Wanna bet new scouting system had legacy code from M21

[Gambo]

This wouldn't be the 1st time they've done something where a major patch/update regresses other parts previously updated.

The draft logic issue really makes me think they started designing the system with the Pre-patch Madden21 logic and they never updated it accordingly. Now that they implemented it, the old logic got overlayed hence the draft logic issue coming back in full force.

The probably never even noticed the issue because the top teams were all looking for QBs last year so it didn't rear it's ugly head until the masses started using it in M22.

I'm pretty happy go lucky and accepting of a few bugs or minor gripes (penalties and the like) but my goodness, this is insane how these issues are so variable between modes and there's no rhyme or reason. I'll be honest, I only buy every 2 years or so and kinda laid off the last 3 until it was part of the EA pass. (I'm a Jets fan..it was pretty depressing). I was pretty pumped for this year, but dude!, I'm a casual player with kids and it's really a hassle. The only good thing this situation has offered is that i've managed to finish 2-3 games waiting for this stuff to be fixed.

I lived through the Front Page Sports Football '99 debacle (look it up kids) and it's starting to go more and more that route. Especially now that they're customer service has gone to full silence mode most of the time.

[JimmyK]

Re: Wanna bet new scouting system had legacy code from M21

I honestly don't believe anyone that works on franchises actually plays franchise mode years in like true sim players. Because if they did, most these issues would be noticeable on the first playthrough for anyone who has played this mode for any bit of time. All the logic breaks all the immersion.

[Gambo]

Re: Wanna bet new scouting system had legacy code from M21

But it’s not just obvious to true sim players…these are year one issues and obvious just casually.

[ForUntoOblivionSoar∞]

Re: Wanna bet new scouting system had legacy code from M21

I honestly don't believe anyone that works on franchises actually plays franchise mode years in like true sim players. Because if they did, most these issues would be noticeable on the first playthrough for anyone who has played this mode for any bit of time. All the logic breaks all the immersion.

That isn’t the cause. The main designer of the scouting system is one of the most true sim franchise player you’ll ever see:

https://forums.operationsports.com/f...e-rebuild.html


Not many people that dedicated. He got hired last October.


The reason for these issues isn’t desire. It’s the fact that the game is MASSIVE and has had countless waves of turnover in employment, which has resulted in lost knowledge about some of the code, with new people having to painstakingly go through it to find exactly what pieces of it do and what they were intended to do, all while trying to create new features compatible with the legacy code.


You’ll be right to say what they SHOULD do is just scrap it all and start fresh. But that would take three years, and clearly is not economically feasible for such a company.

[tg88forHOF]

Re: Wanna bet new scouting system had legacy code from M21

That isn’t the cause. The main designer of the scouting system is one of the most true sim franchise player you’ll ever see:

https://forums.operationsports.com/f...e-rebuild.html


Not many people that dedicated. He got hired last October.


The reason for these issues isn’t desire. It’s the fact that the game is MASSIVE and has had countless waves of turnover in employment, which has resulted in lost knowledge about some of the code, with new people having to painstakingly go through it to find exactly what pieces of it do and what they were intended to do, all while trying to create new features compatible with the legacy code.


You’ll be right to say what they SHOULD do is just scrap it all and start fresh. But that would take three years, and clearly is not economically feasible for such a company.

Adding to this: regression testing is more art than discipline under the best of circumstances.

I've worked at companies with well-understood, well-documented, and relatively young and fresh code bases that still managed to introduce some of the most hilarious and/or forehead-slapping regressions you can imagine.

And as Oblivion correctly points out, EA isn't one of those companies. They struggle with comprehensive UAT and feature testing (offered without judgment one way or the other....it is what it is); I'm more surprised when they avoid major regressions than when they introduce them.

[Dblock1111]

Re: Wanna bet new scouting system had legacy code from M21

That isn’t the cause. The main designer of the scouting system is one of the most true sim franchise player you’ll ever see:

https://forums.operationsports.com/f...e-rebuild.html


Not many people that dedicated. He got hired last October.


The reason for these issues isn’t desire. It’s the fact that the game is MASSIVE and has had countless waves of turnover in employment, which has resulted in lost knowledge about some of the code, with new people having to painstakingly go through it to find exactly what pieces of it do and what they were intended to do, all while trying to create new features compatible with the legacy code.


You’ll be right to say what they SHOULD do is just scrap it all and start fresh. But that would take three years, and clearly is not economically feasible for such a company.

This is the one thing I don't agree with, as much as they'll say it and it may be true, this is a MULTI-BILLION Dollar company. If they ever chose to do so, they could spin up a second team to start from scratch and slowly transition people from the live team to the rebuild team over a matter of years.

They choose not to do this because it would cost more than not doing it, and they know they'll still make a ton of money regardless, but absolutely not unfeasible if they wanted to do it.

[roadman]

Re: Wanna bet new scouting system had legacy code from M21

This is the one thing I don't agree with, as much as they'll say it and it may be true, this is a MULTI-BILLION Dollar company. If they ever chose to do so, they could spin up a second team to start from scratch and slowly transition people from the live team to the rebuild team over a matter of years.

They choose not to do this because it would cost more than not doing it, and they know they'll still make a ton of money regardless, but absolutely not unfeasible if they wanted to do it.

As a gamer(me) looking from the outside in, I understand what you are saying.

As a business person(me too), the entire company is down this year to date over 3.4% in value. So, until that value goes in the upward direction, I think we will continue to see EA as a company being conservative.

https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/ea

My opinion.

[Dblock1111]

Re: Wanna bet new scouting system had legacy code from M21

As a gamer(me) looking from the outside in, I understand what you are saying.

As a business person(me too), the entire company is down this year to date over 3.4% in value. So, until that value goes in the upward direction, I think we will continue to see EA as a company being conservative.

https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/ea

My opinion.

That's absolutely true. Also worth noting that Year over Year (Since Oct 2020) they're up 9.04% though.

I know they're always going to do the thing that squeezes out the extra .01% for their investor reports, but that definitely doesn't make the option "unfeasible", unrealistic, definitely haha.

[Hooe]

Re: Wanna bet new scouting system had legacy code from M21

That isn’t the cause. The main designer of the scouting system is one of the most true sim franchise player you’ll ever see:

https://forums.operationsports.com/f...e-rebuild.html


Not many people that dedicated. He got hired last October.


The reason for these issues isn’t desire. It’s the fact that the game is MASSIVE and has had countless waves of turnover in employment, which has resulted in lost knowledge about some of the code, with new people having to painstakingly go through it to find exactly what pieces of it do and what they were intended to do, all while trying to create new features compatible with the legacy code.


You’ll be right to say what they SHOULD do is just scrap it all and start fresh. But that would take three years, and clearly is not economically feasible for such a company.

Minor correction: Andre Weingarten aka EA Swami tweeted out on the day of the scouting update that the new scouting system had existed in-house at Tiburon in some form or another for two years, and also that it was in fact a design document he originally authored (which others surely had hands on at different points in time, game development at any level is a collaborative effort) which guided the implementation of the feature.

[ggsimmonds]

Re: Wanna bet new scouting system had legacy code from M21

That isn’t the cause. The main designer of the scouting system is one of the most true sim franchise player you’ll ever see:

https://forums.operationsports.com/f...e-rebuild.html


Not many people that dedicated. He got hired last October.


The reason for these issues isn’t desire. It’s the fact that the game is MASSIVE and has had countless waves of turnover in employment, which has resulted in lost knowledge about some of the code, with new people having to painstakingly go through it to find exactly what pieces of it do and what they were intended to do, all while trying to create new features compatible with the legacy code.


You’ll be right to say what they SHOULD do is just scrap it all and start fresh. But that would take three years, and clearly is not economically feasible for such a company.

Also worth pointing out, that a designer =/= developer.

I don't know to what extent people use this term interchangeably when it comes to Madden or how much code people like Deuce and Clint are writing.

But typically in software development the designer presents the image or vision, and developers write the code to make it happen. Similar to architect vs engineer.

This can lead to a whole host of obstacles and unexpected things happening.

Edit: Because it was recent and relevant to this discussion, a little personal story from my work:

Spoiler

I'm a developer and scrum master for a consulting firm. Companies tell us what they want and we build it for them. Now since we are outsourced we don't always understand the business goals as well as we would if we were inhouse. A company I did work for had a platform that was made up of 5 different portals or websites. We worked on 4, their in house team worked on the one main portal. We were asked to add a feature to one portal where a user could create a special kind of password to be used on the main portal.

The requirements stated the password "needed to be a alpha-numeric key of 10 characters."

We made it, it passed our testing, we released it, everyone is happy. Until a month later when the in house team started working on their part of it and everything broke.

We built it requiring a 10 character key as specified but the other team was making test data of a variable number of characters for the key. Turns out the requirement should have stated "up to 10 characters." Oops.

How does this relate to the current discussion? Well the designers give their vision to the developers in the form of requirements. Sometimes it is not possible to include all the nuances in those requirements and as we all know, football and franchise modes have a whole lot of nuance.

Madden's designers may be hardcore sim heads and dedicated to franchise mode. But it may not matter if the developers aren't. If the actual code monkeys don't understand the nuances of football and franchise, all the dedication on the part of the design team may be for naught. The same can be true for the testers.

tl;dr There is a lot of nuance in making a NFL sim and several layers to the development process. If just one of those layers aren't on the same page, it makes the entire product look bad

[Mattanite]

Re: Wanna bet new scouting system had legacy code from M21

Bugs do come up but I can attest that they do get reported, looked at and fixed. I reported the Focus Scout / Private Workout bug to EA on day 1 of the scouting update and the fix of "use all your scouts at the same position for now" came direct from Swami.

If specific things come up then report it, I throw out a tonne of bugs to EA as I break the game each year. My scouting guide below even got a minor review by EA (hence the frustration of me looking for a missing step haha).

https://forums.operationsports.com/f...hise-tips.html

[lions2k9]

Re: Wanna bet new scouting system had legacy code from M21

It’s more of a Tiburon problem. They’re not very good at making games.