Sims Creator Loves New SimCity's "Guilt-Driven Experience"

[Calibanbutcher]

A guilt driven experience?
They should use german film-makers as consultants, they know how to absolutley wallow in guilt and bash someone over the head with it.

 

[Elijah Newton]

Always on DRM is a deal killer for me. I don't care that it can be played single player (which, yes, absolutely the way I'd do it) when I have to be tethered to the internets just to fire the damn thing up. Also, single-player which requires some connection to a server to compile regional play stats is not single player. That's some quasi-MMO bullsh*t.

Which is a bit of a pity as this doesn't look like a bad game though the mandated smaller plot o' land kind of baffles me. I mean, if it's an option, well and good, but I'm not at all pleased the option to do a huge, sprawling city was taken away from me. At the end of the day this seems to provide an experience which (but for the graphics which, duh, very nice) is still less than earlier SimCity games leaving me not really swayed by the designer's intents.* I want more than from my sequels, as in everything the earlier games had and then more. I'm curious how it'll be reviewed but have deep reservations. Honestly, what I was craving / expecting (given the earlier SimCities and the passage of time) was something with Dwarf Fortress's depth and Sim's attention to user-interface.

Unrelated note : Mr. Ocean Q. kept reminded me so strongly of Bob Ross that I was faintly disappointed he didn't work a 'happy trees' reference somewhere into his PR plug. Alas.

* I mean, it's fine if he likes following his dolls around at street level and project on them. To each their own. But the anecdote of a ratio of 20 minutes of work to 45 minutes of watching as a selling point was awful. That's trying to sell a non-interactive experience (watching) when the whole reason I play games is to have a completely interactive experience. In SimCity designing the city is not work. It is play. It is the core reason I would buy the product.

 

[Griffolion]

I had a play of SC5 at Eurogamer last year. I must say I enjoyed it, and will be getting it at some point. I'm not sold on this "always online" thing, it's always been a solitary experience for me. But I'm willing to try something new.

Idk if you know this, but you don't have to play with others. It's always online because half the simulation is calculated by the servers (I think it's things related to the glassbox engine and regional play, as well as the interconnectivity of the world [the global market which you sell and buy goods from a is a "real" market place which all players sell and buy from]). It can be a completely solo experience, and that is precisely how I plan to play.

I might dabble in the multiplayer eventually, but I'm like you, and would prefer to play alone (which you can and I will).

Ah okay, perhaps news outlets misrepresented it, then, when talking about the "always online" features. I just hope that the developers know that they are going for an audience who, up until now, were experiencing Sim City in a solitary fashion. Throwing them in at the deep end with all these multiplayer features may serve to alienate what would be a core fanbase. So I'm with you, I hope there is the option to just go it alone, at least for a while, until I'm ready to dive into multiplayer.