Rugby League Live 3

[HBK619]

Those are valid points re- not waiting for 6 months for release and shoud have been raised.
I think people see this as being rushed for xmas sales due to the odd time (myself included) until this was pointed out.

HBK, a few questions.
Why is Ross such an ass when it comes to negative feedback? Does he realize how bad it makes himself and BA look?

I'm glad to hear that feedback is generally appreciated though (as DBC). Would the following things look to be implemented in RLL3 in future?

-Mid season signings (not releases, but actual signings)

- International matches in Coach mode

- Numbers to represent positions in 9s, or an indication as to what position the number is referring to

- Ability to search off-contract players

- Longer team sheets, 9s you can barely read the names before they are off the screen! I like to be able to see who I'm playing against while checking to see who I selected

- Removal of the June 6th market deadline (where did that come from?, its not like that IRL is it?)

- Season stats

Ross is the boss of the company and he has his own way of dealing with people. I don't question it and in turn the way I handle things doesn't get questioned either. I think the big issue tends to be the style of talk towards him. If you state things in a calm, concise and reasonable manner then you get the same in turn. If you're fiery and vitriolic then that will come back at you. There's no PR spin doctoring going on, it's straight shooting and people are often taken aback by that.

I think most people would get along pretty well with Ross given the chance. I started off on BigFooty and got my opportunity at this company due to forum interaction with Ross. It's not that hard to get along with him, truly. Some go in with the wrong mindset and therefore end up on the wrong side of the spectrum and just make things worse by continuing down that line rather than trying to rectify how things started out. Enthusiasm for a product can sometimes be misguided and come out poorly but you can always get a second chance for that. Coming out swinging with "this is shit, why did you do that?!" or "this is completely broken" doesn't help anyone and you'll get told as such.

As to your questions.
1. This was something we looked at doing but a number of things presented us with issues, it's hard to go in with all the machinations of why, but we definitely looked into it.

2. Definitely looking at what we can do.

3. The 9's one is an interesting conundrum. We never found any real consolidated information about 'positions' in 9's. We went for a 1-9 with not stating positions as the evidence of club selection showed to us that nobody had consistent positional selection. This will likely stay as is. In terms of how a match plays out, it plays out pretty much the same as that, 1-9 are mostly arbitrary in terms of positions, nobody is necessarily a Full Back or Prop or anything like that. In my opinion it helps to create a more free-form game mode and actually differentiates itself well from the regular 13's.

4. You can search off contract players. In the recruiting tile, go to Search for Players. These are all the off contract players you can sign.

5. Understand the issue, but making this longer would require entirely new cutscenes and extensions to that. It's probably unlikely.

6. I assume you mean when the recruiting tile opens up? We have this due to the 'Round 13' rule in NRL. We didn't want to interfere with how that works and have people get the wrong impression towards potential 'DCE events'.

7. Season stats exist. They're in your competition tile (NRL/Ladder/Fixture/Other Comps) just hit R1/L1 or LB/RB to scroll to stats.

 

[ak47]

Those are valid points re- not waiting for 6 months for release and shoud have been raised.
I think people see this as being rushed for xmas sales due to the odd time (myself included) until this was pointed out.

HBK, a few questions.
Why is Ross such an ass when it comes to negative feedback? Does he realize how bad it makes himself and BA look?

I'm glad to hear that feedback is generally appreciated though (as DBC). Would the following things look to be implemented in RLL3 in future?

-Mid season signings (not releases, but actual signings)

- International matches in Coach mode

- Numbers to represent positions in 9s, or an indication as to what position the number is referring to

- Ability to search off-contract players

- Longer team sheets, 9s you can barely read the names before they are off the screen! I like to be able to see who I'm playing against while checking to see who I selected

- Removal of the June 6th market deadline (where did that come from?, its not like that IRL is it?)

- Season stats

-Mid season signings (not releases, but actual signings) - we can sign someone from another team from June, its basically the june30 deadline, which was part of rugby league until this year when DCE raped it. this doesn't mean automatic transfer, they arrive at the end of the year. proper mid season transfers are not in the game unfortunately
- International matches in Coach mode - hopefully they patch this in

- Ability to search off-contract players - in recruitment screen after June6 u can view everyone off contract in your competition

- Removal of the June 6th market deadline (where did that come from?, its not like that IRL is it?) - IRL we had the June30 deadline until July this season
- Season stats - they are all there, go to your competition screen in career, (right page of the career menu) and u see fixtures, and L1/R1 tab over for stats, awards etc

I cant help with the nine stuff - I sim the 9s

 

[Rhyno]

Forwards are useless in this game I can't score a try with one

 

[Frederick]

The game wasn't rushed out.

Beyond that, 6 months isn't chicken feed. That's 6 months worth of salaries, 6 months of pushing back marketing plans. It's a lot of re-working and most likely wouldn't actually have been worth holding the game back for (and even then if it's a '2016 season' game - it wouldn't be coming out day one of the 2016 season due to licensing).

We've managed to get the game out at a competitive time for games and yet in Aus and NZ RLL3 it's the no.1 selling game and top 10 in UK despite only 2 recorded days of sales data. This is when big titles like Mad Max, MGSV, Madden, et al have released and RLL3 is outselling them.

Guess I was more asking why the development timeline wasn't scheduled to line up with the start of a season, like all the other major sports games. All the rosters and draws are more or less already out of date

 

[Shaun Hewitt]

Ross is the boss of the company and he has his own way of dealing with people. I don't question it and in turn the way I handle things doesn't get questioned either. I think the big issue tends to be the style of talk towards him. If you state things in a calm, concise and reasonable manner then you get the same in turn. If you're fiery and vitriolic then that will come back at you. There's no PR spin doctoring going on, it's straight shooting and people are often taken aback by that.

I think most people would get along pretty well with Ross given the chance. I started off on BigFooty and got my opportunity at this company due to forum interaction with Ross. It's not that hard to get along with him, truly. Some go in with the wrong mindset and therefore end up on the wrong side of the spectrum and just make things worse by continuing down that line rather than trying to rectify how things started out. Enthusiasm for a product can sometimes be misguided and come out poorly but you can always get a second chance for that. Coming out swinging with "this is shit, why did you do that?!" or "this is completely broken" doesn't help anyone and you'll get told as such.

As to your questions.
1. This was something we looked at doing but a number of things presented us with issues, it's hard to go in with all the machinations of why, but we definitely looked into it.

2. Definitely looking at what we can do.

3. The 9's one is an interesting conundrum. We never found any real consolidated information about 'positions' in 9's. We went for a 1-9 with not stating positions as the evidence of club selection showed to us that nobody had consistent positional selection. This will likely stay as is. In terms of how a match plays out, it plays out pretty much the same as that, 1-9 are mostly arbitrary in terms of positions, nobody is necessarily a Full Back or Prop or anything like that. In my opinion it helps to create a more free-form game mode and actually differentiates itself well from the regular 13's.

4. You can search off contract players. In the recruiting tile, go to Search for Players. These are all the off contract players you can sign.

5. Understand the issue, but making this longer would require entirely new cutscenes and extensions to that. It's probably unlikely.

6. I assume you mean when the recruiting tile opens up? We have this due to the 'Round 13' rule in NRL. We didn't want to interfere with how that works and have people get the wrong impression towards potential 'DCE events'.

7. Season stats exist. They're in your competition tile (NRL/Ladder/Fixture/Other Comps) just hit R1/L1 or LB/RB to scroll to stats.

Holy crap, thanks HBK! Didn't realise about stats and alot of the insight
Thanks for the insight on all of this.

If this was on the BA forums, I'd +1 rep you
Highly appreciated

I don't believe the game is as bad as its being made out to be on here. I am still enjoying it quite alot.

Keep up the good work

 

[Shaun Hewitt]

Forwards are useless in this game I can't score a try with one

What difficulty are you playing on?

I'm playing Pro at the moment.
Admittedly most my tries are coming down the left wing (on paper my weaker side).
I score a try with a forward just about every game, if its a second rower like Mannering, usually I have him running angles towards a gap. For a prop, I've scored with Vete and Matulino but running hard and straight and fending about 5m away from the try line

 

[Eelementary]

When I say sports fans, I mean sports fans. We have a guy here who has followed NFL since a very young age, and also lived amongst the Canberra faithful during the time of Meninga, Daley and the greats there. So we're across a number of sports.

Beyond that, we also play sports games to better understand what the other games do and play like.

There's a lot of reasons the game ends up as it does, I'd love to go into it further but it's just not something I can do. We know certain things when the game goes out, but a lot of the time it comes down to getting a good opinion from the masses before you can get a good gauge of whether something is right, wrong or otherwise.

The good thing is we have the capability to address these things and as I've said, we're certainly looking to do so.

That was my forumite side coming out. ;-)

That being said, our fans in general are great to deal with and have had massive influence on our products (DBC14 has literally been shaped due to immense community feedback). There's always some bad eggs amongst the crowd, that's inevitable.

Unfortunately I can't confirm what is and isn't going to be in the Steam version on release other than to say we have been taking feedback and are looking to apply it to all versions of the game.

The game wasn't rushed out.

Beyond that, 6 months isn't chicken feed. That's 6 months worth of salaries, 6 months of pushing back marketing plans. It's a lot of re-working and most likely wouldn't actually have been worth holding the game back for (and even then if it's a '2016 season' game - it wouldn't be coming out day one of the 2016 season due to licensing).

We've managed to get the game out at a competitive time for games and yet in Aus and NZ RLL3 it's the no.1 selling game and top 10 in UK despite only 2 recorded days of sales data. This is when big titles like Mad Max, MGSV, Madden, et al have released and RLL3 is outselling them.

You can sell 10 million copies, but if 8 million are returned within a month...

Fact is, six of my closest mates and I myself are returning the game.

I don't care for excuses - its just not a good enough game.

 

[perverse]

Guess I was more asking why the development timeline wasn't scheduled to line up with the start of a season, like all the other major sports games. All the rosters and draws are more or less already out of date

He's already answered your question dude, licensing issues prevent them from releasing a 2016 game on day 1 of the 2016 season. What these licensing agreements are, who could say... they're more likely between the game publisher and the NRL and have nothing to do with the developers whatsoever.

You'd have to ask either Tru Blu or the NRL, or both for the real answer to that question... but I'm guessing their market research indicates this is the best time to release the game, whether you agree with it or not... and the research won't be based on peoples opinions or what people say they want, but sales figures and history - facts basically. Ultimately, most people who are going to buy the game as a league fan are going to buy the game regardless of when it's released... but releasing now may well get them a wider audience. Going by their early sales figures, it would be hard to argue against any of that.

Off the top of my head, one reason could be that games sales figures indicate that a late-end of the year release sells better, you can still leverage christmas with a reasonably fresh game, etc... and they get to launch around finals fever, which if I had to guess would be a key time for the NRL as far as fan engagement goes.

Realistically, there could be a hundred other reasons that are not at all, or only peripherally related to the actually development of the game. The best I feel that the developer could do is make sure a content pack is ready for release at the start of the season, including the most up to date rosters they can manage with shitty pre-season intel. In fact, they're probably better off holding up the roster update until a good month or 2 into the season and rosters have settled.

 

[roostersrule2]

They don't have to have patches for roster updates.

They'll let the fans do it all for them with the FanHub.

 

[Front-Rower]

They don't have to have patches for roster updates.

They'll let the fans do it all for them with the FanHub.

It's the legal way for the game to be up to date without spending money on licenses ala Don Bradman Cricket 14

 

[Walt Flanigan]

This is the latest review that Ross posted, which makes sense when you read it.

https://theanalogstick.wordpress.com/2015/09/21/rugby-league-live-3-review-ps4/

Surely this is satire?

 

[thorson1987]

It's the legal way for the game to be up to date without spending money on licenses ala Don Bradman Cricket 14

Same thing with the NCAA games. Could never be released with player names but people would update squads to download.

 

[MrAnonymous]

I'm just going to trade the game in. It was fun at first but now all the shit that is wrong with it gets on my nerves. Plus the customer support are a bunch of c**k suckers who don't want to take any feedback when their game is piece of shit.

Never seen a company disrespect their customers like these merkins. Give yourselves an uppercut and f**k all your games.

 

[Rabbits rule]

This is the latest review that Ross posted, which makes sense when you read it.

Surely this is satire?

Oh dear.....

 

[GC_Gladiator]

I tried to leave a 'buyer beware' type response to that review but my response hasn't been published yet.

 

[RoosTah]

You can sell 10 million copies, but if 8 million are returned within a month...

Fact is, six of my closest mates and I myself are returning the game.

I don't care for excuses - its just not a good enough game.

This is why "you and your mates" isn't generally a widely cited statistic...

I know a few mates who've bought it, and none of us have returned it.

Sure, there will be people who will send it back, but it won't happen en-masse

 

[Shaun Hewitt]

It's the legal way for the game to be up to date without spending money on licenses ala Don Bradman Cricket 14

Someone over at the BA forum suggested they collect the better fan made ones to replace the players who look nothing like themselves.

I think its a good idea. Check out Simon Mannering for example, BAs attempt at him, compared to some of the user made stuff

 

[Someone]

In terms of employees testing the game we had a number of sports fans on it. I'm a lover of all sports (as I noted in my introduction post). I go to any and all sporting events (went to the Victory FFA Cup game tonight).

I'm also a member of the Storm (going this Saturday to watch them against the Cowboys).

In terms of others at BigAnt and Tru Blu there's a varying mix, remember that we don't just do Rugby games. We've done Jetpack Joyride, Cricket, AFL and have Lacrosse in development as well as a number of other titles that range quite heavily in genre.

But we've had Rugby League fans come in and do focus tests, and we've had people that play local Rugby help us in various aspects of developing the game too.

In terms of testing time it's been close to 2 years, it's all a ramp up though. What you see at the end isn't even close to what it starts out as, and generally the testing process isn't always what people expect (it's a lot of making sure you comply with manufacturer standards).

I don't want to quote a word wall here so I'll try and answer your post as much as I can and just quote the opening paragraph.

First thing I'll mention is that I came to BigAnt, late 2013 just as RLL2 WCE was being finished up on. I'll admit I didn't have a huge amount of knowledge of peoples opinion on that game going into RLL3 as I wasn't around these sorts of forums at that point in time. It's my choice to come to this forum to engage feedback, generally I am here looking rather than posting (as I am somewhat hamstrung by what I can say most of the time - so I try not to say much at all). I don't have to come to this site, but I like to get a diverse amount of opinions. I don't have a hard time weeding through the crap to get to what I need to know, I know how forums operate.

What I will say about RLL3 is that for the most part the game is built from the ground up, there wasn't much of RLL2's code that was used. Whether you believe that or not, it's just fact. We didn't spend 2 years just making the game look better and push it out the door, there was a significant amount of re-writes to pretty much every single system in the game.

Some of the things you mention are design decisions (whether right or wrong to you - if something is designed a certain way it's not necessarily debated internally until people give feedback that it's not how they want it). Other things are things we probably do need to look at, as to why they make it into the final product comes down to a range of factors (again unfortunately I can't really divulge exactly what - as much as it'd be great to enlighten some of the ignorant crowd around here).

I have a heap of feedback gathered that we're dissecting to see what can be done (so yes canberra_raiders2k2 believe it...). If I could talk more about it I would, but I can't at this stage. But yes, things are being heard despite some of the completely terrible and unhelpful comments people can make.

I also don't really care for your inference in your last paragraph about 'AFL crowd'. Just because we're in Melbourne doesn't mean we don't have passion for Rugby League or are 'AFL focused' (I don't really even see how you manage to get AFL into this at all in the first place). Like I said above I'm a Storm member (and have been for several years) and have followed them throughout the shit times and the good and everyone in the studio is aiming to make a good title regardless of the sport we are attempting to emulate. Nobody is sitting back saying "who gives a shit what we give these NRL blokes, they don't know what's going on and AFL is the better sport anyway!"

There's a lot of long hours and late nights put into these games, to think there's any less effort put in just because it's a Rugby title is just not right at all.

Let me start of with just saying I enjoy the game for what it is, and that I paid $100 dollars for it and I wont be returning it. id like to think I deserve a little bit of respect and I will try to show it in return.

my main question re: testing/ gameplay mechanics, is how you guys thought that making the defence absolutely f**king destroy you with massive hits that would break ribs literally ever single tackle was a good idea. The inability to gain forward momentum and use your forwards to push up the field is a massive screw up. its a backwards step from RLL2.

The only way to go forward is by spreading the ball wide, there are some dummy half runs and inside balls that work but it is very touch and go and mostly a chore to have to come up with clever plays to open gaps when your AI teammates are off doing there own thing anyway.

But I could live with that if the point of contact wasn't so f**king dominate and players could use their leg power after first contact. You only have to watch five minutes of a real game of rugby league to realise defenders don't defend like they do on RLL3. the wrestling/slow play the ball make up for the ruck, but the running game vs. AI defence doesn't. the animation of the ball carrier pushing forward using his legs after contact is even in the bloody game but it only happens about 5% of the time. watch a real game and you realise that this happens all the time.

From the outside looking in the difference between creating animations where the ball runner is getting pushed back 1-2 metres every tackle and him gaining 2-3 metres post contact is so miniscule I just don't get why you guys went with that direction.

I just don't understand how that can get through creating and testing and no one asks 'what's wrong with this?'

 

[Eelementary]

This is why "you and your mates" isn't generally a widely cited statistic...

I know a few mates who've bought it, and none of us have returned it.

Sure, there will be people who will send it back, but it won't happen en-masse

How many people here have already said they're returning it, or have done do already?

If you and your mates like it, then more power to you - but this game is pathetically woeful.

 

[Someone]

How many people here have already said they're returning it, or have done do already?

If you and your mates like it, then more power to you - but this game is pathetically woeful.

I don't think this forum, which is full mostly of harsh critics of most things, is a fair sample to use.

only sellers and big ant would know truly how many people are returning the game.