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Posted by: Scan_Man Mar 8 2013, 09:17 PM

Maaaan EA you blew it big time here. Did you not learn from Diablo 3 launch?

Anyway this game is excellent, if you manage to play it. But there are so many servers problems because EA decided to make a single player game online only. I have not been able to play it since launch because servers are busy. Hell, they are so incompetent that at one point they had the busy servers labeled as available and the available servers labeled as busy. And I've had the servers log me off only to try to come back with 30 minute waiting queues. Problem is if you pick another server your city is not there. Hell, I've had cities roll back or be completely erased when I came back to a server. It's very annoying. Yesterday, EA actually removed features from the game because they were causing server instability. What the fuck?

Say what you will about the Diablo 3 launch. Nothing competes with this failure.


But yeah the game is awesome and very deep despite the city size is a lot smaller to past games. But there is a lot more "simulation" to this game than past games though. I like that you now have to gather and manage resources, or import them. People are giving this game a lot of shit on the gameplay side of things, and they are wrong. I understand the city size thing, but I don't think people have played the game long enough to understand the mechanics inside and out. Sim City 4, considered the best in the franchise (which I agree), had 10 years to develop through patches, an expansion, and mods. In this new one, there is a lot more shit you have to pay attention to or it will just domino into a complete disaster right before your eyes. It's really neat and at the same time while makes the game more challenging than Sim City 4.

Like I tried to get away with not building a police station at the start (in Sim City 4 you can wait quite a while before crime levels get to a point where you need police). Well I had criminals coming over from a neighboring city taking advantage that I did not have police. The game is very sensitiveness to these types of things. To add to that, not only is there a lot more money sinks, but building things seems more expensive compared to Sim City 4. To add insult to injury I had a Zombie infestation, which lost 80 percent of my population because I had no money to defend my city. And this is neat too because you can zoom in and follow Sims and it was cool to see them fighting Zombies and hearing gun fire going off in the streets with some people running for their lives and others defending their homes.

It's moments like above that really suck you into this game.

Posted by: HC82 Mar 10 2013, 04:31 PM

I picked up this game Yesterday and me and Kaz played for about 6 to 7 hours straight in a private room. We played on North America east 3 with no servers issues what so ever. I don't see what all the complaints are about; this game is fantastic.

Edit: Just sat down with this game again and I literally sat there for like 7 hours straight and played this again. Once you get the hang of things (developing a specific thriving industry to rake in big cash) you begin to see how things actually open up and how multiplayer is necessary to make the best cities and make the most cash. The Great Works in each areas are necessary for the communal area to really expand and increase their cities. This game has so much replay value its kind if twisted.

Posted by: Crushinator Mar 11 2013, 01:34 PM

Been moving this week so I had to put off buying this, but I'm really looking forward to playing in some big mega-AT region with you guys.

The launch does sound like the biggest clusterfuck of the century, but hopefully by Friday when we get the internet hooked up it will be smoother sailing. Save a spot for me in the apocalypse-topia!

Posted by: Kazicht Mar 11 2013, 05:40 PM

Even with the messy launch this game is already in contention for GOTY for me. Game of the fucking year.

Posted by: Scan_Man Mar 11 2013, 06:03 PM

Definitely agree. When ever I start playing the game for a session, time just flies and I look at the clock and I'm like "Holy shit I just played this for 10 hours." The game is crazy addictive. Hope we get Cheetah speed back soon!

It has a ton of popularity on twitch.tv right now too. Not only is it fun to play for hours, but fun to watch others play for hours too.

Posted by: AC9breaker Mar 12 2013, 03:01 AM

What the fuck, a new sim city came out? Where the fuck have I been?

Posted by: Crushinator Mar 16 2013, 09:52 AM

This game is fucking fantastic. Got sucked in and played until after 3 am without even realizing it last night, hahah.

It really strikes a great balance between the depth of the simulation, and providing enough visual information to let you know exactly what's going on in the city without being overwhelming. The limitation on the space along with the specializations really makes you have to focus on a certain type of city. (Not to say I still don't think there should be an option to build in the entire region, "classic" simcity style)

The multiplayer is great too, when we're all working on our cities simultaneously. The servers were all packed when I finally got on so we've started a new region on the Antarctica server named "Apocalypso".

Posted by: AC9breaker Mar 18 2013, 05:39 AM

Im not gonna lie, game is really good, especially all of us playing together. Crushin was helping me out taking out my trash.

Posted by: Crushinator Mar 18 2013, 11:11 AM

Yeah and now my dump is full of your city's dirty diapers and i have a hobo outbreak!

Posted by: Kazicht Mar 18 2013, 05:56 PM

Everyone who registered SC before the 25th gets a free game off Origin. Choices aren't too shabby either:

Battlefield 3
Mass Effect 3
Dead Space 3
Need For Speed: Most Wanted
Medel of Honor: Warfighter
Sim City 4 Deluxe

And...

Bejeweled 3
Plants Vs Zombies.

It's gonna be either BF3, DS3 or NFS for me... hmmmmm.

Posted by: Crushinator Mar 18 2013, 10:56 PM

If we all get NFS:MW it would be pretty fun to play online. But DS3 is a good choice too.

Posted by: Oddies da Nerfed Mar 20 2013, 08:01 AM

The more I play and learn the mechanics under the hood, the more I realize this is a city variant of farmville with a pretty face. Ignorance is bliss with this game, the less you under stand it the more fun it is. Sadly I have seen just how absurdly broken the core of the game is, I am getting to the point where I find this game more of a disappointing failure than Diablo 3.

Posted by: Kazicht Mar 20 2013, 05:16 PM

Sure, but haven't we learned in the last few years that pretty much every game is just a shiny vairant of Farmville?

Posted by: HC82 Mar 20 2013, 08:04 PM

The game is definitely more clever then farmville; although, the game does have its "builds" which are more favorable then others. From a pure variation standpoint, the game has many variations, but from a min-max standpoint, the game becomes more rigid, especially with the current glitches.

Posted by: Scan_Man Mar 21 2013, 01:59 AM

My main problem as of late is the city size and removed/disabled features. I built a city, I ran out of room and had no trouble making money. It was just nothing left to spend anything on. There was nothing to do. The leaderboard is not working, so there is no reason to make myself look good there. So I figure I find a place to participate in the 2 million sims challenge. Well that does not seem to be tracking properly, so can't do that either. Finally, I start a new city and then get frustrated at no Cheetah speed. I don't mind not having it so much when I have a well developed city. But it's a bit wretched at the start not having it.

I really want to play this game. But every time I load up, I close it after 10 minutes and say to myself "I'm just going to wait until they patch this thing." I pull up the launcher everyday to see what was patched.

Posted by: Oddies da Nerfed Mar 21 2013, 07:47 AM

How would it be more clever? One of the easiest starting setups is nothing but residential and parks (note, you do not need another city in the region to make this work, its self sustaining), very easy to maintain 80%+ approval with 20k/h till you start to specialize and effective at avoiding a number of design flaws while exploiting the hell out of a massive design flaw. Regional and global markets don't work. RCI is completely busted since industry almost does nothing to a city as commercial does not need any goods, they auto restock supplies. To make industry happy the easiest thing is stockpile their produce in a trade depot, once full just destroy the warehouses and rebuild. Industry will be thrilled for making mass profits "selling" their goods, purely because they went somewhere else and nothing more. The best road design is a serpentine never ending road with no intersections purely based on the piss poor AI design, and this issue starts to arise at a paltry 100k population.

Here is a quote that covers why the AI in this game is inferior to pretty much every previous sim city game cept maybe the original, and even then it is a tossup.

"The problem isn't that the sims have trouble picking the best route from point A to point B. The problem is that when they leave point A, they don't know where they're going to end up. They don't know where point B is. They're all going to the first place that MIGHT meant their current "need," so you've got 400 cars all trying to go to the same house first because that's the closest one to the industrial area or to the city entrance (commuters returning from other cities). This is why fire trucks are still gangbanging one fire and ignoring others: it's the closest one to the fire station. "
At least in the older games I could manually dispatch fire/police/rescue so as to avoid 6 fire engines sitting at a single low wealth house while a school is burning down ignored.

That isn't a glitch, that's the intended core design. Enjoy having uneducated workers getting to your nuclear power plant before your educated workers, purely because its first come first serve, then enjoy your meltdown.

The glitches are recycling centers ceasing to work, supply trucks being destroyed and never replaced, "fake" population numbers, the water tables not refreshing, regional buses from other cities getting stuck at a stop and completely blocking traffic as well as causing any passengers to 'lose their job' due to never making it to work, tourists completely ceasing to visit a tourist/casino city over night causing a fast death, so forth. These alone make the game irritating at points, however on top of what is nothing more than a massively retarded core design makes the game utter shit beyond its pretty facade. It is hard to sandbox (and thus keep replay-ability) when you are effectively punished in many designs due to the poor AI and core game design.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=WH-CdkSqDSs
The vaunted glassbox simulation part of "Simcity 5" at its finest.

Posted by: Oddies da Nerfed Mar 23 2013, 12:08 AM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMnvDIYG-PU


Current 1.8 patch AI at its finest.

Posted by: Knightsword Mar 23 2013, 06:20 PM

Oh man, that's terrible.

Posted by: HC82 Mar 23 2013, 06:47 PM

Your entire description as to why the game is so easy and broken is also why it's far move clever than Farmville; it has so many inter-working elements in the game that the gamer has to consider. The problem is that they don't work because this game is from a completion standpoint still in Beta. Farmville is just Harvestmoon with heavy social elements. The problem with Simcity is that it's still technically in Beta form (thanks to EA's bullshit), is easily exploitable and needs to be re-tuned, but that doesn't take away from what it does do right or at least what it is trying to attempt on paper(assuming those things actually worked properly all the time). It's like seeing what a game can be versus what it is. Diablo 3 had the some problem and now it's a much better game.

And yes the traffic and firetrucks suck in this game. Good thing is that these are clear things that can be fixed in the future; the question is if it does get fixed and how well.

Posted by: Oddies da Nerfed Mar 26 2013, 02:11 PM

They don't work because the game IS a facebook game. Here is a fun fact, R builds regardless of any circumstances. If you have R zoned people will move to it no matter what state the city is in, this means you cannot "lose", everybody wins!
So here is what I did, I busted out some "cleverness" and built a residential only city (the only city in the region as well). Cept this R only city has nothing but R, roads and a town hall. No power, no water, no police/fire/medical, no trash pickup, no waste disposal no education. Just a town hall, roads and R zones. Currently I am over 440k population, with 80% approval rating with no traffic issues. This is not a bug, it is an intended function based on core design mechanics of the game.






This game is a facebook game designed to sell DLC with a facade of being a "simulation". Mind you I am quite certain the 24 year old original would not allow any construction of any kind without power. In 24 years the simulation has become worse, so as to not be too difficult for people. The only cleverness and skill this $60+ screensaver has is working around the bugs and garbage design choices.

Posted by: HC82 Mar 26 2013, 07:32 PM

It's just matter of time before a zombie-out break totally annihilates your entire town and you have to re-cheese it back to 400k. Yeah, the game is bugged we know that. They need to fix it. When the game works, it becomes good.

Posted by: Knightsword Mar 26 2013, 09:22 PM

Posted by: Oddies da Nerfed Mar 26 2013, 10:09 PM

The density value is attach to the land already, as such once I bulldoze and rubble or abandoned buildings they will start rebuilding at or near the same density they were at and in a few game hours my population will be restored and continue growing as I see fit.

This isn't a bug, this is a design choice. Just like industrial being irrelevant is a design choice. The same reason why the game doesn't even try dealing with regional buses individually, instead it just shoves the regions number of regional buses in each city. EG 100 regional in the region, every city gets 100 that drive around. Or why each different school does the exact same thing baring Uni which adds research on top of the same exact thing as every other school. Or why street cars will only choose to operate on a single straight area and refuse to make choices to branch to another section.

None of these are bugs, these are all design choices to make the game as simple to code as well as get it to run on near 10 year old hardware.

They will never fix this game, because it would nearly require them to make a whole new one. We will get bug fixes, some band-aid fixes to the most glaringly busted design aspects, then it will be abandoned.

Posted by: Oddies da Nerfed Mar 27 2013, 09:21 AM

Keep in mind, my city would rebuild quite fast, even obscenely fast despite falling victim to a zombie outbreak because the population listed is fake. The game lies to you about your population so you feel like your 2km x 2km city is larger than it really is. At 440k displayed pop, the real population is around 53k. The code function being called is aptly named 'GetFudgedPopulation'. Obviously if I am really only waiting for 53k people to move back in vs 440k+, it will go a whole lot quicker.


This chart shows the population scale between displayed and real.

Posted by: Crushinator Mar 31 2013, 11:02 PM

I really hate how fucked up and essential un-simulating the simulation is in this game, but I still can't help but enjoy playing it and fucking around.

I truly hope they can fix what's broken with the aspects of the sims, traffic, and... shit well everything because despite all that shit I really do like this game a lot, and keep coming back to it.

Posted by: Oddies da Nerfed Apr 1 2013, 08:19 AM

You can help beta test on the test server. Currently you can beta test cheetah speed, a release feature. They also supposedly fixed the recycling center bug, but wont release patch notes for the test server so what you are actually beta testing is a guess.

The problem with this game is, and now confirmed by the devs themselves, they designed this game for the lowest common denominator. It is a fancy 3d Facebook game (farmville city variant!) and nothing more. Because of those design decisions the simulation aspect of this game will never actually simulate anything meaningful. It will take at least one very large patch just to get the multiplayer aspect working in any useful non-broken way. RCI will most likely never be fixed properly, the best we can expect is taxes being nerfed so you can no longer do http://imgur.com/a/gW7F9 The chances of them fixing the agent system to anything more than gang banging the closest and most direct location regardless if it fills up before the agent arrives are minimal at best being the game core would need a major rework. Unless the stars align you cannot fail at this game. (excluding show stopping bugs).

The only reason I keep playing a game inferior to 24 years of predecessors is to showcase how utterly incompetent Maxis developers are, and what is wrong with the gaming industry as a whole. I want to like this game, I really do, I mean its fucking SimCity! Hell, I think the first time Crush and myself really talked was in TLC class when we were assigned together to build a city in OG SimCity. Unfortunately this new version is a SimCity box filled with runny foul smelling shit laden with undigested corn and peanuts that cost us $60+.

Unless the modders get access to this game to fix asap, it will be a ghost town by end of summer, and risking abandonment by the end of the year if left solely to Maxis incompetence and EAs greed.

This game is like the perfect storm. Incompetence, greed, thinking they know what people want to do for fun, and just the pure shit that is the gaming industry today.