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[Simcity] Where discussion of water pollution and power grids is normal.

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Posts

  • SyphonBlueSyphonBlue The studying beaver That beaver sure loves studying!Registered User regular
    KiTA wrote: »
    Bit of a bru-haha has started up. Apparently someone broke the NDA, and uh, SimCity 2013 looks really, really bad.

    http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/8875279.page

    nyPnu.jpg

    The maps are 1/10th the size of the previous games. You are required to specialize your city (business, airport, commercial, etc), no more metropolises. Always online. Required socialization with other players.

    And yes, that map looks like R2D2. It's an EA meme: "The only people who enjoyed the old Simcity games were robots."

    Oh, and those roads? Pre-made, and indestructible. You have to build around them.

    I...Don't believe any of that, frankly.

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  • SurikoSuriko AustraliaRegistered User regular
    Yeah... as much as I may be sliding into pessimism over SC (at 100mph), I'd prefer to see some other verification of this first.

    The title of the thread may as well be "[SimCity] Where hope comes to die" right now.

  • mr_michmr_mich Mmmmagic. MDRegistered User regular
    That seems silly, especially compared to some of the footage we've seen.

    On top of that it's beta. So...things will change and certain things (like roads) aren't expected to be fully-featured.

  • KiTAKiTA Registered User regular
    edited September 2012
    It's not THAT far away from this game's release that any huge changes can really go into effect. For example, Terraforming is officially out, and there's no way something like that is getting put back in in the ~6 months we have until the game comes out.

    There's a couple of huge lists from old bittervets to the Simcity franchise listing just why people are pissed off -- it basically comes down to SimCity 2013 appearing to these fans to be mostly just a PC Port of the SimCity Facebook game.

    Which is bad.
    mr_mich wrote: »
    That seems silly, especially compared to some of the footage we've seen.

    That's the problem. Here are two stills from the in game footage (ignoring the CG announcement trailer, which was 100% bullshot):

    a8Yn5.png

    Those cities are tiny. This is when they're supposed to be wowing us with their city building game -- if the engine can support bigger citties, why not show them off?

    KiTA on
  • DanishVoidDanishVoid Registered User new member
    edited September 2012
    CXL has large maps, but did it "wow" people? Its metacritic was barely satisfactory, and it can't even compete with decade-old SC4 on the ratings.

    If the simulation and gameplay end up as good as they sound, then I wouldn't care much about the map size...
    vdpv9f.gif

    DanishVoid on
  • SyphyreSyphyre A Dangerous Pastime Registered User regular
    My biggest beef with Cities XL 2011 is that I was spoiled by SC4. I liked a lot of their concepts, but I wanted to be able to say "Zone this commercial" and let 'er rip. City gets bigger? Rezone as medium commercial and let it grow. I never liked the "place each thing separately and individually" thing. I like the organicness.

    And yeah, those SC cities looks tiny. But well *Shrugs* we'll see. I'm past the day of caring about purchases until I read a month or two of reviews.

  • rockrngerrockrnger Registered User regular
    edited September 2012
    Wow, great, another spore.

    All the complexity of a final fantasy mini game at an 80 dollar price.

    rockrnger on
  • webguy20webguy20 I spend too much time on the Internet Registered User regular
    While I'm sad at the direction this appears to be going, I will be holding off until I see real reviews and not beta leaks. I don't have to buy it, and my SC4 with NAM still works fine.

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  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    edited September 2012
    I'm not optimistic either. Then again, following the promise of an online-only game world, I was rather dismayed. They need to actually come forward and acknowledge, "Yeah, this is a tiny goddamn city compared to SimCity 4." Or stop making the comparisons entirely.

    If Maxis and EA are both so convinced to go in this direction, I guess that's the way it's going. Between the "let's face it" nonexistent mod support (given the need for standardization in an MMO) and the the commitment to an online world, my interest from this went from "Insanely high" at the trailer to nonexistent. Someone on the forums summed it up well: they want an MMO. They're absolutely committed to that. And they'll probably win over a whole bunch of fans. And those of us who don't want to play an MMO are not an issue of their concern anymore than people who want to mod BF3 are a concern to DICE.

    Oh well. I never really expected a sequel to SimCity 4 anyway--that trailer surprised me, and now I can get rid of that surprise. It's kind of convenient in a way.

    Synthesis on
  • AnarchyAnarchy Registered User regular
    I got to play SimCity at Gamescom this year (so did loads of other people). Whilst I can't speak for the city size (It wasn't huge but then it was a tutorial city), roads were certainly destructible with the exception of one road. Essentially, the city (again I don't know if all cities are like this), had a freeway running through the map which provided the sims for your own city. Essentially, as you built up your city, people would flock to it from this freeway. The rest of the road that was already built was certainly destructible (I did it a few times) and I honestly didn't try to destroy the freeway.

    "Oh, well, this would be one of those circumstances that people unfamiliar with the law of large numbers would call a coincidence."
  • SyphonBlueSyphonBlue The studying beaver That beaver sure loves studying!Registered User regular
    [quote="Anarchy;24311589"roads were certainly destructible with the exception of one road[/quote]

    Called it. Excuse me while I don't believe anything that guy says.

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  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    edited September 2012
    The pre-built road seem either seemed to be a wild exaggeration or a flat-out misunderstanding (for example, assuming Anarchy is correct, we do have to contend with a pre-built road which is not optional--depending on terrain, it might provide a poorer avenue then you'd care for, and then you'll just have to suck it up).

    The idea of mandatory roads chosen from pre-sets, like The Sims games did, kind of flies in the face of that ridiculous R2-city-layout. That seems far more like some developer having a stupid idea and deciding to present it as a cool one.

    Synthesis on
  • KiTAKiTA Registered User regular
    edited September 2012
    Apparently the answer re:pre-built roads is yes and no.

    OUR roads, in OUR regions, are not pre-built.

    However, regions are set up in a checkerboard pattern, with equal amounts of dead space between each region. And this dead space is completely empty except for prebuilt roads going between regions -- which you cannot change or remove. I'm not sure about where these roads extend into your city (or "region" in the new vernacular) -- Anarchy calls them freeways?

    I'm honestly more concerned with the (confirmed) removal of all terraforming. Am I the only one who remembers starting the earlier Sim games on like, an island with a huge mountain in the middle and making it work? I know the powergamers and casual players would only play on an absolutely flat map, but I fall somewhere in between.

    KiTA on
  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    From what I understood, a one-time editing mode still exists? After that, you've got to just work with the normal city-building tools. Maxis is very, very proud of their curved roads, I suppose they want you to adapt to the terrain, not "master" it, so to speak.

  • KiTAKiTA Registered User regular
    Synthesis wrote: »
    From what I understood, a one-time editing mode still exists? After that, you've got to just work with the normal city-building tools. Maxis is very, very proud of their curved roads, I suppose they want you to adapt to the terrain, not "master" it, so to speak.

    Possibly. Except that, forgive me if I'm wrong, there aren't any hills / rivers / etc in SimCity 2013. So there are curved roads... but no terrain to "master."

  • DockenDocken Registered User regular
    If the claims are true, No terraforming and tiny cities turn this into instant shovelware IMO - the heart of the franchise has always been based on those two things.

  • SmrtnikSmrtnik job boli zub Registered User regular
    That "highway new immigrants come in on" reminds me of the Settlers and Pharaoh games.

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  • President RexPresident Rex Registered User regular
    KiTA wrote: »
    Apparently the answer re:pre-built roads is yes and no.

    OUR roads, in OUR regions, are not pre-built.

    However, regions are set up in a checkerboard pattern, with equal amounts of dead space between each region. And this dead space is completely empty except for prebuilt roads going between regions -- which you cannot change or remove. I'm not sure about where these roads extend into your city (or "region" in the new vernacular) -- Anarchy calls them freeways?

    I'm honestly more concerned with the (confirmed) removal of all terraforming. Am I the only one who remembers starting the earlier Sim games on like, an island with a huge mountain in the middle and making it work? I know the powergamers and casual players would only play on an absolutely flat map, but I fall somewhere in between.

    SimCity 2000 was pretty easy with hills because you could plop down a pond on the slope and it would become a waterfall suitable for a hydro electric dam. Terraced slopes weren't the greatest powergaming use of land, but they looked nich enough and din't impact construction too terribly.

    SimCity 3000 was a bit weirder to work with. The multiple graduations made it more economical to tailor your slopes to the steepst one that supported roads, but all of those terraced areas had a nice benefit: you could plop down trees (since you couldn't build anything else on them). Trees in SC3k lowered pollution by a very small fraction, by throw 8 trees down per tile over a few hundred tiles and suddenly you've got a beautified city that helps cut down on pollution.

    SimCity 4 let you actually zone on slight slopes, so - as long as you weren't building on Mount Everest - you could get a city going fairly easily - even if there'd be a bit higher maintenance for all of the roads you'd need.



    But speaking of this new SimCity: While I may have enjoyed sharing a region with friends/family occasionally, SimCity for me has always been a core singleplayer experience. It may be cool to see how other people design their cities, but it sounds like forced socialization. What I don't need is another game like Madden or Tropico telling me I should post my latest accomplishment on Twitter or Facebook.

    I just want to build huge cities/regions somewhat organically/realistically. By myself. Apparently that is too much to ask and I should go back to A-Train and SimCity 2k/3k/4.

  • KiTAKiTA Registered User regular
    A-Train? What's A-Train?

    I heard CitiesXL is bad, but I do own a copy of SimCity 4, which I fired up today after all this talk of SC5 has me hankerin' for some SimCity. But before I get too in depth with this -- I heard there's a good mod community for SC4, are there any mods that are considered must haves?

  • Nova_CNova_C I have the need The need for speedRegistered User regular
    A-Train was a game where you build a rail system and a city grows around it. I used to play it like mad back when it came out in the 90s, but when I tried to go back with DOSBox a while ago I was so lost.

    You can build apartments and the like, but actual housing grows by itself.

  • a5ehrena5ehren AtlantaRegistered User regular
    KiTA wrote: »
    A-Train? What's A-Train?

    I heard CitiesXL is bad, but I do own a copy of SimCity 4, which I fired up today after all this talk of SC5 has me hankerin' for some SimCity. But before I get too in depth with this -- I heard there's a good mod community for SC4, are there any mods that are considered must haves?

    The Network Add-on Mod overhauls the traffic model is the only one that is considered mandatory. None of the others are necessary.

  • AnarchyAnarchy Registered User regular
    Synthesis wrote: »
    The pre-built road seem either seemed to be a wild exaggeration or a flat-out misunderstanding (for example, assuming Anarchy is correct, we do have to contend with a pre-built road which is not optional--depending on terrain, it might provide a poorer avenue then you'd care for, and then you'll just have to suck it up).

    The idea of mandatory roads chosen from pre-sets, like The Sims games did, kind of flies in the face of that ridiculous R2-city-layout. That seems far more like some developer having a stupid idea and deciding to present it as a cool one.

    So the level I played was a tutorial, so I can't speak for the rest of the game. But the tutorial text implied that sims to populate your houses had to come from somewhere, in this case a 4 lane highway/road/freeway (Whatever you wish to call it). And in this tutorial level, the first order of business was to build a smaller road to connect to this larger fixed one so that people could enter your city. All other roads, included the already existing ones were destructable. Now the only caveat I'd want to say is this is a tutorial level of a heavily locked-in build for Gamescom, so we can't assume that is what the finished game is like..

    "Oh, well, this would be one of those circumstances that people unfamiliar with the law of large numbers would call a coincidence."
  • President RexPresident Rex Registered User regular
    Nova_C wrote: »
    A-Train was a game where you build a rail system and a city grows around it. I used to play it like mad back when it came out in the 90s, but when I tried to go back with DOSBox a while ago I was so lost.

    You can build apartments and the like, but actual housing grows by itself.

    It's sort of like being a giant corporation with a focus on trains and other mass transit and a lesser focus on real estate and the stock market.

    I actually piqued my own interest and found that the series is apparently still going relatively strong, with the newest game being The Train Giant (aka A-Train 9 or something ridiculous), but I don't know if it has an official English release. The only one I played was the Playstation version and it had a look very similar to SimCity 2000, but detailed in a different way. You could ostensibly build roads and lay track, but you were more the impetus for development than the controller for it. You could build a factory and houses (and potentially apartments and offices) would spring up (...eventually) if you had it properly connected to transportation. You could buy those buildings, sell your buildings and work towards incentivizing their profitability.

    ...Or you could be a giant corporation that tries to gobble up all the realestate so that everyone in a city lives in your housing projects, rides on your bus routes, goes to your offices to work and buys their stuff from shops you own and goes to relax at the spa you had built.

    It's much slower paced, meticulous and technical compared to SimCity. But it appears to be the only real transportation/city-building game still going around.

  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    Nova_C wrote: »
    A-Train was a game where you build a rail system and a city grows around it. I used to play it like mad back when it came out in the 90s, but when I tried to go back with DOSBox a while ago I was so lost.

    You can build apartments and the like, but actual housing grows by itself.

    It's sort of like being a giant corporation with a focus on trains and other mass transit and a lesser focus on real estate and the stock market.

    I actually piqued my own interest and found that the series is apparently still going relatively strong, with the newest game being The Train Giant (aka A-Train 9 or something ridiculous), but I don't know if it has an official English release. The only one I played was the Playstation version and it had a look very similar to SimCity 2000, but detailed in a different way. You could ostensibly build roads and lay track, but you were more the impetus for development than the controller for it. You could build a factory and houses (and potentially apartments and offices) would spring up (...eventually) if you had it properly connected to transportation. You could buy those buildings, sell your buildings and work towards incentivizing their profitability.

    ...Or you could be a giant corporation that tries to gobble up all the realestate so that everyone in a city lives in your housing projects, rides on your bus routes, goes to your offices to work and buys their stuff from shops you own and goes to relax at the spa you had built.

    It's much slower paced, meticulous and technical compared to SimCity. But it appears to be the only real transportation/city-building game still going around.

    Sounds a lot like a less simplistic Transport Tycoon. OpenTTD is still around.

  • JediNightJediNight Registered User regular
    I've been following the EA SC forum, as well as Simtropolis forums fairly regularly for a couple months now. I'll probably be taking a step back soon though, as especially the EA forums have a handful of bitter SC vets that are just completely running amok frothing at the mouth with rage constantly these days. They keep repeating the same 2-3 things to every new person that posts and generally making an ass of themselves when they made their point a long time ago and should wait for beta.

    It seems likely that city tiles will be a lot smaller than fans of previous SC titles are used to. Even though they say the size is open to change as they continue to develop, I would say it would need to be at least 4x the current size to appease people. Part of the reason appears to be constraints due to FPS etc. As the game loads the entire Region like one giant city map, so you aren't just dealing with your city, but you are being fed updates from everyone elses city in the Region.

    Neighbor connections are hardcoded to the Region map and cannot be destroyed. And of course, no God-scale terraforming. Merely the types of terraforming you could do in mayor mode in SC4. Cities are being designed to intentionally not be self-sufficient and require resources from cities with various specializations, or bought from the global market.

    The one part that does seem to be significantly more in-depth is thinking about traffic flow and managing the transportation networks. As well as tradeoffs that will have to be made with various ploppables, especially industry. IE: Do you go for smokestack addons that are cleaner+more expensive to maintain, or dirty ones and pollute your city more? Etc.

    I'm also reserving judgment on buying the game or not until I see stuff from beta. It's definitely not the SC game I was hoping for, but it looks like it may still be interesting to play on its own right. I'll have to see yet though.

  • TPSouTPSou Mr Registered User regular
    Just to put a few worries aside, I had a chance to play this yesterday at Eurogamer Expo. Things like roads can definitely be created and put wherever you want. Zoning still exists and works in much the way it has done in the past. There are more buildings to place but it's not like the cities don't grow anymore. There was no-one from Maxis about to speak to but from what I played it 'felt' a lot like SimCity, obviously there was no way to see how the community features will impact the game.

  • JediNightJediNight Registered User regular
    TPSou wrote: »
    Just to put a few worries aside, I had a chance to play this yesterday at Eurogamer Expo. Things like roads can definitely be created and put wherever you want. Zoning still exists and works in much the way it has done in the past. There are more buildings to place but it's not like the cities don't grow anymore. There was no-one from Maxis about to speak to but from what I played it 'felt' a lot like SimCity, obviously there was no way to see how the community features will impact the game.

    Peoples concerns don't really stem from "does it play like Sim City?". But that the scope of the cities is dramatically and drastically smaller. Just look at that animated GIF a page or two back in this thread to see just how small the cities are. I just can't imagine that one of those cities would actually be enough to hold someones attention for a prolonged period of time. I think I would need to claim like a block of 4-6 cities in a region to feel like I had enough to do.

  • milathmilath Registered User regular
    Wow. I hadn't been following news from this game for a little while. That screenshot is just sad. I hope it's not true and cities will be way more robust in the final version, but... wow. And some of this other stuff people are saying in this thread. This just makes me really sad. I was hoping for a good game despite my mod support misgivings, but now it's looking like even that's a question...

    Maybe it's time to get an old school style Simcity clone up on Kickstarter. Someone get on that quick! :P

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  • JediNightJediNight Registered User regular
    Hopefully I get into beta and can get a better feel for the game then, but it honestly doesn't look like $60 worth of game so far, let alone $80 for the CE. More like $40 given the smaller scale. It's not that it doesn't look interesting to me .... but just not $60 interesting. And as I said, I feel I would have to snap up a third to half the city tiles in a Region to actually have enough to do.

  • AyulinAyulin Registered User regular
    This video just came out. Seems like there's some neat stuff, though cities do appear pretty small (from the brief look we get at the region view, at least).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YceL2C4TW4Q

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  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    The video, while very pretty and cartoony, reminded me of how much this new SimCity seems to be setting itself up to be a great sequel to SimTown, but not SimCity 4. More and more I've begun to wonder if the best hope for that is an entirely new approach--let SC come out, hope it doesn't do so poorly that EA axes it, and wait for a sequel (maybe an expansion), SimCity 6 that makes the necessary leaps to actually be a metropolis simulator: a region map that doesn't suck (multiple sized regions NOT on a checkboard), proper editing tools, even mod support.

    Shame that even if that works out, it'll take years to happen.

  • RobesRobes Registered User regular
    Cities XL is terrible do not play it. They make a new game once a year that has many of the same bugs as the previous game.

    It is fun until you have to rezone low density to medium/high, because you have to destroy the old zone first, which is tedious if you have about 50 of them. At that point you quit.

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  • El GuacoEl Guaco Registered User regular
    That video actually looked pretty neat. The pre-defined connecting roads and rails is not so terrible, IMO. I also liked how they removed the extra complexity of power lines, pipes, etc. by assuming if you have roads, the rest comes with it. I know some die hards may not like it, but I think it could make the game less tedious.

  • Nova_CNova_C I have the need The need for speedRegistered User regular
    El Guaco wrote: »
    That video actually looked pretty neat. The pre-defined connecting roads and rails is not so terrible, IMO. I also liked how they removed the extra complexity of power lines, pipes, etc. by assuming if you have roads, the rest comes with it. I know some die hards may not like it, but I think it could make the game less tedious.

    This is fine. I don't mind losing tedium.

    What I mind is that in SC2000, which ran on a toaster back in the day, I was able to make a city of a million people.

    Over a decade later I am running a system that could support Skynet. And the city is way, way, WAY smaller? Fuck. That. Noise.

  • POKÉMON MASTER WT SHERMANPOKÉMON MASTER WT SHERMAN i can make this march and i will make georgia howlRegistered User regular
    this has turned into something that i don't think i want to play, and that makes me sad

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  • GnomeTankGnomeTank What the what? Portland, OregonRegistered User regular
    edited October 2012
    Nova_C wrote: »
    El Guaco wrote: »
    That video actually looked pretty neat. The pre-defined connecting roads and rails is not so terrible, IMO. I also liked how they removed the extra complexity of power lines, pipes, etc. by assuming if you have roads, the rest comes with it. I know some die hards may not like it, but I think it could make the game less tedious.

    This is fine. I don't mind losing tedium.

    What I mind is that in SC2000, which ran on a toaster back in the day, I was able to make a city of a million people.

    Over a decade later I am running a system that could support Skynet. And the city is way, way, WAY smaller? Fuck. That. Noise.

    While I agree the direction of SC2013 is very disappointing, this is a somewhat unfair comparison. SC2000 was a 2D isometric game, written originally using Mode 13. Even SC4, which is "3D", uses a ton of 2D tricks to "fake it and make it" (the buildings, for instance, are not fully 3D, but 2D sprites in a 3D world).

    None of this changes the fact that SC2013 looks really disappointing, but your comparing technological apples to technological corn. I personally would rather they use a modern version of the SC4 "fake it when it makes sense" engine than try and force it to be pure 3D with a bunch of 3D buzz words, but run so shitty we can't have big cities.

    GnomeTank on
    Sagroth wrote: »
    Oh c'mon FyreWulff, no one's gonna pay to visit Uranus.
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  • Nova_CNova_C I have the need The need for speedRegistered User regular
    That's true enough, and if that's the case, then Simcity has gone style over substance. Trying to make it 'pretty' at the cost of the simulation.

    A management game requires certain things. If the game is just eye candy, the kind of people that play it aren't going to get much out of it.

    I was really excited by the system they were showing off of how power, water, needs, etc were handled. It looked interesting and organic. And then you realize that while they were putting together this system, they were making it so that you could never build a city, only a town or village connected to other towns and villages.

    It's just really disappointing.

    Of course, that could change.

    But I really, really doubt it.

  • GnomeTankGnomeTank What the what? Portland, OregonRegistered User regular
    I agree, it's disappointing as hell. But "style over substance" is kind of the mantra of AAA gaming right now...and developers aren't being hurt by it, because 'we' keep buying the games.

    Sagroth wrote: »
    Oh c'mon FyreWulff, no one's gonna pay to visit Uranus.
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  • SyphonBlueSyphonBlue The studying beaver That beaver sure loves studying!Registered User regular
    Yeah I don't give a shit if the city sizes are smaller this game looks fucking great.

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  • KlykaKlyka DO you have any SPARE BATTERIES?Registered User regular
    I was looking forward to this but now that I caught up with it again, I don't even want to look at it anymore.

    I know it's usually frowned upon, but in this very instance all I can think is: "Fucking casuals."

    SC2 EU ID Klyka.110
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