Simcity

[Guynemer]

The guy enabled debug mode. Of course devs could build outside the city limits and terraform if they wanted to.

And I think once parks are patched, the "only residential" thing will become impossible overnight.

Why shouldn't you be able to build and terraform either? You really don't think EA was holding that back for a DLC?

As these various issues have come to light over the past 2-3 days, I find EA/Maxis' silence... interesting.

[Wiglaf]

They haven't been silent. https://twitter.com/MaxisGuillaume

[Wiglaf]

They've been clear they are working on routing for agents, which is 90% of the problem. Edit: Actually Sava they have also confirmed the all residential/no tax/parks city is a bug. They are going to patch that as well.

[Wiglaf]

And playing offline kills region play. That's what the servers are doing. That's why the game exists.

[Sava]

I wouldn't expect Wiggy to believe EA's bs about region play.

[Wiglaf]

Do you have any information indicating that parks will be patched?

Not parks necessarily, but the ability to zone just residential is due to a bug that will be fixed. I believe parks are one park of the bug.

[Wiglaf]

I wouldn't expect Wiggy to believe EA's bs about region play.

Without servers, how would it work?

[Guynemer]

You think the primary purpose of the servers is region play, something that can be done single-player offline, as opposed to DRM?

It doesn't bother you that they have flat out lied about the logistics of enabling offline play?

[Wiglaf]

I have said again and again that the primary reason for the servers is DRM. All the "calculations" Maxis kept talking about that were being done on the server were a) inter-regional trading and b) drm checks. They are simply reluctant to say "this is to prevent you from stealing our ****ing game, which you do all the time." Use your brain to figure out why. They emphasized the benefits, the positives of social Simcity, and didn't want to underscore that they are trying to protect their IP. If you are offended by marketing speak, I don't know how you live in this world.

[Wiglaf]

And they never lied about the logistics. They said it would take a lot of time. I'm sure it would. All this modder did was enable single city offline play. The game is so tightly wired for servers that they have even said adding a "cancel" button to the server browser would require significant q&a.

[Guynemer]

It wouldn't be possible to make the game offline without a significant amount of engineering work by our team.

I'm not offended by marketing-speak. I am offended by bald-faced lies.

[Wiglaf]

That's almost certainly true. You can't say otherwise. You haven't seen the architecture.

[Wiglaf]

For those wondering about RCI balance:

R has 2x workers to shoppers, c takes equal parts shoppers workers, I just takes workers
also I produces more money per square meter than C or R

[Guynemer]

That's almost certainly true. You can't say otherwise. You haven't seen the architecture.

One guy got it working offline 8 days after release. The only thing preventing it from being a completely functional build is the lack of local saves, which will undoubtedly be solved within another week.

She lied, Wiggy.

[Sava]

Lucy Bradshaw is a liar liar pants on fire. The only thing preventing offline mode is the ability to create local saves. The game already creates temp files which syncs with the server. Region play with others requires being online. Region play in a private region one your own host machine does not. Given how quickly people have been able to get into the game files, we're going to see some sort of offline fix from the modding community soon. It might involve running some sort of server emulator. I can't say for sure.