SimCity: Wishlists

[Mr Saturn64 742]

10.

An unlimited cash mode for some of us non-hardcore gamers. This would be higher on the list but since Sim City Societies had this mode, it gets points off.

9.

A wide variety of design in schools, hospitals, fire/police stations, train stations, public transit systems, etc. Cities XL 2012 was good with the designs put in Sim City 4, you had a small police station, a larger version of that, and a "deluxe" version with a helipad. It would be nice to see some more variety in this field.

8.

A cheat code menu. I know Cities XL 2012 had one, but for this one, I'd like to see actual codes like a weird combo of letters and numbers like ST3MSIAP2L44729DJD. That was randomally typed. I apologize if there's anything offensive in that. I don't mean it if there is. And if you get a right code, on the city screen, there's a menu to access these codes. This would be higher on the list without us people who make codes and such

7.

A zoned parking lot. Can't you imagine this in Sim City? You got the Football Stadium over there, a Baseball Stadium over here, and a soccer stadium down there. It would look a lot like a professional sports complex, with a lot of different sports and stadiums.

6.

A larger University/country club/army base/etc.

Variety (see number 9) would be nice in Universities, but the army bases and country clubs would look great with the tanks/golf courses for a long space. Speaking of space, these would take up a lot though. A larger university, maybe with individual schools and dorms you can place and a college football stadium/basketball arena would make for the Sim City equivilant of Harvard or Yale.

5.

I talked about stadiums earlier but wouldn't it be great if you could customize them? Like in Cities XL 2012 the Football (American) stadium had CITYLAND in one endzone, and BUILDERS in the other. It would be nice if you could customize stadiums (and multiple designs for each sport) so you could make your own team names. You could make it something awesome. You could make it something funny. You could make it a swear word. There's no moderator if it's in single player mode, right?

4.

Most of this list I talked about things i want to add to the Sim City series. But there's one thing I hate and want to be removed. Those pop up advisors. They have annoying dialouge and sometimes criticize you. Ocarina of Time anyone? But anyway, when they pop up to tell me that "Roads rule in (city name) but streets becoming endangered" I don't care I can afford it. But I sometimes wonder; "why won't they shut up.

3.

More landmarks. Sim City 4 was great. Taj Mahal, Empire State Building, St Basil's, CN Tower, US Capitol. But still, it would be great to see a wider variety in landmarks in the next one. I'm still not sure why the Eiffel Tower and the Sydney Opera House weren't there, but they're up on Simtropolis. On the topic of landmarks, did anyone besides me notice that in city of origin for Independence Hall, Philadelphia is spelled "Philidelphia"

2.

A toggle building function. Cities XL 2012 had one and it was great. We could choose how our skyline looked. With SC4's buildings, with a toggle function, we could have in another game with more buildings whatever we want, wherever we want. By the way, when it comes to buildings in Sim City Socities, I kinda pretend the game never existed. I should, anyway...

OK, before number 1, lets recap

10. Unlimited cash mode

9. Architectural variety in public services

8. Cheat Code Menu

7. Zoned Parking Lot

6. Bigger University.

5. Custom Stadiums

4. Shut up, Advisors!

3. more Landmarks

2. Toggle Function

and the number one thing I would want to see in Sim City 2013 is...

(Remember this is my opinion go don't jump down my throut. Not literally, that would be creepy and painful)

1!!!

More buildings. That is all. We want more styles, we want modern high rises, apartments, services, houses, shops, you name it! We want medeival houses, stores, cathedrals, castles, arenas! We want Colonial buildings, Chinese style, Muslim style, You name it. It would be great to have many buildings from many styles, from many ages, from many cultures, from many countries.

So there you have the list, remember it's my opinion and if you don't like it, I suggest you make your own.

[jacksunny 741]

4.

Most of this list I talked about things i want to add to the Sim City series. But there's one thing I hate and want to be removed. Those pop up advisors. They have annoying dialouge and sometimes criticize you. Ocarina of Time anyone? But anyway, when they pop up to tell me that "Roads rule in (city name) but streets becoming endangered" I don't care I can afford it. But I sometimes wonder; "why won't they shut up.

To me, this is fine as long as there is an option to turn it off, like in SC4.

[rbscott23 8]

Two things I'd like to see...

...being a real simcity fanatic and the basis of my cities being industry and residential zones, I'd like to see telephone poles to be laid like power poles to link city services i.e., fire and police, for faster response in certain areas or between on-line regions, and cable lines ran underground for news stations, etc., Cable lines used between regions and regional players to communicate while playing on-line or to update a region player, maybe as a mini IM screen...

[marksman1416 12]

Two things I'd like to see...

...being a real simcity fanatic and the basis of my cities being industry and residential zones, I'd like to see telephone poles to be laid like power poles to link city services i.e., fire and police, for faster response in certain areas or between on-line regions, and cable lines ran underground for news stations, etc., Cable lines used between regions and regional players to communicate while playing on-line or to update a region player, maybe as a mini IM screen...

That's a little too detailed for this game.

[Next_rim 1]

A more realistic economy. I know it's all about building cities, but financing construction and development is an entire department IRL that is grossly overlooked by SC3000 and SC4 (haven't played others so idk).

1) Separate commercial jobs and government jobs - control size of government. Not just talking schools and hospitals. Actual mayor's office, courts, clerks, financial police, central bank.

2) Separate government loans and private investor loans. Have different types of banks and interest rates.

3) More sources of income - issue licenses, control advertisement regulations, alcohol and tobacco policy, customs and inter-regional trade regulations, police fines and fees.

4) Separate fiscal and monetary policy. Taxes don't just raise money for government budget. You can run a fairly simple simulation engine in HTML, I'm sure you can integrate it into a game.

5) Do something with the money in your bank - raise wages, deposit into commercial banks, launch specific industry subsidy programs. I'm personally always filthy rich in my SC games w/o any cheats and on hardest settings, and it becomes boring to just sit on billions of cash.

6) More taxing options - income brackets, VAT, import/export taxes, quotas, different fees.

[rbscott23 8]

of course it isn't...we're looking for the best simulation game available...

[Joss_Development 1]

More than anything else, I want to see mixed use medium and high density zoning.

[macvirt 361]

Chances are that just comes down to a case of figuring out how the model mixes elements, as there is no manual zoning.

Still, that mixed automatic approach would not be very likely, in most places in the world people tend to have rules in urban development policies against such things

[Joss_Development 1]

Chances are that just comes down to a case of figuring out how the model mixes elements, as there is no manual zoning.

Still, that mixed automatic approach would not be very likely, in most places in the world people tend to have rules in urban development policies against such things

Not for long. Those rules are changing. Mixed use (commercial/residential) is the norm in NYC, and becoming the norm in forward thinking cities. You're starting to see more zoning like this around transit stations in other American cities. Dallas/FW comes to mind.

It might be hard for the developers to pull off. I just don't like my cities to have the land uses separated from each other, and no other option is available. It's just not realistic.

[arosta1 0]

I would like to see a more integrated transit systems (For those larger cities I have planned) like an Monorail, Elevated Rail and Subway System. Dynamic weather would also be a welcome change and, if thought through properly, could be integrated for more disaster options like blackouts and such. Also, the return of U-Drive would be excellent! :-)

[basshead62887 0]

I am not sure if anyone has said this but I feel there is a lot of power plants missing from 4 so i hope 5(SIMCITY 2013 to be correct) has more, there used to even be a hydro plant but thats long gone .

[Mr Saturn64 742]

More than anything else, I want to see mixed use medium and high density zoning.

I knew I was missing something in my top ten!

[macvirt 361]

Chances are that just comes down to a case of figuring out how the model mixes elements, as there is no manual zoning.

Still, that mixed automatic approach would not be very likely, in most places in the world people tend to have rules in urban development policies against such things

Not for long. Those rules are changing. Mixed use (commercial/residential) is the norm in NYC, and becoming the norm in forward thinking cities. You're starting to see more zoning like this around transit stations in other American cities. Dallas/FW comes to mind.

It might be hard for the developers to pull off. I just don't like my cities to have the land uses separated from each other, and no other option is available. It's just not realistic.

Interesting, here in Europe we're actually moving away from that trend. We had that from around the late '70's in the previous century to about the early 2000's, but with the increase in demographic pressure it too often became a convoluted mess (environmental issues, but also excesses due to cultural stress trends, etc).

[eardnua 0]

Don't know if it is possible this last in the game:

-Primary and secondary street

-Streets that are editable in that you can change the width of the sidewalks (larger sidewalks for shopping street that are wide enough to accommodate an outdoor cafe or two and streetscape including streetlights and bike racks. 20'+ for high density shopping streets and 5' for low density residential areas), and add parking lanes (another source of revenue for the city.) in denser areas. This would only be allowed for certain portions of right-of-way in denser areas.

-3-D Zoning: I want to be able to have a podium of retail crowned by residential, office, and hotel uses. It would be nice if I could take zoning up vertically to put residential on top of commercial office uses. It be cool if the simulation could be smart enough to know that retail under residential would be community service such as a grocery store, a cleaners, etc. Or maybe residential over a library. Or commercial over an art gallery.

-designate certain streets as shopping districts. Maybe there is a tool that you can paint a designation over a street to designate it as a shopping street.

-The automatic articulation of building corners at block intersections. ie: rounded corners, blade signs, etc. See http://www.gadgettom.com/477-design-preservation-models-corner-turret-building.html

-dog parks

-Community benefits: Performing arts center, Navy Pier (like Chicago), Boathouses for rowing, editable parks/plazas, public art, bike storage building, designating activities for public spaces for morale of sims.

-No surface parking in high density areas. It would be nice if all parking in these districts were under ground.

[Chackson 3]

I want to see,

Homeless people in the streets when there aren't enough jobs or housing to accomadate them

Chackson

[iomex 24]

I want to see,

Homeless people in the streets when there aren't enough jobs or housing to accomadate them

Chackson

This exists - homeless people tend to congregate in parks, which have a capacity, so having parks filled with homeless people is something you want to avoid.

Two things I'd like to see...

...being a real simcity fanatic and the basis of my cities being industry and residential zones, I'd like to see telephone poles to be laid like power poles to link city services i.e., fire and police, for faster response in certain areas or between on-line regions, and cable lines ran underground for news stations, etc., Cable lines used between regions and regional players to communicate while playing on-line or to update a region player, maybe as a mini IM screen...

All utilities are handled by agents using the road network, and is how the game is built so its highly unlikely it will change.

4.

Most of this list I talked about things i want to add to the Sim City series. But there's one thing I hate and want to be removed. Those pop up advisors. They have annoying dialouge and sometimes criticize you. Ocarina of Time anyone? But anyway, when they pop up to tell me that "Roads rule in (city name) but streets becoming endangered" I don't care I can afford it. But I sometimes wonder; "why won't they shut up.

To me, this is fine as long as there is an option to turn it off, like in SC4.

Advisors in SC are largely silent - when you open the relevant build menu, an advisor is displayed who will inform you of items of concern. For example, if you open your police station menu during a crime wave, you will see an advisor with a speech bubble advising you to expand your force.

There are no other interventions. If you have a problem, the relevant menu icon will turn yellow. When a problem is critical, it will turn red.

[Zukunftstraume 220]

Only two real big wishes right now... Everything else on my wishlist comes 2nd

1) If there could PLEASE be some patch released later... Or hell, I don't even care if I have to pay an additonal 20 booleans for this, but I think I speak for HALF the people playing this game: We really want to make our own regions from scratch! God-Mode in full throttle, like in previous games. It was one of the biggest hallmarks of SC4: it's outstanding region-view and the amazingness of God-Mode, and of course... The God-Mode music itself I have all the faith in the world that EA loves raking in cash... So, I can totally picture them making a few expansions later on... One of which, I request being the God-Mode region-creating expansion, even with a few nice features such as climate-editing (changing wind-currents, using mountains as rain shadows, adjusting seasons i.e. 2 monsoon-seasons, year-round aridness, a single very mild wet winter and very very hot summer, etc...) and deciding the vegetation and biome types of the terrains across the expanse (like in SimCity 3000, only revamped to modern-times).

I understand that deciding where in the region the oil, coal, metal ores, water table, and forests might be somewhat challenging, but that's what makes the game loads of fun. I am really hoping for this, and hopefully someone who works from Maxis will read this or stumble across other requests for region-creating the return of the God-Mode. I have a lot of hope in this, for all I know this was part of Maxis/EA's elaborate plan to make even more money. If it is, kudos! Just let us know... Please

2) The empty spaces between cites... Yet again, seem super unrealistic, the city tiles itself aren't big enough to be a complete metropolitan city, and can only count as districts or neighborhoods within a larger region (not complaining about that), but to have that empty space is straight hooliganism. Whatever happened to "the fog of war" effect in RTS games? It could totally be used here in keeping up with next-door cities playing at different paces. Quite tragic really.... Skyscrapers, skyscrapers, bloop! Empty land for a mile, and then bloop! More skyscrapers nearby! Really? REALLY!!?!? The hell was the reasoning behind this move Maxis? That's not how cities look like in real-life!

Now for smaller things:

3) Throwing in a few other resources (like all those resources found in Rise of Nations) would be nice. Such as: Uranium Ore, Natural Gas, Aluminum, Copper, Gold, Silver, Diamonds, Gems, Titanium, Rubber, Sulphur, Ancient Relics and Artifacts, Obsidian, Marble, etc... Obviously needing to import some to build certain things within the city and trading others to reap massive profits (such as gold, gems, or diamonds!)

4) Throwing in agriculture and also deciding which specific farm products you would want your city to produce: i.e. Rice, cotton, bananas, mangos, etc for much more wet regions; Citrus, Nuts, etc for mediterreanean-type regions; Apples, corn, and so forth for temperate regions; And cattle, diary products, and wool for places with good grass (or in tundra areas like Iceland as a means of providing food... very carnivorous diet). Or mix and match and see how much water a region drains for planting water-consuming crops in an arid region... *cough* Southern California *cough*

5) Maybe as an expansion pack later on: Start off the city in about 1900 and actually watch it evolve and have certain things become unlocked overtime based on the region's technological advancements... Kind of like in SimCity 3000... And keep it going to 2100 and beyond. Maybe don't even keep track of what year it is in that manner and let yourself and your neighbors choose how the region itself evolves... Will it turn into a steampunk-style coal consuming region with futuristic steampunk technology later on? Or will you exploit nuclear research and create a Fissionpunk googie-style city? Where there's dozens of options to choose from based on research and resources exploited, even doing 1000's of combinations if the players choose to do so.

i.e. A region that farms mostly rice on the outskirts and towards the center has super-hi tech industry in one neighborhood with a Fusion powerplant, and an ultra-modern financial district reminiscent of the Cosmopolitan decor in Las Vegas, a spaceport nearby, and sleepy residental hi-rises on the other side of the river... Also on the edge of the suburban districts there is a tremendous mountain range that has some volcanic activity deep underground... On the other side of the main city's bay is a very large sparsely inhabited temperate rain-forest island complete with it's own very lucrative fishing industry... A foggy/overcast climate nearly year-round with plenty of rain... Oh and big uranium + silver deposits within the desert on the other side of the large volanic mountains where we mine it and ship it out to the rest of the world and so forth

I can only picture this game going up from here with plenty of true-expansions i.e. Rush Hour, God-Mode, and Timeline Expansion Packs... Give us the game we want!!!! XD I'll be more than happy to buy eachand every single one of these expansion packs!

[Wosterlee 15]

4) Throwing in agriculture and also deciding which specific farm products you would want your city to produce: i.e. Rice, cotton, bananas, mangos, etc for much more wet regions; Citrus, Nuts, etc for mediterreanean-type regions; Apples, corn, and so forth for temperate regions; And cattle, diary products, and wool for places with good grass (or in tundra areas like Iceland as a means of providing food... very carnivorous diet). Or mix and match and see how much water a region drains for planting water-consuming crops in an arid region... *cough* Southern California *cough*

This is an interesting point. My idea about about farms is that they can fill up the wastelands around the tiles. They only provide several (regional) resources and do not require any sims or civic services to relieve the game engine. In this way a more 'natural' appearance can be created in the regional view.

[Zukunftstraume 220]

4) Throwing in agriculture and also deciding which specific farm products you would want your city to produce: i.e. Rice, cotton, bananas, mangos, etc for much more wet regions; Citrus, Nuts, etc for mediterreanean-type regions; Apples, corn, and so forth for temperate regions; And cattle, diary products, and wool for places with good grass (or in tundra areas like Iceland as a means of providing food... very carnivorous diet). Or mix and match and see how much water a region drains for planting water-consuming crops in an arid region... *cough* Southern California *cough*

This is an interesting point. My idea about about farms is that they can fill up the wastelands around the tiles. They only provide several (regional) resources and do not require any sims or civic services to relieve the game engine. In this way a more 'natural' appearance can be created in the regional view.

Well, it would be a slightly more natural appearence, but it still neglects the fact that we'll have these patches of urban complexes 4 square miles in size and then big blotches of agricultural expanse with a few works thrown in. This still neglects the metropolitan/megalopolis idea that was ever-so prevelant in the beyond-epic region-view of SC4. How I wish for this to return in it's full glory, and some!

[kotcity 110]

On 3/10/2012 at 2:41 AM, flowmotion said:

Also I'd bet a lot of the SC4 nuts here are going to be a little disappointed. My guess is that SimCity5 will be about at the same complexity level as SimCity 3000 - it will not have all the micromanagement options that 4 has. There probably won't be sliders for every type of industry and each individual police station. This is just the general trend in game design.

 

Plus, I think the transportation options will be greatly simplified, at least at first. Things like realistic freeways or complex rail systems probably won't be possible without mods or expansion packs. Same thing they did with SC4 Rush Hour. These are things only hardcore players care about, so they are a lower priority.

 

I can already predict the wailing lamentations about how the game was "dumbed down for the casual audience". But I think that might not be a bad thing, at least at first. SimCity 4 was perceived to be "too hard" to build a nice looking city, and even the devs admit a lot of the simulation details are difficult to understand. Given that it's been almost 10 years since the last game, IMO it's a good idea to get back to the fun & accessible formula of the older SimCity games. Once that's proven, add back in the complex stuff.

If you want simple and accessible, cross your fingers that EA releases another city builder that isn't botched into the ground. If you want a meaty, complex game, that's what I aim to deliver. I'm not afraid to have something that takes you a bit to learn and figure out. I also don't have any publishers or budgets to answer to.  I want this to be the hardcore city simulator. The players out for something casual have plenty of places to look already.

[E103 0]

1.The bus and trains and all the public transport can establish routes.

2.Can choose the type of fleet of public transport.

3.Can choose to play only one city.

4. Have hydro power.

5.Have desalination.

6.Have military.