cirugo

It's SimCity Societies with region play tied to an online server.

I'm not going to buy the GAME, let alone DLC for it unless they come up with a fully functional offline sandbox mode.

He's just the poor guy who has the unfortunate responsibility of bringing the bad news to the angry mobs. He doesn't really know anything other than what the developers tell him. I believe he also runs the Facebook page. Yes, he's right in that you can apparently have an entire region to yourself but they keep downplaying the fact that your region is still tied to everyone else online to fix resource prices and other things of that nature...so no, it's not really single player.

and there's that...

that's the thing...I don't WANT to have anything to do with anyone else playing WHATSOEVER if I choose not to participate in multiplayer. If I want to use money cheats and whatever else to make a city look the way that I want to then I should be able to. Tying everyone to the multiplayer experience, whether they are playing solo or not, limits that and that's what everyone is unhappy about. They have made a decision to emphasize multiplayer and in order for multiplayer to work they have to jettison many of the things that people like about sandbox. Maybe they'll attract a new audience but I'm not going to sit back and watch my favorite game and my favorite TYPE of game go down the same annoying multiplayer route that everything else seems to be going without loudly fighting it every step of the way.

Hence why I'm saying I hope it fails...I'm not interested in rewarding companies with my money who insist on pushing this gameplay model.

Judging it before it comes out is fine but outright stating that is it terrible and that you hate the game is extreme. And that is what a decent amount of people are saying here. You can say that you dislike the current trend of the game and if it continues this way you will not buy it. However to state that outright without knowledge of the rest of the information is just ridiculous. And yes, I know I should avoid those people hating the game but it is hard to do so. I had hoped this community would have been spared those kinds of people and that we can civilly discuss the game and speculate but it seems unlikely. No one is being uncivil...is anyone insulting you? no...you just don't like the opinions that you're seeing. That doesn't mean people aren't being civil.

You can say you dislike the current known facts but until you know all of the facts, you can't say you're fully informed. If months down the line they release new information that gets you excited for the game and makes you want to buy it, then you're flip flopping because your previous stance wasn't fully informed. Honestly, I don't care if people go out and buy the game on launch or never buy it at all. I just want people to be fully informed of everything before they make a blanket statement that they won't buy the game. "As it stands, if the game releases as is with the current info that is known, I will not buy the game. However I am open to the idea that they may release information that perhaps will change my mind." That's what I want to hear because I'll bet that months down the line people are probably going to change sides. People who condemned the game will be singing its praises and will they acknowledge that they're flip floppers, probably not. I just want people to keep an open mind and reserve judgement until all the facts are known. As for my list, can you link me to where they said that single player regions will be limited? I recall reading that they said that single city players will be limited but not single player regions. And there is a big difference because in this game, region is king. To my knowledge, you can play an entire region yourself and it can do everything a multiplayer region can except that it will develop slower because one person is at the helm for all 16 city tiles as opposed to say four people playing four cities. Can you link me to the no terrain editor because I don't think I saw that. I want to know 100% if this is true. I guess you can assume because regions are pre-set but I would like a full confirmation. Green space is just preference. While it does bug me (I wanted to link several cities together and make a strip that connects and goes through the heart of each city) I can live without it. And what does it matter if it is in CXL? I'm gonna guess you mean that it has been done before and done poorly so why would we want it back. If I'm wrong, do tell me. But to that, I say, who cares? If it was done poorly before, does that mean no one can refine and develop it better? If it was good, does that mean no one can build and improve on it? I knew everything I needed to know when they said this was going to be online only...all the bad news since then is just further reinforcing my decision to condemn that decision. If they somehow change their minds and make a fully-functional single-player offline mode then I may change my mind.

I hope so. They've had ten years worth of material to peruse as to what people who made SimCity 4 the most succesful of the series want in a sequel. They ignored all of that and stripped out features to serve their hell-or-high-water online model. I hope it crashes and burns.

In that case, I will do whatever is in my power to make sure it fails. And the original SimCity wasn't online either.

put a station at the very end

Tell that to the MILLIONS of players of any MMOs such as ToR, WoW, TERA, etc. No one is complaining about MMOs...we're complaining about being forced to play a single player game online.

I disagree. There are a lot of ways they could simplify it without ditching some of the things that made SimCity 4 particularly popular with many of us. Some of the things that appear to be left out (determining your own region connections, modding (still unclear where that's going to end up), terraforming (also still unclear but looking increasingly unlikely), reverting to previous saves) didn't make the game complicated. They just get in the way of making it online.

I guess all that money they earned made the movie a "flop"... Sure... Some "fans" may not like what they see, but I'm just happy they even considered a new Simcity. My only demand for the game is to be complete and finished, and not scraped like an old movie script. I see nothing wrong with the game... It's representation of the real thing, not a copy. There is probably other "fans" that stop playing the game years ago, and they make a bigger population combined than all the hardcore Simcity websites. Another thing that surprises me is the game Driver: San Francisco. Received high ratings from critics and fans. I still play that game even though it's almost been a year since it released (which really isn't that long ago). All the merchandise is gone, and you can barely find the game for PC in stores. I try to play multiplayer... But still to this day, I can't find a game, but the real interesting thing about it is the Ubisoft servers are still up! I thought to myself, if no one is playing the game, why keep the servers up? That means someone is using them in either private games or login in to their servers to play singleplayer. So, based on that observation... They pleased the fans and critics, but the game just didn't even make its first year... The community is a ghost town... No one plays it anymore, even with high praise from fans. If you still don't like what you see about Simcity, I would calmly tell them your concerns, and not force your ideas of how it should be. Orderly and well thought out concerns are more powerful then profanity. If you want the game to make it... Let it appeal to everyone. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-box-office-dark-knight-20120723,0,2254345.story "Indeed, the number of bombs is higher than ever. In the first half of 2012, four big-budget studio releases — Universal's"Battleship,"Disney's"John Carter"andWarner Bros.'"Rock of Ages"and"Dark Shadows "— all made about half of their production budget or less at the domestic box office. ("Battleship" tallied a paltry $64 million on a budget more than three times that, though it did perform respectably overseas.)" And I'm NOT saying that companies should ONLY appeal to their core fanbase...I'm saying they shouldn't ditch what appeals to the core fanbase. Keep that and THEN find ways to open it up to bigger markets. Cliches like "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" exist for a reason.

I disagree; I don't think it's that simple. I agree that SimCity should be open and nonrestrictive, allowing the player to creat their city, how they want it, but I don't think the game should be a sandbox. Look at all the previous games; they had restrictions, mainly the budget. Other restrictions such as the ones seen in SC4 should be included as well. I think many people want a challenge, as there are challenges and restrictions in real-life urban design and civil engineering. That's fine but including a sandbox mode as an option is the best solution...most games like this do have sandbox modes

So I have seen this argument again and again...that making a game to appeal to people like us, the ones who've followed the game over the years and who patronize sites like Simtropolis and others, will not allow the game producers to broaden their market for SimCity. Let me tell you a story about "Dark Shadows." Those of you who know may remember that it was a supernatural soap opera that was on in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It has a fairly small but rabid fanbase that has conventions and other fan things like that (like Star Trek but not as popular). Tim Burton announced that he was going to remake it into a big screen movie and Johnny Depp was cast to play Barnabas Collins (the vampire who headlined the series). The fans were cautious but ultimately excited about it. Back in the spring, before the movie was finally released this summer, a trailer finally came out that made it seem like the movie had been remade into a farcical comedy. The "Dark Shadows" fanbase was outraged. There was a lot of viral marketing that then took place to try to counter that initial perception...including the argument that "Dark Shadows" had to be changed to appeal to a broader audience than the core fanbase. End result? The movie was released and it tanked. No, it wasn't a complete farcical comedy as the initial trailer has indicated but most reviews noted that it had tone problems with not being sure whether it wanted to be a comedy, a horror movie, a drama or what...and ultimately ended up being a boring mishmash. Moral of the story? The producers of the movie made enemies of the core fanbase, who set out to trash the film at every opportunity. The general public stayed away. The movie flopped. Now, can somone looking at this example (or, even more pertinently, the example of Monte Cristo's Cities XL) explain why it's a good idea to alienate the core fanbase in an attempt to appeal to a broader audience who may or may not even care about your product? Why not first be sure you've got your core fans on board and then go from there?

SimCity is a niche game...you can't alienate the fanbase in the hopes of attracting a new audience. The Facebook players aren't going to buy this game I guarantee you.

That's because the "normal" gamer out there has an attention span of a three-year old. Thus, they have not the patience nor the creativity to build anything larger than what you see in that picture. That's why Maxis is doing this. As much as some fanboys can't accept, Maxis is still driving to make a profit, and, believe it or not, the folks here on ST are in the sheer minority when it comes to the potential consumer base this game will have. Perhaps not entirely. What you just said is exactly what EA - and lets be honest, we all know exactly who are calling the shots here - think about Sim City, and about gaming in general. But it's not necessarily the case, especially here. City builders are pretty niche by definition, and there's only so much dumbing down and marketing can do to expand the consumer base here - if you are a "normal gamer" who has the "attention span of a three year old" (Hello, elitism) then why exactly would you spend whatever ridiculous number they've slapped on here on a city builder when there are plenty of other, shiner and shootier games just across the aisle, regardless of how much the city builder has been simplified? By all accounts, dumbing down niche games leads only to poor sales - niche games are niche, and there's not much one can do about it. You are exactly right. Ditching the "core" fanbase to try to appeal to a broader audience with a game like this is a recipe for failure.

I don't think the author of that puff piece has even played SimCity in his life

Well-said MamaLuigi945

Oh, I did better than that...I just cancelled my subscription to SWTOR and informed them I will never buy another EA title because of this.

http://www.gameplane...choice---Maxis/ "SimCitys-always-online-requirement-will-give-gamers-choice" up is down...

not to mention I just think it's ugly

They don't care about longevity. Forced obsolescence means you'll have to buy the next version. What better way than to tie the game to a server?

I didn't