EA Asks "What Are Your Biggest Issues?" with Bad Company 2

[iQue]

Re: EA Asks "What Are Your Biggest Issues?" with Bad Company 2

OH and for christ's sake stop BREAKING things that were fine... wth is wrong with them? always breaking things more everytime they try to fix things... i mean why would all of a sudden would they mess up the GOL sights? there was nothing wrong with the gun to begin with, just DON'T TINKER WITH IT!!!

I have to admit they had a very good intention behind changing the GOLs sight though - they made the lines thinner which looks and feels better, it just had the bad side effect of being bugged on lower resolutions. :P

Overall I'm very happy with the game, but it could be lots better - I got my money well worth though. Bring on BF3.

[johnrondot]

Re: EA Asks "What Are Your Biggest Issues?" with Bad Company 2

bigger maps!

[CptainCrunch]

Re: EA Asks "What Are Your Biggest Issues?" with Bad Company 2

This comic reminded me of this:

http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20100716

Crunch

[CptainCrunch]

Re: EA Asks "What Are Your Biggest Issues?" with Bad Company 2

Yeah, too bad thats not going to happen.

Crunch

[(BG)Patton]

Re: EA Asks "What Are Your Biggest Issues?" with Bad Company 2

mod tools. that is all.

[CptainCrunch]

Re: EA Asks "What Are Your Biggest Issues?" with Bad Company 2

I dont really see how this sort of thing helps as they surely already know the issues we all have with the game. Or have they simply not been listening so far? :/

There is a lot of DICE hate going around and it could be that way, but I personally think its to focus on the biggest complaints. The game is vastly improved from release and there has been a huge list of things fixed, but there is still a lot of other items and now nitpicking issues included.

I think its a re-focus thing to decide what should be the new list. When you have a giant list and you have checked off a lot and added a lot, the focus can get muddied.

Crunch

[The_Eliminator]

Re: EA Asks "What Are Your Biggest Issues?" with Bad Company 2

I dont really see how this sort of thing helps as they surely already know the issues we all have with the game. Or have they simply not been listening so far? :/

[Minmaster]

Re: EA Asks "What Are Your Biggest Issues?" with Bad Company 2

Oh! OK, there is a perfect thing I'd like to see fixed. Go ahead and add it to the top OP:

• Quit it with the excuses.

Just do a few small things at a time and release them. Over the course a few months, little things added will add up! If the game is not that modular and you did not learn for the noodle code that was BF2, where one thing touched would break several other things...well, time to go back to some workshops and seminars for software coding. They have set the expectation by starting with an auto-updater. Stop setting expectations, over the last 10 years, DICE, you should have learned now. Be professionals and classy. Stop acting like you are some small software shop renting a small suite on some building. You are grown up now. BFBC2 certainly looks like you thought a bit about what not to do or have added in.

But really, I know you want to have a good product, make money and have enough capital for other projects. Making weapons tweaks every several days till you get that right balance might be OK with the auto-updater if everyone knows that for the first week of August, you are going to put the game into a tweak mode for everyone to hash out different variations...which should have been done in the beta or RC?

Ok, off soap box. OP go ahead and use your discretion if you think I'm flaming and delete my post and points if it is overboard. I've been hearing this crap from DiCE since BF1942 and thousands of dollars later spent on my end upgrading my rig just I could specifically play their titles (and that is the truth, they are the only 3D shooter I played till I moved over to L4D), I've gotten burn and my bank account has for titles that could have been more solid.

And don't get me wrong though...I sure as hell had a lot of fun and kinda feel like I enjoyed every minute of them though I spent a lot of money doing it...to avoid all the CTDs.

read this post where he tries to explain why:

http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/battlefield-bad-company-2-pc/1199353-software-engineering-file-formats-build-processes-packaging.html

here's that snippet:

First off, it turns out that the tools that "cook" the data don't produce binary-identical data all the time. The result after cooking is always functionally identical, but the bit-content may differ slightly. Items in unordered lists change order, uninitialized fields contain random data, that sort of stuff.

Why didn't this get caught sooner? Because you only notice problems of this kind when re-cooking the same data several times, from scratch. And re-cooking all BC2 data takes over 48 hours for a high-end computer. And locating & correcting all places where cooking isn't deterministic down to the bit level would take a lot of time (both calendar time and effective development time). Perhaps that time is better spent elsewhere?

So. If different "cooking" runs produce slightly different results, it is suddenly difficult to look at version A and version B of the data and answer the question, "what are the differences between these two datasets?". It's easy when looking at the source data, but when looking at the cooked data there are a lot of changes which have no effect on the final game experience.

There are about 40.000 source files, and this results in well over 100.000 cooked files. Going through those by hand is not an option. Writing a perfect filter, which knows which differences are benign and which are for real, will take as much time and effort as making the cooking 100% deterministic. Neither that is an option.

So you make a filter which does something in between; be smart, create rules for the file types you know about, and when in doubt - assume that the change is for real. Err on the side of caution.


Then you realize that those shader databases were never designed to be extendable. What happens when a new object is added to a level in a patch? Its mesh & textures are included, no sweat, but what about the shader combinations? How does one create add something to the shader database, when the shader database is an opaque binary block whose entire contents may change when just one object is added to the level?
(One shader database is about 5MB. There are three shader databases per level - one each for DX9, DX10 and DX11.)


And finally, the patch system itself. Yes, it can replace portions of files on-disk. But due to its heritage (from BF Heroes), it is not able to open BFBC2's archive files and apply differences to individual files within the archives.
The only straightforward way is to make all patched-in content arrive in archives on the side of the original archives.

[Rambo]

Re: EA Asks "What Are Your Biggest Issues?" with Bad Company 2

Leave this game die and not milk it,Move on with BF3 and 64 players on PC!?:) or BCV with 12 maps

[RocketChild]

Re: EA Asks "What Are Your Biggest Issues?" with Bad Company 2

well a lot of people asked them to make use of the auto updater and they pretty much gave the community a big old excuse about why they won't do it...

Oh! OK, there is a perfect thing I'd like to see fixed. Go ahead and add it to the top OP:

• Quit it with the excuses.

Just do a few small things at a time and release them. Over the course a few months, little things added will add up! If the game is not that modular and you did not learn for the noodle code that was BF2, where one thing touched would break several other things...well, time to go back to some workshops and seminars for software coding. They have set the expectation by starting with an auto-updater. Stop setting expectations, over the last 10 years, DICE, you should have learned now. Be professionals and classy. Stop acting like you are some small software shop renting a small suite on some building. You are grown up now. BFBC2 certainly looks like you thought a bit about what not to do or have added in.

But really, I know you want to have a good product, make money and have enough capital for other projects. Making weapons tweaks every several days till you get that right balance might be OK with the auto-updater if everyone knows that for the first week of August, you are going to put the game into a tweak mode for everyone to hash out different variations...which should have been done in the beta or RC?

Ok, off soap box. OP go ahead and use your discretion if you think I'm flaming and delete my post and points if it is overboard. I've been hearing this crap from DiCE since BF1942 and thousands of dollars later spent on my end upgrading my rig just I could specifically play their titles (and that is the truth, they are the only 3D shooter I played till I moved over to L4D), I've gotten burn and my bank account has for titles that could have been more solid.

And don't get me wrong though...I sure as hell had a lot of fun and kinda feel like I enjoyed every minute of them though I spent a lot of money doing it...to avoid all the CTDs.

[Minmaster]

Re: EA Asks "What Are Your Biggest Issues?" with Bad Company 2

well a lot of people asked them to make use of the auto updater and they pretty much gave the community a big old excuse about why they won't do it... some excuse about its a lot of work to put together a build, etc... and too risky to release small fixes that can break the game...

[RocketChild]

Re: EA Asks "What Are Your Biggest Issues?" with Bad Company 2

exactly, i hope they stop talking about fixing stuff and just fix them already. fix them in a timely manner too. some of these issues with the game shouldn't be around after over 4 months, no excuses. GET TO WORK DICE.

Actually, I think it would be better if they just said "We are going to put something out every two weeks. Hell or high water, we are using the auto-update feature and releasing something. Whether it is minor or major, we are going to push out something new to the community.

[imported_Snazzy]

Re: EA Asks "What Are Your Biggest Issues?" with Bad Company 2

If they release a map maker/mod toolset they won't have to worry about making more maps themselves.

[Minmaster]

Re: EA Asks "What Are Your Biggest Issues?" with Bad Company 2

I have just had one of my major wishes granted - DICE to ask what is REALLY wrong with the game and to listen to the answers and act on it. I'll leave it up to you guys to push the important points cause I trust you - Awwww

exactly, i hope they stop talking about fixing stuff and just fix them already. fix them in a timely manner too. some of these issues with the game shouldn't be around after over 4 months, no excuses. GET TO WORK DICE.

OH and for christ's sake stop BREAKING things that were fine... wth is wrong with them? always breaking things more everytime they try to fix things... i mean why would all of a sudden would they mess up the GOL sights? there was nothing wrong with the gun to begin with, just DON'T TINKER WITH IT!!!

(would probably help to post it over there though)

[RocketChild]

Re: EA Asks "What Are Your Biggest Issues?" with Bad Company 2

Seems like that list is a very good beginning and it is not too overboard. I know that this game is not really a true "Battlefield" game, and it is a subset called "Bad Company" so it is hard to really push more to make this what it was not intended to be.

If I read that right though "rank caps"....I hope that means do what was done when BF2 came out and up the amount of points or playtime you need to get higher ranks/weapons. We all know gamers on PC play months/years longer then console players so our ranking system should be revised to reflect that.

I saw someone commented on fixing the G3. I would like some elaboration on that, because although I think it could have some marginal improvement, I still like playing with it in its current state. I'm more concerned they'll gimp it when they think they are improving it.

I'll agree with the whole "more maps" thing, but I think it needs to be taken much, much further. EA/DiCE really should look at releasing a map creation kit and allow people to just make maps and DiCE approves some of the popular ones for ranked play. Collin said years ago this was kicked around with DiCE, but it went no where with BF2. I know so many people that have already moved on because of the limit of maps. Yeah, sure there are several, but really why not have 35 maps and then it comes down to 10 really good ones instead of coming down to 3 'sections' of maps.

I never have used the CG...well, OK, I have shot at a couple tanks with it, but I have not tried using it on infantry. So I'll be honest and say I don't know how people use it on players, but I think it should be that either use have to use it with a tracer dart, or you have to hand control the missile into a target...I think it to much a fire and forget round and is beyond what it was designed for (or was it DiCE?).

But I think the GL is fine. It is quite weak and I think if anything was done with the Grenade Launcher, people would moan and that would be a problem. You have to get some cherry shots in BC2 to be dangerous with it, unlike BF2.

I'm happy we have a text/chat feature. Very happy. I think though there should be something you could do in an INI file that will allow you to change the transparency, box location, box size, font size, colors and maybe even put a field in the INI for 0 or 1 for having ingame text spammed into the text box or in its normal location. In all reality, we are PC gamers, and expect a lot more flexibility in our game setups.

I'd like a feature that allows you to join straight to a friends game and on his squad if possible. And to expand on that, if you can't get on his team, you are put in a queue to allow you to be the first team switched to your friends team when someone leaves (not even to his squad, just team). It was mentioned that it would be nice to have an option not to get team switched, well make it so you don't get Team Switched if you are on a team with someone in your friends list.

It is in the list, but allow external browsers to work with the game, I really liked the flexibility of QTracker.

Add in a Stinger as an option for the Engineer class, you can even make it a weak warhead so it takes four shots, but just add it in, especially if more makes come along with more helos.

Make future Squad Death Match servers not allow armor and IO mode.

Put a map voting feature native to the server (excuse my ignorance if this already exists)

That enough I can come up with more.

Oh! This is 2010, not 2005. Servers have more horse power and datacenters more bandwidth then 5 years ago. I work in a huge 10,000+ datacenter, so I'm not talking out of my *** here. Make VOIP defaulted on with all server configs. These machine can handle it and considering we are no longer hosting 64 player servers but 32 player, it should be forced on. And it has to be forced off by the admin if they don't want it. I miss the communication of BF2, TF2 and L4D. Why should I have to run TS or Vent just to talk. It seems more servers have it turned off then have it on.