funnykid

Originally posted by: T Wrecks Originally posted by: citiesxlfan42 It wasn't the game that was bad, it was the marketing strategy. Slapping Sim City on it messed it all up.quote> Word. In fact, a little bit more than that. You see, people from Tilted Mill registered here at ST, said they were aiming for the SimCity crowd, that they were listening to people, that they wanted to take suggestions into account, etc. However, whenever someone criticised an aspect about the game and made a suggestion, they basically said "Thanks, we value your input, but we will stick to our concept 100%". Now if you don't intend to change anything, then you don't need to ask for suggestions and feedback, do you? And then, all of a sudden, when most people thought that there was still plenty of time for development left, the game was released. This means that at the time they were asking for feedback and pretending to be listening to the SimCity community, the game must have been basically warpped up and ready to be released already, except for some last bugfixes etc. Is it a wonder that many people had the feeling that they had been treated like idiots? Especially taking into account the glaring deficiencies in terms of realism that dedgren mentioned - deficiencies that would be viewed with particular criticism in the SimCity crowd, which had been putting years of dedicated work into getting more realism into the game? I imagine that the reaction would have been a lot different if TM had said "Hi, we're from Tilted Mill, we've been developing a different kind of city-building game. It's not like SimCity, but maybe some of you will like it nonetheless. It's basically finished, check out some screenshots and features and let us know what you think".quote> +1 SimCity is a fun city simulator, SCS is.... not fun at all as a simulator. It is, however, a very fun canvas to make your city/town exactly how you like it. The OP repeatedly emphasizes how you can have horses and candy canes and snow and whatever you wish you could have. Yes, in Freeplay Mode, SCS is indeed fun, and the graphics are great. However, it does not simulate anything really.... all this societal energy balancing is just a superficial facade for lack of gameplay. They wanted to appeal to The Sims crowd, they wanted to let players decorate every little thing in their cities. (FYI, I'm a much bigger TS player than I am a SC plater, so I'm not trying to insult the Sims community in anyway). In a nutshell, I'm going to use SCS when I get the itch to create my perfect little town. But if I'm up for some real mayoral work, I'm booting up SC4.

Originally posted by: CptStrategy Tyson, you have to look at the context of SimCity and The Sims. SimCity is a city simulator complete with complex algorithms. At the heart of SimCity is the BAT and Lot creator. This allows you to expand the buildings available to the map by creating your own. SimCity has created several fan communities which contribute to the continued development. The Network Add-on Module is one example followed by the Rural Highway Module, Network Widening Module, the BSC, the CSX, etc. So, when you state that Maxis didn't expand SimCity, they didn't need to; the environment created itself and is perpetual. As for The Sims, you are now in an MMMOOORRPG or whatever acronym you want to use. Basically, you are online and bound to a server somewhere in the world. The expansion packs not only add new avatars, props, etc, they also have to add in the physics and interaction algorithm. I seriously doubt that Maxis will give rights to the server for you to upload that yourself, thus the numerous expansion packs. Its also a marketing and revenue issue: SimCity is a single player game that has developed into a massive multiplayer community without the need for a dedicated server. Even IEEE Computer Society had a contest on building a city, then writing a report on the algorithms used and how the city developed. I'm not sure if they are continuing that contest, but SimCity is a good tool to learn computer science as well as city planning and development. Cptquote> What game are you even talking about? The Sims? Physics? Server? Online? Are you talking about The Sims Online, or The Sims main series? All 3 generations of the main series are offline games with communities that perpetually create user addons/mods much like the SC4 communities do. I think EA was planning to release N number of EPs for SC4, but decided to stop upon realizing that its sales has not reached their targeted numbers. They did something similar for SCS. The reason why RH and Destinations were released respectively for the two games was because development for the first EP usually begins before the main game ships. I too hoped EA/Maxis would pick up SC4 again and release EP's, but I have realized a few years ago that that is not going to happen.

Why is the first STEX collection unavailable?? I was about to inquire about donating for all 3 at once. I'm so disappointed.

Quick patches and free additional content is what EAxis did with the original The Sims also when it was not as popular as it is today. They needed the good word of mouth advertising to increase sales. I reserve my opinions of Tilted Mills until they prove that they will continue their consistent support for more popular games that don't depend good word of mouth advertising to increase sales.

Where is the article!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? I'm so excited!! lol