144 réponses à ce sujet

[Emzamination]

Gatt9 wrote...

I would say the problem is that some of us have seen things from where you sat for 11 years.  I read the historical accounts of Origins and Westwood,  the news articles and interviews with employees who sued EA,  and I routinely read Fatbabies.com.  Everything I've read over the years paints a very different picture than the one you describe.

Then there's the evidence I've personally experienced.  Purchasing the Dead Space 2 PC Collector's Edition,  and finding out after the fact that a significant portion of the content was locked behind an impossible to open pay-wall,  not to mention that so very little effort was put into the PC version that I couldn't even remap keys.

Or Dragon Age 2,  drastically altered for no apparent reason,  and shoved out the door with inexcusable design decisions not seen since early C64 games,  like reused dungeon maps.

Or Mass Effect 2,  which had pretty much anything resembling the original's RPG content ripped out.

Or Mass Effect 3,  blatantly designed around "Marketing initiatives" like Online Pass and Day 1 DLC.  With an ending that was just a blatant "Buy more DLC!" that almost seemed like a line ripped out of Spaceballs ("Merchandising Merchandising Merchandising!").

The EA you describe is very,  very,  different from the EA I've experienced and read about.  I actually hope the EA you describe does exist,  because EA is now out of time,  and the EA you describe must start releasing games now.  The existing lineup isn't going to keep EA afloat,  from what I've seen,  they don't have a viable product in the pipeline for the next year or two.  

 

Dragon age 2 was redesigned to accomodate both pc and console users since dao didn't port well to console, don't know why most are finding it so hard to grasp that.

Everything that was stripped in mass effect 2 (Armor/inventory/vehicles) is solely the fault of the community since they were the ones who complained to bioware about how horrible the features were.Ea/bioware just listened to your feedback and gave you what you wanted.Same with Dragon age 2, we were suppose to get more content and expansions that would answer some huge questions from Dao but that was scrapped because the bsn community wouldn't stop ramming the boat till it cap sized and now we get nothing while bioware attempts to accomodate to community "feedback"

The online pass in mass effect 3 is there to deter consumers from pirating & buying the game used because the company is cut out of the profits which is unfair.

Ea is not the problem, it's the raging consumers halting progress.

[mauro2222]

Emzamination wrote...

Everything that was stripped in mass effect 2 (Armor/inventory/vehicles) is solely the fault of the community since they were the ones who complained to bioware about how horrible the features were.Ea/bioware just listened to your feedback and gave you what you wanted.

Nope, nononope

Fans: Bad implementation, needs improvement.
Bioware: Oh, they hate it, erase it.

[crazyrabbits]

Emzamination wrote...

Dragon age 2 was redesigned to accomodate both pc and console users since dao didn't port well to console, don't know why most are finding it so hard to grasp that.

Everything that was stripped in mass effect 2 (Armor/inventory/vehicles) is solely the fault of the community since they were the ones who complained to bioware about how horrible the features were.Ea/bioware just listened to your feedback and gave you what you wanted.Same with Dragon age 2, we were suppose to get more content and expansions that would answer some huge questions from Dao but that was scrapped because the bsn community wouldn't stop ramming the boat till it cap sized and now we get nothing while bioware attempts to accomodate to community "feedback"

The online pass in mass effect 3 is there to deter consumers from pirating & buying the game used because the company is cut out of the profits which is unfair.

Ea is not the problem, it's the raging consumers halting progress.

From what I understand reading up on DAII, the issue of simply "porting" the game had more to do with the fact that it was a rushjob based off of a completely different title altogether. Said title was "kitbashed" into the DA mold and sent out with bugs and glitches galore for both versions.

That said, DAII (from all accounts) was a flop, even with the smaller budget. You can't say that the BSN was solely responsible for BW not releasing more expansions, when the company (and the people associated with them) have previously gone on record as saying (a) they screwed up the story bigtime, ( the sales numbers were not what they could have been, and {c) there won't be any "Ultimate Edition" because there wasn't enough consumer interest in the first place.

As I noted in a previous post, BW took out a lot of things from the ME experience in the sequel, to varying levels of success. Some elements introduced (the Hammerhead) had their own gameplay-focused challenges, while other changes caused problems with the story and lore of the universe (thermal clips, for example). There was no real reason why they changed any of this other than a (comparatively much smaller) group of fans expressing their dislike of the concept. I was reading the forums in the leadup to ME2 (not as a registered user), and the amount of complaints regarding elements that didn't work was a drop in the bucket compared to the outrage that occurred as a result of 3's leadup.

By the way, online passes have little to do with curbing piracy and more to do with publishers trying to sell a game "twice" because of used sales in outlets like Gamestop. They've proven to be nothing more than a punishment to the consumer and a minor hinderence to most piracy groups.

Modifié par crazyrabbits, 02 juin 2012 - 07:01 .

[DaJe]

Emzamination wrote...

Gatt9 wrote...

I would say the problem is that some of us have seen things from where you sat for 11 years.  I read the historical accounts of Origins and Westwood,  the news articles and interviews with employees who sued EA,  and I routinely read Fatbabies.com.  Everything I've read over the years paints a very different picture than the one you describe.

Then there's the evidence I've personally experienced.  Purchasing the Dead Space 2 PC Collector's Edition,  and finding out after the fact that a significant portion of the content was locked behind an impossible to open pay-wall,  not to mention that so very little effort was put into the PC version that I couldn't even remap keys.

Or Dragon Age 2,  drastically altered for no apparent reason,  and shoved out the door with inexcusable design decisions not seen since early C64 games,  like reused dungeon maps.

Or Mass Effect 2,  which had pretty much anything resembling the original's RPG content ripped out.

Or Mass Effect 3,  blatantly designed around "Marketing initiatives" like Online Pass and Day 1 DLC.  With an ending that was just a blatant "Buy more DLC!" that almost seemed like a line ripped out of Spaceballs ("Merchandising Merchandising Merchandising!").

The EA you describe is very,  very,  different from the EA I've experienced and read about.  I actually hope the EA you describe does exist,  because EA is now out of time,  and the EA you describe must start releasing games now.  The existing lineup isn't going to keep EA afloat,  from what I've seen,  they don't have a viable product in the pipeline for the next year or two.  

 

Dragon age 2 was redesigned to accomodate both pc and console users since dao didn't port well to console, don't know why most are finding it so hard to grasp that.
...

The reasoning is not hard to grasp but it still is wrong. Dragon Age: Origins is still the more popular game on PC and consoles.
The engine is just bad. They should have used a different one if it is so inefficient that it can not be used on consoles unless you make the game look like an empty, bland, soulless plastic like blurr that gets outclassed by Morrowind.
But the horrible grafics are not the only thing that was changed to appeal to a non-existing imaginary bigger audience. Turns out RPG players on consoles and PC have quite similar gripes with the design decisions and rushed attempts to milk a franchise.

Dragon Age was a new promising franchise that started as modern Baldurs Gate and it was successful in that niche.
People want to make something a bigger success and in the end they take away from it because they don't understand why it was popular to begin with. It happens all the ****ing time in every industry.

Cold numbers and publicity speak for them selfs. Nothing can justify the decision making process that lead to DA2. It is a failure and embarressment that only sold anything because of the brand name that is now in ruins.

[A Crusty Knight Of Colour]

Ea is not the problem, it's the raging consumers halting progress.

[meme image removed]

(Also applies to people who lay the blame solely at EA's feet and make out BioWare to be the victims because they're perfect and stuffs. BioWare makes the kind of games they want under the direction of EA. It's not like EA execs wrote the ending and forced BioWare to run with it.)

Modifié par Ninja Stan, 02 juin 2012 - 09:08 .

[SalsaDMA]

hoorayforicecream wrote...

wright1978 wrote...

I've played plenty of sports games and shooters and they can be a fun distraction. However if they were that deep there wouldn't be a version every year. People would be replaying them like mad. Things can be simple and well made to serve a purpose. I don't watch Die Hard for wonderfully deep characterisation it is for the action.

I would like to point out that, with the exception of a single week of Minecraft pushing its way to #2, the past several years of XBox Live total playtime has been utterly dominated by Call of Duty games maintaining a stranglehold on the #1 and #2 spots in the top 10, with a third CoD game often placing within the top 10 as well. People are replaying them like mad.

Yes this article mentions Skylander, not CoD, as Activisions "cash cow"...

http://www.computera...ator-this-year/

[SalsaDMA]

Tazzmission wrote...

slyguy200 wrote...

EA is to blame, everything they touch seems to break.

not true explain to me how a game like dead space 2 was broken


ea finances viceral

The opted for DRM.

The reason why I didn't want it installed on my system.

So for all intents and purposes, that broke the game for me as far as desirability went.

[Ninja Stan]

There's a lot of elitism and gross generalizations of gamers who enjoy different genres in the last couple of pages. I would like to ask for that to stop, please, as that kind arrogance and name-calling prevents productive discussion and really makes people look like childish jerks.

Thank you..

[fegde]

I have absolutely enjoyed playing Mass Effect, the three of them. And the ending was perfect for me. I understand people being upset about not having more options, but honestly, this ending did it for me. Epic.

[katamuro]

Yes EA is a culprit. And not just for bioware. The new mmo by funcom "The secret world" is also less than usual standard by funcom. EA literally milks the game companies it owns until there is nothing left and then discards them.

[Mykel54]

The responsible is the division of EA in charge of the former bioware company, which should be called EAware.

The independent bioware no longer exists, therefore there is no reason to keep calling it bioware (other than the interests of EA in using a brand name for the sake of popularity)

I suggest EAware because it is closer to the reality: digital wares produced by EA.

[Rhalle]

Oh, they've been BiowEAr for a while now.

To be brutally honest, half of DA, DA2 and TOR weren't surprising at all.  But ME3 really was. I don't there were many-- even long-time mean and nasty critics of Bioware-- who saw this one coming.

And what's really puzzling is that ME3 is clearly less RPG and more COD-style shooter than its predecessors, and presumably so to draw in a larger, less cerebral sort of audience than crusty old RPG nerds; yet when they had the chance to do that sort of thing for the ending-- to make a clear and easily comprehensible Michael Bay/80s action-movie ending with big 'splosions and big cinematics and epic soundtrack-- for some reason they didn't do it.

Instead they turned all that stuff off to launch into into the philosophical ozone, and then pleaded "artistic integrity" when people thought it sucked-- which it did, and which was virtually everyone, old-schoolers and XboXers alike.

I don't get it. I really don't.

Is it some sort of weird self-reference, a sort of conceit, with "synthesis" being a kind of metaphor for the sort of game that ME3 is?  

Did they think their bull**** was so dazzling that every type of player would be stuck dumb in awe and admiration?

Or are they really so dense that they thought that the last five minutes of 150 hours of action-adventure gaming was the right time to introduce new pseudo-philosophical problems?  If anything they should have saved the "artistic integrity" for the other 99% of the game, and gone with the epic 'splosions and easily comprehensible stuff for the ending of the series.

Or was it just a ego-driven intentional middle finger to the fans or something?

It's so stupid and self-contradictory a behavior I almost believe it was.

Edit: and another thing. Did they playtest this game? I mean, with people from outside the office? They're clearly iincredibly concerned with garnering a bigger audience and demogrifying and changing their games to get a larger player base, yet nobody external actually played the game?  

Surely not,. or else they would have known what the response would be.  Why don't the do that sort of thing?  EA has more money than God.  Why don't they?

Modifié par Rhalle, 02 juin 2012 - 11:49 .

[unreadierLizard]

I have to say that I've loved Bioware and their products since the first Bioware game I bought, which would be ME2(all the Gamestop's in my area were sold out of ME). But I don't know what's happened, especially with SWTOR(a game I was anticipating as wonderful, which turned out to...not be wonderful). 

I'd like to think the decline in quality is the hand of EA trying to poach and interfere as much as it can in game production of it's subsidiaries. Kind of like saying to them, "You have to do this faster and with less money because we're tired of spending money waiting for no results". 

ME3's ending did feel rushed, but that's the thing - I loved the game RIGHT UP UNTIL the ending. The rest of the game was fantastically done. It was a bitter disappointment for me, at least. 

[diggisaur]

I often wonder if Mass Effect 3 would have ended differently if Microsoft Studios was still the publisher.

[Tazzmission]

fegde wrote...

I have absolutely enjoyed playing Mass Effect, the three of them. And the ending was perfect for me. I understand people being upset about not having more options, but honestly, this ending did it for me. Epic.

i agree other then the ending being perfect. it was ok and passable imo i just dont really care that much about it really because it is what is it and time to move on from it


i have beaten mass effect 3 6 times already and ill be starting anothe rplay after the ec is released.


now im just focusing on unlocking all classes in multiplayer

[Tazzmission]

katamuro wrote...

Yes EA is a culprit. And not just for bioware. The new mmo by funcom "The secret world" is also less than usual standard by funcom. EA literally milks the game companies it owns until there is nothing left and then discards them.

i love how people bash ea with no form of evidence.

and wouldnt you think people who have been let go by now would be saying forget the ndas i want to voice my concerns?

[AlanC9]

Rhalle wrote...

And what's really puzzling is that ME3 is clearly less RPG and more COD-style shooter than its predecessors, and presumably so to draw in a larger, less cerebral sort of audience than crusty old RPG nerds;

This isn't clear to me. How is ME3 less RPG than ME2?

I'm in a somewhat anomalous position here. While I am one of those "crusty old RPG nerds," I'm one who thinks that most of the specific conventions of CRPGs  -- things like loot, exploration, nonlinearity -- are either unnecesary or outright bad, so we probably just don't measure RPG-ness the same way.

yet when they had the chance to do that sort of thing for the ending-- to make a clear and easily comprehensible Michael Bay/80s action-movie ending with big 'splosions and big cinematics and epic soundtrack-- for some reason they didn't do it.

You're using the wrong film reference. Bio's always wanted to make John Woo movies, not Michael Bay movies.

[Reznore57]

I don't know about accepting companies like it's fine there's just there for the money ...
Music industry is changing a bit , because of internet , lately i paid for Amanda Palmer last album via Kickstarter.She left her record company thing because they forced her to do things she didn't wanna do.
Now she got 1.000.000 dollar from her fans , without the industry and can do things the way she want.
Sure she's no Lady Gaga , but she shows that there's another way .

Besides big company buying everything has never been healthy in my book.
Sure ea must provide Bioware with better distribution , marketting and probably help fund more expensive games , but at what cost?
I guess it's not for me to judge because i don't know how it works exactly .
What I know is as a client I play DA , ME , ANd the sims , meaning i have to deal with Origin , DLC , Super expensive store content (for the sims) and I do feel like some cow waiting to be milked .
I like paying for thing i enjoy , because i want to support people who create things for me , but how can i pay for a Bioware games without supporting all those marketting moves from EA ?

[Ninja Stan]

Tazzmission wrote...

katamuro wrote...

Yes EA is a culprit. And not just for bioware. The new mmo by funcom "The secret world" is also less than usual standard by funcom. EA literally milks the game companies it owns until there is nothing left and then discards them.

i love how people bash ea with no form of evidence.

Not just no evidence, but clear evidence to the contrary. Wikipedia claims that of the current studios:

EA Canada, acquired in 1991 (21 years as an EA studio)
EA LA, acquired in 2000 (12 years as an EA studio)
EA Tiburon, acquired in 1998 (14 years as an EA studio)

Of the defunct studios:

Origin Systems was an EA studio for 12 years before closing
Bullfrog merged with EA UK
Maxis was folded into EA Redwood Shores
Westwood merged with EA LA

And those are just the acquisitions. That doesn't include the in-house studios that have closed. It seems more like a company occasionally restructuring in order to better do business. And really, media companies do this all the time. Look to the major motion picture studios or comic book companies, record labels, book publishers, etc. It is quite literally business as usual.

No one likes to think of their favourite game developer closing up shop, but entertainment companies aren't forever, no company is. Companies come and go, new companies get formed from the ashes of old, and smaller companies are acquired by larger companies.

So if you're going to dislike EA, at least try to use factual evidence to do it like "I don't like how Origin works" or "EA used to treat their employees poorly." And yes, you can even say things like "It seems like BioWare has gone downhill recently." That's fine, but outright bashing, name-calling, and conspiracy theories are not welcome in this discussion.

Thank you.

Modifié par Ninja Stan, 02 juin 2012 - 08:24 .

[Stalin Riding a Krogan]

Hahahaha, used.

We can't all beg to come back and do jobs for free, Roo.

[Tazzmission]

Ninja Stan wrote...

Tazzmission wrote...

katamuro wrote...

Yes EA is a culprit. And not just for bioware. The new mmo by funcom "The secret world" is also less than usual standard by funcom. EA literally milks the game companies it owns until there is nothing left and then discards them.

i love how people bash ea with no form of evidence.

Not just no evidence, but clear evidence to the contrary. Wikipedia claims that of the current studios:

EA Canada, acquired in 1991 (21 years as an EA studio)
EA LA, acquired in 2000 (12 years as an EA studio)
EA Tiburon, acquired in 1998 (14 years as an EA studio)

Of the defunct studios:

Origin Systems was an EA studio for 12 years before closing
Bullfrog merged with EA UK
Maxis was folded into EA Redwood Shores
Westwood merged with EA LA

And those are just the acquisitions. That doesn't include the in-house studios that have closed. It seems more like a company occasionally restructuring in order to better do business. And really, media companies do this all the time. Look to the major motion picture studios or comic book companies, record labels, book publishers, etc. It is quite literally business as usual.

No one likes to think of their favourite game developer closing up shop, but entertainment companies aren't forever, no company is. Companies come and go, new companies get formed from the ashes of old, and smaller companies are acquired by larger companies.

So if you're going to dislike EA, at least try to use factual evidence to do it like "I don't like how Origin works" or "EA used to treat their employees poorly." And yes, you can even say things like "It seems like BioWare has gone downhill recently." That's fine, but outright bashing, name-calling, and conspiracy theories are not welcome in this discussion.

Thank you.

agreed and besides wikipedia is full of bs anyways


my aunt went there a few years back to get info on breast cancer and they gave her the wrong info

ever since that ive learned wikipedia is full of liars really

[MingWolf]

Wikipedia isn't 100%, but no scholar would ignore it either. It's an open encyclopedia--information comes and goes, some more accurate than others, but still contains a lot of uses. In the listing of EA's history, I do believe it's pretty accurate. If someone goes onto wikipedia to cure a disease and it doesn't work, it's their own fault.