639 réponses à ce sujet

[Wavebend]

Alright I am going to jump into this thread and start answering some directed points, so bare with me

So I am just going to talk about the "couple cents for bandwidth", the article may be a bit old but afaik this practice is still in place

 

http://multiplayerbl...adable-content/

 

16 cents/gb * 40gb = 6.40 so definitely not cheap.

 

Microsoft doesnt charge for bandwidth, but they would need some sort of incentive for people to pay more (because yes MS is a business)

 

If I understand correctly, dealing with Sony/MS to give free copies on the next-gen consoles isn't possible (it'd require EA/BW to spend more $$), but what about handing out coupon codes which would apply a large discount on the digital copy?

[thesuperdarkone2]

Since Billy and others are being incredibly sensitive over this entire topic, going as far to send PMs to me threatening bans its not like its far fetched. People, like myself, are understandably upset, yet we cant speak out because otherwise we will be banned.

 

We have people like scene_cachet being given warning points for posting an image, myself for 'incorrectly using the quote function', yet Drasca can insult and verbally abuse users for months without reprimand.

It's actually quite sad that more mod action has occurred in this one thread than in the entire forum the past few months.

[Bryan Johnson]

If I understand correctly, dealing with Sony/MS to give free copies on the next-gen consoles isn't possible (it'd require EA/BW to spend more $$), but what about handing out coupon codes which would apply a large discount on the digital copy?

If such a coupon code were to happen, then they would have to be provided by MS and Sony (since obviously we cant make up codes that work on their systems), which would mean we would have to pay for those codes, and it is not pay for the codes upon redemption it is pay for those codes on request. Meaning that if we asked for 1000 codes, but only 10 were used, we would have to pay for all 1000 of those.

 

The only system where this is not the case is PC, since we own the distribution means.

 

@Pork, just they took one of your posts

[Wavebend]

If such a coupon code were to happen, then they would have to be provided by MS and Sony (since obviously we cant make up codes that work on their systems), which would mean we would have to pay for those codes, and it is not pay for the codes upon redemption it is pay for those codes on request. Meaning that if we asked for 1000 codes, but only 10 were used, we would have to pay for all 1000 of those.

 

The only system where this is not the case is PC, since we own the distribution means.

 

@Pork, just they took one of your posts

 

This explains a lot more than any info given by other devs in this thread. Thanks a lot.

[Proto]

If such a coupon code were to happen, then they would have to be provided by MS and Sony (since obviously we cant make up codes that work on their systems), which would mean we would have to pay for those codes, and it is not pay for the codes upon redemption it is pay for those codes on request. Meaning that if we asked for 1000 codes, but only 10 were used, we would have to pay for all 1000 of those.

 

The only system where this is not the case is PC, since we own the distribution means.

 

Bummer. Sounds like its about time to get DAI included as the free game in a bundle package. 

[Bryan Johnson]

This explains a lot more than any info given by other devs in this thread. Thanks a lot.

It is certainly possible that I am mistaken, but my understanding of things is what I said was accurate. 

[Bryan Johnson]

Bummer. Sounds like its about time to get DAI included as the free game in a bundle package. 

You potentially missed my early comment, about (unless it changed) publishers have to pay for bandwidth on sony

[Proto]

Bummer. Sounds like its about time to get DAI included as the free game in a bundle package that comes as add-on when purchasing the Xbox One 

 

Fixed it. 

 

You potentially missed my early comment, about (unless it changed) publishers have to pay for bandwidth on sony

 

I meant when upgrading to the next gen-consoles. Ya know, how I got a free copy of Skyrim when I purchased my Xbox 360. Or the two Assassin's Creed games I've yet to play for the Xbox One.

[Conal Pierse]

Since Billy and others are being incredibly sensitive over this entire topic, going as far to send PMs to me threatening bans its not like its far fetched. People, like myself, are understandably upset, yet we cant speak out because otherwise we will be banned.

 

We have people like scene_cachet being given warning points for posting an image, myself for 'incorrectly using the quote function', yet Drasca can insult and verbally abuse users for months without reprimand.

You have every right to be upset. If that's how you feel, then that is how you feel, and we respect that. You also have every right to voice displeasure with a decision, piece of content, or what have you. If you do so in a way that goes against our boards TOS, you may receive moderator action, which comes in a variety of forms, including the occasional sarcasm in response to sarcasm.

 

You are also responsible for your own actions on these boards. If you see someone else violating the terms of service, that does not give you free reign to do so yourself. If you see someone else trolling or insulting other users, then please report them, and our moderators will take action.

 

You're also more likely to see productive change through clear communication of what particular points you are upset with. Saying you hate EA is less valuable feedback than giving specific examples of what you may disagree with, or sticking with pertinent information. For instance, "I hate EA and they are evil" isn't really necessary to a complaint about the dropping of gen3 support. "I am upset with this loss of support and you have let me down as a customer" is the relevant info. Shaking your fist at a corporate entity doesn't really do either of us much service here.

 

When I pass on information to our team, being able to say "people are upset about x, y, z" is feedback we can consider, address, and work on for the future. Telling them, "People hate EA," isn't of much use.

[ALTBOULI]

What's happening here is bad practice and sets a dangerous precedent.  We all paid for the same game yet part of the player-base aren't getting the same content/services as the rest which just isn't fair at the end of the day. The argument that we get free content and should therefore be grateful is ridiculous, not everyone bought this game for the SP some are only here for the MP and as such they have every right to feel aggrieved by this decision. 

[Pork]

You have every right to be upset. If that's how you feel, then that is how you feel, and we respect that. You also have every right to voice displeasure with a decision, piece of content, or what have you. If you do so in a way that goes against our boards TOS, you may receive moderator action, which comes in a variety of forms, including the occasional sarcasm in response to sarcasm.

 

You are also responsible for your own actions on these boards. If you see someone else violating the terms of service, that does not give you free reign to do so yourself. If you see someone else trolling or insulting other users, then please report them, and our moderators will take action.

 

You're also more likely to see productive change through clear communication of what particular points you are upset with. Saying you hate EA is less valuable feedback than giving specific examples of what you may disagree with, or sticking with pertinent information. For instance, "I hate EA and they are evil" isn't really necessary to a complaint about the dropping of gen3 support. "I am upset with this loss of support and you have let me down as a customer" is the relevant info. Shaking your fist at a corporate entity doesn't really do either of us much service here.

 

When I pass on information to our team, being able to say "people are upset about x, y, z" is feedback we can consider, address, and work on for the future. Telling them, "People hate EA," isn't of much use.

 

Every time someone criticizes bioware in a manner which is emotionally charged then they either get warning points, or a ban. We saw this in voldemort thread that happened while the key bug was still present and we are seeing it here now. 

 

I do report comments that clearly abuse other users. Nothing is done. Dig through Drascas post history. You will find plenty of abusive comments that nobody bats an eye to, because its not BWE that are being abused, its other users.

 

What I am upset by is the fact that you over at edmonton completely ignored your fanbase for several months when the game was released, went on holiday when a patch you brought out broke the entire game for the entire christmas period. Permanently banned and made a public example of the user who has contributed more user guides and tutorials than any other person, runs and manages 3 off site forums for bioware games and probably cares more about this game than its own developers. Judging by the comments that I saw on reddit and youtube at the time, he was not the only one banned for speaking out.

 

I am upset that the connectivity in this game is utter garbage. I have problems every single time I log on, be in connecting to friend or pugs. Crashes, disconnects and loss of progress are an every day occurance. Not to mention that whenever I dont host I have a noticable amount of latency to the host, again, something which is not present in any other game I play.

 

Bugs. My god, the bugs. Key bug. XP bug and enemies spawning outside the map. Game breaking bugs that are introduced after patches are issued. There has been so many bugs its unreal. At launch the game was near unplayable. See the huge PC thread in the SP forums for that. Lots of these issues have still not been addressed.  

 

I have lots of personal issues with things like RNG and spawn systems, though they aren't game breaking and I can live with them, but I still dont like them. 

 

Dropping support for xbox and ps3 after 8 months is a huge slap in the face for those players who bought the game on those platforms. The bottom line is money. EA loves money. Thats a fact. They will screw over any amount of users, for any reason if it means more money for them and its legal to do so. That means cutting story content (seriously, the DAI SP story was made with DLC in mind to actually finish the story) in order to push DLC sales. Smart business models, but at the expense of having your customers hate you (which they do by the way, thats why EA was voted the most hated company in the US two years running). 

 

Not to mention the unprofessionalism of some of the staff you have on your team. I meant, sarcastic responses when grilled about things like the game breaking bug that was introduced is one thing, but indirectly threatening to ban users via the PM system here because they said something that hurt your feelings? Of course this is normal human response, but seriously, hire a PR rep to do the talking on the forums. My company does it, and guess what? We don't have our web forums set ablaze every time we make a difficult choice which will disappoint users.

 

As for productive change? That only happens when there is monetary incentive with EA. You and I both know that. None of these comments will go anywhere, since there has been thousands of comments like this prior to me making it. And EA still remains potentially the most hated company in the entire industry for completely justified reasons. One of them being dropping patch support for 2 platforms after just 8 months and what, 8 patches when it was explicitly promised that 'we will support dragon age multiplayer far beyond mass effect 3'. 

 

So these are some of the reasons I am upset. Bioware, I love your games, but I really really wish that another company was making them. Take a leaf out of Blizzards book. Or CDprojektred, or Valve, or Mojang. Huge companies who pull in loadsa money and still have large, loyal and happy fanbases.

[Bryan Johnson]

Every time someone criticizes bioware in a manner which is emotionally charged then they either get warning points, or a ban. We saw this in voldemort thread that happened while the key bug was still present and we are seeing it here now. 

 

I do report comments that clearly abuse other users. Nothing is done. Dig through Drascas post history. You will find plenty of abusive comments that nobody bats an eye to, because its not BWE that are being abused, its other users.

 

What I am upset by is the fact that you over at edmonton completely ignored your fanbase for several months when the game was released, went on holiday when a patch you brought out broke the entire game for the entire christmas period. Permanently banned and made a public example of the user who has contributed more user guides and tutorials than any other person, runs and manages 3 off site forums for bioware games and probably cares more about this game than its own developers. Judging by the comments that I saw on reddit and youtube at the time, he was not the only one banned for speaking out.

 

I am upset that the connectivity in this game is utter garbage. I have problems every single time I log on, be in connecting to friend or pugs. Crashes, disconnects and loss of progress are an every day occurance. Not to mention that whenever I dont host I have a noticable amount of latency to the host, again, something which is not present in any other game I play.

 

Bugs. My god, the bugs. Key bug. XP bug and enemies spawning outside the map. Game breaking bugs that are introduced after patches are issued. There has been so many bugs its unreal. At launch the game was near unplayable. See the huge PC thread in the SP forums for that. Lots of these issues have still not been addressed.  

 

I have lots of personal issues with things like RNG and spawn systems, though they aren't game breaking and I can live with them, but I still dont like them. 

 

Dropping support for xbox and ps3 after 8 months is a huge slap in the face for those players who bought the game on those platforms. The bottom line is money. EA loves money. Thats a fact. They will screw over any amount of users, for any reason if it means more money for them and its legal to do so. That means cutting story content (seriously, the DAI SP story was made with DLC in mind to actually finish the story) in order to push DLC sales. Smart business models, but at the expense of having your customers hate you (which they do by the way, thats why EA was voted the most hated company in the US two years running). 

 

Not to mention the unprofessionalism of some of the staff you have on your team. I meant, sarcastic responses when grilled about things like the game breaking bug that was introduced is one thing, but indirectly threatening to ban users via the PM system here because they said something that hurt your feelings? Of course this is normal human response, but seriously, hire a PR rep to do the talking on the forums. My company does it, and guess what? We don't have our web forums set ablaze every time we make a difficult choice which will disappoint users.

 

As for productive change? That only happens when there is monetary incentive with EA. You and I both know that. None of these comments will go anywhere, since there has been thousands of comments like this prior to me making it. And EA still remains potentially the most hated company in the entire industry for completely justified reasons. One of them being dropping patch support for 2 platforms after just 8 months and what, 8 patches when it was explicitly promised that 'we will support dragon age multiplayer far beyond mass effect 3'. 

 

So these are some of the reasons I am upset. Bioware, I love your games, but I really really wish that another company was making them. Take a leaf out of Blizzards book. Or CDprojektred, or Valve, or Mojang. Huge companies who pull in loadsa money and still have large, loyal and happy fanbases.

Hello I am going to only comment on some of the things that you have said, because I do not spend a lot of my time on this forum, but some things I will just point out.

 

Alright ill start on the way moderation is done. First off, given that I have no history on this sub-forum (outside of this post) I do not know the history of the user 'Drascas', they could indeed be a very negative poster, but the way you have brought up his name make it seem like you have a vendetta against him (once again my perspective). I can see that user has indeed received warnings before and they all came from the BioWare mods (much like all yours have). When we as employees come into a thread, undoubtedly we are going to be more warning/ban 'happy' than the mods because lets face it things can be heated and as you said we are human. Further more we take the perspective of you just came into our house and started yelling at us, so we have a right to throw you out, type of deal.  

 

There have been bugs yes but you make it sound like the majority of users out there have been broken for months and months and nothing has been done. Your examples of key bug, no xp, enemies spawning in my personal play (mind you for MP that is in the range of about 25 hours), I had hit the key bug 4 times (which was then fixed in future), but not others. Once again I understand that bugs are indeed super frustrating and we do try and deal with them as best we can. 

 

We arent making things up when we say working on 10 year old hardware is not easy. I have been one of the QA experts for the PS3 for the last 4 years, and even 4 years ago things were challenging and now when we are 4 years later and have something with 8x the memory alone, it makes it hard to develop/test them and concessions have to be done. Already things had to be done, xbox 360 has a mandatory install disc (do you know how many games have this? I can only think of BF and GTA and us) without it this game wouldnt have made it out the door. Do you know what the limit on Xbox 360 patches used to be? 2MB (cert requirement) and absolute technical limit of 2GB. Our last Xbox 360 patch (Patch 8) was 791MB for German (This was after we did something that technically was not standard procedure to half it) to contrast this Patch 5 (without our procedure to half it) was 360MB. Given that our next patch is looking on track to be 50% bigger than the previous one, something like that may be approaching the hard line technical requirements of the system, and there was no more tricks to pull out of that magical hat. PS3 has a technical requirement on how big your lifetime DLC can be. These technical requirements were based on what was imagined over 10 years ago, or was available to the technology.

 

We continuously talk about making decisions with 3 groups in mind: customers, employees and shareholders. Without each of them we would not have a business and it is a balancing act to try and satisfy each of them. Each of those groups like to believe they are getting the short end of the stick, another aspect of human nature. 

[Geth Supremacy]

Hello I am going to only comment on some of the things that you have said, because I do not spend a lot of my time on this forum, but some things I will just point out.

 

Alright ill start on the way moderation is done. First off, given that I have no history on this sub-forum (outside of this post) I do not know the history of the user 'Drascas', they could indeed be a very negative poster, but the way you have brought up his name make it seem like you have a vendetta against him (once again my perspective). I can see that user has indeed received warnings before and they all came from the BioWare mods (much like all yours have). When we as employees come into a thread, undoubtedly we are going to be more warning/ban 'happy' than the mods because lets face it things can be heated and as you said we are human. Further more we take the perspective of you just came into our house and started yelling at us, so we have a right to throw you out, type of deal.  

 

There have been bugs yes but you make it sound like the majority of users out there have been broken for months and months and nothing has been done. Your examples of key bug, no xp, enemies spawning in my personal play (mind you for MP that is in the range of about 25 hours), I had hit the key bug 4 times (which was then fixed in future), but not others. Once again I understand that bugs are indeed super frustrating and we do try and deal with them as best we can. 

 

We arent making things up when we say working on 10 year old hardware is not easy. I have been one of the QA experts for the PS3 for the last 4 years, and even 4 years ago things were challenging and now when we are 4 years later and have something with 8x the memory alone, it makes it hard to develop/test them and concessions have to be done. Already things had to be done, xbox 360 has a mandatory install disc (do you know how many games have this? I can only think of BF and GTA and us) without it this game wouldnt have made it out the door. Do you know what the limit on Xbox 360 patches used to be? 2MB (cert requirement) and absolute technical limit of 2GB. Our last Xbox 360 patch (Patch 8) was 791MB for German (This was after we did something that technically was not standard procedure to half it) to contrast this Patch 5 (without our procedure to half it) was 360MB. Given that our next patch is looking on track to be 50% bigger than the previous one, something like that may be approaching the hard line technical requirements of the system, and there was no more tricks to pull out of that magical hat. PS3 has a technical requirement on how big your lifetime DLC can be. These technical requirements were based on what was imagined over 10 years ago, or was available to the technology.

 

We continuously talk about making decisions with 3 groups in mind: customers, employees and shareholders. Without each of them we would not have a business and it is a balancing act to try and satisfy each of them. Each of those groups like to believe they are getting the short end of the stick, another aspect of human nature. 

 

Thank you for the insight.  I'm not going to be happy about this situation, but its nice to see this.  Good on you.

 

I will say the amount of time the RTC glitch (which was in from the day the game released) and the key glitch were in the game was an extremely long period of time

 

For the record I would have preferred the game not be released on PS3 at all as opposed to this crap.  This is not acceptable.

[Pork]

We continuously talk about making decisions with 3 groups in mind: customers, employees and shareholders. Without each of them we would not have a business and it is a balancing act to try and satisfy each of them. Each of those groups like to believe they are getting the short end of the stick, another aspect of human nature. 

 

Thanks for the technical input. Its very useful and would have been great to have been explained to us in this way from the start (since none of us, or few of us are actual game developers). Im sure a lot of users affected will appreciate this perspective from the inside

 

As for the comment you've quoted, this is usually true for most businesses. However, as has been demonstrated in the past, and is continuing to be demonstrated, EA places its shareholders far above its customers. I can't speak for employees obviously, but as a customer, EA does not make me feel like my business is of any value to them whatsoever and this is evidenced by the corporate decisions they make. 

 

One example I will give to you is Valve and the paid mods fiasco. Reddit and several other webspaces were on fire for a couple of days because Valve decided to monitise mods, taking a cut for themselves. 2 days later, the CEO came out publicly and apologised. The decision was reversed because the customers did not like it.

 

Valve almost certainly lost a good chunk of change as a result of that decision being reversed, but it made me feel like my opinion mattered. 

 

Im sure you have seen this video: 

 

 

Obviously its very over the top and exaggerated, but the core principles of why we as the consumer hate your employers so much are there. Businesses exist to trade a product for payment. They make profit in order to improve their services, product quality and to support themselves comfortably. The only thing that EA is concerned about is the last point, and they make it abundantly clear that this is something they obsess over. (quoted from that video btw).

 

'improve their services and product quality'

 

Dragon age multiplayer has WORSE networking that Mass Effect 3 ever did. its had more game breaking bugs and issues than ME3MP did. Its had less content and drastically less communication between fans and devs than what we had in ME3MP. the PC version of the game has clunky controls and was very poorly optimised at launch. No improvement on product quality, despite being released almost 3 years later. The only thing I can safely say has been improved is how the game looks. DAI looks great.

 

'support themselves comfortably.'

 

Right, now where do I begin here? The ending is cut short. We are left with a huge huge cliffhanger. We will most likely have this Solas DLC (which xbox and ps3 will never ever get now) released in the future, sold at a price of $14.99. We have cosmetic packs, exclusive content locked behind paywalls such as digital deluxe, logitech promos and AMD promos. 

 

This video sums the attitude that EA has on add ons nicely. Great business model for raking in $$$, scummy practice for us customers. 

 

 

Surprisingly accurate south park take on it:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2luhwy3KAE0

 

Id write more, but i have work tomorrow, so im going to go to bed now. 

 

Further reading, for anyone who wants to learn more about why EA is one of the industries most hated companies: 

 

http://consumerist.c...erica-for-2012/

 

http://consumerist.c...ny-madden-fans/

 

http://www.polygon.c...rica-poll-again

[Bryan Johnson]

Thanks for the technical input. Its very useful and would have been great to have been explained to us in this way from the start (since none of us, or few of us are actual game developers). Im sure a lot of users affected will appreciate this perspective from the inside

 

As for the comment you've quoted, this is usually true for most businesses. However, as has been demonstrated in the past, and is continuing to be demonstrated, EA places its shareholders far above its customers. I can't speak for employees obviously, but as a customer, EA does not make me feel like my business is of any value to them whatsoever and this is evidenced by the corporate decisions they make. 

 

One example I will give to you is Valve and the paid mods fiasco. Reddit and several other webspaces were on fire for a couple of days because Valve decided to monitise mods, taking a cut for themselves. 2 days later, the CEO came out publicly and apologised. The decision was reversed because the customers did not like it.

 

Valve almost certainly lost a good chunk of change as a result of that decision being reversed, but it made me feel like my opinion mattered. 

 

Im sure you have seen this video: 

 

 

Obviously its very over the top and exaggerated, but the core principles of why we as the consumer hate your employers so much are there. Businesses exist to trade a product for payment. They make profit in order to improve their services, product quality and to support themselves comfortably. The only thing that EA is concerned about is the last point, and they make it abundantly clear that this is something they obsess over. (quoted from that video btw).

 

'improve their services and product quality'

 

Dragon age multiplayer has WORSE networking that Mass Effect 3 ever did. its had more game breaking bugs and issues than ME3MP did. Its had less content and drastically less communication between fans and devs than what we had in ME3MP. the PC version of the game has clunky controls and was very poorly optimised at launch. No improvement on product quality, despite being released almost 3 years later. The only thing I can safely say has been improved is how the game looks. DAI looks great.

 

'support themselves comfortably.'

 

Right, now where do I begin here? The ending is cut short. We are left with a huge huge cliffhanger. We will most likely have this Solas DLC (which xbox and ps3 will never ever get now) released in the future, sold at a price of $14.99. We have cosmetic packs, exclusive content locked behind paywalls such as digital deluxe, logitech promos and AMD promos. 

 

This video sums the attitude that EA has on add ons nicely. Great business model for raking in $$$, scummy practice for us customers. 

 

 

Surprisingly accurate south park take on it:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2luhwy3KAE0

 

Id write more, but i have work tomorrow, so im going to go to bed now. 

 

Further reading, for anyone who wants to learn more about why EA is one of the industries most hated companies: 

 

http://consumerist.c...erica-for-2012/

 

http://consumerist.c...ny-madden-fans/

 

http://www.polygon.c...rica-poll-again

This will be the last time I speak on something like this because it is going off topic. Once again ill preface this is my own personal opinion.

 

So lets start with the articles you linked, they have something in common, they are 2-5 years old and heavily affected public perception. Think about how hard it is to change public perception for the better, let me give you some notable examples. When I say BP, is your immediate thought the oil spill from 5 years ago? How about Halliburton does your thought go to that of Iraq? Can you think of firestone tires without immediately thinking about the roll over recall form 15 years ago? Exxon without thinking about the Valdez oil spill 26 years ago?

 

Do you know where EA was 2-5 years ago in terms of stock price? Looking likely that it would be involved in a takeover from Disney. So clearly that part of the pyramid was also seen as lacking. 

 

The video you linked of John Riccitiello (our former CEO, and I actually miss the guy he was really intelligent and nice), was doing a presentation to shareholders. Which I am going to assume do not know a lot about gaming, and if they do they probably know that something like Fifa and Battlefield are some of the biggest names and therefore the most profit associated with it. So how is it you can easily talk about the concept of micro-transactions to immediate explain the concept behind, you are not going to attempt to explain the whole foundation of fifa ultimate team, but everyone knows how a gun works so you can see how that kind of thing repeats over and over. It is my firm belief that this was just an example to show the concept, such that the audience would understand (remember the audience being shareholders).

 

Lets move onto Valve, you mentioned that you understand the pillar of Employees, Customers, and Shareholders. What is it that Valve doesnt have, Shareholders they are not a publicly traded company. I imagine part of this has to do with the juggernaught of money flow that is steam, they never needed the cash in order to grow, they created something that allowed them do that, I am sure when EA went public in 1989 it did so to get money for some projects it had in mind and thus created all 3 shareholders. The moding controversy that you mentioned also cost Valve millions of dollars in people complaining alone, so it was a financial consequence. They also are rated with an "F" rating with BBB, with 800 total cases, EA sits with an A+ with 2000. Valve has something that others dont though, a strong public perception and when you have done something bad people will say "oh they mistepped once" but if you do something bad and you have not the best historical perception you will pay for it strongly.

 

Once again you seem to perceive that we place shareholders above all else, whereas I do not feel that way, there are certain things that you might perceive as placing shareholders first but in some cases you are bound by law. Like if I was an executive, I could say, in a month we are going to release the biggest DLC you had ever seen and then not release it for another 6 months. The reason for this is you are making people think that the current value of your stock is going to go up because of future sales, based on a schedule. You run into issues when something is schedule to be released in a financial quarter and then it is not released until another one. Which is why I think you are seeing more and more people are talking less about release dates.

 

As for the MP part, I cant comment I didnt work on the MP part. I can say for more/less dev interaction vs ME, I believe that the people you would primarly be talking about would be Derek Hollan and myself (since we were the most active) and to a degree Eric Fagnan. Derek and Eric are no longer with company, and myself DA MP is not the type of game I like to play in my spare time. I have also moved to reddit as my preferred type of communication (the reason for this is because I like the layout more). I believe Billy, Blair and Luke do plenty of fan interaction just the interaction has changed from being on the forum (like you are probably used to) to twitch and twitter.

 

I do agree with you, that there is certainly things that we could do better and that is what Conal was stating that we can do so with constructive feedback. Typically yelling at us (not saying you do, but some people definitely do), attempting to do gotcha journalism (like when I was linked in this thread with the description "dev confirms bugs arent getting fixed") or if you go to my point of once you have a reputation providing arguments with a video whose 'claim to fame' being fart jokes. I know my typical way of communication is from the technical side (which you have seen earlier), and given that I can not speak to anything in terms of technicality I do not believe that this will be as "effective"

[Bryan Johnson]

Thank you for the insight.  I'm not going to be happy about this situation, but its nice to see this.  Good on you.

 

I will say the amount of time the RTC glitch (which was in from the day the game released) and the key glitch were in the game was an extremely long period of time

 

For the record I would have preferred the game not be released on PS3 at all as opposed to this crap.  This is not acceptable.

I am sorry you feel this way, but I do have to ask you a question, if at this point we were to say no more for anyone, would you feel happier? 

 

The reason I ask is I believe people are far more likely to get upset about something when someone gets something they dont vs things ending. 

[Geth Supremacy]

I am sorry you feel this way, but I do have to ask you a question, if at this point we were to say no more for anyone, would you feel happier? 

 

The reason I ask is I believe people are far more likely to get upset about something when someone gets something they dont vs things ending. 

 

I'm not going to feel happier in any way.  The act is what I have an issue with and its done and over.

 

I was always going to get a PS4, but I wanted to get it when I actually wanted it, not have a company I thought was great mislead me and then try to strong arm me into doing it.  I wanted to wait until the PS4 was worth it.  I don't find a 500gb HD acceptable, so now I have to pay hundreds of dollars more to upgrade it when I get it as opposed to waiting for a TB version (that is currently available in the UK)  I don't feel they have ANY games that warrant a purchase from me.  Now this is obviously personal taste, but still true.  MGSV coming out in September (It's also coming out on PS3) was the first game that had me starting to get excited.  Then I also find out today the PS4 was released without blueray support for headsets and I still don't know if that is working on the PS4, but its sooooo "next gen"

 

It's not that someone is getting something I am not.  It's that I paid the same price for the same game and I was purposely left in the dark until this week about getting the shaft on content when if I had the information I would have never bought the game in the first place. That's dirty and why I feel the way I do.  Even IF I was given a free game for the next gen I would still feel like I'm on shaky ground and I only really matter is when I fall in line with what and how they want to do things.  The second that is no longer the case then the realty sets in that none of us do, we just fool ourselves into thinking it.  If someone told me when this game came out "Hey man they are going to stop putting out the MP content for this game unless you go to next gen!"  I would have called them a liar. BTW I ONLY bought this game for MP. I still haven't beaten the SP and probably never will.

 

The people that work at a place can be amazing, and I do think some of the people from Bioware that I have interacted with have been fun and have a sense of humor.  I feel like they are "just one of the guys."  When I go check out a game and it says "Bioware" on the box/page for that game that is not at all what I will be thinking though.

 

Also food for thought.  Dragons Dogma Online is coming out for PS3, PS4, and PC.  It also offers cross platform play for all players. Some may think this would be a SONY game, but its made by Capcom.

[Nythrius]

Bryan,

 

Thank you for coming into this forum and giving us some valuable technical insight onto why this decision was made.  We all knew that this was a possibility, and many of us were surprised that it was even released onto legacy consoles.  Yet, hearing the reasons actually helps calm the emotional response with a rational one.  I know that there are some things that we can't be told for legal reasons, but it's frustrating to hear: "we're doing this for reasons, but you can't know them."  So, any information makes us feel less like children that are having their toy taken from them and more like adults.

[Bryan Johnson]

Also food for thought.  Dragons Dogma Online is coming out for PS3, PS4, and PC.  It also offers cross platform play for all players. It's made by Capcom.

I am sure this is something that they negotiated with Sony, and if the game was actually released on Xbox, this would not be the case.

[Yumi]

Hello I am going to only comment on some of the things that you have said, because I do not spend a lot of my time on this forum, but some things I will just point out.

 

Alright ill start on the way moderation is done. First off, given that I have no history on this sub-forum (outside of this post) I do not know the history of the user 'Drascas', they could indeed be a very negative poster, but the way you have brought up his name make it seem like you have a vendetta against him (once again my perspective). I can see that user has indeed received warnings before and they all came from the BioWare mods (much like all yours have). When we as employees come into a thread, undoubtedly we are going to be more warning/ban 'happy' than the mods because lets face it things can be heated and as you said we are human. Further more we take the perspective of you just came into our house and started yelling at us, so we have a right to throw you out, type of deal.  

 

There have been bugs yes but you make it sound like the majority of users out there have been broken for months and months and nothing has been done. Your examples of key bug, no xp, enemies spawning in my personal play (mind you for MP that is in the range of about 25 hours), I had hit the key bug 4 times (which was then fixed in future), but not others. Once again I understand that bugs are indeed super frustrating and we do try and deal with them as best we can. 

 

We arent making things up when we say working on 10 year old hardware is not easy. I have been one of the QA experts for the PS3 for the last 4 years, and even 4 years ago things were challenging and now when we are 4 years later and have something with 8x the memory alone, it makes it hard to develop/test them and concessions have to be done. Already things had to be done, xbox 360 has a mandatory install disc (do you know how many games have this? I can only think of BF and GTA and us) without it this game wouldnt have made it out the door. Do you know what the limit on Xbox 360 patches used to be? 2MB (cert requirement) and absolute technical limit of 2GB. Our last Xbox 360 patch (Patch 8) was 791MB for German (This was after we did something that technically was not standard procedure to half it) to contrast this Patch 5 (without our procedure to half it) was 360MB. Given that our next patch is looking on track to be 50% bigger than the previous one, something like that may be approaching the hard line technical requirements of the system, and there was no more tricks to pull out of that magical hat. PS3 has a technical requirement on how big your lifetime DLC can be. These technical requirements were based on what was imagined over 10 years ago, or was available to the technology.

 

We continuously talk about making decisions with 3 groups in mind: customers, employees and shareholders. Without each of them we would not have a business and it is a balancing act to try and satisfy each of them. Each of those groups like to believe they are getting the short end of the stick, another aspect of human nature. 

 

 

1. Wow, in the paragraph I set to bold, I really learned a lot. It also gives people with more level heads verifiable facts to state when others use simple, frothy, emotional appeal. I would have loved to been able to list stuff like this, but all I could really say previously was, "A lot of factors go into discontinuing support on last gen systems". Anyway, you are a pretty cool dude Bryan. I hope you cleared this with your boss. Doing explanations like this is so opposite of what usually happens that somehow I have this vague sense that you will get in trouble ._.

 

2. Drasca will now forever be known as "DRASCAS"

[BiggyDX]

I can only imagine what tomorrows stream is going to be like (if there is one).

 

One thing I'd like to ask though. Would it be possible - for the XBO and PS4 versions - to decouple the Multiplayer from the original game? I understand that it is financially - and technically - burdensome, but if such a thing were possible, than it would at least give former 360 and PS3 players of MP a chance to get back into the game.

[Brewskin]

A lot of interesting, informative, even a few insightful comments, conveyed with varying degrees of passion, partisanship and dashes of humor and common sense; if it weren't for the circumstances I'd say this was a pretty dang cool thread.

 

But, circumstances are what they are, and no amount of rationalization, no expressions of remorse, no detailed explanations are going to change that.

 

EA/Bioware decided, at some point in time, to abandon a portion of their customer, and fan base to focus on what they see as a more financially lucrative path, leaving that portion of their customer/fan base with a product that, at best, is not working as intended, purchased in good faith.

 

No where on the copy of DAI I bought for my PS3 system does it state that this game will not receive the same support as newer systems, else I would not have made DAI the last game I would buy for PS3. Hell, I was dumbfounded when I saw it would be on PS3, made my day. Else, I would have waited, and bought it after I purchased a PS4, as I'm pretty sure any other fan of Bioware's games would have done, as would any other responsible consumer. I might have bought a PS4 sooner, come to think about it.

 

Even with that, imo, morally nebulous bit of trickery, the sting would have been eased if EA/Bioware had accompanied their announcement with some at least minimal offer of reparations; if not a free upgrade, then a discounted transition to new gen; no DLC, fine, but no effort made to patch remaining issues? No effort made to at least leave these abandoned customer/fans with some sort of good feeling? No concession given to leave them feeling any sort of loyalty, but instead a semi-commiserative, yet still practical indifference to their frustration and disillusionment.

 

From a perspective based purely on monetary gain, all is well and good. Few disaffected customers lost is barely a fart in the wind to EA/Bioware I'm guessing. Doesn't make it right, but apparently, it works.

 

I'll probably continue to play DAMP on my PS3 for a while, to hang with friends; try to avoid the xp glitched lobbies, and other exploits, deal with the disconnects and bugs, to hang with friends.

 

May even get DAI for the PS4, but I'll buy it used. To hang with friends. Pretty sure ESO is where we're going though, imo, they dinna mislead us by releasing their product on a system that couldn't handle it, and then backpedaling.

 

Billy, Conal, Bryan, Luke, et al; I want to be very clear that I have no animosity towards any of you lads, but the decision made by your employer pissed me off. Whether it was the result of poor planning, poor design or good old fashioned planned obsolescence is irrelevant, it is what it is.

 

Totally understand y'all taking things personally, in your place I guess I would too.

[Geth Supremacy]

I can only imagine what tomorrows stream is going to be like (if there is one).

 

One thing I'd like to ask though. Would it be possible - for the XBO and PS4 versions - to decouple the Multiplayer from the original game? I understand that it is financially - and technically - burdensome, but if such a thing were possible, than it would at least give former 360 and PS3 players of MP a chance to get back into the game.

 

There is a stream, but you can only watch it if you have <50mbps download speed and an origin account with more than 4 games linked to it.  You get additional background music during the stream if you watch it in 4k because then you are more valuable.

[Bryan Johnson]

I can only imagine what tomorrows stream is going to be like (if there is one).
 
One thing I'd like to ask though. Would it be possible - for the XBO and PS4 versions - to decouple the Multiplayer from the original game? I understand that it is financially - and technically - burdensome, but if such a thing were possible, than it would at least give former 360 and PS3 players of MP a chance to get back into the game.

Alright would it be technically possible, yes but not as easy as one would think and not without a lot of ramifications. I am not sure if you are aware, but the trial on PC is basically the hinterlands and MP and it is not that much smaller than the main game. So same would be said about anything for PS4 and XboxOne. As I said in an earlier post, if we were to do something like this there would have to be some sort of incentive for first party to allow it on their platform.

[Bryan Johnson]

EA/Bioware decided, at some point in time, to abandon a portion of their customer, and fan base to focus on what they see as a more financially lucrative path, leaving that portion of their customer/fan base with a product that, at best, is not working as intended, purchased in good faith.

Even with that, imo, morally nebulous bit of trickery, the sting would have been eased if EA/Bioware had accompanied their announcement with some at least minimal offer of reparations; if not a free upgrade, then a discounted transition to new gen; no DLC, fine, but no effort made to patch remaining issues? No effort made to at least leave these abandoned customer/fans with some sort of good feeling? No concession given to leave them feeling any sort of loyalty, but instead a semi-commiserative, yet still practical indifference to their frustration and disillusionment.

Totally understand y'all taking things personally, in your place I guess I would too.

Alright you'll have to bare with me this one is coming from my phone. I am quoting the parts I am addressing since as I said I am decoupled from MP. Also paraphrasing some answers because I went into more detail already in a previous post.

I would not say that next gen is more financially lucrative compared to last gen, if we could flip a switch and have what we do work on last gen without a ton of effort (or in some cases technical impossibility) then we would have certain done that. If the argument is we are money focused then we would do everything in our power to make that money. So the options left are, it can't be done, there is too much variables to allow a reasonable guess such that potential profits are not worth it or it simply would not be profitable. Yes I know for the last point technically something like patches do not have a sense of profit inheritantly.

For the offering free upgrades or a discount look a page or 2 back when I say that, that would be a very costly thing to do.

As I have initially said the main purpose of future patches is support for DLC (notice for pretty much every DLC we put out there is a patch immediately before it?). Does this mean all the patches will do is support DLC, almost certainly not, but introducing a bunch of changes that effectively serve no purpose, is just adding pointless risk. Decoupling those changes that are new things or bug fixes from the rest is just asking for even more danger.

Oh and so far I have not taken anything personally except being falsely represented. Only once have I been driven to anger from this board.