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[FrenchMovieTheme]

i posted ridiculous problems with EA's madden online leagues @ Maddenmania.com last night. they deleted it today. so i reposted, and here it is:
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i posted last night about this, apparently bringing up legit concerns and complaints isn't allowed if it's against EA.

the jist of the post was the following:

Online leagues are bent, broken, and an overall FAILURE thus far and here's why:

1. You cannot have private leagues. Anyone can join your league regardless of whether they are on the invite list or not.

2. You cannot boot people out of your league. Have a deadbeat or someone you dont want in? Too bad.

3. The scheduling is shoddy at best. Sometimes teams end up with 2 or even 3 bye weeks, even though (as the commish) you elected to have ONE and only one bye week per team.


So, to recap, Dodge is PAYING EA to have this premium service, and here are the "premium" services we have received:

- WORSE player stat-tracking than in madden 2004 for PS2 (last year you could see your defense against the run, pass, overall, as well as your offense, and other categories. This year you get the bare-minimum)
- NO premium tournaments with individual homepage
- NO competent and well rounded leagues

That is what we have received so far. EA delayed the leagues for what? I'm not trying to get in trouble with the mods here, I know EA probably puts pressure on you to keep the EA "bashing" (even though these are legit concerns) to a minimum, but when you allow companies to jerk you around like this guess what? they're going to continue to jerk you around until you stand up for yourself and say no more

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everyone knows i like EA's games, i love madden football etc etc. but this is fucking bullshit dudes. you put up a front like you are cock of the walk, you produce games and features consumers want, and you satisfy your customers. no you dont EA. you are full of shit. here is a list of the transgressions EA has had in the past half year alone:

1. Released MVP Baseball on PS2. the game was shoddy as fuck online, and had bad franchise bugs. Strike 1

2. Released the worst football game of the past 3 years, NCAA 2005. the icing on the fuck you cake was that the Xbox port was actually INFERIOR to the ps2 version! give me a break, strike 2

3. You announce online leagues. Then, you tell us you are GETTING PAID BY DODGE TO DO IT. ok, stop right there. you are fucking receiving money from dodge to put up this service. so, not only do you delay launch until the "launch of the regular football season", but you also say there will be NO online leagues for NBA live or any other ea sports game! strike 3

4. YOU delay madden leagues again and again, finally come out with it, and its a piece of shit. its buggy, its missing features, its ugly. who spent time on bug testing this garbage? strike 4, shouldn't you be out?

anyways long story short fuck off EA. i wont stop buying madden, but no way in fuck am i touching any of your other games unless they are extraordinary (that includes NBA live and any other game you have coming down the pike). Sega pulls off online leagues FOR FREE, and has them up within days of launch, and you can't get them working decently in 2 months? what a joke

 

[Ramirez]

OMG,YOU ARE TEH BIAS!!!

LoL

Yea it does suck,but I'm about to the point where I've stopped caring about these companies "online promises"

 

[DMczaf]

Preach on!

 

[bishoptl]

lotta orange folks in that pic

 

[Ramirez]

"But I thought we had something special FMT? *sniff*"

 

[DJ Demon J]

anyways long story short fuck off EA. i wont stop buying madden, but no way in fuck am i touching any of your other games unless they are extraordinary (that includes NBA live and any other game you have coming down the pike).

You're comments about Madden's shitty online comments mean nothing to EA, as long as you say that. Vote with your wallet if you want them to change their ways.

 

[Ghost]

"Sorry you'll have to speak up, all the money you gave me is muffling your voice"

 

[The Faceless Master]

anyways long story short fuck off EA

very next sentence...

i wont stop buying madden

joke thread?

 

[dskillzhtown]

Well...the solution for EA is to have an actual Online Division and stop just tacking the online component on the games. Sports games have a short enough development time without having to think about online play as well. Devoting an entire group to interface with each dev team could be a way to improve the online component. Also the online components will actually be even on each game.

But in the Madden situation, the leagues were always planned to come later after the release of the game, as was the Premium Pass. While I think it is a cop out, I am sure the hurricanes did affect the work schedule atleast a bit. And as I told you on AIM, part of the team is working on NBA Street 2.

Who has gotten the online component right in sports games, no one. Sony's sports games supposedly had the best online set-up, though hardly no one played it. I am thinking lessons learned with SOCOM helped alot. Maybe if the companies made money off of online gaming, then maybe they would care. If more people actually played, then maybe problems would be worked out. The best thing to do is to go to Tiburon's website and send them an e-mail. They actually read the e-mails if they are written with some maturity and not littered with "F this, F that."

 

[FrenchMovieTheme]

its not a joke, when i say i wont stop buying madden i mean in the sense that no one else steps up. if its going to be ESPN vs Madden every year, im going to buy both. but truth be told, now thinking back on that statement, i could envision NOT buying madden if ESPN improves enough in the polish department. i enjoy both games a lot, and the fact is Sega at least has a decent, functional online league system up.

 

[Cloudy]

Sega will also delete negative rantings about their games from their forums. I remember telling you EA would do they same after you got banned from espnvideogames.com. Can you really blame them? :lol

 

[Drey1082]

well said:

You also forgot the rediculous fatigue/formation shift glitch. That pisses me off to no end that they barely acknowledge it exists. (turning fatigue off behind the scenes while it still appears to be on... lame)

 

[Fifty]

Great post.

 

[Mrbob]

Who has gotten the online component right in sports games, no one. Sony's sports games supposedly had the best online set-up, though hardly no one played it.

Well, Sega has ironed out most of their online bugs and the servers are pretty damn good and responsive right now. Plus the league integration between the ESPNvideogames website and online through PS2/Xbox is well thought out. Plus it tracks an arseload of individual stats.

Between leagues and the fatigue glitch, madden is not having a good year.....

*insert sales data here*

Remember, this is how powerhouses fall. By having many glaring mistakes.

 

[Cloudy]

Plus it tracks an arseload of individual stats.

And even more on the XBL stats screen. I dunno how anyone can say no one has got it right yet. For no fee on top off the budget price, what Sega is offering now is as good as it's gonna get...

 

[dskillzhtown]

Well...I am willing to give EA a few weeks to get the leagues working correctly. As Mr. Bob points out, it has taken this long for Sega to get the leagues working and they have the most history in sports online than anyone. I am just happy the shit is free for now. But I do agree that Tiburon really needs to step it up next season to have everything ready at or near release.

I really do wish EA would create some online standards for it's games across the board. The online offerings vary too much from game to game.

 

[Musashi Wins!]

EA is dialing it in this year with their regular sports franchises. And I say this as both a fan of their games and with the realization that Madden still plays a better game (single player) than Sega. Most of their engines and attention to sim detail have a huge leap on the competition but I doubt it will last much longer. I sincerely hope they don't spend one more year releasing minor upgrades to their games. Their online is pretty bad and almost every regular sport title was in reality a minor tweak with stupid additions meant to draw attention away from the fact that the games basically play and look the same (not a horrible thing mind you). The exception was baseball and that game was broken. NBA Live looks pretty poor and the All-Star Weekend is minor at best.

Next year needs a jump up like so many of their extreme franchises receive.

 

[FrenchMovieTheme]

konex, i didn't post that message on EASports.com, i posted it at maddenmania.com which isn't an official EA website.


they deleted my 2nd post as well.

 

[DMczaf]

konex, i didn't post that message on EASports.com, i posted it at maddenmania.com which isn't an official EA website.


they deleted my 2nd post as well.

 

[Eggo]

anyways long story short fuck off EA. i wont stop buying madden

You tell em!

 

[john2kx]

You bought madden.. I don't think EA cares what you say at this point.

 

[FrenchMovieTheme]

they should care. there are people on the edge of whether to buy madden or not, and when people read about shit like this why spend $50 on it? yeah, EA got my $50, and EA is going to get $50 from a lot of people, but no company likes bad word of mouth out for their company. sooner or later EA is going to realize they can't just put up a bullshit front and get away with it forever.

 

[Lil' Dice]

That's what happens when you hype up a game to no end. You shitted on ESPN during it's first few weeks out, and were riding EA's jock in hopes of fooling yourselves into thinking you'd be more satisfied with their offering, that you raised your expectations to an impossible level.

 

[Cloudy]

konex, i didn't post that message on EASports.com, i posted it at maddenmania.com which isn't an official EA website.

Yeah but still your post will just cause arguments on the boards. It's not that they're trying to censor, they just don't want flamewar threads on their site...

 

[FrenchMovieTheme]

it's not even a flamewar man, there is nothing to debate. i'm stating FACTS.

FACT, online leagues are broken
FACT, they delayed it for a broken league anyways
FACT, EA has ignored the fatigue problem etc

these are all facts, not up for debate on the legitimacy of the arguments. i could EVEN understand if they simply MOVED the thread into the "technical difficulties" or "online leagues" section of the website, but to completely remove it says that EA has their cocks in maddenmanias ears and wont allow them to hear anything bad.

also, how are these facts i state anymore "flaming" than someone who posts "WHY DOES EA ALWAYS TAKE FEATURES OUT!?" or "it is impossible to run in this game!" (both topics that were not deleted)? if maddenmania wants to live in a gumdrop house on lollypop lane thats their business. but they are on my "joke sports website" list along with operation sports ("Nope friends! i see no slowdown in the xbox version of ncaa! go ea go!")

 

[FrenchMovieTheme]

That's what happens when you hype up a game to no end. You shitted on ESPN during it's first few weeks out, and were riding EA's jock in hopes of fooling yourselves into thinking you'd be more satisfied with their offering, that you raised your expectations to an impossible level.

whoa dude you are jumping the gun. madden is superior to ESPN in the gameplay department, which is key for me. i am complaining (and venting) about the lack of support, the empty promises, and the sloppy "execution" of promised online features by EA. i shit on espn its first few weeks because it was a fucking joke. the default rosters (which we are playing with in the GAF League 1) with EQ off are STILL a fucking joke. but i will hand it to VC in that they listened to complaints, and fixed a lot of the problems people had.

there is still time for EA to redeem themselves. they need to right the situation by fixing these problems once and for all instead of giving us the better of two evils (for instance, the motion glitch vs. no fatigue).