SimCity 5

[bhavv]

I got the boxed collectors edition for just £36. I wasnt going to buy it, but found a £4 voucher to use at Game, and also had loads of reward points saved up for another £2 off.

I didnt have any troubles logging in or playing, and the game remained connected all night long. I have chronic restart-itis in strategy games though and I keep replaying the first region from scratch everytime I make a tiny error

Im not a fan of the always online DRM, but I have an unlimited internet connection, but its just severely slow for most online games. Sim City is running great however, but I'm only playing it in single player mode.

As long as you can get connected to the servers, its a great game, but the lack of cheetah speed is annoying (you can set cheetah speed, but its still the same as llama).

 

[Maniacal]

£6 off isn't much of a deal

 

[Thorgalaeg]

I like simcities a lot and IIRC have played to all versions, but hell will freeze over before i buy a game like this. It is like buying a car but the car dealer keeps the keys.

 

[warpus]

It's like paying for a hooker and having to stay on the phone with the pimp during the act the entire time, giving him updates on what's going on.

 

[Windsor]

It's like paying for a hooker and having to stay on the phone with the pimp during the act the entire time, giving him updates on what's going on.

What is the hooker looks like Jennifer Lawrence?

 

[J-man]

I currently working on a city and its going really well. Unfortunatly connection with server has been lost, for about 20 minutes so al my progress is not being saved........

Edit: Just got kicked out of the game grrrrrr

 

[civvver]

This is why you don't buy server based games upon release. Honestly has there been a game released ever where the online features worked right? Go all the way back to world of warcraft release, it was bad. The next two expansions were bad too. All other mmos I've played had issues on the release day some for a couple weeks. Didn't diablo3 have a bunch of issues? Multiplayer in civ5 was f'd up might still be, I don't know cus I don't play it. And EA hasn't been any better, for a while ME2 and DA:O would delete your free dlc that came with the game and invalidate your save files. Dark spore had tons of server issues. It's not just EA it's like every server based game.

 

[CivCube]

This is also why you don't buy single player games that are forced to be online.

 

[J-man]

EA realy screwed this up. For the record, when everything is working fine this simcity is a great game and really addictive imho.

 

[warpus]

Whoa.. check out the ratings it is getting on Amazon. I don't think I've ever seen anything rated that lowly there.

Some of the 5 start reviews are sarcastic too. This one sticks out:

I was looking for something new for my computer, when I stumbled upon this game on Amazon and decided, what the heck, lets give it a shot!

I have to say it far exceeds my expectations.

Thankfully, the game never actually loads. I was looking for a program where I could zone out, and stare at my computer screen in a meditative state for hours on end with no interuptions.

There's no actual gameplay, sound effects, or graphics to distract you from your meditation.

You may be forced to run the same "Tutorial" over and over again, but don't worry about that minor problem, because as soon as you exit the tutorial you'll be returned to a program that blissfully crashes or just, never logs onto any server succesfully, once again giving you peace and quiet.

Incredible job EA, will there be a sequel?

 

[NBAfan]

Has a savior arrived?

I'm pretty cynical about Civitas. It's a Kickstarter, and there doesn't actually seem to be any design work other then the initial idea. I do hope it works though.

 

[warpus]

I check their kickstarter page on a regular basis now and they've had 400-500 new backers since last night. They are getting tons of publicity and seem to be working hard to put up a website for the project as well as answering all the questions and dealing with the PR aspect of it.

So far so good. I don't think these guys expected such a huge response. They have 16% or so of the $250k they are asking for with over 3 weeks left to go. I am going to be following this very closely

 

[RD-BH]

Well ...
... I managed to play a couple hours.

Build a metropolis ...
... raise taxes
... shut down services
... milk populace while city burns
... earn 2,000,000 simoleons
... rinse and repeat

Yep, plays just like EAs business model.

 

[bhavv]

£6 off isn't much of a deal

You're right, but the price was also very low for the collectors edition.

It was £42.99 for the CE from Game, with the £6 off 36.xx because it was a few pennies over £6.

So I basically paid the same for the CE than the standard game. Also if it hadnt worked, I could have gotten it refunded like lots of people already did in the US through Amazon, but the Europe servers are working fine, I just had to pick Europe East instead of West because it was full.

EA realy screwed this up. For the record, when everything is working fine this simcity is a great game and really addictive imho.

EA screw EVERYTHING up. Thats the history of EA, everyone should know that by now. I try not to buy EA, but the two exceptions recently have been Dragon Age Origins, and now Sim City, just two games I really wanted regardless of being published by EA.

Another similar game that I want but it has always online DRM is Settlers 7. In this case though, people were getting their accounts locked for quitting the game and trying to relog or something because the DRM detected them as hackers, and no one could play because their accounts were being blocked. Also Ubisoft promised a removal of DRM and always online requirement from all their games, and Settlers 7 still hasnt changed.

I dont expect EA to change, but I'm a fool for Sim City

Theres more crippling bugs in the game however, not only the lack of cheetah speed or the unreliable servers. Region trading isnt working. Im still practicing on the starter 3 city region, and tried to set up a basic trade economy - one city producing power with a coal plant, another producing water with no industry or power plants (no pollution, just a tiny water city), and then I tried trading the power and water between each of those cities, and also to the third coastal city so that it didnt need to build its own utilities and could focus on becoming a tourist city.

None of the power or water is being delivered to any city despite being correctly purchased in region mode and set up with trade routes, I left the game running for 30 minutes to eliminate any chance of it being delayed, and nope, its just not being sent.

I'm uploading a video of the bug now, kind of ridiculous when the biggest thing I read about the changes in this game was the importance of trading resources between cities in a region.

 

[peter grimes]

Has a savior arrived?

Intriguing....

Will definitely pay attention, and likely contribute at the beta level.

 

[Peck of Arabia]

I felt I'd played Sim City through to the point where the novelty wears off and you wonder "Well, now what do I do?" and all I did was watch a couple of Lets plays

boy, did that save me some time, money, effort and disappointment

 

[AlpsStranger]

So... angry.

EA denied my refund request. Just flat out said they wouldn't do it. Had the balls to offer me a 15% discount on my next purchase.

 

[bhavv]

So... angry.

EA denied my refund request. Just flat out said they wouldn't do it. Had the balls to offer me a 15% discount on my next purchase.

Never buy games through Origin / EA, get the retail copy in the future from somewhere like Amazon. This way you get a week at the least to try out the software before deciding if you want to keep it or send it back for a refund.

Its exactly the same with Steam, they wont refund you anything bought on the steam store because its against their policies, even though they violate EU trading laws and have done for a long time, the law / government doesnt care to do anything about it, well except in Germany.

Also I've been temp banned from an MMO before for opening a paypal dispute over purchased cash store points not working - Maple Story limited what you could use cash store currency on if you paid via credit card or paypal because people were apparantly charging them back too much. Being unaware of this, I paid for points and couldnt spend them on anything useful and thought that was valid enough reason for a dispute :x. It would be completely illegal in most of Europe to charge people money, and not provide the advertised service / items for their money.

/Le quit P2W MMOs. And yea, Sim City is going to be full of microtransactions too, but I doubt they would do something as silly as refusing cash store services to paying customers.

 

[Matthew.]

I felt I'd played Sim City through to the point where the novelty wears off and you wonder "Well, now what do I do?" and all I did was watch a couple of Lets plays

boy, did that save me some time, money, effort and disappointment

Same here. Played tons of Simcity 2000 and was tons of fun at the time, but the new Simcity (EA or not) just isn't getting my attention. For renewed interest I'd need something that went above and beyond what any of the others offer, and the new one just looks like a streamlined version of more of the same.

 

[Maniacal]

Although EA has stopped its marketing campaign and is asking its affiliates to stop promoting it, probably to ease the strain on the servers. Related, I got an email from GMG.com today promoting the game and their discount on it They really weren't prepared for this at all...