FLIPDUDE

I am glad to see that maxis is reading these forums. We have many concerns and it's good to know that they're at least being read. However, I am very very afraid of another "Cities XL". I was a member of the forum for a year and a half before the game was released, the developer team was a big part of the community, reading all the posts, making promises, taking suggestions (they had a whole sub-forum for what kind of public transport you'd want to see in the game) but then when the game was about to be released we started noticing that none of the things that really mattered to us were in the game (no public transport, no G.E.Ms, blocky and repetitive buildings) and most importantly - too much focus on online play, which is what eventually killed the game and bankrupted Monte Cristo. I am feeling more and more disconnect between SC5 and the previous SC games. Yes, there are many new and interesting improvments(building modules), but things like online play, pre-determined lot sizes and densities, unrealistic transitions, city specialization and graphics that focus more on looking like toy models than on looking like you're building a big, colossal, realistic city(which, I think is what most people aim for when they play these games)... They worry me. They're things that hardcore simcity fans are screaming against, and hae been pleading against since the time of the Cities XL development phase. I played cities XL a lot recently and I realized how similar the games are looking right now, big differences being that Cities XL lets you build whatever density you want on whatever road you want(which works well on areas that have a lot of traffic regardless of what buildings are on that actual road), and Simcity has non-square lots and specialized cities(specialized cities not being a good thing in my opinion). Other than that the games are so similar it's scary, most notably because Cities XL was a failure. It wasn't until after the company went belly-up and a new company bought, added new things to, and re-released the game as an offline one, that it became an okay game. Please maxis, consider addressing at least some of the magor issues we're bringing up... Even if they are, as I said, magor. I obviously don't expect the whole online thing to be revisited in the next 4 months, but maybe at least the density thing, or some other sort of hardcore-fan-pleasing feature. Thank you.

No... Density... Zoning?! This is making alarm bells scream in my head. The size of the building I want doesn't always match the size of the road! What if inorder to control traffic better I want to make a Los Angeles-esque giant avenue splicing through a low density sprawled out area? Or the other way around - a New York like layout where avenues are wide, streets are narrow, but all the buildings are tall? This is also a dangerously frustrating combination for me with the fact that lot sizes seem to be arbitrarily pre-determined, rather than letting you decide how big you want a lot to be. No farms made me sad. While I didn't always use them, t's nice knowing they're there. I hope they ge timplemented later on. I totally agree about the visual style. I completely don't connect to it. It's very non believable. Thanks for the lookover, it's nice hearing new things for a change instead of the usual "So we have a new engine, called Glassbox! What you see is what's really happening!" for the 40th time. Did you happen to see railway construction? Did I deduct correctly that railways can now connect via unrealistic intersection, as opposed to having to make large, round turns, like in SC4?

Oh my godness, man! That is fantastic! Way to go!

I had this problem on my other comp, and now I installed SC4 on a new comp and its giving me the same problem. I had just installed NAM, and for some reason, avenue intersections (And the blocks leading up to them, assuming theres a turn lane) don't work. They LOOK perfectly fine but they are inaccessible to traffic. houses built next to the intersection will claim there is no route avalible. When going into traffic congestion view, the area where the intersection is appears blank as if there is no road there. This also seems to happen with the rail. My citizens are not using it, and rail crossings seem to be inaccessible to cars. Oddly enough, many other things (like, say, the road-over-rail bridge, roundabouts, wide avenues, etc. Do seem to work). Help? I relaly want to play the game but you can't build a ig city without this stuff.

Oh my gosh! I finally find a codeword and it's one of the ones that are already invalid!!! AARGH!

argh... this is driving em crazy... I want a code so badly, but I have no idea where to look... I event ried answering the german trivia on that one site, and I don't even speak german!!! And I live in such a timezone tha tby the time I wake up tomrorow all the opportunities are surely going to be gone. sigh...