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Why EA should be wary of toxic designs made with sims 4
Anavastia
Posts: 6,515 Member
It's no surprise for everyone EA has been on the short end of the stick with it's consumer base across the board.
You know what the common mistake made is think the fanbase only hate the DRM and always online.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/04/09/ea-voted-worst-company-in-america-again/
These aren't the only problems that EA faces as a company. Now a days, it seems EA likes to punish consumers and provide the least quality customer service possible. By taking cheap short cuts with their fanbase like outsourcing the customer service jobs to areas that barely can speak english and must use scripted solutions. By making invasive programs like origins, forcing fanbase to provide customer support for technical issues, or increasing the value of their game by charging ridiculous prices for microtransactioned pixles in the store.
For a game that goes above market value you must understand that when a consumer is having a technical issue that consumer already is upset and doesn't want to talk to an inexperienced agent. The games itself although having the ability to have online connections has the best connection to the websites store but the worst connection for help and problem solving of the game.
Though so much content can be pumped out for the store online on a weekly and monthly basis a fix to the game only comes out from their departments every six months to a year when expansions are released. The lowest i've seen for any game to have online connection, most companies who use online updating at least update their servers every two weeks and try to squeeze in a bug fix or two. If you think this is a problem for sims 3 alone you'd be mistaken. This happens in their other game departments and it will bleed into sims 4.
We see that with changes being made to penalize players now. Understand no change comes without benefit to EA and what they think will increase profits. Now a days for major companies rarely they do what's fun and enjoyable for the consumer. So no surprise CAST is removed. You think they removed it for low end systems or do you think they removed to create more download space for store content? I'm going to lean heavily for the later reason. However look how greatly inconvenienced fans are because of it. For sure these type of decisions do hurt the sales of the sims franchise.
It becomes toxic designs when marketing is the major influence of a video game. DRM toxic, always online toxic, even micro transactions can become toxic to the company if it affects customer relations. These can cause a major reduction in profit. A good example is rather than providing an entire game at release or a fleshed out expansion resources are split up. You get both mediocre products in the store online and mediocre product on the shelves. That's pretty much sums up sims 3 for me it's mediocre and i expect that sims 4 will be the same. I'll put that on the table now why should i preorder for just a cupcake machine? Can this machine be used in an open venue to sell cupcakes in a bakery? Can this machine provide good open quality gameplay through out all expansions. Or is it just like the store online products such as the pizza oven or the terryaki grill. Great their in the game mediocre they can't connect to anything in the game to provide quality concepts. That is what becomes toxic about microtransactioning a game heavily.
Do i think sims 4 is already better than 3. Nope, there is a difference between hope and what is reality. The reality of it is EA, in the eyes of their consumer, come off as the worst customer service providers across the board both in game and outside game. It be foolish to ignore being voted worst company in the world 2 years in a row. Noticing you have a serious decline in sales and stock value. It's even worse to use shoddy excuses to sweep under the wrong and try to hold face value. Your fans need more than an apology and you as a company need to stop ignoring the signs of a slowly sinking ship. To me the only way to increase sales and really improve their product is to attack the initial disease this company has spread through it's departments. That is to change the outlook profit first fans last.
http://www.tibco.com/blog/2013/04/06/valves-steam-is-beloved-by-gamers-while-eas-origin-is-loathed-why/
You know what the common mistake made is think the fanbase only hate the DRM and always online.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/04/09/ea-voted-worst-company-in-america-again/
These aren't the only problems that EA faces as a company. Now a days, it seems EA likes to punish consumers and provide the least quality customer service possible. By taking cheap short cuts with their fanbase like outsourcing the customer service jobs to areas that barely can speak english and must use scripted solutions. By making invasive programs like origins, forcing fanbase to provide customer support for technical issues, or increasing the value of their game by charging ridiculous prices for microtransactioned pixles in the store.
For a game that goes above market value you must understand that when a consumer is having a technical issue that consumer already is upset and doesn't want to talk to an inexperienced agent. The games itself although having the ability to have online connections has the best connection to the websites store but the worst connection for help and problem solving of the game.
Though so much content can be pumped out for the store online on a weekly and monthly basis a fix to the game only comes out from their departments every six months to a year when expansions are released. The lowest i've seen for any game to have online connection, most companies who use online updating at least update their servers every two weeks and try to squeeze in a bug fix or two. If you think this is a problem for sims 3 alone you'd be mistaken. This happens in their other game departments and it will bleed into sims 4.
We see that with changes being made to penalize players now. Understand no change comes without benefit to EA and what they think will increase profits. Now a days for major companies rarely they do what's fun and enjoyable for the consumer. So no surprise CAST is removed. You think they removed it for low end systems or do you think they removed to create more download space for store content? I'm going to lean heavily for the later reason. However look how greatly inconvenienced fans are because of it. For sure these type of decisions do hurt the sales of the sims franchise.
It becomes toxic designs when marketing is the major influence of a video game. DRM toxic, always online toxic, even micro transactions can become toxic to the company if it affects customer relations. These can cause a major reduction in profit. A good example is rather than providing an entire game at release or a fleshed out expansion resources are split up. You get both mediocre products in the store online and mediocre product on the shelves. That's pretty much sums up sims 3 for me it's mediocre and i expect that sims 4 will be the same. I'll put that on the table now why should i preorder for just a cupcake machine? Can this machine be used in an open venue to sell cupcakes in a bakery? Can this machine provide good open quality gameplay through out all expansions. Or is it just like the store online products such as the pizza oven or the terryaki grill. Great their in the game mediocre they can't connect to anything in the game to provide quality concepts. That is what becomes toxic about microtransactioning a game heavily.
Do i think sims 4 is already better than 3. Nope, there is a difference between hope and what is reality. The reality of it is EA, in the eyes of their consumer, come off as the worst customer service providers across the board both in game and outside game. It be foolish to ignore being voted worst company in the world 2 years in a row. Noticing you have a serious decline in sales and stock value. It's even worse to use shoddy excuses to sweep under the wrong and try to hold face value. Your fans need more than an apology and you as a company need to stop ignoring the signs of a slowly sinking ship. To me the only way to increase sales and really improve their product is to attack the initial disease this company has spread through it's departments. That is to change the outlook profit first fans last.
http://www.tibco.com/blog/2013/04/06/valves-steam-is-beloved-by-gamers-while-eas-origin-is-loathed-why/
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Comments
Well I don't think we'll have to worry about having to always be online to play the Sims 4, EA specifically said that it will be a single player offline game, that will simply have some online components. You'll be able to play the game offline, you just won't get the online features. Kind of like the Sims 3.
That's why I said it's only part of the problem with their video games over all. Drm and always online is an issue of EA's across the board but it's also not the only factor why their sales are going down and why they have such a bad reputation among their own consumerbase right now.
As I said they have other problems, the major one in my opinion being customer service. Also never mention sims 4 having drm or always online. I know their avoiding these services however that doesn't mean they don't have others that punish their consumer base or ruin their games. That was why i said they need be wary of toxic game designs that are being placed in their games that aren't beneficial to both consumer and EA.
Its degradation during The Sims 3 has been saddening to many long term players, and many also find the changes in the series insulting.
I feel for developers who put the best of intentions into their work, only to have company policies mar them. I also feel for developers for the huge rate of piracy they feel the need to try to defend themselves from.
There are terrible people on both sides, to be honest. Ruthless pirates with poor moral coding who continuously steal art and media, and ruthless developer who feel it is ok to release subpar product at high prices, without the need to repair shoddiness and faultiness, instead moving on to the next shoddy, overpriced release.
I guess EA is releasing what the pirates deserve, and the pirates are giving EA what they deserve.
Sadly, there are people like me who have stupidly remained loyal purchasers and have been repeatedly disappointed since 2009.
You're spot on, despite a lot of fun aspects, when averaged out The Sims 3 sits only at mediocre, if that.
I haven't been too disappointed with the Sims 3. Sure they've left some stuff out that I would really like them to include, but I'm certain the same would have been true for all the other games. Also to be fair to the people at EA, some of the things we wanted may not have been possible for them to do with the current technology. I'm certain we'll get some things that we always wanted in the previous games in the Sims 4, only because now, they'll finally be able to do them.
Yes, the base may be offline core gameplay, but I would bet at some point the rest of it is online only eventually because that is the business model for EA as a service business model in the online world of gaming.
@ Mr. Hawk What i would really like to see is sims not only offer technical support outside the game, but also offer technical support inside the game. If players are experiencing lag how hard is it to create a program that at launch detects if the cache files that are downloaded have become corrupt. Or if a save file is corrupted for players. I'd love to see direct solutions from Sims Franchise of technical support. Not Ea's customer service across the board. The game is heavily microtransactioned and expensive it should provide the best technical support there is. Especially since this is their cash cow.
I'd also like to see either 1. a team of community testers able to volunteer to help find bugs even after release and when a fix is applied before updates are sent out. 2. a team of hired testers if that is not possible or trustworthy.
@cinebar Microtransactioning a game can be good and bad. However knowing EA it leans to being mostly bad. Why because the content being pumped out in the store isn't tied to any gameplay that is released with the base game or any other intial expansions and or other store content. That also creates more bugs. This also raises the costs tremendously for the game. Which is ridiculous you as a consumer are paying 4 times the asking price of content to satisfy a gaming habit. Content that very well can be nonexistant if the they take it off the store website.
He just didn't get it, I think.
But the things I've read recently, with him gone, seems that EA has been trying to address some of these problems. Specifically, the removal of ts4 being an online game. Also, the later ep's for ts3, had been much improved compared to the earlier ones.
Supernatural was the first of expansions that really had a lot of stuff and interactions that worked with all previous expansions. It is still the best one, as far as I'm concerned.
I just think the former ceo, JR was the source of many of the problems EA had. I also think that they seem to be trying to change how they do things.
Maybe I'm the eternal optimist, but I am hopeful that t4 will be the game we all wanted 3 to be. *shrugs* only time will tell.
Why not do what blizzard does and have private testing by fans, who cares if stuff gets leaked out. I'd rather have things leaked out than a crappy game filled with bugs, if they're not going to do their jobs at least have people do it for free and submit bugs :roll:
You know I tried the Pet Demo thingy when it came out. I wanted to create my dog but even in advanced mode it didn't have enough options. I couldn't his tri colors correct because it didn't allow me to have two colored shin/legs. He had black on the upper leg and brown on the shins and the black on the paws. Though I was able to do it once I think it wouldn't stick. It was very annoying.
Then I found out the Demo erased my entire saves. :x Remember that bug if you downloaded the Pet Demo before they fixed that bug (which was months later) you lost your game. That did it for me, I think that is when I gave up on TS3 and stopped playing for a few years more.
Buggy stuff upsets me, and makes me not waste anymore money. Needless to say because the colors on the dogs shin bones would stick correctly I didn't buy PETS, and then when I found out they said 'oops' the Demo has a bug and wipes out the your saves, turned me totally against buying the Pets EP.
See this kind of stuff is why they lose customers, I might have bought into all the EPs for TS3 if they weren't so darn buggy. Yes, TS2 had some bugs but I didn't have to wait months and months later to get a patch. :?
Every time I needed Costumer Support (via online chat) they were extremely polite, helpful, solved my problems quickly and definitely and once even gave me a discount on a future game for my trouble. I have nothing but nice words for them. They went above and byond. They did have Indian names and spoke perfectly undersatndable English.
Try that.
I hate that Origin needs to be updated so often and that if you don't update, it won't open. But, other than that, it works very well.
I just hope TS4 isn't as glitchy as TS2. I haven't had problemas as bad as aother people have, but it's annoying that the game can have so many glitches.
And often i have an experience with EA customer service i have to request that they give me their english office because 1. the person on chat or phone does not speak english is not even from an english speaking country and cannot help me with my problem. It be fine if said person was fluent, no half the time the convo is scripted and you can tell cause said person can't understand a word I am saying. I've had many times all their doing is copying and pasting solutions to the problem that has nothing to do with what im talking about. It's an inconvenience to me the consumer who has to be on hold for an additional 30 minutes just to get to someone to help me with my problem and I know there are a lot of people who do have this problem. So why don't put yourself in someone else's shoes for a change and be understanding.
Try that.
You know what if you can't do that why not just look up the many video's on youtube where customer support is horrible from EA. It's the worst and that is why they have the problems they do with their fanbase. If that doesn't help you can see the many occurrences that are posted hear on the forums.
By the way when i talk to customer service I am nothing but polite so don't make an assumption that people automatically are rude. No I am very patient, however when such a person can not even communicate with me obviously they cannot solve my problem. To me it's a waste of time and resources.
O.o no one said origin didn't work i said invasive programs like origins.
I didn't have problems with TS2 like many others did so i wouldn't know what that's like. TS3 i've had the worst problems with. Some problems are designed into the game so i know they'll never be fixed. A video game is always going to have glitches, however upon release when those glitches are game breaking it means EA knows the game has problems and releases it before it's done and has been tested. They're in a major lawsuit right now by their investors for doing that. So to me it's bad company habits that's bring these games down that need to be addressed.
I had problems with ts2 back in the day, but that was a typo. I meant TS3.
I'm sorry you had bad experiences. I just thought I had to give a shout out to the people who really helped me.
THIS! THIS! THIS!
The live-chat customer service is all scripted. At one point I asked "Are you a real person? I want to talk to a real human being please." Of course, the person said they were real, and then went back to their script. EA has terrible customer service.
Also, if EA wants to keep me as a customer, they seriously need to drop the idea of download–only distribution. I'm willing to keep an external "superdrive" connected to any future Macs I purchase if it means a DRM–free physical copy of the games that I want to play. Likewise, the less said about "Origin" the better. To their credit, EA seems to be more willing to consider a physical release than they were when John Riccitiello was running things. I can't help but thing that if he were still in charge, EA would eventually have a business model not unlike Adobe's, and just as I refuse to give Adobe another penny until they stop forcing Creative Cloud on their consumers, I'd likely never "purchase/rent" another game from EA until they abandoned such a system either.
Zeldagirl180 hit on an important point, which is the fact that a good majority of the people here can't stand the company that makes the games they love. If the people who love these games are disgruntled with EA, imagine how the people who may not be as attached to them probably feel about their experiences with the company. EA can definitely turn things around, and it looks like they're starting to do just that, but they've still got a long way to go. I can only hope that they continue to move in the right direction, and that the launch of TS4 is the polar opposite of the launch of the new SimCity. (TS3 may have been buggy, but SimCity felt like it managed to do everything it possibly could to alienate potential players.)
I do remember the problem with the demo erasing saved games, though. That stank.