Sim City 5

[greenhawk]

Anyone notice how property values don't increase properly anymore, at least not like they did a few days ago?

Anyone else notice this?

probably one of the "new" items removed to lighten server load. Slower updates.

Just another item removed to make the gaming experence better for all. I epect more and more items to be slowed or disabled until they have enough servers / rewrite the back end code to be more balanced.

 

[Wyndru]

Stupid question...what Simcity 5?

ftfy

I have a feeling people are going to be calling it SC5 for years to come (unless they actually release a SimCity 5).

Although SimCity isn't descriptive enough and SimCity2013 sounds stupid. Way to go EA for not naming your product correctly!

 

[Jeff7]

probably one of the "new" items removed to lighten server load. Slower updates.

Just another item removed to make the gaming experence better for all. I epect more and more items to be slowed or disabled until they have enough servers / rewrite the back end code to be more balanced.

...wow. Goooo cloud gaming.
"We can also take away features from you at will! No refunds."

ftfy

I have a feeling people are going to be calling it SC5 for years to come (unless they actually release a SimCity 5).

Although SimCity isn't descriptive enough and SimCity2013 sounds stupid. Way to go EA for not naming your product correctly!

"It's a relaunch! It's so awesome that it doesn't need any other descriptors!"

Yes, Marketing, keep telling yourselves that.

Stupid question...what's a DLC?

Downloadable Content

A continuous revenue stream.

 

[SpatiallyAware]

Anyone else still considering cancelling the charge with CC company?


I'm so frustrated... I actually did get in a somewhat decent weekend of gametime, minus the GLARING bugs and features that were removed after I bought the game.

Then yesterday, after 2 hours of trying to get into NA East 2 and 3 I finally got in. Spent a couple hours redoing my roads and everything just the way I like it, and of course got booted out with a black screen saying 'server disconnected'.

This morning I loaded up the city and not only are my changes gone, but it looks like it 'rolled back' even further than my last valid save.



I just have no attachment to any of the cities, and that was why I liked the sim city games so much. I simply don't care about 'making my sims happy' since you really can't consistently play long enough to get any value out of it. You can't consistently connect back to the same city anyway, so anyone who plays has a bunch of junk spread across 5+ unreliable servers.

This, to me, is not sim city, not even a 'reboot'. I don't get the same enjoyment out of it, it feels almost like some other game type altogether.


Right now, for me, the game goal is 'get as much money as possible before I lose my city' whether through server crashes or lack of resources, and that is not what they sold me on.


If I can't connect this afternoon I'm cancelling the charge. I don't care about the origin account or EA.

 

[Sho'Nuff]

Sorry to hear that many of you are still having problems. I am one of the lucky ones, it seems. I've been able to play the last few nights without issues. My city has saved each time, and is there when I log in the next day. Hopefully it gets better for you all.

After much trial and tribulation, I finally learned that the way to increase pop size in an industrial city is to keep property values low and increase density. For a long time I kept focusing on increasing value, and I couldn't understand why my factories were screaming for workers when I had tons of sims saying that they had no job. Turns out that rich educated sims don't want to work in coal and ore mines. The elitist bastards

 

[SpatiallyAware]

Most of the issues seem to revolve around the initial connection. Once you're in game, you can usually stay connected.


In my situation I'm trying to enter the game during peak hours, and can't get in.

 

[Nintendesert]

Anyone else still considering cancelling the charge with CC company?


I'm so frustrated... I actually did get in a somewhat decent weekend of gametime, minus the GLARING bugs and features that were removed after I bought the game.

Then yesterday, after 2 hours of trying to get into NA East 2 and 3 I finally got in. Spent a couple hours redoing my roads and everything just the way I like it, and of course got booted out with a black screen saying 'server disconnected'.

This morning I loaded up the city and not only are my changes gone, but it looks like it 'rolled back' even further than my last valid save.



I just have no attachment to any of the cities, and that was why I liked the sim city games so much. I simply don't care about 'making my sims happy' since you really can't consistently play long enough to get any value out of it. You can't consistently connect back to the same city anyway, so anyone who plays has a bunch of junk spread across 5+ unreliable servers.

This, to me, is not sim city, not even a 'reboot'. I don't get the same enjoyment out of it, it feels almost like some other game type altogether.


Right now, for me, the game goal is 'get as much money as possible before I lose my city' whether through server crashes or lack of resources, and that is not what they sold me on.


If I can't connect this afternoon I'm cancelling the charge. I don't care about the origin account or EA.

I'm getting a free game from the whole ordeal. I'm not ADD enough yet in life to squander a free game over a few days of problems.

 

[BrightCandle]

I loved the prior sim city games and I really wanted to get this one. I knew not to preorder as I could see it had very problematic DRM that would likely cause launch problems although I didn't anticipate quite the mess that has unfolded. I may have unfairly blamed EA for this mess, it seems not only is the DRM very buggy but so is the simulation game once you get onto it. I think I will be waiting quite some time before I play this one, but thanks to everyone else that bought it the bugs will likely get fixed in due time.

Not sure really how these good but broken games are meant to sell in the world. I am benefitting eventually from everyone else alpha testing the initially poor releases, but Maxis is still making money out of behaving poorly. The economics of this shouldn't be working the way they are.

 

[SpatiallyAware]

I'm buying sim city 4 tonight. I'll write up a comparison between 4 and 2013.

FWIW, I LOVED sc2000 but haven't played any sim city game since then.

 

[redrider4life4]

I didn't realize some people were still having issues, I have been playing with no issues since Saturday. The only bugs I know about are casinos and great works projects not updating real time.

I can hold off on a casino city for the time being, I'm still perfecting my oil drilling city to the tune of 800k/day profit.

 

[SpatiallyAware]

I didn't realize some people were still having issues, I have been playing with no issues since Saturday. The only bugs I know about are casinos and great works projects not updating real time.

I can hold off on a casino city for the time being, I'm still perfecting my oil drilling city to the tune of 800k/day profit.

People are definitely still having massive amounts of issues. I spent an hour or two on the forums last night and the connection issues are nowhere near fixed.


If you are the type to start a game and never exit then you likely won't notice much. If you bounce between regions you'll see it a lot.

And if you work a regular job, want to come home and play....... Yeah GL with that.

 

[Anteaus]

Anyone else still considering cancelling the charge with CC company?

Never crossed my mind. First, as someone who actually purchased Ultima IX Ascension at release I can tell you it's not new to buy a crap game on occasion. The bugs in Ultima IX were so extraordinary that after they finally got the game stable they literally mailed a new install disc to everyone who purchased the game.

Consider this about Simcity.

1. Everyone knew it would require 100% online connectivity and after the Diablo 3 fiasco everyone knew the risks.

2. It's EA and while I'm not one of the people who usually beats up on them, their track record is hardly a secret.

3. The game itself is generally fine. Most of the problems are serverside. Maybe that sucks, but refer to #1. This is not an excuse, but it is an important distinction.

I'm incredibly disappointed with how EA screwed up the release, but on the flip side I'm pleased that they owned up for the mistake and are doing their best to make good. While I understand why they don't want to give refunds, they are offering a free game to people who took the gamble. It's not a perfect fix, but it's a start.

I think people who actually contest with their credit card are taking it too far. Now, if the game was still not working at all I think a case can be made, but at this stage Simcity is just another buggy game. Maybe people have some buyers remorse, but that's how it works sometimes.

 

[SpatiallyAware]

I consider myself a technical person but casual gamer. I had heard of people having issues with huge online games, a la diablo III, but I did not think any simcity game would be ANYWHERE near this problematic.


I still can't believe people are trying to blame the customers for being upset about the issues. "You should've known" is such a lame, terrible excuse for what is going on with this situation.

It's disgusting how much some of you stand up for and make excuses for EA. This is not just 'another buggy game'. When I come home and spend 2 hours just going back to server screens that is not "just buggy".

When I spend 2 hours working on a city and all changes are lost, that is not "just buggy".



If these issues were only related to region sharing, or some minor portion of the game then it can be called "just buggy". This is far FAR past that.

 

[SpatiallyAware]

And this "free game" thing is such a bunch of BS, let's wait until the 18th and see what "free game" they were so generous to offer us.

 

[Hoober]

And this "free game" thing is such a bunch of BS, let's wait until the 18th and see what "free game" they were so generous to offer us.

According to the post on EA's forums, it's 'any game from EA's portfolio.'

 

[Hoober]

Apparently I read that wrong. It's actually -- "we’re going to offer you a free PC download game from the EA portfolio."

 

[tdawg]

People are definitely still having massive amounts of issues. I spent an hour or two on the forums last night and the connection issues are nowhere near fixed.


If you are the type to start a game and never exit then you likely won't notice much. If you bounce between regions you'll see it a lot.

And if you work a regular job, want to come home and play....... Yeah GL with that.

I haven't had any server issues so far and have only seen the countdown screen once. I've never been bounced from the server out of the game either. I'm on the west coast and connect to NA East 3 when I get home from work with no problems. If you're on the east coast looking to play at peak tines, have you tried a west coast server (since your 5pm is only 2pm out here)?

 

[Anteaus]

I consider myself a technical person but casual gamer. I had heard of people having issues with huge online games, a la diablo III, but I did not think any simcity game would be ANYWHERE near this problematic.


I still can't believe people are trying to blame the customers for being upset about the issues. "You should've known" is such a lame, terrible excuse for what is going on with this situation.

It's disgusting how much some of you stand up for and make excuses for EA. This is not just 'another buggy game'. When I come home and spend 2 hours just going back to server screens that is not "just buggy".

When I spend 2 hours working on a city and all changes are lost, that is not "just buggy".



If these issues were only related to region sharing, or some minor portion of the game then it can be called "just buggy". This is far FAR past that.

I'm not defending EA. I'm not saying people should have known that this game would have problems. I'm just saying that with every PC game there is an element of risk, especially in the first week. No ever does think it will be problematic until it is. This could have been any game. I blame EA completely for the screwup.

I don't blame the customers for it. The only problem I have with customers in this particular case is that many of them use hyperbole to make their points. There were only a couple of days where the game was down completely. The rest of the time the game was unstable but operational and has been improving every day. They act like EA is killing cats and slashing tires.

Again, I reaffirm that this is 100% EAs screwup. No one is blaming customers. If someone can prove to me that EA has no intention of making good then I'll recommend everyone contest their credit card payments, but that simply isn't the case at least not yet.

 

[Anteaus]

Apparently I read that wrong. It's actually -- "we’re going to offer you a free PC download game from the EA portfolio."

It's my understanding that they are going to offer the player a free game of their choice from Origin, but it remains to be seen if they are going to restrict it to titles not released in the past few months. I doubt they would actually preselect a specific game because there is a chance people will already have it.

 

[Subyman]

If you guys haven't played Sim City 4 Deluxe, by all means get it instead. It is much more robust than the new Sim City and still very playable. The Rush Hour expansion is great.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

I didn't know that SC5 was even out until I read on the BBC news that Amazon had stopped selling digital copies of the games because none of the gamers could connect to servers.

I immediately laughed out loud and rolled my eyes, I stayed away from this title specifically because it was both origin only and also online only, it was a recipe for disaster from day one and even after they've corrected all these issues EA will only disable the online service after 5 years or so anyway.

So glad I stayed away from this, I have literally no sympathy for anyone who bought this, you deserve what you get for supporting this kind of game development, I hope any CC chargebacks you do fail - maybe you'll learn for next time to simply not support this kind of crap

 

[PrincessFrosty]

If you guys haven't played Sim City 4 Deluxe, by all means get it instead. It is much more robust than the new Sim City and still very playable. The Rush Hour expansion is great.

Oh and I second this, SC4 is actually a very good game, classic Sim City feel.

 

[paperfist]

I'm buying sim city 4 tonight. I'll write up a comparison between 4 and 2013.

FWIW, I LOVED sc2000 but haven't played any sim city game since then.

SC4 is like an advanced version of this new Sim City. Backwards we have gone...

Don't even go to simtropolis.com or you'll be sucked into downloading mod after mod after mod to further enhance your playing experience. The NAM download is a must by the way which is funny, when EA can't fix stuff the community can. In the new Sim City it's not possible due to the server tie in.

 

[waterjug]

SC4 is like an advanced version of this new Sim City. Backwards we have gone...

Don't even go to simtropolis.com or you'll be sucked into downloading mod after mod after mod to further enhance your playing experience. The NAM download is a must by the way which is funny, when EA can't fix stuff the community can. In the new Sim City it's not possible due to the server tie in.

ah, so simcity=civ V, simcity 4 = civ 4. That's what I figured, games keep getting dumbed down.

 

[gorcorps]

Reading this thread makes me want to get Sim City 4.

How does the game work? Is there just a sandbox mode you can go through with everything unlocked with no goal other than to raise money to make your city awesome?