Cities Skylines (1&2), SimCity 4, city simulators - sperg about simulations that include or don't include niggers

[Night Crawler]

I have been wanting to play a city building and management game lately. I heard about CS2 and it's been a total shit show since release from what I have heard. Reviews on Steam from February of this year still say don't buy it. I think it released back in November of last year or October. I know a lot of people were hyped for it. It's just another disappointing game that over promised and under delivered. I guess I will just stick to CS1 and Sim City 4.

I voted for SC3K because I remember playing it years ago and I liked it a lot. I had the original Sim City on one of my old PC's back in the early 2000's. I played SC2K on the PS1. I managed to find a copy of SC3K Unlimited on archive.org and I watched a few videos on YouTube and everyone said it would run under Windows 10 but I installed it but couldn't get it to even start up. I guess it's just another game lost to time.

I like CS1 but I still like the Sim City games more. IMO CS just was kind of lacking in the city management.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

I have been wanting to play a city building and management game lately. I heard about CS2 and it's been a total shit show since release from what I have heard. Reviews on Steam from February of this year still say don't buy it. I think it released back in November of last year or October. I know a lot of people were hyped for it. It's just another disappointing game that over promised and under delivered. I guess I will just stick to CS1 and Sim City 4.

I voted for SC3K because I remember playing it years ago and I liked it a lot. I had the original Sim City on one of my old PC's back in the early 2000's. I played SC2K on the PS1. I managed to find a copy of SC3K Unlimited on archive.org and I watched a few videos on YouTube and everyone said it would run under Windows 10 but I installed it but couldn't get it to even start up. I guess it's just another game lost to time.

I like CS1 but I still like the Sim City games more. IMO CS just was kind of lacking in the city management.

I think I pirated the GOG version of SC3KUL, it runs okay but it switches off Aero in Windows 7 which requires some fiddling to restart it.

I remember really enjoying that game years ago when I was younger but I just can't get into it the same way. Part of it is some minor quibbles that are exclusive to SC3KUL, part of it is I just don't find the game as interesting as I used to. Even with SimCity 4 I felt like I had to be constantly stringing out things with mods to get continuous enjoyment out of it.

One of the things about Factorio is how much fun I can have tooling around in vanilla + a few simple QoL mods.

 

[Night Crawler]

I think I pirated the GOG version of SC3KUL, it runs okay but it switches off Aero in Windows 7 which requires some fiddling to restart it.

I remember really enjoying that game years ago when I was younger but I just can't get into it the same way. Part of it is some minor quibbles that are exclusive to SC3KUL, part of it is I just don't find the game as interesting as I used to. Even with SimCity 4 I felt like I had to be constantly stringing out things with mods to get continuous enjoyment out of it.

One of the things about Factorio is how much fun I can have tooling around in vanilla + a few simple QoL mods.

I played a pirated version of it years ago on an old Laptop I had back in the late 2000's. I really liked it. But GoG won't take gift cards because they are located in Poland and that's the only way I shop online. I guess I will just stick to SC4 and CS1. It's a shame that SC2013 killed the series. With CS2 to being a dumpster fire it would be a good time for SC to swoop back in and take the market over with a next gen city builder and management game. SC always did the management part better.

I tried Factorio a few years back and I just never got into it. I might install it and try it again.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

I tried Factorio a few years back and I just never got into it. I might install it and try it again.

Factorio was definitely a different game, and it took some time to really get into it. But it satisfied a lot of the same urges, and could scale up so well. Once you unlock all the research (especially if you have Peaceful Mode, which takes away a lot of the busywork) a lot of it quickly diminishes, but you could start a new game and do something different.

The way that city services work in SimCity (and definitely C:S) is pretty broken. Plopping down police stations and parks in crime areas shouldn't magically turn them good.

 

[Night Crawler]

Factorio was definitely a different game, and it took some time to really get into it. But it satisfied a lot of the same urges, and could scale up so well. Once you unlock all the research (especially if you have Peaceful Mode, which takes away a lot of the busywork) a lot of it quickly diminishes, but you could start a new game and do something different.

The way that city services work in SimCity (and definitely C:S) is pretty broken. Plopping down police stations and parks in crime areas shouldn't magically turn them good.

I think they simplified some aspects for gameplay reasons. When I played SimCity I always started out with nice smaller cities and they turned into crime infested shitholes because I would go broke and have to raise taxes and cut spending on things like police. At first it was because I was new to the game and didn't know what I was doing. But after a while I just did it for fun. I even liked reading all the graphs and stuff to see just how shitty my city became.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

I always felt the city management side was incredibly painful and complicated until you worked out how to be “profitable” and they you were fine. Every single one always had a “minimum viable city” size and fuck you if you wanted to build some low density rural paradise without mods.

What SC4 really needed was the ability to export commuters- and be a suburb simulator if you wanted.

I always found they were most fun to play if I did NOT plan, so I was always reacting to the simulation and felt I had things to do.

 

[Classical Lord Dessler]

From WOTW today:

Q: Will we get actual quays like the ones in CS1?
A: This sounds like it would fit great with the harbor-themed Bridges & Ports DLC coming later this year!

Alright, who had quays as the first free CS1 feature to get monetized?

 

[Xarpho's Return]

https://www.eurogamer.net/cities-skylines-2-dev-says-biggest-regret-is-missing-mod-support-as-it-continues-to-fix-game

Basically, Mariina Hallikainen (that's the dangerhair) has made claims that their "biggest regret" is no day one modding fixing.

They make the following claims:
- They ran into technical difficulties during development and "simply ran out of time" as before launch to fix the game's performance issues
- Makes the "small team of developers, presu understandu" claim (30 developers, which is not small if they aren't dead weight)
- Pledging to improve the game as quickly as it can

All of those are BS. Hallikainen has already made excuses for the shoddy performance, they aren't going to delay the DLC to fix the game's problems, and most importantly, made no apologies for the NPCs. They weren't in the dev diaries until almost to the game's release, and I'm hard pressed to think that anyone said "These look like ass and make the game much slower," or "I don't think this really gives us the effect we're looking for" that wasn't immediately silenced.

 

[Just Some Other Guy]

https://www.eurogamer.net/cities-skylines-2-dev-says-biggest-regret-is-missing-mod-support-as-it-continues-to-fix-game

Basically, Mariina Hallikainen (that's the dangerhair) has made claims that their "biggest regret" is no day one modding fixing.

They make the following claims:
- They ran into technical difficulties during development and "simply ran out of time" as before launch to fix the game's performance issues
- Makes the "small team of developers, presu understandu" claim (30 developers, which is not small if they aren't dead weight)
- Pledging to improve the game as quickly as it can

All of those are BS. Hallikainen has already made excuses for the shoddy performance, they aren't going to delay the DLC to fix the game's problems, and most importantly, made no apologies for the NPCs. They weren't in the dev diaries until almost to the game's release, and I'm hard pressed to think that anyone said "These look like ass and make the game much slower," or "I don't think this really gives us the effect we're looking for" that wasn't immediately silenced.

The only thing they regret is not having more pay piggies.

 

[Classical Lord Dessler]

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/beach-properties-asset-pack-modding-wavelet-patch-announcement.1626444/

"Code modding comes next week! Asset mods? Those are coming down the line, here, we have a $10 DLC to hold you over on additional assets! Look how shiny!"

Wouldn't be shocked if one of the seaside mansions is modeled after one owned by our favorite Finnish CEO.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/beach-properties-asset-pack-modding-wavelet-patch-announcement.1626444/

"Code modding comes next week! Asset mods? Those are coming down the line, here, we have a $10 DLC to hold you over on additional assets! Look how shiny!"

Wouldn't be shocked if one of the seaside mansions is modeled after one owned by our favorite Finnish CEO.

Those buildings look awful. They look like something out of SimCity 3000 (a bit higher resolution)...and they might almost work if C:S2 was an isometric game and a lot of that was just pre-rendered stuff, but it's not, and they probably use far more polygons than is actually useful.

Spoiler: the gif in question

 

[The Gene Genie]

Those buildings look awful. They look like something out of SimCity 3000 (a bit higher resolution)...and they might almost work if C:S2 was an isometric game and a lot of that was just pre-rendered stuff, but it's not, and they probably use far more polygons than is actually useful.

Spoiler: the gif in question

View attachment 5829464

It's funny that the dickslobbering that exists on their forums for their other games translates onto CS2 as well. What an absolutely pathetic show by equally pathetic developers.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

It's funny that the dickslobbering that exists on their forums for their other games translates onto CS2 as well. What an absolutely pathetic show by equally pathetic developers.

While Paradox has a large paypig base I'm sure, that's probably skewed by an army of unpaid "community managers" zapping posts that are too critical.

On that note, before Cities: Skylines there was Cities XL, also made by a Eurojank developer, who pissed off the fanbase by making a decision late in development to make it an MMO with a monthly fee. Their response was to nuke their own forums.

 

[Classical Lord Dessler]

The $10 palm tree DLC is currently sitting at 7% approval for this first day. Hopefully those negative reviews requested refunds! In other words people are being zapped from the steam forums for complaining about it, some within an hour of posting. You definitely can't say every person at CO is lazy.

I explored this "milestone patch" for a few minutes. Map editor is there for the most part and some people have created decent maps even with only vanilla content. The asset editor menu is still quite taunting in there...

The modding menu is also definitely there and that's the nicest thing I can say. A large chunk of must have mods from CS1 are present so CO is now absolved from much of the development and patching that would be up to a competent developer. Sorting is fine for now but I sense it will be overloaded once assets are able to be uploaded as like on steam you'll be sifting through seas of garbage test uploads. And you definitely will, I'm already seeing a steam of garbage maps and save files. So much for a more catered and high quality content base.

Whenever you download a code mod, the whole game needs to be restarted, even from the main menu which... isn't the case in CS1. I'd understand reloading a save for the mod to take effect but reloading the whole game was only necessary for a handful of mods previously. That also sours the feature of downloading mods mid game because... with what's available now you'll have to restart anyway. Oh fun fact, if you do install a mod mid game and exit the menu, the whole UI gets disabled.

City Planner Plays did a performance benchmark for simulation speed but only to 160k pop which is pretty low for this game. I tested my main city at 215k and the simulation hitching is still present but less pronounced. The 1 mil pop test save I downloaded still runs lot molasses for the simulation.

This patch has hit the bare minimum in delivering what was promised, with how piss poor things have been since release bare minimum is technically an improvement. Let's give a big hand to Mariina for only having one catastrophic blunder in a 6 month span.

 

[877-CASH-now]

Cities Skylines II's new tagline is "eh it's there."

Meanwhile ConcernedApe is a one man show releasing what is ultimately a paid DLC that would be worth $15+ for an 8 year old game...for free. But sure, CO can't afford to develop the game that's been out for about as long as a fart without immediately charging for some trees.

Make it make sense.*

(*you can't)

 

[Xarpho's Return]

I find it funny that SimCity 3000 Unlimited (from 24 years ago) has a lot better reviews on Steam than Cities Skylines II does. Granted, SC3k has a lot of quirks of its own and like SC4 suffered from being rushed out the door, but it sure is telling how preferable the experience is.

 

[Classical Lord Dessler]

Speaking of reviews, Beach Blunder DLC hit 3 weeks post release yesterday to still be the lowest rated item on Steam. It currently sits at a comical 4% with 1300 reviews. With such a resoundingly negative reception people are starting to ask what is coming in the actual expansion- Ports and Bridges. Reminder they have it set as the most expensive DLC for the Cities Skylines franchise at $20.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

On SimCity 4, there is a 100% real mod that's a "3D camera mod" for SimCity 4 that lets you view stuff at different angles. Some of the buildings look weird and the frame rate seems to take a tumble, though. It makes me wonder if they could somehow hack 3D buildings into SimCity 4 (though its processor bottleneck makes this unlikely).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYhXnXV2WPA&ab_channel=haljackey

 

[Classical Lord Dessler]

CO has issued an apology for failing to meet each deadline they've set, as well as releasing Beach Properties which they themselves admitted was a rushed dlc. Beach Properties is being made free with refunds now going out to those who bought it, and Bridges and Ports is now being pushed to 2025 as they want to work on free patches and performance in hopes they will be able to get the game to a releasable state for consoles by October.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/the-way-forward-an-update-from-the-team-behind-cities-skylines.1665858/

 

[Xarpho's Return]

CO has issued an apology for failing to meet each deadline they've set, as well as releasing Beach Properties which they themselves admitted was a rushed dlc. Beach Properties is being made free with refunds now going out to those who bought it, and Bridges and Ports is now being pushed to 2025 as they want to work on free patches and performance in hopes they will be able to get the game to a releasable state for consoles by October.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/the-way-forward-an-update-from-the-team-behind-cities-skylines.1665858/

I wonder if the sudden apologies and begging for forgiveness is because Paradox issued some sort of ultimatum that if they didn't get their shit together they'd yank the contracts and leave CO for dead.