SimCity 5

[Lord_Iggy]

SimHamlet.

 

[PieceOfMind]

SIMCITY UPDATE: STRAIGHT ANSWERS FROM LUCY

Spoiler text of article :

LUCY BRADSHAW
GENERAL MANAGER, MAXIS LABEL

I hate to disturb you when you’re playing SimCity, but I’d like to offer some straight answers on the topic: Always-Connected and why SimCity is not an offline experience.

Always-Connected is a big change from SimCities of the past. It didn’t come down as an order from corporate and it isn’t a clandestine strategy to control players. It’s fundamental to the vision we had for this SimCity. From the ground up, we designed this game with multiplayer in mind – using new technology to realize a vision of players connected in regions to create a SimCity that captured the dynamism of the world we live in; a global, ever-changing, social world.

We put a ton of effort into making our simulation and graphics engines more detailed than ever and to give players lively and responsive cities. We also made innovative use of servers to move aspects of the simulation into the cloud to support region play and social features. Here’s just a few:

• We keep the simulation state of the region up to date for all players. Even when playing solo, this keeps the interactions between cities up to date in a shared view of the world.
• Players who want to reach the peak of each specialization can count on surrounding cities to provide services or resources, even workers. As other players build, your city can draw on their resources.
• Our Great Works rely on contributions from multiple cities in a region. Connected services keep each player’s contributions updated and the progression on Great Works moving ahead.
• All of our social world features - world challenges, world events, world leaderboards and world achievements - use our servers to update the status of all cities.
• Our servers handle gifts between players.
• We’ve created a dynamic supply and demand model for trading by keeping a Global Market updated with changing demands on key resources.
• We update each city’s visual representation as well. If you visit another player’s city, you’ll see the most up to date visual status.
• We even check to make sure that all the cities saved are legit, so that the region play, leaderboards, challenges and achievements rewards and status have integrity.

Cloud-based saves and easy access from any computer are another advantage of our connected features. You can pop from work to home, play the game and have your cities available to you anywhere.

Almost all of our players play with connected cities. But some chose to play alone – running the cities themselves. But whether they play solo or multiplayer, they are drawn to the connected city experience. And Always-Connected provides a platform for future social features that will play out over regions and servers.

The game we launched is only the beginning for us – it’s not final and it never will be. In many ways, we built an MMO.

So, could we have built a subset offline mode? Yes. But we rejected that idea because it didn’t fit with our vision. We did not focus on the “single city in isolation” that we have delivered in past SimCities. We recognize that there are fans – people who love the original SimCity – who want that. But we’re also hearing from thousands of people who are playing across regions, trading, communicating and loving the Always-Connected functionality. The SimCity we delivered captures the magic of its heritage but catches up with ever-improving technology.

So I’ll finish with another HUGE thanks to everyone who stuck with us through this launch. Hundreds of thousands are building and sharing cities online now. And what you’re creating just blows us away. SimCity is a special game, with a very special community of players, and we’re proud to be a part of it.

To me this sort of spin epitomises the contempt EA/Maxis has for its customers/audience. This article isn't about "straight answers" but damage control, saving face and layering lies upon lies.

Link to reddit thread

 

[KaiserElectric]

So the gist is "We know you don't like how we're doing this, but we're going to keep doing it anyway because we know better."

 

[FriendlyFire]

You can pop from work to home, play the game and have your cities available to you anywhere.

If the EA servers work, and your save city can be loaded, and hasnt been rolled back and hasnt vanished. Or you could have offline save and then put it on a USB then bring it home with you.

The online multiplayer while is a good idea shouldnt stop Maxis putting in offline single player mode. And its not like the Multiplayer requires servers to do much of the in game calculations, its just leaderboards, rescource sharing, chat and saves. EDIT: DRM and DLC

 

[PieceOfMind]

It's embarrassing for her that she appears to equate MMO with multiplayer.

 

[AlpsStranger]

My God. It's actually beautiful at this point. Like a blood soaked train wreck played out after taking a puff of that SlowMo drug from Dredd3D.

 

[Lord_Iggy]

It is fun to watch, where the fun is stained with sadness, tragedy and loss, mourning at what could and should have been.

 

[cybrxkhan]

It is fun to watch, where the fun is stained with sadness, tragedy and loss, mourning at what could and should have been.

One of the better dramedies of the year, definitely, almost as good as the 2012 US elections dramedy. Only sad thing is the main character happens to be a beloved video game franchise.

 

[Maniacal]

EDIT: Interesting RPS article on the subject, comparing various statements from Maxis/EA
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/16/simcity-bosss-straight-answers-seem-pretty-wiggly/

I hate to disturb you when you’re playing SimCity

... is that a joke? (Yes I know it seems the servers have calmed down for a lot of people, but still, its kind of a dumb sentence).

We put a ton of effort into making our simulation and graphics engines more detailed than ever and to give players lively and responsive cities.

Clearly also a joke seeing how Sim City fails to deliver upon that.

We keep the simulation state of the region up to date for all players. Even when playing solo, this keeps the interactions between cities up to date in a shared view of the world.

From everything I have read, this doesn't seem to work very well, if at all in many cases.

Players who want to reach the peak of each specialization can count on surrounding cities to provide services or resources, even workers. As other players build, your city can draw on their resources.

Which apparently takes a few hours at most, then you're stuck with nothing much to do.

Our Great Works rely on contributions from multiple cities in a region. Connected services keep each player’s contributions updated and the progression on Great Works moving ahead.

Why can't that be done in SP too?

All of our social world features - world challenges, world events, world leaderboards and world achievements - use our servers to update the status of all cities.

No one besides you cares.

We’ve created a dynamic supply and demand model for trading by keeping a Global Market updated with changing demands on key resources.

The same key resources that are in the same spots in every region and you don't even need to run a successful city. I haven't actually heard anything about the world economy and trading aspect...

We update each city’s visual representation as well. If you visit another player’s city, you’ll see the most up to date visual status.

We'll I'd bloody well hope so?

We even check to make sure that all the cities saved are legit, so that the region play, leaderboards, challenges and achievements rewards and status have integrity.

Nobody cares about leaderboards, and good luck modding?

Cloud-based saves and easy access from any computer are another advantage of our connected features. You can pop from work to home, play the game and have your cities available to you anywhere.

How many people honestly play the game on more than one computer? Cloud saving is nice, but really not a necessity.

Almost all of our players play with connected cities.But whether they play solo or multiplayer, they are drawn to the connected city experience. And Always-Connected provides a platform for future social features that will play out over regions and servers.

... you don't give them a choice.

In many ways, we built an MMO.

No, no you didn't. You barely built a working game (and maybe not even then).

 

[madviking]

It is fun to watch, where the fun is stained with sadness, tragedy and loss, mourning at what could and should have been.

Oh yea, a flaming train wreck crashing in slow motion.

 

[warpus]

“So, could we have built a subset offline mode? Yes. But we rejected that idea because it didn’t fit with our vision.”

"Okay guys, we're starting to work on the new simcity. We need a vision. Let's figure this out.. What does every single sim city player want?"

"To be able to terraform terrain?"

"Well yes, but what else?"

"To have an open, potentially sandbox-like game with a lot of replay value?"

"Yes.. And?"

"Mods?"

".... Yes, AND?"

"To be able to play whenever they want?"

"YES. And the exact opposite of that is going to form the core of our vision for this project"

 

[cybrxkhan]

"Okay guys, we're starting to work on the new simcity. We need a vision. Let's figure this out.. What does every single sim city player want?"

"To be able to terraform terrain?"

"Well yes, but what else?"

"To have an open, potentially sandbox-like game with a lot of replay value?"

"Yes.. And?"

"Mods?"

".... Yes, AND?"

"To be able to play whenever they want?"

"YES. And the exact opposite of that is going to form the core of our vision for this project"

It's like as if they didn't want to give what SimCity players wanted.

I can't believe it, this is one of the most surprising plot twists ever...

(Well, it's surprising to me in the sense that I should have seen it coming instead of having some false hope.)

 

[PieceOfMind]

Taking Bradshaw's side for a moment, to be fair I think it probably is truthful that multiplayer would have been a much-requested feature for future iterations of SimCity. People do enjoy the interactivity playing games with other people. It often makes game experiences more unique and improves longevity. How it would work with Simcity in particular is another matter, but I'm sure there are plenty of visions out there that would work really well.

However it's far from a request for forgoing the single player experience entirely. The only way I can make sense of this sort of spin is to assume:
1. Constant-online DRM was a directive from Corporate. This is fairly commonsense.
2. Bradshaw is directed (or by her own judgement since she is management) to avoid speaking about DRM at all costs.

Then it becomes a pretty difficult task to convince (read: PR bs) customers that they wanted a mp-only game when the previous four(!) games were all sp-only. I mean, if she is backed into that corner, what can she say? Silence is an option I suppose.

More interesting is that I've seen a few comments, when responding to this news, of people suggesting the intended audience for this press release is not customers or gamers at all, but investors. That would make more sense, because a typical gamer will see right through the spin and more likely be insulted.

 

[Lord_Iggy]

Hahah, Maniacal beat me to append notes to all of Lucy Bradshaw's crock of ****. You expressed my thoughts exactly!

And PieceOfMind, if Bradshaw's spiel is directed at investors, it's directed at them in a pretty oblique manner. I don't think anyone thinks she fully believes what she's saying, she's just doing her job to spin this disaster into something that sounds intentional.

 

[Quintillus]

The problem isn't that there is an online, connected, multiplayer experience. When it was first announced, it sounded like it had some good ideas. The problem is that that is the only option. If they'd still had the online aspect, but you could also play by yourself in single player, while away from the Internet, and download your online cities for offline use, things probably would have been much smoother. The servers might have still melted down, but at least everyone who'd bought it could still play single player while that was fixed.

It may well have been a vision to have this interconnectedness. It'd be cool to have an option to play with your friends like that in Sim City 4, wouldn't it? But my guess is someone from corporate heard that idea, and then dictated that always online be one of the "features" (read: DRM).

 

[Lord_Iggy]

I dunno. Even if one issue was completely and wholly fixed, the game is so colossally flawed that we would still be raging about all of the other things that are wrong. Just looking at the conversation in this thread, we're discussing problems from the game that fall into several distinct categories, each of which is deeply, deeply problematic and potentially game breaking all on its own.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Here's my take on some separate issues and whether they'll change:

• Online-only DRM. I think there's little chance this will eventually be patched out. Reason being that by forcing players to be constantly interacting with the server it's easier to bombard them with DLC advertising. Not only would it not surprise me, but I'd expect future DLC additions to be thrown into the build menus, constantly annoying you if you haven't bought them. EA/Maxis are almost certainly intent on cashing in as much as they can in this way. One only has to look at the $20 day one DLC to see they would have no qualms with this. Plus, it is EA.
  
• Small city limits. This is something I think won't be lifted. I still say the average gamer is too optimistic about this if they think EA/Maxis are limiting city sizes just to piss us off. No, I'm inclined to believe there are technical limitations of GlassBox that will make the simulation perform really badly as it is scaled up any further. It would take an actual expansion (or equivalent large DLC) to be able to bring in larger cities.
  
• RCI stuff (e.g. Residential only cities). I think this will be fixed to a good degree. There will still be quirks, like industry essentially being an employment sink, but they will at least fix the dependencies so that R only cities aren't feasible.
  
• Broken path-finding. Almost certainly will be fixed to a satisfactory state. It will never be perfect, as all indications are that the guy working on this area is inexperienced with dealing with this type of challenge, but it will be better than the broken release version.
  
• Sims having meaningless lives. To disappoint some hopefuls, I don' think this will change. Reason being it's too fundamental to the engine. Changing how the sims live their lives each day would be the sort of thing you'd be tweaking at the Alpha stage. Even if changing that aspect were feasible now, I doubt the programmers would get permission and IMO that is fair enough. Too much chance to break the game even further and waste valuable resources. They might at least make sims head to different jobs and different homes so that they're not always moving around in bizarre herds, but certainly never persistent homes and jobs. And they'll never have persistent names.
  
• Public Transport having stupid AI. They'll tinker around with it a bit to make it more effective, but it will never make actual sense, like buses going along defined routes.
  
• Emergency vehicles getting stuck in traffic, and all responding to the one task simultaneously when they could split up to handle multiple events. These two issues I expect they'll fix to a good enough extent. I don't think players will ever have the level of control over them they really want, but the behaviours for these services will be patched to be less stupid.

I've probably missed some others. It's hard to really decide which issues are the greatest when I can't play the game myself.

Based on how I expect the game will go from here, I don't think I'll ever have a good enough set of reasons to feel I should buy it. I'll just allow myself to be pleasantly surprised if EA/Maxis change their tact and manage to turn this game into something at least half-decent rather than the scam it is at present.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Fairly informative review I think. A pretty serious fan of Maxis but doesn't pull his punches.


Link to video.

 

[cybrxkhan]

@Piece of Mind: Another issue, though I'm not sure whether it counts as one or not, that I've heard floating around would be the removal of previous game features such as subways (only one I can think of at the moment). Though it's not an issue exclusive to SimCity or EA - a lot of games remove previous content in new versions, often before putting them back in (such as the case with religions in Civ5).

 

[Maniacal]

If they had made the game properly SP with a MP mode in addition it wouldh \ave been fine and cool and probably gained Maxis and EA a lot of favour instead of losing even more credibility (of which they had little).