Since the new, smaller cities are designed to specialize, I'm just going to think of the region as my city when playing by myself.

And it will make it easier to participate in a number of group games as well.

But It's not the same man

City Size Extender for only $9.99!

Buy it now!

EDIT: Who am I kidding, you guys will.

No, but I don't really ever plan to play the game, so whatever.

Enjoyed what I played in the beta. With there being enough city plots over a bunch of different regions to make me not miss terraforming so much, and some regions having space for 16 cities, I'm ok with it.

Once I have a full grasp of the systems within the game, I plan to go to one of the 16 city regions and make each one a "City lot" that does either R/C/I or services.

It seems like the game is designed to have you considering an entire region as opposed to a specific city within that region (right? or are other cities in your region only meant to be established by other players). The bigger problem, on an aesthetic level, is definitely the rather unnatural boundary around each city.

No, it's different, but different can be just as good. Just look at DmC.

I kinda like the whole region idea, but the boundaries of the cities where they just all the sudden stop is kinda jarring. You'd think they'd add in some suburb autofill once you build to the border.

No, but the city size is still a disappointment. I wouldn't really have a problem with it if the region resembled SimCity 4 regions, but there's just empty space between cities that just look plain dumb.

We get it, you dont like the game or the DRM policy, dont bash people for buying a game though. I agree its lame, but if it makes you that mad just stay away from the game.

Yeah, we've seen that joke about a thousand times now. Keep at it, it can only get more funny.

After watching the quick look I don't think I'll give this game a shot. The small city size and online requirement are two big issues.

Yep, the online/multiplayer looked annoying and not what I wanted, but I could live with that. But making tiny towns that max out quickly, fiddling with interactions, and pretending that a region is a "city" is not at all what I want to play.

Totally.

Now let's say the idea was to specialize every cities within a region and that they were all directly next to one another like in SimCity 4 and that when looking at the region view you get the sense that it's all one big metropolitan area and that there is some amount of design on the player's part to give it a nice, well planned look then sure it would work.

Instead there's these humongous open empty spaces with these tiny squares scattered about. Even if mechanically it works it looks so fucking stupid.

You are very jaded it seems.

Ironically, both games turn me off quite a bit due to their aesthetics.

You do realize who you're talking to, don't you?

:'(

Anyway, they are big enough for me. Sure I would really love if they were bigger but it is ok.

Dude, he just really needs you to know how much better than you he thinks he is.

I think the multi-city play will alleviate this issue a lot, you just can't think of every city as self-sufficient if you want to build big. If you play one of those 16 city regions by yourself that is going to give you a lot of space to build.

He should go back into his little troll den cause no one cares what he thinks.

On its own maybe not, but combined with the lack of terraforming and the always-on nonsense, no thank you. I'll sit this one out.

It's been going on for years. At this point, it astounds me he hasn't been banned.

But the fact that they are all plots of city that abruptly stop makes the whole thing feel kinda weird.

No. But it is one of a handful of iffy things that add up. The set terrain plots and inability to just make a solitary city added to the small size make me question the longevity of this game for me.

I don't like the small cities, but are they a "dealbreaker"? Hell fucking no.

Plus, they've already said they plan to expand city sizes in the future. And with the amount of gamer kvetching going on already, I wouldn't be surprised if they do it sooner than later.

And no, they wouldn't charge for something like that, or they'd have an insurrection on their hands.

Aside from the small cities, the game looks fantastic. A lot of the bugs being experienced by people like Jeff will inevitably get squashed, and the game will only get better. Considering Jeff himself still likes the game in spite of it's problems, it can only get better.

Its not even that the plots are small, but that they are fucking tiny.

I'm more worried about the damn thing running on my macbook air. looks heavy and janky even in powerful PCs.

No, it isn't a deal breaker. Sure it would be nice if they were larger, but there is actually a surprising amount of depth to the game that wasn't even touched on in the QL. Watching Totalbiscuit's "WTF is Simcity" video exposed me to lots of nuances and aspects of the game I didn't know about even after the research I've done. I think there will be plenty to do in the game, especially with the city specialization aspect and the apparent addition of ANNO-like supply chain management. But seriously, watch TB's video which I think is a pretty fair assessment:

Absolutely. I really have no interest in the game after seeing it in the quick look.

I'd not really looked at the game before the quick look, but Vinny's reaction to it was exactly the same as mine. Huge let down by the looks of it.

I was extremely deflated by the quick look. The small city size sort of defeats the joy I get from Sim City, which is trying to make the most aesthetically pleasing city as possible. You can't do that when cities can't be self sufficient because of their size.

I didn't want a puzzle game, i wanted a tool to create amazing looking cities, maybe i never wanted sim city?

my only experience with the series was the first game after all.

I'd say it is for me. I just don't feel like I'm playing a proper next-gen Sim City when nothing I make resembles a fucking city. Plus, always online was already a deal breaker in the first place. Between the lack of terraforming, always online drm, tiny cities, and the seemingly stupid road system it's like they tried as hard as they could to keep me from wanting to play it.

The Quick Look pretty much turned me off from the game.

Like Jeff stated at the end of the Quick Look: "I hate that I am having so much fun playing this game." Unless EA releases an update to remove the boundaries, and maybe add a terraforming tool, then I don't see myself playing this game for too long. If EA doesn't fix this issue, then I hope the community pulls a Dark Souls move and release a fix/hack to solve this problem (because if have zero programming skills).

@cmblasko: Same for me. I'll return to it in a few weeks/months and see what the status is.

I agree with @SathingtonWaltz in that the small city size kind of ruined the feeling of playing a new SimCity game in the year 2013. While the simulation aspects are clearly in place and works for most part; it is all in ant-farm form instead of feeling like you're creating a large city. Also the way you need to compromise on your design to maximize the outputs of your city is also ruining some of the creative joy of it. If we had more room, we could make a large and custom/personalized city.

I really like the idea of trade between cities and the region idea... But the implementation is disappointing.

Maybe? I haven't spent much time playing the game yet.

I don't necessarily mind a smaller footprint for my city but the dealbreaker comes when I can't get my population high. I literally haven't seen a city surpass 250k. That is not a city, that's town. If the city limits are so small, there should be accommodations to the building variety, crazy skyscrapers that house thousands, something like that.

If Maxis expects people to min/max their regions to accommodate the shortfalls of the city simulation that's a problem because this is supposed to be SimCity, not SimTown or SimRegion. I bought the game and I'm sure I will enjoy it for a while, but I feel duped.

ARGGHHHHH ;_;

YOU IMBECILE OP. >:(

Where's the 'I have no interest in Sim City anyway'option?!? >:(

I just want to see the results! :P

I ultimately voted no though- cause I don't think this would've been a complete deal-breaker for me if I was interested to begin with.

Can cities even get to sizes like 1 million let alone 10 million? I would say the simulation isn't very satisfying if you can't even get to a "metropolis" sized city regardless of square miles-km area.

I just want them to make it so that the areas which you develop are contiguous. This would make me happy.

The city sizes are one thing, but the fact that you seem to be encouraged to min-max with each city in your region (not realistic self-sufficient cities) if you want to achieve regional goals also turned me off a bit. Aside from that, like Jeff, one of the things that I like most about SimCity games is the constant expansion and seeing my city grow and grow (in size) over time. Filling up the city boundaries within an hour and then spending the rest of the game trying to increase that city's density (or doing it all again with a new city) isn't really what I want to be doing in a SimCity game.

I'm still open to trying it, but this has gone from "likely day one purchase" to "wait and see, or it pick up if it gets cheaper."

epic deal breaker

Sim Town Online

It really really sucks. I'm probably still going to play the game but the city sizes are a huge bummer.

It doesn't bother me at all. I love the amount of detail that is jam packed into the game, and if the city size getting smaller is a product of that then so be it. My opinion may change when it finally comes out, but over the course of the beta I had a ball playing. I can't wait for my copy to arrive.

@warlockengineermoredakka: That option is called not being on the sim city forums.

I believe part of the issue is also the presentation implied lots of empty space just beyond your border while you are struggling to squeeze capacity out of every last space. You can see the other cities off in the distance with gaps in between. Maxis should have strove to hide the limitation because part of the fun of SimCity is the seeing how realistic the model looks but with the space and giant gaps that is not realistic at all. No real growing city would behave this way so I wonder why SimCity would.