That's sad!! the connection trouble was only the tip of iceberg. but it's good to know that EA is trying to fix all this things. Sim City is a great game and don't deserve to be known as a flop.
SimCity - A Week Later
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- Mar 12, 2013
After a week of patches and disasters, the GameSpot team reflects on their first week playing the game.
355 comments
1 Like I'm sure it isn't a big deal for EA...but I had this game pre-ordered and had no idea that I had to be online at all times to play. I since cancelled my pre-order and will not be buying the game again. Even though I really wanted the Heroes/Villians pre-order bonus thing , I just couldn't stand for that type of restriction on my gameplay. The same thing happened with Diablo 3. I wonder how many more people will never buy this game because of this restriction.
@Donrock12 I will never buy this game because it's not done and it's always online. I hate it. On the other hand, console version sales numbers for Bioshock is five times bigger than PC. 10 times for COD 4. Why? Because of piracy, of course. Always online system sucks, i agree but they have to find a solution. Making the game always online seems like a good protection so far. It stops piracy but it has so many negative effects on gaming experience. I don't think it's a big deal for EA. They have tons of money and they will have more by the next gen consoles. PC gamers? I really don't think they (should) care about us anyway. Money comes from consoles. They will be there. So don't expect any more solution soon. PC gamers are being punished by companies so that piracy has to stopped. Otherwise we are doomed. The only exit light seems to be coming from Kickstarter. I hope companies watch that platform closely and develop new sales tactics.
@Donrock12 I couldn't agree more Don, first i'm glad i didn't make the mistake of pre-order, but a friend of mine wasn't that lucky. The permanent internet conn (which in my area is problematic to say the least), the lag/waiting time in the origin servers (20 min+) and the whole install thing (hours of instal-unistall until accepted by the origin) despite the awesome gameplay/graphics isn't worth the 49 euros and the hassle. As for the permanent internet conn is the same what ubisoft did few years back to fight piracy, and look where that has got, less buying more critisicing/complaints.
4 Like This is for whoever needs an argument for NOT buying the game. I've been playing the game for about approx. 20 hours now and are experiences some fundemental issues with the game mechanics and the way certain features work. People, this game is NOT a finished product, it's merely in BETA. You don't believe me? Read this article!
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/fans-press-uncover-massive-holes-in-simcitys-ai-server-connection/
@LukeWesty Somewhat, but the games engine is now being surgically picked apart. Check EAs' forums. The ship is sinking.
4 Like The tiny city sizes make it more like SimCityBlock and the region thing does not represent the way real cities work.
The tiny cities stifle your creativity and hinder the fun.
So with all the other bugs and issues on top of forced online for what is a single player game for most, it's really hard to enjoy this game.
I've made exactly one city. Filled the map, had a flood of cash and couldn't build squat without wiping out parts of my city, easily handled whatever came up, and ultimately had no real reason to continue. It's not fun to develop a small slice of what COULD be the best cities ever if city size wasn't so crippled.
I enjoy making incredible cities. The tiny map sizes limit your ability to do so. Never was and am not interested in developing regions that aren't really cities.
If they ditched forced online that everyone hates, fixed the bugs, and increased the city sizes considerably, this game would be amazing.
4 Like A modder beats EA's draconian DRM
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/14/modder-runs-simcity-offline-maxis-remains-silent/
Once again it is proved that no DRM can save your game . It only wastes your resources , cut the sales , Destroy the game and punish honest people . 
1 Like @Cloud_imperium I don't normally pirate games, but I wouldn't give EA or any other publisher a cent to encourage them to do more of this crap. The only way I'd ever play this game is with a pirated copy. Do you see, game makers, that you are ENCOURAGING me to pirate your game, not discouraging? I'm not the only one who feels this way. You are punishing your honest customers and turning them into pirates. What you are really doing here is stealing from your honest customers to make up for pirates stealing from you. That's wrong.
Stop shitting on your customers by requiring them to connect to your shitty server to play the single-player game they just gave you $60 for. Stop ripping off you customers by charging them for an incomplete game so that you can sell bits and pieces of it to them later as DLC and microtransactions. $60 warrants a complete and functional game at the very least, yet through your greed you are unable to provide even that bare minimum.
1 Like There's a story here on GS from an "insider" that say's the game could be easily made to run in offline mode but EA refuses to. But sounds like servers are only half the problem. It's to bad bc the game looks pretty cool. Who knows what kind of pressure EA put on Maxis to get it out the door. Sounds like the game wasn't ready.
4 Like The major news outlets are even covering this debacle. http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/03/13/simcity-pr-nightmare-escalates/?intcmp=features
2 Like @RoadStar1602 Foxnews??? WOW!!! They should keep there nose elsewhere but...this is making EA look bad.The bad press may be good for consumers...
3 Like @weizegger8 I will buy this game when it has an offline, single player option, which it should have and easily could have. Until then, giving EA money for this sort of misbehavior and customer abuse strikes me as morally wrong. I can't give them any money for it. Not even if they only charge me $5. Doing so would encourage them and others to shit on their customers again in the future.
I am going to buy this game when everything is fixed. But I might change my mind. It depends on what happens with this game in the next few months.
1 Like great quote by Greg Rucka - 'You're buying books you hate,' -talking to people at Greg's spotlight up at a comic-con panel(or something of the like) '...YOU GOTTA STOP DOING THAT!'
i think suggesting that buying a product only reinforces the Behavior of the creator. GOOD or BAD.
good example - the success of call of duty is only enabled by the massive sales accumulated.
another eg. - looking at Gundam games in Japan, they're everywhere. only cause people still buy it. even though its obviously time to move on.
Ive been in a position that i have bought games just because of the name on the cover. you are doing it too. even if it is crap. its just enabling them.
the sad part is it takes 2 new 'crappy versions' of a series, for the people making the game/comic(movie) to realize its time to stop doing what they're doing.
its still our fault.
5 Like had such high hopes for this game....
cities are waaaay too small, and the smaller cities dont properly communicate with others in your region.....lame lame lame.
Would have picked this up if i could have one city for residential, 1 for industrial, and another for metropolis (or you know........1 big city that does it all!)
But this game seems like 1/10 of what they were leading us on to believe....and I know "multiplayer games are soooo much fun", but really......they're not. I play COD mp maybe.....40 hours and im done, done, and done with the connections....the 12 year olds talking trash....and it being repetitive and boring. I buy games for the game itself, single player, campaign, and what the game was INTENDED for.
Multiplayer used to be a last minute extra to throw on to compliment the story. Now its the only focus, the only resource they care about, and ultimately leaves a flat, boring, carbon copy experience that is forgotten with every clone on the market.
Sim city should be an engrossing experience that you loose days/weeks playing. Not some quick city build, move onto another region, quick build, move to another region. Dilute your product, and loose sales. I wont be buying this until an expansion comes out and the game is 100% a buy-able product. Shame on you EA, maxis could do better, but you are to blame EA......so genuinely upset.....sad day for gaming, sad day.
A week later and the game still is missing many of its former game play options that made Sim City feel like a complete city building game. Thrown together/watered down games are getting old. Gamers are getting wise to this and not buying them anymore. You need to do better EA. Period.
This game has so much potential but so little was made, too bad. All the online play on which the game is based just ruined it, nothing works
20 Like Still won't buy it.
- online only
- no mods support.
- missing features compared to earlier version and other similar games
- DLC will keep coming to make this a $200 game eventually (this is the reason why no mods possible)
- no terraforming. So no recreating your own city
- DLC will come with new maps (hence no terraforming) for expensive costs - buy 3 cities for only $15
- very tiny map. So you cannot create New York City. This may eventually come but this is far below the list before I can buy
- loads of other bugs (from forums, youtube videos and other reviewers)
Overall, this game is not even a 5/10. Gamespot was just being generous.
2 Like Lets look at the reality of this game now. The server issues generated a alot of hate initially and rightfully so. People couldn't play their game. But now that people have been able to get some time in and play, the problems with this game go much deeper than server issues not to mention since you CAN play this offline when their server disconnects it calls into question their claims that some game calculations are done on their servers which seems now to be an out an out lie. The server connection requirement now seems to be for the DRM and nothing else.
Now that folks have had a chance to play you quickly discover the game is riddled with bugs, stupid ai issues and stuff that flat out doesn't work. Any posting here about all the fun they've had has obviously not played it much or you'd quickly discover how fundamentally flawed the game truly is but don't take my word for it. Go read the simcity forums and discover the truth about this and what the fans have uncovered.
I cannot recommend this game as it is not a finished product by any stretch of the imagination and the rampant flaws don't make it unplayable, just pointless.
I've been playing the game for 37 hours according to Origin and I've run into some annoying problems. First and foremost, it's the traffic that bothers me and its poor AI. You start to get gridlocks as your population grows and everything stops working. You can only deal with the traffic to an extent because there will always be some cars bugged out that don't move unless you replace the street. Your city can turn into a hell hole in just a few minutes because all of your firetrucks decided to make a kongo line behind a car that cannot move. My city went to hell when none of the garbage trucks worked and everyone started to get sick.
4 Like All i have to say is, that if this was called anything else besides "Sim City" it would already be gone by now. The only reason people are playing this is because of its legacy. I'm not saying it's a bad game, since when it works people seem to like it, but it's a broken game, and without it's famous name, it would have already failed miserably and nobody would have heard about it again.
3 Like While that may be the case with some or even many - I can assure you as someone who has pumped 70+ hours into this game already (lost cities to server, broken cities due to logic now account for 100% of my attempts in that time) I would LOVE this game to be good. I can see the "Maxis" through the "EA Hate". But mid game onwards the game is broken. I don't need a lecture in social dynamics to tell me I'm wrong in stating this. It just is.
Here's one guy playing offline for ages - the waffle under the vid has links to all sorts of people doing/reporting the same
http://youtu.be/c9AdHMcH9Q4
Now - to make it worse (for the devs) and proving them as liars. People are posting games running for 20 minutes, 40 minutes even close to an hour..with NO INTERNET CONNECTION (lead unplugged). Even journos from magazines are trying out this.
20 minutes+ offline zoneing building, roads, transport, power, water, parks, fire and emergency department buildings. growth across all sectors. ALL OFFLINE isn't "a bit of local caching" it's the game running full bore ON A LOCAL PC. For me this proves the online requirement is a crock of $%^&, pure DRM, and the poorly realized multiplayer elements are a trojan horse for badly implemented DRM. One that has taken the community all of 8 days to see through.
The TImes of London, Fox News, The BBC, The Telegraph, The New York Times, CNN, NBC...all talking about what a cluster%$^& the publishers attitude and support for this game is. From the heady days 8 days ago of "pro" reviewers averaging over 90% - it's now just gone below 65% on metacritic. User reviews at 17% (1.7 out of 10) So now even the pro's are seeing the crud through the hype.
I'm sorry but for a company like EA and Maxis, which are not a newbies in the industry, this is an epic fail. Sim City must be the worst released game in the history of videogames... simply it is just insane what is going on with this game. And I'm a fan of the franchise.. but come on!
1 Like http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/9362695.page
This thread is all you nead to show you what a sham this game is.
1 Like Game needs a campaign, once the initial novelty of building a tiny little city is gone the fun wears off. Needs something to keep challenging you and showing off the finer points of the game. As is it's just a tool set with little people running around that have no real purpose in the game.
10 Like Jesus fucking christ, DRM is the REASON why people pirate your games EA! It doesn't protect the game at all. By putting DRM in your games you make them less convenient to use than the pirated versions. It might take longer for the pirates to crack the game with DRM, but it will still fucking happen, it's inevitable either way. The only reason you're using it is to control the already paying customer and that is fucking despicable. These people have proven their loyalty to you by shelling out the 50-60 dollars required to play the game. That should be enough, but instead, you incompetent jackasses try to dampen the consumer experience further rather than make it more convenient. Just look at Valve. They're a corporation. They're out to get money. They get their money. How? By providing a convenient service with periodical sales! The customers of Valve almost never feel cheated when they buy games off of Steam. It's a different story altogether with Origin though. Is your board of directors just a bunch of chimpanzees in a room with John Riccitiello at the head of the table going over the list of people he's pissed off over the years? No? Well it certainly fucking seems like it. Get your fucking act together EA. Try to make the best games you can make without ripping off other popular franchises. Fire your marketing department and hire some human beings. Create a franchise with a definitive end so new stories can be told within that games universe. Get rid of DRM. Only sell microtransactions that don't break the game and only implement them in free to play games or games cheaper than $60. Try and change the prices of your games. Riccitiello even said himself that games these days were ridiculously expensive. Earn yourselves some fucking goodwill. You guys used to be so much better than this. Remember that article "Can a Computer Make You Cry"? You can still be that EA if you try, but right now, you are the everything that is wrong with this industry. Please try and be better, for all of our sakes. You are a driving force in this industry. You can take risks. You can be awesome. Do it.
1 Like @clr84651The same can be said for any game. Try playing it yourself, and if you don't enjoy your experience (Enjoyment is what it's for) then for you, it is a waste. But I myself can't wait to be playing when i receive my copy this weekend, and I think it's going to be a lot of fun for me. The question you need to ask yourself is - Is it simcity you hate, or all games? Aren't they all a 'waste' of time and money? It just depends what you are looking for, and if it's fun, then I'd say Simcity is a pretty good contender for me.
3 Like @gedofgont In about 15 years, when you're all grown up, you'll understand how bad of a company EA is. Enjoy your firetrucks driving around the same block while the rest of the city of burning down, and other things that will never work properly.
1 Like It's astounding to me that so many people are supporting always-online DRM by purchasing this game. We create the next generation of games with our wallets - and what we are creating is not pretty.
I've been really enjoying playing the game with my mates but hell yeah there is a fuck load of bugs. I really want them to fix the airport. That has annoyed me more than most in game issues. I clear a nice big space and put the airport down. But no this flat plot of land is apparantly not flat enough to put down another runway. Ahhhh and then when I had enough cash I demolished it and put a new one elsewhere. Well guess what happens then. It is so not funny. Grrrhhh. I've given up on airports.
Also the server disconnect message on the top left pops up all the time. Whatever you do, do not try to visit your mates city when they're down and pray to god that they don't go down during the loading screen. My advice is hide out in your own city until they have fully fixed the server issues. Like a little hermit mayor.
3 Like To all those saying they won't buy this game: Good. Don't. That's more server space for me and my friends and family. Always-online DRM? Sure it's a bit intrusive, but it really doesn't bother me. I have a stable internet connection and I'm playing it on a desktop. If that bothers you. Fine with me. Again, don't buy the game, then. FWIW, I've had a fun time playing the game so far and I'm looking forward to the social element (with friends and family who also play the game). My servers have been stable since Saturday afternoon - a whole 5 days after launch (zOMG!!!!!). So, for those of you wasting your time ragging on the game day-in and day-out. Cool with me. Do you. If it were me in your position, I'd find another fun game (of which there are hundreds if not thousands) to play and not waste my time on something I hated so much. So, if you say so under the umbrella of internet anonymity, don't buy it. Cool with me.
@CASwim1111 You said you didn't mind the DRM. Okay. We'll go with that. How come you didn't mention the horrible Sim AI that causes traffic issues, the inflated population numbers causing problems, small city size, lack of needed features, and all around game breaking glitches? Did you know you can build an entirely residential city with no other cities in the region and your citizens will tell you there are "good places to shop"? Crap like that is what is wrong with the game, BESIDES the completely unnecessary DRM that we were LIED TO about.
1 Like @CASwim1111 Dude, You do realize that kind off attitude would bite you in the arse? Imagine if you had it your way and only you and your friends own the game. Then forget how stable your internet is coz that would be irrelevant, considering the fact that they wouldn't even be able to afford to maintain the servers, hence you can't play a game that you purchased, oh and the servers will more than likely disappear in the future sometime making that game apart of your collection just become decoration in your storage.
@CASwim1111Always-online DRM? Sure it's a bit intrusive, and you think that is ok after putting down your hard earned $$...really?
@ShimmeringSword @Pyerun Yes, I bow down at the altar of EA every morning after waking up before having breakfast. How did you know? I know you two are fighting the good fight... so keep it up!
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