Constructive Criticism And Ideas To Improve Cities XL

[sparky66 0]

OK, after playing the game for about a week now, here is my list of bugs and suggested improvements for the game. i have only been playing solo mode. they are in no particular order: EDIT: EVERYONES SUGGESTIONS ARE NOW BEING ADDED TO THIS LIST.

1. let solo players trade with their own cities! omnicorp is rubbish! solo cities can never develop properly because it is difficult to get the resources they need. really needs to be fixed. specialised cities cannot be created, making some maps impossiable to build more than a small town.

2. road traffic at junctions. traffic turns left and right from the wrong lane, traffic lights seem to control lanes seperately even when they are part of the same road (e.g. on a three lane road, each lane goes individually rather than all three at once) on wider roads this seems to slow traffic down alot. and it looks silly. also traffic lights don't work.

3. distant models for road traffic. i have the game on the highest detail setting and when i zoom out a tiny bit, all the traffic turns into grey boxes, which looks awful. perhaps some proper distance models for traffic are needed? would really like this to be fixed.

4. bridges over rivers. why do they have to be so high aboue water level? it just looks stupid. they should be able to cross the river at the same level as the surrounding land without having to have a huge ramp at each end.

5. road junctions. i have built a few junctions where pavements (sidewals if you are american) don't appear properly or don't line up with the road and it just looks wierd.

6. parks. if the enclosed area is slightly too large, you can't add a park. parks need to be surrounded with roads. mouse needs to be in exactly the right place to add larger parks. parks don't look very good.

7. lots don't always line up with roads properly. if there is a tiny gap between the building and the road on a steep hill the grass texture is stretched and looks horrible.

8. making one way roads. hard to tell what way the arrows will point until you click on the buttons.

9. holiday hotels. surely the should be able to go anywhere? if a city wants to make a tourist area they don't have to make sure it is in a 'tourist resource' area.

10. interface seems clunky and difficult to use. greyed out buttons for mass transit and railways when they are not released yet and solo mode won't currently be getting them anyway.

11. farms. need a different texture under the buildings instead of they just sitting on a plowed field texture. different farm types just aesthetic. have to delete whole farm just do build a road over a tiny corner of it's field. real life farms have more than just one big field, no livestock in the livestock farm field.

12. lampposts on the simple road (the one that is only slightly larger than the road you get when placing 'blocks' of buildings). lampposts look funny, like they belong in the middle of a car park, not along a road.

13. road junctions always make a traffic light. how about roundabouts? mini roundabouts could improve traffic flow slightly, but not take up any extra room, big roundabouts could improve traffic alot and greatly improve traffic at junctions.

14. whay are some buildings in low density zones so big? bigger than ones in medium density zones. what is the 'star' density, i can't work out what it does?

15. landscapes don't seem 'alive'. need more objects and animals.

16. game keeps trying to get you to buy the PO. even the tutorials say "we could get a better trade, if only we had the planet offer". the writing on the back of the box makes the game seem like it is all about the solo mode, with only a small mention of the PO. and yet you are ignoring solo players.

17. let solo players buy PO content in 'expansion packs'.

18. two different types of 'great avenue (two lanes in each direction, island in the middle) luxurious and normal, no difference except luxurious has the occasional tree in the middle and costs twice as much.

19. highway system very difficult to use. need more freeform junctions.

20. roads just 'end'. need proper end pieces and cul-de-sacs.

21. when placing a 'block' of lots, only the small road is used. option to choose road type would be nice.

22. 'city hall' button should be greyed out when you have already placed one.

23. a few spelling and grammar mistakes. should have been proof read!

24. it keeps saying i have excellent education when i only have one elementary school for the whole city.

25. keeps saying 'your city has a bad reputation with food producing industry'. what am i supposed to do about that? they are not reporting any problems and i am selling all excess tokens.

26. have to sign in every time you start the game. can't it just remember your login?

27. Official forums on CXL website.

28. Multi-core support needed.

29. better terrain editing tools. ability toadd new land and water.

30.  sandbox mode and solo mode cheats needed.

31. Square lots. OK, but could be better.

32. Intercity roads don't touch the edge of the map

33. Would be nice to select what buildings should be build (e.g. a whole street of the same buildings, especially useful for terraced/row houses)

34. leisure buildings are stupid. leisure buildings should be part of retail. ferris wheel needs animation, it doesn't move. also, it's one of the first leisure buildings you unlock, but i don't know of a single small town where the only entertainment to be found is a basketball court and a ferris wheel.

35. Add a 'save game' button.

36. Should be possiable to build tunnels underwater, remove the silly restriction.

37. The ability to make 'sunken' roads and highways with retaining walls/steep banks each side and bridges for roads running over head, and freeform slip roads would be nice.

38. public transport for ALL players, not just PO.

39. automatic destruction of objects when placing roads, maybe a dialogue box to make sure you really mean it.

40. re-zoneing tools would be nice, so when you re-zone a unqualified worker zone with a qualified worker one, the buildings automatically upgrade when demand is high enough, having to demolish everything is stupid.

41. allow tunnels and bridges to go over and under buildings (especially tunnels)

42. better info about what citizens and factories need would be useful, in numbers, as well as the numbers building produce. (e.g. each wind power plant produces 50 power, 100 power= 1 token etc)

43. should be easier to get water, maybe add a de-salination plant so that sea water could be made drinkable, should be able to get water from any river of lake.

44. better individual tax options, like in SC4.

45. make CXL a city building simulator rather than a trading simulator.

46. public services need to be redesigned. one small elementary school and clinic can serve a whole city, which is a bit wierd.

47. better transport model. cars only travel between work - home and factory - city link. random cars driving around, going to shops etc. would be nice.

48. trade needs to be simplified and doesn't make much sence. it's OK to trade utilities but offices and citizens?

49. add transport costs to trading. nearer cities cheaper to trade with etc.

50. what exactly does the city hall do? why upgrade it?

51. redesign highway intersections, the current ones make no sense, look at real junctions!

52. it should be possible to upgrade a road if there is space on one side.

53. overlays should stay until you close them. overlays should update in real time.

54. solo mode should get extra content in expansion packs.

55. if you stop subscribing to the PO you should be able to continue playing your PO cities and use the PO content you already had in solo mode. if you re-subscribe you should be able to add your cities back to a empty slot on a planet.

56. add random events to make your city more interseting. e.g. a fire breaks out in a house and your firefighters automatically go and fight it, police chases etc.

57. smoother, free camera control, rather than jumping between preset angles. (try clicking on a moving car and zooming close to it, the camera just flies right through it!). it's hard to put the camera where you want it.

58. cheats and a sandbox mode option for solo mode (could be toggled on and off like expert mode) sandbox mode should have infinate money, infinate tokens and allow resource buildings to be placed anywhere.

that was a long list! i will probably find more later. do you argee/disagree? and MC, what do you think?

I will try to keep this post updated with all your ideas and bugs (if i can keep up)

EDIT: UPDATED WITH MORE IDEAS.

[HeroIV 0]

Those are some very good points.

My suggestions:

-Dedicated forums (Tiresome to answer the same questions from other users over and over. Technical support forums)

-Multi-core support (The requirments point out that CXL should have multi-core support)

-Terrain editing tools that make sense. You can't make water or new land. (I'm Dutch, we made our country etc. etc...)

Sunken roads (See the image in my next point)

-Overpasses. You need to make huge bridges (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millau_Viaduct) to make your own overpass.

This is what I was looking for.

-Roundabouts made easy (Set centre of the roundabout, move the mouse away from the centre. Presto, perfect roundabout)

More laters...

[Craig-Abcvs 1,595]

Not asking for much are we.  

[Tysons4 68]

sandbox mode...

[Asheroo 53]

Yes, they promised a sandbox mode and cheats and said it so many times, and they can't even deliver that in the end. Hope they get some money cheat in soon and other sandbox mode options.

A suggestion on the bridges I would like to make is to let us place them at any height whatsoever. And also, to get rid of that "cannot dig under water level" restriction. And of course, agree with most of the above and probably the many more to be listed yet.

@ Abcvs - No, not asking for much at all, just a billion dollars, not a trillion.

[ifurkend 0]

Neighbouring cities are visible around player's own city (not in the Planet view!) But that means each map is required to be recreated according to the planetary terrain rather than loads of duplicated maps. This will allow realistic intercity ground traffic connection. Arbitrary transport connection rating really turns off and unrealistic.

[HeroIV 0]

Originally posted by: abcvs

Not asking for much are we.  quote>

I was only just beginning...

-Being able to select what kind of building should be built. It takes about 10 minutes of deleting to get a street of 5 buildings of the same unified type (example... if it was 10 buildings in a street it would take even longer)

-Modern economics (A bowling ally subsidised by the city??? Electric companies are private now-a-days, and certainly not subsidised by a single city)

One way of doing this could be that those "utilities" privatise after 5 or maybe 10 years

[gingechilla 0]

- Add a button to save the game without havign to come out. Also if the internet connection is lost the game needs to auto save before shutting itself off and losing all your hard work!

"Electric companies are private now-a-days, and certainly not subsidised by a single city"

Lol then they would strike and everone would leave :-P

[sparky66 0]

I have added your ideas to the first post so that they can all be found in one place.

[BjEurope 0]

Let's continue the list (maybe sparky66 or a mod could add them to the initial post?)

- public transport to the masses!

- auto-destruction when placing roads, maybe by pressing an additional key to ensure you really mean it

- rezoning options, having to demolish before rezoning makes absolutely no sense

- allow tunnels to go underneath buildings, maybe even allow bridges to overpass buildings

- better information about which services inhabitants are missing (not just "is insufficient")

- allow placement of parks e.g. over auto-fill parks (or even simpler: give auto-fill parks positive effects on inhabitants, environment etc.)

- privatize leisure businesses. Communism did not prove to be too efficient in real live as well as in CXL

- privatize private education (!). I see why I should pay to build a private school. But maintain it?

- give us something to conquer pollution effectively

- water-system is way too inefficient

- make farming land a zoning issue, not a place-farm-by-farm thing (we're back to dictatorship, are we?)

- detailed options to control taxation for different groups/industries individually

- make CXL a city-building simulator rather than a trade-game

I'll add as soon as I've got more additional ideas. We really should not clutter this post by endless discussions. Let's put together that list!

[John-SJ 13]

Sorry if these are reiterations of points already made. Hopefully MC will get the idea!

- Mass transit in single player mode. I am not going to pay for PO, and I am not buying a game that has a crippled single player mode.

- Allow single player mode trade with other cities. See statement above about crippled single player mode.

- I envision planet mode as a super region mode from SC4. In SC4, being next door neighbors means something. It should be just as meaningful in planet mode.

[georgewu 0]

- Option to drew water from river. It's nonsense to drew underground water when a river run across the map

- Complete redesign of public services. I don't think a real-life city will work if there is only one elementary school for a 500K+ city.

- One zoning type for residential area. In SC4 it's a challenge to plan for high wealth residential area and attracting them to the city, now it's just too easy.

- More mature transport model. So far, it seems the only traffic is between work and home.

- Simplify trade please. It's okay to trade utilities but it's so unrealistic to trade offices, citizens and industrial goods.

- Add transportation cost to trading system. You can't sell water to a city located on the other side of the planet

- Tell us what does the city hall do, especially what's the benefit of upgrading? making the city services more efficient?

[MandelSoft 2,775]

Originally posted by: sparky66

12. lampposts on the simple road (the one that is only slightly larger than the road you get when placing 'blocks' of buildings). lampposts look funny, like they belong in the middle of a car park, not along a road.

quote>

You mean these lights?

They look to belong to a car park indeed. I can make better streetlights with the same amount of polygons, something like a one-arm streetlight. Heck, even the Maxis streetlights looked better, and I didn't like them in the first place! But these ones make me laugh! Who designed these lights? And where did the idea come from to use these lights for the roads?

And that's another point I would like to add: they should check the Real Life designs of road features before making them, because I did spot some unlogical errors in the interchange designs...

Best,

Maarten

[georgewu 0]

- Allow me to upgrade a road when there is nothing on one side. Currently we can only upgrade a road when it's empty on both side

[deanco 0]

When I access a data overlay, such as arable land, education, traffic, etc, that data overlay should stay on the screen until i tell it to go away. I want to see the info change in real time, and not have to ping pong back and forth between the overlay and what I'm doing.

While we're on the subject, a bug report: If you have a data overlay selected, then you click a road or whatever, when you're done building, the overlay is still selected to the right but does not display. I have to deselect it then select it again to get it to show.

I have lots, lots more, but apparently most of my complaints were brought up ad infinitum during the beta, so I'll stop there.

caps changed to bold.

thanks for cooperating.

[Tysons4 68]

i would love to have a simulated wealth level...

buildings change to 2 and then to 3 and 4 and go back down again on there own

not having to blindly build and delete entire sections of town because your losing too much in this sector... and now your losing in this sector... and you chase your tail untill it all blows up in your face...

[gingechilla 0]

Originally posted by: mrtnrln

Originally posted by: sparky66

Lamposts and

quote>

Remember Cities XL isn't just based on American things.

The lamposts look pretty much like the ones on most normal roads in the UK.

[sparky66 0]

Originally posted by: gingechilla

Remember Cities XL isn't just based on American things.

The lamposts look pretty much like the ones on most normal roads in the UK.

quote>

i live in the south of england (sussex) and i have never seen any lampposts along roads like that!

(in fact the lampposts along my road are victorian gas lamps with lightbulbs stuck inside them! but we do have modern lamps too, just nothing like those!)

[MandelSoft 2,775]

This lamppost is a low-poly model, that looks more realistic than those wierd Cities XL Lights.

[nashville nelson 51]

Originally posted by: HeroIV

Those are some very good points.

My suggestions:

"..."

-Terrain editing tools that make sense. You can't make water or new land. (I'm Dutch, we made our country etc. etc...)

Sunken roads (See the image in my next point)

-Overpasses. You need to make huge bridges (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millau_Viaduct) to make your own overpass.

This is what I was looking for.

"..."

More laters...

quote>

The sunken highway in your pic was build by Auriga. Here is a small tutorial he wrote:

http://www.citiesxs.de/forum/index.php/topic,351.0.html

[HeroIV 0]

Those crafty Germans again...

Complicated to build though and very...very expensive.

Special tools to create something like that the easy way are still on my wishlist.

Thank you very much for that link by the way. There is a lot of info, atleast for me, to read.

[rhenry 1]

Originally posted by: gingechilla

- Add a button to save the game without havign to come out. Also if the internet connection is lost the game needs to auto save before shutting itself off and losing all your hard work!

"Electric companies are private now-a-days, and certainly not subsidised by a single city"

Lol then they would strike and everone would leave :-P

quote>

as a connection loss is abrupt and unexpected I am not sure this is even possible. Has anyone introduced this ability?

[rhenry 1]

so basically everyone wants MC to turn Cities XL into a 3D version of SC4 is what it sounds like to me. lol.

I just wanted to say, in regards to the highway interchange structure being unrealistic. I don't know about anyone else but in the city I live in, with a metro of about 3,000,000 people, there is always a huge interchange under construction somewhere and they always look different. Many of them have tons of massive ramps that seem to be a mile in the air and extend for a mile before coming back to the ground (I wish CXL had those.) They design them according to the needs of that particular interchange and the geography, and they use their accumulated experience from previous success and failure to design the next one.

here's a brand new cloverleaf and to be totally fair, the one in CXL is not that far off. The ramps in this one don't overlap one another but if they did it wouldn't be that surprising to me.

" alt="" />

Here's another brand new one, not even done yet. Here they've actually had to shut down an entire highway (for 2 years) to rebuild the entire thing because it was so ineffective. Not sure what they call this style but there are a ton of overlapping ramps and what could be viewed as unneccessary bridge style structure, namely the one on the far right. There's nothing under it but the entire thing is elevated.

" alt="" />

Anyway, point being, if an interchange works efficiently and effectively there really is no specific rule saying it absolutely must look a certain way.

[Overkast 2]

I think people should stop complaing about minute details on how things look so quickly after release. The way this game rollout has been positioned you're lucky you even have an interchange to work with or a light post at all.

I'd worry about the bigger concerns, like getting your single-player mode unchained from the evil Matrix which it so rightfully deserves.

[rhenry 1]

Originally posted by: nashville nelson[/b

The sunken highway in your pic was build by Auriga. Here is a small tutorial he wrote:

http://www.citiesxs.de/forum/index.php/topic,351.0.htmlquote>

Is there someplace to get this tutorial in English? I tried google translator and it kind of helps but there are some parts that make little to no sense.

[JakeMD 107]

Maybe this will be a little better.

[rhenry 1]

Originally posted by: swat-medic

Maybe this will be a little better.

quote>

whoa! that's actually waaaaay worse. lol.

[gabry85 2]

*ahem* Region Play in single-player (bit far-fetched, uh?), or something like that. I don't care how primitive they can make it, but you can't build realistically large cities in a single map, no matter how big it is, it's always a restriction. God Mode terraforming tools (free of course) would be very appreciated.

This was strongly suggested in the former CitiesXL.com forums... and not just there (click me).

[rhenry 1]

Apparently I cannot plant trees in single player?

I want that.

[Craig-Abcvs 1,595]

Remember that the purpose of this thread is to make suggestions on how CXL might be improved.

If your purpose is to simply continue complaining, and moaning then I strongly suggest that you do not bother posting.