Sims Can Not Find Shops or Parks

[Aussie123 0]

Hi All,

 

Calling SimCity 2013 gurus!

 

I am having some major difficulties with a recurring problem whereby all of the sudden, I get waves of abandoned residential buildings due to "Can not find shops or parks".  Typically what happens is things will be good for a short while, then all of the sudden the buildozer icon goes yellow and I find a heap of homes abandoned due to "Can not find shops of parks".  It started on my 3rd city, and I tried placing lots of parks and nearby commercial to no avail.  It would be as if these Sims are completely stupid!  I then went and built another city to city of it was somethign unique to my city design and the problem has happened again.

 

I did some googling and some have suggested this could be an AI bug - I hope not. If it is just something messed up in my strategy, that is great because I can fix that but I need some advice from someone familiar with the cause and solution.

 

Thanks!

  Edited July 6, 2014 by Cyclone Boom  
Topic merged (duplicate).

[David S 3]

I am having the same problem and often there is a park or shop close by. I had 16 buildings get abandoned at the same time.

[PeterWeaver 2]

Same here

[Indian007 25]

Sorry to tell you, but it's a bug. I have the same problems, people are next and I mean literally next to a park and shop and they leave because they say they can't find one. lol. This f'in game was just neve ready for launch

[perafilozof 143]

Happened to me when I went back after 4.0 to an old 3.0 city. Most of my medium wealth started screaming no shopping no parks. Not only did I have to add lots of shops and parks but also bulldoze all those homes and get fresh sims to move in.

[Xr3iracer 5]

Having this problem in my current city. Along with "moving out no money" despite taxes being 10% for the low wealth! i thought the low wealth didnt mid high taxes? I always wondered why they jus dont go and get on of the many unfillled jos?

[morriswalters 16]

On the last patch they changed the way medium wealth responds to not having enough shops.  It's much more sensitive to it now.  Zone more medium wealth shops.

[VanGioRobNelli 29]

You have to keep a better balance of unfilled jobs/ unemployed and unsold goods to sold goods.

 

You might be getting tripped up when your buildings are turning to high density.  Your job openings and sold/unsold goods change DRASTICALLY when a C building reaches max density.  It is a pain to balance it out.. you just have to delete and rezone until you can achieve a healthy balance again.  Also, keep your shops as close to residential as possible... or surround your neighbors around a centralized commercial zone, though your roads would need to be well designed to handle C traffic.

[xoxide101 0]

if this is a new bug.. we need more details for devs

 

let me get this straight.. all of a sudden

 

post 4.0 and post release of the theme park (are you all use it?) you are having a shopping issue and a shut down of shops and the theme park or just the shops near by in the rCi .. at what level $ $$ $$$

 

any common factors you can place or put in the city

 

please put the usual information

 

user id:

server name:

region name:

city name:

 

Description of problem: as much information you can about the conditions you think are breaking or what is going on to that may cause shops or business's to close

 

I can' take a look myself and make some observations .. at this point I do not expect to see the devs online until Monday.  Sometimes they will pop online but I know that they were looking forward to a weekend after a lot going on this week on their end with the mac release coming up and 5.0 coming up after that release

 

I will do what I can to help but I need as much detail as possible so I can pass it along to the devs and make sure it gets to the right one

 

Jeff

[PeterWeaver 2]

Ta morris will check that, they're all medium wealth yes

[Zpike 79]

What they said above and also make sure you have your taxes set to a level people can stand.  They get more and more sensitive to environmental factors the higher your taxes are.

[Screwballl 196]

It seems to only popup once high density comes into the picture, and also seems to be related to the "no shoppers" bug with Commercial.

 

I tested this in one city and it id not make a difference.... Had a row of a dozen HD R, then a similarly sized row of nothing but med and high value parks, then a similar sized row of a dozen or so HD C, then another of parks, then another row of HD R.

Everything was fine until the traffic piled up. As soon as traffic piled up, even with bus stops (including shuttle and terminal maxed out), trolley stops and nearby train station. I suspect what is happening is glassbox is spending all of its time dealing with all the individual cars and their routes that its failing to connect the residence with the parks or commercial, and the commerical with the shoppers/residents so they both fail.

 

R needs C for shopping and jobs <--> C needs R for workers and shopping

 

When glassbox being overwhelmed with traffic, people walking, lots of delivery trucks and busses and so on, it isn't able to keep up with the connection.

 

They CLAIM it can handle roughly 1 million "objects".

So lets see, in a city of around 100,000...

 

Thats 100K people, most of them with cars....

Then 15-20 busses per terminal plus half that from neighboring cities so we can say 50 busses, all varying from 10-80 per bus, thats another 40/bus times 50 busses, thats another 2000....

Then a decent city with with streetcars, theres 10 streetcars with 100 each so thats another 1000....

Emergency and service vehicles in a properly covered city would add another 100, but with an added layer of spcialized routing for criminals, fires, injured, trash, recycling, etc....

Then the delivery trucks, boats and trains adds another 100....

Add in travelers by boat and train, mine usually average 5000 total per vehicle type in each city, so thats another 10,000...

Then another 10,000 for tourists in an average city (including by bus, train, cruise ship, etc)...

Can't forget 100,000 connections for power (more if exported), another 100,000 for water (more if exported), 150,000 for sewage (more if exported), and so on.

 

Just looking at this, there is over 500K right there in a med city of 100K and this is right around the population where my cities start to break that connection down....

[Jons511 12]

What I've noticed is that parks and shops have a max capacity. You can have all the shops and parks you want next to a residential building, but if they're filled with people from other areas you are out of luck. One trick I have done is to eliminate all industry in my cities. The commercial buildings not only handle the jobs, but they also fulfill the shopping needs. Since freight seems to magically appear from the region no matter what, there is no need for industry anyways. I also started zoning cities with 10 residential plots to 4 commercial plots throughout my city. Seems to help the balance, as I haven't had this problem since.  

[Screwballl 196]

What I've noticed is that parks and shops have a max capacity. You can have all the shops and parks you want next to a residential building, but if they're filled with people from other areas you are out of luck. One trick I have done is to eliminate all industry in my cities. The commercial buildings not only handle the jobs, but they also fulfill the shopping needs. Since freight seems to magically appear from the region no matter what, there is no need for industry anyways. I also started zoning cities with 10 residential plots to 4 commercial plots throughout my city. Seems to help the balance, as I haven't had this problem since.  

 

I've tried that too, doesn't fix it

[morriswalters 16]

The complaint was that medium wealth would never abandon because of no shops.  They tinked it.  You have to have medium wealth shops.  Parks will not satisfy them completely.

[Screwballl 196]

Something else I found by playing around.... if traffic is bad all over, then they spend all their time in traffic, going to work, then at 5PM all night driving going home, and back and forth. If they have no chance to go to shops, they start to show this issue, and then commercial starts complaining of no shoppers.

[Dj_oj_1980 0]

Something else I found by playing around.... if traffic is bad all over, then they spend all their time in traffic, going to work, then at 5PM all night driving going home, and back and forth. If they have no chance to go to shops, they start to show this issue, and then commercial starts complaining of no shoppers.

This would make sense in my situation - I had parks and commercial adjacent to low/medium density residential with pretty awful traffic and I was getting mass abandonments each day. The bulk of my commercial is in a neighbouring gambling city so they are probably trying to get to the freeway or a train station and failing regularly.

The problem disappeared when I raised the land-value to medium, which matched the small patch of medium wealth commercial that I had in the city. I also restructured the road layout to ease traffic. Now I just need to sort out all the disease and death...

[Screwballl 196]

Another thing I have noticed is the bigger the region is (500K population +), the more traffic in and out of the city you get that usually starts when you get your first medium density buildings (C or R). Some R workers leaving town for work, some workers and tourists from other towns coming in. Med density C can bring in workers and tourists, even if you do not have a casino or any other tourist related items in town.

 

Every new city I build now that my region is 1.3 mil, it goes without fail that as soon as the first med density buildings get built, traffic stays bad so it needs to be routed around the city decently.

[nomnombear 0]

please bump. 

 

my residential that moves out says the same, no shops no parks, but literally this is the resi building with the park right next to it and at the start of the commercial zone on its left side... Lol???

[Screwballl 196]

I have found it is more traffic related. They will not always go to the parks and shops right next door to them. The worse the traffic, the worse this problem gets.

[Noobi-Wan 22]

I think Screwball is right I had this issue with a building right next to a park. Since 5.0 I have noticed that the traffic is going nuts again so the old problems associated with this are back.

The sims (as I understand it) want to get everything done in a day. They travel to and from work but stop off at commercial buildings or parks on the way home to get happiness. If the traffic stops them from completing this in a day then they start moaning about it.

[xavierschmit 0]

I have no traffic at all and still the same problem

Traffic is not the issue here: My region has so far two cities, one 50 000 inhabitants, the other only 20 000. There is no traffic at all and shops of all classes as well as parks of all classes are spread evenly throughout the city. Also I've built a lot more commercial (ratio-wise) than I usually do, because of that particular problem. And it's still not resolved, hence Help is still needed…

  Edited July 6, 2014 by Cyclone Boom  
Merged posts.

[Kalshion 0]

Its a bug, been around since the game was released and 'never' been fixed... kind of frustrating really given they've had all this time to fix it yet seem intent on ignoring it. The problem persists as I have the same issues in my own cities, only its worse with the mega-towers since it seems sims won't travel outside of the tower to a shop, park, or even a nearby building that 'needs' employees to get a job, to shop, or even relax. While I'd love for Maxis to fix this, this might be one of those things that we'd have to rely on the modding community to do so.