Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: LePaul on August 15, 2005, 06:41:59 PM
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This article is from Tomshardware.Com He sums up my frustration with all the games I play.
"Pain with Patches"
We've become so accustomed to patches and fixes for almost every video game we buy that we're no longer even mildly cynical about the need to download patches on the day of a retail release. Tight deadlines are imposed by accountants and businessmen with no comprehension of what it takes to make a videogame. These lines in the sand, set down in order to meet some imaginary milestone in marketing minds, ultimately mean we find ourselves with dodgy games that can at times be so buggy as to be unplayable.
Some developers and publishers are infamous for releasing buggy games, and some are even more infamous for releasing patches that do more harm than good. We recently saw this situation unfold with EA and DICE, the developers behind the Battlefield series, with their first patch for Battlefield 2. In a depressingly familiar routine for Battlefield fans, the patch caused more problems than it solved, by inflicting massive memory leaks and leaving the game unplayable after a sustained period of play. That presumes that you're one of the players lucky enough to be able to launch the game in the first place, and make your way through the dodgy-since-release menu system.
The Battlefield series is the best example of market pressures and complete and utter incompetence combining to completely and utterly bugger up a game. When the original Battlefield 1942 arrived, it was as buggy as a derelict house - the netcode was unstable, and the game was prone to crashing. All kinds of actual gameplay imbalances and quirks existed that took the better part of two years to completely fix and bring the game to what it should have been on the day of release.
It was the same story with Battlefield: Vietnam, and now is the case with BF2, and it is the same with a ridiculously large number of other games being released today. All this begs the question, "What the heck do they be scratching down in the testing department?" Publishers have entire armies of game testing monkeys who are supposed to slave away at the pre-release code of a game, putting in hundreds of man-hours in order to find bugs, gameplay imbalances and features that don't work. These people then pass on reports to the developers who head in and fix the problem.
Or so goes the theory. One has to wonder, however, what actually happens when a game is released with so many problems that a four-year-old could tell you something was horribly wrong with it after ten minutes of play. And it's even worse in the case of a patch, considering that the same time constraints to release are not there!
I mean, how many ace programmers does it take to install a game on a couple of machines other than their high-end development workstations, to see how things go on a machine that's not running 4 GB of dual channel RAM? And what happens then when somebody does play the game with 4 GB of RAM and after two hours of play finds themselves running the game like a Skoda down the freeway? How retarded can a degree in mathematics from MIT make you?
A patch should make a game easier to play by fixing bugs, not put new ones in it! How much of a ride are we being taken on if a problem that would crop up after a few minutes of proper testing can make its way into a major release, which later requires the publishers to recall the patch and ask everyone to please reinstall the game? We spend hard earned cash on these God forsaken games and then they can't even be bothered to spend a bit of time testing their code?
I'd love to sit someone down from places like EA and DICE and ask them just what they're playing at. Of course I'd probably get the boilerplate answer telling me about their commitment to the highest standards in their thorough testing processes. Still, I think we can all smile, nod and roll our eyes when the released version comes with a menu system that's prone to crashing - should you have the audacity to ask it to filter out full and non-populated servers - and the first patch then causes all your RAM to go out partying and get drunk.
In the past we've been overly lenient with developers, blaming buggy releases on pressure to deliver. But when glaringly obvious issues slip through, both on a technical as well as a game play level, and then patches make things worse, I think it's time we stopped being quite so patient with developers and publishers. You have big testing departments, so use them! I shouldn't have to wait six months for the $50 investment I made to mature and become playable; if that's the experience I wanted, I'd become a wine aficionado.
Stupid things like the Battlefield 2 v1.01 patch simply shouldn't happen, and many of the stupid things that are in initial releases shouldn't be there either. We as consumers should stop being quite so accepting of patches. If a game comes out buggy to the point of excess, then we should wait until patches that make the game playable are released. We need to send publishers the message that hitting the right sales target at the expense of completion of design is no good if nobody buys the game. As for developers that release buggy patches, well don't ask me what to do that's not illegal...
Source Linky (http://www.tomshardware.com/column/20050813/index.html)
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As I've said before. Any Business or organization begins to go downhill in a hurry as soon as the beancounters are allowed to have a say in HOW the business is run.
Beancounters are typically only good at counting beans snd cutting costs at the expense of anything resembling quality.
Not running a buisness that successfully produces a quality product.
Bean counters should never be allowed away from their beancounting cubicle or given a voice on the product produced.
Imagine what would happen if beancounters were allowed to say how a hospital OR was run.
In cost cutting moves in an order to increase profit we have decided that all instruments are only to be autoclaved after every other operation. And instead of buying that new $30,000 Autoclave unit
We have decided to just get a magic Chef Dishwasher from the Slightly Damaged store up the street.
Lock the beancounters to their desks and tell them their only job is to count beans.
"Heres how much I spent. Heres how much I made.
Now figure out the taxes and put everything in nice neat itemized rows and columns so I can make sense of it"
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Originally posted by DREDIOCK
Imagine what would happen if beancounters were allowed to say how a hospital OR was run.
Come to Britain and I'll show ya.
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/209_1081438631_swoop.gif)
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Talking about hospitals, there was an interesting article in last month's Forbes magazine, criticising the fact that US hospitals only invest 5% of their benefits in improving the services, whereas companies that offer finantial services invested 10%.
Daniel
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Originally posted by DREDIOCK
As I've said before. Any Business or organization begins to go downhill in a hurry as soon as the beancounters are allowed to have a say in HOW the business is run.
Beancounters are typically only good at counting beans snd cutting costs at the expense of anything resembling quality.
Not running a buisness that successfully produces a quality product.
Bean counters should never be allowed away from their beancounting cubicle or given a voice on the product produced.
Imagine what would happen if beancounters were allowed to say how a hospital OR was run.
In cost cutting moves in an order to increase profit we have decided that all instruments are only to be autoclaved after every other operation. And instead of buying that new $30,000 Autoclave unit
We have decided to just get a magic Chef Dishwasher from the Slightly Damaged store up the street.
Lock the beancounters to their desks and tell them their only job is to count beans.
"Heres how much I spent. Heres how much I made.
Now figure out the taxes and put everything in nice neat itemized rows and columns so I can make sense of it"
Exactly the situation the company I work for is in.
Our VP of Ops is a beancounter. I sat in a meeting a few months ago with him and his sidekick, the controller. They sat there and told me that we don't need to advertise anymore... and that our customers will just continue to order our products because that's what they are doing now and just THINK of all the money we will save by doing this. Now mind you... this company is a Marketing company that is currently selling cosmetics.
Now, we are totaly strapped for cash because we have no more sales, barley making payroll and the controller just quit.
Unbelievable...... I can't BELIEVE the owner put a beancounter in charge.
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Unbelievable...... I can't BELIEVE the owner put a beancounter in charge.
It's that way everywhere, particularly with public companies, IMO. What's important is making the numbers on the next quarterly report look good and getting the bonus payoffs, etc. No one cares what the numbers will look like in 2006, 2007, etc. because those responsible will be covered in millions $$$ regardless and the top shareholders will cash out and move on before the SHTF. Employess and all the minor shareholders and customers are all low on the list compared to the short-term needs of top senior management and the top shareholders.
Charon
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heey guys be nice
im a beancounter in a successful multi-dollar business.
Everybody always blames the counters.. its trendy to pick on us and im getting fed up with it. Pretty soon ill start trashing copyers.
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Everybody always blames the counters.. its trendy to pick on us and im getting fed up with it. Pretty soon ill start trashing copyers.
It depends on the beancounter, and the goals of the organization. In a lot of cases the goals are strictly short-term, or the beancounter has no real experience with operations, sales, marketing, the market, business dynamics or custmer relations. The whole, "to a hammer everything looks like a nail" thing, or "it looked good on paper."
"Lookee! I cut $1 million that goes to our bottom line by replacing our experienced and successful personal sales staff (in a business that benefits from personal 1 on 1 selling) with a telemarkeing sales company based in India. Why didn't anybody think of this sooner? I are geneous!"
Charon
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FWIW, The low point in patchware was the late 1990s. IMO it has improved greatly in since, though I have dramatically reduced my gaming purchases in the last few years and things could have slid backwards. There are still patches, but it seems like they all generally work without that whole Red Baron 3D/WW2OL thing going on for years.
Charon
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My worst nightmare would be to fire someone in the office... :(
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Patches whatever don't bother me.
I'm of the generation that frankly thinks its incredible that I can play on a computer with people all over the world and actualy talk to them too! Its amazing and wonderfull who cares if it doesn't work that well all the time. I consider myself very lucky to be able to blow hours, flying ww2 aeroplanes around.
I mean I remember these things. And to me as a kid they were fantastic things!
(http://tecfa.unige.ch/~nova/img/zx81-1.jpg)
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I think would be a great thread for HiTech to reply in. I would love to get a true game developer's response to the article.
Skuzzy, give HiTech a poke in the ribs to take a look at this thread....
Terror
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Yeah, who in their right mind would release a game where the vox constantly goes out, gv's routimely blend into the landscape and using vox for the first time causes a 10 second screen freeze? Hey, wait a minute...
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Originally posted by Nilsen
heey guys be nice
im a beancounter in a successful multi-dollar business.
Everybody always blames the counters.. its trendy to pick on us and im getting fed up with it. Pretty soon ill start trashing copyers.
Hey don't get me wrong... they have their place and function. It's just that I've seen, more times than not, that the beancounter mindset isn't compatible with the job of running a company. They are good at counting the beans... not making them. Or even being able to direct people that make them.
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Beancounters that knows the business well is a good thing. Sometimes even someone with no experience what so ever with the company and its products can also be a good thing. They can see things that those that are too close to it cant. Fresh ideas and new ways of doing things. They have to be able to listen to reason.
Not a good idea to leave everything to the techs or engeneers either. They all have to communicate to get a good result.
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Originally posted by Terror
I think would be a great thread for HiTech to reply in. I would love to get a true game developer's response to the article.
Skuzzy, give HiTech a poke in the ribs to take a look at this thread....
Terror
Dont know if he could even relate.
HTC cares too much about the customer base by keeping us in the loop so's to speak and puts forth too much effort to get things right. Or if it isnt right to get it fixed right ASAP.
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As much as I love Aces High, sometimes I get frustrated by the silly bugs that to me, should've been caught in testing.
Falcon 4 Allied force falls into this category too. TONS of CTD's because they had to meet a deadline. However, to their credit, they had the Patch out pretty swiftly...but not after a lot of people got the game home, played and poof, desktop.
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The single biggest problem with games on the PC platform are the myriad of combinations of hardware and software available.
Every single video card driver on the market has a bug in it. Every single version of DirectX MS has released has a bug in it. The OS has many bugs in it. The drivers for sound cards have bugs in them. And on, and on.
Then you have all the utility and applications (anti-virus, firewalls, sound editors....) which can interfere with games.
All the background processes, all the spyware and malware programs cause problems too.
Overall, the PC platform is a mess to program a game for.
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Originally posted by Skuzzy
The single biggest problem with games on the PC platform are the myriad of combinations of hardware and software available.
Every single video card driver on the market has a bug in it. Every single version of DirectX MS has released has a bug in it. The OS has many bugs in it. The drivers for sound cards have bugs in them. And on, and on.
Then you have all the utility and applications (anti-virus, firewalls, sound editors....) which can interfere with games.
All the background processes, all the spyware and malware programs cause problems too.
Overall, the PC platform is a mess to program a game for.
All true, and that does not even take into acount the people who have no clue how to keep their system in tune.
No one ever wants to hear it is THEIR pc causing the issue, but it is in many cases. :(
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in MY perfect world, AH3 would be released for one of the new consoles and you could connect sticks and keyb to them as well as regular PC monitors..
I bet Sony and Microsoft wants a truckload of cash for that tho.
Just dreaming..
I really prefer gaming on the PC, but I like the standard hardware of consoles too. No more "can my puter run this game or not"
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It is a shame the XBox is not an open architecture. You have to give MS a buttload of cash to make a game for it. It's not going to slow down ID from making all future games for the XBox first and down porting to the PC though.
I hear the Sony PS3 will be an open architecture though. Could get interesting.
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Can't imagine why they would pick BF2 as an example. It ran great from day one of the demo.