Optional nickname wrote on Mar 11, 2013, 08:01:
[...]
^ NKD, I am opening a game dev studio and I wish to hire you as lead director to a variety of games, for your post demonstrates what I thought was a lost character trait amongst the 7 billion people alive today. Thank god I am not alone in thinking about what is epically wrong with the gamer audience of today's day and age. Finally some substance showing after a long wrath of stupidity rage out there.

EA needs to get with the program, keep on voicing people !

NKD wrote on Mar 10, 2013, 17:16:

Kajetan wrote on Mar 10, 2013, 16:39:

NKD wrote on Mar 10, 2013, 16:29:
The problem is that once the server issues are gone, the motivation to complain goes with it. Sure, they gotta be online, but if the servers are working, they aren't going to be nearly as mad about it and are more likely to overlook the issue. :/

Remember Spore? It took nearly five years to climb from a one star rating on Amazon to a measly 3 star rating. Sim City Online will suffer the same fate.

And remember what EA wanted from Spore? Being the new The Sims with tons of addons and stuff to sell? The second (!) addon was to be released in 2009, then in 2012 and now it has vanished without notice.

Sim City WILL suffer the same fate. EA will cancel this game without any offline mode in two years.

The difference being that people actually want to play Simcity, apparently, as the massive need for additional servers seems to reveal. Spore was a disappointing game that people tired of after a day of playing. And even then it sold a couple million copies.

Gamers have a weakness that lets publishers walk all over them: They aren't willing to put the game down. They will complain til they are blue in the face, they will go on Amazon or Metacritic and give a zero score that says "FVCK EA" fifty times.

But what do they do afterwards? A few might get a refund, but most go spam the Simcity servers some more trying to get in because by the gods they paid $60 and they are going to get their moneys worth out of the game, even if it sends entirely the wrong message to EA.

You can't go around talking about how crack is bad for you, if you've still got the pipe in your hand. Gamers are going to have to be willing to actually NOT FUCKING PURCHASE these games in the first place. Amazon and Metacritic User Score mean nothing to EA, absolutely nothing. All that matters to EA is if they are making money. And after the dust settles, and they start shitting out mediocre content for Simcity, these drones are going to lap it up like one of those funny cat videos where they stick their head under the faucet.

Quboid wrote on Mar 10, 2013, 17:58:
Yes, it was pretty dumb of me. I preordered before the DRM was made public.

entr0py wrote on Mar 11, 2013, 01:07:

Ventura wrote on Mar 10, 2013, 22:15:
It's all such a damn shame, because, server problems aside (ok, and simulation issues), there's a phenomenal game underneath it all.

Yeah, if it weren't for the small maps and always online nonsense it would be a pretty worthy game. Actually, I think the two problems are directly related; we saw from them patching out cheetah speed that much of the simulation happens on their servers. I think it's extremely likely that cities have such a small size cap only to manage server load.

Ventura wrote on Mar 10, 2013, 22:15:
It's all such a damn shame, because, server problems aside (ok, and simulation issues), there's a phenomenal game underneath it all.

xXBatmanXx wrote on Mar 10, 2013, 21:17:
"Look into" goes something like this:

Suit 1 sitting in meeting: Can we do offline?
Suit 2 sitting in metting: Yes.
Suit 1: ok, well we aren't going to. Next topic, bonuses....

wtf_man wrote on Mar 10, 2013, 19:53:

ASeven wrote on Mar 10, 2013, 18:28:

NKD wrote on Mar 10, 2013, 17:31:
Yes, it's technically possible that the game sold 7 copies, and the Commodore 64 hosting the game couldn't handle it, but I don't think that's the most likely scenario.

Don't you go dissing the Commodore 64 now!

He was mistaken... he meant TRS-80.

Quboid wrote on Mar 10, 2013, 17:58:

Dmitri_M wrote on Mar 10, 2013, 17:42:

Quboid wrote on Mar 10, 2013, 16:47:
There's enough dislike of the online requirement. Even when the anger settles, the hatred of any unnecessary always-on requirement in any game will keep this going.

I'm still annoyed that Anno 2070 has (had?) an always-on requirement. I passed on an Anno game for the first time. I think I heard they were patching the requirement out but I don't know if they delivered.

I'm currently in a queue to get onto my server. Shame, because SimSeveralSmallTowns is actually a really good game. Fix the traffic, fix the population:workers ratio and give us larger cities. For free.

You passed on Anno 2070 but bought this Simcity?

Gamers are funny.

Yes, it was pretty dumb of me. I preordered before the DRM was made public.

Yakubs wrote on Mar 10, 2013, 18:53:
Seems fairly obvious to me that they planned on putting in an offline mode at some point all along (once the DRM is less important than squeezing out marginal sales) and they're only announcing it this early to try to calm the hordes.

Similar to how to Blizzard claimed D3's online-only aspect was mandatory and yet are turning it off for the console version.