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    SimCity

    Game » consists of 9 releases. Released Mar 05, 2013

    The fifth major installment of the SimCity franchise is a new take on the old city simulation formula. It features asynchronous multiplayer as well as Maxis' new Glassbox engine, allowing for real time customization and upgrading of buildings.

    Offline mode is here....

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    endoworks

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    Well they listened, it's been almost a year since the release but Maxis announced today on it's blog that it will be adding Sim City Offline mode.... now all it needs is bigger maps :) but this is nice, very very late, but hey major changes a year into a game means they are at least trying I guess :)

    http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/simcity-offline-is-coming?utm_campaign=simcity-social-na-socom-fb-offlinemodeiscoming-jan13-fb&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&sourceid=simcity-social-na-socom-fb-offlinemodeiscoming-jan13-fb&cid=19405

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    ViciousBearMauling

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    Well it doesn't fix the fact that I have to run multiple cities in order to play optimally, instead of one giant city.

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    slax

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    Doesn't this undermine their mod policy from last week? If it's offline, how much control could they have of how their game is modded?

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    Ben_H

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    #4 Ben_H  Online

    This is so hilarious. It basically proves the extreme majority of what they said about how the game functions last year is a load of garbage. They claimed they needed "the cloud" to make the game function and that offline was not possible, which had already been proven to not be the case, but seeing it confirmed in an official capacity makes it even funnier.

    Maybe EA will finally learn that being money-grubbing dirtbags and burning through every ounce of good will with their customer base by cramming a beloved franchise full of DLC and intrusive DRM is perhaps not a good way to make money.

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    Evilsbane

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    #5  Edited By Evilsbane

    No Big cities was my problem and it remains my problem.

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    bigjeffrey

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    EA servers must be going offline

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    Rafaelfc

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    It's funny how they are dumping a lot of time and effort into a game that in optimal conditions and when working as intended, is a huge bummer of a game.

    They should forget it and let Maxis move on to (ruining) better things

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    Jimbo

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    Neat. Give the community another 6-12 months to finish making it and it'll probably turn out a pretty good game.

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    spraynardtatum

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    yeaaaaaaahhh I don't really care at this point.

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    noizy

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    #10  Edited By noizy

    I've stayed away from that game due to the community feedback and limitations. If they make the plots bigger, I'll be tempted to grab it for 5 or 10$ to see it for myself.

    If the plots were bigger, would it fix most of the issues with the game, or is there something deeply shallow about the mechanics too that is beyond fixing?

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    cmblasko

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    #11  Edited By cmblasko

    I,for one, think that EA and Maxis should be congratulated for achieving the "impossible."

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    Wolfgame

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    Seems to me this may not matter at this point. The game has issues beyond the ability to play online/offline, my understanding is that they still haven't gotten a grasp on fixing some of the more basic bugs that plagued the game at release. I wouldn't buy this game under any circumstances.

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    spraynardtatum

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    @noizy said:

    I've stayed away from that game due to the community feedback and limitations. If they make the plots bigger, I'll be tempted to grab it for 5 or 10$ to see it for myself.

    If the plots were bigger, would it fix most of the issues with the game, or is there something deeply shallow about the mechanics too that is beyond fixing?

    The mechanics of the game were great. You'd just fill up a plot within a couple hours and the rest of the game is maintaining. If the cities were bigger and you could play offline the game would be great.

    It's hilarious that they've added offline mode. They spent the entire year last year explaining how it wouldn't even be possible and then 2014 rolls around with a new offline mode. To me, they've just admitted that everything they said about how they designed their game was bullshit.

    On the other hand it did take them a year.....

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    elyhaym

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    Funny how when you're faced with enough backlash, the impossible becomes possible, huh EA?

    In any event, it's a step in the right direction, but the biggest problem with that game will forever be the city size limit.

    I'm not even sure it's wise for EA to keep drawing attention to this game anymore. They dropped the ball on it, accept it and move on.

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    jimmyfenix

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    noizy

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    #16  Edited By noizy

    @spraynardtatum said:

    @noizy said:

    I've stayed away from that game due to the community feedback and limitations. If they make the plots bigger, I'll be tempted to grab it for 5 or 10$ to see it for myself.

    If the plots were bigger, would it fix most of the issues with the game, or is there something deeply shallow about the mechanics too that is beyond fixing?

    The mechanics of the game were great. You'd just fill up a plot within a couple hours and the rest of the game is maintaining. If the cities were bigger and you could play offline the game would be great.

    It's hilarious that they've added offline mode. They spent the entire year last year explaining how it wouldn't even be possible and then 2014 rolls around with a new offline mode. To me, they've just admitted that everything they said about how they designed their game was bullshit.

    On the other hand it did take them a year.....

    The bluff on the always online being core to the game engine was debunked early on when someone hacked the game to work offline. I can see how they want to gloss over that as it's pretty embarrassing. It was totally a design decision to enforce always online, and they built some peripheral "social" features to justify it. Slicing the large plot into an interconnected region provided a credible story for an online experience, while allowing lower minimum spec requirements by the use of smaller city plots. I can see how they convinced themselves this was the way to market their decision. The problem is that we didn't want to play it that way.

    They are hanging on that the plot size can't be increased due to performance issue. That argument only works if you explicitly agree to maintaining certain minimum PC spec and want to ensure the game runs smoothly on the low end systems. I think they could increase the plot size if they are willing to increase the minimum requirement (which might piss people off with low-end PCs; yet another PR nightmare). Or maybe that's also complete BS again, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt as I can understand the correlation between system performance and the increasing requirements in computation for a larger city with more to simulate (If only they could offload those computation to the cloud, could you imagine? :P). I think they should cave on that too for the sake of the game; at least I'd like to as I know I could probably handle large plot sizes.

    Could they lock off larger plots until someone ran a "performance benchmark test", and only recommend/allow the larger plot to those with enough CPU cycles? That'd be my recommendation, similar to Low, Medium, High, Ultra we are familiar with for graphics settings, except this time for CPU bound processes. I might be a bit naive, or maybe too reasonable?

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