How is the Game's Replayability?

[MarkJohnson]

I feel this game plays more like a map maker than anything. There are just no real consequences for your action. The worst feature of this game is the vanishing traffic when traffic becomes too much. It gives you a false sense that nothing is wrong when it is a disaster. Trash doesn't get picked up, hearses don't pick up dead bodies, cims don't make it to work, goods don't get delivered to commerce, etc. You'll need to keep the traffic overlay open a lot and make sure there is no red. any red means trouble. It will look fine, but it is hindering the game to a great degree.

But once you learn the few quirks with the game, it is too easy at the moment. if you're the creative type that likes designing cool looking cities then you'll love this game. If you're looking for a city builder game, then there isn't really much to shoot for in the game. There just isn't an endgame mode just yet.

 

[Cropper]

Well, I don't know why in my cities hearses pick up people now. The entire set of mods you speak of, don't fix "bugs", they tweak the maths, the simulation. I don't use them.

Bugs are the trains piling up at borders, cars using one lane only, crashes, and some other stuff. The rest is balancing the gameplay. You can say that the game is not well balanced, but speaking of bugs is a different thing.

Okay, we have different opinions, live with this fact.

What are you talking about?? Of course they fix bugs, that's why they were made. You should go read what they do again.

You are living in denial.

 

[AmpsterMan]

I may be going against the grain here, but my observations are as follows:

The game is easy when it comes to challenges presented by the mechanics that need to be solved. Tropico and SimCity provide much better challenge in that sense. It is relatively easy to reach the "end game" compared to those other two titles.

However, the capacity for artistic expression is far beyond either of those two titles. The level of aesthetic customization is effectively infinite; you can make your own lots or download thousands easily. The road building tools are robust. Interchange making is arguably my favourite party of the game. Customizable maps makes for interesting challenges, though only in beating the terrain from am infrastructure perspective.

Ultimately, i think it boils down tip your preferences. If you like tip be "challenged" by the mechanics of the game, SimCity and Tropico are better choices. Of artistic and aesthetic expression are ous paramount concerne, Cities is arguably better.

 

[Cropper]

I may be going against the grain here, but my observations are as follows:

The game is easy when it comes to challenges presented by the mechanics that need to be solved. Tropico and SimCity provide much better challenge in that sense. It is relatively easy to reach the "end game" compared to those other two titles.

However, the capacity for artistic expression is far beyond either of those two titles. The level of aesthetic customization is effectively infinite; you can make your own lots or download thousands easily. The road building tools are robust. Interchange making is arguably my favourite party of the game. Customizable maps makes for interesting challenges, though only in beating the terrain from am infrastructure perspective.

Ultimately, i think it boils down tip your preferences. If you like tip be "challenged" by the mechanics of the game, SimCity and Tropico are better choices. Of artistic and aesthetic expression are ous paramount concerne, Cities is arguably better.

I agree and that's pretty much what I said. If you want to draw pretty cities, this game is for you. If you want a challenging in depth simulator then go for Simcity 4 instead until the inevitable DLC makes this game much harder.

 

[Lord Canterbury]

I feel this game plays more like a map maker than anything. There are just no real consequences for your action. The worst feature of this game is the vanishing traffic when traffic becomes too much. It gives you a false sense that nothing is wrong when it is a disaster. Trash doesn't get picked up, hearses don't pick up dead bodies, cims don't make it to work, goods don't get delivered to commerce, etc. You'll need to keep the traffic overlay open a lot and make sure there is no red. any red means trouble. It will look fine, but it is hindering the game to a great degree.

But once you learn the few quirks with the game, it is too easy at the moment. if you're the creative type that likes designing cool looking cities then you'll love this game. If you're looking for a city builder game, then there isn't really much to shoot for in the game. There just isn't an endgame mode just yet.

The despawn is a deliberate design decision to save new players cities imploding completely on their first attempt.

For the the more serious urban planner Traffic Manager Mod allows you to turn of despawn. This has the double benefit of removing a feature you don't like and increasing the difficulty. And as it is a mod it doesn't scare new players away from the vanilla game.

(There are also mods to optimise hearse behavior... though that has the effect of making the game easier).

 

[MarkJohnson]

The despawn is a deliberate design decision to save new players cities imploding completely on their first attempt.

I understand the reason why, my point is it causes more issues that it solves. The despawning of traffic is good for a single game. the second through the thousandth it is in the way severely. Not only that it makes new players think the game is broken in other areas as they think traffic is fine and not the cause of dozens of other issues. This despawn is limiting to the beginner and probably drives them away more than any other facet of the game. It has quite the domino effect.

For the the more serious urban planner Traffic Manager Mod allows you to turn of despawn. This has the double benefit of removing a feature you don't like and increasing the difficulty. And as it is a mod it doesn't scare new players away from the vanilla game.

Mods will scare away new player more than anything. It says the game is so broken you need mods to play it.

(There are also mods to optimize hearse behavior... though that has the effect of making the game easier).

Hearses don't need optimizing. they work perfectly fine if we're allowed to have true traffic. The despawner hides the traffic issues, which is what 90% of this game is all about.

In my experience you never cripple the game to appease the players. At most you can introduce a difficulty level to scaled down traffic (maybe 5:1) at lower levels. Not implement a permanent deficit to the main game mechanic that negatively impacts the whole game throughout from the beginning to the end.

Now we just need a pedestrian traffic monitor for mass-transit. Not to mention an employment monitor to find where the majority of my 62% unemployment is located in game so I can get them to work. Industrial traffic monitor for goods and freight. Basically we need a more refined agent monitoring system. Especially since the game is designed for 9-tiles only. Going past throws the game mechanics out of balance, not to mention if you play with the 81-tile mod. These unlocking tiles aren't turning out to be such a great idea at the moment either.

TL;DR, Despawning traffic is crippling the game as traffic is the main game mechanic of the game. It's all about traffic control and despawning just wrecks it badly. You need to get everything in this game from point A to point B in a timely manner or it won't work.

 

[JerkyJerry]

The only real challenge I have found within the game is trying to reach a population of 1 million. Other than that, like most here have posted, there really are no challenges. Maybe when/if tourism is fixed/working/implemented it may add a level of complexity?

I'm just really hoping that there is a (good) company out there that has been watching and reading very closely not only the shortcomings in this game but SC2013 as well and within a short period of time delivers a more robust and more challenging city builder. There is money to be made (that is obvious) now we just need a company more dedicated to the gamer and less dedicated to the artist to deliver such a game.

 

[Doctor Machete]

The only real challenge I have found within the game is trying to reach a population of 1 million. Other than that, like most here have posted, there really are no challenges. Maybe when/if tourism is fixed/working/implemented it may add a level of complexity?

I'm just really hoping that there is a (good) company out there that has been watching and reading very closely not only the shortcomings in this game but SC2013 as well and within a short period of time delivers a more robust and more challenging city builder. There is money to be made (that is obvious) now we just need a company more dedicated to the gamer and less dedicated to the artist to deliver such a game.

I disagree. If CS have succeeded I’m pretty sure in part is because the game is very easy and appeals to the non casual gamer who is willing to invest hundreds of hours but is also non hardcore city builder, lacking in depth experience in other sim games like SC4 on CIM.

Many people who don’t usually play city builder games (or may have played but a long ago) watched casually let’s play videos from the youtube and what they saw didn’t intimidate them and decided to give it a try, knowing the learning curve was not a very steep one being (more or less) new to the genre, and the game went a bit sort of viral, as a cool game that allows you to easily create dynamic full of life good looking (big) cities, not as a hardcore city builder.

I don’t think most people who bought the game were looking for a challenge, but more of a sandbox and a game to learn a city builder basics. Sure some do want that challenge, and I respect that, but you have to understand it’s only 2 months of the release and I have no doubt with time all gameplay niches will be covered, from the even more casual (with more mods to automate many aspects of the game) to the most hardcore who want to micromanage all aspects of the game. I probably would have not played CS if the game was like you want, because it almost certainly would have passed unnoticed to me, as I have not played any game for a while until I saw some cs lets play videos by pure chance and I was no looking for a city builder (nor any other game for that matter).

The game you want I think wouldn’t sell near as much as CS. A company like Maxis could take such a risk in the past, but a new company with a new franchise of a really hardcore city builder?, I’d be very surprised for that new game getting more than 1/10th of CS sales.

 

[Govner717]

I disagree. If CS have succeeded I’m pretty sure in part is because the game is very easy and appeals to the non casual gamer who is willing to invest hundreds of hours but is also non hardcore city builder, lacking in depth experience in other sim games like SC4 on CIM.

Many people who don’t usually play city builder games (or may have played but a long ago) watched casually let’s play videos from the youtube and what they saw didn’t intimidate them and decided to give it a try, knowing the learning curve was not a very steep one being (more or less) new to the genre, and the game went a bit sort of viral, as a cool game that allows you to easily create dynamic full of life good looking (big) cities, not as a hardcore city builder.

I don’t think most people who bought the game were looking for a challenge, but more of a sandbox and a game to learn a city builder basics. Sure some do want that challenge, and I respect that, but you have to understand it’s only 2 months of the release and I have no doubt with time all gameplay niches will be covered, from the even more casual (with more mods to automate many aspects of the game) to the most hardcore who want to micromanage all aspects of the game. I probably would have not played CS if the game was like you want, because it almost certainly would have passed unnoticed to me, as I have not played any game for a while until I saw some cs lets play videos by pure chance and I was no looking for a city builder (nor any other game for that matter).

The game you want I think wouldn’t sell near as much as CS. A company like Maxis could take such a risk in the past, but a new company with a new franchise of a really hardcore city builder?, I’d be very surprised for that new game getting more than 1/10th of CS sales.

Speaking only for myself here, but I play games for the challenge. Especially single player games. That's what keeps me coming back to the same games when I replay them. I either read about some new strategy that I want to try or I come up with my own self goal and give the game another playthrough. I played Minecraft for years before I finally ran out of self designed goals to accomplish. That was including the mods I was interested in.

It sounds like what I need to do is look at some mods for Skylines to add that extra level of challenge, because the core game just doesn't have it. Somebody previous mentioned a population goal of 1 million or something. I just can't bring myself to do that because the game is just so repetitive. Zone RCI, place services, upgrade/place new roads, repeat (ad nauseam). I'm loath to say it, but at least SimCity 5 had some depth to trading with various industrial specialization(s). That was fun to explore, but the lack of map size just turned me off from that game completely.

I don't mean to draw unfair comparisons, because the game is a breath of fresh air and is almost everything I could want in a city builder. And I really appreciate the fact that as I get older and the game ages to 10 - 20 years old, I will be able to easily replay the game whenever I want to. I don't have to worry about any DRM or online only limitations. That is most important to me and I easily supported this game for that one feature alone.

 

[Doctor Machete]

Speaking only for myself here, but I play games for the challenge. Especially single player games. That's what keeps me coming back to the same games when I replay them. I either read about some new strategy that I want to try or I come up with my own self goal and give the game another playthrough. I played Minecraft for years before I finally ran out of self designed goals to accomplish. That was including the mods I was interested in.

It sounds like what I need to do is look at some mods for Skylines to add that extra level of challenge, because the core game just doesn't have it. Somebody previous mentioned a population goal of 1 million or something. I just can't bring myself to do that because the game is just so repetitive. Zone RCI, place services, upgrade/place new roads, repeat (ad nauseam). I'm loath to say it, but at least SimCity 5 had some depth to trading with various industrial specialization(s). That was fun to explore, but the lack of map size just turned me off from that game completely.

I don't mean to draw unfair comparisons, because the game is a breath of fresh air and is almost everything I could want in a city builder. And I really appreciate the fact that as I get older and the game ages to 10 - 20 years old, I will be able to easily replay the game whenever I want to. I don't have to worry about any DRM or online only limitations. That is most important to me and I easily supported this game for that one feature alone.

It sounds odd to me, because as I see it, when people want real challenge usually don’t play single player but PVP, where is easier to find similar skilled players to play against so it can be just a bit hard, nor easy nor extremely hard for your skill level. Not saying is impossible to find real challenges in single player, only that is not what I think most people usually are looking for in SP games.

By the other side, limitations of AI makes most single player games, even if they are very difficult at first, very easy once you learn the tips and tricks of the game mechanics. And for that reason lots of SP games need to cheat to help keeping consistent difficulty.

You are telling me you need to set you set your own goals in other games too. For me that’s not a real challenge, if it was you wouldn’t have to do that. A real challenge is to overcome a difficult task out of your control, not a self imposed one. Is for that reason I understand some players who want missions in CS, something out of their control to overcome with effort without forcing them to create artificial challenges for themselves.

That’s also the key of success of achievements in the game industry, they are no more than ideas of self imposed challenges so you don’t need to think a self goal for yourself but only to choose for a preselected set of secondary partly self imposed goals, which usually doesn’t means nothing ingame but (a big but and the difference with a true self imposed challenge) can mean something outside because is visible for others in the gaming community (status). They allow to extend the duration of the game a lot without really adding new content, simply having the player to try these artificial challenges.

The problem in CS is that the achievements system is broken and have next to zero status value, because is very mod based. You still can play to get achievements but at the expense of not using many cool and useful mods, and even can use a mod to be able to get achievements using other mods.

Sure SC5 may have more depth in the trading system, but was it really a challenge or simply another thing to micromanage that gets easy once you get the hang of it?, I’ve not played SC5 but I’d bet is the second option like in almost every SP game. Of course can be challenging while you’re learning the game. The hard part for a game is to keep the challenge once you know all about its mechanics and have many hours of experience playing it.

So yes, you like the game but is not exactly what you’re looking for, welcome to the club. It happens every time in every game, especially when developer try to reach a wider range of players than normal for its genre. Always are players who disagree with dev decisions, that’s inevitable.

 

[Govner717]

I can appreciate that different people get different things from their choices of entertainment - in this case games, or more specifically single player games. It wouldn't serve any purpose to argue semantics. So many Internet discussions devolve into that.

I must be an odd duck (story of my life) because I cannot stand achievements. For me, they are a complete waste of time and at worse a distraction that I just don't give a flying fig about. I do understand why they are so popular, for all the reasons you stated. To me, they feel like patronizing comments. If I could turn them off I would. There is probably a mod for that. Haha.

Yeah I do disagree with the design decision of making the game so accessible that it tends to water down the experience for those like to do deep dives. I think it is possible to develop a game that caters to both markets. Obviously, it's a extremely difficult task to do but maybe someday when AI programming in games can start to take advantage of neural nets and other self improving algorithms will it be something that we see more often.

For reference, the trade system in SC5 wasn't difficult at all, just note the requirements for each stage and do those in kind. The difficulty or excitement that came into it was how the global market responded based on server economic rules. Throw in the occasional disaster and it become downright unpredictable at times. I could leave a game running for 30 minutes while doing house chores and come back to a giant mess that would take years of game time to clean up. CS doesn't have that or I haven't found it yet. You can leave a game running for quite a while before things start to fall apart, if ever - things just coast along.

Maybe that's the difference that I am trying to describe. Cities: Skylines doesn't appear to have appreciable levels of entropy.

 

[Lord Canterbury]

I question for those who would like the game to be a challenge - what is it that you would like to see?

Do you want balance change so that there is lower income through tax, higher building costs, more maintainance costs, increased traffic etc?
Do you want scenarios (Achieve 95% well educated within 5 years etc)?
Do you want win-states (population = 1,000,000, so you win)?
Do you want tougher maps (less buildable area etc)?
Do you want external interventions (aliens invading and blowing up half the city every 5 years?)
Do you want to see more constrained progression (effectively a tech tree locking off items until much later in the game?)

I'm curious, as I see CS:L as a sandbox rather than a challenge... meaning I enjoy it as the concepts of easy/hard are irrelevant for a sandbox... but while I've seen numerous threads along the lines of "the game is to easy", I think the more constructive threads would be "I'd prefer the play a game rather than a sandbox and I'd like and option to turn it into a game by doing X"

 

[JerkyJerry]

I question for those who would like the game to be a challenge - what is it that you would like to see?

Do you want balance change so that there is lower income through tax, higher building costs, more maintainance costs, increased traffic etc?
Do you want scenarios (Achieve 95% well educated within 5 years etc)?
Do you want win-states (population = 1,000,000, so you win)?
Do you want tougher maps (less buildable area etc)?
Do you want external interventions (aliens invading and blowing up half the city every 5 years?)
Do you want to see more constrained progression (effectively a tech tree locking off items until much later in the game?)

I'm curious, as I see CS:L as a sandbox rather than a challenge... meaning I enjoy it as the concepts of easy/hard are irrelevant for a sandbox... but while I've seen numerous threads along the lines of "the game is to easy", I think the more constructive threads would be "I'd prefer the play a game rather than a sandbox and I'd like and option to turn it into a game by doing X"

Yes I want to reach 1,000,000 cim population. Why? Because CO said it was the max and damit I want to reach the max, always! Now of course I can't do that because I run out of the ability to place the roads I need to reach that million cim target,,,,,,,,,,,,, but I digress.

Secondly I want tourism to work. On some level. Any level?

Now for the hard core. I want it to be more real world like. For example. I want to be building my city and then through referendums and votes by the populous I as mayor want to be encouraged to...............
Go clean energy
Repair/replace all bridges & roads due to their age
Have existing buildings become ADA compliant
Have existing buildings have to be retro fitted with sprinklers
Build bike lanes
Build bus lanes
Use drones
Build Trams
Build more parks
Maintain more green space
Provide free concerts in the park
Build parking garages/provide more parking
ETC, ETC ETC
In other words all of the real life things that city citizens vote on, want, complain about, get enacted, etc. I want that to happen in my city. Not directed by me. Just randomly by the cims. You know all those things you read or hear about on TV that other cities around the world are doing.
Now as mayor I know my cims want this, that and the other now it is up to me to fund those things they want to keep them happy. Or not. Again that would be up to me as mayor.

Thirdly: I would like there to be almost like an outside/larger government/world where by there are depressions & recessions, global happiness & sadness, cities that need bail outs or food or oil or ore or wood. Maybe I would have to (if I wanted to) provide an outside (pretend) city or country with trains or buses or build them schools or provide them with clean water. Or maybe another pretend city had an earthquake and they needed many supplies and my city could help by building more airports, providing more food, supplies etc. I don't have to see the city/country I'm helping. I'm just doing it to be a good citizen of the world. By doing so that would put a strain/drain on my own resources. So maybe I need more farm land or oil and maybe I don't receive the profits from those industries because I'm helping another land?

Fourth: maybe new industries could be introduced/enacted. Such as automobile factories or plane factories. Where I as mayor would have to provide numerous bonds to get those businesses up and running. Maybe I would want to help a company build a harbor or widget factory? Maybe in the building process there were bad managers of the project who stole all the funding and then I had to help keep the project going (or not) by passing more bonds or giving more loans? Maybe there could be a space program that my cims would want me to fund to send satellites into space to provide better cell phone coverage? Or for tourism trips?

To sum up:
For me I would like to see my cims (or outside influences) ask, demand, need, request many different types of things that my city could provide all be it at a cost. So maybe while I'm funding the new auto factory there could be a world crisis and a massive amount of food is needed and I would need 12 more trains to get the food there then just a few months later my cims vote to have bike lanes placed on all my city roads @ $X amount per mile then a little while later another city is in desperate need for clean water. I don't want to see it coming. I just want to try to manage all of the crisis-es as they happen. So to speak. If that made any sense.