Sim City 5 leaked footage

[Powdermilkman]

Greebo i might be interested in doing that...i haven't played SIM CITY in a long time and i might not be the best city planner but hey i can place things places...East coast server would be best

[MasterChef]

Downloading this now. Origin name is TVB_MasterChef.

An east coast one would be best for me too.

[BigBiker05]

It just baffles me how they call it Sim City but the largest area is 2km square. People have property much larger than that.

[Greebo]

I managed to set up a private region, however it's on North America East 2 which is now full. May be worth waiting to set up permanently (either they'll bring up more servers or we can try on of the European ones).

[Powdermilkman]

my origin name is pavement3117...sadly powdermilkman was taken

[Greebo]

While we wait for the server situation to sort itself out:
whenever you next go online, have a look at the different regions you can create. They range from the small (2-3 'cities') to very large (16). If there's only 3 of us we could either do a small region and fill it up or take a larger one and do more than 1 city per person.

I was thinking large (that's why I did for the current region I set up), but maybe smaller is better.

[Flash]

In all likelihood I'll join y'all after they get around to releasing the Mac version.

[Clay Pigeon]

I read a story on kotaku that the us east servers have been down for quite some time. Can anyone confirm this?


Also, for when 200k sims isn't enough:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/24780/

And when 1 million sims isn't enough:
http://www.gog.com/gamecard/simcity_200 ... al_edition

[Flash]

I'm really disappointed at all the negative reviews and posts I'm reading so far:
http://games.slashdot.org/story/13/03/0 ... layer-game

In doing so came across this which looks very interesting:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/158 ... -of-your-d

[MasterChef]

I read a story on kotaku that the us east servers have been down for quite some time. Can anyone confirm this?

Yeah, I had problems all afternoon trying to get on. And even when I did get on last night, I kept getting notices that the EA servers were down.

It's a shame really, the game itself is pretty fun. It's just sad when some of the "features" get in the way of being able to play what is still basically a single player game. The whole online region thing is neat, and I can see how it would be fun with a group of people having specialized cities and working together. But at the same time, I'd like the option to have my large single player mega city.

The cloud saving and online regions are not bad ideas however, making them required and making it impossible to play offline is bad.

I try not to be one of the people that hates on EA just because they are EA. But they are making it hard not to with their last few releases. Throwing in micro transactions in Dead Space 3 was a blatant cash grab, but I was able to play though it with zero problems staying away from that.

[Greebo]

I'm hoping the server issues calm down in the next few days. It's a pain when you can't get on to the server that has your city/cities.
Without wishing to excuse whoever made the decision to have so few servers at launch, it does tend to be the case for any server reliant game that launch is going to be a rough time.
With any luck they'll bow to pressure and include an offline mode.


I haven't had any issues with city size yet but I've not been playing much except for an hour in the evenings after work (think I still only have less than 15k citizens). Will see if it becomes an issue over the weekend.
My place is also a complete mess in terms of layout etc. I think I need to build up some cash reserves and start demolishing some sections.
For what it's worth, I did read somewhere that they might introduce bigger city areas later on (will cite the source if I can find it again). Though given how much is simulated in the game, I can imagine lower end systems would struggle to support them.

For all its flaws I am still enjoying the game very much.

I took a peek at your place, MasterChef - looked nice!

[MasterChef]

Thanks, I have a pretty heavy industrial zone and a coal mine as well. So, I am probably pumping all kinds of air pollution in to the region right now. Eventually I'll try to get a university set up so I can get some of the cleaner options.

I'm actually a bit surprised that Failtropolis is doing as well as it is. I'm at about 200k population, but most of them are poor and my income could be better.

[Boss Llama]

It feels very much as if "professional" review sites are terrified of giving honest scores to giant game companies. This isn't too surprising - it's long been known and discussed that reviewers are threatened with lack of access to future products if they speak truth to power, but seriously - the pattern is obnoxious. Scores have become so inflated that anything south of an 85/100 or its equivalent is code for "utter rubbish," leaving no room for games that are good without being great. Even the 90+ range isn't a guarantee anymore. When normal gamers are reduced to rating-bombing and CC chargebacks to try and get the message across, it's a problem. Metacritic tells a curious story, using EA as an example:

Sim City 5: Critics 82, users 2.0
Mass Effect 3: Critics 93, users 4.7
Dragon Age II: Critics 82, users 4.2
Spore: Critics 84, users 4.7

By critical scores, all of those should be well made and enjoyable games, that any fan of the genre will genuinely like, and possibly even some non-genre folks will get in to. ME3 obviously is on the cusp of "instant classic" territory according to that. Talk to gamers however, and the supporters are in the minority for any given game, with most folks being a mix of angry, disappointed, or rueful at their purchase. I dunno what I'm getting at here - this is all stuff we all know, but I feel like I have to vent. This is a game I was waiting on to see if it was worth ending my EA boycott for. The video originally posted here was enough to tell me it wasn't, and this post-release crapfest reinforces my resolve for the forseeable future.

[frostdillicus]

I read through about 100 of the negative reviews from users on metacritic. I'd say a good 50% of them were from people who made zero comments about the actual game and just screamed about the Always-On DRM. My guess is most of these people haven't even played the game and are just being dicks. About 40% of these were people that bitched about Always-On DRM and then commented on the gameplay, meaning that they actually did probably spend some time with the game. Of those, about 20% said they would love the game if not for the DRM. The last 10% had actual gripes about the game that made them give it a bad review.

All said, metacritic user reviews are the internet. To be taken with a grain of salt.

Honestly, I don't get the fuss over the online requirements. Perhaps it stems from the fact that if I am playing games I generally have an internet connection. Perhaps I don't have an issue as SimCity actually USES the internet connection even if you are playing solo. Even many solo games now have social features that require an internet connection. Maybe I'm strange that I don't find this weird. Maybe I'm strange because it doesn't bother me. The always online requirement for SimCity isn't just DRM. Getting most of the general public to understand that seems to be impossible though.

It may sound like I am astroturfing for the game, but I'm not. I haven't actually given it much time as I haven't yet been in the mood for a "thinky" game. The could think the game is utter crap when I play it, we'll just have to wait and see.

[Masakari]

Reviews for everything should be taken with a grain of salt. Polygon lowering the review score after it being posted (Which won't reflect on Metacritic, because their policies on review score changes are absurd) is kind of questionable to begin with.

I have no issue with always-on DRM.....until it fails and/or causes issues to play it. That seems to be the case here.