SimCity [don't-call-it-5] in the works

[phongn]

Don't forget that every nuclear plant in the game seems to be run by Homer Simpson and will melt down dramatically at some point during its lifetime. It's only a matter of when.

Uh, I never had meltdowns.

[Serafina]

In Sim City 4, nuclear plants are just a fire risk (like most other industrial buildings). Build a fire station nearby and you won't have meltdowns, which makes plenty of sense.

[phongn]

In Sim City 4, nuclear plants are just a fire risk (like most other industrial buildings). Build a fire station nearby and you won't have meltdowns, which makes plenty of sense.

Also, don't overload your nuclear power plants!

[Bakustra]

Big deal.

Right, so you don't see something wrong with a SC4 solar power plant only 96 x 96m generating 5,000 MW/h month; when it takes in the real world, a solar plant 1,630 x 750m to generate 10,833 MW/h month?

This huge disparity makes solar unrealistically cost effective and unrealistically practical as an on-map power generation plant in SC4; when in reality, you'd have to found a small off-map city, and then fill up the entire valley with solar collectors to feed your 'clean' metropolis.

It's up there with the hydropower hack/cheat in SC2000: make hill, plop water down on side of hill, then plop dam onto waterfall = NEVER REPLACE POWER PLANT AGAIN.

No, I don't see anything wrong with a game being a game, especially since SC4 was the first to implement any level greater than a city into the game, and making solar require a wildly different approach to construction or making every power plant require a different approach to construction (this would probably have been the more realistic approach of the two) would have been confusing and alienating to people who view each city as ideally self-sufficient, as the developers themselves did.

In fact, it's grotesquely obvious that the only reason you (and fgalkin) care about this is because, to your minds, it besmirches nuclear power and/or boosters green power. So perhaps you should be more honest with yourself and others and stop hiding behind that flimsy-ass shield of realism.

PS: You are probably the last living human being to care about Prima or their strategy guides. Thought you might like to know.

Anyways, I hope multi-use zoning is easily enabled, and I hope that they take some inspiration from the NAM for SC4. I'd love the ability to build an actual pre-freeway small town or modernized pedestrian city or include streetcars.

[Mr Bean]

[quote="Bakustra"

In fact, it's grotesquely obvious that the only reason you (and fgalkin) care about this is because, to your minds, it besmirches nuclear power and/or boosters green power. So perhaps you should be more honest with yourself and others and stop hiding behind that flimsy-ass shield of realism.[/quote]
No Shep has a point, every other source of power had it's advantages and disadvantages, but Solar stands alone as the perfect source of city power generation with no draw backs what so ever. Use coal? Pollution, Use wind? Low power generation only good in some areas, Nuclear? Meltdowns, Oil? Expensive, Solar? No drawbacks and plenty of advantages.

It stands as an outlier.

[phongn]

Anyways, I hope multi-use zoning is easily enabled, and I hope that they take some inspiration from the NAM for SC4. I'd love the ability to build an actual pre-freeway small town or modernized pedestrian city or include streetcars.

The engine can handle multi-use zoning but the developers don't know if they'll expose it. Transit modalities - my suspicion is that they'll stick with the usual SimCity model (and maybe rely on DLC, expansions or the mod community to add in other things).

[MKSheppard]

PS: You are probably the last living human being to care about Prima or their strategy guides. Thought you might like to know.

Their X-COM one back in the day was pretty boss.

The only reason I talk about their one for SC4 is because a lot of people who mod SC4 ask about the 'scale' of the game, so that their modded buildings are proportioned right; so this is the 'official scale'.

No, I don't see anything wrong with a game being a game, especially since SC4 was the first to implement any level greater than a city into the game

Bzzt. You had Neighbor Cities in SC2000 on the map which contributed traffic and suchlike to you if you connected your transportation grid to them, and you could have deals with neighbor cities for power or water in SC3000; and you could dump your garbage on them, etc.

In fact, it's grotesquely obvious that the only reason you (and fgalkin) care about this is because, to your minds, it besmirches nuclear power and/or boosters green power.

Right, so you didn't care about the hydropower cheat in SC2000?



Note how there is no large body of water whatsoever feeding the hydropower plant; yet it generates electricity just all the same.

Additionally, unlike all other powerplants in SC2000, hydropower ones never, ever get old; so you never need to replace them every 50 years.

Same thing happens with Solar in SC4 as Beano pointed out -- it has no real disadvantages, because the game version is orders of magnitude more efficient than real life solar.

I can understand knocking a zero or so off to being only 100 or 200 times more area inefficient than nuclear, rather than 2,900~ in the interests of gameplay; but only 7.2 times?

[Stark]

Wait - are you saying SimCity isn't about real-world city planning at all? Did you just realise this? SimCity is arguably a puzzle game, it's not a school for urban design.

In games, real solutions dont have to work and things that work don't have to be real. It's just a ruleset and you don't like it, which is fine.

[Ford Prefect]

Right, so you don't see something wrong with a SC4 solar power plant only 96 x 96m generating 5,000 MW/h month; when it takes in the real world, a solar plant 1,630 x 750m to generate 10,833 MW/h month?

Again, it's a video game. I don't expect it to perfectly replicate the real world.

[Zinegata]

LOL. People are missing the fact that Bean and Shep are in fact talking about in-game balance issues and that the IRL stuff is secondary.

I have to agree with them too. The SC2000 hydropower cheat felt very cheap, and the only reason I eventually went Fusion was because I was going on a massive expansion spree and didn't want the trouble of building dozens upon dozens of hydro plants instead of plopping down just one Fusion plant.

Hydro was more efficient than any other power plant because even with terraforming it was relatively cheap, didn't need replacing every 50 years, does not pollute, and its only issue was it needed more space. It's a broken strat.

I never played SC4, but the Solar plant does indeed sound terribly broken from the stats alone too.

[Stark]

Wow, a single-player puzzle game isn't balanced? Blow me away. Next you'll start on Transport Tycoon!

I doubt these games are popular because of the min/max crowd; I imagine people who actually 'play' them as opposed to run off a spreadsheet from gamefaqs are the target market.

PS Talking about obvious exploits and then saying the game isn't balanced is a huge roffle. Planting rivers isn't very realistic, so why are you even doing it? That's right, because it's a toybox in a sandbox and you're screwing around.

[Zinegata]

LOL.

Stark is seriously retarded enough to be oblivious to the game design concept known as "meaningful choices" (i.e. "If I choose Solar, I get less power but no pollution, while Coal gives me more power but lots of pollution), which does in fact apply to games like Sim City.

It's a good thing Stark isn't in the game industry, because he sure doesn't know what design is if it hit him in the face.

[Stark]

If only there were dates of introduction for the various... oh wait. :V Is your next trick 'lategame stuff too powerful compared to early game stuff'? I can confidently tell you that I have never built coal power in SimCity, and this has hardly ruined the game.

It's fucking hilarious you're banging on about other people sucking at game design when SimCity (a game with these 'flaws' you dislike so much due to your weight problem) is amazingly popular and successful. BUT ITS EASY IF YOU CHEAT OMG????

[Zinegata]

Cool. Stark's stupidity gives me more opportunities to show off my awesome.

Actually, Stark, I'm pointing out that you're the retard when it comes to design, not the makers of Sim City. Nice try with misdirection though.

Despite the popularity of the game it still has flaws, and the lack of meaningful choices is in fact a valid criticism. Just because people love it doesn't meant it's perfect.

Nobody said Sim City is ruined completely because of the hydro plants cheat or overpowered Solar in SC4. Instead, it's obvious that what Shep and Bean are actually talking about is that there is a problem with the power plant choices in Sim City and the game would be better with more meaningful power plant choices without glaring outliers.

In simpler terms, "We want more power plants that make sense to build in-game". Because it felt very silly to build stuff like Coal Plants in Sim City 2000 when there's a considerably better alternative. It's actually a pretty smart criticism.

[Stark]

All that matters is how important those flaws are; and for most people this isn't an important issue. Like I said, SimCity has always been optimistic with regards green energy and the energy model has always been really simplistic anyway. What your power plant tile looks like is less important than other stuff like placement anyway.

If you want a power grid simulator, SimCity is not the game for you. Sorry. It's also full of sploits that immediately invalidate whole areas of play. Oops. Heaps of people just don't care.

Next up in Zinegata is Hilarious - he reveals you can make a city by endlessly repeating the same pattern of tiles! :V SIMCITY NOT SIMMING CITIES ENOUGH.

[Zinegata]

LOL. So Stark backpedals into "I decide what flaws are important to discuss!" (No, you do not speak for the gaming public at large).

That ain't your initial argument dude. You were hitting Shep and Bean with the "Sim City is not IRL!" argument. Concession accepted.

And your backpedal argument is still dumb, because you don't decide what flaws are worthy of discussing. Some of us do in fact find that adding more meaningful power plants a good thing, and it doesn't really change other people's gameplay that much.

So there's really no harm to it and it's again a pretty smart criticism. I wouldn't mind the next Sim City having a neater power plant system - particularly if it takes terrain into greater consideration

(i.e. Wouldn't it be cool if a desert city was better for a Solar power system, while a hilly windy area was good for wind power - and they're all not simply invalidated by an outlier).

[Stark]

SimCity isn't 'real life', and thus quoting actual solar yields is largely meaningless. So what? I mean when you know that the power implementation is so basic that non-moving water can power an adjacent hydro plant, surely this is a bit superfluous. It's ALMOST as if SimCity is built from the ground up on abstractions and generalisations!

PS I'm not claiming that I personally decide blah blah whatever you imagined. The market already did that for me. :v I'm glad your personal tragedy contributes to forcing a thread about a new SimCity game into banging on about stuff people didn't like about old ones, though.

[Zinegata]

Been there, done that. Stark's opinions are not the market's opinions, and completely irrelevant anyway in the face of analyzing a specific mechanic. Game ain't perfect dude.

Also, another been there, done that. "Quoting real life stats to point out a game imbalance" is also not the same as "Quoting real-life stats is to demand that the game should conform to real life."

This broadcast will now be set to automated repeat, because Stark doesn't like to admit that he's just criticizing how other people want to enjoy a sandbox game (with the specific topic of wishing for more meaningful powerplant choices) and just resorts to Wall of Ignorance.

[Stark]

Dude, you gotta take a step back. The series has always been quite simplified (and, obviously, had serious bugs or omissions) and yet is extremely successful. You can pretend I'm the only one in the world who doesn't care about this stuff, but you're just making yourself look like a dumbass.

The best part (for the audience) is of course how he now says that dictating to others what they should and should not enjoy in a sandbox game is bad. He does this, having just said that xyz is bad and wrong and imba and should be changed. :V I'm not sure anyone is telling anyone what to enjoy or not in this thread; Shep highlights broken shit and talks about solar efficiency, people say they don't care, you show up and hyperventilate about how much you hate me.

[Zinegata]

I never argued for overcomplication, if that's what you're worried about. And as far as I can see no one did.

This is a false accusation. Meaningful choice is not the same as overcomplication. Heck, what I proposed is almost cribbed out of the SC2000 manual.

[Stark]

Can someone explain to me how this post is a reply to my above post? What accusation?

Regardless, nobody in the entire thread has made any suggestions towards 'overcomplication'. Some people care about specific abstractions the game makes (and 'optimistic' numbers for green energy specifically) and some people don't. If you stopped barrelling into threads and going straight to OMG FLAMZ0RZ, you'd be able to join into the discussion instead of stopping it.

To be frank the stuff Bakustra and Phongn were talking about is far more interesting; the games I played (really old ones) were built almost entirely on layers of abstraction around transport and 'nearness' which inform basically the entire play of the game, and changing that stuff would really shake the game up.

Its interesting intellectually, but I don't like SimCity games. :V

[Zinegata]

Stark, cut with the bullshit and your blatant character attacks. You accuse me of attacking you when you're the one who's been throwing all the accusations.

What exactly are you arguing about?

I made a very simple statement: Several people made the mistake of attacking Shep and Bean for supposedly wanting SC to be closer to real life, when they're in fact just asking for more meaningful power plant choices. This is fact.

You overreacted and thought it was specifically directed at you, so I made fun of you. You then ran around the bushes with various tangents, but eventually you conceded this by your failure to refute it.

Now you're going off on a tangent on simplicity. And then abstraction. And nobody is seriously arguing against that.

The main point isn't that power plants should have the same yield as in real life just because Shep quotes some real life power figures.

The main point is that power plants should have some actual trade offs - like how it's stated in the SC2000 manual - and that's not a bad thing. Coal is cheap but pollutes most. Hydro is cheap but should be limited to areas with actual falling water. Real trade offs to make it a richer experience.

So get to the damn point. What exactly are you worried about by "Let's make power plant choices more meaningful!".

[Vendetta]

Wait - are you saying SimCity isn't about real-world city planning at all? Did you just realise this? SimCity is arguably a puzzle game, it's not a school for urban design.

In games, real solutions dont have to work and things that work don't have to be real. It's just a ruleset and you don't like it, which is fine.

On the other hand, if one solution is predictably the best forever, the player isn't making interesting gameplay decisions any more, because there's never any reason not to do the one thing that is the best forever.

(see also: People wanting Mechwarrior Online to be MW2 again because they have identified the Best Thing and want it to stay best so they don't have to make new decisions).

[Stark]

While that's true - especially with the self-contained 10-block perfect cities you can tile the map with - the requirements for dicking around in SimCity and playing a multiplayer game are pretty broadly different. I mean in Europa 1400 if you didn't choose thief you were intentionally crippling yourself... but it was still fun managing hobbits. It doesn't work that way if you're actually interacting with other people.

[phongn]

Looks like it'll require an always-on Internet connection