Cities: Skylines is not a great game and not a city simulator

[kromeboy]

C:SL is far from perfect:
- CiM get happy rich and educated to easily
- money flows (although when my city hit the 60k threshold my budget started to go negative)
- Trains, bus stops, and traffic could easily become a mess

But compared to SC4
- it actually try to simulate a bigger city on day one (SC4 large city is 4k without mods)
- it doesn't try to simulate every person in the city (non necessarily a bad thing, but the traffic was purely statistical)
- it also was almost impossible to fail
- Even after intense modding id doesn't have realistic curved road and so is almost impossible to recreate a non geometric city

Compared to SC2013
- Terrain are not smaller then Tropico ones
- People doesn't randomly go to sleep and to work in the first available spot
- Traffic has some sense and you don't need to create a city with only 6 lane roads
- You don't need to develop a specialized industry to gain money, but you gain it from tax like in a real city

 

[NosajDraw]

That's not how it works. Negative feedback is useless if you don't give at least some advice. Imo.

That's not quite correct. Advice could be stupid, unhelpful or whatever, the idea is to give constructive feedback, something the developers can work with, evaluate and make decisions off the back of it.

Sure "this is crap" don't help no one, but advice such as "you should make it better" equally don't help.

But a comment along the lines of "The game doesn't work for me because of X" contains no advice, but is helpful. The OP does seem to me to have overly high expectations, but it does at least say why the critism is made, the devs can (so long as they can get over their natural reactions to the negativity) evaluate what was said and make decisions to deliver "fixes" for those critisms or not.

I love the game, and disagree with much of the sentiment of the OP, but when it comes to the facts of the OP, I tend to agree.

 

[Shadrack]

Isnt it odd how gaming forums work. You can have 99 threads praising a game but it will the one single thread slagging it that always floats to the top of the thread list because its controversial. If you ever read a game forum with a thread praising a game at the top of the thread list dont buy the game. It'll be crap.

 

[TimFisher]

Trolls gonna troll.

 

[jumpstart]

My biggest grip with the game is The graphics. I still love sim city 4 and play it time to time. So I'm not asking for far cry hepatica here! I just can't see anythjng that well!! I downloaded the aa mod and turned the shading all the way down to help. I can only make out the buildings when I'm zoomed in close. The game just looks like doo doo zoomed out. I like building when I'm zoomed out.

And the green just looks like 16 bit era Nintendo. No joke. The green/grass texture is horrible. Not makes the game look so outdated and it's not present to look at.

So again, the game doesn't look good zoomed out.

 

[NosajDraw]

My biggest grip with the game is The graphics. I still love sim city 4 and play it time to time. So I'm not asking for far cry hepatica here! I just can't see anythjng that well!! I downloaded the aa mod and turned the shading all the way down to help. I can only make out the buildings when I'm zoomed in close. The game just looks like doo doo zoomed out. I like building when I'm zoomed out.

And the green just looks like 16 bit era Nintendo. No joke. The green/grass texture is horrible. Not makes the game look so outdated and it's not present to look at.

So again, the game doesn't look good zoomed out.

Care to post a picture? I have issues with the clouds on some maps, but I don't experience the issues you raise, either we have very different expectations, or our graphics subssystems are working very differently.

 

[Lakenstaken]

This game out of the BOX is almost better then SC4 with all the damn mods it has. Give me a break.

You really think that?

I personally think so, but mainly because SC4 is so damn outdated, 12 years is a lot in the computerworld.

 

[Alfa55]

Now everybody's thinking SC4 was a godly game. But if you look back to it it was also not perfect and the graphics were quite poor.

This is SC4 (even the NAM):

Cities: Skylines looks so much better.

 

[KR153]

Care to post a picture? I have issues with the clouds on some maps, but I don't experience the issues you raise, either we have very different expectations, or our graphics subssystems are working very differently.

I wouldn´t go as far as the gentleman above but this game IS kinda poor in handling colours... I really hope that this is changeble, because this is out of question for me:
http://i.imgur.com/lAb7mgk.jpg

A direct CSL and CXL comparison. I mean, six years and it doesn´t even come close.

 

[TimFisher]

I wouldn´t go as far as the gentleman above but this game IS kinda poor in handling colours... I really hope that this is changeble, because this is out of question for me:
http://i.imgur.com/lAb7mgk.jpg

A direct CSL and CXL comparison. I mean, six years and it doesn´t even come close.

Out of that picture the only thing I'd steal are those lines outlining the parallel parking spots. Those are nice.

Okay I took another look. The shadows are better and the textures are higher quality in the bottom pic.

 

[MN121MN]

I wouldn´t go as far as the gentleman above but this game IS kinda poor in handling colours... I really hope that this is changeble, because this is out of question for me:
http://i.imgur.com/lAb7mgk.jpg

A direct CSL and CXL comparison. I mean, six years and it doesn´t even come close.

If you followed the development of this game, you would know that the original colors of the game looked realistic.

Then in DD 5, 6, or 7, the color became weirdly ... cartoonish, as some people describe.

 

[DarkImpaler]

My biggest grip with the game is The graphics. I still love sim city 4 and play it time to time. So I'm not asking for far cry hepatica here! I just can't see anythjng that well!! I downloaded the aa mod and turned the shading all the way down to help. I can only make out the buildings when I'm zoomed in close. The game just looks like doo doo zoomed out. I like building when I'm zoomed out.

And the green just looks like 16 bit era Nintendo. No joke. The green/grass texture is horrible. Not makes the game look so outdated and it's not present to look at.

So again, the game doesn't look good zoomed out.

I really like the graphics in this game, so much better than Citiex XL/XXL ones (black blocks instead of vehicles from far above? in 2015? really?).
No problems with greens for me, since I'm a deuteranope and I can't see greens very well

 

[Greygor69]

Yes but that is only a very vocal very minority complaining about dreams. I only hope the devs will not be harassed too much and they will keep improving the game according to their plan.

Well the reported Sales Figures are 500,000.

Judging that against the number of people who are vocally complaining then issues seem actually few and far between.

Hopefully the devs realise that most who post here do so not expecting everything, we just enjoy the hell out of it and are passionate about it.

 

[Zed68]

Now everybody's thinking SC4 was a godly game. But if you look back to it it was also not perfect and the graphics were quite poor.

This is SC4 (even the NAM):

Cities: Skylines looks so much better.

This is a sad looking interchange, you have some nam/texture set compatibility issues showing here.

SC4 looked amazing at the time it was released. You can say whatever you want but the fact that it used pre-rendered models will make it look sweet in some ways that won't be achievable by any 3D game until a few more years more... Yep 3D and curved roads and modern graphics are a thing... but with SC4 they were NO limits in modeling... and nostalgia is still present.

 

[Quale]

Is this a bad game? Nah.
Is it everything we expected from a game that has been said to redeem the genre after the travesty that was Sim City 2013? Far from it.
Will the next company that takes a stab at it sell heaps of copies based on our anticipation alone for that next gen city sim? You bet.

And good luck to whoever that may be. They'll probably get my money too, even before I'm sure.

 

[FX2K]

I am sorry for what I am going to say, but today, Cities:Skylines is at best, a pretty mediocre game with undeserved praises and review scores, and people will see it on a few days.

- The game doesn't have good graphics, old games like cities XL or 2013 have much better art and models, even night and day.

I'm gonna stop right there. I think the graphics are awesome in this game, yeah it lacks a day/night cycle and AA leaves a lot to be desired, but it looks great from where I am looking, so much so that some screenshots almost look like photographs, perhaps not mine but some...
SC 2013.. .you are joking right.

Spoiler

As for SC4, that wasn't always a great game... its now showing its age in a big way... Ill take CSL over it any day.

 

[rikmarkes]

I personally think so, but mainly because SC4 is so damn outdated, 12 years is a lot in the computerworld.

I'm not talking about graphics, ofc CSL is graphically better than SC4.

What interests me in a game like this is the mechanics, what you can do, how attached to reality it is, how serious the challenges are. You can argue that SC4 had a lot of non-realistic features. It had some, as any game would have, but it has soul. You have to work your ass out to build a big city, you have to balance social classes, provide them enough jobs. If you want some of your population to be rich, you need to provide them education, services and a suitable job. You need to create interest in high tech industries or rich commerce for them to come to your city and stay there, making some of you citizens rich. The majority, if you are successful, will be middle class and some will stay poor.

You have slums with high crime and bad healthcare. Middle class neighborhoods with their nice parks and stuff. Rich blocks with luxurious villas and higly decorated areas. Low, middle and high density. you have nothing like this in CSL, a game that comes 12 years later...

My biggest expense in my current city at CSL is... garbage. Garbage takes almost the double amount of money than healthcare and education combined. And everything is running smoothly. Almost no crime, no unemployment, everybody's happy, getting rich just cause they got some education. Pretty houses everywhere. It's fucking candyland!

 

[Zed68]

It's fucking candyland!

Unless there is a problem with garbage... or health... and then citizens begin to complain...

 

[DarkImpaler]

Unless there is a problem with garbage... or health... and then citizens begin to complain...

or die...

 

[Thedudeman3]

This thread has over 200 replies to a troll. Wow.

But I do have to say, I really don't understand tourism. They need to expand that. That and airports.