SimCity: Multiplayer Discussion

[MINIggy03 227]

If it's 16 players, that might mean 16 tiles in a region. So you can either build up a region by yourself, or invite/join others. Quick Play will probably put you into any public region that has available tiles.

Just a hunch!

[Tarkus 6,932]

If it's 16 players, that might mean 16 tiles in a region. So you can either build up a region by yourself, or invite/join others. Quick Play will probably put you into any public region that has available tiles.

Just a hunch!

I can't say with 100% certainty, but I'm probably 99% certain that will not be the case. It seems overly simplistic.

-Tarkus

[Daytripper 41]

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.

Collecting info about my usage of a particular product is different from scanning my entire PC for ALL files, software and hardware info, whether or not it is related to the product in question.

Other programs allow players to opt out of some or all of the info collection, turn off invasive features or limit the info collected. Origin's EULA gives it blanket rights to scan everything and sell everything if you want to use their programs at all.

[nashville nelson 51]

If it's 16 players, that might mean 16 tiles in a region. So you can either build up a region by yourself, or invite/join others. Quick Play will probably put you into any public region that has available tiles.

Just a hunch!

I can't say with 100% certainty, but I'm probably 99% certain that will not be the case. It seems overly simplistic.

-Tarkus

I also think there will be only 16 city tiles. When every player can play 2 cities (=32 tiles) in a region the region size must be 4x8, 2x16 or 1x32 tiles, i highly doubt that the region will not be a square. The next squarish number would be 64 tiles - 4 tiles for each player - this seems a little bit to big.

EDIT:

I was just reading about Origin and it seems like they have a different Eula for Germany. Origin only scans hardware specs and games installed with origin and they are not selling these information to 3rd parties.

  Edited March 16, 2012 by nashville nelson  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

My configuration is published publicly on my website. Only people with something to hide really care whether someone else scans their machine. I agree that it is inconvenient, but the general provisions of that license agreement are rather broad. I suspect someone who has the assets could break that thing in court, notwithstanding the legal staff of EA/Origin. Remember, what they are "invading" is a Personal Computer even if it is accessing a public network. Also, it is moot whether such a thing applies outside the jurisdiction of the State of California. What do they propose to do with people in other countries?

My feeling is that in a tit-for-tat ruling the provisions of that EULA could expose the Origin servers to a reversal of fortunes. Since they insist on a connection, all it takes is a hardware monitor on your Ethernet card to decode them, and hack them back.

I don't do anything secret on this machine, but if I did, I'd simply have a separate machine to play the game. I wouldn't get too excited about IP knowledge. It is easy enough to work through a chain of proxies and make it very difficult for them to find you. I am not on any operating system they have mentioned so far. If I put up the full security system on this machine, I doubt they could crack it. They are not the NSA or any of the associated agencies, and probably don't have the tools to just crack and scan any machine.

Once upon a time in the days when I was still working for a big computer manufacturer the company paid for me to attend a computer security course that was conducted by a defense contractor who really knew how to do this. I seriously doubt that EA would bother with all the handsprings. That EULA is just an umbrella, and I think it is too large. Some citizens outfit in the states will probably take them on sometime if they don't moderate that little piece of nonsense.

Then there is the natural defense. If you don't want them snooping into things, encrypt them. If they want to spend their resources cracking my files, more power to them. It will distract them from damaging others who might care.

  Edited March 16, 2012 by A Nonny Moose  

[Craig-Abcvs 1,595]

I think we are starting to wander away from the original topic... which is to discuss the merits of multi-player vs single player and how that might work for us while playing.

The scope of this thread is not to get into discussions regarding online user privacy. If you would like to discuss that we have a very nice General Off Topic section.

Craig-Abcvs

Simtropolis Moderator

[semo 14]

I'm excited that there will be an online aspect. Especially if you can build up a city for awhile in single player offline mode, and then export it to an online region (which could be doable if all of the tiles are the same size). I have friends in other cities and it will be nice to be able to play with (or against) each other in an online shared region.

[Catmando 7]

Simcity 4 kind of had an online aspect if I remember correctly, didn't it? Back on the old simcity.ea.com website? It's been such a long time I honestly don't remember for sure, but I thought there were multiplayer regions to play on or something.

Do you think it's worth trying to draw parallels to that thing, or is it too old to be relevant?

[jacksunny 741]

^I'm not sure. I do know however that a couple members sort of a had a multiplayer region going using Dropbox. I think everybody quit, but it was still an interesting thing to try.

[meowza 230]

SC4 had many bugs. Knowing that the new SC will be way more complex than previous titles, the game could possibly have a larger number of bugs upon release. Also, giving players the ability to mod might only open up avenues for online hackers and exploiters. And to think that this will be the first multiplayer simcity...

Really, I have serious worries for Maxis on this one... I just hope this doesn't end up as a disaster.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

There are simple control mechanisms that are pretty hard to crack, so I wouldn't worry too much about hackers. When you register you should be included in various access control lists which will give you permissions to use the items you've signed up for.

I like the idea of being able to have several people of like mind on a common region. It is not necessary for them to be on-line concurrently, but it has some nice social aspects if they are. Otherwise there needs to be an e-mail-like messaging system.

And with a multi-user region, the transaction processing aspect enters the view as various agents are propagated between city tiles over the region. This must happen, come to think of it, even if there is only a single user for a region.

I wonder if it will be possible to start a single user region then invite others to join it?

Possible sample access control list (ACL)

<region=1326549>

<region_name="

St

. Catharines">

<city="Downtown">

<Player="Joe Doakes">

<Player_Permissions="r,w">

</Player>

<Player="Richard Roe">

<Player_Permissions="r">

</Player>

</city>

</region>

All the XML preamble has been omitted, but I am sure this is understood. There is a lot to be said about XML. There is no reason why this could not be encrypted or put into a different form that would baffle casual hackers.

[DazzaDazza 29]

like most people I hope it not anther cites XL Plant offer,

also if there going to do trading between city’s, I hope they stay away from trading people as a resource because they cant think of anything thing ells, if there are better opportunities some where ells people will move there.

Stick to trading what the business produce, not the actual business its self like Cites XL

What to do,

Trade Commercial

e.g. business services,

what not do do

Trade offices, What?

The trouble with multilayer is your going to need to cities with different resource to promote trading, than you need maps that can only build certain types cities on, then you need to restrict players on how much of one resources they can build in on city to keep it far........ then you need a plant offer, and most imported you need to change your name to Cites XL..............

lets hope the game stil feels like a Sim City game,

  Edited March 17, 2012 by mrdazza_460  

[Tarkus 6,932]

If it's 16 players, that might mean 16 tiles in a region. So you can either build up a region by yourself, or invite/join others. Quick Play will probably put you into any public region that has available tiles.

Just a hunch!

I can't say with 100% certainty, but I'm probably 99% certain that will not be the case. It seems overly simplistic.

-Tarkus

I also think there will be only 16 city tiles. When every player can play 2 cities (=32 tiles) in a region the region size must be 4x8, 2x16 or 1x32 tiles, i highly doubt that the region will not be a square. The next squarish number would be 64 tiles - 4 tiles for each player - this seems a little bit to big.

Why would they define the number of tiles in a region based on a 1 per player in a 16-player game? Yeah, that might sound like an obvious tack at first, but it really isn't if you pose more existential questions about it. What if you have a 14-player game? And couldn't you have people playing more than one city tile? Also, look at SC4 regions . . . while the ones that came with the game by default (San Francisco, Berlin, London, Timbuktu and Fairview) were square, many user-created maps aren't. They also aren't all the same size. Fairview has an 8x8 config, San Francisco has a 15x15 config, and the other three have 16x16 configs.

Again, while we do know there will be regions and there will be improved mechanics between tiles, we have no more specifics beyond that. Perhaps for a default region, yeah, you might have that, but it could get old and feel very constraining quickly if other region configurations aren't possible. The config.bmp system in SC4 makes these other configurations very easily possible, and while this is also in the realm of speculation, having seen what our mappers can do (e.g. drunkapple, blade2k5, etc.), I would consider it very likely they'd include a mechanism like that in there. Forcing a 4x4 square on everyone all the time would basically be shooting themselves in the foot.

-Tarkus

  Edited March 18, 2012 by Tarkus  

[flowmotion 24]

Simcity 4 kind of had an online aspect if I remember correctly, didn't it? Back on the old simcity.ea.com website? It's been such a long time I honestly don't remember for sure, but I thought there were multiplayer regions to play on or something.

Do you think it's worth trying to draw parallels to that thing, or is it too old to be relevant?

Hi Catmando -- Maxis did announce a similar online multiplay region sharing feature for SC4. However, I don't think they ever shipped it - they just had a website where you could download different regions.

PS: I'm sure this has been discussed elsewhere, but its too bad all the content from the SimCity.com site is gone now

[Catmando 7]

Hi Catmando -- Maxis did announce a similar online multiplay region sharing feature for SC4. However, I don't think they ever shipped it - they just had a website where you could download different regions.

Aha! I tried going to check with the Wayback Machine. I think I found what you're talking about:

It seems to be "multiplayer" type thing I was thinking of. Also, If you want to see the rest of the old site for nostalgia's sake, you should be able to visit most of it with this link. I had some "browser incompatibility issues" on most snapshots of the website, but that time seems to work all right.

At any rate, getting back to the topic, I think we can at least conclude from this that Maxis never had multiplayer on their website for Simcity 4, although they may have tried to get something up and running. This doesn't really tell us much about the new Simcity, although it seems to me if they were trying to do multiplayer back in 4 they're at least taking the idea as less an afterthought and more a core mechanic of the game this time around.

[flowmotion 24]

Ah, thank you! SimCityScape - no wonder I couldn't find anything via Google. There is some description of how it worked here (works in IE only it seems). My only memory is that it fell far short of what had been promised and people were generally disappointed. Hopefully they can work out the kinks for SimCity 5.

[Mootilda 76]

The problem with SimCityScape was that people didn't follow the rules. One of the main rules was that you couldn't change the terrain in major ways (obviously minor terraforming is necessary). Unfortunately, many people just replaced the SimCityScape city with their own city from a completely different region, so that the edges no longer matched and the region just looked like a set of completely unrelated cities.

I believe that there was also a problem with neighborhood connections. There was no way to negotiate connections with other people, so each person would create their own, which inevitably didn't match up with their neighbors.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The problem with SimCityScape was that people didn't follow the rules. One of the main rules was that you couldn't change the terrain in major ways (obviously minor terraforming is necessary). Unfortunately, many people just replaced the SimCityScape city with their own city from a completely different region, so that the edges no longer matched and the region just looked like a set of completely unrelated cities.

I believe that there was also a problem with neighborhood connections. There was no way to negotiate connections with other people, so each person would create their own, which inevitably didn't match up with their neighbors.

With the large server model, there is no reason for a region to be available in toto to the client player. The region should be adjudicated by the server, and once the cities are started, only minor, in-city civil engineering should be allowed. Border adjustments may occur at need, but hopefully without the large destruction that current reconcile edges causes (a force 7 or 8 earthquake is what seems to happen).

Above, there was a discussion on the size of a region. I see no reason why a region cannot be dynamic to accommodate players as they appear (join the region). A virtual region can certainly exist, and pages made available at need. It need be only necessary to maintain the city granularity, which I believe is implied to be fixed at something like 4 Km².

I would like to see the ability to merge these city granules, piecemeal, as well. This is called municipal expansion or merger.

  Edited March 18, 2012 by A Nonny Moose  

[Mark Waybill 242]

I agree with the concept of being able to expand municipalities to integrate surrounding tiles.

I think it should be possible for a set of rules to be agreed upon by all joining players, created by the group's founding Mayor. That way the founding Mayor or a selection of other Mayors (Regional Council?) can take any actions necessary against trolling and war. For instance say John Smith decides to join Group A's Region. He begins by playing peacefully and according to the Regional Rules but after a while starts doing things of an antagonistic nature which are hardly within the limits of acceptable business or government practices and moreover are not within the rights agreed upon by the founding Mayor/team of Mayor's rules.

This player could be investigated by the FM or a group of 'Regional Moderators' who could delete that players city or mimicking real world politics create some trade restriction or large fine like the UN might.

For those players who wish to send missiles into other players cities, they could join teams whose rules allowed for such interactions.

[nashville nelson 51]

[...]

Again, while we do know there will be regions and there will be improved mechanics between tiles, we have no more specifics beyond that. Perhaps for a default region, yeah, you might have that, but it could get old and feel very constraining quickly if other region configurations aren't possible. The config.bmp system in SC4 makes these other configurations very easily possible, and while this is also in the realm of speculation, having seen what our mappers can do (e.g. drunkapple, blade2k5, etc.), I would consider it very likely they'd include a mechanism like that in there. Forcing a 4x4 square on everyone all the time would basically be shooting themselves in the foot.

-Tarkus

I hope you are right, but in the end it doesn´t really matter. For me the region size, Origin, Multiplayer or 2x2km tiles are not reasons to not buy the game. I mean it´s still Maxis, the godfathers of city simulation games, they won´t screw this up. SC13 is a reboot of an old franchise pimped with new technology to fit in this century. There will be mistakes and they can´t fulfill all our wishes but i can´t know for sure until i played the game.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

^ True. Experience is the best teacher.

However, in the multi-player aspect we do have the concept of a regional government, probably consisting of all the mayors. It might even be possible to hold elections once in a while and elect one of the mayors reeve of the region. A little politics is always good.

This would introduce a little bit of civics into the game, which surely can't be all bad. Political parties, however, must be outlawed. Election could be simple consensus of sitting mayors on a vote of 50% + 1. Of course this applies only to multi-player regions.

In a single player region, the mayor would essentially be the godfather.

  Edited March 19, 2012 by A Nonny Moose  

[Mark Waybill 242]

I second Moose's concept of an election system.

The Founding Mayor decides the constitution of the Region, other players join if they wish to build cities in such a region. Or, the FM and his friends decide together, but it would be best to always have one Mayor as the 'President' just in case a stalemate arises.

Once the FM or him and his colleagues in the Regional Council have decided upon rules they can build their cities etc. New players adhere to the rules or their cities (in that region) suffer in some way, which could be universally agreed upon by Maxis/Origin/EA or Regionally decided upon. If a troll or a player who has been unfairly punished wishes to recover his city there should be some saving/downloading mechanism so that a city can be downloaded and added to a new region, even if it has been deleted or punished in another region. One exception would be actual cases of trolling for its own sake where obviously the Mayor doesn't care about his city or that aspect of the game.

The Founding Mayor or Head Mayor is replaced at regular intervals (either universal or regionally decided upon) with an election. The winner is he who has the most votes. There would be a deadline for voting after which votes wouldn't count, or the election wouldn't be finished until all Mayors voted. The former would make more sense because if a Mayor for any reason stopped playing in that region, the election would never be ended. For this and other reasons the authority of the FM/HM should be maintained until the election is finished, in case during that time a dispute arises. Or the Region could be frozen until all votes are cast.

Naturally MP Mode would need a chat mechanism so all Mayors in a Region could talk to one another. This will obviously exist to some extent, however one issue would be trolls if the chat/region was 'open'. Some privacy level adjusting mechanism would be required, so Regions, once full of happy Mayors, could be 'locked' if wanted. Also 'open' Regions should have some method of preventing spam too. It would be nice to think I could travel around a few regions before deciding on a place to build a new city.

The MP Mode should be easily navigated. A list of cities/regions in which one is participating, election/pm notices, a quick access to the chat screen, a list of regions where one is FM/Hm etc should all be accessible easily. If the game is being played at the same time I imagine this would be embedded in the game itself rather than as a separate window?

Just some thoughts.

[drdru7029 52]

I have had a multiplayer game of sorts going on with my two brothers for a couple of years now. We each have a primary city, and by lots may choose the remaining secondary cities to develop. It's a pretty interesting setup:

• 
  
  
• We all have to agree on custom content before loading it
  
• No cheats, of course
  
• We have built an Excel spreadsheet where we keep track of all pertinent city data (monthly revenue, public transit revenue, pollution level, demographics etc). We then have formulas setup which can extract and extrapolate a multitude of secondary statistics from the primary data.
  
• At certain time intervals we'll stage a 'regional assessment' where certain values are competitive and translated into buying power.
  
• We then assign costs to all of the landmarks and custom ploppable content. We hold auctions of sorts where the best-performing cities have the most buying power and are thus able to purchase more sought-after landmarks.
  
• No landmark is duplicable, to create a unique atmosphere for our region.
  

If many of these features were integrated into the multiplayer system for SC5, I think it would be pretty interesting.

Another point implicit in this post is the importance of making meaningful statistics available to the player! I cannot stress this enough. If such statistics are removed or hidden, it will be a true loss for many hardcore players. Now I simply cannot see the logic in removing the visibility of this data-- it has to be there in the game for the simulation to function. Removing it simply because of the impression it will create too much complexity for the player is simply nonsense, and could so easily be offered in a non-intrusive way. Please Maxis, I implore you: retain the depth of statistical data that has made SC4 so enduring.

[Sap59 3]

Please Maxis, I implore you: retain the depth of statistical data that has made SC4 so enduring.

I agree 100%.

[Paulobergonci 673]

i wish we could have bigger regions, not with only 16 tiles, players could play in 2, 3 tiles, or the region view would be weird, and i love region views.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

i wish we could have bigger regions, not with only 16 tiles, players could play in 2, 3 tiles, or the region view would be weird, and i love region views.

Fear not. I don't think there is a 16 city limit. Just a 16 player per region limit. I doubt that any multi-player game will go beyond 5 or 6 players. They didn't say anything about playing in a region you hadn't been invited into.

[City Planner 121]

Good points. Do you think EA will make us pay for multiplayer to be able to keep these servers up and running? Or perhaps the game cost is as high as it is so they won't have to, although that doesn't seem fair to the people that aren't going to use multiplayer.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

I think it will be typical EA tactics with regards to the multiplayer. Once they feel that the numbers have dropped off or they put out a newer version of SC, then they will close the current servers like they've done for almost all of their other games. The unfortunate thing is that we the player never get to actually know if the low amount of users still wanting to use the servers is only 10 people or 10,000 people.

I doubt that EA will be charging people to use the multiplayer aspect of the game, if they are, I think they should expect that they'll have a high turnout in the beginning but it will dwindle rather quickly as by past experiences, CB games are more of a solo thing anyway, and MoneyCristo's experiement while a bad product up front, should show them that most people will want to build solo.

I sincerely hope that people are not getting their hopes up with posting what they think that multiplayer should be like and thinking that EA/Maxis might introduce their ideas, they are likely to be in for a severe let down (again!) as I have a feeling that Maxis already has a clear design plan in place that they will be following with little deviation.

  Edited March 21, 2012 by City Planner  

[DazzaDazza 29]

City Planner @I guess there always hope.....

wouldn’t they just let player host there own games?, anyway the troubles i see are, is that a city building games are never relay fished, there always more you wont to do, change and add, as much as you jazz it up it will always be a single player game, the point of the game is to crate a city. as long as they don’t focus on multipayer too much the game will be alright. But I say that in a one sided view, To me I just don’t see the point of multipayer in a city building game, maybe simcity will open my eyes.

[SimsCity5 1]

This will be very good because players can work together and make something good in this game . Like citys helping each other and stuff. But One Prom what happens if someone joined and they didnt like your city and destoryed it all.

[Mark Waybill 242]

Which is why you have a Regional Government with rules and sanctions for infringements.

I think the potential of the SimEarth of SimRegions is huge, but I naturally wouldn't blame EA/Origin/Maxis or whoever will operate the servers if they do dumb it down a bit, at least initially. However this really is a great opportunity to create the definitive Simcity, and if they do this MP mode right, who knows how successful this could become. I think that this should be planned as a long term project and I hope that any such ideas of a quick get rich scheme by the developers do not exist in their minds.