Organized log of Maxis's Reddit AMAA.

[Pandemic 32]

I was extremely excited when I read that each car is persistent. A car leaves a home for work, and comes home to park. Essentially meaning traffic is more or less literal. There are to many cars for a road, if there to many cars to fit. This opens up so many possibilities.

I'm pretty happy to that the traffic won't disappear like it did in SimCity 4, even at places where there were no businesses or home. It was a weird system, and with this where it'll only vanish when it reaches it's destination is perfect.

[Firebird 40]

I was extremely excited when I read that each car is persistent. A car leaves a home for work, and comes home to park. Essentially meaning traffic is more or less literal. There are to many cars for a road, if there to many cars to fit. This opens up so many possibilities. If a farm takes to much nutrients from the soil, it produces less. If you rotate fields, it fixes that.

Basically a complex simulation which is easier to interact with because everythings more apparent.

As for the single player region interacting with a global economy. Actually Simcity 2000 had this and is something Id been missing. Economic trends such as a portion of your commercial demand were generated or lost from a global set of factors. I can still remember cringing when I read that cars were selling worse then usual due to a recall. My economy temporarily tanked. I had prepared for it though.

All in all, I am a very happy camper. I literally have nothing I am concerned with.

I am most excited for this as well. When I play SC4 for a while, things start to get stagnant, and somewhat get boring. I can put the simulation on Cheetah speed for hundreds of years, and everything will be fine and dandy. Now, there are disasters and such to spice things up here and there. But something like dynamic economic trends, finite resources, and even that idiot next door who knows nothing about pollution would make things much more interesting. I can foresee this being a very addictive game for me.

[tomfoolery_79 85]

GRAPHICS:

They will be fine. It seems Maxis couldn't be any more clear about what you see is NOT representative of final art. This was a GDC which means it's much less about the public and much more about game development...duh. During game development as companies follow "function before form" methodologies they often will use placeholder artwork to demonstrate gameplay and inner programming being worked out. Anyone with half a brain can look at the videos and demonstrations thus far and can see it's rudimentary graphics.

In today's Reddit Q&A they said, again, that NO final graphics/artwork has been displayed. One thing they did say was that they are "aiming for the look of the concept artwork that has been displayed". That looks pretty dang good to me. As someone else has said I think photorealism sounds good in theory but would suck big time in actuality. I have yet to see a Maxis developed SimCity game that I was upset about the graphics. Have a little faith in Maxis people. Look at how many fears people have had thus far that have been completely shot down.

[Craig-Abcvs 1,595]

Still want to know if multiplayer is free...

Very unlikely. Who do you expect to run and pay for the servers that are required for multi-player? EA/Maxis is not a charity.

Completely disagree with you there Craig.

EA have several, several games that have single player and free multiplayer (I've played a heap of them over the past decade - more recently Battlefield 3). Plus, Sim City is advertised so far as being online only (and these Reddit answers seem to further confirm it) and the cost of the game would cover the server costs, as well as EA's money. Seriously, EA/Maxis are a very strong team and wouldn't want such a big backlash like with the petite Monte Cristo and the CXL Planet Offer (but Cities XL was both an offline and online game - the online was just talked about more), but lets forget about that, MC and the PO is long gone. That would be one of the stupidest things to do to charge more for multiplayer in Sim City and even though people may criticise EA, Maxis together with EA aren't that stupid.

Thanks for showing that too 1701adguru^

You are welcome to disagree.

:: prepares 'crying into cornflakes' thread when people realise that they are going to have to pay for this game (More than US$40) and most likely IMHO, multi-player server access ::

[Kevin 101]

Firebird was nice enough to let us reprint his work in the Omnibus... check it out here. And thanks again Firebird!

[Trioxis 32]

You are welcome to disagree.

:: prepares 'crying into cornflakes' thread when people realise that they are going to have to pay for this game (More than US$40) and most likely IMHO, multi-player server access ::

Actually, I remember Anno 2070 has a similar concept of always online, even though it includes an offline mode for when the servers are down. Anno 2070 doesn't require you to pay an extra monthly fee for the online mode/multiplayer. I'm betting SimCity will follow a similar path.

[guuz 15]

I don't expect any online fee. There are not a lot of games following this path anymore. It only makes sense for large MMOs with huge amounts of server based gameplay (e.g. world of warcraft). There are even plenty of free to play games with a lot of servers (League of Legends, Team Fortress 2). In the glassbox presentation it is mentioned that they don't need a dedicated live server for the game. I don't think they'll use a lot of bandwith/data and don't require a monthly fee to pay for that.

[Culinia 11]

Slightly disappointed with some of the questions asked, they did not answer whether or not you could create your own region or have it imported like in SC4. Would be reaffirming if you could have this done. Also not much was revealed about the transportation system (cars, buses, subways, trains etc). Early days yet.

As for the server issue I would imagine they would go Call of Duty style - having local hosts act as the server.

  Edited March 9, 2012 by Culinia  

[TheRealDeadaim 38]

Slightly disappointed with some of the questions asked, they did not answer whether or not you could create your own region or have it imported like in SC4. Would be reaffirming if you could have this done. Also not much was revealed about the transportation system (cars, buses, subways, trains etc). Early days yet.

As for the server issue I would imagine they would go Call of Duty style - having local hosts act as the server.

Those questions were asked, just not answered.

[LivingInThePast 364]

I didn't like the comparison with Spore. I hope its not that type of stylization. In fact, I really hope it doesn't resemble anything I've seen (Sims/Spore/CXL with its troll people)