[HN Gopher] SimCity launched a decade ago, and it was so disastr...
___________________________________________________________________
SimCity launched a decade ago, and it was so disastrous it killed
the series
Author : acdanger
Score : 226 points
Date : 2023-03-06 14:12 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pcgamer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pcgamer.com)
| proactivesvcs wrote:
| One of the final statements is rather telling of modern corporate
| culture: "We had already begged and pleaded to have more time,
| and at some point, as a public company, they have certain
| obligations to their shareholders. One of them was that SimCity
| would be shipping that quarter."
|
| Torpedoed by one bad business decision after another, despite
| being a promising game.
| bromuro wrote:
| I play SimCities since v1 and I awaited long this release. It was
| indeed beautifully designed and the gameplay was very fun and
| addictive.
|
| Finally EA pushed the project too far and it imploded. Too bad,
| because Maxis didn't reserve it.
|
| I play sometimes Cities Skyline but - to me - CS misses the vibe
| of SimCity.
| mcv wrote:
| Nowadays SimCity seems wholly replaced by City Skylines. I had to
| look up when that was released, but it turns out the release of
| City Skylines was directly caused by the failure of SimCity:
|
| From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cities:_Skylines :
|
| > "While the developers felt they had the technical expertise to
| expand to a full city simulation game, their publisher Paradox
| held off on the idea, fearing the market dominance of SimCity.
| After the critical failure of the 2013 SimCity game, however,
| Paradox greenlit the title."
| jdlyga wrote:
| It's the classic small, passionate development team gets acquired
| by large company, and becomes highly bureaucratic and profit
| driven instead.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| I think if SimCity wasn't such a complete disaster, City Skylines
| wouldn't have taken off how it did. The big misstep I think they
| made is hinging the gameplay around multiplayer. While SimCity
| thought that collaboration would be done through "neighborhoods"
| and "resource sharing", City Skylines took the opposite approach
| and introduced collaboration through Steam Workshop.
|
| The developers of SimCity should have realized that people don't
| play sim building games to play with others, it's a very much a
| solo game. City Skylines navigated this beutifully by letting
| players still play the game alone but also letting them
| collaborate through assets rather than through gameplay.
| delusional wrote:
| I personally believe that the SImCity version of multiplayer
| could have been impressively successful had it not supplanted
| everything else in the game. I like the idea of building cities
| that somehow interact with the cities my friends build, or
| whatever everyone else is doing. I like the idea of a game that
| asynchronously "breaks the meta". It just has to be a good
| SimCity game first and then have that stuff layered on top.
| SimCity 2013 was never a good SimCity game to begin with.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Definitely could be cool to have an intermodal aspect.
| Trains/trucks coming and going with excess resources from
| your and other's cities. Large warehouse zones on the city
| periphery...
|
| Any "open" SimCity-like game?
| SteveNuts wrote:
| OpenTTD fits the bill.
|
| But for me, Sim City/Cities Skylines isn't about resource
| generation as much as it is about just... building and
| expanding a thriving city.
|
| I like the way CS approached this and made it a thing you
| can do to earn extra money, but it's not strictly necessary
| (your industrial areas will auto-import everything they
| need).
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| An intermodal layer could also be a part of the expanding
| of a city and help to make it thriving as well.
|
| Just in keeping with the times, look at the landscape of
| warehouses that surround the periphery of our major
| cities. What is that stuff? Amazon Prime "last
| mile"warehousing? Some other leg of an intermodal
| network?
|
| (And I suppose server farms would be another element --
| perhaps a modern Sim has already added that feature to
| city expansion.)
|
| Perhaps SimPort needs to happen -- simulate the
| international container-ship and port traffic (+ rail, +
| trucking) and make it _all_ about resource management,
| canal bottlenecks, supply-chain fragility...
| (SimSupplyChain -- now there 's an exciting title.)
|
| If no one has written that game/sim, let me know. Maybe
| I'll play with the idea.
|
| Could be a learning experience for all of us.
| Loughla wrote:
| Honestly, while they are the same in overall, 10,000 foot
| concept, they are wildly different games.
|
| SimCity was a resource manager and city planning game.
|
| City Skylines is a traffic manager.
|
| This is the hill I will die on.
| Asooka wrote:
| You won't die alone, I'm with you on this one. I've said
| before I wish I could play Cities Skylines with the agent
| simulator replaced by the purely statistical model from Sim
| City. Though thinking about it again, maybe it could be
| modded in...
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| Skylines isn't even a very good traffic manager (the Cities
| in Motion games that came before it are much better in that
| regard) -- it's a good city _builder_, but not a good city
| _simulator_.
| orwin wrote:
| You have mods that greatly increase the difficulty, and
| make the simulation way better than simcity4. And traffic
| is working the way we European think traffic works in the
| US.
|
| Although to be fair the dlcs improved that quite a lot (not
| enough Pol Sim, but I understand why)
| JohnFen wrote:
| This. City: Skylines doesn't fill the same niche as SimCity.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| Wait it's 10 years already?
|
| Time really does fly faster when you're older.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| One thing I think the article leaves out, that is critical, is
| the damage done to the franchise image by SimCity Societies
| (2007), SimCity 2013 was the second bad miss in a row for the
| franchise (and a big part of Societies problems--on top of
| radical and not well recieved changes to the basic concept--were
| performance/reliability problems, which IIRC, included a
| persistent connection requirement even though it was single
| player.)
| YellowTech wrote:
| Upon launch, I was of course disappointed with the state of the
| server and the online only nature of it. But the larger problem
| for why this game was a failure was the simple problem of way to
| little space to build a city. The whole concept of a few 1km x
| 1km city patches in a shared world to build in was flawed from
| the start. I want to build gigantic cities with elaborate public
| infrastructure and rivers full of sewage. Cities: Skylines simply
| was a much better fit for what makes the city building genre
| appealing.
|
| I find it a bit shortsighted to center the blame for a boring
| game on its launch date debacle. Many other games with similar
| problems at launch became hits.
| everyone wrote:
| KSP2 seems like it might be like that.. It seems quite star-
| citizeny with final AAA graphics and audio, but the _core_
| mechanics and UX rather fucked. I reckon it could take them years
| to fix it if they do. Fixing the core core stuff in a game with
| final assets already done is like repairing an engine thats
| running.
|
| There was so much dodgy slimy stuff going on with the publisher
| also, https://wccftech.com/kerbal-space-program-2-dev-fired-
| employ... the fact that they kept development closed for years,
| then release garbage into early access and charge EUR50.. I think
| they might have no intention of fixing it and are just making a
| cash grab now while there is still so much goodwill floating
| around from KSP1.
|
| Imo there is an opportunity here for a smart small indie team to
| scoop them and make the _real_ successor to KSP faster than the
| KSP2 team can fix their crap.
| jeffwask wrote:
| Another victim of the EA acquisition graveyard.
| orwin wrote:
| They contacted video games influencers/youtubers (in 2013, always
| ahead of their time in marketing, that's the only thing EA is
| good at), invited them to play the game at their HQ. At least one
| of them confessed he was threatened to not publish the video
| after sending them the script and refused to change major parts.
| He wasn't paid the thousand dollars either (at the time
| influencers were cheaper :))
| vadansky wrote:
| Speaking on Sim City, is there a chance anyone has a collection
| of Japanese Sim City 4 bat files? I saved a bunch of bookmarks
| but link rot has destroyed most of them, hoping someone collected
| them all.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Title should say "SimCity 2013".
| mysterydip wrote:
| > We had already begged and pleaded to have more time, and at
| some point, as a public company, they have certain obligations to
| their shareholders. One of them was that SimCity would be
| shipping that quarter.
|
| I get that games have to release at some point or else some devs
| will be perfecting forever. But I can't count the amount of times
| a game was a flop at launch (and never recovered) because they
| needed to hit an arbitrary date and it wasn't fully baked.
|
| Wouldn't the best interests of the shareholders be having a
| financially successful game?
| jcranmer wrote:
| If the release date keeps getting pushed back, then that
| suggests that the problem isn't that the game needs more time
| to get fully baked, but rather there's some more fundamental
| issues in project management or project development that's
| hampering it. Continuing to push the release date back at that
| point is unlikely to improve matters, and pushing the result
| out as-is is actually likely to maximize revenue (the reviews
| won't get better, and you don't have to maintain marketing buzz
| for as long) while minimizing the losses from extra developer
| time.
| bromuk wrote:
| Such a shame, I was very excited for this game and though hated
| it I did enjoy the graphic style, it looked great. (What a palava
| with the "online" simulation that was found out to be faked)
|
| Cities Skylines really put a nail in the coffin of SimCity for
| me, the huge playable area, no faux online requirement, realistic
| cim routines and the amazing mod support (I've only used the
| steam workshop)
|
| Now Colossal Order just need to make a sequel with more in depth
| mechanics akin to some of the mod tools made available (traffic
| management, I'm looking at you), also I don't know much about the
| Unity Engine but making the sequel more efficient on multicore
| CPU's is a must.
| CoolGuySteve wrote:
| > "Every time they would unblock one pinch point, then they would
| just discover the next one," says Librande. "You were unblocking
| the dam and then the flood goes and hits the next dam. Then
| everybody scrambles, tears that one apart, ok, but it keeps
| going".
|
| Apple hit this problem a lot too in the early days of the iTunes
| and App stores. Marketing wants a huge midnight release with all
| the hype but the scale just isn't there.
|
| The only way to go imo for this sort of thing is a staggered
| release, an invite system, or an open beta.
|
| And it also sucks that stupid management and marketing decisions
| killed such an important franchise in gaming history.
| nottorp wrote:
| Tbh this would be a good time for a remembrance of the
| companies/franchises ruined by EA and Ubisoft.
|
| Maxis / SimCity
|
| BioWare / need i say what?
|
| Bullfrog / Populous, Dungeon Keeper
|
| --
|
| Blue Byte / Settlers, Battle Isle
|
| New World Computing / Might and Magic and Heroes of...
|
| And that's just what I remember off the top of my head.
| [deleted]
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Good news, Cities Skylines 2 was just announced today.
| spiffytech wrote:
| Related:
|
| "When SimCity got serious: the story of Maxis Business
| Simulations and SimRefinery"
|
| https://obscuritory.com/sim/when-simcity-got-serious/
| wdb wrote:
| Can still remember I bought a book about SimCity 2000. I think it
| explained how you could rebuild real-life cities in SimCity.
| Pretty cool
| mouzogu wrote:
| this felt like the apex of the post facebook/zynga monetise
| everything always online era
|
| ea have always ridden trends mercilessly. and ms with its bungled
| launch of always online xbox. the hubris of those executives is a
| staggering in hindsight.
| hudsonjr wrote:
| I never thought about it, but that is so true. It also seemed
| like it was roughly the peak of bad DRM as well as trying to
| curtail resale of console games.
| Lutzb wrote:
| All I want is Sim City 2000 for mobile. I know it will not
| happen. Without microtransactions there is no way it will ever
| get green lighted by EA.
| racl101 wrote:
| Sim City 4 needs a spiritual successor.
| dwringer wrote:
| I guess people might argue this all day but I think Cities:
| Skylines is mostly that, with the rather large caveat that you
| can't start separate games on the same large map at the same
| time. You can still get mods (easily, from the steam workshop)
| which open up the entire terrain, and then use one of several
| different approaches to build multiple towns on the same map.
|
| I'm sure I'm forgetting other stuff that's missing, but they
| both scratch the same itch for me.
| tripdout wrote:
| I still play SimCity 2013 today, and despite its flaws, I much
| prefer it over Cities Skylines. SimCity feels alive, with a great
| soundtrack, good looking visuals even today, and I love the
| futuristic expansion pack.
|
| Skylines feels less like a game I want to play in my free time
| and more like a city planner tool. The graphics style also
| somehow feels much colder and more outdated in comparison.
|
| I honestly think SimCity 6 with bigger cities and updated
| graphics would be a massive hit without changing much else - the
| multiplayer aspect of sharing resources, contributing to
| pollution, workers and students, etc is really unique and should
| be kept.
| bombcar wrote:
| SimCity 2013 was fine, and the real killer was just how small
| it was. Everyone coming from Simcity 4 was like "what the @#%@
| is this" and went back.
|
| Even Skylines is too small unless you get the mods that let you
| bust out all the adjacent land areas.
| brnt wrote:
| Is there any way to get it on Steam Deck? There's no record for
| it on Protondb.
| mablopoule wrote:
| I played SimCity 2013 a few months after launch, and I quite
| liked it, especially the gorgeous visuals.
|
| I've read TFA, and honestly they also failed to mention maybe the
| worse issue of SimCity 2013: how limited it was compared to the
| previous instalments. The playable area was tiny, so you quickly
| felt constrained by the border of your playable area. The fact
| that you could build multiple cities in the same region
| alleviated it a bit, but it really felt limiting compared to it's
| predecessors.
|
| Another point, which I feel is a good representation of an
| 'EA'-fied game: I was a bit miffed to discover that you couldn't
| create a subway system, you were limited to roads (I don't even
| remember if you could create a bus system). A few months in, I
| see that there was a 'Subway' content pack, which got my hopes
| up... until I realized it was to add 'Subway' sandwich shop in
| your city.
|
| Same, they had a cross-promotion with Nissan, so your Sims would
| feel happy when they recharged their electric car, and the
| charging station has the effect of a park in your neighborhood.
|
| Add to that the server issues, the fact that they said it was
| because so much computation was offloaded to their servers (which
| was quickly disproved, and felt bogus to being with), and the
| whole affair had a vibe of "Don't piss on my shoes and tell me
| it's raining".
|
| It was particularly sad, because it really still is an enjoyable
| game.
|
| EDIT: After a bit of fact -checking, I realize that I've mis-
| remembered the "Subway" DLC story. It was instead the "Metro"
| content pack (metro is french for subway), which was for a
| newspaper distributed for free near French subway entrances.
| There is also a Subway sandwich mod, but for SC4 only.
| etempleton wrote:
| The playable area was tiny and the game was weird in the way it
| cycled boom and bust development seemingly at random. And then
| despite the game selling incredibly well they abandoned it
| after launch and never really improved the game much.
|
| The marketing hype leading up to it featured lot of outright
| lies in terms of how the game works. Compute was not offloaded
| to the cloud, but bigger than that there was the lie that every
| sim had a daily routine that was simulated and when a factory
| had an output it was an input somewhere else and that was all
| simulated like Factorio. It wasn't. It was all faked and not
| even convincingly well.
|
| I have been hoping for a new city builder for awhile. Cities
| Skylines was great, but I am looking for something a bit more
| in depth. I think I want the original promise of SimCity (2013)
| with the transportation flexibility of Cities Skylines. Solving
| transportation issues and bottlenecks to make sure your city is
| operating efficiently sounds incredibly rewarding.
| dragontamer wrote:
| OpenTTD (Transport Tycoon Deluxe being the original), is my
| preferred traffic simulation game.
|
| Once you can control all routes and trains, you can never go
| back! You get used to the control, the timetables, the
| organization that's possible.
| wardedVibe wrote:
| Openttd is a great logistics simulator, but it's not really
| a traffic simulator. Traffic by it's nature requires a lot
| of independent agents deciding how to use a shared
| resource, and the resulting conflicts, like Braess'
| paradox[0]. As far as I've seen, the only game that does
| well at this is Cities Skylines. OpenTTD on the other hand
| is my favorite part of factorio.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox?wprov
| =sfla1
| dragontamer wrote:
| I've personally found it pretty easy to get around. In
| particular, just build long stretches of roads without
| any intersections. Just "s-curve" like a snake,
| especially around industrial centers (all traffic
| originates in industry, and don't seem to "return" to
| industry in Cities Skylines).
|
| Maximize the distance of these singular roads, and build
| out your road system like a computer-science definition
| of a tree. Its not very realistic, but it solves more or
| less all the issues of Cities Skylines. (Or perhaps it is
| realistic, and matches the behavior of neighborhood
| planners in the real world).
|
| In contrast, OpenTTD encourages hub/spoke model and
| recycling of centers. I think its sizes are off but the
| overall gameplay loop is correct here.
|
| --------
|
| OpenTTD's "traffic" is pretty dumb, but its infinite. As
| long as you've got high station ratings, the station will
| expand and traffic will increase. It doesn't matter what
| design you have, the traffic increases until you can no
| longer support it.
|
| So OpenTTD is somewhat self balancing. The stronger a
| player you are, the more traffic you generate. The weaker
| a player you are, the less traffic you generate.
| wardedVibe wrote:
| > all traffic originates in industry, and don't seem to
| "return" to industry in Cities Skylines
|
| It absolutely does come back? I've had major traffic
| headaches from returning trucks. If I don't build rail
| for trucks, my cities are usually screwed over by that.
|
| > Maximize the distance of these singular roads, and
| build out your road system like a computer-science
| definition of a tree. Its not very realistic, but it
| solves more or less all the issues of Cities Skylines.
| (Or perhaps it is realistic, and matches the behavior of
| neighborhood planners in the real world).
|
| Trees create massive chokepoints when traveling within
| the city, so I don't think its likely to work in a large
| city (though if you squint, road hierarchy _is_ somewhat
| tree-like, I suppose, though with more intra-branch
| connections). I suspect you simply haven 't gotten cities
| big enough to actually have traffic, especially if you
| think most traffic is trucks. It does take a bit for
| personal car traffic to be heavy enough to be a problem.
|
| The unique thing about car traffic vs station demand is
| that the overall speed depends on the quantity of cars on
| the road, with maximal throughput occurring before a
| fully occupied road. That's how you get weird effects
| like Braess paradox.
|
| OpenTTD is much better at simulating public transit
| systems, Cities Skylines is better at simulating traffic.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > It absolutely does come back? I've had major traffic
| headaches from returning trucks. If I don't build rail
| for trucks, my cities are usually screwed over by that.
|
| Don't the trucks go into the Cargo station, and then
| disappear?
|
| In OpenTTD, if you have a truck -> rail station, the
| truck drops items off, then have to return to
| Coal/Forests/whatever to pick up items again.
|
| In Cities: Skylines, the truck hops onto the train, and
| then vanishes. Its been a while since I've played
| Skylines, maybe I'm mis-remembering?
|
| > Trees create massive chokepoints when traveling within
| the city, so I don't think its likely to work in a large
| city (though if you squint, road hierarchy is somewhat
| tree-like, I suppose, though with more intra-branch
| connections). I suspect you simply haven't gotten cities
| big enough to actually have traffic, especially if you
| think most traffic is trucks. It does take a bit for
| personal car traffic to be heavy enough to be a problem.
|
| Or maybe I'm just abusing the behavior of cargo stations
| too much.
|
| The cargo-station "teleports" traffic somewhere else, and
| seems to magically erase return traffic. Use / abuse of
| cargo-stations seems key in making cities grow larger.
|
| ----------
|
| EDIT: Ah, I misremembered. Seems like the return traffic
| does need to be accounted for. In any case, the industry
| -> Cargo Train terminal is really all you need to design
| against. With a proper industry block (or S-road / snake-
| like road), all industry goes to cargo train, and all of
| them return to industry, with no intersections
| potentially wrecking them.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > (though if you squint, road hierarchy is somewhat tree-
| like, I suppose, though with more intra-branch
| connections)
|
| Intra-branch connections are your mistake. Don't do that.
| If you're purely a tree-shape, there's no Braess paradox
| because each neighborhood (or housing unit) only has
| _one_ path to the rest of the city.
|
| The minute you have 2, 3, or 4 different paths to reach
| the same house, is the minute that paradox starts to bite
| you in the ass. So just avoid it completely with a 100%
| tree-like branching behavior. One path means you have
| absolute control and force the little cars to go down the
| exact paths you want.
|
| -------------
|
| Yes, roads and intersections will saturate. At that
| point, stop building in that neighborhood and build
| another branch of your tree.
|
| I don't think I ever found a reason to do a non-tree
| design in the game, aside from simulating realism. But if
| you're just designing neighborhoods to minimize traffic
| and maximize population, a pure tree is the obvious
| approach.
|
| IIRC, there's no residential-to-residential traffic. Its
| all residential-to-commercial, and then commercial-to-
| residential. That's why a pure tree works. Or industry-
| to-commercial, and then commercial-to-industry.
| orangepurple wrote:
| OpenTTD sadly does not simulate passengers as unique
| agents. Transportation demand can be very unidirectional
| and not make logical sense.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Have you not tried the CargoDist button?
|
| It was added maybe 5 years ago, but as an Open source
| project, advertising for this feature is pretty bad.
|
| It turns passengers/mail into agents who will perform 2
| or 3 or more hops to reach their destination.
| zaphoyd wrote:
| Seconding this, if you dropped OpenTTD because of the
| simplistic passenger/cargo routing (i.e. take any cargo
| to any place and pay is only based on how far you took
| it) then definitely give the CargoDist option a try.
|
| Every passenger (or mail or manufactured good) has a
| unique destination in your system that you need to get it
| to. They are roughly balanced based on demand (two
| stations in large cities will generate a lot of traffic
| between them, but a small town will only generate a small
| amount of traffic to and from a large city). It makes the
| transport routing game _way_ more interesting and more
| like the routing of passengers in more traditional Sim
| City type games.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Beyond just that, the ability for passengers to "route"
| themselves (Take airplane from CityA -> CityB, then rail
| from CityB -> CityC, then bus from CityC to CityD... and
| back) is the bigger, more important effect of the
| CargoDist feature.
|
| That means you can form "Hub and Spokes" for passenger
| traffic, and the individual passengers are smart enough
| to figure out how to route themselves to their ultimate
| destinations.
|
| ------------
|
| Its the most "realistic feeling" traffic mod I've found
| of any of these games, honestly. Even Cities Skylines
| seems rather basic in comparison.
|
| -----------
|
| I play on Passengers/Mail as CargoDist, and then all
| other traffic (Coal, Wood, Cargo, Oil, etc. etc.) as
| default / original rules.
|
| I also set the "symmetry" of CargoDist to 80%. That is,
| 20% of traffic is one-way, which seems to be correct in
| my opinion? I think it defaults to 100%, but it doesn't
| make sense for _ALL_ traffic to be bidirectional (ie: for
| all agents to make a return trip each time).
|
| EDIT: I do think that a "big mod" to OpenTTD under a new
| name would be beneficial to the project. Something that
| redefines OpenTTD's sizes (each square is supposed to be
| a square km, but it doesn't "feel" like it. Roads aren't
| a square km wide after all...). I think that if each
| square were 10m x 10m nominal, and then for all other
| parts of the game to be redesigned off of that (scaling
| up docks, rail depos, cities, etc. etc. as appropriate to
| this new size), would be really all that OpenTTD needs.
| Plus CargoDist Passengers/Mail by default.
| tsgagnon wrote:
| _OpenTTD sadly does not simulate passengers as unique
| agents. Transportation demand can be very unidirectional
| and not make logical sense._
|
| Personally this isn't really a negative. I've found that
| I only care about "agents" when the scale of the game
| focuses on caring about individual units. Once you get
| beyond that, I don't think the simulation necessarily is
| more interesting just because it uses unique agents. And
| conversely, I've never thought while playing SC4 or
| similar game that "This game would be better if it
| simulated all citizens as unique units".
| dragontamer wrote:
| A number of games simulates unique agents: Tropico,
| Rollercoaster Tycoon, Theme Hospital, Two Point Hospital,
| Ceasar 3 / Cleopatra etc. etc.
|
| Its a different game entirely compared to games like Sim
| City or City Skylines. I've noticed that these
| "individual agents" games are very "unstable". They're
| only designed for a limited number of agents before
| everything goes to crap.
|
| As such, "individual agent" games tend to be scenarios
| that you play for a short time, rather than trying to
| play for months on the same map (like Sim City or City
| Skylines or OpenTTD can be).
|
| ---------
|
| Tropico Boom/Busts grow too variable and uncontrollable.
| You'll eventually have an island-wide boom/bust collapse
| that probably triggers the instant-loss endgame (aka:
| Soviets and/or USA invades).
|
| Ceasar 3 / Cleopatra are reasonably stable, but
| definitely a smaller map and designed for scenario play
| instead.
| waboremo wrote:
| It's funny you mention wanting to solve transportation
| issues, because that's exactly the reason why I bounced so
| hard off Cities Skylines. At a certain point, it just turns
| into a "play with the roads" game. No matter how many forms
| of transportation you utilized, it just turned into
| bottleneck fix after bottleneck fix. When you tried to
| implement serious logical solutions (ie dedicated bus lines),
| you were met with more chaos. But add several roundabouts in
| succession and suddenly traffic fixed.
|
| I do agree with the depth, something Cities Skylines was
| really lacking. Most of the logic of the game was quite
| shallow, and the people really don't live anywhere near as
| "deep" lives as in SimCity (2013). I'm hoping this is
| something they address in the sequel, but seeing as the
| community has rallied so strongly around the idea of creative
| designing vs functional planning, I'm not holding my breath.
| potatolicious wrote:
| I really agree with this. I've gotten into Cities: Skylines
| numerous times over the years and have bounced off of it
| each time because it was so hard to scale a city past a
| certain point due to transport.
|
| I'm up for a challenge and I think transport is actually a
| fantastic gameplay element for the player to scale, but as
| it is the only way to "solve" transport feels like cheesing
| whatever algorithm is under the hood, rather than designing
| a transport system that makes any real kind of sense.
|
| I have _some_ beef with agent-based simulations in this
| regard. They 're fascinating in the abstract, but IMO too
| many game devs are obsessed with it to their own detriment.
| Heavily agent-based sims tend to scale really poorly (an
| issue I suspect is true with SimCity 2013 _and_ Cities:
| Skylines) _and_ imperfections in modeling the agents causes
| _extreme_ divergences at-scale that break the illusion of
| realism badly.
|
| At this point I'd honestly much rather - especially with
| large-scale sims where you build cities of millions rather
| than a town of dozens - have non-agent-based statistical
| simulations. I want to build cities that I can imagine
| seeing IRL, not some metagame-game-mechanioc-defeating
| monstrosity that's optimized against the game's
| pathfinding.
| bombcar wrote:
| There's really two types of "City Games" - city painters
| and traffic simulators, Cities Skylines is basically the
| second with a bit of the first, whereas SimCity 4 became
| the first with a bit of the second.
| dwringer wrote:
| I've played with Cities: Skylines off and on many times
| over the years and often do give up in frustration with
| endless traffic problems, but I think it's down to two main
| things: one, traffic management is very much "endgame" type
| content, as you can build a nice self-sufficient little zen
| garden community without really worrying about it much. But
| to get big cities it _must_ be dealt with. And two, once
| you 've already built a city, it's _way_ harder to
| implement good traffic flow. This is painfully evident all
| the time in the real world.
|
| Now I use a mod to unlock all the map tiles (actually, the
| entire map) at game start, and I build specifically around
| my envisioned future transportation needs. It's still a
| challenge, and I highly recommend the traffic management
| mod mentioned elsewhere in these threads, but it is not an
| insurmountable one.
| orangepurple wrote:
| SC4 + NAM is what you are looking for https://www.sc4nam.com/
|
| It has been in development for 20 years.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| > the transportation flexibility of Cities Skylines
|
| It's worth mentioning that Colossal Order (the studio behind
| C:S) cut their teeth on transit simulators, namely the Cities
| in Motion series.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| > Cities Skylines was great, but I am looking for something a
| bit more in depth.
|
| Incidentally, Cities Skylines 2 was announced just earlier
| today. There aren't many details yet, but perhaps that will
| scratch your itch.
| etempleton wrote:
| That is exciting. Weird that the trailer is so light on
| detail or gameplay, but it says coming this year, so more
| details will come soon I imagine.
| pdntspa wrote:
| You might enjoy Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic.
|
| It's really rough right now, and frustratingly manual in
| places, but it does a good job of simulating resources at
| least. If you play in Realism Mode then vehicles and
| resources are dispatched and consumed realistically. (People
| too, but they teleport home at the end of their job and they
| don't appear to take transfers for public transit)
| homarp wrote:
| Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic: https://store.steampo
| wered.com/app/784150/Workers__Resources...
| humaniania wrote:
| Did you play Sim City 3000?
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| Did you play Sim City 2000?
| actionablefiber wrote:
| > Another point, which I feel is a good representation of an
| 'EA'-fied game: I was a bit miffed to discover that you
| couldn't create a subway system, you were limited to roads (I
| don't even remember if you could create a bus system). A few
| months in, I see that there was a 'Subway' content pack, which
| got my hopes up... until I realized it was to add 'Subway'
| sandwich shop in your city.
|
| > Same, they had a cross-promotion with Nissan, so your Sims
| would feel happy when they recharged their electric car, and
| the charging station has the effect of a park in your
| neighborhood.
|
| That's kind of insulting. If you were to ask me "what's an
| environmentally friendly piece of mobility infrastructure that
| should count as a park" the answer is very obviously a bike
| trail.
| weard_beard wrote:
| City skylines has more than filled this gap imho. Great
| community. You should check it out if you haven't yet.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I struggle to get into CS because of the number of DLCs. I
| have no idea what ones you need to have a SimCity 4
| experience, and they're all really expensive.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| The way CS does content updates, part of the update is free
| and part of it is paid. So, organically the best way to
| figure out what to pay is to play the game, see which
| features you like, and get the DLCs that expand the areas
| of the game you like the most. (I also recommend this
| method because if it turns out you dont like CS after all
| you arent too badly in the hole)
|
| They do occasionally go on sale, so you can always just
| wishlist something and come back later.
| bombcar wrote:
| If you have Mods you don't even need ANY DLC, really,
| though the park ones make the "park problem" completely a
| non issue.
|
| Mass Transit is a joke, all the options are just memes.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| The DLCs add stuff, but you don't really need them to start
| out. The base game is great as-is.
|
| Other than that, you can see what's included with every DLC
| on the C:S wiki:
| https://skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Downloadable_content.
| That way, you can decide which DLCs you care about and
| which you don't.
| mablopoule wrote:
| It's on my bucket list since, but I was afraid of falling
| down the rabbit hole, same as Anno, Civilisation and other
| cool games.
|
| I'm so glad City Skyline had such a success, because I feel
| that other Paradox Interactive games wouldn't have existed
| otherwise.
|
| As an avid player of Stellaris, and as someone eyeing the
| Crusader Kings series or Europa Universalis, I'm feel that
| Paradox games have DLCs done right. They are clearly on the
| expensive side, but they are contentfull, and feel less
| shameless than EA counterpart (especially with the Sims who
| has the same DLCs over and over again).
|
| On a side note, there is also Caesar III (& Pharaoh) on Gog,
| and it's still a gem.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Is there some backstory to the crucial-ness of Cities
| Skyline? I thought they'd had a pretty good thing going for
| a while by then, with their various funky history
| simulators.
| [deleted]
| mablopoule wrote:
| Maybe not then, I haven't done my homework on this
| subject to be honest.
|
| I mostly said that because of a gut feeling that CS is
| their main cash cow, while their others series are solid
| but with a more niche player base.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Cities: Skylines is published but not developed by
| Paradox.
|
| The games Paradox itself develops are the grand strategy
| games in the Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Hearts
| of Iron, Stellaris, Victoria, and Imperator: Rome lines.
| The flagship games here are the strongest games in the
| genre, and even among the broader category of strategy
| games, they're definitely in the most-played games, with
| the main competitors being the Civilization, Age of
| Empires, Total War, and Mount & Blade series.
| capableweb wrote:
| > while their others series are solid but with a more
| niche player base
|
| Might have been so in the past, but Paradox games are
| relatively mainstream, although they seem a bit niche.
|
| Hearts of Iron IV is the 32th most played game at Steam
| right now (https://steamdb.info/charts/), while Cities:
| Skylines is on spot 56. Might have something to do with
| recent news or released addons, but still, other Paradox
| games are wildly popular and Paradox would surely do just
| fine even without Cities: Skylines.
|
| More interesting stats comparing Hearts of Iron with
| Cities: Skylines
|
| > Cities: Skylines - 18,280 players right now | 24,541
| 24-hour peak | 60,386 all-time peak 8 years ago
|
| > Hearts of Iron IV - 32,652 players right now | 44,193
| 24-hour peak | 70,997 all-time peak 5 months ago
| mablopoule wrote:
| Interesting. Thanks for the detailed comparison, and glad
| to be proved wrong.
| orwin wrote:
| I think they improved their Clauswidtz a lot in the past
| 3 years.
|
| Really night and day in term of bugs. Idk what they did,
| better hire, better process or more people on it (or all
| 3), but it made multi-player bearable on EU4, and great
| on Hoi4/stellaris (I do not like the game that much, but
| it's a better MP game than EU4, let's be honest.)
|
| Anyway, Hoi4 isn't niche anymore. It's like top5 MP
| strategy game.
| capableweb wrote:
| I don't think that has any merit, Paradox have launched
| and developed a bunch of successful (in their genre)
| games, and owns multiple studios while doing the
| publishing for even more. It's a successful company and
| would have been without Cities: Skylines as well.
|
| Probably parent meant the developer of the game, Colossal
| Order, which only developed Cities in Motion before,
| which was successful in it's own right but not on the
| scale of Cities: Skylines. But then "other X games
| wouldn't have existed otherwise" doesn't make sense,
| because Cities: Skylines is the latest game they've
| launched, and it was in 2015.
| zymhan wrote:
| CS has never captured the "soul" of a city though. Your city
| doesn't feel alive at all.
|
| But it's a great city building simulator.
| netruk44 wrote:
| Cities Skylines is alright but my problem with it from when
| it launched is after about an hour into the game it stops
| being challenging and just becomes a zen city-builder-themed
| garden. There's really no chance of losing once you build any
| kind of cash flow, and as a result there's no obvious goal
| other than 'make big city' and then subsequently 'manage the
| traffic'
|
| SimCity on the other hand is challenging to keep going
| throughout. You need to make thoughtful choices on what
| you're building next and where or else due to some quirk of
| the Agent system you're going to be on the brink of collapse
| (Why won't the power go down this one street??)
|
| Obviously there's room for improvement on the SimCity front,
| but my point is that if you're looking for a challenging city
| builder, Skylines is not it unless you wanna spend time
| configuring mods.
| loudmax wrote:
| It depends on what you're looking for in a Sim game.
| There's no Ender Dragon to kill in City:Skylines, so the
| objective of the game is whatever you make of it. At heart
| C:S is really a traffic management game. Cash flow usually
| isn't an issue, but getting efficient traffic flow and
| minimizing traffic jams becomes a major issue when you
| build up a dense downtown area.
| mcv wrote:
| > a zen city-builder-themed garden
|
| Sounds like a great selling point to me.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > the fact that they said it was because so much computation
| was offloaded to their servers (which was quickly disproved,
| and felt bogus to being with)
|
| This shredded the last bit of trust and goodwill Maxis had with
| me.
| windowshopping wrote:
| What is TFA in this context?
| revolvingocelot wrote:
| In HN's comparatively dispassionate register, "the featured
| article". Using it in a more frustrated tone can be
| suggestive of a different F word.
| sciurus wrote:
| The article.
|
| https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=TFA
| shadowofneptune wrote:
| > Same, they had a cross-promotion with Nissan, so your Sims
| would feel happy when they recharged their electric car, and
| the charging station has the effect of a park in your
| neighborhood.
|
| Perhaps not as bad as all the BP solar arrays and windmills in
| SimCity Societies!
|
| Game came out 3 years before the New Horizon spill.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| But it came out 3 years after BP's Deepwater Horizon spill.
| shadowofneptune wrote:
| Memory must fail me, Deepwater Horizon. SC: Societies was
| 2007, to be clear.
| Pxtl wrote:
| New Horizons was the probe that went to Pluto.
| shadowofneptune wrote:
| Looking deeper, it was only a year after the Prudhoe Bay
| spill. The gall.
| blibble wrote:
| it was more of a village simulator than a city simulator
|
| more like SimTown than SimCity:
| https://youtu.be/GRLyvPi7X4c?t=131
|
| > A few months in, I see that there was a 'Subway' content
| pack, which got my hopes up... until I realized it was to add
| 'Subway' sandwich shop in your city.
|
| this is hilarious, but sadly sums up gaming these days
| antifa wrote:
| > When SimCity launched on March 6, it required players to
| maintain an active online connection to the game's servers. If
| that connection dropped, they'd be booted from the game.
|
| SimCity, at it's core, is an offline single player game. EA
| really fucked this one up.
|
| Also EA already had the reputation of ruining every franchise
| they bought.
|
| The series lives on through Theotown and City Skylines.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| EA really did screw up a lot of franchises around that time
| period. I was just watching some retrospectives about Dead
| Space, and the pattern plays out time and time again with
| pretty much ever big series they bought.
|
| It seems like EA's MO in the early 2010s was to buy the rights
| to a successful game, strip the stuff that makes it unique, add
| some more cover shooting, multiplayer, and boobs, spend $100mil
| on advertising, then close the studio when they didn't get a
| return.
| slackdog wrote:
| Some single player games in the same broad genre as Sim City
| have successfully been adapted to multiplayer, so the premise
| of doing so wasn't poorly conceived. Transport Tycoon to
| OpenTTD in particular. The problem in this case was they
| botched the execution (which was no surprise given EA's abysmal
| reputation, as you mention.)
| Jensson wrote:
| OpenTTD supports singleplayer, being forced into multiplayer
| was the problem.
| slackdog wrote:
| My impression was that the 2013 SimCity was effectively
| single player if you didn't connect the game to any of your
| friends, but that it had always-online DRM which they tried
| to excuse as something other than DRM.
| JohnFen wrote:
| You could certainly play it single-player, but it wasn't
| good as a single-player game. It sacrificed far too much.
| It was meant to be a multiplayer game, and it showed.
| speeder wrote:
| I remember seeing a review of a guy playing online, upset
| that EA wouldn't boot a group of trolls that built cities
| all around his city, and made their cities to be extreme
| pollution generators, and then they never played again.
|
| Seemly this happened to multiple people, trolls were all
| too happy to ruin serious players cities by spamming
| pollution near them.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Yeah, it's certainly a problem and isn't unique to any
| particular online multiplayer game. It's why I stopped
| playing online multiplayer games unless it's just with my
| friends.
|
| There are too many people out there who make it their
| mission to ruin other people's fun.
| Asooka wrote:
| I wonder if they had let people host their own servers the game
| would have flourished better. Require an authentication from
| the central server once when you start the game to appease the
| DRM cultists if you must, then let players themselves provide
| server hardware if they can and want to. With central servers
| there is just no way for discrete communities to really form,
| since everyone is funneled into the same pot, and that is
| against the game's core design.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > EA already had the reputation of ruining every franchise they
| bought.
|
| C&C, WingCommander, Bullfrog, le sigh...
|
| Nightmare prompt: "What if EA acquired Wube (Factorio)?"
| vyrotek wrote:
| Sigh indeed... I would pay a ridiculous amount for a Red
| Alert 2 remaster.
| ErneX wrote:
| Maybe you'll like this one
|
| https://youtu.be/Na6bvEEPCQ0
| vyrotek wrote:
| Whoa, looks promising. Great soundtrack already!
| antifa wrote:
| I'm waiting for the RA2 for OpenRA to be finished.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >Nightmare prompt: "What if EA acquired Wube (Factorio)?"
|
| Factorio 2 would come out this decade.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| It would also be a live service shooter.
| quchen wrote:
| Only 99 alien artifacts to unlock blue belts
|
| 7 green science for 2 alien artifacts
|
| 5EUR for 120 green science
| dathinab wrote:
| just speculation but I think ...
|
| it would kill the series for most but some happy whales and
| have docents of micro transactions and would be celebrated
| as huge success by EA management and biggest failure ever
| by everyone else
| JohnFen wrote:
| It's a good rule of thumb that if EA buys something, that
| thing is effectively dead.
| mentos wrote:
| Yea I think the article understates this. From my recollection
| players were not swayed by the multiplayer arguments and saw it
| for the DRM that it was.
| mike_d wrote:
| It didn't help at all that 100% of the online servers were in
| AWS Ireland, regardless of where you were playing from.
| Tostino wrote:
| That is my exact recollection from the time. I know I stayed
| away due to that, even prior to the nightmare launch.
| andrew-dc wrote:
| This is exactly the problem. The shift to online always,
| and "free to play" casino-style micro-transaction hell-
| holes is still a garbage experience. And this is multiplied
| when you have kids, and you want to just buy them a good
| game.
|
| Thankfully, a lot of other studios have rejected this. Even
| though Cities: Skylines has its long list of paid DLC (some
| great, some meh), at least you don't have to buy them, or
| have internet to build a city by yourself.
|
| Lastly, and this is anecdotal but, if you make a good game,
| and respect me as a player, I am more than happy to shell
| over money for it. I'll pay for quality. Penalize me, nag
| me, treat me like a child or a criminal, and my money is
| going to a competitor who doesn't. (I've always felt it was
| absurdly insulting to plaster anti-piracy rubbish on
| DVD's...that someone just paid money for. It's the same
| with games.) Forcing paying customers to suffer because
| some people steal things, is a losing strategy.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| The lead designer was heartbroken? He should have been ashamed of
| his dastardly creation.
|
| I was heartbroken when I saw how they massacred and desecrated
| the Sim City franchise.
|
| It was one of the early online-only cloud microtransaction trash
| games, like Diablo 3.
| stuaxo wrote:
| "EA closed the principal Maxis studio in March 2015," does EA do
| anything but close game studios ?
| JohnFen wrote:
| It also abuses any goodwill and fond feelings people may have
| for a game studio first, to make sure they squeeze it for every
| penny possible.
| spagoop wrote:
| I grew up playing Sim City 2k and 3k (never got around to the
| latest one, but wasn't really interested after reading reviews).
|
| I'd like to see the entire city builder genre challenged by
| changing the perspective from city planner/god-mayor, to those
| whom they serve.
|
| Imagine, instead of a birds eye view, you could only build from
| the perspective of a pedestrian.
|
| Maybe in certain instances you'd have to see a wider swath of
| land for planning purposes (transit as an example), but it would
| be interesting to see how the forms of cities created by users
| change from this new perspective.
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| I think I'd prefer something more similar to a Factorio setting
| (e.g. still top-down, but the camera actions/limited to your
| area as the "pedestrian").
|
| However, I'd also like the insertion of balance against the
| "god" part too - like eminent domain costing goodwill or
| stability points. Too unstable or not enough goodwill, and the
| citizens start acting antagonist against the player on some
| level (e.g. higher crime/fraud, causing less taxes, protests,
| people leaving, etc)
|
| Almost like city-state on some level, but less about the
| political compass and more about city government interacting
| with the local population.
| bombcar wrote:
| The problem with these city simulators is that they're
| relatively simplistic, and it's easy to work out a "formula"
| that lets you get basically infinite money and do whatever
| you want (the "city painter" mode). Which can be terribly
| fun, but it's not so much a game as more of an open-world
| building toy.
| mike503 wrote:
| It had so much promise. It was rocky to start for sure. The
| playable area was so annoyingly small and I felt like I wind up
| in the same pattern every time. I did play it again a few months
| ago. It has so much promise, still, as a base for the next level.
| Ultimately it feels like you have to graduate to using megatowers
| as the cities pretty much could only advance if you included
| them... and they were limited by count and eventually those would
| become stagnant.
|
| If they could make the maps larger and improve things like
| homeless/park issues (I've placed parks like crazy, increase the
| property values and density, etc) but always wind up having to
| bulldoze and deal with homeless people which seems like it
| shouldn't happen based on my understanding.
|
| Go the no man's sky route and give us an infinite world to build
| on.
| JohnFen wrote:
| That release certainly marked the end of the SimCity line for me.
| Making it require the use of their servers when you only wanted
| to play it single-player was intolerable, but it was an inferior
| single-player game (compared to its predecessors) anyway.
|
| I just keep playing the older versions instead.
| cush wrote:
| This site is so full of ads it crashes iOS Safari...
| HighChaparral wrote:
| I gave up after reloading it for the third time to see if the
| next chunk of invisible text would suddenly appear.
| (iPhone/iOS, Safari, Content Blockers off)
| seszett wrote:
| SimCity _2013_ is missing in the title, otherwise it makes little
| sense.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| FWIW, the game is called simply SimCity, and the HN title is
| the same as the title on the article, so, no, not really. HN
| also tends to put dates on articles that aren't from the
| current year. If you're totally unfamiliar with the series, it
| doesn't matter. If you're a little familiar with the series
| (like me), then you know that the original was released more
| than a decade ago and pretty much defined the genre, so you
| know this isn't talking about the original game titled SimCity.
| If you're familiar with the series, then you know exactly
| what's being talked about.
| [deleted]
| hanoz wrote:
| Yes really, the title _in the article_ makes little sense in
| isolation, as even its own subtitle demonstrates.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Before reading the 2nd sentence of the article, you seem to
| have been mixed up about if this article is about the
| SimCity that came out in 2013 or the one that came out in
| 1989. I find it hard to believe that you're aware of the
| original SimCity game and think that this could be an
| article from 1999 that could be about it being a disaster
| for the series (and I'm glad you read further to learn more
| about the series!). But, even in that case, in isolation,
| you know that 2013 was a decade ago (and not 1989).
| joemi wrote:
| > I find it hard to believe that you're aware of the
| original SimCity game and think that this could be an
| article from 1999 that could be about it being a disaster
| for the series
|
| This almost exactly describes what I thought before I
| started reading the article. (And the whole reason I
| started reading was because of this confusion.) Except I
| didn't think "1999" because I don't know what year the
| original SimCity came out, I just know that it was more
| than a decade ago.
| zymhan wrote:
| Anyone familiar with the first SimCity would be well aware that
| it both launched decades ago, and was not a disaster.
| joemi wrote:
| That's what I _thought_ but the article title had me doubting
| it, so I clicked it and only then realized that there was
| another game in the series with the same name and it came out
| in 2013. Kind of felt like I was tricked by a clickbait
| title.
| slowhand09 wrote:
| +1 here. I purchased the original SimCity and soon after the
| original SimEarth. Loads of fun with both.
| bearmode wrote:
| The name of the game was _SimCity_.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| So too was the 1989 (and original) version though.
| bearmode wrote:
| And which one launched a decade ago? How about we combine
| the three bits of info and see what we think we have...
| name = "SimCity", launch = 2013, reception = disasterous.
| Only one of those matches the '89 game, so it's clear which
| one is being referred to.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| With the frequency with which older articles are posted
| to HN, it's easy to imagine this was an older article
| (re)posted. I'm old enough that I remember the original
| and SimCity "2000" and had no idea there ever was a 2013
| version.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Strictly speaking, it's true, but when multiple games with
| the same name are released, it's convention to use the year
| for the newer one. (It's also generally convention to _not_
| use the year for the original one when the newer one is a
| remake of the older).
|
| So _SimCity (2013)_ would be the most expected way to refer
| to the game.
| tarotuser wrote:
| I'm imagining the "Well akshually" guy as the person you're
| responding to.
|
| Sure the name was "SimCity". But this is about the 2013
| game, not the 1990s game. Clarity is preferred over
| 'Wellakshually Correctness'.
| bearmode wrote:
| Normal people can infer context. Nobody thinks the
| original game came out in 2013. Everyone knows it was not
| a disaster.
| fwlr wrote:
| I actually clicked on it thinking it meant the original
| SimCity which I adored, not realizing that was many
| decades ago, and expecting it to be some interesting
| argument that SimCity was somehow so good that it
| proactively ruined every city sim game that would come
| after it.
| tarotuser wrote:
| So it's "Wellakshually" and now the rest of us are 'not
| normal'?
|
| How many other hot takes do you have to share?
| chitowneats wrote:
| Yes, and the original SimCity was a wild success.
| bearmode wrote:
| Yes. So it's easy to tell which the title is referring to.
| jtbayly wrote:
| No, actually, it's not. Because I have no idea there even
| was a 2013 version.
|
| The title makes absolutely no sense to me.
|
| It's flat out wrong. SimCity obviously wasn't released a
| decade ago.
| joemi wrote:
| This is my feeling too. The title as it stands without a
| date clarifying that it was the SimCity from 2013 makes
| no sense. If I knew there was a 2013 version, it would
| probably make sense, but before clicking into the article
| and reading a little, I had no idea. And the only reason
| I clicked and read was because I thought "surely there's
| a mistake in this title".
| pdntspa wrote:
| Gotta love that stupid marketing trend of overwriting history
| with product names
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Maybe "Simcity (2013)" to be extra clear. After all, SimCity
| 2000 came out in like 1994. OTOH the ambiguous naming was
| intentional by EA. They faced the consequences for all the
| other bad decisions made around the game, so any confusion
| about the rebooted name is on them IMO.
|
| But I'm more of a Cities:Skyline fan anyways-I'm glad the Maxis
| devs aren't too sour grapes about the competitor.
| bromuk wrote:
| Funny how Cities: Skylines 2 got announced after I'd commented on
| this earlier
| rcstank wrote:
| The title makes it sound like the SimCity franchise, which
| started in what, 1989?
| smlacy wrote:
| What a bizarre title. Obviously, SimCity has been around for a
| lot longer than a decade. The original Maxis SimCity launched in
| 1989.
| yuliyp wrote:
| I think that's part of the confusion. The title of the game
| released in 2013 was also "SimCity", not "Simcity 5" or
| "SimCity 2013"
| slackdog wrote:
| Usually when game or movie publishers do this kind of crap,
| everybody slaps the year onto the title anyway. "Prey
| (2017)", "Dune (2021)", etc.
| ianhawes wrote:
| I recall playing on launch day and being shocked to discover
| that, aside from the internet connectivity requirement, the
| entire UI was written in HTML using WebKit [0].
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/MaxisScott/status/310835756107177984
| doublerabbit wrote:
| And that the original SimCity were written in TCL and TK
|
| https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/SimCity
| fredoralive wrote:
| Well, for its Unix version anyway, which was a port a few
| years after the early releases.
| kasajian wrote:
| When I saw this title, I had to ask.. a decade ago? I swear I saw
| SimCity 30 years ago.
| bmitc wrote:
| There are several versions:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimCity
| Felminor wrote:
| Loved the visual style.
|
| Not sure why they just didn't build a second one
| weatherlight wrote:
| But it's death allowed for "Cities: Skylines" to come into
| existence and the world is better for it.
|
| https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines/abo...
| shaunxcode wrote:
| Wow finally a simcity2k rival!
| ozarker wrote:
| Rumor is Cities: Skylines 2 is getting announced today at the
| Paradox Interactive event
| mablopoule wrote:
| Well, you were right :D.
| Tokkemon wrote:
| This was released half an hour ago.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdD66WGBVHM
| weatherlight wrote:
| be still my beating heart! :p
| graypegg wrote:
| Aaa?! You've made my monday 1000x more exciting!
| fishtoaster wrote:
| Looks like it actually happened!
| https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines-
| ii/...
| ilovetato wrote:
| I want to believe, but I doubt. Even if they do, I may not
| bother buying it considering they have taken after EA for
| offering the shell game and then packaging up things inspired
| by modders as DLC. $256.00
|
| The only way skylines 2 gets released is if they find a way
| to ramp this behavior up.
|
| All game companies end up the same way in the end. Capitalism
| demands it.
| Zetice wrote:
| Capitalism does indeed demand being paid for your work.
| martinald wrote:
| It's all but confirmed now, there's an article with the
| logo.
|
| Honestly I don't find the DLC behaviour that annoying with
| CS. You can get most of the DLCs on allkeyshop for $5 each.
| I've probably spent about $100 on the game and DLC and have
| had many hundreds of hours of gameplay for that, which
| compares extremely well with many games which are $60/70
| and you get a 10 hour campaign max. $/hour CS comes way
| ahead.
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines-
| ii/...
|
| It's confirmed.
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| CS is a poor replacement for the otherwise incredible game that
| is sim city 4. The issue being that the traffic and population
| simulation engine in CS isnt very good.
|
| There are still modders and a very active community for SC4 for
| that reason alone. Reminds me, I need to install some city
| again
| etempleton wrote:
| I find that CS does a good job with road construction and
| design and I think the traffic simulation is largely on par
| with Sim City 4. Other parts of the simulation are weaker and
| the game really doesn't have much challenge as a city
| management game. It is a better sandbox though.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| Comparison/discussion of Simcity 4's traffic simulation
| really requires considering the Network Addon Mod, IMO.
| It's been in development for years and adds an
| extraordinary level of sophistication and interactivity to
| the traffic simulation. It also considerably raises the
| game's system requirements, but I think SC4+NAM is still
| the best city management simulation ever built, by a _long_
| shot.
|
| I sunk a lot of time into Cities Skylines too, but the
| simulation has too many fundamental flaws under the hood.
| Drivers don't make proper use of turning lanes. Everyone
| moves in at the same time at the same age to new
| residential zones, and then dies at the same time. Etc.
| It's a good game, but the underlying simulation is
| hamstrung. I'd agree it's a more enjoyable "paint a city"
| sandbox, but trying to challenge myself with it as a game
| the way I did with SC4 doesn't feel as satisfying.
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| Thanks for mentioning this. NAM is really a requirement
| for Sc4 at this point.
| ekidd wrote:
| I might go so far as to say C:S is a traffic and
| transportation simulator. The city building parts are all
| there, and they're reasonably fun.
|
| But the ultimate limiting factor with my cities was
| transportation. No matter how much I worked on mass
| transit, I couldn't get more than 80-90% of my citizens to
| use it, and the remaining cars eventually choked even fancy
| road systems into tailbacks and gridlock.
|
| To be fair, this is a problem with real cities, too.
| bombcar wrote:
| Mods can help a but, but 80-90% using mass transit is
| pretty impressive.
|
| The main problem with the simulator is "shortest pathing"
| but the mods can help fix that.
| etempleton wrote:
| In Cities Skylines every car takes the theoretically
| fastest route to get to their destination. This is
| somewhat realistic as this is how most people IRL
| determine which way to drive as well, however the cars
| will follow this even when it is clear that the route
| they will take will have a major backup or congestion and
| another route is only marginally slower and will be
| completely empty. Additionally, and perhaps more
| importantly, drivers don't reroute when a direction
| slows. They will stick with the route they are going
| until they get to their destination.
| cstejerean wrote:
| Sounds pretty realistic then. I remember reading
| somewhere that NYC is around ~60% public transportation,
| and Hong Kong is around 70-80% public transportation. So
| maxing out around 80-90% in the game doesn't sound too
| outrageous. Unless you just get rid of roads entirely,
| which I'm sure would be a popular idea on HN.
| distances wrote:
| My solution was to remove all roads to outside world.
| Only railway links allowed, and for those a strict
| separation of passenger and cargo tracks.
|
| Not very realistic, but it's an utopia roughly matching
| what I would prefer so works well for my cities.
| etempleton wrote:
| This solution also worked in the original SimCity. No
| roads, no traffic.
| mcv wrote:
| A walkable city, then.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| The thing that always held CS back for me was the UI. I
| reinstalled it again recently to see if some five years of
| patches since the last time I'd played might have given
| Paradox time to hire some professional game UI designers, but
| I left disappointed.
|
| Compared to the sophistication of Maxis' UIs twenty years
| ago, CS' clunky interactions, awkward visual hierarchy, and
| downright amateurish typography are indeed a poor
| replacement.
| nwallin wrote:
| > The issue being that the traffic and population simulation
| engine in CS isnt very good.
|
| IMHO C:S is only playable if you use the TM:PE mod. (Traffic
| Manager:Presidential Edition) It gives you the tools to
| completely solve the traffic problems.
|
| Whether this is an argument for or against your point is a
| matter of perspective.
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| Thanks for this recommendation. I'll give CS a retry if
| this mod puts the traffic and pop sim on par with sc4.
| nwallin wrote:
| It won't change anything about the population sim, just
| traffic.
|
| There exist other mods that change the population sim;
| I'm not familiar with them. C:S mods ... well there's a
| ton of them. It's a pretty deep rabbit hole.
| bombcar wrote:
| There's a "realistic population mod" but depending on how
| you use it it just ands some multipliers.
|
| https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=20
| 251...
|
| Note that it is VERY easy to make the game impossible
| with this mod, and to make it painfully easy.
| dncornholio wrote:
| I agree that CS doesn't rub the sweetspot like the original
| Simcity did.
| ocimbote wrote:
| I'm all in to blame corporate any time, but the narrative here is
| a bit too much on a "good people, bad corp" slope, even for me.
| toyg wrote:
| The alternative would have been "good developers, bad project
| managers", which would have been too brutal. Someone had to
| figure out the infra requirements, and it could only be someone
| with knowledge of the volume of preorders. That's not going to
| be developers, but rather someone in the corporate hierarchy.
|
| I think the article is extremely charitable. They could have
| named every exec who made the call on the key features that
| brought about disaster (forcefully turning a solo game into a
| multiplayer one, underestimating requirements, etc etc) and
| instead they just said "EA", effectively absolving everyone but
| "the man".
| jhoelzel wrote:
| Sim city is a phone game.
|
| I want to build cool cities full stop. I think what was more the
| problem is that a LOT of studios realized that a sim city clone
| works better on mobile hardware, because that's where the target
| audience is at.
|
| Since then they did realize it and I was playing it with my
| fiance for hours and hours on end. With the multiplayer with
| multiple cities.
|
| Graphics and disasters where not so much the problem in 2013 but
| they more or less screwed the game by liming it so miuch
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| Check out Pocket City, it's the best realization of a SimCity
| title (especially SC2000) I've seen on mobile devices.
|
| https://pocketcitygame.com
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| I can recommend TheoTown, available for all major platforms,
| even on Android and iOS, completely for free. It has a plug-
| in system, tons of decorative objects. Controls are good,
| too. Plus, it has some endgame content that makes it quite
| fun.
|
| https://hi.theotown.com/
| gowld wrote:
| > In-app purchases $0.99 - $104.99 per item
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| > On Android and iOS we use the freemium model while you
| can get the full game for a fixed price on Steam.
|
| That's not exactly free. (Not saying it _should_ be free,
| but just don 't claim it is when it isn't.)
| mcv wrote:
| If there's a limited free mode and for a single fixed
| price you can unlock the full game, that would be the
| perfect price model for me. The description doesn't make
| it clear whether that's indeed the case and what that
| price would be, though.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| At least on iOS, this "freemium" model is actively worse
| than a paid game for end users -- paid apps and
| subscriptions can be shared among family members, but in-
| app purchases cannot.
| mcv wrote:
| Do you have multiple user accounts on an iOS device these
| days?
|
| As far as I know, Android apps can't be shared with other
| accounts, but all our tablets use my account, so they can
| all use my apps. Unlike with Steam, where they need their
| own account and their own purchase in order to play
| simultaneously.
| gowld wrote:
| > Android apps can't be shared with other accounts
|
| Yes they can.
|
| https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/7007852?hl=e
| n
|
| You can share purchased apps, games, movies, TV shows,
| and e-books and audiobooks from Google Play with up to 5
| family members using Google Play Family Library.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| Not multiple accounts on a single device, but you can
| group into a "family" that can share purchases, and can
| play simultaneously.
|
| So my partner and I can each play Civilization VI on our
| own tablets at the same time, but if I were to purchase
| one of the add-on packs in the game, that could not be
| shared (as there is no store-level way to distinguish a
| consumable sale like a free-to-play game's fictional
| currency).
| gowld wrote:
| PocketCity is a dollhouse, nearly an idle clicker. It's
| pretty, but there is essentially no simulation and gameplay
| decisions to make.
| hapless wrote:
| The interview snippets make it clear that SimCity 2013 was
| hopelessly compromised from minute one
|
| If nothing else, consider the mandates from EA:
| 1. Make it "unpirateable" even if it compromises gameplay
| 2. Make it depend on EA's online service, b/c we need to sell
| that even more than we need the game to succeed 3. Make
| sure it can handle a steady trickle of "expansions" like The Sims
|
| If you are going to implement those mandates, you are gonna end
| up with something bad. Even if SimCity 2013 had not been
| _otherwise_ brain-damaged or screwed up, just EA 's _goals_ for
| the product were damning.
|
| (Of course, it is not JUST the mandates -- the game was screwed
| up in many _other_ ways as well. But the mandates alone would
| have been bad.)
| prox wrote:
| Looks like they first asked "how can we suck the money out of
| customers?" instead of asking how to make a milestone game.
| They repeated that a few more times as I recall. Not sure how
| they do it now.
| brookst wrote:
| > EA was looking to justify the time and money it had already
| spent on Quigley and Willmot's experiment
|
| If true (the whole article is unsourced), that is a classic
| failure of undergrad business 101.
| vmilner wrote:
| In these days of 100GB games I'm still in awe of how much fun I
| had from a game stored in 128KB (SimCity on the ZX Spectrum in
| 1990). And it was perfectly playable in 48KB.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Maxis had a really cool integration ecosystem for a period. I
| remember flying my sim copter in my sim city. Driving cars around
| Streets of Sim City - in my city.
|
| SimCity was the worldbuilder and they let you play in that world
| in a variety of ways. I must have spent hundreds of hours playing
| these as a child: these were basically my Minecraft.
|
| What happened to their vision? Was the EA acquisition the
| beginning of the end, or did the magic start disappearing
| earlier?
| tomca32 wrote:
| Yeah this was bad. The main problem was that the actual
| simulation was being done on the servers, rather than on the
| client...for a single player game.
|
| I'm sure the development team knew everybody was going to hate
| that so it couldn't have been a surprise.
| [deleted]
| toyg wrote:
| _> for a single player game_
|
| But that's the problem: it was really a multiplayer game, sold
| to a crowd who wanted a predominantly single-player experience.
| So users were effectively angry from day 1 simply because they
| were being sold something they didn't want; the fact that this
| also precluded them from salvaging a bit of entertainment from
| it (since you'd be booted out even if you had little or no
| intention to ever interact with other players), was a further
| slap in the face.
| josefx wrote:
| > The main problem was that the actual simulation was being
| done on the servers
|
| While that was the marketing line "simulation so complex it
| can't run on your PC", I remember there being an offline crack
| shortly after release and later one of the official patches
| even enabled it officially.
| delusional wrote:
| Yeah, the part that were simulated online was the trade
| between the cities, a task so trivial it demanded nothing of
| the servers.
|
| The server side simulation was a joke. It was mostly an
| excuse for why the game performed poorly and the cities were
| so small.
| antifa wrote:
| Yeah there was basically no evidence that the game did
| anything more intense than the original SimCity (1989) but
| they loved claiming otherwise.
| nottorp wrote:
| > The main problem was that the actual simulation was being
| done on the servers
|
| That was bullcrap. Soon after launch a crack showed up that
| made the game playable without a server connection, for the
| features that didn't actually need a server connection. EA just
| lied.
|
| Not to mention that they made an official patch available 1
| year after launch that enabled a proper offline mode :)
|
| https://www.eurogamer.net/simcity-can-now-be-played-offline
|
| As for this interview, I guess mr lead designer isn't allowed
| to be honest by his contract.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > The main problem was that the actual simulation was being
| done on the servers, rather than on the client...for a single
| player game.
|
| As I understand it, this _wasn 't_ the case, and the claims
| that it was were primarily bullshit to justify requiring
| always-online access for DRM purposes.
| paavohtl wrote:
| Ah, that's the interesting bit: the actual simulation was 100%
| local. Networking was actually only required for region play,
| and I don't think it even communicates in real-time; just
| occasionally syncs certain variables between cities.
|
| The always online requirement was just a form of DRM, and
| wasn't actually necessary for the game. EA even patched in an
| official offline mode in 2014.
| mr_coleman wrote:
| Didn't someone write a patch the day it came out that
| stripped out all the phoning home in single player and the
| game played perfectly ok in single player. I seem to remember
| it being a large embarrassment to EA at the time due to EA
| saying that parts of the single player were run on the remote
| servers. City Skylines is better and I'm not going back so
| water under the bridge.
| cragfar wrote:
| Yes. EA responded to the always online complaints by saying
| the game couldn't possibly run offline due to servers
| processing information. It was then 0 day cracked showing
| it was a complete lie.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Ah, that's the interesting bit: the actual simulation was
| 100% local. Networking was actually only required for region
| play, and I don't think it even communicates in real-time;
| just occasionally syncs certain variables between cities.
|
| I think you're right, but the misconception comes from the
| fact that EA actively played up the fact that they were doing
| work "in the cloud", to make it seem more powerful and
| advanced of a simulation (and to justify their reliance on
| the always-on network DRM).
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > The always online requirement was just a form of DRM
|
| We can only hope that every app/game that adopts this policy
| dies an excruciating financial death.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I'm not necessarily morally opposed to always-online DRM (I
| mean it is their game, they can do what they want), but it
| is a _strong_ signal that they are not afraid to make
| technical decisions that they know people will hate in the
| interest of monetization. Bad sign!
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| Considering they can't even keep MLS operating for older
| games, always-online DRM is basically a guaranteed the
| game won't work within 3-10 years when the company
| decides to turn off the server. Based on many company's
| record with this, it's basically a guarantee that they
| won't patch the game to bypass the DRM check (or make the
| MLS modifyable and/or default to a fan-supported MLS).
|
| In that case, I do find it morally objective to say the
| person is "buying" a game. If anything, they're renting
| the game.
| anonymousab wrote:
| Most of the game worked perfectly fine offline with a minor
| hack released shortly after the game came out.
|
| There were some game journalists muddying the waters with some
| assumptions about it back then, which can make it difficult to
| get an accurate retroactive historical context today.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| I wouldn't call them assumptions. They were PR spiels
| provided by EA and regurgitated without checking.
| morsch wrote:
| _the actual simulation was being done on the servers, rather
| than on the client_
|
| I remember that's what they said, but I doubt it was ever the
| case. Wikipedia says the cloud functionality "enable[d] cloud
| saves and multiplayer functionality", and shortly after launch
| it was determined you could patch the game to run offline for
| an indeterminate length of time. To me, it was pretty obvious
| back then that it was purely an attempt at copy protection.
|
| Beyond that, the game was just _bad_. The simulation just didn
| 't live up to the hype, and while it did have a lot to live up
| to given its fantastic predecessor, SimCity 4 was old by then,
| and people expected a big upgrade. Specifically, I remember
| "sims not living persistent lives but rather going to the
| nearest available workplace for work and nearest available
| house after work" (Wikipedia again) as being a huge deal in the
| community back then. And then there was the limited play area,
| which was just ridiculous when you consider what people want
| from these games.
| zzixp wrote:
| I would love for Cities Skylines to implement some kind of
| multiplayer or online collaborative option.
| agentultra wrote:
| I remember following every update to this game prior to launch. I
| hated that it required an Origins account and all that but I
| signed up regardless just to play this game. And I recall having
| a good time with this game... for a while.
|
| Unfortunately EA's lack of support for the game was definitely
| felt by us consumers. It started off well enough but instead of
| becoming a better game they turned it into a brand-tie-in DLC-
| fest.
|
| It's hard working at an organization on such a long, ambitious
| project that the leadership wasn't prepared to support and didn't
| really believe in to begin with. As a developer I've been on such
| projects and I recall being invested in the work itself, the
| project, and our users: but getting management on-board to give
| it the funding and direction it needed was always a struggle.
| petepete wrote:
| I'd been looking forward to SC2013 for years and it was beyond
| disappointing.
|
| I know I'm probably not a typical gamer in EA's eyes, but SC4 was
| such a solid release. It just needed playable regions (build
| multiple cities, join them together) and some more graphical
| polish. I'd buy that game in an instant.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| SC4 (which I still fire up on occasion) has playable regions;
| in fact, that was the top-line new feature for that
| installment.
|
| Graphical polish would have been nice, but what the game really
| needs today is an engine upgrade -- it arrived just before the
| broad adoption of x64 and multi-core consumer CPUs, so it can't
| take full advantage of modern systems.
| petepete wrote:
| Yeah I meant a continuous playable region, not lots of
| separate cities next to each other (ie huge cities please)
| kuon wrote:
| I moved to city skylines, which I like, but I miss something from
| SimCity. First CS forces roads everywhere, this is the biggest
| con to me, I would love to experiment with biking only
| neighborhood with mass transit. The other problem is that it's
| too easy. I love the constraint of having no money and struggling
| with public opinion. Like "You want to build a train line here?
| You will have major unhappiness from it". Skylines is good in
| sandbox mode, but misses a lot in "rogue like" mode. I would also
| like more terrain diversity.
| FfejL wrote:
| "SimCity should step outside the single-player bubble and embrace
| the fad of the moment--multiplayer"
|
| Found the problem!
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