SimCity 5 - Launch Discussion

[xxf2dxx]

I just have to mention that literally everything I speculated on based off of limited information came true. You can still get my autograph while this news is hot, no doubt I'll be on Television next week.

On a serious note. Yes, I predicted this based on a very simple analysis of what information we had a 20 or 30 pages, half a week back. Everything EA/Maxis has been claiming turns out to be false and as I suggested, even region play is a mere collection of <number totals> that are occasionally picked up from the servers and stored locally, hence the ability to keep playing with last known data.

Rhorle, while I sympathize with the fact that you feel that animations and physical presentation are no great part of a simulation, as long as those factors disrupt the presentation and accuracy of the numbers that are revealed to the player, it's no longer a matter of mildly annoying, but gamebreaking. And when a company lies to you about every small detail and everything is revealed, one layer after another, it's time to admit that we have all been cheated by a company that is notorious for cheating its customers. There is no shame in admitting that you were wrong. In fact, it would make you a man.

Man, you love to float your own boat. You make it out like anyone is amazed EA was full of shit. We've said this since before the game was released and have since the online DRM was mentioned. Hell, if you can get it off Origin odds are it's already going to be a rough experience. So, congrats I guess for saying what everyone else said.

[Rukh]

It's fortunate that The Sims launched in a much better state than this game, because there are STILL tons of bugs they don't bother fixing, instead releasing more and more DLC to charge for and dozens of expansions. You can't charge for bug fixes, why do it?

[Vespian]

Man, you love to float your own boat. You make it out like anyone is amazed EA was full of shit. We've said this since before the game was released and have since the online DRM was mentioned. Hell, if you can get it off Origin odds are it's already going to be a rough experience. So, congrats I guess for saying what everyone else said.

There's two issues with your response. The first; You, apparently, lack my sense of humor, or at least fail to understand it. Second, EA being full of shit has been known since it bought Westwood out. Which is a long time. Actually, possibly before that, but I can't remember exactly. I was a little bit younger.

This was not about that. While I fully understand that you think my comments were about EA or the DRM practices in general, it's not. It's about the fact that everywhere in the world, people go crazy about DRM as soon as they see "online only" in the descriptions. But what most don't get, is that "Online only" can actually give a better experience, it can be a valid development strategy (as RSP mentions) and it can obviously be used to provide better service while keeping crackers at bay. So in many forms, DRM isn't something bad.

What this is about, is the fact that EA made some really hardcore statements about how their game was really being played on the server and how the server actually processed a large part of the data on their servers, to reduce the stress on the client. Based on pretty much the first 2 launch days, where hardly anyone got to play long enough, any sane person could have analysed that there is something wrong with all the claims made by EA. Sadly, there's quite a few people that refuse to consider that they're being lied to by the companies that make these games, such as EA, and there's one or two in this very thread that have been defending EA even beyond the reasonable.

Since it was very hard to have a decent discussion with these people based on a realistic technical analysis (especially since they lack any form of technical awareness), I'm taking my 10 minutes of fame, now that those theories are getting proof added to them day by day.

Again, I'm not actually full of myself, I just enjoy rubbing it in. Like a glorious comeback in LoL :P

[Edge-]

This whole thing is getting worse and worse. Any leg EA/Maxis may have had to stand on is now absolutely toast.

[SirRobin]

You know what... Before this gets further stuck in the usual "here are sources showing it this way" and sourceless "nyuh-uh" replies. I decided to go the extra mile. Sure, it was difficult. But you? Are worth it.

So let us relate the tale of Mrs Lacie Andersen. Well, Mrs Andersen and the Asbestos Pillow Factory. Mrs Andersen leaves her Medium Wealth house and goes looking for a job. She ends up at the Asbestos Pillow Factory and promptly? Ceases to exist. Not sure what it is about the Asbestos Pillow Factories, but lots of my Medium Wealth sims are going there. Curious, I decided to watch the factory for when Mrs Andersen, or any Andersen in fact, would actually leave. Now I saw lots of sims enter and leave the factory over the next 24 hours. I even saw three leave on top of each other. First two Halls and then an Eckbert. The two Halls pulled in to a medium wealth home and the Eckbert pulled into the low wealth home right next to it.

However not a single Andersen, Lacie or otherwise, left the factory over the next twenty-four hours. Now other people left and came for various reasons. A number with bubbles not making a whole lot of sense. Poor mayor? Wow...

Since there is no visible indicator of a sim's wealth. There appears to be no way for us to actually tell where the sims being created, when they leave "work," should go. The Asbestos Pillow Factory appears to be a level one industrial, but low and medium wealth sims enter it. Just as sims leaving it enter low and medium wealth homes. I'm half tempted to start tracking last names to see if the game only assigns particular last names to particular wealth levels.

Now I did see sims leave Medium Wealth homes and end up in Medium Wealth homes. But only the ones who never disappeared. The ones who never actually "went" to work. I also saw sims with the same names show up over and over again around the factory. The building's sim animations appear to just rerun over and over again.

So, yes, I did not see any low wealth sims enter medium wealth homes, or the other way around. However, I couldn't tell what the wealth of sims actually was. The only actual category indicator I saw was the smilie face. Beyond that, the sims that don't "vanish" didn't end up anywhere near where they left. So them adding the "micro" of following sims but then not having those sims actually go back, if they don't vanish, looks really bad. "I'm going to an interview. Hurray, got the job. Now I'm going to spend the rest of the day walking all the way to the other side of town and disappear into a house."

So sims spawning in industrial or commercial zones may be entering residential houses with different wealth ratings. I watched the pattern shown in the link you discount. I watched it cross residential wealth lines with the two Halls and the Eckbert. There is just no way to tell what their wealth was.

Okay, on to the rest...

You can control the land value by placing things around your zones. Commercial and Residential are both a Happiness (density) and Land Value (class) zones. Industrial is based on Tech levels (Education). You certain can restrict certain zones to a particular wealth otherwise the entire basis of the game would fall apart. Because part of the game is managing your city to make it work. If you couldn't restrict residential to remaining within a certain land value then it would be impossible to maintain enough workers.

Yep, you can only zone for those three.

Traffic is the only agent that gets "congested". Power, Water, Sewage won't get congested through to many things going down an intersection or road. It doesn't need to take a different path because there is nothing stopping it from being on one path. The only thing you could manage is the time it takes to get to a sink. But that isn't that relevant because power and water are only time sensitive when you lose those resources for some reason which will only happen if you rebuild, high demand, or disaster.

The other agents that we don't see like "spread fire" or "fire alarm" are all pulsed. Same thing with "now hiring". They all pulse and don't really save time by going down one long path then they would going around corners and stuff. Its because those pulses are not limited and are a second or less apart.

However, time does matter. So shortages waiting for an "agent" to reach them because of a short roads and intersections layout are negatively impacted. The one long curvy road doesn't have any other direction for agents to go. I'll experiment some more but it looks like they have significantly faster replenishment times when there are shortages.

You can link that forum all you want but it still doesn't show that Sims don't care about the class of a home. Commercial places don't accept any shopper. It has to be a shopper of the correct wealth. If a high wealth shopper goes out and can't find any stores to spend their money at they will go home and bring that unhappiness with them. They may go to the nearest home and fill it but they won't just go to the nearest high wealth home.

You also don't need to put casinos directly at the entrance of your city to succeed. In one city I had two gambling houses right next to each other in the middle of the map with my commercial district at the entrance. My two casino's did fine and were producing 14k and 9k profit a day. I would have had more but I low tourism and was the single city in the region so couldn't draw from the region to fill them. I also had more low wealth gamblers then medium wealth gamblers.

However, so far, I have not seen that thread actually be wrong about anything either. You yourself stated you had no other cities to get tourists from. So if you want out of town tourists then you have to be easily accessible for them. All your casinos had to draw on was the local residential.

Yes. Just because you can't do everything doesn't mean there is less depth to the game. It can create more depth then if you could do everything because you actually have to plan and think about the layout of your city rather then simply adding the needed things to X open space. The entire aspect of city specializations would be have no value if you could do everything in one city.

When they remove options that added more depth and flexibility to the game then it does make it shallower. Again, did you play any of the previous SimCity games? If you don't have much experience with what SimCity previously offered then it could impact your ability to tell.

Play the game. Or have you never played it? Create a city with two separated Low and Medium wealth zones. You can watch the low wealth sims (you know they came from low wealth because you can jump to the location they came from) and if they can't find a job in the Medium wealth shops they return home. But they don't just go to a medium wealth home. They will go to a Low Wealth home with an "opening".

You will also see your low wealth shoppers never cross over to other wealth homes or shops. Though I'm sure you'll just say that it only indicates those shops and homes always had openings when the Sims exhibited that behavior.

Actually I did. This fiasco has provided me with enough entertainment, that I figured I might as well chip in to it with more direct knowledge. As shown at the top, I've watched sims from low and medium wealth homes enter low level industrial. Have not had time to track commercial yet. The ones who don't vanish do track back to the same wealth level of homes they left. However, again, it looks really bad when they go "back" home all the way across town and there is no way to tell what the wealth level of the sims spawning in industrial actually is.

The only real change I'd like to see to the AI is similar to the traffic changes they made. I'd like to see a weighting system for certain jobs. Power for example should be filled first over a park. You won't really encounter it outside of sandbox mode because you don't have enough money to build big early. It was amusing to watch a Sim get fired from the sewage treatment plant, drive away then turn around to take the job at the sewage plant. And watch that cycle repeat because the plant had no power.

Sims care where they go. They just don't have a specific home with in their wealth bracket. A low Sim will go to any open low house. They will go to almost any job because Low wealth sims are the "slaves" of the Sim world. They will tolerate almost anything and do almost anything. Of course if they are not "educated" they will blow up your nuke plant in revenge.

I also created a T city with Low wealth at the end of the top of the T and Medium wealth on the opposite end. At the end of the work day I paused the game and deleted the section of the T connecting to the Low Wealth and built a long winding curvy road over water that connected eventually to the bottom of the T. It now resembled a T and D merged. The Sims returning home from work turned around and walked the long path to the low wealth section instead of turning down the Medium wealth road to fill some vacant spots in the medium wealth residential.

If they always followed the shortest path and filled the first vacant anything they wouldn't have taken the long road home. Which amusingly enough would take them in-game weeks to walk.

You can see up top the results of my investigation.

---------- Post added 2013-03-16 at 07:22 PM ----------

This whole thing is getting worse and worse. Any leg EA/Maxis may have had to stand on is now absolutely toast.

Meh... The only ones being fooled are the ones who actually want to be fooled. EA Maxis will do another panic patch to disable the community's latest reveals, while the "real" pirates will keep their discoveries to themselves and keep laughing their asses off over EA's latest joke of a DRM.

[Remilia]

SimCity Modder Tells Us Offline Regional Play Easily Done

So yeah how long until EA gives up ?

My face hurts from the palm...

Just come clean and stop with the PR nightmare EA / Maxis...

[SirRobin]

My face hurts from the palm...

Just come clean and stop with the PR nightmare EA / Maxis...

I imagine it will depend on whether SimCity's sales dry up or not. If they dry up, then Lucy's days are numbered. At the least, she'll be transferred back to EA. Maxis has been caught "exaggerating," to put it nicely, a lot. This dumbed down shallow reboot is what it is. However, lets be honest here. We just went through a similar scenario with Gearbox and ACM. In fact, going all the way back to Vigil with Vanguard and before we have developers who seem to be blowing as much smoke up their own asses as they are up their customers' butts.

All that matters is whether or not they can find enough suckers to keep buying. When they don't? Well, reckonings follow like Vigil employees being laid off in the parking lot. This is EA we are talking about here. They've purged Maxis before and I doubt would even hesitate doing it again. Lucy, Stone, and crew, certainly should know that. If they come clean instead of towing EA's line? They are history. Their best chance to survive right now is too keep that used car salesman smile glued to their faces.

[Azuri]

They won't. They will quickly apply a patch which will prevent people from doing that. They have already disabled debug mode, no?

Not certain if they have or not but it still seems to get worse. It seems that modders/hackers have all ready made a hack/mod that lets users destroy anyone's online city thanks to DRM.


Source

[SirRobin]

Wait, did they really censor their support number on their forums?

---------- Post added 2013-03-16 at 10:31 PM ----------

Oh good lord.

http://www.cinemablend.com/games/EA-...sts-53730.html

Can this really get any more ridiculous?

[Binaris]

This whole situation is priceless hilarity. Hopefully other publishers learn from this crapstorm.

[rol3x]

This drama has caused me alot more enjoyment than the game ever would, might have to get more popcorn soon.

[SirRobin]

So I wonder if Maxis will get shot a second time over this?

[procne]

Not certain if they have or not but it still seems to get worse. It seems that modders/hackers have all ready made a hack/mod that lets users destroy anyone's online city thanks to DRM.

Uhm, that was before debug mode was disabled. Also, while you can enter and play someone else's city, it won't save on servers. So no damage is done here.
If Maxis made a mistake and allowed it to happen then it would be really pathetic :/


Edit:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013...y-easily-done/

You build a town that has lots of power and water (water is a consumable just like coal) and spare fire trucks. I build a big casino city with lots of criminals. You go offline and don’t play for a whole week, but I keep playing for an entire week. (...) I’ll keep getting water from you, I’ll keep getting power from you – of a ‘set amount’ dictated by how much you had spare when you last logged off. This is all processed by my client, not by the server. All the server did was tell me ‘X fire trucks available, Y water available, Z power available, from city with the name ABC,’ as a raw list of values. When you log back on, your water levels will be exactly as they were when you last logged off

Wait, so the resources are not consumed if you sell them while you are offline? What is the point of limiting them? One could just build a supply center for whole region and never log in. Doesn't it in fact disccourage you from continuing to play your cities?

---------- Post added 2013-03-17 at 11:43 AM ----------

Oh, and a question. Since EA has stopped refunding, to a point where they censor their support number. It was said that if you request CC chargeback you will be banned. Will the ban apply only to Simcity or whole Origin, meaning you lose all the games you have bought earlier?

[Remilia]

Oh, and a question. Since EA has stopped refunding, to a point where they censor their support number. It was said that if you request CC chargeback you will be banned. Will the ban apply only to Simcity or whole Origin, meaning you lose all the games you have bought earlier?

If I remember correctly, Origin.

[procne]

Man, this is ridiculous. Whole game library gone? It's like they are holding your balls.
First all the nice talk why Origin is so nice, all games in your library available anywhere blabla, but do something they don't like and they remove all of them.

Before the launch I used some arguments about bans for bad behaviour removing your access to the game. But I never thought they would go this far...

Edit: Well, seems like Steam does the same. That's messed up. But at least Steam is actually giving the refunds and doesn't hide its customer support numbers

[Vankrys]

charge back is very damaging for a company selling product/services. You basically telling your credit card company, those guys are crooks. and the CC company will not make any business ever, this hurt the selling company as well as other consumer.

Steam, gmg, pretty much everyone consider charge back as an 'act of war' and will close your account.

[Vespian]

LOL!:

http://www.cinemablend.com/games/EA-...zon-40885.html

as he detailed how his job at EA was basically to "troll" forums and websites to create viral marketing effects and deflect bad press from the inner circles of gaming.

Crossing the line now. Disagreeing with someone is fine, but attacking them in the forums is not. Infracted. -Edge

[Rukh]

charge back is very damaging for a company selling product/services. You basically telling your credit card company, those guys are crooks. and the CC company will not make any business ever, this hurt the selling company as well as other consumer.

Steam, gmg, pretty much everyone consider charge back as an 'act of war' and will close your account.

well, I mean they kind of are...

[Frozenbeef]

You people are still crying over the launch? The servers work fine, I've been playing practically constantly for a full week and never been kicked or disconnected. My only problem was with full servers and that is fixed now. The DRM has also done it's job, searching on popular torrent sites i can't find any cracks. When crysis 3 and other popular games were first released a crack was available within minutes of launch.

[Wilian]

charge back is very damaging for a company selling product/services. You basically telling your credit card company, those guys are crooks. and the CC company will not make any business ever, this hurt the selling company as well as other consumer.

Steam, gmg, pretty much everyone consider charge back as an 'act of war' and will close your account.

Steam doesn't close your account anymore, instead you go into a limited usability mode where you can't for example add new games.