SimBurger

What use would a screenshot of my budget panel be, if there is $150,000 in "ether" (invisible unquantifiable undocumented) expenses floating in the ether? theres a detailed list of finances in the budget panel.quote> Wouldn't those expenses listed simply add up to the $150k in quantifiable expenses? Those aren't the problem. Its the fact that according to Morris, I have apparently $150k in additional expenses that aren't represented anywhere on paper. SB

Originally posted by: Coney Originally posted by: SimBurger Everyone says Elites are never happy. As soon as my city enabled Elites, I gave them their own 1) School 2) Police station 3) Health Clinic 4) Retail 5) Fire Station 6) Leisure I haven't had a single complaint from them yet.quote> I suddenly see why you might have trouble keeping a steady income while browsing your city... That is at least -30000 income right there - And at the same time totally unnecesary... quote> Ahhh you're pulling in other unrelated topics I've discussed elsewhere on the forum, and you don't know what you're speaking of, as you have no knowledge of my cities books. Lets try to keep on topic. Keeping elites happy. SB

Morris i believe you're using numbers related to cost. Not effect on city power supply, how many homes/offices/megawatts each plant produces, nor how many tokens each plant can represent. So those numbers aren't tied to what we're discussing here. SB

Im definitely renewing. $6 a month is pocket change for such a comprehensive, complex game and the insane number of hours you get for that six dollars and the fun of interacting with others at the same time. Its still version 1.0 and anyone who knows anything about software development knows that the only direction to go from here, is up. Just like the other guy above said - if my $6 a month will help them make this game awesome, then I'm in. SB

Originally posted by: 0wn3d I'm not sure how you can't get to the state where you can kinda leave your city, but in every city I've built I can basically just do nothing... and nothing changes. I've had times where I'm just in the game and clicking around/unpausing the auto pause every once in a while, if I'm doing something else and want to keep making some money.quote> I've had a TOTALLY different experience than that. Existing trades start popping up cancelled, or dropped, or expire. New needs do come up even if you don't build more stuff. Traffic, businesses need more workers as they grow. The city always has an ebb and flow and needs to be attended to in my experience. Another important point was raised above. A pause is no different than closing the game down, or the auto pause. The auto pause enables trades to keep going, and they do expire while the auto pause is on. Its just a server save. SB

Originally posted by: swat-medic See, the Single player would be different with a pause button. In single player, you don't have another person playing their city in real time. You just have omnicorp, which can be paused along with the game.quote> I understood that. That is why I put # 2 in my post above: 2) The game auto pauses after 1 minute in PO mode already, trades and all.

Everyone says Elites are never happy. As soon as my city enabled Elites, I gave them their own 1) School 2) Police station 3) Health Clinic 4) Retail 5) Fire Station 6) Leisure I haven't had a single complaint from them yet.

Cash flow represents the difference between all sources of income and all expensesquote> ???? Well, my income is $300,000. My expenses are $150,000. Therefore based on that statement, my cashflow should be +$150,000. I dont see how the fact that fuel is both an income and an expense (understood) relates to my question about why income and expenses are basically irrelevant and useless numbers in this game. Unless you're saying that my expenses are $150,000 and there are another $150,000 of "undefined expenses" floating in an invisible land. To be honest that seems very unlike reality to me. Expenses can and should and are quantified in reality. If they're trying to be crazy complex because they think its reality, there shouldn't be over $150,000 worth of undefined expenses. That just doesn't make any sense to me. To be completely honest, this reminds me of university level knowledge. If this game is that complex, then they need an exhaustive tutorial just on the concept of cashflow. This discussion alone is ridiculously complex, and im not a stupid guy.

1) You can completely pause the game in the single player version, so its a feasible request. 2) The game auto pauses after 1 minute in PO mode already, trades and all. You just can't browse your own city and enjoy what you've built, because it automatically unpauses. Pause is implemented in this game already - in a few different ways - so I don't really consider it a new thing, or anything that would be unrealistic. I don't view it as something that would support cheating either. Just my opinion. SB

Here's my point: When I am presented with 4 different types of power plants, and I am *EXPECTED* to provide what my city *NEEDS* - and I have no idea what my city *NEEDS* nor how much each plant can *PRODUCE*, then I am completely in the dark as to what plant to build. Make sense? The problem arose when I was told I needed more electricity for my city. The only gauge I had was a " - 1 " on the token. Okay so how do I meet that need and fix the problem? I am given no information. Maybe the power plants could say "Provides + 2" and the smaller ones could say "Provides + 0.5" and the largest could say "Provides + 5" Then you'd have a quantifiable description, and then I could actually make a decision. As it stands, the only descriptions we have are: "Provides some power" (smaller plant) "Provides power" (medium plant) How am I supposed to fix the "-1" with that type of info? SB

Let me reiterate my main point: I've got twice as much income as expenses, but I've got negative cashflow. So I really don't have twice as much income as expenses. Im still in SimCity4 mindset, where all you had was income and expenses. If expenses got too large, you'd lose money. Maybe I just dont understand what cashflow *is* SB

Someone commented about this on the chat very accurately. Since they completely omitted any PAUSE button (which ive been begging for) its like doing surgery on a person who is still awake. If you bulldoze a main drag to build a highway, you better expect that all the businesses and residents are going to go bankrupt in the time it takes you to rebuild. Its really crazy. I was pretty pissed at first, but then realized - in real life - they have to provide an "alternate route" while building highways. They dont just bulldoze and cut off transportation. A pause button would be nice however. And by the way - if they're going to allow you to right click on a road to "UPGRADE" it .... why dont they actually offer upgrades? That would enable us to make a small road into an avenue without having to bulldoze it and rebuild. For some odd reason all road upgrades do nothing other than make it "ONE WAY". Makes no sense to me, but there's probably some logic im missing. SB

I, for one, don't need to amortize out how many cents per hour or day some game is costing me per day to judge it worthy of my money. If it's fun and deep I'll pay for it.quote> Agreed. I was just speaking a language they can understand: Nitpicking. I can see how this would be an issue if I were 15 years old, and living on an allowance. My allowance used to be $10 a week. $6 a month would really make a dent in that! But for anyone with a minimum wage job, this should be pocket change. I understand "its the principle of it", but doesn't that also qualify as kinda stingy?

What upsets me in the concept is that I have to pay for the people who dont. ...When I purchased Cities XL, I was expecting to be paying for a complete gamequote> Its $6 a month. That's it. Where is everyone getting this "$146 a year" from? You can buy a 3 month package for $18.95 That's $6.30 a month. That's ninteen cents per day (0.19) Assuming 2 to 3 hours of game play per day that's five cents an hour ($0.05) Is $6.30 a month too steep for your budget? SB

I can't even find it in PO mode in the first place. My city is at 150,000 citizens and I dont have a single iota of mass transit running. And everyone is happy. I haven't even built a single highway yet either. Still just basic roads and Avenues. And all is well. I know this is probably simple minded, but when I read threads like this, all I hear in my head is "I DONT WANNA PAY SIX DOLLARS A MONTH FOR THIS GAME!" I just hear whining about money in my head. And I know people who nitpick over 30 cents at the grocery store. Its so weird to me. I mean really folks. Is six dollars that much for an incredibly vast, comprehensive game like this? That works out to $0.19 cents per day. If you play 2-3 hours a day, that works out to a nickel for an hour. Try going to an arcade and playing any game for an hour, for just five cents (0.05) -SB-

I'm just tossing this out there. Do you think its possible a lot of people are going to find this game .... way ..... too.... difficult? It's fairly straight forward for a short while. Assuming you do the tutorial. But the minute that first alert comes up suggesting you need to begin "Trading", all bets are off. I had absolutely no friggen clue what I was supposed to do, despite a decently high IQ and simple useability. I mean it was so beyond confusing that, four times now, I have closed the game down simply because I didn't know what I was supposed to do, no matter how hard I tried to figure it out. I also did not have the time required to sit down and train myself on what trading is, how it works, and what's entailed. I came on the forums and saw pages of posts teaching people how to trade. Those are very helpful - thanks to you guys. But man .... As a fairly intelligent person who is also 35 years old, and the owner of a small corporation, when I am faced with a window on my screen that makes absolutely zero sense, has absolutely no help options, and none of the buttons seem to work as I expect, I simply close it down. Because I know its going to be a pain in the *ss. And I am a guy who was obsessed with SimCity 4. I loved it. I loved the challenge, the thinking, the balancing budget. The unknowns.... I can't even imagine the average joe 15 to 23 year old user. The person who isn't that into the game, but just wants to play it purely for entertainment purposes. The intense focus and importance of trading immediately brought me to a screeching halt every single time, and I haven't even bothered to start playing the game again in a week. I want to, but I know I need to invest the mental power and I am just too busy right now. I don't get the sensation of challenge / reward with this game that I got with sim city. I know I am in the minority because I hear a lot of you saying you do. Kudos to you guys who have figured it out, struggled with it, tackled, it and succeeded. When I arrived on the trading page for the first time - the "Nb" and "C" columns stared me in the face with no explanation. I was told I needed to sell something, but the entire "Buyers" screen was empty. Nobody to sell to. There were 30 people also trying to sell something. So I sat there, lost. Let alone - how much do I sell something for? Whats the guideline? What the heck am I even selling - office services? Does that mean I load a bunch of admin assistants into a "Freight" truck and cart them over to the city next door? It just left me lost. Something about the trade only lasting five days? Why? Is it a day? an hour? a week ? when the time circle at the top goes around once? Who knows? Not me. So I closed the game again. I just don't see the average user even being able to play this game past 15 minutes. Literally. I think people are going to hit that trading screen after the first 20 minutes, not have a clue what to do (especially those who dont know about this forum), watch all their businesses go flat, and say screw it. Thoughts? SimBurger

Hmm .... okay 1) I know video games are supposed to be challenging. Im not talking about that. Most games can be challenging without making the user stare at the screen completely unaware what they're supposed to do. That's a useability issue. There is an aspect of this game which is at its very core (trading) that is absolutely not straight forward in useability. That trading screen is like looking at hyrogliphics when you first see it. Given that you can't play the game without mastering it, I wondered if the average user would view said hyrogliphics and throw their hands in the air. That's all. 2) No. Its not common sense what is meant by "trading office services" Now that you explain it, it makes sense. But trading office services with a city 5 miles away is not the same as outsourcing to India. I just personally don't have any experience or knowledge of real life examples where Toledo Ohio trades office services with Akron Ohio. So it was confusing for me. But I truly do appreciate the monstrous sarcastic poster. Maynards Band..... 3) SimCity 4 wasn't as easy as dropping zones and suddenly having a ton of cash. There are tricks and challenges to making a city succeed. Although the useability was sufficient enough that one could figure out what all the elements mean, and how to operate them. I didn't feel that sense of useability in the trading. This isn't a complaining thread. I love this game. I actually think im probably just a little bit lazy and/or retarded, because most of you guys have no issues with the useability of the Trading feature. I just know that my level of effort is above average, and Im tempted to not bother reading the vast tutorials required to understand trading. I wonder if the *average* user will simply not bother. -SB-

1) The visuals can be amazing. I had to buy a new computer but I kicked out $$$$ for a Velocity Raptor and now - wow! 2) I just love that Monte Cristo bothered to improve Sim City. That alone I give them amazing credit for. Sim City is one of those games that could evolve into a real world - life size virtual reality game as the technology improves, where you walk through your own city and do all kinds of crazy crap. If they can perfect this game, and keep it going, one day we may be in a living breathing virtual city. I was beyond bummed when Maxis/EA just gave up, and the SimCity creator started making "SPORE" instead. Spore! Give me a break! (sorry) 3) Support and follow up. The fact that Monte Cristo is here , in person, putting up with all the annoying whining and never-satisfied end users (including me sometimes), while remaining professional and civil, is amazing to me. The fact that they are here at all is amazing to me. Companies never do this. Ever. They're always this lofty, untouchable, unknowable figure. Lets do our best not to wear out their welcome by b*tching too much ok guys? I always said what matters most is what they do after version 1.0 is released. Because its version 1.1 and 2.0 that are the real thing. Whether they listen to our bug reports, and prioritize our enhancement requests. They seem to be doing just that and they deserve huge praise for it. To you guys who are emailing and not getting responses. Give them a break - they just released a new game worldwide. They probably have over 8,000 emails to answer. 4) I love street view - being able to walk through my city. Its a dream come true. The one thing I always wanted from SimCity. Now if they could just give us a pause button in Planet Offer mode, so we can take time to really walk around and see things. MC if you're listening - one of the BIGGEST joys and most fulfilling aspects of this game is the ability to zoom down and walk your own city streets. Get a feeling for it. The visual. Please ... please consider adding a pause so there arent businesses failing and work that needs to be done every second of game play. 5) Visiting other cities is awesome but the avatar navigation needs to be fixed. Once that's done, going on a "trip" to other places will be another huge highlight of this game. -SB-

I did the tutorial. Unless i missed something it didn't explain anything on how much to charge, what to do when nobody is buying and you have to sell something, what the "C" and the "Nb" are, etc. I haven't seen the manual. Maybe that's my problem. I guess my point was, most games, you can keep playing without needing to take a course in economics. Im willing to do the work and learn, but I wonder if the average user is just going to say screw it. -SB-

Ive been pretty vocal about supporting this game, but admittedly had never tried to play it yet. I ran into several issues during the installation, registration, and set up process. Can someone tell me where I can email this to Monte Cristo? ---------------------- 1) Trying to install the program, it sits there with absolutely nothing happening on the screen. For nearly a minute and a half I saw a splash screen of the earth. Nothing was happening. So I clicked on the screen with my mouse, which then caused the "EXE" file to freeze, and Windows displayed the "This program is not responding, do you want to close it or wait?" Wow. So I clicked wait. 2) After about 2 minutes I finally saw a tiny "percentage" bar appear. Meanwhile the splash image continued to change, but it was grayed out - basically stuck in the "frozen program" faded display. It never recovered through the entire install process. hmm. 3) Upon first loading the game, you take the user to registration. Upon completing registration, you're taken to the main CitiesXL page. On this page appears that popup asking if you "only want to load the secure items" on the page. Its an HTPS page, so simply copy your web files into the HTTPS directory. 4) The main Cities XL page itself says absolutely nothing about what to do next. No instructions at all. Nothing saying "Check your email to click the validation link and enter your product key". 5) As a result, I did what made sense. I tried to log in and start the game. I entered my username SimBurger and my password. I received an error stating "Invalid Characters in Login". I rentered it, knowing that i was not putting any invalid "characters" in my login. It still rejected me. So again I sat there, completely stumped. Fortunately, I figured out that the problem may be the capital letters. I changed that, and it accepted the login. Please fix this. Capital letters are not considered "invalid characters" by any software standard. If they are invalid for your purposes, you need to adjust the error message to clarify that logins should be all lowercase. "Invalid Characters" is vague and will confuse a lot of people. 6) It accepted my login and then said "Invalid Login or Password". No other explanation. Wow. Unreal. Again I sat there, stumped. Here is where you should probably notify the customer that they need to check their email address to validate their account first. You may have seen others complaining that their game doesn't work. It's because of this. Providing zero information is not logical nor user friendly. 7) So I checked my email and clicked the link. Not surprisingly, even the email itself says absolutely nothing about needing to click the link before being able to play the game. Where are all the instructions people need? So I clicked the link, and true to form, after entering the product key, you again send me back to the Cities XL main page, which again asks me if I want to load "unsecure" content. There is no confirmation message that my game has been unlocked, that I can now log in and play - nothing. 9) Finally I was able to log in. By the way - the word you want on the button is "Connect" Not "Connection". Not a big deal, but slightly incorrect grammar. The lack of explanations and useability reflect poor design and planning. Hopefully the game itself will flow better. SimBurger

Sparky - I only got to about number 20 on your list before I stopped. As a leader of several development teams, can I suggest that you take out all the "opinion" related requests and clearly separate them from actual "bugs" ? Bugs are the highest priority and the things they need to address now. Nearly all of your first 20 items were just "I dont like how the lamp posts look" and "why do the bridges have to be so high - that looks stupid" .... and .... "I really would prefer if you could improve the detail of the car graphics" These things are pretty irrelevant on the scale of things right now. They're wants, not needs. Luxuries. So they end up cluttering out the actual bugs that need to be addressed. Like this one: "make CXL a city building simulator rather than a trading simulator." Geez man. You want them to scrap the game and rewrite the entire thing? Gotta be realistic in what you ask for or they will completely tune you out. -SB- EDIT: I just read the moderators post on the first page. Im basically saying the same thing I guess. MC needs constructive feedback right now, not a 60 item list of complaining about totally subjective unimportant things. So we need to help them by making focused, prioritized bug reports. There are a lot of threads doing that so far, and its awesome that MC is here reading. That says a lot about their priorities.

As others have pointed out, the installer for this game completely forgets to place program icons anywhere. I have been having to navigate to the windows /programs directory and drill down to find the executable file, citiesxl_game.exe. When I tried to drag and drop this file onto the start menu, it no longer worked. Clicking on it results in a popup error. That's the first time I've ever seen a completely working executable file stop working just because its on the start menu. Anyone else running into this, and how are you starting your game? SimBurger

What do you mean "No". I was quoting the guy from Monte Cristo, verbatim. He is the one, in another thread, who said they had to do it that way due to restrictions imposed by Vista and Windows 7. Clearly I am running Vista. I know what OS I have. SimBurger.

Actually the answer is that Vista and Windows 7 requires that all game icons go into the "GAMES" menu. If you click the "Start" button (or whatever its called in vista), you'll see in the right "pane" a "Games" text link. (Documents, Pictures, Music, Games) Click that. Note - this is NOT the "Games" folder on the left pane when clicking the start menu. The icon is there. Apparently windows vista and windows 7 requires them to put their icons in there, and they're not allowed to put them anywhere else. SimBurger.

I assumed it was the same thing as the games folder. Why is it in "GAMES" .............but its not in "GAMES" ? That makes a ton of sense. SimBurger