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Cities: Skylines II

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Re: Cities: Skylines II

#141

Post by syntheweave »

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).

The limits of every simulation game come into play where they start to "cartoon" how the world actually works, which has always been the case with city builders in the Simcity mold. The approaches to traffic, crime, pollution etc all act in a way to give an impression of the real world while not really going deep into the subject and making the solutions be a bit lock-and-key, fitting our existing norms rather than presenting an emergent problem: a lot of times it comes down to building "expensive structure X" to solve your city's issues. The original Simcity is ultimately broken, speedrunner style, by reaching into the guts of the sim to realize that every zone just needs a token road or rail by it, not a connection, and therefore can be approached with a nonsensical pattern of disconnected structures.

I think Skylines did a good job of modelling complex traffic, but when I came back to it a month or two ago, I was disappointed by how much it felt like I was steered towards creating a "city of the past" and not engaging with any new technological or economic developments. Like, you can build an Amsterdam-like bike city in Skylines, with the appropriate DLC, but it's not modelled in a fine-grained way and just feels like you have magicked away commuter traffic by dumping bike lanes everywhere.

In the end, if I want to plan a city of the future, I should probably go back to drawing on graph paper like when I was 8 years old.

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#142

Post by satvikpendem »

dysoco wrote: post #130
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…

Wonder why a "The Sims" competitor hasn't appeared yet, would the lack of branding and general "charm" of The Sims(like Simlish) be a dealbreaker?

Life By You seems to be that, which was also announced.

Another one is called Paralives: https://www.polygon.com/23433566/sims-5-project-rene-paraliv...

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#143

Post by byteware »

samtp wrote: post #127
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…

> The amount of unrestrained freedom makes me question why I'm even playing. Well I hope you don't have the same feeling about life. Because we are all free to choose our own adventure (with some choices obviously better than others), and there are no clear objectives or goals besides what you set for yourself.

yes, but then why not just do life instead?

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#144

Post by quic5 »

Having spent countless hours in Cities: Skylines I’m a bit worried that I haven’t spotted a single form of public transport nor more bike infrastructure than a painted bike lane. I hope we won’t have to wait for countless DLCs to add more interesting modes of transport that just cars

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#145

Post by theshrike79 »

dysoco wrote: post #130
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…

Wonder why a "The Sims" competitor hasn't appeared yet, would the lack of branding and general "charm" of The Sims(like Simlish) be a dealbreaker?

The brand is too strong with The Sims. It has multiple generations of fans who started with the original and are still playing the latest game.

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#146

Post by syntheweave »

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.

You can definitely make the city less traffic-heavy, especially after the DLC. But even in vanilla, for the commute traffic it's mostly a matter of having enough pedestrian bridges and tunnels so that they have uninterrupted journeys, and for the trucks the trick is to place rail depots near industrial and commercial districts so that they never need to get to the highway. Do those two things and you've cleared out most of the problem.

Everything else is taken care of by designating a faster arterial road at certain intervals(so that the driving AI's preferences are more predictable) and then designing a one-way flow in and out of areas with a lot of conflict points. It is not exactly how I want to envision my city, but it's also not extremely complicated to work out.

The game really limits traffic reduction mostly through the city services, which all have to drive down the roads to provide services.

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#147

Post by izacus »

syntheweave wrote: post #141
izacus wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

The limits of every simulation game come into play where they start to "cartoon" how the world actually works, which has always been the case with city builders in the Simcity mold. The approaches to traffic, crime, pollution etc all act in a way to give an impression of the real world while not really going deep into the subject and making the solutions be a bit lock-and-key, fitting our existing norms rather than p…

Well, I personally think that these sandbox games need a bit of suspension of disbelief and roleplay to be truly fun.

If you optimize the fun of the game by breaking it (and that's usually rather easy), you'll just... not have fun with it. This is why I personally prefer to avoid using broken strategies and set my own fun challenges to build themed cities.

Which is why I kinda wish there was more variety in Skylines - besides Vancouver, I also want to make messy cities like Shenzen or Bangkok, or London and maybe deal with local limits and idiosyncrasies.

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#148

Post by rasjani »

pavlov wrote: post #128
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…

I posted this earlier [1] but it’s an interesting little twist to this story… While EA was busy destroying the SimCity brand with unadulterated capitalist greed, Cities: Skylines was created with public funding from the Finnish government. No VCs wanted to invest in such a niche company. They were only able to get off the ground thanks to money from Finland’s public startup funding and arts grants. Capitalism on its…

Finn here and i know the game and company and by no means Im not downplaying what you said but; In general - there are quite a few possibilities to apply for grants and similar monetary benefits from the goverment, municipalities and few ngo's here. And as a finn - I would find it actually miraculous that company such as Colossal Order would have never ever benefited from public funding.

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#149

Post by throw0101c »

samtp wrote: post #125
scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How is using your legs in an urban area political?

> How is using your legs in an urban area political?

Since you asked, "Conspiracy Theorists Think Walkable Cities Are Really Open-Air Prison Dystopias Now":

* https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7g898/walkable-15-minute-ci...

"Conspiracy Theorists Are Coming for the 15-Minute City"

* https://www.wired.co.uk/article/15-minute-cities-conspiracy-...

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#150

Post by dirtyid »

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…

City builders experience leans too much towards god mode that closely resembles creators vision rather than the compromised mess that actual urban planning is. A proper city building experience would lead to a haphazard landscape where you hate 50% of what exists but just relieved it even got built in the first place.
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