drdru7029

I'd like to echo the sentiments of Sabretooth and others, and even take it a step further. I've been playing SC4 since the beginning too, and (as an urban planner in real life) hold city sims to the highest standards possible. I'll state it clearly: Skylines currently does not have the depth, complexity and freedom to rival what SC4 has become-- but I fully believe that it will surpass even modded SC4 in the coming years. I say this because it seems to be even more mod-friendly than SC4, and Paradox has seemed to provide a solid foundation with no critical flaws. I bought the game last week and played it some, noting down all of the little things I feel are missing (and most of which are present in SC4). I don't play it very often now and don't plan to over the next few months either. But that in no way illustrates a dissatisfaction with my purchase. The game is simply young, and has a lot of (exciting) growing up to do. Skylines is my little seedling. I've placed it in its soil, and with the water and sunlight of the community expect it to grow into a towering tree.

No way, no how. Bought it right when it came out, waited four days to be able to play it, then, finally gaining access, within a few hours I began to be terrified by what I had anticipated for so long. Ironically it's actually inspired me to get back into SC4. Just started a new region last week and have since spent countless hours reveling in the myriad custom content available on Simtropolis, meticulously planning and sculpting the look of the new world over which I have complete and utter control. Hours (or years?) into my new region and I find myself having no desire whatever for a prettier, yet tragically watered down and creativity-stifled iteration of the masterpiece that is SC4. $60 wasted? Na, in my mind I just purchased something of infinitely more value: a renewed love for the best city simulator of all time.

Seems like they developed Glassbox just enough to become a gimmicky advertisement to promote the game. And then spent most of the rest of the time making things look big, bright and pretty.

My thoughts have mirrored these sentiments exactly. SimCity and Civilization are my two favorite game franchises and have been for almost two decades. Both of the most recent iterations have left me deeply disappointed. At the same time, I was crazy excited about both during their first few months of development. When will I learn from history? The 'classical reboot' trend is here to stay; gone are the days of actually evolving on what worked.

I just tried playing it again. No server problems whatsoever this time, but this thread never was about the server problems; rather what makes the game worth playing once those are resolved. I just can't get beyond the enormous hit to freedom the game takes as far as lot sizes are concerned. Gone seem to be the tightly-packed single-family houses of that small-village character. 1 'tile' commercial/residential lots are just not allowed. 3 tile deep is all that seem to be allowed. Also, the game is highly fidgety about how lots must be placed. If you want an interesting or terrain-sensitive network, huge un-buildable open spaces are what must result. Another thing that I can't get used to is, for example, when I want to continue my winding street down an ocean coastline just to find that, at the city boundaries, i have to turn it into a straight street along the boundary of the tile or else just abandon it altogether. But since I can see the open waiting-to-be-built-upon land right there, it just results in a severe blow to the aesthetic consequences of creative planning. How to alleviate these serious problems? Very simply: Bring back 1-lot zoning. Have the option for the same houses grow but without the extraneous open space surrounding them. So if people want deep low density single family housing/commercial lots, they can. If they don't want them, they can make smaller zones. I feel that these restrictions are in place so that skyscrapers will have the space to be built down the line. But what about people who aren't planning to build a skyscraper village? I want a normal village or small city, but I feel as though I'm being pushed to plan my road network for some future CBD requirements down the line. A city simulator should not push one into a specific creative direction; it should evolve to fit the direction the player instills it with. Make zoning more 'flowing' to idiosyncratic road networks. SC4's rather small individual 1x1 lots allowed this despite having no curved roads. These are part of the heart and soul of what has made SC2000 through to SC4 so great. Not having your creative pursuits result in something that just seems to 'organically' meld together just completely ruins the motivation to be creative. I'm not even going to mention the option of being able to expand your city tile to the areas around it, because it just goes without saying and they know it. I gave it two shots and it's failed my most basic creative necessities. I'm going back to SC4 and the boundless creativity it allowed me-- I'll be back once Maxis removes these creative restrictions.

Urgh... how to make it more clear... Cities like those represented in SC2013 do not exist. We want to be able to model realistic systems, at least as much as the simulation would allow. We want city tiles which are adjacent to each other so that we can, if we like, consider each tile a part of a larger municipal entity. So we can build roads which connect directly to the tile next to us. So when we look at the region view we see one huge metropolis even if it just consists of several smaller city tiles. I don't know if that's more clear or not.

I was one of those discussing many of these points throughout the year. However there's a difference between pre- and post-release. Of course I didn't expect any surprises as far as city sizes/region play were concerned, but still held out hope about certain subtleties that made SC4 great. Sometimes you just don't know if it's going to be a real issue or not until you get your hands on the game and start playing. Now that the game's out I want to focus on things which can be amended, and how we can progress from the point we're at. We failed to make them care enough as they were developing it... here's our second chance.

I'd also like to ask, are there any of these 9(+2) that my fellow citizens of Simtropolis would remove from this list, or change the severity of? Or of course, add to?

From what I've been reading on all the various review sites, official and otherwise, everyone's screaming about the same thing. City size is something Maxis/EA WILL change because it's become such a basic outcry. It's just a question of when. Not having adjacent cities in sandbox mode makes no sense whatsoever, and it has stopped, I imagine, hundreds or thousands of potentially paying customers from buying the game. My guess is they'll get to this eventually as well. Right. More times than I can count in the first minutes of playing the game I found myself saying "I could do this in SC4, why can't I do it here?" I just don't see the connection between sacrificing these basic creative utilities and making the game more approachable. It would be so incredibly easy to just implement a 'tutor' option which would control zoning for people who don't want to think about it. When the option is deselected, it would give people the freedom to zone how they please. I am not really a critic yet of the density-by-road infrastructure idea, because it does make a lot of sense. As long as, say, a 2-lane road can host any density based on the upgrades it receives (infrastructure upgrades, not width increases), it's a sound idea. Or at least, I'm willing to live with it. I'd still like to have the freedom to zone for a skyscraper on a poorly-provisioned street and then have to deal with all the traffic volume mayhem that ensues. But let's take this step by step. The under-the-hood mechanics of this game bring it far above SC4, but some of the rudimentary elements, those almost intangible freedoms which SC4 provided and which are responsible for Simtropolis being what it is today, have been overlooked. I trust those at Maxis are not ignorant to this. They had to get the game out and basically working smoothly. Now, though, is the time to take a step back and start focusing on what made the previous game not only great, but utterly magical. And the answer they'll find is not some complex re-working of the game; just a small number of adjustments that will make all the difference in the world.

Finally was able to download and install SC2013. I was optimistic all the way until I started my first city. After playing it for about 20 minutes (yeah, it didn't take that long), some restrictions to my usual creative options in SC4 have become glaringly apparent. I'll just quickly jot some down here, separated into three groups based on how critical I deem them: Serious Zone depth cannot be dictated irrespective of road type. I'm not sure but am of the understanding that different roads will allow different zone depths but come on, this is an essential component in the creative design process. If I had to choose one issue as a deciding factor of whether or not I'll play the game long term, this would be it. Highway interchange connections to your city are arbitrated for you; the player has no choice in deciding the placement of external road connections. There seem to be no '1x1' parks; all are overly large. Large parks are fine but not without an accompaniment of smaller variations. No micro terraforming of any kind. I know that god mode-esque terraforming was done away with, but I can't even add a tiny amount of land to a coastline so I can fit a (non existent) 1x1 park. Moderate No traffic count query tool. At least I haven't found one yet. I haven't even found a traffic volume data layer but I'm sure that has to be there somewhere. Parks need to be placed adjacent to a road as well. A lot of creative design is lost in this simple restriction alone. Annoying No ability to turn off night view No ability to zoom out and see the entire city. At the furthest zoom level only a portion of the city can be seen from a top-down perspective. No historic trend charts to accompany the data layers (except for population I believe) I've avoided mentioning the two elephants in the room: Very restrictive city sizes. No ability to build adjacent cities (truly adjacent, road connections and all) This is because they've been brought up a lot already by the community and I pretty much consider the fixing of these two issues a prerequisite for even considering playing the game long term as well, so I won't dwell on them but rather focus on the detailed minutia above. Ten years of SC4 has perhaps biased me toward having these basic creative freedoms, but really, this is a city simulator and if such basic freedoms are taken away, it loses a lot of its credibility in terms of keeping that title. The very good news is that not any one of these nine points are unable to be fixed. If the core mechanics of the game were flawed, that'd be the end of it. But if Maxis can iron these problems out (and I view them as real problems, not simply complaints), then we'll have the foundations for a wonderful city simulator with a bright future ahead of it, especially when custom content creation becomes possible. I don't see any of these hindering a newcomer or the mass audience they want to attract. They will, however, add scores of long time hardcore fans to the customer base.

Mods hopefully will be able to solve the aesthetic concerns many of us have. What worries me is that a dozen skycrapers can rise from a square mile city where the population looks to be around a few thousand. This points to an underlying philosophy that might not be so easy to modify. Say goodbye to some of those shreds of realism in SC4 that we came to love.

Yeah I agree, that would indeed make up for a lot.

One thing I love to try to do with SC4 is generate statistics about different 'districts' within my city. For example, I want to compare the current and historical commercial capacity of my downtown area with another 'new center' on the periphery. Or I want to see how the residential population trend of District A compares with District B. Or I want to select an area of my choice and generate a report about the aggregate daily traffic volume of all the streets contained within it. With SC4, coming up with these stats is exceedingly difficult and, where possible, quite time-consuming. Question: will it (or would it) be possible to have a vector-like area selection tool which would allow one to see 'micro-statistics' for whichever area falls within the selected range? I have a feeling that this type of data observation freedom would make a great many fans happy.

My answer to that would be "I suppose you're right, but still..." I mean in terms of the end effect of the simulation from a macro perspective I agree. Basically the same results. But the difference would lay in the evolutionary trends I could extrapolate if citizens were more 'permanent'. For example, I could see which neighborhoods have the longest-residing residents, what the job turnover rate is for different neighborhoods, etc. I could even track the life of sims residing in different neighborhoods in my city. It would be an extra layer of depth that I would find very satisfying. It's a small gripe which will be overshadowed by other advantages I'm sure. I just look forward to the day when this kind of progressive evolution becomes possible in a longer-lived simulation structure.

So this looks to be a simulation which will 'refresh' itself every 24 hours. Meaning, no sim will be a permanent entity which develops in a progressive way throughout his/her life or the life of the city. The entire municipal complex will recreate itself anew with each working day, and no sim will have a permanent job. Obviously the simulation mechanics are a vast improvement on SC4. However for some reason I can't help but wonder when the time will come when a city simulation will be able to retain the characteristics of each individual member of the population, and allow that member to evolve and develop over time in tandem with the development of his neighborhood/city. I just don't feel there's any sense of 'permanence' to the home/work model. Every morning each sim is hired anew, and fired in the evening. Given current computational limitations, does it have to be this way?