SEV: What am I REALY getting for my money?

[Ringold]

Atrocities said:
Well SE IV Deluxe is already making its rounds on the BT sites so I would suspect that SE V will be joining it soon enough. Its not until one of your games is on the network that you begin to see the importance of copy right protection and anti piracy technology. Not that any one here has anything to do with pirated software. If I cannot buy it, I do without until I can get it cheap or I can aford it.

I joined, after lurking at SE sites for years, just to try to defend P2P as a not-entirely-evil way of trying some things before you buy it. I purchased this past weekend SE4 (after years of, ahem, trying it) as part of Steams SciFi pack.. Was thrilled to be able to buy it, 'cause I'd never, ever, seen SE4 on shelves. Actually seen 'Stars!' on shelves (anybody know 'Stars!'? All 4X fans are born somewhere..). I was going to make it a bright example, but after trying to phrase it in a way that really sounded noble for half an hour, couldn't do it.

You're right, piracy takes money off the dinner table of the guy who gives us this great series.. and other indy developers just like him. P2P helps spread the game to those that otherwise never would've heard of it, but the net harm is probably larger than the net benefit. The worst part is, there's no counter to it at all; Even Starforce, which was so powerful it did as much harm to customers as it did pirates, has fallen.

My only hope is that when SEV hits the BT sites a ton of the people that end up DLing it end up making their way to a store or Steam (All games should be offered on Steam -- hardcopys seem so 20th century ) and pay for it.. sort of like I did.. except with the whole several-year delay. Even though I paid for it, I still feel ashamed!

Regarding the original issue though.. I'm with dejavu. But I think its almost the same as with people who don't see why to upgrade to Vista upon release. "It's the same!" Sure its the same, the same as 95 was 3.1, 98 was 95, 2000 was 98, and XP was 2000.. if you want to look at it in a backward fashion, sure. But Vista is rebuilt from the ground up, more efficient network stack, coded with the age of virus's and malware in mind, new driver model for stability and performance, and even in beta builds has been benchmarked to be more responsive and less of a CPU hog. Likewise, SEV is all the same sort of things; rebuilt, bigger and better than ever before in all ways. I think if you really like the game then die-hard fans dont even need to explain it. If one is more of a fairweather or part-time fan, well then, $50 suddenly seems like a lot.

I for one will be eating up Steam's bandwidth on Sept 12th, though.

Last second idea: You know, SiN Episodes found a ton of pirates out by updating through Steam exclusively. If Malfador does the same thing then patches would be more of a pain to distribute. We legitimate customers wouldn't even know a patch occured because it'd happen automagically next time we ran Steam. Pirates on the other hand would flood the message boards revealing themselves all complaining about the bug that was just patched, as happened with SiN. Don't know if thats feasible, random idea though. They want new features and patches, then pay up!

[Fyron]

Eww Steam. No thanks!

[Raapys]

Steam hate.

From what I remember, Fyron, wasn't the MoO2 combat system such that the attacker always got to start? I remember eradicating entire Doom Star fleets with a single Doom Star of my own, simply because I always got to start and had massive amounts of plasma cannons. Guess it might have been fixed/balanced in a patch, as I only played it unpatched.

[Fyron]

The 1.31 patch added a decent initiative system. This is what I was refering to. The original release did indeed have a crappy combat model. If you ever play MOO2 again, make sure to get the patch.

Of course, you can still abuse it with phased cloak and the temporal device that gives you 2 turns for one... But that's not necessarily an issue with the combat mechanics themselves, more with not thinking about the consequences of these two high end components.

[Renegade 13]

Pirates buy games too. I personally know of some examples of people who pirated a game, then bought it because they liked it. I'm not saying I support such a thing, but it does happen.

You mentioned Starforce, and not having had a problem with it. I know this thread isn't about Starforce, but I have had problems with it. I had a CDRW drive die on me for no particular reason, shortly after installing a Starforce protected game. Now, that could be coincidence, but coincidence only goes so far.

But anyways, this thread isn't about Starforce so I'll shut up now.

[Sivran]

I've pirated games. I deleted the ones I didn't like, and bought the ones I did. The remainder I either never bothered installing or just simply forgot about. The "didn't like" and "forgotten" categories are by far the largest. This and the appearance of StarForce have a significant impact on my game buying.

Whenever I'm at Fry's looking at games, I really DO think to myself, "Can I find this game online? Is this game infected with Starforce?" It's the Starforce question that tips the scales toward putting down the box, going home, and either forgetting about the game (in this way Starforce hurts even those who don't use it!) or looking up the list or an illegitimate source. On the other hand, if I've downloaded a game--demo, or warezed--and I see it at Fry's, I might just pick it up as an impulse buy. Hell, I bought GalCiv II for no other reason than its lack of copy protection. I might install it one day, I've heard it's fun.

[dogscoff]

I too will be holding off on my purchase of SE5 until I've heard some feedback on this forum regarding the copy-protection methods used. If it makes the game unplayable, or it means I can't install it on more than one PC, or can't install it on a replacement PC, or it's going to break my PC by installing a rootkit or something, then I won't be buying it until it's fixed.

[frightlever]

To quote myself "I think people willing to pay will pay and those who can't, or won't, won't pay no matter what." which just agrees with you that copy protection or lack therof hasn't got a bearing on whether a game will sell. If you're going to buy it you'll buy it. If you're not then there are plenty of excuses to make to yourself why not.

I'm amazed at the way forums have been taken over by anti-Starforce sentiment in the last year or so. There are plenty of good reasons why I may not buy Space Empires 5 but copy protection definitely isn't one of them. I'll likely pre-order a physical copy and then crack on release day and buy the download too. I ended up buying 3 copies of Silent Storm because I liked it so much I just wanted to spread the word.

As for Steam, which I never really touched on, if you want to play a MP game you need to validate through Steam but if you're playing a MP game you're probably either already on the Internet or on a LAN and if you're on a LAN in the 21st century I can't believe there are too many times you won't have some Internet access.

Again I want to stress I'd prefer it wasn't the case but OTOH I'm not that worried about it. Your life must be pretty sweet if you consider this a hardship. Running a house and holding down a job (to spend on food and games) give me more than enough grief for me to worry about copy-protection.

[Renegade 13]

Ringold said:
Last second idea: You know, SiN Episodes found a ton of pirates out by updating through Steam exclusively. If Malfador does the same thing then patches would be more of a pain to distribute. We legitimate customers wouldn't even know a patch occured because it'd happen automagically next time we ran Steam. Pirates on the other hand would flood the message boards revealing themselves all complaining about the bug that was just patched, as happened with SiN. Don't know if thats feasible, random idea though. They want new features and patches, then pay up!

I kind of have to disagree here. For example, the whole idea Steam is based upon assumes the entire user base has constant access to high-speed internet. This is one reason I don't like Steam. I'm stuck with dial-up internet, and really don't have a choice about it until I move to a larger population center. Second reason I don't like Steam is the very fact that you don't have a hardcopy. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I like something physical that shows I own the product, something that isn't just on my computer and in someone's database showing that, yes, I'm allowed to own that product. It opens up a host of potential problems, from people hacking into Steam's database to allow whoever they want to download whatever they want, or even simple database errors which could cause Steam to reject whatever I'm trying to legitimately download.

Sorry for the rant about Steam, it's not really the topic this thread it about!

[Phoenix-D]

Or with Valve deciding to ban you, thus locking out access to *all* your Steam based games, with no appeal possible.

Given how often I've been marked as cheating when I'm NOT, that's not a small concern. (one popular anti-cheat method thinks I'm speedhacking any time I get packet loss, for example)