Sim City

Professional Griefer

Whats the best thing for industry?

Dcully

OK ill say it again after my sixth city, the size limitation is an absolute joke and totally turning me off the game until its increased.
This to me is 100 times worse than any drm or server crap.
To think in 2013 we are limited to a city size a fraction of what we had in other sim city games or compared to other games like tropico,anno,cities xl etc,its a total joke.
Sorry to sound like a broken record on this but why have a city building sim with nothing bigger than a town to manage?

quarryman

Ok I'm giving up for the night. By that I mean, I've waited in the queue for 40 mins. Looked around my town a bit. Got kicked back to the menu. Waited for the server to reconnect. Kicked again on the loading screen. And now I've given up.

Screw you EA. I'm out.

bizmark

right well got to play this for a while built this monstrosity

Main street

University

in playing iv noticed many many problems with traffic management either from myself or from the game itself that insures its almost impossible to keep things moveing after 100k people bus's become useless as well as street cars 101 min wait for a trip because they all follow each other around like idiots massive traffic jams because they are incapable of planning decent routes around the city (or i cant design good road systems) end result is Lots of this Buildings burning to the ground even though i have 2 fire stations which also effects garbage collection , trade depos etc etc.

Azza

Slutmonkey57b wrote:

You're right about regional pricing. I called them out on it because in this case it's both very transparent and it undermines another pillar of why you should pay top whack to greedy publishers because of all the suffering. If they can afford to sell it for 20 quid in India there's no reason to charge 50 or 60 here other than "we can get away with it".

Might have to do with the fact the average wages per person in Ireland is something like 30 times higher than the average wage in India. If they sold the game everywhere at the same price as it is in the cheapest region I doubt they would make their money back on a lot of games.

Slutmonkey57b

Azza wrote: »

Might have to do with the fact the average wages per person in Ireland is something like 30 times higher than the average wage in India.

Their cost of production bears no relation to the average wage in either country, though.

Their cost of production is a fixed sum. Their cost of maintenance is averaged out across all the physical territories, since there is no restriction on who can join a particular server.

Therefore, the unit cost to provide this game to a person in Ireland is exactly the same as it is to a person in India. Why the price disparity? There's no retail chain for ea to support here.

Kirby

bizmark wrote: »

right well got to play this for a while built this monstrosity

Main street

University

in playing iv noticed many many problems with traffic management either from myself or from the game itself that insures its almost impossible to keep things moveing after 100k people bus's become useless as well as street cars 101 min wait for a trip because they all follow each other around like idiots massive traffic jams because they are incapable of planning decent routes around the city (or i cant design good road systems) end result is Lots of this Buildings burning to the ground even though i have 2 fire stations which also effects garbage collection , trade depos etc etc.

I've heard the traffic complaint alot. Some people even complain it's broken. Oddly, it's not something I'm familiar. with. I've had cities at 100k with sublime traffic, all in the green, with only a couple of minutes wait time on my streetcars. Don't know what to tell you. I don't use a special forumula. I don't plan for it at the start, it just happens organically by accident.

What I have experienced is firetrucks lining up to put out the same fire while other buildings burn. That's not a traffic issue though, thats and A.I. issue. Cloud computing my ass.....:P

cherryghost

Dcully wrote: »

OK ill say it again after my sixth city, the size limitation is an absolute joke and totally turning me off the game until its increased.
This to me is 100 times worse than any drm or server crap.
To think in 2013 we are limited to a city size a fraction of what we had in other sim city games or compared to other games like tropico,anno,cities xl etc,its a total joke.
Sorry to sound like a broken record on this but why have a city building sim with nothing bigger than a town to manage?

Buyer's remorse much? :P

bizmark

Can i see your road lay out?

Kirby

Also, the debate on pricing the game based on the region is an economics debate, not a gaming one.

Azza's point that the wage in Ireland is 30 times higher than ai India is probably true. It's also completely irrelevant. My wage is also 30 times higher than the homeless man down the street. We still pay the same for our morning paper.

Sufficed to say that charging people different amounts for the same item based on their income is wrong. But thats the way the world works with regards to produce. It doesn't make it any less wrong......it just makes it the reality. Don't make excuses for it though.

The old argument was that it cost different amounts to sell a product in different areas. It was mostly true. Shipping, packaging, distribution. Very different around the world. They don't have that reason anymore. This game is largely sold digitally. It costs 20 euro to buy it online from india and 60 to buy it from Ireland. The costs are virtually the same regardless of where the buyer is from and what he earns. Why is it three times the price here? Are irish bytes more expensive? It would seem so..........

EA are not alone. Steam/Valve do the same thing. The simple truth is that businesses do it now because they can.

Turtwig

Business probably do it because they can but I'd imagine regional tax rates on sales and income come into the equation somewhere?

Grumpypants

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/11/simcity-is-inherently-broken-lets-not-let-this-go/

Dude has it right re: apologists. Steam is a good service precisely because consumers gave valve so much **** about it at launch. Anyone letting a game company off the hook for "launch day issues" is a fool.

I have to disagree that the moany idiots that tried to run Steam into the ground saying it was a piece of s**t and they would never use it can take any credit for the service it is today. Most of that credit goes to Valve and some to the early adopters that supported it.

It is sad to see people who moan about the industry never trying something new and constantly go on about design fatigue, now attack a developer for not making their game the same as one they made a decade ago.

Maxis made a decision to totally change how the game runs and how it is played, doing something like this takes guts and is not something a developer will get 100% correct on its first attempt. If they had just re-skinned SimCity4 would people really have been that much happier? And I am sure you would have had the anti EA brigade out moaning about them ripping players off by selling a reboot of a ten year old game.

This is the video game industry if you want innovation then you need to support those that try to innovate.

I do feel that many (in fairness by no fault of their own but down to the server issue) are yet to unlock the game's full potential. In another week or two you will start to see more and more in favour of the online decision.

I've waited 10 years for this game, I'll wait another 10 weeks for them to perfect it.

Slutmonkey57b

Installing SC4 again. This thing asked me for "disc 2". That got a massive smile out of me simply for the antiquarian nature of it. It was rather like being asked for a 5 1/2 floppy. Disc 2 was actually in a cardboard envelope under the user manual, because the case doesn't have two cd trays.

Reading 2 cd's worth of data is taking longer than it took to download the new version of Deus Ex on steam!

Mind boggling stuff... But funny.

Wonder could I run SC2k on my Galaxy s2...?

the_syco

It's cheaper in poor countries so that people will buy it rather than pirate it. It's also the reason why the movie business sells R5 DVDs in Russia whilst the movie is still in the cinema in Europe.

Slutmonkey57b

Grumpypants wrote: »

I have to disagree that the moany idiots that tried to run Steam into the ground saying it was a piece of s**t and they would never use it can take any credit for the service it is today. Most of that credit goes to Valve and some to the early adopters that supported it.

If people hadn't complained, then there would have been no incentive for Valve to improve the service. Don't forget that for a long time Steam was a Valve-only house, and not an obvious success. Its original design was more of a hindrance than anything else. It certainly didn't provide any benefits to the consumer, and it wasn't an improvement in terms of preventing piracy, since with the flaky connections many people still had at that point, all it did was provide an incentive to piracy. Only after Valve opened it out to other studios, responded to community complaints,and above all regained consumer trust did it become the ubiquitous platform we know today. Its success is why Ubisoft and Ea, and Microsoft, are so desperate to try and re-create their own walled garden publishing platform, to regain control.

As to the "support the innovators" argument, I'm not against innovation. But if somebody wants €50 of my money, I'm going to give it to someone who isn't gratuitously stupid, or who isn't asking me for €50 to "support their efforts" while only asking the bloke beside me for €20 for exactly the same thing.

Slutmonkey57b

the_syco wrote: »

It's cheaper in poor countries so that people will buy it rather than pirate it. It's also the reason why the movie business sells R5 DVDs in Russia whilst the movie is still in the cinema in Europe.

Look around. Every country is poor nowadays.

the_syco

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

Wonder could I run SC2k on my Galaxy s2...?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJ-N0a9rBAo

Turtwig

Grumpypants wrote: »

Maxis made a decision to totally change how the game runs and how it is played, doing something like this takes guts and is not something a developer will get 100% correct on its first attempt. If they had just re-skinned SimCity4 would people really have been that much happier?

This is the crux of it though. Did they just re-skin Sim City 4? I mean, what is different from this game to Sim City 4? Everything I've read on this thread so far suggests that Sim City (2013) and Sim City 4 are more or less the same game bar a graphical change. Does the 'agents' actually change anything? Better question : Do the AI agents actually work?

Newaglish

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

Look around. Every country is poor nowadays.

Ireland, India, Ethiopia, Luxembourg, Japan, Brazil? All the same? That's ludicrous.

the_syco

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

Look around. Every country is poor nowadays.

Yes, but some will pay €50 for a game, whilst others will get €50 for their weeks pay.

the_syco

Jernal wrote: »

This is the crux of it though. Did they just re-skin Sim City 4? I mean, what is different from this game to Sim City 4? Everything I've read on this thread so far suggests that Sim City (2013) and Sim City 4 are more or less the same game bar a graphical change. Does the 'agents' actually change anything? Better question : Do the AI agents actually work?

Is Sim City just shinier with dumber AI than SC2000?

Slutmonkey57b

Newaglish wrote: »

Ireland, India, Ethiopia, Luxembourg, Japan, Brazil? All the same? That's ludicrous.

the_syco wrote: »

Yes, but some will pay €50 for a game, whilst others will get €50 for their weeks pay.

My point, fairly transparently, is that the logic "Sure we'll charge triple in Europe because they're langered out of it with cash and they'll never question it" no longer applies.

The content providers are not fighting against "amount of disposable income". They're fighting against two business models:

1) Free (piracy)
2) Discount (Using VPNs, as some on this thread have done)

There is no business model that competes with "free", and there is no business model that survives when "discount" can't be prevented. So, the transparent rip-off of consumers in Europe/USA/Australia etc won't last in the digital age. The content providers cannot claim excessive distribution costs in different parts of the globe, because there are none. The truth is, the pricing is different "because we can get away with it".

As a consumer, I see no benefit in being complicit with that.

bizmark

After being to a australian games store and seeing ac3 being advertised for the low low cost of 120 dollars im going to have to argee with slut here (who doesnt want to agree with a slut every once in a while anyway)

Mc Love

bizmark wrote: »

right well got to play this for a while built this monstrosity

Main street

University

in playing iv noticed many many problems with traffic management either from myself or from the game itself that insures its almost impossible to keep things moveing after 100k people bus's become useless as well as street cars 101 min wait for a trip because they all follow each other around like idiots massive traffic jams because they are incapable of planning decent routes around the city (or i cant design good road systems) end result is Lots of this Buildings burning to the ground even though i have 2 fire stations which also effects garbage collection , trade depos etc etc.

This...this is the thing that made me stop playing tonight, and trying to fix it you cant. The city size's are too too small. I think I need a break from this game it has infuriated me so much

Wonda-Boy

What server are the boards dudes on...add me for a spot in a region.

Wonda-3oy

Slutmonkey57b

bizmark wrote: »

After being to a australian games store and seeing ac3 being advertised for the low low cost of 120 dollars im going to have to argee with slut here (who doesnt want to agree with a slut every once in a while anyway)

You should always agree with a slut, they're full of good ideas.

Sephiroth_dude

Cities are definitely too small,could imagine the size of the city you could have if had the entire map.it would be awesome.

cherryghost

So apparently the Simcity server code has been leaked, and is coded in javascript. There's supposedly a number of guys looking into emulating the servers now.

https://gist.github.com/anonymous/5133829

Slutmonkey57b

cherryghost wrote: »

So apparently the Simcity server code has been leaked, and is coded in javascript. There's supposedly a number of guys looking into emulating the servers now.

https://gist.github.com/anonymous/5133829

Java zero day exploits come to the rescue? Assuming this is true, someone within ea or Amazon must be pretty peed off with the organisation to leak it.

errlloyd

Has anyone worked out how to make the game recognise existing regional city hall modules. Really could do with a big loan here, I know the neighbouring city has dept of finance.