Ubisoft - Love this game, hate the DRM | Forums

[PolygonHero]

Dear Ubisoft,

Love this game (bugs not withstanding), really hating your DRM. I regularly get booted out of games for no apparent reason. The first time it happened was towards the end of a one hour epic battle, and I lost all my saved game progress. I didn't play for about six months after that. Just started playing again, and your server dropped out in the middle of a game and I was really upset and wished I'd never bought it. I left it for a couple of days and tried the offline mode and was very disappointed to see how much of the game you had removed, namely dynasty heroes, dynasty weapons, multiple automatic saves, not to mention having reams of red text pointing out that I'm in offline mode.

I'm never buying another game with online only DRM. Seriously, never do this again, even though this is my favourite game franchise if the next installment has any sort of online only requirement, or sections of functionality that only work if I'm constantly online, I'm shopping elsewhere.

I spend hundreds of pounds on games a month, now stop treating me like this if you want to continue receiving my money.

Matthew

[Mettyx]

You do know you can click F5 on your keyboard?

Losing a save hasn't happened once to me, didn't you learn anything from other games, like Fallout 3, Skyrim, etc..

F5 is your friend.

[prince_c4spi4n]

I'm never buying another game with online only DRM. Seriously, never do this again, even though this is my favourite game franchise if the next installment has any sort of online only requirement, or sections of functionality that only work if I'm constantly online, I'm shopping elsewhere.

I spend hundreds of pounds on games a month, now stop treating me like this if you want to continue receiving my money.

Matthew

Dear Matthew, I think you probably won't look at this place or my reply again but I'm with you. No more being bullied by these moneysuckers even if it means I can't play any more games.

[Ignor88]

F5 is your friend.

You can quicksave in the middle of hour-long battles?

[PolygonHero]

I never knew that you could quicksave in the middle of battles - Thank you so much community

That makes the situation about 5% better, I will indeed be feverishly quicksaving as frequently in battles as I do on the world map, but I don't feel that maintaining session persistence with quicksave is an acceptable workaround.

That the DRM doesn't even autosave your session before dumping you out is incredible. It was clearly only ever tested on developer machines attached to a license server running on the same local area network, and I bet the developers spent most their time with the license code #ifdefed out because it kept dropping out on them and disturbing their development (say it ain't so Black Hole!)

The thing is that the game looks absolutely stunning, and at it's best plays as well as the Heroes 2 and 3 which I have put so many thousand of hours into. Sure, there are serious bugs and balance issues, and game decisions that I'm not sure were for the best, but if it wasn't for the DRM issues I'd mark it up as a good 8.5/10 and wait patiently for the patches.

I find the nerd-rage Heroes 6 a little over the top at times (enough with the city screens already) but since I was unable to find a link to contact Ubisoft directly for feedback, I wanted to make my feelings clear, as someone who spends a lot of money on games, I gave your always online thing a go, but never again.

Matthew

[Ignor88]

The town screen thing is only the tip of the iceberg. The game just isn't immersive enough for some of us.

[Mettyx]

You can quicksave in the middle of hour-long battles?

What the hell...I am about to complete the final Orc campaign and I'm pretty sure not a single battle in all of the campaigns lasted more than 10 minutes.
Are you eating lunch between the turns or something, watching the TV?

P.S.
I also disabled any auto-saving right at the beginning like with all other games, I don't find such spammy auto-save mess helpful. I can remember to click one keyboard button after each turn perfectly fine.

[PolygonHero]

What the hell...I am about to complete the final Orc campaign and I'm pretty sure not a single battle in all of the campaigns lasted more than 10 minutes.
Are you eating lunch between the turns or something, watching the TV?

Hi Mettyx

Thinking hard, and yes I frequently walk away from the computer to do something else between turns. One of the reasons I love turn based games is that you can take your time about things. Was the last battle of one of the Necro campaign maps IIRC and it was extremely close due to not reloading after some earlier defeats. But sometimes you do want to reload from earlier in a week, at which point having more than a single autosave point is invaluable, something not available in offline mode.

Matthew

[broui]

Hi Mettyx

Thinking hard, and yes I frequently walk away from the computer to do something else between turns. One of the reasons I love turn based games is that you can take your time about things. Was the last battle of one of the Necro campaign maps IIRC and it was extremely close due to not reloading after some earlier defeats. But sometimes you do want to reload from earlier in a week, at which point having more than a single autosave point is invaluable, something not available in offline mode.

Matthew

I usually play in the same fashion. With 3 kids, it is often difficult to get a long session in where I'm playing straight through. Time between turns to do some dishes, cook breakfast, deal with the kids' drama...

I've thus far been quite fortunate (knocking furiously on wood). I think we've been knocked off once since Beta even. That was during the holidays and it was a lengthy time being knocked off. However, my wife, my son and I do the Hot Seat or play our own solo thing. None of us are into playing online and we're not about to start. That we'd need a DRM for how we play is ridiculous.

[PolygonHero]

Checked and you can't save in the middle of battles, so if you get kicked out in the middle of a battle you've still lost everything since your last save.