DICE on TotalBF2 - Game Feedback Answered

[imported_Apostle]

Re: DICE on TotalBF2 - Game Feedback Answered

All thie macho crap over problems with a video game. Please.

Because you're above all that, aren't you? :laugh:

[DuffMan]

Re: DICE on TotalBF2 - Game Feedback Answered

Because you're above all that, aren't you? :laugh:

Yes, yes I am.

[imported_Apostle]

Re: DICE on TotalBF2 - Game Feedback Answered

Yes, yes I am.

Hehe. :)

[[DICE]CKMC]

Re: DICE on TotalBF2 - Game Feedback Answered

Heated debate. Much like most others here over 3 pages.

Regardless. I believe I mentioned in the thread that read "DICE READ THIS - outline for the perfect patch" or along those lines:

The split seen in this thread is very indicative of the split on nearly every issue around BF2. I found it interesting that in this thread there have been a few posts setting the J-10 concern above CTD issues. The level of this split and the fervor shown in by people in their defense of their views just shows the passion this community has for the game. Honestly it humbles me to have you guys be so intense.

Moving along. Yes my replies are very obtuse because its a simple transfer of information I am noting. Its also completely accurate that no post from me does not mean that the thread has not been read.

However my answers must be obtuse because I can not give a guarantee that something will be addressed since anything that is going to be fixed has a risk assessment. Then, in some cases, a fix or adjustment is attempted even if the assesment shows that it would be unwise to make that attempt. Then the change is reviewed and kept or discarded.

This whole proccess often happens with little to no visibility to you as a player. Speaking as a player I know that the reaction is often "That sucks you should tell us anyways." Unfortunately this is not the way things work. While I would like to expose things I can not as it then invites review and criticism of internal process; which would then require further internal exposure and on and on...

Yes I realize I just wrote "I would like to expose things..." and expect there to be some humorous stab; or perhaps a not so humorous stab.


Regardless. My overall point is that there are very few 'easy' choices when ever we make a review for any patch. Unfortunately for 1.4 we did have a very easy choice that really was not a choice: Fix the CTD's.

Cheers,
-C

[imported_jerryhopper]

Re: DICE on TotalBF2 - Game Feedback Answered

Yes I realize I just wrote "I would like to expose things..." and expect there to be some humorous stab; or perhaps a not so humorous stab.

Interesting reading colin :)
what can i say? being 'open' is good in many ways, but also bad.
isnt there a path in the middle?

i remember my days with RavenShield and the CinciHighSpeed TS.
were like hundreds of people hang around, waiting for 'MR.X' some quasi popular dude, that had a ****LOAD of inside information! patch release dates, content release dates and more. i would love to see something like that in the BF community.
for what i know of that guy, i think the information MR.X had, was a deliberatly information leak, set up to 'warm up' the community. Since this guy was not represented by the gamepublisher, people didnt even bother to ask him things. we were happy with what he brought everytime!

right now, i think the bfcommunity is dominated by negativity, which is hard to turn around.
Some exclusive content released by the 'smaller' community site, except always the bigger ones ( gamespy etc ) would help.
today people just dont feel 'connected' with EA/DICE, and thats causing the heated discussions.


On the issue that people thing that you dont 'read' threads, there is a simple solution, since there are numerous forums, where people post things, and a lot of the same posts are made on different sites, its simply logical that you cannot reply, but if there was some centralized system, like a modded bugtracker, you could at least acknowledge certain things, which would improve the 'communication' factor.


Over to that Exposing thing again....


did you wash your hands after holding that turd?

( and colin, if you like a real one, PM me a post-adress, and we'll send a real Battleturd your way! )

[RocketChild]

Re: DICE on TotalBF2 - Game Feedback Answered

I miss the .PLAN files John Carmack (and to a lesser Tim Willits, McGee) released. He was a busy guy too. But he kept a blog that outlined the overall direction he and Id were going. It was helpful to see what they were planning in the near-term and the future.

Often it could get a little deep, because he was a developer. But you got a sense that there was a solid direction. It was not as cosmetic as many other software houses are. He gave his insight, philosophy, and opinions.

Being someone that has had to work directly with executives, developers, and departmental managers, I understand the financing and politics involved with user acceptance and internal decisions.

But as a community member, I think most of us would like to see a massive list of items that are addressed. Actually, just a bullet point list of yes, no, to be addressed in future. Something that shows every suggestion ever made and what the verdict is.

People want to know, are there going to be patches 1.5 and 1.6? Are there going to be more maps? Are you going to retroactively add in extensions/functions to BF2 that are built out for 2142? Are we going to see new content? What is our future as a community? Are we going to be forced over to 2142 because BF2 is abandon? Will we more boosters come out? Will new content arrive for current boosters? Are we going to see functionality change for current weapons and kits?

I have read the changes in the beta change log, but I still recall of the lists of things that were going to be addressed back in 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4…where are we progressing to? Everyone expects a lot, but when you are on top, and you make something great, people expect nothing less then continued excellence.

I think the community is uneasy right now because we love the product, we loved the past products. But is DiCE going to join the ranks of Id, Blizzard, and Valve? Or are they going to become another ION storm, Westwood, and MicroProse(Sid Meier).

[JonnyMacFred102]

Re: DICE on TotalBF2 - Game Feedback Answered

With EA and Dice, everything is so secretive about patches. FFS we don't even get a full changelog for any patch released!

[0wn4g3]

Re: DICE on TotalBF2 - Game Feedback Answered

right now, i think the bfcommunity is dominated by negativity, which is hard to turn around.
Some exclusive content released by the 'smaller' community site, except always the bigger ones ( gamespy etc ) would help.
today people just dont feel 'connected' with EA/DICE, and thats causing the heated discussions.

I have to agree whole heartedly. It would appear that BF2 has brought out the worst in public players even though quite a few enjoy and love the BF franchise. I believe that out of common sense the CTD issue is of the utmost importance right now over any other issue involved with BF2. What I don't understand is why it has taken EA/DICE over 4 weeks from the release of the 1.3 patch to actually discuss the server crashes and then mention they are being worked on for 1.4. No one will ever ask a representative from EA why they didn't at least release a hotfix once they determined the cause of the CTD.

Another thing I don't understand is how some of the issues that revolve around BF2 are present patch after patch after patch but yet new content seems to be added as if it's no problem. Then the new content is added which introduces more problems that are now present in combination with problems that were already present. The J-10 issue is the hottest BF2 game issue in debate right now that has been in existence ever since the game was released. For those of you who don't believe in god give the J-10 a try, it's as close as you get.

Jerry mentioned a bug tracker type approach that is seen in combination with many open source projects. I think they would need one hell of a database server to store all the problems this game has. They really wouldnt be able to confirm anything because if we take a look at the past it's pretty evident they don't test crap. If we go back to the release of the BF2 demo, we will see that CTD's were rare and from there on almost every prevailing issue in BF2 has either existed since the release of the game or has been introduced into the game by EA/DICE themselves.

You know, you EA/DICE guys are doing all of this work with the community now a days with the 1.4 patch will be the patch that makes or breaks this game for good. Before the 1.4 patch there was really an out of contact approach to the way you guys did BF2 and I am talking about becoming ONE with the majority of the BF2 fan base. Whatever happened to holding Map Making contests where the best 5 maps made it into a map pack in the next patch and those maps were of course free? What a lot of community involvement it took to create Special Forces/EuroForces/Armoured Fury. The only involvement I can remember dealing with these booster packs is casting a vote on a poll published on the official BF2 site. What the hell did that lead to? A product I had to pay for when instead you could held some sort of contest where the COMMUNITY really got involved.

This entire Chain effect really sucks when the top most links are so crappy. We have EA/DICe in total control of the game, able to modify, fix and add things to the code. Then you have the server administrators and the GSP ranked server providers that of course enable us to play on ranked servers, then the actual client or what I like to call consumers, you know the people that bought the game. This entire chain reaction of crap is getting tiresome. EA/DICE releases a patch, the patch does more harm than good, all GSP automaticly upgrade to this new crappy patch, now all ranked servers are affected, clients are forced to upgrade to the crappy patch because the servers are upgraded and now the client gets to experience the server crashes, the CTD's and the long awaited announcement from the guys at the higher level that there is a problem, wait a month or two and we will try again. Just sucks being held by the balls by the top level and being able to do jack crap about it except ***** and moan, with the 1.4 open beta being the exception of doing anything about it


Deep down I wish that the world could stop while the entire team of people involved with BF2 would just erase all of the mush that is apparently inside the teams head. Then when the world began to spin again they themselves played the game they created and can experience first hand what it's like to play a bunch of crap within 15-20 minute intervals.

[RocketChild]

Re: DICE on TotalBF2 - Game Feedback Answered

With EA and Dice, everything is so secretive about patches. FFS we don't even get a full changelog for any patch released!

Really, it was 3 weeks? before we heard that 'yes we changed something at the last minute that created server/client problems and crashes'. I never saw anything in the change log that I could point to and say ah, there it is. It was just some major obvious changes and then the "and some minor code modifications".

I don't want to rip on DiCE too much, I love their product. I loved it so much that I dropped a paycheck to upgrade my computer. But I don't want to pay for mediocracy again in software. Thats it, over, the end! I am not buying 2142 till I demo someone elses copy for a little bit.

At least when I buy an Id product, I know it is solid, out the door and when something is wrong, they fix it. They build their product for the future, not the present. There is a F'ing reason why Id and Valve license the hell out of their Engine. Because they make it beyond flexible, they future proof the things. Them boys up the street from me know how to take care of their market.

I think the BF community is pretty big, when I look all the active readers in all the English battlefield forums, I think GD! there is a lot of us! Then you start factoring all the other countries that play and are contributing to other forums that are not English, MF there is a lot of us.

It is crazy some of the stuff I read about BF outside of what I read in our forums. When you have mag editors ripping the game support, wow. It is just not here we discuss it.

God, I love the product DiCE has produced, but when I see a competeing product released 14 months after its sister software, I start to wonder, why should I get migrate? People still play Quake3, hell that is the choosen game for this years' CPT. Haha, A LOT people still play Starcraft! I just don't see the point with competeing with yourself. I wouldn't be surprised if EA will only allow DiCE to build out new games to bring in new revenue. I have known people personally that have worked for software houses that EA has done this too.

Maybe I just wish to see what Sony did with Everquest, they took and gave the whole Everquest community the new Everquest2 engine and put it into the old game which could play side-by-side with Everquest2. How fabulous was that!?

How about while I am on it, why not some community ranked maps? What is hard about that? If they are played well, they must be balanced off. If DiCE CA has a rendering box sitting around, maybe the could just run the maps through the device to clean and tighten them up a little. I am sure community members would not mind handing over their work to DiCE/EA. There is certainly enough creativity and man power out there to move on this.

Sigh, I know it comes off harsh when your reading my post, but inside, I still love the product and don't want to see it abandon.

This entire Chain effect really sucks when the top most links are so crappy. We have EA/DICe in total control of the game, able to modify, fix and add things to the code. Then you have the server administrators and the GSP ranked server providers that of course enable us to play on ranked servers, then the actual client or what I like to call consumers, you know the people that bought the game. This entire chain reaction of crap is getting tiresome. EA/DICE releases a patch, the patch does more harm than good, all GSP automaticly upgrade to this new crappy patch, now all ranked servers are affected, clients are forced to upgrade to the crappy patch because the servers are upgraded and now the client gets to experience the server crashes, the CTD's and the long awaited announcement from the guys at the higher level that there is a problem, wait a month or two and we will try again. Just sucks being held by the balls by the top level and being able to do jack crap about it except ***** and moan, with the 1.4 open beta being the exception of doing anything about it

HAHAH, you got your post in before me and it is the same thoughts WTF!

But to add to what I am quoting you are right, this only hurts the greater BF2 community at large. We here at TotalBF2 (and other BF2 forums) are only a fraction of the greater community. We here are more in the no then the occasional 14 year old that does not stay in touch with what is going on. There are a lot of people out there that just saw the game get worst, never got an official EA notice (instead they got Buy Armored Fury Ad) saying hold tight we are hard a work. Then they leave, and the community is more reduced. Now execs think people don't like the game, so they push harder to move on, when all they had to do was own up and inform the people that are not 'in the know' that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Instead, with 1.4, we loose 2 thousand more players, and there goes future revenue to DiCE for another possible booster pack or ranked server.

[Spawndemon]

Re: DICE on TotalBF2 - Game Feedback Answered

List updated with four more questions/answers:

http://www.totalbf2.com/page.php?do=diceanswers

[Scinto]

Re: DICE on TotalBF2 - Game Feedback Answered

i cant view that page from work

[imported_Aegis159]

Re: DICE on TotalBF2 - Game Feedback Answered

List updated with four more questions/answers:

http://www.totalbf2.com/page.php?do=diceanswers

So you're telling me, that through ALL of the reported bug/errors/glitches that they can only answer 11 questions?? And half of these "answers" aren't even real answers.... ??? Is that what YOU call good community relations????

[USI_Krusher]

Re: DICE on TotalBF2 - Game Feedback Answered

Does anyone think that the code was so convoluted when it was written, that they cannot fix things? That they'd have to overhaul the entire code?

I wish they'd just come clean, and admit they cannot fix some things. That would be suicide for them, so it will not happen.

Remember they were going to have snipers be able to pick up clays, then they couldn't because they felt that "the community just isn't ready for that"? WTF is that? That is the most BS non-answer I've seen. Will the community ever be ready for it? Puh-leeze!

Red tag bug still not fixed? AT and TOW missiles still going through vehicles? CTD's? Left click to fire a TV missile, and nothing happens?

Who cares? we've got visible UAV's. We can drop cartillery!

Arrrgggghhhhhh!!!!!

[imported_samfisherchaos]

Re: DICE on TotalBF2 - Game Feedback Answered

hey colin how bout an anti smacktard weapon or key for 2142 i love the taunt idea and wots the secret of these commander toys for conquest mode in 2142??

[jameslcross]

Re: DICE on TotalBF2 - Game Feedback Answered

It's good to see that, but most of his answers were vague and blanket statements that didn't really explain anything.

Init!