Trioxis

Bridge types are determined by the type of road. I would recommend reading this dev diary on roads for specifics. Tunnels won't be available upon release, however I've read they might be coming later.

This isn't a new thing. It happens all the time, especially with MMO's and other games with an always-online requirement. That being said, this really sounds like the kind of thing they should have fixed BEFORE release.

I'm kinda hoping it will come to steam as well. Still no information about that though...

Would be handy if you had included a link, but yeah it seems it is.

And how has this changed with the new engine? The individual Sims still don't really matter. They're effectively just parts of the SIMulation, which is what SIMCity does: Simulating a city. Besides that, I would argue that keeping the citizens happy or at least make sure their problems are dealt with is a very important part of managing a city. As you've pointed out this can be seen in SC4 where the Sims 'demand' that you build more of service X or Y, but you can choose to ignore that. From my beta experience this hasn't changed at all.

This would be all fine and dandy if maxis representitives didnt come on here and make a pitch for a game totally different than what they alluded to in the first place. If they were inspired by sc journals and the nam team then how did we end up with this? How does one claim to be inspired by the nam team when you cannot even place a damn highway in the game. To be inspired by something does not automatically mean they have to make a 1:1 copy of it though. In fact, many things are inspired by something but also fundamentally different from the original concept. So Maxis' claim that they were inspired by the nam team does not have to be untrue and it doesn't mean they have to have placeable highways in the game, to give an example. Whether they've pitched an entirely different game than was alluded to is more a matter of perspective. Most of the people on this forum were expecting a new SC game to be a straight evolution from SC4, and were disappointed when it turned out to be a reboot.

Well I never said it was a good thing, but it's hard to say whether SC13 will be a commercial success or not. I think the game is actually quite decent from my beta experience, but it's not the SC5 many people had hoped for. I'm most likely still going to get it anyway, but maybe not right at release.

Only problem with that is the fact that the market doesn't just include fans of the SimCity genre (i.e. this community) but also includes a vast majority of other people who are not fans. Maxis doesn't NEED to cater to the wishes of the fans in order for the game to be a commercial success, as long as they can get other people to buy it instead. You don't have to like it but there's not much you can really do about it.

While the upcoming SimCity game may not be the 'true' successor to SC4 many fans wanted it to be, it's still going to be a quite decent game. Even though it lacks some features that were in it's predecessors, the game has received a much-needed overhaul in terms of simulation and graphics. I think it's pretty much a trade-off between quality and quantity. The only question that remains is whether it'll support mods or not and if so, to what extent?

Even though you'll fill the map a lot faster than you would the large tiles from SC4, the concept of regional play may mean your cities will be more dynamic and will require more attention to keep running properly. I'm quite excited about the possibilities and challenges it may bring. Whether or not this is a good reason to keep playing is up to you, but I always got bored with the somewhat stale cities in SC4.

You know I never like this kind of approach to getting what you want. It's like a small child throwing a tantrum when it doesn't get what it wants, in the hope or rather belief that it'll make any difference. Sure, there's a place for feedback but in the end it's still up to Maxis to make the decisions and you can't force them to change anything. Well, maybe you can, but I'd still call it bad form. Constructive criticism is where it's at.

Imho, the only reasons CitiesXL failed is because it was a bad game at release and not SimCity.

This is one of my concerns as well. I had zoned a small enclosed area for residential, only to notice later on no houses were being build there. I think they should go back to how it was displayed in the early strategy vids they did.

I think it's a good move on their part to get the required information now. I remember ANNO 2070 had similar issues when it was launched, the server was repeatedly down for several days. I think launches like this are in general fairly problematic, so I wouldn't be surprised if this happens for the first few days after launch.

In my opinion the game is simpler in some aspects and more complex in others. I really like the fact you no longer have to carpet your city with services anymore. Not enough police coverage? Just add a few patrol cars. Not enough jail cells? Go ahead, add some more. Having those modular buildings really adds a sense of progression to the overall game. Do note that the cost/hr of services increases when you add modules to them. I would also like to note that you can only add a fixed number of modules to services, so you'll have to make some choices as to what you need for that particular service. You can bulldoze/remove the modules and replace them with others if necessary. Making money has pretty much become a non-issue, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Although having only one hour to play around with a city it's really hard to determine if it gets harder to make money later on in the game. The data layers are pretty awesome as well, giving clear and detailed information about stuff that's going on in your city. It's really hard to tell if the game is going to be as interesting and easy to play once you've build a larger city, but it has certainly left me wanting more.

I think it doesn't really matter what language your launcher is in. I've got a key from the Nvidia giveaway and the email I got said the following: So chances are everyone will have to download it that same day.

Thanks for the tip. Got a key!

CiM isn't even a city-building game, so why compare it to a game that is? Also, EU3 (and soon EU4) or bust.

Is it just me or does the tile in Beta Gameplay #1 look smaller than the tile in #2? I'm inclined to believe that the #1 video is a tutorial region/city with smaller tiles. The tile in the #2 video seems to be more akin to what we've been shown before and is pretty much satisfactory for me, although I do hope they'll release bigger tiles after release.

Non-shocker. As long as I can play all cities in my region I don't really care how many regions you can have saved at any one time, although I'm positive Maxis will make the cap a fair one. Also @blunder: Would you have been able to run 100km x 100km maps on the avarage machine back when SC4 first came out? I think we might be able to get larger regions in SC2013 sometime in the future, but I don't think it'll ever be on such a scale.

I thought this thread was closed? Anyway, they talk about casual gamers and casual games but there's no clear definition of what those terms mean in that context.

Making random disasters optional is a good move on Maxis' part, I never was a fan of 'forced' disasters in any game. Furthermore, it seems that you can manually control who has access to your region and give them control of a city on the fly, which is pretty cool. Cities do seem to look a bit bigger than I remember from previous screenshots/videos, although I'd still wish the tiles would be bigger, 3x3 would be a preferable alternative if 4x4 is a no-go.

I thought ferries were already confirmed to be in the game? I think it was in that pop-up video they did. Based on the screenshots I've seen so far the architecture doesn't seem to be all that bad, although I'm not a fan of the modern, all-white houses. It definitely looks like some designs were inspired by the Sims games. I have to agree that the textures on the mountains seem somewhat lackluster, but it's not something I really feel bothered by. I'm more concerned by the relatively limited tile size and not so much about whether or not the mountain looks lifelike. Besides that, there's still a few months left before it's released so they might still have time to work on it, although I don't really expect any major changes at this point.

I think I would have to agree with you. It's clear that SC2013 isn't aimed at a particular demographic, although perhaps they're leaving out the so called core fans with some of the missing features. As a casual gamer I couldn't really care less about whether subways are in the game or not. I think the graphical style is nice and fresh and I sincerely hope the UI will be easy to work with. I do not know if more casual gamers feel like I do, but I have to wonder if the average gamer really cares about the supposed missing features and limited map sizes. So far it seems that most of the criticism is coming from the core fan camp and yes, maybe they have a point about the new game being limited. But core fans aren't Maxis' or EA's most important demographic/target audience for this game, in fact they are more like the vocal minority. I just feel like the core fans won't be satisfied until they're getting a SC4.5.

I have this feeling as well. I've never stated the numbers given on any of the wiki sites are 100% accurate. Also, you might want to note that the wikipedia page is about PC GAMES and the other page is about FRANCHISES, I believe there's also a wikipedia page talking about franchises which should give you the same numbers. In any case, so far I haven't seen any proof that your claim is based on anything but assumptions but I'm glad you're at least taking the other games into consideration now. Agreed, even IF the other games sold for a combined total of 5 million copies that still leaves a good 15 million sold copies for SC4, which still is a lot. But like I've said before, the sales figure does not equal the exact amount of unique buyers. You have to take into account people who bought SC4 + Rush Hour or SC4 + deluxe. And then I haven't even started on the percentage of buyers who are still playing SC4 today and might be considered core fans of the series, which could be anywhere from 1 to 100 percent (both equally unlikely). So if we were to continue the 'guesstimate' approach you're using we could be looking at the following: 15 million sold copies of SC4 could perhaps translate into 10 million unique buyers taking into account people who own multiple versions of SC4. Of those 10 million there could reasonably be 30% still actively playing the game with about half of those actually being core fans, which comes down to 1.5 million people (30% of 10 million being 3 million, half of 3 million being 1.5 million). Still a respectable number of people, but not close to 20 million core fans and the wishful $1.2 billion potential worth I've seen in a post. Do note that these numbers and percentages are completely made up, with the 15 million sold copies of SC4 being the only one that could be reasonably accurate given what we know of the sales figures. I've just used this as an example to demonstrate that it's far from a simple matter. Also you might want to read up on Occam's Razor, it's not always the simplest theory that is the most accurate. I have the feeling that this debate will go on until the actual sales figures are known. I would suggest leaving the discussion about sales figures and potential number of core fans be as this thread is actually about the demographics.