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[Rentahamster]

Here's a workaround for the "forever gone service vehicles" bug. Unfortunately, if you already experience this bug, it's going to persist no matter what. Your only option is to restart a new city or region.

http://answers.ea.com/t5/Miscellane...ng-Service-Vehicles-Steps-Included/m-p/736246

Service vehicles from addons will permanently disappear if a service building with addons that increase total service vehicles is destroyed and then another service building is created to replace it.



When trying to upgrade this new service building with vehicle increasing addons all of the addons will appear empty and no vehicles will be produced from them.



This effect is permanent.



Only by increasing the number of addons above the limit of the destroyed original service building will you be able to start producing more vehicles per upgrade, however the upgrades before this will never have any vehicles.





Steps:

1. Create a clinic and apply two additional ambulance addons.

2. Destroy this clinic.

3. Build a new clinic and apply three additional ambulance addons.

4. You now have a clinic with two ambulances.





Additional Information:

1. This reproduces with all service vehicles on all service buildings.

2. The clinic is just an example.

3. Deleting this second service building will only make the situation worse.

4. There is no current work around for this issue.





The following still reproduces the issue:

Turning off the power and deleting the building.

Waiting for the vehicles to return home.




The following is a work around:

Turn off the building and delete each module individually.

This does not fix the issue if you initially deleted a building with modules.

 

[B-Dex]

I'm awaiting the blog post about how awesome the leaderboards are only to have them still be disabled with an indefinite ETA.

 

[Rentahamster]

I feel bad for these guys. Really

One one hand, I feel grateful for the devs communicating with the fans, and I'd hate for them to get flamed over this kind of stuff...since they could just opt to clam up...but I feel they have a responsibility here to deal with it.

https://twitter.com/derricks/status/316292225673854977

Hate to say this, but my experience is that gifts are still working only sporadically, at best.

that makes me sad… @derricks ?

Really, still? Ugh. Will try and understand what's going on there.

.



https://twitter.com/derricks/status/316008490273488897

My main city claims there are 200/300 workers, and my 3,000 unemployed apparently wont go construct the solar farm.

http://i.imgur.com/8yQOgUa.jpg I feel like this stuff is supposed to actually update immediately. 3 days, still stalled

Agh, so maddening. I thought we had ironed out those issues. Sigh.

 

[jamesinclair]

Did ea cut testing out of their game budgets?

 

[frontieruk]

Did ea cut testing out of their game budgets?

no they had a beta, they just didnt test using servers, and the cities were 8 times as large as what we have now/

 

[Tempy]

Yeah, some of these issues are not rare or hard to reproduce, and really should've been picked up by QA.

 

[Rentahamster]

Yeah, some of these issues are not rare or hard to reproduce, and really should've been picked up by QA.

But it did get picked up by us!

 

[timetokill]

Yeah, some of these issues are not rare or hard to reproduce, and really should've been picked up by QA.

QA usually DOES pick up these kinds of issues, and then the developers have to make a decision as to what priority of a fix it is. Clearly they felt there were other, more devastating issues to iron out, which really just goes to show that the product was half-baked to begin with.

 

[Beaulieu]

i know it's impossible to get all of neogaf to understand this, but if you see a bug in a game, it's 99% sure it's been identified by QA but wasnt fixed because of budget/deadlines/tech. Thats how it is.

 

[storybook77]

i know it's impossible to get all of neogaf to understand this, but if you see a bug in a game, it's 99% sure it's been identified by QA but wasnt fixed because of budget/deadlines/tech. Thats how it is.

So now they just figure out which is more important for their consumers and try to fix those within their budget for doing so. I imagine any "minor" things will be fixed in DLC/expansions.

 

[Rentahamster]

i know it's impossible to get all of neogaf to understand this, but if you see a bug in a game, it's 99% sure it's been identified by QA but wasnt fixed because of budget/deadlines/tech. Thats how it is.

Yeah, this is true, but several of the issues relayed to the devs on Twitter have been met with responses of surprise.

 

[Tempy]

QA usually DOES pick up these kinds of issues, and then the developers have to make a decision as to what priority of a fix it is. Clearly they felt there were other, more devastating issues to iron out, which really just goes to show that the product was half-baked to begin with.

I know, I work in the games industry myself, but I'd really qualify some of these bugs as high priority. As they're not crashing the game they won't get fixed at the very last stages of development, but they should've been picked up and fixed well before that. Whether it's QA not picking it up, or the devs being swamped with too many (more important?) issues we don't know, and doesn't matter to the end user anyway.

 

[timetokill]

I know, I work in the games industry myself, but I'd really qualify some of these bugs as high priority. As they're not crashing the game they won't get fixed at the very last stages of development, but they should've been picked up and fixed well before that. Whether it's QA not picking it up, or the devs being swamped with too many (more important?) issues we don't know, and doesn't matter to the end user anyway.

Right, which is why I think EA simply set the date and refused to push it back.
That's at least the most generous interpretation of what happened. I don't know.

 

[Tunesmith]

Yeah, this is true, but several of the issues relayed to the devs on Twitter have been met with responses of surprise.

Possibly because if said bugs were identified late in QA they weren't deemed show-stoppers and weren't relayed on to the devs even after the fact (because by then QA had other things on their mind, other products etc. requiring their full attention). I've seen this happen many times. QA time is leased in a way by studios and allocated accordingly.

 

[Dreamwriter]

I feel bad for these guys. Really

One one hand, I feel grateful for the devs communicating with the fans, and I'd hate for them to get flamed over this kind of stuff...since they could just opt to clam up...but I feel they have a responsibility here to deal with it.

https://twitter.com/derricks/status/316008490273488897

That second one doesn't necessarily sound like a bug to me. Working at a solar farm sounds like something that requires high education, maybe all those unemployed don't have high education. It's like people who complain about having huge populations with utilities that need workers, then you find out most of the huge population is high income, so wouldn't take those jobs.

 

[frontieruk]

That second one doesn't necessarily sound like a bug to me. Working at a solar farm sounds like something that requires high education, maybe all those unemployed don't have high education. It's like people who complain about having huge populations with utilities that need workers, then you find out most of the huge population is high income, so wouldn't take those jobs.

so is the solution to that issue to build a slum?

 

[Rentahamster]

That second one doesn't necessarily sound like a bug to me. Working at a solar farm sounds like something that requires high education, maybe all those unemployed don't have high education. It's like people who complain about having huge populations with utilities that need workers, then you find out most of the huge population is high income, so wouldn't take those jobs.

There isn't an education requirement for the solar farm, unless it's a hidden requirement.

Utilities only require 1 worker minimum to function, like the specialization buildings.

 

[Rentahamster]

It appears my Antarctica city has an infinite power glitch? lol

 

[Jedi2016]

Fire trucks are apparently too dumb to stop across the street. I saw several trucks drive right by a fire, all the way to the end of the block, before turning around. Apparently the AI says they can only park on the side of the street that has the fire, and they can only turn around at an intersection (it was a street, not an avenue).

Also had one get stuck at an intersection because the cross-traffic kept going ahead of it. You think it wouldn't be that hard to prioritize traffic. That maybe the AI might do like real people do: get the hell out of its way.

 

[OchreHand]

It appears my Antarctica city has an infinite power glitch? lol

dat ground pollution?

 

[Rentahamster]

The German EA forum is doing a poll on what you feel the worst problem is.

http://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/1b093c/whats_your_biggest_obstacle_to_play_simcity_poll/

http://forum.ea.com/de/posts/list/1001332.page

EA_Christoph is asking for help to get a better picture of what bugs are the most frustrating or game braking ones for the community.

I couldn't find a similar Thread in the english forum but I thought everybody should make his vote count in this poll.

http://forum.ea.com/de/posts/list/1001332.page

I translated the single points for all the people who can't speak german and do not trust the google translator.

(In order of appearence)

1) Nothing. There are no problems at this time.
2) Server unavailable / Couldn't play at all
3) City/Region disappeared (one or several)
4) City/Region is unable to load (no previous error)
5) Can't claim city (Content-missing-error)
6) Lost Progress (City is still playable)
7) Game Crash (Blue/Blackscreen)
8) Gameplay: Congestion/Traffic-Logic (Leading to more problems)
9) Gameplay: Garbage & Recycling
10) Gameplay: Region Trading is not working (Trading, Moneytransport, Commuter etc.
11) Gameplay: Great Works (Taxes, Shipping etc.)
12) Gameplay: Specialization (in general)
13) Gameplay: Upgrade Buildings
14) Gameplay: City Services (Police, fire department, clinics, education etc.)
15) Gameplay: RCI Logic/Context
16) Statistics & Infos (Not enough, unclear, inconsistent)
17) Other Gameplay Bugs and Errors (Please write a comment below)
18) Citys in the whole region are not connected
19) Game UI (UI unclear, Buttons, Speed...)
20) Finding Free Regions/Slots in a public game (Filter...)
21) Invite friends to the game
22) Inviting friend to the game doesn't work
23) Graphic Bugs
24) Sound Bugs
25) Other technical errors (please post them below)
26) Other things

The RCI thing for me bugs me the most. Commuter bugs and city sharing stuff would be second, I think.

Traffic, although the most popular, I can deal with.

 

[Rentahamster]

dat ground pollution?

Dat fucking around with nuclear power and then kaboom. I was trying to see how dumb I could make my population before it blew up.

I just put TV manufacturing on the nuclear wasteland. As you can see, I have 117 million dollars.

/shrug

 

[Mazdarati]

The German EA forum is doing a poll on what you feel the worst problem is.

http://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/1b093c/whats_your_biggest_obstacle_to_play_simcity_poll/

http://forum.ea.com/de/posts/list/1001332.page



The RCI thing for me bugs me the most. Commuter bugs and city sharing stuff would be second, I think.

Traffic, although the most popular, I can deal with.

#4 for sure. The biggest bug for me has been losing two cities. Roll back error and then unable to load city. Definitely makes me hesitant to play if I know there's a good chance the hours worth of building disappear for no reason.

 

[TimeEffect]

So is this game still plagued or what?

I want to jump in, but the city size and DRM still ultimately holds me back

 

[Rentahamster]

A very convoluted fix for the disappearing service vehicle bug.

http://answers.ea.com/t5/Miscellane...ng-Service-Vehicles-Steps-Included/m-p/736246

 

[Aaron]

So is this game still plagued or what?

I want to jump in, but the city size and DRM still ultimately holds me back

Wait for SimCity 6. The design problems are so deeply rooted no patch can fix them. It's what you get when you have a game spearheaded by an art designer. Very pretty, but underneath... oi, what a mess.

 

[NEOPARADIGM]

So is this game still plagued or what?

plagued, bug, error, unable, disappearing, convoluted, fix, problem, patch ....

All pulled from the last four posts.

I mean, I had the same question. Was answered swiftly.

 

[Rentahamster]

Wait for SimCity 6. The design problems are so deeply rooted no patch can fix them. It's what you get when you have a game spearheaded by an art designer. Very pretty, but underneath... oi, what a mess.

You mean Ocean? He's not in charge of the gameplay mechanics and stuff, though, right? That's the other guys.

If there's anything to praise this game about, the art direction and the aesthetic design is definitely one of them, IMO.

 

[spirity]

You mean Ocean? He's not in charge of the gameplay mechanics and stuff, though, right? That's the other guys.

If there's anything to praise this game about, the art direction and the aesthetic design is definitely one of them, IMO.

Full disclosure: I haven't bought the game. I have been strangely addicted to watching lets plays of it though, if that counts for much.

But I agree with the bolded, it really is a pretty game, and I'd also add the game looks like tons of fun. Its a freakin blast, in fact. My issue is the size of the tiles, and although I can see Maxis' reasoning for it, some people have beefy pc's and no inclination to network a bunch of small cities together. An option for people like me to play the game the way we want to would have immensely improved the experience. The weird pathfinding, ai issues and miscellaneous oddities I can deal with (though I wonder if those problems would be compounded by larger plots? And was that one of the contributing factors during development that deemed it necessary to have small plots? I dunno).

As it is, the game is hamstringed because of those problems and it really is a shame. Hopefully it all gets worked out in time. SimCity has great foundations, if you'll pardon the pun. Maxis just needs to get their shit together.

 

[Mr. Luchador]

I don't know. I think the cluttered nature of the small city limits can distract from the art style. When you see the Sim City 4 cities that are sprawling across vast areas, and are broken up with nice green areas, and farm lands, it looks 'nicer'. The art work might not be as crisp, but it's allowed the space to showcase itself, without fighting for attention.

 

[spirity]

I don't know. I think the cluttered nature of the small city limits can distract from the art style. When you see the Sim City 4 cities that are sprawling across vast areas, and are broken up with nice green areas, and farm lands, it looks 'nicer'. The art work might not be as crisp, but it's allowed the space to showcase itself, without fighting for attention.

Yeah I get that. You expand outwards and after an hour or less you have to stop. Then you spend the rest of your time expanding upwards, trying to min-max as best as you can, knocking out residents because you want to plop down some parks. Then you need to eek out a space somewhere and add more residents. Got to supply jobs for those guys, fuck where do I zone more industrial? There's a space on the edge of that cliff... etc etc. There's way too much plate spinning and nowhere near enough space to build something awesome. Its fun, but the fun starts to run dry too quickly.

 

[Rentahamster]

Sounds like the so called "big patch" is taking a while because it adds changes to the simulation itself. Interesting....

https://twitter.com/MaxisGuillaume/status/316381732632920064

I had a feeling you'd be asking that! No unofficial ETA either, it's not a simple patch like the 1.x ones

The stakes are much higher when we're talking updating the simulation

the patch is in QA's hands, they're making sure no new issue arise

I feel like they should make the test server more substantial and release the patch for people to choose to test out. Like everything else about this game, it's going to go through another round of QA by the players after its released, anyway. They're already using the players as QA, might as well make the most of it.

 

[TriniTrin]

It's $40 on amazon now.

Also FYI, I just got Amazon to 30 day price guarantee this and got some money back from my initial purchase!

 

[chickdigger802]

amazon retail is pretty amazing. I got a full refund, no question asked. And for some reason i still have the game on my origins (i guess they only take it off if you buy digital). Not really eagered to play anymore.

How the fuck did they mess up mp so bad? It's the key design element that's the foundation for all the other design elements! Bah.

 

[brentech]

Also FYI, I just got Amazon to 30 day price guarantee this and got some money back from my initial purchase!

Hrm, how is this done. Never had to initiate a price change myself.
edit: Everything I'm reading says they haven't done that since 2008.

 

[Mazdarati]

My pedestrian overpass. Well, not really, but I think it looks like one...

 

[Rentahamster]

My pedestrian overpass. Well, not really, but I think it looks like one...

Nice. It's pretty stupid the fiddling with parks that we have to do in order to create them.

 

[Mr. Luchador]

Nice. It's pretty stupid the fiddling with parks that we have to do in order to create them.

Yes! It's a nice idea, but fits with the rest of the 'nice ideas' within SimCity, it's poorly executed.

 

[Rentahamster]

Yes! It's a nice idea, but fits with the rest of the 'nice ideas' within SimCity, it's poorly executed.

What is a nice idea? Having to fiddle with parks in order to create overpasses, or the idea that the devs think terraforming should be disabled?

 

[Mr. Luchador]

What is a nice idea? Having to fiddle with parks in order to create overpasses, or the idea that the devs think terraforming should be disabled?

No, I meant the idea (not how it's done) that you could link the different park segments together to make a mega park. However, why any would do this with the limited city size, and like you said the horrible way it was implemented is beyond me. You end up with a disjointed mess, that doesn't look like you wanted it to.

 

[EagleBurnn]

Is SimCity saved yet?

 

[Forsaken82]

Also FYI, I just got Amazon to 30 day price guarantee this and got some money back from my initial purchase!

Since when do they do 30 day price guarantee?

 

[Slacker]

Is SimCity saved yet?

I don't think I'll consider it redeemed until the city size gets increased at least a little bit.

 

[Rentahamster]

No, I meant the idea (not how it's done) that you could link the different park segments together to make a mega park. However, why any would do this with the limited city size, and like you said the horrible way it was implemented is beyond me. You end up with a disjointed mess, that doesn't look like you wanted it to.

Ohhh, I see what you mean. Actually, when I said "fiddling to create them", the "them" is referring to overpasses. In order to create one, you have to exploit the terrain modifying properties of ploppable extensions in order to jerry rig an overpass.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL3eKZkOL0w

However, I also agree with your point that park creation is pretty stupid. The whole park mechanic as is, is pretty lame.

Mashing together disjointed park segments to make a "mega park" is really dumb, and it looks like a cluttered, disorganized, mess.

There is no way to create a park, especially in an area defined by curved roads, that looks like a single, cohesive, entity. This is the same disappointment I have with the inability for buildings to conform to the curved roads - in the end, all the buildings are stuck with a rectangular size limitation, with the excess being wasted space.

I'd like to be able to have, in addition to the regular ploppable parks system that we already have, the ability to zone park space, then place ploppables anywhere within that zoned park space. Have the game then fill out the remaining space with dynamically generated greenspace and filler objects.

Is SimCity saved yet?

Nope. Far from it.

 

[TriniTrin]

Since when do they do 30 day price guarantee?

I googled it and got this
http://askville.amazon.com/amazon-offer-30-day-low-price-guarantee/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=5026807

which i then just asked a rep over chat and they took care of it.

Hrm, how is this done. Never had to initiate a price change myself.
edit: Everything I'm reading says they haven't done that since 2008.

Crazy! Welll, they did do it for me so id say just ask em!

 

[Forsaken82]

I googled it and got this
http://askville.amazon.com/amazon-offer-30-day-low-price-guarantee/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=5026807

which i then just asked a rep over chat and they took care of it.


Crazy! Welll, they did do it for me so id say just ask em!

yeah they removed the "page" that described it all

 

[SuicideUZI]

Also FYI, I just got Amazon to 30 day price guarantee this and got some money back from my initial purchase!

I would also like to know how to do this since I bought my copy on amazon

 

[ameleco]

Okay, so I want to upgrade my university to the final couple levels, but it requires so many students in a day. The solution? Close other schools so those students go to the university. The issue? I still don't get enough students and then, people complain about their kids not going to school. Oh and, yeah, I have no skilled workers. So if someone would please tell me a solution to this entire education thing, I would be really happy. Thanks!

 

[Koomaster]

Okay, so I want to upgrade my university to the final couple levels, but it requires so many students in a day. The solution? Close other schools so those students go to the university. The issue? I still don't get enough students and then, people complain about their kids not going to school. Oh and, yeah, I have no skilled workers. So if someone would please tell me a solution to this entire education thing, I would be really happy. Thanks!

There any other cities with schools in your region? Might want to see if any of your students are commuting to them. If not, ask other people to temporarily turn off their schools so their students will commute to your city instead till you can get enough to upgrade the University.

 

[Forsaken82]

I would also like to know how to do this since I bought my copy on amazon

I sent them an Email via the "Contact us" link regarding pricing issues and got it pretty quick..

Had I Known this was going to happen, I would not have paid my credit card in full... I am curious now what will happen when this goes through and I actually paid to much on my credit card...