156 réponses à ce sujet

[Onyx Jaguar]

Vincent Rosevalliant wrote...

Onyx Jaguar wrote...

HedStr8EyesTite wrote...

lol, stan woo says "commitment to quality."

has anybody at bioware played DA:O on the 360?

Yes I have, ever play KOTOR on the Xbox?

You were at Bioware playing with their Xbox360? That's great!
What was wrong with KOTOR on XBOX?

rofl, good catch

[Fexelea]

Stanley Woo wrote...

Branji wrote...

Bioware/EA didn't barely break even with their games. They made a lot of money, and of course money is your friend. Bioware/EA can (unless there was huge mismanagement) easily afford to spend a little money on making patches. As an example: let's say that Bioware/EA has a team of 10 working on patches after release. and money is set aside to pay them. Make it $75,000 each for one year. Okay, that's $750,000. That equals 15,000 boxes sold. Make it 20 workers and $1,500,000. That's 30,000 boxes. Dragons Age sold in excess of 3 million copies.

Let's play with your numbers, since they're good, round numbers. So you're saying that=, because we sold 3 million copies, we can afford to develop something which would "cost" 30,000 copies. You'd be right, except that that money doesn't go to us directly. The retailer does not ever send us a cheque.

Minimum money that goes back to publisher from a $60 sale is $25 (That is accounting for retailer margin, console royalty, distribution,etc) . Depending on the agreement between publisher and dev studio, there is a percentage that goes straight to said studio. In Bioware's case, as you are now owned by EA, I would assume so do your finances, so the cost of quality can be immediately considered against the $25. So going by the numbers above, 750,000 usd / 25 usdpercopy = 30,000 retail console copies sold needed. This is before you account for online distribution or the considerably cheaper PC process. It is really not overly expensive by any means and it would be a very worthy investment to sustain a competitive advantage. I think any RoI calculation that involves adequate market data would confirm this (and that is the reason successful software companies patch their products)

Stanley Woo wrote...

You can't convince me that Bioware/EA can't afford to make patches. Bioware /EA has lost some fans due to the very slow patching (yet the DLC zips through approvals). If just 50,000 fans were lost, patching properly could get them back to buy more games. That's over $2,500,000 gained. Those fans should be able to bring in more than enough to pay for patching.

Define "patching properly." And can you guarantee that doing so would get back at least 50,000 fans (using your numbers again). And how would you guarantee that, considering we get lots of people saying they'll buy a copy if we do this or that but there's never a contract or any way to enforce it? Simply making up numbers to get a company to commit real dollars for made up gain doesn't usually work, I'm afraid. Besides that, I think that when numbers get high and complex enough, our understanding of how they interact becomes muddied.

There is no need to go into numbers. Crash to desktop, cannot complete game glitch/bug, 15fps combat, freezes, 5 minutes loading screens and the like are certainly things that will garner your games a reputation for being frustrating rather than entertaining. If, as everyone assumes, there is a "dumbing down" going on to appeal to a wider audience, they are the first ones that will turn away the second anything gets demanding or mildly unpalatable.

---

Side note, I agree darkrose

I'm sure he doesn't do it on purpose.

darkrose wrote...

That said, there are enough
game-breaking bugs in Awakening that as a player, it's incredibly
frustrating. I can't speak for anyone else, but your posts here come
across as defensive, and not acknowledging the legitimate frustration
players are feeling after four months. 

[I Valente I]

yet another thread has become a dilusional self righteous power trip. How pathetic.

[HedStr8EyesTite]

Onyx Jaguar wrote...

Vincent Rosevalliant wrote...

Onyx Jaguar wrote...

HedStr8EyesTite wrote...

lol, stan woo says "commitment to quality."

has anybody at bioware played DA:O on the 360?

Yes I have, ever play KOTOR on the Xbox?

You were at Bioware playing with their Xbox360? That's great!
What was wrong with KOTOR on XBOX?

rofl, good catch

yes i have played KOTOR on xbox, many times over, i still have the game... and guess what?  i was able to play the game from start to finish... unlike DA:O.  I suppose i could start another new game in DA, but i would rather play a game that doesnt force me to follow a set of guidlines to avoid game breaking bugs.

Modifié par HedStr8EyesTite, 19 mai 2010 - 03:45 .

[bzombo]

Stanley Woo wrote...

Tirigon wrote...
You are of course right with that, but I think that patches - at least bug-fixing patches, it´s entirely different with balancing patches - are still "mandatory" insofar as they do not add anything new but simply fix what in theory SHOULD HAVE BEEN CORRECT TO START WITH.

Programmers aren't perfect, games are complex, and we don't have infinite time to look for and fix issues. Those are the major reasons why most software is released with bugs. And it's not something you can really control after the fact. You might as well say that a person who didn't want to fail the test should have gotten 100% to start with.

Theoretically possible, but completely ignores the reality of the schedules and money involved.

If a company doesn´t wish to patch their games, it might be better to test it more thoroughly so that it doesn´t NEED patches.

Okay, then, I'll ask. how much more testing needs to be done? Keep in mind that the longer you're testing and fixing, the longer it will be before the game can be sent for certification. In the meantime, you're burning money on operating costs and getting really darned close to advertised release dates. if you miss those dates, that's millions of advertising dollars wasted. You also have other projects which need people being freed up on time, ot their schedule will get messed up.

So please, enlighten me. how much more testing is needed? An extra month? Until al the bugs are located and fixed? Or some other arbitrary length of time which doesn't eliminate your problem at all? Because I'll tell you, it's great to spend all that money to find the blockers and game-breakers, but eventually you have to release. And millions of gamers on millions of different machines will always, always find new problems that dozens of people on dozens of machines simply couldn't find or couldn't reliably reproduce.

It is not surprising that people who paid for a game are annoyed and demand a patch if there is a heavy, for some even game-breaking, bug, that should in theory have been eliminated before release.

I know that´s not always possible, but that´s why patches are important.

Absolutely, and I'm glad pretty much everyone makes them. It has to be worth all that effort, though. Stil doesn't eliminate the base game development issue of not having unlimited time or resources, or having to use fallible, mortal humans to create the game.

i tend to think in most instances most complaints are a bit full of entitlement and sometimes just plain nastiness, and i know that patches take time to devlop and make available. i do have a question regarding awakening. there are two things in awakening that just seem out of the realm of possibility to miss: how was the bug in the mine where you never get your pc's equipment back and the bug where the dragon in the dragon bone wastelands never drops the gloves and boots he was supposed to drop missed? they seem way too common to be missed.

[bzombo]

Ju-0n wrote...

VampireCommando wrote...

Ju-0n wrote...



What a load of rubbish. Name the last ****ing game EA ever supported! Fact of the matter is the console DA:O is now a over-priced caoster because EA/BW will not fix the ****ing mess that was RELEASED. I hope EA/BW goes broke and the developers go bankrupt and end up  living in cardboard boxes. EA/BW is little more than fraud artists masquerading as crappy coders, and there should be a law that specifically applies to con artists like EA/BW that sell faulty products and do NOTHING to FIX them.

EA/BW is just a greedy money grubbing bunch of ****s. Consider all of the DLC and the Expansion for DA:O that have not even been Q&A. Lets face the truth hrer Mr Woo EA/BW are scam artists who sell faulty products. They do not give a **** about their customers or their games after we have paid for them. The proof lies with the entire DA:O experience for consloe gamers. EA/BW have ripped them off, stolen their money and given them a faulty product, whcih, seven months after release they have not even bothered to fix.

Tell us Mr. Woo what will be next a patch to fix the abortion of a game or more DLC. Let me guess more DLC you money grubbing greedy ****ing con artists!

You sir are foul, no matter your anger there is no need for personal attacks, and extremly harsh ones at that, you should be discusted with your self.

The only thing I'm disgusted with is the fact that I paid good money for DA:O. Money which I worked hard for, and, I might add, honestly. Not like the scam artists at EA/BW who sell faulty products and then denigrate us for expecting a fix! No wonder these scam artists can get away with this bullsh!t when there are plenty of idiots who willingly comply with this crap and think its all wonderful.

So Mr. Woo. What is next after DC, a pacth to fix what has become an abortion or more crappy over-priced DLC?

indignant, self entitled, and raging against capitalism to boot. i'd say we have a new one, but it's become all too common on these boards. scam artists? that's a funny one. money grubbing? since when exactly is making money not the biggest concern for a company? that's more a compliment than an insult. "you make money! argh!" well, whatever. this is silly.