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SimCity |OT| It's not the simulation or city that matter, it's <parameter: string>

Slacker

Member
If the location of the server does not really affect gameplay, why do they have to label them as they do?

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Lothars

Member
To my regionmates - I'm sorry. I was able to play a bit today, but the server issues and evident lack of depth with this game have done it - months of anticipation wasted, and my love of the franchise weakened. I'm on hold right now to request a refund.

I hope you guys can manage to have fun in TG3 soon!
See I don't know how you can say that it has an evident lack of depth.

I don't blame you for being upset at the server issues or wanting a refund but saying it has a lack of depth is insanity.
 

N-Bomb

Member
See I don't know how you can say that it has an evident lack of depth.

I don't blame you for being upset at the server issues or wanting a refund but saying it has a lack of depth is insanity.

Maybe it's due to the missing multi-player components, but what time I've been able to use it today, things were fairly stagnant. I was just moving roads around to get bigger buildings, but my plot was still small, there's a lack of sense with how certain mechanics work. I guess after getting through the beginning, I found it starting to get pretty repetitive, and without any social aspect to keep my company of engaged. When you combine this with the disasters, I just found myself going 'aughh... I have to fix this again?'

Constant problems with labour with no seeming function. Other things, okay I'm just bitching now and maybe some of that is my fault/lack of understanding, but I'd never had those problems with a Sim City game before. Just disapointed. :(
 

Brick

Member
I'm really jonseing for a city builder, and was really looking forward to this, but all these server issues have really put me off getting SimCity. I looked at Steam and saw that Tropico 4 collectors edition is 75% off. I've never played Tropico, but it looks like it might scratch that itch for the moment. Is Tropico any good, or should I look somewhere else?
 

Kabouter

Member
I'm really jonseing for a city builder, and was really looking forward to this, but all these server issues have really put me off getting SimCity. I looked at Steam and saw that Tropico 4 collectors edition is 75% off. I've never played Tropico, but it looks like it might scratch that itch for the moment. Is Tropico any good, or should I look somewhere else?

Tropico 4 is a good game, as is the add-on. Excellent campaigns, accessible yet fun gameplay, cool setting. The game has its issues, but they aren't severe (certainly nothing like SC has :p), I'd definitely recommend it.
 
Has anyone had any luck reaching the petroleum sold per day requirement to upgrade the Oil HQ? That daily requirement is kinda crazy!
 

Pyrogeek

Member
Has anyone had any luck reaching the petroleum sold per day requirement to upgrade the Oil HQ? That daily requirement is kinda crazy!

I haven't tried an oil city yet though I did see someone on the official forums recommend setting your Trade Depot(s) to 'Use Locally' until they are maxed then set it to Export, so it all exports at once.
 

Spl1nter

Member
Has anyone had any luck reaching the petroleum sold per day requirement to upgrade the Oil HQ? That daily requirement is kinda crazy!

Ya its not that difficult, im assuming you are talking about the 2nd one of 1,000,000 daily as the first is easy if you have a decent amount of oil supply. Just add on refineries and make plastic and fuel, bumps up your income. However its not really needed as you can just put down a trade hq and easily unlock the trade port that way.

One of the cities on the 5 size map had enough oil to have 7 or 8 full oil fields got to 1,000,000 without even needing a refinery.
 
Suburb City - Have 10,000 residents living in your city
Population Boom - Have 50,000 residents living in your city
Metropolis! - Have 100,000 residents living in your city
Jumbo Region! - Have 500,000 residents living in a region
Mega-Region! - Have 1,000,000 residents living in a region


That pretty much says everything as to how big your population can get in one city, might as well claim a neighbouring city once you hit over 100k
 

Spl1nter

Member
That pretty much says everything as to how big your population can get in one city, might as well claim a neighbouring city once you hit over 100k

The achievements are pretty easy. People have had 300-400k in cities without much issue. Saw one person had 600k on r/simcity but in sandbox mode. Nevertheless overall I think maxis should have lowered density and increased plot sizes. The density at those sizes are just not realistic and it would of satisfied a lot of people demands.
 

StUnNeR H2K

Member
Is it possible to turn off the Heroes and Villains pack? I really don't want Maxis Man in every single city I build.

I hope so. Not sure what the benefit of it is for the city. Hopefully they patch something in that will allow you to at least say NO THANKS to the quest it constantly gives you.
 

JWong

Banned
Suburb City - Have 10,000 residents living in your city
Population Boom - Have 50,000 residents living in your city
Metropolis! - Have 100,000 residents living in your city
Jumbo Region! - Have 500,000 residents living in a region
Mega-Region! - Have 1,000,000 residents living in a region


That pretty much says everything as to how big your population can get in one city, might as well claim a neighbouring city once you hit over 100k

Yeah, just wondering if someone reached the maximum density possible. My 240k is pretty good, I guess.
 
Is Tropico any good, or should I look somewhere else?

Tropico is fantastic. It's not quite the same as simcity, but excellent in its own way. Personally, Tropico is more interesting because of the kinds of scenarios it throws your way and it is story based, in a loose way. Can't beat it for the price too.
 

CAW

Member
Just go to another server, 3 or 4 of them work fine for me. Just not the one where my GAF region is -.-

Silly, probably obvious question: are the cities saved per server? If I join another server my city won't be there, correct?

edit: nvm, answered by Relix lol
 

CAW

Member
Look on the bright side, your city has probably been rolled back or deleted anyway. :)

don't scare me. I had to close the game out manually because it froze when the administrator asked me if I wanted to learn about claiming another city. Once I clicked claim nothing happened and it wouldn't let me escape out or anything. I'm scared to think how far back I'll have to go now that it didn't sync while exiting. :( Not to mention having to wait 20 minutes when I was just in the game...
 

B-Dex

Member
This server mess is also disrupting what would normally be a pretty active bug discovery and fix phase since the team is likely just tasked with doing whatever it takes to get the game working enough that the bleeding stops.

All they have to do it add more servers. But nope. Let's disable features and keep cramming them onto our overloaded ones!

Then they have the nerve to say CROSS-REGION play is not a CORE FEATURE.
 

Danj

Member
They should've just had a free open beta for a couple months before the actual launch. That way no-one would care that the servers sucked, and they could've ironed out the issues and this wouldn't even have been a problem.
 
They should've just had a free open beta for a couple months before the actual launch. That way no-one would care that the servers sucked, and they could've ironed out the issues and this wouldn't even have been a problem.

still think even if they did host an open public beta it would still be an issue at launch lol.
 

Tellaerin

Member
I think people are so narrow minded they only care about me me me now now now.

I understand you paid 60 bucks and you have to wait but ive waited a total of 30 mins and I was playing perfectly fine. Plus Im pretty sure this is not a perm thing Im pretty sure theyre trying to fix the problem.

So you call people out for supposedly being self-centered, then turn around and dismiss their (totally legit) complaints because you haven't had any issues with the game yet?

Sounds to me like somebody only cares about "me me me" around here alright, and it's not them.
 
What I don't get is why Maxis keeps adding 2 or 3 servers at a time and then watching them all become instantly busy. This, at a time when gameplay features have been disabled because of server instability.

Let's say they have 8 servers now. The next addition shouldn't be to 10. It should be to 20. If that's not enough, go to 40. Keep in mind that just getting people on isn't enough -- gameplay features need to be reintroduced so that we can play the full game.
 
I said this earlier, but EA ALWAYS cheap out on servers.

SW:TOR - Not enough servers at launch. Server disconnects, etc.
Battlefield 3 - Not enough servers at launch. DICE commented that they were adding servers as fast as they could, particularly on Xbox 360 I think. Later, when the Rent-A-Server patch went live, they rented out ALL the official servers, so they had to go back and add more servers to make sure that at least 10% of the servers were "official" DICE servers.
SimCity - ...I don't even need to comment here.

This doesn't include the list of other EA and non EA games that have given me trouble. Dragon Age (EA) and Splinter Cell (Ubisoft) both have given me trouble before when trying to enter codes to download pre-order items. The DA servers were down for a day or two, and Uplay was down for a week or two once (pc users felt this as well). D3...well, no need to discuss that fully. Then, Microsoft did not have enough Xbox Live servers ready for TWO Christmases in a row. Remember at Christmas how Xbox Live went down two years in a row? -- All these things considered, I am not a big fan of cloud gaming, always online DRM, or any other practice that prohibits me from playing my games without an internet connection. The cloud, to me, is just another form of DRM that puts me at the mercy of publishers. Granted, it's nice for save games and stuff, but overall, I feel like it gives publishers waaaaaay too much power over my ability to play my games. I see no reason to believe that they have infrastructures built that can handle their ambitions. This year, during the Summer Sale, even the Steam store was unavailable for hours at a time for me (and for a few others, based on the forums). So even Valve don't have a full grasp on things (but at least the actual gameplay side of Valve servers has worked well for years now).

But anyway, with Battlefield 3 and with SWTOR, EA should have had more than enough experience launch high-demand games to know that there would be a hellish demand for servers when SimCity launched. They've been cheaping out on servers for years, which is one of their excuses for shutting down "low player count" game servers early, and it is finally catching up with them.

I actually used to own a bunch of EA stock, but sold it all off after they kept mismanaging their servers, shutting games down early, and trying to "mainstream" all of their games for a wider audience. When a game gets the "mainstream" treatment (Dead Space 3, Dragon Age 2, etc) I always feel like it is a step back from the experience that I love. So, I couldn't hold stock in a company that I felt like was making games that seemed to be becoming less fun to the hardcore gamer (me).

But anyway, I pre-ordered Simcity with the intention of not playing it much until this weekend...so far, the wait is still 30 minutes long for me. I still hold out hope that I can play this weekend. If they had just included a regular old single player game in there with the multiplayer, this wouldn't have been nearly as huge of an issue.

...but anyway, my main point... EA has had TONS of experience with online game launches (SWTOR and BF3) and both times, they didn't have enough servers. You would think, that at some point they would just quadruple their server estimates just to be safe, but nope, they just keep on being cheap.
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
What fixes the "no money" issue sims have? It's weird because I've seen when they complain about no jobs or high taxes, but "no money" is so vague...

They don't have money because they are unemployed.

Go to the population window, click on "details". You will see the numbers of sims who are unemployed in each wealth class.
 

Retro

Member
The great thing about having 6 or 7 threads about different aspects of the same clusterfuck is that people spout off garbage in each one without realizing people can read more than one. It's fun seeing the desperate Defense Force scrambling to gain any ground they can.

I said this earlier, but EA ALWAYS cheap out on servers.

I'm not dismissing what you're saying (I agree with your comments, actually), but as others have said, it's not just about buying a ton of servers. The software is just as important and if the investment isn't there from the beginning, no amount of hardware is going to save a game like this from implosion.

Edit: Oh look, top of the page.... hmm... Fun Fact, One 'city' in SimCity (2 square kilometers) is roughly equal to 3.33 golf courses (average course size is 0.6 sq. km)!

Edit 2: Nevermind, confused two people. Y'all know you shills look alike.
 

JWong

Banned
I said this earlier, but EA ALWAYS cheap out on servers.

Everyone cheaps out on servers. It's a less risky measure, but will cause short term issues with user load.

If a game risk spending too much budget on a lot of servers and it reaches 50% capacity, the game loses a ton of money.
 
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