News Ubisoft: Market ready for always-online services

I know your reply is aimed at fokes like me but that is alot of the gamer population now.

On the pc at least the biggest sellers are all multiplayer games now a days and as the market heads towards this the single player only games will get less and less.

Football manager is my favourite game because it does not need an Internet so i can play it away from home which I am with work alot. But most the countries I vist now have stable Internet and there's a few that don't but in my line of work we vist 1st world countries only that could afford our tech.

But let's be honest would a game like bf3 have even been made as just a single player game when a report by ea said more than 70% of the players have yet to even complete the single player game.

Metal gear solid, final fantasy series. Skyrim style games are all great games single player but they are a dieing breed.

Even the most look forward to game on these forums planetary annihilation has no single player campaign and will only come with a skirmish mode offline.( wonder how many actually knew this before they pledged to it)

Once again I don't here an outcry over the fact that you will need to be online to play it unless skirmish mode is good enough for you.

People seem more inclined to moan at big companies like blizzard ea and ubisoft but they are hardly the first publishers to do it.

 

But no one has a problem with needing an always-on connection to play BF3. You can't use it without a connection - it is an essential requirement. You can't keep using MP games as a reason for always-on DRM on SP games.
Nor can you use the "we'll always have a connection anyway" excuse either. It is plainly a crutch to justify having it, that ignores the reality that NO ONE has an always-on connection (not even EA, Ubisoft or Blizzard the dimwitted fools), we all of us have a MOSTLY-ON connection, although some of us have a "usually-on" or even an "occasionally-on" connection.
The reason there are so many complaints is for the SP experiences where the requirement is purely and only to restrict your ability to play the game. There is no other function to always-on for SP games.

Secondly, I'm going to call nonsense on SP games being a "dying breed". What a load of rubbish, and would you care to back up such a ludicrous statement? As long as there are people buying SP games there will be people making SP games. And people will always like playing SP games.

Also, I believe* EA when they say 70% of people haven't played SP BF3 . . . because it is a steaming pile of crap that I haven't even played so I am relying on hearsay for my opinion.
No one bought BF3 for SP, unless they were pecking at their keyboard with their nose because medical authorities had fitted them with a straight-jacket. Nobody sane will be buying BF4 for SP either.

(* Naturally within certain sensible limits considering they are compulsive liars)

If a game requires an always-on connection - I'm not going to buy it. If a game is MP only - I'm not going to buy it. If no more games are made SP or with an off-line mode, then I'm no longer going to buy games.
This is not hyperbole on my part, I am not going to be a customer simply because the products will no longer interest me.
Maybe I will be that old fart yelling at all those young connected kids to get of his lawn with their 3D HD VR BS, but **** 'em, because I'll be the old fart with multiple redundant backup caches of disc images and install files and a spare room full of hoarded vintage hardware to run it all - I have enough stuff lying around to see out my pitiful lifespan.

 

Theres very few single player games with always on DRM thats the point i was trying to make.

Diablo 3 is not a single player game. ( you dont even have the data to play it offline as the games monsters are stored on blizzards servers)

The only game of recent memory is Sim City.

 

That's the whole point!

There might be very few games that need "always-on" right at this moment in time, but it's becoming more and more common...Ubisoft...Blizzard....EA are saying "I don't get what the big deal is"....Microsoft and Sony are talking about it for their hardware....the point of the above arguments is that we're slowly creeping towards a position where it doesn't become something debatable and it becomes the norm and, at that point, I'll be making the same choices as Adnoctum with regards to my gaming purchases (albeit minus the goat).

I have no idea where you're getting this "single player is dying" idea from either.

A quick look at the Steam "Featured Items" slideshow (AAA titles only)....

Company of Heroes 2 (which will have a strong SP campaign)
Arma III (with a SP campaign)
Dead Island Riptide (with a single player/co-op driven campaign)
Bioshock Infinite (SP)
Dishonored: The Knife of Dunwall (SP)
Skyrim (SP)

Doesn't seem to be dying to me.

So, if Valve do a u-turn tomorrow and decide that Steam will no longer have an offline mode, will no longer allow games to continue to play if your net connection drops etc, will you be coming online singing the praises of that decision?

As Phalanx said right near the top of this thread...

"I love always-online singleplayer gaming!"
- No one. Ever.

 

All the games you listed do not require an always online connection for the record.

So as i said at the start. How many True single player games have come with always online connection in the last few years. I can think of 3 Sim City and AC, SC2.

Cant name another Single player game with always online required.

People are making a mountain outta nothing, The main games that have setup to be always online were always going to be online anyway. Outside of the 3 i listed above there is very few games that have ever required it.

Most games require some form of authentication the first time you run them be it steam or origin after that they could not give a monkeys if you had an internet or not.

More and more commen would indicate more than 3 games that require permanent online internet to play. that were ever based for single player to begin with and not added on as a secondary concern.

 

I think you're missing the point, rollo.

It's not a problem with games that require authentication. I'm happy to go online, register a game on steam to prove I own it, download it, then play it. But if during my playtime in a SINGLEPLAYER game, my connection drops, Steam won't suddenly kick me out of the game for it.

However, games like SimCity and Diablo 3, which have a singleplayer component in them and require the machine to be always online, are the problem. There might not be a lot now, but the problem is if they become dominant, it will affect the industry dramatically. Relying on an always on connection, for something that doesn't need to be played online, is just stupid.

BF3 is a misnomer, as people go online to play multiplayer! That's the point of MULTIplayer. But if you play BF3's singleplayer and you lose your connection, the game doesn't cry about it and kick you out.

Imagine if one of your favourites, Football Manager, required an always on connection. You couldn't play it on a quick break without a connection, or on a plane, train, in a car, out at work during lunch. You would HAVE to have a connection, just to load a game that doesn't actually need one.

That's the point of this thread. We're not discussing games that are singleplayer or multiplayer, and which is best. We are discussing a SINGLEplayer component of a game that requires a connection just to play on your own!

 

you missing the point of this Phalanx - its about piracy.

if 50% of the game is kept online then you need to hack the servers to copy the AI and `mobs`

 

DRM kind of assumes anti-piracy. I didn't miss it.

 

DRM can be broken. If half of your content is stored on servers like Diablo 3 is then no matter what you break the game will not function.

If you have ever been on a wow private server and entered a raid zone none of the bosses do anything except melee attacks as the AI is disabled due to none connection to blizzard servers.

Sim City works alot like Diablo 3 does most of the City Functions are not even on your pc.

Thats why games like Sim City and Diablo 3 have never been Torrented as they are basically uncrackable. ( for a developer this is Win Win, They stop piracy and can control the content users are gaining access too)

Its the next form of Anti Piracy. Piracy is the real problem and till they find DRM that can not be cracked the paying customer ( aka us ) will have to put up with wierd and wonderful counters to it for example Always online connections, Or requirements for battle.net to be perm running in the background.

Always online is 100% better than the DRM that GTA4 on PC came with on release thats for sure, It was easier to run the game pirated than it was to run it as a paying customer.

One day eventually id imagine the worst will happen and all games will require an online connection but we are not there yet, We are not even close.

When every major release comes with it enabled by default then ill be the one helping you complain till that time I think people are worrying about nothing. ( only 1 game requires Online all the time this year and that was Sim City where now 4months into the year )

 

This is why some of us are so upset. As consumers we often conveniently forget that it is we, ultimately, that shape the future of the industry. Each small step towards "always online" leads us closer to the scenario above. Every time we buy a game that uses a method of DRM that's too intrusive we tell the publishers it's ok because we give them our money.

There is no point complaining about it once every major release comes with an "always online" requirement - because by then it is too late. So, us grumbling types complain NOW to try and help people to understand that it's not a good direction to be heading in, and to do something about it whilst we still HAVE a choice.

 

this will only work if it is done like its done on steam, where you can play steam single player games
online or offline otherwise single player games will take a big hit retail wise.

 

The biggest problem I have with this is, as you know they will pull the plug on the server, so you spent $60 to rent the game for a few years and then it is totally useless. That is what is wrong with this system. You know most of them are not likely to release a 'patch' to make the game work for it's fans to keep enjoying after they want to kill the servers, it will just be the end.
I'm still hard advocate of there would be less piracy if they charged $6 instead of $60, make the money on volume not a smaller amount of higher value sales. They need to pull thier heads out of thier asses and use common sense to address thier losses instead of dreaming up ever more convoluted and annoying DRM systems to piss off the paying customers they have left.

 

Always online games will more than likely lead to a decline in people buying game for all the reasons already put forward by everyone.

The sad thing is piracy is blamed for the decline in sales so they use DRM to address this perceived problem and in turn people buy less, so they turn to always online games thus causing people to buy even less games.

It seems like a slippery slope that will end with publishers hesitant to release games at all

Not that it probably matters but my vote goes to they way ID Software done it back in the day with DOOM, shareware for the first episode and pay if you want the rest.

 

QFT!

 

we have that now its called `F2P` - bulk of the game is free , but if you want any of the `cool` toys you pay in micro transactions.

 

QFT

I'll be honest years ago, before HL2 was released and when I had a mere interest in games most of my games were DOS based or cracked copies I'd gotten through family/friends. I remember using http://www.gamestracker.com/ to help find cheap copies of games, but if I couldn't get hold of it for £10 or so (I was 2 years behind the current stock of games so wasn't looking at newly released stuff), I would end up getting a cracked copy.

However, ever since I got introduced to steam about a year after HL2 was released and some of kinks of steam had been ironed out, thanks to their at first infrequent sales, I've never had a cracked copy of a game since. The cheap nature of the sales is where I get most of my games now. Steam finally made me into a hardcore gamer who actually bought all my games. The crux of it is? Well the sales were so good it was NICE to have a full no hassle copy of the game for not much out of my pocket. 90% of my games collection has been brought from sales, and most of the games at -75% off. As a result, I have felt inclined to buy some games at higher prices at times. Price matters, just ask steam....I believe some games which had been released 2-3 years ago, when they went on -75% sale made MORE money that one time than all the years before put together.....so yeh price does matter....and I'm glad and happy to have contributed to that income, further reinforcing to those developers that if they treat us right, we will treat them right!

 

Here's a lovely new article about EA:

www.techdirt.com/articles/20130417/...ial-media-games-without-refunding-money.shtml

My favorite part, and this is all about "Always-Online" games: