EA Sports UFC To be Developed by Fight Night Team, EA Canada
 

EA Sports UFC will be developed by the Fight Night development team, at EA Canada.

The development team will be lead by Team and Action Sports General Manager, Dean Richards (Fight Night, NHL, SSX) and Creative Director, Brian Hayes.

What do you think about this move?

Source - EA Sports

Re: EA Sports UFC To be Developed by Fight Night Team, EA Canada
 

Is this good news or bad news?

Re: EA Sports UFC To be Developed by Fight Night Team, EA Canada
 

This disappoints on so many levels. They already had a MMA team, why not let the people who made EA MMA make the UFC game ? Considering they already have experience with making the player models interact with each other in an MMA environment. Already had spectator mode code written already.

This is basically starting all over from scratch.

Re: EA Sports UFC To be Developed by Fight Night Team, EA Canada
 

I dont think that means they are starting from scratch. EA MMA's striking was based off of FN's mechanics. I think its silly to assume that they wont incorporate most of the code EA MMA had in place.

Re: EA Sports UFC To be Developed by Fight Night Team, EA Canada
 

You can incorporate all the code you want, but unless you have the same programmers, the code won't come out exactly the same. I mean look at EA's Madden and NCAA football games, they been incorporating FIFA's running animation code for years now. But yet the players in Madden and NCAA still don't move or run as smoothly as FIFA's players, even though they using the same code.

Re: EA Sports UFC To be Developed by Fight Night Team, EA Canada
 

This is no good. The Fight Night team couldn't even address frustrating tuner issues with the current Fight Night game.
How about letting the UFC Undisputed 3 team work on it...

I hope they get some people from the UFC Undisputed team because that game was so much better at putting out a sim style fight game. It had it's flaws but you were able to get pretty good fights out of that game. I wish they had more signature styles but the EA game was too arcadish for my taste.

This is bad news, not because they'll do a bad job but because it means it'll be unlikely that we see another Fight Night game. On the plus, at least the striking might actually be good this time.

So what does this mean for Fight Night? FN has its own problems, now the team lose with time with FN to possibly make another subpar game?

Are they still going to alternate years between Boxing and MMA?

Re: EA Sports UFC To be Developed by Fight Night Team, EA Canada
 

I don't know. I think I'm going neutral. Not excited anymore.

I can probably add some insight to this.

Down at Tiburon, once MMA basically got the boot due to Strikeforce signing with the UFC, Most of the MMA team got moved onto different projects. Jason Barnes - creative director for MMA was moved to NBA Live. I've actually talked to Jason about MMA and he loved that series but he and a lot of that team is on NBA Live now and they're very busy with that. I don't think anyone anticipated the signing of UFC or that THQ would sell it. Unfortunately I don't think Tiburon has the resources, and taking Barnes and his team off of NBA wouldn't be fair or a good move considering they just got started with that series.

With that said, EA Canada has a ton of resources at their disposal and I'm sure they're going to connect with Tiburon about the last MMA game and share tech. I have full confidence that the Fight Night guys will pull this off. There is a ton of risk signing a company as big as UFC and they have to and want to come correct on this. I'm sure both studios will talk and possibly share engine tech.

Was EA MMA better then Thq's UFC Unleased 1-3? Becasue i never played EA MMA, so i was just wondering.

You are telling a different story from what the Fight Night producers told me a year ago as far as resources go. They said EA Tiburon has a huge facility and large staffs for the games there.
They always told me the Fight Night staff was very small and that's why much of the things the community asked for wasn't added. I have communicated with the producers a lot since Fight Night Round 3.

I truly hate that they are working on the UFC game. This means if and this is a really big If they make another Fight Night the excuses will come by the truck loads! I used to really have faith in the producers but not anymore. They even talk to me through email anymore because of my honesty.

I refuse to accept anything as gold if it's value is copper. I'm glad EA flew to Canada for Fight Night Round 4 and gave me a Senior Moderator job before but I just can't endorse what I don't like so a company will maybe consider me on a trip or free game. I'm a grown man with his own money....sorry for the rant.

Re: EA Sports UFC To be Developed by Fight Night Team, EA Canada
 

No! EA MMA had the great features and the online was better.

I'd say it was better than UFC 2 (2010)

Re: EA Sports UFC To be Developed by Fight Night Team, EA Canada
 

Completely agree.

Sorry, I was a bit mis-understood. Yes Tiburon is a beautiful studio with big teams but I just meant the guys who were on MMA have been moved to other titles thus making those guys (resources as employees) unavailable. I didn't mean to say they don't have the resources as a studio. I just think that Barnes love the NBA and those guys are focused hard on NBA Live.

As for MMA, I felt like it was a really under-appreciated game. I still play it some to this day. The submission system was great and so was online when it was up. As a new IP it really had a solid foundation. I always thought if they had the UFC license and another crack at it to fix up issues from game 1 they would have had a huge hit. Again, I'm sure EA Canada isn't going to ignore the great work Barnes and his crew accomplished at Tiburon. I think it is premature to say they won't share tech or resources.

I'm pretty pumped. As a guy who trains MMA and has had time with real UFC fighters, this is a pretty important title for me. I'm hoping they focus hard on it and give us a fighting game we can all be proud of.

Re: EA Sports UFC To be Developed by Fight Night Team, EA Canada
 

The EA Sports UFC dev team is taking in feedback on what fans want to see in the game on their facebook & twitter page. @EASPORTSUFC www.facebook.com/easportsufc

Re: EA Sports UFC To be Developed by Fight Night Team, EA Canada
 

Biggest waste of time there is, they act like want feedback but already have what they want to do in place. I have been there done that with these producers. Read my blogs with the wishlists they asked me for.

Re: EA Sports UFC To be Developed by Fight Night Team, EA Canada
 

This ruins the whole ordeal. I hope they wow us though.

It would appear that the FIght Night series is on an indefinite hiatus on the back of this news. A shame as I would rather have a boxing game than a UFC game. That said EA never got close to realising the potential of Fight Night & I'll be suprised if their UFC game will be much different.

Re: EA Sports UFC To be Developed by Fight Night Team, EA Canada
 

Completely agree with you Dazraz.

I'm sure this will make the online people happy as it seems, usually, EA has more stable servers. The online with Undisputed was bad, at best. But my concern is how they handle the single player/career/campaign mode. I hope it gets good attention in a way that will be rewarding. It doesn't have to be a story mode like Fight Night Champion, although that would make for an interesting option. I hope they add depth to it and that they can closer mimmick the career. UFC 3 was a lot closer than UFC 2010 (I feel 2010 was the worst in the series and I do believe I'm not the only one with that thinking) but there were still some things lacking in UFC 3 such as the hyping of fights, post fight interviews (I did like this in 2010) and even the way training was handled. I like the training exercises, but felt they were limited. I know their plan with that was to get you into the next fight quicker, but it seemed a tad too rushed. But I have faith in EA and how they will handle the brand and hopefully bring it to a bigger audience through their name alone. Am I expecting this to be the be all, end all game in MMA? Absolutely not, but I do hope and to an extent, expect something new and "better" so to speak, than previous UFC games. Blending the Undisputed and EA MMA games to find a happy medium will make me a happy fan. Best of luck!

I'm confused, didn't they announce years ago that Fight Night and MMA would alternate. Did that mean back then that they were planning to only have the one team work on both? Or is the break up a newer thing? Either way I can only imagine some THQ guys will make their way over to EA

Just seem like a marketing tool to get people talking about the game.

I'm going optimistic here, IMO, EA Canada's is the company's strongest arm.

Re: EA Sports UFC To be Developed by Fight Night Team, EA Canada
 

In terms of their first effort, EA MMA was definitely better.

I'm not crazy about the FNC team shifting over to UFC, and the main reason is they focused on a very casual version of boxing and never adequately addressed some core issues with the game.

I will give an example of why I feel this development team is not the most promising for EA's first UFC game. In Fight Night 4, there was an issue of guys being able to connect an insane amount of punches and not lose stamina to where you punch yourself out. The bottom line, if you connect, you basically don't lose much stamina. Many complained about this so the FNC team tried to address it but out of the box you could still throw 120+ punches a round and still have good stamina throughout the fight.

Here's where (to me) things really went down hill. They released a patch and series of tuners that eventually tried to resolve the mega punching issue by coding the game so that you randomly miss punches. That's how they addressed it. Even if you had an opening for a flush counter, there was a possibility that you miss because the connection % became random. There was no focus on adjusting a fighter's stamina so that if you throw as many punches as possible, you pay for it with fatigue.

That's just one example of what I would call turning a blind eye coding. Instead of getting under the hood and fixing a long time issue, they created a quick fix that in turn produces more headaches.

Re: EA Sports UFC To be Developed by Fight Night Team, EA Canada
 

Yea, this is not good news to me at all. I will make sure to hold onto Undisputed 3

Re: EA Sports UFC To be Developed by Fight Night Team, EA Canada
 

Yep. Thats why I'm not worried. With Event mode, the Super CAF glitch and the openweight glitch, I could see myself playing UFC3 for at least 3 more years. Its not like the rosters are going to fluctuate that much. 50 of the 80 fighters in UFC 2009 are still in the UFC. 10-15 of the others are still in MMA or recently retired or cut.

If EA's version sucks I'll just stick with THQ. I cant tell you how many great matches I've had against the CPU recently and random results too. I had an event where I had a split draw, a first round KO (won) and a submission by gogoplata (lost, Cerrone caught Guillard with it).

Yea UFC 3 is deep enough with a career, tournament, title and create an event modes that i don't need to get another game for years. I feel i am able to get the most realistic fights in that game and it is still fun to play. I thought EA's MMA game was way too fast, too simple and dumbed down, and didn't represent an authentic MMA experience. It was too easy to go from one move to the next whether it be able you attempt a takedown to transitioning on the ground.

The Fight Night games have not been great the past few years because they have steered away from simulation when guys are able to just throw tons of punches without losing stamina. For the 1st run at this new partnership i think the first attempt will be a step back from UFC 3. I hope i'm wrong but i'm skeptical with EA.

I thought EA MMA was a very good game and actually overall better than the UFC games. It had strong elements of Fight Night in it as it used the engine if I remember correctly. EA's game actually had a better ground game to me

Re: EA Sports UFC To be Developed by Fight Night Team, EA Canada
 

This was their idea at the time until the EA MMA team moved on to other projects. There's no way for them to handle both projects without major assistance.

This kinda sucks because not only do we not get a new Fight Night game anytime soon, this teams attention to details is pretty much non existent. Their saving grace tho is their consistent community interaction

Re: EA Sports UFC To be Developed by Fight Night Team, EA Canada
 

This is exactly what I thought of too when I heard the news. :(

Re: EA Sports UFC To be Developed by Fight Night Team, EA Canada
 

I agree with many of the limitations of the Fight Night engine that have been mentioned, but I'm still hopeful that their team pulls out all the stops for UFC and makes a solid game. There's some great things that can be borrowed from EA MMA and Undisputed and merged into this new title. I hope they don't try to totally reinvent the wheel, but at the same time I want to see something fresh. Like others in this thread, I don't plan on getting rid of Undisputed any time soon though.

If EA's UFC game means the end of the end of the Fight Night series, I can't say that I'm happy about that. Fight Night had a heck of a lot of problems, but it had a decent foundation. There's still room on my console for both sports. The Fight Night series has provided me with a lot of fun, despite some of the issues that I had with it. It would be disappointing if this is indeed the end. I guess we'll find out sooner or later. I wish the Visual Concepts crew would try their hand at a boxing game.

Re: EA Sports UFC To be Developed by Fight Night Team, EA Canada
 

Absolutely. Just like the 'community days'. That's nothing but cheap publicity.

The thing I want most in any combat sport such as boxing or MMA, is a very deep career mode where you have to make small micro-decisions in regards to your stable and diets.

I cannot express how sick and tired I am of boxing/fighting games where every career mode is the same; start out as a 50-OV fighter, train, earn points, distribute points, wash-rinse-repeat.

The problem is, even though you're a 55-OV fighter, you're fighting other 55-60 OV fighters.
When you get to be a 90 OV, you're fighting other 90-OV. So really, what's the difference?

None of the great fighters in either sport started out as a low-talented fighter.
Was Floyd Mayweather's speed at 42 when in his first pro bout?
Was Tyson's power a mere 67 when he stepped into the ring for the first time?
How about GSP? Was his wrestling a 35 in his first MMA fight?
NO!!!

So give us disparity right away!

And give us full stables to manage!

But this won't happen.
It's 2012 and outside of graphics and controls, fighting games are no different than what we played on an NES or Genesis.
It's pathetic that Evander Holyfield boxing still has one of the deeper career modes seen in a boxing/fighting game even to this day. Absolutely pathetic!

So EA, if you're serious about what fans want to see?? GIVE US A DEEP CAREER MODE with diet, stables, managers, promoters, etc!

Re: EA Sports UFC To be Developed by Fight Night Team, EA Canada
 

I thought I was pretty unbiased Money. I did not just market the game, I spoke about the good and loudly proclaimed the bad. No "toot tooting" my own horn but I thought I did a good job. With that said, I wanna go to this community day a lot more than FNC!!!

I hear "I'm Leaving on a Jet Plane" in my head right now :nchuck:

Not to mention that when you start ur career, you are facing guys who just turned pro as well instead of journey men/cans.

We should be able to give our boxers/MMA any physical attributes we want (without buying a dlc pack..)

Re: EA Sports UFC To be Developed by Fight Night Team, EA Canada
 

I understand where you're coming from, but that's pretty crazy in the level of micromanagement required.

Just being honest, I don't think I'd really care to get that in depth in a career. That's something that sounds like it'd be cool but ends up being annoying because you have to spend an hour before each fight doing all these "off the field" things.

Re: EA Sports UFC To be Developed by Fight Night Team, EA Canada
 

I just want an MMA game that it closer to to what a "Dynasty" or "Franchise" mode is in other in other sports games. Instead of the career mode that we currently have.

What I mean by that is instead of playing as a single fighter, let us have control over the entire league. Let us have the option to create our own cards and have the game keep up with everyone's records, rankings, title holders, etc. They could even give us the Twitter updates like in Madden 13 for immersion purposes. This could even work in an online setting, as well. Could you imagine "online dynasty UFC league". That'd be awesome! To me this type of mode seems like a no-brainier, but I've never even heard it mentioned by a Dev. I wonder why?