ThriKreen said:
Nope, you pretty much nailed it, it's a new SimCity, designed around multiplayer. Less focus with large areas and more on quality than quantity.
It's a lot of fun and challenging too, as you need to focus and collaborate with your neighbors, and bad mistakes could result in nuclear meltdowns.
All of those complaints are valid to me, and contribute to why I won't buy the game. I also feel that they all tend to be fairly interconnected.
Basically there is no reason to force a game "always online" other than sheer paranoia on part of the developers. Shoehorning multiplayer into what has largely been a single player game experience is quite clearly an attempt to justify this kind of behavior. People who play this series before have specifically done it because they wanted to play themselves, as opposed to being online with numerous other MMO games, including some based on city and empire building, that existed alongside it. Server dependency also means that you don't have any real control over what you buy, if you decide you want to play THIS version of Sim-City 20 years from now you won't be able to do it, even if the digital platforms storing it still exist (which is in of itself an issue, and why I prefer "disc in hand"). Sure, maybe not many other players, or even noone else, wants to play it anymore, but if *I* do, I should be able to as I paid for the product. Sim games are one of the generes people do actually play older versions of with some frequency.
When it comes to things like "Origin" beyond being generally greedy and retarded as a concept, the bottom line is that by EA running it's own platform it ensures you need to juggle multiple digital platforms for your property. I don't want to have to have a dozen differant platforms and services, each with it's own seperate microtransaction framework to play my games. I want to keep all my digital games in one place (I use STEAM). Origin simply becomes another piece of inconveinent programming on my system, that carries a ton of spyware along with it.
Not to mention that when I call it retarded, I really mean that. I've told this story before, but I will do so again to give you some idea as to why people hate Origin, since this kind of thing happens to a lot more people than me:
When I bought ToR (Star Wars The Old Republic) I pre-ordered a collector's edition from Gamestop. When I got home and put in my pre-order it came out as a normal edition as opposed to a CE, upon invesgitating I found out this was a known issue, so I wound up going back to Gamestop and getting an updated code for my CE pre-order. Upon returning home I tried to put in the new code, but I couldn't because I had already put in a normal edition, and you can't register more than one version of the same product. Upon talking to EA they informed me they were working on a solution, and would have one shortly, but to start a NEW Origin account for the CE pre-order and then I could combine accounts later. I did this, and of course they never got around to fixing problems so I could combine accounts and have all my Origin/EA games in one place. I wound up with TWO seperate EA accounts and of course when installing programs I lost track of which one was logged in, wound up with crap registered to both of them, and EA of course stopped even bothering to respond or get back to me or work on condensing their service. As a result Origin is a pain in the arse to work with for me in general, and their bereaucracy and system designers just literally do not give a crap.
So basically pople considering "you have to use Origin" a strike against a product are fully justified. I do.
I'll also say in comparison that as a service you can't argue that "it's no differant than using STEAM" because in practice it's VASTLY differant. Every single time I've had an issue with STEAM (which is rare I might add) it's been resolved. Heck, I didn't even have a problem getting a refund for the money I put into "The War Z". Origin/EA on the other hand has given me run arounds, long periods on hold, and then just stopped responding to tickets when a problem of their creation is something they do not want to deal with. As a service it's complete garbage. Sure, plenty of people have probably used it without having a hitch... but trust me, it will inevitably happen, you'll see how they are likely to react especially if it's not an easily resolved proble, and then you will understand why it is reviled as a service.
As far as "dumbing down" products go, it's usually an issue when dealing with ongoing series and franchises. The increasing complexity and options in something like a SIM or RPG is part of the point in continueing the series. Doing the same thing, but adding new options and material to it. When you start taking things away in order to make it more appealing to casuals (especially when you already have a solid audience) that becomes a problem. Basically if you've been playing "Simcity" for decades already, you do not need an introductory/streamlined "baby's first sim" with shoehorned multiplayer and social aspects. You want your giant option filled, ultra-complex, sandbox that you can pick up and tinker with on your own without needing to worry about any kind of persistant online play or need to have the neverblinking eye of EA sifting through your computer to make sure your not a thief. If you wanted to manage cities online you could be playing "Ville" games or on say the "Kaboom" website.
"Dumbing Down" games is perhaps the most contreversial issue, because of the way the newer, more casual, gamers who benefit from this outnumber the serious, old school, gamers who carried these franchises from their infancy. At the end of the day I see the problem being that by making everything simplistic and introductory level your pretty much hurting the people who have moved well beyond that level of gaming abillity in their genere of choice and want things to continue to move forward. Continueing franchises are the place to do that. If you want to create introductory level games that are dumbing down for newcomers to learn with, then that's the job of new franchises. Whether it's a "Devil May Cry" brawler, an RPG, or a Sim, franchises need to keep moving forward, new gamers should instead be used as a reason to create new IPs in familiar generes which can then start out very slowly, with simplified, and basic gameplay mechanics.
Not anything I'm going to argue about here, just my thoughts on the subject. I tend to agree that the new Simcity did everything wrong, as such it deserves to be villified. Being hated, and hopefully failing and delivering well below expectations will contrinute to sending a message to the gaming industry about things that gamers are gradually learning not to tolerate.
