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Maxis explores offline mode for SimCity; Bigger cities ruled out.

Saty

Member
http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/state-of-simcity

Exploration for Offline Mode is Happening

Right now we have a team specifically focused on exploring the possibility of an offline mode. I can’t make any promises on when we will have more information, but we know this is something that many of our players have been asking for. While the server connectivity issues are behind us, we would like to give our players the ability to play even if they choose not to connect. An offline mode would have the additional benefit of providing room to the modding community to experiment without interfering or breaking the multiplayer experience.

Bigger Cities

City sizes have been a constant point of conversation among our players since we released the game. The game’s original design focused on the density of an intimate urban environment. It was about intercity connectivity and the challenge of managing a region of cities instead of one metropolis in isolation. However, we recognize that many players have expressed the desire to build up one big city rather than manage the interrelationship of multiple smaller cities.

We’ve put months of investigation into making larger city sizes, reworking the terrain maps, changing the routing algorithms of our agent-based system and altering the way that GlassBox processes the data in a larger space.

After months of testing, I confirm that we will not be providing bigger city sizes. The system performance challenges we encountered would mean that the vast majority of our players wouldn’t be able to load, much less play with bigger cities. We’ve tried a number of different approaches to bring performance into an acceptable range, but we just couldn’t achieve it within the confines of the engine. We’ve chosen to cease work on bigger city sizes and put that effort into continuing to evolve the core game and explore an offline mode. Some of the experiments we conducted to improve performance on bigger cities will be rolled into future updates to improve overall game performance.
 

Raven77

Member
So...your engine is terrible.

This game does NOT have that much going on graphically and I doubt it is running more computations than Sim City 4 does when playing a massive real city, not the small towns you get in this game.
 

Seanspeed

Banned
The game’s original design focused on the density of an intimate urban environment. It was about intercity connectivity and the challenge of managing a region of cities instead of one metropolis in isolation.

BS.

Sounds like your engine is just shit and this is all you guys could manage with it. Nobody in their right minds wants some tiny little SimCity plot.
 

KKRT00

Member
So...your engine is terrible.

This game does NOT have that much going on graphically and I doubt it is running more computations than Sim City 4 does when playing a massive real city, not the small towns you get in this game.

It runs much more computation than Sim City 4. Sim City 4 isnt even multithreaded, this one is and i had like 50% CPU utilization on 4 cores on my i5 2500k. Its because Sim City 2013's agents are moving real-times.
I figured that low end dual core requirement for this game will hurt it and thats why they wont patch bigger cities ;\, what a bummer.
 
While offline mode would be nice, the insanely small city sizes is what kept me from buying this game. I played the demo and had the entire map covered in less than 1 hour. Good thing sc4 is mod friendly and still hella fun.
 
Still trying to turn the latest Simcity into something interesting? I can't shrug hard enough. Just move on Maxis; you screwed this one up, but you can always learn, and come back with something different next time.

will polygon update their review, that is the real question

Bravo!
 

DaBuddaDa

Member
The idiotic looking, absurdly small cities was the thing that most turned me off from this game...so that's the final nail in the coffin for me.
 

Amneisac

Member
I bought Sim City, got a $20 credit from Amazon. Returned Sim City after 3 days, Amazon told me to keep the $20 and then I got Dead Space 3 from EA's "Sorry we fucked up" promotion.

So Sim City cost me -$20 and Dead Space 3 and I still feel like I overpaid.
 

HT UK

Member
With bigger cities being ruled out completely, finally time to un-install this and give up hope.

At least SC4 is on Steam :)
 

Darklord

Banned
So...your engine is terrible.

This game does NOT have that much going on graphically and I doubt it is running more computations than Sim City 4 does when playing a massive real city, not the small towns you get in this game.

Pretty much. They build an engine JUST for a large scale city sim and they can't handle large cities. What the fuck were they thinking? I mean if it was Frostbite or U3 and they claimed the engine wasn't designed for it I can kind of see that as an excuse(though still a bad one) but really, it just sounds amateurish and stupid.

I was so hyped for this game and was really open to accepting a lot of the changes but god, what a shitfest.
 

Aureon

Please do not let me serve on a jury. I am actually a crazy person.
Bigger cities ruled out?
This becoming a decent game, ruled out.
 

BobLoblaw

Banned
Well how about that. The two reasons I decided not to buy SimCity is because there was no offline mode and the limited size of cities. Fuck you Maxis for making me skip your game.
 

Morzak

Member
So...your engine is terrible.

This game does NOT have that much going on graphically and I doubt it is running more computations than Sim City 4 does when playing a massive real city, not the small towns you get in this game.

There is a lot more computation in SC2013, the agent model makes a lot of computations necessary. The problem is more it seems to be damn ineficient, just give us bigger cities and let's see how many peole can handle it.....

Mind you even though SC2013 has to do a lot more computation and every sim is actually an agent, the system they designed is so incredible stupid, that the behaviour just doesn't make any sense in the context of a CityBuilder.

So if they deliver offline mode, will they allow mods that impact (fix) the simulation? or would that destroy the vision of maxis.....
 

Muku

Member
Offline sounded promising... then I got to part with no bigger cities. No thanks. I'd have been tempted to jump on board if bigger cities were in works. Though I wouldn't have actually gotten the game until things were in. Not sure I trust EA enough to buy on word alone on that.
 

Rad-

Member
The most annoying part is that the game was actually pretty darn fun, except for the tiny cities. They made a really bad decision with this engine.
 
What a fucking mess of a game. Everyone involved should feel embarrassed and ashamed. Nearly every aspect of it seems like a step backwards.
 
Seems like smoke and mirrors. EA delaying action in an attempt to give credence to the bullshit stories about how complex an offline mode would be. This should have been your #1 priority after launch week.

Fuck you General Manager. edit. And go back to Capitol Hill maybe people there will believe your the garbage you just typed.
 

Brick

Member
Offline is nice, but without bigger cities, I have no reason to return back to this game. Damn shame too, because that was the only thing keeping me from really enjoying the game.
 

inky

Member
This game turned out to be such a joke. I can't thank you enough EA, for not breaking tradition and shitting on a perfectly good franchise again.

Add another on to the "DEAD" list.
 

Zemm

Member
Bigger cities is far more important than offline mode, but if they can't do it they can't do it. Should fire whoever designed the engine and start work on a new one asap because the current game is complete shit and will continue to be with these "city" sizes.
 

antitrop

Member
Holy shit, they're still trying to make this game relevant?

I had forgotten about it, probably better off that way.
 

Redshirt

Banned
It'll be great once the modding community can be involved, and I'm sure it'll deliver bigger cities.

It's still stupefying that EA completely ignored the component that made SC4 so successful for so long, but it's better late than never. This game can be great for a decade with the community behind it.
 

Raven77

Member
But does the "agent model" even work???

I thought clever PC players looked into it and found that it was all just smoke and mirrors with the AI system not working anything at all like they claim it does.
 

KKRT00

Member
For a love of god.

Its not an engine fault! Its fault of low PC requirement. Big cities would require 4 cores, but most of their player base play on low end PCs and laptops.
 

epmode

Member
For a love of god.

Its not an engine fault! Its fault of low PC requirement. Big cities would require 4 cores, but most of their current base is low end PCs and laptops.

Then you develop a game that lowers the graphics fidelity in exchange for allowing bigger cities on lower end hardware. This game was a mistake from the beginning.
 

megalowho

Member
I don't know a single person that's still playing, plans to play or has a positive opinion of the new SimCity 7 months out. It's admirable they're at least making an effort to try and incorporate player feedback despite the initial PR pushback, but going by my real world experience that time has passed. Limiting mod capabilities will not do the game any favors as well. SimCity 2013 will be remembered as a cautionary tale instead of the modern classic it could have been, and that's a shame.
 

paolo11

Member
You know, I'm happy EA decided to add offline mode for this game. At least they have the courtesy to think of doing it.


Diablo 3 on PC on the other hand.......
 

Mr Swine

Banned
For a love of god.

Its not an engine fault! Its fault of low PC requirement. Big cities would require 4 cores, but most of their player base play on low end PCs and laptops.

Just make the game scale area size depending what specs you have. Shouldn't be hard for EA/Maxis to do... Oh wait we forgot that EA is the worst company in the US 2 years in a row:/
 

AkuMifune

Banned
Great news! And good thing the game hasn't come out yet. Can't imagine how things would've turned out had they tried an online only approach.
 

Mihos

Gold Member
Man, this is just way too little too late. The whole business model around SimCity is just gross to me at this point.
 
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