The thing is most people and companies realise that a while the severs will be crappy the first couple days after launch its not really an issue. The whole issue will have blown over in a week and pretty much everybody who bought the game will be happy.cerebreturns said:
Electronic Arts Disables "Non-Critical" SimCity Features - UPDATED
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
- Start date
I should note that since the patch, while this is all unconfirmed, multi-city play also appears to be broken. Cities do not commute to each other, share resources and the like.
I'm not sure if they stealth disabled this or I'd it's just a bug, but there's been no confirmation one way or another and it's a pretty widespread issue that didn't exist over the last couple of days.
It's is hardly a non-critical feature. Arguably much more important than cheetah speed. My mining and power city is virtually worthless and my gambling city isn't getting the electricity it needs and has nowhere to send its sewage. Pretty terrible actually.
I'm not sure if they stealth disabled this or I'd it's just a bug, but there's been no confirmation one way or another and it's a pretty widespread issue that didn't exist over the last couple of days.
It's is hardly a non-critical feature. Arguably much more important than cheetah speed. My mining and power city is virtually worthless and my gambling city isn't getting the electricity it needs and has nowhere to send its sewage. Pretty terrible actually.
This gives me hope that one day they'll drop the forced servers, so I can buy it. With luck, it'll even all be patched by then.
The always on DRM seems to be working out a treat for EA. Still, I suppose that's good news for us the consumers. All it takes is a screw up like this (and lets face it, a few more) to convince the industry it's a bad idea. At least we get to chant "We told you so!" when the company comes out and admits it was a bad idea.
This is just weird. The issue for me is that other companies take steps, prior to release to test their game, especially if it's online. I Can't remember the last big MMO release that didn't include several stress test weekends where they just gave out ridiculous numbers of invites to get as many people playing as possible. It doesn't usually alleviate problems, but it sure as hell helps the release. it was just really poorly thought out, really poorly. And all those stress test weekends would have increased sales even more.
This is exactly true. Everyone thinks that this will make a difference in the long run. They say, "now everyone will have learned". But no one will. And in a week or two, all the kinks will be worked out and there won't be any server issues. This isn't going to stop anyone from buying games that have this "feature" they call always online.Little Gray said:
Abso-fucking-lutely! This idea that you own a product is a mere facade. In essence, you are renting/leasing the abilty to play it. If this is a road that developers want to go down, great, I just wont be renting your product ever. If you feel the need to charge $20 more for a version where I completely own it, I'll happily pay that. I can still plug in my copy of SC4, SC300, etc, etc, because I own that product.Notsomuch said:
The cheetah mode thing is a BIG DEAL by the way. At the early stage, you have a pretty slow cash flow, so you need to speed the game up to get some cash. This essentially makes you wait around more. It basically just makes the game less fun overall
It is because most people are insane. They keep hating these practices yet they expect things to change while supporting these horrible practices. That is full on insanity.porous_shield said:
If the market changes to always on DRM with pay up front, pay for DLC, pay for microtransactions to be competitive, and fuel the fire then gamers have no one to blame but ourselves for our lack of willpower.
Some of the comments have been the sweet, sweet icing on this delicious cake.Genocidicles said:
"If this isn't working next week, I'm going to get a refund and never touch this game again! (..until next year, when the issues have been fixed, the servers are quiet and there's more stuff available)"
"I'm not going to buy this until it's heavily discounted. Fuck EA." Yeah, that'll learn 'em!
and in similar news: 'Man, I'm done with Bioware. I only have to get DA3 and then that's it!'
Man, this is the gift that keeps on giving. US servers might start getting pieced together but then we have the EU launch soon don't we? Between that and watching the Torment kickstarter climb into the stratosphere I think I'm done for entertainment all weekend.
The biggest problem with this: yet you all STILL bought it.
And that is why they hire professionals and not farmers to do the job, do they not? or do you claim that there are no professionals at EAs employment and all they can do is flip switches.Capitano Segnaposto said:
Face it people. This is nothing more than a little setback. In a few weeks it will most likely all be smoothed out. Maybe a bit more than a few weeks due to Europe release. But after that it will mostly be smooth sailing. I myself have logged 15 hours into this game. Heck i got it up and running before most of the pre-order guys did (heh heh) And honestly. I'm having tons of fun. Yes the inability to connect to the server is frustrating as hell but its still a great game. Addicting one at that. All my cities are awesome.. well trying to be. Cities...y u no work without bankrupting me!
Anyways. The game itself doesnt deserve the bad reviews. Its EA and their drm that deserves the criticism. Dont punish a good franchise for the mistake of its idiot owner. If anything it might make it so that EA never releases another simcity game due to this last ones bad reviews. And then guess what people. All this bashing of the DRM and servers and whatnot will have caused the simcity franchise to die. Unless of course EA sells the rights to simcity... like thats ever going to happen.
Dont hate the player. hate the game.....
er.. Dont hate the game. Hate the owner.
Anyways. The game itself doesnt deserve the bad reviews. Its EA and their drm that deserves the criticism. Dont punish a good franchise for the mistake of its idiot owner. If anything it might make it so that EA never releases another simcity game due to this last ones bad reviews. And then guess what people. All this bashing of the DRM and servers and whatnot will have caused the simcity franchise to die. Unless of course EA sells the rights to simcity... like thats ever going to happen.
Dont hate the player. hate the game.....
er.. Dont hate the game. Hate the owner.
Hmmm. I wonder what could ease server load?
An offline single-player mode, perhaps?
...no. That's stupid. DISABLE THE LEADERBOARDS!
An offline single-player mode, perhaps?
...no. That's stupid. DISABLE THE LEADERBOARDS!
If a reviewer legitimately hates a game, then of course that game deserves the bad review it gets. With regards punishing a good franchise, likewise don't support what you see to be a bad entry in a series for the sake of the name of the franchise alone. For example I love me some Half-Life; if Episode 3 comes out and is crap I'm not going to support it for the sake of its name alone. Judge the entry on its own merits and failings.knight4light said:
If a bad game, unpopular DRM or server issues results in the death of a franchise - that's not the fault of the community complaining about the issues or refusing to support the game; that's the fault of the developer/publisher for screwing up the game, shoe-horning in unpopular/unwanted elements and not providing the support required for the game to be playable.
You've kind of said it yourself though.. don't blame the player.
The worst part is that soon players will 'expect' this type of launches, I mean not that long ago buggy launches was scorned at and the developer ridiculed as poor programmers, now its normal to have bugs at launch and patch it post launch.
Granted games business has changed considerably and pressure is much more intense to get products out but the point still stands... we as consumers got used to buggy launches.
Will we get used to server queues in our single player games now ?
EA was well aware it structure was not capable of coping with the numbers at launch, but they also know (or hoped) that the numbers will smooth out over time so why invest in structure that will only be used at launch and during special occasions (major patches, popular DLC packs)... that is the accountants talking here.
The ones who get the most stick are the customer service section... and when the numbers do smooth out, EA will claim it put in fixes and added hardware to fix the issue, but at the moment its merely riding the wave.
I hope players will learn the most important lesson : DO NOT BUY PRE ORDERS!
Dont give them cash until the product is there and proven to be worth your cash... not boycotts, not meta critic review bombing ... just bloody wait until the game is out and reviewed, wait till more facts are out before buying the game.
Granted games business has changed considerably and pressure is much more intense to get products out but the point still stands... we as consumers got used to buggy launches.
Will we get used to server queues in our single player games now ?
EA was well aware it structure was not capable of coping with the numbers at launch, but they also know (or hoped) that the numbers will smooth out over time so why invest in structure that will only be used at launch and during special occasions (major patches, popular DLC packs)... that is the accountants talking here.
The ones who get the most stick are the customer service section... and when the numbers do smooth out, EA will claim it put in fixes and added hardware to fix the issue, but at the moment its merely riding the wave.
I hope players will learn the most important lesson : DO NOT BUY PRE ORDERS!
Dont give them cash until the product is there and proven to be worth your cash... not boycotts, not meta critic review bombing ... just bloody wait until the game is out and reviewed, wait till more facts are out before buying the game.
The only thing you can't test at full load in beta is the signup/login servers ... the game servers being instantiated can be tested at production loading during beta.Capitano Segnaposto said:
They did shitty testing, even the shitty testing was enough to tell them the launch would be a disaster, they launched any way ... EA can not be dependent on to make an always online DRM game.