Star Wars Battlefront

Games have always been shoddy, we were just more forgiving when we were younger or forgot about all of the bombs that did exist back then.

EDIT: Added the quote since I'm the top page comment.

edited 28th Feb '18 4:57:34 AM by SgtRicko

The "consumers wrath" part is insufficient, it's why publishers and the ESRB are only giving token concessions or half-assed efforts over lootboxes. They don't do anything when introducing game-breaking glitches unless you have like ALL of Reddit coming down on them like happened recently in Battlefield 1 with it's micro-stutter glitch.

It's too little too late to rely on "consumers wrath" anymore for glitchy half-assed games and exploitative features like lootboxes. Especially considering the social media sycophants out there.

I remember glitchy games before, but they were typically PC games and got savaged for its glitchy nature. (Both critically and commercially.) Nowadays, it gets a pass.

Worse, back then a glitchy game sneaking past QA often meant problems with hardware manufacturers (Microsoft, Nintendo, etc.) potentially leading to litigation or prohibition from the platform. Remember the Nintendo Seal of Quality? They didn't let glitchy games come out on their systems when it was enforced up to the N64 era. (And it came about because of fiascos in gaming like Action 52 among other things.) If your game wasn't up to snuff, no release for you. Even early Xbox games were prohibited from being a glitchy mess. (Especially since the OS and hardware to a small extent at the time more or less prohibited patching.)

I'm not saying the glitchy half-assed games didn't exist back then, but they had significantly more barriers to entry and means to prevent them from reaching store shelves.

Again, the consumer response IS having an effect and generating media coverage, quite rapidly at that. It's only been a little over 5 days since the panel, and even less since he ESRB's poor response, and we're already seeing the gaming community concur that the concessions offered suck. Heck, even the panel in Hawaii hardly accepted the responses given by the lobbyists. We're winning, little by little.

EDIT: True, the concept that a problem can be patched away has made certain developers lazy and resort to ridiculously 40gb+ sized "Day One" patches. Sucks if you're living in an area with a monthly broadband limit.

As for the reason why videogame software has gotten buggier in general, I think most of it comes down to two things: how complex game development has become, and how much software is actually involved that often doesn't come from the devs themselves but was instead out-sourced. It's a heck of a lot harder to troubleshoot a problem when you realize that the true issue is with the game engine your company licensed, or god forbid the CP Us. Sure, careful planning and a pragmatic acceptance of your dev team's strengths and limits often helps circumvent that issue, but it's crushed many a team more than once.

edited 28th Feb '18 5:16:49 AM by SgtRicko

No there isn't. There's no reason for laws to regulate the quality of a product if public safety is not involved. There's no reason Video Games should be a special case in this. Laws that regulate the quality of goods all do it for general safety reasons.

Especially when the simple alternative is to not buy the game on launch and learn if it's working or not. A strategy that works for every other commercial products.

Heck, you'd have to spend public money to test games for "bugginess". Which, ya know, fuck that. I'd rather tax money go to education, healthcare, and actual useful shit than to protect shitheads who can't be assed to wait 24-48 hours for reviews and general feedback.

edited 28th Feb '18 5:45:06 AM by Ghilz

Defective product and false advertising laws already exist. And they are unrelated to public safety. Not a year goes by where somebody isn't in trouble on one or the other.

Yes, those laws already do exist. So again, why do you need game specific laws.

Because in the case of games (and software in general) it often falls outside the bounds of traditional defective product laws because there's no tangible product unlike say a baseball or shoes or a car.

There's a line between, say, Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing and Skyrim here. I'm not a fan of "release now, patch later" either but the idea of actively enforcing that games be released entirely bug-free or face legal consequence is silly.

It's only natural a couple hundred thousand people will find bugs more often than a couple dozen people would, anyways, and if nothing else making game-crashing bugs a valid basis for a lawsuit could put bug testers on a thin line where overlooking the tiniest thing could mean their job.

Similar things already happen in many industries be it steel, pharmaceuticals, various trades such as welding, and a ton more. Even when things aren't safety related, they're held up to standards.

Right now in gaming, there are none. Just lazy incompetent developers and publisher enablers.

Those are all things for which lax inspecting is dangerous, even life threatening. Games, conversely, are both a creative industry and a luxury one.

In this case, it's rather like suing the creators of a movie because the editing is terrible.

edited 28th Feb '18 6:42:28 PM by KnownUnknown

Pharmecuticals are currently suffering from the amount of restrictions and legal red tape placed upon them, precisely because of the risk of lawsuit and both federal and state governments being too obstructive towards innovation or competition. And as said above, the heavy machinery industry has higher safety standards than game software would ever require or even need. Overall, physical products make poor comparisons to the troubles that digital software or computer hardware components suffer from.

Well the pharmaceutical industry has proven itself worthy of the regulations and stuff with all the life-saving medicines that they jack up the prices of.

I bought Battlefront II - pre owned because I don't like EA - recently. I've been having fun with the multiplayer while listening to Kingdom Hearts Let's Plays.

I particularly enjoy Heroes Vs Villains.

As for the campaign... I am annoyed that the game did not follow through on what it was sold to me as and I'm convinced that EA were like "who cares if we ruin the story put in missions where you play as Luke, Leia, Han and Lando. No we have no integrity, why do you ask?" and that meant we had to basically stop the interesting part of the story. Like, the main thrust of the personal conflict is resolved before even the halfway point.

Still, I actually really liked the Project Resurrection missions. Those were unique and heartfelt.

Speculation these days seems to be that executive meddling - probably from Disney - is what made the campaign plot the mess it is. Because given the fond memories attached to titles like Star Wars: Tie Fighter or the fanbase's love of indulging in stories regarding the Dark Side or Empire, making a plot revolve entirely around being pro-empire while fighting both the Rebels and First Order would make too much sense not to pass on. Doubly so since the story writer was the guy that wrote Spec Ops: The Line of all games.

Yeah, it's a shame. Guy wrote a highly acclaimed campaign full of twists and moral quandaries...then had to write a standard Star Wars plot.

Oh the tragedy.

What a waste of time & skill.

Dude deserves better.

the spec ops guy

wat

tambor

Wow. Didn't know that. Like, I'm not asking for a complete deconstruction. That wouldn't make sense when the bad guys are literal space nazis. But let's look at, say, Rogue One, which had a lot more moral murkiness. Yeah, we root for them, but they do more stuff that makes us go "ehhhhhhh". We've seen them go for moral ambiguity before, so seeing them coward out is really disheartening.

Like, having sympathetic Empire goons slowly realise the error of their ways is cool. Having them run away and be fugitives is cool.

What isn't cool is one mission later they embrace the Rebellion's cause.

And I don't mind that. I mind it happening not halfway through the story.

Poor Spec Ops guy...

Apologies for the double post, but I have even more thoughts.

While I haven't read the Aftermath Trilogy, I know of Grand Admiral Rae Sloane. While still a villain, she objected to the growing fanaticism of the Empire and would have hated the First Order of Business. She is contrasted with Galius Rax, whom we currenlty have listed as a Complete Monster.

So you have these stories showing the varied faces of the Rebellion and the Empire, then you sell me a game about avenging Papa Palps, the most evil guy ever, then you take that from me because you're a coward.

And I'm inclined to believe this to be EA's fault. I remember "Ragtag", that game Visceral were working on before they murdered, being pressured to have legacy characters in it. EA were basically "Where's Chewbacca? Member Chewbacca?" Maybe Disney had a hand in where they wanted the story to go, but they've tended to be pretty liberal in certain other circles of SW lore, so I dunno if they'd object to a Sympathetic P.O.V. of Empire soldiers. If you were playing as Tarkin ordering the torture and death of dissidents maybe I'd think they wouldn't want that. And we don't need them to be Rebels so soon. Have them try and fight the Empire as tentative allies or on their own before realising "these Rebels are people too. Maybe Papa Palps was wrong all along".

All the more reason why Disney needs to get rid of EA’s exclusivity thing. We need developers that will care about the franchise beyond “Put in shit that’ll make money.”

We'll see if the exclusivity runs out and the same problems persist with another publisher. If they do, then I'll cut EA some slack and blame Disney some more.

I just want to be fair and not be blinded by the Dark Side.

EA gives up on lootboxes for SW:BF 2 and goes for cosmetic microtransactions

Here's a web article for anyone who doesn't want to watch a video: important bits include that it's coming 21 March. Star Cards will still be a thing, apparently, but they'll be part of a linear progression system for whatever class you're playing.

I haven't really looked over the new system, so no real comment on how it'll be. To be honest, this feels too late. It's been about four months now, and in that time Battlefront II has been pretty thoroughly dragged through the mud. I welcome a change, but I can't say it excites me that much, or really puts the game back on my radar.

edited 16th Mar '18 12:38:49 PM by Lavaeolus

Plus the obligatory "But EA said they couldn't just do cosmetic microtransactions!" becomes funny with the recent backpedalling.

I mean, for all the crap I give it, I like this game. I play it with my bois and gal and we have fun, particularly with Heroes vs Villains.

I'll need to check the full deets, but I will second mocking EA's rolling back on their comments. They are not just greedy, they lack integrity in their greed.