Cities: Skylines

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TiLT
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by TiLT »

Kraken wrote:Save me reading 7 pages by answering a quick question: Is this a game with goals and a campaign and scores and structure, a la Tropico and Anno, or is it a Sim City sandbox game?
Sandbox game, though you've got goals in that new abilities and buildings unlock as your city grows, giving you something to strive for.
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by Reemul »

Kraken wrote:Save me reading 7 pages by answering a quick question: Is this a game with goals and a campaign and scores and structure, a la Tropico and Anno, or is it a Sim City sandbox game?

I love me some citybuilding games but I get bored with sims pretty quickly.
No goals at all totally sandbox
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by Kraken »

Thanks for the info. I'll probably add this to my wishlist but only at a rock-bottom price. I'd lose interest after building a city or two.
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by jztemple2 »

Kraken wrote:Thanks for the info. I'll probably add this to my wishlist but only at a rock-bottom price. I'd lose interest after building a city or two.
I'm somewhat burned out after building my first city up to 130,000 people, but since I played 55 hours to get there, I think it was worth the money.
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by JayDeath »

I'm having a blast too. I have about 88,000 on 3 tiles and my growth has kinda stalled. Can anyone confirm that the latest patch fixed the commercial zone bug?
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by jztemple2 »

JayDeath wrote:I'm having a blast too. I have about 88,000 on 3 tiles and my growth has kinda stalled. Can anyone confirm that the latest patch fixed the commercial zone bug?
Yup, they said it was fixed in the patch and it appears to be from what people are saying. 88K in three tiles? Impressive! 8-)
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by JayDeath »

jztemple2 wrote:
JayDeath wrote:I'm having a blast too. I have about 88,000 on 3 tiles and my growth has kinda stalled. Can anyone confirm that the latest patch fixed the commercial zone bug?
Yup, they said it was fixed in the patch and it appears to be from what people are saying. 88K in three tiles? Impressive! 8-)
Yeah and my city is in pretty good shape but the RCI indicator show no signs of want for anything and I'm wondering if it's because I didn't shut the mod off after the patch update. I'll have to try that tonite. Thanks!
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by Enough »

The mods really keep my enjoyment of this game going. I also love how you can download custom LUTs to get the right color balance for your preference. There's even a rudimentary flight simulator now, a new fps multiplayer mod is in the works, the asset modders are releasing copies of many famous buildings around the world and it goes on and on. So glad to have the city builder I wish Sim City had been!
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by naednek »

hepcat - "I agree with Naednek"
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by jztemple2 »

naednek wrote:Yes Please!
(CimCopter Mod)
http://www.pcgamer.com/cities-skyline-m ... le-flying/
Awesome!

Also I see this announcement, Bugfixing-Patch 1.0.7c is LIVE.
Greetings Chirpies!

Easter is over, and so is the wait for the next patch for Cities: Skylines. As previously mentioned our core focus lies in solving the most common technical and accessibility issues some users are experiencing which should be clearly noticeable in this update.

You might recognize some of these patch notes from previous threads, the reason being that we patched previously and then retracted it due to unexpected technical issues.

Please note that if you run a heavily modded version of the game you might want to disable your mods and start a new city to ensure the vanilla game works properly - before you try running your modded city. We can not assume responsibility for the stability of your game when using mods but highly guarantee this practice (as well as regularly backing up your saves!)

If you're experiencing issues with this patch please inform us in this thread so that we can easily monitor the severity and frequency of your problem.

Patchnotes 1.0.7c (incl. 1.0.7b and 1.0.7)

Fixed: disappearing custom assets should now show normally
Modding: assembly version should now be ignored when loading a map
Misc: Embedded mod information to save games (to help debugging and for future improvements)
Asset editor: fixed an issue where dragging/rotating props may conflict
Asset editor: fixed user-made LOD model getting overwritten by a generated one in some cases
Asset editor: fixed problems sometimes occurring when rescaling models in the import window
Localization: German loading tips improved
Warning text added when enabling a mod
Save to cloud box now remain checked if the loading was performed from a cloud save
Japanese garden for everyone
Added command line parameter "-limitfps x" to set a target fps
Mac/Linux: Fixed custom assets not loading due to an invalid PNG format.
Mac: Removed menu bar & docks in fullscreen mode
Asset Editor: the default size of assets created from templates now matches the template size if loading props
Asset Editor: fixed a case where the default textures may get corrupted and require to restart the game
Asset Editor: already placed props can now be moved around and rotated in place (respectively using the left and right mouse click) when no tools are selected
Asset Editor: fixed cases where LODs may not rotate with the building in the import panel
Steam workshop: Steam fixed the workshop not being showing when in offline mode in the latest Steam client release (24 Mar)
Locale: added LOADING text
Misc: fixed a case where command line arguments may conflict
Misc: removed an invalid key binding option
Misc: Added screenshot shortcuts to rebindable input (default is F12 for normal screenshot and shift+F12 for hi-res screenshot, also local screenshots now go to gameUserFolder/Screenshots) Steam screenshot feature is untouched and still the preferred method to take screenshots
Misc: Info views panel added to the Escape chain so the last Escape press will close the info views now
Misc: Save map does not show builtin and workshop maps any longer
UI: Fixed arrows sprites not showing feedback when interacted with
UI: Fixed color picker color not displaying in the right color space
No more duplicate name error for identical names coming from different packages
Paths can not be built inside elevated roads anymore
Elevated roads can now be upgraded or changed direction if one-ways
.ccs files displayed in red can now be selected in the load panel when trying to recover a failed save (when a save fails and attempt to preserve itself generating a .ccs file)
French localization improved
General audio improvements (should help address the sound stuttering issue with some sound cards)


We'd like to thank you all for being patient with us in these times of post-launch funsies (we promise that's the professional term) and hope that we can continue working together to better Cities: Skylines one update at a time!

Regards,
The Cities: Skylines Team
And this seems pretty important: Please note that if you run a heavily modded version of the game you might want to disable your mods and start a new city to ensure the vanilla game works properly - before you try running your modded city. We can not assume responsibility for the stability of your game when using mods but highly guarantee this practice (as well as regularly backing up your saves!). However, even with 38(!) currently active mods, the game loaded up and ran fine after the update :D
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by Daehawk »

Reading this thread the last couple days and watching videos I could not resist and bought it just now. Looks like an updated SimCity 2000...cant wait
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by TazFTW »

:bump: Anyone still playing this? I'm considering getting this but want to know that now that it has been out for a bit if the "long term" impressions are still satisfactory.
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by Lorini »

TazFTW wrote::bump: Anyone still playing this? I'm considering getting this but want to know that now that it has been out for a bit if the "long term" impressions are still satisfactory.
I don't know how many hours you want out of it, but it's been good for 30+ for me. There are over 25,000 mods as well :).
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by Enough »

And if you are like me you will find it impossible to control yourself and the next thing you know you will be subscribed to a metric crapload of mods, and then one day the game will refuse to run. You know it's your fault for subscribing to tons of mods, but then you will focus your ire at Steam for giving you no easy way to unsubscribe to all so you can get a fresh start. Nope, Steam wants you to painfully click unsubscribe to each mod. No bigee if you are only running a handful but for power users like me, that gets a big ole' ugggh. Thankfully there is a solution, you can use a scripted bookmark to mass unsubscribe mods.

TL/DR: you will subscribe to too many mods and break your game. There is no way to mass uninstall mods built into Steam to fix this predicament. What you want my dear friend is the Steam Mass Unsubscribe bookmark.

Name: Steam Mass Unsubscribe
URL: javascript:(function(){jQuery('.btn_grey_black.btn_medium').map(function(){this.click()})})()
1. Goto your subscribed mods in steam using Chrome instead of the Steam app.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the page and select the '30' to show 30 mods/assets per page.
3. Click the bookmark you created in the 'Prelude' of this post.
4. Hit F5 on your keyboard
5. Repeat steps 3-4 until all mods/assets are unsubscribed.
I have also used this bookmark in Firefox with no difficulty.
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by Archinerd »

Lorini wrote:
TazFTW wrote::bump: Anyone still playing this? I'm considering getting this but want to know that now that it has been out for a bit if the "long term" impressions are still satisfactory.
I don't know how many hours you want out of it, but it's been good for 30+ for me. There are over 25,000 mods as well :).
I still have a favorable opinion of this but it never quite got its hooks in me.
The cities I've created have all been a bit 'samey' to me and don't have any real personality. One thing that I think could help is if there was more depth to policies, building/traffic ordinances, etc. The game has a bit of this in the 'districts' but I still wish there was more to it.
I'm hoping mods/dlcs can fix some of these, until then I've started playing other things but this may not actually be the game to do it. I think what I'd really like is a Mayor Sim instead of a City Sim.
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by Biyobi »

My last Cities game broke (got stuck in a never ending growth/death cycle) so I had bailed for a while. The latest patch with the European-style buildings (on some maps) has me intrigued again though.
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by jztemple2 »

New major patch 1.1.1B is live:
Today we are very happy to bring you a bug-fixing oriented patch aimed to address some of the most common issues and points of feedback. Of course, as with any patch, not every problem has been solved - yet we're satisfied with the list of fixes that has been achieved.

Once again we would like to give you all our most heartfelt thanks for the amazing amount of feedback, bug reports and support you've been giving us. It helps us greatly not only with information but also motivation.

Mod compatibility in 1.1.1b
Due to some improvements with how mod-specific options are displayed in-game a fair amount of popular mods will be incompatible with 1.1.1b. We recommend using the steam launch options "-disableMods" and "-noWorkshop" until the mod creators have done the necessary, albeit very small, changes. More info on what needs to be done by our modders can be found here[forum.paradoxplaza.com].

Meanwhile we'll be doing our best to list the known incompatible popular mods below.

Traffic++ (mod creators are notified)


Patch notes

Added 30 new buildings (growables)
Added tunnels for Pedestrian path
Improved error handling for when a mod does unholy operations
Added "unsubscribe all" button in the Steam Workshop category in Content Manager
Fixed De-zoning areas sometimes results in zoned tiles reappearing
Fixed trains stuck to map borders
Important note: This takes a few minutes to go into effect on old saves experiencing this issue. Please let it work its magic!
New option panel layout
Auto-save option added for games
Graphics: visual glitches with pavement on steep slopes fixed
Fixed polish UI audio volume not fitting the Options panel
Fixed the keymapping in all languages not fitting to fit on 2 lines
Fixed missing info tooltips for markers (smoke, large smoke, info tooltip shot, invisible parking space and steam)
Fixed the "-noWorkshop" toggle to completely disable the Steam workshop integration
Fixed mouse wheel to scroll the build toolbar
Added shutter sound to snapshots in map editor
Fixed left and right mouse button references in all languages
Ability to reset keybindings to default without losing all other settings
Installing multiple workshop items at once should not freeze the game anymore
Dedicated options space for mod settings (IUserMod.OnSettingsUI(), added checkbox, button, slider and dropdown support) -
Asset editor: Added new thumbshot and infoshot tools for capturing thumbnail and infotooltip images, respectively
Asset editor: Automatic snapshot, thumbshot, and infoshot are taken when opening the save panel for an asset (unless the user already took them)
Asset editor: Save asset panel now has the ability to select which to use of available thumbnails and infotooltips
Asset editor: Trailer and LOD colors show correctly in the editor when editing color variations
Asset editor: Removed color variation property from trees since it is not used by the game
Asset editor: Optimizations on saving/loading custom assets
Asset editor: Fixed a bug where creating several new assets during the same session would get the same ID, resulting in e.g. snapshots going to the same folder
Asset editor: Fixed additional polygons sometimes appearing in the models when scaling and/or rotating models
Asset editor: Scaling the model larger no longer makes it vanish from the preview camera
Asset editor: Overriding only some of the lod textures (e.g. assetname_lod_d) now works again without having to override any of the others
Asset Editor: Railtracks now available in Intersection editor
Asset Editor: Loading an asset does not reset the previously entered description
Asset Editor: Level 2 specialized industrial buildings can now be imported and edited
Design: Now possible to see what all future milestones unlock
RUS/GER: Fixed the "View on steam workshop" text cut-off in Content Manager.
Fixed trucks stop and wait outside cargo train station, blocking traffic
Added population info in the load panel for new save games

As per usual, please let us know if you experience any new issues with this patch.

Regards,
Your friends at CO and Paradox
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by jztemple2 »

Gosh, no one's posted here since July? I just got back from vacation and picked up the After Dark DLC, plus downloaded the new patch which adds a bunch of free stuff. Just to make things simple I backed out of all mods and Workshop items. Since it's been so long since I've played I'm having to relearn a lot of the basics but it's fun. And the expansion adds cool things like bike paths which makes planning a really green city more interesting.

Oh, here's a nice chart to show what's free and what comes with the DLC:

Image
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by Biyobi »

Their large patches tend to devastate the city I have going at the time. Bizarre traffic and transportation issues popped up after this patch and I basically had to write the city off. My citizens started doing mass migrations to a few particular commercial buildings throughout the city causing huge traffic jams. My airport, passenger rail and cruise terminals also started getting flooded by empty transports, causing me to turn off passenger rail completely in order to allow freight to move about normally. The only real mods I had loaded were the unlimited money and unlock all squares option (generic building assets shouldn't cause what was going on).

The day/night cycle looks incredible and I enjoyed watching my city at night, but it will be a while before I delve into the game again.
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by TiLT »

You're probably seeing these changes because of the increased emphasis of tourism with this patch. Also, at night your citizens won't be driving to and from work anymore, but will be driving to certain businesses. This complicates the traffic patterns of a city, and can ruin carefully laid plans that didn't consider these new factors.
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by msduncan »

This thing is on sale at the moment. Wonder if I should grab it?
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by Lorini »

They should have called it Cities:fix the shitty traffic. I finally gave up.
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by persself »

msduncan wrote:This thing is on sale at the moment. Wonder if I should grab it?
I think it's worth the $15, though this close to Christmas sale, might see if cheaper then...talking
Steam sale, among others.
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by Rip »

Sad thing is you can get the game for $15 now but the DLC still costs that much. They appear determined not to discount it. I can assure you I am more determined not to pay $15 for it.
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by jztemple2 »

Another DLC is in the works: Announcing Cities: Skylines - Snowfall
Paradox Interactive, a seasoned publisher of games, today announced the newest expansion to Cities: Skylines, the best-selling city-builder from Colossal Order. The new expansion is titled “Snowfall” and will be available for players of Cities: Skylines on Windows, Mac, and Linux PCs later this year. Snowfall will allow mayor-players to expand and grow their cities using new transportation options while challenging them to meet citizens’ needs using several new in-game tools. All of these new inclusions will revolve around the expansion’s central feature: an in-game weather system.
Me, I thought it was some James Bond add-on :D
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by Rip »

This game has been bittersweet.

I like playing it but there some fundamental issues that I hope they address at some point. The big one being giving more feedback to the player to make it possible to make the right decisions.
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by jztemple2 »

Rip wrote:I like playing it but there some fundamental issues that I hope they address at some point. The big one being giving more feedback to the player to make it possible to make the right decisions.
There have been a number of posts to that effect when this new DLC was announced. Sadly I don't see them spending the time with a better feedback system when so many people are happy with it as it is. I think the crappy SimCity release so discouraged people that they are happy just to have what they have with Skylines.
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by Suitably Ironic Moniker »

The problem with this add-on is that you have to choose to play on a special map where it's apparently always winter. The normal maps won't see this as a seasonal change, so it's all or nothing.
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by jztemple2 »

Some more info on the new DLC: Cities: Skylines - Snowfall - Dev Diary 2: New Things on the Roads
Traffic is an important thing in any city. Traffic and winter is a whole different challenge! For Snowfall, we wanted to make sure there’s something new affecting traffic. We settled on to two major things: snow on the roads and road maintenance. While the snow plows will be discussed later, this text will shed some light on what else is new in the game.

The road maintenance service, unlike the snow plows, is available on all maps. What the maintenance service does is that it gives some extra care to roads, allowing vehicles to travel on them faster. Normal roads in normal condition are fine and good, but with a road maintenance service covering the city streets, the traffic can get an extra boost from higher maximum speeds on the roads. The boost a maintenance truck gives fades away with time, but if the service covers the city well, the trucks travel to boost the roads that have the least boost left on them. Road maintenance can be used with the snow plow services, so that boosted roads don’t suffer from snow as fast as non-boosted roads.

Then the thing many people have been waiting for: trams! They are something we have been planning for a long time and finally get to share with you. Trams operate on tracks and reside in a tram depot when they are not on lines. The basic principle is much the same as with buses: the budget defines how many trams are available in the depot or depots, and the vehicles are divided between lines depending on line length. Longer lines get more vehicles than shorter lines. To get more vehicles, increase the city budget for the service. Trams need to be able to reach the line from the depot, so you may need to lay some extra tracks to allow trams to get to lines further away from the depot.

To build tracks, you can upgrade/downgrade existing roads to versions with tracks, or build new roads with tracks. There are both regular two-way roads and one way roads with tracks. As a finishing touch, tram tracks have overhead wires.

To give the trams some advantages over buses, tram tracks can also be built as standalone versions with no road beneath them. The standalone tracks are very handy for getting your trams to avoid busy intersections or streets known to be crowded. Stops can only be placed on roads and pedestrian pathways, but the standalone tracks allow for nice little detours to keep your trams free from traffic jams.

Trams have a higher passenger capacity than buses (20 for buses, 30 for trams), but also have a little higher upkeep costs per distance traveled, about 15% more than for buses. For best results, trams should be used as short inner city lines, and buses and metros can handle longer distances. Trams do not benefit from road maintenance boost, but also are not hindered by snow.

To get the winter theme really going, we have done lots of variations of existing buildings. This means your city does not need to have palm trees waving in the snow storm, or citizens hanging out on piers in the freezing cold. Things like flower pots are modified to fit the winter to keep the city looking consistent. Some buildings are only available to players who also own After Dark, but many are variations to the base game ones. My favourites are the agricultural buildings on fertile land, which are greenhouses on winter maps. You will also see many new parks that fit winter time better than the default parks.

These new additions to the game are available in the paid expansion. We feel they give a lot of new possibilities to handling roads, traffic and public transportation. I can’t wait to see all the cool tram systems you will be building!
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by Rip »

If a map is either snow or not snow I have no use for it. Imagine if the after dark expansion made you choose between maps that are always dark or ones always sunny.

IMHO they jumped the shark here.
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by Citizen »

If jumped the shark means the same as shit the bed then yeah, they jumped the shark all night long on this one.
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by baelthazar »

Citizen wrote:If jumped the shark means the same as shit the bed then yeah, they jumped the shark all night long on this one.
Not exactly. "Jumped the Shark" is a reference to a Happy Days episode where Fonzie literally jumps over a shark with water skies. It is popularly thought of as the point where Happy Days was in such a state of decline that they resorted to cheap tricks to try to win back a dwindling audience. This has come to mean any time a show/movie series/book series/game series is in decline does something pointless to attract attention - such as add a baby to the show, bring in guest stars constantly, rely on heavy product placement, add "interesting" new characters (also known as the "cousin Oliver tactic," or kill off/resurrect a main character.

Here is the actual "Jump the Shark" scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4ZGKI8vpcg

I would say pointlessly adding weather effects to get people to pay attention and spend more money is a Jump the Shark moment, so I agree with RIP.
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by Rip »

Exactly. They add stupid crap like this when there are things like say an employment map that would actually improve gameplay. Or maybe actually get the "sims" to use all the traffic lanes. Heck how about variations of traffic etc. based on time of day (which should have been in after dark).

The entire thing just seems half-hearted. I'm really disappointed because it appears they have a good foundation to make it a great game.

It would appear they are interested in the money of an ass kicking city builder without the effort required to polish one.
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by mori »

I played about 5 hours during the recent free weekend. Enjoyable but some really frustrating elements so still not sure I am ready to pull the trigger on a purchase. I should just wait until a Gold edition is released and buy that.
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by dbemont »

Game I have looked at off and on. I remember when Sim City first came out loving the game, but recent iterations made me nothing but sleepy.

What are the major differences between this and the most recent Sim City?
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by baelthazar »

dbemont wrote:Game I have looked at off and on. I remember when Sim City first came out loving the game, but recent iterations made me nothing but sleepy.

What are the major differences between this and the most recent Sim City?
Simply put, Skylines is good and Sim City is an unmitigated disaster.

I would say that Skylines goes back to the more beloved formula of SimCity 4 - with familiar zoning, placement of parks and services that provide benefits in a radius, and the general upgrade style that hinges on education, fulfillment, and property value. It seems to "hum" a bit better than SimCity, which had some interesting ideas but they woefully were plagued with bugs and oddities (I think, largely, from trying to shoehorn in a multiplayer "community" or sister-city aspect that did not work well at all. The maps are also scaled larger and can be expanded. Skylines also has a neat system for "neighborhoods" that you can set certain places to follow certain statutes or have certain types of buildings or industry. It works nicely and allows you to customize your city.

That being said, I did not *hate* SimCity. In fact, I got probably 20-30 hours of entertainment from it. But there were just too many broken and poorly implemented ideas. Skylines largely has systems that work, simplifies things that were unnecessarily complicated and give the player some of the freedom that SimCity took away.
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dbemont
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by dbemont »

So this is quite similar to Sim City 4?
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baelthazar
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by baelthazar »

dbemont wrote:So this is quite similar to Sim City 4?
It has been a long while since I have played SC4, but - as far as I remember - the feel is similar. Obviously it has some nicer and newer mechanics. It also has a big focus on traffic management (some parts good, some parts frustrating), which is to be expected from a developer who specialized in transit sims before Skylines. It was one of my favorite games when it released, and I fully intend to go back and get some time with it soon.

That being said, I am not enchanted by the recently released DLC. The night-life one was excellent, but the snow one just feels too limited.
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by wonderpug »

dbemont wrote:So this is quite similar to Sim City 4?
Very similar, it even has the same residential/commercial/industrial bar graph concept. Cites: Skylines isn't without its flaws, but it's what you should buy if you want a modern version of Sim City 4. In contrast, Sim City 5 is what you should buy if you feel like you have too much money and want to waste some before you regret your purchase and buy Skylines.
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Re: Cities: Skylines

Post by dbemont »

Thanks!
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