SimCity 5

[salty mud]

I see what you mean, but if it's anything like this Simcity, I don't want anything to do with it.

 

[Maniacal]

I hope this game sells well and EA continues the Simcity series.

Except that if it sells really really well and keeps doing so it won't tell them "give us a good SC game" it will tell them "We're okay with this crap". Iirc SC 2013 has sold 1.1 million in the first two weeks. Not bad, but hardly amazing.

 

[J-man]

Except that if it sells really really well and keeps doing so it won't tell them "give us a good SC game" it will tell them "We're okay with this crap". Iirc SC 2013 has sold 1.1 million in the first two weeks. Not bad, but hardly amazing.

The 1st Assassin's creed was widely criticized as being to repetitive by the public but sold really well. Assassin's creed 2 was much better.

 

[Maniacal]

The first Assassin's Creed game also didn't ship with numerous major bugs, broken features, flat lout lies about the online features (it had none), always-online DRM (it is actually DRM free now and all it really had was a CD key), was a brand new franchise, didn't have DLC (that I know of), and wasn't worse than the previous games in its series. AC2 was also made by more or less the same team, today's Maxis is made up almost entirely of people who didn't work on the other Sim City games.

 

[RD-BH]

What isn't?

I find it odd taking my money and giving me a broken game is not considered fraud.

The US lacks solid consumer protection with regards to entertainment.

EA's EULA says the software is sold "as is"; technically meaning they don't believe consumers are entitled to patches for a dysfunctional game.
So, we are at their mercy to fix their game which they rent to us for an ever increasing price.

Why do I keep buying from them?

I need rest.

 

[GrayingGamer]

The US lacks solid consumer protection with regards to entertainment.

I'm sorry, but this is a load of crap.

You can get as much consumer protection as you want regarding PC gaming entertainment - all you need is a measure or two of patience.

Some games have demos - you can actually try before you buy, and all you have to pay for is the computer/bandwidth.

For games without demos, you have numerous avenues of prior review you can take advantage of. Read official reviews, unofficial reviews, read official forums and unofficial forums, or just go to youtube and watch videos of other people playing the game.


The last thing we need is government and lawyer involvement in an industry that absolutely doesn't need it.

 

[W|M]

I'm sorry, but this is a load of crap.

You can get as much consumer protection as you want regarding PC gaming entertainment - all you need is a measure or two of patience.

Some games have demos - you can actually try before you buy, and all you have to pay for is the computer/bandwidth.

Not all do, including SimCity (unless you count the Closed ''Beta'')

For games without demos, you have numerous avenues of prior review you can take advantage of. Read official reviews, unofficial reviews, read official forums and unofficial forums, or just go to youtube and watch videos of other people playing the game.


The last thing we need is government and lawyer involvement in an industry that absolutely doesn't need it.

Reviews are easily changed to make terrible games look very good, and EA isn't exactly the type of company that would shy away from bribing reviewers, and many of the issues aren't even immediately obvious when watching LPs. Consumer protection certainly IS needed to protect customers who haven't had the oppurtunity to see much information about the game, as well as to keep consumers safe from companies which blatantly lie and deceive you at every turn.

 

[fret]

I'm sorry, but this is a load of crap.

You can get as much consumer protection as you want regarding PC gaming entertainment - all you need is a measure or two of patience.

Some games have demos - you can actually try before you buy, and all you have to pay for is the computer/bandwidth.

For games without demos, you have numerous avenues of prior review you can take advantage of. Read official reviews, unofficial reviews, read official forums and unofficial forums, or just go to youtube and watch videos of other people playing the game.

What you posted is a load of crap. Consumer protection has nothing to do with patience. Unilateral mandatory arbitration without any statutory underpinning is a big spiky cactus up the butt hole of gamers.

Digital media products are treated differently to physical good, and the sooner that ends, the better.

Extreme example: Buy a DVD which is broken (ie disc cracked), consumer is protected. Buy a digital file for $50 that is sold as a widget, digital file is not a widget but a broken widget, consumer is not protected.

The last thing we need is government and lawyer involvement in an industry that absolutely doesn't need it.

Even more crap that. What we need really quick is for government to regulate the digital distribution industry and fast, because Steam, Itunes, Origin accounts are getting pretty valuable and the 'owners' of these assets have no rights whatsoever.

 

[GrayingGamer]

Government is needed to protect people when they can't protect themselves.

You're asking government to protect you FROM yourselves over a completely voluntary entertainment industry.

Use some sense and vote with your dollars. Freakin' blows my mind. ANYONE who buys a product from EA without doing their due diligence beforehand deserves whatever steaming pile they get.

 

[grandad1982]

Government is needed to protect people when they can't protect themselves.

You're asking government to protect you FROM yourselves over a completely voluntary entertainment industry.

Use some sense and vote with your dollars. Freakin' blows my mind. ANYONE who buys a product from EA without doing their due diligence beforehand deserves whatever steaming pile they get.

Whilst I agree that you should do your research before buying a game, and if your buying a game from EA you should be extra careful, I strongly disagree that your consumer rights shouldn't have an underpinning in law.

You say vote with your money? Well seasoned "gamers" like ourselves might do that but there are so many more people out there that are "casual" gamers or might be buying games for presents etc, and as such are more vulnerable to buying products that are an abuse of there custom. The belief that a free market regulates itself adequately just does't seem to work as far as I can tell since most multinationals and large corporations answer to their shareholders (and their dividends) before their customers.

 

[J-man]

The first Assassin's Creed game also didn't ship with numerous major bugs, broken features, flat lout lies about the online features (it had none), always-online DRM (it is actually DRM free now and all it really had was a CD key), was a brand new franchise, didn't have DLC (that I know of), and wasn't worse than the previous games in its series. AC2 was also made by more or less the same team, today's Maxis is made up almost entirely of people who didn't work on the other Sim City games.

My point is that a computer game sequel can be of better quality than its predecessor.

 

[sophie]

Government is needed to protect people when they can't protect themselves.

You're asking government to protect you FROM yourselves over a completely voluntary entertainment industry.

Use some sense and vote with your dollars. Freakin' blows my mind. ANYONE who buys a product from EA without doing their due diligence beforehand deserves whatever steaming pile they get.

Likewise anybody who needs to go to the emergency room due to catching e. coli from tainted food because they didn't due their due diligence should only have themselves to blame.

We don't need government doing quality control on food. There are a myriad of avenues a consumer can do to do their own independent research on finding out where that meat came from.

Freakin blows my mind.

 

[J-man]

Wow, a park&ride can be pretty effective in alleviating traffic problems...

I discovered another silly thing. I have this university and couldn't attract enough students for a 2nd upgrade. Then I destroyed all my other schools (grade school, high school, community college) and the students flocked in. Turns out that students can go to any school. So if you have a grade school and a university you can destroy it and let students enroll in the university...

 

[cybrxkhan]

Wow, a park&ride can be pretty effective in alleviating traffic problems...

I discovered another silly thing. I have this university and couldn't attract enough students for a 2nd upgrade. Then I destroyed all my other schools (grade school, high school, community college) and the students flocked in. Turns out that students can go to any school. So if you have a grade school and a university you can destroy it and let students enroll in the university...

Sounds like your town is inhabited by stereotypical Asians.

Speaking of which, for the randomly generated Sim people, what sort of names do they have? Is it mostly American-sounding names?

 

[Maniacal]

My point is that a computer game sequel can be of better quality than its predecessor.

Sure, but there are plenty of sequels that aren't better. SC is so close to rock bottom as it is the only real direction is up, but with the current management and "leadership" at Maxis/EA who are responsible for this trainwreck a sequel probably won't get that much better without a shake up.

 

[civvver]

The problem with eula's and all that is it's pretty subjective. Most people can play now from what I hear. Game bugs could be considered features. Whether the game sucks or not is subjective. I think the only time you are absolutely entitled to a refund is if your pc meets all the minimum specs but won't run the game. Or if the minimum specs weren't disclosed and you can't run it (has happened to me 15 years ago, bought a game that didn't support my gpu chip but box didn't say, got my money back).

I mean if you could get money back just for a crappy product movies like die hard 5 would have negative box office receipts.

As far as sequels, I think most improve upon the game the first one or two times but go generally downhill after that, usually because different people are involved. It's rare to have the same designers from the original 10 years ago. Lots of examples, Mass Effect 2 > ME1 (for most) but ME3 isn't as good. Civ 2, 3, 4 all got better, 5 is a step back. Masters of orion 2 was good, 3 sucked.

 

[J-man]

Sims 3 is a lot better than Sims 1 (I haven't played sims 2).
What about expansions? Imo Civ 4 BTS is much better than Civ 4 vanilla.

In movies the sequel is very often not as good as the first but I think in games it's different.

 

[civ_king]

Sims 3 is a lot better than Sims 1 (I haven't played sims 2).
What about expansions? Imo Civ 4 BTS is much better than Civ 4 vanilla.

In movies the sequel is very often not as good as the first but I think in games it's different.

If an expansion is not at least as good as the base game you are doing something very very wrong.

 

[Maniacal]

Game bugs could be considered features.

Wat?

Whether the game sucks or not is subjective.

It really isn't that subjective. Your personal enjoyment of the game is highly subjective of course, but regardless of how much someone enjoys a game it can easily still have stuff that makes it suck. THEEVERGOD and I had a barrel of laughs playing through The Scourge Project, but there is no way in hell I'd ever recommend someone to buy and play that game even for free because it sucks. Its short, its quite buggy, and it just isn't a very good game.

Sim City 2013, as it exists, sucks. EA/Maxis flat out misled and lied to customers about several features, particularly having part of the game running on their servers (which is completely untrue since they are only used for DRM and saving and the game works fine offline). The game has a rather poor simulation of cities, fails to simulate traffic properly, emergency services only target one emergency at a time, and the regions are far too small to build a proper city. Inter-region gameplay is also a bit of a joke seeing how simple it is and how it doesn't even really work that well. Some people are still, obviously, having fun, but that doesn't change any of the numerous major problems it has.

I think the only time you are absolutely entitled to a refund is if your pc meets all the minimum specs but won't run the game. Or if the minimum specs weren't disclosed and you can't run it (has happened to me 15 years ago, bought a game that didn't support my gpu chip but box didn't say, got my money back).

Minimum specs are often merely "can the game make it to the main menu" and not "can the game run well?" and you really shouldn't be buying a game if you barely meet the minimum requirements.

I agree though that if the min specs aren't properly disclosed at all then you should be able to get a refund, although with account based games (Like Steam, Origin) it can be a lot harder to get a refund. Refunds should also be given if the product is really quite badly broken and/or missing a lot of advertised features. Still not a reason to do a charge back unless the game was advertised as something completely and utterly different from what you received (ie you bought it because it said it was an action RPG game, but it ended up being a Facebook-like game instead or something. I don't know if that has ever really happened though).

I mean if you could get money back just for a crappy product movies like die hard 5 would have negative box office receipts.

Yeah you can't really just return digital media because it wasn't very good, it has to be REALLY BAD and broken.

As far as sequels, I think most improve upon the game the first one or two times but go generally downhill after that, usually because different people are involved. It's rare to have the same designers from the original 10 years ago. Lots of examples, Mass Effect 2 > ME1 (for most) but ME3 isn't as good. Masters of orion 2 was good, 3 sucked.

Yeah pretty much, although ME3 was mostly just as good but its ending ended up being total rubbish. Video game sequels can really go either way, there are lots of great sequels (at least initially) and quite a few mediocre or lackluster sequels, or just plain bad (Dragon Age 2, Bioshock 2, every Stronghold game after Crusader).

Sims 3 is a lot better than Sims 1 (I haven't played sims 2).
What about expansions?

While I am sure The Sims 3 has some improvements, the core gameplay really hasn't changed much since the first game and you have had to rebuy more or less the exact same expansions for all three of them. It also doesn't run quite as well as Sims 2 from what I've seen.

Civ 2, 3, 4 all got better, 5 is a step back.

Eh, they all have problems just as much as they improved things. Civ 3 improved upon Civ2 in a number of areas, although I could never really get into it myself, and I've never liked the aesthetic design of the game. Civ4 added in some great stuff like the resource systems, but still had a lot of annoying features and a god awful stacks of doom combat system that ruined the game. Civ5 at least tried to remedy that, although having your army spread out over a continent just looks silly.

 

[BSmith1068]

Yeah you can't really just return digital media because it wasn't very good, it has to be REALLY BAD and broken.

Your problem comes in defining “Really Bad”, and to some extent “broken”. You would have to have near universal agreement that a game was broken beyond repair in order to justify a mandated return policy. Simply not liking something because it took a creative direction you didn’t agree with, or complaints over bugs that make the gameplay less than ideal are not enough.

Not being able to run the game at all? Probably justified in requesting a refund.

Pissed that all your fire trucks train it to one fire while other fires are around? While less than ideal, this doesn’t “break” the game. Give them some time to work out the bugs and patch things.

And what does it matter if the online requirement was for DRM only or for server side processing and other features? It’s not like we didn’t know that online only was the way it was going to be. And if you didn’t you could have waited until the day after release to buy it and read up on it from people that did buy it before you. It doesn’t really matter why EA said that online only was the way it was.

The lesson here is to not buy a new game on day 1 (or pre-release for that matter). Wait a day or two and do some homework before buying. It isn’t hard to do, it just requires some patience.

I did just that, and decided to buy the game despite all of the reported problems. Is SimCity the best game ever? No. Is it functional and fun to play? Yes. Are there some things that are not optimal? Yes, but there have been 3-4 patches over the past couple of weeks and I have never had a server down issue.