Future of SimCity Official Discussion Thread

[hawkpride147 1]

there we go! thats an idea! expert and beginner modes. many games have them why not SC5?

[KeanoManu 42]

One more thing they must fixed and where almost ALL city-builders fail is waterfronts. It's impossible to build realistic waterfronts. Why not make it like pedestrian plazas but as roads. You build it in the same way as roads and it can be placed both on land and on water (but only out to a certain depth). In that way, you can build the waterfront just as you want.

One thing that's here on Simtropolis but that also can be in the game (expert-mode) may be to manage sport-leagues..?

It would be damn nice to for example being able to name teams for the stadiums you build, and when you have a few, you may being able to start a league for it. And here they should need either a great depth from the beginning or let us create sports so that we can cover many different sports in our city.

Well, many of my ideas are just how i want it. Of course it will not be so but look more at the main idea and see the other things as a little deeper suggestions.

[gradonacelnik 0]

ECONOMICS 101: A PENNY FOR YOUR LOT

There is no incentive to produce a product that consumers will use to produce and distribute content that they can't charge for. We are not dealing with an independent MAXIS that can do as Will Wright pleases, thedevelopers are beholding to EA and the EA stockholders.

Will Wright was being very polite about the change of paths. Verison 5 (doubt they will call it that) will be simple, pretty and chock full of extra content that you can only purchase from EA, they might let you personlize it but your changes can't be shared with others. It will probably have more integration with other SIM products so that if you want to do more with it you have to go out and get SimLife or some other SimThing.

The Simtropolis Exchange has had millions of downloads of user created content. EA didn't make a dime off any of it.

Some upper level manager must be kicking some poor coder from one end of the office to the other for missing the chance to make an non-stop residual income. If they only could have charged $0.01 for each lot download they would be in hog heaven.

I suggest everyone not get their hopes up too high to be smashed down by economic reality. We would be better off making a giant slush fund and offer it to EA as a reward to release the source code for SC4 to the public.

[Mr. Beer 12]

KeanoManu: I agree with you! I'm often disapointed by the poor realism of waterfront...A water tool is needed!

[mustafabb 0]

While there are many very good Lot/Bat Plops, using them is detrimental to the cities as they don't work as they should.

[outriderdriver 4]

Spaceports, for travel to other cities. Mostly for high wealth Sims. How about an expansion pack for the whole thing?! Yeah that would make sense........but no

[outriderdriver 4]

Well Gradonacelnik, why SHOULD EA get anything? they didnt do any more work on the game. they let it die and we helped it to live. The next simcity will not be pleasing at all.

[aking88 7]

Originally posted by: MegaBITE Sorry if this has been posted here already...  According to Wikipedia, Will Wright has indicated that Maxis intends to take Sim City in a "new direction" after new versions had become "steadily more complex".

He was quoted as saying, "SimCity kind of worked itself into a corner, (because) we were still appealing to this core SimCity group. It had gotten a little complicated for people who had never played SimCity. We want to take it back to its roots where somebody who had never heard of SimCity can pick it up and enjoy playing it without thinking it was really, really hard."

The article can be found at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sim_city_4#Future_updates

Based on this, I think the next Sim City will be much more simplified and streamlined, and will probably have less options to control different things in the game.  Everyone's been talking about all kinds of new features they expect in SC5, but judging by Will Wright's comments above, I think we will all be very disappointed.

I was really crushed when I first saw those comments... I hope the people at Maxis have had a change of heart since these comments were made in May 2004.quote>

Im sure they want to satisfy old fans as well as new ones so that all playerstyles can play the game. Of course they want to attract people not so into the game. If they just wanted to evolve the game they could alternatively release another expansion to SC4, but EA wants to make money and a completely new game appeals to a wider market.

Anyhow im sure SC5 can get really good.

_________________

Agree with outriderdriver, where's the logic in EA making money of a fancommunitys work?

[KeanoManu 42]

Spaceports?

Is that possible in real life? Don't think so..

[stardust_sam 0]

-The possibillity of terraform flowing rivers which flow REALLY downhill would be one big thing. (like it was possible long long time ago....)

-Being able to build an hydro power plant would be nice as well. (There must be a way to let ships pass (watergates))

-Diagonal bridges/tunnels

-tunnels as alternative for bridges (free to choose)

-one airport for one region

-mining resources for your industry or your plants would be nice

-the possibility to trade with other cities

-WHEN they want to restyle the gameplay to make it easier for beginners, please give oldies a chance to choose (easy/hard like discribed above!)

-There should be a way to cross valleys with a bridge even there is no river. BUT roads/rails (what else...) have to be able to pass underneath.

Hmm, well, thats all for the moment...

Excuse my language, but I guess u understand what I want to say...

And last one big wish: Hey you (at EA) pleeeeeeease give us some information about SC5. It's so hard to wait... ;-)

[stardust_sam 0]

hmm yea scenarios would also be a nice reborn feature

[rctshack 182]

With the economy 101 thing, yes i am sure they could have milked that for all it's wroth but in the scheme of things... they still can... but don't. Think about it... how many things do we talk about wanting fixed on a daily basis? Better land water, hydro plans, bigger roads and highways, better waterfronts, better tourism, and a lot more. Maxis STILL has the chance to make money if they desired by making a new expansion that you have to download online. You would still pay but they would have no packaging or shipping costs so it would be only the cost of the designers and that's it.

Truthfully Maxis could stil make a lot of money off this game if they wanted but they gave up on version 4 and that's why we have to make our own crap. No one is getting their butt kicked because it seems no one even cares. Take the Sims for example... users create their own content all day... their are sites pretty much dedicated to only making custom content, yet they still release expansions and make tons of money.

In the end, a computer gaming company dreams of what is happening, because Maxis knows that they could never come up with everything we want in the game. They do know however if we are able to take it into our own hands that we can please ourselves and the blame of the lack of content is taken away from Maxis. Does this make sense? If it wasn't for sites like this giving away free downloads for the game, Sim City 4 would be dead and there would be no talk of sim city 5 because it would have been WAY too long since anyone gave effort to care.

It's not too late to release another expansion to please some of the hardcore fans. Especially if it's going to be a couple years till the new game comes out.

[KeanoManu 42]

http://www.simcitycentral.net/2007/02/16/simcity-5-this-year/

Well, we can at least hope so but i doubt.

Anyway, It would be damn nice if we could have much more different road types. Roads in a metropolis usually have more than 1 lane each way. Unfortunately that's not possible in SC4. They should also give us the possibility to add as many different road types that we want without replacing any of the existing ones.

How do you people think about expanding the game so that you build a country?

So that you can build more cities in regionview. Maybe have three stages: Country --> Region --> City.

However, it would be cool to draw the borders more free. I don't want my cities and regions (and possible country) to be a square.

It's fun to read other peoples ideas on how EA can improve the next SC, would be nice if more people gave their opinion

[rekrab 0]

Can anyone point me to where this info on a SimCity "5" people are mentioning is coming from? I have only seen 2 places even hint at at, one saying "A future SimCity release" which could be anything... (I assumed that they meant Japan's release of SimCity DS, the Nintendo DS release of SC3000), and the other site is a Russian software news site that has a lists of all new games expected to be released in the near future, it shows SC5 as being released this year (as well as many other games that I am skeptical about the validity of). Neither of these really makes me think SC5 is coming at all, much less soon, especially since Maxis/EA is doing nothing to create a pre-market buzz for the product. Does anyone have anything more concrete? I went through this thread for a while, but couldn't find a link to anything more significant. Thanks.

[hawkpride147 1]

what do you call this? this is premarket buzz. maxis knows they don't have to create it. they know we'll do it for them (which we are without meaning to).

[mittfh 7]

A simple water flow model would be nice - also, the water table could be set as x metres below ground at time of incorporation - so, if you dig underwater tunnels, you'll need to install a pump lot to pump all the water out. Woe betide you if you allow the pumps power to fail! You could also learn the hard way why it's not a good idea to develop in a river's flood plain...

Pathfinding: as well as the commuters / workers paths, it would be nice to have a visitors / tourists set of paths, generated on-the-fly when you query a CS building. Show paths for seafreight as well.

Public transport: Allow road-top mass transit stops. Tweak the design rules so that you can build next door to one of these, but you can't place a driveway (for fairly obvious reasons). It would be nice to be able to upgrade mass transit stops if they go over capacity, rather than ignoring it, adding additional mass transit networks, or demolishing half your high-rises in order to squeeze in another monorail line.

UDI / disasters etc.: How about having a special 'real-time' mode. In this mode, you wouldn't be able to develop your city or tweak your finances, but as the simulator wouldn't be worrying about these, it could devote time to generating more realistic automata paths - you could even select a car / truck, and observe its route, or hover outside a school and watch the chaos twice a day as parents drive up, park everywhere, and drop off their children.

Zones of Effectiveness: at the moment, the 'effective zones' for schools, hospitals, emergency services etc. are a fixed radius from the building. Particularly for schools and hospitals, it would be more realistic to vary the radius according to the density of the surrounding buildings - evidently a school in a high density residential area will have a much smaller catchment area than one in the middle of a farm.

Multi-level transit networks - including the ability to drag transit lines under bridges. It would be handy to be able to designate the remaining under-bridge space as parkland, or allow small low-density development underneath.

[aking88 7]

Look at the two new techtrailers (tramway and hillsidemansion):

http://www.gametrailers.com/gamepage.php?id=2509

What about using cryengine for Simcity 5?

[KeanoManu 42]

aking88: That looks very nice but i doubt it can be used in SC5. Graphics like that would demand a very powerful computer and SC isn't a graphical game. I've seen too many games become ruined just because they put to much energy at the graphics instead of the actual game. I hope they won't focus so much on the graphical part and add more cool features instead. Tourism, more options (especially mass-transit/roads) tunnels/bridge, better regions and so on.

[aking88 7]

Sometimes better graphicstechnology is essential to enable new functions in gameplay.

BTW... Alla e gaisare innerst inne

[wavesporter 0]

What about a decent university? it should be a seperate zone. and should spawn campuses and clases depending on how well you fund it/ how good your city is. and bring in thousands of students who fuel your night life.

[Camaron 1]

It has probably already been mentioned, but I would like to see random disaster events return to the game in its fullest. SimCity 4 only has random disasters that can be prevented by the mayor and are minor, such as fire and water pipe burst. Major disasters such as earthquakes and tornado's you currently have to create yourself, it would put more fun into the game if you had these happen at random as well. Then, other features such as the city wide emergency alarm could also make a return. On the side note, the "switch random disasters to off" button would also need to come back, so people that do not like random disasters can play the game without them. 

[mittfh 7]

A few more ideas:

Individually naming every street/road/highway is possible, but completely unfeasible for most players. How about the option to name an estate, and let the game name the roads, based on lists of 'themes' (e.g. birds, authors, musicians, or numbers). Or even name prominent geographical features, and let the game name estates based on them.

One way of reducing menu clutter with several different types of roads would be to have all streets/roads that occupy the same tilewidth available under the same button. Placing the street/road would initially place the lowest capacity option, but through relaying the road (perhaps with a modifier key) the road would be upgraded to the next in sequence. If you were lazy, you could ask your advisors to do it for you (after asking permission to go ahead with the likely cost).

Speaking of which, that's one way the game could be made simpler for novices: have the option of allowing your advisors to make some budgetary decisions for you (e.g. automatically adjusting the maintenance cost of public buildings based upon the number of users, automatically replacing old power stations). Although it's nice to dabble in microeconomics, financial management has always been the toughest aspect of SimCity.

Submenus / context menus could also help, so if you wanted a large play area, you could drill down via public services --> parks --> playgrounds --> large (or parks --> large --> playground). That would help end the confusion of one menu item containing dozens of different structures.

It would be nice to have the option of gradual change when rezoning an area - so, instead of demolishing the existing building immediately, it would wait until the building fell into disrepair or became abandoned - similar to what happens when you rezone low density residential with medium/high density.

And finally, since it's likely SC5 will be targeted at Vista, it wouldn't be unreasonable to ask for 1GB RAM requirement (which would only negatively affect those running Home Basic - who are unlikely to want to play computer games anyway), which would allow for much smoother drawing of cities as you roam around (SC4 on 256MB RAM is pathetic - zoom out, and wait 30 seconds for your city to redraw).

[salim 0]

My suggesntions:

1- Economic re-estruturation of the game:

1.1- Tax for services, like energy, water,etc. i mean we could make the price of service, to a limit . $ 0,0 to for exemple $10.00.

1.2- exportation and importantion tax politic.

1.3- a Rich city could give some money to another city in a tax limitation: for exemple 0,5% a month to 20% a month depending of the agree of the two cities.

2- Re-estruturation of the education in the game.

2.-1- Primary school realy functions 0n children age.

2.2- secundary school realy funcions on tenn age.

2.3- univerity to young people realy.

3- re-estruturaton of the god play, more itens and possibilites to construc a region, like others says.

4- airports, ports, parks like zone sistem.

[KeanoManu 42]

Originally posted by: salim4- airports, ports, parks like zone sistem.quote>

 

Why not let us choose with everything?

Choose if we want to zon everything or zone nothing.. Or zone those things we want and then plop the rest. I want to plop everything in my cities (except suburbs).

Akin88: Vilka vann publikligan förra säsongen? Samma lag som kommer att vinna gulden den kommande.

[aking88 7]

KeanoManu:

Vilket lag har sveriges b

[salim 0]

I agree with you KeanoManu, it's a good idea, it will be agreable to everyone. A good idea, we could chose the way.

[SimCityFan452 0]

I agree with random disasters being back but before we start a city we should be shown a map of simnation and on the map there will be areas where sever and minor earthquakes, tornato's, and floods can occur and areas where one or two of these disasters cannot occur at all. We should of course still be able to terriform the land on the little portion of the nation we chose.

[rctshack 182]

That new graphics system looks cool, and while yes it would lag a computer, you don't have to use it to its fullest extent... and when we all seem to want more realistic cities... it seems like a great idea. It makes the game at least 5 times more realistic.

[KeanoManu 42]

"- Customisable lots in-game; Before plopping a lot you could have the option to choose the ground/base for the lot, the basesize and other customisable properties for some lots. The variety of content would be so much better, and when creating custom content you could be able to have different bases and lotsizes in one lot. "

Just one extra note: Let us plop more than one building with the same options so we don't have to do it once again for every building we plop, no-one will use it after a while then. Apart from that, a good idea

Aking88: Kvalité kostar Och Sveriges bästa tränarpar är Norling & Novakovic, det håller ju nästan till och med 90% av Gårdarna & Bajarna med om.

But i don't think we should talk in Swedish here, and not about football either

[Mr. Beer 12]

it would be great if Maxis will post here some picture and tell us some feedback... ;-) We can dream, no? =)