EA Origin
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Ok so I got 3 free game download keys for Origin, and I can procrastinate on installing it no longer.
Here's the first thing I see:
All in all, less painful and horrible than I expected, considering it's EA
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I've only used Origin for BF3.
Maybe the half-line represents DLC?
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@lettucemode said:
I've only used Origin for BF3.
Maybe the half-line represents DLC?
Could be. In theory the code was for the ultimate version, but i can't for the life of me figure out how to tell what DLCs I have for a game title. Assuming EA even bothered to implement that feature.
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Well what do you expect, it's closed source. Closed source software never does anything right. You're always registering and activating and having to prove that you gave money to some crap company that hires idiot programmers.
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I see the issue. There's a massive black box where your gamertag should be.
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I thought it meant "Digitally-Licenced Content" (or Downloadable Licenced Content) like Steam, et.al - but wikipedia suggests it means Downloadable Content.
Is it a WTF that "Down Loadable" is treated as two different words?
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DLC is downloadable content. Typically this does not refer to a full game bought on steam e.a., but to additions such as extra weapons or maps.
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@Cassidy said:
Is it a WTF that "Down Loadable" is treated as two different words?
I do not consider this a WTF. The L is a very prominent phoneme in "download" and it makes intuitive sense to incorporate it in the abbrev.
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@PleegWat said:
DLC is downloadable content. Typically this does not refer to a full game bought on steam e.a., but to additions such as extra weapons or maps.
Yeah, and for the non-gamers, the WTF is that in Steam, their competitor, you can just right-click the game icon select "Show DLC" and it shows you which DLC packs are installed with the game. AFAICK, there's literally no way to do this in Origin. I can't can't verify the code I put in actually gave me the content I received.
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It looks like the ultimate edition includes the Awakening expansion pack plus all nine DLC packs. So your code wasn't for base game + packages, but for one thing, one product. Maybe that's why they don't show up.
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@lettucemode said:
It looks like the ultimate edition includes the Awakening expansion pack plus all nine DLC packs. So your code wasn't for base game + packages, but for one thing, one product. Maybe that's why they don't show up.
Nah I think I figured it out. I booted the game this morning, not wanting to play but just wanting to see if it listed DLC there and-- hey guess what!? All the DLC/download/promo code stuff is actually in the game itself. Which is a horrible, retarded design decision.
So now I've plugged the DLC promo code into Bioware's stupid social network thing (because God knows every company needs their own "social network!" Especially companies owned by EA, which already have one!) and the website says I got all the DLC. The only problem is... the game itself says the DLC is downloaded but not "authorized". Oh well, I'll figure this out later.
Once you resign yourself to thinking, "well, this is a EA game, so obviously I won't be able to play right away, it'll take 1-2 days worth of fiddling with installers and activation codes and what-not", the whole experience isn't so bad. The game doesn't cost money, it costs "dealing with bullshit".
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To be fair, Steam was like that at one point - but looks like they've finally got it right (after learning from hiccups).
Is EA a new player in the DLC marketplace? I was under the impression that Steam was the first to experiment with this as a business model; other than iTunes for MP3s (and netflix), I don't know much about DLC-delivered content.
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@Cassidy said:
To be fair, Steam was like that at one point - but looks like they've finally got it right (after learning from hiccups).
Steam was never this bad. And Steam sucks. I've love someone to make a actually good game download service/platform, but without being a major game publisher (like Valve or EA) you'd never make it work.
@Cassidy said:
Is EA a new player in the DLC marketplace?
Nah. But you know what happened? Dragon Age 1 was developed before EA Origin was. (In fact, Origin is still in beta, it looks like... WTF?) So either Origin doesn't have the feature because it's a piece of shit, or it does and they were too fucking lazy to patch DA1 to actually use it.
I also have a code for Battlefield 3 which came out after Origin did, so maybe it'll be a better experience.
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@blakeyrat said:
Once you resign yourself to thinking, "well, this is a EA game, so obviously I won't be able to play right away, it'll take 1-2 days worth of fiddling with installers and activation codes and what-not", the whole experience isn't so bad. The game doesn't cost money, it costs "dealing with bullshit".
I experienced something similar with Bioshock 2, which has that dumb in-game overlay which connects you to Live. Even though I got the game through Steam. I remember having to log in to Live (which takes longer through the game overlay than through the website for some reason), being prompted to download a patch, and repeating that process a few times before being allowed to get to the main menu. It took about 15 minutes to get to the main menu after running the executable for the first time. I guess Microsoft doesn't want to give its patches over to Steam directly for some reason.
@Cassidy said:
Is EA a new player in the DLC marketplace? I was under the impression that Steam was the first to experiment with this as a business model; other than iTunes for MP3s (and netflix), I don't know much about DLC-delivered content.
Origin is EA's Steam, yes. They ended their contract with Steam a little while ago, I think Dead Space 2 was their last game to be released on Steam. It makes sense for them as a company since they don't have to give Valve a percentage of the sales but is annoying for gamers who now have to install a separate client.
There are lots of digital download stores - Good Ol' Games, Direct2Drive, and several others use websites with downloader software to serve their games. Steam, Origin, and Impulse are the only client-based stores I know of. Desura is like them but instead of being a store its purpose is distributing mods for games.
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@blakeyrat said:
Steam was never this bad. And Steam sucks. I've love someone to make a actually good game download service/platform, but without being a major game publisher (like Valve or EA) you'd never make it work.
What do you dislike about Steam?
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@lettucemode said:
What do you dislike about Steam?
Well it does ALMOST everything fucking wrong. Every time they implement a new feature, they only half-implement it and never actually finish. (Recent example: Steam Cloud is great, but why can't I browse or delete my cloud data?) They obsess over shit nobody cares about, like their retarded "item store" thing.
Why am I even answering this? Just run the program, engage your eyeballs, and look at it. If you can't find 10 obvious glaring problems in the first 10 minutes, you're either blind or have an extremely high tolerance for bad software.
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Shit, did I really write that?
-1 internets for me.
(and there was me talking to the wifey about forum users impatiently hitting "POST" without reviewing/proof-reading their content. My turn for the self-LART, I believe.)
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@blakeyrat said:
@lettucemode said:
What do you dislike about Steam?
Well it does ALMOST everything fucking wrong. Every time they implement a new feature, they only half-implement it and never actually finish. (Recent example: Steam Cloud is great, but why can't I browse or delete my cloud data?) They obsess over shit nobody cares about, like their retarded "item store" thing.
Why am I even answering this? Just run the program, engage your eyeballs, and look at it. If you can't find 10 obvious glaring problems in the first 10 minutes, you're either blind or have an extremely high tolerance for bad software.
Well, seeing as I act like a little kid every time there's a big Steam sale on, it's possible I'm being forgiving. Off the top of my head...
- When going into offline mode, it's necessary to run every game you want to be available before going into offline mode, which is time-consuming.
- Steam downloads suck up all my bandwidth and even simple browsing starts to take a while, no way to throttle (pretty big problem now that I think about it)
- Steam downloads pause whenever I launch any other game through Steam, even if they're single-player only and I want the downloads to continue while I play.
- The item shop is annoying, but I like how you can trade, say, an extra Portal key for TF2 items.
Those are the things I notice affecting me. What else?
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@lettucemode said:
Those are the things I notice affecting me. What else?
You can't change the fucking FONT SIZE?!???!? The gigantic blaring thing? The thing that makes their IM program totally useless on my high-res monitor?
*sigh* This is why software is awful. People don't even notice when software is awful.
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Wow. You're completely right, I never noticed that. Does this link solve the problem for you? I'm gonna play around with that myself when I get home.
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@lettucemode said:
Wow. You're completely right, I never noticed that. Does this link solve the problem for you? I'm gonna play around with that myself when I get home.
It's a hack that half-works, but in the process screws up the layout of most of the windows.
It also pisses me off, that they would make the UI "skinnable" before bothering to add a FONT SIZE feature. WHAT THE FUCK VALVE!
Edit: Valve wouldn't make a video game without subtitles. Yet they think it's Ok to make an IM program without the ability to adjust font size. Reconcile that.
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Speaking of a "skinnable" UI, how come there AREN'T ANY FREAKING SKINS AVAILABLE??? Seriously, I go into the options and the only skin I see is "default"... am I supposed to go and Google "steam skins" so I can download some, or something?
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@ekolis said:
Speaking of a "skinnable" UI, how come there AREN'T ANY FREAKING SKINS AVAILABLE??? Seriously, I go into the options and the only skin I see is "default"... am I supposed to go and Google "steam skins" so I can download some, or something?
This goes back to my thesis about every Steam feature being only half-implemented. They implemented a way of skinning the client, but neglected to include any way of browsing for or automatically installing skins.
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@lettucemode said:
Steam downloads pause whenever I launch any other game through Steam, even if they're single-player only and I want the downloads to continue while I play.
I've seen one or two single player games where downloads kept going even when you launch it.
For all the others, you have to run the game, alt-tab out, pause the (already paused) download, then unpause it. WTF.@lettucemode said:
Those are the things I notice affecting me. What else?
- When you start a chat with multiple people, it does not beep when someone says something and you aren't looking; the complete opposite of the default behaviour when chatting with one person. There is no option to change this default behaviour; you have to set it every time you join/start a group chat.
- You can organise your friends into categories (Click on a name -> Tag As), but you can only do it one person at a time. Additionally, it seems nearly everyone I have spoken to did not even know this was possible to begin with.
- When you restore a large game from a backup file, it will murder your CPU while it does it. It literally makes my computer completely unresponsive
This last point is a bit long, and is actually an example of something I have encountered recently that just boggles the mind.
My sister has Mass Effect 2: Digital Deluxe edition. I have the regular version. The difference between the two is that her version contains about 1 GB of stuff completely unrelated to actually playing the game.
The fun part, of course, comes when steam decides thats the entire ME2 install is missing 1200 files (Everything) and decides to redownload them all. It breaks like this everytime we alternate logging in.
I have actually attempted to fix the issue several times, most notably by nuking everything; I can only assume that the issue comes from steam not separating the two different versions correctly to begin with.
In the end, we've gotten to the point were we just leave it uninstalled, and if we want to play it, we copy all the game files from a backup straight into steamapps/common, tell steam to install the game, and wait as it "discovers existing files". Joy.
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@blakeyrat said:
@ekolis said:
Speaking of a "skinnable" UI, how come there AREN'T ANY FREAKING SKINS AVAILABLE??? Seriously, I go into the options and the only skin I see is "default"... am I supposed to go and Google "steam skins" so I can download some, or something?
This goes back to my thesis about every Steam feature being only half-implemented. They implemented a way of skinning the client, but neglected to include any way of browsing for or automatically installing skins.
Actually, there USED to be something like 4 skins, counting the default, bundled with Steam. I don't know when they disappeared.
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@FrostCat said:
Actually,
Oh! So you're going to tell me I'm mistaken and in fact correct my poin--
@FrostCat said:
there USED to be something like 4 skins, counting the default, bundled with Steam.
Oh. :(
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My favorite Steam WTF of the moment is the inability to put the same game in more than one user-defined category. A minor thing, I know, but it was something you could do during the open beta for the update that added the categories feature. When the update was fully released, you could only put a game into a single category.
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Steam WTFs: You can't buy a gift-pack (buying multiple copies of the same game, so you can gift them to other people) if you already own the game. That's a huge WTF, since the entire point of the gift pack is to give it to other people, and you wouldn't want to gift a game you hadn't even played.
I'm actually shocked anybody can use Steam longer than about a week and not have a personal list of at least 5 WTFs in it.
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@Someone You Know said:
When the update was fully released, you could only put a game into a single category.
... but the UI still uses checkboxes.
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@Spectre said:
@Someone You Know said:
When the update was fully released, you could only put a game into a single category.
... but the UI still uses checkboxes.
Yup! Exciting.
Next WTF: the store pages for age-restricted games ask you to put in your birthdate before viewing them. There's a piece of text below the date fields that tells you the date is only for verification and "will not be stored". Yet every single age-restricted game's page remembers the same bullshit birthdate I put in months ago.
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Ooo ooo and here's another one: Steam uses Chromium to render HTML, but they for some reason they failed to include Chromium's internal Flash Player. Which means, if you don't install the stand-alone Flash Player for Windows (and why would you if you use Chrome as your default browser?) none of the preview movies for games works.
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@lettucemode said:
- Steam downloads suck up all my bandwidth and even simple browsing starts to take a while, no way to throttle (pretty big problem now that I think about it)
- Steam downloads pause whenever I launch any other game through Steam, even if they're single-player only and I want the downloads to continue while I play.
Oh and BTW, and I know I'm replying to an old post here, but Windows has a Service specifically designed to take care of these issues, called BITS-- Background Intelligent Transfer Service. It's what it uses for Windows Update, and when's the last time a Windows Update download slowed your browsing or screwed up an online game? Never.
So the solution is built-in to Windows, already tested and perfected, and doesn't require an ounce of effort on their part, and yet they don't bother to fucking use it. In fact, they went out of their way to write code to pause the download while you're playing a game, when BITS would just do that automatically if it was needed!!
If you're going to write software for Windows, Jesus Christ, spend a few days figuring out what features Windows offers you.
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Oh! Oh! I have one!
Steam doesn't convert currencies.
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@blakeyrat said:
Steam uses Chromium to render HTML, but they for some reason they failed to include Chromium's internal Flash Player
Possibly because it's an ancient version of Chromium, which is a WTF in itself.
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I thought of another one - Steam Wallet is useless. You can't add money to friends' Wallets nor are there gift cards in stores for Wallets. All you can do is give money to yourself...why not just buy a game for the exact price?
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@lettucemode said:
I thought of another one - Steam Wallet is useless. You can't add money to friends' Wallets nor are there gift cards in stores for Wallets. All you can do is give money to yourself...why not just buy a game for the exact price?
I think the intent is that parents (with credit cards) can control the spending of kids (who buy games) by giving them a set amount to spend.
If the Steam Wallet was intended to be used for any other purpose, then yes I agree with you.
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@Someone You Know said:
Next WTF: the store pages for age-restricted games ask you to put in your birthdate before viewing them. There's a piece of text below the date fields that tells you the date is only for verification and "will not be stored". Yet every single age-restricted game's page remembers the same bullshit birthdate I put in months ago.
To be fair, it's merely a lack of updates to the documentation. Prior to a few months ago, it would NOT remember the date you put in, forcing you to enter it every single damn time.
I kind of wonder what happens if you put in a date that is too recent by mistake and you get blocked... how long until you are allowed to fix it? Do you have to contact Steam support? What if you say you are nine years old? Would they then delete your Steam account because the terms of service say you have to be at least thirteen?
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@blakeyrat said:
Ooo ooo and here's another one: Steam uses Chromium to render HTML, but they for some reason they failed to include Chromium's internal Flash Player. Which means, if you don't install the stand-alone Flash Player for Windows (and why would you if you use Chrome as your default browser?) none of the preview movies for games works.
Chromium does NOT ship with the internal Flash and internal PDF readers.
These are closed-source components made by Google and exclusive to Chrome.
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@bannedfromcoding said:
@blakeyrat said:
Ooo ooo and here's another one: Steam uses Chromium to render HTML, but they for some reason they failed to include Chromium's internal Flash Player. Which means, if you don't install the stand-alone Flash Player for Windows (and why would you if you use Chrome as your default browser?) none of the preview movies for games works.
Chromium does NOT ship with the internal Flash and internal PDF readers.
These are closed-source components made by Google and exclusive to Chrome.Ok but that DOESN'T change my point at all, does it? So I don't see why you bothered to post it. Thanks for wasting all our time.
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@Someone You Know said:
My favorite Steam WTF of the moment is the inability to put the same game in more than one user-defined category. A minor thing, I know, but it was something you could do during the open beta for the update that added the categories feature. When the update was fully released, you could only put a game into a single category.
That is a time saving feature really, after all it is going to forget all the categories sometime in the next few days anyway so if you had taken the trouble to put games into multiple categories even more time would be lost.
Then again it still beats the EA downloader hands down in terms of quality.
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@blakeyrat said:
@bannedfromcoding said:
@blakeyrat said:
Ooo ooo and here's another one: Steam uses Chromium to render HTML, but they for some reason they failed to include Chromium's internal Flash Player. Which means, if you don't install the stand-alone Flash Player for Windows (and why would you if you use Chrome as your default browser?) none of the preview movies for games works.
Chromium does NOT ship with the internal Flash and internal PDF readers.
These are closed-source components made by Google and exclusive to Chrome.Ok but that DOESN'T change my point at all, does it? So I don't see why you bothered to post it. Thanks for wasting all our time.
It does. The fact Steam browser is Webkit-based stops being important in any way. Just like every single non-Chrome browser, it requires external Flash plugin.
Now, if your complaint is "it doesn't tell you it needs it, it just doesn't play the movies", sure, it's still the same. But then why mention Chrome and its internal Flash at all?
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So much hate for such a wonderful service. Yes the interface leaves something to be desired, but the service itself I wouldn't want to live without anymore. What I get:
- purchase and play games in four clicks
- I can safely delete those games when I don't want to play them anymore; I can just download them again later on whenever and wherever I want
- incredible deals (around last christmas I think I bought 20 new titles that were on sale...)
- They were nice enough to hook up the online payment service implemented in the Netherlands so I can pay directly through my bank
- I can hook up with friends, see when they are online and go play games together
- I have games in my steam list longer than I ever had a game on a physical disc; no clutter, no wear and tear, no DRM crap (usually, to hell with Anno 2070 for example), no problems
- I have easy access to a wide selection of cool indie games under one interface
- Easy to use store with videos, screenshots and system specs embedded in the game description
Really, who cares about the interface. My average use of the Steam client:
Boot. Check new releases and specials. Put on wishlist if there is something nice. Go to library. Double click game I want to play. Play. Close steam client.
Is it any different for you lot? All other features are basically bloat to me.
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Obligatory topical cartoon concerning EA madness, more satirical than humorous: (so no LOLs, just a wry grin should suffice):
Seen over in another forum:
Attempt to clean up someone's EA account discovers missing functionality.
Then he tries to close his EA account.
TL;DR version:
- customer dislikes having to supply so much personal information during EA account creation so fakes his birthdate (but never makes a note of it).
- customer sells a couple of games and finds he can't scrub their stats from his profile, so elects to delete his profile
- customer finds he can't delete his profile either; support claims the only way it so close the account.
- support requires the user to submit all personal details (including supplied birthdate) to confirm customer identity before closing the account
- customer finds the birthdate is not displayed on the profile, and gets the runaround. Customer reports this catch-22 situation to support
- GOTO 4
The situation has partly arisen from the customer supplying fake information which trips him up when he's unable to recall his lies, so it's not all EA's fault. However, it does seem strange that the account creation/removal process requires so much customer information, and their support dept gives him the run-around. It also demonstrates that an organisation of this size tends to rely heavily on boilerplate and stock generic reactions, rather than actually tracking the customer communication and utilising a bit of creating thinking.
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@erikal said:
incredible deals
Only if the deal is 77% or lower, otherwise you're still being shafted.
@erikal said:
(usually, to hell with Anno 2070 for example)
Emph mine. I was actually planning to picking that up to satisfy my occasional simcity needs. Any good?
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Anno 2070 ties itself to your hardware. Upgrade three individual pieces of hardware (and yes, that includes a videocard) and you can't play it anymore, even if you buy it through Steam. Ludicrous to the max.
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@erikal said:
Anno 2070 ties itself to your hardware.
That's even worse than AssCreed's always-online policy. I was hoping for a game with some classic Deutsche Grundlichkeit, but welp, turns out that also applies to the DRM. This basically means I would not have been able to play the game, since I've formatted, added a drive, swapped out the CPU and upgraded the video card on three different occasions.
Guess I'll go look for a crack patch... or just ignore the game or something.
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Yeah I could have explained that better. Basically it works like the Windows OEM activation crap.The only difference is that Ubisoft doesn't allow me to buy an effing retail version of the game.
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@erikal said:
So much hate for such a wonderful service. Yes the interface leaves something to be desired, but the service itself I wouldn't want to live without anymore.
Yes? Hello? Nobody here's saying Steam's a bad service, or even that it's a bad program (all things considered.) We're saying it's fucking loaded with WTFs. Which even you have noticed, it looks like. We all use Steam. We all love their sales.
You can like something and simultaneously be critical of it. At least, if you're over the age of 8. Steam is good. It could easily be great.
@erikal said:
Really, who cares about the interface.
I do? That's kind of my "thing". In fact, my dream job would be Valve hiring me to work on Steam, giving me a few good developers, and saying, "ok you guys are outside the normal dev process, go fix all those WTFs listed in that DailyWTF thread."
@erikal said:
Boot. Check new releases and specials. Put on wishlist if there is something nice. Go to library. Double click game I want to play. Play. Close steam client.
This is like the Linux user who says, "it doesn't matter that sleep mode doesn't work, because I don't use sleep mode." Or: "it doesn't matter that Linux doesn't have a good gantt chart program, because only dorks use gantt charts."
You don't use the features I'm talking about. Fine. That doesn't change the fact that those features, features shipped with the client, are all half-broken.
Let's imagine a scenario where someone uses Steam ONLY as an IM client. He posts a post much like yours, but instead he says:
@Bizarro Erikal said:
Boot. Start Steam. Look at Friends List. Check their status. Send some IMs to my buddy. Keep Steam open so I can receive IMs. All other features are basically bloat to me.
Why is that user less important than you? Why do you get to dictate which Steam features should be flawless and which are allowed to be buggy?
It's an extremely selfish way of thinking.
