Dev. Tester Here....

[Haljackey 17,306]

Well I never played closed beta 2 so I don't really know the context as well as others.

 

I would assume slope bugs are being tackled for the release version along with bridge glitches.

 

I had a 8800GT back in the day, sturdy card. (Run a 470GTX now)

[nafeasonto 18]

There is a lot of things that are going to give this game a lower score critic wise.  Even a lower score user wise.  What I don't understand is why EA/Maxis is not listenting to there customers or fan base?  ARe they that proud that they think they created a perfect game, or is this just a money grabber?

 

I am going to be surprised if this game even makes a 7.5. 

[Haljackey 17,306]

There are some aspects of the game that boggle my mind, like the always-online internet connection. I think Maxis has done a good job listening to the fans as they've been active here and on twitter, reddit and the official SimCity 2013 forums. What they can and cannot do ultimately comes under the needs and wants of EA. I'm sure Maxis wanted to include a lot more in the game or conceptualized to be very different from what it looks like now.

 

This fan-made video is a good humourous take on EA's control of developers like Maxis (which gets beat up at the end lol).

 

 

So again, I think Maxis did a good job reaching out to the community. I'm sure we've helped influence the game for the better, even if it is still something we (the fans) did not expect for the next SimCity installment.

[Dewm 177]

I would be surprised if it got a 6.5 to be honest.

 

...but that is just my opinion, we'll all see in a few weeks...

[nafeasonto 18]

There are some aspects of the game that boggle my mind, like the always-online internet connection. I think Maxis has done a good job listening to the fans as they've been active here and on twitter, reddit and the official SimCity 2013 forums. What they can and cannot do ultimately comes under the needs and wants of EA. I'm sure Maxis wanted to include a lot more in the game or conceptualized to be very different from what it looks like now.

 

This fan-made video is a good humourous take on EA's control of developers like Maxis (which gets beat up at the end lol).

 

 

So again, I think Maxis did a good job reaching out to the community. I'm sure we've helped influence the game for the better, even if it is still something we (the fans) did not expect for the next SimCity installment.

The always online internet connection is to prevent modding and push microtransactions.  Like in games like WOW and Star Trek Online.  With a game that requires online play, database and saves are on the server side, so it makes modding basically impossible and anything you want "added" to the game or the user end database (I have run WOW private servers), EA needs to approve, and add to there database.  With an always online internet connection like in an MMO this is what it accomplishes.  The more I talk about this the more I get angry. I hope this game gets a 5.0.

[macallen 0]

Hal, if you're still offering to test things, I'd like you to try something for me, please.  I posted this at great length over in Reddit but am curious if it works in the live game.  Here's the post from Reddit:

 

 

Picture 2 cities, Paradise and Nimby.

Nimby contains nothing but 6 water towers, 6 sewage plants, a garbage dump with lots of trucks, and an expanded coal plant. It can afford it because I "gifted" it cash (or it uses bonds, whatever). I never play Nimby more than the 30 sec at llama speed it takes to plop all that down.

Paradise has no water, no sewage, no garbage, and no power infrastructure. It relies solely upon Nimby for these things. As my needs grow, I toss money to Nimby, hop over, quickly slap stuff down, then come back. Eventually Paradise will have its own clean power, recycling, etc and no longer need Nimby.

You might ask "If Nimby has no residential section, who's working all the stuff?" We know already that the low wealth folks from Paradise will drive over and do it. Nimby doesn't have to have a single zone for anything, folks will drive there to work.

I then log into Nimby, bulldoze everything. Nimby has virtually no pollution and purchased no coal, nor consumed any water. The sewage and garbage simply vanished between the cities, even though the trucks and pipes between the cities worked for hours...on one end.

Now granted, Paradise paid for these services, including power, and Nimby never got that money, but Paradise used 1000's of units of coal that no one purchased, so that was effectively "free". So I get all the benefits of dirty solutions without having to pay for any of them.

Does that seem exploity to anyone else?

Edit: Granted, I may need a city hall in Nimby to be able to share, but that's cake, just drop a few residential areas before I put the infrastructure in, let folks in to the point where I can build a city hall, then plop down the messy stuff and immediately log out. It nets the same result, I feel.

Edit2: Another thought...I use bonds in Nimby to buy everything, and I'll never have to pay them back. In Paradise, I never have to waste the money to build the early versions of water, sewage, power, or garbage and then bulldoze them later. So not only do I not pay the consequences (pollution) but I also don't have to pay the startup costs.

[Haljackey 17,306]

In the latest video with Will Wright, Ocean was talking about support cities and noting the differences in SC13. You can of course have support cities but you still have to buy the power, water, etc from it which will cost a lot of money.

 

---

 

To my surprise the Dev. Beta is still running (they said for the month of February so it could go until the end of the month) and I'm having a fun time playing it. If you have any other suggestions you want me to try out or forward feel free to ask.

[waybig 35]

How have they changed zoning? In the first beta it was awful...

[Haljackey 17,306]

So I got into this again. Here's what I can talk about this time:

 

 

 

A few notes:

-I was a dev beta tester back in Febuary during the game's development (before release).

-I have not played SimCity (2013) since early April due to my frustrations with the game

-Patch 7 is currently being tested

 

Also Simtropolis is a non-commercial site so sharing the content listed above shouldn't be much of a problem.

[r00n83 12]

So what are your impressions of update 7 so far? Is it working as it should?

[mb1.0.2 193]

Interesting. I just jumped back into the game after several weeks away. I'm hesitantly optimistic that patch 7 will make the game more enjoyable to play and help keep the conga lines at bay, especially when developing high density areas. What are your thoughts with the RCI tweaks in patch 6?

[Plat-O 1]

Traffic tuning is generally mentioned for most updates and this probably falls under the heading of traffic tuning.  It would be great to see greater improvement on how service vehicles behave, in particular recycling trucks.  Some of my larger cities have failed simply because the recycling trucks don't work.  Probably only a quarter of the trucks in my city will actually collect recycling, the rest just get stuck in endless loops where they go around and around a block for no apparent reason.  It seems their not being tasked with a destination for collection so go in circles.