Selphy

That's the case with many franchises. The thing is individual gamers feel like they're always the people companies should market to but the fact of the matter is that the market is a changing organism. 10 years from now I can guarantee you that games will be significantly different from today because companies will be marketing to newer generations of gamers. Fans of the original Castlevania haven't had a true Castlevania game for ages. It switched to Metroidvania-style games and then 3D action with the console releases. Metroid went from a 2D platformer to a FPS then to whatever Other M was. Mario similarly from 2D platformer to 3D platformer. Only recently have they went back to side-scrolling with New Super Mario Bros. The thing about being a gamer is that you have to learn that you'll be the targeted market at one point in your life but eventually that will change. You have to learn to roll with the changes otherwise you'll always be angry about new games. There are plenty of games that I wish didn't change or evolve to accommodate new generations of players but I gave a lot of them a chance. Sure I wasted plenty of money but I also found games that enjoyed immensely. And yes, they were all $60. But before you go on saying that I'm rich or whatever, I worked tons of part-time jobs to make money to support my hobby. The point I'm trying to make is that things change, sometimes drastically, but that doesn't immediately means it will be bad. The best information we have now is a 20 minute demo. It's hard to gauge how much fun you'll have after playing for a year based on the first 20 minutes. There were so many things not included nor were you able to build a fully functioning city along with regional play to see how cities bounce off each other.

I'm not the biggest fan of the Global Market. I'll use it to the extent that I need to keep my cities running but I don't like playing the markets. I'm glad that it's not entirely forced on you. Whenever I use it I'll just assume that I'm trading with a computer or something.

Are you referring to SC4? or SC2013? SC2013 has static 2x2 km tile size and there are 16 tiles per region.

I know the good work you are doing, but some points that we consider to be negative in the game has diminished our enthusiasm for the game SimCity (2013). You may have noticed that some features and absence of others aren't pleasing the huge community of SimCity fans. I wish Maxis kindly give a response on those points mentioned in this and other forums that are displeasing to most fans of this wonderful game. I hope you understand that we aren't a small group and we admire all the effort you have done by making this game. I'm sure they know and their PR probably won't let them acknowledge the discontent. What would they say? "Yeah, we wanted to terraforming in but upper management decided it would be too difficult for new players to grasp." "We would have liked more options in terms of traffic too but it was decided that we can only work with these options." Etc. etc. They have to believe that the product they are pushing out is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Otherwise it would seem as if the team's wishes and their management's wishes were different or that they know the product their pushing out isn't perfect but that's still the direction they're headed in. You'd think "Oh, so they know that we don't like these changes but they're still doing it anyways. See they, don't care about our wishes." or "They don't even want to make it this way but that's what they're doing so it's probably going to be second-rate." They have to truly believe their game is the best even if they don't believe it because if the developers don't think it's the best then why would we, as consumers, want to buy a product that the creators don't even feel is their best. The best you can hope for is a post-release statement where they say something along the lines of: "We wanted to do more with the game but budget and time restraints prevented us from doing so. We're going to take what we learned making this game and apply it all to the sequel/expansion to make sure we can deliver an even more entertaining/true SimCity experience for our fans."

This one. Sanae > Sakuya, just barely though.

Are you kidding me? There is plenty more for them to elaborate on. Right now, the knowledge we have is just the framework. I for one would like for them to let us know more about city specializations. As of right now, they keep saying coal, casino(tourist), and oil. I would like to know what other specializations exist and some images to showcase the aesthetic change between each specialization. We know you can add modules to stuff but all we know is adding more smoke stacks, cranes for coal plants, extra panels for solar, and a new garage for police and fire. What about things like the Mayor's house? City Hall? Schools? Hospitals? Parks? What degree does each addition affect the original building? Showcase more of the transportation options. I want to know about railroads, elevated transportation and subway. What are the other Great Works we can work towards? Or tell us about some of the rewards that we can get? They showed in the video some type of reward system where you get new building options or something for completing some kind of challenge. Are these one-time use rewards? Do they only show up once? Etc? Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty excited for the game but their marketing is piss poor. From the day the game was announce to now, they've barely unveiled much. They keep telling us things we knew about months ago over and over again. We know the framework pretty through and through. At this point I think we deserve some finer details. I'm not asking them to spoil everything but most games unveil more than they have 6 months prior to launch. RPGs would showcase the battle system, various characters, the world, skill system. Racing games would show us various vehicles, different tracks and probably the customization if any. Action games would show us different scenarios, villains, probably a run-through of the first area, various guns/weapons and cool action sequences. I'm going to buy this game and I'm positive about it but even I think they need to showcase more detailed information. And like I said, they don't have to spoil it all at once or everything for that matter. Just start releasing tidbits to get people excited. Or interested for that matter.

Another interview and nothing new was learned.

They are not going to fix the maps. Get that out of your head right now. Small maps are what you will be playing with. As I read through all these posts something occured to me that I had not considered. do you (anyone) think EA may be intending to SELL larger map option and terraforming? Pay a fee and get the unlock key... ? I imagine they would probably release expansions down the line as popularity died down to spur the community. Within these expansions I can see them including larger city tiles. Think like: SimCity: Downtown. "Expand your borders with this new expansion and give your city the much needed downtown to let your Sims relax and enjoy city life!"

While I applaud your thinking of ideas, I abhor your actual ideas and think those would be terrible additions to the game given the suggestion of how you would implement them. If we had a choice about buying land or having locked 2x2 km tiles, I'd stick with the locked size. Allowing players to buy land and sell it would inevitably lead to much griefing in non-locked games. As you said, people would be scrambling to buy as much land as they can possible because more land means more money. Some people would be left with little to no land for expansion other than playing absurd amounts of money to other players. This is what most players fear, people having direct influence on your cities. If my development was stifled because some jerk bought all the land around my city and refused to sell it, I would be livid. As of right now, there is little influence between cities. I'd like to keep it that way.

A lot of games are going this direction. To my knowledge, Diablo, Starcraft, SimCity, Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed, probably Borderlands 2, Bioshock, Dead Space 3 to name a few. I guess it doesn't matter to me since my connection is usually spot-on or I have other things to do when internet rarely goes down but I suppose you have reasons for not liking this model.

I think the main point of the "have you played it yourself" argument is that playing something and reading about it is very different. For one thing, he may enjoy the engine more and all the tiny details so he may have glossed over items that you might have more interesting like certain building aspects or city management or Mayor mode terraforming. Next, why do you think it will get boring quickly just because he likes the engine? It just adds a new layer to the city building. New things to appreciate and new things to worry about. Because at the core, you still build a city. Why does the fact that data layers being done in CitiesXL already make it bad for this game? I never played the game so I'm asking, where the data layers a good addition? If so, why shouldn't SimCity incorporate it? If it was bad, why can't SimCity build on it and fix it? Over the shoulder shooters became big after RE4 released. That doesn't mean other games can't build off it without being bad? Your last point about getting bored because of small city size is a good argument for you but not everyone wants to build huge cities. Maybe other plays appreciate building smaller towns? My point is, some people can enjoy it. Lastly, just because it's a gameplay article doesn't mean you can truly experience the game by simply reading it. Have you ever liked a game that got unfavorable reviews? Or do you dislike a game that extremely favorable reviews? My point is, you can read as much as you want but actually playing a game ultimately determines your enjoyment of the game. Example. Everyone loves Demons Souls and Dark Souls and the games got very favorable reviews. I can't get into the game at all. But on paper, all the features of the game are features that I enjoy in other RPGs. I thoroughly enjoyed Magna Carta 2 but that game got many unfavorable reviews. What I'm trying to illustrate here is that you can form an opinion and gather information based on other people's experiences but sitting down and playing the game ultimately cements your feeling towards the game. The same goes for movies, books, TV shows, etc.

I beg to differ. I can see how you might think that way and you are more than welcomed to feel that way but I think the fact that they can simulate every Sim at every instance and exactly what they do is amazing. The evolution from what SC4 did to what SC does is astonishing. It's as much of an evolution as the graphics jumps. From text-based adventures to single dot pixels to 2D sprites to 3D models, developers are always trying to push the boundaries and make things more visual. Make every detail matter from the swaying of grass to clouds in the sky. I feel that they're trying to humanize the city. In SC4, I created cities but I never cared about the people in the city. If there was a fire, I put it out. If they wanted more houses, I zoned more residential. But since each Sim is accounted for, I think they're trying to make you keep in mind that each Sim matters and as a mayor you should care about your population. Not to the level of choosing furniture and finding a job but a few steps above that. And yeah, TBH, if I was a developer, I'd always try to find makes to improve my work. This is in regards to your comment about them not being happy about what they did in SC4.

I fail to see how you're forced to compete on the global market/world. If all you want to do is play co-op with your friends and do friendly competition, you can still do that. As far as I know, they aren't withholding unlockables only for the people highest on the leaderboards. If you so choose, you can look at where your city/region places. If you don't want to look, I assume you can just not click the button that takes you to the ranking so you still have the choice to not care.

In regards to people talking about the global economy, I want to put my speculation here and see what you guys think about it. I hope/believe the way the Global Market works is that each city is connected to this Global Market, not simply just a region. The reason for constant online is because their servers are constantly tracking the amount of moved through our factories and sold in our markets within our cities. From this they can track the amount of resources that are moving in the world and put that information into whatever formula they have to spit out a price based on supply and demand. With all that in mind, I believe that we'll be connecting to the server to buy resources. Just like in SC2K and SC3K, you connected to imaginary neighbors to strike up deals. In SC you will strike up a deal with the server for X amount of resources for Y price for Z amounts of days/months/years. The only trading between two people I see is trading within a region to either your friend/random or to yourself if you control all cities.

I imagine the store is probably DLC stuff which we knew was coming and/or an option to just buy resources with real money instead of Simoleons if your city is too poor or you just want to speed up development/whatever.