Patrick Back, Battlefield 3 executive producer and temporary DICE CEO, has responded to criticism the studio has received after the last patch to Battlefield 3.
The latest patch for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC was released at the beginning of April. The weapon buffs/nerfs and other fixes that were released did not go over well with some fans. The patch also created a few new issues as well.
The biggest challenge when you release a big patch like this is to wait,” said Bach. “Because we know that if you have a favorite gun that we have balanced down or you score in a certain way by doing certain things and then we nerfed that down then you will get upset, period.”
According to Bach, much of the feedback they receive from gamers is not very useful since it only takes into account the performance of that particular gamer.
“People do not care and they do not know about the big picture, but we do. Because we don’t care about single individuals, we care about everyone. We try to make sure that everyone has a great time and that the balance is overarching. So we have a lot of statistics, we look at all the data and we try to listen to people and ask ‘is this really an issue? And in most of the cases it is not an issue.”
Dice is evaluating certain issues and trying to determine if there is an actual problem, or if it’s simply a case of gamers saying I’m not used to this, so I hate it.’
“We get a lot of praise for it but the biggest problem is that the people that like it don’t go on forums and write about it, they just keep playing,” Bach added. “We can see that our player numbers are going up as we speak because of the patch. It’s not going down even though people say ‘I’m not playing because of the patch.’
“I think if people went back to the old patch now after a couple of weeks they would see the big differences. But then again it’s not that it’s hassle free, so of course we are looking into any real issues that we need to fix,” Bach explained.
(Via NOW Gamer)