SimCity 5 Disappointment-All

CyberTrick wrote:

With all this hoopla surrounding SimCity I've decided to sit out for a while, but I'm still getting the itch. I decided to treat that itch with some good OLD medicine. Zeus; Master of Olympus that I got from gog.com and Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Platinum (that's currently on sale on steam for the next few hours) did just fine to treat my problem. To my surprise, they both hold up very well, and will keep me busy for weeks to come. Now I'm just waiting for SimCity 4 to go on sale and I may not ever bother with SimCity 5. So, has any one else played Zeus or RT lately; what do you guys think of these older titles today?

-Happy Gaming.

This was from a few years ago: http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/4...

Update 5 is out. Some people still care, right?

http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/9567321.page

Update 5 is focused on improvements to Multiplayer and Multi-city Play

• New: Historic Price charts for Global Market resources are available from the SimCity World button on the main menu.
• New: The Region Wall chat has been completely updated with a new look and new functionality! Chat functions more efficiently and it’s much easier to communicate with other players. Time stamps show on chat messages on rollover. Regional events are easier to read and can be toggled on and off.
• New: Added a filter for friends’ regions in the join region section.
• New: Trading control. Added feature to give players more control over their utilities. Players can now choose whether or not to keep their power, water, or sewage local. This setting can be found on the information panel accessible by clicking on the power plant, water tower, or sewage pipe or plant. Sharing with the region is on by default.
• New: Regional Missions: Added seven new regional missions: Drink It Up!, Plug In, So Stoked, The Wheels on the Bus, Ferry Dust, Station to Station, and Riding Coach.
• New: Regional Achievement: Added a new regional achievement, Field Trip!
• Gifting Improvements: Cash gifts are now delivered electronically, not by truck. This should improve the efficiency of gifting.
• Resource gifts: Resource gifts will happen more reliably. Multiple trucks can make deliveries at once if they are available in the sending city and the truck capacities have been increased.
• Great Works Improvements: Delivery trucks will mark their resources as dropped off as soon as they reach the Great Works, instead of when they arrive back in the city. This will make tracking time more reliable.
• Great Works Improvements: Update to have all resources at Great Works handled at the regional level. This will address players in different cities seeing different resources once the server has processed the region and cities.
• Great Works Improvements: Fixed an issue where an Arcology would maintain power from the region and fixed an issue where shoppers would not increase at the Arcology as it was leveled up. This will update in both existing and new Arcologies.
• Great Works Improvements: Tuned the Solar Farm.
• Regional Unlocks: The advanced coal mine unlocks regionally. Fixed issue where the Trade HQ sometimes did not unlock.
• Fire Advisor Trading clarity: Tuned the Fire advisor so they do not tell you that neighbors are sending fire trucks when your neighbor has no fire stations.
• Trading: School buses that travel from a neighbor’s city will show that city’s avatar.
• Regional Commuting: Fixed an issue where Sims would not be able to take transit out of cities with lots of streetcars or shuttle buses. This could cause some cases where commuting Sims could not return home and their homes would go abandoned.
• Garbage Trucks and Recycling Trucks: Fixed an issue that some cities experienced where garbage and recycling trucks do not leave their buildings or disappeared when trading service with neighbors. Existing cities who have trucks that have disappeared will have to demolish their missing trucks’ garages and plop new garages.
• Text Clarification: The “Out of Money” message now says “Can’t find work” when appropriate in rollover feedback and the approval rating UI. This is to clarify your Sims’ actual need.

Some of those....slap my forehead and wonder how the game even worked before. No, wait, it didn't.

I remember the jokes about the subway DLC but I swear... According to Kotaku it's going to cost $9 too.

The saddest thing is when he refers to listeners as "Maxoids", as if Maxis was anything more than a sucked-dry husk of a trademark.

Wolfen Victrocious wrote:

I remember the jokes about the subway DLC

Those weren't jokes. Those were predictions.

Yeah, they weren't jokes.

Robear wrote:

The saddest thing is when he refers to listeners as "Maxoids"

Odd, I thought "Maxoids" was the nickname for people who work at Maxis.

Also, as expected, DarkSpore provides a cautionary tale for the ultimate fate of this game.

shoptroll wrote:
Robear wrote:

The saddest thing is when he refers to listeners as "Maxoids"

Odd, I thought "Maxoids" was the nickname for people who work at Maxis.

Also, as expected, DarkSpore provides a cautionary tale for the ultimate fate of this game.

Which couples nicely with Dark Spore being pulled from Steam for being broken: http://www.polygon.com/2013/7/1/4482...

garion333 wrote:

Which couples nicely with Dark Spore being pulled from Steam for being broken: http://www.polygon.com/2013/7/1/4482...

If I'm remembering right the main login issue has been going on for a while, but the "error 3" is relatively new. Might be fixed, might not be if the forum is to be believed. If anything I'm probably bumping that up in my backlog just so I can try and not feel like I completely wasted $50 on it. EA last patched the game in September 2011 so the fact that the last surviving mod (who appears to have gone rogue) is finally declaring it dead is funny.

I know you don't care.

http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/9543476.pageUpdate 6 Changes Currently in Testing

We are testing changes to how RCI works in the game in response to feedback directly from our players. The main goals are to make Industrial matter more and make sure the demand bars inform players what they should zone.

• New: RCI Tuning - Tuning to make Industrial needed more. Commercial buildings lose profit if they don’t have enough freight. The demand bars should feel like they inform the player what they should zone.
• New: RCI height variations for Density 3 Buildings. This will add more variety to the look of your cities.
• New: Borderless windowed mode setting.
• Fixes for some issues of the “out of money” problem or unexplained abandonment.
• Clarity around unfilled jobs and workers to make sure players are messaged that there may be an issue where workers cannot get to unfilled jobs.
• Residential and Commercial buildings are now more consistently in the same wealth in an area of a particular land value. Improves visually consistency.
• Help Wanted, no Shoppers, and No Jobs alerts have been added to the Zoning info panel as alerts.
• Data Layer: Greater map accuracy on the land value map. Residential and Commercial wealth colors added. Abandoned buildings show up red.
• Data Layer: Land Value map shows when placing parks.
• Fixed issue where RCI sometimes builds on roads.
• Fix performance slowdown in cities with more than one million tourists.
• UI Clarity: Show which city hall modules are already placed in the region on the palette UI.
• Garbage UI: fixed issue where garbage UI sometimes showed bins that had already been picked up.
• Gifting: Cash gifts will send to another city even if a player leaves the gifting city before seeing gift confirmation.

So...subways? That's the one thing I would ever want to pay for. So the new thread title is just a joke referring to the hot-air balloons?

Keithustus wrote:

So...subways? That's the one thing I would ever want to pay for. So the new thread title is just a joke referring to the hot-air balloons?

Nope, it's very fitting for the latest article on Kotaku. http://kotaku.com/simcity-survey-gropes-about-for-ways-to-keep-folks-play-664400073

They're taking survey to gauge the reaction of future ideas for expansion packs and DLC. Subways is in fact on the list.

Ocean Quigley and two other leads have gone indie.

Ok, so who's left at Maxis?

EDIT: Goodness, Ocean had been there for almost 20 years.

From his interviews and videos, Ocean Quigley seems like a really great guy that was caught in a crap situation with the whole Simcity saga. I've no doubt he loves making great games, so good for him, with Simcity he probably was just beaten by bureaucracy.

Whoa, Ocean and Dan Moskowitz were the faces of the game. Great job EA.

$9 for a subway. I usually only pay $5 for a foot long.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

$9 for a subway. I usually only pay $5 for a foot long.

And it's not even a foot long!

IMAGE(http://www.manolith.com/files/2013/01/subway-sub-11-inches.jpg)

THANKS EA!

Women know about shrinkage, right?

LiquidMantis wrote:

Women know about shrinkage, right?

They know, they just don't care

A few choice quotes from Quigley at Polygon.

One thing that strikes me is how rare it is for someone leaving a company to be so open that they're disappointed in their previous employer and what they put out. Most just leave and get on with their own thing reasonably quietly. I guess there may be a bit of mea culpa there, and EA/Maxis/Quigley admitting they're not too proud of it's state at launch.

Scratched wrote:

A few choice quotes from Quigley at Polygon.

One thing that strikes me is how rare it is for someone leaving a company to be so open that they're disappointed in their previous employer and what they put out. Most just leave and get on with their own thing reasonably quietly. I guess there may be a bit of mea culpa there, and EA/Maxis/Quigley admitting they're not too proud of it's state at launch.

That's a really fantastic article, and while I don't think it provides anything new, it's definitely refreshing to hear someone just come out and say what so many people are thinking already.

Well, he's got to buy back some credibility if he wants people to give him money again. Not that I think he's being disingenuous.

shoptroll wrote:

With Will Wright, Ocean and other old-timers gone I don't know who's left that's trying to champion the experiences that the studio was originally known for.

As far as I can tell, only the brands are left. Anything more than that is a pleasant surprise, but I'm not going to count on it.

Keithustus wrote:

Well, he's got to buy back some credibility if he wants people to give him money again. Not that I think he's being disingenuous.

I'm definitely keeping an eye on it. This team knows how to make quality simulations and the new SimCity I think would've been fine if it had another 6 months to bake plus less executive meddling / PR disaster. I still think the title is salvageable, but I thought Spore could be salvaged if EA actually wanted to put the work into it.

I think the problem Maxis has been facing is that they have a lot of older people who wanted to build simulations and EA's been shoving them into the casual space since The Sims rocketed into space. Which is why there's been some weird decisions like Spore's hard-turn to cute and casual, SimCity 4's MySims and U-Drive It features, and the entire SimCity debacle. Maxis has done a terrible job lately trying to make deep engaging simulations that are also approachable like the original SimCity and SimCity 2000. With Will Wright, Ocean and other old-timers gone I don't know who's left that's trying to champion the experiences that the studio was originally known for.

EDIT: Also, if anyone wants copies of SimCity 4 friend me up on Steam (and put a copy in your wishlist) and I'll gift a copy your way if it goes back on sale during the Summer Sale.

Scratched wrote:
shoptroll wrote:

With Will Wright, Ocean and other old-timers gone I don't know who's left that's trying to champion the experiences that the studio was originally known for.

As far as I can tell, only the brands are left. Anything more than that is a pleasant surprise, but I'm not going to count on it.

*nods in agreement* Yeah, they promoted the Maxis name from "studio" to "label" (for casual titles) a couple years back. Prior to that happening I had thought they silently canned the studio after Darkspore bombed.

I think the over-arching issue is that EA is about brand monetization. "Gaming" is a product, not something that's done primarily to entertain customers. The goal is not to produce fun toys, but to increase shareholder value, and that means that monetization and broad, broad market appeal are the drivers, rather than innovation and creativity.

Robear wrote:

I think the over-arching issue is that EA is about brand monetization. "Gaming" is a product, not something that's done primarily to entertain customers. The goal is not to produce fun toys, but to increase shareholder value, and that means that monetization and broad, broad market appeal are the drivers, rather than innovation and creativity.

Yeah, but as Guru would say, it's a balance between all your company's interests. Or I guess to put it another way, you can fool all the people some of the time, some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time - you can't make a gaming company not based on games.

Scratched wrote:
Robear wrote:

I think the over-arching issue is that EA is about brand monetization. "Gaming" is a product, not something that's done primarily to entertain customers. The goal is not to produce fun toys, but to increase shareholder value, and that means that monetization and broad, broad market appeal are the drivers, rather than innovation and creativity.

Yeah, but as Guru would say, it's a balance between all your company's interests. Or I guess to put it another way, you can fool all the people some of the time, some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time - you can't make a gaming company not based on games.

For the record, you also can't make a gaming company not based on profit.

easy sunday wrote:

For the record, you also can't make a gaming company not based on profit.

Someday some billionaire gamer with a lot of passion for an idea will disagree with you and do whatever he wants. Not that I have this dream once a week or anything of the sort.