If It Aint Broke, Don’t Fix It

Ever since NHL 09 has received its latest update, I’ve been unable to enjoy myself during the game. Before that update, the game was my favorite on the market, but for some ungodly reason, EA Vancouver decided there weren’t enough penalties being called. As any hockey fan knows, you watch a game to see the players play, and not the referees call penalties. With that notion, I certainly DO NOT BUY GAMES TO SEE REFEREES CALL PENALTIES! I wish I was just some hater whose favorite exploits have been taken out, but instead I’m just a guy who throws the body into people along the boards, and 7/10 times that’s a penalty in this game.

“Shut up man, the game isn’t broken, you just suck at it!” – No one said this to me, but I’m sure there are people who are thinking it as they read this. If credentials are what you seek, look up my stats, WelcomebackJman (xbox36). I’m not going to get into my numbers here because this isn’t about me. This is about a game developer’s ability to ruin a perfectly good game, over 6 months after release. Jeremy Steeves, over at game and player, interviewed EA Canada’s director of gameplay, here’s an excerpt concerning the patch itself.

J. Steeves: The most recent patch (1.02) for NHL 09 on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 seems to have had a mixed reception, with some in favor of the more simulation style game being presented, and others not. What direction (simulation versus arcade) is the team at EA aiming for, and is anything being considered to satisfy both groups (such as independent game modes)?

J. Rupert: Regarding the reaction to the patches, it seems almost any change that isn’t a fix to an outright bug is going to receive a bit of a mixed reaction. Some people are used to and like the way it is, and don’t see the need for a change. For the first patch we toned down the effectiveness of the toe-drag shot that was unrealistic and unbalanced. There were people who didn’t like that initially, though in the longer term I think the overwhelming majority of players liked the change. The fix was a reduction in shot accuracy — even though this could be seen as a shift towards more of a simulation game, the motivation was purely gameplay balance and it just happened to push things that way.

For the second patch the number of penalties was the main area of controversy. Here the story is a bit different. I think there was a bit of a miss here because we alienated a category of player much more than we needed to in order to address the problem. Calling interference properly was necessary, but some of the other situations that lead to penalties should have been toned down, especially those that are random or accidental. There are enough penalties for the game to be authentic and balanced without some of these; and if they weren’t there increasing the frustration of those having trouble adapting to the interference calls, I think it would have gone over much more smoothly, and would have been just as good for everyone else. That said, it does seem like most players have made this adjustment, too.

J. Steeves: Will Patch 1.02 be the final major patch before NHL 10’s release?

J. Rupert: It is not my call to make, but I think so.

You can read the rest of this interview Here. Despite accepting that they call too many penalties, EA is not prepared to fix it in anyway. Instead, they want you to drop 60 dollars more on their next game, which they’ll probably just stop supporting about the time they break that too. Nothing angers me more than half-assed work, but it seems like that’s the new M.O. from game developers. Games keep getting released before completion, and developers expect us to pay extra for the unreleased (sometimes already on the disc, but locked/hidden) content, and then other developers releasing so called “fixes,” but then not taking the time to re-correct anything that they didn’t fix.

NHL 09 was easily my favorite sports game ever released, but I don’t think I’ll be purchasing NHL 10 (which I also think is a terrible name) because I can no longer trust EA Canada to support the game… They didn’t even update the online rosters for the trade deadline. That’s like the first thing that online support was supposed to be about, updated rosters, but they can’t even do that anymore? Did they not know there was a trade deadline coming, or do they just not care?

I hope other companies learn from this, but since “it does seem like most players have made this adjustment, too.” Most companies will probably just continue their lackluster support for games, and cite EA as a big reason the industry is still going strong.

I could swear I’ve complained about something EA has done before…HMMMMMMMM.