CONFIRMED - MASS Transportation for Paying Subscribers Only.

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[City Builder]

(...)
So, to answer in a very straightforward manner: yes, public transportation will be part of the content made available for Planet Offer subscribers. Except for the bus system, as it is mentioned as free additional content for everyone on the Cities XL Information web page.

Well, take another feather out of the Monte Cristo cap.

Yesterday they confirmed that mass transportation (railways, planes, trains, elevated trains, and anything else you can think of) will be for paying subscribers only.  The only thing that will come with the game in the form of mass transportation is busses.  The rest will require a subscription to their service in a monthly fee.

Sorry, but they've definitely just

[crowebird]

Nice photo, lol... nothing like modern era game designer, long gone are the days of quality games that are actually bug checked and made sure they offered as much content as possible on release day...

Sure is nice of them to build an engine, sell it for $50 then expect the users to pay an extra 10-20 on top of that for content that should have alreay existsed... kinda like the sims3, base engine, and for an extra 20-100 dollars you can get what the game should have included!

[City Builder]

Yup.

Well, I've gone back to SimCity 4.  And honestly, it doesn't look at all bad at the 2nd level zoom at 1920x1200 screen resolution.  Sure it's got it's caveats like no smooth round curved roads, lack of a real 3D look, but overall the content that people have supplied it is extrodinary and complete.

I've been out of the SimCity 4 scene for so long I've seen now that people have come up with programs that make dealing with all the dependencies that some files require much easier to handle, so I think it's back to SimCity 4 for me and wipe this crud off my hard drive.  I'm done with CXL, it could have been a blockbuster success story (in my opinion) but what I think it will be now is simply an epic failure.

They say they need the money from the planet offering to further improve and add new content to CXL, however most developers do that through selling of retail expansion packs to improve their product and what MC has turned out to be seems like little more than a money grubbing EA wannabe.  They think they are going to get enough subscribers to add onto their game but what they have forgotten is that all the people that did buy or get CXL as a present is going to remember what it DIDN'T have in it so when they do put out the expansion and they'll have to ontop of the online offering and the GEMS they want to sell us too, there wont be enough people around that will buy it.

They blew it when they published Starpeace and they're blowing it all over again with CXL which really many people have already just been calling it a CityLife 2 and nothing near to what it was trying to beat (simcity 4).

It's a shame and I am depressed that they have gone this route, I was looking forward to another modern era city building game which obviously I'll have to wait a while longer, perhaps another 5 or more years.

Yeah the whole Sims 3 thing is bugging me too, for to get the full game when all is said and done will cost most people around $280.00 plus anything else they spent on what is available in the Online store too.

The content they left out of Sims 3 is just shameful.  And now with that adventures expansion.  Pffft, I guess I blew $49.95 on Sims 3 because I won't be buying the first expansion and I haven't even opened up sims 3 in about 2 weeks now.  Maybe the urge will strike me to reopen it and design a new house but everytime that I tried when I last tried, I was simply frustrated at how i couldn't do certain things I could do in SIMS 2 with just one of the expansions.

Maybe my time in PC gaming is about at it's end.  10 years ago I wouldn't have quarreled about this stuff, now Im just about fed up with the way all these developers and publishers are trying to nickel and dime us to death.

Let's hope that Haemimont doesn't go the same route with Tropico 3.

[Khalan]

Yesterday they confirmed that mass transportation (railways, planes, trains, elevated trains, and anything else you can think of) will be for paying subscribers only.

That's just ridiculous.  No way I'll be paying for a stripped down game, then paying again every month to have a complete version.

SimCity 4 is almost 7 years old and it still hasn't come close to being equalled.  I should give it another try.

[RhiannOn]

Well, take another feather out of the Monte Cristo cap.

Yesterday they confirmed that mass transportation (railways, planes, trains, elevated trains, and anything else you can think of) will be for paying subscribers only.  The only thing that will come with the game in the form of mass transportation is busses.  The rest will require a subscription to their service in a monthly fee.

That is terrible  . This more than confirms that they won't be getting any dollars from my purse

[crowebird]

It sounds like some of us need to get together, and create our own CB game... pretty sure it would be the best cb game ever, granted it would probably take quite a few years to get perfect, but the audience we would have at the end of the day would make up for all the costs... and the best part is, we wouldnt be rushed, and we would listen to those testing it

[City Builder]

I like the idea of that crowebird, but sadly so many others have tried before us, and either failed or are still trying 10 years later.

But you know MC had a full compliment of gamers, thousands, perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands of gamers that they could have listened to when it comes to what people want in the game.  Not everybody demanded that they create a SimCity 5, many folks tried to help them with the game as it is to make it better but MC seems to not have bothered to listen, or just wrote stuff off as being impossible to do citing performance issues.  I don't honestly pretend to know if there really are performance issues with some of the ideas that 95% of the people that read the idea on the forums agreed would be great in the game or not, I think the game has enough of it's own performance issues as it is.

30 minutes playing the demo then having it LAG out heavily to the point where I had to restart it is not exactly performance enhanced.

Such a shame, such a shame.  They had so many CB gamers to pick their brains and ignored almost all of the ideas put forth to MC to try to help them make their game better.  As the young hipsters have been saying  'EPIC FAIL'.

Well, Tropico 3 demo should be out pretty darn soon so looking forward to that one.  It's the only game left on my "like to buy" list for this year, since I've seen rumours that Diablo 3 has been delayed to 2010, which is odd since the youtube videos I've seen of it looks more polished than most games on the shelves already.  But a lot is riding on it Im sure and it is Blizzard so they do have the way to for to dictate to the publisher when their title will be ready unlike so many other developers.

[pad11]

oh good crap that's just horrible...

well, at least I saved $50 by not buying this...

gag!

pat!

[City Builder]

I agree.  I'm thankful that I knew about this in advance else I would likely have bought this title, now unless things change theres just no way I'll give up my $50.00 for it.  It just doesn't sound worth it.

It's also been said in the demo chat panel (other users trying the demo that have also been involved in the beta) that the 10% that we see is more like 85% of the game and that it's only missing a few buildings so Im not sure how MC gets off on saying that the demo (which is like 1GB as reported by others, I've forgotten how big the download was myself) is only 10% of the game.

I also am beginning to think that they have limited the demo to that 22,000 population because they know there really isn't much of a game there, and nothing much changes after 22,000 population.  It's just more of the same, which would obviously turn people off of the game.

It needs some serious gameplay added to it, and it's just not going to happen by release day, not a chance in hades.  I'm really baffled at why they didn't listen to what they reported as being their core audience (all the SimCity 4 and CB fans),it just makes no sence at all.  It's like they are trying to destroy their own developement firms name by creating this abomination.  All they really had to do was to follow SimCity 4 in 3D, simplify those things that turned people off from it (the casual gamers) and improve on those things that were lacking.  Then add in their own stuff to make it unique.  Unfortunately they didn't and so it is what it is.   And  much like their earlier attempt at an MMO (Starpeace), I can't imagine the planet offer (online) lasting more than a year or so before they realize it's costing too much money and have to shut it down like Starpeace was.

I've tried starpeace a couple months ago and it's still as dull to me as it ever was, what made MC think it was a good idea back then is beyond me.  As it is now CXL is more just City Life 2 Online, and as seen most everywhere, City Life was not well accepted by CB fans or casual gamers either.

[sbach2o]

Somehow it feels like I've heard that story before.   

A small to medium company of renowned developers formed to create something in the vein of their past success (okay, nothing to report on that front about Monte Cristo?), only they wanted to make it bigger and better and more modern and they wanted to please just about everyone.   

On top of a solid single player game they wanted to build a pay-per-month multi player service (actually called an MMO by a representative of the company) with dedicated secure servers and all the content that people would actually pay for.     So there should be attractive online content at launch to make players subscribe and more and more come forth over time, funded by the happy, paying player base.   

As it turned out, they shot much too high.     When funding ran out and it was time to earn some money, just a better demo was sold at the stores, with all the flaws and nicks that a hasty release implies.     The first months after release were spent in a frantic effort to fix the worst bugs and supply at least some online content to bind the (far too few) subscribers.   

In the end, most players were unhappy.     Single player customers felt cheated because they thought (whether justyfied, I cannot say) they were due a bigger and better game - as the famed successors of this games lineage had been bigger and better and offered oh sooo much play to even the lowly single player person - and they insisted that they were being left out of too much of what the subscribers were getting.     Also the much needed patching of the single player sideshot of the game was lagging far behind the multi player part.     It seemed to them that they had paid to play a demo.   

The multi player game took weeks to get the critical bugs fixed and gameplay smoothed out.     At first, even willing subscription customers were thrown back to that rather thin payed-for demo.     New content came forth, but it never attracted enough subscribers to keep the company afloat.     Although many of the players who weathered the bumby ride of the first weeks had fun, the vociferous crowd of those feeling cheated didn't help at all.     Of course, the game never got as good or varied or big as the precursor games where the lead designers had made their names.   

The company went bankrupt.     Eventually the intellectual property was bought out (without the staff) by an asian publisher.     They probably tried to make something over there out of the title, but it didn't work out.     It don't know how long it took after launch for the online servers to close down, maybe a year total.     The exclusive online content and many of the fixes and optimizations were never released for the Single Player game.   

Well, I am speaking of Flagship Studios and Hellgate: London, of course.   

The portents are there: It seems Monte Christo may be due to go down much the same way as Flagship, just with less grace.     The ingredients are all there.     Overambitous, lets call it grandiose plans for the project.     A business model that doesn't carry and, evenif successful, is bound to leave part of the customers feeling cheated.     Forced release before the game can show off the promised content.     The (vain and irresponsible) hope that box sales and subscription fees may keep the boat afloat and raise enough cash to actually finish the project.   

Seen it all before.