Since I did some searching to figure out if the game was worth picking up or if they were going to fix the glaring issues, thought I'd post this here to give any other searchers a heads up about the key complaint most of us had.

City sizes have been a constant point of conversation among our players since we released the game. The game’s original design focused on the density of an intimate urban environment. It was about intercity connectivity and the challenge of managing a region of cities instead of one metropolis in isolation. However, we recognize that many players have expressed the desire to build up one big city rather than manage the interrelationship of multiple smaller cities.

We’ve put months of investigation into making larger city sizes, reworking the terrain maps, changing the routing algorithms of our agent-based system and altering the way that GlassBox processes the data in a larger space.

After months of testing, I confirm that we will not be providing bigger city sizes. The system performance challenges we encountered would mean that the vast majority of our players wouldn’t be able to load, much less play with bigger cities. We’ve tried a number of different approaches to bring performance into an acceptable range, but we just couldn’t achieve it within the confines of the engine. We’ve chosen to cease work on bigger city sizes and put that effort into continuing to evolve the core game and explore an offline mode. Some of the experiments we conducted to improve performance on bigger cities will be rolled into future updates to improve overall game performance.

So, never going to have to bother buying this game. Very sad - as terrible as it looked at launch I was hoping that at some point they'd turn it into the SimCity game people actually wanted to play, bugs notwithstanding. That their design decisions made that literally impossible on a technical level is just mind-boggling. Guess it's just time to wait for SimCity: Reboot Part Two in another decade.

And some people have the nerve to call GTA V the Most Disappointing Game of 2013.

Whatever.

I thought modders managed to do that within the first couple of weeks after release, though I think they did it by removing the city limits altogether rather than expanding them - i.e., letting you build on the land in between the cities?

SimCity, now with actual Cities in it? I don't believe you.

Definitely one of the more interesting stories of the year. They had a design philosophy and stuck to it, but literally everyone hated it. Shame, I was really looking forward to a new SimCity.

Im one of those people. but probably only because Simcity was so messed up that i never bought/played it. So its not my most dissapointing game of 2013 but i bet it would be if i had played it ;-p

@flappy: That is still a LUDICROUS statement!

Modders were able to build outside of the boundaries, but that's only the tip of the iceberg when you think about all the game logic that would have to reworked to function in the larger area. And I'm pretty sure the computers the modders were using did not represent anything near the lowest specs that EA is trying to ensure that SimCity continues to run on.

"Our engine sucks"

Man, is it possible to have a game you never played be your most disappointing?

I loved Sim City so much. Played it in the computer lab throughout my elementary school years. I was looking forward so much to this one and when Ryan was so hyped at E3 about it I could not help but get excited.

I am so thankful I did not pay full price at launch for this. I will probably get it when it gets dirt cheap and there is still some fun to be had, but just a major fuck up of a game.

The black guys arch was like.. not deep enough man and like I totally loved playing it when I had it but when I finished it I read some forum threads that said it sucked so I guess I kinda agreed with them!

Yeah I didn't really expect them to. At this point I'm just hoping that they learn from their mistakes and the next one isn't too far away.

Well, that depends on your expectations for the game in the first place. I had no expectations for either game, but if someone came into this with more experience and nostalgia for other GTA games and no experience whatsoever with SimCity then it's totally reasonable for them to be more disappointed in the thing they had expectations for rather than the thing they had no stake in.

I don't care either way, because internet will internet but it's worth saying I think.

I've tried coming back a couple of times, but eventually this puts me off of it. I feel like I run out of room after a day of playing and can't complete what I wanted my city to be.

Ooh! They should just make all the buildings, roads, and sims, 1/8th the size instead.

SimCityTown, confirmed.

so pathetic. makes you wonder where they are squandering all of their CPU cycles. What they have now isn't impressive at all.

Maybe it's just me, and maybe it's just early in the day, but this sounds ingenius.

I think it's silly its not something they will allow, at least in a sandbox mode. However, I really enjoy the tighter setup in SimCity (2013). The larger scale of the previous games is what eventually lead me to being too overwhelmed when I got a couple of hours in, and I think the separation of cities really helps with that problem.

Still a bummer, but I'm loving Cities of Tomorrow no less!

I have never once regretted returning this game.

I am a SimCity freak, I have logged 100+ hours on this dogshit game. I still kind of enjoy it but holy lord is it ever super broken. The worst part is that you can fill an entire city plot in a handful of hours. Once they added in easy bridge/tunnel building it got a lot more fun but it's still far too limited to be a proper SimCity game. Also, last time I tried to play it lost my cities, so I'm finally done after going in after each update and dumping another 10 hours in or whatever. They REALLY missed the mark with this game despite being... fairly close in some aspects. If it had the look of this game and some of the mechanics (if they actually worked) with terrain tools and bigger maps this would be the ultimate SimCity game.

Man, I've been wanting to pick it up for a while now thinking that most of the launch issues had been resolved. What a bummer.

With SimCity 2013, it is kind of mystifying the restrictions placed on it. Yes, "it requires online" is annoying but having an online mode should have added a lot of value. But what was delivered had little or nothing about the game that really requires that much co-operation or competition from other players. Various features are deep and complex yet other features are small or shallow. It feels like the project had grand ambitions but ran out of time or money (or both) and they scrambled to complete enough for a functional game.

Isn't it because they didn't want to make their game unplayable on the 'everyman' machine.. which is all well and good but a simple warning next to the larger map sizes saying it needs a high end computer would be fine.

And some people have the nerve to call Bioshock Infinite the Most Disappointing Game of 2013.

Whatever.

@nictel said:

Yeeeeeep.

Most disappointing game of 2013 for sure.

Somebody get this man on the phone with EA, right goddamn now!

Well that sucks to hear. Was really wishing the would have added that. Would have bought it if they were able to.. Oh well.

Well I guess that means I'm never playing SimCity. Do it better next time EA.

This might be the most disappointing game ever for me. I played Sim City 4 on and off as recently as earlier this year, in anticipation for this game. Not only did they fuck up this game, they probably fucked up any chance of there being another Sim City anytime soon, or possibly ever again. Dumping countless hours into making a huge metropolis was the best part in those games for me, and without it makes the game almost pointless.

After months of waiting, I confirm that I will not be ever buying Simcity.

To be honest, it not the game as designed that is most disappointing it is the lies, deception, and disinformation spewed out from the start. They basic premise when thing started going wrong was to lie, when people asked questions they lied, when people proved what they were saying was false they lied more.

If there is something that should be burned into people's minds it is that EA Maxis general manager Lucy Bradshaw lies. Oh, I'm sorry I misspoke, she is not EA Maxis general manager anymore. They PROMOTED HER, she lied to the customers, but she did such a GOOD JOB lying that she was promoted to Senior Vice President at EA.

why can't they add more clouds?