Journal #8132

How much does it cost?

It's $60 striker.

And yeah Atom, I'll play with you. Add Legitzkrieg.

I'm really eager to try the co-op connected cities.

Some $60 or so.

Despite being a great fan of Sim City, I'm not going to play it. Ever. Because

a) it's too bloody expensive
b) it's ONLINE-ONLY even if you don't play online

So they're not getting my money. Ever.

Yeah if waiting in line to get in until they sort this out doesn't appeal to anyone, then don't buy it yet. It's about a 15 minute wait right now.

I don't even have a laptop so the online thing doesn't bother me. Steam's the same way so I can't really complain about this. Not getting to play for the first day after buying it I will HAPPILY complain about though. That was shite.

EA fucked up each and every single game.

Dimbark, I didn't ask for such nonsense, but I agree on that fact that $60 is a lot of cash. And I don't mind the always online policy that much because I'm always online anyway.

I've added you, Blitz, I don't see you yet, perhaps you have to accept my invitation or something.

Ok, I'll keep an eye out. It looks like servers are starting to get stressed again, it's getting near prime-time here in the US now.

I managed to play quite a bit today though, perhaps by this weekend things will have continued to improve at the rate they are and we can start something up.

I will once again point out the irony of Steam users complaining about needing an internet connection to game, because it's too funny.

Always online always bothers me. Perhaps it's personal bias related to not having a decent connection, but making singleplayer gameplay dependent on being able to sustain a connection to a server 100% of the time, and also on that server being up 100% of the time, is...well, stupid.

Blitz: Hey, steam has offline mode, and it works beautifully. Better than online mode in my experience, actually.

^Exactly. Steam has an offline mode, which kind of doesn't quite work if you didn't activate it before disconnecting, but if you happen to lose your connection while Steam is running, everything still works just fine. You can keep playing whatever you were playing (unless of course it was a multiplayer game) and you can start any games you want.

In this case, however, if your internet happens to go down while you're playing, the game automatically quits just to fuck with you, because they're assholes and that's how they roll. It is VERY different.

You can't depend on your internet connection, especially if it's not needed for anything but fucking with people. That is a total dick move.

I've used Steam's offline mode once in the past three years, to go on vacation. Lately I've realized I'd rather spend a few days snowmobiling, riding a quad, or fishing than playing the same games I can play every day back home on my shitty old laptop in a cabin in the woods. You need to predict your internet connection cutting out(or do it the night/morning before you leave for the middle of the woods), and activate it through the menu, then close steam. Yes it keeps running if you disconnect during a game, but:

So does SimCity. If it hasn't reconnected by the time you quit, it waits to sync your data to the cloud.

"if your internet happens to go down while you're playing, the game automatically quits just to fuck with you," Uh, no, no it doesn't. A little icon appears telling you you're de-synced and another appears when you're connected again. They pop-up in game. Not sure if you just made that up, or heard it somewhere. If you heard it from someone, they lied.

Point's moot really. Unless you're psychic, Steam's offline mode is largely useless. Honestly, when was the last time you used it?

And Atom I don't see your request yet. Did you send it to the right name?

Are you the one with 5 Battlefield games and the mech avatar?

Blitz: Literally all the time.
Also, I realize it's not the norm, but there are still places without stable internet connections, like places served by cellphone or satellite technology. Connections like this cut out all the time due to environmental factors, like light cloud cover.

If SimCity doesn't kill itself every time there's a drop in connection, that's great, it's much better than Ubisoft's Always-on, and better than I heard. But still, we're talking about a largely SP game, having to authenticate with servers every time you sign on (or the very act/term of signing on) is insanely unnecessary, especially when they're not able to handle the amount of traffic they get, which is equal to the amount of people that bought the game. With preorders that should have been easy to predict.

I'm a hundred percent with Jeff on this one.

And yes, I had read it automatically quit after very few minutes without internet because parts of the game engine were hidden away in The Cloud and it couldn't run without it. It seems it either wasn't true or they changed it after that.

guys, don't bother supporting a system where anyone can get banned on the forums which results in being locked out of all the games you purchased on that system.

So is the general consensus a "no" then?

I am very interested in this, being a huge SimCity fan, but I'm still fairly skeptical.

Especially at 60$ price point.

AT, check this out. The "update 2" header kind of sums it up.

http://www.polygon.com/game/simcity-2013/2630

A good game crippled by terrible DRM. Has there ever been ANY game that requires constant Internet connection that HASN'T been hit with huge downtimes and server issues at launch? Sim City, Diablo 3, Ubisoft's couple of games with it (AssCreed 2, Settlers 7), pretty much every popular MMO launched recently.... There's probably many more too. What a terrible, terrible DRM scheme, especially since Sim City has always been a purely offline experience. It's a shame too, the game itself looks really good.

HEY! Burnout was, no wait, IS STILL AWESOME! D:

God damn, I want this game. Sucks that it has been shackled by DRM.

Frankly the SimCity series has never been of massive appeal to me. So a DRM-storm has even less.

What's DRM? ._.

Copy protection, basically.

My thoughts too, Pengy. It's a good game, which is why the launch has been so sincerely disappointing. If they had titled it "SimCity: Online" then it'd be less of a big deal, but this way I feel just slightly lied to.

ATDestroy, if you love SimCity that much, you'll probably really enjoy this once the servers get stable. It's addicting. The international aspect of it is super cool.

Atom, yeah, that's me. I'll check again.

It does look really fun, and all this news about it has made me want to play a SimCity game again.
I might get it at a later date. Maybe.

The only simcity I ever enjoyed was SimCity 2000.

Striker you should try 4, it's pretty widely toted as the best one in the series. It was what, ten years ago now, and people still play it a lot.

Definitely. It has aged pretty well.

Unless you play it on my specific combo of hardware and software. I have WinXP, which it was designed for, a 1GB graphics card where it requires a 32MB, and I still somehow get lag (makes the rush hour expansion's driving features unplayable) and crashes everywhere (makes the rest of the game unplayable). Good thing I played the crap out of it before my brother's old computer died a few years ago.
Actually, I was playing SC4 today. Got a mid-sized town laid out and zoned before it crashed to desktop without error.

Jeff - it performs badly in hardware mode. Happened to me with my 6-months-old computer. It runs perfectly in software mode.

Wait, seriously? THAT's been the problem this whole time?
Well, I know what I'm playing today.
EDIT: Performance was much better. Then it crashed. Ah well, I've got work to do.

Lovely homes:
http://www.themightyatom.nl/screenshots/sc2013_residents.jpg

Two factories:
http://www.themightyatom.nl/screenshots/sc2013_factories.jpg

Here's my first one so far. I really should have paced myself better, the most cash I've had is about $100,000 and I'm having a hard time keeping up with services/utilities. Every time I get money I need to spend it all on upgrading police/fire/electricity whatever. I'm also out of space pretty much. Wish the city sizes were as big as they are in 4.

http://i.imgur.com/MEKBeL2.jpg

I love night-time in this game http://i.imgur.com/gX3kqdf.jpg

Very nice looking.

Jeff: I read it crashes a lot if you have a multi-core processor. Apparently you can fix it by adding this parameter to the command line (or launch options in Steam):

-CPUcount:1

I myself also use the following to use my widescreen resolution:

-CustomResolution:enabled
-r1366x768x32

I loved SimCity 4, but SC3K was the one I grew up with.

When I was in grade 9 one of our assignments was to maintain a city in Sim City 3000 Best assignment ever. Also a reminder of how ridiculously pointless school can be at times.... We had another year where the assignment was passing levels in The Incredible Machine

TIM was one of the best parts of middle school tech classes!

Atom I just started a 16 city region with 3 other friends, we should have a fourth soon and possibly 2-3 more eventually. It's on US West 3. Once you start the tutorial you can quit and it will count as doing it, then I can shoot you an invite and you can claim a city. We should have enough space for 2 cities each once we figure out who is playing and who isn't.

We play in Mumble too, so I can give you the address when you do end up playing.

If you have to constantly be connected to the EA servers, what happens 5 or 10 years down the line when they decide that not enough people are playing it anymore to keep the service up?

Also, it looks pretty awesome but I don't really have the means to play it.

That's about everybody's concern. And every time it was brought up, EA steered the conversation to a different topic.

They probably write some shit into their disclaimers saying they have no obligation to keep the service up and running.

I'll try to find you next time i get on, Blitz. I haven't played that much yet so I'm not totally familiar with most gameplay features yet.

Also, it seems that EA is going to give first time buyers of SC2013 a free game to compensate for all the problems that we've experienced since release day. Also, most server problems have been fixed by now so disconnects during gameplay should be reduced, making the game playable. A good thing I guess.

Thats fine man, we're all figuring things out together really. We've got one older guy who's never played a thing besides military sims

Six of sixteen are founded right now, one more on his way, plus you that would make 8. If no one else shows we could all found a second city once we max our firsts out.