Discussion about City Tile Size

[Nihilianth 25]

Yes. The capability is already present within the client. Ofcourse it is problematic now, as while Maxis states modding is allowed it is EA who states that hacking is disallowed and will result in banning but they do not make any mention of what constitutes hacking. Arbitrary judgement. SC2013 is indeed built to be extremely easy to mod through package editing, extension, addition. But since the past few days EA went into paranoid mode again we have no idea what is allowed now or not.

 

An interesting idea occurred to me:

 

Would it even be LEGAL for EA to be banning anyone from their servers who made a purchase of their game!? Would that not constitute theft? The federal government several years ago passed a law requiring that any business that sells gift cards, cannot place an expiration date on those gift cards. Likewise, online voucher stores such as Groupon and Travelzoo, must ensure that the money their customers spend on those websites for any deal, must ALWAYS be honored for the full-price of what they have spent, even if their voucher has expired; The featured merchants must honor at least the base value of what they have paid for, or the online market business itself must give them a full refund.

 

I cannot imagine that EA would have any right whatsoever to ban a customer from their server for any reason who have spent $60 on the product, while FORCING them to only use the servers in order to use the product. Companies just simply cannot do this.

 

It really seems to me, that EA has got to have extremely strict guidelines on what constitutes "hacking," and said guidelines must clearly demonstrate that such "hacking" is malicious and causes damage to either their servers, their company, or the experience and security of private information of other users as the only justifiable means of banning anyone.

 

As for "tile sizes" for cities, it is clearly a joke. This is my hometown:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williamsport,_Pennsylvania

 

The city itself is 9.5 square miles. It has a population of about 30,000. That just's Williamsport, and does not constitute the other towns that are exactly smack-dab right on it's border:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyalsock_Township,_Lycoming_County,_Pennsylvania

 

A town of about 11,000, and constitutes a border of 21.2 square miles. When you drive from Williamsport into Loyalsock, it is literally impossible to tell you have just left one town, and entered the next. Just a regular neighborhood street is the official demarckation point.

 

The next town over:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montoursville,_Pennsylvania

 

has a population of about 5,000, and the area is about 4.2 square miles. The only separation between Loyalsock and Montoursville, is just a small creek.

 

South Williamsport is separated from Williamsport as yet another separate town, and a medium-sized river is between the two: Williamsport on one side, and South Side on the other.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Williamsport,_Pennsylvania

 

Population of about 6,500. Area is 2.1 square miles.

 

And those are just the most significant towns that border Williamsport to the east and the south. (Not much to say about anything to the west and north of WIlliamsport. Not even worth mentioning, as it's mostly farms and woods.)

 

This is a total population of 52,500, over a land area of about 37 square miles.

 

And this is just an average-sized town, barely large enough to even consider calling it a "city." Nevermind places such as Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and New York City.

 

Yet another huge problem I have with a certain concept in this game: lack of control over specific zoning laws. I understand the "reasoning" behind why they did what they did with zoning in this game, but I hardly agree with it:

 

My hometown has a law in place that nothing can be built taller than 12 stories. The tallest structure downtown is 12 stories: The Genetti Hotel.

 

Washington, DC has a similar law: Nothing can rise higher than the Washington Monument.

 

And still other cities have similar laws, but for different reasons: Aircraft clearance.

 

Williamsport, PA and especially Washington, DC have very broad avenues, in which residential and commercial zoning laws apply directly on those avenues as a point of access.

 

The way in which this game is structured, very tall buildings can be built on large avenues, and there is not a whole lot you can do about it. If you want medium-sized development with huge parks and walk-way malls, and beautiful green landscaping along those avenues with a single point of focus on the tallest structure in your town......well then, you are screwed.

 

The only way around this, it seems to me, is if you build another street of avenue paralleling quite close to the really big one with all the neat landscaping features, which could potentially make it virtually impossible if you are going for a certain aesthetic feel to your city.

 

SC4 gives you this capability, and one that I use quite extensively to make beautiful park-like cities.

[macvirt 361]

Well, as long as you are an American you essentially have no rights in these types of affairs as long as commercial terms & conditions trump state and federal law. I realise that is probably something hard to understand for non-Americans, but this is the reality of our legal system today. A big part of that comes from something we as citizens have caused ourselves, the very behaviour which (admittedly together with the excesses of incorporated greed) have created the claim culture. It is only natural in our system for a corporate entity to make use of market potentials to its maximum ability up to and including the use of the forces within potential markets as resources, just like it is only natural for a corporate entity to cover its dependancies and risks against them. There's a myriad of precedents, exceptions and conditional elements, and we should not forget that in many regards the law lags behind both technological and economical evolution, but in a nutshell a company's terms - if constructed properly - trump what we have in terms of generic consumer protection mechanisms. 

 

If you are an American citizen, your job is to buy blindly and only talk about intangible rights as long as those do not clash with the organisation of society. So yes, EA can do what it wants. And to be quite blunt, while we can all have our opinions on the morality of our organisation of society and thinking we have to accept responsability for our choices. If we buy, we have to accept that and all consequences because we did not utilise our remaining prerogative of not buying.

 

Consumerism relies on principles to guard against excesses resulting from the human behaviour that drives and requires it. Not on law, that is just a derivative instrument in its own right, not something magically balanced or neutral. Principles like responsability are only our own, so either live by them or accept the consequences of not living by them. And yes, marketing is today's instrument that works against that conditionality of principles, but there too we must accept our responsability because we are essentially able to not buy the marketing either. 

 

 

It is in EA's interest to keep the waters as murky as possible, that is how one protects interests. And in the organisation of our society corporate interests come first. We created that societal organisation over the course of our history, so it's a simple case of either accepting it or changing it. 

[MayorSpectre 9]

The ridiculous tiny map size and always-online DRM alone has put be off SimCity for good. I really expected that SimCity 5 would expand on the scale of things (at least 8x8km maps) and add more choices for mass transit and more ways of building your transit system. Enstead EA delivered SimFacebookville at a premium price. And Boy will I enjoy the massive butt hurt when EA launches their inevitable Metropolis DLC, at premium price, ofc.

[Nihilianth 25]

Well, as long as you are an American you essentially have no rights in these types of affairs as long as commercial terms & conditions trump state and federal law. I realise that is probably something hard to understand for non-Americans, but this is the reality of our legal system today. A big part of that comes from something we as citizens have caused ourselves, the very behaviour which (admittedly together with the excesses of incorporated greed) have created the claim culture. It is only natural in our system for a corporate entity to make use of market potentials to its maximum ability up to and including the use of the forces within potential markets as resources, just like it is only natural for a corporate entity to cover its dependancies and risks against them. There's a myriad of precedents, exceptions and conditional elements, and we should not forget that in many regards the law lags behind both technological and economical evolution, but in a nutshell a company's terms - if constructed properly - trump what we have in terms of generic consumer protection mechanisms. 

 

If you are an American citizen, your job is to buy blindly and only talk about intangible rights as long as those do not clash with the organisation of society. So yes, EA can do what it wants. And to be quite blunt, while we can all have our opinions on the morality of our organisation of society and thinking we have to accept responsability for our choices. If we buy, we have to accept that and all consequences because we did not utilise our remaining prerogative of not buying.

 

Consumerism relies on principles to guard against excesses resulting from the human behaviour that drives and requires it. Not on law, that is just a derivative instrument in its own right, not something magically balanced or neutral. Principles like responsability are only our own, so either live by them or accept the consequences of not living by them. And yes, marketing is today's instrument that works against that conditionality of principles, but there too we must accept our responsability because we are essentially able to not buy the marketing either. 

 

 

It is in EA's interest to keep the waters as murky as possible, that is how one protects interests. And in the organisation of our society corporate interests come first. We created that societal organisation over the course of our history, so it's a simple case of either accepting it or changing it. 

That's all well and good.

 

However, there is still precedence of companies pocketing consumer dollars without providing at least the minimum value of a service for which consumers have spent.

 

I used gift cards and online voucher stores as two examples already.

 

If a merchant is providing a specific service and charging a specific dollar amount for said service, the merchant is obligated to provide that service or product equal to the price they charge, and the value of said product/service can never "expire."

 

Gift cards and vouchers are easyu examples where it is pretty specific and straightforward.

 

For a more...shall we say "arbitrary" situation.....such as the definition of "hacking" vs. the definition of "modding,"....the company must provide very specific wording and definitions where a gray line between the two naturally exists. They also must demonstrate why the line they draw is where it is, and demonstrate why it gives them an unnecessary burden of doing business.

 

For example, if you can draw a line between "hacking" on the left, and "modding" on the right with varying degrees of activity between the two, the company must draw a specific line somewhere in the middle, proivide a specific definition, and give specific examples, then demonstrate why anything to the left of their defined line harms their business.

 

Companies, even in the United States, do not have unlimited powers to collect money from consumers and arbitrarily set whatever limitations they want after the sale has been complete. They must provide the minimum value of service to a consumer, for what the consumer paid for.

 

In other words: EA would be putting themselves at risk if they start banning people for "hacking," when all they really are doing is "modding" their game. EA needs to provide a valid argument as to why such an activity is "hacking" and not "modding" and how it harms the operation of their business, or the safety and security of other users.

[macvirt 361]

Yet EA has a history of arbitrary enforcement of unpublished rules. It is referred to as the interpretation of "reserving rights". 

 

I agree that such practices can harm business. But I also have to be honest and admit that such potential harm is unlikely as long as the customer does not, in turn, reserve his or her own rights. 

 

EA recognises the line to walk, but out of policy avoids that line. Quite simply because if they are to draw a line they can be held to it. They simply prefer to - again - (p)reserve their rights (regardless of whether those are "rights" in a moral sense or a mere position in terms of strategy or interpretation).

[The_City_Builder 299]

https://twitter.com/MaxisGuillaume/status/316603689420849153

 

Yet more non-specific confirmation of larger city tiles.

[TheFlemishDuck 0]

rant/

"It is always sound business to take any obtainable net gain, at any cost and at any risk to the rest of the community."

Thorstein Veblen

Now i am an anti-capitalist, so there goes for my oppinion for what regards America's more extreme form of capitalism (relative to more mixed economics oriented Europe for ex.) and what it is probable to produce. Whatever consumer mediocrity EA is to produce, EA's shareholders won't mind about the mediocrity, as long as it performs relativly well in profit by any means than its competitors, and in bussiness it does not always need to be those with most merrit apparently who wind up on top, as in any field of bussiness those who bring more capital to the playing field can often gain not nessecarily by quality of product but by capital power trough takeovers, big marketing budgets, capacity for distribution etc.

But really all that capital that all these large firms have, hold or play with is nowadays usually thin air anyway conjured from a fractional banking system modeled to provide capital power to risk takers with tax payers money as collateral.

The gaming industry in a nutschell: small company's of entrepeneuring programmers having a dream of a game and hardly any acces to capital to complete it, and expensive suits who studied at top bussiness school jousting piles of money towards game development that might statisticly make them good money on the basis of a bunch of pie charts. The latter usually are only succesfull if the can exploit a name been sold out by one of the former who's then finally enabled after long work to realy cash in. The problem with the gaming industry is that too much money gets diverted to the hands of men too incompetent to direct an effecient bussiness, because regardless how much weve payed for this game and EA might have "cashed in", there is so much more money we would have spend to timely qualitive update's to the sim city Franchise, regardless of how much content we could have added ourselfs. Bussiness in general has been limping behind developments in the gaming industry, few even that would have ever thought that gaming would become an industry to surpass the movie industry in size, and has a great potential for further growh still. Most of you here must know a few gaming company's who began small and succesfully have run game franchises with good revenue and to who you have payed quite a bit more for games over the years than you have spend in the sim city franchise, who probably have better customer care, patches and modabilety options, all things which probably many of you as customer have learned to value in games besides superficial game elements.

With other words, Ea performs fairly bad regarding these, and it will keep customers away. There is a very considerable segment of gamers for who modabillety and freedom in utilization of the product is paramount to their evaluation of the product, because the extension of playabilety achieved by open source modding makes the product more economicly interresting over time, and limitation of it makes the game far less interresting in a money to value aspect. I think also that the server based system of this game is a choice made that eventually costs them money too, and which quality of service heavily weigh's on the game quality.

And i doubt EA will listen too me, but otoh i think they will eventually be a a far smaller company 10 to 20 years down the line.Their bussiness mentality is too old to survive a next new gamer genneration who has gron up with the minecraft bussiness model.

/rant

[macvirt 361]

Key, as always, is to realise that it is no longer about smart youngsters working in a garage. It is the gaming industry. It is just another industry.

 

I do agree that EA does not have the potential to stand up against an imaginary surge in garage youngsters, something they have realised thoroughly not because of debacles like SC2013 (remember, the customer does not matter) but mostly due to behaviour among investor prospects and more importantly due to what we can call the kickstarter phenomenon. That last part is really something which gives many of us in our industry hope, but which also directly threatens the few on who's money the rest depend. It is that phenomenon (even more than the selective competition between platform models like Steam and Origin) which has created an enormously strong conviction of the necessity to strive towards control over market behavioural forces. In simple terms, control over customer patterns of behaviour, orientation, stimuli, and so forth. Even EA's old example of Apple's grand achievement of creating their own lock-in market has lost its potential as it has demonstrated to face absolute constrictions of sustainable growth (there comes a point always where one has to enter non-controlled markets in general consumerism trends). But EA have seen the light, after all it is not that far fetched to profile human behaviour. You just need to accumulate the data, the variables and the trigger factors. And that is where EA's ultimate focus is, because the ability to guide and/or create demand (for anything, especially if it is low cost mediocre stuff) trumps achieving even the grandest lock-in market.

 

But that striving towards control is nothing new to industry in general. In every industry there is always a point where those who are vested and consolidated face a threat from changing patterns and factors of enablement. Think of angel investor events which at one point had quite a big impact in clothing but also food markets, but also consider other cases like those of so called private citizen banking (something completely unknown back home in the US by the way) or even on a global level the advent of microcredit financing. What you always see is that those who are vested strive towards control, and that they achieve it. Simple example, what is politics today? An extension of lobbyism and the representation of selective interests (wrapped up with a ribbon of a dream and associated wishes & wants used as catalysts for the marketing dependancies of politics). 

 

Microcredit financing has become the domain of banks once again, angel investment is a fringe case again, the list goes on. Look at our global food markets, or even rare earth mineral acquisition or any other case where status quo of consolidation of dependancies faces a challenge. 

 

Unless EA direly screw up on the investment prospects level they will achieve their targets. It may take a while, it may take another generation shift, but it is statistically extremely hard to find any exceptions to the rule. That which already is consolidated, aims for and achieves control of dependancies in market forces. Business mentality has very little to do with it really, it is just a number game. 

[Anya 3]

I don't know why we are even pretending like EA won't take action against for you modding in something as important as larger cities. The larger city tiles are in the game because they fully and unabashedly intend to sell them to us. Why would they allow us to mod them in for free? Would they maybe let you mod it so that your buses are pink or you build a replica of your house? Sure...because they never intended to make profit off of that.

 

The only question, in my opinion, is whether they will sell this to us as one DLC (i.e. all your cities are immediately increased to 3x3/4x4) or if they are going to sell us "credits" to annex small 1x1 plots in cities (think FarmVille expansion), thus generating a constant revenue stream as we will need more credits for each new city.

[bokrif 18]

I don't know why we are even pretending like EA won't take action against for you modding in something as important as larger cities. The larger city tiles are in the game because they fully and unabashedly intend to sell them to us. Why would they allow us to mod them in for free? Would they maybe let you mod it so that your buses are pink or you build a replica of your house? Sure...because they never intended to make profit off of that.

 

The only question, in my opinion, is whether they will sell this to us as one DLC (i.e. all your cities are immediately increased to 3x3/4x4) or if they are going to sell us "credits" to annex small 1x1 plots in cities (think FarmVille expansion), thus generating a constant revenue stream as we will need more credits for each new city.

 

Oh man, FarmVIlle type expansion for real money... that would be really bad.

[EvilTom 1]

Would the tile size be such an issues if the cities were treated like neighborhoods and were park of the checkerboard we used to have in SC4? If they were next to each other with more links between each other, perhaps it wouldn't look so disjointed.

I have never in my life seen a 2km by 2km city full of high rise only with another similar city only about 2-4km down the motorway. I do however realise this is a game and people can do things however they want. Just my preference is the build low density outskirts with a taller CBD in a central point, just like most cities in RL.

I think also the size of the buildings does seem to give the illusion that the areas are very small.

[Funky McBain 1]

First post, I never knew this place existed!

 

As for the size, it's terrible, I'm so gutted by this game and the map size is one of the main things, that and a lack of all the transportation options you SHOULD have, ie subway, freeway etc. I completely agree that if you could just connect the maps to each other, so as to build neighbourhoods all culminating in a huge city covering a region I'd be happy. The way the whole process is designed right now, with the small towns, not being able to properly connect them and then the sims effectively travelling between the regions is just.... it's hard to take because I've been looking forward to this game forever.

[guitarmatt99 27]

First post, I never knew this place existed!

 

As for the size, it's terrible, I'm so gutted by this game and the map size is one of the main things, that and a lack of all the transportation options you SHOULD have, ie subway, freeway etc. I completely agree that if you could just connect the maps to each other, so as to build neighbourhoods all culminating in a huge city covering a region I'd be happy. The way the whole process is designed right now, with the small towns, not being able to properly connect them and then the sims effectively travelling between the regions is just.... it's hard to take because I've been looking forward to this game forever.

 

Bigger tiles will come. I've heard bigger tiles are included in the code which suggests it will be in DLC *sigh*. I guess it will be worth it though, I guess they are just seeing what people's computers can take before it's introduced. I'm guessing it's going to be an expansion with a few more regions that include the bigger tiles.

[lordax 3]

Not only they are very small, I've tried to get a city in place where you have, the already small map, half covered with cliffs or rivers... Gotta be a joke.

[alina2004 5]

Well guys (and gals), I guess our beloved game has been updated to cater to the new generation.  I started playing the original DOS version when I was in highschool and yesterday I bought the new game for my 12-year old son.  All his friends have it and right on cue with EA's design, they all play together, using Skype or GoogleTalk (depending on which gives them the best connection on any given day).  I can hear them constantly talking to each other, 4 chatterbgus, complaing when they can't log in to a specific server, arguing that one city has too many fires, the other city the terrain does not allow for something or other, discussing which city to host one of those new cityhall departments, they play for hours, always connected and talking to each other.  They don't give a damn that they can't recreate this or that real-life city, they don't care about beautiful maps, terrain smoothing, placing trees that change colors with the seasons; it's a new generation that never played and thus never knew what we had.  It is (like another post said) the SimFacebookVille version geared for this generation.  We (the players, but mostly the amazing developers of custom content) used to obsess endlessly about more realistic transit networks, minute details about bus stop capacities, new bridge designs, all matters of city design, while EA took a long look at us and left us behind; almost nothing in this version takes into account how we have been playing this game 10 years after its release. The aim of this version is not to build realistic cities based on real life, but something else, not sure what.  I, like lots of you, played for a few hours, built a mediocre city of about 60k but run out of space, couldn't build a train station, there was no palce to even lay railroad tracks, couldn't plant trees or paint the landscape in any way, couldn't upgrade my streets without demolishing everything, couldn't do any of the trully fun stuff we have all been accustomed to doing.  Yes the economic model is new and can be fun, but after you build the oil drilling plant or the coal mine all the way to max capacity, then there isn't much else to do.  Even if you take region play to the extreme and specialize, most regions from what I saw only have a handfull of city tiles on them anyway......I am sad about the direction EA took this all-time classic, but looking at the kids who never knew or care about classics, why should they care?  We are the dinosaurs of the gaming world perharps, complaining, bitter perhaps, some from what I read even angry, ha? maybe we should get with the program.....The end of the PC era is coming, isn't that what they say?  Maybe it was naive to believe that a corporation would continue to cater to our types.....

[AUGUSTUS_PRIMA 1]

This new SimCity sucks ... let's make our own city simulator and make the corporates eat it !!!

[Funky McBain 1]

This new SimCity sucks ... let's make our own city simulator and make the corporates eat it !!!

There's something on Kickstarter I believe

[northfly 5]

They should really combine CXL and Simcity. Tile size is too small, way too small! Playing simcity is like playing Starcraft, building a small bunch of buildings with a certain function! You really don't have enough space to design the city innovatively! Disappointed!!!

[JimCityBuilder 14]

I think he means combining Sim City with CitiesXL as a single game with all the best features of each  ... not a bad idea in principle, but let,s all see how Sim City will progress in the near future.

 

Jim

[RegularEngineer 4]

I hate the size of it!  >:/ look at the lenth of it! this is NOT SATIFYING It has to be bigger!!

can't we write a pettition and adress it to EA or something?

 

 

aaaw look, every citizen is so happy, though  <: )

[Indiana Joe 1,751]

I assure you, dozens of petitions have already been sent.  And if they do make bigger cities, you'll pay $19.99 for them.

[bluespottedhorse 49]

Just retitle it...SIMTOWN, then it wouldnt be lying about what the game is really all about!

[DazzaDazza 29]

I haven’t got simcity yet, and the tile size is the main reason, and if they make me extra for it then I will simply wait for it, if Maxis think they can make half a game then try to sell me the stuff that should

be in the real game and sell it then I will simply wait until the game is half price.

 

Key, as always, is to realise that it is no longer about smart youngsters working in a garage. It is the gaming industry. It is just another industry.

 

I do agree that EA does not have the potential to stand up against an imaginary surge in garage youngsters, something they have realised thoroughly not because of debacles like SC2013 (remember, the customer does not matter) but mostly due to behaviour among investor prospects and more importantly due to what we can call the kickstarter phenomenon. That last part is really something which gives many of us in our industry hope, but which also directly threatens the few on who's money the rest depend. It is that phenomenon (even more than the selective competition between platform models like Steam and Origin) which has created an enormously strong conviction of the necessity to strive towards control over market behavioural forces. In simple terms, control over customer patterns of behaviour, orientation, stimuli, and so forth. Even EA's old example of Apple's grand achievement of creating their own lock-in market has lost its potential as it has demonstrated to face absolute constrictions of sustainable growth (there comes a point always where one has to enter non-controlled markets in general consumerism trends). But EA have seen the light, after all it is not that far fetched to profile human behaviour. You just need to accumulate the data, the variables and the trigger factors. And that is where EA's ultimate focus is, because the ability to guide and/or create demand (for anything, especially if it is low cost mediocre stuff) trumps achieving even the grandest lock-in market.

 

But that striving towards control is nothing new to industry in general. In every industry there is always a point where those who are vested and consolidated face a threat from changing patterns and factors of enablement. Think of angel investor events which at one point had quite a big impact in clothing but also food markets, but also consider other cases like those of so called private citizen banking (something completely unknown back home in the US by the way) or even on a global level the advent of microcredit financing. What you always see is that those who are vested strive towards control, and that they achieve it. Simple example, what is politics today? An extension of lobbyism and the representation of selective interests (wrapped up with a ribbon of a dream and associated wishes & wants used as catalysts for the marketing dependancies of politics). 

 

Microcredit financing has become the domain of banks once again, angel investment is a fringe case again, the list goes on. Look at our global food markets, or even rare earth mineral acquisition or any other case where status quo of consolidation of dependancies faces a challenge. 

 

Unless EA direly screw up on the investment prospects level they will achieve their targets. It may take a while, it may take another generation shift, but it is statistically extremely hard to find any exceptions to the rule. That which already is consolidated, aims for and achieves control of dependancies in market forces. Business mentality has very little to do with it really, it is just a number game. 

 

That’s doesn’t mean they won’t like it if those options are there, maybe give them a copy of SC4 and see what happens, I find SimCity games are mostly creative games so not everyone will like it most part some people will find it boring, the game isn’t for everyone, but no matter what generation is playing games I thing there’s always a spot and a market of a proper city builder, not a city budget manager that the new game seems to be

[macvirt 361]

Ofcourse there is such a spot. But that does constitute a niche market. Look at it this way, you have a limited budget that comes from investors looking for dividends. You can create something with that budget that sells to a niche market, or you can do that for a volume market cheaper and use some of the leftover budget to create a marketing campaign that uses the niche market so that you can sell to that too (even though the product was not designed to cater to it).

 

In terms of venture development EA made the right decisions. Ofcourse, they did a less than stellar job in risk management and planning, but far from the acute terribleness of the marketing job. But that too is largely irrelevant because the product was designed to keep selling extra's, repairing the sales curve can be achieved. Obviously that will require more marketing (and frankly, a very different marketing approach if they do not want to achieve repair goals by degrading brand value in the long run) but it can be done. 

 

It's a bit of a divide right now in the industry. There is the publisher segment which has moved away from the creative and innovative challenges, and there's the chaos of everything else. Either way, niche markets are less than attractive, particularly to the publishers. It remains much more interesting to tailor products to cater towards volume markets while making use of existing franchise fanbase (the niche market) as a marketing catalyst.

[sEAks11 0]

would the evolution of this game be sim state ?

[mcallisterw 41]

I think we probably just have to accept the fact that we, the gamers, for so long used to being the market for the gaming industry are now relegated to the level of niche market within a gaming industry that is now catering towards people who want to collect and share rather than think and challenge and who would be put off by a game that brings with it the possibility of losing (or in the case of SimCity, struggling). The big players don't see the need to cater for this niche market.

 

I'm sure there will be a DLC at some point to increase city size and bring back a few more of the other features we used to love (am I the only one here who sorely misses being able to rename streets, neighbourhoods, buildings etc?) I can only hope that it will be a single expansion and not what someone else mentioned before where you have to pay each time you want to increase your city size by a small amount.

 

As for EA moving the goalposts on what it considers to be hacking, and banning customers from playing the game, I hope that this won't happen, or that if it does it is found to be illegal. I also hope that (if future expansions tempt me back to playing the game) they don't then retire the servers without allowing offline play.

 

All this sort of behaviour by the big game manufacturers, placing onerous restrictions on the enjoyment of their product. Piracy is still on the increase and they are only playing into the pirates' hands. Piracy is no longer about simply wanting to play a game but not wanting to pay for it. Now it's about taking back control of your own gaming, breaking free of the shackles DRM and anti-modding EULA's place on you, while at the same time sending a clear message to games developers that if you put out shoddy, unfinished, dumbed down games with draconian DRM, then you can't count on starry-eyed gaming fans buying it simply because it's the next installment of a title they love.

 

For me personally, except for any future update which I will consider paying for just to make my original £40 outlay worthwhile, I think in future I will steer clear of any game made by EA.

[Killhipsters 0]

The map size limitations currently in place are not because of any limitations with GlassBox nor the the availability of computer processing power. If you look what they did with Simcity 2 and Simcity 3, there are a lot of DLC packs planned for people to buy in the coming year or two, this is EA. The map tile size restrictions are intentional (as some sleuthing of the game will reveal) and its been acknowledged that they're working on larger maps as we speak. I know the smaller map sizes are too small, but with the inevitable Metropolis expansion pack will undoubtedly yield bigger maps, (heard there is an agricultural DLC planned where you can farm fruit/vegetables/grain for export like the older Simcity titles), a transportation DLC is planned, also heard of an attractions pack where you can build theme parks (roller-coasters, attractions, etc).

 

The game will get better, we sadly just have to wait for it to leave beta.

[London-b 90]

The game won't get better. They will probably release bigger maps, but they will only be big by this games standards, they will still be too small to create anything realistic or with any character. 

 

Continuous tiles are the only way to save the game. Bring back what made SC4 so great.

[DmainEvent 195]

The game won't get better. They will probably release bigger maps, but they will only be big by this games standards, they will still be too small to create anything realistic or with any character. 

 

Continuous tiles are the only way to save the game. Bring back what made SC4 so great.

 

 

Agreed.  Bigger Tiles that are contiguous in a offline mode would fix a-lot of what ales this game.  

[mastorofpuppetz 199]

 

The game won't get better. They will probably release bigger maps, but they will only be big by this games standards, they will still be too small to create anything realistic or with any character. 

 

Continuous tiles are the only way to save the game. Bring back what made SC4 so great.

 

 

Agreed.  Bigger Tiles that are contiguous in a offline mode would fix a-lot of what ales this game.  

 

It woul help, but i disagree  the Ai and simulation need to be fixed, map size won't help with either.