crashx

Yes thanks. If it is going to be a online game then they better support it like one. It's great to see them working on it, definitely.

The problem is they pretty much marketed that all of the sims had their own little lives going on. Had they just not mentioned it I don't think people wouldn't care...but since they made it seem like it mattered...people looked...and people said "Well hey...this isn't working how you said it would work."

Yep lots coming out now about how glassbox is a sham basically. Basically the citizens run a lot like the power system, they just fill whatever house they can and etc etc. Hopefully these problems can be fixed because I can't get a refund on Origin apparently. So basically the game is broken. I'm not even going to blame EA for that, That is on Maxis failing to deliver.

With PC games Modding is HUGE. Simply huge. One thing Maxis should mind the next time they make a game is that Modding is HUGE and that they should make sure the game is accessible to the community to make their own. You mention the Sims, well the Sims has always had a HUGE modding community. I doubt I'd still be playing that game as much as I do without all the mods, NRASS Mods that puts sense into the Sims world or even all the custom skin mods that make sims look less like they were made with clay. You look at some of the big PC games like Elder Scrolls, Look at what Modding did for Arma...I don't have to list all the games but Modding is huge. I think that is another thing about DRM is that it takes that away from customers. How are people going to mod this game? That's a big question here, because then people could just change what they don't like about the game. So you know what? That one little green square may not have been that bad of a idea. Minecraft has had a lot of success, if you are making a game that is supposed to be about creativity then let your customers get creative with it.

If you know who Boogie is, a youtuber about video games he gives a pretty good solution I think. Stop pre-ordering these games. This will be my last pre-order. I'll try my best not to do pre-order another game from here on out, it's guaranteed money for these companies and if the game gets bad reviews? well you already have the game. If the game has a game breaking bug or two...again you've already bought it. I think gamers as a whole should stop pre-ordering these games, but they always get us with these little bonuses. You eventually just say "Well, I'm going to buy the game any ways might as well get the pre-order bonuses."

The chief problem is they're also shedding a vast number of the ever impatient casual gamer crowd as well. But I imagine there's probably enough fools who'll take the bribes EA are offering. The casual crowd doesn't really care. They care about playing the game and getting enjoyment for however long they play it. That's pretty much it, they don't care about some battle against DRM as long as they play their game and have fun doing it then it really doesn't matter much. It's not that they are fools or are stupid, they just aren't that seriously invested to care. They get their entertainment out of the product and really that is what will count. They spend 60-80$ on a game they can't play and probably will never play stably, and that isn't stupid or foolish? What entertainment did they get out of it, as a frisbee or a drinks coaster? And now they've bought into always-online and other stupid EAxis decisions, the quality of their future games will continue to decrease, which I think is pretty a stupid way to behave. Never play stably? That's probably over stating things as people are starting to get playing now.

If they designed the game to be a online multiplayer game that gets it's information from the servers then even if they wanted to do that I imagine it wouldn't exactly be easy to do. I don't see how most of the simulation is done on EA's servers when people have been able to play the game for 20 minutes without being connected to the Internet. Plus this is 2013 we're talking about so any modern gaming rig should be able to handle all of the computations. I am pretty sure they could release and offline patch if they wanted to. Well it's what she said, you can play the game offline for a bit but that doesn't mean the game is designed that way. Unless she is flat out bold face lying about Question 14, people can play their games a bit offline but she said the regions are simulated on their servers not just the cities. I'm sure they could release a offline patch too, but if they designed a game around it then it may not something they can easily do.

If they designed the game to be a online multiplayer game that gets it's information from the servers then even if they wanted to do that I imagine it wouldn't exactly be easy to do.

The chief problem is they're also shedding a vast number of the ever impatient casual gamer crowd as well. But I imagine there's probably enough fools who'll take the bribes EA are offering. The casual crowd doesn't really care. They care about playing the game and getting enjoyment for however long they play it. That's pretty much it, they don't care about some battle against DRM as long as they play their game and have fun doing it then it really doesn't matter much. It's not that they are fools or are stupid, they just aren't that seriously invested to care. They get their entertainment out of the product and really that is what will count.

I will hold my excitement until I see the list. Not expecting newly released games...but we'll see. Could be a good move by EA.

I'll be very surprised at the next game that tries Always-Online DRM after Diablo 3 and now Simcity.

Maxis has stated that they wish for the tile size to increase, they forced it to be small because modern popular computer systems wouldn't handle the larger tile size well. It wasn't a design choice. They may have claimed it was a design choice to make it seem less drastic, but they want the tile size to be big just as much as we do. To go with the system they made. They made that system and they knew it's downsides. They could have easily just repainted Simcity 4, EA would not have cared. Their sports series do this a lot, EA just okays these games although it does encourage games to go online now, I doubt they tell their developers HOW to go about it. Just to do it. Maxis is to be completely blamed for their design choices, we can't blame everything that is bad on EA. Also Maxis makes all their games easily accessible on all computers. That's just a smart choice no matter what game you are making you want to make sure the largest number of people play it. I would be incredibly disappointed if this game was a repeat of simcity 4. Again, I think the new simulation is brilliant and would have been better had it been done a couple years from now instead in order to include larger city tiles. Most of the features of simcity 2013 are great. there are a few cringeworthy facts, but a solid game overall. the only killer to this game for me is the server apocalypse. I agree. I think it's a good game. The only downsides for me has been the server issues and the tile size. Fix those up and I'll be more than happy with this game. It's likely that EA did force this always online on Maxis, but it still was their job to create this game and they created a more than solid game that had a lot of potential to improve.

Maxis has stated that they wish for the tile size to increase, they forced it to be small because modern popular computer systems wouldn't handle the larger tile size well. It wasn't a design choice. They may have claimed it was a design choice to make it seem less drastic, but they want the tile size to be big just as much as we do. To go with the system they made. They made that system and they knew it's downsides. They could have easily just repainted Simcity 4, EA would not have cared. Their sports series do this a lot, EA just okays these games although it does encourage games to go online now, I doubt they tell their developers HOW to go about it. Just to do it. Maxis is to be completely blamed for their design choices, we can't blame everything that is bad on EA. Also Maxis makes all their games easily accessible on all computers. That's just a smart choice no matter what game you are making you want to make sure the largest number of people play it.

I don't see why. It was his decision to implement Glassbox and smaller cities undoubtedly so. EA publishes games, it does not make them. I mean if you hate this game for the small tiles that was a design choice that had nothing to do with EA. EA actually gives Maxis a lot of free reign, they gave them years to develop games like this and games like Spore. I'm sure EA pushed the always online on them (but that is just guessing) but I doubt they had anything to do with design choices.

Actually....that is pretty funny.

The always online thing is probably EAs fault and most likely is...but the design choice of smaller tiles has to go on Maxis here. I think if people want to hate then Maxis should get some of it too, EA just funds and okays these games.

Curvy roads do take up space and space is a premium in this game but.... Why are you blaming EA for this and not Maxis?

The whole idea of Spore is very saddening. So much potential and it was the last game that Will Wright really worked on supposedly. It's a shame that it wasn't the great game it should have been,

Even though those releases were far from perfect, they pale in comparison to how badly this release has gone. Are you sure? Areanet halted sales of their own game because of the issues they had. Not amazon...but the actual company selling the game decided that things had gotten so bad that they couldn't let any more in to make it worse. Not only that but the trading post continued to go offline and generally not function. Which is a pretty big feature to have not working in your game for like...man that must have been a week. The trading post down for a few days compared to this? Grasp at straws much? Only proves my point, game was fully playable. Arenanet offering refunds is just a courtesy and BS, and it just shows they are a lot better company then EA, the issues were not near as widespread, and the scale and number of users in GW2 dwarfs Sim City. You can play Simcity too, in fact I've been playing it. The point is that Areanet HALTED their own sales of the game because of issues. EA is also offering refunds...your point? You say it's the smoothest MMO launch ever, yet a big feature like trading post (the entire game's economy) was down for several days, not a few days and it kept coming back on and off. This is not to mention all the other issues they had with accounts. Banning accounts by the thousands, unable to form parties and guilds, and all the accounts that were hacked. I'm sorry no they are not excused from having a bad launch, you may want to excuse them so you can heap more of your hate at EA. But NCsoft(the publisher) is not much better. Of course you won't see that, you are likely one of the people whose sole purpose is to go on and on about hoe evil EA is. Also all of these issues I've mentioned with GW2 ON TOP of people not being able to play the game. Just because YOU got to play it doesn't mean others weren't able to. If you want to use that logic then hey! Simcity has had a smooth launch because I've been able to play!

Even though those releases were far from perfect, they pale in comparison to how badly this release has gone. Are you sure? Areanet halted sales of their own game because of the issues they had. Not amazon...but the actual company selling the game decided that things had gotten so bad that they couldn't let any more in to make it worse. Not only that but the trading post continued to go offline and generally not function. Which is a pretty big feature to have not working in your game for like...man that must have been a week.

Your an idiot, those launches were not near as bad, in fact GW2 had small issues but nothing major same as SWTOR. Days later most cannot even sign in and play with sim city, and this isnt an mmo. The issues are way more widerspread, you can assure Amazion did this because of the sheer amount of complaints from customers. Get real and get your head outt of EAS arse. I agree, they can set the standard here to ALL companies because pretty much every major online only game has server issues at launch. Agaoin no they don't not like this. I buy and play a lot of games, D3 and guuild wars 2 had some issues but minor compared to this. D3 the servers would be down 20 mins max and you could play again, this is horrid. Another EA blind sheeple. First of all. If you were to call someone an idiot it would be "You're an idiot" not "Your". It's always nice to see someone resort to kindergarten name calling though while doing that. SWTOR nor GW2 didn't have any problems? SWTOR's launch was pretty bad, the reason is they let a small number of people in, staggering the release and the QQ was everywhere about that. People couldn't play GW2 for a few days as well, I was around for both launches, you are way over exaggerating to pretend that both were smooth. Especially with all the issues NCsoft had with accounts. D3 issues were minor? Alright then... Also by definition this is a MMO.

I agree, they can set the standard here to ALL companies because pretty much every major online only game has server issues at launch.

Exactly. Madden 11 was retired after Madden 13 was released, because pretty much everyone who had 11 then bought either 12 or 13. There's just no need to keep old versions going long after everyone's transitioned to the next generation (or the one after that, for people who skip a year). Likewise, Sims 2's online component was just shut down a month ago, long after Sims 3 came out, because there was really no one still playing it online, and that's for a game over TWELVE years old. (Yes, Sims 2 is older than SimCity 4 by several years.) SimCity isn't like that, because they're not going to release SimCity2014 next year, and SimCity2015 the year after that; they'll just add more DLCs or expansions for as long as they can. Based on past SimCity games, it'll be 5+ years before we get the next game in the series, and if the Sims 2's track record is any indication, it'd be a decade before they shut down the servers for this game. Also, most of those games have offline and/or hotseat play, so losing their online components didn't completely cripple them. This game would be useless without the server (unless they add the ability to save locally down the road), so they'll have even more reason not to shut it off. It's odd to find Sims 2 on that list as Sims 2 didn't really have a online component. It merely had a site that sold some items IIRC and that was pretty much it. Sims 2 community did not just go away though, people that are upset with changes about Sims 3 still play sims 2 just like SC4 players. That's just how it is though.

Ummm, that is a bad decision. Will force players to just stare at their screen waiting for stuff to happen.

It's fine that Amazon has done this, but they should do this for every other MMO game that launches then and set the standard. I surely don't remember them doing this to GW2 or SWTOR.