easypeacy42

Sounds good, looks like Cities XL 2011 might end up in my shopping cart finally. I do hope, however, that "A realistic representation of the population. Citizens have various profiles depending on their age, their career and their health. Take profiles into account to provide the services and the entertainment they need." does not mean that they are going back to the City Life crap but going into a better simulation direction of the population (more than the current click-and-assign-people-type-to-job-type loop).

Great news!!! Honestly, I didn't believe that there would ever be a "Cities XL 2011". But it's good to see that it will come out, with buses and subways in solo mode. That's what I like. Although I generally don't like the "simulation" concept of Cities XL at all (assuming that it will be the same concept in CXL 2011) I will buy this game in October, finally.

Originally posted by: Gregory_C Yes, the '2010' bit was definitely a typo. The official name is "Cities XL 2011" -- although obviously at this point we do not have a release date. As posted on the french forum I cannot really give more informations about MC's current situation. However I do want to instist on the fact that despite our financial woes the company is still running; all the developpers and other employees are here, and development work is still going on as usual for the next version of Cities XL. What the future is made of I cannot tell (or don't have the ability to), and part of it is not in our hands anymore. "What will be will be". We are focusing our efforts on completing the new version, that is the most important thing. What happens after that; we'll see.. quote> Thanks for your statement Gregory. It's obvious that the part that is "not in your hands" is the fact that MC ran out of money and needs financial investors to save the company and to continue the work on Cities XL. I understand that you cannot comment on this, of course, and do not expect an answer on this part. Although I was one of the beta testers who heavily criticized the game (with plenty of constructive ideas how to adjust / enhance) and didn't buy the game, because I couldn't enjoy your game concept (me being a long-time SC4 player, but open to new concepts in general), I do hope very much that MC will be able to continue the development on Cities XL. This being said, I think we all know why Cities XL was not successful and why MC is so much trouble now. I'm not mainly referring to the Planet Offer. I'm referring to the fact that MC obviously didn't understand what a city simulation game (or city builder game, call it what you like) should offer to reach the community of city builders out there. MC didn't understand that the opinion and input of long-time city builder players (mainly SimCity, inevitably) should have a certain weight in their decisions. I'm not talking about the old and endless "should Cities XL be a SC5 or not" discussions. Cities XL does not have to be a SC5. But to be successful, Cities XL simply has to offer certain aspects / contents that cannot be neglected. And, last but not least, it must not be just a re-polished version of the City Life game concept (unfortunately, Cities XL is not much more than this at the moment). I would be interested to see about the learnings MC did and how you want to close the gap. By assuming for one moment that the financial situation could be solved, the strategy how to close the gap will be key to make Cities XL 2011 a successful and true "next generation city builder game". If you manage to take the right steps, Cities XL has a huge potential to be a great, even exceptional game for many years, to be established as the next "city builder franchise" in the gaming world. If MC believes, however, that they can continue by releasing a "Cities XL 2011" being just a slightly enhanced Cities XL solo-player game, then MCs end will just be delayed by a few months. And no one is interested in this happening. For me, and in the beta forum it seemed like a lot of people shared a very similar opinion, some of the missing pieces would be multiple lot sizes, more mass transportations like trains / subways / ships and a more dynamic simulation part to keep the city alive (graphically, but mainly in the simulation engine part, where the city should dynamically react to decisions of the player and the environment situation of districts, etc.). With those three gaps closed, I'd immediately buy the game and enjoy it a lot. Any comments in this direction might help a lot to slowly re-establish trust and confidence of "the community" (whatever that means ...). It might also help to show that MC also recognized finally that proper communication is also key to get support of "us", the potential customers.

Well ... I hate to be the boring smart-a$$ here ... ... but I clearly remember a time during beta, when people became aware of what is in the game and what not. When, despite all warnings and votes from a large part of the community, MC even took further bad decisions having its climax in the fact that there was no mass transportation at release, and additional content like bus transportation, etc. was announced to "never" be made available in SP mode. During the beta phase, there were quite some people, including myself, who stated that MC will likely run into bankruptcy within a short time when they do not start listening to the community and when they really go live with their bad decisions. Wow ... I clearly remember how some other parts of the community started bashing people like me ... telling us that we were old-fashioned Sim-City fans who would not be open to "new great concepts" ... and that we should shut up with our "destructive opinions" ... and that we would never represent "a large part of the community" ... and even MC indirectly threatend us to be banned from the beta although we simply stated in a fact-based and politically correct way what we believed would happen and what we believed it would take to make it a great and well-accepted game. No, I'm not happy at all that we were obviously right with the points we raised. When MC announced that they would transfer all features into the SP mode and will come out with a "Cities XL 2011", I hoped that they would survive. Because it was the right decision and they started heading into the right direction. Although "Cities XL 2011" would still by far not be expected to be the city builder game I was hoping for during all those months and years, I'd most likely have bought it. Because this could finally represent a basis where there would be the chance to unveil the great potential of the game over time. Unfortunately, it does not seem that they will ever make it so far. Unfortunately, also, it's absolutely clear that the blind and arrogant management of MC was driving the whole project into the wall by completely ignoring even the most basic wishes and recommendations of the community, by taking awfully bad decisions one after the other and, last but not least, by ignoring that the "good old Sim City community" is not just a little bunch of old-fashioned gamers but would and should have been their main target group to make this game a success. In short words: Ignorance and incompetency of MC's management took away from us city builder fans a great opportunity for a new and excellent "next generation city builder" gaming platform ... and, as a "side effect", will most likely destroy a significant number of jobs. I'm sure those managers got a fat bonus at last year's end ...

I'm glad to see MC coming to reason, finally. Even when it hurts that they probably first had to lose lots of money and time. I think around 80% of the beta tester community can now say "we told you so, MC", indeed ... simply because they did, for months, and no one at MC wanted to listen. For me this is good news. Because now I again start thinking about buying the game, finally. First, however, MC has to more clearly define what "Cities XL 2011" would be and when it would be. In addition, it would not hurt to finally improve two major points for Cities XL 2011, which is first of all more lot sizes and second a more dynamic simulation (and not just a repetitive number shifting of residents and jobs). Then, together with improved mass transportation, it would start to become even a great game, sooner or later. With this news, I'm starting to be a little bit more positive that MC finally starts to work on the great potential of this game. And that they finally start to listen to the community again ... ... hint: MC, maybe look again at the most prominent threads of the former beta forum (if you still have this data ...) ... there you still have what most of the community expects from the game. Go ahead!

From by beta experience (I didn't buy the game) I see the following to be the most burning issues: multiple lot sizes (also smaller lot sizes) to bring in more variance dynamic simulation that changes the behavior and graphics of the city according to the mayor's actions and the environment. Today, you only have to match job numbers to resident numbers of the same category, and you're basically fine. This is too one-dimensional and not satisfying in long-term (for me not even short-term) mass transportation (trains, subways, etc.) ambient sounds, so you can hear your city, your district, traffic, factories, birds, etc. Last but not least all features must be made available also in solo mode, for an appropriate one-time fee, of course. I consider this point also to be an in-game issue (from a solo player point of few) and it's not intended to start any PO-is-good-or-bad discussions. So, please don't start this discussion

This is a really strange move of MC, indeed. My thought are going into the direction of AlemanXL. Just for a re-pricing, it would be horribly stupid to withdraw those subscription offers and thus basically rejecting people who would be willing to pay for the PO ... and making them angry, even. So, I guess that this is not the reason (well ... actually ... MC has taken a lot of awful decisions during the past many months, unfortunately ... but let's be optimistic). So, reasonably, you'd only withdraw those subscriptions when you're really forced to. Which leads to the next question: What could force MC to do so? I currently can only think of the following alternatives: They re-structure the PO offer in a dramatic way, e.g. you will pay per city and/or online-time, per resources, per whatever ... They will give away the PO for free due to the (I guess) low subscription rate (and maybe they could finance the PO by ads, etc.?) ... this would also resolve the issues with the SP players (at least some of them, depending if they release new features for SP then or still enforce peolpe to connect to a planet ... or they even drop the SP mode completely, then ... which is not what I hope, personally) They will stop the PO because they might have realized that it will never work out financially I guess we will learn about this in January 2010.