SimCity 5

[XplorR]

Some folks here might know Quill18. For those who don't, he's YouTuber who has done quite a few Civ 4, Civ 5 and SMAC "Let's Play"s. Well just recently he made some videos of the time he got to play in the SimCity Beta .

Let's Try: SimCity BETA - Part 1/6 (The Tutorial)


Link to video.


Let's Try: SimCity BETA - Part 2/6 (The Region Tutorial)


Link to video.


Let's Try: SimCity BETA - Part 3/6 (Playing the ACTUAL Game)


Link to video.


Let's Try: SimCity BETA - Part 4/6 (Suddenly: Graphs!)


Link to video.


Let's Try: SimCity BETA - Part 5/6 (Dumbed down? I don't think so!)


Link to video.

Let's Try: SimCity BETA - Part 6/6 (Polluted Hellscape)


Link to video.

 

[KMRblue1027]

Gah don't make me have to get this game. I'm already spending over $100 on Tuesday I cannot afford to keep burning money.

 

[GenMarshall]

Still doesn't convince me to get it until they remove the always online and Orgin exclusive crap.

 

[WildFire]

Origin side of it really doesn't bother me. Only thing that bugs me is the regions aren't randomly generated, they are all premade. Still should be a lot of fun and I'm anxiously awaiting March 5th

 

[Maniacal]

They're all pre-made? Yet another thing I hear about it is just worse. Seriously don't support this crap, EA is just going to keep making it worse.

 

[Leonel]

If I recall the regions in SimCity 4 were premade too, although you could import grayscale maps with some keyboard trickery.

 

[cybrxkhan]

If I recall the regions in SimCity 4 were premade too, although you could import grayscale maps with some keyboard trickery.

SimCity 4 regions were "premade" in the sense that the definition of where each city was and its size was determined beforehand (unless as you said you do some modding trickery), but otherwise you were free to edit and change and mess around with the terrain of the cities - and the entire region - to your heart's content (and there were and are even 3rd party tools to help ensure your entire region looks the way you want it to look).

 

[PieceOfMind]

There has been a lot of marketing hype for this game, and so a lot of interest generated. Lots of preorders I'm sure. Will be interesting to see whether it's a flop or not. This time I'm definitely taking the wait and see approach.

 

[Maniacal]

Amazon.com canceled all their pre-orders.

On accident when sending out e-mails saying EA has said there will be no pre-loading.

 

[WildFire]

http://www.ign.com/wikis/simcity/Regions

the regions that are available in the game...

I'm guessing they are premade so they can actually have meaningful leaderboards. No point in keeping track of cities if they are all on different maps.

Also gives EA something to charge $10 for... region packs!

 

[Maniacal]

So your cities will always be the same in each region since the resource is always the same, and those maps all look line one city-area in Civ4.

 

[Chairman Meow]

If I recall the regions in SimCity 4 were premade too, although you could import grayscale maps with some keyboard trickery.

Somewhere around here I have a program I wrote in Mathematica that generates regions with random terrain for use in SimCity 4. I may just dig it up this weekend and start a new region. No way in hell am I buying SimCity 5, though.

 

[Sonereal]

http://www.ign.com/wikis/simcity/Regions

the regions that are available in the game...

I'm guessing they are premade so they can actually have meaningful leaderboards. No point in keeping track of cities if they are all on different maps.

Also gives EA something to charge $10 for... region packs!

Leaderboards in SimCity? I think they're confused about the genre.

 

[Antilogic]

There has been a lot of marketing hype for this game, and so a lot of interest generated. Lots of preorders I'm sure. Will be interesting to see whether it's a flop or not. This time I'm definitely taking the wait and see approach.

This is where I am as well. I have such fond memories of the first four games, not sure if I want to take the early plunge on the reboot or not.

 

[Peck of Arabia]

It doesn't look as bad as I imagined it might, but doesn't it all seem a little too limited?

I mean look at the videos at the top of the page- that about, what, 2 hours of game time and he's already practically filled out the playing area.

I'll wait and see, if nothing else, all this talk and hype over a new Sim City has got me re-installing Sim City 4 and that's no bad thing.

 

[XplorR]

Question:Will city sizes get bigger?

Answer:

Lead designer Ocean Quigley reveals we will see them "eventually."

Here's his reason for small cities at release (snipped from article over at Escapist Magazine).

"We need to keep in mind that SimCity is a mainstream game, it's not a game that is only going to run on high-end gaming PCs, it has to run in your Dad's PC as well," said Quigley, when asked about the performance trade-off that led to city sizes being limited.

Another question:At what cost? Answer (my guess): What ever EA thinks they can get away with.

Link to article.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122463-Maxis-Will-Eventually-Increase-SimCitys-City-Sizes

 

[peter grimes]

A not-so-glowing evaluation of the release code version at ArsTechnica:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/simcity-impressions-we-waited-ten-years-for-this/

I'm not going to quote it, because it's mostly a dialogue between two writers. But here's what I took away from it:
-City size is frustratingly capped at a small size - like 200k people.
-Low-level simulation was focused on, with big city simulation suffering for it.
-not enough info made available to the city manager
-no ability to save and replay

Those all seem to me to be reasons to wait spending $60 on a game. $30? Sure. But not more.

 

[JtheJackal]

I've finally decided the positives easily outweigh the negatives in the game for me. The level of simulation, the transportation options, city specialization and the play a whole region strategy I am very excited about. For me this is what I wanted to see in the game and if I have to sacrifice some other features for the other features to be good I will live.

 

[Maniacal]

Wow, EA's servers had trouble staying up for the relatively small number of players in the past few days or so who were journalists reviewing it. Reviewers kept losing connection to the servers and getting booted out to the main menu XD

http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/why-you-shouldnt-trust-our-simcity-review


tl;dr

EA originally wanted reviewers to travel to their offices and play SimCity on their machines, under their supervision, and get a sense of the multiplayer features and overall game over a few days. There are many reason why that’s not an optimal way to play a game, and their compromise of sending us review code to use on our home machines and to play for around five days was acceptable.
...
We also weren’t able to try out many of the game’s social features, and those are expected to play a large role in how the game acts and feels in its latest incarnation.
...
the mechanics of connected cities have in no way been tested by critics or players in a serious way
...
I’m not comfortable calling what we published today a review, although Sophie certainly put the game through its paces in a good environment using what should be finished code.
...
My recommendation? Don’t preorder or buy the game unless you’d be fine with non-functioning servers tomorrow. If that sort of thing would make you angry, hold off until you know things are stable. Until then, it’s all conjecture.

PA's review

Sounds like the online requirement is completely unnecessary (no surprise there), there are plenty of self-sustainable buildings to build so you don't need other resources, and it doesn't seem like it will have the depth and long lasting appeal fans of the series and SC4 will want.

From Polygon's increasingly laggy and badly designed website:

More problematic (for me) was my home network set-up and a wi-fi router that has taken to dropping connections of late. If you lose an internet connection while playing SimCity will most likely stop and you will be forced back to the loading screen. Sucks to be whatever sims you may have been trying to help or rescue. If you do not have a connection when you try to start playing, the game will not start.

It remains to be seen if EA’s servers will be up to the task of hosting however many simultaneous SimCity games will be played post-release. And those with unreliable internet connections may need to consider if the ability to play SimCity is worth an upgrade of either your service provider or equipment, which may be a cost too high to bear.

ArsTechnica impressions:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/simcity-impressions-we-waited-ten-years-for-this/

 

[Antilogic]

... that does not inspire confidence. My internet connection is notoriously terrible, guess I'm not going to be playing SimCity.