When a Patch is Just Too Late to Save a Game

[rudyjuly2]

Quote: Originally Posted by rhombic21

My thoughts on your patch system are that you guys simply are inefficient with what you do. You release minimalist patches, when you really could quite easily do a lot more.

I think in some ways you are asking too much. EA has their hands tied by MS with regards to patch size, largely because of the stupid 360 version that doesn't have a hard drive. The Madden team wanted to include accelerated clock in their patch but that feature alone was more than MS would allow so they dropped it. Sony allows a much larger patch size but EA doesn't want to provide a larger Sony exclusive patch either.

You can't assume that the EA team doesn't want to patch more things than it can. Plus, some of these things would require more than a simple patch imo. There are flaws in the game that probably need a complete overhaul like the cpu QB AI (too many picks, never going deep). These things need to be fixed on release.

I'll agree with you on some things. I still don't understand why EA thinks the average college kicker should be able to kick a 55 yarder with ease. The default settings really need to be looked at in a big way which is very important for you online guys. And the sliders need to have a greater effect for us fine-tuning the offline gameplay. I don't understand why they neutered the blocking sliders this year. And I don't buy the casual gamer likes some of this stuff either. The casual fan still wants realism.

[Pared]

Quote: Originally Posted by OMT

...since we get a free one we look at releasing one every year and try to add something additional to the game.

I guess I'll bite.

What exactly has been released in a patch that has "added something additional to the game?"

Do bug fixes fall under this category? Because if they do, it just echoes my initial comments posted previously. No need for me to re-iterate them.

I wouldn't call fixing roster glitches and tweaking defensive AI "adding something additional to the game," but that's just me. That sort of thing should be the basis of why you're creating the game year to year.

It's one thing when the defense doesn't react to something because of a money play; It's another when you make the defense completely inept as a design decision to create a facade in the way the game should play. Casual gamers might not pick up on that and buy your game because of it... but don't insult the intelligence of the crowd here at OS and not expect a reaction in return to the decisions being made.

[fistofrage]

Quote: Originally Posted by Pared

I guess I'll bite. What exactly has been released in a patch that has "added something additional to the game?" Do bug fixes fall under this category? Because if they do, it just echoes my initial comments posted previously. No need for me to re-iterate them. I wouldn't call fixing roster glitches and tweaking defensive AI "adding something additional to the game," but that's just me. That sort of thing should be the basis of why you're creating the game year to year. It's one thing when the defense doesn't react to something because of a money play; It's another when you make the defense completely inept as a design decision to create a facade in the way the game should play. Casual gamers might not pick up on that and buy your game because of it... but don't insult the intelligence of the crowd here at OS and not expect a reaction in return to the decisions being made.

Its WIIIIDE OPEN!

The Field goals are just way too ridiculously easy too. I guess thats so if you amazingly can't score a td, at least you are guaranteed 3. A 40 rated kicker is just as good as a 90. Its awesome.

The AI will throw interceptions no matter what you do. I can't find a slider set including all human defensive sliders at 0 on heisman where the AI won't throw interceptions and pick 6's.

It goes on and on. I don't htink they can fix this though because they most likely don't know how. Its the only explanation I have. Why else would you have a pick 6 festival programmed into the game? Except that its WIIIDE OPEN!

[youALREADYknow]

A few thoughts:

1. I think we as a community underestimate the complexity of the AI in this game. Changing one position's AI will always have an impact on other players and I would never call these kind of changes easy and simple (WR/CB interaction, OL/DL interaction, etc.).

2. It's also obvious that EA has underestimated the complexity of building AI in a next-gen football game. This is not Sega Genesis and I should not be seeing 1990's AI and logic in a sports game anymore. Given years of building on the same flawed logic and AI, EA should have ample knowledge within their own walls to figure out what is wrong with the game. You don't need 2 months post-release to determine that the OL/DL interaction is still not working when this aspect of the game has never worked and little to no development was done on that aspect of the game.

3. While EA will likely never offer a "public beta" like we see in every PC game (a market EA needs to be taking advantage of), the excuse that no gameplay testing can occur on your product is simply absurd. EA obviously has devkits and obviously internally tests the product with QA on some kind of build. When the game hits gold status, does that build not get tested by QA? I'm sure that a gold product is ready enough to get constructive criticism by an internal tester who actually knows football and has a history of playing college football games. In another thread OMT has stated that there are three months between gold status and release, so these are three whole months that feedback could be used to create a task list for the first patch. If I'm wrong on this OMT, please explain why this cannot work.

4. If the primary goal of patches are bug fixes, then we should expect as consumers that the most significant bugs are taken care of by the time the devs move on to next year's game. This year there are so many problems that the game is at times unplayable and these are almost all problems that were identified shortly after release.

Online dynasties have so many offseason problems that some gamers have quit playing this mode, CPU schools recruiting and depth chart management is so buggy that they can't field a player at the correct position some seasons, the flawed poll and BCS logic virtually guarantees a mid-major conference champion will compete for the BCS title, the QB Accuracy slider impacts throwing power needlessly, the CPU cannot execute a screen pass to save their lives, the QB Choice plays are executed horrendously by the CPU, etc, etc, etc.

I have no doubt that SOME of these areas will be improved for NCAA 2010, but as of now the only game we can play is NCAA 2009 and that product is still a beta quality product as far as I'm concerned. It is unfair to the consumer in my opinion to release a product using the exclusive NCAA license that does not even run as designed (let's ignore the desired result that we all would like to see).

The game needs to run as designed or we're being swindled as consumers. I don't think the NCAA patches were too late to save the game, but they were too insignificant to save the game. If I was promised NCAA 2010 would be fully patched and working as designed by August, then I'd be a happy customer.

[Zeppelin8]

I think sports games develop slower compared to other genres. Gameplay is not getting better every year, they just add a few more features here and there. Yeah I know it's hard to completely revolutionize games every year but hey what is the point of taking good stuff out? There are certain good things in every new version, seems like they just have to take away at least one good thing to put some new feature.

Problems of sports titles are similar to MMORPG's. For both titles there is always a new ''feature'' which is either broken or simply not fun. Both genres are in a slump, they are only getting better on paper and both started lose their fun factor in last few years.

[SuperBowlNachos]

Patches don't bother me in games like GoW and CoD, where people spend there time finding soft spots in the map. Those patches are good because that stuff in not forseen.

Having to patch crap like sliders not working, entire gameplay elements being broken is just sad.

[OMT]

Quote: Originally Posted by Pared

I guess I'll bite. What exactly has been released in a patch that has "added something additional to the game?" Do bug fixes fall under this category? Because if they do, it just echoes my initial comments posted previously. No need for me to re-iterate them. I wouldn't call fixing roster glitches and tweaking defensive AI "adding something additional to the game," but that's just me. That sort of thing should be the basis of why you're creating the game year to year. It's one thing when the defense doesn't react to something because of a money play; It's another when you make the defense completely inept as a design decision to create a facade in the way the game should play. Casual gamers might not pick up on that and buy your game because of it... but don't insult the intelligence of the crowd here at OS and not expect a reaction in return to the decisions being made.

You're misunderstanding me. We WANT to do small features in the patch, however we have had bugs that come up that are much higher priority.

For NCAA 09 we wanted to add halftime highlights in the patch, but we had all our resources fixing bugs we wanted to tackle in the patch and couldn't get the halftime highlights polished enough to inclue.

[OMT]

Quote: Originally Posted by youALREADYknow

3. While EA will likely never offer a "public beta" like we see in every PC game (a market EA needs to be taking advantage of), the excuse that no gameplay testing can occur on your product is simply absurd. EA obviously has devkits and obviously internally tests the product with QA on some kind of build. When the game hits gold status, does that build not get tested by QA? I'm sure that a gold product is ready enough to get constructive criticism by an internal tester who actually knows football and has a history of playing college football games. In another thread OMT has stated that there are three months between gold status and release, so these are three whole months that feedback could be used to create a task list for the first patch. If I'm wrong on this OMT, please explain why this cannot work.

The three months are getting it approved and the disks getting manufactured. We cannot make ANY changes in that period of time unless the game is failed by the 3rd party. Then we fix the bug they found and the whole process starts over again. They don't fail a game for not being good enough... they fail it for crashes, save/load... things like that.