It seems a few players were a little upset with the way the most recent instalment of SimCity turned out. Today a survey is making the rounds suggesting several potential features and expansions that might transform Maxis’ train-wreck into the game we wanted in the first place.
What sort of improvements and changes? How about the ability to raise and lower the ground? Larger cities, so we’re not done building in 30 minutes? The return of subways! Along with these compelling features, the survey also gauges interest in fresh multiplayer features, including I don’t care about multiplayer SimCity anymore. Wait, that’s not on the list.
The survey continues, laying out the idea of a potential expansion pack, packed with further really cool things that might make me open up Origin again. I love the idea of SuperScrapers reaching into the sky, with the ability to split them into distinctive zones. And future cities? Yes, please. I want my city to progress until we are all Autobots and Decepticons.
Of course this is just a survey, and no indicator of what EA’s actual plans might be. It’s at least somewhat comforting to imagine they might be listening to SimCity players for the first time since all of this shit went down.
Comments
24 responses to “SimCity Survey Gropes About For Ways To Keep Folks Playing”
All of these options save for things like the military pack and the like sound like things I’m bullish for. Particularly the limitless option that they mention here http://imgur.com/a/n9gy8#0 would certainly make me play it again
Price point for the new expansions: 99 dollars.
Definatly bigger cities followed by subways.The small land plots were the only problem I had with the game.
Guilds? What sort of game are they trying to turn it into? Basically though, most of the other ‘features’ seem to be in Sim City 4 but in their wisdom decided that people didn’t need them for this version
Obviously you missed EA’s earlier memo about Simcity being an MMO like service 8D
Bigger plots would give me more of a reason to buy the game. To turn it from Sim Town to Sim City.
Let me build a hive city from 40K and i’ll play.
I’d much prefer they fix the game halting bugs before they attempt to give us what was already included in sim city 2000.
Bigger cities (… much bigger) + offline mode.
Put in an offline mode so that people who do not want to be forced to deal with the rushed tacked-on connectivity designed purely as a transparent excuse for shitty always-on DRM will not be forced to deal with the rushed tacked-on connectivity designed purely as a transparent excuse for shitty always-on DRM.
If EA does this then I MIGHT just consider playing it!
The DRM aint that bad anymore, I started playing after Ver. 4.0 and have only had one server dissconnect in 50+ hours, is you want an off-line version, well there are ways but from a gameplay point I would feel it would not be inprovement as it would just be like starting a private region.
I think it’s more fun playing on a region with other players and adds a another level of dynamic complexity, so I view at a multi-player game so have no problem with the current state of DRM in the game however I am glad I missed the train wreck of a luanch.
I’m quite sad I haven’t gotten this email.
I’d just tell them “Go look at Sim City 3000.”
Shared Events? Leaderboards? Guilds? These guys still don’t get it, do they?
Nope, nothing. Sorry. I’ve moved on. I’m not dating that ex-game again.
Always Online and treating it almost like a MMO was the big hope for these guys. On paper, MMOs are awesome for revenue for two reasons and you can see why.
1) Social pressure. It’s why facebook works, even though google+ is the ‘better’ product. In the fever dreams of EA execs, everyone would be playing Sim City together through social pressure/incentive. And that would make it much easier to agree to that drip-feed of The Sims-style DLC they were planning. (Mark my words, that bullet point is on a powerpoint presentation somewhere in EA.)
2) No piracy. It doesn’t matter how much you store or calculate client-side, ‘always online’ is the ultimate DRM, and that remains its greatest selling point to out-of-touch morons who stupidly equate 1 pirated copy to 1 lost sale and consequently believe that they are missing out on BILLIONS in revenue. We all know arguments about the ‘benefits of multiplayer’ are so much horse shit when they are provided as the only option, and not just an attractive option. The pros and cons have been weighed and decided for you, the choice taken away from you.
There are a few other bonuses such as increased brand loyalty due to exposure, some good opportunities for subliminal/overt-and-obnoxious advertising and cross-promotion, and having the numbers of who’s logging into your servers with regularity is a statistic you can reliably provide to advertisers.
“We can guarantee X number of eyeballs on your product.” You can’t garauntee that with one-off box purchases, if the players then don’t actually log in to be measured.
It’s insidious and because I prefer the production of games to be treated as a creative endeavour first, business second instead of the reverse, I want to see them fail and fail hard, as a warning to the rest of the industry.
Regarding “No Piracy”, that’s not true. There are custom servers for a lot of MMO’s – EverQuest 1 & 2, Starwars Galaxies, WoW, and heaps more. Search Google for “mmo custom servers” and you’ll find heaps for games that never had those servers released.
People figured out the protocols and wrote their own servers and eventually got them working with a particular version of the game client.
Now, these usually say you must have a legal copy of the game, they’re not offering the game for download, and don’t help you find it. But since these aren’t official servers, they can’t check to see if you’ve bought it, so by proxy piracy is possible because it lets people play the game without paying a monthly fee or whatever the purchase model is.
They might as well just call the game Sim City Online… and pretty sure that already existed
is there an option to want a version of simcity 4 with all its features running in the new engine, witouth the online bs?
Modding allowed?
Multiple game saves ?
Offline play?
How about make a new version of Transport Tycoon built into simcity, you zoom in to the city to build the city simcity stlye, and you zoom out to see all your citys and build industry TT style. On second thought i dont want to see EA do this ever.
“Along with these compelling features, the survey also gauges interest in fresh multiplayer features, including I don’t care about multiplayer SimCity anymore. Wait, that’s not on the list.”
Damn. Region play could be cool if it worked properly. I wish at least gifting money worked, that shouldn’t be hard to get right. I’ve sent at least 20 gifts to other cities I own so far and not one has come through, luckily the sending city can generate cash quickly without much trouble.
I hope I get a mail with this survey since I’ve got the game. They need to at least include bigger cities and terraforming. One of my cities is on a mountaintop with about 1/4 of the, already tiny, space usable! Took many tries to even get a road to the top o.0
Bigger cities! And fix the road textures – they still disappear when you zoom out and it makes everything look really crummy.
I thought the community had been pretty vocal about what they wanted. Bigger cities and removal of the DRM… Not sure why this needed a survey.
Because those things are never going to happen, so they need to know what else they can do. 🙂
I enjoyed Sim City from the original through to Sim City 4 (although I skipped SC3000), and the gameplay videos were looking great for this new one. My big worry was that it would be as poorly-optimised as SC4, which ran like a palsied slug. At no time have I considered Sim City to be a multiplayer game.
I get that multiplayer would be a cool feature and that in many ways it would make it a more interesting game. But region management was one of my favourite things about SC4, and I got to do it all by myself.
If there was one thing EA could do to make me even consider buying “New SC”, it would be to have a SP mode similar to SC4. To push me into “purchase” territory, it would also need offline mode and I would need to start hearing less complaints about Origin.
Nothing they do will get me to play/buy their game. You killed the franchise for me EA.