PAX

[spiritbw 111]

I think we've been over this before, but I'll just say it again -- the team built the game from ground up to be an online game. End of story. However, I still think you should give the multiplayer features a shot. You never know, man -- you want actually like it. A lot.

You releasing a demo then that people can try?

Your going in a radical new direction here and of course, people aren't going to shell out the price of a full game for something they don't like the sound of and asking them to buy it on faith.

[ferryv 94]

I think we've been over this before, but I'll just say it again -- the team built the game from ground up to be an online game. End of story. However, I still think you should give the multiplayer features a shot. You never know, man -- you want actually like it. A lot.

You releasing a demo then that people can try?

Your going in a radical new direction here and of course, people aren't going to shell out the price of a full game for something they don't like the sound of and asking them to buy it on faith.

Maxis is releasing a beta version soon (http://www.simcity.com/en_US/beta/info) here you can get the feeling of how the new SimCity is gonna be. Just sign yourself up for the closed beta and experience it yourself.

[MikeDao 12]

Just to quote few really troubling points from that hands on article:

The game shares more with The Sims than its previous incarnations, and that’s not a bad thing. The interface was simple and has a similar button layout. Anyone who has played SimCity Social on the Facebook will feel right at home in navigating all of the possible build options

Not necessarily bad thing if it concerns just interface.

The greatest changes made to the game as compared with previous versions, however has to be the gameplay. It follows the trend of many remakes, in that a lot of the minutiae has been removed in order to allow the player to focus on the core gameplay elements. I will admit that I was never very good at SimCity. There was always one part of the game I would hit after a few hours where I would never be able to grow the city any further without taking on some serious debt, the politics of which I will not debate in a virtual world. There was also a good amount of micromanagement in older titles. Roads had to be built, of course, but so did items like power transmission lines, sewer pipes, and water lines. It isn’t enough to zone areas and collect money, services needed to be provided, and it was often difficult to lay out water in an area that only just needed it. So, in this title, all services of that nature are tied to roads, which does make sense, allowing people to plan more effectively just using roads.

How many remakes are better than the original? Removed all that made SC4 so complex and great? Micromanagement has been one of those really important parts of SimCity for me, I want to be charge of everything in my cities, with more options to do so the better.

SimCity has always been an open ended game. The last title, SimCity 4, followed this mold, and I had a great difficulty playing the game, as the cities I built would never really scale all that well, and my town would soon find itself in fiscal crisis. The new title, however, nips this right in the bud

So it seems this will be great game for new gamers, or those that found SC4 too hard :| .

I would really like to hear some thoughts from old time SimCity veterans who have had hands on time with this, cause I still want to believe this will be great game.

Smokki, I wrote that article, and I'd like to take the opportunity to expound some on the concerns you have. First, how it feels a little bit like The Sims and Sim City in the interface. You've probably seen form screenshots, how the interface elements are at the bottom of the screen and you dive into categories from there. It's an interface that's been in Sim games since oh, SimGolf- it's clean, and unobtrusive, yet it is unmistakably a Sim game. It certainly looks better, but it does not deviate from what you're already used to.

Next, the micromanagement of power, water, and sewage. What's been removed is the need to lay power, roads, water, and sewage independently. When you lay a road down, you are also laying down all of those. It does take a bit of micromanagement out of the game, but there are still other factors that the player still has to manage, you can have everything connected via a road, but if you do not have sufficient capacity, a good amount of water towers built in the right places, or enough power generation plants, you're still SOL. In the demo, turning on my power plant for the first time, watching workers arrive at the plant, and then seeing it go online, and lights coming on throughout your town was quite something to behold.

Finally, your concern that this game will be something more for casual players as opposed to the hard core. What I played was, of course, a very early alpha build, and what was shown was a demo stage that had an introductory tutorial. The tutorial did a good job of introducing the concepts of the game, and leads into the quest type system with a very small pre-built town. I'm sure that they will give you the opportunity to start from scratch if you like. The quests can also be ignored - but they're milestones that a dedicated player will want to hit on their own, if memory serves me, the first was to reach a certain population, and to attain a certain level of income.

I hope this helps clear things up!

[VeritaScientia 150]

Everything running off the roads.....hmm sounds like a time-saving and very good idea from my perspective, I usually lay my water lines under a road anyway, its how most big cities do it, if I'm not mistaken. Plus instead of having to take the time to lay five different grids, I can just do one. Talk about a time-saver.

[cirugo 1,889]

Just to quote few really troubling points from that hands on article:

The game shares more with The Sims than its previous incarnations, and that’s not a bad thing. The interface was simple and has a similar button layout. Anyone who has played SimCity Social on the Facebook will feel right at home in navigating all of the possible build options

Not necessarily bad thing if it concerns just interface.

The greatest changes made to the game as compared with previous versions, however has to be the gameplay. It follows the trend of many remakes, in that a lot of the minutiae has been removed in order to allow the player to focus on the core gameplay elements. I will admit that I was never very good at SimCity. There was always one part of the game I would hit after a few hours where I would never be able to grow the city any further without taking on some serious debt, the politics of which I will not debate in a virtual world. There was also a good amount of micromanagement in older titles. Roads had to be built, of course, but so did items like power transmission lines, sewer pipes, and water lines. It isn’t enough to zone areas and collect money, services needed to be provided, and it was often difficult to lay out water in an area that only just needed it. So, in this title, all services of that nature are tied to roads, which does make sense, allowing people to plan more effectively just using roads.

How many remakes are better than the original? Removed all that made SC4 so complex and great? Micromanagement has been one of those really important parts of SimCity for me, I want to be charge of everything in my cities, with more options to do so the better.

SimCity has always been an open ended game. The last title, SimCity 4, followed this mold, and I had a great difficulty playing the game, as the cities I built would never really scale all that well, and my town would soon find itself in fiscal crisis. The new title, however, nips this right in the bud

So it seems this will be great game for new gamers, or those that found SC4 too hard :| .

I would really like to hear some thoughts from old time SimCity veterans who have had hands on time with this, cause I still want to believe this will be great game.

Smokki, I wrote that article, and I'd like to take the opportunity to expound some on the concerns you have. First, how it feels a little bit like The Sims and Sim City in the interface. You've probably seen form screenshots, how the interface elements are at the bottom of the screen and you dive into categories from there. It's an interface that's been in Sim games since oh, SimGolf- it's clean, and unobtrusive, yet it is unmistakably a Sim game. It certainly looks better, but it does not deviate from what you're already used to.

Next, the micromanagement of power, water, and sewage. What's been removed is the need to lay power, roads, water, and sewage independently. When you lay a road down, you are also laying down all of those. It does take a bit of micromanagement out of the game, but there are still other factors that the player still has to manage, you can have everything connected via a road, but if you do not have sufficient capacity, a good amount of water towers built in the right places, or enough power generation plants, you're still SOL. In the demo, turning on my power plant for the first time, watching workers arrive at the plant, and then seeing it go online, and lights coming on throughout your town was quite something to behold.

Finally, your concern that this game will be something more for casual players as opposed to the hard core. What I played was, of course, a very early alpha build, and what was shown was a demo stage that had an introductory tutorial. The tutorial did a good job of introducing the concepts of the game, and leads into the quest type system with a very small pre-built town. I'm sure that they will give you the opportunity to start from scratch if you like. The quests can also be ignored - but they're milestones that a dedicated player will want to hit on their own, if memory serves me, the first was to reach a certain population, and to attain a certain level of income.

I hope this helps clear things up!

Great, it sounds like you might enjoy the game but I'm not sure how you think you can allay the concerns everyone else has (incidentally no one's really making much of a stink about simplification of infrastructure like water and power) when you yourself state that you were never very good at SimCity.

[MikeDao 12]

Great, it sounds like you might enjoy the game but I'm not sure how you think you can allay the concerns everyone else has (incidentally no one's really making much of a stink about simplification of infrastructure like water and power) when you yourself state that you were never very good at SimCity.

Haha, let me clarify. I also believe that I am terrible at ALL games.

It's a part of my self-deprecating charm!

[MikeDao 12]

Great, it sounds like you might enjoy the game but I'm not sure how you think you can allay the concerns everyone else has (incidentally no one's really making much of a stink about simplification of infrastructure like water and power) when you yourself state that you were never very good at SimCity.

Haha, let me clarify. I also believe that I am terrible at ALL games.

It's a part of my self-deprecating charm!

It's also important to remember that it is still early days. We're at approximately half a year out from release, give or take a few weeks. A lot can change. What I saw from the demo was a good showcase of the direction they want to take this franchise.

Though the removal of having to lay down separate infrastructure was something that jumped out of me, what left the most lasting impression upon me was the game's charm. I realized afterwards that as I was playing the game and doing mundane things, like building sewer buildings so my town didn't have poop everywhere, I was smiling. When was the last time you played a game that made you smile? (It was Cards Against Humanity for me, but I'm also a terrible human being.)

I'm an advocate of this title, and I came to this message board to talk about it with you guys and gals, because though they have their place in the industry, we have enough Call of Duties and Medals of Honor and Gears of Wars. We need more games that make us smile. We need more games where we cooperate to build things bigger than those we can build by ourselves.

Like I said, this title made me smile. If you're on this forum discussing it, chances are that you'll purchase it regardless of what I or anyone else has to say about it. And I hope you do, because I'd like you to experience what I did.

[cirugo 1,889]

Great, it sounds like you might enjoy the game but I'm not sure how you think you can allay the concerns everyone else has (incidentally no one's really making much of a stink about simplification of infrastructure like water and power) when you yourself state that you were never very good at SimCity.

Haha, let me clarify. I also believe that I am terrible at ALL games.

It's a part of my self-deprecating charm!

It's also important to remember that it is still early days. We're at approximately half a year out from release, give or take a few weeks. A lot can change. What I saw from the demo was a good showcase of the direction they want to take this franchise.

Though the removal of having to lay down separate infrastructure was something that jumped out of me, what left the most lasting impression upon me was the game's charm. I realized afterwards that as I was playing the game and doing mundane things, like building sewer buildings so my town didn't have poop everywhere, I was smiling. When was the last time you played a game that made you smile? (It was Cards Against Humanity for me, but I'm also a terrible human being.)

I'm an advocate of this title, and I came to this message board to talk about it with you guys and gals, because though they have their place in the industry, we have enough Call of Duties and Medals of Honor and Gears of Wars. We need more games that make us smile. We need more games where we cooperate to build things bigger than those we can build by ourselves.

Like I said, this title made me smile. If you're on this forum discussing it, chances are that you'll purchase it regardless of what I or anyone else has to say about it. And I hope you do, because I'd like you to experience what I did.

I hope you're right about "a lot can change"...that's why so many of us won't shut up about where they're taking the game. No one is objecting to them trying to appeal to more people or taking the game in a new direction. We are objecting to them forcing the rest of us to play that way and dumping features we like to facilitate it.

[Smokki 54]

Smokki, I wrote that article, and I'd like to take the opportunity to expound some on the concerns you have. First, how it feels a little bit like The Sims and Sim City in the interface. You've probably seen form screenshots, how the interface elements are at the bottom of the screen and you dive into categories from there. It's an interface that's been in Sim games since oh, SimGolf- it's clean, and unobtrusive, yet it is unmistakably a Sim game. It certainly looks better, but it does not deviate from what you're already used to.

Next, the micromanagement of power, water, and sewage. What's been removed is the need to lay power, roads, water, and sewage independently. When you lay a road down, you are also laying down all of those. It does take a bit of micromanagement out of the game, but there are still other factors that the player still has to manage, you can have everything connected via a road, but if you do not have sufficient capacity, a good amount of water towers built in the right places, or enough power generation plants, you're still SOL. In the demo, turning on my power plant for the first time, watching workers arrive at the plant, and then seeing it go online, and lights coming on throughout your town was quite something to behold.

Finally, your concern that this game will be something more for casual players as opposed to the hard core. What I played was, of course, a very early alpha build, and what was shown was a demo stage that had an introductory tutorial. The tutorial did a good job of introducing the concepts of the game, and leads into the quest type system with a very small pre-built town. I'm sure that they will give you the opportunity to start from scratch if you like. The quests can also be ignored - but they're milestones that a dedicated player will want to hit on their own, if memory serves me, the first was to reach a certain population, and to attain a certain level of income.

I hope this helps clear things up!

Ok, this is good to hear, I understood things a bit wrong. I'm just so worried about stramlining and making games more mainstream. There are some games that should never be streamlined.

[~Dee~ 215]

I would suspect that a game takes quite a few years to develop, so saying that there is still 6 months to go and things can change, well the core elements will be in place.

The features what have been taken out won't be put back, I would think that the last 6 months before release would be used to tweak what's not quite right and to iron out bugs and so on.

In other words, not much will change and the ways the game stands now (going by the information from Maxis) it's not what I expect or want from a city building game.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

Actually, a ton can change in six months. Look at Minecraft for instance. Also, Glass Box is meant to be highly extensible.

  Edited September 4, 2012 by OcramSeattle  

[jdenm8 362]

Actually, a ton can change in six months. Look at Mine raft for instance. Also, Glass Box is meant to be highly extensible.

Minecraft wasn't made by an internal AAA Studio under the scrutiny of their AAA Publisher. It was an indie project which should be in perpetual Beta.

There are completely different expectations for both parties. It's too late for features to change. Though, Bioware did improve Mass Effect 3's ending, maybe the same thing will happen with SimCity. A horde of angry customers, a ton of bad press for EA...

  Edited September 4, 2012 by jdenm8  

[CaptCity 4,752]

More topic clean up. The subject here is "PAX" and the related article. Please find the appropriate thread for other comments.

[spiritbw 111]

I think we've been over this before, but I'll just say it again -- the team built the game from ground up to be an online game. End of story. However, I still think you should give the multiplayer features a shot. You never know, man -- you want actually like it. A lot.

You releasing a demo then that people can try?

Your going in a radical new direction here and of course, people aren't going to shell out the price of a full game for something they don't like the sound of and asking them to buy it on faith.

Maxis is releasing a beta version soon (http://www.simcity.com/en_US/beta/info) here you can get the feeling of how the new SimCity is gonna be. Just sign yourself up for the closed beta and experience it yourself.

The only problem witht that is that you will only get to try it if you get into the beta. They aren't going to let everyone who signs up in on it after all. Ditto if the only place they do demos are at the expos. Only folks that can get to the expos are going to get any chance to check thigns out.

Oh, and for the record I did sign up to give it a go.

[ferryv 94]

I think we've been over this before, but I'll just say it again -- the team built the game from ground up to be an online game. End of story. However, I still think you should give the multiplayer features a shot. You never know, man -- you want actually like it. A lot.

You releasing a demo then that people can try?

Your going in a radical new direction here and of course, people aren't going to shell out the price of a full game for something they don't like the sound of and asking them to buy it on faith.

Maxis is releasing a beta version soon (http://www.simcity.com/en_US/beta/info) here you can get the feeling of how the new SimCity is gonna be. Just sign yourself up for the closed beta and experience it yourself.

The only problem witht that is that you will only get to try it if you get into the beta. They aren't going to let everyone who signs up in on it after all. Ditto if the only place they do demos are at the expos. Only folks that can get to the expos are going to get any chance to check thigns out.

Oh, and for the record I did sign up to give it a go.

Were does it say they aren't let everyone who signs up in? Yes its a closed beta (thats the siging up part) and you need to meet the requirements with your computer (dxdiag) But i didnt see somewere that there gonna choose a selected group.

And i played SimCity on one of the expos () But it was still a alpha version instead of a beta or demo version.

[spiritbw 111]

I think we've been over this before, but I'll just say it again -- the team built the game from ground up to be an online game. End of story. However, I still think you should give the multiplayer features a shot. You never know, man -- you want actually like it. A lot.

You releasing a demo then that people can try?

Your going in a radical new direction here and of course, people aren't going to shell out the price of a full game for something they don't like the sound of and asking them to buy it on faith.

Maxis is releasing a beta version soon (http://www.simcity.com/en_US/beta/info) here you can get the feeling of how the new SimCity is gonna be. Just sign yourself up for the closed beta and experience it yourself.

The only problem witht that is that you will only get to try it if you get into the beta. They aren't going to let everyone who signs up in on it after all. Ditto if the only place they do demos are at the expos. Only folks that can get to the expos are going to get any chance to check thigns out.

Oh, and for the record I did sign up to give it a go.

Were does it say they aren't let everyone who signs up in? Yes its a closed beta (thats the siging up part) and you need to meet the requirements with your computer (dxdiag) But i didnt see somewere that there gonna choose a selected group.

And i played SimCity on one of the expos () But it was still a alpha version instead of a beta or demo version.

Betas are always select to some degree.

If they only need X number of testers they are not going to overburden the system by letting X+1 into beta. With it needing hardware at thier end, till release there is going to be a hardware limitation to the number of testers they can have. That's but one reason and there are many more possible reasons for limiting the number of beta testers. In the end it still boils down to that if you sign up for the beta and even if your system is up to spec there is no garantee you will get in.

The only time I've ever heard of everyone who wants in getting in has been during OPEN betas, and those are fairly rare. We MIGHT see that just before release f Maxis decides to stress test thier system, but I would not hold out for that.

[Culinia 11]

I live nearby but I did not buy tickets. I am saving up to upgrade my computer.

I have a suggestion if you want to play SC4 smoothly: do not upgrade (assuming you want to upgrade your graphics card) to either GTX600-series or any ATI radeon cards with "boost function" - this is because with older games like this the graphics processor does not operate at full capacity resulting in jerky gameplay when you move around the game when it demands it i.e. the game is slow until it gets up to (clock) speed, during that moment it is slow/jerky and then if you stop moving around the clockspeed goes down and then the same cycle continues.

Don't know if this will be fixed at later date due to new drivers etc. but this is what happens on my GTX670 since I got it when it came out, not game-breaking but annoying.