"This is the first truly multiplayer Sim City."

[Firebird 40]

What is the consensus on this thought? It appears that Maxis is going to make this version of Sim City almost revolve around multiplayer gameplay. In this video from simcity.com, they go into explaining how deeply two nearby cities effect each other. Even to the point where pollution from one city can ruin the safety of another. It's shown in the trailer that muck from an industrial city clogs the mutual powerplant, blowing the power for both nearby cities. This causes both mayors to have to work together to solve the problem, and quell the anger of both their rioting sims. It's really cool sounding on paper, but honestly I find myself being a little skeptical. I, like a lot of people, get really protective over my creations and don't want people mucking them up without my knowledge. But then again... if the multiplayer is similar to Minecraft... then you've got my attention.

Source video.

Screen cap of Origin website calling the game, 'Online Only.'

  Edited March 7, 2012 by Firebird  

[TekindusT 3,809]

I will have a clear policy with this matter: "My cities are mine, not my Sims', not my friend's. Mine".

At least, seems that the social features are not kings here; I'll finish my opinion when I see some actual screenshots.

[nashville nelson 51]

Think about the possibilities! As far as i understand this you can have one region for yourself or you can choose to play with others. When you as the region starter are able to ban people in your region or the region is by invite only you have full control on what is happening in your region. One can have a farmland region with small towns across the region, the suburb dreams of LA or a New York style city. When you play a region by yourself you are only affected by worldwide pollution.

[2farnorth 26]

Technically, it ads realism into the game, as parts of major roads will have to be approved/built by different people. However, "trolling" could happen, with one player deliberate trying to destroy another's city.

[Azurespecter 506]

I think the multiplayer could be amazing as long as I have people that I enjoy working with in the same region. I think Simtropolis will be a fantastic place to meet and prepare a good multiplayer team for SimCity, and I actually plan on organizing a team here when the game gets closer to release. Tryouts maybe? haha

[Craig-Abcvs 1,595]

Multi-player will be fine as long as we can choose who we play with. EA/Maxis is talking about 'friends'... that is people we chose to play with. Also if multiplayer is supported 1-16... that is not that ridiculously huge, and certainly does not indicate that random people from anywhere on the internet will suddenly be able to gate crash your region and muck up hours of your work.

To a degree we already have this in the form of City Journal Unions... players that work together to play out a certain game scenario ... have there been squabbles and disagreements in the past with CJ Unions? Sure... that is the nature of working collaboratively... we don't always agree with each other...

...the key is to choose your friends wisely... no one will force you to play with anyone if you don't want to.

[doorknob60 11]

Works for me as long as either:

1. All the cities that affect each other are mine, like regions are in SC4, just more connected and complex (a good thing, adds realism); and/or

2. I choose who to work with like friends from real life or Simtropolis, not random people or anything

I know EA can be annoying (sometimes real annoying), but they aren't completely stupid, so I'm sure it will work along the lines of that, so I'm not worried about this aspect will play out, it should be alright.

[Charlie_Zane 963]

I was suprised when they annonced it was going to have multiplayer, but i guess it will be easier to look for inspiration on the region your on, and look at other people's cities.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

With groups of up to sixteen players per instance of the game, that is going to have to be one gigantic server. I suspect they'll need either a mainframe or a cloud of micro-system servers. The real-time aspects may be difficult to manage, as each user must have a full set of queues and there must be a way of posting these without system lockups.

Of course with virtual systems, only one copy of the game text need be present provided it is multi-taskable. However as load grows additional instances might be advantageous. If all versions are on-line, I don't see much memory requirement for the playing station. I am thinking of a big transaction processor, perhaps, rather than a game, but I don't see that there is any philosophical nor system obstacles in the server having the game text and only graphics and human interface happening at the PC end. This militates against stand alone versions. Studies have shown that multi-tasking/multi-processing hits the knee of its performance curve somewhere around the entry of the fourth CPU core into the mix. You get something less than 20% utilization out of the fourth processor. This is historical from many years ago, so I am sorry but I cannot provide a reference.

[croxis 150]

Rock paper shotgun has more details: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/03/08/back-from-simulation-city-inside-maxis-glass-box/

Sim City is going to be using the internet for a few clever features too. It’s “Fully online buzzword compliant”. It’s got support for cloud saves, you can access statistics about what’s going on in your game world from a browser, the multiplayer is based on the asynchronous server model: So you can interact with friends and enemies without needing to coordinate to be playing at the same time.

....

If your internet lockdown bullshit alarm is raised at this point, you’re not alone. However:

If the internet goes out for a bit, you can still play.

And:

To be clear: We’re still very focussed on supporting a focussed single player experience.

Reassuring, although the “A bit” is a little worrying. Hopefully it’s not going to be locked down by any always online DRM, but at least they’ve confirmed it’s not going to drop you out of your game if your router’s on the fritz.

[Firebird 40]

^ That is actually quite comforting to hear. A lot more like what I would want the multiplayer to be! Thanks. Now, hopefully the DRM won't suck.