Before I buy - an ancient survivor

[Flixotide 1]

Perhaps I'm about to be extinct, or have just outgrown gaming altogether. But before I let my late 80's and 386 enthusiasm carry me on to buying this modernized edition of Sim CIty, I'd love to hear your recommendations, when the DRM is set 100% aside.

 

From the 1 hour limited BETA I only gained a scarce impression, but it seems to me that Sim City Socities still looms heavily over the game, and the amount of ploppaple content heavily outweighs the spontaneous dynamics of the previous editions. In Sim CIty 2000 things were still levelled nicely, in Sim CIty 3000 things rapidly developed, and yet in Sim CIty 4000 matters were still in a fair balance... then the plops took over. Perhaps even as a response to the huge amount of ploppaple content developed by the creative community?

 

While certainly beautiful, advanced and with all respects, a tremendous effort by modern day development teams, that overshadow anything in the past, I simply can't help gaining the impression that the game shouyld be deemed "Control City" rather Sim City. Perhaps I'm being a tad harsh, perhaps I'm not, but I'd just like to get the impression from those who have actually managed playing the new Sim City. What do you spend most time on? Zoning and creativity? or plopping and directing?

 

Best Regards from an x86 dinosaur

[cirugo 1,889]

you'll be waiting a long time...they'd rather give you free games than fix the DRM

[hym 358]

From my experience with the game, you have your usual ploppables for stuff like police, fire, education, health, parks, water, power, etc.  Outside of that, the majority of the ploppables deal with city specializations.

 

While you will get prompts encouraging you to specialize your city, it is entirely optional.  If you choose to play the classic RCI model, the general game mechanics are about the same.

[Catchin22 299]

I don't think the DRM is an issue at all, the issue has been the servers / service. That aside I think the game is remarkable and a HUGE step forward. The "limitations" it has compared to past versions are mostly forgotten about once you start playing. OQ did say they were working on the city sizes so I expect them to do something about that in the future. Though, I can see just how complex this game would get with larger city sizes. Whatever the case those limitations have not ruined this game. If you want everything SC4 offered you can still play it, if you want something MUCH newer and MUCH better, play 2013. Just know that this is really intended to be played online, with friends to really get the most out of it.

I've played with complete strangers from here on this board and had a blast. Be careful about public servers though and investing time into them, if everyone else isn't building up the cities too you're probably in there by yourself. The few pubs that I joined seemed to get abandoned quickly, I think this was probably due to new people just experimenting and trying to get the hang of it. Then leaving once they figured out they screwed up.

[velve 16]

"catch22" you really sound like an EA rep. 

 

why so motivated on defending the game? if people dont like it let them be, then again I guess you have to make up for the 5% population that arent haters 

 

on topic I would also really like to know the similarities between this and SC4. NOT because i'm a die hard fan trying to kill the franchise, just out of interest.

[Flixotide 1]

I'm with Velve here. I couldn't care less for like or dislike DRM or franchise diehards attacking EA. I'd just love a bulletpointed list of arguments for and against, compared to the original concept.

 

I do however like Catchin22's 24 hour gameplay post. Nice screenshots and creative input. Not at all unattractive.

[velve 16]

Theres quite a few threads posted few pages back 

 

amongst others. 

 

oh and if youre looking for a quick laugh theres a thread about chinese spammers in between them somewhere. Worth looking at for a chuckle but not on topic whatsoever. 

[PeterWeaver 2]

I'm also a survivor Flix and I'm enjoying it, it's not perfect but it's an absorbing simulation in the original wished-for ant farm mode

[Catchin22 299]

I'm also a survivor Flix and I'm enjoying it, it's not perfect but it's an absorbing simulation in the original wished-for ant farm mode

 

Something I found really fun to do was to zoom all the way out, then look straight down on to traffic. It's a lot of fun for some reason to watch the traffic from top down drive around. I kept finding new things that were fun to do / see.

[reReticulated Spline 69]

If I compare my time spend with that of SC4 I'd say I spend much more time on road layout and less time on terraforming (gee, I wonder why) and testing out mods I downloaded.

 

Seeing as how I love the way roads let you make some really creative cities easily and avoid the 'every city looks the same' trap which I spend most of my SC4 effort trying to avoid, this is a definite plus in my opinion. Especially since I hated how terraforming worked in SC4 (until the talented modders here brought SC2000 type terraforming back). In SC4 I usually quickly put down some basic roads, here it requires much more planning and can be aesthetically and functionally worth it to put some real thought into it. The result just feels awesome.

 

As for plopables. I have completely ignored Simciy Societies' existance because there was no zoning. What I love about the Simcity series is how you just put down the basics for the city, and the city builds itself dynamically. The only thing this game has as plopable that the previous ones didn't have are specializations. Because of their importance you could say that the game has become a bit more of the plopable variety. On the other hand, these specializations are responsible for creating a lot of dynamics in the city that you don't directly control, like extra traffic, tourism and mass unemployment and decay when a critical building goes out of business because resources are spend. These kinds of dynamics, which you don't plan for but naturally grown in your city as a indirect result of your actions, are why I'm excited about playing this game (probably in about a month or so) since I played the beta.

 

Zoning itself requires less time now simply because of the smaller city map sizes. You have a lot less options where to zone so instead it's more about how you build the roads you want to zone at, then in which direction to zone. If you like the 'conquering the land' feeling that slowly zoning a large SC4 map, choosing between crossing rivers or building uphill gives you, this game does not deliver. Not now and I doubt, when the city size will inevatible be increased, it will change that much but maybe I'm wrong there.

 

Not sure if this helps you. You seem to like the dynamics of zoning but not the responding to city needs. In your words I'd much sooner put 'plopping' and 'creativity' together as the sandbox type style were people build cities in their image and 'zoning' and 'directing' together as antfarm style were you give the sims a start and then watch what they do with the tools you gave them. This game is certainly more of the latter with the exception of road shapes freedom.

 

Darn, I'm older then the dinosaurs.