What you mention are good examples of the countless things this game is missing to feel like a completed product. The problem is, Big ant have been giving the attention to Proteam and neglecting the numerous simple things that add polish to the product. AFL2004 had polish, is it too much to ask of Bigant for AFL23 to get the simple things right first. Complete the team selection screens, fulfill the season mode setting option ‘enable injuries and suspensions’, by actually having injuries and suspensions. The benches are blank. The in game interchange pad is unfunctionable and useless as the times you use it(stoppage, set shot, kick in) it disappears! The hall of fame mode doesn’t work, and looks like the walls are under renovations. The hall of fame walls in the game are the perfect representation of the game itself. Unfinished! Seriously finish off your product. The game at the moment just doesn’t justify having a hunky dory PROTEAM MODE.
Proteam will come out eventually but the game still won’t be complete. I’ve seen the video, proteam looks detailed, it looks polished, it looks complete. It looks like a lot of time has gone into it. Much prefer the other modes to be quality, and not have proteam at all.
Barebones unfinished game plus proteam.
OR
Completed game but no proteam
Hmmm…
I won’t be spending a cent on it. Imagine spending say $50 on a mode to a game that was released 14 months ago. Only a couple of months left in the season remaining so the mode could be dead by December. It could also be riddled with errors that make it unplayable until September. Another real possibility with this mob.
You’re spot on here. There are things from the very start that we have all pointed out which haven’t been acknowledged or changed. As you mentioned, how do you release a management mode without suspensions? Or even have players showing on the bench? HOne of my biggest things are the stadiums, the interiors all feel grey and lifeless. But as you summed it up, it just isn’t polished.
Most people who have been around here a long time would know I’ve defended BA more than anyone should, so it is just a letdown to see them recently go very dark on gameplay…even when Proteam is the issue at hand. What if someone purchased this game with no intention of playing Proteam?
Yes I agree the game needs some updates to fix certain issues but sadly BA will most likely not add or fix thing in management mode (as it’s a complete mode). The only updates we will most likely get are list updates and ProTeam updates (whenever it does launch)
Do you genuinely believe there is someone over in Washington sitting there play testing and analyzing every single game across every single genre from every single developer that comes across their inbox for approval?
They would have no idea what a lot of the games are far less sit there and play test them all.
They simply just have processes in place that need to be stuck to.
Doesn’t make it any less frustrating though that’s for sure!
I mean, we are at 6 weeks of ‘approval time’ its far from believable that it is still sitting there waiting to be approved.
They have to have failed a submission and resent it.
why do they have had to have failed a submission and resubmitted, why is that the only possible outcome?
Remember, this isn’t just a run of the mill patch they have submitted to push through like we had for previous updates, they are seemingly pretty quick and easy to push through.
This is an entire new mode with micro transactions. Bit more complex than just some basic game play patch updates, possibly even needing legal team approval from playform holders.
Theres a couple of ways we can look at the whole thing, either they genuinely are just waiting - which seems the most unlikely as its a very quiet time for platform holders.
Or they have had to resumbit due to a fail, but BA would never come out and tell us this, it also doesnt really change anything either way.
The matter of the fact is they have had far to long to get this right and blaming it on the platform holders is the biggest cop out. The platform holders werent the ones who didnt have the game mode ready until well over a year past release to then finally submit it.
You would think with all that extra time BA would have been able to know what was coming like the back of their hand, even submit it earlier than they did.
We all shouldnt even be in this position discussing this, if pro team was ready at launch like advertised.
Add to that continous poor communication since launch and a lack of marketing to tie people over and you have one frustrated fan base.
Maybe if other modes, e.g. management mode had some depth to it players would be more accepting but it gets a bit repetitive essentially playing play now over and over.
Like has been explained, the reason the re submission happened further down the track was most likely due to an update / improvement being made to the mode that triggered a new set of approvals.
They weren’t just sitting on the mode for 11 months, it got to May and someones outlook calendar popped up a reminder to submit the game.
Like I said, doesn’t make it any less frustrating, but if the resubmission is a result of the continued works and updates on the mode, then I’m in the camp of embracing it and would rather that be the case.
There COULD be resubmissions… but totally not the only possibility.
For resubmissions, if they were needed, they could be for extreme testing that no one could foresee… like crazy situations… like
‘you buy 3 bronze packs, buy a 4th but cut the power to your console midway through the transaction, Turn it back on after the next season ticks over, and notice that you weren’t charged for your 4th pack’…
Because it’s money exchanging hands, and these microtransactions take place, no doubt there is extreme testing like this that could require a fix and resubmission.
By the same thought… it might have been a single submission, and the platform holders are taking extreme time to give the tick of approval.
But it shouldnt have taken the 11 months. The game was advertised with a feature that wasnt / still hasnt been delivered.
With all this extra time for ‘continued works and updates’ it better be mind blowingly good. It’s a shame history suggests this is likely not to be the case.
Its been one of the longest testing phases ive ever seen.
100% agree.
Imagine open honest communication from day 1, people would be far more understanding and happier that the community feels valued enough to be taken on that journey.
Instead - the only time we hear from them is the 11th hour to be told bad news.
Personally it all boils back down to no other games ever seeming to have this issue. Other smaller, indie games have gone through massive updates, adding monetization in various ways and modes before ultimately being swallowed up by Epic and going free to play (Rocket League, Fall Guys, etc), and they never missed a date, and especially not by a month or more.
Rocket League, even before going to Epic, started dealing with various licensed items and added real money microtransactions and never had any issues. They were big licenses too for a small company, Batman, Hot Wheels, Back To The Future, NBA, Jurassic World, Ghostbusters. These are IPs tied up with big companies with no doubt mountains of licensing paperwork (not a license for the league that already licenses the game). They added and removed seasonal entire game modes. They added (and later removed) trading. Big changes to how the game infrastructure operated.
If anyone could point to literally any other game and say “See, it happened to them too” then we’d be more inclined to accept it. But at the moment it’s like the guy that’s 15 minutes late to work every day because of “traffic”, yet somehow everyone else manages to get to work on time.
