They still sell Sim City?

[Tev]

Well, apparently they don't sell it very well...

Despite positive reviews from many critics, EA's disastrous SimCity launch might go down as one of the worst debacles in the history of gaming. How bad is it? So bad that Amazon briefly stopped selling SimCity not 48 hours after its launch.

According to the BBC, Amazon temporarily suspended digital sales of SimCity on March 7 after customers complained that they were not able to connect to the game's servers. While the sale of the game resumed after a few hours, there is now a warning alerting potential buyers to EA's ongoing server woes.

SimCity, the latest iteration of the classic city-building simulation, requires players to be online to play. That aspect is a game-changer in the literal sense; previous titles in the series were single-player, standalone applications.

EA has spun the change in design as a way to introduce a social element to the game, but some critics said that it is primarily an anti-piracy strategy. And the connectivity issues are not sitting well with consumers.

Outrage over the "Always Online" Digital Rights Management (DRM) in SimCity has spawned a Change.org petition asking EA to remove the feature from it and all future games.

But no, I recently started seeing ads for Sim city on TV and was confused because I was pretty sure that game died out in the 90's once we all started playing God on a more personal level with The Sims and its endless iterations.

Anyway, apparently this new relaunch is full of bugs and glitches (beyond the whole "trying to hide online DRM as social networking and failing miserably" thing) and is just downright poor quality all around. I'm kind of sad about that since I was thinking about giving it a spin for old time's sake.

[Bells]

There are a few Sim city-alike games out there. Cities in Motion XL for example... Sim city is just your typical reboot...

EA is burning out spectacularly, they survive on Hype and burning rage alone now... speically since they haven't caught up to the fact that you can bypass the "always online" feature in a pirated game really easy. So, it's pointless for one... and counter intuitive at the same time.

They managed to drive their very own FPS brand to the ground... they actually managed to beat a dead horse to death with that one! Then, there was the entire "Dead space is totally horror sci fi you guys!! srzly!", and now this...

Just you wait untill E3 when they annouce the new Mass Effect 4 Prequel will be Full Online Coop all the time semi-MMORPG game... just you watch...

[Krylo]

Originally Posted by Tev

is just downright poor quality all around

I've actually heard the opposite, and that the real tragedy is that the game, itself, when you are, on rare occasion, allowed to play, is pretty damn good.

That said, with a launch like this, it may as well be complete trash because buying it is like telling EA that, no, really, you like it this way. Lube and foreplay are just distracting.

[Loyal]

As I mentioned in chat...

(14:29:51) Loyal: Basically Sim City's built from the ground up to support always-online DRM.
(14:30:20) Loyal: because something about game calculations being partially held server-side to help people with slower computers play the game.
(14:30:47) Loyal: so if your internet flickers, you get booted. And playing while on the go or in other non-ideal conditions is just not happening.
(14:31:30) Loyal: Further, despite the extensive testing for exactly that purpose, SimCity still pulled a Diablo 3 and failed to have enough servers running at launch to handle the stress.
(14:32:42) Loyal: There's also complaints about the game feeling too simple, and of cities being more like small villages in terms of size, and airports, and some other stuff that I don't remember because I didn't pick up the game.
(14:37:05) Loyal: But yeah, people are mostly pissed that a single player game once again requires a persistent internet connection.
(14:37:11) Loyal: And there's' no offline mode.

Citation on the calculations bit.

I'm sure it'll be pirated eventually, but it'll take some time because they need to figure out how to get the game to use the PC for all of its calculations and not connect to EA. There's always the possibility EA's lying out its ass about this, but I imagine it'd be mighty embarrassing if their hail mary of anti-piracy turned out to be a bluff.

[Sifright]

Originally Posted by Loyal

As I mentioned in chat...



Citation on the calculations bit.

I'm sure it'll be pirated eventually, but it'll take some time because they need to figure out how to get the game to use the PC for all of its calculations and not connect to EA. There's always the possibility EA's lying out its ass about this, but I imagine it'd be mighty embarrassing if their hail mary of anti-piracy turned out to be a bluff.

doesn't matter how they've done it some one will reverse engineer a way to perform the calculations client side.

Would require a packet sniffer and debug hook into the games dlls but the game being pirated is inevitable.

[Loyal]

Originally Posted by Loyal

There's always the possibility EA's lying out its ass about [Glassbox], but I imagine it'd be mighty embarrassing if their hail mary of anti-piracy turned out to be a bluff.

Wwwwwwwelp!

[Azisien]

Originally Posted by Loyal

Wwwwwwwelp!

Not to mention some official, unofficial admission.

Of course anyone in their first semester of software development can see through EA's bullshit in a second. Maybe there would be a decent amount of overhauling to convert it to an official, offline mode, or let dedicated servers run Regional calculations instead of hosted EA servers, but having work to do and being impossible are pretty wildly different statements.

Anyway, my Simcity play finally reached a conclusion. The city plot sizes are just so small, it's not all that fun to specialize your city. It's not fun because you can only take specialization so far, and it's currently gimped by the fact that you NEED to remain self-sufficient because regional simulation currently does not work (-----> EA servers, plus possible design flaws on top of that). I decided to play with three friends on a plot with 4 city blocks all connected by Highway (by far, the best regional connection available, as you can share all city services with each other). I made my city, the middle, into a regional hub, with the intent of providing all power, water, sewage treatment, police, fire, health, waste disposal, and some education services to all three adjacent cities. My city would be extremely profitable from all that income, in theory, and especially from the recycling operation, even if my city did not internally produce anything.

Then, all three other cities would free up enormous amounts of room, because they need minimal, or zero, power plants, water plants, sewage plants, hospitals, police stations, etc etc. They could specialize to the max, and we would form a mutual dependency. This is the foundation of the new SimCity, the absolute maximum of the social capabilities of the game.

It doesn't work.

The queue to make services run through the EA server is so ridiculously enormous, I'd say maybe 5% of the services I offer actually get recognized in the other cities. The way the game handles offered services is also horrific. Firstly, there is no authentication on from either player when services are offered. When someone wants to buy power from you, they just click "Buy power" and bam it's done. The power exporter doesn't get a message along the lines of "____ City would like to buy power from you. They need _____ amount. Yes/No?" This seems like an odd player choice to leave out, especially in a city management game. You also only export if you have a "green" surplus of power. The moment you drop to "yellow" surplus (which I think is like plus or minus 10% of your overall capacity), you immediately stop all exports. With no warning messages or feedback that the game does so. Exports also only supply a BARE MINIMUM to other cities. If a city needs exactly 10MW of power to run, you will export exactly 10MW of power. And Gods Help that city if they buy even a single building and need 10.001 MW of power. Their residents will become angry, and their city will remain unpowered, until the rumbling Snorlax of an EA server finally ticks (this could take minutes), and adjusts the power export balance, which it would take to 10.001 MW. Hey, why not add in a safety margin of 5-10% to allow for city growth between regional ticks? Or, I dunno, make regional ticks every few seconds instead of every five minutes.

This applies to every single city service. You can't play a hub, so you can't enjoy that style of play, or really dig into specializations without juggling 4-5 of your own city plots. With rather long load times, this is a pretty terrible experience. Back to SimCity 4 Deluxe for me. Or rather, other genres.

[Sifright]

Originally Posted by Azisien

This applies to every single city service. You can't play a hub, so you can't enjoy that style of play, or really dig into specializations without juggling 4-5 of your own city plots. With rather long load times, this is a pretty terrible experience. Back to SimCity 4 Deluxe for me. Or rather, other genres.

Now imagine that problem but the servers have to actually do all the computational work as well ala cloud computing.... which is what this game is the first step towards.

Yea....

[Azisien]

Originally Posted by Sifright

Now imagine that problem but the servers have to actually do all the computational work as well ala cloud computing.... which is what this game is the first step towards.

Yea....

We need to collectively embrace this new server-first approach to EA Games, heavily laden with day-one DLC and microtransactions, and just buy absolutely nothing ever. But you know, keep them thinking that we might. They'll never see it coming.

[Arcanum]

My favorite clusterfuck news regarding SimCity is still the fact that the Sims use the same agent-based simulation as the power or water simulation. Sims will just move towards the nearest open job slot, and when they're done work they will go to the nearest open home slot. So you really can't follow a single sim throughout the day, 'cause every sim just goes the a random job and then a random house, as long as it's the closest available slot.

And if the path to the nearest open slot is too far or too complex, shit like this happens.