Community Interviews Maxis: Part 2

[egod6969 8]

Aren't you guys being a little over- reactive with this game? No game can make you completely satisfied. There are plenty of compromises we have to make in life- and we live with it. I'm sure the game will still be fun and a challenge. Just because the game doesn't include a few features- why does it mean that you will automatically hate the game? Alot of you are just a little bit too closed- minded with all the expectations that have grown on this game for the past few years. I'm just happy that there is another game in the line at all.

Terraforming: Its dissapointing to see this feature go, but I currently play CXL, which doesn't include huge terraforming options, and i live just fine. Without terraforming the game is more realistic and you have to plan your roads around the terrain- just like in real life. I was disappointed with CXL terraforming when i was planning to buy the game, but when i actually started the game, the freedom of curved roads and interesting networks made it alot of fun to build around mountains and roads!

Regions: I see alot of over reaction in this part of the game. Just because the concept art shows disconnected cities, doesn't mean yours will be! You can build to the very edge and so can your neighbor [or you if your playing solo]. So YES, you can plan out suburbs/urban sprawl if you wish- or plan it out with a friend!

The Cloud: Yes, it is an issue if they stop there servers, but otherwise most of us to everything online anyways [like reading this post].

Graphics: Coming from CXL this will be difficult to adjust to, but its not the end of the world. I've seen worse. I'm excited for the simulation side of the game!

Terraforming: Terraforming isn't just about making the game easier or less realistic. It is also about the freedom to craft a region as you choose and that is unique rather than being tied to the same 5 designs that every other person in the world is. When I am terraforming the last thing I think of is where roads are going.

Regions: Umm did you read the linked article? Directly from the first sentence of the answer "

Although there is a lot going on in the region between cities, you will not be able to expand outside of your city boundaries."

The Cloud: I am not against the cloud or multiplayer in general, I was actually hoping myself and my son could share a region. However EA seems to have a habit of turning off game servers when they feel the game has outlived it's life span. If SC4 was tied to an EA server it would have been unplayable for the last 5 years knowing EA.

Graphics: I personally like the graphics.

@William Gates

It is hard to say, one thing I hate doing is replying to something and rehashing what the last 10 replies have said.

  Edited July 26, 2012 by egod6969  

[cirugo 1,889]

hahah, Sim City on facebook is REAL bad.....about 96% of the comments are bashing the game. AND THIS IS ON FACEBOOK. The comments even appear under unrelated wall posts such as "________________is the first sim city game you played" One of the answers was "Sim City w/o an internet connection" WAHAHAHAHAH. The maxis interview #2 is getting real heat. If that doesn't change the direction of the game, im sure it wont change the direction of where my wallet is going.

Actually, I think the Facebook page proves we're fighting a losing battle here.

As of now: The # of Facebook responses for the Q&A part 2 article, posted 1 day ago, number 40. The # of Facebook responses for the Q&A part 1 article, posted 7 days ago, number 26. Yet, tons of people are apparently following the SimCity Facebook feed. The # of Facebook responses to the 'which is better: Simcity 2000 or Simcity Societies?' question, posted 1 day ago? 774. The # of Facebook responses to the 'what is the first SimCity game you played?' question, posted merely 7 hours ago? 456.

Why did the article posts receive so few comments when so many people are obviously following the feed? An intuitive answer is that it's because most people following the feed simply don't care enough to respond. They aren't going to put decent time and effort into reading an article and understanding its implications, and then writing up a response of a few sentences. Only people who cared would do that. In other words, most of the Facebook feed consists of what we like to call casuals. (By the way, the comments to each article post are about 95% negative, showing practically everyone who actually does care enough to read an article and post a comment dislikes what is happening).

Why did the two question posts receive so many comments? Because it takes no effort to respond to those kind of posts. It's extremely easy and quick to understand the post itself. The answer requires just one word! Barely any thought is required. Do any of these qualities remind you of the direction the new SimCity game is taking?

Most of the comments on the Facebook page are from people spamming for friends for SimCity Social...whether that will translate to sales for SimCity remains to be seen. I have my doubts.

[copper121212 23]

Well time for me to vent.

I started truely playing this game when SimCity 2000 came out. If you had of told me the map size in 2013 would be SMALLER than it was then I would've laughed. I envisioned huge sprawling endless regions and I'm sure 95% of SimCity fans would rather have that. It gives you endless possibilites to build a city however you want, not boxed into a tiny map having a game telling you how to do it. It's definitely a deal breaker for me.

It's SimCITY but they've turned it into SimNeighbourhood with this map size. How can anything look realistic when you're playing on such a tiny map. From farms to sprawl to big cities a tiny map will look ridiculous and then add into that neighbour cities are essential stand alone with some crappy long distance connection. Can't even pretend your tiny cities are one large city.

It's obvious their vision for how people play the game is to have a bunch of tiny specialized cities sharing "resources" with eachother. Sure you don't necessarily have to play it that way but when it seems that's how the game is designed any other way won't feel right.

To make matters worse it's not even as if the graphics we are getting are earth shattering great to make up for the tiny map. Glassbox is promising for sure but likely the reason the maps are so small and useless leaving us stuck with a micro sim. I just don't get it.

As a fan of SimCity I probably won't invest in SimNeighbourhood.

[Vampirovibrio 43]

I'm very disappointed by the fact that there is no terraforming. This precludes players from constructing the region they would like. I have a question: did Maxis ever said that players cam make their own region map? If we can't that is a sad sad day in the history of simcity, frankly, from the time I heard that a new simcity is coming, I have been looking forward to it. But as time goes on, I'm wondering if this new simcity is really going to live up to the standards set by their predecessors. Usually, as games go through the series, they improve on their best features. Till now, it would seem that maxis is removing more features than they are putting in and more importantly rather than build upon and improving the series' best features, they are removing a number of them.

[Endureth 37]

Ya know, it's not like the SimCity community hasn't been crystal clear about what we wanted in SimCity 5. We've been talking about it for years and most of the players are pretty unanimous about what they want to see in the next SimCity. It's not exactly a big secret.

You have to pretty STUPID to not know what we wanted. All Maxis really had to do was know how to read.

[Selphy 69]

Ya know, it's not like the SimCity community hasn't been crystal clear about what we wanted in SimCity 5. We've been talking about it for years and most of the players are pretty unanimous about what they want to see in the next SimCity. It's not exactly a big secret.

You have to pretty STUPID to not know what we wanted. All Maxis really had to do was know how to read.

Has anyone considered that Maxis didn't want to go that direction? I understand that SC4 has been alive for so long and we've grown accustomed to things and have ideas of our own but in the end SimCity is their property and IP. It would be awesome to have them cater to our desires but they also have their own plans for their project.

[herob4u 34]

Has anyone considered that Maxis didn't want to go that direction? I understand that SC4 has been alive for so long and we've grown accustomed to things and have ideas of our own but in the end SimCity is their property and IP. It would be awesome to have them cater to our desires but they also have their own plans for their project.

I was kinda thinking of that....not that Maxis is doing these horrible decisions, it's the fact that EA owns Maxis that makes me believe the developers of the game have no say about DRM/Online issue we are regressing, it's simply sick EA on the job again, infecting and using a popular franchise until it's ruined to the ground...all for the sake of some greed. (That's what I see of them at least)

[cirugo 1,889]

Ya know, it's not like the SimCity community hasn't been crystal clear about what we wanted in SimCity 5. We've been talking about it for years and most of the players are pretty unanimous about what they want to see in the next SimCity. It's not exactly a big secret.

You have to pretty STUPID to not know what we wanted. All Maxis really had to do was know how to read.

Has anyone considered that Maxis didn't want to go that direction? I understand that SC4 has been alive for so long and we've grown accustomed to things and have ideas of our own but in the end SimCity is their property and IP. It would be awesome to have them cater to our desires but they also have their own plans for their project.

when they take it in a direction that most of the people who have enjoyed playing it over the years aren't interested in going, then they deserve to fail.

[Mark Waybill 242]

The various negative bits of news I've got from this interview and other sources have made me decide to not buy the game and cancel my preorder. Sad day for city simulation. Well may we say Maxis Man save Simcity, because nothing will save EA

[kruegersc4 0]

This is a little off topic, but I heard that some of the simulation will go on in 'the cloud'. So this means that the game will not be playable at all offline, therefore setting into stone that there will be a time when the game will be completely irrelevant and unplayable (when the servers shut down)? And this will also probably severely limit modability?

At least the fact that it's a more true simulation is cool.

[copper121212 23]

Ya know, it's not like the SimCity community hasn't been crystal clear about what we wanted in SimCity 5. We've been talking about it for years and most of the players are pretty unanimous about what they want to see in the next SimCity. It's not exactly a big secret.

You have to pretty STUPID to not know what we wanted. All Maxis really had to do was know how to read.

Has anyone considered that Maxis didn't want to go that direction? I understand that SC4 has been alive for so long and we've grown accustomed to things and have ideas of our own but in the end SimCity is their property and IP. It would be awesome to have them cater to our desires but they also have their own plans for their project.

While I don't know if this is usually the case but it seems to me that franchises that alienate their core base are destined to fail.

[kruegersc4 0]

Unless a game is really good for completely different reasons than the core base expects.

[Moory 7]

If the reason to not terraform is because of the resource side of it, then that's not a good enough answer. Maxis could somehow implement having players add the resources to the map that they create rather than having pre-built maps. That to me is being very limited on the freedom that this game has always been based upon. Although Sim City on SNES was based on random pre-built maps and I still loved that game.

I am still being optimistic about this game as much as it hurts to say. There is still plenty of time for changes to be made before release plus being that this game is online-only, Maxis could easily release a fix to allow terraforming again.

[Helbore 15]

Glassbox looked amazing, but all these further updates have really soured my expectations for this game. It's sad, as I'd long given up hope on a new Sim City, so was really excited to see it was finally coming back.

The reason SC4 has lasted for so long is because of how flexible it was. You could design a whole new region and build vastly different, sprawling cities. Add in how much extra has been provided through modding and you had a game that constantly had new things to do. Its why it can still be played years later.

All this limitations like no terraforming and no control of regional transport mean the game will get old REALLY quick. With 2x2km city sizes, we'll have built a city to its limits within a few hours. In SC4, I like the fact that once I run into the city limits, I can just load up the next tile and continue on with more of the same city. Its rewarding to look at a massive region you've created, with this big sprawling city ever-expanding over it.

Instead of being shown new features that make us go "wow, I can't wait to try that out," we seem to be getting info telling us why we should be thankful they've removed features we've loved using in the past. That doesn't make me feel confident that I'll end up enjoying this game.

I don't want to play "share the resources," in an online game. I've no interest in online gaming. All I want to do is be able to build a whopping great city, in the manner that I want to make it. Heck, I want to make a whopping great region, with a few whopping great, interconnected cities, towns, villages and farmland scattered across it. I can do that with SC4, even if some of the mechanics are fiddly. If I can't do anything close to that with SC13, why would I buy it?

They need to drop this online crap and gameplay limitations and allow us to have a fully-flexible, custom-buildable region. Give us an improved terraformer, instead of removing it completely. Give us the ability to choose the size of a city tile by simply typing in a number (so we can choose a size that best suits the power of our computer), instead of forcing us into a single size too small to fit a farm in, let alone a city. Give us a fully-flexible transportation network, not limit us to pre-defined intercity connections.

They make us believe that the reason this game is happening is because they've seen how SC4 has survived and flourished due to the online community. But then rather than paying attention to what said community wants, they not only spend all their effort putting in features that nobody asked for, but are actually cutting out existing features that made the game capable of enduring for all these years in the first place!

I can only see one good reason for them doing this. They don't want to risk the game lasting as long as SC4. They want the game to lack longevity, so they can keep selling us upgrades and new versions. They're intentionally knobbling the game because they hope it will allow them to more easily milk their customers. I think it will backfire and we'll see another 10 years of SC4 being played to death by its fans.

[alex macnamara 139]

I can only see one good reason for them doing this. They don't want to risk the game lasting as long as SC4. They want the game to lack longevity, so they can keep selling us upgrades and new versions. They're intentionally knobbling the game because they hope it will allow them to more easily milk their customers. I think it will backfire and we'll see another 10 years of SC4 being played to death by its fans.

ending result is this

1. Terraforming DLC $9.99

2. Single Player Sandbox Mode $19.99

3. Region Filler Pack $9.99

4. Highways n' Stuff Expansion $19.99

5. Mega Map Pack $5.99

all while saying "you spoke , we listened, we charged"

[CaptCity 4,752]

Well, we've wondered into areas already being covered in the pinned topics. Please use them... Thanks.