7 ms·

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 pathfi

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 infrastructure. I also hope they offer a way to do true mixed-use building instead of being forced to choose residential/commercial/industrial/office.

izacus 4y ago
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.
- leeter 4y ago
  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.
  - izacus 4y ago
    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).
    - em-bee 4y ago
      but that's the issue. most sims are designed after american cities
    - PeterisP 4y ago
      Not only many world cities, but also at least some parts of iconic USA cities like New York City Manhattan, downtown Chicago, etc.
      - red-iron-pine 4y ago
        essentially pre-automotive cities vs. post-automotive cities.
    - jschveibinz 4y ago
      This was standard in US cities in the early 20th century (prior to 1920) before the value of the real estate (and taxes) and automobiles changed the model. Mixed use may be coming back-California recently passed a state law allowing for it, I believe . Here is one article on the topic of mixed-use: https://www.secfin.com/private-money-blog/2021/12/15/the-rise-of-mixed-use-properties https://www.secfin.com/private-money-blog/2021/12/15/the-ris... And if you haven’t read anything by Jane Jacobs, it’s worthwhile checking out her books written (1950-1960) about the importance of city neighborhoods from the perspective of NYC urban dwellers.
    - syntheweave 4y ago
      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.
- acchow 4y ago
  > 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...
  - doctor_eval 4y ago
    It’s true that every building needs to be on a street but it is nevertheless possible to build substantial pedestrian architecture. I’ve spent many happy hours building pedestrian infrastructure and encouraging my peeps to walk and catch the subway.
    - lamontcg 4y ago
      And if you don't want your cities to die from traffic congestion you need to make it all walkable with good public transportation. I can get much further through the middle game by focusing from the start on not building all kinds of roads. I used to run a big highway down the middle of my city thinking that was the right way to do it, but you're vastly better off not doing that, because if you build that road, they'll overuse it. The sims will walk a pretty unreasonably long way as well, I've built ped overpasses that were packed, while having nice and quiet roads. CityPlannerPlays is a good youtuber to learn how to build cities that aren't terrible, and aren't overly cheesing the game mechanics: https://www.youtube.com/@CityPlannerPlays https://www.youtube.com/@CityPlannerPlays
      - MrGilbert 4y ago
        CPP is really great. Recently discovered, and I'm binge-watching through all his content. I love the stories he's telling, plus the insides he gives as being an actual city planner.
  - xdrosenheim 4y ago
    It would be so cool to only have a rail station to begin with.
- ajkjk 4y ago
  The game desperately needs a 'campaign', similar to (but hopefully richer than) what the Roller Coaster Tycoon series had, just to give some structure to repeated gameplay.
  - govg 4y ago
    There are scenarios[1] in the game, from my experience that is very similar to what RCT used to have. You're given a map and a point in time where the map has certain issues, and you have to solve them. The issue is that they are gated by DLC, so not all players can experience it. Also they aren't really deep and don't have too much re-playability. [1] : https://skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Scenarios https://skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Scenarios
    - ajkjk 4y ago
      Oh yeah, I've played the game and some of dlc and didn't even know about them.
- potatolicious 4y ago
  If they don't give us mixed-use zoning I'm going to tableflip, so here's hoping. I dislike how Western-centric the concept of zoning is - in most of the world having a grocery store at the bottom of a building is normal! Likewise I wish they would model the amenity effect of businesses. Commercial zones in C:S are only about employment, but IMO having good amenities near residences is a huge influencer of QoL and should be modeled. In fact I would love to see zoning become a more full-fledged game mechanic - balancing the amenity effects of mixing business with residential with the nuisance drawbacks. Likewise the idea that you had to start every city with a huge freeway is a bit of a turnoff. Give me a start with a train station! I want to make a beach town that's primarily accessed by train!
  - andybak 4y ago
    > Western-centric Don't you mean US-centric? I don't recall a UK city where there wasn't a grocery store within a 10 minute walk of everywhere and I don't recall visiting a city in Europe that wasn't pretty much the same.
    - munk-a 4y ago
      I think they meant vaguely North American. That kind of awful zoning is quite prevalent in Mexico and Canada as well.
    - mcv 4y ago
      It's very common for Dutch shops to have apartments above them. Sometimes it's where the shop owner lives, sometimes not. Many modern shopping malls include a lot of residential space of some sort. Many neighbourhoods have corner shops. Another interesting thing that these games don't support is reusing existing buildings for a different purpose. Former industrial or dock areas are always popular places to turn into expensive housing or shopping areas.
      - db48x 4y ago
        There are a couple of mods that let you change what buildings are used for, or rebalance how dense they are. Ploppable RICO, Realistic Population, etc. You can even go so far as to use Procedural Objects with Service Cubes. Use PO to create a completely unique building, then hide a Service Cube inside it that provides housing for 100 families, another that provides some commercial, and another that provides a city service like a school or a morgue. There, instant mixed–use building. Overlap it with a subway station for extra realism. One of my favorite Youtube series is Cities Skylines: MARS <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDX8YQ_aGnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDX8YQ_aGnY>. The author goes hog–wild and builds a complete city into a dome on Mars using custom assets he created himself (the game comes with asset editors), Procedural Objects, Service Cubes, and liberal use of the Move–It mod. It really is an astounding work of art, but you can also see why Colossal Order didn’t make a game with that level of freedom built–in; it almost becomes more of a 3D modelling program than a game. There’s a fine line between competing with SimCity and competing with Maya or Blender!
jeffbee 4y ago
[flagged]
iso1631 4y ago
Be good if the cost of car parking was accounted for. Want to have cars? You've got to have large parking lots cluttering your space with low appeal, or your buildings cost far more to build / lower density etc
- bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
  https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/the-philosophy-of-simcity-an-interview-with-the-games-lead-designer/275724/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/the-p... Geoff Manaugh: While you were making those measurements of different real-world cities, did you discover any surprising patterns or spatial relationships? Librande: Yes, definitely. I think the biggest one was the parking lots. When I started measuring out our local grocery store, which I don't think of as being that big, I was blown away by how much more space was parking lot rather than actual store. That was kind of a problem, because we were originally just going to model real cities, but we quickly realized there were way too many parking lots in the real world and that our game was going to be really boring if it was proportional in terms of parking lots. Manaugh: You would be making SimParkingLot, rather than SimCity. Librande: [laughs] Exactly. So what we do in the game is that we just imagine they are underground. We do have parking lots in the game, and we do try to scale them -- so, if you have a little grocery store, we'll put six or seven parking spots on the side, and, if you have a big convention center or a big pro stadium, they'll have what seem like really big lots -- but they're nowhere near what a real grocery store or pro stadium would have. We had to do the best we could do and still make the game look attractive.
scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
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-LbbcR84 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?
- samtp 4y ago
  How is using your legs in an urban area political?
  - scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
    How that urban area came to be is highly political. How it evolves is as well.
  - throw0101c 4y ago
    > 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-cities-con 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-climate-denier https://www.wired.co.uk/article/15-minute-cities-conspiracy-...
    - phpisthebest 4y ago
      [flagged]
memonkey 4y ago
a cool extended feature of that would be to have pre-built unoptimized cities with a budget to update existing metro areas to more walkable and efficient metro areas (with metrics that track things like CO2 emissions).
mcv 4y ago
It would be great if a game like that was such an accurate city simulation that you could use it to experiment with different kinds of infrastructure and draw conclusions from that. I'm probably asking way too much, but it would be awesome if possible.

izacus 4y ago

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.

leeter 4y ago
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.
- izacus 4y ago
  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).
  - em-bee 4y ago
    but that's the issue. most sims are designed after american cities
  - PeterisP 4y ago
    Not only many world cities, but also at least some parts of iconic USA cities like New York City Manhattan, downtown Chicago, etc.
    - red-iron-pine 4y ago
      essentially pre-automotive cities vs. post-automotive cities.
  - jschveibinz 4y ago
    This was standard in US cities in the early 20th century (prior to 1920) before the value of the real estate (and taxes) and automobiles changed the model. Mixed use may be coming back-California recently passed a state law allowing for it, I believe . Here is one article on the topic of mixed-use: https://www.secfin.com/private-money-blog/2021/12/15/the-rise-of-mixed-use-properties https://www.secfin.com/private-money-blog/2021/12/15/the-ris... And if you haven’t read anything by Jane Jacobs, it’s worthwhile checking out her books written (1950-1960) about the importance of city neighborhoods from the perspective of NYC urban dwellers.
  - syntheweave 4y ago
    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.
acchow 4y ago
> 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...
- doctor_eval 4y ago
  It’s true that every building needs to be on a street but it is nevertheless possible to build substantial pedestrian architecture. I’ve spent many happy hours building pedestrian infrastructure and encouraging my peeps to walk and catch the subway.
  - lamontcg 4y ago
    And if you don't want your cities to die from traffic congestion you need to make it all walkable with good public transportation. I can get much further through the middle game by focusing from the start on not building all kinds of roads. I used to run a big highway down the middle of my city thinking that was the right way to do it, but you're vastly better off not doing that, because if you build that road, they'll overuse it. The sims will walk a pretty unreasonably long way as well, I've built ped overpasses that were packed, while having nice and quiet roads. CityPlannerPlays is a good youtuber to learn how to build cities that aren't terrible, and aren't overly cheesing the game mechanics: https://www.youtube.com/@CityPlannerPlays https://www.youtube.com/@CityPlannerPlays
    - MrGilbert 4y ago
      CPP is really great. Recently discovered, and I'm binge-watching through all his content. I love the stories he's telling, plus the insides he gives as being an actual city planner.
- xdrosenheim 4y ago
  It would be so cool to only have a rail station to begin with.
ajkjk 4y ago
The game desperately needs a 'campaign', similar to (but hopefully richer than) what the Roller Coaster Tycoon series had, just to give some structure to repeated gameplay.
- govg 4y ago
  There are scenarios[1] in the game, from my experience that is very similar to what RCT used to have. You're given a map and a point in time where the map has certain issues, and you have to solve them. The issue is that they are gated by DLC, so not all players can experience it. Also they aren't really deep and don't have too much re-playability. [1] : https://skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Scenarios https://skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Scenarios
  - ajkjk 4y ago
    Oh yeah, I've played the game and some of dlc and didn't even know about them.
potatolicious 4y ago
If they don't give us mixed-use zoning I'm going to tableflip, so here's hoping. I dislike how Western-centric the concept of zoning is - in most of the world having a grocery store at the bottom of a building is normal! Likewise I wish they would model the amenity effect of businesses. Commercial zones in C:S are only about employment, but IMO having good amenities near residences is a huge influencer of QoL and should be modeled. In fact I would love to see zoning become a more full-fledged game mechanic - balancing the amenity effects of mixing business with residential with the nuisance drawbacks. Likewise the idea that you had to start every city with a huge freeway is a bit of a turnoff. Give me a start with a train station! I want to make a beach town that's primarily accessed by train!
- andybak 4y ago
  > Western-centric Don't you mean US-centric? I don't recall a UK city where there wasn't a grocery store within a 10 minute walk of everywhere and I don't recall visiting a city in Europe that wasn't pretty much the same.
  - munk-a 4y ago
    I think they meant vaguely North American. That kind of awful zoning is quite prevalent in Mexico and Canada as well.
  - mcv 4y ago
    It's very common for Dutch shops to have apartments above them. Sometimes it's where the shop owner lives, sometimes not. Many modern shopping malls include a lot of residential space of some sort. Many neighbourhoods have corner shops. Another interesting thing that these games don't support is reusing existing buildings for a different purpose. Former industrial or dock areas are always popular places to turn into expensive housing or shopping areas.
    - db48x 4y ago
      There are a couple of mods that let you change what buildings are used for, or rebalance how dense they are. Ploppable RICO, Realistic Population, etc. You can even go so far as to use Procedural Objects with Service Cubes. Use PO to create a completely unique building, then hide a Service Cube inside it that provides housing for 100 families, another that provides some commercial, and another that provides a city service like a school or a morgue. There, instant mixed–use building. Overlap it with a subway station for extra realism. One of my favorite Youtube series is Cities Skylines: MARS <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDX8YQ_aGnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDX8YQ_aGnY>. The author goes hog–wild and builds a complete city into a dome on Mars using custom assets he created himself (the game comes with asset editors), Procedural Objects, Service Cubes, and liberal use of the Move–It mod. It really is an astounding work of art, but you can also see why Colossal Order didn’t make a game with that level of freedom built–in; it almost becomes more of a 3D modelling program than a game. There’s a fine line between competing with SimCity and competing with Maya or Blender!

jeffbee 4y ago

[flagged]

iso1631 4y ago

Be good if the cost of car parking was accounted for. Want to have cars? You've got to have large parking lots cluttering your space with low appeal, or your buildings cost far more to build / lower density etc

bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/the-philosophy-of-simcity-an-interview-with-the-games-lead-designer/275724/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/the-p... Geoff Manaugh: While you were making those measurements of different real-world cities, did you discover any surprising patterns or spatial relationships? Librande: Yes, definitely. I think the biggest one was the parking lots. When I started measuring out our local grocery store, which I don't think of as being that big, I was blown away by how much more space was parking lot rather than actual store. That was kind of a problem, because we were originally just going to model real cities, but we quickly realized there were way too many parking lots in the real world and that our game was going to be really boring if it was proportional in terms of parking lots. Manaugh: You would be making SimParkingLot, rather than SimCity. Librande: [laughs] Exactly. So what we do in the game is that we just imagine they are underground. We do have parking lots in the game, and we do try to scale them -- so, if you have a little grocery store, we'll put six or seven parking spots on the side, and, if you have a big convention center or a big pro stadium, they'll have what seem like really big lots -- but they're nowhere near what a real grocery store or pro stadium would have. We had to do the best we could do and still make the game look attractive.

scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago

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-LbbcR84 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?

samtp 4y ago
How is using your legs in an urban area political?
- scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
  How that urban area came to be is highly political. How it evolves is as well.
- throw0101c 4y ago
  > 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-cities-con 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-climate-denier https://www.wired.co.uk/article/15-minute-cities-conspiracy-...
  - phpisthebest 4y ago
    [flagged]

memonkey 4y ago

a cool extended feature of that would be to have pre-built unoptimized cities with a budget to update existing metro areas to more walkable and efficient metro areas (with metrics that track things like CO2 emissions).

mcv 4y ago

It would be great if a game like that was such an accurate city simulation that you could use it to experiment with different kinds of infrastructure and draw conclusions from that. I'm probably asking way too much, but it would be awesome if possible.