Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#241

Post by IheartApplesDix » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 11:29 PM UTC

zachinglis wrote: post #88

I can only speculate the designers said "Oh man, if we can interact with each other's city that'd be awesome" and someone higher up said "It'll always be on!" Everyone saw this coming. Everyone. I don't understand how they couldn't prepare better?

Because EA doesn't care about their customers that much. There's no reason on doubling your launch fleet for a few days when it will hardly effect the sales of your game. Save money and let customers bitch for a few days, just more free press about your game.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#242

Post by eurleif » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 11:29 PM UTC

Fargren wrote: post #236

EA is offering refunds but only in some cases, with a very haphazard criteria: http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18gs2vgs50fjijpg/original.jp...

Wow. "you can of course request a refund" in a press release actually means you can request a refund, but it will be refused? Just... wow.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#243

Post by rdw » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 11:32 PM UTC

aeturnum wrote: post #160

reitzensteinm wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you're adding clarity here. People are upset about the lack of a single player offline mode, which absolutely is about preventing unlicensed copies. There is no technical reason for its absence. The cloud based stuff sounds great, and if it were an optional extra that was unavailable at launch due to technical difficulties, I doubt you'd see a hundredth as much bad PR.

>People are upset about the lack of a single player offline mode, which absolutely is about preventing unlicensed copies. There is no technical reason for its absence. I see this sentiment expressed pretty often, but in this case it seems flawed. From what I understand, you can't build a city that does everything, instead you rely on the other cities in your 'region.' The new Simcity is no more single player than Wor…

It's possible to have a single-player experience, where one player controls all of the cities in a private 'region'. It's alluded to here: http://kotaku.com/5988848/tips-for-playing-simcity Ironically, if they hadn't included that feature, arguments such as yours would have a lot more weight, but as it is there is a purely-single-player experience, and you still needlessly connect to a server for it. (I don't own the game, just going off what I've read on the Internet)

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#244

Post by PeterisP » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 11:33 PM UTC

bdesimone wrote: post #75

Short of asking for a refund, and not buying the game in the first place, who at Maxis and EA can customers write/call/etc to let them know what I feel about the business decision to force online only DRM?

Short their stock.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#245

Post by gambiting » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 11:33 PM UTC

scarlson wrote: post #139

gambiting wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had Diablo 3 since day one and played successfully to level 60 with two characters, never had any problems with connection. And SimCity doesn't work sometimes - it just doesn't work at all.

You weren't playing Diablo 3 at release then. Give EA time and Sim City will stabilize as well as D3 has, either because they've expanded hardware, or shrunk their user base.

Well I was. But my point is that it was a hit-or-miss. I managed to play without problems but I had friends who could not connect. SimCity is not like that. SimCity just does not work at all.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#246

Post by ShawnBird » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 11:33 PM UTC

prezjordan wrote: post #124

ghshephard wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thinking goes - without DRM, some large number, X % of the games are just copied instead of purchased. With DRM, close to 0% of the the games are copied, but some large number Y % of the games are no longer purchased because people either are (A) Philisophically opposed to DRM, (B) Want to be able to play the game offline, or now, (C) Can't play the game because the DRM breaks it. The balancing act, here, is how…

Seems like Valve is spot-on with that X%, and maybe even lowers it a little by offering such a great service and caring about their customers. That sounded fanboy-ish, but it's the truth.

If it isn't on GoG or Steam (or Humble Bundle) I just don't buy it. I don't have that much time for games and will just go without. Steam is an amazing service, I am surprised that movies and music have not followed suit.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#247

Post by pifflesnort » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 11:34 PM UTC

junkilo wrote: post #234

pifflesnort wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're seriously blaming this on Maxis ? I think the respective records of EA and a pre-EA Maxis ought to provide ample evidence of the likely culprit here.

I was speaking more broadly. This isn't the first time EA has seriously blown a launch due to infrastructure issues I realize. EA's main infrastructure server team runs things like a pre-dotbomb forture 5. I'm slow to throw blame since EA's acquisitions chose to join EA. Technical Directors at Maxis are just as much to blame as well as product/project managers that fail to squeeze load testing into the busy schedule.…

> I do (sadly) agree that studios seem to lose their magic to us gamers once they join EA. Why?

I'll give you one guess.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#248

Post by baddox » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 11:35 PM UTC

scarlson wrote: post #141

DannoHung wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The meme I see tends to be: EA ruins everything.

EA's success to failure rate tends to be lower than its competitors.

Or, one could say, EA's definition of success is different than many of its competitors.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#249

Post by baddox » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 11:38 PM UTC

gknoy wrote: post #189

aviraldg wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best compromise: create a "local" version of the server.

I seem to recall that the reason for the cloud based server was to leverage more number crunching power to yield better AI. Running it locally might not help. (Though, it certainly is better than no server, and it'd be interesting if they let people tune the fidelity of the processing so that it could run locally, or on a private server.)

I highly doubt they are providing server resources for every player that are more powerful than the player's desktop or laptop computer. Surely that would be extremely expensive.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#250

Post by calebegg » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 11:38 PM UTC

ardacinar wrote: post #239

estel wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when are they available for free?

I think SimCity 2000 was considered abandonware, or was it only the first SimCity game? I'm not really sure about it. But the first 4 games are definitely playable without any internet connection whatsoever.

According to Wikipedia, original SimCity is available on Wii (virtual console) and iOS, and 2000 is still available on PSN. Hardly abandoned. And playable without an internet connection is far from "available for free".