EA Launches Spring Sale: Come For The Deals, Stay For The Impotent Nerdrage

[PsYcNeT]

Well come on, everyone knows if more than half of the video games you release each year get less than 60% on Metacritic you are literally Hitler.

[Blaster86]

Originally Posted by cDnStealth

I think boycotting a publisher/developer and potentially missing out on great games because you got burned once is pretty stupid. Ya, by all accounts SimCity was a terrible game. My spider sense was tingling within minutes of booting up the beta.

Simcity had giant bust written all over it from the announcement on. At no stage did that game show any promise to deliver on what was expected. Games from the former Maxis umbrella have been like that since Spore dropped.

Originally Posted by cDnStealth

This isn't necessarily directed at you but one of the lessons people need to learn is that pre ordering games is for suckers. There is very little benefit in buying a game before it releases. Any discount or pre-order DLC can be had later once you've made an informed decision based on reviews and impressions. This is especially true on PC where discounts come up often.

1000 times, this. Do not buy into hype. Ever. Large gaming companies like this have millions of dollars ear marked for advertisement and media. Also avoid main stream reviewing services like IGN. Rely on user votes and word of mouth.

Originally Posted by cDnStealth

Perhaps it's just me but I've noticed many developers lately (not just EA) are running with the attitude of release a game in a buggy mess and fix it post launch. It's pretty easy to avoid this kind of garbage if you wait to see what kind of state a game is in when it releases.

Releasing games as buggy has always been a thing, but like most things they can catch lightning in a bottle on the internet and explode as a huge issue. The BF4 netcode thing is a good example. 95% Of people wouldn't notice it if the internet hadn't caught wind. That said, EA is really bad about this. They force games out far to early on a regular basis. I can't remember what game it was, but there was an EA game that an insider was saying was only 50% done on release. I think it may have been Dragon Age II.

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by Blaster86

I can't remember what game it was, but there was an EA game that an insider was saying was only 50% done on release. I think it may have been Dragon Age II.

Well it beats Sega/Gearbox's Aliens:CM which was only 25% done and actually had features they had shown off previously stripped out

Unless some nerd bangs the drum on Gearbox for that one (they won't) people will still end up buying Borderlands 3 or whatever new property they release.

[Blaster86]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

Unless some nerd bangs the drum on Gearbox for that one (they won't) people will still end up buying Borderlands 3 or whatever new property they release.

Thing is, you get some leeway for one mistake. Make it a consistent issue and you have a problem. That being said, again like Simcity, Colonial Marines had that stink of failure from the get go.

Did either company ever end up addressing that, or did someone just fall on the sword for releasing it too early?

[Teh_Bandwagoner]

I'm getting pretty OT, but meh what the hell.

Specifically with Sim City, it wasn't even the fact that Sim City was buggy upon initial release. Of course people expect that. It was the fact that the game was straight up inaccessible during the first week or two (not days...weeks), and then when you did log in, a bunch of stuff was disabled, and the stuff that was enabled was bugged to hell, and the game itself was essentially unplayable (well..you could play it for a day before your city would perma-crash, and be unable to log in again). Then you add the fact that the simulation algorithms were total jokes that have yet to have been fixed to this day. Total clusterfata.

Diablo had server issues on launch day (not for weeks), and the initial release of the game was meh before they switched directors a year later, but at least the game worked as intended. And Diablo is fun now. Plus Blizzard still releases great quality games. People complain about them, but they get a buy from me. EA has dropped the ball too many times in my books. One game won't cause me to boycott, but fool me a few times and I'll start to get very hesitant about your product.

Back OT, Titanfall is the only game on that list that interests me mildly, but generally I'm not into CoD-type games. If I do purchase, it would definitely be from the discount bin a year or two from now.

P.S. And yes I definitely felt like a sucker. SimCity was the first PC game I've ever pre-ordered, and will definitely be the last. Lesson learned. I'm just glad I didn't purchase the deluxe version.

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by Blaster86

Thing is, you get some leeway for one mistake. Make it a consistent issue and you have a problem. That being said, again like Simcity, Colonial Marines had that stink of failure from the get go.

Did either company ever end up addressing that, or did someone just fall on the sword for releasing it too early?

Well they also released DNF...

But yeah, as I remember it, fingers were pointed everywhere for a few weeks, with Gearbox firmly pointing at a subdeveloper they hired (TimeGate Studios), but later an anon from TimeGate published an article talking about Gearbox's ineptitude handling the project, etc. etc.

In the end, no one took responsibility, no one fixed the game, and it's still 6 kinds of terrible.

[Blaster86]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

Well they also released DNF...

That was just a terrible game. The mistake they made was thinking there was any appetite for a game like that anymore. The humour just hasn't stayed relevant.

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

But yeah, as I remember it, fingers were pointed everywhere for a few weeks, with Gearbox firmly pointing at a subdeveloper they hired (TimeGate Studios), but later an anon from TimeGate published an article talking about Gearbox's ineptitude handling the project, etc. etc.

In the end, no one took responsibility, no one fixed the game, and it's still 6 kinds of terrible.

Depressing but not unsurprising. Gearbox keeps that up, and yeah, even Borderlands will not be a sure thing.

[Kjesse]

I really wanted to have the new SimCity game but stayed away having read the reviews here and elsewhere. No way was I going to pay full price.

So is it still broken and not worth even the $15 or $20 with the xpac?

[Blaster86]

See the video game thread for that question.

[Teh_Bandwagoner]

I wouldn't. Despite being a decade older, Sim City 4 is a far superior game.

As for expacs, I've never really played any of the BF series (seems that boycotting EA is quite easy for me anyway lol), but it seems odd to charge $15 for extra maps that are rehash of old maps. At least with other games (Borderlands, Blizzard Games, Bioshock, Last of Us), you get a lot of new content with the expacs. But then again, maybe there's more to the BF expacs than just maps? I've never played them so I wouldn't know heh.

[Mattington]

Is the Crysis Trilogy a good series of games for that price? What type of game is it? Have heard lots about the graphics, but that's about it.

[Blaster86]

Originally Posted by Teh_Bandwagoner

As for expacs, I've never really played any of the BF series (seems that boycotting EA is quite easy for me anyway lol), but it seems odd to charge $15 for extra maps that are rehash of old maps. At least with other games (Borderlands, Blizzard Games, Bioshock, Last of Us), you get a lot of new content with the expacs. But then again, maybe there's more to the BF expacs than just maps? I've never played them so I wouldn't know heh.

I never played a BF game prior to this one. I too used to be baffled by the map pack and why anyone would drop money on such a thing. It seemed like a waste of money.

Truth be told, I had to be harangued into it by friends. 200 Hours of game play later and I don't regret it one bit. Map packs add more than just maps in the way it changes game play. It adds new weapons and most of all, for a multi-player based game, it adds game play formats.

Now the exception here, that was brought up prior to my post aswell, was the Second Assault pack, which was a re-release of old maps. The thing to remember is these maps were voted on. This is essentially an all-star map pack with what people considered to be the best maps in BF 3.

Point is, the map packs add $15 worth of additional game play in my mind. If you aren't an FPS fan, or don't enjoy huge amounts of variation in your game play then they don't make sense.

[Kjesse]

Originally Posted by Blaster86

See the video game thread for that question.

Thanks, but its 314 pages and not useful to those who find the search ability limited.

[PsYcNeT]

Honestly, IMO $15 is perfectly fine for Simcity. I put ~ 50 hours into it and enjoyed myself at least 3/5s of that time. I loaded it up recently and the game is much less of a pile of #### now, and can also be modded to run larger cities.

That said, you juuuust missed Tropico 4 on sale on steam for $3, which is like a 50 billion times better deal because Tropico quite simply rules.

[DownInFlames]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

That said, you juuuust missed Tropico 4 on sale on steam for $3, which is like a 50 billion times better deal because Tropico quite simply rules.

It's $6 on the Humble Bundle store. I agree that it's a far better game. Can't wait for #5.

https://www.humblebundle.com/store

[Russic]

I picked up Simcity during the sale. $15 is dirt cheap, and if I can get 2 or 3 hours of enjoyment out of it I'll be pleased. Plus with expectations this low, it might even surprise me.

[McG]

Totally off topic but the destruction of criterion games (Burnout franchise) under EA's oversight is a travesty.