Future of SimCity Official Discussion Thread

[aking88 7]

They have been, u missed it .

[SystemUK 0]

It says on the front page, lol.

[Jabberdau 1]

Guess it just wasn´t obvious. On some forums, things like this start a thread spam usually starting with "OMG!". Where is all the spammers these days ? And the "What we KNOW about SC5" and the SC5 section and...well you get the idea.

[sendarrow 3]

I like growables. It makes it more realistic. I think that a grid pattern is better because it makes the city easier to control. Can't wait for SC5 either!!!!!!

[mittfh 7]

Thinking of startup farms / mines etc., how about an option to start with some form of through route. Cities are rarely planned in the middle of nowhere - there's usually some form of transport traversing the area to begin with.

In the UK, many towns started off with a ford (track crossing a river) - merchants saw they made ideal places to trade goods, so eventually settled, built houses / shops etc., and the towns took off.

[WillG_75 19]

Ok, this might of been mentioned, but I didn't want to read 17 pages worth of replies hehe.

They should do what the makers of Tycoon City New York did with commercial buildings. Say, in an area, there is demand for some restaurants and some entertainment, let us plop a restaurant and a movie theater. I am really tired of forming cities with 50 Ruzwicks Ritzy Plaza's in the area of 5 blocks and then have them all go abandon!

And include some more city buildings. Less buildings that sit on a huge lot and have a ton of space between them. I want to have the ability to create a realitsic Little Italy or Chinatown, where space is at a minimum.

Also, they should ditch the idea of having 1890's Chicago, 1940's New York and 1990's Houston. You don't see all those buildings in one area. They should have eras of buildings. Say they have 20 houses from the 1890's, 20 more from the 1900's, 20 more from the 1910's and so on. I'd love to create old districts and historical houses near downtown and the sprawling subdivisions out around the city.

Malls are never located in a 5x5 tile. Near my house, we have a mall that is very spread out, probaly 2-3 miles of parking lots and outlet centers. Let us do something like that, that would be cool

Let us choose different styles of hospitals, fire stations etc. I don't like it when I see the same hospital or school 20 times. I tend to forget where I am

Terraforming shouldn't affect surrounding buildings and neighborhoods. I spent a good time making a neighborhood, and them made a small hill and destroyed the neighborhood.

Thats all I can think of now

[rctshack 182]

I agree with almost everything above. And with the whole 2 to 3 mile mall and condensed sections like china town and so on, the main problem with the game is the aspect ratio to real miles is wildly messed up. I know they wanted to save space and computer memory and so on, but a real city is almost the size of a region. My home city of 25,000 is about the size of two of the LARGE city sqaures. Whereas a major city would be the size of the region. It's not correct to have to put a school every 6 blocks, it just doesn't truthfully work that way. They need to rethink the land area issue so that a maga mall can be built in your town and not take up half of a Large city square. 1 million people can't realistically fin into a 15 block by 15 block city, it just doesn't work that way. Mass transit also needs to be more realistic, subways don't turn at a 90 degree angle and be able to asct the way it does. Also building times for everything needs to work out better, roads are realistic, but subways aren't. It takes about 2 years AT LEAST to build a subway, and stations are a lot larger, but are under roads, and have exits on sidewalks. VERY few subway stations i have ever seen take up the size of a house on a city block. Elevated rails in most major cities goes down the center of avenues, and will go inbetween major buildings and so on, not all the time do they take up as much room as they do in the game. A train in this game is less than the width of a car. To many scale issues, our cities would look and run a lot better if the scare was correct on everything, that's why we have zoom.

And commute time, don't even get me started. People won't go past like 3 blocks... subways are every 10 blocks in NYC, and i walk 7 blocks to work and back everyday, and that's without mass transit or a car. People realistically will draive at least half way if not all the way across the sim city maps if it were real life. Highways are made for that, the game doesn't even use it barely. It makes no sense. I just hope they fix the issues and that cities are a lot larger so that we can have a more diverse city.

[PoseidonST 0]

Some say that spore will take over the gaming world. I think that SimCity 5 will have some trouble making it up there. What do your elephant brains think?

-Earthshaker

[waway625 72]

id love for SC% to feature the ff:

1. Larger cities (the present 4kmx 4km tile is too small for a city with skyscrapers) they should make it at least 8km x 8km or if possible, 16km x 16km, that way we can have our downtown and suburbs in one city

2. this may sound a little off, but what if instead of tiles, we are able to create city boundaries? say on a region, we create areas of influence per city (cities dont have square boundaries after all

3. Diagonal zones and roads! ate least 45deg zoning or if possible, in 30 degee increments, and on a more wishful thinking scale, curves.. i think a 45degree zone isnt that hard considereing the other game "citylife" has diagonal zones

4. more proportionate scales (the 16mx16m scale set here in simtropolis is a good basis) so its be good if maxis scaled their buildings and roads..and that airport too (lols just realized that the default airport in SC4 cannot handle large planes if we are to follow the SImtropolis scale)

5. have ploppable residential buildings (since cities do porvide housing projects, why cant we in SC5 right?)

6. the option to have integrated water pipes and underground utlities to go with road laying, and while we are on road laying topic, wider avenues would be good as well, the 4 lane avenue is too small as most cities have 4-6 lane roads and up to 8 lane avenues

6. LAstly, and IMHO a very important one..instead of just Low, med, high density zoning, itd be nice if we can set the price/tile of a specific land/zone? that way, we can dictate who gets to live there, say i want an all R$$$ village/district, i simply value the land at a certain price tag so as only those who can afford the live on that zone gets to build their house there, same goes for CS, CO and industires

plus, to add to the realism, why not make construction time of buildigs longer? (that means n more instant plops too) if say i plop (or grow) a huge skyscraper like taipei 101, then itd take me a year or two before the building get finished, same goes for roads, seaports, airports, bus stops, parks etc

[GreekMan 246]

Well

Senarios

more transit options

better advisors SC4 advisers are the worst SC3 was the best

better commutining

have one or two regions that are fully developed

Well that's it

[erikfloan 1]

I wish...

- A country-based game (SimCity 5 is coming out in 2007), where you can decide each regions temprature, and economic style (communistic/capitalistic, kingdom/republic etc.)

- A more European game has also been nice, since SimCity 4 is a VERY AMERICAN.

- Water powerplants! We really need them!

- REALISTIC water with waves, and with changing wheater (after climate).

- Weather and climate! I wanna decide this sort of thing when I make a new region!

- I can decide which areas I will cover with a firestaton/clinic/policestation etc.

- More types of roads: Gravel roads, normal asphalt roads, autobahns etc.

[erikfloan 1]

I wish...

- A country-based game (SimCity 5 is coming out in 2007), where you can decide each regions temprature, and economic style (communistic/capitalistic, kingdom/republic etc.)

- A more European game has also been nice, since SimCity 4 is a VERY AMERICAN.

- Water powerplants! We really need them!

- REALISTIC water with waves, and with changing wheater (after climate).

- Weather and climate! I wanna decide this sort of thing when I make a new region!

- I can decide which areas I will cover with a firestaton/clinic/policestation etc.

- More types of roads: Gravel roads, normal asphalt roads, autobahns etc.

[rctshack 182]

I completely agree with the underground utilities being an option to lay with the roads. That would be grately helpful and save a lot of time, plus it would keep from forgetting that I didn't lay pipes for a neighborhood. In the real world, stuff like water and sewage is laid with the rodas or next to them.

[sendarrow 3]

Sometimes I wonder what Will Wright meant when he said that he wanted to take Simcity back to the basics and make it easy so everybody can play it. Idon't wanna play a child's game,so he better not do a game too easy, or at least provide options or levels, like easy,hard, etc.

[sanantonio 0]

I was discussing this with a friend last night and the topic of Spore came up. It would be nice if SC5 drew from Spore, and we get to have something like a planet to colonize and develop rather than a region. You'd play over the internet and as you explore your planet, other players' cities will download to your game. You can then either make friends, set up trade, etc. or send a few thousand troops to take over.  You could then claim the city for your own, demolish and rebuild, leave as a wasteland, etc. This, of course, won't affect player B, but only your game. There could also be a wysiwyg mode where the city you come across actually is someone else's city. An online community could take over planets, develop countries with different players representing states, have interplanetary trade, global war...again, lots of options...

After rereading this, it sounded much better when we discussed. I can't type all we talked about, but you get an idea.

Oh, and splines...get rid of the grid. please, please please lose the grid.

[aking88 7]

Personally i am completely against the option to make war, simcity should keep to cityscaping not turn into a warstrategygame.

[waway625 72]

i second that..

all i wish for SC5 would be for more depth and more city planning options

[rctshack 182]

yah, that sounds like well.... spore. Well maybe spore with a more andvanced city building mode. I don't want it to be "cartoon like" because it's too childish. I want it to look more realistic than SC4. War is a bad Idea, cities never go to war, countries do, except for civil wars, but those are wars of ideas, not land. This is DEFINITELY not a war game.

I do kind of like a planetary idea, slightly, at least with trade. Regions could be side by side in a wider view and the wider view could be side by side in a planet view. And you still have your city or region, but can interact with other people online. This is just if you want to play multiplayer, but hopefully the new game with have MANY new resources to make more money, like mining, all different kinds of farming, creating technologies through industry to trade, haveing commercial buisinesses that spread to other regions but have headquarters in your city. Also things like stadiums and large museums should bring people from far distances to either fly or drive into your region/city to see that location or game.

Also one thing that greatly needs to be fixed is airports. It should almost be it's own little building part of the game. Not only should you be able to add more runways and terminals, but you should also have to zone around it apropriately. If an airport is in a suberb it is usually fine, but people complain about noise and it is lower wealth that live under the flight paths. Then some form of mass transit takes the thousands of people a day to the cities they need to go to. If the airport is in a downtown setting, the zoning at each end of the runway has to be lowrise, so that plains don't collide with the buildings, and mass transit also has to ship people every direction to their destinations. It makes me upset that when i put a subway next to an airport right now, and have many more subway stops in downtown, only like 4 people ride it, when it says 50,000 people use the airport. Where are these people? Where is the traffic? Aiports are dumb and useless except for extending the demand cap for commercial. All things like airports and stadiums should have a much higher traffic volume and have to be planned better.

A solution in my mind to problems like this could be setting aside land for developers asking YOU as a mayor to build in your city. You have a messege pop up saying "5 Flags would like to build a theme park in New Dallas and needs you to allow a plot of land to be purchased and built on." Where then you have the option to turn them down, or highlight a plot of land that is outlined to be used to build the theme park. Things are not always square, hopefully the game will go away from everything being square. It can have square element inside, but the edge shouldn't have to be. The park then takes a while and starts building, it will ask if it can be connected to road, then later on will say "Many people in your city travel by subway, can we help in building a subway stop within 3 blocks of the theme park. We will kindly pay for the cost of the station, if you pay for the tunnel". Things like that would make the game more real to me. Not placing a theme park only because it will make my mayor rating go up 5 points. But because a developer wanted to build one and my decision on if it was time, or the right area, or if mass transit should connect it, or if the right theme park company was chosen, stuff like that is how I would like to see the game played. Same with the airport, and even subdivisions. Many housing divisions are built but subdevelopers, not the mayor. I can zone, but then huge neighborhoods (with roads, pipes, and everything else) are built but people underneath me. The stradegy is making a city work profitably, Not to spend 3 hours building one neighborhood. The game can use the time more wisely doing other things.

[LLDB 0]

  What if they madeit global to local grid?  Zoom in on a area that you're working in? Then the Program would only work that spacific area.

[LLDB 0]

Well,

 

         Seems I have read for the last two hours, many idea's are very sound.  Keep this one thing in mind....   It's the Players that make the game what it will become.  To the Modders.... I say to you    Thank you  for without you we would have been bored to death.

         I have lived in many places in my life, one thing I know for sure, a City starts very very small. I remember a time when you had to drive  from Dallas to fort Worth, now you cross a street.  Perhaps a Region can be as a County? City bounderies would grow out as the population increased, with a merge city prompt.   The city I live in now is Phoenix AZ.    Where I used to hunt quail is now tract homes, and so life goes on and Cities grow, They don't stay a constant size and zones do change, Mass transit  buses do travel on all avenues. And the Stage coach is replaced by the airplane.    What I think we yearn for is a bit of realizm.   Do people really stay at home if work is 15 miles away?  Not if ya want to eat ya don't.   Tax credit for taking rapid transit  might be  the ticket to lower traffic.    Yes a grocery Store in the Nieghborhood is a good idea.

      In a planning mode maps should show as a topo map  so elevations are revealed, perhaps also to terrace area's a selection could be made for  X  elevation change +/-.      And thank you to who ever it was that made those angled walls.

          Well here's to all our hopes that they get smart and read all of the input from everyone.

[sanantonio 0]

As to war - war is a part of human nature.  As cities and countries develop, the want/need to expand is inherent.  I'm not saying war is a good thing, I believe exactly the opposite, but war and city destruction can be a means of peace and city flourishing.  Look at Rotterdam, Netherlands.  The city was almost completely destroyed after the second world war.  Since then, a huge revitalization has taken place and the city is prospering. 

Rotterdam coat of arms:

"Stronger through struggle"

[sendarrow 3]

As to war - war is a part of human nature. I agree with you, but human nature on a pre-historic level. Nowdays, it's stupid the thinking that ppl are still killing each other. We have advance tech, but can't get along with each other. In the best-scenerio world, the conflicts will be resolve via diplomatic way, not killing ppl like in the middle ages. Anyway, SimCity should be a peace oriented game, and I would even propose to get rid of the military base that SC4 currently features. Love you all.

[sendarrow 3]

Sorry again.

[sendarrow 3]

Can an admin erase these 3 post of mine?

[sendarrow 3]

Sorry for the 2 post. mea culpa.

[rctshack 182]

War is human, but so are a lot of other things that shouldn't be in the game. War is a country thing, not a city affair. Yes cities have been destroyed by war, but i think that would be a terrible thing to implement in this game, especially since they would have to explain why and then you would have to create armed forces and so one, just play civilization if you want war, or about 20 million other war games out there. The two reason I love sim city are: 1) No shooting up people, and 2) It's a never ending game. There is no end, and it can last as long as I want it to.

They have the correct gameplay and concept, they just need to implement more realism.

I would also like to see a few future techs added. Things that are being researched now. Faster trains, maglevs, alternatives to everything i guess. I feel like it is a game stuck in the 70's.

[KeanoManu 42]

If i writes down a big list of suggestions and ideas that may be considered as being in a new Sim City, is there a way to get the developers to read it or something like that. Do they maybe read this thread? Have some ideas but i'm not sure if i will write them down if it never has a chance to be considered into the game. Maybe Simtropolis will do a list of the best ideas from people and send to Maxis later? And this is the right thread for this? Really want to play a city building game but i feels that SC4 is incomplete, wants new addons, not just buildings.. And all other city-building games are crap.

[kibblewitbit 0]

i have a small sugestion about the game clock its pretty screwed up, the sun rises at 3 am, like come on i go to bed at 3 am, in sc5 they gotta change that, like where does sc4 take place, antarctica.

[kibblewitbit 0]

another sugestion would be to have more religious monuments as landmarks, in many cities the most recognisable landmarks are churches, cathedrals, sinagogues, temples, you know what i mean, it might be a political corectness isue but i think maxis should add some more of these buildings to the game

[MartyMcFly 0]

My one and only wish for SC5 is that it Not be such a resource hog and run properly on a large amount of computers.  Maybe make it for the 360.  You can still get online and get updates from modders.  Please make it run correctly.