Of course, it doesn't really cost them anything to give away free digital games. Better to beg for forgiveness than to get things right in the first place? It still would have been cheaper to have excess server capacity up front and diminish it over time than to underestimate server needs by (according to this report) by probably close to 200%. Was the beta that ineffective? I know these sorts of things are unpredictable, but whoever designed the beta needs to be taken to the woodshed.
In the end, though, the PR mess probably won't cost them. As much as gamers bitch and moan about EA, they still keep buying EA's games. So maybe they decided the PR hit wouldn't hurt them in the long run. I'm not sure that's wrong, given the fickleness of gamers.
This sucks. I'm not even opposed to requiring a constant connection, but if you're going to do that, you need to provide infrastructure. I hoped (rather than expected) EA to do this right. But now it's not just problems connecting, but basic functionality that's compromised. Honestly, I'm not sure fixing this stuff matters. I trust VanOrd's opinion on this, and the problems he's stated probably mean I'm going to skip this.
Let's hope they reconsider, and release a SimCity that's actually designed for the people who want to play it, and not full of game-breaking bugs. Not actually saving progress? Deal-breaker.
Because we're spending so much time looking at her hair while we're gaming :/
Anything that makes visuals look more realistic is worth it, but this is a very subtle thing. I'd be more concerned about atmospheric effects, weather, water, lighting, etc. rather than hair--because we're actually looking at those things more often than we're looking at our character on screen.
@BEANS_ON_TOAST Same here. I always wanted to run around and explore the world and beat shit up, but as soon as the RTS stuff kicked in, I got seriously bored. If it had been a straight-up adventure, I probably would have loved it.
Weird that it's coming out on PC now, so long after its original release.
I'm not feeling worn out on these yet. AC3 might have been disappointing, but mostly because it lacked the focus of Brotherhood. and a decent protagonist. There's still a lot of meat on these bones. So far, every game in the franchise has been entertaining, even if they all haven't been stellar. So yeah, I'm looking forward to this. Let's just hope they follow through on the promise, return some of the elements they cut (like armor upgrades) and give us something more compelling, like Brotherhood. And I wouldn't be disappointed if they kept the modern-day storyline to a minimum.
Permadeath is overrated as a game mechanic. People keep bringing up XCOM: Enemy Unknown, but let's be honest here--those characters are interchangeable. They have no personalities, and though you get to name them (if you want to), when they died I had no real connection to them. I just replaced them with another squad member. By the end of the game, you'd be hard pressed to remember any of them. Scripted deaths, on the other hand (even if they're optional), at least have narrative impact. But there's no narrative to speak of in XCOM. Characters are just names on a list. If that's all it takes to make a connection for some gamers, that's fine. But that seems crazy to me.
What permadeath usually means is tedious gameplay slowed down to the point where it's painful. In a military shooter, yeah, it would change the way you play the game. It would cease being fun. Sure, it might make some kind of larger point about war (ie., it's not fun--as though we didn't already know that), but those games aren't really about war. They're big summer blockbusters, not serious narratives about conflict. Permadeath misses the point of those games. There might be a place for it on occasion, but in the end it's an obstacle to good gameplay.
Does it really add weight to actions? I don't see how. You just go back and play again. Because in the end, even "permadeath" in games isn't really death and isn't really permanent. At best, it's only more inconvenient. A gimmick that works once. Which is why we don't see it more in games.
Not completely unexpected, if true. But honestly, for as good as the naval missions were in AC3, they were still a bit thin. They'll need to flesh things out quite a bit before it's worthwhile. Not that doing so would be impossible, but let's just say I have some doubts. We'll see.
@metalgrinch It's understandable given the rather vast difference between the Cell processor and the x86 processor in the PS4. It's not at all likely that Microsoft will have better luck with backwards compatibility, given that they seem to be moving in the x86 direction as well. Still, moving from the PowerPC architecture to the x86 would present fewer obstacles. I somehow doubt that Microsoft is sweating this issue much. After the first six months of a console, backwards compatibility tends to matter very little in new sales.
It's a legitimate point, about not showing the hardware. It makes me wonder if Sony felt pushed to get their information out first, before the hardware was actually ready. So it raises some red flags, and shows that Sony may not be as confident at the moment as they'd like to be. Still, I can't imagine Microsoft is in a much better position. Let's see what they do before judging Sony too harshly.
ernelson1976's comments