[PC] SimCity impressions

[tcweidner]

Trying to connect, saw Arkons invite, will see if the server stays up long enough  

Arkon, as far as money is concerned, float some bonds, they give you instant cash.  You find them by clicking simoleons,  you can have three bonds floating at once.

[PR_GMR]

So one thing I am finding is that it would seem I am growing too fast...my city is around 30,000 citizens, and I am not bringing in enough money to keep up with trying to cover power, water and sewage, let alone create jobs and then try to reconfigure to improve traffic flow.

My city is growing at a more organic pace. The city of Cabo Rojo is at 1500 citizens. 

[USMC Kato]

I have a total of two hours playing time logged in, tried to play the tutorial last night and early this morning. I kept on getting the "Could not connect to server due to a network problem" with "Retry" and "Cancel" buttons on the dialog box. Retry button didn't work only the cancel button did.

[Isgrimnur]

 

[Arkon]

Trying to connect, saw Arkons invite, will see if the server stays up long enough  

Arkon, as far as money is concerned, float some bonds, they give you instant cash.  You find them by clicking simoleons,  you can have three bonds floating at once.

Yeah I float bonds as soon as I pay one off sadly...

[Arnir]

I think today it went global.  If the servers couldn't handle the Western Hemisphere alone....

I also saw that they have *apparently* stopped offering refunds.  Reports vary.

When I can play the game, I'm really enjoying it.  But today is almost a total loss.

[CeeKay]

fired it up this afternoon and my city was back.  accepted the new invite and claimed the same area.

whoever OlBigDaddy is he/she has so much claimed.  we must unite and crush them!  FREEDOM FOR THE NORTH!!! 

[wonderpug]

Hopefully OlBigDaddy the Conquerer just had a hiccup with the server nuttiness when he went to create his city.  OlBigDaddy the Conquerer, do you mind abandoning your extra landclaims?

[wonderpug]

lol, now they've disabled cheetah speed.

[Arkon]

Hopefully OlBigDaddy the Conquerer just had a hiccup with the server nuttiness when he went to create his city.  OlBigDaddy the Conquerer, do you mind abandoning your extra landclaims?

According to my friends list that is TC Weidner.

[Arkon]

lol, now they've disabled cheetah speed.

For me, they have disabled all speeds, seeing as I still can't connect, haven't been able to for 4 hours or so now.  I can get logged in, get to the main menu and then it says I have no connection to the server.  Their launcher is all kinds of garbage, it tells me the server is available, but if I go into the server select, it then shows as busy instead.

I should have waited...but that Amazon $20 credit seemed too good to pass up, when I knew I wanted the game.

[wonderpug]

I should have waited...but that Amazon $20 credit seemed too good to pass up, when I knew I wanted the game.

Eh, I'm frustrated too, but there's not a big difference between me paying $40 now or $40 in a few weeks.  Well since the sale ended, it'd be $40 now or $60 later. 

While the launch is at MMO-level disastrous proportions, there's at least no monthly fee / free month to be up in arms about.

Though if the game is still nonfunctional a week from now, I may yet join the torch & pitchfork crowd.

[CeeKay]

I should have waited...but that Amazon $20 credit seemed too good to pass up, when I knew I wanted the game.

+1.  thankfully I've got plenty to play if it the servers are down, but EA really screwed the pooch this time around.

[tcweidner]

Yeah  LOL,  Ill abandon those cities except Schrute Farms.   I was just trying to claim anything, told me I couldnt, Finally I got one, and made it Schrute Farms,  now all of a sudden Im a landbaron.

LOL, Problem of course its telling me I cant abandon right now,  blah blah blah,  so I'll keep trying.

[wonderpug]

One thing to keep in mind is that there's no reset button on any city plots unless you obliterate the entire region.  If you run your city into debt and bulldoze everything, abandoning the plot will just leave the next mayor a wasteland in debt to start with.  We can gift each other money to get people out of painted corners, but I read somewhere you at least need a city hall to be able to receive gifts (a little armored truck actually drives from one city hall to the other), so it's sounds like it's theoretically possible to create an unrecoverable city.

[Punisher]

Yeah  LOL,  Ill abandon those cities except Schrute Farms.   I was just trying to claim anything, told me I couldnt, Finally I got one, and made it Schrute Farms,  now all of a sudden Im a landbaron.

LOL, Problem of course its telling me I cant abandon right now,  blah blah blah,  so I'll keep trying.

Are beets a commodity in SimCity?

[tcweidner]

lands are freed up, nothing was touched on them,  just server hick-up......and Oh by the way, I already had a few citizens abducted by a ufo, and one house blown up by the ufo...wtf  LOL

[Arkon]

Yeah I have had a UFO, Godzilla, Earthquake and Zombie outbreak...by far the zombie outbreak was the worst.

[Teggy]

Amazon has stopped selling the PC Download version. Note the 1-star review average.

[Isgrimnur]

The second batch of Europe, along with India, South Africa, and New Zealand are due to be coming on line March 8th. Seeing as it's already after 10 am in New Zealand, I doubt volume issues are going to be resolved in anything approaching a timely manner.

[Autistic Angel]

Amazon has stopped selling the PC Download version. Note the 1-star review average.

Not everyone is up in arms.  Check out this guy's 5-star review!

You'd think I'd be mega unhappy like everyone else at the constant waiting and lack of actually being able to play a game I purchased.

Well, you'd be wrong.

The hours upon hours since launch that I haven't been able to log in, whether it be sitting in queues, or server busy messages, or just plain old not working screens, I've managed to do a heap of things that I never do when I'm locked in my man cave playing video games.

I've washed the dishes, the laundry, changed the oil in the car, mopped the floors, dusted, did a spot of gardening, greeted my children who I hadn't really seen since Christmas, walked the dog, asked how my wife's day has been and listened to the entire response, restocked the groceries and many more things! My family has never been happier that they've got a father and husband again.

In fact, I feel like Simcity has given me a new lease on life. This wouldn't have been possible without the seemingly crazy decision to have constant online connections and server side save points even for single player.

So I can only thank EA and Maxis. Your failures have been my rewards. 5 stars!

-Autistic Angel

[CeeKay]

well, started up CeeKay's Creek.  got a good city going (if the servers saved it) with a good income coming in.  I think I'm about to build a casino in the rich neighborhood.


oh, and I figured PR_GMR's city could use some extra cops so I sent him an extra unit

[metallicorphan]

Gotta admit,'Ceekay's Creek' doesn't really sound like a place i want to live ..or visit ,ewww

[Arkon]

I have major traffic issues...and I mean major.  I have a huge bottle neck on the main streetcar avenue coming in to town and I am likely going to have to rebuild a large swath of town to get out of it...almost went bankrupt after a fire took out many buildings, knocking my income to a -$3,000 an hour.  Managed to get it back to a slow trickle right as I was able to take out a new bond.  The main issue is that the traffic is so messed up that construction vehicles can't get to the buildings to build them, so when an apartment building decides to upgrade, kicking a few thousand citizens out, it takes a large chunk of my tax base out, until I can finally get vehicles where they need to go to rebuild.

[CeeKay]

since city hall departments affect the whole region I might as well mention I've built one for Transportation, Tourism and Safety.

I'm also running out of room already 

[PR_GMR]

well, started up CeeKay's Creek.  got a good city going (if the servers saved it) with a good income coming in.  I think I'm about to build a casino in the rich neighborhood.


oh, and I figured PR_GMR's city could use some extra cops so I sent him an extra unit

You sent me an extra 'unit'. Ceekay, I didn't you were gay too?! 

[tcweidner]

I visited your guys cities, man they are all like nice and stuff.  My city looks like Brooklyn.  I got 250,000 sims jammed in there already.  Its one ugly place.

[CeeKay]

I visited your guys cities, man they are all like nice and stuff.  My city looks like Brooklyn.  I got 250,000 sims jammed in there already.  Its one ugly place.

I got to visit yours and was impressed by your use of space.  I have a feeling I'm going to need to re-lay a bunch of avenues to get my population to grow any more, plus I forgot that I have a coal and iron ore deposit that I can exploit.

Built a casino and damn is the thing a dud.  I closed it down along with the Ferry/cruise ship port after my income started plummeting all of a sudden.

[tcweidner]

funny my casino and cruise ship port were total duds as well.  I wonder if it has something to do with perhaps regional tourism possibly being shut off right now?    

I had a giant oil field and everything attached,  it was huge, made me a lot of money,  Godzilla took care of that.  Cost me hundreds of thousands lost,   freakin lizard.

[davidrobots]

Our quasi-official statement on the status of our SimCity review:

http://gamingtrend.com/2013/03/07/so-amazon-has-de-listed-simcity/#more-51432

[Lee]

So posts seem to sound like it is getting better?  Hate to give them money, especially $60, but I finally have time to play this weekend. Please keep posting server updates.

[CeeKay]

Our quasi-official statement on the status of our SimCity review:

http://gamingtrend.com/2013/03/07/so-amazon-has-de-listed-simcity/#more-51432

they must have changed it recently because when I click on the Amazon link in the article there are options to buy either version.

[Destructor]

I'm also running out of room already  

*drops into thread and posts random picture*

Spoiler for Hiden:

(right click view image to see full size)

[PR_GMR]

Cabo Rojo is now at 4000 citizens. Layout is coming along slowly and organically. Hope to post a picture soon. Servers were better tonight. There was a post from one of the lead game designers that they are adding more servers. Looks like it's beginning to improve.

[wonderpug]

So posts seem to sound like it is getting better?  Hate to give them money, especially $60, but I finally have time to play this weekend. Please keep posting server updates.

It's getting a little better, but there's still a lot going wrong and the high weekend demand seems likely to just exacerbate the server woes.

[Teggy]

I watched giant bomb today and they showed how you can just go into other people's games and replace all their stuff with parks.

[pr0ner]

I played for over 2.5 hours this evening (man, what a time sink) after trying for about 5 minutes to access my starter city.  Damn, what a time sink this game has the potential to be.

And yes, I've said time sink 3 times.  Third time's the charm!

[metallicorphan]

[Update] Maxis released a statement regarding the SimCity launch and its plan to add new servers to the game throughout the weekend.

In a statement released to Kotaku, Maxis general manager Lucy Bradshaw addressed some of the issues surrounding the game's troubled launch:

"Thousands of players across the world are playing and having a good experience - in fact, more than 700,000 cities have been built by our players in just 24 hours. But many are experiencing server instability and consequently, the rollout in North America has been challenging. It's also now evident that players across Europe and Asia are experiencing the same frustration. Our priority now is to quickly and dramatically increase the number and stability of our servers and, with that, the number of players who can simultaneously access the game. We added servers today, and there will be several more added over the weekend. We're working as hard as possible to make sure everyone gets to experience the amazing game we built in SimCity."

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2013/03/07/simcity-fallout-continues.aspx

[CeeKay]

I played for over 2.5 hours this evening (man, what a time sink) after trying for about 5 minutes to access my starter city.  Damn, what a time sink this game has the potential to be.

And yes, I've said time sink 3 times.  Third time's the charm!

yeah, I was surprised to see Origin say I've played 8 hours so far.  surprisingly not a lot of that has been waiting to access the game-  if there is a queue or the game won't connect I just move on to something else.

[Asharak]

if there is a queue or the game won't connect I just move on to something else.

I'm sorry, according to the Official Law of the Internet, when something like that happens, you are required to spend a minimum of two hours composing multiple irate and vitriolic posts explaining in graphic detail just what you'd do to the bodily orifices of any EA employees you might ever happen to meet.

This "I just move on" crap is entirely too anti-climactic and reasonable to be tolerated.

- Ash