A challenge to the SC4 fanatics!

[baertooth 330]

As it's been pointed out in several different ways already, fair or not, the comparison will be made.

And if I'm going to spend a lot of time on building a city, I have to ask myself which I prefer, and I would have to say I would rather play Simcity 4/Rushhour than CitiesXL and wouldn't really miss the fancy 3D or bendy roads.

[Evillions 552]

Lets put it this way.

Sc4 = For keeps, you're not renting a city or content for a certain period of time.

CitesXL = You either pay and get "rented" content and cities. Or you don't pay and you get nothing. No mass tranist, nothing. Just pure roads and buildings.

Verdict- I'd much rather have SC4 than CXL if they allowed Custom Content for SP and PO. Like PO gets SP and PO content. And SP people get only SP content only. But really, with this MMO, there's never going to be custom content one way or the other. Just don't buy until those juicy reviews comes in.

[RedImperator 16]

Originally posted by: Fourjays

The whole "custom content isn't profitable" argument doesn't work, as proven by EA themselves with the Sims franchise. There is a huge amount of custom content. One of the things EA did with the Sims 3 was to get all the content creators involved to see what they could do with it.

I think that any future Sim City should take the Sims approach and release expansions, and not to add stuff that should be there in the first place either. The Sims 2 was great with all the expansions, but was still good without them. It was only after an expansion pack came out that people would be like "it's so dull without the expansion". I played SC4 without RH for years and thoroughly enjoyed it. It is only now that I have played RH that I realise it is better with it. But with CXL people are saying it is dull and add-ons will make it better... this is not a good start.

Unfortunately for MC, even if they changed to an expansion pack model I wouldn't bother - the game mechanics are fundamentally flawed, and even an expansion pack can't fix that.quote>

This.

The Sims 2 has an absolutely gargantuan modding community; easily 3, 4 times larger than SimCity 4's, probably much more.  My girlfriend's DL'd hair take up more hard drive space than my entire Plugins folder.  The modders were actually directly competing with EA, which released "stuff packs" in-between expansion packs to add more hair, clothes, furniture, etc., and a major selling point of the XPs was all the new stuff they added.  And EA made a flipping fortune off TS2. 

The idea that you can't let the users make custom content because you won't make any money that way is completely ridiculous; if anything, most game companies are going the other way, saving money on artists' and coders' salaries by letting the fan community provide extra content and even bugfixes (hello, Paradox Interactive) for free.  Monte Cristo isn't allowing custom content because they decided to make an MMO instead of a traditional standalone simulator, and they want to lock players into subscriptions by taking all their toys away if they quit.  That's what strikes me as skeezy about the whole thing; I'm not opposed to an MMO model if the MMO adds value (such as interaction with other cities), but hell will freeze over before I pay a monthly fee just to play a non-crippled version of a city simulator.

[Craig-Abcvs 1,595]

 

[wrileys 0]

If they would come up with a demo, they could use bit torrent to distribute it, that is what happened with windows 7 beta versions....

[MINIggy03 227]

I get the following in a $10 game:

region play

mass transit

a city budget

terraforming

true zoning

CitiesXL has none of that and it asks for $40, plus $6 a month to eventually get rental features such as trains, busses, and sold-separately GEM's. If we're going to compare a modern city simulator to a 6 year old $10 game, you'd HOPE the modern simulator would have MORE features, MORE content...not LESS and ask you to pay extra to get features we've had since 1989. Unfortunately, CitiesXL is less content but with features that are sold separately. Everyone likes to say "You get new content every month" but I've yet to see this past fixing their own bugs and issues. It looks like CitiesXL will get new content every 4-6 months and when you get it you'll have to pay for it, and continue to pay monthly to keep it. That is not a way to keep customers coming back for more.  

By all means, go ahead and spend $6 a month to keep the cities you build and the features you rent. Otherwise, spend $10 and get yourself a complete game you can keep that has way more features and depth.

Unfortunately Monte Cristo is continuing to shoot themselves in the foot with their business model, and I don't see them releasing the trigger any time soon.  Simcity 4 hasn't lasted 6 years with a strong fan base by nickel and diming their customers. It has thrived because of it's community and all MC is doing is fracturing theirs.  

[soltangris 42]

Your point is a valid one, but it

[gyzzzmo 0]

the original SC4(without RH) had alot more content than Cities XL, and is ALOT more challenging. Therefor its also much more replayable and more fun.

In purchase price theyre both equal, but Cities XL is more expensive because you have to pay for extra content, content that was already there in Simcity4.

I cant really blame MC, i suppose theyre just too small to deliver a ready package like Simcity4, they need the extra money/time for the extra content. But that also means that Cities XL is not as good as Simcity4, and i'm definitely not going to extend my PO because the game got boring quickly and extra content takes too long.

Gyzzzmo

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Without Rush Hour, SimCity 4 had 1 tax rate for all classes. Monte Cristo said that in an upcoming patch more detailed or complex wealth-based tax will be implemented.

[John-SJ 13]

Originally posted by: 8elhaj

SC4 was terrible without RH.

I will see how CXL will be.

But we should expect more for a new-gen game than a game done 7 years ago.quote>

Statements like this make me laugh every time I read them.  Like others, I would think that anyone would expect a game that was made today to be better than a game that came out 7 years ago.  If it were, then the supporters of the new game wouldn't have to hide behind that illogical argument.

Does anyone expect Command and Conquer 4 to be better or worse than the C& C of 7 years ago?  When Supreme Commander was new, was it a step ahead or a step behind the games that were out 7 yesrs earlier?  Was Civ IV better or worse than Civ III?

Those are a few examples I can think of, I am sure there are hundreds of others.  The point is, most often, new game offerings are better, right out of the box than their predecessors.  I expected, wrongly, Cities XL to follow that trend.

It didn't, in my humble opinion.

[EAGCE 2]

You can't forget that Simcity 4 had the backing of the super giant EA and previous generations of SimCity to build off from, while MC is a small company starting from scratch. 

The cost to content ratio may be a bit higher with Cities XL but they're going in the right direction.

[north country dude 207]

Originally posted by: EAGCE

....., while MC is a small company starting from scratch. 

The cost to content ratio may be a bit higher with Cities XL but they're going in the right direction.

quote>

mmmm,...not exactly. They have been around for awhile (since 1995) and thier game designs have been primarily in the Economic Simulation genre, ie; they aren't starting from scratch.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Cristo_(company)

As for the direction they appear to be going in,..."profit from a niche market " seems to be the motivator here.

[cheuk18me94 0]

The game will as good as simcity 4 if you pay for planet offer, but the constraint is that you can't have any mod?

But you can't get any/few update on solo-mode. Let's see if MC can release bus for expansion pack for solo mode at least?

So. this game is not comparable with simcity4.

CXL is just a drop in the simcity 4( a sea)............

If CXL want to be suceesful, just have free/expansion pack to solo mode. Solo mode should be the forus.