Hello Everyone
I completely agree with the OP. When it comes to Service 2.0 we basically have two choices: Adapter or quit. I chose adapt and I'd like to share my experiance to hopefully encourage those who are on the verge of giving up of their cities.
I also manage to get through the rollout without any losses. My secret was thorough preparation:
- Worst-case calculation: even before the update hit, i calculated whether my city could also have a chance to survive without the compensation gifts.
- Being informed: i spent a lot of time reading up on the changes and took precautions, such as managing resources, building up a currency buffer, no requirements shown in the City report for update of streets and no or minimale service couverage area overlap'
- The result: 100% integration in a Single day. No loss in income (Simelons and Neo Simelons) and the population in both my capital city and regions has remained stabile.
However -and this is a big "however":
Event thougt i've mastered the new system, the game is currently not much fun from a technical standpoint. Since the update performane has suffered massively. Despite having a clean system (cleared cache, over 1.9 GB of free RAM) the game is extremely "jittery" and lags constantly.
IIts a shame: we players invest time and strategy to adapt to these new mechanics, butthe technical Implementation of Service seems to be pushing the hardware to its limit. I really hope EA improves this because a strategically perfect city isn't much fun when scrolling and building becomes a test of patience.
Hang in there and plan your moves ahead - it definitely works!