About game modes - designer, casual, hardcore

[Brazilian Joe]

At game launch there was a lot of back and forth in the community about how easy/hard the game is.

I saw several opinions, and as in any group composed of many people, I saw that there is no consensus.

But the opinions basically fall on 3 groups:

Designers - people who just want to build beautiful cities, and don't want to care about financial limitations and stuff. They want the sun to roll and the cars to move back and forth in a cinematic fashion, with no challenge.

This model lends towards a no-sim game mode, where the mechanics would just be reduced to cosmetic fashion - i.e. how heavy is traffic in this road? give me a slider! - and every building would be hand-ploppable. There would be no water/electricity issues, and it would be a canvas to create beautiful vistas.

Designer mode may not appeal everyone, but there is a significant group, I think a dedicated game mode is warranted.

Casual - this is how the game came out, and what it is. There are not significant challenges, and eventually you get enough money to do stuff, but there are still milestones to complete. It is a nice mode to cater to a wider audience.

Hardcore - This is my meat, this is what I would personally like to play. A city with more consequences to decisions and bending more significantly when infrastructure does not meet demand. This is currently filled in by a number of mods. But mods have problems when they need to be upgraded to newer game versions, or when devs abandon them due to lack of time or interest, and there are so many of them that it's hard to share save games.

Maybe it an old subject, but over time the devs opinions could change.

I think that it would be more interesting and accessible for the game to have native rulesets for these 3 game modes, instead of only relying on mods.

Is there any chance for this to happen in the future, is it already planned, or is it a no-no in the eyes of the devs?
What does the community thinks as well?

 

[Steve B.]

I agree with your categories. These differences have caused a lot of acrimony on the forums. Designers hate the limits and there is no way to make the game more difficult without several mods. But mods that effect the game's AI are dangerous.

I would like to see them to beef up their hard mod (which isn't very hard) and add some more challenges to the game.

 

[goralt123]

I would like to see them to beef up their hard mod (which isn't very hard) and add some more challenges to the game.

They couldmake the game harder with oneof two ways.

The bad way:
Make things more expensie. I hate it when devs in all games resort to this to make the game harder. It doesnt make the AI any more competent, it just hgives a handicap to the pkayer. A classic example of this is deity mode in CIV 5. The AI doesnt pay any better, it just gets ridiculous bonuses and its just annoying to play against them.


The good way:
What CO should do is to add more concequences to actions. One thing that needs to be done is make happiness affect mor things. Maybe protest can break out that lower taxes and tourism. Bulldozing building for a new highway will add jnhappiness. Traffic jams will lower productivity and taxes. Maybe add a thing like tropico where you need to be reelected as mayor. Things like that that add challenge without simply changing numbers in the game.

 

[Darf]

At game launch there was a lot of back and forth in the community about how easy/hard the game is.

I saw several opinions, and as in any group composed of many people, I saw that there is no consensus.

But the opinions basically fall on 3 groups:

Designers - people who just want to build beautiful cities, and don't want to care about financial limitations and stuff. They want the sun to roll and the cars to move back and forth in a cinematic fashion, with no challenge.

This model lends towards a no-sim game mode, where the mechanics would just be reduced to cosmetic fashion - i.e. how heavy is traffic in this road? give me a slider! - and every building would be hand-ploppable. There would be no water/electricity issues, and it would be a canvas to create beautiful vistas.

Designer mode may not appeal everyone, but there is a significant group, I think a dedicated game mode is warranted.

Casual - this is how the game came out, and what it is. There are not significant challenges, and eventually you get enough money to do stuff, but there are still milestones to complete. It is a nice mode to cater to a wider audience.

Hardcore - This is my meat, this is what I would personally like to play. A city with more consequences to decisions and bending more significantly when infrastructure does not meet demand. This is currently filled in by a number of mods. But mods have problems when they need to be upgraded to newer game versions, or when devs abandon them due to lack of time or interest, and there are so many of them that it's hard to share save games.

Maybe it an old subject, but over time the devs opinions could change.

I think that it would be more interesting and accessible for the game to have native rulesets for these 3 game modes, instead of only relying on mods.

Is there any chance for this to happen in the future, is it already planned, or is it a no-no in the eyes of the devs?
What does the community thinks as well?

In a sense designer mode is already in the game. You can just enable the unlimited money and milestone mods. There's some more hardcore mods, but they don't add a whole lot of meat to the game. Rush hour is a good mod and realistic population and demand is another. Still to increase the difficulty in a good way, there should also be rewards for playing the right way.

The biggest challenge in a game like SC4 was always to reach higher density and it wasn't easy at all. It even required that you built a second city to reach certain population numbers and density levels.

That's why C:S needs a change in it's lvl up mechanic. It's just way to easy to reach max lvl in whatever. In 4 hours you can have a large city with lvl 5 high density. To reach level 4-5 you need new requirements and for the highest level you would need like a city of 200k, a large harbor, airport w/e. This would also accomplish a more realistic cityscape. Now there's almost no incentive to create lvl 1-3 custom buildings, because they upgrade in 20sec anyways. Secondly, the income you get would be less, because from residential lvl 1-3 earns less taxes, thus having the effect that the starting difficulty is the same.

To accomplish this, there should be a minimum required group of uneducated people, so shops and uneducated jobs also fullfill their demand. Groundvalue should be lowered across the board and roadaccess, pollution and location (water, hills) should have a greater effect on landvalue. Parks etc. should ahve a limited effect on what can be reached.

This would make the game feel about the same in lower lvls and harder and more fullfilling as you get a bigger city.

 

[goralt123]

To accomplish this, there should be a minimum required group of uneducated people, so shops and uneducated jobs also fullfill their demand. Groundvalue should be lowered across the board and roadaccess, pollution and location (water, hills) should have a greater effect on landvalue. Parks etc. should ahve a limited effect on what can be reached.

I currently like the fact that highly educated people will work in menial jobs because education is so hard to control that it would be near impossible to have an isolated neighborhood of purposefully-uneducated people. As of now, cims will travel across the map to get to an elementary school for an education, and if I enable "Schools Out", then the people that need (are destined for) the education won't get it. I like the current mechanic for education as it is right now, it laissez-faire just the right amount.

 

[Darf]

I currently like the fact that highly educated people will work in menial jobs because education is so hard to control that it would be near impossible to have an isolated neighborhood of purposefully-uneducated people. As of now, cims will travel across the map to get to an elementary school for an education, and if I enable "Schools Out", then the people that need (are destined for) the education won't get it. I like the current mechanic for education as it is right now, it laissez-faire just the right amount.

Don't agree at all. The current system is flawed, because if there's enough schools and it's not hard to get enough schools, everyone is educated on university level. There are no lower schooled people. Schooled people will prefer higher educated jobs, which causes that shops don't get enough uneducated workers, if you have enough high lvl jobs because of good land value and transportation options.

Furthermore residential level is based on how educated people are, not on the job they have. So this causes almost no variation in building levels.

 

[goralt123]

Don't agree at all. The current system is flawed, because if there's enough schools and it's not hard to get enough schools, everyone is educated on university level. There are no lower schooled people. Schooled people will prefer higher educated jobs, which causes that shops don't get enough uneducated workers, if you have enough high lvl jobs because of good land value and transportation options.

Furthermore residential level is based on how educated people are, not on the job they have. So this causes almost no variation in building levels.

Of course, educated people will prefer higher-level jobs, but if everyone is highly educated, you have to earn a living somehow. I do not want that mechanic to change. What are you suggesting so that not everyone gets "schooled" (ha!)? I'm fine with my city being idealistic, where if I pump enough money into my education system, everyone will get educated. Maybe my city is like Singapore, and corporal punishment is still legal. "Don't want to learn? Whack! Now I see you want to learn." Maybe we education could get more expensive so that it's not as easy to educate everyone, but you still can.

What you seem to want, and I think is interesting, is to have "good" and "bad" parts of town, where socioeconomic conditions affect education, crime, and building levels, but how would you cause that to happen? Also, if this feature somehow worked, there would have to be ways to fix "bad" parts of town.

 

[Darf]

Of course, educated people will prefer higher-level jobs, but if everyone is highly educated, you have to earn a living somehow. I do not want that mechanic to change. What are you suggesting so that not everyone gets "schooled" (ha!)? I'm fine with my city being idealistic, where if I pump enough money into my education system, everyone will get educated. Maybe my city is like Singapore, and corporal punishment is still legal. "Don't want to learn? Whack! Now I see you want to learn." Maybe we education could get more expensive so that it's not as easy to educate everyone, but you still can.

What you seem to want, and I think is interesting, is to have "good" and "bad" parts of town, where socioeconomic conditions affect education, crime, and building levels, but how would you cause that to happen? Also, if this feature somehow worked, there would have to be ways to fix "bad" parts of town.

I would like to have more level difference in buildings, instead of the monotone you get now of level 5 residential. Level 5s should be rarer and only occur in your CBD, where also some level 3s and 4s occur. Level 1-2-3-4s should spawn in the less attractive parts of town.

There's always people that don't grade university level in society. Realistically you can't educate anyone. So in my opinion, yes providing good education should make a difference, but there should be a minimum amount of people that don't get that level of education. Furthermore this should also extend to parks.

Good and bad parts of town and offering ways to fix those, would need another dimension of simulation. This would require to seperately simulate building level and citizen wealth level. The current situation is high education = high wealth = higher building level (density). While this would be a major step in the right direction, I think it's not realistic CO will change that. Visually this would also be harder to do.

Simcity 4 had this level of level of simulation and while not perfect - there were ways to cheat - it offered a far more realistic wealth simulation and challenging and rewarding gameplay. I think this is C:S biggest flaw, although this game does have a far more realistic road and transport simulation.

 

[goralt123]

o in my opinion, yes providing good education should make a difference, but there should be a minimum amount of people that don't get that level of education.

Although your concept makes sense, I dislike the fix. I really hate hard number caps, they are just artificial limitations to railroad game play to be more realistic.

I think what could be more interesting is a pass/fail system. For example, each cim graduates elementary school, it's just that easy. Let's say it takes 1 game year for a cim to get an high school education. At the end of the year each cim could have a 80% chance of passing or a 20% chance of failing, and they don't advance to the next education level. At university, the courses are harder and the fail percentage can rise to 30-40%. Of course the pass/fail percentage would have to be tweaked.

Things can modify that pass/fail percentage, such as education budget and land value. This would make it possible to have a slightly uneducated portion of your populace, while at the same time allowing you to have everyone educated, albeit with much more difficulty and expense than now.

Furthermore this should also extend to parks.

What do you mean?

Haha just saying but this thread wandered way off the OP's original topic.

 

[Steve B.]

They couldmake the game harder with oneof two ways.

The bad way:
Make things more expensie. I hate it when devs in all games resort to this to make the game harder. It doesnt make the AI any more competent, it just hgives a handicap to the pkayer. A classic example of this is deity mode in CIV 5. The AI doesnt pay any better, it just gets ridiculous bonuses and its just annoying to play against them.

Yeah, that's what the in game hard mode is. Everything's just more expensive and you get less money. Slows you down at the beginning, but after a while doesn't do anything.

 

[Darf]

Although your concept makes sense, I dislike the fix. I really hate hard number caps, they are just artificial limitations to railroad game play to be more realistic.

I think what could be more interesting is a pass/fail system. For example, each cim graduates elementary school, it's just that easy. Let's say it takes 1 game year for a cim to get an high school education. At the end of the year each cim could have a 80% chance of passing or a 20% chance of failing, and they don't advance to the next education level. At university, the courses are harder and the fail percentage can rise to 30-40%. Of course the pass/fail percentage would have to be tweaked.

Things can modify that pass/fail percentage, such as education budget and land value. This would make it possible to have a slightly uneducated portion of your populace, while at the same time allowing you to have everyone educated, albeit with much more difficulty and expense than now.



What do you mean?

Haha just saying but this thread wandered way off the OP's original topic.

That would be a good implementation, not sure how costly it would be in terms of simulation, but it could create a more realistic simulation. Also I want to point out employing overeducated workers is part of a mod, it's not in the base game. About parks I meant that the effect of parks and other land value increasing buildings should be limited to a certain value and location, accessibility polution should determine the rest.

 

[Lord Morpheus]

Yeah, that's what the in game hard mode is. Everything's just more expensive and you get less money. Slows you down at the beginning, but after a while doesn't do anything.

That's not true. The Hard Mode actually lowers the land values so it is somewhat harder to reach level 4 (or level 2 in terms of commercial and office) and much (!) harder to reach level 5 (or level 3). So the hard mode isn't totally useless in late game. But I agree the game needs more depth. Seperate demand for each wealth level would be fine I think.

 

[Steve B.]

That's not true. The Hard Mode actually lowers the land values so it is somewhat harder to reach level 4 (or level 2 in terms of commercial and office) and much (!) harder to reach level 5 (or level 3). So the hard mode isn't totally useless in late game. But I agree the game needs more depth. Seperate demand for each wealth level would be fine I think.

I didn't realize that; I had never noticed it while playing.

 

[Brazilian Joe]

The thing is that with mods you have problems when aan update comes out, or real life/ lack of interest burns up the modder.

That's why it's important to have first-party solutions for that.

About Designer Mode, while the game becomes easy, people cannot really paint a city just the way they want to.
The randomness on building growing prevents designers from having complete control.
A proper designer mode would allow the player to select whether this commercial building is a pizza store or ice cream store and what wealth level it is.

A Hardcore mode would likewise have rebalanced profit levels and thresholds to make growing up harder, and make it more difficult to have a runaway economy.

 

[medopu]

Yeah, i tried hard mode recently and I just realized how relatively easy it still is to manage a city. But then again, even SC4 never really proved to be such a difficult game for me like everyone keeps saying it is for them.

The most difficult part has always been traffic, be it in SC4 or CXL or C:SL. In real life, traffic is only "one of" the important aspects of city management.

 

[Azurespecter]

Very good discussion. Always love hearing your well-organized ideas Brazilian Joe =) I'm mostly responding to this thread so I can followup on this after the next expansion is released.

If you haven't heard, Colossal Order is working on a Scenario Editor that I think will alleviate some of the hardcore players. I don't have all the details, but the tool is shaping up to be pretty flexible and can cater to some pretty difficult scenarios. Modders are sure to make it even better, which is of course why we invited them into a modders beta to test it out

 

[funhave]

I am a designer, I always build first the roads (with the unlimited money and all unlocked) then I want grow the town with supply buildings and special buildings) and make the streets and town beautiful (golf area, traffic islands, barriers, functionable signs, etc...

And i like to build C:S city from scratch, but from the 15th century to the future

 

[Brazilian Joe]

Very good discussion. Always love hearing your well-organized ideas Brazilian Joe =) I'm mostly responding to this thread so I can followup on this after the next expansion is released.

If you haven't heard, Colossal Order is working on a Scenario Editor that I think will alleviate some of the hardcore players. I don't have all the details, but the tool is shaping up to be pretty flexible and can cater to some pretty difficult scenarios. Modders are sure to make it even better, which is of course why we invited them into a modders beta to test it out

It feels great when a dev gives acknowledgement in our threads. Please let me shamelessly give a shout out for my suggestion in another thread about the interior mapping technique, which creates an illusion of internal space without requiring geometry, to enhance the game's visuals. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...rtially-detached-from-building-models.879131/

I dream of seeing lights switch on/off and windows open/close based on numbers of cims at home/studying/working, and upon close inspection, having apparent floors, walls and ceiling inside windows.

--


Back on subject:
While I don't know the details of the scenario editor, it seems like it probably will become the very designer mode desired by many, on top of it with the ability of creating "hard mode" scenarios.

I hope this tool expose simulation behaviors to make alternate rulesets for the scenarios.

One much desired feature:

Generalize specific service vehicle behaviors to general rulesets which can be settable to any building which provides a service.

Specific case: hearses
General case:
service vehicle range: infinite
stops on: any building with the flag " dead cim"

General case:
service vehicle range: option to set up any building providing service vehicles range to "neighborhood only"

Specific case: bus services
service vehicle range: specific route (implies setting up "totems" to create route - bus stops)
stops on: totems only

General case:
service vehicle range: ability to set up any building providing service vehicles to range "specific route" and set up totems (stops) to generate said route. examples: schools, garbage trucks
stops on: ability to use either "totems only" or "any building in range" or "any cim with flag <whatever>". player could do weird stuff like setting hearse stops to generate a specific circuit, but allow the hearses to stop on any house along the way.

General case: ability to activate service vehicles for certain buildings and set up an associated cost.
example: activate school bus service vehicles for schools, set up bus stops for school buses.

 

[MOK]

If you haven't heard, Colossal Order is working on a Scenario Editor that I think will alleviate some of the hardcore players.

I do not believe this feature will do very much to address the desires of the 'hardcore' player - the challenges it imparts are niche, rather than systemic. I'm sure it'll be a welcome and enjoyable highlight, but it does not address the base issue(as I interpret it).

My interpretation is that many(or most) 'hardcore' city-builder players aren't necessarily interested in higher difficulty, per se. Rather, it's to deal with choices and consequences that change their game, or approach the real goings-on and stories innate to managing a real city. Dealing with these dynamics probably comes out to be 'more difficult' to the player in practice. But to approach the problem merely in terms of difficulty is to miss the actual gameplay that's desired.

This is why the current hardcore mode presently doesn't do much for hardcore players, I suspect. The sort of difficulty it imparts is mostly without purpose, goal, or consequence - it's arbitrary. It does not change much to enhance/affect immersion, choice, verisimilitude, intricacy, differentiation, surprises.... Those are some examples of what a 'hardcore' city-builder player like me might want in our gameplay. Difficulty is a potential byproduct of those gameplay goals, but difficulty is not necessarily the goal itself. Difficulty(like depth) is merely a catch-all phrase, a ragged category of experience that's easier to identify than something more precise. So focusing on difficulty is, I think, a red herring.

In this view, the Scenario Editor only caters to a 'hardcore player' insofar as the scenario designer themselves address the player's desire for choice, intricacy, realism, surprises(besides disasters), etc. The game's scenario editor would not systemically allow for what we want from it - those desires get outsourced to the scenario designers and modders of the community. It would be better if our gameplay desires were possible outside of scenarios, within standard game sessions, perhaps enabled via a checkbox instead of via a community member.

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I believe that Brazilian Joe is absolutely correct in his suggestion to differentiate game modes.

For example, the gameplay I might dream about, with a better simulation of real industry and social economics and civic friction, is at stark odds with what tons of great "Let's Play" youtubers do. Their desired gameplay and mine just can't really coexist, even though the game's engine and scope seems able to support either style very well.

I'd play "Mayor Mode" in a heartbeat, where I take control of my local political party over the decades, and weave together the city-building aspect with an economic and social engineering portion that, in my opinion, better reflects the nature of thousands of individuals crammed together in one spot. A city is people, not buildings. But that's just my fringey gameplay desires talking.

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Side note: I'd beg CO and Paradox not to dismiss these complaints to the "can't please everyone" bin. I would rather hear rationalizations about why a certain design decision rules out what I want. I can accept and respect those, and crucially, I can adjust my expectations. When I say, "I'm not that interested in disasters," this style of response does not help me re-adjust my expectations and get on Colossal Order's wavelength. Without managed expectations, I'll keep hoping for some future event that might never happen, and my frustration needlessly grows. Along with my desire to vent on forums. And my likelihood of hitting a dismissive response.

So please: Avoid the "can't please everyone" response. There's a better way.

 

[goralt123]

I'd play "Mayor Mode" in a heartbeat, where I take control of my local political party over the decades, and weave together the city-building aspect with an economic and social engineering portion that, in my opinion, better reflects the nature of thousands of individuals crammed together in one spot. A city is people, not buildings. But that's just my fringey gameplay desires talking.

This sounds quite like a game, Urban Empire, by Kalypso studios that I saw will be released recently.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/352550/

I believe Cities should have at least some "push-back" to a mayor's actions, whether negative or positive, to express the desires and needs of a populace living densely together, beyond the simple need for services.

Adding a city council, with wards/districts that elect representatives that advocate for them (raise land value, stop demolishing buildings for public domain, etc.), would be a large step in introducing the "feel" of being a mayor, rather than just a central planner grinding out efficiency in an dull office. Alas, I fear this is far out of the game's reach.

However, what could change, is adding more "weight" to the happiness of your city. Different districts have different happiness levels, based off of crime, land value, education, etc. This would provide the game with noticeably wealthy and "ghetto" type districts. Happiness should also have a greater effect on the city, especially unhappiness. This could range from very simply reducing the tax rate, to indirectly affecting it and other things such as traffic flow by having cims stage protests, leaving work and blocking the roads. I think that this is not too far from the game's current scope, could be implemented well in a future expansion, and would, I hate to use this word, deeply affect the game.

As the game is now, the player is an all-powerful dictator building their city at their whim.