Not too shabby
Means I get a game I've been looking at for free....
Expect I'll get downvoted for this too.....
Maxis has published the list of the games it's offering free miffed 'Mayors' to compensate for SimCity's disastrous launch. The offer was announced by Maxis on Sunday and lets existing customers and those who register before March 25 to get a free game along with their copy of SimCity as compensation. The downloads start on …
I sent my copy back and got the refund today from Amazon. My main reason to get rid of it was that it was almost impossible to log on to the same server and find I had to start again.
As to the Games on offer, most gamers will have a copy of them already and if they didn't its because they didn't want them first time around.
I have my money back, and if everyone who complained did the same thing maybe EA would change their tune.
Still went they turn off or reduce the server count next year or the year after, don't winge when you find your saved cities have disappeared in the ether.
I nearly bought this game but then remembered that i had already boycotted EA for any future purchases. So saved myself some heartache there. I can say this with no fear of libel: EA are a bunch of fucktards rapidly sucking the life out of gamers and coders who have no passion for games themselves - hell i bet the CEO's are not and have never been gamers.
Nobody cares. Go back to the troll cave.
They won't change their tune because they don't have to as they have a fckton of money. Yes their DRM is dodgy and yes it will most likely be unplayable in a few years but it works at the moment. I've not had one issue since the initial server problems. It's still more fun than similar "modern" games. SC4 is still "ok" but just feels a little bit dated now for me.
A lot of people that are getting banned/booted are doing so for doing the "offline hack" that is pointless anyway as it doesn't actually save properly.
As for the game being broken, there has already been numerous updates to attempt fixing things. - A traffic fix came out today.
Considering the fact that Amazon gave a $20 promo code to buy anything from their site when I bought Simcity Limited and now the free game (I wanted to try Mass Effect 3 and downloaded it last night as my free title..its got a 9.5 on IGN, a 9 on Gamespot and an 89% on Metacritic..cannot be bad if its anything like ME1 or ME2 even if its without DLCs), I wouldn't complain now. I paid $60 for my Simcity. With the above discounts and freebies, if my net pay comes down to $30 for the game, its like a dollar for every month of play in 2 years. Thats much less than what some people spend on their Farmvilles and Mafia Wars anyways..
I, too, think a better idea would be to return the game for a refund, then use it to buy one of the other games on the list.
Though I can't talk - I took the free games after the PSN hack, and I'm glad I did. It got me into the excellent inFamous series. Looking at EA's list, I'd probably take the new Need for Speed - sorry, I meant to say Burnout Paradise 2.
The only good thing about that whole affair was that when I still had my PSP I mistakenly made a PSN account with SCEA, (North America), when I was meant to make One with SCEE (Europe). The upshot beeing that I was able to get InFamus and WipeOut from the US Account, and Little Big Planet, and Ratchet & Clank from the European Servers. This was more the better for me as InFamus was not available as was (The PSN equivalent of XBox Arcade), Dead Nation. In Germany. Cause ya know for the Kids!
Because I think that voting with our dollars is the best way to decide what we will and will not take. if being online 24/7 doesn't bother you and this game, despite the issues, makes you happy? Then I'm happy for you, I really and truly am.
That said I will NEVER buy a game that demands i be online merely to "prove" I am not a criminal, I gave you my money and expect to be treated as your customer NOT as a potential shoplifter. If you went to a shop and a security guy followed you down every aisle, even though you had done nothing and shopped with them for years, would you go back? So why put up with the same treatment from a game company?
I buy games from Steam because I can play for a month without Internet and the worse it'll do is tell me that achievements in some game won't count or that it needs to sync my saves next time I hook up, big deal and the services they give me in return for using Steam DRM (great chat and matchmaking, great service even over the holidays, cheaper prices) makes it worth it to me.
I won't buy Origin games as I have already heard from friends how quickly EA will use the banhammer (costing you your games at the same time BTW) if you dare complain, I won't buy always online like the AC series and Splinter Cell series (although I heard Ubisoft has removed all the always online stuff so if true I may pick them up) and when it came out that D3 was online only not only did I buy several copies of Torchlight II to give away to family and friends (if you haven't tried TL2 its a great game, you can do LAN or online MP and SP is offline) but I wrote a nice letter telling Blizzard WHY I wouldn't buy D3 after buying a good dozen copies of D1 and D2 (again so my friends and family could enjoy it too) so they could see how their boneheaded move cost them another loyal customer.
Vote with your wallet folks and stick to your guns, at the worst you'll have a better gaming exp and be rewarding those that treat you well, and at best as we saw with Ubisoft getting rid of always online you CAN make a company change direction.
Tbh i cant see why people are moaning so much about always online DRM... most people have broadband which is connected to the internet most of the time and most people will have their pc/laptop connected to the internet most of the time because, hay, you need your latest facebook update... yeah simcity was unplayable on launch week, but that has passed now. but tbh even on launch week i didn't have many problems(granted some did) D3 had the same connection issues but that was fixed after a week or 2. the only problem with simcity and D3 is that their DRM is protecting a somewhat average game. D3 was linear as hell and from what i have seen they still haven't brought out PVP. SimCity is also fairly linear and lacks new content, if feels like a cut down version of previous simcitys with better graphics. The only people in uproar as i can see is single player gamers that wanted to play a single player game and freetards.(yes it has been cracked to play offline but you still cant save) . With that rant over im quite annoyed that they didn't offer Crysis 3 and the fact that they offered Plants vs Zombies is laughable.
I don't really care about the DRM angle, and personally I am only going to play games at home.
But if you wanted to play on a laptop while on a train or whatever, that's a PITA.
I think the biggest legitimate (rather than hand-wringing "it's just bad because it is") concern is that you are reliant on their servers. Never mind the odd outage - many games have been released buggy - but what happens when they pull the plug? You can still buy and play SC4 as they are pointing out, but in 5 years will SC still be playable?
"you are reliant on their servers"
True that. They retire games all the time, when the usage drops below a certain level. I'm not a fan of the DRM by any stretch, but I really wanted the game. It is a bit stripped down, but I've still enjoyed playing it thus far.
And to be honest, if they do turn the servers off after 3 years, I'll have had an enjoyable game for less than £12 per year, with online multiplayer and updates etc. And I'm sure someone will have sussed how to crack it to play it offline and save by then anyway, so that'll be the option for when it is retired.
Smart phone? Tether? Personal Wifi? Ring any bells? USB Broadband dongle? Most people have a smart phone and im sure you could get a portable broadband easy... you can even get them pay as you go... (granted connection may drop when moving but that doesn't kick you outa the game) and if you say "what about abroad" to which i will reply, "you have gone on holiday, for the love of god put down the laptop."
Obviously you do not travel for work and do not have to deal with no internet connectivity when travelling to Central and South America. Not many things are worse then being bored to hell and wanting to have a little gaming to get the mind off work etc. For that reason alone any game that REQUIRES an active working internet connection is a no sell for me. At least Steam games can be configured to play offline before travel begins.
"Tbh i cant see why people are moaning so much about always online DRM.."
Yet the last line of the article reads "A full list of the games whose online functions are no longer supported by EA, is available here.", where "here" links to:
http://www.ea.com/1/service-updates
To be frank, anyone who can't see why expensively renting an essentially single player game until EA gets bored and turns it off, so they can sell you the next version, deserves everything that they get.
Agree about broadband - but there are occasions when you'll want to play offline on a laptop or whatever on holiday or on a train away from any network connectivity.
I've not touched the Sim City franchise for a long time. I do play HL2 and a few Steam games. At least Steam notices offline play and lets you still play the game disconnected. EA should have just followed a similar approach.
EA should have considered offline play in their design and offered an online/offline check for their DRM module so that you can still play offline for a couple of weeks between connecting back up.
Is that this 'apology' has ulterior motives. I'm not sure if EA has attempted to force users to use origin for even boxed copies of games (I seem to remember they at least trialed this with a game or two), but this free 'gift' will be distributed via origin for sure. If they're going to lose a bit of money they might as well try to create a bit of consumer lock-in with their digital store, right? Not to mention the reduced cost as it's simply a download.
They're so desperate for the platform to work that they recently joined forces with their competitor Ubisoft to offer each others game libraries on their separate stores (to combat their nemesis steam). Their foolishness will hopefully backfire when one day when users demand portability of digital games between eshops that are on the PC.
Meanwhile I guess we can only vote with our $.... Yeah, I'm not very hopeful for the future.
"Meanwhile I guess we can only vote with our $"
I don't understand why anyone would buy anything from a games company who think they can force people to have an online connection in order to play a game. It's a shame more people don't tell them to get lost and vote with their wallets. They certainly won't get a penny from me.
"to combat their nemesis steam"
This is odd - I play one Ubisoft game on a daily basis because there really isn't an equivalent anywhere else.
It's called Rocksmith, and it's on Steam.
(For the skeptical: Rocksmith reveals the true purpose of USB sockets. Where else are you going to connect the Rocksmith cable?)
We bought my son the "full" version of NFS Most Wanted for his PS3 .... now it turns out that he needs additional packs at £12 a go to complete the game.
If this is the way gaming is going then it's just greed.
Maybe I'm old fashioned, but you bought the game disc and it was all on there to the end.
Thieving gits!
I can't help wonder if this is really about finishing the game or getting his hands on the Lamborghini Diablo (or whatever else is in the DLC's).
Unless he's referring to the 'time saver' DLC; you don't need that to finish the game. You need this if you want to finish the game quicker; so instead of unlocking all cars yourself one by one you get everything in one go, or better put: one purchase.
There's also nothing new here; they did the same with Burnout Paradise.
Why is it a rip-off to sell an add-on, people have been doing this for over ten years. Extra levels, new campaigns, etc.
I have that game - I play it often - and you do not need to buy add-ons to 'complete' the game. It's completed when you have unlocked all the races. The add-on packs are just that - additional content for people who want more (most will not and we'd all have to pay more for it if it were included).
And I don't know where you got £12 from, I looked last night as it happens and I'm sure it was more like £5.
Just buy the next game for £10 instead. Or look for a deluxe edition with it included.
So that's why EA has been boasting about a all time high of origin users.. so they have an excuse when users have problems going thru the free offer. "Unanticipated growth".
In other news EA's CEO has been forced to resign. Guess the board had to pin the blame on someone for the continued PR nightmares and declining profits.
"After the offer expires it is likely that an EA/Maxis bean-counter will run the numbers on the games people chose and come up with a number representing either lost or missed revenue."
But that woud be, ahem, wrong. Looking at that list I already own the only title there I want. So I may, to be bloody minded pick another (the most expensive) and download it, and register it.
But what's the value of it? This is a rather odd concept.
I (say) I wanted Battlefield, and was about to go and buy it then its value to me is the current retail price.
If I didn't want any of them then the value to me is roughly the resale value, oh, zero as it can't be resold.
The "cost" to EA is only lost revenue on the former, not the latter. Even then the marginal cost (actual money out of the door) is pretty much nil, just the extra electricity to generate a new unlock code and spin some platters to facilitate a download.
EA will, of course, never know which was which, so any attempt at saying "we lost revenue of $...." is wrong, irrelevant, and downright silly.
Our SimCity Mayors are incredibly important to the team at Maxis. We sincerely apologize for the difficulties at launch and hope to make it up to you with a free PC game download from Origin
We hate you, we fucking hate you, we hope you die now that we've got your money, and no you can't have a refund and we can't code for shit (see Sims3 crashing and memory errors and save corruptions that we haven't bothered fixing in 7+ expansions) - suckers... Here, have a free crap game on us for being our good little bitches.
Have to admit, I'm really surprised at EA - that's a really good list of games. I didn't expect anything like that and expected games from a few years ago to be offered up. Now the difficulty is to choose what to get... really not sure but I at least already have a couple, so makes it easier! Always wanted to get MOHW, but people don't seem that keen on it... decisions, decisions!
"After the offer expires it is likely that an EA/Maxis bean-counter will run the numbers on the games people chose and come up with a number representing either lost or missed revenue."
Also likely is that the titles people choose will be included in EA's "sales" figures for the quarter, painting a rosy picture to cover the sudden reversal of SimCity sales.
I made the mistake of purchasing SimCity. I also made the mistake of purchasing it through a new online vendor offering a low price... Still waiting for my copy to arrive, will be mighty pissed if it arrives after the 25th...
The line that most caught my attention was :-
"A full list of the games whose online functions are no longer supported by EA, is available here."
If we keep letting game developers / publishers make MAYORS i.e. game-renting-fools out of us, then they will just turn off games whenever they want or force game upgrades on us by turning off previous versions.
Getting sick of this...
I have Ubisoft's Driver-SF. I'd like to play with friends but not online as the online gamer profiles easily become corrupt. But of course there's no LAN option! When they choose to turn this title off it'll be night night permanently for the game!
So am I the only one who actually likes the game and hasn't had any problems playing after the first few days? Though I am looking forward to the traffic routing improvements.
My dislike of EA runs deep, for many reasons (thanks for ruining Mass Effect 3 guys); but Maxis have made a very good game here! I'm quite happy spending my evening browsing El Reg while my city sims away in windowed mode on my other monitor. £30 well spent for me, considering £30 doesn't really buy you much (it's not even a night out).
Though I have merely been an advisor to a friend playing it (as I have a boycott on EA) I have noticed quite a few things about the game that really shouldn't be accepted, even disregarding the server stability issues (which I haven't seen and my friend hasn't complained about either).
As you yourself mention the routing for anything basically doesn't exist. Shortest route to whatever thing you're doing that's available. People get new jobs, new homes, new children, new partners every single day because of this. I hardly understand why emergency vehicles even have sirens, it's not like they appear to have a function other than auditory. Most problems (that don't relate to the game's apparent lack of depth) seem related to the routing issues (all the more reason for you to be looking forward to the improvements).
There are some basic city building tools that are missing - and which could provide a useful tool in sorting out the inevitable traffic jams at the entrance to your city. One-Way-Streets is one thing that should, I think, be in the game.
But I wont be surprised if it becomes available as part of a "Transportation Heaven" DLC. Now with all new one-way-streets, intersections that use turn-arrows to alleviate pressure on the busiest roads, and the all new - never seen before - busses that wont go around in a circle to pick up passengers from the same bus stop 10 times in a row!
It'll be an amazing DLC! And for only £15 - I mean that's not even close to a night out!
I can see the appeal of the game - it can be fun. But on reflection I think it's more fun in a Angry Birds kind of way, rather than a Sim City kind of way.
It's more about beating the challenges that the game set (as in how do I make traffic work with this horrific system), than about making a city that's plausible or desirable.
That is the plan of course. That's why the single player offline mode was never considered.
All the stuff that's oddly wrong and plainly missing will appear every few months as chargeable DLC.
In about 18 months and $60+ later you should all have the full game as it was intended.
Enjoy!
Once again, I look on with the smugness of one who NEVER buys a product the moment it comes out, but who waits a few months, saves a tenner or more, and gets something that works.
Why don't more people do this? They've lived their entire life without a product, so why do they then need it NOW?
Looking at the sports games the '11 versions are already off so EA will only support online on the current and previous versions, doesn't seem very long. I guess the incremental changes aren't enough to keep people upgrading so they are turning functions off. I wonder how long before they require a connection so that even single player games can't be played.
I bought Sim City and have never had an issue with playing it - no lost saves, never failed to connect to a server (granted I didn't try in the first ~3 days after release).
The 'free' game is worthless to me as I don't want any of the games they're offering. If I wanted them, I'd have bought them already.
My biggest issue with Sim City itself is the map size. It took me about 30 minutes to fill my city to bursting point. Sim City 2000 had larger maps, I'd have thought in this day and age, especially because apparently EA's servers do most of the processing that my 6 core, 12 thread 3930K can't do, that we could have significantly larger maps than yesteryear.
I know that I can start multiple cities in a region, but a) the other cities pause while you're working on them, and b) who the hell wants to restart constantly with bugger all money or infrastructure? Where's my rows of industries and arcologies? It's a real shame. The game itself seems pretty solid, a fair amount to do (though I actually used to enjoy running pipes and power, none of which you need to do anymore).. but it just seems too small and incomplete.
I too think its a step back to have everything run off the roads and if u place something on a crap road. i.e. police station or power plant and u need to upgrade the road. You have to delete the power plant or police station with no refund...
the city's are small and get filled up in no time usually by a solar plant that takes up a silly amount of space just so you can power your casinos...
yeah it annoyed me also when you start a new city in the same region the money doesn't transfer, an upside though everything you unlock does and you do get volunteer help from other city's i.e. they randomly help put out fires and stuff. (im guessing its alot easier if you play with lots of your friends)
But i honestly think alot less people would be annoyed if game itself was actually a better game...
I bought the deluxe version also £70 down the drain for a few extra buildings... the way they made it out was that their is extra game modes... not just extra buildings.
Hack attack that can be used to destroy your precious little Cities on-line by some lulz seeking trolls then?
Copy Pasta begins....
Just when users thought the debacle of both failing server support and outright lies might finally be out of the spotlight for EA, it looks like SimCity fans are in for more disaster. Hackers have discovered that it’s possible to completely destroy players’ cities on public regions, and as a result overwhelmed SimCity support staff have begun censoring the customer support hotline number on the EA Forums – meaning gamers in need of help will face an uphill battle to get it.
Copy Pasta ends....
Link: http://gamerant.com/simcity-hack-destroys-neighbors/
EA had an interesting and well designed game in Motor City Online .. over 12 years ago
.. was online only .. the net code was a lag filled clusterfuck and anti-cheat was non-existent .. bitched about it loudly during the beta test .. servers were shut down less than 2 years later
"Previous Motor City Online users were offered access to The Sims Online, Ultima Online, or Earth & Beyond"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_City_Online
so EA has long experience with dropping support once the profit's gone or if it's never made
>>This appears to contradict EA/Maxis' earlier claims that allowing the game to be played offline would require "a significant amount of engineering work by our team".
Does it? The hack lets you play offline as long as you don't want to be able to save your game. That could be relatively substantial to rewrite depending how it is set up.
Presumably someone will set up an alternative server, or a way to run a 'local server' with a hack to let you point the game to any server you wish.
Of course EA could still release an "offline play" patch and say "this took a lot of time but we've heard your love to play SC offline and have put your first"
Because of course designing your server to be shared and deployed without security issues is exactly the same as just dumping it on FTP and saying "here you go".
And of course everyone wants to run a mega server for local gameplay. Just install MySQL or Oracle or Amazon S3 locally...
There's a slight possibility that the backend of a FPS game and the backend of SC are rather different.
Stating the obvious but still, it's true. Sadly i like the battlefield series to much not to install it, judge as you will. It did amuse me somewhat that i logged in the other night to be greeted with a 1 question survey asking me if i would recommend Origin to my friends, i couldn't hit the "no, not ever" response quick enough, i would hope everyone else does the same.
Stopped playing it when 3K came out and it was pants. I now play OpenTTD, based on the classic Transport Tycoon. Alright it's not anywhere near as flexible as Simcity I know but you can't grumble about the price of OpenTTD and at least it's playable on almost all mobile devices without need for constant internet connection!
Me thinks someone has missread/misunderstood something when writing/reading the article.
The 22nd is the end date of when access to the downloads will complete its roll out world wide, not the start date of the downloads. (although presumable who ever is last to get rolled out to, would be on the 22nd!)
They are already releasing the downloads, since yesterday, on a region by region basis.
I got the email last night from EA and an hour later I was playing Dead Space 3. Not a bad game.
...unless you are into mindless, stupid, dumbed-down console-ports or retarded mindless shooters you are better off not wasting any time with those, EA's output is almost pure junk nowadays.
My fav is how just badly the much-hyped Battlefield 3 sucked after its excellent predecessor, the superior teamplay-oriented multiplayer Battlefield: Bad Company 2... interestingly BF3 was done after EA acquired DICE (developer), it was a shiny, better looking but utterly dumbed-down, stupid Call of Duty copycat, lost or hollowed out everything BFBC2 was interesting for. Well, that's what you get after EA acquires you, I guess...
...that and utter incompetence on the technical side: there wasn't a SINGLE triple-AA game launch in the past ~5 years EA didn't disastrously botched, usually FOR DAYS - it's common knowledge that EA is practically clueless about large-scale rollouts, designing fault-tolerant architectures, running scalable services. No clue, whatsoever.
I have zero hope for EA getting things in order. Ex-CEO Riccitiello, while being a business guy, he actually had *some* clue about the technical side too - in 2007 pretty much he saved EA from becoming obsolete 'overnight' when he forced them to start working on mobile products, digital delivery etc - but he never got enough money from the shareholders and/or never been able to properly scale up/out things... by the tone of his (obviously forced) resignation citing worse than expected results I'm 100% sure the board will appoint a much worse MBA idiot, some stupid beancounter and will tell him to copy Activision/King Kotick's money-printing, franchise-milking but game/talent/industry-destroying recipe...
...as for games eg Battlefield 4 etc I expect everything to get much worse, to go for the lowest-quality mass-appeal thus proving right all the critiques who are claiming for years now that DICE actually never had a clue how to make a good, smart FPS, they just accidentally hit a nerve with BF2 and BFBC2... we shall see on March 26 but I tend to agree...
Had two power outages in the past week. It reminded me how vulnerable we are when infrastructure breaks down. Now if my Router could have been powered by a USB cable via laptop that would be one thing...
Cloud Gaming and the Cloud in general is quite vulnerable to power outages at the user end, but you don't hear that discussed much.... When Japan had outages following their nuke plant shutdowns they could still work for several hours on battery powered laptops. But internet access was a whole other thing. 3G dongles weren't much of a substitute!