Bioshock 2

[nath]

You know what i mean you're just being pedantic

Pedantic about which part - I edited my post to add in a bit.

 

[Sparx]

I just see it as a totally watered down excuse to not buy something.

Far too many people who do things against the law try to justify it with such a shit reason.

You dont want to pay for something just in the off chance you may exceed 5 PCs in how many years? Surely if there is a way to hack the game then its easy enough to remove a PC from authorised, Itunes does it easy enough for example

Like i say im not a oh my god you must buy everything. I have a terrabite station full of HD movies, i didnt go oh my lord those movies are too expensive im being FORCED to download. No i downloaded them cause it was late at night and i wanted to watch that film.
whos to blame there? shops for not being open late enough for me to buy the movie?

 

[nath]

Again, I'm not speaking for anyone else but myself here, but the alternative to buying some shitty DRM laden game isn't to pirate it but to simply not buy it. There no doubt are ways to manage the installations, some games have de-authorisation tools, but quite frankly I'm not interested in paying for a game and then maintaining it like that. I also wouldn't buy any MP3's from iTunes, if I were to pay for an MP3 (ludicrous idea for me, CDs all the way) I'd get it from Amazon where they're just MP3s with no fucking about.

The reason I'm not buying Bioshock is half the fact that it's supposed to be a bit crap, and half the shitty DRM. It's extremely likely that I'll be playing it again in however many years as I do that with an awful lot of my old games. It's also the principle that I would be getting a fundamentally inferior product than if I'd pirated it (which I won't). Put simply, their anti-piracy methods are stupid and don't work, I'm not going to suffer simply because they're too retarded to work that out.

I was thinking about the original Bioshock - that one did prevent a nice easy crack for a few weeks. If future releases were able to reproduce that with the promise that once it's publicly clearly and successfully cracked they remove the DRM from the game as it will have served its purpose. However, they seem to insist on waiting up to a year+ before removing/reducing the restrictions. Fuck 'em, I'll wait or I'll go without.

 

[Sparx]

Perhaps i just cant understand what your going on about, i just see it as a total wash of an excuse to justify ilegally downloading it.

Im not talking specifically about you here. I hear so many people say the same thing, and i download an album and if i like it i buy it, really? every single album you like? what about that odd one, or 10 you didnt get round to buying

Its just all self justification to not feel guilty

 

[nath]

Like I said, I'm talking about myself and so it stands to reason there are plenty of people who are in the same position as me. There may well be those using these reasons to justify pirating it but that doesn't invalidate my position. I've not pirated and I've no intention of pirating Bioshock 2. I did intend to buy it until I found out about the protection but now I'll wait until it's in a Steam deal and they've remove the activation limits.

Ultimately I've no need to justify anything, if I want to pirate a game I'll pirate it. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it, I'm not going to feel guilty. That doesn't change the fact that I *won't* pirate it. I prefer buying games, and if I were to pirate it first, it'd reduce the value and fun of owning it when I do eventually buy it. I'm just not putting up with stupid business practices that adversely affect customers and not pirates. Why the fuck should I?

 

[Sparx]

My arguement had absolutely nothing to do with you then if you dont illegally download

 

[nath]

Well you were criticising the stance I hold with the added assumption that the alternative to purchasing was to pirate. Bit of a straw man argument tbh.

 

[Wazzerphuk]

Also, I don't see how it's annoying the hackers - I'm pretty sure they like a challenge, plus there's masses of kudos for the groups that crack a tough release and that's what they're doing it for. The people who end up downloading the game have no trouble at all as the end result is always pretty straightforward.

For FM09 we had very stringent DRM. The hackers were not able to crack or release a fully working copy of our game before release, which really pissed them off. As a result, they DDoS'd us (SI), SEGA and the activation servers as retaliation on release day to try and cause as much chaos as possible. For their part it worked and caused many users to have problems activating their games after buying it. This is all public knowledge, and goes some way to show how determined hackers can be at being disruptive and anti-industry.

Those are the actions of petty, annoyed people. You have to remember that most hacking groups see things as a challenge - put something up in front of them that they can't do and they get angry.

 

[Sparx]

Well you were criticising the stance I hold with the added assumption that the alternative to purchasing was to pirate. Bit of a straw man argument tbh.

no im talking about justifying illegal downloading, which yo said you dont/wont do

So how does this mean you?

 

[nath]

For FM09 we had very stringent DRM. The hackers were not able to crack or release a fully working copy of our game before release, which really pissed them off. As a result, they DDoS'd us (SI), SEGA and the activation servers as retaliation on release day to try and cause as much chaos as possible. For their part it worked and caused many users to have problems activating their games after buying it. This is all public knowledge, and goes some way to show how determined hackers can be at being disruptive and anti-industry.

Those are the actions of petty, annoyed people. You have to remember that most hacking groups see things as a challenge - put something up in front of them that they can't do and they get angry.

I'm not sticking up for hackers by any stretch of the imagination, and yes that's pretty fucking shitty behaviour. Plus, if you're able to release a game with protection that prevents hackers for a few weeks, more power to you - I'd not need to see any stats to believe that that is certainly worth the money. However, I don't see why companies don't have a policy to remove the more stringent protection schemes once it's clear that they've been bypassed and are no longer useful.

no im talking about justifying illegal downloading, which yo said you dont/wont do

So how does this mean you?

My initial response to you was your post here:
https://forums.freddyshouse.com/game-consoles-71/241009-bioshock-2-a.html#post3608794
There you were responding to Chodax and making a straw man argument suggesting that the reason to be angry at DRM was to justify piracy.

 

[Wazzerphuk]

I'm not sticking up for hackers by any stretch of the imagination, and yes that's pretty fucking shitty behaviour. Plus, if you're able to release a game with protection that prevents hackers for a few weeks, more power to you - I'd not need to see any stats to believe that that is certainly worth the money. However, I don't see why companies don't have a policy to remove the more stringent protection schemes once it's clear that they've been bypassed and are no longer useful.

It was pretty shitty indeed. Ended up with a lot of users thinking that the DRM we used was utter shit (not true) and the cause of the problems (again not true). Trying to give customers advice and help around the time of release was a nightmare (as we do most of our direct support through our forums) as they were constantly going down, timing out etc., so a lot of people found themselves with a brand new game, unable to play it and unable to get help.

 

[nath]

It was pretty shitty indeed. Ended up with a lot of users thinking that the DRM we used was utter shit (not true) and the cause of the problems (again not true). Trying to give customers advice and help around the time of release was a nightmare (as we do most of our direct support through our forums) as they were constantly going down, timing out etc., so a lot of people found themselves with a brand new game, unable to play it and unable to get help.

I can't stop myself from pointing out that if the game didn't require online authentication then it wouldn't matter if your servers were getting hammered .

 

[Wazzerphuk]

It didn't require online activation, you could also activate via phone :smug:

 

[nath]

For a computer game that's worth like 25 quid? Madness!

 

[Sparx]

I'm not sticking up for hackers by any stretch of the imagination, and yes that's pretty fucking shitty behaviour. Plus, if you're able to release a game with protection that prevents hackers for a few weeks, more power to you - I'd not need to see any stats to believe that that is certainly worth the money. However, I don't see why companies don't have a policy to remove the more stringent protection schemes once it's clear that they've been bypassed and are no longer useful.



My initial response to you was your post here:
https://forums.freddyshouse.com/game-consoles-71/241009-bioshock-2-a.html#post3608794
There you were responding to Chodax and making a straw man argument suggesting that the reason to be angry at DRM was to justify piracy.

something which you later went on to say you didnt do, then i clearly stated that my point wasnt aimed at you rather than people breaking rules

 

[Tom]

Well back to the game, I bought it last week and spent a few days completing it.

Its an excellent game although not as engrossing as the first - there were times that I wasn't quite sure what I was doing.

Nice to be able to walk in the ocean though, should have been more of that.

Probably not worth the cost, but I don't regret buying it.

 

[Wazzerphuk]

Have to say I'm enjoying this more than the first, it's got a better balance (particularly with the weapons - on the first you didn't need to use anything other than a machine gun for the entire game), and a bit more variety in there. Some cool lighting and visual effects, a few bugs (although for me they don't detract from the gameplay), but it's already more playable and varied (just) than the first.

The hacking mini-game of the first has been replaced, thankfully, and means that hacking is now actually a worthwhile and reasonably satisfying experience. In the first there was no point trying to be a good hacker, it wasted so many tonic slots just to make the mini-game completeable that autohacking was the only realistic option. Now, you can actually balance your character a bit better than the first. I still think the plasmids are very ineffective as weapons though, and other than to temporarily freeze enemies you're still better off using real weapons and not wasting the eve.

 

[Wazzerphuk]

Actually having said that there are still a number of major balancing issues that royally screw the game up. Playing on the hardest difficulty level, for example, can be an utter joke. A couple of pistol/rivet hits from a splicer and you're almost totally drained of all health, despite the fact you're in a massive armoured big daddy suit. Try the same on one of the opposing big daddies and see how far you get... not only that but big daddies have close to 100% accuracy rate if you're at mid-distance (for example, if you hide away on a roof and shoot down at one, every shot he makes upwards hits you, which is just laughable since hitting targets above you on roofs should be the hardest type of shot possible)...

An unmodified shotgun is nearly useless too, does very poor damage and has a tiny clip size so it's pointless until you can upgrade it.

It seems that what should be a great game is only a good one. Pity.