New Patch 1.6.3

RaphaelMart said:

… I want that terrible bug with hundreds of people dancing in front of my busses solved. Everyone has spoken about it, they promised to solve it, but it keeps happening and it seems even worse now.

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Yeah, this is about the #1 problem with a new game started on 1.6.3 for me. It does seem to be even worse than before, to the point of being a critical game-breaking bug, bordering on making it unplayable. I think it seems to hit worst when you get to the middle phase of maybe 25-50% geographic coverage, and are trying to seriously grow things. At that point in the progression, there's a huge number of people walking about, and it's hard to go even a single day without a swarm circle of people completely shutting down a busy junction and whatever lines pass through it.

It's extremely frustrating, and is a bug that has been present since day #1. There's no sense to it, no fun, and it seriously spoils the game.

I agree. Looks really good.

Murph9000 said:

Yeah, this is about the #1 problem with a new game started on 1.6.3 for me. It does seem to be even worse than before, to the point of being a critical game-breaking bug, bordering on making it unplayable. I think it seems to hit worst when you get to the middle phase of maybe 25-50% geographic coverage, and are trying to seriously grow things. At that point in the progression, there's a huge number of people walking about, and it's hard to go even a single day without a swarm circle of people completely shutting down a busy junction and whatever lines pass through it.

It's extremely frustrating, and is a bug that has been present since day #1. There's no sense to it, no fun, and it seriously spoils the game.

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This problem often occurs when a stop is place too close to a pedestrian crossing. If the vehicle blocks the crossing*; CIMs who want cross seem to loose their pathing and start rotating in circles. As soon as the vehicle moves away or we delete it (by selling it) everything returns to normal.
* Can also be due to a traffic jam.
Other traffic does not cause the problem, only our vehicles.

Norfolk_Chris said:

This problem often occurs when a stop is place too close to a pedestrian crossing. If the vehicle blocks the crossing*; CIMs who want cross seem to loose their pathing and start rotating in circles. As soon as the vehicle moves away or we delete it (by selling it) everything returns to normal.
* Can also be due to a traffic jam.
Other traffic does not cause the problem, only our vehicles.

Click to expand...

Yes, it's the pedestrian short-distance pathfinding which is melting down. My best guess is something like their specific next target point is obstructed, and they enter an endless loop trying to find a path to it when none exists. The algorithm fails to detect the permanent logic loop which forms, and doesn't make any attempt to either back off and wait for the point to become available, or choose an alternative target. Whatever it is, it's a chronic condition due to a critical flaw in the pathfinding, and generally does not recover without manual intervention.

My form of intervention is to close the lines which have the most vehicles there (thereby sending the entire line(s) back to depot), as otherwise you end up with knock on effects lasting for game-days due to the gridlock which has typically formed around it. Vehicles end up breaking down due to lack of depot maint, you have a useless procession of nose to tail vehicles causing chaos across the city as the grind forwards, etc. Closing the line isn't good for business, but it gives an immediate solution to most of the worst problems which cascade from the root cause. I take that approach because I don't tend to spot it until it's too late and there's dozens of vehicles across several lines jammed up in the mess.

At 25-50% geographic coverage in campaign mode (and therefore default ruleset), it's proving to be pretty much impossible to go more than a game day in 1.6.3 without a meltdown caused by the broken pedestrian pathfinding. Extremely frustrating and disappointing.

Well, I am not getting any more DLCs until at least a few of the game-breaking bugs have been addressed by CO.