SimCity Update 8
Hello, I’m Stone Librande, the Lead Designer of SimCity, and I wanted to take a moment to address some of the questions that I’ve been hearing about our game. Now that we’re getting close to resolving our server issues, we’re putting a lot of attention on improving the simulation based on the community’s feedback.
SimCity is built on GlassBox, which is an agent-based simulation engine. At the surface level, GlassBox is designed around the premise that “Agents” are created to carry data to various “Sinks” around the city. In SimCity, you can think of the “Agents” as Sims and vehicles. The “Sinks” are the buildings that receive money, happiness and other resources from these Agents. During development we tested many cities in a variety of scenarios, but there are almost limitless permutations. Now that the game is in your hands we are seeing the emergence of many cities that test our systems in unique ways. It’s great to watch this happen because at its core SimCity is a game about experimentation and exploration. (Of course, it’s not so great when these experiments reveal bugs.)
We are constantly tuning the game and through the telemetry of our players we are shaping and evolving the experience to accommodate many different play styles. When bugs are discovered we will address them as quickly as possible, with updates such as the ones we’ve been rolling out over the past week. Our main focus right now is updating the pathing system that the Agents use to get to their Sinks. Running a successful city means keeping the traffic flowing and we are actively working to make this system better.
We understand that when cars always take the shortest route between point A and point B there will be unavoidable (and illogical) traffic jams, so we are retuning these values to make the traffic flow more realistically. Guillaume Pierre (our lead scripter) talked a bit about the improvements that we are making to the traffic system in the game here. To dig a little deeper our roads will have a weighting system based on 25%, 50% and 75% capacity. As a road hits those marks it will become less and less appealing for other cars, increasing the likelihood of them taking an alternate path if one exists.
We are working on additional fixes with the pathing of our Agents and these changes will streamline the way that the simulation unfolds in your city. For instance, emergency vehicles will not get blocked in their garages and will move into empty lanes to get around traffic jams. We’re also working on preventing service vehicles from clumping up (for instance, only one fire truck will respond to a fire instead of two) and improving the way that Public Transportation operates in the city. We are currently testing a patch internally and hope to have it out to you soon.
SimCity is a simulation but it is also a game. We wanted to make managing the mundane day-to-day functionality of a city a fun experience. We wanted players to be invested in the lives of their individual Sims, which is why you can click on one and see a name and small story about what is happening to him or her at that moment.
On that note I wanted to take a moment to address a question that’s been coming up: the persistence of our Sims. The Sims in the game are persistent in many respects. They go from a home to a workplace or to a shop and back each day. Their happiness, money, sickness, education level, etc. are also persistent and are carried around the city with each Sim as the simulation unfolds. But many aspects of the Sims are not persistent. They don’t own a particular house or have permanent employment. We also don’t track their names, their clothing, gender, or skin color. We did this as in attempt to increase performance so that we could have more Sims in the city. Ultimately we didn’t feel that the cost of adding in that extra layer of micro detail made the macro game play richer. Game design is filled with tradeoffs and compromises like this and we are constantly evaluating these (and many other) decisions.
I want to end on some good news. We are slowly re-enabling some of the non-essential features that we had turned off during the week of launch. Regional Achievements are live on a select number of servers and we’ve re-enabled Leaderboards on the Test server. We need your help testing the Leaderboards so I encourage you to go to the Test server so that we can expedite the timeframe in which this feature is brought back to the rest of our servers.
We’ll continue to provide you with updates on the game as we make these changes. We appreciate all of the feedback that you’ve been giving us and I want to assure you that we’re listening. It’s fascinating for us to see all of the different ways that players are testing our systems and we’re excited about making SimCity better with your help.
Comments
And yes still no mention of
And yes still no mention of offline mode, thanks for not listening to us
this is just update 7
this is just update 7 reposted, i guess a glitch?
yup
yup
displaying correctly now, my
displaying correctly now, my first comment stands though
That's because Sim Update 7
That's because Sim Update 7 was the first available link when your mouse agent walked by.
Just accept that it's not
Just accept that it's not happening. The point has been made, time to let it go.
yeah, I'm not going to be
yeah, I'm not going to be doing that
Shut up about the offline
Shut up about the offline mode allready
Offline mode if implemented
Offline mode if implemented correctly, which I will admit is unlikely given how everything else was implemented, would not effect online play at all. And it is something I know a lot of people still want they are just getting discouraged by EA's stubborn refusal to tell the truth or even acknowledge many people plees for this. However, if you like online mode, its fine, but offline mode should not effect you. So how about instead of telling people to shut up and being a jerk about it, you mind your own business.
I want offline mode. And i
I want offline mode. And i will keep crying out for it. I however dont think it is going to happen. But if people just roll over and take it then this will keep happening.
Thank you. Anyone who wants
Thank you. Anyone who wants offline mode should continue to be vocal, the overwhelming evidence now is that EA has been lying to us the whole time. Not that I expect that came as a surprise to anyone, but the fact is, they know a large portion of those with the game want an offline mode, many people haven't bought the game until an offline mode is added. They claim its impossible but employee leaks and modders have shown them to be lying and they continue to try to circumvent the issue. I have no intention of letting them do so. OFFLINE MODE NOW!!!
Anyone who has played the
Anyone who has played the game long enough to see the "attempting to reconnect to server" message should know the excuse for having to always be online was at best deceptive, if not a flat out lie the moment the game loses connection and everything continues to work despite not being connected to their servers.
I do not want offline
I do not want offline anything; I want COMMUNITY and SHARED RESOURCES.
Thanks for keeping it that way, too.
Best update I've seen so far.
Best update I've seen so far. This was very informative and I hope this (attempt at) transparency continues throughout the game's lifespan.
Can someone help me understand whether or not I'm alone in this boat? I have not been able to add any of my friends in the game. I know their screen names, but they are not being found.
I've been unable to add
I've been unable to add people in game, however if you look for them on the Origin service itself I've had no trouble finding and adding people. Now inviting them to a region is a whole different nightmare. Good luck!
They have to be in the same
They have to be in the same server as you. So if you make a region on NA West 2 they must first join NA West 2 and then you can invite them.
A comment on the status of
A comment on the status of modding and whether it is allowed or not would be nice.
This tweet from Ocean says modding it is fine, but some of the other statements from the devs/company seem to go against this.
https://twitter.com/oceanquigley/status/299566347438936064
really good to hear this :)
really good to hear this :)
cheetah please
cheetah please
Heads up. It is NOT a fun
Heads up. It is NOT a fun experience.
Ironic that you want more
Ironic that you want more Sims in the city but the population count still doesn't add up.
So you're the buffoon that
So you're the buffoon that decided C did not need I to function... Nice move ya jamoke...
We both know that C usually
We both know that C usually just sells air these days :)
I'm sorry, but if things like
I'm sorry, but if things like traffic always taking the shortest routes and all fire vehicles going to the same fire did NOT come up during your pre-launch internal testing then your testing methods suck. Not just a little, but big time. These issues came forward in less than a week of playing. You don't have to have a huge city and 100 hours of playtime to notice these problems, hell some of them were mentioned during the closed beta's! Us straining your servers and playing your game 'differently' than you expected is the shitiest excuse I've ever heard.
I think that multiple fire
I think that multiple fire trucks responding can be good. If a city has one working fire and 4 trucks can respond, why not let the fire burn out that much faster. Not 4x faster, maybe each additional truck reduces fight time by say, 15 or 20% of remaining time? Ex. - 1 truck = 10 min, 2 trucks = 8 minutes, 3 trucks = 6 min 24 sec, 4 trucks = 5 min 7 sec, etc. I think the larger the fire, the more trucks may respond. However, if there are more working fires, only 2 trucks may respond to each. But, if all trucks are responding and another breaks out perhaps none respond until available.
If multiple trucks arrive and block a single lane, then traffic should be blocked. I'm not aware of many working fires where the fire department allows traffic to pass through. Typically that road gets closed while the fire is fought.
I think the ability to move to an empty lane is a good idea, but they should also be able to change traffic signals as they approach. Similar to the real world "opticom" system. As they approach the signal would change to green. All stopped traffic would be allowed to move, which would also reduce congestion... it may also introduce other traffic situations like backups on affected streets since they didn't get to progress. All real scenarios.
Nice update! Any news on
Nice update! Any news on Cheetah speed?
And this is just one of those
And this is just one of those days that I'm reminded that I'm playing Sim City and not a top notch simulation...
Pathfinding has always been an issue since 4, and to me there seems to be some "illogical" things going on. Sure, I understand that this is a video game, but it seems kind of stupid that emergency vehicles and police cars don't force the traffic to move over as in real life, as well as for medium density streets/avenues to all use traffic lights for better flow... Again, it's a video game and it's supposed to be challenging, but I did wish things would flow a lot better...
Of course, we can't forget that the player also tweaks things with their city layouts. A two lane road coming out of a suburban area into a broad avenue IS going to become a bottleneck (which is why there is usually more than one way into these kinds of areas). I'd be stupid to think that it wouldn't happen.
We desperately need clarity
We desperately need clarity on a glaring issue; CAN WE OR CAN WE NOT MODIFY THE GAME AS IT CURRENTLY STANDS - EA are giving us very contradictory information compared to Maxis developers.
Fixing traffic will improve
Fixing traffic will improve the game drastically. Now this was a good update. Hope the patch corresponds to it. And get to us fast!
I'm not sure how keeping the
I'm not sure how keeping the agents persistent and living/working in specific buildings can cause a performance hit. Clearly the game still works with nearly every agent gridlocked on the road at the same time. And all they need to store extra is a home/workplace reference and persist through staying at home/going to work. Unless you are referring to the amount of data you would have to pass across the network to save on your server... which would be the only performance hit I can think of.
As for traffic problems... the problem is not that they take the shortest route from point A to point B. The problem is when you have 1 open spot at point B and 5,000 agents try to go fill the sink at the same time because it happens to be the closest sink. If you decide for whatever reason not to make some kind of persistent home/work relationship, you can fix the traffic problem for some things by reserving slots at point B before agents arrive so that they will spread out to point C, D, E, F, G, H, I, etc and not converging into a traffic jam. You are already checking for a sink, so why not consider it full for the agents deciding where to go next?
I find it amusing they rather
I find it amusing they rather re-add leaderboards instead of cheetah mode lol
offline mode is not the big
offline mode is not the big issue....
Glassbox not simulating anything is...
Thank you for working your
Thank you for working your hardest on this issue. I know the past weeks must have been very trying and difficult. I enjoy this game very much, but its many flaws and bugs have made it very difficult to love. Please listen to the fan (ignore the shriller and cynical voice among us) and continue to refine Simcity 5.
Is that a young Chris Elliot?
Is that a young Chris Elliot? Good to hear about the traffic, that's one of my biggest issues right now. Woo!
My question is, are the
My question is, are the vehicles (agents) going to prefer higher capacity roads over lower ones, regardless of the current capacity of the road? It would still be stupid to have a dirt road filled to 75% and a 6 lane avenue filled to only 25% right next to it. It should be the other way around.
Sounds to me like they are
Sounds to me like they are saying that the way most people are playing the game is not the same way it was played during the time-limited beta. I really hope that they don't think that. Personally, I think that they had to get this out the door for EA, I'm glad they are fixing it but they haven't won me back into the camp of loyal customers.
It's good to hear there will
It's good to hear there will be some more logic acting of the agents. Did indeed find it weird that emergency vehicles had all these sirens, but didn't have/get priority.
I'm wondering whether the improved pathing of the 'agents' will help in getting water/electricity into the nooks and crannies of a road network. Sometimes you just end up with an unconnected end of a road. And the chance of resources getting there was slim. Sometimes this situation was needed because else all traffic would go through there, but hopefully that will be resolved with this update too.
Just letting us lay the 'plumbing' ourselves for a few corner cases could really help too. That's just a workaround for a lack in the agent system though.
As the lead developer I guess you're the right person to ask this;
Why did you go for the 'old' way of dedicated servers? Why not use the power of 'the cloud' and have 'virtual' regions that could be load balanced around actual servers? I've mentioned Eve Online in this regard before. I can understand that the first method is better known to a lot of developers and thus brings less risk in the development process. But the latter would have made the launch issues fixable in a matter of hours instead of days, just by adding more servers to your cloud.
Also, will we at one point be able to move a map from one server to another? I can imagine that when popularity of this game reduces, you'll have to merge servers yourself anyway. Though then you can take them down for the process.
Sorry maxis ?!?
Sorry maxis ?!?
http://www.golem.de/news/sim-city-onlinezwang-und-stadtgrenzen-per-mod-a...
Although I'm a bit
Although I'm a bit disappointed that Sims don't actually own homes or have their own jobs, I'm glad this was acknowledged and explained from your point of view. Can't wait for all the updates and improvements that are in the works now. Thanks for this!
I still dont understand how
I still dont understand how they could not understand that a weighting system for congested roads was needed when they were developing the game..
I mean... I know they played their own game, so...... Why did they not code it from the start with a weighting system? I don't get it, it makes no sense.
The only explanation is that the game was rushed out while the devs KNEW it was not ready.
for the love of god would you
for the love of god would you do something about finding a region to play! how about a list that names the region - used slots/total slots - all these pretty pictures of full regions are useless.. I'd bet I've spent more time hitting the "show me more" button then I've actually played..
This was interesting reading.
This was interesting reading. Looking forward to more "problems" being solved. I must say that some stuff should have been fixed before release, but right now I am just glad that it is being looked at and getting improved. I don't mind playing now, as long as the game is stable and stuff is improved often. Rather that than waiting another year for the game (building a top notch simulator doesn't sound easy).
ooh, and for once I won't complain about the small and low res images in the article ;)
Hey Mjollnira, how did you
Hey Mjollnira, how did you post to this thread with no Internet connection? That's amazing!
Let's be honest, that's not
Let's be honest, that's not tweaking or 'tuning'. Such huge yet essential improvement on 'pathing' should have been there from the start, it's like Maxis hasn't really tested the game more than a few hours considering how these changes are as necessary as they are obvious. That said it is nice to see it is coming and brings me hope, if it is well done that is. Now please for the love of your SimCity fan-base, at least make it an option to allow that additional layer of persistence with sims along with bigger plots. You shouldn't be restricting most of the people's game quality & simulation's depth because some are running the game on 'their dad's laptop'..
Simcity indeed has a lot of potential but I'm not launching it again nor am I advising anyone to buy it until (and I'm carefully keeping away the whole DRM debacle here)
1- The whole traffic/Pathfinding is resolved for both Sims & services
2- Zoning gets balanced and Commerce/Industry are linked & influenced rather than having to deal with that magical freight/goods system.
3- Sims are properly SIMulated, i.e more persistence & no pop inflation.
4- Proper plot size so I can stop calling that game SimVillage.
If you guys manage to fix at least these 4 points, it will be hard for anyone, players or press, to criticize the quality of simcity, until then there'll be several press articles and youtube videos stating the obvious in a condemning tone.
I dont care about an offline
I dont care about an offline mode. If i want to play alone i make my region private. The big problem is that traffic problem. You can do what you want but with 100000 or 200000 sims this simcity becomes unplayable. It seems that every Feature works against eachother. You want to build a big city it doesnt work because after a while there is to much traffic and Service Cars stuck in a traffic jam. Also becasuse there is no persistance in a sim. Why not add an social systematisch the sims keep the job for at least lets say 7 days?
This and BF3 are the last
This and BF3 are the last time I ever get caught with EA again unless they really put some effort in to pleasing their customers. Like making it offline, adding large cities with terraforming enabled. Sorry EA but I think you've gotten too greedy and jumped too far ahead of yourselves this time.
Sounds great but still no
Sounds great but still no cheetah mode!?
Offline mode no needed.
Offline mode no needed. Online part work perfectly! BUT!!! Need all corrections which discribed in this blog. Urgently!!!
AND biggest size of map.
Seems to me that the
Seems to me that the developers really don't care about what we, the player's think when it contradicts their "creative" process. Shout out for offline play all you want. Instead of complaining how about we all try and come together and mod our own offline mode that saves locally and allows us to edit whatever we want like the good old days. Seems a lot more productive than screaming bloody murder at every little blog / social media post when the reality is the game is good just not what "we" wanted, it's what the developer's wanted. Now I'm done...
I for one appreciate the
I for one appreciate the insight into the Glassbox engine and how the sims engage in their environment. Can you please speak on the RCI relationship and the decisions on how it's implemented in this relase?
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