To Andrew...

[SHAFT23]

What is it exactly that you do for EA Sports?

Do they take your advice and work seriously? Do they ask for feedback at all? Do you give them the hard low down or do you ease it out so that the flaws you notice seem small and irrelevant?

It seems to me that you and NLSC has put up a pretty good site here, but EA does nt really care much about the feedback from the real gamers. It's pretty easy for them to fund this site and put someone in charge of making updated rosters. You and these other guys work hard on rosters and they end up fucking up.

The game this year is lacking in a lot of departments. I was just wondering what role you and feedback plays in the EA developement?

[BIG GREEN]

Obviously i'm not Andrew..but ill venture to step in and say that EA definitley reads these boards occasionally and take advice and feedback from us. I know this from personal experience and interaction with EA staff.

[hipn]

Yeah, I think EA reads posts on these forums, I mean in this forum, we talked about the need of toning down blocks, steals and a lot more shoes. And this year EA kind of fixed the blocks, and steals and adden a ton of shoes. They also fixed the fast break issue. So I think EA gets the ideas and stuff from here. And I think EA makes the game (but dont try hard to make it awsome) and they let us or the patchers here do all the work.

[cyanide]

Obviously i'm not Andrew..but ill venture to step in and say that EA definitley reads these boards occasionally and take advice and feedback from us. I know this from personal experience and interaction with EA staff.

Serious?! How come the in-game save isn't there?

[Hoozah]

I know EA reads these boards, and many oversee other forums also. But I don't really think they pay too much attention to the gamers, especially the PC gamers who year in and year out, buy LIVE.

I guess being the onlu BB on the PC contributes to this. It's ashame that MS cannot create another BB game for Windows. After all, Microsft has more than enough $$$ to take on EA in the sports genre.

[SHAFT23]

Obviously i'm not Andrew..but ill venture to step in and say that EA definitley reads these boards occasionally and take advice and feedback from us. I know this from personal experience and interaction with EA staff.

Okay so they have some intern or trainee look at the forums and this website and make a report about how the game should be improved. This trainee or person probably never plays nba live himself. They should take an experienced gamer who really knows the game and all it's features or take 2 or 3 of these guys to put together a good evaluation and feedback report.

I know that EA does NOT want to make the perfect NBA game, because they won't sell the next version. They are perfectly able to make a NBA live that has almost no flaws, but then sales will dramatically drop the next year because room for improvement is zero, unless they implement something new each year.

From nba live 2003 to 2006 they should implement all the positives from all those games. But what they do is they take small pieces of the older games and put them in the new ones. For example some lay ups werent in live 2003 and 2005 and they are in live 06. The sliding was bad in 2003 and the arcade action too.......they fixed that a little in 2004 and 2005 and they brought it back in thisone. Just to fix it in next years version. Next year will be the same.....they will fix the sliding and they will fuck up something else.

It's hard for a company to keep improving, that is why they won't make the perfect game. but they can if they want.

Yeah, I think EA reads posts on these forums, I mean in this forum, we talked about the need of toning down blocks, steals and a lot more shoes. And this year EA kind of fixed the blocks, and steals and adden a ton of shoes. They also fixed the fast break issue. So I think EA gets the ideas and stuff from here. And I think EA makes the game (but dont try hard to make it awsome) and they let us or the patchers here do all the work.

First of all everyone that has played online and played against the better players in 2004 and 2005, knows that the blocks were not that bad. The higher rated players that played against eachother, had around 8 blocks a game. That was 3 more than nba teams in real life. Guys who couldn't play and tried to dunk every play with fred jones on ben wallace or Shaq got blocked 15 times. The pc drove to the basket a lot and guards are obviously smaller and will get blocked more often. The block issue just wasn't an issue for me last year. plus the sliders could fix it for the people who thought that it was too much. I rarely got blocked in a one on one situation even against Shaq or Big Ben.

The steals ? they messed that up, this year. It is too easy to steal the ball and the interceptions are charged up too.

Shoes? i don't really care about shoes, but shoes are not that much of a hassle for them to implement in the game. They can just assign guys to that feature a week orso and it will be done.

[Fadeyi]

Obviously i'm not Andrew..but ill venture to step in and say that EA definitley reads these boards occasionally and take advice and feedback from us. I know this from personal experience and interaction with EA staff.

I doubt that very much... They killed online game..
And fatigue is still not in the game for online among
other things.
IF they check the boards or listen to gamer, they would have in game save and they would know that all the online leagues add fatigue to their
settings for the online games. ( Whats the point of using only your best players and no need for subs)
They are either incompetent or negligent
I am definately not buying this game next year. Cant believe
i bought a controller for a game that is so buggy..

/rant off

[SHAFT23]

They are either incompetent or negligent
I am definately not buying this game next year.

they just care about keep making money on the games. I hope the next one will be the perfect game, but it won't. They just picked a lot of stuff from Live 2003 to put in this one. I'm starting to see a lot of similarities between the 2 games.

[J@3]

Re-release Live 2000 with better graphics

[SHAFT23]

Re-release Live 2000 with better graphics

i remember in nba live 98 you could also pick and choose the dunks and lay -ups that you wanted for the first time in the history of the game. It was like that untill they just decided to take that feature out , just to put a upgraded version (freestyle superstars) in the game this year.

And i think it is really weird that Andrew lives in Australia and he is doing all this work for EA and he didn't even get a notice that they released it earlier in australia. They probably released it there to get some feedback and look a the sales. They chose australia, because there aren't a lot of australian crackers and sharers on the net AND Australia is a continent relatively far away from the US and Europe, which holds back the spreading of the copies/ export.

[J@3]

Well the thing is this is an unofficial fan website. We're not really affiliated with EA, apart from the fact that one of the creators of the site now works for EA. They technically don't owe us anything, but alot of people do make the game more enjoyable here... through patching, roster updates, sliders etc.

Personally I think they should show us a little bit more respect (releasing the game early in Australia without letting the Australian webmaster know, or even sending him a copy of the demo is low) but I guess they don't feel asthough they gain or lose anything via their treatment of the NLSC.

[Jeff_Hornacek]

Re-release Live 2000 with better graphics

i remember in nba live 98 you could also pick and choose the dunks and lay -ups that you wanted for the first time in the history of the game. It was like that untill they just decided to take that feature out , just to put a upgraded version (freestyle superstars) in the game this year.

And i think it is really weird that Andrew lives in Australia and he is doing all this work for EA and he didn't even get a notice that they released it earlier in australia. They probably released it there to get some feedback and look a the sales. They chose australia, because there aren't a lot of australian crackers and sharers on the net AND Australia is a continent relatively far away from the US and Europe, which holds back the spreading of the copies/ export.

Australia usually gets computer programs earlier due to the time difference. It´s early earlie then the rest of the world. It´s like that when windows ou famous programs set a world saler premier day...

Somehow it came out first in china...

[beau_boy04]

Obviously i'm not Andrew..but ill venture to step in and say that EA definitley reads these boards occasionally and take advice and feedback from us. I know this from personal experience and interaction with EA staff.

Serious?! How come the in-game save isn't there?

that's why they have the intervention when simulating games. I guess that was the replacement for in-game saves. Probably it is a lot easier to have intervention than in-game saves. A little bird told me the other day "americans are lazy people" and most of my friends admitted to that statemtents. They like to shorten things out just for the heck of it. And no offense to anybody in here I know im just generalizing here so chill out!

[beau_boy04]

Re-release Live 2000 with better graphics

That is one of the smartest thing I've heard in ages! and I fully support it! I love the in-game menus, players profile, in-game saves, etc etc it was a blast! I focking hate the menus in 03 and 05 they are focking retarded! and the players profile when you are looking at the stats should be all in one page without having us clicking to see the stats for different years! it is just foking ugly, waste of time and pointless and not user friendly at all.

[beau_boy04]

I see there are lots of complains towards the release of Nba Live 06 and I'm officially announcing that I will not YOU HEARD ME RIGHT ea! I will not buy the focking game. Thank you for wasting our time.

Good luck to all of ya fellas.

[Andrew]

What do I do for EA Sports? I pay them money for a copy of their video game NBA Live, which I play and maintain an unofficial fansite dedicated to said game. I do know a couple of folks on the production team which allows me to get those Q&As and some other tidbits and I do provide feedback and offer my input as well as compile the Wishlist, but that's about the extent of my involvement. I'm not employed by EA Sports or directly involved in the production of NBA Live.

[SHAFT23]

What do I do for EA Sports? I pay them money for a copy of their video game NBA Live, which I play and maintain an unofficial fansite dedicated to said game. I do know a couple of folks on the production team which allows me to get those Q&As and some other tidbits and I do provide feedback and offer my input as well as compile the Wishlist, but that's about the extent of my involvement. I'm not employed by EA Sports or directly involved in the production of NBA Live.

okay thanks for clearing that up. So basically EA sports has a free patch making employee, that does all the work and gives feedback. Feedback that EA uses as long as they feel it usefull NOT what is going to be usefull to the gamers.
this isn't a way to bash on Andrew, because you guys do a great job here, but EA is really messing up in the feedack and implementation of this feedback.

[Metsis]

That is one of the smartest thing I've heard in ages! and I fully support it! I love the in-game menus, players profile, in-game saves, etc etc it was a blast! I focking hate the menus in 03 and 05 they are focking retarded! and the players profile when you are looking at the stats should be all in one page without having us clicking to see the stats for different years! it is just foking ugly, waste of time and pointless and not user friendly at all.

Well, the UI went south the moment they decided to make the game for the consoles and then port it to the PC... They did it the other way around before 2002... Thus we had an excellent mouse oriented UI with multitude of options that couldn't be done with the consoles.

NHL 2003 had the UI that should have become a standard for all their sports games from there on... NHL got a screwed in 2004 too with UI... Again with the consoles sheit that is just sub-par for the PC.

NHL 2003, the greatest sports gaming user interface ever created, and they just trashed it... And went for a console look that is just horrible on the PC...

The only real annoying problem with game through the years has been the development of the user interface... It was pretty sweet in Live 2000 and 2001 and then they decided to send it back to the seventies with the consoles... C'mon... I've seen some good shit in my day on the UI side, but this clicking and scrolling and clicking and scrolling just to see one stat is just BAD!

[Andrew]

okay thanks for clearing that up. So basically EA sports has a free patch making employee, that does all the work and gives feedback. Feedback that EA uses as long as they feel it usefull NOT what is going to be usefull to the gamers.
this isn't a way to bash on Andrew, because you guys do a great job here, but EA is really messing up in the feedack and implementation of this feedback.

Well, I wouldn't call myself an employee because I'm not affiliated with them in anyway. I would call myself a very loyal and keen customer though.

[gothik]

okay thanks for clearing that up. So basically EA sports has a free patch making employee, that does all the work and gives feedback. Feedback that EA uses as long as they feel it usefull NOT what is going to be usefull to the gamers.
this isn't a way to bash on Andrew, because you guys do a great job here, but EA is really messing up in the feedack and implementation of this feedback.

I think instead of complaining , you should actually be thankful that there is a site with frequent game news , feedbacks , and patches , IMO.

[fred.cad]

Some of you guys talk about EA adding tons of shoes in the game after listening to your complaints .... But Why do you care about the shoes ????...... It seems more important than the gameplay for Christsake !!!

I read the review by Andrew and EA just do the same mistake as last year : no Save Stats button and no ability to toggle stats !!!

[J@3]

Australia usually gets computer programs earlier due to the time difference. It´s early earlie then the rest of the world. It´s like that when windows ou famous programs set a world saler premier day...

That's not quite accurate, generally we get games after they've come out in the US/Asia, but with NBA Live 06 we actually got it like a week earlier than everyone else, which has nothing to do with time differences.

[cyanide]

that's why they have the intervention when simulating games.

Ahh, I never thought of that. It is a nice touch. Too bad I don't use it. I like to play full games, and an in-games would be nice rather than simulate a quarter then intervene. Besides, the only time I use simulation is when I'm doing 25 year dynasties, where I wouldn't waste my time intervening. What about the time-conscious people's needs?

[JWL2672]

After all, we're only paying around $40 for a game and EA has been making improvements each year. I've been buying this game since Live 95 (on SNES and then every year afterwards on the PC) and true they've pissed me off in many years (removing in-game saves, Live 04 sucking ass on Offense, gay ghetto graffiti menus in 99, etc. etc.) but most years, the graphics get better and the gameplay improves slightly. I thought 05 was a vast improvement over 04.

EA has done one thing right - I can't conceive of any improvement in the All Star weekend. The graphics are fantastic for the 3 point contest and the dunk contest animations are excellent. You really can't add much to All-Star weekend to improve that.

That said, EA does have a lot to improve upon. But they really have only 1 year to do it and I'm sure their production team is only 15 guys or less. They should seriously raise the game's price to $60, hire 15 more guys and cover all the improvement possibilities mentioned on this site. And putting Andrew on the payroll would certainly help matters.

Andrew, you rock. I wouldn't be playing this game year round if I couldn't get roster updates and had to do it myself. You should have a donation link somewhere here so we can contribute a little to your efforts. Thanks dude.

[SHAFT23]

okay thanks for clearing that up. So basically EA sports has a free patch making employee, that does all the work and gives feedback. Feedback that EA uses as long as they feel it usefull NOT what is going to be usefull to the gamers.
this isn't a way to bash on Andrew, because you guys do a great job here, but EA is really messing up in the feedack and implementation of this feedback.

I think instead of complaining , you should actually be thankful that there is a site with frequent game news , feedbacks , and patches , IMO.

I think instead of talking shit , you should actually read that i do really appreciate what NLSC is doing here and i am upset with how EA treats it's costumers and loyal gamers/costumers (as Andrew sees himself...in my opinion he is doing more for PC users than EA)
I ain't looking to kiss anybody's ass like you, i just want to know how some shit works with these guys and EA Sports and i got my answers as i gave my opinion.