Battlefield Bad Servers 2: A continuing issue

What’s interesting is that it effects all versions of the game. You’d understand if the problem was geared towards only one platform, but this is ridiculous. From what research I’ve done they’ve been having this same problem even in their beta/demo release and mainly blamed it on the state of the game (that being a beta release).

All in all, I can’t remember ever having bought a game and wanting to trade it in after only three days of getting it.

I found the game to be quite pleasing. I have Xbox Live, and don’t get as much issues as it has been told over news reports. Today [Monday - the week after BC2 was released], I have the unlocks for all classes other than the Engineer class. And one of my Xbox Live friends told me that I have over 35 hours of play time. So I disagree with what people say about loss of statistics. Also, at times when a player is searching for a game to enter, it would say, “Searching for game. Please wait …” It may look like the game gets ‘stuck’ on that message screen, if you wait a few minutes, you will be put into a game.

Many of the problems might be due to server overload. I have only been in one game that had less than 20 players on the server. All the rest were full, or with one or two player slots open.

As stated, this is not new for EA/DICE/Battlefield Games.

There are a few things that get me to the fuming mad, never want to buy from them again mindset:

1) It’s one thing to have issues with purely the multiplayer. I’ve come to expect this no matter what with this franchise and sort of build up some cushion of annoyance to deal with it. With that said, I have had enormous issues with the single player campaign. Sound issues, vanishing weapons, losing movement functionality (like sprinting) due to some combination or menu loads and saving checkpoints, menu issues of hang time or trying to exit and 1/2 the time it processes and then returns to pause menu, etc etc. I am well above specifications and am sure that there is a configuration issue but can’t find what it is. There is no point in beta testing if the issues almost multiply upon release. There is also flatly NO EXCUSE for such broad sound issues. One of the main aspects of the campaign is experiencing the effects/voice/explosions. Thousands upon thousands of complaints regarding this eliminate user ignorance.

2) Having to jump through hoops for the demo is beyond sickening. This move has to be some decision from some corporate bean counting dummy that put me off from the start. I was able to play it, but many I know were not due to the requirements. I have used EVERY single demo of a BF game to gauge it, practice & prepare. The only viable explanation is that the heavy population of years old demos (and some that never leave the demo) have opened the door for corporate to try and ensure switching to full. Part of the success of this franchise has been in part due to the demos and making them difficult to access is beyond me.

3) The Multiplayer… Lordie. In as condensed form as possible:
- First get connected to a server. I have managed a whopping 2 servers for over a 1/2 hour of playtime. Every single other attempt has been a broken conn, etc.
- PB Issues. PB in itself is more the issue and can usually be worked around by running as admin/compat mode and/or updating the client. Still a headache for a game already having issues.
- Joining a game, oh wait … no you didn’t. Join the game, screen loads and churns. Then back to the menu and only option is to click join 100 times and maybe one time will actually join one or restart the game and try again.
- The issues with stats, upgrades etc etc. Doesn’t even need to be spoken about. I was even a victim in this in my whopping 2 times connecting.

4) EA is aware of the issues. Lovely. This is more of an instant anger moment b/c they were aware in part of these issues prior to release. It can be said they had no way of knowing, but trust me … they did. Could be from every other release in this series to be aware or just the issues in beta and/or own internal testing. It was known.
- Cross platform issues. As mentioned, this isn’t limited to PC. There are a plethora of issues on all platforms (admittedly PC the most). Absolutely no excuse.

5) Customer service.
- Somewhat the same as above but has it’s own issues. On release day, there was a specific queue for Bad Company 2. Now, there isn’t. You are now gleefully linked in with the ‘bulk load’ games where you will not call without being told the longest person in queue has waited longer then 20min (the max it will tell you). If you have the time to wait for 90min, more power to you but most do not. I imagine once you are connected to someone, they will have no answers for you but to upgrade all your drivers … verify specs and then tell you EA is aware of the problem(s) and working on it. Or that lovely scapegoat excuse “The population is so heavy.” Great so it is now the consumer/customers fault in part! Any whiz who decided that was something to say to the customer has never been coached in quality assurance in a contact center I’m aware of.

- On the plus side? I’m still an avid 2142 player and due to a new pc, wanted to go through the process of reinstalling the game and all. In my original phone call (launch day), I was able to get digital downloads setup of all my bf games (including bad company 2) and download them and install at my leisure. This has and always will be one of the best customer service abilities I have ever experienced in relation to gaming.
I lost my cd key a long time ago now to Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare. Having not done so in the past, I called in to activision to work it out. I was registered, could access my account online and everything. I was told my only option was to go buy the game again. Nothing else, didn’t matter. Poof, all done. Didn’t matter if I had the receipt or what I did, I was done and sorry for my luck. So, in that regard – EA/DICE get an A+ from me. I’ll never lose my ability to get my game going b/c if I verify everything, I’m good to go.

Specifically to EA:

The fixes will come, we all know that. The problems will be resolved, we all know that. I’ll tell you this though. The next Battlefield game and/or production from EA/DICE won’t be purchased from me until it has been out for MONTHS and has dropped in price. No reason not to? I’m eliminating my headaches and not spending top dollar for a service that doesn’t work.

Sincerely,

BF Franchise Veteran

P.S. – I want to thank the owners of this site for letting me get out some frustration in advance. I tend to read through here often and find the insight/pieces valuable.

@Dustin
All I really know is that it works for me. I live in Chicago, where there are a ton of servers. The servers that I’m playing on probably have an average ping of 15.
I purchased BC2 from Steam and it applied the patch automatically and when I kept on getting kicked the first day I updated punkbuster manually. I noticed that it wasn’t showing the pings in the server browser though, which was also a problem that was happening with the beta unless you set the BC2 exe to run the program as an administrator in compatibility mode. So I did that and it didn’t fix the problem I don’t think, so instead I decided to run the Steam exe as an Administrator and that did fix the problems(can’t explain why) and it’s been running fine since. I’ve never lost stats or unlocks and like I said I haven’t been kicked from any games since. I’ve played on 30+ servers, mostly Rush although I have played some of the other modes a couple times. I usually check the boxes for no empty servers, no full servers, and no passworded servers and then sort based on ping and chose from(of course) the lowest ping servers with the most people in match in a 32-player Rush match.

If it helps you out any here are my specs:

Motherboard: ASUS P5Q
CPU: Intel Q6700
Memory: 8GB’s OCZ Reaper HPC PC2-9600
GPU: XFX Radeon HD 4890
PSU: BFG1000 Kilowatt
Primary HDD: 60GB OCZ Solid Series SSD
Secondary HDD: 500GB WD
Case: Antec 900
OS: Windows 7 Pro x64

I understand that sometimes things can work for one person, and not for another which sucks for that person. But like I said, all I know is that it’s running with out a hitch right now for me and I love the game. I was really excited about this since I decided not to buy COD:MW2 since they got rid of dedicated servers. When I saw the previews/trailers for this I thought this looked like such a better game and that it had more possibilities and I haven’t been upset yet. I played MW2 at friends houses and could only play in 30 min spurts because of the boringness of it – lots of campers, lots of noobtubers, lots of hackers, and it got really redundant among other problems that I had with it(mostly dedicated server withdrawls – I was fiendin to kick ppl, play different maps, etc). I hope you get it up and running, Good Luck.