SimCity Trailer Shows Off Pre-Order Incentives

[Steven Bogos]

SimCity Trailer Shows Off Pre-Order Incentives


The Heroes and Villains set lets you unleash super heroes and organized crime on your city.

Pre-order incentives have pretty much become the norm for games these days, with developers often dangling a tantalizing carrot of exclusive digital content for fans dedicated enough to put their money down early. SimCity is no different, and the latest trailer for EA's city builder shows us the Heroes and Villains set that will be included free in the "limited edition" of the game. The set will allow players to place buildings that unlock "criminal masterminds" and "supreme superheroes" and follow their exploits throughout the city.

The trailer shows arch-rivals "Dr. Vu" and "Maxis Man" as they cause havoc throughout a city. Dr. Vu's Evil Lair generates funds for the player with his high-tech research, but comes with the downside of an occasional act of terrorism. Thankfully, upgrading a police center to Maxis Man's Super HQ brings in a superhero to keep Dr. Vu's exploits in check.

The Heroes and Villains set comes free in both the limited and digital deluxe editions of the game. EA have not announced just how "limited" the limited edition will be, or how much the set will cost separately (if it's even available at all), so for now you can presume that pre-ordering is the only way to secure it. You can pre-order the game from EA's SimCity website [http://www.simcity.com/en_US/buy], on Origin, or through various retailers. The digital deluxe edition also comes with the French, German and British city set.

SimCity is the 5th game in the SimCity franchise, following SimCity 4 in 2003. It will be released for the PC on March 5 and the Mac a little later. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/119054-SimCity-Wreaking-Havoc-on-Mac-in-Early-2013]

Source: EA Official Youtube Channel [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lFmi6vVLCLA]

Permalink

 

[VanQ]

I really want to give you my money for this, EA! Take out the stupid always online and cloud saves and I'll throw it at you! All I want is to be able to save my data locally, that's all. I don't want to have to rely on my shitty Australian internet to play your game.

 

[ThreeKneeNick]

SimCity is the 5th game in the SimCity franchise, following SimCity 4 in 2003. It will be released for the PC on March 5 and the Mac a little later.

I just love that we've forgotten ... that other SimCity game. Did not deserve the name.

 

[RA92]

SimCity? More like SimVille.

Maybe they'll release paid DLCs that will let you terraform, or build cities that are larger than the current 2km x 2km size. Or let you fucking load your save files from a previous point.

 

[kajinking]

I really want to give you my money for this, EA! Take out the stupid always online and cloud saves and I'll throw it at you! All I want is to be able to save my data locally, that's all. I don't want to have to rely on my shitty Australian internet to play your game.

HERETIC! Do not question the will of the cloud!

SimCity? More like SimVille.

Maybe Zynga can sue them and use the settlement to get back on it's feet. That always works right?

OT: The graphics kind remind me of Buzz Lightyear

The graphics still don't look right to me as well, something just seems off.

Also at least if this bombs I can always go back to Anno 2070

 

[Deathfish15]

SimCity? More like SimVille.

Maybe they'll release paid DLCs that will let you terraform, or build cities that are larger than the current 2km x 2km size. Or let you fucking load your save files from a previous point.

In an interview, Ocean Quiggly already said the reason that there's no terraforming is because they wanted it to be a slight more realistic "deal with the land that you have". This is also dealt with in-game by roads and buildings doing cut-a-ways into the land as needed to conform to the shape of the lands, hills, and so on. Bridges, tunnels, and the like will show up when needed to fit the game.

The largest city size is going to be 2km by 2km, don't expect larger. It's large enough for people in the last beta to get 100,000+ citizens with over 2/3rds the buildings locked down. Maxis has stated that several of their in-house testers have gotten 1million population in their cities, so it's not that difficult.

As for loading/saving, they're not pussyfooting around on this one. The cities are going to be a living, breathing thing that's interactive with the other cities in the region. Don't like your city? Either A) abandon it for a different plot in that region, or B) demolish it and start from scratch. To want to "load" because you've messed up on a specific aspect of your city is kind of a weak thing to do.

 

[Covarr]

How will heroes and villains impact gameplay? Will it significantly change the core gameplay, or just be an fairly minor addition? Honestly, I don't think I find myself too excited for either possibility.

I really want to give you my money for this, EA! Take out the stupid always online and cloud saves and I'll throw it at you! All I want is to be able to save my data locally, that's all. I don't want to have to rely on my shitty Australian internet to play your game.

From what I understand (and there's a chance they flat out lied about this to save face), it's not just cloud saves or always-online; most of the actual simulation is also done on the server. The whole server-client model means that releasing an offline version wouldn't be as simple as flipping a DRM switch, and would require a significant amount of reworking of the game engine, and possibly its mechanics if they want to target lower end PCs that can't handle that much simulation at full speed.

But again, they might've been lying.

SimCity? More like SimVille.

Maybe they'll release paid DLCs that will let you terraform, or build cities that are larger than the current 2km x 2km size. Or let you fucking load your save files from a previous point.

I think the idea is that if a player feels too limited, they can start more cities in the same region and make a single functional unit out of them. Not as good as having large cities to begin with, but I think it'll have roughly the same net effect.

I just love that we've forgotten ... that other SimCity game. Did not deserve the name.

Y'know, back in 2001 there was a game in development called SimsVille, which would've been somewhere between The Sims and SimCity in scale. The idea was to run an entire neighborhood, building items and services to attract sims rather than directly controlling them. It was canceled, in part because playtesters and people who saw it at E3 found it to be boring and too hands-off for a Sims game and too hands-on for a SimCity game, a game that really had no idea what it wanted to be.

I've long suspected Societies started out as a project to rework SimsVille and bring it to market. While not the same game by a long shot, it seems to have many of the same core concepts and fundamental flaws that come with focusing on sims without controlling them.

As an aside, I looked into Tilted Mill Entertainment, the company responsible for Societies, since Maxis couldn't be bothered to do it themselves (they were busy with Spore at the time). They have almost exclusively produced crap, with their best products being merely mediocre. I can understand hiring an outside studio for a game, but it'd be nice if EA had done a bit of vetting to make sure they were hiring a decent outside studio.

P.S. Thanks

 

[aelreth]

Shouldn't they be making these offers more intuitive for those that already pre-ordered? Maybe they would like to upgrade...morons.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

As for loading/saving, they're not pussyfooting around on this one. The cities are going to be a living, breathing thing that's interactive with the other cities in the region. Don't like your city? Either A) abandon it for a different plot in that region, or B) demolish it and start from scratch. To want to "load" because you've messed up on a specific aspect of your city is kind of a weak thing to do.

I usually used the save as an excuse to spam disasters when I got bored/for the LOL's.

I mean what the point of building a virtual city if you can't make it explode spectacularly!

 

[Nazulu]

I really want to give you my money for this, EA! Take out the stupid always online and cloud saves and I'll throw it at you! All I want is to be able to save my data locally, that's all. I don't want to have to rely on my shitty Australian internet to play your game.

Here here. They've convinced themselves in the same way Nintendo wanted you to experience every thing in a new way (like they did with the Wii). It seems the future is less about convenience/options and more about forcing people to socialise with others.

Hope it ends up like Diablo 3 so they learn their lesson, or a magic alternative game you could invest in and then give the finger to this.

 

[Antari]

Theres the final straw for me. They are just going to turn it into a DLC queen. Too many bad ideas all disguised as a good game. Looks like the biggest landmine of 2013. I'm not stepping anywhere near it.

 

[Strazdas]

I really want to give you my money for this, EA! Take out the stupid always online and cloud saves and I'll throw it at you! All I want is to be able to save my data locally, that's all. I don't want to have to rely on my shitty Australian internet to play your game.

While I sympathize with your aussie situation, the games key feature around multiple city builds and coop is build around the online mechanic the same way a MMO is build around a server hosted off site.

Yeah that sucks, but it would be a different game in design or 2 completely different builds in order to make it work singleplayer as well as multiplayer.

I really dont see an elegant solution to this.

there is an elegant solution: dont make games that make us rely on other players and let their stupidity spill into our city.
ANd if you do, at least make it a new ip and let it bomb and not ruin a decent IP.

 

[Strazdas]

I really want to give you my money for this, EA! Take out the stupid always online and cloud saves and I'll throw it at you! All I want is to be able to save my data locally, that's all. I don't want to have to rely on my shitty Australian internet to play your game.

While I sympathize with your aussie situation, the games key feature around multiple city builds and coop is build around the online mechanic the same way a MMO is build around a server hosted off site.

Yeah that sucks, but it would be a different game in design or 2 completely different builds in order to make it work singleplayer as well as multiplayer.

I really dont see an elegant solution to this.

there is an elegant solution: dont make games that make us rely on other players and let their stupidity spill into our city.
ANd if you do, at least make it a new ip and let it bomb and not ruin a decent IP.

As a guy who enjoyed multiple MMO's and still buy games that are only enjoyable in coop (Dungeon Defenders) I find the notion of completely ignoring this type of design to be terribly shortsighted.

If they should have made it a new IP is an entirely different question. There are multiple sides to that in that the gaming market is VERY vary of new IP and sales will suffer as a result, while at the same time being very confident in retreading of old ground making the whole yearly releases possible. The issue lies in "are you willing to risk making a new IP or are you going to risk not being enough like the last one".

I too enjoy multiple MMOS (though i dislike coops), however why MMOs work and this doesnt is that MMOs are designed to be MMOs, not singleplayer city building simulators that get shafted into multiplayer because "must havem ultiplayer to sell" belief.

 

[CommanderL]

the more I hear about this game the more glad I am I am not buying it

 

[Victim of Progress]

Pre-Order, huh? The last time I pre-ordered a city building game(Cities XL), I got some "radical" clothing for my avatar, and huge monuments, which I COULDN'T BUILD, BECAUSE THE DAMN SEVERS WENT DOWN and it was a multilayer-only feature. I'm sure, that SimCity 5 will have similar problems.

 

[Strazdas]

le snip
Try the same argument, but instead of MMO's use Dungeon Defenders, L4D, Dota or any racing game. While they can be enjoyed by themselves there is a boon in playing with others through their design while you are perfectly capable to play them by yourself.

The problem is that the long builder type of strategy havn't had success with implementing multiplayer.

Where the examples I used before there were 2 methods of making multiplayer in design. Cooperative play and competitive play.

Both those methods run into a problem with a long build type due to the games being so long. It is hard to have a coop or competitive game if a game session will take 7 hours to complete (example from Settlers).

However Minecraft found a method around the problem of long cooperative play in that they had static servers that hosted the projects. Sim City 5 uses that principal. Having a third party for point of reference. This makes for the cooperative build as a valid game design for Sim City. Now before I have a feeling know what direction you mind is going and that is "minecraft still has a singleplayer so Sim City could as well" And that more or less comes down to the technical aspects and financial constraints. Like I said the original post you quoted "2 completely different builds in order to make it work singleplayer as well as multiplayer.". Minecraft was for quite a while 2 different builds. If you scale that up to the size of Sim City 5 and then add the difficult of handling security for millions of users rather than a whitelist of 24 people, then you should see it is a time and resource constraint that prevents the new Sim City from having an offline mode.

While you do get the gist of it, what you fail to realize that people playing long builder types do so because they want to play them in singleplayer. Hotseat is great, because it allows you to save it. COnstant server (aka minecraft) is terrible. The only servers in minecraft where any cooperation happens is the ones where you can lock down the buildings from being destroyed, and that negates the need of "cooperate or crime will spill" that simcity 5 has. For "lnog builder types" multiplayer is the addon option for those few people that want to try it. its not a primary feature that sim city 5 wants to make it.
Yeah, so you confirm that this was a failure on the developement part to focus on multiplayer aspect isntead of making ti a singlepalyer. yes they are different builds, but this is taking a singlepalyer build and showing it into multiplayer the way thier doing it.

P.S. 7 hour settler matches were fun. though playing civilization 4 on marathon and huge map can get tediuos. we played for a week and still havent finished it. thats over 50 hours for one match. we still dont regret that and thats becasue it was a hotseat, so we were doing more than gaming.

 

[Strazdas]

.

I guess we just have completely different tastes and we will have to leave it at that then.
Still flipping a IP on its heels removing fans from old sim cities is not the way to go in my opinion, ergo make this a new ip.

IM glad to hear about region scaling down to 2 cities, that make it a bit better.

 

[Blunderboy]

Oh look, more bitching. This is getting old...fast.

OT - Yay. I for one will enjoy the ever loving fuck out of this game.

 

[RA92]

To want to "load" because you've messed up on a specific aspect of your city is kind of a weak thing to do.

Oh yeah, and XCOM is a weaker game for providing difficulty levels other than Iron Man.

Oh look, more bitching. This is getting old...fast.

OT - Yay. I for one will enjoy the ever loving fuck out of this game.

Until the servers are inevitably shut down by EA. Yay!

 

[Blunderboy]

To want to "load" because you've messed up on a specific aspect of your city is kind of a weak thing to do.

Oh yeah, and XCOM is a weaker game for providing difficulty levels other than Iron Man.

Oh look, more bitching. This is getting old...fast.

OT - Yay. I for one will enjoy the ever loving fuck out of this game.

Until the servers are inevitably shut down by EA. Yay!

In like 5 years time. Yay.