SimCity traffic congestion fixes detailed

As discussed in a previous update, EA Maxis will patch SimCity to do something about the currently unavoidable and nonsensical traffic jams which ruin everything, forever.

In a new blog post, lead designer Stone Librande said SimCity's Glass Box engine has Agent entities aiming for Sinks, but it doesn't always work as planned.

"When bugs are discovered we will address them as quickly as possible, with updates such as the ones we’ve been rolling out over the past week. Our main focus right now is updating the pathing system that the Agents use to get to their Sinks. Running a successful city means keeping the traffic flowing and we are actively working to make this system better," he said.

Referring back to earlier discussions of the conjection problems plaguing the game in its current state, Librande explained how Maxis will correct the issue.

"To dig a little deeper our roads will have a weighting system based on 25%, 50% and 75% capacity. As a road hits those marks it will become less and less appealing for other cars, increasing the likelihood of them taking an alternate path if one exists," he said.

"Emergency vehicles will not get blocked in their garages and will move into empty lanes to get around traffic jams. We’re also working on preventing service vehicles from clumping up (for instance, only one fire truck will respond to a fire instead of two) and improving the way that Public Transportation operates in the city.

"We are currently testing a patch internally and hope to have it out to you soon," he added.

While we wait for the patch - which will probably tame a variety of my personal concerns with SimCity - Maxis is "slowly re-enabling" some features disabled during the mad crunch of launch week. Regional achievements are live on a select number of servers, and leaderboards are back on the Test server. Maxis has asked players to check in with the Test server in order to expedite the roll out of leaderboards.

Thanks, PC Gamer.