SimBurger

First off, thank you for being here. That says a LOT about Monte Cristo that they've got people here actively participating. Says so much. If you're good at compiling bugs from people's feedback, this will be huge for improving the game. Consider us your QA team You can scale the interface in the option menu. Are there any specific panels or menus where you find the text particularly hard to read?quote> Good to know. For me its laying zones. Clicking one type generates those square, single, rectangle, etc boxes near the bottom of the screen for Residential Zones. Hovering over those, and several other elements brings up menus and descriptions that are brutally tiny. pressing the up arrow makes the view pan down. Pressing down arrow makes view pan up. Alright .... Can you be more specific? Does it happen in all modes (Planet View, Avatar mode, City mode)? Does anyone else have the issue?quote> 1) City Mode 2) Zoom all the way down to street level. 3) Using only keyboard - no mouse. Arrows. 4) The way to look up and look down is hold Control + Up arrow or Control + Down arrow. 5) Unfortunately down arrow makes the guy look up. Up arrow makes the guy look down. Peculiar Characters Appearing on hover over "4"quote> This "alt tag" (so to speak) appears when hovering over the "4" icon. I dont remember if this was in the tutorial or regular city. Registration Process Challengesquote> 1) Upon first loading the game, you take the user to a Registration page. User fills in Registration form, and clicks to complete. User is then taken to the main CitiesXL webpage. In IE 8 base install user is presented with a popup asking if they would like to load only the secure items on the page? Click yes or no. I believe this can be resolved by having all elements on your main page inside an HTTPS directory. Most likely there are some images being shown in the page that are not also in HTTPS. 2) Frustratingly, the user should be told at this point, on the page, that they need to check their email and click the activation link. There is no information on the page saying this. So I was stumped. Someone mentioned that the note *IS* there, but I did not see it. So maybe make it much more noticeable. 3) As a result, instead of checking my Email, I tried to just start the game. I typed my username as "SimBurger", and was presented with the message "Invalid Characters in Login". I was completely stumped as there are no invalid characters in my log in. After 10 minutes I figured out your program wanted lowercase letters only. Industry standard, as far as I know, doesn't consider capital letters to be invalid characters. If your program does, this should be communicated clearly. 4) I fixed my username and attempted to log in again. This time it said "Invalid Login or Password". No other explanation. Again I was completely stumped. This was happening because I had not checked my email nor clicked the link, nor unlocked the game. The reason why is because at no point had anything, anywhere, told me to I needed to do this. 5) So I checked my email and clicked the link. Astonishingly, even the email itself says absolutely nothing about needig to click the link before being able to play the game. It says nothing about the link being a method by which to unlock the game, nor the place where you need to enter your Certificate Key. It really should. 6) After entering the product key, you again send me back to the Cities XL main page, which again asks me if I want to load "unsecure" content. And true to form there is absolutley nothing on the web page which states that my game is now unlocked, my login is now activated, and I can now play the game. This information really should be conveyed in big huge letters. Pausing the Game in Planet Offer Modequote> This is just a want, not a need. But I do like to take several minutes, or longer, to stop building and get down on the ground to cruise my city. It helps me get a feel for how things are laid out, distances, and picking places for certain elements based on geography. Unfortunately I keep getting nag screens every 20 seconds that the city needs attention. Im not able to take any time out to stop and smell the roses. My money goes up or down, my employment changes, buildings go from alert to bankrupt, all in the 15 mins Im trying to check things out. I hate not having control over the play speed., and the ability to pause. People mentioned that the game can't be paused in PO mode because its live with other players, and would lose sync. Why not just do a save on a Pause, then a resync when its started again? Is it a server-strain issue? Controlling your Avatar while walking through someone elses cityquote> The avatar movement control is extremely extremely difficult. The keyboard is the only thing I have. 1) I can not consistently make him walk. 2) I try arrows, control+arrow, shift, etc. 3) Sometimes he breaks out into a sprint. Other times he walks. 4) Most of the time he just hops once forward. Always doing a little hop. 5) If I do figure out a keystroke to make him run, or walk, or do something, I can execute the exact same keystroke again and he *wont* do the same action. 6) I can right click somewhere on the map and he goes there. 7) Sometimes he gets stuck on the side of a skyscraper and I can't get him to go up or down I put him in a park once, and he was waist deep in grass. Couldn't see his legs This entire function needs to be addressed. Maybe copy over the functions for the street view navigation/movement. It seems to work fairly well there. But currently, keyboard only, I can't make the guy do what I want him to do. Even basic things. Thanks again for being here. Monte Cristo is doing the right thing! SimBurger

Since when does dragging and dropping onto the start menu change the path of the file? I have several items i've dragged and dropped there and their path has not changed. Its assumed that this is a shortcut, because its the start menu. I kind of figured that was the problem but it doesn't make any sense, and it doesnt happen with other files. Is this just an EXE file thing? SimBurger

I never played SimCity 4 with any sort of guidebook. Its always trial and error. Even to this day, if I dont play it for 6 months I forget important things, and end up having to scrap my first city. That's the fun of this game. It draws you back. And you have to learn. SimCity4 tarnished our view on high tech. I found out a long time ago with SC4 that you can just immediately zone high density residential, and high density industrial. And all you need are lots of schools and low taxes to get high tech structures to form. Smart people and zero tax on $$$ industry. Seems that is not the case with CitiesXL. Sounds like they're doing things more intelligently. Im still a little thrown by the 14% starting tax rate. Europeans *do* know that our tax rates aren't that high in the USA don't they? Im not sure how to translate this into terms my brain can grasp. With SimCity4, they hovered around the USA standard - 7%. You can go up or down from there. The reaction of the city was logical based on that. But starting at 14% - i dont know how things work if I go up from that, or down .... We would go down to zero % to encourage high tech in SC4 .... but going from 14 to 0 in CitiesXL is a whole different dynamic. Oh well im sure ill figure it out. SimBurger

In SimCity4 you had three possible speeds, and a pause. I realize CitiesXL pauses after some idle time. However, my big "fantasy" with a game like this is to be able to create a city, and walk around inside it. With CitiesXL you can do that. I may be fooling myself but I believe if you can walk the streets, drive down the main drag, etc you can see important things, like how far the drive to work is. How far the low income housing area is from the nicer areas. Etc. You can tell if you need a park somewhere, and based on the topography you can see where a nice housing development should go. Therefore I tend to spend a lot of time at street level just wandering around my city, getting a feel for it. The problem is, the game keeps on ticking, and I see all these alerts, and employment decreases in the 5 minutes I am poking around. I really would prefer to be able to slow down time, or even pause it, so I can stop and think. Is there any way for me to slow or pause this game so I can take a moment to breathe? Thanks

Originally posted by: Psycho_Teddy What I would like to see happen with this thread is this: 3.) Sticky?quote> Please no. There's already 52,327 stickies in this forum. Way too many already. Besides, your post contains one simple concept. Lower taxes to stimulate growth. Doesn't need an entire sticky thread dedicated to it. Could probably even fit well in a list of other common sense tips. SimBurger

My biggest issues are as follows: 1) Font is way too small on menu zoning and other menu items. Please increase, or allow user to increase. 2) Navigation, panning,etc is very difficult. Pressing up arrow pans down. Pressing down arrow pans up. Drives me insane. 3) Completely unable to make my avatar walk when i go into someone's city. Sometimes he will. Other times he will start running. Other times he'll just jump a little. 4) One keystroke that makes the avatar do something will do absolutely nothing the second time around. The exact same keystroke. 5) Install process does not create an executable program file to run the game. Nothing on desktop. Nothing in program menu. Nothing. Please fix! 6) I created a city named Priapism, then deleted it within 15 minutes. Went to a new location an hour later and tried to use same city name. Said city name already taken. 7) Absolutely no help text anywhere during the install process informing the customer to check mail, unlock program, etc before being able to play. Tried to log in after registering a username and password and it said "invalid login". Nothing about having to check my email to click a link to enter a certificate code. No information. Capital letters on login result in a vague "Invalid Characters" error which left me stumped for 20 minutes. Try saying "Lowercase Only" instead. 9)

MISSING PROGRAM ICONS FOR GAME: AGREED Huge huge HUGE pain that they dont even create icons on the desktop or Program Menu. Major oversight Monte Cristo! First bug fix right there guys. I even tried to drag and drop the EXE file from windows explorer into the program menu and it simply WILL NOT execute from there. It executes from windows explorer but not if you move that shortcut anywhere else. NEver seen such a thing. Probably a vista bug of some sort, which only happens with this program? As it stands I have to go into Windows explorer and navigate to the file just to play the game. Every time. Any suggestions? NAVIGATION: This is my other biggest issue right now. For some reason pressing the up arrow makes the view pan down. Pressing down arrow makes view pan up. Alright .... And When I try to make my avatar walk around a city - forget it. It jumps. Hops. Stops. Does one thing with one keystroke and something different with the exact same keystrokes. I have no idea why it does this. I can't make him walk. Sometimes he runs. Sometimes he wont move. Its very very awkward trying to pan around the city. Then again I am new to games like these so maybe they're all like this. FONT SIZE ISSUES: AGREED Beyond unreadably small on several of the zone menus.

Good points. I never thought of the fact that your city must keep going so that other cities can keep going. But im still a little confused - if you can close down for a week and log out and do nothing, why can't you pause it in Planet Offer mode too? Seems to be almost exactly the same thing, no? Pause can initiate a "Save" and that's that. Right? Where I did have a problem with poking around my city for 15 minutes was when it was new. People are trying to move in, and there aren't enough zones, etc. I kept getting popups saying basically "Hurry! Hurry! Need more residential zones! Oh crap! Running out of new job space! Employment is starting to take a dip!" And that was all in the 10 minutes I was at street level looking at my city. It was stressful after awhile. I couldn't enjoy what I was doing. I like to be methodical, and think things through. It was bothering me. SimBurger

Ok so basically the program icon is not placed where its accessible. There are two files in the CitiesXL directory .... CitiesXL_game.exe and CitiesXL.exe The latter I believe is the correct one, but half the time I click it , I still get the above error looking screen. Is this another bug I should report? I also found this bug in the hover tag (when hovering over the "4" grayed out elites icon)

Great - So I wake up this morning and want to start the game. But there is no icon. Anywhere. Nothing in the programs list. Nothing on my desktop. I did a search in the programs list for "citiesxl" and an icon appears. I click it. And this happens. Can someone tell me how im supposed to start the program?

I dont mean to nitpick. Honestly. But to the first guy who responded saying he had no problems at all. That's fine, but the issues I raised did occur. I swear that through the entire process I did not see a single bit of "helper" text anywhere, telling me what to do "next". Nowhere. The program freezing during install was very weird too, because it wasn't really frozen, it was still going. I checked the Cities XL home page three times and never saw any notifications in a blue bar like you mention. If it was there, it blended in so much with the rest of the page that it was unnoticeable. As far as my IE settings and the "Insecure" popup - I have a base install of IE 8 without any modified settings, so I do represent the majority of users. Its an HTTPS page. Some images are not housed in an HTTPS directory on that page. This is a web design flaw as far as I know. Not a problem with my browser settings. I do have to say that once I got into the game, everything seemed very well done. Honestly. Based on knowledge of development teams, I am willing to bet someone was in charge of the registration process, and someone else was in charge of the game itself. The team in charge of the registration process isn't very good. I know its nit picking so I apologize. I dont like ot be "that guy". But first impressions .... I do think the avatar customization tools are poorly designed for useability. The whole "Random" option combined with the four checkboxes above was very confusing for me. I've never used an avatar customizer before though. Clicking "Last Avatar" doesn't work. It shows you a completely different one than what you just saw. The Avatar appearance was the most unappealing thing about the process though. They were a mixture of Fat Albert, Jabba the Hut, Napoleon Dynamite, Jar Jar Binks, and Roseanne Arnold. None were even slightly appealing. So I sat there for 15 minutes clicking through them trying to find the least disgusting looking one. I finally figured out you can adjust their face, etc. Is that just how most Europeans look without adjustments? (ha ha) I do this stuff for a living (useability testing), but I am new to "Games", so some of my comments might seem clueless. Hope to see you guys on the planet! By the way, why did the USA planet get such an ugly name? Haha ... Pollux? Like Bullocks? SimBurger.

Living in the past - try not to be so negative. If the game ends up sucking and never improving, people wont buy it. Look at Societies. There's really not much point in assuming things that haven't happened yet. I know you're mad about them ignoring you, but we're all over the age of twelve here, so "staying mad" at them and talking trash just cuz you're mad, has no real value. We can't comment on what we don't know. None of us knows the reasons why they changed directions. I said this before in my other post and I stand by it. What matters now is what they do next. And yes, its a basic rule of business that the more subscribers they get, the more they will pour into the game and improve it. Saying that is wrong, is incorrect.

Human beings are so funny. One guy is screaming he can't play at all without connecting to the internet. Turns out he didn't activate his product. Another guy is screaming that Monte Cristo "stole his money". Turns out he didn't even give it a couple days to ship to his front door yet. Others are just saying "Lame" and "Sucks". You guys kill me. Enjoy the newest and yes - improved - game since Sim City 4. Stop being impossible to please. Your negativity is going to spread everywhere and a pretty cool game is going to get a bad rap. No different than negativity ruining the honeymoon with our amazing new president.

I think the real question here is, why are human beings never satisfied, always negative, over-entitled, whiny, and always see things cup half empty? We've got a potentially awesome new game coming. Smile. Or would you rather go back to another 7 years of nothing, post SimCity4 ? I think all of you should watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOtEQB-9tvk It gets better near the end... -SB-

Mrdazza - your thought processes are definitely foreign to me. Im kind of surprised you are a business owner. You seem to be typing like the customer that business owners dread. The ones who see with blinders on, complain about everything, act like victims, and have no understanding of the product development lifecycle, and the difficulties of coordinating a project of this size. Im sure MC is not perfect, and they probably made some mistakes. But aren't Sim enthusiasts supposed to know thats how things go sometimes? Was your first sim city a success? Im not making excuses for them, but I think we were all inspired by the "movie" trailer for this game. If that is their end goal, then I am willing to give them time to get there. Even with some speed bumps. If they're just buttering us up to sell a mediocre product, then they wont succeed. I'd be more disappointed that I missed out on such a cool potential game than I would be about losing $39. The real test period is not prior to release of 1.0. Its how they handle things after 1.0. Will they enhance? Will they bug fix? Will they listen to their customers? And even then .... like I mentioned .... they may need to do things we dont like, such as push the subscription thing for another 6 months. Just so they can address funding issues. We really shouldn't speculate about their intentions when we don't even know what they're up against. Gotta remember, human beings are behind this process. They're slow, imperfect, emotional, get tired, and maybe incompetent sometimes. Why not just get the game, see what it does, and then take the necessary steps to make our voices heard, via whatever communication method they will set up?

I wouldn't say that only a few people have purchased this game. We have every reason to believe they've sold well over 40,000 copies of it even before its been released. That's a decent amount isn't it?

Actually that's wrong. Order numbers do logically coincide with how many orders. The starting number is the real key. If a guy who purchased Sept 4th (above) says he was number 649,000-ish and a guy who purchased in October was 679,000-ish, then we can logically assume they've sold 30,000 units in that time period. As the guy pointed out above, that means they've probably made well over a million. Probably much more, assuming preorders went back further than Sept 4th. And the more they make, the better off we are. I hope they are rolling in billions of dollars soon from this game, because that means a better game is on the horizon. All of you who are SimCity fans should be using this thinking. Not the childish thinking of a big company trying to make money off us, as if its evil. If they are a responsible company, the more they sell means the more they will pour into enhancements. They can finally pay their bills, and may begin making this the game we've always wanted. This is how business works. I dare say it was a financial decision which made SimCity4 the last game of its type. Lets not let that happen again If they don't make a fully functional stand-alone version of this game, they are nuts. I agree. If it happens, we just communicate that to the company. They may NEED to keep the online incentive going to help offset their expenses for awhile. If so, expect it. That's how business works. You all claim to be Sim enthusiasts, you should understand economics. Those of you who have the $ - lets spend it, and become investors. If the game ever becomes like the video caps i've seen of it, then they deserve to be wealthy.

Here's the bottom line. What version 1.0 of any game was awesome? None? Speculation is great for Discussion Forums. The day the game comes out, you find out everyone was blathering for the most part, and reality takes over. Let the people like me, who have too much cash on hand, spend the money on the monthly fee for online play. The rest of you can play pacman for awhile. Let people buy the game. Let the ROI start to come in for Monte Cristo. Let the funds increase. Let the bug requests roll in. Let the feature requests get compiled and prioritized. Let Monte Cristo have money to fund more development. Let them work on version 2.0. Let them do updates and patches. Fixes. Enhancements. Let time pass. If this company has a dream for this game, they will enhance it. And we as customers should thank them for what they've taken the time to attempt. If it sucks, it can be improved. If they don't improve it then they suck and they wont succeed. Its called Natural Selection and it happens in game development just as much as nature. There''s no point in screaming conspiracy theories or yelling at a company for what approach they chose to take. You don't have the first clue about the details of "why" they had to do what they did. So dont sit around and act like you know. Anyone who has spent any time in business knows how things pan out sometimes. Maybe they have to sacrifice the happiness of us SimCity4 Fans so they can address financial duress. Does that mean they won't make the game we all dreamed of eventually? No. Let the money start rolling in and give Monte Cristo a chance - 6 to 12 months - to show us they plan to follow through. We will know soon enough if they just rake in the dough and don't do a thing to enhance the game. But they will. So relax.