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[aeolustl]

Only for that 'day' I believe. The sim will have a home, go to a job, but then might go to a different home after that job, and then go to a diffferent job on the next day. It just finds what ever is closest when it moves from 'job' to 'home'

Doesn't it got fixed after an update before?

 

[Raytow]

Small cities that limit longevity, crap simulation, having to run multiple cities to get access to most stuff, etc. Don't bother really. It's a crappy game. The always online was just icing on the shit cake.

So the game is crap even without the always online bullshit? jesus tapdancing christ EA, what the fuck did you do to Maxis ;_;

 

[Facism]

I sincerely hope the developers and publisher learned a lot of lessons with the latest Sim City. If they ever do another one, that is.

 

[Mengy]

Anyone who is familiar with the updates they've released since launch:

Do the Sims actually have assigned homes yet, or do they still just go back to the nearest available at the end of the day regardless of whether or not it was the one they started with?

No, no they do not. They still go to random work every day and come home to the closest available random house every night.

 

[Burger]

Polygon's news report of this is hilarious:

10 months after saying it couldn't be done "without a significant amount of engineering work."

Lucy Bradshaw, said that it wouldn't be impossible to build an offline mode into the game, but it would require "a significant amount of engineering work by our team."

Bradshaw described the online requirement as "fundamental to the vision we had for this SimCity."

According to Bradshaw, Maxis built the game to offload aspects of the city simulation into the cloud so they didn't have to be processed locally.

No mention that their Reviews Editor also reiterated the same, telling gamers they didn't know what they were talking about.

 

[PoweredBySoy]

No, no they do not. They still go to random work every day and come home to the closest available random house every night.

So then what's the point of even having 'sims' in this game? Open the cities up and just have people and traffic as background animations or something.

 

[Perkel]

I sincerely hope the developers and publisher learned a lot of lessons with the latest Sim City. If they ever do another one, that is.

I just hope modding community will fix bugs and improve game.

Sim city 4 wasn't perfect at start but with expansion and CAM and NAM it is perfect game

 

[Seanspeed]

Besides the lame defense for this guy that Sean speed is putting, anyone find it amusing that Seanspeed looks just like Arthur Gies? Is this Gies' GAF account?

Good job keeping up with the conversation!

As for me looking like Gies, I guess all white people with shaved heads look just alike, eh? :/ Hilarious.

 

[Bedlam]

Technically he didn't say anything wrong, you could argue this really well especially if you get really pedantic about definitions.

Sure he did. I am also referring to his "incorrect" tweet in the same conversation. That guy thinks he knew how the game worked but in reality he only swallowed and regurgitated PR bullshit and doesn't have the slightest clue. When he made that tweet, people had already proven that this "complex server-side calculations" talk was pure crap.

We're well past this now. Its been addressed many, many times.

Just sayin.

Apparently we're not and it had to be addressed again.

 

[Harlock]

Dont worry, Lucy Bradshaw got a promotion because your excellent work with Sim City 5.

http://www.vg247.com/2013/10/02/maxiss-lucy-bradshaw-named-ea-senior-vice-president/

Maxis’s Lucy Bradshaw named EA senior vice president
A new SEC filing has confirmed some details of EA’s recent executive reshuffle, and outed Maxis general manager Lucy Bradshaw’s new title. As reported by GameInformer, Bradshaw is now one of EA’s senior vice presidents. There has been no update on the new roles of other EA bosses.

 

[Seanspeed]

Sure he did. I am also referring to his "incorrect" tweet in the same conversation. That guy thinks he knew how the game worked but in reality he only swallowed and regurgitated PR bullshit and doesn't have the slightest clue. When he made that tweet, people had already proven that this "complex server-side calculations" talk was pure crap.

We're well past this now. Its been addressed many, many times.

Just sayin.

 

[blazeuk]

I just hope modding community will fix bugs and improve game.

Sim city 4 wasn't perfect at start but with expansion and CAM and NAM it is perfect game

I think it's a long shot to expect the modding community to even want to fix these things, Maxis didn't care for them before, I doubt too many will be in a hurry to help them out. I imagine some people will add a few things but I can't see too many people rushing over - they were shunned by Maxis in favour of more profit, their "legacy" to the modding scene was happily ignored by them and only now do they want help extending it's life when the game has likely died far quicker than they planned for.

 

[Seanspeed]

Apparently we're not and it had to be addressed again.

Oh ok, I thought this was one of the first page posts you replied to. My bad.

 

[Dibbs]

As am I.

As am I.

 

[Mengy]

For all of you re-installing Simcity 4 or thinking of picking it up, this is the latest and most active thread on NeoGAF about SC4:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=509394

And for anyone thinking of picking up Sincity 2013 after this offline news, please consider buying Simcity 4 Gold instead and installing the mods in the OP of the above thread. You will be spending much less money while also getting a great (maybe the best?) city building game ever. You will get a fun game instead of a broken one. Trust the majority on this one, SC2013 isn't ready yet, it still needs more time to bake in the oven. Hopefully the dough doesn't collapse while we wait for it to be done...

 

[FranXico]

For all of you re-installing Simcity 4 or thinking of picking it up, this is the latest and most active thread on NeoGAF about SC4:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=509394

And for anyone thinking of picking up Sincity 2013 after this offline news, please consider buying Simcity 4 Gold instead and installing the mods in the OP of the above thread. You will be spending much less money while also getting a great (maybe the best?) city building game ever. You will get a fun game instead of a broken one. Trust the majority on this one, SC2013 isn't ready yet, it still needs more time to bake in the oven. Hopefully the dough doesn't collapse while we wait for it to be done...

Links in the OP are dead

Any chance to re-upload?

 

[Rentahamster]

the sims do come from specific houses and go to specific jobs...I have witnessed this myself. Am I wrong here?

Yep.

Only for that 'day' I believe. The sim will have a home, go to a job, but then might go to a different home after that job, and then go to a diffferent job on the next day. It just finds what ever is closest when it moves from 'job' to 'home'

Not for that day. They aren't assigned any specific job location. Job location sends out an invisible agent along the road, requesting workers, invisible agent hits a residential house, residential house spits out workers who wander towards the source of the employment.

Doesn't it got fixed after an update before?

They've been fixing traffic and all kinds of other stuff. As far as I know, they can't rework the no specific job thing without reworking a great deal of the core game.

So then what's the point of even having 'sims' in this game? Open the cities up and just have people and traffic as background animations or something.

The simulated sims act as another layer of complexity, so you can actually see people running around your city that aren't placeholders. On the other hand, it's not so complex that each sim has their own house and job. Maxis hoped you wouldn't notice/care.

 

[hellmonkey]

Didn't this game come out like 10 months ago? Seems a bit late but these things are apparently difficult.

(On a slightly OT note, what is the best SimCity game for a newbie to the franchise?)

Get SC4 with the Rush Hour exp pack. You can get it from Amazon or Steam. Be sure to also get the NAM (network addon mod) addon as it help a lot with traffic has addons for light rail, real highway, and other forms of travel. It aged very well and still looks pretty good unless zoomed in all the way. simtropolis.com and sc4devotion are great resource for addons, modding, and questions.

 

[NoirVisage]

Good job keeping up with the conversation!

As for me looking like Gies, I guess all white people with shaved heads look just alike, eh? :/ Hilarious.

only white people with shaved heads who are related by blood!
-_______-

 

[3rdamention]

Polygon's news report of this is hilarious:









No mention that their Reviews Editor also reiterated the same, telling gamers they didn't know what they were talking about.

Well, in all fairness, I doubt they are going to throw Gies under the bus, considering Gies probably edited that article after it was submitted. I wouldn't doubt that he added a few of those sentences himself.





I think it is pretty obvious what we have here. Sim City was created as an online only game. Maxis claims it was to offload all these simulations and calculations into the cloud so they didn't have to be done locally. However, it wasn't too long after release that the gaming community found ways to mod the game so it didn't need to be always online. So all these difficult simulations and calculations being processed in the cloud was really just more PR speak or an excuse for some type of online DRM that many suspected.


Now, 10 months later, sales have started to slow, the DLC may not have made a big splash, and I am sure that EA and Maxis are battling over what to do with these servers. How long do you keep maintaining these online servers for a game that is no longer generating major $$$? You simply dont keep maintaining them. You remove those requirements, say you are doing it for the fans, try to save what face you have left, meanwhile, you no longer have to maintain those servers and can move on to the next game.



All that is going on here is EA and Maxis want to close these servers at some point, and are making those servers unnecessary when they used to be so be so pivitol in how the game was created and was supposed to work, at least in their words.

 

[Doug Heffernan]

SimTown?

That's too generous...

SimVillage.

 

[Pociask]

The simulated sims act as another layer of complexity, so you can actually see people running around your city that aren't placeholders. On the other hand, it's not so complex that each sim has their own house and job. Maxis hoped you wouldn't notice/care.

That's so... strange? I don't know, what seems more lifelike? The old way - doing rough traffic calculations based on movement between areas, and putting in placeholders for road and pedestrian traffic. Or, the new way - creating a fake model of employment and housing, so that you can have "real" sims instead of the placeholders. It seems almost like a choice between having fake traffic representing real movement, or real traffic representing fake movement.

You have to think they originally wanted real traffic representing real movement, but it quickly started destroying CPU's.

 

[Mengy]

That's so... strange? I don't know, what seems more lifelike? The old way - doing rough traffic calculations based on movement between areas, and putting in placeholders for road and pedestrian traffic. Or, the new way - creating a fake model of employment and housing, so that you can have "real" sims instead of the placeholders. It seems almost like a choice between having fake traffic representing real movement, or real traffic representing fake movement.

You have to think they originally wanted real traffic representing real movement, but it quickly started destroying CPU's.

Probably. In all honesty it was an interesting concept on the design side, but in reality it just didn't work. At that point they should have scrapped the idea and went back to doing it Simcity 4 style so that we could have large cities. Instead they doubled down on a bad design choice. It would have greatly helped if they had multi-threaded the simulation code to allow all of us with multi-core CPU's to benefit from them, but instead they also stuck with their single core Glassbox engine.

Simcity 2013 is chock full of both great and horrible design choices. Unfortunately the gameplay suffers greatly due to the bad choices, and thus the game is just broken.