official SimCity (2013)

[Draconian Guppy]

What I don't like about kickstarter is some projects have ridiculously amount of time after the campaign gets funded...

[spacer]

Whee, another promise of a game that eats your money and will probably end up sucking horribly. Kickstarter is great for those!

Not every kickstarter project ends up like that. And besides, I was only linking it just in case anyone here didn't know about it. If you don't like it, don't participate. Personally, I'm not into this type of game, but if I were I'd rather take a chance on a game that promises all that Civitas does over dealing with SC5's bag of awful.

[spaceelf]

Not every kickstarter project ends up like that. And besides, I was only linking it just in case anyone here didn't know about it. If you don't like it, don't participate. Personally, I'm not into this type of game, but if I were I'd rather take a chance on a game that promises all that Civitas does over dealing with SC5's bag of awful.

I would give you opinion merit if you were commenting on the actual game rather than the server outage. Virtually no one has given an opinion without an anti DRM diatribe that made more sense ten years ago when the last SimCity was released except 'I want single player'...fair enough, but that's one point of many. I do think people should try the social option before dissing it, but that's their call.

[PGHammer]

You're not unlike a lot of us. A lot of us also want to play the game, only we can't because EA won't get their act together with their terrible servers.

Did ANYONE ever think that maybe EA *underestimated demand*? That HAS been known to happen, and not just to EA. (The troubles with Diablo III, and similar issues with Starcraft II Wings of Liberty can be traced to underestimated demand. During the second closed beta, EA had only the two US West servers deployed in the United States alone - in the initial closed beta, they had just the single US West server.)

Also, as much as nobody wants to realize it, the back-end database for SimCity is at least as large as that for any MMORPG (such as Starcraft II or even DIablo III) Lack of computational oomph is the single biggest reason for large database bogdown. (My background isn't JUST previous versions of Simcity, but programming as well - and specifically database programming; I've seen what happens with an underpowered database - and it's definitely not pretty. That is why they are having to turn features off - the same servers acting as back-end hosts are also doing computational tasks, and they are drowning under the load. This is the game equivalent of *load shedding* for an electrical utility - and for the same reasons.)

The back end is easily THE most complex of ANY city (or other) simulation program out there in general circulation. I HAVE both CitiesXL and SImCity 4 - comparing either to SimCity's betas is absolutely silly; comparatively speaking, they are tricycles compared to Simcity's mountain bike. However, all the USER sees - or cares about - is what they see externally. As games get more complex, there's lots more that can go wrong. And as with ANYTHING complex designed and/or built by humans, if something CAN go wrong, it will. (Ask Boeing - or Airbus.)

[Tha Bloo Monkee]

^

Well, with the millions of dollars they're raking in, maybe they should be paying some real professionals to foresee the problem and fix it. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to say "well, we're going to have MILLIONS of people online when the game launches, maybe we should have enough server power for it all".

Edit: if it's happened before, then it should be a lesson.

[Tha Bloo Monkee]

Still have been unable to play the game. Due to network errors, I'll be sure to have a wallet error next time and avoid these unacceptable server issues.

[TruckWEB]

Did ANYONE ever think that maybe EA *underestimated demand*? That HAS been known to happen, and not just to EA. (The troubles with Diablo III, and similar issues with Starcraft II Wings of Liberty can be traced to underestimated demand. During the second closed beta, EA had only the two US West servers deployed in the United States alone - in the initial closed beta, they had just the single US West server.)

Why not just buy the game instead of asking for a KEY? Go, open your wallet and pay $60 or $80 and then ENJOY not being able to play the game you just paid. Sit back and relax while EA tries to fix the problem. Keep smiling.

[Teebor]

Maxis is fixing bugs as quickly as they can, but server architecture issues are hampering them.

Hang on, wouldn't they have designed the architecture that everything is running on?

I mean picked the hardware, the OS then organised whatever databases and storage they needed or written their own backend software and tools.

That statement seems really odd.

Come on EA I don't like you but I would really like this game to be good

[PGHammer]

Why not just buy the game instead of asking for a KEY? Go, open your wallet and pay $60 or $80 and then ENJOY not being able to play the game you just paid. Sit back and relax while EA tries to fix the problem. Keep smiling.

TruckWEB, I planned on doing exactly that. Still, with all the nerdrage over the issues EA is having with the game, I actually thought I would save one of the horked-off the trouble and take a product they are UNHAPPY with off their hands. It is precisely such a holier-than-thou ATTITUDE that got me to take everything to PM in the first place.

[Dan~]

From what I've heard it's a load of rubbish, always have to be online is such a stupid idea, but then again it is EA afterall

[PGHammer]

From what I've heard it's a load of rubbish, always have to be online is such a stupid idea, but then again it is EA afterall

Dan, you are basing your assumption on the first four SimCity games - none of which was as detailed as this one. I was in both closed betas and I actually get the reason for the need for online connectivity - while DRM is part of it, that rather large back-end database is an even larger part, and is something the previous titles did NOT have. (I'd know, as I have SC2000 through SC4 Deluxe installed on my desktop.)

EA's problem (with this Simcity) is severely underestimating demand for the game. (In a way, that was somewhat understandable, given all the anger over the need for online connectivity - which EA not only did not hide, but was rather upfront about - just as ActivisionBlizzard was with Diablo III - which also got severely hammered over the same thing. And just like Diablo III, apparently a LOT of folks purchased the game anyway. Finally - and also just like Diablo III, there aren't enough servers, resulting in a bungled launch.)

How many of you played - or tried to - Diablo III during the Launch Week? There was griping about the issues throughout that first week - even AFTER the issues got solved. I started playing the second day, and had NO issues whatever. And the time gap between the last D-II expansion and D-III was how long?

[WildWayz]

I had no problems getting into a server this morning... even creating a game. However, went to come out of it to go to work "Connection to server lost".

Now my city is gone.

[majortom1981]

Not having cheetah speed sucks (the arrow is there but its the same as lama speed. Takes an hour just to get enough money to build a police station.

[TruckWEB]

Still, with all the nerdrage over the issues EA is having with the game...

Wow, nerdrage? Realy? So you think that we all should shutup and just be happy and wait for EA to fix all the problems?

I'd guess that most of us that paid for the game were expecting to be able to play with it, not wait for the poor plannification at EA to fix things up...

[Depicus]

I wonder how many users there are per server as this should give us an idea of how long before they pull the plug and the game is useless. I suspect the servers would be shut down a few months after SimCity 6.

Also why not have your server imaged so you can spin up as many as required then monitor and when usage drops then start shutting down the excess servers. Let's hope they didn't underestimate how many servers were required to make a profit or it could be a very short game.

I'll wait for the pirate copy which i suspect should land sometime before EA respect it's customers.

[scaramonga]

Not having cheetah speed sucks (the arrow is there but its the same as lama speed. Takes an hour just to get enough money to build a police station.

Yes, were paying for features, included in the game when purchased, only to have the EA Gods disable them at will, because they can.

If you bought that brand new car with that super fast turbocharger, only to find it had been removed/disabled due to performance issues, you'd want your money back?, surely?

;)

[+primortal Subscriber²]

So basically I bought a remote desktop client for SimCity and all that's on my PC is music and textures. It escapes me that Cheetah speed requires EA's servers..... What a cluster ****.

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

I had no problems logging on yesterday evening European time. Played through the tutorial, then spent 2 hours building a city in a sandbox region I'm likely going to scrap - I messed up its design.

The game is good as long as it works, and I'm giving EA the benefit of doubt - it's in their own interest to fix the mess and ensure a smooth experience.

[scaramonga]

So basically I bought a remote desktop client for SimCity and all that's on my PC is music and textures. It escapes me that Cheetah speed requires EA's servers..... What a cluster ****.

That's exactly what you paid for. EA can, and will, control a good proportion of this software, when it sees fit. And when the time comes, sooner or later, that includes shutting it completely down, without your permission. They have your $60, why should it bother them otherwise?

Now, the sooner we all, myself included, stop buying into this nonsense, the sooner EA will have no power over the good paying customer.

[HawkMan]

Game is working great now. Logged right in this morning, restarts a non sandbox city in one of the many copies of my avalonia region that apparently was created as I kept pressing create yesterday :)

Been playing a lot today and have an almost 15k argue city now that's working pretty good. Even with a superhero :)

Now that the server are up and able to be logged into, it's he best sim ci type game out there, well worth the money. French police cars have terrible sirens btw...

[+primortal Subscriber²]

That's exactly what you paid for. EA can, and will, control a good proportion of this software, when it sees fit. And when the time comes, sooner or later, that includes shutting it completely down, without your permission. They have your $60, why should it bother them otherwise?

That I understand but it's a shame that corporate greed has gotten this bad and now with EA at full steam with microtransactions it takes greed to a whole new level. So instead of paying $60 upfront with this "new" model of remote desktop gaming just charge me a monthly subscription fee and get it over with.

[HawkMan]

That's exactly what you paid for. EA can, and will, control a good proportion of this software, when it sees fit. And when the time comes, sooner or later, that includes shutting it completely down, without your permission. They have your $60, why should it bother them otherwise?

Stop trolling about stuff you don't know anything about. Try the game before dropping such ridiculous claims.

[scaramonga]

Stop trolling about stuff you don't know anything about. Try the game before dropping such ridiculous claims.

I've forgotten much more than you will ever know, regardless, I've been in and out of game since it released, more often out, but that is out of my hands.

[Draconian Guppy]

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 waySimCity 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

Sauce: http://www.polygon.c...mcity-2013/2630

[ILikeTobacco]

I have yet to have any real issues with the game. The things people complain about aren't an issue for me. Number one complaint is the always online feature. Its 2013. Get over it. Also, you are complaining on the internet so clearly that isn't as big of an issue. Until people start complaining about it in newspapers and on TV, it isn't a complaint that is a serious issue. Second complaint is the city sizes. The cities are made small on purpose. If you had the large cities that we had in the previous games, the regions feature would be pointless. Every city could sustain itself without outside help from the other cities in the region and one city would be able to complete the works projects alone. This game does exactly what it says it does out of the box. If you can't understand that, maybe you should complain to your grade school teachers instead for not teaching you reading comprehension. My 2 cents. Don't take it as law.