EA gets even stupider.

[VincentX3]

The always online thing has been known for a while now.

All the same, I love sim city, the sims (yeah screw you I like it!), ect but I am giving this one a solid pass until they fix it so its not always online and I can play singleplayer game how I want.

Edit:

Then somebody made a crack and everyone could save their games offline and skip the DRM bull.
Everyone was happy.

....

Except EA, their just annoying.

I will buy it if a crack comes out for it as well!

You know it will happen, it's inevitable.
No one should need to put up with always online bull this day and age, so EA can bite me.

Oh sure they will crack it, but it could be highly annoying to do so like Diablo 3 was/is

See this is why I don't bother talking about cracks, because someone usually mentions "Diablo III" and the discussion that follows is a chore. So here's the "easy version" for you.

Diablo III is basically an MMO with a single player campaign, it was designed that way from the beginning.
Meaning all the GAME DATA is on blizzards servers, that's why being "Always Online" is needed.
In order to crack Diablo III, you would need to replicate the GAME DATA that's stored on Blizzard's servers, which could take months (Not counting all the updates Blizzard does to the game)

Sim City on the other hand, doesn't work that way. All the GAME DATA is stored on your PC, the difference is it stores your saves on Cloud servers instead of locally.

Hence the crack.

So yea cracking Diablo III =\= Sim City

So yea, they sort of, cracked Diablo 3 in July. You can play single player offline. The crackers typically also get the updates, crack them, and put them out for download as well.

I don't want to sound like a supporter of piracy but, for single player portions of games, DRM only affects honest customers. Pirates don't deal with always online requirements.

They cracked it in just the way I stated earlier, constantly debugging data that was replicated from the game
Even now it still has constant bugs and updates.

DRM effect's everyone in general, they should really spend the money they use on the game's DRM to actually making the game more stable and enjoyable.
But yea, that's basically a fairytale this day and age.

 

[VincentX3]

The always online thing has been known for a while now.

All the same, I love sim city, the sims (yeah screw you I like it!), ect but I am giving this one a solid pass until they fix it so its not always online and I can play singleplayer game how I want.

Edit:

Then somebody made a crack and everyone could save their games offline and skip the DRM bull.
Everyone was happy.

....

Except EA, their just annoying.

I will buy it if a crack comes out for it as well!

You know it will happen, it's inevitable.
No one should need to put up with always online bull this day and age, so EA can bite me.

Oh sure they will crack it, but it could be highly annoying to do so like Diablo 3 was/is

See this is why I don't bother talking about cracks, because someone usually mentions "Diablo III" and the discussion that follows is a chore. So here's the "easy version" for you.

Diablo III is basically an MMO with a single player campaign, it was designed that way from the beginning.
Meaning all the GAME DATA is on blizzards servers, that's why being "Always Online" is needed.
In order to crack Diablo III, you would need to replicate the GAME DATA that's stored on Blizzard's servers, which could take months (Not counting all the updates Blizzard does to the game)

Sim City on the other hand, doesn't work that way. All the GAME DATA is stored on your PC, the difference is it stores your saves on Cloud servers instead of locally.

Hence the crack.

So yea cracking Diablo III =\= Sim City

Please don't condescend to me, I know exactly how the game works and operates and I know it has been cracked. I just said it has the potential to be as annoying as D3, not that it is exactly the same.

And as the new Sim City has yet to be released there is very little way to tell how much of the game data is stored on the EA cloud, unless you have advance access to the stuff and can inform us otherwise.

Google?
Also the fact that every other non MMO game uses the same method for storing GAME DATA (Which has nothing to do with the method of storing saves)

Really it's just logic.

 

[Andrew_C]

This is old news if you've been paying attention to the development. They confirmed it months ago at that trade show in Germany. And hard core SimCity fans have been bitching for months about it. But this game is not aimed at SimCity fans, it's aimed at The Sims fans.

Maybe they'll change things now that Reddit has taken notice, but I doubt it because the game has a Client/Server architecture like Diablo 3, everything important happens or is stored on the server. No-way they can redesign the game this late.

Some of the things this games lacks:
1) No offline mode
2) No terraforming, so you can't create the region you want, be it a real-life area or something from your imagination
3) No subways
4) You can't place city connections where you want them.
5) Stupid border area between cities, so you can't create a sprawling megapolis out of a region.

So basically the things that make SimCiy great and creative have been ripped out. But they've simulated every shit your sims take with their Glassbox Engine?. Whoop de doo.

 

[AnnaIME]

But this game is not aimed at SimCity fans, it's aimed at The Sims fans.

There are many, many Sims fans who don't accept always on DRM either, and many of us use mods to remove all the annoying online/facebook/spam-your-friends parts of the game.

 

[Andrew_C]

But this game is not aimed at SimCity fans, it's aimed at The Sims fans.

There are many, many Sims fans who don't accept always on DRM either, and many of us use mods to remove all the annoying online/facebook/spam-your-friends parts of the game.

Sorry for the implication. What I meant was the reason Maxis/EA weren't listening to the fans of the old games (apart from not giving a damn, that is) was because they aren't the target audience for SimCity 2013.

I know what you mean about the spam your friends stuff. I can't tell you how annoyed I was when I saw that in Tropico 4 and how happy I was when I found the in-game option to totally disable it.

 

[Waaghpowa]

I for one wasn't going to get Simcity anyway, was never into that kind of thing. EA just gave me another reason.

What's with this forcing people to be social thing lately anyway? Blizz did it to Diablo which, despite having the option to be multi player, most people would play solo. These companies need to realize that some people just don't want to play with other people.

 

[Andrew_C]

You dont like the product? By all means pass it up and look for a product that pleases you. Let that be that. Massive parts of the markets buy games for an online experience. Dont go arguing they are wrong just because dont want to be online.

I personally would have no objection to people enjoying online multiplayer in SimCity 2013 (I'm sure there are people who would find it a personal affront). What I object to is that Maxis/EA have taken an offline singleplayer game, turned it into an online multiplayer game, ripping out core gameplay in the process, only very reluctantly included an online singleplayer mode, flat out refused to consider an offline mode and then had the balls to call it SimCity.

 

[Krantos]

See, some people see EA as a Bond villain.

Me? I see them more like Dr. Evil. They're trying so hard to be evil, but they're so out of their depth it's just funny.

They're probably the biggest game publisher out there right now, but they simply don't get the industry. They see other companies do stuff like this, and then try to implement it in the most egregious and bassackwards way imaginable.

They just don't get it. It's hilarious.

 

[Comocat]

I'm going to make a stand like the mature gamer I am, I'm simply going to zone low density industry around all of their houses.

 

[Worgen]

Well, that's going to go about as well as selling ice to Eskimo's.

The truly sad part is people will still throw money at it.

Well, at least my wife can be safe in the knowledge that I won't be spending our money on that game .... ever.

I doubt people will be throwing that much money at it, back in the day simcity was pretty popular but its not like diablo or starcraft where people will bend over and take whatever stupid drm method they want to use. City building games are more of a niche genre then blizzard games are, meaning that doing something like this could really end up hurting ea, I mean they kinda pulled something similar with C&C 4 and that game was a total flop despite being part of a rather strong even at that point, brand.

Back in the day games were a lot less refined than they are today.

The barrier of entry has lowered significantly and games like Minecraft and Farmville does try to cater to the same aesthetics that Sim City caters to.

In the end the price is in the pudding.

C&C 4 failed despite being a established brand on a combination of deviation from original series, poor design and technical incompetence (if you have a game that forces you online at least have the servers up reliably). I highly doubt that C&C 4 would have been a smashing success if only it had been offline.

If they deliver a good game that utilizes the online element to a point where an offline game seems like the lesser game, then they will succeed.

The difference between simcity and farmville, not touching your minecraft comparison. Is that farmville plays itself and is intended to be something you jump onto for a little while then leave, simcity has always been about managing the city and actually doing things that might not end well, in short its a game you can lose unlike farmville, unless they changed it to the city building formula of all those crummy lil games on tablets/phones.

I think it would have been much more successful if it wasn't online required since that would have forced them to reign in some of their stupider decisions, like forcing the player to level up to get access to new units and probably would have let a player control more than one walker at a time or given the walkers more flexibility.

 

[Andrew_C]

You dont like the product? By all means pass it up and look for a product that pleases you. Let that be that. Massive parts of the markets buy games for an online experience. Dont go arguing they are wrong just because dont want to be online.

I personally would have no objection to people enjoying online multiplayer in SimCity 2013 (I'm sure there are people who would find it a personal affront). What I object to is that Maxis/EA have taken an offline singleplayer game, turned it into an online multiplayer game, ripping out core gameplay in the process, only very reluctantly included an online singleplayer mode, flat out refused to consider an offline mode and then had the balls to call it SimCity.

Ah yes they have the balls to do something with something they own.
Were you under the impression that just because you liked the last one you now had special privileges when it came to the franchisee?

Furthermore the "core" gameplay for you that I saw the last post isn't the "core" gameplay for me, so now what? We going to have a pissing contest over who is right here based on who is the bigger fan? Then the winner would get to say yay/nay to the game?

Or we could ignore each others opinions on the subject and get on with our lives. Buy the game if we like it and ignore it if we dont without the idea of self importance imposed by liking the last one.

I didn't like the last one. Simcity Societies was dumbed down and a total break from what makes a SimCity game great, which is why it didn't do so well. The other games built upon the good ideas of the previous games, which is just one of the many reasons why they were so great. If they just called this SimCity Societies 2 I might even buy it.

And I definitely call the ability to build where you want to right up to the edge of the map, place city connections where YOU want and need them and have a large variety of transport options core mechanics of Simcity. If you don't, fine, but I would be interested to know why you think they are unimportant.

 

[harryhenry]

You dont like the product? By all means pass it up and look for a product that pleases you. Let that be that. Massive parts of the markets buy games for an online experience. Dont go arguing they are wrong just because dont want to be online.

I personally would have no objection to people enjoying online multiplayer in SimCity 2013 (I'm sure there are people who would find it a personal affront). What I object to is that Maxis/EA have taken an offline singleplayer game, turned it into an online multiplayer game, ripping out core gameplay in the process, only very reluctantly included an online singleplayer mode, flat out refused to consider an offline mode and then had the balls to call it SimCity.

Ah yes they have the balls to do something with something they own.
Were you under the impression that just because you liked the last one you now had special privileges when it came to the franchisee?

Furthermore the "core" gameplay for you that I saw the last post isn't the "core" gameplay for me, so now what? We going to have a pissing contest over who is right here based on who is the bigger fan? Then the winner would get to say yay/nay to the game?

Or we could ignore each others opinions on the subject and get on with our lives. Buy the game if we like it and ignore it if we dont without the idea of self importance imposed by liking the last one.

I didn't like the last one. Simcity Societies was dumbed down and a total break from what makes a SimCity game great, which is why it didn't do so well. The other games built upon the good ideas of the previous games, which is one of the reasons why they were so great. If they just called this SimCity Societies 2 I might even buy it.

And I definitely call the ability to build where you want to right up to the edge of the map, place city connections where YOU want and need them and have a large variety of transport options core mechanics of Simcity. If you don't, fine, but I would be interested to know why you think they are unimportant.

Ummm, you do know that will wright liked the changes in sim city societies? because he felt that the series got too complicated with each installment, and he wanted simcity to be an acsessable franchise. so the changes in the new sim city? will wright would probably like them