The SimCity Thread of Offline Play

[Badnik Mechanic]

Wait, what? Random people can edit your city?

 

EDIT: Oh, maybe it doesn't actually change the other city, as you said.

 

 

According to people who have the game and who have gotten more than 30 min of play time. You can go to another persons city and 'play it' but nobody knows yet if the changes affect the host player right now.

 

Also other serious problems.

 

Nuclear disaster: If a nuclear power plant explodes. Your city is destroyed, the radiation doesn't go away, even after skipping ahead millions of years the radiation is still there. The population is now hundreds/thousands of generations old but they're all still sick and dying from sickness. You can't remove it at all. Only option is a total re-start.

 

Random Rollback: So the game has a feature that lets you either start over or rollback to a 'playable' state if it detects your city is doomed/not going to survive for much longer... the problem... it's doing it randomly to cities which are working.

 

 

They took our jobs!: This is a really odd one, some people are saying that their cities have thousands of people unemployed, however they have a huge industrial sector and commercial sector... The sims in the city are not going to the industrial sectors for jobs, meaning the city is lacking in a specific area for growth and finance.

 

The current theory on the problem? The education level... they're too smart so they're not taking the lower paid jobs.

[Badnik Mechanic]

UH OH CHONGO!

 

 

Amazon have pulled the digital game from it's store following mass complaints about the inability to play it since the game launched.

 

Here are the user reviews on amazon for the game....

 

[Patticus]

I like how EA's attempts to forge a pirate-proof game have resulted in shit tons more piracy than would ever have happened if only the game had a fully functional offline singleplayer mode.

[Badnik Mechanic]

I like how EA's attempts to forge a pirate-proof game have resulted in shit tons more piracy than would ever have happened if only the game had a fully functional offline singleplayer mode.

 

The annoying thing is that the online for this did actually sound quite nice, go and visit other peoples cities, trade with them etc. But it's just that it's destroyed the most basic thing, that being a game.

 

I've had Sim City 3000 and Sim City 4, and I did enjoy what little I played of them. But even if I had a machine that could run this game, there is no way I would get it due to how much of a mess it is just to enjoy the single player.

 

 

... ... ... .Should we change the topic title to something more fitting? Like I dunno "Everyone is online except EA?"

[Patticus]

I've changed the topic title to something more suitable for now. Expect it to change again when more things go wrong at EA.

[Badnik Mechanic]

Best Sim City 5 review so far.

 

And in the world of Sim City. You can connect your cities with rail links.

 

 

See the links? The green arrows indicate the finest rail service money can buy.

 

 

But the trains don't run anymore.... Why don't they run? Because the servers need to be working for that to happen... Theres tons of things like this happening, so much is run from the servers that many games are looking dead.

[Stacy]

Did EA even buy enough servers? Makes you wonder?   

Edited March 7, 2013 by BW199148

[Badnik Mechanic]

Did EA even buy severs enough severs? Makes you wonder?   

 

 

I think the only servers at EA are the ones in the EA canteen.

[Phos]

You realize how this works, right?  In 2 weeks the number of concurrent players will have dropped substantially, EA will have sold basically the same number of copies and they won't have spent a bunch of money on servers that they no longer need...  of course, if they hadn't required everything to run on their machines and instead just had cloud saves for online games like a normal person might they wouldn't even need this many servers.  

 

By the way, even without server problems this game is hot garbage.  You fill up your 2 K square in maybe a few hours, there's no terrain generation or terraforming, no crazy future buildings, and even with the tiny cities, the game still runs very poorly because the simulation isn't multithreaded.  

 

Not gonna get anything like this:

Edited March 7, 2013 by Phos

[Emmett L. Brown]

My scheme to boycot all games that demand always-online connection to play SINGLE PLAYER is working out even better than I could've hoped.

 

Thanks for demonstrating what a terrible idea it is and hopefully scaring straight future game developments, EA. I really like the way you teamed up with Blizzard for this one.

 

 

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122581-Thousands-Sign-Petition-Demanding-Removal-of-SimCity-DRM

Edited March 8, 2013 by Emmett L. Brown

[Patticus]

By the way, even without server problems this game is hot garbage.  You fill up your 2 K square in maybe a few hours, there's no terrain generation or terraforming, no crazy future buildings, and even with the tiny cities, the game still runs very poorly because the simulation isn't multithreaded.

Fuck sake. RPS were saying that when you start a new game, if you set it to private, you control the adjacent regions as well, but only as additional towns, not one big land area so you can at least do it that way. But if the simulation itself runs like crap, then what's the point? And why isn't it multi-threaded? It isn't like multi-threading is a new development!

[Badnik Mechanic]

EA suspends all online marketing campaigns and asks affiliates to stop promoting the game.

 

To be clear we are continuing to payout commissions on all SimCity sales that are referred, however we are requesting that you please stop actively promoting the game," the email reads. "We will notify you as soon as the SimCity marketing campaigns have been resumed and our promotional links are once again live in the Linkshare interface. We apologize for any inconveniences that this may cause, and we thank you for your cooperation."

 

[Patticus]

If there's any consolation, this might all be enough to kill always online DRM.

[Elseb]

Nice to see that the games launch has been such a success. I'll now just go spend £45 on it.

[Gabz Girl]

I knew this was going to fail. It seems that everything EA touches nowadays is either mediocre or awful. Another classic ruined... .-.

Edited March 8, 2013 by Gabz Girl

[Emmett L. Brown]

Electronic Arts:

 

"We're so afraid of people stealing our products that we won't even let paying customers use them"

[PSI Wind]

So, if they don't fix this stuff, they can be sued, right?

[Stacy]

So, if they don't fix this stuff, they can be sued, right?

 

What for? As much I like to see them get their just desserts I don't know if they can be actually sued for anything.     

[Patticus]

Could they be sued for failing to provide customers with the advertised product and/or gameplay experience?

[Stacy]

Could they be sued for failing to provide customers with the advertised product and/or gameplay experience?

 

Really? You would of thought that they of would put "requires an internet connection to play" on the box.

[Detective Shadzter]

EA refuses refunds as SimCity server fiasco enters day 4
Weekend work planned to fix servers; Amazon pulls the game; petition grows; Euro rollout fairly stable
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/395022/ea-refuses-refunds-as-simcity-server-fiasco-enters-day-4/

 

People should be allowed refunds for a product that doesn't work as advertised, especially when the game has been like this for days now.

[Ming Ming Hatsune]

Of course they won't refund their customers. They are thieves. That's why ladies and gents EA won the worst company in America 2012. I still can't believe they beat Bank of America to it...

[Badnik Mechanic]

EA: It's the customers fault people can't connect online.
 

In what has to be the most incredible display of PR spin seen in a videogame crisis, an Electronic Arts spokesperson has claimed SimCity's notoriously awful DRM setbacks are a result of the game being just too gosh-darn enjoyable to quit! No, this isn't an Onion article.

"What we saw was that players were having such a good time they didn't want to leave the game, which kept our servers packed and made it difficult for new players to join," explained senior producer Kip Katsarelis on EA's forums.

The remark has already led to SimCity being renamed to SpinCity (thanks to Hollander Cooper!) in celebration of an almost impressive bit of damage control. SimCity is now the game too fun to work, and it's all your fault for wanting to play it so badly.

 
Did anyone else think we'd see such a disaster of a game so soon after Aliens: Colonial Marines?

http://www.destructoid.com/ea-simcity-s-broken-because-it-s-just-too-much-fun--248186.phtml#JWTv2fot0cH62CJq.99

[Patticus]

SimCity is the kind of game that encourages long play sessions. SC4 was a real time drain for me; I sank countless hours into it without even realizing where the time was going.

 

What'll they do next? Release a patch prohibiting play sessions longer than a couple of hours?

[SIXTH-RATE SOMA]

EA: It's the customers fault people can't connect online.

 

From Destructoid:

Don't worry, EA. We'll make sure this doesn't happen next time