Madden-ing Glitch Irks Gamers

theodp writes "A vexing glitch in Madden NFL 2005 has players complaining in online forums and even demanding a recall. Because repeated offensive shifts exhaust the defense before the ball is snapped, EA's forced online players to turn off the fatigue setting, which disables the exploit, but spoils the realism of the game. At least you've got an excuse for that first-round Madden Challenge loss."

Here's a thought...

[databoing]

Why not have give the offense players a "fatigue" setting that fatigues the entire offense when they repeatedly shift. That would even the stakes, right?

Updates

[falcon203e]

Hmm... I suppose I'll be buying NHL 2005 for my PC instead of my PS2. Gotta love free updates.

Who's designing and testing this stuff?

[thelenm]

Jeez, that should have been about the first thing on their minds when designing the new formation shift feature. Can online players do anything to unfairly abuse it? Hmm, oh yeah, a formation shift affects the defensive team's fatigue level without the defensive player being able to do anything about it. Whoops! Maybe even more surprising is that apparently no playtesters even thought to try it. Aren't you supposed to be as evil as possible in kicking the crap out of every aspect of the game before it's released?

Why don't they just patch it?

[Guspaz]

The game is for XBox and PS2, right? While this doesn't work on the PS2, from what I understand EA could easily release a client-side patch for the xbox version to fix this. This is one of the benefits of having a hard drive in a console.

Of course I could be wrong, but it is my understanding that xbox games can and are patched.

Re:Wait a sec...

[August_zero]

1. This is the internet we are talking about, people cheat when they get the chance, a lot. 2. In leagues this is not always possible, you may be stuck playing a specific opponent. 3. How many times can I change before it is cheating? How do you know I am not just indecisive? 4. This is the Internet, people will accuse you of cheating when you win, especially if the potential top cheat is there (OMG AIMBOT). Ever play a round of counter strike and get kicked for cheating even though you weren't? All of these things will severely reduce the enjoyability of the online game. I don't think they are obligated to fix the bug just as I don't think people are obligated to buy their product if they are not happy with it.