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ooo, look

Started by 0nehanklap, February 12, 2013, 01:13:49 AM


Rotten Luck

Okay I'm getting SimCity! 
One way or another... Heroes will fly again!


General Idiot

Man, I want to get that game. Anyone know if the multiplayer features require origin? Or can I buy it from a local store and not have to deal with EA's substandard Steam clone?

dwturducken

Dammit! Now, I have to get that game, too!  :gonk:
I wouldn't use the word "replace," but there's no word for "take over for you and make everything better almost immediately," so we just say "replace."

Arachnion

Quote from: General Idiot on February 12, 2013, 03:32:15 PM
Man, I want to get that game. Anyone know if the multiplayer features require origin? Or can I buy it from a local store and not have to deal with EA's substandard Steam clone?

Even worse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimCity_%282013_video_game%29#Multiplayer

"SimCity will require players to be logged into EA's Origin service to play the game, including when playing single player. An active internet connection will be required every time the game is launched and must be maintained throughout gameplay"

:-\
I'm all dressed up with nowhere to go
Walkin' with a dead man over my shoulder

Waiting for an invitation to arrive
Goin' to a party where no one's still alive

General Idiot


Knightslayer

Quote from: Arachnion on February 12, 2013, 10:44:54 PM
Even worse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimCity_%282013_video_game%29#Multiplayer

"SimCity will require players to be logged into EA's Origin service to play the game, including when playing single player. An active internet connection will be required every time the game is launched and must be maintained throughout gameplay"

:-\
Yeah... sadly I see this becoming more and more common...
I'm guessing it's because it makes the games much harder to toss on warez sites on the day they launch, since a large part of the code runs serverside and is inaccessible without reverse engineering and stuff like that... (or at least that's the impression I got)
I've got my SimCity preordered though :)

Mister Bison

We sure would have constructive feedback about those features.
Yeeessss....

houtex

Nerf Controllers and Stalkers!
Fren Dominators and Tankers!
Your PvP balancing sucks, zOMG *RAGEQUIT*

You mean like that?  :D

saipaman

Another copy sold!

After 8.5 years of CoX, I'm numb to the idea of needing a constant Internet connection to play.

General Idiot

Yeah, needing an internet connection is fine with me since I'm always connected anyway and most of the other games I play require the same due to being MMOs or on Steam. What bothers me is having to install Origin. I wish EA would just give up on that and use Steam like every other company.

saipaman

I also wish they would change to Steam.

Primantis

Quote from: Knightslayer on February 13, 2013, 08:33:45 AM
Yeah... sadly I see this becoming more and more common...
I'm guessing it's because it makes the games much harder to toss on warez sites on the day they launch, since a large part of the code runs serverside and is inaccessible without reverse engineering and stuff like that... (or at least that's the impression I got)
I've got my SimCity preordered though :)

Which in the end delays the pirates a whole day (if that) and does nothing but punish legit users.

There's a reason why many people who want to support the game resort to downloading and installing pirated copies (While still buying a legit version as well).. This DRM stuff is getting out of hand.

General Idiot

Unless parts of the game are actually being run serverside, which the pirates aren't going to have access to unless someone inside the company leaks the server code. Then it takes them substantially longer to produce pirated copies as they have to reverse engineer an entire server. See also: Diablo 3.

Knightslayer

Quote from: General Idiot on February 18, 2013, 12:29:18 PM
Unless parts of the game are actually being run serverside, which the pirates aren't going to have access to unless someone inside the company leaks the server code. Then it takes them substantially longer to produce pirated copies as they have to reverse engineer an entire server. See also: Diablo 3.
Yep, that's the game I was thinking about - I recall hearing some people, that didn't want to spend money on the game, cursing about it while I was enjoying D3.  8)
A few weeks later they just gave in and actually BOUGHT the game, so those who think it's a useless measure - think again, it's not like DRM, which yes, the pirates get past on launch day, if not the next.

Kaiser Tarantula

My only problem with "INTERNET REQUIRED FOR SINGLE PLAYER" is this - I live in an area with a shoddy connection.  I'm almost always connected, but my bandwidth is on the low end of broadband and when I'm playing a single player game, I do like to do other things with my connection.  I don't like being forced to endure this drain on my bandwidth, and I don't like being effectively out of a game if my connection goes down.

For a single player game, there's no reason for any part of the game to be run serverside.

Knightslayer

Quote from: Kaiser Tarantula on February 18, 2013, 01:53:42 PM
For a single player game, there's no reason for any part of the game to be run serverside.

None for us, no - but I can imagine for the company there are tons of advantages to it.
Besides the pirate thing mentioned above, they can also monitor people's playstyles - see what feature is incredibly popular, which isn't, the hours that you spend on the game, and lots of other data that their marketting/R&D department would probably kill for.
But yeah, it is an annoying trend that the gaming world seems to be moving towards...

General Idiot

It should also be noted that the new SimCity isn't really a singleplayer game anymore. Sure you can play it by yourself, much like people could and did play CoH by themselves. But it's designed to be played multiplayer, with multiple people each with one or more cities in a shared region.

Personally I still think Steam has the best solution to the problem as far as the tradeoff between preventing piracy and annoying legitimate customers goes. You have to be online at least once to activate games, but it saves account data so if you don't have an internet connection when you start Steam it'll go into offline mode and let you play whatever the last account that was logged in has unlocked.

Of course, you see cracked versions of steam games without the steam requirement all the time. It's only marginally harder than cracking a conventional CD check. But really you can't go any further without it becoming an annoyance to large numbers of paying customers. At some point you have to value the people who are paying for your stuff more than trying to prevent people getting it without paying. Because really, if they couldn't pirate it most of them just wouldn't get it at all. It's not like erasing piracy is going to immediately make all these people go buy the game they'd otherwise pirate. Some might, but far from all.


Out of curiosity, anyone know what happens if you lose connection while playing this, or Origin stuff in general? Does it let you keep playing, or boot you out?

The Fifth Horseman

Quote from: Kaiser Tarantula on February 18, 2013, 01:53:42 PMMy only problem with "INTERNET REQUIRED FOR SINGLE PLAYER" is this - I live in an area with a shoddy connection. 
My problem with it is that it will only last as long as the servers are kept online by the publisher.

...now ask yourselves: how long until SaveSimCity becomes neccessary?

*Goes back to the old good SimCity 2000. High polycount isn't enough to beat the classics. *
We were heroes. We were villains. At the end of the world we all fought as one. It's what we did that defines us.
The end occurred pretty much as we predicted: all servers redlining until midnight... and then no servers to go around.

Somewhere beyond time and space, if you look hard you might find a flash of silver trailing crimson: a lone lost Spartan on his way home.