Anyone else here excited for the new simcity?

[willhoot]

just want to talk simcity 5 with anyone who wants to.

[Gennah]

I've never played a Simcity game, and was considering giving this one a shot since it seems like a good entry point.

Then I saw always online drm, which in my opinion is complete bullshit for this type of game any game with any singleplayer component at all and will make it completely unplayable for me.

[willhoot]

I've never played a Simcity game, and was considering giving this one a shot since it seems like a good entry point.

Then I saw always online drm, which in my opinion is complete bullshit for this type of game any game with any singleplayer component at all and will make it completely unplayable for me.

I don't think it will be that bad. I mean if you look it up they cloud the saves, as a person who has more than one computer I like that idea. it is kind of annoying especially during their first beta when their servers were just not ready.

[Gennah]

It is literally impossible for me to play any game with an always online requirement due to my connection. Cloud saves are great I agree, but by no means does that mandate always online for all users.

[dragonshardz]

I've played the Dev Beta, and I'm neither impressed nor excited. The online component is required for gameplay, as the new engine offloads a lot of the simulation number crunching to EA's servers instead of the local CPU.

Yeah, the could saves and curvy roads are nice, but you're sacrificing a lot for that. City size is gimped, basic city sim functionality is gimped unless you build certain buildings - you can't, for example, start out building a sewage treatment plant, oh no, you have to dump sewage until you build the Dept of Utilities and THEN you can place the sewage treatment plant. EVERY city starts the same - mix of RCI, then slowly specialize while wrestling with the spacing of roads to have enough space for buildings to upgrade their density. It's not a terrible game, but there are more reasons to avoid it than there are reasons to buy it.

[Michael101]

Have you seen what they have lined up for the deluxe version, Simmarketplace DLC?

The best firehouse/police station/hospital upgrades, as well as high speed rail and public transportation will be purchaseable on the marketplace as day one DLC

The Simmarketplace won't just be for cosmetic items, but game changing upgrades as well...

[Neowulf]

So they're just copying what they did with the sims and the sim store?

Mostly worthless crap like $5 hairstyles, plus a few extremely overpowered and overpriced items seeded within?

[Xylord]

I am still respecting my EA boycott, and I'm especially happy to do so with a simcity that will be mediocre at best. I have the fourth, and it's well good enough for me.

[Mooseman9]

Have you seen what they have lined up for the deluxe version, Simmarketplace DLC?

The best firehouse/police station/hospital upgrades, as well as high speed rail and public transportation will be purchaseable on the marketplace as day one DLC

The Simmarketplace won't just be for cosmetic items, but game changing upgrades as well...

If this is actually real, I'll go buy simcity4. I have simcity 3000 I think, and I found that to be fun at times.

Modern EA sucks, and I'll steer clear of them.

[miniboxer]

If this is actually real, I'll go buy simcity4. I have simcity 3000 I think, and I found that to be fun at times.

Modern EA sucks, and I'll steer clear of them.

Get SC4 deluxe edition, it has some problems running on 64 bit machines though, just to warn you. There are some work arounds, but it is still a bit unstable.

[elmarko98]

Works fine for me, definitely worth getting as well. And speaking of EA servers...I hate them. I used to play Battlefield 3 but at times I couldn't play because of their crappy servers. EA ruins everything

[Eldmor]

Reviving this thread to see if anyone wants to make a region together once this hits live.

I'm willing to experiment and try any sort of city to fill the need of the region and carry my neighbor's ignorant burden.

[xtrasyn]

I'm still in doubt about this game. I think ea is not doing much for the gaming world except taking their money. Especially the last few years...

[Eldmor]

After playing for almost the past hour, this game is INCREDIBLY fluid and has beautiful execution.

If you can get over the three bugbears of the game (always on DRM, smallish city size, and piece-meal DLC), you'll have a wonderful time. I'm going to educate the fuck out of my city so they can start making computer parts soon.

[Michael101]

I was just switching between twitch streams and noticed the Destructoid streamer was sitting there with a 29 minute queue to re-enter the game after he crashed.

He had over 900 viewers and they were all just sitting there watching the queue timer count down from 29 minutes...

[freakachu]

After playing for almost the past hour, this game is INCREDIBLY fluid and has beautiful execution.

If you can get over the three bugbears of the game (always on DRM, smallish city size, and piece-meal DLC), you'll have a wonderful time. I'm going to educate the fuck out of my city so they can start making computer parts soon.

I am down for making a region. I will warn you though, I am not the greatest player of this game. apparently I am terrible at traffic management.

edit: as far as servers go, they are terrible for this game so far. launch night was a fiasco and a half. however, if you're getting the queue in the launcher, it is a completely arbitrary wait time. if you go to select server and simply select the same one, it will retry the login. keep doing this until it works, you'll save hours of time.

[Michael101]

SimCity launch debacle drags on, as EA disables features | PCWorld

:science:

[Michael101]

Polygon has once again lowered their review score of the game, first from 9.5 to 8, and now down to 4 due to dumbing down of the game...

SimCity review update 2

The question of whether or not EA would be able to support a large, enthusiastic audience for SimCity with a robust server system has been answered with a resounding "no," at least for the time being.

Since the official release of SimCity I have repeatedly tried to replicate the experiences I had reviewing the game with pre-release code on EA's development servers, and repeatedly I have not been able to — not entirely.

The server issues have been more troublesome, and have prevented me (and many players, we learned anecdotally) from connecting to the game at all.

On launch day, during a period of roughly five hours, I experienced the same number of server-related game failures as in my entire 50 hours of review the game pre-release. That the experience of connecting to the game was, effectively, 10 times worse contributed to Polygon's decision to lower the score for SimCity (from 9.5 to 8).

In all other respects, however, when I have been able to access the servers to play SimCity, the experience I have had with it post-launch has been the same as it was pre-launch.

Until today.

EA's decision to remove certain features of the game in order to attempt to stabilize server performance has resulted in a dramatic change to the way SimCity is played and, in my experience, has not stabilized the server situation.

In attempting to play SimCity today, it took me over half an hour to load a game, during which time my connection to the servers dropped repeatedly, multiple attempts to load the city were aborted, and I finally had to "trick" the game into showing me (and then, finally, loading) my city by accessing the list of games present in the drop-down Origin profile menu. The main "Resume Game" button and the list of games in progress both would not show or load a city.

Even then, immediately after finally managing to load my city (New Pittssex), I received a notice that connection to the servers had dropped, suggesting my ability to actually load a game had been blind luck. Had the process taken a second or two longer, it would most likely not have loaded at all, as happened in approximately ten tries previously.

That said, the experience of connecting to a game and loading a city can not be said to be measurably worse (or better) than it has been since launch. Merely bad in a slightly different way. These same issues (and more) have been present since the game was released. What has changed is the experience of playing.

One of EA's major changes to the game has been the removal of "Cheetah" mode. SimCity allows you to alter the speed at which time passes so that you can make changes to your city and then see the results more quickly, or slow things down to address problems in "slower than normal" time. There are three speed settings, and they are "Turtle," "Llama" and "Cheetah." Corresponding roughly to slow, normal and fast.

With the removal of Cheetah mode, SimCity is now stuck with merely slow and normal, which would at first not seem to be too great an imposition, but in reality has drastically changed the manner in which the game can be played. The short version of which is: It's less fun.

EA has also (temporarily, they say) disabled SimCity's leaderboards, which allow players to see how well they are doing against other players worldwide, and the achievements system. I was able to access the achievements I had unlocked previously, but I will not accrue any new ones with this feature turned off. That's not a huge issue for me overall, but as a feature that was once present, but now is not, it's a big deal.

More problematic are the leaderboards. For a game advertised to be connected and social experience, the loss of the ability to see how you rank against other players is devastating. And, more troubling, accessing neighboring cities and finding the cities of my friends, using the Origin Friends service, has taken a dramatic stability hit. Even attempting to load a neighboring city causes my game to crash.

Given this currently horrendous state of both accessibility and playability, and acknowledging the fact that even the drastic changes EA has made to the game in its attempts to address them haven't worked, it is hard to continue to recommend SimCity. The experience currently on offer is now significantly altered from what was reviewed, and there is simply no guarantee that the existing server issues will go away, nor what further changes may be made to the game in order to address them. - Russ Pitts, Polygon Features Editor and SimCity reviewer

[robotnikthingy]

I really hope this blunder will sway all other developers away from requiring constant online access to run a game

[Niavmai]

I really hope this blunder will sway all other developers away from requiring constant online access to run a game

They still made tons of money off of it, because people are too dumb to vote with their wallets. CEOs will see the profit margin, and think it's perfectly acceptable.

[Jay?]

They still made tons of money off of it, because people are too dumb to vote with their wallets. Devs will see the profit margin, and think it's perfectly acceptable.

It's important to recognize that devs are, in general, not the problem here. Devs are just guys with jobs in the creative industry. The problem is the CEO's and other fatcat buisiness folk who don't really understand the world that they're selling to. They're the ones telling the devs that the game needs to have intrusive DRM. Devs are being given a choice between sabotaging their own livelihood, and supporting the gamers who play their games. It's not an enviable situation, and most devs that i've talked to dislike the always-on DRM trend.

[Niavmai]

It's important to recognize that devs are, in general, not the problem here. Devs are just guys with jobs in the creative industry. The problem is the CEO's and other fatcat buisiness folk who don't really understand the world that they're selling to. They're the ones telling the devs that the game needs to have intrusive DRM. Devs are being given a choice between sabotaging their own livelihood, and supporting the gamers who play their games. It's not an enviable situation, and most devs that i've talked to dislike the always-on DRM trend.

Edited because I knew that but was too thoughtless to put it in. :v

[Neowulf]

One prevalent thought amongst publishers is second hand game sales are theft because they doesn't get a cut of the purchase.

So anyone who was interested in this online-singleplayer setup for their games just sees the problems happening as a small price to pay for stopping the evil theft of their hard work by devilish gamestop-like stores and fiendish ebay listings.

Welcome to the post-corporate-takeover videogame landscape. Where customer satisfaction and goodwill are just minor variables in a cost-benefit analysis spreadsheet, ones the business grads are always looking to remove from the formula...

[robotnikthingy]

They still made tons of money off of it, because people are too dumb to vote with their wallets. CEOs will see the profit margin, and think it's perfectly acceptable.

Yeah thats true, CEO's think with their dicks wallets, they dont care as long as it makes money

It actually makes me glad that the gaming industry is moving towards smaller independent companies making casual games, instead of relying on large publishers which control everything.

[Gennah]

They still made tons of money off of it, because people are too dumb to vote with their wallets. CEOs will see the profit margin, and think it's perfectly acceptable.

Oh I wouldn't be too sure about that. When EA starts asking people to stop advertising their game you know things are starting to get serious.