Have CO lost touch with what players want?

[Cool_Z 1,547]

I've been re-reading this whole topic and it's really a complete manual about what a city builder needs to have or could do without.

We have the recipe.

Is there really no hope a new game could emerge in a near future ?

CO is a very small team, they did it even if it's flawed. Modders are only a bunch and are able to make stuff that works, stuff that betters the game. All the ideas are there.
And CSL proved there was a way of making money with a modern city builder... so... why not ?
 

I wonder what the development budget for CSL was... would it be such a huge risk for a very big studio ??

 

On the other side, if it was a "made by the community" game... what would it need ? Would crowd funding allow for making a good game ?

[Avanya 2,605]

I watched this video from ParadoxCon (totally worth watching!) today, where Mariina talks about how Cities: Skylines came to be. It's crazy to hear how small their team was - 2 programmers! I mean, we have more modders in our community than they had originally work on the game - no wonder we see mods add some things we'd consider core features, which should be in the game. Also in case you missed it, this comment from Karoliina in the reddit AMA is also worth a look. From the start of the video and that comment I really really hope we get to see a sequel for Cities - I think that would bring the things we're missing now (which aren't possible without a major overhaul of the game code).

Ofc that doesn't do anything for the game now, but I figured it might be interesting for others too, especially when we talk about CO's intentions with the game. 

[Horus_Kol 118]

On 4/29/2017 at 5:21 PM, Bloggo said:

Just reading some of the posts in this thread you get an idea of how much hate CSL has managed to garner, it is a real shame but unfortunately that is how it seems to be now..

Selection bias - threads like this pretty much invite the hate and, for some reason, the haters seem to be a lot more vocal than everyone else - but looking around at the activity in the other forums, and particularly the awesome mods/assets that are being pumped out, you can see that there's a lot of love.

[boformer 3,169]

On 28.5.2017 at 5:55 PM, Cool_Z said:

I've been re-reading this whole topic and it's really a complete manual about what a city builder needs to have or could do without.

We have the recipe.

Is there really no hope a new game could emerge in a near future ?

CO is a very small team, they did it even if it's flawed. Modders are only a bunch and are able to make stuff that works, stuff that betters the game. All the ideas are there.
And CSL proved there was a way of making money with a modern city builder... so... why not ?
 

I wonder what the development budget for CSL was... would it be such a huge risk for a very big studio ??

 

On the other side, if it was a "made by the community" game... what would it need ? Would crowd funding allow for making a good game ?

It's not that simple. Cities: Skylines was their third game in this genre. Maxis worked on city simulations for two centuries.

Experience plays an important role when you want to develop a game like this.

[TekindusT 3,809]

40 minutes ago, boformer said:

Maxis worked on city simulations for two centuries.

Spent some unforgettable afternoons building horsecars and telegraph lines with SC1880...  Memories...

[Cool_Z 1,547]

1 hour ago, boformer said:

It's not that simple. Cities: Skylines was their third game in this genre. Maxis worked on city simulations for two centuries.

Experience plays an important role when you want to develop a game like this.

Yeah but there was no citybuilder yet when Maxis started... now there has been hits and misses that can serve as an example for every aspect of the game, and a community that is pretty vocal about what it wants or doesn't want.

[rovapasi1 53]

2 minutes ago, Cool_Z said:

Yeah but there was no citybuilder yet when Maxis started... now there has been hits and misses that can serve as an example for every aspect of the game, and a community that is pretty vocal about what it wants or doesn't want.

Not sure if that would be so easy. As you can see even in this forum there is a simple rule. Many people - many opinions. So a possible new game should be highly ease to use for those who play just sometimes, allowing 100% drill down into any possible detail to satisfy the micro-gamers.

Just look at SC4. What Maxis delivered was far from perfect, but it was open - so people still play it.

So a game thats far from perfect thats openly moddable is in my mind much better than one that would cover 80%-90% of the wanted features with no hope on getting the last 10%.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

4 minutes ago, rovapasi1 said:

So a game thats far from perfect thats openly moddable is in my mind much better than one that would cover 80%-90% of the wanted features with no hope on getting the last 10%.

Agreed... but the problem with C:SL is that some of the most basic features for "regular players" are not really there (and that's why it gets more love as a city painter than as a city builder).

[cmdp123789 710]

1 hour ago, Cool_Z said:

Agreed... but the problem with C:SL is that some of the most basic features for "regular players" are not really there (and that's why it gets more love as a city painter than as a city builder).

I dont think the problem is features, but rather the fact that there are limits. With simcity 4, the game wasnt perfect, but we made it in a way that we were happy playing it. Of course, going back to it, now that we are used to all the new features in CSL would be really hard.. that's why they made it possible to mod. The only problem with that is the fact that they let us mod it, but they limit us.

I don't think we need a new game.. what we need is a couple of basic fixes and a complete removal of limits.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

6 minutes ago, cmdp123789 said:

I dont think the problem is features, but rather the fact that there are limits. With SimCity 4, the game wasnt perfect, but we made it in a way that we were happy playing it. Of course, going back to it, now that we are used to all the new features in CSL would be really hard.. that's why they made it possible to mod. The only problem with that is the fact that they let us mod it, but they limit us.

I don't think we need a new game.. what we need is a couple of basic fixes and a complete removal of limits.

Yep the limits are a problem too but I don't think the fixes needed are just "basic".

If you use the game only as a citybuilder, the lot size limit forces you to plop big towers. The wealth/density mix makes cities grow in a very unnatural way. These are the things that make CSL a bad city builder. I'm not talking about fancy things, complex things. These are the basics of a citybuilder for me, and they're not there.

Even SC3K does a better job !

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Cities: Skylines has most of what I want and Colossal Order has added much requested features including commercial specialties, night, weather (albiet confined to 2 biomes: too cold for snow to ever melt and too hot for snow to ever stick), natural disasters (thank God that was an EP and not a free patch!), and more mass transit options.

What I want to see next is a way to have medium density, a way to seperate density levels from wealth levels, and Cities XL style fields. These might never be released by CO but might be modded in.

[rsc204 21,868]

11 hours ago, boformer said:

It's not that simple. Cities: Skylines was their third game in this genre. Maxis worked on city simulations for two centuries.

And in that time (two decades I think you were going for), they made 3 before SC4? So Maxis were one game ahead, as such your argument doesn't really hold. I think a fairer way to say it would be that Maxis had significantly more resources at their disposal. Not to mention operating in a time when games development was more sanely priced. That said, you can tell that C:S was made by a very small team, because that's where a lot of the problems stem from. Having made so much money, you'd think they'd support those who bought the game and turn it around. Instead I find more and more bugs with each update, this sucks.

People constantly bemoan SC4, but at it's core is a stable, working game. Sure the community did need to tweak a few things that were not perfect. The most glaring being the traffic simulator, but at least we could and the reason why it was broken was technically necessary at it's release too. For all of C:S's supposedly infinite modding potential (that statement is so wrong it genuinely annoys me), there are fundamental problems which seemingly can never be resolved, if CO don't have the will to do something about them. That or maybe I'm too impatient to play a working version. Each new update saps my motivation to play the game. This is sad, because again at it's core are some great ideas. The took a lot of what was good about SC, CitiesXL and CiM, bundled them together and came out with a very promising release. But whilst like many, I didn't expect it to be perfect on day one, I did expect basic bugs to be dealt with.

8 hours ago, cmdp123789 said:

I dont think the problem is features, but rather the fact that there are limits.

There is practically no simulation in C:S. It's so basic, no matter how bad you play, everything still works somehow? Except for the core of the game, traffic... oh traffic you *censored*. When it comes down to it, if traffic works, the simulator works. When traffic doesn't work, the simulator doesn't and everything falls apart. But the traffic simulator can't cope with the very things it was supposed to do and is incredibly dumb. Probably so those people with rubbish PCs could still play the game, I get why, I do, I just don't like it.

Outside of that, many of the basic game mechanics don't reflect the world around them. It's obvious to me that the code is somehow just making things work, either to make up for inherent problems of it or simply to keep the game as easy as possible.

But it's an important point point here, some people want an actual game, something with more substance than just a paintbox. As a paintbox it still leaves a lot to be desired if you ask me, limits being a factor in that. But if there is one thing you hear again and again as a NAM team member, it's people complaining about the difficulty curve of complex stuff like the NAM. This is another issue, it's very hard to make a game where you can play it simply, whilst also allowing a high level of complexity and control for those that want it. But just as with borking your game to run on more hardware, keeping the game simple will mean higher sales. Hence the only way to get the "hardcore" experience, if you will, is through modding. It's unlikely any simulator would be made that way, your target audience would be too low.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

6 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

People constantly bemoan SC4, but at it's core is a stable, working game.

100% agreeing on that

[boformer 3,169]

Coming back to the original question, I think CO has not lost touch with us.

With the latest free update, popular mods were integrated. The DLC added many requested features.

We just have to accept that CO won't change the underlying basis of this game, the low-level mechanics and systems. They are just adding and improving the stuff built on top of it. That's reasonable.

Limits will always be there. There are limits in C:SL, and there are limits in SC4.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

5 minutes ago, boformer said:

popular mods were integrated.

But they really missed the point with the trafficlights/stop sign thing

[kingleno 197]

So much gloom and doom in this thread. some players wouldn't be satisfied if Zeus stepped down from Mount Olympus and delivered city building with every aspect of everything, from having to campaign for mayor, to being able to plant each tomato on a farm in the rural countryside. In a city building/simulation/management game the options and possibilities are infinite. To come up with a list of "basics" of a game with that scope would be endless. 

I think CO does a great job of interacting with the fan base and listening. I think they miss the mark sometimes and have some really stupid ideas that they probably think are great, with a small team, some crap is just going to slip by. (I hate chirpy) I think they could implement more simulation that actually matters in the game, but as said before, I don't think they are going to add anything that radically changes the way the game is played or simulated at this point, especially in a DLC that every player isn't going to buy. That's like adding forest fires to the base game that can only be put out from a mechanism included in the DLC. So they have to focus mostly on adding optional features that aren't really necessary and don't change how the base game is played for the person without any DLC. 

[Trooth 22]

28 minutes ago, kingleno said:

So much gloom and doom in this thread. some players wouldn't be satisfied if Zeus stepped down from Mount Olympus and delivered city building with every aspect of everything, from having to campaign for mayor, to being able to plant each tomato on a farm in the rural countryside. In a city building/simulation/management game the options and possibilities are infinite. To come up with a list of "basics" of a game with that scope would be endless. 

I think CO does a great job of interacting with the fan base and listening. I think they miss the mark sometimes and have some really stupid ideas that they probably think are great, with a small team, some crap is just going to slip by. (I hate chirpy) I think they could implement more simulation that actually matters in the game, but as said before, I don't think they are going to add anything that radically changes the way the game is played or simulated at this point, especially in a DLC that every player isn't going to buy. That's like adding forest fires to the base game that can only be put out from a mechanism included in the DLC. So they have to focus mostly on adding optional features that aren't really necessary and don't change how the base game is played for the person without any DLC. 

I agree with you completely.  Everyone has their own wish list for a game like this, and what one person wants, another person might hate.  The only expansion I didn't buy is the disasters DLC.  I have no interest in it at all, but I understand that other gamers love that aspect of city builders.  The game was built with a small development team, and the core game shows it.  The main thing that made it a big success is the ease of adding on to the game through assets, mods, etc.  The core game is still limited.  Many people don't take into consideration that PC games have to be built to run on mediocre systems, and because of that the limits in place are there to prevent the game from crashing, or bugging out at a certain point.  It would be nice if they could open up those limits for people with advanced systems, but it is what it is.  I anticipate that they are developing or will be developing a CSL 2 in which they can build on what they have now, fund a bigger development team, and expand the core game to take advantage of newer hardware.  

[Turjan 1,048]

This is a tricky subject. Fortunately, I tend to forget a lot of things these days, so I probably won't notice when I repeat myself .

CO's specialty is traffic simulations, and I have to admit that, despite all its warts, traffic somehow works. Could it work better? Yes. However, even my largest city that reached something like 500k inhabitants didn't need any Traffic++ or Traffic Manager:PE to work. Admittedly, larger cities have less traffic problems in CSL because of the fade-out mechanics, and I couldn't always use the most natural solution to traffic issues and had to find workarounds, but it's feasible. I used NEXT though, which helped a lot. Which incidentally also means that the latest game update will generally help players with these issues because it introduced the roads I found essential for dealing with the most glaring traffic issues of the original game.

What sucks and will always suck is the city simulation. There is no adequate simulation of the wealth, density and education mechanics or industry, including its specializations, all points where SC4 excelled at. The lot size limit is part of the problem. While I like that I can plop my large industry buildings with RICO now, it still makes me very sad that I cannot simply set up the simulation in a way that I get the desired results. This sucks big time. And let's not talk about agriculture, but that was admittedly a step child in SC4, too (it's one of the few things Cities:XL actually got right).

I can deal with the goofy stuff. I've tolerated deathcare for a long time, even if I used lots that made it easier to deal with it. I've now switched it off because I need more agents. I can deal with the retarded budget (day/night) by simply ignoring it (the budget doesn't do anything anyway). I don't mind the sausage and donut parade.

Finally, I have to admit that I can understand CO's decision to keep it simple to some extent. The game is built for 4GB of RAM. I have 16 GB, and I struggle. I was already eyeing RAM upgrades, but this computer is too old to throw €250+ at it for a single game. I can look at all these detailing videos and city journals, and I know that I simply cannot do this, or I would have to scale back to very small cities again, which I won't. Another data point that made me see their point was when the Loading Screen Mod removed the feature to exclude vanilla buildings from loading because the mod creator couldn't deal with all those complaints from people who were too lazy or stupid to RTFM. And no, Building Themes does not do the exact same thing. The Building Themes mod lets me choose exactly what the game grows, yes, and in much more detail than the Loading Screen mod ever did. However, I need more RAM, and Building Themes doesn't help me with that. Reading the Paradox forums lets me see that many of their customers are afraid of mods, and those are unfortunately the people who decide what the rest of us will get.

For me, this means I will have a lot of organizing to do. I will now go through the tedious process of making better use of the collection feature. I guess my feelings towards this are comparable to those I get when it gets to cleaning my apartment, but well, it's necessary.

[Fantozzi 4,069]

7 hours ago, rsc204 said:

This is another issue, it's very hard to make a game where you can play it simply, whilst also allowing a high level of complexity and control for those that want it.

One has to consider here that citybuilders - mostly free of violence and sexual content and rarely with agressive elements and even with some educational potential - are ideal games for children under 12 years. Compared to TV - they can be some sort of 'family show' one of the rare possibilities, parents and children can share interests. I remember that many people complained about the graphics on SC2013 which had something of those educational software, colourful and optimistic, well one could say 'childish'.

No matter if you do a TV program or a computer game as a company - you always have to ask how you get in touch with the target audience. Modding, most of the time will interfere. 'Family games' will have to make compromises and modders will break them, being uncompromising. I personally think - this will always be the same. 

But to make a citybuilder an adults only game quite from the start - I can't imagine this as an attractive idear for any company. It's because of the subject, I think. The thinking is: adult - this means sex, violence. At the end it's a little bit sad that adulthood should only consist of this. And one had to consider that adults made a little bit gaga by entertainment industry - offering strategy games for children and sex and crime for adults. Adults should protest here - hey, we aren't that way, we enjoy strategy games too ...

... sometimes.  But I think reality is - there never was a citybuilder aiming on adults only. And so, basically, we are always disappointed expecting an adults game and getting a childs game. But maybe it will always be the job of modders to make them 'mature'.

[Avanya 2,605]

@kingleno He already did - and it was super fun  

 

Sorry, I just couldn't help myself. Your comment reminded me of the many many hours I spend with that game

I think boformer is right - there's just some things we'll have to accept won't change in C:S. Maybe in a sequel those could be different, but as Mariina says in the video from ParadoxCon, they had very limited resources and knew they couldn't get it all. Had the system requirements been higher from the start, perhaps they would have had more room to improve on things, but there's prob a ton of things they would have done differently had they known the game would be this popular!

I think CO are listening, but ofc they miss some great points or suggestions. Perhaps a dedicated CM would be worth it for them. Or maybe we should just make sure we repeat the good points we spot, so they can't miss it.   Ofc our community is never gonna want the same stuff - I've seen posts on Paradox's forum wanting more automated bus line creation and at the same time requests for schedules to micro-manage even more. I'd love more depths to the simulation, I'd love a more complex traffic AI, I'd love medium density and wealth and building levels to be seperated, but tbh I'm not even sure my pc could handle all of that atm and I'm above even the recommended specs.  

With how well the game had done I think it's very likely we'll see a sequel (unless CO want to move in another direction ofc) - and such a sequel would have completely different resources to work with. Just the fact that the team is more than double the size now makes a difference, on top of that they now have more experience to build on, a fanbase and some very nice sales numbers.

Ofc it sucks right now, because a sequel is years in the future, meaning we're stuck with C:S and it's flaws and limits. But there's hope. I'm just gonna leave a few quotes from the reddit AMA in case you guys missed them. There's loads more ofc, but there were a few that I figured would be interesting in regards to this post.
 

Quote

I DLC about farming is an idea I like. I can't say much more about that, but at least now you know the dev team shares your interests!
- Source

Quote

Q: What aspect of Cities Skylines do you think is most in need of improvement?

A: Thinking long term we need to find ways to improve the mod handling and easy accessibility to the game for the new players (UI/feedback during the game). Some improvements are still possible and will be worked on, but certain features are not possible to add at this point and we need to take a hard look on how to work on these improvements in the future.
- Source

Quote

Currently we are investigating making a road modding tool (very early state). Would love to hear your feedback on that!
- Source

Quote

Q: Are there plans to make Cities Skylines: 2 in a few years time? Or hasn't that been discussed yet? And if that was the case, apart from improved graphics that will be available in the future, what are some of the things you would want to implement that you hope is possible, but simply could not in this current one?

A: There are quite a few things we would do differently for sure. Modding API, seasons (time scale in the game), upgradeable buildings... Basically anything that we didn't have the time or the resources to work on with our small team in the beginning. We have also learned so much in these couple of years.
- Source

 

[UrbanLegend 63]

On ‎5‎/‎31‎/‎2017 at 3:09 AM, Turjan said:

This is a tricky subject. Fortunately, I tend to forget a lot of things these days, so I probably won't notice when I repeat myself .

CO's specialty is traffic simulations, and I have to admit that, despite all its warts, traffic somehow works. Could it work better? Yes. However, even my largest city that reached something like 500k inhabitants didn't need any Traffic++ or Traffic Manager:PE to work. Admittedly, larger cities have less traffic problems in CSL because of the fade-out mechanics, and I couldn't always use the most natural solution to traffic issues and had to find workarounds, but it's feasible. I used NEXT though, which helped a lot. Which incidentally also means that the latest game update will generally help players with these issues because it introduced the roads I found essential for dealing with the most glaring traffic issues of the original game.

What sucks and will always suck is the city simulation. There is no adequate simulation of the wealth, density and education mechanics or industry, including its specializations, all points where SC4 excelled at. The lot size limit is part of the problem. While I like that I can plop my large industry buildings with RICO now, it still makes me very sad that I cannot simply set up the simulation in a way that I get the desired results. This sucks big time. And let's not talk about agriculture, but that was admittedly a step child in SC4, too (it's one of the few things Cities:XL actually got right).         

I thought CO did a great job adding things I wanted to the original game.  Day/Night cycles and nightlife, weather and disaster (although I rarely use), new transportation options.  Moders have taken care of much of the rest.  But my main complaint with CS, really all city building games since SC4 is that none of them have really combined all the elements to create a living breathing city in the sense of people going to and from work, commuting patterns, neighborhoods gentrifying and decaying and so on.  CS is a great city "painter".  YouTubeists like Strictoaster and Flux Trance create beautiful cityscapes, but they are really like virtual train sets.  I don't really want to plop a bunch of trailers and check cashing shops near my intermodal rail terminal and call it my "wrong side of the tracks" neighborhood.  I want a neighborhood to be the wrong side of the tracks because I zoned some light residential and commercial between the rail yard and the highway and that's what developed.

 

I also think some of the graphics are a bit clunky and feel "Beta" version.  Like why do I need to use a half dozen mods and a dozen more props to make a realistic highway interchange?

 

[Ltw 401]

22 hours ago, UrbanLegend said:

I thought CO did a great job adding things I wanted to the original game.  Day/Night cycles and nightlife, weather and disaster (although I rarely use), new transportation options.  Moderns have taken care of much of the rest.  But my main complaint with CS, really all city building games since SC4 is that none of them have really combined all the elements to create a living breathing city in the sense of people going to and from work, commuting patterns, neighborhoods gentrifying and decaying and so on.  CS is a great city "painter".  YouTubeists like Strictoaster and Flux Trance create beautiful cityscapes, but they are really like virtual train sets.  I don't really want to plop a bunch of trailers and check cashing shops near my intermodal rail terminal and call it my "wrong side of the tracks" neighborhood.  I want a neighborhood to be the wrong side of the tracks because I zoned some light residential and commercial between the rail yard and the highway and that's what developed.

 

I also think some of the graphics are a bit clunky and feel "Beta" version.  Like why do I need to use a half dozen mods and a dozen more props to make a realistic highway interchange?

 

I agree for the most part with what you're saying. There is a mod which fixes the commuting problem, Rush Hour. This works great and creates a more realistic travel pattern, it also has random events that attract a lot of people to certain unique buildings. However, I would turn off the modified demand, for me that didn't work and resulted in problems (I only had residential demand and no commercial and industrial demand). But if you turn that option off it works great.

Regarding the neighborhood-issue that you're raising I totally agree with you. In SimCity 4 you could influence the amount of rich/poor people living in certain neighborhoods by making them more attractive. Neighborhoods with fewer parks, fewer schools and fewer services in general attracted poorer people. Those people applied for certain jobs that fit their profile. They are also more inclined in using public transport. This kind of simulation is seriously lacking in Cities Skylines. In my opinion this should be expanded massively, the basics of the simulation of commute is in general quite decent but I just think that the simulation of income, unemployment, education and so forth is lacking.

I think it is quite doable to include this in the simulation. All the information is there, it is just a matter of including this in the simulation. For starters there should be a limit on how well you can educate your citizens. Now it is possible to give almost everyone high education (which is in real life simply impossible). If you could build in a certain maximum (like for instance, at most 25% or 30% is highly educated) you get a more realistic view of how the population should look like. Also, lower educated citizens are only able to live in cheaper neighborhoods, you can keep neighborhoods cheaper by a 'social housing' policy, which is the opposite of the high-tech housing and creates large social housing projects in high density and small terraced houses in low density. Cheaper neighborhoods also attract more crime and people living there are more inclined to use public transport (which is sort of the effect of the free public transport policy, but in this case, you get income from it). Since poorer people (thus, less educated people) are only able to live in cheaper neighborhoods it is actually worth it to build less attractive neighborhoods. If you don't have enough dedicated neighborhoods with lower residential prices a result could be that certain buildings in your more expensive neighborhoods will house more citizens, and also lowering land value around them (an effect similar to the effect of abandoned buildings). You could compare this to a phenomenon in a lot of cities throughout the 20th century, people used to live in bad housing because there was a lack of social housing that could accommodate them (a famous example is Greenwhich Village in New York before it got expensive, but there are also a lot of examples in for instance Brittish cities).

These are some ideas I have regarding dealing with neighborhoods and wealth, the best thing is that these suggestions are actually quite doable. The main problem of Cities:Skylines is that agent-based simulation (the behavior of every single citizen is being simulated, which is a different approach than for instance SimCity 4) involves a lot op computer power, giving the programmers some serious limitations in what they can and can't do. However, these suggestions are mostly adding some charactaristics to different agents (thus, citizens). However, the simulation of how they travel and what they do doesn't change too much. Poorer citizens just have more limitations on where they can live, and richer citizens are more inclined in living in more expensive neighborhoods. The limitation of Cities: Skylines is mostly regarding people traveling, however, it can save up to more than a million citizens (which already have characteristics such as place of residence and occupation). So going into more detail on this part could be possible I think.

If you really want to do the simulation right it should also include more detailed simulation of education and employment, this could be more challenging since it could influence the agent-based simulation quite drastically in some cases. At first education. Now it doesn't matter how well a citizen is educated, if there is a job below their level they do it anyway and are happy to do that for the rest of their lives. Which isn't realistic in my view, working a job below your level should at least lower happiness, furthermore, it should be a temporary solution, if people are working in a lower educated job for a long time they are more inclined in leaving the city, searching for different work. So if the jobs in your city don't match with the workforce it could happen that the population is decreasing. Furthermore, employment. Now it doesn't matter if you are employed or not. People could be happy without a job for like forever. Therefore unemployment should also affect happiness. Furthermore, rich unemployed people are more likely to leave the city looking for another job and poor unemployed people are more likely to get homeless, they could 'live' in parks (therefore not influencing the agent-based simulation too much), more homeless people could also affect land value and the crime-rate. There could be a policy for this offering free shelter for homeless people, which costs a lot but could solve a lot of problems.

I think the suggestions I've just raised could really improve the liveliness of cities. It gives the player more challenges in managing a city, normally the challenge is mostly traffic but I want to do more. Including stuff like this in the game could really improve the experience in my opinion. CO could do this by for instance releasing a new DLC focused on social housing. The free content included with that could be the revised simulation. I think I would rather have such a DLC in the future than a DLC that is focused on one small part of the game that I didn't really miss in the first place (such as the public transport DLC, snowfall, stadiums, and those creator packs). Most DLCs could also be covered by some of the great content in the Workshop, but I think that a Housing DLC is something that could really add more value to the game. 

[UrbanLegend 63]

Ltw - I think those are all great ideas.   Ultimately, I think it's a technical issue of simulating the interactions and economics for 50, 100, 500k residents or more.  SimCity 4 abstracted this a bit since the technology was nowhere near being able to simulate individual citizens.  Cities XL created what felt to me like an artificial class structure.   SimCity 2013 tried to do this, but people were put off by the tiny Hoboken sized city lots.

For Cities Skyline, I would simplify what you suggested to make it more like SC4.  A lot of the metrics like wealth, crime, happiness are already there.  I would just add more visual cues through props and decals to show what is going on in the neighborhood.  The same house or apartment condo would be covered in graffiti or have broken windows and trash in the yard if the scores were low.  Higher scores would display similar indicators.

 

[Ltw 401]

1 minute ago, UrbanLegend said:

Ltw - I think those are all great ideas.   Ultimately, I think it's a technical issue of simulating the interactions and economics for 50, 100, 500k residents or more.  SimCity 4 abstracted this a bit since the technology was nowhere near being able to simulate individual citizens.  Cities XL created what felt to me like an artificial class structure.   SimCity 2013 tried to do this, but people were put off by the tiny Hoboken sized city lots.

For Cities Skyline, I would simplify what you suggested to make it more like SC4.  A lot of the metrics like wealth, crime, happiness are already there.  I would just add more visual cues through props and decals to show what is going on in the neighborhood.  The same house or apartment condo would be covered in graffiti or have broken windows and trash in the yard if the scores were low.  Higher scores would display similar indicators.

 

Yeah exactly, that would be a great addition as well. Also stuff like trash on the streets and maybe old asphalt textures if the neighborhood is a little bit rundown could help making it look like it is authentic. I don't know to what extent this is feasible since those details also have to get away or change when the neighborhood is getting more expensive but details like that would be great to look into.

Regarding SimCity 2013, that is actually quite detailed in terms of simulation. A lot of things that aren't simulated in Cities:Skylines are actually being simulated in SimCity 2013 by agent-based programming. However, in order to do that they had to choose between size and simulation and they preferred the simulation over the size of the cities, which is in my opinion the wrong choice. However, there are a lot of things that Cities:Skylines should include in the simulation (like I mentioned before) but also things that could've been left out or at least changed. Examples are the hearses, it's unlikely they cause traffic jams and dead bodies being in apartments for days because of traffic jams is simply unrealistic. Furthermore, delivery trucks could be bigger and if you would prefer simulating garbage trucks they should be bigger as well with a wider range. Ambulances should preferably start their trips at depots throughout the city in order to shorten the trip as much as possible. These are some suggestions I have in order to make traffic easier to simulate. I'm not saying I don't like the details in the simulation of traffic but I would rather have the precious computer power being used for something different such as a more realistic development of different neighborhoods.

[UrbanLegend 63]

Yeah, I don't know why "death care" is such a thing.  Like is body disposal a major consideration in civic planning?  But I can see it being important if you are simulating every aspect of every Sim (or Cim)'s  life from birth through schooling through career, recreation and death.  I think that's what they tried to do with SC2013, which is why the cities were so small.

CS, with the 81 tiles mod, your cities almost become too big to micromanage at that level. 

 

[Horus_Kol 118]

"Death care" has been fairly important in town/city planning over recent history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnificent_Seven_cemeteries

[Ltw 401]

On 5-7-2017 at 2:24 AM, Horus_Kol said:

"Death care" has been fairly important in town/city planning over recent history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnificent_Seven_cemeteries

Okay, interesting. I'm sure that there are quite some examples of the importance of cemeteries in urban planning. Death care has been difficult in for instance European cities during the plague-epidemic. However, there are also nice examples of the central role of cemeteries in urban planning, in Arabic cities for instance, you often see very large cemeteries because the Islamic religion is stating that someone should be buried pointing towards Mecca until 'judgment day'. Therefore, you can really see how religious beliefs are shaping the city landscape. Another good example is the function of cemeteries in a lot of South-American countries, the cemeteries over there have a clear recreational function because there often is a lack of public parks. Thus you can see people doing all kinds of recreational activities in those cemeteries, which really broadens the function of such cemetery.

My point is that you can really broaden the whole idea of how death care in the simulation should look like since there are a lot of different ideas about the whole concept in real life. However, we should always acknowledge that Cities:Skylines (or a simulation-game in general) is a simulation, and therefore not perfect. And, a simulation will never be perfect, simply because life is too complicated for that. However, it is important to try getting close to perfection. And if (and I know, this is kind of hypothetical since I'm not a programmer) the simulation of death care is making it more complicated for a computer to calculate other things such as wealth, unemployment, and segregating neighborhoods I would rather have that instead since that.

FYI, if there is no downside of simulating both death care and wealth, unemployment and segregation that would be preferable. However, I think it is important to keep the discussion going on what is clearly lacking in the game and what could be left out if the game would be too heavy for most computers if you'd include more aspects in the simulation.

[Turjan 1,048]

The problem with deathcare is that the only part of it that is simulated is the traffic it causes. And this specific part is simply unrealistic.

I have finally switched it off. At least that frees a few agents.

[punkologist4 2]

Wow! It has been years since I have visited Simtroplois and this thread has shocked me. I don't really understand all the hate. C:SL is a ton better than SC2013 for a start.
My only real bugbear with the game is the traffic simulation in that cars don't use all available lanes, making it really hard to create good functioning road systems.

Not sure why people think the graphics are so terrible either. Just have a watch of @Strictoaster's youtube channel, particularly what he is doing on Seenu. This game can look spectacular and very realistic. It has really inspired me to create something detailed rather than the traffic clogged grid mess I have made in the past.

The best design decision they made was to have steam workshop support. Like SC4 before it, mods are what really makes this game amazing. Vanilla SC4 was pretty awful too.

 

 

[Darf 1,439]

There's a huge amount of mods and assets to create and beautify cities. It can look pretty photorealistic. Nobody is debating that. Vanilla C:S just looks plain bad. Like if I look at the difference when my brother plays vanilla and my cities it's like a world of difference. Some of the models are just plain... Like if you put the models of the earlier games (CiM1+2) to C:S it's like they stopped caring about great models to commit to their comic art style for C:S.

The difference in SC4 is that SC4 had a great basic set of buildings and C:S doesn't have any of that.

Simulation wise C:S is very very shallow. You basically can't fail at the game. Which is what many players want.

Also some aspects are still really unbalanced, like deathcare. Yes, it works untill your city gets to about 120k, but after that you can put as many cemeteries or crematoriums as you want, but the majority of hearses will arrive too late, because of the distance of the map. It's also stupid to see a notification for every single death person. Like half of the maps notifications are for death people. Without it the simulation works a lot better.

Tourism, it works great now! Except for the part where there's no challenge in it. There's no cost/revenue balance. It's just there, does it's thing. Education, electricity, crime, it's like that with all aspects.

I want a citysim, where if I don't educate a neighbourhood and there's no police there it becomes a gangland. If I have made that mistake it will cost a bit more effort than to plop a few schools and policebureaus.