Keigen Shu

A lot of the service path-finding issues could've been fixed if they just added this logic: "If I've been doing the roughly the same thing over and over again, i.e. collect about the same/lowering amounts of garbage for 2 minutes, go to the place where I'm needed the most RIGHT NOW."

What's with the keyboard shortcuts? Did he run out of stuff to say?

What about the other part of the world having less than 5Mbps connection speed? I'm still stuck with 1Mbps here, and there's nothing I can do about it. Keep in mind that this is SimCity here. If the simulation breeding is done on EA/Maxis' oases, you're going to need a very wide river for lots of boats to migrate those live simulation fishes to your fishery. It's either that OR Maxis breeding smaller fishes (downsizing the simulation model), which means more small glittering fishes (eyecandy) and less meaty salmon (simulation content, for us who hunger for it). [Pardon me for the fishes, I find it hilarious]

I guess they're trying to prevent people from god terraforming obscene landscapes, like how there were a lot of obscene creatures on SPORE. I'll leave the rest of the imagination to you.

I don't think the idea of social classes really apply to every city in the world. They would apply to an entire state, but not particularly to a densely populated city. However, I do find that the expanded RCI model in SimCity 4 can be adapted to show social classes in the city.

I blame them for over-publicising GlassBox. They tailored the engine to work for most of Maxis' large scale simulation games, and just to show us it's capabilities, they made a SimCity-like demo. I knew that they haven't really started working on SimCity when they revelaed the new game simply because of the lack of details on the design. I guess the problem came when they just went up front to make developer interviews on SC2013 and started putting up promises when the game hasn't even been researched and designed properly. Maxis had never removed key features from the base game in their expansions. They only improved on them to make the game better. A lot of their guarenteed features could have been made as a improvement or as an optional addition to the gameplay in SimCity 4, but they decided to force a major design change and reboot the franchise. It's clear that they did this in order to make the game much more simpler for all players. I suspect that they couldn't afford to research other potential designs that would've appealed to fans, and decided to choose another design new to them that has been proven to work, like CityVille and SimCity Social (though one might note that SimCity Social is too simple hence any new player would pick it up and think that is SimCity).

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. You did raise a good point, but to a gamer's perspective, this kind of stuff (overly detailed mundane disasters like fires) gets boring in the long run. It's just like how we sort of cared when the Safety Advisor panics when we began SC4, but further on it becomes annoying to have to call a fire truck, just to stop a smoldeing shack in the poorer area of your city from slowing down the simulation. Now, imagine that with a lot more visible details. In the end, everyone that has been around would focus on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTJQTc-TqpU. Maybe they want to spice that up a little with some drama, but why not leave that to the player's imagination, instead of using a specific set of instructions?

I don't understand why they had to put so much detail in simulating every Sim in the game, like making Sims run out of houses during an arson caused by a bad sim. It's just a blatant waste of computing resources. It's as if they're not happy with the exact same features they put on SC4 (like gun-fire sounds and CSI props) and decided to make it obnoxiously cinematic in front of everyone. It's overkill.

Here is my wishlist. I'm sorry if some of these has already been covered: 1. Keep the simulated mechanics realistic, down to the details. An example of what I'm talking about here water. As we seen on the demo, the water table shows the amount of water that can be pumped from the ground and is replenished by rain. I wish Maxis uses this to the fullest and make it so that we have varying water levels across the terrain. This also means that it would be possible to simulate a really problematic flash flood and other water-related disasters. Add that with a really bad lightning fire disaster in the middle of the city... just think of the possibilites. It's not impossible. In fact, based on what they said in GDC about GlassBox is capable of, I was hoping for the ultimate simlation experience where the environment is basically a modern version of SimEarth. If they didn't then some guy is probably going to make an open source version of it sometime in the future; when computers are capable of simulating it smoothly. 2. Starting from a beautiful existing small town (user-adbandonment or randomly generated), maybe with some problems (the reason the previous mayor got kicked out of office). Good for newbies picking up the game or some journalist looking to write stories of the city. 3. I'd like to see a 2012 Doomsday Scenario, for the hardcore Maxis fans. SimEarth anyone? You start in some successful city. One month later, a giant meteor crashes into the city. The balance immediately turns into negative infinity. Now you're left in a state where money becomes useless(income/taxes don't work) and lots of debri (no demolition allowed because you have no money), pollution from meteor collision and radiation from the old nuclear power plant. You must use the workforce of the few remaining demoralized survivors to create a self-sustaining economy in the city and develop the city back to how it was.

I have some doubts how the multiplayer would turn out, and I think Maxis has not focused much in it and only had a rough figure on how it would work. Given thier vague presentation about the multiplayer, we can only guess and hope for the best. On the bright side, they're making this moddable for the community, so I think the content aspect of the multiplayer will work like OpenTTD, with some exclusive pay-to-get mods. My idea(or more like what I'm fantasizing how it would look like) is that a rough image of the region terrain will be generated Minecraft style (reconstructable, seed-based, infinite). A player (host) can start building a city in any part of the region they like, and then the actual city terrain will be generated (generated details can be random for replayability, and then sent to god mode (YAY~)). When new players join in, they can choose to build a new city within a certain limited range around all of the players in the region on the same region terrain. This is to make sure every city is connected in some way yet can still own 2*2km area.