Did EA Lie About Battlefield 4?

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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May 9, 2000
Messages
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All of the problems associated with the release of Battlefield 4 are not just a concern to the consumers who paid out the hard earned cash for the game, the issue is now under investigation on behalf of the company investors who fear irrefutable damage may have been done to the company name.

This despite the fact that EA subsidiary developer DICE rolled out a new patch on Wednesday to improve the game’s stability. Clearly, investors aren’t convinced such measures have fixed the problems.
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EA is the HP of the video game industry.

I suffered through BF4 for a few days, trying to convince myself I was having fun or that "a patch should be released soon to fix this.." but after 2 patches, I uninstalled it.

Investors arent wrong, at least. There's absolutely no way in hell I'll buy another EA game without giving it weeks of release time and checking the respective forums for complaints.
 
Wait..wait wait....After all the shitting EA has done on the BF community since BF2 the investers are just NOW convinced they have done damage to the brand? Really? Fucking Really? All that backlash about Origin, All the backlash about telling the modding communities (You know, the groups that actually made BF successful in the first GD place) and they are Just NOW thinking the brand is damaged because of yet another shit launch?....

Wow..just fucking Wow.
 
Still haven't bought this game and I usually buy every BF game day one.
It was something about this game that didn't sit right with me. The two year rushed cycle was one red flag.

A game this challenging to develop can't be on a two year cycle.
 
My guess would be a different generation of investors after the others saw the light. ;)

Dekoth-E- said:
Wait..wait wait....After all the shitting EA has done on the BF community since BF2 the investers are just NOW convinced they have done damage to the brand? Really? Fucking Really? All that backlash about Origin, All the backlash about telling the modding communities (You know, the groups that actually made BF successful in the first GD place) and they are Just NOW thinking the brand is damaged because of yet another shit launch?....

Wow..just fucking Wow.
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The idea is that you release a good working game and screw investors/stockholders.
When games become assets for pleasing the financial market might as well stop breathing.
 
Well PC version seems to be far less buggy than the console version. I haven't experienced any bugginess but I also haven't played it as much.
 
Yeah like this is the first thing EA has done in order to earn shit buckets of hate from gamers. Well, better late than never!
 
Love this quote from the article. " Of further worry may be that EA has permanently damaged its reputation among gamers."
Really? How can you damage a reputation that was already in the toilet?
 
I remember when EA was great. That was back when their logo was EOA for some reason and they were releasing games like Mail Order Monsters. How times have changed.
 
Hard to tell that EA is disliked when people keep shoveling their shit into their mouths as fast as possible.

Same with Activision/Blizzard....
 
Red Falcon said:
In before someone remembers the Sim City debacle! :p
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My wife was a huge fan of that franchise until she played The Sims 3. You have to wonder if their testers and QA folks are just filling out fictitious reports while jerking off to porn or something.
 
As I have played some BF4 some (and had 2 particular rounds crash on me after the previous round was over and the scores tabulated and recorded so I didn't lose anything progress-wise) I too thought of the situation involving EA/DICE and what could have caused these obviously very public issues between the community and BF4.

When you look through the history of DICE as a company even before EA acquired them and beyond the time EA acquired them you see that DICE has been infamous and notorious for doing 2 things with the Battlefield franchise that in my mind leaves them being not as good a development house as some would be lead to believe. You heard me. Here we go:

1. DICE in their history has never, ever, ever released a Battlefield title in a good developmentally stable condition. Ever. Each one has been filled with showstopping bugs, glitches and problems at launch that took about 60 days to fix and get the title stable.

2. DICE with all games has had the same problem upon patching any of their games (including the Mirror's Edge series). They fix everything they want to fix with their patch at that moment but...(and a Costco sized product but here) they tend to break at least 2-3 dozen different things they didn't mean to break while fixing the problem they promised to fix.

So let's break all that down in a John Madden style short summary: So see here first POW! They can't release a developmentally stable game at launch and BOOM! They can't properly patch the game after later.

And all this time, we knew they had these 2 problems with their games throughout their history (or you do now if you read this) and it made us wonder, "when is this finally going to catch up with them and really blow up in their grilles?" Now, it finally has caught up to them and we all can agree on that here.

Some people have said over this situation, gaming industry insiders really but community too, that EA rushed this game to market. In the words of Max Kellerman, "Wrong wrong wrong!" EA/DICE had a release date for BF4 for 7.5 months (mid February 2013 is when we all knew) set in stone. 7.5 months to get this game developmentally stable and they blew it because of various reasons that we are only beginning to discover thanks to the insiders of the industry right now. None of them had to do with the words, "rushing it" when you break it down to the basics of how the game industry really works.

Some people have also said, "If they had 3-9 months more with this game they would've sorted it out." History tells us that's untrue too. Let's go back to Battlefield 3 as the example here. EA/DICE made the claim with BF3 for PC that it was finished about 5-6 months ahead of schedule. Yep, they sure did. Okay then, if it was finished and polished 5-6 months ahead of schedule then what reason did EA/DICE have to 1. release a day one patch at launch that you had to load before you could even be allowed to play the game? And then 2. release 2 more patches on top of that within 2 weeks of launch eh? Again, that's called slacking off development-wise because if the game was truly "completely finished" 5-6 months ahead of time do you really think BF3 would need 3 patches in its first 2 weeks of existence? I think not!

So in closing it's a situation here with BF4 where you'd think with all I typed here that I am very angry, disgruntled and non-plussed about EA/DICE when in all reality I am as calm as a summer's breeze emotionally over this. This is just a poster giving you the facts of the situation so that no longer is anyone possibly confused over this. In turn if you want to be angry fine. If you want to vote EA Worst Company in America again for a 3rd consecutive year do it over the facts like the ones posted here not over an emotional response towards them. As for my vote in that contest, I just ignore such things. That is all. Thanks.
 
I have not really experienced any issues where my game is unplayable. I am playing the PC version and feel I got my monies worth pre-ordering it. The next sale on Premium and I am going to snag it. The game is still much better than COD Ghost. BF4 may be the most fun game I have played to date. Remember, these are just my opinions.
 
As the publisher, then they need to tell DICE to get their shiz together or drop them. If a publisher publishes a game, they're directly stating "This game meets our quality standards" and any negative impact from the poor quality of that game will fall on their shoulders. If that game turns out to be full of bugs/issues, then we know where EA's standards lie. :p
 
They really need to change the way betas are released. Release it at least a few months before retail release, and start rolling the patches out during beta. Modding would be nice. Even simple mods breath new life into games I play. Team Fortress 2 has a few simple mods with servers running them, that convinced me to play some more tf2. For that matter, I still hop onto CoD 4 because there are some decent mods for that. BF4 has some strange bugs, still enjoyable but I cringe everytime I find one.

I have a feeling investors were already breathing down DICEs necks if they are continously pushing for early releases. I'm going to blame the stock market. The stock market is making my game crash.
 
I got the game and I don't feel like I had problems with it. The worst I get is a crash every 2-3hrs of playing and the usual "800 tickets game turning into 1 the next". Other than that, I've had my share of fun.
 
This was my first ever BF title. I made it through the single player campaign over the course of about 5 nights, and only got one crash. All in all, I wasn't disappointed.
 
RareAir23 said:
As I have played some BF4 some (and had 2 particular rounds crash on me after the previous round was over and the scores tabulated and recorded so I didn't lose anything progress-wise) I too thought of the situation involving EA/DICE and what could have caused these obviously very public issues between the community and BF4.

When you look through the history of DICE as a company even before EA acquired them and beyond the time EA acquired them you see that DICE has been infamous and notorious for doing 2 things with the Battlefield franchise that in my mind leaves them being not as good a development house as some would be lead to believe. You heard me. Here we go:

1. DICE in their history has never, ever, ever released a Battlefield title in a good developmentally stable condition. Ever. Each one has been filled with showstopping bugs, glitches and problems at launch that took about 60 days to fix and get the title stable.

2. DICE with all games has had the same problem upon patching any of their games (including the Mirror's Edge series). They fix everything they want to fix with their patch at that moment but...(and a Costco sized product but here) they tend to break at least 2-3 dozen different things they didn't mean to break while fixing the problem they promised to fix.

So let's break all that down in a John Madden style short summary: So see here first POW! They can't release a developmentally stable game at launch and BOOM! They can't properly patch the game after later.

And all this time, we knew they had these 2 problems with their games throughout their history (or you do now if you read this) and it made us wonder, "when is this finally going to catch up with them and really blow up in their grilles?" Now, it finally has caught up to them and we all can agree on that here.

Some people have said over this situation, gaming industry insiders really but community too, that EA rushed this game to market. In the words of Max Kellerman, "Wrong wrong wrong!" EA/DICE had a release date for BF4 for 7.5 months (mid February 2013 is when we all knew) set in stone. 7.5 months to get this game developmentally stable and they blew it because of various reasons that we are only beginning to discover thanks to the insiders of the industry right now. None of them had to do with the words, "rushing it" when you break it down to the basics of how the game industry really works.

Some people have also said, "If they had 3-9 months more with this game they would've sorted it out." History tells us that's untrue too. Let's go back to Battlefield 3 as the example here. EA/DICE made the claim with BF3 for PC that it was finished about 5-6 months ahead of schedule. Yep, they sure did. Okay then, if it was finished and polished 5-6 months ahead of schedule then what reason did EA/DICE have to 1. release a day one patch at launch that you had to load before you could even be allowed to play the game? And then 2. release 2 more patches on top of that within 2 weeks of launch eh? Again, that's called slacking off development-wise because if the game was truly "completely finished" 5-6 months ahead of time do you really think BF3 would need 3 patches in its first 2 weeks of existence? I think not!

So in closing it's a situation here with BF4 where you'd think with all I typed here that I am very angry, disgruntled and non-plussed about EA/DICE when in all reality I am as calm as a summer's breeze emotionally over this. This is just a poster giving you the facts of the situation so that no longer is anyone possibly confused over this. In turn if you want to be angry fine. If you want to vote EA Worst Company in America again for a 3rd consecutive year do it over the facts like the ones posted here not over an emotional response towards them. As for my vote in that contest, I just ignore such things. That is all. Thanks.
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I feel lucky that I've been able to play BF4 pretty much without issue since launch. By that I mean the game actually runs. I'm not forgetting the 1 hit kill headshot bug, the stupid 3d emp blur every 5-15 seconds, the god awful hit detection, and other issues. The reason I say that I feel lucky is that there are still people who can't even play the game. That just should not happen.

BF3 had me so mad in it's first 3 weeks or so that I eventually uninstalled it. A year later it was fine, but reading through the update history it shouldn't take 6 months after a game has launched for it to be stable. EA and DICE knew about the problems at launch with BF3 and released it anyway, and they've done so yet again with BF4.

jon666 said:
They really need to change the way betas are released. Release it at least a few months before retail release, and start rolling the patches out during beta. Modding would be nice. Even simple mods breath new life into games I play. Team Fortress 2 has a few simple mods with servers running them, that convinced me to play some more tf2. For that matter, I still hop onto CoD 4 because there are some decent mods for that. BF4 has some strange bugs, still enjoyable but I cringe everytime I find one.

I have a feeling investors were already breathing down DICEs necks if they are continously pushing for early releases. I'm going to blame the stock market. The stock market is making my game crash.
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Most "betas" are a damned joke. Nothing more than cherry picked builds to do some last minute stress testing of stuff like the server browser(battlelog in this instance) and function primarily as a game demo. These are marketing betas, not serious development betas.

Sure, no game developer can test every hardware/os/driver/etc. combination, and I don't expect them to. But when you've got obvious glaring issues that either cause your game to not even run, or issues that make a game simply unplayable, that stuff needs to be addressed and not pushed off to meet a release date.
 
I've played over 60 hours of BF4. Realize the problems aren't the typical "choppers don't fly right," the G36 is too powerful," etc. There are a lot of basic can't-play-the-game and game-play problems which still persist. The most annoying which remains is the 'cannot connect to the game, disconnected from the server.' It's not even listed in their "Top Issues Tracker," so as far as DICE is concerned, this isn't an issue, or it's been fixed. It persists and affects many. The netcode is horrendous. Get used to firing and running into the next room, only find that your were hit in the previous room. There are a lot of hilarious youtube videos which capture the problem.

I've been gaming a long time, and of all the games I've played, this is the one I've had the most problems with. It has great potential (obviously so if I've played so much), but it's too frustrating at this point.
 
mrtheshaggy said:
Not sure I understand as I have had zero problems with the game?
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If you have zero problems, I dont know what your doing, I havent had nearly the issues some of my mates have with crashes but the bugs ingame are still pretty bad. I still get CTD's, black screen freezes and regular End of Round crashes. The hit detection is still horrible after three stated attempts to work on it and still get a server crash every once in a while (thinking its more server hardware now)

I still have fun, I still have over 270 hours into it, and I got my monies worth... But this game wasnt quite ready for primetime and its a damn shame.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
Wait..wait wait....After all the shitting EA has done on the BF community since BF2 the investers are just NOW convinced they have done damage to the brand? Really? Fucking Really? All that backlash about Origin, All the backlash about telling the modding communities (You know, the groups that actually made BF successful in the first GD place) and they are Just NOW thinking the brand is damaged because of yet another shit launch?....

Wow..just fucking Wow.
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Doesn't matter how much shitting EA has done on you. BF BC2 and BF3 sold well, BF4 hasn't, really.
 
mrtheshaggy said:
Not sure I understand as I have had zero problems with the game?
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You may not, I don't have many problems with it. However pretending that problems don't currently exist is silly.

Game server crashing. Doesn't matter how well it runs on your computer if the server crashes mid round. That's been patched what, 3 times?

1 hit kill headshot. Randomly bullets were being counted going through the head hitbox multiple times. Maybe you never noticed it and assume that you killed the enemy or simply got killed quickly, but it happened pretty often. I don't mean with a sniper rifle either. Most guns cannot kill in 1 hit even with a headshot in BF4.

Piss poor hit detection made worse with latency. You've really never seen hit markers fail to appear? Never had someone with a ping of 300 join the server and seemingly be invincible?

Desync problems causing players to appear where they aren't. This one was recently resolved for stance changes. The game would get out of sync while you were switching between standing/crouched/prone and leave your head sticking out above cover to get shot at.

Lag and counterknifing. You see a player running straight at you, they knife you. For some reason the game thinks the player knifed you from the side or behind(likely due to lag) and you get no counterknife prompt. This also happens the other way around. Sometimes you can walk right up behind a player and knife them, only to get counterknifed because the game thought you were in front of them when the knife animation was initiated.

Reload time for jet and helicopter missiles. Want to fire one missile instead of both in quick succession so the other pilot flares the first and can't flare the second? Nope, not gonna happen.

Instant reload glitch for UCAV. I'm not going to explain how to do this, but it does work, and turns 1-2 players into a constant swarm of UCAVs making the rush game mode a disaster. This is supposed to take around 20 seconds to reload, not be reloaded by the time your first UCAV hits.

Defuse. Wasn't even playable half the time until just recently due to the server having problems after the game mode glitched out in a previous match.

Custom ticket counts getting broken with every other patch. At least 3 times now DICE has broken the ability for server admins to set custom ticket counts. This is especially dumb on the stealth jet air superiority maps where 100 tickets can cause a game to end in under 2 minutes and typically last no longer than 3 minutes. It almost feels like you spend as much time staring at the post game report and loading screen than you do playing.

The audio dropouts on lancang dam and golmud railway. At least they fixed it, but having the game audio go away the moment you jumped in a vehicle sucked.

The upper floor areas that make players invincible on Locker. Yeah, that's fun when you're trying to cap the central point and 5 players are up in the balconies(no, I'm not talking about the stairwell with the window at the top) able to shoot at you, but you can't hit them with your bullets.

That's just the tip of the iceberg with problems that have happened, not including some people having sound loop crash bugs, Massive performance stuttering on some maps. occasional problems where you can't accept or decline a revive leaving you no choice but to quit the game, people not having primary(or even secondary) weapons when join a server and spawning into the map.

There is just no way that you have had zero problems with the game unless you've barely played it.
 
pretty sure BF4 issues pale in comparison to Sim City, why no legal action then? BF4 is like a walk in the park by comparison.
 
michael.pa2 said:
Love this quote from the article. " Of further worry may be that EA has permanently damaged its reputation among gamers."
Really? How can you damage a reputation that was already in the toilet?
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Didn't they win worst company back to back? That should have clued the investors in.
 
The games has had a lot of issues, it seems to be getting better however it was nowhere near finished when they released it.
 
Spidey329 said:
Didn't they win worst company back to back? That should have clued the investors in.
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Investors don't care about that, they care about money. EA could have won awards like that every year for the past decade, but if the investors have been getting expected returns then they have no reason to care. Now when they start looking at year over year numbers for each quarter and see significant drops, they start wondering what the hell happened(with BF4 happening to be the recent screw up, but definitely not the only one).
 
hmm. i play bf4 every day and dont really have a complaint? weird.
 
michael.pa2 said:
How can you damage a reputation that was already in the toilet?
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Because it wasn't. Only a minority of gamers hate EA which is evident by the amount of units they sell of every game they make.

Believe it or not folks, the opinions of people here at the [H] are in the minority, and companies could give a fuck what people here think. The sooner the user base here learns that the sooner there will be less people who are disappointed.
 
The only crash I have experienced, was when the server crashed itself. Honestly this game could have been held off another year for development reasons and been just fine.
 
The game is a blast. Although I don't understand e 30-50% sli gpu usage during gameplay vs the 70-90% sli gpu usage when dead or scoreboard screen....
 
Merc1138 said:
Investors don't care about that, they care about money. EA could have won awards like that every year for the past decade, but if the investors have been getting expected returns then they have no reason to care. Now when they start looking at year over year numbers for each quarter and see significant drops, they start wondering what the hell happened(with BF4 happening to be the recent screw up, but definitely not the only one).
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Which is why I don't feel sorry for them one bit. It's these same investors which put pressure on developers to release game after game every year with no clue to what's involved in development, thus giving impossible deadlines. The customer is a different issue. While I'm not exactly thrilled with how customers act when it comes to software, I can at least pardon their ignorance on the fact that they're not directly involved in the decision making.

Honestly, if you want to stop these horrible beta releases though, it involves those dirty words: government regulation.
 
Fine on PC. Once I figured out to unpark my cores in windows 7 got rid of the ever so slight stuttering. Windows 8 is unparked by default... Have to wonder if that's the difference....
 
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