curious what your thoughts are on the launch or the drm fiasco that shouldnt have surprised anyone but did.

I picked it up on a whim, and have some definite buyer's remorse. Not saying the game is bad but I don't feel like its improved at all from Sim City 4.

As for the launch its absolutely terrible, and pretty much the definition of why tacking on "social networking" features to justify always on internet connection DRM is an affront to customers. I personally spent 6+ hours over the past 48 or so *trying* to play more Simcity and being unable to do so due to various issues on Ea's end. I'm a pretty forgiving guy since MMo launches and the like have this sort of thing all the time, but it took them a rather long time to "fix" And by "Fix" I mean turn off online features until the servers could handle it again. All in all a lot of bullshit for what I essentially want to play as a single player game.
And even if I did want to play with others to take advantage of the region features and such its nothing that couldn't be taken care of p2p w/ cloud saves.

Anyway gratz EA on getting my 60 bucks. Hopefully I'll truly have learned my lesson this time.

Thought about it, since the game looks easier to understand from people playing it, despite the smaller map size, lack of certain features from SC4 (Subways I guess are a big thing) and the overemphasis on making it a multiplayer game...

...then what everyone predicted comes true. Why pay anywhere near full price when you know they're going to nickle and dime you for other features down the road?

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-Formerly Movien, greatest Beastmaster evah

I always kind of liked the Sim City series, even though I'm pretty terrible at it. My affinity for old school sprites, and nice squared displays and stuff really makes me favor Sim City 2000, even to this day. There's just something about Sim City 2000 that I love that the newer ones haven't been able to replicate with their fancy new graphics.

Small map size and weird construction features have made me disinterested in this game. If I do get it, it'll be only because Kitty begs me to, so that he doesn't feel like a fool buying it. He's curious to see what the latest one is like.

I currently have no intentions of buying it, though.

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I got two copies of this game. One for me and one for Julie. The game itself is pretty good. The problem is the "always connected" aspect of this game has made the launch so craptastic that it takes away from the actual game itself.

Theres also a lot of bugs in the game now that make the game impossible to play (GERMS!). However, my biggest problem is this whole modular city thing they got going on. The space to create a city is tiny. Its too small. After about an hour of playing and a population of 50k, you will run out of space.
Water resources are limited. You end up having to constantly create, destroy and move your water processing factories.

Id rate this about 6/10, but it has mega potential to be 11/10 if they addressed the issues.

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COBRA KAI DOJO NEVER DIES
RIP Shiloh

i only played the beta which only gave you 1 hour which wasnt enough time to grow a city organically so I dont feel in a position to comment on the retail version. I did watch Ket play for a while one night and the game seemed fine.
I agree that size is too small, i didnt like forcing the production of 3 or 4 specialized cities. i would have preferred to focus on one metropolis and create devisions within itself if i so wished. like a port area or a gambling district. not an entire city soley devoted to gambling that cant manage anything else. the drm standarss of the game also were worrying. at least with the beta i couldnt rid of the unagging feeling that the game was another sims situation. wherein the base game is just on the verge of funtioning, to make it feel like it flows or is complete will require you to buy expansions and dlc. thats not confirmed but its pretty inevitable.

Overall i feel bad for maxis i think simcity 5 had as great potential as they hyped but it semi failed due to things they were forewarned of by consumers well ahead of time. i dont think ea particuarly cares though because sales seem to be strong regardless lf these issues.

it reminds me kf ff14 if 14 was an american game how the scenario would have played out. if anything it makes me really respect se. as far as ea goes, im simply just not surprised.

ps i hope the people whom truly had a hand in the decisions that gave simcity 5 a terrible launch actually take accountability and not give greif to the dev team. cause the game itself isnt all that bad.

As much as I don't want to negatively spectate this game, the theater EA has put on regarding it has just been far too entertaining to turn away. Moral of the story, do not assume your consumers are stupid especially in this particular business.

Basic break down of events:

-Glassbox engine is introduced, game is advertised early on to have extensive simulation down to each individual sim populating your city. Boasts the ability to follow around a citizen sim for their entire day as they interact with your city and live their lives.

-Players give EA negative feedback regarding always on DRM and small plot size to name a few. EA responds that the always online requirement is not for DRM at all but instead claims that the glassbox simulations are so complicated and complex that it is not even possible for the average computer to handle. Therefor EA's servers must co-process the game for players. No one of course buys this explanation but EA sticks to their guns with their story.

-EA starts beta, only allows for an hour of play. Bans anyone who gives negative feedback and in some cases even people who reported bugs. Banning is all encompassing, meaning that any other EA products you own will no longer validate DRM and become unplayable. Testers are irate, EA quietly un-bans some testers and affirms the bans were a computer error. They resort to merely deleting any posts on their tester forums that make the game appear broken in any way. Most of the complaints again are regarding the always on DRM (which EA keeps insisting doesn't exist) and plot size which they still do not comment on.

-Game launches, EA's servers cannot handle the player loads. Most players cannot get into the game for up to two weeks following. Players whom were able to get on are plagued with issues such as their entire playtime being lost or rolled back and several bugs.
EA responds by systematically shutting off almost all of the social functions of the game and locking players out of the fastest time pass speed (lock out of these features is still in effect).

-People unable to get the game to function request refunds. EA announces that no refunds will be made and for anyone who requests one or charges back their credit card will be permanently banned from EA products. EA instructs customer service people not to assist anyone calling regarding the SimCity title.

-With the reduced speed and after having the game work more than an hour, if one was lucky to stay on the server that long and also dodge corrupted save files, players begin to notice several inconsistencies. Gaming journalist interviews anonymous Maxis dev and gets word that the glassbox and DRM claims are false.

-Modder announces that he has disabled EA's DRM server check and play the game indefinitely offline as well as build outside the city's small plot limits. He posts a video as evidence. This proves EA's numerous claims that the game required extensive server-side processing to make the game function at all completely debunked. EA is forced to comment that, yes, there are DRM checks but dances around the admission of their previous falsities. Their new story is that now the game is actually a MMO and that online functions were their vision (despite most of these features being currently disabled). EA states that in order to make the game even function offline would require arduous difficulty and too much work from the Maxis devs and therefor can not be done.

-Modder responds by making public that in order for him to have turned the game from online to an offline game is the mere omission of one single line of code. Shorter than this sentence even. Says that to be able to return cloud saving to local would require perhaps one week of single-man work.

-Players test the game and prove that the game does not in fact simulate individual sims at all contradictory to how the game was advertised. Agents merely spill from the first open node to the next. It is not actually possible to follow a sim around and observe their life as they do not have one, it completely changes depending on which node is closest to it at the time. Traffic algorithm is equally overly simplified making only one possible street layout functioning. The over simplified simulations have broken the game in several ways. Population is also falsified by making each style of house have a predetermined inflated value in order to fluff the city to appear larger than what is actually simulated.

-Maxis dev makes a comment that at least the traffic agents will be patches to work more efficiently. EA makes a statement that they expect most of the game's issues to be fixed by the modding community and do not see a need to address all complaints on how the game is currently operating.

-EA starts censoring their customer service number from their websites and forum posts. Deletes posts and bans people whom try to help others get refunds on their game. When confronted forum mods responds, "No one wants to call our customer service."

-EA CEO resigns

I probably left out quite a few tracks along the way or placed events slightly out of order but I think you will get the gist of this train wreck.
The sad part about it is, that they have an incredibly popular IP with players salivating to bite into, and an OK base of a game to better build upon (pun unintended) and this entire thing could have been avoided, once again, if player's feedback and concerns were taken more seriously. I should say amongst this that EA has started a promotion offering a free download off Origin, from a selection, oddly one of such option is Sim City 4. I think 5 in this case /can/ be salvaged but for the love of Pete and all things holy please stop lying to your customers EA.
Oh well at least this terrible launch has been amusing, as neutral bystander. It makes me appreciate Yoshida so much more.

There are so many bugs in Simcity its crazy.

I just had to abandon my best city because of bugs. I had a major trade city opened up and I even got the population up to about 250k. I was exporting a ton of processors and at one point I had about 3.5 mil in cash.

Then all the depo trucks stopped. My depos all quickly filled up with product. Then the factories filled up with product. Then I stopped making money. I watched my city slowly die as I couldnt keep up with the hourly debt. Normally exporting processors would make me a few 100k a day. Now I just have a city with about 2 million in export materials, but a bug that is preventing me from actually doing any exporting.

Another city I had was almost as good as the one above, but it was a tourist city, then all the tourist stopped coming. I went from having like 5-6k per bus terminal and 10k per train station to 0. Nothing. The city quickly went belly up around 150k population.

My third best city was a mix of tourists and exporting. Then once I hit the 100k population mark my schools would all randomly close down and open back up. This would reset the education level of my city causing all the industry to fail. If this wasnt bad enough my nuclear power plant blew up since the people operating it seem to have lost all their education over night.

Im at the point now that there isnt anything else I can do with out running into game ending bugs. I even completed a Solar Great Works, but dont even get me started on the bugs when trying to do that whole thing.

ugg... If EA would just take some time to listen to the players and clean up the bugs this game could be the greatest thing ever. I dont even give a shit about the always online DRM.

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COBRA KAI DOJO NEVER DIES
RIP Shiloh

Yarr,

I imagine that's incredibly frustrating, so I'm sorry you had to go through it, but... The thing about the education and nuclear meltdowns was hilarious. haha.

Sucks that the game is still so broken, though

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EA doesn't really care about bug quality control. I've experienced a lot of atrocities from The Sims 3. Their second expansion pack introduced the failed concept of having to complete quests in the Sims game. Only the quests could not be completed past the first few because of a bug. Ages went by and EA still hadn't resolved the issue, so some mods created a bypass for it which made the game function again. Anyone else who complained about getting stuck from then on were instructed by EA officials to go download the fan made mod. Several years later they still haven't fixed it because they feel it was already resolved for them.

They commonly have game breaking bugs each expansion pack they release that make either the current expansion or previous ones no longer work. They don't actually patch the game for these issues until the next expansion. Something really archaic to do, which is try to include the bug fixes on the next expansion's dvd. Only, if you decide not to BUY that next expansion pack, you're basically stuck with a forever broken game. A lot of fans to take it upon themselves to fix the bug issues in the game, which I believe is what has breed EA to believe lately that it's ok to have release poorly tested products as either people will ignore issues until their next purchase or someone else will magically fix it for them so they don't have to devote the funds to doing it the correct way.


Anyho sorry for my Sims 3 rant. I'm sorry to hear you had difficulty playing Yarr it sucks when a city reaches it's end before you could unleash godzilla and your other favorite disasters to end it properly.

Yeah it is annoying Kio and my wife ran into that problem with the second Sims expansion too. We had to use the fan mod to fix it.

The problem with SimCity is EA. If Maxis was still on its own, this wouldnt be an issue.

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COBRA KAI DOJO NEVER DIES
RIP Shiloh