What you HATE about SC4...

[Goldfish4209 9]

Highways are so clumsy. I have a slope mod installed, but nevertheless it's taking me forever to get it up a mountain and put in a few exits. ARRRRRRGGH!

[vilbe 6]

What really grinds my gears about SC4 eh?

well where to start, when the game was released, which i bought soon there after [like simcity 3000 and unlimited before it] it was really buggy and laggy on my computer. it wasn't until almost 2 years later that i had a set up to allow halfway decent city building...

i've been playing sense the original. i grew up on the sim city series. i've seen it grow, and had the opprotunity to make hundreds of thousands of citys and such.

Things that are missing entirely from SC4

-Natural Disasters. Simcity 2000 had a great mix. flooding, hurricanes, tornados, fires, and such. done randomly, with the ability to turn em off entirely. not only were they fun to combat, and pretty realistic [minus that damn monster], but enabled another thing missing. scenarios. even the original sim city had scenarios. a cool thing too that could of been added in, would be the ability to make your own scenarios, which we've never easily had yet..

-Rivers, or how about water in general that just doesn't happen to be at sea level? however careful terraforming i guess can be a slight fix, but you couldn't recreate Crater Lake for example...

-A reason [besides city building] for time to go buy. remember SC2000, when you had the option of starting at 1900, 1950, 2000, and 2050. at 2050 the entire game is pretty much unlocked already, with few things to be discovered still, where as at 1900 you had a few things avalible to you, but over time more and more things became discovered etc... iunno maybe i miss the ability to build a scratch city, and being stunned when highways become availble, or cleaner energy sources, or subways etc..

Things that weren't done correctly in SC4

-Commute time, pathfinding, etc. lets just call it traffic.

-Region play. there should be some sort of ability to see 5 or so tiles in neighboring cities to determine where what and how to build things. also there should be more things to do in region play, almost as if region census itself was incorperated into it. the satistics of cities [population, education levels, jobs, deals, etc] should be able to be viewed againt other cities of your region..

-Highways. too small. better interchange useability, maybe even an ability to set how many lanes, etc. i've read somewhere that while the rest of transportation things were done to scale, highways are 50% to scale. geeeze.

-avenues. they should of had an ability to be made one way, or determine how many lanes there are. as with highways, maybe provide a way to upgrade? it'd be realistic..

-Advisors. they do more harm then good, even if they mean well. i never really liked SC3's news ticker, but did enjoy the rather generic newspapers of SC2000.

-Industry. factories employ many more workers than SC4 allows..

-Airports/Seaports. go back to the ability to zone em, and have them spawn related BATs that fit together and function. also, in light of region play, its not realistic to have two airports in cities next to eachother, there should be a radius element to it maybe, that goes to multiple cities or something. iunno, i'm not a programmer or a designer, just some food for thought...

Misc.

note: number 1 gripe about SC4. when the game "Freezes" when saving. not a frequent problem, primarily a combination of zooms and recently running it on fastest speed, slowing it down, and not giving it time to "catch up" before saving i guess. but still, as bad as the CTD bug..

-CTD bug is iritating, mainly with zooming, but it does happen randomly as well..

-ditch the car monster thinger, UFO's and such, and focus on better disasters. although lightning is a very good addition..

-UDI shouldn't be apart of sim city itself. it should be an entirely different program with alot of things similar to sim city. you should be able to load your REGION and drive from there. you should also have joystick play, as well as planes, trains, and boats. it can be done, look at grand theft auto [now thats another different idea, but merge the two together?!]

-My sim. well you could do a few things here, remove it entirely, let you actually control your sim in UDI sort of fashion, or something similar to my UDI solution. i think its been established this was only thrown in there to ride on the success of the sims and make sims users more apt to give sim city 4 a try, even though they never had played a sim game prior to the sims..

well i think thats it. i could go on, but i've done enough. i'd however like to take time out to thank the simtropolis community though for making SC4 what it is today, a thriving game with an even more thriving following. you guys have managed to fix alot of things that have increased playability and fun-factor 100 fold...

[smstevenms 7]

Lets hope there going to put in some sort of tool that gives you an over view of your city/region. Telling you whats missing (schools, hospitals, etc.), traffic fix suggestions (such as a suggested overlay to route traffic to ease congestion). I guess what Im saying is I hope they've fired all of the advisors and hired intelligent ones.

[granto93 4]

oh man, ya know what really grinds my gears lol. the way when you have an excellent city built, and your staring at how beautiful you made something and than all of a sudden the screen turns black and poof, no more city. it rots me to the core. and sometimes when i WANT to exity a city it freezes up than too lol. there is no pleasing me Also, i agree with everything vilbe said. a well thought out post that describes just about everything needed to fix.

[smstevenms 7]

granto93, I haven't had such luck as you but I've had to reinstall my system many times, so I keep everything on back up. I might have lost alittle but not everything. I got a 4 gig card, more than enough space. This doesn't make anything better for whats already happened but might just stop it from being as bad as a thing as it has.

[vershner 11]

I'm really surprised at the posts in this thread, many of the problems suggested are not really problems at all.

My main problem with the game is the mayor-mode terrain editing. It is by far the worst aspect of the game. No other part annoys me anywhere near as much.

Firstly, the tools are crap. Even using shift-1 it's still horribly clumsy as the game auto-smooths the other squares around it. The level-tool is completely useless. It's a pretty damning indictment of the tool when the only way to successfully level some land is to build a checker-board pattern of roads.

Secondly, the game doesn't warn you before destroying a building, bridge, tunnel etc. This is made worst because there's no undo.

Thirdly, when laying road, rail, etc, on sloped terrain, the game always chooses the ugliest configuration possible.

Fourthly, the game can't seem to lay diagonal track flat at all.

Finally, what I would like to be able to do is edit a single grid square, without touching any of the squares around it. The game allows buildings to do this, but there's no way to do it manually. It's so annoying. Have any of you played any of the Roller Coaster Tycoon games? - That's how terrain editing should be done.

[Pixelrage 34]

-Omission of water & river tool, inability to create lakes above sea level

-Sawtooth edges along diagonal roads

-Illogical curves of highways and rail

-No "undo" for terraforming mistakes

-No way to add additional menu branches for community content

-the crashing...

[smstevenms 7]

Yea the mayors terrain tools are very limited. I just like the short range, but the terriformer is awesome, totally custom, why didn't they think of that?

[westfieldismyawesomehome 0]

how fast buildings abandon and how many times the stupid pop ups get in my way!!

[Arg777 0]

What I hate is the inevitable pollution problem from transportaion and the way that zoning HAS to be quadratic and not free from ex. curved properties that you normally need for cul-de-sacs and stuff.

Also I hate how stupid sims are when they plan their commute. Just take the freakin subway or train when its only 1 or 2 tiles away. But no,probably more than 2/3 continue using cars.

Also, I wished there was weather and seasons. but thats for another thread. But over all I bilieve thats its good qualities transcend its bad ones.

[Explodingsims 3]

I hate most of the cars in the Game, almost all of them seem to be vaguely 50's style cars. This irritates me when I try to build a modern city.

Also, the fact that buildings do not build diagonally seemd bad to me.

[smstevenms 7]

The one thing I can think of right now is trying to build near water. Its a time consuming process, you get a great idea and an hour later your give in to a creation you didnt invision. This is expecially irrating when trying to use the IDK, the port/industrial set (not sure thats right, thinking off top of head). Oh and one other thing, everytime I level my borders to match my neighbors save & exit, after a few saves this reverts & ask if I want to level the borders. I've even tried this and it ends up destroying and not changing the landscape, only to repeat this as stated. That's all for now...

[joeshmoe 1]

no diagonal lots or bridges lame networks no underwater tunnels

[smstevenms 7]

Originally posted by: joeshmoe no diagonal lots or bridges lame networks no underwater tunnelsquote>

 

Lets hope that is something they change. As far as underwater tunnels theres a mod that uses subways as the underground connection which will go underwater. As far as the actual name cant remember, it something to do with the big dig project in Boston, MA., it works & looks great in use.

Once I had this great idea of creating this deep ravine, dragding a bridge across. I couldn't of course without water, and I also wanted to have a small town in the belly of this ravine. I couldn't do that either because I had two things against me, primarly the bridge above, but the fact you can't have a road go under a bridge and you can't have a bridge go under a bridge, not to mention both across water. 

Needless to say the project was scraped.

I also can't stand the fact that there isn't any real highway options. The highways I drive are primarly completly ground level and exits go either under or over highway (usaully under hwy in more dense areas, & over in less populated areas with less exits). When highways are elevated their done so with coloums. We should have the option of 2/3/4/6 lane hwy's with a smooth transition from a 2 lane into a 3 lane and so on.

That's all for now.

[Jazzmaster 716]

I don't absolutely "hate" this, but while the view is technically 3d its really more 2.5D how the cameras are fixed 4 different angles. I know a 3D SC would kill most computers, but at least provid a top down view and/or more zoom levels so I can see how my roads are doing behind all those skyscrapers. Other than that the game is fine!

[smstevenms 7]

Originally posted by: Yoshiisland I don't absolutely "hate" this, but while the view is technically 3d its really more 2.5D how the cameras are fixed 4 different angles. I know a 3D SC would kill most computers, but at least provid a top down view and/or more zoom levels so I can see how my roads are doing behind all those skyscrapers. Other than that the game is fine!quote>

 

Yea, the terraformer as the perfect type of camara, totally free, but flimsy.

[LivingInThePast 364]

I think that the most gimmicked thing of SimCity 4 was not UDI or even My Sims, it was placing animals in your city.

[JakeMD 107]

the fact that people hate it!!!!!!

[David12345 0]

The thing i hate is that i ordered SC4 deluxe over 5 weeks ago, it was supposed to be delivered in 3 weeks, yet now it's "not in stock"and they don't tell me when they're gonna deliver it. Can someone please email me the game or something (just to play while I'm waiting)?

[smstevenms 7]

I hate that we have to even have hatred, can't we all just play.

[SimRabbit 48]

hey LivingInThePast placing animals into your city is actually funny LOL

what i really hate about sc4 is:

fake ass roads (grid, i like them croocked ), and slowness

[LarksTonguesInAspic 28]

I guess I can only ad a "me too" on a lot of this, no major release should EVER crash as easily and often as this one, period. The stunning lack of foresight and flexibility inherent in the game is another irritation. I guess EA figures they're untouchable and have no need to worry about competition. Perhaps those out here with the skills/education/etc could put together their own version, just enough unlike SC4 to avoid legal issues, but good enough to point the way to EA. Not that they'd notice.

[IDS2 3,429]

-no diagonal buildings

-lack of higher elevation water (but can be fixed somewhat)

-lack of waterfalls

That's just the start...

[ciber 0]

i have an idea but it requires a havker and a programe and some info on what hapens to disks returnd to ea no wait lets just send i hiley sofistocated virus to ea headquarters that makes all thear skreens show a big mesag saying

YOU BEEEP BEEEEEEP LIED ABOUT THIS GAME MAKE IT RIGHT OR WE WILL CRASH ALL INFECTED HARD DRIVES BWAAA HA HA HA

ALS IT NEEDS TO BLINK RED AND ORNGE

somw to learn how to hack ha ha ha ..../goes to google and searches [how to hack sim city 4 ] /

[topcliff 1]

I hate the fact that it can't handle 8+ gigs of plugins. Take it like a man, you stupid disc! Leonardo

[smstevenms 7]

Wow 8gigs, you got me be I'm only at about 2.5gigs. But I'm just getting started.

[autoVino 26]

How the sc4 sun doesn't line up with the bat lighting rig... ie the shadows don't line up themselves properly...

[McKizzle 0]

What drives me insane about simcity 4 is the unrealistically long commutes. Ever since when does it take 60 min to go 5 blocks (4X6 tiles)?

[Anomaly1 0]

Originally posted by: smstevenms The one thing I can think of right now is trying to build near water. Its a time consuming process, you get a great idea and an hour later your give in to a creation you didnt invision. This is expecially irrating when trying to use the IDK, the port/industrial set (not sure thats right, thinking off top of head).quote>

This. It takes way too long to set the land up, and even then something is going to inevitably mess up.

[smstevenms 7]

How about no draw bridges! I mean hello, can't place a small bridge unless nothing travels down that path. There should be a rail & road D.B.. And I just thought of something else, where are the bridges that go higher (you know the ones that cross massive bodies of water, and have to accommodate very tall ships).