Sim City 5

[StinkyPinky]

Metacritic is turning into a joke...

More like the other way around. Professional gaming sites have become a joke.

Always on DRM and log in queues to play a game single player. What a joke that is. What's even more crazy is that people actually defend this practice.

 

[pcslookout]

More like the other way around. Professional gaming sites have become a joke.

Always on DRM and log in queues to play a game single player. What a joke that is. What's even more crazy is that people actually defend this practice.

I defend it because the pirates are the people here. Don't make me laugh. I go haha to all the people that can't pirate it now like they wanted to.

 

[StinkyPinky]

I defend it because the pirates are the people here. Don't make me laugh. I go haha to all the people that can't pirate it now like they wanted to.

You sound like a shill for EA.

 

[Dankk]

I defend it because the pirates are the people here. Don't make me laugh. I go haha to all the people that can't pirate it now like they wanted to.

They'll wait two or three days until the DRM is cracked, and the game shows up in a torrent.

You don't honestly think the DRM is going to be effective for any longer than that, do you?

 

[Dominato3r]

It's Diablo 3 style DRM. A lot of logic on the servers...

 

[Nintendesert]

I just logged in fine other than Origin causing problems. Damn though! 16 city regions!! This is going to get really interesting.

 

[waterjug]

Because there is no reason for it? Other than greed and stupidity? NOT BEING ABLE TO PLAY THE GAME is a hell of a deal breaker.

Exactly. A half hour wait time to 'log-on' to your private single player game? And companies wonder why their games get pirated & cracked.

 

[Genx87]

Because there is no reason for it? Other than greed and stupidity? NOT BEING ABLE TO PLAY THE GAME is a hell of a deal breaker.

Yeah nothing helps the bottom line like not letting your customers consume the product you are selling. There is obviously a reason why there are issues logging into the game. And how long do you expect this issue to last? 1 hour, 1 day, 1 month, or 1 year? If you expect it to be a long term situation I don't know what to tell you. If you expect it to be a short term issue then how can you consider it to be a deal breaker?

 

[T9D]

I played a lot today. No log in problems or wait. Been having a lot of fun playing.

Had the server say it needed to reconnect automatically but it let me keep playing and didn't make a difference.

I think they just got way more sales then they thought. It'll get ironed out for those who are having trouble.

 

[TheUnk]

ok so I keep losing my progress. How can I force it to save?

Anything I do, once I quit the game and go back in it's gone.

 

[TheVrolok]

Sooo... running the "Getting started" tutorial annnnd it loads.. thennn... nothing happens. Time passes, no tutorial begins. Apparently happening to a few of my friends as well. Thanks EA/Origin/Maxis. Quality release.

 

[pcslookout]

Sooo... running the "Getting started" tutorial annnnd it loads.. thennn... nothing happens. Time passes, no tutorial begins. Apparently happening to a few of my friends as well. Thanks EA/Origin/Maxis. Quality release.

No problems here.

 

[TheUnk]

Sooo... running the "Getting started" tutorial annnnd it loads.. thennn... nothing happens. Time passes, no tutorial begins. Apparently happening to a few of my friends as well. Thanks EA/Origin/Maxis. Quality release.

Mine started out ok, then the game crashed, so I started the tutorial again and it did this same thing. Absolutely nothing.

 

[irishScott]

And it's Diablo III all over again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUl_Cj2_KWU

 

[TheVrolok]

Mine started out ok, then the game crashed, so I started the tutorial again and it did this same thing. Absolutely nothing.

Trying to play with 3 other friends. All 4 of us have different looking main menus.. different number of buttons in the upper right corner. Apparently servers are going down now?

 

[TheVrolok]

Starting to get pretty ragey about this nonsense

Shitload of "Network errors." Restarted SimCity, now I have 4 buttons in the top right corner (which I assume means I was connected) but my friends list failed to load.

 

[Franz316]

Well I actually got to play for a bit after the stupid waiting time. My observations are that in many ways, as a longtime SimCity fan, this game is a step backwards.

-The maps are ridiculously small - you can fill one in less than an hour.
-No Subways? The amount of transportation options pale in comparison to SC4
-Graphics are fine
-I liked the tedium of laying water pipes and electric grid removed
-Lots of random bugs where sims complain about infrastructure which is just fine

Overall it feels like a watered down, simplified game geared towards the casual gamer. That's all EA is good for nowadays.

 

[TheVrolok]

Well I actually got to play for a bit after the stupid waiting time. My observations are that in many ways, as a longtime SimCity fan, this game is a step backwards.

-The maps are ridiculously small - you can fill one in less than an hour.
-No Subways? The amount of transportation options pale in comparison to SC4
-Graphics are fine
-I liked the tedium of laying water pipes and electric grid removed
-Lots of random bugs where sims complain about infrastructure which is just fine

Overall it feels like a watered down, simplified game geared towards the casual gamer. That's all EA is good for nowadays.

At least you can play it? 2 of the 4 of us can play, the other 2 can't connect or connect partially, etc.

 

[Wyndru]

Overall it feels like a watered down, simplified game geared towards the casual gamer. That's all EA is good for nowadays.

Ugh, I'm bummed to hear this from so many people. I was hoping after they did this with simcity societies they would have learned their lesson.

 

[TheVrolok]

Looks like servers are back up. Now I have a 20 minute counter until it retries to connect again. Wonder if it'll connect then.

 

[irishScott]

Looks like servers are back up. Now I have a 20 minute counter until it retries to connect again. Wonder if it'll connect then.

And then it has to stay connected.

 

[TallBill]

And then it has to stay connected.

Haha what a joke. Sounds like the perfect game to torrent.

 

[BigDH01]

100% agreed

I mean look at this:

Its obvious the professional reviews are largely BS if they don't even remotely sync up with what the actual users are saying.

Brings me to this pic:

Professional review sites are jokes. Let's look at two recent disappointments:

Civ 5
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/sid-meiers-civilization-v

Reviewers: 90, Users: 7.1

And the users were still being a big generous given the state of Civ 5 at release.

And another attempt to "Simify" a promising concept by Maxis/EA... Spore:

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/spore

Reviewers: 84, Users: 4.7

It's clear that reviewers have drastically inflated their ratings.

 

[Regs]

Are you to say that most users who are satisfied with a game might have more motivation to review a game than people that have discontent? Obviously not. I think it swings both ways. The old Sim City is dead. They're not coming back with it. It was part of an age were you could download windows 2000 or XP and only needing a cd key generator to crack it. I wish I could say I was disappointed but, realistically, we all knew better.

These games are now made for 12-17 year olds who don't even know what cloud saving is. Sim City 2000 or 4 has become the old SS Camaro of our fathers generation that they want back, but you know with gasoline at 4 a gallon, muscle cars are dead.

 

[kamikazekyle]

From a technical standpoint, offloading the bulk of the simulation processing to a backend server farm is genius. It allows for much more detailed simulations without requiring a beast of a local terminal, as attested to EA's choice in being able to model down to the individual sim level but having a somewhat basic game engine that can run on a variety of hardware. But similarly, placing this processing on a distanced remote server that has to comply with consumer grade broadband connections leads to compromises: small city sizes, extended client update intervals, and, oddly, some compromises in simulation logic (see: sim/traffic travel networking issues, though those were apparent in every SimCity to some extent). And then there's the "always connected" requirement.

Though I still think SC5 will still be a worthwhile addition to the series, but not in a traditional sense. Given its compromises (plus the lack of multiple anytime save slots), it has to be played a bit differently. Each city is, by and large, disposable. Play the city to it's population cap (according to Ars the city starts imploding around 200k), then start over in another tile. I believe if the game was called "SimDowntown" or a rebrand of "SimTown" it'd be viewed in a totally different light. People that love the prior incantations of SimCity were expecting something like SC3k or SC4, but scaled up with better graphics, larger sizes, a better interface, and utilizing modern PC technologies. They got a more detailed simulation, but a game that "downsizes" in most other respects compared to prior games, which were on a "scale up" development.

I'm on the fence personally, and will reserve judgement until I've actually played the game. I do believe that modeling down to the individual sim level is a bit excessive in what is supposed to be a city/metropolitan-level simulation. Something like in SC4 or Cities XL where you can zoom in and see traffic/sims doing actions related to what the larger scale algorithms were processing is a good mix, in my personal opinion. And I also must lament the lack of a terraforming feature. I've always wanted some form of multiplayer in SC for a while, but I dunno about the current implementation. Again, it could very well be that everything meshes together into a fun game for me, or it could just be a reminder of how shallow SC5 is compared to its predecessors.