What do you wanna see in SC5?

[JJC50]

I would like to see more city government. And maybe a way to make the city unique with differents landmarks, different types of roads whatever. Maybe even street lighting and road medians (going through the process of placement and types.) Being able to choose different landscaping would be nice. And different selection of municpal building styles. Like to choose what an arena would look like for instance.

[SD_Phil]

How about architecture that changes with time? I realize that this is impossible to continue for infinity but it would be awesome to watch your city start off with brick midrises and go through glass office towers, brutalism, utilitarianism, crazy organic styles, crazy future buildings etc. This is somthing I missed from...was it simcity 2000?

How about fully 3 dimensional graphics? If games like Warcraft can make a successful conversion from 2d to 3d why not simcity? I would love to be able to rotate my city from every angle.

[Crackertastik]

I have multiple suggestions....so here they are in no particular order.

1. Instead of the famous square cell grid in which to layout streets and zones, i think a revamp to a dexagonal or octagonal shaped cell grid would be better. this would allow for streets to go in any direction, create curving roads. coastline roads. organic type city blocks, curved bridges a la coronado bridge in san diego.

2. personalization of cities and interaction with other cities. this might take a lot of pc power but its getting to the point where we should be able to have pcs handle this. what i mean is. Sports franchises, naming of streets. customizable landmark buildings. city newspaper with updates of scores, building problems, new trends, etc. etc. hosting olympics, world events.motor speedways. americas cup races. marinas. navy ports. aircraft carriers and the things that brings and takes from the city.

3. customizable buildings in a much much larger building set. in my town i want to create a baseball stadium. options might pop up. what dimensions. what type of facade. brick. what color seats. what kind of ring and outer facade. have these kinds of options for any building. glass facade, black exterior. things like this. less repeated buildings and more customization

4. 3d environment. i want to go in my city and walk around. damn it!!

5. better zoning efforts. zoning for parks and mixed used. setting of height limits, land use ratios. having n airport and then skyscrapers right next to it is silly. doesnt happen. zone for heights. zone for price as well.
that is all for now

[Lemonhead]

Going along with number 3 of Crackertastik's post, I wanna elaborate on my own thoughts. Maybe we could take a certain structure, such as a landmark skyscraper or a stadium, and pick a certain style (Deco, Post Modern, International, etc) and change window patterns, colour, and even material (stone, brick, glass, etc). We could do that with landmark structures and even make a basic building that would grow on its own. With stadiums, we could give it a dome, maybe even have the dome open and close... things like that would be great, I think.

Wow, 5 pages and 102 replies. Amazing.

[SD_Phil]

Originally Posted by Jasonhouse

I want to be able to designate various special overlay districts, which could be "categorized" into a few generic forms. Maybe historic, tax overlay, special architecture, master planned, etc... And then each district could have perhaps different parameters set by the player, to determine what sort of development occurs within the district.

historic district... maybe "rigid", where there is no change... "preserve density"... "preserve predominant style"...and so on...

tax overlay... the extra tax rate can be set, and what it pays for could be designated from a list..... special decoration and cleanup: like fancy lightpoles and fancy streets, cleanup crews keep nieghborhood attractive... transit: creates nieghborhood circulator, or maybe funds intermodal center... education: funds after school activities and improves nieghborhood IQ... etc, etc.

special architecture... to denote the designated style for an area of new development or redevelopment (and the the user could select from a list of themes, like art deco, victorian, neoclassical, etc)

master planned... to designate unified development type for a new or redeveloping nieghborhood... new urban town center... highrise town center... entertainment (like French Quarter)... residential subdivision... campus style office park....etc, etc

The districts could either be drawn with a cursor by the player at his whim, or perhaps more simply with click and drag boxes, which could merge when adjacent to one another during the drawing process.

This play heavily into what I see as the next logical progression in gameplay for the series... The game obviously has the basics down, and the graphics are solid... What's needed now is the ability for the player to scale the game's depth to his liking, to be able to make the game more for fun, or more for heavily detailed micromanagement of the city. (as it is now, there is little variety in the manner in which a player can engage the city as mayor. we all have to zone and lay roads and such... we can't choose if we want to really get in depth, or maybe stand off and macromanage taxing and economic conditions as the "political dealmaker", with the game instead building the city for us, according to conditions we establish through our policies.

This sounds exactly like the control system for Masters of Orion 3 which is probably bad news. MOO 3 allows the computer to handle most of the micromanaging (this is the default setting) and allows you to set general policies that multiple AI "governors" then apply to individual worlds (not always faithfully which is a nice touch). Since you are suppossed to be an emperor in this game this makes a lot of sense to me although the game itself offers you the option of micromanaging everything that happens in every planet (which can make individual turns last 30-40 minutes).

Problem with this is that MOO 3 was a commercial disaster and this new control system was partially to blame. Maxis would have to take notice of the general public's reaction to this and it makes for an argument against this kind of control system, especially if they are targetting the game to a wider audience (which was exactly what the changes in MOO3 were meant to do).

Obviously you can't draw general conclusions from an isolated case. I myself love the control system of MOO3 and would love to have layers upon layers of complexity in SC5 but I'm doubtful that it will happen.

Incidentally another feature I would like in the next simcity is the ability to do something about disasters (other than initiating them). I would love to have my military base fight off the robot.

[ItsConanOBrien]

We clearly need more low and mid rise buildings to fill in the areas between the suburbs and the downtown. I would also like more options when it comes to zoning.

[Jonovision]

E3 just came and went and I was hoping that they'd announce Simcity 5 but no such luck. That means we'll probably have to wait another year at least.

[RLS_rls]

I'd like to see the RCI demand changed. I don't like the current vague indicators, telling you when to zone more residential but for no reason. I'd like it if the RCI metre ran on something like demand of space. Maybe the deman for commercial would be 5 million square feet of retail and 2 million of office. So then you could just zone out commercial and the amount of demanded space would go down as new buildings pop up.

Plus I'd like to see a lot more cause and effect, not the generic stuff that sc4 teaches. If I build a park I want more that positive results. I want my citizens to bitch about increased taxes, or wildlife interrupting traffic. And none of those bullshit ordinances. Plus I'd like to see some more eastern styles, ecspecially some tweaking on the euro tileset which is really unoriginal. I recognized about 6 buildings in that tileset which were overly obvious rip offs of skyscrapers from Germany.

And one more thing I'd like to see is some major imporvements in low density housing. When you zone residential the only changes you ever see are the houses go up an income level. I wanna see my sims add garages or pools or new roofs or balconies onto there houses. I want them to tear down there "old fashioned" and "stuffy" victorian house and replace it with some ugly ass, Gropius inspired house.

Plus I'm getting increasingly annoyed by how kidsy and childish it is. It's not like I mind it on other things, but when you put kid stuff and city planning togethor it usually doesn't work out that well. Thank God for Simtrop and the NDEX....

[Doady]

Originally Posted by Evilon Doomm

I'd like to see the RCI demand changed. I don't like the current vague indicators, telling you when to zone more residential but for no reason. I'd like it if the RCI metre ran on something like demand of space.

That's how it already works. Notice the numbers on the right side of RCI demand graph.

[RLS_rls]

Yeah but it's so.....simplified. Those numbers are how many jobs are being demanded, it's different.

[Jasonhouse]

^Are you looking at the detailed demand graph (breaks down by zone type/wealth), or the shit bars on the main toolbar of the game?

[RLS_rls]

Both of them. I downloaded the Census Repository so I could see my RCI population more accurately. I find the detailed bars too complicated to read.

[shortydee999]

Most of the changes mention here are what i would like to see also. I know i would love the option of bigger(wider) freeways, to be able to add and delete lanes, more interchange options( 4 level stack ) One way streets with more than two lanes, double decker freeways and bridges, six lane avenues, i hate that one big plot for the university. How about zoning an area for the university so u can still have streets running through it or have like urban universities( i.e NYU and UAB).

[Lecom]

I wish we could build a city then play in it GTA-style.

[MobileAl1]

I think it would be nice if you can play the region as whole.

[Mininari]

Re-introduce the hydroelectric dams, but make them highly customizable. This is how you do it:

Firstly, this will require the return of surface running water and waterfalls to SC5. Make it so that you can only place a hydroelectric dam over a waterfall, THEN make it so that the user decides how big the dam will be. The higher and bigger the dam, the more power it produces, and the more it costs. This could permit some nice looking, decently functional hydroelectric power to be reintroduced.

Furthermore, add a seasonable water function to the game so that water levels fall during the summer and rise during the winter.

Sound good?

The interface would be just like SC4's bridge building interface, where you choose design and height. The corresponding interface for the dam would be HEIGHT, WIDTH, andit would show cost and power produced.

[Jasonhouse]

^Way too complicated (and not at all an accurate representation of how dams are really built), and totally irrelevant to city building.

What does building a hydroelectric dam (which are often way out in the boonies) have to do with building a city?

[eventhrzn]

It's been quite a while since I last played SC4 but my biggest gripe is building the bridges and freeways. I wish I could just set the bridge / freeway wherever I want it, and it would hilight what would need to be demolished (buildings, roads, where the land needs to be raised / lowered) and then just send me the bill! The unsuitable for construction or greyed out freeway sections drive me nuts!

[Slim Pickens]

Originally Posted by Jasonhouse

^Way too complicated (and not at all an accurate representation of how dams are really built), and totally irrelevant to city building.

What does building a hydroelectric dam (which are often way out in the boonies) have to do with building a city?

Agreed, but they really need to do something concerning water levels. Having one water table really takes away from it.

[Clevelumbus]

Adding to that, the ability to create waterfalls and streams that actually run down the mountains would be great!

Also, when you build bridges on very low land I think it looks kind of bad when the bridge is raised so high above everything else, maybe the ferry height should be reduced? Or.. if you could build a causeway type brided and designate only a certain stretch of it where ships can pass, and have that area rise to the required height.