Sim City 5? [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Closet_Skeleton

2013-03-06, 01:34 PM

There is a real good game buried under all of that, however as it stands I'd say it isn't worth it to find it. Give it a month, maybe a bit longer, to see if EA can get the server stuff sorted, and have the game go on sale.

Hopefully EA give it a chance to build a player base and don't just cut it because it didn't lay golden eggs over night.

Thank you. That is what I will do.

Maxis: Awesome.
EA: Suck.

As someone who hates to say this because he boycotts all EA games and will never forgive them for Westwood, that isn't a fair thing to say.

Maxis was acquired by EA in 1997. There is no Maxis anymore. There hasn't been since SimCity 4 in 2003 and the creation of a seperate The Sims Studio in 2006. Studios don't just freeze in time for 9 years not making anything. This game was basically created by a completely new studio using an old brand.

Everything, the good and the bad (and there is some good according to certain sources) is entirely the result of the effort of EA.

The Glyphstone

2013-03-06, 02:55 PM

EA Games: Ruins Everything. *bzzzt*

I loved the Simcity series, but I'll be skipping this one and hoping they go back to offline play with SC6.

Iskandar

2013-03-06, 10:58 PM

Yeah, it appears to be that time again, the time when developers/publishers jump on the latest bandwagon at the expense of classic gameplay. A few years ago, it was the "everything must be rts/fps, tbs games are dead" and now it appears to be "multiplayer is the new future, no one wants to play single player anymore"

Bah. I'm getting old.

My normal take of a game like this is to revisit it in a year or two, when it shows up on Steam or whatever for 10 or 20 dollars, and might then be worth it, warts and all. Thanks to the new DRM, I'm not convinced this game will still exist in a year or two, or how long it will continue to exist if it does. That is my biggest gripe so far, that this new always-on DRM takes control away from the players, gives it to the publishers, they now decide how long a game is worth playing. That is abuse waiting to happen.

But I'll not argue that point.

I take it back, what is out right irritating me at the moment is how crass EA has become in monetizing their customers, to the point that there has been a huge backlash, and people are still giving them money, hand over fist. It just boggles my mind.

Sigh. No, I'm done. I keep going down that path, no good shall come of it.

Ninjadeadbeard

2013-03-06, 11:47 PM

From what I've been told by people who've played the game, SC5 is a great game when it works.

However, it never works. :smallamused:

Grif

2013-03-07, 12:01 AM

From what I've been told by people who've played the game, SC5 is a great game when it works.

However, it never works. :smallamused:

Damning statement right there. :smallsigh:

Karoht

2013-03-07, 01:23 AM

From what I can gather, the city building is well thought out and beautifully detailed. Especially given that a city doesn't have to hit all the bullet points now, it can specialize or diversify on a whim. Ultimately, a good game in most respects.

The online stuff though... they really didn't think any of this stuff through. At all.

Avilan the Grey

2013-03-07, 02:27 AM

I WILL get this game, but it won't be until after my next salary, on the 25th. The good part is that EA hopefully have fixed stuff by then.

factotum

2013-03-07, 03:20 AM

After hearing about all the problems I just went and bought Sim City 4 again instead (lost my copy some years ago)--it's much cheaper and doesn't have any of this required online connection stuff.

Castaras

2013-03-07, 09:05 AM

I read an interesting review that summed Simcity 5 as feeling "more like a really thoughtfully designed multiplayer mode for a larger, single-player capable game."

From what I've seen, I'd agree with it. I wasn't intending on getting it anyway because the DRM turns me off it completely, but seeing that this is what people are saying about it... I'm not at all upset I'm refusing to get it on moral grounds.

Lamech

2013-03-07, 02:54 PM

Hopefully EA give it a chance to build a player base and don't just cut it because it didn't lay golden eggs over night.

But eventually the player base will decline and then they will cut it. I'll buy this if they make an off-line mode. Until they do? No money from me. EA makes good games, but they have a record of screwing up servers, and cutting them entirely.

Grif

2013-03-07, 07:49 PM

Hiro Protagonest

2013-03-07, 09:40 PM

As TB once put it "EA has managed to make themselves more hated than Activision".

And let's face it. EA doesn't decide whether or not to publish games based on their merits. They decide to publish them based on some algorithm for calculating sales figures they've come up with by combining genre, difficulty, and quality. And now they've decided to add DRM to make it harder for pirates to crack. This is also why they've moved from a few big expansions that you pay for to lots of little overpriced expansions that you ultimately pay more for, as well as stuff like day one DLC. And they - or anybody else - can't explain it without sounding like they're just greedy and don't care for the customer.

Spuddles

2013-03-08, 12:22 AM

Karoht

2013-03-08, 12:57 AM

I was never a fan of the grid system. I wanted to make sweeping curving highways and traffic circles everywhere. Instead I got traffic squares. Not as cool.

The lack of grid system, to me, feels more organic, feels more like the way some cities build.

Map size too small? Huh. Of all the things really. All the game needs to do is give us a great big canvas, and it fails at that? Shame.

Avilan the Grey

2013-03-08, 02:30 AM

My buddy bought it. City size is way too small. We joked that he has to wait for the Sim City: City Expansion DLC, which is likely not far from the truth. His other big gripe was the removal of the grid system. Roads and zoning is a huge pain in the ass now.

The map size was known before hand. Due to system limitations (the new Sim AI) makes having the largest city size from SC4 impossible if you want to be able to run it on non-gamer rigs. The maximum size, if i remember correctly, is the same as the second largest maps in SC4.

And not having the grid is the MAIN FEATURE of the new game. I am REALLY looking forward to plan my city in a realistic way.

Iskandar

2013-03-08, 03:38 AM

The map size was known before hand. Due to system limitations (the new Sim AI) makes having the largest city size from SC4 impossible if you want to be able to run it on non-gamer rigs. The maximum size, if i remember correctly, is the same as the second largest maps in SC4.

And not having the grid is the MAIN FEATURE of the new game. I am REALLY looking forward to plan my city in a realistic way.

Aye, but limiting everyone to small city size because some can't run it is... well, typical, I guess.

Kind of the theme of SimCity 5, actually, the stripping of choice from the gamer. Can't choose where to buy it, forced to get it from Origin. Can't choose whether to play single player or multiplayer, forced online, can't choose to save locally, forced to save to the cloud, can't choose city size, forced to play small cities, and so on.

Sigh.

Avilan the Grey

2013-03-08, 03:50 AM

Aye, but limiting everyone to small city size because some can't run it is... well, typical, I guess.

Kind of the theme of SimCity 5, actually, the stripping of choice from the gamer. Can't choose where to buy it, forced to get it from Origin. Can't choose whether to play single player or multiplayer, forced online, can't choose to save locally, forced to save to the cloud, can't choose city size, forced to play small cities, and so on.

Sigh.

Nitpicking: MEDIUM cities. :smallbiggrin:

Trixie

2013-03-08, 05:10 AM

Here's a detailed video review (http://www.jonathancresswell.co.uk/2013/03/review-simcity/) of gameplay ^^

Also, I love games you permanently lose as soon as company deems servers unprofitable.

Artanis

2013-03-08, 07:14 AM

"always online" DRM
Note to self: do not buy this game.

Trying to play Diablo III on internet connections that regularly alternate* between "badass" and "don't bother", I don't intend to get online-only games ever again if I can help it. I know, I know, a massive ping isn't going to impact Sim City in the way that it will something like Diablo, but the principle is nonetheless firmly ingrained in my mind now.

*Brief explanation: I work on oil rigs, so I spend 2-3 weeks at a stretch sharing a single satellite connection with 15 other people, interspersed with periods of "civilized" high-speed internet when in town between wells.

Avilan the Grey

2013-03-08, 07:21 AM

Note to self: do not buy this game.

I can see you being annoyed at D3 for Always Online, but this? It is explicitly stated, over and over, that it is online only. Do you get angry at MMOs for having to be always online?

One of the main features is that your city has to survive in an environment that is altered by other player's cities! For example, you try to build a green utopia but the guy south of you has built a city focusing on industrial production and low education and doesn't care about polution. Now if the wind shifts to southern, your south side will be covered in smog from the other city.

Artanis

2013-03-08, 07:35 AM

I can see you being annoyed at D3 for Always Online, but this? It is explicitly stated, over and over, that it is online only. Do you get angry at MMOs for having to be always online?

One of the main features is that your city has to survive in an environment that is altered by other player's cities! For example, you try to build a green utopia but the guy south of you has built a city focusing on industrial production and low education and doesn't care about polution. Now if the wind shifts to southern, your south side will be covered in smog from the other city.
I don't get mad at MMOs for being online only. However, I won't consider buying an MMO unless my situation changes drastically since they're unplayable for me. That's why I won't buy Sim City 5: 80% of the time, my internet connection is too flaky for me to trust that I'll be able to play it.

In retrospect, my comment probably doesn't add much, if anything, to the thread :smallredface:

factotum

2013-03-08, 07:52 AM

One of the main features is that your city has to survive in an environment that is altered by other player's cities! For example, you try to build a green utopia but the guy south of you has built a city focusing on industrial production and low education and doesn't care about polution. Now if the wind shifts to southern, your south side will be covered in smog from the other city.

You know, I've re-read this twice now and I'm still confused as to why this would be considered an *advantage* in any way, shape or form... :smallconfused:

Avilan the Grey

2013-03-08, 08:05 AM

You know, I've re-read this twice now and I'm still confused as to why this would be considered an *advantage* in any way, shape or form... :smallconfused:

It is more realistic, for one thing.

GungHo

2013-03-08, 08:56 AM

Ah, yes... I forgot that Ann Arbor, MI was founded to troll Detroit and Flint.

GolemsVoice

2013-03-08, 08:57 AM

But they could implement that just fine WITHOUT always online.

Avilan the Grey

2013-03-08, 08:58 AM

Ah, yes... I forgot that Ann Arbor, MI was founded to troll Detroit and Flint.

Sorry but what?

t209

2013-03-08, 09:32 AM

I can see you being annoyed at D3 for Always Online, but this? It is explicitly stated, over and over, that it is online only. Do you get angry at MMOs for having to be always online?

One of the main features is that your city has to survive in an environment that is altered by other player's cities! For example, you try to build a green utopia but the guy south of you has built a city focusing on industrial production and low education and doesn't care about polution. Now if the wind shifts to southern, your south side will be covered in smog from the other city.
http://www.nerfnow.com/comic/968
Nerfnow has done it.
After hearing it, I think I'll wait for another year and probably have to "pretend play" Sim city on Minecraft.

Alejandro

2013-03-08, 09:39 AM

EA should have remembered that the trait most Sim City nuts share is being control freaks. I mean, the enjoyment of Sim City comes from being able to control every last little thing, from where a power line goes to whether or not everyone dies to lasers from space.

But this latest version takes lots of control away from the single playing person, and gives it to the masses as a whole... which, although a valid design choice, is not going to appeal to the control freak.

This is currently the most-helpful rated feedback on SimCity on Amazon:

How would you feel if you waited for the new Corvette to come out, preordered one, and when you try to drive it home with its massive V8 engine the dashboard tells you, "Gas Pump not connected, aborting."?

Well, this is the world of EA games. For years now they have been plugging DRM into games regardless if it's singleplayer or multiplayer. At some unspecified date, from a year to a few years down the line, they'll pull the plug on the life-support of the game (aka server) and tah-dah! Your $60 game is now a $60 Frisbee.

There is no reason at all that anyone who shells out top-dollar for an over-hyped game should have to sit in a queue for hours at a time to even reach the main menu. The queue makes NO mention of your spot in line, and only says, "ATTEMPTING to reconnect in: (20 minute countdown)". That is, not checking persistently. That is, indefinite wait time. Your saves are SERVER based, so if your connection is lost, the server hiccups, or you move to a less-populated server? Hours of gameplay wasted.

Tutorials are bugged. Region buttons are greyed out and unable to continue. The crashes force you to sit in the queue once again.

Bottom line: Go up to a random stranger, preferably a musclehead, hand him your $60 and ask him to punch you in the face. You'll get more out of your money, and it'll be less painful to watch.

PASS.

Chen

2013-03-08, 01:06 PM

Enough people are willing to go through the DRM hassels to play the game so they keep on with it. Personally I never really pay attention to what DRM a game has. It doesn't bother me. It can lead to inconvenience and sure I could appreciate the lack of DRM/online only in some games. But not enough to make me not want to pick up the game to begin with. I suspect a large number of gamers are like this and that's why these companies still do it. Not to mention the number of people who HATE DRM but still go and buy the games anyways. Its money that talks. We'll see how things work out from now on. Will the next Diablo game (or Diablo 3 expansion) sell significantly fewer titles because of the fiasco with the D3 launch? Will Sim City 6 sell terribly? If so perhaps companies will re-think their strategy. I'm anxious to see the results, but I suspect the sales of these games won't be nearly as dire as all the hate posts on the forums would indicate.

Falgorn

2013-03-08, 01:32 PM

GolemsVoice

2013-03-08, 01:40 PM

Except that, even though Blizzard didn't handle it that well, they handled it quite okay, and the problems were less severe. EA doesn't seem to do this.

Domochevsky

2013-03-08, 02:37 PM

So... looks like there's more news (https://www.giantbomb.com/articles/simcity-s-launch-isn-t-going-so-well/1100-4597/) on that particular topic. Opinions? >_>

Hiro Protagonest

2013-03-08, 02:43 PM

Nitpicking: MEDIUM cities. :smallbiggrin:

Two square kilometers is not a medium-sized city. It's a well-off town.

Avilan the Grey

2013-03-08, 03:25 PM

Two square kilometers is not a medium-sized city. It's a well-off town.

I am talking about the city sizes from SC4. SC has never been to scale anyway.

Alejandro

2013-03-08, 03:57 PM

All launch issues aside, the friends in my life who have managed to actually play the game tell me that the city maps are small (more like Sim Part Of A City) and it's awkward to play without relying on others, which never works on the Internet.

Trixie

2013-03-08, 06:48 PM

Not only Nerf now (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/03/08) http://i.imgur.com/N2nfK.jpg

Castaras

2013-03-08, 08:14 PM

That's not a good sign... (http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/8/4079894/ea-suspends-simcity-marketing-campaigns-asks-affiliates-to-stop)

Alejandro

2013-03-08, 09:26 PM

"asking its affiliates to "please stop actively promoting the game" until further notice."

It's like watching freight trains crash into each other in slow motion.

Karoht

2013-03-08, 10:07 PM

Wow, 3 whole days from launch. That has to be some kind of record.
Lets call Guiness and enter it!

Zar Peter

2013-03-09, 04:11 AM

Well, I will post this in another thread, too, but I think it's related.

If you are as enthusiastic about SimCities new "Allways online" DRM you might never want to look at this: Civitas (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1584821767/civitas-plan-develop-and-manage-the-city-of-your-d)

They really try to make a version of Sim City you can play WITHOUT internet connection!!! Blasphemous!

Avilan the Grey

2013-03-09, 04:24 AM

EA apologizes for Sim City server frakkup:

http://t.co/o4n07yGMuE

Zar Peter

2013-03-09, 04:32 AM

Well, they are still not apologizing about making a single player game online only.

Avilan the Grey

2013-03-09, 04:37 AM

Well, they are still not apologizing about making a single player game online only.

Which is not true, so why should they?
It is perfectly clear from all the info that this is not a traditional single player game. I get a lot of the criticism but not this one.

Zar Peter

2013-03-09, 04:43 AM

Avilan the Grey

2013-03-09, 04:45 AM

Zar Peter

2013-03-09, 04:50 AM

Well, Sim City was a great game I played when I didn't even think there could ever be something like the internet. It will stay like this in my memories.

Grif

2013-03-09, 06:03 AM

Which is not true, so why should they?
It is perfectly clear from all the info that this is not a traditional single player game. I get a lot of the criticism but not this one.

Considering Sim City is designed to take advantage of online features, it'll be odd to not consider it a multiplayer game.

Avilan the Grey

2013-03-09, 07:38 AM

Considering Sim City is designed to take advantage of online features, it'll be odd to not consider it a multiplayer game.

My point exactly.

super dark33

2013-03-09, 09:30 AM

What advantages does a single player game get for being online?
Microtransactions?

I'm telling you, games have been dumbed down.
It's like every game is a Facebook/iPhone game with fancy graphics and a huge price tag now.

Zar Peter

2013-03-09, 09:30 AM

Gamerlord

2013-03-09, 10:21 AM

Well, have fun with your MMOG, I'm hoping for something that let me enjoy building cities (and destroy them :smallbiggrin:) when I like and where I like. I'm hoping Civitas will be something that hooks me again.
Eh, I dunno, that kickstarter has "Scam" written all over it. We have the name of only like one guy on the team, no website yet, it launches oh-so-conviently just a few days before SimCity releases, no idea what engine they are using or if they are making their own, and they haven't given us even a vague plan on what the money is being used for. And how are they going to do what they are claiming they will do with just 250k, and release it by November?

Avilan the Grey

2013-03-09, 10:33 AM

I'm telling you, games have been dumbed down.
It's like every game is a Facebook/iPhone game with fancy graphics and a huge price tag now.

Oh god not the "dumbed down" thing again. I am so incredibly tired of this unsupported statement. If complexity and illogical controls make a good game, Sim Planet and Sim Life would have been HUGE hits.

OracleofWuffing

2013-03-09, 11:30 AM

What advantages does a single player game get for being online?
Outside of the whole "The city always runs" aspect and whatever strategies come from that, I remember previous announcements that all of the actual simulation programming is complex enough that it wouldn't run well on even an overpriced "gamer" computer due to a lack of resources. The actual mathematics and logics of the city all have to be done on the server end because the server has more power (manly grunt) than anything the players could provide. So if it wasn't online, the game wouldn't be playable at all.

Yes, I'm aware that I just sat myself up for a "So, what's the difference?" response. :smalltongue: But that's what the claim was. If they released an offline version of it as-is, you still wouldn't be able to play unless your personal computer is more like a server cluster.

Erloas

2013-03-09, 11:56 AM

Alejandro

2013-03-09, 12:10 PM

I'm sure the game can be played without server help, and on larger maps... that way, they can make you pay for the expansion that allows it!

And come on. We're sorry our EA game was a giant turd, so to make up for it, we'll give you another EA game (giant turd) for free?

Yeah, no. What they mean is, we'll give you another mechanism that you will hopefully use to pay us even more money in downloadable content.

Grif

2013-03-09, 12:14 PM

I find that hard to believe, especially since most servers aren't really all that powerful, most server processors are not any faster then what you can get for your home PC. Not to mention that any game that required a high end server *per* player/game could never hope to break even in costs.
It could be that the minimum specs would have been higher then they wanted without offloading some of it, but that is still a fairly poor excuse.

Indeed. It's worth noting that SimCity 4 already did this 10 years ago, albeit in a more basic and abstracted manner with their "regions" concept.

I expect they have their reasons, but what I seen so far just reeks of the stench of DLC.

OracleofWuffing

2013-03-09, 12:41 PM

I find that hard to believe, especially since most servers aren't really all that powerful, most server processors are not any faster then what you can get for your home PC.
:smallconfused: That's why you cluster them and outpace quality with quantity? Like every major server has done since, like, the 70s?

I'm sure the game can be played without server help, and on larger maps... that way, they can make you pay for the expansion that allows it!
I suspect that there's some embellishing going on on EA's side, too, but since I am not a city planner or some city engineer or whatever, I have no idea how complex building cities and predicting how people behave to how the city is built really is. I look forward to people proving EA's claim dead wrong, but I don't actually have any reason to believe it's a flat out lie at this time.

Indeed. It's worth noting that SimCity 4 already did this 10 years ago, albeit in a more basic and abstracted manner with their "regions" concept.
And Utopia did it 22 years ago in an even more basic and abstracted manner. :smallwink:

I mean, yeah, if the programming is as complex as claimed, then one of the things EA should have thought of would have been to wait until the technology catches up to actually be able to play the game, but saying that older games did it fine by using simpler code is kind of missing the point of releasing newer, more complex games (I mean, outside of money). Granted, this particular game is apparently too complex for its own good.

factotum

2013-03-09, 12:46 PM

:smallconfused: That's why you cluster them and outpace quality with quantity? Like every major server has done since, like, the 70s?

Or you could run the simulation on thousands of distributed processors...like, say, the ones in the computers the gamers are actually playing the game on? You know, maybe they could even put *all* of the simulation on the local machine and do away with the need for a server at all...kind of like games have been doing for the past 30 years?

Simple fact is, modern CPUs are pretty much all multi-core, so having the simulation part running on one core while the other one handles the UI and graphics is entirely within the bounds of possibility. Saying you *have* to run the simulation on a remote server simply makes no sense at all.

Grif

2013-03-09, 12:49 PM

And Utopia did it 22 years ago in an even more basic and abstracted manner. :smallwink:

I mean, yeah, if the programming is as complex as claimed, then one of the things EA should have thought of would have been to wait until the technology catches up to actually be able to play the game, but saying that older games did it fine by using simpler code is kind of missing the point of releasing newer, more complex games (I mean, outside of money). Granted, this particular game is apparently too complex for its own good.

My point is more to say that there is no apparent reason to think household computers cannot handle the simulation required for multiple cities in a region. Of course, I might be wildly underestimating the complexity of their simulation.

Alejandro

2013-03-09, 12:49 PM

The whole reason they put some of the game calculations on their servers, instead of our PCs, is so they could attempt to reduce game piracy. The data the gamer has is incomplete, so pirates would have to recreate the parts on EA's servers.

However, the resulting clustercluck has surely lost them more money than any piracy ever would have, so I point and laugh at EA.

Iskandar

2013-03-09, 01:04 PM

Outside of the whole "The city always runs" aspect and whatever strategies come from that, I remember previous announcements that all of the actual simulation programming is complex enough that it wouldn't run well on even an overpriced "gamer" computer due to a lack of resources. The actual mathematics and logics of the city all have to be done on the server end because the server has more power (manly grunt) than anything the players could provide. So if it wasn't online, the game wouldn't be playable at all.

Yes, I'm aware that I just sat myself up for a "So, what's the difference?" response. :smalltongue: But that's what the claim was. If they released an offline version of it as-is, you still wouldn't be able to play unless your personal computer is more like a server cluster.

Yeah. EA straight up lied. People have already pulled their internet while playing SimCity, and you know what happens? The game runs just fine until it does its next "are we connected check". You lose the multiplayer stuff, but your city runs just fine. Those running the game over wireless, which tracks data, have reported the amount of data coming and going from EA is fairly minimal.

So, yeah, EA lied their damn asses off in an attempt to make their DRM seem like something other than DRM. Yeah, the multiplayer aspects require you to be connected, but even there they really could have abstracted a lot of it, because neighboring cities don't actually run if no one is playing them, they just stay there frozen in time.

Another complaint is there is no excuse, none, for not allowing local saves. It is causing lost cities, regional corruption, lost progress. Oh, and it is server based, so if your server is congested, and another server is empty, moving to the empty server means none of your saves transfer, which is more than a little silly.

What it comes down to, in this day and age, including multiplayer as an option is a good idea. Removing any and all offline ability is not. As has been so wonderfully demonstrated, the technology to run such a thing smoothly just does not exist unless you are willing to throw massive server architecture at the problem. A MMO can get away with that, because monthly subscriptions make up for the cost of maintaining infrastructure, a one time purchase type of game simply can't, it isn't practical.

OracleofWuffing

2013-03-09, 01:08 PM

Simple fact is, modern CPUs are pretty much all multi-core, so having the simulation part running on one core while the other one handles the UI and graphics is entirely within the bounds of possibility. Saying you *have* to run the simulation on a remote server simply makes no sense at all.
I want you to use your left hand to eat this apple, and then use your right hand to build a 1:1 replica of the Eiffel tower. And you had better be done by the time this web page is done loading. :smallwink:

Yeah. EA straight up lied. People have already pulled their internet while playing SimCity, and you know what happens? The game runs just fine until it does its next "are we connected check". You lose the multiplayer stuff, but your city runs just fine. Those running the game over wireless, which tracks data, have reported the amount of data coming and going from EA is fairly minimal.
Do you happen to have a link? All the things I can find are still hung up on how they can't play the game, and, like I said, I can't wait to see EA be proven wrong.

Another complaint is there is no excuse, none, for not allowing local saves.
I can think of one game that switched from local saves to network saves because people were editing their own personal saves to cheat ahead of everyone else. Of course, people still cheated after that switch, just differently, so perhaps it is a moot point.

nhbdy

2013-03-09, 01:14 PM

well... if this thread has taught me anything it's that simcity isn't for me, too much baggage I do not wish to support, so yeah, shun the dirty EA nonsense

Grif

2013-03-09, 01:33 PM

Do you happen to have a link? All the things I can find are still hung up on how they can't play the game, and, like I said, I can't wait to see EA be proven wrong.

I'd point you to Escapist or NeoGAF's forums, but I can't be arsed to dig through thousands of (whiny) posts. But yes, apparently you can continue to play even if you pulled the plug on the Internet. The game just uploads the current instance of your city back to the servers when you have reconnected. Of course, you're limited to that one city until you re-established connection.

On a related note, methinks somebody will figure out how to take advantage of this and produce a no-DRM hack.

OracleofWuffing

2013-03-09, 02:24 PM

Well, I guess the take away from this is that the launch was mishandled so badly that the fact PR lied about the game's complexity is being overlooked, so that's probably a net gain from EA's point of view.:smallbiggrin:

Zar Peter

2013-03-09, 03:23 PM

Eh, I dunno, that kickstarter has "Scam" written all over it. We have the name of only like one guy on the team, no website yet, it launches oh-so-conviently just a few days before SimCity releases, no idea what engine they are using or if they are making their own, and they haven't given us even a vague plan on what the money is being used for. And how are they going to do what they are claiming they will do with just 250k, and release it by November?

Well, if it's a scam I lose only 25$ and can't play a game while with EA I lose 50 $ and can't play a game so it's a win win situation :smallbiggrin:

Studoku

2013-03-09, 05:57 PM

Eh, I dunno, that kickstarter has "Scam" written all over it. We have the name of only like one guy on the team, no website yet, it launches oh-so-conviently just a few days before SimCity releases, no idea what engine they are using or if they are making their own, and they haven't given us even a vague plan on what the money is being used for. And how are they going to do what they are claiming they will do with just 250k, and release it by November?
Even if it is legit, I can't see them getting anything released without EA suing the crap out of them.

Alejandro

2013-03-09, 06:13 PM

Here's the supposed letter to EA executives, from an EA employee:

“To the executives at EA, from one of your employees

I am deeply embarrassed by the troubled launch of Sim City and I hope you are too. When I walk around our campus and look at the kind of talent we’ve collected, the amenities we have access to and the opportunities working at such a big company affords us, I can’t imagine how for release after release, EA continues to make the same embarrassing, anti-consumer mistakes. We should be better than this. You should not be failing us so badly.

Another thing I see when I walk around our campus are massive banners that display what are said to be our company values. They are on posters on every floor, included in company-wide emails and hanging above the cafeteria in bright colors. You even print them on our coffee mugs so we see them every day. But somehow when planning the launch of Sim City, you threw them all out the window.

Most important of the values you are ignoring is Think Consumers First. What part of the Sim City DRM scheme, which has rendered the game unplayable for hundreds of thousands of fans across the globe, demonstrates that you are thinking about consumers before you are thinking about yourselves? Does “first” mean something different in boardrooms than it does to the rest of us? Does the meaning of that word change when you get the word “executive” in front of your title?

You can’t even pretend that you didn’t know consumers would be angry about this. Common sense aside, consumers complained about this during your public betas. In fact, when one of them posted his criticisms on the forums, he was banned! You tried to silence your critics. The same thing is happening now as users write in to demand refunds. What part of this behavior aligns with our company value to Be Accountable?

What you’ve demonstrated with this launch is that our corporate management does not believe in our core values. They are for the unwashed masses, not for the important people who forced this anti-consumer DRM onto the Sim City team. This DRM scheme is not about the consumers or even about piracy. It’s about covering your own asses. It allows you to hand-wave weak sales or bad reviews and blame outside factors like pirates or server failures in the event the game struggles. You are protecting your own jobs at the expense of consumers. I think this violates the Act With Integrity value I’m looking at on my own coffee mug right now.

On behalf of your other employees, I’d like to ask you to fix this. Allow the Sim City team to patch the game to run offline. If Create Quality and Innovation is still a core value that you believe in, then this shouldn’t be a hard decision. Games that gamers can’t play because of server overload or ISP issues are NOT quality. Be Bold by giving the consumers what they want and take accountability for the mistake.

Finally I’d like to ask you to follow the last company value on the list in the future: Learn and Grow. When you made this mistake with Spore, the company and all your employees suffered for it. You didn’t learn from that mistake and you are making it again with Sim City.

So please, learn from this debacle. Don’t do this again. Grow into better leaders and actually apply our company values when you make decisions. Don’t just use them as tools to motivate your staff. With the money, talent and intellectual property available to EA, we should be leading the industry into a golden age of consumer-focused game publishing. Instead we’re the most reviled game publisher in the world. That’s your fault. Things can only change if you actually start following the company values and apply them to every title we launch.

Sincerely,

A Disappointed But Hopeful Artist at EARS”

Hiro Protagonest

2013-03-09, 06:32 PM

I'm telling you, games have been dumbed down.
It's like every game is a Facebook/iPhone game with fancy graphics and a huge price tag now.

What. No. I'm never getting this game, but saying it's been dumbed down is just plain wrong.

Unless, of course, your idea of "the good old days" is Rogue and Nethack.

Closet_Skeleton

2013-03-09, 08:01 PM

Oh god not the "dumbed down" thing again. I am so incredibly tired of this unsupported statement. If complexity and illogical controls make a good game, Sim Planet and Sim Life would have been HUGE hits.

Dumbed down is a legitimate argument at times. There are plenty of games that had sequels which were basically 'the same but worse'. There are games that literally were 'dumbed down for consoles' in that they were sequels to PC games that removed features because a console controller didn't have enough buttons for them.

As far as this game goes, they've removed terraforming and separate power and water supply lines.

Alejandro

2013-03-09, 08:30 PM

And subways. I mean, come on. A Simcity without subways?

Oh, I forgot, it's EA. That's so they can charge $10 for subways later.

Androgeus

2013-03-09, 08:35 PM

And subways. I mean, come on. A Simcity without subways?

Oh, I forgot, it's EA. That's so they can charge $10 for subways later.

It lets you have trams at least, so you do get some kind of railway supplement.

factotum

2013-03-10, 02:23 AM

I want you to use your left hand to eat this apple, and then use your right hand to build a 1:1 replica of the Eiffel tower. And you had better be done by the time this web page is done loading. :smallwink:

Computers are far better at multi-tasking than people are. Or are you saying that having a multi-core processor at all is pointless and the CPU companies have been lying to us for years?

Iskandar

2013-03-10, 05:24 AM

Do you happen to have a link? All the things I can find are still hung up on how they can't play the game, and, like I said, I can't wait to see EA be proven wrong.

http://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/19yoxk/simcity5_does_not_have_to_be_online/

Androgeus

2013-03-10, 05:52 AM

http://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/19yoxk/simcity5_does_not_have_to_be_online/

Here's a reddit thread on what the server actually handles (http://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/19xwhx/distribution_of_client_and_server/)

OracleofWuffing

2013-03-10, 12:34 PM

Computers are far better at multi-tasking than people are. Or are you saying that having a multi-core processor at all is pointless and the CPU companies have been lying to us for years?
That's completely misunderstanding the point, so let's review.

The assertion (by EA) was that server-side processing was necessary because there was too much data to process. Granted, this assertion has been proven false, but that was after your statement. You then suggested that our processors could handle having too much data just by splitting the workload up into separate cores.

Now, keeping in mind this is all hypothetically speaking, that suggestion is ignoring the fact that multiple core processors cannot process an infinite amount of data (in my analogy, "build the eiffel tower") infinitely fast ("before the page loads"). So, if EA actually was telling the truth (which, again, I recognize they were not!), this suggestion solves nothing, because even in a multi-core environment, you can still have too much data to process. Otherwise, CPU companies would have no need to release faster and larger processors because IBM's POWER4 would be able to process the same amount of data at the same speed as today's processors, because it is multi-core.

Clearly, my fault was expecting a game company to tell, at the very least, half of the truth.

Needless to say, because the founding assertion is now known false, further discussion on how processors work would likely best be resolved in a separate core thread.

Erloas

2013-03-10, 01:26 PM

That's completely misunderstanding the point, so let's review.

The assertion (by EA) was that server-side processing was necessary because there was too much data to process. Granted, this assertion has been proven false, but that was after your statement. You then suggested that our processors could handle having too much data just by splitting the workload up into separate cores.
What your statement tried to imply though just didn't work. The way it seemed to me you were implying that because the two tasks were very different it would be much harder for a computer to handle both of those tasks at the same time. But thats not really how it works, while it might seem like rendering a webpage, playing music, and running a basic AI script are very different tasks when it comes to actually running the code to do all 3 they are very similar. Switching between those very different seeming tasks isn't any more work for the CPU then running 3 instances of any one of them.

It also fails the basic "does it make any sense for the company" question. If your average $400 PC can't run the code for the game then how can the company even think about selling the game for $60 when *each* instance of the game on their servers would require more computational power? As has always been seen spending twice as much on computer never gives twice the power (there are some specific exceptions on parts but it is lost on the overall cost of the system), so they can't just spend $2000 on a server and expect it to be more then 5 times more powerful then the average consumer PC. Thats even ignoring the fact that "server grade" parts are more expensive for the same performance as consumer grade parts. So the implication was that they would need something like $1000 worth of server infrastructure for each instance of the game they wanted to run. (because it needed more power then the minimum spec $400 computer could run).

Of course you could also argue that the graphics are taking up a huge amount of the needed processing power, but looking at the minimum graphics requirements, they are *very* low, so they aren't doing anything special in the graphics department. The bandwidth requirement for doing graphics server side would be insane. The high likelihood of unplayable lag also increases exponentially as you move more and more calculations to the server side.

Which is why those of us that knew much about computers knew what they were saying was BS before it was more or less proved by others.

I would have been interested in checking out the game. I used to love the series but I don't think I even tried SimCity4 because I just can't get into these open world time-sink games any more.

OracleofWuffing

2013-03-10, 02:57 PM

What your statement tried to imply though just didn't work. The way it seemed to me you were implying that because the two tasks were very different it would be much harder for a computer to handle both of those tasks at the same time.
:smallconfused: Not your argument, dude. I mean, how do I make it clearer that I was responding to the assertion that halving any unknown code will make it run on two cores regardless of what the code is?

It also fails the basic "does it make any sense for the company" question. If your average $400 PC can't run the code for the game then how can the company even think about selling the game for $60 when *each* instance of the game on their servers would require more computational power? As has always been seen spending twice as much on computer never gives twice the power (there are some specific exceptions on parts but it is lost on the overall cost of the system), so they can't just spend $2000 on a server and expect it to be more then 5 times more powerful then the average consumer PC. Thats even ignoring the fact that "server grade" parts are more expensive for the same performance as consumer grade parts. So the implication was that they would need something like $1000 worth of server infrastructure for each instance of the game they wanted to run. (because it needed more power then the minimum spec $400 computer could run).
If we were to give EA the benefit of the doubt, a multi-billion dollar company that already has managed online games (for certain definitions of "managed," naturally), it would not be absurd to expect that the company has existing server infrastructure (or has it all contracted with someone else, but that's getting into needless details) that outpaces your price estimates by several magnitudes. Of course, it's clear to me now that EA does not deserve such a benefit, and they were apparently just swimming around in a money bin instead of doing the reasonable business choice. And before anyone asks, no, I am not yet decided on whether or not I can blame them for swimming around in a money bin.

In unrelated discussion, all these subway concerns are silly to me. SimCity on the SNES didn't have subways, and it was certainly my personal favorite. :smalltongue:

Alejandro

2013-03-10, 03:32 PM

You're right, it didn't have subways. But as the series progressed, more and more neat things were added. And now EA's new version has far less neat things, and we know why: because they want to soak you for money to add them later.

Good game progression should keep improving, not take away past improvements.

Hiro Protagonest

2013-03-10, 03:55 PM

Well, Bethesda will name their online game "The Elder Scrolls online" and not "The Elder Scrolls 6".

Blizzard named their online game "World of Warcraft" and not "Warcraft 4". Why they named "Diablo online" "Diablo 3" is out of my grasp.

And "Sim City Online" is ok but it's not "Sim City 5". It's marketing crap. I really was looking forward for this game but since it was obvious that it's online only it's dead for me. Actually the Sim City franchise is destroyed with this decision. For me at least.

...

There's a difference between having an always-online DRM and being an MMO. ESO is an MMO, it has servers that the players join that have tons of other players. WoW is the same way. Diablo Online would have to be an MMO, and it would be bad because Blizzard has already made a strong MMO based around a very untactical combat system with lots of loot. It even has a better story than Diablo. Sim City Online... that would be an okay name, I guess. But it would need to have dedicated playing servers, where you choose one and start building and interact with other players and their cities.

factotum

2013-03-10, 04:50 PM

:smallconfused: Not your argument, dude. I mean, how do I make it clearer that I was responding to the assertion that halving any unknown code will make it run on two cores regardless of what the code is?

I wonder who made this assertion that you're responding to...it certainly wasn't me. I was talking about splitting the simulation part into a separate thread than the graphics part, not splitting code evenly in half and hoping it works.

In any case, the main basis for my argument was always this: Sim City 5, from everything I've seen, is a *less* extensive simulation than Sim City 4. Sim City 4 came out in 2003 and was designed to work well on a 1GHz single-core processor--that one core had to handle the graphics, the UI, and the simulation. Therefore, it simply isn't credible that a simpler game running on more powerful hardware simply won't work.

What Erloas said about the server specs is spot on the money, as well--if SC5 required such an enormous processing load that it simply wouldn't work on the user's own machine, there's no way EA are going to be able to put together a server farm that does any better. This is why I talked about thousands of distributed processors, because that's essentially what you have when you're running the simulation on each individual PC.

This is probably my fault for not explaining myself clearly enough, but there you go...

Artanis

2013-03-10, 05:14 PM

instead of doing the reasonable business choice.
Actually, I have a sinking feeling that EA will get away with this and that people will keep buying their stuff in the future. If you can half-ass it the way they are and still get gajillions of sales, well...that's the "reasonable business decision" :smallfrown:

OracleofWuffing

2013-03-10, 07:05 PM

I wonder who made this assertion that you're responding to...it certainly wasn't me. I was talking about splitting the simulation part into a separate thread than the graphics part, not splitting code evenly in half and hoping it works.
You might not be splitting code in half, but you're most certainly splitting hairs. Again, we didn't know that the advertised "more complex" simulation programming wasn't actually more complex until afterwards, so suggesting that it would run if it was given its own core still falls to the "too much stuff" situation I typed about previously.

In any case, the main basis for my argument was always this: Sim City 5, from everything I've seen, is a *less* extensive simulation than Sim City 4.
You did not actually state this in this thread, my apologies for not knowing. I'm just going off what information I've been provided with, which is why I entertained EA's statement regarding complexity.

Actually, I have a sinking feeling that EA will get away with this and that people will keep buying their stuff in the future. If you can half-ass it the way they are and still get gajillions of sales, well...that's the "reasonable business decision" :smallfrown:
Same here, too. I mean, I'm concerned that we've got links of people demonstrating that always-online is just for DRM, but that's not the traditional major media outlets. There's a possible situation here where EA can advertise that a future game will make one's sexual relationships better, and as long as the game doesn't work on day one, people will buy it... And forget why they bought it because of its launch travesty.:smallfrown: In other situations, there would be a big hubbub over massive false advertising... But I just don't see this getting any follow through.

Iskandar

2013-03-10, 07:29 PM

Actually, I have a sinking feeling that EA will get away with this and that people will keep buying their stuff in the future. If you can half-ass it the way they are and still get gajillions of sales, well...that's the "reasonable business decision" :smallfrown:

Not "will get away" more like "have gotten away". Despite of the immediate internet backlash, and ongoing problems they are having, SimCity sold really well. As in, no one could make another purchase, and they still have made money well. And it isn't affecting the sales of their other games one little bit.

Prediction time. In two weeks no one but the (rapidly declining) Simcity player base will remember or care about any of this. With a lot of the initial players now gone (quit out of disgust or just bored with the game) plus a few new servers, the game will be playable finally, but a buggy mess (more or more bugs are popping up as people are being able to play the game for longer stretches). Expect a few more haphazard patches from Maxis over the next month or two to spackle over the worse of the cracks without dealing with the underlying issues, servers being shelved a month or two after that as more and more people stop playing, and the whole game to go dark in a year, maybe two, completely forgotten. A bit after that, expect the sequel to be announced and, despite a fairly vocal minority, sell REALLY REALLY well to start the whole cycle over again.

Yes, that is cynical, but it is based on past history. EA keeps making poor and unpopular choices for their games. abusive and oppressive DRM, day 1 DLC, microtransactions, lousy sequels, so forth and so on. Despite the overwhelming bad press they get, every time they announce the next shiny new game, people stampeded to buy it. I just don't understand that, I don't.

Grif

2013-03-10, 08:44 PM

That said, I heard Dead Space 3 sold really poorly. Akin to Aliens: Colonial Marine bad. (Only 1m units sold for all consoles/PC.)

SimCity's future iterations would probably suffer the same fate now that bad press lingers over it like a bad stench.

Hawriel

2013-03-11, 03:01 AM

EA lost by business after I finished Mass Effect 3. No it was not a nerd rage over the ending. That made me reflect on what Bioware used to be, when they joined EA, and how their products turned out sense then.

I also looked at other EA games and how I saw them. EA ruined a good company, they make playing their games a chore, and they want to control me. While expecting me to pay them for it.

A very creative company is now just a label to slap on a box. EA has no respect for it's employees or costumers. I will never buy their games again.

When I saw that there was going to be a SimCity 5 I was looking farward to buying it. I did not see it was being made by EA.

Avilan the Grey

2013-03-11, 03:04 AM

In any case, the main basis for my argument was always this: Sim City 5, from everything I've seen, is a *less* extensive simulation than Sim City 4. Sim City 4 came out in 2003 and was designed to work well on a 1GHz single-core processor--that one core had to handle the graphics, the UI, and the simulation. Therefore, it simply isn't credible that a simpler game running on more powerful hardware simply won't work.

I don't know where this is coming from.

From everything I have read the Sim City citiziens AI is the "culprit". Since they now are individuals, not just representation on a map, and the game can have over 10 000 citizens in one city, the city size has to be limited. Pathfinding* and decision trees for 10-15 000 individual "AI's" do take up a heck of a lot of the processing power used by the game.

Likewise I do not know where the idea that the "server side has to be there to help with calculations" came from. Again, according to everything I have read the reason is because of the interconnection with othe player cities and the shared environment. Period.

*For example, the game will have the individua Sim drive / commute to work "for real". This means the pathfinding will have to follow the roads / tracks you built, and find a way to use these to actually move itself from it's "appartment" to it's workplace. No matter how awful the traffic is and how stupidly you have put down the roads.

Trixie

2013-03-11, 05:07 AM

The assertion (by EA) was that server-side processing was necessary because there was too much data to process. Granted, this assertion has been proven false, but that was after your statement. You then suggested that our processors could handle having too much data just by splitting the workload up into separate cores.

Now, keeping in mind this is all hypothetically speaking, that suggestion is ignoring the fact that multiple core processors cannot process an infinite amount of data (in my analogy, "build the eiffel tower") infinitely fast ("before the page loads"). So, if EA actually was telling the truth (which, again, I recognize they were not!), this suggestion solves nothing, because even in a multi-core environment, you can still have too much data to process. Otherwise, CPU companies would have no need to release faster and larger processors because IBM's POWER4 would be able to process the same amount of data at the same speed as today's processors, because it is multi-core.

But the thing is, local processor is better at computing stuff. Because, you see, in time it takes data to be sent to server, processed, and sent back, local processor can simply keep calculating. Then, there is no issue or missed packets that need to be resend on local motherboard, the fact that data transmission within your own PC has infinitely larger speed and bandwidth than sending it over the net, etc. etc.

That's why the data is, as show, done locally, because game would lag even given servers with infinite speed unless EA would be willing to put servers in every major city. Cost of this would be astronomic, not even MMORPGs do much server-side.

Also, NN takes another swipe (http://www.nerfnow.com/comic/970) at the issue :smallcool:

As has always been seen spending twice as much on computer never gives twice the power

Unless we're talking really cheap parts, meaning about half of market today http://i.imgur.com/N2nfK.jpg

Avilan the Grey

2013-03-11, 06:48 AM

Unless we're talking really cheap parts, meaning about half of market today http://i.imgur.com/N2nfK.jpg

Definitely. These days a competent Office / Surf / Flash Games computer (a laptop!) costs half the price of a new iPhone. Tops. If you double that price you get a computer that IS basically twice as good. Keep in mind that "twice as good" doesn't mean "Processor is twice as fast". It doesn't work like that. It DOES mean things like "have a dedicated graphic card, twice the RAM, slightly faster processor and three times the HDD size.

Zar Peter

2013-03-11, 06:57 AM

Well, either way, if they designed the game in a way that always online is absolutely necessary then they made a major design mistake. If always online isn't absolute necessary then it's near fraud (although they mentioned that it's always online they didn't give the real reason for it).

Anyway, the best name for this piece of crap I heard is DRM Village. Comes close to the truth from my point of view.

Avilan the Grey

2013-03-11, 07:01 AM

I still don't get the hatred for DRM as such.

Robert Blackletter

2013-03-11, 07:25 AM

Avilan the Grey

2013-03-11, 07:51 AM

I didn't think anyone got a prob with reasonable DRM. It's when, like here where it actively stopping people who brought the game legally while those that pirate it get no problems that I and others have a prob

Actually a lot of people do. There are tons of people who still refuses to play a game that uses Steam, for example.

Trixie

2013-03-11, 07:55 AM

Keep in mind that "twice as good" doesn't mean "Processor is twice as fast".

I meant things like cheap graphic cards where say AMD Radeon HD 7450 can cost half of Radeon HD 7650 while having half to third the power, or entry processors having half and weaker cores than normal one - while it's true very high segment parts gain little with price, low segment ones suffer massive cuts in power for tiny price cuts. And yes, then part is literally twice (or more) as fast.

I still don't get the hatred for DRM as such.

Try living in country where internet is A) metered B) unreliable C) expensive. Your net is down and you can't check mail? Meh, I can play the game inste-- oh wait.

Then, there is issue of fair use, that allows you to not only make a backup of game, but also ensures you actually own the game. In normal countries anyway. Rights of customers and all that. New Sim City? EA can take game away from you on a whim or decide the servers are too expensive to maintain and turn them off. I can play SimCity 2000 today, I won't be able to revisit SimCity 10 years from now even if I wanted to. You really see no issue here? At all? :smallconfused:

Robert Blackletter

2013-03-11, 08:04 AM

Actually a lot of people do. There are tons of people who still refuses to play a game that uses Steam, for example.
While I use steam, but many who refuse disagree with their terms and condition and see them as unreasonable.

Domochevsky

2013-03-11, 08:16 AM

While I use steam, but many who refuse disagree with their terms and condition and see them as unreasonable.

Plus the fact that you have to ask the steam server with a pretty please to be allowed to play or even install "your" games every time. :smallsigh:

Avilan the Grey

2013-03-11, 08:31 AM

Plus the fact that you have to ask the steam server with a pretty please to be allowed to play or even install "your" games every time. :smallsigh:

No you don't.

You have to be connected when INSTALLING, but there is Offline Mode for playing.

Karoht

2013-03-11, 08:44 AM

Let's be honest though. Hardly anyone 'sells' a game these days. The EULA and ToS spell it out pretty clearly. The company owns the game and you pay for permission to interact with it. Games are data, that data is essentially rented to you. Sure, it sucks that 10 years from now I won't be able to play an unsupported game. But I already have that problem with games that are 10 years old to begin with, just due to changes in technology or operating system. So this aspect of DRM, that of not actually owning the game, isn't much of an issue to me.

When you have crappy internet and want to play, THAT I empathize with greatly however. I play a lot of online games, most of which my friends do not play with me for this exact reason. Their internet connection is the suck. Having that as a barrier to entry is not exactly fun.

Domochevsky

2013-03-11, 09:29 AM

No you don't.

You have to be connected when INSTALLING, but there is Offline Mode for playing.

Oh, you mean the "don't bother me for a week, maybe" mode? Yeah, i remember that one. :smallannoyed:

Divayth Fyr

2013-03-11, 09:31 AM

You have to be connected when INSTALLING, but there is Offline Mode for playing.
Which doesn't always work as intended - I had steam want to connect to its servers to go into offline mode:smallconfused:

Also, the fact that Steam forces you to update if you happen to go online and it detects a patch can be a major PITA.

Karoht

2013-03-11, 09:42 AM

I dislike how Steam gets a bit pushy with me and my system at times. Part of why I have it disabled in selective startup, and immediatly shut it down after playing something, unless I want to update. Even then it doesn't always work.
I dislike aspects of the client, but that won't stop me from playing most of it's games.

Origin? *shudder*

Avilan the Grey

2013-03-11, 09:47 AM

I can understand that having awful internet connection is awful.

However I am in two minds about this because at the same time technology cannot cater to those left behind.

Many could not afford a TV when it came out on the market. Many theatres could not afford the upgrade to play films with sounds in them and went belly up. Up until a few years ago it was common that if you didn't upgrade your PC with hardware worth $150 - $400 every year you couldn't play the newest games.

Basically the complaint should be primarely directed at your government for failing to supply a vital service (yes, Internet is becoming as vital as electricity), not the game industry.

at the same time, as I said I fully understand your disappointment. I just feel you are directing your ire in the wrong direction.

I dislike how Steam gets a bit pushy with me and my system at times. Part of why I have it disabled in selective startup, and immediatly shut it down after playing something, unless I want to update. Even then it doesn't always work.
I dislike aspects of the client, but that won't stop me from playing most of it's games.

Origin? *shudder*

Oh I never start Steam or Origin automatically. I have no problems with them, I just don't like autostarted programs, period.

Steam is much better than Origin, but Origin is servicable. I even manually added ME1 to it so I have all Bioware games in one place. I ONLY use it for EA-published games of course, everything else is bought on Steam.

OracleofWuffing

2013-03-11, 10:24 AM

But the thing is, local processor is better at computing stuff. Because, you see, in time it takes data to be sent to server, processed, and sent back, local processor can simply keep calculating.
I really hope the people at OnLive know about this, because their entire platform is based on a situation pretty much opposite to what you're describing, and as far as I know, it works and has been inspiring similar actions for other companies.

Whoracle

2013-03-11, 11:17 AM

Actually a lot of people do. There are tons of people who still refuses to play a game that uses Steam, for example.

To give my angle on it:
I bought the game. I decide when, if and on which hardware I play it. I resell it. It is mine.
Asking for a serial key that's printed in the manual is OK, but it has to be offline.
I bought the game, not rented it. And when Steam finally goes belly-up* I still want to play the darned thing.
And current EU resp. german law thankfully agrees at least partially with me.

* which it will, somewhen down the line. Not this year, not in the next 5 or 10 years, but somewhen down the line.

I really hope the people at OnLive know about this, because their entire platform is based on a situation pretty much opposite to what you're describing, and as far as I know, it works and has been inspiring similar actions for other companies.

Well, in OnLive's case, the games they offer run fast enough on remote servers. But local still is faster. Also: Yeah, OnLive are doing really well with their model... (http://www.polygon.com/gaming/2012/8/17/3250066/onlive-cloud-gaming-service-closing-staff-laid-off) Granted, the article is a bit older, but they haven't recovered even partly yet. Browse your favourite gaming site for further news.

Reverent-One

2013-03-11, 11:26 AM

To give my angle on it:
I bought the game. I decide when, if and on which hardware I play it. I resell it. It is mine.
Asking for a serial key that's printed in the manual is OK, but it has to be offline.
I bought the game, not rented it. And when Steam finally goes belly-up* I still want to play the darned thing.
And current EU resp. german law thankfully agrees at least partially with me.

* which it will, somewhen down the line. Not this year, not in the next 5 or 10 years, but somewhen down the line.

Gabe has said before that whenever Steam shuts down, they'll release code to remove the Steam DRM from whatever games they can, and Steam support has answered questions before about how "measures are in place to ensure that all users will have access to their Steam games".

Erloas

2013-03-11, 11:28 AM

I really hope the people at OnLive know about this, because their entire platform is based on a situation pretty much opposite to what you're describing, and as far as I know, it works and has been inspiring similar actions for other companies.

That is actually very different, in that absolutely everything is calculated server side and only a video stream is sent to the client and the only thing the client sends is control inputs. It is still fairly bandwidth intensive but not to the same extent.
I've heard reviews of OnLive have been pretty good but I haven't meet any actual people that are using it.
I also see that the requirements for the service are at minimum a 2Mbps connection and a recommended 5Mpbs connection. Which ironically (at least in my mind) is a much more limiting requirement then the PC requirements for the games available. Considering that many areas services by DSL are 1.5Mbps.

As for how the service is doing, it doesn't look great:

On 17 August 2012 the company laid off all of its employees. ...
OnLive then sold off its assets and started a new company, also called OnLive...
It was revealed in October 2012 that OnLive was sold for only $4.8 million. For a company that analysts once estimated was worth approximately $1.8 billion, there was some surprise at the low figure for which the company was sold off.

Divayth Fyr

2013-03-11, 11:50 AM

However I am in two minds about this because at the same time technology cannot cater to those left behind.

Many could not afford a TV when it came out on the market. Many theatres could not afford the upgrade to play films with sounds in them and went belly up. Up until a few years ago it was common that if you didn't upgrade your PC with hardware worth $150 - $400 every year you couldn't play the newest games.
It's a somewhat false comparison, since in many cases the only reason for requiring an internet connection is the DRM and not any features of the game itself. How does it compare to the situation where something required the new technology because it allowed the medium to function?

Iskandar

2013-03-11, 11:53 AM

I really hope the people at OnLive know about this, because their entire platform is based on a situation pretty much opposite to what you're describing, and as far as I know, it works and has been inspiring similar actions for other companies.

No, no, and no again. I see this argument all the time, and, I'm sorry, it doesn't work like that. What OnLive is doing is not SHARING processing at all. Your computer does exactly zero work when hooked up to OnLive, which is why you can play ONLive game on an internet capable television. You just send the input, whether keyboard/mouse or joypad, OnLive runs the game and sends you the video out. This has been around since the dawn of computing, the internet has just extended the reach between client and server by quite a bit. Yes, it is fairly expensive for OnLive to do this, as each user has to have enough server power allocated to them equal to a home computer. This is why they charge a monthly fee, after all.

What EA is claiming is something else entirely. They are trying to say they are doing part of the processing of the game for you. That is bull****. For a packet of data to be sent off across the internet and return some kind of answer takes 10 milliseconds under optimal conditions, not counting whatever processing is dome on that data. This is truly best case, most people don't have internet ping times that low, and when you count in lost packets, and whatever processing is going on you are talking more like a tenth of a second or slower.

Even for a terrible computer, it can get a lot done in a tenth of a second, after all most of of what it does can be measured in thousandths or even millionths of a second. That means that the data being offloaded must be so intensive that the server can handle it at least 100 times better than the client computer, otherwise it just isn't worth it, the client could do it faster locally.

EA, quite obviously, isn't doing that. Instead, they are just doing the fairly standard multiplayer stuff, like almost every other game. Verifying players actions to make sure they aren't cheating (which is actually where a lot of the load on their servers is coming from), hosting multiplayer regions, leaderboards, that kind of thing.

Trixie

2013-03-11, 12:02 PM

I really hope the people at OnLive know about this, because their entire platform is based on a situation pretty much opposite to what you're describing, and as far as I know, it works and has been inspiring similar actions for other companies.

Onlive not only runs games in very low resolution (mere 720p, less than my old crappy laptop can do in most games) it also requires stable, unflinching connection faster than average internet line used worldwide, requires you to live close to one of handful of data centres they have, makes games lag, stutter, and ruins video quality by using compression. One review found out their video quality was barely comparable to console running 480p (http://www.gamingexaminer.com/onlive-a-year-and-a-half-later/11843/#.UT4NLFeOWcA) - that is something PCs did well in 90s. 15-20 years ago.

So, you were saying? :smallconfused:

Whoracle

2013-03-11, 12:12 PM

Gabe has said before that whenever Steam shuts down, they'll release code to remove the Steam DRM from whatever games they can, and Steam support has answered questions before about how "measures are in place to ensure that all users will have access to their Steam games".

As for this, I point you to this article by Shamus Young which explains in easy to understand detail why that won't work (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1680).

tl;dr: Not gonna happen, since you won't have the means to do so anymore.

And in Steams case it's even harder, since they can't patch the games from 3rd-party developers.

I know a bit of programming, and you'd basically have to program what amounts to a crack for the games, which, incidentally, is what DRM is there to prevent in the first place.

Alejandro

2013-03-11, 12:14 PM

All the Sim City problems can be summed up thus: Sim City by its very nature is a game to get immersed in, spend time on, and explicitly control. It's now struggling because all three of those facets are not being met.

You can't get immersed if you can't reliably play and stay playing.
You can't spend time on it if you can't play it when and how you want to.
You can't explicitly control it, because of DRM and 'multiplayer.'

OracleofWuffing

2013-03-11, 12:15 PM

Well, in OnLive's case, the games they offer run fast enough on remote servers. But local still is faster. Also: Yeah, OnLive are doing really well with their model... (http://www.polygon.com/gaming/2012/8/17/3250066/onlive-cloud-gaming-service-closing-staff-laid-off) Granted, the article is a bit older, but they haven't recovered even partly yet. Browse your favourite gaming site for further news.
I hope you'll understand me taking this information with a grain of salt, as it claims that the company will no longer exist as of that day... And they are still operating (http://www.onlive.com/) half a year later.

That is actually very different, in that absolutely everything is calculated server side and only a video stream is sent to the client and the only thing the client sends is control inputs. It is still fairly bandwidth intensive but not to the same extent.
Let me get this straight.
With OnLive, user's control inputs are sent to the server, the server processes the entire game on its end, captures and encodes audio and video, and streams that audio and video to the user.
With EA's hypothetical and-it-totally-happened-seriously-that's-what-they-tell-themselves awesome complicated AI programming, the user's inputs are sent to the server, the server processes the inputs on its end using some super-realistic dark magic that EA cannot talk about in part because no it didn't happen, and then it sends an array of results back to the user.
And I'm supposed to believe the first one is less bandwidth-intensive then the second one? Because, as far as I remember, ISPs have always been proponents of the idea that streaming video is one of the largest bandwidth hogs of the internet and text files are usually smaller than movies.

No, no, and no again. I see this argument all the time, and, I'm sorry, it doesn't work like that.

[...]

EA, quite obviously, isn't doing that. Instead, they are just doing the fairly standard multiplayer stuff, like almost every other game. Verifying players actions to make sure they aren't cheating (which is actually where a lot of the load on their servers is coming from), hosting multiplayer regions, leaderboards, that kind of thing.
Yes, I have acknowledged that EA is not sharing the processing. Several times, actually. However, they claimed to share the processing, and nobody proved that wrong until after the game was released, for reasons that should be very obvious. I brought up OnLive because Trixie was talking about how sharing processing over the internet would not be feasible. That's it. Unless you're trying to tell me OnLive does not process game information for internet users, you're just spinning your circles here.

Onlive not only runs games in very low resolution (mere 720p, less than my old crappy laptop can do in most games) it also requires stable, unflinching connection faster than average internet line used worldwide, requires you to live close to one of handful of data centres they have, makes games lag, stutter, and ruins video quality by using compression. One review found out their video quality was barely comparable to console running 480p (http://www.gamingexaminer.com/onlive-a-year-and-a-half-later/11843/#.UT4NLFeOWcA) - that is something PCs did well in 90s. 15-20 years ago.

So, you were saying? :smallconfused:
That OnLive processes game information on a server end for a client.

...

Which you just proved right up there, because if it didn't, it'd be very hard for someone to review that service. It'd also be very hard for the game to lag and stutter if it didn't run the game in the first place.

Whoracle

2013-03-11, 12:31 PM

I hope you'll understand me taking this information with a grain of salt, as it claims that the company will no longer exist as of that day... And they are still operating (http://www.onlive.com/) half a year later.

I was at work and posted the first link I found. See Eorlas' post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=14873076&postcount=111) with a wikipedia quote about the current state of affairs.

The gist is: It doesn't work. Latency is too high. There is a reason we moved from thin clients to desktop workstations in the 90s, and that was for text-based programs like office and such, not for real time 3D rendering. it's just now that thin-clients are starting to resurface, and that's mostly in LAN environments (with 100 to 1000MBit/sec transfer speeds). Just try streaming a simple office-Desktop over the internet in a usable speed. VMWare and Citrix tried something like that two years back, and it didn't work out.

Heck, just install Diablo (1, mind you) on a PC and try to play it via RDP from another PC (something all windows PCs have on board). Won't happen.
In OnLive/GaiKai and their ilk, it just "works" because of the horrible compression, something which in addition to rendering the game in question on their side introduces another hefty overhead.

And I have tried OnLive once. Quake 3 Arena. A 1999 game. In 2011. Wasn't fun, even on a gigabit internet connection (yay for company lines and a nerdy boss!). The game looked worse than it did on my rig back then. 12 years later.

Iskandar

2013-03-11, 12:46 PM

Yes, I have acknowledged that EA is not sharing the processing. Several times, actually. However, they claimed to share the processing, and nobody proved that wrong until after the game was released, for reasons that should be very obvious. I brought up OnLive because Trixie was talking about how sharing processing over the internet would not be feasible. That's it. Unless you're trying to tell me OnLive does not process game information for internet users, you're just spinning your circles here.

That OnLive processes game information on a server end for a client.

...

Which you just proved right up there, because if it didn't, it'd be very hard for someone to review that service. It'd also be very hard for the game to lag and stutter if it didn't run the game in the first place.

Argh, no. Stop, halt, cease and desist. You apparently missed what I said. OnLive is NOT sharing processing AT ALL with the client computer. It is doing all of the processing ALL OF IT. Not part of it, not 99% of it, ALL OF IT. All that is happening from the user end is that they are sending the inputs, OnLive just feeds those inputs into the game that they are running themselves, on their computers, and streams the video and audio back to the user. This is why OnLive is so hardware agnostic, because none, zip, zero of the actual game is being run client side.

As someone pointed out, and this doesn't surprise me, this doesn't work real well, real time compression and internet desyncs being what they are, but it is feasible.

What EA tried lying about doing is a horse of a completely different color, and trying to compare what OnLive does to that is quite literally trying to compare an apple to a bowling ball. They are both round, and that is about the only thing they have in common.

Zar Peter

2013-03-11, 02:07 PM

I still don't get the hatred for DRM as such.

When they can make a DRM where I can play MY game (I bought it. Yes, it's mine) where I like and when I like then I don't have anything against it. As long as every piratee gets more than I, who bought my game, it's crap.

I have the same problems with DVD advertisments against piracy. Everyone who buys his movie regular has to watch this crap, everyone who buys a pirated movie don't.

Reverent-One

2013-03-11, 02:31 PM

As for this, I point you to this article by Shamus Young which explains in easy to understand detail why that won't work (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1680).

tl;dr: Not gonna happen, since you won't have the means to do so anymore.

And in Steams case it's even harder, since they can't patch the games from 3rd-party developers.

I know a bit of programming, and you'd basically have to program what amounts to a crack for the games, which, incidentally, is what DRM is there to prevent in the first place.

That article makes a few assumptions about the how of the shut down, most importantly that the shut down happens all of sudden, with no warning. Valve isn't just some game development studio under employment of a another company that could change without warning on a moments notice, if they're getting sold/shutting down, they're doing the selling/shutting down, they'd know it's coming before the shutdown date. And while they can't patch 3rd party games, they can patch how steam authenticates games, like say reverting Steam to offline mode.

Hiro Protagonest

2013-03-11, 02:37 PM

Guys, I think you're not looking at the real reason behind the servers running a lot of the stuff.

It makes it easier to run. Sure, serious gaming PCs can run it. But the lower the requirements, the larger the base of potential customers. It's not just an excuse for DRM, it's a business decision.

It's also an excuse for DRM, which is entirely a business decision and has no concern for the enjoyment of the individual gamer.

You want to know how stop pirates without alienating the fanbase? Free to play, or real cheap (ten bucks or less for digital copies, no more than twenty for discs). And put in microtransactions. Even EA's stupid micro expansions might work here. Sony knew what they were doing. People may even put up with DRM at that price!

Whoracle

2013-03-11, 02:50 PM

That article makes a few assumptions about the how of the shut down, most importantly that the shut down happens all of sudden, with no warning. Valve isn't just some game development studio under employment of a another company that could change without warning on a moments notice, if they're getting sold/shutting down, they're doing the selling/shutting down, they'd know it's coming before the shutdown date. And while they can't patch 3rd party games, they can patch how steam authenticates games, like say reverting Steam to offline mode.

That (maybe) clears the legal issues.
But first: The offline mode does not work reliably. At least for me it doesn't.
And second: The article also states something about the production pipeline. Namely that most of the time you simply don't have the tech anymore to recompile your stuff. And you won't have the time and/or money to rebuild all that. You'd have to see the demise of your service or company coming in advance to pull such a thing off. And usually companies try to stop the coming demise rather than throw (precious) manpower at some scheme to soften the blow to existing customers.

Now, if Valve decides to pull the plug on Steam for soem other reason, I'd believe in the whole "we'll patch it out" thing. But seriously, the only reason for Steam to go down is for Valve to be bought off. And if that happens, we're stuck with no patch and a bunch of useless games that we used to be able to play. No matter how much you trust Valve. No matter how much you trust Gabe himself. It's going to happen sooner or later.

Same goes double for any other service like UPlay and Origin, since they don't even have Valves independence,but have to keep their shareholders happy.

Reverent-One

2013-03-11, 03:03 PM

That (maybe) clears the legal issues.
But first: The offline mode does not work reliably. At least for me it doesn't.
And second: The article also states something about the production pipeline. Namely that most of the time you simply don't have the tech anymore to recompile your stuff. And you won't have the time and/or money to rebuild all that. You'd have to see the demise of your service or company coming in advance to pull such a thing off. And usually companies try to stop the coming demise rather than throw (precious) manpower at some scheme to soften the blow to existing customers.

Except if they have contingencies in place already.

Now, if Valve decides to pull the plug on Steam for soem other reason, I'd believe in the whole "we'll patch it out" thing. But seriously, the only reason for Steam to go down is for Valve to be bought off. And if that happens, we're stuck with no patch and a bunch of useless games that we used to be able to play. No matter how much you trust Valve. No matter how much you trust Gabe himself. It's going to happen sooner or later.

The only real reason for Steam to go down is because for market reasons it's stopped making money, not likely to be bought out in that case.

Karoht

2013-03-11, 03:33 PM

You want to know how stop pirates without alienating the fanbase? Free to play, or real cheap (ten bucks or less for digital copies, no more than twenty for discs). And put in microtransactions. Even EA's stupid micro expansions might work here. Sony knew what they were doing. People may even put up with DRM at that price!
To which I say, The Humble Indie Bundle. The first one.
You could pay as little as 1 penny to get $45 worth of games.
People still chose to steal it.
Cheap as free doesn't stop pirates.

What's more, it does nothing to stop cheaters or hackers. It means that if you ban them, they just grab another copy of the game for cheap as free, and repeat the process.

@Steam Going Down
Uh, I hate to mention this, but isn't Valve owned by EA? By that logic, couldn't EA also choose to shut down Steam for little to no reason and little to no warning? Also by that logic, couldn't EA choose to block anything Valve does after said Steam shutdown gets announced?

Gamerlord

2013-03-11, 03:48 PM

Uh, I hate to mention this, but isn't Valve owned by EA? By that logic, couldn't EA also choose to shut down Steam for little to no reason and little to no warning? Also by that logic, couldn't EA choose to block anything Valve does after said Steam shutdown gets announced?
No, they just publish the disk-based versions of Valve's games IIRC.

Erloas

2013-03-11, 04:09 PM

Guys, I think you're not looking at the real reason behind the servers running a lot of the stuff.

It makes it easier to run. Sure, serious gaming PCs can run it. But the lower the requirements, the larger the base of potential customers.
That was pretty much where the discussion started before it was proven that EA's excuse was a load of BS. Anything complex enough that an average PC (that is going to be playing any games, not just this one) can't handle it would be too processor and bandwidth intensive to be practical to move it to a server. Even if you were to assume everything but the UI and controls are server side, which would be the only way to manage the bandwidth requirements, the infrastructure costs would be prohibitively expensive for a game without a monthly fee and even then it would be a hard thing to justify.

@Steam Going Down
Uh, I hate to mention this, Maybe you should have done a basic fact check before saying it then? No, Valve is in no way, shape, or form, part of EA. In fact EA made Origin because Valve was laying waste to them in digital distribution and they had no counter to that before. That is also why quite a few of the newest EA games have never showed up on Steam, because EA wanted to try and force people to move to Origin. It was precisely that reason why even though I love ME, I didn't get ME3 until almost a year after it came out.

So if they removed water lines and subway systems, I assume that means they have removed everything underground?
And not that suspension of disbelief was all that great in the series, with city populations limited to something like 15k citizens (I think that is what was said) it really strains the credibility of the game at all. I live in a town of about 13k people, and even counting our close neighbor city, there is very little "interesting" here (at least from a city management perspective). We have 1 police station, 3 fire stations (its almost entirely volunteer, I really have no idea what is really there beyond garage space), 1 grocery store, 4 fast food places, maybe 6-8 stop lights. We have very little specialty stores. We have pretty good industry though. We don't even have the population for any big casual dining restaurants to even look at us on the map, the neighbor city did manage to get an Applebees but they are closer to 25k and our population is pretty much considered into that in terms of potential market.

Trixie

2013-03-11, 05:31 PM

I brought up OnLive because Trixie was talking about how sharing processing over the internet would not be feasible. That's it. Unless you're trying to tell me OnLive does not process game information for internet users, you're just spinning your circles here.

Except, no? EA claim was that their servers do calculations better than typical home PC. I ridiculed that, pointing home PCs have far more time to do calculations even if slower than "magical" EA servers, and that it would introduce lag and require enormously expensive infrastructure.

Onlive example proved my claims.

Which you just proved right up there, because if it didn't, it'd be very hard for someone to review that service. It'd also be very hard for the game to lag and stutter if it didn't run the game in the first place.

Except, Onlive has very powerful servers you need to live very close to, and all it does...

Is running game as well as twelve year old home PC.

They never claimed they will somehow be better than your desktop computer, and indeed, massive effort they did barely matches computers made in XX Century. That's why they have so much financial problems - their service is awful.

So, nope, for all intents and purposes Onlive proves it doesn't work. It can't work, due to simple laws of physics. When everyone has gigabit fiber optic connections, maybe, today, no way.

OracleofWuffing

2013-03-11, 07:38 PM

I was at work and posted the first link I found. See Eorlas' post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=14873076&postcount=111) with a wikipedia quote about the current state of affairs.
Doesn't change a thing from me.

Argh, no. Stop, halt, cease and desist. You apparently missed what I said. OnLive is NOT sharing processing AT ALL with the client computer. It is doing all of the processing ALL OF IT.
You're telling me I missed what you said... And then restate something I said just above the paragraph you quoted. Again, the discussion was about how troublesome it is to offload processing on to a server, OnLive offloads processing to a server, and none of what you're saying contradicts that.

What EA tried lying about doing is a horse of a completely different color, and trying to compare what OnLive does to that is quite literally trying to compare an apple to a bowling ball.
If we're talking about a hypothetical model where clients can offload processing that they can't handle to a server and have the server sends the results back, I honestly feel that another model where clients offload all of their processing to a server and the server sends the results back is relevant to the discussion. Also, apples are vastly inferior to bowling balls: a bowling ball is round, an apple is not.

Except, Onlive has very powerful servers you need to live very close to, and all it does...

Is running game as well as twelve year old home PC.

They never claimed they will somehow be better than your desktop computer, and indeed, massive effort they did barely matches computers made in XX Century. That's why they have so much financial problems - their service is awful.

So, nope, for all intents and purposes Onlive proves it doesn't work. It can't work, due to simple laws of physics. When everyone has gigabit fiber optic connections, maybe, today, no way.
If, for all intents and purposes, OnLive does not work, then the review you posted is clearly fake. A non-working service would not be able to sputter along. It would just not work. You know, like how an always-on DRM game by a company that grossly underestimates its user base on launch week wouldn't actually let people play the game. Wish I could think of an example of one... :smallwink:

DaedalusMkV

2013-03-11, 08:06 PM

Also, apples are vastly inferior to bowling balls: a bowling ball is round, an apple is not.

http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumblarge_649/132221272577uIZS.jpg

All I have to say on this topic is that all of this "Must be connected to the internet to play your questionably-multiplayer game with no single-player mode" nonsense needs to stop before it completely ruins the gaming industry. I often need to deal with unreliable internet connections; Steam is fine, if I lose connection for ten minutes it's no big deal since I only need to start Steam to have full access to my games all day. Diablo 3 and its bastard offspring, on the other hand, are completely unfeasible for me, and everyone like me. Just give your singleplayer games an offline mode for god's sake; it's not that hard! :smallfurious:

OracleofWuffing

2013-03-11, 08:19 PM

http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumblarge_649/132221272577uIZS.jpg
Egads! They're evolving! :smalleek:

Grif

2013-03-11, 09:09 PM

Maybe you should have done a basic fact check before saying it then? No, Valve is in no way, shape, or form, part of EA. In fact EA made Origin because Valve was laying waste to them in digital distribution and they had no counter to that before. That is also why quite a few of the newest EA games have never showed up on Steam, because EA wanted to try and force people to move to Origin. It was precisely that reason why even though I love ME, I didn't get ME3 until almost a year after it came out.

I'll also add that Valve is privately owned (by GabeN himself IIRC and a few others), and thus isn't beholden to shareholders or corporate suits. Unless he decides to sell, which I highly doubt, Valve is in good hands.

On-topic, I hear the simulation of agents in game are hilariously borked (http://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/19uev9/does_this_game_even_have_ai/). Instead of taking the most logical route to a destination, they take only the shortest route. Which leads to a SNAFU when they all pile into that avenue and ignore your purpose built highway in the middle of your city.

Iskandar

2013-03-11, 11:57 PM

Huh. Ya know, as much as I hate what EA did with the current SimCity, with mandatory online stuff and the cloud saves, when it comes down to it, they did do a lot of things right. They allowed Maxis to take a chance on something brand new, instead of churning out a recycled SimCity 4 with new graphics. Behind all the launch day woes, and server problems, and DRM hate, that is being lost, and that is a shame. This game is brand new, a fresh take on the city builder. Yes, it has its own problems, and these are becoming more apparent as the game gets more playable, but a lot of that is because Glassbox is something that hasn't been attempted before. Like any new technology, there are flaws, and honestly, I'm willing to give them a lot of leeway for being willing to take the risk of trying something no one else has attempted.

Given a chance, I'm sure Maxis can take the lessons being learned here, and release an expansion or a sequel that addresses the problems. Like, for instance, what happened with the brilliant, but flawed Caesar III and its successor, Pharaoh.

Of course, unless EA addresses the issues I have with their attitude towards DRM, online only saves, and Origin exclusivity, I won't be playing any potential sequel either.

factotum

2013-03-12, 02:50 AM

And not that suspension of disbelief was all that great in the series, with city populations limited to something like 15k citizens (I think that is what was said)

Ironic you should say that shortly after chiding someone else for not checking their facts--no, 15k is not the population limit, even with the smaller cities in Sim City 5; I've seen Youtube videos of people playing the game with more than 100k citizens in their cities. I believe somebody managed to create a city in Sim City 3000 that had 6 million inhabitants, although they had to jump through some real hoops to do it (and not care overmuch how happy or healthy their people were).

Trixie

2013-03-12, 07:37 AM

You're telling me I missed what you said... And then restate something I said just above the paragraph you quoted. Again, the discussion was about how troublesome it is to offload processing on to a server, OnLive offloads processing to a server, and none of what you're saying contradicts that.

Um, no. Onlive doesn't offload processing - it replaces processing done on your home PC. Why does it matter? Imagine you have PC with 100 units of computing power. What Onlive does is to replace your PC with 120 power server, yet, due to compression, game looks like it was played on 50 power PC. What EA claims to do is to take 50 power PC and to offload further 100 power to server, which is also what you say Onlive does.

What's the difference? As pointed out already, EA can't afford to give players 100 power server, not for the game price, and besides, 50+100 =/= 150. It would be like ~75 at best, maybe dipping to as low as 40. Why? Look at all the problems with sharing load on multi-core processors - and in this case, we not only need to share load on even more processors, some of the processors are in different state and your home PC needs to idle wasting its power before it gets data from offloaded process, and waste power synchronizing with offloaded data instead of seamlessly doing everything locally. This is why EA claim can't work - it's so hard problem from computational, physical and programming sides, it literally can't be done on modern infrastructure without throwing billions at it. That's why Onlive doesn't even try, it does everything locally on their own PC.

But EA claim was proven to be a lie so it's all academic, really.

If we're talking about a hypothetical model where clients can offload processing that they can't handle to a server and have the server sends the results back, I honestly feel that another model where clients offload all of their processing to a server and the server sends the results back is relevant to the discussion. Also, apples are vastly inferior to bowling balls: a bowling ball is round, an apple is not.

PC - driving your own car. Onlive - being driven in Taxi. EA claim - riding in your old car, while Taxi 10 km from you tries to "help" you by towing your car on 10 km long cable. It would be about as responsive and difficult problem as this automobile example.

And you never saw custom 'grown in shells' round apples? We can do even square melons (http://www.mentalfloss.com/sites/default/legacy/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/square-watermelon.jpg) that way :smalltongue:

If, for all intents and purposes, OnLive does not work, then the review you posted is clearly fake. A non-working service would not be able to sputter along. It would just not work. You know, like how an always-on DRM game by a company that grossly underestimates its user base on launch week wouldn't actually let people play the game. Wish I could think of an example of one... :smallwink:

480p is equivalent to 640x480. My first PC, which was bought in 1995, had monitor with 1024x800 resolution. Granted, it was useful for running windows 3.11 only, as it struggled to run some games even at 640x480, but still...

Many could not afford a TV when it came out on the market. Many theatres could not afford the upgrade to play films with sounds in them and went belly up. Up until a few years ago it was common that if you didn't upgrade your PC with hardware worth $150 - $400 every year you couldn't play the newest games.

Um, no? :smallconfused:

I had PCs since 1995, always changed them every 4-5 years, and I can honestly count number of games I couldn't run in that time on fingers of both hands. Sure, I had to do with low settings sometimes, or specially configure my pc to free as much memory as possible, but still...

Basically the complaint should be primarely directed at your government for failing to supply a vital service (yes, Internet is becoming as vital as electricity), not the game industry.

So, ignoring reality by trying to do things 3-4 years before their time is government's fault? :smallconfused:

Anyway, I only say I still play games I got in 1995, if only for sentimental reasons. Some of them were a few years old at that point already - sure you might need DosBOX and such, but they run. The new crop with 'always on' crap? Sorry, I draw a line there. I don't want to start liking game that might vanish into thin air without warning.

Chen

2013-03-12, 08:10 AM

All I have to say on this topic is that all of this "Must be connected to the internet to play your questionably-multiplayer game with no single-player mode" nonsense needs to stop before it completely ruins the gaming industry. I often need to deal with unreliable internet connections; Steam is fine, if I lose connection for ten minutes it's no big deal since I only need to start Steam to have full access to my games all day. Diablo 3 and its bastard offspring, on the other hand, are completely unfeasible for me, and everyone like me. Just give your singleplayer games an offline mode for god's sake; it's not that hard! :smallfurious:

Except people still FLOCK to these game franchises and apparently accept them. If companies make a game you want to play they're probably going to keep moving to this type of thing until it starts costing them significant amounts of customers. You think the companies are going to look at the Sim City release and say "oh man that was terrible we can't do online only". No they're just going to have to get their servers up to par so that they don't release a game into a ****storm like this. Internet requirements are just starting to supercede other hardware requirements.

Avilan the Grey

2013-03-12, 09:07 AM

[QUOTE=Trixie;14879019]I had PCs since 1995, always changed them every 4-5 years, and I can honestly count number of games I couldn't run in that time on fingers of both hands. Sure, I had to do with low settings sometimes, or specially configure my pc to free as much memory as possible, but still...

---

So, ignoring reality by trying to do things 3-4 years before their time is government's fault? :smallconfused:[QUOTE]

Funny, I distinctly remember having to buy either a new graphic card, a new soundcard, more memory or a new processor or a whole new computer every year between 1995 and the time X-box 360 got on the market. Maybe I just didn't have enough money to buy a top of the line computer...

And no, the point is that it ISN'T 3-4 years before it's time. The broadband expansion is about 10 years behind where it should be in many countries.

Erloas

2013-03-12, 09:33 AM

Ironic you should say that shortly after chiding someone else for not checking their facts--no, 15k is not the population limit, even with the smaller cities in Sim City 5; I've seen Youtube videos of people playing the game with more than 100k citizens in their cities.

I had actually tried to search and the only references I could find were of the older games. Looking at it now, what I saw was the map size of 2k by 2k, if that 2k is pixels or meters or arbitrary units, I can't tell. It must be arbitrary units because nothing else makes sense, it also makes it hard to judge what that really means.

Funny, I distinctly remember having to buy either a new graphic card, a new soundcard, more memory or a new processor or a whole new computer every year between 1995 and the time X-box 360 got on the market. Maybe I just didn't have enough money to buy a top of the line computer... I think my first computer was around 1995, and we had a fairly low end computer at that time, it was a 386 when the 486s were out. I remember having to change settings to get things to work but I don't remember having to upgrade much. But I don't remember how many games I didn't buy because they wouldn't run.
I do know that onces 1999 rolled around I bought my own computer (rather then my parents, who were cheap) and that ran everything I could throw at it until I decided to replace it in... 2003 or 2004, and the next computer was pretty good but not really high end and it lasted through 2008 and was able to run everything, thought obviously not everything at the highest settings by the end. And the computer I've had since then will still easily run anything out there and always wasn't a really high end system, I have done 1 upgrade to the video card but that was as much to save my brother money on his computer as anything else (put my old card in his computer and got myself a new one).

factotum

2013-03-12, 11:37 AM

Karoht

2013-03-12, 12:03 PM

Except people still FLOCK to these game franchises and apparently accept them. If companies make a game you want to play they're probably going to keep moving to this type of thing until it starts costing them significant amounts of customers. You think the companies are going to look at the Sim City release and say "oh man that was terrible we can't do online only". No they're just going to have to get their servers up to par so that they don't release a game into a ****storm like this. Internet requirements are just starting to supercede other hardware requirements.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.
The 'access' economy or information economy as it is sometimes refered to, is only going to shift more and more to this kind of model as time goes on. Why? It is in their interests to do so. The companies get to ignore a laundry list of problems (cheating, piracy, hacking is harder), they control distribution more directly, they control/revoke access on a whim.
At some point, they'll stop selling games on physical media, more publishing/distribution services like Steam and Origin and other Cloud Gaming platforms will pop up. Especially as those services are also capable of low cost advertising and statistics collection on the client base.
All of the above is in their interests as a company trying to make money and survive in the current marketplace. It is in their interests to sell you access to a game under their terms and conditions than it is to sell you the game.

If more companies positioned/designed such services for convience or to provide better service to customers, or to create more of a community, then it might not suck. Maybe. And it is in their greater interests to provide such, but fans/consumers need to demand it.
An arguement could be made that Steam is doing exactly that (at the very least endevouring to do so), Battle.net is trying but missing the mark, and Origin is more or less the example of how not to do it by all accounts.

And at some point, one company will up and say it. "Don't have internet? Too bad caveman. Get with the times." Or something equally as unsavory (not my opinion towards those with crappy internet). The gaming industry is very tech-dependant, and while it should probably focus more on the here and now (the tech people actually have access to) on the more widely available equipment, they understand that stagnating or holding on tech can cost them. Big time. On the flip side of that, expanding on tech that isn't widely supported (IE-Requiring internet when most of the demographic probably doesn't have a good enough connection) can cost them big time as well.

So if we want any of this stuff to go away, then better ideas need to prevail, or as Chen said much larger cry from the masses must make itself heard. Preferably both.

OracleofWuffing

2013-03-12, 12:12 PM

Um, no. Onlive doesn't offload processing - it replaces processing done on your home PC. Why does it matter? Imagine you have PC with 100 units of computing power. What Onlive does is to replace your PC with 120 power server, yet, due to compression, game looks like it was played on 50 power PC. What EA claims to do is to take 50 power PC and to offload further 100 power to server, which is also what you say Onlive does.
When I'm offloading something, I'm moving it from one place to another. Playing on OnLive, relatively speaking, moves the game from my computer to theirs. I do not find it fruitful to split hairs over that word, but that's in part because apples are fruits and we have bowling balls.

Look at all the problems with sharing load on multi-core processors - and in this case, we not only need to share load on even more processors, some of the processors are in different state and your home PC needs to idle wasting its power before it gets data from offloaded process, and waste power synchronizing with offloaded data instead of seamlessly doing everything locally. This is why EA claim can't work - it's so hard problem from computational, physical and programming sides, it literally can't be done on modern infrastructure without throwing billions at it.
So, if EA had implemented their voodoo AI system for which they lost the source code (honest!), I would need to wait for buildings to construct themselves... On a game that's based on waiting for buildings to construct themselves and for taxes to come in? Doesn't sound bad at all.

But EA claim was proven to be a lie so it's all academic, really.
Woah, wait, really? When was that?:smalltongue:

And you never saw custom 'grown in shells' round apples? We can do even square melons (http://www.mentalfloss.com/sites/default/legacy/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/square-watermelon.jpg) that way :smalltongue:
Yeah, I've seen square melons, but I figured comparing a process that shapes melons to a process that shapes apples would be like comparing apples to oranges.

480p is equivalent to 640x480. My first PC, which was bought in 1995, had monitor with 1024x800 resolution. Granted, it was useful for running windows 3.11 only, as it struggled to run some games even at 640x480, but still...
And that was back when floppy disks were floppy on the inside and the outside. Aaah, memories.

Avilan the Grey

2013-03-12, 03:33 PM

I agree with Erloas there--unless you want to stay on the absolute bleeding edge of hardware there's no need to upgrade every year. My current machine is a 3.2GHz Athlon X3 married to a Radeon 5770, both of which are pretty old tech, but I was perfectly able to run Far Cry 3 at 1920x1080 with reasonable graphics settings.

My point is I mentioned that after the XBOX 360 was released, with the co-development that followed, the quick escalation of system requirements for PC games halted and is nowadays almost a crawl.

Karoht

2013-03-12, 04:01 PM

My point is I mentioned that after the XBOX 360 was released, with the co-development that followed, the quick escalation of system requirements for PC games halted and is nowadays almost a crawl.The demand seems to have shifted to bandwidth mostly.
Also, 1GB video cards are quite commonly available these days, at 30-50 dollars if one knows where to look. An old generation 1gig card will take you pretty far these days.

factotum

2013-03-12, 05:35 PM

My point is I mentioned that after the XBOX 360 was released, with the co-development that followed, the quick escalation of system requirements for PC games halted and is nowadays almost a crawl.

And my point is that I've never tried to keep my machine cutting edge and I've never had to upgrade it every year, not even when the XBox 360 was released and immediately afterward.

Grif

2013-03-12, 08:57 PM

And my point is that I've never tried to keep my machine cutting edge and I've never had to upgrade it every year, not even when the XBox 360 was released and immediately afterward.

Gaming requirements stagnated in this generation. It's not a bad thing, unless you're one of those graphic afficandos who demand moar shinies every generation. I run every "modern" game pretty well on my Radeon HD5850, and not needing to upgrade is really something I am grateful for.

Zar Peter

2013-03-13, 07:02 AM

This is getting more and more fun (to watch, not to be actually involved of course):

Maxis Insider says Server not necessary for gamplay (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/12/simcity-server-not-necessary/)

EA is tearing itself apart. I hope they learn something for the next games but I doubt.

Alejandro

2013-03-13, 08:59 AM

There is not enough popcorn in the world to go with this.

Iskandar

2013-03-13, 09:22 AM

This... is frakkin' absurd. They had a good game here. Yeah, a little wobbly around the edges, but a good enough game that the SimCity fans would have bought the game in record numbers... if they had just left the damn thing alone.

This really could have been the next success story, like XCom was. Instead, EA seems bound and determined to do everything they can to screw it up.

Kind of fascinating to watch, like a train wreck in motion, but I really wish it had happened to a game series I liked a bit less.

Sprinter

2013-03-13, 09:38 AM

I cant say im suprised by this. EAs claim about server needed was simply ridiculous.

Wonder if they ever release single player patch.

Karoht

2013-03-13, 09:46 AM

EA has time and again demonstrated itself as that company that just doesn't get it. I seriously wish they would just fold already, but that would probably drag a lot of other good gaming companies down with them.

Gamerlord

2013-03-13, 09:52 AM

So, apparently the Sim simulation is not as complicated as previously thought. (http://answers.ea.com/t5/Miscellaneous-Issues/Traffic-quot-AI-quot-This-is-why-services-and-traffic-are-broken/td-p/737060)

Sprinter

2013-03-13, 10:23 AM

This is why SimCity needs to be on server. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7glooJZWM0&feature=player_embedded)

*grabs more popcorn*

Eldan

2013-03-13, 10:40 AM

You know...

I have no intention of ever buying this game, I'm quite happy with SC4 or 3000 from GoG. But reading the threads about it is hilarious.

Gamerlord

2013-03-13, 10:41 AM

You know...

I have no intention of ever buying this game, I'm quite happy with SC4 or 3000 from GoG. But reading the threads about it is hilarious.
They got 3000? Last I checked, the only had 2000. :smallconfused:

Eldan

2013-03-13, 10:49 AM

I think they do. Or at least, I have it on my computer, and I mostly buy games from there...

Starsign

2013-03-13, 10:51 AM

OracleofWuffing

2013-03-13, 10:59 AM

This is why SimCity needs to be on server. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7glooJZWM0&feature=player_embedded)

*grabs more popcorn*
Sadly, Gladly, Sadly, searching a bit has revealed that the changes you make are not permanent and don't actually change the city for anyone.

But as long as we're talking about silly stuff, I'm guessing this is really funny the first two or three times you see it, and then not funny at all.
http://i.imgur.com/0WTldpn.jpg

Grif

2013-03-13, 11:12 AM

Pardon me changing the subject, but what is SimCity 4 like? Of all the SimCity games, 4 and it's Rush Hour expansion are the ones I'm most interested in. However I've heard SimCity 4 is astoundingly challenging for it's money-management, so I've been a bit wary about getting it for now until I've gotten some opinions on it.

SimCity 4 used to be hard. (Started with only $10,000) Then they added easy mode. (More money to start off, which really eases things along.) :smallwink:

But anyway, it's managable once you get a hang of basic city management. Just remember to tune down the services in accordance to your population needs and use cheap power and water options first. Regions let you specialise your city to a degree (not as much as this SimCity, but it is there), and allows you to be more flexible in how you build.

Divayth Fyr

2013-03-13, 02:49 PM

This is why SimCity needs to be on server. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7glooJZWM0&feature=player_embedded)
Apart from the lulz, is this the maximum city size (didn't really bother checking the info once the drm info was revealed)?

Zar Peter

2013-03-13, 05:31 PM

Apart from the lulz, is this the maximum city size (didn't really bother checking the info once the drm info was revealed)?

Since City size is one of the critique points I fear yes. I was shocked because of this when I saw the video, too. They really utterly destroyed this game. Sad.

Sprinter

2013-03-13, 05:53 PM

Apart from the lulz, is this the maximum city size (didn't really bother checking the info once the drm info was revealed)?

Yes it is maximum city size. After reading this thread you think the game is already dumbed down simplified enough version of previous SimCity. It is even more dumbed down simpler then you think (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACdu1ho2Ic4&feature=player_embedded)

Bravo EA!! :smallamused:

GloatingSwine

2013-03-13, 05:58 PM

On the other hand, Tropico 4 is super cheap right now so you can get your buildy management fix there. (Oh, and it has all the individual agent simulation that SC doesn't).

Iskandar

2013-03-13, 06:01 PM

Wow. This just keeps getting better. Or worse, take your pick.

So, now people can (mostly) play the game they paid for, it is turning out that it really wasn't ready for primetime, so to speak.

Stupid AI? Check (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/13/simcitys-sims-dont-seem-that-smart-after-all/) and check (http://news.yahoo.com/simcity-pr-nightmare-escalates-150021213.html).
Industrial and Commercial zones entirely optional? Check (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACdu1ho2Ic4) and check (http://i.imgur.com/zuHZR9O.jpg)
Proof that Simcity is "fudging" population counts to hide how tiny the city actually is? check (http://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/1a6oeo/proof_that_the_game_is_misleading_regarding/)

And that is just what I have found with just a bit of digging.

And the way this is continuing to build, I may actually have been wrong, EA might take a financial hit for this. Good grief.

I hate to be the one applauding a company for going down in flames, but if any company deserves it, it is EA.

What a mess.

Eldan

2013-03-13, 06:51 PM

Wonderful. Just wonderful. No other game has brougth me this much joy this year, and I'm not even playing it.

Aah, Schadenfreude.

Gamerlord

2013-03-13, 06:59 PM

Eldan

2013-03-13, 07:24 PM

They should have expected this. If there's anyone out there crazy enough to double-check all hte population and employment curves, it's SimCity players.

OracleofWuffing

2013-03-13, 08:36 PM

I hate to be the one applauding a company for going down in flames, but if any company deserves it, it is EA.
If only they could take Zynga down with them. :smalltongue:

Grif

2013-03-13, 08:49 PM

They should have expected this. If there's anyone out there crazy enough to double-check all hte population and employment curves, it's SimCity players.

:smallbiggrin:

Who else? This is the same group of players who calculated each and every step required to get a skyscraper in SimCity 4. (Of which, I only got once.)

Hiro Protagonest

2013-03-13, 10:44 PM

I think they do. Or at least, I have it on my computer, and I mostly buy games from there...

They only have 2000. None of the others.

Grif

2013-03-13, 10:46 PM

They only have 2000. None of the others.

Steam has SimCity 4. Glorious.

Avilan the Grey

2013-03-14, 03:18 AM

Well it sounds like it was a very good thing that I couldn't buy this last month. The "always online" thing do not bother me at all. But the shoddiness pointed out in the articles above do.

I notice that EA has kept the Special Edition "for now" on Origin to try to lure more people to order it.

In other news, Swedish newspaper gives the new Sim City 1 out of 5, their lowest score possible.

Oh and I definitely agree with Grif; get Sim City 4 on Steam. (I have the original discs from way back then, so I don't have to).

Gamerlord

2013-03-14, 06:16 AM

Oh boy, someone on Reddit has managed to mod out the forced disconnect timer, and is able to play the game indefinitely without a connection (Well, you need a connection to log in to get to the city in the first place.) The only issue so far is that you can't mess with the Regions stuff and you can't save/load your city....for now. :smallamused:

Sprinter

2013-03-14, 09:08 AM

Another great article on RPS.

Modder fixes always on DRM and city border limit . (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/14/modder-runs-simcity-offline-maxis-remains-silent/)

Lamech

2013-03-14, 10:32 AM

So modders may end up fixing all the problems with the game?

Anyway, if this game had no DRM, I probably would have bought it. Although after seeing all the massive problems... not so much.

Grif

2013-03-14, 11:09 AM

So modders may end up fixing all the problems with the game?

EA must have taken a leaf out of Paradox. Too bad the company itself doesn't have the charm of Paradox and its games that made the modders so dedicated to their games.

Sprinter

2013-03-14, 11:13 AM

So modders may end up fixing all the problems with the game?

Anyway, if this game had no DRM, I probably would have bought it. Although after seeing all the massive problems... not so much.

Well they cant unless they can create New AI for SIMs. True reason why city size is so limited in SimCity seems to be poor AI of generated citizens leading to huge problems with traffic and nonfuncional services even with current limit on city borders.

https://i.minus.com/ilPrUhB9dfjvn.gif

Studoku

2013-03-14, 11:30 AM

https://i.minus.com/ilPrUhB9dfjvn.gif

It's both sad and beautiful. I can't look away.

Eldan

2013-03-14, 11:43 AM

There's a benny Hill version on youtube.

Aotrs Commander

2013-03-14, 12:14 PM

I couldn't actually believe that gif wasn't edited or something until I actually went and did a google search for the aforementioned Benny Hill version.

This is so utterly hilarious on one level and utterly risible behavior on the other. I can see this being worse for EA than the ME3 debacle, and that at least had a solid game up until the last fifteen minutes or so behind it...

I think I've built cities in Anno and Pharoah bigger than in SimCity if some of the screenshots are any indication...!

Karoht

2013-03-14, 01:14 PM

It's both sad and beautiful. I can't look away.Watching those other people walk down the street towards it... It's like watching a ship getting sucked into a black hole.

Hiro Protagonest

2013-03-14, 02:30 PM

Steam has SimCity 4. Glorious.

Having checked GamersGate and Greenman Gaming, Greenman Gaming has it without DRM.

Grif

2013-03-14, 08:39 PM

Having checked GamersGate and Greenman Gaming, Greenman Gaming has it without DRM.

Literally my entire game collection these days is on Steam. :smalltongue:

Avilan the Grey

2013-03-15, 03:23 AM

Literally my entire game collection these days is on Steam. :smalltongue:

All my games are on Steam except games published by EA (Sims 3 and Bioware games) that are on Origin.

Scowling Dragon

2013-03-15, 04:31 AM

Its like a trainwreck in four dimensions.

DLC or not, this game is a wreck.

Avilan the Grey

2013-03-15, 04:52 AM

Its like a trainwreck in four dimensions.

DLC or not, this game is a wreck.

All the technical choices aside (always online, smaller city map, blah blah) which I can, on some level, understand, it just seems they never actually playtested the damn thing.

Artanis

2013-03-15, 06:13 AM

Literally my entire game collection these days is on Steam. :smalltongue:
Mine is starting to trend that way, though I'm broke enough and attached enough to my older games for it to be a slow, slow process :smalltongue:

Closet_Skeleton

2013-03-15, 06:19 AM

All my games are on Steam except games published by EA (Sims 3 and Bioware games) that are on Origin.

I prefer Origin to Steam.

Before they launched Origin, Steam made me break my EA boycott when it offered me Red Alert 3 for £2 and I wanted to see how bad it was. Now that Origin is out and all new EA games are Origin exclusive I can safely boycott EA knowing that Steam sales can't tempt me with EA games I might want to play.

Now that's a service.

Erloas

2013-03-15, 09:12 AM

All the technical choices aside (always online, smaller city map, blah blah) which I can, on some level, understand, it just seems they never actually playtested the damn thing.

Of course they playtested it, otherwise they wouldn't have known they had to greatly limit the city size to (mostly) keep the bad pathing issues hidden. They also had to playtest to realize that the city populations would seem painfully small if they didn't start artifically inflating the population counts as things started to grow.
What they didn't do was fix the problems, which is a different issue from testing for them.

Sprinter

2013-03-15, 09:40 AM

Time for some more fun

House on top high cliff ? No problem for SIMs. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cy9aXjJArs&feature=player_embedded)

How do they get back to work? By jumping down the cliff. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yySa34R0D_4)

Benny Hill fire trucks.Houses on fire? What fire? wheee!!! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQs4WIxXQog&feature=player_embedded)

Eldan

2013-03-15, 10:36 AM

Beautiful. Just perfect.

Edit: does gaming have an equivalent of the Golden Raspberry in movies?

AmberVael

2013-03-15, 10:50 AM

I've never played a Sim City game before, but I'm beginning to love this game for just how hilariously broken it is.

Divayth Fyr

2013-03-15, 10:59 AM

Edit: does gaming have an equivalent of the Golden Raspberry in movies?
I don't think so. Also, this year would be rather boring - we already know what would win in most categories ;)

factotum

2013-03-15, 11:06 AM

I don't think so. Also, this year would be rather boring - we already know what would win in most categories ;)

I dunno...in a straight fight between Sim City and Aliens: Colonial Marines, which would win? Not sure it's as cut and dried as all that! :smalltongue:

Zar Peter

2013-03-15, 12:18 PM

I dunno...in a straight fight between Sim City and Aliens: Colonial Marines, which would win? Not sure it's as cut and dried as all that! :smalltongue:

I think there's a differene between not meeting up with the expectations of hard core fans and not meeting up with the expectations of hard core fans AND delivering a total broken and bugged game.
Alien lied about their beta but at least the shooter was decent playable I heard.

As a free to play online Sim Village I think this Sim City iteration would have had chances to rival Farmville. But an AAA 60$ game? That's fraud!

Starsign

2013-03-15, 12:26 PM

That is nothing short of amazing. I'd never thought I'd see a AAA game so hilariously busted that it makes most Bethesda games look perfectly stable. :smallbiggrin:

Scowling Dragon

2013-03-15, 12:41 PM

And its PERFECTLY broken. Its broken in the BEST kind of ways in addition to the WORST kinds.

The worst kinds (Poor connection) pisses people off. But the best kind is like the awesome everything else.

Cikomyr

2013-03-15, 01:37 PM

Okay.. Brokeness aside, how does the game stands up compared to SimCity 4?

Eldan

2013-03-15, 01:53 PM

There's not much besides brokenness. From the videos I've seen, resource management does not work, zoning does not work, power and water do not work, traffic and jobs don't work...

Mainly because a lot of them use the same system.

Hiro Protagonest

2013-03-15, 02:32 PM

The gameplay is okay. But only okay. Even without all the other problems, it's still worse than SimCity 4. Cops will only go after one criminal at a time, and upgrading a police station with extra space just means more cops going after one guy. The AI isn't the greatest, as they will always take the most direct path (i.e., the quickest in an ideal situation), which leads to massive traffic jams in some layouts. Add on top of that the fact that you don't have as much space to work with, and it's not worth the money unless you really want the multiplayer.

Iskandar

2013-03-15, 04:46 PM

Tvtyrant

2013-03-15, 05:07 PM

It sounds like they should just make it a F2P if they want to keep it the way it is... Make it a turbo-farmville and switch over to DLC and micro transactions to make it profitable.

Artanis

2013-03-15, 05:21 PM

It sounds like they should just make it a F2P if they want to keep it the way it is... Make it a turbo-farmville and switch over to DLC and micro transactions to make it profitable.
From the sounds of it, I don't think that would work in this situation. That sort of system only works if people play the game and like it :smalltongue:

Erloas

2013-03-15, 05:26 PM

Well, now we know you've never actually played the game you're representing. Nor are you even paying that close attention to the problems your customers are having.
Actually it is very cleverly written in management speak to be true and talking around, but not about, the actual problems.
I don't think I've read anything yet refuting the interactions with other cities, which is the "important part" that the servers are managing that "makes the game what it is." (the last part being entirely subjective and can't really be argued beyond personal preference). It could be that the assumed other cities in the region have some impact on the other weird things the game allows, such as complete residential cities.

It doesn't in any way address the pathing problems.

Eldan

2013-03-15, 06:06 PM

Read a few of the comments below that article. Apparently, the region interaction stuff isn't working well either.

Hiro Protagonest

2013-03-15, 06:08 PM

Read a few of the comments below that article. Apparently, the region interaction stuff isn't working well either.

Oh yeah, there is the fact that if nobody's in a city, the city is frozen in time. So if someone logs onto a region, only the city they're editing runs.

So yeah, it doesn't work properly unless everyone has one city and everyone is always on at the same time.

Eldan

2013-03-15, 06:09 PM

There also seems up to one hour delays in the "real-time" updates and transfers between cities.

Grif

2013-03-15, 06:13 PM

Oh yeah, there is the fact that if nobody's in a city, the city is frozen in time. So if someone logs onto a region, only the city they're editing runs.

So yeah, it doesn't work properly unless everyone has one city and everyone is always on at the same time.
So... kinda like a SimCity 4 region anyway. :smalltongue: (In which every city is frozen in time until you play them.)

Androgeus

2013-03-15, 06:23 PM

It doesn't in any way address the pathing problems.

They are addressing some of the pathing problems. For traffic at least (http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/simcity-update-8).

OracleofWuffing

2013-03-15, 06:56 PM

http://www.ea.com/news/simcity-update-straight-answers-from-lucy

Wow.

Well, now we know you've never actually played the game you're representing. Nor are you even paying that close attention to the problems your customers are having. You might as well be putting your fingers in your ears and chanting "La la la I can't hear you" in the hope the problems will go away.

there is a pun here about being disconnected from reality, I think.
Well, she's a General Manager. I don't know about her portfolio and her history, but her job description is less "playtests game" or "programs game," and more "make sure everyone meets their deadlines." It's totally possible that nobody from EA who talks about this game has played it, and their statements are just a conglomeration of their underlings gone through with a fine-tooth comb by Public Relations. After all, why should they play a video game when their company's receiving a lot of bad press? :smalltongue:

Also "Learderboards" are "An innovative use of servers." Just pointing it out.

t209

2013-03-15, 07:24 PM

From the negative cries of the players, I wonder which city sim should I turn my tail to? Which Sim City would be the best? Any freeware version of it?

GolemsVoice

2013-03-15, 07:26 PM

You know, once they actually finish developing this game, it could turn out to be pretty good, don't you think?

OracleofWuffing

2013-03-15, 08:02 PM

From the negative cries of the players, I wonder which city sim should I turn my tail to? Which Sim City would be the best? Any freeware version of it?
Well, there's Micropolis (an open-source version of the first game that was created when SimCity's source code was released under GPL 3), but as far as I know, the project's been abandoned and there's no easy installation doodad for it.

You know, once they actually finish developing this game, it could turn out to be pretty good, don't you think?
I can't wait to build a city that's shaped like a reproductive organ. :smalltongue:

Erloas

2013-03-15, 08:20 PM

Aotrs Commander

2013-03-15, 08:38 PM

Apparently Anno 2070 is a city/civilization builder of sorts and it is currently on sale on Steam (for another 15 hours at least).
I don't know anything about the game though, having only heard of it because of the aforementioned Steam sale. Anyone have anything to say about that game?

First off, it requires online access (like many games) so it's that's a deal-breaker, be aware of it.

(Though personally, I've never had any troubles with it and I don't think permantant access is required, though it is to get any career updates).

In relative short, then, you have lots of islands and you build on them. You will essentially have usually only one "city" in which your populace live, and everything else is basically the industry chains to supply them with goods. Citizens have needs, some of which are supplied by buildings (which supply the need within a radius) and some of which are supplied by goods, which you make (or buy if push comes to shove). Once you've satisfied the needs of your bottom level of population, you can advanced them to the next level (which unlocks another load of buildings to supply the next set of needs). There are basically two factions, the greens and the industry faction. You pick one to start with, but by the time you get to the top level of population, you can unlock the other one too. You also, a bit before that, get a third crowd, the techs (in order to reach the top levels of both techs and the other faction, you need both).

The supply chains are more about applying the right goods from the islands to your "main" island than micromanaging (all warehouses on an island are "magically" connected, so you don't get problems shipping stuff around the island like you do in say, Caesar/Pharoah/Zeus), and the population is asbtracted, there to generate tax and unlock buildings (there's no "jobs" as such).

There's a military side to it as well, though it's not a major aspect in most missions and a war is largely won on who has the best economy anyway.

Personally, I really like 2070 (and it's immediate predessor Anno 1404). It's not quite a city-builder, like the TiltedMill games (or the SimCitys) - it's sort of falling between the line of city-builder and Civ game (only without tech advancement). Kinda.

(Probably best thing is go and have a look at some videos on youtube or something.)

Avilan the Grey

2013-03-16, 03:39 AM

From the negative cries of the players, I wonder which city sim should I turn my tail to? Which Sim City would be the best? Any freeware version of it?

So far Sim City 4 is the best in the series.
But as GolemsVoice says this game might still become good.

GolemsVoice

2013-03-16, 03:47 AM

But as GolemsVoice says this game might still become good.

That was sadly more of a joke. The way I see it, some very basic things, and things that distinguish SC5 from other Sim Cities, are working badly, disabled, or are even counter-productive (if hilarious)

Grif

2013-03-16, 06:18 AM

Been enjoying some Anno 2070 for myself.

Enjoyable and more importantly, polished game.

Cikomyr

2013-03-16, 06:31 AM

Been enjoying some Anno 2070 for myself.

Enjoyable and more importantly, polished game.

Is it really fun? Lots of depth?

Rising Phoenix

2013-03-16, 06:33 AM

Is it really fun? Lots of depth?

It's a horrible horrible time sink, aka one you'll get sucked in and wonder "wait, where did those 5 hours go?"

Cikomyr

2013-03-16, 06:38 AM

It's a horrible horrible time sink, aka one you'll get sucked in and wonder "wait, where did those 5 hours go?"

Curse you sir..

....

Purchase complete

Eldan

2013-03-16, 06:53 AM

I haven't played any Anno since the original 1602. Is it still any similar? And how do they explain the story if it's set in 2070, instead of the age of exploration?

Yora

2013-03-16, 07:04 AM

The biggest problem with Anno and similar games is that at some point some ******* comes by and starts destroying your stuff. If I take too long to switch from building infrastructure to enough cheap troops in Starcraft multiplayer, that is my own damn fault.
But in single player economy games, that's just a fun-killer.

Cikomyr

2013-03-16, 07:14 AM

Aotrs Commander

2013-03-16, 09:12 AM

I haven't played any Anno since the original 1602. Is it still any similar? And how do they explain the story if it's set in 2070, instead of the age of exploration?

Fairly similar I would imagine, given the similarities between the two I've played, 1404 and 2070.

Storywise, it's 2070, the world has flooded more. Otherwise, the setting is not really touched that much upon in the whys and the story of the campaigns is more about what's happening now; like with 1404, it's more of a "don't think too much about the whys that make the game mechanics work."

The biggest problem with Anno and similar games is that at some point some ******* comes by and starts destroying your stuff. If I take too long to switch from building infrastructure to enough cheap troops in Starcraft multiplayer, that is my own damn fault.
But in single player economy games, that's just a fun-killer.

Depends on what difficulty you play on and what missions you do. On fair chunk of the missions, military forces are not all that important. (The campaign missions are quite fun anyway and well worth doing, as are the World Events in 2070 is you catch 'em when they're running (they run in a cycle about one per month.) If you happen to fancy Anno 1404 (I got it plus it's expansion for about £5 of Amazon), not only is the campaign good, but the expansion has a load of interesting single missions on top.)

If you play on open world with the higher difficulty AIs, then yeah, you end up doing a lot of rushing about to get an army up, but that's sorta the point on those, it's supposed to be hard (and why I don't play on those sort of settings.) But you can just play missions (or set up your open world games to "get umpteen twiddle dudes, build a Cathedral/Sultan's Palace slash Eco/Tycoon/Tech Monument, get x amount of gold and/or do x number of quests for monuments etc etc), giving you free control of your difficultly.

(If you're one of those fellows who wants to play on the hardest difficultly settings of course (which in the open game the difficulty is the conglomeration of all the settings), then you do have to be prepared to run balls-to-the-wall especially in the early game and be prepared to fight for victory, but them's the breaks; you don't have to play that way.)

Sidenote: Anno 2070 also doesn't have ground troops at all; you fight with ships, submarines and aircraft (the latter are critical for being able to take enemy islands - there's like one aircraft that can capture enemy warehouses, but I found it took so long it was just more efficient to blow them the crap up with other air units and just rebuild their island from scratch.)

Also, in both Anno 1404's and 2070's expansions (Venice and Deep Sea respectively), you can also buy out the enemy islands intact with cash, which provides an alternative.

You can also exceed your ship pop cap by using the mentors to buy in reserve fleets (though the cool down is a very long time); you hgave to be a bit careful, of course, lest you do what I did when I realised to complete one of 2070's world events, I had to wipe out the other two players and bought in my ships before I'd got any aircraft! Thus I had to wait until I'd attriciated away some losses before I could even finish the job! That particular mission took about 20 hours in the end, I think!)

Grif

2013-03-16, 02:05 PM

It's a horrible horrible time sink, aka one you'll get sucked in and wonder "wait, where did those 5 hours go?"

That'll explain all my missing hours today. :smallbiggrin:

Combat is a little shallow, but that's almost to be expected. It actually feels like Stronghold, which all the resource chains you have to setup and manage. The one thing that does annoys me is how opaque the game is with regards to how quickly a building actually generates resources. It takes quite a few tries to figure out the exact ratio to efficiently run a chain, but even then, other factors like depot storage compounds the timing. Part of the challenge, I guess.

Eldan

2013-03-16, 02:11 PM

I remember the original Anno 1602 came with a double-sided A3 poster that had all the resource chains on it, including the necessary ratios. Useful thing, that.

Aotrs Commander

2013-03-16, 02:59 PM

That'll explain all my missing hours today. :smallbiggrin:

Combat is a little shallow, but that's almost to be expected. It actually feels like Stronghold, which all the resource chains you have to setup and manage. The one thing that does annoys me is how opaque the game is with regards to how quickly a building actually generates resources. It takes quite a few tries to figure out the exact ratio to efficiently run a chain, but even then, other factors like depot storage compounds the timing. Part of the challenge, I guess.

Or you use the extensive Anno wikis, if you're a lazy bugger like me.

Yeah, I use the wiki building layouts too, so sue me!

Trixie

2013-03-16, 07:23 PM

Sidenote: Anno 2070 also doesn't have ground troops at all; you fight with ships, submarines and aircraft (the latter are critical for being able to take enemy islands - there's like one aircraft that can capture enemy warehouses, but I found it took so long it was just more efficient to blow them the crap up with other air units and just rebuild their island from scratch.)

Capturing with aircraft? Not, say, troop ships? Say what? :smallconfused:

Only, oh, about three millennia of warfare begs to differ -.-

Hiro Protagonest

2013-03-16, 07:47 PM

Only, oh, about three millennia of warfare begs to differ -.-

Aircraft haven't been around for three millenia.

Trixie

2013-03-16, 07:57 PM

Aircraft haven't been around for three millenia.

But ship invasions were.

And actually, paratroopers never captured any island. One famous example almost ended with Paras massacred and their asses being saved by troop ships. It's just too trivial to deny air landings even with primitive resources.

GolemsVoice

2013-03-16, 09:01 PM

Hm, the invasion of Crete?

Iskandar

2013-03-16, 09:13 PM

So, we all knew that the always online was bogus for a single player city. As it turns out, it isn't needed for Regional play for single player either (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/16/simcity-modder-tells-us-offline-regional-play-easily-done/#more-146044).

Yup, looks like it would have taken very minor tweaks to make the single player portion of the game to be completely offline, and that includes local saves.

This is actually good news, in a way. This means that this version of SimCity doesn't need to vanish when EA turns off the servers. It is also looking more likely that the modding community might patch this game into a usable state DESPITE EA.

It really is a shame that EA made this an Origin exclusive. If they released it on Steam, I might actually pick it up. When it goes on sale for like $10 or $15, of course.

Hiro Protagonest

2013-03-16, 09:52 PM

And actually, paratroopers never captured any island. One famous example almost ended with Paras massacred and their asses being saved by troop ships. It's just too trivial to deny air landings even with primitive resources.

Well, yeah, if you use planes. Paratroopers are easy targets for sharpshooters, and runways are well-protected. A good Chinook is much better, let alone an Apache or Blackhawk.

factotum

2013-03-17, 02:39 AM

Well, yeah, if you use planes. Paratroopers are easy targets for sharpshooters, and runways are well-protected. A good Chinook is much better, let alone an Apache or Blackhawk.

Using helicopters as troop carriers only works if (a) you have total air superiority, (b) know that there aren't any rocket launcher troops on the ground who can take out your low, slow-flying bird and (c) can actually do the job once you arrive with the limited number of troops you can fit on board the things. All of those things together pretty much require you to have massive technological superiority over whoever you're invading. When tech is even? Not so much.

Grif

2013-03-17, 02:44 AM

It just gets deeper. (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/16/simcity-modder-tells-us-offline-regional-play-easily-done/)

And deeper. (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/16/simcity-bosss-straight-answers-seem-pretty-wiggly/)

And deeper. (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122732-EA-Admits-That-SimCity-Could-Have-Been-Offline)

:smallbiggrin:

Pic very related.

http://denver.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/img/mlfw3165-13303758468416.png

Scowling Dragon

2013-03-17, 03:06 AM

It just gets deeper. (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/16/simcity-modder-tells-us-offline-regional-play-easily-done/)

Its just that the moderator was Batman:

"Punk is nothing but death, and crime, and the rage of a BEAST!"

Eldan

2013-03-17, 06:26 AM

This is my game of the year. It's now officially funnier than Portal 2.

Scowling Dragon

2013-03-17, 06:45 AM

You know what pisses me off more the the DLC?

How LAZY the DLC is. I get stuff that might take hackers a few weeks to crack to boost early sales but THIS. Your messing up EVERYBODY SO BAD so that it could easily be hacked and played alone ANYWAY.

Eldan

2013-03-17, 06:53 AM

What is the DLC?

Gamerlord

2013-03-17, 06:54 AM

What is the DLC?
I think he meant the DRM. As far as I know, there is no DLC announced yet.

Avilan the Grey

2013-03-17, 08:03 AM

I think he meant the DRM. As far as I know, there is no DLC announced yet.

One is; in the pre-release interview / demonstration for Swedish PC Gamer one of the upper Maxis design guys kept mentioning that the terrain editor will be made aviable within 6 months after release.

Scowling Dragon

2013-03-17, 08:05 AM

Doh! Well, both begin with a D, have 3 letters and piss people off. I got confused.

Cikomyr

2013-03-17, 08:26 AM

Doh! Well, both begin with a D, have 3 letters and piss people off. I got confused.

I don't mind DLC that add nice flavour or supplemental gameplay opportunities.

I hate DLC that are available from Day 1 and are somewhat essential to the overall story, and/or contributes gamebreaking items. (Yes, I am looking at you, Alien Guns from Fallout 3 with your 2000 clips)

Jimorian

2013-03-17, 09:37 AM

Iskandar

2013-03-17, 10:52 AM

One of the EA brainfarts in all this is that they had a decent strategy for DRM. Namely, put enough of the sim computation behind the server wall to make it difficult/impossible to completely isolate it for offline play. And yet for some reason - either they couldn't make it work or never intended to try - they simply made it just like any other connected game where only the bare minimum data is passed.

So they tell the world they're doing this really unpopular thing, but at least it has the benefit of protecting their assets. Except, now everybody knows that they aren't protected AT ALL, and they not only have the originally pissed-off people, they've added just about everybody else to the list. So now they'll end up with probably the MOST pirated game in history.

Heads will roll over this.

Couldn't get it to work. Neat idea, but the technology to make it feasible does not exist yet, and broadband coverage isn't ubiquitous enough to make sure 100% of your customer base can actually make use of it.

Btw, stop calling this DRM an anti-piracy measure. It isn't. It was never intended to be. This move was all about taking away the biggest power that gamers have, namely choosing when to move on to the next game. If EA can get away with making all their games depend on their servers to run, and it looks like they might, they can then arbitrarily shut down any game at any time. As soon as a game gets to a point they can't wring any more money from it, it goes away and the new sequel is released to repeat the cycle.

That might sound cynical, but I guarantee that is the real reason behind this DRM nonsense. EA, as has been proven again and again, only cares about one thing, how much money they can squeeze out of their customers. Game quality and customer satisfaction are entirely unimportant. They have found out that no matter how badly they abuse their fan base, people will still line up and throw money at them when they announce the next shiny new game.

Welcome to the future of PC gaming.