166 réponses à ce sujet

[MichaelFinnegan]

Sanunes wrote...

2) Internet connectivity is the norm anymore, I haven't bought Assassin's Creed 3 yet, but all the previous UbiSoft games required you to be online and even Blizzard has done this with Diablo 3.

And how exactly is this a good idea to follow?

[corporal doody]

being forced to always be online isnt new and it isnt just a EA thing.

[redBadger14]

Blind2Society wrote...

redBadger14 wrote...

Nice try.

Cliff has said that what we pay for games nowadays is a lot less than it takes to make them. $50 or $60 price point is balanced enough to make good profit.

Second, what is actually wrong with micro transactions? Gears 3 had weapon skins you could pay for, whoopie! You don't need to buy them, and weapon skins you get in game are arguably better. Not to mention, these companies have people that work that need to provide for themselves, micro transactions provide more money to do that. 

Here's a little hint: if games were selling enough, they wouldn't need to do micro transactions, and if micro transactions were not profitable by now, they'd stop doing them. Plus your favorite company Valve has micro transactions in TF2, except its more player-to-player.

Wow.

You continue to show how much of a tool you are. Because someone else does it, it's okay?  And you think they do microtransactions because games aren't selling enough, because they're not making enough money? No it's because they're greedy and want to suck every dollar out of every person they can.

That said, the fact that you are talking about nothing but microtransactions when that wasn't even a topic in this thread shows you just a puppet.

And before you go, perhaps you should do a youtube search "wealth inequality in america".

Ha, the topic was about EA ruining stuff, which I think micro transactions is a part of what people love to hate about EA.

Its absolutely absurd you think its greedy. They aren't sucking money out of you, they aren't forcing you to pay to get content. If you don't want it, don't pay for it! That simple.

This is a business too. If they can and need to make money off micro transactions, they'll continue to do it. People act like its greedy or evil but DING DING it works.

[donosaur]

People keep getting mad that you have to be connected to servers in order to play the SimCity single player, but there IS no single player. It's an MMO/region simulator and nothing can happen without the server. It has been built that way since the beginning. Call it DRM if you want, but there's no game without the server on the other side.

That being said, I have no idea why they weren't ready. Internets is hard, I guess.

Modifié par donosaur, 08 mars 2013 - 04:25 .

[redBadger14]

Cyonan wrote...

redBadger14 wrote...

Ha, you actually think I'm trolling. That's cute.

Afraid to get smacked down by the truth from Cliff B is nothing to be defensive about. Cliff is one of the best game designers out there, currently unemployed by any particular game company. If anyone is more in-touch and knowledgeable about the issue, its him.

But keep prancing along like you guys know anything and can use that as ammo against EA, its still very cute.

Cliffy has some good points, but EA does deserve a lot of the hate it gets.

On Origin he brings up a good point. People are quick to beat on it but Steam was even worse at launch, and you know what? Valve forced me to use it if I wanted to play Counter-Strike when they took the WON servers down. I didn't get a choice about not using Steam to play Half-Life 2.

Origin's main issue is that their servers just can't handle it. I don't know what's going on behind the scenes here, but it needs to be sorted out if they want people to be more open to using Origin. It's not asking a lot to want to play the game I paid $60 for without suffering constant disconnections. It deserves the hate, but pointing to Steam isn't exactly a good example for anybody who knows what Steam was like in the beginning.

Micro-transactions are a mine field and not inherently evil. I play quite a bit of free 2 play games and they always have them. I have no problems spending money on them if I enjoy the game and want to see it continue. The point of them is that they fuel future content that is free but has optional payments for a XP boost or a new skin or something. As long as I'm not directly buying something that will give me an unfair advantage over other players it's all good. Mass Effect 3 actually pulls this off in a way I am okay with as we've gotten 5 free DLC and nobody can buy anything that I can't get with credits(though less RNG would have been great).

Where I start to take issue is in a game like Dead Space 3, where it's very likely not going to give me free DLC. Charging $20 for a pet in a game that I already paid $60 for and they're charging me a monthly fee? Yeah, I wasn't all that happy with Blizzard that day =P

Oh, and always-on DRM should not be used unless you are an MMO or a free 2 play game as far as I'm concerned. It's ridiculous that people can't play Sim City because the servers can't handle it.

The two best points he makes are: EA gets hate for things that people seem to be okay with from other companies and that if you don't like it don't buy it. I'll not be buying Sim City as long as it has always-on DRM.

You make good points, thank you for being smart on the whole matter.

Just so other people know btw, EA isn't the only company to do Always Online. Unfair to bash EA over it when other companies do it too.

[DungeonHoek]

Initially I gave the new Sim City a year's life span, but after hearing that Amazon.com is outright refusing to sell copies of it any more. I think I was being generous.

Seriously, online all the time is a seriously stupid way to handle games. Not everyone has internet like mine, nor can afford it. And these DRM's are ridiculous. Punishing not pirates, but honest legit paying customers. Meanwhile every pirate out there can do what they want because they know how to get around that crap.

Or was I mistaken when I got reports of people bypassing Origin completely for what was it?, Battlefield 3 and yet still being able to play online with it.

Sheesh, even Mass Effect 3's online is spotty at best. I don't get disconnected too often, but when I do, it sucks. And this is a game that can run in single player. Yet has to check my console multiple times in the span of a few minutes to be sure that I somehow didn't pirate EA property at the speed of light.

It's just ridiculous.

[quebra]

Cohen le Barbare wrote...

I've said it before: if you play with WiFi, drop it, try and use a good old cable. It changed the game for me: I've had less than 5 DC in the last 6 months when I used to have several per days. And no, I didn't change my ISP or anything. I just switched from Wifi to cable.

+1926 penultimate post of power!

Seriously, it's the laziness of the wi-fi users that are bogging down many a match.  WIFI bandwidth is considerbly less than what you have when you are cabled to your router... Add a few WIFI house mates surfing porn, or watching netflix, etc., and yer bandwidth can be reduced to dail-up speeds.

Please don't bother hosting if yer not going to cable up to your router, yer creating lag for everyone in the match.    Ethernet cables are cheap, in a worse case move your router fibre/coax closer to your pc, xbox, xtc., if ethernet cable length is an issue.

That said, it's ridiculos to require online connectivity for SP games... I'd even go so far as to say it's offensive.

[Ziegrif]

I miss the days when games were property and not a service you ''subscribed to'' when you bought a disc.

I was already flipping **** over due to Skyrims requirement of steam and not having pretty much anything on the discs. I actually collect videogames in their cases, the earliest game I own is Air Combat 1995 for Playstation 1 a damn good game. So when things started going more and more digital, retail will eventually dwindle down more and more making collecting interesting games harder for me.

EA is well, they've become a necessary evil. They publish way too many games I want to play but their service and servers are terrible, I'm actually afraid to try and buy anything from Origin due to how many times it's gotten hacked, they also don't provide retail cards that I could use to buy BW points and get DLC. Sonys PSN sells these cards making the PS3 one of the only systems I feel comfy buying online with, due to not giving away credit info.

EAs PA machine is also dreadful and they've become too big a corporation to make this many mistakes and not lose the trust of the consumers.

Games have also become costly to buy and make it seems, but alongside the cost there seems to have been a steady loss of quality aswell, this is probably due to games becoming more and more intricate as programs making bugs a plenty.

But eventually the publishers and developers are going to hit a wall. People are not going buy games at some point if the prices keep on rising, some won't even be able to due to life and bills, games are a luxury item after all.

I wonder when developers will start to think that using older and cheaper tech for games could make things more cost friendly. Oh and I am not going to buy a PS4 from the looks of things. It may make things look pretty but no backwards compatibility bor PSN support due to them changing the PS4 innards. It's like slapping the people who bought PS 1, 2 and 3 right in the face.

/Incoherent rambling.

Modifié par Ziegrif, 08 mars 2013 - 04:28 .

[Devoidparanoia]

Things haven't been that bad for me, BF3 ha sent been bad, but I haven't played that since reckoning

[Cyonan]

donosaur wrote...

People keep getting mad that you have to be connected to servers in order to play the SimCity single player, but there IS no single player. It's an MMO/region simulator and nothing can happen without the server. It has been built that way since the beginning. Call it DRM if you want, but there's no game without the server on the other side.

That being said, I have no idea why they weren't ready. Internets is hard, I guess.

The thing is that Sim City isn't an MMO.

The only reason there is no game without the server is because EA specifically designed it that way when they didn't need to.

There easily could have been an off-line single-player mode and you'd have gotten pretty much the exact same game, only without a friend there.

[robarcool]

corporal doody wrote...

being forced to always be online isnt new and it isnt just a EA thing.

Doesn't mean it's good. I don't buy Ubisoft games because of the Uplay. Now EA has crossed that line too. If this happens with every company I love, I would rather stop gaming than bend to these idiots.

[DungeonHoek]

Ziegrif wrote...

I miss the days when games were property and not a service you ''subscribed to'' when you bought a disc.

I was already flipping **** over due to Skyrims requirement of steam and not having pretty much anything on the discs. I actually collect videogames in their cases, the earliest game I own is Air Combat 1995 for Playstation 1 a damn good game. So when things started going more and more digital, retail will eventually dwindle down more and more making collecting interesting games harder for me.

EA is well, they've become a necessary evil. They publish way too many games I want to play but their service and servers are terrible, I'm actually afraid to try and buy anything from Origin due to how many times it's gotten hacked, they also don't provide retail cards that I could use to buy BW points and get DLC. Sonys PSN sells these cards making the PS3 one of the only systems I feel comfy buying online with, due to not giving away credit info.

EAs PA machine is also dreadful and they've become too big a corporation to make this many mistakes and not lose the trust of the consumers.

Games have also become costly to buy and make it seems, but alongside the cost there seems to have been a steady loss of quality aswell, this is probably due to games becoming more and more intricate as programs making bugs a plenty.

But eventually the publishers and developers are going to hit a wall. People are not going buy games at some point if the prices keep on rising, some won't even be able to due to life and bills, games are a luxury item after all.

I wonder when developers will start to think that using older and cheaper tech for games could make things more cost friendly. Oh and I am not going to buy a PS4 from the looks of things. It may make things look pretty but no backwards compatibility bor PSN support due to them changing the PS4 innards. It's like slapping the people who bought PS 1, 2 and 3 right in the face.

/Incoherent rambling.

You and me both. Well, more precisely, the 360 is definetly going to be my last console. Especially with the stupidity that's going on with them. And I could always use a more powerful PC.

Games are just far too expensive these days, lack quality and then game companies pull all sorts of crap. ME3 wasn't the first I was burned by. In fact, I'd say over the last 2 years, I've probably lost about several hundred dollars to bad games with lack luster work behind them. And it was always something stupid that could have been completely avoided with a little more work, a little care, or a little thought behind the process.

At this point when it comes to games, I'm so hesitent to buy them, I'm making my friends buy them first before I even consider it.

[Blind2Society]

redBadger14 wrote...

Just so other people know btw, EA isn't the only company to do Always Online. Unfair to bash EA over it when other companies do it too.

How is it unfair because other companies do it too?

[HolyAvenger]

Vote with your wallet people, its the only way they'll learn.

[MassPredator]

Just do not buy EA games....

[RGB]

redBadger14 wrote...

He doesn't need to get back to me, the answer is simple.

Nothing is ever priced what it costs to make. No profit would be made. If a majority of games as they are now, standard edition (not limited eds), were priced at $100 or more, they wouldn't make better profit than $50-60 because people just aren't willing to pay that much money. Simple business practice. Also, if a game ships with bugs, its the developer and QA's fault, not the publisher i.e. EA. The masters of buggy games, Bethesda, hardly come under fire but when EA and BioWare or Visceral ship a 95% functional game, they come under fire? Ridiculous.

Cosmetic and most micro transactions we seem to agree with, alright.

DLC, like the game, is priced a lot less than it takes to make. Citadel is a prime example of DLC that was relatively expensive for BioWare to pump out: VA's were needed for tons of lines, story needed to be written, areas to be created and mapped, etc. The final content comes out to 4GB, well larger than any DLC I care to think of. Remember how COD map packs cost $15 a pop? Those are less than 500MB in size. The other ME3 DLC's are also pretty hefty in file size. So if you want anything to compare relative price of DLC, I think COD map packs more than justify the worth of ME3's offerings.

Plus, we got 5 MP packs, with maps and tons of new characters and abilities and weapons for NOTHING. Yet there's still a problem?

Also, its inaccurate to suggest that paying for DLC counts as a whole game package, as if it all came with the shipped game. You aren't paying $100 up front, you're paying it over long periods of time for separately released content that took more money to make outside of the retail game. Its not "evil" for them to charge that, and if you ask anyone around here, most tend to agree Leviathan and Citadel are worth the price tag, where Omega was underwhelming.

From Ashes is a sore subject on the forums but I got it for free with the Collectors edition of ME3 so I really can't argue whether or not it was worth people's $15. I mean, if you enjoy the content with Javik, or any content for that matter, I don't see how it can be too expensive. That's of course relative.

I actually refuse to play Bethesda games, but I'm on PS3, and they have proved they don't really care about getting it right on PS3.

To address the issue of cost, it's never an acceptable business practice to charge less than it costs to make your item.  Nintendo is finding that out.  Sony is finding that out.  The airline industry has found that out.  You know who doesn't have that problem?  Apple, as an example.  They're expensive but they sell, because they make quality products that are easy to use.  This is venturing far afield of our initial disagreement, though.

I consider the SP and MP to be separate issues since the packs are the only thing that cost in MP, and I'm honestly fine with that, because there's nothing in there that I can't get just by playing the game (which I honestly love to do).

When the quality of the product is in question (and ME3 has as many glitches as it does MP kits), you don't think it's reasonable to expect companies to be more up front about what they're doing and how they're charging you to play their game?

It boggles my mind when customers defend companies like EA.  They outright bombed a game launch, and made multiple reviewers confess that they couldn't even play the game.  They deliver a service like Origin to compete with Steam, but the service from all the tales I've heard is garbage and more trouble than it's worth.  Yet it's REQUIRED.

The cost of DLC has always been a sore point for me.  DLC was supposed to be an idea that benefited the consumer.  Now you see companies PLANNING DLC instead of planning to release a complete game.  What would be a fair charge for said DLC?  Not nearly the same amount as the base game for probably 5 or 6 hours of content.  CD Projekt is not my cup of tea, but they have my respect for releasing free DLC.  The Bioware MP team has my respect for putting out free MP DLC.

To add to it, their pricing policy aggressively removes content from games or schedules content as DLC that could have been included in the game with a longer developement cycle.  I want the companies that make games I love to stay in business.  I don't want them to make me feel like an idiot while they're doing it, or to make such obviously anti-consumer behavior seem like the norm that we all have to put up with.

Yes, paying for DLC goes toward the final count in my head of the game's cost.  When they know you're a fan of a game, they'll exploit that, but I'm not allowed to keep score?  I've never called EA evil, but their business practices show their true colors.  It is possible for a business to make a profit, be popular with consumers and put out a good product.  That is the holy trinity of any brand.  Right now EA is just making that profit.  

Is it any wonder people don't like them?

Modifié par BryceH, 08 mars 2013 - 04:50 .

[Blind2Society]

BryceH wrote...

I actually refuse to play Bethesda games, but I'm on PS3, and they have proved they don't really care about getting it right on PS3.

I spent a lot of time playing Bethesda games on PS3 as well. Do yourself a favor and upgrade your PC.

[donosaur]

Cyonan wrote...

donosaur wrote...

People keep getting mad that you have to be connected to servers in order to play the SimCity single player, but there IS no single player. It's an MMO/region simulator and nothing can happen without the server. It has been built that way since the beginning. Call it DRM if you want, but there's no game without the server on the other side.

That being said, I have no idea why they weren't ready. Internets is hard, I guess.

The thing is that Sim City isn't an MMO.

The only reason there is no game without the server is because EA specifically designed it that way when they didn't need to.

There easily could have been an off-line single-player mode and you'd have gotten pretty much the exact same game, only without a friend there.

Other SimCities weren't MMO's, but this one is. If you're saying that customers didn't want and didn't ask for that, I'd say you're probably right. EA's major misstep here is giving customers something they didn't want and telling them they'd like it, then not doing their part to make sure it worked on day one (or two, or three). Also I'm trying to remember where I read it, but I think that a lot of the simulation aspects run on the server, not on your local machine, so an offline mode isn't really an option, even with a patch or something.

[MichaelFinnegan]

Ziegrif wrote...

/Incoherent rambling.

Not at all incoherent. Quite the opposite.

Oh and I am not going to buy a PS4 from the looks of things. It may make things look pretty but no backwards compatibility bor PSN support due to them changing the PS4 innards. It's like slapping the people who bought PS 1, 2 and 3 right in the face.

Earlier versions of PS3 had backwards compatibility for PS2 games. As I understand it, to do that, Sony literally had to put PS2 hardware in there. Later versions of PS3 don't have this hardware emulaton for PS2 games.

For PS4, providing backward compatiblity for PS1/2/3 would mean greater overhead hardware costs, which means either Sony making a bigger loss on every unit sold or for the customer to pay a higher price for PS4. I expect some form of software compatiblity mode to come up, though. No idea how effective that would be.

The issue you raise about PS is somewhat different, in this sense.

[RGB]

Ziegrif wrote...

I miss the days when games were property and not a service you ''subscribed to'' when you bought a disc.

I was already flipping **** over due to Skyrims requirement of steam and not having pretty much anything on the discs. I actually collect videogames in their cases, the earliest game I own is Air Combat 1995 for Playstation 1 a damn good game. So when things started going more and more digital, retail will eventually dwindle down more and more making collecting interesting games harder for me.

EA is well, they've become a necessary evil. They publish way too many games I want to play but their service and servers are terrible, I'm actually afraid to try and buy anything from Origin due to how many times it's gotten hacked, they also don't provide retail cards that I could use to buy BW points and get DLC. Sonys PSN sells these cards making the PS3 one of the only systems I feel comfy buying online with, due to not giving away credit info.

EAs PA machine is also dreadful and they've become too big a corporation to make this many mistakes and not lose the trust of the consumers.

Games have also become costly to buy and make it seems, but alongside the cost there seems to have been a steady loss of quality aswell, this is probably due to games becoming more and more intricate as programs making bugs a plenty.

But eventually the publishers and developers are going to hit a wall. People are not going buy games at some point if the prices keep on rising, some won't even be able to due to life and bills, games are a luxury item after all.

I wonder when developers will start to think that using older and cheaper tech for games could make things more cost friendly. Oh and I am not going to buy a PS4 from the looks of things. It may make things look pretty but no backwards compatibility bor PSN support due to them changing the PS4 innards. It's like slapping the people who bought PS 1, 2 and 3 right in the face.

/Incoherent rambling.

From a design standpoint, we cause some of the issues that we see in the way that we consume.  We flock to game websites and fawn over the newest, most beautiful THING.  It still comes back to the same issue - if the game companies were up front with us about the cost, would we be willing to pay it?  It seems unlikely.

Try PayPal.  The internet shopper's version of a PSN/360 card.

[redBadger14]

Blind2Society wrote...

redBadger14 wrote...

Just so other people know btw, EA isn't the only company to do Always Online. Unfair to bash EA over it when other companies do it too.

Unfair to bash EA solely for it. Sorry, didn't elaborate that clearly.
How is it unfair because other companies do it too?

Unfair to solely bash EA over it. Sorry didn't elaborate that clearly enough.

Modifié par redBadger14, 08 mars 2013 - 04:59 .

[RaptorSolutions]

Which is why I'm rushing my ME3 playthrough and worrying about Skyrim later. Sure I could use wiki checks for both of them, more actually for Skyrim but at least I can play the damn thing without going online.

[Cyonan]

donosaur wrote...

Other SimCities weren't MMO's, but this one is. If you're saying that customers didn't want and didn't ask for that, I'd say you're probably right. EA's major misstep here is giving customers something they didn't want and telling them they'd like it, then not doing their part to make sure it worked on day one (or two, or three). Also I'm trying to remember where I read it, but I think that a lot of the simulation aspects run on the server, not on your local machine, so an offline mode isn't really an option, even with a patch or something.

Unfortunately in order to be an MMO you need to have a persistant overworld, which correct me if I am wrong but Sim City does not have this. Many games call themselves MMOs, but that doesn't make it true without that overworld like World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, or The Old Republic. Having a server-side part to your game doesn't make it an MMO.

They can dress it up however they want and call it whatever they want, but at the end of the day it's always-on DRM.

The only times I consider that good practice is in an MMO or a F2P game, of which I don't consider Sim City either of those things.

My point about the servers is that they could have designed the game from the ground up so that there was no simulation aspects running on the server and it was all done locally. Blizzard could have designed Diablo 3 so that everything in-game was done locally as well.

[Nogs28]

immanji wrote...

and it's a one player game requiring constant connectivity?

Ubisoft.  They beat EA in that stupidity, but they actually make stuff that's worth a damn.  But any games like that I will buy, but I'm looking at the pirate bay for a crack so I don't have to put up with that ****.

[HolyAvenger]

Why even buy a SP game with always-on DRM