Greetings Mayors!
I'd like to share with you all an issue I have found with sandbox mode. A lot of you probably already have thought about this issue, but I'm just going to highlight it and why it's an issue for me.
I was doing some design maintenance on this blog and thinking of some cool ideas that would make this blog worth coming back to each day. Then I was thinking about things that could get users of the community involved more! Well, I then came up with the idea of contests! It was a total win in my eyes. Until I thought about the process to which the contests would work, then I hit this sandbox mode issue.
The issue
Well, if I were to host a SimCity contest, how would I determine if that city were legit or not? Even if they had to make a video of their city, they could still fake it in sandbox mode with ease.
Here's a comedy strip I made for you all, to explain what I mean. ;) (click for a larger image)
My 'solution'
I'd have to visit the cities entered in the contest 1-by-1 which would be extremely inefficient Also bare in mind that if the server which their city is on, is full I'd have to wait a good 20 minutes just to judge their city. Let alone, how hard it would be to find their city in the first place. It's not a good solution and it still gives me issues, like the ones I've stated above. But if I host a contest, it's really my only hope to knowing if a city is legit or not.
What there could be to solve this
An official screenshot uploader to an official simcity sub domain (E.g http://www.shots.simcity.com), where images cannot be tampered with and a watermark is placed over it if the city was created in sandbox mode. Not only would this make the game more competitive but it would allow me to create contests which would make the game more fun!
Anyway, I highly doubt that this would be in Maxis' to-do list, but if it was... I'd be very pleased.
Thanks for reading!
Post your opinion in the comments and/or in this thread: http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/0/9356855.page#27577414
I'd like to share with you all an issue I have found with sandbox mode. A lot of you probably already have thought about this issue, but I'm just going to highlight it and why it's an issue for me.
I was doing some design maintenance on this blog and thinking of some cool ideas that would make this blog worth coming back to each day. Then I was thinking about things that could get users of the community involved more! Well, I then came up with the idea of contests! It was a total win in my eyes. Until I thought about the process to which the contests would work, then I hit this sandbox mode issue.
The issue
Well, if I were to host a SimCity contest, how would I determine if that city were legit or not? Even if they had to make a video of their city, they could still fake it in sandbox mode with ease.
Here's a comedy strip I made for you all, to explain what I mean. ;) (click for a larger image)
My 'solution'
I'd have to visit the cities entered in the contest 1-by-1 which would be extremely inefficient Also bare in mind that if the server which their city is on, is full I'd have to wait a good 20 minutes just to judge their city. Let alone, how hard it would be to find their city in the first place. It's not a good solution and it still gives me issues, like the ones I've stated above. But if I host a contest, it's really my only hope to knowing if a city is legit or not.
What there could be to solve this
An official screenshot uploader to an official simcity sub domain (E.g http://www.shots.simcity.com), where images cannot be tampered with and a watermark is placed over it if the city was created in sandbox mode. Not only would this make the game more competitive but it would allow me to create contests which would make the game more fun!
Anyway, I highly doubt that this would be in Maxis' to-do list, but if it was... I'd be very pleased.
Thanks for reading!
Post your opinion in the comments and/or in this thread: http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/0/9356855.page#27577414
You have another problem here, and that's gifting. A person (or friend) could set up a city just to make money(or any other resource) and gift all they want to the new city.
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