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Yeah, some console games even push up to $110 AUD (equivalent to $115 USD). The only exception to this seems to be Blizzard, who charged us the US prices for Starcraft 2 and Cataclysm. On topic - the agent demonstration videos from GDC have got me pretty excited for this, just sucks that we've got so long to wait. Will have to dust off my Simcity 4 CDs in preparation!
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 00:38 |
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| # ? May 23, 2013 16:19 |
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I hope they implement ways to mimic different kinds of economies. If I want a harsh authoritarian police state or a centrally-planned communist utopia, let me make it. I'd also like to see more social/economic policies like SC4's ordinances as well. Let me control tariffs or outsource industry.
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 01:22 |
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mutata posted:It's even worse in Australia I hear. ~$80-$100 for a game sometimes.
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 01:32 |
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Australia getting shat on? Why I never!
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 02:03 |
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Sorry guys. I'll act as gifter to any aussie who wants normal prices.  I've installed SC4 in preparation for this, and I even went so far as to sculpt my own mini-region in zbrush and import it into the game. Woop woop!
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 02:15 |
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MikeJF posted:Australia getting shat on? Why I never! It's like all the major publishers forget that Australia exists when it comes time to do permament price drops on their products. Civ V regular is still $70 there 
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 02:18 |
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Criminals should appreciate they get access to games at all! That is really dumb. And just swapping dollars for Euro or GBP without converting the price.  I guess they figure it's a captive audience so what are you going to do about it, ese.I don't know if that's worse or them just leaving prices where they were when the AUD was worth half as much as USD.
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 02:21 |
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Of course the local distributors are trying to protect the local bricks'n'mortar stores or something. But why? GAME's PC sections are an afterthought, EB's range is a bit better but they too seem to prefer make their profits flipping used console discs.
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 02:27 |
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My favorite part of SimCity 3000 was recreating Dr. Ron Paul's libertopia with no taxes but all the terrible things that give you money per month to fund a rapid expansion, and then jacking up taxes once the city is built to enrich my coffers even more. I will be irate if I cannot do this in SimCity.
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 02:31 |
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The Deadly Hume posted:Of course the local distributors are trying to protect the local bricks'n'mortar stores or something. But why? GAME's PC sections are an afterthought, EB's range is a bit better but they too seem to prefer make their profits flipping used console discs. It's more due to Walmart and Best Buy and such. Places that sell a lot of new games. Even those stores don't have a huge PC game selection, but since publishers deal with console games and PC games, it's almost impossible for them to sell games digitally online for cheaper and keep their deals with big box retail stores for console games. Of course, publishers would love to switch everyone to buying digital copies for $60, since they get to keep all that money themselves. This is basically what EA is doing with their "digital only" special editions.
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 02:33 |
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thedaian posted:It's more due to Walmart and Best Buy and such. Places that sell a lot of new games. Even those stores don't have a huge PC game selection, but since publishers deal with console games and PC games, it's almost impossible for them to sell games digitally online for cheaper and keep their deals with big box retail stores for console games. It'll be interesting to see what happens with the next-gen consoles because London to a brick they'll have much more emphasis on direct downloads and then retailers will probably be just the places you pick up the console bundle and get sidelined on all software purchases.
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 02:36 |
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:It's like all the major publishers forget that Australia exists when it comes time to do permament price drops on their products. Civ V regular is still $70 there It's just a retarded Steam thing, it's much cheaper in local stores like this. And honestly, at this point you're more likely to find it in the $20 bargain bin.
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 03:23 |
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:It's like all the major publishers forget that Australia exists when it comes time to do permament price drops on their products. Civ V regular is still $70 there The last couple of Total War games have all been listed on Steam at the US prices, and then as the release date approaches had a sudden 80%-100% mark-up.
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 05:04 |
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Grand Fromage posted:I thought 3K was the weakest of the bunch, but I am an unashamed lover of 4 and have probably sunk more hours into it than any other game I've ever had. I'm also one of the minority that thinks 4 wasn't nearly complex enough. The mods make it quite enjoyable, particularly since they act as shortcuts to patching the game since maxis will never do it. SimCity 4 is quite amazing, and my favourite, though I was too young of a gamer to appreciate previous games of the series.
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 06:09 |
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Jebediah Kerman posted:The mods make it quite enjoyable, particularly since they act as shortcuts to patching the game since maxis will never do it. SimCity 4 is quite amazing, and my favourite, though I was too young of a gamer to appreciate previous games of the series. Oh I know. I have basically all the gameplay mods plus literally thousands of buildings.
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 06:13 |
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Wait, there's actually a new SimCity game coming out? Quit naming new games identical to old ones in the same series, dammit! 
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 06:30 |
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You're all making me want to go dig out my old Sim City 2000 for the Playstation and have a day full of nostalgia  .
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 06:33 |
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Apocadall posted:You're all making me want to go dig out my old Sim City 2000 for the Playstation and have a day full of nostalgia Yesss, my old playstation CD is probably long lost though.
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 06:39 |
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Shall we just refer to it as Simcity 5 in this thread for the meantime? Calling it Simcity when comparing it to previous entries all the time is just making things hella confusing.
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 06:48 |
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I'll probably always call it SC5, reusing the no-number name is dumb and confusing. It's not like there's a story to start over on or something.
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 06:50 |
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 So what's the deal with this image on simcity.com? I can't seem to find it anywhere else except on the site's front page.
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 07:05 |
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Jebediah Kerman posted:
It appears to be a rendered visualization. I would imagine the buildings there will probably become assets, but there's no way the game will include all that ambient occlusion from light bouncing off nearby buildings onto other buildings. Pretty, though.
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 07:09 |
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ExtraNoise posted:It appears to be a rendered visualization. I would imagine the buildings there will probably become assets, but there's no way the game will include all that ambient occlusion from light bouncing off nearby buildings onto other buildings. I was gonna say..that looks perfect.
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 07:25 |
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If that's how the game actually looks when it comes out, I'll be perfectly happy with it.
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 07:28 |
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You'll notice that's a flipped and textured segment of one of the untextured city shots we saw. Here it is flipped. There's a few elements changed and small buildings shuffled around, and the above-ground-highway added. Given that it's been changing and they're clearly working on it, I'm guessing it's fairly indicative of actual game art. MikeJF fucked around with this message at Mar 13, 2012 around 07:35 |
| # ? Mar 13, 2012 07:32 |
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Ahundredbux posted:Yeah, happens all the time on steam, just straight up switching the $ for €. That's probably just the established price in the market.
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 07:48 |
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The Orange Mage posted:I like the ideas of resources, because it will mean commerce and industry will work like Sims themselves, meaning products from industry will go to other industries or commercial places, which makes me wonder if we will see things like coal mines, logging camps, and other resource-producing structures. It would lead to terrain/environment playing a bigger part it how a city develops. Make a coastal city and you get to have a fishery and see the boats out getting the catch, and you can trace the product as it goes to commercial zones and then spreads to residential or something. Simulate everything, I say! Its all fun and games until simBP opens a coastal drill site and pollutes the sea, and then your sims are eating crude drenched fish...
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 07:54 |
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I like that it introduces the real possibility of financial bubbles and collapses. You can create your very own Flint, MI! Previously in SC, you always got the same tax no matter what and businesses never entered any real hardship unless some other factors destroyed your high tech employee base or something.
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 07:56 |
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I'm actually kind of interested in the multiplayer. Can't wait for someone to purposely irradiate GoonCity. e: Someone's gonna mod in libertopian seasteads. Get the right region and it could be a pretty sweet LP. SniperWoreConverse fucked around with this message at Mar 13, 2012 around 08:02 |
| # ? Mar 13, 2012 07:58 |
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The Flint/Detroit scenario: You're playing in a multiplayer region, and your city is by-and-large based around a booming automobile industry, supplying most of the region with cars. All the other players start transitioning into pedistrian-friendly city planning with heavy uses of public transit. Nobody is buying cars from your city anymore and the whole thing comes crashing down. Alternative scenario: Another player managed to create an even stronger automobile industry that can sell at cheaper prices, and failure to adapt means economic collapse. It seems entirely plausible considering the nature of the GlassBox engine. The only question is how much of an impact that will actually have. Can you incentivize specific industries? Will it be absolutely trivial to transition from one type to another? Will there be no reason to ever specialize at all? In real life, most major cities have a specific specialty. All they've shown us so far is the basic simulation. The cynical part of me says that as soon as one industry in your city falls, another will automatically just rise up to take its place and there wont ever be any problems with that stuff.
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 08:06 |
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I could see Flint happening. It depends on how factories "choose" what to make, they could seamlessly swap to some other item, or might have to retool. That could be scripted in. It also depends on inter-regional effects too. Can agents even cross over into other cities? I would assume it would work somehow, but it might be abstracted. If you export cars can you end up with stuff like migrant workers? How's technology handled in these newer SimCities? Last one I played was 2000, and they had it based off of year. Would a situation come up where super-cool monorails come out, another city pounces on the tech and out competes your super-lame cars? I was assuming pollution can drift between cities, but if that can map across, can stuff like coal and oil? Deplete the layer to the determent of other cities? Can you wreck the whole aquifer? This might end up really crazy.
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 08:20 |
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I'd love it if we could pick a difficulty level to play on as far as the online economy goes. Maybe a Casual setting where things are bought and sold at a static price, and an Advanced Mode where the cost fluctuates based on other players. I really like the idea of being able to have a Rust Belt situation, but at the same time I like chilling out making Utopian societies while watching documentaries too.
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 08:25 |
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Flint was actually a scenario with the original SC2000 in 1994. It was a rust belt even then 
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 08:38 |
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SniperWoreConverse posted:How's technology handled in these newer SimCities? Last one I played was 2000, and they had it based off of year. Would a situation come up where super-cool monorails come out, another city pounces on the tech and out competes your super-lame cars? In 4 there's no calender year (well, it keeps track, but it counts from 0 at your city's founding). Technology becomes available when you reach a certain population threshold or, say, a certain number of high-tech jobs for high tech stuff.
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 08:41 |
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ExtraNoise posted:It appears to be a rendered visualization. I would imagine the buildings there will probably become assets, but there's no way the game will include all that ambient occlusion from light bouncing off nearby buildings onto other buildings. Some game engines, like CryTek have support for simulated GI (global illumination, bouncelights) and screen-space ambient occlusion. This would be even easier since the city as a whole isn't wandering the environment constantly. They probably won't though its not out of the realm of possibility!
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 08:46 |
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The Deadly Hume posted:Flint was actually a scenario with the original SC2000 in 1994. It was a rust belt even then Oh yeah, I remember that scenario! Flint has been in steady economic decline since at least the 70s. Often, depression is associated with an entire region or country, but Flint was solitary. Detroit was still booming when Flint got utterly devastated just sixty-some miles away. This makes it a good metric, the ability to recreate Flint will be a good test for the overall strength of SC5's economic simulation.
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 08:48 |
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How would that kind of multiplayer work though? It's not like everyone's going to be online at the same time. How would the agents of one region affect the other without breaking the simulation? Would your game simulate based on last saved state of their region ala SC4 or would there be some kind of simulation rollover at regular intervals?
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 09:07 |
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Eej posted:How would that kind of multiplayer work though? It's not like everyone's going to be online at the same time. How would the agents of one region affect the other without breaking the simulation? Would your game simulate based on last saved state of their region ala SC4 or would there be some kind of simulation rollover at regular intervals? I don't think the agents themselves go across the cities. We don't know the specifics, but one scenario is that the game gauges your productive capacity and the rate you accumulate excess resources, and allows those resources to be exported to other cities in the region. If they don't get sold, then they probably get wasted. If two cities come to some import-export agreement, whether automatically or by player intervention (no idea how it works), I suspect it will work like SC4. When you're in the exporting city, it will just assume those resources are being sold and the agents will dump them off at the border of your city. When the importer is playing, the game will assume that the resources are being produced and agents will pick them up and bring them to the relevant business. When both players are playing, I'm assuming it will just sync the state of the other city every minute or so. Dr. Video Games 0031 fucked around with this message at Mar 13, 2012 around 09:18 |
| # ? Mar 13, 2012 09:16 |
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PalmTreeFun posted:Wait, there's actually a new SimCity game coming out? Quit naming new games identical to old ones in the same series, dammit! I wonder if SimCity will be available for iPad! Seriously, though... drat you, awkward naming conventions! EDIT: Anyway, what I'm really looking forward to is that 'moment'... you all know the one. That perfect moment where you've installed the game, you boot it up, and you start laying down really basic stuff for your small town, and you realize that this game 'has' you, because everything's just so intuitive, and many, many ideas for a sprawling metropolis fill your head. This same thing has happened to me with SC2k, 3k and 4, and I can't wait for it to happen with this one. I think it could be best likened to that part on a rollercoaster right before the big drop. Rupert Buttermilk fucked around with this message at Mar 13, 2012 around 12:26 |
| # ? Mar 13, 2012 12:22 |
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| # ? May 23, 2013 16:19 |
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Grand Fromage posted:
Steam is really really bad at this and it's pissing me off more and more. Just recently I had the chance to buy Wargame for 50€ myself, or 40$, which amounts to 30€, from the US. I'm just paypalling money to my american friends to buy stuff for me nowadays.
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| # ? Mar 13, 2012 12:27 |
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