Sim City 5: "players were having such a good time they didn't want to leave"

[Cerveza mas fina]

Lets be fair here , d3 had some issues, but it also sold 10 million copies.

Sim City prob did 10% or less of d3 at launch and its still borked, really shameful.

[Great Rumbler]

Lets be fair here , d3 had some issues, but it also sold 10 million copies.

Sim City prob did 10% or less of d3 at launch and its still borked, really shameful.

But it's not a question of raw sales numbers. Both Blizzard and EA know that the initial Day 1 surge will quickly die down to a more manageable number. Adding more servers to meet Day 1 demand costs money that they're not willing to spend, not when those servers probably won't be necessary later in the week. And if they are necessary, well, you go set up some more servers.

[archnemesis]

Can't they rent servers from Amazon for the initial peak?

[benjipwns]

Pulled from Amazon?

[Cerveza mas fina]

Winner of 26 PC games awards...

Lets be fair here , d3 had some issues, but it also sold 10 million copies.

Sim City prob did 10% or less of d3 at launch and its still borked, really shameful.

But it's not a question of raw sales numbers. Both Blizzard and EA know that the initial Day 1 surge will quickly die down to a more manageable number. Adding more servers to meet Day 1 demand costs money that they're not willing to spend, not when those servers probably won't be necessary later in the week. And if they are necessary, well, you go set up some more servers.

Oh I agree, its not an accident nothing works on launch, just cold hard calculation.

[Great Rumbler]

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/03/04/simcity-review-in-progress

tl;dr version: IGN is telling people to avoid buying it right now.

[Himu]

so stick with sim city 4 and the sims 2, okay

[pilonv1]

http://www.jonathancresswell.co.uk/2013/03/review-simcity/

Also

http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/9341807.page

Patch 1.2

* Fix for crash caused most commonly occurring on servers experiencing lag. This crash would happen most often when claiming a new city when playing in a region.
* Fix for server select dialog not appearing on start-up if the server the player was last on is not available.
* Disabled Cheetah speed. Cheetah speed is now the same as llama speed.
* Crash fix for finding closest points.
* Crash fixes in transport and pedestrian code.
* A fix cities having processing problems associated with helicopters.

[Purple Filth]

http://www.jonathancresswell.co.uk/2013/03/review-simcity/

Also

http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/9341807.page

Patch 1.2

* Fix for crash caused most commonly occurring on servers experiencing lag. This crash would happen most often when claiming a new city when playing in a region.
* Fix for server select dialog not appearing on start-up if the server the player was last on is not available.
* Disabled Cheetah speed. Cheetah speed is now the same as llama speed.
* Crash fix for finding closest points.
* Crash fixes in transport and pedestrian code.
* A fix cities having processing problems associated with helicopters.

Sounds like it was pinging their server too much.

[Great Rumbler]

http://www.jonathancresswell.co.uk/2013/03/review-simcity/

Also

http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/9341807.page

Patch 1.2

* Fix for crash caused most commonly occurring on servers experiencing lag. This crash would happen most often when claiming a new city when playing in a region.
* Fix for server select dialog not appearing on start-up if the server the player was last on is not available.
* Disabled Cheetah speed. Cheetah speed is now the same as llama speed.
* Crash fix for finding closest points.
* Crash fixes in transport and pedestrian code.
* A fix cities having processing problems associated with helicopters.

Sounds like it was pinging their server too much.

THANKS OBAMA

[Howard Alan Treesong]

Sim City 2000:



Sim City 3000:



Sim City 4:



Sim City 5:

[Great Rumbler]

Here's an even better comparison:



See that little red square? That's roughly the size of a Sim City 5 city.

[pilonv1]

SC4 cities looked so awesome when you got them built up to a reasonable level

[benjipwns]

[CajoleJuice]

Polygon just lowered their score to 4

also that video

[pilonv1]

http://kotaku.com/5989350/nfl-punter-kicks-the-crap-out-of-ea-and-simcity

[CajoleJuice]

he bought the game, he loses

[pilonv1]

Plus he has to play for the Vikings

[Rahxephon91]

I'm a noob to this series and haven't followed 5 at all, really all I liked was 3000. But they did the region thing from 4 again and made the individual areas smaller? Why?

[Himu]

Hahaha this game!

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

This is the future of hollywood gaming here.  Better get ready!

[Stoney Mason]

I'm a noob to this series and haven't followed 5 at all, really all I liked was 3000. But they did the region thing from 4 again and made the individual areas smaller? Why?

They put more of a focus on multiplayer so by making the areas smaller, you can't really have self sufficient individual cities that have everything in them so you have to co-ordinate with other people in your region. Or play multiple cities in your region if you play by yourself.

The other thing is that supposedly the game is pretty resource intensive. The game seems to be struggling even with these small cities so bigger cities at this stage would only bog it down even more.

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

I played so much Sim City 2000 when I was a kid.  Hundreds if not thousands of hours.

[Stoney Mason]

I played so much Sim City 2000 when I was a kid.  Hundreds if not thousands of hours.

I played the original a shitload but I just dabbled in the later ones. Honestly it all started to get a little too complex for me with all the different little subsystems.


The pic below is the real crux of the issue to me though. I think they've fundamentally misjudged why a decent percentage of the audience played the game. I'm not saying what they've done couldn't be a valid mode in a sim city game. But that pic below I think is the dream when people buy games like this. Even if you never ever get close to building a city that large, that's always this far away goal in the back of your mind. That if only I had the time and dedication, I would build something like that. By removing that, they've killed the power fantasy that is Sim City. In a more honest world they would have renamed this something else. SimRegion or something more catchy than that. But for marketing purposes its SimCity which is part of the reason its gonna get a big backlash. 

Here's an even better comparison:

(Image removed from quote.)

See that little red square? That's roughly the size of a Sim City 5 city.

[Great Rumbler]

Polygon just lowered their score to 4

But they did the region thing from 4 again and made the individual areas smaller?

They did, and here's the thing: in Simcity 4, the individual player controlled every aspect of the region. So, you could build a factory town that was connected to your peaceful suburb and have those two cities feed off of each other. Now? You have to hope that other people in your region are cooperative.

[Stoney Mason]

They did, and here's the thing: in Simcity 4, the individual player controlled every aspect of the region. So, you could build a factory town that was connected to your peaceful suburb and have those two cities feed off of each other. Now? You have to hope that other people in your region are cooperative.

To be fair I think you can create a private region and just run all the cities yourself although at that point it begs the question of why the game is online (We all know its piracy of course). Same as with Diablo 3. I wish one of these companies would just have the balls to admit the truth here and just say we want to radically decrease the amount of piracy for our game so that's why we did all this stuff. I know there would be a huge backlash in that case too but personally I would give them daps.

[Great Rumbler]

They did, and here's the thing: in Simcity 4, the individual player controlled every aspect of the region. So, you could build a factory town that was connected to your peaceful suburb and have those two cities feed off of each other. Now? You have to hope that other people in your region are cooperative.

To be fair I think you can create a private region and just run all the cities yourself although at that point it begs the question of why the game is online (We all know its piracy of course). Same as with Diablo 3.

My own personal opinion is that they want tamp down on the mod community, which almost certainly would have increased the size of cities by now. That, and the mod community would probably release a lot of cool buildings and such for free. Can't have that, gotta make a little money in DLC, ya know.

[Himu]

Don't know why everyone is shocked. Everything mentioned in this page are things we have known about for almost near a year. The game has smelled fuck up since post-E3. But I guess most of the people in this thread now didn't follow this games marketing.

[Stoney Mason]

Don't know why everyone is shocked. Everything mentioned in this page are things we have known about for almost near a year. The game has smelled fuck up since post-E3. But I guess most of the people in this thread now didn't follow this games marketing.

I didn't follow the game at all until about a week ago so I knew nothing about it. The only thing that "shocked" me was the size of the cities. That was a surprise. The rest of this circus I honestly don't really care about. I'll still buy the game when it goes on sale for a reasonable price.

[Himu]

I was subscribed to their fb page for a while and they had the worst fucking marketing. Speaking as someone who works in advertising I was appalled as they were committing franchise seppuku.They'd try to get people to buy it by making posts about guitar shaped neighborhoods. On and on about stupid bullshit rather than the simulation.

Makes me really worried for Sims 4 Especially considering Sims 3's general "game-y" and less Simulation aspect. If EA puts Sims 2 on steam I won't have to touch Sims 4 though.

[Diunx]

Will wait for crack.

[benjipwns]

From D4Danger and Wario64:

[Cerveza mas fina]

I can't believe they will ban your account if you have your bank get back money, that definately isn't legal in Europe. I'd like to see them ban Europeans for getting their money back the legal way 

[mjemirzian]

If you issue a chargeback to your credit card it's pretty standard policy for any online game service to ban your account.

No refunds is also a pretty standard policy of any MMO/always online game. Yes, even if the servers are overloaded and broken.

[Fifstar]

ALl this talk about how crappy the new SimCity makes me crave some other good city builder. What would be the best to play? Is SimCity 4 the best or something else, I've read some mixed opininions on it and it appears to have stability issues for some people..

[Great Rumbler]

ALl this talk about how crappy the new SimCity makes me crave some other good city builder. What would be the best to play? Is SimCity 4 the best or something else, I've read some mixed opininions on it and it appears to have stability issues for some people..

Simcity 4 is still the king, the Cities XL series ain't half bad either.

[Joe Molotov]

Remember SimCity Societies? Neither do I.

[Cerveza mas fina]

I had Sim City Societies but quit after like 2/3 hours.

[Great Rumbler]

SimCity Societies did eventually become OKAY, after like ten major patches, but that's about the best that can be said for it.

[ManaByte]

http://www.businessinsider.com/chris-kluwes-simcity-5-review-2013-3#ixzz2My6vF2NE

EA, you are worse than Herpes. At least my infrastructure worked.

[hampster]

Remember SimCity Societies? Neither do I.

Remember Sim Ant? Everyone remembers Sim Ant

If EA wants to make an always online game it should be a massively multiplayer sim ant game. Each server can be a backyard (spiders unlocks are $5 each!)

My ant hill is surrounded by rocks. I dare you to come to my hill!

[cool breeze]

just yesterday I looked it up and was shocked to learn that Sim Ant was a game about simulating ant life.  I thought by "Sim Ant" meant a smaller scale Sim City experience, like a proto-Sims.

[maxy]

http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/8/4079894/ea-suspends-simcity-marketing-campaigns-asks-affiliates-to-stop

Publisher Electronic Arts has suspended some of its online marketing campaigns for SimCity in the wake of ongoing server issues, asking its affiliates to "please stop actively promoting the game" until further notice.

In an email sent this morning to affiliate partners, EA Origin says it has "deactivated all SimCity text links and creative and we ask you to please remove any copy promoting SimCity from your website for the time-being." The email, obtained by Polygon, is directed at affiliates of EA Origin's LinkShare program.

"To be clear we are continuing to payout commissions on all SimCity sales that are referred, however we are requesting that you please stop actively promoting the game," the email reads. "We will notify you as soon as the SimCity marketing campaigns have been resumed and our promotional links are once again live in the Linkshare interface. We apologize for any inconveniences that this may cause, and we thank you for your cooperation."

SimCity launched earlier this week and has struggled to meet player demand. Developer Maxis has deactivated certain gameplay features and says it will continue to roll out fixes to address "server instability" and player frustration."

Polygon has contacted Electronic Arts seeking comment and will update with any information the company provides.

[Mr. Gundam]

http://neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=504556&page=21

Good times reading this thread.

[benjipwns]

"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," explained senior producer Kip Katsarelis on EA's forums.

[ManaByte]

[Great Rumbler]

Good Lord, this is one of the biggest gaming disasters I've ever seen.

[Steve Contra]

All they had to do was put out a prettier Sim City with a few more features!  How do you fuck this up so badly?

[Great Rumbler]

All they had to do was put out a prettier Sim City with a few more features!  How do you fuck this up so badly?

By wanting to get everybody online and cram in tons of social features that the people who play this kind of game likely don't care about.

[pilonv1]

Remember SimCity Societies? Neither do I.

Remember Sim Ant? Everyone remembers Sim Ant

Sim Golf

[Himu]

I knew release would be fucked due to the pre release crap but gosh. Sims 4....I'm worried.

[Joe Molotov]

EA/Maxis employee caught damage controlling on TEH GAF.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=49532727&postcount=14

[Cerveza mas fina]

Ea giving every buyer a free game.

 :ow

[archnemesis]

That's a lot cheaper than offering refunds.

[Brehvolution]

EA needs better QA.

[Brehvolution]

What we are doing is deploying more servers over the coming two days

Someone in management didn't expect this thing to sell very well.

EA already has money from the initial purchase.  No need to add more expensive servers, especially considering only a fraction of the user base will still be active several months from now.

Seems typical for online game launches. Providing enough servers for launch capacity is a waste of money when the online pop. will plummet in the coming weeks or months.

Good Lord, this is one of the biggest gaming disasters I've ever seen.

[benjipwns]

MaxisToast 27 points 2 hours ago
So, we originally had some grand designs for this map. It used to be the 'budget map' and was supposed to show not only expense, but income.
Long (and slightly confidential) story short: doing the income part was crazy hard and we cut it.
The map was still super useful when balancing the budget, but since it didn't give the full picture we weren't comfortable featuring it in the main data layer palette. So now it lives only within the context of a bankrupted city.

oh god

[pilonv1]

MaxisToast 27 points 2 hours ago
So, we originally had some grand designs for this map. It used to be the 'budget map' and was supposed to show not only expense, but income.
Long (and slightly confidential) story short: doing the income part was crazy hard and we cut it.
The map was still super useful when balancing the budget, but since it didn't give the full picture we weren't comfortable featuring it in the main data layer palette. So now it lives only within the context of a bankrupted city.

oh god

link/sauce/etc...

[benjipwns]

http://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/1a425b/the_most_helpful_map_in_the_game_that_you_cant/

[pilonv1]