Sim City is now down, the maintenance message is amazing

I can't imagine how bad some of the actual developers over at Maxis are feeling horribly bad seeing everybody shit on their game (though not as much the game itself as the network stuff). I know I would feel horrible, anyway...

I also can't wait for either EA (most likely not) or someone to put out some patch or something to be able to play this offline. Just thinking I wouldn't be able to play this on my laptop whenever I go somewhere without internet, or the fact that if EA ever closes their server I wouldn't be able to play it anymore just makes me sick...
 
BomberMouse said:
Just saw this, probably posted. Is this true?

EA Hires Hundreds of Chinese Spammers to Post Positively About SimCity’s Always Online Requirement
http://www.p4rgaming.com/?p=1473
Click to expand...

I remember EA doing something exactly like that during some kind of gay pride petition they put up.

I don't remember the story exactly, maybe someone on GAF remembers. It was sometime during ToR or ME3 where EA was looking to make their image more solid among the LGBT community.

They had some kind of petition set up on one of their websites. And it was flooded with about 15 prebaked, positive messages sent from random locations throughout the world.

It was getting a little ridiculous when it said, 'you get 'em EA' thousands of times, but from different countries where they don't even speak English. Must of been some kind of glitch in their program.
 
IISANDERII said:
It gets worse. Some people think that EA must have known of the server issues well in advance and and that was the reason for the small city sizes we see.
Click to expand...

It was confirmed via Twitter that the small city size is because the simulation aspect only runs off a single processor, though I imagine since the game cloud saves and the online component is so deeply embedded into the gameplay, the server issues is almost certainly involved as well.

@moskow23: The main sim + game loop is on a single thread, so extra cores don't help. We do make use of extra CPU for audio/rendering (source)
Click to expand...

@SimCityForum: last and big question. In the full version, the cities have different sizes in one region, or all cities the same size?

@oceanquigley: For now, all the same size -2k square.

@whyman: What is the thinking behiend that? It really seems way to small.

@oceanquigley: Performance tradeoffs for more realistic simulation. We can (and will) go bigger as machines allow. (source)
Click to expand...

While digging around for those quotes, I skimmed through the previous SimCity thread. It's funny seeing the people who adamantly defended EA / Maxis and swore that they didn't mind the game having forced online, small city sizes and missing features pop up again in this thread to bitch, despite all of us telling them how bad this was going to be.
 
EA certainly found an amazing new way to shit on a classic computer game franchise. I feel sorry for what remains of Maxis, they used to be one of the "good guys" in PC game development.
 
Retro said:
It was confirmed via Twitter that the small city size is because the simulation aspect only runs off a single processor, though I imagine since the game cloud saves and the online component is so deeply embedded into the gameplay, the server issues is almost certainly involved as well.





While digging around for those quotes, I skimmed through the previous SimCity thread. It's funny seeing the people who adamantly defended EA / Maxis and swore that they didn't mind the game having forced online, small city sizes and missing features pop up again in this thread to bitch, despite all of us telling them how bad this was going to be.
Click to expand...
Good to know, thanks for posting this.
 
JTbXxQT.gif
 
IISANDERII said:
Good to know, thanks for posting this.
Click to expand...

Heh, don't thank me, it's pretty much just me saying "told you so" to all of the people who dismissed all of the comments about crap like this. It's just funny that a lot of them are showing up to complain this thread, like we all didn't tell them it was coming.
 
Grief.exe said:
I remember EA doing something exactly like that during some kind of gay pride petition they put up.

I don't remember the story exactly, maybe someone on GAF remembers. It was sometime during ToR or ME3 where EA was looking to make their image more solid among the LGBT community.

They had some kind of petition set up on one of their websites. And it was flooded with about 15 prebaked, positive messages sent from random locations throughout the world.

It was getting a little ridiculous when it said, 'you get 'em EA' thousands of times, but from different countries where they don't even speak English. Must of been some kind of glitch in their program.
Click to expand...



Oh yeah, that was sinister as fuck.
 
Diablo 3 got a 10 from Polygon despite an equally awful launch.

EDIT: Oh I see it's a progressive review of its current state. Interesting.
 
TheNatural said:
LOL you can't make up whatever you want in your EULA and expect it to hold. They still have to follow laws for good business practice.

That's like saying "If you agree to play this game, we reserve to take money out of your bank account at our discretion, along with having intercourse with a relative of our choosing at our discretion."

EULA's mean shit.
Click to expand...

The Supreme Court held that contracts can write out the consumer's right to join a class action: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-5...-sue-your-wireless-carrier-in-a-class-action/

I realize a EULA is slightly different from a contract you sign with your phone carrier, but...
 
JoeBoy101 said:
Incidentally, Gamespot Review

5.0

Metacritic Score now at 82, for the critics.
Click to expand...

The problem with metacritic is they dont change their metascore. They stay at a, at this time, flawed 95pt Polygon score.
And, as this game requires servers that thousands of people play on and try to access every second i find it laughable to accept reviews written with regard to what i can only call staged and controlled environments before the floodgates open.
I find it sad that people and companies rely so much on metacritic...

(oh and i didnt quote you cause i disagree with you or anything, i just commented because of the metacritic link)
 
Iacobellis said:
Wow, is Sims 3 really that old already?
Click to expand...

Sims 1: 7 expansion packs over 3 years (2000-3)
Sims 2: 8 expansion packs over 4 years (2004- 8)
Sims 3: 11 expansion packs over 4 years (2009-13)

When phrased that way, you can also see how they have steadily milked the franchise with expansion packs (which in many cases add in features that were part of the core game in previous versions).
 
Jindujun said:
The problem with metacritic is they dont change their metascore. They stay at a, at this time, flawed 95pt Polygon score.
And, as this game requires servers that thousands of people play on and try to access every second i find it laughable to accept reviews written with regard to what i can only call staged and controlled environments before the floodgates open.
I find it sad that people and companies rely so much on metacritic...

(oh and i didnt quote you cause i disagree with you or anything, i just commented because of the metacritic link)
Click to expand...

No problem. Frankly, I only check metacritic or reviews to make sure a game isn't total Bomba. I have to say, though, GAF did me right. I was -><- this close to buying SimCity and then saw all the issues with the servers and the talk about the city sizes (which is a bigger issue to me than the server issues and DRM).

So, thanks for saving me that $60 GAF.
 
JoeBoy101 said:
Incidentally, Gamespot Review

5.0
Click to expand...

The nice thing about this review is that the reviewer acknowledges the issues may be fixed at a later time but stuck to his guns about the score; he drove it home that you should either skip the game or wait until these issues are resolved.

He does fail to mention the recent developments though of removed features to try and fix the issues but that's okay. All in all, a pretty fair review.
 
Unknown Soldier said:
EA certainly found an amazing new way to shit on a classic computer game franchise. I feel sorry for what remains of Maxis, they used to be one of the "good guys" in PC game development.
Click to expand...

Maxis ere the people who gave Rush Hour expansion out for free (during week one) because most of the features in it were supposed to be in the original game and they ahd elt the customer down.

A decade later.....
 
Grief.exe said:
I remember EA doing something exactly like that during some kind of gay pride petition they put up.

I don't remember the story exactly, maybe someone on GAF remembers. It was sometime during ToR or ME3 where EA was looking to make their image more solid among the LGBT community.

They had some kind of petition set up on one of their websites. And it was flooded with about 15 prebaked, positive messages sent from random locations throughout the world.

It was getting a little ridiculous when it said, 'you get 'em EA' thousands of times, but from different countries where they don't even speak English. Must of been some kind of glitch in their program.
Click to expand...

Big game outcry... turn to LGBT issues to salvage some PR...

I'm sure the timing of the "Full Spectrum" event is entirely coincidental, but makes you think... In that tin-foily way, but still...
 
jamesinclair said:
Maxis ere the people who gave Rush Hour expansion out for free (during week one) because most of the features in it were supposed to be in the original game and they ahd elt the customer down.

A decade later.....
Click to expand...

Let's be glad they are still called Maxis at least, and not "The Sims Company" (or thereabouts) like EA wanted not too long ago.
 
dygiT said:
JTbXxQT.gif
Click to expand...

To be fair, to the best of my knowledge few people, and no pirates, are able to play Simcity; that's the big "advantage" (if you can call it that) for the publisher, is that it really does eliminate piracy, since a large portion of the program is server side and it won't work without it.

EA thinks its going to save money that way, and is trying to be cheap with the servers too; because those cost money and all that. Never mind that the DRM that's this bad actually prevents sales.

Has EA Forgotten the lesson other publishers learned from Starforce already?
 
Ironlion45 said:
To be fair, to the best of my knowledge few people, and no pirates, are able to play Simcity; that's the big "advantage" (if you can call it that) for the publisher, is that it really does eliminate piracy, since a large portion of the program is server side and it won't work without it.

EA thinks its going to save money that way, and is trying to be cheap with the servers too; because those cost money and all that. Never mind that the DRM that's this bad actually prevents sales.

Has EA Forgotten the lesson other publishers learned from Starforce already?
Click to expand...
I think you're sorta missing the point. The gif is illustrating how draconian drm inevitably hurts legitimate customers more than pirates. Which is exactly what's happening here, even if pirates are also stymied for the moment.

And now I've ruined the joke :(
 
I really feel sorry for those devs from Maxis who worked on all the Glassbox stuff that has jack squat to do with this always-online bullshit. All their hard work is getting shat on from above because some dumbass suits pushed this shit on the entire product.
 
NJBorn said:
just how the flawed system works
Click to expand...

While I wish there were exceptions to the rule, the Metacritic owner reasoning is sound as to why he only allows the first score:

"Yes, the critics we track know—and I spoke to the GameSpot team about this this week - that we only accept the first review and first score published for a given game," Doyle told me in an e-mail. "I'm explicit about this policy with every new publication we agree to track. It's a critic-protection measure, instituted in 2003 after I found that many publications had been pressured to raise review scores (or de-publish reviews) to satisfy outside influences. Our policy acted as a disincentive for these outside forces to apply that type of inappropriate pressure."
Click to expand...

I do dislike rules are rules policies though. There should always be some flexibility.
 
Mrbob said:
While I wish there were exceptions to the rule, the Metacritic owner reasoning is sound as to why he only allows the first score:

I do dislike rules are rules policies though. There should always be some flexibility.
Click to expand...

That reasoning doesn't rule out lowering a review score at all.
 
Oh, I agree. I'm surprised Metacritic isn't getting more flak. I suppose they probably think if they change one score the flood gates will open for everything.
 
Is this perhaps the worst launch for a video game ever? I know that's full of hyperbole, but I have never seen such an unfathomable trainwreck.
 
I never thought I'd see the day that a game that doesn't actually work and is completely broken, reviews the same on Metacritic as a God of War game. Bizarre.
 
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