Online Q&A

[henrysotherleg]

Whats the chances of beating a 5 star team with a half star team, especially if the 5 star team is manchester ronaldo

[henrysotherleg]

I agree with Njazz too, nothin worse than playing someone with bad lag. They are used to it and so becomes an unfair advantage for them

[EA_DavidRutter]

Originally Posted by henrysotherleg

Whats the chances of beating a 5 star team with a half star team, especially if the 5 star team is manchester ronaldo

The custom team exploit SHOULD NOT be happening any more...
Let me know if it is...

D

[Kellog_G8]

^Hi david, any info on the club servers being imporved? I'm 100% sure that if you fix the servers, more than half the problems EA has right now wouldn't exist.

[cbcruz]

Originally Posted by Kellog_G8

^Hi david, any info on the club servers being imporved? I'm 100% sure that if you fix the servers, more than half the problems EA has right now wouldn't exist.

^Truth.

Mr Rutter: Agree, and act on it.

The servers are in a desperate need for an upgrade.. Escpecially for club mode!

EDIT: I would love for you to join us in a match, just so you can see how bad it is. If you already have played a club match, then you surely must know how it is for us!

[cbcruz]

sorry, double post.

[EA_DavidRutter]

Originally Posted by Kellog_G8

^Hi david, any info on the club servers being imporved? I'm 100% sure that if you fix the servers, more than half the problems EA has right now wouldn't exist.

Hey fellow Canadian Dweller. Hope the weather in Toronto isn't too bad.
Ours has mellowed out somewhat...

We're looking at the clubs servers at the moment. As much info as possible to Wilson as possible - gamertags, locations and times (including time zone) and he can did in to see if it's a hardware or software issue.

We did have some outages yesterday - thankfully adroit and aurora picked up on them - and they were fixed pretty quickly.

I'm still pushing hard to get that info out to you lot as it happens to make sure you're aware of it. It's a little beyond my sphere of influence at the moment though. In the meantime - letting Aurora and Adroit know of issues as they happen can get things fixed pretty quickly now. They've a direct line into the studio.

D

[EA_DavidRutter]

Originally Posted by cbcruz

EDIT: I would love for you to join us in a match, just so you can see how bad it is. If you already have played a club match, then you surely must know how it is for us!

We had a development team going for a while - but being based on the west coast of Canada means that we couldnt get many games...

Oh to be back in Europe surrounded by footy all the time and not hockey.

Although I've grown to like Hockey - and can snowboard after work and at the weekends now

As soon as I can I'll start getting info out to you all about developments for FIFA 10 online - but my hands are a bit tied at the moment. Suffice to say there will be a lot of improvements though.

D

[Kellog_G8]

Originally Posted by EA_DavidRutter

Hey fellow Canadian Dweller. Hope the weather in Toronto isn't too bad.
Ours has mellowed out somewhat...

We're looking at the clubs servers at the moment. As much info as possible to Wilson as possible - gamertags, locations and times (including time zone) and he can did in to see if it's a hardware or software issue.

We did have some outages yesterday - thankfully adroit and aurora picked up on them - and they were fixed pretty quickly.

I'm still pushing hard to get that info out to you lot as it happens to make sure you're aware of it. It's a little beyond my sphere of influence at the moment though. In the meantime - letting Aurora and Adroit know of issues as they happen can get things fixed pretty quickly now. They've a direct line into the studio.

D

^Weather is perfect. Record amounts of snow and bone-chilling temperatures I know how different temperature is in Vancouver, heck you'd be almost the same distance away if you were still in England

Thanks for the quick responce David, appreciate it will follow your help. Best of luck with FIFA 2010 (If you're still going to do that, that is) Just fix the servers and it'll be a cracker!

Cheers!

[Kellog_G8]

Originally Posted by EA_DavidRutter

We had a development team going for a while - but being based on the west coast of Canada means that we couldnt get many games...

Oh to be back in Europe surrounded by footy all the time and not hockey.

Although I've grown to like Hockey - and can snowboard after work and at the weekends now

As soon as I can I'll start getting info out to you all about developments for FIFA 10 online - but my hands are a bit tied at the moment. Suffice to say there will be a lot of improvements though.

D

Adapting to the Canadian life, I see. Glad to hear although I do hate not being able to play during the winter...

Hockey's great! Who do you support? The canucks Nah?

GO LEAFS !

[EA_DavidRutter]

Dom one of our top engineers on FIFA is from Toronto and is a big Leafs fan. He always laughs at us all when the snow hits here because we're so ill-prepared...

Difficult to support the canucks at the moment...this should be a different thread...

Wilson V the owner of this is a big hockey fan and player too...and a very skillful footy player to boot. Likes the skill moves does Wilson...

[alann-29]

Originally Posted by EA_DavidRutter

The custom team exploit SHOULD NOT be happening any more...
Let me know if it is...

D

yeah but what happen with the persons that use the custom team ??
they gain a lot of points and that is unfair for the people that try to do by the right way they should been punished or something??

[NZJ0KER]

Lol David, I think the question everyone here playing fiwc wants answered is, will there be penalties to the players who have glitched their way to the top. You guys took points away at the start when the ranking system was changed so will this be done again?

[Sumo]

Another question for you here, Wilson.

At the end of an Online Clubs match, the player ratings on my screen are usually different to the player ratings on my screen, and we all have a different player as Man of the Match. Is this going to be fixed, so that all player ratings are the same on all screens, along with only one Man of the Match?

[mcassidy3]

Hey Wilson

can u tell us if u guys are looking at the sub glitch?

thanks

[DOA KappaTango]

Originally Posted by EA_DavidRutter

Hey fellow Canadian Dweller. Hope the weather in Toronto isn't too bad.
Ours has mellowed out somewhat...

We're looking at the clubs servers at the moment. As much info as possible to Wilson as possible - gamertags, locations and times (including time zone) and he can did in to see if it's a hardware or software issue.

We did have some outages yesterday - thankfully adroit and aurora picked up on them - and they were fixed pretty quickly.

I'm still pushing hard to get that info out to you lot as it happens to make sure you're aware of it. It's a little beyond my sphere of influence at the moment though. In the meantime - letting Aurora and Adroit know of issues as they happen can get things fixed pretty quickly now. They've a direct line into the studio.

D

Hi David,

Thank you for your input.

Is there ever a thought process at EA sports which considers the possibility of Public Beta testing? I work in software dev ( Scope, test, bug fix and deploy ) and have also fortunatley been involved in some of the Public Beta's made available by other Software houses ( COD4 Infinifty Ward, HALO 3, Bungie ) etc.

I appreciate that these were a limited free for all access, but I still posted feedback to the dev teams whilst alot of user see it purely as a sneek peek to an upcoming game.

I believe handled correctly, incorporating enough time to react to feedback AFTER the beta will make the FIFA experience so much better, for both developers and customers alike. With your yearly turnaround on games, I think alot of us appreciate the amount of work that you guys put into testing the next iteration, but time/money will always impose their own restrictions. A public beta, with structured feedback process is a cost effective way to gain valuable information from your audience - the ones who will be BUYING your game.

You only have to look at the board posts the day/week after release to see that some issues were quickly discovered by users, missed by developers/testers under strict timeframes to deliver.

Rest assured, while alot of people are quick to slate a game, there are many of us who buy games and ALSO work in and around your environment and are more than willing to help create the optimal result.

Thanks

Karl

[85scottmichael85]

cool, i never knew you got more points in clubs, if you play with more players.......

[EA_WilsonVenhola]

Hi, I'm back.

Responses included.

Originally Posted by mcpop72

Thanks for the Info.

All I can say is that when I first got the game in December I didn't have any lag problems other than users with noticeably bad internet connections (which you can understand coming across from time to time)

Nowadays I frequently get sluggish, non-responsive games: underpowered passing, chip shots that no longer go over the goal line, balls bouncing off players etc etc

So, logically, you would assume something has changed between when I got the game and now?

I'm going to endeavour to keep a log of games where these problems exist and post them on to you. Notepad next to PS3

I have to apologize, I'm not sure how to best respond to this. I have read the long thread that is "Online Changes", and I see there is a lot of passion about this topic but it's still not clear to me what exactly is the problem. Right now, I think I should re-iterate that there were no changes to gameplay ( online or not ) between the patch that fixed the crab walking bug and now. If you find a pattern, reasoning, or cause to these sluggish, non-responsive games please keep us informed.

I should also mention that there should be a distinction made between the what you consider sluggish or non-responsive and the specific items you have listed. An underpowered pass is not necessarily unresponsive. It's coherant to say that an underpowered pass may in fact be very responsive. The same holds true for for underpowered chip shots, and ball player collisions. Although I would be hard pressed to find a situation where I would ever classify a ball player collision as responsive or unresponsive.

It's an important distinction for any engineer looking at the problem because the architecture of the peer to peer online gameplay means that network conditions will affect the responsiveness ( latency, lag, sluggishness ) of when your gameplay actions are applied, but will NOT affect the power applied to passes, chip shots, or the timing of player ball collisions.

Originally Posted by cbcruz

"You may have noticed that this is much more frequent in head to head matches than it is in online team play or clubs matches. This is because online team play and club matches connect to an EA hosted game server"

I guess this answers why there's so much delay in club mode.

It doesn't matter if were 3v3 or 10v10, delay is always presence.

Q: Are you guys planning on upgrading the servers?

Sure, we can play some beatiful football, but in most situation it's based on pure luck. Mainly because of the delay. Head-to-Head games as you called it, feels like playing offline compared to clubs, and to be fairly honest, this needs to be looked at.

If there is a problem with the game servers, it will be corrected as we identify it. If you could provide a little more information about your connection quality, that would help a lot in narrowing down the problem. It wouldn't do us any good to add better or more hardware to the servers, if the problem actually stems from a routing problem between your location and the nearest server.

With regards to online gameplay latency, I find the opposite true myself, clubs matches are generally more responsive than 1v1 matches for me. In Vancouver, when I play with our dev team club, we generally match-up against opponents on the North American west coast server. However, when I match up against 1v1 opponents they are generally from a broader pool of opponents ( I'd hazard a guess that the average latency I experience would end up being equivalent to playing a NA east coast opponent )

I see you're in Norway. The european game servers are located in Geneva. Can you try pinging 159.153.161.74 and report back what kind of latency you get? ( type ping 159.153.161.74 on the command prompt ( on windows, start->run->cmd.exe) , and copy the output into this thread. )

Originally Posted by MusePT

Hi... great topic here...

I have two questions that I don't know if you can reply to:

1- When will the advantage rule be fixed? it was supposed to be fixed on the latest update but still 9 times out of 10 the ref will stop the match when he should let it play on

2- The Squad update due to release friday will only have the transfers from the january market or will it have more things like review stats for players, apperances, etc?

Thanks

Re: Question 1 - I believe that's really a design question. I'm not a designer!

The advantage rule is a relatively tricky one, and I'm not an expert on the implementation in FIFA so I'll decline to comment.

I believe the fix that was applied during the patch fixed a particularly annoying bug whereby it was possible to score a goal on the advantage but have the free kick awarded instead of the goal. I am pretty sure that does not occur anymore.

Re: Question 2 - Sorry I'd have to ask our database team for all the updates it has. Maybe they can provide a big summary in another thread.

Originally Posted by cG_Zen

Cheers for posting the topic, it's appreciated. One thing though you need to elaborate on, how do clubs get into certain divisions? If you could answer that then everything will be spiffy. Thanks.

I believe this is answered in the clubs faq, but it's a very trivial answer so here goes.

Ranks 1-50 are division 1.
51-100 are division 2.
101-151 are division 3.
etc.

Originally Posted by Sumo

Hey Wilson

I have a couple of questions:

1. It is currently impossible for our players to get a serious injury online and be forced to be taken off. Will you be looking to include serious injuries in any upcoming patches?

2. Will the Interactive League problems (games not counting etc) be fixed in an upcoming patch?

Thanks

Re: 1.

Having had ACL reconstruction a couple years ago, due to a football injury, I'm not terribly enthusiastic about adding serious injuries to online play as well!

Seriously though, it's something that comes up once in a while, and I cannot confirm or deny anything.

Re: 2.

This is news to me. I haven't read a thread about this, and IL is not a gamemode I frequently play. Do you have more information about this problem?

Originally Posted by Carl---xD

I find it despicable that you expect kids to be able to know how to open ports on there router We want to play others online why can't you of made it easy for us to do that

First off, I totally agree. Asking users to open ports is not ideal, and expecting your kids to do it for you is just plain mean!

We absolutely want it to be as easy as possible to play other people online. We do try to make it so that as many people as possible can connect to each other ( on the 360, microsoft handles the peer 2 peer connection process so we do have to rely on their implementation ). It still remains true that when all else fails the fail safe is to do some port forwarding.

Originally Posted by savillbros

Thanks, I have a question?

My club were winning 2-1 in the 90th minute, they decided to make a "substitution", and the game froze, we went to the dressing room, to find that no result what so ever had been recorded, this happened 3 days ago.
This incident happened again and we were recorded a loss, then again when we were winning and no result was recorded.

When will this get sorted, as I believe me & my club are being cheated out of wins, our record is:
Wins - 3
Ties -1
Losses - 1
It should be:
Wins -7
Ties - 1
Losses - 0

Unfortunately, this substitution freeze bug is causing a lot of grief. It's not only a major frustration because it prevents the game from continuing, but it causes problems with clubs game reporting. I don't think I have any concrete answers about why these games wouldn't be recorded. Can you send me more details about any games where this happened to your club? Opposing club name, number of users on each side, what your team did after the freeze occurred.

In the case where you were assigned a loss, that was probably due to one of your users leaving the game ( maybe resetting the console ), and your team falling below the minimum 3 players required to play the game.

Originally Posted by Njazz

I think the "if u leave within 3m u dont get a DNF increase" is kinda unfair. Most of the time 3m is not enough to see if the game is laggy or not, specially if u play as the away team...cant u guys remove that rule and stick to the one for the 5m?

It's technically possible. I'm inclined to think the DNF increase isn't really that big of a punishment, and what do you see in 5 minutes that you wouldn't see in 3 minutes of game time? Personally, I think the bigger problem is being able to quit in those 5 minutes if your opponent is maintaining strong possession. But there I go putting on a designer hat.

Originally Posted by NZJ0KER

Lol David, I think the question everyone here playing fiwc wants answered is, will there be penalties to the players who have glitched their way to the top. You guys took points away at the start when the ranking system was changed so will this be done again?

I don't know what the exact answer to this is but it's probably ok to say that we did run a script over a history of the FIWC game logs and identified users who consistently exploited the FIWC custom squads bug to gain an unfair advantage.

Originally Posted by mcassidy3

Hey Wilson

can u tell us if u guys are looking at the sub glitch?

thanks

Yes we are looking into the issue. The more information you can provide about how to cause it, the better chance we have of finding a fix for it. I've yet to experience it any of the 30 odd clubs matches I've played, but several other team members have reported seeing it.

[gladewolf]

Nice explanation of the points system in ranked games (i.e. reference to an obtuse Wikipedia article). I say if you can't explain something simply then you don't understand it yourself.

[mcassidy3]

for the sub glitch im not so sure why usernames etc can help with this. surely it is a fault within the game at the point of subbing rather than something to do with individual gamers etc

[mcassidy3]

and u mention the reason u get a loss when it freezes is due to a user leaving the game, but what else is there to do. sit there like turkeys for an hour or 2 in a freezed game?

[DOA KappaTango]

Originally Posted by EA_WilsonVenhola

Re: 2.

This is news to me. I haven't read a thread about this, and IL is not a gamemode I frequently play. Do you have more information about this problem?

Thanks Wilson, here is a description of what it is, and how to get around it

Originally Posted by DOA KappaTango

Voted YES, here is how, there is a bug and I posted the answer......

You need to make sure you ARE in interactive leagues, and that is not as simple as it sounds....

The first game you enter in the Interactive leagues when you sign in is NOT a IL match. This is the bug. You can tell this because on the first screen under you Gamertag there is the "Guest" sign in option.

Play this first game, and at the end notice it says "Return to Arena", choose his option.

You will be back in the I.L lobby, find another game. This time you will see there is NO Guest option. This is an I.L game. Also, at the end of the match you will see it now says "Return to Community League Screen".

As long as you dont exit the league, the following matches will be I.L matches and count towards the Achievement.

If you lose connection, or leave the League Lobby, you will need to repeat the above.

Interactive League Achievement Glitch :@

[cbcruz]

Thank you Mr. Wilson. Here's the results

159.153.161.74: byte=32 time=54ms TIL=47
159.153.161.74: byte=32 time=54ms TIL=47
159.153.161.74: byte=32 time=53ms TIL=47
159.153.161.74: byte=32 time=55ms TIL=47

Ping-statistics for 159.153.161.74:
Packages: sent = 4, received = 4, lossed = 0 <0% loss>,
Average time for round trip in milliseconds:
minimum = 53ms, maximum = 55ms, average = 54ms

Not sure if "round trip" was the correct translation, but I'm sure you know what it means

[smeltzerinho]

finallyyyyyyyyyyy! someone who knows what they're talking about

excellent answers Wilson, telling us exactly what we wanna know. Great read.

I'm going to do that VoiP test thing

Lately, I've been finding that a 1v1 match starts fine (lag wise) and then degenerates (2nd half) into a laggy pile of lalalala and there's nothing you can do about it Not asking for advice, or clarification. Just whinging really

[cbcruz]

I forgot to add something Mr. Wilson

I have no lag problems what-so-ever in 1 on 1 matches.

I don't have any lag in club either, but DELAY. I believe there's a difference there. You have the occasionly lag where the picture hangs back a little and suddenly the ball is somewhere else. This only happens 1-3 times in a club match, that last for 1-2 seconds each.

EDIT: Every single person I've played with hates the delay. In other words: They all have it. Wether they have a 10mb or 2mb connection.