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When a Patch is Just Too Late to Save a Game

04:18 PM - December 13, 2008 by RaychelSnr

When a new sports title drops, anticipation surrounds the release. People scourer message boards and try to get first-hand impressions from their peers. They read reviews, watch game footage and inspect every little screen capture they can on the Web. Still, nothing beats getting it into our grubby little hands for the ultimate experience.

When a game has major flaws, especially a much-anticipated title, it is a letdown to say the least. You can hear about these problems through the grapevine, or you can discover first-hand the reason why you may have wasted your $60.

Read More - When a Patch is Just Too Late to Save a Game

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Member Comments

# 21 Jeru3131 @ 12/17/08 09:53 AM

So true. I had the same issue with Ncaa. By the time the patch came out my copy was back at Eb as a trade in for madden, which soon after was used as a trade in for nba 2k.

# 22 bigwill33 @ 12/17/08 01:46 PM

Some great comments gents. I feel many of your pains and agree with a good bit of what you guys are saying too.

However, I am from the mindset that patches are good, but there is a long way to go in perfecting on what they can do and how and when they can be released.

After being around the industry for nearly the past decade I believe strongly that gaming companies don't try to release broken products. But yes they are on a tight time line and that has to be met above all else. My main reason for stating this is because I know how many games were just broken before consoles were able to have patches at all. And I know if given the chance the developers would have fixed those problems any way possible and in fact usually have it fixed as point 1A for the next release.

I am sure if you think back you can recall an NCAA, Madden, Live, or NHL from EA that was just junk and unplayable in the past, well before patches existed. So to me that goes along way in ruling out the argument that patches are crutches.

Still with that being said and in relation to the article I would hope that future games bring a better and more efficient time table for patch release. With a strong agreement that games can be fixed and tuned well into the next games development cycle. Even if it means adding more people to work on the process, though I doubt that ever happens.

# 23 Tycobbler @ 12/17/08 06:13 PM

If you don't know by now perhaps you never will. Dev's hype the game, people feed into it, and are let down by their own high expectations. It's further felt when you're made to wait an additional set period for the update/patch when you allready want what you want when you want it. Future practice for the masses- Day 1 game release. Read reviews, laugh at the early birds, learn from their mistakes. Days 2-whenever patch/update. When that day comes further peruse the forums, weigh the pro's and con's and then and only then make your final decision on what to do.
A patch is never to late, it's your patience that simply cannot wait.

# 24 OMT @ 12/18/08 01:16 PM

Couple things...

1) We don't rush the game because we know we can patch. We have and use the same amount of time to make the game as we have since we first made it. It is a one year game, so we are very strict with our scope to make sure it is done on time.

The first patch is free. After that they cost a lot of money and are only released when necessary. We hope that there are no big issues that need to be fixed in the patch, and since we get a free one we look at releasing one every year and try to add something additional to the game. However, we are pretty restricted on what we CAN include in a patch.

2) Beta testing... not sure how you can do this with a console game. Our disc builds can only be played on special consoles or devkits. For a disc to run on the retail kit, it needs to be encoded by the manufacturer (MS or Sony in the case of NCAA).

Are there any console games out there that have a public beta?

# 25 rhombic21 @ 12/18/08 02:12 PM

Halo 3 did some sort of public beta for the online portion of the game. Seems like you could figure out some type of limited beta system that maybe only used two teams and one stadium, but would at least allow people to play around with the general gameplay.

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'm coming from online play, but this year the following things were not addressed in the patch, and there's really no reason for them not to be. I'm not talking about adding new graphic displays or anything super complex like that. I'm talking about tweaks to the gameplay engine:

- DL get pushed to ground way too often. I'm not saying they need to "win" more often, but a huge part of the problem with your pass rush is that 2 or 3 guys get knocked to the ground, so then when somebody does beat their guy, extra blockers come over and pick him up. Surely there's a way that you guys can tweak this so that the animations that are resulting in DL ending up on the ground play out less often.

- Man to man coverage is useless. It's simply terrible. Surely there is some way that you guys could have relatively easily tweaked man coverage to not be so horrible.

- Field Goals can be kicked from way too far out. I can easily make 55 yard kicks with average kickers. Seriously, this can't be hard to tweak.

- QBs are ridiculously accurate, even on the run and way behind the LOS. There are a whole host of ways that you could easily address this, many of which have been implemented on Madden.

- Playbooks are simply incomplete. I talked with Anthony White at community day, and I understand that he has a lot on his plate pre-release with Madden coming out a month later, but there's really no reason at all that you guys could follow up with some type of downloadable content later in the year that had updated playbooks. Hell, even if you just take plays and formations that are used in Madden, it would expand the NCAA playbooks a ton.

Your standard appears to be "only fix in a patch if it's absolutely necessary, fix all other things the next year." You need to abandon that approach. Your standard ought to be "if we can reasonably fix this with a patch, then we ought to do so." Patch it in when the problem is identified, and then fix it permanently for the next year.

And look, you guys sat on feedback for a month and a half and did nothing with it, which is why your gameplay patch took over a month after release to hit. I'm not saying that you had to finalize it based on the feedback that you had, but many of the problems that we pointed out were things that everybody (even the developers who we were talking to) agreed was a problem. So there's no reason that somebody shouldn't have been working on getting all of those things patched during the lag between when the disc goes gold and when it ships. That way, you have a starting place to address more than just the most glaring problems when you start receiving feedback from the community.

# 26 rudyjuly2 @ 12/18/08 02:26 PM

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.

# 27 Pared @ 12/18/08 02:29 PM

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.

# 28 fistofrage @ 12/18/08 03:34 PM

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!

# 29 youALREADYknow @ 12/18/08 04:07 PM

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.

# 30 Zeppelin8 @ 12/18/08 04:54 PM

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.

# 31 SuperBowlNachos @ 12/18/08 06:45 PM

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.

# 32 OMT @ 12/18/08 07:22 PM

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.

# 33 OMT @ 12/18/08 07:25 PM

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.

# 34 OMT @ 12/18/08 07:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by olliethebum85


	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.

I agree. And while "sad" might not be the best word for you to use, it is a good word to describe how many of us on the team felt when these issues came up. These things are very upsetting because we want to deliver a patch that enhances the game... not something which fixes a bug we should have known about.

# 35 rhombic21 @ 12/18/08 07:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rudyjuly2


	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.

Other manufacturers of sports games have released much more expansive patches for gameplay. 2K's patch rundown/fixlist for their basketball games always dwarfs what EA does for the football titles.

# 36 rhombic21 @ 12/18/08 07:40 PM

And I tend also think that EA needs to do more to go the extra mile to make it up to the consumers when they do release a product with massive bugs. Rather than cutting back on what you do as far as adding new content, you ought to take the perspective of going the extra mile to make it up to those of us that have been hardcore fans of the series.

I know that patches take away from the next year's development cycle, but the other reality is that it's 12 months between game releases, and when we end up with a game that has serious flaws or is missing key elements, we, as fans of the franchise, have to wait an entire year for you guys to release the next year's version. I shouldn't be sitting here in November and December and already be thinking that NCAA 2010 needs to hurry up and come out, just so some of these massive gameplay flaws will potentially be fixed.

I'm not saying that you should do it ever year, and I understand that it would get cost prohibitive, but IMO, after what happened this year, you guys should have found a way to make it up for us. Cut into profits or something, and divert extra resources to fixing the game and releasing continued content. Instead, what we got was a pretty weak patch effort that didn't release until a month and a half after the game came out, and then zero continued content from that point on. What kind of message do you think that sends? How can you claim to care about your consumers here? What it tells us is that you've essentially given up on the game, at least until next year, and that we should too. As a community, where does that leave us?

# 37 youALREADYknow @ 12/18/08 08:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by OMT


	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.

Maybe console game development really is THAT different from PC software development, but that line of thought is ridiculous coming from my field of work. You create a new branch and develop off of that branch which becomes the basis for the patch.

I'm not employed at EA, so I'm not going to ask you to go back and forth with me on this but it's obvious that the current testing and feedback cycle is not working and I just hope that somewhere internally you guys are making some changes for the better for next year's game.

Contrary to the comments of some others, I believe NCAA 09 is actually a great game in the areas that work as designed... it's just the 20 other bugs and flawed logic that make the game seem as if it's held together by paper clips and Elmer's glue.

# 38 OMT @ 12/19/08 11:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by youALREADYknow


	Maybe console game development really is THAT different from PC software development, but that line of thought is ridiculous coming from my field of work. You create a new branch and develop off of that branch which becomes the basis for the patch. I'm not employed at EA, so I'm not going to ask you to go back and forth with me on this but it's obvious that the current testing and feedback cycle is not working and I just hope that somewhere internally you guys are making some changes for the better for next year's game. Contrary to the comments of some others, I believe NCAA 09 is actually a great game in the areas that work as designed... it's just the 20 other bugs and flawed logic that make the game seem as if it's held together by paper clips and Elmer's glue.

Right, we do branch it off for the patch. But I believe my quote was talking about the packaged game. The patch process is a lot faster because it is a direct download and doesn't have to be manufactured and shipped by truck to stores.

# 39 Pared @ 12/19/08 12:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by OMT


	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.

Fair enough as I can understand that. Having spoken with developers plenty of times I can follow what you're saying here now.

Some of the other comments by rhombic and youalreadyknow are very on point.

SOMETHING needs to be done, whether it be a change in how your team operates, more weight to the community leaders opinions... something... that will not lead to these "major" (and I use that term loosely) not being a problem every year. Let's be real here, you can't get to every single bug, and most in the community know that.

With NBA Live, we were given free reign to tell the developers exactly what we think. I didn't hold back... and being open and honest goes a long way with people, even your customers. I didn't say "you suck at life" but offered input on how the defense shouldn't be as defenseless as it is. Since the CD happened so late in the dev. cycle, there was no way the appropriate changes could be made in time. If that's the case, have the CD's earlier (and I have mentioned this to Will as well) and put more weight on the guys who are not only a harsh critic of your game, but willing to work with you as well.

Most of these problems traditionally arise from the way the CPU AI reacts to the way a human plays. The CL's should be given more time with the AI IMO. I understand not everything is in place but take a day out of your schedule, sit down and game with these guys and pick their brain. If your engineers are football guys too, throw them in there just to listen. I know some of them are socially inept, don't speak English well and so forth, but not all of them are that bad. All these are minor steps towards releasing a game the community (the individuals who read previews, hunt for pictures online and discuss your work for hours) will be very happy with.

It goes without saying your hands are tied at times but I really think you have to sell your co-workers on this. Our interaction will only be beneficial for us all, as you make more money from sales and we get the game we really want.

It's a win-win if handled appropriately.

Sorry for the long post, but perhaps this helps you understand why I look at a patch as a crutch; It's because that's all it has been the last few years. Until something changes where a patch can have enough ability to add new features AND you can address the issues you might need to (damn MS and their patch size limitations) something needs to be done to help ease the game making process for us all so we have a product we all enjoy.

# 40 OMT @ 12/19/08 12:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pared


	Fair enough as I can understand that. Having spoken with developers plenty of times I can follow what you're saying here now. Some of the other comments by rhombic and youalreadyknow are very on point. SOMETHING needs to be done, whether it be a change in how your team operates, more weight to the community leaders opinions... something... that will not lead to these "major" (and I use that term loosely) not being a problem every year. Let's be real here, you can't get to every single bug, and most in the community know that. With NBA Live, we were given free reign to tell the developers exactly what we think. I didn't hold back... and being open and honest goes a long way with people, even your customers. I didn't say "you suck at life" but offered input on how the defense shouldn't be as defenseless as it is. Since the CD happened so late in the dev. cycle, there was no way the appropriate changes could be made in time. If that's the case, have the CD's earlier (and I have mentioned this to Will as well) and put more weight on the guys who are not only a harsh critic of your game, but willing to work with you as well. Most of these problems traditionally arise from the way the CPU AI reacts to the way a human plays. The CL's should be given more time with the AI IMO. I understand not everything is in place but take a day out of your schedule, sit down and game with these guys and pick their brain. If your engineers are football guys too, throw them in there just to listen. I know some of them are socially inept, don't speak English well and so forth, but not all of them are that bad. All these are minor steps towards releasing a game the community (the individuals who read previews, hunt for pictures online and discuss your work for hours) will be very happy with. It goes without saying your hands are tied at times but I really think you have to sell your co-workers on this. Our interaction will only be beneficial for us all, as you make more money from sales and we get the game we really want. It's a win-win if handled appropriately. Sorry for the long post, but perhaps this helps you understand why I look at a patch as a crutch; It's because that's all it has been the last few years. Until something changes where a patch can have enough ability to add new features AND you can address the issues you might need to (damn MS and their patch size limitations) something needs to be done to help ease the game making process for us all so we have a product we all enjoy.

Yeah.. I agree. Will needs to get comunity day earlier. The problem is that Madden is the big game and they are on a different dev cycle. So if you guys are brought in with enough time for NCAA changes, then Madden isn't showable.

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