Cities : Skylines

[Turjan]

Sure and all very interesting but manually deciding when to have a disaster defeats the purpose. I want them to be random, so that they are challenges not the equivalent of a kid destroying his sandcastle

Maybe, my point in this regard got lost, but those aren't really any fun in any game I saw them. Tropico has them, but it also is a good example for the point that you have to keep disasters pitifully ineffective in order to be able to integrate them into normal gameplay. This is also the reason why fires don't spread in this game, as, realistically, in any case this happens, your city will be dead.

It will take decades for the city to recover from that flood up there.

 

[Hobbit Lord of Mordor_]

Sure and all very interesting but manually deciding when to have a disaster defeats the purpose. I want them to be random, so that they are challenges not the equivalent of a kid destroying his sandcastle

Maybe, my point in this regard got lost, but those aren't really any fun in any game I saw them. Tropico has them, but it also is a good example for the point that you have to keep disasters pitifully ineffective in order to be able to integrate them into normal gameplay. This is also the reason why fires don't spread in this game, as, realistically, in any case this happens, your city will be dead.

It will take decades for the city to recover from that flood up there.

That's a matter of the right level of challenge, the right amount of randomness

Business cycles reducing/increasing economic demand and indirectly your tax collection. Or fluctuations in crime, environmental movements, anti-nuclear whatever. Maybe the unions or SJWs or the gays demand you pass a certain policy and block the roads, maybe you give in or send in the police to quieten them down

I also think having some kind of election cycle, so you need to be popular every 4 years or so would make you balance long term and short term objectives

 

[Turjan]

That's a matter of the right level of challenge, the right amount of randomness

Except maybe a tornado, which is usually limited to a smaller area, a "right level of challenge" is, most of the time, simply unrealistic. Also, personally I would switch disasters off. They just disturb.

Business cycles reducing/increasing economic demand and indirectly your tax collection. Or fluctuations in crime, environmental movements, anti-nuclear whatever. Maybe the unions or SJWs or the gays demand you pass a certain policy and block the roads, maybe you give in or send in the police to quieten them down.

I can imagine some of this, as long as it does not interfere with how I want to build that city. It's basically a different kind of game you want.

I also think having some kind of election cycle, so you need to be popular every 4 years or so would make you balance long term and short term objectives

Yeah, we've seen how well that went in Tropico. Who would want to lose a city by losing an election? Not fun. In the end, you have to make this feature as laughable as it was in Tropico to make it bearable. In the last version I played of that game, it was pretty much impossible to lose an election. When it was still slightly more challenging, you could just give some tax relief, and everything was peachy. Honestly, that's either just window dressing or a major nuisance.

In principle, this game wants to follow up on SC4. It's somewhat simplified compared to the latter, but it's mostly spot on as far as the features are concerned.

 

[baturinsky]

So, how is C:S doing? Was traffic underpified?

 

[Turjan]

I'm not quite sure what to think about it yet. Trams are nice, but let's see how they are implemented. There will be weather effects (rain and fog) on all themes. Snow is a separate map theme though, which means we are not dealing with season changes here.

 

[Alienman]

In that case, meh. Thought this was a season thing.

 

[Perkel]

In that case, meh. Thought this was a season thing.

Hard to implement. It would require non janky texture swaps that would put game under a bus in therms of performance compared to original game. Also it would make mods way more harder to make (as it would require basically at least 2 models)

 

[Hobbit Lord of Mordor_]

Even if there are seasons what would the gameplay challenge be?

If its' just for looks sounds like a stupid thing to spend money on, I could play Morrowind instead

 

[Turjan]

You have a few gameplay elements, like needing more power, some kind of heating source (it sounded... weird... something with water), snowplows...

But yeah, it's not much. I hope they fix at least the tourism bug. Regarding traffic, I don't expect anything, but I know most workarounds.

I'm a sucker for trams in my cities though. They will probably give traffic the final infarct from clogging, but hey...

 

[Hobbit Lord of Mordor_]

What's the difference with rail? Just a cheaper but slower rail isn't it?

 

[Caim]

What's the difference with rail? Just a cheaper but slower rail isn't it?

I think it can be placed on roads, or the rails for trams come with road parts themselves.

 

[Hobbit Lord of Mordor_]

WOW. Sounds worthwhile

 

[Turjan]

WOW. Sounds worthwhile

Trams are part of the public transport system in many European cities. That's actually something many people asked for, so it isn't anything to complain about in principle. The city I live in still has a tram route network of about 110 miles (about 270 miles track length), compared to about 50 miles of subway routes.

The issue will be how they implement it. Buses have been no problem anymore since they made bus stops separate lanes, so let's hope they do something intelligent with tram stops.

 

[Turjan]

DLC is out, and it's decidedly half-assed. Haven't bought it, but they have a patch that brings some joy to all your cities.
Gorgeous mountains of shit:

Shiny rocks:

And your roads got laminated so they don't dissolve:

Sigh...

Of course, the patch/mod update combo broke everything for the moment.
At least the light got somewhat prettier (in one of my oldest cities that at least still loads):

Which still isn't much of a consolation.

Why do companies have to do shitty updates like this one?

Edit: The German mag Gamestar has a review on their site:
http://www.gamestar.de/spiele/citie...t/cities_skylines_snowfall,53587,3268183.html
Verdict: 58/100

 

[Caim]

Well that's a disappointment.

LGR review hits on monday.

 

[Dead Guy]

Gorgeous mountains of shit:

Shiny rocks:

Bethesda rocks.

 

[Angthoron]

To be fair, this winter looks pretty much like that.

 

[Turjan]

To be fair, this winter looks pretty much like that.

If those images were from a winter map...

Unfortunately, those are from my current city that I have been building for weeks and that got "beautified" by the weather update. Now, a nuclear bomb is the only option.

Edit: One further free addition is actually a theme editor. Which is rather cool. When they introduced the feature, they replaced the rock textures with a pic of Dolph Lundgren. Not sure whether an improvement.

 

[Stokowski]

Trams = reskinned buses.
Heat = reskinned water system.
Lazy, lazy, half-assed piece of DLC.

 

[Wilian]

Heat = reskinned water system.

But that's how heating works in reality unless you live in rural areas.

 

[Turjan]

Trams = reskinned buses.
Heat = reskinned water system.

Hmm, the heating system is in principle the way how most households in the city I live get heated. Not that it's overly interesting.

I'm not sure what you mean with trams as reskinned buses. Trams and the theme editor are the two really good things in this DLC. You have trams on roads or on standalone tracks. The execution could be better (the way they realized avenue stations requires trams with doors on both sides, but the lines need loops), but it's definitely a different system from anything else that is in the game at the moment.

 

[Turjan]

Some mod updates made my main city difficult to load in the meanwhile, but that has been solved now. I'm still waiting for a performance patch.

What I said about the lighting update up there seems to have solved some of the issues with the lighting after the AD update. At least, if I look at my current city, sunrises look quite nice:

Still waiting for the second patch though.

 

[Turjan]

Just to be fair, last week's patch fixed most of the complaints I had with how the game looks now.

Also, bugs are fixed. That still doesn't make the winter stuff more exciting, but at least the main game looks nice enough now.

Also, coming back to this old comment:

Hard to implement. It would require non janky texture swaps that would put game under a bus in therms of performance compared to original game. Also it would make mods way more harder to make (as it would require basically at least 2 models)

Funny enough, they made winter work in a more intelligent way. You don't need different models. Snow is actually layered onto existing models. Which basically leaves the performance excuse, which is what they bring up for all the shortcomings (like the traffic AI). At least the latter can be tackled with additional roads and/or mods.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Anyone still playing this, or did they manage to sink a promising game with two lackluster expansions?

 

[Turjan]

Anyone still playing this, or did they manage to sink a promising game with two lackluster expansions?

I'm currently taking a break, but not because I dislike the game. I just have to play something else for a while and intend to go back to this at some point.