Loads of bitching in here. I'm on the fence about this, what is the game like? worth getting? I don't care about the online drm if the online game is good. But sounds like it is just forced on multiplayer for the sake of making the game online?
weird, I used vpn and never had a problem waiting in the queue. enjoyed the game last night, will play more today.
yea but if you read what people are complaining about gameplay itself is what worries me: tiny maps, force you to participate in MP to get your city running, microtransactions, no local saves etc etc for me personally simcity is a game i enjoy playing by myself offline so what i am reading is not really appealing to me atm on the topic of always online drm, i don't like it, i think it's dumb, particularly for single player games, argue piracy all you want, but it's up to the developers to work out a way to protect their own products without inconveniencing legitimate buyers to give an example, only few weeks ago we've had some pretty heavy rain and flooding again here in Brisbane, at my place phone lines were gone and had no internet for a few days, so i'd been pretty pissed off if i had nothing to do at home and couldn't play the game because i couldn't be online, there were also other times where i wanted to for example squeeze in a quick game before work but couldn't because of server maintenance (Diablo 3) and on the topic of supposedly lost sales because of piracy, just because a person could not pirate the game it doesn't mean that he/she will go out and buy it, i know a few people if they can't pirate the game they just won't play it, simple as that, they are not going to spend the money either way
Tiny map is the biggest issue. What do you mean that multiplayer is forced? You can claim all the regions yourself, although it could run bit inefficient compared to all the regions being managed by different people due to time freeze issue that scatman839 mentioned. And nobody here is saying every pirated copy translates into sales... Like you said, some will simply not bother playing anything not free. But there are others who are willing to pay if the free option becomes too inconvenient. Could you give out more details about this law in France? Also if you want to give examples like that, I have more relevant example, AKA South Korean PC gaming market. Over there, only the F2P and MMOs (two genres with most intrusive form of DRM) can survive anymore due to rampant piracy (thanks to good network infrastructure and almost complete indifference towards piracy). There was this TBS series based on Romance of Three Kingdoms, which is big as Civ games are over here in the states... last official release sold 5,000 copies because everyone just pirated the crap out of it. As for 1 and 2, hah we all wish that was the case. 1 is what pirates use to either troll the forums or what they tell themselves to feel less guilty. 2? The friend would probably pirate the copy him/herself.
that's what i mean, like to get the most out of the game you almost have to play multiplayer i obviously haven't played the game so i am simply going by what others have said, i was prepared to overlook the fact that it requires online connection all the time but after reading gameplay issues i might hold on a bit until at least sh!t gets sorted out server end or wait for price drop haha, simcity 4 is still good fun if i need my fix lol
The only thing that bothers me is the tiny map and transportation...we'll see what DLC comes out (or mods if possible). The best feedback will be seen in a couple of weeks when people get bored of the small size and the servers are stable.
SimCity launch hobbled by server strain; EA offering refunds i love where this is going, facebook style games with always on DRM and overpriced patches called DLCs is the future, well look at the kids born in the 2000's, can't blame the developers!
My refund is processing. Ill pick it back up in like 6 months or so. It was pretty good while I could play it but you spend more time waiting in queue than playing the game. Screw that mess.
I'll go refund way as well I think. the cities are just too small. Great fun, but then you run out of space after a couple of hours... will install cities xl me thinks.
You can also flip that around as well. There are people who are willing to "pirate" if the legal option becomes too inconvenient.
Yea., I had to wait almost 30 mins. well if you guys want a refund, do it now. EA will only be gracious with giving back your money for a short time.
yeah, I'll go for it now. and will pick it up later. if they add larger cities. the game is immense fun, until you hit a wall. shame.
The size of the cities are fine and are appropriate to the region/level you are playing them on. If you want to control an entire region, you are welcome to try, but as I mentioned before: this is not a single player game, in my most humblest of opinions. Each region has a goal and strategy to achieving that goal, with each region having a specific (and frankly, obvious) path to follow. This could be considered a flaw of game design; that it's a little too easy to figure out what kind of city is meant to have X resource exploited, or simply what the specialization of each city needs to be for success. The flip side to that is I, myself, have a certain level of respect for this game design, because it hawks back to when games had no save game option (arcade) and you had to figure out which character to place where in a 4-way Gauntlet session with your buds. Like I say, the city sizes are too small IF you believe each city should have an independent RCI equally balanced across its boundaries. Those who think that way will fail, or worse; ragequit. Look at the map before you select a city - nothing is more nutty than picking a city ripe for industry, Ore, Coal, Oil and a seaport for trade being used to educate sims; when elsewhere in the region someone is using a Nirvana-esqe seaside city with two connected roads and sweeping sea-views as an industrial city. Managing a region is hard, which is why I suspect their will be a lot of regions that people set up and abandon, because they can't be bothered to re-zone an entire map, or tell other people to rezone their city because they messed it up first time around. I also suspect a lot of players will not use the comms channel for anything other than whining about EA/Origin/DRM/City size etc, instead of actually working together to 'solve' a region - which would be my preference.
i know you for some time, i decided to ignore your posts until you made a smart move, thank you for not making me doubt you man!
Very true. Good points BUT that doesn't entirely give satisfying answer to tiny city issue... If you stuck with previous SimCity titles, they captured that magic of growing your small town from sprawling metropolis. In this game, that experience is just cut short. Yes, there are other regions, but they are subpar substitute for fully integrated tiles that you had to manage real time in previous SimCity games. That being said, tiny city is a problem because I want more of this game. So that is some confirmation about the core mechanics working well here. Also the inter-region support mechanics you briefed over makes sense as multiplayer-lite game that this is. So far every time I play this game, it feels like I'm about to touch the epicness of mid-late game SimCity, then the experience is cut short by lack of content. If this continues I would give this a solid B for laying down good foundation but failing to fully realize the potential (probably due to various marketing goods). If you haven't played SimCity games before and don't mind about 2d graphics, I would recommend SimCity 3000 or 4 first. But I also wouldn't dissuade anyone from buying this either because what is present here is very functional (minus the DRM LOL), it just feels short.
