Don't Start Your Madden NFL 16 CFM Until New Patch Arrives, According to Developers

[bkrich83]

Quote: Originally Posted by aholbert32

**** NBA2k15 barely had fouls called at default and it took X1 owners almost three months before it was patched. I love the NBA2k series but its generally buggy as hell on release.

And my personal pet peeve no highlights for games with longer than 6 min qtrs. 2 years in a row mind you.

[Sphinx]

Quote: Originally Posted by LorenzoDC

I can only speak for NBA2k on that list, but that game has not nearly been as bug ridden as Madden has in recent years. It's main issues have been server access and reliability for online play. That's not about the code, it's about the cloud based infrastructure. And as far as franchise modes go, you can't even talk about Madden and The Show or NBA2k in the same paragraph, let alone the same sentence. Madden just can't hide behind the short development cycle. It's not as if the cycle is a new phenomenon - they've been at this a long time. If you do project management and code building right, you build on layers year by year and make expansions and improvements off a solid foundation. Madden, like everyone else, put in a new foundation with the new consoles, just as the others did. And yet it has had more problems, false starts and steps backward. I really think it's the EA culture that is not designer friendly, leaving the design and engineering side unable to do stable planning, investment and infrastructure building because they are subject to the whims of the bean counters and marketing suits year on year.

I don't disagree with what you're saying but I think developing something like madden is slightly more difficult then many of us think. I would imagine they have some pretty old legacy code out there buried underneath the new code and architecture. I do feel madden,MLB and NBA2k can be used in direct comparison. All of them have a yearly dev cycle and all of them take a different approach. All of them have their issues at launch, Madden is our focus because we all want to play the perfect football game. Perfect, is a bit of an overstatement but we want a good representation of what we think the game should be. It's not right now, I am not arguing that. But to say none of these others games have issues at release is not accurate either.

[aholbert32]

Quote: Originally Posted by SolidSquid

Which brings us to a bigger issue in my opinion, do they even do quality testing at EA Tiburon?

They do but that isnt a guarantee to catch a bug. There are plenty of people here who played CFM all last week and didnt realize their were any major issues with CFM.

[EricFreakingBerry]

Quote: Originally Posted by LorenzoDC

I can only speak for NBA2k on that list, but that game has not nearly been as bug ridden as Madden has in recent years. It's main issues have been server access and reliability for online play. That's not about the code, it's about the cloud based infrastructure. And as far as franchise modes go, you can't even talk about Madden and The Show or NBA2k in the same paragraph, let alone the same sentence. Madden just can't hide behind the short development cycle. It's not as if the cycle is a new phenomenon - they've been at this a long time. If you do project management and code building right, you build on layers year by year and make expansions and improvements off a solid foundation. Madden, like everyone else, put in a new foundation with the new consoles, just as the others did. And yet it has had more problems, false starts and steps backward. I really think it's the EA culture that is not designer friendly, leaving the design and engineering side unable to do stable planning, investment and infrastructure building because they are subject to the whims of the bean counters and marketing suits year on year.

This x10000. The other companies can get away with a few bugs here or there because literally ZERO of the bugs I've seen in patch notes for those games or experienced in my gameplay were egregious and/or they were related to online feature sets which everyone should assume there will be kinks to work out upon release.

Neither of those other gaming franchises have put out an on-disk/download gaming mode that is so bogged down with mind-numbing issue after mind-numbing issue. EA is showing some responsiveness lately, which is a really GOOD thing for them; hopefully, within the next 1-2 years they will perform an overwhelming host of fixes to their engine that gives them something stable to build upon.

There is nothing about EA that's been customer-friendly for years, so we'll see how long this takes to fix, but I may just trade Madden in for NBA2K16 until they prove themselves with a stable CFM product.

[aholbert32]

Quote: Originally Posted by bkrich83

And my personal pet peeve no highlights for games with longer than 6 min qtrs. 2 years in a row mind you.

Yep and 2k cant seem to fix that on the ps4.

[SFNiners816]

Quote: Originally Posted by aholbert32

I'd argue that online and MUT have been more important modes in this game for the past 5 plus years.

That doesn't justify having a broken franchise mode in a sports game. Especially considering that a portion of that increase of online traffic is because of an on line franchise mode.

[LowerWolf]

It seems like just about every game these days needs at least one post-release day patch before you can really dive into it.

[bkrich83]

Quote: Originally Posted by EricFreakingBerry

This x10000. The other companies can get away with a few bugs here or there because literally ZERO of the bugs I've seen in patch notes for those games or experienced in my gameplay were egregious and/or they were related to online feature sets which everyone should assume there will be kinks to work out upon release. Neither of those other gaming franchises have put out an on-disk/download gaming mode that is so bogged down with mind-numbing issue after mind-numbing issue. EA is showing some responsiveness lately, which is a really GOOD thing for them; hopefully, within the next 1-2 years they will perform an overwhelming host of fixes to their engine that gives them something stable to build upon. There is nothing about EA that's been customer-friendly for years, so we'll see how long this takes to fix, but I may just trade Madden in for NBA2K16 until they prove themselves with a stable CFM product.

That's a lot of hyperbole for one post.