SimCity; Refunds Offered

I read somewhere that the game is already cracked and pirates are playing this game while legitimate users need to go wait in queue or something, wonder if it's true.

False or true, it does not matter a lot. Online is an integrated feature in this game. Gameplay is based on the feature. Playing offline is like speaking in public in a desert. When an activity is designed to be a social activity, doing the same activity alone removes something.

They know what they are doing. One way to make pirating less relevant is to make sure that playing online is fundamentally different and better than playing offline.

Very likely the case for this game.
 
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They're not making any goddamned pirating less relevant. I mean, why would anyone pirate a game that practically doesn't work! I can't believe someone still thinks that pirates earn something by sharing rubbish. The sell-useless-junk strategy after paying to get max ratings from review sites is EA's strategy, not pirates' one. And in case of this particular game, I can't say pirates are doing something wrong, they don't pay for that sh*t!

What EA is doing is making a MMO that should later be plagued with microtransaction fraud schemes. ME3 MP part was just a start of that.
 
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They know what they are doing. One way to make pirating less relevant is to make sure that playing online is fundamentally different and better than playing offline.

With a game like this, playing online is fundamentally against how people play the game. SimCity fans expect a city-builder, not some weird MMOized version of one.

And the piracy argument is pointless and just an excuse they haul out to explain anything bad they do. What they're really creating is a super-aggressive marketing and "research" tool in the guise of DRM and "gameplay enhancements", but let's not get drawn into a debate on the problems with the anti-piracy crusade.

I didn't realize until now that there is no ability to save and reload, which completely kills any sort of experimenting, or just fun city trashing, you might want to do. It's taking away the player's ability to play their game how they want, which seems to be the trend these days, and that alone is enough to ensure that I'm not going to buy it.
 
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Piracy is undubiously made less relevant when a game is about social experience and that the pirated version only gives access to a solo experience.

If the game is designed (gameplay, game mechanics) to take full dimension only when played online, pirating the game to get the solo experience offline is just a bad idea.

As to what SimCity fans expect: they have various expectations.

Players like me who want an insulated, à la carte, gaming experience, wont be satisfied by this city builder.
But they are other city builder fans who will enjoy the connectivity with a communauty of players.

For some reasons, it is more profitable for EA (and other developpers, publishers etc) to favour players who want to play their city builders among a communauty of players rather than players who want to play them solo.

All these are mere observations. To be taken or left.

The only question is to know whether that city builder delivers enough on its belonging to a communauty of city builders side to satisfy the gamers who look for that type of experience.

Players who look for solo experience are no longer a desired customer base by publishers etc
 
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it's like saying "New Solitaire for your computer, you need an internet connection to play, but hey, now when you play a card your friends get a screenshot!". It's like they forced the developers to think of ways to make the game only available online, not for the good of the game, but to reduce piracy.
 
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Again?
Man…

To reduce piracy, you just can't make paying customers' life miserable and sell a completely broken product!!!
There is no excuse. You sold something that ain't working. You're earning millions on selling a pile of useless trash. And when customers get angry, you blame it on piracy? Nothing is your fault, only what's yours is the money you got from conned ppl who should do what? Ask nonexisting pirates for refund? Sue those same imaginary pirates? Start WW3 with homemade nukes in RL, not in some virtual EA game - you also got conned into buying? Whatever you do, it's not EA's fault. No, sir! Oh, btw, have you checked the latest EA's DLC? It's a must have! Yea, nothing fun or worth inside, but, yea, well, you have to buy it because of some evil pirates. Yea, those in Somalia. You buy DLC so they don't come abduct your sorry arse. Buy now! Play Cry later.

No wonder they don't shoot tragicomedies in Hollywood any more, we have crapload of that stuff in gaming industry.
 
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Now theyre talking about all the DLC, including the infamous day one DLC. They are going to shovel DLC at you in this game

All simulation games shovel DLCs at you, not the just those made by EA. Train simulators are just crazy. The 2012 version of Railwork simulator had over $2000 in DLCs before they made cheaper bundles...and release the 2013 version that already cost over $200 on Steam to get everything (it was released 6 months ago).
 
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It's like they forced the developers to think of ways to make the game only available online, not for the good of the game, but to reduce piracy.

I am not sure they forced the developpers to think that way. The developpers might have come to this by themselves. City builders are somehow an abandoned genre. Quite some time between the last Sim city and this one. In the meantime, the few that tried to fill (less than five, I think), one already moved to the MU gaming: cities XL.

One key question here is to determine what room of improvement the developpers felt to be available for that genre while maintaining an exclusive SP approach.
Good thing with the multiplayer approach, it adds a lot of coding and maintenance job to code things like interaction between players etc

I am not sure how the game mechanics were moved forward if they were.

One thing is sure: this approach added work that was immediately available for the developpers to do.
 
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From the 'review in progress' notes on PC Gamer, it was sounding like the game was having some pretty serious issues with its advisors even before the servers got snowed under. I'm guessing it will be a couple of months at least before I think about getting this game, which means I'll likely forget about it until the summer Steam sale…

This whole server thing is really a travesty, though. It's like the MMO launches of old. "Oh, we didn't know we would get so many new players all trying to play on the first day!!" Sure you didn't.

The MMOs learned their lessons (more or less) and now divide up the initial rush with options to get into the game early and even to limit sales over the first few days. EA ignored the history and now they are repeating it. That's particularly sad given that they publish some MMOs.
 
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By all accounts they eliminated a lot of mechanics (public transit, large cities) which would not necessarily be a step forward. Maybe the economic model is a step forward but I cannot play to find out.

It did add work but from a companies perspective this is a cost center not a profit center especially since they are not collecting monthly fees. You can justify post release maintenance either through continued fees or continued sales and I dont expect them to get either at this point unless they fix this quick. Even if they do fix it quick I think the damage is done.

The final thing though is that I'm betting the game will be available for dirt cheap prices much earlier than it normally would have been so it may be in a sale or 2 for them to try to lure customers back assuming they fix the issues or enough users drop out.
 
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By all accounts they eliminated a lot of mechanics (public transit, large cities) which would not necessarily be a step forward. Maybe the economic model is a step forward but I cannot play to find out.

It did add work but from a companies perspective this is a cost center not a profit center especially since they are not collecting monthly fees. You can justify post release maintenance either through continued fees or continued sales and I dont expect them to get either at this point unless they fix this quick. Even if they do fix it quick I think the damage is done.

Quite interesting.

All of it allowed to remake the game. As they withdrew certain features, they gave themselves room to make a new installment. In the current situation, they might be able to justify a new iteration to add the features they withdrew.

They are adapting a game that was exclusively SP to social gaming and this alone ensures work and money.
 
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Instead of refunds EA is offering a free game for those who pre-ordered to make amends

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/...og-game-to-apologize-for-simcity-server-woes/

What?!

So, one of games you practically buy for pocketchange on sales now you get for free.
DLC for that same game, in fact all of them, are never on sale and you pay a massive sum. So you get a free game, but EA still milks you in the end and that's something positive?

And I thought EA can't go worse than it was.
 
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I was able to login finally to one of the servers this morning and had a reasonably painless experience this time compared to previous evenings. The experience has been distasteful but seems like they have made headway or a lot of people dropped out. They also have not dropped as many features as it sounded like (though subways are missing and metropolis are unlikely) and they have added new things like public projects (space center, airport) which may be interesting.

I won't say no to a free game if they are going give one to me. Hopeful its not like when Sony tried to make amends for the PS3 fiasco and their free selection was basically older games that they were going to release newer versions of in a couple of months probably in hopes you would buy the sequel after liking the free offering.
 
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From a complany that gave for free all preorder DLC items in a years old game this Xmas and made that sound like it's a huge thing, I wouldn't expect much.

Items. Y'know those mostly OP stuff you don't need at all. Not anything else.
 
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Well now there talking about making a offline patch now so at least the outrage did something good.

Taken from a tweet from Maxis.
We have no intention of offlining SimCity any time soon but we'll look into that as part of our earning back your trust efforts.

Link-http://www.bluesnews.com/s/139791/ea-will-look-into-offline-simcity-new-patch-released

I see this whole blowup as another setback, and a lesson that games should not all be played off servers. Sadly stockholders don't care and we will see more examples from other games in the future.
 
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wow, interesting development. This really is a huge deal, we are witnessing a pretty big event in the history of gaming unfold, this is the sort of thing that sets precedents. This is like the PS network getting hacked, or the D3 auction house, gaming gauntlets being thrown down.

Ok, I'm a little buzzed and rambling lol

From what ive been reading, a lot of the game takes place online, it runs like an MMO. So they'd be releasing a huge patch, essentially making it SP again. Youd think they already have provisions for doing this in the future anyway, they'd just be doing it early.

If I were them, i wouldnt fuck around with "maybe", I'd do it right now, every day that goes by this simmers longer and is really making people hate them.

I had no idea how far-reaching this is going, but I was playing D&D Friday night and 2 different people both remarked on it, people that I didnt even think really played games at all. Sim City is one of those games that crosses over from the hardcore game crowd to the The Sims type players and casuals. I know 2 people that are affected by this, and really pissed off. My wife wanted the game as well, but wont touch it due to this crap. I even thought it looked cool and considered it, but unless they do the right thing and patch for SP option i wont be touching it either. This is pretty important for gamers and the industry as a whole, how this turns out and how people react. How Maxis/ea reacts, and furthermore the industry as a whole.


Do the right thing: Patch or DIE! :biggrin:
 
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A lot of the game does not actually take place online is the thing and why there are a lot of people upset.

Once you get to your city there is no need for online activity for 20-30 minutes and is self contained (mostly). The online piece is there for save games but to also allow regions. Different players can manage different regions and then share resources like I can send my garbage trucks to collect your garbage if you like or my residents might visit your casinos. There are also join projects like the Space Center which multiple players can contribute to.

When I look at this game there is absolutely nothing in it that I think requires a server and what does seems to be minimal. I wouldn't mind the online piece if it was optional but its not so I mind.

I'll be surprised if an official patch does actually come which removes online unless its basically already written. I suspect that it just doesn't make financial sense for them to invest resources in it.
 
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I really didn't care for about this game nor what happens next with it, but our local gaming newspaper brought this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Bmce9oIxJag

Some modder messed with ingame files and made the game working offline flawlessly. Which in the end means EA is not telling the truth (that switching the SP game to offline mode is impossible).
Of course, you still have to save and load your progress on the EA server which means a short time to be online is still required, but wait a minute… Is it, in the end, really impossible to just recode the game so it makes a save locally and not on some cloud? If I was a CEO and someone told me that saving something on a PC's HDD or SDD is impossible, I'd fire him instantly. In this case, I'm not CEO, but when someone is obviously lying, I'm not buying that game that lies… On lies.

And every time I think EA can't go lower, every time EA proves it can. And will. Till when?
Couldn't they just name the game SimCity Online and say "we won't enable offline mode as it's MMO"? Noone would object on that. Me included.
Would it sell with the suffix "online"? Dunno. But at least, I wouldn't be able to claim it's a fraud.
 
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