SimCity 5 Disappointment-All

I'm not sure actually.

LiquidMantis wrote:

I haven't been actively following SC so what's 2.0 supposed to bring to the table?

Fixing the 'clumping' of service/emergency vehicles... supposedly... Other than that, I'm not sure I care

Posting to join the GWJ SimCity Final-Shot Region
Origin ID: LupusUmbrus
Region Preference: ?

I'm out. I built up a nice city, was making good money, had some skyscrapers and a good industrial base going with a trading center, an ore and coal mine. Then I quit the game to take a break, and when I came back, my city was rewound to about 1000 population.

I think I'm done with this game. They still can't get something as basic as save games right. I have no hope for any other fixes. Probably going to uninstall tonight.

Sorry I wasted all the money in that region's city. Maybe someone else can pick up Sharkbite Shore. it has a good amount of ore and coal, room for a port and a train connection.

Good lord, why has no one ever told me to build the goldmine that is the Expo Centre before now ?

Just watch out for the increased traffic to/from it!

BadKen wrote:

I'm out. I built up a nice city, was making good money, had some skyscrapers and a good industrial base going with a trading center, an ore and coal mine. Then I quit the game to take a break, and when I came back, my city was rewound to about 1000 population.

I think I'm done with this game. They still can't get something as basic as save games right. I have no hope for any other fixes. Probably going to uninstall tonight.

Sorry I wasted all the money in that region's city. Maybe someone else can pick up Sharkbite Shore. it has a good amount of ore and coal, room for a port and a train connection.

I know how you feel. Amazon won't let me post a blistering review commenting on how they still can't get it right five weeks after launch! Please release the city you started in our joint region so some other fool like me can claim it.

mastrude wrote:

Please release the city you started in our joint region so some other fool like me can claim it.

I abandoned it, is there anything else I need to do? Is it still named Sharkbite Shore? It's over in the area next to Farscry.

Posting to join the GWJ SimCity Final-Shot Region
Origin ID: Budo99
Region Preference: no preference

What server is this on anyway?

Also, if this doesn't click with me, I'm just going to hop into Tropico 4 which has been sitting on my pile for months now.

Budo wrote:

Posting to join the GWJ SimCity Final-Shot Region
Origin ID: Budo99
Region Preference: no preference

What server is this on anyway?

Also, if this doesn't click with me, I'm just going to hop into Tropico 4 which has been sitting on my pile for months now.

North America West One.

PS - your first task is to build a University. No, really.

BadKen wrote:

I abandoned it, is there anything else I need to do? Is it still named Sharkbite Shore? It's over in the area next to Farscry.

Thanks. It was still named Sharkbite Shore last I looked. I think that name has a ring to it.

davet010 wrote:

PS - your first task is to build a University. No, really.

I will build one when I can. I want the "clean coal".

Advertising in games has been around for ages, but quite something to contort a game and content for a game around it.

Thats it, I'm out. The whole thing just feels icky yucky

Yeah, that's my limit. I'm okay with promotional re-skins. I'm even okay with paid content with additional features. I'm really really not okay with promotional content with added features and no non-promotional equivalent, *particularly* given how *every* new thing they've added since release has been promotional.

Welll... you can still get the toothpaste DLC for free. The fine print describes how you can mail them a 3x5 card with your info hand-printed on it to receive a code. Just like cereal collector prizes in Ye Olde Tymes.

For a game I didn't buy, this has given me a lot of free entertainment, maybe the most since Daikatana n_n

You guys realize this is a lot of fuss over a giant gnome and a ball of twine? Really not things you'll miss if you don't get them, I can assure you. Still, there is the principal of the thing, which is pretty distasteful, but EA and the Sims have been doing this for ages, so this shouldn't be a surprise to any of you. Especially to those of you who have had nothing but negative feedback.

Yeah, that's why this isn't really bugging me. I expected it, and wouldn't have purchased the game if the core content and gameplay wasn't going to be enough to entertain me (again, just like The Sims games).

This isn't to say that there aren't issues that are genuinely worth being upset about. The problems in the simulation model do bug me, and their quality issues (such as the cloud saving problems) are past the point of forgiveness.

I'm getting some lolz from this stuff, mainly because this is apparently the "value add" you get in exchange for the always-online DRM. These things could've been added as player mods in earlier games, but not this time.

I'm also kind of amazed that they'd proceed with this kind of cross-marketing stuff when the game already has such a poor image. It's not a "big deal" in real effect on the game, but from a PR perspective this just seems... I don't know... ill considered at this time. Now's when you want to make the game more attractive and win back some good will, not when you want to sell toothpaste.

namikaze wrote:

Still, there is the principal of the thing, which is pretty distasteful, but EA and the Sims have been doing this for ages, so this shouldn't be a surprise to any of you. Especially to those of you who have had nothing but negative feedback.

Remember that Dr. Pepper promotion a few years back for pretty much everything in their catalog at the time?

That said, there is a good point to be made about everything released since launch is a tie-in. Although they did have all that European stuff available on Day 1. I guess that counts as non-tie-in, right?

namikaze wrote:

You guys realize this is a lot of fuss over a giant gnome and a ball of twine? Really not things you'll miss if you don't get them, I can assure you. Still, there is the principal of the thing, which is pretty distasteful, but EA and the Sims have been doing this for ages, so this shouldn't be a surprise to any of you. Especially to those of you who have had nothing but negative feedback.

If it was just cosmetic nobody would mind. The fact is the additions effect game play.

To quote the PA report:

“The Attractions Set adds happiness to low wealth Sims,” the official post stated. “They will also bring in all three wealth classes of tourists into your city.”

This is why I have such a deep loathing for EA at the moment. It's not that you get neat stuff for buying a certain brand of toothpaste, it's that the game seems designed around these sponsorship deals and monetization strategies. It doesn't feel like EA and Maxis sat down and tried to create the very best version of SimCity possible, it feels like they designed the game that would be the easiest to control, monetize, and sell to advertisers.

strangederby wrote:
namikaze wrote:

You guys realize this is a lot of fuss over a giant gnome and a ball of twine? Really not things you'll miss if you don't get them, I can assure you. Still, there is the principal of the thing, which is pretty distasteful, but EA and the Sims have been doing this for ages, so this shouldn't be a surprise to any of you. Especially to those of you who have had nothing but negative feedback.

If it was just cosmetic nobody would mind. The fact is the additions effect game play.

Yes, they affect play the same way any low- to mid-wealth park affects play. Since there are literally more than a dozen variations on the low- to mid-wealth park in the game, I can't see how 5 new (and silly) parks would make a difference. As far as the tourists, they're no different than adding a train station to your city. My city has absolutely zero tourist attractions, only a train station to connect everything. I have all three classes of tourists in the city, whoopity doo.

Ultimately, it's just a silly gimmick. If you guys are so up in arms about a gimmick, I feel bad for what happens when a serious issue arises.

namikaze wrote:

Ultimately, it's just a silly gimmick. If you guys are so up in arms about a gimmick, I feel bad for what happens when a serious issue arises.

Emphasis added; I kind of feel like that's a mischaracterization of the response here.

I don't think anybody here is "up in arms" about this, but it's one more tacky thing bolted onto a game that's already got enough image problems.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/EY1uzB5.gif)

gore wrote:
namikaze wrote:

Ultimately, it's just a silly gimmick. If you guys are so up in arms about a gimmick, I feel bad for what happens when a serious issue arises.

Emphasis added; I kind of feel like that's a mischaracterization of the response here.

I don't think anybody here is "up in arms" about this, but it's one more tacky thing bolted onto a game that's already got enough image problems.

That applies to many other games too. Given the way discussion goes, I think people get the picture in their head of people RANTING IN RAISED VOICES at no one in particular and hitting things, whereas more likely they just went "urrgh", rolled their eyes, and maybe uninstalled it if they were extremely annoyed.

Yeah, my wife has been limitedly playing, so they've already got our money, but it's getting a bit ridiculous now. If they want to add microtransactions for all of those things that mods would have really covered before, fine, cool, go for it. Trying to get people to buy stuff for in-game rewards is just a little too much. I expect EA to cash in via its gamers at this point... doing so via in-game rewards for other companies' products and such... at this point, I'm wondering why we needed to pay $60 for the game so EA could shoot ads at me in yet another way.

Certainly not everyone is up in arms about the changes, but I've seen enough of the negativity on the internet to get a pretty good gist of things. There are certainly some people that seem flat-out insane about this issue. And I can assure you there are people who are reading this right now thinking, "I'm not insane about this issue! ROFLSTOMP!" Because that's the nature of the internet. One needs only head over to Rock, Paper, Shotgun to get an idea of the fervor that is whipped up when mentioning the acronyms "DRM" and "EA" in certain circles. And based on the earlier responses of even the mild-mannered GWJ community, it seems that many of our people aren't immune to this fervor-whipping.

Is the blame entirely on EA for making this into such a big deal? I think not. Certainly EA is responsible for the game, content, servers, and a lot of other stuff. But as much as EA would like to, they can't control the community's reaction. And there is a definite segment of the community that will simply not let go of every little thing that EA does. Just look at the wording in this article by RPS. And look at this Amazon review by one of our own, saying that people would be "stupid" to buy the game. And the internet is on fire with reviews, such as this slew of them from Metacritic. The fans gave it a 1.9 average? Come on, it's nowhere near that bad.

So yeah, people on the internet are up in arms. And some of those people are members (maybe just lurkers) on GWJ. So to see these reviews online constantly, and then to read bad reviews here... it's a bit overwhelming. And I disagree with most of it. It really should not come as a surprise to anyone that EA is marketing with other products. It's a little odd that the product in question is toothpaste, but I'm sure there's some sort of justification there. Perhaps they didn't want to inspire people to drink sugary sodas? Maybe it's so that kids can get the codes too? Who knows. Perhaps that is the discussion people should be having. What was the reasoning behind EA pairing up with toothpaste to sell video game content?

I'll note that I spent a lot of time rolling my eyes at Malor's antics here. I was also rather frustrated by RPS's over-the-top coverage. But like I said, I'm pretty much done. I don't hate the game, but my trust level for EA has just been dropping over time, and now they've entered the "not going to go all Malor on them, but not pleased, and not about to pre-order anything from them even if I [em]really really[/em] want it any more" zone. I wouldn't really call that "up in arms", it's more "sad that it had to be this way".

I don't think I could reach Malor levels of upset unless they somehow actively reached out and forced their stuff on me, and I'm not sure how that would work. *shrug*

In short: I've gone from being a supporter of the game well past the point of release to "yeah, f*ck 'em".