They still sell Sim City?

[Aerozord]

With internet connections what they are now its possible. Cloud gaming like onlive does exist after all so they definitely can do things like that. Not saying they do, just that its possible.

[Loyal]

Originally Posted by Loyal

There's always the possibility EA's lying out its ass about [Glassbox], but I imagine it'd be mighty embarrassing if their hail mary of anti-piracy turned out to be a bluff.

Wwwwwwwelp!

[Azisien]

Originally Posted by Loyal

Wwwwwwwelp!

Not to mention some official, unofficial admission.

Of course anyone in their first semester of software development can see through EA's bullshit in a second. Maybe there would be a decent amount of overhauling to convert it to an official, offline mode, or let dedicated servers run Regional calculations instead of hosted EA servers, but having work to do and being impossible are pretty wildly different statements.

Anyway, my Simcity play finally reached a conclusion. The city plot sizes are just so small, it's not all that fun to specialize your city. It's not fun because you can only take specialization so far, and it's currently gimped by the fact that you NEED to remain self-sufficient because regional simulation currently does not work (-----> EA servers, plus possible design flaws on top of that). I decided to play with three friends on a plot with 4 city blocks all connected by Highway (by far, the best regional connection available, as you can share all city services with each other). I made my city, the middle, into a regional hub, with the intent of providing all power, water, sewage treatment, police, fire, health, waste disposal, and some education services to all three adjacent cities. My city would be extremely profitable from all that income, in theory, and especially from the recycling operation, even if my city did not internally produce anything.

Then, all three other cities would free up enormous amounts of room, because they need minimal, or zero, power plants, water plants, sewage plants, hospitals, police stations, etc etc. They could specialize to the max, and we would form a mutual dependency. This is the foundation of the new SimCity, the absolute maximum of the social capabilities of the game.

It doesn't work.

The queue to make services run through the EA server is so ridiculously enormous, I'd say maybe 5% of the services I offer actually get recognized in the other cities. The way the game handles offered services is also horrific. Firstly, there is no authentication on from either player when services are offered. When someone wants to buy power from you, they just click "Buy power" and bam it's done. The power exporter doesn't get a message along the lines of "____ City would like to buy power from you. They need _____ amount. Yes/No?" This seems like an odd player choice to leave out, especially in a city management game. You also only export if you have a "green" surplus of power. The moment you drop to "yellow" surplus (which I think is like plus or minus 10% of your overall capacity), you immediately stop all exports. With no warning messages or feedback that the game does so. Exports also only supply a BARE MINIMUM to other cities. If a city needs exactly 10MW of power to run, you will export exactly 10MW of power. And Gods Help that city if they buy even a single building and need 10.001 MW of power. Their residents will become angry, and their city will remain unpowered, until the rumbling Snorlax of an EA server finally ticks (this could take minutes), and adjusts the power export balance, which it would take to 10.001 MW. Hey, why not add in a safety margin of 5-10% to allow for city growth between regional ticks? Or, I dunno, make regional ticks every few seconds instead of every five minutes.

This applies to every single city service. You can't play a hub, so you can't enjoy that style of play, or really dig into specializations without juggling 4-5 of your own city plots. With rather long load times, this is a pretty terrible experience. Back to SimCity 4 Deluxe for me. Or rather, other genres.

[Arcanum]

My favorite clusterfuck news regarding SimCity is still the fact that the Sims use the same agent-based simulation as the power or water simulation. Sims will just move towards the nearest open job slot, and when they're done work they will go to the nearest open home slot. So you really can't follow a single sim throughout the day, 'cause every sim just goes the a random job and then a random house, as long as it's the closest available slot.

And if the path to the nearest open slot is too far or too complex, shit like this happens.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Oh EA, things just keep getting worse for you.

Not surprised that the game really can work offline and that the "always online" bit is mainly for DRM.

[Azisien]

Originally Posted by Arcanum

My favorite clusterfuck news regarding SimCity is still the fact that the Sims use the same agent-based simulation as the power or water simulation. Sims will just move towards the nearest open job slot, and when they're done work they will go to the nearest open home slot. So you really can't follow a single sim throughout the day, 'cause every sim just goes the a random job and then a random house, as long as it's the closest available slot.

And if the path to the nearest open slot is too far or too complex, shit like this happens.

I had to destroy and rebuild a fully upgraded police station because 32 police vehicles jammed themselves up, permanently, right outside the police station. A crime wave proceeded to bring my city to its knees for 2 months.

also lol

[Sifright]

Originally Posted by Azisien

This applies to every single city service. You can't play a hub, so you can't enjoy that style of play, or really dig into specializations without juggling 4-5 of your own city plots. With rather long load times, this is a pretty terrible experience. Back to SimCity 4 Deluxe for me. Or rather, other genres.

Now imagine that problem but the servers have to actually do all the computational work as well ala cloud computing.... which is what this game is the first step towards.

Yea....

[Ramary]

For people who want a city builder that is pretty awesome, and different from Sim City. And for the next couple hours, only 10 bucks.

[Azisien]

Originally Posted by Sifright

Now imagine that problem but the servers have to actually do all the computational work as well ala cloud computing.... which is what this game is the first step towards.

Yea....

We need to collectively embrace this new server-first approach to EA Games, heavily laden with day-one DLC and microtransactions, and just buy absolutely nothing ever. But you know, keep them thinking that we might. They'll never see it coming.

[Overcast]

Ignoring every post before me I'm going to try to get my brain together on what I felt as I played through the first week I had in Simcity. I was stuck in for the first two days as they were having trouble with people being able to claim cities on their servers, I found little to help me until my boyfriend who had also bought it personally invited me to one of his little locations. It seems he has played little since then and I began working with no real direction through my first city. Rushed quick, did well, became well educated, conducted much trade with the global market, and it seemed everything was looking up. Then I made a rather significant screw up when one of my buildings deleted my nuclear power plant.

I could have recovered, I didn't want to.

Second game, rushed even harder, I worked toward a tourist center but at some point my nuke plant melted down. this created an continuous encroaching ground pollution of doom creeping toward the rest of my town and doing some measure of damage to my tourism.

Not sure if recovery was possible, but I definitely didn't feel inspired.

Between these two my largest problem so far with the multiplayer seems to have arisen. I have no reset button. Every time I learn some new lesson the hard way I have to back up, move to a new block, and stare at the remains of one greater failure while I attempt again. Something about that is just plain unfun, aggravating, painful. Unlike earlier simcities I am forced to accept that unleashing a giant lizard on my town is something I cannot take back after having my fun. Damning.