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I feel like most of these city building games is that they feel like a doll house. You can create all the nice things you want and have a pretty city that you'd

by aflag 4y ago

I feel like most of these city building games is that they feel like a doll house. You can create all the nice things you want and have a pretty city that you'd like to live in. However, the cities themselves don't have much of a personality. It's barely a simulation. I'd like to see certain areas becoming rough sort of ghettos. People in the city having different backgrounds. Just creating a school in those places would not necessarily improve things. I'd like to see economic effects happening and causing disruption in the city. Big companies coming and going and affecting daily life. I'd also like to see rich regions forming. Cool places that everyone wants to go. Essentially, I'd like to have less control and see things not working out exactly like I planned. Everything always goes exactly to plan.

standardUser 4y ago
I completely agree, and it's true more for Skylines than the old SimCity games. The "simulation" aspect is lacking in respect to developing different kinds of neighborhoods. I spent a lot of time in Skylines modding and creating custom neighborhood sets that could emulate various levels of density or socio-economic status. But that's the doll house approach, it doesn't emerge from the simulation. At least in SimCity 4k you could create distinctly rich and poor neighborhoods and the factors that led to those neighborhood types were reasonably well-simulated.
zokier 4y ago
I think one problem with many city builders is how they don't really have proper sense of time. Houses you plop down now are exactly the same as you did 50 in-game years ago, and even megaprojects usually complete in trivial amounts of in-game time. Combine this with the player having near god-like powers to build whatever and eventually raze down and reshape any parts, and it leaves cities very hollow
foobarian 4y ago
Imagine the individual people in the simulated cities were run on a ChatGPT-like backend, and remembered everything. Held grudges for destroying their neighborhood. And therefore self-organized into gangs, etc.
- sefrost 4y ago
  Have you played Tropico?

by aflag 4y ago

standardUser 4y ago

I completely agree, and it's true more for Skylines than the old SimCity games. The "simulation" aspect is lacking in respect to developing different kinds of neighborhoods. I spent a lot of time in Skylines modding and creating custom neighborhood sets that could emulate various levels of density or socio-economic status. But that's the doll house approach, it doesn't emerge from the simulation. At least in SimCity 4k you could create distinctly rich and poor neighborhoods and the factors that led to those neighborhood types were reasonably well-simulated.

zokier 4y ago

I think one problem with many city builders is how they don't really have proper sense of time. Houses you plop down now are exactly the same as you did 50 in-game years ago, and even megaprojects usually complete in trivial amounts of in-game time. Combine this with the player having near god-like powers to build whatever and eventually raze down and reshape any parts, and it leaves cities very hollow

foobarian 4y ago

Imagine the individual people in the simulated cities were run on a ChatGPT-like backend, and remembered everything. Held grudges for destroying their neighborhood. And therefore self-organized into gangs, etc.

sefrost 4y ago
Have you played Tropico?