Sims are dayflies?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

The idea has been put forth by the developers that Sims are a fixed bunch of mixed classes, who are new every Sim-day. None of them have permanent jobs, permanent homes, etc. Do you see this as a game you would want?

[guuz 15]

As I've said before, single day sims don't affect the modeling of a city enough to be worth the processing power. There are no sims, there are only houses that supply a certain amount of workers every day to perform the jobs at factories, public buildings and construction sites. If there are not enough residents to perform the job, or they can't get there the other buildings won't work.

Having sims keeping their jobs can be even frustrating and make your city building decisions less noticable. If you build a new highway you want the new connection to be used as soon as possible. Your residences will recalculate workroutes and jobs next day so you'll notice it immediately. If sims would keep their job every house would have to decide (dice roll) if changing jobs for a certain amount of reduced travel time is worth the economic risk, this would result in a part of a neighborhood driving long distance to their old jobs, and part of the neighborhood driving to new jobs. In the meantime you sit there watching from above why all those sims keep complaining about long distances to their work, even after building that highway.

Modeling something is reducing details until you reach a point where you can simulate it at a certain cost. Reducing it to a level of residences that supply a workforce, instead of sentient sims is imho a good way to reduce power without compromising a realistic, logical simulation.

[meowza 230]

I don't like it one bit, despite their recent explanations. Though not to the point that it would deter me from getting the game.

If they really want to inspire and educate kids correctly, then they must fix this. If not, then they should just rename the citizens to "Dumb Sims".

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

^ Good point, but if you will recall the way the path finder works in SC4, this new system depends totally on agents that find paths every day. It may not be necessary to consider the Sims as anything but a faceless labor pool, but some jobs will require skill levels. The generator will have to be set up in such a way that it generates approximately enough of each class to keep the city going, or conversely it could cause an employee dearth by not generating enough of the right Sims. This introduces an interesting variable, don't you think?

Perhaps the hype so far has been too much on the "life" of the Sims and not enough on the city and the region.

[JcCali1214 34]

You bring up a good point A Noony Moose. I believe the simulation of SC4 did reshuffle the sims as such though, I don't think it was 'every day' - though, it could have technically been every 'game day'.

I initially said no because: Their sims! But, once I heard them explain it, it made sense in terms of the simulation. I mean, it's no doubt unusual (especially when compared to real life).

But, the only problems I have are in terms of actual class & social mobility, education, and family units.

1. Class & Social Mobility - Like I said, in terms of the simulation, it's fine. But, the fact that a Sim is in a class FOR LIFE, just doesn't sit well. There should be opportunity for advancement up (and even down) the socioeconomic ladder, and different ways for a city to promote (or .. dispromote?) ways to do so, like
2. Education - is a great way to change the world. But really, I just don't understand education if not for #1. Is it literally just to send the kids somewhere so there not sitting at home all day? What is the benefit to the city if the Sims are benefitting from it? I feel as if they've made any relevancy/function of education void by doing this.
3. Family Units - So, going to a new job every day = (I guess) NBD. But, new house? (Terms of simulation = fine). But, doesn't that mean they are returning home to a new sim everyday? I mean, if it's a free love kinda society ... but really, doesn't the way they are handling the simulation mean there is no Sim family unit? Does that mean that everyone is just a single worker drone? A large part of society caters to the family and if there is none, many civic functions are no longer needed (like #2). For example, a mom and kid are playing in the park (though, due to the simulation, they're not even related) but, they go home to different homes. Makes perfect sense.

I think a large part of this is due to the fact that we have placed so much emphasis (and love) on the individual Sim instead of the society as a whole, a move the devs seem to be taking. And, it makes sense but, it feels like they they easy way out.

If they could explain these issues when it comes to the mobility of the Sims. I'm on board.

If not - well, I'm still on board, who are we kidding. Just ... less on board as I'd like.

  Edited March 29, 2012 by JcCali1214  

[Mark Waybill 242]

I voted yes because it isn't going to deter me from buying the game, and i've pre ordered anyway.

However I would rather if each Sim was considered a constant unit until it reached the average life expectancy and SimDied. I do believe this will affect the realism of the game, and will slow down the integration of the game with the Sims franchise. And while an argument has been given that we'd be wasting our time tracking a few Sims throughout their days if they did implement a better system for simulating their SimLives, I don't see how that would be the case considering we play the game primarily in order to build cities, and MySim mode or whatever is just an element of observing the city at ground level., no different to using the query tool on a building.

But I guess having SimFamilies and complex or seemingly complex SimSocial interactions would take up power that could be better spent, but I hope that is the only reason they are simplifying matters.

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

Perhaps there can simply be an option to create up to a certain amout of sims as we do in SC4 to place into the city manually. You know the ones with the bubble that tell you what they're thinking? Every other sim does not matter matter as we never tracked them anyway. I sometimes create a sim and watch them throughout the development of the city. With this new engine they can even be specialized or career based for certain buildings whether civic polotion or a CEO of one of your biggest companies. I do not see myself tracking every sim, specially when they are in the tens of thousands.

[TekindusT 3,809]

Perhaps there can simply be an option to create up to a certain amout of sims as we do in SC4 to place into the city manually. You know the ones with the bubble that tell you what they're thinking? Every other sim does not matter matter as we never tracked them anyway. I sometimes create a sim and watch them throughout the development of the city. With this new engine they can even be specialized or career based for certain buildings whether civic polotion or a CEO of one of your biggest companies. I do not see myself tracking every sim, specially when they are in the tens of thousands.

The opinions of SC4's My Sim are, IMHO, one of the best additions. If I was a real mayor, I'd like to walk down the street and know what do people think about the city I rule. My Sim is just the same but in an SC4 scale. I'd like to see this feature improved in SC5.

In the other hand, Maxis can keep their social Sims for themselves. Just an improved My Sim will be enough.

[Mark Waybill 242]

I don't think a MySim mode would be too difficult, if these agents were treated differently to regular Sims, but whether they'll have it or not, who knows. It would make sense to. Also they mention having characters like Joe Arsonist and so forth who act specially, so why not have MySims.

[flowmotion 24]

As a practical matter, I think it will probably be very similar to SC4, except with a ton more detail around the traffic simulator, e.g. actual cars with actual traffic jams rather than just animations, and commercial and recreational travel in addition to job commutes.

Things like education level and social mobility will probably still be handled statistically - e.g. X% of the population is an age cohort, and that cohort has an average education level of Y, so there's a Z% chance they'll take a certain job. And then some % of sims are instantly upgraded from R$ to R$$, or visa-versa. If the simulation runs frequently enough this will hopefully even-out and your population will be fairly stable day-to-day. (And if the simulator can't be run frequently enough to 'even-out', they could always fake it like they did with SC4.)

In a city with 10s or 100s of thousands of individual sims, you wouldn't want to follow individuals around anyway, so it doesn't really matter if they are regenerated on a daily basis.

And as guuz said, having instant feedback to your city changes will make the SC5 model seem more realistic, even if the employment model really isn't.

[nashville nelson 51]

Class & Social Mobility - Like I said, in terms of the simulation, it's fine. But, the fact that a Sim is in a class FOR LIFE, just doesn't sit well. There should be opportunity for advancement up (and even down) the socioeconomic ladder, and different ways for a city to promote (or .. dispromote?) ways to do so, like

Education - is a great way to change the world. But really, I just don't understand education if not for #1. Is it literally just to send the kids somewhere so there not sitting at home all day? What is the benefit to the city if the Sims are benefitting from it? I feel as if they've made any relevancy/function of education void by doing this.

When you place a school you just kill all the dumb kids and replace them with smarter kids. Schools aren´t for education anymore they are for attracting a different social class.

[guuz 15]

As a practical matter, I think it will probably be very similar to SC4, except with a ton more detail around the traffic simulator, e.g. actual cars with actual traffic jams rather than just animations, and commercial and recreational travel in addition to job commutes.

Things like education level and social mobility will probably still be handled statistically - e.g. X% of the population is an age cohort, and that cohort has an average education level of Y, so there's a Z% chance they'll take a certain job. And then some % of sims are instantly upgraded from R$ to R$$, or visa-versa. If the simulation runs frequently enough this will hopefully even-out and your population will be fairly stable day-to-day. (And if the simulator can't be run frequently enough to 'even-out', they could always fake it like they did with SC4.)

In a city with 10s or 100s of thousands of individual sims, you wouldn't want to follow individuals around anyway, so it doesn't really matter if they are regenerated on a daily basis.

And as guuz said, having instant feedback to your city changes will make the SC5 model seem more realistic, even if the employment model really isn't.

A school could produce education agents that drop off "knowledge" points at houses. If a house builds up enough of those points it triggers a rule that makes the game build a house that produces more intelligent sims every simulation cycle. The game doesn't need to keep track of sims if you only simulate a production cycle. A house produces workers, shoppers and children.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

As a practical matter, I think it will probably be very similar to SC4, except with a ton more detail around the traffic simulator, e.g. actual cars with actual traffic jams rather than just animations, and commercial and recreational travel in addition to job commutes.

Things like education level and social mobility will probably still be handled statistically - e.g. X% of the population is an age cohort, and that cohort has an average education level of Y, so there's a Z% chance they'll take a certain job. And then some % of sims are instantly upgraded from R$ to R$, or visa-versa. If the simulation runs frequently enough this will hopefully even-out and your population will be fairly stable day-to-day. (And if the simulator can't be run frequently enough to 'even-out', they could always fake it like they did with SC4.)

In a city with 10s or 100s of thousands of individual sims, you wouldn't want to follow individuals around anyway, so it doesn't really matter if they are regenerated on a daily basis.

And as guuz said, having instant feedback to your city changes will make the SC5 model seem more realistic, even if the employment model really isn't.

A school could produce education agents that drop off "knowledge" points at houses. If a house builds up enough of those points it triggers a rule that makes the game build a house that produces more intelligent sims every simulation cycle. The game doesn't need to keep track of sims if you only simulate a production cycle. A house produces workers, shoppers and children.

I think our assumption of class as being a wealth level with other things stuck to it doesn't work in what these guys are developing. All the Sims are generated new every day and nothing carries over. This means that the generator will have enough latitude to generate the appropriate Sims of whatever "class" is needed.

Sims don't get upgraded, but the probability is that residences do. We need more clarification on how this is going to work. We don't even know the number of classes nor the attributes of each class. We don't know very much at all, and this needs further clarification.

[flowmotion 24]

A school could produce education agents that drop off "knowledge" points at houses. If a house builds up enough of those points it triggers a rule that makes the game build a house that produces more intelligent sims every simulation cycle. The game doesn't need to keep track of sims if you only simulate a production cycle. A house produces workers, shoppers and children.

That makes perfect sense - I was thinking in terms of how elementary schools only educate the young, so it takes several years before your workforce benefits. (And likewise cutting funding causes younger generations to be less-educated.) But that could still be modelled on the 'house' level.

[Jahnri 21]

Strictly speaking the sim lasts until it moves from the city or dies. Its activities reset each day. The idea that the agent resets each day is wrong. They actually remain the same sim.

  Edited March 29, 2012 by Jahnri  

[Thetford 22]

Is it me, or does it sound like people tend to forget this is SimCity not the Sims. The core of the former is residences, while the latter residents. While the demographics change daily, the buildings don't. Chances are, that neighbourhood of two storey homes that accommodate more people per square metre than Dickensian slums, are quite likely going to go to work today in those factories next door that will make your finance and environment advisers at odds.

Would you follow a sim from front door to factory floor, and back? It's probably not even going to be the same mesh or texture. Does it matter?

In regards to social class, it relates to my previous point. There are no permanent individuals in the grand scheme of things, but there is always a perpetual ratio of upper/middle/lower class workers, simply because of the economy. It's like a pyramid formation. Multiple workers work in a department headed by a department head, multiple departments make up an organisation headed by a CEO. Which means, very few $$$, more $$, and a more significant chunk of $. Someone has to make the stuff and someone has to buy it.

You can likely encourage more of the regions share of the mega wealthy to your humble little berg complete with a yacht club, though it might encourage the world's unwashed masses to flock en massé to that fancy new fangled factory or mine town over those yonder hills that produces so much pollution (and profit), that if video games were real life, may cause more ecological controversy than Lara Croft using the endangered species list as a hit list. So all the people in that fancy yacht town - which will likely produce next to nothing aside from the next generation of touchscreen toothbrushes - will be likely relying on the cruddy little town where all the peasant live for their food and furnishings - or they could always own the factories and just commute everyday. When your rich and wealthy you can have your cake and eat it, so just let the poor eat cake (or not, whichever is more economically advantageous)

OK, I think I just drifted off into a monologue only myself will find humourous, but hey, I'm tired, and hopefully (though unlikely) I explained myself well. I don't think I have, just ignore me.

  Edited March 29, 2012 by Thetford  

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

I guess I am one of the sick ones that would like to randomly follow sims for an entire day just to see if they run into something interesting. Since every sim is simulated and there are no more animations triggered by statistics, would we actually witness flashers, murders, and vandals writing graffiti? You know those sessions you have when you look around your established city to find stuff? Remember those chalks on the sidewalk in your crime infested areas? I always wondered what the story was behind that. No lie, I actually tried to follow sims in SC4 to see where they were going before they disappeared.

[croxis 150]

The other thing to remember is that even though individual sims are not simulated, individual buildings are.

Like I said in the other thread the dirty secret in game design/programming is to take advantage of human's unique ability to find patterns in everything, even if there isn't one. Lets say that you have a slummy neighborhood, you plop down a new high school in it, and after 5 in game years 5% of the slum trailer shacks upgraded to small wood homes. The game could of simulated the change by individualy simulating sims and modeling social mobility. Or the change happened by houses collecting invisible education resources from the school (which may be how it will be done in GlassBox) which represents social mobility of individual sims. So does it really matter if individual sims are not persisted?

[flowmotion 24]

Strictly speaking the sim lasts until it moves from the city or dies. Its activities reset each day. The idea that the agent resets each day is wrong. They actually remain the same sim.

That's encouraging.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Strictly speaking the sim lasts until it moves from the city or dies. Its activities reset each day. The idea that the agent resets each day is wrong. They actually remain the same sim.

That's encouraging.

I'm afraid not. I've been going over all the literature and articles and it seem that a new set of Sims is generated on each day cycle. The old ones are just discarded. The guts of the game seems to be focused on the residential locations and the Sims simply carry the results of the day to update the place where it arrives to sleep, which will probably not be the place it came from in the morning. I may be in error but this is the way things seem to read.

This means that the Sims, however interesting to watch running around, are simply information channels between the various destinations and the sleeping places, even if it is under a bridge. At the end of the day, they update the doss where they arrive and evaporate.

[Cob92 360]

This is a bad thing how exactly? People were complaining constantly when Societies was coming out that the game focused too much on individual Sims; now you're complaining that it doesn't focus enough? I don't care if all my Sims disappear into a black hole at the end of each day so long as it doesn't detract from the simulation.

[frdrcklim 139]

i agree with cobhris.

while it would be nice for sims to have some ability to settle down, it doesn't really matter, does it? again, when we click a sim, are we going to know his name too? how are we gonna follow it? when it goes inside a building, can you go inside to? and if you don't, how would you know when the sim left when they probably all look the same? in the grand scheme of things, they're just statistics. in fact, even if we know their nomadic nature, i doubt we will even notice this .

[Mark Waybill 242]

Personally I would prefer a fuller integration with The Sims, (and do remember that just because two games become one doesn't mean if it's done gradually either game loses for the sake of the other) but I can understand why Maxis have decided not to with this release. We may have advanced a lot since 2003 but there is still much progress to be done before every Sim can be realistically simulated from cradle to grave.

[meowza 230]

This is a bad thing how exactly? People were complaining constantly when Societies was coming out that the game focused too much on individual Sims; now you're complaining that it doesn't focus enough? I don't care if all my Sims disappear into a black hole at the end of each day so long as it doesn't detract from the simulation.

What's a city's worth without its citizens? The answer is elementary.

It's true that one of the issues of SCS is that it focused too much on individuals, but that doesn't mean that the new SC should make the citizens unrealistic.

They can add giant bowling balls into the game, but not social mobility?

If they can't emulate social mobility due to tech constraints, then they could atleast create a low-cost illusion for it.

[guuz 15]

It's true that one of the issues of SCS is that it focused too much on individuals, but that doesn't mean that the new SC should make the citizens unrealistic.

They can add giant bowling balls into the game, but not social mobility?

If they can't emulate social mobility due to tech constraints, then they could atleast create a low-cost illusion for it.

How do you imagine social mobility in a game like simcity while keeping the results of your decisions to build or not build that high school/prison/homeless shelter in a certain area clear? Houses can improve if you make the area nicer to live in, or worse if you remove services or add NIMBYs. You don't need to simulate citizens to do that, only the houses. If you change jobs from company A to company B and move to a new home closer to B, another person will take your job at A and probably move closer to A. You don't have to model this movement as one 'sim' replaces another, it doesn't matter for the big picture of the city.

[nashville nelson 51]

It just doesn´t feel right. When i place a park and a school in one neighborhood i know the sims living there won´t profit from it. They just get replaced with other sims or a higher class. I don´t think you will notice this in the game but now we know it and the illusion is gone.

[meowza 230]

It's true that one of the issues of SCS is that it focused too much on individuals, but that doesn't mean that the new SC should make the citizens unrealistic.

They can add giant bowling balls into the game, but not social mobility?

If they can't emulate social mobility due to tech constraints, then they could atleast create a low-cost illusion for it.

How do you imagine social mobility in a game like simcity while keeping the results of your decisions to build or not build that high school/prison/homeless shelter in a certain area clear? Houses can improve if you make the area nicer to live in, or worse if you remove services or add NIMBYs. You don't need to simulate citizens to do that, only the houses. If you change jobs from company A to company B and move to a new home closer to B, another person will take your job at A and probably move closer to A. You don't have to model this movement as one 'sim' replaces another, it doesn't matter for the big picture of the city.

Ofcourse I'm not expecting each citizen to constantly convert each of their houses in the game.

I bet there are many ways, like I said, to create an illusion for social mobility without using up too much resources. Like how Maxis created volumetric illusion for cars and buildings via internal mapping. They could have just passed on the idea, but they applied it to the game anyway. Even though it never really mattered much to the core of the simulation, or should I say, the "bigger picture".

---

It just doesn´t feel right. When i place a park and a school in one neighborhood i know the sims living there won´t profit from it. They just get replaced with other sims or a higher class. I don´t think you will notice this in the game but now we know it and the illusion is gone.

The way the devs have been explain it, I don't think there was ever an illusion of social mobility from the very beginning. They seem to be intentionally disregarding the fact that it exists.

  Edited March 30, 2012 by meowza  

[Cob92 360]

It just doesn´t feel right. When i place a park and a school in one neighborhood i know the sims living there won´t profit from it. They just get replaced with other sims or a higher class. I don´t think you will notice this in the game but now we know it and the illusion is gone.

In reality, this is much more realistic than the social mobility idea. Social mobility occurs over a much longer period of time and results from a younger generation attaining higher education/work skill levels and thus higher income. When you improve a neighborhood in a city, what usually happens is that land values go up and the poor people get bought out so that wealthier people can move in. It's called gentrification.

What is important is that SC has neighborhoods that evolve and change in a persistent and fluid manner, because the neighborhoods and the buildings in them are the real characters in the game.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Social mobility is there, but it is indirect.

I think that as a new day begins and the Sims are generated, they will be classed based on the prior results. This could easily mean that higher class Sims will increase in abundance depending on the various "attributes" accumulated in the point of placement or generation in the game. They will be generated inside buildings of the city and take on the accumulated "status" of the building at the beginning of the day, I hope. This makes social climbing somewhat random for any given Sim, but remember they are not the purpose of the game. Since they live less than 24 Sim-hours, what does it matter?

[MINIggy03 227]

Here's what they've said lately about it,

"The sims themselves also operate at a very detailed level. Katsarelis allowed that they don't quite do 1:1 "sim-tracking"—in other words, every sim in the game doesn't have a name, and you couldn't track one from college to his career to his downfall, homelessness, and redemption. While all of those things can happen to a sim, they still happen to groups and not individuals."

"Looked at broadly, the sims' behavior is similar to past SimCity games—you make them mad enough, they'll start to protest. Humorously, more highly-educated sims like to complain a lot more. But there's much more of a sense of the sims as people this time around—they may not be trackable as individuals, but they are graphically viewable as individuals, which gives a heightened sense that you're dealing with a city full of people."

http://kotaku.com/5896976/simcity-is-more-expansive-and-detailed-than-ever-yet-remarkably-true-to-its-roots

I don't see the big deal. There is still social mobility and progression, it's just happening on a larger scale and not down to individual sims. Hasn't Simcity always been this way(actually, this is far more detailed than ever before)? The computing power it would take to track hundreds of thousands of Sims on top of everything else is just not feasible yet.

  Edited March 30, 2012 by MINIggy03