Xenocity

Is there anyway one of you can make a mod that fixes the student commuting issue for universities and schools? Maxis has announced the game is officially opened for modding, rules llisted here.

Do they take actions though? I really doubt EA will do anything about it except for lying out theirs policies and how everyone should have equal access to their cities and etc. I wouldn't know, I play by myself due to my OCD requiring me to have it just the way i want it. But to Maxis defense they didn't want people screwing others over. Though I've read they will reset a city and/or region for you if you ask them. Really just find other fans to play with. I do think Maxis will implement something soon, especially after the modding announcement they gave on January 9th that opened the game officially for modding.

People like this ruin most online games. There is nothing you can do, other than report them to EA. You should always be weary of playing with random people. I suggest you visit the Origin Friends thread at the top of the forum to find committed people to play with.

Actually the extra Water and Power are divided up equally amongst all the connected cities (including the unstarted cities), unless you have stopped the power and water sources from exporting to the other cities. Garabage, Recycling, and Trade depot trucks are subject to traffic and can get stuck in traffic. University and Community College commuting is broken. There is an issue that can prevent students from being picked up by school buses that is unrelated to heavy traffic. Heavy Traffic can prevent school buses from pick up students if they get delayed long enough. Where's my education patch...? Seems to me that commuting is the only really broken thing. Few workers commute to neighboring cities, while it seems that students will not commute at all. Shoppers commute, but there is no reliable way to track their numbers, and I end up having to put stores in every neighborhood because people won't go shop in the downtown of the big city next door. Service sharing works fine for me; I've been able to completely get rid of garbage facilities in some cities and rely completely on trucks coming from a dump in another city. One city can provide services for an entire region if you invest enough in it. I agree. Though it does bother me how power/water/sewage are automatically divided up. I wish my cities could buy what they need from the supplying city instead. Granted the solar power crowns on Mega Towers does allow for a city to produce tons of power without taking up room. Students do commute to high schools and elementary schools. But for some reason they will occasionally stop communting for no reason, causing zones to be abandoned. Strangely they will not commute to Universities (which really stops me from maxing out my university) I found out that buses and ferries are best for commuting shoppers and workers, granted it still varies widly. Trains, Airships, and others (I think I'm forgetting something) tend to work on and off. I hope they fix the education commuting in Update 10 (I'd like both to be fixed). I still find it strange that Maxis still has trouble getting Sims to commute between cities after 3 mainline Simcitys. Outside of commuting, the only other major issue is the Megatower residents who constantly have issues causing them to move out or be unable to find the shops and offices (they are right above you or in the next tower). This causes the towers to become massively unprofitable at the very least. Though this major issue happens if you play the same city for an hour or two without break. Other than that I enjoy the game and the expansion.

You've obviously confused EA with Blizzard, Valve, and Capcom. EA's business model is to do yearly iterations like the rest of the Western console developers. Maxis is the special exception due to their degree of independence within EA. And it wouldn't sell enough to breakeven. Anyways EA's next quarterly conference call is in a few weeks and we will see if Simcity 2013 has broke 3 million mark, thus outselling Simcity 2000. Honestly I wouldn't expect a sequel to Simcity 2013 for a few more years if at all due to how niche the simulation genre is when it comes to sales. I'd expect Maxis to turn out a few more expansion packs over the next few years. I think we will only see one Simcity per decade now due to the sheer costs of development and the low sales of simulation games. I'm surprised EA allowed Maxis to make another Simcity after how badly Simcity 4 performed. I mean Cities XL sold so little that it bankrupted the developer Monte Cristro in 2010. Focus Home Interactive bought the rights to Cities XL, but they said they are only a publisher and have no plans to find a developer to develop a sequel to Cities XL series because of low sales (Or fix the game engine for that matter). This is why they've only released the expansion packs known as XL 2012 and Platinum. Long story short, Simulation games don't sell enough to warrant today's development costs. History of Maxis and EA: Maxis was literally out of money by the end of 1996 and was forced to find a buyer or be liqudiated. EA was the only company willing to buy Maxis. EA was unhappy that Simcity 3000 and 3000U didn't make Maxis profitable EA decided to shut down Maxis after the release of The Sims. The Sims sold faster than EA could ship discs. The Sims made EA extremely profitable EA decided to leave Maxis alone provided they continue to work on The Sims as well. Maxis retained their status as an independent EA studio. The point is EA saved Maxis and The Sims is the only thing keeping Maxis profitable.

Not true. By that logic Windows 8 would've sold even faster because it was $40 for the first 6 months. When I said "stickers" I was implying OEM installs. PC sales peaked in 2011 because tablets began to eat into the low-end market. [source] Actually Windows 8 suffered from a huge negative public perception at launch which caused people to avoid the OS. This perception was not due to bad code or lying about minimum specs requried to run it like Vista suffered from. Windows 8 suffers from being new and different which caused an overall backlash from the development community and consumers. People still believe Windows 8 has trouble or cannot run software made for Windows 7 or before. People are still put off by the titles replacing the start menu. Windows 8.1 was formally launched under the name Windows Blue, conveying that is a new OS not a service pack of 8 (which it is). Windows Blue (8.1) launched to good public and developer reviews, especially that Microsoft conviced everyone they were allowing Wiindows 8 users to upgrade to the new Windows for free!!! Windows Blue will see decent adoption rate, if not good marketshare by 2015 (unless Windows 9 launches next year as rumored). The reason why Windows 7 adoption rate was through the roof even at launch was due to glowing developer and public perception and reception of 7. Windows 7 is a damn good OS, which makes it all astonishing that it came from Microsoft of all people. People couldn't wait to ditch the crappy OS that was Vista and upgrade to 7. With that all said, I do hope Windows 8.1 gets the marketshare it deserves, I don't regret upgraded to 8.1 from 7. It fixed all the issues that plagued 8. I love my titles and the sheer snappiness of 8.1. Long story short, Public and developer perception and reception will make or break an OS, The tablet marketshare isn't hurting or helping Windows as a whole. The only thing tablets are doing is causing some growth for Android.

More like 2011, otherwise I'd be seeing more Vista stickers than 7. Ermmm think ~$700 for a respectible PC and ~$1200 for a equivalent Mac. The "fat-ultrabook" I bought last year for $700 had: 3rd Gen. Intel Core i5-3315U 4 GB RAM (upgraded to 8 GB for $50) Intel HD Graphics 4000 500 GB HDD I can run SimCity on medium settings, all the way up to 200k population fairly smoothly. Looking at the Microsoft Store, 4th Gen. i7s can be had for $600. My post is based on the actually prices and specs on the sites of Dell, HP, Apple at the time of posting. Yes I actually went to their online stores to get the prices and specs. I know very few people who will pay more than $500 for a PC of any brand, without screaming about how over priced they are. This includes the engineers and IT people I know. The only reason why Windows 7 had lightning fast adoption rate, was due to Microsoft offering upgrades to Vista users for $50 or less in the first six months. I upgraded for $13 for the digital download of Windows 7 at launch. This chart also helps explain why many developers including Maxis have kept their software with low spec requirements. People are begrudgingly moving on from XP, which for some reason commands 30-40% of the market share depending on the source. Also this graph doesn't show 10.9, even though it is from November and 10.9 has the highest adoption rate for any version of OSX since 10.1 http://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-8.1-adoption-rate,24974.html

Actually the extra Water and Power are divided up equally amongst all the connected cities (including the unstarted cities), unless you have stopped the power and water sources from exporting to the other cities. Garabage, Recycling, and Trade depot trucks are subject to traffic and can get stuck in traffic. University and Community College commuting is broken. There is an issue that can prevent students from being picked up by school buses that is unrelated to heavy traffic. Heavy Traffic can prevent school buses from pick up students if they get delayed long enough. Where's my education patch...?

Yup. Meteors can contain redaition and ores.

Well to be fair, Simcity 1-4 use the same core engine (hence the graphics) Obviously you don't remember how many years of patching it took to make Simcity 1, 2000, and 4 fully functional. Also Simcity 3000 is said to be the easiest Simcity to date, while Simcity 2000 is said to be the hardest to date.

1GB - 2GBs of VRAM is considered medium specs when it comes to gaming, especially on the forum. 4GBs + is considered high end. I mean the OP views his hardware as good enough for gaming.

This. You find a region you want to play in, it's just starting out, you dig in and start to work.... and then you notice the other person is long gone and no one else has joined. Exactly. Though to be fair most people don't enjoy micro managing their cities and grow bored with them after a few hours or days. Hell everyone I know is still puzzled by the fact that I spend countless hours in every Simcity trying to perfect my cities, instead of stoping when I run out of room. To be fair I do suffer from OCD...

People say this about most games now including the big budget titles regardless of the system. We can thank Steam sales for rapidly devaluing gaming as a whole along with Android store. i mean why buy a game at full price when you can find it on sale on Steam for less than $15 at least 5 times a year. Though i still beg to differ with your post, I've diffently gotten my money worth out of this game and its expansion pack. I've actually clocked 188 hours in this game to date which is more than every game I've bought in 2013 combined (except for Animal Crossing: New Leaf, which I've currently clocked 200 hours on) Edit: I should also note Simcity is one of very few games that allows you to install it both on Mac and Windows for no extra charge. Most games still charge you a fee for to get the version that runs on another OS.

Well Maxis is probably right. People pretty much stopped buying new PCs around 2007 as seen by the massivle declines each quarter in PC sales and shipments continuing to this day. (this is not meant to spark a discussion on whether or not smartphones and tablets are cannablizing the PC market) Most developers are focusing on lower specs for their games. The reason for this is simple: People with lower spec computers (Running Graphic Cards with less than 2GBs of RAM) is far greater than those with higher end specs by a large margin. Also most people aren't willing to spend more than $500 for their desktops and $800 for their laptops (NPD has the market research). Go to Dell, HP, Acer/Gateway, Asus, etc... and see the specs for their computers. For computers (includes laptops and ultrabooks) costing less than $1200 on a general rule the base specs are: iCore 3 or 5 CPU 4 GBs of RAM Intel HD Graphics 4000 or 5000 (is it out yet?) 500GBs - 1TB HDD Dell does sell performance and gaming PCs both Alienware and Dell brands stating at $700. Though they only come with 1GB Nvidia Graphics card. If you want a better graphics card it will cost you a few hundred more. HP does sell desktops with 2GB graphics card, though they will run you at least $1,000 Even Apple charges you extra if you want a dedicated graphics card now. Most Macs now ship with Intel integrated HD graphics as the only graphic card. The main reason for this is the fact that for 20+ years now consumers have been taught cheaper is better when buying PCs, thus leaving higher performance models and graphic cards as being perceived as "overpriced"!

Thanks Xeno, Could you perhaps elaborate on the "constantly switch cities" comment? I understand the benefits of having inter-connected cities, so doing it solo means you'll have to build up multiple ones. But once they're in the 'final stages', would you still have to keep switching cities to gain a benefit? Or in other words, does the act of being online in a city but not doing anything extra to progress, still give a benefit to trade (or other things) with a connected city? It means you have to play all the cities and build them up. If you want one city to have more utilities capacity, you must switch to that city and add the utilities. Then you must play the city until everything takes effect. Same goes for the other aspects as well. It can get time consuming to micro manange a whole region. Personally i don't mind. When playing with others, you just have to send a message to that person telling them what you need and they hopefully will do it.

The only disadvantage of solo play is having to manage the region on your own. This means you have to constantly switch cities when ever you need to do something. The advantage is you get to CONTROL THE REGION!! The only real advantages of multiplayer are: People maintain cities in the region instead of you having to do it all alone It allows for interesting dynamic by having multiple view points. It really boils down to how obsessive you are at micromanaging everything.

This. Simcity 2013 is far more realistic in the way traffic, agents, and sims operate than Simcity 4: Deluxe was after 3 patches. Every Maxis game to date except for Simcity 3000U has been glitchy and problem ridden near to the point of unplayability. The only difference this time around is Maxis actually decided to fix the game via patching instead of making fans do it (Simcity 4 did not get decent traffic and sim pathfinding until 2010 version of NAM). Maxis suffers from having to meet deadlines/release date like most developers these days. In order to meet the deadline/release date, games tend to get rushed by most developers and/or are unable to be fully debugged. This is why we get patches on almost every game now. If a developer ends up delaying a game, they get punished by the publisher, management and shareholders (who are the worst of the bunch). Shareholders alone will dump the stock or force a massive change in management via a shareholders vote in order to ensure profits over stable products. Management tends to fire those who are unable to meet deadlines/release dates. Maxis themselves were spared being shut down due to the success of The Sims (most of Maxis games do not sell well or make decent profits including their pre EA days) This is why Maxis has more freedom than the rest of EA.

So are you inferring it will go the way of Simcity 2000 and Simcity 1 where very few notice the release of the second expansion pack? In most cases the first expansion pack does well, while the others that follow only sell to dedicated players. So yeah only the first expansion packs are the important ones.

It will depend on sales. If sales keep going strong along with the majority of the users still playing (as it was at the end of EA's last quarter), then not any time soon. Since my laptop is connected to the internet nearly all time, the online requirement doesn't bother me. Edit: Many new PC games also have an always online requirement including Diablo 3 and Anno 2070. So this is gradually becoming more prevelant in PC gaming due to piracy and cheaters

The game works now. It still has a few lesser issues and Universities still cannot get regional students. The Expansion Pack adds a lot new futuristic stuff. You can buy Simcity Plus (Game + Expansion Pack) on Origin for $60 If you don't like the new direction, then you can always buy Cities XL Platinum on sale for $10.19 on Steam thru January 2nd. I suggest you go to Target by the end of tomorrow to take advantage of the 10% special sale and pick up an Origin Cash Card and/or Steam one while you can get them on sale.

No, One city can supply a Great Works site with all the utilities it needs (and workers too). The Great Works sites count like builldings in the utilities grid. The Great Works take precedence over the cities when it comes to utilities. So the power distribution will look like this with the Great Works hooked up: If one city is powering the Great Works and the region: Total Power Usage = (Power City + Great Works) + City 2 + City 3 + City 4 If two cities are powering the Great Works and other cities: Total Power Usage = (Power City 1 + Great Works) + (Power City 2 + Great Works) + City 3 + City 4 If three cities are powering the Great Works and other cities: Total Power Usage = (Power City 1 + Great Works) + (Power City 2 + Great Works) + (Power City 3 + Great Works) + City 4 etc....

That would be a good money sink for the game- a million simoleons for another entrance. Any city large enough to need more entry spots should be able to afford it. In addition, regions with more totally flat city spaces. Decent terraforming would certainly help with all of the above. The tools provided in SimCity 4 were impressive and remain so. Although I fear EA/Maxis may use the argument that they are introducing more regions instead, but I noticed some modders have discovered that there are "hidden/debug mode" features that allow you to build roads outside city boundaries http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWYIVxaTD4U Bigger Cities would also be a help for this sort of thing (yeah yeah, I am going to keep mentioning this until it happens) Despite it being the second most popular moan/request (after Offline Mode) it seems enlarging the ridiculous small city-sizes has been thrown out of the window. I hope they don't expect us to pay for terraforming tools in the form of a future expansion. Most games have a hidden debug mode that can only be accessed by the developers and hackers. I personally enjoy the challenge of building my cities around the environments.

Depending on the settings you have turned on, it may have already distributed the excess power to the cities already buying it. The 57MWs are what's left over after all the existing cities take their cut.

I've only had it happen to me once a few months ago. Once it was done, I went on playing without any trouble. It hasn't happend to me again *knocks on wood*

There's probably never been a more absurd lie in gaming history, ever. Microsoft has EA beat by a very long mile. Microsoft told us Xbox 360 from the very beginning could play games in full 1080p (only a handful over the past 8 years could). Microsoft also told us the fabled 360 hardware failures were caused by user errors and that they have to charge us to use Netflixs and IE on 360 and Xbox One due to the effort it requires to stream data to them. Sony also told us PS3 was worth working 2 jobs over at launch. Nintendo told us, they couldn't make Princess Peach playable in New Super Mario Bros. Wii due to her dress being too hard to animate in 2.5D (they really did say this)! Activision told us every version of Call of Duty on PS3 and 360 were in full HD, even though they ran in 560p. Apple claims their iPhone is the best selling video game system in world. Etc... The point is EA hasn't made the worst lines on why something doesn't work. Maxis just doesn't want to force fans to buy new PCs. If they did, believe me everyone would hate the them and the game even worse than they already due if their PCs couldn't play the game. Maxis already learned that lesson once.