Simcity

[Wiglaf]

You don't have a problem with that?

Actually, no. Now my decisions have more consequences. It autosaves when I log out.

[Dinner]

Hasn't Kickstarter always been a place for startups? It's not really about public good, unless you count supporting a business as a public good. I think you're misinterpreting the purpose of that website.

I probably am as Ken and MM pointed out.

[kentonio]

I guess that's true but all I seem to see there are 3rd rate self published video games, D&D nerds who think they can make a better version of an RPG, tons of garage bands by teenagers who think they'll be the next big thing in the music business, and bad authors who couldn't get published any other way.

This is only really true if you think that games, books and bands get chosen by investors purely on merit. Given that the decision (for games at least) is generally based on an executive making a pretty arbitrary decision, you can understand why gamers are embracing getting to choose which games they actually want to get made. There have actually been a number of very high budget, high profile games funded this way already.

It's just not exciting me the way the project to build a new public market here in San Diego did as that project at least had lasting community good as part of it's goal and I don't see how paying to have some no name band self publish their own CD will do any public good.

It's got nothing to do with public good, Kickstarter is a business that takes IIRC 5% of all contributions.

[snoopy369]

I'm fine with actions having consequences (see: XCOM), but I don't like it in SimCity. SimCity is for me to have fun. And I don't want 'sandbox' mode with infinite money - that's not what I mean by sandbox. I mean a mode where I can play around and try different things, see which helps my game more, without trying to "win". I still want the limitation of money

Anywho, Wiggie, I'm not trying to say "SimCity is a lousy game". I'm saying "SimCity is not the game I'd like to play". I have no objection to you ... enjoying ... it as much as you want to. I just don't think I would. And honestly it'd probably be fun - just not $60 worth of fun, and perhaps not the # of hours worth of fun (see: 2 kids = no time).

[Wiglaf]

Why did you put "enjoying" in between creepy ellipses like that? Do you think I am jerking it to this game?

[Wiglaf]

BECAUSE I AM

[snoopy369]

I guess what Guy and I and (millions of others? one or two guys? who knows) are wondering, is why EA couldn't have simply taken this game, and added on "no server" mode, where everything's exactly the same except the input/output from other regions/cities/whatever the server is doing is fixed and/or set according to some limited algorithm, not dissimilar to SimCity 4? I think if they made just that change, and no other change, I'd be happy. (That would presumably include the ability to save games and reload, since it's my local server and thus I could backup my local server.) Leaving that out, forcing us to be in EA's server always, is just plain insulting, and makes the game far less likely to be enjoyable - you have all sorts of people locked out from playing early on when the inevitable server overload hit, you have a time limited game that will cease working in a few years, etc.

It's not like server instability is a surprise; unless they did a limited release (a la Gmail or whatever), they'll get that, because you know you'll have a spike at release day; you might have 400% of your reasonable baseline player count on release day, if not 1600% or 25000%. Why would you put enough servers into play to support that - it would be horrifically expensive. Instead they just say "We can handle it", and never, ever can. Sigh. Add in an offline mode and this wouldn't have mattered - but they didn't.

And yes, the ellipses was for that purpose.

[Wiglaf]

DRM is the obvious answer. They'd lose millions of dollars with a different system. But I think there's some good to come of being always on. Every week Maxis posts a challenge (the first one is 1.2 million pop in a region) and ranks people as they try to achieve it. That kind of thing is fun and engaging and adds some competitiveness to the game.

[snoopy369]

Erm, again, this is my taste; but I don't give a rat's ass about challenges or competitiveness. I don't play SimCity competitively. I don't care about challenges. I like being able to simulate a city. That's it.

DRM, of course; but that's a stupid reason, given it's costing them sales. 100000000000000 people can pirate the game, but if they lose one sale from DRM it's likely a net loss to them to have the DRM.

[Wiglaf]

EA's highly paid and competent analysts disagree with you there, and I'm inclined to agree with them after what happened to Crysis. The nerds who hate DRM are very vocal, but the losses from piracy are even more staggering.

[snoopy369]

They make those numbers up, as you well know; "# of people pirating * $ cost of game" is an idiotic term for "losses". Either way, it doesn't affect my point: they made this game in a way that makes me less willing to play it. If their unwillingness to have an offline mode is primarily DRM related, then my money is a casualty of DRM, as probably is Guy's and (some) others. Other companies manage to do DRM in ways that doesn't inhibit the playing experience - EA should consider it. I'm not some anti-Steam extremist; I'd be happy to play it on Steam. Origin plus always-on servers is idiotic.

[Guynemer]

Agreed. Lord knows, my feelings on piracy are well-known here. But I have a hard time accepting that the cost of rightly ass****ing pirates is the complete inability to play it offline, or even allow our own save games. Fix that, and I could probably overlook (what looks like crippling) city size and other creative limitations.

I am also extremely leery of likely future microtransactions on the part of EA. I would be surprised none at all if they allowed larger cities for an additional $10, or $5 for a civic building pack, $0.99 for reskin of this, that, the other building...

I doubt we'll see the sort of modding community for this release that was present for SimCity 4.

[snoopy369]

I don't think city size is crippled as a monetary issue; they've said it's a processor capability issue (ie, you can only handle 200k or so sims before your machine craps out unless you have a Cray). I can believe that. I think it was a poor decision to cap it there - either make your sim algorithms tighter, or make them slightly less good in exchange for having a lot more of them - but nonetheless.

Mostly the microtransactions are going to be new buildings and tilesets and such, which I can live with. We'll see. Modding certainly won't be where it was for SC4; it probably won't be possible to be as good.

[Wiglaf]

What game has successfully deterred pirates without a similar model?

[Wiglaf]

I don't think city size is crippled as a monetary issue; they've said it's a processor capability issue (ie, you can only handle 200k or so sims before your machine craps out unless you have a Cray). I can believe that. I think it was a poor decision to cap it there - either make your sim algorithms tighter, or make them slightly less good in exchange for having a lot more of them - but nonetheless.

Mostly the microtransactions are going to be new buildings and tilesets and such, which I can live with. We'll see. Modding certainly won't be where it was for SC4; it probably won't be possible to be as good.

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.