If the newest SimCity had been billed as an MMO, would people have complained?

[CGAdam]

Subject line says it all. It just feels like the 'always on DRM' is more like an MMO model. You can either build your city alone and ignore everyone else, as compared to grinding levels in your choice of MMO. Conversely, you can trade with other cities and players the same way you'd team up for a large scale quest.

Captcha: stony hearted. Huh.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Apart from all the fans screaming 'WTF' for turning a a city builder into an MMO without Warcrafts excuse of telling a story, the massive server issues for the first few weeks, and the fact that the EA servers are only used for cloud storage and everything is run client side?

The rage would be slightly less, but still pretty bad.

 

[Dryk]

The rage would be exactly the same, except preceded by a period of confusion as everybody wonders why EA think that 16 is a massive number.

 

[Genocidicles]

16 players a server is not massive.

It's a multiplayer game in the same way 16 people in a room each playing their own game of Solitaire is.

Outside of chat you can't directly interact with every player on your server.

 

[Joccaren]

Bigger outrage probably. People would be confused at first as to why a single player experience is being made an MMO, then they'd realise its not an MMO, its just EA being retarded, and then they'd get pissed off more upon realising that its all just an excuse for Always Online DRM.

 

[Alfador_VII]

It was billed as an MMO, or at least "like an MMO" by EA. It isn't, and it didn't help the reception.

If it had working servers at launch they could have billed it as a lobster and it would have been received less badly.

EDIT: Yes I know 16 players isn't in any way massive, especially as the multi-player is asynchronous. There are other lobby based games, with smallish maps that also stupidly call themselves MMOs. World of Tanks comes to mind, 15v15 is NOT massive.

 

[Zeh Don]

A game that doesn't work is simply that - doesn't matter what category you file it under.

 

[SSJBlastoise]

Yes, they would, just for the simple fact that this logo is on the cover (I know most people wouldn't have a cover but oh well).

 

[verdant monkai]

It doesn't matter the reason or the definition of the reason. If it renders the game unplayable it will get complained about.

 

[DirgeNovak]

Yes, people would still have complained, because calling SimCity an MMO is fucking stupid.

Massively: It's 16 players. Hardly a massive number.
Multiplayer: You don't play with anybody. You do your own thing and happen to buy stuff from real people instead of randomly generated cities. Plus nobody wanted that in the first place.
Online: Nothing in the game justifies forcing it. Especially the mandatory cloud saves, which can easily (and did) fuck players over.

 

[Shocksplicer]

What's the point of this thread? It WAS billed as an MMO. That's a big part of the controversy...

 

[MoltenSilver]

It would have been the same, at most the mitigation would have been having the outrage more spread out rather than concentrated at launch, because the people who would buy a new Simcity game never wanted an MMO. But then, as has been said above, the server issues would still have lit the fuse, followed by finding out how 'online' it really was etc etc.

Which just makes it all the more two-faced that EA is trying to hide behind that claim now, because I'm willing to bet marketing it as an MMO before it launched would've resulted in a whole lot of its fan-base looking right on past it.

 

[Something Amyss]

They did bill it as an MMO, and it was stupid.

 

[Ken Sapp]

If it had been billed as an MMO I would not have bought the game.

Having played Cities XL when it was an online multiplayer game I don't think the game type is suited for the format. SimCity has only served to reinforce my opinion.

They did bill it as an MMO, and it was stupid.

I wish I had noticed that before I purchased.


Honestly I am tired of these companies trying to shoehorn online into everything. I just want a decent single player experience as I rarely play online games and am more interested in the story than in having an e-peen contest with people I will likely never meet in real life. I don't care if developers think that everything should be online, I have no wish to be forced into socializing. The most memorable and best experiences I have had in games have overwhelmingly been single player.

 

[Doom972]

If there was a monthly subscription fee, this game would've sold far less copies - because in order to be an MMO this game would need to have servers with large player capacity (the MASSIVE part of MMO), which it doesn't have.

With less people buying the game, I guess fewer people would complain, but not for the reason that I think that you're suggesting.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Subject line says it all. It just feels like the 'always on DRM' is more like an MMO model.

It has been marketed as a MMO. The problem is that it's not a MMO, it's barely even a multi player game. The rage stems from the arbitrary nature of it's DRM, the fact that it's worse (smaller, buggier, fewer features) than it's predecessors and the small issue that it doesn't work.

Those issues aren't going anywhere however it was marketed, that it's EA and EA talks to prospective customers like they're idiots only compounds the matter.

 

[Worgen]

They really should have called it 'Simcity Online' or something, that way people would realize it was stupid before buying it.

 

[linkmastr001]

It'd be as bad, if not worse, simply because it isn't an MMO.

I haven't played it, and I know that's the case.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Yes, because the launch was still a fairly major disaster no matter what they choose to call the bloody thing.