Anyone wanna share some popcorn and watch the Sims 4 train wreck?

[Longknife]

Had a thread about this game on the Bethesda forums but got slapped with a two week ban for being an ass towards Skyrim (I REGRET NOTHING!) so I can't laugh with my buds over there at this game. :c

 

 

Am I the only one that enjoys watching greedy companies like EA get the snot kicked out of them by reviews? Surely I can't be the only one. :D

 

Guess I'm under the delusion that moments like these are potential moments for sucker-like customers who'll blindly buy anything to wake up, or for greedy companies to realize they should probably focus a tad more on customer satisfaction.

 

I'm literally camped here watching metacritic reviews: http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/the-sims-4/user-reviews

[IndiraLightfoot]

EA is pretty much preventing me from even trying DA:I, since I don't want their Origin game portal installed, so I have a bone to pick with them right there, and Sim City IV recently and forced online mode at launch, let's not even go there. I feel sorry for all the dev teams, but the EA management, not so much.

 

EDIT: Their games remain super expensive throughout as well, it seems, like Sims 3 and Spore, despite them being several years old. It reeks of greed and hubris.

Edited September 2, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[HoonDing]

Thanks to EA I cannot play Alice Madness Returns anymore.

 

And before any smartasses retort: no, it's an awesome game.

[BruceVC]

Thanks to EA I cannot play Alice Madness Returns anymore.

 

And before any smartasses retort: no, it's an awesome game.

 

Why can't you play Alice because of EA? Is it because of Origin and the fact you don't want to use it. Alice is an excellent game, I loved it

[HoonDing]

Gamestopping bug that won't ever be patched because of EA.

[Longknife]

EA is pretty much preventing me from even trying DA:I, since I don't want their Origin game portal installed, so I have a bone to pick with them right there, and Sim City IV recently and forced online mode at launch, let's not even go there. I feel sorry for all the dev teams, but the EA management, not so much.

 

EDIT: Their games remain super expensive throughout as well, it seems, like Sims 3 and Spore, despite them being several years old. It reeks of greed and hubris.

What absolutely blows my mind is that people are still buying games like the Sims 4 on day one. EA has a horrendous reputation. They've gutted customers for money, they've made buggy releases, they've been behind train wrecks like Sim City, and the previews for sims 4...? I'm by no means a sims fanatic. I thought the sims 3 was pretty meh and I recall a rather wonderful encounter on the Sims 3 forum where a disabled guy humbly requested disabled sims (specifically ones in wheelchairs) be included in the Sims 4 because he - like many people - would like to play his sim self but cant because wheelchairs aren't an option. To my disgust, the MAJORITY of the community reacted by saying disabled sims would be boring to play cause they'd be so worthless or that disabled people are disgusting and they don't want to see bad parts of life included in their game they play to escape. Myself wearing a prosthesis and sympathizing with the guy wanting to make himself, I basically told those people to **** off and die in a fire along with only two other women who stood up for him against an overwhelming majority calling disabled sims a terrible idea with very offensive arguments. When EA swept through and calmed the thread down, they decided to simply temp ban the minority opinion, aka myself and the three others. Well, I found out their ban system at the time relied on cookies, deleted my cookies and spent several hours spamming their forums and calling them **** suckers. Been banned from all EA services and networks ever since. Aside from that? As stated I was already disappointed with the Sims 3 for multiple reasons.

 

 

But even with my limited knowledge of the Sims 4 and limited interest in its news, I heard about development problems. I heard it was initially planned to be DRM but that was scrapped once Sim City took a dive, BUT the game remained on the engine intended for online play (aka a limited one). I saw the big list of all the features that'd be missing from the game.

 

 

And most importantly, I paid attention to the feature they championed the most: emotions.

 

Uhhh... Those are buffs. Mood buffs. They existed in the Sims 3. Yknow like how you could visit a library and get the little "diligent" or "inspired" moodlet that made them gain skills faster. The only difference is the Sims 4 polished them up and attached more stuff to them, such as animations or little social interactions though. And while that's neat....? Reality is it won't float that boat. For example my sims in sims 3 might get the stir crazy moodlet for not leaving the house for an extended period of time. Do I care? No, I tell them to keep improving their skills anyways because it's just a minor mood debuff. How is my sim being angry going to discourage me from focusing on getting a promotion or getting new skill points? Doesn't seem like it would. It's shiny and distracting, but that's just is: it's a distraction and nothing more. It's not a revolutionary new game mechanic, it's moodlet buffs being shinier.

 

 

AND YET PEOPLE LINE UP AND SAY "PLEASE TAKE A DUMP IN MY MOUTH AGAIN EA." Absolutely blows my mind..I'm sure there are some people legitimately satisfied with what they're getting, but at the same time I find it hard to believe that the majority of people who buy EA games are oblivious to missing features and don't have some degree of disappointment. You are not entitled to try and ignore that disappointment, EA is entitled to fix that if they want your money. And yet people handle it like it's the other way around....

 

Absolutely blows my mind.

[Bester]

I don't care about all that, it may even suck, I just wanna play it. Ughhhh.

[Lexx]

The last Sims game that I've played was Sims 1. Look at how hardcore I am!

[Volourn]

"EDIT: Their games remain super expensive throughout as well, it seems, like Sims 3 and Spore, despite them being several years old. It reeks of greed and hubris."

 

Youa re the one full of greed and hubris.

 

It's like still priced high because they are getting enoughh people to buy those 'several year old' games to  keep it that price.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Alright, I'll take that hubris back and stick it on me forehead, but EA will get "greed" tattooed onto their sweaty, furrowed one.

Why, this harsh tone, you wonder?

Because charging tens and hundreds of bucks for some new skins, digital furniture and a couple of pets, calling them "expansion packs", with their big target market being kids, is right down there in the sixth circle of hell, among the lolly stealers and water monkey salesmen.

[TSBasilisk]

Oh what a surprise, a highly-anticipated game has a roughly equal mix of good and bad ratings with people who played for roughly two hours giving it a 0, a score you generally reserve for "not even a game" games.

[Longknife]

Oh what a surprise, a highly-anticipated game has a roughly equal mix of good and bad ratings with people who played for roughly two hours giving it a 0, a score you generally reserve for "not even a game" games.

You wanna bet money this is just people being edgy and giving instant 0's that are exaggerated and that much of this sentiment won't remain once the week is up?

 

 

I've paid attention. I'm all-in on this ****. This game is gonna tank, and I'm gonna love watching it burn.

[Enoch]

It's bizarre that people care this much to see a game do poorly. 

 

I mean, how does one get to a point in their lives when they're willing to invest so much mental and emotional energy in yearning for disastrous results from the work product of hundreds of people in the entertainment industry who they've never met? 

 

...

 

Well, apart from hating the Dallas Cowboys, that is. 

 

...

 

Still, at least hating a sports team is tied up in loving a competing team.  Vidyagame production isn't a zero-sum game the way professional sports are-- "rival" games developers can have concurrent success and happiness. 

 

So EA is making a game that you don't care to play and has customer-relations practices that make you unwilling to buy their products.  That's one less sale for them.  Why does it have to be more than that? 

Edited September 3, 2014 by Enoch

[Hurlshort]

Origin is solid and I'm really enjoying Madden, so I don't have any beef with EA.  Plus it's a video game company, so I don't get real emotional with them.  Now when I went through a short sale with Wells Fargo, that was cause for some real consternation towards a company.

 

So yeah, your problems are petty.  

[ManifestedISO]

No, I hate getting popcorn between my teeth.

 

Wells Fargo is a codename for "We'll **** You."

[Keyrock]

I hate EA as much as the next guy but staring at metacritic and hitting F5 while waiting for negative user scores to roll in doesn't sound like a fun or productive way to spend an afternoon to me.  But hey, if that's what floats your boat, have at it.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

Don't own and never played any of the Sims games. Not my type of game.

[Freshock]

Dayum! Didn't know that it flopped that big, but for some reason it's not that surprising either. Last Sims I gave a shot was the third one and I bought the whole package, which was like well over 100 euros on steam, I ended up playing it for half an hour. I miss the old ones, these new ones just don't have the charm. I try to stay away from any EA games these days, because of the Origin platform, have had so much issues with it that I turn rage mode everytime I have to deal with it. Even worse is the Uplay - I keep myself to Steam, I don't want these new platforms to compete with a oldschool one that is already (basiclly) bugfree. 

[Humanoid]

I've enjoyed all the Sims games so far, but am dodging this for now, so yeah. Bunch of red flags about missing features, and while a lot of it is to be expected, a fair few of them spell out "technical issues" rather than "cut feature". It's one thing to nickel-and-dime on relatively simple stuff for future expansions, it's another to have limitations like everyone being the same height, foundations being all-or-nothing, plots having to be completely flat: it screams that there's something fundamentally wrong with the game engine and that it's not something that will ever be added.

 

 

P.S. The Sims 3 was in a Humble Bundle not so long ago, so I wouldn't say it's costly.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Origin is solid and I'm really enjoying Madden, so I don't have any beef with EA.  Plus it's a video game company, so I don't get real emotional with them.  Now when I went through a short sale with Wells Fargo, that was cause for some real consternation towards a company.

 

So yeah, your problems are petty.  

Long ago, EA was synonymous with good sports games, and hopefully it still is. I no longer play any.

[ShadySands]

Can I get my share of the popcorn to go? 

 

I would totally hang out but I got stuff to do

 

[mute688]

" Unfortunately, EA did not provide us a review code early enough to fully evaluate the game in advance." - Game Informer

 

"We here at Kotaku haven't had enough time with the game to give it a proper review......" - Kotaku

 

Gamespot has only user reviews.

 

"Editor's Note: Because EA did not provide advance review copies of The Sims 4 until Monday, we were unable to produce our usual review in time for launch."  - IGN

 

"Turns out, EA did not provide advance review copies for the latest installment of its popular sim franchise." - GameZone

 

Anyone want to take a guess as to why advance copies were so scarce?  

[nipsen]

It's bizarre that people care this much to see a game do poorly. 

 

I mean, how does one get to a point in their lives when they're willing to invest so much mental and emotional energy in yearning for disastrous results from the work product of hundreds of people in the entertainment industry who they've never met? 

Why would anyone care about having their favorite developers held hostage by a publishing house that literally says, while rubbing your nose in a turd, that: "if you buy our overpriced, buggy products. If you accept our broken backend for online games, if you accept that you can buy servers to alleviate our running costs, while still being forced to run "your" server as load-balancing for our global server pool. If you bear with us on our truly horrendous customer-service. If you accept sponsoring a guy who is widely known for trying to bribe the IOC to allow the olympic games to become a monetized gambling ring with advertisement revenue on top. If you just ignore all of that and shove money in our faces -- we may, out of the goodness of our hearts -- some day maybe sponsor an actual good game. Rather than continuously destroy good ideas and good studios, in the belief that all our customers can be exploited endlessly with cheap gimmicks. But remember that we allowing one of our studios to do something interesting is dependent on all of our bull**** actually succeeding beyond our wildest imagination in the first place. Now buy our **** at 69 euro, along with "premium" for another 59! It's cheap!"?

 

..I mean, really, it's a good question. Why would anyone actually be pissed off by what a company like EA does? They have no real power, they're a pretty insignificant entity, there are other games you can play. So how can a company like that somehow end up being targeted by not just dismissive, but vindictive critics. Who otherwise don't seem really interested in discussing video-games in any way beyond "I kind of like this game!". You know, it's a good question, that really there is no one single answer to. 

 

Or as tier 3 customer support at EA, in the US, said it: "It works for me at my end!".

[Nepenthe]

It's bizarre that people care this much to see a game do poorly. 

 

I mean, how does one get to a point in their lives when they're willing to invest so much mental and emotional energy in yearning for disastrous results from the work product of hundreds of people in the entertainment industry who they've never met? 

 

...

 

Well, apart from hating the Dallas Cowboys, that is. 

 

...

 

Still, at least hating a sports team is tied up in loving a competing team.  Vidyagame production isn't a zero-sum game the way professional sports are-- "rival" games developers can have concurrent success and happiness. 

 

So EA is making a game that you don't care to play and has customer-relations practices that make you unwilling to buy their products.  That's one less sale for them.  Why does it have to be more than that? 

 

 

Regarding your other point: http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap2000000362613/article/dallas-cowboys-players-read-mean-tweets

[Malcador]

It is nice to watch things go wrong now and then, though I suppose more passively than wasting time hunting down reviews. I suppose those that worked on it may feel bad, but eh, big deal.