Mass Transit - The REAL Deal Breaker?

[Kingdom of Hispania 4]

i'd go with C or D. Mass transit is not that importatn to me

[jim 546 43]

D sounds an auful lot like SC4!

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I would go with C if there was room for expansion. It has no errors, bugs, or crashes.

[barrera_marquez 0]

I'm going with option B because there is always the community that will fix the shortcomings. Mass transport requires a lot of code inside and any mod will not be able to successfully integrate a mass transport if the underlying code is to blame. If budget management is the problem, then somebody can fix it with mods because altering budget (incomes+expenses) is much easier to do than putting a mass transport as a mod. (graphics+vehicles+coding+testing). Putting a mass transport is also buggy for a mod developer unlike altering a budget.  Restrictions? What kind of restrictions are we talking about? We are already accustomed to SC4's restrictions.

By the way, I won't be buying this game without mass transport. It's either take it or leave it. Very disappointing.

[gabry85 2]

Originally posted by: barrera_marquez

Restrictions? What kind of restrictions are we talking about? We are already accustomed to SC4's restrictions.quote>

Yes, there were a few annoying restrictions in SC4, most of them fixed with mods and all, but in CXL they're particularly bad, like "You must do this, you can't do that because I say so." Mostly what this game shares with City Life:

- must build a city hall at start

- and now you must build a City Link and this 'all-in-one' thingy too before starting (what if you don't want industries?)

- City Links are arbitrarily placed by the game (against Region Play): I had to build lots of useless roads 'for more realism'

- ridiculously expensive unlockable leisures and civics (even small towns in the US do have police and fire stations, clinics, volunteer companies and elementary and high schools)

- no rezoning, no upgrading

- unlockables available forever after first city (doesn't make any sense)

- poor budget management (only two types of taxation, no ordinances)

- the very mass transit available only in PO issue

- deletion of a whole road/highway segment (especially annoying for highways)

- 'No Border' message for fillers even though there's actually a defined border

- no save button (supposedly, no multi-slot/backup saving in single-player either)

- can't upgrade roads and can't rebuild the same curve after deleting the old one (especially when upgrading)

- can't build straight or 45°/90°-constrained highways (why?)

- snapping to roads when placing buildings, which can't be deactivated

- ginormous lots (including low-density buildings)

- retaining walls even in gentle slopes (SC4 dealt with this a little)

- 1 pixel too much: can't build

- extremely poor terraforming tools (would you terraform a whole map in PO? That would be cheating!)

- ambitious, creative projects (like sunken highways, symmetrical roads and elaborate parks) and workarounds are often punished with irreversible mistakes and steep costs

- (custom content and modding restrictions to avoid cheating in PO)

- (resources: can't design my city)

These are some of the restrictions that came up in my mind. Many of them highlight poor programming and the emphasis on a particular feature (the PO) versus the whole gameplay, which in the end will undermine the PO itself, in my opinion.

---

And not everything can be modded in a game: even though the NAM Team did a terrific job with roads and RHW, you still can't curve or set a road angle because the grid restriction is a built-in problem in SC4. At some point, there are limits you can't break.

So, the more restrictions, the less the chances to mod them.

[City Planner 121]

Since it's now been reported in a interview with MC somewhere on here that the bus system will also now be a subscriber only feature, then yes any hope that i had to buy this title have been removed now. It was the proverbial last nail in it's coffin for me. I suggest they just get rid of singleplayer aspect all together at this point and go online mode only and quit torturing us.

Originally posted by: mrdazza_460

your are  right sometimes things look out of perspective like you are saying,  but thing like that will change over time with custom content, do you uses any maxis SC4 buildings, I don't 

anyway back to topic I 100% agree with gabry85 this would make lot of people happy. 

quote>

We can only wait and see what kind of custom content can be created in CXL.  Since MC seems to be saying that the only way of supporting CXL is with the planet offer, I don't expect them to give the content creators much in the way of creating things like we've all become accustomed to doing in SC4.  I certainly don't expect that the size of the lots (reported as 40x40 or in my opinion 1 square screen inch) to be changed in custom content.  Whether however people will be able to create smaller houses on that same sized lot and then fill the rest of the lot with incidentals will remain to be seen with what they allow us to create.

I'm not holding my breath about it however and if I look at their past endeavors (City Life), world edition, it never took off, at least I've never seen any great depository of custom content for City Life.  I can only guess it was because it never garnered any great following, which unfortunately it seems CXL is running down that same route.

They've got a lot of issues in CXL that still need to be resolved but which will likely never be resolved, such as different sized lots instead of them all being the same is just one of the more minor issues.  Curvey roads are nice and all but when you can't get a lot to absorb to that curvey road, it all becomes rather pointless and asthetically quite ugly to even place that curved road.  The last home that I owned up in the mountans was a corner lot, it was aproximately 200 feet at the front street, and only 75 feet at the back yard fence, but it conformed to the street corner on all sides, it was "natural" looking and is what CXL is missing and that which to me is a big issue, almost as big as the lack of mass transportation.

Honestly, I think the only thing that could save this game now is a custom content creation tools and an avid group of creators as that is what apparently works in SC4, The Sims games etc.  People love to collect stuff for their games, and as long as theres enough of it, people will quite possibly buy it.

With the way things have been mentioned in interviews however, Im half thinking that custom content creation will also only be for paying subscribers to the planet offering.  Or at least very minor custom content for singleplayer, and the fat majority of it for subscribers only.  Quite possibly putting in a depository of CC that people make and have to be approved by MC and then put on their own in game browser system so that people can't get it that don't subscribe to the planet offer.  This is just my opinion since the developers have been pretty much silent on CC creation thus far, so I could well be wrong and they will allow full customization of buildings, mass transit etc in the single player version, though I'd have to doubt it at this point since Planet Offer is going to be their bread and butter to keep the game expanding as they've said on a more than a couple of occasions now.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Originally posted by: gabry85

Originally posted by: barrera_marquez

Restrictions? What kind of restrictions are we talking about? We are already accustomed to SC4's restrictions.quote>

Yes, there were a few annoying restrictions in SC4, most of them fixed with mods and all, but in CXL they're particularly bad, like "You must do this, you can't do that because I say so." Mostly what this game shares with City Life:

- must build a city hall at start

- and now you must build a City Link and this 'all-in-one' thingy too before starting (what if you don't want industries?)

- City Links are arbitrarily placed by the game (against Region Play): I had to build lots of useless roads 'for more realism'

- ridiculously expensive unlockable leisures and civics (even small towns in the US do have police and fire stations, clinics, volunteer companies and elementary and high schools)

- no rezoning, no upgrading

- unlockables available forever after first city (doesn't make any sense)

- poor budget management (only two types of taxation, no ordinances)

- the very mass transit available only in PO issue

- deletion of a whole road/highway segment (especially annoying for highways)

- 'No Border' message for fillers even though there's actually a defined border

- no save button (supposedly, no multi-slot/backup saving in single-player either)

- can't upgrade roads and can't rebuild the same curve after deleting the old one (especially when upgrading)

- can't build straight or 45°/90°-constrained highways (why?)

- snapping to roads when placing buildings, which can't be deactivated

- ginormous lots (including low-density buildings)

- retaining walls even in gentle slopes (SC4 dealt with this a little)

- 1 pixel too much: can't build

- extremely poor terraforming tools (would you terraform a whole map in PO? That would be cheating!)

- ambitious, creative projects (like sunken highways, symmetrical roads and elaborate parks) and workarounds are often punished with irreversible mistakes and steep costs

- (custom content and modding restrictions to avoid cheating in PO)

- (resources: can't design my city)

These are some of the restrictions that came up in my mind. Many of them highlight poor programming and the emphasis on a particular feature (the PO) versus the whole gameplay, which in the end will undermine the PO itself, in my opinion.

---

And not everything can be modded in a game: even though the NAM Team did a terrific job with roads and RHW, you still can't curve or set a road angle because the grid restriction is a built-in problem in SC4. At some point, there are limits you can't break.

So, the more restrictions, the less the chances to mod them.

quote>

I do not see the problem with the all-in-one, it provides the all of utilities needed for residential and commercial in addition to industrial for a lower price.

You must have forgotten SimCity 4 (without rush hour), it had 3 types of taxes: residential, commercial, and industrial (no wealth level taxation or diferentiation between offices and shops).

There will be a save button in Solo Mode and SimCity 4 did not have multiple save files per city.

What do you mean by "resources: can't design my city"

If you think that resources hamper creativity then take this into consideration: 1 city is the size of a small region, most resources are freight or services, self-sufficiency is nice but you can sell excesses and buy what you need or trade (I saw the new video) one resource for another.

I personally use bus, subway, and rail in all my cities thus I am disappointed with CitiesXL but not enough to cancell my pre-order.

Lastly, the beta and demo are different from the full version and some minor fixes will happen.

[Mr. Cortez 11]

My two cents:

I'd rather pay a high price ONCE to get all my mass transit features, than to pay a small price EVERY MONTH that would add up over time for a feature I don't even like, just to get the same mass transit options.

Edit- have to change my sig.

[ifurkend 0]

Originally posted by: Ilikeseattle

I do not see the problem with the all-in-one, it provides the all of utilities needed for residential and commercial in addition to industrial for a lower price.quote>

All-in-one facility is too unrealistic, if CXL is advertised to allow the creation of realistic city, it fails.

What do you mean by "resources: can't design my city"
If you think that resources hamper creativity then take this into consideration: 1 city is the size of a small region, most resources are freight or services, self-sufficiency is nice but you can sell excesses and buy what you need or trade (I saw the new video) one resource for another.quote>

The problem is each map has limited choices between resources, so player is bascially forced to extract as much resource as possible from the given map. Otherwise you will not have enough spare tokens to trade for the resource which you'll never be able to produce in your city.

For eample, you decide to not let the resource distribution hamper your creativity then you plan your temperate city freely. Your city grows smoothly in the early stage. But then when the population grows really high, some resource in the chat tells that you have no  enough fuel (negative red) and you seriously need to trade for the fuel because temperate map has no fuel resource. Wait, you do not have enough spare token to trade for the fuel, ok then let's produce the resource token from the map. Hum? Water and fertilized zones already have building upon them! Then you will need to bulldoze those buildings or bring out that magical all-in-one to save the day.

Sorry, no all-in-one, it's too unrealistic.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I agree that the all-in-one is unrealistic but it helps new players and has a similar function to a waste-to-energy plant (with a "magical" bonus of free water).

In the demo, water towers have a small footprint and take away accessible water zones for a large radius (because they produce a fair amount of water). In all SimCity games except Classic, you needed to build water facilities. That means that if your city has water, you should take advantage of it. Agriculture is also popular in SimCity 4 Deluxe/Rush Hour (and to a lesser extent in SimCity 4 vanilla and SimCity 3000 Unlimited and maybe SimCity 3000 also) so it is a generally smart move to build some farms. If you like tourism, maybe you should build a few hotels in "Holiday" resource zones. If you don't want agriculture, stick to the lake city (for the demo) because water is the easiest resource. If you have a lot of Industry (offices, high-tech, manufacturing, or heavy), you can sell or trade those. Therefore if you have a balanced, SimCity 4-esque city, you should have enough tokens. If you have a large city with no resources, you will probably be making a large enough profit to buy resource tokens. In my opinion, the Beach and Mountain-Top Lake cities are the easiest and you can make cities similar to those in SC4.

Here is a tip I have for everyone: do not build wind-power-plants near your nicer zones because CitiesXL introduced noise pollution.

[sparky66 0]

i think if this game had all the mass transit included, i would have no second thoughs about buying it. without mass transport i am not sure if i will buy this or not. basically, the PO and the way it works are putting me (and many others) off this game.

[gabry85 2]

Originally posted by: Ilikeseattle

You must have forgotten SimCity 4 (without rush hour), it had 3 types of taxes: residential, commercial, and industrial (no wealth level taxation or diferentiation between offices and shops).quote>

I haven't forgotten this at all, but at least industry and commerce taxes in SC4 Vanilla were still separated, hm?  And I mentioned in another thread that SC4 Vanilla also had ordinances, civic and utilities funding, city beautification... all the stuff that lets you control your city budget and therefore save your city from bankrupt without spending a fortune to maintain schools, police stations... hotels (), leisure and sports facilities (), but on the other hand you don't pay a cent to maintain parks. Not that I care much about it, mind you. I prefer using cheats while building my city.

NOTE: All-in-One and mandatory City Links before building the City Hall were introduced in a later patch during the beta. You didn't have these restrictions before.

(DISCLAIMER: The last paragraph above doesn't violate the NDA as it is clearly stated that the earliest pre-patch situation is not part of the 'complete' game whatsoever.)

[La_migo 0]

Hello,

I have read here that mass transit will be not available in single player and then also new developed features will be available only via planet offer.

But here I don't understand it.

Does it mean that if I want to create megalopolis with respective transporation like trains, subways etc. I have to play online mode and pay every month, or periodically regulary? or does it mean that when I subscribe once on planet offer for let's say one month, I will be allowed to download every upgrade and than continue in single player with all of updates?

Because when somebody doesn't have a time to play on regulary base what to do? Do I have to pay monthly when I don't have opportunity play every day or week in that month?

Thank you for explaining if somebody understands...

[Craig-Abcvs 1,595]

 

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