SoftcoreGamer

This is very good news. Thanks guys for the info and links. The ship-with 3D import and mod tool is just wow. Now I need to find out whether it'll have terraforming, variable tree spray, and ground texture spray options. SC4 God Mode method of sculpting the environment is very important to me and many others. Pedestrian paths including bridges and over/underpasses important too. This kind of upfront 'we have listened" attitude makes me want to support Colossol Order, apparently a tiny little Finnish company. $29.90 is nothing, to be honest. Let's hope they generate enough to breakeven and keep our SC4 successor dream alive.

Can't believe how quiet things are around here. Sheesh. Still waiting for some enlightened people from the official team to subcontract Oppie, the few programmers hanging around here, and Simtropolis to build the next Lot Editor, official unpacker, and 3Dmodel importer. All parties involved will be richer and happier for it. No brainer, you'd think?

Exactly. As I've been saying for more than one year, the current 2x2 tile labeled Cities were meant to be Towns. The Region we have today, was meant to be One City. Then some genius deduced that the new audience they were courting will find region-sized cities Very Intimidating. Other geniuses also invent new engines with high collateral damage side effect. But nevermind what those 2x2 tiles are called. If Maxis insists on calling them Cities, if realism is sacrificed for technological regression or profit margin, so be it. And now, since they're courting us diehards again... The solution is dead simple: 1. Contiguous Tiles - the disgusting square-ness will be evened out. Must also come with freedom to have any numbers of intercity links, link types, and flexible placements. OR BETTER STILL 2. Remove Tiles - allow the whole region to be free to build like a city. Build small towns, build big sprawling city, anywhere and shape. Build as crazy as one's computer spec could handle. That's it. No brainer. And based on the "leaked poll" in July 2013, yes they were considering giving users No.2 Build-Anywhere-No-More-Tiles option. So I'll just wait. The longer I wait, the more complete the legacy features I'll get when I jump on board. More fun and more time-saving for me.

$30 is a good deal. However for me it's not the money, but TIME. As in projected precious time I may have to spend on navigation, bug fix FAQs, unofficial mod hunting on Google, combing through the noise on official forums, learning workarounds, etc etc. And after all that precious time expenditure, I still don't get to terraform, or play with an offiical Lot Editor. After all that, I still get no contiguous spread, I still get no choice how I link those pathetic square little 2x2 towns pretending to be cities. And these are SimCity LEGACY BASICS. So what is the point? None. My time is too precious to waste on much ado about little fun. So, like typical diehards, I go do other things. And wait.

The only ground level demographic stats on city-building games I've come across is one from CitiesXL community before CXL2011. The forum poll result of some three figure sampling size was interesting - the concentration is in the 20-30 group. I consider CXL a hardcore city-building game. This means hardcore city-builders remain mostly young and male. Simtropolis crowd could be older than CXL, but I doubt it. There had been a lot of speculations that the new SimCity Online with MP and SOCIAL focus is "the way to go because kids are all online". Some claim the "core fans" (hardcore and softcore) are too old for Maxis. I think that is a huge misconception. Fact 1: older gamers (40+) have more disposable income, credit card access, and even Time to Play and hence deeper involvement with the community. Game companies do not dump the oldies just because they are "old". Fact 2: SimCity has always had a very wide player age (I also read that 25% are females) Fact 3: Social games (Zynga "villes") attract mostly "Moms" U.S.-based social gamers averaging 48 years of age Average Social Gamer is a 43 YO Woman Which means, given how the product looks and feels, the new direction is going from the CXL hardcore young males to casual social 40+ Farmville moms with credit cards. I used to play The Sims so I don't mind the new cutesy feel eventhough I hate the imbalance of dumbing down. I just don't think the average young males are going to be pleased with this, nor do I think moms are going to pay $60 upfront to try another social city game. So these are still among the things to mull over how involved I want to get. Feel free to chime in...

@Xenocity Selling games to China, or BRIC, lots of hurdles to cross. Granted. But China has just opened up end of 2013. Like Germany and rest of the civilized world, China also spelled out clearly why they banned what they ban. So when in Rome. Have manners. Simple. No excuse now. Sharing 40% with a local rep should not be that painful. Profit is profit. The demand is there no doubt, BRIC or Europe or South East Asia. New urbanites of Indonesia and Vietnam and developing megacities want to play city bosses. A quick visit to SimCity.cn revealed that Chinese city-builder fans have been buying SC2013 directly on Origin, even willing to deal with all sorts of payment workaround and bandwidth inconveniences using Honh Kong and Taiwan channels. The passion. So what's the excuse. Make money, by all means, just don't kill the products. Sell me corns and potatos, just don't poison and scorch mother earth while doing it. Game biz is like their cousins music/ film biz, their don't care about creating market, or the market sentiment, they just want to gobble up market creators, until the biggest fattest one among them rise to the top. The side effect of leaving behind a barren landscape full of game corpses and malinvestments? Too bad. SC2013 could well be another collateral damage, Maxis has taken their gamble to ignore legacy SC fans until terminal stage. What happened if Hollywood suits decided Toystory 2 is a distant 1999 dream and Toystory 3 is not worth a $200 million investment in a 2010 market saturated with 3D animations? They would've missed a $1 BILLION boat. What happened if movie producers ignore cries of legacy fans and ran after hot industry trend and make a mom-approved kid-friendly Batman: Toy City or Despicable Batman? Batman: the bomb. What happened if Bethesda decided ES:Oblivion's mere $2 or $3 million sales under-performed expectation and turn out a cute & casual ObliVille with message board - and shipped WITHOUT The Elder Scrolls Construction Set, by consensus one of the best official modding toolset ever created? They would've missed a $20 million Skyrim boat. Nevermind how much oblivating Bethesda will received from the ES diehards. It's easy for Too Big To Care bloated dinosaur EAs of the world to lose touch with what exactly is it they are selling. It's easy for Maxis to get lost in between priorities to meet shareholder's vs customers' demands. It's easy to forget GAME manufacturers are suppose to be about creating fun experiences, not contrived DLC TRAPS. Seduce us. Pls do. Just don't blame gamers for being fickled or stingy. Gamers will always pay and pay a for a good addictive game, music fan will always pay for the music one way or other, to Viacom overloads, to hardware biz, or or to Lorde's future own indie label. Upfront... casual gamers may pay $2.99 to 9.99, Hard Core fans, $35, maybe; Diehard fans, will easily pay $35 x 3 for a game they love. I know diehard fans here who willingly give $100 crowdfund to real or conman SC5 makers. Point is: SC2013 is a Batman:Toy City that drew in 2 million casual viewers. Diehard legacy fans will ignore it to death. Not saying making a SC5 will definitely fetch 20 million sales. Just saying, Maxis needs to show they are SERIOUSLY CHANGING DIRECTION AND MEETING GROUND-LEVEL NEEDS. And I say "needs", not "demands" or "hardcore sentiment". No nebulous promises will do. Trust is gone, what works now is CLEAR EVIDENCE. Most enlightened move for all involved remains: INVEST in reforming SC2013 into a SC5. Gear it towards a "prequel" to Sims 4. If only to warm up for Sims 4. Work harder on a SC5-like expansion for SC2013. Stop wasting money in the wrong direction. News: China city-builder fans are also celebrating offline-solo announcement. Stop wasting everyone's time. And stay proactive. Stop wasting resources: SimCity diehard community may not be strong in numbers, but in terms of passion and creative prowesss and staying power, they are a rare high quality breed of fans, a power resource still untapped by a forgetful and clueless and blindsided Maxis. So far this co-developer equivalent had been treated at best like a bastard-cousin during Xmas lunches. SC4 community leaders and techies and creatives deserve at least some real investment as TheSimsResource when Sims3 was being launched. Now that's what I call REAL core fan engagement and marketing strategy. Okay, time for a coffee break... Yak on people...

Emm. QUITE CLEARLY - to me at least -----> SC2013's cute little 2x2 bite-size city plots disjointed city plots with huge unused gaps in between unthreatening pre-laid-out intercity connections lack of map editor modding prohibitions all of which have nothing in common with SimCity3000 or Skyrim or today's standard MMOs, but scream? Yep. ZyngaVilles. Haven't you seen how giant buildings rise vertically over those cute little CityVille or FarmVille plots? So SC2013. So not my thing too. Definitely not standard MMO features LOL... Seriously... SC2013 was made not because "SC3000 network edition was hot", or EA/Maxis wanted to give us SC5 because they're feeling nostalgic or bored, but a well-published, well-established EA/Maxis attempt to conquer a new trendy frontier - the 20 million strong ZyngaVilles market. Probably not Maxis's fault, they are just following orders. Probably Maxis's fault, too, perhaps they didn't have enough confidence in their legacy Sim Franchises, or they too felt 2-5 million sales ain't sexy enough. Ironically, 2 mil is what they (claimed they) captured so far. They expected 20 million Social Sim Gamers to come, and they didn't. The mistake EA/Maxis made this round is failing to grasp: a Social Game with Sim Features DOES NOT a Sim game with Social Feature make. Don't blame the SimCity franchise being niche though. Don't blame the core fans for not coming too. Blame their own cluelessness, over-calculation and magical expectations. Oh, and SC4 is STILL doing very fine, without Maxis input or EA meddling, thank you very much. And as to SC4 being a money-maker: EA/Maxis could've invested more in making SC4 expansions and aggressively market it to China. But they didn't for their own reasons, not because SC4 was a failure or unattractive. Look at Simtrop, look at Japan's SC4 scene after 10 years. But OK, selling <5 mil copies was becoming too boring in post-Nasdaq era. But, obviously, in post-2008 world and post-ZyngaVille 2013, suddenly single digit million is good enough again! In hindsight the most obvious thing to do next for Maxis was The Sims 4 and SimCity 5 "engagement", laying the ground for eventual TS5 and SC6 marriage. Or, well, just merge the Maxis Eve and Adam already. The size of SimCity core audience is not superhot but hot and noisy enough to boost and energize The Sims franchise to another level. As a TS SC hybrid core fan, I can see how SC5 could be packaged in a way to capture a percentage of the 10 million strong TS audience. Say, another 2 or 3 million on top of existing hybrids like me. Formula would be linear. What worked in SC3000/SC4 + what worked in TS2/TS3: CUSTOMIZABILITY - Design-Your-Sim room, Build Mode, Lot Editor, God Mode.... Basically, all the conventional god game features (which were removed from SC2013 which shows Maxis didn't make SC2013 in the image of SC3000 network edition) OFFICIAL MODDING SUPPORT - Create-a-World tool, Lot Editor Parameter Tweaking Tool, official 3D model importer.... Maxis was never half-hearted in their support for casual ro hard core modders. SC2013 has none of the above. OFFICIAL 3RDPARTY MARKET SUPPORT - The Sims 3 already have an open market that complement/ compete with official store. EA/Maxis still makes money. Customers get more options and varieties. Market buzz generates more news more sales more longevity more profit. It makes sense this model continues into next gen. IMO the open market model is the most $ALE$ friendly decision Maxis has ever made. Whatever Maxis chooses in the mid haul, I wish them all the best. As a long time Maxis customer I hope they have enough juice in their engine still to move this Sim ship along for many more years.

@Xenocity : You're right, gamers should just ignore industry labels and play however they want. Not that gamers need this reminding anyway... "Contextual hardcore and literal hardcore are two different definitions." Indeed, and expanding on that: taking transient contextual definition too literally and too far can lead to multi-million losses, which is what's been happening. The loss course could be averted or at least softened by IMPROVED LISTENING SKILL and course correction, seems to be what's happening... EA Maxis is running after core fans now shouting offline solo moddability. They have hopefully learned, even the tiny demographical gap between The Sims and SimCity audience matters a great freaking deal. That it is expensive to be misled by egos, over-simplified demographic boxes, or statistical misinterpretation... The survey graph posted is case in point: convenienty ignored far more complex categorization, carelessly lumped all sim games under ONE CATEGORY: Management/Sim. So apparently, City/Flight/Train/Transport/Mech sims are all play by 30% male 70% females! Yeah OK if the stat god says so...LOL But nevermind...your chart is a mere iOS report. Majority PC games=Windows. So stats super distorted. Mgnt/Sims category was probably swayed heavy by female-leaning The Sims and definitely female-dominated Farmville. Regardless, IMO the more accurate broad category for most sim games is Strategy-Solo-Sim. Which sits squarely in the all-encompassing gender-neutral, age-neutral middle. Where SimCity should be. Which makes more common sense... Which brings us to......SEXISM. Or...How To Screw Up A Good Product With Sexist Vision. I was kinda tickled someone here accused me of being sexist for making the (gasp) shocking claim that SC2013 is trying hard to appeal to the pink side. Like that's a secret. Mmm so if I say SC2014 intend to appeal to Chinese with Shanghai architectural style I would then be racist? LOL... Anyhow...I've argued for underestimated SimCity female presence in my very first post in this thread, so I won't be shocked at all if you could magically whip out hard evidence showing SimCity core fans as majority females. Who knows, most gender-ambiguous forum avatars are really girls, who knows! For the sake of good game not going to waste, I do wish game company execs - male or female - would pay more attention to far more complex reality. Traditionally it's been easier - they split neatly into blue/pink dolls/guns ken/barbie boxes. But today's females who play PC games - around 150 million of them and as numerous as the male counterpart, are not so easily pigeon-holed. The issue here is not SimCity core fans going "Oh no the graphical style has gone barbie and shiny!" or "oh no girls are not welcomed in nerd boy zone!" Simtrop is a correct, girl-friendly zone. As a female Gamasutra commentator/gamer said - the industry needs to Move Away from 'Pink It and Shrink It" Marketing Game execs, EA/MAxis included, have underestimated female gamers' capacity for deep challenging problem-solving: intelligent, serious games like SimCity are made simpler and fluffier for the supposedly lighter-weight, shorter-attention-span female gamer brain underestimated young male gamers' equal passsion for non-aggressive non-competitive creative-constructive or even nurturing games My projection is the gray "androgynous" area of the chart will be 80% by 2020. Genderizing games and gamers will eventually be totally meaningless for design or marketing. Still, female gamers as a demographics is relatively "new" to the lope-sided-vision industry. Female gamers have been ignored until a few years ago. So now they're suddenly in hot pursuit. That's why EA-Maxis did not stop at SimCity The Sims merger attempt. They aimed higher - they wanted what Zynga created: 20 million strong Farmvillers. Hence we didn't just get Sims4 with SimCity features. We get... FARMVILLIZING of SIMCITY Evidently, SC2013 is not SimCity Resurrected or SimCity 5. It is a SimCity derivative game. It is EA:SimFarmVille. It's a new sort of beast. Which is meh, but fine. Problem is, EA/Maxis, already late to the "social games" party, misunderstood the demographic data. They thought "social" games meant classic games with added "social" stuff. And if a game LOOKS like our sim game, it must BE a sim game! We can do that! Bigger! Better! Oh their users mostly >35 Pink Ladies? A strange new breed of gamers with money and time to spare? We totally get them - mature ladies need to kill time and socialize and share their decorative achievements in pretty relax easy-going little areas! Let's not freak them out with scary big maps! We go Casual-er! Cutesier! Fussier! Shinier! Smaller! Familiar! Less is More! The result is Farmvillized SC2013, based on a lethal formula of (FarmVille = a Sim genre) falsehood + (Social = Female = Chat-obsessed Social Butterflies) assumption + (Female gamers = Timid & Casual & Style-Over-Substance gamers) assumption = (Classic games + Crippled Features + Shrunken Freedom + Social features + Fluff + FarmVille Atmosphere = Sure-Fire Female Gamers Netter) Reality is, Farmville's success with the underestimated and lucrative older female group has nothing to do with "female" interest in "simulation genre", or a "female" need to "socially bond". It popularity has everything to do with Facebook's essential nature, SOCIAL COMPETITION, which is not even gender-specific. Farmville is NOT a "sim game with socializing features", but a hyper-competitive social-climbing everyone-loves-me game that happened to be fun for SOME mature females ON FACEBOOK. Point is, Farmvillers never cared about sim games, city or farm or train or kitchen sim. Basically, one industry sexist blindspot = over-associating female dominance of social sim category with "female's natural social inclination such as their constant need to chat and bond". More than a year ago, I said Farmvillers won't get onboard SC2013 as EA fantasized. EA/Maxis learned of this miscalculation soon after SC2013 launch. Hence the surprisingly early annoucement that Sims4 will be offline solo. Lucky for The Sims crowd, SC2013 disaster saved Sims4. Still, later we learned SC2013 offline has been in the works for some time now. Yep, apparently Plan-B has been long activated because some wrong-headed fantatiscal expectations have not been met. Verdict is clear: no female sim gamers - from The Sims or Farmville or Transport sims - flocked enmasse to Farmvillized SC2013 as expected. Even clearer: - they totally misunderstood the psychographics of female-majority Farmvillers - they totally under-estimated the intelligence, creative needs, privacy needs, and resistance of female Simsters. Sexism doesn't pay. I wouldn't be surprised instead of typically-intelligent (and committed) female sim gamers, SC2013 captured a diffused mix of male-majority casual gamers who rarely pay for DLCs, a MISC crowd that could've been captured with little effort anyway. Lesson for EA+Maxis: Female gamers - especially those of the REAL sim genre - are not dumber, more timid, more socially-interested nor easier to manipulate than male sim gamers. And NEXT TIME, REGARDLESS OF YOUR SKEWED GENDER VISION, KEEP THE WINNING LEGACY GAME FEATURES INTACT. Obviously, I'm still pissed...

There're too many demographics discussion in other threads, which belongs here in this thread. Specifically on demographic description (hardcore vs casual) and core values of legacy SimCity.... To recap... various positions on labelling / describing SimCity core gamer: Hard Core - in post #55 Lucy Bradshaw of Maxis said in her presentation "Primary Target: SimCity Fans, hard core gamers." and also attributed SimCity’s financial and popularity success to “Open model garnered hard core appeal”. Casual - some users claim typical SimCity players are "nerd gamers" who ought to be labelled "casual gamers"; possible rationale...nerds...are...casual....people.... I prefer to go with the official game creator's description of their own baby: hard core appeal for hard core gamers. But just for convo let's look at the term "hard core", how it's used in this discussion... The argument to label legacy SimCity gamers as "casual and not hard core gamers" are fraud with obvious assumptions and misconceptions, which are... - violence/ destructive games = hard core, constructive/creative games = casual (obviously false) - all constructive/creative games are uninvolving/ un-addictive; their gamers are unenthusiastic, not hard core about their game and community (obviously false) - only nerds play sim games; nerds look/act/talk/walk casual; so sim games = casual (obviously false again) - when nerds play violent games, nerds look/act/walk/talk casual; but said games are still labelled "hard core" (obvious logical inconsistency) The premise, it seems, is if a game is teen-safe, it is not hard core. Perhaps there's a real need to decouple the word hard core from excessive reference to sex or violence, and return to its original meaning, that is Merriam Webster: a small number of very active and enthusiastic members of a group : the most devoted and active members of a group Have you seen how hard core the typical The Sims players can be? Very, very enthusiastic, very very involved and in for the long haul. Hard core to the core. Have you seen nerdy shooter gamers casually kill/shoot with their equally geeky virtual team mates while munching chips and chatting with their date on a typical mundane afternoon? Even yawning and texting as they splatter more blood? Then move on to another shooter game? Very very casual indeed. There's nothing casual about a typical SimCity session - it's a highly complex and involved thing to plan and build your city simultaneously in terms of traffic, pollution control, economy mix, costs, income, visual appeal vs functional requirements. So many variables considered at once at every moment. I would theorize that a typical SimCity session lights up more parts of our brain and create more new synapses than a typically linear-calculation GTA session. In terms of active mental psychological emotional and energetic involvement, legacy SimCity is potentially more hard core than typical shooters. So, yes, I agree with Lucy Bradshaw on SimCity being a hard core gamer's game.

So finally, news of an offline solo game. Am I surprised? Am I excited yet? Time to celebrate and gloat? Nope nope and nope. From 18 months ago, all we needed was common sense to see what's coming, no genius required. Every possible train wreck the core fan protestors foresaw and laid out in detailed analysis had already happened - server fiascos, mass outrage, glut and demise of casual city games, denial, firing, restructuring, recoding, even projected first year 2 mil sales figure which underperformed investor expectations. All of which will of course prompt the myopic visionaries to activate Plan B - bring back the classic, solo, single-player, offline, as in = ORIGINAL, HARD CORE aspects of SimCity. So why the muted response - in spite of game mags jumping up and down about the "great" news? Short answer... Too many times bitten. By EA? Maxis? Acti-thesda-zynga-wawa? Doesn't matter. Manufacturers can label a bottle of chemicals as real orange juice, but if consumers can't find what they want on its ingredient list, if consumers felt cheated, money go elsewhere. To me, SC2013+expansions are not SimCity games but derivatives pretending to be the real thing. Pointless purchase. Potential clutter on my clean machine. So ignored. I also ignored the hacked offline version. Simply because? Compromised moddability. Why waste time on half a game. Modding freedom is the ultimate missing ingredient. Reality is we live in post-SC4 post-Simtropolis era. So offer these "Creative Freedoms" or bleed another $10 mil on damage control. The Return of True SimCity should include SC4-level modding, terraforming, sharing freedom. Until I see these in solid terms, latest great news is just more EA/Maxis sales dept noise. And since I ignored all derivative subprime products thus far I am less concerned if and how the new offline/solo version would gel with the online/multiplayer version. The latter should defer to the former, as typically-unstable derivative should peg to the real deal. Plan B should be Plan A from the start. So restart. Take all the time. By all means. Snowcrash ambition can wait, 2020, maybe. Fix the core game, keep to the fundamentals, this baby could still fly.

If Cobraroll is right that GlassEngine just doesn't scale beyond 2048x2048, then forget about the legacy aspects, for the game is fundamentally a fail as a city simulation game. From the start. Everything else just additional crap on the cake. Funny how one of the fundamental laws of building a good city is solid foundation and basic planning. Same for website planning, or scaling aspect of games. Shocking. Smells exactly like Too Big to Fail mentality. Agreeing with the following two members... CitiesXL and dozens other simulator games have achieved this by 2008. So.... Then What Is The Point of Playing this new SimCity, when it is NOT even half of what it used to be? As well as the ultimate demise of LEGACY SimCity. 4) their only hope for their investment to make sense now hinges on the will power of Those Who Loves SimCity But Still Refuse To Budge Obviously, our Restrain worked. Obviously, businesses HAS TO care about getting ALL their customers. So Maxis and EA, keep talking Offline Mode and Modding. My ears are opened. And of course, I ignored the expansion pack. Casually so. Acropolises cramped inside 2x2 - in full 3D glory? This is 2013. What a joke.

I knew why I love the classic Simcities, precisely for those basic elements of interconnectivity between cities, terraforming, god-like manipulation. So I knew I would hate what they're attempting to do to this legend. Didn't buy, still won't, still no regret not buying. And I wouldn't bother with a pirated copy. Because I want official support for modding. The amazing SC4 modding community should not have to sneak around to help EA sell more copies.

Yep. And everything projected to go wrong with online+glassbox+cityville-wannabe has gone wrong 3X. I trusted my instinct. Didn't buy. Still won't, until offline, continuous map and modding come along.

I recall a concise post from eons ago... Here it is

Ah...indeed. There are constructive whiners and not so constructive whiners about constructive whiners. It takes all types! Thank goodness EA is acting responsive to the whining. They are openly acknowledging their lousy attitude and poor communication skill - even hint at asking us what we want thru a user survey! Even pre-emptively promise a offline The Sims 4! I would like to thank all the most enthusiastic SimCity whiners for making all that happen! Now it's my turn to give constructive, impersonal, subject-relevant map-oriented whining... No problem indeed. If next version Photoshop removes basic round brushes, saturation adjustment, cropping features see their core fans up in arms too. No whining there. Just straight-forward, totally-justified outrage, followed by protests or exodus. Logical progression...really. So yeah, Simcity removing user control on region maps, God Mode, map size options, map edge intercity connection options, what would likely happen? Right... Of course people will keep referring to SC4. It was the most recent version of SimCity wasn't it? Which recent SimCity came with village size plots with pre-placed city connections? None. So well, expect to hear more "I want this SC4 basic and that SC4 features". Exactly. It boggled the mind, until I caught a slip in one official video. Fact is Maxis didn't call the 2x2km plots "cities". They called them TOWNS. Yep, you hear me right. See my earlier complete with pic. The slip was caught in an official demo video. It seems they are in touch with consensual reality and actually agreed with us that 2x2km equals towns! Still, they changed their minds, and decided to sell the 2x2 towns to us as "cities". But no matter. They have every right to do whatever they do to risk their investments. Buyers have every right to buy or not buy or whine or ask for their money back. More importantly for me though, from the leaked July 5th survey, they are considering and thus are capable of making the plots bigger, and cities contiguous, even BORDERLESS!! In their own words: Bigger Cities: Imagine city spaces that are 2x the current city size, to build bigger cities. Cities Without Boundaries: The landscape is wide open. Push your cities for miles and miles. Set your own city borders and connect your cities however you like. Aha. so they can do "borderless". Why? Because the 2x2 were towns in the first place! This adds to my theory that the "region" we have today, were meant to be one single "city". From development day one. This also potentially means, to give us the two features above, they probably don't even need to write new codes, just get rid of their silly Cityville-wannabe square boxes and fixed citylinks. Then again Kotaku exposed EA/Maxis could've given us offline, from day one. My concern is their bigger map is merely "2x". 2x of 2x2 is not 4x4. It's like 2.83 x 2.83, not even 3x3. Hello? If so, EA, don't bother. Unless the "bigger" map has 8x8 ++ options, it's meaningless, to me anyway. Smartest move, IMO, is 100% map freedom for offline. Just like SC4. Stop wasting time grappling over 2x2 4x4 8x8 12x12 for offline. Cities without boundaries. Build as big as our PC can handle. And announce it soon. When some of the uncompromising ones are still lingering around. Investor relation press needs new angle.

Among standard feature inclusions "being considered"... Offline, Bigger map, Terraforming (!!!), Classic Mode (functionally a sandbox mode), Subways, Lot Editor, User Made Content, SimCity Exchange....things that will make Simtropolis creators very happy... Packs/ expansions being considered... Farms, military, subways... The survey image is here Gamespot EA considering offline mode for SimCity Venturebeat Rumored EA survey suggests SimCity could get offline mode and bigger cities Kotaku SimCity Survey Gropes About For Ways To Keep Folks Playing The Mashable article Survey Suggests 'SimCity' May Add an Offline Mode highlighted key potential change including one unexpected one... Cities Without Boundaries: The landscape is wide open. Push your cities for miles and miles. Set your own city borders and connect your cities however you like. Wow. If that happens. I still want city map size to have 8x8 options though. Keyword for map size or any power-constrain features, options! Let users decide. It seems that the diehards campaigning here and elsewhere didn't fall on deaf ears. They did hear us. So will they DO IT? Will they save themselves? Apparently EA wouldn't bother with user survey if they're not interested in investing more time and money in that franchise. So keep talking guys and gals!

Just checked in on Gamespot to see what's happening with this train wreck. Am very surprised by the lack of excitement here about the latest "offline SC5" consideration. A few July 5 speculative articles, on a leaked SimCity survey image, implied an offline mode is being considered. The leaked survey image contains a few dozens of typical core fan wants so deserve a thread of its own which I will start after this post. In a later Gamespot July 24 article, SC5 is also mentioned alongside the confirmation of The Sims 4 being offline... excerpt: In addition, the feedback EA received from gamers following SimCity's launch helped inspire the company to make 2014's The Sims 4 an offline game, Gibeau said. "In the last few months, we have started making changes to the business practices that gamers clearly don't like," Gibeau said. "In the spring, we dropped our online pass program for consoles--both next-generation and current-generation. We listened to the feedback on SimCity and decided that The Sims 4 would be built as a single-player, offline experience." In another June article titled EA Wants to Stop Being 'Hated', EA also recently retired its controversial Online Pass program saying the decision came about in part because of user feedback. OMG they can hear! What I'm really saying is, there may still be hope for a truly offline version of SC2013. Of course, it must be no login required, 100% playable offline, save-able offline in user computer, to qualify as offline. So let's see...

But that's the thing - the always-on connection is precisely why you are not allowed to have larger than 2x2 plots to play with. If you think the current server fiasco is bad, wait til you get to play a 4x4 city! The only solution is a 100% offline game. As in Offline expansion pack. All other server-induced syndromes will be gone gone gone. But will they do it?

SC2013 1.3 mil sales first two weeks is not impressive at all. This is 2013, not 2002. Diablo3 sold 6.5mil first week, is a $ucce$$ from pure investment point of view. It definitely inspired resurrection of ignored classic titles like SimCity, but also raised the bar for corporate profit expectations. The more they invest, the higher their expectations. SC2013 profitable or not thus far, it depends on dev cost + server cost. But whether it is a "success", that depends specifically on corporate expectation. If $50 mil cost, around 900,000 copies to break even If $60 mil cost, around 1,300,000 copies to break even But breaking even is not "profitable" nor guarantee of "survival". Server cost is more than the initial setup, rental and human labor costs will be staggering. They've just increased server capacity by 400% among other 4X extra costs. If sales momentum fails to sustain (they usually don't and tend to taper off sharply as shown by posted graph above)... What do you think is going to happen SOON? And as to sales figure to date meeting corporate expectations, EA top dog is "stepping down" and getting fired precisely because Simcity sales expectations have not been met. See EA CEO steps down amidst SIMCITY DRAMA. Point is, it doesn't matter SC2013 sold 1.3 mil or 1.6 mil. The obvious is - SC2013 has severely underperformed. As if that's not enough, as CEO get fired, Amazon pulled down SimCity due to overwhelmingly negative review. It's really not that easy to earn ONE star with almost 1000 reviews. Nevermind reputation, now the Amazon sales line is gone too. Congratulations, how did EA-Maxis manage to pull this stunt on such a sure-hit title? More importantly - what does "SimCity sales figure not meeting EA expectations" mean for fellow gamers? Right... They are hoping most who have bought into the game will not notice what's coming. Many diehard fans saw this coming many moons ago, and here we are. Oh no, I'm not celebrating this vindication. I'm just glad I abstained in time, no pre-order, no post-order. Spared myself the pain and disaster that I knew 300% was to come. I still hope SimCity will recover from this disaster of corporate idiocy and myopia. There is still a chance EA-Maxis could keep the sales figure up - by going the very simple Offline Expansion Pack route. But will they do it?

Excellent observations highlighted. Forced back on the drawing board earlier - explains why the 2x2 "Town Names" tiles were changed into "City Names". At an earlier point, Maxis got it right - the region was the CITY. So what happened? As elaborated in the SimCity Demographics Past & Present topic, Maxis has frequently said they want core fans, AND clearly they also know what SimCity core fans want. Still, they only have one new thing to sell to core fans - Detailed Simulation, but 12 other Legacy Features reduced or removed, which, upset and repel core fans. Why the Imbalance? And is the lope-lopsidedness intended? If it is not, are steps being taken to rectify it? They have vaguely explained their new changes - to appeal to "mainstream" players. But they have also made disasters and tile sizes in CityVille fashion, and advertised "Power to Change a World Together" and "Play With Friends" loud and clear. The "Social" symptoms are evident... SimWorld with a Leaderboad visual is unambiguously the first out of six Game Overview pages on official page, while "Create a Customized City"....is at the BOTTOM of the very last page! Legacy players majority have been saying, the SANDBOX aspect of Create a Customized City should be first. I am suggesting from a investment standpoint, as the new speculative and experimental aspect, SimWorld should be the last of the game design and marketing focus. IMO, EA/Maxis is developing it now, because of Zynga overall success by 2011, before the quick Boom & Bust of the social gaming genre. Evidently, post 3Q 2012 is a wrong time to be a Zynga wannabe, from a market hype perspective, or a profit-seeking perspective. As many core fans have rationally and reasonably suggested - back to the drawing board?

This canvas analogy keeps coming back again and again, but of course. Anyone who'd played any version of SimCity knows it's a first and foremost a SANDBOX game. We are already watching the horror trailers showing how a sandbox CITY simulation is - one feature at a time - being turned into a mini "do it right disaster god won't destroy your mini TOWNs" preset mission game in the veins of CityVille with all external transport connections pre-positioned on the map by the game. No matter how detailed the car and sim simulation, I will not care about a god game no more, nor will I invest my time in a CITY simulation game with NO MAP EDITOR. They need to rethink their region level design, and make it a SC4 God Mode equivalent as a pure sandbox complete with plot size cutting option and terraform, which will overcome all upsets mentioned in this topic. Indeed. They are probably pitting SC13 head on against CityVille, or decided it is too challenging to compete with SC4 + customization + generous communities. I have been detached for a month since I figured out why almost every new feature they announced is anti legacy SimCity traits - ESPECIALLY MAP DESIGN. So my reaction to another new rude shock is more amusement.

Shuddering stuff indeed... Even in faux-3D SC4's region view looked and felt far superior, simply because the tiles were seamless and contiguous, and connections and terraforming were allowed. At least then we had tile size OPTION, region size OPTION, and tile cutting OPTION. Maxis was right to label these so-called city plots "towns" earlier. I also agree with other users who said it doesn't even qualify as a typical realistic town. Putting skyscrapers and huge stadiums on a town-size tile just makes it look even faker. Pinewood Mesa with towers sprouting among low-rise flat land is like town-planning gone wrong from corrupt city hall. Bramble Overlook with half a map unbuildable and uneditable looks even more absurd. Here's another pic without towers to indicate how the fixed-size tile barely qualify as a town. See the town border as indicated by white dotted lines...

New video from Amazon.com confirming projected map size, relative distance of so-called cities from each other, the looks and feel of the "region" view, and the implication of preset highway/freeway connections between so-called cities. http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=tsm_1_tw_s_vg_mdi5w6?docId=1000856141

I agree "logically backed-up reasons" is the way to go and SC13-improving suggestions should continue. Maxis or EA are not omniscient, they make wrong-headed marketing and design policies all the time. EA may just save money and time and borrow from Ubisoft's market research on How Gamers Universally Hate Always-On, and how within a few months from SC13 announcement, social gaming is announced as a dying trend. I don't blame the EA/Maxis couple for going after "play online with friends" Social gamers. The industry buzzword "Social" is equivalent to "3D" during SimCity3000's development, the must-have item on executive lunch tables... There's a chance Maxis will still listen and respond positively to constructive requests and feedback, I agree - for they did listen during the 2-year long development of SC3000 in 3D; after receiving negative and rational feedback from core fan testers and game industry pros, Maxis admitted 3D was premature, and went back to making a proper 2D SC3000 which turned out to be huge success. In their zealousness to capture the new Zynga-created type of gamers Maxis had overlooked the importance of the SimCity X FACTOR: the SimCity Legacy Features they are suppose to preserve or defend. Paying too much attention to beating CityVille and overvaluing what millions of gamers are like these days (light &easy), they may have forgotten how many SIM franchises core fans DO NOT WILL NOT play FaceBook kind of city games, NOT on FaceBook, NOT on infamous Origin. And operating from a perfect tech paradise, they have very likely miscalculated how many millions of SimCity's urban/suburban dwelling core fans have lousy net connection. So yes, they need to be enlightened on why online-only is not feasible from a purely business standpoint. Always-on or a proper MMO SimCity may not be a risk or disaster in 2020, but now, it is simply as premature as SC3000 in 3D. To RE-capture the alienated core fans, EA/Maxis should RE-implement SimCity Legacy Features.

I have supported my assertions with enough facts and official sources and links. So far 20 million is the best SC4 number derived Maxis source and PCworld source. I am very curious how many copies SimTown has sold, and to who, indeed.