EA Wrecking Franchises

[skace]

Why is command and conquer on that list? C&C3 is a perfect example of an old game getting a proper sequel. The production values were nearly flawless in every regard. I'm not here to defend EA, but if we are going to bash them, do it right.

 

[Maximilian]

Originally posted by: skace
Why is command and conquer on that list? C&C3 is a perfect example of an old game getting a proper sequel. The production values were nearly flawless in every regard. I'm not here to defend EA, but if we are going to bash them, do it right.

It failed the community as a whole. Heres just a quick summing up of the games problems:

1. Story didnt really tell us anything new, it was ok, but not as good as it should have been.

2. Theyve totally wrecked the environment tiberian sun had set up, i didnt want tiberian sun 2 but i didnt want c&c tiberian dawn in 3d either. No mutated landscapes? No viceroids? No danger.... Theyve made tiberium which was an interesting and mysterious substance boring, it just self replicates now according to EA.

3. There isnt much depth to the game, you wont be kept occupied for long with it, its not like red alert 2 was.

4. The maps suck, theyre all symmetrical, and the ones that arent are for 1v1's, for an example of decent to play on fun maps see red alert 2.

5. EA tried to cater to the pro online community with their "fast fluid" gameplay and the abundance of stats players have tied to them, failing to realise that a good healthy community will have all sorts of players in it, noobs, map makers, clan types, wannabe pros etc etc but these people all leave because theres no damn fun to be had, and it sucks now with everyone having in excess of 500+ games under their belt, you either get booted from a game for being too good or too crap. It sucks.

They "tried" to cater to the pro's but they also failed at that too with all the hacking that goes on.

6. Due to the above problems the multiplayer portion of the game is dying, theres anywhere from 200-800 people online most times. It goes to 1200 sometimes but not often, for a c&c game thats only what.. 9 months old? thats terrible.

So there ya go, a short summing up of why c&c 3 wasent as fantastic as it should have been. Gotta say, i now agree with all those crazy diehard tiberian sun fans that are scattered around the c&c forums, namely planet cnc, tiberian sun 2 may have been better.

 

[skace]

A lot of your problems relate to the multiplayer experience. I could make a very valid argument simply that the community failed C&C and not the other way around. Perhaps playing a true oldschool C&C game online was not what people really wanted.

Likewise, none of your complaints really show that EA "wrecked" C&C. You argue nuances.

 

[Beev]

Originally posted by: Drift3r
Vivendi owns Valve or at least serves as their main publisher as well I believe but yeah they do own Blizzard.

Vivendi and Valve split. EA publishes Valves hard copies of their games now.




And wtf at all the "end of Crysis felt rushed" people. I enjoyed the last half of the game WAY more than the first half. The last half was pure epic.

 

[Regs]

Originally posted by: Beev

Originally posted by: Drift3r
Vivendi owns Valve or at least serves as their main publisher as well I believe but yeah they do own Blizzard.

Vivendi and Valve split. EA publishes Valves hard copies of their games now.




And wtf at all the "end of Crysis felt rushed" people. I enjoyed the last half of the game WAY more than the first half. The last half was pure epic.

The game was enjoyable. I don't think the ending was rushed either, it just did not end.

 

[T2k]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

Originally posted by: T2k
Starforce did not brick anything - educate yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarForce#Controversy

Text

under Windows XP, if packets are lost during the reading or writing of a disk, XP interprets this as an error and steps the IDE speed down. Eventually it will revert to 16bit compatibility mode rendering a CD/DVD writer virtually unusable. In some circumstances certain drives cannot cope with this mode and it results in physical hardware failure (Most commonly in multiformat CD/DVD writer drives).

It has been reported by many users that the slowdown caused by StarForce on some recent multiformat DVD writers can cause irreversible hardware failures on those drives (they aren't recognized anymore)

And the point is...? Sorry as much as I hate Starforce and its arrogant, loser creator I have to admit it would be the last thing to take a website's word as objective when it starts with Boycott Starforce and Wiki does not have a word about it...

 

[T2k]

Originally posted by: CP5670

Originally posted by: T2k
So you experienced ONE and heard about another?

Wow, talk about fluffing BS...

It's not like I'm about to get another of their recent games after playing SCDA and seeing their level of support for it.

Now games despite you just admitted you have only played ONE (with problems)?

Gee, at least make up stuff logically.:frown:

I had a fair share of technical issues with the earlier Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory as well, even though that game was generally outstanding otherwise. Some of those issues also revolved around bad technical design decisions than unintentional bugs.

Ummm ROFLMAO - WTF are you talking about, seriously? First they DID release StarForce patch - I remember seeing it for BiA.
Second how do you mean removing? You mean releasing a patch that would compeltely remove DRM?
ROFLMAO you are actually funny...

Show me a patch that removes Starforce for Chaos Theory.

And FYI, there are companies that remove the copy protection in their games entirely through a patch after they have been out for a while. id and Epic are some examples.

Ummm then why the hell did you bring this up, pal? Seriously, it was you who accused Ubi of using "intrusive copy protection schemes ", don't you remember?
Wow, talk about not making sense...

You think that makes it better just because EA does it too? As I said, they're comparable to EA but with crappier product support.

I like how half of your post consists of irrelevant insults rather than actually having anything to do with the subject matter. I guess every company must have its rabid, drooling fanboys somewhere.

I don't know about that but it's more than obvious now you have had problems with ONE SINGLE GAME yet you are keep posting utter generalizations - a.k.a. BS - about ALL their titles.
You brought up the DRM then you call it off now?

So who's a (negative-)fanboy here, may I ask...? isgust;

 

[CP5670]

Originally posted by: T2k
I don't know about that but it's more than obvious now you have had problems with ONE SINGLE GAME yet you are keep posting utter generalizations - a.k.a. BS - about ALL their titles.
You brought up the DRM then you call it off now?

So who's a (negative-)fanboy here, may I ask...? isgust;

Negative fanboy? :laugh: Did you make that up or something?

I have experience with two of their relatively recent games (and not just the games, but the kind of support the company provides for them) and have seen enough benchmarks from one or two others to conclude that those are also poorly optimized on the PC and show signs of being console ports. I think I am more inclined to go by these observations than some incoherent fanboy's rantings.

Why is command and conquer on that list? C&C3 is a perfect example of an old game getting a proper sequel. The production values were nearly flawless in every regard. I'm not here to defend EA, but if we are going to bash them, do it right.

I liked C&C3 a lot too. It had its flaws and wasn't really revolutionary in any way, but was overall quite an enjoyable game.

 

[Czar]

http://www.duelinganalogs.com/?date=2006-11-08

 

[PingSpike]

I haven't owned a lot of ubisoft games, but Dark Messiah worked pretty good for me. The only bug I remember pissing me off was when I grabbed a swinging rope and swung outside the map...forcing a reload. Other then that, things worked fine for me. Granted, I bought the game about 4-5 months after its release...but if it was a buggy mess, they did fix it. I'm not sure where the "ubi never fixes games" thing comes from. My wife plays a few of them...I think HOMM5 and it wasn't to bad even though she got it near release day. It would be more accurate to say, in my experience, that while they may release buggy games they do eventually fix them.

I never even played battlefield 2, but I remember people complaining about the wrong color team name showing up like 6 months after its release. Did they ever actually fix that?

 

[Maximilian]

Originally posted by: skace
A lot of your problems relate to the multiplayer experience. I could make a very valid argument simply that the community failed C&C and not the other way around. Perhaps playing a true oldschool C&C game online was not what people really wanted.

Likewise, none of your complaints really show that EA "wrecked" C&C. You argue nuances.

The first two points are directly related to single player and storyline, the third point is partially related. Theyvre ruined tiberium as i said before, its not interesting anymore, back in c&c 3 it caused "respatory ailments" "reproductive ailments" and "death" in tiberian sun they took that a step further and showed it causing mutations, tiberian fiends and floaters and viceroids were created, contributing to an already dangerous environment. That firestorm mission with the crazy planet cult that have a piece of the tacitus in one of their temples was awesome, same with the original tiberian sun mission GDI-5 i think it was, you have to shut down nod radar with limited forces, the environment is a real danger there! Mistake a tiberian fiend for a friendly green sheep as i did and your mission could become a whole lot harder, same if you walk your heavy vehicles through some weed. Tiberian sun isnt particularly advanced for todays standards but they took c&c TD and advanced upon it and brought it into the year 2000, c&c 3 didnt deliver the same, it dumbed down tiberium making it boring.

The actual first point i made about the stoy is varied dependant on what the individual thought of it. Personally i wanted more, after 7 frickin years i would like to know why kane keeps coming back, i want to know where slavik went, i want to know what CABAL is up to i didnt want a damn paragraph that vaguely tried to explain away what happened to CABAL. They had an interesting storyline in tiberian sun, there was no need to ah heck around with it, the gameplay was the only thing that sucked in tiberian sun. If they had taken c&c 3's gameplay and kept with a proper continuation of tiberian suns storyline (high tech stuff, CABAL, mutating tiberium, some new stuff etc) then i would have been satisfied, i said the gameplay in c&c 3 is shallow which it is, but i would have been a happy camper if the storyline was decent which in my opinion it wasent. It was OK, and OK isnt good enough for a game carrying the c&c label.

So overall EA is generally decent with gameplay (not the best but you can do a hell of a lot worse in gameplay terms) but they lack the creativity to advance a storyline in an interesting fashion and to advance a games universe. They dumb things down and are only interested in the money, any interest shown in the opinions of the fans/community is fake and they probably are thinking along the lines of "If we hire a community officer and give interviews with joe kucan etc etc and make it seem like we care, we will sell more games to the fans on the internet and offset the cost of looking like we care, making a profit in the end." Thats EA's mindset, and its an unfortunate one.

 

[Jadow]

Originally posted by: tvdang7
bf2 was really good. can some one paint me a picture on who does what? whats publishing and all that junk. i dont get it really.

Here's my prob with BF2, how is it any different from the Special Forces MOD for BF:1942?

You buy BF:1942, you got em all.

 

[GundamSonicZeroX]

NFL games in general.

 

[Acanthus]

BF2 was good?

It was one of the worst launches ive seen for a heavily hyped title. It shipped loaded with crash bugs,

The login server didnt work im sure everyone remembers connecting for an hour.

The 1st patch introduced a memory leak that had to be emergency patched (nice QC).

They *STILL* cant seem to make a working server browser (Oh wow i have a 0 or 117 ping to every server in the world!)

It took them over a year to fix the hitboxes going apeshit crazy by prone spamming or dolphin diving. However instead of fixing the hitboxes, they just didnt let you spam it anymore. So now going prone and jumping still makes the hitboxes go crazy, you just cant exploit it as much.

They still have made no real effort to counter aircraft.

 

[skace]

And yet Soviet, even after everything you just posted, the game was still a huge success and a text book example of bringing an aging genre into a current gen environment while still staying true to the gameplay of old. That isn't to say your complaints aren't valid, but in the grand scheme of things you are basically just bitching. You probably haven't thought about what you could have gotten instead, another generals or something worse. They could have completely screwed up C&C, but they didn't, they made an exceptional entry and you simply don't agree with some of the story choices like the fact that the GDI military budget was on a downfall due to supposed peace time efforts and lack of NOD.

Originally posted by: Acanthus
BF2 was good?

The server browser sucks, the menu system is slow, artillery is teamwork counterproductive, jets have ridiculous air superiority and any attempt to balance them simply raped hellicopters, the red teamate bug stayed in the game way too long, there are some very lame hacks and exploits like the one that removes fog of war effects or flags everything on the map regardless of team (both not big deals until put in the hands of a good jet pilot).

And yet, despite all this yes, yes it was a good. No, infact, it was great. BF2 took great arcade style FPS combat in the war genre, ironed out a lot of the hit detection sniping problems of 1942, and then added an awesome and addictive ranking system. It is still one of the best games to play for team based FPS combat.

 

[mrblotto]

Originally posted by: T2k
EA's most abhorrent failure is their absolutely RETARDED, UTTERLY USELESS, multi-login/user management system - perfectly showcases the sheer incompetency that is virulent at EA.
For example I would NEVER BUY any shooter without a proper single-sign-in stats tracking system.
Second THEY DO NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT BUGFIXING BEFORE RELEASE - every fuckin' EA game I came across int he past few years - not many though because MYSELF NEVER BUY ea FOR LONG-LONG TIME NOW - was horribly buggy at release and they just start patching it afterwards. OTOH it's a tendency now, every publisher takes a shit on you when you buy their titles, they think it's OK to update it later. This is not only fuckin annoying and selling a knowingly unfinished/rotten product but also bad for sales: these retards at EA and other places don't get the point that if it's buggy out of the box I won't buy anything from them (studio and/or publisher) again nor tell anyone to buy it!
Too bad most review sites are completely corrupt and they would never trash any game because they fear loss of ads from that particular publisher...

EA is a wrecked ship, it's going ahead by its weight but I hardly see anything exciting in their lineup.

My only hope is in Valve and Steam, perhaps Epic can sway things a bit. I also happen to like Ubisoft games and if 2K wouldn't be such a bunch of fuckin clueless losers - see the complete chaos and the fuckin illegal rootkit/DRM shit around Bioshock's release - they could have a chance too.

EA is pretty much like RIAA/MPAA for me: disgusting shitty corporate cluster, led by arrogant yet clueless corporate morons who fuck up almost everything they touch including the most east-to-win projects.

Why dont you tell us how you really feel?

 

[pontifex]

Originally posted by: skace
And yet Soviet, even after everything you just posted, the game was still a huge success and a text book example of bringing an aging genre into a current gen environment while still staying true to the gameplay of old. That isn't to say your complaints aren't valid, but in the grand scheme of things you are basically just bitching. You probably haven't thought about what you could have gotten instead, another generals or something worse. They could have completely screwed up C&C, but they didn't, they made an exceptional entry and you simply don't agree with some of the story choices like the fact that the GDI military budget was on a downfall due to supposed peace time efforts and lack of NOD.

Originally posted by: Acanthus
BF2 was good?

The server browser sucks, the menu system is slow, artillery is teamwork counterproductive, jets have ridiculous air superiority and any attempt to balance them simply raped hellicopters, the red teamate bug stayed in the game way too long, there are some very lame hacks and exploits like the one that removes fog of war effects or flags everything on the map regardless of team (both not big deals until put in the hands of a good jet pilot).

And yet, despite all this yes, yes it was a good. No, infact, it was great. BF2 took great arcade style FPS combat in the war genre, ironed out a lot of the hit detection sniping problems of 1942, and then added an awesome and addictive ranking system. It is still one of the best games to play for team based FPS combat.

bf2 had tons of hit detections issues, sniper rifles and other weapons. bf2 sucked ass

 

[Backdraft11]

EA + Ubisoft + Vivendi = Axis of Gaming Evil

Let's see:

EA - speaks for itself, but in case you want reasons: keeps churning out the same crappy sports games each year, buys good companies then shuts them down, just about the poster child for bad gaming management

Ubisoft - their services/support are actually good, but they totally screwed up the Tom Clancy games (R6, Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell). Seems to have a knack for taking good PC titles and consolizing them (in no way do I mean that console ports are bad, just saying the way Ubi does it is a disgrace) until they are a shadow of their former glory. I will never forgive them for screwing up the GR series and alienating the original, loyal PC fans that made the original what it was.

Vivendi - screwing up one of the biggest gaming companies of the 90s (Sierra) and having disputes with reputable developers like Valve.

Gaming divisions that are relatively good for the industry include THQ, Activision, and Epic, although they are still small except for the Big 3 (except maybe Activision). Also it's nice to see the Euro gaming scene getting hot (STALKER, Witcher), just wish a good publisher would pick them up to give them the resources to make their games polished.

 

[QueBert]

EA bought Westwood, due to that I never got to play Legends Of Kryandia IV, screw EA!

what they did to Madden is a damn shame, and to add salt to the wound they bought exclusive rights for NFL video games.

Ubisoft should stand up to them, Ubisoft has it's share of problems like horrible PC ports, but they make a lot of fun games, and next to EA are the much lesser of 2 evils.

 

[Fadardo]

Originally posted by: Bateluer

Originally posted by: Soviet


Dont vivendi own blizzard though?

I believe so, but the Blizzard name will sell pretty much anything. If Blizz decided to break with Vivendi and become an independent developer, they'd have no problems self publishing.

Vivendi owns Blizzard and can make business decission that bypass those of the Blizzard CEO or high level execs.

They've already tasted the mmorpg money pot, and have decided blizzard will be making 4 or 5 new mmo games every 2 years for the next 10 years.

Other divisions of Vivendi have gone through some major financial loss as Vivendi as a whole has lost over 1billion dollars last year. Vivendi Shareholders are eager to recupe those losses and Vivendi is looking to mmos to poor in the money.

Expect a Diablo and starcraft mmo.

 

[jjj807]

ea took westwood AWAY!!!!!!!!!

 

[Fadardo]

Ubisoft is tainted as well, as they are now 15% owned by EA, after EAs hostile takover bid of Ubisoft. I blame EA for ruining Assassin's Creed

 

[wazzledoozle]

C&C series.

C&C3 was a pretty faithful clone of the old gamestyle, but thats the problem. It was like playing the same exact game again, with shiny graphics. The series has no innovative future.

 

[Maximilian]

Originally posted by: wazzledoozle
C&C series.

C&C3 was a pretty faithful clone of the old gamestyle, but thats the problem. It was like playing the same exact game again, with shiny graphics. The series has no innovative future.

Yeah, remniscent of doom 3.

 

[wazzledoozle]

Originally posted by: Soviet

Originally posted by: wazzledoozle
C&C series.

C&C3 was a pretty faithful clone of the old gamestyle, but thats the problem. It was like playing the same exact game again, with shiny graphics. The series has no innovative future.

Yeah, remniscent of doom 3.

Exactly. But even doom 3 introduced more modern FPS concepts to the game than C&C3 did to the C&C game formula.