Sim City

Blisterman

I'm not a big gamer, but really interested in getting this game, once things are working a little bit more smoothly.

From experience with MMOs and things, which have had these problems on launch, roughly how long does it take for things to be sorted out? Days? weeks? months?

Kirby

Quick tip for anyone who can authenticate the servers fine but can't actually get the game to launch.

If you press the "play" button and nothing happens and yet SimCity32.exe is still loaded in your task manager, it's an overlay issue. Similarly if you see a black screen and a cursor but nothing else.

Go into origin, application settings, ingame, and then turn off overlay and it will work.

I think it has something to do with multi monitor setups not playing nice with the Shift+F1 overlay.

Nody

Usually a month is the safe bet; some can fix it faster and some take longer.

Anyone

Blisterman wrote: »

I'm not a big gamer, but really interested in getting this game, once things are working a little bit more smoothly.

From experience with MMOs and things, which have had these problems on launch, roughly how long does it take for things to be sorted out? Days? weeks? months?

It depends on the issue. This appears to be a server capacity issue. Now, the easy thing to do is launch more servers, but this has a crap affect later when game demand drops(you get empty servers).

My guess is 1-2 weeks and it will be fine if its just a server capacity issue.

IRL_Sinister

Just had a huge f*cking Godzilla like thing destroy my 3 hours of hard work. FUFUFUFUFU

Mc Love

VinLieger wrote: »

Done
Server will depend on whats working best later on ill post the info here when i set it up.

Currently 16/16 spots taken - Full
VinLieger
Merger
Kirby
Lockie1983
Newaglish
Youreadthat
Grizzly
Johnny 666
NotorietyH
Dcully
IRL_Sinister
Mc Love
.ak
Belfunk
nesf
ShanU

If theres more people interested we can get another going at some stage

How are we going to organise this as per the Government (City Hall) situation, should we have set cities for the dept of transport/safety etc? As the whole region benefits from them. I am sure we can sort it through the chat function later (if we can get on that is )

IRL_Sinister wrote: »

Just had a huge f*cking Godzilla like thing destroy my 3 hours of hard work. FUFUFUFUFU

The Godzilla came into mine too, but he appeared on the edge of my city and walked across the river, and went to the Garbage Dump and started eating the rubbish I also had the MaxiManor so i think Maximan helped

Grimebox

IRL_Sinister wrote: »

Just had a huge f*cking Godzilla like thing destroy my 3 hours of hard work. FUFUFUFUFU

Mis-micro? :pac:

Drexel

VinLieger wrote: »

Done
Server will depend on whats working best later on ill post the info here when i set it up.

Currently 16/16 spots taken - Full
VinLieger
Merger
Kirby
Lockie1983
Newaglish
Youreadthat
Grizzly
Johnny 666
NotorietyH
Dcully
IRL_Sinister
Mc Love
.ak
Belfunk
nesf
ShanU

If theres more people interested we can get another going at some stage

Added a few of ye there. Origin id is Drexel_1

VinLieger

Mc Love wrote: »

How are we going to organise this as per the Government (City Hall) situation, should we have set cities for the dept of transport/safety etc? As the whole region benefits from them. I am sure we can sort it through the chat function later (if we can get on that is )

Yeah we can sort it out pretty esily, obviously we all will have our own goals for what we want to build, but it should be able to happen pretty naturally, im really tempted to build a garbage city you all end up depending on and then blow it up and spend my millions on casinos, this is the kind of fun were gonna get to have

Mc Love

Ah thats quite a good idea - i'd like to have a university town, but that can be quite hard. How would the rest of the citys depend on that? Can students go to the uni then?

Sephiroth_dude

If your playing a map on your own and you have a few cities on the go,how when you move to different cities the other ones freeze?

VinLieger

Mc Love wrote: »

Ah thats quite a good idea - i'd like to have a university town, but that can be quite hard. How would the rest of the citys depend on that? Can students go to the uni then?

Yes a university also depends on other cities though as its pretty hard to max out your universities student count without the aid of other cities, unless you just wanna plant a load of dormitories

Julez

Got a good couple of hours in there from about 10-12 without any problems on Euro West 3. Hope it stays that way...

VinLieger

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

If your playing a map on your own and you have a few cities on the go,how when you move to different cities the other ones freeze?

I assume so but havent had a chance to test it yet

Newaglish

I'll just play to the strengths of whatever area I'm in. I'm thinking either a sea-side tourist town or an oil/mining town with craploads of money, depending on what resources I have!

gizmo

_Puma_ wrote: »

Pretty much sums up my point.

Again, like your point, the article is predicated on the fact that there is no server-side simulations being done, only data updates which are processed locally. Of course, it's impossible to prove it correctly one way or another so it comes down to either believing the Maxis engineers that there are, or refusing to believe their explanation.

As it stands, I tend to believe them since the server issues are so severe that to not believe them insinuates that everything is falling over due to a large number of simultaneous logins and asynchronous connections for city updates and sharing. Since the issues are more similar to MMO and Diablo 3-esque launch failures I see this as being fairly unlikely. On the other hand, if the opposite it true it makes EA's failure all the more damning.

Newaglish

Not to jinx things but it seems to be working fine now

Inquitus

I remoted in and I can't join Western Europe 4, my server, and we are a long way from primetime, this has Diablo 3 written all over it........

I'll be well pissed if I spend all evening getting booted and queuing to reconnect.

Dcully

Playing the last2 hours,every few minutes im seeing server offline the reconnected messages.
I wonder what of my city is actually being saved.
I must say though it was possibly the quickest two hours ever lol,i thought civ V coined the phrase one last go but fcuk me this is addictive stuff.
I have an adviser telling me to connnect to the highway, ffs that was the first thing ive done.

Jonny7

Amazon have just suspended sales of SC

the drama rises..

_Puma_

gizmo wrote: »

Again, like your point, the article is predicated on the fact that there is no server-side simulations being done, only data updates which are processed locally. Of course, it's impossible to prove it correctly one way or another so it comes down to either believing the Maxis engineers that there are, or refusing to believe their explanation.

As it stands, I tend to believe them since the server issues are so severe that to not believe them insinuates that everything is falling over due to a large number of simultaneous logins and asynchronous connections for city updates and sharing. Since the issues are more similar to MMO and Diablo 3-esque launch failures I see this as being fairly unlikely. On the other hand, if the opposite it true it makes EA's failure all the more damning.

If this is the case why is a single player sandbox mode even possible? I am not contesting the fact that for the multiplayer mode that there is some serious bandwidth being used for the server client connection, with updates from neighbouring regions or whatever that occurs every 3 mins, and this is probably causing the servers to fall down. What is my problem is how they can justify the always online connection for something that is basically a single player mode.

What are these server side "simulations" in the one player mode if they exist? Bar global Leaderboards etc.. I cannot imagine anything that is done on a server and piped down to the client that cannot be done far more efficiently on the client itself, even if the data has to be simulated.

Seriously if ya have a link with some solid evidence i'd gladly read it.

Mc Love

Dcully wrote: »

Playing the last2 hours,every few minutes im seeing server offline the reconnected messages.
I wonder what of my city is actually being saved.
I must say though it was possibly the quickest two hours ever lol,i thought civ V coined the phrase one last go but fcuk me this is addictive stuff.
I have an adviser telling me to connnect to the highway, ffs that was the first thing ive done.

I know I went the whole day yesterday without eating and I didnt even get hungry!

IRL_Sinister

Just reached 75K people and rising in my second city. Think I'm getting the hang of this (even after I had a godzilla-like monster destroy half my industry).

ShaneU

Barlett wrote: »

Is trading not one of the main reasons they said always online was needed?

Yup

Mc Love

IRL_Sinister wrote: »

Just reached 75K people and rising in my second city. Think I'm getting the hang of this (even after I had a godzilla-like monster destroy half my industry).

What roads are you using in your Res areas?

VinLieger

Jonny7 wrote: »

Amazon have just suspended sales of SC

the drama rises..

Nah that happened yesterday, drama hasnt risen much since then unfortunately

Azza

In Gamestop at lunch time for about 15 minutes and the game was flying off the shelf.
But I had to laugh at the staff trying to explain the always online requirement and system requirments to a cluelss mother and her slightly more clued in young son.
Didn't help that the gamestop staff where also clueless.
Sorry if this is sort of going off topic but I found it really funny. It went like this.

Gamestop Employee. "This game requires you to be online all the time, so if you turn off your broadband it won't work. "

Mother to Son "Do we turn off our broadband"

Son "I don't think so"

Mother to employee "Do people turn off there broadband"

Employee " yeah people do it all the time, it saves on your electricty bill.
Anyway if your playing online with another person and he logs off you can't play, the game will stop working"

Mother " Do we loss all our progress?"

Employee "yes you loose connection to the server"

Mother to son "whats a server"

Son" its a thing where everyone plays together"

Employee "does your computer meet the system requirement"

mother " what do you mean?"

employee "is your computer powerful enough to run it, is your computer new"

mother " I dunno, our computer runs the other sims games fine and has got a big screen. Its a mac, why would the game not work on some computers, this seems really technical lol"

employee "this game is using this new technology called glassbox that requires a powerful computer to run it"

Anyway a few minutes she takes it along with a Sims 3 expansion after being reassured about gamestops returns policy policy that if they game is unopened they can bring it back. They do that 5 minutes later. Game doesn't run on mac. The staff then have difficulty operating the card machine for the refund.

During this the mother askes "why does this game not work on mac.

Second gamestop employee, "I dunno its odd because all the other sims games work on mac"

Mother and son leave a second time.

First gamestop employee " Yeah its stupid because Mac computers are like the most powerful computers around"

Second employee " yeah its probably just microsoft you know, you know microsoft"

employee 1 "yeah ITunes never works on my mates computer"

employee 2 "ITunes is crap anyway"

employee 1"at least its more stable than (some other app I can't remember the name)"

employee 2 "well maybe if you payed for it instead of pirating it might work"

employee 1 "yeah maybe"

I know I shouldn't be laughing at this. Its just a job to them and they don't really care but I was still a little dumb founded.

nesf

Europe West Servers all quite busy. Seems to be varying though. It's going to get ugly after 6pm.

VinLieger

Azza wrote: »

In Gamestop at lunch time for about 15 minutes and the game was flying off the shelf.
But I had to laugh at the staff trying to explain the always online requirement and system requirments to a cluelss mother and her slightly more clued in young son.
Didn't help that the gamestop staff where also clueless.
Sorry if this is sort of going off topic but I found it really funny. It went like this.

Gamestop Employee. "This game requires you to be online all the time, so if you turn off your broadband it won't work. "

Mother to Son "Do we turn off our broadband"

Son "I don't think so"

Mother to employee "Do people turn off there broadband"

Employee " yeah people do it all the time, it saves on your electricty bill.
Anyway if your playing online with another person and he logs off you can't play, the game will stop working"

Mother " Do we loss all our progress?"

Employee "yes you loose connection to the server"

Mother to son "whats a server"

Son" its a thing where everyone plays together"

Employee "does your computer meet the system requirement"

mother " what do you mean?"

employee "is your computer powerful enough to run it, is your compter new"

mother " I dunno, our computer runs the other sims games fine and has got a big screen. Its a mac, why would the game not work on some computers, this seems really technical lol"

employee "this game is using this new technology called glassbox that requires a powerful computer to run it"

Anyway a few minutes she takes it along with a Sims 3 expansion after being reassured about gamestops returns policy policy that if they game is unopened they can bring it back. They do that 5 minutes later. Game doesn't run on mac. The staff then have difficulty operating the card machine for the refund.

During this the mother askes "why does this game not work on mac.

Second gamestop employee, "I dunno its odd because all the other sims games work on mac"

Mother and son leave a second them.

First gamestop employee " Yeah its stupid because Mac computers are like the most powerful computers around"

Second employee " yeah its probably just microsoft you know, you know microsoft"

employee 1 "yeah ITunes never works on my mates computer"

employee 2 "ITunes is crap anyway"

employee 1"at least its more stable than (some other app I can't remember the name)"

employee 2 "well maybe if you payed for it instead of pirating it might work"

employee 1 "yeah maybe"

I know I shouldn't be laughing at this. Its just a job to them and they don't really care but I was still a little dumb founded.

How can people working at selling games be so clueless?

Julez

VinLieger wrote: »

How can people working at selling games be so clueless?

Its crazy, I'd say they get littered with CV's from young lads (and young ones) that know there stuff and have a vested interest in games, but they seem to hire a lot of staff that don't really know what they are talking about.