Musings on the Battlefield: LANCANG DAM BOYCOTT UPDATE! and DICE's CTE initiative FAN-FOCUSSED or FARCE?

My faithful readers will recall that back in June, I began my one-man boycott of the LANCANG DAM map because it had proven the most unreliable on my PS3. And by “unreliable” I mean a hard-reboot is a comin any time I drove a tank near a certain position on the map (see: http://amiddleagedgamer.blogspot.com/2014/06/i-am-not-insane-why-i-have-decided-to.html)

Then this past week, DICE released a giant 600+MB patch that was supposed to fix several bugs and issues on the PS3 as well as all the other platforms. I decided, the optimist that I am, to give the map a go, and well, what you see below happened, more than once.

Yeah, that patch thingy? Didn't work. Nope.

Normally I would pile on and tell you what a joke it is for a software company to still be releasing giant bug patches at this stage in their app's development, but it is clear from this past weekend’s 2x XP SNAFU that the boys and girls at DICE have got bigger problems than responding to my diatribe.

For those that may not have had the time or desire to play, the XP boost didn’t work at first. And then, after it started working, they still ran a banner stating that it wasn’t working. Eventually they put up a new banner that said DICE was going to “extend” the bonus round till 1 pm PST the following Monday, the 14^th.

It looked amateurish. It was evident from the ad hoc fashion they announced the bonus weekend and it’s related “Battlefest” initiative, that they were confident their systems were capable of handling the increased traffic and overall activity. Well, they were wrong and what was worse, their mishandling of the launch made them look inept.

Which leads us to the second topic on my agenda, the “CTE”.

The CTE, or Community Test Environment, was announced back in June on DICE’s Battlefield blog beneath the auspicious title, “The Road Ahead: Introducing the Community Test Environment.” Clearly motivated by the overwhelmingly negative response to the quality of the multiplayer experience across all platforms, the CTE was supposed to be an opportunity for, “passionate fans to evolve [the game]… and become part of the development process.”

EXCELLENT! A MARVELOUS RECOVERY FROM YOUR PAST SINS DICE! But wait…WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT IS ONLY FOR THE PC PLATFORM?!?!?!?!

Yep, and here is where the entire train goes off the rails …  again.

According to DICE, in spite of the glaring omission of all other platforms but PC, their “goal” is to apply what they learn during the CTE initiative to all platforms. In other words, they don’t want to put the effort into making their CTE into what it should be, a PLATFORM INDEPENDENT TEST ENVIRONMENT.

And that’s as simple as it gets.

“Are you suggesting that there can be no benefit derived from the CTE beyond improving the PC player experience?”

No. DICE has made it clear that their primary focus is on “Netcode”, otherwise known as the lines that drive the online experience. “Netcode” is, or at least should be, platform independent. But there’s the rub, “it SHOULD be.”

If there is anything that years and years of working as a programmer have taught me, it’s this, HARDWARE MATTERS. It does and DICE knows it. Come on, DICE KNOWS. They have programmers who were taught by some of the best in the world, and one of the first things you learn is that in a complex, HETEREOGENOUS, environment like for instance, AN ONLINE MULTIPLAYER, hardware differences cannot be ignored.

Sorry for all the tech jargon, that was a shot across the bow for the folks at DICE to let them know that I ain’t some rube from Kalamazoo. I know some stuff. For those that don’t understand what I wrote, here’s the Cliff notes version: the CTE is a farce, and the proof is in the pudding.

The first patch supposedly resulting from the CTE was released a month ago. Has anyone who uses the PS3, PS4, XBOX360, or XBOX1 experienced any significant improvements? I know I haven’t (see LANCANG DAM above).

In fact, I would be willing to bet that the PC community hasn’t either, but that’s not my point. My point is that DICE needs to recognize that their player community is not stupid. They can see through shoddy attempts to placate their growing dissatisfaction.

So here’s my advice to my people at DICE: Open the CTE to ALL PLATFORMS and ALL PLAYERS. You have the money to make it happen. Just call it “R/D” wink wink.

And STOP IT with all the announcements of how you’re all working so hard to make the game better. You don’t have to tell us, WE WILL KNOW it when the game is ACTUALLY better.

Next post I will share my feeling about the blessed “Revive and Survive” loadout and
HOW TO SCORE MAXIMUM POINTS WITHOUT JOINING A CLAN. Until then, happy hunting and don’t forget to come hang out with me in Dragon’s Teeth at PSN>JOHNDAVIDFLORES.