3 ms·

The response from the community in regards to SimCity is understandable -- but also disturbing. SimCity isn't unplayable. Quite the opposite. It is an engrossi

The response from the community in regards to SimCity is understandable -- but also disturbing. SimCity isn't unplayable. Quite the opposite. It is an engrossing, beautiful, rich game with plenty of gameplay available. I've played the game for probably forty hours so far, across four different cities -- and the game has only been out for a week. That's amazing. A game hasn't captured my attention like this in quite a while. And yet, many players seem to believe the game is completely unplayable. The top comment on this thread as I write this says that the game is a 'travesty' and shouldn't have been shipped. That's unreasonable. I can only begin to imagine what SimCity's developers are feeling right now. They built this beautiful, different, rich product that is objectively amazing. And yet the players they wanted to please can't stop talking about how shit it is. Usually I place the blame at the feet of the developers, but not this time. This time, I think it's the community that needs to get over it. There is a rich, great game here if you just look past your own expectations for half a second.

benjarrell 14y ago
It is broken when things such as this happen all to regularly: http://i.imgur.com/7cd6VZV.jpg http://i.imgur.com/7cd6VZV.jpg Every single police car in the entire city will respond to the exact same crime in progress, ignoring all others, creating a traffic black hole, and leaving you with no police.
- jellicle 14y ago
  Things like that could not help but have been noticed. Somewhere there is a bug report: "All police cars respond to every crime". It is marked something like "WONTFIX - by design" or "WONTFIX - no time before release" or "WISHLIST". That is all anyone needs to know about the game to judge it.
IheartApplesDix 14y ago
You know what else is playable? Simcity 2000, 3000, 4, etc. Sorry, but "playable" is putting your pants on in the morning, especially in the niche of AAA, DRM'd, persistent, service based gaming markets like this. Nobody pays a premium for incomplete services unless those are some top notch services; not services just billed that way and described in terms of reticulated splines. Just because corporations now have the rights to buy and sell concepts that should have passed into public domain decades ago doesn't mean that they really "own" the public awareness, emotional investment and their passions. Rights can be bound by laws and recorded on paper, but you can't put a price on 10 million fans and tell them to suck it up and drop their expectations because they are legally owned. When you buy a franchise like this, you're really buying a responsibility, not a cash cow to be milked until a husk. To EA this is just another product reaching the end of it's life cycle and they're trying to stay profitable while keeping the lights on, and it doesn't matter if that means ripping out half the game and replacing it with anti-features and price tags. I think publishers and "innocent developers just doing what their boss asked" may be the entitled ones here, thinking they deserve a payday because they worked hard bringing you a game that is quite profitable to operate. You know who else worked hard, harder than anyone else? Hitler.
joshdotsmith 14y ago
I understand the point you're making, but two things are still just horribly broken: 1) Pathing. Once you reach a certain city size, there's not much you can do that helps resolve this issue. 2) Numbers don't add up. Again, once you reach a certain city size, you can't keep services in line with your population. No matter how much else I may love about the game, these make it a broken experience for me.
munificent 14y ago
> They built this beautiful, different, rich product that is objectively amazing. And yet the players they wanted to please can't stop talking about how shit it is. This experience has been true for all game developers of all gamers forever. While many games do have serious flaws and much criticism is valid, my experience is that gamers are the most entitled, fickle, negative audience you can imagine.

benjarrell 14y ago

It is broken when things such as this happen all to regularly: http://i.imgur.com/7cd6VZV.jpg http://i.imgur.com/7cd6VZV.jpg Every single police car in the entire city will respond to the exact same crime in progress, ignoring all others, creating a traffic black hole, and leaving you with no police.

jellicle 14y ago
Things like that could not help but have been noticed. Somewhere there is a bug report: "All police cars respond to every crime". It is marked something like "WONTFIX - by design" or "WONTFIX - no time before release" or "WISHLIST". That is all anyone needs to know about the game to judge it.

IheartApplesDix 14y ago

You know what else is playable? Simcity 2000, 3000, 4, etc. Sorry, but "playable" is putting your pants on in the morning, especially in the niche of AAA, DRM'd, persistent, service based gaming markets like this. Nobody pays a premium for incomplete services unless those are some top notch services; not services just billed that way and described in terms of reticulated splines. Just because corporations now have the rights to buy and sell concepts that should have passed into public domain decades ago doesn't mean that they really "own" the public awareness, emotional investment and their passions. Rights can be bound by laws and recorded on paper, but you can't put a price on 10 million fans and tell them to suck it up and drop their expectations because they are legally owned. When you buy a franchise like this, you're really buying a responsibility, not a cash cow to be milked until a husk. To EA this is just another product reaching the end of it's life cycle and they're trying to stay profitable while keeping the lights on, and it doesn't matter if that means ripping out half the game and replacing it with anti-features and price tags. I think publishers and "innocent developers just doing what their boss asked" may be the entitled ones here, thinking they deserve a payday because they worked hard bringing you a game that is quite profitable to operate. You know who else worked hard, harder than anyone else? Hitler.

joshdotsmith 14y ago

I understand the point you're making, but two things are still just horribly broken: 1) Pathing. Once you reach a certain city size, there's not much you can do that helps resolve this issue. 2) Numbers don't add up. Again, once you reach a certain city size, you can't keep services in line with your population. No matter how much else I may love about the game, these make it a broken experience for me.

munificent 14y ago

> They built this beautiful, different, rich product that is objectively amazing. And yet the players they wanted to please can't stop talking about how shit it is. This experience has been true for all game developers of all gamers forever. While many games do have serious flaws and much criticism is valid, my experience is that gamers are the most entitled, fickle, negative audience you can imagine.