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[Simcity] Where discussion of water pollution and power grids is normal.
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Even if you ignore the giant spider robot, the entire screen is covered in bright flashy colors. It's a simulation but it never tried to be gritty or realistic. To me the graphic style in the trailer looks perfect, it certainly isn't any more cartoony than SC2K was(other than the drag-and-drop buildings which is just for effect).
In response to 12 year olds screwing up your city
LOD, baby!
(actually there are a few more subtle things, but the stuff SC3k adds far outweighs those)
The only real downer part was that the only way you could make outlandish geography was importing a bitmap for terrain since the terrain editing tools only let you go to a certain steepness.
I am tentatively waiting for a promising actual city-building simulation game...even if I have to buy it on origin.
Oh man... I saw the pictures before I read the post. Thought they were screenshots... almost lost my shit there.
I particularly enjoyed the diagonalization of pedestrians at 1:30-1:32
Additionally, some way to reduce the pollution output from cars--short of trying to offer every possible alternative--would be nice. Fuel-efficiency standards, electric cars, etc. Or even as simple as making cars damn expensive through taxes (with the according penalty on the population).
Can you be more specific? I looked at the proportions and designs and stuff and am kind of still not seeing the cartoon thing.
I disagree with your first point. I think that's exactly the way it should be. However, your second point is completely valid. Some of the transportation logic in SC4 made me rage.
People made mods that apparently made it better. I'm not sure how much it helps though.
What made me the angriest was the behavior between car parks and mass transit.
I bought Sim City 4 after I got a city to 40k pop with constant demand in SC2000 and after a few years in 4 I managed to take in more taxes than what I'm spending and I am getting constant demand for residential and industry.
I made a cute little farming community with some medium industry across the river and it looks so cool.
Well I didn't mind micromanaging my utilities/civics (healthcare, police, water, power, schools etc) which cut down on my expenses a hell of a lot. Also keep in mind that you don't need to provide water to low-density zones so you can reduce your water bill which I find becomes very expensive if you're not careful.
The big thing that I found to be true in either 2000 or 4 was to lay out zones very conservatively. If you create too many zones your demand will take a nose dive and it'll be hard to get any revenue. Commercial is still the zone you don't need a lot of. Once demand equals supply just let the city run for awhile without touching any of the taxes and keeping an eye on your funding for the above mentioned utilities/civics so you are supplying just above what your city needs. Eventually your revenue ought to climb.
Glass Box is a promising engine. However, 10's of thousands of agents doesn't seem nearly enough. That's barely enough for a large town, let alone a bustling city of millions.
You'll be able to choose if you want to play in a multiplayer region. I think they'll let you create a region and invite friends to play in it, or you can just use it yourself. There will be a global economy that influences a few things in your cities but nothing that will be a complete game changer for you.
Hardly much point buying it digitally outside of Origin when you need Origin running anyway. I did notice another game with the same idea though (aside from always-online) - a little game on Steam called Warp is available through that, but requires Origin to run as well.
This does suck for wanting to play Simcity on trips and stuff where there's no internet access, though. The Sim series was great for that.
Edit: Another interview: http://www.shacknews.com/article/73061/one-on-one-with-simcitys-mayor
In general, the huge focus on multiplayer is really putting me off. Yeah, players asked for MP. That doesn't mean always-online.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
It's a proven DRM technique that most people are fine with. Although the people who aren't fine with it are actually (quite understandably) outraged.
Wow, they're really pulling an Ubi Soft on this, aren't they? Just makes my boycott easier.
Also, this "simulation" thing... "agents", etc... showing all that happens... hasn't The Settlers series had this since day one? For how many years now? They also broke the grid, how many years ago?
I was just about to write that "it's lucky that old games don't become worse, simply because a new one is released", but that's the whole goal of "always online", isn't it? Look at the servers EA shut down recently, killing online components of fairly new games. That's what they want to do! It doesn't matter if the new game is worse, they shut down the servers of the old game, and it's good bye title, please buy our new one, thank you very much. No thanks!
Well yeah, it is obviously an excuse. It's just a pretty bad one, that nobody will buy.
I want to remain excited for this, but outright optimism's given way to extreme caution. Especially given that EA just hates killing MP servers so much. This also means that good old God Mode is very likely to be gone, and there'll obviously be no more cheats.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
Word. The biggest gripe I've got is that there's a lot less sandbox capability.
On the other hand, I can really see some of the potential of having a fully-connected set of cities. The notion of a global economy can be really awesome, like in EVE. Or maybe they'll colossally fuck it up, cause...EA or whatever.
I'm pretty excited, namely so that my friends and I can build cities and talk about our plights. I don't expect it to be a 200-hour euphoric timesink like SC4 was though.
Yeah I'm a fan of planning and construction, not microing utility funding levels.
Also conveniently, it allows me to drop my earlier "tepidly intrigued" notion from the first page.