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Cities: Skylines II

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Re: Cities: Skylines II

#101

Post by scyzoryk_xyz »

dcchambers wrote: post #14

I have put many hours into Cities Skylines and I am really looking forward to this. The obvious thing people will want them to fix is traffic and vehicle pathfinding, put personally I hope they let us build more pedestrian-focused streets. I so desperately want to build walk and bike friendly cities with beautiful pedestrian malls and walking-only streets but the game kind of forces you to build out extensive car inf…

I too have put lots of time and energy into this and many other city building games.

Agree on everything you say, but I do wonder to what extent the bad traffic and all those limitations are an inherent statement that these games carry by design. A statement on how we think urban design should work blah blah.

SimCity 2000 certainly had a sharper, more pointed set of things to say that presumably originated with Will Wright. Skylines obviously can’t be too political about it, they just have to keep it mild to sell.

I do remember this guy making a great series of videos explaining a lot about how cities were/are made while playing through a modded copy of Skylines. Highly recommend here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwkSQD3vqK1S1NiHIxxF2g_Uy...

I can imagine what you’re wanting for will probably be delivered with a variety of mods and community content. Or as DLC?

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#102

Post by brink »

knorker wrote: post #55

What has made me give up on Cities Skylines is that you can't build a liveable city. It forces you to build US-style car-centric dystopias. I found that once you reach a certain city size this game is just car traffic management.

There's a pedestrian focused expansion pack.

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#104

Post by PeterisP »

nikanj wrote: post #95
Laaas wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turns out, building good _anything_ is profitable.

But building user-hostile crap _anything_ is way more profitable

Well, no, not really - the example of Simcity 2013 vs Cities: Skylines given above is a great example where the user-hostile crap was much less profitable than what EA could have gotten based on their brand if they would have just made a straightforward remake similar to Cities: Skylines.

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#105

Post by PeterisP »

izacus wrote: post #61
leeter wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious how much they'll pull over from the existing DLCs, the Plazas and Promenades pack does allow for pedestrian cities. But not in a European sense despite the dev being in Europe.

We could even begin with a concept of mixed zoning that's so standard in many world cities. The usual "stores on the street, apartments above" design. (I was really surprised that actual USA is building cities the same way SimCity modeled - with complete separation between commercial and residental areas).

Not only many world cities, but also at least some parts of iconic USA cities like New York City Manhattan, downtown Chicago, etc.

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#106

Post by colechristensen »

satvikpendem wrote: post #83

I find it hilarious that EA had the concept down and just blew their opportunity with Simcity 2013 (always online (which by the way was actually not true, people cracked the online requirement within the first day or so), had to contract with other users for basic services like sewage and electricity), paving the way for competitors like Cities: Skylines to take the lead instead. This reminds me of the same thing tha…

"EA" didn't have the concept down, Maxis did. They bought out something and ruined it, par for the course for acquisitions.

Isn't it great when founders get a pay day but does that kind of thing really benefit everybody else? Just in general it doesn't seem that allowing most mergers is a particularly good thing for the American public, benefiting mostly just very large corporations who get to offload risk on to startups and their investors and reward only a lucky few (though skill is important, who succeeds and gets a good exit has a lot to do with luck)

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#107

Post by namaria »

legitster wrote: post #31
toasteros wrote: post #20

I have a hard time with freeform city builders like Skylines or SimCity. The amount of unrestrained freedom makes me question why I'm even playing. I have the same issue with The Sims or something like Planet Zoo. That and Skylines giving me a blank canvas paralyses me. How does one plan a city? Where do the roads go? It's the sort of game I want to love, but I just get so overwhelmed by the sheer number of options a…

I similarly get bored of Skylines as soon as the game starts handing you near-infinite money. Making something aesthetically pleasing is only so interesting to me - I want the challenge of constraints. I actually have a similar problem with the Tropico remakes. Tropico 1 was hard . You could not survive a mission without dipping into the dictator toolsets. So striking a constant balance between economics and human ri…

Same decay happened in Civilization. Civ4 was a great challenge in terms of making choices and fighting off a somewhat competent (at least enough to make you take it into account) AI. Civ6 seems to be more of a design game after you get past the initial hump a getting some early infrastructure together without going bankrupt or conquered.

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#108

Post by acchow »

izacus wrote: post #34
dcchambers wrote: post #14

I have put many hours into Cities Skylines and I am really looking forward to this. The obvious thing people will want them to fix is traffic and vehicle pathfinding, put personally I hope they let us build more pedestrian-focused streets. I so desperately want to build walk and bike friendly cities with beautiful pedestrian malls and walking-only streets but the game kind of forces you to build out extensive car inf…

I also hope that they'll let us build more "european" cities that aren't so horribly car centric and are more diverse. Hopefully we also get a bit more diversity of gameplay - Skylines got pretty repetitive quickly with only challenge being traffic optimization. The new DLCs didn't really add that much to gameplay except different things to paint between roads. I hope things like universities, industry, agriculture,…

> I also hope that they'll let us build more "european" cities that aren't so horribly car centric and are more diverse.

Yeah, I wanted to start Skylines but found that it all begins with a highway...

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#109

Post by jstummbillig »

satvikpendem wrote: post #83

I find it hilarious that EA had the concept down and just blew their opportunity with Simcity 2013 (always online (which by the way was actually not true, people cracked the online requirement within the first day or so), had to contract with other users for basic services like sewage and electricity), paving the way for competitors like Cities: Skylines to take the lead instead. This reminds me of the same thing tha…

> It just goes to show that

unlikely stuff does happen but not as much as likely stuff. Generalising from anecdotes and cherry picking data remains ill advised.

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#110

Post by satvikpendem »

jahewson wrote: post #97
Laaas wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turns out, building good _anything_ is profitable.

It's definitely not! Many good things cost more to build than people are willing to pay for them.

Yeah, lots of good things aren't profitable (at least to the ones making them). Xerox PARC comes to mind, Xerox didn't want to capitalize on those good things that were made there and thus Gates and Jobs did instead.
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