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[TL]Hanabi - US West 4
[TL]Ohana - US East 4
[TL] Destination East 4 |
On March 08 2013 16:42 fr0d0b0ls0n wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2013 16:06 Al Bundy wrote:
"Ok guys, here's a game from 2003. Look at these huge regions, they're entirely covered in buildings, man they look like actual metropolises. Look at these AI and gameplay tweaks that the community has come up with. Ok, Let's scrap all that shit and produce something that's more shallow and more pretty. If someone asks about missing features and whatnot, just tell them that we'll release DLC sometime in the future".
People need to understand that development time and resources are limited, so you can't have too many features. Even if those features has been done before, they just don't magically appear coded and bug-free on a new game running on a new engine.
I guess asking for a game to be better than its predecessor is just too much to ask. Please bear in mind that we're talking aout EA and Maxis here, not some indie devs.
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On March 08 2013 16:06 Al Bundy wrote:
The more I learn about this game, the less I want to buy it. This is not a pleasant feeling because I've been a fan of the series since the Sim City on SNES.
You are right, some of the features in this game are truly impressive. However some of them are definitely questionable. The Sc4 community has been tweaking and improving the game for ten years. And yet developers chose to disregard everything that was built and went for weird design choices. How can you go from Sc4's insane depth of gameplay, to the crappy region design that's found in SC5? Please tell me how do you manage to produce something inferior to a game that was released ten years ago, when you have so much money and experience? Sounds like Diablo 3 all over again.
"Ok guys, here's a game from 2003. Look at these huge regions, they're entirely covered in buildings, man they look like actual metropolises. Look at these AI and gameplay tweaks that the community has come up with. Ok, Let's scrap all that shit and produce something that's more shallow and more pretty. If someone asks about missing features and whatnot, just tell them that we'll release DLC sometime in the future".
What happened at Maxis? Are they slaves to the money-hungry EA or did they make these choices by themselves? As a veteran PC gaming enthusiast, I don't know what to think anymore. Maybe I'm just not the target audience.
Sorry for ranting but it's hard to keep your cool when these people ask 70€ for this game. Yes, it features some really interesting things, nonetheless I can't help but feel that the positive elements are being overshadowed by the negative ones. I'll just wait a few months to see whether they care to fix the game or not.
So do you judge the game after you play by yourself or you just do it with the other people's opinions that can be biased? From what I play so far, the game has a lot of depth that I think I still only scratch at the surface at this time.
I'm also someone who was in PC gaming since I was 7 years old and I could say SimCity was one of the very first game I played. Still, I am very impressed by the new SimCity and I think Maxis did a very good job on modernizing the game for newer generations. It is a good game by its own, even though it might be different from the older entries.
About cities's size, I can totally see why they choose to keep it small and expand the size later. Have you ever seen the video about how their simulation engine works? Everything in the game, every building, car and other stuffs is being calculated all the time with the new engine. The calculation requirement would increase exponentially with the increase in size of the city. And they want the game to run on even old PC and that's totally fine. This is a game that target wide range of audience, not only hardcore gamers that have 1000$+ USD rig.
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After Steam got popular, I don't know anyone who pirates games. I know it's happening, but majority still buy the game on Steam. This always online thing is just bullshit, and I hope it makes EA lose a lot of money.
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On March 08 2013 16:55 Arnstein wrote:
After Steam got popular, I don't know anyone who pirates games. I know it's happening, but majority still buy the game on Steam. This always online thing is just bullshit, and I hope it makes EA lose a lot of money.
Say that in Thailand and you will get laughed off. I would say around 30% of gamers in Thailand (and I would argue in SE Asia countries) buy and use pirated copy DVD. You read it right, they "buy" a pirated copy manufactured in the country. Another 30-40% would torrent the games. There's a saying in Thailand that "only idiots buy a legit copy (of games, anime, movie, etc.)" since the price of pirated copy is like 3-10x lower than the legal ones.
One story about gaming in Thailand that is related to EA is that piracy managed to drive EA out of business here. One of the reason that EA Thailand closed down was that the pirated copy sold a lot more than the actual copy to the point that operating a local business in Thailand was no longer profitable and EA closed down the office in Thailand.
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While I understand the limitation of city size because of the simulation of every sims... this doesn't make me more happy about it lol.
It still is small, "why" isn't making it fine.
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On March 08 2013 16:53 Veldril wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2013 16:06 Al Bundy wrote:
The more I learn about this game, the less I want to buy it. This is not a pleasant feeling because I've been a fan of the series since the Sim City on SNES.
You are right, some of the features in this game are truly impressive. However some of them are definitely questionable. The Sc4 community has been tweaking and improving the game for ten years. And yet developers chose to disregard everything that was built and went for weird design choices. How can you go from Sc4's insane depth of gameplay, to the crappy region design that's found in SC5? Please tell me how do you manage to produce something inferior to a game that was released ten years ago, when you have so much money and experience? Sounds like Diablo 3 all over again.
"Ok guys, here's a game from 2003. Look at these huge regions, they're entirely covered in buildings, man they look like actual metropolises. Look at these AI and gameplay tweaks that the community has come up with. Ok, Let's scrap all that shit and produce something that's more shallow and more pretty. If someone asks about missing features and whatnot, just tell them that we'll release DLC sometime in the future".
What happened at Maxis? Are they slaves to the money-hungry EA or did they make these choices by themselves? As a veteran PC gaming enthusiast, I don't know what to think anymore. Maybe I'm just not the target audience.
Sorry for ranting but it's hard to keep your cool when these people ask 70€ for this game. Yes, it features some really interesting things, nonetheless I can't help but feel that the positive elements are being overshadowed by the negative ones. I'll just wait a few months to see whether they care to fix the game or not. So do you judge the game after you play by yourself or you just do it with the other people's opinions that can be biased? From what I play so far, the game has a lot of depth that I think I still only scratch at the surface at this time.
That's one of the more ridiculous comments in the thread. And that's saying something.
By your logic, we shouldn't have reviews of anything, because hey, you didn't watch/play it yourself. Yes, other people's opinions can be biased. But if they have the same biases I do... why would that be a bad thing? If someone I trust tells me a game is shit, and explains reasonably why, I don't need to play it. Maybe they're wrong, but I trust their opinion.
On March 08 2013 16:53 Veldril wrote:I'm also someone who was in PC gaming since I was 7 years old and I could say SimCity was one of the very first game I played. Still, I am very impressed by the new SimCity and I think Maxis did a very good job on modernizing the game for newer generations. It is a good game by its own, even though it might be different from the older entries.
Nobody's claiming that the game is terrible. They're saying that it's not as good as prior SimCity games were. Therefore... why should they play it when they already have something better?
On March 08 2013 16:53 Veldril wrote:About cities's size, I can totally see why they choose to keep it small and expand the size later. Have you ever seen the video about how their simulation engine works? Everything in the game, every building, car and other stuffs is being calculated all the time with the new engine. The calculation requirement would increase exponentially with the increase in size of the city. And they want the game to run on even old PC and that's totally fine. This is a game that target wide range of audience, not only hardcore gamers that have 1000$+ USD rig.
OK, but who asked for that? Were people really clamoring for more detailed simulations? Did someone say, "SimCity needs to simulate every car and building?" Is the game appreciably better for all of that simulation?
If city size is important to the game, and you make a game design decision that forces you to limit the city's size... you have failed as a game designer.
Fundamentally changing the nature of a game this much is not a good thing. I'm all for sequels trying to have something of an identity, rather than being minor variations on what came before. But size has always been a big part of SimCity. Even old-school SimCity I was as big as the technology allowed. And SimCity V goes against that. Whatever good may have come from the level of simulation cannot undo the bad that limiting the city size brings.
To put another way, I'd rather have a less-accurate simulation with a larger scope than a more accurate one with a smaller one.
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On March 08 2013 17:45 NicolBolas wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2013 16:53 Veldril wrote:On March 08 2013 16:06 Al Bundy wrote:
The more I learn about this game, the less I want to buy it. This is not a pleasant feeling because I've been a fan of the series since the Sim City on SNES.
You are right, some of the features in this game are truly impressive. However some of them are definitely questionable. The Sc4 community has been tweaking and improving the game for ten years. And yet developers chose to disregard everything that was built and went for weird design choices. How can you go from Sc4's insane depth of gameplay, to the crappy region design that's found in SC5? Please tell me how do you manage to produce something inferior to a game that was released ten years ago, when you have so much money and experience? Sounds like Diablo 3 all over again.
"Ok guys, here's a game from 2003. Look at these huge regions, they're entirely covered in buildings, man they look like actual metropolises. Look at these AI and gameplay tweaks that the community has come up with. Ok, Let's scrap all that shit and produce something that's more shallow and more pretty. If someone asks about missing features and whatnot, just tell them that we'll release DLC sometime in the future".
What happened at Maxis? Are they slaves to the money-hungry EA or did they make these choices by themselves? As a veteran PC gaming enthusiast, I don't know what to think anymore. Maybe I'm just not the target audience.
Sorry for ranting but it's hard to keep your cool when these people ask 70€ for this game. Yes, it features some really interesting things, nonetheless I can't help but feel that the positive elements are being overshadowed by the negative ones. I'll just wait a few months to see whether they care to fix the game or not. So do you judge the game after you play by yourself or you just do it with the other people's opinions that can be biased? From what I play so far, the game has a lot of depth that I think I still only scratch at the surface at this time. That's one of the more ridiculous comments in the thread. And that's saying something. By your logic, we shouldn't have reviews of anything, because hey, you didn't watch/play it yourself. Yes, other people's opinions can be biased. But if they have the same biases I do... why would that be a bad thing? If someone I trust tells me a game is shit, and explains reasonably why, I don't need to play it. Maybe they're wrong, but I trust their opinion. Show nested quote +On March 08 2013 16:53 Veldril wrote:I'm also someone who was in PC gaming since I was 7 years old and I could say SimCity was one of the very first game I played. Still, I am very impressed by the new SimCity and I think Maxis did a very good job on modernizing the game for newer generations. It is a good game by its own, even though it might be different from the older entries. Nobody's claiming that the game is terrible. They're saying that it's not as good as prior SimCity games were. Therefore... why should they play it when they already have something better? Show nested quote +On March 08 2013 16:53 Veldril wrote:About cities's size, I can totally see why they choose to keep it small and expand the size later. Have you ever seen the video about how their simulation engine works? Everything in the game, every building, car and other stuffs is being calculated all the time with the new engine. The calculation requirement would increase exponentially with the increase in size of the city. And they want the game to run on even old PC and that's totally fine. This is a game that target wide range of audience, not only hardcore gamers that have 1000$+ USD rig. OK, but who asked for that? Were people really clamoring for more detailed simulations? Did someone say, "SimCity needs to simulate every car and building?" Is the game appreciably better for all of that simulation? If city size is important to the game, and you make a game design decision that forces you to limit the city's size... you have failed as a game designer. Fundamentally changing the nature of a game this much is not a good thing. I'm all for sequels trying to have something of an identity, rather than being minor variations on what came before. But size has always been a big part of SimCity. Even old-school SimCity I was as big as the technology allowed. And SimCity V goes against that. Whatever good may have come from the level of simulation cannot undo the bad that limiting the city size brings. To put another way, I'd rather have a less-accurate simulation with a larger scope than a more accurate one with a smaller one.
First point, I would agree that reviews are useful, if they are only taken from various sources with different biases. From what I see so far, most of the opinion is formed from reading through people who only play a little, or not play at all, and judge that the game is bad. Many criticisms are valid (bad launch, for example) but more of them are very subjective or formed from bias that it is different than SC4 therefore it is worse and judge the game even before in depth review of the game came out.
Second point, the better or worse than previous games notion is a very subjective in nature. Myself feels that SimCity is quite a step ahead of SC4; although admittedly I only play SimCity 4 only during the first two years when it came out because the game bored me after awhile.
Final point, I don't really think that city size is that much of problem. It adds challenge into the game itself. True, it can be very annoying sometimes, especially when you do a mining/drilling business but at the same time, trying to maximize the space you have is very challenging. So it's even out for me.
As for "who asked for a more simulation detail", no one except the devs and I don't think the devs consider city size is the most important thing in the game. What more important is making sure that the game run in a wide range of spec first, then the bigger size can follow later. Also, the game is not a "sequel", it is a reboot of the original title, because the dev wants to change the nature of the gameplay.
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On March 08 2013 18:11 Veldril wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2013 17:45 NicolBolas wrote:On March 08 2013 16:53 Veldril wrote:On March 08 2013 16:06 Al Bundy wrote:
The more I learn about this game, the less I want to buy it. This is not a pleasant feeling because I've been a fan of the series since the Sim City on SNES.
You are right, some of the features in this game are truly impressive. However some of them are definitely questionable. The Sc4 community has been tweaking and improving the game for ten years. And yet developers chose to disregard everything that was built and went for weird design choices. How can you go from Sc4's insane depth of gameplay, to the crappy region design that's found in SC5? Please tell me how do you manage to produce something inferior to a game that was released ten years ago, when you have so much money and experience? Sounds like Diablo 3 all over again.
"Ok guys, here's a game from 2003. Look at these huge regions, they're entirely covered in buildings, man they look like actual metropolises. Look at these AI and gameplay tweaks that the community has come up with. Ok, Let's scrap all that shit and produce something that's more shallow and more pretty. If someone asks about missing features and whatnot, just tell them that we'll release DLC sometime in the future".
What happened at Maxis? Are they slaves to the money-hungry EA or did they make these choices by themselves? As a veteran PC gaming enthusiast, I don't know what to think anymore. Maybe I'm just not the target audience.
Sorry for ranting but it's hard to keep your cool when these people ask 70€ for this game. Yes, it features some really interesting things, nonetheless I can't help but feel that the positive elements are being overshadowed by the negative ones. I'll just wait a few months to see whether they care to fix the game or not. So do you judge the game after you play by yourself or you just do it with the other people's opinions that can be biased? From what I play so far, the game has a lot of depth that I think I still only scratch at the surface at this time. That's one of the more ridiculous comments in the thread. And that's saying something. By your logic, we shouldn't have reviews of anything, because hey, you didn't watch/play it yourself. Yes, other people's opinions can be biased. But if they have the same biases I do... why would that be a bad thing? If someone I trust tells me a game is shit, and explains reasonably why, I don't need to play it. Maybe they're wrong, but I trust their opinion. On March 08 2013 16:53 Veldril wrote:I'm also someone who was in PC gaming since I was 7 years old and I could say SimCity was one of the very first game I played. Still, I am very impressed by the new SimCity and I think Maxis did a very good job on modernizing the game for newer generations. It is a good game by its own, even though it might be different from the older entries. Nobody's claiming that the game is terrible. They're saying that it's not as good as prior SimCity games were. Therefore... why should they play it when they already have something better? On March 08 2013 16:53 Veldril wrote:About cities's size, I can totally see why they choose to keep it small and expand the size later. Have you ever seen the video about how their simulation engine works? Everything in the game, every building, car and other stuffs is being calculated all the time with the new engine. The calculation requirement would increase exponentially with the increase in size of the city. And they want the game to run on even old PC and that's totally fine. This is a game that target wide range of audience, not only hardcore gamers that have 1000$+ USD rig. OK, but who asked for that? Were people really clamoring for more detailed simulations? Did someone say, "SimCity needs to simulate every car and building?" Is the game appreciably better for all of that simulation? If city size is important to the game, and you make a game design decision that forces you to limit the city's size... you have failed as a game designer. Fundamentally changing the nature of a game this much is not a good thing. I'm all for sequels trying to have something of an identity, rather than being minor variations on what came before. But size has always been a big part of SimCity. Even old-school SimCity I was as big as the technology allowed. And SimCity V goes against that. Whatever good may have come from the level of simulation cannot undo the bad that limiting the city size brings. To put another way, I'd rather have a less-accurate simulation with a larger scope than a more accurate one with a smaller one. First point, I would agree that reviews are useful, if they are only taken from various sources with different biases. From what I see so far, most of the opinion is formed from reading through people who only play a little, or not play at all, and judge that the game is bad. Many criticisms are valid (bad launch, for example) but more of them are very subjective or formed from bias that it is different than SC4 therefore it is worse and judge the game even before in depth review of the game came out. Second point, the better or worse than previous games notion is a very subjective in nature. Myself feels that SimCity is quite a step ahead of SC4; although admittedly I only play SimCity 4 only during the first two years when it came out because the game bored me after awhile. Final point, I don't really think that city size is that much of problem. It adds challenge into the game itself. True, it can be very annoying sometimes, especially when you do a mining/drilling business but at the same time, trying to maximize the space you have is very challenging. So it's even out for me. As for "who asked for a more simulation detail", no one except the devs and I don't think the devs consider city size is the most important thing in the game. What more important is making sure that the game run in a wide range of spec first, then the bigger size can follow later. Also, the game is not a "sequel", it is a reboot of the original title, because the dev wants to change the nature of the gameplay.
The opinion of one individual doesnt change the opinion of the mass.
Right now, even mainstream reviewers are giving this game a bad review.
http://uk.gamespot.com/simcity/reviews/simcity-review-6405012/ <---5/10
http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/03/08/simcity-burning-a-warning-to-microsoft-sony-and-all-publishers-on-the-dangers-of-always-online-drm
Polygon <--- 4/10
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Okay I actually managed to play a bit this morning before the servers died on me again.
I actually have a different issue with the size restriction.
I remember reading somewhere that a Dev said that these restrictions are meant to force the player to be creative and that real life city planners actually face similar issues. In this game though, we do not face any issues other than a grey line telling us that a certain part is over an imaginary boundry.
Is everything behind that line radiated, inhabitated by giant killer dragons or a giant lava pit? Nope, its just over an arbitrary restriction. If you are simulating the growth of a city, and you on top of everything else can actually see over the border and its just normal fucking land that no one needs then lowers the realsim the game apparantly tries to inspire with its 1000000000000 calculations a second, by a lot. And what it also does is force you to be pretty fucking boring if you want to have something resembling a big city.
Speaking about the joy of roads, does anyone have any idea why on several roads one lane is completely ignored and causing a lot of issues? Three lanes are used and for some reason the 4th is not. It only happens when upgrading and obviously causing gigantic traffic blocks.
Overall not a bad game but I am not really happy right now either. Then again servers dying on you makes a game less fun...
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On March 08 2013 13:41 Fzero wrote:
All I can say is that our team at Maxis put in a ton of work on this game. I can't go into details, but I still hope that people give it a shot. I have a personal investment that maybe you shouldn't trust, but if you came to this thread looking for SimCity - this game will deliver a very respectable game. I can't tell you how frustrated everyone is with what is going on right now.
It is a respectable game. But it is not really a sim city game. Its more of a town simulator with server problems due to DRM. A very good town simulator, but still only a town simulator nevertheless.
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On March 08 2013 18:26 mkfk1 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2013 18:11 Veldril wrote:On March 08 2013 17:45 NicolBolas wrote:On March 08 2013 16:53 Veldril wrote:On March 08 2013 16:06 Al Bundy wrote:
The more I learn about this game, the less I want to buy it. This is not a pleasant feeling because I've been a fan of the series since the Sim City on SNES.
You are right, some of the features in this game are truly impressive. However some of them are definitely questionable. The Sc4 community has been tweaking and improving the game for ten years. And yet developers chose to disregard everything that was built and went for weird design choices. How can you go from Sc4's insane depth of gameplay, to the crappy region design that's found in SC5? Please tell me how do you manage to produce something inferior to a game that was released ten years ago, when you have so much money and experience? Sounds like Diablo 3 all over again.
"Ok guys, here's a game from 2003. Look at these huge regions, they're entirely covered in buildings, man they look like actual metropolises. Look at these AI and gameplay tweaks that the community has come up with. Ok, Let's scrap all that shit and produce something that's more shallow and more pretty. If someone asks about missing features and whatnot, just tell them that we'll release DLC sometime in the future".
What happened at Maxis? Are they slaves to the money-hungry EA or did they make these choices by themselves? As a veteran PC gaming enthusiast, I don't know what to think anymore. Maybe I'm just not the target audience.
Sorry for ranting but it's hard to keep your cool when these people ask 70€ for this game. Yes, it features some really interesting things, nonetheless I can't help but feel that the positive elements are being overshadowed by the negative ones. I'll just wait a few months to see whether they care to fix the game or not. So do you judge the game after you play by yourself or you just do it with the other people's opinions that can be biased? From what I play so far, the game has a lot of depth that I think I still only scratch at the surface at this time. That's one of the more ridiculous comments in the thread. And that's saying something. By your logic, we shouldn't have reviews of anything, because hey, you didn't watch/play it yourself. Yes, other people's opinions can be biased. But if they have the same biases I do... why would that be a bad thing? If someone I trust tells me a game is shit, and explains reasonably why, I don't need to play it. Maybe they're wrong, but I trust their opinion. On March 08 2013 16:53 Veldril wrote:I'm also someone who was in PC gaming since I was 7 years old and I could say SimCity was one of the very first game I played. Still, I am very impressed by the new SimCity and I think Maxis did a very good job on modernizing the game for newer generations. It is a good game by its own, even though it might be different from the older entries. Nobody's claiming that the game is terrible. They're saying that it's not as good as prior SimCity games were. Therefore... why should they play it when they already have something better? On March 08 2013 16:53 Veldril wrote:About cities's size, I can totally see why they choose to keep it small and expand the size later. Have you ever seen the video about how their simulation engine works? Everything in the game, every building, car and other stuffs is being calculated all the time with the new engine. The calculation requirement would increase exponentially with the increase in size of the city. And they want the game to run on even old PC and that's totally fine. This is a game that target wide range of audience, not only hardcore gamers that have 1000$+ USD rig. OK, but who asked for that? Were people really clamoring for more detailed simulations? Did someone say, "SimCity needs to simulate every car and building?" Is the game appreciably better for all of that simulation? If city size is important to the game, and you make a game design decision that forces you to limit the city's size... you have failed as a game designer. Fundamentally changing the nature of a game this much is not a good thing. I'm all for sequels trying to have something of an identity, rather than being minor variations on what came before. But size has always been a big part of SimCity. Even old-school SimCity I was as big as the technology allowed. And SimCity V goes against that. Whatever good may have come from the level of simulation cannot undo the bad that limiting the city size brings. To put another way, I'd rather have a less-accurate simulation with a larger scope than a more accurate one with a smaller one. First point, I would agree that reviews are useful, if they are only taken from various sources with different biases. From what I see so far, most of the opinion is formed from reading through people who only play a little, or not play at all, and judge that the game is bad. Many criticisms are valid (bad launch, for example) but more of them are very subjective or formed from bias that it is different than SC4 therefore it is worse and judge the game even before in depth review of the game came out. Second point, the better or worse than previous games notion is a very subjective in nature. Myself feels that SimCity is quite a step ahead of SC4; although admittedly I only play SimCity 4 only during the first two years when it came out because the game bored me after awhile. Final point, I don't really think that city size is that much of problem. It adds challenge into the game itself. True, it can be very annoying sometimes, especially when you do a mining/drilling business but at the same time, trying to maximize the space you have is very challenging. So it's even out for me. As for "who asked for a more simulation detail", no one except the devs and I don't think the devs consider city size is the most important thing in the game. What more important is making sure that the game run in a wide range of spec first, then the bigger size can follow later. Also, the game is not a "sequel", it is a reboot of the original title, because the dev wants to change the nature of the gameplay. The opinion of one individual doesnt change the opinion of the mass. Right now, even mainstream reviewers are giving this game a bad review. http://uk.gamespot.com/simcity/reviews/simcity-review-6405012/ <---5/10 http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/03/08/simcity-burning-a-warning-to-microsoft-sony-and-all-publishers-on-the-dangers-of-always-online-drmPolygon <--- 4/10
I'm actually Impressed. Diablo 3 didn't even make it that low despite it's launch insanity. Though, D3 was actually fairly polished outside of the server issues, SC5 sure is buggy in many ways.
The underlying concept of SC5 is fantastic, they just didn't execute it well 
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Roflmao.
Zombie attack wiped out 80% of my population and it went on for like 10 minutes cos cheetah speed got nerfed. Got some weird bugs like my tier 2 police and fire closing because i did not have prerequisites (population decrease) even though i built them.
The games still good but takes too long atm with the cheetah nerf for me to advance.
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Pandemona
Charlie Sheens House51449 Posts
EA
Biggest idiots to ever breathe in the Gaming community!! (Thats coming from an EA Fan)
They make me so mad, i mean they didn't think this game was going to be so popular or something? Their servers are tiny, and their problem solving the issues are shocking.
Amazon have had to suspend selling SimCity 5 due to the shite servers
Source
In a message posted to the official EA discussion forums, SimCity's senior producer Kip Katsarelis said the launch week had been "challenging" for the company.
However, he added, there was a positive side to the delays.
"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," he wrote.
Pretty much sums up EA ;_; FML
Anyone else having numerous problems ;_;
This isn't the first issue i have had with EA servers either, when FIFA 13 came out their servers for that game (console) kept going offline for long periods of time for no reason!! So annoying ;_;
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is awesome32269 Posts
I don't get why people still buy games (expensive games) when they know they are going to be fucking train wrecks. I seriously think they enjoy bitching about them.
It's not very hard to read a couple of reviews online before buying and notice what is wrong with the game.
Vote with your wallet, EA could care less about bitching because they have a team set up already for mitigating that. You don't like always on DRM? Don't buy games with always on DRM.
And if you are a hardcore fan of the series, when you see disasters like this come up, you can always avoid the frustration and wait till everything is sorted out to buy the game.
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On March 08 2013 18:26 mkfk1 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2013 18:11 Veldril wrote:On March 08 2013 17:45 NicolBolas wrote:On March 08 2013 16:53 Veldril wrote:On March 08 2013 16:06 Al Bundy wrote:
The more I learn about this game, the less I want to buy it. This is not a pleasant feeling because I've been a fan of the series since the Sim City on SNES.
You are right, some of the features in this game are truly impressive. However some of them are definitely questionable. The Sc4 community has been tweaking and improving the game for ten years. And yet developers chose to disregard everything that was built and went for weird design choices. How can you go from Sc4's insane depth of gameplay, to the crappy region design that's found in SC5? Please tell me how do you manage to produce something inferior to a game that was released ten years ago, when you have so much money and experience? Sounds like Diablo 3 all over again.
"Ok guys, here's a game from 2003. Look at these huge regions, they're entirely covered in buildings, man they look like actual metropolises. Look at these AI and gameplay tweaks that the community has come up with. Ok, Let's scrap all that shit and produce something that's more shallow and more pretty. If someone asks about missing features and whatnot, just tell them that we'll release DLC sometime in the future".
What happened at Maxis? Are they slaves to the money-hungry EA or did they make these choices by themselves? As a veteran PC gaming enthusiast, I don't know what to think anymore. Maybe I'm just not the target audience.
Sorry for ranting but it's hard to keep your cool when these people ask 70€ for this game. Yes, it features some really interesting things, nonetheless I can't help but feel that the positive elements are being overshadowed by the negative ones. I'll just wait a few months to see whether they care to fix the game or not. So do you judge the game after you play by yourself or you just do it with the other people's opinions that can be biased? From what I play so far, the game has a lot of depth that I think I still only scratch at the surface at this time. That's one of the more ridiculous comments in the thread. And that's saying something. By your logic, we shouldn't have reviews of anything, because hey, you didn't watch/play it yourself. Yes, other people's opinions can be biased. But if they have the same biases I do... why would that be a bad thing? If someone I trust tells me a game is shit, and explains reasonably why, I don't need to play it. Maybe they're wrong, but I trust their opinion. On March 08 2013 16:53 Veldril wrote:I'm also someone who was in PC gaming since I was 7 years old and I could say SimCity was one of the very first game I played. Still, I am very impressed by the new SimCity and I think Maxis did a very good job on modernizing the game for newer generations. It is a good game by its own, even though it might be different from the older entries. Nobody's claiming that the game is terrible. They're saying that it's not as good as prior SimCity games were. Therefore... why should they play it when they already have something better? On March 08 2013 16:53 Veldril wrote:About cities's size, I can totally see why they choose to keep it small and expand the size later. Have you ever seen the video about how their simulation engine works? Everything in the game, every building, car and other stuffs is being calculated all the time with the new engine. The calculation requirement would increase exponentially with the increase in size of the city. And they want the game to run on even old PC and that's totally fine. This is a game that target wide range of audience, not only hardcore gamers that have 1000$+ USD rig. OK, but who asked for that? Were people really clamoring for more detailed simulations? Did someone say, "SimCity needs to simulate every car and building?" Is the game appreciably better for all of that simulation? If city size is important to the game, and you make a game design decision that forces you to limit the city's size... you have failed as a game designer. Fundamentally changing the nature of a game this much is not a good thing. I'm all for sequels trying to have something of an identity, rather than being minor variations on what came before. But size has always been a big part of SimCity. Even old-school SimCity I was as big as the technology allowed. And SimCity V goes against that. Whatever good may have come from the level of simulation cannot undo the bad that limiting the city size brings. To put another way, I'd rather have a less-accurate simulation with a larger scope than a more accurate one with a smaller one. First point, I would agree that reviews are useful, if they are only taken from various sources with different biases. From what I see so far, most of the opinion is formed from reading through people who only play a little, or not play at all, and judge that the game is bad. Many criticisms are valid (bad launch, for example) but more of them are very subjective or formed from bias that it is different than SC4 therefore it is worse and judge the game even before in depth review of the game came out. Second point, the better or worse than previous games notion is a very subjective in nature. Myself feels that SimCity is quite a step ahead of SC4; although admittedly I only play SimCity 4 only during the first two years when it came out because the game bored me after awhile. Final point, I don't really think that city size is that much of problem. It adds challenge into the game itself. True, it can be very annoying sometimes, especially when you do a mining/drilling business but at the same time, trying to maximize the space you have is very challenging. So it's even out for me. As for "who asked for a more simulation detail", no one except the devs and I don't think the devs consider city size is the most important thing in the game. What more important is making sure that the game run in a wide range of spec first, then the bigger size can follow later. Also, the game is not a "sequel", it is a reboot of the original title, because the dev wants to change the nature of the gameplay. The opinion of one individual doesnt change the opinion of the mass. Right now, even mainstream reviewers are giving this game a bad review. http://uk.gamespot.com/simcity/reviews/simcity-review-6405012/ <---5/10 http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/03/08/simcity-burning-a-warning-to-microsoft-sony-and-all-publishers-on-the-dangers-of-always-online-drmPolygon <--- 4/10
All those reviews are criticizing the launch and server issues and the always online single player. Polygon had given it a 9.5 based on closed server review, while gamespot's video review doesn't go in depth into the systems and mostly rates the problems.
This game is getting trashed because of the online problems, most people agree the game is great. Before the whole server problems started getting detailed in reviews, SimCity had 91 average on metacritic, even getting a 100/100 from one of eurogamer's smaller sites.
Main gripes are:
-Intrusive DRM
-Always online singleplayer
-Origin
-Small cities
Very few gameplay elements are actually criticized in most reviews. Which makes this situation even sadder.
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United States22883 Posts
Yeah, but part of that is reviewers acting as shills or simply getting bought off by EA. Again, it's not a 100/100, even without the server issues.
The server issues are part of the product. If you go to a restaurant and the food is great but the service is atrocious, you generally don't eat there anymore and you grade it on both the food and service. For the end user, you can't separate the two, especially when they're forced together. If it takes an hour for the waiter to bring your drinks and another two hours to serve your meal, you'll say it was a terrible experience.
I'm curious, for the people expecting city size expansion later on (I know the dev said it's possible, but he didn't confirm it'd happen), how would it make you feel if it came in the form of paid DLC? Same for subways and stuff?
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Brunei Darussalam566 Posts
On March 08 2013 13:41 Fzero wrote:
All I can say is that our team at Maxis put in a ton of work on this game. I can't go into details, but I still hope that people give it a shot. I have a personal investment that maybe you shouldn't trust, but if you came to this thread looking for SimCity - this game will deliver a very respectable game. I can't tell you how frustrated everyone is with what is going on right now.
My biggest gripe with SimCity is that several design choices made by the development team were a huge "fuck you" to the loyal fanbase who was a huge asset towards making this franchise relevant until today. Sure, SC4 was an interesting and deep game out of the box --- more so than this reboot, at least ---, but over a decade of hard work from the modding and plot-building community (including HUGE changes to SC4's core mechanics, such as what NAM did with pathing and transportation logic) turned the game into a far superior product, which remains relevant (and as a benchmark for other city building games) until today.
How does Maxis / EA respond to their loyal fans? With always-on DRM which severely hampers modding capabilities, with several missing hallmarks of the SimCity franchise (DLC, anyone?), with tiny cities that are no bigger than a neighbourhood and yet house several hundred thousand people, with a lack of proper single-player experience, and so on.
SimCity (2013) is neither a proper installment of this franchise, nor a sequel to SC4. Rather, it's a polished version of SimCity the facebook game. The "features" are all there: play with your friends! Give them free crap and make them give you free crap! Share your stuff on social networks! Interact with your neighbours! Spend a few bucks at a time for stuff we should have included in the first place for every player who bought our product!
The biggest difference, though? Facebook SimCity is free, yet, inexplicably, SimCity (2013) costs 60+ bucks.
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Pandemona
Charlie Sheens House51449 Posts
Indeed, i have not bought the game yet, as it has not come up until today in England. But my mate has bought it and has had millions of issues with it already. I just think why do they do it ;_;
I will buy it probably this evening to play it over the weekend, but when it gets to the stage Amazon pulls it from their website you know there is a flipping huge issue with the servers ;_;
I'm not too hardcore in the SimCity franchise, i played 3000 and 4 and loved them, but i only played them casually and not majorly hardcore. So aslong as they werent mega expensive and you did get your monies worth i wouldn't mind having DLC instead of a new game. But hell id rather pay an extra £10 at the moment so they could buy bigger servers ;_;
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On March 08 2013 23:27 Jibba wrote:
Yeah, but part of that is reviewers acting as shills or simply getting bought off by EA. Again, it's not a 100/100, even without the server issues.
The server issues are part of the product. If you go to a restaurant and the food is great but the service is atrocious, you generally don't eat there anymore and you grade it on both the food and service. For the end user, you can't separate the two, especially when they're forced together. If it takes an hour for the waiter to bring your drinks and another two hours to serve your meal, you'll say it was a terrible experience.
I'm curious, for the people expecting city size expansion later on (I know the dev said it's possible, but he didn't confirm it'd happen), how would it make you feel if it came in the form of paid DLC? Same for subways and stuff?
Of course, I understand the online component should be part of any serious review. Thing is, people posting in this thread suffer from the same problem many SC2 critics do. Sure, the community modded many things and made SC4 great and some of those things aren't there in SimCity. That doesn't impact the quality of the product, it's just a different interpretation of something.
BW hardcore fans agree that unit clumping, multiple building selection, automining etc are bad things in the grand scheme of things, and it may be so from that specific standpoint, however, anyone who looks at the game without BW glasses and sees the product for what it is, knows that SC2 is an extremely high quality product.
Same thing happens in this thread, people are criticizing the game for things they LIKE about the modded SC4, but that doesn't mean that the new product isn't high quality, apart from the shitty internet service, it's a different, but still very good game, at least if arguments outside of the online component are to be believed. The game is getting deservedly bashed and I hope that EA and Maxis learn a lesson.
I'm still broken on whether to buy it when it's fixed or just pirate it when it's possible (it will), simply to boycott this type of abusive DRM
My biggest gripe with SimCity is that several design choices made by the development team were a huge "fuck you" to the loyal fanbase who was a huge asset towards making this franchise relevant until today. Sure, SC4 was an interesting and deep game out of the box --- more so than this reboot, at least ---, but over a decade of hard work from the modding and plot-building community (including HUGE changes to SC4's core mechanics, such as what NAM did with pathing and transportation logic) turned the game into a far superior product, which remains relevant (and as a benchmark for other city building games) until today.
This is what I'm talking about, doesn't this look familiar to anyone who was here when SC2 was released? I get it, I understand it, but it doesn't say anything about the game's quality on its own. They're different games, and it might not be your taste, as an SC4 enthusiast, but that doesn't mean the game is bad.
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EPT
