Maxis Will "Eventually" Increase SimCity's City Sizes

[uncanny474]

Any sort of MT, from what it looks like, is just around city skin themes like the digital deluxe having a British, German and French skin for the buildings. Basically cosmetic stuff, maybe a landmark or two like the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben.

They had MTs in the BETA? Wow, that's ridiculous.

Yeah, if they were bad enough to include skin MTs in the beta, they're definitely going to have other MTs for each region in the full game. Not, like, to start a region, but maybe an MT to give you more starting resources or something that you don't technically *need* but you realistically do. Otherwise, it's just TERRIBLE game design, and I refuse to believe they're THAT stupid.

 

[ThriKreen]

I approve them doing it, I don't approve their excuses for not doing it in the first place.

How hard is it to say "larger maps may tax your system? I cant play huge maps on Civ 5, that doesn't mean no one else should be ale to.

EA is like a dealer, I want so very hard not to buy their games but the just so happen to publish the series I love.

Don't forget, the regions also reside on their servers too, not just yours, as part of the multiplayer. Larger city area == more storage required, even if nothing is there yet, since the database still has to allocate and reserve the empty space for when it does get used. They might want to stick to manageable, smaller sizes first to gauge server farm capacity before expanding it further down the road.

 

[BrotherRool]

It's almost like the games had a strong singleplayer fan base were excited about a having a new game after a decade and didn't want a co-op focused multiplayer MMO.

Yet everywhere that I've read with people that had that same thought, after playing the beta they changed their minds and actually like the new features.

okay I'll leave the snark alone now. It's still irrelevant to me, in the last 5 months I didn't have reliable internet access for 1 and a half so it's just impossible for me to consider buying a game with always online requirements. The thing I fear most is that it might actually be a good game like you suggest and then they'll try this with other franchises and there will be more games that I'm unable to play.

 

[ThriKreen]

They had MTs in the BETA? Wow, that's ridiculous.

Yeah, if they were bad enough to include skin MTs in the beta, they're definitely going to have other MTs for each region in the full game. Not, like, to start a region, but maybe an MT to give you more starting resources or something that you don't technically *need* but you realistically do. Otherwise, it's just TERRIBLE game design, and I refuse to believe they're THAT stupid.

No, they did not. In fact, there wasn't any hint of MT at all in the beta.

All we know is that there's a store that was hinted at in the manual, and the DD offers the mentioned Brit, German and French tilesets, which can be bought for $10 individually later. So you can safely assume it'll utilize said storefront. Much like what was in The Sims 3 for the cosmetic stuff.

That's it.

And yes, asking for money for each new region is stupid, and so is believing they'd be that money grubbing. They *can't* do it, because it disrupts the leaderboard ranking system if someone can just pay to maintain a positive cash flow despite whatever state their city is.

Again, there's always the sandbox mode for that.

 

[kajinking]

Having played the beta, unlike, well, every poster here so far it seems, let's address some of the issues shall we?

City Size: It's more about quality of the city then the quantity of the sprawl. Sure you can fill up the city limits within 10min if you wanted to, but good luck trying to get a higher population. Larger capacity roads, set up some parks to increase the land value, convert those land wasting single houses into large scale condos. Balance the mix of zones to achieve denser ones, as you also need high tech commercial businesses to support the higher wealth of the citizens now. It's actually quite challenging, as after a bit you start setting up a second city to offset some of the load and start specializing.

Computer power: It might LOOK like a simple graphics engine, but believe me, there's a crap load of stuff going on. Every object is its own object agent, it's not abstracted like in SimCity 4 then represented as an animated texture. If you have a traffic jam somewhere, it's because every citizen is actually there trying to get from their home to workplace, and are actually stuck in traffic. As with the above about the quality of the city, better give some alternate, better routes from the residential to industrial zones. Protesters at your city hall in front of said traffic jam? That's 100 individual citizens being rendered with their likes and dislikes and goals, as well as the 100 cars in the jam. It will tax both your CPU and GPU due to the sheer amount of objects on the screen. Then the buildings around it. And visual effects if a fire broke out. And all the lighting, since this is a city building game, so the environment is dynamic, so you can't bake lighting like in FPS games. Lighting is usually one of the most expensive operations in a game, especially with shadows enabled.

It has chugged sometimes on my computer and it's a quad-core Q6600 2.4ghz, 6gb RAM, GTX 560 Ti 2gb, running at 1920x1200. I've turned shadows to low and disabled anti-aliasing to improve performance. While not exactly a powerhouse compared to some current gen systems, it should give you some perspective on how much it can tax your computer.

I can understand your points of view as well as EA's justification of the size limits (still don't quite agree with the no demolish thing but I'll have to see how that pans out).

As a avid player of Simcity 4 and Rushhour on a medium range PC of the time (a $15 cellphone about now) I HATED the fact that the game ground to a screeching halt when my city started to get slightly large but since in all honesty making huge cities was what the game was about I had to keep dealing with it.

The idea that the game can now be focused on smaller cities is something I like not only to prevent system issues but also to stop the attitude of "MORE!!! MUST BUILD MOOOOORRREEE!!!" that always made my cities boring cut and paste grids in an effort to stick the maxium amount of buildings in whatever region I was in. For me the smaller cities might also mean less stuff to manage and less focus on efficiency perhaps allowing me to try and being a bit more creative with my cities making them look a bit more organic and natural with some curved roads rather than grid city.

Tell me did you notice at all if the game looked a bit more natural that 4? That the cities look like they could actually be real cities?

 

[ThriKreen]

okay I'll leave the snark alone now. It's still irrelevant to me, in the last 5 months I didn't have reliable internet access for 1 and a half so it's just impossible for me to consider buying a game with always online requirements. The thing I fear most is that it might actually be a good game like you suggest and then they'll try this with other franchises and there will be more games that I'm unable to play.

See that's the thing: do you complain to the game developers for trying to make use of (new) technology and designing the game around that, like, well, any MMO requiring you to be online? Or like a game utilizing Shader Model 2.0, so my laptop can't play it since it's GPU only supports 1.2?

Or perhaps instead complain to your city and ISP for lack of or crappy, price gouging service?

 

[ThriKreen]

Tell me did you notice at all if the game looked a bit more natural that 4? That the cities look like they could actually be real cities?

You could make them cater to the land it's on [http://www.thrikreen.com/temp/simcity/simcity_haven.jpg].

Or stick to the grid [http://www.thrikreen.com/temp/simcity/simcity_seacrook.jpg].

Just... watch out for these guys [http://www.thrikreen.com/temp/simcity/simcity_zombies.jpg].

And don't let Homer run your nuclear reactor [http://www.thrikreen.com/temp/simcity/simcity_oops2.jpg].

And I need to try making a city with this layout [http://www.thrikreen.com/temp/simcity/simcity_escapistland.jpg].

 

[BrotherRool]

okay I'll leave the snark alone now. It's still irrelevant to me, in the last 5 months I didn't have reliable internet access for 1 and a half so it's just impossible for me to consider buying a game with always online requirements. The thing I fear most is that it might actually be a good game like you suggest and then they'll try this with other franchises and there will be more games that I'm unable to play.

See that's the thing: do you complain to the game developers for trying to make use of (new) technology and designing the game around that, like, well, any MMO requiring you to be online? Or like a game utilizing Shader Model 2.0, so my laptop can't play it since it's GPU only supports 1.2?

Or perhaps instead complain to your city and ISP for lack of or crappy, price gouging service?

Thats not the issue and it also contains the issue very nicely, that a large percentage of a countries population lives inside a city, but a not insignificant percentage of that population live in rural areas where the numbers don't allow efficient internet access. Laying fibre optic cables up a mountain for the 30 people living in the hamlet isn't going to work.

I don't live in a city, but my problems with internet access are more that I end up moving around a lot and it takes time to set up a new internet connection when you're in a new place. And the time when I'm most wanting to play a game is when the internet is down and I can't surf.

 

[kajinking]

Tell me did you notice at all if the game looked a bit more natural that 4? That the cities look like they could actually be real cities?

You could make them cater to the land it's on [http://www.thrikreen.com/temp/simcity/simcity_haven.jpg].

Or stick to the grid [http://www.thrikreen.com/temp/simcity/simcity_seacrook.jpg].

Just... watch out for these guys [http://www.thrikreen.com/temp/simcity/simcity_zombies.jpg].

And don't let Homer run your nuclear reactor [http://www.thrikreen.com/temp/simcity/simcity_oops2.jpg].

And I need to try making a city with this layout [http://www.thrikreen.com/temp/simcity/simcity_escapistland.jpg].

Oh I like! And I was so totally like in that last city!

 

[King of Asgaard]

...and for $14.99, you too can have maps larger than a gnat's left testicle.
Seriously, this is becoming increasingly ridiculous.
It's gotten to the point where the cons of the game vastly outweigh the pros.
The sad thing is that people will not only buy the game, but they'll buy the special editions for the asinine DLC which should have been in the main game from day one, and EA will continue to kneecap the industry with its cockamamy business models.

 

[mad825]

Computer power: It might LOOK like a simple graphics engine, but believe me, there's a crap load of stuff going on. Every object is its own object agent, it's not abstracted like in SimCity 4 then represented as an animated texture. If you have a traffic jam somewhere, it's because every citizen is actually there trying to get from their home to workplace, and are actually stuck in traffic. As with the above about the quality of the city, better give some alternate, better routes from the residential to industrial zones. Protesters at your city hall in front of said traffic jam? That's 100 individual citizens being rendered with their likes and dislikes and goals, as well as the 100 cars in the jam. It will tax both your CPU and GPU due to the sheer amount of objects on the screen. Then the buildings around it. And visual effects if a fire broke out. And all the lighting, since this is a city building game, so the environment is dynamic, so you can't bake lighting like in FPS games. Lighting is usually one of the most expensive operations in a game, especially with shadows enabled.

It has chugged sometimes on my computer and it's a quad-core Q6600 2.4ghz, 6gb RAM, GTX 560 Ti 2gb, running at 1920x1200. I've turned shadows to low and disabled anti-aliasing to improve performance. While not exactly a powerhouse compared to some current gen systems, it should give you some perspective on how much it can tax your computer.

Some might call that bad optimisation. Haven't played the beta but surely it could be handled better, it seems they're going for the Tropico approach really badly.

All that said, what about dynamic graphical settings? Lower res street models e.g. It mostly sounds like a cop-out to me. Quite frankly, it seems that the top-end systems, mid and lower systems are going to suffer regardless.

 

[uncanny474]

And yes, asking for money for each new region is stupid, and so is believing they'd be that money grubbing. They *can't* do it, because it disrupts the leaderboard ranking system if someone can just pay to maintain a positive cash flow despite whatever state their city is.

I never said they'd ask money for each new region. I said they'd ask money for "optional" resources that make starting up and maintaining a new region easier.

And it's exactly because the leaderboards would be pay-to-win that they'd add this. The whole point is to get people to pay for leaderboard rankings instead of just giving the rankings away for free.

 

[ThriKreen]

Some might call that bad optimisation. Haven't played the beta but surely it could be handled better, it seems they're going for the Tropico approach really badly.

All that said, what about dynamic graphical settings? Lower res street models e.g. It mostly sounds like a cop-out to me. Quite frankly, it seems that the top-end systems, mid and lower systems are going to suffer regardless.

I should have clarified that it sometimes chugs when I had a fully loaded city with tons of high rises and such going on, not that it's always chugging. Obviously a pristine, new area before settling in is just blazingly fast since there's nothing to render.

I know shadows always impacts performance and in every game I always turn it down to a blob shadow since I prefer faster fps. Anti-aliasing is turned off since I play at a high enough resolution that I don't notice jagged edges that much. All the other settings were at medium or high. It runs well enough that I wouldn't be too bothered for the full game since I can still turn more details down.

I'd say it's pretty optimized for the detail they were going for. If you looked at my screenshots, you'd also notice in one of them that neighboring cities are also rendered in the distance. With the lit skyline at night too!

 

[ThriKreen]

I never said they'd ask money for each new region. I said they'd ask money for "optional" resources that make starting up and maintaining a new region easier.

Ah, I think there's some confusion here. They might sell entirely new regions for people to play on, basically like unlocking new maps or map packs. But they won't make you pay to start playing a new city/region in one of your available slots. I was thinking the latter, while you were probably thinking the former.

And it's exactly because the leaderboards would be pay-to-win that they'd add this. The whole point is to get people to pay for leaderboard rankings instead of just giving the rankings away for free.

Yeah ... game balance says no. Plus you can sell resources on the global market for the ore, oil, technology, etc you can mine, drill, create in your cities. Letting people magically buy resource packs to sell on the open market would drastically disrupt that.

 

[Snowyscar]

I've still pre-purchased this game, but I'm really concerned about actually NEEDING other players to get to the biggest buildings and "wonders". I seriously do not have any gamer-friends, and this guy says that you should only invite friends? Where do that leave us who don't have gamer-friends? And he also said that multiplayer is vital... so then I have to invite some random bloke to play for a while, who then might up and leave at any moment? Or what if I feel that this bored me after a day or two, what happens to that bloke's city?

I'm very, very concerned. Hope they manage to remove a lot of our worries and fix them when the game comes out, but I'm not keeping my hopes up.

 

[Nurb]

In other words "We'll unlock features as soon as we find ways to charge people for them"

There's nothing that can redeem the game after everything EA has done and said over it, no matter what they do.

And "Maxis", please! EA closed the doors to that place a decade ago after buying them when they were independent and worth giving money to, and only started using the name in a cheap attempt to get a few nostalgia purchases.

Here's hoping for failure

 

[oldtaku]

So they Diablo IIIed it.

But at least the plot will be better.