Simcity

[Guynemer]

Apparently, the game only runs on one thread; they could probably have much larger cities if they allowed multithreading. To say nothing of the fact this is supposed to be a city builder, not a macro version of The Sims.

I suppose that might be unfair; the game is supposed to be whatever the programmers want it to be. But one can not trade on using the SimCity name and not expect to be (unfavorably) compared to previous iterations.

[Guynemer]

The small city size is vital for game balance now.

Because it is multiplayer.

Was there a groundswell of support for a multiplayer version of SimCity that I missed?

[snoopy369]

The small city size is vital for game balance now. They can't simply expand it. The whole game is making the most of a limited space, and using regions for the rest.

... they could change how the game balance works? Wasn't Civ5 a game that was made very carefully with 'game balance' in mind, but at the cost of speed of building things, ie, exchanging fun for game balance? This is better, how? I'd much rather be able to build whatever size city I want, than worry quite so much about game balance. (But again, I am not competitive about SimCity. This also isn't the game breaker for me it is for some, as I often stop around a few hundred K people, anyway. If I were to 'fix' it, I think I'd just make it so you can say each sim = 10 or 100 people, dividing by 10 or 100 the number of people that can be served in each region/building - allowing people to have whatever size (physically) city they want while allowing the number of 'real sims' to be the same (and the complexity and balance to be the same, or easily adjusted).

What game has successfully deterred pirates without a similar model?

It rather depends on your definitions of 'successfully' and 'deterred'. Nothing is ever going to 100% deter pirates. The point is to make it so people who might buy your game, do. Most games on Steam manage that with no problems - Steam servers are large enough and are just handling a quick authentication, so there's no real risk of overload. I doubt many games on Steam lose significant sales to piracy.

[snoopy369]

Apparently, the game only runs on one thread; they could probably have much larger cities if they allowed multithreading. To say nothing of the fact this is supposed to be a city builder, not a macro version of The Sims.

I suppose that might be unfair; the game is supposed to be whatever the programmers want it to be. But one can not trade on using the SimCity name and not expect to be (unfavorably) compared to previous iterations.

To be fair, I think having the individual sims is a good idea. Not having them in the SC4 way - ie, being able to visualize them and give them clothes or whatever **** that was - but I mean having individually simmed residents, which allow for a brownian motion sort of effect and more organic city growth. I think they probably needed to do it a little better and/or simpler given current hardware, but still I think it's good for SimCity. Older SimCitys tried to do things like this, but didn't do it nearly as well.

Balance wise, I think Wiggie is talking about internal balance, not necessarily MP balance. You'd certainly change some of the numbers of how things worked if you changed the potential size of the city, as well as changing how fast the city grows.

Honestly one of the bigger mistakes they made I am guessing is not making the 'regions' able to be grouped together more - I'd be happy if I could make Chicago with 40 regions of 200k each rather than one 8MM city. But from the reviews, the regions don't mesh together that well (they're too separated physically for that to work well, for one). Having each region have the same interconnection to one big highway/railway, instead of having more interesting things - like, say, Chicago would have 90/94 running up and down it and 55 and 290 and 355 and 294, and regions be various pieces off of those, with entrances and such being a bit different especially for the ones on corners of two major freeways.

[Wiglaf]

Nothing is ever going to 100% deter pirates. The point is to make it so people who might buy your game, do. Most games on Steam manage that with no problems

That a joke? There's 3,500 people on pirate bay stealing Borderlands 2 right now, and that's Steam only. There's no big secret why this is a multiplayer-focused game. EA realized it had to be always-on for DRM, then tried to make the best of it by offering the option of multiplayer. No one is forcing you to play MP. The game is just as fun and fulfilling without it.

[Wiglaf]

Honestly one of the bigger mistakes they made I am guessing is not making the 'regions' able to be grouped together more - I'd be happy if I could make Chicago with 40 regions of 200k each rather than one 8MM city. But from the reviews, the regions don't mesh together that well (they're too separated physically for that to work well, for one). Having each region have the same interconnection to one big highway/railway, instead of having more interesting things - like, say, Chicago would have 90/94 running up and down it and 55 and 290 and 355 and 294, and regions be various pieces off of those, with entrances and such being a bit different especially for the ones on corners of two major freeways.

I agree with this. They could easily add some DLC regions that allow for it. It's mostly cosmetic though.

[Wiglaf]

Because it is multiplayer.

Was there a groundswell of support for a multiplayer version of SimCity that I missed?

The balance as snoopy said is for single player as well as MP. The designers wanted this to be a game of careful planning and tradeoffs. Each fire station you place now is a pretty big deal for a variety of reasons. Every house you lose to crime or fire is a big deal.

[snoopy369]

That a joke? There's 3,500 people on pirate bay stealing Borderlands 2 right now, and that's Steam only. There's no big secret why this is a multiplayer-focused game. EA realized it had to be always-on for DRM, then tried to make the best of it by offering the option of multiplayer. No one is forcing you to play MP. The game is just as fun and fulfilling without it.

How many of those people would have bought the game if it had perfect DRM? Numbers of pirated games is a completely irrelevant strawman. I don't think their profit margin was significantly hit by these pirates. 3500 people stealing it is nothing, if 3500 people don't buy it because the DRM is there they lose a heck of a lot more money. I want a game that is MY game, that I can play without screwing with their maybe-running maybe-not servers.

I know you're trying to paint me out as some nerd who is in a minority, but this really isn't a very unusual stance, nor an unreasonable one. Certainly plenty of people don't care, which if that is EA's market, more power to them - those are the people who buy a lot of games and don't spend much time on any given one, and don't care if the servers are down anyway. But to the SimCity loyalists who are planning to play some version of SimCity for perhaps decades, EA isn't doing a favor here, and they'll certainly lose some sales - including mine.

[N35t0r]

That a joke? There's 3,500 people on pirate bay stealing Borderlands 2 right now, and that's Steam only. There's no big secret why this is a multiplayer-focused game. EA realized it had to be always-on for DRM, then tried to make the best of it by offering the option of multiplayer. No one is forcing you to play MP. The game is just as fun and fulfilling without it.

Is think the point is that most of those probably wouldn't have bought the game if they couldn't have pirated it. Those aren't lost sales that they would have gained with stricter DRM.

[Wiglaf]

How many of those people would have bought the game if it had perfect DRM? Numbers of pirated games is a completely irrelevant strawman.

How is the number of people who are downloading a free copy of a game a "completely irrelevant strawman" when arguing for the importance of DRM? At worst, it could be slightly misleading. Again, look at a game like Crysis. Revolutionary PC exclusive. Stolen so much the devs ran to console as fast as they could. EA is not stupid. They've given gamers a chance before and lost a lot of money on the deal.

[Wiglaf]

Is think the point is that most of those probably wouldn't have bought the game if they couldn't have pirated it. Those aren't lost sales that they would have gained with stricter DRM.

I do not believe this, or know why you would think this.

[Alexander's Horse]

simcity, blah. if it doesn't have armies or FPS I'm not interested

[snoopy369]

How is the number of people who are downloading a free copy of a game a "completely irrelevant strawman" when arguing for the importance of DRM? At worst, it could be slightly misleading. Again, look at a game like Crysis. Revolutionary PC exclusive. Stolen so much the devs ran to console as fast as they could. EA is not stupid. They've given gamers a chance before and lost a lot of money on the deal.

Because games/videos/mp3s are not physical goods, nobody 'loses' something when they're 'stolen'. The only thing that is lost is if the person pirating may have purchased the good, in which case the loss might be calculated as the % chance of that person buying the good times the retail cost of the good. The number of people pirating, by itself, is an irrelevant strawman.

So if 3500 people are stealing Borderlands, but 3000 of them would not have bought the game for any reason, and the other 500 had on average a 10% chance of buying the game (that's really high compared to the likely real chance), then the loss from piracy is, at maximum, 500*.1*$50, or $2500. Hardly a reason to have always-on servers ruining your game.

I hardly think 'ran to console' because of piracy is the case, either; presumably they went to the console because they could sell more on the console. Heck, Crysis is a terrible example, because it ran like **** on PCs when it first came out; going to consoles makes sense for them, since they can guarantee performance there.

[Hauldren Collider]

How is the number of people who are downloading a free copy of a game a "completely irrelevant strawman" when arguing for the importance of DRM? At worst, it could be slightly misleading. Again, look at a game like Crysis. Revolutionary PC exclusive. Stolen so much the devs ran to console as fast as they could. EA is not stupid. They've given gamers a chance before and lost a lot of money on the deal.

QFT. Crysis was awesome, but the sequel sucked because it had to be nerfed for consoles.

[snoopy369]

I do not believe this, or know why you would think this.

Because most of the people doing the pirating are 12 years old and pirate EVERY GAME OUT THERE to play for ten minutes, then move onto something else?