Sim City

errlloyd

Anyone worked our how to destroy a city yet? Also how long does it take to clean up pollution. My current city is horrific, a real hell hole. Purely extraction economy no services nothing. I feel actively sorry for the people who live here. But I do have a few million saved up, and I am almost ready to build an educated utopia. Just need to delete all.

Kirby

Well I just had some fun and plopped down some disasters when I destroyed mine the other day. Other than that, you can click alot with the bulldozer if you hold the button down. Makes fairly short work of it all. If there is a "Destroy whole city" button, I haven't found it.

gizmo

Kirby wrote: »

Perhaps I should clarify. By "patch" I'm not really referring to bug fixes. Crash to desktop, items not spawning, getting stuck in a wall, ammo not spawning, quests not working correctly, etc. That's just bugs that get fixed. EA are the same as everyone else in that regard.

I'm talking about patches....making alterations to the game engine to make the game better. Blizzard do content patches. Valve do content patches. EA don't do that. And I don't mean new or additional content before you jump all over that. I'm talking about spending the time to tweak the game so that it plays better for your existing customers.

If your wide reciever's run out of bounds on every play, they are going to do it for the whole year. It won't get fixed. Dodgy keepers letting in a shot from the halfway line? Sorry, that's here to stay. Your nanosuit power mode doing the same damage as a regular hit? Too bad. Learn to live with it. And so on and so forth.

They don't spend time or resources on anything that alters the game for the better. It either goes into next years iteration of the title or is sold as DLC.

This traffic alteration is a fundamental programming change to the engine. It's rare for EA to do something like this.

Well it depends, by design was Power Mode meant to enable you to deal more damage for a melee hit? If it was and it doesn't do it, then that's a bug and should be fixed via a patch. On the other hand, if it wasn't and neither breaks the game nor affects it in a detrimental manner then it's a simple design call and they shouldn't be obliged to patch it. It's a fairly dangerous road to go down because often you could be reacting to a vocal minority of the community when you start changing how a game plays. The Sim City stuff seems fundamentally broken so I'm sure they'll patch it in the near future as the designer indicated on his blog.

As for the Valve reference with respect to DLC and releasing additional content, well that's an easy one. Valve don't need to release more DLC or charge for additional content when they're already making 30%+ from the sale of everyone else's DLC. It's easy to appear as the good guy when you're making money on the side from selling all the bad guy's stuff. ::pac:

Kirby

gizmo wrote: »

if it wasn't and neither breaks the game nor affects it in a detrimental manner then it's a simple design call and they shouldn't be obliged to patch it. It's a fairly dangerous road to go down because often you could be reacting to a vocal minority of the community when you start changing how a game plays. The Sim City stuff seems fundamentally broken so I'm sure they'll patch it in the near future as the designer indicated on his blog.

I'm not talking about changing a map or facet of the game because people whine on forums. I'm talking about stuff that is obviously broken, or could be improved upon. Ask any fan of Fifa or Madden and they will tell you. The game they play on day 1 release in October is the same game they will be playing in 9 months time. Zero changes. The engine stays the same. They could make changes to it. But it makes more business sense to keep the changes for next years version.

Ask a fan of Starcraft how the game changes for free in the same 9 month period. He will regale you with engine changes to beat the band for half an hour. This unit can now shoot accross the map. Oh, that unit was dropped. You no longer have to click that....the unit does it on his own. Not just balance changes.....improvements to the game. They change the UI completely. They add a chat channel. They add custom modes for players. Release map editors.

Blizzard are an extreme example...the lunatics kept patching Diablo 2 for over a decade. But plenty of publishers support their games far better than EA. Sega aren't exactly renowned for quality control....and yet they let Creative assembly keep patching Shogun total war over a year after it's release. Changing the campaigns. Adding anti-aliasing features, different shader models. Big stuff that took alot of time. Not just bug fixes.

The traffic in sim city is not a bug. The traffic in the game is working as intended....shortest path first. But they are changing it......for free. I mean, I could post a picture of the four horseman of the apocalypse but I think you get where I'm coming from at this stage.

gizmo

Kirby wrote: »

I'm not talking about changing a map or facet of the game because people whine on forums. I'm talking about stuff that is obviously broken, or could be improved upon. Ask any fan of Fifa or Madden and they will tell you. The game they play on day 1 release in October is the same game they will be playing in 9 months time. Zero changes. The engine stays the same. They could make changes to it. But it makes more business sense to keep the changes for next years version.

Ah yes, I'm certainly not a fan of that in the games I play however judging by the sales of the Fifa and Madden series I'd suggest those players simply stop buying the game every year if they want things to change.

Kirby wrote: »

Ask a fan of Starcraft how the game changes for free in the same 9 month period. He will regale you with engine changes to beat the band for half an hour. This unit can now shoot accross the map. Oh, that unit was dropped. You no longer have to click that....the unit does it on his own. Not just balance changes.....improvements.

Again this comes down to what you want from the game. For instance, Crysis will never have the same staying power as a game like Starcraft which is designed to be played at a professional level for a considerable amount of time. Due to this, it needs constant balance tweaks and a small amount of content over its lifespan to keep things relatively fresh. I guess the same could be said for most multiplayer games but regardless, it's nearly approaching games as a service at that point, where you pay your upfront cost and know you'll get constant access to such tweaks. This is most certainly the category I'd see Sim City falling into too.

Crysis, on the other hand, is something I wouldn't like to see go in that direction. It's a product, a game that behaves in a certain way as designed by the team. As above, if something is broken or perhaps genuinely doesn't "work" when it hits retail then I'd expect them to fix it but I certainly wouldn't expect them to keep tweaking things months after release, instead I (this being my own opinion of course) would prefer them to get working on the next iteration with a full campaign containing new things, a new chunk of content which, depending on what it contains, I'd probably pay for (see: Borderlands) or maybe a new project altogether.

Kirby wrote: »

The traffic in sim city is not a bug. The traffic in the game is working as intended....shortest path first. But they are changing it......for free. I mean, I could post a picture of the four horseman of the apocalypse but I think you get where I'm coming from at this stage.

Aye, but I'd lump that into the "detrimental to gameplay" category above and so it should be fixed via a free patch. The idea of them charging for such a fix is, as a result, utterly abhorrent to me.

Kirby

Okay so starcraft is an example that doesn't suit you. Cd Projekt Red kept supporting the Witcher 2 long after release. That's a game alot more similar to Crysis than Starcraft. Single player campaign, adventure game, etc. They still chose to make it better.

It's quite simply an ethos....or philosophy. Everybody wants to make money out of their game. That's a given and there is nothing wrong with it. But you can tell the difference between people who want to make good games to make their money and people who just want to make money. If EA thought they would make more money by selling purely Hello Kitty games....thats what they would do.

CD Projekt would still make the Witcher.

And in the words of Zapp Brannigan, I believe that your dominoes have fallen like a house of cards. Checkmate!

gizmo

Well CD Projekt RED are just flat out a pretty great studio, I don't think anyone could deny that. In fact, I'd happily have a 1000+ post thread about how ****ing awesome The Witcher series and CDPR are rather than one bitching about Sim City and EA.

On a serious note though, CPDR are a great example in a different way too. They're a company who made some pretty massive mistakes with their games (shipping with overbearing DRM which had an actual effect on game performance and going down a rather nasty path with regards engaging with services of shady letter-sending solicitors) but then turned around and released a bunch of free content for their game and fixes based on fan feedback. I'd sure as hell like to see more of that to be honest but, as Azza said above, the new content developed by them is something that people should appreciate, not expect. I don't want to labour the point but this kind of new content is bloody expensive to make so I can't reasonably expect every company, especially publicly traded ones like EA, to produce it for all of their games.

So yes, it's most certainly an ethos thing, the problem is that positive ethos can only manifest itself in certain ways depending on the company. When it comes to EA, I'd happily settle for a solid, relatively bug free game that offers something new over a previous iteration (if one exists) and that certainly doesn't stop me from playing it for what is going on over a week now. That is, if I bought it. Which I didn't.

Slutmonkey57b

VinLieger wrote: »

One of the designers released a new blog post last night saying the next priority was to get all the features running again, as well as working on the ai. So they will be adding a new feature to roads that make them more or less appealing to sims depending on the traffic density so they will take other routes. And emergency services will be able to weave in and out of traffic apparently.

Edit here it is : http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/simcity-update-8

Jesus that blog post is still full of disingenuous ****ing lies. No, Mr lead designer, people are not "stressing" the engine in "new and unique ways". They're doing perfectly normal and everyday setups, which don't work because your precious engine is ****, and broken. Occasionally they are setting up test case scenarios to demonstrate exactly how your engine is broken so you can't weasel out of it.

Apart from anything else, the city size is so tiny that there aren't many "new" ways to play you couldn't have covered with a decent test programme.

You knew the game was broken, which is why you held such a restrictive beta in the hope nobody would find you out. You got found out anyway.

Azza

Kirby wrote:

I'm not talking about changing a map or facet of the game because people whine on forums. I'm talking about stuff that is obviously broken, or could be improved upon. Ask any fan of Fifa or Madden and they will tell you. The game they play on day 1 release in October is the same game they will be playing in 9 months time. Zero changes. The engine stays the same. They could make changes to it. But it makes more business sense to keep the changes for next years version.

Well Starcraft 2 brings as far as I can tell absolutely nothing new to the RTS genre. I can't think of a single inovation, its about as old school as you can get. Its still a great game, polished to a mirror sheen and they keep ontop of balance issues but there is nothing in this game that hasn't been done before. The updates they release are simply balance changes. These updates are massive game changers for people who play the multiplayer competitvely but like balance changes in fighting games they go unnoticed by casual players.

Kirby wrote:

and yet they let Creative assembly keep patching Shogun total war over a year after it's release. Changing the campaigns. Adding anti-aliasing features, different shader models. Big stuff that took alot of time. Not just bug fixes.

As in the way EA let Crytek release 9 different patches including a DX 11 patch and a high resolution patch for Crysis 2 a few months after its release?

Kirby wrote:

I'm talking about patches....making alterations to the game engine to make the game better. Blizzard do content patches. Valve do content patches. EA don't do that. And I don't mean new or additional content before you jump all over that. I'm talking about spending the time to tweak the game so that it plays better for your existing customers.

You mean like the way EA did that in Mass Effect 3 when they added additional characters and maps for its multiplayer mode for free. Or they released an improved ending for the single player campaign. They also released a small amount of free single player armor and weapons as well.

Kirby wrote:

Cd Projekt Red kept supporting the Witcher 2 long after release. That's a game alot more similar to Crysis than Starcraft. Single player campaign, adventure game, etc. They still chose to make it better.

They added pretty much similar content to what EA did with Mass Effect 3. They added a bit more single player content for free but the amount of content was no where near as substantail as the paid for ME 3 DLC. Like I'm sure the cut scene was expensive to make and all, but its doesn't change how the game plays it expands the plot much like ME3's extended ending.
There wasn't any engine updates as far as I'm aware. They expanded the last chapter of the game because it was lacking in content and added a tutorial to help people who found the game difficult but ME3 for example didn't have these issues to begin with.

Turtwig

Eurogamer's review.

4/10

Favourite line :

Nearby, buses bought to alleviate traffic congestion can also be spotted driving up and down the same strip of road over and over again. Their 40 passengers have never been known to disembark and I wonder if all on board have long since perished, leaving the ghostly carriage to haunt the streets forever.

Deputy editor's reason for the delay in their review.

Our biggest issues with the game are probably patchable, yes, but as bugs go they're clearly quite serious and deep - and going by the latest from Maxis, they might be connected to the fundamentals of the simulation engine. We don't expect them to be fixed on a short timescale - unlike the login issues, which I would expect to be resolved sooner rather than later.

We're open to the idea of re-reviewing the game down the line if it undergoes substantial change, but we won't be changing the review or the score in the immediate future (i.e. not for months, at least, if ever).

By the way, thank you all for your patience in waiting for this review. SimCity's a fun game initially, and its issues only become clear on extended play, so it was crucial for us to put proper time into the game on public servers to arrive at this verdict.

Funny how Eurogamer Sweden gave it 10/10 though.

This game looks amazing to look at it, so I really hope all these bugs are fixed. I don't mind Sims not having the same houses, I struggle to understand though why they can't remember their job 'type'.

Slutmonkey57b

Eurogamer posts the first honest review by using the amazing method of "looking at the game and seeing if it works".

Or if you want to be cynical, "reading the backlash to the Swedish review and rewriting based on what comes out over the following week".

Not that I'm cynical.

Dcully

Tired to play my new city from the other night, 170k people, all clean city,no crime pollution etc and the ****ing thing has vanished.
As if that wasnt bad enough i made another and 70 mins in its become unplayable at this time please try later.
What a fecking joke.

Kirby

Azza wrote: »

snip

You know I had a long post written out rebutting alot of what you said, particularly your lack of knowledge on starcraft 2 and the brand new UI they introduced and the custom and mod arcade and the chat channels and the way they reworked the ladder system.....twice. But It's just not worth it. It will end up going in a circle.

I can't figure out if you just like being in the minority or are being contrary for the sake of it. If you want to keep defending EA and holding them up as some sort of bastion of gaming and diminishing the contributions of companies like blizzard, go right ahead. I'm not going to debate it any more.

Julez

Dcully wrote: »

Good honest review if anyone is sitting on the fence about this.
Probably one of the most honest reviewers around.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgsVXYX9TSg

Agree with pretty much this whole review.

I paid €40 for this, and I don't regret it. I've wasted €40 on a lot more useless stuff in the past. Its just frustrating because it feels so close to exactly what we want and just falls short on what seem like such obvious and minor issues - map sizes, traffic working how it should, fireman having a brain etc...

nesf

Jernal wrote: »

This game looks amazing to look at it

Ah now, the textures are depressingly bad if you zoom in even on Ultra. Not that I particularly care about graphics much in a game like this.

Drexel

So pissed with this game!

Picked the 3 city region and tried to build one city for residential, one for industrial and one for commercial.

It just doesnt work. Of 10k people in my residential city only 500 are commuting for work and only 2 shoppers are commuting!

Load of ****e.

I can stand the always online. I could take the small cities and regions. I can put up with no terrain editor but what I cant stand is a game that doesnt work right

VinLieger

jonny666 wrote: »

So pissed with this game!

Picked the 3 city region and tried to build one city for residential, one for industrial and one for commercial.

It just doesnt work. Of 10k people in my residential city only 500 are commuting for work and only 2 shoppers are commuting!

Load of ****e.

I can stand the always online. I could take the small cities and regions. I can put up with no terrain editor but what I cant stand is a game that doesnt work right

Had been meaning to try something like this, out of curiosity what is your inter city transport system like? Municipal buses, trains and planes?

Dcully

OMFG im so pissed off with this game, the city i mentioned above has now vanished aswell as two previous cities, 2 more are stuck in rolling back for 5+ days now.
Its a total joke at this stage, i tried repair installation but nothing wrong with installation.

Drexel

VinLieger wrote: »

Had been meaning to try something like this, out of curiosity what is your inter city transport system like? Municipal buses, trains and planes?

I only got as far as buses, but I had a good few of them. I put 2 stations in the residential area. One at either side of the city town and had one each for the other cities.

All the factories are closed cause of no workers. Shops are closed cause of no shoppers and homes are being abandoned cause of no money.

The services like sewage and power are working fine but the sims themselves dont seem to travel well!!

Each city is making money tho!! Il keep going with it later if it doesnt annoy me and keep you posted!

Grumpypants

Jernal wrote: »

Eurogamer's review.

4/10

'.

To be honest many of this guys complaints are L2P issues.

You can see in one screen shot he has built a 8 road junction :eek: 4 road junctions are notoriously bad for traffic problems but he sticks two together then moans about traffic issues in the city :rolleyes:

He even complains about not being able to save it and roll back in case he makes a mistake ??

Turtwig

nesf wrote: »

Ah now, the textures are depressingly bad if you zoom in even on Ultra. Not that I particularly care about graphics much in a game like this.

Well, I've only seen gameplay videos.:o I don't particularly care too much about graphics either (if I did I'd long since have bought this game). It's just every now and again when I'm playing a game like this or SC4 I just like to play it on turtle speed and watch the city do its own thing. There's something relaxing about it. In terms of visual charm SC2013 looks beautiful when viewed from far out. It does really look like a living city.

Azza

Kirby wrote:

I can't figure out if you just like being in the minority or are being contrary for the sake of it. If you want to keep defending EA and holding them up as some sort of bastion of gaming and diminishing the contributions of companies like blizzard, go right ahead. I'm not going to debate it any more.

Your in a a public forum, when you make a claim you can be called on it.
I'll criticize EA when they should be criticized. As I said I'm no fan of SimCity DRM and Maxis/EA should also be criticized for bugs, A.I. path finding issues and they should address them as quickly as possible. They messed up this games launch needlessly. However this doesn't mean every other accusation thrown at them is true. I'm not holding them up as a bastion of gaming either, there are better publishers our there imo, I personally find them a pretty typical game publisher, with the same hit and miss ratio as other major publishers but I'm not just going unfairly run them into the ground because that what everyone else is doing. I prefer taking a balanced approach and actually investigating claims on topics like this instead of just parroting the same claptrap over and over. I'd take the same approach when it comes to any other game, developer and publisher. Also speaking of holding Blizzard up as a bastion of gaming (which you where not doing but hey I'll play that game if you accuse me of the same with EA) care to explain Diablo 3 always online DRM and RMAH. Or the lack of LAN support with the SC2 series? I wonder what was the reasoning behind them?

Never mind going off topic again :rolleyes:
I suppose to avoid this people should just stick to complaints that directly relate to this game.

nesf

Jernal wrote: »

Well, I've only seen gameplay videos.:o I don't particularly care too much about graphics either (if I did I'd long since have bought this game). It's just every now and again when I'm playing a game like this or SC4 I just like to play it on turtle speed and watch the city do its own thing. There's something relaxing about it. In terms of visual charm SC2013 looks beautiful when viewed from far out. It does really look like a living city.

It's definitely charming and engaging, I quite like the artwork overall. The immersion is kind of ruined by the city size though, you don't get that feeling of massiveness than you get in SC4 with the bigger maps. It's also not big enough to do a "tailing off" from a high density centre to low density units on the outskirts, you can't get an anyway decent population with that approach here, so no suburbs, all city centre and then an invisible line cutting it off. Also with the current traffic AI you don't want suburbs!

As I've said earlier, it's addictive and fun despite all the bugs (ignoring the server side issues which some people are having which would drive me mad). Give them a month or two to fix stuff and it might be worth buying. Even if they don't fix stuff fully it'd probably be worth picking up in a 50% sale or similar.

Slutmonkey57b

Grumpypants wrote: »

To be honest many of this guys complaints are L2P issues.

You can see in one screen shot he has built a 8 road junction :eek: 4 road junctions are notoriously bad for traffic problems but he sticks two together then moans about traffic issues in the city :rolleyes:

He even complains about not being able to save it and roll back in case he makes a mistake ??

Lack of saves is a perfectly legitimate complaint in a game of this type. The traffic issues go way beyond building a bad junction.

Grumpypants

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

Lack of saves is a perfectly legitimate complaint in a game of this type. The traffic issues go way beyond building a bad junction.

You can't on one hand complain that the simulation isn't realistic and at the same time want to be able to roll back to a previous save when ever you build the wrong building in the wrong spot.

If they are going to fall all over a game like Dark Souls that doesn't allow you an easy ride using check points sparingly so a mistake hurt. Then you can't turn around and slate another game for not allowing you to easily cheat when you make a mistake.

There are many legitimate problems with the game, the buildings that you drop into the game. You can't turn them to suit your map and you need to plop them onto a road side. This also is a nightmare when you come to upgrade roads to avenues as you have to delete the building to put down a new road.

Cities being lost, rolled back, the weird population figures, weird traffic and people movements etc all legitimate

Not being able to reload an earlier save point so you can cheat is not a complaint.

KilOit

This going cheap anywhere online or in shops, greenmangaming code has expired

Turtwig

Grumpypants wrote: »

Not being able to reload an earlier save point so you can cheat is not a complaint.

It's not necessarily cheating. Part of the fun with simulators, or indeed many games, is changing the permutations to see what happens. I've 'rolled back' before in loads of games, it wasn't because I was annoyed or peeved at my outcome, it was just I was curious to see if what I could change. It's all part of the fun and experience.

Slutmonkey57b

Grumpypants wrote: »

You can't on one hand complain that the simulation isn't realistic and at the same time want to be able to roll back to a previous save when ever you build the wrong building in the wrong spot.

If they are going to fall all over a game like Dark Souls that doesn't allow you an easy ride using check points sparingly so a mistake hurt. Then you can't turn around and slate another game for not allowing you to easily cheat when you make a mistake.

Not being able to reload an earlier save point so you can cheat is not a complaint.

But in a game like Sim City, reloading a save game isn't cheating, that's the point. The player sets their own targets in the game, if they even choose to have a target at all. How they achieve it is up to them. The whole point of the series is to experiment, build, change, and see if what you're trying to create works. In this game, you should be able to get to a point where you can say "I see two ways I could go here". The obvious thing to do is save the game, and try both of them. Then you end up with two different future cities. Neither one is the "correct" one that you were "supposed" to end up with when you saved the game.

That's not cheating, because you're not subverting, or getting around a requirement or condition to reach a goal. It is not a linear experience. It's not supposed to be. It's the original sandbox game.

Pressing a button that says "give me 100,000 simoleans" is a cheat. Trying different layouts isn't.

Dcully

I give up on this game tbh, sick and tired of cities i make just vanishing into thin air, or stuck on roll back BS.

Eoin247

It annoys me so much to see a great game go to the 'fail bin' just because of poor decisions made with the launch. I really hope the bugs and gameplay flaws get fixed but this game cannot recover at this stage with reviewers.