Dev post about forthcoming article has been deleted...

[Kaizersan]

If you want to prosecute EA in the world of internet opinion... you need clear objective facts, not just opinions presented as fact by players who are angry.

 

Now.. if you want to argue a difference in opinions between a company and the players... fine.. but don't resort to different opinions = lies. From a business perspective... "massive" or "difficult" or whatever term one chooses to use is both subjective and irrelevant when framed by players as a "lie".

 

The article link about a legal claim filed of course would carry such weight... IF.. IF it actually said it was a player class action lawsuit for tangible causes... rather then a shareholder lawsuit... which was thrown out by a federal judge, rewritten and refiled, and then tossed again.

 

EA are not angels of the gaming industry by any means ... but if you want to prosecute them to support your distaste.. at least use factual links, rather then internet opinions.

 

it's not a opinion when it turns out to be true.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/01/ea-explains-why-offline-simcity-took-so-long/

[The-Kaitou-Kid]

And your point? You found internet opinion that calls a deliberate design choice to be a lie? LOL.

 

Of course it is technically feasible, but they made a design decision (right or wrong is irrelevant) to not allow it. Their game, their choice. They coded it that way, and when players complained... they stated that NO, you cannot play it offline. The reasons are irrelevant.

 

http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/9/4081464/simcity-interview-ea-maxis-lucy-bradshaw

 

With the way that the game works, we offload a significant amount of the calculations to our servers so that the computations are off the local PCs and are moved into the cloud. It wouldn't be possible to make the game offline without a significant amount of engineering work by our team.

 

Underlined portion is relevant. They flat out said it wasn't technically possible to play it offline in its current state (meaning without that significant amount of engineering work) and that was a lie. That's the point. Person you're quoting isn't saying that their design decision was a lie, he's saying their statement as to why they made that design decision was a lie. Because it was. It wasn't necessary for the game to be online to function outside of the social aspects as they led consumers to believe which makes their statement to the contrary a lie.

 

It was likely done to prevent piracy, yes, and while they have every right to do that the consumers have every right to not like it. Especially when, as it was proven, it's not needed. It only penalizes paying customers in that scenario and in a much more invasive way than other DRMs. Had they not lied about their intentions with it I doubt it'd have been as big of a deal as it was but there's no mistaking it: they lied. It may not have been DRM, it may have had some other purpose that they felt they couldn't speak on, but the reasons they gave were lies and lying to the consumers will never gain trust.

Edited August 24, 2015 by The-Kaitou-Kid

[DOHboy]

it's not a opinion when it turns out to be true.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/01/ea-explains-why-offline-simcity-took-so-long/

 

proves more the original statement why its hard (port from java to C++, move algorithms, etc) where as the hack disabled bunch of the features they were promoting (city communication) and basically left you with a sub-optimal gaming experience.

 

not sure what you are claiming as proof?

 

Engineer said they had to work a bunch of code and server side communication, EA said was was difficult and going to take time to return the same gaming experience offline as you get online. This article says exactly that.

[DOHboy]

http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/9/4081464/simcity-interview-ea-maxis-lucy-bradshaw

 

 

 

Underlined portion is relevant. They flat out said it wasn't technically possible to play it offline in its current state (meaning without that significant amount of engineering work) and that was a lie. In order to offer the same offline experience that you get on line (cross city communication) there is extra work required to move that from server side to client side. While possible, its was not simple. The offline "hack" disabled alot of that server side stuff and thus did not return the exact same experience you would get playing online. Although most people demanding the offline mode didnt' care about that anyway, but ignoring that fact doesn't make it any less true. That's the point. Person you're quoting isn't saying that their design decision was a lie, he's saying their statement as to why they made that design decision was a lie. Because it was. It wasn't necessary for the game to be online to function outside of the social aspects as they led consumers to believe which makes their statement to the contrary a lie.Which is what they said, offline disabled alot of those aspects of the game which is not the same experience. If you want to have a 1:1 game experience it required some additional changes to the underlying code, if all you wanted was just that sub section of the game (just the city building) then yes it was possible, but to port the ENTIRE game offline it took more effort than just a small change.

 

It was likely done to prevent piracy, yes, and while they have every right to do that the consumers have every right to not like it. Especially when, as it was proven, it's not needed. It only penalizes paying customers in that scenario and in a much more invasive way than other DRMs. Had they not lied about their intentions with it I doubt it'd have been as big of a deal as it was but there's no mistaking it: they lied. It may not have been DRM, it may have had some other purpose that they felt they couldn't speak on, but the reasons they gave were lies and lying to the consumers will never gain trust. that is a matter of opinion, if you didnt want the full game, you see it as a lie, if you wanted 100% of the delivered functionality it was true

 

/5char

[Andryah]

proves more the original statement why its hard (port from java to C++, move algorithms, etc) where as the hack disabled bunch of the features they were promoting (city communication) and basically left you with a sub-optimal gaming experience.

 

not sure what you are claiming as proof?

 

Engineer said they had to work a bunch of code and server side communication, EA said was was difficult and going to take time to return the same gaming experience offline as you get online. This article says exactly that.

 

^^ Agree.

 

Kaizersan, if you simply stated that in your opinion... they lied about SimCity.. I would never have commented. I would have simply chalked your comment up to yet another opinion I disagree with. But when you feel the need to post internet links to support your opinion as fact, and when said links do not actually support your opinion... you earned a comment of disagreement.

 

My opinion is that none of us actually know how difficult it would be for the devs to make the change and release the change. That includes you and all the internet armchair devs. All of which by the way is irrelevant.. because they made a business and design choice for their product. As players our choices are limited... play or don't play. Personally, I chose not to play SimCity precisely because I disagree with their choice of business model. But that does not make them liars.. it makes them game producers who produced a game I choose not to play under their existing business model.

Edited August 24, 2015 by Andryah

[Kaizersan]

proves more the original statement why its hard (port from java to C++, move algorithms, etc) where as the hack disabled bunch of the features they were promoting (city communication) and basically left you with a sub-optimal gaming experience.

 

not sure what you are claiming as proof?

 

Engineer said they had to work a bunch of code and server side communication, EA said was was difficult and going to take time to return the same gaming experience offline as you get online. This article says exactly that.

 

No sub-optimal gaming experience because those who wanted to play it offline didn't want or cared about those factors of the game because all the Sim City games before it didn't have that and were still very good games and the city communication doesn't effect game play in the slightest you can still do everything that makes the game a Sim City game without it.

[Khiriath]

Actually it does EA had told the customers that Sim City couldn't be played offline no matter that which is a lie because all the was stopping one from doing so was one line of code that modders were able to remove and the fact that they were able to bring up the lawsuit in the 1st place says a lot and honestly you haven't even read all of the article you linked to as it only gives you a big of info.

 

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130312/15405822302/maxis-insider-ea-lying-about-needing-servers-single-player-simcity.shtml

 

Only responding to the enlarged portion.

 

The fact that someone filed a lawsuit, and that a law firm turned it into a class action suit means absolutely nothing.

 

People file frivolous lawsuits all the time. People tried to sue McDonald's for making them fat. The US is a highly litigious society, and the fact that someone brought a lawsuit means virtually nothing, other than Dev dollars were eaten up in high paid lawyers' fees.

 

That the lawsuit tried to blame a DDOS attack on BW is simply absurd. No company wants to be hacked, just ask Avid Life Media, yet despite their best efforts they still get hacked. DDOS attacks are the easiest to pull off and the hardest to defend against. The NSA, the best hackers and internet security professionals that the government can employ, fell victim to a DDOS attack...

[DOHboy]

No sub-optimal gaming experience because those who wanted to play it offline didn't want or cared about those factors of the game because all the Sim City games before it didn't have that and were still very good games and the city communication doesn't effect game play in the slightest you can still do everything that makes the game a Sim City game without it.

 

so they wanted to give a larger indepth experience that cities could communicate and talk which required online play, but because some didnt want that, thus demanded an offline mode. They couldn't just say "ok here you go, here is a FULLY functional game with the same experience as you get online, just in an offline mode".

 

lets put that in context. If bioware said this game would be technically difficult to turn into a single player offline game would they be lieing if someone came by ripped out the <50 story and let you play it offline?

[azudelphi]

No sub-optimal gaming experience because those who wanted to play it offline didn't want or cared about those factors of the game because all the Sim City games before it didn't have that and were still very good games and the city communication doesn't effect game play in the slightest you can still do everything that makes the game a Sim City game without it.

 

So, you're saying they are lying because a full port is more difficult than a partial port?

[TUXs]

Seriously, who cares about Sim City? Shouldn't this debate be taken to another forum?

[Khiriath]

Seriously, who cares about Sim City? Shouldn't this debate be taken to another forum?

 

Which is why I ignored it in my response.

[TUXs]

Which is why I ignored it in my response.

 

/bow Well done

[Kaizersan]

So, you're saying they are lying because a full port is more difficult than a partial port?

 

No because there was no reason it needed to be online only at all due to all the features that sell the game to Sim City fans are all the features that were fine with no connection at all.

[The-Kaitou-Kid]

In order to offer the same offline experience that you get on line (cross city communication) there is extra work required to move that from server side to client side. While possible, its was not simple. The offline "hack" disabled alot of that server side stuff and thus did not return the exact same experience you would get playing online. Although most people demanding the offline mode didnt' care about that anyway, but ignoring that fact doesn't make it any less true.

 

Which is what they said, offline disabled alot of those aspects of the game which is not the same experience. If you want to have a 1:1 game experience it required some additional changes to the underlying code, if all you wanted was just that sub section of the game (just the city building) then yes it was possible, but to port the ENTIRE game offline it took more effort than just a small change.

 

Sure, but that stuff isn't required to play the base functionality of the game just as you mentioned. An "offline mode" which would, obviously, disable features that are inherently social and online features. It'd be like a Call of Duty game requiring you to be online regardless of if you're playing MP or not, and then saying you have to be always online because if you're not then you can't play the online multiplayer.

 

They said such a mode wasn't possible, meaning the game couldn't be played offline. But it was able to be played offline. You lose the online features, obviously, but that's the expected outcome anyway. But the base game, the core gameplay of the SimCity series, was available to be played offline. They said this was not possible, not with the caveat of "the full, optimal experience", just flat out not possible to play it offline due to the design. But it was, as has been shown, so that was a lie. You could play it offline, which would allow players to play the game they bought when their internet was out or, of course, when Maxis' servers go down.

 

That's a big part of why this was such an issue, by the way. Let's not forget that. SimCity's launch was coincided by massive server issues on Maxis' end that ended up making the game unplayable (due to Maxis' online-only design, not technical limitations) for a lot of people who paid money to play it. Those who hacked it to play offline could play it just fine, and pirates who were able to patch the offline mode in with saves enabled and other fixes within months of the game's release. Legitimate paying customers were punished for being legitimate paying customers.

[Kaizersan]

so they wanted to give a larger indepth experience that cities could communicate and talk which required online play, but because some didnt want that, thus demanded an offline mode. They couldn't just say "ok here you go, here is a FULLY functional game with the same experience as you get online, just in an offline mode".

 

lets put that in context. If bioware said this game would be technically difficult to turn into a single player offline game would they be lieing if someone came by ripped out the <50 story and let you play it offline?

 

You can't really compare the 2 as Sim City pretty much everything it takes to run the game is all on the client side where as with SWTOR a majority of what it takes to run the game is server side.

[azudelphi]

No because there was no reason it needed to be online only at all due to all the features that sell the game to Sim City fans are all the features that were fine with no connection at all.

 

Still not a lie...

[Kaizersan]

Only responding to the enlarged portion.

 

The fact that someone filed a lawsuit, and that a law firm turned it into a class action suit means absolutely nothing.

 

People file frivolous lawsuits all the time. People tried to sue McDonald's for making them fat. The US is a highly litigious society, and the fact that someone brought a lawsuit means virtually nothing, other than Dev dollars were eaten up in high paid lawyers' fees.

 

That the lawsuit tried to blame a DDOS attack on BW is simply absurd. No company wants to be hacked, just ask Avid Life Media, yet despite their best efforts they still get hacked. DDOS attacks are the easiest to pull off and the hardest to defend against. The NSA, the best hackers and internet security professionals that the government can employ, fell victim to a DDOS attack...

 

It wasn't just the DDOS that they were going on about it was also about the numerous bugs in the game too.

[Kaizersan]

Still not a lie...

 

Actually it is based on this quote "With the way that the game works, we offload a significant amount of the calculations to our servers so that the computations are off the local PCs and are moved into the cloud." the game runs the same off line and online nothing is offloaded to their servers at all.

[DOHboy]

You can't really compare the 2 as Sim City pretty much everything it takes to run the game is all on the client side where as with SWTOR a majority of what it takes to run the game is server side.

 

actually very little of the game is run server side, why do you think it takes 40 GB install and depends highly on your CPU/GPU combination, all the servers do it coordinate the client side communication.

[DOHboy]

Actually it is based on this quote "With the way that the game works, we offload a significant amount of the calculations to our servers so that the computations are off the local PCs and are moved into the cloud." the game runs the same off line and online nothing is offloaded to their servers at all.

 

well except that whole city to city communication portion that obviously choosing to ignore.

[TUXs]

well except that whole city to city communication portion that obviously choosing to ignore.

Which is what type of feature DOH? An Online feature...right? Which they've already explained to you multiple times.

[Kaizersan]

actually very little of the game is run server side, why do you think it takes 40 GB install and depends highly on your CPU/GPU combination, all the servers do it coordinate the client side communication.

 

Actually quite a bit run server side that's the reason why data miners can't tell you everything about the game because a lot of it still is server side. The game runs mostly off the CPU rather then the GPU because of the game engine which is a big reason why the game has so much performance issues.

Edited August 24, 2015 by Kaizersan

[azudelphi]

Which is what type of feature DOH? An Online feature...right? Which they've already explained to you multiple times.

 

Right, but porting that intra-city communication from the launch state as an Online feature to a post-Launch state as an Offline feature was more difficult than just creating a single-city offline version.

 

So, without that feature it was an impartial port...

[TUXs]

Right, but porting that intra-city communication from the launch state as an Online feature to a post-Launch state as an Offline feature was more difficult than just creating a single-city offline version.

 

So, without that feature it was an impartial port...

Why would they have ported an online feature to an offline version?

[DOHboy]

Which is what type of feature DOH? An Online feature...right? Which they've already explained to you multiple times.

 

my point is, it is a feature of the game, it may not be a feature they ultimately care about, but is still a core function of the game that they wanted to deliver for an overall experience. If EA said well we can deliver you half or 3/4 of the game offline as you get online for the same price people would complain. So instead of offering a different game experience offline as you get online they said, there is technical limitations to deliver an offline version of the game, why, because a portion of the game would not function in offline mode as it would online.

 

If people never play multiplayer aspects of a game, can they demand an offline version (diablo 3 for example) that you can play only part of, and then claim they are lying when they say no, its technically difficult to offer the same game experience offline as you do online?