Hellsing321
Member
Keep in mind Sim City 4 was designed to work with much older PCs and you may need to do some modding to get the game to run acceptably on your machine.
Sim City is now down, the maintenance message is amazing
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Keep in mind Sim City 4 was designed to work with much older PCs and you may need to do some modding to get the game to run acceptably on your machine.
They more than likely don't and do not spin my point. They are of the mind that states "oh well, this is how it is" without knowing any better, without researching, without voicing their distaste. There is a rather large group that simply takes what their given and believes that's how the cookie crumbles.
ANYONE who supports these types of "models" is the problem. Most gamers are against this for good reason - the casuals "that's how it is" their way to ignorance. "Gamers", while vocal, are a very small minority.
Neuromancer
Member
I need a hug you guys
BolognaSoup
Member
And formable terrain which is HUUUUUGE for me. But don't worry I'm sure EA will let you buy that "feature DLC" later.
Unless they changed it, SCII is only always-on if you're playing multiplayer, right? It only occasionally phones home when you're first logging in and playing the campaign from what I remember. Using game servers to control game logic is pretty asinine in any case. I'm pretty sure that if my PC can handle SC4 it can deal with SC5's simulation on a smaller, instanced scale.
I'm kind of glad that this happened, because it reminded me to go play SC4 some more.
I'm kind of glad that this happened, because it reminded me to go play SC4 some more.
TheChewyWaffles
Member
Wow. I feel like a genius for not shelling out for this piece of shit. I will never support always- on DRM. Ever. If that means I have to just read more books for entertainment, then so be it.
Neuromancer
Member
A few minutes later...
TheQueen'sOwn
insert blank space here
On my game launcher it just says Checking for updates...
Anyone else have the same thing??
Anyone else have the same thing??
ReturnOfTheRAT
Member
Single-handedly making review scores worthless.
VeryGooster
Banned
$6.99 in-forum purchase
bigdaddygamebot
Member
"Every EA game will have multiplayer."
eventually...
"Every EA game will have microtransactions."
Don't you know? The "casuals" love that stuff.
They were worthless before, but they are marketable.
HEY! IT'S MEEEEEEEE!
Sorry, you didn't pre-order so you don't get a free "NeoGAF hug".
I don't see what they are 'simulating' that is so complicated they can only handle cities a fraction of the size of earlier games which ran on ancient PCs. It's basically just the stupid fucking graphics, right? Because they want you to see each ndividual stupid person, they're breaking a fundamental part of the game. Idiots
SnakeswithLasers
Member
Doubtful. They'll just sell more regions. Why give you the cow when they can keep selling you milk?
maniac-kun
Member
The simulation part runs on a single CPU core. They must rewrite the core of the game to get bigger cities to work
SatelliteOfLove
Member
Strike one.
Strike two.
Ask yourselves, before strike three plops into the catchers mitt of history, why are these like this? Why is it inevitable? What do YOU get out of this?
Strike two.
Ask yourselves, before strike three plops into the catchers mitt of history, why are these like this? Why is it inevitable? What do YOU get out of this?
Sim City. They want to simulate stuff that goes on in a city and people wandering around and doing stuff tends to be a big part of it.
I am sure as hell they will make the regions bigger but it might have more of an inpact on lower spec machines.
Developer and Publisher still utterly underestimate demand or what to expect from online games. Also, they still don't test enough.
SteveWinwood
Member
Those evil pirates don't steal all the games from the good guys!!!11
Isnt it that the older game used an approximation of the citizens behaviour while the new one actually simulates each individual citizen in order to generate emergent gameplay or some such?
Seriously? That's terrible. But also perhaps relatively simple to patch in down the line.
Avoid Piracy or just a gameplay element that did not quite work in their favor.
I think its also 32bit. I am sure I saw that somewhere.
bigdaddygamebot
Member
Yep...you can follow the day to day of a single citizen in your city. I suppose that sounds compelling for some.
SnakeswithLasers
Member
Like grenades rolling down hills?
FaintDeftone
Junior Member
EA should make things right by hooking up early adopters with a free Origin game or free DLC or something.
Oppo
Member
According to Origin's policy, no refunds at all on digital purchases.
I looked it up. Let me know if you get anywhere with them, though.
Bitmap Frogs
Mr. Community
Glad I passed on this.
StreetsAhead
Member
What an absolute clusterfuck this game's launch seems to have been. Glad I reconsidered my decision to buy it once I found out about the DRM policy as this is far worse than I imagined.
Caesar III
Member
The first Settlers game on my Amiga limited the map size to 3 out of 8 options because my Amiga did not have enough RAM to use bigger (randomized!) maps. Sometimes, when some more sound effects could be loaded on startup it was even limited to 2 out of 8. Why not do something like this as well? My CPU is sleeping while playing the game. Gimme the simulation
They could even base this on the Windows Performance Index. "You want to play bigger areas? Get a 5 rated CPU"Version 3.0
Member
No, I can very easily fault a company for "trying to be profitable". There are a lot of illegal, immoral, or "grey area" things companies can and do use for the sake of profits. Such as incorrectly reporting their taxes, underpaying/overworking employees, or selling products that don't work, or work poorly. Among many other things.
This would be a "grey area" scenario. And yes, I can and do fault them for it.
TheChewyWaffles
Member
It's just sarcasm.
I'd be careful doing a chargeback. IIRC, Steam will lock you out of your account if you file a chargeback against them. I don't know if Origin will do the same. So consider that possibility if you have other games tied to that Origin account that you wouldn't want to lose.
LAUGHTREY
Modesty becomes a woman
I didn't buy it, but I can see myself playing this game once it calms down.
afaik the game isn't just using always on DRM, you actually need to be connected to their servers to play the game because some of the processing is done server side. Whether thats true or not I don't know.
If it was just always on DRM, then yeah its 100% anti-consumer and I won't buy it and all they're doing is losing sales because pirates will always find a way. But if there's actually a good reason to be connected to it, even if it is a single player game, then this is really a micro-sliver in the games lifespan.
They never have enough server space for peak players to play, that'd be retarded and you'd lose more money than it'd be worth it.
Phone companies also don't have enough lines for everyone to use their phone all at once, you gonna stop paying for your phone because the 1 in a million chance you dont get a dial tone when you pick up?
The easiest solution here is to just open the game up slowly over 5 days earlier for pre-orders on a first come first serve basis. I've never seen a smoother launch than The Old Republic and that's what they did. No one will suddenly all want to play all at once and clog the servers.
yellow submarine
Member
Are they even doing anything server-side in terms of CPU calculations anyway? This seems like a DRM-focused always-on requirement, like in the AssCreed PC versions. That one didn't get my money either.
kurtrussell
Banned
Been in-game for most of today, tbh the only problem I had at all was when everything went down about 25 minutes ago. I don't want to be one of those "well, I didn't have any problems" people, but until that point, everything was smooth as butter.
Having said that, the server lost connection twice throughout the evening, but both times, it just popped a little message up in the top left hand corner of the screen saying "lost connection" - the game continued and after about 15 minutes, connection restored itself....
Interestingly though, whilst there was no connection, it became obvious that there is a lot more of the server-side stuff than people actually believe - large parts of the simulation just didn't react as they had been throughout the day - my service coverage went a bid fubar for example with weird crime waves breaking out. However, as the server is simulating each criminal and policeman individually, I suppose this makes sense to be honest.
All in all, though, in my 25 years of playing Sim City, this is easily the best one so far. It's a really brave and admirable reboot that plays in an entirely fresh and new way, but still feels close to it's roots. The insane level of depth to this one makes SC 4 seem like Fisher Price kiddy city builder - once you play it, I don't think it's possible to go back to the old versions
I also can't help thinking that the server situation could have been avoided if there weren't a bunch of asshats using Singapore VPNs to try and play a couple of days earlier. They were launching it over a week across regions to try and control stuff and avoid exactly this kind of server issue. Sadly, all the idiots who couldn't wait a day or two longer piled on and screwed it up for all of us :-\
Having said that, the server lost connection twice throughout the evening, but both times, it just popped a little message up in the top left hand corner of the screen saying "lost connection" - the game continued and after about 15 minutes, connection restored itself....
Interestingly though, whilst there was no connection, it became obvious that there is a lot more of the server-side stuff than people actually believe - large parts of the simulation just didn't react as they had been throughout the day - my service coverage went a bid fubar for example with weird crime waves breaking out. However, as the server is simulating each criminal and policeman individually, I suppose this makes sense to be honest.
All in all, though, in my 25 years of playing Sim City, this is easily the best one so far. It's a really brave and admirable reboot that plays in an entirely fresh and new way, but still feels close to it's roots. The insane level of depth to this one makes SC 4 seem like Fisher Price kiddy city builder - once you play it, I don't think it's possible to go back to the old versions
I also can't help thinking that the server situation could have been avoided if there weren't a bunch of asshats using Singapore VPNs to try and play a couple of days earlier. They were launching it over a week across regions to try and control stuff and avoid exactly this kind of server issue. Sadly, all the idiots who couldn't wait a day or two longer piled on and screwed it up for all of us :-\
Hysterical - Kotaku article from June of last year about EA not repeating Diablo III's mistakes with SimCity
When has an online game launch not been a failure. Honestly, I am not sure I can think of a single game that required onilne (MMO or otherwise) who's lunch wasn't a total cluster. Someone better figure this stuff out before we are forced to do this on consoles (I know, low blow).
Thanks for the tip. Another unfortunate circumstance. Talk about anti-consumer. I don't want to risk it...but if the game doesn't work when I return Thursday and Origin won't refund my money I'm not going to be afraid to go that route. It is legitimate.