SimCity, One Month Out: Still As Troubled As Day One?

[cats_Paw]

EA: "Problem? What Problem?" - While checking their bank account and seeing they got the money anyway.

 

[ojas]

[citation][nom]bee144[/nom]Spent $85 on this crapware of a game. Never. Buying. Another. EA. Game. (That includes BF4, I spent 300 hours on BF3)As the article pointed out, the game is boring and severely limited by map size. The game is single core only, which is why the maps are so small. These past two months they've managed to do nothing with the game.[/citation]
Haha, BF3 was the first and last game i pre-ordered and the last from EA. Don't have a single server in my country.

 

[videobear]

Leave the city. Come to Second Life!

 

[the great randini]

/simrage

 

[jpishgar]

I should point out as well, that the official message board on SimCity.com is far more entertaining than the game itself. 24 hour comedy gold.

Especially since the big 2.0 patch. Potential buyers of SimCity should note that the 2.0 patch delivered bugs like "Trees now give off the noise of sirens." and "Taxi-cab invasions randomly appear, clogging your streets for days."

Users have had to invent creative solutions in street layout to either minimize or avoid the use of stoplights altogether, which is ridiculous. Once you reach a certain population this can completely kill your city.

In my latest cities (SimHamlets), I based the road design on "reverse L" designs, making zero 4-way intersections and using streets more heavily than avenues. Avenues, it turns out, don't allow motorists to turn around. They function like an interstate would, if an interstate had no off-ramps, and had a bunch of intersections.

Public services seem to randomly stop working, more specifically trash and recycling pickup.

I've built 10+ cities now as a result of writing this review, and I have not yet once seen a Recycling Center that worked. Not only this, but the garbage collection always, always, always seems to be unable to collect the total number of garbage cans in the city, even maxed out.

Oh ya, you can lose a city or even an entire region due to some sort of critical (and seemingly prevalent) server syncing bug.

The region I was playing multiplayer SimCity in had cities with more rollbacks than Walmart.

Tourism is broken, largely due to traffic problems.

I tried a "tourism" city once. Usually you make your big money with event buildings, like the stadium and expo center. You make bets with money up front betting how likely it will be that a) tourists will come and b) your road system won't melt down. Totally...uhh, "fun", in the classic EA definition.

Joe, the new comments section under the news items is pretty bad...forums are fine, imo, though quoting is buggy.

They are still working out the kinks on article commentary since the switch-up to the new article comments system. I'm pestering the devs on a daily basis on this, and hoping to have it fixed soon.

One way for us to put the screws on publishers is to stop pre-ordering games.

I've stopped pre-ordering entirely. With digital downloads, why would you pre-order any longer? If you can wait till the day of, even, you should. I try to wait until a week or so after, especially with the big ones. We've been trained to know that the first release by certain publishers (EA) will be buggy and require an OMG LAST MINUTE PATCH! to become functional.

However this will be an interesting test to see what happens with a terrible game that you know has many DLCs scheduled down the pipeline. How will EA price the DLCs?

I'm betting they'll use the pricing model from The Sims, with wide ranges from $1.99 to $8.99. They've so far used the game as a car commercial and to sell toothpaste. Brace yourself for when they start selling space in SimCity to OTHER EA games that marketing says need a little push.

The first paragraph reminded me of the movie "the terminal" when Viktor Naworski repeats to the security camera "I'll wait".

Funny, I was thinking of the word "terminal" while writing the review. But mine was more in the "We're afraid the illness with bad game development is...terminal." kinda way.

On another topic: I liked the review. How about a section called Tom's gaming and review games (in conjuncture with h/w, or something like that?)

We had a Tom's Games for a long time, though it was all flash games and such. I'll ask the editor guys if they'd be down for more game reviews.

some people were linking this article on the simcity forums, and EA moderators were blocking the posts claiming it was a link to some guy's hardware store named Tom......no joke......and that the link to the this article was just some store trying to sell stuff. ......oh, and that TOM ( who wrote the article =P ) was just using EA bashing because it was a good way to get hits for his stores website........ROFL.......

Well then. A field trip is in order.

Leave the city. Come to Second Life!

I'm in Second Life. Let's just say the llama problem in SimCity is considerably less.... uhh..."X-rated" than the llama problem in Second Life.

 

[MMaiO]

aa

 

[brenro12]

I stopped buying EA games a long time ago.

 

[rebel1280]

The backtracking on the EA forums by the mod is classic! LOL

 

[Fabel]

I did pirate a lot when I was young but as my income increased I paid for my games.

Now there is an increased tendency at delivering incomplete betas and charging for the missing parts as DLCs, so after almost 15 years of paying for all my games when I see such cases I just pirate, and I really hate that cause I don't want to worry about viruses in cracks, patches, firewall rules, missing videos, language packs etc...

Even if the retail version were free sometimes the inconveniences of DRM and abusiove DLCs make the pirate versions more convenient.

 

[jpishgar]

The backtracking on the EA forums by the mod is classic! LOL

An innocent mistake. They may have been confused by the Kontera ads / in-line links. I clarified for them in that thread.

 

[BRADY]

Thank you jpishgar for this awesome article! It's just so spot on there's not much more that can be said.

 

[nerrawg]

Simple solution: Buy Sim City 4 and mod the heck out of it!

With the right mods it looks as good as the new Sim City.
Not to mention so many more possibilities:
-One way streets
-Building and map editors allow you unprecedented customization
-Subways and alternative public transport methods
-Loads of custom and new structures for power, utilities, education and commerce
-Custom cars, planes and trains
-Accurate recreations of satellite terrain maps for making your own versions of famous or infamous geographic regions

 

[zkevwlu]

Keep buying their crap, EA is laughing all the way to the bank.

Seriously, how many more botched games do they have to release before you idiots learn?

 

[mapesdhs]

Joe writes:
> ... Funny, I was thinking of the word "terminal" while writing the review. ...

Joe, I laughed so much reading your post on the EA forum, and this article; you really do
have a way with words. A singular wit, as a Klingon general once said. The game doesn't
interest me except from a gaming industry perspective, but I do enjoy reading good prose.

Ian.

 

[icepick314]

I get the feeling EA/Maxis will abandon this game in 2 years, maybe 3 years tops, and move on to SimCity 2 or whatever the next game will be...

and people will forget what happened and buy that said new game...then complain AGAIN after they bought the game with the next set of problems....

 

[voodooking]

WOW! I thought Civilization 5 was bad..

 

[tirvon]

EA is FAIL.

Origin proved it's inability to cope on day 1, BF3 is [FINALLY] where it should have been a year ago, and while it is a fun game and I admitedly have put quite a few hours into it myself, I still rage at it on a fairly regular basis for the necessity of the biggest POS add-on, none other than the infamous memory depleter and system crasher "FAIL-log".

Whoever came up with the idea of incorporating the server brower in a web browser should be shot.

But I digress. The lack of a FAIL-log counterpart is the ONLY thing I see going for SimCity, but apparently putting the server brower in the game itself didn't really help....SO. EA = FAIL. No more preorders from this former Battlefield fan either.

Glad to see people can at least vote to show that this company is not worth our money.

 

[hetneo]

Goodbye MoH and Danger Close, soon will be goodbye to SimCity and Maxis. Will same fate happen to Battlefield and DICE? smh
[citation][nom]DavidRappl[/nom]I really hope that DICE is able to let their developers make a great BF4, and that EA does not insist in implementing a stupid microtransaction[/citation]
I'm certain there will be at least BF3 level of it, meaning shortcut pack BS smh

 

[shrub1]

they have your money now they dont care they just move on to the next 'BIG LAUNCH'

 

[ddpruitt]

They are still working out the kinks on article commentary since the switch-up to the new article comments system. I'm pestering the devs on a daily basis on this, and hoping to have it fixed soon.

I find this comment incredibly ironic as Tom's hasn't been able to get the new forums/comments working with a simpler system and have rolled back to an older version, which by the way I don't mind a single bit, if the old version works why kill it.

 

[littleleo]

EA got your money, and they continue to get more victims daily why spend money fixing it? You bought a lemon, and I think the only what you'll get EA to fix it is by filing a class action lawsuit for fraud against them. Until then it will business as usual until the source of new victims drys up from people read about the total failure of this game. Once the revenue from the new victims stops perhaps they will consider fixing it, but I doubt it. The only way to change this new gaming company mindset is to take them to court and make them spend millions defending the piece of crap you bought, good luck!

 

[jigawatt]

more constructive rants just like this, please! I loved it!

 

[jamus34]

you might get 1 more patch for simcity...tops...all other fixes will be rolled into the DLC

I'm about done with EA too...Madden has been utter garbage the past 5 years ago and across the board they are getting worse. These big megapublishers bitch and moan about the production costs of AAA titles however you look at the indie scene and they put out fun, functional titles at a fraction of the cost.

I cut my teeth gaming on a C64 so graphics for me are fairly low on the totem poll of importance in a game...I want to have fun first and foremost

 

[jamus34]

I also love the fact that they will BAN your Origin ID if you request a CC chargeback because they sold a sheet product...Way to stand by you product there guys.

 

[doogansquest]

I love how people say stupid shit like, "Always online is killing gaming..." It's not though. People are still buying it, the companies making those games are therefore profiting, and thus there's no reason to move away from the trend. Growth creates jobs as well, so more people benefit than just a select group of hardcore gamers who are going to participate anyway.

Your complaints are worthless. Until people stop buying the products, the move to online-only will continue. Complaining won't change it. Stop supporting it with your dollars! They aren't forcing you to buy: you have a choice.