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EA's Advice is to Uninstall Battlefield 2
Grym writes "The recently released Battlefield 2 was met with various levels of acclaim by reviewers. Besides the insane hardware requirements, the chief complaint was the amount of bugs in the game. Hoping to address the situation quickly, EA hastily released a patch to address the concerns cited in reviews. Big mistake. The patch turned out to be littered with bugs. One of the biggest was a huge memory leak. Another actually turned teammates' names red--just like enemies. The game became unplayable because of the patch. Tycho at Penny-Arcade discussed the issue in his latest news update. EA has owned up to the buggy patch and has said that there will be a hotfix released soon. In the meantime, gamers have been offically told to uninstall Battlefield 2 and play without the patch; advice that many fans are not happy to hear. Meanwhile, some sites are still offering the 1.01 patch for download on their front pages, only adding to the confusion. When are game companies going to learn? Quality assurance and play-testing should not be an afterthought!"
I hope EA gets totally burned by this and the games industry learns a lesson about sacrificing quality to hit a release date.
I also hope that they make a better tasting pie that isn't fattening.
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
I've been on the fence in regards to whether or not I was going to get Battlefield 2. I think I'll skip this one, I'm not interested in the game enough to put up with this kind of crap to play it. Next.
from eagames.com:
we recommend that you reinstall the game and NOT the v1.01 update we released earlier this week.
Reinstalling Battlefield 2 will not affect your in-game medals or ranked server statistics. EA and DICE are committed to getting a fix for v1.01 as soon as we possibly can and will continue to keep you informed through this web space in the coming days.
Uninstalling and reinstalling are NOT the same thing. Why must Slasshdot editors re-word the headlines and make them misleading?
EA is not saying to install the game. They're saying "play without the patch". Way to go /. editors...
As far as BF2 goes, I guess I'll wait to get this one. I was really looking forward to it, too, 'cause if done right, this game would rock.
Windows isn't the answer... it's the question. NO is the answer!
"When are game companies going to learn? Quality assurance and play-testing should not be an afterthought!"
They blew that budget on executive bonuses, sorry.
Meet the new sig, same as the old sig
...on the QAF (Quality Assurance Failure) Document I use to note myself such games. See sig for other examples.
Non-supporter of Online Activation and any other draconian DRM
I am still playing w/ the patch and have had no trouble, there are still servers up, including ranked. The game itself plays fine, and plays perfect on my old generation video card on medium settings at 1024x768 w/ the draw distance at 100. Runs fine, excellent game, lightyears beyond 1942 and Vietnam. The commander and squad system w/ the built in VOIP sounds great and makes the game excellent for being able to coordinate and such. Great game, once all the bugs it will be 100% perfect.
Home of the midwest loser - www.say-10.net
It takes forever to reinstall all 3 discs of this game.
When are game companies going to learn? Quality assurance and play-testing should not be an afterthought!
In all probability, not on our life. Because what keeps it sane in other industries are the laws allowing us, consumers, to return a broken products for a full refund. I don't see that happening to sofrware any time soon.
The "feature" that made your teammates appear to be enemies by appearing as red was actually a bug in the 1.00 and was NOT introduced in the patch. Don't get me wrong though, I'm still mad at EA for releasing a bad patch without enough testing. And, to top it all off, DICE is on vacation after releasing BF2...just messing this whole situation up even more
Since when do big media companies learn from their mistakes?
I feel no remorse for EA and their stupidity. And I must smile at this, after they overtook Westwood and bastardized the Command and Conquer Universe. While playablity increased, plot is lacking. It seems with Battle Field 2, EA is getting rid of playability as well.
Looks like some EA employees won't be seeing sunlight for a few more weeks, time to start another "crunch time" and add in a few more fatigue induced bugs.
...but all software. PHBs have no clue how long it takes to make software correctly. If the screen shots look good, then the product is finished, right Pareto?
They look at the "testing" tasks in the project plan with dismay at the amount of time allocated. Figuring a simple solution to a complex problem is the best approach, they say, "just make the developers test it," which is a colossal mistake that---in a just world---would get a PHB fired, but in the real one, they take it out.
Yeah, right.
...but getting to the game.
I've played BF:2 enough to achieve rank of Lance Corporal and on my way to promotion, I have experienced a few minor glitches (weird flag capture behavior, bizarre clipping, etc.); however, nothing that has detracted from my enjoyment of the game while playing.
IMHO, I think BF:2 has improved upon the forumla of its predecessors (including Desert Combat). Class balance issues have been addressed, the squad system is absolutely fantastic, and the "Commander" concept works well (if players know how to do it right).
So, the gameplay is solid, not revolutionary mind you, but solid; however, getting into a game is a completely different issue.
I cannot believe I have to use the atrocious in-game browser to find a game. Honestly, it's a terrible browser and it fails on every level to deliver basic, reliable functionality. Servers register a "0" latency occasionally, so I don't know if I can connect to that server or not. In addition, I attempted to use ASE (all-seeing eye) but BF:2 doesn't seem to want to play nice with it.
Since I don't use x-fire, it makes finding a game with my friends very difficult, which, is a terrible shame, because with the squad system, a co-ordinated group of players can do very well.
A thought off the top of my head is to have a feature where players can form squads out of game using the browser and then having the squad leader choose a server for the squad and everyone automatically connects to the chosen server. That sort of functionality would be innovative and very helpful to groups of players who want to play together.
Respect It.
Things like this have led me to be a "late adopter" of new games. Sure, I miss out on getting to brag about having the game the day it's released, but I usually pay less for the game. And I tend not to get hit with the odd patch or two that causes your drive to get formatted if you uninstall it, or causes the game to be near unplayable.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Well, with a poor intro, they will fall from favor and sooner than later I'll be able to pick this game up on the cheap.
:)
After they have resolved the hundreds of bugs, of course.
Pretty Pictures!
In the meantime, gamers have been offically told to uninstall Battlefield 2 and play without the patch
How would they play the game after the uninstall it? Oh, this sentence (and the title) is wrong. Their official statement says to REINSTALL Battlefield 2, and not to install the patch until they release a new one.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Sigh. Grym got it wrong on several levels -- as others have pointed out, the official advice from EA is to reinstall -- which does involve uninstalling and installing again. I agree, this is silly -- EA should've come out with a de-patcher.
/.'d, but BattleWiki has a lot of good info, not only on how to play but also on known bugs.
But that's hardly the only thing wrong with this story.
Another actually turned teammates' names red--just like enemies.
This bug exists in the 1.0 release and is not due to the patch. I've seen it myself prior to the patch being released. It appears to be random and isn't persistant -- once you die (or the teammate dies) their name may be back to normal.
The game became unplayable because of the patch.
And yet it plays just fine on my PC (Ath64 3000, 1 GB, GF6800 GT). I slightly prefer the 1.01 patch to 1.0 because the server browser is slightly better. The other issues it alleged to resolve were never problems for me, and the memory leak hasn't been a huge issue either (close the game and the client side leak is gone; the servers still suffer, but I haven't had severe problems except for the first day of the patch).
Tycho at Penny-Arcade discussed the issue in his latest news update.
Actually last Friday's news update, no longer the latest one. And most of what he wrote he got wrong too. Excepting the memory leak every issue he listed was in the 1.0 release -- medic revive issues (which are mostly user error and/or a misunderstanding of how things work), the server browser problems (were much, much worse for me in 1.0 than 1.01), etc.
Hopefully this won't get
Meanwhile, some sites are still offering the 1.01 patch for download on their front pages, only adding to the confusion.
Which isn't really EA/Dice's fault, but those sites.
When are game companies going to learn? Quality assurance and play-testing should not be an afterthought!
Agreed here, but come on. What did you expect? BF1942 and BF:V were buggy as hell when they were released too. The demo was buggy (although perhaps less buggy with respect to netcode at least) too. That the release was going to be buggy was hardly a surprise to anyone who'd been following the game.
And let's not get into the issue of closing their Ranked servers to paying customers based on a ridiculously unfounded excuse.
The problem isn't the product. It's a great game whose attractiveness has been foiled by a poor process.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
I'm waiting patiently for them to fix the bug that happens when you're commanding and you drop artillary. For some reason, when the artillary icon shows up on your team's map, they all instantly run into the artillary fire and then punish you for a team kill. I so hate that bug.
Or maybe he should consider replacing that old Creative Labs Quad Speed CD-ROM drive of his with something more 2005-ish.
I applied the NOCD crack to it so I didn't have to work in the Nazi demands that my disk risk being ruined and my dvdrom get unnecessary use. When it came time to patch it couldn't find the install directory. Whats this? YOU CAN'T FIND THE DEFAULT DIRECTORY?! Apparently using the patch and disabling the crap for intro movies is "modifying" it to their dislike. As a plus the uninstaller couldn't remove it so I got to remove all files manually and do some registry editing. The problem now is with PunkBuster. 99% servers haven't updated it, same goes with the users. I am severly limited to what servers I can play on since I have updated. I highly recommend the Gamespot GameCenter servers. Everythings up to date and the pings are nice, at least for me. Only problem I had was with one guy deciding my handle of "APE992" might be racist and another calling me a "bleeding heart liberal" because I said I considered him stupid for calling someone "gehy". You have to deal with this kind of idiocy everywhere though.
Personally, I love the fact that pressing the Escape key to skip the intro movie will save it into the input buffer, thus applying it to the password field of your "auto login" screen. So even if you have the correct account password saved, you have to edit it to get rid of the escape character.
I think its awesome that in order to change your keymappings that you have to un-map them one by one first, and then pray that they are not mapped to helicopter strafe-right or some other thing that happens to be completely hidden in the UI. Double bonus that unmapping pops up a dialogue box in the middle of the screen and snaps your mouse focus to the OK button saying, "You have unmapped this key [OK]". This is extremely helpful to remind me of what I just did, yes thanks for the workflow.
Very enjoyable to have a server browser that insists on invoking the uninterruptible server-list refresh every time you access the game menu - even though you're still connected and playing a game.
So much fun to make it such that to select a pre-canned radio message you have to press FIRE. This is especially interesting if you request a medic and your crosshairs just happen to be aimed directly at one. :-)
I am particularly impressed with the fun and challenge of finding a ranked server that has reasonable ping since most of them show up as ZERO in my browser.
The game should be called "BF2 : Revenge of the UI" or some shit like that...
By the time I actually make it into the game and start playing, I'm yearning for the safety of a trench being bombarded by howitzers...
Random question for all of /. to read...
Why don't all new games (that require more than one CD) come out on DVD?
I mean really. If you need a $500 video card, a Gig of RAM, 2 GBs of HD space, and a 2.2 Ghz or faster processor to play the game with a decent framerate... you can afford the extra $10 for the DVD drive.
Maybe I'm wrong.
Deja Vu
n. 1. The sensation that you've read this very article before.
I would like to point out that the bug concerningthe friendlies as red enemy, has been in there since the demo and 1.0
when you apply a game crack, always backup the files to be overwritten. When you have to patch or uninstall the cracked game, just revert to original files.
I confess I don't know much about these things but would it kill them to release a 1.01 to 1.0 "fix"? I really can't be bothered going through this uninstall -> reinstall rigmarole. I'd much rather they wasted their own time and got this done than waste mine.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
Quality assurance and play-testing should not be an afterthought!
Damn Right! If EA keeps treating us like this, when Battlefield 3 comes out I might wait a whole week before running out and buying it!
It's the buggiest piece of shit game coding I've seen in a long time; it looks like their beta testers did not do much work on this one. Minor bugs include the GameSpy interface doesn't sort, filter, etc. the way it should. Major bugs include CTDs that I've experienced and others have complained about. Maybe part of the problem is I'm running it on Windows 2000, and it was "only tested on windows xp"... so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
The hefty requirements are not insane. I'm running a sempron 2400 with a gig of RAM. By upgrading my crappy FX5200 to a 6600GT, I'm able to play quite nicely at 1024x768! So don't believe any fud saying you have to have top of the line hardware to play this game. It's similar to my car tastes -- it wants an Aston Martin Vanquish but will be content with a sporty Toyota.
Having stated the above, I love the game play and the teamwork required to win. If you join a server where your team is comprised of John Rambos, you can forget even coming close to winning a single round. With just slight coordination by squad leaders and the commander, a team can really put the hurt on the other side! I love the additional classes/roles they've added to the game. But EA really did all of us BF-fans a disservice by not going through a proper quality assurance phase before release. At least they'll get the patches and patches-of-patches out fairly quick. *sigh*
Ok, I happen to know a bit about this topic so I'm going to answer the question which was asked, namely, "Why does this happen?" The answer is not meant to be specific to this title, developer, publisher or distributor.
1) Publishers buy advertising spots in advance. They cannot, in general, recoup these ad buys if the game misses its launch. You might think they ought to be able to recoup or reuse the spot at a latter date, but this would have the effect of putting game magazines out of business. Publishers spend 20% of all their revenues on advertising; this is twice as much as the average profit margin for a publisher. That 2 to 1 leverage means that a single missed launch can knock out the profits of 2 titles. Note - this may not affect EA which probably makes magazines eat it, but it does affect other major publishers.
2) Big institutional investors like stable quarterly results. Not only equity investors but also, and perhaps more importantly, bond investors. 50-60% of title earnings are in the first 3 months after launch. So missing a launch can cause big swings in quarterly results. And contrary to popular opinion, that can't be hidden in the SEC filing. The cause of the swings they will lie about till the cows come home but the swings themselves are there for all to see. Let's say you are a really big publisher and have 10 titles come out per quarter (that's a very narrow field, btw.) If one title comes out a quarter late, then you go from 10, 10, 10, 10 to 10, 9, 11, 10. Did you catch that, there's another 2:1 leverage going on. A single miss has twice the expected impact. That's a 20% swing in income. Two misses in the same quarter and you've taken a 40% swing and will be having a very, very unpleasant conference call with investors. Or even worse, if you are part of a conglomerate, with your bosses boss and someone may be losing their job.
3) Game development is not fully mature. Games are still being developed up until the last minute before launch and this is essentially software development. This isn't audio engineering or film post production. By the time you need to start buying ad spots a lot can still go wrong.
4) All media is similar, very similar. This is a problem because the individuals at the top of conglomerations tend to think they know more about all the individual parts than they really do. A lot of problems at subsidiary publishers can be traced back to game publishers being treated the same as other media publishers. A book with some typos, we'll fix it in the next addition.
5) Game players are pissy - they hate getting built up about a game for a year and a half and then having their candy pulled away from them just before they were about to have their first taste. Yeah you know its true, don't play ignorant. But guess what no one cares, because you aren't problems #1, #2, #3 or #4. And most of all, because you cannot fire anyone. This brings me to the last reason.
6) Game players cannot fire game publishers. Decisions get made on a CYA basis and game players aren't the first, second or third entity in that feed back loop.
But from a gamer's standpoint, the patch is really really good. Er, let me add a disclaimer in that this isn't a flame. Right. Anyway, the original version of BF2 is much harder to play from the bug perspective. Okay, yeah, the new patch introduced a memory leak, which is needless to say horrible. In general, however, the UI and number of (noticable) bugs decreased dramatically. This story is quite a bit biased; I'm sure that gamers are mostly sad to hear this news, since not only must they go back to the buggy original release, but they don't know what their favorite servers will be running!
- dshaw
But that's all they have in common.
I'm sorry, I couldn't resist!
.... including your customer's patience? .... including your integrity?
Anyone else have this problem?
"When are game companies going to learn? Quality assurance and play-testing should not be an afterthought!" When people stop buying into hype. How else can you explain the popularity of WoW or the pet rock?
"When are game companies going to learn? Quality assurance and play-testing should not be an afterthought!"
They'll learn as soon as their players and customers stop paying for the privelege of being that "quality assurance and play-testing." Why pay for these concepts when you can get others to pay you?
When are game companies going to learn?
What is the only form of communication that we have to companies like EA? Hint: it isn't the Contact Us form on their webpage.
It's your wallet. Companies will start learning that they can't publish this when you refuse to buy another EA product because of your experience with Battlefield 2. Dollar amounts are the only language they understand, and right now most PC gamers are saying, "Wooo! Give us more!"
I would also suggest that companies have learned. Most of EA's budget goes to console dev, not PC. Even the hardcore niche PC gaming print mags have started to include video games in their coverage, because PC games is becoming more desolate. That's not to say there haven't been some hits - Half Life 2 being the prime example. But whereas there used to be a dozen major games coming out each year from each publisher there are now one, or two max.
But in order to really change the behavior of EA, bitching on some unread message board about patch problems and then being the first in line to buy the $39.99 expansion pack for Battlefield 2 is only saying, "Thank you sir may I have another." Don't buy EA games, and they'll get the message.
What do you expect from these people. They screwed up UO, they melt any game series they touch into useless fluids...
Ok, instead of a tyraid of info, Ill just post the best example to date.
They Had a good game once...it was a MMO Battletech game, with money and levels and cools mechs. It was going awesome, feedback was high, the game didnt suck... But then they shut it down - didnt even let people try out the cool mechs before they were gone forever.
Why? Because they thought Majestic would sell better. Anyone remember Majestic? The mystery game where people would call you up to give you clues?
I think it was a month later, they had taken Majestic offline and into CD format, and then it was promptly Bargain bin material.
And their business practices havnt changed ever since.
Don't tell people everyone had problems, it was a small minority of people who had issues anywhere near as bad as you are describing.
actually, you don't have to click to select the radio command from the menu, you fucktard. you just have to release the radio-com button (default t) after moving your mouse in the correct direction and highlighting the intended phrase. but i guess it's EA Games' fault that you're an inept retard.
"By the time I actually make it into the game and start playing, I'm yearning for the safety of a trench being bombarded by howitzers..."
enemies shelling starting locations is just something you have to deal with, and hardly unintended or wrong. maybe you just whine too much? do you complain that the blocks start falling faster after you beat a level in tetris?
The companies should just release the untested stuff instantly and frequently, instead of passing it through a layer of QA that clearly isn't accomplishing anything except holding up releases for a week or more.
My biggest annoyance is the ranked server stragety. They are closing access to parts of the game unless you play on server they essentially control. They significantly overprice the servers and allow very little variation in how they work.
This is killing the user base at a lot of the smaller non-profit sites that have high traffic and aren't able to afford the massive bandwith requirements and the pricetag of a ranked server.
I suspect that once people get off the 'new release' high and can't afford to keep the ranked server's they are renting this will start to collapse the user base.
Also, they don't allow any mods on the ranked servers and have yet to release the mod tools that were promised a long time ago.
So good bye mod community for BF2 as well.
Whatever good intentions they purported to have were either lost on the way to the bank, or they had no intention on delivering anything other than profits to their bottom line.
So sure, go ahead, it makes the investors happy. But it's only a matter of time before someone else will exploit their obvious weakness to put out something that will last.
Maybe ID and Raven are paying attention.
whee -Me