24 replies to this topic

[Ion Cannon!]

I'm sure most of you know I love simcity 4, I've poured a stupid amount of time into it and when the new simcity game was announced I was over the moon, I really was.

However since then a number of issues have appeared that make the game for me - well a no go, and that saddens me because I really really wanted this game to be great.

Anyway, you know how in simcity 4 you can terraform to your hearts content? Well in the new simcity you can't.

You know how region play works in simcity 4? Well in the new simcity that doesn't exist anymore, connections between cities are preset - you cannot build them, you cannot change them, each city also has a predetermined green space around it so you can't really build a large city anyway. Essentially say you have a 40 city tile map, you can build 40 small towns, you can't build a massive city it's just not possible. You also have no control over anything that happens in the preset green space, besides maybe being able to build an airport or some such.

To make matters worse the city sizes themselves are smaller, it wouldn't have been so bad if the tiles were each 4x4km which was the max size in simcity 4, but the max in the new simcity? 2x2km... hardly big enough for a large town let alone an entire city.

Oh yeah, and it's always online - you can't destroy a city then not save, so there goes experimentation!

Sadly this is yet another case of a big publisher using the name, but not creating the game. It's a case of stripping out features and game mechanics which made a franchise great for the sake of the more casual audience and I hope it dive bombs in the most horrendous way possible. The sooner this trend of simplifying stuff to attract a theoretically larger audience dies, the better.

If any of you were thinking of buying this, or have preordered, I urge you to reconsider - if you want "simvillage", sure buy it, but if you want a simcity game you're going to be disappointed.

[Bakelitu]

dammit was actually looking for it. But already had a feeling that they will screw it up. But the good thing I can just play more sim city 4 without worriyng that I will leave my City.

now my only hope is that they wont screw generals 2 up but I bet they will.

[Wizard]

Seems to me that this will simply be "The Sims" on a larger scale without a decent chunk of what made the original game what it is.

I was looking forward to giving this ago. Will have to investigate further, but it doesn't sound particularly appealing right now. :sadface:

[TheDR]

I'm not really the fussed. Sure Simcity 4 was a great game, but it was a great game at a price of being ridiculously complicated, it took me years to even attempt playing the game seriously and it also took several mods to actually make the game work (and also a brand new computer capable of running the game). Sure, call me a casual gamer, but I honestly don't think I am (or maybe I'm just lying to myself), but a few changes to make the game run smoother and multiplayer play are enough for me to get the game. If I ever want to build a massive city I will just go back to the bewildering world of Simcity 4 and play that (bewildering fun I might add, but its not the best game ever made).

The main problem I find with your analysis of the game is that you appear to assume all the game design 'choices' have to be based on the idea of dumbing down the game. Which is a far enough view point with a lot of games being streamlined, even the new 'Simcity' is by removing graphs and charts to make the game flow better (and also, sort of taking the Sim out of Simcity, but thats another point). Okay I'm not basing this idea on anything other than speculation and guessing, but maybe these design choices are because of the game becoming a multiplayer experience.

The first point, the connections. Connections work great in Simcity 4, but imagine SC4 system in a multiplayer game, they would cause a multitude of problems. For example: Hey, that guy just built a road into my city which destroyed my 'something', and: Why doesn't this guy login to except my proposal ect.

For the sizes, who says that its not just the limit of the engine? Sure that brings up the question of quality vs quantity, but I guess they picked quality. It might not be true, they might of limited the size of the plots to make the game easier, but that honestly just doesn't make any sense to me. There would be no reason to limit the size of your game, you'd just stick it under a choice in the menu and say that bigger plots are for more advanced players.

I think this game definitely isn't a sequel to Simcity 4, the devs seem to agree because they didn't call it Simcity 5. It feels like its changing into a multiplayer game, all the choices and design decisions, either good or bad, reflect the addition of online play.

'Simcity Online' is what the game should be called. So get 'Simcity Online' and play it with your friends and have a good time, while still playing Simcity 4 on the side to supplement your singleplayer needs. Or at least thats what I'm going to do.

[Ion Cannon!]

TheDR, on 19 July 2012 - 13:58, said:

I'm not really the fussed. Sure Simcity 4 was a great game, but it was a great game at a price of being ridiculously complicated, it took me years to even attempt playing the game seriously and it also took several mods to actually make the game work (and also a brand new computer capable of running the game). Sure, call me a casual gamer, but I honestly don't think I am (or maybe I'm just lying to myself), but a few changes to make the game run smoother and multiplayer play are enough for me to get the game. If I ever want to build a massive city I will just go back to the bewildering world of Simcity 4 and play that (bewildering fun I might add, but its not the best game ever made).

The main problem I find with your analysis of the game is that you appear to assume all the game design 'choices' have to be based on the idea of dumbing down the game. Which is a far enough view point with a lot of games being streamlined, even the new 'Simcity' is by removing graphs and charts to make the game flow better (and also, sort of taking the Sim out of Simcity, but thats another point). Okay I'm not basing this idea on anything other than speculation and guessing, but maybe these design choices are because of the game becoming a multiplayer experience.

The first point, the connections. Connections work great in Simcity 4, but imagine SC4 system in a multiplayer game, they would cause a multitude of problems. For example: Hey, that guy just built a road into my city which destroyed my 'something', and: Why doesn't this guy login to except my proposal ect.

For the sizes, who says that its not just the limit of the engine? Sure that brings up the question of quality vs quantity, but I guess they picked quality. It might not be true, they might of limited the size of the plots to make the game easier, but that honestly just doesn't make any sense to me. There would be no reason to limit the size of your game, you'd just stick it under a choice in the menu and say that bigger plots are for more advanced players.

I think this game definitely isn't a sequel to Simcity 4, the devs seem to agree because they didn't call it Simcity 5. It feels like its changing into a multiplayer game, all the choices and design decisions, either good or bad, reflect the addition of online play.

'Simcity Online' is what the game should be called. So get 'Simcity Online' and play it with your friends and have a good time, while still playing Simcity 4 on the side to supplement your singleplayer needs. Or at least thats what I'm going to do.

First off, I think I put this in the wrong forum, but ah well.

I would agree that simcity 4 was complicated, but I was able to pick it up fairly easily when it came out and I was 12 then, however I had played plenty of city builder games before it and of those it was the most complex. The game was definitely a resource hog at the time, I had to upgrade my computer once my cities passed the 1 million mark - though that was just increasing ram from 512mb to 1GB, so hardly a large cost.

The game design choices are designed to make multiplayer a better experience - fine, I understand that - but why does that also need to apply to the singleplayer? I honestly have no problem with removing the charts and graphs and I am all for making simcity easier to play, what I don't like is the removal of control, of freedom and the taking away of options and other general mechanics that make a simcity game, a simcity game.

Again the choices about how the region play work and the connections make sense for multiplayer, I don't deny that but it shouldn't and need not apply for the singleplayer.

Even your average PC is massively powerful now, and the new simcity game won't be demanding at all on a graphics front. Limiting the size of the plots doesn't make anything easier anyway, it makes it less intimidating, however it does massively restrict what you can do.

On your last point, if they had marketed it as Simcity Online - then I doubt there would have been any gnashing of teeth, however they are still trying to market it to the hardcore SC4 crowd as something we want, or that they're listening - glassbox maybe, but the rest - not really.

I also love how developers under publishers keep saying always online is for a better playing experience, is it fuck, always online does NOTHING for the player it's simply to stop piracy.

[TheDR]

Ion Cannon!, on 19 July 2012 - 14:21, said:

First off, I think I put this in the wrong forum, but ah well.

I used view new content and didn't even notice, consider it moved.

Ion Cannon!, on 19 July 2012 - 14:21, said:

The game design choices are designed to make multiplayer a better experience - fine, I understand that - but why does that also need to apply to the singleplayer? I honestly have no problem with removing the charts and graphs and I am all for making simcity easier to play, what I don't like is the removal of control, of freedom and the taking away of options and other general mechanics that make a simcity game, a simcity game.

Again the choices about how the region play work and the connections make sense for multiplayer, I don't deny that but it shouldn't and need not apply for the singleplayer.

I think the problem is the new Simcity isn't being designed to have singleplayer, from what I have read is that the singleplayer is just an extra bonus tagged on. If they were to design a 'mode' just for singleplayer they'd probably end up designing two different games. Sure that wouldn't really be a problem with an FPS or an RTS but Simcity has always been on a huge scale and they did just spend a lot of time creating a new engine. I'd blame the publishers for this, to them investing more money into a game that is PC only probably wouldn't be a good idea.

Ion Cannon!, on 19 July 2012 - 14:21, said:

Even your average PC is massively powerful now, and the new simcity game won't be demanding at all on a graphics front. Limiting the size of the plots doesn't make anything easier anyway, it makes it less intimidating, however it does massively restrict what you can do.

I'm not sure that graphics will be the problem, but more of the shear amount of processing that will have to go on. If you can have a million cars on the roads (which I'm just guessing you can) thats a lot of calculations, especially when the cars in your city can have jobs in other neighboring cities. We'd need to see some technical details on the game to see the plausibility of either of our arguments.

Ion Cannon!, on 19 July 2012 - 14:21, said:

On your last point, if they had marketed it as Simcity Online - then I doubt there would have been any gnashing of teeth, however they are still trying to market it to the hardcore SC4 crowd as something we want, or that they're listening - glassbox maybe, but the rest - not really.
I also love how developers under publishers keep saying always online is for a better playing experience, is it fuck, always online does NOTHING for the player it's simply to stop piracy.

Well this is a marketing problem and not a game problem. I as much as anyone wants a squeal to my favorite hardcore game. For example a game dev bought the rights to Evil Genius and announced a new Facebook game, this hit me hard. What that made me come to terms with is that the sequel I dreamed of was dead and would never exist, it was just a cheap cash in made to ring dry the money of the fans. What I mean by this is that I don't feel EA is trying to turn Simcity into a casual gamers dream, or hype up the hardcore audience unnecessarily, because they already made a Simcity Facebook game. Sure its not the dream sequel to Simcity 4 but at least its a sequel that has some game mechanics from the older games and the glassbox engine looks positively enticing.

However you might be right, Maxis and EA have disappointed me in the past with Spore, but they have also made The Sims games, which although the expansion packs have been horribly overpriced, the series has chugged along quite well and kept the same feel from the older games.

What I mean by all this is that I don't think you, or anyone, should give up on the game just yet, at least let it be released first.

[Alias]

I'm not going to preorder (and never was) but do remember it's a long way from release. The Simcity community still has a powerful voice so don't be surprised that if there is more outcry it will start to move in direction closer to the predecessors.

I'm with Ion on the fact I don't like the directiion, but I'm also with Doc on the fact that there is still a long time to go. The early versions can be vastly different to later ones.

[Failure]

It's sad that new games in many series are dumbed down. It mostly happens with the same schematic - dumbed down game, less atmosphere and gameplay fun - better graphics.
IMO, that's the same way Generals 2 and Tiberium based series are going.

This is why I'm nowadays reluctant when getting new games. I mostly stick to Generals, Renegade and some semi new titles, most of the new games are graphics oriented and tbh I'm already bored that everyone makes a big fuzz about photorealistic graphics in games instead of focusing on making the game playable, fun and giving it this magic thing that will make you replay it numerous times. See Renegade.

[Ion Cannon!]

Nothing new, but it confirms that everything we've heard so far was not a misunderstanding :(

Why must developers/publishers do this! Glassbox had such huge potential :(

http://www.simcity.c...ws-Maxis-Part-2

[Sgt. Rho]

No Terraforming? No freely choosable connections? Screw that. Not getting it.

[Slye_Fox]

Sgt. Rho, on 24 July 2012 - 18:28, said:

Not getting it.

^ This

[CJ]

Ion Cannon!, on 24 July 2012 - 13:49, said:

Nothing new, but it confirms that everything we've heard so far was not a misunderstanding :(

Why must developers/publishers do this! Glassbox had such huge potential :(

http://www.simcity.c...ws-Maxis-Part-2

So, basically it's Simcity Societies 2: Online then?
Thanks for saving me the bandwidth I'd have needed to download it :3

[TheDR]

Sign up for the Simcity Beta here

[Ion Cannon!]

Another nail in the coffin.. You cannot prevent disasters, in fact some things you build will actually increase the chances of them occuring.

So yes, you heard me, you cannot go back to a previous save and disasters will happen regardless of what you do. Seriously what the fuck is this shit?

So lets see what we have in our list so far.

City tile size limited to 2x2km - however the scale of the game seems way out of whack so that 2x2km is very very small indeed.
Removal of the region system, each "region" is pregenerated with preallocated spots for your "city" more like village.
Each cityvillage is isolated, there is no fluid connections to create a larger city/urban area.
Regional transport is preallocated, you can connect to highways and railway lines which pass through your cityvillage, but you cannot actually plan or build transport on a regional level.
Everything is saved on the cloud, there is no going back, once you've done something it's done.
Removal of large scale terraforming.
Removal of regional tools and the ability to create your own region.
Removal of subways and multiple other transport options. Hello DLC!!
Disasters cannot be turned off, they will happen regardless.
Removal of density based RCI, the type of road built now changes the density of the buildings created.
It's always online.
If you play multiplayer other peoples fuck ups can fuck up your city.
It's on origin.
It costs £45 for the base version and £65 for the digital deluxe version - FOR A FREAKING PC GAME!
It's EA.

[TheDR]

Even I, the ever optimistic Simcity fan, can't say anything good about that list. Looks like I will do the same thing I did with Spore, play it without purchase.

[CoLT]

Based on that list, Simcity Social on Facebook sounds like a much better game.

[Wizard]

CoLT, on 26 October 2012 - 02:27, said:

Based on that list, Simcity Social on Facebook sounds like a much better game.

That is probably the worst indictment of any game, ever!

[CoLT]

Well when you consider that Simcity Social has virtually no limitations on city size and that disasters don't happen unless they are scripted to do so and that it doesn't require a high-end PC to run... It's kinda true. Sad, but true.

[Gen.Kenobi]

Well... I don't like EA, but I believe that this new Sim City can work out quite well. Specially because of the new simulation system.
Not sure if you guys saw it:

[CoLT]

Well, either way, at least it didn't turn out like this.

[Soul]

Not much discussion on here for awhile, here's a trailer.

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=e2wU9m1L7c0

Discuss!

Edited by Soul, 12 December 2012 - 03:14.

[Ion Cannon!]

Compare the SC4 region view below, to the one in this video - ;Granted, the game has some interesting concepts, but I'll stick with SC4, at least until modding is able to unlock the new simcity anyway.

[Libains]

Going to be honest, I think that video looks rather nice...

[Alias]

Yeah, I think it has progressed significantly, but there are still a few things I would like to be changed.

Like Ion, it really needs terraforming and borderless cities (although it is sort of understandable why they've done this, since you're not going to be able to force synced borders between different players), hopefully if you make a singleplayer-only realm or something you can have a borderless region, or at least if you can't manually terraform you can create a region from a heightmap.

Edited by Alias, 14 December 2012 - 14:17.

[Ion Cannon!]

Libains, on 14 December 2012 - 14:10, said:

Going to be honest, I think that video looks rather nice...

What?? How dare you have an opinion of your own!!

Like I said, it has some nice concepts and if the ideas had been fleshed out in a region style with borderless cities and terraforming, more in the way of SC4 I would be tempted even with the DRM.

Alias, on 14 December 2012 - 14:16, said:

Yeah, I think it has progressed significantly, but there are still a few things I would like to be changed.

Like Ion, it really needs terraforming and borderless cities (although it is sort of understandable why they've done this, since you're not going to be able to force synced borders between different players), hopefully if you make a singleplayer-only realm or something you can have a borderless region, or at least if you can't manually terraform you can create a region from a heightmap.

You can't, they've stated the reason for the bordered cities/small city size is due to the way the simulation pounds the CPU. Which may well be true, but it might only pound the CPU because the requirements are so damn low. Core 2 Duo 2Ghz.

"We experimented a lot with this. It's what we started with. The (extremely) frustrating reality was that if cities sit right up next to each other, then they either need to be simulated for real, or they look lifeless. Neither was acceptable. If we simulated them for real, then we would have to make the cities ridiculously small. (We are giving the CPU a crazy workout with the sim!) We pounded on it for a long time, but in the end the best solution was to push the cities just a bit apart. "

Edited by Ion Cannon!, 14 December 2012 - 14:57.