The State of Simcity - EA/Maxis speaks

[baertooth 330]

EA Forum to post comments

 

The blog post itself

 

 

[GoldLeader 1]

(Bigger city size NOT happening confirmed) Dang, that really is disappointing to hear. Based on the way people with so called inside information were talking we were going to get some great news soon. I actually just bought the game because it was on sale and I was believing that bigger cities were just a matter of when not if. What a shame. I guess it's pointless to discuss any further as this is the confirmed end of the line.

[JaceTwice 115]

(Bigger city size NOT happening confirmed) Dang, that really is disappointing to hear. Based on the way people with so called inside information were talking we were going to get some great news soon. I actually just bought the game because it was on sale and I was believing that bigger cities were just a matter of when not if. What a shame. I guess it's pointless to discuss any further as this is the confirmed end of the line.

 

Perhaps, though with what is basically a confirmation of an upcoming offline mode, and the recent discussions of specialized regions for full scale mod support. I can only imagine that bigger cities are still an inevitability. Even if they don't end up as an official feature.

[Cyclone Boom 16,875]

It is a shame about the map sizes, but there are positives from this. An offline mode is what's needed to allow proper modding. Maybe one day we can find a way to expand city tiles, or at least make them joined together without the gaps. Creating a metropolis is a big thing missing from this game. If this sort of region can be created, the whole issue of small maps might be easier to overlook.

 

"The system performance challenges we encountered would mean that the vast majority of our players wouldn’t be able to load, much less play with bigger cities. We’ve tried a number of different approaches to bring performance into an acceptable range, but we just couldn’t achieve it within the confines of the engine."

 

I think this confirms larger maps are possible, even though performance is an issue. Maybe GlassBox can be tweaked or simplified to reduce the load on computer resources. Let's not give up hope yet.

[Catchin22 299]

They can't / wont make them larger because their ONLINE mode, the servers couldn't handle the extra load and they aren't willing to nix it. Not only that but the game is so incredibly boring that people are willing to spend money on DLC in the HOPE it can be better, making large city maps offline would negate most people having to purchase DLC.

 

I no longer have a bit of respect for Maxis. To me they are toast. I have decided I will be forming a game company to build a new city simulator, I'll be running a kickstarter on it by early next year.

  Edited October 19, 2013 by CaptCity  

[Urban Cartographer 601]

They can't / wont make them larger because their ONLINE mode, the servers couldn't handle the extra load and they aren't willing to nix it. Not only that but the game is so incredibly boring that people are willing to spend money on DLC in the HOPE it can be better, making large city maps offline would negate most people having to purchase DLC.

 

I no longer have a bit of respect for Maxis. To me they are toast. I have decided I will be forming a game company to build a new city simulator, I'll be running a kickstarter on it by early next year.

I hope that your Kickstarter is more successful than Brandon Smith's Civitas.

[jaredh 195]

Wow.

 

So they are essentially rolling over and dying.

 

1 - no bigger cities

2 - "looking at" offline.  They said that about #1.  Expect #2 to become "impossible" in a couple months

[Rokugatsu 126]

What people wanted the most was bigger maps, offline mode, mods and bug fixes and yet we get everything but what we asked for.

Why not give us a choice if we want bigger maps or not? Why not create regions with bigger maps for the players who want it? I can't believe I was waiting so many years for a new SimCity game just to get what we have. I trusted Maxis and was always telling everyone it's gonna be great, even though people said it's gonna fail because of this and that and guess what? They were right.

This is beyond disappointing.

  Edited October 4, 2013 by Cyclone Boom  
No mask swearing please.

[heat33330 26]

Maxis seems to love making broken engines... First Sims 3 and now SimCity.

[nathanthemayor 1,261]

Well, personally I am pleased that offline mode is coming soon, but am disappointed about city sizes; however I wonder what this new "Offline" mode will be like.....

[ebalosus 19]

First off: Yay for (possible) offline mode. BOO for not increasing city sizes.

 

They say that it's a limitation of the engine...but if you've already played the game, you will already note that the engine does not function as specified once your city gets big enough, meaning that the engine issues are less to do with actual game-space, and more to do with agent simulation limitations. From a programming perspective, the city size limit is something completely artificial, as far as I'm concerned.

[ryan_mizu 1]

   Maxis' post refers to discussing a line in the sand for UGC. Where they draw that line will determine if SC13 will sink or swim for commited players. In retrospect of Sim City 4, was there ever a line drawn for UGC? I ask because when you look at the game now after ten years the archives of mods appear to point to no limit.

[KaOra 4]

Off line mode will appear then they can axe the servers and move on to another project 

[Snugies 91]

I can see the city connections as being a big headache for modders. I think they may have to make like only 3 "potential" connections on each side for each city, not allowing the player to just freely make connections where ever they want. I think it has something to do with agent simulation. It is like the Region acts as some total controller in the game. Graphics are superb but its the agent simulation I think will give people a lot of headaches. The whole trying to 'calculate every persons actions' instead of just approximating. They should have just approximated stuff again and given us bigger maps....ah well.

[AkemiAzula 280]

I try to understand their argument. But please. This is 2013 and you're telling me a bunch of programmers in California can't make a agent based system in a city simulator work for cities bigger than four square kilometres? Please. if GlassBox won't do it, consider making a wooden box.

[spiritbw 111]

Heard about this yesterday elsewhere on the net.

 

What I am getting from reading the blog post is that it wasn't that they couldn't increase city size.  The problem was they couldn't increase city size and still meet their stated minimum hardware requirements.  So no official size increase which does suck but is at least understandable.

 

However.....

 

Then they say they are looking at offline and mod support.  To me, these go hand in hand.  Offline support means mod support is a go.  Looking back on what was found out about the always online requirement this seems like it should be a fairly simple thing to pull off, just time consuming.  It's going to come down to if they have the budget to let a programmer sit and code the thing plus some Q.A.  Given the fiasco of launch I'm betting/hoping Q.A. has become a sacred duty at Maxis.

 

IF they give players an offline mode and mod support, I imagine one of the first mods we'll see is a larger map size mod.

[huskerman007 26]

I will be very happy if they release this in offline mode. When my internet goes down I shouldn't have to worry about playing Simcity. It's not a multiplayer game. To me Simcity will always be meant to have one person play the entire region. I am extremely dissapointed that bigger maps probably won't come. I have maxed out a lot of my cities and wish I could do a lot more with them.

[ebalosus 19]

I try to understand their argument. But please. This is 2013 and you're telling me a bunch of programmers in California can't make a agent based system in a city simulator work for cities bigger than four square kilometres? Please. if GlassBox won't do it, consider making a wooden box.

 

If simcity is built using OO principles, then we can assume that the simulation happens within the Class "city". "city" is contained with the Class "region". The solution: make "city" equal to, or slightly smaller than "region".

[Noobi-Wan 22]

Maxis seems to love making broken engines... First Sims 3 and now SimCity.

I agree. They seem to have bitten off far more than they could chew with the engine. Couple this with the multiplayer aspect and the need for this to work on old hardware and the prospects of bigger maps were always bleak.

This is one of those priceless examples of not finding out what the existing customers want before releasing something. Glassbox is cool but too ambitious.

That said I like the game despite the issues and there are glimmers of hope in here (albeit with some rather large ifs). IF we get an offline mode, IF mod support is implemented and IF the modders out there are able to, perhaps we may one day be able to build on entire regions.

[Zapf Dingbats 7]

The blog is bogus. The guy blames on not being able to create a doable game because they don't have enough servers to run their game. That's complete bogus.

 

It's like saying Coke will sell you soda but Coke only have Coke and nothing else. No, Coke has 125 flavors. Ya they make sure you drink until you drop.

 

So yes EA, make the game work because you are selling it, not giving it away for free.

 

I don't care much for bigger citie or offline mode.

 

They need to fix the current critical issues first

1) Add Highways

2) Fix the broken mass transit

3) Unfullfilled freight orders - No matter how many industrial zones I have, I even created a separate city with nothing but poor sims and half of the map are industrial zones, I still have 10,000 unfullfilled freight orders.

[reReticulated Spline 69]

Lack of bigger maps is a big dissapointment for everyone, myself included. However, for me this has always been secondary to adjecent city tiles. I want to fully develop a region and build everywhere. Whether this is done on 1 map or 30 doesn't matter that much to me. With bigger maps as a (partial) solution off the table, I wonder how Maxis is going to go foreward.

 

Offline being considered is good new though and the latest Dev post on the UGC forum is really great news, as it shows their intention to give modders all the power as long as they can protect players who don't want UGC to influence their games. 

 

Ultimately the question for me is going to be: will I be able to create something that 'looks' like a real life city and add my own gameplay-content to it? Gamplay-wise this game has jumped far ahead of SC4, but without the ability to keep expanding your city it will miss the longevity SC4 had.

[baertooth 330]

Concerning adjacent tiles...

 

 

eversonj90

Senior Moderator

Joined: 07/27/2010 14:28:40
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Jacob wrote:I am still wondering why are there big gaps on the map between each city? These looks highly unrealistic, and influences of one city on its neighbors will be greatly diminished because of increasing distance between each city. All these make the game less fun because if the cities in a region cannot correctly interact with each other, they become isolated and difficult to perform specialized function. After a while all the cities look like similar as well.

 

[/indent]

It could be something to do with regional connectivity/balance and distribution of agents. At worst I would imagine the map is laid out in such a way to give an illusion of size.

The only limiting factor that I'm 100% aware of is a 7 connection (air, sea, road), etc, limit per city. It would be good to have this improved so that city tiles could sit next to each other connecting on all sides to produce a larger city, even if these do need to be micro-managed.

However, I'm still trying to get to the bottom of where this 7 limit comes from, what technical decisions are surrounding it (if any) and whether improvements to it can be made or not.

 

 

This is from the thread the above link points to in the Simcity forum.

[Yaffle 29]

I find it irritating that the idea of bigger cities was not thought about before release - surely any tester would think after 2-3 hours "oh, where do I put the XXXX". But still. The longer this goes on the more this will wind up in text books as an example of exactly how not to release a game.

 

Then we get told it's just "too difficult" to make cities bigger. I buy, a bit, the idea that some machines can't deal with it, but it is at best disingenuous. So here's where my problems with that are:

 

1. I was told that the simulation was being run on EA's servers, not my machine, so why does my machine specification matter? Please Maxis/EA, be at least slightly consistent with your announcements.
2. I know my machine is fast, but still when SC runs it uses far less than 4% of the CPU. That's a lot of headroom.

A parallel would be graphics settings. Every gamer just deals with the way that some machines are more powerful than others. So we have a "graphics settings" slider. You have an older/slower GPU - no problem, set it at the bottom. You have a faster one, set it at the top. Surely a similar slider could be written for city size?

 

Another compromise would be just roads and "ploppables" outside the square. We know this works already thanks to the modders, so why not exploit it further? Minimal map adjustment, or shock! horror! terraforming could allow it to happen easily and give some relief to players.

 

Instead, no compromise. Just "no, we're not going to do that. So clear off and don't talk about it again."

 

That's fine. That's okay, you have my money from this one game. But it's the last of it you will ever see. Maxis and EA both in the "sanctions" bin, never to receive any more Yaffley cash.

 

My other concern is about telemetry - how do they know my machine specs? I don't recall ever saying they could extract them, so I assume it's buried in the EULA. If that's the case, what other data from my machine has EA been harvesting?

[Cobraroll 138]

It's not because of the player's computer's specs. The agent system doesn't scale very well, so with larger maps, the pathfinding would be more and more broken until some components simply ceases to work (for instance, water that can't find the way to a house, or workplaces not recognised as such because they are too far away from the residential area). In short, if the maps were slightly bigger than they are now, the simulation wouldn't work.

 

It's not your computer that's bad, or EA's servers that don't do their jobs. It's the framework of the game that's fundamentally flawed.

[reReticulated Spline 69]

I find it irritating that the idea of bigger cities was not thought about before release - surely any tester would think after 2-3 hours "oh, where do I put the XXXX". But still. The longer this goes on the more this will wind up in text books as an example of exactly how not to release a game.

 

Of course it was though of before release. They just couldn't get it working in time so they decided to postpone it until after launch. Then, they worked on it after launch and still couldn't get it to work so they had to give up. 

[Rufus Honker IV 100]

Well, at least they're being honest now.  I'd rather have an honest answer I don't like than a lying answer I like.

 

If they are NOT giving us bigger city sizes they really need to give us more small town playthings.  It's easy to build a small town in sandbox or on a map with other people opening up city hall addons, but if you don't like sandbox (nothing to work towards), or can't find a good region to work in (not easy) your options are limited on small towns.

 

The first two million players received the Launch Park, we recently released new hotels and houses of worship, and we’re planning to release additional free content soon - more region maps, more free buildings and more.

 

 

I have houses of worship - what are these hotels?

[Yaffle 29]

It's not because of the player's computer's specs. The agent system doesn't scale very well, so with larger maps, the pathfinding would be more and more broken until some components simply ceases to work (for instance, water that can't find the way to a house, or workplaces not recognised as such because they are too far away from the residential area). In short, if the maps were slightly bigger than they are now, the simulation wouldn't work.

 

It's not your computer that's bad, or EA's servers that don't do their jobs. It's the framework of the game that's fundamentally flawed.

 

I think you are utterly correct, quite simply the glassbox engine isn't really fit for purpose. My irritation comes from this quote in the blog:

 

"The system performance challenges we encountered would mean that the vast majority of our players wouldn’t be able to load, much less play with bigger cities."

 

Which implies it's a raw processing issue. I am sure it's not, and I am sure you are right that getting power across a map fails on the current size because of the engine. Life would be so much easier if they would just level with us.

[Xenocity 343]

Maxis seems to love making broken engines... First Sims 3 and now SimCity.

All Maxis games are plagued with issues starting with the very first release of the original Simcity on Commodore 64 in 1987.

Simcity on SNES is the most stable version because Nintendo stepped in and helped optimize it.

 

To be fair testers rarely play simuation games long enough to find many of the bugs.

If it makes you feel any better Maxis games are still less bug ridden than Bethesda's (Elder Scrolls, Skyrim, Fall Out 3)

 

A fun fact from history, Simcity almost didn't find a publisher because no publisher though the game would sell enough to warrant the investment in 1987.

It took the game  3 years before it sold well.

 

(The article is white font against a white background, so you have to highlight it to read it, or read the spoiler box below)

explains Wright. "My games are more like a hobby - a train set or a doll house. Basically they're a mellow and creative playground experience."

 

Not surprisingly, game publishers had a hard time buying into the concept. As Wright remembers, publishers such as Broderbund "just kept asking me how I was going to make it into a game." However Wright resisted the pressure to change his creation and as a result, SimCity didn't have a publisher for the PC or Mac. Wright would go on to release a Commodore version in 1987, but the main gaming platforms were out of his reach, at least until he met self-dubbed "idea guy" Jeff Braun at a pizza party in 1987. Braun was so taken by Wright's innovative SimCity design that the two decided to immediately start their own company to help publish the game on home computers. They'd call it Maxis.

 

By 1989, Wright and Braun struck a co-publishing agreement with Broderbund. But they still weren't sure if the game would sell. "Jeff thought it would do really well, but I was less optimistic," Wright admits. "It was just a much more cerebral game than anything else out there, by far." Initially, he was right. Sales were sluggish, and for the first few months, Wright handled all the tech support for the game out of Braun's Orinda, California, apartment.

 

 

 

If they do give us an offline mode, does this mean people will be able to pirate and hack the game to bits?

I know a few people who are waiting to pirate this game like they have done with all the previous Simcitys.

[heat33330 26]

I knew that about SimCity already. It was the same for most Maxis games. In this case though, Sims 3 and SimCity are way buggier than the usual Maxis games. Sims 3's last EP will be released this year so at least there will be modders to rescue it, can't say the same for SimCity.

[Rufus Honker IV 100]

 

If it makes you feel any better Maxis games are still less bug ridden than Bethesda's (Elder Scrolls, Skyrim, Fall Out 3)

 

A fun fact from history, Simcity almost didn't find a publisher because no publisher though the game would sell enough to warrant the investment in 1987.

It took the game  3 years before it sold well.

 

We bought Ultima 7 when it first came out in 1992.  There was a bug where if you went to the Horace the Lich's house in Skara Brae the game would crash.  We called Origin and they sent us a patch.  Via floppy disk.  Snail mail.  Those were the days.

 

The fact that companies can now release crap and patch it up after letting us playtest it is a sad but unavoidable fact today.  I don't see a way around it.