Cities: Skylines II • Hacker News Board

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#31

Post by legitster » Mon, Mar 06, 2023, 6:48 PM UTC

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 rights was an interesting challenge. (It also made for a much more biting satire). The games since 3 are still pleasant city-builders in their own rights, but make it a bit too easy to win on the straight and narrow.

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#32

Post by Macha » Mon, Mar 06, 2023, 6:49 PM UTC

wnevets wrote: post #25

I'm really hoping they don't botch this release like some of their DLC. Most of the DLC released have pretty bad ratings on Steam.

Some of the later DLC have been pretty half hearted yet at the same time they've hired modders for some of the more popular mods (like traffic manager) who've said they weren't working on DLC, so this has been in the works for a while

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#33

Post by zamadatix » Mon, Mar 06, 2023, 6:51 PM UTC

YesBox wrote: post #17

Well crap, I'm going to have some serious competition :D I've been developing a city builder myself over the last year (Metropolis 1998). I wanted to do a 3D version sometime in the future, but alas. Maybe people will be tired of purchasing $15 DLCs on top of a shallow base game (probably not). Time to get to work

As long as the shallow base game still has more gameplay hours than most games I don't think people mind additional (also needing to be worthwhile) content costing money. That's Paradox's general business model and I think it works great for the types of games. I think I have nearly all of the optional content for Cities Skylines now but dollars per hour I'm still doing better than when it launched and when it launched the dollars per hour was still significantly lower than traditional games.

Looking at Metropolis 1998 my feedback would be I'm excited for the concept of a modern take on retro builders but I'm worried the gameplay will end up more "2D grid traffic simulator" than city builder. "Traffic simulator" can be a key layer for city builder die-hards but I'm hesitant that a 2D grid approach would be more interesting than base CS1, particularly with a free mod that simulates traffic more realistically (albeit not as performant what you can do with the traffic and road designs in 3D freeform is also much more interesting). I'll keep an eye on it though, it may be something I pick up in the future as it materializes :).

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#34

Post by izacus » Mon, Mar 06, 2023, 6:52 PM UTC

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, airports, etc. become a an actual challenge to build, fund and retain - maybe pull in some things from the Anno series to make it happen.

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#35

Post by brianbreslin » Mon, Mar 06, 2023, 6:52 PM UTC

Would love to play this on my m2 mac, but i'm assuming its windows or console only? Or do we think this would be available on Apple devices?

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#36

Post by pastacacioepepe » Mon, Mar 06, 2023, 6:53 PM UTC

I hope they don't go again with a car-centric idea of city building, but seeing the steam page screenshots I'm preparing for disappointment.

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#37

Post by BaculumMeumEst » Mon, Mar 06, 2023, 6:53 PM UTC

I wonder if this will still use Unity

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#38

Post by gdprrrr » Mon, Mar 06, 2023, 6:54 PM UTC

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…

Do you know that Cities Skylines introduces the services after you reach certain population milestones? It starts with just Power and Water. https://skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Milestones

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#39

Post by toshredsyousay » Mon, Mar 06, 2023, 6:55 PM UTC

One thing that annoys me about the first game is the way the commute times are not factored in at all to happiness or whatever. People literally go from one side of the map to the other for work and you aren't punished for terrible transit design (and cars magically disappear). I think the AI is too crappy for commute times to be a feature, but I hope they improve AI and add it for the sequel because it is just one of the most important aspects of city design.

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#40

Post by freitzkriesler2 » Mon, Mar 06, 2023, 6:55 PM UTC

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 trick is to start small, like a country town with farms and a small downtown. Build from there.

There's also the flip side which is just sandbox building a city to your specifications and ignoring the city building aspects of it. Almost like building a model of a city.