Open question~ PATCH PHILOSOPHY

[JAYMO76]

This is an open question to members of the community as well as the EA/Tiburon developers. I am interested in the philosophy behind game patches. I realise there will be a patch for sliders this year and that got me to thinking. What should game patches be for? There seem to be two divergent philosophies.

1. Fix the game and any outstanding issues not addressed in the development cycle.

OR

2. Add content, options, and fixes that could not be squeezed into the tight development cycle.


MY TAKE ON THE QUESTION:
From a simplistic standpoint I tend to go with option one. But, the overachiever in me says that the gaming model should change to reflect the technology available. Games should have more than a three month window. I would love to see additions made via the patch that would keep the game new and fresh. Most importantly though, the game would continue to develop after the completion of the development cycle.

Now, let's face facts... option two is probably not bottom line friendly... but just imagine how vastly games would improve. I love NCAA FOOTBALL and it's frustrating to see my fave series (NCAA) and my fave game (06) stray so far from what has made3 it great. Whatever steps can be done to improve the game need to be made... Let's go back to the old cliche from field of dreams: "If you build it he(they) will come." Give us our game back and we will ALL flock back to NCAA FOOTBALL.

P.S. i'm not looking for any personal attacks... I just want to see an open, friendly discussion on philosophy. That's my take... what's yours?

[gogators]

Quote: Originally Posted by JAYMO76

This is an open question to members of the community as well as the EA/Tiburon developers. I am interested in the philosophy behind game patches. I realise there will be a patch for sliders this year and that got me to thinking. What should game patches be for? There seem to be two divergent philosophies. 1. Fix the game and any outstanding issues not addressed in the development cycle. OR 2. Add content, options, and fixes that could not be squeezed into the tight development cycle. MY TAKE ON THE QUESTION: From a simplistic standpoint I tend to go with option one. But, the overachiever in me says that the gaming model should change to reflect the technology available. Games should have more than a three month window. I would love to see additions made via the patch that would keep the game new and fresh. Most importantly though, the game would continue to develop after the completion of the development cycle. Now, let's face facts... option two is probably not bottom line friendly... but just imagine how vastly games would improve. I love NCAA FOOTBALL and it's frustrating to see my fave series (NCAA) and my fave game (06) stray so dfar from what has made3 it great. Whatever steps can be done to improve the game need to be made... Let's go back to the old cliche from field of dreams: "If you build it he(they) will come." Give us our game back and we will ALL flock back to NCAA FOOTBALL. P.S. i'm not looking for any personal attacks... I just want to see an open, friendly discussion on philosophy. That's my take... what's yours?

+1

I also want my game back.

[doctorhay53]

With sports games, I think it is kind of difficult to add options and game improvements via patch, because when the game comes out, you're already working on the next iteration. You would have to take people off of next year's game to keep working on a game that has likely already sold 75% of the copies that will sell.

However, what the patching process shouldn't be is an excuse to ship a broken product simply because it can be patched later. For instance.....there are some inexcusable problems in NCAA '10. If the game was released 4 years ago, no one would buy it because there are many 'gamebreaker' issues that are there right out of the box. These problems could not have been fixed for a game that came out 4 years ago on last gen. The game would have been given a 5 out of 10 on most ratings simply for the glaring bugs. Due to the patching process, the game can come out in its current, inexcusably broken form.

So my opinion on patch philosophy is this:

1) Patching should not be a substitute for a finished product right out of the box
2) Patching should fix bugs that are found once a million people start putting in millions of hours, bugs that we shouldn't have expected them to find in limited testing
3) At least 1 patch should include some minor options and tweaks requested by the gaming community; this patch cannot be expected to contain things like completely new camera angles or stadiums, but small things like 'for the love of god can we have the option to turn auto-picture OFF????!?!?' or 'can you PLEASE make the CPU take a little more time off the clock before a field goal?' Also, small gameplay tweaks should be a MUST in this patch, as people who put hour upon hour into the game get a feel for tweaks that can definitely help.

[Adam_Thompson_EA]

Quote: Originally Posted by JAYMO76

This is an open question to members of the community as well as the EA/Tiburon developers. I am interested in the philosophy behind game patches. I realise there will be a patch for sliders this year and that got me to thinking. What should game patches be for? There seem to be two divergent philosophies. 1. Fix the game and any outstanding issues not addressed in the development cycle. OR 2. Add content, options, and fixes that could not be squeezed into the tight development cycle. MY TAKE ON THE QUESTION: From a simplistic standpoint I tend to go with option one. But, the overachiever in me says that the gaming model should change to reflect the technology available. Games should have more than a three month window. I would love to see additions made via the patch that would keep the game new and fresh. Most importantly though, the game would continue to develop after the completion of the development cycle. Now, let's face facts... option two is probably not bottom line friendly... but just imagine how vastly games would improve. I love NCAA FOOTBALL and it's frustrating to see my fave series (NCAA) and my fave game (06) stray so far from what has made3 it great. Whatever steps can be done to improve the game need to be made... Let's go back to the old cliche from field of dreams: "If you build it he(they) will come." Give us our game back and we will ALL flock back to NCAA FOOTBALL. P.S. i'm not looking for any personal attacks... I just want to see an open, friendly discussion on philosophy. That's my take... what's yours?

What we do is identify areas that we would like to improve (and can improve as patch content is limited) once we final the game and start working on them. A lot of this is gameplay tweaks that are shared between Madden and NCAA, but Madden still has a month to go. Then we identify patchable features/content we would like to do and start work on these.

Hopefully nothing comes back broken at this point, like a bug we missed. If we do identify a must fix bug, we have to drop the new features/content and work on the fix instead. Any work being done on additional features will be resumed and if no more patches are planned, they will be included in the next iteration of the game.

[Adam_Thompson_EA]

Quote: Originally Posted by doctorhay53

However, what the patching process shouldn't be is an excuse to ship a broken product simply because it can be patched later.

I've seen this thrown around a lot on the boards, and it simply isn't true. We don't say "We'll fix it in the patch" when we find something broken unless the game is already finalled. We don't use the patching system as a way to rush games out the door. If anything is broken on the final retail version of the game it is because it was missed by our testers, EA testers, Sony testers, and MS testers.

[md0t]

yeah give us our game back

[da ThRONe]

Quote: Originally Posted by Adam_Thompson_EA

I've seen this thrown around a lot on the boards, and it simply isn't true. We don't say "We'll fix it in the patch" when we find something broken unless the game is already finalled. We don't use the patching system as a way to rush games out the door. If anything is broken on the final retail version of the game it is because it was missed by our testers, EA testers, Sony testers, and MS testers.

Im sure thats the case but as a consumer when I see paid accelerators and season showdown when the rosters are off and sliders are busted out the box(again). What am I suppose to think?

It appears that those things took priority over others and you guys just felt like you could just patch the others later.

[jsquigg]

Quote: Originally Posted by Adam_Thompson_EA

I've seen this thrown around a lot on the boards, and it simply isn't true. We don't say "We'll fix it in the patch" when we find something broken unless the game is already finalled. We don't use the patching system as a way to rush games out the door. If anything is broken on the final retail version of the game it is because it was missed by our testers, EA testers, Sony testers, and MS testers.

I really don't want to be disrespectful, so if I'm out of line please call me on it. My question is how does the testing process go and how does the NCAA team miss the same problem (sliders) that was prevalent last year? I used to be a lot more excited about this series, but even last gen there were recurring problems that were immediately noticeable upon playing the game. I know it is challenging to get a game developed within the stress of deadlines, etc., but I was hoping you could shed some light on the testing process.

[doctorhay53]

Quote: Originally Posted by Adam_Thompson_EA

I've seen this accusation thrown around a lot on the boards, and it simply isn't true. We don't say "We'll fix it in the patch" when we find something broken unless the game is already finalled. We don't use the patching system as a way to rush games out the door. If anything is broken on the final retail version of the game it is because it was missed by our testers, EA testers, Sony testers, and MS testers.

Then there is obviously a problem with the testers. (A point I made very clear I thought was an issue last year as well)

I wasn't suggesting that a conscious decision is made and discussed, where you guys sit around and say 'we'll fix ______ with a patch so we can just ship as-is.' I'm suggesting that the patching process has inadvertently caused a certain laziness in the quality of testing and the quality of shipped products. I'm not accusing you guys of purposefully NOT fixing something just because you could patch it later. I'm sure these issues were brought to light after the game was already in press at a plant somewhere. I just think that a game 5 years ago wouldn't have shipped with broken sliders and the wrong rosters, because the developer would have known it wouldn't sell. More care would have been taken in the testing process to find the biggest issues.

I suppose the counter-argument to what I've said is: 'By spending less resources on testing and more on development, more features can make it into the game.' All this has done is moved some of the thorough testing to the first guinea pig gamers who buy the game (and here I am not singling out EA in any way.....many many MANY games have required major patches for stability. I maintain that the mere ability to patch plays a role in this, along with the increasing complexity of games, we have to remember that one too. But they are definitely connected). This is where we feel we are being ripped off. Why should we be finding glaring issues with the game? I'm not just talking about bugs, which sometimes take hundreds of hours or more to accidentally pop up. I'm talking about things like rosters and broken sliders ( I suppose broken sliders are a bug). If we can find them so quickly, it definitely makes it seem like testing process is lacking and ineffective.

Please don't take offense. I was never suggesting that you were purposefully leaving things in the game that you could have fixed before it went into press (though I know some people around here have claimed just that).

[Adam_Thompson_EA]

Quote: Originally Posted by da ThRONe

Im sure thats the case but as a consumer when I see paid accelerators and season showdown when the rosters are off and sliders are busted out the box(again). What am I suppose to think? It appears that those things took priority over others and you guys just felt like you could just patch the others later.

That's what I'm trying to clarify. We didn't know that the rosters were bad and the sliders weren't working correctly until after the game was finalized. It seems like you are lumping bugs and features you are not fond of into the same bucket.