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General Kane Nash

Fan-made offline fix for C&C4?

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Ok, I know we are getting into dangerous waters for talking about this, but I decided to make a topic here instead of the official forums since I believe the CNCNZ team has actually shown some real concern about the new always online requirement for C&C4.

 

I have talked with APOC about this and requested him and the EALA team to convince their bosses to remove this requirement from the game, I have told them the overwhelming vast majority of the people playing the game will support them if they decided to tray to do the right thing and simply go back to the old antipiracy system of , but, well, I got the answer here:

 

Like I said, whether the design came through as expected, the online mechanism in C&C 4 is significantly less to do with anti-piracy, and more do to with persistent stat/experience tracking pertaining to SP/MP play. A good number of original features tied to that did not make it through, but overall, that was the core design motivation. Ranting against that is fine, just wanted to emphasize what I know to be the design process from the getgo and thought train.

 

Helping to prevent anti-piracy is a good bonus, but it wasn't our core reason.

 

It certainly helps, you can't benefit from multiplayer with a cracked version because you need to validate your master account with a legit serial key, so unless a genius coder has crafted a serial key generator that works (which I don't fully doubt), its not going to be that easy.

 

That's all I can really elaborate further on the matter. We knew full well, like any other PC game, ours would be pirated and cracked as well.

 

-APOC

 

Here is the link of the thread, just to be show it on context.

 

So basically APOC is telling us that the always online was never primary intended as an antipiracy measure, and this effect was just a "bonus".

 

Ok with that, but this doesnt remove the problem, not everyone have a high speed stable connection, this is extremely dependant of in what country or region of the world you live.

 

Such is my case, so far I have had this game since wednesday, in all that time I have been only able to play less than 5 games online because my internet company keeps giving me an unstable connection, you may say "then you should change to another company" well guess what, there is only other viable company at my city, and for the info I have gathered for months it's as bad as the one I am with (for more info look for Telefonica and Telmex on Goggle, and never contract them if you have any other option).

 

So in the end and after suffering of many disconnections, losingmy battle experience and receiving the famous "Error 23" I decided to download and offline fix for the game and install it on my PC.

 

After messing a bit with the files I finally managed not only to make it work, but created a personal account and automatically unlocked the whole arsenal for both GDI and Nod, plus create a system similar to Modern Warfare, so now I can alternate between my online and offline account without more than a few editions.

 

Now here comes the question, wouldnt it be good if the same fix I got and upgraded were available from the fansites of C&C to the average fan? I am sure you find wrong a lot people is suffering of this "always online" feature and since EALA public voice has stated this was actually not intended to be an antipiracy system then I dont seen why it should be denied to those who spend their money in an original copy, and it would be awesome if some people here could help me making the fix avoid the manual edition to minimize any unwanted risk.

 

I really hope people get interested into this, so we can correct the current situation.

 

PS: Sorry for the grammar mistakes, not every was born in english speaking countries with fast and stable internet connection.

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Guest Stevie_K
Ok, I know we are getting into dangerous waters for talking about this, but I decided to make a topic here instead of the official forums since I believe the CNCNZ team has actually shown some real concern about the new always online requirement for C&C4.

 

I'm afraid you won't get very far with this here, mainly because of the forum rules. Unless EA eventually releases this themselves.

 

Now here comes the question, wouldnt it be good if the same fix I got and upgraded were available from the fansites of C&C to the average fan?

 

It would be a wonderful idea. In fact that fix might just make me want to buy the game since it's already at outrages discount in the local game shops.

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I call shams on the "it wasn't to reduce piracy" thing. Tracking SP/MP usage by phoning home could just have been done optionally when the player HAS access to the Internet instead of REQUIRING it. What a crappy way to get out of saying it was anti-piracy.

 

As for the topic.. what is the main point your trying to get at? You want a fix made? Uploaded? Allowed?

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I call shams on the "it wasn't to reduce piracy" thing. Tracking SP/MP usage by phoning home could just have been done optionally when the player HAS access to the Internet instead of REQUIRING it. What a crappy way to get out of saying it was anti-piracy.

As a commercial economics student's point of view, I can say it was to track whatever the player is doing. To get a good picture of what all players do and what they spend most of their time on, is key to making a game that everyone wants. Also, optional would mean a large majority would not accept it, and thus would majorly affect the outcome of the research.

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I knew there's always a reason behind it, but as a bonus instead of anti-piracy, that's the wrong way to go. To keep the online status, try to follow good examples of those servers which won't fluctuate on disconnecting such as the MMO games, their server never resets their profiles, because their game makers know they must keep their connection strong. A permanent disconnection from an MMO game is you're teleported out permanently.

 

But still, I prefer another method which is yet simpler, STEAM. Why can't EA utilizes that in the first place? It's already effective enough to use it.

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I knew there's always a reason behind it, but as a bonus instead of anti-piracy, that's the wrong way to go. To keep the online status, try to follow good examples of those servers which won't fluctuate on disconnecting such as the MMO games, their server never resets their profiles, because their game makers know they must keep their connection strong. A permanent disconnection from an MMO game is you're teleported out permanently.

 

But still, I prefer another method which is yet simpler, STEAM. Why can't EA utilizes that in the first place? It's already effective enough to use it.

Yeah you're right, but STEAM costs EA precious money.

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Yeah you're right, but STEAM costs EA precious money.

 

Oh, now that is ugly. :mellow: But still, if only they should learn from the MMO game makers, learning from pure scratch will result to the problems like we know today.

 

After all, look at WoW, even with the lowest broadband package, a friend of mine played it smoothly and his profiles still kept intact, even after hours of playing.

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I highly doubt if Apoc and EALA will make an offline patch for C&C4, but that still won't eliminate piracy after all.

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This is unfortunately a grey area, mainly because this can be used both legally and illegally.

For the sake of staying on good terms with EA, or at least I believe this is the reason, CNCNZ does not allow the discussion of cracks etc. So I doubt there is any chance of it getting on here.

 

My thoughts: If you bought the game, cracking it is legal and you should have no moral problems doing it what so ever.

 

I just hope that EA will uphold their promise to patch and remove the DRM when they stop supporting the game. My prime concern now is that the game is so tied in to EA's servers it will be hell for EA properly patch it and make it client-side so they really won't bother. It will just cost too much.

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Sorry to bump this six year old thread, but I have a major problem. Yes, the offline fixes still exist today, however, they only work with the retail disc versions of v1.00 and not the latest v1.03. Also technically they don't work with Origin versions at all, because this is what I get when I launched C&C4 the first time from Origin (legal run or offline patch):

 

Yt51S5P.jpg

Edited by zocom7

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As 90% of all such anti-piracy matters, it only makes it a hassle for the honest customer (who runs into trouble when his WiFi is even slightly unstable) whereas the pirate isn't bothered (because he uses an offline crack anyway).

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