1P or 3P, Don't Hold Back In POV Options
I like clicking on a vehicle or pedestrian and following them around in 3rd person, hovering closely. Technically, though we act like disembodied god, the vehicle driver or chosen pedestrian is really acting as our temporary avatar. Typical city builder feature, already existed in SimCity4 and CitiesXL. For discussion, I'll call it
3PFollow. Follow mode is not the same as a Drive mode. Follow mode is just a fixed position looking through the vehicle windscreen or eyes of a pedestrian. Just passive stalking really. No reason not to make 3PFollow so close that it is 1PFollow, like in CXL, via hotkey toggle.
KR153's "walk/ride with me" idea is also interesting. "Follow" in 1st person in fixed relative position. This implies we are not the driver/ sim, but closer to being a real entity. An alternative kind of
1PFollow I guess.
1st Person should be a given camera view for a city builder game. I recall in CitiesXL, beyond 3PFollow and 1PFollow, we get to 1P free roam in varying speed - glide anywhere on terrain level onto building balconies, rooftops, or the highest service platform of a bridge. For discussion sake I call this the
1PGlide mode. The mechanism is, when we glide "into" a building we will end up on the highest point of its mesh shell. Beyond that, we roam through trees and across waters with no care for physics. So CXL style 1PGlide is the cheapest 1st person "interactive" view point to implement. Great snapshot viewpoints aside, it's really cool to look at the scenery from any rooftop or balconies, Makes one feel like an inhabitant of that world.
To sum up,
God Mode style Camera, 3PFollow, 1PFollow, 1PGlide modes are already standard camera POV in city builder genre. Typical city builders will expect these. It'll be a win-win if CO include all of these in Cities: Skylines.
Remember why we hardcore city builders build cities in the first place. Not to turn a profit on public transport income, but to roam around in a world we create, in the free-est, most amazing ways possible. So please don't ever hold back in world-exploring options!
But I will be patient re: steering/driving sort of POV. Any POV that includes steering a sim or vehicle, will be more laborious to create, so belongs to stuff of expansion/ DLC/ serious modding.
For the longer run I would like to propose a 1st person "
Parkour mode". :ninja:
Basically, highly immersive and more fun 1P roaming. In Parkour mode I could click on on anything in the world with a small horizontal surface and steady myself there, including building ledge and balcony railings. I could look left/right, hop quickly from top of one car to another. I could climb walls or glide down walls. I could click on any visible small landing point and "hop" there within reasonable distance. Unlike 1PGlide, in Parkour mode I will not run through planters, pedestrians, cars or trees, but avoid these.
This is slightly more labor/resource intensive, but not exorbitant. It will be the most immersive way to explore a city as a "real" person. A 3rd person Parkour mode will be expensive to create. A high res skeletal sim with animations. But why not. Some modders may later come along and create an Assassin or Catwoman style mayor who like to climb walls and snoop on citizens.
.
It could also be a real mayor sim DLC, or part of a "1PDrive Everything with Collision/Physics" expansion, in which we could be a real sim who drive our favorite vehicle around anywhere we like.
Don't hold back on POV or roaming exploration options. C:SL is a city building game.
