Maxis Developer Takes SimCity Review Lumps Gracefully

[nickpy]

I was on the Beta for this SimCity, and I was sorely disappointed even then. I had to wait a full say to get in to play the game at all because all the servers were down. Not a good sign...

And then when I finally did get in, discovered all this "play for one hour" nonsense, which included the agonisingly slow and hand-holdy tutorial... I think that when I finally got to play I did so for about 10 minutes before realising the whole thing was deadly boring and quit. They didn't even let you fully test the game - half the stuff was disabled with a big banner that said "Not in Beta". Guess what it did after I quit? It sprang Internet Explorer on me with a page about pre-ordering the game for £45!

Beta my foot. It was clearly a marketing gimmick by EA that Maxis decided to dress up as a Beta so they could at least catch a few bugs in the process.

All this coming from a -fan- of the SC series. SC4 was Excellent. Not perfect, mind you, but compared to this pile of rubbish it was the gaming equivalent of an angelic choir.

 

[Warlokk]

Anyone else get Tropico in the steam sale? Did it to spite SimCity but its actually really good. The DRM requires you to sign in once but that's it. Gotta say, with all this fuss about SimCity its made me realize even if there were no launch problems, there are better alternatives out there.

I picked it up and haven't been able to stop playing it since... it's a whole lot of fun, and when your people raise a fuss you can have them arrested or shot, which Sim City never let me do

I gotta say, it's a blast being benevolent/malicious dictator And for the price for the full game + all the expansions, it's a steal.

 

[Scars Unseen]

All I read was "SimCity is an online game." That was enough to tell me that Ms. Bradshaw hasn't taken nearly enough lumps yet.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

I got a chill when I saw the line "from start to finish". We already knew, but the candid presentation of a $60 retail Simcity game having a "finish" just didn't sit right with me. Let your damn Facebook knockoff games "finish", not a $60 game I might want to give a spin years down the road. If this continues, it'll be damned hard to have an archive of video games for historical purposes. "Oh yeah, there was a Simcity 5, we just have screenshots because EA decided that it finished". Blech.

 

[lancar]

I heard somewhere that EA did a stress test of Simcity during it's beta phase to test and see how the servers held up (can somebody verify/dimiss that?).

They didn't.

They then went and launched it anyway.

It didn't work out.

durr....



Captcha: "harp on"
captcha knows the score

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

Well it's nice that she isn't calling players "entitled whiners" at least.

 

[theultimateend]

I honestly have a hard time believing anything out of this woman's mouth.

With every passing day it looks like playing offline is more and more feasible and fairly simple to accomplish - there's already rumors of a debug mode where you can disable the check to see if you're online, plus the developer who claimed that it would be fairly simple to get the game running offline, plus Kotaku being able to play the game for 20min offline without any problem other than the game killing itself after it failed an online check, plus my own instincts as a software developer that tell me that running any significant part of the game on a server would be a colossally stupid design choice.

I have a hard time believing that this wasn't a mandate from EA and they're now just distancing themselves from the whole debacle as much as they can by throwing Maxis under the bus.

The way she keeps trying to push that SimCity is totally an "Online game" when its looking less and less like that's the case really calls into doubt anything that she says.

Graham said on their podcast that he watched someone play for an hour disconnected with the only disability being no interaction with friends (which makes sense).

So it's literally nothing but DRM.

If anyone figures out how to redirect where the game saves, it could be made 100% offline for single player already .

 

[Covarr]

"SimCity's review scores, based to a large extent on its connectivity issues"

NOPE. That wasn't the core problem, just a manifestation of some bigger issues. SimCity is guilty of a few far more grievous mistakes that really hamper its potential:

1. There should absolutely not be an always-online requirement. Don't get me wrong, I actually like the presence of multiplayer, and I'm not advocating removing it entirely... but it should be an optional game mode, not the center of the product. I think this is the most obvious problem and the one that has most players up in arms. Single player would allow for reverting saves and cheating, both focal points of the classic SimCity experience, as well as mods, a focal point of almost any modern gaming experience on PC.

2. The agent system feels unfinished. Individual sims are so dumb, with bad pathfinding, non-persistant jobs, and choices based solely on location, that the game really would be better off if they weren't there at all, and the game only simulated the overall effects of population in areas, as in previous SimCity games. For example, entertainment choices should be made with an RNG[footnote]Random Number Generator, for those of you who aren't programmers[/footnote], giving weight based on travel distance, quality of venue, and household wealth, not just pure distance. Other agents, such as power and water, spread too slowly; in real life, if you add more water to an existing pipe system, does it really take weeks for that water to propagate? No! The agent system isn't inherently bad, in fact it's a damn good idea, but its implementation is a definite "needs improvement" right now.

3. Cities are too small. This is another one that's gotten a lot of attention, so I'm not gonna go into a lot of detail, but suffice to say that people want to build sprawling metropolises. Also, it's worth noting that the economy isn't even remotely realistic. They try to hide this by padding the numbers, but realistically you couldn't fit more than maybe 50K residents in this space, it's really that small, and 50K simply won't support the sorts of structures players are encouraged to build.

4. In an effort to streamline the game after the convoluted beast that was SimCity 4, they removed too many features. We want terraforming. We need subways. I understand why they attached water and electricity to roads, but that should be optional (perhaps attached to a difficulty mode?). IMO, managing piping and water structures was one of the best parts of SimCity 2000, and the biggest reason it's still my favorite entry in the series.

5. Finite resources and the global market are cool in theory, but resources are used too fast. This isn't even a major design flaw, but a balancing problem, and one that could easily be fixed by tweaking a few numbers in a patch. All it does now is screw over players who share regions with someone who abandoned their city.

6. Players should be allowed to run their own self-hosted servers. Look at Minecraft's success, or any of dozens of FPSs, this is a large part of the reason for it. Being able to play a multi-city region with mods or custom settings would add a ton of replay value to the game, as well as reducing your own server strain (assuming you release dedicated server software separately rather than just having people pay you to host it, which would be a huge mistake).

C'mon, Maxis. It's not too late to fix this. These are some pretty serious problems, but bigger hurdles have been overcome [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XIV:_A_Realm_Reborn]. You wouldn't have to start from scratch. You've got a strong foundation here, and though it would be a lot of work, it would go a long way in regaining consumer trust if you were willing to do it.

P.S. Thanks

 

[rebus_forever]

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Maxis-SimCity-EA-Single-Player,21515.html


This is worth looking at apparently always on is completely forced rather than actually relying on anything server based.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

I wonder if this whole debacle has taught EA a lesson or they will just come up with an even less popular DRM scheme in the hopes of making always online DRM look good by comparison. And I have my doubts as to whether that many reviews will change since overall trust in Maxis has gone through the floor.

I doubt anything will change. The shareholders got their cash, EA's stocks didn't monstrously drop because of the DRM debacle, the quarterly statement will more than likely state that SimCity was incredibly profitable. Considering that - expect more DRM. The only thing that will change the current outlook the industry has toward its own services is if DRM woes ever came to trigger a stock price drop.

That's the saving grace of private companies like Valve. Valve doesn't issue stock, it doesn't have shareholders to report to, its quarterly statements only concern its upper bigwigs (like Newell), so its policies aren't designed to please a bunch of non-gamers who lean on hypothetical stock to garnish their retirement funds.

Going public means you have more cash, but you become a slave to the whims of people who only honestly care about their stock packages turning a profit. EA's implemented DRM because a bunch of non-gamers were concerned that the filthy, filthy pirate scum would prevent them from tasting their planned golden years.

 

[5mj7R7yf4Dwr3gdZyyu9PeGNwYjlNrjzuh3iTXQG]

This still smacks of Ms. Bradshaw falling on her sword for EA. I'm pretty sure EA pushed on Maxis the Persistent-connection DRM and gave them the chore of making it palatable. You can task the best chef in the world with making Gateau au chocolat avec l'uranium appauvri[footnote]Chocolate cake with depleted uranium[/footnote], and STILL no one is going to be able to stomach it on account that any amount of depleted uranium is too much for chocolate cake.

That said, I hope Ms. Bradshaw emerges from this in serviceable enough condition to make more Sim games, preferably not under the profane mantle of Electronic Arts. We want more and better Sim City, (and in my case more and better Sims 2) but next time with a bit less depleted uranium, please.

238U

 

[5mj7R7yf4Dwr3gdZyyu9PeGNwYjlNrjzuh3iTXQG]

I suspect EA is doing these things out of desperation than hubris. At least I want to give EA the benefit of the doubt, but either way, EA's decisions will only speed it to bankruptcy regardless of the motivations behind it.

It reminds me of the desperation of the Aztecs in the decline of their civilization increasing drastically the human sacrifices being made, enough so that it became a recognized factor contributing to their fall in analyses afterwards.

238U

 

[FoolKiller]

I wonder if this whole debacle has taught EA a lesson or they will just come up with an even less popular DRM scheme in the hopes of making always online DRM look good by comparison. And I have my doubts as to whether that many reviews will change since overall trust in Maxis has gone through the floor.

What do you want to bet that they're main work after getting servers running is patching the loopholes allowing the modders to play offline?

 

[Tiamat666]

Sim City is an online game? Why? Since when? I just want to build up my city and enjoy the game on my own, at my own pace, in my spare time. I don't want to play a Sim City online game, which is why I'm never going to play this new Sim City game.

 

[FoolKiller]

SimCity's review scores, based to a large extent on its connectivity issues

Well you wanted your game to be a service and not a product. You chose to make your service online and now you're unhappy that the service that you have provided has been judged?

Well, which is it? Is the game a product or service?

 

[Formica Archonis]

Bradshaw went on to say that SimCity's review scores, based to a large extent on its connectivity issues, were fair,

She wants something. She wants something and knows demanding it or playing the victim would bring the torches and pitchforks out anew.

If you can't play the martyr, play the penitent.

and that she hoped the reviewers would revisit those scores now that connectivity wasn't a problem.

And that is what she wants. Less review score murder.

 

[Johnson McGee]

Just leave this little guy right here....

The instant I saw SC5 'regions' I thought they were basically SC4 cities divided into smaller playable areas. Seems like that is confirmed by how that video shows you can modify the game so simply and just play like the borders aren't even there.

I think it's a shame that server connectivity dominated the media surrounding this game because it falls flat in so many other areas. The city size in particular, it's so small and with not being able to control road placement outside the area it seems to me that the game could fairly easily be 'solved' in a small region. Doesn't leave much room for creativity.

 

[kebab4you]

As far as wonderful? Only in fantasy land could someone create path-finding this bad and be proud of the results.

... really? Calculating the cost to travel path x or path y isn't rocket science, both path has a base value to travel over them and as more car drive on them the value increases. So, eventually the nearby road will cost too much to travel over so the cars will take the one further away. BUT the game seems to completely ignore any kind of travel value and only settles for the shortest path, pathetic.

 

[mfeff]

As far as wonderful? Only in fantasy land could someone create path-finding this bad and be proud of the results.

... really? Calculating the cost to travel path x or path y isn't rocket science, both path has a base value to travel over them and as more car drive on them the value increases. So, eventually the nearby road will cost too much to travel over so the cars will take the one further away. BUT the game seems to completely ignore any kind of travel value and only settles for the shortest path, pathetic.

I have only limited experience with the release product. Couple hours at best. That being said one of the better quick and dirty ways to express how the path finding works is the align the map E/W N/S and drop bb's down the roads. Each sim is a bb, when that bb hits a house, that bb occupies the house, hits a job, occupies that job, so on and so forth. Every bb travels to "that" house/building/entity until it is filled, then the "entire" bb chain calculates to the next "fill" point.

This creates a sort of rubber banding effect. Thing is the sim entities are destroyed and reconstituted at different times during the "day" cycle. That is no sim is "saved" in any state or sense of a state. Essentially the "game" acts more like a bb check valve flow distributor rather than any type of "simulation of a city".


Couple other fun facts... parks are treated like commercial buildings which have 0 cost on the agent unit. So it is possible to build entire cities with nothing but residential and parks... and traffic will be next to nothing as sim agents walk to parks.

Commercial buildings import at 0 cost new inventory for sims to buy things, so educated sims with a recycling plant will generate trash, which then may be used to produce high tier materials from the garbage, using no industry, which in turn can be sold at a trade port.

Your idea with weights for roads is an intuitive approach but the game itself does not track much of anything, so there is no way to "update" the agent bb's with alternative routes without really addressing some of the core mechanics.

No "sim" lives in the same house twice, or works the same job twice, they are simply created and bb'd into the road network using the shortest path from that location to a target job or service.

As an example, if you build a little square town, and then a dirt road with 1 house at the end of it... at the end of the day every sim leaving a job will drive to that house trying to fill it... every sim.

 

[McMullen]

"We made this game for you because you asked us for another SimCity," she says.

Why do people who work at companies that are for profit and make those profits by selling things think that this is a good thing to say? It's probably true sometimes, but your credibility has to be really good and your bullshit record squeaky clean in order to be convincing. A person who works for a company owned by EA does not have these credentials.

Here's the thing. When you say that, you're saying to your customers that your intentions were good and you were doing it in their interest. It's a retroactive commitment to not bullshit them. If you make this commitment, having already broken it, and being known on the Internet mostly for breaking it, then you look kind of like trash.

See, to say that, having gone with the always-online scheme against your user's wishes in the first place, is just a bit on the insulting side. To say it when that decision is the reason people can't play the game that you "made for them" looks a little bit like contempt. To say it when your claims that it was necessary have been proven absolutely false is... well, I'm not exactly sure what that says about a person.