SimCity Will Finally Get an Offline Mode in Next Update

Year of the bow.

Year of Luigi.

Year of the mea culpa.

I dunno what sort of miracles they had to work to turn this "built from the ground up as a MMO" game into an offline one but well, it's still a matter of too little too late, and the online restriction was only one of the issues with a very flawed and unsatisfying game. Offline isn't going to remedy that issue, this is not the Sim City anyone wanted but EA/Maxis.

y...yay?

Too little too late

Literally would suggest that I'm still in diapers, cry when I go to the bathroom, cry when I'm hungry, and have an undeveloped brain.

Okay, while SOME of those are true, I'm not a baby.

SimCity 4 is offline and it's awesome. Maybe I'll play that.

Online wasn't the problem. The game sucks.

Mods made SC4 a great game, but without them it was at least pretty good.

Simcity is going to have mod support! They're adding mod support in a really big and soul stealing way:

Distribution of your Mod in any form constitutes a grant by you to EA of an irrevocable, perpetual, royalty-free, sub-licensable right to use, copy, modify and distribute that Mod (and derivatives of that Mod), and use your name if we choose to, for any purpose and through any means, and without obligation to pay you anything, obtain your approval, or give you credit. You also agree to promptly execute assignments confirming this license upon request from EA.

TOO LATE!!!!!!! sim city will have to go away for a while then start over again.

@spraynardtatum: Haha, that's just Perfect.

This is like getting an update on how a convict is progressing in his rehabilitation program. He'll never be pardoned, but it's nice to know his therapist is reaching him. Maybe one day he'll be suitable for a few visiting hours.

Eh, if it goes under $5 on a Steam sale I might pick it up.

Still not interested. The cities are still too small to not feel frustrated in. I don't want to build Manhattan, Reno, and Hollywood. I want to build Megacity 48 god damn it. I think I may try the Cities XL series and see if that's any good.

Until there is a patch that makes the city size bigger... Pass!

It ain't bigger cities, so I'm still not going back to it. Still, a tentative step in the right direction.

But they would need teh cloud for bigger cities!!1

I have a crappy restrictive softbank internet connection that has provented me from even updating and enjoying simcity at all. I'll definitely lug the pc to work to get this update when it arrives.

I'm going off the grid. I'm going to play Sim City via a proxy and snail mail. EA will never find me.

You will be waiting for at least ten years....

You will be waiting forever?

Hmm can't think of a great joke...it will never be on steam as it's a Origin Exclusive game.

I don't have a twitter account but I really want someone to ask him what his thoughts are.

Hahahhaha tsk tsk, Maxis.. niiiiice try. I'm still sore about Spore sucking!

@dooley: I think the part where you say "Having never played the older SimCity games" invalidates your opinion.

I bought the soundtrack. I think I'm good, thanks.

Just try not to be spore about sore sucking.

This is exactly how internet rumors form.

I'm neither willing to trust, nor pay into the system that EA and Maxis made here with Simcity, they didn't just lose my trust, they threw it out and I'm not sure they can engineer that back.

@larrydavis said:

if only nba live 14 had multiple tiny basketball courts instead of one big one lmoao

I like SimCity. But then I'm not so crazy negative as most people. More of a Jeff than a Alex, one might say.

I love So Much SimCity , And All Strategy Games ! :D

Cities are still too small, unfortunately.

Stick your blatant lies up your cloud, EA.

AhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhHAHAHAHA

@alex:

Late. Old. Clickbait. Get your news from a REAL source next time.

http://www.giantbomb.com/simcity/3030-37620/forums/current-state-of-simcity-1465283/

Love you.

x

I think they are a little late to add support for this. People stopped caring several months ago.

Why do people still buy anything from EA at all? Everything they get they ruin.

Although forcing a stand alone, single player game online is part of the problem a big issue is that the game itself is still too small. People don't aspire to build cities of hundreds of thousands and even then at that size the simulation is suspect.

Many people would begrudgingly play with the weird simulation and online if the city size topped out at 10 million. Although it is good to offer the player more modes like Offline it doesn't solve the issue of creating small cities.

Fuck this game

So maybe someone will mod real cities back into this game? That's the only thing I could possibly look forward to.

What if... they update the game to support bigger cities but say you need to be online to play them because the power of the cloud is necessary!?

Make it happen EA.

The game's engine doesn't handle large cities.

My real problems with the game were (are?) cities being too small and the broken AI. The Glassbox simulation ended up being far less intelligent than it claimed to be. Horrible traffic AI that was game breaking and the revelation that "agents" (sims in the game) didn't really use much logic in their actions. Leaving from one home and returning to another? Uh ...

Nah they said it's more that it doesn't handle them well. Someone could probably increase them by 5, 10% for example, and it'd just be up to your PC to either run laggy or not. The size of current cities is the best for most players, based on average computer specs, that's all.

Just think about it. What does "not handle large cities" even mean? What's "large"? If you moved the outskirts 1% out, would the game suddenly melt? No, it would probably be fine for all but X number of players. Maybe at 10% bigger it becomes a problem for 50% percent of players, know what I mean?

Playing that game alone would not make it any more enjoyable. The game was clearly designed from the ground up as a multiplayer experience. The game needs to be rebalanced and probably completely redone to add in a proper single player. Lets just let this one burn out as a failed experiment and hope EA can start getting stuff right. Honestly, between dragon age 2(which was clearly put out way too early), sim city with all its issues and battlefield 4 still being basically a mess makes me wary of EA products in the future.

At this point, any action the company takes to "resolve" the problem is just going to make things worse. Maxis, the "friend-ship" has sailed...

The funny part is we all say, "Too late" meanwhile hasn't this game sold well enough to make our waling irrelevant? As of July 2013 the game had sold over two million copies, so now it must be up to 2.2 or 2.4 million. It might not have been the major hit EA wanted, but it has probably covered their costs well enough. Any copies they sell from now onward are just gravy.

The lied, they handled the blow back well, they promoted the people most in the line of fire out of the way, and now they just ignore our muffled cries like they would ignore a bag of kittens sinking in an icy river. And, we're gamers - we will buy the next game even as we whine that it "Better be good THIS time..."

It doesn't matter what the technical reason turns out to be. People play(ed) SimCity to see if they can build and manage a city of population upwards of 10 million+ cities not a city of population ceiling of 100,000~. It might have been an interesting "spin-off" called SimSuburb but they didn't promise or advertise that.

If they managed this, I would re-install SimCity immediately.

I hope this kills always on DRM. To bad it had to kill Sim City with it

I'm not sure if they ever said but was anyone able to pirate this game? Did the always on DRM work in that regard or was a pirate able to flip the switch and torrent the game like it was The Witcher 2?

Yeah....still not playing this mess.