new "real" Sim City in 2013

[vortext]

There're plenty of EA memes going around these days, this one gave me a good chuckle.



It's actually a hack of this original Cyanide and Happiness strip [via 8bitfuture]

[j-dub]

I am still debating whether I should get this game, and even though I was not suffering the launch day, they sent me this email, and now I am debating if it's worth it, with their free game offer for this weekend only.

Our SimCity Mayors are incredibly important to the team at Maxis. We know we messed up and want to sincerely thank you for staying with us. The good news is we have solved most of the major issues and players are really enjoying the game. We're getting great feedback from our fans and know that many of you are having fun and are exploring this whole new expression of SimCity.

As a small token of our appreciation, we are offering you a free EA PC game download on Origin*. Mayors who have authenticated their copy of SimCity on Origin by March 25 can select a free game through a redemption portal inside the Origin desktop client later this week. We'll be opening up the redemption portal country-by-country so some of you may see it a little sooner than others. The portal will be live worldwide for everyone to select their game by March 22.

We don't want any of you to miss out your free game, so please note that you must register your copy of SimCity before March 25, 2013 at 11:59 PM PST and you must claim your free game by March 30, 2013 at 11:59PM PST.

What does majority think, should I get this game before this offer is too late now?

[Shark7]

I am still debating whether I should get this game, and even though I was not suffering the launch day, they sent me this email, and now I am debating if it's worth it, with their free game offer for this weekend only.

Our SimCity Mayors are incredibly important to the team at Maxis. We know we messed up and want to sincerely thank you for staying with us. The good news is we have solved most of the major issues and players are really enjoying the game. We're getting great feedback from our fans and know that many of you are having fun and are exploring this whole new expression of SimCity.

As a small token of our appreciation, we are offering you a free EA PC game download on Origin*. Mayors who have authenticated their copy of SimCity on Origin by March 25 can select a free game through a redemption portal inside the Origin desktop client later this week. We'll be opening up the redemption portal country-by-country so some of you may see it a little sooner than others. The portal will be live worldwide for everyone to select their game by March 22.

We don't want any of you to miss out your free game, so please note that you must register your copy of SimCity before March 25, 2013 at 11:59 PM PST and you must claim your free game by March 30, 2013 at 11:59PM PST.

What does majority think, should I get this game before this offer is too late now?

Personally, I'm not going to.  I see no reason to pay for a fundamentally broken game just to get one that *might* actually be working.  I'll just skip the whole EA fiasco and go buy a game from a company that makes sure its games are working before they foist it on the public.

EA did this to themselves, and they've lost a lot of customers over it.  I will be very, very wary of any game published by EA from this point forward, and I didn't even get ripped off by buying SimCity.

[j-dub]

I just got a lot of angry feedback from CBS subscribers saying why it was not worth it, a petition was handed to me.

https://www.change.org/petitions/electronic-arts-inc-remove-always-online-drm-from-simcity-and-future-games

73,912 out of the 75k needed signatures to validate sending. I hope this works, because last time I signed against some butt munchers, they still did not listen, even after majority rule, take the Motion Picture Association of America for example, when those ***** would not drop of the R-rating on that Bully documentary, exposing how bad the American School life really is.

[catty]

I posted this link to a NZ review over at SimPeg a few days ago

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/games/8440029/SimCity-dream-flounders-with-scale

Some bits he likes other bits he finds very frustrating and his final recommendation

SimCity delights and frustrates in equal measure, and Maxis is busy sorting out the quirks and issues, but at the moment, it has too many frustrations to recommend as a must-buy.

[Reginasunrae]

I haven't bought it and don't plan to unless (pigs would probably fly first) they released an off-line mode patch for it and even then it's not worth $60 to buy a defective product.

Over the years I've bought all the SC games since I found SC2000 in a bargain bin. I bought the Sims and all expansions. I bought Sims 2 and all expansions. Then I bought into Sims 3 and some of the expansions and I may buy one more expansion for it but am not sure yet. Once that's done I have no intention of ever buying another EAxis title, ever. The reasons for this are several. With every expansion pack that's been released for TS3 more and more bugs are introduced that are never fixed. One expansion pack/update brought the ability to add lots to an existing town map. A few expansion packs later those same lots are causing massive routing issues. Late Night introduced a bug that causes cars to be left all over town. The cars build to the point where the game starts lagging so badly it becomes unplayable. The only work-around is a third-party mod that cleans up those cars every night at midnight. If a modder can fix the problem, why can't EA take the time to do it? Every new expansion pack or update breaks something. Every time a patch is released it breaks something else and this hasn't changed over the years. They just flat out don't deserve anyone's money.

The other day I was reading an article at Time by someone who seriously looked like an apologist. They accused people of nerd-raging over this and called them immature and said they need to start voting with their wallets. I agree, they do need to start voting with their wallets but I don't agree those who bought the game gave up the right to complain about the problems. In fact, I think they have every right to complain and the louder the better. The writer also said video games are basically art and that players really had no right to complain about Maxis' vision with this new game. Sure it's art and just about every artist has a vision when they create something. However, if they're creating that work to sell they also have to please their customer. Imagine if 100,000 people had joined forces to have me decorate a Christmas tree for them to put in a public place. I have a vision for this tree that I think will be lovely and I decide the tree should be done with no tree topper. On top of that about half the ornaments I use are broken. I get it all finished and unveil it to the waiting crowd. Now imagine 20,000 of them look at the tree in disgust because I didn't include a tree topper. Then all of them realize I used broken ornaments. Would I ever get hired to decorate another tree? I really doubt it and rightfully so. If I'm an artist hired to do a job for someone it's THEIR vision I need to fulfill, not mine. That's what this new SC game is like to me. Even if it does get a tree topper (offline mode) it still has a bunch of broken stuff and I doubt they'll ever fix most of it. There is also the fact that Lucy Bradshaw out-and-out lied about the capability of an off-line mode. Neither Maxis nor EA deserves a single penny of mine.

[j-dub]

And that has nothing to do with the fact that it was only just this past week, and after the appology, that the CEO of EA for the last 6 years resigned. Appology and free game or not, don't change the problem.

[catty]

For those of you who are wondering if you want to get SC2013, there is an bug list being kept up-to-date over at PCGamingWiki

http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/SimCity_%282013%29/Bugs

And I know all new games have bugs, but some of the problems SC2013 has, and I'm not counting the server issues as that is something they should have anticipated and planned for  ... are bugs that should have stopped it being released until they were fixed.

-catty

[Diggis]

I just got a lot of angry feedback from CBS subscribers saying why it was not worth it, a petition was handed to me.

https://www.change.org/petitions/electronic-arts-inc-remove-always-online-drm-from-simcity-and-future-games

73,912 out of the 75k needed signatures to validate sending. I hope this works, because last time I signed against some butt munchers, they still did not listen, even after majority rule, take the Motion Picture Association of America for example, when those ***** would not drop of the R-rating on that Bully documentary, exposing how bad the American School life really is.

J-Dub, just a note of caution, these petitions hold no legal standing. The 75K mark is just a number they require before it's sent, the company can ignore if they want. I'd be surprised if EA take any notice.

[NCGAIO]

Worse than reimbursements and some petitions may be a massive impression that already runs rampant in the analyzes on the unpreparedness to deal with a game that as said  Lucy was written to be MMO.


Maybe basis of what already is said about it  have misunderstood the acronym and translated the meaning of MMO like Massive Multiplayer Out_game.


Now the shovel of lime on this mess and that is tormenting the players do not even is related to  game bugs as you can see in the massive majority of complaints at EA answer HQ ie:


. Missing City - 1423
. Can not process this city at this time. - 1307
. From Players experiencing Rollbacks - 1186
. Unable to Load City at this Time - 602


No wonder that many of those who bought the game off of Origin and request a refund are being attended without many questions.


It would be very naive to think that these servers will have a long life if these problems are not fixed soon because even the casual market that is the target of the publisher will not tolerate it for much longer! 


Who would say .... of "Simcity Reboot" to "Simcity Rollbacks" 

[catty]

Came across a couple of youtube video's of SC2013


http://youtu.be/8uNVpn4p70M


http://youtu.be/ytk1agmcXhU

[catty]

Double post ... sorry, but I thought a talk by Dan Moskowitz, Senior Software Engineer at Maxis, creators of SimCity speaking to an audience of game developers at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco was worth it

the link is here  http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/29/4161422/simcity-pedestrians-teleport

the article was written by Russ Pitts at Polygon I'm going to quote it in full cause its fairly mindblowing

"We just didn't realize the ridiculous scope of the game we were trying to make," said Dan Moskowitz, Senior Software Engineer at Maxis, creators of SimCity. "It became clear that our scope was so big we were standing on the edge of this giant chasm."

Moskowitz, speaking to an audience of game developers at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco, described the technology behind SimCity, the "GlassBox" engine powering the game's world-building simulation and the struggles he and the SimCity team faced putting the game together.

But his panel got off to a rocky start, as he opened his presentation and his screen failed to begin loading his presentation slides.

The audience of over 100 laughed nervously as an error message popped up on the screen stating that the presentation could not connect to the servers.

It was a goof, but a good one. And a necessary one, as SimCity's failed (and still turbulent) launch has threatened to overshadow all of the hard work put in to making the game.

"As a member of the team, I apologize to anyone here who experiences frustration [playing SimCity]," Moskowitz said.

"The audience laughed nervously as an error message popped up on the screen stating that the presentation could not connect to the servers."

Moskowitz touched briefly on the server issues still plaguing SimCity and mentioned the team is still working to address them, but declined to delve too deeply into what many see as the most important topic of discussion about the game.

"Anyone who brought tomatoes, I would happily direct you to our PR guy," he said.

Instead, Moskowitz took a deep dive into how GlassBox works and why SimCity behaves the way it behaves. In short: Maxis spent years of trial and error deciding how deep the simulation should go and the answer, in terms of fun, was: "not very."

Initial prototypes featured super-modular buildings (which the SimCity team calls "toys") and a level of complexity that, in the end, proved to be not only unnecessary, but also un-fun.

"At one point we thought skyscrapers were going to be stacks of units," he said, "but we quickly backed away from that."

An early version of the SimCity power station, for example, featured multiple add-ons and a variety of upgrades that performed in various ways, but the designers discovered that it was possible to upgrade the station in such a way as to break it, causing it to overheat or explode. And some heavily upgraded power stations would actually cease producing power. The result was "sim power station" which, while interesting, distracted from the core of the game.

"We had no idea how many parts would be fun or how detailed they needed to be," Moskowitz said. "Your power production could be stifled because you didn't have enough smokestacks or [they] would catch fire. We soon realized we were going down this complexity rabbit hole."

He added that, as a software engineer, it was often his responsibility to say "no" to outrageous requests and even, sometimes, his own preferences.

"It's important to remember that saying no is one of your tools, and sometimes it's a really powerful tool," he said.

Eventually the team settled on a 2 kilometer by 2 kilometer city size, and buildings that would be modular and simple enough to make building a city fun without being confusing. Upgrades were streamlined and designed to only add functionality without necessarily adding complexity.

"It felt like we were pushing this boulder up a hill," said Moskowitz. "We reached this magic moment where we felt like the boulder finally got to the top of the hill and then started rolling down the other side."

""I can't overstate how completely evil complexity is, especially in a sandbox game.""

While the result worked perfectly in theory (servers aside), they found that it was still possible for players to game the system, or unintentionally create cities that would break the game.

The biggest issue they faced was city size, and massive numbers of pedestrians (which are each distinct simulations) clogging up sidewalks and using too much processing power without ever getting to their destinations. The solution they decided on had the virtue of being unique.

"We had to do something, but changing the simulation wasn't the right place for that," said Moskowitz. So they used magic, forcing some pedestrians to teleport to their destinations instead of walking, once the total number of pedestrians reached a certain level.

"[It was a] good tradeoff between performance ... without sacrificing the simulation integrity," he said.

Moskowitz said that although SimCity was designed to be a deep simulation, Maxis found over and over that making the game less complex made it more fun.

"I can't overstate how completely evil complexity is, especially in a sandbox game," he said. "Constantly ask yourself: What can I remove from the game?"

      

[ACEfanatic02]

Moskowitz said that although SimCity was designed to be a deep simulation, Maxis found over and over that making the game less complex made it more fun.

"I can't overstate how completely evil complexity is, especially in a sandbox game," he said. "Constantly ask yourself: What can I remove from the game?"

/headdesk

A valid reason for cutting out more of the end-user complexity (building upgrades, etc.)? Yes.  For having a simulation so broken you can build a city consisting of nothing but residential zones? Not in the least.

The blame for the server issues and always-online can be pretty clearly traced to EA.  But the fact that the simulation is a bunch of smoke and mirrors rather than a driving force behind the game is entirely Maxis's own fault.  They seem to have decided that "demand economies are *hard*" and so they built a weak resource management game and dressed it up like a city builder.  In my opinion, *this* is the most damning evidence against Maxis in this whole thing.  They're stuck with EA and EA's suicidally paranoid business model, but the fact is that even if the game was patched to play offline and save locally, it would *still* be a terrible simulation.  SimCity Classic is better, and it's just a suped-up Game Of Life.  End-user complexity is bad, but a complex simulation under the hood that can develop and run a city naturally is the entire *point* of this genre.  Maxis has spent too much time wrapped up in The Sims and now doesn't understand how to build simulators any more.

With two failed games now, Maxis is out of the running.  Cities XL is plagued with sloppy coding and what looks like a fairly weak simulation under the covers.  All of the open source alternatives (that haven't failed yet) are pie-in-the-sky projects focused on graphics and flash rather than interesting simulation, run by people with little to no programming ability.

Pretty sure we won't see another game to top SC4 as a city builder for a long time to come.  And that's pretty sad, as it's not all that high a barrier to cross these days.

[WC_EEND]

I will say this. At least Maxis appears to be hard at work fixing the game (granted, most of the bugs shouldn't have been there in the first place) but at least they are doing something about it. That being said, I'm holding off from playing it again until they have managed to work out most of the issues.

[NCGAIO]

Pretty sure we won't see another game to top SC4 as a city builder for a long time to come.  And that's pretty sad, as it's not all that high a barrier to cross these days.

Well... not exactly on simulation (RCI) of cities but I found it interesting to read about CiM 2. -


-  Much bigger maps, possibility to have 1 huge city or a few small town on one map.
-  More advanced and easy to use map editor.
- Scenario and rules editor.
- Pathways will be able to be built freely, and are not restricted to a grid system.
- Traffics lights are sensitive to traffic. If there are no pedestrians waiting, they operate a bit quicker.
- The game will include buses, trams, trolleybuses, waterbuses and metro.

  and has more ... beyond the single player

-  optional Multiplayer: Competetive and Co-operative modes. And all for $ 19.95].

  -     Maxis should have sent someone to do an internship there    



  More to fun ... EA has new interpretation for M.M.O games

- Make Money On_Line   

- Massive Multyplayer Online_store   

Or a fusion of both ie their preferred interpretation - Massive Make_money Online_store. 

[z]

That interview with Dan Moskowitz really is a mind blower.  Especially notable is the following:

The biggest issue they faced was city size, and massive numbers of pedestrians (which are each distinct simulations) clogging up sidewalks and using too much processing power without ever getting to their destinations. The solution they decided on had the virtue of being unique.

"We had to do something, but changing the simulation wasn't the right place for that," said Moskowitz. So they used magic, forcing some pedestrians to teleport to their destinations instead of walking, once the total number of pedestrians reached a certain level.

So what this means, very simply, is that their traffic simulator is overloaded, since it's what plots the routes of all the pedestrians.  That's not really surprising; in SC4, the traffic simulator runs about once every four months, while in SC 2013, it has to run every day - more than a hundred times as often.  Now pathfinding simulation has advanced a lot during the last ten years, but not that much.

So what are the implications of this?  There have been a lot of complaints about the traffic simulator in general, and now we know why it was shipped in its current state (or at least one reason).  The traffic simulator had to be significantly detuned in order to run fast enough for those daily simulations.  That's why it runs even worse than the Maxis traffic simulator.  But it still wasn't fast enough, so they had to make the pedestrians teleport.  And since runtime of the traffic simulator grows exponentially with city size, for this reason alone, they can't make cities bigger than 2 km x 2 km.  And for those people who wanted denser cities than they can build?  This is why you'll never see them in the game.

As for highways and subways, the presence of these in a city would require a lot more out of the traffic simulator, which is already overloaded.  So they're not about to make an appearance in this game.  As for the usage of highways in debug mode, I think that shows that Maxis originally wanted them inside the cities.  But the overloaded traffic simulator couldn't handle the extra work that highways within a full-fledged city would involve.

In other words, the game is permanently broken.  The design is broken.  Due to the design choices that were made (such as the whole agent paradigm that changes daily), many of the worst bugs are impossible to fix.  Even an increase in computing power over the next few years won't help, as you'll keep bumping into the traffic simulator's exponential growth curve.

No wonder the CEO of EA resigned shortly after the game's release.  I think that a lot of people are expecting the worst bugs to be gradually fixed over time.  But they can't be.  The underlying structure is broken.  When this is fully realized, we may see more heads rolling at EA/Maxis.  These problems should have been caught in the design phase through prototyping, when the design could be changed.  Now these bugs are a permanent part of the game.

Moskowitz said that although SimCity was designed to be a deep simulation, Maxis found over and over that making the game less complex made it more fun.

"I can't overstate how completely evil complexity is, especially in a sandbox game," he said. "Constantly ask yourself: What can I remove from the game?"

/headdesk

Exactly.  Can you imagine the NAM Team saying, "What can we remove from the game?"  But for SC 2013, the design meant that complexity made the game unplayable.  So they have to take out features until all they're left with is a kids' game.  And a very buggy kids' game at that.

I will say this. At least Maxis appears to be hard at work fixing the game (granted, most of the bugs shouldn't have been there in the first place) but at least they are doing something about it. That being said, I'm holding off from playing it again until they have managed to work out most of the issues.

They may be hard at work, but it's like being hard at work rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  The worst problems are impossible to fix because of the design.  They may try to patch over some of these bugs (for example, with teleporting), with the result that the game is even less realistic.  Or they may simply try removing some features in order to get the rest of the game to work better.  Either way, it's easy to see why the word "disaster" has so often been associated with this game.  That's not going to change significantly.

[Grneyes]

I haven't played SC2013 yet, am in fact, still thinking about buying the game, and have just watched vids of people playing it and can't help but wish there was a way to combine it with SC4. Like, couldn't Glassbox be used for SC4? Wouldn't it be great if they released the complete source code for SC4 and let the community programmers go at it? If the two games could be combined, it would be beyond awesome. Right now though, it just plain sucks.

Concerning the bugs, Haljackey points out in almost every one of his vids, the line of grass on the road at the beginning of every entrance into the city. He says it's been there since the first beta. Why? Why did it make it that far? Why is it still there? Yes, it's minor, but it should have been fixed. If things like that are overlooked, continuously, what makes any one think other, more important things are going to get fixed?

[NCGAIO]

That interview with Dan Moskowitz really is a mind blower.  Especially notable is the following:

"We had to do something, but changing the simulation wasn't the right place for that," said Moskowitz. So they used magic, forcing some pedestrians to teleport to their destinations instead of walking, once the total number of pedestrians reached a certain level.

In a comment about Tweet  our dear artist  O.Q.  said " The sims will prefer walk 400 mts  before to use a car " but the game already came out very different. Now will disappear with pedestrians to relieve pathfinding ?

- Everyone goes to work and enter the first available

- All return home and enter in the first available

In summary -  the objects (lots) just make  fishing  for objects  (sims)  available in roadside to them in the same way that the resources and  the utilities automatons ( ie just only sends them in the right direction is enough).

That's what I call really advanced simulation.

Yes, it's minor, but it should have been fixed. If things like that are overlooked, continuously, what makes any one think other, more important things are going to get fixed?

A good point...-  Simcity finally free of RollBack of according that says the  EA .





- The " Solution " is explained in the links below

- Temp fix for city not processing

   - Temp fix for city not processing -


- How EA forum is bringing together any link that cite the word " RollBack" as  problem...



today - -  How Many Of You Have Lost A City Due To a Rollback?

.               Rollbacks are UNACCEPTABLE


I think we should all disclose the maximum the links above to fix this problem that plagues those who lose their cities and do not know it.

Finally I think we can wait to fix all the problems soon. Simply just wait someone there to find new tricks that consumers can use to remedy product defects.

[mike3775]

An early version of the SimCity power station, for example, featured multiple add-ons and a variety of upgrades that performed in various ways, but the designers discovered that it was possible to upgrade the station in such a way as to break it, causing it to overheat or explode. And some heavily upgraded power stations would actually cease producing power. The result was "sim power station" which, while interesting, distracted from the core of the game.

Funny, but I recall zots appearing in every single simcity game when you built to much and didn't have the power capacity.  Having to add another power plant has never taken away from the game, and honestly, it would be nice to be able to expand your power plant, and it would not take away from the "fun" as he says

Like others have stated, this game is fatally flawed, and unfortunately, I think this is the "Enterprise" of Simcity(Star Trek fans will get that reference)

[daeley]

cool thread, lots of good info here, keep it coming.
I was holding off buying the game, first because I anticipated the launch server issues, nut now I think I'll wait until it's a bit more playable.

It's a pity they didn't fully understand the complexity of their simulations until it was too late. Looking at the early gameplay previews they posted last year I could not understand why they had to make literally everything "agent-based". Makes sense for sims, but IMHO it adds unnecessary complexity when applying it to things like water, power and waste. IMO they should have spent more time optimizing the behaviour of sims, and should have kept they other things like utilities on a "macro" level like in earlier simcities - i.e. your power plant produces x power, house uses y power, if x < y, house is out of power. Plain, simple, efficient, realistic (!).

The sims teleporting to their destinations because the transit simulator runs out of juice... that's just stupid. In fact, from a software design perspective that's not a design, that's a HACK. Where I work at, "features" like that would never make it to release. But then again, they were probably pressured by management to release the game in current state.

There's one thing I will defend the developers though:

"Constantly ask yourself: What can I remove from the game?"

Some might /facepalm to a statement like this, but from software design perspective this makes a lot of sense. To me, this actually gives the guy some credibility back. They obviously started the wrong way, trying to put as much in the box as possible. As with any project that starts out like that (and it surprises me a big company still makes those mistakes) you eventually hit a brick wall where the complexity of the system becomes so unmanageable you can't even get any basic bugs fixed. At that point, removing complexity is the only way to fix the system. Generally, you even end up with a better product because things make more sense.

I'll even add something provocative:

Exactly.  Can you imagine the NAM Team saying, "What can we remove from the game?"

Well, maybe if we did, the NAM releases would not be so few and far between.

I'm pretty sure Simcity 2013 can be fixed. It's software after all. Will it be fixed? Hard to say. That depends on how much funding EA is willing to sink in. They probably want some more money from the fans in the form of an expansion, so I'm hopeful they still have some money to spend on bugfixes right now.