SimCity: Gameplay

[Mark Waybill 242]

I expect people expecting to run with WiFi may be at a disadvantage because of the additional overheads.

That's the one thing which worries me, but one can't get in the way of progress and I can see the benefits to server based gaming.

What do people think about a Regional Governor with a staff?

I personally would enjoy it if I could found a colony in a new region, make a surplus in some product, trade inter-regionally and have a Council of Members for various purposes, such as a Member for Transport or a Member for the Environment, and after 50 SimYears a fine city has arisen from those humble beginnings. Then again I spent my lunch breaks at school drawing maps of imaginary cities so I'm a tad biased there.

[Vahr 341]

Maxis has officially stated there'll be a fully fleshed out single player (See Multiplayer discussion).

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Maxis has officially stated there'll be a fully fleshed out single player (See Multiplayer discussion).

Yes, but wouldn't it be a nice option if a single player region could join in universal trade relations with other regions? One thing that is really missing in SC4 is the ability to create trade relations between cities, let alone regions. Perhaps some kind of commodities market?

[Mark Waybill 242]

It would be nice to have a farm hinterland that makes goods, sends them by rail to a town/city, and sells them at various places. With GlassBox this could be done as IRL, it would be nice to think a Sim buying apples at a market in the city was buying something made across the other side of my region.

[Asheroo 53]

Maxis has officially stated there'll be a fully fleshed out single player (See Multiplayer discussion).

Yes, but wouldn't it be a nice option if a single player region could join in universal trade relations with other regions? One thing that is really missing in SC4 is the ability to create trade relations between cities, let alone regions. Perhaps some kind of commodities market?

I myself have actually always used cheats to develop my cities. I just want to come in and create the cities of my dreams without worrying about money. I don't mind about the region's economy, environmental issues, service problems etc, but I'd like to have unlimited money to develop my cities. Without the cheats, I won't be able to enjoy the game as much (I've tried it in SC4 and CXL) as I'd like to just get in and build the imaginary cities I see made up in my mind, instead of being caught up in money issues.

EDIT: I have Tweeted the Sim City Twitter account asking if there will be cheats in single player and said how I used them a lot in SC4 so there would be no worries with money. Hopefully I'll get a reply and will post back here if I do.

  Edited March 20, 2012 by Asheroo  

[City Planner 121]

I've never heard of a reboot (other than what you do to a PC). It just seems a bit confusing to me, what's wrong with Sim City 5?

Even if the game is officially just called "Sim City", I think to differentiate between it and SC4 or any other previous release, we'll have to come up with another name for it.

By naming it only Simcity, it leaves them a way "out". If we remember there were files in Simcity Societies that had reference to SC5, but yet they wisely named it as Societies.

By not naming this one SC5, they are leaving themselves a way out and can always produce a SC5 later on.

As far as a reboot goes, I've heard of this before, most recently with Stronghold 3, saying that they were doing a reboot to SH1 and SH2, but most of us know what a catastrophe that turned out to be. I only hope that Maxis/EA doesn't make the same mistake and make SC so primitive and 'rebooted' that people are going to hate it.

[Asheroo 53]

I've never heard of a reboot (other than what you do to a PC). It just seems a bit confusing to me, what's wrong with Sim City 5?

Even if the game is officially just called "Sim City", I think to differentiate between it and SC4 or any other previous release, we'll have to come up with another name for it.

By naming it only Simcity, it leaves them a way "out". If we remember there were files in Simcity Societies that had reference to SC5, but yet they wisely named it as Societies.

By not naming this one SC5, they are leaving themselves a way out and can always produce a SC5 later on.

Wow, you're being way too skeptical there.

It's been almost 10 years since Sim City 4, the name Sim City 5 won't mean as much today as simply just Sim City. It's 2012, not 2003, believe it or not a decade has gone by since the last Maxis SC. The name Sim City alone says enough about the game, it's a 'big' enough name.

[Cockatoo 2,256]

Yeah, I'm quietly confident that Maxis isn't going to need an 'out' with this one. All the signs so far are saying they've learned the big lessons from Societies.

I still think SC5 would have been a better choice of name, just to avoid confusion and to designate the game as the real successor to SC4. I still think we'll end up unofficially calling it something else (probably SC 2013), but I guess for now I can live with just 'Sim City'.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

OK, we are all agreed that the 'brand name' is SimCity by Maxis. A subordinate nomenclature to distinguish it from older generations of the same name is probably going to be needed on sites like this which has a very long memory. That said, this is a whole new technology.

Things are possible now that in 2003 would have taken a main frame. This machine I am on now is nearly as sophisticated as a large mainframe I once used. The only things missing are the rather large associated decimal processor, and the matrix processor that had hardware instructions for directly manipulating decimal numbers (including 64 digit floating point) and matrices that occupied up to 1 MB of memory (large matrices were handled with multiple operations). I really don't need either, as I am not trying to plot orbital elements to Mars without mid-course corrections.

Developments in graphics have come a long way from 'dumb' terminal consoles to the fancy GUIs and other displays and animations we have now. Heck, even windows being moved around can be animated easily now. The PC revolution has done as much for computing as the idea of a stored program (von Neumann machine).

I think we are embarking into a realm that was previous limited to very large companies running distributed transaction-processing systems. It can start small with a server and a set of client PCs, but nothing stops this from growing into a global server network.

  Edited March 21, 2012 by A Nonny Moose  

[nashville nelson 51]

EDIT: I have Tweeted the Sim City Twitter account asking if there will be cheats in single player and said how I used them a lot in SC4 so there would be no worries with money. Hopefully I'll get a reply and will post back here if I do.

Why isn´t Simtropolis asking questions about the game on twitter? Or maybe ´Simtropolis´ (Dirk) can ask Maxis if they are willing to answer some of the questions which are discussed here over and over again. (Sandbox, Offline SP, Tile size, will modding be allowed, ...).

[Epilef 57]

EDIT: I have Tweeted the Sim City Twitter account asking if there will be cheats in single player and said how I used them a lot in SC4 so there would be no worries with money. Hopefully I'll get a reply and will post back here if I do.

Why isn´t Simtropolis asking questions about the game on twitter? Or maybe ´Simtropolis´ (Dirk) can ask Maxis if they are willing to answer some of the questions which are discussed here over and over again. (Sandbox, Offline SP, Tile size, will modding be allowed, ...).

I think Simtropolis should try some form of communication with developers, and serve as a bridge between us and them.

It would be nice for them to have a more precise feedback from the community, and would be good for us to have important information without distortions and fanciful speculations.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

This is a form of communication. it is a public forum and no 'guests' are excluded. We don't need to complicate matters and increase the burden on Dirk. Just stick here, and keep going. The social networks are far too general for this specialized topic. It would be just more clutter. And in case no one realized it before, Simtropolis is a fiction run by Dirk and a set of volunteers. It has no corporate existence to speak of.

---

Now for a general comment, which is why I signed on to this thread anyway.

We have thrown out a great many ideas in just three weeks since the announcement. Most of them cannot be implemented in the time frame allotted to get the game on the street. Don't be disappointed if your cherished wants and wishes don't appear immediately. I expect this game to have a long life of expansion packs and perhaps the building of a library of DLC and other material over time.

There are some items that need clarification, but one wonders if these items are clear even in the minds of the designers? We have thrown them a mishmash of ideas, some practical and others not very practical. This writer is a guilty as anyone.

Programming anything takes time. And, strangely, in my many years of application experience, the smaller the writing team, the sooner you get your application. Unwieldy structures of personnel in a project like this only delays it by complicating it with bureaucracy. I truly hope the team at Maxis is not very big. I think ten people including the librarian and the quality assurance group should be sufficient.

We want a fully debugged application that cannot crash under any circumstances without a full diagnostic trace back. Initial releases of programs often are a bit buggy because some ignorant executive forces it on the street before debugging is complete, so let's give the team a little leeway on this.

Let us also hope that a selected few (of us?) will be chosen to do an exposure (beta) test of this product. It should hit the market without an immediate follow on set of patches.

Best wishes and good programming to the team.

  Edited March 23, 2012 by A Nonny Moose  

[City Planner 121]

Wow, you're being way too skeptical there.

It's been almost 10 years since Sim City 4, the name Sim City 5 won't mean as much today as simply just Sim City. It's 2012, not 2003, believe it or not a decade has gone by since the last Maxis SC. The name Sim City alone says enough about the game, it's a 'big' enough name.

And you're being way to optimistic.

I seem to remember you being overly optimistic with CXL too, and then one day did a complete about face. I hope you don't pull that again.

Please stop putting me down with your comments about what I am, when you really don't know, else I'm going to feel the need to do the same to you.

Thank you,

  Edited March 24, 2012 by City Planner  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Wow, you're being way too skeptical there.

It's been almost 10 years since Sim City 4, the name Sim City 5 won't mean as much today as simply just Sim City. It's 2012, not 2003, believe it or not a decade has gone by since the last Maxis SC. The name Sim City alone says enough about the game, it's a 'big' enough name.

And you're being way to optimistic.

I seem to remember you being overly optimistic with CXL too, and then one day did a complete about turn. I hope you don't pull that again.

Please stop putting me down with your comments else I'm going to need to lash out at you and do the same to you.

Thank you,

You guys need to cool your jets. Everything in this forum is speculation. I am waiting to see what actually happens.

[meowza 230]

Solution: ST chat with Maxis.

All these uncertainties are driving people nuts - I included. And I definitely don't like the feeling of it.

[Catmando 7]

Solution: ST chat with Maxis.

All these uncertainties are driving people nuts - I included. And I definitely don't like the feeling of it.

I don't really think this is necessary or, for that matter, optimal. I would prefer we get together as a community and come up with a list of, say, ten questions that most urgently need to be addressed by Maxis. Fairly simple questions, easily answered but vital to ease the anxiety we all have. A few suggestions:

1. How comprehensive will the offline play be? (Emphasis on the word offline, not single-player.)

2. Are city tile sizes like 2x2 km set in stone or expected to be changed?

3. Is the transportation customization expected to be at least as varied as vanilla Simcity 4? (Other comparisons rather than vanilla: Simcity 4 Deluxe, SC4 with basic NAM, SC4 with NAM/SAM/RHW)

And so on. I couldn't see more than an hour spent answering these questions and a shift in attitude early on from "oh dear God what if EA wants to screw us over!" to "Hey, these sounds great!" might be beneficial in the long run for the reception, and, of course, the sales of this game. It'll also lower the collective blood pressure of this forum.

[meowza 230]

^ That's also a valid option. Though I think ST chat works in a similar way - not sure if it's still the case nowadays...

Four devs had the opportunity to answer Reddit questions within a three hour session, yet there were still so many questions that they left unanswered. So I don't think the amount of time spent answering our questions will be a real issue. Instead, questions that they are only allowed to answer for the time being is what is going to matter for them.

If I had a question though, it would be:

Is Maxis still taking in suggestions from ST? If yes, please give us an example of a valuable and gameplay-worthy suggestion that you had to add or edit in during development.

[Asheroo 53]

Wow, you're being way too skeptical there.

It's been almost 10 years since Sim City 4, the name Sim City 5 won't mean as much today as simply just Sim City. It's 2012, not 2003, believe it or not a decade has gone by since the last Maxis SC. The name Sim City alone says enough about the game, it's a 'big' enough name.

And you're being way to optimistic.

I seem to remember you being overly optimistic with CXL too, and then one day did a complete about turn. I hope you don't pull that again.

Please stop putting me down with your comments else I'm going to need to lash out at you and do the same to you.

Thank you,

You guys need to cool your jets. Everything in this forum is speculation. I am waiting to see what actually happens.

Precisely, and that's my main point, and why you shouldn't be overly skeptical, its like being overly optimistic.

And no, I'm not being optimistic, I'm remaining open. I was a kid back in the old CXL days and have grown quite a bit since then. And once again, it was Monte Cristo - a bunch of city building amateurs. So please, forget the CXL days, they're gone and history, and don't put me down either for who I was back then, I do regret a lot.

Anyways, that's it from me for now. I'm just tired of seeing all of this speculation and skepticism, it's worse than any high optimism. I remain neutral and open to all information, making my own judgements, but no conclusions.

[DazzaDazza 29]

Yeah, I'm quietly confident that Maxis isn't going to need an 'out' with this one. All the signs so far are saying they've learned the big lessons from Societies.

I still think SC5 would have been a better choice of name, just to avoid confusion and to designate the game as the real successor to SC4. I still think we'll end up unofficially calling it something else (probably SC 2013), but I guess for now I can live with just 'Sim City'.

i agree SC5 is a better name,

look at Citys XL, Cites XL 2009 or was it 2011..................... or 2012...................., or all of them...... WHAT IS GOING ON HEAR..........

[Catmando 7]

Four devs had the opportunity to answer Reddit questions within a three hour session, yet there were still so many questions that they left unanswered. So I don't think the amount of time spent answering our questions will be a real issue. Instead, questions that they are only allowed to answer for the time being is what is going to matter for them.

The problem with that session was that, as far as I could tell, about 50% of people were asking the same thing, and that was questions about multiplayer. Worse, Maxis's answers ended up being the source of a lot of the anxiety I was talking about: rather than talk about offline mode, they talked about single player mode. If we give them very clear, explicit, simple questions, I think it would be a lot more effective. That opens the door to better questions about the gameplay rather than forty people asking the devs in slightly different wording "Will we need to be online/need Origin/etc.?" I'm interested in a lot of aspects of the game that haven't been talked about as much as I'd like, but all this worry over multiplayer is pushing everything else onto the backburners.

[nashville nelson 51]

And the other 50% were saying:"Don´t dumb the game down! Don´t make another SCS!"

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

With the result that little, if any, real information was gleaned. This is why chat won't work.

[Mark Waybill 242]

This is why selected individuals from forums like this ought to be the ones asking the questions at such events. In that time with that amount of questions I could have squeezed way more milk outta that cow.

[Catmando 7]

There's no reason why we couldn't just make a list of good questions now and pray Maxis takes notice. I think it's plausible they too noticed everyone was basically asking the same thing on Reddit.

[Mark Waybill 242]

I don't know how we would go about arranging such a thing. There was a suggestion Dirk ought to do it, but I think as long as a general consensus was reached regarding the questions any of us could theoretically represent the interests of the SC community. I don't know how these things are arranged. Does anyone know how to even contact Maxis?

[Catmando 7]

I don't know how we would go about arranging such a thing. There was a suggestion Dirk ought to do it, but I think as long as a general consensus was reached regarding the questions any of us could theoretically represent the interests of the SC community. I don't know how these things are arranged. Does anyone know how to even contact Maxis?

Well, the whole idea of us coming to a consensus about it is that it would ideally better represent the community than any one person asking the questions. Taking a vote on which issues most urgently need to be addressed would be a nice way to reach a consensus, at least among registered users on Simtropolis visiting the Simcity 2013 forum (nothing is perfect). I don't know how to contact Maxis, though. Even then it comes down to Maxis actually wanting to or being able to answer the questions. I wanted my post to deal with the feasibility of making such a list, though, not the feasibility of getting the questions answered, because as I see it and as I think we've shown that's a whole 'nother ballpark.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The basic problem is that everyone has a private itch to scratch. However, I think we can agree that the main question is:

Is SimCity to be a free-standing PC product with only optional attachment to a central server?

Everything else is commentary.

[Catmando 7]

The basic problem is that everyone has a private itch to scratch. However, I think we can agree that the main question is:

Is SimCity to be a free-standing PC product with only optional attachment to a central server?

Everything else is commentary.

I almost fully agree, with the caveat that each person has not one private itch but about half a dozen. Personally, mine are the retention of a grid, of disasters, and of the classic Maxis humor, and the expansion and simplification of modding and custom content creation, of terraforming tools, and of transportation customization, in no particular order.

[DmainEvent 195]

The basic problem is that everyone has a private itch to scratch. However, I think we can agree that the main question is:

Is SimCity to be a free-standing PC product with only optional attachment to a central server?

Everything else is commentary.

I almost fully agree, with the caveat that each person has not one private itch but about half a dozen. Personally, mine are the retention of a grid, of disasters, and of the classic Maxis humor, and the expansion and simplification of modding and custom content creation, of terraforming tools, and of transportation customization, in no particular order.

Any list of question must include clarifying if there will be any way to get a different sized map then the 2Kx2K map tile size they spoke about. With a caveat for 16KMx16KM being the preferred map size for those of us who will posses 64Gigs of Ram at time of release.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The basic problem is that everyone has a private itch to scratch. However, I think we can agree that the main question is:

Is SimCity to be a free-standing PC product with only optional attachment to a central server?

Everything else is commentary.

I almost fully agree, with the caveat that each person has not one private itch but about half a dozen. Personally, mine are the retention of a grid, of disasters, and of the classic Maxis humor, and the expansion and simplification of modding and custom content creation, of terraforming tools, and of transportation customization, in no particular order.

Any list of question must include clarifying if there will be any way to get a different sized map then the 2Kx2K map tile size they spoke about. With a caveat for 16KMx16KM being the preferred map size for those of us who will posses 64Gigs of Ram at time of release.

I don't think so. The really hot button is the one above. The rest will come later.