official SimCity (2013)

[F_C]

Really? Sheesh I've probably put in over forty hours since launch. There WERE some major bugs (especially with trading) but it's all been cleared up and the servers are performing great now.

If you like it, that's great, unfortunately for me though I can't get past what seems to be inherent flaws in the design of the glassbox engine, not just simple bugs which can be fixed.

And none of the problems which are putting me off are to do with the servers/always on stuff.

[JaredFrost]

as someone that actually plays the game, lots. then again, for every vocal person on the net complaining about it, there's at least a 100 000 actually playing the game. people who play don't waste energy complaining on forums, they're in the game. And the ones complaining on the forums aren't playing the game.... so why are they complaining...

Using that logic and the amount of people complaining, the game has sold more copies than ANY other game that has ever existed

No wonder they had server problems, they sold like 100 million copies.

[matt4pack]

It's mostly the hardcore fans who are trashing the game. More casual fans seem to be enjoying it.

I'm not even sure how feasible it would be to have agents mimic the real world which seems to be the big complaint without it causing the game to be unplayable on today's hardware. Although I do think tile size should be increased or the entire region should be playable with the current size tiles.

[spaceelf]

I'm not even sure how feasible it would be to have agents mimic the real world which seems to be the big complaint without it causing the game to be unplayable on today's hardware. Although I do think tile size should be increased or the entire region should be playable with the current size tiles.

The entire thing might be a lot more impressive in a 64 bit game, but that's not likely to happen before the new consoles have been out a while IMO. Would be awesome though.

[majortom1981]

It's mostly the hardcore fans who are trashing the game. More casual fans seem to be enjoying it.

I'm not even sure how feasible it would be to have agents mimic the real world which seems to be the big complaint without it causing the game to be unplayable on today's hardware. Although I do think tile size should be increased or the entire region should be playable with the current size tiles.

The problem is once you get deeply into the game. Meaning not in sandbox mode but once the leader boards are turned on and things like that . The traffic handling, and sims handling is borked . When you make your streets around controlling the borked traffic you cause other problems like buildings not getting power because not enough street connections. Remember power flows like water in this game . To stop your highway from backing up you need to have a long expanse of avenue. if the powerplant is one side of this the other side of the avenue will have power problems because the one or two street connections aren't capable of delivering power.

I do play the game. These traffic problems cause a lot of trouble when you start doing things like trading . They cause your region connection to backup for miles which means you trading trucks are stuck in that mess. It doesn't help that that connection has one lane connection (one onramp for each direction).

Then include the fact that the buses which are supposed to help traffic cause 100's of region buses to flood into your city making traffic even worse.

This is not just useless complaints. it actually causes major problems that will become more pronounced when trading and leader boards get turned back on again.

[Pupik]

For the 28 bucks that I paid for it, I can't complain about the game. Gave good amount of enjoyment and I'm still not done with it. Even in the medium sized cities, the game still offers more than Simcity 4 or now for some reason highly recommended Tropico 4 (which is a copy of Tropico 3, that didn't get much gameplay time from me).

[SuperKid]

Does anyone know if I purchase SimCity for PC and when the Mac version comes out can I convert the PC version to Mac?

[Brandon H Supervisor]

Does anyone know if I purchase SimCity for PC and when the Mac version comes out can I convert the PC version to Mac?

i'm guessing you'll be good. my guess is just like with steam. just install origin on your mac and it'll allow you to install your games that are mac compatible

[Hurmoth]

Did they put a gun to your head and make you buy the game? That's your problem if you're dumb enough to pay $60 for a game which you end up hating.

It's not a perfect game but a lot of stuff is being overblown. With all it's faults it's still a fun game but I wouldn't have paid $60 for it. I don't pay that for any game.

First off, I never expected to hate the game, before the game was released, all the reviews made it sound amazing, and most people's complaint about the "beta" they got to play was the limited city size and the time limit. Neither of which seemed that big of a deal, and the city size still isn't a huge problem.

Secondly, I'm so sorry that I couldn't get the game for free :rolleyes: No, no one put a gun to my to make me buy the game, which is exactly the reason why I have the right to complain. I chose to give EA my money and come to find out, EA screwed up big time and even lied to us, the paying customers.

Deal with my complaints!

[spaceelf]

I do play the game. These traffic problems cause a lot of trouble when you start doing things like trading . They cause your region connection to backup for miles which means you trading trucks are stuck in that mess. It doesn't help that that connection has one lane connection (one onramp for each direction).

Having too many avenues seems like it hampers traffic problems since everyone will be queued at stoplights. Especially if they're the first things vehicles entering your city see so they get queued up at it.

I actually decided to use avenues for very little this go around, and it's paying off. Sure, I do have to upgrade some streets here and there but the traffic flows more naturally.

[PGHammer]

For the 28 bucks that I paid for it, I can't complain about the game. Gave good amount of enjoyment and I'm still not done with it. Even in the medium sized cities, the game still offers more than Simcity 4 or now for some reason highly recommended Tropico 4 (which is a copy of Tropico 3, that didn't get much gameplay time from me).

Agreed. I was in the closed betas, and own (and have installed) SC4 (the Deluxe version, which includes the Rush Hour DLC). I found even the closed betas much more enjoyable than SC4 Deluxe, which has gotten me my share of flack from the hardcore SC4 defenders - and especially when I point out that the very things that SC has gotten whacked for as far as pathing, etc., were either just as badly broken in SC4 (and required fixes by modders, such as the traffic issue, which is fixed in SC4 by a community mod) or are just plain missing.

The very reason why managing a large city in SC4 and earlier is easier is because you don't have as much in the way of detail thrown at you - even by the Advisors/City Council - let alone by individual Sims. Managing an entire rhree-city region in this version of SC would be like being Michael Bloomberg or Rudy Guliani on steroids - and far harder than managing even a medium-sized city in SC4, let alone a large one. If anything, Simcity of today is far more realistic in terms of the simulation, even as badly broken as it is, than previous versions.

That may well be what has gotten THIS version of Simcity in hot water - the simulation's complexity.

[Draconian Guppy]

Does this new simcity allow you to start building and placing work, houses, etc. BEFORE you set up basic services (water, electricity) like cities XL does? This drives me nuts, you should first have the basic services! (eg. in SC4, you can, but either the people or industries would leave, in cities XL, you only need water pumps, electricty when you reach around 50k in population )

[(Spork)]

have the server troubles gotten better ? still thinking about buying this but want to make sure the servers are getting better

[MillionVoltss]

Modders have it working offline.

[Hurmoth]

have the server troubles gotten better ? still thinking about buying this but want to make sure the servers are getting better

As far as I can tell, yes, they're much better, although while in game I get that disconnected from server message a bit to often, but it doesn't hinder gameplay though.

[HawkMan]

Does this new simcity allow you to start building and placing work, houses, etc. BEFORE you set up basic services (water, electricity) like cities XL does? This drives me nuts, you should first have the basic services! (eg. in SC4, you can, but either the people or industries would leave, in cities XL, you only need water pumps, electricty when you reach around 50k in population )

You can, but you will only get like 50-100 unhappy sims. and factories won't get power or water and will shut down and get abandoned.

Also the tricks show in this thread don't really work. while parks will make people move in, without jobs you can't fill a whole region with people like some videos claim, so there's definitely been some trickery done there.

same with the money "trick". sure you can up the taxes for the 2 seconds between 1:59 and 2:01, but people will complain, not as much as if the taxes where high all the time, but they're definitely not happy, so you can't do it every hour.

[laz45]

So EA was found lying out their ass... a modder has hacked the game to run entirely offline, and even play outside of the game?s ridiculously small borders. Inside the code it talks about big maps like it was going to be a DLC :p embarrassing... Population number is faked/inflated http://i.imgur.com/AhIm3Gu.png

[+LogicalApex MVC]

I found this interesting:

http://www.gamasutra...n_simcitys_.php

This is the guiding bedrock of software development. You build complexity out of simplicity. I'm not shocked at all that this game, on a fundamental level, is very simple.

[scaramonga]

So EA was found lying out their ass... a modder has hacked the game to run entirely offline, and even play outside of the game?s ridiculously small borders. Inside the code it talks about big maps like it was going to be a DLC :p embarrassing... Population number is faked/inflated

Not to mention that a city can grow past 200k pop without industry and commerce in the entire region, in other words, nothing in the game actually does anything, it looks good, but underneath, is worthless.

Basically, Its just one big $60 sandbox paint app.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

This is the guiding bedrock of software development. You build complexity out of simplicity. I'm not shocked at all that this game, on a fundamental level, is very simple.

I'm not really surprised that it's quite simple at the base, but I am surprised that the supporting systems are so badly implemented/broken (That is, agents have no set home, there's no form of traffic avoidance, etc.)

[HawkMan]

So EA was found lying out their ass... a modder has hacked the game to run entirely offline, and even play outside of the game?s ridiculously small borders. Inside the code it talks about big maps like it was going to be a DLC :p embarrassing... Population number is faked/inflated http://i.imgur.com/AhIm3Gu.png

So a guy hacked the game to play offline, of course now he doesn't have the multiplayer the game was designed around having for inter city cooperation, or the region wide simulation of pollution and traffic, just the local simulations and limited "connection" to other cities in the region, cities that are effectively dead since you can only play one at a time.

And you sure you can hack it to play outside the border, but then you stick hacked it. and there's a reason for the small borders, both because larger cities would make it dead easy to make a multipurpose can do everything really well city. and for performance. and we don't know how many bugs he ran into on a larger city, just that he "did". and they're not ridiculously small, that's a ridiculous claim. And so what if they're making bigger maps a DLC ? then they will be whole new regions(Maps) specially designed for bigger cities and will probably be introduced with other content required for such big cities and limits to prevent easy multi purpose mega cities.

And so what if the pop numbers are inflated, they're not faked, they're inflated, which is part of the simulation engine. it's how it's designed to work. sometimes it just doesn't make sense to operate with the real number, it's far simpler for the engine to work with a smaller number while presenting you with a larger number better reflecting the "real" citizens in your city.

Not seeing anything embarrassing except your post.

Not to mention that a city can grow past 200k pop without industry and commerce in the entire region, in other words, nothing in the game actually does anything, it looks good, but underneath, is worthless.

Basically, Its just one big $60 sandbox paint app.

Maybe you should actually try that, and then you'd realize that the guy who showed that, has done some serious fudging to make that work.

[PGHammer]

Does this new simcity allow you to start building and placing work, houses, etc. BEFORE you set up basic services (water, electricity) like cities XL does? This drives me nuts, you should first have the basic services! (eg. in SC4, you can, but either the people or industries would leave, in cities XL, you only need water pumps, electricty when you reach around 50k in population )

No - you have to have the basic services first (even the closed betas enforced this rule). I typically started with a single-stage wind generation plant, a single water tower, and a sewage outflow pipe (all either in or north of the industrial zone, in the upwind portion of the city). They all have the advantage of being cheap and therefore easily upgradable (wind plant and water tower) or replaceable (outflow pipe). I put this in the ground along with a skeleton of the city core before laying out even the first plats.

[spaceelf]

No - you have to have the basic services first (even the closed betas enforced this rule).

HUh? Why do I usually have everything building before I remember I have no money for those then?

haha...seriously. fortunately early game bond measures are not traumatic

[HawkMan]

I think he meant as in that people won't move in without them.

[Teebor]

So a guy hacked the game to play offline, of course now he doesn't have the multiplayer the game was designed around having for inter city cooperation, or the region wide simulation of pollution and traffic, just the local simulations and limited "connection" to other cities in the region, cities that are effectively dead since you can only play one at a time.

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

And you sure you can hack it to play outside the border, but then you stick hacked it. and there's a reason for the small borders, both because larger cities would make it dead easy to make a multipurpose can do everything really well city. and for performance. and we don't know how many bugs he ran into on a larger city, just that he "did". and they're not ridiculously small, that's a ridiculous claim. And so what if they're making bigger maps a DLC ? then they will be whole new regions(Maps) specially designed for bigger cities and will probably be introduced with other content required for such big cities and limits to prevent easy multi purpose mega cities.

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

And so what if the pop numbers are inflated, they're not faked, they're inflated, which is part of the simulation engine. it's how it's designed to work. sometimes it just doesn't make sense to operate with the real number, it's far simpler for the engine to work with a smaller number while presenting you with a larger number better reflecting the "real" citizens in your city.

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.

Not seeing anything embarrassing except your post.

Yes........

Maybe you should actually try that, and then you'd realize that the guy who showed that, has done some serious fudging to make that work.

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