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[dennis]

My friends and I enjoyed the demo, so we went out and got copies of this USD60 game.

Single player campaign is fun, though it takes a lot of cues from Call of Duty 4.

However, multiplayer is awful. It's like they just didn't bother to QA it. The maps are unbalanced and buggy, player spawning is utterly broken, and matchmaking based on skill is something they decided they didn't need.

We joined a server and got our asses kicked because everyone on my team was level 5 or below and everyone on the opposing team was brass. There's no way to switch teams and apparently no autobalancing in the game. And this is when you join under "normal" challenge. There's a "hard" as well.

If that weren't bad enough, all the maps have been mastered and the game's been out only a week. So you have one squad or team exploiting all the weaknesses of the map and the opposing players don't last long enough to become familiar with it.

Spawning is completely broken. Not only will the game spawn you directly under an incoming artillery barrage, or directly in front of a moving tank, it'll spawn you on any available teammate, instead of just your squad leader as happens in BF2.

The game will also spawn you inside a destroyed piece of environment, such as a oil tank. Even though it's destroyed, it has invisible walls and you're trapped forever. The only way out is to suicide.

Seriously, when 50% of your spawns result in immediate death, there's something wrong with the game.

There's currently only one mutiplayer mode, called Gold Rush, which is basically a one-way territory capture, a la Team Fortress. What inevitably happens is the offensive team hides a player behind enemy lines and spawns off that player in waves. Respawn times are short enough that it's nearly impossible to clean them out entirely, and they only need one surviving player to spawn on.

They're releasing a new MP mode, so hopefully that will be an improvement, and maybe they'll fix some bugs along the way.

[Melodic]

The team out of DICE that worked on BF:BC were under enormous pressure to release on time, as far as I was aware. Half of the development time was spent twiddling their thumbs waiting for Frostbite to be finished, and the other half was working their asses off.

Obligatory "fuck EA".

[dennis]

Well, kudos to Digital Illusions for managing to get something entertaining out. I'll hang on to the game a little longer hoping they can fix it in patches.

[MadassAlex]

The issue here is that EA are a bunch of fuckwits that can't manage a game studio. Valve and Blizzard do fantastically, both in terms of quality and finances. Perhaps EA could learn from them?

[Melodic]

Blizzard and Valve both work on a "when it's done" basis. EA doesn't have that luxury. It's like telling Microsoft to behave more like Apple.

[Nodaisho]

Why can't they? With the exception of sports games and the previous title of UT3, there is no reason they can't be delayed.

[Spluff]

It just wouldn't be EA if they didn't force games out too early and ruin studios.

[Dimmukane]

Every big publisher has deadlines, and they'll push the devs hard to reach them.  If it's something sellable, they'll take it, otherwise they'll push it back.  Not just EA, mind you.  Activision made Treyarch do Call of Duty 3 in 8 months.  And what was everyone's chief complaint with that?  Multiplayer.  Basically EA didn't think it was an important enough issue to push the release back. 

[Melodic]

Why can't they? With the exception of sports games and the previous title of UT3, there is no reason they can't be delayed.

We're talking about EA. Different companies work in different ways, and EA's is too push things out the door when their deadline is reached. Obviously, it's a successful business strategy since the games get sold. For every logical reason anyone could come up with for EA to amend their ways and stop pushing the devs so hard, there will be a counterpoint by the brass at Electronic Arts telling you a reason their way works best.

And for the record, EA knows when to loosen the noose around a developer's neck. They aren't the mother of all evils.

[Spluff]

And for the record, EA knows when to loosen the noose around a developer's neck. They aren't the mother of all evils.

Origin and Westwood might disagree with you.

[Storm Rider]

That was years ago and under different management. EA is run very differently now, get the fuck over it.

[Spluff]

How is it 'run very differently'? I haven't seen them do anything good yet. EA still rushes out half finished games and releases the same useless sport titles.

[MadassAlex]

That was years ago and under different management. EA is run very differently now, get the fuck over it.

Are you sure? Because I'm still seeing the same sports game re-hashes and half-finished titles that they've become infamous for. If they're run very differently, then it doesn't seem to have any bearing on the final product.

[Melodic]

This thread sucks.

[MadassAlex]

I understand business ethics and everything, but EA has ruined far too many games with fantastic potential for me to cut them anymore slack. It's downright ridiculous.

[Dimmukane]

This thread sucks.

[Johnny C]

LOL CAPITALISM

Not EA's fault that teenagers don't have anything to do with their time in the summer - which it is right now, look outside - than master video games. The unfortunate fact is that when you're an adult you don't have nearly the time or energy to expend on getting better at a video game than a teenager does. The multiplayer is unbalanced because it's July and it'll be unbalanced until September and there's barely anything that anyone can do about that. Welcome to the real world, kids.

Also why does everyone take a shit on EA for things they did in the last decade, you people are utterly confounding sometimes.

[Storm Rider]

How is it 'run very differently'? I haven't seen them do anything good yet. EA still rushes out half finished games and releases the same useless sport titles.

Are you sure? Because I'm still seeing the same sports game re-hashes and half-finished titles that they've become infamous for. If they're run very differently, then it doesn't seem to have any bearing on the final product.

First of all, if you don't care about the useless sports titles, then what does it matter to you if they keep releasing them? Sports fans want annual game releases, and like it or not, those sports games help them finance other games. Plus, if you look at critical assessment of EA's sports games, at least the FIFA and NHL games have seen a pretty dramatic increase in quality in the last few years. Hell, they came out with skate last year, which I haven't played, but is apparently the most original and unique sports game in years. Furthermore, EA has been taking risks and pushing more and more original IP recently, like Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, Saboteur, Rock Band, and fucking Spore for crying out loud. They're distributing and at least partially financing all of Valve's products, and are you going to argue about the quality or originality of that?

And on the 'half-finished' front, would the old EA have pushed back Mercenaries 2 for over a year to give it more development time? Would they have delayed Army of Two for four months and out of a holiday season release when it was supposed to be one of their marquee games for the season? Would they have moved Dragon Age back to 2009, when it's been in development since 2003? Hell, the original release date for Bad Company was March of 2007. Was the game released 'half-finished'? I'm not impugning what Dennis is saying, since I haven't played this game myself, but considering the reviews this game is getting, I doubt it. From what I've heard, spawn camping has always been a problem with the Battlefield games, and it's not specifically with this installment of the series or something that can be blamed on EA. The fact of the matter is, even if the accusation of rushing Bad Company is true, every publisher rushes out games occasionally. They're publicly traded companies, and they have to report to their shareholders and put games out in a given financial quarter.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, the new evil empire of the video game industry is Activision. After acquiring Blizzard (which as I pointed out in the Diablo 3 thread, hasn't put out an original property in a decade), they're even larger than EA, and they're churning out the most formulaic crap I can possibly conceive at an amazing rate. EA is not the company putting out five Guitar Hero games in 18 months. The only remotely original games coming out of Activision anymore are the Sierra games, and frankly the only reason those exist is that they were in production before the acquisition. For whatever reason, EA has moved on, but gamers haven't, even though there's a far worse culprit at this point that nobody ever calls out on their bullshit.

[Jackie Blue]

It's sad because Activision basically made the best games ever...

...uh, 26 years ago... 

[Melodic]

Man, when did Tony Hawk's Pro Skater come out? That game was fucking fantastic.

[Dimmukane]

Word on the street is DoubleFine/Brutal Legend is looking for a different publisher because they're unhappy with the Activision/Vivendi-Blizzard merger.

[Nodaisho]

Not EA's fault that teenagers don't have anything to do with their time in the summer - which it is right now, look outside - than master video games.

You appear to be unfamiliar with parents, Johnny. These days, lots of parents sign up their kids for way too many activities during the summer, last summer was more stressful for me than being in school, though that wasn't my mother's fault, just bad luck with scheduling.

[Ozymandias]

Man, when did Tony Hawk's Pro Skater come out? That game was fucking fantastic.

1999.

9 years ago.

Since then, 9 other THPS games have come out.

Before Neversoft was finally allowed to stop making them so they could whore out Guitar Hero once Harmonix left.

[Thy Dungeonman]

Before Neversoft was finally allowed to stop making them

If only they were so merciful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Hawk%27s_10

[Ozymandias]

I basically imagine Neversoft to be a bunch of small 5 year old Asian kids working with large machinery except also constantly forced to say things like "That was a wicked awesome mutilation today, bro." and then laugh when someone in charge flings feces at them.

[Johnny C]

I imagine that they made GUN.

I enjoyed GUN.

Not the last Tony Hawk game, though. I hated that.

[dennis]

LOL CAPITALISM

Not EA's fault that teenagers don't have anything to do with their time in the summer - which it is right now, look outside - than master video games. The unfortunate fact is that when you're an adult you don't have nearly the time or energy to expend on getting better at a video game than a teenager does. The multiplayer is unbalanced because it's July and it'll be unbalanced until September and there's barely anything that anyone can do about that. Welcome to the real world, kids.

Also why does everyone take a shit on EA for things they did in the last decade, you people are utterly confounding sometimes.

Man, it's not that people mastered the game already, it's that the game is so flawed that people are already exploiting the flaws. Multiplayer is unbalanced because there's no balancing. This stuff doesn't happen in COD4, for instance. Or Halo. Or even BF2. BF:BC is broken.

Have you even played this game?

[dennis]

First of all, if you don't care about the useless sports titles, then what does it matter to you if they keep releasing them? Sports fans want annual game releases, and like it or not, those sports games help them finance other games. Plus, if you look at critical assessment of EA's sports games, at least the FIFA and NHL games have seen a pretty dramatic increase in quality in the last few years. Hell, they came out with skate last year, which I haven't played, but is apparently the most original and unique sports game in years. Furthermore, EA has been taking risks and pushing more and more original IP recently, like Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, Saboteur, Rock Band, and fucking Spore for crying out loud. They're distributing and at least partially financing all of Valve's products, and are you going to argue about the quality or originality of that?

First of all, EA has no creative or deadline control over Valve. EA is only distributing their brick and mortar retail segment. This is why Valve games are typically uncompromised.

Second: The majority of EA's annual sports titles involve only incremental development. Major development happens by necessity when a new generation of consoles come out. The only reason to release yearly titles is to move more product. People will buy them because you shut down the servers and stop supporting the previous year's incarnation.

Third: most of the original IP you talk about originates in dev houses that they bought. EA, again is the publisher. Mirror's Edge is a DICE game. Saboteur is a Pandemic game. Rock Band is a Harmonix game. Spore is a Will Wright game. No one thinks of these games as "EA games". What EA does do to these games is implement asinine DRM and control marketing. Their level of creative control varies, but really, it comes down to deadlines with these houses. EA did learn to stop assimilating the dev houses and let them work with some degree of autonomy.

And on the 'half-finished' front, would the old EA have pushed back Mercenaries 2 for over a year to give it more development time? Would they have delayed Army of Two for four months and out of a holiday season release when it was supposed to be one of their marquee games for the season? Would they have moved Dragon Age back to 2009, when it's been in development since 2003? Hell, the original release date for Bad Company was March of 2007. Was the game released 'half-finished'? I'm not impugning what Dennis is saying, since I haven't played this game myself, but considering the reviews this game is getting, I doubt it. From what I've heard, spawn camping has always been a problem with the Battlefield games, and it's not specifically with this installment of the series or something that can be blamed on EA. The fact of the matter is, even if the accusation of rushing Bad Company is true, every publisher rushes out games occasionally. They're publicly traded companies, and they have to report to their shareholders and put games out in a given financial quarter.

Not every game is in a state to be released at all when the deadline comes around. If you can't play the game, you can't very well release it. The content of BF:BC was already pretty much there and finalized, but what EA seems have to cut is QA time. A proper QA cycle would have caught many of the problems people are seeing now, including the technical online issues they had at launch. Quality assurance is just as important as content development, but management more often than not thinks QA is expendable vs. a deadline.

Also, being a publicly traded corporation is not the same thing as having responsibility to the market (i.e. gamers). The bottom-line for a publicly traded company is  profit. EA is definitely no exception.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, the new evil empire of the video game industry is Activision. After acquiring Blizzard (which as I pointed out in the Diablo 3 thread, hasn't put out an original property in a decade), they're even larger than EA, and they're churning out the most formulaic crap I can possibly conceive at an amazing rate. EA is not the company putting out five Guitar Hero games in 18 months. The only remotely original games coming out of Activision anymore are the Sierra games, and frankly the only reason those exist is that they were in production before the acquisition. For whatever reason, EA has moved on, but gamers haven't, even though there's a far worse culprit at this point that nobody ever calls out on their bullshit.

EA has gotten better, but really it's only as a result of losing lawsuits. Hopefully they are coming around as to learning from their development mistakes, but I think it's naive to think that EA will move off the bottom-line mentality. They've realized that giving developers more autonomy is profitable in the long run, but I don't expect them to start listening to gamers themselves rather than gamers' dollars.

[Storm Rider]

What caused the change is irrelevant, the point is that the improvement is there. Furthermore, what difference does it make whether or not the IP is coming out of a studio that they bought or not? They're still financing and distributing the game, so they're instrumental to its release to the public. And I never said they had creative control over Valve anywhere in that post, only that they facilitated distribution.

Really, what this ultimately proves is that they must have added in multiplayer pretty late into the equation, since it was intended as a single-player only game in the first place. Ultimately, if the single player part succeeded, then I'd say DICE achieved its original goal, and the buggy multiplayer is an unfortunate consequence of that focus during development.

I'm not arguing anywhere that EA isn't a profit-motivated company, only that their methods have substantially improved in recent years but nobody's giving them credit for it and instead heaping shit on them based on events that were nearly a decade ago.

[Ozymandias]

Oh, geez. Whatever, Bryan. All they're doing is letting the companies they buy use their vast resources to pursue their own goals and ideas, just like every other major development company in the industry does. I mean, when Army of Two got bad reviews upon pre-release, it's not like EA could've just said "fuck it, bad games happen" and shoved it out unfinished and terrible. No one does that.

[KvP]

Sometimes they do, usually during the holiday season, as Bryan pointed out. I'm thinking particularly of Knights of the Old Republic 2, which probably needed at least 2 more months of development time to be even coherent. But they threw it out there. O' course Lucasarts was hemmorhaging cash at the time and is now a shadow of its former self.

[Dimmukane]

I just wanna point out that Melodic's comment about the engine not being finished is still relatively important.  Too Human got pushed back 2 years after the predicted date (once it was on 360) because they had to overhaul the engine.  It still has noticeable, though not terrible, framerate issues.  Prey and DNF both went through at least two complete engine changes.  One of them just came out a while ago, we're still waiting on the other one.  The one that did come out is known for having very laggy and broken multiplayer.  Even with extra time, some things still don't turn out as well as expected because of things like that.

I'm in no way saying the deadline EA set isn't partially responsible, I'm just saying there can still be other factors. 

[dennis]

What caused the change is irrelevant, the point is that the improvement is there.

It's relevant to how much credit gamers are going to be giving EA in the future. Just because you force someone to change doesn't mean that they learn anything from it.

Furthermore, what difference does it make whether or not the IP is coming out of a studio that they bought or not? They're still financing and distributing the game, so they're instrumental to its release to the public. And I never said they had creative control over Valve anywhere in that post, only that they facilitated distribution.

The difference is that the studios have their own thing. It doesn't matter where the money comes from or who distributes the game.  On the other hand, the studios *belong* to EA, so they do stick their fingers in, and every time they do, something goes wrong. Valve is a special case because the relationship with EA is limited. EA can't stick their fingers into a Valve production, yet you seem to think that EA is essential to Valve's creating a quality product.

Really, what this ultimately proves is that they must have added in multiplayer pretty late into the equation, since it was intended as a single-player only game in the first place. Ultimately, if the single player part succeeded, then I'd say DICE achieved its original goal, and the buggy multiplayer is an unfortunate consequence of that focus during development.

Well, I guess it's too bad for me and my $60 that multiplayer is so buggy then. What was I thinking, buying the game intending to play both modes? Surely EA will give me back $20 since they didn't deliver on that part of the game.

I'm not arguing anywhere that EA isn't a profit-motivated company, only that their methods have substantially improved in recent years but nobody's giving them credit for it and instead heaping shit on them based on events that were nearly a decade ago.

I'm not saying you are. I am saying that they still deserve a lot of the shit they do get.

[Storm Rider]

You seem to be an expert at putting words in my mouth. I never said anywhere that EA was essential to Valve making anything, only that they helped getting the products to gamers. Or that I wasn't expecting you to play both modes, only that the single player was the focus of Bad Company and always had been, so it explains the disparity in quality between the two modes.

[jeph]

  VIDEO GAMES 

Seriously though bummer about Bad Company's multiplayer. I might pick it up anyway for single player though, I am sick to fuck of RSV2 and if I start another playthrough Cristi will break up with me.

[Melodic]

Bad Company wasn't supposed to be some big-budget game, either. It's fairly well known (I think) that BF:BC was just an experiment within DICE to develop a good console game. It's not a sequel to Battlefield 2. Panties are getting way too bunched over a game that I think most people should be pleasantly surprised with. When I first heard about Bad Company I was expecting the same sort of crap that was forced out of us on the console crowd (Battlefield: Modern Combat, anyone?).

[dennis]

You seem to be an expert at putting words in my mouth. I never said anywhere that EA was essential to Valve making anything, only that they helped getting the products to gamers. Or that I wasn't expecting you to play both modes, only that the single player was the focus of Bad Company and always had been, so it explains the disparity in quality between the two modes.

I apologize for putting words in your mouth.

In my defense, it seemed like a reasonable assumption that you were implying that EA is instrumental to Valve's success. Otherwise, you really aren't saying anything. Valve contracted with EA after dropping Vivendi, so it wasn't really any kind of forward-thinking on EA's part to handle retail distro for Valve. If it weren't EA, it would be someone else, and it wouldn't really make any difference to the consumer. EA is a nonplayer in that sense, no gamble was involved.

To the second thing: I don't think I was putting words in your mouth in this instance. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you did say that EA deserves more credit than it's getting from gamers. You followed that up by saying the focus on SP development in Bad Company explains its shortcomings in MP, and since SP is good, DICE accomplished what they set out to do. So I have to ask:  If DICE only intended to have SP for Bad Company, where did the decision to tack on an MP component come from? Where did the decision to release an incomplete game (and yes, a game that didn't have a proper QA phase is incomplete) come from? Regardless of DICE's original intentions, Bad Company is an SP + MP game. That the MP was a tack-on might excuse DICE's performance, but it doesn't excuse anything for EA and does nothing to improve its reputation.

[himynameisjulien]

SPORE has been pushed back a long, long time; I think about a year. They're really taking their time with that one. My friend owns skate, and it's pretty revolutionary in terms of how a skateboarding game works. The tradeoff is that every Tony Hawk game since the first Underground has been very, very bad, IMO. Every time a new one of these skateboarding games comes out, however, they added most tricks in the first one, and the only option is to put in rediculous things. What the fuck is a "Beaver Smash"?! A trick where you fly into the air using some magically appearing rocket? Come on.
There have been a lot of complaints that Crysis, the legendary resource-consumer, could have been better optimized to run better on more computers. I bet it could, if they had more time; what kind of game needs $2100 worth in graphics cards to run at 45 or 55 FPS? Don't believe me? Watch the video on Youtube of a guy who bought 3 NVidia 280's to put in 3-way SLI; it runs a stable 50 FPS most of the time.
I agree with all who say EA is tightening the noose on devs. Except for SPORE, and maybe skate.

[Melodic]

If you haven't played Crysis, you're a far cry (ba dum chump) from being fit to analyze its system requirements. People don't whine to their car manufacturer that if they'd have more time, they could have gotten the vehicle to run faster: it's a matter of technology. You can't just expect that time spent * hard work = performance. There comes a time when things are as optimized as they are going to get, and the game is just ahead of its time. Crysis was intentionally over-reaching in terms of graphical quality because it was, from the beginning, an experiment. The entire game probably started with two drunk guys at Crytek betting each other they could make a higher-resolution leaf texture.

END RANT. Anyways, back on schedule, fuck EA. They pay shit.

[Ozymandias]

Actually, they got sued for that and had to stop paying shit. So...that's not true anymore either.

[Dimmukane]

Well...he would know.

[himynameisjulien]

But why even put out a game whose engine restricts the majority of buyers from playing it at the levels that are "ahead of it's time"? If no one has the capacity to use the next-gen (actually next-next gen, since people just now can play it on full at acceptable FPS) features, EA should know that, and try to cut out things that are just unimportant. Like the leaves moving dynamically when you move through them. Very few other games have that, and they can all be just as fun, or more so. Crysis got a 9.5 from IGN, not bad at all; Halo 3 got a 9.7, and MGS4 got a perfect 10. Neither of the latter games have the "graphical enhancements" of Crysis. However, and this may or may not be a problem depending on how you look at it, those games are console games, which means they are tailored for a specific system. Which happens to cost a hell of a lot less than a PC that can run Crysis on full. (I'm guessing $4000, built yourself, vs. $400 or $300)

[Dimmukane]

Because there is a large enough demographic that will buy things because they look good. Or at least try to acquire them, which the piracy rates have shown.  It was the same story with Far Cry, albeit broadband speeds were slower, so more people actually bought the game.

[Ozymandias]

Crysis got a 9.5 from IGN, not bad at all; Halo 3 got a 9.7, and MGS4 got a perfect 10.

Man, IGN is the last place I would expect any sort of decent journalism or unbiased reviews.

(As evidenced by the fact that Halo 3 got a 9.7 and MGS4 got a perfect 10.)

[dennis]

Crysis and the PCs that people build to run it are kind of like F1 racing.

[Melodic]

Y'know, that's a good analogy. Except it's sort of like NASCAR too, because no matter what anyone says the damn thing is scalable. I still run it on Ultra High @ 1280x1024 with an X1900XTX, which is 4 years old by this point.

[dennis]

Also, there are no rules that drop from the commission stating that you can only use Nvidia cards from now on, and that you can't change settings in the middle of a game.

NASCAR is more about racing the exact same cars with different drivers in an oval. I'd say that's more like console gaming.

[Nodaisho]

The changing settings metaphor was for them not letting someone sitting on the sidelines change the settings on the car's computer, right? That seems to me like a good thing, maybe I am old fashioned, but I think racing is supposed to be about the driver and his machine, not the driver, his machine, and the guy with the laptop that could probably drive it himself from the sidelines.

[Symptom]

This thread still sucks

[ThisIsOriginal]

not all of EA's sports titles are horrible.

check out SKATE, the game,story,graphic's,and controls are fabulous.

sure it might sound like a Tony Hawk rip off but in reality it's just a more real like skateboarding game.

and yes the controls are way different than Tony Hawks but after a while you will understand them and love the game.