Xenocity

To be fair no Simcity game to date has allowed us to build a realistic city without mods.

~4 milllion in my university city from selling utiltiies and recycling until a quick succession of disasters bankrupted it. now it only has ~300k due to the expense of fighting crime (I haven't recovered from the disasters yet)

I'll let you know how it goes. I finally have a successor to Simcity 2000 (Saturn) futurstic building set.

Pick and choose. You do not have to get this expansion pack, to play with those who have it. Everyone still gets to play together regardless of expansion packs. up it is a preorder bonus. Damn now I'm going to have to preorder this. From Origin: Get the Launch Arcology content only when you pre-order the Limited Edition. Space Tourism comes to SimCity with the Launch Arcology! Make extra money by sending your Sims on a fantastic adventure to the stars. Build this all-new landmark and decide which segments of your populace (good or bad) to send into space on each individual launch. Marvel at the launch spectacle as you send your Sims off to an unknown fate.

This can be read as: "We're not fixing transit, so we're going to bypass it." Well to be fair they didn't bother to fix transit in Simcity 4 either. True, but at least they let us fix it. Which wasn't fixed until 2010 with NAM. We had almost 6 years of broken transit in Simcity 4. Transit has been getting better in Simcity 2013 with each new update, so they are doing something with it. My cities post update 7 rarely have traffic issues.

This can be read as: "We're not fixing transit, so we're going to bypass it." Well to be fair they didn't bother to fix transit in Simcity 4 either.

Ok... Simcity 2013 is leagues more complicated than SimTown ever was (yes I owned SimTown). Also the cities are much bigger than SimTowns Towns. On that note here are some fun facts about the world: The smallest country in the world is 0.17 miles (0.44km) which is Vatican City Vatican City is the world's smallest city as well City of London, UK is 1 square mile in area at the heart of London, UK. City of Clarkston, Michigan is 0.51 square miles it total area with a population of 882 (yes it is legally a city) and is only a few miles from me Rochester, Michigan another city near me, has 3.83 square miles of land with a population of 12,711 We have plenty of cities in Michigan that are under 5 square miles in land size. Monaco the world famous city is only 0.7 square miles in area, oh it is also a country as well. There are plenty more micro cities and countries to add to this list. The legal definition of a city does not have a land minimium. Also I hate to say this, sales determine how long a game is supported before a game is no longer supported. This includes DLC sales data. With this all said, I wouldn't mind getting new SimTown. SimTown is a very fun game.

You'll have to balance the budget first. A massive short term tax hike and/or turning off all possible buildings should do the trick. I had this happen to me as well due to a string of disasters. If that doesn't work you'll have to go on a bulldozing spree.

updated my post with the official trailer.

Cities of Tomorrow is officially announced coming November 12th. IGN has the trailer here http://www.ign.com/videos/2013/09/19/simcity-cities-of-tomorrow-preview https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=K6sqFYQqPuQ The expansion pack includes the following: Mega Towers: each have 8 modules featuring commercial, industrial, residental, and power. (holds up to 10k sims) You can mix and match them Research Academy: this is needed to unlock all the advancements Ground scrubbers: this cleans up ground pollution and radiation monorails: yes there are monorails Skybridges: connects Mega Towers in the sky Delivery Drones: these drones deliver freight, police, fire, and ambulances by flying through the air Garbage Antomizer: zaps Garbarge away pollution free Omega Corp: Sign a deal and Omega Corp will set up shop. It will infect all other businesses making them wildly profitable and huge polluters Omega will infect other cities Your city will become Omega dependent Omega can destory your city, if it gets out of hand It does make you a ton of money Multiple style of futurstic buildings Wave Generators: uses water waves to generate clean power More to be announced later Everyone gets 4 new maps based on Tropical and Wasteland themes No bigger map sizes, offline mode, or flying cars.

At least this gives gamers a reason to support charity, disproving the whole "gamers are selfish" image. Since the American Red Cross is literally broke due all the disasters this year, this should give them some boost. Can we talk about the who the new EA CEO is instead (he was announced today)?

What? Does this mean we will get to build transportation in link skyscrappers together with sky roads? This Expansion Pack seems like it adds the future stuff from Simcity 2000. If this gives me the futuristic building sets and advancements like Simcity 2000 (Sega Saturn) did, I might cave and buy it. I miss the futuristic building sets from that game. That means I'll have spent ~$90 (I got the digital deluxe upgrade for $4), If I buy the expansion pack. in comparision with the other games: I spent $100 on Simcity 3000 thanks to Simcity 3000U 8 months later. I spent $100 on Simcity 4 thanks to me buying 3 copies of the game (I cracked the disc for the first copy, bought a second copy, then the Steam copy to play disc free) I spent $80 on Simcity 2000 (I wanted the PC version) I spent ~$80 on Simcity 1 thanks to the PC and Wii versions (I will spend money to upgrade to the Wii U version if it ever sees the light of day) I guess there are much worse things to spend money on than on Simcity stuff. I am actually enjoying the game, but i find this expansion very ironic. it is a futuristic expansion for cities of tomorrow. The irony is they can't even get the present right, for example subways/recycling.... and now they want to do futuristic cities.... I have very little issues with recycling. But Multi-layer transport means we should see some more transportation offfers. I want monorails, skyways etc... I could careless about subways due to the fact that no matter how I build them in the previous games, my sims complained about them. I am happy to have future cities, I hope EA officially unveils it soon (they leaked it by accident).

What? Does this mean we will get to build transportation in link skyscrappers together with sky roads? This Expansion Pack seems like it adds the future stuff from Simcity 2000. If this gives me the futuristic building sets and advancements like Simcity 2000 (Sega Saturn) did, I might cave and buy it. I miss the futuristic building sets from that game. That means I'll have spent ~$90 (I got the digital deluxe upgrade for $4), If I buy the expansion pack. in comparision with the other games: I spent $100 on Simcity 3000 thanks to Simcity 3000U 8 months later. I spent $100 on Simcity 4 thanks to me buying 3 copies of the game (I cracked the disc for the first copy, bought a second copy, then the Steam copy to play disc free) I spent $80 on Simcity 2000 (I wanted the PC version) I spent ~$80 on Simcity 1 thanks to the PC and Wii versions (I will spend money to upgrade to the Wii U version if it ever sees the light of day) I guess there are much worse things to spend money on than on Simcity stuff.

Nice try merging PC gaming into total video game industry sales. PC gaming only accounts for games bought on Windows. That number is ~$20B for 2011/2012. That is only a few billion more than where it was in 2003/2004 (The PC market experienced a sizable slowdown and a slight decline from 2006- 2009) Most of the PC gaming growth is driven by the MMORPG genre, Online FPS, and huge sales. http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/09/04/why-pc-gaming-has-exploded Mac gaming is not calculated in that number. Video game industry figures includes Nintendo systems, Microsoft systems, Sony systems, Windows Mobile, iOS, and Android. Currently the growth in gaming have come from the the sheer amount of software Wii owners, iOS and Android owners have purchased Right now iOS and Android are accounting for nearly half of all the growth in gaming revenue at the moment. Console revenue has seen double digit drop over the past year, showing the NA market is contracting in sales. Right now the Gaming industry sales in North America are down 16% over 2012. The North American market has seen a monthly sales down by at least 20% each month since December 2012. http://wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/analyst-video-game-sales-are-tumbling.html/ The European and Japanese market have declined even further due to their bigger economic problems. Lastly why should Origin offer a return policy when Steam, Amazon, Windows Store, GoG and phsyical retailers do not offer any form of returns for any games? 24 hours is more than enough time when you can download demos for most games this day in age.

First off PC gaming has only grown slighly over the past 10 years. Console gaming has shrunk (PS3, 360 and Wii sold less than the previous generation) The only part of the gaming industry to grow over the past 10 years is smartphone gaming and handheld gaming. Simcity 4 had a bigger marketing campaign, better reviews, better press coverage, etc... than Simcity 2013. It launched at $50 on both PC and Mac. 8 months later it recieved an expansion pack for $20 along Simcity 4 Deluxe which retailed for $30. Even with a quick price drop, Simcity 4 still sold ~4M less than its predecessor and didn't even turn a proift. Also when did you buy your copy? On August 19th 2013, EA started a refund policy for all digital downloads through Origin. FYI no retailer will allow you to return your physical game for a refund once it has been opened regardless of system. They will only allow you to exchange the game for another copy of the same game. Same goes for CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays. At least Origin allows you to return games for a refund, too bad Steam doesn't. You can now go back to your Anger filled rant againt the game.

First off Simcity 4 doesn't have realism, it has a dark cartoonish look to it. It also has unrealistic disasters as well. Simcity 4 is not considered a success to Maxis and EA because it sold 70%+ less than Simcity 3000U. When your game takes a few years to sell 1 million copies, you need to take a hard look at said game. When the same game fails to breakeven, that is even a bigger issue. Simcity 4 still hasn't passed the 2 million mark worldwide. Simcity 4 sold barely better than the much hated Simcity Societies. Maxis and EA didn't lose touch with the market, the market rejected Simcity 4 and accepted The prior Simcitys and Simcity 2013. You just don't go from 5M+ sales (Simcity 3000U) to 1M+ sales (Simcity 4) for no reason. Where did those fans go? The low Simcity 4 sales is why Maxis quit patching the game and canceled the other expansion packs they had in development. Only diehard Simcity 4 fans and modders still play Simcity 4, which consists of a very small niche market. The majority of players moved on like they do with every game after the second year.

Simcity 2000 and Simcity 3000U were great games. Simcity 4 was decent at best due to all the issues original game suffers from. You need to remove all the mods including NAM and watch the numerous bugs cripple your cities and force buildings to be abandoned. You're right but you have to consider that sc4 is far more complex than it's predecessor. so it would eventually justify any launch inconsistency ... We'll anyway I'm sure maxis had a bold project (in the beggining) but to make it real they started castrating each aspect of the game they thought were too complex to develop. They ended up with a child game instead of a city simulator... I've decided to give a third chance to sc13 past week, and decided to create a village with dirty roads with no public services or anything (cash maker) ... you know something funny? Ppl ended up burning the whole city (wtf just because they are poor and uneducated they don't know how to magane a stove or what? lol) ... Actually the bugs I am referring to are still in the game and were only fixed via NAM and other mods. Maxis never fixed Simcity 4 (Remove all the mods if you want to experience the game Maxis built). Simcity 2013 is no less chidlish than the previous Simcitys. Simcity has always had goofy, colorfully, bright, graphics with funny and colorful disasters. Maxis has yet to make a graphically realistic game. If you want a realistic city simulator, then Cities XL is for you. Also uneducated sims in any Simcity will cause trouble for your city in the form of crime, fires, and diseases. Even my University city is profitable thanks to mass regional recycling which massively offsets the budget losses. I have no trouble making my cities profitable in 2013. We should find out soon if Simcity 2013 has finally out sold Simcity 1 (it has already outsold Simcity 4). I think you didn't get it. Maxis didn't fixed it because of the same reasons they didn't make the new simcity much more micromanageable (it was not profitable and THEY THOUGHT ppl wanted only CASUAL gaming)- thats simcity 2013 - CASUAL and SOCIAL - that was the emphasys and who can blame them? Well, anyways if maxis allow modding maybe we get a very much better game. I was counting on simtropolis for that... HELLO MAXIS, ALLOW MODDING and OFFLINE mode and let the pros take over!!! (i think they would save a lot of money dismissing ppl and would sell even more licenses doing that - lmao) You know Simcity has always classified as a kiddy and "casual" game since kids and nerds are the main market that plays simulators. "hardcore" gamers/real gamers won't touch a simulator with 10 foot pool. also "casual" and social are two different segments. Also RPGs, Puzzles, and Platforms are now considered "casual" games as well. For fun NPD states these are the 6 types of gamers now: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-06-05-free-and-mobile-gamers-outnumber-all-other-segments-npd Free & Mobile gamers (those who play free games or on their phones and portable non gaming devices.) Avid Omnigamer (those who own multiple systems, but aren't considered "hardcore"/core) Causal Gamers (redefined, but definition not given) "Hardcore" and Core are now merged into one type Social Gamers Family Gamers On that note market research doesn't lie

Actually Cities XL was not the first game to be online. Simcity 2000: Network Edition was the first city game to go online by back in the 1990s. back on topic: Update 7 fixed many of the remaining issues making the game quite stable and fun. Also if you hate the price DLC, it regularly goes on sale for 50% off (I hate DLC). I'd complain about it, if I wasn't guilty for buying all those Maxis Expansion packs over the years.

Simcity 2000 and Simcity 3000U were great games. Simcity 4 was decent at best due to all the issues original game suffers from. You need to remove all the mods including NAM and watch the numerous bugs cripple your cities and force buildings to be abandoned. You're right but you have to consider that sc4 is far more complex than it's predecessor. so it would eventually justify any launch inconsistency ... We'll anyway I'm sure maxis had a bold project (in the beggining) but to make it real they started castrating each aspect of the game they thought were too complex to develop. They ended up with a child game instead of a city simulator... I've decided to give a third chance to sc13 past week, and decided to create a village with dirty roads with no public services or anything (cash maker) ... you know something funny? Ppl ended up burning the whole city (wtf just because they are poor and uneducated they don't know how to magane a stove or what? lol) ... Actually the bugs I am referring to are still in the game and were only fixed via NAM and other mods. Maxis never fixed Simcity 4 (Remove all the mods if you want to experience the game Maxis built). Simcity 2013 is no less chidlish than the previous Simcitys. Simcity has always had goofy, colorfully, bright, graphics with funny and colorful disasters. Maxis has yet to make a graphically realistic game. If you want a realistic city simulator, then Cities XL is for you. Also uneducated sims in any Simcity will cause trouble for your city in the form of crime, fires, and diseases. Even my University city is profitable thanks to mass regional recycling which massively offsets the budget losses. I have no trouble making my cities profitable in 2013. We should find out soon if Simcity 2013 has finally out sold Simcity 1 (it has already outsold Simcity 4). Just because Simcity13 outsold the other titles doesnt necessarily mean its a good game! Maxis played two sides of the coin here. They used the publicity and anticipation created by previous simcity games, talking about building "cities" and making comparisons to games gone past whilst also at the same time trying to portray the idea that this was not a sequel. They done the latter to cover their backs, as they knew before launch that this game was way to simple. It is effectively a facebook game they have created. Obviously you've never played a Facebook game. If you don't like the game fine, but no need to make stuff up or deride those who like it. Maxis received a huge earful from people on how complicated Simcity 2000 was, causing them to make Simcity 3000/3000U more simplified (we also losted a good amount of features) Maxis market research told them people wanted a more complicated game, so they designed Simcity 4. Maxis again received a huge amount of market research explaining why Simcity 4 failed to sell, one of the reasons was due to how complicated the game was. Believe it or not most people do not enjoy laying waterpipes, powerlines, and micromanaging their games. Also people were open about the lack of multiplayer with Simcity 4. Maxis tried to make a Simcity that addressed the reasons why people avoided Simcity 4. EA on the other hand was very reluctant to fund a new Simcity after Simcity 4 failed to break even and sell well. Believe it or not companies do not like to fund games that don't sell well and fail to breakeven. If you add highways to Simcity 2013, you get Simcity 3000. If you add three global building sets and highways you get Simcity 3000U Right now Simcity 2013 is more complicated than: Simcity 1 Simcity DS Simcity Creator Wii Simcity Creator DS Simcity iOS Simcity Deluxe iOS Simcity Societies Simcity 64 Call of Duty Halo Shooters in general Final Fantasy XIII trilogy Most Nintendo games Etc... None of these games are Facebook games, unless the definition changed. Also you want a genuine complicated city simulator I suggest you play CityOne from IBM! It's free and browser based. http://www-01.ibm.com/software/solutions/soa/innov8/cityone/ The above link will take you the game's page at IBM. The game is heavily based on decision making and making a smart city. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtSL3YeVWdk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4Ts7BenlsM Though If you still want to play a Facebook game, I hear Simcity Social is good (or did they finally shut it down?).

Simcity 2000 and Simcity 3000U were great games. Simcity 4 was decent at best due to all the issues original game suffers from. You need to remove all the mods including NAM and watch the numerous bugs cripple your cities and force buildings to be abandoned. You're right but you have to consider that sc4 is far more complex than it's predecessor. so it would eventually justify any launch inconsistency ... We'll anyway I'm sure maxis had a bold project (in the beggining) but to make it real they started castrating each aspect of the game they thought were too complex to develop. They ended up with a child game instead of a city simulator... I've decided to give a third chance to sc13 past week, and decided to create a village with dirty roads with no public services or anything (cash maker) ... you know something funny? Ppl ended up burning the whole city (wtf just because they are poor and uneducated they don't know how to magane a stove or what? lol) ... Actually the bugs I am referring to are still in the game and were only fixed via NAM and other mods. Maxis never fixed Simcity 4 (Remove all the mods if you want to experience the game Maxis built). Simcity 2013 is no less chidlish than the previous Simcitys. Simcity has always had goofy, colorfully, bright, graphics with funny and colorful disasters. Maxis has yet to make a graphically realistic game. If you want a realistic city simulator, then Cities XL is for you. Also uneducated sims in any Simcity will cause trouble for your city in the form of crime, fires, and diseases. Even my University city is profitable thanks to mass regional recycling which massively offsets the budget losses. I have no trouble making my cities profitable in 2013. We should find out soon if Simcity 2013 has finally out sold Simcity 1 (it has already outsold Simcity 4).

I'll be the first to admit that Simcity 3000U was the peak of the series. Every game that followed was rittled with major bugs and other issues that rendered them nearly unplayable. Maxis please go back and use Simcity 3000U as the base for the next game and make sure it has all the features from Simcity 2000 versions, so we can forget the last 15 years. Simcity 2000 and Simcity 3000U were great games. Simcity 4 was decent at best due to all the issues original game suffers from. You need to remove all the mods including NAM and watch the numerous bugs cripple your cities and force buildings to be abandoned.

That's due to your graphics card and/or drivers being out of date You need an ATI HD2600 Pro or better Nvidia 940M or better Also your system is meeting the bare minimum need to run the game, thus you will have trouble with it. As I've already posted by Late 2011 MBP runs Simcity on high settings in full screen mode without any issues related to hardware.

Good stuff I agree with most of that, the other stuff I don't need Though seriously I really would like the Great Works bug to be finally fixed in the next update.

I would love for Maxis to fix the Great Works bug. Said bug does the following: Can prevent new cities built after it from recognizing the Great Works project. Can make the Great Works building only become available to the new cities at the same SIM YEAR that it was completed for the existing cities. Also I would like: Train Station modules (I just want one massive train station instead of multiple stations) French Police station modules More Casino modules and types More Regions Great Works Garbage plant Great Works Water/Sewage Plant Make Arcologies blast off into space like Simcity 2000 Space Port Wider Avenues One way Streets Toll Booths Hyrdoelectricity plants (SC2K) Traffic Circles Bigger Water Pumps Monorails Bigger cities I also want more weather based disasters: Drought Hurricane (SC2K) Blizzard (SC2K) Heat Wave

Let me get mad at "The Game of Life" because the game uses a spinner rather than having make moral choices about which direction to head in life. I get your frustration but sometimes people want this game to be SO realistic they should just go into a City Planning career. I hope you see my sarcasm here and I hate that you are disappointed with the update, but this GAME can only go so far, and I personally think they are doing a good job of helping the game function without too many errors. Sure... my point is that SC4 didn't have these traffic problems, so we have gone BACKWARDS - that's a first for this franchise. It’s called "SIM" city for a reason you know, as in “simulation”? I have played SimCity for almost 24 years, and this latest version has us doing some very weird things just to get the traffic to function? Come on… no excuses for game developers that have a 24 YEAR HISTORY! I guess I expected the GAME to be fun, not frustrating? My mistake! SC4 had its own near gamebreaking traffic bugs that Maxis never patched. It took modders almost 4 years later to fix it via NAM. Only those aware of modding and NAM are able to play the game without mass abadonment of residential zones. We didn't go backwards with traffic, we went left then forward. Update 7 fixed nearly all of my traffic issues and gave me tunnels.