Maxis Insider: SimCity Servers Not Necessary

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An anonymous source at Maxis says SimCity servers are not necessary and that making an offline mode would "require minimal effort." The source goes on to say they have no idea why the company is claiming it isn't possible to do.

The servers are not handling any of the computation done to simulate the city you are playing. They are still acting as servers, doing some amount of computation to route messages of various types between both players and cities. As well, they’re doing cloud storage of save games, interfacing with Origin, and all of that. But for the game itself? No, they’re not doing anything. I have no idea why they’re claiming otherwise. It’s possible that Bradshaw misunderstood or was misinformed, but otherwise I’m clueless.
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But the servers are necessary in terms of making Origin mandatory. We can't have people not using Origin...
 
"And in other news, a Maxis employee was fired today, but the cause was never explained."
 
It is quite obvious why they're saying this. Standard CYA to get people to shut up about the awful gameplay design. Tell people something is impossible from a design standpoint, and they usually shut up.
 
But we need the servers for the city team co-op deathmatch...what that doesn't exist, then why the heck do I need to be online?
 
Skripka said:
It is quite obvious why they're saying this. Standard CYA to get people to shut up about the awful gameplay design. Tell people something is impossible from a design standpoint, and they usually shut up.
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Sadly people believe that about the Frostbite2 engine and BF3's lack of modding
:mad:
 
Outamyhead said:
But we need the servers for the city team co-op deathmatch...what that doesn't exist, then why the heck do I need to be online?
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Because the gameplay is focused more for co-op or regional play and importing/exporting....and the server processes the thousands of inter-city commerce cevents that happen and queues them.

Given EA's abysmal failure with in-city AI of sim citizens...I think they'd make an even worse job of making a regional AI to make offline single player work.
 
And 3 months later...

"EA is now announcing, SimCity Offline! For $59.99, users can experience SimCity without online connectivity. For the first time!"
 
I bet people at Maxis are pissed and that's why someone spoke out. They probably just want to make a game for people to enjoy but then EA wants to throw on a bunch of shit to attempt to add "value" and protect the game from piracy. EA probably employs hundreds of people with only general business experience that don't actually play video games outside of their iPhones but lets them make important decisions based on perfect theoretical scenarios for what they think is best in video games.
 
I bet Diablo 3 could be offline with "minimal effort" as well, all you got to do is what? Move the generation and loot drop rates to the client side for single player games... but then you couldn't have the stranglehold on your artificial money make venture.

I have a feeling this inside might be overstating what "minimal effort" really entails, I think EA would rather watch this shit go down in flames (or at the very least get flamed for what they did) then release an offline version and admit there was something wrong with what they did.
 
I find it sad that *this* game, a classic SP series, has been used as the test pig for EA. What about the people that want to play on long trips (planes, trains, and automobiles)? They're SOL.

There's no reason it can't be client side. It's like EA is hellbent on doing the opposite .. server side for SP! But we'll use client side for MP (BF3 etc). Lol.
 
Skripka said:
Because the gameplay is focused more for co-op or regional play and importing/exporting....and the server processes the thousands of inter-city commerce cevents that happen and queues them.

Given EA's abysmal failure with in-city AI of sim citizens...I think they'd make an even worse job of making a regional AI to make offline single player work.
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In Sim City 4, we get to build every city in the region. I don't think anyone is expecting or even want AI to spawn those city. The fun is in building each city ourself.

Its no different here. EA merely took away that ability to have our own region, and forces us to play online with others. An offline mode would simply be what Sim City 4 has done, our own region for us to build in.
 
How is this game not considered offline? The servers are! yuk! yuk! yuk!
 
What are the improvements on Sim City 4 that we get here? I've heard that things were actually taken away and the only addition is this ridiculous mandatory online requirement
 
Sorry to those that bought the game at release, but this circus is very fun as well as entertaining to watch from the sidelines. EA is going to be under fire for a while, then SimCity offline for $30 with some new buildings!!! They know how to make money. According to them, from what I have read, If you don't like it we will ban your account and you get no money back...LOL
 
filip said:
Sorry to those that bought the game at release, but this circus is very fun as well as entertaining to watch from the sidelines. EA is going to be under fire for a while, then SimCity offline for $30 with some new buildings!!! They know how to make money. According to them, from what I have read, If you don't like it we will ban your account and you get no money back...LOL
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+1... Not a huge SimCity fan, always like to build a city though for a little while, never enough to build tons... ADD here I guess:)

What is scarier is that lots of the simulations are just broke. Seems like the new engine doesn't handle them well and they have been caught "cheating" the simulation essentially with very simple rules and no data retention. Larger cities are seeing huge issues due to this.

From what I understand all services like police, fire and ambulances are completely borked. Every service you build will only respond to their jobs in sequential order without ANY regard to location of service house (firehouse, police station) or if another "house is handling it"

So if you have 10 fires in your city, 20 firetrucks in 10 firehouses spread through-out your city... All 20 trucks go to the first fire... a few will fight it, the others will just wait there causing traffic jams. Once the fire is out, all 20 proceed to the next fire. Same with cops, they will only handle 1 crime at a time, driving past crime to wait in line with 20 other cops until that one is taken care off and they all move on.

It is to the point where people are saying just create 2 small police/fire stations for your whole city since only so many cops/fire trucks can handle a crime/fire at a time, no sense in spending on more when they all just sit there and much up traffic.

This same type of mechanic pretty much is borking lots of other things in the game... Apparently people just to to the closest job available, they tend to walk there, skipping mass transit/cars... The job is taken by a closer sim and they keep walking (not adjusting to take a car/train etc) trying to find an available job... eventually leading them to walk across the city and basically giving up and going home. I guess each day a sim goes through this random closest available system where they could be working and living in different hones on a daily basis. Not sure how this screws up the macro running of your city or if just effecting the "zoom and follow a sim" feature.

Also heard a lot of bugs due to the "closest" decision making of the sims, from backed up poop to pollution issues.
 
I really enjoyed the old Sim City games but, this one sounds like a huge sack of shit.
 
Hornet said:
In Sim City 4, we get to build every city in the region. I don't think anyone is expecting or even want AI to spawn those city. The fun is in building each city ourself.

Its no different here. EA merely took away that ability to have our own region, and forces us to play online with others. An offline mode would simply be what Sim City 4 has done, our own region for us to build in.
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You can totally have your own region. There is a check box to keep the region closed to the public, so then you can play the region entirely yourself, or can invite specific friends if you want.
 
I'm honestly disappointed that this is the first SimCity game I will not buy. I have owned all SimCity games (even that stupid Societies one that came with an SC4 bundle) from the first one to SC4 and Rush Hour.

Until they de-link the game from the servers, allow me to just load it up like SC4 without having to go online, allows me to create my own regions, create large cities and customize them as I see fit as I have done in SC4, fix the performance and AI issues, then this game will not touch my hard drive once that happens.
 
Skripka said:
Because the gameplay is focused more for co-op or regional play and importing/exporting....and the server processes the thousands of inter-city commerce cevents that happen and queues them.

Given EA's abysmal failure with in-city AI of sim citizens...I think they'd make an even worse job of making a regional AI to make offline single player work.
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funny part is most of that is turned off atm to ease server load... and no ETA on when IF EVER it will come back lol
 
dandirk said:
Lol says the guy that doesn't work at maxis or on the game...

He has a point, if you didn't build or have intimate knowledge of the simulation system then no you could not say it would be easy... but you also couldn't say it was difficult either.
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yeah that software engineer on reddit that analyzed the network data and showed that the game still functions just fine without a connection for upwards of 20minutes is CLUELESS.
 
Better yet, one of the guys at Kotaku simply pulled the network cable from his machine and played for 19 minutes before the game noticed he was offline and booted him.
 
I gotta wonder how high was the pay to Polygon for that initial 9.5 review... ohh sure they fixed it, first to 8, and when people kept arguing how unplayable it was is when they finally send it under the bus to 4.

So yeah, i do not trust polygon at all to be unbiased in this business.
 
I have played this game far more than I would admit to my friends and family. I guess I was one of the lucky few that didn't experiance much down time due to the server overloads. I did notice that my game would tell me that it wasn't connected to the Sim servers often. The game played fine without the connection as long as I didn't try to move to an adjacent city in the zone I was playing in. The game can function offline for a time. I think there is a kill switch if you haven't had contact with the server for a certain period of time.
 
M Bison said:
Better yet, one of the guys at Kotaku simply pulled the network cable from his machine and played for 19 minutes before the game noticed he was offline and booted him.
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Yep, this is true. While I haven't pulled the network cable, I was playing last night and a message popped up saying that I had lost my connection to the server, and that it was trying to reconnect. It never did. However, I could continue to play just fine (build roads, place the different zones etc). About 20 minutes later, I was automatically kicked back to the main screen. My entire REGION was totally missing this morning. I had started my own region and had it in private mode so that only I could invite people to play - thankfully no one else was on the map! They released a patch yesterday which is meant to help connection issues, but if anything I am getting more (sync issues with the server, needing to rollback/abandon cities because they weren't processed correctly etc.). IMO, it's completely borked in its current state.
 
I really wanted to get this game and was hoping the issues would be fixed, but I don't see that happening any time soon. Guess I'll stick with modding SC4 for another decade...
 
Revdarian said:
I gotta wonder how high was the pay to Polygon for that initial 9.5 review... ohh sure they fixed it, first to 8, and when people kept arguing how unplayable it was is when they finally send it under the bus to 4.

So yeah, i do not trust polygon at all to be unbiased in this business.
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He's just whiny that Kotaku beat them to the punch on the article.
 
I prey for one of the hacker groups to come out with an offline patch... Please please please!!!
 
Stimpy88 said:
I prey for one of the hacker groups to come out with an offline patch... Please please please!!!
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It has already been done...and tested...certain aspects don't work in the game...but, it has been done.
 
djoye said:
I bet people at Maxis are pissed and that's why someone spoke out. They probably just want to make a game for people to enjoy but then EA wants to throw on a bunch of shit to attempt to add "value" and protect the game from piracy. EA probably employs hundreds of people with only general business experience that don't actually play video games outside of their iPhones but lets them make important decisions based on perfect theoretical scenarios for what they think is best in video games.
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I doubt it, Maxis has been a subsidiary of EA since '97. That place is probably just as much EA as EA is to iteslf.
 
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