SimCity: Wishlists

[drunkapple 1,743]

I think the only thing I would like to see in a new simcity would be a proper pc camera for the buildings. It would stop the buildings from looking like pyramids.

I'm not so fussed about 3d after playing around with cim, the building detail is lacking compared to sc4 and the box of tricks runs a bit like a stodgy spud with all the fruit turned on and full resolution (2560x1440). It ain't no slow poke either.

Cheers

drunk(again)

[keremozan 0]

I would like to see some non western buildings and streets in the game like that terrible blocks where in eastern Europe, South America, Middle East etc. so that the game will be a "city" simulation. It was one of the most annoying thing while i was playing Simcity and mods weren't enough to achieve realism due to core game engine structure.

When i see London first time i thought about Simcity because i never believed cities are like that

[Walden95 8]

Responding to a Maxis comment on the Reddit boards...

25) Zakerias:

Hello Kip, Ocean and Dan,

I have two questions:

1. Could you tell something about the maximum size of a city? Will it be the same scale as a massive city in 3 & 4, or should we expect final cities to be a bit smaller because of the new Glassbox engine?

2. What do you think will be the biggest gameplay improvement over Simcity 4?

Maxis:

[Dan] The size of our new cities are roughly equivalent to the SC4 medium sized city (2 kilometers square). That said, you can connect cities together inside a region and build out a network of connected cities - each city providing different resources and abilities to its neighbors and the region. For example, one city could be a residential suburb which provides workers every day to a nearby industrial city. The industrial city could be providing power to the suburb. You can play both of these cities yourself, or even run the entire region by yourself, or invite a friend to help out.

As for the biggest gameplay improvement, we’re moving from a purely statistical simulation model to an agent based model. So one example of how that’s different would be that the vehicles you saw in SC4 were just visual representations of ‘traffic density’ at that location, they weren’t real, if you watched them long enough they’d fade out as they turned corners. By contrast, with our new simulator, each and every vehicle and person is a real simulation entity heading to some real destination.

So traffic jams occur naturally – it’s really fun to build out a road structure, start zoning, play for a while, and ‘discover’ where your busiest intersections are. Thanks for your support, we really do take our community seriously and are trying to deliver the game that we all want to play!

I'd love to see map creation be very flexible. I've seen the "Inside the Glass Box" demonstration video and love the ability to place, locate, and determine the quantity of natural resources. What I would like to see however is an ability to expand map sizes to infinite amounts (or a really insane number) with a warning and a recommend maximum size for sanity purposes. One of my biggest pet peeves in SC4 was that your city size was greatly limited by that Large map maximum. Even though I was satisfied at the time around release when the computer was barley powerful enough to handle required pressing and graphic power the game demanded for large cities. As time passed, computers caught up and more extreme cities could be built. However, because of the limited city sizes, one was forced to exit into region mode and select the neighboring city(ies). With my current impression, it feels that cites are no longer directly boarding one another with a gap whether it be water body, forest, or plains. I'd love for the ability to be able to further extend the lifespan of the game. In adding a scrollable size map function, I think that it will allow for several seriously unique and diverse cities and city neighborhoods.

I can just imagine it now; in the year 2018-2023ish, I'll take a dive back into nostalgia, and childhood once more in playing SimCity (2013). I start up by creating my own (super-sized) map and begin. After so long, the entire thing begins to resemble that of Tokyo or Paris with an urban sprawl reaching great lengths from the city center. At this point, the idea of replanning and redeveloping several districts to accommodate the new issues on inter-city transportation, high and spread out Hospital/School usage, and pollution levels that grow ever so closer to resemble the descriptions of London and the Thames river during the industrial revolutions. I feel that this combined with the idea that your city really responds to your actions giving a relevant and lively response will really spice thing up. Different neighborhoods would require different things as time goes on.

As I see it now, this will all happen on the game's release, but just on a lesser scale if SC4 medium sized cities are locked.

  Edited March 9, 2012 by walden  

[Eʟᴇᴍᴇɴᴛ 273]

I would actually love to see the "tilt-shift" photography style of the video somehow implemented into the game. It give the game the look of working on a scale model, like you're actually working on a miniature city but at the same time extremely detailed and realistic.

I thuink a slight touch of "tilt-shift" like in the video below will give a nice effect to the game.

[lovessuburbs 3]

My wishlist :

3D like City XL.

For highways & interchanges, sunken highways, bridges etc to be easier to build.

More landmarks & more choice of buildings. In SC4, it was annoying when the same buildings kept popping up in the city.

For zoning to be more like City XL. I didnt like the fact that in SC4 low density land value would become high & it would need to be upgraded. Real life cities have poor ghetto areas. A mixture of different zones would give the city a more realistic look. More varied buildings, so to create ghetto areas & affluent areas.

Buildings that dont automatically upgrade themselves. Buildings that remain the same, giving the game player more control over the look of the city. But also, if buildings dont change then the emphasis is on the gameplayer to carry out urban regenration of areas based on population demands etc.

In SC4, I found it difficult to maintain suburbs. If you upgraded low density to medium density, high rises would pop up. Cities with spraling low desnity suburbs & a central downtown core of skyscrappers.

Emphasis not only on building cities, but villages, rural farming communities etc. Also towns & cities that dont require all types of industries/commerce. Again this will impact the types of buildings you can develop in the city and the overall look.

Weather & change of seasons.

Natural disasters - flooding, droughts etc and their impact of communities within the city. e.g droughts leading to farm issues.

Econmonic depression.

Being able to download maps & street layouts from google earth onto the game would be awesome. So you can start a city with a road layout from a real life city & then fill it yourelf.

Differnt building styles like in SC3 e.g USA , European, Japanese etc.

[poshbakerloo 186]

*Airport*

- Make them expandable and upgradable by adding new features such as a new runway to add capacity

- The roads at to the airport should take traffic that is from the passengers rather than just the airport workers (A main road to a SC4 airport could have as little as 120 cars when it should be 1000s)

- Control flight paths over the city

- Simulate airport noise and the effects on the surrounding areas

[Mark Waybill 242]

Ten years ago when I first played sc2000 it's features were enough to keep me up at all hours for nights and nights on end. Needless to say our fan wishlist is only going to expand in number and complexity of ideas. However a few simple ones, out of a bucketful, the first to come to the top of my head and a few suggestions...

Transport

I'd like it if transport options were obv expanded but also I think, as well as CXL ability to place routes (micromanagement that imo should be optional, as part of an optional spectrum of mayoral power and advisorial/council power) the ability for networks to be intelligent and maintain themselves. As much as I wish to retain the authority to tell my contractors where to place the end of terminal platform 5 in relation to a grove of trees I wish to save, I'd also like my contractors to think for themselves. If say a station is not getting much usage, the nwtwork will limit stops at that station rather than ask me to demolish or keep it. Etc. Simulated intelligent micromanagement like that. If accidents occur on Line 5 frequently either ask me to build a better network or try to fix it within reasonable means. So say if budget allows it and resources allow it, fix it yourself. If a single track line needs upgrading or if we're using diesel and some sim lobby group wants electric infrastructure then yes, tell me to do something, but I don't see why they can't make some decisions themselves.

Environment

If animals/plants are to be simulated an ecosystem should be realistic, in that it can adapt to some extent. Living or dead shouldn't be the only options. like in the case of that species of moth in Birmingham that adapted to soot.

Weather

If you are going to introduce Al Gorish elements into the game, the weather, or subclimatic effects, should become real in their effect. Where I am living now in Wollongong the southern side of Mt Keira has experienced a landslide due to rain and the soil/rock conditions there, and the beaches are being eroded also.

Surfers

Sims if they are to be intelligent need to grow up and stop expecting their parent (the Mayor) to give them something to do. If there is a natural feature like a beach then go grab a surfboard and use it, don't ask me to plop a beach there. The same goes for cliffs. in CXL people hang glided off towers. Riiight. Even though there were perfectly good cliffs and mountains... Sims can go bushwalking or camping without me placing a ranger station. Truly intelligent sims also rebel. If I enact a law banning skateboarding without a helmet I expect people to rebel against that. Religion is a bit of an iffy area but if I demolish a Church I'd expect some kind of reaction rather than complacency. Also their interactions shouldn't be predictable and My Simish. If I'm driving through a city and the Sims are all standing around reading papers I might as well be examining financial statistic graphs...

Ambience

I was glad to hear all sounds/images were to be representative of some action going on, and also that the music's beat would be that of the city and not some indifferent entity by itself. I think the landscape and the culture of the neighbourhoods would also affect that. If I was standing on a mountain top I'd expect different music to standing in a warehouse yard. Localised camera position based feedback.

Of course these are many of a bucketload of ideas that I have nothing better to do than come up with

[LivingInThePast 364]

Here's mine, a 100-item one updated last August and updated again in 2012.

1. A good query system, ala SimTower. You can check source/destination/stress of people. Could be designated as right-click.

2. Single track railroads as the default!

3. If you demolish anything: roads, rails, and buildings--a scar will be left for years to come if undisturbed.

4. Abandoned railroads! This is what happens when they are disconnected (or abandoned), or simply haven't been used in a while. Abandoned railroads breed crime (in big-city areas) and lower land value. In this, I was referring to the old Katy line in Dallas...see below.

5. Railroads, in general, need a huge update! Better crossings (both in terms of what it looks like on the ground or on the rails...lights or no? Gates or no? Concrete or wood? And noise, there needs to be train noises that are loud. I mean, I kind of want to run a miniature railroad here in many aspects, though that's not always possible.

6. One main police station and a couple of smaller branches (instead of tons and tons)

The crime system in SC4 was kinda broken

7. Realistic school systems.

I'm a sucker for intermediate schools and the "flow patterns"

8. The components sound pretty awesome: I've always wanted an easy way to make your own malls. This is best as a third-party opportunity, as video game corporations typically do not have the right to make malls with Dillard's and Sears, for instance. The problem from this, unfortunately, is that everything will end up looking more or less the same.

9. Realistic looking roads. Yellow stripe in the middle for North America. Cities XL has failed in this respect. See #32 for more.

11. Sunsets and sunrises, plus weather effects. Lots of rain means more accidents, sun means water and power use go up. A drought means that water uses go way up and flammability increases.

12. Disasters and U-Drive-It where people are allowed to get somewhat hurt. I don't want to run into someone, and they move off a bit, then either disappear or keep moving. When I hit them, the cars will get totaled as the fleeing driver jumps onto the sidewalk.

13. A fun U-Drive-It replacement, or none at all. U-D-I just wasn't fun. The car crash limits, the horrible control system, the isometric view, it was just so slow...

14. I've always wanted to see a real university system (instead of a building). Lots of buildings named after various professors and/or donors, a separate police station, absorb more and more city area, bars and nightclubs, frat houses, crazy student drivers, and lots of traffic for the big game! Living near Texas A&M University is like that. When you add a university, the traffic and crime spiral up, but there is also jobs and income (the basis of a city).

15. Light industrial again.

16. Now here's somethin' retro: you can choose which industries you want in your city (food, construction, tourism, petrochemicals, etc.) and set the tax rates accordingly (a la SimCity 2000).

17. Everything is in the language where it is made. I want to see American English on most of my stuff, and other languages if its a foreign BAT or something. As in...no Simlish!

18. Real religion churches (I want to see the churches, mosques, and synagogues...no "House of Worship"). Or just nothing religious at all, I'll wait for mods.

19. All the cemetaries I've seen have narrow roads running through them (except the small ones)

20. Make the BAT plugins smaller. Seems like the SC4 ones were too bloated.

21. More farm variety. You should see the crop grow and possibly get rotated out. And big irrigation things.

22. I want feel. Give me the sunny countryside. The crowded highway at rush hour. The "bad part of town" at night. Specifically, this applies to the "feel" of various neighborhoods. It may even involve signage change (Houston, again). Not everyone wants futuristic eco-cities.

23. Rather turning dark, I want to see poorly-maintained buildings see stuff like paint chipping. Likewise, abandoned buildings will not be nearly as common.

24. Ploppable street signs that have an effect, like "There's an accident on Logan Street!"

25. Realistic water towers (usually having city's name)

26. Weeds in park if poor maintenance.

27. Roads should naturally gray, repaving depends on traffic. Some places have naturally red gravel or other types.

28. Uneven maintenance. As in, you could make sure the streets were well-done in the nicest neighborhoods, and bad everywhere else.

29. A measure of how corrupt you are (demolishing entire neighborhoods for your personal estate, etc.), which figures into how happy your Sims are.

30) Ploppable street lamps, in certain cases.

31) Power lines, both low and high voltage.

32) Customizable stoplights and stoplight behavior.

33) Selling plots to residential developers (instead of you). This would mean they plan the streets, too.

Why zone for residential if you have to end up building streets? And I hated the default grid.

34) REALISTIC PARKING LOTS.

Again, this got me.

35) Realistic newspapers, replacing the newsticker. I'm sick of lame one-liners.

36) KILL THE ADVISORS. I once said kill them all with fire and I mean it! I'm sick of them yapping at me for one thing or another.

37) Graffiti on street signs (in really crime-ridden areas).

38) Realistic navy/air/army bases. They are no longer evil and will help a city a lot. They resemble Fort Hood rather than a WWII training camp, for starters (if you were using the American-based set, that is).

39) Strategically placed buildings (fast food and malls on the highway, homes in the suburbs). Some direct plopping is good, after all (that aren't landmarks)

40) Demographics. Demographics would be more than just some random statistic, it can affect crime, buildings built, and people walking around. Care should be taken not to make it racist (but in many cases, that's just how things appear, sadly).

Not on the first release, anyway.

41) It would be terribly complex, but I want to design the subway/elrail/GLR system to have different stop times, different station types, and routes.

Yeah, pipe dream. But still, that would so be awesome!

42. Underground tunnels or skywalks linking buildings or going under/over roads. They have commercial uses (the tunnels in downtown Houston, for example).

43. The ability to add sidewalks to roads without sidewalk, to increase bike and ped usage. Don't add them automatically.

44. I want my cities to be gritty and/or realistic. Not the dumbed-down, politically correct, sterilized, perfect Sims world where people speak gibberish. I am worried about the

Cities XL failed, SimCity Societies failed...keep dreaming?

45. Fires happen constantly in cities. One small blaze that my firefighters can put out is not worth going to. However, if I go by there, I can see it. It will come to my attention if it gets out of control (or is a big building).

46. Complete redevelopment doesn't happen nearly as often. More likely, a renovation will occur.

47. Traffic is no longer random. For example, you will occasionally see trucks with oversize loads, pickup trucks (if your city has lots of farmers or college students) or SUVs (if you have a lot of suburban soccer moms)

48. Cell phone towers.

49. The option to have what the city is "known for", like the "Sticksville, the Eggplant Capital of the World"

With the new resources feature, this could be a reality!

50. A completely redesigned light rail system. You can have it light rail-type or subway-type rail. The latter runs faster and is good for longer commute, but can't have direct crossings with anything. The former could get up to decent speeds, but won't have the capacities of the higher one. It also can go on streets, whether in a dedicated lane (Houston), dedicated ROW (Dallas), or on the streets (New Jersey). The light rail is closer to heritage trolleys, which should also be an option.

51. Better tools for intersections and on-ramps. Third party opportunity?

52) An updated traffic system. Rather than have trips "fail" (which in reality, they never do), it builds up stress levels (again, like SimTower) especially if they don't have a decent-paying job. I created a simple traffic model that would measure this type of thing. Basically, the roads/highways measure cars per minute (per lane) AND average speed. If there's a road, let's say, it's 60 miles per hour (which, by the way, you set yourself). Traffic is going fine, people are going at the normal speed, it's about four cars a minute. But if it gets down to four cars a minute but the average speed is 15 mph, that's a problem: traffic isn't moving fast enough to go forward. Could be anything, a wreck (high speeds), driveways connecting to the road, anything. More importantly, Stress rises, which becomes more aggressive if traffic is heavy enough (larger cities have more aggressive drivers). If you decide to go with mass transit, stress compounds with every stop. All this will contribute to Sim-Unhappiness.

53) City first, people second. SCS (and CXL to an extent) has focused too much on this.

SimCity 2013, also apparently. THIS MUST CHANGE.

54) Festivals and protests. These bring people out to parts of the city (or lack thereof). Downtown Sticksville has their Eggplant Festival every year. These can be downloadable!

55) Networks no longer have a "set speed", all vehicles are "microsims" with their own objectives (and some drive...badly). See #52.

56) TIF incentives for areas you want businesses to go. Some places can just become blighted.

57) Bus and HOV lanes, especially the latter. HOV lanes are sort of funky things, they have specific enter/exit points, only open at certain times, and so on. Specifically, US-290 northwest of Houston.

Not for long, when they rebuild the highway into a highway and parallel tollway...

58) Sea level is no longer absolute. You can make your own rivers, lakes high above sea level, and, of course, a New Orleans-esque set-up being BELOW sea level!

59) Others have said to get rid of the grid, but I disagree. Make the grid SMALLER.

60) The GEMs of Cities XL were a flawed concept, especially considering you did everything inside of Cities XL and that was only available with the Planet Offer. Though it is kind of a neat idea: this kind of goes along with the Will Wright vision of the 1990s where you could buy a product to create, say, a car, and place in an existing world. This opens up a world of expansion for SimCity (you know, the RCT fans are getting restless...)

61) An import feature allowing you to bring SC4 and SC3K cities into the city, along with SC4 items.

YES PLEASE. I personally believe SC3K importing was planned for SC4 but cut in development.

62) The ability to budget items. This means you could set aside X number of Simoleans (or some other currency) to build, say, that super-highway on the east side of town. When you run out of budget money, that may be a good warning to not spend more than you want to.

63) "Special events like the Olympics. Will cost a lot, but increase industry and commerce revenue, as well as tourism. Would create a heavy toll on traffic. You would have to have a large built-up city with suburbs and stadiums." was a suggestion from the SC2K FAQ. This would be a great sponsorship opportunity.

64) An UNDO! (James Walker)

An Undo would've been the thing to crow about.

65) As much as I hate to drive through them, construction zones add a lot of realism and I'd like to see them.

66) And now, back to our regularly scheduled program. Master planned communities, like The Woodlands in Texas. This is like having a city-within-a-city built for you!

67) It's dangerous and scary, but some rails (heavy) do cross the road grade at bizarre angles with the road (unprotected), including regular roads and straight through intersections. This includes street running.

68) Three modes overall: a "developer" mode (in addition to "god", "mayor", and "citizen") that can build fancy subdivisions with a theme. This developer mode would be for plopping buildings. Even better, having the Developer mode have a different budget than the Mayor.

69) Rural areas. Outside of your city, these will grow, sprouting farms and middle-class subdivisions with large yards but inferior roads. When you annex this, you can tax these denizens. Your localized ratings will take a hit, though.

70) A terrain editor. Advanced users can Photoshop their way to a cool terrain.

71) Full color buttons (unlike SC4, more like SC3K)

72) Sewage lines.

73) An alert system in the form of emergency radio. This is used for traffic situations too, as well as overhead electronic signs. ("Tune into 1024.6 AM when flashing")

74) Spectacular wrecks on the streets. This is a city we're talking about after all.

75) Residential is green, industrial is yellow, and commercial is blue. A "red zone" is added, allowing for a zoning free-for-all that will produce some pretty interesting combinations. Based after Houston.

76) An expansion from #17. DISCONNECT SIMCITY FROM THE SIMS FRANCHISE.

Another thing to make happen.

77) Make it fun! A small city should be just as interesting as a larger one.

78) Balance the delicate line between complexity and accessibility.

79) There is so much to add. Expansion packs would be awesome, though don't make it fluff like The Sims does. That's one thing about SimCity 4 that I wish was done better.

80) Various vegetation for different parts of the world.

81) Should be easy enough to pick up and play, but a thick manual with all sorts of neat information would be awesome! See this post

--Still updating, please come back later

94) A new soundtrack that perfectly fits that SimCity feeling.

95) Achievements to help fit in with the modern gaming world. These don't actually unlock anything in the game, however.

96) Stability is really important.

97) Lose the socialism. Freight railroads are private, and they build in your city first, randomly. Power, you don't raise or lower the maintenance, you charge them for it. Of course, these are all options.

98) Cars. Cars everywhere. Daytime, nighttime. You might never see an unused road (unless it's in the subdivisions, or something).

99) Weather and its effect.

100) A city has to GROW. It can't be Perpetual 21st Century. It could grow from any era, from a Medieval village to a modern European town, from a colonial trading post to a regional metroplex, from a Western boom town to a futuristic center. The Future has to be CREATIVE, not too SILLY, and without an AGENDA.

This was the original post from August 2011. I meant to write Perpetual 21st Century, and the Future and Past dreams still hold.

(From #4)

In real life, cities rarely build train lines (unless, of course, they're commuter lines), train companies do. As a result (especially in older cities), trains often run haphazardly through regular streets.

Here are a few examples:

Bryan, Texas (UP)

http://maps.google.c...0.000597,0.0...

Houston, Texas (MKT)

http://maps.google.c...heights+bike...

Although now a bike trail, the railroad originally crossed 7th and Cortlandt with two unprotected crossings.

Waco, Texas (St. Louis Southwestern)

http://maps.google.c...waco+texas&s...

Abandoned, but you can see how the railroad is as close as the road as a sidewalk.

Worse, there's an actual functioning railroad that is VERY close to the road.

http://maps.google.c...waco+texas&s...

As more train companies enter your city, they will start to consolidate and sell off the right of ways, of which you would either:

1. Leave the ROW (right of way) as-is. Absolutely cheapest to you, but may breed crime. Dallas, TX left the Katy railroad intact for years.

2. Convert the ROW to a bike trail, of which MKT was done to in inner Houston and Dallas.

3. Convert the ROW to a light rail. Dallas did this.

4. Convert the ROW into a road or make a road expansion. College Station TX built a road on the old I-GN right of way, many highways have expanded using old ROWs.

5. Buy the railroad and use it as your own commuter railroad (which is what Austin, TX did...they really cleaned up some virtually abandoned railroads and old crossings into a fine commuter rail)

In a city simulation game, trains are very noisy (residents may get upset) like they are in reality. Quiet zones can be made at a cost.

It's also a hazard to roads. While accidents are rare, it will often slow down traffic. Overpasses/underpasses solve this problem (plus gets rid of noise, as trains no longer have to make noise at crossings) but are also very costly to make.

If a railroad comes into your town, that's good as they pay YOU for the right of way in the beginning, and it can often bring commerce (both historically and current, with industrial spurs).

I'll be updating this some more shortly thereafter.

  Edited March 10, 2012 by LivingInThePast  

[flowmotion 24]

In my dreams, I would love to see a historical model which accurately reflects how cities actually developed. That way you could have a realistic mix of old antique buildings with modern skyscrapers, and be forced to make difficult redevelopment decisions.

For example:

Year 1800 - Only walking, horses, and water transportation. Cities are very high density and crowded around ports. Economy is mostly agricultural.

Year 1850 - Railroads appear, along with heavy industry. You can now have a spread-out network of smaller towns.

Year 1900 - Subways and trams. Skyscrapers and large apartment blocks become possible. You can now start building a large city.

Year 1950 - Freeways & low-density suburbia is now available. Spread out people across all those farmlands, destroy the port district and build gigantic skyscrapers downtown

Year 2000 - Oil crisis! Start rebuilding those transit networks and increase density. Build a 'green city'. Attract tourists.

And so forth...

[flowmotion 24]

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.

[mapboy 106]

I agree with Flowmotion. I can see this SimCity just working on the simulation, but not the complexity for the moment. It's very hard thinking of SC4 without Rush Hour, but we do have to remember that future Expansion Packs can really change the game. I'm thinking the new SimCity might follow this expansion model, but I do hope that it doesn't get into Sims expansion territory... 3 maximum, I think.

[rh1346 2]

My main concern is the realism of transportation systems, which many before me here have already pointed out. However, I have more specific grievances:

In SC4, Maxis incorrectly labeled their roads. "Roads", "streets", "avenues" are NOT terms that designate the size, capacity, speed limit, etc. of a given road. Pave any 2-lane city street and you can name it an "avenue," a "road," a "way," whatever you like. These terms they labeled were not accurate and not indicative. Instead, on my "wishlist" I ask that the roads be more accurately labeled. "2-Lane Arterial" "4-Lane Arterial" etc. for in-town roads.

Next, intercity roads. They COMPLETELY got this wrong. A "highway" does NOT mean it's a freeway! What they labeled "highway" and subsequently has everyone on this website referring to as a "highway" is a freeway. If you were to carve out a footpath between two cities, it would be a highway. THAT is a highway. Any form of non-rail ground transport that leaves a city and travels to another locale. The new SC should have a "Highways" panel that would include:

-"2-Lane Highway"(YES, a 2-LANE ROAD can be a highway. I can drive on one to leave the city I live in right now.)

This would have options for Passing Zone, No Passing Zone, Passing on One Side, No Passing on the Other, and turning lanes(making it technically 3 lanes, but it would still be 2 lanes in each direction)

-"3-Lane Highway"-Same Passing, No Passing, etc. options. Also, of course, you'd be able to determine which direction gets 2 lanes and which gets the remaining 1 lane. Also, same turning lane situation applies.

-"4-Lane Highway"-Many options here. Median/No Median. Divided/Undivided. Turning Lanes On/Off.

and THEN

-"Freeway"-(for those who don't know: a freeway is a limited access road that cannot have at-grade intersections. I.e., one can only enter a freeway on entrance ramps and exit on exit ramps(limited access), and the freeway may not cross another transportation's path, so it must have a bridge over it, or it must go under it(no at-grade intersections). Freeways should have the 4-Lane, 6-Lane, 8-Lane, and 10-Lane options. Then, you can use a tool to drag the entrance and exit ramps out of the freeway, as well as drag flyover ramps out of it to connect with other freeways or even surface streets(this DOES happen in real life). This was another big complaint for me in SC4: You were confined, and still are, even with the NAM, to certain pre-built ramps for freeways. In real life, this never happens; almost every entrance/exit ramps and flyover is unique and specific to that area. Maybe it's very very long and winds far from the freeway to avoid an obstacle. Maybe it's very short. Dragging them in SC5 would allow for road systems that don't force you to bulldoze tons of your development.

And that is all. Just a road system that is functional and realistic. But I'm not going to hold my breath that it's going to happen.

[VeritaScientia 150]

OH YES!!!!!!!

@Flowmotion: Right on! But let's take it further!

In Sim City 2k and 3k they had powerplants developing at different times. Let's take that one further: Have alll technological advancements dependent upon regional education and technological advancement. For example: A region with tons of high-polluting industry with a low-quality education system won't have the resources to develop nuclear power, let alone fusion power. An agrarian society won't have the ability to attract the Mustard brothers to start a world-class hospital, nor would they have the education to build supertall buildings.

[flowmotion 24]

OH YES!!!!!!!

@Flowmotion: Right on! But let's take it further!

In Sim City 2k and 3k they had powerplants developing at different times. Let's take that one further: Have alll technological advancements dependent upon regional education and technological advancement. For example: A region with tons of high-polluting industry with a low-quality education system won't have the resources to develop nuclear power, let alone fusion power. An agrarian society won't have the ability to attract the Mustard brothers to start a world-class hospital, nor would they have the education to build supertall buildings.

Yep, with a proper historical model, there's all kinds of neat things they could do. For example, you could build an Ag College in the early stages which boosts farm employment. Over time, you could upgrade it into a Research University which boosts hitech industry and makes things like nuclear power possible. Or you could boost your agriculture and get things like horse farms and wineries.

SimCity 4 always bothered me because the urban development model is backwards. You start with a 1950s suburb and then you would build out higher densities, add mass transit etc. Historically, it was actually much cheaper to start with a rail-based high density city, and only later did they add wide suburban roads and freeways. Such things should only be affordable with a gas tax after 1950 or so. But they would also unlock things like regional shopping malls and big box retail, so you could build an 'edge city' outside of your downtown core.

[mapboy 106]

Rh1346, names of roads change depending on cities. Here is New Zealand, there is no real classification of streets - a small culdesac could be a 'Road' or a Highway could be a 4 lane arterial or what you call a freeway. What I'm getting at is that it does not matter what streets are classified as, just as long as they are available. You complain that Highways should be called Freeways, but what if I think they should be called Motorways?

This makes me think of something I would like. The road naming tool in SC4 was pretty cool, however I never use it because the labels always disappear when construction happens nearby. If SC5 is going to have this labelling system (although, it wasn't implemented in SC4 until Rush Hour, was it?) I would like it to be fixed, and if a road is upgraded the label doesn't disappear but instead just adapted to the wider road.

[TheRealDeadaim 38]

Rh1346: As has been pointed out, the definition of roads varies from country to country.

[Terribletown USA 18]

+ Seasons and weather would be nice, especially the option to freeze the season or weather and time or day (regardless of the date/progression of time).

+ Hydropower! With pumped-storage if possible. But I would settle for just having dams again.

+ Many types of intersections and interchanges. I imagine this will be something modders will have to do, which is fine. Parclos, SPUIs, and roundabouts, yes please!

+ Reversible lanes on highways and roads, such as HOV lanes.

+ Several types of bridges with customization. For example, there are a variety of types of truss bridges... it would be neat to select the type and color you want. Many locales paint regular beam bridges vibrant colors like red and blue, especially for large river crossings. When building large bridges, an option as to which type (truss, beam, cantilever, cable-stayed, etc.), color, and a preview of what it would look like once built would be helpful.

+ Viaducts for roads, highways, and railroads. Extra bonus, being able to lay a railroad or another road/highway underneath them. Have the option to build roads under/over railroads.

+ Tunnels where you'd like them--under streets, water, mountains, whatever. Streets, rails, highways, whatever.

+ On-street parking options.

+ Precision terrascaping with options like stone coloration/type or retaining walls.

+ Better terrain logic. Nothing irked me more in SC4 than seeing a house on a hillside with the entire lot built up with a giant retaining wall like a fortress.

+ Ability to build towers for broadcasting TV and radio over your city and region. The taller the tower, the further its range, so it could broadcast into neighboring cities. Obviously putting a tower on a hill would be advantageous. Don't forget the warning lights!

+ Please please give us power to put in place names. Name anything from a street or highway to a bridge, park, building, neighborhood or even a borough.

+ Keep in mind it's a city simulator, not an idealist society simulator. Not everyone will want to go green! And please don't bog users down in the lives of individual sims, unless they so desire.

+ In-game iTunes/music control so you won't have to switch windows and all.

+ Bring back the YOU CAN'T CUT BACK ON FUNDING! YOU WILL REGRET THIS! guy.

The main idea is this: OPTIONS.

[Pandemic 32]

I would actually really like to see, when emergency vehicles are responding to a location, that traffic tries to pull over and stuff, then once the emergency vehicle passes, it gets back onto the road. It'd ensure that we make traffic congestion low in areas so that emergency vehicles are able to get to their location quickly.

[daderic888 216]

G'day out there,

I would really like to see amore realistic night time, similar to either the Simfox Day/Night Mod or Gizmo's Night Mod as the default Maxis night time in Simcity 4 doesn't look realistic.

Also I would like to see a weather mod where we can build our city however we like, rain, hail or shine (get the picture). Oh and to see windy stormy weather too.

Cheers,

daderic888

[Frode789 70]

First of all, I am optimistic about the new SC, can't wait for it to come Now, on to a field that is important to me: More realistic proportions.

One thing that is annoying is the sidewalks. Don't make those huge sidewalks that was in CXL.

But more importantly:

Make runways on the airports near-realistic in length! Shortest ones should be at least 800m, and using the full length of the city tile at ~1800m for the international runway. Ideally it should have been 1.5-2km longer, but seeing as city tiles are only 2x2km.. Those pocket-size airports in SC4 looked ridiculous. What was going to take off with full weight on that? A model-plane? I am positive in hope about seeing modular airport pieces, so we can customize our terminals and such. Just make sure we get proper runways as well!

Default:

A more realistic airport:

Which one would you pick? Yes they take a lot of space, but it so happens to be like that in real life.

  Edited March 13, 2012 by Frode789  

[Simlock 3]

Hmmmm... Well, when your city isnt developing, i would like it to be a little more easy to find out why it isnt developing.

I'd like cities to look more 'natural' (curvy roads should improve that a lot) and unique, as in architectural style, variety in buildings, roads, natural environment. Think Abu Dhabi, Tokyo, Amsterdam, New York, even something as dirty as Mexico City.

To achieve that i'd like there to be an easy to use building-design program, where you can create buildings and give properties.

Oh yeah... I would LOVE to see arcology's and other high-tech stuff!

[Simlock 3]

Oh... And id like to be able to create an industry that the who (or more) city leans on, like an airport that you can keep expanding so that it will eventually create thousands of jobs or something like Hollywood with lots of filmstudios, or something like Silicon Valley with all the tech company headquartes etc. Etc.

And id like to be able to walk/ drive/ fly around in my city, and also in other peoples cities

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

While there might be some similarities to previous versions, I expect a whole new paradigm. I think the emphasis of the last edition on getting to/from work sites will be submerged in the general traffic pattern and be only a bump in the road. I'd like to see more emphasis on commercial traffic and daily traffic like "mom takes the kids to school then goes downtown to shop" sort of thing.

Resources like soil, rain etc. for farms could lead to specializations like the Napa Valley in California where growing grapes is very important. The grapes go to either grape juice, grape jams and jellies, or to wine making, so there are several industries that make agricultural produce into other products, some discrete (jars of jam) and some non-discrete (tanks of juice, fermenting tanks, etc). This in turn can lead to warehousing (jars to boxes to skips) and shipping (palettes out/palettes in), bottling scenarios, etc. The grapes to wine industry alone has a huge chain and can include specialties such as making Xerez type wines, etc. I have considered only one commodity here, and if you want to create a farm economy you can go on and on.

This little scenario could only be a beginning depending on what modding and editing tools come with the game. The tools suite may be a separate package, but it should not be very much delayed after the release. Not more than, say, 18 months.

Make it open-ended, give us the tools, and we'll finish the job.

[Paulobergonci 673]

In my dreams, I would love to see a historical model which accurately reflects how cities actually developed. That way you could have a realistic mix of old antique buildings with modern skyscrapers, and be forced to make difficult redevelopment decisions.

For example:

Year 1800 - Only walking, horses, and water transportation. Cities are very high density and crowded around ports. Economy is mostly agricultural.

Year 1850 - Railroads appear, along with heavy industry. You can now have a spread-out network of smaller towns.

Year 1900 - Subways and trams. Skyscrapers and large apartment blocks become possible. You can now start building a large city.

Year 1950 - Freeways & low-density suburbia is now available. Spread out people across all those farmlands, destroy the port district and build gigantic skyscrapers downtown

Year 2000 - Oil crisis! Start rebuilding those transit networks and increase density. Build a 'green city'. Attract tourists.

That would be great!!

Thats actually how i play sc4, i start at some year, for example, i started a region now in the year of 1710.

[Epilef 57]

-Full transport network with subway (surface and also the viaduct), urban and regional trains, GLR, monorails, BRT, ferry (water taxi too).

-Lines Management (even minimal)

-Better missions. Example: How to solve the pollution problem at a certain time, or solve the problem of transport, or manage a crisis (economic, public health, disaster) spending little as possible, etc.. May influence its popularity, for example.

-Diagonal bridges, and possibility to place over the land and buildings.

-A interface that is easily modified to accommodate numerous mod.

-Residential Zone, Commercial Zone, residential-commercial zone, industrial zone. Each with three levels of density (as in SC4) and ability to limit / permit maximum height of tall buildings.

-More realistic zoning for agriculture. Possibility of having prosperous rural towns.

----

I have thought quite a kind of "drawing tool of intersections and interchanges", l ike a module within the game.

Imagine you are building your highway network, and need to create a interchange. Then the game asks, "Would you like to draw a interchange?"

If you answer "yes" a new interface appear and gives you the possibility to drawn each bridge and in/out ramp the way you want. Then the game would work to create the model as you drawed.

So you could have nice, complex and realistic highways that would fit better than the default ones.

If the answer is "no." then the game automatically creates the intersection and you need not worry about it if you do not mind.

----

[Oohforf 19]

1. 3D. (Please?)

2. Acknowledge the existence of the NAM and the NAM team and follow in their footsteps when it comes Transit networks.

3. Weather control. (prior to starting your region)

4. More of a "country" feel, opposed to one single city.

5. Gated communities.

6. An even better in game, widespread region editor.

7. No more ugleh $ cottages.

8. A choice of road textures

I have a lot more, but this is just off the top of my head.

[croxis 150]

Well it is 3D, we have curvy roads and probably curvy bridges as well, the whole pipe/power/road system is all based on the same code so adding new network options is relativly trivial for them. it is just a matter of balancing development time and making sure there are not too many options to overwhelm new players. They also showed that sims not only go to and from work but traffic also includes freight transport and shopping traffic.

It is nice to see how a lot of this wishlist is already in the engine, or at least close to possible.

[timchilestone 0]

I'd like to see a couple of small things which I think would make a big difference.

1) Name streets and areas. I don't mean just labelling them, I mean actually naming them (e.g. you could click the "start" and "end" point of a road, or drag across a wide area) so that when there's an incident you can actually be told what road it's on or what district it's in.

You could then assign public buildings to "belong" to a district, and alter their catchment areas accordingly.

2) Flexible road grading. This is of particular relevance to those of us from the UK, I think - as you know a "main road" might be woefully inadequate for the amount of vehicles it carries, but cannot be upgraded for whatever reason. So maybe we could alter speed limits, assign certain roads as "trunk" roads, or "preferred for through traffic" etc.

Potentially this system could be used to assign a "ring road" for traffic moving across the city rather than going through it.

3) Council buildings - especially residential. Instead of zoning and waiting for development, you could build a housing estate or supermarket or parade of shops or high street or retail park, and then rent the buildings out. Rather than receiving tax income for these properties you'd receive rental income instead. Or, if you're particularly tight, aswell.

[Helbore 15]

I really, really want to see the transport system overhauled completely. No more streets, roads, avenues and highways. Instead, we should have a road and that's it. Then we can customize the road to how we want it. Options such as;

• 
  
  
• Number of lanes in each direction from 0 to infinity.
  
• Whether there is a median in the road and how large it is.
  
• The speed limit of the road.
  
• The definition of the lane (eg. walkway, cycle lane, bus lane, all traffic, no HGV lane, car pool lane, etc)
  
• Whether it accepts at-grade intersections or on/off ramp interchanges only
  

They are just a few options, but you get the gist. If I decide I want to build a road with 50 lanes in either direction and a speed limit of 200mph, I should be able to do so. It will cost a fortune and no-one will even build a house anywhere near it, but if I want to build it, I should be able to. Similarly, if I want to stick a walkway down the side of this road and put an in-grade intersection across it, I should be able to - and then watch the ensuing carnage that it would cause.

Of course, such detailed management would be annoying if we had to do this every time we laid a new road, so we would be able to save layouts as templates. This also gets around the complexity issue for novice gamers. Maxis can simply provide several standard road templates and people need never touch the advance customization menus until they're good and ready (or never, if they don't want to)

The same should apply to all network types, with basic templates for rail and added customisation options for advanced users (light, heavy, train types, dual or mono rails, maglev, raised/ground/sub and full interchanging between grades). We should also be able to create proper routes for rail and bus services. None of this "hop on a train and treat a rail line like you're driving a car down a road" stuff. If your destination station isn't on the same line as your starting station, you need to go via a station with line interchanges.

Personally, I'm sick of being railroaded (pun intended!) by a limited transportation system. When you get a city to a certain size, the game practically revolves around transportation planning. If my city outgrows a three-lane highway, why should I be stuck with congested traffic forever? My city DESERVES it's four-lane highway!

Also - and this one is pretty much a pipe dream - I'd love to have some fully-realised real world cities included in the game. For instance, I live in London, UK and it would be awesome to have an accurate recreation of London (among other cities) bundled with the game. Then, using my new customizable transport system, I could go about trying to actually fix the transport issues that plague the city. See if I can pull of what our real Mayor is incapable of!

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I would like to remove UDI as it stands completely along with everything having to do with My Sims.

In its place, I would like to have a new facility called "Sims View" in which the player can actually impersonate a Sim and perform his daily tasks with the camera replacing the eyes of the Sim. Get up in the morning, and if the Sim is the breadwinner, go to work, work all day at the job, go home, etc.

This could give a much better view of the ground-level game than you get from just driving a vehicle, unless your job is transit driver, chauffeur, or you drive to/from work, drive the kids to school and go shopping, or what ever.

I propose this to be a separate module or perhaps even a separate supplementary release that functions within a user- or pre-built city. This could even be extended into a Sims 4 game with a separate memory load and some kind of connection to the running SimCity game. The interprocess communication could be as thorough as the implementors choose.

Market for this separate module could easily be the entire universe of Sims and SimCity players plus all the new excitement it could attract. This could easily be a follow on in the 2014-2016 time frame, and would take a considerable burden off the current development.

I see this as a fun game on its own, but also for SimCity players, as a way to see how you have done building your city, and it might give one a view to suggesting improvements in the city. Both a fun item and an assistant to developing your city.

There seems no end to the possibilities here. What if the Sim being viewed is an astronaut going to the ISS? What a challenge for a development team!