Anyone else lost interest?

[azxcvbnm321 17]

I don't think it's the micromanagement that's the problem.  The problem is that no matter what you do short of extreme situations (like R and parks only), there are problems that cannot be solved.  No amount of public transportation or good layout can stop traffic problems once your city gets big enough.  No amount of fire and police stations will stop firemen and policemen from dealing with one crime or fire at one time, leaving the rest of the city to be burned down and looted.  It's these features that stop the game from being fun.  When you have no control, you feel as if you are just an observer and it's not fun.

[ItsShane 18]

I'm the exact same. Completely lost interest in the game, didn't even bother playing today at all..

[Mrericg 1]

When we finally got 'online' we played for about a week.  Haven't even launched it since then it's been such a dissapointment.  Tiny cities all end up looking the same and managing the different cities that don't really seem to share anything in a dependable way is a headache..  I just dl NAM so hopefully that will get my son interested in at least SC4 again.

[Treadstone6700 2]

I want to like this game so much, but I do find my interest waning.

 

My last good binge I had a city with trains, streetcars, and a good bus system .  Yet my roads were still always covered in traffic which would back everything up.  I clicked on a random car and then clicked the follow button and watched it drive in a loop 15 times in a row.  Eventually it moved to a different section of the city but then just did a loop there 12 times in a row.  Bugs that ruin your city really suck.

[jacqueline 2]

Not bored yet, but not exactly enthusiastic to play it either. This game was supposed to out do SimCity4 in every way, instead it seems like a downgrade.

[macvirt 361]

SC2013 was never intended to be the next SimCity following the customer nurtured SC4. The intent was to transform a niche genre product with immersive gameplay for simulation and replication to a volume market product with accessible gameplay for casual and leisure patterning. 

 

I have to admit though, it is understandable that people thought that SC2013 would be the next SimCity, building upon the strengths of a nurtured SC4 intended to outdo that game. EA's marketing deliberately created expectation patterns for that. The problem is, that was only done in order to get existing franchise fans to generate buzz, to talk about it, to kickstart their communities in to creating exposure for it. We can argue about whether that is morally acceptable or not, fact remains that it worked. People bought the marketing, and thus the game. As it stands, there is no morality attached, because people buy it. They enable the mindset that results in these situations.

 

Personally I'm in agreement with the good folks of RockPaperShotgun. SC2013 is an easy access quick bit of fun game. But as it so heavily favours form over function it is just not my game. From a professional perspective it is well made, well tailored and well marketed according to strategic directives, I can see how it was planned and specced out. But I also find discarding the existing potential of an existing commercial customerbase wasteful. I can see how they easily could have served both worlds, so to speak. That they decided to discard one world after use, well, that is EA's prerogative. That it is commercially wasteful has even already become clear in sales figures available today. But so be it. 

 

I fully realise that EA will take a few lessons from 2K Games in how to use the factors of "I want to believe" and "I want to embrace" for the immersive gameplay niche customer base to come back and buy more DLC in order to finish, fix and enhance the game. Personally however I am not going to give them that chance. The mentality behind this kind of entrepreneurial approach is one of desdain for the customer, and more importantly it is one of desdain for the dependancies any company has to deal with in order to achieve growth. It does not deserve giving that chance, I much prefer (and I realise this is a decision out of principles) to give a chance to other companies who do not demonstrate the same wasteful desdain towards customers, developers and investors alike. 

 

The big question right there for those who are demonstrably not the target customers for EA with the SC2013 title is whether or not they will a) come back to buy DLC (to essentially finish the game, fix the game and enhance the game - in recognition of those enhancements being designed to cater to other customer types) and b) come back to buy further titles from EA. In the knowledge that they have been used, are not sufficiently important to be serviced and are not the target customer types EA wants to create for. 

 

Yes, it should have been possible to punch through the marketing. Some people did, others did not. Ultimately however punching through it was not even necessary as EA managed to pull its own pants down, so to speak, through the consequences of decisions originating from the mindset behind the strategic directives. Server issues were just one tiny case in that. A bigger case was that of contradictions between EA's and Maxis statements. A yet even bigger case was that of EA's own failures in messaging towards customers following release. 

 

SC2013 is perfect for today's volume markets. It is only because of EA's own failings in mentality that it failed in reaching those strategic targets. It's a game that does provide a nice quick shiny bit of fun, but it fails to keep my attention. Not because of all the issues or frustrations surrounding the marketing and release, but simply because it does not match my gameplay. I prefer to simulate in depth, to try and build to replicate both the real and the imaginary (and imaginative), I don't appreciate arbitrary constrictions, and I do not see any point in being forced to play online only quite simply because to me a simulation game is something I engage in on my own at a time and place and circumstances of my own. 

[macvirt 361]

I'll be damned. You're right. I need to hang out less with these Frenchies and Brits, it's starting to affect my language. Why did I ever move here

[Resender 18]

My biggest dissapoint is the traffic problem with the regional connection, there's only 1 so you can't resolve traffic problems on that one.

The game does run well on low-end systems, hell I can even run it on a laptop that could barely run SC4.

 

But in order to be better then SC4 a whole lots needs to change. I'm doing a compare video on this next month.

In my opinion however SC4 is the better Sim City although it suffers from performance issues.

[lew1984 231]

Im in the same boat, stopped playing a few days ago as I got bored the tile sizes are just to small... I need more room to expand and continue to build up my cities. Now am back on Cities XL/Simcity 4.

[Foley803 2]

I'm pretty much done with the game unless two things happen: power/water simulation are reduced to an equation (does power ever have t "find" a building IRL?) And the wasted processing power is used to simulate a bigger city.

Also, I will remain uninterested until the glaring bugs are fixed and there are too many to list here.

[GenXisT 127]

I still play.  though it is pretty stupid that every city in the region ultimately starts to look exactly the same.

They've made some pretty egregious errors with this one.  Marketing, targeting, programming, it's a pretty long list.

The question remains in my mind is how on earth did they simply ignore what SC4 had become?  I mean, they didn't start this game in 2003.  

Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say they started it in 2009... that means they had all of SC4 up till then to look at and expand upon thanks to the modding community.

4 years... it doesn't take 4 years to do a game (unless it's HL3, apparently)

 

There's a massive lack of creative freedom with this game due to the size limitations and bad graphical interfaces.

It's more or less like we're all the SAME mayor.

[moaku 74]

Yay! 72 hours without playing

Had a motivation lubia to play at some point, but that passed as soon as I ran the game and the title screen appeared... I was wondering why I launched it.

But I played ~20 hours of Simcity 4 during that same period.

[ronnie.swinch 4]

I'm starting to lost my interest after rebuilding two regions because of those city cannot loaded issues. Plus industry is not at all important in the game and the way to get the money is always the same (from TVs). Not like you are always trying to pursuing the balance on the accounting book as well as keeping the city expanding like in Simcity 4. Also like you said the tiny little city and again only one or two linkage towards the outside cities and also usually 4 cities as a group in the region. I guess all those cut down my interest more and more. 

[novaseeker 4]

The question remains in my mind is how on earth did they simply ignore what SC4 had become?  I mean, they didn't start this game in 2003.  

Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say they started it in 2009... that means they had all of SC4 up till then to look at and expand upon thanks to the modding community.

4 years... it doesn't take 4 years to do a game (unless it's HL3, apparently)

 I think it's as was written above -- the intention was not to create a simulation game like SC4, which was considered too niche and too hardcore (too small an audience), but rather to take the "basic idea" and repackage it as an accessible, mass market game for a large audience.  Of course, that has nothing to do with all of the bugs and things that are not working properly, but the overall design of the game was definitely not intended to be much like SC4.

[macvirt 361]

^^ exactly.

[Haljackey 17,302]

The more I play this game, the more frustrated I become with it.

[Aaron82 0]

4 hours is all i got out of simcity2013 before i was bored with it and went back to simcity 4, which after 200 hours im still learning. like in the last week i've only found out about the real highway project.

 

 

simcity 4 there is no game like it.

[Mr Saturn64 742]

It's an internal conflict of mine where I want to play the game but I don't want to be always online.  Without online, I'd play it all the time.

[Rhadamant5186 19]

I check in to see what they've patched, but I've lost interest. I'll probably come back to the game in 6 months time only to realize it is just as buggy and unsatisfying as it is now.

[el_roy1985 0]

I'm starting to lose insterest. With all the issues and the extremely small map size, it seems I build my city to a certain point and then I really don't want to go any further. For one, I like building cities with lots of open area filled with parks and creative layouts. Doing this in the current SC, I get to a point where I feel like my city is finally just starting to take shape, but then I realize "no, this city is done, because I have now run out of room and I don't want to increase density." Then if I do  build a "city" to the unrealisticly high population density that this game encourages, my city turns into a big traffic jam and the only things I do from then on are deal with bugs that cause my city to run poorly.

 

I still enjoy a bit of play now and again though. The core mechanics seem to be a good concept, they just need better routing for traffic and to fix the RCI. If every "agent" could pre-plan it's route, I think it would alleviate a lot of the traffic problems. Then instead of sims just funneling off to the next nearest home every time, they could have a set destination before their trip even starts. That way they will drive directly to their destination, causing a lot of them to naturally select different routes and eliminating all the queing that causes all the traffic issues.

 

I think this game still has the potential to be great, it's just a matter of whether they will stick with it till it gets to that point. I sure hope they do, because I really don't want to have to go back to SC4 again.

[anytownUSA 32]

I've gone back to SC4.  I play simcity mostly to relax and have a creative outlet, yet still feel challenged.  Since I cannot build my own region maps and the city tiles are so small I feel very limited playing the new SC.  SC4 is relaxing and beautiful, the new SC is just downright stressfull...

[nutdotnet 0]

Yes.

 

I've only played a few hours (watched a lot of playing through YouTube and Twitch). But man....the game doesn't have the same draw to me as SC4 did...I played SC4 all the way up to last year. 

 

It's likely my play style. I like to build large urban cities, not small-to-mid size ones and then start over....they really shouldn't have titled this "SimCity"...it's more like "SimRegion" or "SimSuburb"...which is fine, but not what I had in mind when I heard of a new SC game.

[GenXisT 127]

The question remains in my mind is how on earth did they simply ignore what SC4 had become?  I mean, they didn't start this game in 2003.  

Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say they started it in 2009... that means they had all of SC4 up till then to look at and expand upon thanks to the modding community.

4 years... it doesn't take 4 years to do a game (unless it's HL3, apparently)

 I think it's as was written above -- the intention was not to create a simulation game like SC4, which was considered too niche and too hardcore (too small an audience), but rather to take the "basic idea" and repackage it as an accessible, mass market game for a large audience.  Of course, that has nothing to do with all of the bugs and things that are not working properly, but the overall design of the game was definitely not intended to be much like SC4.

 

Then they should've named it something else.  This clearly is NOT SimCity.  I'm getting really tired of the lust for large market crap like Facebook games mutilating the market for quality, in-depth games.

Some people like to actually spend time playing stuff, especially if you're going to refer to it as a "simulation."

 

If they'd have called it "Sims in the City" or something along those lines... then I wouldn't have even bought it.  But to call it "SimCity" that means there's an expectation.  You cannot rehash a game that doesn't need rehashing... i only needed updating to include the stuff that was modded in from SC4.  All they've done with this rehash is destroy it.  You can't really simulate anything.  i mean, every city eventually ends up being this massive square of skyscrapers.  no actual suburbs or any actual "neighborhood" feeling. It's really a bit contrived.

 

Sure, it has its fun moments... but it needs to be WAY more than it is.  i could even live with the small tile size if they had conjoined city squares or something to make it more realistic.

It's just frustrating... 

[novaseeker 4]

Then they should've named it something else.  This clearly is NOT SimCity.  I'm getting really tired of the lust for large market crap like Facebook games mutilating the market for quality, in-depth games.

Some people like to actually spend time playing stuff, especially if you're going to refer to it as a "simulation."

 

If they'd have called it "Sims in the City" or something along those lines... then I wouldn't have even bought it.  But to call it "SimCity" that means there's an expectation. 

 

Yeah I'd say it's more like "Sim Districts Online" if we're going to name it descriptively.  

[Rhadamant5186 19]

Then they should've named it something else.  This clearly is NOT SimCity.  I'm getting really tired of the lust for large market crap like Facebook games mutilating the market for quality, in-depth games.

Some people like to actually spend time playing stuff, especially if you're going to refer to it as a "simulation."

 

If they'd have called it "Sims in the City" or something along those lines... then I wouldn't have even bought it.  But to call it "SimCity" that means there's an expectation. 

 

Yeah I'd say it's more like "Sim Districts Online" if we're going to name it descriptively.  

More like "Sim Traffic Manager"

[GenXisT 127]

 

Then they should've named it something else.  This clearly is NOT SimCity.  I'm getting really tired of the lust for large market crap like Facebook games mutilating the market for quality, in-depth games.

Some people like to actually spend time playing stuff, especially if you're going to refer to it as a "simulation."

 

If they'd have called it "Sims in the City" or something along those lines... then I wouldn't have even bought it.  But to call it "SimCity" that means there's an expectation. 

 

Yeah I'd say it's more like "Sim Districts Online" if we're going to name it descriptively.  

More like "Sim Traffic Manager"

 

LMAO... that's the one... 

[+Guest Joel Jose]

yes....I decided to stop playing...I chose not to be a LOSER!

[aMerkuri 2]

After two first city rollbacks I decided to quit. This is not the way I should spend many hours playing a game, developing it, succeeding and get everything lost in seconds..

[uebs 11]

I'd name it, The Sims City 2013

 

"Dumbed way down for the non SC4 base" would be the marketing campaign...

[+Guest Joel Jose]

I was interested on March 5, 2013...

 

I lost interest exactly ONE day later...