About game modes - designer, casual, hardcore

[Brazilian Joe]

The political aspect is another factor that I haven't even touched in my suggestions.

The top dog in terms of city sim with politics is IMO the Tropico series. Personally, I have only a few titles of the series and I got them in bundle packs, so I don't have almost any hours of gameplay accumulated in such a game mode.

See, this specific bug has never bitten me - juggling political power and approval ratings to be able to keep mayoring.

But I totally get the interest other people get in this kind of gameplay.

The problem is that's yet another layer of complexity and simulation to run on top of a game which is already limited on its performance envelope, because it can't go overboard its release-time baseline power requirements.

I think that even if we accept the current performance floor as a de facto immutable value for this game version, there are two concepts which should be explored in tandem, that may still be able to yield a higher performance ceiling to cram in more simulation.

1) Get a nerdy nerd cred which kicks ass on GPU Compute and try some massively parallel versions of the algorithms to solve game stuff which require to be done "a million times" per second. offloading e.g. traffic to the GPU might hit on the graphics part, but will also free up some PCU cycles, and the amount it eats on the GPU side will be less of an impact than the amount freed on the CPU side. It's worth at least exploring for the next iteration of the game.
1.1) If you hit the jackpot with the GPU Compute and can replace the traffic algorithm with a version which costs less compute-wise, allow the car limit to explode to 1 million on the street.
1.2) If you guys are already running e.g. traffic in GPU compute, I am barking at the wrong tree.

2) LOS , or Level Of Simulation - Just like there is this thing called "Level Of Detail" for graphics, there might be ways to creatively partition the game simulation to that a portion of it can run in a simplified model. If the city can be cut in "simulation districts" small enough so that they can be un/loaded as the user scrolls around, and the sim districts in "far view" run in a way that they cost 10% or less computing resources than a full blown sim district in "close view", and then much more can be simulated.

 

[Azurespecter]

The other thing you need to remember is the UI. Cities: Skylines UI is dedicated to city-building and management. If you use mods, the UI is filled to the brim with all sorts of extensive additions and features for city-building. Adding in a whole new function of gameplay like politics could overload the UI and just make it very confusing to navigate.

Not saying it's impossible, just remember that usability is often times under-rated when considering new features. There are actually some pretty cool studies done on iPhones where consumers were asked to rate the importance of new features compared to product usability. Before using the product people usually over-rate new features and under-rate usability, but tend to flip their ranking of importance after using the product.

 

[MOK]

Wow, these are really great points, thank you. I especially appreciate that you've both given me clear rationale that greatly challenges the feasibility of my comments. Based on them, I'd certainly back away from many of my prior thoughts, especially in terms of scale.

On the other hand, some exploration of civic elements may still be possible within the current boundary of UI complexity, and maybe processing resources. Neither of which I know anything about. But in particular, the idea of how crime and policing work are, I think, not well represented. Speaking only for myself, it's the single biggest eyesore on the gaming experience. But in approaching this element, delving into politics in the manner of Tropico(A game I'm very familiar with) is not the only approach. Politics in the popular sense might never come into play while imagining a civics portion of the game, preserving the 'god-mode' frame that the current game exists in.

But primarily, I'd like to voice my interest in finding more ways to further express a city as a collection of people. It's an angle on Skylines that's slightly different from it's current focus, though it need not be extremely different. Social elements - like 'crime,' or local economics, or varied and colliding population interests - would be my most wished for area of simulation. Even if it were merely to a minor degree, enough to make some element of balancing and deciding.

This would certainly deserve an opt-in setting. And in doing so, it would spare the Sculptor style players from a great deal of nuisance. It would also spare players from any potential UI complexifying except for those who specifically desire it. This could functionally translate into something like a 'hard-mode' in some respects, or at least address the challenges and choices desired by a player like me.

 

[RonBurgundy]

Special Interest Groups:
Maybe instead of a large "politics" system, we could have a "Special Interest Group" feature where as your city grows, you could see environmentalists crop up in more high-tech areas of the city or big industrialists who will get angry if you set carbon emission regulations. If one "SIG" gets too angry, they'll start leaving. I think it would really bring the city to life and would really feel like your city is populated by many different types of real people with real agendas.

Difficulty:
As for difficulty, I would really love for CO to add a difficulty slider. I'm using a mod and it has done wonders for the game. I used to think I'd never get back into C:S but since using this mod that gives you difficulty settings, I'm loving the game. I have to strategically plan every expansion. I have to think about if I have enough money to place that fire station or if I should just risk fires breaking out in my city.

I have to use the budget sliders much more and for the first time, using the districts and policies to help regulate my economy and power/ water usage. The game is so much more intriguing for me and I would love for CO to add in a difficulty slider for the city. At the current difficulty, you can completely ignore policies and be fine, so by adding difficulties, players would more often use these features that CO has worked so hard on. I want to be forced to use all available tools to grow my city. Even now, I've been working on a small city for the last couple hours, having to restart a couple times and even though the city is still very small, I find its success to be infinitely more rewarding than building some sprawling metropolis in the vanilla game.

Scenario Editor:
I love this idea. Challenging other players to fix the mess you've made and having to overhaul infrastructure to make the city work again. Genius. Can't wait to play with this. However, as previously stated, this doesn't satiate "hardcore" players because it is more niche. It will be a welcome challenge but the overall lack of difficulty in the vanilla game will still be a hot button topic on these forums.

Crime:
This is a huge part of any respectable city builder game. As others have said, it's difficult to implement realistic crime levels. Even in SimCity, you could just plop a police station and instantly, everyone becomes law abiding citizens. I think crime should exist everywhere, regardless of police presence, but I think there should be a multiplier based on education and wealth. Lower income neighborhoods will have something like 4x the amount of base crime while one police station can only handle a certain percentage of crime in any one area. I think this would be more realistic, although I'm no game developer. I just love this game and would love to see it improved

 

[havenost]

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 particularly true for me.

I don't necessarily want my game to be harder, or just more grindy in terms of less income, or more expensive buildings. What I want is to feel like my actions actually matter in the game.

Right now how I build the city in this game does not seem to really matter. I can build the most inefficient city as long I cover the basic needs of the people they keep coming in and paying taxes.

The one thing I miss from Sim City 3000 / Sim City 4 is the consequences of different type of buildings and what you're trying to specialize in. As Ron Burgundy says, its important to have those special interest groups that makes it feel like your decisions actually had some meaning.

The other thing you need to remember is the UI. Cities: Skylines UI is dedicated to city-building and management. If you use mods, the UI is filled to the brim with all sorts of extensive additions and features for city-building. Adding in a whole new function of gameplay like politics could overload the UI and just make it very confusing to navigate.

In terms of UI, it shouldn't be all that hard... if you simply clump up different UI buttons on different organized parts of the screen.

For instance you could put all the city building panel stuff towards the bottom left/middle of the screen. The budget panel, politics panel, city districts and policies could all be on the bottom right.

 

[RonBurgundy]

This particularly true for me.

I don't necessarily want my game to be harder, or just more grindy in terms of less income, or more expensive buildings. What I want is to feel like my actions actually matter in the game.

Right now how I build the city in this game does not seem to really matter. I can build the most inefficient city as long I cover the basic needs of the people they keep coming in and paying taxes.

The one thing I miss from Sim City 3000 / Sim City 4 is the consequences of different type of buildings and what you're trying to specialize in. As Ron Burgundy says, its important to have those special interest groups that makes it feel like your decisions actually had some meaning.

I agree with you to a point but I think that making money tighter and problems in your city like crime, fires and sickness, more prevalent does add a feeling of accomplishment to the game.

Using that mod that allows the player to set difficulty levels, I've had to make quite a few decisions for my city (that's still in it's infant stages) this evening. Decisions such as:

"Should I raise hospital funding to combat the high rates of sickness in my city or should I save up so I can expand my residential area?"

"Should I keep building windmills, a short term power solution, or save up for the coal plant?"

"Should I take out a loan that will allow me to quickly expand my city but take a 400/wk income hit or continue with my gradual expansion?"

Granted, it's not perfect but I'm proud of my small town and I love having to make strategic decisions rather than just mindlessly placing roads and buildings.

 

[havenost]

I remember the days when I use to make so much money in Sim City 4 that I just maxed out the budget for everything. People started moving away from my city because the Police were being too zealous. That is something I would like to see.

Or more basic services required, like libraries for education? I don't get how basic libraries didn't make it into the game. Or for instance prisons?

A nice thing to add would be individual budget sliders for service buildings like in Sim City 4, that way you can further micromanage your cities efficiency. Cause it bugs me when I build a large zone and the police/fire coverage is barely inadequate for a couple of buildings... like why can't I build a second police station there, with a lower upkeep budget so that it just covers that it just covers that tiny zone only.

 

[Radltruhe]

Or for instance prisons?

Prisons are included. DLC AD is required to be enabled.

 

[havenost]

Oh, I don't have any dlcs. My main question is why wasn't that included in the base game.

 

[Simcity5]

The game lacks real depth, not difficulty, sticking a few 00,s on the cost of everything or making you buildings explode from some disater once in a while does not really add the depth that the game needs.

Its more of a traffic management sim than a city sim. The game seems designed about the looks of your city, and making it look like one rather than act like one.

In this game your actions are based on what looks best rather than what works best. Cos the latter doesnt matter enough.

If you take the roads away from this game youre not left with much to think about, and most other previous city builders roads werent as important and you still had a lot more to think about.