The next DLC/expansion

[The Wookiee]

Hello!

Paradox/CO: For the next DLC/expansion, can we please have something more substantive?

Don't get me wrong, I bought both After Dark and Snowfall, and while I think they are a little too pricey for what they add, they are fine additions to the base game. I am confident that I am not alone in wanting tweaks and addition to the simulation, zoning, infrastructure etc. - things that mods don't do, or don't do well enough, or simply can't offer. Things like the agent simulation and limit, supply and demand/logistics simulation tweaks and additions, morea realistic industrial zoning (for example farm areas instead of tiled buildings), big infrastructure megabuildings/areas (like airports, docks, rail yards, power plants, water treatment plants etc.), more realistic and higher quality terrain (higher quality geometry, promenades/seawalls, better texture quality and variety, more/better tools), bigger maps and grid count, and more.

You might argue that some of these ideas are too big for an expansion/DLC, and would only be doable in a sequel, and that's fine, but I really hope that some of these things have at least been discussed internally. After Dark and Snowfall are a bit gimmicky, and it would be a shame to see Cities Skylines go the way of Sim City 2013 (please, for the love of christ, no futuristic DLC). I don't know that I would be on board for another thematic content pack in the style of After Dark or Snowfall. It would be nice to hear the devs say something about future plans. I really, really like Cities Skylines.

Thanks.

 

[Mr Jay]

I agree entirely however I think they'd be better off giving up and starting on CS2. They're whipping a dead horse with lowly imposed hardware limits and about as much depth as paddling pool, Its time for a fresh I think. I'm sure many will agree that without mods the vanilla game is almost unplayable. I had high hopes for this game thinking while its very basic on release they would build upon their success and add everything thats missing'over the course of the year, sadly I was very wrong. I hope that they learn from these obvious glaring omissions in the second round. Maybe they should crowd fund it ?

Whats wrong with the Future DLC? That was one of SC2013 best features???

 

[Timmeynator]

They're whipping a dead horse with lowly imposed hardware limits and about as much depth as paddling pool

In theory this game should be able to utilise 128GB of RAM. You're telling us you've already reached that lowly limit?

There is still plenty to be done with the base game. Just look at all the mods and assets which can be incorporated in to the base game.

The CEO stated they would be focussing more on bugfixing and modding tools, seems as we're only scraching the surface of possibilities with this game.

 

[vukica]

In theory this game should be able to utilise 128GB of RAM. You're telling us you've already reached that lowly limit?

There is still plenty to be done with the base game. Just look at all the mods and assets which can be incorporated in to the base game.

The CEO stated they would be focussing more on bugfixing and modding tools, seems as we're only scraching the surface of possibilities with this game.

he meant about min. hw requirement which is 4 gb.

meaning if it doesn't work with 4gb it won't get done.

 

[Mr Jay]

Thank you vukica.

 

[Tanaxia]

What I'd like to see is more resource management and creation. Let's say you have industry for oil, how about creating some factories to refine that oil into gasoline or something else? Then use that in combination with another industry-type to create yet another thing. And having all these as requirements to build certain things.

That was what I loved about the Future expansion of SimCity'13. You'd create all these things that in combination creates the required parts to make the flying drones for police/fire/medic.

An example applied to C:S would be to create engine parts for all your road services, police, snow plows, etc. and have the cars break down once in a while, needing to go into repair shops which requires engine parts. Maybe a crappy example but there you go

 

[Simcity5]

I'm not sure why anyone would disagree, maybe it was CO Anything not paint a city is not fun

I agree, industry could be hugely improved. An industry DLC, I would pay for, I'm not buying snow for rooftops, but an industry dlc I really would. To be honest, it needs to be in the base game, cos its vital really, but DLC is good enough. Anything better than nothing, or how it is now which is close to nothing.


I want industry to play a much bigger role like it should be, not ignorable like it is now. I would steal Sc13s industry combined with SC4s, if it SC13 had the agent system of CS that would have been pretty good. How bad SC13 was and how rushed and inadequate it was as city builder its amazing it does something so much better than CS, which just shows how bad CS is in this department. I would also steal the mayors mansion from SC13.

Your industry should shape your city, the type of industry you can attract should shape the kind of residents you should attract, and how successful that is should determine how successful your city can become and what direction you can take it in. I think at the minute theres only two cities you can make in CS, either a tourist city, or not a tourist, and to be honest its the same city both times.

I would buy a SC4 style region DLC too, a statistic off screen city, you could build on a joining save. I think thats pretty vital as well. It should be included in the industry DLC.

I want to be able to build a mine and mine so much coal I dont know what I want to do with it, until I can figure out how to arrange import iron from the city next door that has so much they dont know what to do with it that I built in an early save, to take to a steel mill or somewhere on another map I build on another save, thats nearly closing down cos it has no supply to meet the demand. Or if I'm really clever and can find tyhe resources do it all in one city and be self sufficient and not relying on my neighbour cities.

Then when the grounds ran dry build a nice leisure tourist attraction on the old mine site with all that lovely money I made.

Thats another thing, Taxes shouldnt be based on how happy people are. People dont do that, otherwise I would be thinking up any excuse to pretend to be unhappy so I dont have to pay much, I'm not paying much tax today cos the binman forgot to empty my bin, it fluctuates like crazy cos its nonsense. It should be based on profit and income, if a resident has a good job he pays more tax, if a factory is racking in the dough they pay more taxes, piss poor industry means a poor city.

I want to be able to run my city so bad it looks like a zombie apocalypse took place, only the desperate would live there, but they are so broke and jobless the city has to pay to keep them. Sticking a park down just means I got a park in my zombie apocalypse, which costs me even more money, Not suddenly turning the place into a paradise of tax happy residents. The only way you can create a zombie apocalypse is to turn the power off for an hour. Then stick it back on and fast forward and you are back to paradise in no time.

Theres so much they could do with an industry DLC, the possibilities are huge, then they wouldnt have desperately fill the patch notes with 80% chirpy improvements. It doesnt even have to be all in one go.

Either that or another chirpy hat. Whatevers best

 

[vortical]

if I could agree more than once, I would be mashing that button for the next week Simcity5. Industry is such fertile ground for adding depth to a city builder, yet NO ONE ever seems to capitalize on it.

 

[Mr Jay]

This is something that SC2013 got so right. Industry DLC would be the next logical step if they are going to pursue the game in its current form.

 

[Azurespecter]

Thanks for your feedback! We've definitely been hearing the desire for more improvements to the simulation and game mechanics.

We understand not everybody was interested in the day/night cycle or weather, but the fact is that those were two of the most requested additions since even before the game was released. Know that CO is still hard at work making the game better, and pumping out new content and improvements! Keep the feedback coming, we are listening, and are very dedicated to making your dream cities come true! Just don't be dismayed if it doesn't happen overnight

add everything thats missing'over the course of the year

I'm 100% certain that nobody at Paradox or CO ever even hinted that we could make a perfect city-builder with every feature we wanted in 1 year... that's a little too much dreaming buddy, haha

 

[muttonnoir]

The anniversary patch announced today sounds promising. CO are doing a good job with this game.

 

[slornie]

We understand not everybody was interested in the day/night cycle or weather, but the fact is that those were two of the most requested additions since even before the game was released.

I don't want to quibble, but I seem to recall the requests for weather were largely expressed in conjunction with requests for seasons! Something is better than nothing though.

 

[Simcity5]

Thanks for your feedback! We've definitely been hearing the desire for more improvements to the simulation and game mechanics.

We understand not everybody was interested in the day/night cycle or weather, but the fact is that those were two of the most requested additions since even before the game was released. Know that CO is still hard at work making the game better, and pumping out new content and improvements! Keep the feedback coming, we are listening, and are very dedicated to making your dream cities come true! Just don't be dismayed if it doesn't happen overnight





I'm 100% certain that nobody at Paradox or CO ever even hinted that we could make a perfect city-builder with every feature we wanted in 1 year... that's a little too much dreaming buddy, haha

Yep, I said that before, probably the most requested things has been exactly what we got, trams too, and traffic improvements, and they did that, I think some people were thinking, myself included that the direction of the updates have mainly been about cosmetics than making the game deeper. People keep wanting traffic improvements because traffic is kind of the only focus of the game, and people wanting traffic to work better. Instead of improving how traffic works, people seem to want more and more traffic solutions to work around the problem instead.

I think some people are just thinking that some parts of the game are being neglected like simulation, while the others like cosmetics are getting all the attention, which is like SC13 all over again, how it looks is more important than how it plays.

People are just worried it might never happen.

Its good that CO pop in once in a while to point out its not forgotten, it just takes time. That eases the worries. Plus we want everything yesterday

 

[Azurespecter]

I don't want to quibble, but I seem to recall the requests for weather were largely expressed in conjunction with requests for seasons! Something is better than nothing though.

Definitely. From what I've heard from the team, full-out seasons were just too work much to fit in at this time. We'll see what the future holds though, CO has always been flexible to what the players want.

Its good that CO pop in once in a while to point out its not forgotten, it just takes time. That eases the worries. Plus we want everything yesterday

I know it's frustrating when we don't always respond to really fantastic suggestions and feedback, but I promise you it's not because we're ignoring you. It's simply because we have so many great suggestions and feedback and critiques, the team has to decide what's the highest priority and how to best spend development time and resources.

 

[Jorlaan]

I for one would have waited however long it took to get season working right for all maps. As it is Snowfall left my wishlist as soon as I found out seasons weren't a thing.

 

[Madolite]

he meant about min. hw requirement which is 4 gb.

First off, who on earth has only 4Gb of RAM nowadays? I'm assuming you're talking about RAM, cause what else could be that low? Pretty much every graphics card in existence today is 128Gb or higher. The vast majority of computers today come with 16Gb of ram, and 8Gb is considered slow. 32Gb is becoming increasingly common, as well.

Either way, I personally think there's tons of stuff to be improved and tweaked for this game. One thing being in macro-management - the idea of having higher-tier services etc that cost tons more but at lower monthly costs, so that you not only get new buildings with unique designs, but also a deeper gameplay that caters to both micro-managers as well as macro-managers. I.e. late-game, you're getting major improvements to budget efficiency, but it's not viable early-game because you don't have the tech and/or money to go for it.

And what about the ability to upgrade existing buildings with either addon structures or internal improvements, or both? For instance, Solar Arrays could get a battery buffer upgrade that reduces or eliminates the effects of night-time. This battery would be inputting during the day and outputting during the night, at default. A player could turn on or off the battery at will, of keep it auto-switching. Turning it on or off costs no extra in monthly cost, because the whole point is that it's an expensive "hard upgrade" and not a higher risk/reward thing.

Finally, they can do several things to the existing starting maps, such as make them available for editing as well as make climates an overlay of the maps, rather than integral to each map. This means that you can play every starting map in the game using any climate. There wouldn't be a set climate per map.

 

[Soviet Lord]

First off, who on earth has only 4Gb of RAM nowadays? I'm assuming you're talking about RAM, cause what else could be that low? Pretty much every graphics card in existence today is 128Gb or higher. The vast majority of computers today come with 16Gb of ram, and 8Gb is considered slow. 32Gb is becoming increasingly common, as well.

Vast majority of computers sold are OEM models, and they typically have only 4 or 8GB ram. See steam statistics: only 16% of gamers have more than 12GB ram.

 

[AndrewT]

First off, who on earth has only 4Gb of RAM nowadays? I'm assuming you're talking about RAM, cause what else could be that low? Pretty much every graphics card in existence today is 128Gb or higher. The vast majority of computers today come with 16Gb of ram, and 8Gb is considered slow. 32Gb is becoming increasingly common, as well.

If you did my job, you'd know this is not so ... ! Every week at least I'd get someone with 4gb of memory trying to run 3 mods and 200+ assets. I'd get someone every day at least trying to run the game on 32bit Windows (=2gb of available RAM!), including on XP BTW!

 

[Agnitio Ex Mach]

If you did my job, you'd know this is not so ... ! Every week at least I'd get someone with 4gb of memory trying to run 3 mods and 200+ assets. I'd get someone every day at least trying to run the game on 32bit Windows (=2gb of available RAM!), including on XP BTW!

I'm glad I don't have your job, and I'm painfully close to a career in PR! I kid. I hope Paradox appreciates the efforts of you and your team in order to help the less tech-saavy understand what they can and cannot do in regards to Paradox titles.

That being said, I would like to see a balancing patch at some point. Balancing isn't currently a huge issue but I'd like to see official game values try to reflect real life a little more and see some new in-game tools, such as an official version of the Precision Engineering mod. Of course, if there's nothing to be fixed and no money to be gained, that's fine.

 

[Mr Jay]

I'm 100% certain that nobody at Paradox or CO ever even hinted that we could make a perfect city-builder with every feature we wanted in 1 year... that's a little too much dreaming buddy, haha

I didn't say they did but to produce a city builder that's lacking many of the features all other city builders have as standard is very short sighted. The work has been done in previous games, the ideas are there..others have done the work...use it. I also never mentioned anything about "the perfect city builder" but I would have expected CO to have implemented features that were common and popular to other city builders by now. Its not likes its a bold new genre we've had them for 20 years! Strange how the modding community have managed to fix most of these problems in well under a year!

When the game was launched CO were in testing the water as it were I assume to see what the markets like after the failure of SC2013, makes sense why invest lots of time and money into something that may not sell well. However after their success literally nothing has been done to add depth or dynamic game play to the game at all. Take transport for example sod all has been done with regard to the railway system, no multi-track stations, very poor transport UI which is a real pain in vanilla (Extended Transport UI had to correct that for them and its still not as good as the windows huge!), no auto colour etc. What they should have done is take everything good from SC4 & SC2013 and implemented it into a modern game engine. They have a real chance here to become the new MAXIS however sadly I see this opportunity being sorely missed. Releasing poorly thought out cosmetic DLC twice in a row and thinking its will make up for other missing basic features now that is dreaming ha ha! Take a look at SC4 NAM this is what DLC should be.

Thank God for the Rush Hour mod! One man manged to fix After Dark himself!