Sim City V

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, my understanding is that you can just make a private region.

 

*Edit* - Is anyone going to ever play in a non-private region?  I can't imagine wanting to play such a persistent game in public multiplayer where other people could fuck with you so easily.

Edited February 4, 2013 by TheMightyEthan

[Mr. GOH!]

Are their semi-private regions? We could do a PXOD metropolis!

[TheMightyEthan]

My understanding is that a private region actually means it's invite-only, so if you want to play alone you just make a private region and don't invite anyone, but if you want to play specifically with friends you can do that too.

[deanb]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure there's the mechanisms in place to just play with friends.

[Mr. GOH!]

Okay, friendos, let's do a royally weird PXOD SimCity V city. I call I get to make the trash city!

[Saturnine Tenshi]

That actually sounds very neat. Too bad about the other things.

[deanb]

Yeah GOH is making it somewhat tempting. Then I look at the price n regardless of any thoughts DRM or not I won't be getting it at launch.

[Vecha]

I'll join that PXOD city when the price gets down to 20 bucks.

[TheMightyEthan]

I'll join it when the price gets down to it-doesn't-have-always-on-drm.

[jayc4life]

Another Closed Beta scheduled for February 16th, for anyone interested. Guessing they weren't happy that the overwhelming demand bollocksed up their servers the first time, meaning a lot of people didn't actually get to play the game.

 

It's actually a good thing they're going for a Round 2, because all hell'd break loose if nobody could play on Day 1 à la Diablo 3. That's a damage control job nobody would want.

[Thursday Next]

That's kind of what Beta's are supposed to be for. Once upon a time. Before marketing got hold of them and started renaming "demos" "betas".

[TheMightyEthan]

The sad thing is the outcome only has two potentially shitty conclusions.

 

A.) Millions buy it, reaffirming to EA that DRM isn't so bad to deter consumers.

 

or

 

B.) It flops. No more Sim City. Ever.

 

I've decided there's a third option I'm desperately hoping for:

 

C.) It does well enough for them to know there's interest, but the sales are obviously hurt by the online requirement so they abandon it next time around.

Edited March 4, 2013 by TheMightyEthan

[Mal]

For those who buy it, they should complain to hell and back. We want the series to continue but with none of this "Always online" requirement (Among others).

[Mr. GOH!]

The previews/reviews I have glanced at do not look promising at all. Even more disheartening is reviewers' embrace of the stupid social aspects of the game. Most disheartening of all is that the play area in any given city is tiny, and there is mandatory open fields/wilderness between these small cities. This sounds frustrating and limiting, and will result in bizarre mini-cities full of skyscrapers that abruptly end at the pre-approved borders. No adjacent suburbs to make real-seeming big cities. Ars Technica's previewers suggested that it should be called Sim Town.

[deanb]

Yeah, part of their focus on low-end PCs. Which seemingly fare worse with the game than low-end PCs of yore that managed cities fine. It shouldn't be an issue since part of the reasoning for the always-on component is that the simulations are being ran server side. So yeah, they should maybe make their mind up in that dept.

 

The reviews from today are worth jack though given none of them are running in real world scenario of their being thousands if not millions on the game, not a few hundred reviewers.

[Mr. GOH!]

Here's the Quick Look from Giant Bomb. http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/quick-look-simcity/2300-7103/

 

Those cities are tiny. Fuck EA for ruining SimCity. Gonna get SC4 instead.

[Mal]

"Quick look" from TB and his wife (Didn't expected that but its cool to see a husband and wife team) that I watched.

 

To me its the size of the city that actually pushes me to not get the game. I maybe might be able to accept the DRM and all its weird quirks like server side calculations (A very big sticking point for me) but I want to work the entire region at once. At the moment if nobody is on a city in a region, its pretty much freezes which is sort of a way to force MP. It feels so damn restrictive. The size of the cities is the most visual of the bunch.

 

I got to agree with TB and Genna that the simulation aspect of the game is fantastic. It looks amazing even with the weird little quirks like a line of buses. As for being able to run on your dad's PC, maybe if its all set on low?

 

It looks fantastic and for the most part plays fantastic (When you can get on...) but the backstage side of the game I can't really support. Especially so when it feels and looks so restrictive.

Edited March 5, 2013 by MaliciousH

[Mr. GOH!]

The city size limit is a big dealbreaker for me. What use is a good city simulation that can only emulate towns? 

 

I mean, they should have left in some customization options. Who cares if folks playing on their shitty $400 laptops can't use the biggest settings? Allow those of us who who can handle it have the option. And the forced woodland and alck of region customization is fucking terrible.

[madbassman39]

I don't want to support the online only gameplay, but given that not having it is not an option I would have to deal with it if I wanted to play the game.

 

The only time I played a Sim City game was when I was younger and used cheats to build a city and destroy it. I have Sim City 4 on Steam, but never really spent the time figuring it out (plus watching how water and electricity work in SC5 makes me more interested in that).

 

The small cities bothers me, even though I feel like it would be a good stepping stone for someone like myself, but with no option to make a city any bigger at all, whats the point? Once you fill up your space its time to move on to a new location? Then the other players depending on your city end up being screwed because of that.

 

I would love to play a private server with people I actually know, but I would feel bad doing a PXOD server because I would stop playing after three weeks because I have "Video Game ADD" and essentially becoming a terrible neighbor. I couldn't do that because I would hate to have that done to me.

[Mal]

Other people, I think, can fill in for you but still... whats the point? If Genna's experience is anything to go off by, it seems like you can get a good "city" up and running in about a hour or two while using up all the space given to you. By no means that you would be done with the region but that "city" square would be pretty much done. Someone just have to manage it.

[Baconrath]

I remember playing Sim City 2000 and not knowing how to build power plants so the people would always riot. I can't remember if it was because the UI was sketch or because I'm a big dumb when it comes to Sim City. Probably the latter.

 

Does the new one seem to explain how to do things better?

[Dee]

After having played the game a bit before the serve issues cropped up, I would have to say yes and no.  There are things in the tutorial that are long and tedious.  I found that going through playing the game myself made more sense than paying attention to the tutorial.  Within a couple of hours, I figured out how to do a few things on my own and I would say it's a little less confusing than the previous SimCity games.

[Mal]

The city size limit is a big dealbreaker for me. What use is a good city simulation that can only emulate towns? 

 

I mean, they should have left in some customization options. Who cares if folks playing on their shitty $400 laptops can't use the biggest settings? Allow those of us who who can handle it have the option. And the forced woodland and alck of region customization is fucking terrible.

Could you (almost) accept it when you think of it trading off between large, mostly static cities to a smaller living breathing "city"? When I think of it that way, I can almost accept it. Gameplay wise, as in while you are managing a city, it seems to be much better. Yes, the smaller "cities" leads to shorter gameplay time but again, that trade off I mentioned. Even the static cities when not in view because of relevance to the server (not sure how to phrase this) can be viewed under this lens. How they did this game is actually really cool. You indeed don't need a top of the line computer to do any of the simulations*. Just change your graphic settings and have at it (Unless you are saying that there isn't options. I'm not sure right now).

I'll admit... I can't explain the forced woodland and lack of customization since the simulation shouldn't care for the size (Maybe up to the region size) and configuration of the regions. For the servers*, it would be like running multiple current "cities" at once. So yeah, other than that, I really like what I see.

 

*Note, I am ignoring the DRM in this discussion since that is another HUGE can of worms. Someone can start really talking about it if they want. I;ll say this though, I like the blend of offloading simulations to a server to deal with since it can allow for more complex stuff... but yeah, DRM. Servers and EA... Woo.

 

Me right now regarding this game, EA et al:

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

Edited March 6, 2013 by MaliciousH

[deanb]

The simulations aren't that complex, especially when you take into account when SimCity 4 was made (a decade ago) you wanted a Pentium 3, and these days there's quad-core in nearly everything and CUDA n all that kind of stuff. I don't actually believe they're running simulations on their side, at most the inter-city stuff for MP. In line with the smaller cities thing there's nothing stopping people with better machines running larger cities, it'd still be the same simulations under the hood so it's not going to suddenly become "lifeless" just because it's bigger. See Civ series for how to do this properly.

[Mr. GOH!]

Malicious: I could, theoretically. But I loathe the fact that you can grow a super dense square of urbanization in something like four square miles surrounded by invisible walls.. It looks ridiculous and limited. The relationships between 'cities' is social gaming garbage rather than simulation problem solving. You're not building a simulated region so much as engaging in multiple social game sandboxes that owe more to FarmVille than SimCity Classic.

 

I like designing small towns, sure. Especially if they were the suburbs to a big city. But that shit doesn't work in the predefined play areas in this version of SimCity. But I also like designing regions with my choice of transportation infrastructure, terrain, and city plots. 

 

Bottom line: I will not settle for less, though I know many players are fine with it. That's why the industry keeps shitting out the gaming equivalent of Big Macs.