Hym's Post-Maxis Trip Impressions

[hym 358]

Hey everyone!

 

First, I would like to thank everyone for their interest in our post-event impressions, and for their patience while we worked to get everything together.  Second, I want to thank the people at Maxis for their awesome hospitality and for putting this event together.  It was a blast to get to talk with the developers, especially since everyone was so excited to have us there for the day.  Finally, this is my first time doing a write up like this, so I'm just going to go for it and see where it takes us. 

 

However, before we jump head first into the write up, let's take a moment to discuss the format of the event.  Our day was split between play testing the latest version of the game, interviews, and opportunities for general chit-chat.  That said, I'm going to jump between talking about play testing, interviews, and the like.  The first impression upon starting up the game is that Maxis has been busy since the time that the beta was launched.  Stuff has been tweaked as a result of feedback from the beta, and the game actually plays differently as a result (I think the end result is better balanced).  Just to throw out a single example, road costs have been tweaked, which means that strategies that worked in the beta will now drive you bankrupt in a hurry.  For those who think that the new SimCity has no difficulty levels, the taxes act as your primary difficulty levels.  (This may not seem like much, but at the same time, the difficulty levels in SC4 really just altered the amount of cash you started with.)

 

As we all know, one of the big new features of the game is city specializations.  Some die hard SimCity fans are likely to regard this move as heresy, but I don't see it that way. If you want to play the new SimCity using the classic RCI model, you are totally free to do so, and you will find that the game responds in much the same way that you would expect it to.  However, for those of us who might be bored of the classic RCI model, or want to try something new and different, city specialization is a great way to mix up the franchise.  Some people will say that the "formula for success" with the city specializations is somewhat flat, but that is a superficial analysis as it takes some degree of skill and planning to capture the benefits of city specializaton while mitigating the negatives that go along with that specialization.  There has been concern that the specializations are tilted to favor the resource-based specialization, which would logically mean that the city spaces rich in coal, oil, and ore would be the first to be claimed. However, this concern misses the unique challenge the resource-based specializations face: resource scarcity.  These resources are finite, and it's only a matter of time before you have to address your sustainability problems.  (During the beta, I built a city based on oil and drove it for everything it was worth.  However, the oil fields couldn't sustain that forever, and they started to fail to meet the demands of my refineries.  I had to start importing oil to sustain the refinery output, which took a big chunk out of my profits.)  If you decide that you want to re-specialize the city, you face potentially even bigger challenges. For the Community Day event, I landed with a city laden with ore, so I specialized in ore production.  However, I got tired of the ground pollution hurting my residential development, so I decided to "turn the city around."  Except that it didn't turn around.  It was like watching the decline of the American Rust Belt as my city slid into a financial death spiral.  I had built a city with millions that was the third most economically powerful city in the region, and it all fell apart because I failed to plan far enough forward to ensure a successful transition away from an ore-based city economy.  So if you're thinking that pumping oil is a cheap way to amassing millions, just remember that you're going to burn through millions trying to carry your city through the post oil boom days.

 

So at this point, let's take an intermission from the play testing and talk about one of the group interviews that we did.  We had the opportunity to do a small group interview with the design team concerning Glassbox and the depth of the simulation.  We got to see under the hood and see the game through the eyes of one of the developer debug tools that is used to tune the simulation.  With the drag of a slider, the dev shut down a coal plant and with another drag of the coal supply slider, the plant started up again. (Meanwhile, the coal supply animation responded to reflect the state of the coal supply.)  Then with a few more clicks, we got to see the pollution simulation while Ocean Quigley explained how the simulation rules wrote air pollution to the map.  A couple of clicks later, and we could watch one of the sims driving around the city and what his most pressing interests were.  At 6AM, the little sims started getting up for work and we could see traffic picking up while watching how the sims were altering their most pressing needs in response to the events they were encountering.  While I admit that I'm not a modder, I feel like if we can get even a fraction of this kind of capability in modding the game, we will eclipse anything SC4 was capable of supporting.

 

Let's jump back to the play testing and talk about something that we all care about: region play.  However, before we do that, let's talk about me for a second.    I am a lone wolf gamer.  My big interests are campaigns (like Halo or any other FPS game) and PvE (like Guild Wars 2 or World of Warcraft).  I don't generally enjoy PvP or cooperative play with people I don't know well.  That said, let's jump back to SimCity.  It took me a few minutes to warm up to the vibe of the room and the people in it, but once that happened, it was magic.  I decided that my city was going to be one of the trash dumps of the region, where the mayor didn't care about you and your troubles, and thus, Double Shift was born.  And the place lived up to it's name.  Double Shift dominated the crime leader board, and I was immensely proud with I became aware that my criminals were setting up franchises in neighboring cities.  Fire services weren't set up until half the city was engulfed in flames, and with no health services at all, my sims lived hard and died young.  Soon enough, my sims began clamoring for assistance from their neighbors, and Tosca Cliffs came to their aid with police and health services.  But Tosca Cliffs had troubles too; trash was overflowing with no method for managing it.  Except that Double Shift had just completed expanding its waste management services.  A deal was struck and soon the residents of Double Shift began breathing the pollution of Tosca Cliffs's trash.

 

While all of the above is important, it misses another important part of SimCity's region play: the social interaction.  Admittedly, the bunch of us were in the same room and this enables conversation to flow in ways that isn't normally possible over the internet, but I'm fairly confident that none of us have had a string of random conversations like this in SC4:

 

-"Oil is where it's at, man.  Already making $750,000 a month."

-"I want to build a green city.  Who's going to take my sewage?"

-"We don't want your *bleep*.  No one's going to take your *bleep*."

-"But I want to build a green city!"

-"Send it to Double Shift.  I hear he's building a trash dump of a city.  He doesn't care."

-"Sure, send it over.  The ground in that part of the city is already dead anyway."

-"JOIN MY CAPITALIST EMPIRE AND TOGETHER WE SHALL RULE THIS REGION!!!  MWAHAHAHAH!!"

 

Random amusing stuff like this is possible with the new SimCity.  If you want to experience it, you can.  If this doesn't interest you, you're under no pressure to engage in this stuff.  Now do you want to voice chat with some random dude you don't know who is playing in your region?  Probably not.  Does it have the potential to be a lot of fun among friends, family, and whatnot?  I think so.

 

Another area that deserves mention is the visual filter capabilities.  For some individuals, the default visual style is awesome, and for others, not so much.  Filters offer an easy way to find a visual style more suited to your tastes.  However, filters have so much more potential than that.  As cheesy as it sounds, filters offer a new way to experience your city.  A single filter change can fundamentally alter how a street feels.  I didn't think to ask about this question during the event, but I hope that we get the ability to add in new filters to the game.  If we do, I suspect we will the experience the growth of some truly wild and unique City Journals.  If you're wanting to tell a story about your city, filters just offer too much potential to ignore them.

 

Before we wrap this thing up, let's head back to the group interviews one more time to hopefully shed some light on what the devs were hoping to achieve with the new SimCity.  One thing that was made very clear was that, in designing the new SimCity, the developers were hoping to capture the elements from the previous SimCity titles that made them so much fun to play.  However, as even Will Wright admitted, the series was getting too complicated, so they felt that it was necessary to find a way to give the player the core essentials of the SimCity series without burdening the player with micromanagement and extraneous details.  Additionally, Maxis is well aware of past efforts to reboot the SimCity series, and the dev team has made the effort to learn from those mistakes.  You may think of it as "getting back to basics," or "the prodigal son returns home," or any other number of things, but the dev team has tried to keep the core fundamentals of the SimCity series in place while re-imagining how those core essentials can come together in a game.

 

If you had asked me a while back if I would buy the new SimCity game, the answer would have been a definite no.  As far as I was concerned, it was basically another Societies or Cities XL clone and I wasn't interested.  I got the opportunity to participate in the beta, so I decided to try it out, and it had a very definite "this is a reboot" feel.  It didn't feel like it warranted the title "SimCity 5," but as a reboot of the series, it was decent.  However, after playing the version we did for the community event, it is evident that this isn't a reboot where the producer throws out all the old material simply because he didn't like it.  This is Maxis positioning the SimCity series for a future it could have never achieved under the previous design paradigm.  It may look like Maxis is taking steps backwards with the technology, but that is incorrect.  Rather, Maxis is basing the series on a new technological underpinning that will be capable of carrying our favorite franchise into the future.  We are witnessing a new stage in SimCity's evolution, and while SC4 hands the new game enormous shoes to fill, I feel it is up to the task.

 

Bottom Line: I intend to buy the game.

[hym 358]

So I thought it would be cool to post some pictures from the event and kind of create a one-day, one-post mini city journal of Double Shift.

 

We can see Double Shift in its humble beginnings.  The ore extraction facilities provide a nice friendly neighbor for the residents next door.

 

SimOre^TM has discovered another site of ore and built a smelting unit next door to provide easy refinement of the raw ore.

 

 

The day is done and everyone is trying to fight traffic to get home.

 

 

With the smog and the ground pollution and the insufferable ore extraction facilities and the raging fires and the megacorps crushing the little sims' souls, Double Shift is a great place to live!

 

 

Who doesn't love some nice, family-friendly toxic waste?

 

 

 

So my sims are sick of living in waste and waking up with the occasional third hand, so we're going to try to re-specialize and switch to a culture-based city.  You can see the first two arenas are already in place.

 

 

A view of the city nightlife.

 

 

"Stupid mayor is at it again.  Bulldozing our homes and roads."

 

 

So a nice tourism district is building up on the main road.  Hope you don't need to travel on the highway though.

 

 

The city lights!  More importantly, we can see the beginnings of a commercial district growing up near the tourist destinations.

 

 

Welcome to Boulevard of the Cheap Motels.

 

 

Growth in the commercial sector is continuing, and the traffic continues to get more hellish as the days continue.

 

 

It's a little congested down the avenue, but that's just the hustle and bustle of city life.  Little sims all trying to do their thing, while business owners are trying to get their attention to spend their money.

 

 

Except that at night, the seedier elements of town come out and you suddenly find yourself in a part of town that you don't really want to be in.

 

 

And here we can see that, even though my city is swirling down the drain financially, the beginnings of a strong commercial district based around tourism services is coming to life.

 

 

And that's my write up for the Maxis Community Day event.  Thanks for reading! 

[JaceTwice 115]

Great review! Thanks for reassuring me that Maxis does indeed still know how to make a fun game. I sounds like it's pretty challenging.

I'd been having trouble actually plunking down the money for this game, but after this review I don't feel so apprehensive about it.

[hunkske 53]

This was great to read!!

[rawls 39]

Thank you for your effort!

 

But I am a little bit disappointed that Double Shift has a wind farm. I believe it could be a much better place to live with a coal power station.

[Herdervriend 46]

Loves the story and pictures.

[MPleines 17]

Nice write up!

 

btw, what's the building between the Globe Theatre and the Sydney Opera?

[tomfoolery_79 85]

I am buying this game and perhaps I should reserve judgement on multiplayer, but other peoples crime, trash and pollution flowing over into my city (especially with the huge buffer between cities) irks me.  If I wasn't trying to build a utopia perhaps it would be fine.  I feel like it's "why do I have to suffer because you can't keep your act together".  Then again, like your experience actually playing, maybe that will be fun!

[Sunfighter 186]

So would you say due to the excessive pollution, having a long-term industrial town is out of the question? Does the game have a built in bias towards green?

[flacwby 6]

I am buying this game and perhaps I should reserve judgement on multiplayer, but other peoples crime, trash and pollution flowing over into my city (especially with the huge buffer between cities) irks me.  If I wasn't trying to build a utopia perhaps it would be fine.  I feel like it's "why do I have to suffer because you can't keep your act together".  Then again, like your experience actually playing, maybe that will be fun!

You only have to worry about that if you play with others in a region. If you don't invite anyone in to yours or you don't join someone else's then your entire region can be a utopia. 

[rawls 39]

So would you say due to the excessive pollution, having a long-term industrial town is out of the question? Does the game have a built in bias towards green?

 

No, this is absolutely possible. I think you just have to make sure that you don't educate them too much. Education will lead to a less polluting industry, as far as I know.

[PrixFixe 25]

Thanks! Love the nighttime shot of the tourism center.

[Ardandy 28]

SimCity always got rid of your real world friends! Now its not?

 

Anyone else scared!

[nhgriffith 179]

You mentioned your smelting company discovered another site for ore. Is this just city-journaling, or can your mining/drilling industry find new deposited you didn't know about at first?

[Haljackey 17,385]

That was an enjoyable read, thanks for sharing your impressions from the trip with us Hym!

 

My opinions of the game match yours in similar ways. At first I was quite sure that I did not want to buy the game, but I remained cautiously optimistic, hoping that things would change for the better. My optimism for the game had its ups and downs until I tried the betas and became more involved following the game's development, understanding why they were making the game the way they did. Today, I feel like I am more likely to buy the game, possibly even on release day. I feel there is enough material in it to actively tell the story of your city, and will also be something City Journal authors will love.

 

Regarding city specialization, I feel like it's a mixed issue. For example if there's oil in my city I feel that I would only use it to power my oil power plants and sell the excess for profit. I don't really feel the urge myself to expand and build refineries and make plastics and other materials, but its good to know that's a possibility if you want to try it out. When the oil runs out, I could simply import it or hope I've saved up enough cash to build another power source like nuclear.

 

Despite my opinion of the game swaying to the positive, I still have several major concerns about it. Without a doubt my biggest issue is tile size, something you did not mention in your review. Did you find it as confining as myself and others feel? I understand that this is a reboot of the game but as a longtime SimCity fan I feel like I'm losing a great deal of the gameplay experience I'm so accustomed to in previous titles of the series.

 

Anyways thanks again for taking the time to make this writeup, was an enjoyable read!

 

Oh, and I'm super jealous you got to go to community day. Sounds like you had a blast!

[hym 358]

@JaceTwice: I think that the challenge in SimCity will be what you make it.  If you want the game to be more difficult, you can fiddle with the taxes till you get a difficulty that is right for you.  IMO, this is probably the best way to handle difficulty settings for a game like SimCity.

 

@hunkske: Thanks!

 

@rawls: Now that you mention it, I totally agree.  I could have used the little bit of coal that was in my town for powering a nice coal plant.  I could have even placed it upwind of the elementary school... so that the sim children could have easy field trips and hands-on learning, of course!

 

@Herdervriend: Thanks!

 

@MPleines: That is the Oslo Opera House.  It caters to high wealth sims (and possible some medium wealth, I can't remember).  It only allows you to schedule one type of event, and I never made any money off of it, but considering 

I came close so many times, I think I could have turned it into a money maker with better traffic management.

 

@tomfoolery_79: During the beta events, I didn't want to play with anyone else.  I figured all they would do is completely ruin the experience I was going for.  Boy, was I wrong.  However, if you are totally committed to building that verdant utopia of your dreams, you can always do it in a private region and not invite anyone else to play.

 

@Sunfighter: Industrial towns are totally an option!  (And really fun too.)  In retrospect, managing polluting industry in the new SimCity is much the same as it was in SC4.  You could build the industry in a different part of the map and place trees around that area to help control the spread of pollution.  You could locate the industry in a different city entirely and plan on sims commuting between cities for their jobs.  The third major option is to upgrade the education levels and move high tech manufacturing into the city.  (Which is probably one of the harder things to do.)

 

@PrixFixe: Glad you enjoyed the night shot.  I like that a lot of emphasis has been placed on good night lighting for this game.

 

@Ardandy: Play with your friends or play it solo.  The choice is yours.  I think playing with friends is more fun, but that's my opinion.

 

@nhgriffith: Unfortunately, it was just city journaling.  The ore deposit was always there, but I didn't initially utilize it.  However, you bring up an excellent idea.  Having the ability to discover new reserves could have some interesting consequences for how a city develops.  Do you drill for oil at the newly discovered well right under the hospital that is keeping your sims healthy?  Decisions, decisions...

 

@haljackey: You're right that I didn't adress tile size, and honestly, I think it was because I never felt anything particularly strong one way or the other about it.  (Which in itself might be an endorsement of the tile size.)  During the beta, I sort of felt like the tile size was too small, but I didn't have that feeling during the Community Day event.  It might have been that I was already used to the reduced tile size or that, because it was totally flat, I had enough room for it to feel normal.  I don't know.  However, I do find myself slightly frustrated by the tile size if I have significant ore, coal, or oil deposits spread out all over the city tile.  This is primarily because I don't want to build over good deposits, but I want dense packing of my RCI, so having an ore deposit spread all over my city confuses my grid-based playing style.  For those cases, I would definitely want some more space, but I'm not certain how much exactly.  I think we all want to build big cities, but Maxis is forced to strike a balance between what we want to build and what our hardware can support running.

 

Thanks for all the questions and feedback everyone!

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

Thanks for an excellent write up on your visit. It's beginning to sound more and more promising. I think regional play will be quite interesting, especially when there are disagreements between players!

 

Just one question, do you feel the 'gaps' between cities detracted from the overall playing experience? It obviously doesn't affect gameplay or the simulation, but it just makes cities appear to be isolated and detached.

 

---

EDIT: This thread seems rather popular!

 

 

[hym 358]

Thanks for an excellent write up on your visit. It's beginning to sound more and more promising. I think regional play will be quite interesting, especially when there are disagreements between players!

 

Just one question, do you feel the 'gaps' between cities detracted from the overall playing experience? It obviously doesn't affect gameplay or the simulation, but it just makes cities appear to be isolated and detached.

 

Feuding Mayors: SimCity Edition.

 

As for the gaps between cities, I think it depends on the way you are playing the region.  If you're running a culture-based city, I think it's fun to see the sims backed up on the highway for what looks like miles, all clamoring to get to that epic rock concert your hosting.    If you're going for the whole "rival city" dynamic, then I think having the space makes it more believable, as it is easier to see the sims developing an "us versus them" mentality.  On the flip side, if you are going for a "the whole region is a giant metropolis" feel, then the gaps between the cities are definitely going to cause you some creative design problems.  Ultimately, I think that the gap issue is going to come down to the individual player, and it may not remain consistent for that player at all times.  I suspect that sometimes we will think the gap is a good thing and other times we won't, and it will all depend on the particular vibe we are going for at that moment.

[MINIggy03 227]

Great writeup!  I think a lot of people who are on the fence about the game will change their minds once they get to actually play it.  The beta definitely changed my mind!  The gameplay is really strong, the simulation is beautiful to watch, and it all feels very much like SimCity.  

 

Did you have a lot of traffic issues with your highway entry?  It seems like from your pic, the traffic would take a bit to get in.  We might eventually get highways that let us drag them into the city (like rail) so we can have better traffic flow with ramps.  

[hym 358]

Great writeup!  I think a lot of people who are on the fence about the game will change their minds once they get to actually play it.  The beta definitely changed my mind!  The gameplay is really strong, the simulation is beautiful to watch, and it all feels very much like SimCity.  

 

Did you have a lot of traffic issues with your highway entry?  It seems like from your pic, the traffic would take a bit to get in.  We might eventually get highways that let us drag them into the city (like rail) so we can have better traffic flow with ramps.  

 

 

When events weren't scheduled, traffic into the city flowed along nicely.  When events were scheduled, it was a nightmare.  (Interestingly, the criminals always knew when to leave to avoid being caught in the traffic.)  One of the Maxis devs noticed my traffic problems and offered the following key thought:

 

"See, you have an intersection right on the highway connection.  That's a mistake.  Intersections slow your traffic down and make it more difficult for your sims to get into your city."

 

So if I were given the city to play over again and armed with that information, I would have designed the tourist center much differently.  Sims would exit the main highway and find themselves on an avenue with no intersections.  There would be bus stops, street car stops, and the like to encourage the sims to get off the road.  The road would wind past the various tourist destinations (again without intersections) and the sims could get off the road or the mass transit at the desired location.  Additionally, I would bring rail lines from my connection at the back of the city up to the tourist destinations to enable me to pull more sims in from the rail networks.

 

I think that with removing the things that are slowing down the movement of the sims (like the intersections) and providing opportunities to move more sims through a smaller area (the mass transit) I could have probably turned the traffic nightmare into little more than a moderate annoyance.

[Sunfighter 186]

Great writeup!  I think a lot of people who are on the fence about the game will change their minds once they get to actually play it.  The beta definitely changed my mind!  The gameplay is really strong, the simulation is beautiful to watch, and it all feels very much like SimCity.  

 

Did you have a lot of traffic issues with your highway entry?  It seems like from your pic, the traffic would take a bit to get in.  We might eventually get highways that let us drag them into the city (like rail) so we can have better traffic flow with ramps.  

 

 

When events weren't scheduled, traffic into the city flowed along nicely.  When events were scheduled, it was a nightmare.  (Interestingly, the criminals always knew when to leave to avoid being caught in the traffic.)  One of the Maxis devs noticed my traffic problems and offered the following key thought:

 

"See, you have an intersection right on the highway connection.  That's a mistake.  Intersections slow your traffic down and make it more difficult for your sims to get into your city."

 

So if I were given the city to play over again and armed with that information, I would have designed the tourist center much differently.  Sims would exit the main highway and find themselves on an avenue with no intersections.  There would be bus stops, street car stops, and the like to encourage the sims to get off the road.  The road would wind past the various tourist destinations (again without intersections) and the sims could get off the road or the mass transit at the desired location.  Additionally, I would bring rail lines from my connection at the back of the city up to the tourist destinations to enable me to pull more sims in from the rail networks.

 

I think that with removing the things that are slowing down the movement of the sims (like the intersections) and providing opportunities to move more sims through a smaller area (the mass transit) I could have probably turned the traffic nightmare into little more than a moderate annoyance.

 

I would of been like...well then let me have more than one friggin highway entrance lol.

[dysonraf 37]

 

Simtropolis YouTuve video just been posted...  At least according to SimCity twitter page!

[Charizard 284]

Why didn't you guys ask the devs about the many issues brought up by members of this community and other SC communities? Namely:

 

- Lack of terraforming

- Lack of modding (A faint assurance that modding will be implemented sometime down the line isn't that much of an assurance since EA has promised things in the past and not delivered when the time came. I won't buy a game where things are missing at launch and all I have is the devs word for it. Even in this interview the dev tried to dodge the question and gave a broad and indirect answer. Unfortunately this is the most likely type of response you're going to get when you ask the devs about serious issues relating to the game).

- Outdated graphics (My computer was easily able to handle the game at the highest settings. This game could have been done 3-4 years ago imo).

- Still no definite answer on the small city sizes.

- Cities are located in small square plots surrounded by uninhabited grassland. Forget about being able to make seamless megalopolises or even real-life metropolises where one "city" flowed into another. You could then surround the big city with suburbs/farms. Instead, your region is now a landscape that you cannot for the most part touch except for the 16 designated small square tiles that aren't even next to eachother anymore.

- No farms

- No control over highways....

- No subways

- Airports look terribly awkward (probably because they have to fit it all in one small city square)

- I can live with always being online and the Origin component, but what happens when EA decides to shut down their servers (this has happened to other games)?

 

These issues are brought up again and again and the devs refuse to address them. No offense but this "interview" and playtest session just felt like an op-ed praising the game. Real interviewers ask to-the-point and often curveball questions that represent all of the concerns of the intended audience. 90% of the issues I mentioned were not addressed either by you guys or Maxis. If they want to ignore an entire demographic then they should expect us to "ignore" their game as well. The game is aimed at an entirely different demographic this time (hint: it's not the SimCity vets). If they expect the game to do well because of casual gamers, the "social" component, and microtransactions they are terribly mistaken. Many "casual" gamers have never heard of SimCity and most will get tired of it after 3 months, if not sooner. Sure they might pump money into the game via microtransactions for the first month or two but once they stop playing the game they won't even remember it anymore. Just look at SimCity social, the Sims online or even Age of Empires online. In contrast if the game was aimed at the core fan base, loyal fans would almost certainly buy expansions/DLC (as long as they are good and fairly priced) for as long as the devs support the game. If they wanted to appease both sides then they could have left the multiplayer mode just the way it is and have had things like modding, cities next to eachother, terraforming, etc. in the singleplayer mode. Instead they slapped the long-time fans in the face and the singleplayer mode is an exact replica of the multiplayer mode (except you're not playing with human players obviously). I just can't believe with the failures of other franchises going the casual, social and online-only route the devs still won't address the core fan base. This is not SimCity. This should be called SimTown 2 (since there was already a SimTown believe it or not) or SimCity Social 2. I played the beta and I can safely say that I do not intend to buy this game the day it is released. Don't get me wrong, there are some very nice simulation elements but the aesthetic and customizable touch is lacking. At best I'll get it when it's in the bargain bin for $25.

[MandelSoft 2,775]

Great writeup!  I think a lot of people who are on the fence about the game will change their minds once they get to actually play it.  The beta definitely changed my mind!  The gameplay is really strong, the simulation is beautiful to watch, and it all feels very much like SimCity.  

 

Did you have a lot of traffic issues with your highway entry?  It seems like from your pic, the traffic would take a bit to get in.  We might eventually get highways that let us drag them into the city (like rail) so we can have better traffic flow with ramps.

 

When events weren't scheduled, traffic into the city flowed along nicely.  When events were scheduled, it was a nightmare.  (Interestingly, the criminals always knew when to leave to avoid being caught in the traffic.)  One of the Maxis devs noticed my traffic problems and offered the following key thought:

 

"See, you have an intersection right on the highway connection.  That's a mistake.  Intersections slow your traffic down and make it more difficult for your sims to get into your city."

As a civil engineering student, going to specialize in the transport sector, I would say this is the world turned upside down! Any engineer would've seen that single access, the interchange itself is the bottle-neck in the system. ALL traffic coming in and out of the city has to go through that one road, and if it gets clogged, the whole system has a problem. Also, when accidents occur, say goodbye to your only connection to the outside world. The most logical solution would be that you build more connections to the outside world to distribute traffic more evenly over the city, but as we all know, this isn't possible in the new game

Again, this is another thing that impacts our freedom; the boundary condition of that single connection to the region and the impact on traffic in the future limits our way of designing our cities. I'll see many, many, MANY people making the same mistake and people don't even notice they are doing this because they try to cram everything into the city tile with a most efficient use of space (another limiting factor).

Long story short: from an engineering perspective, the single connection to the city is totally silly.

Just my semi-professional two cents

Best,

Maarten

[Towel 76]

@Charizard

 

Because almost all of those questions have already been answered on multiple occasions

[cirugo 1,889]

@Charizard

 

Because almost all of those questions have already been answered on multiple occasions

No, they haven't.  they've been deflected and ignored.  the vague technobabble about a server being required for the game because of leaderboards and resource trading?  absurd.

[Towel 76]

@Charizard

 

Because almost all of those questions have already been answered on multiple occasions

No, they haven't.  they've been deflected and ignored.  the vague technobabble about a server being required for the game because of leaderboards and resource trading?  absurd.

 

No, you're just unhappy with their answers. There is a distinct difference.

 

Personally I've found most of their answers acceptable, and having not worked on the game personally I am in no position to judge if they are not being truthful (and I do believe them for the record).

[efgrib 45]

@Charizard

 

Because almost all of those questions have already been answered on multiple occasions

No, they haven't.  they've been deflected and ignored.  the vague technobabble about a server being required for the game because of leaderboards and resource trading?  absurd.

 

yes, they have! all of them! that you are not satified with the answers makes it not unhappen...

[Charizard 284]

 

@Charizard

 

Because almost all of those questions have already been answered on multiple occasions

No, they haven't.  they've been deflected and ignored.  the vague technobabble about a server being required for the game because of leaderboards and resource trading?  absurd.

 

No, you're just unhappy with their answers. There is a distinct difference.

 

Personally I've found most of their answers acceptable, and having not worked on the game personally I am in no position to judge if they are not being truthful (and I do believe them for the record).

 

They have not given clear and honest answers to many of the questions raised by the users here and elsewhere (including most of the ones I have listed). The only issues that I recall they have "addressed" are the city tile sizes and the modding capabilities. But instead of giving a clear and cutthroat answer, they skirted around the issues saying that they "might" be implemented sometime down the road instead of giving a straight and direct answer. Skirting around the issue does not count as a serious answer to a question. That's like accepting most politicians' "answers" to serious questions as legitimate and without fallacy when we all know that is seldom the case.

[Plancus 17]

Thanks for your impressions during the visit. I personally think the specialisation scope is promising, and the concept they developed of regional play is interesting (if only the cities wouldn't look like isolated islands, it would be great). I think overall Maxis has been making many efforts to produce a game they're proud of.

 

However, my biggest concerns regarding this game, and what will make me buy it only at a later date (and unfortunately for Maxis, most likely at a much much lower price) are:

- Region size

- Modding

 

As mentioned before, these two were more or less mentioned as "yeah it would be good if we had it, but we'll see". For region size, I can understand it might be a technological constraint based on the engine. I'm not a programmer, I don't know the engine, so I take their word for that. There's not much we can do about it, but hope they are telling the truth (and it's not part of some delusive conspiracy theory where they'll make us pay to have an extra square kilometer just for fun) and will address it in the future.

 

Now... modding. That's the problem. The whole concept of microtransactions and piecemeal DLC content, coupled with the need to be attached to a world market coordinated by the EA servers, makes me feel this aspect - exactly what makes SC4 be so long-lived - is going to be ignored or at least downplayed. Rather than a technical limitation, it's more a business limitation now. To give users the freedom of doing whatever they want and not having to go through a "Maxis-approved" process of certification due to the online aspect of the game is very important when it comes to truly modding the game. Sadly though, I suspect a lot of the vagueness about this. I don't want to buy a game to have a preset of buildings forever, and whenever I want to see a new police station, I have to spend 5€ in a building pack with a new building and 2 new textures, when I could've got that for free through modding. For the record I'm not a DLC hater, I do buy DLCs of games I like. I just don't like being forced to buy them if I want new content that could be introduced through the work of dedicated modders.

 

If Maxis sees this, please don't consider it as mindless hating. It's just that I haven't seen anything so far that makes me believe some things will be supported without having the players being limited in what they can do, in favour of a milk-the-customer business system that's so popular nowadays. I understand Maxis and all the developers have been hard at work and developing a game that corresponds to a vision they have, and for that I say good job! However, when it comes to these things I mentioned, feel free to prove me wrong!