Sim City 2013 Launch is one big Sim Failure

#4547352

nhlkoho

2013-03-07 21:36

Why would making the game run on a single core, fool people to think it needs DRM? I don't understand.

I'm not sure he understands his argument either.

#4547356

Sash

2013-03-07 21:39

if you see lucy bradshaw's blog post that i changed instead of her interview you see why: GlassBox is the engine that drives the entire game -- the buildings, the economics, trading, and also the overall simulation that can track data for up to 100,000 individual Sims inside each city. There is a massive amount of computing that goes into all of this, and GlassBox works by attributing portions of the computing to EA servers (the cloud) and some on the player's local computer. SOURCE Now please blame me for being a fool again. There are only 2 of you who don't get it, the rest of metacritic's 1000+ negative reviewers and amazon's 1000+ one star voters who decided to ask refunds and made AMAZON stop selling SimCity seemed to get it. Im not gonna argue with two people anymore, there are thousands of people who get it!

#4547368

Ghosty

2013-03-07 21:45

if you see lucy bradshaw's interview you would probably read why: GlassBox is the engine that drives the entire game -- the buildings, the economics, trading, and also the overall simulation that can track data for up to 100,000 individual Sims inside each city. There is a massive amount of computing that goes into all of this, and GlassBox works by attributing portions of the computing to EA servers (the cloud) and some on the player's local computer. SOURCE Now please blame me for being a fool again.

The target audience is very different to most other games. So it would make sense to get the game running on many different systems. They are doing this by taken some CPU usage away.

#4547370

lucidus

2013-03-07 21:46

They did a good job of simulating Diablo 3's launch .. maybe worse.

#4547374

killer_939

2013-03-07 21:52

More reasons to get the more reliable, DRM free, somewhat cheaper versions of games like this. I'll admit i have pirated to avoid a DRM before, I wont be missing out due to companies failing. I wont however pirate unless i feel it is better for the game industry if i don't pay for it.

#4547382

daffy101

2013-03-07 22:03

Its sad to see another premiere title product being killed by EA. So many titles so many poor reviews. God forbid they ever got hold of the Elite franchise that would be the final heart break for me. Simple solution vote with your wallet (electronic download here £44 amazon £34) and keep your money for companies that actually make an effort to entertain.

#4547474

Taint3dBulge

2013-03-08 00:21

Well since i was banished from the simcity thread, because now in guru3d you must play a game in order for you to actually comment on a thread, and be heard, i can freely post here my furstrations, since it is relevant to my rant in the simcity thread from the "games that you played and only then you can comment them" section: People blindly bought the game, knowing this is EA, and it will destroy another game and just run off with their money. They are ignorant, ok, they payed for it, got mad for not being able to run it, then cried to Maxis and EA. And they are like, yeah no problems here, oh we will just make some maintenance work. Wanna know a dirty secret? SimCity is coded as a SINGLE CORE game, so that it will run on one core, this is an EXCUSE so that people like OCEAN QUIGLEY and LUCY BRADSHAW can justify the always on DRM and the "need of raw processing power from EA's servers" GLASSBOX WORKS FINE WITHOUT ONLINE DRM, THE PROBLEM IS THAT THE GAME IS CODED AS SINGLE CORE! That is a justification of the SMALL CITY TITLES as well! If it was made so that the simulation would spam on all the CPU's cores... boom, bigger city size, probably more ram and a better videocard but guess what? you have detail settings!! People pay 60$ for a money milking game that they dared call it SimCity! this is nothing like SimCity! it is a money milking game made by EA with a fancy simulator called Glassbox so it keeps people who play farmville and citiville on facebook intrested and amazed and makes them buy it! This game's target-group are facebook kids!

Go blow your horse**** somewere else.. If it is only a one core game then why does my 8 core or excuse me my 4 module 8 thread CPU always have 4 cores at 80% or better and the other 4 are jumping between 10~40%... I dont see one core thats at 100% the whole time.. If you dont like EA Maxis or whatever dont buy the game... But to me SimCity is awsome fun! Way to addictive and well yes the first few hours the game came out they had server lag.. Yesterday they were doing maintenance on the servers as well to make them better to handle more people.. I cannot get mad at them.. I mean if any server got slammed with millions of people trying to connect to a game.. Well any server would go down or slow down and have a hickup.. Do you guys get pissed off when the Guru3d server gets flooded and it has a hickup or goes down for alittle bit.. pfff.. Get a grip and grow up. No body is perfect, and i would complain if i still couldnt get on, but guess what its running just fine today... :bigsmile:

#4547480

airbud7

2013-03-08 00:29

People pay 60$ for a money milking game that they dared call it SimCity! this is nothing like SimCity! it is a money milking game made by EA with a fancy simulator called Glassbox so it keeps people who play farmville and citiville on facebook intrested and amazed and makes them buy it! This game's target-group are facebook kids!

Well Said, Sir......:thumbup:

#4547516

HEXXEN9x

2013-03-08 01:25

'Face palmed self to death' pre-order and EA should never exists in the same sentence unless its being bashed. now... that's set and done the why cant you the buyers let EA crumble and disappear so other companies with bigger hearts sell us higher quality games after pillaging EAs corps. Its people like you that feed the beast and keep our some of our favorite games owned by corporate monsters, thanks.:puke2:

#4547527

eclap

2013-03-08 01:38

Rubbish like this is actually fueling piracy. Why pay for a game, unable to play it on the day of release, have to have a constant connection so you are screwed if you are in an area without internet or travelling when you can: 1) Download it a few days after launch 2) Comes DRM free 3) Can play it anywhere without a constant connection 4) Its free I gave up after the Empire total war where it took me over a day to download. I have not bought a PC game since, OTHER than games that are on offer at silly prices on steam sales. Sorry EA, you screwed up, you screwed your profits and possibly the gaming industry NOT piracy. /rant

funny, I played my LEGAL copy 3 days before it launched in my region (UK) 😛

#4547532

Redemption80

2013-03-08 01:49

While review sites have different needs, I don't believe any consumer should pre order any PC game, the platform is a mess when it comes to issues and people should know this by now. Same thing with season passes, why the hell would you pay for more of a game before you know if you like the game or not, tbh think this race to play it first messes with peoples head. While i hate Blizzard and so far in my life have never had an issue with EA, Diablo 3 clearly was handled much better than this. I have to ask what is it with Maxis games, the last time a PC game launched to this sort of poor press was Spore. Now there is no 100% way of knowing if the online only was a gameplay choice or a DRM choice, but it does make you think Maxis have a greater fear of piracy than the rest of the companies who work for EA.

#4547566

k1net1cs

2013-03-08 02:33

'Face palmed self to death'

Well, if you're facepalming using others' faces, I think that'd be rather rude.

#4547570

lucidus

2013-03-08 02:47

While review sites have different needs, I don't believe any consumer should pre order any PC game, the platform is a mess when it comes to issues and people should know this by now. Same thing with season passes, why the hell would you pay for more of a game before you know if you like the game or not, tbh think this race to play it first messes with peoples head. While i hate Blizzard and so far in my life have never had an issue with EA, Diablo 3 clearly was handled much better than this. I have to ask what is it with Maxis games, the last time a PC game launched to this sort of poor press was Spore. Now there is no 100% way of knowing if the online only was a gameplay choice or a DRM choice, but it does make you think Maxis have a greater fear of piracy than the rest of the companies who work for EA.

EA isn't really experienced with this sort of thing, Blizzard has been running WoW for 9 or so years and they still had issues with D3's launch. I think EA bit off more than they could chew. I wouldn't be surprised if they made an anti-piracy choice as their sims titles appeal to the casual audience a lot and is more sought after as an unauthorized download as compared to other core games. Who knows, may be the next major Sims game will be like this as well.

#4547583

Alexraptor

2013-03-08 02:59

They blew it big time. Moral of the story is: Never try to turn an exclusively singleplayer game into multiplayer. :P Also hear that trolls are running rampant, taking over cities, running them into the ground with debt and then abandoning them, totally screwing up regions.

#4547587

Redemption80

2013-03-08 03:04

EA isn't really experienced with this sort of thing, Blizzard has been running WoW for 9 or so years and they still had issues with D3's launch. I think EA bit off more than they could chew. I wouldn't be surprised if they made an anti-piracy choice as their sims titles appeal to the casual audience a lot and is more sought after as an unauthorized download as compared to other core games. Who knows, may be the next major Sims game will be like this as well.

Sounds like it, and usually when EA try to copy Blizzard it goes badly for them. The fact the beta testing went without a hitch sounds like alot more people bought it than who downloaded the beta, or something technical went tits up this week. Either way, whether it be for DRM or gameplay, if your going to launch an online game, especially one that costs a good bit more than most games these days, there is no excuse for messing things up on launch. The fact that most EA games are still pretty good is what is keeping them going, but they can't keep having messed up launches like this, and i doubt they will try and sweeten people with free stuff either.

#4547595

lucidus

2013-03-08 03:16

Also hear that trolls are running rampant, taking over cities, running them into the ground with debt and then abandoning them, totally screwing up regions.

That's terrible if it's true. Didn't 4chan pull off something silly like that on an internet game a few years ago? :P

#4547598

Redemption80

2013-03-08 03:19

The server issues can't be that bad if trolls are able to run rampant. Either that rumour is exaggerated or the service issues are.

#4547602

Alexraptor

2013-03-08 03:25

That's terrible if it's true. Didn't 4chan pull off something silly like that on an internet game a few years ago? :P

Also heard of people ending up having serious trouble because another player decided to abandon/demolish an established city which they depended on. When it does not work its a mess, when it works its still a mess it seems. Don't know what on earth they were thinking.

#4547691

Sash

2013-03-08 07:15

Go blow your horse**** somewere else.. If it is only a one core game then why does my 8 core or excuse me my 4 module 8 thread CPU always have 4 cores at 80% or better and the other 4 are jumping between 10~40%... I dont see one core thats at 100% the whole time.. If you dont like EA Maxis or whatever dont buy the game... But to me SimCity is awsome fun! Way to addictive and well yes the first few hours the game came out they had server lag.. Yesterday they were doing maintenance on the servers as well to make them better to handle more people.. I cannot get mad at them.. I mean if any server got slammed with millions of people trying to connect to a game.. Well any server would go down or slow down and have a hickup.. Do you guys get pissed off when the Guru3d server gets flooded and it has a hickup or goes down for alittle bit.. pfff.. Get a grip and grow up. No body is perfect, and i would complain if i still couldnt get on, but guess what its running just fine today... :bigsmile:

thanks for letting everyone ser how far a brainwashed EA customer can go defending his game and company. Shamr for some people considering themselves gamers for having this "horse vision" 😉 Ok you are not mad, how about IGN? http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/03/08/simcity-burning-a-warning-to-microsoft-sony-and-all-publishers-on-the-dangers-of-always-online-drm Yes, please go on telling me how sim city is so great? "But Sash, you're still a moron, fool, idiot and all other insults i can think of with my small remote control EA brain" O rly? Check out gamespots uk's review: http://www.gamespot.com/simcity/reviews/simcity-review-6405012/?edition=desktop Eurogamer.se gave it a 10 because they played a beta from 1 week prior to launch and also got payed by EA, now the only 10 review is waved all over simcity's website like a victory flag, lol

#4547703

lucidus

2013-03-08 07:53

thanks for letting everyone ser how far a brainwashed EA customer can go defending his game and company. Shamr for some people considering themselves gamers for having this "horse vision" 😉 Ok you are not mad, how about IGN? http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/03/08/simcity-burning-a-warning-to-microsoft-sony-and-all-publishers-on-the-dangers-of-always-online-drm Yes, please go on telling me how sim city is so great? "But Sash, you're still a moron, fool, idiot and all other insults i can think of with my small remote control EA brain" O rly? Check out gamespots uk's review: http://www.gamespot.com/simcity/reviews/simcity-review-6405012/?edition=desktop Eurogamer.se gave it a 10 because they played a beta from 1 week prior to launch and also got payed by EA, now the only 10 review is waved all over simcity's website like a victory flag, lol

Amazon made the game unavailable for purchase for a few hours and put it back on with a warning about connectivity issues. They've been issuing refunds to people too.