SimCity 2013 (or SimCity 5)

[Echo35]

Anyway, refund stuff aside, the lies about the single-player-sim needing the servers and the depth of the individual sims' sim... I can understand why they might have liked to reap the benefits of those being seen as true, but I cannot understand how they would have thought they would actually get that outcome for very long.  The claims are just too easily falsifiable.  Something's fishy.

Speaking of lies, remember that thing about the guy who was able to play offline? Well...

https://pay.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1a9t0e/simcity_modder_removes_always_online_forced/

Among (Many) other things, seems the online check is actually just a bit of JavaScript code that simply boots you after 20 minutes. There is also terraforming support with a full UI for it and support for larger regions.

[keith.lamothe]

Anyway, refund stuff aside, the lies about the single-player-sim needing the servers and the depth of the individual sims' sim... I can understand why they might have liked to reap the benefits of those being seen as true, but I cannot understand how they would have thought they would actually get that outcome for very long.  The claims are just too easily falsifiable.  Something's fishy.

Speaking of lies, remember that thing about the guy who was able to play offline? Well...

https://pay.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1a9t0e/simcity_modder_removes_always_online_forced/

Among (Many) other things, seems the online check is actually just a bit of JavaScript code that simply boots you after 20 minutes. There is also terraforming support with a full UI for it and support for larger regions.

Wow, I found this bit of that post particularly interesting:

SimCity has behavior for offline save handling. When offline, your city is saved and is uploaded to Origin the next time you go online. Offline mode seemed to be cut hastily.

So it appears they actually had an offline mode during development.  It may have been only for convenience of development/testing, but I'd say it really makes that "offline mode would take signfiicant reengineering" claim... well, you know what it makes that.


This whole thing is actually really entertaining to me, for some morbid reason.  It's like watching a high-speed-camera replay of two trains crashing together to pancake a compact car on Mythbusters or something like that.

[eRe4s3r]

The whole thing really seems like a repeat of Gearbox and Colonial Marines.... they probably threw together the game in 9 months. It would explain the many absolute inane flaws of the simulation engine.

[keith.lamothe]

The whole thing really seems like a repeat of Gearbox and Colonial Marines.... they probably threw together the game in 9 months. It would explain the many absolute inane flaws of the simulation engine.

Colonial Marines was a disaster, but not as bad as this.  Though I guess the "fake demo" for CM went beyond merely "they made a really bad game" into the integrity-failure zone.  But EA/Maxis at this point are colonizing the integrity-failure zone.  I'm pretty sure they've got the whole R-C-I triangle going up in there.

[eRe4s3r]

Speaking of R-C-I triangle, did I mention you can build a city just with utilities, parks and housing? no C and I needed at all.

And that is really hilarious ;P There isn't a R:C:I dependency in this Sim City game at all. At this point I must wonder if they dumbed it down intentionally... "oh looksy, it's so shiny and accessible!" I hear the reviewers say..

Sidenote: Any reviewer not at least mentioning that R:C:I is completely broken is off my list of places I read ;P If a reviewer doesn't notice this he failed his job. And epicly at that.

[Mick]

EA has probably already made millions. Sim City 6 will sell ridiculously well because everyone will be hoping it fixes all the issues in 5 (Spoiler: it won't).

[keith.lamothe]

Speaking of R-C-I triangle, did I mention you can build a city just with utilities, parks and housing? no C and I needed at all.

And that is really hilarious ;P

SimUtopia!  Everything you need just materializes out of thin air

... you know, some economic commentary I hear sounds an awful lot like they would consider that an accurate simulation.

[keith.lamothe]

EA has probably already made millions. Sim City 6 will sell ridiculously well because everyone will be hoping it fixes all the issues in 5 (Spoiler: it won't).

They might.  But I think there's a definite chance they won't "get away with this" in the overall sense.  And I suspect it was not their plan to do so.  Their moves thus far seem calculated to produce lasting outrage.

[Mick]

EA has probably already made millions. Sim City 6 will sell ridiculously well because everyone will be hoping it fixes all the issues in 5 (Spoiler: it won't).

They might.  But I think there's a definite chance they won't "get away with this" in the overall sense.  And I suspect it was not their plan to do so.  Their moves thus far seem calculated to produce lasting outrage.

I think Hanlon's Razor applies.

[LaughingThesaurus]

I'm curious; Can anybody think of a launch that was more disastrous than this? I certainly can't, not unless we go all the way back to the video game crash of ages ago.

[keith.lamothe]

EA has probably already made millions. Sim City 6 will sell ridiculously well because everyone will be hoping it fixes all the issues in 5 (Spoiler: it won't).

They might.  But I think there's a definite chance they won't "get away with this" in the overall sense.  And I suspect it was not their plan to do so.  Their moves thus far seem calculated to produce lasting outrage.

I think Hanlon's Razor applies.

The thing is, I don't think simple stupidity would have sufficed to produce the number of distinct "axes of fail" (as in the plural of axis) and the extent to which they have "stuck to their guns" and not opted for the relatively-easy "relief valve" (refunds).  Usually simple stupidity will lead to some form of recanting or at least backpedaling in the face of overwhelming catastrophe.

I don't think it's necessarily malice that's making up the difference, I just don't think the prima-facie explanation adds up.

[TechSY730]

Speaking of R-C-I triangle, did I mention you can build a city just with utilities, parks and housing? no C and I needed at all.

And that is really hilarious ;P There isn't a R:C:I dependency in this Sim City game at all. At this point I must wonder if they dumbed it down intentionally... "oh looksy, it's so shiny and accessible!" I hear the reviewers say..

You know, someone did this in SimCity 4 as well.
They just had utilities and tons and tons of toll booths. So there was some brokeness there too.

However, for that version, it wouldn't scale. As the number of jobs a toll booth offers is very limited, and so is the number of roads you can have that will still give you income if you toll booth it, you could only have so much population before you either run out of room to place more toll booths or you start having high unemployment. Basically, you would have to avoid heavy or possibly even medium density residential, thus capping your population to a pretty low value.
Because of these limitations of this sort of ridiculous setup, the brokeness was very minor, and thus the RCI triangle still stood firm.

In SimCity 5, you can actually get this sort of thing (replacing toll booths with parks, I guess) to scale upward to a well populated city...
Yea, that is a sign of something going wrong with the RCI balance.

[eRe4s3r]

But what kind of design plan makes you put in non-R:C:I buildings that offer both JOBS (money) and HAPPINESS (is what upgrades density). Don't you reach the conclusion before putting it in like... "Wait a second.. that's totally stupid, we already have C doing that, adding a building that does what C and I together do would break the R:C:I triangle?"

Point is, they may offer jobs, but parks should never offer both jobs and happiness (which cause an infinity cascading loop). Since the only thing sims get from C is happiness (and jobs) what they get from I is just jobs and pollution (which decreases happiness, funnily..).

I -> Jobs + Pollution
C -> Jobs + Happiness
R -> Workers
Parks -> Jobs + Happiness
Utitilities -> Jobs + Pollution

And all 3 R:C:I pay taxes .. but especially *I* is not producing ANYTHING except negatives (well, and taxes.. but money isn't a problem). Someone at maxis must have noticed this... the entire balance is .. broken by design. Like literally. It makes no sense. If you want to make a challenging game, the above described balance table would make for a broken simulation to begin with. There was never a way for that setup to WORK right.

[Mick]

... If you want to make a challenging game...

"Challenging" is not much of a selling point for games these days.

[Mánagarmr]

Yeah, King, we've only discussed that for the last page and half. /bonk READ!