NCAA Designers Step Up to the Plate

[RaychelSnr]

For what seems like an eternity, EA football gamers have been clamoring for more interaction with the developers of NCAA Football and Madden. This year, those gamers got their wish. Check out how the developers handled the pressure in Erik Westfall's article, NCAA Designers Step Up to the Plate.

"In a growing trend around the internet, a number of video game developers and designers are making their presences known on various community forums. EA Sports has done this for a number of years, most notably through Ian Cummings and more recently Phil Frazier. Well we have a newcomer to the arena - Adam Thompson (OMT on the OS forums)."

[osubucksfan47]

Re: NCAA Designers Step Up to the Plate

Thats what I like, that they are taking the time to listen to their customers and respond to both positive and negative feedback. If they hadn't done so, maybe the roster problem wouldn't be patched as quickly.

[OMT]

Re: NCAA Designers Step Up to the Plate

[kohlrums]

can they make a patch for the ball not rotating when you pass?

[bigjake62505]

Video games and exclusive licenses must be a great business to get into, could you imagine selling broken cars, refridgerators, stoves, or girl scout cookies. And telling the customer that you are working on it. When you get them home just hook them up to the internet and you can download a patch, when we get one done. Thank you for your money, oh and don't forget to come back next year and we will sell you another broken item. What? You dont like that, oh we are sorry but we are the only company who has the license to produce that product. Have a nice day, don't forget we have a couple guys on message boards who will answer questions for you.

[jwb0581]

Re: NCAA Designers Step Up to the Plate

I was hoping this thread would be about NCAA designers stepping up to the plate to patch the rampant online dynasty problems.

[bartolet7]

Re: NCAA Designers Step Up to the Plate

Well, I for one am very appreciative of Adam's presence on the boards this year. He's been a great source of information and insight into the workings of the game while fielding countless questions about how it works, what EA's doing to make it better, and what they're doing to try and fix it where it's broken. I've found that when I'm browsing the various threads that I always stop when I see that distinctive "Angry Football" avatar and read his post. Sure, we may not always like or agree with his answers to our questions but at least he's HERE to ask. That's not always been the case.

The level of involvement we've seen this year from all the programmers has been outstanding and I hope they continue the trend in the future.

Kudos, Adam!

[jamesda3asu]

Re: NCAA Designers Step Up to the Plate

can they make a patch for the ball not rotating when you pass?

Who cares about patches for minutes stuff like this or even sliders at the moment let's get the roster glitch and the online dynasty problems fixed those make the game unplayable especially online dynasty when you advance the winning team loses and the scores and stats are wrong the other stuff we can live with as far as I am concerned.

[KG]

Re: NCAA Designers Step Up to the Plate

I was hoping this thread would be about NCAA designers stepping up to the plate to patch the rampant online dynasty problems.

same

[labguy]

I think having EA staff on the boards is great! I think it will help not only with patches but also as a tool to guage what features the community wants to see in future releases. I encourage people with negative opinions to keep it professional and not attack these guys and to throw out a suggestion along with the negative feedback. If you think the AI for pass defense is poopy then just add what you think would make it better. I don't think the EA guys expect for 100% glowing feedback from us. They know there are some things they can do better. I just don't think ANYONE would want to be called a lazy piece of crap and such. Be critical if you want just keep it on point and be specific. EA sucks a$$ comments aren't going to make the games better. Ok I will get off my soapbox now.

[Solidice]

Re: NCAA Designers Step Up to the Plate

I was hoping this thread would be about NCAA designers stepping up to the plate to patch the rampant online dynasty problems.

patches just don't spawn from thin air, they have to be made and tested. and thats only after they find what the problem is and what is causing it.

[BoomerSooner11]

Re: NCAA Designers Step Up to the Plate

I am glad Adam is on here, better than nobody and getting zero insight on whats to come.

[ewto16]

HAving the EA people on the board is great, but if the product still turns out like crap, it doesn't really matter.

Rosters being broken and, now apparently, online dynasty being broken are pretty big things to have broken out of the box.

It continues to seem as if EA has one not very well trained person that does testing for about 8 hours and declares the game done.

[TopCop7980]

If Im the President at EA and Im reading all these responses about problems in my game then I would call all my testers in my office and give them the ole "YOU'RE FIRED!!" line.

[Spanky]

Re: NCAA Designers Step Up to the Plate

If Im the President at EA and Im reading all these responses about problems in my game then I would call all my testers in my office and give them the ole "YOU'RE FIRED!!" line.

I'm not convinced the problem is the testers. It's entirely possibly that the testers did discover many of these bugs but that the executives didn't want to put forth the time and resources necessary to fix them, thinking that these bugs won't appreciably affect sales.

But assessing fault is irrelevant at this point.

I realize patches take time and that the EA guys on this forum can't reveal what is being patched until they know for sure that the particular bug can be fixed. But I'm hoping they will keep us updated with the latest info. If I know now that the sliders mess can't be flixed I'll be more inclined to trade this in toward Madden (assuming that game isn't all f-ed up again). But if I'm told by EA that the sliders can and will be fixed, then I'll keep the game.

Because I really feel the inoperative sliders is the only thing that's screwing up the game experience -- at least for me. That's assuming the roster mess is fixed. Though I am somewhat upset that EA chose to take out about 30 mascots on the 360 version. They're used to be about 73 and now there's only about 40 or so. Why do you keep taking things out when you should be adding?