SimCity first day bugs

[Tupin]

So after looking forward to SimCity for a very long time, I finally got my copy today. Being the heard-headed consumer I am, I bought a physical version. I put it in my PC and it prompts me immediately to install Origin. Fine, I guess. A Steam rip-off is a Steam rip-off. So after about a half hour of clicking boxes and waiting around, the game finally boots up. It's actually pretty graphically impressive. Since I'm a relative newbie to the SimCity series, I found it odd that I didn't get a tutorial first and just jumped into making a town. Five minutes in, the game crashed.

It's at this point I realize that I was supposed to have a tutorial when I started the game the first time. I just didn't. I clicked the menu option for a tutorial, it loaded, and then....nothing. No prompts, all I can do is move the camera around the tutorial town. I try logging onto another server, and it doesn't even load the game.

How does a company miss something this big? Whose fault is this? Needing such big fixes, be it actual bugs or handling the servers better, seems to be occurring more and more often recently.

At least in the five minutes I got to play the game, it was fun. But everything else about my experience sadly seems to be par for course for online games bought on day one. Anyone else have similar experiences?

[Sinizar]

So after looking forward to SimCity for a very long time, I finally got my copy today. Being the heard-headed consumer I am, I bought a physical version. I put it in my PC and it prompts me immediately to install Origin. Fine, I guess. A Steam rip-off is a Steam rip-off. So after about a half hour of clicking boxes and waiting around, the game finally boots up. It's actually pretty graphically impressive. Since I'm a relative newbie to the SimCity series, I found it odd that I didn't get a tutorial first and just jumped into making a town. Five minutes in, the game crashed.

It's at this point I realize that I was supposed to have a tutorial when I started the game the first time. I just didn't. I clicked the menu option for a tutorial, it loaded, and then....nothing. No prompts, all I can do is move the camera around the tutorial town. I try logging onto another server, and it doesn't even load the game.

How does a company miss something this big? Whose fault is this? Needing such big fixes, be it actual bugs or handling the servers better, seems to be occurring more and more often recently.

At least in the five minutes I got to play the game, it was fun. But everything else about my experience sadly seems to be par for course for online games bought on day one. Anyone else have similar experiences?

Same problem here. The work around I found is when the tutorial comes up, load into it and it will not allow you to do anything. Let the game run until it crashes. The next time you start the game the tutorial is gone and you can start playing. Very buggy game and I recommend waiting until EA patches this or they put the price so low you cannot resist. It is fun for the 5 minutes at a time you can play but since the server is online it never syncs until you exit the game properly. Hope you like starting a city from scratch each time you crashed from your game.

[SOL BADGUY]

Theres no bugs that these guys are experiencing......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx0hcTT7dUE

TROLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLLOLOLOL!!!!!!!1!!

[Graham Mitchell]

I'm sorry but that's pathetic. They need to stop releasing these broken games. They should work out of the box. How could they not have known about this?

[kupomogli]

I feel for you. While I'll admit that I've never had an issue where the game didn't work at all, being a console gamer, a lot of games that are released release with screen tearing, sub 30fps framerate, and many other issues. Add to that that in order to get the complete game you're required to preorder and buy the ton of day one DLC that companies release, so unless they come out with a GotY edition it's never going to truly be complete.

If developers do fix the issues, they take months to do so. Twisted Metal is an amazing game, but it took until September or October to make the game playable online. It wasn't laggy, you just couldn't get into a match. Half a year atleast after the game was released. The last two times I tried to get online, the moment the countdown started for a match, my PS3 crashed. The exact same moment, twice. I have a 60GB PS3 and I've heard that was the issue, but it shouldn't matter. Playstation All Stars the game is a huge lag fest, so many bugs and glitches. The game should have came out months down the road rather than when it did. When they did patch it, the online only got worse. 1.08 is better, but still laggy. 1.05 and 1.07 was unplayable.

It was nice when consoles weren't like PCs. When developers couldn't just update the game to get it working after release. Now days, developers have the luxury of pushing out an incomplete product because they know they can patch whatever issues people complain about afterwards, They got their money already. Their fanbase doesn't mean anything to them. Rather than using sites that do video game comparisons for console comparisons, I use them to see what the framerate of the game is, screen tear, etc. It's a reason why I refuse to pick up Far Cry 3 for consoles. Why am I going to pay $60 for a game that's locked at 20fps on consoles and screen tearing all over the place. It's a bit ridiculous.

[Graham Mitchell]

I feel for you. While I'll admit that I've never had an issue where the game didn't work at all, being a console gamer, a lot of games that are released release with screen tearing, sub 30fps framerate, and many other issues. Add to that that in order to get the complete game you're required to preorder and buy the ton of day one DLC that companies release, so unless they come out with a GotY edition it's never going to truly be complete.

If developers do fix the issues, they take months to do so. Twisted Metal is an amazing game, but it took until September or October to make the game playable online. It wasn't laggy, you just couldn't get into a match. Half a year atleast after the game was released. The last two times I tried to get online, the moment the countdown started for a match, my PS3 crashed. The exact same moment, twice. I have a 60GB PS3 and I've heard that was the issue, but it shouldn't matter. Playstation All Stars the game is a huge lag fest, so many bugs and glitches. The game should have came out months down the road rather than when it did. When they did patch it, the online only got worse. 1.08 is better, but still laggy. 1.05 and 1.07 was unplayable.

It was nice when consoles weren't like PCs. When developers couldn't just update the game to get it working after release. Now days, developers have the luxury of pushing out an incomplete product because they know they can patch whatever issues people complain about afterwards, They got their money already. Their fanbase doesn't mean anything to them. Rather than using sites that do video game comparisons for console comparisons, I use them to see what the framerate of the game is, screen tear, etc. It's a reason why I refuse to pick up Far Cry 3 for consoles. Why am I going to pay $60 for a game that's locked at 20fps on consoles and screen tearing all over the place. It's a bit ridiculous.

Come to the dark side. Build a pc. You won't go back once you taste the forbidden fruit ;)

Pc games still have their glitches (rage was broken out of the box until nvidia updated their drivers) but once they work they work very well. Steam is a ln awesome service, too. Full retail games take less than an hour to download.

Come, be one of us!!!

[Tanooki]

Ugh I feel bad for ya about this. This is primarily why I don't buy non-indie PC games anymore until they've been out for at least many months. To cut costs companies these days are putting less effort into testing that they once did with systems not having hard drives(consoles) or internet (for easy patches.) Now you get to buy beta software and with all the myriad of computer part randomness out there, you get to be the guinea pig on your bill which is wrong wrong wrong. It's also pretty horrid they're forcing the install of Origin.

That right there ensures I will never buy this game now. I've walked away from Steam because I didn't like the overhead, the stupid thing always in the background, and just the insidious nature of all the sales as I'd just keep clicking my paypal bucks into a pile of crap where 95% of it I used once which was a waste. :) Maybe due to the Sim fan base out there, eventually someone will clean up the bugs and hack out forced install of Origin as it looks like it could be a fun game if it ran right.

[Lanzo]

Man, I have seen the commercial a few times and was really looking forward to trying this. That's so damn lame.

[Collector_Gaming]

There is already discussion about how people are arguing about it being online constantly and the servers crapping out all over the internet. Some people are wondering how long the servers will last before they go out the window which would then render the game useless.

One guy I read said he had super high hopes for this game and wanted it be everything. But after hearing these reports he reinstalled Sim City 4 and said it will be good enough for him.

[Tupin]

To be fair, the only problems with the game is with the always-online stuff. Other than that, it's really good.

Still can't play it, though. Servers are down. I did manage to get through a tutorial, though.

Jeez, even Spore wasn't this bad.

[RP2A03]

Meanwhile at the EA servers...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UR5WpJCZGA

[Kitsune Sniper]

It looks like Amazon is giving refunds to people who bought it at their store, at least according to a review on the product page.

[danawhitaker]

It looks like Amazon is giving refunds to people who bought it at their store, at least according to a review on the product page.

They also quit selling it apparently. I loved the earlier Sim City games, particularly 2000, but I won't be touching this with a 10 foot pole. I already have one game that is tethered to an always-on umbilical cord, I don't need more of them. EA's managing to make Blizzard's Diablo 3 problems look nice.

I mean, for crying out loud. You know it's bad when EA's also disabling features in the game in order to try and make it work.

[Tupin]

Can anyone explain to me what the "always online" thing is supposed to do on paper? I could get connecting to the Internet once to register the game and tell EA I didn't pirate it or something, and I could get selectively connecting to join someone else's game.

But why do I need to be online when I'm on a private region? Why are all of the games apparently run serverside, since they removed Cheetah speed?

[danawhitaker]

Can anyone explain to me what the "always online" thing is supposed to do on paper? I could get connecting to the Internet once to register the game and tell EA I didn't pirate it or something, and I could get selectively connecting to join someone else's game.

But why do I need to be online when I'm on a private region? Why are all of the games apparently run serverside, since they removed Cheetah speed?

On paper, no matter what other excuses they give, it's supposed to prevent piracy.

At least in Diablo 3, I can see the need for it, because they want to prevent fraud and dupes and item hacking with the auction house feature.

[The 1 2 P]

I hope the console makers are paying attention to this story. One more reason we shouldn't be required to have an always-online connection.

[wingzrow]

EA has been pulling this sort of thing for YEARS. I'm not surprised in the slightest.

[danawhitaker]

EA has been pulling this sort of thing for YEARS. I'm not surprised in the slightest.

THIS bad though? So bad that Amazon or other retailers actually stopped selling the product? I've played some of the Sims 3 stuff over the years, and never ran into anything this ridiculous. I stayed away on principle from this game and I'm glad I did. People are rolling into Day 3 of not being able to play, and even reviewers are having trouble fully reviewing the game because they're unable to play.

Club Pogo, which is run by EA, and is by definition always on because all the games are java-based or Flash-based browser games through a paid service, doesn't have nearly the problems this single launch has. I can count on one hand, since 2006, the number of times the service has been completely out of commission or borked outside of regular weekly maintenance. On a side note, one of those times happened to be, conveniently enough, Wednesday, during the throes of Sim City problems. Makes me wonder if they're related at all since EA hosts it all or whether that just happened to be a coincidence.

[Graham Mitchell]

Not only is this ridiculous, it's a shame because the game sounded fun.

[danawhitaker]

http://kotaku.com/5989385/why-south-korean-gamers-are-so-pissed-about-simcity

Wow, EA. Just...wow.

[Collector_Gaming]

Well the thing I think about when I see this is EA monopolizing way too fast and have lack of control over its monopolies. Which is probably why if one game fails they will take epic franchises and take em out back and put them down for good instead of giving them another chance.
Its kinda funny cause wasn't Maxis the first company they bought out before they went ape shit crazy buying every game company they could get their filthy hands on?
https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/7116875008/h45EF64A0/

But i also wanna say this is from technology growing too fast and publishers force feeding us this new technology going. ITS NEW ITS COOL ITS BETTER THEN EVER BEFORE YOU HAVE TO TRY IT!!!! YEAH!!!!.

[Kitsune Sniper]

EA has been pulling this sort of thing for YEARS. I'm not surprised in the slightest.

Never like this.

They kill multiplayer servers after a while, and stop providing some DLC content too, but nothing has been as bad as this.

And the reason they didn't experience this during the beta testing phase is simple: They only had thousands of players playing the game then. They were simply unprepared for the huge amount of players, and it's all their fault.

[danawhitaker]

I can't recall hearing before of a company suspending marketing for a game, either. It might have happened, but I can't recall it.

http://kotaku.com/5989523/report-ea-suspends-simcity-marketing-in-light-of-launch-disaster

[Collector_Gaming]

And the reason they didn't experience this during the beta testing phase is simple: They only had thousands of players playing the game then. They were simply unprepared for the huge amount of players, and it's all their fault.

which i dont understand. what did they expect was going to happen? that people don't play sim city anymore or something?

[wingzrow]

THIS bad though? So bad that Amazon or other retailers actually stopped selling the product? I've played some of the Sims 3 stuff over the years, and never ran into anything this ridiculous.


Sims 3? You mean the game where they purposely didn't fix the bugs just so they could release expansions which ALSO didn't fix the bugs? Oh right, THAT game.

In any case, it seems like they're in full on damage control mode now.

(picture summary of everything surround this mess)

http://postimage.org/image/fdjt2yk5t/full/

[Tupin]

Here's the thing: Even with all of this negative press, even with all of these people frothing at the mouth for EA to burn, they're still going to keep doing it. And they'll still make money. In a month the servers will be fixed and we'll just be bitching about how the cities are so small and that there's no subway systems (have they ever been to a big city before?!) unless they go the route of Ubisoft.

But that's the thing. I don't think they could just pull the DRM like Ubisoft did. The whole game is designed around being always online.

[Griking]

I can't recall hearing before of a company suspending marketing for a game, either. It might have happened, but I can't recall it.

http://kotaku.com/5989523/report-ea-suspends-simcity-marketing-in-light-of-launch-disaster


Steam stopped selling WarZ for about a month or so because it was a buggy mess that didn't include many of the advertised features.

Of course its back now. Still a buggy mess and missing many advertised features...

[kupomogli]

EA is sending out emails to those people who have SimCity activated on Origins so they can get a free game from a choice of a few. Dead Space 3 and Need For Speed Most Wanted are two games that are available.

[Gamereviewgod]

EA offering free games is not an apology. It's a marketing tool. Most of the games offered have extensive DLC, so they open up additional avenues of revenue from items that in the end, cost them nothing other than some bandwidth.

The only legit apology is a refund for anyone who requests one.

[Trumpman]

EA offering free games is not an apology. It's a marketing tool. Most of the games offered have extensive DLC, so they open up additional avenues of revenue from items that in the end, cost them nothing other than some bandwidth.

The only legit apology is a refund for anyone who requests one.

Oh come on, the games have DLC available but so does EVERY big-budget game these days. That list of free games seems pretty great to me -- if I owned a copy of SimCity I'd be pretty happy with getting Battlefield 3, Mass Effect 3, or Dead Space 3 for free. Seriously, DS3 only came out a month ago and they're giving it away for free. That's crazy.

I know defending EA is blasphemy, but how can you be mad at them for this?

[kupomogli]

I was just informing those who purchased it so they don't miss the email. Besides. Dead Space 3 and Need For Speed Most Wanted are fairly new games so DLC shouldn't matter given the amount of content both games hold and the fact that most people aren't going to purchase the DLC unless they first complete the games and all the available content to begin with. Sim City 4 Deluxe Edition is also included as one of the available games and that includes what was added to Sim City 4.

Aside from that, atleast EA is doing something for the fanbase. There are a lot of developers have released games that were incomplete or broken and haven't did anything. What about the people who purchased those games and also didn't get a refund? If it wasn't EA that did this, people who have no interest in SimCity at all would have never taken interest. Because it's EA though, everyone talks like they've experienced the issue first hand. More people bash the game because it's EA than have actually played it, I'm sure(meaning that right now there's atleast 600,000 people who have bashed the game.)

The SimCity issue must have been an error that Maxis didn't notice in development or something, because it seems like they got it fixed pretty quickly. This is in comparison to developers who have game breaking issues yet don't get the game fixed for months. Twisted Metal's online was playable, but that's if you could actually get into a room. Aside from the day one patch, this went along for a month before another patch was issued although nothing was resolved. Twisted Metal is finally playable online six months after release, but that's way too late when there's hardly anyone left to play with. Don't forget that fixing this issue has a good chance to crash fat model PS3s on a match start up, so those of us with a 60GB PS3 still can't play online. Both Silent Hill Downpour and HD Collection had frame drops which I've heard have made the games unplayable and weren't patched until six months after the games release. While Downpour was patched for both PS360, Konami cancelled the HD Collection patch for the 360. Though they did offer owners who purchased the HD Collection on 360 prior to August that year the availability to exchange it with another game. Gettysburg Armored Warfare was unplayable at launch, and being an indie dev, I'm sure no one was refunded or offered anything for their troubles. There are many more games, but you get the idea.

EA quickly resolved the issues the game has and that's what's important, although people don't care if the issues it's had were resolved quickly. The fact that there was any issue with EA to begin with just gives more fuel for the hate train to keep on going.

*edit*

Mass Effect 3 and Battlefield 3 are free as well and also have DLC, so edited comment about DLC.

[SOL BADGUY]

Soooo, the EA President stepped down. Good he did.

[Nature Boy]

I think we overreact to most things but most of it is warranted in this case.

(Except the idea that giving away free games was simply a means to get people to spend more on DLC. That's not just a stretch, that's a whole Yoga class).

It's not the idea of always online that matters to me though, it's the fact that they obviously can't pull it of yet but tried anyway that is ridiculous. I don't know how you go about testing something like this prior to launch, but I know where you can ask about how not to test it prior to launch...