I have a question for the EA devs regarding playtest.

[ThaPeeplz]

Curious to know exactly how you guys playtesters go about testing individual ratings #'s. It doesnt seem like this is really tested very well, which in turn leads to things such as the d line having problems pressuring qbs, smaller players running over bigger players, etc. Here's my 2 cents for ya. Take two player models, put em on the field and tweak numbers as you control these players until you observe the correct outcome.

The way I'm visualizing this in my mind it doesnt seem like it would even take much time to do. I know 2010 is probably already in development, maybe you guys can pull the testers coat right now and have em jump on it, so by July next year it should be perfect.

[duffman]

if the testing goes like any other software company ive ever worked for, its all isolated and boiled down to finding issues within a single, reproducible set of circumstances. players not running off the field middle of the play (aside from the catch animation which were all aware of), the game not blowing up if you go for it on fourth, and so on as opposed to the actual ai play reading, players playing to ratings, etc. testers are given a very simple, strict set of guidelines to run through and find bugs, theyre not really there to make sure that the game plays a "real" game of football. is it a good way to test a game? probably not. good way to test other software? sure.

anyway, sorry for the rant (it's a little off topic from the question about ratings), and im probably wrong, but as someone who works in development/testing, i can see how alot of the problems with the game made it through QA.

[Strummer101er]

Whatever the case, toward the end of the cycle I think Tiburon needs to subject the game to at least a week of hard gameplay testing and tuning before it goes gold.

Most community members were able to discover major issues with the game (pass rush, kick coverage, broken sliders, sideline weirdness) within 24 hours.

I still say the magic bullet for all these problems are fully functional and extremely responsive AI sliders. If the sliders worked properly, excessive INTs and the problems with the pass rush would be non-existent.