EU release of SimCity officially bombs (who would have thunk it!)

[Jiefu]

The weird part to me is people still pre-order these games in droves. I don't thinnk there has been a smooth "always online game" in the history of gaming. It's hard for companies to change their ways when people are throwing fistfuls of money at them. Why spend money to fix something consumers obviously dont care about?

Good to know that EA has had record sales at $80 dollars a time. Now they know that they can keep up their current business practices and continue to murder the games industry.

If its so cool to hate on EA, why do morons support them and buy their games? Maxis made a great game but they've already been paid.

Also I would like to know if SimCity has its in game shop open yet.

Actually, Maxis' compensation is likely not fully settled. I recall news coming out a while ago that Obsidian missed a major performance incentive because their final Metacritic score was 84, one point short of the target of 85 (while you may not put much stock in Metacritic, for publishers the thing's basically treated like an oracle). Many devs likely have similar contracts, even fully-owned ones like Maxis.

 

[TheCommanders]

Doesn't a game bombing mean that it doesn't sell well? I was under the impression that SimCity sold pretty damn well, despite being horse crap. Either way, this shit just isn't acceptable. If a company insists on having a purportedly single player game nailed to a server, the least they could do is have the fucking thing working. Also, this sort of thing is kind of sneaky, because during a press beta, there won't be anywhere near the amount of users on the servers as there would be at release, explaining why few to none of the review mentioned that this might be an issue. I do find it suspicious that this crap game is rated so well, even if the reviewers were unaware of the server issues.

To you too Antari, they did extensive patching since release, and even upgraded server capacity. But derp logic!

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/12/20/maxis-explains-the-use-of-simcity-always-online-drm/

?GlassBox is the engine that drives the entire game?the buildings, the economics, trading, and also the overall simulation that can track data for up to 100,000 individual Sims inside each city. There is a massive amount of computing that goes into all of this, and GlassBox works by attributing portions of the computing to EA servers (the cloud) and some on the player?s local computer,? Bradshaw writes.

If I?m understanding that correctly, Bradshaw?s saying that offloading certain aspects of the simulation to SimCity servers is not only the way the game is designed, but a technical requirement. Bradshaw reflects this again in a later paragraph: ?Trades between cities, simulation effects that cause change across the region like pollution or crime, as well as depletion of resources, are all processed on the servers and then data is sent back to your city on your PC. Every city in the region is updated every three minutes, which keeps the overall region in sync and makes your decisions in your city relevant to any changes that have taken place in the region.?

tl;dr Servers are required so people's computers don't spaz out due to the amount of regional play at hand and the amount of processing required, especially for pathfinding, where routes between cities is calculated on server then you're sent what you need to know i.e. they just say 'take X, turn right at Y' and the rest, whilst your game just renders the vehicle.

I have seen this, but as a programmer myself I can point out that this is just horrible design. For one thing, it means as soon as EA decides to stop running the servers (probably between 5 and 10 years from now) your game will simply stop working. Blatent planned expiration, I say. Just because something was designed to work a certain way doesn't it was the best way it could have been designed. This particular design benefits the producers of the game, and detracts from the experience of the consumers. Bad design. QED.

 

[Silvianoshei]

Emulating the server calculations should only take a few months at most. I'm not saying someone should make a retail crack for use on private servers. I'm definitely not saying that at all. I can't imagine what kind of terrible person would do that.

 

[Ryank1908]

SimCity is still selling really well, and the reason that these games with all these issues sell well is that a lot of the 'always online' DRM games in recent years have been new instalments in beloved franchises -- Anno 2070, Diablo 3, now SimCity, and I could be wrong, but wasn't SC2 always-online? -- so people aren't going to stop buying them. I mean, how often does a Sim City game come around? It's been 10 years since Sim City 4, 10 years between Diablo 2 and 3, and while fans of those franchises surely despise online DRM like everyone else does, they kind of have to deal with it.

The reason people put up with being shafted by these asshole companies is because, unfortunately, the games underneath the business models are usually excellent, and generally very, very important and exciting to those who've invested into the franchise.

 

[BeeGeenie]

How did they figure this would work?

Easy. They got your money. They win.

You have fed the corporate trolls. You have my condolences.

 

[GundamSentinel]

Hmm, now I don't mind having to wait a week for my copy of Simcity to be shipped from Hong Kong (was half price though :3). Apparently I wouldn't be able to play it anyway. Saves me a lot of frustration.

In all seriousness though, this is of course utter balls, even if it was to be expected. Curse EA for publishing good franchises, because to be fair, EA sells and makes some very good games.

 

[Easton Dark]

I wonder if companies would be ballsy enough to put always-online DRM into new franchises instead of just ones with established fan-bases of millions.

It probably wouldn't work well for them.

 

[Uriain]

Actually, that's incorrect. Unless we are talking about something like Path Of Exile, where you can blame the inexperience of the developers.

Honestly, I cannot remember the last time I had my WoW server crash or lag, or seen the login server cause any problems. And yes, that includes launch nights for new expansions. To my recollection, the Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria launches were pretty much flawless, with close to zero problems of any kind reported. And yeah, while hating on WoW might be the cool thing to do these days, it certainly did have a LOT more players waiting for the expansion, than Simcity did for its launch.

The reason why Simcity (or Diablo 3) had terrible launches, was not the fact that those giant corporations were OMG-SURPRISED! by the number of people trying to log in on launch. They weren't. They just don't care. Addind server capacity is extremely expensive, and for a game that has no subscription, and whose number of active players will plateau quite heavily within the following month, there is no reason for them to do it. There is no reason to spend some money to prepare you launch day for 2 million logins, when only 30,000 of those will actually be playing concurrently in a few days.

WoW does, because the number of players at launch is pretty close to the final number. Yes, people come and go, and some don't play that much, but most of the people who buy a subscription based MMO expansion are most likely to actually play it, several hours a day, so investing in server capacity is mandatory.

Quoted for "nail on the head" accuracy

 

[BloatedGuppy]

WoW does, because the number of players at launch is pretty close to the final number.

Agreed with almost all of your sentiments, but this is slightly inaccurate. WoW's concurrent population is about 1/5th of its concurrent population during the expansion launch. Most MMOs see a drop down to 10-20% of their launch week population numbers. Opening up a ton of servers for an MMO to deal with launch volumes tends to be a pretty stupid plan.

SimCity is still selling really well, and the reason that these games with all these issues sell well is that a lot of the 'always online' DRM games in recent years have been new instalments in beloved franchises -- Anno 2070, Diablo 3, now SimCity, and I could be wrong, but wasn't SC2 always-online?

Technically? No. It could be played offline.

Functionally? Yes. It was very annoying/limiting to play offline, and you lose Battle.net and MP, which is 95% of the reason for SC's existence in the first place.

 

[Carnagath]

WoW does, because the number of players at launch is pretty close to the final number.

Agreed with almost all of your sentiments, but this is slightly inaccurate. WoW's concurrent population is about 1/5th of its concurrent population during the expansion launch. Most MMOs see a drop down to 10-20% of their launch week population numbers. Opening up a ton of servers for an MMO to deal with launch volumes tends to be a pretty stupid plan.

Not exactly sure where those numbers are from, but even assuming they are correct, the point still remains that, in a subscription based game a company struggles to provide a high quality of service across the board, because otherwise they lose subs. Cutting corners on server capacity and frustrating players in WoW for example would be suicidal. As Blizzard, you do not want to piss people off over something that is preventable. In Diablo, or Simcity, they couldn't care less if you are mad at a horrendous launch. They most likely already have your money if you a hardcore fan of the title. If you are not, then you are going to wait a bit before buying it anyway, and by then the problems will be less crippling due to a plateau of activity.

I'm not saying that deliberately terrible launches are the correct way to do things of course. They are a horribly consumer-unfriendly way to save some money. How much money? I can't say for sure, but taking Diablo 3 as an example, it's a game that sold over 10 freaking million copies. What fraction of that income would it cost to ensure a smooth launch with buffed server capacity? Something tells me that it's a very minor sum. However, large publishers not giving a single fuck about treating their customers in an acceptable way seems to be the way all the "big cool" kids do things these days. Pretty sad for sure.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Not exactly sure where those numbers are from, but even assuming they are correct, the point still remains that, in a subscription based game a company struggles to provide a high quality of service across the board, because otherwise they lose subs. Cutting corners on server capacity and frustrating players in WoW for example would be suicidal. As Blizzard, you do not want to piss people off over something that is preventable. In Diablo, or Simcity, they couldn't care less if you are mad at a horrendous launch. They most likely already have your money if you a hardcore fan of the title. If you are not, then you are going to wait a bit before buying it anyway, and by then the problems will be less crippling due to a plateau of activity.

I'm not saying that deliberately terrible launches are the correct way to do things of course. They are a horribly consumer-unfriendly way to save some money. How much money? I can't say for sure, but taking Diablo 3 as an example, it's a game that sold over 10 freaking million copies. What fraction of that income would it cost to ensure a smooth launch with buffed server capacity? Something tells me that it's a very minor sum. However, large publishers not giving a single fuck about treating their customers in an acceptable way seems to be the way all the "big cool" kids do things these days. Pretty sad for sure.

No, I agree. I think it's cost cutting, pure and simple, at the cost of a smooth customer experience. The end result is dramatic public outcry, and that's earned censure. People should get mad, because it's retarded. There's no excuse for it.

MMOs are in a tough spot. Open 10 servers, and your servers are slammed on launch day. "THIS SUCKS! FUCK QUEUES! BACK TO MY OLD MMO!" cries the peanut gallery. Open 50 servers, and your servers are empty after a few weeks. "THIS SUCKS! GAME IS A GHOST TOWN! BACK TO MY OLD MMO!" cries the peanut gallery. You can't win for losing.

 

[Weaver]

Why do you guys keep pre-ordering shit you know won't work?

 

[Carnagath]

Why do you guys keep pre-ordering shit you know won't work?

Personally the only game I've preordered in the last year has been Heart of the Swarm, because I know that the campaign is not server-dependent, only the achievements, and even if it all goes south you can still play it offline.

 

[raankh]

[snip]

?GlassBox is the engine that drives the entire game?the buildings, the economics, trading, and also the overall simulation that can track data for up to 100,000 individual Sims inside each city. There is a massive amount of computing that goes into all of this, and GlassBox works by attributing portions of the computing to EA servers (the cloud) and some on the player?s local computer,? Bradshaw writes.

If I?m understanding that correctly, Bradshaw?s saying that offloading certain aspects of the simulation to SimCity servers is not only the way the game is designed, but a technical requirement.

It's very unlikely to be a requirement. What Bradshaw is essentially saying here is that they track a huge amount of data. No way can they afford to significantly offload the capacity of hundreds of thousands of gaming PCs. Absolutely no way, we're talking petaflops supercomputers here, hundreds of millions of dollars in investment. And if it isn't significant, there's no reason why a fairly modern gaming computer couldn't do the same calculations. (Edit: For these capacities, a cloud provider is unlikely to charge less, since they still have to make a profit)

Distributed computing vastly out-scales mainframe architectures, which is why the many scientific @Home projects have been so successful and continue to be important low cost alternatives to supercomputers.

 

[elthingo]

What's really crappy about all this is that everyone who's going "THEY TOOK MY MONEY AND ALL I GOT WAS SADNESS AND WAITING! I WILL NEVER BUY ANYTHING FROM THEM AGAIN!" will probably buy the next EA game that interests them.

I was hopeful the first couple of times I saw companies take their customers money and only give them a punch in the dick and 50 different DLCs all consisting of basic stuff like gardens (cough Anno 2070), and everyone started shouting they'd never buy another game from that company again, but here we are, with one of the biggest dick punchy DLC engines there's ever been (they're probably going to make you buy the privilege of having something close to a sim city 4 style large plot), and it's probably an enormous economical success. We'll probably have the same thing when they release the sims 4 and it turns out to be an online only version of the sims 3 with micro transactions, which is basically a slightly modified, graphically improved sims 2. They wouldn't be doing this if it actually hurt their sales numbers too much, after all...

 

[Colt47]

What's really crappy about all this is that everyone who's going "THEY TOOK MY MONEY AND ALL I GOT WAS SADNESS AND WAITING! I WILL NEVER BUY ANYTHING FROM THEM AGAIN!" will probably buy the next EA game that interests them.

I was hopeful the first couple of times I saw companies take their customers money and only give them a punch in the dick and 50 different DLCs all consisting of basic stuff like gardens (cough Anno 2070), and everyone started shouting they'd never buy another game from that company again, but here we are, with one of the biggest dick punchy DLC engines there's ever been (they're probably going to make you buy the privilege of having something close to a sim city 4 style large plot), and it's probably an enormous economical success. We'll probably have the same thing when they release the sims 4 and it turns out to be an online only version of the sims 3 with micro transactions, which is basically a slightly modified, graphically improved sims 2. They wouldn't be doing this if it actually hurt their sales numbers too much, after all...

Really? I've not been buying from them since 2009, largely for the same reasons I'm not buying anymore Diablo games from Blizzard... only in this case it's more like a company wide thing since EA has managed to pretty much screw their entire line up at this point.

 

[Keewa]

I'll give it a month and when it calms down and all the pre-order silly people have gotten bored, maybe I'll buy it.

 

[Madman123456]

I'm sorry for your Inconvinience OP. But frankly, since you're spending quite a bit of money for games each year you should've known better.
First: Games that require access to the Internet will barely work on Launch day. We've experienced this many many times and those of us who didn't: Games that require internet access wont work on Launch day.
Second: It's from EA. If it's a Game from EA, there is an overwhelmingly large probability that it has something in it to screw you over.

I can not understand why People still buy Games from that Company. I'm trying to be objective here, i really do but i can not comprehend this.

Captcha: Civil war.
Well, while i think the Industry would be better off if EA where to go away, i think captcha is being a bit too extreme D:

 

[Tohuvabohu]

Amazon appears to have stopped offering the digital version:

http://www.amazon.com/Electronic-Arts-41018ted-Edition2-SimCity/dp/B007VTVRFA/ref=cm_rdp_product

^Shows up as Unavailable. Whether or not this was Amazon or EA's doing, I dunno. But it's definitely not a good sign.

I gotta wonder if EA thinks all this stupid ass DRM trouble is worth it.