Looks like the Crown has been passed....

[ghosty20 150]

@ghosty

 

I didn´t say I detest Cities:Skylines. During those 10 days of playing I had fun growing a city (80k citizens, not much I know), but that "been here, done this" feeling started to take over (I played Simcity4 for MANY years). The road configuration is no challenge to me because I learned from Simcity 5 some good lessons (and with all mod tools available, those from CSL are not new). You mentioned: "You do know that pretty much all city building games are like that, in once you stop zoning your cities population stops growing." That is not true, not even in Simcity4 - even if you zoned high density lots, if demand wasn´t enough you would problably get a small residence wich would grow in height and residents (the same happens in Simcity5). In CSL if you zone high density it will instantly grow a building no matter what you have on your RCI bars. Oh, and these RCI bars? Imagine you have them low for R+C+I you just force zoning industry or comercial lots to push residential demand up - THAT IS UBBER FAKE.

 

When city starts growing and zones starts shifting (Industry to perimeter, next to a coastline, freight boats etc..) I found that despite having a direct train route from a residential district (high density) they just didn´t go there and Industry starts complaining about lack of workers - on simcity 5 I have a 160k (I know it´s a fake number) residential hub WITHOUT a single C or I providing almost 10k workers to another city. The lack of neighbooring plots in CSL region makes the game shallow - like aable said, "it feels you are abandoning your previous city". It would be great if you could build a neighboor city connected to the same regional freeway, sharing workers, shoppers, tourists and freight (and you can actually do that in SimCity5).

 

That residential district I mentioned, was supposed to be "uneducated" because forest industry use a lot of those. It was waaaay apart from the "main" city (where primary, high schools and University were placed) and they still had acess to education (strangely enough without any education "green line" reaching that district).

 

In my opinion it is easier to a game like Skylines be almost bug free from day 1 because there are not many moving parts under the bonnet. Simcity5 is a groundbreaking game model (maybe still a prototype) but so many people failed to realize that - sometimes great projects need to be sold half baked to allow further development (I want to believe we are going to ear more from Maxis in the future).

Ahh k, I think I understand now what you meant, just me being a white knight as hoping this game succeeds where in some respects SC2013 didn't.. And shows how long I have played SC4.. lol  Been a long time since I played it mainly because my system don't like it and the issue with mods and hassle finding the dependancies for some of them..  Maybe they might bring in some form of regioning like SC4 and Sc2013 who knows since they do listen to the players they could be working on something like that..  And well if what is on the front page is correct the Maxis we knew is no more and well since we know EA's track record I don't expect much good stuff to come from them..

 

 

 

Why do I only read "the roads are great; "the intersection are wonderfull" "the roads the roads the roads". Ghosty20 mentioned the homeless attack - I start suspecting that you didn´t quite tamed Simcity5! It seems you quit playing Simcity5 waaaay before all patches and mods.

 

I have not played SC2013 in a long time and I never bought the Cities of Tomorrow expansion either.. One day I might go back to SC2013 but while I have the CSL to play then it will be longer..  And interestingly the person who wrote the article on the main page here about the closure of Maxis by EA suggests that SC2013 might have been the reason EA shut down the Maxis Emeryville Studio.

[Dazzyls 576]

 

Imagine a mod in CS where the player can build custom rollercoasters, some nut will probably do this messing around with the road options. Rollercoaster Tycoon and Simcity coming together. Game over man! Game over!

It would be cool to have a mod with which you can export rollercoasters from RCT3 and import them in CSL. And maybe whole theme parks!

[Agente Silva 28]

From the few, almost nothing I read about that Maxis shutdown thing, I think it was only one studio at Emeryville. I don´t usually "beat the giant" for no reason. Every publisher had to shift their attitude because the gaming market as changed a lot on the last decade (more like the last 5 years maybe). Damn, even Ubisoft wich was one of the most respect publishers had to sacrifice their quality in order to keep up with market and marketing - Electronic Arts has a great contribute for gaming and gamers for a long time now, we shouldn´t forget that (I´m from FIFA Soccer generation - 1994 and Desert Stike, Jungle Strike and so on )

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

Damn, even Ubisoft wich was one of the most respect publishers had to sacrifice their quality in order to keep up with market and marketing

And you think that's a good thing?? To each there own. If you love EA and SC2013, that's just how you feel and no one can be mad at you. But to say sacrificing quality for marketing at the expense of the player's experience is ok, I have to disagree. C:S is a hit because it caters to the city builder fan base in a way no other game did since SC4.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

 

Damn, even Ubisoft wich was one of the most respect publishers had to sacrifice their quality in order to keep up with market and marketing

And you think that's a good thing?? To each there own. If you love EA and SC2013, that's just how you feel and no one can be mad at you. But to say sacrificing quality for marketing at the expense of the player's experience is ok, I have to disagree. C:S is a hit because it caters to the city builder fan base in a way no other game did since SC4.

 

 

100% agreeing with you. Sacrificing quality is and always will be BAD! 

[Agente Silva 28]

Once again... did I say sacrificing quality is a good thing?!! For the love of da lord guys.... I´m trying to induce some good sense here and not taking the small for the whole. I´m assuming we have a minimum degree of maturness enough to realize that pontual beahviours are not representative of the whole. For every action there´s a reaction... if publishers today are behaving bad gamers will react (negatively). I´m sure you never failed in life and so forgiveness or second chances are not in your book! Maybe you´re too young to remember where EA or Ubisoft came from...

[Mystrelia 57]

Maybe we shouldn't drag this thread off into EA's problems.

 

I had a love/hate relationship with the regional play in SC4. I loved that I could have all these cities connected, little garbage dump towns here and there, a "city" that focused on ag, etc. but the one thing I never liked about it was that there I'd be all caught up in working on the project I wanted to work on for that play time and all of a sudden demand would plummet and I'd have to go off to another city and spend hours on end getting it all up and running in order to go back to work on what I wanted to be doing.

 

Which one of you brought up how the education (and other services) system in Cities: Skylines work? I find that after years of reading complaints about buildings with perfect radius coverage in SC4 that anyone would complain about this. The green coverage area of these buildings affect one thing: citizen happiness, which in turn affects their property values. It's pretty much like real life. The more niceties an area of a city has the happier the citizens are to live in it which results in property values going up. I certainly have no idea how many here may've lived in a rural area and had to go to a school that was miles from their home but that's how real schools work. I went to elementary school in a district that was comprised of a couple of small towns and one larger. Each town had its own elementary but there was only one junior high and one high school and all the kids from all over the district were bussed to those two main schools. CS, in my opinion, is a much more realistic model for education than SimCity ever was. In order to keep some uneducated workforce you have to have more possible students than schools, and even though it won't be their top preference (they will fill jobs requiring educated Cims first) educated Cims will work in lower-level jobs.

[chocolate_city 93]

 

 

I'm sorry but no... SC2013 was dead from the start when we learned about the map size. It only went downhill from there.

 

 

But for many players it did become the replacement, even if it was only by virtue of the SimCity moniker.

 

As I alluded, SC4 was a broken game upon release as well and was somewhat widely panned in reviews (though not nearly to the degree of SC13).  It is definitely a great example of something that only gets better with age.  I remember initially being excited about the simple things such as how every house now has road access (!) as I always disliked the 3-deep housing in 2k and 3k.  Soon after, though, the novelty wore off and the game was too difficult to be fun - but not in a challenge sort of way; rather a broken sort of way.  The saviors were Rush Hour and the brilliant minds in that modding community who commandeered the game.

 

CSL is free of those particular issues, thankfully (not to say it couldn't use some help), but to say it has taken the crown is a bit premature.

 

I think for the most part... Those that played SC2013 played it because the were stuck with it, there's not enough polish in the world the make that turd shine.. Look at how much Simtropolis has embraced CS.  I really want to see how this much this game will have progressed by this time next year...

[thenext88 102]

 

 

Imagine a mod in CS where the player can build custom rollercoasters, some nut will probably do this messing around with the road options. Rollercoaster Tycoon and Simcity coming together. Game over man! Game over!

It would be cool to have a mod with which you can export rollercoasters from RCT3 and import them in CSL. And maybe whole theme parks!

 

 

I would love to see RCT implemented into this game somehow. Reserve a large plot of land for a park (like the square plot in RCT3). Slow down the day cycle when in "amusement park mode" and just give its own unique simulation that operates within the larger one of CS. Then the profits (or losses) of the park could directly factor into the city budget. Replay value would double for me because I could see myself spending an equal amount of time building an amusement park as the entire city.

 

Combine that with an increase from 25x25 tiles to some absurd amount (really give this game good multicore support for that many tiles, or maybe "turn off" neighboring regions like SC4 and only run one 25x25 one at a time), max lot sizes to 8x8, and we've got a game that will easily double the life time of SC4 imo.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

Combine that with an increase from 25x25 tiles to some absurd amount (really give this game good multicore support for that many tiles, or maybe "turn off" neighboring regions like SC4 and only run one 25x25 one at a time), max lot sizes to 8x8, and we've got a game that will easily double the life time of SC4 imo.

 

 

I've already heard that some folks would try to unlock the whole map size, means 9x9 tiles... 81 of them... not bad

[thenext88 102]

I don't know why I said 25x25. But going from 25 to 81 would be nice! I also think it would be even better if we could have extremely large maps that let you select any arrangement of 81 tiles. Many tiles cannot be used due to water, or mountain terrain that cannot be built upon. But if you could select 81 tiles that connecting around mountains of islands, you could come up with insanely large "effective" (I can't think of a better word) area for building.

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

 Many tiles cannot be used due to water, or mountain terrain that cannot be built upon.

You can use the in game terrain tools for those situations.

[Mayor of Tempest Lake 34]

Currently clocked in at 140 hours for C:S..

 

Maybe, maybe not. While C:S surpassed SC4 in mostly everything in terms of the interface, performance, "the feel", it is still morbidly lacking in the sheer scale that SC4 provides. I pretty much have to stop expanding at ~230K because I've reached the maximum amount of utilities and services allowed on the map, and I've not even reached borders on all sides of the 5x5 plot; while my largest city in SC4 is 24kmx24km (144 C:S tiles)

 

However, that said, both games provide me with the feeling that I am building cities, instead of administrating some kind of weird engineering experiment involving Sims on an acreage.

[wallacet 336]

Currently clocked in at 140 hours for C:S..

 

Maybe, maybe not. While C:S surpassed SC4 in mostly everything in terms of the interface, performance, "the feel", it is still morbidly lacking in the sheer scale that SC4 provides. I pretty much have to stop expanding at ~230K because I've reached the maximum amount of utilities and services allowed on the map, and I've not even reached borders on all sides of the 5x5 plot; while my largest city in SC4 is 24kmx24km (144 C:S tiles)

 

However, that said, both games provide me with the feeling that I am building cities, instead of administrating some kind of weird engineering experiment involving Sims on an acreage.

 

And C:S won't reach that scale (144 tiles). It can't. There's no "edge" to your cities in C:S, where once you fill up a tile, you quit that tile and load another one. SC4 has the advantage of only having to simulate one tile at a time. Imagine the flames that would be coming out of the side of your PC if SC4 allowed you to have all 144 tiles open at once. C:S does have all those tiles open at the same time, and it would simply be too much to handle at the scale you are talking about.

[Mayor of Tempest Lake 34]

 

Currently clocked in at 140 hours for C:S..

 

Maybe, maybe not. While C:S surpassed SC4 in mostly everything in terms of the interface, performance, "the feel", it is still morbidly lacking in the sheer scale that SC4 provides. I pretty much have to stop expanding at ~230K because I've reached the maximum amount of utilities and services allowed on the map, and I've not even reached borders on all sides of the 5x5 plot; while my largest city in SC4 is 24kmx24km (144 C:S tiles)

 

However, that said, both games provide me with the feeling that I am building cities, instead of administrating some kind of weird engineering experiment involving Sims on an acreage.

 

And C:S won't reach that scale (144 tiles). It can't. There's no "edge" to your cities in C:S, where once you fill up a tile, you quit that tile and load another one. SC4 has the advantage of only having to simulate one tile at a time. Imagine the flames that would be coming out of the side of your PC if SC4 allowed you to have all 144 tiles open at once. C:S does have all those tiles open at the same time, and it would simply be too much to handle at the scale you are talking about.

 

 

 

I realise that seeing it's already struggling at 230K, and thus doesn't bother me that much. 10x10 is more than enough for all intents and purposes, and enough to create an illusion of a big city ie. able to take a photo without showing the massive amount of emptiness behind it.

[chocolate_city 93]

I think that this game has the utmost potential of all the latest city simulators out, but right now, to me, personally, I'm putting it on the back burner..... The things I dislike about it are too glaring.  I don't think I need to repeat those over again... I can wait for some gifted modder to come around and make things right...

[KiethMarkus2014 14]

I have noticed since C:SL has been released there has been a huge drop in SC4 activity.

[chocolate_city 93]

I have noticed since C:SL has been released there has been a huge drop in SC4 activity.

Probably due to the "newness" of the game, it does have a lot of features that fans have been asking for.  If it keeps going at this rate, SC4 will finally be put to rest..  (Not hatin' on SC4)..

[KiethMarkus2014 14]

That's a shame and to think I was just getting into learning how to customize SimCity 4

[rsc204 21,866]

My feelings are that SC4 is not dead, I just think Skylines has all the attention right now, there are still new SC4 players around, remember also lots of people simply can't run skylines on their current PCs too. You can tell me how I can select from 33,000 mods but honestly, few of them actually add anything to the game, most of them feel more like sensible fixes/improvements from a gameplay perspective at best. I love the game, it's great fun and I see the potential, but just because something has potential, doesn't mean it will reach it, right now I'm switching back to SC4 because I simply feel more capable of creating things I want to make with it. But this is the hobby side of things for me, I enjoy tinkering with mods and have invested a lot of time and effort into my continuing attempts to bring a vision slowly to life, in this sense I'm not playing SC4, this is a project I work on. By comparison I don't see Skylines as a replacement for my SC4 hobby, instead it's a fun game that I can relax and enjoy without being so picky about all the details, I play it for the joy of playing a videogame.

 

Many SC4 players make realistic cities and landscapes, most of the city journals and pictures depict such scenes, so I don't think all those people are going to feel Skylines replaces SC4 right now. Equally a number of modders are still showing progress of current projects and have plans to continue making content, I suppose it comes down to a combination of dedication, what you want out of either (or both) games and how sure you are that Skylines will usurp SC4 in the future. I don't feel any pressure to predict the future right now a month or so past release, I will wait on the fence and if I move from SC4 it will be when I feel the advantages are too strong to ignore. Personally I think the work involved with making a decent plugins suite is probably a large part of peoples desire to move away from SC4, it's just too much work to play a game for many. That said, sifting though a million steam workshop items to find the gems is not likely to be any more fun or easy to get right either, so I don't personally see this problem as solved yet, I stopped downloading Skylines mods after a few weeks, too much effort to go through everything. Every now and again I check the mods section, but last time it was 10 pages or so and still manageable and this is where I find stuff I'm really interested in anyway. I would be very sad if SC4 was finished off before Skylines was really in a place where it had actually excelled over SimCity4 in terms of the ability of a user to have control over every little detail, it's this almost unique characteristic that allowed SC4 to be all that it can be and gave the game its longevity in the first place.

[Sabretooth78 808]

I'm the exact same way, although I still play CSL.  It's probably say a 65/35 split for me.

 

I don't really get this what is ultimately a near constant jumping to throw all the other entries in the genre into the dustbin of history.  Last I looked, there were at least 5.  I don't see why that's a problem.

 

Heck, I still play SC2k (and SimTower!) when the inclination strikes, and I'd give SC3k some love if the maps/dialogs weren't so glitchy in Parallels (it won't run for me under Wine).  It's unfortunate because unlike SC2k and SC4 pre-2013 I actually still have all my old cities.

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

Yeah. Though I find myself playing C:S more these days, SC4 will always be installed on my hard drive. Just because something new comes out does not mean the death of the previous title. It's not an either or thing for me. But if C:S satisfies everything that I like about SC4, it's a no brainer what I will gravitate to 100% of the time. But for now that seems to be far off. So again I say not yet.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

I haven't launched SC4 (or SC3K, I still played SC3K too) since C:SL's release... 

[jmsepe 2,039]

Lately, I have never thought of SC4 as a city simulation game, it's more like design and create. Why? You can just plop everything design as at your own will and modify thing that they don't really have to grow them. 

 

CSL is a good game for authentic simulation but I think I like SC4 better when creating pleasantly atmospheric cities that are endless in size. The reality is that, we can never compare those two games and just because someone is new and has more camera options does not totally make it better imo. However, it is still to early to conclude, wait for another year to see whether CSL can truly live up to its expectations. 

[Agente Silva 28]

" wait for another year to see whether CSL can truly live up to its expectations..."

 

Ahahahah.... hype´s fading out?

[CorpusDei 69]

From the few, almost nothing I read about that Maxis shutdown thing, I think it was only one studio at Emeryville.

 

Umm that "one studio at Emeryville" was Maxis; SimCity and SimCity Societies were the only games being worked on by Maxis - The Sims was spun off into a new studio in its own right years ago.

 

SC2013 is basically defunct; there is no longer anyone supporting it - it's a dead parrot.

[Marla_Singer 46]

When I see videos such as this one. I just say wow. And that's only 5 weeks after release.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlIXneOwy1M

[Mystrelia 57]

 

From the few, almost nothing I read about that Maxis shutdown thing, I think it was only one studio at Emeryville.

 

Umm that "one studio at Emeryville" was Maxis; SimCity and SimCity Societies were the only games being worked on by Maxis - The Sims was spun off into a new studio in its own right years ago.

 

SC2013 is basically defunct; there is no longer anyone supporting it - it's a dead parrot.

 

About halfway through developing expansion packs for Sims 2 the Maxis name was removed from the splash screen. After Sims 3 was released it was put back on. Part of what was going on at Emeryville when it was closed was development of Sims 4 and its hoard of DLC which is now being worked on elsewhere.

[chocolate_city 93]

I'll bet it took 5 weeks of nearly uninterrupted work to get it to look like that.... the highway system is not that easy to put together .... at all

[xonedl 342]

After a while playing... Here are what in my mind.

 

Modders are starting to deal with ploppable pieces such as sea wall, good to see that happening. It may be well a good start and soon we will see majority of SC4 pieces been develop for CSL.

We certainly need those to address the lack of close up detail (and I mean, realistic detail) of the current game.

 

However one thing always be the chain pulling the game from advancing - performance. I'm not saying that I blame people for playing on slow machine, but that is a fact that holding the game back to being rather cartoonish, low polygon, etc. If you want to compete with SC4's pre-rendered visual, you gotta have higher polygon for every objects and remove all those dang trees/road limitations (that already not enough to fill the current map). I'm certainly aiming for something far more realistic which probably not gonna happens anytime soon but maybe a DX12 version of city builder game on Unreal Engine. Modders made ugly old games like the old GTA into insane graphic level, maybe that will happens on this game? We'll see.

 

Anybody actually feels the road is kinda BIG? As long as nobody create a variety of proper road size I'm not gonna be completely happy with this game. We have a better grid of 8m x 8m now, USE that advantage!

That's my major concern right now and seems like no body really cares. I can only guess most of you lives in rich cities... Everyone seems like just want to build BIG BIGGER BIGGERZAPARAZA...

 

Realism! Where is the realism!