New SimCity Will Require Always-On Internet - UPDATED

[Meight08]

First I have to miss out on Diablo 3, now this.

I hate being a PC gamer sometimes.

You said it. I just got through reminding one of my friends why I won't be buying Diablo III, which included the thought that soon other games would attempt to follow suit. it all came down to that fact of precedence plus the fact the people I may move in with at a later date live just inside a Broadband dead zone.

... I'm not trying to be smug or anything, but apparently I subconsciously called it. Sorry traveling Sim-city fans or in the many crevices of bad internet networks. its just not for you.

I'm just waiting for the inevitable "but you're complaining online, this doesn't affect you!" argument I always get, because the other person hasn't considered my internet sometimes goes down for days at a time, usually once every two weeks.

I live in a well developed UK town to, I hate to think of what gamers in the EU have to deal with

Don't worry I live in an underdeveloped dutch Christian village. This is my connection .

[http://www.speedtest.net]
Maybe Uk internet is just bad?
We got really good internet Connections over here and it has never stopped working in the 8 months i have been using it.
Which gives me a moral dillema my internet is beast so always on is no problem for me. On a technical level at least on a moral one i just dont know the answer.

 

[Baresark]

Shoot, and I was really looking forward to this. Meh, guess we can't have it all.

I mean... lets face facts, say I wanted to play it single player like I always have, do they honestly expect me to buy it? The way this is going to work is now that ME3 has been released, I have no more use for EA. So, it sucks, I thought they had their hooks in me for one more title. I have had it with this stuff. I stopped playing all Ubisoft titles, and now it'll be EA. I know that I should hate Steam... but I don't. They at least offer an semi functional offline mode where none of the titles are restricted (barring online only games). They try to make gaming accessible for all people. EA and Ubisoft do not. I understand BF3 requiring Origin. I don't get SimCity.

Also, to continue this little tirade, I don't give a shit about adding social experiences to my gaming. Here is a useful statistic, 1/3 to 1/2 of all people are introverts. Meaning that adding a compulsory social experience to games won't attract those people. It will most likely drive them away, as it has done me. For me, and many like me, gaming is a way of not being in crowded environments but still having a good time. It's the same reason I had thousands of CD's before digital music players became common. I loved to listen to music all by myself. It was fun with other people as well, but when you really want to hear a song it becomes harder around other people.

And, to state the obvious, the people who will most likely have the least hindered experience is people who pirate the game. And that is just terrible.

 

[Mayhemski]

Well for me SimCity was the game I played when my internet was DOWN....... So there goes my reason for purchase...

This ^^

I hated the idea of regions in Sim City 4 - I just want to build a freakin' city not manage a nation or deal with other people the point of Sim City is to my maind a big fuck off to other people...

Captcha: Oh, Lord - exactly

 

[Dogstile]

First I have to miss out on Diablo 3, now this.

I hate being a PC gamer sometimes.

You said it. I just got through reminding one of my friends why I won't be buying Diablo III, which included the thought that soon other games would attempt to follow suit. it all came down to that fact of precedence plus the fact the people I may move in with at a later date live just inside a Broadband dead zone.

... I'm not trying to be smug or anything, but apparently I subconsciously called it. Sorry traveling Sim-city fans or in the many crevices of bad internet networks. its just not for you.

I'm just waiting for the inevitable "but you're complaining online, this doesn't affect you!" argument I always get, because the other person hasn't considered my internet sometimes goes down for days at a time, usually once every two weeks.

I live in a well developed UK town to, I hate to think of what gamers in the EU have to deal with

Don't worry I live in an underdeveloped dutch Christian village. This is my connection .

[http://www.speedtest.net]
Maybe Uk internet is just bad?
We got really good internet Connections over here and it has never stopped working in the 8 months i have been using it.
Which gives me a moral dillema my internet is beast so always on is no problem for me. On a technical level at least on a moral one i just dont know the answer.

The highest i've gotten is 10mbps download. It just goes down a lot because they change up the infrastructure around here a lot and it causes a lot of faults within the network (negligent network engineers, I should know, I'm studying it).

I'm jealous of your town.

 

[Lord Siathene]

So lame, was so excited for this. Guess it was too much hoping it was going to be awesome, but Origin makes it a no buy. Guess I stick with Anno...

 

[The .50 Caliber Cow]

Fuck EA. My net is too unreliable for that, I've avoided Origin thus far and I'll just get my simcity fix from older titles. I don't care about the game if it needs to be online all the time.

You just lost my sale. Forever.


[sub][sub]Mooooooooo... [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9iIgQN5uZE][/sub][/sub]

 

[Elyxard]

Jesus Christ.

First they announce the collectors edition (the same thing as ME3, collectors edition to get DLC that was cut away from the main game. ie, spend 80 dollars to get all the content).

And now this? Haven't they learned a damn thing from their entire customer base taking up torches and pitchforks?

Urgh, I give up.

 

[Fasckira]

My internet's always on anyway, just like every other person I know. Will still check this game out, and will still manage to keep all my toys in my pram.

Then again, I also have Origin on my laptop and so far Ive noticed no drop in performance, my bank details haven't been stolen and the world has failed to end.

 

[Meight08]

First I have to miss out on Diablo 3, now this.

I hate being a PC gamer sometimes.

You said it. I just got through reminding one of my friends why I won't be buying Diablo III, which included the thought that soon other games would attempt to follow suit. it all came down to that fact of precedence plus the fact the people I may move in with at a later date live just inside a Broadband dead zone.

... I'm not trying to be smug or anything, but apparently I subconsciously called it. Sorry traveling Sim-city fans or in the many crevices of bad internet networks. its just not for you.

I'm just waiting for the inevitable "but you're complaining online, this doesn't affect you!" argument I always get, because the other person hasn't considered my internet sometimes goes down for days at a time, usually once every two weeks.

I live in a well developed UK town to, I hate to think of what gamers in the EU have to deal with

Don't worry I live in an underdeveloped dutch Christian village. This is my connection .

[http://www.speedtest.net]
Maybe Uk internet is just bad?
We got really good internet Connections over here and it has never stopped working in the 8 months i have been using it.
Which gives me a moral dillema my internet is beast so always on is no problem for me. On a technical level at least on a moral one i just dont know the answer.

The highest i've gotten is 10mbps download. It just goes down a lot because they change up the infrastructure around here a lot and it causes a lot of faults within the network (negligent network engineers, I should know, I'm studying it).

I'm jealous of your town.

Well i live less than 100 meters from the broadcasting tower And the infrastructure in holland is really good because its so small and its affordable to place more towers.
And i got a VDSL connection because i got a hot deal from a provider.
A 100 channels for my tv phone calls and a 17 mb internet connection for the price of just the tv.
A Lan cable does not hurt either stops interference.
But still what do you reccomend on my moral dillema about always-on its kinda bugging me.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

I hate always on requirements, not because they inconvenience me (my net goes down, like... once every few days for a few seconds and games crash or freeze about that often anyway--not to mention I'm not playing 24/7) but because it's stupid. Pirates crack it. Why bother? What is the point?

Split personality much?

OT: Well I am definitely not going to buy it, so I'll stick to the other games.

 

[irishda]

"I don't wanna be on the internet." -People on the internet

 

[Rouzeki]

Well i live less than 100 meters from the broadcasting tower And the infrastructure in holland is really good because its so small and its affordable to place more towers.
And i got a VDSL connection because i got a hot deal from a provider.
A 100 channels for my tv phone calls and a 17 mb internet connection for the price of just the tv.
A Lan cable does not hurt either stops interference.
But still what do you reccomend on my moral dillema about always-on its kinda bugging me.

Not that you asked me, but it just depends on your principles. RIGHT NOW Diablo III wouldn't actually interfere with me much- but when I kept thinking about the scale what it represented, and then weighed in my potential deadzone issue, I had to give that game up, and the Diablo Franchise is something I would never had turned down if it at least had a single player offline portion, as D1 and D2 were games I planned and played offline most of my life.

Of course, it didn't help how many times people flogged back at me saying "since you didn't play multiplayer most of the time, you didn't do it right for +70% of your user experience." Or the fact that people would be annoyed with it was a Surprise to some. I was a big Mark for Blizzard, trust me, so it left me a bit... unhinged.

 

[Absolutionis]

Amusingly, the always-online thing isn't what I have an issue with. It's the lack of mod support that kills it for me.

Sim City has always been a game about mods, for me. I loved all the cool stuff I could just download. By forcing me to play with other people and disallowing mods, the Sim City experience is tremendously waned.

To think, I would have thought EA learned their lesson after the failure that was C&C4. Instead they're repeating all the errors of C&C4 while stating that they're not idiots.

You are idiots.

Also:

"I don't wanna be on the internet." -People on the internet

Correction:
"I'm not always on the internet" -People currently on the internet

 

[irishda]

Also:

"I don't wanna be on the internet." -People on the internet

Correction:
"I'm not always on the internet" -People currently on the internet

"Just when the computer's on." -The majority of people with a computer.

 

[Weaver]

But this isn't a question of Origin, which I have no problem with, but of requiring an always-on connection. If a game is going to dump me because my shitbag ISP pukes out on a near-daily basis, why am I going to spend money on it? Especially when I have zero intention of playing it online anyway.

I don't much care about SimCity, but I'm infuriated about Diablo 3, which I will not be buying because of the same idiotic requirement. It's interesting, though, that you don't hear anywhere near the same level of rage about Blizzard and Battle.net. Some people have legitimate, principled concerns about always-on DRM, but I think it's fair to say that others are a little more selective about where they point their anger.

It might be worth dropping a line to EA - a civil line - to protest this always-on nonsense and ask for the inclusion of a proper, offline single-player mode. It's still fairly early in the development process, so it might still be possible for minds to change. Worth a shot.

I agree. I like my ISP (I'm with teksavvy) but they're a small fish in a big tank and they're reliant on the networks made by bell and Rogers. I've had 2 days of down time in the past month, and a few intermittent hourly bursts here and there. Famously, Rogers ran out of IP's for the GTA area last holiday season and Teksavvy basically had to petition Rogers to allot more to the area as people on Teksavvy couldn't connect. It was like 2 weeks of no internet.

Anyways, My 2 days of downtime was unfortunately an oddly free weekend where I had the change to just game straight through it and veg out... then my internet died. Thankfully steam was able to start in offline mode, which is pretty much like flipping a coin.

Regardless, I'd love if the world had perfect and stable internet, but the reality is that it just doesn't. If a game required me to be online at all times, I just can't support it, and I feel a LOT of PC gamers share similar feelings. Even Anno 2070 can be played offline (and it has UPlay in it).

I guess what I'm confused about is that surely EA and Maxis know this. Why would you make a PC only title with a DRM feature that what I believe to be the majority of PC gamers are fundamentally against? Where is the logic? Sales are going to be abysmal, you're not Blizzard.

WHY Blizzard can get away with it, I have no idea. I suppose it's just legions of fans nipping at the bit. I assume one day they'll probably realize what's happened. I had a terrible experience with the Diablo 3 beta that showed me yes, the always online loot drops and loading dramatically slowed down the game and introduced severe latency issues in single player. I don't want this.

I know I'm just rambling and raging, but dammit; I'm angry!

 

[Ranooth]

If gamers can get EA to change the ending to a game when it's been released then surely we can get them to include an offline sandbox mode in a game one year away from release.

Don't be lazy guys, go and fight for it.

 

[Wicky_42]

And now I'm throwing a sad I was actually getting interested in SimCity - it gets the budding architect in me going, and I kinda enjoyed messing around on one of the older versions back in the day. Always-on internet, compulsory multiplayer experience? No thanks.

I got out starcraft 2 the other day to have a play around in some skirmishes. Then I lost internet connection and discovered the only thing you can do offline is play the campaign. What the shit? I'm fucking fed up of this internet guzzling shit for ostensibly single-player games - it's enough to drive an honest man to piracy, all these restraints being placed over the software he's bought. When I began pc gaming developers seemed to enjoy delighting you with their creations, and you would share in their passion. Now though? Not so much.

 

[MailOrderClone]

Rats. I was looking forward to this game too, but my internet isn't nearly stable enough to be trusted with a persistent connection to a ten minute deathmatch, much less the hours on end that a SimCity game would require. Guess I'll be skipping this game.

 

[Tanis]

And thus, like D3, I won't be getting this game due to a rather...unstable...internet connection.