Too easy?

[simfanheatermayor 17]

Is this game too easy? I DO NOT play sandbox, at all. But everytime i play my single city has 100,000 residents, high education, full services and all. With half the map used, in year 2!! In year 3 i have it all, complete with landmarks, Nuclear, airport and so on.. And then i'm done, highly educated sims, around 200,000 residents, and over 80% approval rating. No room to expand. Then i discard the city and start over. This just happened today in 3 hours. Last time (yesterday) i had a bigger city, and it had it all! all aspects included. I'm getting bored

 

[MINIggy03 227]

Anyone will get burned out eventually with any game when you're doing the same thing over and over again.  Switch it up by making a city that's not what you would normally do.  Have you accomplished all the specializations? Great works? Tackling a region on your own?  I'd get burned out too if I started every city with the same end goal.  I have 5 cities in my region and each of them is completely different in class, specialization and density.  (i have a coal and oil drilling town where I'm gifting them to my city where the HQ's are. I HATE building those HQ's in mining towns!)

 

With relation to the game being easy, i think that has more to do with a non functioning global market.  Many of us are making way too much $$$ because there's no influence on the trade prices yet.  I do think happiness/mayor rating is too easy.  I would also like to see negative land value push higher land value away rather than the opposite.  It's strange that I can build middle/high class R next to factories as long as you push the negative land value back with parks/services.  I think it should work the other way around, negative land value should push positive land value away.  

[iceanimator 6]

Try and get to Maximun density?

[AshTym 31]

Getting to a population of 200,000 and "having it all" (as you say) is not really an achievement at all. The upcoming first official SimCity challenge is to reach a population of over 2,500,000 with an approval rating of over 90%. Once you're continually reaching that level of success, then you can start patting yourself on the back.

 

(Just for the record, I have absolutely no idea how I'd get to 2.5 million population either.)

[Vaikin 10]

Getting to a population of 200,000 and "having it all" (as you say) is not really an achievement at all. The upcoming first official SimCity challenge is to reach a population of over 2,500,000 with an approval rating of over 90%. Once you're continually reaching that level of success, then you can start patting yourself on the back.

 

(Just for the record, I have absolutely no idea how I'd get to 2.5 million population either.)

Unfortunately not, it's 2.5 million in a region.

[Griffon 19]

I think you can get at least 600k population in 1 city because that is required to fully upgrade the city hall, most of my cities have around 400k population in them and I've pretty much mastered all specializations except tourism, which I'm working on doing now, I've maxed out all HQs but gambling and even maxed out the university with between 300k and 400k in all my cities and usually 80% mayor rating too

 

I started the 3 city region and gonna build up an mining/oil city and an electronics city, build the international airport then build up the last city around tourism, I read purr's tourism guide  gonna try that strategy this time, if I understood it correctly, the secret is to get tourists in your city with your commercial buildings alone, then build up the casinos afterwards

 

but yes, for the most part I think the game is too easy

[AshTym 31]

Getting to a population of 200,000 and "having it all" (as you say) is not really an achievement at all. The upcoming first official SimCity challenge is to reach a population of over 2,500,000 with an approval rating of over 90%. Once you're continually reaching that level of success, then you can start patting yourself on the back.

 

(Just for the record, I have absolutely no idea how I'd get to 2.5 million population either.)

Unfortunately not, it's 2.5 million in a region.

 

 

In a region? Well that's not challenging at all! Though I was wondering how in hell you're supposed to pack 2.5m sims into 2sqkm.

[Killhipsters 0]

Maybe it's just getting a feel for the new Simcity and how it all works (not a Simcity 4 player) but I don't find it overly easy. Water table pollution, small city sizes to accommodate a growing residential, industrial, commercial and then on-top of that utilities and landmark buildings as well as infrastructure. I've got 3 cities going on at the moment, each a different specialisation with different goals. I've got a mining town, a gambling town and a green friendly town (Department of Utilities, solar power plants, wind farms, Nissan Leaf charging stations, great transport).

 

Change your goals, if you're trying to achieve the same thing repeatedly then you're going to get bored easily. We won't see a DLC pack for at least another 6 or so months.

[Griffon 19]

what other goals are there besides maxing out the specializations? since the last time I posted a topic here I've build 3 cities, 2 finished, a successful electronics city and a very successful mining/oil city that is 1/4 the way done building the international airport, I'll finish the tourism city after it's built and a lot of time I spent handling internet problems so I didn't even play for that full time between posts, my electronics city has 350k people but I neglected the residents population in the other city with barley 40k, but most of my workers are commuting in and since I placed 2 specializations in that city that is taking up most of the space as well as cliffs in that city, I also maxed out electronics, trade, metal, and oil HQs in that region and the university once again, I've also researched fast nuclear reactors (which is powering all 3 cities) and the hospital and police upgrades

 

I still think it is too easy, especially if you know what your doing

[jpsurratt2005 4]

(i have a coal and oil drilling town where I'm gifting them to my city where the HQ's are. I HATE building those HQ's in mining towns!)

What are you gifting to the HQ city? Confused...

[simfanheatermayor 17]

I tried 3 city region this easter, and they were all thriving. In so little time. I don't want my sims to be highly educated after 2 hours of gameplay. No crime, barely a few fires and so. The only thing that slows my cities down are those ANNOYING disasters. But this "easiness" could lead into something beautiful if the city maps would be bigger.   Bigger is better in this case, but i'd like to have suburbs etc, attached to the downtown. This region type : A city here and there is just unrealistic, boring and annoying.

[MINIggy03 227]

(i have a coal and oil drilling town where I'm gifting them to my city where the HQ's are. I HATE building those HQ's in mining towns!)

What are you gifting to the HQ city? Confused...

 

Haha, yea that could use more clarification.  I started with one mining town where I sucked the coal and ore dry to unlock the HQ's for mining/trade.  This was then converted into a city because I hated that the HQ's didn't fit in a mining town but I wanted to take advantage of their specialization.  So I started two new mining towns; one ore and one coal. I stock piled it all, having 6 trade depots storing it and then gifting it to my HQ city.  That way I can keep the integrity of a mining town and make use of the HQ's elsewhere withing a city.

Yeah a little crazy, haha.

[jpsurratt2005 4]

Where is it stored when you gift it? Does the recipient have to build all the storage?

[HugeF1 0]

I tried 3 city region this easter, and they were all thriving. In so little time. I don't want my sims to be highly educated after 2 hours of gameplay. No crime, barely a few fires and so. The only thing that slows my cities down are those ANNOYING disasters. But this "easiness" could lead into something beautiful if the city maps would be bigger.   Bigger is better in this case, but i'd like to have suburbs etc, attached to the downtown. This region type : A city here and there is just unrealistic, boring and annoying.

There is an entire pinned topic for this whining. Stick this kind of junk in there.

 

If the game is too easy, I suggest you're not trying to achive very much.

[Griffon 19]

If the game is too easy, I suggest you're not trying to achive very much.

so what should we try to achieve? collect every single game achievement? on ever server? (since they don't carry over)

[CaribbeanSail 33]

If the game is too easy, I suggest you're not trying to achive very much.

so what should we try to achieve? collect every single game achievement? on ever server? (since they don't carry over)

 

Have you managed to max out the mayors mansion (not in sandbox of course)?  I have made many cities and consider myself a pretty skilled player at this point, but I havnt managed to keep my citizens happy enough in any city I have tried.

 

SimCity is a toy, not a game.  Its not meant to be "won", so saying its too easy does not make sense to me.  SC4 didnt have acheivements, thats EA/Maxis grasping at the whole online thing which seems obsessed with acheivements these days.  In every SC release I have always played aiming for my own goals, since there is no "win".

 

There are many styles of play and always have been in every SC. 

 

Some people go for visually pleasing and interesting cities, caring little about mechanics behind SC, this is where SC4 and mods thrived.  But given your idea that SC13 is "too easy", this obviously isnt your route, as that play style is about being artistic, not beating something.  (though personally I think this is the hardest, because I have never made beautiful cities, even if I made awesome utopias from a mechnics view in every iteration of SC).

 

For others its all about packing as many sims per inch as possible and making it work.  Let me stress, making it work, I dont mean making one of those all residential cities with no services that implodes on itsself as soon as you unpause it.

 

Another style would be going for perfect balance, make all the sims as happy as possible in a reasonable sized city.  This is my playstyle, and probably the most common.  An upgraded mayors mansion is a good test for how well you have done on this.  To date I have yet to see a single person, anywhere, manage to get a fully upgraded mansion other then sandbox mode.  Too easy? No one has "beat the game" yet.

 

But yeah, if you think making millions of simoleons means you "won", because you made processors or TVs, yeah, the game is easy.  But thats never been what SC is about, staying in the green is easy, keeping the citizens happy is not, no matter how rich you are.

 

SC13 is limited in a lot of ways, its buggy, it isnt what most of us wanted.  But it is not, in any way, too easy.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

I dunno about you guys, but what I like about SC4 and have always liked about SimCity is the freedom to create anything from a rural hamlet through a mountain town or a harbour city to a thriving metropolis, all with some kind of challenge.

 

For example, in SC4 I might actually have budget problems when I need to build another large hospital, even if I don't have it all (no college, no university, no zoo, no marina, no large museum, fewer police and fire departments than I'd like...). In the long run, it all works, but sometimes I'll have to go through tight spots. Or some bar will be stuck in the middle, and trying to get it further towards the green might not be all that easy. If it's health or education, it might take quite a while, too.

 

Now I haven't played SC2013 yet, but as far as I understood the original poster, it's precisely this aspect of challenge that he finds lacking, and I personally think that stubbornly going for max population or fully maxed mayor mansion means narrowing down the game to a pretty one-dimensional affair - which is precisely what SimCity traditionally has NOT been. It has always been very multi-faceted and flexible. Wouldn't it be better if - no matter what you want to achieve with your city - there was some fair challenge involved?

 

Wouldn't it be better if making a small town run fine would be almost as challenging as reaching a certain population figure? Sure, you have less infrastructure to take care of in a smaller town, but you also have fewer tax payers, lower density (= longer commute paths), and public transportation may be costly because it's below the "critical mass" of commuters to get it past the break-even point. In short, there should also be some challenge.

 

I repeat, I cannot judge SC2013 in that respect, but what I gathered from simfanheatermayor's thread opening post seems to suggest that he finds the game lacking in this respect, and if what he writes is true, I tend to agree with him. I wouldn't like it, either, if I could achieve so much so quickly and easily in SC4.

[Griffon 19]

 

If the game is too easy, I suggest you're not trying to achive very much.

so what should we try to achieve? collect every single game achievement? on ever server? (since they don't carry over)

 

Have you managed to max out the mayors mansion (not in sandbox of course)?  I have made many cities and consider myself a pretty skilled player at this point, but I havnt managed to keep my citizens happy enough in any city I have tried.

 

SimCity is a toy, not a game.  Its not meant to be "won", so saying its too easy does not make sense to me.  SC4 didnt have acheivements, thats EA/Maxis grasping at the whole online thing which seems obsessed with acheivements these days.  In every SC release I have always played aiming for my own goals, since there is no "win".

 

There are many styles of play and always have been in every SC. 

 

Some people go for visually pleasing and interesting cities, caring little about mechanics behind SC, this is where SC4 and mods thrived.  But given your idea that SC13 is "too easy", this obviously isnt your route, as that play style is about being artistic, not beating something.  (though personally I think this is the hardest, because I have never made beautiful cities, even if I made awesome utopias from a mechnics view in every iteration of SC).

 

For others its all about packing as many sims per inch as possible and making it work.  Let me stress, making it work, I dont mean making one of those all residential cities with no services that implodes on itsself as soon as you unpause it.

 

Another style would be going for perfect balance, make all the sims as happy as possible in a reasonable sized city.  This is my playstyle, and probably the most common.  An upgraded mayors mansion is a good test for how well you have done on this.  To date I have yet to see a single person, anywhere, manage to get a fully upgraded mansion other then sandbox mode.  Too easy? No one has "beat the game" yet.

 

But yeah, if you think making millions of simoleons means you "won", because you made processors or TVs, yeah, the game is easy.  But thats never been what SC is about, staying in the green is easy, keeping the citizens happy is not, no matter how rich you are.

 

SC13 is limited in a lot of ways, its buggy, it isnt what most of us wanted.  But it is not, in any way, too easy.

your probably right, I'm one of those players that like to maximize population and money, btw I've maxed the mayor mansion upgrades up to the 85% mayor rating before, so that is all but the last 90% mayor rating and no that was not in sandbox mode, actually the happiness increase from each upgrade helped me get the next level faster, as well as the nissan leaf charging stations (I should also tell you I had around 80k people in that city too) and as far as I'm concerned achievements don't really mean much

[HugeF1 0]

If the game is too easy, I suggest you're not trying to achive very much.

so what should we try to achieve? collect every single game achievement? on ever server? (since they don't carry over)

If you like. But I'm talking about actual achievements in the game. Like fully upgrading the City Hall AND the Mansion. Or have 100% educated sims in a large city (200k+) etc. Use your imagination.

 

There is no "end" to a game like this.

[Grimhood 1]

If the game is too easy, I suggest you're not trying to achive very much.

so what should we try to achieve? collect every single game achievement? on ever server? (since they don't carry over)

Have you managed to max out the mayors mansion (not in sandbox of course)? I have made many cities and consider myself a pretty skilled player at this point, but I havnt managed to keep my citizens happy enough in any city I have tried.

SimCity is a toy, not a game. Its not meant to be "won", so saying its too easy does not make sense to me. SC4 didnt have acheivements, thats EA/Maxis grasping at the whole online thing which seems obsessed with acheivements these days. In every SC release I have always played aiming for my own goals, since there is no "win".

There are many styles of play and always have been in every SC.

Some people go for visually pleasing and interesting cities, caring little about mechanics behind SC, this is where SC4 and mods thrived. But given your idea that SC13 is "too easy", this obviously isnt your route, as that play style is about being artistic, not beating something. (though personally I think this is the hardest, because I have never made beautiful cities, even if I made awesome utopias from a mechnics view in every iteration of SC).

For others its all about packing as many sims per inch as possible and making it work. Let me stress, making it work, I dont mean making one of those all residential cities with no services that implodes on itsself as soon as you unpause it.

Another style would be going for perfect balance, make all the sims as happy as possible in a reasonable sized city. This is my playstyle, and probably the most common. An upgraded mayors mansion is a good test for how well you have done on this. To date I have yet to see a single person, anywhere, manage to get a fully upgraded mansion other then sandbox mode. Too easy? No one has "beat the game" yet.

But yeah, if you think making millions of simoleons means you "won", because you made processors or TVs, yeah, the game is easy. But thats never been what SC is about, staying in the green is easy, keeping the citizens happy is not, no matter how rich you are.

SC13 is limited in a lot of ways, its buggy, it isnt what most of us wanted. But it is not, in any way, too easy.

I have a fully upgraded mayor's mansion. It's relatively easy, lol. Get a pretty good happiness rating, say in the 80's, and then about once every hour or so, bulldoze any building that's unhappy. This is not a very satisfying achievement, though! Getting it by actually generating happiness sounds like a good challenge.

[Board_Marshal 104]

My opinion would require too many qualifiers which would ultimately result in a TL;DR post.  My desire for a game which is easy to learn, difficult to master is always at odds with my desire to play games which are tremendously complex to learn and just as difficult to master.   With that said, for me right now the game is readily classified as easy to learn, nothing to master.  There are a variety of things to do which keeps me occupied but it comes across as mostly whack-a-mole-esque play gaming.  

 

As a creative outlet I am enjoying it immensely.

[Cob92 360]

 

 

If the game is too easy, I suggest you're not trying to achive very much.

so what should we try to achieve? collect every single game achievement? on ever server? (since they don't carry over)

If you like. But I'm talking about actual achievements in the game. Like fully upgrading the City Hall AND the Mansion. Or have 100% educated sims in a large city (200k+) etc. Use your imagination.

 

There is no "end" to a game like this.

 

 

Yeah, getting a giant city that excels in every area is quite difficult. That means every trash can and recycling bin picked up every day, every student enrolled in school, no deaths, no crime dens, no buildings burning down, no traffic jams, no unemployment or unsatisfied shoppers, and balanced budget. Gets tougher the more areas you try to tackle simultaneously.

[Grimhood 1]

In this game you really need to dream up the possibilities and set your own goals. Another game i enjoyed, EVE Online, was like that too. Once you get past the tutorial it's wide open. You have to identify a challenge and then try to do it.

Personally I'd like to make a green city of 100k with a balanced budget. Not sure how ill measure "green" though...

[5uper_Mania 6]

Great Works, I believe, is the developer's device to extending gameplay.

[Griffon 19]

In this game you really need to dream up the possibilities and set your own goals. Another game i enjoyed, EVE Online, was like that too. Once you get past the tutorial it's wide open. You have to identify a challenge and then try to do it.

Personally I'd like to make a green city of 100k with a balanced budget. Not sure how ill measure "green" though...

have absolutely no polluting buildings in your city, including sewage, you'd almost need another city nearby supplying it, but that would be interesting to try, one thing you could do is only use solar or wind (they're considered green power), but you'd defiantly need another city to take all your garbage away and I'd think placing a recycling center in that city would be acceptable since recycling is considered green, I'll try this too with my next city I start, good idea!

[Grimhood 1]

Yeah that's what I was thinking. High tech industry very quickly, clean power, and cleanest options available for everything else. Using another city for garbage feels like cheating to me haha. The dump doesn't cause pollution if you don't incinerate it or bulldoze it.