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**** EA Games

Binary_Digit

Binary_Digit

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I hate this company so much.

- They disabled online support for many of the old Command and Conquer games (Red Alert 2, Renegade, etc). Rather than supporting their products properly (which would take up maybe 0.1% of their server workload), they left it to the gaming community to come up with X-Wiz so people can play these games online again. EA expects amature hackers to do their job.

- They released Command and Conquer the Ultimate Collection about 2 months before the GameSpy servers shut down. So almost immediately after purchasing their product, about half of the product was rendered totally unusable. Classic bait and switch if I ever saw one. And again, rather than supporting their products properly, on their own servers, they left it to the gaming community to come up with CnC Online so people can play these games online again. And I don't know about you, but when I tried to install the necessary tools to get CnC online working, I got spammed with malicious software warnings so I decided it was not a good idea. Again, EA expects amature hackers to do their job.

- Speaking of Command and Conquer, EA Games took a fantastically successful franchise and ran it straight into the ground. CnC 4 was an absolute joke, with almost nothing that resembled the successful CnC gameplay everyone came to know and love and expect. CnC Generals Online might have been a great game, if EA had only listened to the community feedback instead of getting butthurt about it and pulling the plug on the entire project.

- Years ago, they couldn't (or decided not to) make Madden NFL capable of competing with ESPN's NFL 2K. Instead, they acquired an exclusive rights contract with the NFL, effectively suppressing any and all competition and forging themselves a bona-fide monopoly on NFL games. Just the other day an EA executive was quoted as saying the exclusive rights contract still has "a number of years" left. Meanwhile, every year they release an updated roster with different menu colors and have the brass balls to call it an entirely new $60 game. And of course, the Madden-ites play along every year mainly because there just isn't any alternative.

- In 2008, EA declared that there is not enough demand for Madden games on the PC. (In truth, their Madden PC games were just clunky and awkward because they were so obviously ported from the console version with little or no apparent effort to make it look/feel nice and professional.) So they haven't released a new version of Madden for the PC for almost a decade now. And because of their BS monopoly on NFL games, no other company is able to release NFL games for the PC. Us PC Madden fans have been stuck with 2008 this whole time. My Seahawks still have Matt Hassleback and Adrian Parker. I know there are community-developed mods and roster updates out there, but they don't touch the gameplay at all.

- They bastardized a revolutionary FPS (BF 1942) by trying (and failing) to turn it into another Call of Duty instead of letting it keep its unique and successful identity.

- They squandered and all but killed the hugely successful SimCity franchise by 1.) Reducing the max city size (contrary to community requests), 2.) Implementing some half-assed persistent online feature in lieu of DRM, and 3.) Releasing the game on schedule instead of when it's ready. 3/4 of the player population couldn't play the game at all when it was released. Take a look at Cities: Skylines for an example of what EA should have been able to do with SC.

- Sims 4 is another example of how out-of-touch and uncaring this turd of a company is. Start with Sims 3, remove toddlers, remove pets, remove schools, remove swimming pools, remove Create-A-Style, remove the open world sandbox feel, and add a bunch more loading screens and DLCs for content that should be part of the core game. Voila, Sims 4 is ready to ship!

"EA Games. **** Up Everything"

Seriously, **** EA Games.
 
Last edited:
Wait you are just coming to this conclusion now? BTW I also loved C&C franchise. Refuse to acknowledge 4 as a game.
 
soccerboy22 said:
Wait you are just coming to this conclusion now?
Click to expand...
No, I've known this for a while now. But lately I've wanted a soapbox because I just looked into when the NFL exclusive rights BS is supposed to end.
 
He is right, I have paid most attention to it with the Sims, SimCity, Command and Conquer, and even the Battlefield series.

With Sims4, the OP is dead on right. Sim3 was perhaps the height of what the series could achieve, the additional content made it the most expansive application of the idea. Then Sim4 showed up out of the box with greatly reduced basic content, basic function, and the sandbox appeal for the "towns" was basically removed. The lot sizes for homes were made smaller with less ability for outdoor space, being able to just explore the "towns" was entirely removed, several of the careers and jobs were removed, and the randomness of the encounters was removed.

With SimCity, they basically took one of the best city builder / city management games in history and reduced it to a kids level theme park game. With SimCity4 you could develop several cities in your world all interconnected with management needs across an area that is well north of 100 times that available in the newest SimCity. In the prior SimCity4 game the taxation effects were more pronounced, having to deal with utilities and transportation was vastly more complex, and the raw number of building types was greater.

Command and Conquer, as a series now, is a complete and total failure. Basic military strategy, multiple unit types for offense and defense, surveillance, and all the resources management was basically discarded for a smaller mapped, smaller theater of combat, rock-paper-scissors game.

Battlefield Hardline is becoming a joke compared to Battlefield4 (and 3, and 1942.) I have been playing the Battlefield series for years now and when you look at online player levels week to week, the drop off rate for Hardline is breaking records. At this point they will have to give away map expansion packs just to get players to come back. In an odd way, both the closed Beta and open Beta versions of Hardline played superior to the released version. With Hardline the largest map is far smaller than the largest in both 4 and 3, there are less classes using less guns and equipment, there is less destructed buildings and scenery, and the number of vehicles to use is less by far. They took a FPS warfare series game and applied it to cops and robbers, and players have walked away back to 4 and 3.

It has all become the same thing for EA. They have taken expansive strategy games, and/or expansive FPS games and reduced them to less, trying to make the less look better with graphics improvements in the exchange. In my opinion the player is being discounted, and it appears major legacy titles are being destroyed by EA (and other groups they work with) decision making the further we go.
 
I'm sorry your ancient second-string RTS isn't profitable in 2015, but that doesn't make EA evil.

Lots of other things make them evil.
 
Eh, EA hate is overrated.
 
Binary_Digit said:
I hate this company so much.

- They disabled online support for many of the old Command and Conquer games (Red Alert 2, Renegade, etc). Rather than supporting their products properly (which would take up maybe 0.1% of their server workload), they left it to the gaming community to come up with X-Wiz so people can play these games online again. EA expects amature hackers to do their job.

- They released Command and Conquer the Ultimate Collection about 2 months before the GameSpy servers shut down. So almost immediately after purchasing their product, about half of the product was rendered totally unusable. Classic bait and switch if I ever saw one. And again, rather than supporting their products properly, on their own servers, they left it to the gaming community to come up with CnC Online so people can play these games online again. And I don't know about you, but when I tried to install the necessary tools to get CnC online working, I got spammed with malicious software warnings so I decided it was not a good idea. Again, EA expects amature hackers to do their job.

- Speaking of Command and Conquer, EA Games took a fantastically successful franchise and ran it straight into the ground. CnC 4 was an absolute joke, with almost nothing that resembled the successful CnC gameplay everyone came to know and love and expect. CnC Generals Online might have been a great game, if EA had only listened to the community feedback instead of getting butthurt about it and pulling the plug on the entire project.

- Years ago, they couldn't (or decided not to) make Madden NFL capable of competing with ESPN's NFL 2K. Instead, they acquired an exclusive rights contract with the NFL, effectively suppressing any and all competition and forging themselves a bona-fide monopoly on NFL games. Just the other day an EA executive was quoted as saying the exclusive rights contract still has "a number of years" left. Meanwhile, every year they release an updated roster with different menu colors and have the brass balls to call it an entirely new $60 game. And of course, the Madden-ites play along every year mainly because there just isn't any alternative.

- In 2008, EA declared that there is not enough demand for Madden games on the PC. (In truth, their Madden PC games were just clunky and awkward because they were so obviously ported from the console version with little or no apparent effort to make it look/feel nice and professional.) So they haven't released a new version of Madden for the PC for almost a decade now. And because of their BS monopoly on NFL games, no other company is able to release NFL games for the PC. Us PC Madden fans have been stuck with 2008 this whole time. My Seahawks still have Matt Hassleback and Adrian Parker. I know there are community-developed mods and roster updates out there, but they don't touch the gameplay at all.

- They bastardized a revolutionary FPS (BF 1942) by trying (and failing) to turn it into another Call of Duty instead of letting it keep its unique and successful identity.

- They squandered and all but killed the hugely successful SimCity franchise by 1.) Reducing the max city size (contrary to community requests), 2.) Implementing some half-assed persistent online feature in lieu of DRM, and 3.) Releasing the game on schedule instead of when it's ready. 3/4 of the player population couldn't play the game at all when it was released. Take a look at Cities: Skylines for an example of what EA should have been able to do with SC.

- Sims 4 is another example of how out-of-touch and uncaring this turd of a company is. Start with Sims 3, remove toddlers, remove pets, remove schools, remove swimming pools, remove Create-A-Style, remove the open world sandbox feel, and add a bunch more loading screens and DLCs for content that should be part of the core game. Voila, Sims 4 is ready to ship!

"EA Games. **** Up Everything"

Seriously, **** EA Games.
Click to expand...

i have hated ea for a long time,but i posted in another thread when shroud of the avatar was brought up about richard garriot being free of ea.

in the early 90's they bought the ultim game franchise,as literally butchered it.it went from being the most renowned rpg series to a joke in just 2 games,ultima 8 and ultima 9. the ultima series was not the only games ruined by ea. ea would buy out smaller companies,exploit their famous game titles by releasing mediocre junk until the title did not sell anymore,then throwing it in the trash.


many of the 90's great titles or in ultimas case 80-90's were destroyed by ea,most the developers went on elsewhere, using their creativeness to create other games for other companies,as ea is essentially the game killer.


it would be on par to volkswago buying gm and rebranding vw rabbit trucks as chevy trucks,not even the same,but cashing in on loyalty to name until people got fed up,then dissolving it entirely.
 
Deuce said:
I'm sorry your ancient second-string RTS isn't profitable in 2015, but that doesn't make EA evil.

Lots of other things make them evil.
Click to expand...

no ea being evil makes ea evil!!!

for decades they have taken popular game companies,bought them out,and used their names for mediocrity for quick profit.the end result is disbanding those companies after they bled them dry. ea both decades ago and now has not changed.
 
I don't play EA games much and I've never played the CnC games, but haven't they been around since like...1995? I don't think I would have any heartburn if a 20 year old game went by the wayside.

The fact is, when a game is reduced to a handful of hardcore players, it's time to cut them loose. If you really want to keep playing it, set up your own servers and be happy you are able to do so. EA doesn't owe you their support forever.

Now, I know they screwed up with the launch of BF4, and while I just tried it out to see if my system could handle it, it seems to me that game had a lot of players. BF Hardline just didn't seem to attract the same amount of players. So it goes. The BF series, as a whole, has been a great success story for them.

Anyway, if you are pissed at them because they cut loose CnC, maybe you should upgrade your system and play a modern game.
 
EA is the Microsoft of the game industry. They buy up any one who might compete or off whom they can make a few bucks, while churning out mediocre products. The one thing EA is better at than Microsoft though is giving alot of people close to what they want. The sad truth is that alot of people like mediocre, easy mode games and EA gives it to them in droves. Microsoft just does not care what people want, they will have to stick with them because Windows is what most stuff runs on.
 
OrphanSlug said:
Battlefield Hardline is becoming a joke compared to Battlefield4 (and 3, and 1942.) I have been playing the Battlefield series for years now and when you look at online player levels week to week, the drop off rate for Hardline is breaking records. At this point they will have to give away map expansion packs just to get players to come back. In an odd way, both the closed Beta and open Beta versions of Hardline played superior to the released version. With Hardline the largest map is far smaller than the largest in both 4 and 3, there are less classes using less guns and equipment, there is less destructed buildings and scenery, and the number of vehicles to use is less by far. They took a FPS warfare series game and applied it to cops and robbers, and players have walked away back to 4 and 3.

It has all become the same thing for EA. They have taken expansive strategy games, and/or expansive FPS games and reduced them to less, trying to make the less look better with graphics improvements in the exchange. In my opinion the player is being discounted, and it appears major legacy titles are being destroyed by EA (and other groups they work with) decision making the further we go.
Click to expand...

Yeah I had a bunch of guys from our Platoon [TAG] buy it and played it for about a week for some and two weeks or so for others, but NO ONE is playing it anymore.. LOL I told them.. :)

BF4 is still a great game though.

Tim-
 
Hicup said:
Yeah I had a bunch of guys from our Platoon [TAG] buy it and played it for about a week for some and two weeks or so for others, but NO ONE is playing it anymore.. LOL I told them.. :)

BF4 is still a great game though.

Tim-
Click to expand...

BF4 I still play, but you are right that BFH is quickly dying off before the 1st expansion map pack can even be released. The XtG, CMW, rTr, and ADK servers for BFH spend the majority of the day idle with no players on. BF3 now seems to have more activity than BFH, and I think it speaks to what EA has been planning with these games.
 
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