official SimCity (2013)

[Hurmoth]

Not seeing anything embarrassing except your post.

Pot, kettle :rolleyes:

EA stated that the always-on internet connection was required because the extreme computation load that a normal PC CPU's wouldn't be able to handle.

There's only two things that a connection needs in this game, multiplayer and DRM. These modders have proven that an offline mode wouldn't be that difficult unlike what EA has stated.

[mattmatik]

I usually defend this game, but im getting super sick of the "Your city is not processing properly" crap, and having to roll it back 10+ min, and this only seems to happen after i change alot.

Happened twice this morning!

I don't understand, so the game will have you roll back to an earlier 'save' because you aren't progressing how the game thinks you should? That is crazy. I haven't seen that message yet.

[HawkMan]

The game still allowed him to sell to other cities, this means that the interaction between cities doesn't actually rely on the online feature as its false

I'm pretty sure it didn't let him build outside the city borders but it DID allow him to manipulate the roads which when reconnected to the server allowed them to be saved. This has now been patched to prevent access to the debug menu that allowed this to happen as people were apparently screwing with the region maps

The inflated figure shows you a number of sims that don't actually exist in your city. Which means that even if you think you have say 200k sims you will be short of actual workers as this number is completely false and doesn't actually represent the amount of workers you have in your city as they don't exist. This makes planning for industry more difficult imho as you cannot be 100% sure you have the right number of workers for the jobs.

Yes........

This serious fudging basically involved building parks and lowering taxes, nothing more. Not really a serious fudge now is it?

On a lighter note the a new video was posted by Maxis showing the improved Congestion avoidance which will hopefully be going in to the game shortly

Sorry I can't remember how to post linked youtube videos

This looks like an awesome fix to the traffic problems, Can't wait for this to go in

Yes, the game allows limited inter region trade without server connection... and guess what I even mentioned that in my post, but there's more to the region than just that that won't work in this mode. it won't kill the game or anything, but it is part of the simulation of this sim game.

you don't need to see the real number, you can't build a city on that number anyway, and besides not everyone in your city works, and this is how it works in the real world as well. and the game takes that into account anyway. The whole "it makes it hard to know how many real workers you have" idea is pure speculation and somethign I've only seen mentioned here by you. it's not actually a problem in game.

Except, no matter how many parks and how low taxes you have, you will only get a very small low amount of people, a non self sufficient population of trailer trash. So he definitely did some other fudging as well besides that.

Improvements are always welcome, though personally I've only had very small congestion problems, generally by my own fault in bad road design. the only problem I had had is that export trade seems at times to be unreliable, which I assume ties into the trade issues. but it generally works itself out, or is tied in with the "your city won't process" issues.

but all fixes are welcome and if traffic will flow better, all the better, just make sure my trucks get out :)

[scaramonga]

:laugh:

Oh, and Eurogamer review just in..

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-03-15-simcity-review

BOOM!

[Dane]

I have two cities. One main and one for extra resources. The city with the resources says processing. It's been that way for over a day.

[.Markus]

Anyone managed to build a great work yet? On my way to saving up for the Archology one, will probably take forever though being the only one in my region..

I suppose it makes a major difference in tourism and people commuting between cities.

[Beyond Godlike]

Did you guys see that the always-online DRM was cracked, that EA lied about the dependency on 'cloud computing' to make it run. Game is trash.

[Teebor]

you don't need to see the real number, you can't build a city on that number anyway, and besides not everyone in your city works, and this is how it works in the real world as well. and the game takes that into account anyway. The whole "it makes it hard to know how many real workers you have" idea is pure speculation and somethign I've only seen mentioned here by you. it's not actually a problem in game.

http://simcityhall.boardhost.com/viewtopic.php?pid=12014

http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/9356526.page

http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/9358418.page

However you are right as you can open up the population screen to show you how many actual workers you have, which I've kind of been overlooking :(

[PGHammer]

Did you guys see that the always-online DRM was cracked, that EA lied about the dependency on 'cloud computing' to make it run. Game is trash.

Please - you sound like you won't be happy unless you can do everything completely offline. If this for all games, or only for games published by EA?

If it's only for EA-published games (and you also use Steam), that makes you either a hypocrite (because Steam is the same sort of DRM in that fashion as is Origin) or you have been living in a frigging CAVE since the first announcements about this version of Simcity from Maxis (or EA, for that matter) have made plain that an online connection is required.

Also, if you have been following the SAME posts, you would note that as badly as the online side is broken, the offline side still needs major patchwork because the game is DESIGNED to require server-side connection refreshes. In short, just because a game has been hacked to not require a connection to the server as often, it doesn't mean that the game can work AS INTENDED completely offline; that is something that every poster (including those in the Simcity subReddit) have admitted.

Further, the reason behind MOST of the hackery that has popped out in the Simcity subReddit is for the very reason you claim to be the reason you made your post - anti-DRM of EVERY sort. Hating DRM is one thing; however, buying a game that you are AWARE has DRM in it ANYWAY flies in the face of that hatred.

So, which is it? Anti-DRM in general? Anti-EA? Or are you just plain bandwagon-jumping?

[hhernan]

Hi guys!

I can't find any ongoing region with an unclaimed city... When I go to "Join Game" all the cities are already taken...

[majortom1981]

Anyone managed to build a great work yet? On my way to saving up for the Archology one, will probably take forever though being the only one in my region..

I suppose it makes a major difference in tourism and people commuting between cities.

Arcology is awfully easy to create. Just build a mining town. mine the ore and coal and import the plastic needed for the TV's and processors. Shows how unbalanced this game is. one person can build an arcology all by themselves.

I did. You have to be prepaired for the massive influx of visitors each day though.

Alloy and metal is easy enough, plastics as they sit right now are cheaper to import for things. Once you build your mining town the intial million for the construction start is easy.

[_bobcat_ Veteran]

Did you guys see that the always-online DRM was cracked, that EA lied about the dependency on 'cloud computing' to make it run. Game is trash.

The cloud & server stuff has its advantages, would be nice if they made it optional to have local saves. The game is flawed but it's not trash. The flaws are not in the online stuff as far as I'm concerned, but things like the poor AI and path finding.. I find it unforgivable that they released it in that state. I still have way too much fun playing it though ..

Hi guys!

I can't find any ongoing region with an unclaimed city... When I go to "Join Game" all the cities are already taken...

Hmm, you could create your own region. You could make it public or private (& invite only) depending on how you feel about others playing.

[Pupik]

Hi guys!

I can't find any ongoing region with an unclaimed city... When I go to "Join Game" all the cities are already taken...

Click on citylog icon at bottom left in main menu. Shows you the newly created regions with available spots in them.

[spaceelf]

Is there a bug with the medical centers? Seems no one ever uses it when i get one. They they use the clinics though. usually always full.

Medical Centers cost too much, and arent worth it if no one will use them. Weird

They'll use the closest first iirc. I just close down my clinics when I get a hospital.

[scaramonga]

http://www.simcity.c...swers-from-lucy

"I hate to disturb you when you?re playing SimCity"

First line says it all lol!

She ain't got a ****in clue, no idea whatsoever, nothing, zero. She's a 'puppet' for EA, they pull her strings, and her sorry little mouth moves.

[spaceelf]

bit more info here

http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/15/saints-row-returns-to-again-beg-the-question-why-so-serious/

[scaramonga]

Lucy is on her way home after a hard days work at Maxis, but she bumps into a Sim.

Hello Lucy, says the Sim.

"I hate to disturb you when you?re playing SimCity" says Lucy...

The sim replies "I'm stuck in congestion Lucy, can you help?"

Lucy replies "I hate to disturb you when you?re playing SimCity"

Sim gets lost, and waits for a patch to fix Lucy ;)

[articuno1au]

Hawkman is far too entrenched in his position to take seriously.

He is just ignoring statements and quoting scriptures -_-

I'm quite enjoying the game (when I'm not getting my city rolled back -_-) but it has some serious problems..

From my experience thus far:

Simulation:

• Water table doesn't regenerate (even beside rivers). I shut down my water plant and built a new one about 20 hours of gaming ago, and I still can't turn my old plant back on despite it being right beside the river. That's how I came across the sewerage/water pump trick. Problem is I can't do that in my Neowin city..
  
• The exact opposite of this happens with sewerage plants. Your "Outflow pipe cannot handle the flow". That's because the water table below the treatment system was completely saturated and not distributing to the rest of the table. Also means my city isn't getting sewerage services and everyone gets ****ed off.
  
• Garbage collection will aim at the closest pickup, not the one that needs it most. As a result, I had 28k of 30k picked up, and one building in the back that kept catching fire because it had too much trash.
  
• Traffic bugs. MILLIONS of these that totally destroy your city if they happy on the main interconnect to the highway. In my case a bus at a high school glitched out and kept jumping from the unload point to it's storage place and back. Everything line up behind it blocking the avenue sending traffic other ways and deadlocking my city. I lost 20k an hour until I spotted the issue.
  
• Further to the above, traffic doesn't route very well. I know they're fixing (possibly fixed?) this but it's still a god damn pain.
  
• In a Casino town (with higher crime as a result), I had 32 cop cars respond to a single robbery whilst 2 more occurred just 10 meters down the road. Both criminals got away because the cops went full retard and caused a traffic jam with themselves. This kind of behaviour is prevalent with all services.
  
• I'm getting TONS of retarded "There's no shopping nearby/Where's the shopping in this town" complaints from Sims. This is particular annoying because one of them is across a street from a high density shop of the same wealth level. Just to really drive home the point, the business is going broke because "There aren't enough shoppers".
  
• My oil rig is perpetually drilling.. I've had it running for months and it's sitting on "3 months supply remaining". Not that I'm complaining, it's making my city insanely easy to run. I also managed to balance my Ore and Coal mines thusly. I'm rolling in cash despite running an 18k deficit on my budget.
  
• Sims coming into my airport will ignore the Casino right across the road. This is due to the street car station right between the two. All "200" (ha) Sims will emerge from the airport, walk straight to the street car terminal and ignore the Casino right there. It's hilarious because the street car is dropping off other people who walk straight into the airport. It's like my Casino is in a bubble. Actually, that might be what's happening with me issue 2 points above >.>
  
• I've been getting tons of "Your city isn't processing properly bla blah" errors. I know how to trigger one as well. The issue is that I triggered the situation in my last save, and in fixing it keeps crashing my town. In my case there's a train station that is disconnected from the road, so there are a ton of Sims driving around in a circuit trying to get out. As soon as I reconnect it, BAM. I've tried deleting my train station and road, but that also crashes the town. Looks like the town is ****ed :|
  
• There's a ton of smaller issues as well, but these are the big ones..
  

Servers/EA

• I've regularly encountered delays of hours between someone creating a Finance (or whatever) department, and that change showing up in my town.
  
• Updates on the amount of resources in a zone are regularly extremely delayed (this is particularly moronic given you can see the data is exchanged as just numbers, with no noteworthy calculations being made).
  
• EA blatantly lied. Point blank lied about requiring the server to do calculations. You can see it in the code if you take the time to look. They lied about this and a dozen other things.
  

All of that having been said. I'm still enjoying the game. The rollbacks are ****ing me off to no end, but the rest of it's quit enjoyable >.< I take the bugs as something extra to work around. It's fun finding ways to fix impromptu ****ups :D

You can say the game is enjoyable DESPITE the bugs, but you can't suggest the bugs don't affect the game. The game is honestly an abomination of EA prostate milking players and over promising under delivering.

It is bug ridden and broken, but it can still be a lot of fun.

[scaramonga]

It is bug ridden and broken, but it can still be a lot of fun.

An awesome post, and sums it up really. Yes it can be fun, but far far short of what was promised.

[spaceelf]

Hawkman is far too entrenched in his position to take seriously.

I'd say the same about some of the complainers on the opposite side. If we could clear the dumb anti DRM/EA/troll posts and just talk about the game it'd be awesome (though I don't see that happening obviously.)

Still, well written. I think a lot of the bugs are straight down to the pathing problems with traffic, and I need that fixed before I play too much more.

Also, I think mines regenerate slowly, and the 'months left' can stall depending on where your delivery trucks are/how the trading market is doing.

http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/simcity-update-8 goes into the traffic issues/improvements being implemented

[articuno1au]

The DRM is part of the game. It's driven decisions (such as the regional play model) and is something that should be debated. The anti-EA stuff is probably better kept for a different thread.

The traffic issues are enormous as you say. That's where I'd be focusing my attention.

I build trade centers right beside the mine, so it's always instantaneous >.< I've been testing this one thoroughly, it's definitely "cheeseable". I've built 2 enormously profitable cities with this model. At the moment my Neowin city is sitting on 2 million simoleons and I've only stopped because I need the rest of the region to catch up >.>

Looking forward to more fixes. I have high hopes for the game.

The problem with the above is that the game should have been much better on release.

[spaceelf]

The problem with the above is that the game should have been much better on release.

Probably true, but if they weren't expecting this many sales to begin with they limited the dev budget for the game.

I'd like to see what happens next. After the traffic fixes I'll have nothing to complain about, and I'm sure they're working on DLC.

I hope to see DX11 in there someday if this is supposed to be a long tail release, but that's another discussion entirely.

[articuno1au]

This article is worth a read: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/simcity-one-week-later-time-doesnt-heal-all-wounds/

Be forewarned it's written in a really wanky format.

They pretty much said what I've been thinking: Even when they scaled back on what the game could do, they didn't scale back on telling people what it could do.

DirectX11 won't benefit you much in this given how nicely the game runs on DX9 >.> Might get a little prettier, but a lot of the advantage of DX11 is the improved unit number rendering.

/shrugs

[spaceelf]

DirectX11 won't benefit you much in this given how nicely the game runs on DX9 >.> Might get a little prettier, but a lot of the advantage of DX11 is the improved unit number rendering.

A lot of the advantage is that they can do more with it, especially in special effects.

I know, it's not a powerhouse of a game so it doesn't 'need' it...but that doesn't mean it would be pointless. And if they're porting it to PS4 (nobody said they were, but I don't see why they wouldn't) they'll very likely be making better quality assets for it and can bring them over.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

The only differences to a PS4 port would involve them making it render using OpenGL, it's not like the PS4 is more capable than current PCs so they're not going to increase rendering complexity for it.