@CB Your retort was an encyclopedia of fallacious debate tactics. The only actual argument I saw in there was "pay your $60 or don't" which is the most nihilistic gamer stance you can possibly take short of "buy it used from GameStop" - OH WAIT, IRONY.
I wasn't debating and was not considering tactics. Only expressing an opinion. I was pleading with my friends to stop debating this topic as if it was a really big deal. I was not defending EA or Origin or Maxis, nor was I agreeing with or disagreeing with anyone. I was asking for a cessation of the mountains made of molehills.
Saying the way to deal with Maxis doing this is to quietly not buy the game is like saying the way to deal with SOPA was to quietly stop running your websites. It doesn't take that many molehills stacked up to start feeling like a mountain.
1 - Sometimes it is a good idea to take the ending of a non-major road turn it into a Medium Density road. This allows you to maximize density on the non-major road, but avoid creating a stop light at the main road so your traffic flows a bit more smoothly. 2 - University Addons are required to START Research. You can disable them after you start to save yourself expenses. The Research will continue without any problems (Realized this after my University was hit by a meteor) 3 - Always separate out your Commercial/Residential from your Industrial. Earlier SimCities the people seemed to care about distance from their home to their job, they don't seem to care in this game. 4 - City Specialization doesn't count into expense/income very well. I ran at a -14k/hour on cheetah speed for 7 hours, but gained money because my Casinos and Processor sales were so high. 5 - Trade Ports with actual Ports are by far the best way to trade. They run more often than train and hold way more than truck or train. But it does have a higher cost. 6 - Even if you don't volunteer stuff to a nearby city, your extra police/ambulance/firetrucks still seems to be shared as long as they aren't busy.
The difference is that SOPA is actually a stepping on of consumer rights
Then I guess the fundamental issue we disagree on is that I think not having your purchases unilaterally rescinded or remotely shutdown is a consumer right.
The big difference I have is that I don't find it remotely insignificant that SimCity could become the standard model future games follow should we lay down and accept its hostility as the status quo.
While I think it's cool that the game takes into account the rest of the world playing when making the calculations for your single-player city, I would much prefer that to be an option, rather than a requirement.
By locking people in to an online-only model, they've reduced the potential buyer pool (though not that much, because some people will buy it anyway), alienated everyone with a remotely dodgy internet connection, and set themselves up for failures on a massive scale.
I said that tolerance for 10-minutes of offline play during connection loss was proof that SimCity didn't need a connection to the mothership to do any of the "simulating" Maxis claims it was doing. Now we have proof that I and others were right: we were being lied to about the nature of SC's server/client model.
The servers are not handling any of the computation done to simulate the city you are playing. They are still acting as servers, doing some amount of computation to route messages of various types between both players and cities. As well, they’re doing cloud storage of save games, interfacing with Origin, and all of that. But for the game itself? No, they’re not doing anything. I have no idea why they’re claiming otherwise. It’s possible that Bradshaw misunderstood or was misinformed, but otherwise I’m clueless.
And:
Kotaku ran a series of tests today, seeing how the game could run without an internet connection, finding it was happy for around 20 minutes before it realised it wasn’t syncing to the servers. Something which would surely be impossible were the servers co-running the game itself.
In Icrontic Gorge (East 3) I think we need to make a city comprised entirely of low-med wealth workers and just have them shuttle into our cities via regional transportation. Both of the major cities are experiencing worker shortages and my tourist/gambling economy requires more sims than we currently have.
Also Nuclear or bust.
0
JBoogalooThis too shall pass...Alexandria, VAIcrontian
Maybe I'll hop on and create that world of low-med wealth workers. It'll probably be a day or so before I get time to do it though.
I think I've gotten to the "end game" content of this game way too damn fast. In one long, 24hr stretch Jimmy and I were able to build an Arcology using broken game mechanics and a city with a total of 30,000 people generating millions of income per hour. The trade/heavy industry mechanics are so easy to exploit that I currently feel cheated of a challenge.
Now, I wanted to build another "end game" city using casinos and tourism. NOPE. Both are broken - even with an insane number of tourists and shoppers Casinos will not make money.
Traffic is broken. Sims are DUMB - they cannot learn to take a side street to avoid traffic. They follow the path closest to a straight line ALWAYS.
People are posting cities of ONLY residentially zoned grids with parks. The sims love it.
I can handle the DRM, but I'm not happy about it. I was frustrated with the servers not being available on launch weekend. I was upset when I couldn't play with friends because the region mechanics were messed up.
I felt like those issues would be fixed.
Now, I feel like I'm bored already after ~60 hrs of gameplay, compared with the 100's that I thought I'd have. I truly doubt they will make this game a better simulation, and so I am disappointed and defeated.
Aside: I promoted @CannonFodder's comment because he took the time to outline his experiences with the game after significant gameplay, not just to promote a "game sucks" narrative.
reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/1a82q7/the_simcity_pr_nightmare_escalates/ "Several players have noted that the characters in the game don’t actually have any permanent jobs or homes. They simply walk to the nearest available open job or a suitable home at certain times, a simplification that creates major headaches in city planning. Sims that start walking don’t switch to mass transit if they don’t find a job nearby; kids don’t get to schools easily; all cops go to a single crime scene even if police stations are carefully spread in different parts of the city. School buses, fire trucks and tourist hordes all seem to have trouble finding obvious routes to their goals. As a result, designing a functional city may mean planning a street grid and placement of different facilities in a deeply counterintuitive way. Players have to design their cities to suit bad algorithms, not realistic goals."
Also from Reddit:
cleo_ 94 points 4 hours ago I think they're trying to fool people who just look at a population number and are happy. A lot of people complained about not being able to build million-cities, so EA just enlargened the number so they wouldn't complain anymore.
simcity.GetFudgedPopulation = function (a) {
a = "undefined" !== typeof a ? a : simcity.gGlobalUIHandler.mLastPopulation;
if (500 >= a)
return a;
if (40845 < a)
return Math.floor(8.25 * a);
a = Math.pow(a - 500, 1.2) + 500;
return Math.floor(a)
};
Nition 80 points 4 hours ago* For the non-programmers (or the lazy), what this is doing is: Pop 0-500: Report actual population Pop 501-40845: Report the actual first 500, plus the rest to the power of 1.2 Pop 40846+: Report 8.25 * actual 40846 might seem like a random number. It's chosen because it's the point where the two algorithms seamlessly cross over: Actual pop 40845: 500 + ((40845-500)^1.2) = 336971 reported Actual pop 40846: 40846 * 8.25 = 336979 reported Edit: Fixed the forgotten -500. Edit2: Here's a graph.
My whole city is residential and money producing oil industry. Need commercial and/or industry desperately lol...
add me on origin if anyone else wants in on the fun! East 3, Icrontic Gorge
Yeah I noticed that the majority of your workers started running over to my city as soon as I opened my industrial sector.
Had I not felt like increasing the wealth levels in my city I'm sure I could've just stuck to building industry but as soon as my oil/ore/coal reserves ran out I realized I had to find other sources of income.
Aside: I promoted @CannonFodder's comment because he took the time to outline his experiences with the game after significant gameplay, not just to promote a "game sucks" narrative.
Thank you - I wanted to make a "helpful" post rather than just promoting a negative campaign.
Apparently "GetFudgedPopulation" is not just leaked code; you can open up the game files and see it in the Javascript. (Disclaimer: Don't know if doing so would violate the EULA.)
However, Maxis did previously publish the fact that not all of your population would be simulated. Computing constraints or something. Maybe the visual city size and number of buildings do correspond to the larger pop. figure?
Comments
Also:
My hair is a bird.
1 - Sometimes it is a good idea to take the ending of a non-major road turn it into a Medium Density road. This allows you to maximize density on the non-major road, but avoid creating a stop light at the main road so your traffic flows a bit more smoothly.
2 - University Addons are required to START Research. You can disable them after you start to save yourself expenses. The Research will continue without any problems (Realized this after my University was hit by a meteor)
3 - Always separate out your Commercial/Residential from your Industrial. Earlier SimCities the people seemed to care about distance from their home to their job, they don't seem to care in this game.
4 - City Specialization doesn't count into expense/income very well. I ran at a -14k/hour on cheetah speed for 7 hours, but gained money because my Casinos and Processor sales were so high.
5 - Trade Ports with actual Ports are by far the best way to trade. They run more often than train and hold way more than truck or train. But it does have a higher cost.
6 - Even if you don't volunteer stuff to a nearby city, your extra police/ambulance/firetrucks still seems to be shared as long as they aren't busy.
By locking people in to an online-only model, they've reduced the potential buyer pool (though not that much, because some people will buy it anyway), alienated everyone with a remotely dodgy internet connection, and set themselves up for failures on a massive scale.
Maxis Insider: SimCity Servers NOT Necessary And:
Also Nuclear or bust.
add me on origin if anyone else wants in on the fun! East 3, Icrontic Gorge
I think I've gotten to the "end game" content of this game way too damn fast. In one long, 24hr stretch Jimmy and I were able to build an Arcology using broken game mechanics and a city with a total of 30,000 people generating millions of income per hour. The trade/heavy industry mechanics are so easy to exploit that I currently feel cheated of a challenge.
Now, I wanted to build another "end game" city using casinos and tourism. NOPE. Both are broken - even with an insane number of tourists and shoppers Casinos will not make money.
Traffic is broken. Sims are DUMB - they cannot learn to take a side street to avoid traffic. They follow the path closest to a straight line ALWAYS.
People are posting cities of ONLY residentially zoned grids with parks. The sims love it.
I can handle the DRM, but I'm not happy about it. I was frustrated with the servers not being available on launch weekend. I was upset when I couldn't play with friends because the region mechanics were messed up.
I felt like those issues would be fixed.
Now, I feel like I'm bored already after ~60 hrs of gameplay, compared with the 100's that I thought I'd have. I truly doubt they will make this game a better simulation, and so I am disappointed and defeated.
Cheers :/
"Several players have noted that the characters in the game don’t actually have any permanent jobs or homes. They simply walk to the nearest available open job or a suitable home at certain times, a simplification that creates major headaches in city planning. Sims that start walking don’t switch to mass transit if they don’t find a job nearby; kids don’t get to schools easily; all cops go to a single crime scene even if police stations are carefully spread in different parts of the city. School buses, fire trucks and tourist hordes all seem to have trouble finding obvious routes to their goals. As a result, designing a functional city may mean planning a street grid and placement of different facilities in a deeply counterintuitive way. Players have to design their cities to suit bad algorithms, not realistic goals."
Also from Reddit:
cleo_ 94 points 4 hours ago
I think they're trying to fool people who just look at a population number and are happy. A lot of people complained about not being able to build million-cities, so EA just enlargened the number so they wouldn't complain anymore.
Indeed. Even more damning is that it seems to be happening at the GUI layer (if the code leak from earlier in the week is indeed true and up-to-date).
https://gist.github.com/anonymous/5133829#file-simcityui-js-L8510
simcity.GetFudgedPopulation = function (a) { a = "undefined" !== typeof a ? a : simcity.gGlobalUIHandler.mLastPopulation; if (500 >= a) return a; if (40845 < a) return Math.floor(8.25 * a); a = Math.pow(a - 500, 1.2) + 500; return Math.floor(a) };Nition 80 points 4 hours ago*For the non-programmers (or the lazy), what this is doing is:
Pop 0-500: Report actual population
Pop 501-40845: Report the actual first 500, plus the rest to the power of 1.2
Pop 40846+: Report 8.25 * actual
40846 might seem like a random number. It's chosen because it's the point where the two algorithms seamlessly cross over:
Actual pop 40845: 500 + ((40845-500)^1.2) = 336971 reported
Actual pop 40846: 40846 * 8.25 = 336979 reported
Edit: Fixed the forgotten -500.
Edit2: Here's a graph.
Had I not felt like increasing the wealth levels in my city I'm sure I could've just stuck to building industry but as soon as my oil/ore/coal reserves ran out I realized I had to find other sources of income.
However, Maxis did previously publish the fact that not all of your population would be simulated. Computing constraints or something. Maybe the visual city size and number of buildings do correspond to the larger pop. figure?