Simcity

[Wiglaf]

No one in this thread seriously thinks SC5's launch issues won't be smoothed out in a week, so let's not pretend the game is broken and deserves the ridiculous scores it is getting.

[Wiglaf]

I don't want SC4 with updated graphics, I want something that is at least an incremental improvement over SC4 and not a step backwards. SC2000 was a step forward from SC, SC3000 was a step forward from SC2000, and SC4 was a huge leap over SC3000. This is a step back.

It is amusing to me the people in this thread who have played the game like it. Everyone else seems to just see the small city sizes and online glitches and spend hours complaining about it.

[Hauldren Collider]

The game is quite literally broken, though. And if I am a customer thinking "should I buy this game" the answer right now is no.

[Wiglaf]

Actually, I'd buy it, if that free EA offer is still on the table. They just added 5 servers.

[Guynemer]

Actually, I'd buy it, if that free EA offer is still on the table. They just added 5 servers.

The offer is extremely vague. It might be any EA game, it might be only games of a certain price, it might be one particular game.

Beware of incompetent corporate monoliths bearing gifts.

[Wiglaf]

What pisses me off so much about the whining in this thread is that this is a game that tries something new. It is more novel than SC4 ever was. It's more original than any other game, even citybuilder, in the last 10 years. It's PC exclusive, high budget, not compromised for consoles (XCOM arguably was). And yet people in this thread are dumping all over its gameplay (despite never playing it) due to this DRM circlejerk, which is a separate and obviously temporary issue.

[Guynemer]

The DRM is NOT a temporary issue. It is a permanent issue. The servers are a temporary issue for now, and will be a permanent issue in the future.

Moreover, modelling every single person in your society is not novel. Tropico has been doing it for over a decade.

[Tupac Shakur]

The game is quite literally broken, though. And if I am a customer thinking "should I buy this game" the answer right now is no.

Yeah, I was tempted after first reading Wiggy's raves about the game, but **** that noise. I feel dirty giving EA my money even for their best games, and this is ****ing far from that.

[Wiglaf]

The DRM is NOT a temporary issue. It is a permanent issue. The servers are a temporary issue for now, and will be a permanent issue in the future.

Moreover, modelling every single person in your society is not novel. Tropico has been doing it for over a decade.

So it's better to never play the game at all, simply because it might not work in ten years? Huh?

The Tropico comparison is hilariously inept. It isn't even really a city planner.

[Guynemer]

Well...
You've got to move your goods from production to industry to shops or the world at large...
You've got to manage traffic...
You have to pass laws to manage your city...
Every citizen is modeled, cradle to the grave, with their own wants, jobs, budget, and multiple fluctuating needs that must be attended to...

[Wiglaf]

The Sins aren't the only agents glassbox models.

[Wiglaf]

I have having SEX WHEN I SENT THE LAST POST so let me expound on this.

First of all, even if I concede your premise that SC5 iterates on T3/4, there's no way to argue realistically that T3/4 are superior in execution. The traffic modelling in T3/4 is almost inconsequential - don't you simply plop a garage or two, and one or two roads? I mean, what's the effect of a traffic jam in T3/4, exactly? Is there even one? Do they ever happen? Why? The resource modelling in T3/4 is also exceptionally simple and as I recall easy. T1 I think was more of a challenge in this sense I guess, but it was all pretty straightfoward - there's resources in the map, X buildings to produce or refine them, and then X building to ship them out. SC5 is considerably different. While there are still buildings that refine pre-set resources, the region setup requires certain cities to specialize in certain aspects of production and distribution. And it's rather easy to screw this up, because some of the buildings are tied to your ability to manage traffic, pollution, health, crime, etc -- all of which are also modeled on the region level. Tropico does have the advantage of a more indepth political system, with the citizens' factions, and I guess it did allow for ordinances. The factions are how I'd define T1-4: they're lite political sims.

Now I do not agree at all that T3/4 did what SC5 did with the agents model. They're just different games. In SC5 each house's toilet flush is an agent. Each puff of air pollution is an agent. Each gallon of water from a pump is an agent. Each sim -- whether they are walking around homeless, or in a police car or chopper -- is an agent. Heat from fires and garbage from sim houses are, for all intents and purposes, agents. Power is an agent. All of these are agents in the city next to yours, too. Optimally juggling these conflicting agents is what defines SC5. Your sewage pump can affect the output of your water pump which can affect the health of your sims which can affect their productivity which can affect their job security which can lead them to become criminals. Your road placement and building placement can affect sims' happiness, business productivity and traffic pickup and emergency services responsiveness etc.

[Wiglaf]

Remember Caesar 3 and Pharaoh? Those games were more similar, in that buildings would produce "agents" who would walk around, and only their physical presence would impact buildings (in other words, the buildings did not simply generate a radius -- the agents from those buildings had to physically touch buildings to have an effect on them). This was on the right track, but Caesar/Pharaoh had no traffic system (agents could overlap) and only modeled a handful of "sims" as agents (prefects, engineers, market people, warehouse workers). Those games still demanded intense city management skills only because the agents' pathing was mostly random, so the player had to course correct for a variety of arbitrary gamey restrictions.

[regexcellent]

Zone density being tied to street width is a ****ing retarded decision. It is THE source of traffic headaches. Why? Because if you have heavy traffic and you cover up with wider streets, then skyscrapers show up and you get your heavy traffic back. It is IMPOSSIBLE to manage unless you dump huge ****loads of cash on public transit that doesn't affect zone density.

Here are some quotes from the SomethingAwful thread, which I've been following:

A park. I blame a park for a city of dead, irradiated, burnt sims.

Here's the story:

My city was doing nicely, earning a decent profit and had good service coverage. High density buildings had started sprouting up in my core downtown area after upgrading my roads, but they werent a huge burden to the city and I was handling things. I built a nuclear power plant and, now supplying the region with lots of power, took down my old windmill. The city was well educated and running smoothly.

I decided that downtown could use a little urban renewal, so I built a plaza.

Immediately the new high-wealth skyscrapers started to spring up. It halfed my total population, as everyone who was living in the buildings that were just there were kicked out in the name of new development. But that was where all the smart sims lived!

The nuclear plant immediately started issuing warnings of a lack of educated workers, and that's when things got hairy. The plant melted down. A wave of radiation washed over my city, killing hundreds.

With the power now out, and no money for a backup, the clinics filled up and then shut down. The schools shut down. Police. The fire departments.

Sims, homeless and without jobs because their factories and offices were closed, began turning to crime. Crime led to arsons. And that's when the great fire broke out, consuming what was left of the city that wasn't completely sick and decayed.

In less than a year, the city went from a thriving metropolis to a burned crater, glowing and full of criminals and fires.

All because of a park.

Had a cozy little town going, but the main avenue was getting a lot of traffic backed up during the morning and evening commutes. City was perfectly stable, I was making enough money to experiment with some upgrades and was generally having fun exploring the game. Without thinking I upgraded the avenue. and suddenly a bunch of medium density buildings converted themselves into an unbroken row of skyscrapers. They looked like the magnificent mile in Chicago.

All the sudden I had thousands of unfilled jobs and I wasn't making money any more because the vacant towers weren't generating any taxes. After a few minutes my industrial sector also got pissed off because no one was accepting their freight and then they started shutting down.

Worst part was it didn't do jack **** to help the traffic problems.

To alleviate traffic congestion, I added an extensive streetcar fleet running a perimeter loop around my city, as well as one spur through the central avenue that runs from the highway to the coast. To help circulation, I also added an avenue on the edge as well.

My incoming traffic backed up to the next city over. You know all that green space people are complaining about as empty? Nope. Full of cars. Outgoing traffic was paralyzed too.

Then a taxi stopped on the side of the main avenue for days. And my oil tanker got stuck behind that. My city ran out of power due to lack of oil and negative tailspin bankruptcy hoooo

[Hauldren Collider]

Yeah, I was tempted after first reading Wiggy's raves about the game, but **** that noise. I feel dirty giving EA my money even for their best games, and this is ****ing far from that.

QFT, the only games I buy from EA now are BioWare games. Mass Effect 3, Dragon Age 2, etc.