Maxis Will "Eventually" Increase SimCity's City Sizes

[Griffolion]

"Don't worry guys! We made Sim City to work on your dad's PC, that's why the cities are so small! Of course, if you'd like the larger cities on your more powerful machine, that will be an extra £15, 2 months after release! Bargain! Don't be silly, of course it was a finished product at launch!"

- EA

 

[BoogieManFL]

So instead of leaving an option for those with PCs that can handle it, the best thing they can come up with is just to make it small and force it on everyone, and ignored the feedback of their testers? Really?

That makes no sense. To me that says lazy.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

snip

Sorry for asking, but how much do you get payed for this marketing?
Everything you wrote is either wrong or is better in SimCity 4.

 

[Maurice Harding]

so what we have is a £45 AAA facebook game.

oh and in befor the P3 relaunch with offline play.

R.I.P simcity.

 

[Dryk]

Seems like all of these problems are just arising from poor design decisions... there's no reason any of this stuff couldn't have been included as an option.

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?

The scariest thing to me about EA's current mentality is that they assume that you have friends that play the same games as you at the same time as you. For me that's never the case.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

so what we have is a £45 AAA facebook game.

oh and in befor the P3 relaunch with offline play.

R.I.P simcity.

Ok, now that was a good one!

I doubt it would really happe... Oh who am I kidding? This is EA!

 

[ZZoMBiE13]

Wow. There is an olympic level of snark around here.

Almost every complaint I've seen in this thread is based on pure unfounded speculation and most of it is inaccurate.

I played in 2 of the 3 betas. If you don't want other people in your region, you have "private" options that will keep all the plots free of others. That's what I did in the last beta and I managed to build 3 decent cities in the 3 or 4 hours we had access to the game. One for industry, one for housing and commercial, and a third that I was grooming as a tourist trap with casinos.

As far as DLC and MTs, you have access to the full game for the base price. The Digital Deluxe version gives you 3 full tilesets to work with. And this isn't like SC4 where buildings repeat dozens of times over. In all of my plots there were basically no repeat buildings once things got going. If they want me to pay for them to make dozens of new skins for the game, I don't think that's unreasonable. It's not like you need the cosmetic choices if you don't want them. They're completely optional.

This is a good game, possibly a great game. I know it's fun to bash EA, but I just don't understand all the seething anger based on a few developer remarks.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

So they Diablo IIIed it.

But at least the plot will be better.

yup that was my thought

"This SimCity architecture is much more like the Sims. In the previous Sim Cities it was difficult to add any additional content. We built this SimCity to be 'composable', which is the best way to describe it. It puts us in a position to make more stuff for the game and to build more content. So we'll see what people want and ask for in particular and we'll make more content."

This game looks fun, but everything I hear about it just makes it sound bloody horrible.
I would be really hesitant about just letting someone in my region, so I'd probably just claim all cities on it and build them myself, for two reasons:

1) I won't get dead cities
2) If I want to stop playing, then I can and don't have to feel like I'm letting some poor guy's town (and let's be real, they're towns) just kind of die off with no neighbours.

In that case the game has no reason to be online, for me anyways.

also this.

just gonna stick to sim city 4, hopefully someday this game get's the diablo III effect where they consolize it and are going to patch in an offline mode.

 

[ThriKreen]

Its not chugging because it was hard to run.

Its chugging because you are asking a server from EA to run the program for you and send it over the internet. Have you ever WONDERED why the download size for simcity was so small and quick?

You aren't playing most of the game on your computer, practically you are just streaming it.

So what you're saying is you have no understanding of how a client/server system like this works, since it's not like that at all.

Not me, after the beta I had more of a hatred of it than anything else. I found it pandering. So stop generalizing.

Fine, you are, quite literally, the first one to not. Have a cookie. But considering you're making stuff up to justify your dislike of it, I'm not surprised at your attitude.

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?

You can manage all the cities in your region by yourself if you wanted to, and can set up a private region to be invite only, and limit who can join. It can get tedious jumping from one city to another and maintaining it, but in some way it's no different than having one huge area in previous SimCity games, just less separation. It's up to you if you want to delegate the workload or tackle it solo.

Sorry for asking, but how much do you get payed for this marketing?
Everything you wrote is either wrong or is better in SimCity 4.

Nothing, I enjoyed playing the game and I don't like bad, inaccurate information that often gets spread around simply because it's an EA published game.

Like the guy above who is making stuff up so he can hate on it.

I don't know about better, some of the city management in SimCity 4 just got frustrating to me, laying out water pipes and power lines and such. It's a different game for sure, focusing more on a smaller scale parts of managing a city, less so the tedious nitty gritty stuff.

Don't get me wrong, there are some things I don't like either, like the fore mentioned lack of save slots. I too, wouldn't mind being able to save a city's state and test things out, and revert the changes without damaging my current city. Cuz you know, disasters and watching the civilians running and screaming and burning. Less likely to goof off now with the persistent game world. Like the nuclear radiation accident, which I have to deal with if I don't want to abandon my other cities in the region.

I also do wish areas could be a bit larger too, as sometimes it does feel cramped when I've got a super dense one and want to expand. I mean, there's that flat empty space right there beyond the city border, what do you mean I can't just claim it?

When connecting roads, I have to make intersections, but no way to make one way exits like you'd see on highways to improve traffic flow.

And overview of what services are going to and from what neighboring cities would be nice, instead of having to click on each individual police/ambulance/firetruck/garbage/etc. button to see the arrows. Basically a summary screen.

There's a post wall in the main menu region view to see news and post things to other mayors in your area, but it's not accessible without going out of the game mode afaik. I wish there was better chat options to coordinate, without having to switch out to the Origin overlay to chat to the other mayors.

Better context for what the Sims are protesting - Yes, I see you want better land values, but WHERE in the city? I've plopped parks everywhere, raising the value up a lot, but you say it's still low? The complain that there's not enough lower skill workers for the industrial areas? I guess when it's released there would be more information on how to better manage Sim needs and wants.

 

[ThriKreen]

yes, it is like that. The first thing I noticed when downloading the beta was how fucking small it was. It was then I realized that the announcement that the beta players told me beforehand it had a streaming-like architecture was true.

Me making up shit? you're the one playing marketeer right now, and refusing to point out where I am "making shit up.

It installed a launcher via Origin, then downloaded the rest from the SimCity launcher, like an MMO. I don't know where you get the small from, the game folder is sitting at 1.8gb which seems reasonable an install size for me.

I said it chugged sometimes, with a full city, due to my computer having to render the city and calculate the citizen actions and all that.

You're the one claiming it's all handled by the server farm then streamed to the client, which it isn't.

If you paid attention to any of the articles about it's networking set up, they said the game sends snapshots every 3 minutes (and maybe longer now that people have complained about momentary network loss). So most of the game calculation is on your end, then you upload your city's state to the server farm, where it would do additional gameplay calcs to send it to the other active cities in the region, and you get an update from their cities.

 

[Roxor]

Performance? Yeah, right. If they were concerned about the game running slow with large cities, they would have just used simpler models to reduce the rendering demands.

I think they're just trying to make you pay more.

 

[infinity_turtles]

It installed a launcher via Origin, then downloaded the rest from the SimCity launcher, like an MMO. I don't know where you get the small from, the game folder is sitting at 1.8gb which seems reasonable an install size for me.

Haven't played the game, but that seems small to me. Like ridiculously small. The only games I have on my computer that small are either small indie games, several of which are bigger then that, or games that are nearly a decade old. My Sim City 4 folder is larger then that.

 

[theultimateend]

To summarize: They've made a big F'ing mess of single player trying to make the games multiplayer work.

Multiplayer that nobody was asking for.

At least nobody I know or work for.

This is a good game, possibly a great game. I know it's fun to bash EA, but I just don't understand all the seething anger based on a few developer remarks.

I was in the betas to.

The fact that a historically single player game was nerfed repeatedly for multiplayer content that should have been secondary is aggravating.

They can also shut off your connection to the game at any time. I can still play Sim City 4 (and I do), I can guarantee you that I won't be able to say the same thing about this game in 5 years. That's a darn shame.

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.

Not me, after the beta I had more of a hatred of it than anything else. I found it pandering.

So stop generalizing.

Yeah, I had two dozen people (well 19-20) in the beta with me.

None of us liked the emphasis.

That's not a huge sample size I admit but it is there.

 

[Unit72]

If this makes any sense its sort of like Battlefield 3. Its not as good as Battlefield 2 but it has its own style that its still playably good. Or in a broader term its no Empire Strikes Back but atleast its no phantom meneace.

My opinion is probably invalid seeing as i havent played the beta. Ive been watching alot of beta vids on youtube though and i agree that the size of the city can be small seeing as a majority of players seem to build lots of roads to make large residential grids. The europeans actually bother to curve and plan thier cities though which i find really cool.

This guy especially instead of sanctioning off and partitioning large parts of his city for res, com, ind, he just builds in a little corner and plans as he plays rather than planing before he plays. Its a pretty big city considering he's only using the top left corner of the map only and still has atleast 60% of the map still unused.




I dont expect anyone to watch the whole thing but i did and he never zooms out of the map to paint swashes of land with roads and zones, he instead opts to just work on the one corner of the city and it works. Skip to 59:20 and its as close to zooming out as he gets. A nicely sized fully functioning city with more than half of the map still waiting to be built and eat up hrs of his day building.

Mabey we as players are at fault somewhat for blowing up a little much. We have to realize this isnt or trying to be SimCity 4+. Its going in a new direction. PLaying this game like you would play Sim4 wont work. Like i said i watch plenty of let's play SimCity Betas since im very excited for the game to come out and alot of them dont bother to see what alt or shift do when laying roads or zones. They are perfectly content with painting all corners of the inside of thier squares by hand rather than hold a key and click to do it automatically or wonder why thier road guide dotted lines dissapear sometimes. People who dont realize that there is wind that moves pollution in one direction but people in the comments still complain about building residential too close to industiral (land values are low there but not as much as sim4's values). People who plop a service like a school or police station and immediatly fill it with busses and cars even though its not necessarily needed and the money is better spent elsewhere. Or place bus stops on every single corner when just a few trouble areas are enough for the size they built thier city in.

The above may be way off base seeing as i didnt play the beta, i only get this from watching many lets play's so it may be wrong. But can we really be that harsh on this game? Is what we want just Simcity 4 3D? I dont like the tiny maps, the nudges they keep giving us to play with freinds (i dont have any), single landmarks that reskin a part of your town for $10, just cloud saving, lack of subways. But I like the quaint style of the graphics, i like that all the sims are rendered and now i dont have to build 1x1 bus stops across the map. I miss the epicly large map sizes too but lets be honest here, was responding to all those "THIS STRETCH OF ROAD A NIGHTMARE FOR SIMS" really that fun when your fixing the 100th trafic problem in your big large city that same hour? Its too soon to praise Simcity for its freshness or inovation till i get my hands on it but ive played vanilla rush hour for years (was never intrepid enough to mod it out) and this looks like while it may not be "OMG BETTER THAN SIMCITY4!!!", it will atleast be "well not my favorite city builder but it is doing something no other citybuilder has or is doing".

 

[Callate]

General detractor towards EA that I typically am, I have to point out that the article doesn't actually say anywhere that larger cities is something that will be added later as purchasable content. It could just be patched in- stranger things have happened.

Of course, that so many people are making that assumption off the cuff does say something about EA's (not necessarily unwarranted) image problem, right now...

 

[Playful Pony]

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.

Yeah, I was actually more positive about many of the features after playing the beta, stuff that had so far put me off buying the game even though I love the previous Sim City games.

I can certainly understand the fustration of people that just wanted a prettier Sim City 4 though, but this game isn't it really. It's a new thing, although similar in many ways to the previous games. I kind a feel the same way about it that I do Fallout 3. It's NOT the same game as the previous ones at all, but it's still a VERY good game (one of my all-time favorites).

Stuff that I'm not happy with in Sim City is the small city sizes, I very much agree that there should be possibilities for far bigger ones. I consider it likely that I'll come to the game in one form or another at a later time, but I feel this should be in the game from day 1! It should also be possible to set up your region with some custom "rules" when you create it, one of which should be how long a city remains if the owner is inactive. The options could be "Unlimited", "1 year", "6 months", "30 days" and "7 days". Maybe remove the 7-day one, but I feel for really busy open regions in particular, that would be important... This way you avoid any practical way of "cheating" by piling money into a single town, while making it so that the region opens up for new players if someone disapears. Personally I'll only play with close friends so it won't be such a huge problem, but it would still be nice to be able to remove completely one of the cities...

 

[Oltsu]

snip

I said it chugged sometimes, with a full city, due to my computer having to render the city and calculate the citizen actions and all that.

snip

To be fair the Q6600 is an over 6 year old CPU, it's shouldn't be maxing anything at this point in time but core 2 was an amazing architecture so those chips have aged very well.

I find it depressing that developers are restricting the game's features because they're afraid of harming the brand due to teenage girls' and soccer moms' computers not being able to play the game with full settings on bigger maps. Why can't these people be expected to turn their graphics settings down? If there ever was an appropriate time and place for the term "dumbing down" it's this one.

I really think the best solution would be to make bigger cities an option in some .ini file so that the people who are capable of harming the brand because of lower performance in bigger cities wouldn't get their hands on bigger cities. It'd be a win-win situation for everyone. Better press for EA and a better game for the people with powerful enough rigs to play on bigger maps.

As a person with a 5.3ghz i7 3930K and a GTX Titan in my rig it's obvious that I care about graphics but I can understand when those aren't cutting edge quality due to consoles or lower spec machines but cutting gameplay features in a PC only game is just cringe worthy.

 

[IndomitableSam]

I gave up trying to fight for people to give the game a chance. I followed the development so knew going in it was an mmo, and that city sizes were small. I read the forums, interviews and articles, learning what I could and reading the dissections and arguments everyone had for it.

I loved the beta. I will be buying it, possibly this release week.

Really, if you don't like it, don't play it. EA laid out its plan for the game a long time ago and has stuck to it. Buy the game or don't.

 

[evilneko]

SimCity peaked with SimCity 2000 and has gone downhill ever since.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

I guess if they will make it bigger over time then thats great. Starting off with small areas help you learn and build small but well built cities. Once they let you go big then we can build huge massive mega cities. That would be awesome.