sparky66

I remember reading somewhere a few days ago (I can't find it again, try searching google) an interview with focus home interactive about their games and they said something along the lines of 'We are not fans of MMO's, we prefer to let players compete and show their work through leaderboards and blogs and believe that the single player experience should not be negatively affected by any online features, and that the online features should remain optional to all players.' I don't think it was directly about Cities XL 2011, but it was a recent interview, and so it could be a reference to the direction they are taking with the game. Personally I think a free optional built-in feature that lets you take screenshots and write about your city in game whilst you are playing and then seamlessly upload it to a dedicated online city journal would be nice. Definately no more excuses for MMO's and paid subscriptions though. If Cities XL 2011 has more than a hint of 'Planet Offer-ness' about it, then I will probably not bother buying.

could you maybe make another version of this mod that only includes the things that work 100% properly like the medieval buildings etc. please as I am fed up with clicking something and then my game crashing Great work by the way. It just shows how much MC left incomplete and hidden away from us.

updated first post.

Originally posted by: gingechilla Remember Cities XL isn't just based on American things. The lamposts look pretty much like the ones on most normal roads in the UK. quote> i live in the south of england (sussex) and i have never seen any lampposts along roads like that! (in fact the lampposts along my road are victorian gas lamps with lightbulbs stuck inside them! but we do have modern lamps too, just nothing like those!)

I have added your ideas to the first post so that they can all be found in one place.

OK, after playing the game for about a week now, here is my list of bugs and suggested improvements for the game. i have only been playing solo mode. they are in no particular order: EDIT: EVERYONES SUGGESTIONS ARE NOW BEING ADDED TO THIS LIST. 1. let solo players trade with their own cities! omnicorp is rubbish! solo cities can never develop properly because it is difficult to get the resources they need. really needs to be fixed. specialised cities cannot be created, making some maps impossiable to build more than a small town. 2. road traffic at junctions. traffic turns left and right from the wrong lane, traffic lights seem to control lanes seperately even when they are part of the same road (e.g. on a three lane road, each lane goes individually rather than all three at once) on wider roads this seems to slow traffic down alot. and it looks silly. also traffic lights don't work. 3. distant models for road traffic. i have the game on the highest detail setting and when i zoom out a tiny bit, all the traffic turns into grey boxes, which looks awful. perhaps some proper distance models for traffic are needed? would really like this to be fixed. 4. bridges over rivers. why do they have to be so high aboue water level? it just looks stupid. they should be able to cross the river at the same level as the surrounding land without having to have a huge ramp at each end. 5. road junctions. i have built a few junctions where pavements (sidewals if you are american) don't appear properly or don't line up with the road and it just looks wierd. 6. parks. if the enclosed area is slightly too large, you can't add a park. parks need to be surrounded with roads. mouse needs to be in exactly the right place to add larger parks. parks don't look very good. 7. lots don't always line up with roads properly. if there is a tiny gap between the building and the road on a steep hill the grass texture is stretched and looks horrible. 8. making one way roads. hard to tell what way the arrows will point until you click on the buttons. 9. holiday hotels. surely the should be able to go anywhere? if a city wants to make a tourist area they don't have to make sure it is in a 'tourist resource' area. 10. interface seems clunky and difficult to use. greyed out buttons for mass transit and railways when they are not released yet and solo mode won't currently be getting them anyway. 11. farms. need a different texture under the buildings instead of they just sitting on a plowed field texture. different farm types just aesthetic. have to delete whole farm just do build a road over a tiny corner of it's field. real life farms have more than just one big field, no livestock in the livestock farm field. 12. lampposts on the simple road (the one that is only slightly larger than the road you get when placing 'blocks' of buildings). lampposts look funny, like they belong in the middle of a car park, not along a road. 13. road junctions always make a traffic light. how about roundabouts? mini roundabouts could improve traffic flow slightly, but not take up any extra room, big roundabouts could improve traffic alot and greatly improve traffic at junctions. 14. whay are some buildings in low density zones so big? bigger than ones in medium density zones. what is the 'star' density, i can't work out what it does? 15. landscapes don't seem 'alive'. need more objects and animals. 16. game keeps trying to get you to buy the PO. even the tutorials say "we could get a better trade, if only we had the planet offer". the writing on the back of the box makes the game seem like it is all about the solo mode, with only a small mention of the PO. and yet you are ignoring solo players. 17. let solo players buy PO content in 'expansion packs'. 18. two different types of 'great avenue (two lanes in each direction, island in the middle) luxurious and normal, no difference except luxurious has the occasional tree in the middle and costs twice as much. 19. highway system very difficult to use. need more freeform junctions. 20. roads just 'end'. need proper end pieces and cul-de-sacs. 21. when placing a 'block' of lots, only the small road is used. option to choose road type would be nice. 22. 'city hall' button should be greyed out when you have already placed one. 23. a few spelling and grammar mistakes. should have been proof read! 24. it keeps saying i have excellent education when i only have one elementary school for the whole city. 25. keeps saying 'your city has a bad reputation with food producing industry'. what am i supposed to do about that? they are not reporting any problems and i am selling all excess tokens. 26. have to sign in every time you start the game. can't it just remember your login? 27. Official forums on CXL website. 28. Multi-core support needed. 29. better terrain editing tools. ability toadd new land and water. 30. sandbox mode and solo mode cheats needed. 31. Square lots. OK, but could be better. 32. Intercity roads don't touch the edge of the map 33. Would be nice to select what buildings should be build (e.g. a whole street of the same buildings, especially useful for terraced/row houses) 34. leisure buildings are stupid. leisure buildings should be part of retail. ferris wheel needs animation, it doesn't move. also, it's one of the first leisure buildings you unlock, but i don't know of a single small town where the only entertainment to be found is a basketball court and a ferris wheel. 35. Add a 'save game' button. 36. Should be possiable to build tunnels underwater, remove the silly restriction. 37. The ability to make 'sunken' roads and highways with retaining walls/steep banks each side and bridges for roads running over head, and freeform slip roads would be nice. 38. public transport for ALL players, not just PO. 39. automatic destruction of objects when placing roads, maybe a dialogue box to make sure you really mean it. 40. re-zoneing tools would be nice, so when you re-zone a unqualified worker zone with a qualified worker one, the buildings automatically upgrade when demand is high enough, having to demolish everything is stupid. 41. allow tunnels and bridges to go over and under buildings (especially tunnels) 42. better info about what citizens and factories need would be useful, in numbers, as well as the numbers building produce. (e.g. each wind power plant produces 50 power, 100 power= 1 token etc) 43. should be easier to get water, maybe add a de-salination plant so that sea water could be made drinkable, should be able to get water from any river of lake. 44. better individual tax options, like in SC4. 45. make CXL a city building simulator rather than a trading simulator. 46. public services need to be redesigned. one small elementary school and clinic can serve a whole city, which is a bit wierd. 47. better transport model. cars only travel between work - home and factory - city link. random cars driving around, going to shops etc. would be nice. 48. trade needs to be simplified and doesn't make much sence. it's OK to trade utilities but offices and citizens? 49. add transport costs to trading. nearer cities cheaper to trade with etc. 50. what exactly does the city hall do? why upgrade it? 51. redesign highway intersections, the current ones make no sense, look at real junctions! 52. it should be possible to upgrade a road if there is space on one side. 53. overlays should stay until you close them. overlays should update in real time. 54. solo mode should get extra content in expansion packs. 55. if you stop subscribing to the PO you should be able to continue playing your PO cities and use the PO content you already had in solo mode. if you re-subscribe you should be able to add your cities back to a empty slot on a planet. 56. add random events to make your city more interseting. e.g. a fire breaks out in a house and your firefighters automatically go and fight it, police chases etc. 57. smoother, free camera control, rather than jumping between preset angles. (try clicking on a moving car and zooming close to it, the camera just flies right through it!). it's hard to put the camera where you want it. 58. cheats and a sandbox mode option for solo mode (could be toggled on and off like expert mode) sandbox mode should have infinate money, infinate tokens and allow resource buildings to be placed anywhere. that was a long list! i will probably find more later. do you argee/disagree? and MC, what do you think? I will try to keep this post updated with all your ideas and bugs (if i can keep up) EDIT: UPDATED WITH MORE IDEAS.

i think this game, especially solo mode, is being held back by the PO offer. if MC just released expansion packs for solo mode (no subscription needed) and sorted out solo trading (allow you to trade with your own cities, not just omnicorp) this game could be alot better. also, about the mass transit. i don't know anywhere near where i live (south of england) that doesn't have some sort of mass transit, no matter how small. the village where i live has a regular bus service as well as a train station. in the countryside there are even request bus stops for single cottages in the middle of nowhere! also, i know of a request train station that only serves a single pub, but you have to walk across two muddy fields to get there! people saying mass transit is not important are, in my opinion, wrong. i used to love planning mass transit in SC4, and was looking forward to doing the same in CXL. However it seems only PO subscribers will get the privelage of mass transit. i would gladly buy a solo mode mass transit expansion (like SC4 Rush Hour) if MC released it. alos, has anyone noticed that in the picture of a bus in the second post on this page, it shows a New York bus next to a London Transport bus stop? i hope that can be changed, i would love some red routemaster double deckers!

i think this game, especially solo mode, is being held back by the PO offer. if MC just released expansion packs for solo mode (no subscription needed) and sorted out solo trading (allow you to trade with your own cities, not just omnicorp) this game could be alot better. also, about the mass transit. i don't know anywhere near where i live (south of england) that doesn't have some sort of mass transit, no matter how small. the village where i live has a regular bus service as well as a train station. in the countryside there are even request bus stops for single cottages in the middle of nowhere! also, i know of a request train station that only serves a single pub, but you have to walk across two muddy fields to get there!

traffic outside any building does seem to have an effect on its effectiveness. can't people in this game walk anywhere? think about it though, if you have a choice of, say, two identical supermarkets, but one is really busy and has traffic problems on the surrounding roads, and one is quiet and easier to get to, even if it is slightly further away, which one would you choose (if you had to drive)?

Originally posted by: gutterclub I don't really understand people saying they would pay the same as they would have to subscribe to the PO to get the same content in single player..surely if you are going to do that you may as well just sign up.quote> you would get the content for a one off fee and be able to use it offline in solo mode. and you would be able to keep the content and your cities without having to keep paying a subscription. other games make alot of money from expansion packs, so why can't MC? City building does not work well in an MMO, and least not in this format. I refuse to keep paying a subscription for a chat box and a broken trading system.

Originally posted by: KyleLAM HI thur! I'm currently reviewing Cities XL wondering whether to join in or not. My main question i would like to ask before i can make a decision is this: From what i have seen, the cities being created all look like American or European based cities in terms of appearance. I personally would be inclined to start off making a city that looks like the sort of establishments you would expect to see in Asia, and although there isn't a huge difference when it comes to cities, it is still noticeable. I am wondering if there is any content to choose from that would grant your city an Asian appearance, if so, how much content? the theme would have to be consistent, you cant just shove Tokyo's Imperial Palace in the middle of a western civilization, that sir is a big NO. If you want me to instantly purchase the game and tell all my friends to buy it too then tell me that there is uncountable numbers of Japanese orientated material to choose from and that i could literally recreate Japan (i would also like it if you mean it)... Thank you very much quote> they may release japanese content in the future. a 'chinatown' pack is coming soon. the game was advertised as being able to recreate european, american and asian cities. as long as your asian cities look like american or european cities you can! of course, all future content is only if you subscribe the the PO.

nope, it doesn't exist in solo mode either. would be a nice feature though.

if only MC would give solo players the option to buy PO content for a one-off fee. the way it's going at the moment solo mode will just turn into a 'demo' of PO mode. looking at the official documentation and advertisements for this game, the PO is advertised alot, but so is single player. nowhere does it say that it is all about the PO. but that is what they seem to be doing. also, they need to start sorting out this game properly before they start releasing 'medieval building packs' etc.

Originally posted by: soundwave27 I'm wondering about the 'content packs.' Official blurb here: www.citiesxl.com/index.php In reading, these are available in planet offer only, okay. My question is; are these going to be available to current subscribers only. Or will I be able to subscribe in a few months (when PO becomes more appealing) and have access to previous 'content pack' content? quote> Yes. i just wish they would let solo players buy the content for a one off fee.

it would be nice if MC had just made stuff like this properly in the first place. SC4 had better highway intersections. this game needed more work before it was released. unfortunately, if you don't keep paying for the PO you will never get the complete game.