As a very casual player who prefers to just make the biggest population possible with little effort or strategy, what I need to play my way is:
1. Cheats or ways to modify gameplay:
Spending hours on my city thriving only to see it halt to a crawl doesn't interest me in the slightest. A cheat for unlimited resources please.
A cheat for more money, hopefully one you don't have to type in 2 million times if you have a high spending budget.
Option to to make the water, power and garbage, pollution, desirability and commute time unnecessary to play the game.
Since Simcity will be compulsively online, I'm worried they won't included cheats. The main reason I use them because all the infrastructure for power and water etc. takes up space and I always run out of space.
2. Bigger building space:
Even the huge land areas on simcity4 where too small for me. As big as I want please.
3. No lag from big cities:
I'm aware that ultimately it's up to how good my computer is but I'll appreciate your efforts in avoiding this.
4. No fire engine missions:
Seriously, I hate those missions.
Other nice touches would be:
5. Choice in the cultures of the city:
Having the choice to choose different cultures would be lovely. Along with American buildings, I'd like to see european, Islamic, Soviet types as well.
6. Having the city change realistically over time:
It would be a real nice touch if they brought back the option to start earlier then modern day. Would be great to have the ability to watch your 19th century building evolve into more modern one's as time goes on.