I feel I must point some things out, having dealt with the "qualities" of EA's published titles for the past year or so...
To confirm another individual's note regarding widescreen, yes... many of EA's published games do not have proper or native widescreen support. Medal of Honor, despite being published by EA, does have some form of widescreen support. However, that does not erase the fact that many of today's high-profile games do not have proper widescreen support.
I have posted on EA's forums to push the developers of the Battlefield franchise, DICE, to support widescreen. I have since been unsuccessful in doing so. There are many who would like to see proper support for widescreen. However, there haven't been enough of a push to really get the deaf to hear us out.
With all due respect to the gamers on the Mac platform, I urge you not to purchase titles published by EA. Their support for the Mac is sound. But alas, Steve Jobs and Bing Gordon (one of EA's top brass) did not disclose on how they are supporting it. One has to wonder about the performance hit, let alone the GPU power needed to run a graphic-intensive game such as 2142. As a player who has dealt with EA's software quality, rest assured that it's not entirely rosy on the Windows end of the field. When it does work, it works. But when it don't... well... who knows where the problem truly lies.
In the time that DICE/EA has to rework the BF2 engine, nothing has been done at all to fix some of the problems that has remained in BF2. BF2 came out in 2005 with virtually no support for widescreen. The only way to use a resolution that is not native to the game is to use a couple of command-line arguments. In Windows term, we modify the Shortcut to the game. When rendering the world in 3D, this is fine. The only distortion would be from HUDs and the game's UI. Patches after patches, nothing has been done to add widescreen. At some point, it was quoted that widescreen gives those users an unfair advantage. At another point, it was quoted that the userbase for widescreen isn't large enough to warrant adopting it. To this day, EA continues to remain silent about adopting widescreen despite the rising userbase percentage.
As DICE/EA continued to push out patches in their attempts to make the game balanced and fair, players have grown frustrated with the balance changes in the weapons. Most notably are the G36E and the AK-101 guns that have remained the top two most widely used time and time again. Pilots have also shown frustration in dealing with the game's J-10 aircraft when compared to the lowly F-35B aircraft. These issues have yet to be resolved.
During the development of 2142, it's been asked again whether widescreen support will be included. That question has been answered with a disappointing "no." Yet that did not stop people from requesting that it should be supported. After several patches, 2142 still remains without proper support for widescreen.
With the release of Windows Vista, many gamers are wondering how they'll be able to play their games on an OS that has its security model changed so drastically. This lead to a massive array of posts from people who cannot get their games to run unless they either run the game as Administrator or turn off UAC altogether. This was partially solved when PunkBuster updated their system to adapt to Vista's new security model. What used to be based on DLLs is now multiple services (processes) running in the background. This solved part of the problem. However, general stability is not up to par on the Windows Vista OS. Numerous posts were made on EA's forums regarding game crashes, key packet issues with PunkBuster, and "memory.dll" errors. Not even a clean install of Vista solved this problem. And the problem seems to be a general hit-or-miss. When it works, it works. When it don't... it just don't. As of today, there has been no acknowledgement from DICE/EA regarding making the game more compatible with Vista. It's a gamble to use Vista.
In one of the early patches to BF2142, DICE/EA has adjusted the game's Assault class weapon unlocks. This resulted in a massive spike in usage of the Voss L-AR unlock which many now considered to be the most powerful gun in the game, bar none. To this day there are numerous heated arguments and debates regarding the Voss L-AR unlock compared to the Baur H-AR unlock of the same class. It is unknown as to whether or not this'll be adjusted again.
One of the problems now plaguing the servers is the act of glitching (to expose a physics/mapping flaw in order to gain an unfair advantage). The problem is severe enough that one can sit in a single spot and do nothing but kill. Their last patch is dated April 24th. It's nearing two months since then and EA has continued to be silent about these issues.
Also of note is the PunkBuster issue that was created when they updated their system to conform to Vista's new security model. If one plays on a single server, then the user will not see the issue. But for many, changing server is common and one cannot simply jump from one server to the next. But this is more than likely to be an issue with EvenBalance rather than DICE/EA.
With all of these problems listed, and probably with plenty more, I truly wonder if it's worth your money to get EA titles. With all these issues left unresolved, what does EA have to show its customers? A booster pack and more patches. BF2 is nearing 2 years old. In its lifetime, it has seen only 2 free maps. A third one is already released into the wild as "beta" but it's a wonder when that "beta" tag will be removed. For 2142, there's a possibility of a free map being made available. Personally, I do not know why anyone would bother. The reason anyone would play BF2 or BF2142 is to earn points and to make their profile as fancy as they wanted to... or to see how much that they suck or how they fare against some of their friends. There's no approval or endorsement system in place to attract map designers and creators to make a map worthy of ranked play. The game is not nurtured nor cared for. If one is still going to purchase an EA title... expect no less than a stale cookie.
To confirm another individual's note regarding widescreen, yes... many of EA's published games do not have proper or native widescreen support. Medal of Honor, despite being published by EA, does have some form of widescreen support. However, that does not erase the fact that many of today's high-profile games do not have proper widescreen support.
I have posted on EA's forums to push the developers of the Battlefield franchise, DICE, to support widescreen. I have since been unsuccessful in doing so. There are many who would like to see proper support for widescreen. However, there haven't been enough of a push to really get the deaf to hear us out.
With all due respect to the gamers on the Mac platform, I urge you not to purchase titles published by EA. Their support for the Mac is sound. But alas, Steve Jobs and Bing Gordon (one of EA's top brass) did not disclose on how they are supporting it. One has to wonder about the performance hit, let alone the GPU power needed to run a graphic-intensive game such as 2142. As a player who has dealt with EA's software quality, rest assured that it's not entirely rosy on the Windows end of the field. When it does work, it works. But when it don't... well... who knows where the problem truly lies.
In the time that DICE/EA has to rework the BF2 engine, nothing has been done at all to fix some of the problems that has remained in BF2. BF2 came out in 2005 with virtually no support for widescreen. The only way to use a resolution that is not native to the game is to use a couple of command-line arguments. In Windows term, we modify the Shortcut to the game. When rendering the world in 3D, this is fine. The only distortion would be from HUDs and the game's UI. Patches after patches, nothing has been done to add widescreen. At some point, it was quoted that widescreen gives those users an unfair advantage. At another point, it was quoted that the userbase for widescreen isn't large enough to warrant adopting it. To this day, EA continues to remain silent about adopting widescreen despite the rising userbase percentage.
As DICE/EA continued to push out patches in their attempts to make the game balanced and fair, players have grown frustrated with the balance changes in the weapons. Most notably are the G36E and the AK-101 guns that have remained the top two most widely used time and time again. Pilots have also shown frustration in dealing with the game's J-10 aircraft when compared to the lowly F-35B aircraft. These issues have yet to be resolved.
During the development of 2142, it's been asked again whether widescreen support will be included. That question has been answered with a disappointing "no." Yet that did not stop people from requesting that it should be supported. After several patches, 2142 still remains without proper support for widescreen.
With the release of Windows Vista, many gamers are wondering how they'll be able to play their games on an OS that has its security model changed so drastically. This lead to a massive array of posts from people who cannot get their games to run unless they either run the game as Administrator or turn off UAC altogether. This was partially solved when PunkBuster updated their system to adapt to Vista's new security model. What used to be based on DLLs is now multiple services (processes) running in the background. This solved part of the problem. However, general stability is not up to par on the Windows Vista OS. Numerous posts were made on EA's forums regarding game crashes, key packet issues with PunkBuster, and "memory.dll" errors. Not even a clean install of Vista solved this problem. And the problem seems to be a general hit-or-miss. When it works, it works. When it don't... it just don't. As of today, there has been no acknowledgement from DICE/EA regarding making the game more compatible with Vista. It's a gamble to use Vista.
In one of the early patches to BF2142, DICE/EA has adjusted the game's Assault class weapon unlocks. This resulted in a massive spike in usage of the Voss L-AR unlock which many now considered to be the most powerful gun in the game, bar none. To this day there are numerous heated arguments and debates regarding the Voss L-AR unlock compared to the Baur H-AR unlock of the same class. It is unknown as to whether or not this'll be adjusted again.
One of the problems now plaguing the servers is the act of glitching (to expose a physics/mapping flaw in order to gain an unfair advantage). The problem is severe enough that one can sit in a single spot and do nothing but kill. Their last patch is dated April 24th. It's nearing two months since then and EA has continued to be silent about these issues.
Also of note is the PunkBuster issue that was created when they updated their system to conform to Vista's new security model. If one plays on a single server, then the user will not see the issue. But for many, changing server is common and one cannot simply jump from one server to the next. But this is more than likely to be an issue with EvenBalance rather than DICE/EA.
With all of these problems listed, and probably with plenty more, I truly wonder if it's worth your money to get EA titles. With all these issues left unresolved, what does EA have to show its customers? A booster pack and more patches. BF2 is nearing 2 years old. In its lifetime, it has seen only 2 free maps. A third one is already released into the wild as "beta" but it's a wonder when that "beta" tag will be removed. For 2142, there's a possibility of a free map being made available. Personally, I do not know why anyone would bother. The reason anyone would play BF2 or BF2142 is to earn points and to make their profile as fancy as they wanted to... or to see how much that they suck or how they fare against some of their friends. There's no approval or endorsement system in place to attract map designers and creators to make a map worthy of ranked play. The game is not nurtured nor cared for. If one is still going to purchase an EA title... expect no less than a stale cookie.
