Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: Sandwich on April 01, 2013, 03:05:31 pm
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Anyone have one started, or interested in starting one?
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Please be warned that you should never buy this terrible and intrinsically broken game.
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Anyone have one started, or interested in starting one?
No.
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Please be warned that you should never buy this terrible and intrinsically broken game.
It's not a bad game per say, game mechanics wise and the multiplayer addon is interesting. But on the other hand : Extremely badly implemented DRM(always online connection) a lot smaller city plots, launch DLCS (and more to come I bet) so buyer beware!
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The game mechanics are atrociously mishandled - an all residential city is somewhere close to the optimal build, and even a nominally well-designed city can arbitrarily fail due to agent pathing problems. The programmers and designers didn't understand the challenges of their own design and ultimately were unable to implement it. It just does not work on any level: it will grow less fun and less interesting the more time you spend with it.
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Please be warned that you should never buy this terrible and intrinsically broken game.
Indeed.
Please do not give EA any more money by support this broken product.
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Please be warned that you should never buy this terrible and intrinsically broken game.
Indeed.
Please do not give EA any more money by support this broken product.
Too late I already did, pre-ordered it after playing the beta. I thought it was going to be a good game (I played the heck out of the beta and had a blast) and then launch day came around and I couldn't play the game for 4 days. Then when I could I felt kind of disappointed, the regions small size makes it really difficult to grow the city after a certain threshold and problems become nearly impossible to manage with larger populations and no real-estate to work with. I might give it a try again once they work out some more of the bugs.
Got a free game over the launch debacle but didn't particularly care for the choices. I pretty much had all the games I would have been interested in so I ended up getting Dead Space 3, haven't even bothered to try it yet.
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And also their decision to simulate individual Sims and work upwards from there has to be one of the most basic mistakes they could possibly make. I expect that kind of naïveté from a 15-year-old hobbyist who's just read A New Kind of Science and expects that ~emergence~ will make everything work out, not from Maxis of all people.
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I have a friend who studies computational complexity at Google and yeah that's pretty much exactly what she said - that they should have realized the game was broken much, much earlier in the design process.
I think the Eurogamer review (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-03-15-simcity-review) is pretty fair to it.
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It's Mass Effect 3 all over again: people take the game's most horrendous failing and hold it up as the single fatal flaw in an otherwise well-made work, when actually it was completely broken from the start.
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And also their decision to simulate individual Sims and work upwards from there has to be one of the most basic mistakes they could possibly make. I expect that kind of naïveté from a 15-year-old hobbyist who's just read A New Kind of Science and expects that ~emergence~ will make everything work out, not from Maxis of all people.
From what I've read the basic approach to handle the simulated population using an agent model isn't that bad, it's just that the lack of persistence makes it all somewhat moot. If the individual sims were to remember their jobs and homes, I think the fundamental issues with the pathfinding would disappear at the cost of increasing computational complexity. The completely abstracted model they used here (and why in gods name did they use the same broken system for sewage and electricity???) just isn't fulfilling the goal of making a living city (much less the living town they were apparently aiming for).
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And also their decision to simulate individual Sims and work upwards from there has to be one of the most basic mistakes they could possibly make. I expect that kind of naïveté from a 15-year-old hobbyist who's just read A New Kind of Science and expects that ~emergence~ will make everything work out, not from Maxis of all people.
From what I've read the basic approach to handle the simulated population using an agent model isn't that bad, it's just that the lack of persistence makes it all somewhat moot. If the individual sims were to remember their jobs and homes, I think the fundamental issues with the pathfinding would disappear at the cost of increasing computational complexity. The completely abstracted model they used here (and why in gods name did they use the same broken system for sewage and electricity???) just isn't fulfilling the goal of making a living city (much less the living town they were apparently aiming for).
Do you have any links to articles or research about those issues? I'm curious.
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I read this as a HLP religion for Simy City.
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The thing is, even if you fleshed the Sims out and gave them persistent jobs and homes and all that, debugging the game would still be a nightmare. As anyone who has played Dwarf Fortress can tell you, detailed low-level simulations like that can lead to all sorts of totally insane things happening, and trying to tune city-wide behaviour to the standard expected of SimCity would be nigh impossible.
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Oh, certainly, but I would argue that DF with its ultra-intricate simulation of the dwarven condition overshoots the target for SimCity by quite a margin. And yes, more detailed simulation will lead to stranger emergent behaviour, but that's something that should and could be dealt with during development. Hell, it might even be fun!
My opinion is basically that if you're gonna go and do an agent-driven simulation, you might as well do it properly and not stop halfway through.
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The thing is, even if you fleshed the Sims out and gave them persistent jobs and homes and all that, debugging the game would still be a nightmare. As anyone who has played Dwarf Fortress can tell you, detailed low-level simulations like that can lead to all sorts of totally insane things happening, and trying to tune city-wide behaviour to the standard expected of SimCity would be nigh impossible.
Not to mention the computing power involved. A full 200-dwarf fortress can bring a lot of rigs to their knees.
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The thing is, even if you fleshed the Sims out and gave them persistent jobs and homes and all that, debugging the game would still be a nightmare. As anyone who has played Dwarf Fortress can tell you, detailed low-level simulations like that can lead to all sorts of totally insane things happening, and trying to tune city-wide behaviour to the standard expected of SimCity would be nigh impossible.
Not to mention the computing power involved. A full 200-dwarf fortress can bring a lot of rigs to their knees.
Damn... I wouldn't of thought it was possible, considering how crude Dwarf Fortress's default graphics are.
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It's not the graphics that will bottleneck DF. It's a game that is exclusively CPU-bound.
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Out of curiosity, is DF multi-threaded?
EDIT: Apologies for further derailing the thread.
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Out of curiosity, is DF multi-threaded?
No. Dwarf Fortress is single-threaded and essentially held together with the coding equivalent of bubblegum and duct tape.
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Yeah, turns out a mathematician working for the art makes a terrible software engineer.
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Out of curiosity, is DF multi-threaded?
No. Dwarf Fortress is single-threaded and essentially held together with the coding equivalent of bubblegum and duct tape.
It's also limited to 2GB of memory, which is a big problem with larger fortresses.
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Ok, so I gather that nobody wants to join in on a region with me? :rolleyes:
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yes, and also your taste in games is horrible
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yes, and also your taste in games is horrible
If you look carefully, most - if not all - the reviews complains about a couple of very high-profile issues... the launch debacle, and the always-on requirements. Sure, some have issue with the AI & pathing, but what game doesn't have those kinds of issues? Besides, that's half the fun - figuring out what's going on, why, and how to work around it, or even better, utilize it.
In any case, it's a game I generally have fun playing. Yes, I still have issues with it, but many of those can be resolved by regional play... hence the reason for this thread.
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SimCity 5 is not a good simulation of a city.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytk1agmcXhU
Notice the airliner(s) below you.
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If you look carefully, most - if not all - the reviews complains about a couple of very high-profile issues... the launch debacle, and the always-on requirements. Sure, some have issue with the AI & pathing, but what game doesn't have those kinds of issues? Besides, that's half the fun - figuring out what's going on, why, and how to work around it, or even better, utilize it.
In any case, it's a game I generally have fun playing. Yes, I still have issues with it, but many of those can be resolved by regional play... hence the reason for this thread.
Well as I see the problem, it's not that the game isn't any decent or wouldn't be fun to play with friends, it's that it's essentially a prettier, but less functional version of SimCity 4, with a few new features that don't make much difference. Also 4 is way cheaper, and proven to work well, and doesn't need an always-on connection.
I'm not the sort to boycott a game with a stupid requirement or a few problems (such as MMOs), if it's going to be worth it. SimCity 5 just isn't worth it.
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SimCity 5 is not a good simulation of a city.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytk1agmcXhU
Notice the airliner(s) below you.
You know, I think that video actually increases the game's value for me. :lol:
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yes, and also your taste in games is horrible
If you look carefully, most - if not all - the reviews complains about a couple of very high-profile issues... the launch debacle, and the always-on requirements. Sure, some have issue with the AI & pathing, but what game doesn't have those kinds of issues?
sandwich
did you even read
the last page of discussion
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yes, and also your taste in games is horrible
If you look carefully, most - if not all - the reviews complains about a couple of very high-profile issues... the launch debacle, and the always-on requirements. Sure, some have issue with the AI & pathing, but what game doesn't have those kinds of issues? Besides, that's half the fun - figuring out what's going on, why, and how to work around it, or even better, utilize it.
In any case, it's a game I generally have fun playing. Yes, I still have issues with it, but many of those can be resolved by regional play... hence the reason for this thread.
If you look a little more carefully you will realize that exactly the opposite is true, this game is fundamentally broken.
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Freespace is fundamentally broken. Space physics just don't work like that. And what is up with that retarded AI always crashing into capital ship hulls?
You get the point, I trust? Games don't have to be perfect (and nobody is claiming that SimCity is perfect!). They just have to be fun. I happen to be having fun playing SimCity. If you are so biased against it that you're unwilling to even try it, kindly shut up - this is not your thread. If you did try it and don't enjoy playing it - kindly shut up, this is not your thread.
If you want to try playing in a multiplayer region with me an other forumites, speak up. Otherwise, go ***** in the other SimCity thread.
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Freespace is fundamentally broken. Space physics just don't work like that.
Yes, but the physics still work. Simcity's "physics" on the other hand...
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For ****'s sake, I got to side with Sandwich here if only due to people throwing complaints about the game (ones which I assume he is aware about) or insults about him directly (Phantom, was that really necessary?)
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I have no idea whether or not it's a fun game, as I haven't played it. If you like it and find it fun, kudos.
But on a simulation level, that **** is miles behind where the previous installments were. It makes me wary about the future of Maxis.
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AIUI Maxis of old is completely gone, now it's fresh-faced EA-hired staff for everything.
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Freespace is fundamentally broken. Space physics just don't work like that. And what is up with that retarded AI always crashing into capital ship hulls?
You get the point, I trust? Games don't have to be perfect (and nobody is claiming that SimCity is perfect!). They just have to be fun. I happen to be having fun playing SimCity. If you are so biased against it that you're unwilling to even try it, kindly shut up - this is not your thread. If you did try it and don't enjoy playing it - kindly shut up, this is not your thread.
If you want to try playing in a multiplayer region with me an other forumites, speak up. Otherwise, go ***** in the other SimCity thread.
I'm not super sure how to respond to this. You're correct, you have every right to set up a multiplayer game, though we also have every right to warn people off buying this game. But the other points you're making are wrong - the analogy with FreeSpace physics doesn't hold, since FreeSpace physics function as designed whereas SimCity cannot, and it's not a question of bias since bias involves attention to nonsalient information rather than diagnostic information, whereas this is literally 'the game does not work'. I feel like we haven't done an adequate job explaining that the issue here isn't 'SimCity is a game with bad design choices', it's 'SimCity is a game that fundamentally and almost randomlydoes not function'. This is why so many people who had fun with the game initially have actively revised their reviews.
I'm not sure how to balance correcting these misconceptions with your expressed desire to keep this thread on a different topic. Open to advice!
edit: I guess the question I'm asking is, do you want to talk about this:
If you look carefully, most - if not all - the reviews complains about a couple of very high-profile issues... the launch debacle, and the always-on requirements. Sure, some have issue with the AI & pathing, but what game doesn't have those kinds of issues?
or not? Because this statement I've quoted is flat-out wrong. On the other hand, it being wrong does not deny you the right to enjoy the game and to try to organize multiplayer, nor does it mean that people should be allowed to insult you.
The other thread is also over a year dead, are we gonna get yelled at for necroing :ohdear:
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My frustration stems from the fact that I didn't care one iota what other people thought about the game; I wanted to play the game with others who were willing. Instead, the thread got intentionally, forcibly, and repeatedly derailed, in spite of my repeated attempts to refocus on the one simple, original question. :sigh:
I'll necro the other thread for you; we can debate the game's brokenness there.
EDIT: There, happy? http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=80219.new#new
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Yes, that's perfectly fair.
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Tell you what Sandwich, give it a couple of months and then re-boot this thread and I may well be interested.
I don't own the game at the moment, mostly because of concerns about the launch-day readiness (and because I always felt a bit burned by the atrocious 'Societies'), but I actually quite like the look of it. Hopefully in a few months the worst problems will be ironed out and I will definitely take a look at picking it up :)
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I'll be honest with you, Flipside, I started playing perhaps one week after launch, and haven't seen a single instance of the "Unable to connect to servers, retry in 20 mins" launch-day problems. Twice while playing I had momentary notifications go off that the game lost connection to the servers, but it resolved quickly and didn't cause any actual problems.
The only thing I have noticed repeatedly - and this may be by design - is that if I start the launcher (which connects to the servers itself to get the latest patch), get sidetracked by something, and then return to the still-open launcher 20 mins later or whatever, it will have in essence timed-out without any notifications of such. You just go to launch the game and it says "Unable to connect". In 100% of those times (I think this happened to me 3 times or so), the problem was simply resolved by exiting the launcher and reloading it again. Hmm... actually, I'm not sure whether that happened to me in the launcher or in the main menu in-game, but either way, the problem and resolution were as described - long periods of inactivity led to "timeout"-style disconnects resolved by simply reloading the launcher/game.
My only remaining real complaints are the lack of terrain-editing capabilities, and the diminutive size of the cities themselves - the latter being more frustrating than the former.
ANYway, bottom-line is that if the game interests you, there's no real reason to wait IMO.
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Tell you what Sandwich, give it a couple of months and then re-boot this thread and I may well be interested.
I don't own the game at the moment, mostly because of concerns about the launch-day readiness (and because I always felt a bit burned by the atrocious 'Societies'), but I actually quite like the look of it. Hopefully in a few months the worst problems will be ironed out and I will definitely take a look at picking it up :)
Please, please do not buy this game. SimCity is one of the most egregious examples of both corporate ill intent (through the incredibly deceptive marketing and the out-and-out lies they told during after release) and poor game design (the game literally lies to you about your city, never mind the fundamentally broken GlassBox engine). Not giving EA your money for SimCity is certainly a good decision, but it also verges on morally imperative if you care about the way companies relate to consumers.
Eurogamer's 4/10 review (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-03-15-simcity-review) covers the design problems, in a broad sense, and while some of these will likely be addressed in patches, others won't. More importantly, at least in my eyes, is the cycle of lies that EA corporate tried to feed us, lies that were systematically struck down by people actually looking at the game's code. They claimed that the GlassBox engine relied on cloud calculations on EA servers; basic activity monitors proved that this wasn't the case, that it was an out and out lie. They claimed that SimCity could not run in offline mode because it wouldn't be able to conduct the computations necessary for agent-driven behaviors; within days people had the game running perfectly fine in offline mode...at least until the built-in timer killed their games. Never mind the deception inherent in advertising SimCity as a functional game, when those same agent-driven behaviors turn out to be rotten from the ground up.
As matters stand, paying for SimCity is feeding a sickness.
e: quoteses
Things EA said before launch:
“GlassBox is the engine that drives the entire game — the buildings, the economics, trading, and also the overall simulation that can track data for up to 100,000 individual Sims inside each city. There is a massive amount of computing that goes into all of this, and GlassBox works by attributing portions of the computing to EA servers (the cloud) and some on the player’s local computer.”
9th of March - Polygon(MICHAEL MCWHERTOR) interview with Bradshaw, the beginning of the un-challenging of our games media:
“With the way that the game works, we offload a significant amount of the calculations to our servers so that the computations are off the local PCs and are moved into the cloud. It wouldn’t be possible to make the game offline without a significant amount of engineering work by our team.”
12th of March - Kotaku(Stephen Totilo) interview with Bradshaw - Finally more pointed questions from the games media:
Quote:
“Online connectivity as a creative game design decision was infused into the game’s DNA since its inception and so we’re fully committed to delivering against that experience first. A significant portion of the GlassBox Engine’s calculations are performed on our servers and off of the player’s PCs. It would take a significant amount of engineering work from our team to rewrite the game so that all of those functions are calculated locally without a significant performance hit to the player.”
15th of March -
Quote:
“From the ground up, we designed this game with multiplayer in mind – using new technology to realize a vision of players connected in regions to create a SimCity that captured the dynamism of the world we live in; a global, ever-changing, social world… We also made innovative use of servers to move aspects of the simulation into the cloud to support region play and social features.”
Within days of the game's launch it had been demonstrated, inarguably, that this was a systematic deception, that there were no 'aspects of the simulation' in the 'cloud', that EA had consciously and deliberately decided to lie to consumers in order to cover up a high-level corporate decision motivated only by the desire for control. Apparently on EA's orders, we heard Maxis say "it wouldn’t be possible to make the game offline without a significant amount of engineering work by our team." Yet within days of release one modder had, by altering something like a single line of code, made the game work offline.
RPS summarized:
Repeated emails to EA have resulted in no response since, and the whole situation has become more muddy with each day. It’s since been revealed that population numbers are nonsense, even down to leaked Javascript code featuring “simcity.GetFudgedPopulation” as a function. We’ve learned that city size limits are arbitrary, pathfinding is rudimentary at best, and Eurogamer’s absolutely superb review lists many more bugs, broken features, disappearing pretend-money and never-arriving resources.
So it’s all the more odd to see Maxis head Lucy Bradshaw acting as if none of this is happening, and instead just carefully rewording her mantra of how SimCity is only supposed to be played online, but this time leaving out the bit about server-side computations for local play.
Bradshaw’s post, which appears to be some sort of attempt at damage limitation – without actually ever addressing the issues raised – re-emphasises the point that they wanted it to be always online because of how they designed the game. She then lists the functions those server sums supply. And they’re what we already knew – they let the social game be social. This list that is basically just “the game has co-operative multiplayer” eight times seems to be an attempt to reveal just how grand this aspect is, how intrinsic it is to… something. It doesn’t manage this. What we’re learning from the many players posting videos, and the reviewers who actually played the game properly before smothering it with rosettes, is that those regional functions don’t work very well either.
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l o l holy ****, EA's forums censored their own customer support hotline number so people couldn't post it
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This is part of my concern, I bought Cities XL a few years ago, one that was 'always online' to play, and then Monte Christo folded a day or two later. The problem was, the password creation screen allowed capitals in the password, however, the password input screen did not, leaving me with a game I could not even log into. I was left with a game I could not even start for nearly a year, until the license was picked up and I was able to reset that password.
Whilst it doesn't seem likely that this would happen to EA, it left me in a situation where I really don't trust that kind of system any more.
It's a massive pity, I love city-builders, and Sim-City always used to be the benchmark by which other games were judged.
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You can always get one of the older SimCities! In fact, part of EA's apology package for SimCity being bungled so massively was the option to get a free game, including (I believe) SimCity 4 Deluxe.
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Please, please do not buy this game.
*words*
As matters stand, paying for SimCity is feeding a sickness.
A thousand times this.
l o l holy ****, EA's forums censored their own customer support hotline number so people couldn't post it
haha
oh
wow
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EA really needs to hire people with brains (http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/simcity-as-advertising-platform-how-ea-rewards-you-for-buying-real-world-pr).
I mean, DLC exclusive to a certain brand of toothpaste sold in the US? What are they thinking?
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To be fair, how is that different from the cereal box goodies from the 80s?
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They just region-locked a clear advantage in the game mechanics. :wtf:
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So what? At least they're selling the game worldwide, unlike some companies that don't even sell their games outside the US or Canada...
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They just region-locked a clear advantage in the game mechanics. :wtf:
So what?
So what?
So what?
Well, from a general perspective it's pretty damned unethical to show favoritism to any specific group beyond 'has-thumbs'.
And from a game design perspective (while admittedly this is less of a problem in a game like this), it's an inherently bad design choice (not to mention a PR and marketing nightmare) to give a clear advantage to specific nations / whatevers. NEW BATTLEFIELD 4076! U.S. players get better gear than Australians! Also ten-inch pianists! And choppers! GET TO THE CHOPPERS!
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I don't disagree with you that it's not "fair" to do so; my point is more along the lines of "why complain about it this time and not all the other times its been done?" Perhaps Americans aren't aware of just how frequently they are shown favoritism? Just look at the eligibility clause for most online contests/sweepstakes: the overwhelming majority of them are for "legal residents of the USA or Canada only".
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The setup here is slightly more cynical than cereal box goodies. A cereal box company pays money to put trinkets into cereal in order to boost sales on their cereal (hopefully leading to a net gain). Here, I'd wager, EA sells their DLC as advertising space to Crest/Oral B for a profit.
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Also cereal box giveaways don't have leaderboards!
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Depends which is the target item being purchased, and which is the tag-along bonus - which, I might add, completely depends on your POV as well.
For example, in the case of cereal boxes, the cereal was the target item moms went to buy, and the trinket was the bonus. The opposite was true for the moms' kids - they wanted that Voltron left foot, damnit, and they didn't give a hoot about which cereal it came with.
With the SimCity DLC, it again depends on your POV. Are you a regular FPS-crazed gamer who happens to need some toothpaste (the target)? Well, along with your toothpaste, here's a bonus, which happens to be an incentive to go buy a sim game! Sim fans, on the other hand, are going to go buy an extra tube of toothpaste that they don't want or need (the bonus) just to get the DLC code (the target).
In both cases, it's a matter of cross-marketing (not sure if that's the official term or whatever). You know what I mean: "Group A wants what you got. Group B wants what I got. Let's combine our shiznit and get both groups to buy the whole package." It's a perfectly legitimate form of marketing... just that usually, there's a bit more categorical overlap between the target and bonus items. Cereal is for kids, trinkets are for kids... toothpaste is for everyone, sim games aren't for everyone... it's weird.
Now here's a conundrum: Would it have been more palatable had EA said, "Buy this DLC and get a free tube of toothpaste!"? :p
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With the SimCity DLC, it again depends on your POV. Are you a regular FPS-crazed gamer who happens to need some toothpaste (the target)?
This is just hilarious. You can't be trying to make a point with this sort of argument, right?
Just for the record, I'm completely uninformed about the issue at hand, but when I read your post right there the first thing I thought was: "he must be joking, but he's not?.. how can that be!"
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The point was that the SimCity DLC is considered either target or bonus, depending on who you are... hence the cross-marketing.
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This isn't actually cross-marketing, and it's not analogous to cereal box trinkets. It's something a little more modern and a little more revealing re: EA's current priorities. It speaks to how much they're paying attention to the current crop of web monetization strategies - they want to use their games as a platform to sell advertising.
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Damn, and I thought EA had safely ceded the evil empire crown to Activision. Evidently they felt the need to step up their game again.
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This isn't actually cross-marketing, and it's not analogous to cereal box trinkets. It's something a little more modern and a little more revealing re: EA's current priorities. It speaks to how much they're paying attention to the current crop of web monetization strategies - they want to use their games as a platform to sell advertising.
Wait, what? Marketing computer game add-on content with toothpaste is a thing now? Like, it's representative of modern web monetization strategies (MWMS)? Or did you mean that selling in-game advertising is MWMS?
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Other than the toothpaste part specifically? Yeah, it is.
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Damn I somehow deleted my whole post. But, in gist - maximizing space for sellable advertising in your design is a core component of any modern web design, whether you're a social network or a music delivery system or even a free-to-play game. EA loves this stuff and has tried dynamic in-game ad space in the past (with Battlefield 2142, for instance) but this is the first time I've seen it implemented this way specifically.
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And yet it's been around in various forms since 1978 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-game_advertising). So how exactly is this instance different than other in-game advertising, just by how "intensive" it is?
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And yet it's been around in various forms since 1978 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-game_advertising).
Precisely my point above - I'm not sure where the 'as yet' comes from, since that frames this as a counterpoint. In-game advertising is a strategy that EA has always been interested in exploring.
I'm not So how exactly is this instance different than other in-game advertising, just by how "intensive" it is?
This is explicitly not in-game advertising, so your question is mis-addressed; the advertising here is placed outside the product, as compared with the previous Nissan Leaf DLC with SimCity, where Nissan (presumably) purchased advertising space within the game in the form of charging stations. Rather, here, EA sells the distribution channel for the DLC to an advertising partner. They're keen on moving away from the pure packaged goods model of game sale, and they want to be able to monetize their platform in lots of ways.
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Semantics. Regardless, looks like we both agree that this is somewhat of a new tangent in game marketing. The debate was that people were shocked at the exclusiveness of this deal; I, on the other hand, have grown accustomed to being excluded from deals, being someone who lives outside the USA/Canada.