Infinitum80

100% Its like finding out your girlfriend/wife cheated on you. Do you forgive her or dump her? And if you do forgive her, can you really trust her again and will you really love her the same? Something tells me my own loathing of this whole situation will mean I will play it only when the cost is worthwhile (ie bargain bin at my local game shop) as at present I would rather stick the money into a SC clone kickstarter

The best thing about it all is the comments underneath the article post Streams of people complaining with 100 positive thumbs up You get the occasional "stop moaning, i love the game" comments which get -100 thumbs And to make things even funnier, the only post Maxis replies to in the entire chain of pain is someone saying that they love the game, the reply says "Thank you, we hope others see it this way soon" and that reply got many thumbs down where people responded saying "Maxis, how come you are replying to the ONLY comment that is being positive and not addressing the negative" Seems like this is EA all over from here on in. I think we have to honestly consider abandoning SC - Gone are the days of proprietary fixed content that is only set to one game. LOL, HON, DOTA and DOTA2 are examples of this - basically the exactly same game but with some visual tweaks So why can't we start looking to Steam and Kickstarter for the next SC - we waited 10+ years for a decent SC game and they got it wrong - i hate this, i really want to play this game but i really cant stand what they have done to us.

So we know how to play SimCity 2013 offline - we have been shown how so EA felt it needed to respond indirectly to this http://www.ea.com/news/simcity-update-straight-answers-from-lucy Multiplayer in mind? So something in them said "Players want to play with other cities online" - where did this come from? The outrage regarding this suggests it didn't come from the players, so where? If Blizzard decided to take WoW offline for some reason and used the same excuse, there would be uproar. I have no doubt that there are some WoW players that would prefer to play offline and some SC players who want to play online but the majority in these cases suggests that you design a model to fit their demand and then treat the secondary model as an option. SC offline + option to go online? That would have been fine! So here it is ladies and gents - we have gone from "Complex calculations that need to be run on the server" to "Online is just about running the region and social stuff. Which is pretty much what we have figured out ourselves. So instead of saying "We screwed up, we lied to you, we are sorry" they say "Actually what we meant to say about online is that it does all of this... can you just forget we said the other stuff please?" Lucy Bradshaw and EA are stupid or they think we are stupid, either way stupid comes into it! So now she thinks we are playing the game at work? I don't know about you but my work doesn't let me play facebook games let alone full blown install to harddrive PC games. Bizzare! How do you know they are DRAWN to the connected experience? Have you polled people? The only draw players have is the handcuffed requirement to play online, it isn't a draw it is a requirement and stop making it sound like players want this, we don't. Let those that do click the "play online" button whilst the rest of us will pick "play offline" - that choice was taken away from us and to come out saying it was decided for us because that is what you not only thought we WANTED but that we continue to WANT is beyond arrogant and extremely insulting. Poll the players, ask them - they dont want it online and whilst you will get SOME that do, stating SOME as ALL is lies at worst, incorrect at best. They used the 3 magic letter word that has completely been avoided until now. Why not just call this SC: Online and market it as an MMO? ... well because players would have kicked off long before launch and the trap-money they wouldn't have got otherwise would be spent elsewhere Your vision? I appreciate Maxis is a creative work and they have reign to do as they please but this isn't an indie game, this is a £45 ($60) billed product and when you charge so much money for something you go past the "This is my creative work I hope you like it" into "We have to build something people want" I won't go so far as to say the communities vision is stronger or more important than maxis What I will say is that community deserved consideration, even a smidge and it got none Single City Isolation? A nice way to put down the version of the game most players wanted. Categorizing that there are SOME fans who want offline but 1000s who love the functionality - this is saying that the offline fans are in the minority. We aren't You can skew figures to say anything - I can say there are 1000s of anything and compare it to some of another thing but it doesnt make it right. I almost want to start picketing this crazy ladies house and the offices she works at. This is worse political speak than we get from our political leaders. MOST fans want Offline MOST fans never wanted Online I don't have fancy number as such Lucy does but I know how to read the pulse of a gaming community and this one from the players, the community members (forum posters, chatters, bloggers etc), reviewers, youtube posters, magazines are all screaming the same thing. You only have to read the twitter feed of Simcity to see propoganda in action live. Its beyond fluff and just had some random twitter responds saying "I am glad you enjoy the game, post some pictures of your cities" where I reckon for every 1 fluff tweet there are 10 less fluffy ones and no surprise they arent getting commented on by EA. Its one thing to go against our interests and make a game the most of us dont think is good enough Its another to say that is what we wanted Its like assualting some and saying they asked for it!

Agree totally... thankfully the always-on-drm means that at least patching will be something easier to do WOW, am i actually defending EA at this point? LOL

http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/simcity-update-8 We understand that when cars always take the shortest route between point A and point B there will be unavoidable (and illogical) traffic jams, so we are retuning these values to make the traffic flow more realistically. Guillaume Pierre (our lead scripter) talked a bit about the improvements that we are making to the traffic system in the game here. To dig a little deeper our roads will have a weighting system based on 25%, 50% and 75% capacity. As a road hits those marks it will become less and less appealing for other cars, increasing the likelihood of them taking an alternate path if one exists. We are working on additional fixes with the pathing of our Agents and these changes will streamline the way that the simulation unfolds in your city. For instance, emergency vehicles will not get blocked in their garages and will move into empty lanes to get around traffic jams. We’re also working on preventing service vehicles from clumping up (for instance, only one fire truck will respond to a fire instead of two) and improving the way that Public Transportation operates in the city. We are currently testing a patch internally and hope to have it out to you soon. I await to see this in action, once its fixed perhaps ill buy the game

Really? Well i suppose that works in the US or outside the UK but I am fairly sure that the lights I run into have no consideration of sensors. Sometimes I have got really bored and counted how long until the lights change - and this doesnt vary I reckon it will change depending on recorded and forecast data (ie different at peak time, different if there is a football game on) but I do not think that in the UK we have a lot of these smart-traffic lights or not at least that I have run into. Either way, a roundabout is the smartest form of traffic control since it allows for the exact traffic scenario to be judged each tiem And becuse of this you would think there are more accidents on roundabouts when in fact they save more lives in their placement than they cause. Near our house there is a small T junction where the tail part connects to a supermarket. Getting in and out of this used to be a nightmare because to get out I would head up the tail of the T and turn right to get home but to do that I would need to cross over the traffic which required me to have no traffic coming from the right or left. So in this situation for traffic to flow it has to wait for there to be a natural gap between two independent lanes of traffic going opposite ways where the t-bar of the junction has priority and doesnt suffer this problem. Now we have a roundabout and its seamless and there are no problems or heavy queues. Why dont they just have a soft-key that lets you pain roundabout junctions. I dont know the maths but i reckon if someone compared a typical gridlocked 4-way junction to a roundabout offering the same exits that it would allow traffic to flow smarter than any traffic light would. And overpasses... why cant we have these? even if you add terraforming so we can make it go through a tunnel or something. Why does the busy hectic stupidly busy because pathfinding is broken road have to intersect with my breezy not as busy intersection? One thing i realized is... why can't Maxis/EA just come out and say "We have a buggy game, we are sorry however we want to institute some kind of community development and as a result tailor the game to suit what the community want. We are going to have 5 things every month we want to change (either they come up with them, see the interest from the forums or ask directly for feedback) and then you can vote on what you want" That way if the people know that each month something they want will be added (ie roundabouts, overpasses, subways etc) then it will actually be a joint venture rather than EA bleeding us

The stupid one i heard was that agents dont reside in permenant locations, specifically with home and work. Yes, i get that you could justify that everyone is a day worker and works in a different place each day but when they go home to a completely different lot is just crazy. IMHO, its either graphical representation of traffic (so if its busy it refers to the relevant opportunities to reduce traffic, bus, rail, nearby extra routes etc) or its actual agents in traffic but you can't argue both because well you get what we have now. As gamers we are used to seeing NPC's vanishing into thin air or going into rabbit holes, its fine and our suspension of disbelief works fine in this regard. What we don't like is when a game says to us that we are getting a real agent based engine and it falls down at the first hurdle suggesting either poor initial design (bad maxis!) or bad testing of possible flaws (bad maxis testers!) Come on... testers figure out everything in a game.. what if i plop down a fire station whilst there is a fire nearby and hold my breath whilst tapping the escape and enter key in unison 100 times? - surely they could have tested "what if a traffic jam builds up when there is a quicker but longer route nearby?" Either a) This came up and was ignored (for financial or idiocy reasons) b) This never came up because it worked in test but something changed and now it is bugged c) This never came up because this wasnt tested

I know I have said this in another thread but wanted to really "drive" it home In a typical road junction managed by traffic lights, the lights come on and off in a timed sequence that is in real life forecast based on traffic patterns but ultimately uses a timer to determine traffic. This means that if Road A has 100 cars queing and Road B has 10 cars queing and the Traffic Light alternates on a 30 second window, and each car takes 2 seconds to pass through the junction, 15 cars can go through the junction at any point. This means that Road A will only allow 15% of its queing cars to evacuate the junction whilst Road B allows the entire queue to leave with 10 seconds left over. In this specific scenario those 10 seconds (approx 16% of the total sequence) is lost. This is only a specific scenario, real life / sim life may allow for more or less queue, different sequences etc etc but the concept remains the same which is that without some kind of constant calculation of the traffic second to second, time is lost with a typical traffic light system unless all traffic is 100% equal (which usually means 100% gridlock!) A roundabout however DOES utilize constant calculations in real life, with the control being down to the drivers and their eyes/brains and common sense. In the above example, roughly and not exactly the waiting time is shared out amongst all parties and whilst the variations do alter based on which direction the traffic wants to go, the confidence of the drivers etc it ultimately means very little if any time is spent waiting at junctions. Bottom line - bring roundabouts to SC please!

I get the people looking to cling to the hope that Maxis developed the game well and the pathfinding is just a glitch but i think it has been pretty much hashed out that it isnt a glitch, its a shortcut in programming and am sure if the developers were put to the microphone without fear of reprisal - they would admit it to and no doubt it was all down to something needing to be cut to save on resources. What i reckon (not fact, just musings) is that Maxis told EA "pathfinding will cost X amount of resources that means you will need Y amount of servers and cost Z amount of dollars" - EA then said "Well, we reckon that if JUST the forecasted people play the game, we have the presales to pay for the resources we have however unless more come, we cant afford it - we will look at changing pathfinding when we have more business from it" The floating people, the buggy/flawed roads, the bad servers - all these things were I believe cost savings by EA and Maxis had to cut corners to assure reliability and speed of release. As more money gets thrown at it, the money will be spent on fixing the problems I hope but all EA cares about is money and they dont want to speculate their own when they can utilize customers money. Synical? Perhaps but has EA really given us much reason to believe otherwise? We guess/fear/sumize the worst because that is what they have done to our confidence in them. I guess I will need to wait 5 years for a good kickstarter SC clone to come out that addresses these problems!

I havent got the game so really cant test (so tempted to buy it, but since the main reason i want to is search for flaws, i reckon i am not in the right mindset to get enjoyment from it!!) Morris, did you try the test as per the youtube clips? IE : Create a traffic target (expo centre) and 2 routes, one short but congested and one technically longer but quicker? If so and it works for you, perhaps it is buggy and is working less than intended for all - otherwise if its global, no excuse from EA i reckon! Call me silly but if i have traffic outside my door going RIGHT that has been there for 5 days or by just going left and taking a 1 hour detour i can get to work - guess which route i will take! Also - if i am on a dual carriageway (avenue to you americans) then if i come out of my house and the road is moving right to left and I need to turn right, i need to go onto the road and make a uturn at the end of the dual carriageway to get where I am going On a street, its far different. There are natural gaps in traffic you can edge out into and make the turn, even when 100% congested... so why is SimCity still telling the user to make a Dual Carriageway / Avenue style one way only route when going over the road is perfectly natural and needed. Furthermore if we are working on a 1-way system as suggested above, why not let us make all the roads 1-way... then we could utilize roundabouts. A roundabout for those outside UK/EU is a one way road that loops in a circle with off/on points. its like a clockface. So if you need to go from NORTH to WEST you get on at 12 oclock and travel around the road until you hit 9 oclock and exit. Roundabouts are the single most smartest piece of traffic management and to see them removed from every Sim City game is a travesty And then lastly, what about under/overpasses. If you are telling people they have no highways and need to use avenues like highways and have to travel 5 miles in one direction to turn around, why can't we have over or underpasses to allow people to come off the road, turn around and get back onto the junction and head the other way? What really winds me up is that all of these things were learned back in the previous games Highways worked in SC2000+ as citywide ring-roads since they enabled people to get on and off at set junctions and although this was simulated traffic and not actual agents, it still functioned the same fashion where the route is controlled by correct junctions. At present you have poor pathfinding leading to badlly planned junction management (traffic lights at best) with no way for us to bypass the junction with an overpass. If you have road A that is going for residential zone to industrial, north to south and road B that is going from the airport to the casino, west to east. If (for arguments sake) we say that no one from either road has reason to travel to/from any of the points (so no resi's going to the casino and no workers going to the airport) then road A and B should be 100% seperate. However for the airport traffic to reach the casino, they need to intersect at the centre of the city where the workers are heading to the industry zone. They will butt heads and congestion will ensue. So if the workday traffic is congested, all of a sudden the airport>casino traffic is as well. HOWEVER if i could create an overpass bridge to skip over the road - voila, no traffic problem This was in SC2000, which TBH is from a performance/graphical point of view a shadow of games that can run on iPhones. So... why on earth is the premier game from EA this year not able to perform better or as good as SC2000 in this respect Its honestly like EA want to build a game that works for them but not for us. And i have no idea why And lastly... where did this "STICK ZONES ON EVERY PIECE OF ROAD" come from? Why cant a road be used to connected 2 zones without it being filled with decision points for people to stop on? I know zones are free but come on?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/03/13/simcity-offline-what-we-know-so-far/ Best post i have seen that sums up the problems This was going to be my game-to-play-instead-of-DOTA-2-for-awhile but looks like it is back to watching my last hits and denies!

The sad thing about modern games now is with the development of most games being split into three camps 1 : Free to play, we will milk you over time 2 : Indie games, cost very little but are hit/miss regarding how good they are 3 : Expensive games, cost a bomb and you pretty much expect the world for what you get Now, F2P and Indie games can allow people to get involved for nothing, or so little that they don't feel like their cost : enjoyment ratio is hurt When you have an expensive game, like Sim City turn out to be screwed from Day-0, the ratio is beyond painful! Why didn't they just make SimCity F2P and make the money on the DLC? : F2P is for small cities, non-priority server access, less starting capital, no sandbox mode, only public regions, pay-2-play content (like fancier buildings, better tourist attractions etc)... and even tiered access pay-2-play so you can have access to certain features as a pay-2-play unlock (pay $10, get bigger cities) : P2P monthly for subscription, get everything I am being sarcastic... making Simcity like this (even though with paid DLC in the works, it will end up being as such anyways) would be tragic. A single player game where you have to subscribe x10 the cost of what it would be retail (one purchase FOREVER) over a year would be criminal I think they made this online for one reason - persistent income. Unlike Sims 3 (or Sims 4) where they can expect people to purchase add-ons because of the nature of the game, Sim City really isn't the type of game where add-ons will be in demand. The core of the game is there at the start, the only add-ons you can get are fluffy missions and extra buildings - thats pretty much it. There isn't much in the way of DLC development for SimCity because it isn't a Story-driven game or a level/map driven game. Its quite static and thats what makes it great. So, how does EA make money out of SimCity? Micro transactions of course!!! - but the only way to realisticly do this is create a crowd of people they can wave a pretty banner in front of and get interest. If SC was offline, the DLC would need to be marketed via Amazon, Google Adwords, Online / TV marketing, PC magazine marketing and email marketing... it would hit less than the intended people they want. Now, imagine you have all of your players TRAPPED in a game that they will see a rotating banner whilst they wait to log-in pushing the upcomming DLC - possibly even in game adverts or popups and whilst most hardened gamers would filter that out, the increase in revenue for DLC transactions will go up. Whilst hurting internet pirates is a thing, ultimately driving revenue past the release is their plan.

Takes me back to being a kid, playing Sim City on the SNES and it encouraging me to dig out a pen and paper and paper my walls with A4 sheets encorporating my 2D City. Makes no sense why i enjoyed it then, nowadays that type of creativity is stifiled by iPad/iPhone and everything is 3D but it was fun when i did it

I don't even have the game and it is winding me up! - I reckon i need to stop watching gameplay and reading articles and news. I am trying to give EA grace period to sort the game out and their attitude before forking over my £££ I am preparing for that to, well fail and am not willing to gamble with my pennies hoping that they fix it in time. So in regards to that, what can I play instead to fill my fix? SC3000? SC4? Cities XL? Are those my only 3 options?