About47Pandas

I know I am a little late on this topic, but I was skimming through this forum and reading some of the posts. People seem to forget what making a game is about. Sure everyone will say "They just want money" But lets scale this down a bit. Hypothetically speaking, lets say you are an Indi game developer and you made 2 or 3 fantastic indi games that people love. It becomes a success, and you update it regularly that meets the standard of YOUR VISION OF THE GAME. Thus the people are happy, it is the first game of its kind so peoples expectations are not as high. They have a brand new game in front of them that they have not experienced before. So that first game is awesome. The first Simcity was like this. Then you create your second game, building on your first game and expanding it again it is a success, much like the next SimCity, and the one after that and so on. Sim City 4 was a great success as everyone keeps referring to it as if it is the bible itself. Now your third game... you are thinking it up, brainstorming. You love the previous games you made and you made them in your vision, and thus, you are satisfied with them. Now you want something more unique something more... unique. You play your games and your friends play it. So your next game is a build of the previous, but with a new mechanic. It is essentially the same game yet you build it in your own vision. The one mechanic that you want in the game will of course go into the game. Now your game is released and the one mechanic that you wanted in the game... people do not like. People rage on forums and blogs about how the game is unplayable because of this new feature. That they will not buy it because of this garbage that is implemented in game. Could you remove this... this thing you wanted in your game. Of course. (Did EA/Maxis Lie about the ability to remove the always online, yes) The bottom line is "It is your game, you and your team made it" These people who are demanding that the game be changed to suit their wants do not have to buy it. While you read all these insulting posts about your new game, you are thinking to yourself "What game has this person made? Did they make a series of games that I loved? And If I did, did I scrutinize every detail of their game and demand it to be changed? How many people complain that Call of Duty is a load of garbage yet continue to play it and how many of those people who say it is so bad will probably buy the next one? How many people say that McDonalds is probably the worst thing you can put in your body yet walk in and shell out 5 bucks for a meal? How many people complain their girlfriend doesnt do the dirty stuff and they cheat on them? (My bad... getting a little personal) Bottom line is, EA and Maxis Had the set goal of creating what they think is an "MMO" Now, I personally disagree with their idea but if that is the premise of their game then there is nothing I can do about it. Imagine people hearing about World of Warcraft before it was released. These fans of the RTS Warcraft games who played single player offline would be thinking "Wth? Always online? What if I wanted to quest on my own offline?" Our Idea of an MMO is likely that of WoW or EQ or Starwars Galaxies *Before the revamp*. That MMO of course would be always Online. Now EA and Maxis claim SimCity 5 is an MMO and is always online. Now I read the redit posts as to the Sim City servers only pushing updates from other cities in realtime if the other player was online etc thus making an offline mode VERY easy to accomplish. What if EA/Maxis wanted to build on this premise of their new Idea of an MMO and we do not know all their plans? Forget about DRM, DRM is here to stay now, and I hate it, but think of all those people who owned VCRs and Hundreds of VHS tapes? Pft DvD players? Dvds? You are telling me it is gonna be harder to copy my DVDs to another disk but... but... VHS only had the little tab I had to cover up and I could record it or--- DvDs are here to stay, Bluray is an update to DvDs just like there was a version previous to VHS. 8 Track tapes to cassette tapes. We live in an ever evolving tech world, and us Old school guys are not going to like it. Lets take a look at the Acronym "MMO" Meaning Massively Multiplayer Online Massively - large in scale, amount, or degree Multiplayer - a mode of play involving more than one player at one time in a computer or video game Online - connected by computer to one or more other computers or networks, as through a commercial electronic information service or the Internet. Now is does the new simcity meet these definitions in their game? Yes, it is massive, collecting data from other players, recording them in a data base on a large scale, one server that people connects to. Yes it is Multiplayer, Sharing a region with other players, interacting with their cities by means of trade, donating etc, Social functions. Yes it is online, Viewing your own city and being able to view your neighboring cities while they are offline. Putting all this together would be an MMO. Now we could argue this. Games like Counterstrike is not an MMO right lets look, No it is not massive, Different servers are run by individuals and do not share stats, and you can not interact with those players while offline Yes it is multiplayer, Playing with 2 or more people Yes Online, Connecting to any one individual server to play Lets up it a little again. Call of duty black ops 2 No it is not massive. While Stats are shared you are still playing with others in game on a small server run by the client Yes it is multiplayer, connecting to that one individual server to play with 2 or more people Yes online, Connecting to redeem stats and connect to other players Word of warcraft just for kicks Yes it is massive, connecting to one server that records your characters and stats along with about 5000 other people at the same time Yes Multiplayer, playing with up to 5000 people on one server Yes online, connecting to that one server. This simcity 5 is an MMO of a different style, while the other simcities are based just around your PC an no one else. Can you play games like World of warcraft in a single player mode? Of course, There are Private servers. You could set up this server and run it just on your computer making it a single player game, could you do this with Simcity sure you can. You do not see people crying that MMOs like WoW or EQ are not single player? why would you about this game? because it is your expectation? Well that sucks Opinion - DRM is the new "CD Key" and it is something that we just have to deal with. Good, buy something else, I suggest getting into a new hobby other then gaming, the future of PC and console gaming will probably require being online. Look at Xbox One. Yes EA can and does shut down servers... it is their servers... Do you still eat a bag of chips after it is stale and hard? No (and if you do... gross) so why would you pour money into a server that is not producing enough income to RUN THAT SERVER?! People these days expect that these servers run off magic and should continue to run well after the game is basically dead. The MMO City of Heros was shut down because the server capacity was 5000 or so, and only 100-300 people played during peak hours and there was not enough accounts to support the game. Its kinda like the idea that you expect your car to run well after it ran out of gas. DLC is the new expansion pack. I am not sure if you know this or not. Back in the day, DLC was free. Addons were free or user created. Then came a game called Halo 2, I am sure you are aware of that game. A map pack expansion came out for that game. now, earlier games before this, Battlefield 1942 had released maps for free (IE Coral Sea) Call of Duty 4 released some free maps, dozens of games did this. Now this game halo 2, it came out with a map pack, you had to GO to gamestop, or GO to walmart and buy these 4 or 5 maps on disk. It didnt add to the story, It was the birth of what I like to call DC(Disk Content) that you bought, then matured landing it at DLC (Downloadable Content) DLC is here to stay just as DRM is. Expansion pack will be an obsolete phrase soon and will only just be DLC. Which sucks, but hey, its the future. I agree. I remember when Steam first came out, it was a simple Valve tool to keep your Valve games online, and keep up with friends now its a store, I remember CS 1.5 before steam. Look at any other gaming company, they are doing just the same thing. Look at Dead space 3... There is an IN GAME IMPLEMENTATION to merely monetize. You can buy things to make your robot mine faster, buy upgrades etc etc... In game... Opinion Opinion The game was not advertised to be offline... it was advertised as always online. So "you" bought and paid big money to play an always online game...offline? his always on internet connection will not stop, it will only grow. Explain how it is unnecessary? It is the way THEY want to make it... You cant tell an artist that his painting is wrong? It is his painting.... Game developers are indeed artists, while yes hundreds of people worked on this game, there are also hundreds of people that work on the same painting Well you can play SC4 and when your internet is up you can play SC5. No one is forcing anyone to go online? Where does it imply that? People who were HUGE Warcraft fans and played the RTS Didnt have to buy WoW. All I really read was people complaining over and over and over. The game is exactly as advertised, if you do not like it make your own game. Its amazing that reading all this, you all feel justified in your words. There are 3 types of Gamers. Gamers that love their game and play it because they love it. Gamers that hate their game but play it because of a trend, or they are skilled at it, or because they are addicted. Then gamers that are casual, that play a game to have fun, and could careless semantics. Most of you seem like Gamers that loved SC4 and expect EA and Maxis to Follow through with an exact clone with some cool new graphics but learned that they will probably be buying a game they hate, but will play it because of the addiction or trend etc.

Hey Fellow babies, New to the social aspect of Sim City 2013, and new to the forums. I am looking for casual players to play a city with, Big or small doesnt matter. Maybe even people who are interested in using teamspeak or ventrilo. I havent done any decent multiplayer PC games in a while. My O-Account is Ab0ut47Pandas, Hit me up, and lets get something going if possible.