There are many things that needs to be expanded, point is this game was great since day 1 and nowadays (sad but true) that's something rare (yes, SC2013, Diablo3 and Ubisoft games, I'm talking about you)
Cities: Skylines is not a great game and not a city simulator
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There are many things that needs to be expanded, point is this game was great since day 1 and nowadays (sad but true) that's something rare (yes, SC2013, Diablo3 and Ubisoft games, I'm talking about you)
TOTALLY agree. I just love this game, even if it has flaws, cause nothing is ever perfect.
Yeah... that's how it is in candyland... errr, wait.
Well that's how unpopular opinions (translate: trolling) work. If everybody loves a certain thing, just post a completely biased opinion against it and *blam* success.
I can't help but feel that people are confusing aesthetics with graphics. Aesthetics will ALWAYS be pleasing some and displeasing to others. Graphics, however, are a measurable property. If it can display dynamic lighting/shadows; if it is fully 3D; if it has more polygons; if it can display graphics correctly at every zoom level; if it has such properties, then by definition the game has better "graphics".
SC4 loses in every catagory as far as graphics are concerned. Cities Skylines and SimCity 2013 have comparable graphics with a slight edge to SC ( Skylines has no day/night cycle so dynamic lighting and shadows aren't as big a deal)
Now if one wants to compare aesthetics, that is a different case. Skylines has a stylized aesthetic a la SC13, Tropico, etc. SC4 aesthetics tend toward the more realistic a la Cities in Motion, Cities XL, etc. Skylines has a more stylized approach because it is the general trend of popular aesthetic appeal in today's indie market.
Let's keep this in mind when we discuss graphics.
SC4 loses in every catagory as far as graphics are concerned. Cities Skylines and SimCity 2013 have comparable graphics with a slight edge to SC ( Skylines has no day/night cycle so dynamic lighting and shadows aren't as big a deal)
Now if one wants to compare aesthetics, that is a different case. Skylines has a stylized aesthetic a la SC13, Tropico, etc. SC4 aesthetics tend toward the more realistic a la Cities in Motion, Cities XL, etc. Skylines has a more stylized approach because it is the general trend of popular aesthetic appeal in today's indie market.
Let's keep this in mind when we discuss graphics.
Also keeping in mind, most of people concerns can likely be modded when it comes to aesthetics and even graphics. The limit is going to be the engine, and unity is capable of some pretty amazing looking graphics.
I personally think it's a solid release and the most important thing is that I'm enjoying it.
I tend to agree after spending many hours enjoying this game and now thinking if it could of been a little more challenging with some of game features/mechanics going a little deeper (more complexity).
Overall it's great start and hopefully it's only going to get better with upcoming bug fixes, improvements & features.
I tend to agree after spending many hours enjoying this game and now thinking if it could of been a little more challenging with some of game features/mechanics going a little deeper (more complexity).
Overall it's great start and hopefully it's only going to get better with upcoming bug fixes, improvements & features.
Yeah I been ilspying it all and it looks incredibly open to modding. I don't think there is any reason to believe it cannot become the game each of us wants.
The thing as i understand is .
1- Simcity 2013 was a Body and systems of a ferrari with a not working engine.
2-Cities skylines is a body of toyota camry(very , bland and generic, not exciting) with a very smooth and reliable engine , that you can do watever with and will still function.
Problem- People wanted a ferrari body with an engine of ferrari , but cities skylines is not that . Specially , the thing that should be considered is that you only paid for a toyota camry , i.e 30 dollars .
The decision to keep cities skylines so basic and simple (not very fun) might be to test the viability of game and to brush off the pirates.
I think the CO has already planned , how they are gonna implement different complexities and additions , so that the game changes completely after a while.
I think it is a win-win situation for everyone as , you get to test a very smooth engine , which is easily moddable and will have a body and compexity of a ferrari after a whille.
Just wait and be patient. #winwin
1- Simcity 2013 was a Body and systems of a ferrari with a not working engine.
2-Cities skylines is a body of toyota camry(very , bland and generic, not exciting) with a very smooth and reliable engine , that you can do watever with and will still function.
Problem- People wanted a ferrari body with an engine of ferrari , but cities skylines is not that . Specially , the thing that should be considered is that you only paid for a toyota camry , i.e 30 dollars .
The decision to keep cities skylines so basic and simple (not very fun) might be to test the viability of game and to brush off the pirates.
I think the CO has already planned , how they are gonna implement different complexities and additions , so that the game changes completely after a while.
I think it is a win-win situation for everyone as , you get to test a very smooth engine , which is easily moddable and will have a body and compexity of a ferrari after a whille.
Just wait and be patient. #winwin
The problem here is that it is not clear at all what would you suggest to make the game less 'basic' and less 'simple'.
Disclaimer: I don't believe the game has any serious issues.
I would rather have to have a "super computer" to run a deep true simulation city builder than have a sandbox type. I know thats not a great balance for alot of people with different machines but thats what i would prefer. I would invest in hardware if it was needed for a game like that.
You forgot about CXXL... the body of a mercedes and the engine of a smart car... again... :wacko:
Instead of dismissing the OP as a troll, let's take each argument one at a time, and see if certain things are absolutely issues, and if they are relative issues. There are some problems that are inherent to city-builder games, and some problems that are inherent to Cities: Skylines. I'm also going to offer some suggestions for making Skylines better at the end of this, because I think the game does have problems unique to it that are fixable, possibly even with mods.
This is... questionable. When it comes to graphics, some things are purely subjective (colors) and some things are not (texture pop-in, jaggies). Skylines has jaggies, and the lack of proper AA is hurting. But have you seen some of the garbage from Simcity 2013? To call it night and day is ridiculous. Don't overblow the differences because you don't like the color scheme. This is not an issue that breaks the game relative to any other title out there, unlike Cities XL, where it seems the quest to make things aesthetically pleasing overshadowed the need to make a functioning game. For all the hate the models and colors in this game are going to get, the game runs fantastically.
Partly correct, partly wrong. Skylines does seem extremely easy on money once you get past the first few thousand citizens. This is the only correct bit, and it's a problem I may have a solution for in a bit.
But what basic features does this game lack, especially when compared to other city-builders? Do you want missions with objectives, as in the Tropico or the Anno games? That may be the only thing this game properly lacks. Every single aspect of Simcity 4 and 2013, which the OP apparently considers to be city-builder games, is in Skylines. Those aspects are not reduced in the slightest, they still constitute the core of the game. What basic features are lacking? And how is a road building simulator with minor gimmicks added not a city-builder game? Traffic was just as problematic in Simcity 4 and it was an even worse problem in 2013. Traffic is going to be the challenge of any city-builder game, and it's also the one aspect of the simulation that is far more complicated than all other aspects. Unless you believe that Simcity: Societies is the pinnacle of city-building games, this is not even nitpicking, this is blatant disregard for what the genre is.
Limited in options relative to... what, exactly? Cities in Motion, a game whose sole purpose was mass transportation? Simcity 4, a game with even less options than this game when it comes to mass transit? Simcity 2013, Tropico, are you kidding me here? Yes, bus lines work by just spamming stops. I'm just sure that's great for your traffic. Have you even used mass transit in a city with more than 20k people? This argument is disgusting.
Here's a sensible argument. I don't know much about the effect of pollution on people simply because I don't build around it, but that is its own problem, one which I will propose a solution for at the end of this post. The education system is overblown and ridiculous, it's as if students can't fail. And because education is so easy to handle, crime isn't as much of a problem as it should be. This is an aspect of the simulation that people like to gloss over and they shouldn't. The game is really weird because of this.
Tourism exists as a cash cow in a game that has too many cash cows. I believe making the simulation more difficult in other aspects will make tourism more important.
So we need disasters in a game to make things challenging? We need RNGs to destroy stuff that the player has built just to make things more difficult? Most players like disasters, yes, and they do provides challenges, but they should not be the sole source of challenge as the OP suggests they should be. He is also blatantly wrong in suggesting that the game has no challenge in the long run because there are no disasters - have you not had traffic problems at all in a city of 200k+ people? Or have you just not gotten there yet?
Traffic is crap in literally every single city-builder game. You want to know why? The day a realistic traffic based model is created by someone, game developers will be very low on the totem pole of people who would want it. It's a rather significant computer science problem. Traffic was crap in Simcity 4 - why do you think NAM is basically needed to play it? Traffic was crap in Simcity 2013. Traffic was crap in the Tropico games. Traffic was crap in Cities in Motion. All of it, crap. Crap, crap, crap. If you want to play a city-builder game with a good traffic system, then keep waiting, but don't claim this game cannot be great because of it when you claim other city-builders are great.
No, road options are totally limited when you get past tunnels, it's not like people can create realistic cities or even cities from other games in this one because the road options are so limiting and everything must be constructed near a road like... like real life, actually. It's not like anyone has created Los Santos in C:S or anything...
Oh....
Oh wait...
Yes, because policies were so much better in Simcity 4. It's not like this game has useful stuff like smoke detectors or red light districts or anything like that, like Simcity 4 had.
In all seriousness, policies shouldn't be game-changers, they aren't in real life. They're usually minor things. That said, I have a suggestion coming up concerning this.
This one is a legit issue that's still far too minor to put this game down to "good" from "great". Like, really? Now this is nitpicking, especially when the map editor is pretty robust.
This is pure laziness. Now this right here pisses me off. This is worth nothing. If you have a lot more issues, then state them and defend them. If you don't state them and defend them, they are shit and they are not problems. How lazy do you have to be to resort to infomercial rhetoric? And then you have the gall to call this game "vastly inferior" to Simcity 4 because of, after parsing out the stupid issues, nostalgia (Simcity 4 was not as great as everyone makes it out to be, especially when it launched; people mostly remember it with NAM, which came out after Rush Hour, which was an expansion pack ffs). What a disgrace. You had some good arguments in there and you blew it.
Now, on to more constructive things. Skylines does have issues that need to be addressed, and as I was going through the OP, I came up with some ideas to make things more interesting, to create challenges besides traffic. Even though traffic should be the largest challenge in a city-builder, it should not be the only challenge. Here's my proposal for making things more challenging, in a fun way, for Skylines.
The OP didn't even mention things like how clean energy is ridiculously overpowered compared to non-clean energy, or how wonders are a bit pointless right now because your problems are largely solved by the time you get them to solve your problems. But I'm hoping that someone notices my suggestions and at least considers them, possibly someone makes a mod, I don't know. This is a weird thread to do it in, but the OP's larger concern should be noted even though he presented it in a terrible fashion.
This is... questionable. When it comes to graphics, some things are purely subjective (colors) and some things are not (texture pop-in, jaggies). Skylines has jaggies, and the lack of proper AA is hurting. But have you seen some of the garbage from Simcity 2013? To call it night and day is ridiculous. Don't overblow the differences because you don't like the color scheme. This is not an issue that breaks the game relative to any other title out there, unlike Cities XL, where it seems the quest to make things aesthetically pleasing overshadowed the need to make a functioning game. For all the hate the models and colors in this game are going to get, the game runs fantastically.
Partly correct, partly wrong. Skylines does seem extremely easy on money once you get past the first few thousand citizens. This is the only correct bit, and it's a problem I may have a solution for in a bit.
But what basic features does this game lack, especially when compared to other city-builders? Do you want missions with objectives, as in the Tropico or the Anno games? That may be the only thing this game properly lacks. Every single aspect of Simcity 4 and 2013, which the OP apparently considers to be city-builder games, is in Skylines. Those aspects are not reduced in the slightest, they still constitute the core of the game. What basic features are lacking? And how is a road building simulator with minor gimmicks added not a city-builder game? Traffic was just as problematic in Simcity 4 and it was an even worse problem in 2013. Traffic is going to be the challenge of any city-builder game, and it's also the one aspect of the simulation that is far more complicated than all other aspects. Unless you believe that Simcity: Societies is the pinnacle of city-building games, this is not even nitpicking, this is blatant disregard for what the genre is.
Limited in options relative to... what, exactly? Cities in Motion, a game whose sole purpose was mass transportation? Simcity 4, a game with even less options than this game when it comes to mass transit? Simcity 2013, Tropico, are you kidding me here? Yes, bus lines work by just spamming stops. I'm just sure that's great for your traffic. Have you even used mass transit in a city with more than 20k people? This argument is disgusting.
Here's a sensible argument. I don't know much about the effect of pollution on people simply because I don't build around it, but that is its own problem, one which I will propose a solution for at the end of this post. The education system is overblown and ridiculous, it's as if students can't fail. And because education is so easy to handle, crime isn't as much of a problem as it should be. This is an aspect of the simulation that people like to gloss over and they shouldn't. The game is really weird because of this.
Tourism exists as a cash cow in a game that has too many cash cows. I believe making the simulation more difficult in other aspects will make tourism more important.
So we need disasters in a game to make things challenging? We need RNGs to destroy stuff that the player has built just to make things more difficult? Most players like disasters, yes, and they do provides challenges, but they should not be the sole source of challenge as the OP suggests they should be. He is also blatantly wrong in suggesting that the game has no challenge in the long run because there are no disasters - have you not had traffic problems at all in a city of 200k+ people? Or have you just not gotten there yet?
Traffic is crap in literally every single city-builder game. You want to know why? The day a realistic traffic based model is created by someone, game developers will be very low on the totem pole of people who would want it. It's a rather significant computer science problem. Traffic was crap in Simcity 4 - why do you think NAM is basically needed to play it? Traffic was crap in Simcity 2013. Traffic was crap in the Tropico games. Traffic was crap in Cities in Motion. All of it, crap. Crap, crap, crap. If you want to play a city-builder game with a good traffic system, then keep waiting, but don't claim this game cannot be great because of it when you claim other city-builders are great.
No, road options are totally limited when you get past tunnels, it's not like people can create realistic cities or even cities from other games in this one because the road options are so limiting and everything must be constructed near a road like... like real life, actually. It's not like anyone has created Los Santos in C:S or anything...
Oh....
Oh wait...
Yes, because policies were so much better in Simcity 4. It's not like this game has useful stuff like smoke detectors or red light districts or anything like that, like Simcity 4 had.
In all seriousness, policies shouldn't be game-changers, they aren't in real life. They're usually minor things. That said, I have a suggestion coming up concerning this.
This one is a legit issue that's still far too minor to put this game down to "good" from "great". Like, really? Now this is nitpicking, especially when the map editor is pretty robust.
This is pure laziness. Now this right here pisses me off. This is worth nothing. If you have a lot more issues, then state them and defend them. If you don't state them and defend them, they are shit and they are not problems. How lazy do you have to be to resort to infomercial rhetoric? And then you have the gall to call this game "vastly inferior" to Simcity 4 because of, after parsing out the stupid issues, nostalgia (Simcity 4 was not as great as everyone makes it out to be, especially when it launched; people mostly remember it with NAM, which came out after Rush Hour, which was an expansion pack ffs). What a disgrace. You had some good arguments in there and you blew it.
Now, on to more constructive things. Skylines does have issues that need to be addressed, and as I was going through the OP, I came up with some ideas to make things more interesting, to create challenges besides traffic. Even though traffic should be the largest challenge in a city-builder, it should not be the only challenge. Here's my proposal for making things more challenging, in a fun way, for Skylines.
- Make industry worth a damn, and make offices dependent on industry. The pure office society is what made Tropico 5 ridiculously easy in the end-game, it's what makes Skylines ridiculously easy from a much earlier point, and the same solution should work for both games. The income of offices should be dependent on the industry in the same city - they should work as a multiplier. Offices should boost industrial income by, say, 50%. Industry should remain the heart of a city's income. In addition, imports should be far more expensive. This will make specialized industrial zones something to work towards, rather than something that should be avoided atm because they make traffic far worse.
- Based off of the previous suggestion, air pollution should not be limited to industrial zones. But instead of expanding the radius of pollution, the way pollution should work is that, say, 98% of an industrial building's pollution is locally dispersed, while 2% is dispersed across the entire map (numbers are not important here, just the concept). This will make pollution problematic, but only to cities with lots of low level industrial buildings; since industrial buildings are going to be a necessary evil in the previous proposal, however, most cities will experience pollution problems, and getting industry to max level will become an objective. I'm thinking Beijing when it comes to this problem, btw, their pollution is not caused locally, it's caused by regional dirty industry. It's ridiculous to put all of your industry in one corner and not have problems because the rest of your city starts a block away, as it is in the current model.
- On education, we absolutely need limits on educated people. We need a certain % of the population to fail in certain schools no matter what, limit the number of highly educated workers (another part of making industry more important) and we need things like crime, fire safety, leisure, all of that to affect education chance. In addition, I'm not sure if the simulation does this already, but highly educated people should be funneled to higher land value residential plots while less educated people are funneled to lower land value plots. This is how Skylines will get ghettos, basically, with all of its real life civic planning concerns.
- Policies. I think district policies should be stronger than global policies. Applying a policy across a city should be a weak thing - it affects more people, it's not going to be as strong simply because you're dealing with larger bureaucracies. District policies, on the other hand, can be more rigidly enforced and stronger to act as funnels. This is how you get Hamsterdam. I want Hamsterdam.
The OP didn't even mention things like how clean energy is ridiculously overpowered compared to non-clean energy, or how wonders are a bit pointless right now because your problems are largely solved by the time you get them to solve your problems. But I'm hoping that someone notices my suggestions and at least considers them, possibly someone makes a mod, I don't know. This is a weird thread to do it in, but the OP's larger concern should be noted even though he presented it in a terrible fashion.
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I still play SC4. It's not from memory. It's a better game. I'm not saying it's better in every single way, but people claiming C:SL is better, right now as it currently is, are just deluded.
Basic and Simple as , I would like the game to have more complex systems like cities xl , where you can't just spam build something and provide with service and you are good to go , You had to manage a lot of things like type of workers for that particular industry and types of services like hotels and so on for offices .
More fun cities like in simcity 2013 , where you could make different cities (tourism,education and so on) everytime , rather than the bland vanilla flavor of cities skylines . Managing tourists, hotels ,extra crime and traffic with tourism , hosting events were really fun things for me. (watching criminals was fun too).
Everything looks very generic in skylines and has same kind of system( offices and residentials have same demands for growth ).
These are some of the things that i find lacking in skylines , but as i said , this was not meant to be a ferrari at the start and i hope that there are more complex system and interaction added to the game in future.
I've played both in recent years, and I'm sorry but there's no way I could go back to SC4 after CS. Yes, there are certainly elements (esp. service building types) from SC4 I miss in C:S, but on the whole, *unmodded game* against unmodded game, C:S is a far more flexible city-builder. And to me, flexibility is the gold standard in a city builder (and in most sandbox games). The thing C:S lets me do with roads alone (and the lack of a fixed grid) blows SC4 dead out of the water.
Now SC4 with its entire library of mods, yes, that probabkly edges out C:S - at the cost of a ridiculously long list of buildings. But that's with a decade of mods, which is not a legitimate comparison between a 10 years old game and a 10 days old game.
And again, at the cost of giving yourselves headaches trying to remember where the building you want is.
Of course the question is how big a market there is for a 'proper simulation' compared to this accessible if perhaps (initially) more shallow one. In the end game companies want to make money as well as develop a product they would enjoy themselves.
And it is interesting to note that many of the games that seem to last these days have some level of simulated agents, eg Crusader Kings, Sims, Dwarf Fortress, Football manager. It seems many people connect well to that level of simulation.
I must agree the statistical simulation of CXL is interesting... too sad it stays at the statistical level and the cities look dead.
SC2013 is broken, how fun is that ????
Yeah CSL looks a bit generic, but at least it looks alive and it works and it's not restricted to a poststamp-sized map.
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