Anyone going to gamescom? (my notes from gamescom)

[The_City_Builder 299]

Was it a fun experience overall? Did anyone from Maxis mention anything about the tile size?

How many details were there, for example, how good were the car and pedestrian animations?

Because from the way it's sounding, the game sounds so great that it's easy to forget about the tile size, and you end up having fun either way.

They didn't say anything about the tilesize, but I was reaching one of the edges a few minutes before the end. So I'm betting that this was either the smallest tile or they reduced it for the demo.

The car and pedestrian details were very good. For example you could see sims playing football, zoom right in and click on them to see what they were doing. In SC4 it was just animation of sims playing football, but in the new SC they actually know they are playing football. The cars driving seemed less jagged than in the trailers.

It is definitely fun.

Then this has definitley secured a pre-order from me.

[warrior 169]

Sadly it seems that the city in the demo was a "standard" sized city...

@Jon889 That's our standard map size (2k square' date=' the same as an SC4 medium city). Rendering everything in 3d, we're performance constrained.[/quote']

@Jon889 That's our standard map size (2k square, the same as an SC4 medium city). Rendering everything in 3d, we're performance constrained.

— Ocean Quigley (@oceanquigley)

August 17, 2012

And it is the only size available...

@Jon889 Sorry for the confusion - yes' date=' only one size, 2k square.[/quote']

But he does say you can get much much higher populations in that tile.

20 minutes was enough for me to get withdrawal now. The city size isn't as noticeable as people have been worrying about. But I am a little sad to hear that it's that size...

[The_City_Builder 299]

Well, as long as we have lot's and lot's of build options available, and the maps look pretty (rivers in the final version?), I'm sure people will be able to forget about the size. But a medium city tile in SC4 was big enough to squeeze a million sims out of.

Personally, I could really care less about tile size, though I know a lot of you think differently. The reason for that is I'm the kind of person that just sits and looks at how a city functions; I'm not one to really dig deep into transportation management and such like a lot of people here.

I think this game will be a success. But only time will tell.

  Edited August 17, 2012 by The_City_Builder  

[snick25 384]

Well, as long as we have lot's and lot's of build options available, and the maps look pretty (rivers in the final version?), I'm sure people will be able to forget about the size. But a medium city tile in SC4 was big enough to squeeze a million sims out of.

Really? In order to get anything larger than a small town (which I hear is what most players at Gamescon were getting using up half the map), you'd most likely have to build at least a few highrises, and if you want a million Sims condensed in to 4 square kilometers, you'll probably have to build a field of skyscrapers. Now, you tell me, how will that look surrounded by a field of no-man's land?

I realize you have a different opinion of maps and aren't as concerned about the big picture (a.k.a. building up and connecting a region), but most of us are. Most of us believe that any city-building game marketed as a major alternative to what's out there currently (pretty much CXL and SC4) should give you the ability to create more than just one city with rigid boundaries. You should be able to build a metropolitan area, with multiple cities/suburbs connected to each other stretching over large distances of land (larger than 4 sq. km at least!) without any unsightly borders/boundaries.

This was offered to us in SC4, so I find it hard to believe why the developers didn't take that very popular feature from the most popular game in the franchise and make it a possibility here. Yeah, I realize there are performance issues and all that crap, but, believe it or not, I'm sure there are many people out there that would be willing to sacrifice a little in the performance department to at least be able to make a city larger than this size of TinyTown USA!

I was actually starting to get my hopes up for this game. I even started to get a little excitement back about it. I was even considering biting the Origin bullet and trying out the beta. Not anymore. This is a deal-breaker for me.

[Maxis_MD 79]

Part 2 to the blog posted on reddit yesterday is up:

http://www.reddit.co..._5_for_over_an/

From all I've read it sounds like the game as fun, or at least the first 20 minutes of the game is fun. I still have a lot of concerns though, biggest of which is how small the maps are. Sure the game is a lot of fun while you only have a small town, but what about once you reach the map limits? While it's still possible highways will be in the final product it is really started to sound like a longshot.

Argh, there are so many aspects of this game that sounds really fun but I still can't get over all of the stuff they took out. As it stands now, I still wouldn't buy this game on launch day, I would wait a while to see what people think of the game after they've played for a week or two (or if I get itno the beta i can decide for myself). I'm really worried that the fun will wear off once the map is filled up, and that won't take long.

I'm really wouldn't worry about the fun wearing off. There's SO many different ways you can play the game, it's kinda ridiculous, actually. Especially when you factor in region play, striving to top different leaderboards (biggest polluter, highest Mayor rating, etc.) and all the different challenges (all part of the SimCity World features we announced last week). Because we'll be able to put out new challenges on a regular basis, there will always be fun stuff to do in the game.

BTW: That reddit write-up is really informative. Really cool that he took the time to do that (he played the game four times -- that's hardcore!).

[The_City_Builder 299]

Part 2 to the blog posted on reddit yesterday is up:

http://www.reddit.co..._5_for_over_an/

From all I've read it sounds like the game as fun, or at least the first 20 minutes of the game is fun. I still have a lot of concerns though, biggest of which is how small the maps are. Sure the game is a lot of fun while you only have a small town, but what about once you reach the map limits? While it's still possible highways will be in the final product it is really started to sound like a longshot.

Argh, there are so many aspects of this game that sounds really fun but I still can't get over all of the stuff they took out. As it stands now, I still wouldn't buy this game on launch day, I would wait a while to see what people think of the game after they've played for a week or two (or if I get itno the beta i can decide for myself). I'm really worried that the fun will wear off once the map is filled up, and that won't take long.

I'm really wouldn't worry about the fun wearing off. There's SO many different ways you can play the game, it's kinda ridiculous, actually. Especially when you factor in region play, striving to top different leaderboards (biggest polluter, highest Mayor rating, etc.) and all the different challenges (all part of the SimCity World features we announced last week). Because we'll be able to put out new challenges on a regular basis, there will always be fun stuff to do in the game.

BTW: That reddit write-up is really informative. Really cool that he took the time to do that (he played the game four times -- that's hardcore!).

Can you give us an idea as to what types of challenges there are? The idea sounds pretty neat.

[pyanodon 218]

Can you give us an idea as to what types of challenges there are? The idea sounds pretty neat.

I think he is talking aobut the challenges showed in the sim city world trailer. Like. "build an university" etc

[Maxis_MD 79]

Part 2 to the blog posted on reddit yesterday is up:

http://www.reddit.co..._5_for_over_an/

From all I've read it sounds like the game as fun, or at least the first 20 minutes of the game is fun. I still have a lot of concerns though, biggest of which is how small the maps are. Sure the game is a lot of fun while you only have a small town, but what about once you reach the map limits? While it's still possible highways will be in the final product it is really started to sound like a longshot.

Argh, there are so many aspects of this game that sounds really fun but I still can't get over all of the stuff they took out. As it stands now, I still wouldn't buy this game on launch day, I would wait a while to see what people think of the game after they've played for a week or two (or if I get itno the beta i can decide for myself). I'm really worried that the fun will wear off once the map is filled up, and that won't take long.

I'm really wouldn't worry about the fun wearing off. There's SO many different ways you can play the game, it's kinda ridiculous, actually. Especially when you factor in region play, striving to top different leaderboards (biggest polluter, highest Mayor rating, etc.) and all the different challenges (all part of the SimCity World features we announced last week). Because we'll be able to put out new challenges on a regular basis, there will always be fun stuff to do in the game.

BTW: That reddit write-up is really informative. Really cool that he took the time to do that (he played the game four times -- that's hardcore!).

Can you give us an idea as to what types of challenges there are? The idea sounds pretty neat.

Certainly! There's going to be a variety of different challenges in the game that will require you to really think about how you play. Some may be simple (build a University City like pyanodon mentioned) while others may encourage you to band together with the global SimCity community to complete a specific task (create X # of jobs, for instance). We'll be doing them quite regularly, too, so it'll be fun to come back and see what the newest challenge is. Look out for a commentary about the all the SImCity World features very, very soon.

[Netuno 97]

http://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/ydm5u/update_i_have_been_playing_simcity_5_for_over_an/

"Residential showed respective things, like Number of Workers in the different wealth levels, ..."

I really liked this aspect in this game, will we have the richest or poorest neighborhoods in the game?

At least partly my proposal has been met.

SimCity (2013) could establish preconditions that determine social class which would inhabit a certain area of the city as crime rates, presence of green areas, proximity to industrial areas or not, traffic, transport, leisure areas, etc.

  Edited August 19, 2012 by Netuno  

[maddogmark25 58]

One thing I've noticed is whenever MAxis is referring to map size, they keep saying the "standard" map size

Could this mean that there are indeed bigger and smaller map sizes? Just a thought.

[fatbuster 44]

As of right now, it seems that they're planning on releasing with just that size. They have mentioned though that the engine could handle larger cities, with the limitation being what your system can handle. Ocean saying "standard" instead of "only" does sound encouraging, but I wouldn't get my hopes up about it.

[jpjoe 29]

Thanks for posting your experience, warrior!

[Deleted irrelevant, nonconstructive, and otherwise very aggressive parts of post - BL]

  Edited August 21, 2012 by Blue Lightning  

[MandelSoft 2,770]

He didn't say he didn't like it. He just said that he didn't find it worth it to pay the fee just to try out the new SimCity. That's a decision some people make, just like I don't pre-order the game because considering the price (which is high even to today's gaming standards), it's a quite risky investment and I would like to see what I get for my money.

For me, there's another problem why I'm not visiting GamesCom and that's the problem that I live too far away from it (FYI, I live across the Atlantic Ocean, so I have to fly to the USA just to get to GamesCom, and that's not very cheap). It looks like only you Americans have the privilege to try the new SimCity out...

[Linoa06 1,374]

Gamescom's in Cologne, not the USA.

[MandelSoft 2,770]

My bad, but still, Köln is not around the corner for me, especially when you're not having your own car and driver's license yet...

[Linoa06 1,374]

Yeah, but it's closer, I suppose.

You can always reach Heerlen by train then take the RB20 to Düren and then take the S12 or rush-hour S13 /nod

Local lines ftw.