Sure.DoctorFruitloop wrote:
The piece of toilet paper is guaranteed to have no impact with EA at all, but given EA/DiCE's recent statement that they are setting up DiCE Live to monitor the opinions of the community and incorporate them into any decisions, the petition at least has a chance of doing some good.
Just to remind you:
It's the same EA/DICE that gave a man called Colin Clark a job as community manager who's job it has been to keep the community informed about the activities around BF2 regarding patches, fixes, news and other stuff. Did he do his job good? You can answer this question easily by checking how many updates there have been posted in the BF2 section of battlefield.ea.com in the last like 6 to 9 months and how many of them were actually vital (bugfixes, stability issues etc.) or... I'll be pollite and call that "of lower importance" (interview with {TA}Firestorm, tournaments etc.).
It's the same EA/DICE that had public beta testing of patch 1.4, that had numerous reports of glitches (and even videos of how to abuse them) and still didn't take care of at least a majority of problems.
It's the same EA/DICE that had several more or less public stages of beta testing for 2142 which resulted in several QUALIFIED and WELL WRITTEN and DETAILED reports of all the bugs, glitches and other problems that occured. Looking for some of those in the retail version just to find them again shows how much they actually cared about all that.
To clarify this: I'm not talking about the average pub n00bsmurf whining about this and that. I'm talking about experienced competetive players and beta testers that discovered stuff like the passable walls in the titan or other wall glitches already in /STAGE 1/ of the beta.
Not to forget: It's the same EA/DICE that ignored a petition signed by >10.000 players to give BF2 back the "squad hopping".
It doesn't take a "community live team" or whatever they call it to recognize and read a petition like that one or the bug reports from the competetive participants of the 2142 beta and to report about that to higher levels. It would only take a company that actually REALLY cares and does not only pretend to do. Ffs, they could have given a student a job for a few weeks to read those bug reports and excerpt the major and often mentioned problems.
As a matter of fact, they did not. They either didn't read them at all or did act upon what they read. Either way, they did not care.
To sum it up: EA and DICE both give a shit about their customers' opinion. I personally think we as customers have been very, very patient and given them a lot of credit. They owe us, not vice versa. I am definitely not willing to give them any more advance credit.
Before anyone starts flaming me now: I have fun playing BF2142 and I had a lot of fun playing BF2. I'm even likely to give a possible 2142 successor a try, because BF2 and 2142 are actually among the best FPS I ever played. It's the games that attract me, they attract me stronger than EA/DICE's attitude pushes me away.
Yet as far as I'm concerned, EA/DICE have proven to be more reliable making unnecessary changes than making necessary improvements. They have more often given in to a loud whining minority than to the voice of reason.
Back to the original topic: As far as I know, EA was never 100% sure whether or not to provide a "public" stats feed with late rumors saying they tend to provide one anyways. If they do, however, there's good reason for it and I'm willing to acknowledge some concern about the customers.
What I am and will not be willing to acknowledge is the impact of an online petition like this one on that decision. Sorry.
EA/DICE are well aware that people want to view their stats outside of the game, it doesn't take an online petition to tell them.
They're not thinking about whether to provide one or not because they're evil, but because it costs a lot of money to run servers and provide that feed. Providing that feed for free is a good will gesture, charging for that would be an economic decision.
Wow, I think I lost my point somewhere in there. I apologise if you actually took the time to read all that.
Proud member of a dead community.