SimCity Makers Say Crashes Dramatically Reduced, No All-Clear Yet

9 responses to “SimCity Makers Say Crashes Dramatically Reduced, No All-Clear Yet”

1. 

   piratepete

   March 11, 2013 at 1:54 pm

   I dont think we bought the game expecting you to fix the server issues, I think we bought it expecting to be able to play.

   Reply
2. 

   korolev

   March 11, 2013 at 2:01 pm

   I’m not attempting to play this for another 2 days at least. I finally got in last night, worked on a city, only to have none of my progress count because the servers got disconnected. Oh and my first two cities straight up disappeared.

   SimCity is, in many ways, a very clever game. It has some very good design elements and some very smart game play choices. But the lack of freedom (no terraforming, no random maps), the graphical and gameplay glitches and the horrendous server issues means that I am going to never trust Maxis or EA again. I suppose its not Maxis’s fault – EA probably forced them to do this “always online” thing. But regardless of who is to blame, the fact stands that even after 5 days, the game is sometimes completely unplayable for me and I am unhappy with that.

   You know, I was willing to give “always online” a chance. I never liked the idea, but I thought it could work, somewhat. Diablo III, for all the crap that game got for its server issues, worked virtually perfectly for me 15 hours after launch. Inexcusable to some, but not to me. But no more – it’s been 5 days and they still haven’t made it functional.

   And their excuse? That they “didn’t expect this many players” or for us to play for long (It’s a SimCity game! OF COURSE we’re going to play for hours! Have none of the development team ever talked to a sim city player in the past!?) is ridiculous.

   And the thing is, this game was always going to have this problem, because of the way they designed it, with cloud-computing a part of the game. You literally CAN’T play it offline, even if you did get around the DRM, because a hefty chunk of the code is on THEIR end, not ours. That was a ridiculous design choice, which has locked them out of the easiest and best solution – simply turn the DRM off and let us play the game we bought with our money.

   I’m really sorry to be so negative. I like SimCity. I liked Maxis. I wanted this game to be good, after such a long absence from the scene. I thought and still think that many of the design elements of this game are clever and smart and interesting. But once again, an unreasonable fear of pirates by Corporate suits who seek to blame every single profit fall of “dem pirates” (funny how other companies seem to make profits despite “dem pirates), has cost this game dearly.

   I know piracy is an issue – but it’s not that big of one. I’m not a fan of piracy, but it’s a problem that requires a smart approach, and not a big sledgehammer of an approach that alienates paying customers.

   Reply
   1. 

      dnr

      March 11, 2013 at 2:09 pm

      As much as i dislike EA, turns out its maxis fault not EA, at least according to this article.
      http://www.kotaku.com.au/2013/03/simcity-boss-on-games-failure-this-is-on-maxis-we-own-it/

      Reply
      1. 

         me

         March 11, 2013 at 2:14 pm

         the problem with that is that we can’t trust her words. If EA did force them, she can’t very well go out and say “yeah EA forced this on us”. Considering Maxis is owned by EA, saying something like that would guarantee losing her job.

         I mean BW did the exact same thing with DA2 and SWTOR. “EA didn’t force this on us, blah blah blah”. And yet the one common denominator is EA.

         Reply
      2. 

         dknight1000

         March 11, 2013 at 2:40 pm

         This game feels like they didn’t test everything they should have, that it was pushed out the door early. I don’t see Developers doing that but I do see Publishers doing it.

         Microtransactions in every game EA publish, I don’t see that as a Developer decision either to be honest.

         Reply
      3. 

         akira_22

         March 11, 2013 at 3:25 pm

         Maxis IS EA. They are straight up owned by them. Therefore this is EA.

         Reply
   2. 

      single_malt

      March 11, 2013 at 5:40 pm

      Yep, it’s easy to see why so many people don’t believe the company line that ‘always on-line was necessary because it relies on cloud computing”. The system requirements for the game are very low: 2.0 GHz Core2Duo, 2GB RAM, NVidia 7800 or ATI Radeon HD 2×00. This is tech that’s 6-7 years old now. It’s hard to believe that current gen systems couldn’t handle anything the game could throw at it locally – I mean, we’re not talking about calculations on a folding@home scale here.
      It’s also hard not to believe that the always on-line requirement was a deliberate design decision as a method of DRM and maximising profits through the potential for DLC and micro transactions, especially given EA’s track record. The EA hate didn’t come from nowhere, they have a history of treating customers badly (the refusal to offer refunds on the digital purchases is just another example).

      Reply
3. 

   jedikilla

   March 11, 2013 at 7:01 pm

   I understand people are having difficulty still, it was somewhat different in my situation. I bought the game yesterday, installed fine, updated and it went straight into the game. I haven’t had to wait for the servers at all. The only real complaint I have is that if you try and join a game they always seem to be full.

   Reply
4. 

   gozzav

   March 12, 2013 at 9:40 am

   I bought the game a couple of days ago and have had no problems whatsoever.

   I just created my own Region last night. Looking for neighbouring Mayors 🙂

   Please join
   Server – North America West 3
   Region – Macedonia
   Me – GozzaV

   Reply