Simcity/Always Online Requirement

Seems like a good topic to speak of though we all likely have the same opinion on it.


More games are requiring you to be "always online" so they can enforce that no one is pirating their game (bet you five god damn dollars that the pirates have already found a way around it). Problem is that come launch day the servers are getting hit harder than a $2 whore and they won't let people in. We expect this on launch day for say Halo or Call of Duty's moulteeplayir servers since their are literally millions of people trying to get on at the exact same time and that it will be fixed in a day or two and for the most part we accept this.

Problem is now these people are forcing you to be connected online ALWAYS so if their servers isn't working because of those millions of people trying to get their dick in the same hole no one can play SINGLE PLAYER. We've seen it in Diablo with error 37 and now even more famously with SimCity since people payed $60 dollars to play a single player game and no one can play it because of their moulteeplayir systems being down.

So fuck whichever group of suits that are sitting around a table implementing and approving of this bullshit.


(I imagine it looks like this)



^ Fuck these guys

I think that it is a stupid system and I bet you they are losing far more money from lost sales and running the server than they are gaining from stopping pirates for a month.

I bet it's a day.

I'm going to check Pirate Bay right now and see if this game is up there cracked.


*edit* huh, they don't have it cracked yet but skidrow and reloaded (the guys/teams that have the top cracks for every single new release game you can name) are working on it right now and are expected to be done within the week.



Because of this always online fiasco going belly up down shit creek I guarantee you more people who know how to pirate and buy games will say "fuck it, i'm pirating it".

I have that feeling and I don't even want to play the game.

It will probably take them a little while to crack it properly since they're going to have to come up with a way for people to save their games, as currently that's all done on the servers, as well as a way to go between regions, which is also handled on the servers.

They've managed to mod it to run offline, but you still have to go online to switch areas and save your cities.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/14/modder-runs-simcity-offline-maxis-remains-silent/

Did I really not post that already? I'm slipping.

How's the game working now? I'm watching a Let's Play for it and it looks pretty good.

PiEdude wrote:How's the game working now? I'm watching a Let's Play for it and it looks pretty good.

Supposedly its very simplified compared to older ones, with a decent player being able to get a full city in about an hour. You have to be connected to the internet to save or load your city and to switch to a different region (regions are a lot smaller then in older ones as well). Their so called simulation is a joke, as it just picks a random close building instead of actually simulating things like they claim to, as well as the population being fudged at above 500 people, so your city of 1 million is actually just 100k people.

Basically, go play one of the simcities from before societies.

The other Sim cities didn't simulate Sim movement either they just had sprites representing where Traffic built up ect. In terms of performance theres no way they could allow even 300 Thousand Agents + all the Utility ones without melting everyone's computers. Not to mention the game is 'supposed' to run partially on the server (Which we now know is bullshit) to help performance.

Literally theres no way given technology you can have 1 million AI units operating independently. Even dwarf fortress (Which HAS to be Ascii to even work reliably later on in the game) Drops to around 10 FPS and puts your PC on Watch for a horrible meltdown when the In-game entities go over a certain amount, damn kittens.

dragoon9105 wrote:The other Sim cities didn't simulate Sim movement either they just had sprites representing where Traffic built up ect. In terms of performance theres no way they could allow even 300 Thousand Agents + all the Utility ones without melting everyone's computers. Not to mention the game is 'supposed' to run partially on the server (Which we now know is bullshit) to help performance.

Literally theres no way given technology you can have 1 million AI units operating independently. Even dwarf fortress (Which HAS to be Ascii to even work reliably later on in the game) Drops to around 10 FPS and puts your PC on Watch for a horrible meltdown when the In-game entities go over a certain amount, damn kittens.

I know, its just that they marketed it as simulating each individual sim in your city. Dwarf Fortress is also poorly optimized and loaded with features that don't really add to gameplay but drastically slow down the game. The largest a city is going to get in the new sim city is about 100k unfudged population, and it is feasible that a high end computer could at least store where the sim lives and works, and have them go to those spots instead of a random close residential and industrial/commercial building.

Yes, a High end Computer, EA learned a while ago Selling a game designed for people with top of the line machines doesn't sell well (Crysis). Generally I have never cared much about the sprites (or even optimal road layout for traffic) in previous Sim city games. I hadn't even heard about the Agent system until launch, only the Always online/Smaller cities/Regional play stuff. Which the only one that really bothers me and is the reason i'm not getting the game is the Always Online requirement and the inherited requirement of having Origin back on my PC.

dragoon9105 wrote:Yes, a High end Computer, EA learned a while ago Selling a game designed for people with top of the line machines doesn't sell well (Crysis). Generally I have never cared much about the sprites (or even optimal road layout for traffic) in previous Sim city games. I hadn't even heard about the Agent system until launch, only the Always online/Smaller cities/Regional play stuff. Which the only one that really bothers me and is the reason i'm not getting the game is the Always Online requirement and the inherited requirement of having Origin back on my PC.

You realize that Crysis was one of the best selling PC games of all time, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PC_video_games
The expansions sold pretty well too.

They were hyping the agent system in every video they released before launch, so I guess you didn't see those? Also, DF is a bad example due to the feature creep and lack of optimization which causes the game to run way slower then it should (if they did some optimization). Also, DF can have sprites through the many spritepacks available for it, its just the creator decided to not use sprites for the official release for some reason. (Probably time/cost of creating sprites instead of using ascii)

If EA wants to allow a game to work on older computers, why don't they just do what everyone else does and add a graphics level option?

CivBase wrote:If EA wants to allow a game to work on older computers, why don't they just do what everyone else does and add a graphics level option?

They did, and Crysis did run on low-mid end computers at the time as long as they had a dedicated graphics card of some sort that wasn't 4 years old. Its just people with terrible computers couldn't run it, and people couldn't max it out at a stable playable frame rate on the high end hardware at the time. The game could have been more optimized for high end hardware, and the sequels improved this, but almost everything can be more optimized if you have time and money, its just a matter of deciding when you've spent enough time and money on it.

If your computer is THAT bad (it would either be a low-end laptop, lack a dedicated GPU, or be 10 years old) how is it EA's responsibility to make sure their product can run on your computer? That is not an excuse to screw everyone else over. This could have easily been an option for people who needed it.

In fact, the nature of their 'fix' for the low-end computers issue just puts an arbitrary max on how much high-end computers can do with the game (assuming they are even allowed to play the game). Network will always be slower than local hardware if the local hardware is capable of running it. Even people who can only run the game on its lowest settings will be getting a performance loss because of this.

This is not a way of helping people who are trying to run a new, triple-a title on their TA-84. This is always-online DRM. I can stand most forms of DRM, but always-online DRM is just messed up.

CivBase wrote:If your computer is THAT bad (it would either be a low-end laptop, lack a dedicated GPU, or be 10 years old) how is it EA's responsibility to make sure their product can run on your computer? That is not an excuse to screw everyone else over. This could have easily been an option for people who needed it.

That's just how games are generally made (Especially by EA), Lowest common denominator, Its not EA's responsibility its just what they did as that is the way they feel they will make more sales. The Cap on Sims in a city isn't DRM forcing you to play Online all the time Is. Another Issue, is forcing people who did buy the game to buy the DLC the Limited edition comes with as i've heard if anyone in a Region builds a limited edition structure it locks everyone else who does not have the DLC out.

Also Crysis is Notorious for being Pirated to all hell because of perceived performance issues that eventually Crytek was forced to release a demo just so people would stop pirating the game playing halfway through (To the point where the game completely changes direction and your now playing Mobile tower defense against flying squids) and then never touching or buying it.

Its success now is mainly due to the expansions (I hear warhead is great fun) and the Sequels coming out (Which make people want to go back and play the game). And yes Crysis could run on Mid end computers but the game was specifically advertised (and Infamous/Famous) for having massive requirements for the time. Saying it could run on Low end computers back then is bordering on insulting the game As Crysis was PC exclusive for the sole reason that the 360 which could be compared to a computer between the low-mid range (Now that gap is much wider) in terms of performance just simply couldn't be seen handling the game at an acceptable level.

And before the Sequel is Mentioned Crysis 2 was Heavily optimized and the Areas ingame are significantly smaller to allow the game to run on Consoles presumably the Graphics on the PC version were one of the things cut in making the game playable on the consoles.

dragoon9105 wrote:That's just how games are generally made (Especially by EA), Lowest common denominator, Its not EA's responsibility its just what they did as that is the way they feel they will make more sales.

I know, but consumer outrage and resulting loss of sales should counterbalance that sort of crap.

dragoon9105 wrote:The Cap on Sims in a city isn't DRM forcing you to play Online all the time Is.

Right, that's what I was trying to say.

dragoon9105 wrote:Another Issue, is forcing people who did buy the game to buy the DLC the Limited edition comes with as i've heard if anyone in a Region builds a limited edition structure it locks everyone else who does not have the DLC out.

Really? I didn't think the SimCity situation could get any worse...

dragoon9105 wrote:Also Crysis is Notorious for being Pirated to all hell because of perceived performance issues that eventually Crytek was forced to release a demo just so people would stop pirating the game playing halfway through (To the point where the game completely changes direction and your now playing Mobile tower defense against flying squids) and then never touching or buying it.

Its success now is mainly due to the expansions (I hear warhead is great fun) and the Sequels coming out (Which make people want to go back and play the game). And yes Crysis could run on Mid end computers but the game was specifically advertised (and Infamous/Famous) for having massive requirements for the time. Saying it could run on Low end computers back then is bordering on insulting the game As Crysis was PC exclusive for the sole reason that the 360 which could be compared to a computer between the low-mid range (Now that gap is much wider) in terms of performance just simply couldn't be seen handling the game at an acceptable level.

And before the Sequel is Mentioned Crysis 2 was Heavily optimized and the Areas ingame are significantly smaller to allow the game to run on Consoles presumably the Graphics on the PC version were one of the things cut in making the game playable on the consoles.

And EA should take from that "Don't advertise a game as being inaccessible to most consumers even though it can actually be played by most" rather than "Advertise a game as accessible to all consumers even though nobody can actually start the game because of the horrible DRM".

(bold because I was bored, not because I'm trying to make a big point)