A serious debate about Madden

[howboutdat]

Ok so , im just curious , can we have a intelligent debate about how every single year , madden comes out , there are always alot of issues, that somehow "slipped" past their testers before they release their game. It seems every single year, this is an issue , and they have to have patch after patch after patch. I personally only play Online CFM, and dont care about nor play anything else, if not for that i wouldnt even buy Madden. Im just wondering , why EA wouldnt let us help them , AHEAD OF TIME. Why not put out a beta a month before release , and let players pick 1 area they want to "help test". Like if your mainly a MUT guy , you get to test out MUT, if you into offline CFM, you test out only that, If your online CFM guy, u just test only that. To me this seems like it would benefit them greatly, seeing as how the people who actually turn on the game and use these modes seem to find the flaws fairly quickly and easily. Not to mention , its basically free testing for EA. It would give them a month to make the real fixes they need to before its release. Thus giving a better overall happiness with customers, thus creating better word of mouth advertising( which is also free) while helping them create a better game at launch , thus actually helping sales , instead of reducing them . Why is this so hard to do /understand , it could really help sales. Its pretty clear either their current testers arent doing their job, or some of these issues can only be found when numerous people are using the item from different places. Either way , it would give them a much better test for bugs process than what it currently is. Am i the only one who thinks like this?

[mestevo]

Nothing you describe is free, distribution, even QA of beta builds, etc, are all additional costs. No matter how this is framed, it doesn't make much sense for them to give away early copies of the game for play testing.

[roadman]

Quote: Originally Posted by howboutdat

Ok so , im just curious , can we have a intelligent debate about how every single year , madden comes out , there are always alot of issues, that somehow "slipped" past their testers before they release their game. It seems every single year, this is an issue , and they have to have patch after patch after patch. I personally only play Online CFM, and dont care about nor play anything else, if not for that i wouldnt even buy Madden. Im just wondering , why EA wouldnt let us help them , AHEAD OF TIME. Why not put out a beta a month before release , and let players pick 1 area they want to "help test". Like if your mainly a MUT guy , you get to test out MUT, if you into offline CFM, you test out only that, If your online CFM guy, u just test only that. To me this seems like it would benefit them greatly, seeing as how the people who actually turn on the game and use these modes seem to find the flaws fairly quickly and easily. Not to mention , its basically free testing for EA. It would give them a month to make the real fixes they need to before its release. Thus giving a better overall happiness with customers, thus creating better word of mouth advertising( which is also free) while helping them create a better game at launch , thus actually helping sales , instead of reducing them . Why is this so hard to do /understand , it could really help sales. Its pretty clear either their current testers arent doing their job, or some of these issues can only be found when numerous people are using the item from different places. Either way , it would give them a much better test for bugs process than what it currently is. Am i the only one who thinks like this?

No, because what you are suggesting has been suggested since video games have come out.

I recall people were calling for the same thing when High Heatball was made on the PC. High Heat Baseball was considered to be a sim baseball game, but with a lot of bug issues.

We live in the world of patches of yearly sports games. It's not going to change. Even NBA 2k last year had VC and server issues.

10 million eyes are better than 1,000 eyes, sadly.

[PMO]

Quote: Originally Posted by roadman

No, because what you are suggesting has been suggested since video games have come out. I recall people were calling for the same thing when High Heatball was made on the PC. High Heat Baseball was considered to be a sim baseball game, but with a lot of bug issues. We live in the world of patches of yearly sports games. It's not going to change. Even NBA 2k last year had VC and server issues. 10 million eyes are better than 1,000 eyes, sadly.

Remember the days of old when games release dates were not set in stone. The release date would approach and it would get pushed off a week or 2 because there were bugs. Now they just release it and say "yea there's issues, we are working on a patch". Basically saying here's a broken game but we will eventually fix it since we have your money now lol.

Sorry I love Madden and all but I was 1 of those rare people who didn't have a problem when a games release date was pushed off. Now a days most sports games announce the delivery date 6 months in advance and stick to it no matter what.

[Quick II Draw]

The bugs in Madden take two eyes. Playcall glitch almost every single game, h2h cfm games not counting, unlimited confidence by shuffling depth chart, awful commentary, etc. are not exactly latent defects.

[Big FN Deal]

Quote: Originally Posted by howboutdat

Ok so , im just curious , can we have a intelligent debate about how every single year , madden comes out , there are always alot of issues, that somehow "slipped" past their testers before they release their game. It seems every single year, this is an issue , and they have to have patch after patch after patch. I personally only play Online CFM, and dont care about nor play anything else, if not for that i wouldnt even buy Madden. Im just wondering , why EA wouldnt let us help them , AHEAD OF TIME. Why not put out a beta a month before release , and let players pick 1 area they want to "help test". Like if your mainly a MUT guy , you get to test out MUT, if you into offline CFM, you test out only that, If your online CFM guy, u just test only that. To me this seems like it would benefit them greatly, seeing as how the people who actually turn on the game and use these modes seem to find the flaws fairly quickly and easily. Not to mention , its basically free testing for EA. It would give them a month to make the real fixes they need to before its release. Thus giving a better overall happiness with customers, thus creating better word of mouth advertising( which is also free) while helping them create a better game at launch , thus actually helping sales , instead of reducing them . Why is this so hard to do /understand , it could really help sales. Its pretty clear either their current testers arent doing their job, or some of these issues can only be found when numerous people are using the item from different places. Either way , it would give them a much better test for bugs process than what it currently is. Am i the only one who thinks like this?

I feel you OP and something like this would be nice, imo, maybe one day if some company leads the way, others would follow suit. Until then though, it's likely status quo and some kind of cost benefit analysis. As long as the status quo is widely accepted and doesn't impact sales too much, that's likely what will continue to be done.

In the case of Madden there is also the obvious element of no direct competition, which likely widens the range of known shippable issues. I agree with your general point and think something like you're suggesting is a win/win for gamers and company sales but not seen as a necessity.

[kpkpkp]

Quote: Originally Posted by mestevo

Nothing you describe is free, distribution, even QA of beta builds, etc, are all additional costs. No matter how this is framed, it doesn't make much sense for them to give away early copies of the game for play testing.

This.

I think the root of most of Maddens issues, and bugs/glitches specifically, are the because 1 thing and 1 thing only: RESOURCES.

For whatever reason EA does not devote enough resources to bug testing and QA. Good examples are like: the wind arrow being backwards for 3 years, the much touted sim engine improvements having a glitch at launch, poor implementation of the financial changes to CFM, legacy issues like OPI/DPI penalties never getting called, the white sleeve glitch for 2 years.... ALL of that stuff. They know about it. But resources are never dedicate to fixing it.

Who knows why.

Maybe it's Dev Team laziness, or lack of coding knowledge. Or maybe they are specifically told by executives not to fix known glitches and to work on new features instead. Maybe it's a combination of all 3.

But it's been this way for a decade and the entire last gen on PS3/360.

Madden will never implement user beta testing, they would need put additional $$$ or resources into it.

And even if they did, the Dev Team might not have to technical skills to implement changes noted by beta testers anyways.

I think Madden is what it is, and has been, for a decade. With the current landscape I don't see this changing anytime soon. It's a decent product, it won't get worse, but I wouldn't bet on it getting better. And certainly don't expect it's propensity for glitches to change.

[Alliedboba]

Just speculation, but I think the biggest problem is how much money they actually make off the game. They absolutely rack, and even though WE as a group complain, they dont really have an incentive to make substantial changes. I'm not even going to touch MUT, and I dont want to offend anybody that likes that mode, but man... Anyway. Lets look at everything that has been omitted from CFM lately. Actually, lets start with the fact that they rolled all the old modes into simply one "CFM"? instead of fleshing out create a player, and franchise mode as individual, they just mush them all together. Secondly, with regards to coach/owner mode: back and front loaded contracts, stadium editor, holdouts, actual draft busts, uniform editor, playbook creator (where you move the individual X's and O's around a field)... I can go on and on. At the end of the day, I truly believe, at least in some capacity, that the Madden dev team loves football and wants to put the best game out that they can, but they are clearly hamstrung. Until EA sports doesnt have an exclusive license, or they see a significant dip in sales (~30%), I think what we gripe about will be lost in the mix. Just one mans opinion.