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[TL]Hanabi - US West 4
[TL]Ohana - US East 4
[TL] Destination East 4 |
On February 11 2013 16:35 fuzzy_panda wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2013 10:06 Arnstein wrote:Take it easy, people, trains and subways will be available as DLC for 10 dollars a week after launch! plated.rawr: you don't have to install Origin to play it. You can pirate it  That's what I'm going to do, and it will be the first game I've pirated for 5+ years! Not gonna work bro, SimCity's entire simulation is now done server-side (hence the always online feature). If you pirate it the hackers better know how to simulate the entire functional city that the dev team has been working for years on.
Too bad, then it's no Sim City for me. That is, I still have Sim City 2000 and Sim City 4, maybe I'll play those if I'm in the mood for Sim City again. They are probably better as well.
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On February 12 2013 02:18 Slackzftw wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2013 00:29 Tobberoth wrote:On February 11 2013 16:35 fuzzy_panda wrote:On February 09 2013 10:06 Arnstein wrote:Take it easy, people, trains and subways will be available as DLC for 10 dollars a week after launch! plated.rawr: you don't have to install Origin to play it. You can pirate it That's what I'm going to do, and it will be the first game I've pirated for 5+ years! Not gonna work bro, SimCity's entire simulation is now done server-side (hence the always online feature). If you pirate it the hackers better know how to simulate the entire functional city that the dev team has been working for years on. Same solution as in D3, and as we all know, that can't be pirated either, they are still working on server emulators but it's still not even close to enjoyable. I'd say this is the one perfect solution for game makers who want to fight piracy, there's no way around it. Unfortunately for the game companies, it's a terrible solutions which no one buying the games want since it leads to tons of issues with lag, server instability etc. "Fighting piracy" ...oh lord, are you really that stupid? Making great games is the way to fight piracy! Look at Games like Dragon Age: Origins, Skyrim or the Witcher 2. Great Games always sell a great amount!
Yeah I totally agree. EA really dropped the ball on this one. They totally forgot the audience they are targetting. the SimCity audience tends to like to space out and build their own city. Now there is actually no way to play offline, it's gonna make that extremely difficult. They're gonna lose a huge portion of the audience of core SimCity fans that have been waiting for years.
On February 11 2013 23:49 QuanticHawk wrote:
I am a bit confused. Are all city sizes gonna be the same in the shipped version of the game??
and what's the deal with the couple mentions of no trains or highways that I saw?
I tried reading everyone's opinions and it's all over the place. Can someone give me a good little overview without some kind of tangent about origin? that's kind of straight forward i dont need an explanation about that
- City sizes are all the same at release (i.e. tiny towns compared to past SimCity games, ones you can finish in about 6 hrs). People are just predicting that EA will probably launch larger cities sometime down the road.
- There are trains or highways. I've seen them in the trailers and gameplay.
- They have included pretty much everything that SImCity used to have. No worries there. There's waste, energy, water supply, transportation...,etc
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I'm almost 100% certain you can't build highways and having a predetermined rail connection is bullshit.
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I don't have an issue with SimCity 5 being online only. I think it's an interesting (albeit predictable, since Spore) path to consider, and am open to dealing with it.
The issue I have is with having to use junky require-ware like Origin and Steam.
On February 11 2013 03:21 Fzero wrote:
Yeah guys, lets nobody buy the game because we have to install software with it. Oh god no. I don't even have the option to delete it later. Why god why. This is a serious issue man.
Can't play offline (although that's irrelevant to steam/origin if the game itself requires internet), hogs extra system resources, takes up harddrive/registry/data space (clutter), potential privacy issues, slower to start game, complications interacting with games or the OS.
It's really lame to force people to run stuff to use something unrelated. First it's this, next they'll be running malware (well technically some things already have malware). It's not right.
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/uRUtmM8.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/A1AtuMU.png)
After earlier statements they made on reddit when they made the AMA I do think we'll have mods.
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On February 12 2013 17:14 Xapti wrote:I don't have an issue with SimCity 5 being online only. I think it's an interesting (albeit predictable, since Spore) path to consider, and am open to dealing with it. The issue I have is with having to use junky require-ware like Origin and Steam. Show nested quote +On February 11 2013 03:21 Fzero wrote:
Yeah guys, lets nobody buy the game because we have to install software with it. Oh god no. I don't even have the option to delete it later. Why god why. This is a serious issue man. Can't play offline (although that's irrelevant to steam/origin if the game itself requires internet), hogs extra system resources, takes up harddrive/registry/data space (clutter), potential privacy issues, slower to start game, complications interacting with games or the OS.
Oh no, clutter! Because I'm sure that 300MB of harddisk space is precious compared to your 500GB-1TB of harddisk space that you no doubt have. And I'm sure you're always tripping over registry entries for Steam and so forth. 
Steam is like Firefox or other utility applications to me. It's not something I install to play "a game". It's a part of my life as a gamer, no different from my X-Box or Wii. It's my interface to dozens of games.
Last night, I downloaded the Torchlight 2 demo, and then I bought Torchlight 2 based on that. All through Steam.
Was Steam "unrelated" to this? No. Because without Steam, I'd have had to go find their website, download the demo, install it, play it, like it, then uninstall it, then use whatever arcane purchasing system they happened to use (thus spreading my buying credentials to another website. That opens up far more privacy concerns than Steam) and then downloading the real game. And then I would have to either use their updater to keep the game up-to-date, or download new patches as they appear.
Steam facilitates playing games by lubricating various aspects of the gaming experience. I have one account, from which I can purchase almost every PC game worth playing. I get automatic updates, I can replay old games, I can reinstall any game I own at any time (if an old game's website goes off like, you're usually SOL), I can back-up installations and restore them from backups, etc. There are friends lists, groups for discussions, and various other value-added propositions associated with Steam that are generally not possible without it.
For all of that, I don't mind taking up 100MB of RAM. Especially since I have 4GB, so it's not like I'm missing it. That's an investment, not "clutter". I am actually annoyed by non-Steam PC games; they're outside of my general play experience.
Oracle is a problem because Oracle is only for EA games. And the only EA games I own are the first two Mass Effect games (and technically only the second is an EA game). I don't live in EA's little world, so Oracle is not lubricating any experience for me. It's getting in the way, because it's a thing I have to start up or shut down explicitly just to play one specific game.
Steam adds value because it's associated with literally dozens of games I own. Oracle adds nothing because it's associated with nothing that I own. This is compounded by it's general stupidities.
If SimCity 5 being always online actually allowed something that couldn't be done without it, if it added value to the overall experience, I wouldn't mind (so much). Like if it actually reduced the CPU burden, thus allowing the CPU to do GPU tasks and made the game prettier as a result or something. Or if it being on a server allowed simulations of a level (size and/or depth) that wouldn't be possible on most computers. Or if being non-local made it so that you could run it on almost any machine with excellent performance (graphics not withstanding of course), to the point where you could run it in a browser.
But none of these are true.
Steam can be an inconvenience sometimes, that much is certain. But it adds value to my gaming experience. Always online adds nothing to my gaming experience.
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On February 13 2013 02:55 Seiniyta wrote:After earlier statements they made on reddit when they made the AMA I do think we'll have mods.
why so cryptic though, wasnt this one of the main selling points right off the bat??
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On February 13 2013 04:25 QuanticHawk wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2013 02:55 Seiniyta wrote:After earlier statements they made on reddit when they made the AMA I do think we'll have mods. why so cryptic though, wasnt this one of the main selling points right off the bat??
Probably because they want to preserve that for a blog/announcements. Like how Blizzard can be vague at times before they do a full out blog about stuff. It's not uncommon.
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Yeah true. I just thought it was odd because that was one of the first things I remember being talked about when it was announced. And for months it was on my steam splash window when i'd boot up SC4 haha
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Got my Key from here, now I got one myself, I hope someone still wants to try it out.
DDTK-SVWC-55EB-UAGV-ZC5M
Beta is only 1 day.
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One of my biggest objections just by playing the beta is that the town feels very small. Maybe that will change later in the game but starting out you feel sort of cramped for space. Other than that I kind of liked it despite all the things lacking from previous sim cities. I'll probably pick it up on some sale at a later date.
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Well that was a fun 24 hours. A shame so much is locked though. I did get my city to around 80k population before I couldn't control the widespread fire in my city anymore and I decided to start over. Can't wait for the release
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On February 17 2013 04:43 nihlon wrote:
One of my biggest objections just by playing the beta is that the town feels very small. Maybe that will change later in the game but starting out you feel sort of cramped for space. Other than that I kind of liked it despite all the things lacking from previous sim cities. I'll probably pick it up on some sale at a later date.
Totally agree. It was good fun but even in the 1 hour given to play during the beta you started to run out of space. I really hope that some of the zones available in the live game are significantly larger.
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Brunei Darussalam566 Posts
Wasn't selected for the beta  , despite having played basically every Maxis game ever launched.
Can someone give me their thoughts on the beta? I really like some of their ideas, but can't really get over the fact that the cities seem so small and SimTown-ish.
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The game will get hammered if its released by the press. The Demo looked terrible and thats the final version. The Mini-Zones won't change and I didn't even mentioned the Online-Only-DRM
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Played a few hours of beta, must say that it was pretty disappointing. What was available in beta was severely limited and the size of both regions and cities were extremely small. Only three cities (I think) + Great Works site available in beta region, only two of which were playable.
Great Works only had a Space Center, International Airport, some skyscraper thing (?), and a solar power plant.
The cities themselves are not really cities... more like neighbourhoods or towns. Really lame that one or two basic service buildings is enough for the entire city neighbourhood. But if the live regions contains ~15 zones, I don't have a big problem with managing multiple neighbourhoods rather than one city.
The limited size forces specialization. You either be great at one industry or be mediocre at multiple industries, really lame.
Love the idea of region play but Maxis sort of failed hard on this idea. I'd imagine lots of people (which includes me) will be playing regions privately due to the small city sizes.
Not sure why the fuck they kept train tracks as it seems really pointless with the limited space you're given and doesn't really make sense when you can't build subways or highways.
Modular buildings are cool. Hope the module options of buildings not available in beta are just as good as or better than basic ones we've been exposed to.
It's going to take lots of trial and error to make a block without wasted space.
Dr Vu shit or whatever = really lame. I want a real city, not a fucking superhero city.
Surprisingly, there's a lack of settings - no borderless window, no audio output, no sensitivity. The biggest deal breaker for me is that there's no borderless window....
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On February 18 2013 08:29 skyR wrote:
Played a few hours of beta, must say that it was pretty disappointing. What was available in beta was severely limited and the size of both regions and cities were extremely small. Only three cities (I think) + Great Works site available in beta region, only two of which were playable.
Great Works only had a Space Center, International Airport, some skyscraper thing (?), and a solar power plant.
The cities themselves are not really cities... more like neighbourhoods or towns. Really lame that one or two basic service buildings is enough for the entire city neighbourhood. But if the live regions contains ~15 zones, I don't have a big problem with managing multiple neighbourhoods rather than one city.
The limited size forces specialization. You either be great at one industry or be mediocre at multiple industries, really lame.
Love the idea of region play but Maxis sort of failed hard on this idea. I'd imagine lots of people (which includes me) will be playing regions privately due to the small city sizes.
Not sure why the fuck they kept train tracks as it seems really pointless with the limited space you're given and doesn't really make sense when you can't build subways or highways.
Modular buildings are cool. Hope the module options of buildings not available in beta are just as good as or better than basic ones we've been exposed to.
It's going to take lots of trial and error to make a block without wasted space.
Dr Vu shit or whatever = really lame. I want a real city, not a fucking superhero city.
Surprisingly, there's a lack of settings - no borderless window, no audio output, no sensitivity. The biggest deal breaker for me is that there's no borderless window....
The region can have up to 16 cities so that should be quite big.
Trains are important for industry because the freights produced by industry must be shipped to the commercial zones or export to the global market or neighbor cities. If their is not enough export/commercial, then some factories in industrial zone will be closed down. So you need a depot for trains/ships to ship off your excess goods (or stockpiling goods if you specialize in trading).
For small city size, I kinda see why they choose to do have it that way after I saw the video explaining the simulation system/engine in the game. Basically, every building or person in the game is an actor that send out agent to communicate with other buildings. For example, water pump will produce a "water" agent along the road that will communicate with each house and give them water. Or the factory with no workers in the industrial zone will produce agent that will communicate with each house in the residential zone to hire workers if the house owners are still unemployed. Same goes with commercial/industrial and commercial/resident interactions and other more. So I could see that the computation need for the simulation would grow exponentially with the size of the city. If they want the less powerful system to be able to play (I think the computation is shared between server and client), they cannot really make the city too big. What I hope is that they will allow the bigger map in the future for those with more powerful PC (but it would give them kinda unfair advantage against the people with lower spec in the global market).
About always online DRM and piracy: I would simply put that I doubt people in the US or Northern Europe really knows how large the piracy problem is. For example, in Thailand, piracy is not only about people download softwares/games from the internet, it is about people download them and burn them into DVD and sell them in the market since most people don't have access to a fast internet. You can even find a store that sell piracy softwares in some department stores. The top pirates could easily make 1 million USD per year with pirated softwares/movies. So even though I don't like DRM, I kinda understand why they put them in since there's a lot of people that making money of their work for free .
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I was kinda wondering how they were able to have so much complexity in that game but have so low system requirements. I guess you would run into a lot of performance issues if you had bigger cities. We're kinda stuck with the 3-4 ghz per processor technologywise.
I really like the multiplayer aspect. More multiplayer = more fun imo
Im not sure how to buy simcity 5. Has anyone got experience with downloading games from amazon or origin? It says sim city would be only 2 GB download. If i can use my entire bandwith (for example in steam) i should be able to get it in 20 minutes.
I just dont know if amazon or origin can handle the first days properly. Im undecided.. maybe i should just order a physical copy.
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I think Amazon just provides you a game key and I highly doubt Simcity is a 2gb download when it asks for 12gb of disk space.
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EPT
