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We have been busy little bees working on something completely new for Cities: Skylines and now we finally get to talk about it!

Cities: Skylines Snowfall is inspired by the Finnish winter that just seems to last forever. It's all about what we see and feel around us: Snow, ice and cold weather. You get to experience the snowfall, so make sure your citizens stay warm by offering heating, and tackling the challenges of slippery roads slowing down traffic.

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People have been asking us to add seasons to the game. However we felt that winter should have it's own theme with unique challenges. This means that winter maps have eternal snow and new features tied to it. You can create your own winter maps in the map editor or play the three maps that are available in Snowfall.

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The snow is naturally a very visual feature and we have created quite a few new buildings for the theme. Many of the base game buildings have been varied to fit winter conditions better, so you won’t have flowerbeds or palm trees in your winter wonderland. For modders we'll have more information how to prepare their assets for the snow coming later, but what we can say at this point is that the snow is generated by code and the assets should work with minor tweaks. Roads are also covered by snow and citizens wear winter clothing. Just like in European maps, winter maps have special buildings only available in them. We have also added some weather effects for all the other map themes.

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Not only is the winter map about the visuals but there are special services that are available only in this theme. So make sure you clear the roads of the snow and heat up the citizen's home because the temperature is dropping. We'll be talking about these new features and more in a weekly developer diary until the release, so stay tuned!

Are you ready for a gorgeous winter wonderland?
 
Would like to hop in and thank you all for the wave of feedback in this thread. Lots of interesting opinions and suggestions.

It's unfortunate that we are not able to please everyone with what we choose to add to Cities: Skylines. As most of you probably know the people on this forum are the most hardcore players and you generally value simulation, depth and further challenges more than the majority of people who own and play this game. Taking into consideration that After Dark has 88% positive reviews on Steam (which is literally amazing for a DLC) we are still very satisfied with the contents and reception to that update.

When Cities released it pooled in city builder fans from all aspects. We got people from SimCity, Banished, CitiesXL, Pharaoh, Tropico - you name it! This has resulted in a very mixed set of expectations on what individuals wishes the game to be. Our goal is to provide the best solutions for our community as a whole.

Thanks for understanding and please keep the feedback coming.
 
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ah, so there actually is a plan?

why all the secrecy? it's not like you guys have competition, except for SC4 + NAM.

i'm not asking details, revealing that now would mean DDs would be useless. i'm asking are we going to see network improvements, public transport, services, map stuff maybe?
 
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ah, so there actually is a plan?

why all the secrecy? it's not like you guys have competition, except for SC4 + NAM.

i'm not asking details, revealing that now would mean DDs would be useless. i'm asking are we going to see network improvements, public transport, services, map stuff maybe?

Yes, of course there is a plan :)

Because we are still a pretty small company in a world that has fresh video game news every single day. If we want our fans to know what's going on we need to be smart about what we say and when. It's simple as that.

Yes, the forum will keep track of what we say and won't lose out. But the rest of our players, which are the vast majority won't have the same vigilance in searching for info.

Also because details change and we don't want to set expectations that then we are not going to deliver on. We tell you things when we are sure you'll be getting just that.

Hope that makes sense!
 
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As most of you probably know the people on this forum are the most hardcore players and you generally value simulation, depth and further challenges more than the majority of people who own and play this game. Taking into consideration that After Dark has 88% positive reviews on Steam (which is literally amazing for a DLC) we are still very satisfied with the contents and reception to that update.
...

Yes, that’s a cross to bear, but Paradox kind of exists to cater to our niche. So please don’t throw us under the bus with CL!

Apart from that, I read that After Dark only sold about 200,000 copies? While that sounds large in absolute terms, if true it would amount to only about 10% of CL owners. So you missed out on a lot of potential sales. And don’t read too much into the positive Steam ratings. Some positive ones are actually more expressions of hope that the promised features will work some time in the future. And there might be some (like me) who have not given a rating, but who are steadily growing more disappointed that CO still hasn’t delivered what was promised for After Dark.
 
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Would like to hop in and thank you all for the wave of feedback in this thread. Lots of interesting opinions and suggestions.

It's unfortunate that we are not able to please everyone with what we choose to add to Cities: Skylines. As most of you probably know the people on this forum are the most hardcore players and you generally value simulation, depth and further challenges more than the majority of people who own and play this game. Taking into consideration that After Dark has 88% positive reviews on Steam (which is literally amazing for a DLC) we are still very satisfied with the contents and reception to that update.

When Cities released it pooled in city builder fans from all aspects. We got people from SimCity, Banished, CitiesXL, Pharaoh, Tropico - you name it! This has resulted in a very mixed set of expectations on what individuals wishes the game to be. Our goal is to provide the best solutions for our community as a whole.

Thanks for understanding and please keep the feedback coming.

I agree with disclaimer. Don´t forget that high ratings not always tell you about quality - many people were upset by simcity and happy to see a city manager/painter/simulator? (we will see what we have in the future) with maps bigger than a single city district; and soo many people in this time have zero aspirations that high ratings are overrated. There are so many flaws in AD, you must have blinkers to not see them and give a positive rating.
It is your decision whether or not this game goes full on casual, eventually ignoring all the "hardcore" players from SimCity4 and the other (good) games you mentioned and with that decision risking to build up a big loyal fanbase willing to support the game for a long time.
SimCity4 was at release miles ahead in terms of complexity and simulation (please have a look on this http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...dark-in-a-bad-way.903271/page-3#post-20550606 he even didnt mention explicit the 3 wealth levels), a really solid base upon all the fans and modders relied till this day. Without a solid base all that what you have right now with CS will eventually collapse and the players go back to their "hardcore" games.
 
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ah, so there actually is a plan?

why all the secrecy? it's not like you guys have competition, except for SC4 + NAM.

i'm not asking details, revealing that now would mean DDs would be useless. i'm asking are we going to see network improvements, public transport, services, map stuff maybe?

As someone who works in the software industry, I think secrecy is the norm. The reason being is that software is enormously hard to do... *especially* games. It's not just for competitive reasons, but mostly because they don't want to over-promise only to have to start yanking features for whatever reason. That tends to get gamers riled up because they will say "but you promised" when in reality, the devs tried their best but ultimately couldn't not make it happen. The dev's here are probably waiting until they know that "hey, we got this in the can" before revealing what that is. So in our case, they got winter, plows and trams in the can. They don't know if they can get in other stuff yet, but once they do, then we'll hear about it.
 
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Yes, of course there is a plan :)

Because we are still a pretty small company in a world that has fresh video game news every single day. If we want our fans to know what's going on we need to be smart about what we say and when. It's simple as that.

Yes, the forum will keep track of what we say and won't lose out. But the rest of our players, which are the vast majority won't have the same vigilance in searching for info.

Also because details change and we don't want to set expectations that then we are not going to deliver on. We tell you things when we are sure you'll be getting just that.

Hope that makes sense!
Banished was made by a smaller team and it's miles ahead of C:S in terms of depth and simulation without being an ugly game. Well, even C:S modders did stuff actually worthier paying for in a shorter time than AD and Snowfall together as they're both cosmetic focused DLCs. I can't see any other rock in the way to unlock the true simulation potential of this game but casual players that are not even the fanbase of this game, believe me, they'll leave once the hardcore players go away if things keeps like that. They're like wasps and they always acted like that.

Nonetheless, I still have hope (even through it's small) that CO will make this game the so promissed city simulator and take the crown from Simcity 4 because realism is all about fun.

In other words:

Remove the 4x4 zoning limitation that makes the building scaling quite unrealistic, they are as big as 1x1 SC4 buildings at the point of being impossible of making a real Skyline; add some utility to the budget sliders in order to make them get used more often as they should be; add some real consequence for messing up at the start of the game and events/disasters by cutting the budget such as holes on the roads and riots through the city for being a poor mayor; unlock the civic buildings and roads at the start of the game because locking almost everything up at the very start is laughable for veteran city simulator gamers as if we needed someone grabbing our hands to walk in the park; add flood on the city after a rain in case of cutting the road budget; remove the extra money that the game gives to the player when said player manages with effort to bankrupt a city; nerf the overpowered wind power plants; add some more NIMBY aspect to the useless pollution because even Simcity 2013 got the pollution simulation done right; etc, etc, etc...

Realism needs to be the focus here because there is no fun if there is no realism and complexity like the one present in SC4, which needs only one necessary mod to be improved.

Casual players don't give a good fame to a game, we hardcore players do and C:S is a proof for that fact. Ignore the casual masses and give your long time supporting fanbase what they are screaming for (a good place to see what people are aiming for is the workshop) instead of focusing on updates that adds nothing to the game and that feel like a make-up for the lack of depth in the simulation.
 
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"Deep simulator" lol. Please open your eyes and take a look at how game mechanics are implemented. Here's a detailed explanation: https://www.reddit.com/r/Gaming4Gam...cities_skylines_after_dark_expansion_pack_is/




I don't disagree with this, more options are good, but the game is supposed to be a city management simulator not traffic sim. So far the management side is rather weak...we spend more time dealing with traffic than everything else...

When creating a city, you have to take in account; the traffic or else your city will choke itself out. As your city expands; you need to address traffic. Traffic needs to be addressed. That's what makes CS so special; as you said a city management simulators. If cities didn't pay attention to traffic; there would be no buses, trains, subways, highways, etc
 
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When creating a city, you have to take in account; the traffic or else your city will choke itself out. As your city expands; you need to address traffic. Traffic needs to be addressed. That's what makes CS so special; as you said a city management simulators. If cities didn't pay attention to traffic; there would be no buses, trains, subways, highways, etc

There are more things to a city than traffic. Like, how much do rents cost, before citizens can no longer afford to pay them or the wellbeing of your citizens. In the case of CSL both things are implemented rather sloppy. City rents do not matter, since your citizens can afford them anyway. If you have at least one service building of each type you normally do not have to think about the well being of your citizens anylonger. That is where CO has to expand the game. Instead they give us a new game mode as a core feature.
 
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When creating a city, you have to take in account; the traffic or else your city will choke itself out. As your city expands; you need to address traffic. Traffic needs to be addressed. That's what makes CS so special; as you said a city management simulators. If cities didn't pay attention to traffic; there would be no buses, trains, subways, highways, etc

Well, did you know that workers actually do not need to reach their workplace? https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...o-consequence-for-not-getting-to-work.883621/

And i am afraid, he did not say it is a city management simulator - he said it is supposed to be one, and not a traffic sim. And this even isnt a traffic sim. You have no idea how heavy traffic can ruin a residential district in sim city 4 - such things are not possible in C:S.
 
Would like to hop in and thank you all for the wave of feedback in this thread. Lots of interesting opinions and suggestions.

It's unfortunate that we are not able to please everyone with what we choose to add to Cities: Skylines. As most of you probably know the people on this forum are the most hardcore players and you generally value simulation, depth and further challenges more than the majority of people who own and play this game. Taking into consideration that After Dark has 88% positive reviews on Steam (which is literally amazing for a DLC) we are still very satisfied with the contents and reception to that update.

When Cities released it pooled in city builder fans from all aspects. We got people from SimCity, Banished, CitiesXL, Pharaoh, Tropico - you name it! This has resulted in a very mixed set of expectations on what individuals wishes the game to be. Our goal is to provide the best solutions for our community as a whole.

Thanks for understanding and please keep the feedback coming.

Agree 100%. My own city building interest dates back to the very first SimCity, and I love a really good simulation. So sure, this game isn't precisely what I would have it be if someone died and made me Ruler of the Universe. (Don't worry, I'll make the announcement if/when that happens!) In the meantime, the little things that might not be perfect in the CSL simulation don't stop me from having a heap of fun playing this game! Sure, having 100 hearses in a city of 10,000 drives me a little insane, but if that's the price for having a game that has converted tens of thousands of new users worldwide to city building, rescued the genre from death's door, and given me a game that lets me create stunningly beautiful cities while being able to shape those cities in so many different ways, then it's more than worth it!!!

So, would I have taken this new DLC in the same direction as CO is going? Honestly, no. But that isn't going to stop me from purchasing it and saying, "Thank you, good job, you guys & gals are awesome!" And then I'll sit back and enjoy whatever they've created, because these folks have earned my respect.
 
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So, would I have taken this new DLC in the same direction as CO is going? Honestly, no. But that isn't going to stop me from purchasing it and saying, "Thank you, good job, you guys & gals are awesome!" And then I'll sit back and enjoy whatever they've created, because these folks have earned my respect.

Finally! Thank you! Couldn't have said it better. This game is far away from perfect, sometimes I really go into ragemode because of things I really don't understand why someone sane has said: "This is a good idea, lets implement it this way!" ... but I am about to reach the 600 hours played counter, I think this is speaking for themself.
As I said already on reddit, CO should listen to the community thinking BEFORE even to start to build on a new system, but I understand that this is not always possible. Anyways, thank you for this awesome game so far and I am curious what is next.

(Cities in Motion3, with procedural generated buildings and awesome adjustment of every lane of a street? <3 )
 
Can't you make a special mode for seasons (alternating between summer and winter as of now)? Just make it way slower. Yes, it would be slow, but I'd still play it.
 
How will weather/snow work on regular maps? That is part of the free update right ? (don't worry I will be buying snowfall too)

If I recall weather will be visual only on other maps that isn't specific to snowfall, but will snow still accumulate and turn things white?
 
How will weather/snow work on regular maps? That is part of the free update right ? (don't worry I will be buying snowfall too)

If I recall weather will be visual only on other maps that isn't specific to snowfall, but will snow still accumulate and turn things white?

There will be no snow on regular maps. Just comsmetic rain/fog.
 
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Would like to hop in and thank you all for the wave of feedback in this thread. Lots of interesting opinions and suggestions.

It's unfortunate that we are not able to please everyone with what we choose to add to Cities: Skylines. As most of you probably know the people on this forum are the most hardcore players and you generally value simulation, depth and further challenges more than the majority of people who own and play this game. Taking into consideration that After Dark has 88% positive reviews on Steam (which is literally amazing for a DLC) we are still very satisfied with the contents and reception to that update.

When Cities released it pooled in city builder fans from all aspects. We got people from SimCity, Banished, CitiesXL, Pharaoh, Tropico - you name it! This has resulted in a very mixed set of expectations on what individuals wishes the game to be. Our goal is to provide the best solutions for our community as a whole.

Thanks for understanding and please keep the feedback coming.


Being a new poster and all (i swore i already had an account, but i guess not) i would hardly call myself "hardcore", but i can't just play something that provides little to no challenge.
Me i grew up with SimCity on the Snes, and i've found that a much slower (and harder) progression towards reaching a vast metropolis compared to this. You hold the players hand like they are going for their first dip in the pool, the difference being; this is a game, and as a gamer the challenge is in learning from your mistakes (much like life), and with that you actually do learn something.
But you don't let people make a mistake, as you've held their hand, everything is set, you just plop a few things down and your done, i want risk! i want to know if i wiped out the infrastructure that everything would goto hell and the loan sharks would have me sleeping with the fishes, if the people hadn't hung me first! Instead i could demolish a city out of existence and still be richer than i was when i first started.


You have alot going for this game, but with all the possibilities.. it's like having a pie with pastry but no filling.



There's not much else i can say beyond what @fefenc has already said.



Cheerio! :)



Btw, great traffic sim tho!
 
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