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edgecrusherO0's avatar
edgecrusherO0
Seasoned Ace
4 years ago

Re: Lack of Communication

@Adamonic I mean, EA could write volumes about poor management of studios - either micromanaging them to death (RIP Maxis, Visceral etc.) or leaving poor leadership in place and giving them too much freedom to blow most of their time/budget doing nothing (ME:A, Anthem, and apparently BF2042).

Really, the only teams that seem to have a good bead on what they're doing within EA are the EA Sports teams (fairly straightforward), Sims (mistakes, but at least the series is ongoing), and Respawns titles. Pretty much everything else seems to be only slightly less of a chaotic, unplanned mess than Ubisoft's complete lack of any strategy outside of the AC franchise.

19 Replies

  • RMEChief's avatar
    RMEChief
    Legend
    4 years ago
    @edgecrusherO0 yeah, they try to spit games out on an unsustainable interval. Most sports titles are annual. So they have a known cycle and know exactly how much new content they can put in annually (not much).

    However, for other titles, they just have no clue how to manage the development timeline to ensure titles go out the door in at least a beta state. BF2042 was not even at that point when it launched.
  • edgecrusherO0's avatar
    edgecrusherO0
    Seasoned Ace
    4 years ago
    @Adamonic Same thing happened with Anthem. Open beta was a "months old build" that ended up being nearly identical to the launch build, complete with the majority of the major bugs and expansive design flaws.

    EA execs are like every other executive: Focused primarily on the next quarterly results and not the longer term. So they push out games to meet target dates for quarterly reporting and kneecap themselves, rather than taking a bit more time and spending a bit more budget to aim for a much better quality game - especially since they're pivoting away from relying on initial box sales and more towards sustained revenue.

    Which requires a good game people want to keep playing.
  • edgecrusherO0's avatar
    edgecrusherO0
    Seasoned Ace
    4 years ago
    @Adamonic Honestly, probably pretty great as long as FIFA and Apex Legends revenue continue to carry the bottom line in a huge way, with mobile contributing. They've already messaged lower expected revenue from BF2042, and I doubt they were expecting it to quickly become another $1B a year franchise like FIFA/Apex.
  • RMEChief's avatar
    RMEChief
    Legend
    4 years ago
    @edgecrusherO0 those two titles are pretty consistent but the wild card is BF2042, and I don't think even they could've expected this precipitous drop in players. In the next week, player count (on Steam - not total) will be under 2K. It has one of the lowest player counts of a AAA title in under 6 months ever.
  • edgecrusherO0's avatar
    edgecrusherO0
    Seasoned Ace
    4 years ago
    @Adamonic If they weren't expecting this then someone was lying internally, because this should have been predictable.
  • RMEChief's avatar
    RMEChief
    Legend
    4 years ago
    @edgecrusherO0 there is no way they expected it to be this bad. This is historically bad, like one of the worst FPS game launches ever.
  • shoogknight's avatar
    shoogknight
    4 years ago

    Need to just start spamming their personal emails. [edit: email address removed] or whatever foe answers

  • cso7777's avatar
    cso7777
    Seasoned Ace
    4 years ago
    @Adamonic
    After the open beta they already had enough feedback to understand that they had big issues and they must have known that the launch would fail hard.
  • HJ_Spacewar's avatar
    HJ_Spacewar
    4 years ago
    @Adamonic I honestly didn't think the launch was that bad for a battlefield game. It's the support afterwards, especially after Christmas break, that kills it for me. We were getting weekly updates and handfuls of communication but then it all disappeared. As if the majority of staff stayed on until break then after that moved to a different project.
  • cso7777's avatar
    cso7777
    Seasoned Ace
    4 years ago

    @HJ_SpacewarBut internally they must have known how bad things were.

    They knew about the development-progress on new content (season 1), they knew the player-base hated the specialists, the feedback on orbital was that it was a bad map and they knew the unreleased maps would be much worse, etc etc.

  • HJ_Spacewar's avatar
    HJ_Spacewar
    4 years ago
    @cso7777 For me, I'm fine with the specialists and maps. Maybe not the way I like things but they put all that info out there before launch for us to see and judge. My issue is with the glitches and missing features. Then on top of that the total lack of live service including communication/community engagement. Like the game has been out for awhile and the bug squashing just stopped around Christmas. We don't know where this game is going and if it is truly worth waiting for.
  • cso7777's avatar
    cso7777
    Seasoned Ace
    4 years ago

    @HJ_SpacewarThe maps are probably the main reason for the game dying now. Things like scoreboard, server browser etc are needed, but without usable content they doesn't matter.

    The existing maps are a total joke and most of them are not fun to play. Without any new maps (and fixing of existing maps), this leaves most players without any reason for playing the game anymore.

  • Ironhead841's avatar
    Ironhead841
    Hero
    4 years ago

    The main reason why this game failed is it just fundamentally wasn't a "Battlefield" title.

    It is a confusing mishmash of popular trends and game modes, trying to appeal to all and ended up being universally dis-liked by nearly everyone.

    And yes, the lack of communication sucks.

  • HJ_Spacewar's avatar
    HJ_Spacewar
    4 years ago
    @cso7777 We can make all kinds of guesses as to why the game is dying. The truth is rumors and wild guesses is all we have because DICE won't communicate.
  • edgecrusherO0's avatar
    edgecrusherO0
    Seasoned Ace
    4 years ago
    @HJ_Spacewar DICE: Actually, the game is not dead and we really care! We promise! Listen to our words and ignore our actions just like we've ignored BF2042 and our community for the past 5 months!
  • RMEChief's avatar
    RMEChief
    Legend
    4 years ago
    @HJ_Spacewar yeah I should've worded it better, more like post-launch period. I can't imagine they envisioned such a massive negative response as the Steam reviews came in and crushed it. The bad reception stunted purchases beyond the pre-orders. Post-holiday the sales were literally gone. It was a top 5 title in November, 10th in December and then off the charts to almost zero in January and beyond. No one is buying or playing this game. March 31st is the next key date. We should know something in early April about where this game is going.
  • RayD_O1's avatar
    RayD_O1
    Hero
    4 years ago
    @Ironhead841 wrote:

    The main reason why this game failed is it just fundamentally wasn't a "Battlefield" title.

    It is a confusing mishmash of popular trends and game modes, trying to appeal to all and ended up being universally dis-liked by nearly everyone.

    And yes, the lack of communication sucks.

    Mishmash sums it up perfectly and missing so many of the important core elements which were always standard in all previous BF's.

    Sadly BF2042 is not worthy of the Battlefield name and the mass exodus of players since launch speaks volumes, and still DICE doesn't speak at all. ! 

  • edgecrusherO0's avatar
    edgecrusherO0
    Seasoned Ace
    4 years ago

    Glad to see DICE is still lying about wanting to communicate and engage with the community.

    They've had nearly three full months and we've seen nothing. Monthly blog posts that are a whole lot of nothing, no information about what's coming in future updates, the "feedback loop" was a waste of time.

    Y'all talk a lot about wanting to communicate, but y'all are literally the ones in control over whether you do or not. Either admit that you don't want to communicate and engage with the community or, at the very least, stop lying and saying you want to.

    Because at this point it's a lie. Plain and simple.

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