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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!"
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!
I realize you're (sort of) kidding, but it's normally lack of time and not money that cause proper testing to fall by the wayside. Everyone (designers, management, users) wants to stuff in all the cool, whizbang features, but they all scream bloody murder if you try to slip the release date to allow for proper testing.
I battle against this on a daily basis as a QA engineer. At some point, all you can do is explain the risks of untested or poorly tested features, and if the Powers That Be say "We can live with that," there's nothing you can do but cross your fingers and hope for the best.
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.
i remember hearing something along the lines of EA hiring the guys who did the desert mod for the original battlefield to create BF2. when initial development for BF2 was over and done, they fired the development team.
so, of course who was still around to patch the game? some new people i guess, and this is what you get out of it.
im looking for the exact article i saw on it. i dont recall all of the exact details, but if im right... one word. karma!
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
The great thing about this all is people will go through great lengths to get a buggy pre-release game pirated off of bittorrent or from a friend and never complain about the bugs. But the moment it is released and you pay a couple bucks to have a game that is supported well you bitch about it because hey every game is perfect when it is released. I for one am happy to have a game released so I can play it early with support. You can always go the route of Blizzard and postpone a game for 3 years so you can release one good version too late. But I digress...
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
"Class balance issues have been addressed"
I would agree with everything you said except that part.
For the most part, it's not too bad. But the one class that is GREATLY overpowered is the medic class. Medics are widely considered the "point-whores" of the game, because you now not only get points for healing your team, but you can also revive them with shock paddles. Some people may say this doesn't sound too bad, but if you're in a squad with other people, you can quickly rack up the points by healing and reviving your allies. Also, to top it off, the medic rifle you unlock later in the game is more powerful than the assault rifle that most people have.
With all that said, the Special Ops kit doesn't get any points for blowing up the other team's commander media(radar, artillery strikes, scanners). What crap.
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.
Maybe some people did already learn that lesson. I mean... Duke Nukem Forever... they totally sacrificed the release date, hopefully to get the quality... Now, just imagine the amount of quality you'll get ;-)
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
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!