What it should have been.........

[UglyandHasty]

EA and Dice are actually doing with the Battlefield community what CA could have done. That show respect for the customers, those who pay for the game.




There has been a new community update posted over at the Battlefield: Vietnam website with information important for any budding BF2 mod teams. Here is the scoop:

Calling all BF2 Mod Team Leaders
Over the last couple of months, EA and DICE have seen several mod teams declare their intent to develop content for the Battlefield 2 engine. Some of these teams come from successful Battlefield 1942 and Vietnam teams and others are starting fresh. Well, whether your team is on .45 of its Battlefield 1942 mod, or have never touched the current Mod Development Toolkit, EA and DICE want to get to know your team and your big plans for BF2.

By providing this information, you will help us understand your strengths (and where we might be able to provide support) and also help us promote your mods down the road as they near release. As you've seen, we love to talk about successful Mod Teams in this space, and we will be doing even more of this for Battlefield 2.

Here's what we would like to know. Please provide as much detail as you feel is necessary. Note: Even if you have been in contact with someone at EA or DICE previously (or talk with one of us every day), we would appreciate it if you provided this information to us, anyway.


Mod Name Mod Concept (i.e. is it Battlefield in Korea, or is it something like giant robots duking it out on other worlds)

Big Idea (what will be your killer feature? This may be the same as your concept)

Mod Team Lead and Members (please provide the following information for each member of your team, with as much detail as you see fit)

Nickname

Real-world Location (US and Canada: city, state/province; Europe and Asia: city, country)

Specialties (scripter, mapper, skinner, etc)

Previous mod experience (preferably with a few specific examples of content created -- i.e. maps mapped, models modelled, skins created, objects scripted, etc.)

Link to Mod Home Page

Mod Team E-mail Address

Please send this info to bfhq@ea.com with subject line "Battlefield 2 Mod Team - (your mod's name here)

Thanks to all who agree to share this information with us. We look forward to learning about your team and speaking with each of you on a one-on-one basis.

EAComMike and the rest of the Battlefield team!


Not a chance to see this with CA. No offense intend, but i am much more willing to spend my money on game with that kind of support, than to a game with the support we all know.

Well that was my rant of the week, sorry i am so disapointed by RTW mp...

[Tamur]

Having dealt with EA on a professional level, I have to doubt their sincerity. They're 1) looking to add to their cheap GA/scripter hire pool, and 2) looking to gain bottom line by cutting their dev costs. With their turnover rate it's no wonder. EA never take actions that are for others' benefit, period.

And yes, this could possibly be viewed as a cynical post.

[Sin Qua Non]

I'd say you're correctly cynical, Tamur. CA seems to give a good amount of advice and counsel, and while they could give more, too much support can also hurt modding efforts as well.

And about EA... let's just say that EA has the "dubious" vice.

[UglyandHasty]

I dont know Tamur. But i doubt they want to "steal" fan ideas. One clanmates of mine, who's in DCX team, believe they really want to help mod team with technical help. We will know soon enough, as we may begin our own mod for BF2. Anyway that is what, is in my opinion, respect for the fan base and the modders who help a game gain in longevity. Did anyone hear just of beta-tester for RTW ? As for helping modders, i can see CA employees here once in a while, all to their credits, but did you hear any "corporate" news for CA, or any "corporate" decision to help modders ??

[Colovion]

Well in the end 'using the modders" helps both the fans and the devs - and EA knows that. The fans get better mods quicker when they have that kind of support and EA will sell more product when there are more replayability options (like Counterstrike and Halflife). EA just wants their FPS to start to rival HL2.

[Akka]

If I understand correctly, EA is using modders to make the game free of charge, a game they will then sell to people and put their intellectual copyright on it ?

[Colovion]

If I understand correctly, EA is using modders to make the game free of charge, a game they will then sell to people and put their intellectual copyright on it ?

exactly, sans the selling - they'll sell the base game probably with advertisements talking about the mods the game has

[Nerouin]

I don't know if any of you played Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, but EA's support of the game left something to be desired (assuming patching was not outsourced). There were two patches in the game, both in the first two months. After this, a massive glitch in the game allowing one to see through walls was found and posted all over the online community, however EA announced they were done patching the game and did nothing about it.

That was a real shame.

[Spino]

Thanks to the ground laid by Id with their Doom & Quake games and the phenomenal long term success of Valve's Half Life via Counter Strike and other mods it seems the rest of the industry is finally waking up and taking notice.

EA, being the corporate monolith of gaming, stuck to its 'f--k the modding community' guns for the longest time and were absolute bastards for their withholding of the SDK for the Medal of Honor games. Countless fans were screaming for user made MP maps, let alone mods, and EA did nothing. As if Valve's jaw dropping success with Half Life and Counter Strike wasn't enough to motivate EA to follow suit! Fortunately someone in EA eventually got a clue and Battlefield 1942's moddability produced one of the best mods of all time, Desert Combat. I wonder how many people bought BF1942 just to play that mod?

The good news is modding has become so widespread that publishers who discourage modding risk becoming the odd man. Furthermore they risk watching their investment jeopardizing the long terms sales of any given game by This situation is worsened if a competitor publisher releases a similar game that IS moddable. Modding also gives the opportunity for the community to fix bugs, balance issues and implement new features that the publisher would ordinarily have to devote time and money into implementing in a patch. Despite the risks and headaches associated with releasing a mod friendly game it really is a win/win situation for developers and publishers.

[ChaosLord]

From the sounds of it EA wants to find a few likely/good sounding mods and help the teams get them ready to go with the intial release of the game. So they can both provide mods from the getgo, and seem to be like they're supporting the community. It seems likely that they're doing it to help them compete with HL2, dunno if it'll work though.

I suppose I sound cynical as well, but look at what modding support they offered when BF1942 came out and after and you'll understand why.

But anyway, i've gone kind of off-topic. If CA tried to do something similar the game would have probably been delayed any longer, or shipped in a worse state. They/Activision just don't have the resources EA/Dice can toss around to do that sort of thing.

[TheDuck]

Thanks to the ground laid by Id with their Doom & Quake games and the phenomenal long term success of Valve's Half Life via Counter Strike and other mods it seems the rest of the industry is finally waking up and taking notice.

EA, being the corporate monolith of gaming, stuck to its 'f--k the modding community' guns for the longest time and were absolute bastards for their withholding of the SDK for the Medal of Honor games. Countless fans were screaming for user made MP maps, let alone mods, and EA did nothing. As if Valve's jaw dropping success with Half Life and Counter Strike wasn't enough to motivate EA to follow suit! Fortunately someone in EA eventually got a clue and Battlefield 1942's moddability produced one of the best mods of all time, Desert Combat. I wonder how many people bought BF1942 just to play that mod?

The good news is modding has become so widespread that publishers who discourage modding risk becoming the odd man. Furthermore they risk watching their investment jeopardizing the long terms sales of any given game by This situation is worsened if a competitor publisher releases a similar game that IS moddable. Modding also gives the opportunity for the community to fix bugs, balance issues and implement new features that the publisher would ordinarily have to devote time and money into implementing in a patch. Despite the risks and headaches associated with releasing a mod friendly game it really is a win/win situation for developers and publishers.

According to the BF1942 modding community, BF1942 is not set up for modding at all. Its just that the folks that did Desert Combat are very very good at figuring stuff out. EAs support for modding in that game was the same as all other EA games. Dismal.

EA has a 'stabilize and pump' philosophy of software distribution. They get the games so that they are relatively stable, but don't concern themselves with 'tuning' issues. For single player games this generally means they keep selling those games until they are superceded in some fundamental way by a better game.

For multiplayer games, it means that they have a very limited shelf life (because once multiplayer communities discover that one team is stronger or one type of playing is stronger (i.e. imbalanced) they tend to lose interest). This is why Starcraft and Warcraft 3 are so ever-popular, but CnC Generals is losing ground. Starcraft is still being sold, 8 years after its release.

With single player gaming, keeping sales alive is the name of the game, and that means stability and a reasonably fun game. Add ons help, but add ons don't get anywhere near as much revenue as original releases.

With multiplayer gaming, keeping sales alive is more about 'fair and balanced' along with (possibly) 'extensible'. EA sucks at that model. I think the only reason that BF1942 was so successful was that DICE pretty much got it right very quickly after release, it was a very good new concept in shooters, and the modding community for it just rocks (these were folks that cut their teeth on figuring out Quake 1 and Quake 2 modding, when modding was extremely difficult due to how games were packaged).

The games that get the whole model right are: Warcraft 3, Starcraft, QuakeX, UT/2003/2004, and I'm sure a few others. Those games are built around either 'balancing' combat models or 'extensibility'. It would almost be better if EA didn't even include a multiplayer component in MOH and games of its ilk. They just don't do the right things to support those communities... They are fun, to be sure... but they will never be the stellar successes that they could be given some support. And don't get me wrong, I don't think EA is 'bad' for not doing this. Their production/sales model has made them huge, and I still buy/play their games!

Cool if they are trying, but trying isn't succeeding, so I'm not holding my breath. To me they are still 'stabilize and pump'. I like their games and play them, but don't overly expect support other than 'it won't crash on my system'. And I can tell you I haven't played any of their games for more than a year, which is simply not the case with games like MTW, STW, Quake, UT, Age of Empires 2, Starcraft, and Half-Life and its mods (counter-strike for instance). Those games are just phenomenal (for various reasons)

[LordKhaine]

EA and Dice are actually doing with the Battlefield community what CA could have done. That show respect for the customers, those who pay for the game.

I saw this line and laughed. Anyone in the BF1942 scene would do the same. The current batlefield games have frankly laughable support for mods, and the engine had an insanely large amount of restrictions on what you could do. Call me cynical, but I don't see much hope for moddablity in BF2. It's simply EA trying to repair damage it did before due to the BF1942/BFV engine being highly mod unfriendly. One can only hope their next moves to help mod teams will prove more useful than the tools they (eventually) put out for BF1942. And who made the modding tools for BF1942? you guessed it... a mod team, not the game devs.

If you wanted to give an example of a dev team who supports modding well, you could of given many many better examples (Epic, ID...etc)

[Khorak]

EA is a gaming giant. It's huge. It's rich. A project like this looks good and is, financially, absolute freaking peanuts to them. It also has the possibility of extending the life and sales of their game like Counterstrike did with Half Life if they're lucky.

Then you have Creative Assembly, a company which is funded entirely by the Total War series of games and some obscure Rugby games. Total War does well, it doesn't do THAT well. Creative Assembly don't have staff and money falling out their bloody ears so they're very limited in what they can do for you in the way of supporting the community.

EA have sod all respect for you, which doesn't matter because people are still loading them with cash for a new sports game no different to the predecessors every single year like some horrific machine of sporting capitalisation. Hold me, I'm scared.

EDIT: Oh and EA are the publishers. They can give time out for this. If Creative Assembly asked Activision if they could do this the response would have been 'get back in your cubicle and finish my cash cow you filthy whore'.

[UglyandHasty]

I could have given better example, but i had this one under hand. Just to show a game under develloppement that was planning for a community. It may be just PR stuff, it may fail, time will tell. But at least they are doing something. Dont tell me CA is a small company that dont make enough and dont have staff to support community. Paradox a much smaller company, is giving a much better support.

I have buy Shogun, Shogun WE MI, MTW. Poort support, then i have buy a patch delux, Viking Invasion. I was expecting a little better for RTW. Just the way they have piss on the internet gaming community is a shame. Where are their promise of giving tools for the modding community ? Still thinking on it ?

[JeromeGrasdyke]

Paradox a much smaller company, is giving a much better support.

For the record, Paradox is about the same size as CA, and possibly slightly larger, judging from the company mugshot on their website.

[UglyandHasty]

Might be Jerome. Ah well never mind my rant, i am just so disapointed by the MP side. Dont get me wrong, RTW is a good game, but in SP. Last 2 years, TW games MP was my bread and water. I am starving right now .............

[Akka]

I still fail to see how this make acceptable your agressivity and rudeness toward CA.
You could have made these complaints politely and respectfully.

[Lord Ovaat]

Again, no offense meant to anyone, but this game is designed single player with mp as an option. This is a campaign game. And I'm sure the vast, vast majority of buyers will never attempt mp. We just never hear from the "silent majority". They generally don't frequenst forums, whereas, multiplayers do. Squeeky wheel? The devs will never recoupe their investment with the mp market. It must appeal--and sell to--the single player. My favorite online game is also published by Activision, Call of Duty and it's expansion. I bet the production cost difference between COD and RTW is staggering. COD's single player is good, but very short. It is meant for the mp market. And it does that very well. I believe if CA puts all of their patching effort into mp, they may end up losing their shirts. Again, this isn't meant to create any annomosity, just a purely commercial observation.

[UglyandHasty]

Spending more than 200 $ over 3 years is a good enough reason to voice my displeasure. I didn't say anything rude, or impolite. Or maybe when i say they piss on us ? Well haven't you feel the drop fell when you bought RTW ?

[Khorak]

I could have given better example, but i had this one under hand. Just to show a game under develloppement that was planning for a community. It may be just PR stuff, it may fail, time will tell. But at least they are doing something. Dont tell me CA is a small company that dont make enough and dont have staff to support community. Paradox a much smaller company, is giving a much better support.

Paradox is a much smaller company that is also working with a far simpler game engine they have been rehashing over and over and over and over and over. Plus, it's just an outright lie that their support is better. I've played their games and I've been to the forums on many occasions, their games are never released completed. They have to patch the hell out of their games after release simply so they bloody work properly, and it's the mod community who actually do anything to add to the game, a community that isn't helped at all by Paradox, only by the simplicity of the scripting system and engine which Paradox still somehow manage to screw up with each new game and patch.

I have buy Shogun, Shogun WE MI, MTW. Poort support, then i have buy a patch delux, Viking Invasion. I was expecting a little better for RTW. Just the way they have piss on the internet gaming community is a shame. Where are their promise of giving tools for the modding community ? Still thinking on it ?

They just spent years busting their nuts creating an entirely new engine from scratch. Two engines effectively, the campaign map and the battlemap. And you expect them to have furnished us with modding tools and patches aplenty and you even mention an expansion pack there, in just a few weeks.

Their support isn't crap, your attitude is.

[Lord Ovaat]

Spending more than 200 $ over 3 years is a good enough reason to voice my displeasure.

Your telling me that you have gotten over three years of enjoyment for the paltry sum of $200, and you're complaining? Friend, how much did you spend on other forms of amusement that came and went almost unnoticed? I used to have a friend who fished at least two, three times a week, all year long. AND complained about the high cost of the $25 license. I never was able to get him to see the irony in that. Maybe the forums enable us to complain too easily. I'm never completely satisfied, either, but this is still a great game.

[UglyandHasty]

The MP side of RTW is a shame, they did create a new game, but they still had lots of experience with their previous games concerning multiplayer. Ever try to play RTW online ? If you don't fell out of sync, get lost in the horrible lobby, you can loose anytime to any cheaters without ever knowing it(of course experienced players will sniff them out). They should have remove multiplayer mention behind the box. It would have been less disappointing. As for the modding tool, that was a CA statement, not mine.

And yes, 200$ is a good enough reason to voice my displeasure. As most bugs or complaints could have been avoid with a less corporate policy. If they had choose 10 beta-tester before the release in this community, well known vets(not me i am the ever noobi), they would have been warn of countless bugs. Especially on the MP side.

I have shut up when they release Shogun, i have shut up when they release MTW, i wont shut up now they have release RTW.

And as said above, i am not firing those who actually work on the game, i fire at CA as a corporation! Expect to have a super-patch for RTW release as an expansion pack.

[Catiline]

Dear EA,

Please sign me up to your targeted marketing database...

[The Scourge]

Again, no offense meant to anyone, but this game is designed single player with mp as an option. This is a campaign game. And I'm sure the vast, vast majority of buyers will never attempt mp. We just never hear from the "silent majority". They generally don't frequenst forums, whereas, multiplayers do. Squeeky wheel? The devs will never recoupe their investment with the mp market. It must appeal--and sell to--the single player. My favorite online game is also published by Activision, Call of Duty and it's expansion. I bet the production cost difference between COD and RTW is staggering. COD's single player is good, but very short. It is meant for the mp market. And it does that very well. I believe if CA puts all of their patching effort into mp, they may end up losing their shirts. Again, this isn't meant to create any annomosity, just a purely commercial observation.

Cod is also my favorite online game as well ,because it's just so easy to get into.A click and you're into it.
RTW on the other hand ,I have to say are not very newbie friendly at all in my experience.
My attempt at getting a game the other day was a little frustrating ,as every time I clicked on a game ,it asked for a password.
So maybe the community should be doing their bit as well ,and being a bit more open to the outside world.
Seemed a good opportunity to get that rant in.

[Nerouin]

The MP side of RTW is a shame, they did create a new game, but they still had lots of experience with their previous games concerning multiplayer. Ever try to play RTW online ? If you don't fell out of sync, get lost in the horrible lobby, you can loose anytime to any cheaters without ever knowing it(of course experienced players will sniff them out). They should have remove multiplayer mention behind the box. It would have been less disappointing. As for the modding tool, that was a CA statement, not mine.

And yes, 200$ is a good enough reason to voice my displeasure. As most bugs or complaints could have been avoid with a less corporate policy. If they had choose 10 beta-tester before the release in this community, well known vets(not me i am the ever noobi), they would have been warn of countless bugs. Especially on the MP side.

I have shut up when they release Shogun, i have shut up when they release MTW, i wont shut up now they have release RTW.

And as said above, i am not firing those who actually work on the game, i fire at CA as a corporation! Expect to have a super-patch for RTW release as an expansion pack.

Your name fits well your attitude.

[Haido]

I myself have played with a top10 clan in Battlefield 1942 and briefly played BF: Vietnamn. I would rate EA support to the game community it would be somewhere on the negative scale.

[ah_dut]

Dear EA,

Please sign me up to your targeted marketing database...

And sign up Elmo and the other MP vets as well.

[Colovion]

I knew this thread would turn into this.

"THe game is disapointing to me."

- 'SHUT UP NO IT ISN"T!'

yadda yadda yadda

I'm disapointed with parts of the game as well.

[Akka]

I knew this thread would turn into this.

"THe game is disapointing to me."

- 'SHUT UP NO IT ISN"T!'

yadda yadda yadda

I'm disapointed with parts of the game as well.

I'm disappointed with parts of the game as well, too.
I agree there is flaws in the game.
I agree we should voice them.
I agree that CA should take notice.
But I disagree when it's done with such a childish attitude as UglyandHasty.

There is a saying : "the more you give, the more they ask".
Fits well here.

That someone says "the games is lacking that here, this point disappoint me, and this is flawed because A and B", is good.
That he says "OMFG I'VE BEEN ROBBED, THERE IS SOMETHING NOT WORKING AS I WOULD LIKE TOO, I FEEL PISSED UPON, IT'S A SCANDALE !", is not.