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Cities: Skylines 2 Now Available

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  • WotanAnubisWotanAnubis Registered User regular
    Watching Quill's livestream, I suddenly have a lot of respect and no small amount of pity for those tasked with ensuring the smooth flow of traffic.

  • ButtcleftButtcleft Registered User regular
    I'm kind of surprised at how many women seem to have worked on the game, but then again the developer is in Finland and might not deal with the same bullshit women in the industry in America get.

  • Mr RayMr Ray Sarcasm sphereRegistered User regular
    Buttcleft wrote: »
    I'm kind of surprised at how many women seem to have worked on the game, but then again the developer is in Finland and might not deal with the same bullshit women in the industry in America get.

    Its not just an American thing, as far as I can tell its just a "Western" thing. I've done development myself, both in the UK and Australia and while I've met plenty of women in the industry, almost all of them were non-white. I've met more middle-eastern female developers alone than white Australian women... in Australia. Something ain't right there. But this is probably a topic for another thread!

    Back on topic, I remain cautiously optimistic. This looks like Simcity 2013 minus the bullshit and plus all of the features it should have had in the first place. And I mean it really looks like Simcity, right down to the green/blue/yellow RCI system and the smooth lines of the interface. Its almost like they're deliberately trying to piss Maxis off, which I'm more than okay with.

  • ButtcleftButtcleft Registered User regular
    Deliberately piss off EA you mean, as Maxis is nothing but a brand anymore that EA throws on Simmy shit.

  • chuck steakchuck steak Registered User regular
    I don't quite understand all of the Simcity hate. I got the game a few months ago and thought it was great. Is this all just from the launch always-online stuff? Cause as a game I've had nothing but fun with it.

  • That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guy Registered User regular
    As much as the devs deny it, I am reasonably certain that this game is a direct response to how terrible Simcity 2013 was. They would have begun development pretty much right after Simcity 2013 came out. It wouldn't surprise me if a bunch of folks on the team bought SC'13 and all said at once, "Damnit, we can do better than this."

  • ButtcleftButtcleft Registered User regular
    That_Guy wrote: »
    As much as the devs deny it, I am reasonably certain that this game is a direct response to how terrible Simcity 2013 was. They would have begun development pretty much right after Simcity 2013 came out. It wouldn't surprise me if a bunch of folks on the team bought SC'13 and all said at once, "Damnit, we can do better than this."

    and from everything I've seen and heard so far today, it seems they have.

  • AxenAxen My avatar is Excalibur. Yes, the sword.Registered User regular
    edited March 2015
    I don't quite understand all of the Simcity hate. I got the game a few months ago and thought it was great. Is this all just from the launch always-online stuff? Cause as a game I've had nothing but fun with it.

    Well that certainly didn't help.

    Another thing that kind of really annoys people is that when you make a sequel to a 10(ish) year old game people generally expect the new version to have at least as much (preferably more) functionality than the predecessor.

    And judging by Sim City 2013 and The Sims 4 it seems to be a frame of mind they don't share with the playerbase. :(

    Axen on
    A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
  • Mr RayMr Ray Sarcasm sphereRegistered User regular
    edited March 2015
    Buttcleft wrote: »
    Deliberately piss off EA you mean, as Maxis is nothing but a brand anymore that EA throws on Simmy shit.

    There's been a lot of debate about whether EA or Maxis fucked up Simcity 2013, but as far as I can tell the answer is "both". EA were most likely the ones who forced the always-online bullshit, but it could still have been a good game despite that. But it wasn't, because the glassbox engine was fundamentally flawed in a number of ways that became painfully obvious if you played the game for more than an hour or so. And that was all on Maxis.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXMnZvBbaMM

    Not shown: ten fire trucks stuck in traffic responding to the same fire while two other much closer fires go ignored, criminals going on a crime spree right outside the police station, wtf streetcars, bus conga lines, pedestrians walking in circles forever, e.t.c.

    Mr Ray on
  • DirtyboyDirtyboy Registered User regular
    Bought this after watching a couple streams.

  • That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guy Registered User regular
    edited March 2015
    I have a good, stable internet connection so the always online never bothered me. My biggest complaints were all about the limitations of the game. Even with the Cities of Tomorrow expansion you would pretty much run out of space to build within an hour or two. The next couple of hours were spent troubleshooting your city before the engine started chugging so hard that you were getting 15fps during rush hours. Once the engine starts chugging the pathfinding shits the bed and traffic start backing up. Once traffic is backed up enough, you run into total gridlock until you start bulldozing buildings to create relief roads. This is not a result of any lack of computing power on my rig. CPU and GPU usage are at lower levels than when the city is moving along smoothly.

    Now lets really tear into the meat of the engine. You probably remember the water and poo blobs. Well, people are the same way. The developers basically lied to us when they said every person was an independent agent. You start with a home. Every morning the home spawns worker and student blobs. Those blobs try to find the fastest route to either work or school. When the engine starts chugging this is the first thing to go out the window. You have people waiting for buses that will never arrive because everyone saw that the bus would be slower than driving. Parking lots and streetcars could help, but there were limits to their effectiveness. Cities of tomorrow introduced a maglev system that helped things enough so that the unmodded game at least ran smoothly for a lot longer. In the end your city would always entropy to the point of uselessness within 3-4 hours so you would just have to make a new one. Everything in Simcity was so superficial. Unlike Simcity 4, I never felt like I was building a city. It felt like I was building with duplo blocks.

    Edit: That video is rather out of date. That much has been fixed for some time.

    Double Edit: AND THE POPULATION NUMBERS LIED. They lied so bad.

    That_Guy on
  • Mr RayMr Ray Sarcasm sphereRegistered User regular
    That_Guy wrote: »
    I have a good, stable internet connection so the always online never bothered me. My biggest complaints were all about the limitations of the game. Even with the Cities of Tomorrow expansion you would pretty much run out of space to build within an hour or two. The next couple of hours were spent troubleshooting your city before the engine started chugging so hard that you were getting 15fps during rush hours. Once the engine starts chugging the pathfinding shits the bed and traffic start backing up. Once traffic is backed up enough, you run into total gridlock until you start bulldozing buildings to create relief roads. This is not a result of any lack of computing power on my rig. CPU and GPU usage are at lower levels than when the city is moving along smoothly.

    Now lets really tear into the meat of the engine. You probably remember the water and poo blobs. Well, people are the same way. The developers basically lied to us when they said every person was an independent agent. You start with a home. Every morning the home spawns worker and student blobs. Those blobs try to find the fastest route to either work or school. When the engine starts chugging this is the first thing to go out the window. You have people waiting for buses that will never arrive because everyone saw that the bus would be slower than driving. Parking lots and streetcars could help, but there were limits to their effectiveness. Cities of tomorrow introduced a maglev system that helped things enough so that the unmodded game at least ran smoothly for a lot longer. In the end your city would always entropy to the point of uselessness within 3-4 hours so you would just have to make a new one. Everything in Simcity was so superficial. Unlike Simcity 4, I never felt like I was building a city. It felt like I was building with duplo blocks.

    Edit: That video is rather out of date. That much has been fixed for some time.

    Double Edit: AND THE POPULATION NUMBERS LIED. They lied so bad.

    Yeah, they basically modeled the population like a fluid and buildings as pumps; residential zones would squirt out people in the morning and workplaces would suck them up, and vice-versa in the evenings. Which is a great way to efficiently move large numbers of objects around, but not a very good way to model how real, thinking population would behave. And yet a small-name German dev team managed populations of 2000+ actual, thinking agents in Tropico 5:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN_TKTQTzvs

  • That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guy Registered User regular
    Mr Ray wrote: »
    That_Guy wrote: »
    I have a good, stable internet connection so the always online never bothered me. My biggest complaints were all about the limitations of the game. Even with the Cities of Tomorrow expansion you would pretty much run out of space to build within an hour or two. The next couple of hours were spent troubleshooting your city before the engine started chugging so hard that you were getting 15fps during rush hours. Once the engine starts chugging the pathfinding shits the bed and traffic start backing up. Once traffic is backed up enough, you run into total gridlock until you start bulldozing buildings to create relief roads. This is not a result of any lack of computing power on my rig. CPU and GPU usage are at lower levels than when the city is moving along smoothly.

    Now lets really tear into the meat of the engine. You probably remember the water and poo blobs. Well, people are the same way. The developers basically lied to us when they said every person was an independent agent. You start with a home. Every morning the home spawns worker and student blobs. Those blobs try to find the fastest route to either work or school. When the engine starts chugging this is the first thing to go out the window. You have people waiting for buses that will never arrive because everyone saw that the bus would be slower than driving. Parking lots and streetcars could help, but there were limits to their effectiveness. Cities of tomorrow introduced a maglev system that helped things enough so that the unmodded game at least ran smoothly for a lot longer. In the end your city would always entropy to the point of uselessness within 3-4 hours so you would just have to make a new one. Everything in Simcity was so superficial. Unlike Simcity 4, I never felt like I was building a city. It felt like I was building with duplo blocks.

    Edit: That video is rather out of date. That much has been fixed for some time.

    Double Edit: AND THE POPULATION NUMBERS LIED. They lied so bad.

    Yeah, they basically modeled the population like a fluid and buildings as pumps; residential zones would squirt out people in the morning and workplaces would suck them up, and vice-versa in the evenings. Which is a great way to efficiently move large numbers of objects around, but not a very good way to model how real, thinking population would behave. And yet a small-name German dev team managed populations of 2000+ actual, thinking agents in Tropico 5:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN_TKTQTzvs

    The limitation of 2k agents in Tropico 5 has actually been removed. You can get as many as 10k agents on your island. I had a game going where I hit 5k before the autosave was corrupted. I lost about 700 people :( Once you get over about 3000 citizens, the engine chugs a little when population waves hit. Waterborne lets you expand way out into the water around your island.

  • ButtcleftButtcleft Registered User regular
    also it doesn't matter if you have 100% uptime, always on gaming is bullshit because it makes you 100% dependent on servers that they might not want to run in a couple years, its the worst kind of DRM.

    I'd rather have the most onerous securom iterations than an always on connection

  • PoketpixiePoketpixie Siege Registered User regular
    I don't quite understand all of the Simcity hate. I got the game a few months ago and thought it was great. Is this all just from the launch always-online stuff? Cause as a game I've had nothing but fun with it.

    EA did a half assed job with the game. The Glassbox engine they used to run it has a number of issues and doesn't scale well at all. This limits city plots to something the size of a neighborhood. Their agent system is crippled because of it. This is a core system that is the underpinning for the whole game so if it doesn't work right the rest of the game isn't going to work right. It all works like a series of pipes through which everything has to flow so if there's a bottleneck or if something is too far from the source it won't receive resources be that workers, students, power, etc. It is unfortunately a fragile system, sensitive to changes, and prone to failure.You get things like sims complaining there are no jobs even though there are a couple thousand available(sometimes even when they're right next door) so you add more jobs and they complain they're being worked to death and leave(which really screws over mega towers).

    All types of industry require massive amounts of workers. Their idea is that one person will set up an industrial city while another supplies the workforce and their region bs only adds to the traffic problems. I have one city that's crippled by traffic because every city in the region is sending tourists, students, and workers despite having sufficient resources to supply those needs in their own cities. They just show up and overload the fragile traffic system which causes a cascade affect on every other service leading to workers being unable to reach jobs, emergency services unable to reach fires/injured in time, etc. If it gets bad enough the city implodes. To illustrate another example nuclear plants are like ticking time bombs. If they don't get enough educated workers they have a meltdown so you have to understand how foot traffic flows and then place your university and nuclear plant accordingly. Nuke plants and meteor disasters can leave radioactive waste behind and until they added ground scrubbers there was no way to remove it except to let it decay over a very long period of time. Given the issues with their agent system that made nuke plants a hassle to use at all. They never could get the timer on disasters to work right so they just added an option to turn it off.

    After awhile you're not managing a city so much as trying to find workarounds to the game engine. Instead of fixing these problems they rushed to capitalize on the game with DLC and when the game flopped they wrote some quick and dirty fixes and called it a day. They've essentially abandoned the game at this point. They added offline mode but I still have to connect to Origin to run the game(meaning I have to be online). They added a means to transfer your mutiplayer regions to offline mode but it doesn't work half the time. Heck I have trouble just getting the game to run these days(yep, I uninstalled and reinstalled, updated video drivers, the works). I could go on but I think you get the point. Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed playing SimCity. I've put close to 800 hours into it so I've got my money's worth but the experience has left a sour taste in my mouth.

    This is why I'm so excited for Cities: Skylines though! They're promising much larger city plots, better scalability, and a much more robust simulation system. I don't want to get my hopes up too much but Cities looks like it's going to be a good game and there's mod support built in right from the start. I'm really hoping the mod community will pick up this game in a way they never did with SimCity 5.

  • That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guy Registered User regular
    I put more than a few hundred hours into SC'13 myself but only because I was jonesing for a new city builder. You can only play Simcity 4 for so many thousands of hours before getting sick of it.

  • RobesRobes Registered User regular
    The streams today helped shed light on a lot of the game play elements. I got really excited while watching it. The game looks really impressive, and IF they really do support modders, this could be the true successor to SimCity 4.

    At least we know that we'll be able to play it on launch day. So it has that going for it.

    "Wait" he says... do I look like a waiter?
  • That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guy Registered User regular
    Im reading this AMA on reddit with the community manager.
    http://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/2o1g64/cities_skylines_constant_ama/
    Evidently the dev team is 9 people. It's understandable that the sheer amount of assets is low. It's smart of them to bring the mod community in to fill in with asset production.

  • ButtcleftButtcleft Registered User regular
    That_Guy wrote: »
    Im reading this AMA on reddit with the community manager.
    http://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/2o1g64/cities_skylines_constant_ama/
    Evidently the dev team is 9 people. It's understandable that the sheer amount of assets is low. It's smart of them to bring the mod community in to fill in with asset production.

    in all honesty all a game needs to work is a good premise and a solid foundation and it'll develop a community to expand it beyond their wildest dreams.

  • SatsumomoSatsumomo Rated PG! Registered User regular
    The simple fact that garbage trucks/buses in SC2013 did not follow a route was what really made me just stop playing altogether. I did manage to squeeze about 30 hours out of the game, but when I've spent over 200 on SC4, you can tell how lacking in depth 2013 was. It was "fun" if you like city builders, but not fun at all for a city simulator.

    I am incredibly excited for Skylines, been following them for a while, and with the game actually being available in a complete state for youtubers to pick at, with mostly positive feedback, this seems like a sure buy for me.

  • ButtcleftButtcleft Registered User regular
    Out of all the stuff I've seen about Skylines, Theres only one thing I don't like because I know its going to infuriate the shit out of me.

    Its not strictly grid based like SC4/3/etc was. Meaning you could make roads that might be just a hair of square and that grinds against my OCD of perfect grid streets.

    EVERY CITY MUST BE NEAT, CLEAN GRIDS FOR MAXIMUM EFFICIENCY.

  • WotanAnubisWotanAnubis Registered User regular
    Buttcleft wrote: »
    Out of all the stuff I've seen about Skylines, Theres only one thing I don't like because I know its going to infuriate the shit out of me.

    Its not strictly grid based like SC4/3/etc was. Meaning you could make roads that might be just a hair of square and that grinds against my OCD of perfect grid streets.

    EVERY CITY MUST BE NEAT, CLEAN GRIDS FOR MAXIMUM EFFICIENCY.

    I don't know about "maximum efficiency". After all, you can't have gridlock without grids.

  • ButtcleftButtcleft Registered User regular
    Buttcleft wrote: »
    Out of all the stuff I've seen about Skylines, Theres only one thing I don't like because I know its going to infuriate the shit out of me.

    Its not strictly grid based like SC4/3/etc was. Meaning you could make roads that might be just a hair of square and that grinds against my OCD of perfect grid streets.

    EVERY CITY MUST BE NEAT, CLEAN GRIDS FOR MAXIMUM EFFICIENCY.

    I don't know about "maximum efficiency". After all, you can't have gridlock without grids.

    GRIDS, GRIDS EVERYWHERE. MAXIMIUM LAND USAGE, MAXIMUM DENSITY.

  • EndaroEndaro Registered User regular
    Buttcleft wrote: »
    Out of all the stuff I've seen about Skylines, Theres only one thing I don't like because I know its going to infuriate the shit out of me.

    Its not strictly grid based like SC4/3/etc was. Meaning you could make roads that might be just a hair of square and that grinds against my OCD of perfect grid streets.

    EVERY CITY MUST BE NEAT, CLEAN GRIDS FOR MAXIMUM EFFICIENCY.

    So, you can't snap streets to right angles? It's all freeform? I can see how that would be a bit annoying. The worst is when you freeform a box but the building you wanted to put there doesn't fit because it's a hair too small when you drew it by hand.

    Still, an improvement on SC4 when endless grids were the only option. It lacks life.

  • BlindPsychicBlindPsychic Registered User regular
    I really would like some sort of grid tool and some sort of circular road building tool. The problem with going for free draw roads is that you basically want to have an Illustrator level suite of drawing tools.

  • ButtcleftButtcleft Registered User regular
    nah they seem to have an amazing tool for making clean curves

  • quarthinosquarthinos Registered User regular
    You can snap to right angles, but you can also draw freeform or with known curves. Check quill18's youtube, he has a tutorial specifically about roads.

  • BlindPsychicBlindPsychic Registered User regular
    They're nice, but it looks like making things mirrored nicely is tricky

  • ButtcleftButtcleft Registered User regular
    Well, what was once just a lable is now nothing. EA Shuts down Maxis

    A bit of interesting timing, considering the release of a game that is everything SC13 should have been, with a much smaller dev team.

  • That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guy Registered User regular
    Skylines is number 2 in the top sellers list. The more people who buy this, the better the mod community will be. I bet there will be a ton of new buildings available launch day.

  • FiendishrabbitFiendishrabbit Registered User regular
    Worried about roads?
    I'm not. I read their "Dev Blog 1: Roads"

    They actually have several different road building modes (freeform, Curved, Straight and Upgrade) so you can build exactly the type of road you want with a minimum of fuzz.

    "The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
    -Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
  • That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guy Registered User regular
    Also, if you like a particular interchange you have created, you can save it and use it again. You can download custom interchanges from the steam workshop.

    The Devs are holding an asset generation contest ahead of release.

  • SatsumomoSatsumomo Rated PG! Registered User regular
    It drives me nuts that a lot of people on the internet get really upset that Maxis has been closed down, when it has only been a name and not the actual studio for I don't know how many years. Just like when Rare went to Microsoft.

  • ButtcleftButtcleft Registered User regular
    edited March 2015
    Satsumomo wrote: »
    It drives me nuts that a lot of people on the internet get really upset that Maxis has been closed down, when it has only been a name and not the actual studio for I don't know how many years. Just like when Rare went to Microsoft.

    Yeah, Maxis has been dead since just after SC2K was released iirc

    Buttcleft on
  • SatsumomoSatsumomo Rated PG! Registered User regular
    No way, SC3K and SC4 are great, The Sims was also great in its time.

    I think Spore was the definite indicator that Maxis was fully under EA's control, with Wright's vision being completely dumbed down to what was released.

  • ButtcleftButtcleft Registered User regular
    Satsumomo wrote: »
    No way, SC3K and SC4 are great, The Sims was also great in its time.

    I think Spore was the definite indicator that Maxis was fully under EA's control, with Wright's vision being completely dumbed down to what was released.

    SC3K was..meh.

    I think the opinion on SC4 has mutated with the Rush Hour expansion, and major mods that fix it like NAM. Its certainly better than 3, and with mods it is definitely playable, but on its own..it was like a last desperate gasp of air.

  • SatsumomoSatsumomo Rated PG! Registered User regular
    I never really played SC3K in-depth so I'll take that back.

    And even though SC4 was a step back in a lot of things in SC2K, I still think that even before the Rush Hour expansion, it was a great game on its own.

  • SurikoSuriko AustraliaRegistered User regular
    On a business trip in Brisbane, and noticed a SimCity street advertisement. Was surprised that a citybuilder would get that kind of marketing.

    Turns out it was for a horrendously butchered F2P mobile game called SimCity. Because how better to honour a childhood franchise than the screw the franchise's corpse.

    That was depressing.

  • ButtcleftButtcleft Registered User regular
    iirc its a f2p mobile game that you have to buy resources in for absurd amount of real money (you can, of course, get them in game for free..but it takes forever)

  • TheflyingassTheflyingass Registered User regular
    So, has there been anyone who has their hands on the game that has put the game through the wringer and tested the simulation?

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