Sim City 5 (2013) - Sim<parameter: string>

[avelle]

Is there a trick to sharing resources between cities? My one is flooded with power but I can't seem to be able to choose to buy any for my second city.

Are your two cities connected by road? They need to be in the same "cluster" in order to be able to share services.

[Hank]

Yes, they're right next to each other. They're actually so close that I can see a car leaving my city drive down the main road of the second.

[chiyio]

worst part is, because of their reported DRM tactic being most of the game's calculations and inner workings taking place on EA's servers to prevent piracy, once the servers go down you're literally shit out of luck and your game just became a brick. tbh I think im going to stick to sim city 4 and spend the 60 bucks elsewhere, the whole system that they have laid out for this thing is beyond ridiculous and does not deserve any support. a shame that the IP is what it is and it got so much right out the gate because of it

I think this has been shown to not be true. All the city calculations are done on your own PC. The servers just handle the communication between your city and the others in the region.

[Scythiroth]

All of this news has been really depressing. =/ I really hope EA admits fault in all of this and decides to change, but who am I kidding, they will probably just blame Maxis and continue their DRM and always online in everything.

[Maestro]

Yes, they're right next to each other. They're actually so close that I can see a car leaving my city drive down the main road of the second.

Was finally able to log into my city and it seems that the only requirement if the cities are connected by road is that the city providing power have excess power. Than the option to purchase the power from the 2nd city should be available in the region view of the city that will be buying power.

[falloutboy14]

FYI, I tried sharing electricity/water between two cities connected by a road. I was unable to do so (I did it in the beta, so I know how to do it). I'm thinking the server issue is also preventing cities from interacting in this way.

To expand on how to buy/sell electricity, it should just be a matter of playing the city that wants to purchase electricity, going to region view, and clicking on the power symbol.

[Uzor]

In the city that will be buying power, go to region view. There, press the electricity tab, and there will be a button to buy.

To share services, you have to be in the city that will give.

Also; UI is server dependent. I've managed to load a game, but lose connection to the server that handles the UI and construction. I wasn't even able to build a road.

[djzombie]

I want to buy this game, but you guys keep saying things on here that make me want to wait until they remove this awful always online requirement

[Lucavi]

There seems to be some fuzzy math involved with just how much of something you can use from a city. I had a power plant that was producing 150w of elec, my main city was using 98w, and the remaining was to be sold off to two other cities. I eventually hit a point with one of my other cities where power was getting close to being cut off and no additional power was available to be purchased, despite the main power plant not being close to running out. I switched back to the city with the power plant and double checked the numbers on its own end, and they were the same, but after I plopped down another module which doubled the power and switched back, both of my other cities were free to consume and purchase more power.

This leads me to believe that either the main city will always leave enough of a resource for to serve as a comfortable buffer to their own needs (to prevent all regions who use the resource from all borking out at once), or the stuff isn't working 100% correctly. I have a similar situation with sewage, with there being tons of room left in a treatment plant, yet one of my cities who was sending off their sewage was beginning to get backed-up. I'm sure that if I drop another tank in the ground, all will be fine, but I wish this game did a better job of showing you the exact science behind the numbers, instead of giving you rough estimates of when things may shut off for sister cities.

[Ohemgee]

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18gv...jpg/xlarge.jpg

Totally doing this the next time I'm able to get in to the game

Spoiler: show

next week!

[Necronus]

I think this has been shown to not be true. All the city calculations are done on your own PC. The servers just handle the communication between your city and the others in the region.

I've been watching various forums on reports of the truth behind this matter. From what I gather, the only server calculations are

A) As you said, intra-region sharing (which *could* be done locally if they really wanted)
B) As an extension of A, calculating the "global" market prices of the invisible "Maxis" player (totally not needed for SP, they could be constants or just simulated)

TLDR: SC2013 DOES rely on server calcs, but only because they intentionally put them there for no good reason.

[Hank]

FYI, I tried sharing electricity/water between two cities connected by a road. I was unable to do so (I did it in the beta, so I know how to do it). I'm thinking the server issue is also preventing cities from interacting in this way.

To expand on how to buy/sell electricity, it should just be a matter of playing the city that wants to purchase electricity, going to region view, and clicking on the power symbol.

That's what I'm thinking, that it's a current issue, because I've definitely been able to do it before in a different region.

[Ohemgee]

http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/8/408...es-do-the-same

EA puts marketing efforts on hold and encourages their affiliates to do the same.

Electronic Arts has faced a number of problems with the latest SimCity since launching the title, and the ongoing issues have now led the company to call off some of its online marketing — and it's asking affiliates to do the same. Polygon reports that EA has sent an email out to members of EA Origin's LinkShare program, informing them that it has "deactivated all SimCity text links and creative," and is requesting that members of the program do so as well. EA will still pay commissions to program members for any referred sales, and pledges to let members know when it resumes the marketing efforts.

It's just the latest reaction in what has become a truly embarrassing snafu. Earlier this week "non-critical" features of the game were turned off, while Amazon has suspended digital sales of the game due to the overwhelming number of customer complaints. Polygon has also reported on an internal memo from developer Maxis about the steps it is taking to stabilize the situation, but it's still not clear when SimCity players can expect the game to function as advertised.

This is worst than D3. This is worst than SWTOR. EA has really fucked up this time when they're saying NOT to advertise their own god damn game.

[Salodin]

So tragic its funny.

[TacoTaru]

EA: SimCity's broken because it's just too much fun!

In what has to be the most incredible display of PR spin seen in a videogame crisis, an Electronic Arts spokesperson has claimed SimCity's notoriously awful DRM setbacks are a result of the game being just too gosh-darn enjoyable to quit! No, this isn't an Onion article.

"What we saw was that players were having such a good time they didn't want to leave the game, which kept our servers packed and made it difficult for new players to join," explained senior producer Kip Katsarelis on EA's forums.

The remark has already led to SimCity being renamed to SpinCity (thanks to Hollander Cooper!) in celebration of an almost impressive bit of damage control. SimCity is now the game too fun to work, and it's all your fault for wanting to play it so badly.

Amazing.

http://www.destructoid.com/ea-simcit...--248186.phtml

[Prothescar]

are you fucking kidding me right now

[Scythiroth]

are you fucking kidding me right now

^

Almost spit out my water reading that quote from them.

[Necronus]

http://www.destructoid.com/ea-simcit...--248186.phtml

Clearly they should take the next logical step by assigning players to predetermined play windows!

"Timmy, you can play Wednesdays 5PM-9PM, Fridays from 1PM-5PM, and every other Saturday from 2AM-6AM. Tina can play on ... "

followed by

"..... and for only $3.95 on our Origin store you can buy a Time Shuffle pack to get a new set of assigned times. Or for $8.95 you can buy a Premium Time Bender pack which lets you manually pick one of the 5 hour windows!"

[TacoTaru]

I don't think this is an official SimCity account, but I still laughed.

[Sephiroth]

"What we saw was that players were having such a good time they didn't want to leave the game, which kept our servers packed and made it difficult for new players to join,"

Had to LOL at that. If I buy a PC game I'm probably going to leave it running in the background even when I am not actively playing it.

I held off pre-ordering this due to the ridiculous pricing and these server issues are enough to put me off buying it for a while. Unfortunately for EA I will have other games to play by then.