Sim City: Ruined by DRM?

[Saracen]

After reading back, i see you're right. I mistakenly assumed your quoting me was from my comment following spuds comment. So i acted rashly. I admit i am wrong, and take it back. But i still say you were making an issue out of a small thing.

The reason I quoted each and every post number was to make it clear what the sequence of posts was.

The reason I said "But .... it doesn't really matter ....." was precisely because I wanted it clear I was not making an issue of it.


It is all too easy, as I said, to get confused over what tracks with what, in a long thread. Which is precisely why I said, very clearly, that it didn't matter. I was merely pointing out that you were mistaken, and that you had quoted me.

That doesn't matter.

What does matter is the way you reacted.

That snide "open your eyes" remark and the dig about "picky, insignificant nothings" does matter. It is entirely a common way of having a poke at someone, just like you did when warned before.

Look, I've spent many years as an admin here, and elsewhere for that matter, but especially here, I and others have invested a lot of time and effort getting to the point where we can have some very interesting debates, including on some quite emotive topics, and can disagree completely wothout seeking to prod and poke at others like that, because if you do, it escalates. A snippy remark gets a snippy response, which gets a snippier response, and ends up in a flame war. I've put out enough to know how it starts, and how it ends.

There are quite a few people on here with whom I, for one, regularly have arguments. Santa for one. Aidanjt and I regularly disagree (and perhaps less regularly agree), and we've been doing it for years. We are, if you like, "friends", in a way. But we always manage to hsve those arguments with a tone of politeness and courtesy, or it ends up simply wrecking the threads.

We also had a number of members privately tell the admin team that they didn't comment in "emotive" threads, because it could get quite aggressive. We've worked hard for years to stamp that out. Everybody should be able to jump in without getting snipped at.

You, frankly, show all the hallmarks of being a great addition to this board, being mainly clear, eloquent, active, opinionated and willing to jump in. But that snippy attitude is not how we do things.

Simplistically put, that "care to open your eyes" remark could have been expressed as simply "I didn't mean you" without using language clearly intended to be a poke.

Similarly, that "yes sir" remark .... it's rather what was known in the army as dumb insolence, because it says a lot more than the words alone do.

I strongly recommend that a little thought about how snippy remarks are likely to be received is worthwhile before making them, because if an attitude that threatens to disrupt an otherwise good thread continues, it's only a matter of time before I or another mod puts a stop to it, and that would be a pity.

So it is not a matter of it being a "small thing", and certainly not of making an issue of it, but of merely a correction to a mistake. Had I merely said, you were quoting me, you very likely would have said you weren't. That's why I gave the detail of exactly what was quoted, by whom, in sequence.... not to make an issue of it, but to avoid misunderstandings, and to avoid having to go back and forth with 'yes you did", and "no I didn't" posts.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

You can still play on a train with a 3G stick, as there is a 20 minute "grace" period (well, its roughly 20 min) where it doesn't need an internet connection. 3G should be fine for it too as it doesn't send a lot of data.

There are no "mods" that let you actually destroy another players city - at least not permanently. The game doesn't save what you do, so the other play never knows you have "destroyed" their city..so this really is a non-issue. Yes in theory you could spoof another player id and origin account, and bypass any security..but at the moment that isn't possible.

I don't think that EA or Maxis have actually lied to us about the game either - yes there were major issues at launch (it was unplayable) and yes it's overpriced, but the game itself is actually very good and extremely addictive, once people get off their high horses and actually just play the game. lots of people are realising this.

I had similar negative opinions a week ago, then I played a friends copy..I've now bought it (thankfully with a 50% off code) and sunk 12 hours into the damn thing this weekend already..running 4 cities on Antarctica without any server issues/queues, and cheetah mode is available/working...

One last thing - I completely get why being an always on multiplayer game makes a difference - this particular iteration of Sim City would be no fun at all on your own, and would be much harder. It's very focussed around the multiplayer interaction and working together to build (or destroy) cities/wonders etc. I can see potential for "world economic wars" here inside a region, a decent in-game marketplace (not micro transactions..talking more stocks/shares).

It's not the single player Sim City that many wanted - in the same way that Aliens:Colonial Marines was not the sequel to AvP that we all wanted, or Deux Ex 2 IW wasn't the sequel to Deus Ex, or the new C&C going FTP...we have to just deal with the fact that sometimes games companies don't make exactly what we want.

well said.

as i said previously, Those who have actually put more then 5mins in this game, love it and enjoying it. yea its not perfect. no game is but it is easily a good game in the 7+/10 bracket.

And i have almost proven teh fact that most here would have bought it had it not been the DRM. So that person making a sly remark saying "thats what happens when someone doesnt read the thread" needs to point that remark to he or she's self.

edit:

regards to your last statement, i would like to edit this a bit:

"game companies sometimes want to umm try something new and refreshing in there franchise" People complain when game companies simply up the graphics and slap on an incremented number for the sequal complaining how its the same old etc etc and then the same complain saying bah bah this game is ruined! what is this new feature x and y. i want my old game with updated graphics blah blah there is no winning

[xodianbarr]

The reason I quoted each and every post number was to make it clear what the sequence of posts was.

The reason I said "But .... it doesn't really matter ....." was precisely because I wanted it clear I was not making an issue of it.


It is all too easy, as I said, to get confused over what tracks with what, in a long thread. Which is precisely why I said, very clearly, that it didn't matter. I was merely pointing out that you were mistaken, and that you had quoted me.

That doesn't matter.

What does matter is the way you reacted.

That snide "open your eyes" remark and the dig about "picky, insignificant nothings" does matter. It is entirely a common way of having a poke at someone, just like you did when warned before.

Look, I've spent many years as an admin here, and elsewhere for that matter, but especially here, I and others have invested a lot of time and effort getting to the point where we can have some very interesting debates, including on some quite emotive topics, and can disagree completely wothout seeking to prod and poke at others like that, because if you do, it escalates. A snippy remark gets a snippy response, which gets a snippier response, and ends up in a flame war. I've put out enough to know how it starts, and how it ends.

There are quite a few people on here with whom I, for one, regularly have arguments. Santa for one. Aidanjt and I regularly disagree (and perhaps less regularly agree), and we've been doing it for years. We are, if you like, "friends", in a way. But we always manage to hsve those arguments with a tone of politeness and courtesy, or it ends up simply wrecking the threads.

We also had a number of members privately tell the admin team that they didn't comment in "emotive" threads, because it could get quite aggressive. We've worked hard for years to stamp that out. Everybody should be able to jump in without getting snipped at.

You, frankly, show all the hallmarks of being a great addition to this board, being mainly clear, eloquent, active, opinionated and willing to jump in. But that snippy attitude is not how we do things.

Simplistically put, that "care to open your eyes" remark could have been expressed as simply "I didn't mean you" without using language clearly intended to be a poke.

Similarly, that "yes sir" remark .... it's rather what was known in the army as dumb insolence, because it says a lot more than the words alone do.

I strongly recommend that a little thought about how snippy remarks are likely to be received is worthwhile before making them, because if an attitude that threatens to disrupt an otherwise good thread continues, it's only a matter of time before I or another mod puts a stop to it, and that would be a pity.

So it is not a matter of it being a "small thing", and certainly not of making an issue of it, but of merely a correction to a mistake. Had I merely said, you were quoting me, you very likely would have said you weren't. That's why I gave the detail of exactly what was quoted, by whom, in sequence.... not to make an issue of it, but to avoid misunderstandings, and to avoid having to go back and forth with 'yes you did", and "no I didn't" posts.

I appreciate that. It is why after my insolent 'yes sir' i bothered to go back and check properly. Undoubtedly something i should have done in the first place. I could go into depth to explain why i was patronising towards you, but i dont see that it would be a worthwhile venture. More than at least to say that i thought i was not quoting you, but i felt on the second occasion you were trying to antagonise me. Truth be told i do take things too personally, and tend to see criticism where maybe there is none. I felt that on an earlier occasion, you were arguing against me without giving my comments enough consideration, for example. You mentioned about earlier giving me a warning, fair enough, but for my part i did not even realise you had.

One last note, my 'yes sir' was posted purely because you decided to threaten me with suspension in public, rather than in private. Were you to have discussed your misgivings with me via PM, i would have responded politely.

[TheAnimus]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain...lopers-vision/

So basically it could easily have been Steam Like DRM.

[Pob255]

SNIP

I'm not getting into this DRM debate here, I'm just addressing the 2nd point

"game companies sometimes want to umm try something new and refreshing in there franchise" People complain when game companies simply up the graphics and slap on an incremented number for the sequal complaining how its the same old etc etc and then the same complain saying bah bah this game is ruined! what is this new feature x and y. i want my old game with updated graphics blah blah there is no winning

I'd agree with that but for a slight problem, game play gets stale when you repeat the same thing over and over with new graphics ONLY when you do not have a fan base or the market is over-saturated with clone/similar games or you are churning them out too frequently with too little change.

And SimCity does not fall into any of these 3 pit falls, the last real simcity game was simcity4 in 2003, 10 years ago, the only other game really close I can think of is Cities XL, so the market and fans are hardly flooded with games of this choice.
(strangely enough cities XL started with a multi-player structure similar to that of the new simcity but dropped it in favor of single player only)

They've tried "something new and refreshing" in the series before, it was called SimCity Societies the reviews where mixed and it had lackluster sales.

All told there are enough people who want a new Simcity and would of happily have the same thing again with new shiny graphics, by EA is more focused on trying to get the next "Sims" mass appeal game which can be used to generate a larger and more sustained revenue over time.

It's not a bad game, it's a good game, but it's not the game a lot of the fans have been waiting for, which is a good part of what is kicking up a lot of stink.
I can see that it's getting a lot of popularity and buzz, but I'm not sure it's going to generate the levels of long term interest and revenue EA are hopeing for.

[Saracen]

I appreciate that. It is why after my insolent 'yes sir' i bothered to go back and check properly. Undoubtedly something i should have done in the first place. I could go into depth to explain why i was patronising towards you, but i dont see that it would be a worthwhile venture. More than at least to say that i thought i was not quoting you, but i felt on the second occasion you were trying to antagonise me. Truth be told i do take things too personally, and tend to see criticism where maybe there is none. I felt that on an earlier occasion, you were arguing against me without giving my comments enough consideration, for example. You mentioned about earlier giving me a warning, fair enough, but for my part i did not even realise you had.

One last note, my 'yes sir' was posted purely because you decided to threaten me with suspension in public, rather than in private. Were you to have discussed your misgivings with me via PM, i would have responded politely.

Oh, I see. You think I'm not giving your views enough consideration, and that justifies snide, patronising and deliberately insolent attitude?

You choose not to tell me, politely and in a PM, that you feel that, and instead choose to be snotty at me in public, yet I should go to PM to address yoyr concerns instead of dealing with that attitude where you did, in public. And your posts make it clear you are STILL trying to blame this on me.

You got a dressing down in public because you chose to be snide, at me, in public. If you felt I wasn't "giving my comments enough consideration", you could have taken that to me by PM, where I would gave told you, politely, that no, I considered what you said. I just don't agree.

Let me make this very clear, because you are still arguing over the style of moderating decisions, and I've had enough of it.

Any post I make on the subject of a thread is open to disagreement, and you or anyone else is free to disagree. Goodness knows enough people do.

Moderating decisions and their validity or method are not subject to your approval, or whether you like them or not, and are not up for debate, and for absolute certainty, not for insolent remarks because you "felt" I wasn't giving your posts due consideration. I'm not obliged to give your remarks any consideration, and nor is anybody else, nor are you obliged to give my opinions on thread subject matter adequate consideration. You can ignore them entirely if you wish. A fair few people seem to do that to me, too, and that's their right. But moderating decisions aren't up for challenge.

Now, here's another moderating decision. I'm not going to continue justifying moderating decisions. It's been explained at length. And that is now at an end.

So lose that snide attitude, drop the challenge, right now, and move on. Stop the arguing, and the self-serving justifications, and move on. Do that, and we'll get along fine. But if I see that snide and patronising attitude again, or if you continue trying to blame this on me, a suspension will follow immediately.

You next post on this matter, if you choose to make one, determines what happens next, because you've had all the lattitude from me your going to get. If you want to be suspended, keep arguing.

[jimbouk]

Posts on both sides of this debate are not making this thread a nice read or the community a better place. Perhaps a clean up of the thread so it can go back on topic and then taking it out of the public eye would be helpful?

[xodianbarr]

Oh, I see. You think I'm not giving your views enough consideration, and that justifies snide, patronising and deliberately insolent attitude?

You choose not to tell me, politely and in a PM, that you feel that, and instead choose to be snotty at me in public, yet I should go to PM to address yoyr concerns instead of dealing with that attitude where you did, in public. And your posts make it clear you are STILL trying to blame this on me.

You got a dressing down in public because you chose to be snide, at me, in public. If you felt I wasn't "giving my comments enough consideration", you could have taken that to me by PM, where I would gave told you, politely, that no, I considered what you said. I just don't agree.

Let me make this very clear, because you are still arguing over the style of moderating decisions, and I've had enough of it.

Any post I make on the subject of a thread is open to disagreement, and you or anyone else is free to disagree. Goodness knows enough people do.

Moderating decisions and their validity or method are not subject to your approval, or whether you like them or not, and are not up for debate, and for absolute certainty, not for insolent remarks because you "felt" I wasn't giving your posts due consideration. I'm not obliged to give your remarks any consideration, and nor is anybody else, nor are you obliged to give my opinions on thread subject matter adequate consideration. You can ignore them entirely if you wish. A fair few people seem to do that to me, too, and that's their right. But moderating decisions aren't up for challenge.

Now, here's another moderating decision. I'm not going to continue justifying moderating decisions. It's been explained at length. And that is now at an end.

So lose that snide attitude, drop the challenge, right now, and move on. Stop the arguing, and the self-serving justifications, and move on. Do that, and we'll get along fine. But if I see that snide and patronising attitude again, or if you continue trying to blame this on me, a suspension will follow immediately.

You next post on this matter, if you choose to make one, determines what happens next, because you've had all the lattitude from me your going to get. If you want to be suspended, keep arguing.

Look, im not trying to get your back up. Yes i said some things i shouldn't have, and i agree that patronising you was not a very nice thing to do, and again, i apologise that. But i must stipulate that i did not post that with the intention of apportioning blame. It is entirely my fault that i did not bother to read your post properly and get my facts straight before responding, in my last post i was merely explaining why i over reacted and was therefore rash. Im not telling you how to do your job. I can see you're a well educated and intelligent man with thought evoking opinions and i value that - i really do. I spoke about your dressing down in public, because that is what you did. I decided to discuss this publicly - again, because that is what you did. I'm really not trying to upset you and im not even justifying my behaviour - im just explaining to why i reacted as i did. How I would have reacted by PM is really rather irrelevant. What matters is how I 'said' i would have reacted. You have an opinion about how i would react - yet you do not know me. It is unfair to assume that i am dishonest without reason to justify it. I can tell you that i have opened my feelings up to you to bother to explain my actions purely because I am - honest.

[Marenghi]

some people really don't know when to stop

back on topic;

i won't be buying this game because i don't like the route Maxis decided to go down and the fact that we've been lied to as to what the always on connection was for. talk about back tracking when the backlash begun

[j.o.s.h.1408]

I'm unsubscribing from this thread.

[Saracen]

Posts on both sides of this debate are not making this thread a nice read or the community a better place. Perhaps a clean up of the thread so it can go back on topic and then taking it out of the public eye would be helpful?

As the exchange you refer to is now terminated, yes, when I get a chance, I'll clean it up. But I'm not going to even try on the touch-screen on this tablet. It's too fiddly to do it.

Whether it makes the place better or not is a matter of opinion, and mine differs from yours. No, it's not nice. But first, it makes clear what is or is not acceptable. Second, if it leads to an account suspension, and this now has, we can't be accused of doing things in secret, as has happened in the past.

But this is not the place for further discussion on that, either.

[Jay]

anyway....

Update 3/18/2013 - Update 1.7

General:

• All units and buildings can now be demolished using the bulldoze tool.
• Performance improvements for low spec systems.

Traffic Improvements:

• Tuned traffic congestion and fixed some intersection traffic issues.
• Emergency Vehicles will drive in empty lanes to get around traffic at intersections.
• Emergency and Delivery vehicles get priority over regular traffic when leaving garage

This seems to fix some of the issues that had popped up in a few reviews.

[jimbouk]

This seems to fix some of the issues that had popped up in a few reviews.

Sign of the times I guess. Forgetting the DRM/always on issue, another software house has released a beta to customers as a finished product and underestimated the server loads.

- Step 1: apologise, add some more servers and give away some back catalogue
- Step 2: get patching!

It really doesn't seem worth buying any new game within a month of release due to them not being completed and tested.

I remember Half-Life 2 on release, which I specifically bought a boxed copy of due to my internet not being the fasted in the world, only to be saddled with overloaded servers and a patch on day 0. Over 8 years later and nothing has changed...

This doesn't seem to be limited to PC games either, plenty of PS3 games have day 0 patches before you can play them online (though the update servers seem not to struggle as much).

[Jonj1611]

I do keep looking at Simcity and thinking I wouldn't mind playing that, but my internet isn't always stable, I used to hate it when playing for hours on Fifa Manager and have that crash and lose all that work. Plus as mentioned I can see some other things like having to pay for bigger cities etc, plus I am not a very online player type person, I would rather play by myself, take that as you will lol.

[Pob255]

This seems to fix some of the issues that had popped up in a few reviews.

Traffic AI is still very bad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6Cs2M93IxE
Interesting that EA are now giving away a "free game" to everyone who bought simcity

[kopite]

I`ve been playing it for a few hours today and whilst I still havent filled the area I have for my city I can already feel it being a bit cramped. I really wish they would make the cities a lot bigger