1 fear and 1 question.

[IIWW]

The main thing I'm concerned right now (I saw quill18 "let's play" and the PDS/CO feature presentation) is won't the game be too easy?
Quills is having some problems with trafic, but he seems to be really bad at designing his city. Money doesn't seem to be a problem, he run out of them one, maybe two times, buildings are unlockable, so basically You don't decide when to build the first police station/fire dept etc, You just do it when possible. One of the main strategic decision in SC4 (the best IMO game from this genre, at least till 10 III) was when You should build Your first building of each type. Here You have it given on a silver platter.
Also, a question, mainly to ppl who own CIM and a PDS game (EU4, CKII mainly): how is CO contact with users compared to PDS? I'm quite frequent poster on EU4 forum, and PDS is really in touch with users, they reply to our concerns, critique and sugestions. Is it on similar level with CIM?

 

[Greygor69]

The main thing I'm concerned right now (I saw quill18 "let's play" and the PDS/CO feature presentation) is won't the game be too easy?
Quills is having some problems with trafic, but he seems to be really bad at designing his city. Money doesn't seem to be a problem, he run out of them one, maybe two times, buildings are unlockable, so basically You don't decide when to build the first police station/fire dept etc, You just do it when possible. One of the main strategic decision in SC4 (the best IMO game from this genre, at least till 10 III) was when You should build Your first building of each type. Here You have it given on a silver platter.

Also, a question, mainly to ppl who own CIM and a PDS game (EU4, CKII mainly): how is CO contact with users compared to PDS? I'm quite frequent poster on EU4 forum, and PDS is really in touch with users, they reply to our concerns, critique and sugestions. Is it on similar level with CIM?

It does come with a Hard Mode Mod.


But that aside Quill seemed to have plenty of problems that just having money didn't start to address, traffic, population dying off etc.


Oh and CO's customer communication and interaction is, so far, the best I've ever seen of any company.

 

[Person012345]

As the user above said, CO's feedback and user interaction has been second to none so far.

As for difficulty, it's something I'm a little worried about too. I mean, I don't want something too challenging that you have to design things "perfectly" or else everything will collapse, but I'd like a certain level of challenge. I think my first city will be built with hard mode turned on. Ultimately though, you'll only really know whether it meets your standards for challenge when you play it yourself.

 

[Rhion]

So far I haven't seen any videos of players that run hardmode, so that would be interesting to see. (If anyone does know a video, feel free to provide a link )

From what I have seen, the game leans more towards sandbox than towards simulation.

 

[SimonJM]

Skye Storme's videos didn't give the impression of it being too easy at all. He had to budget very carefully in the beginning. If I hadn't watched his videos I would've easily just blown all my money on roads and left people without power and water.

Anyway I'm hoping the challenges of growing your city to high populations will be where the game shines...

 

[lemonsquid]

Skye Storme's videos didn't give the impression of it being too easy at all. In fact he had to budget very carefully in the beginning. If I hadn't watched his videos I would've easily just blown all my money on roads and left people without power and water.

Anyway I'm hoping the challenges of growing your city to high populations will be where the game shines...

Agreed, and we have only seen very small populations from these reviews, I cant imagine the pain staking task of managing 1 million people

 

[Mendeth]

So far I haven't seen any videos of players that run hardmode, so that would be interesting to see. (If anyone does know a video, feel free to provide a link )

From what I have seen, the game leans more towards sandbox than towards simulation.

I may be wrong, because I began watching Quill18's stream then swapping between a few, but Arumba07 may have played on hard mode initially. I noticed that the first 'objective'/'level' required a higher population mark than that in Quill18's game

Spoiler

900 vs 800 pop size respectively

It is therefore possible that a) he was playing hard-mode and b) said hard-mode could affect more than simply financial matters.

 

[Person012345]

Skye Storme's videos didn't give the impression of it being too easy at all. He had to budget very carefully in the beginning. If I hadn't watched his videos I would've easily just blown all my money on roads and left people without power and water.

Anyway I'm hoping the challenges of growing your city to high populations will be where the game shines...

No, they really did. He was never in any danger of actually running out of money and he wasn't even playing that technically well.

 

[consi]

Even the most advanced cities are in dept. So it should never be easy to stay on positive flow. If money comes effortlessly, then there's no challenge. If no challenge, ultimately boring. Fast...

 

[KnightHawkTFC]

Even the most advanced cities are in dept. So it should never be easy to stay on positive flow. If money comes effortlessly, then there's no challenge. If no challenge, ultimately boring. Fast...

Not to me, in all my years playing sc4 90% of it was played with artmoney locking 2 billion$ in ram, once you've built a few the hard way, for me it's boring to do it all over again and more entertaining to me to focus on size,layout, design, other management problems like transport\traffic (yes eventually ending up in the black too , but not till I'm done do I care). Too each their own though, and I think if it's a little easy on people out of the gate that might be better than if 'normal' was too hard. Besides if Hard isn't hard enough for you I'm sure they can add a "harder" and then for impossible add the "Detroit" option later {be funny for a modded difficultly level}. :wacko:

 

[Greygor69]

Even the most advanced cities are in dept. So it should never be easy to stay on positive flow. If money comes effortlessly, then there's no challenge. If no challenge, ultimately boring. Fast...

That is SC 2013's issue, ridiculously easy to make money, the issue is normally what to spend it on that will fit on the map.

I think the challenge with CSL is the smooth running of your city, with money being a side issue.

 

[consi]

Not to me, in all my years playing sc4 90% of it was played with artmoney locking 2 billion$ in ram, once you've built a few the hard way, for me it's boring to do it all over again and more entertaining to me to focus on size,layout, design, other management problems like transport\traffic (yes eventually ending up in the black too , but not till I'm done do I care). Too each their own though, and I think if it's a little easy on people out of the gate that might be better than if 'normal' was too hard. Besides if Hard isn't hard enough for you I'm sure they can add a "harder" and then for impossible add the "Detroit" option later {be funny for a modded difficultly level}. :wacko:

doesn't your style already have an option called sandbox?

 

[shibby191]

As I saw on a couple streams money can be a big issue if you build too fast or don't factor in the weekly/monthly upkeep of a particular building. It can blow your budget pretty quickly and leave you in a death spiral if you're not careful.

 

[Greygor69]

As I saw on a couple streams money can be a big issue if you build too fast or don't factor in the weekly/monthly upkeep of a particular building. It can blow your budget pretty quickly and leave you in a death spiral if you're not careful.

And Using the Smoke Alarm policy

 

[Sn3ipen]

Didn't Arumba fail the first time? I was watching Quill18 and i just noticed in the chat someone talking about Arumba failing because of traffic.

 

[Person012345]

As I saw on a couple streams money can be a big issue if you build too fast or don't factor in the weekly/monthly upkeep of a particular building. It can blow your budget pretty quickly and leave you in a death spiral if you're not careful.

Sure, if you spend recklessly and stupidly then you'll go bankrupt. That doesn't make the game challenging.

 

[Turjan]

While Cities: Skylines is a game, it's also a city builder. Yeah, I know, that sounds a bit silly, but if I want to build a big, nice looking city, the gamey aspects may actually get into my way.

My way with Simcity 4 was that it took me maybe three attempts to develop a strategy of how to keep my city finances positive. After that, I never failed again at this task. Years later, I still play the game, but I just want to build nice cities, try different building concepts, make the traffic flow. This is what causes longevity in a city builder. The strategy aspect will always become moot after a while, as there is no opponent you work against.

 

[Mendeth]

Sure, if you spend recklessly and stupidly then you'll go bankrupt. That doesn't make the game challenging.

Challenge doesn't just have to come from financial matters. Other systems (traffic management, population management, etc.) can also make the game difficult. If the challenge was solely in balancing the budget I think it would become quite repetitive.

 

[IIWW]

From what I saw if You don't make some pretty obvious mistakes it would be pretty easy. All youtubers I saw did frequently forget to provide power to facilities, if they run out of money at the begining it was from overbuilding roads, etc. Quill made a huge office district, which was empty, because of lack of educated workers. He passed a policy to encourage people to go to universities which... he haven't build. The difficulty don't have to be caused by money, but the trafic problems derives from beginners mistakes, things that anyone who played a bit of SC series won't make.
Right now I'm starting Skye's lets play, and he also seems a bit unexperienced, from the very begining his city is very streched, he paid extreme amount of cash just to connect everything.
It seems that the major challenge is caused by big mistakes done by players, good, but not great, play would decrease difficulty to nearly 0.
Of course, it's based entirely on videos, for obvious reasons I haven't played the game. It's just a fear, not necesserly a flaw.
On related note, does anyone know a youtuber who actually plays the game good?

 

[Zed68]

In all the citybuilders I have ever played when you have a good money balance you could lower taxes to raise your city attractivity. That's how I always played anyway.