Regardless of the online vs offline debate - which is interesting to Slashdot readers for a variety of reasons (DRM, cloud, corporations lying to the users (do they ever not?), etc.), is it even a fun game?
I'm embarrassed to say I purchased this game. The goddamn digital deluxe edition for $80 goddamn dollars. I should probably click the "Post Anonymously" box to hide my shame, but I won't. I'll wear my scarlet EA.
Now, I knew about the "you have to be online" thing, but I thought that was just for authentication, like StarCraft 2. I do not like DRM, I run Linux on most of my computers, and I'm a donation-making member of the EFF (got the t-shirts and everything) but I will, on occasion, fork over cash for a DRMed video game and roll my eyes when I have to sit through "verifying with server..." bullshit. I'm weak.
I read pre-reviews of the game, and I watched gameplay videos. I have fond memories of SimCity 2000, and thought this game looked awesome.
I was annoyed when I couldn't play for the first two days because of 'server load' issues. They were right about the "multiplayer experience." Not being able to play a video game because "servers are unavailable" is definitely part of the multiplayer experience.
But, I'm a patient person, and I wanted to play this game. So when the servers stabilized and I had time over the weekend, I played. And it was great! It was a ton of fun drawing and planning my city.
Until.
Until you hit about 100k population (which, as the decompiled ui code shows is only actually 15000 sims because they inflate the pop to make it seem like they're doing more). When you get about that big, all of a sudden, the city collapses because of incredible traffic jams on the roads. No one can get to work or back, a building catches fire and the fire trucks can't get to it so the building burns down. Sims get sick and the ambulances can't reach them because of traffic, they die, people become unhappy and leave, no money from no taxes, city collapses etc etc.
And at first you think, "Oh, I have clearly been mistaken with regards to my city planning abilities! What an interesting challenge! Let's look closer at the traffic patterns to see what I've done wrong, and what I can do to fix my city that is being simulated in exciting and challenging ways!"
So you start looking closer. You turn on the traffic map and see, "hey wait a minute. Why are all cars using that one narrow side street instead of the massive 4 lane highway right next to it..?"
So you think, "perhaps I've overloaded that street, or have failed to understand the population density along it?" So you look closer. So you follow a single sim to see what he does to get to and from work.
And when you look at an individual sim, an "Agent" in the GlassBox lingo, you see that he is stupid, and does not behave in any way like a real denizen of a city. Which is what you're trying to simulate.
You follow the sim and discover that when he leaves his house at 6AM to go to work, he does not know where he is going. It isn't even correct to call it "his" house, as it's not his house, it's the first open house he came across when he left work the night before. When a sim goes to work, he becomes aware of the closest building with an available job. And closest means "shortest path" routing, not "least cost." So he will take a.99999 mile long dirt road instead of 1 mile long super highway, because it's shorter. So he travels to this closest building, and if when he arrives, there is still an available job there, he will go inside and fill up a job slot. If by the time he reaches the building, some other sim has arrived first and TOOK HIS JERB he will pick the next closest building with a currently available job and try his luck there instead.
However. Every other sim that spawned is following the same process. Which results in the city-ending traffic jams.
And this is when it happens. There's an word for it, "anagnorisis." It's an element of greek tragedy. It's the moment when the protagonist realizes the clearer, fuller picture of the situation and of his destiny, in all of its horror.
Because you think, "so how do I lay out a city to perform with this behavior?" and you realize that you can't. I mean, you can "solve the puzzle." You can make one long winding road with the homes all at one end and the jobs scattered along the rest so none of the agents ever have to make a turn. When they get to a full building they keep on going along the same road to the next one, so they're always heading in the right direction. Or you can lay out some clever paths so they always take a path that takes them away from other job locations, or along a narrow street. And it has to work in both directions, because they use the same logic when they leave work to go "home." They crash in the first open house they find.
But if that's the puzzle you're solving, then you're not solving the problem of city planning, because no city works like that.
Since the sims are not simulating the way people in a city behave, you're not actually simulating a city. You're drawing a city that will accommodate the behavior of "Sims," which are entities that have nothing have in common with real commuters.
It gets worse when you start visiting forums and looking around the internet and discover other problems. Like that you can build a city that's nothing but residential buildings and city services. No industrial or commercial zoning needed.
So, in the end, all this time, you haven't been simulating a city at all. You've just been drawing. The graphics are beautiful, don't get me wrong. But there is no actual "game" here because there is no simulation of a city, so it's pointless.
And that's when I turned off the game, have not turned it back on since, and started demanding my refund. EA has refused, so next I'm going to issue a chargeback on my credit card.
I have never in my life disputed a credit card charge for an order I actually placed, but this bullshit will not stand. This is a bait and switch. I ordered a game of city simulation and I got MS Paint with city tiles.
I don't care about banning my Origin account, as it has nothing on it except SimCity, and I will never purchase another product through Origin, anyway, given their "no refunds" policy. To paraphrase a great American, "there's an old saying on the Internet - I know it's in Texas, probably on the Internets - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again."
Fuck EA, fuck Maxis, fuck them right in their goddamn ears.
It isn't even correct to call it "his" house, as it's not his house, it's the first open house he came across when he left work the night before. When a sim goes to work, he becomes aware of the closest building with an available job.
Seriously? They didn't fix the traffic model from SC4?
SimCity 4 has a similar fundamental flaw in its traffic model that you describe. The SHORTEST route always won out, regardless of whether or not it was the FASTEST route, or HIGHEST-CAPACITY route. Every city you make in SC4 will have that same issue.
Well, they do until you have enough of that nonsense and install the Network Addon Mod ("network", in this case, meaning "traffic network"). Just ignore all the n
Well, the routing is really the secondary problem. Yes, it's dumb that they pick the shortest path instead of the quickest/least cost path, like they never heard of the Interior Gateway Protocol. But, even if all the cars picked the fastest route instead of the shortest route, you'd still end up jammed, because the fundamental problem is that they're all going to the same place.
Not exactly "all" but a lot of them, because if you have your city separated into regions, which one usually does as you don't wan
So, yeah, traffic routing is silly, but it would still have mostly worked if the sims weren't so completely retarded in picking their destinations to begin with.
Bottom line, the game will never make sense unless their destinations make sense. I don't know how complex Simcity 4 actually is, but it appears to be highly complex. You can click on a route and see that people are going from this area to that area, they have an actual destination in mind which might be in another town. Today, each and every citizen of the city ought to have their own job, their own way of getting there (if they have enough money and traffic's not too bad, they should own their own car, wh
Online, offline - is it even fun? (Score:2)
Regardless of the online vs offline debate - which is interesting to Slashdot readers for a variety of reasons (DRM, cloud, corporations lying to the users (do they ever not?), etc.), is it even a fun game?
After seeing videos and reports like these:
http://kotaku.com/5990362/with-simple-ai-like-this-why-does-simcity-need-cloud-computing [kotaku.com]
I'm inclined to think that the answer may well be 'no'. At which point it really doesn't matter much whether you play it online or offline, does it?
Re:Online, offline - is it even fun? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Is it even fun?"
The answer is "no."
I'm embarrassed to say I purchased this game. The goddamn digital deluxe edition for $80 goddamn dollars. I should probably click the "Post Anonymously" box to hide my shame, but I won't. I'll wear my scarlet EA.
Now, I knew about the "you have to be online" thing, but I thought that was just for authentication, like StarCraft 2. I do not like DRM, I run Linux on most of my computers, and I'm a donation-making member of the EFF (got the t-shirts and everything) but I will, on occasion, fork over cash for a DRMed video game and roll my eyes when I have to sit through "verifying with server..." bullshit. I'm weak.
I read pre-reviews of the game, and I watched gameplay videos. I have fond memories of SimCity 2000, and thought this game looked awesome.
I was annoyed when I couldn't play for the first two days because of 'server load' issues. They were right about the "multiplayer experience." Not being able to play a video game because "servers are unavailable" is definitely part of the multiplayer experience.
But, I'm a patient person, and I wanted to play this game. So when the servers stabilized and I had time over the weekend, I played. And it was great! It was a ton of fun drawing and planning my city.
Until.
Until you hit about 100k population (which, as the decompiled ui code shows is only actually 15000 sims because they inflate the pop to make it seem like they're doing more). When you get about that big, all of a sudden, the city collapses because of incredible traffic jams on the roads. No one can get to work or back, a building catches fire and the fire trucks can't get to it so the building burns down. Sims get sick and the ambulances can't reach them because of traffic, they die, people become unhappy and leave, no money from no taxes, city collapses etc etc.
And at first you think, "Oh, I have clearly been mistaken with regards to my city planning abilities! What an interesting challenge! Let's look closer at the traffic patterns to see what I've done wrong, and what I can do to fix my city that is being simulated in exciting and challenging ways!"
So you start looking closer. You turn on the traffic map and see, "hey wait a minute. Why are all cars using that one narrow side street instead of the massive 4 lane highway right next to it..?"
So you think, "perhaps I've overloaded that street, or have failed to understand the population density along it?" So you look closer. So you follow a single sim to see what he does to get to and from work.
And when you look at an individual sim, an "Agent" in the GlassBox lingo, you see that he is stupid, and does not behave in any way like a real denizen of a city. Which is what you're trying to simulate.
You follow the sim and discover that when he leaves his house at 6AM to go to work, he does not know where he is going. It isn't even correct to call it "his" house, as it's not his house, it's the first open house he came across when he left work the night before. When a sim goes to work, he becomes aware of the closest building with an available job. And closest means "shortest path" routing, not "least cost." So he will take a .99999 mile long dirt road instead of 1 mile long super highway, because it's shorter. So he travels to this closest building, and if when he arrives, there is still an available job there, he will go inside and fill up a job slot. If by the time he reaches the building, some other sim has arrived first and TOOK HIS JERB he will pick the next closest building with a currently available job and try his luck there instead.
However. Every other sim that spawned is following the same process. Which results in the city-ending traffic jams.
And this is when it happens. There's an word for it, "anagnorisis." It's an element of greek tragedy. It's the moment when the protagonist realizes the clearer, fuller picture of the situation and of his destiny, in all of its horror.
Because you think, "so how do I lay out a city to perform with this behavior?" and you realize that you can't. I mean, you can "solve the puzzle." You can make one long winding road with the homes all at one end and the jobs scattered along the rest so none of the agents ever have to make a turn. When they get to a full building they keep on going along the same road to the next one, so they're always heading in the right direction. Or you can lay out some clever paths so they always take a path that takes them away from other job locations, or along a narrow street. And it has to work in both directions, because they use the same logic when they leave work to go "home." They crash in the first open house they find.
But if that's the puzzle you're solving, then you're not solving the problem of city planning, because no city works like that.
Since the sims are not simulating the way people in a city behave, you're not actually simulating a city. You're drawing a city that will accommodate the behavior of "Sims," which are entities that have nothing have in common with real commuters.
It gets worse when you start visiting forums and looking around the internet and discover other problems. Like that you can build a city that's nothing but residential buildings and city services. No industrial or commercial zoning needed.
So, in the end, all this time, you haven't been simulating a city at all. You've just been drawing. The graphics are beautiful, don't get me wrong. But there is no actual "game" here because there is no simulation of a city, so it's pointless.
And that's when I turned off the game, have not turned it back on since, and started demanding my refund. EA has refused, so next I'm going to issue a chargeback on my credit card.
I have never in my life disputed a credit card charge for an order I actually placed, but this bullshit will not stand. This is a bait and switch. I ordered a game of city simulation and I got MS Paint with city tiles.
I don't care about banning my Origin account, as it has nothing on it except SimCity, and I will never purchase another product through Origin, anyway, given their "no refunds" policy. To paraphrase a great American, "there's an old saying on the Internet - I know it's in Texas, probably on the Internets - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again."
Fuck EA, fuck Maxis, fuck them right in their goddamn ears.
Re: (Score:2)
TOOK HIS JERB
You, sir, win one internet. Use it wisely.
Re: (Score:2)
It isn't even correct to call it "his" house, as it's not his house, it's the first open house he came across when he left work the night before. When a sim goes to work, he becomes aware of the closest building with an available job.
Wait...that's not normal where you live?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
What I got out of that was the following:
Seriously? They didn't fix the traffic model from SC4?
SimCity 4 has a similar fundamental flaw in its traffic model that you describe. The SHORTEST route always won out, regardless of whether or not it was the FASTEST route, or HIGHEST-CAPACITY route. Every city you make in SC4 will have that same issue.
Well, they do until you have enough of that nonsense and install the Network Addon Mod ("network", in this case, meaning "traffic network"). Just ignore all the n
Re: (Score:2)
Well, the routing is really the secondary problem. Yes, it's dumb that they pick the shortest path instead of the quickest/least cost path, like they never heard of the Interior Gateway Protocol. But, even if all the cars picked the fastest route instead of the shortest route, you'd still end up jammed, because the fundamental problem is that they're all going to the same place.
Not exactly "all" but a lot of them, because if you have your city separated into regions, which one usually does as you don't wan
Re: (Score:2)
So, yeah, traffic routing is silly, but it would still have mostly worked if the sims weren't so completely retarded in picking their destinations to begin with.
Bottom line, the game will never make sense unless their destinations make sense. I don't know how complex Simcity 4 actually is, but it appears to be highly complex. You can click on a route and see that people are going from this area to that area, they have an actual destination in mind which might be in another town. Today, each and every citizen of the city ought to have their own job, their own way of getting there (if they have enough money and traffic's not too bad, they should own their own car, wh
Re: (Score:2)
So it's like SimCity for Lemmings without the cliffs?
They should put all of it indoors and call it the EU or something.
Re: (Score:2)
Now THAT'S a useful and interesting review. I'd definitely mod up if I had the points.