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I used to use Aime(or Bana Passport) for playing some other games(i.e. Tekken, Taiko, etc.) and think "I will make one someday for Initial D" every time I go to the arcades.

And suddenly a new version Zero comes out and BOOM. No more need to make a card for this.

Am I the only one for this here?

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Aime is good and easy to use when your arcade Internet and remote server works.

However when either arcade internet connection or Sega's server is down it is not good since its entirely cloud based. A few days ago there was an outage in the All.Net servers so you couldn't even access your data for single player play if you wanted to - and this happened to ALL the Aime games. And where I live, I occasionally see outages for Mai Mai, which also uses Aime.

It also requires the Sega All.Net servers to be there so if your arcade stops subscribing to the Sega servers (remember that they have to -pay- Sega monthly for that privelage), you won't have access to even the ability to save data and are stuck with stock cars.

By contrast, with all the previous Initial D games you still have the ability to make a card and save data even if their online services have stopped. Having different cards is inconvenient and the card reader can sometimes cause problems, but at least your data is saved locally and not based on your ability to access a private subscription based server.

This post has been edited by SonicSP on Mar 27 2019, 09:29 AM

Well, yeah. That's true, since the company takes 3~6Yen per credit.

But thinking about the probability of being denied accessing would be almost 0 : unless the server actually gets down, or the arcades being closed - since I play IDAS at major arcade chains such as Round1, Taito Station, etc.

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This post has been edited by Sakamuke on Apr 2 2019, 02:55 AM

Maybe over there in Japan, but where I live we suffer from Mai Mai network outages from time to time and the machines become more or less useless to a non-casual player after that.

The Aime server was also down for around five hours two weeks ago. That means not being able to use save data at all. It doesnt happen often but its one of the huge drawbacks of cloud only saves.

But the worse thing is less the inconcevenience while Zero is new but after its not being supported anymore. We still have the ability to use save cards for any IDAS game from D1 to D8, even if we can't use the online TA or battles anymore for those games.

For games like D7 or D8, the games are pretty much unplayable without save cards since their real physics arent unlocked until Full Tune. We still have the ability to use card saves with those games despite the online service being gone.

I think a good alternative system would be to have a hybrid cloud and local system. Like save the data on the card but upload it whenever there's connection. This is pretty much how Dropbox and Steam Cloud Saves work.

This post has been edited by SonicSP on Apr 1 2019, 05:48 AM

Thinking in the other way, Sega and the others should make money too, as they're "COMPANIES". I think that's why they made it as such. As the other companies' products(or even Sega's, just like maimai you said) are supporting network services. I think they tried to transfer to Aime ALL.Net network as the cabinet itself is completely newborn.

Most of all, I'm not talking about "How the network&game itself become inconvenient" or anything else.

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Of course they should make money, but that doesn't change the fact that their new system has some disadvantages compared to the old one. Losing features is not a good thing.

And this is the shift we are seeing in gaming in general, and why video game companies want to move to streaming in the future. Because the conpanies want have more control and by restricting things to server services, they can take it away once it no longer fills their purpose as well as take more revenue from subscription instead comparee single purchases.

This is fine genres like MMO where the whole game is only possible with a server but for a racing game to have save data be restricted to the cloud (and a service) is kinda unfairly restrictive.

This post has been edited by SonicSP on Apr 4 2019, 02:27 AM

Ok, I know what you mean. But once again, this is NOT what I was talking about. So I'd appreciate it if you could stop going off-topic.

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