ckotchey

With all due respect to those who have used and maintained this website through its history - and I do recognize that this is one of the focal sites when it comes to SimCity 4, but as a new user to the site myself, I understand the confusion that other new users are finding with this site. In short, I find the whole organization method of "everything goes in a forum post" very difficult to work with. I don't know if it's the whole mindset/paradigm I have, but I've always treated forums as the "discussion goes here" part of the website, but other general, static information, like "what is gmax? where can I get it? how can I learn to use it? what is STEX? what is NDEX?" should go into a simpler FAQ/Link/Information page (or series of pages) outside the scope of the forums. Again, I'm only speaking from personal experience, but when i first found this website, I was a bit confused by the fact that, in a sense, it has no "home page" - it simply lists an overwhelming collection of forums, each on a different topic - and as a new user, I don't know (or didn't know) what all these topics even meant (for example, BAT, NDEX, STEX, etc.). Digging through days, months, and years of posts to find an article with the basic information you are looking for tends to be quite tedious, and I'm sure after paging down a few times, it's easier for a newbie to simply add yet another post, asking the most basic questions - which is fine if you ask me for a format such as this - but I see that some number of people get quite frustrated with it. Anyway, i think you get my point. Just adding my $0.02 to the discussion by saying that it's not the lack of information at the site (well, at least while the site is under re-construction), it's the organization and difficulty in finding the good, relavent information. I think this site would go a long way to correcting this if the "home page" were replaced with a FAQ page, or list of links, with links into the appropriate locations in the forums (sort of like The Tips and Tricks Site at simcity.ea.com), for example, instead of the home page simply redirecting straight into the forums.

Hopefully this isnt' too odd a question. Back in ancient days, I played the original SimCity to some extent, and SimCity 2000 to a lesser extent. Soon after came a marriage and kids, so I haven't played any flavor in ages. I just started playing SC4, and I have a very general question about playing style. I know it's an open-ended game to play, but I think i find myself becoming too impatient about things. I don't know if I'm really a bad player, or if I'm simply not taking the time it really takes to allow things to move, grow, and progress. So my simple question is - how long does this game usually take for people to play? Would you say you put in a few hours, dozen hours, or hundreds of hours to grow your little hamlet into a big 1,000,000 population city? As an example, I just started playing by using the "Big City Tutorial" city as my starting point. I think the starting population of this town is around 22,000, and after maybe 3 hours of playing, learning, and tinkering, I'm grown the city now to about 38,000 people. Is this a typicaly growth speed? (Or do I just suck at this stuff?) :-) Hopefully now that I'm older (and hopefully wiser), I can calm myself into taking my time about things. I think I'm also starting to get over my massive fear of demolishing any existing structures to make way for the new - I'm guessing this is also a key to progressing. Somehow, I have a hard time convincing myself it's OK to demolish a line of buildings through the heart of my town to make way for that big ol' avenue or highway that is needed!