Making Simcity 4 More accessible

[baertooth 330]

One of the driving reasons behind the creation of Societies was EA's perception Simcity 4 was too complex.

Out of interest, what would you have done to make Simcity 4 more accessible to newbies and people who didn't like it?  What kinds of changes might make things easier, friendlier, and more entertaining if the decision was yours?

Here are some of my ideas:

I would totally rework neighborhood play, and possibly do away with it.  The system now is barely acceptable and adds too much unneeded complexity.

When you start your city, you're given then choice between budget play or sandbox play.

I would also create a better options page where certain features can be turned off, like water pipes, power lines, aging buildings, disasters, etc.

One of the biggest problems with SC4 was there were no good starter cities and it was difficult to impossible for advanced players to share their working cities with newbies.  I would create a decent system for sharing cities so newbies could get a working city to play with and more advanced players could share their creations, which is a powerful motivator to play.

Create 2d top down edit modes so it's easier to see what you're doing.

Cean up the interface and make it more scalable.

[ADG 0]

What I would have done:

Make different difficulty levels that has a huge effect on how the game is played. On easy you don't have to worry much about pollution , long community time (sims don't mind traveling longer distances), water pipes, power lines, etc. While on the most difficult setting, it will be very hard to get sims to live close to even the slightest pollution (so watch out for air pollution from cars), sims don't want to spend more than 30 minutes to get to/from work, etc

And then there of course should be a custom setting

This way everybody gets what they want. Those who's never tried SimCity before will be able to (on very easy) to get a huge metropolis within an hour, while SimCity veterans (on very hard) can have a hard time getting the same thing after days of play

Those who hates having to build water pipes doesn't have to, while those who likes the extra strategy can still use it

[offgreen 1]

I wouldn't have. I think we drastically overstate how hard this game really is. Maybe its because you guys have never played harder games, maybe its because you want to feel like you are playing the hardest and in-dept game known to man, I don't know, maybe EA marketing and their excuses for SCS are getting to you. Don't get me wrong, its still hard at times, but if you don't like it I am not going to strip out realistic features just because its too hard. And why do water pipes always come up? Let them go play the sims if these newbies, whoever they are, don't think the game is friendly enough for their attention spans.

[baertooth 330]

I think you're mistakening what's being said offgreen. I'm not trying to help EA, I'm trying to illustrate that a few changes to SC RCI could have achieved the goals EA had for Societies.

[Robstersfive 0]

I agree that current format could have been made simple for beginners or simple had a totarial on the game

I think only thing made it harder was regions really, I think regional play should have been on/off option because that i think was and still is most off putting part of simcity 4 at times i like it but other times just love to consentrate one city and have neighbour cities already.

[The_Dalai_Llama 15]

Toggling utilities and finances, ploppable RCI buildings, and an optional SC3K style of region play could make the franchise more accessible for newer players. The way regions are done in SC4 is a good start for the hardcore crowd we Simtropolites love, but there's so much to improve on.

[sobol 1]

a more realistic region play, for example... a single giant airport serving multiple neighborhoods.. or a port... or... .. also a better UI would work... I wish I could organize my displays....

[baertooth 330]

I agree Robstersfive. Regional play was diffucult and very clumsy in Simcity4. I never did like having my cities split up into sections like you where you have to load and unload to play different sections of city. One of the suggestions I liked instead of this type of game play was to start off on a very small city tile, but as you gain more money, you can buy more land and annex it into your city limits. From what I've seen about Societies, I think this might work there too.

One of the things I thought they screwed up most of all on in Simcity 4 was they didn't include any worth while example cities. They did in 2 and 3 and it made a world of difference, I thought. What better example is there to learn from than to see it working already. And some people don't want to do that much work. They want to play with the cities but a megatropolis in Simcity 4, which was extremely hard to come unless you did it yourself, was a bit of work and not everyone likes that aspect of the game. That's why I like to make it a definite point to be able to share cities. The people who like to play the big cities but don't like the work, and newbies could download from people who like and know how to make the big cities. Motivation from one side to the other, it's such a win win. I'm glad to hear that TM is considering that and I hope it's a good system.

[beebs 129]

Originally posted by: offgreen I wouldn't have. I think we drastically overstate how hard this game really is. Maybe its because you guys have never played harder games, maybe its because you want to feel like you are playing the hardest and in-dept game known to man, I don't know, maybe EA marketing and their excuses for SCS are getting to you. Don't get me wrong, its still hard at times, but if you don't like it I am not going to strip out realistic features just because its too hard. And why do water pipes always come up? Let them go play the sims if these newbies, whoever they are, don't think the game is friendly enough for their attention spans.quote>

However, it would be nice to have options. I personally get frustrated trying to make a balanced budget in SC4. So I have to cheat... it would real cool if I had the option in the game to make money meaningless.

Yes, it defeats the purpose of the game (in the most basic sense).. but I don't have fun playing SimCity simply to make a "functional" city that barely makes budget each month.

[Cob92 360]

Difficulty should have been truly scalable, making the differences between easy and hard truly noticeable. All they did was give you more money, which doesn't help if you don't know how to play. The base game should have had a more comprehensive mayor tutorial, and large starter cities(like Metropolis/Europolis from SC3K). Region play was badly implemented. It KILLED many of my earliest cities. I also agree with baertooth that you should be allowed to annex neighboring tiles when you want to expand, and only start a new city when the intention is to create a fully independent city.

Above all, airports and seaports should serve a whole region once the cities are connected to the city containing the airport/seaport.

[zzsim 3]

Two things would have made the game much more welcoming to newcomers while not compromising the complexity or realism of the game:

1)  Make abandonment more forgiving.  Often times I would have no reason as to why whole neighborhoods would abandon at once despite having plenty of job opportunities.  All I would get were the ambiguous No Job Zots.  They should have made such abandonment much more rare by making the paramaters (commute time mainly) for abandonment more forgiving as well as given more information as to why the abandonment was occuring.  

Of course it didn't help that the initial commuter scale is completly unrealisic, which made creating realistic suburbs overly difficult (I still have to use job lots and the NAM to get around this).

2) Give us a sandbox mode with no budgeting.  Sometimes people want to just make a city without worrying about the city's finances.  I think this would certainly allow new players the chance to get a grasp of the city building mechanics (transportation networks, utilities, etc) without overwhelming them with budget constraints.  

With those two improvements they wouldn't need to dumb down any of the game's more complex features or change its formula.

My personal opinion is that the simplification exuse was just used by EA to justify changing the game to appeal to a more casual user base.  The fact is city building sims are just plain dull to some people and they wouldn't play it even if they understood it without any problems.  With SCSocieties EA is trying to make this franchise as popular (and profitable) as the Sims while ignoring the fact that the city building genre is and will always be limited to a more niche audience (which is still fairly large if this site's user count is any indication).  

BTW, the fact that SC4 is four years old and still on store shelves (not many PC games that old are) should have told EA that they didn't need to mess with the game's formula.

[ExiL3 10]

with the right modifications to the game, that are available today here on the STEX, the game can be pretty easy, and still be "realistic". I don't see why we should make the game easier, the game IS easy enough.

take care,

[FrankU 358]

Indeed,

In fact the game is not that difficult. Whithin minutes you can build a small village. And then, slowly, you build it up into a town etc... You know what I mean.

Of course, the game gets more complex when your city and region grow larger. Just like in real life. That is even one of the most interesting aspects of the game.

It was so long ago that I played SC and SC2000 that I totally forgot how they worked except the very basic idea. And then, last year I bought SC4, read some tutorials on this site and started to play. I am still learning and having fun. I fear there will be no end to this. At least my wife fears for this....

Considering SCS: I have no opinion on this game except that I think it should not be considered as a sequel. It's a very different type of game. Pity there will be no SC5.