Sim City

[ArithonUK]

Francis? That's Cartman from Southpark all grown up, eating Cheesos and drinking Mountain Dew straight from the three litre bottle, as he sits in his mother's basement posting expletive videos to YouTube...

Aren't his stubby little arms cute when he flaps them? Awww..

This player had this to say

This game is a cluster****. I could put up with one or two bad ‘suit  decisions’ but this game… It’s like they let everyone in head office  take their turn adding their own personal **** up so no one felt left  out. I think it was the not being able to load save games that pushed me  over the edge. It really hurts because fundamentally I’m behind a lot  of the concepts, I don’t think the region idea is bad but they ****ed it  up by forcing compromises in every other area to support it. I really  really like the graphics and the visible data layers are gorgeous, and I  don’t feel it looks particularly dumbed down (or, at least, I feel that  it is on my level… make of that what you will!). BUT:
 The game needs to be pretty ****ing polished on release to justify  the absurd price that Origin are charging, I mean £45 is above a premium  price for a pc game, and it clearly isn’t. They clearly haven’t fixed  bugs that were present in the beta, and they have clearly taken a  cynical not-giving-a-**** approach to launch demand. I understand all  the proviso’s about ‘having to make money’ and I don’t begrudge  companies some monetising and profit maximising but there is a ****ing  limit, and considering that this game doesn’t exist in a vacuum, that I  can go and play Crusader Kings or XCOM or ANNO instead, I don’t need to  put up with it. I want to say that I hope EA get burned by this but I  don’t know if it will make any difference either way.

Yes, saved games are ONLY stored "in the cloud" so your games are not recorded on your PC.

More from RPS this morning.

EA took to that most detail-conducive of mediums â€" Twitter â€" to explain the situation:
 

“We are experiencing overwhelming demand which is keeping  some users from accessing their games. We’re working as fast as we can  to resolve. Due to the high demand for SimCity, Origin has experienced  delays impacting a small percentage of users. We’re working non-stop to  resolve.”

 â€œWe’re making changes to prevent further issues, and are confident  that Origin will be stable for international launches later this week.”

So a handful of players and press who pre-ordered  from ONE REGION, who stayed up until midnight to play (not your typical maximum playerbase), cripples their servers and that's "overwhelming demand".

Admittedly, there are some things you can only learn by taking to the  frontlines, but this approach certainly isn’t benefiting anyone in the  short term. Not EA, and definitely not their customers. Frankly, it’s  unacceptable. Nothing’s perfect, but â€" last I checked â€" so-called  â€œservices” were supposed to serve us.

Deja vu anyone?



My internet? I think not.



Advice with the game was "contact us via our website" and "email support@ubisoft.com" - a bit difficult when their solution IS the problem. Assassins Creed 2 was the first and last "always on" (now there's an oxymoron) DRM game I will ever buy.

The game hits the fan in the UK tomorrow, so if you've bought it, you  better hope EA's "always on" DRM is (a) actually on and (b) working.  There's no pre-loading, so have a three hour game of minesweeper ready to  go...

[smilodon]

What confuses me is that always on-line gaming is nothing special. I seem to have no problems playing WOW, Arma, CS:GO, Minecraft, BSGO, LotRO, all of which require a permanent internet connection (as they're all multi player games). So setting aside the whole argument of why Sim City is a multi player game and why it uses the DRM it does EA should still be able to launch a game that works regardless. Why don't they send an email to Blizzard and Valve and ask them how to provide robust on line games that actually work. It might save them a lot of grief.

[OT]Boogie 2988 is a great You Tuber. His alter ego characters like Francis are hysterical. Some of his stuff falls a bit flat but when he's on form he's genius.[/OT]

[ArithonUK]

Ars Technica have more on the issues. One of their valid comments is this:-

EA had a good chance here to prove that a publisher could launch a major, Internet-connected game with proper infrastructure and planning and without significant server-related issues. Unfortunately, EA seems to have squandered that opportunity.

They also note:-

Origin didn't allow purchasers to pre-load SimCity before its  official launch at 12:01am EST this morning, apparently because the  development team was "working to polish the game until the very last  second," according to a post from an EA community manager. This decision  appears to have led to widespread download problems and delays before  the game even unlocked and started downloading for many pre-order  players. Some online reports indicate that even those with the  disc-based retail version of the game were delayed in their installation  by Origin server problems.

You have to wonder what they were working on, since players have noted nothing (including the bugs) has been noticeably fixed since the open BETA.

[T-Bag]

The reason their servers are falling over is presumably because they don't have enough. I imagine YouTube requires far more server bandwidth each day than SimCity, so it's not the case of it being an impossible task and they've reached too far in terms of technological challenges. It doesn't help that everyone trying to play the game will all be downloading gigabytes worth of data all at the same time...but again manageable with enough mirrors.

I imagine they did ring experts the likes of Blizzard and other Valve and asked how many servers to rent, looked at the bill and thought...lets go with plan B.

[Tutonic]

Blizzard & Valve both had their problems when they launched online services.

The early versions of Steam were notorious for connection outages and slow download speeds, and WoW had horrendous login queues for quite a while after it launched. It took both companies a while to get to grips with the problems, presumably at a very high cost.

This doesn't excuse EA's shenanigans, but it's worth remembering that their not the only company to make these mistakes. Why hasn't anyone learned from them? Good question...

[smilodon]

That's the point I agree EA don't learn or perhaps don't care to learn. People have been here before, had these problems and worked out how to fix them. Blizzard launched a huge expansion to WOW last year, more or less without issue. Valve release on-line games every day on the Steam platform. EA have a wealth of resources to tap to make make sure they can launch a game well. Standing on the shoulders of giants, is the poncey term used.

Here's a free tip or two for them. Don't be greedy, don't lock yourself into a release date long before the game is ready. Finish the game, polish it as much as you like. When you're done pre download the game to pre-purchasers. Buy/rent enough hardware to support the game, Launch the game. Count the huge bags of cash like Blizzard/Activision and Valve are doing.

[RizZy]

But they havn't had to do any of that & I would guess people have still brought it by the bucket loads = even more profit & screw the customer, can't play your game? I'm sure they don't care - or the sensible things you've suggested would've been in place Smilo.

[BrotherTobious]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1927[/ATTACH]

Made my morning

[TommyGuner]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1927[/ATTACH]

Made my morning

Dang, actually thought that was real. Need to wake up.

[TheDvEight]

Dang, actually thought that was real. Need to wake up.

did take me a while

[ArithonUK]

EA are issuing a patch!!

To fix the game? To fix the servers? Building more servers? No. The patch will disable features of the game to make it require the servers less.

Earlier today, we  released a patch that temporarily cut off some features including  leaderboards, achievements and Cheetah Speed to reduce data stress on  the servers and effectively free up space so that we can let more people  into the game. These are great features that we're proud of and we'll  turn them back on soon, but our number one priority is to bring  stability to our servers. This update also resolved some of the bugs and  issues that have been frustrating players. You can read all about it at  http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/9341807.page

God forbid they patched the single-player game to just work off-line. But hell, a single player game that works is a stupid idea right?

As the Daleks would say, "Avoid! Avoid! Avoooiiidddd!!!"

[smilodon]

While I'm sad for all the gamers who are struggling with the game, in a way this is a good thing. The more that EA suffer and are damaged as a brand the less likely they will be to do this again,  maybe?
Also other games companies must be watching this car crash of a game launch and hopefully coming to the realisation that it's not a route they want to take with their own games.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

[ArithonUK]

PC Gamer is running a feature on Sim City

An invitational was announced, and a supergroup of talented and accomplished gamers was assembled to found great cities in the county; to build, to exploit, and to pollute the pristine landscape. Their story beings here.

From the Twitter feed of Chris Kluwe, one of the Celebrity Gamers in this "experiment" in game review. Talk about a celebrity endorsement own-goal!


Mar 5
Bah. It uses your Origin ID for your mayor name. Knew I should've gone with TurdFerguson.


Mar 6
I would like to start my celebrity Sim City thing with PC Gamer, but Origin has dethroned burning AIDS needles for Worst Thing Ever.

Wowowowowow. EA asterisked out "Poopytown". Guess I'll have to rename to "Fuqville".

And, somewhat surprisingly, EA is perfectly ok with a town named Herpes. Huh. Did not see that coming.

It also looks like cities have a very finite lifespan due to limited amount of water in the water table. Not a fan of that.

Primarily because I can already see the end of my city in sight, and I've been playing it for one day.

Hmm, Sim City servers down again. This is pretty much why "always on" has no place in a single player game.

I love Maxis, and the games they make, but I honestly cannot recommend buying Sim City 5. This is ridiculous.

As a publisher/developer, if you're going to push "always on" onto the consumer, then it's YOUR responsibility to make sure it always works.

And if it doesn't, well, I'm going to tell people not to buy your game. There are plenty of other single player games out there.


Mar 7

Error messages right away! Great job with your game EA.

And tonight's streaming ends in the most appropriate way - with Sim City lagging out and crashing.

Today's Sim City update: Apparently 9am is peak load time, as the servers still don't work despite saying "available" on the login screen.

I reeeeeeaaaaally hope Maxis does a comparison of refunds demanded versus typical projected losses to piracy. It would be enlightening.

And then hopefully they find a way to not have to work with EA ever again. Always on DRM is awful.

And for those wondering why I'm continuing to smash my face against EA's DRM, it's because I told PC gamer I would participate in their city

If it weren't for that I wouldn't try to log in ever again. This kind of treatment by a publisher is toxic.

I got into Sim City for THREE MINUTES! You're all pretty jelly right now I bet!

I really enjoy the queue system of Sim City. It's not a queue to actually get in the game, it's for a "chance" to get in.

So far I've cycled through it four times, and it always bumps me back to the same 2:09 countdown. Not really a great queue system.

Yup. Really working hard there EA. Keep up the good fight. You might get a participation ribbon! pic.twitter.com/pGvVD7ejP3

Oh, and don't bother joining a new server if you want to save any of your old progress. Cities don't transfer over.

So @SimCity, would you qualify this current state of affairs as an "unmitigated cluster****", or a "royal screwing of loyal customers"?

Next question @SimCity: How many lost sales do you predict from word of mouth versus general piracy rates? What does the maff say?

Oh! Oh! @SimCity, can you tell me why the Diablo 3 launch didn't inform you on how incredibly stupid the idea of always on DRM really is?

I guess what I'm really wondering, @SimCity, is why people should ever buy one of your products in the future based on this experience.

Now lets hit the big fish. Hey @EA, how does it feel to successfully run a developer's image into the ground? Does it make you feel good?

Tell me @EA, between this and the constant microtransactions, why should we trust you to have our interests as gamers in mind?

Are you aware of the long term consequences of seeking short term profit @EA? Should we ask for regulation in the video game industry?

The prosperous town of Herpes, home to 162,000. People enjoyed living here, and times were good. pic.twitter.com/Hwd1iXvPH6

The town after two days of @EA's uninterrupted horseshit service. pic.twitter.com/Zy7CPo9g7n

[TommyGuner]

Funny feed of the downward spiralling of EA's server into oblivion.

However, I don't endorse these so-called "celebrity" gamers, a lot of it is self-proclaimed.

[ArithonUK]

After 88% negative feedback Amazon.com has withdrawn Sim City. Nice.

Also, on the patch:

Update #2: The latest SimCity update disables a decidedly critical  gameplay feature in hopes of alleviating EA's continued server woes.
 
Earlier today, the SimCity team announced it was disabling some  "non-critical" gameplay features to help resolve its network  instability. These features included leaderboards, achievements, and  region filters. The latest update, Patch 1.2, continues to address the  city-building simulator's online issues â€" only it axes a rather vital  function. In a post on EA's forums, SimCity's community lead states that  the new update disables Cheetah speed, the fastest simulation speed in  the game. Instead, Cheetah speed now runs at Llama speed.

Or reviews editor Joe Juba is still in the process of playing SimCity  for our review, and confirms that unlike the previously disabled  features, not having access to Cheetah speed is in fact a big deal.  There's currently no ETA on when Cheetah speed or any of the other  disabled features will be restored.                      

Oh, and "Francis" has a in-game play video. NSFW (or anywhere with the volume on frankly). Which demonstrates how the single player game cannot run.