The new SimCity...*sigh*

[ThunderAeroI]

My game continues to be an expensive paperweight in which I cant do anything.

[Cutter John]

Sounds to me like they're trying to turn their games into Facebook style social media events. Screw that. I want a game that I can fire up and play to pass the time whenever my internet goes down.

TheGodBen wrote:

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Diablo III broke sales records and is the fastest-selling PC game in history. So yes, most gamers will take it up the ass, those of us that care about the way these companies treat customers are in the minority. Always-online DRM is here to stay for as long as people keep buying those games.

That just means a lot of people fell for the initial hype. I'm love to know how many people are still playing it.

[The Mirrorball Man]

I have no interest in any kind of multiplayer experience, so I won't buy this, which is a pity because I like that kind of game.

[FPAlpha]

Cutter John wrote:

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Sounds to me like they're trying to turn their games into Facebook style social media events. Screw that. I want a game that I can fire up and play to pass the time whenever my internet goes down.

That just means a lot of people fell for the initial hype. I'm love to know how many people are still playing it.

I've stopped playing after reaching Inferno and getting my ass whooped constantly /and that's been months ago).. gear was not good enough but monsters rarely dropped anything useful besides Potions. So i had absolutely no desire to farm gold and buy better gear through the auction house.
Was a blast though initially and together with some friends over teamspeak was really great.

For whatever reason i'm still itching to buy SimCity.. everything i hear is mostly critical and EA has major troubles getting their crap online DRM to work so people can actually play.

Yeah i know.. i'm pathetic

[ATimson]

Cutter John wrote:

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That just means a lot of people fell for the initial hype. I'm love to know how many people are still playing it.

Hype, or nostalgia for the old games. After StarCraft II did well, we thought Blizzard knew what it was doing. We were wrong.

[TheGodBen]

billcosby wrote:

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Yes, I know I'm in the minority here, that doesn't make it any less lame or downright insulting to a consumer that the producer assumes that I am complicit in piracy before the software is installed! I don't care how awesome the game is, I wouldn't install an always-on DRM game if you paid me.

I agree with you completely, the moment they announced that SimCity was going to require a constant internet connection to play was the moment they lost my business. But the majority of consumers just don't care about that. I wish it wasn't so, I wish that more people would oppose this transparent attempt to shift power away from the consumer and towards game publishers, but most people just want to play a game and don't care about the back-end stuff.

I'd like to think that the negative PR from the failures of SimCity and Diablo III's launch will encourage gamers to be more cautious about purchasing games with this kind of DRM in the future. But I fear that the next game to try it will just throw millions of dollars into generating hype and this sort of crap will slowly become the norm.

There's already a rumour that the next Xbox will require a constant internet connection to run, and Sony may well do the same if MS decides to.

Robert Maxwell wrote:

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The only reason an Internet connection didn't become a requirement sooner was because the financials didn't work out--not enough people had the required connections to make it viable. But now, there is plenty of broadband penetration in the major markets where games are sold, and requiring a connection serves multiple business needs: it thwarts piracy, enables various social features that wouldn't otherwise be possible, permits purchasing of in-game content, and allows the publisher/developer to unilaterally "retire" the game and push people to buy a newer version (or another title entirely.)

There's another big advantage to this system: preventing user mods. Why let people download free mods when you can charge them for DLC instead (and SimCity has a big ad for DLC packs right on the main menu). By making SimCity an online game they can justify banning modders for "hacking". I think it's pretty telling that this SimCity has a global leaderboard, which is weird in a game that's ostensibly about the challenge of designing the city of your dreams, not competing with other players.

EA may not choose to do this with SimCity if players find a way to mod the game. But I have little doubt that this is the direction EA is planning to go long-term.

Cutter John wrote:

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That just means a lot of people fell for the initial hype. I'm love to know how many people are still playing it.

But does that matter? Millions of people bought the game and Blizzard made tonnes of money. From a business point of view, it was a huge success.

[Squiggy]

Cutter John wrote:

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Sounds to me like they're trying to turn their games into Facebook style social media events.

They already have one, called "Sim City Social". It's like Farmville meets Sim City. Cutesy graphics with missions and you have to have neighbors who also play.

I play it, but meh.

I do like all this complaining about the servers being shit. If everyone gives up then it'll be that much more server space when the Mac version comes out in a few months.

[Robert Maxwell]

TheGodBen wrote:

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There's another big advantage to this system: preventing user mods. Why let people download free mods when you can charge them for DLC instead (and SimCity has a big ad for DLC packs right on the main menu). By making SimCity an online game they can justify banning modders for "hacking". I think it's pretty telling that this SimCity has a global leaderboard, which is weird in a game that's ostensibly about the challenge of designing the city of your dreams, not competing with other players.

EA may not choose to do this with SimCity if players find a way to mod the game. But I have little doubt that this is the direction EA is planning to go long-term.

I think that may be a premature assumption. User-generated content is a major draw for games like this, so I don't see EA getting rid of modding entirely. What they would likely do, if anything, is provide a supported means of modding the game while keeping the social playing field (e.g. global leaderboards) level. If you engaged in unauthorized hacking of their files, however, I would not be surprised if they detect this and consider it a "compromised" client, going so far as disabling the game entirely. Things like that are trivial to do with an always-connected game. But since there are good business reasons to have a user-driven modding system in place (such as the value it adds through user-generated content for very little expense on the business side), I don't think the industry is poised to eliminate that just yet.

[TheGodBen]

Robert Maxwell wrote:

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I think that may be a premature assumption. User-generated content is a major draw for games like this, so I don't see EA getting rid of modding entirely. What they would likely do, if anything, is provide a supported means of modding the game while keeping the social playing field (e.g. global leaderboards) level. If you engaged in unauthorized hacking of their files, however, I would not be surprised if they detect this and consider it a "compromised" client, going so far as disabling the game entirely. Things like that are trivial to do with an always-connected game. But since there are good business reasons to have a user-driven modding system in place (such as the value it adds through user-generated content for very little expense on the business side), I don't think the industry is poised to eliminate that just yet.

You may be right, and it's possible that I'm just being overly negative about their intentions. But there does seem to have been a trend in recent years away from modding and towards DLC and microtransactions. I'd like to think that EA are smart enough to realise the downsides of that sort of thinking, but this is a company that just removed the singleplayer component from a traditionally singleplayer franchise, so I don't hold the management of that company in particularly high regard.

As for modding in SimCity, according to a reddit thread I read earlier (which is the most respectable source of information around ) while the Glassbox engine used for simulating cities client-side is moddable, the Glasshouse engine that simulates the regions serverside doesn't currently support user mods. Maybe Maxis will construct an infrastructure to allow mods work in the future, but right now they're struggling to even get the basics working properly. They've even been reduced to disabling non-essential features just to allow people play the game.

[Timby]

TheGodBen wrote:

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but this is a company that just removed the singleplayer component from a traditionally singleplayer franchise

Always connected to the Internet =/= removing single-player.

[Squiggy]

Timby wrote:

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Always connected to the Internet =/= removing single-player.

Since most people are already always connected to the internet, I don't understand the gripe.

[Sheep]

Squiggy wrote:

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Since most people are already always connected to the internet, I don't understand the gripe.

What happens wheen EA announces SimCity 2015 and kill their existing SimCity servers? This is EA who HAVE killed servers for games only a year or two old.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...A?tag=at055-20

Looks like Amazon's pulled the download version. I'm guessing they got a flood of complaints from users unable to connect or play.

[Robert Maxwell]

Timby wrote:

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Always connected to the Internet =/= removing single-player.

It sounds like this game is "single-player" only in the sense that, say, The Old Republic is single-player: you can do everything by yourself if you want, but the game is inherently Internet-based.

[Vendikarr]

This thread makes me want to play some SimCity. I am going to have to find my SimCity 3000 disk and load it up.

[JarodRussell]

I found myself playing Sim City 2000 for a while after reading this thread. Won't be possible with this one, I guess, because eventually, they WILL shut down the service.

That's what I hate about online games (any game that requires online connection, for DRM purposes or multiplayer) the most. You buy it, but you can't keep it as long as you like. You can only play it as long as the company has the online service up and running.