SE5 bad reviews and problems.

Fyron · #1 November 1st, 2006, 11:07 PM

Xrati said:
The modders and "Hard CORE" players would have made excellent testers.

2/3 of the testers are modders and "hard-core" players, though. They were chosen well. The only ones that were not explicitly chosen are the ones that won the lottery, or that got a slot from the Race to SEV tournament.

For the record, it was far less than half that "flaked out..." Really only a few. There were a few that had to stop testing due to real life reasons, but there is nothing shameful about that (or foreseeable).

Atrocities · #2 November 1st, 2006, 11:21 PM

I have to agree with Fyron. There are over 11,000 posts in the beta forum in just over a year. This does not include the Chat sessions, Features DB, or emails to Aaron. The beta was officialy delayed once or twice do to RL issues but not for long. The beta testers were an exceptional bunch of dedicated people who spent a lot of their personal free time testing the game. Their efforts made the difference and if you were to ask Aaron about it, I am willing to bet my copy of SE V that he has nothing but good things to say about most of the beta testers.

I have been invovled in at least five beta tests now and by far this one has been the most productive of them all. Our suggestions and bug reports were acted upon by Aaron.

Aaron is only one man, and being steam rolled with bug reports, feature requests, suggestions, and other, does result in a more drawn out beta than if there were a team of programers working on the game. For one man, and a small beta test team, Aaron has done a wonderful job with SE V. The game will only continue to get better as the bug reports keep coming in. In a year I will bet we will all be very happy with this game and will even be discussing what we would like to see in an expansion pack.

This game has so much potential that it fills me with joy just thinking about it. And to actually make me fill optomisic enough to feel joy given the way my mind works, is truly a profound thing.

The more the bugs and dislikes about the game are reported in a constructive helpful manor, the better the game will ultimately become.

Captain Kwok · #3 November 2nd, 2006, 02:47 AM

The root of the problem is time. MM really needs a second person to handle things like game balance or documentation, so that Aaron can focus on the game engine rather than time-consuming tasks like manuals, tutorials, or balancing.

Is there enough money for this now? Is there someone at SFI that can work in this capacity? Does somebody want to pay me to do this?

Jeku · #4 November 2nd, 2006, 03:43 AM

"Oh I even forgot about the adware that watches what you do on the internet and gives you _IN GAME_ ads based on it, and they still charge you $50 which is outrageous for all the reasons listed above."

*Actually* this isn't true. There is no adware--- just a dirty rumour that got spread around pretty fast. I happen to work for EA so when I heard about this I was pretty infuriated, and didn't want to be mixed in with a company that would do this.

What it is, is when you play the game, a 3rd party company receives your IP, and sends your country name to the game, then destroys the IP. The game uses your country name *alone* to determine which in-game ads to show. This is so you don't get ads in different languages, etc.

There is no adware, and nothing that logs what sites your browse, etc. I just wish people did more research before further propagating this kind of rumour :-|

shinigami · #5 November 2nd, 2006, 08:25 AM

Quote:

Jeku said:
when you play the game, a 3rd party company receives your IP

Whether defined as adware or as spyware this practice is just plain wrong and if people stop buying their products in protest, tough, you reap what you sow. If they wanted to use in-game ads based on your country they could have pulled the regional settings from the registry.

Yimboli · #6 November 2nd, 2006, 10:09 AM

Quote:

shinigami said:

Quote:

Jeku said:
when you play the game, a 3rd party company receives your IP

Whether defined as adware or as spyware this practice is just plain wrong and if people stop buying their products in protest, tough, you reap what you sow. If they wanted to use in-game ads based on your country they could have pulled the regional settings from the registry.

do you view pulling registry settings as less invasive than getting the IP?

shinigami · #7 November 2nd, 2006, 11:13 AM

Lesser of two evils, yes. A program checking the registry is common practice. I would prefer that one did not do even that, though.

Suicide Junkie · #8 November 2nd, 2006, 11:18 AM

The third party thing is a big hole. You can't always trust the *maker* of the game these days, what with asinine stuff like starforce these days. God knows what a third party will do.

Besides, the IP address thing is less accurate anyways.
Especially for European stuff, where it is easy to drive to a new country with completely different language.

On the other hand, it is a given that the user can read whatever language their regional settings are set to. If you don't read Italian, your PC isn't going to be set to Italian, even if you're visiting Italy at the time.

Or, heck, you could let the user choose what language they want the ads in! You're already doing that for the game's UI, right?

The question of why there are ads in a game you already paid for anyways is a separate matter.

Tim_Ward · #9 November 2nd, 2006, 04:53 PM

Quote:

Jeku said:
"Oh I even forgot about the adware that watches what you do on the internet and gives you _IN GAME_ ads based on it, and they still charge you $50 which is outrageous for all the reasons listed above."

*Actually* this isn't true. There is no adware--- just a dirty rumour that got spread around pretty fast. I happen to work for EA so when I heard about this I was pretty infuriated, and didn't want to be mixed in with a company that would do this.

What it is, is when you play the game, a 3rd party company receives your IP, and sends your country name to the game, then destroys the IP. The game uses your country name *alone* to determine which in-game ads to show. This is so you don't get ads in different languages, etc.

There is no adware, and nothing that logs what sites your browse, etc. I just wish people did more research before further propagating this kind of rumour :-|

That is adware; software that downloads and displays ads. What you describe is spyware; software that logs users online behavior &c.

These people that don't do their research, eh?

Fyron · #10 November 2nd, 2006, 05:46 PM

The application is adware, since it serves up ads... But does it really matter? It is despicable either way.

(PS: It's not really necessary to quote entire posts like that, especially when you are only adding a sentence or two... Usually better to just pick a critical sentence or so to quote, cut out the rest.)