BF2: Nice guys finish last.

[imported_Kenf22]

Re: BF2: Nice guys finish last.

I think the main problem with these patches are not the time, but the size. They make these huge patches, trying to fix everything in one fel swoop, and things get missed, beta testing is a nightmare, and the community get irrate because of it. If they just fixed a few things at a time, maybe ff on mines, AA, and the red/blue bug, testing would have been much better, and we may have been farther by now. Even if it took longer, I think the more regular patching would keep the community happy.

[Mr. ADHD]

Re: BF2: Nice guys finish last.

Think about it for a sec...they patch something release the patch...then they have to work with the patched copy for the next patches. They probably dispatch the problems to departments, all running with the same version and wait to bundle all the fixes. Otherwise, they would have to keep updating each department. Each fix can wreck havoc on another department.

I think the delays are probably a question of resources and manpower, while keeping costs down.

I was reading through a Game Testing companies prospectus...they said they offer the Top of the line equipment....first mistake...the average player doesn't have top of the line equipment....

...this is why open beta testing is so important.

I think the main problem with these patches are not the time, but the size. They make these huge patches, trying to fix everything in one fel swoop, and things get missed, beta testing is a nightmare, and the community get irrate because of it. If they just fixed a few things at a time, maybe ff on mines, AA, and the red/blue bug, testing would have been much better, and we may have been farther by now. Even if it took longer, I think the more regular patching would keep the community happy.

[Princess_Frosty]

Re: BF2: Nice guys finish last.

IMO the patches are pretty appauling, they seem to intorduce as many bugs as they kill, but the ones they do introduce are glaringly obvious ones which should NOT get past beta testing - full stop.

Extra features like the visible UAV should only be implimented once all the other features have been playtested to death, in fact extra features idealy could go into completely seperate patches to be released after the game has been made bug free.

As for the balancing, they're not much better, people asked for claymores that friendlys cannot set off, but I dont recall one person asking for claymores that are indestructable to enemy nades/exposives.

[Metalbolt]

Re: BF2: Nice guys finish last.

Come on people, think about it. This is EA we are dealing with, the king of all sequels. If they **** off enough people, they know that those same people who are never going to play BF2 again, will buy BF3... because they still have hope. It's how crappy sequels sell, silly fanboys will buy them even if the last game sucked, because they still have hope for the series.

In reality, we have nothing to complain about. Sure the game was released too early, sure they have yet to fix the bugs that should have been addressed in patch one. Look on the bright side, it's not Diablo 2. D2 has seen eleven, yes ELEVEN, patches now. Two of which were released within the first month the game was out. So let's all be happy that we'll never see that many patches for this game.

[Idaeus]

Re: BF2: Nice guys finish last.

Youve got a point Mr. ADHD... You cant satisfy everyone... Some things will remain annoying nomatter how many patches they release... Some people will even quit forever because of the good things in the patches.. Like this guy: http://bf2s.com/player/48208587/

PS. Please change your avatar? Its freaking me out...

[Mr. ADHD]

Re: BF2: Nice guys finish last.

Marty feldman...oh..I don't think so...he's a classic (my avatar) google him.

Princess has a great point... don't add new features until you fix the old features.. But then again...I'm off the point.

Maintaining true to your title, while showing your customers that their input is important, is fine line to dance.

In the end, people want playable games.

The fact that there are Mods available for BF2, should limit the amount of gameplay and balancing done EA/DICE. In essence, patches should be entirely or predominately on techical issues rather than balancing.

let the Mods sort it out.

[ILuvDaKnob]

Re: BF2: Nice guys finish last.

Yes!!! Nice guys always do "finish" last...


Wink, Wink, nudge, nudge, say no more, say no more...

[Revoluti0n]

Re: BF2: Nice guys finish last.

Its not easy to patch a messed up engin and poor programming.

For this reason, battlefield will ALWAYS have so many bugs...

They screwed up by releasing it maybe 6 months too early ? or maybe even a year too early ?

They SERIOUSLY should have taken a whole lot more time because now that the coding is sooo poor and bugged out, any fix introduced will just introduce a new bug...

Total agreement on this. It must be a painful process indeed to go through thousands of lines of code and adjusting here and tweaking there, hoping that it comes out right. Another thing that must be hard to do is fix code written by other programmers. If you have a huge task like that, there has to be multiple teams that are hired as temps for projects. If these teams come and go, the next ones in line are left to try and find the bugs from the last without really knowing what they did or how.
The game might have been better off being released 6 after it was. But at the same time, a deadline is a deadline. Investors will start withdrawing support as soon as you miss that fate. This spells financial disaster in no uncertain terms. They had to do what they had to do.
Dice did a terrific job with Desert Combat, I think at least. They would release new content with every patch. This included vehicles, weapons, maps, etc. I wish they would throw us a bone so to speak as far as the maps go. Im tired of playing the current ones and I am not paying for new maps. They already got my $80, the least they could do is give us a couple more maps 4 free.

[yorkshireman]

Re: BF2: Nice guys finish last.

If you log onto any gaming forum concerning an online game there's always thousands of post complaining about the gameplay, exploits, bugs etc. Does'nt this then show that rather than games companies trying to release unfinished/unprepared products that there still is a lot of real inherent problems in providing the perfect online multiplayer. I know that everyone with a fair amount of computer savvy likes to think that they could iron out all the games problems pretty quickly but lets face it i'm sure the developers don't employ people who are thick! And for those who believe that badly made games are released delibrately to encourage future sales, well your just getting into the realms of fantasy!
Personally I still find it amazing that you can sit at home infront of a screen and play a game with 64 people from all over the world in real time, something that would have seemed impossible only a few years ago. But then again I'm a bit of an old fart.

[00SoldierofFortune00]

Re: BF2: Nice guys finish last.

I think the red/blue tag bug is really thrown out of proportion. I play only on 64 player servers and I hardly ever run into it the ammount people complain about it. I know I am not the whole community, but it is just that I never run into it the ammount everyone says. And if you see someone running across the field, don't be a jackass and run at him if his uniform is different(happened to me when I had the tag once), just use some common since and don't fire until you know who he is. Too many quick trigger noobs out there now who fire at anything that moves.

And the bug isn't that easy to fix when you have such a complicated game with all this coding.

[ILuvDaKnob]

Re: BF2: Nice guys finish last.

Sometimes I "finish" first and last.... :)

LOL!

[Idaeus]

Re: BF2: Nice guys finish last.

Sometimes I "finish" first and last.... :)

LOL!

You seriously need therapy dude...:shakehead

[B.U.R.N_Eazy-E72]

Re: BF2: Nice guys finish last.

I have to laugh when I read some of these post in this forum. I don't know how many of you guys/gals play other games but the clan I'm in originaly started out as a Star Wars Battlefront clan. We compete in ladders and other forms of orginized competition so we are faily critical of the game we play. All I have to say is be glad that you are not having to deal with Lucas Arts and Pademic. You want to talk about lack of support. With the first game they came out with 2 patches and a third that never left Beta and some factions were so unbalanced it wasn't even funny. Now jump forward to SWBF II. You want to talk about rushed and incomplete. This game has so many colision detection issues and balance issue that it is enought to make you scream sometimes. Now it has been out since November and all the issue have been voiced from the comunity and we have been begging for a patch from them. Well they just released one for SWBF II just about the same time the 1.2 patch came out for BF2. The main difference is that the 1.2 patch actualy did something and made changes to the game that some, including myself, really enjoy. The patch from LA and Pademic.......DIDN'T DO A DAMN THING! There were a few little tweaks they said are in there but any of the major issues such as anyone with a 64 bit processor not being able to play the game, (oh yes, it's true, if you have a 64 bit processor SWBF II will not play for very long which is inexcusable) nor did they make one single change to anything that the whole community had been complaining about. You want to talk about being P****D. I can even play the first game on my new 64 bit rig but I cannot play SWBF II now. Our clan has even gone back to playing the first game because of all the issues with the second one and then they come out with this so called patch that does nothing. It's more insulting than anything. At least EA/DICE is doing something about the problems that the 1.2 patch may have caused. It's a hell of a lot more than LA/Pademic is doing. So to all you out there that are so quick to jump EA/DICE, just remember, it could be worse.

[Alcorr]

Re: BF2: Nice guys finish last.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

It's amazing, the main complaints I've heard for the last 3 months (repeatedly, in multiple forums etc) have been:

Overpowered Air\Underpowered anti-air
C4 throwing
Inaccurate weapons
dolphin diving

So... Dice make a patch, they fix the anti-air, stop dolphin diving, increase the accuracy of the weapons, and get rid of c4 throwing.

Hours after the patch comes out, people are already complaining about the AA being overpowered, about the guns being too accurate, and then trying to 1984 insignificant bugs into "issues the community has wanted fixed since day one", but they have no massive effect on the gameplay.

Another thing, people complaining about how mines and claymores cause stupid people to drive\walk over them and then punish. Every day or 2 I see a new thread about "ZOMG idiots drove a apc over an amine and punizhed me".

It gets fixed.

4 hours later people are whinging about how people are spamming claymores and mines.

If I was a dice worker, I'd have shot myself in the head by now, they just can't please these whingers.

I agree with most of your post, the main problem is that they patched something but they didn't do it correctly. Just because you change the problems so they aren't there anymore doesnt mean anything IF you create more problems.

As far as rushing patches I see none of it as far as EA/DICE goes. Mostly I see delayed releases of games and patches.

Anyways, the reason so many people are complaining is because Dice replaces problems with more problems and even MORE bugs.

If they fixed the problems in the first place and fixed the bugs then peole wouldn't complain.

IMO the game was fine orginally, people complain too much, thats why dice creates more problems and even more bugs.

And now I complain because dice took a handful of problems and a bag of bugs and multiplied each 10 times....

[<EsP>Fury]

Re: BF2: Nice guys finish last.

I hate to say it but I think the best model for patching games now belongs to STEAM.

I was not a big fan of STEAM in the begining it had a lot of problems but now it is the best method to use.

Think about it small patches fixing only one or two issues at a time not these monster patches DICE is making.

I think DICE has done some great things but they are not perfect and have made some mistakes as well.
When you get bugs in the demo and they are still around more than a year after release you have to ask your self some hard questions.

They should start by doing larger scale public beta's on nonranked servers and only try to take on 2 or 3 issuses at a time. I am speaking of game issuses i.e. red/blue ID bug, animation, sound, server crash in SF those types of issues not game balance issuses fix the base first then tweak game play.

As I said above they should look into a model for patching their games like STEAM it will probably be painful at first but if the community is patient I think we will be better served in the long run.