DICE on Battlefield patches: 'We can't win'

By Steve Watts, Apr 27, 2012 12:00pm PDT

Battlefield 3's latest patch packaged a lot of changes. But unless you're new to the Internet, it should come as no surprise that feedback was mixed. Executive producer Patrick Bach says this is the natural cycle of game feedback, and pleasing everyone is impossible.

"I've heard some people say, I didn't notice any difference. And I've heard people say, it was good, now you broke it," Bach told Eurogamer. "So when you say that, it's a bit like, this is the patch that made the game complete. But is that a good thing or bad thing compared to the other people who didn't notice anything, or say we broke it? We can't win."

He says that the team couldn't have all of that feedback when they shipped. "We are listening and we are not getting lazy," he said. "We know Battlefield is not a game where you just release it and then move on to something else. It's a game where you need to have a team that works on it post-launch."

He suggests that players might perceive problems that aren't really problems at all, and the developers can tell because they have access to more raw data. "We have people only looking at telemetry, matching that towards the feedback that people actually write in forums. In a lot of cases it doesn't match up. It's like, no, this isn't a problem. You claim it's a problem. It's not a problem. The numbers tell me this is not a problem."

Bach recalls that the team saw similar feedback with Battlefield 2. "When it was released people thought it was great," he said. "And then you had all the complaints. People still played it. We won all these awards. But the guys who were actually playing the game claimed after a thousand hours, I hate your game. It's the worst game ever. You should listen to me because I spent a thousand hours in it. It's like, well you're not really hating it. You're loving it so much that you get upset about these things."

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