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(may as well just wait for the cracked version and enjoy the game with more convenience)
http://www.reddit.com/r/simcity seems to be summing up the problem pretty nicely with some clever use of the curved roads.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Although it is more likely in this case that the EA executives mandated online only to the developers.
Why? I see this over and over again in this thread, but I don't believe it anymore because it is not just a one-off case of the developers being ignored, they're willingly doing bad practices like this over and over and over again. Best case: They do it reluctantly, but don't care enough about their work to stop it. Worst case: They do it willingly and think it is a great idea.
I feel bad for the game devs who got to see their hard work turn into something they don't intend. I suppose this is a great advertising technique for small firms, startups, indie shops, etc. "Don't want this[ http://amazon-pulls-sim-city ] to happen? Work for our small team. We won't destroy your work." I know it's standard to say "you get a part in the decisionmaking process!" That's part of it. But a lot of people…
Maxis has totally ignored the issue. Look at their Reddit AMA when nearly every question was regarding this, and they didn't even acknowledge it. Perhaps they were under legal obligation or pressure from EA, but I find it hard to feel sympathy.
When a game requires an internet connection to work we call it DRM and slam it. When a text editor or spreadsheet requires an internet connection to run we call it innovation.
Online spreadsheets or docs allow you to export to a locally accessible format. SimCity does not.
I mean, besides the DRM. I don't get why my fake city has to be attached to a world of fake cities if all I want to do is play in the sandbox. Didn't the designers/executives consider that many people would be perfectly fine playing alone? And then slowly rolling out the multiplayer features?
I doubt we'll see it, but it'd be great to see a post-mortem of the actual bug. Was it load-related or just something extremely boneheaded?
SimCity and SimCity 2000 were such great games, it's a bit disappointing to see how EA screwed up the rest of the series.
Micropolis (Simcity): http://code.google.com/p/micropolis/
SimCity 2000: http://www.gog.com/gamecard/simcity_2000_special_edition
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I don't think you're adding clarity here. People are upset about the lack of a single player offline mode, which absolutely is about preventing unlicensed copies. There is no technical reason for its absence. The cloud based stuff sounds great, and if it were an optional extra that was unavailable at launch due to technical difficulties, I doubt you'd see a hundredth as much bad PR.
>People are upset about the lack of a single player offline mode, which absolutely is about preventing unlicensed copies. There is no technical reason for its absence. I see this sentiment expressed pretty often, but in this case it seems flawed. From what I understand, you can't build a city that does everything, instead you rely on the other cities in your 'region.' The new Simcity is no more single player than Wor…
WoW relies on active human beings to make its world lively and addicting. I don't think that need is as prevalent in a sim game, where the game AI itself can...well...simulate the regional qualities that would affect a player's city well enough.
1) remove the online DRM 2) significantly expand the size of the ridiculously small city area (let users push the bounds of their system by choosing how big of a city to work on) 3) enable a save/load to go with the offline mode
Do it as fast as possible. And then suck up to users by providing some free DLC here and there.
Anyone taking bets that EA will do the opposite of these obvious steps?
Can we talk about this more clearly? This isn't strictly "evil DRM" as people are highlighting. Unlike some other games, it's not like SimCity is just phoning home to figure out if it is licensed or not, and preventing unlicensed copies. SimCity depends on EA/Maxis' server infrastructure for a great deal of storage and computation related to the macro-scale components of each game. Not only is city state synced there…