pipvac

/sarcasmon Yes, this does indeed make up for the lack of trains and monthly subscription plan being over priced. I will be rushing back to pay 175% more than I did the last time due to this superb addition. I can't wait to manage my contracts across two planets rather than one, because it works so well on one already. Excellent application of time, man power and resources, afterall it was priority one on everyones' list of Cities XL improvements. /sarcasmoff

I enjoy Cities XL, and from the start subscribed to the 3 month deal. The value for money aspect of the online content was always dubious, but I was happy to be part of the initial uptake and investment. This was, in my small way, my contribution to the game's on going development, to where it should have been at release. The removal of the three month subscription, without any adjustment to the monthly rate (an effective price increase of 175%), has pushed the value for money element of this game from just about acceptable, to over priced. Its not a question of whether I can afford it, its a measure of whether it offers value for money at the price asked. To be clear to MC. I will NOT be renewing my subscription to Cities XL at this pricing level. I wish MC well in their future endeavour with this game, and hope that their strategy going forward enables them to make this product viable. I regret that I do not represent the target customer for this new strategy.

Just to be clear, business hotels do not 'need' to be near offices to be profitable, they can be located anywhere... provided they are on a road with high passenger and freight traffic.

Originally posted by: morriswalters Trading is conceptually flawed. If you remove Omnicorps the system would collapse. If you only have one city to a planet people will eventually quit playing because the trading system is not responsive enough. The problem is time. The clock never stops. But trading does. You play on your schedule and I play on mine. But the game drives ever onward. Omnicorps ideal role is one as wholesale house, but their prices are fixed and unrelated to supply and demand. Nothing has value except as flow. So the lag between buying and selling is lost opportunity. This drives everybody to Omnicorps. Because low money is better than no money and your expenses happen in realtime. And since everything is paid for in flow, you are driven to build to create more flow. No saving for any new toys. One million or 25 million makes no difference. When you get to any point that you can get stable at, the game is over except for maintenance trading, which is tiresome and routine. quote> This. I wanted to write my own summary, but this really hits the nail squarely on the head. Your bank balance actually means very little. It doesn't matter that you have 1bn in the bank, if your cashflow is down to a low level than you are stuffed, without demolishing cost generating items out of your city for any period of time. This is rather odd to me. You can't trade in tokens (buy or SELL (!!!???)) if you have zero or negative cashflow. You may have the biggest bank balance on the planet, and could sustain the contract with zero cashflow years beyond the five day period, this will always be ignored. The trading system is hopelessly flawed. Its an interesting novelty, and on a small scale can help you specialise your city. As soon as you progress beyond a certain point in your city's development, the flaws become cracks, making reliance on 'real' trade rather than chaining our five cities, impractical.

Originally posted by: SimBurger I'm too lazy, and its nearly 2am, and I have some macaroni and cheese cooking right now, so I can't be bothered to search for this. I run my city barely making any office hotels. Once in a blue moon, I see a flag above an office saying its suffering from lack of office hotel services. Then I build one. What's the protocol for these things though? 1) Are you supposed to have them scattered around everywhere, in numerous quantities for the health of the businesses? Or is it just one or two every blue moon? 2) Why would anyone bother to build a "Low Quality Motel" that clearly says on its label "A few Low Quality rooms". Or even a regular sized motel which says "Several Low Quality Rooms". Is there some value to building these versus those with higher quality rooms? Confusing... 3) As far as location - should they always be near office areas, or can they be anywhere? I guess im not clear on what they are in the first place. Never really considered hotels to be a major industry used by offices. But they are in this game. I know the other big need for offices in this game is heavy industry... Thanks. -SB-quote> 1) The effect is city wide. The only thing you need to consider when placing them is they need good passenger/freight traffic in order to be profitable, and they dislike pollution. Offices consume the 'output; of business hotels. So when offices want more, build more. In the same way that you need manufacturing for retail outlets; 2) Good question. In practice I have found that Elite/Exec high offices (ie high density) prefer higher quality hotels, and therefore generate more resource to fulfill their needs. The opposite being true for low density and medium density offices. Whether this is supposition or real is difficult to measure; 3) see (1).

Someone has already mentioned freight and traffic, plus demand for the resource... Also check to make sure that they have their full compliment of execs/elites. If you have full employment, and business do not get enough of each population type, that can impact profitability dramatically. Noise pollution may also be a factor.

The trading system is beyond broken? Well the 150+ contracts that I have up and running seem to suggest that it works just fine. There are issues, eg people can place contracts despite not having sufficient freight to honour them, so the system wont let you 'buy' them, yet they still list. Updates are a little slow. Yep, its bugged, no theres no excuse for MC to have launched a game in this condition. Does that make it unplayable? Far from it. I have found enough depth and complexity in the game to make almost any city builder fan blush with pleasure. Should you buy the PO? Depends on your level of patience, and your ability to work around issues. Why should I have to? You shouldn't, but theres a great game there for anyone with the mindset to get into it now. But you do have to be inclined to work around issues. Once MC pull there heads out of their backsides, you'll have a proper challenge. The player chat on its own has paid dividends, as the problem solving interaction between like minded people is, to me, a large part of the entertainment value. There are some very clever people playing this game (myself excluded).

I have a 2.7m city with a large high density office based environment. With one large airport, and around eight small ones, I have a passenger capacity of 798, and I am currently only using 298 of it. Yet my offices continue to have issues with available passengers capacity. Every tick the passenger 'map' seems to shift the green areas like a tide going in and out. Regardless of how many airports I place, or their location (I now have placed three directly in the middle of the offices, and the rest on the outer edge of the map), the issue remains unchanged. Have I missed something, in which case this is an issue for me to put right, and I would appreciate your advice please... or is this a bug, and is there a work around? Thanks in anticipation. Pip.

Given that we are where we are, and change is as yet not scheduled... I am in exactly the same boat, this week, travelling to Spain on business for five days. My counsel would be to get the best contracts you can prior to departure. On return, DO NOT ENTER YOUR CITY. Open the trade window for that city on the planet screen and secure what supplies you need BEFORE you enter your city. If there are items not available in the market, check in chat to see if anyone is willing to help with the shortfalls, or use Omnicorp as a temporary top up until cheaper comes along. This has worked for me on two occasions since launch where I have had to travel. I hope that helps.

Originally posted by: 0wn3d First off, somewhat off topic, if you place airports very close to your offices then they will close down due to pollution. Next make sure on your passenger map that it is green near your offices. Make sure you have a very large road near them connected to your airports or the edge of the map.quote> This is infact not entirely accurate. Offices are unaffected by noise pollution, and airports do not generate air pollution (bizarrely!). So you can place offices directly next to airports with only positive effects from passenger flow. The solution was reached thanks to that chat box you pay for in the PO. We put our brains in gear in chat, and a couple of players with bigger brains than mine suggested checking traffic flows... Yep... that was it... traffic jams were preventing the passengers from getting to parts of my city with the offices. After about an hour or so tweaking traffic flows, problem solved. In summary, if your passenger map shows that the green isn't reaching certain parts of your city, first check that you have enough passengers (eg airports and out of city connections), then ensure traffic flow is not preventing them getting to where they need to be. Thanks goes to the many players online who took time out to discuss this with me.

With something in the order of 60+ active contracts, and a wealth of gameplay tips and knowledged shared in the chat, I think I see the advantage of the planet offer. However, it does not represent value for money by a long way, yet. There are some fundamental issues, most of which are covered elsewhere. Ignoring the obvious gameplay bugs which do not involve the PO, there are a number which need urgent attention:- 1) Trade - the trade window is outrageously slow; open to abuse by players accepting then immediately cancelling contracts; people can place offers without the necessary freight to accomodate them, meaning they wont 'accept' and the screen just leaves you refreshing until you reload; trade ignores your bank balance, and focuses soley on cashflow; occasional bug where ALL your contracts reset to leave you with huge deficits; contracts are only 5 days max; 2) Tutorial can over save your planet city - yea this is a doozey. If you go from the tutorial to planet mode, you can lose your city save on the planet, as it gets replaced with the tutorial; 3) Where are the blueprints !???? 4) Web page trading not up yet 5) So much for live updates on your webpage, as its now only updated once per week (I think) My advice to anyone not yet subscribed.... don't... not yet. Don't get me wrong... I actually love the gameplay challenge. Its much more tricky than I was anticipating. However, the only online feature which is actually working is the chat window. Offline, there are an enormous number of gameplay bugs... staggering number in fact. Again, I enjoy the game even after all that. Unless you are blessed with the same patience and goodwill that I am, you would be better off spending your time threading a fine needle blindfolded, whilst being electricuted each time you missed the hole... it would be less frustrating than CitiesXL is right now. If MC can fix all of this (a big if), then there is one hell of a game to get excited about here.

Originally posted by: gyzzzmo Originally posted by: Coney Originally posted by: SimBurger Everyone says Elites are never happy. As soon as my city enabled Elites, I gave them their own 1) School 2) Police station 3) Health Clinic 4) Retail 5) Fire Station 6) Leisure I haven't had a single complaint from them yet.quote> I suddenly see why you might have trouble keeping a steady income while browsing your city... That is at least -30000 income right there - And at the same time totally unnecesary... quote> Isnt true. I have a city where i placed enough services to keep my citizens happy at a taxrate of 30%. That gave me an income of 1,3m a tick an a city with 1,5m citizens. So investing in it can definitely pay back. quote> This. As for silos... freight is the key. Make sure you have decent freight traffic passing the silos. Same for business hotels... location near offices is a myth. The key to profitable hotels is ensuring that they have high freight/passenger traffic flowing past them (see economy indicators and select freight and passengers).

Yesterday no problems, today I cannot get past the splash screen which says "Checking game version". It just sits there with the 'busy' cursor doing its rotating blobs. Left it for well over 20 minutes before ctrl-alt-del my way back to desktop. Any thoughts on what may be causing this? No change to my client, or hardware in between my logging on yesterday and my attempts today. Game version is 1.0 (build 369) by the way. Cheers folks.

I'm reading these posts nodding in agreement. The game is quite harsh ( although I remember alot of posts on these very forums saying how easy Cities XL would be...cough! ). Yet, you can mitigate some of the issues, eg. use 'diversions' or temperorary re-routing to placate any transport problems; check your trade contracts on the planet screen before entering your city when logging back on; etc etc. Little things, but really helpful in creating safe guards to your city.

Should anyone wish to pursue further action, then please feel free to do so under the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 (UK), supported by European Directive 1999/44/EC, which will provide a grounding in France where MC are registered. Personally, I would be happy with some form of explanation, and list of corrective actions applied in a 'reasonable' length of time. As for their experience, one would hope that they retained some expertise from running an MMO from their other offerings, going as far back as Starpeace (now run by independents with MC's blessing).

Once again, I'm stuck on this screen. At what point does this become a breach of contract? or failure to supply a service? This is difficult to accept on two counts:- 1) Having paid for the planet offer, its reasonable to expect to be able to log in and use my account at any time other than during maintenance of the server, or when new functionality is being added, as per the EULA. As per the reply above this is neither of these instances, and constitutes a loss of service; 2) Due to their draconian software security, a side effect of not being able to use the server is that the offline mode is also inaccessible. For the hard of thinking, let me repeat.... 'offline mode'. Again, a product for which I have paid, I cannot use when I wish too, even if I had no desire to use Monte Cristo's servers. French law and cleverly worded EULAs can only go so far at protecting MC from this abstract failure to honour its obligations in respect of providing access to this product both online and offline. Particularly as the vast majority of us have fulfilled, without default, our obligations in respect of the EULA. At the very least, some kind of communication from MC as to the nature of this issue, and the corrective actions in place to restore service would not be unreasonable to expect, nes pas!?

I have a couple of relatively small cities, the largest of which has around 250k population. There are a considerable concentration of low densitiy and medium density offices. However, they have got to a stage where they require business hotels, yet when I set up up, they quickly go bust. Regardless of size, or bedroom quality. Regardless (it seems) of location, or proximity to available services. I appear to have reached a brick wall, and would greatly appreciate your expert help please.

This problem goes away (kinda - still crap profits), where you have 'holidays' as a resource on the map. However, this issue is devastating where no holiday resources are available. Not sure if this is intentional or not, but there is no way to compensate for the lack of 'holiday' resource on a non-holiday map. It would seem a little daft for business hotels to rely on 'holidays' as a resource as opposed to the available business community. Asking around on the servers, those who claim that its not an issue for them are also on maps with holiday resources. Others in the same position as myself, also do not have holiday as a resource. This is out of sample of about 20 cities. There would appear to be some correlation, although this is not a statistically significant sample.

I pre-ordered my LE copy from Play.com, and its delivery has been delayed (unavoidably by the postal strike here in the UK, as it was despatched on time). However, I had a concern regarding the timing of the issue of my activation key and emailed MC. They responded promptly, clearly read the email, and offered me a referral contact for more information. Frankly I couldn't have asked for more, and all this on launch day. Thanks MC.

I love your approach to the journal. Interesting development style, which would be different to my own. Therefore I will be interested to see how things work out. Got to say, I completely agree with kookalang. Keep it going. Look me up when copy finally gets delivered and I'm online.

MC: "Mass transportation (including buses) will be part of the future features and, as such, will only be part of the Planet Offer. We intend to deliver the bus system this side of Christmas and will confirm as soon as we can." Source: http://blog.simtropolis.com/post.cfm/interview-with-monte-cristo

Mass transportation on launch is not available. However, it is planned as an update at an undefined point in the 'near future' and will be available as part of the Planet Offer only to the best of my knowledge.

Looks like another thread hijacked by the overwelming number of registered members who feel betrayed or even mis-sold by MC. I wonder if we can get back on topic, and hear what those who have had a chance to play the full retail version have to say about it please? Its already very clear from the abundance of negative and angry posts elsewhere how people feel pre-launch. I write this while listening intently for the clatter of my mail box as I await delivery of my pre-order limited edition. To quell my thirst I would very much like to read peoples' genuine first impressions of the retail product.

Like you, I pre-ordered mine from Play.com. Product despatch notice recieved yesterday. Was hoping it would be delivered today, but no postman at all. Fingers crossed for tomorrow. Well... I can dream can't I? The good news is Play.com issued the activation code this afternoon. Looks like I'm all dressed up with no where to go. Perhaps the more lucky of you can tease us with your screenshots and initial journals.

I feel like I'm cheating a little relative to the OPs reply requirement, but anyways... Despite the posts on this forum I am excited about the launch of Cities XL, and am likely to buy the game for the single player aspects initially. The game is due to be reviewed by PCZone magazine (published on 28th October). This review together with feedback from the early adoptors (you guys?), will dictate whether I plunge into the Planet Offer or not. I'm one of those players that likes the 'Plop 'n Play' method of positioning your buildings, as the idea of having greater impact on my cities aestetics (for good or bad), really appeals to me. Hopefully you guys will continue to post your feedback on Cities XL, especially the PO, after launch, assuming you can drag yourselves away that is?