miss neko

Just a thought - considering how many talented and devoted people are here, has anyone ever considered getting together in a group to make a completely new city simulator rather than waiting for EA (which of course mostly makes sports games) to get around to it. If a group of independent people can write an operating system, I'm sure it could work for a city sim. Anyway, I personally would want stuff that makes things seem more accurate, like people will travel sometimes large distances in commute like 60-70 miles at times, or that the area the city is in will work better cooperatively rather than a bunch of small cities that *all* want an airport and the traffic all leaves on the two-lane road that has been around just because it's been there longer rather than the wider road I created as a bypass so I *don't* have to tear down a zillion developments - nothing ever seems like it works together. I don't mind the whole region thing as it keeps system requirements lower, but it's crazy how nothing ever seems to go right when I know it would make sense in reality. The original simcity was better in some ways because the graphics were simple - you could imagine things to seem real, and then came more and more fun eye candy and a multitude of options - which seem more and more like an alternate reality. I've never been in any city in my life where all the bus stops were half-acre plazas - normally they're a sign at an intersection. Nor are there landfills everywhere which fill up like crazy. Transportation takes time, a helluva lotta money and a considerable amount of planning to be constructed - there's no way a subway could just be plotted along any conceivable path on the whim of a city planner, and freeways are massive undertakings to seriously change traffic patterns. And can't the fire department put out fires on their own? Why must I do it? What have I, what have I, what have I done to deserve this? So yeah, there's all the little new features everyone wants like more kinds of trains and lanes and landscapes, but I personally think things should just kinda make sense, and then people who haven't even played simcity will be able to play and things will just kind of seem obvious what they do. And everything should work together better so nobody will be guessing if their plans will have the desired effect or not. To me having a better-functioning city sim would be more fun and playable than having an additional freeway option or even more detailed graphics. But it wouldn't hurt to make the game more easily customizable, because we know players are more enthusiastic than the executives who release the software and its expansions.