The servers are not handling any of the computation done to simulate the city you are playing... I have no idea why they’re claiming otherwise

The On-Line only issue is actually only the tip of the ice-berg – at least to me. It has been discovered by some of the players and posted in EA’s forum – that in fact the “GlassBox” engine is in fact BROKEN.

Apparently SimCity actually only simulats a very small % of the population, and the rest is relatively fake numbers called a “Shadow population”. Its absolutely game breaking around the 100k population mark as just about everything starts to fall apart.

It’s so bad that its been discovered you could NEVER make a single industrial zone, and have a happy healthy, and better functioning society.

bhcompy wrote on Mar 12, 2013, 17:18:

nin wrote on Mar 12, 2013, 17:00:

bhcompy wrote on Mar 12, 2013, 16:07:

Creston wrote on Mar 12, 2013, 11:06:

Quboid wrote on Mar 12, 2013, 11:02:
I've found point A to be a game breaker. At 1000 sims, I have 40% workers. Great! At 10,000 sims, I have 25% workers. Hmm. At 50,000 sims, I have 12% workers,

Sounds like you made Tulsa! Everyone who lives here apparently does nothing else except drive around town all day...

Creston

Pick me up a bowl of chili from Coneys please

Is that the one downtown? I think they finally closed...

They were open when I was there in December.. shit, they were packed(lunch). Would be sad if they closed

nin wrote on Mar 12, 2013, 11:14:
Basically they say "ask us any questions about ourselves and our team" and then proceed to say almost nothing for 9 pages...despite people calling them out over it.

edit: After reading it all and seeing they put up a video staring two people, I think I may change my opinion from "scam" to "wildly inept".

NegaDeath wrote on Mar 12, 2013, 12:07:
I don't know if you can call a demo disc for a game a "launch" but I remember reading about a serious issue waaaay back with a game demo on one of those CD's you used to get packed in with PC magazines (which one I can't recall). When finished the installer would do a "delete c:*.*" or something retarded like that when it was finished, the developer goofed when they coded the part where it removed the temp files at the end. They had an article about it in the following issue apologizing for the bricked PC's. That takes the cake in my book.

jacobvandy wrote on Mar 11, 2013, 22:39:
Thankfully, most of that stuff (graphics settings) will be standardized on the server side with the stand-alone, because lower quality graphics also give you a bit of an advantage. Such as having shadows turned off so that people can't hide from you better within them. I'm also hoping they crank up the draw distance for foliage including grass on the ground, because as it is you can be laying down in a field 500m away in a ghillie suit, and it doesn't do you any good because the grass you see on your screen isn't rendering for the other person, who will plainly see the outline of a person on a flat, pea-soup plane.

wonkawonka wrote on Mar 12, 2013, 03:22:

jacobvandy wrote on Mar 12, 2013, 00:52:
Holy crap, this guy made Dr. J and Larry Bird Go One-on-One? SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!

And Seven Cities of Gold! And Archon too...
The dude is a legend as far as I am concerned. Hey, next time I'm near my old //e I'll fire up One on One and see if I can still do that back-to-the-basket-fake-right-go-left to win on pro mode.

Edit: he only produced all those games. Who knows what level of involvement he had, but at least he's got a lot of experience in the industry.

nin wrote on Mar 12, 2013, 09:29:

I'll just leave this here. I'm up to page 6.

Quboid wrote on Mar 12, 2013, 11:02:
I've found point A to be a game breaker. At 1000 sims, I have 40% workers. Great! At 10,000 sims, I have 25% workers. Hmm. At 50,000 sims, I have 12% workers,

Verno wrote on Mar 12, 2013, 08:56:
Better late than never.

Pubknight wrote on Mar 12, 2013, 09:15:
I didn't have a problem with the comment.
He did say "most" PCs, not "all" PCs. I don't think an avid PC gamers gaming rig would fall under the description of 'most' PCs.

Jerykk wrote on Mar 12, 2013, 01:38:

Beamer wrote on Mar 11, 2013, 23:29:

Creston wrote on Mar 11, 2013, 23:07:

Ray Marden wrote on Mar 11, 2013, 20:44:
They have a point, though, as much as I don't like admitting it. Today, my PC is vastly more powerful than the hardware in the PS4. And yet, come launch time, all of my games will step up to PS4/Xbox 720 image quality and I suspect my PC will struggle to play games anything close to 60 FPS at 1080P.

The "next-gen" consoles won't play 1080p at 60fps either,

People keep saying this.
I don't think they understand how meaningless it is.

Won't play what at 1080p and 60fps? Anything? The best games? Some games? All games?

What? Why even bother having this conversation? People keep talking about how the consoles will or will not run at that, and then claiming their PCs can. If we're not talking about something specific than it's meaningless. Again, I can easily write a piece of software right now that the PS3 can run at 1080p and 60fps. I can also write a piece of software, hell even with the same exact output, that it can't.

I think he meant that the vast majority of games won't run at 60 FPS, much like with this generation. The next Killzone has already been confirmed to be 1080p30 and I expect that to be the same for the rest of the games.

Flatline wrote on Mar 12, 2013, 04:00:
I found the AI to be annoying and potentially cheating. Last game I played I conquered like half the galaxy, had three opponents left, one declared war on me and I was forced to turn my entire empire towards creating fleets because the enemy went from like tier 2 ship fleets to top tier (4 I think?) in like 4 turns, and my defenses weren't enough.

And I created them like crazy. All the way up to top tier ships bristling with weaponry that should have outclassed the two enemies, who had maybe half the number of worlds I did, combined.

But over the course of a few hours it became clear that the game was rubber banding the AI fleets. Simply put, they were building at about 3 times the rate I was. I'd assemble massive fleets, and only get *maybe* one world into their empire, having defeated their gargantuan fleet, and then like 1 turn later an even larger fleet would be "built", and come clean the living bejeebus out of my remainder fleet and start their way towards conquering my empire. I'd then crush their fleet, but it was always a stalemate, and eventually I got bored and quit the game, uninstalled it, and never went back.

Edit: Oh yeah I forgot, there's a general firepower rating to compare fleets. My fleets would have firepower in the 7000 range or something like that and the enemy fleets would be sub-1000, but still manage to generate a billion ships and wear my fleets down by attrition every 2 turns or so.

eRe4s3r wrote on Mar 11, 2013, 23:17:
Because nothing you do has any effect on the world you play in. It is a sandbox with no content, no narrative, no scaling challenges (except pirates.. BLEH!). Every game is at the basic level the same. Even if you play different races. You still do the same things over and over again. And I don't find that entertaining.

It's part of why I think space 4x games this decade ALL sucked. Although Endless Space sucked less, it still had issues that would not make me recommend buying it. And I did buy it. I am regretting it

I could write you a 2 page essay on why I think space 4x games lately all sucked... but I am hungry and going to watch the Walking dead s03e13 instead... is more productive Nothing will change if I explain....

ASeven wrote on Mar 11, 2013, 19:31:
RPS really nails this.

"What EA and Maxis have done with SimCity is attempt a year-long PR assault to suggest that the online-only nature of SimCity is designed to offer enhancements for gamers. This is simply not true. It’s utter rubbish. It’s a backward step for a format that seemed to be managing for years to offer single player and multiplayer options for games without the universe cracking in two. The idea that multiplayer-only is an enhancement is such an obvious piece of newspeak, such a ridiculous untruth, that we can only loudly and furiously react against it if we’re to not see it incredulously accepted as fact. I do worry it’s maybe already too late."

"To see anyone defending EA and Maxis for the state of SimCity, even were it in perfect working order on launch, depresses me to my core. This self-flagellation-as-skincare notion, where gamers loudly and proudly defend the destruction of their own rights as consumers, is an Orwellian perversity."

This last paragraph reminds me too much of some people here.

Ray Marden wrote on Mar 11, 2013, 20:44:
They have a point, though, as much as I don't like admitting it. Today, my PC is vastly more powerful than the hardware in the PS4. And yet, come launch time, all of my games will step up to PS4/Xbox 720 image quality and I suspect my PC will struggle to play games anything close to 60 FPS at 1080P.