It has been a while since I last wrote a word of the week, but as we are about to head to summer vacation I thought it would be good to give you guys a heads up that we'll be off the grid for a month. Worry not, we are still going to add more content and new features to the game and will be listening to your input on what would be the most interesting theme for a new expansion. So any hopes and dreams for future developments are still more than welcome! We'll just get back to it after the vacation

Mass Transit expansion was released in May and it seems that you guys really liked it! We have received some ideas and suggestions for features that already exist in the game and we thought that improving the communication on what an update brings to the game was needed. You might have already noticed the “What’s new” window that appears with a major update. The intention is to notify you if the game has updated with new content. The window informs you on what is new and how it works in a nutshell. It won’t advertise new features in a DLC you don’t have, but mention things that have been updated for free or are in a DLC pack you have purchased. Any feedback on this feature is highly appreciated! Is it informative? Needed? A waste of time? Awesome?

I shall continue these updates in mid-August and it's going to be very exciting as we have some cool content that we have been working on. If I say anything more Paradox will hunt me down and no remote cabin in the Finnish woods will be far enough to hide in. However I shall now take my four weeks of vacation for horsing around and enjoying the possibility of decent weather (I want to believe).

Have a great July

Cheers,
Mariina

 

[Anttonilla]

I have yet to find the "what's new" panel. Can someone please show me the light?

It pops up when you open the game. Soo maybe your game is bugged or something.

 

[JohnA45]

I'm begging for a better bridge expansion, a DLC like what you did with the Pearls from the East would be great. I think each road should spawn a different bridge (including the two lane roads) that get nicer based on type of road. Example: A regular road makes a truss bridge or simple type of bridge and a tree lined road creates the prettiest bridge. Continue this same idea to the avenue bridges and then highways make better suspension bridges as the lanes increase. And maybe add a large highway bridge that brings two multiple highway lanes together like the Golden Gate, Sydney Harbour Bridge or perhaps like that Millau Viaduct one in France. This way you only need one bridge to cross a river...you know...like in real life!

 

[Kastle117]

It pops up when you open the game. Soo maybe your game is bugged or something.

Thanks a lot! I've seen this before now, but I clicked the "Don't show again" button, which is why I'm not seeing it anymore. Silly me...

 

[funhave]

I'm begging for a better bridge expansion, a DLC like what you did with the Pearls from the East would be great. I think each road should spawn a different bridge (including the two lane roads) that get nicer based on type of road. Example: A regular road makes a truss bridge or simple type of bridge and a tree lined road creates the prettiest bridge. Continue this same idea to the avenue bridges and then highways make better suspension bridges as the lanes increase. And maybe add a large highway bridge that brings two multiple highway lanes together like the Golden Gate, Sydney Harbour Bridge or perhaps like that Millau Viaduct one in France. This way you only need one bridge to cross a river...you know...like in real life!

But not only over water, I would like to have good looking bridge over interchanges same when we have the traffic manager and movie it mod and all that traffic mods included and they should create automatic dams where dams needed and only bridges over streets and tracks where bridges needed

 

[El Sicko]

I really wish you would raise the vehicle and agent limits.
And include a seperation for service vehicles like CSL Service Reserve.

I always lay down the game for weeks because it's no fun above 200.000 people in town.
And that is easily reachable in standard 9 ltiles.
Anything above 300.000 is a total mess.
The city looks so empty and all the work to fix traffic issues before becomes obsolete.

At least you could communicate a bit on this issue.
If it is a technical problem by using small arrays and reworking is hard or a political decision.
I mean the average pc specs should have improved since game launch and there is always the way of having an additional setting that is disabled by default.

really frustrated with this...

greetings

 

[metacritical]

search the forum, this has been addressed about a thousand times before.

 

[dreadicon]

Have a good vacation; wish we got month-long vacations here in the states!

As to where to take the game from here, the breadth of gameplay aspects is solid; everything is either in the game, or already been deemed outside the scope of C:S. I suggest that depth of play be explored then, or improvements which allow modders to dig deeper. Some examples of depth of gameplay could include rush hour mechanics for traffic (along with park & rides and similar concerns), stockpiles for industry so that goods aren't made on-demand, and better simulation of slums, homeless, and the darker side of cities around the world.

Just like Sim City 3000, Skylines could add a "Rush Hour" expansion, which was much loved there; why not here too? Beyond events people rush to and the daily simultaneous commutes, It could include scenarios of cities with bedroom communities and traffic bottlenecks, along with associated buildings and even could add in interesting stuff like custom road templates (i.e. either in-game or in-asset-editor road customization) and toll roads. Carpool lanes to go with the park and rides as well.

How about "Big Industry" expansion, focusing on more in-depth simulation of things like air pollution, production chains, and of course stock yards so that goods can be ready and waiting near your shops in downtown rather than having to order more from industry on the far side and hoping it gets to the store before it runs out! This could deal with topics like clean vs. dirty power in greater depth and complexity. Buildings could include more power plants and natural gas utilities, introduce recycling facilities and mechanics, and car pollution issues as well.

If you're looking for another thing the game hasn't covered much yet, how about inter-city relations? Make a deal with the next city over to take their garbage or buy their water. Become an education town with people coming to school at your university. Have the national ecconomy ebb and flow forcing you to adapt your strategy and change priorities. This could also be a good place for stockpiles, as well as recycling or bigger college-level education mechanics, like linking nearby schools together to increase their 'education rating'.

Finally, "Urban Renewal," taking some inspiration from the classic Sim City 2000's expansion of the same namesake. We all know Cities: Skylines cities are rarely anything less than idylic and utopian; everyone goes to school and graduates, buildings never get old, and the streets are quite easy to keep clean. Not to mention no one ever goes homeless or hungry for long! This is definitely fun in it's own way, but Sim City never pulled it's punches on this topic; you could, and would, often end up with buildings aging and homeless people would begin roaming the streets. Dealing with these problems is a major part of most any US city, and they often snowball too; low education leads to crime, which leads to decreased land value, which leads to the wealthy leaving only the poor behind, and the whole cycle starts over again. The possibilities for how to handle this are endless; homeless shelters & community centers, drug education programs, outreach programs, urban renewal to give old parts of town a face lift. Give unique mechanics to all those boring monuments other than just generic 'land value'.

Now, apart from expansions, I'd like to chime in again for modders; make some of the fixed values in the code variables that we can change. Agent limits are the obvious ones, but while in there how about making the zone size limiters different too?

Ideally, I'd like to ask for an expansion which comes with larger growables that have significant challenge to getting them to grow. I remember my days in Sim City where getting the top tier of buildings - your sky scrapers - felt like a major accomplishment. You had to get the zoning right for the land value and placement, give them the right services, and even then, it wouldn't always work.

The long and short of all this is I don't think there are many new mechanics the game is lacking. It's just lacking depth. It feels somewhat thin and unfulfilling as a city simulator many times. More like wonderful designer and city painter; which is great, but it could be so much more.

 

[Beer Fiend]

Finally, "Urban Renewal," taking some inspiration from the classic Sim City 2000's expansion of the same namesake. We all know Cities: Skylines cities are rarely anything less than idylic and utopian; everyone goes to school and graduates, buildings never get old, and the streets are quite easy to keep clean. Not to mention no one ever goes homeless or hungry for long! This is definitely fun in it's own way, but Sim City never pulled it's punches on this topic; you could, and would, often end up with buildings aging and homeless people would begin roaming the streets. Dealing with these problems is a major part of most any US city, and they often snowball too; low education leads to crime, which leads to decreased land value, which leads to the wealthy leaving only the poor behind, and the whole cycle starts over again. The possibilities for how to handle this are endless; homeless shelters & community centers, drug education programs, outreach programs, urban renewal to give old parts of town a face lift. Give unique mechanics to all those boring monuments other than just generic 'land value'.

That's how you earned that agree.

Adding onto that, a Crime and Punishment (Suggested name?) DLC would be cool. Like you could have certain types of crime happen in certain areas (White collar crime more likely to happen in office areas, shoplifting in commercial, gang related stuff in low income residential) and you have to deal with that kind of thing. You could have policies such as scared straight, curfews or even brutal crackdowns in gang infested areas or something like that, Hell have recreational use actually do something.

You could also maybe have Police armouries and Riot police added to the game (still backing riots in game!) Organise raids on high crime buildings, actually have the city feel real, that kind of thing.

And a minor niggle, why can't we name our football teams that we get with the Match Day DLC? Teams are not just '<Town Name> FC'. This is especially noticeable when you have two Match Day capable stadiums in the same city (as is perfectly acceptable). Rather than two Blackfield FC's I feel that I should be able to re-name the teams, seeing as you can customise the names of individual citizens for Godssakes!

 

[Krullevaar]

What about the following ideas?

- introduce 4-lane railroads that can handle extra traffic, because I prefer to transport cargo and people by train (=less traffic jams) and right now I have to use two separate tracks to prevent train jams.

- the option to ban outside train traffic should also be available on cargo buildings. I have to use two separate stations to transfer cargo from the outside connections to my intercity rail network, which I want to keep free of outside traffic. Otherwise my tracks are full of cargo trains from outside connections, which are often just passing through from one side of the map to the other.

- add politics/decision making. For example: every few years your cims elect a new city council, which has a certain agenda that you, the mayor, has to fullfill before the next election. Like "build a university", "create more jobs", "build more industry", "improve fire coverage in distric X", etc. If you don't succeed, people will become unhappy, refuse to pay taxes for X days, strike for X days or even riot. A good mayor can prevent/stop this by meeting their demands and an evil mayor could send the riot police after them or demolish their houses (muhaha!). The outcome of the election and the agenda of the new city council depends on your demography (level of education, income, age, etc.); high class people may ask for better roads or lower taxes, lower class people want more jobs and less crime in their district, etcetera.

- if that's too complicated, you could also present the mayor with moral dilemmas or events, where all options have their pros and cons. How do you deal with football hooligans? Will you allow a gay parade? Or a demonstration of the far left/right? Will you spend extra money on a sports event that may or may not bring profit to you city (maybe even the Olympics)? How do you handle a terror attack? Will you give the homeless money/shelter or will you arrest them for panhandling? Will you give your cims free public transportation when protestors demand it? I.e. I would like to see more of the stuff that happens in real cities.

- add religious buildings. This may be a sensitive subject but it would be nice to be able to build churches, mosques, synagoges, Buddhist temples, etcetera to add some flavour to your city.

- add the option to create an artifical lake, preferably without it flooding half the city because the water mechanic can be quite disastrous.

 

[Steve B.]

dd religious buildings. This may be a sensitive subject but it would be nice to be able to build churches, mosques, synagoges, Buddhist temples, etcetera to add some flavour to your city.

There are plenty of religious buildings in the workshop. Many of them also work as crematoria or cemeteries. They're very useful; I use them all the time.

- add the option to create an artifical lake, preferably without it flooding half the city because the water mechanic can be quite disastrous.

You could probably do this by connecting a sewage pump to a water pump or tower that are not connected to your water supply. When the lake is filled, demolish them.

 

[Beer Fiend]

You could probably do this by connecting a sewage pump to a water pump or tower that are not connected to your water supply. When the lake is filled, demolish them.

Or use the fresh water outlet instead.

 

[Smallgamer]

Hello,
There are few things I miss in the game:
- trolleybuses: You could make trolleybus road with tram track or with monorail track. There is big amount of combinations in this case.
- ferry for cars: It could be cheaper then bridge.
- upgraded subway system to elevated track or overground track
- lift bridge for large ships: This option could be used in a case of lack of space. (impossibility of high bridge)
- monorail 4-lane avenue with tram track
These things are just ideas how to improve my Skyline experience but game is definitely great without these ideas.
Thank you for reading it.

 

[Krullevaar]

There are plenty of religious buildings in the workshop. Many of them also work as crematoria or cemeteries. They're very useful; I use them all the time.

I'm using a church, mosque and synagogue from the workshop but it would be nice if the vanilla game had some too. Right now it only has a cathedral that can be placed once.

You could probably do this by connecting a sewage pump to a water pump or tower that are not connected to your water supply. When the lake is filled, demolish them.

Or use the fresh water outlet instead.

Will the water remain after removing the water pump/outlet? Because I've tried making lakes and the water kept draining away.

 

[co_emmi]

Hi everyone!

Mariina and most of the team are still on their summer vacation, but I am here and I'll try to catch up with the forums today.

I still think riots and protests would be a good way to go. Just something to make the cities feel less idyllic or utopian.

Thanks for the suggestion. Riots and protests are on the wishlist, but have not made it to the development at least yet. One issue with this is the citizen behaviour as we've seen with the disasters: they like to remain calm and collected

I would like the ability to create / edit roads in asset editor. There are many different road types with added lanes in CS now, eg bikeways, monorails, bus, tram etc. But with them none have decorative trees or grass. Trees especially useful for cutting down road noise in elite suburbs. The ability to edit these splines would be helpful, besides could make fence splines and many others.

I love the what's new feature, even for regular players you can sometimes forget about a feature or two.

My main problem with all the new content, mainly roads, is that the road selection is too crowded and it is too difficult to find the road I want to place. A custom road builder would be nice.

I am happy to hear that the what's new feature has helped! It seems to be doing exactly what we aimed for.

Road modding tool is in the making at the moment, let's see how it works when we get to test it out more.

next DLC should be EVENTS!

Thanks for the suggestion! Events are on the wishlist.

Yes, for English names. But I mean it would be nice if you could opt for name lists in other languages. Imagine you want to build Rome or Kopenhagen, then English street names would make no sense. So it would be nice if there was a list of (for example) Italian or Danish street names you could pick instead at the start of the game. And then people can all make their own language lists and share them in the workshop.

I'll take a note on this and check with the programmers when they are back from the holidays if it would be possible to localise the street names.

allow to create some facilities along pedestrian ways (seats, ice-cream seller, underground entrance, ...)

Nice idea, not sure if possible though but I'll add it to the wishlist.

For the future it would be nice with a drawing overlay/tool where you could sketch out the layout for your city without spending money.

Interesting idea. I am wondering though that doesn't the unlimited money mod allow this kind of free drawing and then with the limited money it's part of the challenge?

I'm begging for a better bridge expansion

"More bridges" added to the wishlist

I really wish you would raise the vehicle and agent limits.

I think our lead programmer has said the limits have been raised to maximum we can without creating problematic issues with the game balance and mechanics. We have to take this into account in the future, but with Cities: Skylines I'm afraid our hands are tight.

Have a good vacation; wish we got month-long vacations here in the states!

As to where to take the game from here, the breadth of gameplay aspects is solid; everything is either in the game, or already been deemed outside the scope of C:S. I suggest that depth of play be explored then, or improvements which allow modders to dig deeper. Some examples of depth of gameplay could include rush hour mechanics for traffic (along with park & rides and similar concerns), stockpiles for industry so that goods aren't made on-demand, and better simulation of slums, homeless, and the darker side of cities around the world...

Thank you for the suggestions! We've been quite overwhelmed about the modding community and we are all the time working on better modding tools. Currently under work is the road modding. Game play suggestions we have on the wishlist and we try to address them in the future.

Adding onto that, a Crime and Punishment (Suggested name?) DLC would be cool.

And a minor niggle, why can't we name our football teams that we get with the Match Day DLC? Rather than two Blackfield FC's I feel that I should be able to re-name the teams, seeing as you can customise the names of individual citizens for Godssakes!

Thank you for the DLC suggestion. With the team naming I think it has something to do with legal stuff related to the real teams.

- introduce 4-lane railroads that can handle extra traffic, because I prefer to transport cargo and people by train (=less traffic jams) and right now I have to use two separate tracks to prevent train jams.

- the option to ban outside train traffic should also be available on cargo buildings. I have to use two separate stations to transfer cargo from the outside connections to my intercity rail network, which I want to keep free of outside traffic. Otherwise my tracks are full of cargo trains from outside connections, which are often just passing through from one side of the map to the other.

- add politics/decision making. For example: every few years your cims elect a new city council, which has a certain agenda that you, the mayor, has to fullfill before the next election. Like "build a university", "create more jobs", "build more industry", "improve fire coverage in distric X", etc. If you don't succeed, people will become unhappy, refuse to pay taxes for X days, strike for X days or even riot. A good mayor can prevent/stop this by meeting their demands and an evil mayor could send the riot police after them or demolish their houses (muhaha!). The outcome of the election and the agenda of the new city council depends on your demography (level of education, income, age, etc.); high class people may ask for better roads or lower taxes, lower class people want more jobs and less crime in their district, etcetera.

- if that's too complicated, you could also present the mayor with moral dilemmas or events, where all options have their pros and cons. How do you deal with football hooligans? Will you allow a gay parade? Or a demonstration of the far left/right? Will you spend extra money on a sports event that may or may not bring profit to you city (maybe even the Olympics)? How do you handle a terror attack? Will you give the homeless money/shelter or will you arrest them for panhandling? Will you give your cims free public transportation when protestors demand it? I.e. I would like to see more of the stuff that happens in real cities.

- add religious buildings. This may be a sensitive subject but it would be nice to be able to build churches, mosques, synagoges, Buddhist temples, etcetera to add some flavour to your city.

- add the option to create an artifical lake, preferably without it flooding half the city because the water mechanic can be quite disastrous.

I'll add the train traffic improvements to the wishlist. Politics are on the wishlist already, it might be a too big of an addition though as you could make a full game out of it. More events are a wished feature Religious buildings are also on the wishlist.

The lake idea is interesting and a first time for me to hear about it I've used the fresh water outlet to create lakes safely. Though it has the problem of water draining away or floating unless you stop and put it back on time to time.

Hello,
There are few things I miss in the game:
- trolleybuses: You could make trolleybus road with tram track or with monorail track. There is big amount of combinations in this case.
- ferry for cars: It could be cheaper then bridge.
- upgraded subway system to elevated track or overground track
- lift bridge for large ships: This option could be used in a case of lack of space. (impossibility of high bridge)
- monorail 4-lane avenue with tram track
These things are just ideas how to improve my Skyline experience but game is definitely great without these ideas.
Thank you for reading it.

I like trolleybuses too They are technically a bit tricky to add to the game, but I am dreaming... Not sure if the rest of the team agrees though
Car ferries, more roads, bridges and tracks are on the wishlist. I am afraid the overground metro is not so likely thing to happen for Cities: Skylines.

 

[funhave]

I want have no limits for set props and outside connetions

 

[ouglgl]

For the future it would be nice with a drawing overlay/tool where you could sketch out the layout for your city without spending money.

Interesting idea. I am wondering though that doesn't the unlimited money mod allow this kind of free drawing and then with the limited money it's part of the challenge?

I think the sketching feature is more about designing a complex area ingame (not in the asset editor, because too large for example) and paying it, but avoiding the costs of all the temporary reworks it may have needed to accomplish the final layout. The unlimited money allows you to redesign as you want for free, but you won't pay for the final layout at all, which is not what people playing with the money challenge want.

 

[EricTheGreat12]

I am afraid the overground metro is not so likely thing to happen for Cities: Skylines.

How is it impossible to do? I don't want to be rude, but the current MoM mod does it quite well; the only reason why there are issues currently is due to the fact that the part of the modding team seems to not be updating the files based on the current game's version.

Besides for those minor gripes, the Metro Overhaul Mod is amazing and I'm quite disappointed to hear that it won't be integrated

 

[neillunn84]

I'd like some way to zone some mixed use areas.

Similar to how in real cities, ground floors are often retail/commercial, and then maybe offices or residential above. Could there be a way to integrate public transport into the buildings too, like how the London underground stations are sometimes on the ground floor/basements of office and retail buildings?

Maybe if there was a way to zone a "mixed use dense zone" where you could 'sub-zone' potential floors/storeys of the zone, to allow commercial for the first 10m above ground level, then residential above.

I'm not at all sure if this would work in the game's mechanics, but I'd like a way to have my sims be able to work, live and play in a relatively close area.

Maybe also pedestrian streets built into the vanilla game. So that if you have a thriving retail area, you can pedestrianise a street, possibly still with public transport options like a tram line. Cities should be designed for people, not cars.

Also if you can mark a district as a park, so that you can build a large custom park (with paths, trees, other smaller in-game parks, occasional small commercial blocks), that would have the same happiness effect as an in-game park?

 

[Smallgamer]

Hi again
I was thinking about the zones and they could be created like new ones :
- already mentioned mixed zones are good idea
- high-tech zones: industry zones on the biggest level and without pollution
- new skyscrapers, houses or comercial buildings
- new buildings with the possibility to influence the city: town hall, court house or parliament - These ideas are related to the policy which was mentioned
- new types of power plants and sewage disposal plants
- region with multiple cities
Thank you for reading it

 

[neillunn84]

Another thought: if there was a way for buildings to change their use over time, such as being able to mark buildings or districts as heritage or conservation items, that way the built form would remain, but the use/zoning could change. An example could be an industrial district that is marked as heritage, but the zoning changes to commercial or offices, so then those types of businesses would move into the buildings. Or old warehouses could become trendy new apartments.