Civ = SimCity?

That's fair enough; but it's part of the game experience as well, and it certainly makes things more challenging. Both in the short term (can't play the game) and in the longer term when they shut off the server (can't play the game any more, ever).

It's a stupid practice, and it is my firm belief that policy like that actually promotes piracy, not hinders it.
 
Right, the things that kill SimCity 5 are not related to gameplay, but they are still pretty big deals:

-People were unable to play it when they bought it (servers full).
-People are unable to to play it on their own terms (offline).
-People will be unable to play it in the future (when they turn the servers off - either once SimCity 6 comes out, or it's just not profitable to leave them on, etc.)


Has nothing to do with the gameplay, because for most people, you can't even get to the gameplay. This is why SimCity 5 will go down as one of the worst games of all time.
 
The thing that will kill SimCity, if anything, is the limitation on city size. It's really bad. You notice it pretty early in the game. That said, it may not matter because the younger players are just not into the complexity.

Most people that played SimCity 4 a fair amount and liked it will not be able to get comfortable with the limitations in the new SimCity. Pretty much the same experience many had with Civ V.

On the other hand, I can see in SimCity how EA is really bringing in new, more casual, gamers with the social play part. It might work from a business perspective, a lot like Civ V worked even though its a much worse game than its predecessor. That's the future ladies and gentlemen - the younguns have the attention span of a gnat and are only satisfied if their gaming experience is "social". Larger, complicated games that require attention and seclusion are out, smaller, simpler games that permit socializing are in. It happened with RPGs (Bard's Tale, Balder's Gate, Forgetten Realms?) as well when they all turned into FPSs.
 
Yeah, I haven't played SimCity 5 yet, but from what I've heard, it seems to be in a pretty similar boat to Civ 5. One of the better games of the last five years or so, but still no match for its predecessors.
 
I wonder if a comparison can be made to Settlers, too?

I was a massive fan of the first one, the second one seemed to be a good refinement, and the most recent one has rebooted and done away with the hex roadmap economy I enjoyed tweaking...
 
Windsor said:
EA switched civics and we get a turn of anarchy... Painful in the short term, doesn't matter that much in the long run.
Click to expand...

What you don't seem to get no matter how hard people try to point it out to you: a huge amount of people not buying games because of ridiculous Online-DRM issues is not a short term thing. EA pi..es off people big time by this kind of policy. The one-star reviews on Amazon are proof for that. And with each AAA-title they spoil this way, they are pi..ing off more people. Those are paying customers lost for this game and also for future games. There are people - unlike you - who don't like being treated like criminals. There are people who don't like paying full price for a game that does not work or can only be played occasionally. I can forgive a bad game or bugs, that get fixed properly - but I won't accept online-DRM-nonsense. Never. Ever. Consequently EA will never get another Cent from me as long as they use stuff like Origin. Steam or Orging for me is like Playstation (which I don't own). It's a hardware requiremend I don't fulfill or support. I know I alone won't kill them, but neither does it kill me to avoid their products like hell...
 
Quintillus said:
I can't speak to the balance issues, because I never really got far enough to properly judge that before crashing. Once it's stable, I'd certainly be curious to try it again... but until then I cannot recommend it.
Click to expand...

Try Rocks 2 Rockets. It's got most of C2C in, but it's reasonably stable... not as much as vanilla BTS, but not unplayably so.

However, you will come up against the balance problems. It's not so much that individual civics or units are unbalanced, but just that the game is much too long; sooner or later, you'll have the upper hand, and thereafter if you're still playing it's because you voluntarily decided not to win - the challenge is gone.

It's rather like how in regular Civ if you're first to elepults or Rifles you should then stomp all the AIs and win without ever seeing the endgame... but with a hundred times as many opportunities for that to happen. If you play to win you are never going to see C2C/R2R's endgame; you'll probably never see anything much after ocean-going vessels.

I'm not sure how this can be fixed given that the whole point of C2C is that it's really long, but I think a step in the right direction would be to reduce the thickness of the tech tree while keeping the length. C2C doesn't just make the tech tree stretch from prehistory to speculative future techs, but adds a lot of extra depth - the portion of the C2C tech tree that corresponds to the Civ IV tech tree has many more technologies. Strip that away, and reduce the prehistoric and future tech trees by the same proportion, and the game would be much shorter (and you won't have to care about inventing six different styles of modern art).
 
IDK if the new simcity is any good but I have heard there is long connection times to servers. LOL Origin, the crappy steam clone. At least steam lets me play Civ 3,4,5 without connecting to a damn server.
 
gps said:
What you don't seem to get no matter how hard people try to point it out to you: a huge amount of people not buying games because of ridiculous Online-DRM issues is not a short term thing. EA pi..es off people big time by this kind of policy. The one-star reviews on Amazon are proof for that. And with each AAA-title they spoil this way, they are pi..ing off more people. Those are paying customers lost for this game and also for future games. There are people - unlike you - who don't like being treated like criminals. There are people who don't like paying full price for a game that does not work or can only be played occasionally. I can forgive a bad game or bugs, that get fixed properly - but I won't accept online-DRM-nonsense. Never. Ever. Consequently EA will never get another Cent from me as long as they use stuff like Origin. Steam or Orging for me is like Playstation (which I don't own). It's a hardware requiremend I don't fulfill or support. I know I alone won't kill them, but neither does it kill me to avoid their products like hell...
Click to expand...

And unfortunately, what YOU sir don't seem to get is there are a LOOOOOOT of stupid people out there who will keep buying it because of the marketing and the demo videos look cool. Do you wonder why new games cost $50-80? Because stupid people will pay it, and so the game companies get the message: it's okay to screw the customer base, they don't care, there are always more suckers being born every minute.

All too often, games are released half done. Unfinished. I quit buying them years ago, but it's still happening because stupid people keep buying them.

I'm not saying you're not right about what you're complaining about, just that the intelligent gamer market isn't nearly as big as we like to think it is.
 
A very good game like Civ 5 (with G&K) does not even compare to the trash that is the new Simcity. As for DRM, Civ 5 has DRM? Since when?
 
I think he's referring to steam. In this day and age of super high speed internet I still don't get why people hate steam so much. It works very well for me and it's not drm, it's just a digital distribution center.
 
civvver said:
I think he's referring to steam. In this day and age of super high speed internet I still don't get why people hate steam so much. It works very well for me and it's not drm, it's just a digital distribution center.
Click to expand...

I don't like having to sign-up with a distribution center in order to play mah games.
- :blush:
 
gps said:
What you don't seem to get no matter how hard people try to point it out to you: a huge amount of people not buying games because of ridiculous Online-DRM issues is not a short term thing. .
Click to expand...

I never said Online-DRM is a short term thing. However it has nothing really to do with the quality of the game. Complaints about Origin are totally irrelevant for those who doesn't have the problem with it.

Why discuss Online-DRM on SimCity release when you can take that discussion ANYTIME and as a general discussion since it would apply to all Origin-games?
 
Alright, having followed the disaster of SimCity 5 for the past couple of weeks, I take it back. Civ 5 may have been a step backwards for the franchise (IMHO of course) but it was nowhere near the trainwreck that SimCity 5 has been.
 
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