NBA Live 10: Online Play Impressions

[Tha_Kid]

Quote: Originally Posted by Sigma4Life

I think patches are a great thing. I'm a software developer so I completely understand how impossible it is to ship a bug free product. My problem is competent testing should find all obvious bugs. Simply using the product as a customer would prevent deal breaking bugs like no fatigue online. EA's problem isn't with their developers, it's with their testers. They have idiots testing the product and they don't find obvious stuff that sim players care about.

Thank you for saying what I can't. I don't know what their testing setup is like that certain things get through or get overlooked, but you have ground to stand on with your background. I just don't want to say something is simple if I don't know for sure.

[3rdamention]

Quote: Originally Posted by Sigma4Life

I think patches are a great thing. I'm a software developer so I completely understand how impossible it is to ship a bug free product. My problem is competent testing should find all obvious bugs. Simply using the product as a customer would prevent deal breaking bugs like no fatigue online. EA's problem isn't with their developers, it's with their testers. They have idiots testing the product and they don't find obvious stuff that sim players care about.

Both games have bugs. The other game is running at a near unplayable framerate. So both of them are going to have issues until they are patched. The devs said in this thread they hope to have the patch out by the end of the month. That is like 3 weeks, not 6 weeks.


Right now, look at the issues with both games, and pick your poison.

[Sigma4Life]

Quote: Originally Posted by 3rdamention

Both games have bugs. The other game is running at a near unplayable framerate. So both of them are going to have issues until they are patched. The devs said in this thread they hope to have the patch out by the end of the month. That is like 3 weeks, not 6 weeks. Right now, look at the issues with both games, and pick your poison.

I hope fatigue is cranked up enough to make it meaningful in a 5 minute game.

[oOausarOo]

Quote: Originally Posted by Sigma4Life

I think patches are a great thing. I'm a software developer so I completely understand how impossible it is to ship a bug free product. My problem is competent testing should find all obvious bugs. Simply using the product as a customer would prevent deal breaking bugs like no fatigue online. EA's problem isn't with their developers, it's with their testers. They have idiots testing the product and they don't find obvious stuff that sim players care about.

Patches are great in theory. If companies released polished, well tested games and used patches only to touch up minor issues that would be great, but in reality companies are using them as a crutch to release unpolished games with the intention of patching later.

I'm guessing releasing unpolished games isn't hurting sales so as long as that's the case there's no incentive for them to change.

Obviously this is not just an EA or 2k Sports/VC thing. This has become standard practice industry-wide across many genres. It's been 10 years since I haven't purchased a nba game at launch.

[Sigma4Life]

Quote: Originally Posted by oOausarOo

Patches are great in theory. If companies released polished, well tested games and used patches only to touch up minor issues that would be great, but in reality companies are using them as a crutch to release unpolished games with the intention of patching later. I'm guessing releasing unpolished games isn't hurting sales so as long as that's the case there's no incentive for them to change. Obviously this is not just an EA or 2k Sports/VC thing. This has become standard practice industry-wide across many genres. It's been 10 years since I haven't purchased a nba game at launch.

It really doesn't matter when the game gets released. A year is 12 months whether the game is released in October or November. What this means is we would get the same semi-rushed product no matter what. If EA released NBA Live 10 in November they still only have 12 months to get NBA Live 11 ready by the same date next year.

Maybe this year's game would be a little more polished since they would have spent 13 months between releases (October 2008 - November 2009) but next year we have the exact same problem of a semi-rushed product because the development cycle would be down to 12 months again, November 2009 - November 2010.

What does this really mean? We get the same game except 1 month later. All the talk about working on the game another month is pure nonsense when dealing with a yearly development cycle.

As a result I'd rather get the game 1 month before the season and have a major patch around the time the season starts. It's obvious EA doesn't catch the bugs we do. With the current model at least they get a 1 month head start and can fix the bugs we find early in the season instead of around all-star break.

The only solution is to release the product every 2 years which would likely cause EA to lose massive amounts of money that's predicated on yearly sales.

[Tha_Kid]

Quote: Originally Posted by Sigma4Life

It really doesn't matter when the game gets released. A year is 12 months whether the game is released in October or November. What this means is we would get the same semi-rushed product no matter what. If EA released NBA Live 10 in November they still only have 12 months to get NBA Live 11 ready by the same date next year. Maybe this year's game would be a little more polished since they would have spent 13 months between releases (October 2008 - November 2009) but next year we have the exact same problem of a semi-rushed product because the development cycle would be down to 12 months again, November 2009 - November 2010. What does this really mean? We get the same game except 1 month later. All the talk about working on the game another month is pure nonsense when dealing with a yearly development cycle. As a result I'd rather get the game 1 month before the season and have a major patch around the time the season starts. It's obvious EA doesn't catch the bugs we do. With the current model at least they get a 1 month head start and can fix the bugs we find early in the season instead of around all-star break. The only solution is to release the product every 2 years which would likely cause EA to lose massive amounts of money that's predicated on yearly sales.

Well you make a whole lot of sense lol. Makes my comment about pushing back the release look silly. EA is doing exactly what you said in the 2nd to last paragraph and yeah that is pretty ideal.

[gbx34]

PLayed one quick match it was real smooth. It was a decent sim game. They had the playoff crowd i don't know if it is random or not. They had the pregame intro. There was none of the replays or highlights throughout the game which is fine.


Although there was no end game highlights or the options to save highlights!! I am pretty pissed about that!!

[iLLosophy]

Ask yourself, honestly, would any of these blatant bugs make it into console games before they were allowed to make patches? EA would never let their game be released for a whole dev cycle with fatigue toggle not working, guys standing out of bounds, players skipping down the court after every possession, etc...

They know they can "fix it later" and thus have laxed their standards of quality, and transferred some of the responsibility of quality assurance onto the customer.

That's my beef.

And you rarely see glaring bugs like this in other genres...I'm willing to bet my life savings that Modern Warfare 2 won't have a bug where I set it to Deathmatch, and it makes us play Capture the Flag. Like Sigma4Life said - they need to release a game every 2 years...

Honestly, I'm starting to think I need to wait until these sports games has its first price cut before I buy it...that should be around the time that the Beta phase actually finishes.