SimCity: Multiplayer Discussion

[Charlie_Zane 963]

It will be very interesting to see two very different cities by two people working together. It looks very promising.

[jrm541992 17]

I'm expecting the multiplayer in the new SimCity to play similar to the multiplayer in OpenTTD. Anybody else got ideas on how the multiplayer will work?

[InCommandOfCars 22]

My opinion is Multiplayer for Simcity (2013) should work like Age of Empires and have a network based game instead of a online, where there is a host and people can log into their network and play. Like OpenTTD the person would run it and others could join.

I think that would be a more effective way of tackling the problem because multiplayer would more so be for friends and not an inter nation competition.

ON THAT TOPIC, when they said 'Leaderboard' i think they meant the single player cities information is uploaded and compared, so if my city 'Lukeisawesomtopia' has 46,000 residents and 'Jakesawesomeville' has 54,000 residents his city could be ranked higher in population but my city could rank higher in recourse or education or even wealth.

That is how i would like to see the game run as it would be more less CitiesXL and more Simcity.

[jacksunny 741]

I would love a leaderboard.

[KeanoManu 42]

My opinion is Multiplayer for Simcity (2013) should work like Age of Empires and have a network based game instead of a online, where there is a host and people can log into their network and play. Like OpenTTD the person would run it and others could join.

I think that would be a more effective way of tackling the problem because multiplayer would more so be for friends and not an inter nation competition.

ON THAT TOPIC, when they said 'Leaderboard' i think they meant the single player cities information is uploaded and compared, so if my city 'Lukeisawesomtopia' has 46,000 residents and 'Jakesawesomeville' has 54,000 residents his city could be ranked higher in population but my city could rank higher in recourse or education or even wealth.

That is how i would like to see the game run as it would be more less CitiesXL and more Simcity.

That's clearly the best way to do it, and it would allow a fully developed SP as well as MP. If this was the case, the fear of a crippled SP wouldn't exist.

The problem is... They won't earn any extra money with it.

Do people really think they will go for a free multiplayer solution when there's possibilities to earn more money on a pay-as-you-play multiplayer?

[Sap59 3]

It sounds like the regions from SC4 now have multiplayer options and citytiles will influence each other more than before. Overall they seem good changes/options.

We have to make sure they don't remove regions from single player though. Like Cities XL did.

I couldn't agree more, I very much doubt that I will be playing MP so I would really like to see that they keep regions for Single Player too.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Some people want conflict. If you find you don't want this, you can vote such players off your region, I suppose.

[guuz 15]

It sounds like the regions from SC4 now have multiplayer options and citytiles will influence each other more than before. Overall they seem good changes/options.

We have to make sure they don't remove regions from single player though. Like Cities XL did.

I couldn't agree more, I very much doubt that I will be playing MP so I would really like to see that they keep regions for Single Player too.

If you look at the slides from the GlassBox presentation, multipayer seems to work like regions influencing each other by sending "boxes" of information.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

A single player should not be restricted to a single city. Perhaps this is necessary for Multi-player but I can see no real reason for this as long as a player can only open one city at a time, and it must 'belong' to him (he has write permission on the file).

[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.

When asked about mods, they were just a little cagey, and couldn’t reveal any details but said:

We’re huge fans of our modding comunity. If you look at how Sim City 4 is still relveant today, it’s mostly because of the mods. We’ve designed things to be modable, andwWe’re using the same patching system from Sim City 3000 and 4. Glass Box is built to be modable.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

As this discussion continues it is becoming clear that this game will use the "cloud" technology currently being used by some vendors for file storage. If this is the case, no one will have a plugins list. All will be available for the asking. Perhaps this will be the success that Spore was not. A set of massive cloud nodes will become necessary if this catches on. If you have a million clients and collect $20 a quarter from each of them, that puts a lot of funds in your hands regularly. I like this idea of on-going cash flow.

The problem is whether they will adequately fund the initial node.

[Terring 6,473]

By having a modable regional Simcity, I can imagine myself building a clean future city with a space elevator in the middle, just next to a Medieval village with a large castle in the middle. Today the castle, tomorrow the Moon

[Ocram's Razr 963]

I hope the Multi Player is more Anno 2070 and less Cities XL Planet Offer.

[soltangris 42]

Oh yeah..... so we'll end up with a second Planet offer

[HookerHeels 309]

Must be fun to have a lot more interaction between cities, and maybe we can move on from the PEG garbage chute/ docks

Well now you can dump your garbage into your friends' cities using the garbage chute and cause mass pollution. I'm not moving on

: @ Jack

[Thetford 22]

I'm just wondering if all players will be live and in real time as in, if we won't be able to use time/speed controls, or if all players are required to be logged in at all times, or if they are allowed to step out for a while (with intention of coming back) if their city will be in suspended animation, or running along merrily while your at work. How regional is the region play, and how will it work? Do we get assigned? Is it first come first served on a region board? Do we get to modify the terrain? And will we have to pay to use it, or will it be like Steam games (or at least the ones I played such as The Ship)

These questions I'm sure will be answered in about a couple of seasons time.

[Terribletown USA 18]

Can't wait to underdevelop my city, wait for the region to explode, then lure all the rich sims and clean industry away from crowded and expensive neighboring cities

[Shishka 14]

I hope the Multi Player is more Anno 2070 and less Cities XL Planet Offer.

Actually, I was hoping that the multiplayer would be the opposite of that. I was hoping it would use the same concept like Cities XL had with 1 massive world (region) with tons of people playing on it all at once and you could buy and sell resources, dump garbage, etc. I still hope thats what they go for.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I hope the Multi Player is more Anno 2070 and less Cities XL Planet Offer.

Actually, I was hoping that the multiplayer would be the opposite of that. I was hoping it would use the same concept like Cities XL had with 1 massive world (region) with tons of people playing on it all at once and you could buy and sell resources, dump garbage, etc. I still hope thats what they go for.

I think it is clear that it won't be a MMOS. Multiple regions, 1 group per region, 1 to 16 players per group. Nothing says that more than one group can't have the same region, but its own copy thank you. As for "dirty tricks", I don't see why not, but SimCity has always been rather more polite than that and has avoided conflicts by malicious NPCs. I fail to see the 'fun' in upsetting someone's apple cart.

There is no reason for it to be 'like' any other system. I think taking a transaction processor approach is best with a shared environment using the client PC to hold the graphics layout and drivers and the human interface. The central server will simply post activities to the groups, and keep a master data base and journal for off-line group members. The conflict controls and commitment points should be kept by the server and notified to the stations. The actual simulation code need not reside on the PC, but only the I/O to suit the local system. This militates toward a very fast server with lots of queuing.

[Mark Waybill 242]

As long as you are playing with friends there shouldn't be any visits from Joe Trollface and his Butthole Brigade. Sounds like a rock group lol. Anyway if you do have an argument with a friend, they take it badly, and send a nuclear missile into your carefully built up CBD, there's something that might help. Saving the game. If each city is periodically auto saved like in CXL then if you want to load a previous version you can. Then the agents or wtvr that want to get to their resources or wtvr it is in your city and find it's the your city of 1995 and they are from their city of 2012 they will act like a failed job ad and leave. Hope that made sense. I'm sure that if you can save or load cities, download them etc, there should be a way to get a saved copy from past times before you and Susan P Haroldson from next door had a falling out and then insert said city into another group or make up with Sue and then reconnect your cities. I'm sure Maxis/EA/Origin will find a solution.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

They did say that you could join a quick play or random public region though those seem to be where the undesirable players would hang out.

Anno 2070 minus war is similar to Cities XL (except with an even more command and conquer style economy) where you grow and build resources that are often finite and then you can trade with NPCs or other players and look at their cities. The main screen lets you pull up leader boards and global statistics. So SimCity 2013 would be a mostly free market economy where you can set up trade (neighbor deals) with your immediate neighbors visible beyond your borders but pollution seeps through borders and you could export to or import from the global market if you have an international port (or a trade route to an international port in the region). The multiplayer home screen would let you look at leader boards, global economy statistics, and market values (base value plus modifying value) and surplus/deficits of goods/resources/products/tokens.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Strikes me that a backup is your responsibility. People should always have a recovery point, especially in a situation that might cause a rollback of several users.

For example, suppose you do something and your city does a CTD. You back up to your last save, which in a multi-player situation has to stop everyone in the group and back them up as well. This is not as simple as it sounds, and doing this with up to 16 players is a rather ugly thing.

In a transaction processing system, there is a concept of rollback/recovery that could fill this niche very well. As each transaction completes and the data base is considered safe, a cleanpoint is written on the transactions journal. This means that the data was OK at this point. If there is some kind of clash, everything on the journal up to the last cleanpoint is backed out, and rerun with the exception of the transaction that caused the failure. Only the user whose item caused the failure is notified. This is usually pretty fast, but users might notice a slight response delay. How this could apply to a game with multiple users is the question since some of the rollbacks could be forced (by a users wanting a restore), and not necessarily to the last cleanpoint.

I think there will be lots of journaling in this server, and it had better have a really good I/O system, probably not suitable for a bus oriented PC.

{This text was here three times because of resends (F5). It isn't always a solution.}

  Edited March 12, 2012 by A Nonny Moose  

[Ocram's Razr 963]

Anno 2070 has an autosave feature that automatically saves your game every 15 minutes by default. I usually end up deleting old autosaves but still keep all the important saves I did manually. Because Anno 2070 has all resources (maps, resources, buildings, ships, etc) saved on the computer of each player and you need to let the auto patcher run before playing online (there is premium content that is saved on your computer that you need to enter a code for, a code that is generated uniquely when you purchase said content), crashes to desktop are not too bad. I think that Anno 2070 has a save file on the servers for multiplayer games from the point that a second player joins until the point where the game is won (you can set win conditions for games, which are optional for continuous play single player).

The developers say that Glass box saves all the multiplayer games on the servers, "NO EXCEPTIONS" (a common Internet phrase) so this is a non-issue. There are no LAN parties (unlike SimCity 2000 network edition).

---

Edit: Splitting double post because my phone cannot delete and Simtropolis is having too many network problems to wait.

By the way, on forums my posts are mostly first hand accounts and paraphrasing and I type 'OR' all caps --- this would never fly in academia. I lost 2.5 points (out of 50) for not having only 2 OR 3 inline citations on a paper written on a 1st source database article because I did not look at the article on the day I wrote out the majority of my paper. Granted, I looked at the charts and article when I edited my paper.

  Edited March 12, 2012 by Blue Lightning  
Merged it for ya ;)

[Cob92 360]

Can't wait to underdevelop my city, wait for the region to explode, then lure all the rich sims and clean industry away from crowded and expensive neighboring cities

Don't forget the McMansions and strip malls!

  Edited March 13, 2012 by Cobhris96  

[simmaster07 1,220]

Just leaving this here for some of the naysayers.

[KeanoManu 42]

What exactly was the question?

They did confirm "Single Player" in the AMAA a few days ago - BUT they then added that even in Single Player you would be connected to the global market. This could destroy gameplay for those of us who wants to just build a good-looking city without too much managing (of money).

They also consistently use the word "single player" even though questions are asked about "offline mode".

Until they confirm that Single player will indeed be 100% single player with no interaction whatsoever with the online parts of the game i will be skeptical. And of course, Single Player has to have all the features that are available in Multiplayer, something that Cities XL didn't have for example. Much of the anti-online mentality here is rooted in how MonteCristo handled Cities XL.

On a more positive note though: The fact that Sim City 2013s multiplayer doesn't seem to be an MMO but more like a traditional free multiplayer makes it less likely for them to force player into online-gaming. But as i said, until they confirm it's a matter at least i would really like to get a clear answer on. For me it's the most important question at the moment.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The whole issue is a matter of what you get when you purchase this program. So far this is known (I think):

1. There will be an on-line connection.
2. The on-line connection will support multi-player groups of up to 16 players.
3. There will be a single-player mode.
4. It is not clear whether the single-player mode requires a connection to the server while playing.

Now, if what you get for your PC is the whole, complete game, then a stand-alone single player game is what you get.

However, if what you get is a client package that accesses the server no matter what because you don't have all the code, then that's that.

I do not see what the problem is, other than some vague privacy concerns.

In the case of players wanting to produce mods and lots, the only problem I see is that their work will be immediately exposed to the editors (human) on the server and adjudicated. There are both advantages and disadvantages in this. I, for one, don't see myself as contributing things to EA's pot without compensation.

Since, in the second case above, a server fee will be extracted from the players in all likelihood, the rewards for custom content could easily be in extended server time until license expiry.

  Edited March 14, 2012 by A Nonny Moose  

[Keigen Shu 17]

I have some doubts how the multiplayer would turn out, and I think Maxis has not focused much in it and only had a rough figure on how it would work. Given thier vague presentation about the multiplayer, we can only guess and hope for the best. On the bright side, they're making this moddable for the community, so I think the content aspect of the multiplayer will work like OpenTTD, with some exclusive pay-to-get mods.

My idea(or more like what I'm fantasizing how it would look like) is that a rough image of the region terrain will be generated Minecraft style (reconstructable, seed-based, infinite). A player (host) can start building a city in any part of the region they like, and then the actual city terrain will be generated (generated details can be random for replayability, and then sent to god mode (YAY~)). When new players join in, they can choose to build a new city within a certain limited range around all of the players in the region on the same region terrain. This is to make sure every city is connected in some way yet can still own 2*2km area.

[Daytripper 41]

However, if what you get is a client package that accesses the server no matter what because you don't have all the code, then that's that.

I do not see what the problem is, other than some vague privacy concerns.

I have more than "some vague privacy concerns" if we are required to be connected to the Origin servers the whole time we play Simcity 2013.

The Origin EULA 2. Consent to Collection and Use of Data states (emphasis added):

In addition to information that you give EA directly, EA collects nonpersonally identifiable (or anonymous) information for purposes of improving our products and services, providing services to you, facilitating the provision of software updates, dynamically served content and product support as well as communicating with you. The non-personally identifiable information that EA collects includes technical and related information that identifies your computer (including the Internet Protocol Address) and operating system, as well as information about your Application usage including but not limited to successful installation and/or removal), software, software usage and peripheral hardware. As noted above, this information is gathered periodically for purposes such as improving our products and services, troubleshooting bugs, and otherwise enhancing your user experience.

EA reserves the right to scan our entire PCs - files, programs and hardware usage - and send that info to EA. The EULA goes on to reserve the right to sell this info to any third party EA chooses.

And there is no option to opt out of this. If players don't agree to these terms, they cannot play any EA game that requires an Origin connection.

I don't think that this info is any of EA's business so it is very important to me whether Simcity 2013 will come with an off-line mode.

[jacksunny 741]

Everybody collects info about your usage. If you don't want to use these products, then don't use the following:

-Google products

-iOS

-Zynga Games

-Dropbox

and many more.