SimCity: Gameplay

[Urban Cartographer 601]

I play games to have fun, not to be competitive.

 

Outside of the sandbox mode, SimCity (2013) would be too competitive for my liking.  Leaderboards are mainly for ego-boosting, and players are rewarded for competitiveness, not necessarily creativity.  Regarding leaderboards, to be effective, balance is the main priority, not variety.  It means that many complex features have to be removed, as well as varied city sizes.

[Ma8thew 77]

I play games to have fun, not to be competitive.

 

Outside of the sandbox mode, SimCity (2013) would be too competitive for my liking.  Leaderboards are mainly for ego-boosting, and players are rewarded for competitiveness, not necessarily creativity.  Regarding leaderboards, to be effective, balance is the main priority, not variety.  It means that many complex features have to be removed, as well as varied city sizes.

The developers have repeatedly stated that the limit on city sizes is because the new simulator is more computationally demanding. It has nothing to do with 'balance'. Can we confine these repetitive discussions about city size to a single thread?

[RyanMorgan95 144]

Heres a complex answer. Multiple leaderboards. Or an eveb better answer.....get rid of the leaderboards entirely. I mean is there anyone over 10 years old who really cares about leaderboards.

 

I do! It's great to have a competitive side to SimCity, which is balanced with co-operative elements too. A region has to work together to take on other regions!

[DazzaDazza 29]

I play games to have fun, not to be competitive.

 

Outside of the sandbox mode, SimCity (2013) would be too competitive for my liking.  Leaderboards are mainly for ego-boosting, and players are rewarded for competitiveness, not necessarily creativity.  Regarding leaderboards, to be effective, balance is the main priority, not variety.  It means that many complex features have to be removed, as well as varied city sizes.

The developers have repeatedly stated that the limit on city sizes is because the new simulator is more computationally demanding. It has nothing to do with 'balance'. Can we confine these repetitive discussions about city size to a single thread?

It sound like a planned excuses to me.  you must admit,  Specialized city’s, resources, global economy, multiplayer regions and small cities all add up to a major focus on interacting with other people. A good way of doing this is to make players have more than one city and make them spend less time making

one city. thus improving their global economy and make shore  that the leader boards change regally are not clogged

up with mega city’s,  

 

I would rather have bigger city’s than watch sims deliver thing around the city

 

Why would they sacrifice such a big part of SC4 game play?

 

[Ma8thew 77]

 

I play games to have fun, not to be competitive.

 

Outside of the sandbox mode, SimCity (2013) would be too competitive for my liking.  Leaderboards are mainly for ego-boosting, and players are rewarded for competitiveness, not necessarily creativity.  Regarding leaderboards, to be effective, balance is the main priority, not variety.  It means that many complex features have to be removed, as well as varied city sizes.

The developers have repeatedly stated that the limit on city sizes is because the new simulator is more computationally demanding. It has nothing to do with 'balance'. Can we confine these repetitive discussions about city size to a single thread?

It sound like a planned excuses to me.  you must admit,  Specialized city’s, resources, global economy, multiplayer regions and small cities all add up to a major focus on interacting with other people. A good way of doing this is to make players have more than one city and make them spend less time making

one city. thus improving their global economy and make shore  that the leader boards change regally are not clogged

up with mega city’s,  

 

I would rather have bigger city’s than watch sims deliver thing around the city

 

Why would they sacrifice such a big part of SC4 game play?

 

Because they made the decision to increase simulation realism at the cost of smaller cities. Why is that so hard to understand? You don't have to agree with the tradeoff they made. The traffic simulation in Simcity 4 is really terrible. Even with mods it doesn't improve significantly. On that basis alone, the new simulation engine will be welcome. The creative director has repeatedly stated that he wants larger cities, but that the performance of the slowest computers which can run SimCity prevents that. You have no evidence whatsoever for your theory, and it requires that the Maxis developers have explicitly lied to us.

[Kythlyn 80]

Hi guys. CaptCity's suggested I repost this here since the thread it was in had to be locked.
 

Hey everyone! I wrote an article about whether the new SimCity is a downgrade from SimCity 4. I tried to be unbiased, and to feature both sides of the argument:

 

http://gamerhorizon....from-simcity-4/

When I think about the most dedicated community of SimCity fans, Simtropolis comes to mind before anything else. So I value your opinions, and I'm sure you all have a lot to say on the subject of the new SimCity game. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the article, and I appreciate any and all feedback!

[d.mcglone 11]

I really really hope that it forces you to invite your friends to help build the great works or atleast let you spend £1 or maybe £2 for each resource so you can just build it yourself to save time. To make things better, how about adding in a system where you can expand your cities a bit at a time for a bit extra money... it would really keep me playing because I would have invested so much time and real money into my city I'll just have to carry on playing and paying for me things. I haven't got enough money in my SimTown? How about putting a feature in so I can just quickly and easily buy some more? And how about those gold coins that are in every facebook game?  How about putting them in there too because you know how popular they are, then you can release "Top-Up" cards like they have done with FarmVille.

And hopefully they will link SimCity with facebook and twitter and give you rewards for "Sharing" pictures or regions with friends there.

I can't wait to socialise with all my internet friends on this game.

 

 

[end of sarcasm] Seriously, this is what I think will happen to this game... a glorified facebook game. (really loved SC4 aswell)

 

How about make a game where you don't need some random internet friends to help build something, How about implimenting Single-Player mode so people can build what they like when they like and save when they like and have fun like we all did with the past SimCity games. I loved Blowing my city up with Meteors earthquakes one second and then reloading the save and carrying on with it the next.

I enjoyed making Huge region-wide cities with interconnecting motorways and railways, placing landmarks (that were free and didn't come in "sets") all around my downtown area and making farms on the outskirts, creating rivers that go through my cities so I could have ferries or cruises running through them.
I Enjoyed SimCity for what it was, I never touched the online aspect and I'm pretty sure most of you here didn't either. SimCity wasn't about socialising or competing and it definately had nothing to do with facebook. It was a game that inspired creativity and imagination where you could recreate your dream cities or just make one up as you go along. Maybe you wanted to see if you could run a full agricultural region, or even an indistrual one or a complex combination of the three zoning features, you could do all of that.

I have a major feeling this is going to go the way of "Spore", did anyone here see the 2005 demo videos? wow. compared that to the "a game for everyone" pile of rubbish that was the Retail version. I only enjoyed the Molecular and creature stage of that game, everything else was just boring and uninspired.

 

Anyway, I'm drivelling on now... Sorry about this rant.

 

As an Apology, here is a picture of a cute cat

[Ma8thew 77]

I really really hope that it forces you to invite your friends to help build the great works or atleast let you spend £1 or maybe £2 for each resource so you can just build it yourself to save time. To make things better, how about adding in a system where you can expand your cities a bit at a time for a bit extra money... it would really keep me playing because I would have invested so much time and real money into my city I'll just have to carry on playing and paying for me things. I haven't got enough money in my SimTown? How about putting a feature in so I can just quickly and easily buy some more? And how about those gold coins that are in every facebook game?  How about putting them in there too because you know how popular they are, then you can release "Top-Up" cards like they have done with FarmVille.

And hopefully they will link SimCity with facebook and twitter and give you rewards for "Sharing" pictures or regions with friends there.

I can't wait to socialise with all my internet friends on this game.

 

 

[end of sarcasm] Seriously, this is what I think will happen to this game... a glorified facebook game. (really loved SC4 aswell)

 

How about make a game where you don't need some random internet friends to help build something, How about implimenting Single-Player mode so people can build what they like when they like and save when they like and have fun like we all did with the past SimCity games. I loved Blowing my city up with Meteors earthquakes one second and then reloading the save and carrying on with it the next.

I enjoyed making Huge region-wide cities with interconnecting motorways and railways, placing landmarks (that were free and didn't come in "sets") all around my downtown area and making farms on the outskirts, creating rivers that go through my cities so I could have ferries or cruises running through them.

I Enjoyed SimCity for what it was, I never touched the online aspect and I'm pretty sure most of you here didn't either. SimCity wasn't about socialising or competing and it definately had nothing to do with facebook. It was a game that inspired creativity and imagination where you could recreate your dream cities or just make one up as you go along. Maybe you wanted to see if you could run a full agricultural region, or even an indistrual one or a complex combination of the three zoning features, you could do all of that.

I have a major feeling this is going to go the way of "Spore", did anyone here see the 2005 demo videos? wow. compared that to the "a game for everyone" pile of rubbish that was the Retail version. I only enjoyed the Molecular and creature stage of that game, everything else was just boring and uninspired.

 

Anyway, I'm drivelling on now... Sorry about this rant.

 

As an Apology, here is a picture of a cute cat

Where did you get the impressions you need multiple people to build a great work? You can create a private region, build every city in it and complete a great work if you want. Ocean Quigley has told people who have asked that it will not be possible to pay real money for resources.

[yuriwild 4]

After playing SC Beta 2, I have a gameplay related question:

 

Can I play 1 city in a public region and at the same time claim a whole region for myself?

[nhgriffith 179]

After playing SC Beta 2, I have a gameplay related question:

 

Can I play 1 city in a public region and at the same time claim a whole region for myself?

Yes.

Where did you get the impressions you need multiple people to build a great work? You can create a private region, build every city in it and complete a great work if you want. Ocean Quigley has told people who have asked that it will not be possible to pay real money for resources.

Also, if you make an extraordinarily profitable trade city, you could simply import all the materials you need to build the great work...

[Towel 76]

I kind of think a lot of the "friction" with this new SimCity comes from a recasting of the series... It isn't a "city builder" anymore, it's simulation.

 

The game puts more emphasis on the simulation rather than the city itself...

 

People are getting nostalgic for SimCity 4, which is fine ... But SimCity 4 was a "city builder" so the comparisons are not relevant.

 

I'm more excited about this SimCity because the beta at least felt like everything mattered.

[London-b 90]

I kind of think a lot of the "friction" with this new SimCity comes from a recasting of the series... It isn't a "city builder" anymore, it's simulation.

 

The game puts more emphasis on the simulation rather than the city itself...

 

People are getting nostalgic for SimCity 4, which is fine ... But SimCity 4 was a "city builder" so the comparisons are not relevant.

 

I'm more excited about this SimCity because the beta at least felt like everything mattered.

 

So why don't they give you a ready made city like in 'Cities in Motion' and you just control laws, finance, trade ect???? Oh yeah because everyone knows SimCity is a game where you build a city and that the reason for the restrictions is nothing to do with some ideology of simulation vs builder. It's because they were more in love with glassbox than making a game and went too far with it so they couldn't design something that's more of a compromise.  If they didn't think the builder aspect was important then it wouldn't be in 3D, it wouldn't have curvy roads, it wouldn't have camera filters, 

[jacobhinds 36]

I've been lurking this forum for a long time and it's sort of tragic to see all this expectation over Simplicity 2013 (I'm gonna call it that) being disappointed by everyone's least favorite gaming company, and in every thread I see the same (perfectly justified) arguments against this atrocity. But I'm gonna play devil's advocate here - maybe I'm repeating what's already been said but oh well - 

 

 - The engine is pretty amazing. I mean just look at the thing. Sure, the menu interface is the ugliest thing I've ever seen, and it has more holes than pumice, but the thing that really got me interested was the agent system. It's a marketing gimmick, sure - but I get the impression that at its inception there was an effort to create a proper game. Simcity 4 vanilla had a traffic simulator that only a mother could love, not to mention the infamous circles-of-schooling-and-policing. However Simplicity 2013 is an actual simulator, however basic and dumbed-down its real application is. Instead of calculating traffic based on raw numbers, for instance, it takes one small step closer to realism by simulating all of those cars. 

This game may be simplicity societies 2, but it has one heck of an engine overhaul.

 

 - Micromanagement and little detailed features was actually what I really enjoyed about Simcity 4. I like thinking of every suburb as it's own place and designing each district as if it was my first, and the little features (basically everything outside of zone-utility-transport) are what prevented Simcity 4 from basically being a Minister-For-Transport Simulator. Things like the water table and being aware of the geography underneath your city open up the horizons for a borderline world simulator, with Terraforming being a whole load more than a fixed sea level and a heightmap. What I find most frustrating about simplicity 2013 isn't the always on DRM or online play - I mean they're the staple of all games nowadays - its the missed opportunities from this darned sophisticated engine they could have perfected given a few more years and some more motivated staff. I'm not too bothered really, simcity 4 will still be there. even if only in my heart. or my hard drive because I rarely have the time to play it

 

Now I might have too much faith in the goodwill of EA here, but let's say they WERE to make simcity 5 (simplicity 2013 is NOT called that by EA or Maxis, so stop calling it that lest we soil a potential future game), and let's assume that this new game used the glassbox engine. Even the basic three changes (sinlgeplayer focus, region play, modding tools) would make it rival the Simcity 4 we all know and love. Even the most cynical gaming corporation knows you can't pull the same trick three times on an equally cynical fanbase (disregard COD and sports games), so assuming Maxis isn't found in a pool of blood in the next few years, this isn't much of a stretch of the imagination. Either way, Simplicity 2013 will be forgotten hopefully and make very little money. They can take our residential zoning but they will never take...OUR SIMCITY 4!!

 

tl;dr They tried

[Towel 76]

I kind of think a lot of the "friction" with this new SimCity comes from a recasting of the series... It isn't a "city builder" anymore, it's simulation.

 

The game puts more emphasis on the simulation rather than the city itself...

 

People are getting nostalgic for SimCity 4, which is fine ... But SimCity 4 was a "city builder" so the comparisons are not relevant.

 

I'm more excited about this SimCity because the beta at least felt like everything mattered.

 

So why don't they give you a ready made city like in 'Cities in Motion' and you just control laws, finance, trade ect???? Oh yeah because everyone knows SimCity is a game where you build a city and that the reason for the restrictions is nothing to do with some ideology of simulation vs builder. It's because they were more in love with glassbox than making a game and went too far with it so they couldn't design something that's more of a compromise.  If they didn't think the builder aspect was important then it wouldn't be in 3D, it wouldn't have curvy roads, it wouldn't have camera filters, 

 

I just don't agree with any of that... The game emphasises the simulation, it asks you to build a city under the rules of the simulation. In practice this means that their simulation takes priority when they have to decide between supporting the simulation versus supporting the building components. 

 

It's not that they didn't think the builder aspect wasn't important, far from it ... It just appears to me they prioritised the simulation when they had to make choices between a better city builder or a better simulation. This isn't ideology, this is game design 101. You pick a Unique feature of your title and you design the game around that core. Every AAA title attempts to do this, every single one, and the game's success is based on how good that core was.

 

So when it comes to curvy roads, that's fine ... It doesn't require a trade off with the simulation, same goes with 3D, and camera filters. All those things can exists without causing conflict with the simulation. 

[nats 99]

I love the curvy roads - for the first time it is breaking the terrible gridded look that every other SimCity game has suffered from.

 

And I love the agent system - for the first time the city will behave with a modicum of intelligence.

 

I love the added complexity to the water system, and I dont mind losing the electrical cables and water pipes underground. They were always a pain anyway.

 

And I love the idea of the multiplayer aspects as well being able to affect neighbouring cities and help them out is great.

 

All great ideas. Its a real shame they ruined it with the other ideas though. They should have known when to stop with the agent system to enable massive cities. They should have gone down the Kickstarter route and dropped EA which would be enabled them to drop the DRM system.

 

Well maybe Sim City 6 ...

[Ma8thew 77]

I love the curvy roads - for the first time it is breaking the terrible gridded look that every other SimCity game has suffered from.

 

And I love the agent system - for the first time the city will behave with a modicum of intelligence.

 

I love the added complexity to the water system, and I dont mind losing the electrical cables and water pipes underground. They were always a pain anyway.

 

And I love the idea of the multiplayer aspects as well being able to affect neighbouring cities and help them out is great.

 

All great ideas. Its a real shame they ruined it with the other ideas though. They should have known when to stop with the agent system to enable massive cities. They should have gone down the Kickstarter route and dropped EA which would be enabled them to drop the DRM system.

 

Well maybe Sim City 6 ... this is the first Sim City game I wont be buying. Thats quite sad really I feel.

Who are 'they'? The people who built SimCity are all EA employees.

[AkemiAzula 280]

I think they've done the logical thing and made the right decision. A balance between realism (individual agent simulation, 'real' cause and effect as compared with the former 'statistical' simulation) and creativity. Yes the restriction to city size will be a massive turn-off for many. But I like to think of this as an experiment. Consider 2013 like Trevithick's locomotive. It's small and limited, and doesn't exactly do what we envisioned the industria age to achieve. But it's a step. It's a rational, enlightened compromise. And so I think they've made the right steps, really. After all, if we were the boss of EA, what would we have done?

[nhgriffith 179]

By the way, Kickstarter or not, Maxis can't just do SimCity without EA.

First and foremost, EA owns the SimCity brand.

Second, and maybe more importantly, I'm sure everyone that worked on SimCity 4 has some sort of clauses in their contracts that prevents them from just quitting and making their own city-building game. If their game was too close to SimCity 4, EA would be all over them with their lawyers.

[AkemiAzula 280]

That, and a city building game called 'MegaCity' or, heaven forbid, 'Virtu City' (lol) wouldn't exactly have the same ring to it.

 

But I think Glass Box has a strong future ahead of it. Come Simcity 6, I reckon most of our demands will be met. Think of this as Stephenson's Rocket

[London-b 90]

 

I kind of think a lot of the "friction" with this new SimCity comes from a recasting of the series... It isn't a "city builder" anymore, it's simulation.

 

The game puts more emphasis on the simulation rather than the city itself...

 

People are getting nostalgic for SimCity 4, which is fine ... But SimCity 4 was a "city builder" so the comparisons are not relevant.

 

I'm more excited about this SimCity because the beta at least felt like everything mattered.

 

So why don't they give you a ready made city like in 'Cities in Motion' and you just control laws, finance, trade ect???? Oh yeah because everyone knows SimCity is a game where you build a city and that the reason for the restrictions is nothing to do with some ideology of simulation vs builder. It's because they were more in love with glassbox than making a game and went too far with it so they couldn't design something that's more of a compromise.  If they didn't think the builder aspect was important then it wouldn't be in 3D, it wouldn't have curvy roads, it wouldn't have camera filters, 

 

I just don't agree with any of that... The game emphasises the simulation, it asks you to build a city under the rules of the simulation. In practice this means that their simulation takes priority when they have to decide between supporting the simulation versus supporting the building components. 

 

It's not that they didn't think the builder aspect wasn't important, far from it ... It just appears to me they prioritised the simulation when they had to make choices between a better city builder or a better simulation. This isn't ideology, this is game design 101. You pick a Unique feature of your title and you design the game around that core. Every AAA title attempts to do this, every single one, and the game's success is based on how good that core was.

 

So when it comes to curvy roads, that's fine ... It doesn't require a trade off with the simulation, same goes with 3D, and camera filters. All those things can exists without causing conflict with the simulation. 

 

Firstly, if the genre of game has two main aspects (simulation + visual/building), the extent you implement one is your ideology​,  this is facts 101.

 

Secondly, it's clear that the unique feature the developers want to portray is the multiplayer, and the game is made around this, glassbox isn't, they know a load of 12 year olds don't care about mechanics, this is actually more in line with modern game design.

 

Thirdly. you admit in your first paragraph that there is a trade off between simulation and building components, and then in the last paragraph say there is no conflict between the simulation and the building components.... we all know there is, the argument is to what extent it should be, not if one exists. I understand why you contradicted yourself though, making arguments to defend the indefensible is difficult and why lawyers are paid a lot. 

[Towel 76]

@London, look I think you've misunderstood what I'm saying. But it's clear from your post you won't be swayed by any argument or fact ... So I'll leave it at that.

[Jim14409 448]

That, and a city building game called 'MegaCity' or, heaven forbid, 'Virtu City' (lol) wouldn't exactly have the same ring to it.

 

But I think Glass Box has a strong future ahead of it. Come Simcity 6, I reckon most of our demands will be met. Think of this as Stephenson's Rocket

SimCity 6???

SimCity5 has not even been built yet.

[Exe19 22]

SimCity Societies' files already have *.sc5 extension.

[Jim14409 448]

SimCity Societies' files already have *.sc5 extension.

Do they? Well then somebody goofed didn't they?

[nhgriffith 179]

I play games to have fun, not to be competitive.

 

Outside of the sandbox mode, SimCity (2013) would be too competitive for my liking.  Leaderboards are mainly for ego-boosting, and players are rewarded for competitiveness, not necessarily creativity.  Regarding leaderboards, to be effective, balance is the main priority, not variety.  It means that many complex features have to be removed, as well as varied city sizes.

You don't have to compete for high scores in the leaderboards. Sure they exist, and playing outside of sandbox mode means you're technically competing in them... but did you play the beta? Did you see the leaderboards anywhere while you were building your city? I didn't. I wasn't really looking for them. I'm not sure where they are. Probably somewhere on the game menu.

You can go find your rank if you really want to. And I guarantee there will be plenty, plenty, plenty ultra-casual regions where no one in the region cares about leaderboards. Just because leaderboards exist and you're ranked somewhere on them doesn't mean the game is "too competitive."

And as far as I know, there's no reward for topping the leaderboards other than just knowing you're the best at whatever category you topped. There's no officially EA or Maxis sanctioned contest... they do exist purely for ego-boosting... and if you care about boosting your ego, you're free to take part. But at least in the beta, it seemed so tucked away that if you didn't already know the leaderboards existed, you may never know.

[Haljackey 17,302]

Hey guys I streamed the 4 hour unrestricted closed beta 3. You can watch it beginning with part 1 here: http://t.co/S8tNySwIMx

 

[mapboy 106]

Hey guys I streamed the 4 hour unrestricted closed beta 3. You can watch it beginning with part 1 here: http://t.co/S8tNySwIMx

 

I was watching this live earlier and I want to say thank you for sharing this Haljackey, I really enjoyed watching you play. I am *this* close to pre-ordering now. And I finally got to see the giant lizard disaster!

[flyer2359 92]

Hey guys I streamed the 4 hour unrestricted closed beta 3. You can watch it beginning with part 1 here: http://t.co/S8tNySwIMx

 

That was definitely a fun watch there.  I didn't get to see the whole thing since I had other things to do but the 15 minutes I watched it were definitely good.  I already pre-ordered it back in January and your stream made me even more excited for Tuesday.  What I did notice is that it seems harder to keep a consistent positive cash flow now which is really good compared to the first Beta I played.

[ShadeSigma 16]

The main difference between SC4 and SC 2013 is that SC4 had good fundamentals and it's bugs were FIXABLE by patching and modding. SC4 is flawed but thankfully most of the stuff there were fixable.

The problem with SimCity (2013) is that many of its main fundamentals are already extremely flawed from the beginning. Its major advantages it has is the 3D camera and Glassbox simulation with "real people". Problems and bugs with SimCity (2013)'s curved roads are fixable with patching but the major fundamental stuff are not.

I highly doubt many of the major issues and disadvantages of SimCity (2013) can be simply patched or modded:

• Save cap limits. You are given a max number of cities/regions. Once you use all your save slots, the only way to continue is to delete your regions or cities to make room for more.
• Since save caps are limited the game will likely have a short life span
• Everything is online and permanent so you cannot load a previous save normally.
• No local saves. Cloud save only.
• Answer on Reddit to "What happens if my internet connection is disconnected while saving?" is not assuring.
• Always - online.
• EA cannot even assure people if the game will still be playable in any form once the servers get shut down for maintenance or permanently.
• Unable to save if servers are closed or if internet connection fails. EA cannot even assure people if the game will still be playable in any form once the servers get shut down for maintenance or permanently.
• Tiny city size.
• Extreme lack of freedom. SC4 allowed people to have 100% control and freedom with all of the space. SC (2013) lacks that same freedom.
• Unable to edit transportation connections. 
• A lot of transportation options have been cut.
• Wasted space in between cities that you cannot edit or fix.
• Flawed density zoning rules.
• No farms
• Regions are all pre - set.
• No Terraforming.
• Unable to build a normal looking city or metropolis because of that big wasted space in between cities.
• Region size is restricted.
• Number of cities in a region is just 16
• No urban sprawl.

I could probably go on and on but most of these major issues are a huge step backwards. Many of these will probably require the source code and reverse engineering it. That's illegal. Unlike SC4, modders don't really have much hope there.

 

Since this game is always - online there might be limitations to modding since that might be tantamount to "cheating" the online market. 

 

It's just not the same game. I won't be buying. And the servers might get shut down before the game price goes down. I just can't see how people look at the list you just provided and is still willing to buy that game. But hey, it is what it is. We'll just have to see how it all goes after the release.

[London-b 90]

What has struck me when watching the beta videos is that fact that the city tile size really affects the gameplay. At the core of much of the game is unlocking stuff at the city hall which is done on a population basis. So to reach towards 250,000 when you've unlocked a lot you basically are forces to build high density a lot. This looks stupid on such a small tile, and so I think it's probable that many people will build identikit unrealistic cities with no character. Another factor is that because of the new zone density system, if you want a decent population you will have to build those really thick avenues which also look out of place on the map. This also makes it harder to decide and plan where buildings will go. In reality, an authority would be able to decide what plots in a city are ok for skyscraper development. In this you only get to decide what large areas might get skyscrapers.

 

So you're basically going to be denied content if you want to play online and want to build anything that actually resembles somewhere that might exist.