Star Wars BattleANTICLIMAX

But it isn't actually spyware. They're just getting info about you and your pc for "research". I don't have a problem with the principle, but their execution was pretty bad. It eats bandwidth like free donuts.

You can turn it off also...

They're also apparently bringing more options into the OS to modify the existing setup. As on-topic as this is.

Guess what the reaction was?

MICROSOFT HAS TOO MANY OPTIONS IN WINDOWS, TRIES TO CONFUSE USERS.

Stacked quote, sorry, at least it's all related!

Gorbles, your counter argument is primarily that we don't know what the DLC will include, and whether it will actually carry the value it's been assigned by EA. Which is pretty much standard: its our burden to prove the point. However, I feel that there is more evidence that the pricing scheme is taking advantage of the buyers. In fact, I feel that the DLC is becoming a scam: make minimalistic base game that looks and feels great, charge for more content 4-5 times, at least 1 of which should've been included, and now they're making a huge profit. They've done this for multiple games, which suggest that this is simply the norm now. I think Mered hits the point well about the regular increases. perhaps they do give out 100% more content, but that means we're looking at up to 10 DLCs for one game! That means that you have up to 10 different player bases that have been separated by a pay-wall, assuming that some of the DLC's don't end up being lumped together, of course.* It's a very flawed system, and it works great because regular, smaller purchases definitely appeal to more people (and are more affordable) than a few larger purchases.

As for the actual value of the game, I don't think that it's at a AAA quality. It's awesome that the game looks so good, but while experience developers are worth more, they also spend less time which helps offset the costs to a degree. There really isn't very much to the game. Battlefront II had more content than this looks like it'll have, and it looked good (not as good as this, I'll admit) when it was released. Battlefield had more content than this, and it's graphical fidelity was great for it's time, just as CoD:MW and Cod:MW2 did, once again, with more content. Perhaps the final release will have significantly more content (I hope for double), and if it does then all of these doubts can be thrown right out the window.

When did they start working on it? I mean when does their coding time-line begin (not planning stages)? I bet that it wasn't very long ago. Throw a whole bunch of programmers on it, get it done very rapidly, but the money spent by having extra takes away from the actual game, resulting in a fast development cycle that produces decent, but over-all bland games.

*Eh, disregard that, I misread it.

Disclaimer: this could be a long post, sorry if I end up making it too long.

1. I can do nothing that convinces you to feel anything different about DICE's products and EA's business practises. I've tried very hard to avoid doing anything like that - as much as I champion games, defend specific developers, etc, at the end of the day I just want people to make up their own mind. It's what I do, and I honestly think the world would be better off for it if a few more people thought for themselves more instead of relying on bulk opinions of <insert community or personality cult here>

2. We do not know how minimalistic the base game will be. We don't. You're free to assume that it will be, and I urge you to wait for reviews before buying (I definitely want the game, but due to funds, etc I probably will only be able to get it by Christmas, so I'm waiting either way, hah) . . . but that doesn't add up to much now especially after they granted us an open beta with three game modes unlocked (and many, many more visible). By comparison, you could argue that BF4's beta was equally-impressive . . . but BF4 wasn't played by as many players (Battlefront, for the record, was EA's most popular beta ever with 90 million players). The server tech is more reliable (thankfully). The game runs fantastically. These are the two major points when running a beta (that BF4 didn't help expose, unfortunately). The amount of game content? We could see it all in there, whited out. There was no indication what DLC (if any) was needed to access any of that content. For every assumption that most of those games modes require DLC, there is an equal and opposite assumption that none of them do, and DLC will simply add more into the mix.

3. There is no indication there won't be smaller, individual purchases. A Season Pass is a way to acquire it all at once, usually for a discounted price (logistically this makes sense, there will always be a markup per-package on any product, digital or physical, and combining multiple packages into one reduces the cost of the markup).

It's also a business strategy to lock in revenue before the content is actually distributed, of course. The former is a consumer benefit, the latter is a publisher / investor benefit. The developers, um, suffer regardless, haha

4. What do you consider AAA quality? How much content hits this kind of mark? The problem with setting "AAA" or "AA" development by the amount of content produced doesn't follow through - all the AAA designator means is that the developers work with a certain budget more than anything else. The AA tier has (more recently) been used to describe talent that doesn't get the funding AAA development gets (seriously, look at how much Destiny cost) but is still miles ahead of indie and similar development. A good example of this would be THQ's portfolio prior to their collapse.

This game is bleeding-edge. I use this rarely. The Witcher 3 is a beautiful, high-end game. Mass Effect 3 was, for its time (and has held up quite well, hair and eyeballs aside). The new Battlefront is above both of those (or at least equal with the Witcher's open world tech), and more besides. It benefits from experienced developers working with an optimised Frostbite engine, absolutely. But that doesn't diminish the achievements within. Just because DICE are good at what they do, doesn't mean they don't deserve praise for it. The game is a visual masterpiece, and even the UI is relatively polished (personally they could do with some work around the popups and confirmation buttons, but that's just me).

Did you not see all the whited out gameplay modes? The five or six addition tiers of difficulty the SP / co-op invasion game mode had (nevermind the different maps)? There is content there. Estimating development time is a fool's errand - I have no idea about your experience with software development, management or anything of the kind, but what I've learned from several years developing software (and systems) clients frequently dramatically-underestimate everything. Do you think the netcode came together easily? Regardless of their improvements during BF4's lifecycle (the bubble-network mechanic they implemented to deal with latency for individual players on the server, etc) . . . this is a new product. A new base, sharing only the game engine (which is a decent chunk, sure) - but even that will have been modified. I sincerely doubt the rendering engine in BF4 was ported without a hitch and worked immediately with some of the things on display (snow deformation on Hoth being an easy one; the sun scatter reflection on the snow probably needed implementing too). And that's just the renderer. There's optimising network traffic for the different data coming through, optimising pathing for the way maps might work differently (and jet packs, let's not forget them).

This is stuff I'm only familiar with, so I could be getting details wrong. I main in software, server and web development. I study and develop games code on the side, in my spare time. I only have some experience with Unity, and a little with Unreal. Most of my code is about building stuff from scratch (yeah, it's one of the "never do that" things, I know). This isn't a "hah look at me", this is more a "this is the extent of my knowledge and how I acquired it, so hopefully people might listen more than they would some other random post on the Internet"

.... .... *face-through-lap to desk* .... ...

At the end of the day, @Gorbles , I see EA doing the regular scummy EA things all over again. That's waht I'm seeing. Is the gameplay terrible? Depends on what you like. I personally am not sure about the vehicle gameplay, but I like the gunplay. Is it the next trendsetter? Not really - it's a throwback to older games and how they played. And it's great in the regard. It's not super unique, though.

I have plenty of ammo with which to shotgun the Battlefront Beta's gameplay. I can't speak for the final game yet, but that's only a month away. However, the trend that EA is setting here is lining up with their previous habits regarding pricing and DLC. It's terrible and predictable, and it won't be stopping until EA goes out of business.

Just liker burgers: It always looks better in the pictures than it does in front of you.

Yeah, I hate no time for the EA hate train these days. It's five years too late and fantastically inaccurate. Ubisoft's a more popular target these days, and I still don't understand why Valve gets the benefit of the doubt for doing everything of the above and more

EA has been doing this since Day One and they continue to do so. Ubisoft has been publicly humiliated at least twice for **** games at a high price. No developer is going to make that mistake again, especially Ubisoft.

I'm not letting anyone off the hook here - it's EA and DICE's product, so I'm obviously focused on them.

Remember when this thread was about that new Battlefront game? Haha, good times...

But EA IS BATTLEFRONT. AND DICE IS EVIL.

*aliens*

More like Star Wars BattleTRIPE.

Yarr me matey, we be not recruiting, but if ya'd tell th' copyright 'n trade agreement people that thar not we'come, i'd 'preciate it.

Edit for more pirate. Edit for phone not getting the hint.

Things started out kinda hopeful and then got burned like rubber on a racetrack. Holy crap, EA.

What a terrible game.