EA Admits That SimCity Could Have Been Offline

[Vault Citizen]

in my opinion an offline version is inevitable, the only question for EA is whether or not it wants to be the one supplying it.

 

[kouriichi]

A wise man once said, "You sit on a throne of lies."

While EA sits on something far larger than a Throne, i feel the point still stands. Now if only EA wasnt one of the biggest corporations in the gaming world, this debacle would mean something.

 

[Roman Monaghan]

" But we're also hearing from thousands of people who are playing across regions, trading, communicating and loving the Always-Connected functionality."

Yeah this would be nice. IF YOUR SERVERS DIDN'T FUCKING SUCK AND WE COULD ACTUALLY PLAY THE FUCKING GAME FOR MORE THEN THREE SECONDS BEFORE BEING BOOTED.

Three days ago my internet modem blew the fuck up, and I was without internet access. Meaning if I wanted to play Sim City during that time, guess who woulda been out of luck! Hence, always online bullshit is wrong, because if even one customer who paid money for your product cant play it because of your stupid shit, you've failed as a product creator. You do not get to charge me 60 dollars for a product, and hide behind artistic integrity when I can't fucking play the game I paid money for. How the hell do they have the balls to pull that excuse after the Mass Effect 3 ending fiasco last year anyway?

Whatever their design philosophy was going in, the lack of even letting us have the option to play the game the way WE might want to play it is disgraceful. It's like the opposite of games that are built as single player experiences and have shitty tacked on mulitplayer shoved in before release. We'd be fine with that! And then when everyone is playing the game offline and your serves are going un used cuz no one wants multiplayer SimCity, you'll see your design philosophy going in was retarded and learn from your mistakes for next time.

Side note: why not just call it Sim City 5? Is it a fucking reboot? Seriously, getting tired of this "name the next game in the series as just the title without any indication of it being a new installment" shit.

 

[Strazdas]

your vision means exactly NOTHING. its all about players vision. and the more i hear about this the more i think that those "thousands of people who wanted online game" are fake and they just made that up.

you put it on online crashing servers, you minimized the city to what turned out into a joke, you lied about the whole deal and you expect to have anyone be thankful? no. burn in hell, you deserve it.

 

[TheSchaef]

"'The SimCity we delivered captures the magic of its heritage but catches up with ever-improving technology,' Bradshaw adds."

Yeah, how's that ever-improving technology working out for you on launch day?

Apparently some people's technology improves a little more ever than others.

 

[Cpt. Slow]

The people at EA are inadvertently starting to look like the people from Office Space. I wonder if Lucy Bradshaw has 8 different bosses.

 

[Glaice]

This "Artistic vision" is the biggest load of crap I've seen with this mess that Simcity and Maxis is in. To me, Maxis is essentially dead along with EA who has messed up the only other franchise (Dead Space) I actually cared about before it was dumbed down into just another action horror shooter with cover mechanics and away from a decent horror third person shooter.

If I ever want to play a Simcity game, I will install Simcity 4 and some mods and be content with it.

Burn in Hell, EA.

 

[Mayamellissa]

If I wanted to play a SimCity game that was an MMO I'd go play the one on freaking Facebook that I blocked because I hate playing games that require people to help me. I second the Burn in Hell, EA.

 

[Atmos Duality]

If I wanted to play a SimCity game that was an MMO I'd go play the one on freaking Facebook that I blocked because I hate playing games that require people to help me. I second the Burn in Hell, EA.

Rejoice then, because the multiplayer interaction is skin-deep at best.
Seriously, the way regions are handled, it's basically just like having multiple people playing their own games of SimCity at the same time, only they can occasionally send crap to each other.

Of course, this does nothing to justify the online requirement so...

 

[indelibleStain]

Lucy Bradshaw has to be the worst project manager at EA right now. Why she was ever let anywhere near SimCity is beyond me. This latest revelation of hers is either the bravest thing she could have done (in defying her overlords), or yet another act of stupidity from her.

Also, having witnessed how SimCity is "connected"... there is really no reason for it to be "always online". Local saves are entirely possible, and the components that rely on social connectivity could be simulated for single player gaming very easily. So not only is she (Lucy Bradshaw) being entirely dishonest, she is also overplaying the hand that Maxis has (in the face of facts that we consumers have that tell us she is lying).

She's not going to have a job for much longer, I fear.

 

[Ed Classified]

While I respect their vision, why can't they just add the offline mode if it has been proven to work?
Giving the player the choice to play offline wouldn't hurt that vision in any way.
Everybody that loves the social aspect can play online with friends and people who don't won't be bothered.

It seems that instead of giving the people what they want they'd rather make excuses, like this one.
Alienating a large part of your fan base doesn't sound like a good business decision to me.
Maxis and EA if you're forcing this always online system on the consumer as DRM, just say so.
Don't hide behind excuses like saying it's for our sake or that it will ruin your vision of the game.

 

[PatrickXD]

Isn't this exactly what people wanted? Developers to stick with their guns and not tack on extras?
I think there is a lack of focus on the problem here. The problem is that the product didn't work as advertised. It is not that the product is not exactly what the consumer wants it to be.
For clarification: People always complain about tacked on multiplayer that is inconsequential to the core vision of the game.

 

[Andrew_C]

The people at EA are inadvertently starting to look like the people from Office Space. I wonder if Lucy Bradshaw has 8 different bosses.

Seeing as Maxis only appears to qualify for a "Brand Manager" these days, not a VP or other executive level position, almost certainly at least 8.

 

[faefrost]

No one who witnessed Diablo III's belly-flop at launch couldn't have seen this coming, but I must give EA credit for managing to surprise me at just how badly their train flew off the rails. I assumed that if they were going the whole hog with always online they would at least relegate a substantial amount of info to the server-side so that a cracked copy wouldn't really offer any functionality. But when the mod community peaked under the hood and found it was nothing more than a back-to-base alarm for not being connected, it was almost too funny to believe.

It just goes to show that EA are incredibly out of touch with the broader community of Sim City fans, despite their constant claims to the opposite. Anyone who has even vaguely glanced in the direction of SimTropolis in the past few years would have known that an army of people with vast modding experience would have been picking the guts of this program apart the second it was released. Did they really think they wouldn't get caught with their pants down? Clearly not. EA have obviously decided that their core audience for the franchise are people who like Farmville, and tailored their expectations accordingly.

Of course, this bubble being popped won't stop the board from giving the CEO another huge bonus, nor the PR team calling this a 'success' because enough people bought the game before discovering the litany of flaws within.

The even sadder thing is while they made a bad decision with Diablo III's always on internet stuff, there was at least some sort of a non mercenary logic path to it that they could hide behind. Much of Diablo I and II's success and certainly almost all of Starcrafts was focused around multiplayer. The thing that kept bringing players back after 10 years was the multiplayer stuff. Battlenet etc. Yes there was a strong single player game there, but there was some reasonable calculations to me made when they debated whether or not to build the thing around Battlenet. I don't like it. It flopped hard on launch. And some of the online structured features had the unintended consequences of being long term game poison (ie cash auction house). But you can at least see how, from a purely game and gameplay perspective, they may have come to or at a minimum been able to justify that decision.

But SimCity? Really? Show of hands, who here ever used any multiplayer features in any previous SimCity games? (Where there even any?) I mean SimCity as a MMO? What possible game design argument could be made to justify that? That they had so much success with the Sim's Online that they wanted to do it again? That they had some very valuable data from all 349 Simcity 4 players who ever attempted to use the multiplayer functions? There is no way to get to that design decision that is based on gameplay or game design. It is 100% pure unmitigated mercenary marketing. It is truly appalling. I am not sure it has sunk in with EA yet just how much damage they have done to themselves with this one?

 

[ShermTank7272]

The worst part of this is that we all saw it coming.