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Hacker Skips SimCity Full-Time Network Requirement
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Geek.com: "Ever since SimCity launched, there has been a suspicion that the need for the game to always be connected to a server was mainly a form of DRM, not for social game features and multiplayer. Then a Maxis developer came forward to confirm the game doesn't actually need a server to function, suggesting the information coming out of EA wasn't the whole truth. Now EA and Maxis have some explaining to do as a modder has managed to get the game running offline indefinitely." The writer names a few small ways in which the game is actually improved by being offline, too.
Not a huge surprise... Though I wonder how they're going to wriggle their way out of that one. I'm guessing they'll just try to ignore it and hope it goes away.
I gave up sigs almost a year ago.
This is probably the best thing that could have happened to SimCity 5 in order to save the SimCity franchise.
It's a pity how corporate greed can ruin an otherwise excellent product. Management at EA/Maxis was obviously incredibly detached from the product. Comments such as how surprised and unprepared they were for the massive response they got to the new product speaks volumes to the fact that the people in charge had absolutely no clue about the products they make, nor what it takes to make them successful.
The good news? At least there is one team out there that gets it!
Whew! This water sure is cold!
There's a YouTube video at the top of the article. Here's a direct link: SimCity Super Debug Mode.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
I just don't care to spend that much effort fixing something that should have had the option out-of-the-box. EA is a big company, if they want sales, sell a finished game. Getting upset and spending my TIME trying to hack it or pirate isn't worth the $60 anymore... The have created a situation where even FREE is losing me money.
The solution is that the servers needed to JUST WORK. As a grown up, waiting twenty minutes even twice has wasted more of my money/time than the price of the game... They're jerks, fix it.
Here is what Lt. Cmdr Data thinks about this.
I was a big fan of the game since the original and thought it odd it was one of the few mega-popular EA franchises that did not get updated frequently. I was anticipating the release, but I have learned not to pre-order any video game, nor buy it until it has been out a number of months for it either to be "fixed", for customer reviews to roll in, and beta test NDA's to expire. The bigger the game company the worse the lies become.
Professional game reviewers and magazines can simply not be trusted. Shorly after release metacritic scores showed the "professional" critics giving 90's and 100's, while no customer aside from a stockholm syndrome candidate gives a good review at all. Now that it is popular to bash the title, magazines being rolling in with the poor reviews.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
They were probably finally able to login to the game last night.
The article noted that you can do everything, and better, offline except "save" and "socialize". I would bet that you can work around the save issue simply by running a virtual machine and saving the session using the virtual machines capability to preserve memory state. Unless this thing is actually monitoring gaps in the wall clock time record for DRM puproses it should be possible to use a memory image.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
This is the top positive review on Amazon:
You'd think I'd be mega unhappy like everyone else at the constant waiting and lack of actually being able to play a game I purchased.
Well, you'd be wrong.
The hours upon hours since launch that I haven't been able to log in, whether it be sitting in queues, or server busy messages, or just plain old not working screens, I've managed to do a heap of things that I never do when I'm locked in my man cave playing video games.
I've washed the dishes, the laundry, changed the oil in the car, mopped the floors, dusted, did a spot of gardening, greeted my children who I hadn't really seen since Christmas, walked the dog, asked how my wife's day has been and listened to the entire response, restocked the groceries and many more things! My family has never been happier that they've got a father and husband again.
In fact, I feel like Simcity has given me a new lease on life. This wouldn't have been possible without the seemingly crazy decision to have constant online connections and server side save points even for single player.
So I can only thank EA and Maxis. Your failures have been my rewards. 5 stars!
"Is it even fun?"
The answer is "no."
I'm embarrassed to say I purchased this game. The goddamn digital deluxe edition for $80 goddamn dollars. I should probably click the "Post Anonymously" box to hide my shame, but I won't. I'll wear my scarlet EA.
Now, I knew about the "you have to be online" thing, but I thought that was just for authentication, like StarCraft 2. I do not like DRM, I run Linux on most of my computers, and I'm a donation-making member of the EFF (got the t-shirts and everything) but I will, on occasion, fork over cash for a DRMed video game and roll my eyes when I have to sit through "verifying with server..." bullshit. I'm weak.
I read pre-reviews of the game, and I watched gameplay videos. I have fond memories of SimCity 2000, and thought this game looked awesome.
I was annoyed when I couldn't play for the first two days because of 'server load' issues. They were right about the "multiplayer experience." Not being able to play a video game because "servers are unavailable" is definitely part of the multiplayer experience.
But, I'm a patient person, and I wanted to play this game. So when the servers stabilized and I had time over the weekend, I played. And it was great! It was a ton of fun drawing and planning my city.
Until.
Until you hit about 100k population (which, as the decompiled ui code shows is only actually 15000 sims because they inflate the pop to make it seem like they're doing more). When you get about that big, all of a sudden, the city collapses because of incredible traffic jams on the roads. No one can get to work or back, a building catches fire and the fire trucks can't get to it so the building burns down. Sims get sick and the ambulances can't reach them because of traffic, they die, people become unhappy and leave, no money from no taxes, city collapses etc etc.
And at first you think, "Oh, I have clearly been mistaken with regards to my city planning abilities! What an interesting challenge! Let's look closer at the traffic patterns to see what I've done wrong, and what I can do to fix my city that is being simulated in exciting and challenging ways!"
So you start looking closer. You turn on the traffic map and see, "hey wait a minute. Why are all cars using that one narrow side street instead of the massive 4 lane highway right next to it..?"
So you think, "perhaps I've overloaded that street, or have failed to understand the population density along it?" So you look closer. So you follow a single sim to see what he does to get to and from work.
And when you look at an individual sim, an "Agent" in the GlassBox lingo, you see that he is stupid, and does not behave in any way like a real denizen of a city. Which is what you're trying to simulate.
You follow the sim and discover that when he leaves his house at 6AM to go to work, he does not know where he is going. It isn't even correct to call it "his" house, as it's not his house, it's the first open house he came across when he left work the night before. When a sim goes to work, he becomes aware of the closest building with an available job. And closest means "shortest path" routing, not "least cost." So he will take a .99999 mile long dirt road instead of 1 mile long super highway, because it's shorter. So he travels to this closest building, and if when he arrives, there is still an available job there, he will go inside and fill up a job slot. If by the time he reaches the building, some other sim has arrived first and TOOK HIS JERB he will pick the next closest building with a currently available job and try his luck there instead.
However. Every other sim that spawned is following the same process. Which results in the city-ending traffic jams.
And this is when it happens. There's an word for it, "anagnorisis." It's an element of greek tragedy. It's the moment when the protagonist realizes the clearer, fuller picture of the situation and of his destiny, in all of its horror.
Because you think, "so how
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.