SimCity: Wishlists

[VeritaScientia 150]

I thought of something else.

Diversity in terrain. I'd like to do a region that has rolling plains in one area, but then a mountain range with snowcapped peaks, and on the other side of the peaks, a small desert with a couple oases.

[Craig-Abcvs 1,595]

I mean we don't want much... really...

[Forthwall 1,118]

Mastof, you've gone a long distance, although it is good ideas you have, I don't think you'll have that in the standard version, I think Jason's idea is great

I agree with craig on the name, It has to be the enigmatic "Sim City 5"

Personnaly I just don't wnat a cartoony SC and I'd like hte possibilty of modding/batting

Thats why I said DLC for a bunch

[brynhyfryd 222]

I would like the following. Just a few ideas.

1.zoning

More zoning options rather than just RCI E.G industial could be broken down into sub categories as in cities XL

Would like zoning for Parks, Seaport, Beaches

Keep the grid system as a optional extra. User can turn on or off.

2.Transport

Much more variety of roads and highways.

Must have rail, subways, buses. Would like Tram, Helicopters, Boats, Freight, Tunnels.

Airports, Seaports

3.Civic Services

More choices of power generation

Must have powerlines and water. Would like sewage, Telecommunications lines.

4.Natural Resources

Coal, Oil, Gas, Gold, Copper ETC.

Please dont make cities dependant on them to develop. None of the cities xl rubbish.

5.Finance

Stock exchange, recessions and booms.

Plenty of micro managment.

6.Natural Disasters

Snow storms, volcanos, tsnunami, earthquake, Riots, Fires, Nuclear meltdown ETC.

7.City Tasks (optional)

Have requests to build or achieve certain tasks throughout the game

8.NO SOCIAL NETWORK INTERGRATION.

PLEASE, PLEASE NONE OF THIS TRIPE.

9.Weather Effects.

Self explanitory.

  Edited March 2, 2012 by brynhyfryd  

[ricardobty 5]

possibility to choose the format of the cities boundaries. a much larger region, like a country

[croxis 150]

Deep, complex simulation that avoids being complicated with needless features that adds little to gameplay (Main Power lines? Makes sense. Water mains? Sure. Laying down every little power line or telephone wire? Little too far...)

[Ocram's Razr 963]

What references to Broccoli?

[hamsterTK 93]

What references to Broccoli?

It would be funny if the newspaper came back. "A Gregarious Llama threw a flaming cube on a stack wood at 233 Lumpers Ave. Fanned by the 65635 MPH winds, the inferno torched two Cassidy's Toy Stores, the Industrial Thingamajig and the Microwave Power Plant. Mayor YOURMOMSBUTT9823LOL will speak at AWESOME CITY city hall tomorrow."

Also magic birthday cakes that disappoint babies by turning into oil filters. We need those.

I guess what I'm getting at here..Simcity has always been a rather serious looking game with realistic art direction and gameplay, but at the same time a very eccentric kind of humor. To really fit into the series it needs to be these things. No "casual" garbage like SCS but it shouldn't take itself too seriously like most flight sims(whadya mean I can't crash the plane in a fiery explosion?) either.

  Edited March 2, 2012 by hamsterTK  

[dlf 0]

1. Either retail (disc) or digital (steam) . . . .

2. If there's graphs (like SimCIty) ALLOWS COLOR OPTIONS FOR THE COLOR BLIND.

3. For graphs allow (like some mods made) options to be turned OFF.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

I don't mind social networking integration as long as it is not needed and can be turned off.

[bigro 165]

I mean we don't want much... really...

Lies, we want everything and a half.

Jokes aside, all I really want for christmas sc5 is the awesome customizing abilities that sc4 had, moreso even. A little stability sprinkled here and a little tolerance of future generation computers there...

I mean, 3D is nice and all but in all honesty I would just be happy for stability and moddability. Or modability of the stability with stability of the modability.

[jakehh 52]

1. The Ability to name landmarks (Including, Certain Skyscrapers)

2. Possibly a DB inside the simcity 5 engine, allowing modders to add extra tables for Custom content EG/ Brand new types of Networks and/or ability to edit said DB to change the way such transport engines work.

3. Ability to walk around the city and see the city from the perspective of the citizens from the sprawl

4. Have an option to see the skyline of the city from the suburbs?

[csp40 0]

No social networking integration.

No excessive DRM (For example forcing an active internet connection throughout gameplay is way too excessive), by making it so cumbersome you're only hurting those that purchase the game.

Not all of us have top-of-the-line computers. But many of us don't have laptops from 2003 either. Please keep the game scalable (e.g. Multi-core support).

Stability.

Autosave option.

Extensive modding, custom content, and terrain generating/editing tools.

Land type e.g. Tundra, temperate, desert, etc

Sometimes I like a good challenge. But I think SimCity is a citybuilding game first. No, sometimes I just don't want to get 4000 high-tech industry population with energy demand of >30GWh to unlock the hydrogen plant to power my region from the foresty-corner of the region. Please keep cheats.

Having said that, please don't dumb down/make linear the game either. Appealing to those who haven't play SimCity before is indeed a priority, but SimCity's complexity and "let your imagination run wild" (Something lacking in most games nowadays) was what attracted me and kept me attracted to it in the first place.

As it is 3d, a Camera option would be nice. For example you can set different camera angles to take pictures, or maybe even set camera "paths" (travelling cameras) to take stunning photographs and videos.

PLEASE don't make it for console then port to PC.

  Edited March 2, 2012 by csp40  

[Tony Bark 2]

Personally, custom content creator (aka SC3k-like BAT, only better) and co-op/competitive multiplayer functionality.

  Edited March 2, 2012 by Zc456  

[jigsaw 227]

and finally

NO STEAM!

[simmaster07 1,220]

I honestly do not care for My Sims or U Drive It, since I rarely, if ever, use them. Gameplay and simulation development should come first, and then, if the Maxis EA Sims Department devs are really bored and have nothing else to do, maybe then they can add it in, without cartoonizing the entire game.

And going with the previous posts, moddability is an absolute MUST, or the game will be dead after a year or two.

  Edited March 2, 2012 by Stormeus  

[pbmbfl 4]

everyone has nailed it with the wishlist, but i want to add one more: it has to be less US-centric with tilesets.

the amount of CJ's with euro/med themes clearly show the world wants a 'global' settings theme. NY/Chicago/Houston/Euro just doesnt diversify enough and cut it with all we have done.

I have nothing against euro//med themed but thats something i could not stand about CitiesXL, I could not make an american style suburb at all. American cities have most of the tall buildings in the center not on the outside next to farms.

[jacksunny 741]

I actually wouldn't mind social network integration, as long as it could be turned off. Perhaps something that posts status updates about your city like "Megaopolis just reached 3 million population!"

[blak 4]

Well, my wishlist is not different from what other people said here.

-> Diagonal buildings (and roads, railways etc.)

-> Emphasis on tourism

-> The player should not be forced to create a "metropolis". I just want to create a rural area or a small city sometimes.

-> Mod support of course.

-> Some buildings from SimCity 2000 and 3000 should be included as a throwback.

-> And speaking of SimCity 2000, Archeologies should make a comeback too (or at least a cameo).

  Edited March 2, 2012 by blak  

[poshbakerloo 186]

I hope that this new version has the same flexibility as SC4 has! SC4 over time has pretty much been transformed into a whole new game!

For the features I would like to see, I would look to have a slip road/link road tool. I guess the name would depend on where you are from, but basically the small roads that link up motorways on large junctions. This would allow you to make your own custom designed junctions, and also upgrade existing junctions in the future.

I would like to see the ability to upgrade existing infrastructure with out having demolish things. In London the North Circular Road was a 2 lane single carriageway road when built in the 1920s, but was left on purpose with a lot of land on each side for future upgrading. It is now 3+3 lanes but no houses had to be demolished, they just lost the grass in front.

[pbmbfl 4]

I hope that this new version has the same flexibility as SC4 has! SC4 over time has pretty much been transformed into a whole new game!

For the features I would like to see, I would look to have a slip road/link road tool. I guess the name would depend on where you are from, but basically the small roads that link up motorways on large junctions. This would allow you to make your own custom designed junctions, and also upgrade existing junctions in the future.

I would like to see the ability to upgrade existing infrastructure with out having demolish things. In London the North Circular Road was a 2 lane single carriageway road when built in the 1920s, but was left on purpose with a lot of land on each side for future upgrading. It is now 3+3 lanes but no houses had to be demolished, they just lost the grass in front.

I hated that about SC4, I agree.

I also didn't like having to fund the hospitals, I want private ones and more things owned by companies but to still have the other option aswell.

The most awesome thing to me would be weather and climate. I want a thunderstorm or hurricanes and the ability to manage the disasters more deeply.

[VeritaScientia 150]

Last night, as I was trying to fall asleep, i came up with another idea and couldn't fall asleep until I had fully formed the idea.

Have an option where the population is tied to how much farmland you have developed unless there is sufficient food supply. For example:

Farmland would be the first zone needed to develop, and the initial demand for housing would be dependent upon the size of the farm zone. After reaching a population of 500 or so, the smallest seaport would be unlocked, allowing for the importation of enough food to support a population of 10,000. Further seaport development should be tied to commercial or industrial development, thus making sure there is enough balance for self-sustaining cities, but also allowing an option to have interdependent cities.

I think there should also be less expense for building and maintaining power plants, but more money spent on utility lines and infrastructure, and the ability to designate state/provincial and national capitals with different civic building options depending on the regional orientation, so we don't have to have to use landmarks from other areas if we don't want, though this could easily be left up to the community. In addition to this, a wider range of things such as city halls and courthouses, the Maxis default city hall or courthouse is wholly inadequate for a city with a map size of more than 50,000

Another thing I tend to do--ability to subdivide a map so it's like a county in the American sense, so there's several villages that grow semi-independently, but after a while they can merge. An example of what I mean can be found in my own hometown, there was the small town of Preble that was absorbed into Green Bay a few decades ago, and still today there's Ashwaubenon and Allouez that while pretty much contiguous with Green Bay itself, are separate municipalities, (as a well-known example, all the land around Lambeau Field is actually Ashwaubenon which also has the land Green Bay's airport is built on.

[jacksunny 741]

I also didn't like having to fund the hospitals, I want private ones and more things owned by companies but to still have the other option aswell.

I completely agree, the player should have this option. Perhaps there could be an ordiance for it.

  Edited March 2, 2012 by jacksunny  

[papakapp 0]

My wishlist would never get fulfilled, I'm afraid. I think I am in the minority in this, but here it is

1) Lots of beta testing and bug squishing. No crashes and nothing like incorrect numbers/data values in the tooltips.

2) Ability to build retaining walls bundled into the terraforming tools. Currently, it's hard to make terraced roads on a hillside without collapsing your buildings.

3) Ability to set grade on major roads/rail as you drag them out. Then if you drag over a small hill, it auto generates a retaining wall to keep your road level, and if you drag over a small valley it fills it in. (No more roller coaster freeways.)

4) It has to be able to handle at least 5 layers of transit in the same tile/space, all laid out at separate times without a million slightly different puzzle pieces to make it work. (Here is what I mean)

Google maps

This has a 4 way intersection, Borean and Pine, built into an overpass, over top of a major freeway. There is also an express lane in a tunnel below that freeway, and there is an off ramp tunnel below the convention center (a building). AND, none of the streets are on a compass grit, they are at weird angles. My absolute biggest dream for Simcity 5 would be to have that much control when planning the traffic.

I want to be able to force bridges, force tunnels, and curved tunnels and make a small bridge pass below a large bridge and draw a road, and then 50 years later stick an el-train above that same road and cross a railroad on one tile, and then dig another road below that exact same tile and basically never run up against a limitation that I can imagine, only to find out that it can't be done.

[nashville nelson 51]

I would just wish that SC5 is like SC4+RH+Gridless in 3D.

That would be enough for a start.

[jigsaw 227]

i hope a new game brings back some of the legends... Oppie, Cobbs, bigredfish etc etc.

[Msprintz 25]

I also didn't like having to fund the hospitals, I want private ones and more things owned by companies but to still have the other option aswell.

I completely agree, the player should have this option. Perhaps there could be an ordiance for it.

Even private health care institutions still receive government money, through the various government health care service providers. In that regard having to fund them is realistic to a point, think of the funding as medicare and medicaid payments. This is actually a major problem for many private health care concerns as the United States government has been attempting to tweak medicare and payments, and in fact a lot of institutions are quite vocal opponents of that change ( but that's another story for another topic ).

My wish list is pretty simple, and that mainly consists of improving on the Sim City 4 experience.

Zoning - Add in mixed use zoning for commercial and residential properties ( this is probably the most important zoning feature neglected in the SC game series ).

Airports and Seaports - I would prefer the modular approach to building both airports and sea ports. Don't get me wrong zoning was nice in Sim City 3000, but the creativity one can get with airport and seaport modular pieces is second to none. One just needs to look at this forum to see the impressive results.

Parks and other recreational services - Again I would prefer a modular approach.

Natural resources - I would like a fairly in depth resource tree ( preferably unlimited in quantity ), that ties into industry and commercial development. Coal for example could be used for both power and steel making, the steel produced then could be used for either construction purposes or industrial activity to produce commercial resources. Ultimately everything eventually ties into each other and relies on each other to an extent in regards to the industrial and commercial economy.

Natural disasters and climate - I'm not the first to admit I miss the random disasters included in Sim City 3000, and wouldn't mind if that were to be included again ( although the SC4 approach by no means is a problem ). Some natural disasters should tie into climate for example blizzards and droughts ( although droughts can technically occur in any climate ). I would like to see climate dictate the type of landscape seen in a particular city and the type of products the farms of that city produce. You're not going to see an Orange orchard in the mountains of New York, and conversely you're not going to have corn being harvested in the marshlands of Florida.

Modifications - I'm sure those at EA know exactly how adept individual in the Sim City community are at modding. Take that to heart and allow some free reign to the mod community and you'll be repaid in spades. Just one look at the thriving Sim City 4 communities showcase that truth.

Transportation - While I'm not expecting mass transit to be anywhere as in depths as what's included in Cities In Motion, I would like to see a fairly robust management system where we can set up individual routes and some sort of schedule for our cities mass transit services. I would also like to see transportation networks on multiple layers, with the ability to stack highways on top of each other and possibly to even mix transportation types to have El Rail going through the middle of a freeway. this allows for added creativity and will of course serve to improve game sales.

[§haÅ--Ñ€ §hÅŽo 370]

I'd like to revise my wishlist a bit:

-Basic SimCity 4 gameplay expanded upon (add in an economy)

-Glassbox engine to allow realistic looking buildings and Sims

-Many building variation (to avoid repetition)

-It not to be like the disaster named Societies

=Allow unlimited regions (so they can be countries)

=Allowance of cities to be exempt from the leader board (I don't want my cities to be on the leader board)

-Have Singleplayer gamemode (I don't care for multiplayer, so at-least have Singleplayer)

-Allow Custom-Content (without it, this game will be dead by the 2 year mark)

-Ability to minimize HUD (So CJer's can take pictures for their cities)

= Optional

- Required

[VeritaScientia 150]

Modular airports would be good, I've looked at and downloaded a lot of the modular add-ons, but rarely have I had the patience to fiddle with them. But If there was a way to incorporate a miniature airport and seaport-construction feature, I'd probably squeal with delight. I've drooled over the Port threads in the City-building concepts thread.

For realism's sake having rectangular airports with solely parallel runways needs to go. There's only one airport I can think of that's in a complete quadrilateral plot...Midway Airport in Chicago, which its worth noting has runways in several directions, as well as only one major airport that relies on solely parallel runways, LAX.

This seems to be a better option: Have upgradeable terminals and airport services as lots, use drag-and-drop for taxiways and runways. Furthermore, add in options to have air force and emergency services lots (like the fire department landing strip, a Medevac helipad, and a police helipad) able to be connected into the runways. This would allow for realism and open-ended creativity while maintaining ease of use.

For Seaports its a bit more complex in my eyes. There's four main types of cargoes that for realism's sake: breakbulk (ores, rocks, and the like) which would be common with industrial areas, containerized cargo (consumer goods) and liquids |gas, LPG, LNG) which would be common regardless of what kind of city is being built. and breakbulk grains, which would be common for many ports, but would have a greater need for ports serving agricultural areas.

An easy way to go about it is this: Have upgradeable seaport lots dedicated to the four different categories of port traffic with a seaport zone that would develop differently depending on what it is connected to, what the port traffic consists of (if there's no demand for breakbulk raw materials, there wouldn't be any piles of said materials at the ports.) and how much port traffic there is.

Something like the PEG CDK would be neat as a built-in feature too.

And to the EA Developers who will undoubtedly come across this: if you're going "yikes, that's too much for us at EA to build" pleeeease release a small pre-release SCURK-type utility for the community's modders to work on the custom content so you don't have to.

[Cob92 360]

1. Civic service ranges based on road capacity and speed rather than an arbitrary area of effect.

2. Larger maps, or better yet, the ability to join multiple city areas into one continuous city. Annexation.

3. More consequences for screwing over your Sims. I shouldn't have to pour toxic waste into the streets for people to get mad enough to revolt.

4. Flexible road system similar to Cities XL.

5. Either a modular airport/seaport system (of course designed for simplicity of use), or bring back zoned ports and have a zone developer that can put together ports properly.

6. Events, like parades, rodeos, festivals, holidays. Don't just make them eyecandy, make them affect the city.

7. Disasters and disaster response. Have all the old mainstays like fires, tornadoes, etc. but perhaps also add some stuff like radiation leaks, tsunamis, hurricanes, terrorist attacks.

8. Mixed-use development, along with partial abandonment if demand is too low for one kind of occupant but high enough for another.

9. Urban blight. I want to see those abandoned buildings becoming criminal havens and fire hazards. Give me a reason to bulldoze them.

10. "College town" effect. Universities do more than crank out workers for high tech industry; they influence the culture and economy of the surrounding area.

11. Tourism/entertainment. I would love to be able to build a city that thrives from its beaches or casinos. I would love to be able to build a downtown entertainment district like Austin's 6th Street. Perhaps ordinances or buildings that would encourage this kind of development.

12. In keeping with the previous item, airports need to generate traffic. Hooking your airport up to your transportation network should be part of the game and how well you do it should influence how much the airport helps your city.

13. Regions should be in again. Airports and seaports should have a regional effect, with traffic crossing city lines to reach the airport. Thus, not every city needs an airport, and the airport need not be in the downtown area.

14. Keep the depth of the simulation. I hate plop-and-watch games like CXL; I want a city that is ALIVE. I want to see gentrification, blight, crime, slums, "white flight", neighborhoods, education success/failure, and all the other things that go to make a city more than just a bunch of pretty buildings. If I zoom to my streets and see a Sim being carjacked, I want to open up my Crime view and see that the area I was looking at is a hotbed of crime.

15. Make the game open to modification. The core simulation is the most important element, make no mistake, but moddability is what keeps the game alive long past its expiration date. Mods are what keep the community together, that keep old players buying new copies 10 years down the line.