If you play the PDX in-house games, like Hearts of Iron, they display a row of alert icons when something in the game requires the player's attention. Each of the alerts, such as idling factories or enemy ships sighted, has its own icon so that you can see at a glance what the game tells you without having to mouse over or click the icon. An experienced player can throw a glance up at the new icons that pop up and instantly know if they need to take action.
In Cities Skylines, you have a Twitter bird up in the top of the screen that never goes away, and important messages are drowned in chatter from your citizens about vacations and the weather. If your city suddenly doesn't have enough power, or if houses are flooding, or if there is a district somewhere without adequate fire protection, you'll either have to check the bird every time you hear that ding sound, or be lucky enough to spot the alert icon next time you zoom out.
With respect to the devs, with C:S having been out for years, might it not be time to switch to a system that works? We know how well the row of alert icons works from Paradox's titles, and I'd much rather have a system that works and tells me at a glance what I need to know, than a gimmicky bird that spams me with unimportant updates all the time. This would also have the added benefit of not having a blue bird clutter up the top of the screen constantly. I suppose there could be an option to instead show Chirpy for those who want that, at least right after the patch comes out.
In Cities Skylines, you have a Twitter bird up in the top of the screen that never goes away, and important messages are drowned in chatter from your citizens about vacations and the weather. If your city suddenly doesn't have enough power, or if houses are flooding, or if there is a district somewhere without adequate fire protection, you'll either have to check the bird every time you hear that ding sound, or be lucky enough to spot the alert icon next time you zoom out.
With respect to the devs, with C:S having been out for years, might it not be time to switch to a system that works? We know how well the row of alert icons works from Paradox's titles, and I'd much rather have a system that works and tells me at a glance what I need to know, than a gimmicky bird that spams me with unimportant updates all the time. This would also have the added benefit of not having a blue bird clutter up the top of the screen constantly. I suppose there could be an option to instead show Chirpy for those who want that, at least right after the patch comes out.
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" - I know I built a new hospital, why tell me! Also, a time stamp would be handy. We do not know if the problem has just happened or was it something we fixed hours ago Better still, remove messages no longer applicable.