Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Guardian G.I.]

With SC5 not going to be the serious city builder we all hoped for, and a booming Indie scene, has someone maybe heard of a promising city building game by an indipendent developer?

Do you mean SimCity-esque games or city building games in general?

[Spitfire]

With SC5 not going to be the serious city builder we all hoped for, and a booming Indie scene, has someone maybe heard of a promising city building game by an indipendent developer?

Do you mean SimCity-esque games or city building games in general?

SimCity-esque is a great take on city building, but granted pretty hard to pull off. If other developers have other concepts of gameplay for serious city building, I would also check them out.

[Azated]

After reading about SC5, my opinion of EA is now about as low as it can get. They've ruined so many franchises of good games for money. I don't think I can name a single EA game that I would call average, let alone incredible.

[forsaken1111]

Am I the only one who thinks the game looks pretty cool and is looking forward to playing it? Myself and 3 others are planning on setting up a multiplayer region.

[timferius]

Am I the only one who thinks the game looks pretty cool and is looking forward to playing it? Myself and 3 others are planning on setting up a multiplayer region.

You know what, it does, it may be different than previous games, but this does not mean it's a bad game! I think this looks like a terribly fun game, and I'll probably also grab 3000 on GoG later as well, and it is also a fun game!
We're a funny lot as gamers, we complain about the CoDs of the world, with a few small features each game but generally the same gameplay, but then they try to mix things up with another series, and we complain that they've changed the game we loved so much!

[Sergius]

With SC5 not going to be the serious city builder we all hoped for, and a booming Indie scene, has someone maybe heard of a promising city building game by an indipendent developer?

Do you mean SimCity-esque games or city building games in general?

SimCity-esque is a great take on city building, but granted pretty hard to pull off. If other developers have other concepts of gameplay for serious city building, I would also check them out.

Well, there are some projects.

For one, the original SimCity was GPLed for the "One Laptop Per Child" project and has since been ported as "Micropolis". Not sure if there's a Windows version.

Also there's Lincity NG. Don't know how playable it is.

[DoomOnion]

Simcity 5 is not going to be a serious city builder? I thought it was pretty serious, what did I miss?/
All they did was just bring all the numeric data to the graphical graphs so that you didn't have to stare at spreadsheets until your eyes sore... I think.

[10ebbor10]

The main problems with Sim City 5 are:

-Some simplification (Almost everything uses roads, for example)
-Social network integration
-Always online DRM
-Small maps. Last thing I heard is that they are only barely larger than the smallest maps you can find in Sim 4

It all looks very pretty and stuff, and I'm probably going to play it (just not buying it at the rather high starting price), but I'm afraid that the small map size is going to force you to set up all your facilities in another city if you want to do anything usefull.

[timferius]

The main problems with Sim City 5 are:

-Some simplification (Almost everything uses roads, for example)
-Social network integration
-Always online DRM
-Small maps. Last thing I heard is that they are only barely larger than the smallest maps you can find in Sim 4

It all looks very pretty and stuff, and I'm probably going to play it (just not buying it at the rather high starting price), but I'm afraid that the small map size is going to force you to set up all your facilities in another city if you want to do anything usefull.

To clarify or inquire on a few points:
-Some simplification (Almost everything uses roads, for example)
I'm not sure what you mean on this one. Like, does hydro/water use roads? or? I'm just a bit confused is all (is there railways in this one?)
-Social network integration
I'd be highly surprised if this is mandatory
-Always online DRM
I will wholly concede this point, it's not great, and I don't see why a single player city would need this.
-Small maps. Last thing I heard is that they are only barely larger than the smallest maps you can find in Sim 4
From what I read in an article (on RPS I think) they're about the same size as the medium Sim City 4 maps

[DoomOnion]

The main problems with Sim City 5 are:

-Some simplification (Almost everything uses roads, for example)
-Social network integration
-Always online DRM
-Small maps. Last thing I heard is that they are only barely larger than the smallest maps you can find in Sim 4

It all looks very pretty and stuff, and I'm probably going to play it (just not buying it at the rather high starting price), but I'm afraid that the small map size is going to force you to set up all your facilities in another city if you want to do anything usefull.

I still don't get it.

1. Elaborate. Last time I checked, aside from zones depending on roads to be asigned, nothing 'core' gameplay related was greatly altered.

2 & 3. Well, they are trying out some new stuff here, simulation on a broader scale. It's not nearly absurd as AC revelations being always online DRM. The DRM actually has reason and logic here this time, and uh, they are actually using it to influence the gameplay, i.e. meta-multiplayer.

4. then you heard it wrong. It's about the size of medium sized map of sim city 4. Think of each region as a city in sim city 4, and each city as a town, or a segment in a metropolitan area. They are promoting specialization. I'm not saying, it automatically makes the game awesome(er), I am saying that I, or rather, we all can see the logic and reasoning behind it.

All in all, I can't help but to feel that this is just Mass Effect 3 all over again, not as in, the game is going to suck balls, but as in, people are just going apeshit over problems that are generally tolerable, posting bad things about it all over internet, posting propaganda all over the forums with extreme amount of profanities.

I'm NOT going to buy that 80 dollar edition, but I'm definately thinking of picking up the 50 bucks copy from Amazon.

[Korbac]

The main problems with Sim City 5 are:

-Some simplification (Almost everything uses roads, for example)
-Social network integration
-Always online DRM
-Small maps. Last thing I heard is that they are only barely larger than the smallest maps you can find in Sim 4

It all looks very pretty and stuff, and I'm probably going to play it (just not buying it at the rather high starting price), but I'm afraid that the small map size is going to force you to set up all your facilities in another city if you want to do anything usefull.

To clarify or inquire on a few points:
-Some simplification (Almost everything uses roads, for example)
I'm not sure what you mean on this one. Like, does hydro/water use roads? or? I'm just a bit confused is all (is there railways in this one?)
-Social network integration
I'd be highly surprised if this is mandatory
-Always online DRM
I will wholly concede this point, it's not great, and I don't see why a single player city would need this.
-Small maps. Last thing I heard is that they are only barely larger than the smallest maps you can find in Sim 4
From what I read in an article (on RPS I think) they're about the same size as the medium Sim City 4 maps

The simplification... eh. I can see why you guys don't like it, but I've got to be honest the water pipe production was never anything difficult - it was just something else obvious that you had to do. Social Net, ignorable; DRM, annoying but not really a problem for me; map size might be irritating if I actually become *good* at the game.

*Insert angry gamer 'ploppable' here*

[10ebbor10]

As for the simplifications: Roads (and rails and ports) connect everything. Meaning everything has to be build adjecent to a road. Furthermore I heard that the amount of buildings is small (plopables should make up for this, and I think they are nice) and that diversity if limited.
The other simplification is that the entirity of God mode (shape your own terrain) was removed.

As for the social network integration, I'm afraid it might up like the Sims, where you're poked to post on facebook for the littlest of things you do. (Haven't played for years, so I dunno if you can turn that feature off.)  Besides, developper videos focus a lot on the highscore boards.

Oh, for the always Online DRM, I heard it's really always online, so losing connection midgame would result in getting kicked out of the game. No confirmation on this one though. Also, the game is Origin only, a system known for it's security, tolerance and ethical bussiness doing.

On the topic of maps, In sim city 4 the towns bordered, allowing you to make nice regio scale cities, here that is no longer the case. There are going to be ugly highways connecting everything.

Oh, and some more.

-No modding: No support and no permission. It would interfere with the MMO part of the game. This combined with EA and you know there's going to be overpriced DLC.

-All savegames are stored on the cloud. Luckily we all know EA is to be trusted and won't just pull the plug out of the game servers once it's no longer profitable.

I'll just link you guys to the EA forums thread. Link. It's not that this is a bad game, I'm just quite afraid that it won't be great.

[Korbac]

...okay, some of those points (esp. the no modding, even though I'd probably never use it) really hurt.

[DoomOnion]

and yet I still fail to see why this would make sim city a 'not-so-great' game...


              ...the game is not even out yet.

Let me give you an example of DF.
 -Horrible UI
    Extreme reliance on third party tool(Dwarf Therapist) is needed make the game playable.
 -Several aspects of game mechanics are not well polished
    5x5 farm plot being able to sustain a 100+ fort
    Military screen not allowing players to mass-edit the materials of gears, or copy pasting of things.
 -Steep learning curve
 -Steep dificulty curve
   First, you get 3~5 migrants, then you get about 5~10, and suddenly, you end up getting 40+ migrants.
 
Does this make DF a 'bad' or 'not-so-great' game? Maybe, maybe not. It's all the matter of personal opinions. I see games, just like movies and music, as an experience rather than a sum of its whole. Which means it gives room for individual problems or errors a chance to make up for the mistake. Humans are not perfect, naturally, their creations are not so much different. It's bound to have errors. Judging from the past works of Maxis and EA, I think its safe to say that they are doing on okay job of fixing and reducing those errors over the course of years. Sims series has been improving by a mile, sim city improved from the first title to their latest installation sim city 4, (Like everyone is saying, SC societies isn't even made by maxis, so I am not going there).

In short, we don't know if the game is going to be a letdown or not until its out.

[jhxmt]

and yet I still fail to see why this would make sim city a 'not-so-great' game...


              ...the game is not even out yet.

Let me give you an example of DF.

I would quite happily buy SC5 for the same price as DF.  If EA are happy to give me a copy of the game and politely and unintrusively suggest that I donate a small amount if it brings me enjoyment, then I will do so.

I will then ride my flying pig into the sunset while playing the maracas.

(Also, I'm not sure that 'polite' or 'unintrusive' are in EA's vocabulary.)