I want Sim City, but.... Origin...

[Jayemsal]

Even after the terrible actions of EA, I am still in love with the franchise and I will likely be buying the game soon.

My question is, how does Origin behave? Is it user friendly? Will it spy on me via webcam?

(Looking for legitimate answers here, not people felating Steam)

(I like Steam)

 

[Tom Waits' hat]

It is really not as bad as people think.
It just another digital distribution client. People just hate it because it's EA.

Chat overlay isn't as good as Steam, but browser overlay is better.

 

[Smertnik]

I think Origin has improved quite a lot over the course of time. I actually like it more than Steam in terms of looks and some of the features. For once it's very simplistic without any of the community bollocks, you have your games list and that's it. You can also launch singleplayer games without the client. And there's an actual age verification system, something that German users have been asking Valve for many years (Although I have no idea whether they still sell censored stuff despite that. But the system is there at least). If Steam didn't have a vastly superior game library and sales I'd probably stick with Origin instead.
So yeah, the client is decent enough in my opinion. But you can always just download it and see for yourself.

 

[evilneko]

Buy Simcity 2000 from GOG instead.

You'll be glad you did.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

Origin is fine to use. The UI is clean and simple and it runs smoothly. It's the always online nature of Sim City that I would be more wary of.

 

[The_Lost_King]

It doesn't spy on you anymore. They changed the terms of use agreement.

 

[OpticalJunction]

It's a lot like steam with a smaller games catalog and ridiculously high prices. About privacy, this is what wikipedia says about it:

Accusations of spying

Origin's end-user license agreement (EULA) gives EA permission to collect information about users' computers regardless of its relation to the Origin program itself, including "application usage (including but not limited to successful installation and/or removal), software, software usage and peripheral hardware."[27] Initially, the EULA also contained a passage permitting EA to more explicitly monitor activity as well as to edit or remove material at their discretion.[28] However, this section was removed following an outcry over privacy implications. That outcry was fueled in part by pictures and video captured by several German gamers which showed Origin accessing tax programs and other unrelated software, as well as a report by the newspaper Der Spiegel investigating the allegations.[29][30] In response to the controversy, EA issued a statement claiming they "do not have access to information such as pictures, documents or personal data, which have nothing to do with the execution of the Origin program on the system of the player, neither will they be collected by us."[31] EA also added a sentence to the EULA stating that they would not "use spyware or install spyware on users' machines," though users must still consent to allowing EA to collect information about their computers.[32]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_%28content_delivery%29#Criticism

 

[Doom972]

It's basically a bare-bones version of Steam and it works as it is expected to. If that's your only concern, buy the game, but remember that one day they'll shut down those servers and you'll find out that you rented the game at full price.

 

[Kaymish]

yeah origin is ok i suppose i have never had a real issue with it however i try not to use it though because the prices are worse than retail and its just another background service and i had to go through the bioware site to get my ME3 DLC
i would wait on getting simcity however until they have sorted out its brokenness and i don't mean the server issues but the massive amount of bugs and severe lack of modding support that would allow more rapid fixes

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

Origin is fine as a client. The only issue with it is that it's another client to have on your computer. It's much faster than Steam for me, personally.

The always online nature of SimCity is a far bigger concern.

 

[uchytjes]

While I haven't downloaded origin and do not plan on it any time soon, I'm sure the client can't be too different to what steam does. Sure it may not be as polished or you may not agree with EA but it can't be that bad. If I ever do download origin, however, it will be for the new Sim City. but only after two things happen: 1. The price goes down. Hey, I've gotta put money towards college and food first. 2. Servers are either A: gotten rid of or B: fixed so that I can use Cheetah Speed. Sim City just isn't right if I can't use Cheetah speed to wait for money.

 

[Unit72]

TLDR:
HOW DOES ORGINS BEHAVE: Like a child who is still learning the ropes but does its share to stay out of your way. Its not bad is what im saying.

IS IT USER FREINDLY: Yes for the most part, the shop desperatly needs reworking since its hard to browse. I got money burning my pocket but nothing interests me in here. I can find loads of steam games i want but this one is hard to find games on.

WILL IT SPY ON ME VIA WEBCAM: No, there was this big deal over Orgin's spyware but thats gone now and has been for a few months now, or was it years....anyway its gone now and its safe.


I bought battlefield 3 when it first came out to tide me over till skyrim came out and i hated orgins compared to steam. But i hated it for little things, the biggest of these things that still sorta irks me (irks me, it doesnt make me full out rage or even anger me it just.....irks me) is that games dont just start and take you to the main menu. It loads up a client like an mmo would and you gotta navigate though that, though i guess it depends on the game. I only own battlefield 3 and Simcity on orgins not becuase i dislike the service but because no other games they sell interest me. Both these orgin games i have also lack any ingame VOIP forcing you to make the person you wanna chat with a freind so you can talk to them through the orgins client unless ive been missing out on something here. Sometimes i wonder if that was intentional so that the service seems useful seeing as these games are so into making us socilize with our team to coordinate squads or build up great works. I mean BF2 had Voip, why wouldnt 3?


If anything its a minor inconvenience and not even that at times since it does what its supposed to without getting in my way.
1)I go to my desktop
2)Double click SimCity
3)SimCity client opens up like any other mmo client and autenticates/patches your game.
(i thought just like steam orgins is supposed to be incharge of that so i nvr have to authenticate everytime i wanna play but whatever it only takes like 3 secs)
4)Click play

The only time you will see orgins is when you exit Simcity to see that when you started your orgins game, the orgins library automatically opened as well which isnt bad. It does have this annoying tendency of not showing the market though.
There is currently a "mystery" sale going on now and they give you a hint and you guess what it is, reveal the deal by clicking the box just like steam does when you finish the game and it treis to sell you some games on sale or newly released. But when i do it takes FOREVER to load up. When it does though i see that they already took the libery of adding them to my cart which i find kinda pushy but hey whatever its service right? XD.

I dont mind orgins anymore as much as i used to. Im having alot of fun with simcity. There are alot of things wrong with this game and you could say its still in beta. Alot of features are off atm like map filters, cheetah fast forward speed, multi city trade, the list goes on. But despite this im having fun playing it in small doses. Dont be fooled by the hate the game gets, i admit its veeeery rough compared to what we were promised but im having tons of fun playing a buggy 3/4 finished game then to not play it at all and wait 3 more months when they polish it all to a clean shine. This isnt the talk of a fanboy either, i work for a living and only get 2hrs of gameing these days and for the time i invest in it im having fun. I guess if your really really detailed oriented go to the simcity forums and check out what the people are saying and decide for yourself. I only say so incase this thread gets hijacked by simcity haters who played and cant see past the bugs to find the point of a simulation game, to watch a city at work even if it is trafic infested.

 

[Auron]

Origin works fine, the cloud saving feature is leagues ahead of Steam, the customer support is faster, albeit a bit clumsy from time to time and there's a bunch of exclusives, everything else is better on Steam and their sales don't really compare overall but again, it's fine. It's maligned because "ea the devil." but it does it's job pretty well.

 

[Revolutionary]

Origin itself isn't that bad really. For me it's more a case of "I want it but that DRM".

 

[Snotnarok]

Origin is fine, there's nothing overly stupid about it minus you can't gift digital games, you can (I believe) gift physical games off the system though. Though that Always Online DRM is more a problem I'd say.