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The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

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Re: The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

#11

Post by talmand »

icehawk219 wrote: post #5

Skylines is hands down my favorite game right now and is directly responsible for my highly unproductive, but fun, weekend. But it's not without faults. For me one of the telling things will be how they handle a very similar problem that EA had with the latest Sim City. Traffic. Once your city becomes a certain size the game goes from City Builder to Traffic Management Simulator. Which itself wouldn't be a problem if…

That actually sounds quite realistic to me. Part of traffic management is dealing with, and trying to predict, stupidity.

Re: The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

#12

Post by Erwin »

icehawk219 wrote: post #5

Skylines is hands down my favorite game right now and is directly responsible for my highly unproductive, but fun, weekend. But it's not without faults. For me one of the telling things will be how they handle a very similar problem that EA had with the latest Sim City. Traffic. Once your city becomes a certain size the game goes from City Builder to Traffic Management Simulator. Which itself wouldn't be a problem if…

The current proposed hack to encourage them to use all the lanes is this: https://i.imgur.com/F8eKjp5.jpg -- periodic narrowing of the lanes so those that don't need to turn stay in the middle.

Re: The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

#13

Post by intull »

The Colossal Order team, in my opinion was very lucky! There were three games - 1. SimCity 4 with the statistical simulation model, big maps (region-wise) and plenty of features. 2. SimCity 5 with a pure agent-based simulation model (it had flaws though, especially traffic), but again the series pioneered a new way of creating games in this genre. And, 3. Cities XL having a HUGE map, few unique features like bus routing, etc and amazing graphics!

All these games had flaws in their respective models but worked well nonetheless. SimCity 5 is a success IMO; for venturing into a much realistic simulation that you could connect with. Though we all love to complain about the map size.

Cities: Skylines had the advantage of picking up the good pieces of each of these games! On the other hand, the last good game was SimCity 4 in 2003, more than a decade! We badly needed Cities: Skylines.

It's also very elating to see the support the team is giving to us! The Map Editor, the Asset Editor, the water dynamics, a mixture of agent and other simulation models (as they call it - "complex"). Though this game has its own share of flaws, they're quite tiny; except for the traffic (which is being fixed)!

Re: The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

#14

Post by hobs »

I don't know if it is just my incompetence, but I wanted to mention is that it can be unclear what the citizens want unless you cycle through all the available overlays and check things out.

I feel like they could definitely summarize important counters for you so you don't always have to click 10 times to get all the information on your city. This is especially true early game when your city is expanding by leaps and bounds and you keep hitting electricity/water supply issues.

Re: The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

#17

Post by voteapathy »

icehawk219 wrote: post #5

Skylines is hands down my favorite game right now and is directly responsible for my highly unproductive, but fun, weekend. But it's not without faults. For me one of the telling things will be how they handle a very similar problem that EA had with the latest Sim City. Traffic. Once your city becomes a certain size the game goes from City Builder to Traffic Management Simulator. Which itself wouldn't be a problem if…

True on the traffic. Sure, the game isn't perfect. However, one of the successes of Skylines has been the honest tone and communication with the developers. There's a sense of confidence that the game will be supported and improved over time. This didn't exist with Sim City 5, what with the always-online drama, the inability to play the game well for several months after release, and the early focus on producing large amounts of paid [overpriced?] DLC.

Re: The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

#18

Post by TeMPOraL »

icehawk219 wrote: post #5

Skylines is hands down my favorite game right now and is directly responsible for my highly unproductive, but fun, weekend. But it's not without faults. For me one of the telling things will be how they handle a very similar problem that EA had with the latest Sim City. Traffic. Once your city becomes a certain size the game goes from City Builder to Traffic Management Simulator. Which itself wouldn't be a problem if…

The team did a few games focused on traffic before, so there's hope they have enough experience to make it work in Skylines.

Re: The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

#19

Post by mlieberman85 »

intull wrote: post #13

The Colossal Order team, in my opinion was very lucky! There were three games - 1. SimCity 4 with the statistical simulation model, big maps (region-wise) and plenty of features. 2. SimCity 5 with a pure agent-based simulation model (it had flaws though, especially traffic), but again the series pioneered a new way of creating games in this genre. And, 3. Cities XL having a HUGE map, few unique features like bus rout…

Did it actually have much of a "realistic simulation" though? One of the main reasons I didn't buy the game is because people tore it to shreds for utilizing the same exact algorithm for determining traffic as they did water and other utilities. Also people pointed out that like people themselves weren't actually simulated in anyway they just woke up in the morning found the first open commercial job to work at and at night left and found the first house to live in.
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