SimCity

[Taernath]

I was pretty psyched about this, as I still play 4 from time to time and wind up wasting a whole day without realizing it.

Then I heard about the always online DRM requirement, and that, coupled with EA's habit of shutting down a game's servers after a year or two, I don't know any more.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/12/20/maxis-explains-the-use-of-simcity-always-online-drm/

Kinda scary. Any thoughts?

[Taernath]

Bump. I guess it comes out next week. Anyone played the beta or plan to buy it?

[TheEschaton]

The beta looks pretty good, but I try and not buy EA games any more.

[TheEschaton]

TotalBiscuit is streaming the beta right now actually, if you want to watch: www.twitch.tv/totalbiscuit

[Tgo01]

TotalBiscuit is streaming the beta right now actually, if you want to watch: www.twitch.tv/totalbiscuit

Man I hope things turn out differently later in the game, so far it looks almost exactly like SimCity4. I know all simcity games look pretty similar but DAMN.

[Tgo01]

Well I guess it's different enough. I'll be buying it!

[RichardCranium]

I'll buy it because Adam Devine is selling it.

[TheEschaton]

I wasn't watching, Tgo, what changed?

[Tgo01]

I wasn't watching, Tgo, what changed?

I just watched it for a few minutes but it looks more involved, like you can do stuff at each type of building and stuff.

[4a6c1]

Will this be playable on Ipad? Pretend I'm asking for a person who owns all this tech and don't know how to use it. For science.

[Androidpk]

Oh Rojo, you so silly.

[TheEschaton]

If I go by the micromanaging being shown on this stream.........no.

[4a6c1]

:[

[TheEschaton]

Also, if you want a view of the game in more managable chunks from one of those average (read: bad) gamers on Youtube, Jesse Cox has a few videos up on his channel. First one starts at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWfEPXlQEiA&list=UUCbfB3cQtkEAiKfdRQnfQvw&index=12

[Taernath]

I wound up pre-ordering. I like the overlays and changes to modular buildings, but that small map size is going to be super distracting. Hopefully there won't be any Error 37 bullshit on launch.

[Whirlin]

I'll just leave this here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AjxiNeaKIskndFRybzhWaEJfeUw5RW1ySjZoMlh5e mc&single=true&gid=0&output=html

[TheEschaton]

I wound up pre-ordering. I like the overlays and changes to modular buildings, but that small map size is going to be super distracting. Hopefully there won't be any Error 37 bullshit on launch.

From what I understood from TB's stream, he thought that was a negative too. But the design intent, he said, is apparently to build multiple mini-cities and link them by the highway system. You can claim multiple yourself, you can do it co-op with a friend, or you can link it to the world at large.

[4a6c1]

I'll just leave this here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AjxiNeaKIskndFRybzhWaEJfeUw5RW1ySjZoMlh5e mc&single=true&gid=0&output=html

needs moar numbers

[Gelston]

I watched the videos, game looks fun. I haven't touched SimCity since SimCity 2000.

[Taernath]

I played for a couple hours this morning and had no problems. Now I'm getting kicked 5 minutes after starting a game with no progress saved - I think it has to do with the servers being busy.

[Fallen]

Did anyone watch IGN's 9 hour marathon for the game? It looked pretty awesome. I'm also hearing nightmares of people losing hours of progress because the game isn't saving properly (due to remote saving).

[Whirlin]

I had no problems saving, even though I lost connection a few times.

I've basically been doing my own marathon... but unfortunately, cities are much smaller now, so in order to get more factory workers, I need my friends in my region to build up their residential zones and have them commute to my town...

[Gelston]

If you do a single player, can you make multiple cities of your own in one region?

[Taernath]

Yes.

[Gelston]

Oh cool, so you can make one area straight up residential, the next industry, and the next commercial, and all the dudes could commute to work in the other cities?

[TheEschaton]

My question is, can you claim more cities between the 2-3 listed in each region? What happens when all 3 cities are filled? They're not overly large.

[Fallen]

Why don't we set up a PC area? I'll pick up the game if others want to play together.

[Tgo01]

Anyone get the deluxe version with the British, French and German cities? Think it's worth the extra 20 dollars?

[Some Rogue]

Anyone get the deluxe version with the British, French and German cities? Think it's worth the extra 20 dollars?

I heard it always turns into British, German and German cities within the first 5 minutes.

[Gelston]

Why don't we set up a PC area? I'll pick up the game if others want to play together.

I'm planning to get the game tomorrow or the day after. I'd be down for that.

[Fallen]

It's a motherfucking DATE

[Gelston]

I bought this crap and am downloading it now. I got the $80 digital deluxe edition, because I am a baller. If I got my up and running before any of yall, I'll go ahead and create us a private region thingy or whatever.

[Fallen]

Sounds good. I'll pick it up after I get back from work in a few hours. Fair warning, I haven't played sim city since it was released on the SNES.

[Gelston]

I watched a bunch of those videos about the Beta, it looks pretty intuitive... And you apparently no longer need to stick pipes and powerlines all over now (Roads do that function for you.) I haven't played since SimCity 2000... although I have played things like Tropico 4 and all that.

[Taernath]

My question is, can you claim more cities between the 2-3 listed in each region? What happens when all 3 cities are filled? They're not overly large.

Some of the larger regions can hold 16 cities.

[Gelston]

I am on the server North America East 1, send me your origin name when you get it and I'll send you a region invite. I picked Titan Gorge map, 16 available slots. I named the region elanthia because I'm not very good at being original.

[Fallen]

I'll get the download going now.

[Gelston]

Anyone else that wants to join the region, send an origin friend request to Gelston and I'll invite you.

[Atlanteax]

http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/i-R8XRnwt/0/950x10000/i-R8XRnwt-950x10000.jpg

[Gelston]

Man, my entire downtown district burned down :/ I sent garbage trucks to Fallen's city though. I GOT YO TRASH BRAH

[Whirlin]

So I put in about 4 hours worth of SimCity Last night...

I built up the education system for the region, I now have a community college and university, and an elementary school in my city... Fuck high schools. It was just a stepping stone anyway

The problem is that I completely filled up every last not-really-square in my city space. I have ridiculous high tech industry thriving on lower class workers. The problem though, is that my city CAN'T advance any further without regional support.

I need more workers, even though about 65% of my city is residential (15% is public works, 30% industrial). I need more students in my university to be able to continue more research projects.

Basically, I need a city nextdoor that's 100% upper class residential... I could even supply the power and water! The problem... none of my friends in the region are up to that point yet...

Very frustrating. I just wish the city landscapes were about 30% bigger (that's what she said).

[Taernath]

I'm having the same problem.

Anyone try Maxis Man HQ in-depth? I placed it but learned that not only is it $40k initial and $900 hourly, you also have to pay a per-mission expense. Seems pretty useless.

[Fallen]

Man, my entire downtown district burned down :/ I sent garbage trucks to Fallen's city though. I GOT YO TRASH BRAH

All I did was claim land. Heh, the fucking game must play itself because I literally didn't do anything else. ANNNNNND the servers are fucking down, so I can't play anyway.

Did you set the world to require unlocking things through achievements or do you just have access to everything right away?

[Gelston]

I think the challenges appear by themselves. I've gotten a few achievements... Like no child left behind and crap for building a bunch of school bus stops.

[Gelston]

WTF, a giant monster popped up in my city and rampaged all up through there.

[Gelston]

I'm having the same problem.

Anyone try Maxis Man HQ in-depth? I placed it but learned that not only is it $40k initial and $900 hourly, you also have to pay a per-mission expense. Seems pretty useless.

I put in MaxisMan, he is running around saving injured people right now.

[Fallen]

ANNNNND now I've lost wi-fi. It seems like god does not want me to play god.

[Fallen]

Just a head's up to anyone thinking of buying this game. Though Gelston doesn't seem to have any problems, I have been unable to play pretty much all day due to ongoing server issues. You may want to wait a day or two until things get ironed out.

[Taernath]

Yeah, same here. I have a 2 hour window in the morning to get on, because at about 9 AM US West 1 (where most of my cities are) fills up and I'm locked out until midnight.

I'd be really interested in hearing how many people these servers are capable of handling.

[Atlanteax]

Considering it's EA, probably lowballing the servers =(

[Whirlin]

Yeah... my friends and I were chatting on mumble... haven't seen this big of a launch fail since Diablo 3.

[Latrinsorm]

ANNNNND now I've lost wi-fi. It seems like god does not want me to play god.(Gundam) Meister Eckhart should have played SimCity, eh? Eh???

[Gelston]

It is fun. It does get a little crappy with the connection sometimes, but it works alright for me. They were saying all the server issues should be handled by the 7th, which is the international release date. We'll see.

[Tgo01]

Am I missing something here? I HAVE to play online? I don't mind an "always on" connection being required but I have to play on one of their whole 9 servers?

[Gelston]

You can play a single player, but it is always online yeah. You get like 10 regions per server, so that is 90 regions. They are opening more servers with the international release aswell. Just come join our region in NA East 1! It really, REALLY is better to help eachother out and stuff... Like you can make your city the garbage capital and we can all deposit our trash there.

[Tgo01]

I really can't believe I can't just load up a Simcity game and play whenever I want to. After going through 4 servers that were supposedly not busy only to find out they really were busy I spent 10 minutes trying to "claim" a city only to get an error that I can't claim a city at this time.

I hope this shit gets fixed soon.

[Tgo01]

Like you can make your city the garbage capital and we can all deposit our trash there.

Well that does sound awfully tempting...

I sent you a friend request Gelston.

[Gelston]

Got it, I'll send you a region invite whenever the servers decide to work.

[Gelston]

http://i1093.photobucket.com/albums/i433/GelstonJ/Spark_2013-03-07_01-14-20_zpsc18ef86e.png

There is my city.

[Taernath]

Considering it's EA, probably lowballing the servers =(

That's probably what happened. An EA number cruncher looked at login statistics, and said, 'Well, 9 servers can only handle 75% of the load now, but several months from now demand will decrease, and those servers will be enough.'

Also apparently I'm stuck in Europe West 1. I'm gonna be pissed if I get back and find Gonorrhea Heights has been deleted/taken over by someone else.

[Gelston]

I logged on this morning and it downloaded a quick patch, then no server troubles at all. Maybe it is fixed now.

[Fallen]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57573053-1/simcity-launch-a-complete-disaster/

I'm not fucking with the game until next week.

----
From another article. Looks like they are also disabling features to try to fix the problem:



In an effort to stabilize SimCity's shoddy servers, EA is disabling "a few noncritical gameplay features." This includes leaderboards, achievements, and region filters. Apparently, disabling these features will "in no way affect your core gameplay experience." Except for the fact that you're paying $60 for a game in which all of the promised features aren't implemented.
"We are continuing to do everything we can to address the server issues," EA said in an update (http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/0/9341242.page). SimCity's launch has been plagued by server connection issues thanks to its always-on DRM model. "In the meantime, so that we can give you as good an experience as possible, we are in the process of deploying a hotfix to all servers."
For the record, the hotfix hasn't change anything for me. I still can't log in. What I find most odd is that my co-worker, sitting right next to me, is able to log in and play his city (on the same sever as mine) while I am greeted with "Can not connect to server" messages. Gotta love always-online DRM...except when it isn't online.

[Androidpk]

I logged on this morning and it downloaded a quick patch, then no server troubles at all. Maybe it is fixed now.


http://kotaku.com/5989207/the-simcity-disaster-continues-ea-disables-features-to-try-to-get-the-servers-working

[Gelston]

Yeah, I was in there this morning for about 30 minutes, everything was perfect, then bye bye.

[Androidpk]

Amazon Has Stopped Selling Digital Copies Of Sim City

http://kotaku.com/5989265/amazon-has-stopped-selling-digital-copies-of-simcity?post=58079021

http://i49.tinypic.com/160vazt.jpg



The game even has a lower user review score on Metacritic than Aliens: Colonial Marines.


http://i48.tinypic.com/1zefknm.jpg

[Tgo01]

I guess I have no one to blame but myself really. I read about all of the problems the game was having but I thought hey, how bad could it be? Diablo 3 had a shitty launch but it wasn't really all that bad. For fuck's sake, GIVE ME DIABLO 3's LAUNCH!

Right now 7 of the 9 servers are "busy" 1 is full and the other is in Europe. Like I'd play on the same servers as the French, pshaw.

ETA: How silly of me. I tried logging on the Europe server and I get an error "Could not log in to SimCity due to a network error."

I managed to play the game for about a whole 30 minutes last night, I have so far spent more time today trying to play the game than I spent last night actually playing it.

[Whirlin]

Yeah, we were talking about it last night... This has been the worst launch since Diablo 3... hands down... But Blizzard was a LOT more forthcoming with statuses and updates to their problems... EA doesn't even seem to know/care that they suck.

The best is that there's now a login queue... so it takes 18 minutes for you to subsequently get disconnected from their servers and unable to play... And then you get to wait another 18 minutes til you can try again...

At least their doing a good job in curbing the amount of hits against their servers... ... ... By trying to fuck over their players until they don't want to play anymore.

[Whirlin]

I worked from home today and got to play for a few hours... The commercial demand bar was turned off... Clearly not an essential part of the game.

[Tgo01]

I worked from home today and got to play for a few hours... The commercial demand bar was turned off... Clearly not an essential part of the game.

That's hilarious.

[TheEschaton]

Could the big winner in all of this be....Blizzard? LOL.

[Tgo01]

Could the big winner in all of this be....Blizzard? LOL.

Yeah, who would have thought someone would come along and usurp the title of "most anticipated, biggest launch failure ever"?

[TheEschaton]

Also, I don't disagree with the business decision to have a number of servers equal to your long term estimates of playerbase. Look what happened to SWTOR, they launched, not enough servers, added a hundred more, then had to delete them all less than a year later. Most companies plan their server load not around launch night, but around a few months down the line. GW2 was the same way, it was unplayable for a week after launch.

[Tgo01]

Also, I don't disagree with the business decision to have a number of servers equal to your long term estimates of playerbase. Look what happened to SWTOR, they launched, not enough servers, added a hundred more, then had to delete them all less than a year later. Most companies plan their server load not around launch night, but around a few months down the line. GW2 was the same way, it was unplayable for a week after launch.

Yeah but come on, 9 servers for the whole world? I think Diablo 2 had more at launch 10+ years ago and that game didn't require an internet connection to play.

[Atlanteax]

The game even has a lower user review score on Metacritic than Aliens: Colonial Marines.

Heh, that's when you know a game launch was a stinker...

[TheEschaton]

The thing is, I don't know anyone who actually thinks the game itself is bad, barring the smallness of the cities themselves.

[Keller]

I'll just leave this here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9VClRhU404&feature=player_embedded#!

[Tgo01]

I'll just leave this here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9VClRhU404&feature=player_embedded#!

That guy works? I just assumed he was on disability.

[Androidpk]

"youtube studio"

[TheEschaton]

These guys make some serious cash sometimes. The guy who's video I posted earlier in the thread has been living off money made on Youtube videos since the beta of WoW's Cataclysm where he was one of the first video commentators/guides out there (along with Totalbiscuit, another one who got started on making WoW videos).

edit: from what I hear, it's roughly $1 per 200 views. At 100k views, that guy's already made $500 for a 3 minute video of him ranting about SimCity. Or maybe it's 2k views? Hmm, that might make more sense. Any idiot can get 200 views.

[Androidpk]

You must be mistaken. People started putting up video commentators/guides on WoW since it launched in 2004.

[TheEschaton]

I didn't say he was the first, just one of the first in Cataclysm beta, which was invite only (unlike MoPs beta).

[Taernath]

The game even has a lower user review score on Metacritic than Aliens: Colonial Marines.




It's down to 1.7 now. SimCity is in the running to unseat WarZ's title of "Game That Pissed Off The Most Consumers".

[DrZaius]

It's down to 1.7 now. SimCity is in the running to unseat WarZ's title of "Game That Pissed Off The Most Consumers".

I've put probably 1,000 hours in to a variety of Simcity games over the years. The fact that this was not a day 1 purchase for me should tell them something about their business model. I don't care about always-on DRM, *if it works*.

[Fallen]

Are they accepting returns? I'd certainly like to hand in my digital copy.


What is your refund policy for PC digital downloads?
As a general policy, EA does not offer refunds on any products downloaded through Origin.

For full details, please go to our terms of sale (http://tos.ea.com/legalapp/termsofsale/US/en/PC/)

Cut. Print. Gay.

[Kastrel]

I think what saddens me about this the most is that if it were ANY other company than EA (or Activision), taking any one game like this and obliterating its public opinion with poor decision making, bad design and support, and controversial DRM implementation would cause enough loss in profit to hurt the company enough to A) either teach them that screwing up like this is a costly mistake or B) take them out of business entirely.

But because its EA, and they have such a domination on the market, they can afford to regularly toss out crappy games, or entirely ruin decades-old franchises. They buy up IPs, milk them for all they are worth while putting the least amount of effort in, and discard them when the player base finally wises up. They own so many franchises now that they can afford to make so many crappy games, and the biggest victims of said exploitation are IPs like Sim City and their fans. EA's business model is so destructive to so many game franchises, I can only pray that eventually there will be enough overall backlash to put them (and Activision) out of business.

[Androidpk]

Are they accepting returns? I'd certainly like to hand in my digital copy.



Cut. Print. Gay.


Supposedly if you talk to customer service they will issue you a refund.

[Tgo01]

From the whole 30 minutes I was able to play I can say the game looked like it was going to be fun. I didn't care for the small city size but I guess it goes with the whole region thing. I can't really say they released a shitty product in the game itself but they really screwed up the always on internet connection bit.

Granted I can't comment on any possible bugs the game may or may not have because I can't even play the damned thing.

[Androidpk]

I have heard it requires the online connection because a lot of the calculations are done server side because it's too complex for most peoples computers to handle.

[Whirlin]

From the whole 30 minutes I was able to play I can say the game looked like it was going to be fun. I didn't care for the small city size but I guess it goes with the whole region thing. I can't really say they released a shitty product in the game itself but they really screwed up the always on internet connection bit.

Granted I can't comment on any possible bugs the game may or may not have because I can't even play the damned thing.

I played for a LOT of the first day without server side support... Of course... this meant that I was basically operating in a bubble from all other cities around me...

It took me 2 hours to max my city within my city limits... It's not that difficult... Unfortunately, past that point, you NEED tourists from other regions, you NEED their citizens, and they NEED your industry, or commercial presence. To compare it to SimCity 2000, it's like having a river dividing your city, and your friend playing half, and you playing the other half. The synergies are an absolute necessity for growth.

Today, I worked from home, and had the opportunity to play in my region again for about an hour. The historical information on the population was astounding. 100k population of residents, and before I logged onto the live server today, I didn't have ANY tourists to my city. Once I logged in... I had over 150k visitors to my city on a daily basis... My industry got oversaturated with 0 jobs left... Commercial demand was bugged to shit and there was no bar... and my neighbors suck at managing crime, so I had arsenists and thieves coming over UNTIL I sent extra squad cars to patrol their towns.

Then Godzilla came and leveled a whole bunch of high end shit I had built. Seriously... Fuck Godzilla... I also had Aliens blow up my clinic, and a tornado rip through some buildings. Not a good day on the disaster front.



What bothers me the most is that EA pushes their shitty shitty Origin backend. They knew EXACTLY how many licenses they had sold. They're a big company, so they have adequate evidence to support an anticipated demand of last minute orders on launch day. I played the stress test beta a week ago, so they knew EXACTLY how many people were stress testing, and the anticipated data loads for that volume of players. They could have EASILY extrapolated that to the sold licenses. I really want to know who could have failed so miserably in that oversight. You learn how to balance two fractions in like, 5th grade. a/b = y/x = ax=by... I mean shit... How hard could it have really been to foresee and start to do something about this two weeks ago?

It's a dayum shame too, just like my avatar says, because it is a GOOD game... but it's just the most miserable launch in the history of all launches forever.

[Taernath]

I have heard it requires the online connection because a lot of the calculations are done server side because it's too complex for most peoples computers to handle.

Which is deeply ironic considering the launch situation.

[Androidpk]

Not sure if this authentic or not, just saw it on RPS.

http://i50.tinypic.com/n2ldux.jpg

[Tgo01]

I wouldn't mind a 15% off my next purchase...

[Fallen]

I don't like berating costumer service, even when i'm in the right, so to speak. It is definitely a skill worth having, as it is often effective in getting what you want.

[Whirlin]

"The Squeaky Wheel Gets Oiled"

What bugs me is that editted flag at the bottom... I'm concerned about the authenticity.

[Bobmuhthol]

I don't like berating costumer service, even when i'm in the right, so to speak. It is definitely a skill worth having, as it is often effective in getting what you want.This. Years later, I'm still annoyed that there was a lengthy local news segment about how to be enough of a dickhead to your cable provider that they will lower your bill. There was no subsequent story about how prices are higher for everyone because a fraction of customers are assholes and do this.

Really, the worst part about seeing shit like this is that they say something like that at the end. "This chat text goes viral." That was the guy's intent the entire fucking time, and it has nothing to do with customer service. Fuck him.

[DrZaius]

"CNET Editor Jeff Bakalar, assigned to review SimCity, ran into problems trying to connect at least twice a day since Tuesday: "I had planned on reviewing the game for launch -- and I'm not joking here -- I've yet to been able to even play the game. Once."

[TheEschaton]

What bothers me the most is that EA pushes their shitty shitty Origin backend. They knew EXACTLY how many licenses they had sold. They're a big company, so they have adequate evidence to support an anticipated demand of last minute orders on launch day. I played the stress test beta a week ago, so they knew EXACTLY how many people were stress testing, and the anticipated data loads for that volume of players. They could have EASILY extrapolated that to the sold licenses. I really want to know who could have failed so miserably in that oversight. You learn how to balance two fractions in like, 5th grade. a/b = y/x = ax=by... I mean shit... How hard could it have really been to foresee and start to do something about this two weeks ago?

It's a dayum shame too, just like my avatar says, because it is a GOOD game... but it's just the most miserable launch in the history of all launches forever.

Of course they know. But companies don't plan their resources based on launch day or even launch week numbers.

[Atlanteax]

I think what saddens me about this the most is that if it were ANY other company than EA (or Activision), taking any one game like this and obliterating its public opinion with poor decision making, bad design and support, and controversial DRM implementation would cause enough loss in profit to hurt the company enough to A) either teach them that screwing up like this is a costly mistake or B) take them out of business entirely.

But because its EA, and they have such a domination on the market, they can afford to regularly toss out crappy games, or entirely ruin decades-old franchises. They buy up IPs, milk them for all they are worth while putting the least amount of effort in, and discard them when the player base finally wises up. They own so many franchises now that they can afford to make so many crappy games, and the biggest victims of said exploitation are IPs like Sim City and their fans. EA's business model is so destructive to so many game franchises, I can only pray that eventually there will be enough overall backlash to put them (and Activision) out of business.

Case in point ... the relatively low level of geniune content for the base content of 'The Sims' and a gadzillion $40-50 expansion packs to add a marginal amount of content.

Editted to clarify that I'm referring to the Sims3 'franchise'.

[Whirlin]

Of course they know. But companies don't plan their resources based on launch day or even launch week numbers.

There must be loaning companies out there that could loan out hardware on the short term...

If you're worried about longterm revenue stream, don't offer a server based game without the potential for content purchases for continued revenue. That was likely mistake #1. Offer small content packages at micro-transaction levels for F2P games... It doesn't JUST apply to MMOs, it applies to anything that RELIES on a server... which clearly SimCity does.

[Tgo01]

Case in point ... the relatively low level of geniune content for the base content of 'The Sims' and a gadzillion $40-50 expansion packs to add a marginal amount of content.

Hey I like The Sims 3. Although I agree with the expansion packs, damn. I heard about 2 months ago they had just released that Seasons expansion pack then just the other day I heard they had released 2 expansion packs since then. That shit is crazy.

[Drew]

Of course they know. But companies don't plan their resources based on launch day or even launch week numbers.

Yeah, same story with Diablo 3.

[Atlanteax]

Hey I like The Sims 3. Although I agree with the expansion packs, damn. I heard about 2 months ago they had just released that Seasons expansion pack then just the other day I heard they had released 2 expansion packs since then. That shit is crazy.

Yes, each for $40-50 or whatever. Rivals what Activison does.

[Androidpk]

Who is this guy and what did he do to Francis?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2NTxSyb_uQ

[Taernath]

I wouldn't mind a 15% off my next purchase...

The odds are pretty good that it's only from a particular list of games (hope you like FIFA), has to be used within a week, and is only valid if you buy a game selling for more than $30. That's what they did with the SimCity preorder deal.

[Taernath]

Hey I like The Sims 3. Although I agree with the expansion packs, damn. I heard about 2 months ago they had just released that Seasons expansion pack then just the other day I heard they had released 2 expansion packs since then. That shit is crazy.
4677

Not quite on the level of Train Simulator, but getting there.

[Whirlin]

The odds are pretty good that it's only from a particular list of games (hope you like FIFA), has to be used within a week, and is only valid if you buy a game selling for more than $30. That's what they did with the SimCity preorder deal.
I gamed the fuck out of that system and got the entire Mass Effect Trilogy with 1 $3 DLC to put it at like... 30.99 during a sale.

[Tgo01]

4677

Not quite on the level of Train Simulator, but getting there.

Geez, I didn't even know about the 70s, 80s, 90s expansion pack. So many expansion packs!

Also by some miracle I was able to sort of log on to Simcity (says the servers are down but I was able to log on? No idea.) And Gelston you're finally showing up on my Simcity friends list, send me an invite to the region please.

[Atlanteax]

Somehow, this seemed fitting for EA.

http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/i-9cXZC54/0/950x10000/i-9cXZC54-950x10000.jpg

[Tgo01]

http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/a-simcity-update-and-something-for-your-trouble


Here’s a quick update on the problems we were experiencing with SimCity – and a little something extra for people who bought the game.

The server issues which began at launch have improved significantly as we added more capacity. But some people are still experiencing response and stability problems that we’re working fast to address.

So what went wrong? The short answer is: a lot more people logged on than we expected. More people played and played in ways we never saw in the beta.

OK, we agree, that was dumb, but we are committed to fixing it. In the last 48 hours we increased server capacity by 120 percent. It’s working – the number of people who have gotten in and built cities has improved dramatically. The number of disrupted experiences has dropped by roughly 80 percent.

So we’re close to fixed, but not quite there. I’m hoping to post another update this weekend to let everyone know that the launch issues are behind us.

Something Special for Your Trouble

The good news is that SimCity is a solid hit in all major markets. The consensus among critics and players is that this is fundamentally a great game. But this SimCity is made to be played online, and if you can’t get a stable connection, you’re NOT having a good experience. So we’re not going to rest until we’ve fixed the remaining server issues.

And to get us back in your good graces, we’re going to offer you a free PC download game from the EA portfolio. On March 18, SimCity players who have activated their game will receive an email telling them how to redeem their free game.

I know that’s a little contrived – kind of like buying a present for a friend after you did something crummy. But we feel bad about what happened. We’re hoping you won’t stay mad and that we’ll be friends again when SimCity is running at 100 percent.

SimCity is a GREAT game and the people who made it are incredibly proud. Hang in there – we’ll be providing more updates throughout the weekend.

This is actually pretty awesome assuming it isn't some bullshit FIFA 10 dollar game only deal.

ETA: Silly me. I came here to post this thinking I would actually be able to log on and play afterwards. HA. What's the definition of insanity again?

[Tgo01]

Guess I spoke too soon. Apparently you are forced to do the tutorial first and it made me do it again but now I can finally play the game I bought 3 days ago! Woo!

[Gelston]

Yeah, working perfect for me now. Also, WTF, I have a zombie apocalypse happening in my town... It looks like the police and MaxisMan are handling it though.

[DrZaius]

Yeah, working perfect for me now. Also, WTF, I have a zombie apocalypse happening in my town... It looks like the police and MaxisMan are handling it though.

So I guess I never really looked into this - is there a way to roll back things like that, or is there no "reload from save"? Is the issue that you're on a public/shared region and therefore can't save/reload, but you could if you were in a private region? I'm basically just waiting until the internet calms down and tells me the thing works before I purchase.

-DrZ

[Showal]

Ok, I'm not a huge gamer, but games like SimCity and Civ V are what I do play when I actually play games. I need a new computer soon. If I got something like an i5 or i7 processor, about 6-8 GB of RAM, but only with the intel graphics, would that support this game?

[Stanley Burrell]

I already know something related to computing was probably asked in this thread, maybe, but what's a decent amount of RAM ...medium'ish... to run this when I pick up a PC in Q3-4-5 of this year?

Edit: Also, based on some of the avatars on this forum, I'm just going to go ahead and state the obvious: Dogs are people too. This place is like a cross between a Bosch and M.C. Escher painting. While watching Primer.

[Showal]

Stan, back the fuck up. I already hijacked this thread with a comp question.

[Androidpk]

You're both going to need around 20GB for this game. As well as business suits and ties. I can sell all of these to you at discount.

[Gelston]

So I guess I never really looked into this - is there a way to roll back things like that, or is there no "reload from save"? Is the issue that you're on a public/shared region and therefore can't save/reload, but you could if you were in a private region? I'm basically just waiting until the internet calms down and tells me the thing works before I purchase.

-DrZ

No roll back at all. You can play in a sandbox mode that allows cheats and stuff though, but you don't get achievements.

[Gelston]

Ok, I'm not a huge gamer, but games like SimCity and Civ V are what I do play when I actually play games. I need a new computer soon. If I got something like an i5 or i7 processor, about 6-8 GB of RAM, but only with the intel graphics, would that support this game?

According to the minimum, integrated intel series 4 or better with a min of 256MB of RAM. Your processor will be fine.

[Stanley Burrell]

Stan, back the fuck up. I already hijacked this thread with a comp question.

Hah, lucky for me I'm just going to reedit my crap and make it look I already knew that. Yeah.

[Showal]

You're both going to need around 20GB for this game. As well as business suits and ties. I can sell all of these to you at discount.

SHUTT UPP AND TAKE MY MONNEYYYYY QUICK

[Stanley Burrell]

SHUTT UPP AND TAKE MY MONNEYYYYY QUICK

Playground. 3:00PM. No teachers.

Yeah I don't read threads before I respond to them.

[Androidpk]

SHUTT UPP AND TAKE MY MONNEYYYYY QUICK


Playground. 3:00PM. No teachers.

Yeah I don't read threads before I respond to them.


Tito, Sanchez, relax! I have enough ram and suits for everyone.

[Atlanteax]

From the article Tgo01 quoted:


And to get us back in your good graces, we’re going to offer you a free PC download game from the EA portfolio. On March 18, SimCity players who have activated their game will receive an email telling them how to redeem their free game.

Would anyone consider it a 'strategic move' to purchase SimCity before the 18th, to get another 'free' game from EA?

I'm not sure if this only applies to people who have already purchased it or pre-purchased it ... or if it *is* a "as long you brought a copy before the 18th" thing.

[Androidpk]

As long as you buy it before the 18th. From what I gathered from the questions session last night they won't announce what games are eligible UNTIL the 18th.

[Atlanteax]

Was checking out Metacritic, and YEE-OUCH .. are the reviews *bad*


This is not Sim City. With the tiny land size it should have been called 'Sim-Town'. You are set in a region, where you either have to personally manage several 'towns' and specialize them towards a regional goal. If you choose to play with other people, you better hope they are on board with the common goal or they can basically contribute nothing. On top of the obvious goal of monetizing the game with micro transactions over it's lifetime, the 'always on' internet requirement... this feels more like an iPad game than a PC game. Shame on the review sites for lowering there expectations of PC games to that of mobile gaming standar.

A lot of emphasis on the significantly smaller map-size...

and I LOL'd at the bold in this person's succinct review:


The region system as set up is extremely visually jarring. There is a lot of wasted space and it results in two massive high-density cities being next door to each other but having absolutely no connections to each other aside from a meager, meandering highway. Then you have the myriad of idiots who just build cities in the shape of phalluses, ruining your experience anyways. Then, you're forced to play in a multiplayer region if you want the full experience of the singleplayer game, namely having all those imports and exports. However, all the cities next to you also move pollution to and fro. So there's always that guy who picks an upwind position and builds nothing but coal factories and industry, filling everyone else's cities with stifling pollution and preventing any meaningful progression. "So just play with friends in your own region" you say, well I'm sorry to say that I'm the only idiot dumb enough to buy this awful game. This is not a SimCity game in any sense except name only. This is just SimTown with awful design decisions and a clear plan to have loads of microtransactions. Save your money and don't buy this game until it hits the $5 bargain bin. Hope that EA doesn't shut down the servers by that time

Ouch @ how that pollution example works out too.

Welp, I'm definitely not risking the let-down with this game. I remember enjoying the original SimCity and especially Simcity 2000 (I actually pre-engineered cities on grid-paper and play-tested various city-pattern theories ... like 8 mini districts surrounding an interior district providing utility services to the outer 8, and basically duplicating it across the map ... as well as trying to design around only-1-per-city restructions like the Army base).

[Whirlin]

Honestly, it's not THAT bad...

Yes, the cities are small. Supposedly, that was one of the things that Maxis cut back on in order to help their server load during the beta... They're planning on creating land size later on as a patch once things stabilize a little bit. Hell, right now half the features are turned off. Still functioning insanely better than last week though.

The biggest gripe I have about the game is that once you've expanded your city to the city limits, there's not much more to do that doesn't take hundreds of thousands of $$, which you can accrue as quickly as 10k/hr (game time). Which basically means, you're idling for a while.

Original Sim City, the goal was to expand to the borders of the map. This SimCity, its about expanding, but then critiquing and nitpicking for maximization. But if you had a crappy initial setup, it's gonna hurt to redo your infrastructure later on.

That being said. Yes... this is an online game through and through. Regions are the new Cities. Play with good friends, or play by yourself. I don't know why people would have high faith in unknown people on the internet. Nowadays, if you're anonymous on the internet, it ends up being intelligence level of /b/ 4chan.

I dunno what they're saying about micro-transactions yet though... Stores are all turned off, and I can manage my city perfectly without paying for anything. They probably just suck at life, video games, and their mothers probably hate them for it.

This is one of those games that I would recommend a person to pick up after the price drops. It's a good $30 game... it's not a good $60 game. Sure, it sucks not to be cutting edge, and most PC SimCity players will likely play it out by the time you pick it up... but it's worth playing... eventually.

[Tgo01]

Have there been any announcements on micro transactions or are those people just speculating? I don't see how it's "obvious" the game is set up for micro transactions.

As Whirlin said the game isn't that bad. It's not quite as good as I was hoping it was going to be but it's still fun. Not only should people not expect much from playing with random people on the internet but the game is less than a week old (if you don't count all the days the game has been down), I doubt many people really know what they are doing yet. Heck I've gone through a few towns already and am still learning something new every time I play.

I will agree the city size sucks but again it's not that bad when you consider the idea now is the entire region is the city. I also don't understand that second person's comment, he complains he is forced to play multiplayer even if he just wants to play single player yet one person can play on their own private region and control each and every single city. There is no advantage to multiplayer over single player, except of course the social/working together aspect, but if he wants to play single player and is tired of people polluting his cities then I don't see why he doesn't just play single player.

[Taernath]

I haven't had any problems with trolling in MP regions, but I'm sure it happens. The amount of inter-connectivity between regions is a big issue in MP, because you can fuck over your neighbor pretty easily if you're not careful.

My biggest issue is that nothing happens real-time. I was in a region with a friend of mine, working on my city while he was in his, and absolutely nothing was shared between our cities until several hours in. We couldn't even chat via region wall because it was either disabled or severely lagged. He was going to make a residential city and his sims were going to commute to my city for work, but there was no commuting going on, and we were both in the red. When I'd look at his city, it was just a big empty plot of land.

[Taernath]

Have there been any announcements on micro transactions or are those people just speculating? I don't see how it's "obvious" the game is set up for micro transactions.


There's a manual floating around that mentions the in-game store.

[Whirlin]

I haven't had any problems with trolling in MP regions, but I'm sure it happens. The amount of inter-connectivity between regions is a big issue in MP, because you can fuck over your neighbor pretty easily if you're not careful.


Yeah, I'm gonna second this... My girlfriend and I finished an international Airport in our region... She exited her game, I logged in from my box, and it was complete when I logged in... She logged back in.. and it was still constructing additional pylons.

I write that up to the horribly unsuccessful launch though, and I think it'll be hammered out in time. They just need to a better job replicating the regions to the players. At least we're in the game now? Or... more into the game than we were last month.

Don't misunderstand, this is still by far the most unsuccessful launch of any game, Diablo 3 included. But, people are really taking it to be the game's fault, inherent in what it was attempting to deliver, whereas it should be reflecting on gross negligence and mismanagement by Maxis and EA and their horrible inability to anticipate demand when they specifically have the Origin front to get specific metrics on licenses.

[TheEschaton]

I wouldn't be surprised if larger city sizes are part of DLC later on, or a microtransaction. Is that shady? IDK, I guess it would depend on whether you think the current city size is incomplete, lacking, etc.

[Tgo01]

Right when I was finally giving EA the benefit of the doubt for fixing their cluster fuck of a launch I come to find out they have the servers down for maintenance, 24 hours of maintenance. First they don't have enough servers for demand, then they get enough servers to meet demand but the servers need 24 hours of maintenance after running for 3 days?

Okay I can't say for sure the maintenance is 24 hours, I'm just guessing. I just know when I tried logging in 20 minutes ago the message said the servers would be down 13 hours. So at least 13 hours of maintenance.

[Fallen]

Lol.

[Androidpk]

Maxis insider says servers are not necessary for game to work.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/12/simcity-server-not-necessary/#more-145460

[Fallen]

Maxis insider says servers are not necessary for game to work.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/12/simcity-server-not-necessary/#more-145460

That's fucked up right there. I was reading about people managing to play 20ish minutes while not online. Now we see how that's possible.


....which the article actually mentions, heh.


Kotaku ran a series of tests today (http://kotaku.com/5990165/my-simcity-city-thrived-offline-for-19-minutes), seeing how the game could run without an internet connection, finding it was happy for around 20 minutes before it realised it wasn’t syncing to the servers. Something which would surely be impossible were the servers co-running the game itself.

[Warriorbird]

I love SimCity but no. Straight not.

[Androidpk]

Should be interesting to see how Maxis/EA PR back peddles on this one.

[Tgo01]

Hmm...maybe that message I saw earlier was from earlier today and they just hadn't updated it yet and it was just a coincidence the servers were down because the servers are back up. Try putting a date on your down times next time Maxis, might prevent me from looking silly in the future :(

[Latrinsorm]

Should be interesting to see how Maxis/EA PR back peddles on this one.*peeked

[Some Rogue]

Is this Sim(utronics)City?

[Latrinsorm]

/thread

possibly /board

[Whirlin]

Alright, finally back in today... and they F'ed up trade ports... It seems like as soon as my trucks leave the city, they NEVER RETURN!!! 2 fully decked out trade ports, and they aren't exporting any electronics... so now processors, TVs, and Computers are backed up and won't export...

GG

[Showal]

I wouldn't be surprised if larger city sizes are part of DLC later on, or a microtransaction. Is that shady? IDK, I guess it would depend on whether you think the current city size is incomplete, lacking, etc.

I bet it will be SimCity expansion pack: Big City!! for $30. Sim series loooooooooooove their $30 expansions.

[Warriorbird]

/thread

possibly /board

Pretty much. I don't want to pay for it any more.

[Taernath]

Alright, finally back in today... and they F'ed up trade ports... It seems like as soon as my trucks leave the city, they NEVER RETURN!!! 2 fully decked out trade ports, and they aren't exporting any electronics... so now processors, TVs, and Computers are backed up and won't export...

GG
Yeah there have been a lot of weird bugs since launch. Sometimes I'll log in and find I'm down $30k from when I last was on, or my trade ports just refuse to export, or my bus station keeps screaming it's not connected, or every single sim in the city is suddenly, inexplicably evicted from their home.

[g++]

The AI in the game is terrible. There are dozens of terrible issues that can easily cripple a game once you get over 200k population in a loaded zone. I actually had a city collapse because I built the statue of liberty. So many people came too see it from other regions in the zone that my roads became completely locked to the point where fire, police, and trash service all halted and the city collapsed. Just awful, I don't think anyone tested this thing.

[Kastrel]

The AI in the game is terrible. There are dozens of terrible issues that can easily cripple a game once you get over 200k population in a loaded zone. I actually had a city collapse because I built the statue of liberty. So many people came too see it from other regions in the zone that my roads became completely locked to the point where fire, police, and trash service all halted and the city collapsed. Just awful, I don't think anyone tested this thing.

You can look at this as sort of success. Your tourism appeal is SO high that it caused an automatic self-destruction of society as tens of thousand of people flocked mindlessly to your amazing city, only to die a horrible death due to self-inflicted anarchy. Thats really impressive, actually.

[g++]

So before I went to bed last night, i zoned a game all commercial and residential dropped basic services and went to sleep.

Woke to this.

http://i1179.photobucket.com/albums/x387/pjaaay1/Spark_2013-03-13_07-58-10.png

Every gun on the chart is a murder in progress. Makes sense right? I mean a small town with a small police force should logically have 200+ murders a day right?

[Kastrel]

I like how there are comparitively few non-murder crimes. I see one arson, and maybe a half dozen robberies and shoplifting . . . but no, these people just want to murder. You've successfully created a society of sociopaths!

[g++]

The funny thing is the criminals murder so fast they actually cause the buildings to be bull dozable because everyone who lived in the building is dead. Its actually a fun city to watch.

[Fallen]

Congrats on your Neo Detroit, G++.

[Delias]

Fairly sure chicago is dominating the murder scene these days.

[Bobmuhthol]

But the murder rate per capita is lower in Chicago. I think it's actually highest in New Orleans, but Detroit has a hell of a lot more wrong with it than just being the second most murderous large city.

[g++]

I rounded all the criminals up but then I realized I didn't actually want to play the map so I bull dozed the jail and watched ~80 murders in 30 seconds. Despite all the weirdness the game still has some basic appeal I guess heh.

[Taernath]

I actually had a city collapse because I built the statue of liberty. So many people came too see it from other regions in the zone that my roads became completely locked to the point where fire, police, and trash service all halted and the city collapsed.

USA USA USA

[Atlanteax]

Congrats on your Neo Detroit, G++.

IB4 WB's 'Racist'

[Fallen]

IGN's review of the game is up. They gave it a 7.0 http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/03/13/simcity-review

[Tgo01]

IGN's review of the game is up. They gave it a 7.0 http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/03/13/simcity-review

He makes an excellent point about buildings being bound to the road they are placed next to for life. I don't mind RCI buildings being destroyed when I bulldoze the road but I should be able to rebuild that 100,000 simeleon building for free.

Other than that a lot of the bugs he mentioned I haven't noticed at all. Like taking hours for extra electricity and water to show up as available for other cities. It does take a few minutes on each end. I tried plopping down a power plant in one city and as soon as it had workers and was producing power for that city I hopped over to another city and waited around for a while and never saw the power show up. So after that I tried playing in that city for 5 or 10 minutes then went to the other city and it usually showed up after a couple minutes, most times right away.

Also as far as wants being buggy I haven't noticed that at all. When Sims are complaining about pollution there is usually a pollution problem, when complaining about germs there is usually a lack of hospital coverage or I need to upgrade my hospital. I do agree with the endless protests though, seems like as soon as you get a city large enough the protesters show up and never go away.

[Warriorbird]

IB4 WB's 'Racist'

He didn't suggest that it was all those pesky black people's fault.

[Liagala]

The AI in the game is terrible. There are dozens of terrible issues that can easily cripple a game once you get over 200k population in a loaded zone. I actually had a city collapse because I built the statue of liberty. So many people came too see it from other regions in the zone that my roads became completely locked to the point where fire, police, and trash service all halted and the city collapsed. Just awful, I don't think anyone tested this thing.
You're still alive? I was convinced you had dropped off the map or something.

[g++]

You're still alive? I was convinced you had dropped off the map or something.

Yah, just done with WoW I think. Fire nerf rabble rabble Pandaria worldofdailycraft, etc. Would rather do other stuff.

[Latrinsorm]

When Sims are complaining about pollution there is usually a pollution problem, when complaining about germs there is usually a lack of hospital coverage or I need to upgrade my hospital.Little do they know they're only setting themselves up for an organ harvesting epidemic.

[Atlanteax]

He didn't suggest that it was all those pesky black people's fault.

Wait wait... you mean you did not project that interpretation? So it is whimsical afterall on your end.

[Warriorbird]

Wait wait... you mean you did not project that interpretation? So it is whimsical afterall on your end.

Only somebody as tightly wound as you would have trouble telling the difference between you complaining about black people in Detroit and somebody else suggesting that Detroit is not doing well.

[Showal]

Just bought this! http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834314006

I'll likely be buying this game in the coming month.

[Taernath]

There's no way that will handle the massive amount of route calculations or sophisticated AI. (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/13/simcitys-sims-dont-seem-that-smart-after-all/)

[Kastrel]

This is going to bug me, but something about this game is reminding me of another game that came out in the past few years . . .

The general idea was that "huge sacrifices" were made so that the game was able to perform in some amazing new way, but when the game came out, it didn't work that way at all, but the sacrifices were still in place. Gah, I hope I can remember what it was.

I played Sim City 2000 I think, but I never was good at it. Fucking Zones, how do they work?!

[Tgo01]

There's no way that will handle the massive amount of route calculations or sophisticated AI. (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/13/simcitys-sims-dont-seem-that-smart-after-all/)

Wow, that explains so much. And here I thought I just failed at city building, I knew that couldn't be the reason!

I also love how service vehicles (garbage trucks for example) all follow each other along the same route rather than each of them taking a portion of the city. Always love seeing 16 garbage trucks all following one another, fighting each other for that next garbage can!

[Bobmuhthol]

There's no way that will handle the massive amount of route calculations or sophisticated AI. (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/13/simcitys-sims-dont-seem-that-smart-after-all/)The "oh, look, the Sim doesn't give a fuck what house it wants to live in as long as it lives in a house" argument doesn't seem very damaging. Having not known that this game was even being made until it was released, I'm not comparing it to any grandiose expectations, and I haven't read any claims by Maxis/EA. But it seems like this guy has a problem with individuals in the society all having the same preference set, i.e. they all prefer living close to where they work as opposed to not. This doesn't seem like a problem in a game where you're simulating city development, unless you're really pissed off that there isn't a random set of weird preferences for each individual in the city, or the inclusion of buildings that are built by idiots and thus nobody likes, etc. You're either going to have a system that is entirely deterministic (no matter how complex, you can tell exactly what will happen if you just follow the equations), or one that is entirely random -- there's no in between.

Going back to the "watch these cars all go to the house and turn around" argument, you're watching them believe that the house is available and drive there. You know it's not, but why would they? If you were omniscient and watched actual people, I feel like you'd have the same reaction: why are they behaving so goddamn stupidly?

Again, I know nothing about what people expected coming into this, or what claims were made. I just think it's silly that the critique of a simulation game is that it simulates things.

[Kastrel]

Now, I'm not the best when it comes to AI or coding, but if you can code "the horde" to detect the nearest house and aim for it . . .

Can't you code them to detect the "second" nearest house, and assign a RNG% likelihood of choosing the second nearest over the closest?

In the video with the cars for instance, every single one took the shorter, slower route . . . shouldn't the pathfinding beable to address a secondary road and have a portion of them choose between the two?

Maybe it would add more calculations, but the game is already a mass fuster cluck of that, so why not.

[Tgo01]

The "oh, look, the Sim doesn't give a fuck what house it wants to live in as long as it lives in a house" argument doesn't seem very damaging. Having not known that this game was even being made until it was released, I'm not comparing it to any grandiose expectations, and I haven't read any claims by Maxis/EA. But it seems like this guy has a problem with individuals in the society all having the same preference set, i.e. they all prefer living close to where they work as opposed to not. This doesn't seem like a problem in a game where you're simulating city development, unless you're really pissed off that there isn't a random set of weird preferences for each individual in the city, or the inclusion of buildings that are built by idiots and thus nobody likes, etc. You're either going to have a system that is entirely deterministic (no matter how complex, you can tell exactly what will happen if you just follow the equations), or one that is entirely random -- there's no in between.

Going back to the "watch these cars all go to the house and turn around" argument, you're watching them believe that the house is available and drive there. You know it's not, but why would they? If you were omniscient and watched actual people, I feel like you'd have the same reaction: why are they behaving so goddamn stupidly?

Again, I know nothing about what people expected coming into this, or what claims were made. I just think it's silly that the critique of a simulation game is that it simulates things.

I actually kind of expected them to have their own house, especially since before you get apartments and huge condos each house has the name of a family on it. I just assumed that person lived there until he moved, he would commute to work, come back to his house, blah blah blah.

Same thing with having a job. I see people driving to a building I just built and they all say "applying for job" I just assumed they were applying for that job "forever" (until he found a better job or died or something), I had no idea they were getting a new job every day.

Same thing with shopping. I assumed Sims were shopping at random stores, not that they just go to whichever store is closest. This explains why I can have a city full of shoppers, most shops are doing great and expanding yet there are a few here and there that are going out of business because of a lack of shoppers. I guess Sims never make it that far.

[Atlanteax]

There's no way that will handle the massive amount of route calculations or sophisticated AI. (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/13/simcitys-sims-dont-seem-that-smart-after-all/)

That is really sad design on Maxis' part, considering what they were able to accomplish in prior editions.

[Bobmuhthol]

The path finding stuff is slightly concerning if for no other reason than the Sim doesn't think, "This traffic is insane, maybe there's another road around here?" I don't have a problem with all of them trying the same road first, but after a while they should start seeking alternate routes, certainly. That could even be handled with identically behaving people -- once traffic starts to build up, newcomers can identify it and look elsewhere without ultimately ending up with all the Sims just moving to a different road.

As far as stores, do the Sims just say, "I NEED SHOPPING" and go to generic places? Or do they need food and go to a grocery store, etc.? The fact that individual citizens aren't tracked isn't surprising if you're allowed to have cities with 200k residents, except that it could easily be handled if they were serious about the cities running on their servers.

[Tgo01]

As far as stores, do the Sims just say, "I NEED SHOPPING" and go to generic places? Or do they need food and go to a grocery store, etc.?

From what the game says Sims just shop until they run out of money, I don't believe they are shopping for anything in particular So what the site is saying they will just walk to whichever store is closest and apparently will keep going down the line of stores until they run out of money.


The fact that individual citizens aren't tracked isn't surprising if you're allowed to have cities with 200k residents, except that it could easily be handled if they were serious about the cities running on their servers.

Would it really be that hard? I'm no expert by any means but would it really be difficult to have the game remember "Okay this Sim lives here"? I could sort of overlook this if they at least made this daily routine somewhat random, at least then I could see Sims traveling all over my city at once instead of mostly just sticking to one or two roads. But to have everyone just follow a conga line down the road until they come upon a house that has a vacancy for the day kind of fucks everything up. It really does explain a lot about how the city is developing.

I still enjoy the game, just kind of disappointed in this.

[Bobmuhthol]

From what the game says Sims just shop until they run out of money, I don't believe they are shopping for anything in particular So what the site is saying they will just walk to whichever store is closest and apparently will keep going down the line of stores until they run out of money.:( That's pretty poor. I assumed it was some sort of category index, where they bought a mix of things and stores actually specialized.
Would it really be that hard? I'm no expert by any means but would it really be difficult to have the game remember "Okay this Sim lives here"?You'd have to constantly monitor a set of characteristics about hundreds of thousands of individuals, so you're essentially talking about keeping a live database with millions of entries. I do a lot of financial simulations, and I'm constantly wrestling with size limitations without ever going beyond, say, 10 million data points, and those are just numbers. To save a variety of data types about a huge base of people would almost certainly be impractical... on an individual's machine. Servers could definitely do it.

And don't forget that the game not only has to remember all of that information, but then must calculate the path for each Sim's life, so it has to simultaneously read and write all of that data all of the time. Some of my simulations take minutes and even hours, and all I'm doing is generating random numbers and applying them to a handful of equations. Even when I say servers can easily do it, I mean good ones, which are probably the kind EA doesn't want to maintain.

[Taernath]

I haven't read any claims by Maxis/EA.

You really ought to, considering they said each sim had a personal life you could follow them around on, and this was one of the major reasons they went with always online - there were so many calculations being done no one's home computer could handle the load.

[Atlanteax]

You really ought to, considering they said each sim had a personal life you could follow them around on, and this was one of the major reasons they went with always online - there were so many calculations being done no one's home computer could handle the load.

The later of which of course, being a 'fib' under the pretenses that the servers acted as super-computers.

[Showal]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-d0b41H-Lnk

[g++]

Yah I tried pretty hard to like this game but its just not as good as 4. The small map sizes and bad pathing are a bit too egregious. All the sim fanatics are like "No if you just place all your fire stations in breadth first search pattern on dirt roads 30 yards from your town hall...." no fuck that thats not a game, I can figure out shitty algorithms in code at work.

[Androidpk]

Some people figured out how to open up the debug mode and play offline as well as be able to terraform land/coast and increase the plot sizes.

[Tgo01]

Some people figured out how to open up the debug mode and play offline as well as be able to terraform land/coast and increase the plot sizes.

Really? Kind of blows the whole "No your computer just sucks too much to handle this game" theory away.

Also I can't believe how horrible this launch has been and continues to be. Game been out about two weeks now and people have already hacked away the "online connection required" bit?

[Androidpk]

Really? Kind of blows the whole "No your computer just sucks too much to handle this game" theory away.

I liked how they basically backtracked on the whole intricate calculations part when people figured out that the sims didn't have their own homes, jobs, ect.

[Bobmuhthol]

Game been out about two weeks now and people have already hacked away the "online connection required" bit?There's no realistic way to prevent this from happening. Any game with this structure is going to look about the same, and it's been done many times before. The game at some point checks if it's online. Find that piece of code, remove it, and start the game. In theory, they could encrypt everything to prevent people from reverse engineering it, but that's very much only a theoretical solution.

[Tgo01]

There's no realistic way to prevent this from happening. Any game with this structure is going to look about the same, and it's been done many times before. The game at some point checks if it's online. Find that piece of code, remove it, and start the game. In theory, they could encrypt everything to prevent people from reverse engineering it, but that's very much only a theoretical solution.[/COLOR]

I thought Diablo 3 handled the monster actions server side so while someone could run an offline server of Diablo 3 the monsters would all be standing around doing nothing so it was pretty pointless. At least that's what I remember hearing, could have been bullshit I guess.

[Androidpk]

From what I garner Blizzard servers handle monster AI and loot drops. There are some hacked servers but they're pretty pointless to play.

[TheEschaton]

I can't believe Blizz is coming off looking good in this fiasco. So when they say they needed servers to handle monster AI and loot drops, they were telling the truth......UNLIKE EA?!?!

[Bobmuhthol]

I thought Diablo 3 handled the monster actions server side so while someone could run an offline server of Diablo 3 the monsters would all be standing around doing nothing so it was pretty pointless. At least that's what I remember hearing, could have been bullshit I guess.Oh, yeah, that they can do. But given absolutely nothing appears to happen on their servers except validation, the game isn't built for it.

[g++]

Oh, yeah, that they can do. But given absolutely nothing appears to happen on their servers except validation, the game isn't built for it.

I think the question is, can you play multiple plots in the same zone correctly without the servers. The game is essentially a POS if you don't have interconnected zones and I think their servers handle that. I could be wrong obviously as I don't have a hacked version to test with but that's my assumption.

[Fallen]

The D3 server emulators are extremely buggy. Last I read, they can only go up to Act 2 and most quests are unplayable.

[Androidpk]

http://kotaku.com/5990951/kotaku-shop-contest-the-emperor-has-no-pants-the-winners/gallery/1


My chop came in 2nd place :)

http://i47.tinypic.com/2s9r9n5.jpg

[Buckwheet]

Picked this up so I could get Crysis 3 for free. Is there still a region open?

[Tgo01]

I don't think anyone plays on our region anymore.

[Showal]

It appears they've fixed some of the traffic issues.

[Gelston]

I don't think anyone plays on our region anymore.

haha, I'm waiting.

[Tgo01]

haha, I'm waiting.

You still playing over there? Seemed like no one was playing everytime I checked. Maybe it was a bug showing last time on.

[Androidpk]

Someone also figured out how to disable the 20 minute disconnect timer. There isn't a way to save locally but that will be coming soon.

[Tgo01]

It appears they've fixed some of the traffic issues.

What changed?

[g++]

What changed?

The cars make a respectable attempt to use the entire road system now. They changed it so sims looks for a new route if a road is congested.

[Tgo01]

The cars make a respectable attempt to use the entire road system now. They changed it so sims looks for a new route if a road is congested.

That sounds fucking awesome. That's exactly how I pictured the traffic would work before I even bought the game.

Curious as to why they didn't already have this implemented. Seriously do companies have testers that sit around and say "Oh this makes the game challenging!" then when general public gets their hands on it and they say "This isn't challenging it's fucking stupid" then they change it?

[g++]

I think its more like.

Maxis "We haven't tested the road system yet"

EA "We don't give a fuck"

[Taernath]

You still playing over there? Seemed like no one was playing everytime I checked. Maybe it was a bug showing last time on.

I was on about a week ago, but I probably won't return until they sort the pathing out. Who was the other one besides you and Gelston? I never saw them improve their plot.

[Gelston]

Fallen

[Fallen]

I don't see myself playing, which is a waste. Monster Hunter Tri comes out, but more importantly, Tales of Xillia at the end of this month. Plus...school.

[Androidpk]

I don't see myself playing, which is a waste. Monster Hunter Tri comes out, but more importantly, Tales of Xillia at the end of this month. Plus...school.

What did you think of Ni no Kuni?

[Fallen]

What did you think of Ni no Kuni?

It was absolutely beautiful....and... I couldn't get into it at all. Put in about 12 hours and said eh. Great game, just not for me.

[Ashlander]

I don't see myself playing, which is a waste. Monster Hunter Tri comes out, but more importantly, Tales of Xillia at the end of this month. Plus...school.

Thought Xillia was coming out later for some reason been needing a new rpg to play.

[Taernath]

EA Reveals Free SimCity Apology Games (http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/03/18/ea-reveals-free-simcity-apology-games)

Ok, who called Bejeweled and Plants vs. Zombies?

Dead Space 3 is on there.

[Gelston]

I'll probably be getting Dead Space 3

[Gelston]

Go this e-mail from them today..

Our SimCity Mayors are incredibly important to the team at Maxis. We know we messed up and want to sincerely thank you for staying with us. The good news is we have solved most of the major issues and players are really enjoying the game. We're getting great feedback from our fans and know that many of you are having fun and are exploring this whole new expression of SimCity.

As a small token of our appreciation, we are offering you a free EA PC game download on Origin*. Mayors who have authenticated their copy of SimCity on Origin by March 25 can select a free game through a redemption portal inside the Origin desktop client later this week. We'll be opening up the redemption portal country-by-country so some of you may see it a little sooner than others. The portal will be live worldwide for everyone to select their game by March 22.

We don't want any of you to miss out your free game, so please note that you must register your copy of SimCity before March 25, 2013 at 11:59 PM PST and you must claim your free game by March 30, 2013 at 11:59PM PST. For more information, including instructions on how to get your free game and a list of eligible games, please read our FAQ (http://em.ea.com/a/hBRR0uXB7uauvB8xbWcMhePFqBn/faq?NUCLEUS_ID=2311071657). We've included some of the hottest games in the EA portfolio, so pick one and add it to your Origin library on us!


Sincerely,
Maxis

[Tgo01]

This sucks, I was actually looking forward to getting one of The Sims 3 expansion packs. I know, it's like I never learn my lesson.

[Atlanteax]

This sucks, I was actually looking forward to getting one of The Sims 3 expansion packs. I know, it's like I never learn my lesson.

I appreciated that they extended the 'deadline' to March 25th, but this is a disappointing 'free consolation game' list.

[Ashliana]

EA's CEO was just fired. Good riddance? I wonder how much had to do with the SimCity debacle.

[Gelston]

Probably more to do with:

However, EA has fallen into hard times, having recently been voted the worst company in America by the Consumerist magazine, beating the likes of Bank of America and AT&T.[7] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Riccitiello#cite_note-7) EA's share price continues to tumble, losing over half its value since January 2012 and people have started to question Riccitiello's competence as CEO.[8] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Riccitiello#cite_note-8) Riccitiello's response was that this state of affairs was of no fault of his own but that of investors 'who did not understand the gaming industry'.[9] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Riccitiello#cite_note-9) In March 2013, EA announced Riccitiello would step down as CEO at the end of the month. [10] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Riccitiello#cite_note-10)

[Taernath]

So, in other news, I logged in to one of my cities after the last patch... where before public transportation users were evenly divided between trains, buses and streetcars, now every single civ in my city wants to ride the train. Everybody, all 75k of them. Shit, people are commuting from other cities just to get on that train. There's a 25k sim wait list at some stations.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-DpRcxK_N8

[g++]

Is it possible they are all commuting to another city? Whats unemployment at?

[Fallen]

Their list of games is SOMEWHAT awesome except for the damned fact I OWN ME3 and DS3, so i'm left with Battlefield 3, which is not my cup of tea, but that's what i'm getting.

[Latrinsorm]

What if you returned ME3 for unconditional store credit, then got ME3 with your SimCity credit, then got whatever you wanted with your ME3 credit?

[Fallen]

What if you returned ME3 for unconditional store credit, then got ME3 with your SimCity credit, then got whatever you wanted with your ME3 credit?

All games were for PC and/or digitally purchased.

[Latrinsorm]

I don't understand these digimawhoozits. Can't you just put all the bytes in a Ziploc bag and return that?

[Drisco]

Just picked the game up. Gonna get a city up and going, and try it out. Do we have a PC Continent yet?

[Buckwheet]

The traffic is killing my city of 250k. Anyone make a bigger one? I think we should discuss traffic design.

[Gelston]

Yeah, send a friend request to gelston on Origin. We have a place on NA East 1

[Tgo01]

The traffic is killing my city of 250k. Anyone make a bigger one? I think we should discuss traffic design.

This guy explains the traffic pretty well. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV6PrEjaH8Q) I think it was before they tweaked the traffic but I'm sure most/all of what he says still applies. While watching the video the first time it made a lot of sense but when I tried to do it in my city I fucked it up so I gotta watch it again. Basically what he says though is 4 way intersections = bad because you have so much traffic all coming to a stop at the same place, so he says try to do your road layout with avoiding 4 way intersections as much as possible. He also says the main road coming to your city is the most important road because that's where all vehicles have to go when they are commuting or selling goods and what not so try to keep the main road as free of traffic as possible. He also said something about if you have a non avenue road intersect with an avenue road that the non avenue road traffic yields to the avenue road traffic...I have to watch that part again because I didn't see it. Also he said trolly roads are bad because they mess up the previous point I just mentioned because with trolly roads the cars on the avenue have to yield to the trolly so it slows down the flow of traffic on the avenue.

[g++]

The traffic is killing my city of 250k. Anyone make a bigger one? I think we should discuss traffic design.

Ive gotten to 400k but it gets sketchy as hell at that point. You have to balance your population very well at that point to not have society collapse, any unemployment or unfilled jobs will flood your streets with commuters. If you use the medium road medium avenue trick at major intersections you can get there though.

Another trick is to spam trees on ground pollution and keep everyone educated to hold down germs.

The biggest trick is when your going to high density on your streets go to the end of each one and build a one section medium road at the end point, then check your avenue to make sure theres no traffic light, then upgrade the road. This will leave no intersection so your high density road wont increase avenue traffic. It also leaves a great spot to build a middle class park. So you can kind of kill two birds if your aiming for a high tech low pollution industry.

Another trick is if you see avenues spilling onto a particular street put a kink in the road somewhere to make it artificially long so people will stop using it get to work.

Also make sure none of your industrial is making its own deliveries and make sure your trade ports are not on the same routes as commuters so that the industrial delivery trucks are never in the same traffic as shoppers or commuters.

[Buckwheet]

Also, rumor has it the traffic tweaks have not been released yet.

[g++]

Also, rumor has it the traffic tweaks have not been released yet.

I think some of them have, the road overflow AI I think is in already, but there should be more too come, fixing street cars for instance to not cause traffic to yield would be good. As of now street cars are essentially a miscategorized disaster because inserting them in a high pop city instantly grinds it to a halt.

[Buckwheet]

Also, emergency vehicles behaving like regular commuters when you have 4 lanes of traffic open and they just sit at the stop light is pretty gay. Traffic is my #1 problem right now. Shit is burning down and crime is sky high because the emergency vehicles are just stuck in traffic. Same thing for my 4 processor mfg facilities. I have budget problems with 8,000 crates of processors just sitting.

[g++]

Yah, because the pathing in simcity is so insanely stupid a good way to help with that is to build your city a specific way


------------------------
| ---------I----------- |
| ---------I----------- |
-----------------------
| --------RC----------- |
| ----------------------|
------------------------
|FIRE|----- RC------ |POL|
|TRASH|------------- |HOS|
| ----------RC--------- |
| ----------RC--------- |
-------------------------
|WAT/SEW SCHOOLS |
-------------------------

The idea being that your services will always go left to right, your workers will always go up and your students will always go down. It doesnt have to be exactly that but i think you get the idea. I saw that in the video that was posted earlier and it works to an extent.

[Atlanteax]

Probably more to do with:

However, EA has fallen into hard times, having recently been voted the worst company in America by the Consumerist magazine, beating the likes of Bank of America and AT&T.[7] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Riccitiello#cite_note-7) EA's share price continues to tumble, losing over half its value since January 2012 and people have started to question Riccitiello's competence as CEO.[8] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Riccitiello#cite_note-8) Riccitiello's response was that this state of affairs was of no fault of his own but that of investors 'who did not understand the gaming industry'.[9] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Riccitiello#cite_note-9) In March 2013, EA announced Riccitiello would step down as CEO at the end of the month. [10] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Riccitiello#cite_note-10)

Wait wait... he blames the investors, and claims that *he* understands the gaming industry by virtue of pushing out one shitty product after enough, and squeezing franchises dry while investing minimal assets to further develop them?

[Whirlin]

But, there NEEDS to be a new -Insert Sport- game EVERY year! They can't just patch in different players, graphics, or anything else... It needs to be a distinct and absolutely NEW game... running off the same engine... with minor graphics tweeks.

Geeze Atlanteax... you just DON'T UNDERSTAND the industry!

[Gelston]

Just got my free game. Hooray Dead Space 3.

And I sent you a request Dris.

[Tgo01]

It's almost like Maxis is listening to their customers.

Traffic Improvements:

Tuned traffic congestion and fixed some intersection traffic issues.
Emergency Vehicles will drive in empty lanes to get around traffic at intersections.
Emergency and Delivery vehicles get priority over regular traffic when leaving garage.

Turned regional Achievements back on!
Update so new players will go through the Getting Started Scenario only once. Those playing before the update must go through the Getting Starting Scenario once before they will see the Play menus when switching servers.
Fix for a gameplay crash
UI improvement: We increased the length of time that system alerts are displayed to enhance readability
Graphics: shader change to improve look of walls and parking lots
It’s now easier to place airport runways
Budget transaction optimization to increase performance
Update of buffers on buildings to save memory
Performance improvement for lower end machines

[Gelston]

Sweet!

[Taernath]

None of those traffic issues should have made it into the live game.

[Buckwheet]

None of those traffic issues should have made it into the live game.


Emergency Vehicles will drive in empty lanes to get around traffic at intersections

How do you miss this during QA/QC? It was the dumbest thing ever.

[Whirlin]

I dunno, the traffic conditions are still pretty prohibitive in the game. A simple option of having a second entrance/exit to the city would be a simple remedy.

QA/QC? I think there were quite a few problems that could have been identified if there was proper QA/QC

Maybe I was just being slow at picking up obvious nuances of the new SimCity... but I'm realizing that high wealth residential is barely worth it, with how much easier Medium/low wealth people are to deal with and keep happy, and how EVERY building you make for infrastructure typically uses low/medium wealth people.

For those of you that have like, 100k+ populations, hows the wealth level look of your cities?

[Tgo01]

Maybe I was just being slow at picking up obvious nuances of the new SimCity... but I'm realizing that high wealth residential is barely worth it, with how much easier Medium/low wealth people are to deal with and keep happy, and how EVERY building you make for infrastructure typically uses low/medium wealth people.

I notice the same thing. Also what kind of jobs require high wealth people? I've had cities that had thousands of high wealth job openings yet I didn't notice any adverse effects on my city and the zoning guy never said "We need more high wealth sims to fill these jobs now!"

[Whirlin]

I notice the same thing. Also what kind of jobs require high wealth people? I've had cities that had thousands of high wealth job openings yet I didn't notice any adverse effects on my city and the zoning guy never said "We need more high wealth sims to fill these jobs now!"

I think maybe electronics manufacturing, and maybe high wealth commercial require some high wealth residential... It didn't really seem like High Tech generated many high wealth jobs... but I could be wrong about that. But it's so few jobs for them comparatively...

The thing I'm struggling with now is that I've created a heavy commercial environment, with decent education, meant to be a cultural/tourist destination... but high density high wealth commercial produce an ABSOLUTE TON of recyclables... Two full recycling centers at capacity, at about 60% collection... Therefore I've branched out into electronics manufacturing just due to having the materials on hand.

[Buckwheet]

I am also doing electronics manufacturing. I ended up with three centers. Plastic seems to be the most abundant.

[g++]

I dunno, the traffic conditions are still pretty prohibitive in the game. A simple option of having a second entrance/exit to the city would be a simple remedy.

QA/QC? I think there were quite a few problems that could have been identified if there was proper QA/QC

Maybe I was just being slow at picking up obvious nuances of the new SimCity... but I'm realizing that high wealth residential is barely worth it, with how much easier Medium/low wealth people are to deal with and keep happy, and how EVERY building you make for infrastructure typically uses low/medium wealth people.

For those of you that have like, 100k+ populations, hows the wealth level look of your cities?

400k city, have about 60-40 low-mid. <1% high, all industry is high tech thus the large amount of middle class.


Low and mid wealth people are more dense then rich people. Also if you have a lot of high wealth people they will usually run out of shopping because it is a pain in the ass to get commercial to go high wealth sometimes.

Additionally high wealth people refuse to use mass transportation so they are essentially utility workers for traffic purposes.

[Drisco]

These full servers are driving me nuts! I wanna get on NA 1 to play with you folks but no matter what time of day I check, it's always full.

[Whirlin]

400k city, have about 60-40 low-mid. <1% high, all industry is high tech thus the large amount of middle class.


Low and mid wealth people are more dense then rich people. Also if you have a lot of high wealth people they will usually run out of shopping because it is a pain in the ass to get commercial to go high wealth sometimes.

Additionally high wealth people refuse to use mass transportation so they are essentially utility workers for traffic purposes.
The more and more I read about it... the less and less I want high wealth... Plus, the nature parks, which will help reduce pollution and germs, are middle class workers.

Maybe I'll gut all the parks from my city later and see what happens... sounds like a fun social experiment.

[Latrinsorm]

How do you miss this during QA/QC? It was the dumbest thing ever.
QA/QC? I think there were quite a few problems that could have been identified if there was proper QA/QCPeople say this stuff a lot, but what they forget is that QA isn't in charge of what gets fixed and what gets left alone, and does not have any control over the schedule for release.

The question you should be asking is how game companies (routinely!) get away with releasing content that is clearly not finished yet.
The more and more I read about it... the less and less I want high wealth... Plus, the nature parks, which will help reduce pollution and germs, are middle class workers.Socialist!!!

[Tgo01]

I don't know if things have changed or I did something wrong but the idea of avoiding streetcar avenues because they make things worse didn't work for me.

I started a new city and was trying the suggestions that one guy in the video suggested and my city was about to collapse at 75k people. The traffic to get into the city was so bad it hardly budged in two game days. The delivery trucks couldn't even get to my coal power station and I ran out of electricity and my population quickly dipped to under 60k. I figured since the city was lost anyways I might as well go ahead and see what upgrading to street car avenues would do. In the blink of an eye (okay it was several blinks) my population shot up to 130k, the traffic literally disappeared from the highway, there was no traffic at all coming into my city. And this was just by upgrading the main road into my city into street car avenues.

[Whirlin]

The question you should be asking is how game companies (routinely!) get away with releasing content that is clearly not finished yet.Socialist!!!


No no... if I created a high wealth society, charged 100% tax rate and 0% tax rate on the poor, then I'd be socialist... I'd prefer to think of myself as a slum lord.

Managed to get my commercial city up to 100k last night. Pretty much just destroyed any high wealth parks and replaced them with mid-wealth nature parks. But man... the trash problems... 25k of recycling barrels a day... I have 3 fully loaded recycling centers pumping out plastic and alloy nonstop, which is only collecting 15k of recyclables. Due to the ridiculous amounts of production, I put in 3 fully loaded processor plants. The new recycling electronics process is netting me 1m a day.. Pretty ridiculous amount of money for no import costs.

[Whirlin]

I don't know if things have changed or I did something wrong but the idea of avoiding streetcar avenues because they make things worse didn't work for me.

I started a new city and was trying the suggestions that one guy in the video suggested and my city was about to collapse at 75k people. The traffic to get into the city was so bad it hardly budged in two game days. The delivery trucks couldn't even get to my coal power station and I ran out of electricity and my population quickly dipped to under 60k. I figured since the city was lost anyways I might as well go ahead and see what upgrading to street car avenues would do. In the blink of an eye (okay it was several blinks) my population shot up to 130k, the traffic literally disappeared from the highway, there was no traffic at all coming into my city. And this was just by upgrading the main road into my city into street car avenues.

Well, there was the patch 1.7 traffic changes, maybe they phantom patched the street cars to make them not suck? I have 2 fully loaded streetcar stations in my city. I mean, with the amount of patching, I wouldn't trust any video made before like... yesterday.

[g++]

I don't know if things have changed or I did something wrong but the idea of avoiding streetcar avenues because they make things worse didn't work for me.

I started a new city and was trying the suggestions that one guy in the video suggested and my city was about to collapse at 75k people. The traffic to get into the city was so bad it hardly budged in two game days. The delivery trucks couldn't even get to my coal power station and I ran out of electricity and my population quickly dipped to under 60k. I figured since the city was lost anyways I might as well go ahead and see what upgrading to street car avenues would do. In the blink of an eye (okay it was several blinks) my population shot up to 130k, the traffic literally disappeared from the highway, there was no traffic at all coming into my city. And this was just by upgrading the main road into my city into street car avenues.

The streetcar strat is for when things are approaching the limits of what the roads can hold. Street cars can help you get to 250k but when you get there you will be in some serious shit is the thing. They put stop lights at EVERYTHING they cross. even other avenues. So if you have laid out a well thought out high pop town with 6 or 7 long avenues intersecting medium density roads with no stop lights upgrading one of them to street car will instantly add dozens of crippling stop lights to the entire route. So when you start going over 300k->350k a single stop light in the wrong spot can literally doom your entire commute every day and make traffic so bad nothing works, so thats the basis of the strat for never going to street car.

[Atlanteax]

No no... if I created a high wealth society, charged 100% tax rate and 0% tax rate on the poor, then I'd be socialist... I'd prefer to think of myself as a slum lord.

Managed to get my commercial city up to 100k last night. Pretty much just destroyed any high wealth parks and replaced them with mid-wealth nature parks. But man... the trash problems... 25k of recycling barrels a day... I have 3 fully loaded recycling centers pumping out plastic and alloy nonstop, which is only collecting 15k of recyclables. Due to the ridiculous amounts of production, I put in 3 fully loaded processor plants. The new recycling electronics process is netting me 1m a day.. Pretty ridiculous amount of money for no import costs.

Sounds like the pinnacle of strong game design.

[Showal]

Anyone know if you run out of things like oil? And when you do, are you shit out luck or can you get it back?

[DrZaius]

Anyone know if you run out of things like oil? And when you do, are you shit out luck or can you get it back?

I'm fairly certain resources like oil are finite. You could buy more on the open market, or plan to change your economy before you run out.

-DrZ