Maxis: 'we could have built an offline mode' in SimCity
"Could we have built a subset offline mode" in SimCity, Maxis asked. "Yes. But we rejected that idea because it didn't fit with our vision."
Perhaps the most-wanted feature of any SimCity player is an offline mode, as evidenced by this hack. Officially, Maxis' latest release requires an always-on internet connection, which has been the root of the game's many problems at launch.
Lucy Bradshaw, general manager at Maxis, directly addressed the possibility of offline play. Bradshaw answered the question "could we have built a subset offline mode" with a rather disparaging response: "Yes. But we rejected that idea because it didn't fit with our vision."
Her admission that an offline mode could have been built into the new SimCity directly contradicts earlier statements, which suggested that online connectivity offloaded some of the game's computational load onto EA's servers.
In a blog post titled "Straight Answers," Bradshaw says that always-connected play will provide "a platform for future social features that will play out over regions and servers. The game we launched is only the beginning for us--it's not final and it never will be. In many ways, we built an MMO."
Unfortunately, it means longtime fans of the franchise will not be able to play the game as they want to--at least, not officially. Bradshaw says that "We recognize that there are fans--people who love the original SimCity – who want [an offline mode.]" But, apparently that audience is moot because there are "thousands of people who are playing across regions, trading, communicating and loving the Always-Connected functionality."
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replyAndrew Yoon posted a new article, Maxis: 'we could have built an offline mode' in SimCity.
"Could we have built a subset offline mode" in SimCity, Maxis asked. "Yes. But we rejected that idea because it didn't fit with our vision."-
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yea, seriously. There's no real point in interviews anymore. They are full of deceit and lies from developers (aka Randy Pitchford). On top of that, you'll rarely see any dissent from developers about their publishers hands in the pot. Dissent only comes after they've broken ties with each other or an anonymous reddit-type post from an ex-employee.
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Well, they are owned by EA.
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If I remember correctly, the decision to leave steam wasn't over piracy or DRM, but over Valve not allowing EA to use their own "currency" to unlock DLC, thus bypassing valve for their cut of the pie.
That having been said, I'd probably have preordered SimCity if it had been on Steam, so I'm kind of glad they're not talking to each other :P
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The current quote is in reference to whether they could have originally designed it to be offline, not whether they can add offline mode to the current game.
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They are damned if they do and damned if they don't now. If they had shut up and kept their head down it might have blown over. Now that they just said it, people are going to beat that horse into oblivion. What a colossal fuck up of planning and management from the start. This is approaching Daikatana wtfness.
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I have no problem with games that are build around the single player having advantages with persistent online servers like the Spore model, or the Autolog feature of EA racing games, or even simple leaderboard aspects, but still remember that they are an SP game at the core since you are not interacting with others 100% of the time (the whole point of an MMO).
EA is instead trying to find a way to require internet connectivity at all times, not only to protect its assets via DRM, but to lead towards a microtransaction future. -
Our Vision: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
P.S.
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I bet the true story is that it didn't fit some jackass EA executive's vision.
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People are taking things way too literal and blowing it out of proportion.
Just because they said that stuff ran on the servers doesn't mean it was impossible to make an offline mode.
It was a architecture choice they made. If you don't like the fact that it needs to be online, don't fucking buy the game.-
Except...that's not true at all.
They framed it as an architectural choice that prevented an offline mode from being implemented, but in fact, mods have shown that the game has offline mode capability built into the architecture.
The only architectural choice is how and where the saves are made. Considering the scope of the game, whether or not that's online or offline seems to be fairly trivial.-
Show me where they actually said that it was technically impossible and not that they just made a design choice and that currently the way it's implemented it's not possible for an offline mode.
Everyone keeps referencing this tweet https://twitter.com/simcity/statuses/310487966311133184
And as far as I know, the offline hack does not allow region play, so there you go.-
You're making the assumption that region play is an *essential* component of the Sim City experience.
However, we know that regions can be set to private.
That Tweet implies that the region play is integral to the gameplay; it is not.
Why didn't they have an offline, private, solo play mode?-
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The point of this conversation is that people are upset that their communications team was clearly not honest with the public.
If, at the beginning, they would have said: "We only want region play because it doesn't fit our vision," that'd be fine!
Instead, they said that it wasn't possible because they had to simulate the regions.
The first would have been a hard pill to swallow and would have drawn some initial flack for sure.
The second, which is a lie, is insulting to the customer.-
Can we just all agree that EA's public-facing entities are messed up right now? From the CEO, to PR, to producers and community managers, all of EA's statements in the past year have been cringe-worthy.
- Mass Effect 3: the ending, the handling of the statements on the ending, the fixing of the ending via DLC, and so on.
- Medal of Honor: Warfighter getting released with a giant day-one patch
- SimCity getting announced as "always-connected!", and then a year later, experiencing the most disastrous "online-only" game launch in recent memory (worse than a bunch of MMO launches, which is a sad achievement)-
Yeah, I think I can agree with that.
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Also, it's almost one year after this post: http://www.shacknews.com/chatty?id=27917525#item_27917525
Keep in mind, I was really depressed and anxious back then, and I'm a little embarassed looking back on it. But now, after seeing how bad the launch is, I look at it and say, "Yeah, it's not getting embraced by the public, after they saw how bad the server infrastructure is, and how bullshit the coding is, considering that someone already hacked it to be fairly playable with an indefinite connection loss, exposing the "always-on" coding effort for the rush job it probably was. Other proponents of always-on single-player games are now at least asking themselves questions, if not outright panicking at a tarnished reputation, as an anonymous developer confided to Brad Shoemaker, as reported in this week's Bombcast."-
That was in this week's bombcast? I don't recall hearing that.
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Scanning for time index and quote in the 3-12-2013 Bombcast; please stand by...
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Timestamp 1 hour 52 minutes... aarrrgh, have to head out the door so I can't transcribe now...
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1:52:25: Brad: "So I was talking to a friend who's a game developer right before this, and he was furious with EA about this launch, but not because he bought the game and couldn't play it, but because it's giving this style of connected game a horrible reputation. It's like, 'Well, this is where stuff's going?! We're all being swept along for the ride on this, but they are poisoning the well on the public's acceptance of this kind of model by fucking it up.'"
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Oh right! I do in fact remember that part. I read what you said differently.
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They could have just as easily designed all of the region capabilities without the server. As pointed out in the past, that capability was in SimCity 2000 Network Edition, where cities could share resources and compete/cooperate.
His point is that this didn't require them to run their own servers, and that's even more correct than the SimCity 2000 example, because all of their infrastructure is on EC2. All they'd have to do is release the AMIs and make the EBSs available and anyone could run their own SimCity server if they were willing to pay for the EC2 time.
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"thousands of people who are playing across regions, trading, communicating and loving the Always-Connected functionality." I would like to see a survey backing up this claim. Just because people are playing it doesn't mean that they 'love' it.
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I'm sure thousands of people do love it. There are probably tens of thousands that don't
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The thing is, there's no reason TO love it. I suspect players are ambivalent when always-on works, and royally pissed off when it doesn't.
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I don't own the game, so correct me if in wrong. Why would you need always-on for regional multiplayer? You could enable a multiplayer mode when you wanted to interact with friends.
That's the thing: multiplayer connectivity should be optional. EA said the game requires always-on, when it doesn't. They lied.
They could have enabled an offline mode for players who want to build apart from others, and made multiplayer a switch for those who want to take part in those activities. -
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The funniest thing is all the points she makes in the blog as to why it's online only aren't actually working (broken or deliberately disabled) or are half functioning and extremely slow compared to what an offline sp mode would be for a single person doing multiple cities.
- We keep the simulation state of the region up to date for all players. Even when playing solo, this keeps the interactions between cities up to date in a shared view of the world.
- Players who want to reach the peak of each specialization can count on surrounding cities to provide services or resources, even workers. As other players build, your city can draw on their resources.
- Our Great Works rely on contributions from multiple cities in a region. Connected services keep each player’s contributions updated and the progression on Great Works moving ahead.
- All of our social world features - world challenges, world events, world leaderboards and world achievements - use our servers to update the status of all cities.
- Our servers handle gifts between players.
- We’ve created a dynamic supply and demand model for trading by keeping a Global Market updated with changing demands on key resources.
- We update each city’s visual representation as well. If you visit another player’s city, you’ll see the most up to date visual status.
- We even check to make sure that all the cities saved are legit, so that the region play, leaderboards, challenges and achievements rewards and status have integrity.
I'm sure a lot of people will be glad to read that :<
She probably should have waited until that stuff is actually working and working properly. -
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Unfortunately, EA doesn't track the sales they didn't make...
Which is kind of why they went with the always online DRM in the first place, they look at a pirated copy as lost revenue.
In this case they'll just say anyone who didn't buy it was waiting for a cracked copy, and would never have bought it regardless of their draconian DRM.
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I never knew all my fellow gamers wanted leaderboards in their city simulation games so badly
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This was easily one of my most anticipated games in years, and I still have not bought it. I will wait until they fix their shit/ admit to their bullshit, or simply not buy it. It's frustrating as hell. I don't think I've ever seen such a shitty situation that so clearly comes down to the publisher assfucking a high profile title.
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^^^ IAWTP. I really wanted this game, but I'm not paying $60 for something so inherently broken and I'm not giving EA money while they give customers the finger.
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Same here.
I fucking LOVE Sim City. -
The servers have been working fine since last Friday, the game is a blast and you're missing out.
Yes there are still some pathing issues here and there (I personally haven't experienced any problems with it), and they've already got a patch in the works. Those who say the game is "beyond repair" because it's "fundamentally broken" are completely out of their mind. What's hilarious is that most of them haven't even played it.
Yes, they screwed up the launch and people couldn't play for the first couple of days. But the game works fine now, has been for a couple of weeks, and is pretty damn amazing.-
sorry I meant days, I actually mentioned "last Friday" in my first sentence.
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This. The game has flaws, undoubtedly. But they are fixing them as fast as possible, and even with those issues in place the game is still a ton of fun to play. Once they've sorted their shit out it'll be even better.
I understand wanting to hold off until they've gotten the more obvious problems fixed, but it's not like the game is an unplayable, unfun mess. -
Have they adressed exactly what issues they are planning in fixing besides the traffic routing?
What about the lack of need for industrial or commercial? The agent job system? Region trading? Recycling plant fail? Etc.
Just because the servers are up and people are logging on doesn't negate the fact the the game is ok now. Have you read eurogamers review yet?-
Region play has been working fine since last week, I know because I used to complain about it myself ( http://www.shacknews.com/chatty?id=29800400 ). They discussed the agent job system in a blog post yesterday, I'm sure there will be tweaks and we'll hear more about it. The pathing is most troubling now so they are focusing on that first. They *just* got done putting out the server fires; fixes for smaller quirks will come soon enough. I did read Eurogamer's review and it just sounded like it was written back when region play was still broken, and that he experienced issues with pathing. Nothing new really, at least it was not to me.
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I haven't been able to play in the past 2 days, but did they fix the gifting system in region play yet? Reports of people gifting simoleans to a neighboring city and the money never shows. Just goes poof into the digital aether. :(
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That's working now, but I'm not sure if the mechanic itself was ever broken. It was a consequence of the servers being so overloaded; transfers took DAYS to go through. I did a 50K transfer and it took 3 or 4 days to arrive iirc, during the first few days when servers were getting absolutely slammed. Obviously I thought it was lost.
I actually sent another 75K when I played two days ago and it went through in about 10 minutes. Still not ideal, but workable.
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LOL that really sucks.
You can see the server status here: http://www.simcity.com/en_US/server-status
I honestly haven't had any issues getting into a game or playing it since last Friday. I'm on US West 1, if that makes a difference.
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Same. I bought Anno2070 instead and it's amazing.
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I would like to have an offline mode (private) where we can tear down the "city" borders within a region and claim the WHOLE region as out map. That way our city will be large enough to be self-sufficient (or damn well try to) without having to rely on city-to-city resource trade.
I bet so many people would be happy with this that EA would probably shit their pants once they saw sales spike because of it. As someone else mentioned, some prick stiff suit at EA didn't have a vision with customers in mind, only the pirates. So fuck Sim City always online mode and the people who defend it as being necessary. Make it optional for those that want to play it as it was "envisioned."
Also with the ability to SAVE & LOAD games LOCALLY.
Notwithstanding the multiple bug fixes. -
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And laid.
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Maxis has to tow the company line. Of course they are going to be like "yeah! Its so much better to have expiring servers force people into regional multiplayer gameplay." They obviously didnt focus group what people who play a singleplayer sim city want... In the end hopefully someone will just hack the game to work offline and allow bigger cities.
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This whole thing just strikes me as another Dragon Age 2. Game sells crazy numbers at launch/pre-order based on previous game in the series. However sales drop really rapidly after release due to bad press/word of mouth, and fundamental changes to the gameplay that the existing fanbase who pushed the game didn't want.
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Nope.avi
I actually fell asleep playing the game.-
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No, but you opinion IS invalidated due to the fact that DA2 was a terrible, terrible, butchered and bastardised version of DA:O with a shonky plot, bad gameplay and wooden characters.
Not to mention cycled areas/textures and a city that never changes once in the 10 year in-game timeframe despite the promises by Mike Laidlaw that it would be changing over that time based on your actions...I mean hell, Fenris didn't clean up his house ONCE in 10 YEARS!
Nah, DA2 is bad, sad mad. Total sham. If Bioware repeat those mistakes with DA3, I personally will never buy another game with Mike Laidlaw listed anywhere in development.
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I AIN'T EVEN MAD about online only....if it worked. however it's compounded by the game itself NOT WORKING.
EA, your vision is fucked, the testing was fucked, the support is fucked, and the PR control is fucked. stop fucking up.
MP could have worked, we all know this. adds a layer of fun! hooray! however, crippling individual contributions is dumb, and compounded by the MP portion barely even working? wow. that's well beyond DRM issues. it's your.... vision. whoever was at the whiteboard fuckin' around with simcity didn't have much engineering and development behind it.
and so we're left with "we have issues because people love the game and won't leave the servers".
STOP IT EA, JUST STOP -
Vote with your dollars people. If you pre-purchased or day-1'd it, wait for reviews/buzz next time. Aside from that, request a refund.
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Because publishers have been just fabulous when it comes to refunds...
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+1 Agree totally.
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Looks like I won't be buying this game then. Matter of fact I won't be buying any EA games from now on as long as they require to be online or require Origin.
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They're more full of bullshit every day that passed since release, lucy is probably the biggest corporate troll ever.
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What a pathetic display of greed. Everyone who purchased this game and supported EA should be embarrassed . Continue to bend over and take it as your powers that be lie to you and milking you for content that should be included in the final price.
The fact that they are willing to ignore a gaming community that doesn't want to play online and basically saying "F---k em" is an insult and anybody supporting that is helping to bring the gaming industry down.
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