Done, population dipped a bit, and I am in the process of doing some other things...but other than that nothing has really changed. Almost like I don't need anything from the outside world.
SimCity
- Thread starter Araxen
- Start date
That video further reinforces the terribleness of this game.
So then, so far we have (1)T intersections with L-shaped roads and (2)1 giant twisting avenue being the most efficient road systems...road designs that don't exist anywhere in real life. Plus his explanation of how people find jobs is preposterous. Go to nearest factory every day, go to next one if it's full, and so on...what a pathetic piece of shit game.
I think the server issues just might be a boon to EA. Everyone is up in arms over that and probably paying less attention to how terribly designed the AI is. This sort of thing on a smoothly-launched game would be catastrophic to the game. Instead it doesn't get all that much attention.
Void
Experiencer
- 9,483
- 11,200
Yeah, this is one of the things that is really killing it for me. The truck leaves one building heading the wrong direction, and decides to take who knows what fucking journey through town before ending up right next door.
Traffic is ONE of the main root causes of almost every other terrible thing in the game, I think. Like when I switch to Police View; who knew that the best way for a villain to get away scot-free was to just pull out into traffic? There is absolutely no chance that even 100 cops are going to catch him when there is even one car sandwiched between them, let alone dozens. And heaven forbid if he's on the other side of the street going the other way!! Might as well just drive around town and look for someone else at that point!
Falstaff
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 8,313
- 3,169
How has it effected your traffic? Do people try to leave your city and just drive around in circles?
Sort of like the Plane of Time issue, the only reason people were still raiding is because all the content was bugged to keep them playing?
Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
- 45,573
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Basically, lol. Once they fix the bugs they need to insert a hard mode that does a variety of things, but also makes your city more RCI dependent and makes the RCI very region dependent. As it is now I'm pretty sure we could make 15 residential only cities in a region and the 16th one could be residential only np.
Vandyn
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 3,656
- 1,382
At some point one has to wonder if some people are putting up with all these issues simply because it says 'SimCity' on the box. I can pretty much assure you if this game was called anything else other than 'SimCity', it would already be bargin bin material.
Void
Experiencer
- 9,483
- 11,200
I'm not going to ask for a refund from Amazon simply because I figure it is a lesson learned, and I'll end up playing it here and there over the coming months I'm sure, and if a few patches or tweaks make it more entertaining I might even really enjoy it. But yeah, if it weren't called SimCity I wouldn't even give it the time of day, even if there had been zero connection issues. All the inability to log in did was delay me realizing it was actually boring as fuck. Watching that video of the guy getting to 400k population made me realize that I don't want to continuously re-draw and re-zone streets every few minutes to maximize my dps. With a huge city size you didn't have to micromanage like that, you could just add another commercial block if you needed one, not bulldoze shit and draw another one.
Aside from the traffic shittiness, I have to say that bulldozing being an integral, required part of the game (whether to fix your layout or to get rid of abandoned buildings) is probably the biggest turn-off for me. It just goes against my nature to be expected to destroy large percentages of what I've already built. I realize that's my problem and not the game's, but still, it drives me nuts. Watching that guy ADHD his city made me realize just how much it kills the fun for me.
Aside from the traffic shittiness, I have to say that bulldozing being an integral, required part of the game (whether to fix your layout or to get rid of abandoned buildings) is probably the biggest turn-off for me. It just goes against my nature to be expected to destroy large percentages of what I've already built. I realize that's my problem and not the game's, but still, it drives me nuts. Watching that guy ADHD his city made me realize just how much it kills the fun for me.
Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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SimCity really is a magnificent and ambitious game. The platform is all there it just needs to be fixed and tweaked. Right now it's at beta level and they really shouldn't have released it for a few months.
Intropy
Shit Gamer
- 358
- 60
I think they've essentially created anuncanny valleyeffect with their agent simulation system. Unlike in previous games where we could just be satisfied with a completely abstracted simulation system, things are finally fine grained enough that we can start to identify individuals. The problem is that its of course not fine grained enough that those individuals are actually able to behave as intelligently as individual humans. We're kind of left in an awkward middle ground where we can no longer be satisfied with an anonymous approximate simulation, but we don't yet have the computing resources to have super detailed AI for each individual sim to behave realistically.
Its unfortunate how things have turned out, and I definitely empathize/relate to what the detractors are saying about the game, nonetheless I feel optimistic that this more ambitious model is the right direction and hope that they can improve it over time, even if it means this game is a couple full releases away from being perfect.
Its unfortunate how things have turned out, and I definitely empathize/relate to what the detractors are saying about the game, nonetheless I feel optimistic that this more ambitious model is the right direction and hope that they can improve it over time, even if it means this game is a couple full releases away from being perfect.
Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
- 45,573
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I take back what I said. The simulation isn't as rigorous as I thought:
http://answers.ea.com/t5/Miscellaneo...737060#U737060
edit:
http://answers.ea.com/t5/Miscellaneo...737060#U737060
post_sl said:
Post_sl said:
If this is all true than the simulation is only there to give an illusion of being and ownership. I was under the impression that the city modeled the 100,000 sims and their lives. This just visually represents the system in SC4 but fucks it over by making the simulation depend on the visualization..Casino_sl said:
edit:
Yeah I agree, the uncanny valley metaphor is a good description of this system. It adds in enough realism to fuck over the system but not enough to be realistic.Intropy_sl said:
Agraza
Registered Hutt
- 6,890
- 521
Tropico 4 has a lot of good points, but the Kalypso half-assed it in a number of ways too - which we don't need to get into really. I like that children have ages and will attend different education programs as they grow older, each one elevating their education. SimCity on the other hand, will let you educate your entire population with anything anytime.
Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
- 45,573
- 73,680
swayze22
Elite
- 1,212
- 1,093
2nd'ed'd......I was about to give this a whirl so let me know if I am going to be wasting my time please.
Agraza
Registered Hutt
- 6,890
- 521
When I say half-assed, it's because the base game is basically a Tropico 3 remix. Little was done to improve the design. It was like an EA Madden game where they just updated the graphics and made it bigger. This left a lot of their core customers disgruntled around the time of release as problems in 3 re-occurred in 4. Having not played 3, I only know this from having tried to resolve problems and finding that the problem persisted from the predecessor and that the problem was not solvable on my end.
I don't know if all of these have been resolved, but, for example, they had decorative rock overhangs on some of the maps that prevented road construction beneath them. The "fix" they put in for those was the removal of the overhang. This had originally caused those maps to lose access to whatever portion of the island was past the overhang. They also have some areas where the area between obstacles is so thin that you cannot place a road through, again, denying you access to a % of the map and resources. This latter issue was never addressed while I actively played.
They made maps quite a bit bigger in 4 as opposed to 3 (so I'm told), but limited the amount of road you can lay to an amount insufficient to create complexity across the larger island. So the distant locales of your island only had main street if you even bothered. Many SSes of cities showed half the island going unused because of road limitation.
There is also a hard pop limit, for which there is esentially nothing you can do, which limits how much you can use your island. That limit is like 1500 or 2000, and as you're expanding into the region of that limit you'll see some really hardcore job switching. If people switch off from the teamsters (trade depots) your income will plummet as your imports and exports stop being trafficked.
This is just off the top of my head. I haven't played since the Modern Times DLC was released. They've released like 3 more that probably addressed some negatives. I know I had some design and balance gripes, but I can't recall the specifics. I think they sell it really cheap though. At$10 for every single thing(ends March 15th), it's a really good value.
I adore the humor in it. The advisors in Tropico are fantastic. Everything is voiced and colored with exaggerated communist/capitalist overtones.
TL;DR My concerns may be dated.
I don't know if all of these have been resolved, but, for example, they had decorative rock overhangs on some of the maps that prevented road construction beneath them. The "fix" they put in for those was the removal of the overhang. This had originally caused those maps to lose access to whatever portion of the island was past the overhang. They also have some areas where the area between obstacles is so thin that you cannot place a road through, again, denying you access to a % of the map and resources. This latter issue was never addressed while I actively played.
They made maps quite a bit bigger in 4 as opposed to 3 (so I'm told), but limited the amount of road you can lay to an amount insufficient to create complexity across the larger island. So the distant locales of your island only had main street if you even bothered. Many SSes of cities showed half the island going unused because of road limitation.
There is also a hard pop limit, for which there is esentially nothing you can do, which limits how much you can use your island. That limit is like 1500 or 2000, and as you're expanding into the region of that limit you'll see some really hardcore job switching. If people switch off from the teamsters (trade depots) your income will plummet as your imports and exports stop being trafficked.
This is just off the top of my head. I haven't played since the Modern Times DLC was released. They've released like 3 more that probably addressed some negatives. I know I had some design and balance gripes, but I can't recall the specifics. I think they sell it really cheap though. At$10 for every single thing(ends March 15th), it's a really good value.
I adore the humor in it. The advisors in Tropico are fantastic. Everything is voiced and colored with exaggerated communist/capitalist overtones.
TL;DR My concerns may be dated.
Cantatus
Lord Nagafen Raider
- 1,437
- 79
See, that's probably the thing that disappoints me the most about this. When I heard Sim City was going to include online features, the idea actually excited me. I think there's a lot of compelling online content that could be added to a city simulation. After all, real cities don't exist in a bubble and have to deal with external forces constantly. They could've included things like diplomacy or dealing with limited resources or trying to attract certain businesses. It could be things like installing tax breaks to try to attract filmmakers to your town or passing ordinances for your region or working together to prevent disasters.
Instead, they are stuck trying to convince people that it isn't just a ham-fisted form of DRM since there really aren't, as far as I can tell, any interesting parts to the online mode. So far, it's mostly just been a giant inconvenience for people, and even when the server issues are resolved, how much of the online portions of the game do people care about? Had they come up with more uses to the online portion of the game that encouraged people working together in a fun way that added a new layer to the game, people likely would've been a lot more receptive to the always-on requirement.
Zaphid
Trakanon Raider
- 5,862
- 294
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013...y/#more-145460
What are the chances someone will emulate servers in the future ?