Month: March 2013

Random: Gamersfirst using SimCity problems to tempt us back to Fallen Earth

Posted on by Nimgimli

I don’t even know what to think of this. Here’s part of an email that hit my inbox last night:

We know you’ve been unfaithful. You’ve been dallying with that new game; you know, that one that’s technically a single player game but you’re being forced to play it online because PIRATES or whatever. And yet, try as you might, that other game just won’t return your affections. With all the “challenges”, disabled features, and random performance issues, it’s nice to know you can return to the warm, loving embrace of that game you’ve always loved, Fallen Earth. And what’s better, Fallen Earth won’t even hold it against you! Not forever, anyway.

Bonus points for the image in the email:

broken_image

There’s something delightfully ironic about sending out an email calling out the technical difficulties another game is having, and managing to do it with a big fat broken image link in your email.

Public Service Announcement for those who bought SimCity digital from Amazon (Update: Or EA!)

Posted on by Nimgimli

Update: EA is now promising a free game to everyone who has activated their game by March 18th. At least that’s how I’m reading it. Details here. It’s not as good as a refund but it’s at least an acknowledgement that they screwed up and owe their customers something.

According to a post on CNET Amazon is making an exception to their normal “no refunds for digital content” policy in the case of SimCity.

Leave it to Amazon to show EA how it’s done, though. You’re in luck if you ordered a digital version of SimCity through Amazon and want to return the game. CNET spoke to an Amazon customer service representative who said the company currently allows refunds of the digital download of SimCity, which actually goes against company policy, but the massive influx of refund inquiries left Amazon with little choice. This move follows Amazon’s temporary closure of SimCity digital download sales yesterday, which lasted for nearly half a day — Amazon now sells the game again but warns users about server stability problems.

At the time of this writing, consumers posted over 1,500 reviews of SimCity on Amazon; over 1,350 of those reviews contained very critical comments and rated the game as one star, the lowest rating possible.

The Amazon rep indicated that the green light for refunds of the SimCity download could end at any point. “People are pretty upset [about SimCity],” said the rep, who has worked with Amazon for several years. “I haven’t seen anything like this before, even when people were upset with Diablo III.”

(Emphasis mine.)

If you purchased from Origin, your only recourse is to ride out the server storm and wait for things to settle. It can’t be much longer at this point.

Closing comments because this really is just an info share. I’m way sick and tired of arguing about this launch.

Defiance and I are having our first fight

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’m excited about the SyFy show Defiance, coming in April. And I’m excited about the Trion game of the same name. I can’t talk a lot about why due to an NDA but I have been in a beta weekend and I’ll leave it at that. I have the game pre-ordered.

But today came news that is giving me second thoughts.

Defiance is an MMO shooter. It costs $60 but has no subscription fee. All indications are that it’ll have some kind of cash shop. I’m basing this on the fact that pre-ordering Deluxe versions get you bonus items like

  • +5 Increased inventory space
  • 30-Day scrip boost
  • 30-Day XP boost

Those sound like things you’ll be able to buy in the cash shop, don’t they? And that’s fair… with no sub fee Trion and SyFy need some way to pay for keeping the servers up, right?

But all along we’ve heard a ton about ‘transmedia’ and how events might start in the TV show and end in the game, or vice versa. That suggests an ongoing stream of new content in the game based on advances in the TV show. I was pretty excited about seeing how that works out.

Today however, we got word of a Season Pass for DLC. $40 gets you the first 5 DLC packages. Here’s what they say about DLC:

Join the fight and save big on 5 DLC packs with the Defiance Season Pass. Enjoy a new playable alien species, new weapons and vehicles, missions, and rewards � plus a bonus Hellbug Combat Cap and Lock Box � a 20% savings!* This is the ultimate package for the true Ark Hunter!

And now I’m concerned. If we’re getting new missions and species via DLC, does that mean all this ‘transmedia’ stuff is going to be in the DLC that we have to pay for? At that point, isn’t this just a subscription, basically? If you watch the show and some big event happens and then you log into the game and find out to access this new content you have to pay $10 for the DLC to get it… I mean it isn’t literally a subscription… you could just skip out on that new content. But the transmedia aspect is one of the unique things that Defiance is bringing to the table.

Now, let’s be fair. It might be that there will be plenty of new content dished out in addition to the DLC, and if that’s the case I’ll be less concerned. But right now it isn’t clear.

I think Trion needs to be a lot more transparent about what sorts of content we will get outside of paid DLC, and exactly what that $40 is going to get us.

$60 box price (standard edition) + $40 Season Pass + cash shop to upgrade things like inventory slots… suddenly Defiance is sounding pretty damned expensive.

In general we gamers need to make more noise about this kind of thing. Publishers urge us to pre-order or buy season passes and they often are very light on the details about what exactly we’re paying for. Even looking up at that list above… +5 Inventory Slots. What does that mean? Does a basic account have 100 slots, in which case +5 is a mere 5% bonus? Or does a basic account have 5 slots, in which case +5 is a 100% bonus. We don’t know, but we’re supposed to trust the publishers and pre-order anyway.

Publishers: If you have faith in your game, give us all the information we need in order to make informed decisions.

Of course as I said, I’ve pre-ordered… so clearly I am part of the problem.

Disconnected, but here’s what I’ve been playing lately

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’m not sure when it happened, but somewhere along the line I hit a point where all my gaming was being tracked by someone, somewhere. If I played an Xbox game, my Xbox Live friends knew it. If I played a PS3 or Vita title, my PSN friends knew. On the PC, Steam and Raptr both paid attention to what I was playing and let my friends know.

But when I start playing a 3DS game it’s like I drop off the radar. Sure, I have exchanged Friend Codes with some of my 3DS owning friends but Nintendo kind of shuffles the Friends stuff off to the side. I do think I can see when a friend is online but I don’t think I can see what they’re playing. I’m not 100% positive though since it’s so cumbersome to check that I’ve never bothered to do so.

All of which is just a rambling waste of space before sharing the fact that I’m still playing Fire Emblem: Awakening and still loving it. I’m moving through the story very slowly and spending a lot of time leveling up my troops via bringing in Bonus Armies and fighting on DLC maps. I realize it’s only March but Fire Emblem is an early contender for my personal game of the year. If you have any interest at all in strategy-RPGs, get this game, even if it means buying a 3DS to play it on. Yup, it is a system seller, in my opinion.

I’m still poking at Ni No Kuni too. I sometimes let it sit for as much as a week before I go back in and grind a little bit more. It’s such an un-even game. Long passages of mindlessly grinding mobs followed by short bursts of interesting boss battles. I seem to remember there was some kind of a story but it’s dished out in such tiny, infrequent morsels that I kind of forget what it was all about. Probably if I could stomach boring grinding night after night I’d remember.

I’m not against grinding, really. I’m grinding in Fire Emblem honestly. The different is that Fire Emblem has a combat system that makes grinding fun, while Ni No Kuni has a combat system that just feels sloppy and imprecise to me. Most of the time spent in grinding battles is taken up in getting into and out of the battle system. The actual fights take seconds and usually I just spam the attack key until everything falls down. Mana potions are so expensive that I rarely use magic unless I’m right outside town (so I can hit the Inn and recharge my mana).

Part of this is my own fault. I switch up Familiars too often so now my characters are in their 30s but my highest level familiars are closer to 20, which means I have a lot of work to do catching them up. And random mobs tend to run away now which adds to my frustration.

But I’m going to keep soldiering on! I’m determined not to give up on this game!