Sim City (2013)

[Magua]

As soon as my Origin friends actually show up in game I will invite everyone. Maybe Deety can do it, but I don't know if her updated Origin friends list is showing up in game either. Deety is the only one showing up for me.

It's just one big cluster bleep.

Yeah deety is the only one on here showing up in my friends list. I have a few RL friends that appears though.

 

[scott91575]

So there are now 6 European servers and 4 NA servers. WTF EA? I guess they decided they already screwed the NA players so no saving them. Might as well keep screwing NA players and hope the Euro trash doesn't get mad.

 

[scott91575]

I decided to try a European server. I was able to play in about 1 minute. Of course that will change very soon, but it just sucks that I can't play the BP region from another server. Such bull.

 

[Deety]

Okay, I do see where to invite people now ("Play" from the region screen or by clicking a city in the game). I can only invite people who show as online, so I'll getcha as I see ya.

 

[scott91575]

Looks like people that have been in a region since launch are having issues loading back in. If I create a new region I can play right away even on NAEast#2. I am going to create another region and play there. Up to you Deety what you want to do. I don't want you to have to abandon your city, but since I cannot play in that original region, starting a new one is better than nothing.

 

[Deety]

Looks like people that have been in a region since launch are having issues loading back in. If I create a new region I can play right away even on NAEast#2. I am going to create another region and play there. Up to you Deety what you want to do. I don't want you to have to abandon your city, but since I cannot play in that original region, starting a new one is better than nothing.

A fresh start sounds good!

 

[osustamm]

I finally got in last night and enjoyed the gameplay up to 25k people when my laptop battery died. (i didn't plug it in on purpose to make sure i didn't stay up til 4am playing)

The only issue i was having (that i know of) was there seemed to be a lot of buildings being built at 0%. They stayed at 0% for quite some time. Does it take a long time to build buildings? Are there only so many contractors? My roads didn't seem to be gridlocked, so getting to the site wasn't the issue.

Is there a good way to find out?

 

[Buckeye86]

I imagine these will be helpful. Now they just need to release the game for Mac (after they've fixed all of the server and other problems, of course).

Also, I always thought it was best to put the commercial in-between residential and industrial. However, based on the flow chart that doesn't seem like the case anymore. If anyone is playing that style based on the old games (like I would be without looking at that) maybe that is a big part of the traffic problems? After all, industrial creating traffic to deliver to commercial definitely wasn't a part of the old games.

 

[Deety]

Ooh, good charts.

I logged in for a quick checkup, and once it connected, I couldn't see the BP region or one I started for experimenting. It said I had no games, and went to the tutorial. Hope the games come back. 11 of 12 servers were "busy," so it's still overwhelmed. How's that for accurate demand estimations?

BTW, Cheetah speed is disabled; it's now the same as Llama.

Someone at the EA forums compiled a list...

Gamespot (Maxis Internal Memo Leaks)
http://www.gamespot.com/news/maxis-internal-simcity-memo-leaks-6405050

NEW YORK TIMES: A Game That Can?t Be Played: Is It Still a Game?
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/09/arts/video-games...rver-issues.html?smid=pl-share

FORBES: The 'SimCity' Effect: We Need An Industry-Wide Return Policy For Defective And Unplayable Games
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2013/03...efective-and-unplayable-games/

WALL STREET JOURNAL: New SimCity a Failure to Launch
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2013/03/08/new-simcity-a-failure-to-launch/

PCMAG: An Open Letter to EA on SimCity: You Could Have Prevented This
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2416387,00.asp

WIRED: SimCity Blackout Is Just One More DRM Disaster
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/03/simcity-outage/

ABC News: EA Scrambles to Fix 'SimCity' Server Congestion
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/ea-scrambles-fix-...r-congestion/story?id=18677568

BBC: Amazon suspends sales of SimCity video game
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21712910

LA Times: ?SimCity?: Server failures lock out players
http://herocomplex.latimes.com/games/simcity-server-failures-lock-out-players/

TechCrunch: We Built This SimCity On A Shaky Foundation Of DRM
http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/07/we-built-this-sim...-on-a-shaky-foundation-of-drm/

Mashable: EA Scrambles to Fix 'SimCity' Server Congestion
http://mashable.com/2013/03/07/simcity-server-troubles/

 

[jwinslow]

It would be nice if a major media outlet would write the sobering truth:

"Suckers who paid for past EA games saw this coming"

 

[jwinslow]

Also, I always thought it was best to put the commercial in-between residential and industrial. However, based on the flow chart that doesn't seem like the case anymore. If anyone is playing that style based on the old games (like I would be without looking at that) maybe that is a big part of the traffic problems? After all, industrial creating traffic to deliver to commercial definitely wasn't a part of the old games.

Does that chart indicate where to put things? Or is it just a convenient and legible way to read the arrows?

 

[jwinslow]

IGN hops on the fail train too

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/03/08/can-you-get-a-refund-for-simcity

They're afraid to give it a bad score and are looking for an out so as to not piss off EA

If I were worried about pissing off EA, would I have written this story? Or telling people to straight-up not buy SimCity right now in the review in progress?

Classy username from the head reviewer.

Sorry, hopping around on Disqus comments gets me confused. However, the point stands: he suggested I was afraid to give EA a bad score, and I am the one giving SimCity a score.

Then why haven't you given it a score yet? The game has been out for days, and the game is a service. The fact that the service has worked so poorly that you can't review it is in fact all you need to know to review it.

If this level of failure isn't reflected in the review, you're not doing your job as a reviewer.

Because I believe in being thorough, and this is a very complex game. I intend to give a score within a week of release.

There is a price. We're beating them over the head with it on the front page of the biggest games website on the planet. But rating a game as worse than it is to spite the people that made it is not something I'm OK with.

Back on Gamespy, you guys gave Age of Empires Online a horrible score because it was badly and prematurely launched due to the publisher being completely incompetent (it later improved)... why cut SimCity any slack?

i love the "Worse than it is" line as if it "isn't" broken atm. Picking a later more convenient reality for no apparent reason than the current one I see, neat. Gotta keep those 8000 dead space advertisement's coming.

I don't see it as relevant. If you've already bought SimCity, a review doesn't affect you at all except to validate your own opinion. You're probably mad about the way things have gone, so you'd like to see EA punished. If you haven't, though, you're reading my review to see if you want to buy this game or not. That's the guy I'm looking out for - I'm going to tell him exactly how good I think SimCity is, and let him make up his own mind. I'm not out for revenge.

When I'm writing a review, I'm not thinking "I bet this will influence the developer/publisher in the future." I'm thinking "I hope I help gamers find games they'll like and avoid games they won't. That is the ONLY concern I have, and as I've explained, that means not bashing a game for problems that no longer exist at the time of review.

It's getting a review score within a week of release, which is pretty standard for games we don't get to play much ahead of time. In the meantime, it's getting a straight up "Do not buy this right now."

We've blasted this game for a shoddy start. It's all over the site right now. But things are changing quickly. A review written based on the conditions of yesterday wouldn't be accurate today - there are still problems, but they're not the same problems. I intend to write a review that will tell people how good SimCity is, not how good it was on March 6th. That won't be useful to people next week.

If you think getting mad and wanting revenge makes someone a bad guy, then sure, I guess I'm demonizing them. I prefer to think of that as a perfectly human reaction. I'm simply thinking about long-term benefits to gamers, rather than about giving EA a black eye for botching a release.

The day before yesterday I couldn't play at all. Yesterday I could, but certain things weren't working right. I'm sure when I log in today I'll see a whole new set of conditions. It's unstable, which is why I'm flat-out telling people not to buy it right now.

I'm giving it a review score within a week of launch. I don't see that as being an unreasonable amount of time to play a game of this complexity before making a decision. If that's too long for you to wait, I am sorry, but I would rather be right than first, and I'd rather have a well-thought-out and measured review than a knee-jerk reaction to initially unstable servers. That's just how it's gonna be.

It is baffling to me that you think I'm treating EA with some level of preference at a time when a story calling this game unplayably broken and a disaster - written by me - is currently in one of the most prominent positions on the site. And at a time when I'm telling people they shouldn't buy it in a running review. If I were afraid of hurting EA's feelings, I wouldn't have done any of that. I am not attempting to help EA. I am attempting to give gamers an accurate picture of what they can expect if they decide to play SimCity in the future, and frankly I couldn't care less what EA thinks of that.

Why not just wait to review the game when EA shuts down the servers in a few years?

 

[Buckeye86]

Does that chart indicate where to put things? Or is it just a convenient and legible way to read the arrows?

Both?

I think the main thing to keep in mind is that residents are going to drive to industrial zones and commercial zones to go to work and shop/work respectively while industrial zones create traffic going to the commercial zone and the region/world market (main highway, rail station, dock).

If all of that traffic is funneled through the same major roads it seems inevitable that there will be traffic problems.

However, if you are able to create a transportation network that can get the traffic where they are going without crossings paths too much the problems will be minimized.

In that respect, the diagram seems like a useful model to base your transportation network around.

 

[buff0323]

Am finally able to log in. My origin name is zburkhart if someone would send me an invite. Thanks.

 

[scott91575]

Origin name: CJston15

Sent you an invite to the second BP region. I still cannot get into the first. I also sent one to Deety and buff.

The new region works well for me. I actually did 2 different cities to unlock a bunch of stuff (cities do regional unlocks and it's a pain to play without the unlocks, and it's damn near impossible to do it with just 1 city).