SimCity Review Thread - the curse of reboots to strike again?

Jeff's tweet nailed it for me.

You want to make your game online? Sure plenty of games have good reason to always be online like LOL/WOW.

Cramming in shitty community aspects and then crippling max city size in service of justifying your shitty always online DRM? Fuck you and fuck you again for thinking you're going to see a dime out of me.

Just like Diablo 3, they fucked up their own loot tables to make the Auction House important, instead they gimped their own game by taking out the importance of loot drops and not having any unique cool loot at all.
 
LuchaShaq said:
Jeff's tweet nailed it for me.

You want to make your game online? Sure plenty of games have good reason to always be online like LOL/WOW.

Cramming in shitty community aspects and then crippling max city size in service of justifying your shitty always online DRM? Fuck you and fuck you again for thinking you're going to see a dime out of me.
Click to expand...

The city size is due to technical issues. The game is already difficult to run on some computers, the simulation is just that dense.
Most people couldn't handle the cities being that much larger.

The online is a totally separate thing.
 
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BearPawB said:
The city size is due to technical issues. The game is already difficult to run on some computers, the simulation is just that dense.
Most people couldn't handle the cities being that much larger.

The online is a totally separate thing.
Click to expand...


If tech limitations are why cities are so small they should have scaled back other places, until proven otherwise all I see it as a BS excuse to cover for making multiplayer/multiple cities required and piss poor optimization that was likely rushed as fuck.

EA has proven time and time again that they do not deserve the benefit of the doubt with this type of stuff. If the civ team was making Civ6 into some multiplayer only game I'd have similar reservations but at least would trust their reasonings behind things even if I don't agree with the choice.
 
RE:Gerst

I feel like a lot of the "hardcore" players don't really understand the complexity of the new simulation engine just yet.

I'm pretty hardcore, but once I realized that your sims are no longer data entries on tables, but that each individual sim is actually generated and simulated, it changed my entire outlook on the game.

I don't think a lot of people appreciate how mind blowing that is.
 
LuchaShaq said:
If tech limitations are why cities are so small they should have scaled back other places, until proven otherwise all I see it as a BS excuse to cover for making multiplayer/multiple cities required and piss poor optimization that was likely rushed as fuck.
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I'd rather have a dense/fully realized simulation than a huge city. *Shrug*
It's not some big spreadsheet like old sim cities. Each sim is simulated.
 
Rentahamster said:
I'm pretty hardcore, but once I realized that your sims are no longer data entries on tables, but that each individual sim is actually generated and simulated, it changed my entire outlook on the game.

I don't think a lot of people appreciate how mind blowing that is.
Click to expand...
Why is that mind-blowing. Tropico 3 and 4 have that.
 
Rentahamster said:
RE:Gerst

I feel like a lot of the "hardcore" players don't really understand the complexity of the new simulation engine just yet.

I'm pretty hardcore, but once I realized that your sims are no longer data entries on tables, but that each individual sim is actually generated and simulated, it changed my entire outlook on the game.

I don't think a lot of people appreciate how mind blowing that is.
Click to expand...

It's technically impressive, but I'm not sure inserting The Sims into SimCity was something people wanted.
 
HoosTrax said:
Why is that mind-blowing. Tropico 3 and 4 have that.
Click to expand...

Exactly, Tropico even pulled it off on fucking consoles. Hell even in tropico it went further with each citizen than I cared to in a city building game. If sim city goes down to the sims level in this good for them but I don't know anyone who would give a shit about that at all compared to the massive compromises the game has.



It looks like they would have been better off making sims suburbs or sim village if they couldn't make anything that is actually the size of a city.
 
LuchaShaq said:
Exactly, Tropico even pulled it off on fucking consoles. Hell even in tropico it went further with each citizen than I cared to in a city building game. If sim city goes down to the sims level in this good for them but I don't know anyone who would give a shit about that at all compared to the massive compromises the game has.



It looks like they would have been better off making sims suburbs or sim village if they couldn't make anything that is actually the size of a city.
Click to expand...

Is this for real? Simcity has 100x as many citzens....


greatnorthern said:
It's technically impressive, but I'm not sure inserting The Sims into SimCity was something people wanted.
Click to expand...

Just like importing your sims into simcity 4......
 
There is no point in simulating every citizen of the city if doing so comes at the cost of actually realistically simulating a city or granting the player the ability to create fully realized cities.
 
Rentahamster said:
RE:Gerst

I feel like a lot of the "hardcore" players don't really understand the complexity of the new simulation engine just yet.

I'm pretty hardcore, but once I realized that your sims are no longer data entries on tables, but that each individual sim is actually generated and simulated, it changed my entire outlook on the game.

I don't think a lot of people appreciate how mind blowing that is.
Click to expand...

The entire point of managing is looking at the bigger picture, which means that people turn into datapoints. Yay that they're simulating every single Sim, but if that matters so much to you, go play The Sims. When was the last time your mayor spent an hour with you personally to understand your needs?
 
neorej said:
The entire point of managing is looking at the bigger picture, which means that people turn into datapoints. Yay that they're simulating every single Sim, but if that matters so much to you, go play The Sims. When was the last time your mayor spent an hour with you personally to understand your needs?
Click to expand...

I mean if your "city" caps out around 200k you might get personal time with the mayor, but at 200k you are not really a city.
 
LuchaShaq said:
I mean if your "city" caps out around 200k you might get personal time with the mayor, but at 200k you are not really a city.
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Well to be fair, you're a city. You're just not a world class city. You're an average, run of the mill, small city. I don't see the appeal of a game that doesn't allow you to attain a world class city with enough play.
 
greatnorthern said:
It's technically impressive, but I'm not sure inserting The Sims into SimCity was something people wanted.
Click to expand...

It has nothing to do with the sims. The simulation is now built from how these individual sims act, from the bottom up, not the old statistical way the previous versions were. The old sim cities were basically statistical simulations updating cells in a spreadsheet.
 
HoosTrax said:
Why is that mind-blowing. Tropico 3 and 4 have that.
Click to expand...

LuchaShaq said:
Exactly, Tropico even pulled it off on fucking consoles. Hell even in tropico it went further with each citizen than I cared to in a city building game. If sim city goes down to the sims level in this good for them but I don't know anyone who would give a shit about that at all compared to the massive compromises the game has.



It looks like they would have been better off making sims suburbs or sim village if they couldn't make anything that is actually the size of a city.
Click to expand...

Tropico has a population cap of 1200 or 1700 or something. There is no population cap in SimCity 5. In the beta I had a population of 160k.

Instead of radii of influences, police actually patrol your streets. Firemen actually put out fires. Ambulances actually pick up sick sims and bring them to the hospital.

You can't just plop down service buildings in a pattern and call it a day anymore. You need to think and plan long and hard about how you design your streets so that they don't fuck up your services and economy.
 
neorej said:
The entire point of managing is looking at the bigger picture, which means that people turn into datapoints. Yay that they're simulating every single Sim, but if that matters so much to you, go play The Sims. When was the last time your mayor spent an hour with you personally to understand your needs?
Click to expand...

I'm not arguing from an "I love the Sims" perspective. I'm arguing from a hardcore gaming perspective and a complex city planning perspective.
 
Rentahamster said:
Instead of radii of influences, police actually patrol your streets. Firemen actually put out fires. Ambulances actually pick up sick sims and bring them to the hospital.

You can't just plop down service buildings in a pattern and call it a day anymore. You need to think and plan long and hard about how you design your streets so that they don't fuck up your services and economy.
Click to expand...
So like Caesar III.
 
Rentahamster said:
Tropico has a population cap of 1200 or 1700 or something. There is no population cap in SimCity 5. In the beta I had a population of 160k.
Click to expand...

From the Ars article

I've reached a functional limit around 200,000 people. I have no more space.
Click to expand...


Unless making a bigger city is some really fucked up DLC the tiny city plots are simply not big enough to be much over 200k aka reach the size of a legit city.
 
LuchaShaq said:
From the Ars article




Unless making a bigger city is some really fucked up DLC the tiny city plots are simply not big enough to be much over 200k aka reach the size of a legit city.
Click to expand...

I mean the author might not of been the "best" simcity player either?
 
Has anyone tried to approximate the actual area of the largest plots? I'd like to see what the size is so we could try to calculate the conceivable maximum density.
 
The lack of saving/reloading is a pretty big turn off for me. Being able to say "I wonder what happens if....." and being able to reload if it royally screws me is a thing I really like about these types of games.
 
krpiper said:
I mean the author might not of been the "best" simcity player either?
Click to expand...

Maybe he wasn't even in then top 10 of MLG's Sim city tourney last month. I mean it's such a demanding game where elite players can somehow break the game and create a city plot 10 times bigger than others.
 
200k is not some sort of cap, and in no way represents a maxed out city. That is what some people obtained in a week of play, and i doubt they had some sort of perfect city.
It is a big assumption on Ars part, and given they weren't ready to give a review I doubt that they knew that.

Fill up a city with skyscrapers you will hit way more than that.
 
HoosTrax said:
So like Caesar III.
Click to expand...
Sort of but more complex.
LuchaShaq said:
From the Ars article
Unless making a bigger city is some really fucked up DLC the tiny city plots are simply not big enough to be much over 200k aka reach the size of a legit city.
Click to expand...
In the dev beta, some testers achieved cities of over 800k people. Most people will not be achieving this, however.

That still doesn't somehow validate the comparison of this game's engine to Tropico, a game that limits its population to a hundredth of what SC5 is capable of.

If you really want that huge huge city feel, consider the region as a whole.

syllogism said:
Basically it's a much better simulation of a much smaller city
Click to expand...
Basically. The tradeoff for a much more dense simulation engine is a smaller area.
 
PsychoSoldier said:
The lack of saving/reloading is a pretty big turn off for me. Being able to say "I wonder what happens if....." and being able to reload if it royally screws me is a thing I really like about these types of games.
Click to expand...

yeah, that was half the fun for me in previous games.
 
Rentahamster said:
If you really want that huge huge city feel, consider the region as a whole.
Click to expand...

A few issues with that. It would probably be much easier to do this if a) you didn't have so much space between cities in a region that was unusable, b) you could control the transportation infrastructure between cities in a region, and c) you didn't have to independently load each city in the region.
 
Rentahamster said:
If you really want that huge huge city feel, consider the region as a whole.
Click to expand...

This is actually exactly why I am ok with the size of cities. The regions themselves have multiple city zones to build in... and they are all linked together are they not? Instead of managing one giant city, you manage multiple smaller cities at any time. Correct me if I am wrong.
 
AbortedWalrusFetus said:
A few issues with that. It would probably be much easier to do this if a) you didn't have so much space between cities in a region that was unusable, b) you could control the transportation infrastructure between cities in a region, and c) you didn't have to independently load each city in the region.
Click to expand...
It's spread apart like that because (i suspect) it looks weird to be working right next to another area of city that you can't control at the moment.

I have similar qualms too, but I accept their explanation that they had to give up some map size to accommodate the additional complexity. Besides, they are working on increasing map size later.

Forsaken82 said:
This is actually exactly why I am ok with the size of cities. The regions themselves have multiple city zones to build in... and they are all linked together are they not? Instead of managing one giant city, you manage multiple smaller cities at any time. Correct me if I am wrong.
Click to expand...
You are right, but you are limited by the fact that you can't work on them all at once in real time, just like multi city play in SC4. The closest you can get to multi city real time play is if you have other people playing multiplayer with you.
 
I'm happy that they remade the simulation. Naturally it is disappointing to be limited so much in the first game but there will be sequels and in time city size will grow hopefully. Maybe even in patches to this version of the game.
 
The entire appeal of SimCity to me was turning your city from Butthole, Iowa into Los Angeles. I understand they made tradeoffs but simulating each individual citizen is not what I personally need or even want from a SimCity game.
 
I'm completely fine with what they've done. I'd rather have a deeper, more complex simulation. The only problem I got is the drm, but I'll be supporting it anyways and looking quite forward to it... I don't want to wait 10 more years for more SimCity..
 
A deeper more complex simulation is great if it actually provides a more realistic result than other forms of modeling. I'm not sold that the trade off of such a complex simulation in exchange for smaller less dynamic cities is a net positive.
 
AbortedWalrusFetus said:
A deeper more complex simulation is great if it actually provides a more realistic result than other forms of modeling. I'm not sold that the trade off of such a complex simulation in exchange for smaller less dynamic cities is a net positive.
Click to expand...

Someone didnt play simcity 4 and experience its transportation model.
 
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