Sim City - EA are greedy *******s Thread.

[Iconic]

Yer I bought it, and have played it a bit though I have had a heap of issues with servers. I wish I didn't buy it now, its a lovely game but the process of playing it is simply stupid.

 

[Shelley]

Yer I bought it, and have played it a bit though I have had a heap of issues with servers. I wish I didn't buy it now, its a lovely game but the process of playing it is simply stupid.

I'm sure they'll soon stabilize their servers in time. More waiting is required.

 

[Jason]

Online gaming is nothing like your example. EA blew it by not ensuring there was enough hardware in place to handle the demand for game play. By your reasoning, MMOs should be able to be played locally on your machine, therefore negating the MMO aspect of the game. Doesn't work that way.

SimCity isn't a true MMO, but that's beside the point.

The problem isn't enough hardware, they've been throwing up new AWS instances since launch. If EA has 100 machines at this point, then there's nothing AWS can do. It could be that their AWS infrastructure is on point and the problem lies elsewhere.

Many problems are not magically solved by throwing more machines at them. Instead, it seems more to do with their DevOps practices, and singling out EA for bad tech is like beating a dinosaur...it's been dead for millions of years. They need to switch their thinking from how to prevent downtime to expecting it and recovering as quickly as possible. One way of doing that is by avoiding single point of failures.

The entire SimCity network stack is one, right now: when it goes down, nobody can access the service. That encapsulates another set of problems that are intrinsically singular. You could use friends lists, as an example of such a problem. No matter how much horizontal and vertical scaling you do, it will eventually be possible for a player to create a friends list that has so many friends on it that operations on it end up becoming prohibitively expensive. Friends list operations end up effectively being JOINs.

Another problem they have is storage. For instance, many US players got placed on a European server due to high-load, and when they moved back to a US server all their data was lost. Saving data should be a separate, independent service to the game servers itself. By doing that, it'll make it easier to transfer data globally and later cache locally for individual game servers. Besides, there's really no need to make players pick a server -- choose the fastest one for them!

DRM. If they're requiring playing on a server as a form of DRM, then they should consider following other, more successful, models. Every time a player starts playing on a SimCity server, it could phone home to check if they've actually purchased the game. If for some reason it can't communicate with the DRM server, it falls back to offline mode which allows players to still play the game.

It would have been one thing if they marketed this as a service-based game, but they didn't. They marketed it as a boxed game and did a bait-n-switch.

 

[Shelley]

SimCity isn't a true MMO, but that's beside the point.

The problem isn't enough hardware, they've been throwing up new AWS instances since launch. If EA has 100 machines at this point, then there's nothing AWS can do. It could be that their AWS infrastructure is on point and the problem lies elsewhere.

Many problems are not magically solved by throwing more machines at them. Instead, it seems more to do with their DevOps practices, and singling out EA for bad tech is like beating a dinosaur...it's been dead for millions of years. They need to switch their thinking from how to prevent downtime to expecting it and recovering as quickly as possible. One way of doing that is by avoiding single point of failures.

The entire SimCity network stack is one, right now: when it goes down, nobody can access the service. That encapsulates another set of problems that are intrinsically singular. You could use friends lists, as an example of such a problem. No matter how much horizontal and vertical scaling you do, it will eventually be possible for a player to create a friends list that has so many friends on it that operations on it end up becoming prohibitively expensive. Friends list operations end up effectively being JOINs.

Another problem they have is storage. For instance, many US players got placed on a European server due to high-load, and when they moved back to US West all their data was lost. Saving data should be a separate, independent service to the game servers itself. By doing that, it'll make it easier to transfer data globally and later cache locally for the game servers. Besides, there's really no need to make players pick a server -- choose the fastest one for them!

DRM. If they're requiring playing on a server as a form of DRM, then they should consider following the MineCraft model. Every time a player starts playing on a SimCity server, it could phone home to check if they've actually purchased the game. If for some reason it can't communicate with the DRM server, it falls back to offline mode which allows players to still play the game.

It would have been one thing if they marketed this as a service-based game, but they didn't. They marketed it as a box game and did a bait-n-switch.

Why the servers are not able to sync up when you get thrown onto another server without losing your city is unbelievable, and somewhat unforgivable. This is mainly why i have not thoroughly played it yet because that absolutely ruins the gaming experience. The fact is EA were unprepared, they knew this and I think they thought they could get away with it and ride this one out like blizzard did. That being said, I hope they release or fix the servers so they sync up and players are able to join any server without losing their cities., I mean that alone spending countless of hours and then losing everything would result me in abandoning the game. Maybe.

 

[Lisa]

This story with what you did to Lisa, could never ever get old..

And you can shut up too

 

[Jason]

Why the servers are not able to sync up when you get thrown onto another server without losing your city is unbelievable, and somewhat unforgivable. This is mainly why i have not thoroughly played it yet because that absolutely ruins the gaming experience. The fact is EA were unprepared, they knew this and I think they thought they could get away with it and ride this one out like blizzard did. That being said, I hope they release or fix the servers so they sync up and players are able to join any server without losing their cities., I mean that alone spending countless of hours and then losing everything would result me in abandoning the game. Maybe.

Absolutely. It's inexcusable to have someone be unable to play the city they spent hours building out simply because they can't reconnect to the game server they were originally playing on. That's a huge oversight, and something they should patch fast.

 

[EQnoble]

SimCity isn't a true MMO, but that's beside the point.

The problem isn't enough hardware, they've been throwing up new AWS instances since launch. If EA has 100 machines at this point, then there's nothing AWS can do. It could be that their AWS infrastructure is on point and the problem lies elsewhere.

Many problems are not magically solved by throwing more machines at them. Instead, it seems more to do with their DevOps practices, and singling out EA for bad tech is like beating a dinosaur...it's been dead for millions of years. They need to switch their thinking from how to prevent downtime to expecting it and recovering as quickly as possible. One way of doing that is by avoiding single point of failures.

The entire SimCity network stack is one, right now: when it goes down, nobody can access the service. That encapsulates another set of problems that are intrinsically singular. You could use friends lists, as an example of such a problem. No matter how much horizontal and vertical scaling you do, it will eventually be possible for a player to create a friends list that has so many friends on it that operations on it end up becoming prohibitively expensive. Friends list operations end up effectively being JOINs.

Another problem they have is storage. For instance, many US players got placed on a European server due to high-load, and when they moved back to a US server all their data was lost. Saving data should be a separate, independent service to the game servers itself. By doing that, it'll make it easier to transfer data globally and later cache locally for individual game servers. Besides, there's really no need to make players pick a server -- choose the fastest one for them!

DRM. If they're requiring playing on a server as a form of DRM, then they should consider following other, more successful, models. Every time a player starts playing on a SimCity server, it could phone home to check if they've actually purchased the game. If for some reason it can't communicate with the DRM server, it falls back to offline mode which allows players to still play the game.

It would have been one thing if they marketed this as a service-based game, but they didn't. They marketed it as a boxed game and did a bait-n-switch.

I have to say the bait and switch is something EA is notorious for...I mean, I don't know any other game maker for xbl that requires you to pay for a separate subscription to their services besides your xbox live services. The titles are the same average price as your premium game titles yet they don't make it super obvious that you need a secondary online account with their system to play. And speaking of bait and switch, it is not very nice that they shut down the online services less than 2 years after a game's release.

http://www.ea.com/1/service-updates

It's one of the main reasons I don't play sports games anymore. Playing sports game against AI can get boring, now when I do buy an xbox title, it is for the online play. I bought an EA title about a year after the game came out but bought it new. I wasn't able to play it for more than a year before the server was shut down.

I think the DRM thing works in the way of you get a free pass to play on their servers if you buy the game new...but if you buy it used and assuming the person who sold it used the free pass, you can't get online without buying an addition serial or something along those lines.

 

[Shelley]

Oh well, but it may be on the cards offlining it >>

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...dmits-it-was-dumb-says-sorry-with-a-free-game

 

[BlackJacket]

I hate it! I was so excited when I purchased it but the game has turned out to be total crap. Well, not the gameplay itself, more like the servers and the fact you cannot play offline. Also, if you switch servers, your cities do not move with you, so you have to start a new.

Worst Sim City ever made.

 

[BlackJacket]

Online gaming is nothing like your example. EA blew it by not ensuring there was enough hardware in place to handle the demand for game play. By your reasoning, MMOs should be able to be played locally on your machine, therefore negating the MMO aspect of the game. Doesn't work that way.

But I don't want to play Sim City with others. I just want to build my city like before, only me.

 

[Shelley]

Happy to say I thought i'd give the tutorial a try in Sim City and the game certainly has depth. I don't think I have any issues with playability with regards to the actual game. I'll still wait till EA though have 100% fixed all known issues with the servers and I know I can connect to the same server without losing my city because the servers can't cope and chance i won't be able to connect back onto the same server.

So far, game itself >>

 

[Lucas]

The sad fact is probably they did an always-on DRM so people can't pirate it, but at what cost?

 

[Slavik]

Pretty much everything made by EA nowdays is junk. Their best games come from independent studios they finance, but leave to do their own thing.

 

[Lucas]

Pretty much everything made by EA nowdays is junk. Their best games come from independent studios they finance, but leave to do their own thing.

Not exactly, they did crap out quiet a bit on the BF3 franchise which we were so excited about and built http://battlefieldo.com for. Although I do not play it much anymore and have left anything related to EA, it's just a waste of time, they aren't respectful, their support is awful, they are milking the hell out of any game they are releasing, etc. My only hope on keeping the gaming industry semi-stable is Valve at the moment. Time to support the little guys again.

 

[Jaxel]

I think the "region" system in SimCity 4 was the worst thing about the game... now they brought it back for SimCity 5... and the cities are smaller... no thanks.

 

[Shelley]

I take back what I said. It's currently retrieving my data and has been hanging on 11% for the past 20 minutes. Quite clearly EA have not fixed the servers and not sorry for their consistent incompetence. They should be forced to make this offline play.

 

[Forsaken]

I hate it! I was so excited when I purchased it but the game has turned out to be total crap. Well, not the gameplay itself, more like the servers and the fact you cannot play offline. Also, if you switch servers, your cities do not move with you, so you have to start a new.

Worst Sim City ever made.

Someone is already working on making it available offline.

 

[Claudio]

Someone is already working on making it available offline.

Really? Tell us more

 

[Forsaken]

Really? Tell us more

Friend only told me he's making it so it'll connect once initially to check to see if its not a pirated copy, and then it'll allow for people to play offline.

Not sure if he's planning on fully emulating Origin so that friends can play as well.

 

[Lucas]

I don't know if I should say this or not, but to those that bought the game, there is a version were you can play offline atm, just look around.