Even though the SimCity servers are working much better than they were a week ago, the damage is still done. Gamers still feel burned by developer Maxis and publisher Electronic Arts who failed to effectively launch their highly anticipated game. Specifically, the games always-on connection requirements crippled servers, and resulted in everything from long wait times to cities disappearing.
However, amidst complaints about the ineffectiveness of always-on requirements, and SimCity‘s launch failure, Maxis remained steadfast in their claims an Internet connection was the only way SimCity could work properly.
An anonymous developer with close ties to the game tells Rock Paper Shotgun that switching SimCity to a wholly single player experience – stripping the game of its always-on requirements – would require minimal effort. This claim, of course, is in direct opposition with the lines Maxis has been feeding gamers since SimCity launched.
The source explains just what SimCity‘s servers are doing:
“The servers are not handling any of the computation done to simulate the city you are playing. They are still acting as servers, doing some amount of computation to route messages of various types between both players and cities. As well, they’re doing cloud storage of save games, interfacing with Origin, and all of that. But for the game itself? No, they’re not doing anything. I have no idea why they’re claiming otherwise. It’s possible that Bradshaw misunderstood or was misinformed, but otherwise I’m clueless.”
They also claim “it wouldn’t take very much engineering to give [players] a limited single-play game without all the nifty region stuff.” In fact, some gamers, like Minecraft creator Markus Persson have been able to play SimCity offline without any problems.
Perhaps Maxis feels that the “nifty region stuff” to which the source refers is an integral component of the game, and therefore finding a way to apply that idea to a single player experience would be challenging. At this point, the damage has been done, so it really doesn’t matter SimCity can be taken offline or not. And it doesn’t even matter that EA is offering a free game.
Besides, Maxis has taken strides to improve SimCity‘s online experience, including a substantial update and a new server status page. The page will alert players as to each server’s status – whether they are available, full, or if there is a waiting room.
Basically the page takes the guess work out of signing into SimCity only to find the West 1 server, for example, is full. Still, full servers, or having to sign in to a server, for a game that could easily be a single player only experience is the major problem.
Do you think that Maxis could easily take SimCity offline, but they are avoiding doing so? Can SimCity ever recover from the failed launch?
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Source: Rock Paper Shotgun
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“Do you think that Maxis could easily take SimCity offline, but they are avoiding doing so?”
- Not their call. It’s the publishers..
“Can SimCity ever recover from the failed launch?”
- Not in the eyes of informed gamers.
I think they should’ve listened to the people when they asked for an offline option. Had they done so, there wouldn’t be so much controversy over the game and I’m sure many more would buy their product.
EA made them have the online always mode, it’s EA we should be angry at, not maxis.
I honestly love maxis games and think that the new sim city was great! and could just be better if played offline. I adapted to the online and play it occasionally, with friends too the servers run fine now and i don’t see why people are still complaining.
Maxis has been apart of EA for so long that there’s not really a difference between the two now. The guys at BioWare even said that EA/BioWare are basically one and the same now (and it shows in both BW and Maxis). Plus remember Spore and tell me that Maxis didn’t have there hands in that mess also.
i don’t remember ever having any problems with spore?
Maxis has done good by me over my gaming life.
I honestly LOVE the new SimCity. Don’t get me wrong, I HATE the living crap out of the “always online” BS and the problems that happen with it, but I still love the game for what it is because when the game actually works, it is AWESOME. I happen to be lucky and get SimCity a week after opening,s o i got all the room in servers, etc. and because of the updates I was able to start playing after maybe 5-10 min after installing the game on Origin. SimCity is a BLAST and I can’t stop playing it whenever I have the chance. It is really fun and it is only sad that the game doesn’t have an offline mode or something like that
and exactly why i didnt buy this game.. was so looking forward to it. but wow what a fail..
Even if they were to make playing offline an option now, which obviously wouldn’t take the huge amount of work they said, it wouldn’t mend the damage they’ve done. Its far more frustrating that they are continuing to lie about the reasons that it needs to have a constant connection.
But lets say that a gamer can move past the obvious DRM that Maxis/EA are trying to enforce they are going to still be aggravated by the small city sizes. Something that modders have already shown can be worked around as well as the population count. It seems that informed gamers would be better off waiting to play until the modding community can work out all the issues that Maxis didn’t. That won’t fix the rift between gamers and Maxis/EA but at least they will be able to play the game they paid sixty dollars for how they want.
The game can be modded to play off line.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-03-14-simcity-modded-so-it-can-be-played-offline-indefinitely
Who cares… Everybody is blowing up about this. It launched with problems… big freaking deal. It happens. Stop crying over it and play the game. Its doing a ton better than last week. They are fixing the issues.