SimCity 5 Disappointment-All

Played the tutorial till it wanted me to look at a neighboring city, server error.

Tried to add garion to friends, network error!!

Anyways I'll live.

Well, now that I've played around for a while with sandbox mode, a new note on building and grid sizing:

When you're placing zones, it shows you the "back" of the lot. [em]However[/em], that back is based on the street density fronting the lot. So the space usage you see if you're using a low density road is much smaller (half that?) of what you see if you're using a high density road. This is another one of those "grid is deceptive" moments. Result: Even if you're seeing a lot of seemingly wasted space based on that, if you plan to buy cheap roads first and then upgrade your roads later to satisfying demand for increasing density, don't worry about it, you'll use a lot more of the space once the density increases.

So I blew away a perfectly good housing tower after I realized it was right next to my rail stub by the border of my city. I built a rail station there. Now, it tells me it's working and names another city it's connected to (ie, shows it's icon in the list), but no one arrives and it also tells me I need to connect it to a major rail line. Well, it is. Bug? Anyone seen this? I'm thinking I should doze it, but that's a costly change...

Roads are expensive.

So I'm loving the game so far, with one niggling detail. Every time I try to begin building in another city, I barely get started and the game crashes. It's quite annoying. I'm doing a repair install to try to sort it out.

Yikes, regions seem a bit up in the air at the moment. Hoping to get the game tomorrow afternoon, I'll be happy with whatever region I end up in I guess. Perhaps I'll go chill with the Eurogoodjers, they seem to need the numbers.

Stupid tutorial made me claim another empty city in GWJWest 1 region. I tried to abandon it, not sure if its just a server delay.

As a spectator this whole process seems like nothing short of a greek tragedy.

This server queue is making me sad. Still stoked to play this game, though. Perhaps tomorrow will be easier.

I have to admit I am quite annoyed by the server queue. But I can't deny this game is fun as hell. It's time for bed anyways, but still, I hate not being able to play.

No major game play complaints so far. I installed fine, and haven't had any crashes HA! Origin crashed as I typed this and forced a SimCity close.

Friends seems broken in game. My in game friends list only shows one offline friend even as I'm getting popups from Origin telling me friends are starting the game up. I have quite a few terrain vs road drawing errors but that about the biggest visual complaint I have.

Other than that, I'm enjoying it. I went through a firestorm phase where I wasn't able to afford a fire station and things were burning down all over but eventually I raised funds and was able to build one without any long term problems.

For fun, here's a gallery of my terrible little city: http://imgur.com/a/KIy96#0

I had the game crash twice, and the chat doesn't appear to work, but otherwise I haven't really had any problems. No queues, no serious bugs, etc.

Now if I can just keep my citizen's toilets from overflowing, and do something about all the rampant crime. And the rolling blackouts. Seriously, don't start off trying to power your city with wind turbines.

ruhk wrote:

I had the game crash twice, and the chat doesn't appear to work, but otherwise I haven't really had any problems. No queues, no serious bugs, etc.

Now if I can just keep my citizen's toilets from overflowing, and do something about all the rampant crime. And the rolling blackouts. Seriously, don't start off trying to power your city with wind turbines.

I did this too. Is there a way to see what your city's attributes are after you've started (see the water level, available coal, gas, etc?)

TempestBlayze wrote:

Edit to the edit: The tutorial loaded but isn't working. Screw this. Tomorrow it is.

Happened to me and Tkyl. For me, the script started after about 2-3 minutes. For him, much more time passed so he quit and got it to work on a different server.

SIMCITY DAY 1: game is good, everything supporting the game is horrid.

Also: it's funny we're all on vent but not really planning or coordinating. I think we're just not good enough at the game to make that matter much.

Xeknos wrote:
ruhk wrote:

I had the game crash twice, and the chat doesn't appear to work, but otherwise I haven't really had any problems. No queues, no serious bugs, etc.

Now if I can just keep my citizen's toilets from overflowing, and do something about all the rampant crime. And the rolling blackouts. Seriously, don't start off trying to power your city with wind turbines.

I did this too. Is there a way to see what your city's attributes are after you've started (see the water level, available coal, gas, etc?)

There's a button on the far bottom right of the HUD which brings up a menu for all the map overlays.

Unrelated question: does "Abandoning" a city delete it, or just relinquish control of it? I sort of want to start from scratch now that I have a better handle on the game mechanics, but I also really like the plot of land I'm on and don't want to take up a second plot.

EDIT: okay, so apparently it just cedes control of the city. Is there anyway of deleting a city?

ruhk wrote:
Xeknos wrote:
ruhk wrote:

I had the game crash twice, and the chat doesn't appear to work, but otherwise I haven't really had any problems. No queues, no serious bugs, etc.

Now if I can just keep my citizen's toilets from overflowing, and do something about all the rampant crime. And the rolling blackouts. Seriously, don't start off trying to power your city with wind turbines.

I did this too. Is there a way to see what your city's attributes are after you've started (see the water level, available coal, gas, etc?)

There's a button on the far bottom right of the HUD which brings up a menu for all the map overlays.

Unrelated question: does "Abandoning" a city delete it, or just relinquish control of it? I sort of want to start from scratch now that I have a better handle on the game mechanics, but I also really like the plot of land I'm on and don't want to take up a second plot.

EDIT: okay, so apparently it just cedes control of the city. Is there anyway of deleting a city?

You can bulldoze it and try to start over, but it keeps all the pollution. AFAIK there's no way to delete a city.

Alright, well. I ended up bulldozing most of New Innsmouth. I expanded too quickly and was having problems keeping up with the utilities and had to shut off services when I started dipping into the red. Then I had a zombie outbreak and a meteor bombardment almost back to back and everything was pretty much unrecoverable at that point.

Ground pollution seems to fade with time if the source is removed.

No crashes here. Some issues with the servers losing contact. Authentication issues. One hang when the tutorial I was doing was interrupted by a server disconnect and the choice box stopped working but never left the screen and still had focus. (Stopping the game with task manager fixed that.) And the problem with the rail station that I mentioned above.

I've had one earthquake. The game is very fun so far, kept my attention riveted for hours.

Robear wrote:

So I blew away a perfectly good housing tower after I realized it was right next to my rail stub by the border of my city. I built a rail station there. Now, it tells me it's working and names another city it's connected to (ie, shows it's icon in the list), but no one arrives and it also tells me I need to connect it to a major rail line. Well, it is. Bug? Anyone seen this? I'm thinking I should doze it, but that's a costly change...

My rail station is fully connected to an existing line and I see no traffic either:-(

Well my hopes to play were crushed last night I am hoping things actually work tonight.

MisterStatic wrote:
Robear wrote:

So I blew away a perfectly good housing tower after I realized it was right next to my rail stub by the border of my city. I built a rail station there. Now, it tells me it's working and names another city it's connected to (ie, shows it's icon in the list), but no one arrives and it also tells me I need to connect it to a major rail line. Well, it is. Bug? Anyone seen this? I'm thinking I should doze it, but that's a costly change...

My rail station is fully connected to an existing line and I see no traffic either:-(

i think it has to do with the roads connecting to the rail station. I had to build a small road and actually connect the front of the rail terminal (the front of which looks like a parking lot/pavement). After I built that, people started using my rail station.

Grumpicus wrote:
Lucky Wilbury wrote:
MisterStatic wrote:
Robear wrote:

So I blew away a perfectly good housing tower after I realized it was right next to my rail stub by the border of my city. I built a rail station there. Now, it tells me it's working and names another city it's connected to (ie, shows it's icon in the list), but no one arrives and it also tells me I need to connect it to a major rail line. Well, it is. Bug? Anyone seen this? I'm thinking I should doze it, but that's a costly change...

My rail station is fully connected to an existing line and I see no traffic either:-(

i think it has to do with the roads connecting to the rail station. I had to build a small road and actually connect the front of the rail terminal (the front of which looks like a parking lot/pavement). After I built that, people started using my rail station.

Yes, roads are (almost) everything in this game.

and they are my biggest confusion. do you want to manage densities or just keep them as high as you can? Why ever use anything other than avenues. Cost is a big issue i know but it seems you just pile on and pile on and pile on to meet the demands of everything.

I was lucky enough to get in a good amount of playtime on West #1 and had lots of fun. Really liking the game but I'm not that great at it.

I think I started out okay, went from a small coal/ore mining town to a bustling High Tech industry city with a good amount of wealthy Sims. Then I ran out of space and my zoning guy is screaming at my for more workers. Doesn't help that I'm really terrible at drawing roads and I tried to do a lot of fancy curved streets that I ended up bulldozing later to let buildings expand.

Now I'm just stagnant at 55k pop and Hazmat fires are wreaking havoc on Gainzville. No idea what causes Hazmat fires to happen but my fire departments suck at fighting them.

Having so much fun but I just have to get a better handle on the systems.

Launch day went fine for me yesterday. I had problems downloading the game onto one of my computers but did manage to get in around 3 hours of play time. The game is fun, no question about it. My biggest complaints are the small city size and the lack of terraforming. Of course I knew both coming in but its hard to adjust to the lack of these critical features from past games, even more so when you disagree with the design decisions made the resulted in their removal.

My current city in Gooderville West 1 has both water and cliff and this severely reduces my already small city size. I have nearly filled the city up in an hour or two of play. The only thing now is to grow it up instead of out. It's just such a constraining factor on the overall gameplay that I can't help but be disappointed. I'll still have fun with the game but your mind has to adjust to this limiting factor and accept that you must make new goals for your city other than being a huge metropolis.

Cobble wrote:
Grumpicus wrote:
Lucky Wilbury wrote:
MisterStatic wrote:
Robear wrote:

So I blew away a perfectly good housing tower after I realized it was right next to my rail stub by the border of my city. I built a rail station there. Now, it tells me it's working and names another city it's connected to (ie, shows it's icon in the list), but no one arrives and it also tells me I need to connect it to a major rail line. Well, it is. Bug? Anyone seen this? I'm thinking I should doze it, but that's a costly change...

My rail station is fully connected to an existing line and I see no traffic either:-(

i think it has to do with the roads connecting to the rail station. I had to build a small road and actually connect the front of the rail terminal (the front of which looks like a parking lot/pavement). After I built that, people started using my rail station.

Yes, roads are (almost) everything in this game.

and they are my biggest confusion. do you want to manage densities or just keep them as high as you can? Why ever use anything other than avenues. Cost is a big issue i know but it seems you just pile on and pile on and pile on to meet the demands of everything.

See if this helps at all.

Copingsaw wrote:

Launch day went fine for me yesterday. I had problems downloading the game onto one of my computers but did manage to get in around 3 hours of play time. The game is fun, no question about it. My biggest complaints are the small city size and the lack of terraforming. Of course I knew both coming in but its hard to adjust to the lack of these critical features from past games, even more so when you disagree with the design decisions made the resulted in their removal.

My current city in Gooderville West 1 has both water and cliff and this severely reduces my already small city size. I have nearly filled the city up in an hour or two of play. The only thing now is to grow it up instead of out. It's just such a constraining factor on the overall gameplay that I can't help but be disappointed. I'll still have fun with the game but your mind has to adjust to this limiting factor and accept that you must make new goals for your city other than being a huge metropolis.

which is difficult in itself because upgrade paths are largely dependent on population increase. So in the end you are going to end up with huge skyscraper sprawl in every case which isnt something I want.

Lucky Wilbury wrote:
MisterStatic wrote:
Robear wrote:

So I blew away a perfectly good housing tower after I realized it was right next to my rail stub by the border of my city. I built a rail station there. Now, it tells me it's working and names another city it's connected to (ie, shows it's icon in the list), but no one arrives and it also tells me I need to connect it to a major rail line. Well, it is. Bug? Anyone seen this? I'm thinking I should doze it, but that's a costly change...

My rail station is fully connected to an existing line and I see no traffic either:-(

i think it has to do with the roads connecting to the rail station. I had to build a small road and actually connect the front of the rail terminal (the front of which looks like a parking lot/pavement). After I built that, people started using my rail station.

Yes, roads are (almost) everything in this game.

Edit: To be clear, I don't have the game yet, but I put many hours into the first beta weekend and will pick it up once the dust settles (i.e. this weekend). Kingdoms of Amalur (along with the aforementioned beta) is the only reason I have an Origin account so I don't have any Origin friends but I guess I'll need some now. Friend me up and I may be coming soon to a region near you.

I wonder if the size limit is related to performance issues. Keithustus was saying that when he hit 200k pop he had to turn down graphic settings. Perhaps this is an artificial restriction to limit the scope of the simulation and rendering engines.

My biggest issue with gameplay so far is the "not enough room to upgrade" error because of my wonky roadways (due in part to the middle of the map having a plateau.) That and my homeless population is wildly out of control.

Added my name to the East Coast 2 list on the google spreadsheet. I should be online tonight.