Posted on March 13, 2013, Ian Miles Cheong SimCity Mass Transit Fixes Coming Soon
EA Maxis has ironed out much of SimCity‘s online connectivity problems. Connections to the servers are much more stable than they were at launch, and players can actually sit down and play the game for half a day without suffering a single disconnect. In other words—it’s playable.
However, with one problem solved, Maxis is intent on tackling another issue that’s been recently brought up by the game’s community: mass transit. Today, the game’s lead gameplay designer Guillaume Pierre posted a lengthy update to explain how streetcars work under the present system. He does so with an extensive description of the streetcar mechanics with illustrative images to explain how the game handles pathing.
The system is far from perfect, as it fails to prioritize agents to use roads based on occupancy. The result is that traffic is often congested, even when it shouldn’t be. To that end, the developer states that the studio is looking for ways to improve the game’s transit mechanics. Here’s a couple of solutions they’ve come up with:
1. If there are 300 Sims waiting for the streetcar on the other side of the loop for example, they may have to wait a long time for the vehicles to make their way. To remedy this problem, we’re looking into make crowded stops “high priority pick-up” destinations that transit vehicles will go to first.
2. Another problem is that, well, all the vehicles that are in the same area and want to go to the same destination type will all follow the same path, resulting in clumping and general traffic problems. We’re looking into various ways to improve the situation so traffic will spread out better.
We can expect to see the game updated with the new mechanics soon.