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[JackDT]

There's a lot to be critical of in SimCity (small city sizes, questionable routing, the online disaster, flat out bugs) but 'fake' Sims is not really one of them.

As long as the extra "population" is still derived from all the agents you see running around, all it means is that a single agent represents a number of people. This is still a radically different approach to the simulation than any previous SimCity which are essentially just systems of differential equations laid out on a map.

Now the mob mentality when the Sims all rush towards the same single house only to turn around when the first of the mob fills it? That could use some work.

 

[fleck0]

It has been what 10 years since SimCity 4? Why hasn't someone else come up with a challenger then? I have purchased and played Cities XL and don't remember it being great.

Cities XL isn't great but there are some decent contenders, they just aren't cultural phenomenons

Tropico
Cities in Motion
Anno
Weird European games like The Guild 2

edit: Dwarf Fortress may be the best heir

 

[Barryman]

 

[20cent]

I really want to play this game too. Maybe the next version.

Everything will work fine in few weeks.

A most anticipated online (well, forced feature) game has server problems the first week, nothing new here.

 

[eznark]

There's a lot to be critical of in SimCity (small city sizes, questionable routing, the online disaster, flat out bugs) but 'fake' Sims is not really one of them.

As long as the extra "population" is still derived from all the agents you see running around, all it means is that a single agent represents a number of people. This is still a radically different approach to the simulation than any previous SimCity which are essentially just systems of differential equations laid out on a map.

Now the mob mentality when the Sims all rush towards the same single house only to turn around when the first of the mob fills it? That could use some work.

Considering "follow your sim from street view as he lives his life!" was one of the selling points and the main justification for the micro city sizes, I'd say it's a pretty massive deal.

 

[Hellsing321]

Everything will work fine in few weeks.

A most anticipated online (well, forced feature) game has server problems the first week, nothing new here.

Have you been paying attention to anything in the thread?

 

[jambo]

Everything will work fine in few weeks.

A most anticipated online (well, forced feature) game has server problems the first week, nothing new here.

Did you even read the thread?

Parts of the game are broken.

 

[JackDT]

Even with the bugs I'm still more interested in the agent based approach. It has so much more possibility for depth.

If only this game had mods like SC4 though! Can you imagine what modders could do if they could create entirely new agents with different behavior, custom pathfinding for agents to change traffic, etc? EPIC EPIC level simulation.

 

[Charoncaori]

Everything will work fine in few weeks.

A most anticipated online (well, forced feature) game has server problems the first week, nothing new here.

I'll eat Pachter's fucking tiny chocolate hat if they can "fix" the fundamental traffic issues in a few fucking weeks. Bullshit.

 

[Dr.Palutena]

Everything will work fine in few weeks.

A most anticipated online (well, forced feature) game has server problems the first week, nothing new here.

Except the things being complained about in this thread have nothing to do with server issues.

 

[rpmurphy]

Are the reviews from Polygon typically this bad, or was this just exceptional quality?

 

[CrazedProfessional]

It's nice to see EA putting in less and less effort into their games. I can't wait for Dragon Age 3 if this is any indication of how much effort they're putting into future releases.

 

[ascii42]

I'll eat Pachter's fucking tiny chocolate hat if they can "fix" the fundamental traffic issues in a few fucking weeks. Bullshit.

That's probably one of the easier fixes, actually.

 

[Aaron]

There's a lot to be critical of in SimCity (small city sizes, questionable routing, the online disaster, flat out bugs) but 'fake' Sims is not really one of them.

As long as the extra "population" is still derived from all the agents you see running around, all it means is that a single agent represents a number of people. This is still a radically different approach to the simulation than any previous SimCity which are essentially just systems of differential equations laid out on a map.

Now the mob mentality when the Sims all rush towards the same single house only to turn around when the first of the mob fills it? That could use some work.

The huge problem is you can't build cities like you would in real life. You have to account for their very artificial and not any way human behavior, which is not only exactly the opposite of what Maxis promised, but also leads to terrible cities already suffering under the size restraint.

Though much smaller scale, Tropico 3/4 does what Simcity promised, and if you build a city according to the needs of the people it will prosper. In Simcity, you need to build a single road and other crazy shit to get a positive outcome.

Are the reviews from Polygon typically this bad, or was this just exceptional quality?

They're all that bad. It's the Verge hipster style shit.

 

[Charoncaori]

Are the reviews from Polygon typically this bad, or was this just exceptional quality?

In before Nier fishing video.

 

[elfinke]

Beta testers were enjoying the fact they could play the game before anyone else.

So it would seem.

I mean, I get that beta testing happens pretty damn late in a game dev cycle; it's not like these fairly fundamental design issues could have been fixed, or changed (and it's clear that things like having the population number actually hidden behind avatar Sims (ie, 1 Sim represents 10 Sims, or some such) is a mechanical design decision). And I get that beta testing was no doubt done under NDA, so people couldn't chat about it.

But in this day and age, I just find it astonishing/disappointing that these fairly pretty basic flaws (particularly and especially the pathfinding) were shown up in under a week by Joe Blow and Jane Citizen and their mates and this is the first we've heard of it.

 

[RoKKeR]

Well fuck me twice, this is absolutely ridiculous. Overall it doesn't effect me personally too much, but I really did wish they'd sort out the damn traffic issues. I honestly couldn't care less about the whole sim work/house debacle.

 

[Delusibeta]

Christ mighty lol.. Biggest high profile game release blunder in modern videogame history?

While I'll be hesitant to say that, it's seems to have become a bigger balls-up than Aliens: Colonial Marines, and considering the state that game was in, that's saying something.

 

[Charoncaori]

That's probably one of the easier fixes, actually.

Yes, but they are not going to patch a gameplay issue that glaring in three weeks. They'll either wait longer and fix more things, or claim it's working as intended and ninja a fix into future dlc.

 

[fleck0]

The beta test was also limited to 1-hour sessions which makes it hard to closely analyze how the sim is working

 

[Valnen]

So this is why Will Wright left Maxis.

 

[Broder Salsa]

Are sims fake? I THOUGHT THEY WERE REAL

 

[SnakeswithLasers]

Keep telling yourself that. It really wouldn't surprise me if this pathfinding crap affected the city sizes. With tens of thousands of agents roaming around pathfinding, they probably had to limit the city size to stop the game from needing insane PC specs or crashing.

Plus it effects city planning. If you keep laying down extra roads to lower congestion, but the Sims never use them because of the horde mentality then the game is broken.

And as for not caring about who lives in each house, see below.



That's one of the things that I kept getting during the previews. Maxis seemed to keep banging on about Sims in your cities letting you know about issues you should fix in different areas. But if they keep moving around then how the hell does that work?

They could just run it on the serv...lol, oh yeah.

 

[Retro]

There's a lot to be critical of in SimCity (small city sizes, questionable routing, the online disaster, flat out bugs) but 'fake' Sims is not really one of them.

Well, here's the problem. It's SimCity, and the whole point of the game is that it is attempting to simulate a city. The fact that the Sims are being 'faked' isn't new; all of the previous SimCity games basically 'faked' the lives of the citizens as well, and let you focus on building a successful city.

Look at any of the youtube links in this thread of the game doing really stupid things, like not taking high density roads because they are longer than the single-lane dirt road. Or all of the fire engines in the city rushing to one fire, ignoring any others. The 'snakes' of school buses. Goods not being distributed, passengers not being picked up. These are problems with the way the game is simulating the sims and their behavior. These aren't just pathing issues, they are fundamental flaws in the way the simulation is running.

Being able to follow a guy home and to work is not a big deal. That's window dressing and you're right, it's a non-issue. I'm even fine ignoring EA's claims that such a thing would be possible, because that's EA and you shouldn't believe their lies anyways.

But following him to the first available home and the first available job means there are deeper issues with the way the game is managing the city. It's signs of a bad simulation, which means the layout, design and function of the city is not behaving in a realistic manner, which means the entire game is broken.

Everything will work fine in few weeks.

A most anticipated online (well, forced feature) game has server problems the first week, nothing new here.

This thread is about fundamental issues with the gameplay, not the servers. That's Clusterfuck #1. We're on Clusterfuck #2.

Edit: This is only Number 2, right? I didn't miss any?

To say that anything related to this game will work fine 'in a few weeks' is beyond optimism and well into delusional.

 

[Surfheart]

I was trying to do that, only issue is there's only one way in and out of the city (well there's another entrance on the other side of the map but no one really came in or out of there for whatever reason).

If I could build a highway through my city and have off ramps that'd be great, but it's not possible. You can only have a big road and every time it intersects a cross street there's a traffic light and that jams up traffic for miles back.

This. In real life we have overpasses, off ramps, slip roads. None of these things are in SimCity 5. WTF is this a simulation of exactly?

 

[20cent]

Have you been paying attention to anything in the thread?

I have, no one knows the source of these issues, except one desperate day one crying baby on EA forums.
I play the game since last week too, but I encountered these same 'AI' problems in my 3 cities only since the latest patch.
Just an update and it will be fine, the games is not 'broken' forever, no need to rage-run for refund to Walmart.
EA always sucked anyway.

Jesus.

 

[exmachina64]

I have never been more disappointed with a game I purchased. I am actually ashamed for having bought it.

Me too. I'm thinking about calling EA and trying to get my money back. And I don't care if they ban me from every EA game and service, I'm not going to buy Dragon Age 3 or the next Mass Effect.

Are the reviews from Polygon typically this bad, or was this just exceptional quality?

Polygon's typically this bad. They don't hide the fact that they're paid for their coverage and reviews well.

 

[TimeEffect]

So...just how good IS Tropico?

 

[RoKKeR]

That's Clusterfuck #1. We're on Clusterfuck #2.

Edit: This is only Number 2, right? I didn't miss any?

I wouldn't call this a 'clusterfuck' at all, especially compared to the disastrous launch.

 

[inky]

Are the reviews from Polygon typically this bad, or was this just exceptional quality?

Yes, they are terrible. Don't read anything by Arthur Gies if you plan to get to your elder years without having an aneurysm.

Look at any of the youtube links in this thread of the game doing really stupid things, like not taking high density roads because they are longer than the single-lane dirt road. Or all of the fire engines in the city rushing to one fire, ignoring any others. The 'snakes' of school buses. Goods not being distributed, passengers not being picked up. These are problems with the way the game is simulating the sims and their behavior. These aren't just pathing issues, they are fundamental flaws in the way the simulation is running.

Indeed. People dismissing this as nitpicking or mob mentality are not really seeing the big picture. Go watch Giantbomb's Quicklook.

Jeff's cities had a bunch of similar problems. For example, a big part of his main city was not getting any water, even though he had a surplus coming in. That is apparently because the water he was importing runs through the roads, and as we can see, agents aren't really that smart about distributing resources. He had a bunch of other problems too, like the obvious one (traffic).

This wasn't a problem with his layout really. All his areas were connected and roads were setup in a grid for zoning efficiency. Apparently, he needed to make a single snake road for the game to work properly (or, better said, to work around how the game works).

 

[exmachina64]

I wouldn't call this a 'clusterfuck' at all, especially compared to the disastrous launch.

This is equally as bad as the launch.

 

[EatinOlives]

This.

The thing is, the Tropico series has been doing what Maxis bragged about since Tropico 1, and that came out in 2001. Each individual citizen is fully simulated, where they're specifically assigned a place and a job with a salary and you can see them walking to and from work, they preserve their family tree, have children, stop working and become elderly after several years, and die of (hopefully) natural causes. And the only reason why the game could have those kinds of simulations is that the islands and cities were absolutely tiny. Even Tropico 4 has microscopic cities in comparison with this SimCity.

Though I'm not defending Maxis. Quite the opposite, in fact. It's deplorable that one of the biggest marketing bullet points was the "everyone is individually simulated!" line, even to the point of justifying the shitty DRM ("omg so calculation heavy, we must do some of them in da cloud!") and small city sizes, and now everyone realizes that the simulations aren't even real and other games have done the same thing better.

So...just how good IS Tropico?

Any entry other than Tropico 2 is really good. It's the "inside-out" version of SimCity (except for 5, which is apparently just shit all around). Whereas SC is about zoning and influencing how your city grows, Tropico is about poring over every detail of your citizens' lives. It's on a much, much smaller scale than any SimCity, but the obsessive detail of simulating every citizen more than makes up for it. Just don't expect to have your buildings built in less than 10 minutes. Lots of planning ahead of time is required in all the Tropico games if you want to succeed in them.

 

[Zuhzuhzombie!!]

Is Sim City 4 the current "best" game in the series?

Whats so bad about Cities XL?

 

[Puppet Shadow]

So...just how good IS Tropico?

It's actually a lot of fun. It's only $7.49 on Steam right now, well worth it.

 

[exmachina64]

So this is why Lucy Bradshaw's leaving Maxis.

Spoiler

Fixed.

Quite prescient, Valnen.

 

[Kinyou]

Oh my, this game isn't getting a break. From too small cities to launch issues to lying about simulation in the cloud to actually not having real individual Sims

 

[BajiBoxer]

I have, no one knows the source of these issues, except one desperate day one crying baby on EA forums.
I play the game since last week too, but I encountered these same 'AI' problems in my 3 cities only since the latest patch.
Just an update and it will be fine, the games is not 'broken' forever, no need to rage-run for refund to Walmart.
EA always sucked anyway.

Jesus.

lol, it's a fundamental design flaw, not something that suddenly turned up after a patch.

 

[RoKKeR]

You know, despite the hate surrounding the game, when I sit down to play it I have an absolute blast and end up playing for hours on end. I don't regret the purchase at all.

 

[exmachina64]

Is Sim City 4 the current "best" game in the series?

Whats so bad about Cities XL?

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/cities-xl-platinum

Is that user score low enough for you?

 

[Retro]

I have, no one knows the source of these issues, except one desperate day one crying baby on EA forums.
I play the game since last week too, but I encountered these same 'AI' problems in my 3 cities only since the latest patch.
Just an update and it will be fine, the games is not 'broken' forever, no need to rage-run for refund to Walmart.
EA always sucked anyway.

Jesus.

Go home Glassbox, you're drunk.

So...just how good IS Tropico?

It's not perfect, but it's a better SimCity than SimCity5. There's a few things I don't like (no city-building game has ever been a perfect match for my tastes, I'm picky), but for $10 you cannot go wrong.

I wouldn't call this a 'clusterfuck' at all, especially compared to the disastrous launch.

I dunno about that, I'd say it's worse. The launch issue will eventually be resolved, but the actual gameplay being this broken, at such a fundamental level? It's like peeling back the rotten flesh and finding the wound has festered.

 

[Puppet Shadow]

I give it only a year or two until EA starts offering us deals like $4.99 per save file.

 

[Uhyve]

Are the reviews from Polygon typically this bad, or was this just exceptional quality?

Apparently they can't even use adjectives correctly. It's "addictive" not "addicting", unless you're saying "I'm addicting you to something" and even then, it's not great English.

Edit: Sorry, pet peeve. For me, it's this and "could care less". But I mean, these guys are going for the whole 'actual journalist' vibe, so they should really be able to get this stuff right.

 

[inky]

So...just how good IS Tropico?

It's a lot of fun. It is more about managing a small island-city with a very specific politic and economic system than making it as big as you can. You can either please the people or hoard everything and run a very tight militaristic country until the citizens rebel against you.

YMMV but I like to play it every now and then for several hours.

 

[Aaron]

So...just how good IS Tropico?

It's great, but it's very small scale. You place every last building personally, except for the shacks the poorest people build on their own. There are a ton of missions in the campaign, and also a sandbox mode for doing whatever. I also enjoy the political subversion you can pull off with secret police, covert deals with the Russians, and other sorts of fun.

 

[epmode]

Apparently they can't even use adjectives correctly. It's "addictive" not "addicting", unless you're saying "I'm addicting you to something" and even then, it's not great English.

Everyone does this. Drives me nuts.

 

[Retro]

It's great, but it's very small scale. You place every last building personally, except for the shacks the poorest people build on their own. There are a ton of missions in the campaign, and also a sandbox mode for doing whatever. I also enjoy the political subversion you can pull off with secret police, covert deals with the Russians, and other sorts of fun.

Don't forget the huge amount of touristy stuff you can have too. At first blush it looks like a Cuban Dictatorship simulator, but if you play more towards the capitalism / US side of things, you can create a tropical paradise. The only thing I wish it had more of was commercial / office buildings so you can act as an off-shore tax haven. There's some elements of that there, but it doesn't go deep enough.

 

[yogloo]

Tropico is very very fun. Most of the time I would try to build a tourist island and once in awhile I would try to rule with an iron fist using my army.

 

[fargofallout]

Ok, snarkiness aside, will Maxis/EA actually acknowledge this? Doing so would amount to admitting that the beta was pointless (used only for marketing), and while I don't know what it would take to fix this, I know admitting it's a problem would be another heap of bad PR for a game that has had some of the worst PR I can think of. I wonder if they'll fix it quietly, or even ignore it.

 

[oneils]

Heh. Remember this thing? That one guy who spent years and years calculating and planning the most efficient functional city that is mathematically possible in SC3k?

yeah..

Somehow, that is the creepiest video I have ever seen. *shudders*

 

[chubigans]

Ok, snarkiness aside, will Maxis/EA actually acknowledge this? Doing so would amount to admitting that the beta was pointless (used only for marketing), and while I don't know what it would take to fix this, I know admitting it's a problem would be another heap of bad PR for a game that has had some of the worst PR I can think of. I wonder if they'll fix it quietly, or even ignore it.

They'll ignore it. What else can they do? "Oh whoops are entire traffic system, on which the entire game is based on, is completely broken, our bad!"

If anything they'll likely give the PR speak of "we'd like to thank users for sending us bugs and issues and we will do our best to address some of these in a later patch."