Despite what the vocal majority said, I enjoyed SimCity enough that I put over 200 hours into the game after its release. That being said, I was not blind to its issues, most notably those involving connecting to the game’s servers.
The game’s launch was plagued with connectivity issues, stability problems, regions not properly working together, and small city sizes. While the first three issues were addressed with the “long awaited” release of SimCity offline, it’s the fourth point that’s arguably most important to the franchise’s community. In theory, the smaller cities working together as a region was a nice idea, but the execution of that idea has been both incredibly sloppy and is still a major talking point for gamers.
Over in r/SimCity, the thread announcing the release of Offline Play is filled with, you guessed it, discussion on the smaller map sizes.
“The main issue that I hated with this game was having a small map… and having a small map meant having lesser amounts of resources available,” reads the top rated post by user GTAsian. “It seemed like every time my city got to a notable size, I would start running out of water at an alarming rate and then my citizens would leave town while it turned into a dried out desert.” The thread is filled with people saying “I hope modders can find a way to make bigger cities” and “I avoided this game because of the always-online requirement, but is it worth the price now even with the smaller cities?” The discussion should be about offline play. Instead, its about the map sizes.
Despite the continued (and appreciated) work by Maxis and the solving of a key issue from the game’s launch last year, fans of SimCity still aren’t convinced that they should stop playing SimCity 4. Mind you, SimCity 2013 was never supposed to be a proper sequel, instead focusing on a brand new experience. Gamers, however, have spoken: they didn’t want that new experience. This brings us back to one of the comments I mentioned earlier: modders. If they can find a way to sprout life into the game, then it has a chance to flourish.
But it might be too little too late.
