Sim City

nesf

gizmo wrote: »

Well in fairness, they did have the opportunity to do some cool stuff with region play and by that I mean do what they claimed they were going to do (reasonably speaking) but it seems so pared back that it's approaching useless at this stage.

The more I think about it the more confused I am at the direction they took. I mean, if they had drawn a line in the sand between offline and online play then they could have easily just pushed the ever living crap out of the benefits of region play in interviews et al and made the single player side of the things to be the poorer version of the game. The game would still be hit by piracy but it would have been, theoretically at least, reduced somewhat due to the desire of folks to play online with their friends (should everything work). Even then down the line they would be in a far better position to turn things off on the multiplayer side and leave the rest of the game in working order.

Now all they're left with is what appears to be a broken game, overwhelmed back end, monumental amount of bad PR and the possible ruination of future plans to go always-online for more of their games soon due to the mess they made from this one.

I guess we'll find out how they've ultimately been affected in the coming weeks and months as the sales figures come out and EA's second quarter financials are released.

Yeah one thing that annoyed me was the agent work modelling. Their initial idea was this, a factory sends out X signals for how many workers it needs in the morning, these signals travel along the road system until they find a house with a free worker in it. The signal goes into that house and then that worker immediately leaves and heads to that exact factory. Now, I don't particularly like this way of modelling human behaviour, I think it's quite crap, but it at least makes some sense with regard to traffic behaviour, each agent has a definite final goal. What we have at release is all the workers leave home and make a beeline for the nearest free job which is just bonkers mad as a system, bad undergraduate Computer Science level of modelling.

The public transit systems are equally banjaxed. Sims get on and off at random whereas officially the bus was to pick up Sims until fullish and then immediately head to the closest stop that was relevant to a passenger. That very clearly does not happen. Really the only way they could implement an agent based mass transit network is if we could set routes and assign busses to them, e.g. have X stops in Residential District linked to Y stops in the Industrial sector and the busses making a circuit of the stops picking up and dropping off workers. Ditto for a commercial and tourism/gambling system. This would add a very pleasant element of traffic management to the game but perhaps might turn off the more casual market that this game is quite clearly aimed at? This isn't anything crazy and new, Cities in Motion (basically a traffic management game) already does this.

The game is quite fun but I play simulation games long term because tweaking the simulation is a lot of fun. There seems a real lack of depth to this game from what I can tell after 60ish hours spent experimenting with different aspects of the game to see how the game simulates stuff.

Edit: Oh, and whoever thought building a High School should reduce demand for Elementary School places should be taken out back and shot.

gizmo

Reekwind wrote: »

But there's a difference between suspicion and fact...

That's not what I'm getting at, there was nothing to prove or disprove at that point since it was pre-release. It was a case of simply asking Bradshaw about the fact that a connection was needed in circumstances which wouldn't require one due to there being no region play present in a single player offline game.

nesf wrote: »

Yeah one thing that annoyed me was the agent work modelling...

Aye, I've been extremely disappointed about what I've read about the agent behaviours post-release. At least pre-release the concept made sense due to the need to (potentially) simulate a far larger city than in other games but now? Well yea...

Reekwind

gizmo wrote: »

That's not what I'm getting at, there was nothing to prove or disprove at that point since it was pre-release. It was a case of simply asking Bradshaw about the fact that a connection was needed in circumstances which wouldn't require one due to there being no region play present in a single player offline game

She was asked and her answer was that it was practically impossible to have a singleplayer game because so much of the calculations at to happen centrally. That was the pre-release party line. It wasn't until release that it could actually be demonstrated that this was nonsense and that Maxis were lying through their teeth

nesf

gizmo wrote: »

Aye, I've been extremely disappointed about what I've read about the agent behaviours post-release. At least pre-release the concept made sense due to the need to (potentially) simulate a far larger city than in other games but now? Well yea...

Did you hear about how education is modelled? You have a generic pool of students, just as you have a pool of shoppers and workers in a city. If you have 10,000 students you can educate them all in Elementary schools and they'll be happy or you can demolish some of the elementary schools and build some High Schools and Community Colleges. Either way the sims will be happy and say "We're so happy we're educated," the only thing that is affected by having higher level education buildings is your city's "Education level, a mark out of 5 basically" which only ever matters if you are going medium or high tech industry. More bizarrely again, you need the Elementary School plopped to unlock the higher level buildings, so you can plop an Elementary school, plop a University, delete the Elementary school and viola your population is happily educated. Since High Schools are cheaper to run per student than Elementary Schools you actually have no incentive to keep Elementary schools in your city unless you want to plop another high level education building.

Do you know why? This is my guess. We have no demographics in the engine. Your houses are filled with a set distribution of workers, students and shopper sims (worker sims don't go shopping, different agents do that). These agents are just randomly generated every day, there's no permanence. There's nothing going on in the engine saying we have X no. of kids between 5 and 12 therefore Elementary School demand is Y. Instead we have a generic pool of students which is far, far easier to model and they just head to the closest place of education each day, morphing from schoolkids getting on the school bus to your Elementary schools to young adults driving to college depending on what buildings are there.

Seriously. Just, no.

Thinkingaboutit

Ordering from GameStop.ie and basic postage saves a tenner, as many here have probably mentioned. Hope it comes soon.

gizmo

Reekwind wrote: »

She was asked and her answer was that it was practically impossible to have a singleplayer game because so much of the calculations at to happen centrally. That was the pre-release party line. It wasn't until release that it could actually be demonstrated that this was nonsense and that Maxis were lying through their teeth

Precisely, calculations which which were required for intra-regional play, something that doesn't exist (as far as I'm aware) in a private single player game.

nesf wrote: »

Did you hear about how education is modelled? You have a generic pool of students, just as you have a pool of shoppers and workers in a city. If you have 10,000 students you can educate them all in Elementary schools and they'll be happy or you can demolish some of the elementary schools and build some High Schools and Community Colleges. Either way the sims will be happy and say "We're so happy we're educated," the only thing that is affected by having higher level education buildings is your city's "Education level, a mark out of 5 basically" which only ever matters if you are going medium or high tech industry. More bizarrely again, you need the Elementary School plopped to unlock the higher level buildings, so you can plop an Elementary school, plop a University, delete the Elementary school and viola your population is happily educated. Since High Schools are cheaper to run per student than Elementary Schools you actually have no incentive to keep Elementary schools in your city unless you want to plop another high level education building.

Do you know why? This is my guess. We have no demographics in the engine. Your houses are filled with a set distribution of workers, students and shopper sims (worker sims don't go shopping, different agents do that). These agents are just randomly generated every day, there's no permanence. There's nothing going on in the engine saying we have X no. of kids between 5 and 12 therefore Elementary School demand is Y. Instead we have a generic pool of students which is far, far easier to model and they just head to the closest place of education each day, morphing from schoolkids getting on the school bus to your Elementary schools to young adults driving to college depending on what buildings are there.

Seriously. Just, no.

Christ. Well if there was no demographic information it'll be easier to spot elsewhere too. My first guess would have been that the Sims happiness at educational services is based solely on the city rating which the University would raise and the removal of the elementary school wouldn't cause to drop. Either way, it's a depressingly unrealistic system in either case, I'm not even going to call it a simulation as it doesn't deserve the title in that regard.

nesf

gizmo wrote: »

Christ. Well if there was no demographic information it'll be easier to spot elsewhere too. My first guess would have been that the Sims happiness at educational services is based solely on the city rating which the University would raise and the removal of the elementary school wouldn't cause to drop. Either way, it's a depressingly unrealistic system in either case, I'm not even going to call it a simulation as it doesn't deserve the title in that regard.

There are almost no stat screens. Almost none. Now granted in SC4 and earlier these screens were just generated statistics based off some factors in your city but it was kind of important, if you have a young city with a lot of young kids you're going to need a different services distribution to a city mostly consisting of middle aged people.

I think you get a happiness boost in middle wealth and high wealth housing from having a University in the city, I can't check I'm visiting my parents with the kids for the weekend and my laptop couldn't run Sim City, but I'm unsure of how important that is. To get high density buildings you just need to make sure the sims basic needs are met, i.e. they can spend money to make them happier and earn money by having an employed worker in the house. Education isn't needed I don't think but I haven't tested this, but I've read about people having 100k+ cities of all residential and little to no education so it is probably possible.

It's not really a simulation. Not in the true sense of the word. Yes we have agents running around doing stuff but there's absolutely no effort to model reality here. It's interesting as a game, figuring out good road patterns for low traffic levels with the current ****ed up state of the pathing AI is somewhat fun but it reminds me a lot of the base launch of SC4 where a bus network was utterly pointless because the citizens almost never used it and other such nonsense. The only reason SC4 is counted as a good simulator now is because of an awful lot of work by the modding community, most certainly not Maxis.

nesf

gizmo wrote: »

Precisely, calculations which which were required for intra-regional play, something that doesn't exist (as far as I'm aware) in a private single player game.

Which basically is just the global market for specialist materials like coal, oil, alloys and so on. It'd be trivial to come up with a modified random walk to simulate price fluctuations in a private single player game.

Turtwig

Honestly from reading the last couple of posts they should have just called it Sims'City and be done with it. I'm sure it's a fun game, but it's not really what folks were hoping for, or what they were given the impression of.

Goodshape

That description of education sounds about right from my experience. I don't really mind that each sim isn't unique and persistant, that's a game mechanic and I can accept it, but the alternative just doesn't seem to work well enough.

It's a hope that it's even fixable with a patch, and that they do it before I get bored with the game.


Maybe someone can tell me what's going on with my cities? I'm playing a region solo and I've got two towns (call a spade a spade) built up to a comparative level. One town has is mining coal and ore. Not a nice place, small patch of industry and housing, the rest is all drill sites. A second city has good services, lots of residential zoneing, no commercial and a tiny patch of industrial. Both cities have rail and boats.

And both cities have thousands of empty jobs. How do I stop jobs cropping up in the 'population town', when I hardly any industry and no commercial, and get my sims commuting (none of them are)?



Also, water. Population city has tonnes to spare. Dig city imports this but constantly there's some building not getting any of it unless I build up Dig City's own water towers.


Starting to feel like the game is playing itself.

nesf

Goodshape wrote: »

That description of education sounds about right from my experience. I don't really mind that each sim isn't unique and persistant, that's a game mechanic and I can accept it, but the alternative just doesn't seem to work well enough.

It's a hope that it's even fixable with a patch, and that they do it before I get bored with the game.


Maybe someone can tell me what's going on with my cities? I'm playing a region solo and I've got two towns (call a spade a spade) built up to a comparative level. One town has is mining coal and ore. Not a nice place, small patch of industry and housing, the rest is all drill sites. A second city has good services, lots of residential zoneing, no commercial and a tiny patch of industrial. Both cities have rail and boats.

And both cities have thousands of empty jobs. How do I stop jobs cropping up in the 'population town', when I hardly any industry and no commercial, and get my sims commuting (none of them are)?



Also, water. Population city has tonnes to spare. Dig city imports this but constantly there's some building not getting any of it unless I build up Dig City's own water towers.


Starting to feel like the game is playing itself.

I've heard it reported that the problem is on the server side, that we should be seeing very rapid changes with inter-city services but because of server load it's delayed, so you get things like it taking an hour+ for fire engines to start appearing in a neighbour's city after you've assigned them to the task (you however instantly lose the coverage of those fire engines). It's meant to be improving but I haven't played much the past few days so I don't know.

Azza

gizmo wrote:

While it's nice to see the media continue to hammer them on the issue (probably the only way they'll introduce an offline mode) I'm still incredibly disappointed they weren't doing it before release. If you look back over the pre-release interviews with Bradshaw, she was repeatedly allowed to avoid the off-line single player question by reverting to the list of benefits derived from the multiplayer region play and the "technology" used to power them. At no point did an interviewer just stop her and ask about the people who didn't want to play with anyone else and wanted to stay offline. At least then there would have been a better chance of us getting a straight answer from a PR mouthpiece.

I agree with you on this point. In fairness to the media would not have known in advance the launch would of been this bad, and they wouldn't have known about the A.I issues or what the online servers actually did. Bradshaw is I feel giving typical PR spun answers but that's common in the industry. Like I'd imagine it was the same with Diablo III (if someone wants to correct me on this fire away), the media probably asked what about those who want a single player offline experience, and I'm sure Blizzard probably did the same and reeled of the benefits of the online feature set and that it was designed as an online game as a dodge and the games media didn't really press them on it.
But the real answer in my opinion and one they can't give because it would be marketing suicide, is that your single player experience is being sacrificed as a means to counter piracy. They are willing to do this because they must feel that the benefits of countering piracy out risk the loss or earnings from disgruntled customers. The online benefits are merely small compensation for this, exaggerated in scope by the publishers to counter the bad press.

I speculate that part of the reason that games media doesn't press developers/publishers that hard it they simply don't want to bite the hand that feeds them.

gizmo wrote:

So, wana take bets on what happens if EA/Maxis do capitulate on the offline mode thing?

My guess...

Game sees massive piracy rates as users aim to get one over on EA due to the always online requirement.
EA use massive piracy rates as an excuse for the always online requirement in both Sim City and future high profile titles.
Server and general gameplay issues are eventually fixed.
The majority of gamers go back to playing almost exclusively in online mode since it offers some of the most interesting gameplay possibilities.

Point 1 is a possibility. But its possible the DRM system has already done a significant part of its job. Like as far as I'm aware most piracy occurs around release day and shortly there after. They may have prevented enough piracy by now too already deem the system a success. Bare in mind this game should be much harder to crack than Spore (like if they had avoided server code leaks it would of been). Spore was pirated much faster.

Piracy rates are already massive. Like with Spore after being specifically targeted in revenge for its DRM, I think EA changed track with there DRM policy. Possibly concluding the bad press wasn't worth while.

Point 3 I agree. Most of the problems will probably be fixed.

Point 4. Well if they do thats fine. But at least people with crap internet have an option to play the game, or people travelling with laptops.

the_syco wrote:

Most of us who played SC2000 couldn't really wait any longer, especially as most of us knew EA would fcuk it up regardless even though we hoped they wouldn't.

Yes you could of. SimCity is an entertainment product, a luxury. Not a requirement to go on living. You could of done 100 and 1 different things with the money you spent on SimCity. Go out and get locked, buy a different game etc. But the mentality your demonstrated with that post and your far from alone with it, is what EA are counting on. If they have a franchise that's highly desirable and tempting they could force through changes that many would find unpleasant. People will moan for a while but eventually they just accept it and move on. The only way to counter this is to hit them where it hurts, the wallet. But gamers have shown time and again they have no spine when it comes to this sort of thing.

SB2013

I presume its the same issue that delayed the sharing of government buildings benefits and made the trade depots stock up instead of sell. This has improved slightly for me lately.

Goodshape

Oh, right. So even though I'm the only person on this region I'm still hampered by some server bull****.


This game be broken.

nesf

Azza wrote: »

Like I'd imagine it was the same with Diablo III (if someone wants to correct me on this fire away), the media probably asked what about those who want a single player offline experience, and I'm sure Blizzard probably did the same and reeled of the benefits of the online feature set and that it was designed as an online game as a dodge and the games media didn't really press them on it.

From a quick google it really looks like Lucy Bradshaw studied what Blizzard said: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/08/01/diablo-iii-no-mods-online-only-cash-trades/

It's eerily similar in parts. That said, Diablo already had Battle.net and multiplayer in the game so it was an easier sell...

SB2013

Azza wrote: »

I agree with you on this point. In fairness to the media would not have known in advance the launch would of been this bad, and they wouldn't have known about the A.I issues or what the online servers actually did. Bradshaw is I feel giving typical PR spun answers but that's uncommon in the industry. Like I'd imagine it was the same with Diablo III (if someone wants to correct me on this fire away), the media probably asked what about those who want a single player offline experience, and I'm sure Blizzard probably did the same and reeled of the benefits of the online feature set and that it was designed as an online game as a dodge and the games media didn't really press them on it.
But the real answer in my opinion and one they can't give because it would be marketing suicide, is that your single player experience is being sacrificed as a means to counter piracy. They are willing to do this because they must feel that the benefits of countering piracy out risk the loss or earnings from disgruntled customers. The online benefits are merely small compensation for this, exaggerated in scope by the publishers to counter the bad press.

I speculate that part of the reason that games media doesn't press developers/publishers that hard it they simply don't want to bite the hand that feeds them.



Point 1 is a possibility. But its possible the DRM system has already done a significant part of its job. Like as far as I'm aware most piracy occurs around release day and shortly there after. They may have prevented enough piracy by now too already deem the system a success. Bare in mind this game should be much harder to crack than Spore (like if they had avoided server code leaks it would of been). Spore was pirated much faster.

Piracy rates are already massive. Like with Spore after being specifically targeted in revenge for its DRM, I think EA changed track with there DRM policy. Possibly concluding the bad press wasn't worth while.

Point 3 I agree. Most of the problems will probably be fixed.

Point 4. Well if they do thats fine. But at least people with crap internet have an option to play the game, or people travelling with laptops.



Yes you could of. SimCity is an entertainment product, a luxury. Not a requirement to go on living. You could of done 100 and 1 different things with the money you spent on SimCity. Go out and get locked, buy a different game etc. But the mentality your demonstrated with that post and your far from alone with it, is what EA are counting on. If they have a franchise that's highly desirable and tempting they could force through changes that many would find unpleasant. People will moan for a while but eventually they just accept it and move on. The only way to counter this is to hit them where it hurts, the wallet. But gamers have shown time and again they have no spine when it comes to this sort of thing.

This is one of the things that really bothered me about the whole thing. All the press reviews were done with early access copies that had zero server issues. A very smart move by EA but one which obviously made a lot of press people look foolish and left them scrambling to change or qualify their reviews.

cherryghost

Oh look, xml files

cherryghost

The stories keep getting darker. The Javascript code has been leaked for how you connect to SimCity. Basically it defines how long you long can stay in offline mode for. Simply deleting a line stops the servers from querying if you're online or not.

nesf

cherryghost wrote: »

The stories keep getting darker. The Javascript code has been leaked for how you connect to SimCity. Basically it defines how long you long can stay in offline mode for. Simply deleting a line stops the servers from querying if you're online or not.

Am I the only one that has the suspicion that this stuff is being found so fast because the coders wanted it to be found fast?

gizmo

nesf wrote: »

Am I the only one that has the suspicion that this stuff is being found so fast because the coders wanted it to be found fast?

Code reviews, amongst other things, are designed to stop this kind of stuff.

jill_valentine

cherryghost wrote: »

The stories keep getting darker. The Javascript code has been leaked for how you connect to SimCity. Basically it defines how long you long can stay in offline mode for. Simply deleting a line stops the servers from querying if you're online or not.

Oh FFS EA...

Still, good news for me. I'm not going to buy it launch price given EA's twattery, but when a handy local save method is available, I'll be painfully tempted.

nesf

gizmo wrote: »

Code reviews, amongst other things, are designed to stop this kind of stuff.

Yeah, in theory anyway...

cherryghost

nesf wrote: »

Am I the only one that has the suspicion that this stuff is being found so fast because the coders wanted it to be found fast?

I'd almost be inclined to think that way, but it would be like shooting themselves in the foot over and over.

nesf

cherryghost wrote: »

I'd almost be inclined to think that way, but it would be like shooting themselves in the foot over and over.

I agree, though I'm having trouble finding another explanation. Apparently the game files are laid out very similarly to the Sims 3 ones which made it very easy for hackers to work out what was doing what very quickly.

Sierra Oscar

Egh, why does the "Getting Started" tutorial randomly appear sometimes when I launch the game? Very annoying.

nesf

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

Egh, why does the "Getting Started" tutorial randomly appear sometimes when I launch the game? Very annoying.

It appears every time it's your first time on a server. Just let it load and then hit menu and quit to menus and you won't see it again usually.

Slutmonkey57b

cherryghost wrote: »

I'd almost be inclined to think that way, but it would be like shooting themselves in the foot over and over.

I think it depends on how confident the code team or even the qa team is that the issues aren't their fault.

If they highlighted these problems but were ignored by management, or had bad coding decisions forced on them management, then this is a way of torpedoing said management.

Or, if they know what needs to be fixed, but ea won't do it, leaking to the modding community means they know it will get done.

gizmo

nesf wrote: »

Yeah, in theory anyway...

Sorry, I thought you were referring to cherryghost's first link. The second lot which contains the always on code wasn't leaked, it's been ripped from the installed files.

EDIT:

As an aside, the Art Director for the project, Ocean Quigley, has pretty much indicated that some form of package modding will be allowed which ties into the above I guess. It was mentioned in the Reddit AmA previously but here are the relevant tweets.

Link 1
Link 2

nesf

gizmo wrote: »

Sorry, I thought you were referring to cherryghost's first link. The second lot which contains the always on code wasn't leaked, it's been ripped from the installed files.

No problem, yeah I was talking about how quickly people are picking apart the installed files.

nesf

gizmo wrote: »

EDIT:

As an aside, the Art Director for the project, Ocean Quigley, has pretty much indicated that some form of package modding will be allowed which ties into the above I guess. It was mentioned in the Reddit AmA previously but here are the relevant tweets.

Link 1
Link 2

Those tweets are from back in February unfortunately.