Why does (almost) everyone hate Societies?

[Mr Saturn64 742]

It is my second-favorite Sim City game (4 is better). I like how in Societies it really captures the feeling of just... Being able to choose the intricate layout. None of the others did it better than Societies. It just allows you to do just what you ant with it. If I want a certain building here, I can put it there.

I don't understand why everyone else hates it.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

1. Gameplay-wise, it was shallower than Caesar IV and Children of the Nile even though it is newer.

2. It was tedious to plop down every single building.

3. Models could not be modified or imported.

4. It was a drastic spin-off from SimCity 4.

5. The gameplay eventually grows boring and repetitive.

Tilted Mill could have made a wonderful SimCity game. They could have had realistic agent-based trash and recycling plus surplus/deficit of not only electricity but also of water. They could have had houses that upgrade (but still generate the same societal points). They could have extended the lifespan of the game through model editing and importing. They could have even simulated the production, selling, and consumption of food.

--Ocram

[The Pennsylvania Turnpike 252]

I liked societies. But people mostly disliked it due to the lack of zoning, modding support, variety of road type, Disasters, and other things needed to create a proper SimCity game. As Seattle said it is a spinoff, but i enjoyed it. But now it won't work on my windows 7 so i don't have any way on playing it.

[Mr Saturn64 742]

Something about the game just shows he delicacy of a small town and the details of the inner parts of a larger city.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

SCS was the least played SC game I ever bought. I never bought SC3000 because I was into the Sims at the time.

I made recolors of dream homes and banks. I grew bored with the game before I released the bank mod. I don't see how SCS could be any better than even Tropico 1 at depicting small towns.

--Ocram

[Terring 6,476]

There are a few things I don't like in Simcity Societies.

1) The coloring and design of the game is too childish and cartoonist. Simcity 3000 had also colorful buildings and wacky characters, but that's all. Simcity Societies cities are like watching Fanboy and Chum Chum.

2) There is no city connections, so your cities are in isolation. I'm not talking about regional gaming, like Simcity 4, but at least the basic connections, like Simcity 3000.

3) No terraforming. You can plant trees but that's all. You can't level the tile or make a river. It's like playing Tropico, but I don't want to play Tropico.

4) The civil buildings are messed. For example, since when a prison is considered as venue? You don't spend your free time watching the prisoners, do you?

5) There are only a few options for transportation, disasters e.t.c.. No railroads? No airports? No even diagonal roads? We had more stuff to build in the previous Simcity games. Why had they to be removed?

6) The game doesn't have the old time classic zoning system, so you need to plop every single building!

On the other hand, there are a few thing I like in Simcity Societies.

1) It's actually a sandbox game, where you can build anything you want without worrying about energy needs and expenses.

2) You can customize the city blocks by painting the ground and adding details. You can do this is Simcity 4 only by the Lot Editor, while in new Simcity it's impossible at all.

3) The buildings can be rotated. Too bad we don't have diagonal roads as well.

4) The city themes songs are awesome, especially the cyberpunk and authoritarian ones.

5) It's possible to mix different city themes to get some very interesting results. For instance, I have made a spiritual cyberpunk city, with strange apartment buildings surrounded by gardens and cyborgs visiting temples to search the meaning of life. Try to do this in new Simcity.
 
6) Many of the buildings can perform actions, like protecting an another one from fire hazards. Sometimes I feel I play a R.T.S. game instead of a city builder.

7) There are a few buildings that are really awesome, like the technological monolith and the cryogenic prison. Too bad you can't bring them in Simcity 4 without stupid complains like "you should be ashamed for bringing those buildings in Simcity 4".

I don't like the game, but I can recognize some of its innovations. My biggest complain however is the name. This game should have not been named "Simcity". It doesn't have the look and the feel of a Simcity game. It's a ripoff of Simcity, not a Simcity game.

[The SimCity 4 Gamer 0]

i love Societies. but i hate the in-game features.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

There are a few things I don't like in Simcity Societies.

1) The coloring and design of the game is too childish and cartoonist. Simcity 3000 had also colorful buildings and wacky characters, but that's all. Simcity Societies cities are like watching Fanboy and Chum Chum.

2) There is no city connections, so your cities are in isolation. I'm not talking about regional gaming, like Simcity 4, but at least the basic connections, like Simcity 3000.

3) No terraforming. You can plant trees but that's all. You can't level the tile or make a river. It's like playing Tropico, but I don't want to play Tropico.

4) The civil buildings are messed. For example, since when a prison is considered as venue? You don't spend your free time watching the prisoners, do you?

5) There are only a few options for transportation, disasters e.t.c.. No railroads? No airports? No even diagonal roads? We had more stuff to build in the previous Simcity games. Why had they to be removed?

6) The game doesn't have the old time classic zoning system, so you need to plop every single building!

On the other hand, there are a few thing I like in Simcity Societies.

1) It's actually a sandbox game, where you can build anything you want without worrying about energy needs and expenses.

2) You can customize the city blocks by painting the ground and adding details. You can do this is Simcity 4 only by the Lot Editor, while in new Simcity it's impossible at all.

3) The buildings can be rotated. Too bad we don't have diagonal roads as well.

4) The city themes songs are awesome, especially the cyberpunk and authoritarian ones.

5) It's possible to mix different city themes to get some very interesting results. For instance, I have made a spiritual cyberpunk city, with strange apartment buildings surrounded by gardens and cyborgs visiting temples to search the meaning of life. Try to do this in new Simcity.

 

6) Many of the buildings can perform actions, like protecting an another one from fire hazards. Sometimes I feel I play a R.T.S. game instead of a city builder.

7) There are a few buildings that are really awesome, like the technological monolith and the cryogenic prison. Too bad you can't bring them in Simcity 4 without stupid complains like "you should be ashamed for bringing those buildings in Simcity 4".

I don't like the game, but I can recognize some of its innovations. My biggest complain however is the name. This game should have not been named "Simcity". It doesn't have the look and the feel of a Simcity game. It's a ripoff of Simcity, not a Simcity game.

1. The textures are extremely easy to modify. I was no help. The 2 dozen or so garish "Dream Homes" mod was designed by me (and coded by PrimeTime).

2. True

3. A flatten terrain tool was eventually added and it was modified to dig rivers and even make hills.

4. True

5. Eventually, small cruise ship terminals, taxi stations, bus depots, helipads, and yes, even airports were added in SimCity Societies: Destinations.

6. True, that was annoying.

--Ocram

[Terring 6,476]

5. Eventually, small cruise ship terminals, taxi stations, bus depots, helipads, and yes, even airports were added in SimCity Societies: Destinations.

So I need to spent extra money to get something that I should already have it?

 

What were they thinking?

 

[TekindusT 3,809]

 

5. Eventually, small cruise ship terminals, taxi stations, bus depots, helipads, and yes, even airports were added in SimCity Societies: Destinations.

So I need to spent extra money to get something that I should already have it?

 

What were they thinking?

You know, that annoying "vice" EA (or Tilted Mill in this case) has of not including on the original release some stuff they for sure had already designed and implemented just to make the buyers spend some more money to get these add-ons.

[fefenc 77]

Simcity Societies should be named as "Simcity Socialism".

[Ocram's Razr 964]

It is difficult to find SCS nowadays without SCS: Destinations. You can probably find them bundled with SC4 in the SimCity Box.

--Ocram

[T Wrecks 10,210]

A lot of hate also stemmed from the attitude the game was presented with here in the community. First, they came and were like "Oh hi y'all, we're making a new city simulator for the SimCity crowd, and we really appreciate you and your input". Then they began to reveal stuff that showed more and more clearly that this game lacked what can be considered the core of SimCity: You can only influence buildings indirectly. When criticism arose, quite literally almost every answer boiled down to "we really appreciate your input, and we are going to show our appreciation by totally ignoring it, sucks to be you". A short time later, it turned out that the game had actually been nearly finished when it was shown here, and that the entire community presence had been nothing but a lame marketing attempt right from the start. Long story short, the introduction of SC:S has been a textbook example of how to p*** off your alleged audience, burn your brand name, and turn your product into a focus of hatred and symbol of ignorance. In the end, for many people SC:S ended up being not simply that awkward wannabe-SimCity game, but practically an insult.

[Mr Saturn64 742]

A lot of hate also stemmed from the attitude the game was presented with here in the community. First, they came and were like "Oh hi y'all, we're making a new city simulator for the SimCity crowd, and we really appreciate you and your input". Then they began to reveal stuff that showed more and more clearly that this game lacked what can be considered the core of SimCity: You can only influence buildings indirectly. When criticism arose, quite literally almost every answer boiled down to "we really appreciate your input, and we are going to show our appreciation by totally ignoring it, sucks to be you". A short time later, it turned out that the game had actually been nearly finished when it was shown here, and that the entire community presence had been nothing but a lame marketing attempt right from the start. Long story short, the introduction of SC:S has been a textbook example of how to p*** off your alleged audience, burn your brand name, and turn your product into a focus of hatred and symbol of ignorance. In the end, for many people SC:S ended up being not simply that awkward wannabe-SimCity game, but practically an insult.

that's Sim City 2013's development in a nutshell fer ya.

---

I have the Sim City box, which has 4, Soceities, and some weird game called "Snap-city" and it has Destinations, which for some reasons gives me the regular game when I put the disc in. Ay suggestions?

[Ocram's Razr 964]

that's Sim City 2013's development in a nutshell fer ya.

---

I have the Sim City box, which has 4, Soceities, and some weird game called "Snap-city" and it has Destinations, which for some reasons gives me the regular game when I put the disc in. Ay suggestions?

At one point, most of the users saying that SimCity Societies was better was either a shill (or was it shrike?), a child who doesn't know better, or a troll. There have been actual people payed by EA to write pro-SCS propaganda to get people to like it and it was proven that this problem was real.

It should be obvious to most people that if money was not an object, SimCity 2013 in its current state is better than SimCity Societies in most ways (even with Destinations). The main feature SCS has better than SC2013 is that its sims are smarter agents that persist until they die (or move out), much like Tropicans. This also limited the size of cities (which is why SC2013 came up with their compromise of having slightly simpler agents). The default map size was rather small (but modifiable) and the best of computers would come to a standstill once you have 100~ buildings or 200~ persistent sims (which corresponded to about 20,000~ population. Each residential building in SCS has a worker population and a "fake population" (which is used for statistics). If Maxis made students and children count as part of the population (instead of just workers and shoppers), then SC2013 would not have needed to fudge the displayed population count.

--Ocram

[elavery 1,013]

Societies never ran well on my computer for some reason, hence I didn't get into it.

[wgames77 5]

Actually, the worst SimCity spinoff is SimTown. Ok, so SimTown was made for little kids, but when I was like 4 I played SC2000.

[Huston 5,799]

Actually, the worst SimCity spinoff is SimTown. Ok, so SimTown was made for little kids, but when I was like 4 I played SC2000.

 

Lol, that wasn't even close to SimCity, nor could it be considered a spinoff

 

In regards to SimCity societies, the one thing I had to hate was (once again) the horrendous graphics. I mean, the overly cartoon-like designs looked terrible, while no the other hand, judging by what people have had to say (I never bought it), it wasn't nearly as close as to an actual SimCity game. You can't even compared SC3K(U) to SimCity Societies, neither games are in the same league, and SC3KU trumps SCC hands down.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

 

A lot of hate also stemmed from the attitude the game was presented with here in the community. First, they came and were like "Oh hi y'all, we're making a new city simulator for the SimCity crowd, and we really appreciate you and your input". Then they began to reveal stuff that showed more and more clearly that this game lacked what can be considered the core of SimCity: You can only influence buildings indirectly. When criticism arose, quite literally almost every answer boiled down to "we really appreciate your input, and we are going to show our appreciation by totally ignoring it, sucks to be you". A short time later, it turned out that the game had actually been nearly finished when it was shown here, and that the entire community presence had been nothing but a lame marketing attempt right from the start. Long story short, the introduction of SC:S has been a textbook example of how to p*** off your alleged audience, burn your brand name, and turn your product into a focus of hatred and symbol of ignorance. In the end, for many people SC:S ended up being not simply that awkward wannabe-SimCity game, but practically an insult.

that's Sim City 2013's development in a nutshell fer ya.

 

Exactly my reaction.

 

Actually, the worst SimCity spinoff is SimTown. Ok, so SimTown was made for little kids, but when I was like 4 I played SC2000.

 

It wasn't even truly released so it doesn't count... but you can find it and play it. I did. It's weird 

[Crazyforsimcity 23]

SCS, in my opinion is a really boring game, I used to like it, but lets say that that wasn't for long. Whenever I tried playing it after the long process of placing buildings one by one, and having to deal with that dumb road tool, It was really not enjoyable at all. Just watching how the city system functioned was uninteresting, and it all seemed way too easy, it didn't give you the thrill of watching the population increase and the buildings build and upgrade. also the maps were really small and the camera view was horrible, just panning around was a mess. I have to say this isn't even SimCity it is just a game with the name SimCity slapped on it, just like those cheap cereals that are ripping off the brand named cereals.