SimControversy (updated Mar 23/13)

Everyone is jumping in on the SimCity bandwagon. It's been a week now, and still the reports are ceaseless. If you haven't heard, or would like a recap, go here.

What bothers me isn't that yet another DRM game failed. What a surprise. Such a problem is easily forseen, and people are fools to have put faith in DRM yet again.

The beloved SimCity franchise crippled with a tacked on DRM that no one asked for is also not a source of my ails. Such a matter was announced early on in development, much to the chagrin of the fans, but this isn't anything surprising within the last week when the game garnered so much criticism.


The problem is that EA lies. Or more precisely, everything or everyone EA touches becomes corrupted or a liar. Lucy Bradshaw, Maxis' general manager said, "SimCity is an online game and critics and consumers have every right to expect a smooth experience from beginning to end. I and the Maxis team take full responsibility to deliver on our promise."

Well, if the game tanks, it's on you. If the customers are not getting a smooth experience, it's coming out of your wallet. So then what happened when people asked for refunds when the game didn't work, then had features removed, then still didn't work? Did Lucy Bradshaw step in and make good on her promise of 'respnsibility'? No, EA customer support instead turned away customers requesting refunds, and threatened to close their Origin account (effectively banning them from all the games they've purchased on that account).

It's really easy to make promises before you're asked to make good on them.

I really don't care about EA, as I never buy games from them anymore, I've had my fair share of listening to the PR spin of liars in their employment, and I'm not stupid enough to put faith in their games. But EA didn't force Lucy Bradshaw to write that damage-control bullshit. She wrote that. She wrote that without truly understanding the weight of her words. And sure enough, people put faith not in EA, but in her. I guess it works. You work for EA, you learn the ways of a liar, no matter how respectable you once were.

We can all learn from EA. Publish that you are offering refunds, and that you're taking full responsibility, but ensure the fine print policy specifies the possibility of rejecting refunds offered, and that no responsibility may actually be taken. Where in normal scenarios these stipulations apply to the corner case scenarios, EA applies them to all scenarios.

Many games have problems at launch (not that this is an excuse), but EA... You're trying your hardest to dig your own grave. I hope in the future, you will accept consumer apologies as payment for your games, as you seem to think apologies are sufficient in lieu of refunds. Oops, sorry I just accidentally pirated Dead Space 3.

Update:

 I stopped following the SimCity scandal because I didn't think it could get much worse. But then it did, as the lies continued.

It was then quickly discovered that a modder by the handle UKAzzer cracked the game, removing the online requirement and fixing the majority of bugs and problems in one fell swoop which has poured more fuel onto the fire. Naturally the ability to play the game offline with no repercussions, other then the ability not to be able to go online, directly contradicted statements from Lucy Bradshaw, General Manager at Maxis who stated “It wouldn’t be possible to make the game offline without a significant amount of engineering work by our team.” Her evidence was that the entire region was simulated server side, but that claim itself was debunked by a Maxis Developer.

Free games are being given out as compensation, and the CEO of EA resigned. Refunds are 'being honored' but who knows if that actually means you'll get your money back.

Leaked SWTOR developer's meeting

SWTOR Dev Lackey: GUYS GUYS GUYS GUYS GAIZ GAIZ! I has idea! What if we take our game, which nobody thinks is worth paying for... And then strip content out of it, and sell it back to them as individual components at a collectively higher price?

SWTOR Dev Lead: GENIUS. Let's take 6 months to covertly plan and develop our new F2P features, while subscribers continue to pay a monthly fee and receive no content updates. Then when F2P arrives, they will have to pay TWICE just to get back the items and perks they've earned and already paid for.


And thus, an already shitty game became a cosmic joke. In retrospect, I guess they achieved something original with the franchise after all, instead of just cloning another MMO.

If you haven't heard, SWTOR announced F2P some time ago, after the TORtanic prophesies proved true. Waves of players and developers abandoned the sinking ship, and EA hastily branded it a failure, and the sole unpredictable blemish on their otherwise flawless business strategy, deferring all blame onto Bioware. When your own parent disavows and abandons you, you know you've fucked up. Around that time, BW/EA tried to excuse themselves with data claiming that subscription based MMOs were dead, and an unsuitable payment model for the times. They also tried to reference F2P MMOs like LOTRO, DCUO, etc for their relative success. But the truth is, F2P isn't a cureall. I will probably make a dedicated post about that later, but F2P doesn't automatically make your game better, nor will it alleviate the existing flaws. However, no need to worry, because SWTOR never got the memo on how to make a F2P game; they focused all their time on fixing their public relations problems instead, so it would be a farce to even call this F2P.

Back to the headlines then: SWTOR officially launched their F2P today, and now all servers are open for you to play for free. Not that I would recommend it.

SWTOR's F2P restrictions are so tight, that many players are labeling it an 'extended trial', as it allows a player to level from 1-50, but little else. For the first time in any F2P MMO I've heard of, SWTOR restricts your UI, and makes you pay money to use it. It doesn't end there. Let's list some moronic restrictions:

1. Only get 2 of the available 6 hotbars for skills (and believe me, you need at least 4)
2.  Pay more at vendors and every time you exchange tokens for gear (the primary way to get good gear)
3. Can't use guild bank or regular banks (any items inside are locked)
4. Can't mail or trade
5. Cant accept common quest rewards
6. Can only post 2 auction house listings
7. Cant have more than 200k credits on you (the rest is locked into an account that is never released until you subscribe)
8. Can only talk in 2 channels at 1 message a minute
9. Cant wear epic gear (even if earned from being a subscriber)
10. Cant wear event gear (even if earned from being a subscriber)
11. Can't hide headslots or display titles or legacy name (even your 'founders title' awarded from being a long term subscriber)
12. Can only roll 3 times for loot in dungeons PER week (failed rolls count)
13. Can only do 5 battlegrounds a week (losses and incomplete games count, and the weekly quest requires 9 battlegrounds won)
14. No access to the LFG tool
15. No access to raids.
16. Only 1 of 3 professions allowed
17. Emotes are locked
18. Half your inventory size. Anything in the other half is locked until you pay.
19. Quick Travel (town teleport ability) cooldown is quadrupled, now at 2 hours. Emergency fleet pass (teleports you back to main fleet hub) completely disabled
20. Only 2 characters per server. Returning players must select 2 and lock out the rest.
21. No rest xp.
22. No using /who.
23. No using out of combat move speed passive ability until level 14.

What the fuck? So for the past 6 months, instead of adding new content that people will want to pay for, they took content that people were ALREADY paying for, and removed it. I guess that's one way to slack off as a developer. And even though you can buy back the features you want piecemeal, they are horrendously expensive, outweighing the monthly subscription. Just paying the weekly passes for raiding and battlegrounds ONLY, will make your monthly bill around $20. And you still won't be able to wear any epic gear or use hotbars.

SWTOR Devs: Herp derp, you don't want to pay $15 a month for my game? How about $20 for only 1/5th of my game? ULTRA DEAL!

It is clear that this F2P change won't draw in any more players than their free trial did. Because that's all this is: another free trial. And a chance for Bioware to double-dip into their subscribers and make them pay again for something they've already paid for months ago. And which ex-subscriber would be stupid enough to pay? If they didn't think the entire game was worth the money then, why would it be worth the value now? Nothing's changed, except for getting even less content. Sickeningly, it also means Bioware gets an excuse to put in a CASH SHOP into a P2P game. People would have been outraged if they did it while it was still technically P2P, but now they can call it F2P, however unfaithful it may be to that label. It shocks me that Bioware promises more content every 6 weeks from now on, when they've broken that promise repeatedly since release, when people were already supposedly paying monthly for content. Now that people don't have to pay monthly... They're promising monthly content again? How gullible do you think your subscribers are?

These guys have no fucking clue how to run a MMO, or a F2P game. Since release, more than half their employees and major project leads were fired, and I'm not sorry to see them go. They were trash and should never work in the industry again. My only regret is that their replacements are just as deluded and out of touch with gaming and the community.

What a fucking waste. And I'm not even surprised. I came to my senses in March, but that was already too much time wasted on this crap. So I'll redeem myself with a prediction, nay, a prophecy: SWTOR F2P is going to flop hard, and will not get any more players than a wave of trial offers. Not even close to the 50 million predicted (this guy should be fired too btw). Bioware won't shut down SWTOR so soon, so I foresee massive revamping of the F2P system, an admission of guilt and a shallow apology, then a reduction in its restrictions, and more incentive for ex-subscribers to return. New periodic content of substance will still be scarce. Cash shop profits will keep SWTOR afloat, and they'll attempt to use it to bolster their reputation and initial claims, despite subscriber numbers not actually increasing (but they'll conveniently avoid that data).

Update: Just read this at wired.

The $15-a-month subscription game is dying. But it’s not because players are cheap, it’s because they’re bored.

As the game development website Gamasutra put it, the most expensive game in history is now free: With a reported $200 million budget, the massively multiplayer RPG Star Wars: The Old Republic wasn’t attracting nearly the number of subscribers that publisher Electronic Arts needed if it was going to see returns. So EA added a business model that has been lucrative for other online games: Allow gamers to play for free, then charge them small amounts for upgrades once they’re hooked.

But that may not be enough. Experts in the space say the reason Star Wars struggles while other online games are killing it isn’t because of the money, it’s because of how the games themselves are designed. It’s not the business model that’s obsolete, but the product.

 While the rest of the article points at a conclusion I'm not quite ready to accept, this segment of it is spot on. The game is bad, that's why it's not worth $15 a month. If they focused on trying to make the game better to match the $15, it would be harder, but ultimately a better product. Instead, they weakened the product to market it at a deceptively cheaper price. I also don't think the problem is with the p2p MMO archetype, it is with the games being lackluster and ultimately, lacking the frequent updates you'd expect with a monthly bill. Imagine subscribing to a magazine, and paying a monthly fee only to get the same issue over and over again. Not enough content? Re-read it! Read it backwards! Fold it into origami! Keep yourself warm at the fireplace! The sad thing is, f2p moba games update every 2 days, yet $15 a month, despite server maintenance costs, give you an update every 6 months if you're lucky? I'm afraid the problem lies with the developers and publishers, not with the model.

Command and Conquer 4 and what it can teach us.

This post is, as usual with me, as late as your first date. But in that same way, it eventually showed up, grinning stupidly, oblivious to all its faults.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So Command and Conquer 4 flopped like everyone predicted. Not a surprise. The game is bland, stank of foul betrayal, and is a momumental insult to fans of CNC and RTS gamers everywhere. I wrote about it here last year (ed: now 2 years ago).

I would like to take a moment to spit in the faces of every single person who tried to defend CNC4 pre-release. Every single EA fanboy who said "the new style needs a chance, shouldn't be written off", and every EA moderator (under contractual requirements) who said "don't judge the game before you've played it". Those flimsy veiled excuses don't hold up anymore now, eh? Too bad the bombardment of criticism might have actually curbed the game from ending up such a disaster, but no, instead, we had to not stomp on EA's pathetic marketing campaign for this abomination, only so that we could expose it for being a laughing stock later. Unfortunately, since now it's 'too little, too late', CNC fans got screwed out of a proper sequel (and conclusion) and EA's like 'herpy-derp, we couldn't have forseen this, lawl'. Except for the fact that if they listened to us, instead of hiring moderators to lock/close/hide threads of criticism on their forums, they wouldn't have gotten so badly reamed by every single reviewer. The true, loyal CNC fans did their part. It is EA, and the EA fanboys have no one else to blame but themselves.

However, I'm not here to relive every moment of the nightmare that is CNC4, but rather to educate you on its history, from which, we all may yet learn something. Perhaps this is indeed CNC4's only redeeming quality: it acts as a beacon of tragedies for others to beware.

After CNC4 was released, it's review scores submitted, and it's initial wave of buyers suckered in (about ten people total), CNC4 developers, some of them now ex-employees, were freed from contractual stipulations and revealed the asinine development processes behind the game. In the following link, Greg Black, ex-EA, tells us some of the ugly truths behind CNC4 that fans were forbidden to know before the game's release date. Additionally, Sam Bass, lead designer of all EALA's CNC games, divulges more information about his own power struggle with EA management over the game's direction.

Since I don't expect you to want to sift through it all, I've summarized the major points for how it became such a disaster.

1. As CNC4 was nearing its release date, the number of remaining developers dwindled. EA was trying to cut costs for the project and removed non-essential staff from it's payrolls as the game neared a releasable state. It was also known well ahead of time that ALL of its developers would be terminated by release date. As you can imagine, this didn't promote company atmosphere or enthusiasm. The developers went to get their uninspired game out the door and collect their final paychecks, all while already looking for new employment elsewhere. It didn't help any that the release date was pushed forwards and that CNC4 was expected to be a rushed project since Starcraft 2 was creeping on the horizon.

2. CNC4 was originally designed as a multiplayer online browser game to be marketed in Asia, with very loose ties to the CNC universe, and no singleplayer inclusion, nor any plot advancement. Since it was a lightweight browser game, there was no base-building, macromanagement, nor harvesting of resources. EA management later decided that it would be wiser to repackage the game with a shoddy, cheap singleplayer and as an entire game, cramming a game that was never designed to fit the mold into something else. The designers didn't like it, but they didn't have a choice. Once the fans learned about it, they weren't satisfied either, but the damage was done and EA had no intention of reversing it.

3. In the backlash caused by the poor writing in both CNC3 and Kane's Wrath (CNC3's expansion), Sam Bass, somewhat tired of working on CNC, promised fans that the next main title in the franchise would be an epic conclusion to the story, and resolve most major plot holes and finally answer the fan's questions on the enigmatic Kane, the primary antagonist since the original Command and Conquer. This would release him from working on yet another title in the foreseeable future (up to this point, EA has forced EALA to produce a new CNC title every 6 months), and would allow him to appease the fans he's had to apologize publicly to so many times before. Unfortunately for Bass, EA's intervention demanded that a game that almost entirely contradicted the lore had to be bent and reshaped to fit back into the CNC universe. Worse, EA uncovered Bass' intention of concluding the main plot and revealing one of its greatest mysteries, and promptly forbade it. In the disagreement that followed, Bass retracted the original plot for CNC4, removed the information about Kane, and closed the saga leaving more questions and plot holes than before. At first, it seemed that Sam Bass had lied to the fans. With his admission post-release, Sam Bass has indisputably betrayed and misled fans with misinformation under stipulations of his contract. Even though EA drove the project into the wall, Bass is not entirely blameless for continually oiling the wheels.

4. Following the rather lackluster (but at least palatable) titles of Red Alert 3 and Kane's Wrath, the fans were issued public apologies and promises of better feedback methods pre-release as well as consistent patch support post-release. So for CNC4, they had an invitational pre-screening, gathering pros, prominent players and CNC-fansite reporters to a convention in Germany. The feedback was almost entirely negative, but the developers expected this for the reasons above (which at the time they couldn't disclose). Knowing that EA would never let them alter the game, they curbed the criticism with excuses, claiming that the product was still unfinished, and that it would be much more acceptable by release, even though the main criticisms were with the game fundamentals which were already set in stone. Following the pre-release convention, a multiplayer beta was issued, but as accurately confessed by Greg Black in the above interview, there was insufficient time to have a meaningful beta where feedback could be evaluated and used to further develop the game. Beta and release were practically the same, which is unsurprising, considering all EA betas are like this now. See: Need For Speed World, Medal of Honor, Dead Space 2 betas.

Overall, no one's surprised that EA released a terrible title. No one's surprised that EA management was at fault for leading the trainwreck either. At one point I thought EA had sensibly canceled Tiberium (the CNC FPS game), but then for them to promptly lead this project into disaster makes me think their judgment is spotty at best. EA is never going to learn from its mistakes, but other developers can. And while EA has a lot of buffer room when making such errors, others don't. Learn from EA. Don't be a shit stain on gaming.

I Fucking Knew It.

http://forums.commandandconquer.com/jforum/posts/list/19892.page

http://forums.commandandconquer.com/jforum/posts/list/19952.page

So, EA admitted that they stole their innovative RTS ideas from other games. I kind of already went over all that bullshit a few posts back here though, so I'm really not surprised in any way. The EA boards probably has more skeptics than fanboys, but the naive defiance of the latter generally makes the atmosphere too stifling to follow.

First you have fanboys who fiercely defend the franchise for being innovative, but then change gears when evidence says otherwise. Now they're justifying the borrowing of gameplay ideas, claiming that many games borrow inspiration from the others before them, but they heavily gloss over the fact that the 'borrowed' ideas aside, CNC4 has nothing innovative of its own. As the PC gamer podcast (second link) says, EA's 'first ever RTS with mobile bases' appeal is ridiculous, as they must have never played another RTS in their life. It makes sense though, EA has always been a company lagging behind their competitive developers, with blinders over their eyes and plugs in their ears.

EA - Shitty marketing

I'm sure you heard about BioWare. They are the ones who made Mass Effect, Jade Empire, Neverwinter Nights, Bauldur's Gate, KOTOR and more. I never played all of them but I've played some and they were some pretty decent games. You'd probably rememeber back in 2007 when EA bought out BioWare. Yeah... But what's the big deal. Well Dragon Age: Origins is coming out soon, and they kept going on about how it is a "spiritual sucessor" to bauldur's gate. What's that you ask? Well its apparently BioWare's most famous game, I've yet to play it longer than 20 mins though. Well that doesn't sound too bad.

It sorta reminds me of The Witcher, where you play in a fantasy world where you have to keep picking the lesser of two evils as you continue the game. It showed some pretty good stuff decent story/choices etc etc. Then suddenly a change of marketing. ITS ALL ABOUT BLOOD AND TITS. What the shit? I haven't been following the whole thing. Back when I first heard about it then fast forward to a couple of months ago, then a couple of weeks ago. My god has the whole thing shifted.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=659507958654&ref=mf

Thats the E3 demo where it was showed at. Holy shit the voices are bad and the script horrible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcyR9adOuMI

The hell? What are they trying now? God of War? Because that game was an awesome action game and this doesn't look like much of an RPG. In their interviews they keep saying how the game is "dark mature fantasy." Literally repeat it like 6 times a sentence. Funny thing is they keep calling it a "spiritual sucessor" to bauldur's gate. What does it really mean exactly. Well, it means its a game that has nothing to do with bauldurs gate but we'll add spiritual sucessor to it so we can milk as much money out of the bauldur's gate fans. I can imagine it now.

"Hey we need a new game" - developer 1
"Well, we're already working on Mass Effect 2, maybe we'll develop a new game something oriental" - developer 2
"We have Jade Empire ass dick" - developer 1
"How about a medival fantasy game?" - developer 3
"Nice idea but what can we do?" - developer 2
"Well lets have some non inspired evil demons who want nothing other than to destroy the world" - developer 3
"How would that accomplish anything? What is the point of destroying the world? What would they gain?" - developer 2
"..." - developer 3
"Fuck it lets just add bloods and tits then call it the spiritual sucessor to bauldurs gate and everyone will buy it" - developer 1
"Fucking genius" - developer 2

That is how DA:O was made.

CNC4 Subtitles

Lmao. In my previous post, I mentioned how terrible EA was at creating their subtitles for the CNC series, continually relying on some of the most trite and overused phrases in the entertainment industry, but there has been some new development. EA has been made aware to their inadequacies in the naming department... And is now asking fans to name the game for them through submissions. >_>

Wow. Well. Considering how terrible EA is at making games, maybe next time they'll ask fans to make the game for them too. This can only be a good thing.

Edit:
CNC4's subtitle is now Tiberian Twilight, as per fan requests, reverting back to the original naming scheme established by Westwood (in line with Tiberian Dawn, Tiberian Sun). It's a little odd now since CNC3 is named Tiberium Wars, a discontinuation of the trend... But what's done is done. Tiberian Twilight would have been alright as a subtitle, but I'm not that excited this time around, as:
1. CNC4 will play nothing like the previous CNCs, and thus, does not deserve the name Tiberian Twilight
2. This subtitle was originally intended as the name for CNC3 (when it was still being made by Westwood) so really, now they're just resurrecting an old title.
3. The title shows no EA ingenuity at all... Although this time it's not really EA's fault, as they left in the hands of the fans. Sorry to say, but the fans suck at making subtitles too, just not as much; they just copied Westwood's dead title.

Command and Conquer 4: The Revenge of Tiberium!

Well, I admit. EA is just better than I am.

AT MAKING SHITTY SUBTITLES.

Yeah, considering their previous publications - BFME2: Rise of the Witch King, CNC3: Tiberium Wars, CNC3: Kane's Wrath, then RA3: Uprising, and just Tiberium (for their first person shooter title) - EA has me beaten by a mile when it comes to cliche, angry and spiteful underdog avenger titles. Ooh. So scary.

So, no. CNC4 isn't called the Revenge of Tiberium. I'm sure it'll be much worse though, so just stay tuned. But it'll be pretty hard for Tiberium to have revenge on anybody... You know why? Tiberium is now a tame and easily accessible resource that has no infringement on human health or lifestyle. What the fuck.

For those who don't know the lore being Tiberium, I will do a quick recap, as the story was revealed by Westwood, the original developers. Not long ago, a meteor fell from space and crashed in Italy. It brought with it a strange biological plant growth called Tiberium that leeched minerals out of the ground and sprouted it as a green plant on the surface. While this made harvesting the plant quite lucrative, the plant emitted poisonous gases and rapidly spread, destroying Earth's habitat, killing off other plants and animals. Tiberium's growth was so dramatic that much of the world was covered in it, even the seas were clogged with it, and the only places that could slow its growth were icy artic regions or areas with steep rocky terrain. The world was being split into two factions, GDI and Nod, the former trying to restore peace and order and quell the advance of Tiberium, and the latter trying to undermine GDI (and the current world order) to embrace Tiberium, the secrets it may hold, and usher forward a new race of enhanced beings. While GDI and Nod slugged it out with each other, they stumbled upon the bizarre. Some wild animals, humans and even plants adapted with excessive exposure to Tiberium, becoming much stronger and more resilient. Furthermore, Tiberium was obviously alien, but unnervingly hinted at the existence of an invading intelligent alien race.

Unfortunately, as Westwood's rights to the franchise were passed to EA, the story began to crumble in inconsistency. Tiberium became some crystalline lifeform, and resembled the minerals in Starcraft. Alien artifacts that were found in earlier games were 'refound' at an even earlier date. Alien arrivals were poorly explained, and Nod's enigmatic and visionary leader, Kane, began to operate in a questionable manner with incomprehensible objectives. But worse... Tiberium is no longer the plague that is encompassing the globe. It is now of no threat to anyone, safely locked away underground, and mined by large vertical drilling shafts. Tiberium no longer is on the surface to destroy civilian respiratory systems, give severe skin burns and cancers, corrode the armor off of vehicles, mutate biosystems, or uproot and level cities. What's going on? The main element of the game... The resource you NAMED the game after, has been so drastically altered, there is really no point in trying to continue this franchise. Worse, EA drops the guillotine: they claim they will be concluding the story and wrap up loose ends with this final installment. Considering how they bullshitted the story for both CNC3 and the expansion pack, they have so many plot holes and loose ends that they will never be able to piece the thing back together in just a single game.

EA tried to write the story as it pleased them in CNC3, and it lead to inconsistencies and fans asking well-deserved questions, often about the characters or incomplete events from the previous titles. But since it was plainly obvious that EA did not even play the previous games themselves, they had no idea who or what the fans were talking about. So... what did they do? They made an expansion pack to try fill in the gaps. So the fans received 5 second explanations during FMVs, often just saying that so-and-so died before the game events occurred, or that Tiberium underwent a mysterious overnight transformation and that researchers could not come up with any answers. Wow. Lame. If by 'filling the gaps' they meant just acknowledging their poorly written inconsistencies in an official FMV... then EA sure succeeded. And worse, they tried to bring back old characters and factions to do fanservice... even when these things had no right to return. Now with factions like Cabal, a previously rogue AI commander, back in his throne, EA has plot holes the size of dump trucks to fill. And yet they think they can complete a convincing story in just ONE game? Get over yourself, EA.

So that's enough about the plot. They fucked it up, and it isn't going to get unfucked any time soon. But what really pisses me off is that they're selling the same fucking rehash gameplay and engine. This engine has been used for 11 games, not including expansions! 5 of these games were ancient, and used a very very old basic version of this engine, fair enough... But the earliest one was from 2001! Way to milk a dry cow. Or in this case, a dry and half-eaten-by-vultures carcass. Now just reusing engine code isn't bad... But its the way it is used is important. Some games show noticable engine upgrades and improvements that make the engine recycling well justified... But EA does not make that sort of game. Currently, the CNC4 screenshots look like a game from 2004... But I will give them the benefit of the doubt since it's still in alpha: CNC4 at release will look about as sharp and clean as CNC3, but no better. Why is this? Because EA has no incentive to improve it past that, and CNC3 already consumed a ton of memory in high-res textures. On top of that, RA3, based on the same engine, showed diminishing graphics relative to CNC3, a game that is its predecessor.

Graphics aside, CNC4 doesn't have any gameplay innovations to speak of, only concepts borrowed from other games. Instead of having a construction yard and building around it like other CNC games, you have a walking mega unit that is pretty much your base all in one package. Not only has this been done before in Universe at War, and Dawn of War, but it isn't anything like what the franchise is like. Instead of harvesting fields of rapidly growing Tiberium, you capture and hold Tiberium control points that give you a steady stream of income. Done by Dawn of War and other capture-point based RTSes like Demigod, Company of Heroes, and World in Conflict. This is not anything like any CNC game either. They've introduced a population cap. If I wanted to play a Blizzard game, I'd play a Blizzard game. There's also no more base building, another feature taken from modern tactical RTSes. Everything that made CNC unique is gone, we only have some pathetic trend following, courtesy of sloppy and uninspired EA developers. Instead of unlocking units by teching up to new tech tiers, you level up your commander level by killing or losing units. Your commander level is a consistent stat that carries across games. Not only is this RPG element completely unnecessary, but it is so poorly integrated that it will throw a wrench in any RTS mechanic that remains in the game. Players will be limited to what units they can build because of their level. That limits build orders, strategies and even the opponents they can fairly fight and counter. Why even bother? This is a terrible idea just at conception. Scrap the damn thing.

Now someone may ask... The game isn't out, why are you so harsh and so certain it will fail? These words were spoken to me every single time a EA CNC game was on the horizon. It came about for CNC3, for KW, and for RA3. Yet unsurprisingly, every time, I was justified in my criticism. EA is truly a company that you cannot let out of your sight, as when they are given creative freedom, they are bound to failure and disappointment. So, I know without a doubt that EA will screw up CNC4, and like their previous releases, I refuse to purchase it. And you know what is sad? I was happy when EA announced the cancellation of Tiberium, their first person shooter rendition of the CNC universe. I thought they came to their senses and decided to not pursue developing a genre and universe that they did not understand and instead moved their investment to something they do better... Like sports or something. But no. They put their money here, in this other abomination of a RPG-Squadbased-Tactical-RTS game. Jumping from one sinking ship to another. There is no doubt that EA will fuck up. The only question on my mind is between the unfinished Tiberium project and CNC4, which one would have been the lesser of two evils? Ultimately, the answer to this is moot; both of them are destined to be a shit stain on gaming.