Cities Skylines looks like what SC5 should have been...

[Engioc]

I've only just bought SC5 because it was on sale for $24 for a complete edition. Played all the previous SimCity, SimTower, SimFarm etc games of the past at the time they were released.....SC5 may have pretty graphics but honestly without mods its a shite game to say the least. A bunch of confusing futuristic buildings like Air filter thing I cant ever remember its exact name, stupid buildings to magically clean up all the crap, the return of arcologies seems lame too...most of what I've seen seems to be in the game because of the pathetic map sizes. Its not that I'm finding it hard either, I'm making 10k+ in taxes despite the fact I haven't got a clue what most of the crap I'm building does or is....way too easy. I wont totally dismiss the game but it aint the SimCity game I remember or expected.

OK winge over . Now for the positives...I've watched all the videos so far for CS and it looks amazing and like it includes everything one could ask for, and its done in a sensible modern/current era city/theme. Love the blend of having farm land with animals and country areas, as well as the ability to create cities right up to metropolises, and of course the inclusion of an editor makes this game FAR better than SC5 and the slack asses at EA. A big thumbs up to Colossal Order, another small studio showing the bigger guys like EA how games should be made. Cities Skylines is on my wishlist for sure.

 

[TheSutekh]

To me, SimCity 2013 was an evolution. They tried to push the game towards actual simulation instead of the representation we got from previous SimCity games. This, of course, came with some setbacks.

So far, we don't know how Cities: Skylines will run, how buggy it will be, how well can out computers can run it, etc. However, the game looks amazing and seems to cover some of the failures of Sim City 2013 well and add on new features.

I reckon that while city sizes was probably the biggest problem in Sim City 2013, even though it was the average city size in Sim City 4, in Cities: Skylines it will be the 1 million population cap, a hard coded limit. For example, you won't be able to accurately re-create Manhattan and similarly tightly populated large districts.

Also, keep in mind, if there was no Sim City 2013 with all of its successes and failures, there probably wouldn't be a Cities: Skylines...

 

[medopu]

in Cities: Skylines it will be the 1 million population cap, a hard coded limit. For example, you won't be able to accurately re-create Manhattan and similarly tightly populated large districts.

I've noticed, that many players have a wrong perception on how much 1 million citizents actually is.

This is because all the current city-builder games cheat on population count. The biggest culprits are SC2013 and CXL. In these games you can get millions of citizents easily, even though the city looks like it could hold max 100K citizents.

These games superinflate population number just so naive players think their city has a million people, even though the city size is terribly small compared to a REAL-WORLD million-people metropolis.

SC4 was also inflating the numbers. Houses/apartments have 5x or even 10x too many inhabitants.

So people, try the "REAL-no bullshit-1 million citizents" in CSL and see if 1 million is really low number. Because it's really not.

 

[Engioc]

I've noticed, that many players have a wrong perception on how much 1 million citizents actually is.

This is because all the current city-builder games cheat on population count. The biggest culprits are SC2013 and CXL. In these games you can get millions of citizents easily, even though the city looks like it could hold max 100K citizents.

These games superinflate population number just so naive players think their city has a million people, even though the city size is terribly small compared to a REAL-WORLD million-people metropolis.

SC4 was also inflating the numbers. Houses/apartments have 5x or even 10x too many inhabitants.

So people, try the "REAL-no bullshit-1 million citizents" in CSL and see if 1 million is really low number. Because it's really not.

Thats right and something I had always noticed in SC games. I've always enjoyed the SC games so dont get me wrong, they were ground breaking and clearly king of the hill for city builders for a long time. Lately though they have stopped being the innovators and are actually lagging behind other developers, which should not be the case given the huge resources of EA.

So far, we don't know how Cities: Skylines will run, how buggy it will be, how well can out computers can run it, etc. However, the game looks amazing and seems to cover some of the failures of Sim City 2013 well and add on new features.

Also, keep in mind, if there was no Sim City 2013 with all of its successes and failures, there probably wouldn't be a Cities: Skylines...

I'm not totally disagreeing with you, SC games have been a fantastic series but I feel lately EA just doesn't put in enough effort given their size and resouces, yet a smaller dev like CO is able to do it.

I am quite sure when CSL ships it will have bugs like every other game, and it will need more content via DLC's, expansions, and modding, but imo once we get the final finished product it will be a much better and more complete city builder than SC5 Complete Edition. Remember without mods (which isn't supported officially by EA) SC5 wouldn't even have simple things like one way roads, something we already had in SC4 albeit limited to just small streets. Even with bugs CSL is already better imo because its going to have an editor, the devs will actually support and encourage modding, and waterfalls sounds amazing and the last time I saw a city builder that allowed for waterfalls was actually SimCity 2000 where you could place water wherever you wanted, I never got in to the CXL games but I doubt there are many examples that had water coming from a height. The standard these days has always been to go for what SC3000 introduced, a set water table/level totally eliminating the idea of waterfalls, mountain lakes/river/streams etc. So yeah no matter how many bugs it ships with, as long as they fix them it'll be a better game than SC5 for certain.

 

[TheSutekh]

So people, try the "REAL-no bullshit-1 million citizents" in CSL and see if 1 million is really low number. Because it's really not.

That assumes that Cities: Skylines will not exaggerate the numbers as well. Also, when I said "biggest problem" I meant it as something people will criticize the most. Otherwise, it shouldn't come as a shocker to people that what we see on screen is not a 100% accurate representation. It's a game after all.

I'm not totally disagreeing with you, SC games have been a fantastic series but I feel lately EA just doesn't put in enough effort given their size and resouces, yet a smaller dev like CO is able to do it.

I am quite sure when CSL ships it will have bugs like every other game, and it will need more content via DLC's, expansions, and modding, but imo once we get the final finished product it will be a much better and more complete city builder than SC5 Complete Edition. Remember without mods (which isn't supported officially by EA) SC5 wouldn't even have simple things like one way roads, something we already had in SC4 albeit limited to just small streets. Even with bugs CSL is already better imo because its going to have an editor, the devs will actually support and encourage modding, and waterfalls sounds amazing and the last time I saw a city builder that allowed for waterfalls was actually SimCity 2000 where you could place water wherever you wanted, I never got in to the CXL games but I doubt there are many examples that had water coming from a height. The standard these days has always been to go for what SC3000 introduced, a set water table/level totally eliminating the idea of waterfalls, mountain lakes/river/streams etc. So yeah no matter how many bugs it ships with, as long as they fix them it'll be a better game than SC5 for certain.

I'd agree completely if both games came out at the same time. I think Cities: Skylines wouldn't become the game it's becoming today without Sim City 2013's successes and failures. I still think that Sim City 2013 was a good game. I had many fun hours with it. It was a necessary experiment in a way to advance the genre. If it was made by a less mainstream studio it would probably not garner the same negativity.

 

[uebs]

That assumes that Cities: Skylines will not exaggerate the numbers as well. Also, when I said "biggest problem" I meant it as something people will criticize the most. Otherwise, it shouldn't come as a shocker to people that what we see on screen is not a 100% accurate representation. It's a game after all.

I'd agree completely if both games came out at the same time. I think Cities: Skylines wouldn't become the game it's becoming today without Sim City 2013's successes and failures. I still think that Sim City 2013 was a good game. I had many fun hours with it. It was a necessary experiment in a way to advance the genre. If it was made by a less mainstream studio it would probably not garner the same negativity.

I'd be pleasantly surprised if they don't fudge the numbers...a million of anything on my monitor would be crazy...

SC2013 the first city builder to actually try and simulate?

SC4 was basically representative..."high-level statistics were first generated. These statics were used to create the graphical animations" and CXL seem to be the same too. Cars would just appear and dissappear basically, so it was more graphically representative rather than actual.

If SC2013 was sucessful then the interest in C:SL wouldn't be as great. I don't see a better opportunity for CO to make a name for themselves...from all the videos on youtube they seem to be going in the right direction.

There's always Sim City buildit for mobiles maybe that explains the small city sizes in SC2013, they were creating a game to the lowest denominator...

 

[Engioc]

To me the problems with SC2013 is not because of a lack of innovation, its because imo they went too far and changed things too much. Not sure I see it as being anything overly complicated a thing to do to progress the city building genre. I think the mistake is they are trying to overthink the whole thing. All most fans wanted is an SC4 style game but with updated graphics and basically add more. To me SC2013 doesn't fail simply because of the city sizes, it fails in a lot of ways where they would have been better off just sticking with what has been done before in earlier SC games. Getting carried away with trying to re-invent the game when it really doesn't need re-inventing.

One of the things I read about SC2013 and one of the reasons behind the changes was because they felt it had become too complex, yet in reality I would say adding crazy futuristic buildings and too much imagination is what makes SC2013 far more complex than it needed to be. All these silly ideas like Air Cleaners and Net Controllers and just a whole load of buildings that aren't even a picture of the future, they're just totally made up BS. CSL will be a success not just because of SC2013, it is learning and building on what made SC4 a success and not trying to be anything other than a modern/current world city sim.

Again though SC2013 is not a totally bad game, I'll keep playing it and I'm sure I will come to enjoy its differences but its still not what I would have expected from the king of city builders...but then again I've always felt that while games are made by large teams of people, truly great games get made by/from the minds of a great person (or at least the idea/concept). Will Wright left EA and it shows in their work and I honestly feel big companies like EA struggle with creativity without people like Will Wright there to push new ideas out there and being listened to, without them the big companies allow their conservative marketing boys rule too much.

 

[medopu]

That assumes that Cities: Skylines will not exaggerate the numbers as well. Also, when I said "biggest problem" I meant it as something people will criticize the most. Otherwise, it shouldn't come as a shocker to people that what we see on screen is not a 100% accurate representation. It's a game after all.

Developers said quite a few times, we're going to have 1 million individual people. Ofcourse there are obivous constraints,
-you will certainly not see all of them on the street. Most of the time, they'll be in houses/jobs
-this number includes tourists as well.
But it is a hard number. Theoretically & if you really wish to do so, you could click and inspect every person out of these 1 million people. It's an accurate representation.

I rather have a city with 1 million people, that actually has 1 million people than a city which lies to me and tells me "good boy, you have 10 million people in your townville, be proud of yourself"

 

[zorkman]

I'm not totally disagreeing with you, SC games have been a fantastic series but I feel lately EA just doesn't put in enough effort given their size and resouces, yet a smaller dev like CO is able to do it.

There is a reason for this. EA thought they could use Sim City 2013 as another Sims franchise where they could release loads of DLCS for it, which added little bits each time. That is how they work, & are an extremely greedy organisation, and so glad they failed. The problem was that the standard game released wasn't up to it, & there was such an outcry they were put on the back foot & all there plans abandoned.

CO is a small developer who tries to give a quality product to their customers at the same time hopefully make a sufficient profit on it. Like others have mentioned how can a small company do this whilst massive corporations like EA cannot, and the answer is they could but are entrenched in layers of management & bureaucracy & have lost what they originally were as a developer.

 

[Engioc]

I'd agree completely if both games came out at the same time. I think Cities: Skylines wouldn't become the game it's becoming today without Sim City 2013's successes and failures. I still think that Sim City 2013 was a good game. I had many fun hours with it. It was a necessary experiment in a way to advance the genre. If it was made by a less mainstream studio it would probably not garner the same negativity.

Not sure I can agree with that either after reading this article which was listed under the FAQ thread: http://www.digitalspy.com.au/gaming...h-player-freedom-in-mind.html#~oZEeVcq8M06XEG

"Hallikainen also discussed how the team was almost deterred by the announcement of SimCity, which they thought would be the "next great city builder".

"After making Cities in Motion 1 and 2, [Paradox has] totally supported us taking on a city-building project, even though there was the scary news earlier when EA and Maxis actually announced that they're going to be making a new SimCity.

"Everybody at the office was like, 'No! Now they're going to make the next grand, great city builder'. We were thinking that it's been so long since SimCity 4 that we dared to think [to] take on this huge task. They were pretty sure that, OK, we're going to have to figure out something else to make.

"Luckily after the release [of SimCity] it didn't look so grim after all for us to take a stab at it. This is basically the result of what we've been working on now."

Hallikainen added: "We were seriously thinking that there is no market to make a city builder after the new SimCity's out. It's going to be the new SimCity 4. Everybody's going to play it, nobody's going to give a crap if some 13 people from Finland actually make a city-building game.

"We were really thinking, 'OK, this is not going to happen for us'. That's why when it wasn't such a success like we anticipated, it became clear also to us and Paradox that we still have a viable idea here. They've been great in supporting us in this, and we're super happy to be working on this game."


From that interview it seems fairly clear they were already planning this game before SC2013 had even been announced....I am sure they will benefit from looking at what failed with SC2013, but it could of still been an excellent game even if we'd never had SC2013. I say that because the things I hear from CO in interviews, videos etc seems like they really want to embrace the community, and they're really aiming for realism rather than the future stuff that SC2013 introduced. Its clear these were already their ideas regardless of what SC2013 did. So not sure how accurate it is to suggest the potential success of CSL is better now just because of SC2013. SC2013 can still be a fun game but imo it missed the mark by miles in terms of a realistic urban development game which is what all the previous SC games provided.

 

[TheSutekh]

Developers said quite a few times, we're going to have 1 million individual people. Ofcourse there are obivous constraints,
-you will certainly not see all of them on the street. Most of the time, they'll be in houses/jobs
-this number includes tourists as well.
But it is a hard number. Theoretically & if you really wish to do so, you could click and inspect every person out of these 1 million people. It's an accurate representation.

I rather have a city with 1 million people, that actually has 1 million people than a city which lies to me and tells me "good boy, you have 10 million people in your townville, be proud of yourself"

Didn't SimCity 2013 made similar claims before its launch?

Not sure I can agree with that either after reading this article which was listed under the FAQ thread: http://www.digitalspy.com.au/gaming...h-player-freedom-in-mind.html#~oZEeVcq8M06XEG

"Hallikainen also discussed how the team was almost deterred by the announcement of SimCity, which they thought would be the "next great city builder".

"After making Cities in Motion 1 and 2, [Paradox has] totally supported us taking on a city-building project, even though there was the scary news earlier when EA and Maxis actually announced that they're going to be making a new SimCity.

"Everybody at the office was like, 'No! Now they're going to make the next grand, great city builder'. We were thinking that it's been so long since SimCity 4 that we dared to think [to] take on this huge task. They were pretty sure that, OK, we're going to have to figure out something else to make.

"Luckily after the release [of SimCity] it didn't look so grim after all for us to take a stab at it. This is basically the result of what we've been working on now."

Hallikainen added: "We were seriously thinking that there is no market to make a city builder after the new SimCity's out. It's going to be the new SimCity 4. Everybody's going to play it, nobody's going to give a crap if some 13 people from Finland actually make a city-building game.

"We were really thinking, 'OK, this is not going to happen for us'. That's why when it wasn't such a success like we anticipated, it became clear also to us and Paradox that we still have a viable idea here. They've been great in supporting us in this, and we're super happy to be working on this game."


From that interview it seems fairly clear they were already planning this game before SC2013 had even been announced....I am sure they will benefit from looking at what failed with SC2013, but it could of still been an excellent game even if we'd never had SC2013. I say that because the things I hear from CO in interviews, videos etc seems like they really want to embrace the community, and they're really aiming for realism rather than the future stuff that SC2013 introduced. Its clear these were already their ideas regardless of what SC2013 did. So not sure how accurate it is to suggest the potential success of CSL is better now just because of SC2013. SC2013 can still be a fun game but imo it missed the mark by miles in terms of a realistic urban development game which is what all the previous SC games provided.

It's quite obvious from those quotes that they're hinting at the idea that they continued with the project because SimCity 2013 wasn't a success. From what I see though, they use much of the new stuff that SimCity 2013 introduced. Actual agents representing the population for example. I can't remember the mechanism for how they'll distribute electricity and water.

 

[uebs]

I think they were working on a city building game. I don't think the game they started with looked like what they have now. I think it was more in the lines of CIM'sh...

With the implosion of SC2013 they took the good ideas from SC2013 (yes there were some good ideas) read the community complaints about SC2013 and said "hey that's a good idea, yeah we can do this and that" iterated the game to what we have today. Based on the early videos which have a uncanny resemblance to SC2013.

I don't think all the suggestions for C:SL we have will be implemented due to time/resources/original vision of CO. If the game isn't moddable to address those issues then quite possibly another game company will rise up and fill in the demand.

I always believe competition is good...speaking of which.

"The architect" is looking amazing visually and does something no other game does, not sure if that's a good thing or not. It looks like CXL in terms of realism and scale. Overall idea seems diff from CXL and SC and C:SL. Not much has been released in terms of game play or game rules.

Release date Fall of 2015.

 

[medopu]

Didn't SimCity 2013 made similar claims before its launch?

No, i don't think sc2013 made any claims about simulating 1 million individual 'sims'. correct me if i'm wrong.

 

[TheSutekh]

No, i don't think sc2013 made any claims about simulating 1 million individual 'sims'. correct me if i'm wrong.

No, no. I mean I think they claimed that the population would be represented by agents to the last person.

 

[medopu]

No, no. I mean I think they claimed that the population would be represented by agents to the last person.

Well anyways, even if they did make such claims and broke the promise, call me naive, but me personally, I hold Collosal Order to a higher degree of trust than EA, which means i'm actually willing to believe CO will deliver the simulation they promised.

 

[TheSutekh]

Well anyways, even if they did make such claims and broke the promise, call me naive, but me personally, I hold Collosal Order to a higher degree of trust than EA, which means i'm actually willing to believe CO will deliver the simulation they promised.

It's not that I think a million agents is not enough or that they shouldn't exaggerate the numbers at all or that I don't trust them to do it the way say they will. This game makes me excited and I can't wait to play it. I'll like will pre-order. I'd recommend any city simulator lover to do the same. I still think that people will criticize that limit a lot.

 

[medopu]

It's not that I think a million agents is not enough or that they shouldn't exaggerate the numbers at all or that I don't trust them to do it the way say they will. This game makes me excited and I can't wait to play it. I'll like will pre-order. I'd recommend any city simulator lover to do the same. I still think that people will criticize that limit a lot.

Yeah i'm excited as well. Besides, maybe 1,000,000 citizent limit isn't exactly a limit that can't be "modded away". We'll have to wait and see.

 

[Engioc]

I think they were working on a city building game. I don't think the game they started with looked like what they have now. I think it was more in the lines of CIM'sh...

With the implosion of SC2013 they took the good ideas from SC2013 (yes there were some good ideas) read the community complaints about SC2013 and said "hey that's a good idea, yeah we can do this and that" iterated the game to what we have today. Based on the early videos which have a uncanny resemblance to SC2013.

I don't think all the suggestions for C:SL we have will be implemented due to time/resources/original vision of CO. If the game isn't moddable to address those issues then quite possibly another game company will rise up and fill in the demand.

I always believe competition is good...speaking of which.

"The architect" is looking amazing visually and does something no other game does, not sure if that's a good thing or not. It looks like CXL in terms of realism and scale. Overall idea seems diff from CXL and SC and C:SL. Not much has been released in terms of game play or game rules.

Release date Fall of 2015.

You're quite right in that sure CSL is going to benefit from what happened with SC2013, I'm just questioning by how much.

Also just want to say that sure for every thing I can find that is wrong with SC2013 there are some equally nice ideas that they did introduce. The ability to expand existing buildings is a great example of something I'd say they did right and hopefully will catch on for other city builders. Also happy to accept what you said earlier about the fact if SC2013 had been made by someone other than EA we probably wouldn't be treating it so harshly......but in a way I feel EA deserve that kind of treatment if only because they are bigger and have loads more resources to throw at a game dev. And I'd admit I am always more accepting of faults in a game by smaller devs like CO than I am of EA, Ubi, Codies or any of the other big names. I can accept small companies have less resources and its to be expected they wont always hit the mark at least on release, all I care about with the smaller guys is they at least make the effort to fix the problems that get found.

Yeah i'm excited as well. Besides, maybe 1,000,000 citizent limit isn't exactly a limit that can't be "modded away". We'll have to wait and see.

I can't find where I saw this but I believe it was in one of the articles listed in the FAQ thread...CO say its possible to mod this limit to something higher but also state you'll need a supercomputer to run it .

 

[TheSutekh]

I don't really think that more money means a better game. Games are like books. The ideas matter, not how good the paper is or how well it was bonded together with the cover. Money doesn't necessarily get you the best ideas, or the most efficient codes.

 

[Hannodb]

I've only just bought SC5 because it was on sale for $24 for a complete edition. Played all the previous SimCity, SimTower, SimFarm etc games of the past at the time they were released.....SC5 may have pretty graphics but honestly without mods its a shite game to say the least. A bunch of confusing futuristic buildings like Air filter thing I cant ever remember its exact name, stupid buildings to magically clean up all the crap, the return of arcologies seems lame too...most of what I've seen seems to be in the game because of the pathetic map sizes. Its not that I'm finding it hard either, I'm making 10k+ in taxes despite the fact I haven't got a clue what most of the crap I'm building does or is....way too easy. I wont totally dismiss the game but it aint the SimCity game I remember or expected.

OK winge over . Now for the positives...I've watched all the videos so far for CS and it looks amazing and like it includes everything one could ask for, and its done in a sensible modern/current era city/theme. Love the blend of having farm land with animals and country areas, as well as the ability to create cities right up to metropolises, and of course the inclusion of an editor makes this game FAR better than SC5 and the slack asses at EA. A big thumbs up to Colossal Order, another small studio showing the bigger guys like EA how games should be made. Cities Skylines is on my wishlist for sure.

+1

Screw that.

+1 000 000!!!