SimCity

[Quindiana Jones]

But I want to play it. I want to play the game that they should have made. Fortunately, somebody else has fixed all the problems and made the game playable and, oh, how nice! They're giving it away for free.

Don't be so hilariously archaic. The line you've drawn for yourself is non-sensical, at best. If developers make their product as difficult and punishing to use as possible, then they're products should be pirated until they stop being so bloody useless. The way to stop piracy is to make consistently high quality games that are easy to access and reliable to play. Being a whiny bitch has been proven not to work.

Holy trout, I just reread your post, and it gets better. You're fine with piracy as long as people have already bought the game and dicovered it's unplayable? Haha, I'm glad you have money that you can just throw away, but most people don't have the luxury to buy things they know don't work.

Oh, and bollocks to it, I may as well address this as well. If developers made their products more easy to buy and play, then piracy wouldn't be necessary.

[Skyblade]

I'm fine with people getting what they paid for out of a product. If you purchase it and it doesn't work, you're free to do what you need to do to restore functionality. You're also free to employ legal actions against the company that made the faulty product for fraud and denial of service.

You're not free to use a product you haven't paid for. That's theft, regardless of your reasons.

[Quindiana Jones]

Theft is a criminal offense; piracy is a civil offense. You sound like a PSA remix.

[Madame Adequate]

Going to put on my mod hat for a second and gently remind people that whilst it is admittedly pertinent to the discussion, this thread is about SimCity, not the ethics of piracy in general. I think at this point we've derailed enough in that direction. (Although admittedly it's not like anyone's been able to play the game to discuss it )

Something I heard which some players have been testing, and as far as I know it's a legit thing, is that the game starts inflating your population figures after you build for a short while. The example I saw was a city whose actual simulated population was approximately 15,000 residents was being displayed as over 100,000. I can understand if things were padded a little but that's 85% of the city not existing, which is a pretty damning indictment of the Glassbox engine.

Also, a Maxis insider has stated that it'd be pretty easy for them to remove the always-on stuff. Maxis Insider Tells RPS: SimCity Servers Not Necessary | Rock, Paper, Shotgun

[edczxcvbnm]

I will just stick to Cities XL. It is basically SimCity, is offline and is fun. I think the game is more akin to Simcity 3000 than simcity 4. I basically say that because I did not like 4 at all :/

[Shauna]

Also, a Maxis insider has stated that it'd be pretty easy for them to remove the always-on stuff. Maxis Insider Tells RPS: SimCity Servers Not Necessary | Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Hahaha, like two days ago Maxis released an official statement that the servers were necessary. I wonder what they will do now that the truth is out!

[kotora]

Going to put on my mod hat for a second and gently remind people that whilst it is admittedly pertinent to the discussion, this thread is about SimCity, not the ethics of piracy in general. I think at this point we've derailed enough in that direction. (Although admittedly it's not like anyone's been able to play the game to discuss it )

Something I heard which some players have been testing, and as far as I know it's a legit thing, is that the game starts inflating your population figures after you build for a short while. The example I saw was a city whose actual simulated population was approximately 15,000 residents was being displayed as over 100,000. I can understand if things were padded a little but that's 85% of the city not existing, which is a pretty damning indictment of the Glassbox engine.

Anyone interested in reading about this: EA Forums

What is basically happening with this game is that EA is lying to us over and over again about their troutty product. Instead of just putting their efforts into making a good game. I don't get it man. It's not like they had to invent anything new - they just had to take what SimCity 4 did and improve on it.

[Skyblade]

Did anyone honestly expect EA's game servers to handle the load of hundreds of billions of Sims?

Or, for that matter, for Maxis's Glassbox to handle even hundreds of thousands on one machine?

It's EA. They lie, ruin games, and ruin game companies. Have we forgotten ME3's ending debacle already?

[Loony BoB]

It doesn't matter if it was unlikely - you were paying for a game that worked, and if it didn't work, well... if you got a TV that didn't work, would you be happy if they said "Hold on, we'll just remove some features and then it'll work."

[Skyblade]

It doesn't matter if it was unlikely - you were paying for a game that worked, and if it didn't work, well... if you got a TV that didn't work, would you be happy if they said "Hold on, we'll just remove some features and then it'll work."

Well, no, but I wasn't discussing the removal of features so much as I was the inability to deliver on promises/expectations.

The only "removed" feature was Cheetah mode, which was done specifically to ensure that they could keep watch on the players.

I was referring to features that never existed. I honestly never expected my machine to handle hundreds of thousands of Sims all at once, and the failure isn't a big surprise.

I think there are other issues, that are surprising, that deserve more attention.

First up, while I have no problem with the game only tracking a few tens of thousands of Sims instead of hundreds of thousands, it seems it can't even do that. It seems that each Sim is randomly generated each time it's created, with different models and mannerisms. So the Sim who leaves work is a different Sim than the one who left for work, sharing only a last name. Heck, Rollercoaster Tycoon did a better job of tracking patrons than that a decade ago.

Then too, apparently the basic mathematics of the game seem broken, as tax income doesn't scale with either real or phantom population, resulting in you needing an exponentially higher tax rate as your population increases.

The game seems basically broken on so many levels.

[Loony BoB]

When you pay for a service, you should expect the service. If you don't expect the service to deliver, that's the fault of the service provider, and you should be reimbursed and they should expect people to look elsewhere for that service in the future.

You can say "But seriously, did you think they would pull through?" all you like, it doesn't change the fact that they are obligated to do so because of their own decisions.

PS. Cheetah mode is a neccessity for SimCity as far as I'm concerned.

[Yar]

There are games that I love playing with others and there are games that I prefer playing totally on my own. SimCity is one of the latter.

It's really sad. I can see this game had a lot of potential but was ruined by just stupid and asinine decisions.

[Skyblade]

When you pay for a service, you should expect the service. If you don't expect the service to deliver, that's the fault of the service provider, and you should be reimbursed and they should expect people to look elsewhere for that service in the future.

You can say "But seriously, did you think they would pull through?" all you like, it doesn't change the fact that they are obligated to do so because of their own decisions.

PS. Cheetah mode is a neccessity for SimCity as far as I'm concerned.

Well, yeah, but that's what you talk to lawyers or complain to the company about.

[Madame Adequate]

I was referring to features that never existed. I honestly never expected my machine to handle hundreds of thousands of Sims all at once, and the failure isn't a big surprise.

Well yeah, that's sort of what people are mad about. Maxis/EA specifically said "Hey, remember how the old SC games used abstraction to make it look like it was a simulation? Well no more!" and acted like they've conjured up a system, Glassbox, that's downright goddamn magical.

Turns out it's even less advanced than other SC games and they're devoting more to smoke and mirrors than to any sort of meaningful simulation.

[Loony BoB]

Lawyers? Over a video game? Really? xD