SimCity 5 - Launch Discussion

[Frozenbeef]

The focus of this simcity is the muliplayer, you play with friends and make a region that competes with other regions.

I don't have friends :*(

[Sephiracle]

Mass Effect 3 says hi. Fan outcry works. Fans created a shitstorm about the ending, it ended up across gaming news sites everywhere, EA/BW responded with the extended cut DLC.

Jim Sterling did a pretty good video on why "whining" is actually more effective than boycotting. Check it out, it's worth a watch.

Yeah, whining probably has more pull now with social media. I'd rather just not make the effort and put the funds into a broken game. I'll buy it when the issues are fixed, no sooner.

---------- Post added 2013-03-06 at 01:00 PM ----------

snip

Pretty funny considering the reasons they give the online only capability of the game being DRM and saving your progress continuously.

[Finangus]

Pretty funny considering the reasons they give the online only capability of the game being DRM and saving your progress continuously.

Yeah, it definitely does't save continuously. In fact, it doesn't seem to save at all while you're in game. How do I know this? Because every time I quit the game, it has to upload my progress to the server because what's on the server is outdated. So, yeah, looks like it only bothers to save when you quit the game. Genius!

[Fluffygong]

Yeah, it definitely does't save continuously. In fact, it doesn't seem to save at all while you're in game. How do I know this? Because every time I quit the game, it has to upload my progress to the server because what's on the server is outdated. So, yeah, looks like it only bothers to save when you quit the game. Genius!

Is there a manual save for those of us who like to play it safe?

[furriusmurrius]

Is there a manual save for those of us who like to play it safe?

If there is, I surely can't find it. Which is baffling, given the nature of city simulation.

[Deleted]

From the sounds of it, I was right to not buy this game from EA despite the maddening urge to.

My last experience with EA/Origin was Battlefield 3. While it was a great game I got a refund due to the browser based game joining, requiring Origin, and getting booted off servers all the time.

I was skeptical about this game because of the above, and also due to Diablo 3's horrible launch issues. I'd love to try this game, honestly, it looks great. The problem is I will get frustrated extremely quickly if the servers are unstable and it deletes my cities etc. The price tag, while high, I would have been willing to pay for a great game however reading the thread and also seeing that site lower its' rating from 9.5 to 8, EA will not be seeing my money for this game.

On a final note, before I get told that all massive online launches go terribly and have issues and that I should wait a week or suck it up and not blame the company behind them, Grinding Gear Games managed to pull off a stellar Closed to Open beta transition just a few weeks ago with their game Path of Exile, very brief server downtimes and no real issues apart from that. They have very few employees and had a massive influx of players to their servers. Why can a company as big as EA or Blizzard get something so wrong, but a small company like GGG can get it right?

[Dezerte]

Make no mistake, always-online DRM is done because of the fear of piracy. It also then makes sense to design your game around that DRM, and voila, you have Sim City 5.

[Pachycrocuta]

On a final note, before I get told that all massive online launches go terribly and have issues and that I should wait a week or suck it up and not blame the company behind them, Grinding Gear Games managed to pull off a stellar Closed to Open beta transition just a few weeks ago, very brief server downtimes and no real issues apart from that. They have very few employees and had a massive influx of players to their servers. Why can a company as big as EA or Blizzard get something so wrong, but a small company like GGG can get it right?

And what game was that, if you could be so kind as to say?

Edit: Hm... Comparing the open beta phase transition of Path of Exile to the launch of a massively popular game series like SimCity... I don't quite think that works, honestly.

[Deleted]

And what game was that, if you could be so kind as to say?

Oh wow, way to miss out a vital part of information! Looks like time to edit my post.

Path of Exile by the way.

Edit: Hm... Comparing the open beta phase transition of Path of Exile to the launch of a massively popular game series like SimCity... I don't quite think that works, honestly.

As much as I get your point, I'd consider the transition to be equivalent to a release simply because it went from exclusivity, to a free for all, and free to play game as opposed to a $60 purchase. Yes EA is a huge company and this game was probably heavily marketed/advertised but in terms of numbers I think it's a fair comparison simply because anyone, interested or not, could hit the download button and have a punt due to the no-purchase necessary nature of it.

When the servers went online for PoE, there were thousands of players waiting to log in and everybody that was waiting was playing within 10 minutes if I remember correctly. There were a handful of server downtimes in the first week but there were no real issues. There certainly weren't any massive periods of downtime and no accidental data loss regarding people's characters. And yet with Sim City, well, the posts above me say it all, I won't bother repeating it all.

[furriusmurrius]

And what game was that, if you could be so kind as to say?

Edit: Hm... Comparing the open beta phase transition of Path of Exile to the launch of a massively popular game series like SimCity... I don't quite think that works, honestly.

You are correct. EA's standards should have been much higher than they were this time around. They paid no heed to the massive amount of pre-orders for this game, and many, MANY things have gone wrong/are still going wrong right now. EA is a massive company. They are not launching an MMO. But even when TOR launched there weren't as many issues as there are with Simcity V. I was there for both launches, and I just don't understand how you can fuck up this badly.

On a side note, has anyone posted the Total Biscuit video regarding this terrible situation? It says perfectly everything I have to say on the subject, but I don't want to post a video if its already been seen.

[reighnman]

If you played the beta it was easy to see that this was going to happen on launch. There was no way I was going to pay $70 for this game, especially at launch knowing it was going to have major problems. Once the game get's around $30 I'll probably pony up and hopefully by then everything will be stable.

Another thing I wonder is how long EA is going to be willing to support the game when revenue drops. It's nice being able to fire up sim city 4 occasionally, I really don't see ea maintaining this unless they force you to purchase new versions.

[Deleted]

ive never played a sim city game, but im fond of the cities XL games. im on the fence about getting this, i enjoy building big spawling cities, which it doesn't look like i can do on here. im not a fan of no offline play, but i can deal with that i guess. how are peoeple finding the small cities size? from ive seen its more like a town sim

[furriusmurrius]

ive never played a sim city game, but im fond of the cities XL games. im on the fence about getting this, i enjoy building big spawling cities, which it doesn't look like i can do on here. im not a fan of no offline play, but i can deal with that i guess. how are peoeple finding the small cities size? from ive seen its more like a town sim

It seems to be focused more on city density as opposed to size, which is fine for me, but I couldn't tell you how it works in action as I have yet to play more than 20 minutes of the game without losing my progress.

One of my favorite things about it is that each building (aside from residential, commercial and industrial zoned 'random' buildings) are customizable - so my hospital may have an entirely different look than your hospital, and my police station may have tons of cop cars in the lot but yours may have a bunch of prison cells. Gotta give it big props for that - one of my biggest peeves about SC4 was that at max level, all zones looked essentially the same and you were always using the 'best' option in regard to that. Also, if you zone an are to be residential, and place it on a dirt road, the houses will be trailers and cottages, but if you upgrade that road (which you can do without demolishing it this time around - a very welcome change) and there is room for expansion within the plot of land that residential zone is placed on, it will expand intoa duplex and then into things like apartment buildings.

But again, these praises are being sung by a deaf man because I have no first hand experience because the game is unplayable. Take it for what its worth.

[Edge-]

So, apparently if you are logged in when the servers go down, and remain logged in until they come back up, nothing happens. You get to keep playing and keep all your progress.

There goes EA's bullshit excuse that you need to be connected to their servers because the simulations are too complex to run on your computer. Granted, I don't know if regional is possible, but that's proof that local play is 100% fine without their always on DRM is just that, DRM. Stay classy EA.

[SirRobin]

Make no mistake, always-online DRM is done because of the fear of piracy. It also then makes sense to design your game around that DRM, and voila, you have Sim City 5.

Its also another way of killing the used game market.

[Deleted]

So, apparently if you are logged in when the servers go down, and remain logged in until they come back up, nothing happens. You get to keep playing and keep all your progress.

There goes EA's bullshit excuse that you need to be connected to their servers because the simulations are too complex to run on your computer. Granted, I don't know if regional is possible, but that's proof that local play is 100% fine without their always on DRM is just that, DRM. Stay classy EA.

It's a shame companies keep trying to come up with stuff like this to justify DRM. It's only to try to stop people pirating the game, nothing more, nothing less. Doing it for the multiplayer? Probably designed around the DRM.

Give it a couple of days and I bet their DRM will be cracked and pirates playing the game offline, origin-free, DRM-free. It's sad really, because the DRM probably won't prevent the piracy of the game at all unless their server infrastucture is particularly difficult to emulate.

[SirRobin]

It's a shame companies keep trying to come up with stuff like this to justify DRM. It's only to try to stop people pirating the game, nothing more, nothing less. Doing it for the multiplayer? Probably designed around the DRM.

Give it a couple of days and I bet their DRM will be cracked and pirates playing the game offline, origin-free, DRM-free. It's sad really, because the DRM probably won't prevent the piracy of the game at all unless their server infrastucture is particularly difficult to emulate.

They claim piracy is their motivator for this but to me its always seemed like they were actually more terrified of the used-game market instead. Like the dlc bullshit they used to spew about funding additional content and then what do they do? Have day one dlc's...

Meh... They are just making up bullshit again, that won't fool anybody who bothers to think about it anyway. Of course that type isn't really their target market anymore anyways.

---------- Post added 2013-03-06 at 04:02 PM ----------

So... Are we getting the claims, like we got with D3, that its really a multiplayer game so it has to be online yet?

[Deleted]

They claim piracy is their motivator for this but to me its always seemed like they were actually more terrified of the used-game market instead. Like the dlc bullshit they used to spew about funding additional content and then what do they do? Have day one dlc's...

Meh... They are just making up bullshit again, that won't fool anybody who bothers to think about it anyway. Of course that type isn't really their target market anymore anyways.

---------- Post added 2013-03-06 at 04:02 PM ----------

So... Are we getting the claims, like we got with D3, that its really a multiplayer game so it has to be online yet?

Sure I've read that somewhere, but that may have just been some guy's opinion in this thread. Wouldn't surprise me if all these big companies had a "DRM handbook" filled with handy buzz words and phrases to use when using DRM. Some excerpts I imagine:

1. The game is designed as multiplayer, and you'd have to be online to be play multiplayer anyway.
2. What person doesn't have an internet connection?
3. Our servers are very stable.
4. We have anticipated the load on our servers ready for launch.
5. Your save games are safer on our servers, we know you probably store your hard drive in a box full of magnets.
6. Be thankful you're in a queue, it's to prevent a laggy in-game experience.

[Frozenbeef]

How dare they try to stop people pirating the game in which they spent months/years of time,effort and money to develop...

[Harnace]

How dare they try to stop people pirating the game in which they spent months/years of time,effort and money to develop...

Thing is - This DRM thing will not really stop people pirating the game. It just screws over the people that actually buy the game.