Massive Multi-City Scale

The only thing about this article that confuses me: is he saying that police or firetrucks are both in your city and in the other city at the same time (assuming they are both being played at the same time?) I is confused...

Nothing new .. because what KK does every time he is ever published was becoming confused everything things to that is not good to be much explained .... maybe innate ability.

Why is no one bringing up how ridiculously small the cities look in those screenshots. Even small farm towns are larger than the space provided there. The whole regions looks to be the size of a large city by itself in SC4. I'm sort of confused how people will spend more than a few hours on a city and then be done with space?

Everything is way too dependent on multi-player cooperation it seems. Literally not one article they have released has been about how fun it will be to play on your own, it seems to only revolve around online multiplayer and that's really depressing considering most Sim City players are not fans of multi-player games. It's one thing to work with other cities as a mayor, but it's another to have to spend over half of your time focusing on things outside your own city.

Actually all these are poppycock used as excuse to explain the transformation of Simcity in a game "App" Client-server which definitely does not have much to do with the genre of cities simulators.

Simcity 2013.. a poor simulator.. maybe a great game!

Why is no one bringing up how ridiculously small the cities look in those screenshots. Even small farm towns are larger than the space provided there. The whole regions looks to be the size of a large city by itself in SC4. I'm sort of confused how people will spend more than a few hours on a city and then be done with space?

Everything is way too dependent on multi-player cooperation it seems. Literally not one article they have released has been about how fun it will be to play on your own, it seems to only revolve around online multiplayer and that's really depressing considering most Sim City players are not fans of multi-player games. It's one thing to work with other cities as a mayor, but it's another to have to spend over half of your time focusing on things outside your own city.

Agreed, advanced players will not find this game very fun. We won't be able to customize every last detail like we can in SC4 e.g. terrain, map size, climate.

Even if they do release mods or expansions for this I still loath that 'plastic' looking graphical style. I don't think anyone would be able to replicate the fantasic, realistic-looking cities and regions in various CJ's shown here on ST.

Multi-city play doesn't matter to me one bit that as long as those cities are separated by bizarre and incredibly unrealistic wastelands that cannot be edited. How can this game accurately simulate cities in a region if the the region is laid out in such a ridiculously unrealistic manner.

I'd be perfectly fine with smaller tiles if the city tiles touched eachother and didn't have areas you can't edit between them.

As it is, however, this is a deal-breaker for me. This is simply a way to disguise how small the playable area is by making you feel like you are in a big region. The problem is that it distorts gameplay and frankly looks comical.

Whats more conserning is that the more information is released, the core gameplay seems to lean toward SIMCITY FACEBOOK...

gifting eachother Plastics, Processor’s, TV’s and Cash .... sound familiar!?

And the city specialising thing is so anoying. name 1 city in the world that is specialised in garbage, water electricity etc :S

there is nothing at all "massive" about that screenshot.

there is nothing at all "massive" about that screenshot.

it just highlights all of the limitations that their designs have put on this game.

I really hope that the "city specialization" and "Resource Tycoon" won't be forced. They take up actual city space and I might not like that. Since space in this game is very limited, that WILL be a problem. It SHOULD be optional.

Every new post i ask myself why they did that.

It is nice to see the actual gameplay explained, something that had not been done yet.

Even though this game falls off of the appeal scope of most of us at Simtropolis, those who are indeed excited about the re-boot can have a better glimpse of how their new game works.

offcors there is some things that do sound nice about this game, but there is just so many minuses about it that it will be one of the games i open once in a whail to maybe check some new future or when im just totally boord.

Multi-city play doesn't matter to me one bit that as long as those cities are separated by bizarre and incredibly unrealistic wastelands that cannot be edited. How can this game accurately simulate cities in a region if the the region is laid out in such a ridiculously unrealistic manner.

I'd be perfectly fine with smaller tiles if the city tiles touched eachother and didn't have areas you can't edit between them.

As it is, however, this is a deal-breaker for me. This is simply a way to disguise how small the playable area is by making you feel like you are in a big region. The problem is that it distorts gameplay and frankly looks comical.

Couldn't agree more!!!!!!!!!!!!

And the city specialising thing is so anoying. name 1 city in the world that is specialised in garbage, water electricity etc :S

There aren't any because it is patently ridiculous to think that one distant community could supply LOCAL resources to another. You can privatize them or make them public, but they are always indigenous.

Sadly, this title just keeps getting farther away from a worthy sequel to SC4 as more info is released. I personally won't even look at it until there is a subway, but now it seems clear why there isn't one--the cities themselves are too small and subways don't work as regional links as would be required for this artificial layout of development.

The more they say, the more they are disillusioning everyone. This is not an update to the existing franchise. It is a total restart relegating the old series to the dustbin.

C'mon you guys, release the source of SC4, if you dare.

The only thing about this article that confuses me: is he saying that police or firetrucks are both in your city and in the other city at the same time (assuming they are both being played at the same time?) I is confused...

Response to Archetechnid's question from the EA comments:

Since it's asynchronous, yes. It could be night in one city and day in another, etc... The idea behind the design was that we wanted to encourage trading and sharing between cities and make it as friction less as possible for both player's. The player providing the police is already paying for the upkeep of those cars. There's an added benefit to playing with others and sharing the coverage provides additional income. For the player's receiving the police coverage, they get the benefit of the additional police coverage. It's meant to be a bonus.

EA very careful not to state the initial number of regions available for play.

EA very careful not to state the initial number of regions available for play.

marcomsousa 69 points 12 hours ago

Since this is online, will there be a limit in the number of regions/cities that I can play?

[–]MaxisKip 87 points 11 hours ago

Yes, we had to put a cap here. We learned a lot on Spore about this. You'll have plenty of save slots, which will allow you to create and manage many regions and cities. We haven't locked the number yet, but what I can say is that they are bound to regions. So if you created a 16 city region, you could play all 16 cities and that would be one save slot.

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This isn't a glorified photoshop where you can paint cities for a useless region view. They are making Sim City a game. What a thought...