Zero day DLC = disrespecting the customer

No, perhaps it's a slippery slope up there somewhere. And perhaps we slid down it at once point.

You're making an argument that would have made sense 4 or 5 years ago when stuff like this started happening. It's a bit late to make a stand now. The horse has bolted.

Constantly online DRM is the slippery slope now - Steam is the reasonable alternative.
I make an argument that already made sense 5 years ago, and as still does.
I simply have done what you say : took a stand and stopped walking down the alley of ripping-off. I was just aware about it much sooner than you were.

And simple CD-check aren't a thing of the past, nor is intrusive DRM an inevitability. There is still plenty of games that are reasonable on the copy-protection part.
 
How would it be impossible? Locked content isn't a trait of DLC.

I'll refer you to the "Dawn of War" series by THQ. If you don't have the expansions, you can still play with others that have them. You just can't play AS the expansion races.

So if I'm playing against you, and I have the Deluxe version, I can be Babylon and you can't.

How is this hard to understand?
nope. it is all too easy to understand.

suppose i host a game without the deluxe version, playing with someone with the deluxe version. e.g. i am the server, all others are clients.

i presume unit types are assigned an id by some algorithm. so i have N unit types. and supoose that babylon will have a UU or a UB (for UB's the same exact reasoning is applied, but only to building types) so any clients with the babylon will have N + 1 unit type.

the game starts. bla bla. on some turn a client playing babylon chose to build his UU: the client network code sends some packet to the server saying "bla bla a unit with id(unit type) = N + 1 needs to be created". WHOA!! but i only have N unit types. what happens next? 95% chance of server crash and certain out of sync :lol:

the same will hold true, if i, being the client, stumble upon a babylon's UU. the server will send some packet "a unit with parameters bla bla and with id(unit type) = N + 1 was discovered". an almost certain client crash.

How is this hard to understand?
 
And simple CD-check aren't a thing of the past, nor is intrusive DRM an inevitability. There is still plenty of games that are reasonable on the copy-protection part.

No? Cool. Name me the last big mainstream game that attempted no online activation DRM of any description and relied solely on a CD-in-drive check for every feature?
 
No? Cool. Name me the last big mainstream game that attempted no online activation DRM of any description and relied solely on a CD-in-drive check for every feature?
We seriously need a popcorn smiley.
 
No? Cool. Name me the last big mainstream game that attempted no online activation DRM of any description and relied solely on a CD-in-drive check for every feature?

Gal Civ II made top 10 lists for PC games, sold over 1 mil total, and didn't even rely on the CD-in-drive check.

Sins perhaps also- unsure how well that sold though.
 
Gal Civ II made top 10 lists for PC games, sold over 1 mil total, and didn't even rely on the CD-in-drive check.

Sins perhaps also- unsure how well that sold though.

Oh! Galactic Civilizations II you say?

Released in 2006 you say?

Gosh, if only I'd said "would have made sense 4 or 5 years ago"!

Then I wo... wait a second...

You cheeky devil! You almost got me!
 
As I'm sure your mother has asked you at least once, if everybody jumped off a bridge, would you jump off the bridge too?
Based on his comments, would you really exclude the chance that he would do so? :mischief:
 
4-5 years ago is not that long ago (well, unless you're a hardcore gamer). And just because "everybody's doing it" today doesn't make it the right thing to do. As I'm sure your mother has asked you at least once, if everybody jumped off a bridge, would you jump off the bridge too?

No, but when everyone is doing it and the majority of people are OK with it, the small group of people vehemently ranting about it years after it became normal tend to get ignored.

And then buy the game anyway.
 
4-5 years ago is not that long ago

:lol:
Unless someone is 15 years old, then it's a huge portion of their life. For most others, it is very recent in history. Chalks hates Gal Civ 2 and Stardock because they offered a superior alternative to REQUIRING an internet connection to play a game offline you just purchased. And they were successful with it, and had strong community backing.

Now the only argument he can make is... "4 years ago! That was back in the caveman days!"

It is the console game mentality that drives this. Either that, or they simply love having less control and freedom themselves. DRM' purpose is: People are stupid, we must make it incredibly difficult for re-sale of our game, and our loyal customers must be treated like trash by requiring these insolent fools to have internet to play offline.

Some people love this purpose... and even push it. Who am I to argue with them if they feel this way about themselves.

Some others though, do not realize these things, so no fault to them. Being okay with it now, means it will get worse later... another thing people always fail to realize.
 
As I'm sure your mother has asked you at least once, if everybody jumped off a bridge, would you jump off the bridge too?
of course i would! i do not want to spend the rest of my days in a nuthouse :lol:

:lol:
Unless someone is 15 years old, then it's a huge portion of their life. For most others, it is very recent in history. Chalks hates Gal Civ 2 and Stardock because they offered a superior alternative to REQUIRING an internet connection to play a game offline you just purchased. And they were successful with it, and had strong community backing.

Now the only argument he can make is... "4 years ago! That was back in the caveman days!"

It is the console game mentality that drives this. Either that, or they simply love having less control and freedom themselves. DRM' purpose is: People are stupid, we must make it incredibly difficult for re-sale of our game, and our loyal customers must be treated like trash by requiring these insolent fools to have internet to play offline.

Some people love this purpose... and even push it. Who am I to argue with them if they feel this way about themselves.

Some others though, do not realize these things, so no fault to them. Being okay with it now, means it will get worse later... another thing people always fail to realize.
disagree. the pace of technology nowdays accelerates at an astonishing pace.

maybe you recall that Morrowind was released in 2005 ;)

4-5 years is a long time for technology, but an instant for inertness of human mentality :p
 
disagree. the pace of technology nowdays accelerates at an astonishing pace.

maybe you recall that Morrowind was released in 2005 ;)

4-5 years is a long time for technology, but an instant for inertness of human mentality :p

Yes, exactly.

If you think 4-5 years is not a long time in terms of technology, you should remember that the first ever game requiring Steam activation was released only 6 years ago.
 
Futurists and Moore's law

Futurists such as Vernor Vinge, Bruce Sterling, and Ray Kurzweil believe that the exponential improvement described by Moore's law will ultimately lead to a technological singularity: a period where progress in technology occurs almost instantly. :run:

-----

Now 4 years would be a long time, if we suddenly sent a manned mission to Mars... but we are talking about a game (Morrowind) compared to (Civ5). The latter will have better graphics; and otherwise has taken all of it's core ideas from other games and previous iterations to create. Nothing technologically ground-breaking here. As for the AI, that sounds like it is a new idea; but to determine it's success we will have to see (it could possibly be ground-breaking).

But you are mixing together technology progress of hardware, and mixing software in; which is not what technological progress refers to. Software is always limited by it's hardware counterpart. Furthermore, games are not designed to run on state-of-the-art equipment; but mainstream equipment (or better put... slow beasts of computers).
 
Have you actually been following the topic of this conversation?
 
What planet have some of you been living on? DLC has become a fact over the last 2-3 years. Not a "wave of the future". A here-and-now fact.
 
What planet have some of you been living on? DLC has become a fact over the last 2-3 years. Not a "wave of the future". A here-and-now fact.

Excellent point!

So a company creating a game for release, then deciding that certain portions they will release on Day 0 as 'Additional Content' instead of with the Day 0 game itself... and selling the 'Additional Content' for high prices. And they do so to 'Herd the consumer' into digital download of the product (which costs them less, and is priced higher). And the majority of the Happy Herd of Consumers goes right along as they are coerced to do.

I guess you are right, that is the "wave of the future" here and now, it's called ripping the customer off and being disrespectful.

I almost forgot that such was commonplace nowadays and has been for the last 2-3 years!
 
:lol:
Unless someone is 15 years old, then it's a huge portion of their life. For most others, it is very recent in history. Chalks hates Gal Civ 2 and Stardock because they offered a superior alternative to REQUIRING an internet connection to play a game offline you just purchased. And they were successful with it, and had strong community backing.

Now the only argument he can make is... "4 years ago! That was back in the caveman days!"

It is the console game mentality that drives this. Either that, or they simply love having less control and freedom themselves. DRM' purpose is: People are stupid, we must make it incredibly difficult for re-sale of our game, and our loyal customers must be treated like trash by requiring these insolent fools to have internet to play offline.

Some people love this purpose... and even push it. Who am I to argue with them if they feel this way about themselves.

Some others though, do not realize these things, so no fault to them. Being okay with it now, means it will get worse later... another thing people always fail to realize.
four years is a long time in computer time, only four years ago it seemed we were still using Pentium 4s with one core now you can buy 6! at the highest clock of a P4! for $300! that kind of computing power would have been over $2000 four years ago probably more like $3000
 
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