So. Who got it?

And who feels this is another example of EA forcing a release before a game is finished?

So many glitches and bugs that it's almost a broken game regardless whether it was released or not.

There is only so far that a 'larger than anticipated player base' can get you. They said the same with BF3. Didn't learn alot did they.

I thought about getting it, then thought it didn't look as deep as the previous games, then I heard about the release problems, now I'm quite content not to play it.

Quote from Funnybear :

So. Who got it?

And who feels this is another example of EA forcing a release before a game is finished?

So many glitches and bugs that it's almost a broken game regardless whether it was released or not.

There is only so far that a 'larger than anticipated player base' can get you. They said the same with BF3. Didn't learn alot did they.

I fail to recall many issues in bf3

I got it, only had server issues on the night it was released then was able to play fine. Problem is the agent simulation engine is so broken its a pretty worthless game, such a shame as I love the SimCity series.

Still, got BF3 for free, so every cloud and all that!

Fifa 13 was(still is for pc) broken... I notice a theme

BF3 did have server issues on release . . . . actually, it had a hell of a lot of issues on release. Still does have a hell of a lot of issues but I've enjoyed playing it, although the last lot of maps arn't really up to much.

But yea, I got Simcity nearly straight after release with high high hopes as I've always loved the series. I played it without forum watching or twitter reading so I went into it with no preconceptions.

But man, it only took a few hours for me to work out it is a broken game.

Just basic things like the emergency services not using empty lanes and stopping for red lights. That's just play testing 101. But the more you get into it the more you realise just how broken and how utterly badly implemented the fundemental core of the game is.

It's such a shame that A) Publishers think that is a viable marketing strategy. And B) We the consumers keep falling for it.

It's a pretty screensaver but pretty useless as a game atm.

Wait for the major patch update before even considering buying it. And then make sure they've actually fixed the important stuff.

I wanted to get the new SimCity because it does look pretty nice and fresh graphically, but a few things prevented me from doing that:

• Origin only, which is an instant nope. One would think EA should have learned from Steam and improved own service by now.
  
• Always online DRM, and in continuation to that...
  
• The lies of EA/Maxis regarding the "mandatory" simulations they claimed to run on their online servers but were proven to be false like many suspected pre-launch - it's all just anti consumer DRM.
  
  
• Tiny cities, or villages more like it.
  
• simcity.GetFudgedPopulation
  
• It's buggy as hell and quite a broken game from what I've read.
  

If they happen to fix the game and push it to Steam or any other DD platform than Origin, then I might get it when it goes real cheap on a sale.

I mean, don't get me wrong. I've spent a few hours playing around with it, and it is very very pretty. But you do get to a point when you start to realise that it's not doing or behaving how you think it should. I'm not a programmer or even that much of a geek, but I do have enough of a feeling for games to know when they are not doing what they really should be.

It's hard to really pin your finger on it when your playing it. E.G. You can't get your zones balanced . . . . You can't get your multiple cities to support each other properly . . . . Your specializations arn't working as you think they should . . . . And no matter how much you try you just can't sort out your Traffic without seemingly extreme solutions. And the City limits, why oh why did they make them so small? Your not building a city, your builing a small hamlet in the cotswolds. My own back garden is bigger and has far more interesting things in it.

Having now been reading around the forums and press I gather these are quite deep seated problems that might/might not be addressed . . . .

So it appears I might have wasted 60quid or however much it was on a broken toy . . . Which is a shame. I thought I was more careful with my cash.

Hnngh I so want to play this because it looks so good but the gameplay looks like utter shit

I'll try it when it's 'free'.

It also has very short gameplay time, you can pretty much max a city out in a couple of hours, at which point it gets so big it just melts down and you move on to start another one.

I must say I don't have a problem with the always-online DRM though. I can't remember the last time I even rebooted my router so that's not an issue.

The real problem with the game (and I'm not even talking about the city processing errors, traffic issues, SIMs traveling to the nearest available house instead of their 'own' house, population inflation, broken zoning, tiny cities, etc) is that the region play - you know, that thing they focused their entire game concept on - is completely broken.

Sims don't travel between cities properly, don't really go to school anywhere else, visitors and tourists just seem to come from invisible places in 'the region', Hell - the chat still does not even seem to work properly.

It's just a terrible state to release a AAA game in. Very, very, very bad.

Yet... I can't stop myself from playing it. I'll be bored of it once everything works though, like everyone else. I guess the thing is, that it's not a bad game, but it misses out on reaching its own potential by such a large margin that you might as well be playing an alpha version.

bummer, thought of buying it, as I still like to fire up old Simcity 3000 from time to time. But the region stuff not working probably and the small city size really keeps me from buying. I feel bad for Maxis, EA most likely forced them to publish already.

I really want it now that they are fixing things but I'm not supporting the ****s at EA.

Quote from CheerioDM :

I really want it now that they are fixing things but I'm not supporting the ****s at EA.

So LFS is probably the only thing you support, eh?

Am I the only one that ATM has really trouble to find a lot of fun in gaming? I rarely buy games, because the main focus of pretty much every single game is to make the most profit possible, to make a awesome game seems to be prittey much one of the least important things (who would buy the followup game the next year?!)

From the main publishers, I prittey much only love valve. 1 They show love for linux (A massive from me) 2 When they release a game, it is at least great (IMO) 3 DLC? shure you can have it for free (Not all DLC's have to be free, but at least make the pricing anywhere close to reasonable. Most of the production cost is writing the core stuff like MP coding, balancing, optimising etc etc. But for some wired reason, the content in DLC's is usually like 3-10 times more expensive then the stuff in the core game).

Back some many years ago, people tried to make great games, taking PC's to the max and put effort into stuff. Now the budgets are like 100 times bigger, but you get 99% games that you can easily finish in a day. (and usually are HEAVILY similar to other games. No you don't need to reinvent the wheel, but at least TRY to make something better/different to other games)

is it me or it looks (according to youtube) awfully similar to cities XL?

Quote from John5200 :

Am I the only one that ATM has really trouble to find a lot of fun in gaming? I rarely buy games, because the main focus of pretty much every single game is to make the most profit possible, to make a awesome game seems to be prittey much one of the least important things (who would buy the followup game the next year?!)

From the main publishers, I prittey much only love valve. 1 They show love for linux (A massive from me) 2 When they release a game, it is at least great (IMO) 3 DLC? shure you can have it for free (Not all DLC's have to be free, but at least make the pricing anywhere close to reasonable. Most of the production cost is writing the core stuff like MP coding, balancing, optimising etc etc. But for some wired reason, the content in DLC's is usually like 3-10 times more expensive then the stuff in the core game).

Back some many years ago, people tried to make great games, taking PC's to the max and put effort into stuff. Now the budgets are like 100 times bigger, but you get 99% games that you can easily finish in a day. (and usually are HEAVILY similar to other games. No you don't need to reinvent the wheel, but at least TRY to make something better/different to other games)

All game companies do it for the profit, both developers or publishers. That doesn't mean they don't want to make a great game or have fun while doing it, but the primary reason in the end is always to make money and make a living. As a side effect, many publishers want the developers to push their games out unfinished to meet the release schedule for vacations/holidays to make the most money at launch. The actual games we get now are still great and have improved a lot (with some consolitis affecting them like QTE's and general dumbing down) compared to what we had 10-20 years ago.

Valve are great, definitely my favourite developer and publisher at the moment, but they aren't as perfect as most of the gaming community think of them. Steam still has the dreaded $ = € pricing model (before you say it's only because third party publishers wanted it, Valve does it too) and the reason they are pushing Linux so much lately, is so they can maximize their own profits without having to compete with the integrated Windows app stores in the future. Another reason for their Linux development is the upcoming hardware they are cooking up. Running a free OS on it is much more profitable than having to license Windows for each machine. Having said all that, I have nothing against Linux gaming and in fact I wish it great success. It's truly fantastic that Windows is finally getting some competition on the gaming front that they've held in a monopoly.

The problem with modern gaming is largely to be blamed on the horribly outdated console generation. There's only so much you can get out of eight year old hardware, which wasn't that great even when it came out. That's why games that are pushing the PC boundaries to the max are rare to come by, as consoles are still the lead platform for most publishers as they make them the most money with the least efforth. That said, there has been a shift towards PC gaming lately, as PC's have gained more and more traction in the last couple years as console gamers want a better experience than what nearly decade old consoles can offer.

I got it, also got a free game out of it, had very few problems other than Cheetah speed being disabled, although the city sizes are quite small which is a bit annoying.

Was looking like it was going to be fun, but I would probably prefer the older Simcity style over a 'Sims and the City' type of thing. I hope they can patch up the mess the game is apparently in.

I think PC games are doing fine. It's me who's outgrown them. Of course any big name game will overshadow an indie, but the indie game scene is thriving in spite of and probably more so because of the dominance of the big publishers. Just to show my age, the best game in my opinion to come out last year was 'Legend of Grimrock'. You couldn't call it original though, not by a long shot. It was just an old idea infused by new technology. It was terrific. My problem is I'm getting too tired to even play a game these days. If I was 14 I would be all over BF3 like a rash.

Although consoles are outdated now, I have still had fun on xbox and spent FAR less money than I would buying a gaming PC and new hardware every other year. The problem with PC games that push the boundaries is that only a select few get to enjoy that experience on their amazing supercomputers. The rest are using 'old' computers and have the graphics settings turned down so the benefit of the game itself being better (graphically) is lost on a great number of players who paid the same amount for it.

For that reason developers should use the existing technology to create more FUN games rather than spending so much on advancing the technology. The most fun game I have ever played in my life was Ocarina of Time. I think it should benefit all gamers that studios are held back by outdated console tech. because it would force them to create a better experience with what most people have access to. I don't think it works like that all the time though because of the greed factor.

Example: Call of Duty is an atrocious franchise that shits on their users and make them beg for nuttier chunks in their mouths. Old technology has enabled them to squirt out quantity over quality.

Quote from Electrik Kar :

Was looking like it was going to be fun, but I would probably prefer the older Simcity style over a 'Sims and the City' type of thing. I hope they can patch up the mess the game is apparently in.

I think PC games are doing fine. It's me who's outgrown them. Of course any big name game will overshadow an indie, but the indie game scene is thriving in spite of and probably more so because of the dominance of the big publishers. Just to show my age, the best game in my opinion to come out last year was 'Legend of Grimrock'. You couldn't call it original though, not by a long shot. It was just an old idea infused by new technology. It was terrific. My problem is I'm getting too tired to even play a game these days. If I was 14 I would be all over BF3 like a rash.

That is how I felt when BF3 came out. It is hard for me to spend a lot of time on a game for it to be worth it. I still buy new games but there are so many that sit on my computers for months or even years before finishing.
Arma III may make it on here when it is released but I don't know until it is final.

Yea, I've been watching Arma III. It does look good, but could end up being a little 'too' heavy for my casual gaming nature.

Been putting a few more hours into Simcity, and it is getting very infuriating. I've ditched Ind for just purely Com and Res, but I still can't get the traffic sorted and I've run out of power and room and I've a never ending need to upgrade sewage and water (which keeps running out) and I don't have the room, and I can't upgrade my City hall to get mass transit because I can't get the people, and I don't have the room and even if I start a neighbouring city I can't garantee it's going to support this one properly and I don't have any room and I can't get enough tourists in because there is no room for an airport and I DON'T HAVE ANY ROOM!

It is very pretty though.

Quote from Funnybear :

I DON'T HAVE ANY ROOM!

It is very pretty though.

That is what my boyfriend said when he saw my penis for the first time.

Quote from CheerioDM :

That is what my boyfriend said when he saw my penis for the first time.