What is wrong with people wanting an updated SimCity 4 ie something that had something resembling a city?
Nobody asked them to sacrifice game mechanics. They were the ones who chose to remove cities ...
And yes it is a perfectly legitimate business practice to create a game that 90% of the people can't experience to the full ... you yourself quoted Crysis and there are plenty of other games in fact which give you options for graphics and physics ... why not here. So keep the rolleyes you're being quite obtuse if you can't get past a few simple facts:
1) Always online is bad for single player games
2) When you buy a game called SimCITY that is about CITY management that is in a series of games about managing CITIES then you kind of expect them to provide as much detail as they can in a city through options not provide an experience that looks like you are building hamlet ...
Nothing is wrong with it, but thats not what Maxis has done, is it. Its not the game we'd all wish it could be, but what there is appears to be extremely good, and while apparently a LOT of people hold a lot of hate towards a few decisions they've made (Maxis/EA ie DRM, sizes etc) i personally would rather see them keep the integrity of the game more thorough, rather than compromise.
SimCity 4 was fairly artificial. It was pretty realistic behind the scenes, fake on-screen.
SimCity 5 is mechanically sound, and visually attractive and representative of whats going on behind the scenes too.
The thing is, what could be dumbed down, or taken away, to make room for say 25% more GPU power to enable more real estate?? The game mechanics probably wouldnt, because they dont seem to be particularly taxing on the CPU. Its the visual representation of information, thats what needs to be dialed down. If you start compromising on that, then your in this middle ground where your dependant on charts to know whats happening in the city right infront of you, the visual city is just there to make pretty screenshots.
Personally, and im perhaps in the minority, happy with an engine that is thinking ahead, and should be able to do 10x10km plots, but is let down by the fact the customers dont own supercomputers, but every supercomputer is a home computer in a couple of years. They're kinda setting the foundations, now they need to optimise it and let hardware advances come to them, and together we'll get the game we'd like SC5 to be.
Crysis, well thats quite different to what you'd proposed (or my understanding of it). Crysis was 100% playable on modern hardware, however it was scalable for the future. They didnt make it so that there were levels which were simply unplayable on cutting edge tech meaning nobody could play them. Crysis was made with room to grow into, but you werent losing anything in the meantime. If SC5 had maps which were bigger and made the game unplayable, thats a terrible practice, and we all know the reviewers and customers would slate them for including something they couldnt play properly and it'd be just one more thing people would blame on EA.
We just have to accept that the game we want isnt quite possible just yet, but its close.
I dont disagree with DRM, im not a fan, but ive never said otherwise, ive not even brought it up. The only thing i addressed was this misconception that maxis could have given us huge city but are choosing not to, and they'll charge us upto £20 for them as DLC.
As for sizes, same again, i'd rather they were bigger, but technology says that isnt possible without being more like SC4 and being dependant on misleading visuals (fake traffic etc) and data tables for information. But i havent suggested their fine as they are, i've only tried to explain why they are how they are, hopefully so more people are informed with reasoned explanations rather than having silly conspiracy theories. But instead its implied on on the EA/Maxis payroll, simply for pointing out truths about only what i've addressed, like im saying everything else is therefore perfectly acceptable and everyone should suck it up and love it.
I dont agree with DRM, i wish the cities were bigger. But that doesnt change the fact that the points i'd initially made were valid, and since then ive been drawn into discussing other areas by people taking my first post out of the subjects i'd gone into, because they assume im defending every aspect, when im only trying to clarify 1 area, city sizes and why we're stuck with them being smaller than we'd like for the time being.
