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Old 06-12-2017, 06:21 PM   #25
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Re: Retractable Roofs Open?

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Originally Posted by PhillyPhanatic14
Sick. Let us know if you hear anything. This and ability to choose weather for CFM would be massive.
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Old 06-12-2017, 09:55 PM   #26
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Re: Retractable Roofs Open?

Seems like a very basic thing to add. They cut corners everywhere and they don't listen to the community. I know this is a small detail but it's also an important, every game presentation, thing they took out of the game. They've had the beginning coin toss in the game for years and they don't even bother with it anymore. Like why are you taking something that is authentic to the game out, their business strategy is horrible for consumers but we all feed into them anyway because they are the only ones who can make an NFL game.
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Old 06-13-2017, 03:05 AM   #27
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Re: Retractable Roofs Open?

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Originally Posted by badams2k8
Seems like a very basic thing to add.
Let's remember that it took The Show years to get this in as well. It's probably not basic at all.
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Old 06-13-2017, 03:28 AM   #28
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Re: Retractable Roofs Open?

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Originally Posted by NEOPARADIGM
Let's remember that it took The Show years to get this in as well. It's probably not basic at all.
More often than not, it's not the difficulty of the task that is the blocker. Getting stadium and weather selection into Franchise is probably more than just "some UI work" - I'd worry about online desyncs in head-to-head games, for example - but on the scale from 1 to Impossible, I would venture to guess this is closer to 1.

Rather, time is more often the blocker. Every engineer's time is already blocked out for the next two weeks of sprint work, possibly the next month if Tiburon schedules sprints that far ahead (I wouldn't know). There is an endless number of bugs and regressions on the backlog to fix and address once engineers are done with their sprint tasks. There are also a bunch of sprints of work left to schedule and assign to engineers once the current sprints are done. All this work is the minimum to just to get the features you must ship into the game.

And before you say "well the engineers should work extra hours" - they're already doing that. One of my bosses who previously worked on MLB The Show has relayed to me a couple horror stories about some of the time crunches at Sony San Diego (which he said was a great place to work, lest I give the wrong impression). One particular time there was a period of two weeks during which he and his cube-mates literally slept under their desks and literally lived at the office for two weeks. They had to do this because there was too much work to do and none of them could afford to take the time it took to drive to and from the office. That was the state of play in AAA game development in the late '00s; zero concept of work-life balance during crunch. It's better now, but it's still tough and video games is not the industry for you if you don't like long hours.

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Old 06-13-2017, 09:47 AM   #29
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Re: Retractable Roofs Open?

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Originally Posted by NEOPARADIGM
Let's remember that it took The Show years to get this in as well. It's probably not basic at all.
You can't compare these two games. Madden already has it in their game but you just can't utilize the open/closed option in CFM. This is what baffles me?
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Old 06-13-2017, 09:54 AM   #30
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Re: Retractable Roofs Open?

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Originally Posted by CM Hooe
More often than not, it's not the difficulty of the task that is the blocker. Getting stadium and weather selection into Franchise is probably more than just "some UI work" - I'd worry about online desyncs in head-to-head games, for example - but on the scale from 1 to Impossible, I would venture to guess this is closer to 1.

Rather, time is more often the blocker. Every engineer's time is already blocked out for the next two weeks of sprint work, possibly the next month if Tiburon schedules sprints that far ahead (I wouldn't know). There is an endless number of bugs and regressions on the backlog to fix and address once engineers are done with their sprint tasks. There are also a bunch of sprints of work left to schedule and assign to engineers once the current sprints are done. All this work is the minimum to just to get the features you must ship into the game.

And before you say "well the engineers should work extra hours" - they're already doing that. One of my bosses who previously worked on MLB The Show has relayed to me a couple horror stories about some of the time crunches at Sony San Diego (which he said was a great place to work, lest I give the wrong impression). One particular time there was a period of two weeks during which he and his cube-mates literally slept under their desks and literally lived at the office for two weeks. They had to do this because there was too much work to do and none of them could afford to take the time it took to drive to and from the office. That was the state of play in AAA game development in the late '00s; zero concept of work-life balance during crunch. It's better now, but it's still tough and video games is not the industry for you if you don't like long hours.

I want to point out that your professional experience colors your thinking so you are way more sympathetic to the game makers than the ordinary consumer.

But from the consumer's perspective the final product really is all that matters. From the consumer perspective it really is this simple. (1) Madden has open and closed retractable roofs in the game (2) the NFL has open and closed roofs during their season (3) CFM which is supposed to be a representation of the NFL season has not had this for years (4) Not satisfactory.
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Old 06-13-2017, 11:35 AM   #31
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Re: Retractable Roofs Open?

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Originally Posted by CM Hooe
More often than not, it's not the difficulty of the task that is the blocker. Getting stadium and weather selection into Franchise is probably more than just "some UI work" - I'd worry about online desyncs in head-to-head games, for example - but on the scale from 1 to Impossible, I would venture to guess this is closer to 1.

Rather, time is more often the blocker. Every engineer's time is already blocked out for the next two weeks of sprint work, possibly the next month if Tiburon schedules sprints that far ahead (I wouldn't know). There is an endless number of bugs and regressions on the backlog to fix and address once engineers are done with their sprint tasks. There are also a bunch of sprints of work left to schedule and assign to engineers once the current sprints are done. All this work is the minimum to just to get the features you must ship into the game.

And before you say "well the engineers should work extra hours" - they're already doing that. One of my bosses who previously worked on MLB The Show has relayed to me a couple horror stories about some of the time crunches at Sony San Diego (which he said was a great place to work, lest I give the wrong impression). One particular time there was a period of two weeks during which he and his cube-mates literally slept under their desks and literally lived at the office for two weeks. They had to do this because there was too much work to do and none of them could afford to take the time it took to drive to and from the office. That was the state of play in AAA game development in the late '00s; zero concept of work-life balance during crunch. It's better now, but it's still tough and video games is not the industry for you if you don't like long hours.
I'm not complaining about the individual programmers that don't put this in because I know it's not their call. It is 100% on the shoulders of the guys that decide what gets implemented and what doesn't. They're prioritizing things like story mode while we still can't do extremely basic things like have open roofs in CFM. They never should've accepted designing CFM to not allow it in the first place (just like they never should've designed an injury system where half the offense couldn't get injured) so they deserve everything they get for not fixing this year after year.
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Old 06-13-2017, 11:59 AM   #32
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Re: Retractable Roofs Open?

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Originally Posted by fballturkey
They're prioritizing things like story mode while we still can't do extremely basic things like have open roofs in CFM.
The project managers are doing their jobs correctly by de-prioritizing this. For the overwhelming majority of Madden's audience, Story Mode is a better bang-for-buck feature than toggling a roof open / shut.

Be reasonable and put on your thinking cap for a second. How many people in Madden's customer base would honestly care about having the ability or even use an open / close roof option? How many people on this message board would even care about it beyond seeing it once, saying "oh, that's neat" and moving on to never touch it again?

In the grand scheme of things, the ability to open and close a stadium's retractible roof is not important to the game whatsoever. It's a cosmetic choice which has a very limited if any gameplay effect. If the list of potential new features in a given Madden year is 100 items long (it's not, but let's pretend), this is easily among the bottom five; it is purely a nice-to-have. Pretty much any single thing the project managers have their dev team work on instead of this is more important and is a better investment for the greatest number of people who play their game. It further will probably always be in the bottom five of this hypothetical list of 100 because just about any new idea a game designer could think up would be more a impactful addition to the game.

That is how decisions get made in video games the vast majority of the time - what can we do to make the game better for the greatest number of our buyers?

It's the same reason CPU v CPU options don't get much love in Madden. There are maybe like five people who do CPU v CPU (admittedly exaggerating for effect, but the number of people who play CPU v CPU is extremely small). Building any feature specifically for CPU v CPU is not getting the most bang-for-buck out of the limited man-hours the dev team has available and is a disservice to the overwhelming majority of the game's audience. If you were in a PM position and didn't make the same decision, you'd be overruled at best and fired at worst.

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They never should've accepted designing CFM to not allow it in the first place
Oh please, quit acting so self-important. Opening and closing a stadium's roof is objectively nowhere close to being a necessary component to the experience of playing an NFL season online with up to 31 friends. It never was and still is not a blocker to anyone enjoying the core experience of franchise. The mode is plenty playable without this.
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