r/CitiesSkylines • u/LucasMaxado • Mar 22 '23
What you would like to see in the Cities Skylines 2? Discussion
Particularly, I'd like to see consequences of inequality, like favelas or poor neighborhoods emerging when housing prices get too high or more ambiental problems.
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u/lizon132 Mar 22 '23
Mixed use and not just commercial/residential mixed use. But also things like a transit hub mixed with commercial space or a recreational pier mixed with residential.
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u/ina80 Mar 22 '23
Yes! And having the noise be the result of traffic not just a commercial building existing
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u/omnimutant Mar 22 '23
Honestly while I know noise is a real issue, I would remove it all together from the game because it's really hard to scale properly and the game does it in such extremes that it's just silly most of the time.
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u/Depth-New Mar 23 '23
I lived in a shopping outlet for a year. I was on the 8th floor.
When my windows were open it was SO loud. But when I closed them I couldn't hear anything from the outside world.
Housing developers seem to take this into account, and it really wasn't an issue for me. So I agree, it was a bad mechanic.
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u/bonierrope Mar 23 '23
Maybe they could have a city policy for districts similar to high tech housing but for things like reinforced soundproof windows or some kind of noise ordinance similar to the NIMBY one.
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u/montybob Mar 23 '23
Basically the game needs to allow for existing infrastructure. If I put a metro station into an existing development, there should be an impact. If I put a metro station down and zone around it, there shouldn’t be.
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u/0pyrophosphate0 Mar 23 '23
We don't need to throw out noise as a concept just because CS1 is very shallow in its implementation. CS2 isn't a content patch, it's a full sequel, a whole new game. Now is the time to turn noise into a more interesting gameplay mechanic. I mean really go back and rethink what it means from a city planning perspective, and have the consequences be more realistic.
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u/nlblocks Mar 23 '23
It should be a factor for land value, not a separate thing. For example, Being close to shops should add more value than what noise takes away. But industrial areas make more noise, create pollution and are ugly and undesirable and lower residential land value more, however, many companies together should raise the land value for industrial.
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Mar 22 '23
Normal looking buildings
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u/_artbreaker Mar 22 '23
The problem is there's little consistency between low density residential buildings, but a ridiculous amount of the same types of commercial building stores.
It would be cool to see unique chain businesses across your city spread tactically that are properly branded but in different building styles (e.g.starbucks,McDonald's etc) instead of 3 book shops next door to each other.
Residential buildings are usually built as part of an estate, I end up spending way too long deleting and making historic when I want to make nice neighborhoods 😪
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u/Rachelcookie123 Mar 23 '23
It’s interesting you say residential buildings are usually part of an estate because that’s not the case where I live. Where I live most houses are unique because people build the houses their self. They buy the plot of land from the developer then hire a builder and choose whatever house they want. Occasionally you will come across a row of like 5 houses that are the same that a builder bought the land for, built, then sold but most of the time that’s not the case. I thought this was the norm in most places.
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u/Jampine Mar 22 '23
To add to this, the buildings needs the scale changed, its weird that a family sized house and an apartment block can occupy the same floor space, so either the houses are really big, or the apartments are tiny.
To compare, in simcity 4, low density housing only needed a 1x1 to spawn, if it was larger it usually took the form in a front yard, whereas any decently sized high rises needed at least 3x4 blocks to build (Might be slightly wrong, years since I played and can't find any reliable information on it).
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u/Ill-Woodpecker1857 Mar 22 '23
I always wanted to see this kind of mechanic mixed with something like they did in Sim City Social where you could essentially building up 4 4x4 in a 16x16 pattern that would eventually grow into on large building taking up that foot print.
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u/dkurage Mar 23 '23
Wasn't the max size for growables also 6x6? I don't remember if there were any vanilla growables that size, but I do remember a few growable high density buildings I'd downloaded that used it.
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Mar 22 '23
And highrises, buildings that are like 70-90 stories. Not just tonnes of 15 storey towers.
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u/Jonas_Venture_Sr Mar 22 '23
I’d love to see the game start in the past, so different parts of the city will have a different look and feels than other parts.
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u/RenTroutGaming Mar 22 '23
I used to love in Sim City 4 marking some neighborhoods as "historical" so you'd get a true historic neighborhood even has your city built up.
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u/Jonas_Venture_Sr Mar 22 '23
Exactly! I think people forget that cities have a story to tell, but when the entire city looks modern and is perfectly planned, it’s not much of a story. It’s probably not for everyone, but I would love to see the difficulty of the game ramp up, so tough decisions about spending need to be made, which helps tell the story of the city.
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u/Redditing-Dutchman Mar 23 '23
Agreed on that last part. Would love to have a mode where you can't just demolish buildings on a whim. That would make cities much more organic I think. But to have it work an even smaller level of detail is needed.
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u/Mazazamba Mar 22 '23
Converted buildings would be cool. Make a whole city that looks like a You Live IN What? episode.
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u/I-Like-The-1940s Mar 22 '23
Yes 100% there’s so many old houses near me that are now offices and stores. it’s a shame you aren’t able to do that normally in cities, you just have to demolish the existing building.
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u/Lutastic Mar 22 '23
Yeah, more like Sim City in that respect. Starting in like 1900 or whatever with different time periods. That would be cool.
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Mar 22 '23 edited Mar 22 '23
This so much. I just don't understand the art direction in this game. Like, some unique and colorful buildings can be okay when placed occasionally, but looks terrible when every building is a different style and color.
I drove past some nice looking apartments today that were tan and had nice, cool blue accents on them and wondered why we can't have something like that. Instead, we get these wall to wall buildings with this extremely saturated blue color, not to mention the buildings are oddly shaped.
Also none of the CCP or DLC packs have any consistency among them. That, along with the wonky district system makes the game quite frustrating.
If CS 2 follows the same direction, I'm throwing my hands up and letting the series go.
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Mar 22 '23
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Mar 22 '23
The self sufficient buildings are cool looking but I rarely use them. I prefer Avanya's European Suburbia though. She has the best CCP in my opinion.
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u/nosi40 Mar 22 '23
Yes! The amount of time I have spent in vanilla builds destroying art deco buildings is just too much.
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Mar 23 '23
Half of my absurd number of assets are dedicated to normal looking buildings.
At this point it feels like they leave so much of the game up to the modding community because they're just mad at us for not liking the game's art style lol.
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Mar 22 '23
Better traffic ai. Utilization of all the lanes and some more realistic vehicle options like not having ore dump trucks just casually in traffic.
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u/Ancient_Definition69 Mar 22 '23
Factoring in traffic when deciding on a route, too. No more "fastest path wins" and then sitting in a month-long tailback.
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u/HurtJayD Mar 23 '23
CS1 is heavily based on LOS… kinda shitty for cities that you’d prefer hyper efficiency
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u/princekamoro Mar 23 '23
This is a huge misconception about CS1 traffic.
This guy did an experiment and found that the routing does adapt to traffic, but not very efficiently.
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u/DarkPhoenix_077 Mar 23 '23
Well then wed like for it to be efficient in cs2, so that we can have induced demand
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u/JoJack82 Mar 22 '23
I would pay double if Cities Skylines 2 was just Cities Skylines 1 but with realistic traffic
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u/Unfetteredfloydfan Mar 23 '23
I wouldn’t get your hopes up too much for truly realistic traffic. I’m a transportation engineer, and while the software we use is more realistic and based on actual research, it still kind ends up kind of working like city skylines. With phantom traffic jams and vehicles switching lanes at seemingly random locations.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s better and more accurate than cs, but it’s not /that/ much more realistic looking.
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u/RoguesNameWasTaken Mar 22 '23
You can do heavy traffic ban in the policies section. Just don't apply it to your whole city...not a good day
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u/jhanon76 Mar 22 '23
This alone. Everything else here would be nice but this is a requirement.
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u/omnimutant Mar 22 '23
Absolutely. Not forcing the traffic to switch lanes ONLY on "nodes". Would be a massive improvement.
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Mar 23 '23
God I just hope 2 handles the concept of nodes better full stop.
like why did they think the pipe laying minigame was going to be a good idea? Everyone hates doing it and it wastes a ton of nodes.
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u/DX3Y Mar 22 '23
I’d like to see a vastly improved system for water features. Lakes, ponds, and streams are really janky in CS, and it would be neat to be able to have realistic wetlands, creeks, etc. I think it would be neat to have vegetation grow around water sources naturally over time as well.
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u/Calgrei Mar 22 '23
I'd love to see distinction between freshwater and saltwater as well
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u/vodwuar Mar 22 '23
On top of that add desalination plants if you do pull seawater, and if you don’t it makes people get sick
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u/CaptHorney_Two Mar 22 '23
Oooh, I want a full-fledged stormwater management system. Let me require LiD and design stormwater management ponds.
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u/DangerMccloud Mar 22 '23
I play console and I really want to be able to make ponds and other water features. This and better vanilla detailing would be amazing
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Mar 22 '23
a better scale. Houses as big as super tall skyscrapers just doesn't make sense
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u/_artbreaker Mar 22 '23
This, commercial and industry buildings could be huge not just 4 squares
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u/jhanon76 Mar 22 '23
DLC does this...and move it makes you able to print many of the larger buildings. But would be nice for vanilla also
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u/sven2123 Mar 22 '23
What dlc?!
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u/jhanon76 Mar 23 '23
Industries. Gives you lots of control and personally I prefer those buildings...more realistic
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u/mattmitsche Mar 23 '23
The problem with that DLC is the industries are almost entirely independent of the vanilla industries. I'd like it if vanilla industries were more like the DLC
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u/cofibot Mar 22 '23
It's hard for me to articulate this idea, but I want unstructured grid simulation where there's detail where it matters, and low detail or procedurally-generated fill.
I want a city to be tens of kilometers across, 1:1 scale with real cities, but big swaths of suburbs can be boring, monotonous procedural fill to save on CPU+RAM.
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u/SaucyMan16 Mar 22 '23
I wish there were random road events. Like accidents, pot hole repairs, etc. Things that could close lanes or entire intersections for short periods
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u/n4torfu Mar 23 '23
To add on to this, I think it would be cool if things like accidents were dependent on your traffic situation. The more traffic you have = the more accidents.
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u/Steelkenny Mar 22 '23
This. Delete access to random road for a few moments (or close some lanes) and see how bad your city actually is sometimes in real life situations.
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Mar 22 '23
I think that’s the point, Causes severe consequences and would be nice to have some difficulty
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u/chass5 Mar 22 '23 edited Mar 22 '23
more realistic freight: factories that can accept freight rail shipments, preferably on a schedule. freight rail stations that interface with resource production. for example: oil extraction should feed pipelines to the refineries. refineries should have sidings, and so should warehouses and factories.
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u/xplorer_of_everythin Mar 22 '23
This, this is a huge aspect of the game to me as I like making things efficient and building up businesses, I would really like to be able to program what trucks haul what to where it would be wayyyy better
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u/Shadowbreakz Mar 22 '23
Along this line it would be great if get introduced barges to ship garbage and goods across the water, and ferries that could take cars on them
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u/llamawithscarf Mar 22 '23
- Paintbrushes for ground textures instead of themes. And brush settings for feathering or opacity. I think that could make for some really good map editing.
- In-game LUT edit controls. (do we have that already? I don't know how LUTs work)
- Better bridges! And no more tiny suspension bridges. I want a bridge selection that is somewhat like what Sim City 4 had. There was a sense of scale with those bridges.
- No more super long single-lane traffic jams on a multilane highway.
- UI that is scalable. No more scrolling to the side while seeing a row of items. I want multiple rows in order to see assets and stuff in the build menus. And a search function by default.
- Larger ploppable buildings. At the launch of C:S, many buildings like powerplants and arenas felt really small.
- Ports, I want to build a large container port.
- cul-de-sacs
- More buildings that fit wall, to wall like the brick buildings in New York or European cities.
- Big box stores and warehouses.
- Some sweet radio stations!
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u/Muse4Games Bus transit best transit Mar 22 '23
Easier zoning (no more grids breaking with the slightest bend) and bigger zoning blocks (bigger than 4x4). A lot of the essential mods from C:S to be vanilla. And most important engine stability so no more need for 32/64gb of ram for a couple of mods.
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u/wquaniran Mar 22 '23
Plus buildings/parks that can be placed more remote from roads. Or be connected to small sidewalks.
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u/Ill-Woodpecker1857 Mar 22 '23
On this subject. Let me place ALL placeable buildings without connecting to a road. Just require me to have a road connected before it operates.
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u/cofibot Mar 22 '23
I would like so have the complete elimination of forced grids, unless that's a design choice by the player.
I would like to have procedural buildings and multi-building site layouts that change shape to conform to the parcel, terrain, connections, etc.
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u/jodingh Mar 22 '23
I agree, this would be cool though I imagine it's also a mighty headache to implement a system like this. I would love to at least have the plots of land that buildings spawn on conform to the environment though, like having the front yard properly fit to a curved road.
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u/JesusSwag Mar 22 '23
And most important engine stability so no more need for 32/64gb of ram for a couple of mods.
This is a gross exaggeration. My laptop has 8 GB and I use a decent amount of mods, plus hundreds of assets with no problem
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u/Larry_Loudini Mar 22 '23
Agree on slums but would also like the connection between density and wealth removed. Ie you should be able to have low density McMansions and high density project tower blocks
Think SC4 actually had that?
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u/Larry_Loudini Mar 22 '23
Essentially I want the city building of CS combined with the city management of SC4!
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u/TryhardBernard New Hudson Commonwealth Mar 22 '23
SC4 was very ahead of its time. You could zoom into high crime areas and see graffiti on the buildings and hear random shouting. I also liked how rich areas could turn poor with disinvestment, and the mansions would get dirty and unkept.
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u/Soft_Excitement7144 Mar 23 '23
I was just watching CPP playing SC4 and it made me sad how I want so many of the features from that game in a modern city builder.
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u/omnimutant Mar 22 '23
Lets be honest everyone wants a new 2023 version of Sim City 4 ;)
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Mar 23 '23
I sure wish Maxis didn't die. Even if they were lagging behind in the genre they created, they were a necessary piece of market competition that drives innovation. Solo market dominance in video games is a bad thing. Like World of Warcraft and Total War games stagnate without much innovation because they ran everyone else out of business that makes games like theirs.
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u/clamraccoon Mar 22 '23
Less warping of land around buildings to make it completely flat around said building.
Suburban Houses which don’t engulf a 4x4 plot of land (2x2 house with a nice yard)
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u/PRETZLZ Mar 23 '23
Yes I would love for houses to have yards that are hills. That's exactly what my home is like and I want to be able to make it and reminisce even when I'm gone.
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u/DetectiveMoosePI Mar 22 '23
On top of almost everything that’s been said:
- More civic/government buildings (courthouses, departments, city offices, community centers, squares, places of worship) -More variety is ploppable parks and city service assets (schools, fire, police, medical) -Improved land value system with more complexity and subtlety
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u/jay92393 Mar 22 '23
Overhaul of traffic, and a few more roads with a "turn only" lane <especially for us on consoles>
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u/mkstatto Mar 22 '23
Destinations that have a better functioning spawn/despawn/cargo drop off point, I.e. cargo train stations and not a long single line of traffic.
Whilst we are on traffic, better lane ai.
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u/NiknameOne Mar 22 '23
The main thing I want is real traffic simulation. Modern CPUs should be able to handle it pretty well.
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u/pearfire575 Mar 22 '23
Just demand it to the gpu. Modern gpu are a beasts with those calculations.
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u/MithridatesX Mar 22 '23 edited Mar 22 '23
Integration of the features of the most endorsed mods.
I want traffic AI and junction management on par with TMPE.
Intersection marking tool.
Move it.
Lifecycle rebalance.
Realistic population density (more in high density buildings, 1 household in what is clearly a 1 household house)
Completely overhauled zoning and ability to plop growables a la RICO.
I would also hate for it to be barebones (in order to justify dlc), it should already have features from all the main CS1 dlcs, including: industries, parks, the various mass transit options, etc…
A more realistic building style for vanilla buildings.
Better car physics, removing all the random ass wobbling.
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u/Stablav Mar 22 '23
I'd be happy to have things like campus and airports be left for DLC, they've got to make money somehow. But I'd want to see the mass transit and all the public transport options in CS2 already, and the industries of course
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Mar 22 '23 edited Mar 22 '23
I would love to see alot of things that sim city has. You have city council (advisors that recommend certain policy changes) neighborhood problems, policy changes that have protests. More IRL items/issues a normal city would encounter.
Parades, celebrations, or festivals. Environmental groups that complain or react to pollution, etc. or wealthy that complain about homelessness, high crime, etc. I want all of the spice.
These can come in the form of DLC and I would definitely buy. But then again I know people who play to relax and these things would add more stress to the gameplay but I digress. This list isn't exclusive, just a few things I thought of off the top of my head.
I also would like to add I like a lot of the ideas people have in this thread. I can't wait for Cities Skylines 2 :)
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u/Thylax Mar 22 '23
I loved that aspect of sim city, the little guys giving you side missions and stuff to work on made it feel much more like a story of a city rather than a sandbox alone
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u/derpman86 Mar 23 '23
If they have the advisors I hope they have the angry transportation dude who gets MAD when you cut back on funding... and YOU WILL REGRET THIS!
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u/UnderratedImmigrant Mar 22 '23
- Realistic looking population, cars, and buildings
- Medium Density (Townhouses & Condos) and Mixed-use development
- Improved Traffic AI (Right-turn on red, Yield Left Turn)
- Better vanilla intersections including pedestrian crossing
- Better shore and river banks assets (i.e. Beaches, boardwalks,..etc) and easier to create/manage canals
- Active neighbors, better connections that doesn't wreck traffic
- Logical Services coverage and upgradable service buildings
- Neighborhood or block themes like Historical/Old-town
- Better overall performance that supports Mega-cities
- Functional vanilla international airports with ability to create new lines
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u/HowManyBigFluffyHats Mar 22 '23
- MIXED-USE ZONING
- Dramatically improved RCI demand
- More granular land-use demand (e.g. office vs. industrial demands are different)
- Varies across the city's geography (e.g. different demand downtown vs. some suburb)
- Far more sophisticated demand modeling (i.e. what are the actual drivers of R, C, I, O demand? Current models are pretty dumb and don't make intuitive sense)
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u/Gandolaf Mar 22 '23
The one good thing from SimCity, truly modular Buildings. Instead of building ten garbage incinerator expand one, Build a big mine with several shafts, stuff like that. Like the terminals from the airrpott dlc work.
Like instead of building tons of seperate mines you build a main build, add modular shafts and a rain depot, all interconnected.
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Mar 22 '23
Most important to me, better road building on hilly or mountainous sloped terrain. The game really needs both smoother edges on the sides of roads when going across uneven terrain but also the vanilla road tools need to work better with less automatic flattening when the ground isn't a perfectly flat stretch. It's practically impossible to build on the hilly or mountain maps without the node moving mod, and I wouldn't even attempt any of the good mountainous maps in game without mods.
I'd also like to get to choose your own starting tile.
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u/daveed4445 Mar 22 '23
Real traffic patters with daily changes. Rush hour should be busier than midnight! It’ll add an interesting challenge to build transportation for irregular inconstant but realistic demand
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u/Keulapaska Mar 23 '23
Cities in motion had this as it did have a proper day/night cycle and you could even customize the day length in irl minutes(/hours?) so a work commute wasn't 4 hours in game time or however many days it's currently in skylines. I don't remember if they had a reasoning as to why they didn't add it in skylines, and was a bit confused when they added day/night cycle that did kinda... nothing. Would be nice to have it back even if with that short of a timescale building a city would be "unrealistic".
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u/haaphaap Mar 22 '23
graphics that actually look better than the 20 years old simcity 4
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u/Ne0nSkyl1ne Mar 23 '23
The official page says the graphics will be 'stunning' and 'beautiful' so hopefully. I'm tired of messing with graphics mods so waiting for cs2
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u/creamcolouredDog Mar 22 '23
Tree brush in city mode
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u/Thargor33 Mar 22 '23
And the ability to demolish trees in masses, and not each and every single tree separately.
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Mar 22 '23
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u/skatyboy Mar 22 '23 edited Mar 22 '23
On top of that, land costs. Makes it harder to bulldoze half of a developed city center to build a highway if the city has to acquire land at a premium. Would definitely provide a challenge in late game (city treasury is loaded), as I tend to just bulldoze through skyscrapers, which irl, would definitely bankrupt the city.
On the flip side, the city government can hold on to parcels of land and wait for the right time to sell it for more cash (e.g. develop transit links first). This is how cities like Hong Kong and Singapore can operate with low taxes, using land sale revenues.
However this should definitely be an option, since most of us play C:S to design cities, not be involved in NIMBY/negotiations.
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u/cofibot Mar 22 '23
I would like to have some cooperating/competing entities played by AI, like developers, regional & national government, large industrial firms, etc.
That would help complete the market so land values make sense.
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Mar 22 '23
Yeah, I think it would allow for a sandbox mode, legacy mode (CS1), and realism mode (with roleplaying and more realistic constraints / consequences).
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u/jojj0 Mar 23 '23
I'm not so sure about that, the game is about you being like a god and making a city however you'd like it.
But I think making it into another gamemode maybe would be pretty nice, you'd get both things then.
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u/sebring1998 Mar 22 '23
Completely agreed! I was thinking for example NIMBYs could block development to which then you either stand your ground or try to make concessions, some sort of councilmen/district leaders system, running for reelection, etc. That would be really awesome to have within the game.
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u/Affectionate_Ad206 Mar 22 '23
I'd love to see road construction. As well as graffiti in the poorer parts of town more balanced public transport stops. I always hate it when there's 300 people at one stop then like 3 people at a different stop. Would also like to see traffic fluctuate with time, being more busy around rush hour and less busy otherwise.
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Mar 22 '23 edited Mar 23 '23
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u/Thargor33 Mar 22 '23
We are getting seasons, so I’m not sure more snow maps are needed.
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u/MacTheZaf Mar 22 '23
I would love for rail to be more available earlier in the game. Either having railways that run through the starting square on a few maps, or having some rail available at one of the first milestones. It’d make it more realistic since plenty of cities are planned around rail corridors
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u/AnividiaRTX Mar 22 '23
MEDIUM DENSITY.
To extrapolate on it a but... i think most people can figure out how residential and commercial would look but industrial would be changed entirely. All current density of industrial would fall under "medium" density. Low density industrial would be farms like SC4. And high density industrial would be where office space would go, since offices are effectively more like industrial than commercial. The new 4th zoning type would be mixed use ofc.
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Mar 22 '23
A day night cycle that actually means something besides aesthetics, realistic construction instead of just scaffolding for everything including a 1 story house, more resource management, mixed used zoning, the ability to have buildings repurposed and rezoned, proper grading and the challenges that come with it, divorce from the grid system, proper road to driveway visuals, street level visuals and events based on the surrounding areas properties, divorce from density and wealth, better train and traffic simulation and management, customizable roads instead of having 45 different buttons for each individual variant, proper building scaling, more than one single retention wall, freight lines the way we set up passenger lines, multiple cities that interact with each other the way SC4 did, but not grid based...
There's more but that's all I can think of right now
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u/Spoonerism86 Mar 22 '23
Co-op. Would be nice to build a city Anno style with a friend.
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u/Cue99 Mar 22 '23
I would like to see SimCity style multiplayer / region play in some way. It would be really cool to even just be able to trade with and visit a friends city
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u/st_nick1219 Mar 22 '23
Realistic traffic. A city of 50,000 does not have as bad of traffic as this game thinks. Also, realistic city services. By that, I mean a city of 100,000 doesn't usually have 50 elementary schools, a dozen hospitals, etc...
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u/The19thGentleman Mar 22 '23
An aspect of historical progression. Starting in the late industrial era and moving through the 20th-21st century. Seeing how evolving technology and corresponding demands/changes affect the character and composition of a city.
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u/Wrong-Historian Mar 22 '23
Better scale, mixed zoning, parking (no more pocket cars), better lane AI
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u/Thargor33 Mar 22 '23
I might be alone in this thought. But I’d love to have a realistic run time. I find it funny that my cim will take a couple in-game days to travel across the city, even if there’s no traffic issues.
I’d also love to have ploppable buildings: I’ll be playing on ps5 so to be able to set the buildings I would like to put down would be awesome.
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Mar 22 '23
Not having to use a road for connections like holy hell the game hates ped path connections (fishing docks, etc.) Some things just don't need a road plopped for it to exist if ped paths are there.
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u/kidclutchtrey5 Mar 22 '23
probably something small but if they can pick up garbage or police be able to get to places without roads (ie island communities or mountains with cable cars)
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u/magoo622 Mar 22 '23
Port areas similar to industry or airports.
-Loading and unloading hubs for road, rail, and ships.
-Sorage areas such as rows of shipping containers.
-Specialty roads for straddle carriers to drive on.
-Ships dock with specialized quays. Some have cranes. some have boarding ramps for passengers. Some have conveyors for loading tankers.
-Passenger terminals with transit options.
-Elevated concourses from passenger terminals to docks.
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u/Magnus_Zeller Mar 22 '23
- Fluid lot sizes - there should be large lots for rural areas, and smaller ones for denser suburbs and urban areas. They shouldn't be restricted to perfect squares or rectangles. The lot should distort in shape to fit the curves of the road.
- Mixed use - this would be a big time game changer
- Building and infrastructure deterioration - funding needs to be more complex and nuanced. For example, there's a big capital investment in building your metro, but you have to predict how much you can afford to fund maintenance, or how much policing the platforms you'll need to do. This can lead to rundown stations, schools with roof leaks, parks with litter problems, crime, etc
- Homelessness - accompanying this there should be policies you can use to attempt to resolve homelessness, like affordable and senior living, shelters, supportive housing, etc and improper funding can lead to deteriorating projects
- Scales need to make sense - farms should be able to get gigantic. Ports should be massive. A skyscraper footprint could be a whole city block
- Realistic and complex planning and building restrictions - you should be able to ban multi-family housing in some areas, and single family in others. You could have a slider for height restrictions. Residents should complain about polluting industry too close by, and should dislike being in the shadow of a 50 storey building. So you should be able to use zoning restrictions to mitigate this
- There should be feedback loops that cause neighborhoods to prosper and decline - if you let crime go up in a neighborhood, this could cause property value to decline, which causes stress on school budgets, which causes schools to decline, which causes youth crime to increase, which causes property value to decline and so on.
- A dynamic class system - your city should not level up from poor to rich. Instead, you should need a balance of working class and bourgeois. A city that can't attract rich investors should wither. A city with no working class should not function at all. Therefore, you need working class districts, and a healthy amount of rich neighborhoods for increased tax base. You should experience tension when trying to balance these. For example, if you let working class neighborhoods decline while rich areas get amenities, this can cause anger, maybe even protests and riots.
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u/ParanoidSkier Mar 22 '23
More advanced architectural settings on districts would be nice. Instead of just normal/eco friendly/high tech. Have some more historical options as well as more variations in the already existing architectures.
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u/fallenouroboros Mar 22 '23
I want more traffic options to get out of the map. Maybe even let us make our own highway exits
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u/Jusaboiii Mar 22 '23
One of the big things I dream of is RICO that don't need to be in a perfect rectangle to took neat.
Ideally it would be a semi-procedural system that can handle any angles within a certain range, making the proper piece on the fly from pre-existing assets.
While I have some ideas on how this could be implemented, I also see it being a huge pain in the ass based on my few years of experience doing game programming and the little procedural stuff I've done.
That's why I would be more than happy if there were just pieces for specific angles, like 135° for example.
The zoning system would likely need extensive reworking to make it happen naturally, which is why I don't really expect them to do it. But I would be absolutely delighted if they did!
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u/calargo Mar 22 '23
I'd love to have realistically sized farmland + the ability to make rural communities. I know that the primary emphasis is on cities, but I've always felt it's a bit odd that farmland in CS1 was so tiny. I like the thought of beginning with a small rural town and gradually having to move the farms further and further back as the city keeps growing.
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u/Fortune_Silver Mar 22 '23
A road designer.
I want to be able to select a road width, and design a road to my liking.
If I wanna make a road with no parking or sidewalks, a cycle lane, a one-way bus lane, a regular lane and a monorail track, I should be able to.
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u/wordbird89 Mar 22 '23
Being able to build realistic on/off-ramps and acceleration lanes on highways would be nice!
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u/pinko_zinko Mar 22 '23
Less pointless busy work. Let me have roads automatically route power, water, and sewage. Make it cost more, if needed. Add auto-bulldoze. Simple things like that shouldn't need mods.
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u/Cynical_musings Mar 23 '23 edited Mar 23 '23
-Ride sharing policies (for and against)
-Rental car businesses (commercial)
-Functional taxicabs
-"GPS rerouting" helping to distribute modernized traffic/populations away from jams
-Drivers who will merge into faster lanes if they are a sufficient distance from their next turn/exit
-Cabs not sitting in the middle of the road when looking for a fare
-Drivers not stopping in the middle of the street when looking for parking (TMPE realistic parking)
-Fares not standing in the middle of the street when waiting for a cab
-Loading zones for businesses/industry, so that cargo trucks can be routed off of primary thoroughfares to complete pickups/deliveries, rather than stopping traffic in front of every curbside business
-SIGNIFICANT privatized corpse management/death services, minimizing the need for city services to this effect
-If any building achieves the CS2 equivalent of 'red status' for a city service issue (such as garbage buildup, dead bodies waiting, etc) and there are ANY service centers with a vehicle available to service that building's needs, then such a vehicle should be dispatched immediately with orders to begin its route at the distressed building's location, thereby servicing that building first before the vehicle's capacity for service is spent on other structures
-Traffic accidents, exacerbated in locations with higher traffic, traffic controls, and/or merging
-Police actively enforcing laws (pulling over speeders which might result in rubbernecking back ups, the occasional car chase, etc). Police forces should be able to cover a greater degree of their costs the more burdensome that laws, fines, and enforcement become for the populace through municipal policy
-A 'realism' mode, with realistic parking needs, building populations, construction times, road construction rather than instant placement, traffic accidents, education distribution (more affordable housing should be available as a method of maintaining some amount of a lightly educated population/workforce, etc), homelessness propagation which stems from more liberal city policies and law enforcement, realistic aircraft movement requiring clean approaches to runways, etc.
-A sliding scale for taxation incentives and disincentives, rather than CS1's binary "Set to 12% and forget": Higher taxes reduce interest in the city for residents and businesses on an exponential scale, while the inverse is true for lower taxes. The more advanced the city, the higher the tax burden that entrepreneurs and residents should be willing to endure without growing restless
-Residential and business zoning should be much more granular, allowing mayors to implement policies like rent control and low cost housing mandates/restrictions, and the known consequences of those policies should be reflected in-game, both good and bad
-Private developers (game AI) should meet the demand for the types of businesses and housing desired based on the current state of the city most efficiently without regulatory encumbrance, naturally maximizing population density and tax revenue alike when there are minimal/no market-distorting regulations in place
-Traffic-disrupting protests and civil unrest should happen occasionally, and be more prolific and violent in cities with increasingly liberal policies and/or underfunded and politically suppressed police departments
-Over-funded and/or over-encouraged police departments should become increasingly corrupt and overzealous in their enforcement: pulling over and ticketing innocent commuters more often to meet ticket quotas, bringing national embarrassment to the city by militarizing and overreacting to mundane situations (perhaps with fatal consequences), imposing curfews that hurt businesses and piss off residents, establishing DUI checkpoints, etc. This should also result in increased civil unrest, and occasional lawsuits that cost the city large amounts of money
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u/CharlieH_ Mar 23 '23
Emergency vehicles having priority in traffic when responding to an emergency.
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u/vexaph0d Mar 22 '23
I really want crime rates to work more realistically (more cops != less crime in real life, it's more about available jobs and incomes). Also I hope they at least attempt to use consistent size scales and realistic occupancy rates to building size ratios.
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u/Marco_Memes Mar 22 '23
Better transport options. Busses not stopping if nobodies getting on or off, change the fare price per route, rush hour only routes, game day routes, ability to set multiple bus kinds to a route
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u/GarwayHFDS Mar 22 '23
Personally, I'd like to have Modular Railway Stations, Harbours and Airports.
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u/moonyriot Mar 22 '23
More varied city styles, like region based. I want to build a city that looks like Midwest America or East Coast America or the UK or Japan. I get bored with every city looking mostly the same style wise.
Plus better pre-made intersections or interchanges
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u/470vinyl Mar 22 '23
Ability to start with railroads. I’d rather use that than highways for freight.
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u/Lukinjoo Mar 22 '23
Realistic population in housing and parking. There cant be living 10 people in 20 story building etc
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Mar 22 '23
I would love to see growable historic/iconic buildings. Every city has a famous cafe, or club, or something that is important to the culture and history. It’d be cool to see that represented in the game.
Like under certain circumstances (land value, proximity to uses, etc) buildings have a random chance of turning into an iconic landmark - which boosts the attractiveness of the city around it. It’d be cool if they could still abandon too, so you have to think carefully about how you change certain neighbourhoods.
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u/Sinestero Mar 23 '23
Changing zones without having to de-zone and re-zone. Eg residential to commercial
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u/Less_Tennis5174524 Mar 23 '23
Realistic buildings. Skylines 1 started with a cartoony artstyle and then slowly got more realistic, so it now has a mix of great looking models and goofy stuff
Much better traffic AI
Road and lane tools we've seen in mods so I can make good interchanges and roundabouts.
Construction over time instead of instant (as an option). Would add a layer of realism
More difficulty. Most cities are constantly pressed and need to make hard decisions. Realistically you would have areas that are underfunded. Having wealthy people should also take time and not just be "add parks". Crime should be a real factor.
Procedural neighborhoods. Remember how in SimCity 4 you could draw zoning and it would add roads? That feature but let me have different road layouts to select from.
Delivery trucks that make multiple stops instead of one truck per business/factory. This is how it works in the real world.
Parking. Would be cool if people had cars that they needed to park. It could be another layer of management. Good traffic flow is one thing but can you also make enough space for people to park once they reach their destination? Then car focused cities would also look much more realistic (worse).
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Mar 22 '23
-More detail with vanilla buildings. Skyscrapers and small business alike should have an alley out back with dumpsters, even delivery vehicle props, crates, pallets, etc.
Warehouses also should have tons of props built in.
Houses should have fenced yards, playgrounds, etc.
-I'm BEGGING for built-in American style stuff. American traffic lights, speed limit signs, big box stores, detached houses, 1 story businesses, fast food, etc. I know it's ugly but that's the type of city I, and TONS of others, want to build
Just to name a few!
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u/DJXpresso Mar 22 '23
Ability to choose lane count at intersections. If I want 8 lanes on the right and 2 on the left that should be up to me.
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u/MrDMA94 Mar 22 '23
Deep level statistics. I love looking at the graphs. If they can make it show you your stats in real time without having to pause the game, that would just be the cherry on top
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u/Chankler Mar 22 '23
Lets be honest: the main game is amazing. But I would like to see events in the city. Things that happen, a bit like the court in ck3. Or road accidents etc, protests, more politics etc. Also would like it to be online, being a living city on a plot of land with other groups. Like joining a guild and requesting a spot. The guild will accept or deny it.
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u/chioz Mar 22 '23
As many others have said I'd like to see better traffic simulation and management. Also more realistic roads, which I know I can get via mods but I'd prefer it in the core game.
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u/bwoah07_gp2 Mar 22 '23
This post made me think we need proper beaches in the game. We can't take advantage of beautiful coastal shorelines in the game. Maybe the sequel can build off it.
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u/ElleRisalo Mar 22 '23 edited Mar 23 '23
Everything I already bought in Skylines 1, with improvements to traffic management and road design/layout (lines) access to all possible tiles. Out of the box.
I mean I have that all already, I just don't want to pay for it all again (or have to wait on the smart people to make mods.)
Biggest one for me is smarter traffic. Old people drive slow, young people drive fast, everyone uses ALL of the lanes.
Updated visuals will be nice.
And I mean its a city builder. Graphics is nice but they ain't everything.
If I need to rebuy Transit, Industry, Parks, Airports and like a half a dozen others just to unlock the mechanical ability to build a Cities 1 esque functioning city....
I'm out.
I'll just play CIties 1 with all the DLC I already own, and the insanely strong mod community already behind it.
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u/xX_Dres_Aftermath_Xx Mar 22 '23
-More assets and ploppable buildings on Console.
-Different modes, such as one where you can progress through historical eras in certain places (such as 1890-2030 US western city). Or a more expansive (and realistic for christ sake) fix it mode, like in CS1
-More in depth policies and in depth services, such as budgeting for certain areas of policing to combat high crime. Speaking of which...
-More in depth statistics, and views, like you can see where exactly crime is rampant, where a gang exists, etc. (Might be slightly extreme but that would be awesome)
-Political story, such as a rich company wanting to build their HQ in your city, or protests due to the neglect of a neighborhood
-Political disasters, such as how industries moved out of cities in the Midwest causing the rustbelt, which would force players to more carefully design industries, which would mean there would also be more in depth industries.
I could come up with more, but this list is great already.
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u/omnimutant Mar 22 '23 edited Mar 22 '23
I'd like to see the things that are fundamental mods right now in CS 1 as a standard part of CS2. Mainly I'd like the game to address enough core things that we don't need mods to play and have the same basic experience. Things like what precision engineering offers, full access to the terrain tools (not just in editor mode), a solid Traffic manager with capabilities even kind of close to what TMPE offers. An advance fine tuning tool similar to move it would be nice as well.
Don't dumb down the game. Many people who play these types of builder games are the opposite of the audience you seem to be trying to cater too. It seems like either CO is afraid to make some realistic and technical tools, in fear of making the game too complicated, or they are using the KISS principle because they are lazy developers (do as little work for maximum profit). Know your audience.
I want a game that works and delivers on it's promises and hype.
Give me closer to realistic populations per requirements. What that means is don't make me have to place 35 elementary schools for city that is the size of a small town at best. Massively increase the population size to reflect real cities demographics and requirements. Current CS is always trying to make way too many sky scrapper type buildings for areas that are way too small to support the possibility of those things even existing at all. The fact that the Airports DLC exists is fun, but like there's no way you would need or find anything like that in a sub 500k city. In fact most things in CS are massively overbuilt for the population size. And yet, the population being as low as it generally is, they game doesn't do very well, in allowing you to make rural looking areas which would be the most expected experience given that 80K is considered a "Megalopolis".
I would love a toggle that uses some AI learning to replicate what is sitting at the "edge" boundaries of your city beyond your city so that the LoS doesn't just drop off into a void. The current workable space just ends at the boundary, so anything more than 13 square miles (which is tiny btw... my real life city is 517 square miles!) just stops at the edge. You can't even make a portion of a downtown city and pretend it extends beyond the boundaries, because it just stops. So if the game, with a toggle switch, could render in a little LoS blur, simulating an extension of what's at the border it would make it feel way more realistic and be amazing. And it wouldn't even be that hard to do.
Something like what the OP posted is seriously needed as well. Not every zone should be focused on making the most expensive area imaginable. Having mostly multistory mega mansions spawning in any city is a bit absurd, and trying to force the game not to do that is extremely difficult currently. Even when you zone 1x1 it'll still end up building tall multistory monstrosities. There needs to be a feasible way to build normal apartments (2 maybe 3 story at max), and single story suburban style housing. As well as multistory low wealth tenement= or "Project" areas. Being able to zone High middle and low class areas is probably the easiest solution. I don't know why making something a bit closer to reality is such a hard task when so many games did it for decades previous.
One really big issue I have with traffic is that there should be some basic rules governing responsible use for the type of traffic being generated and what it will normally use as a priority. For example there is no reason at all, that the large trucks and commercial shipping traffic, should cut through residential neighborhoods, whether the route is shorter or not. Similarly, outside of commuters, there really shouldn't be much "normal traffic" in the heavy industry areas. Heavy industry traffic should always prioritize freeways and industrial type roads.
I could go on for days but the point is moot. I understand that nothing I post will effect CS2 since it's probably already deep into beta since it's been announced as a 2023 release. And if they were still in the development stage at such a level they could implement these changes, there would be no way it would release this year anyway. But alas it's a wish list.
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u/Caslol17 Mar 23 '23
A very niche wish, but I want them to (either in base game or as a dlc, I wouldn't mind) allow us to mkae mountainois resorts with skislopes in the winter and hiking paths in the summer, with different lifts and buildings related to a mountain resort.
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u/Crowdaw Mar 23 '23
Large parking lots and structures. An old sim city had a parking garage to make more use of public transit, like a park and ride hub. Also better traffic AI, lane changes etc
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u/Athel13 Mar 23 '23 edited Mar 23 '23
Parking Minimums.
Slums/unorganized housing/squatting.
Allow civilians to walk on land without paths.
Ranches/estates.
Ability to connect a 9x9 city to another 9x9 city off map in a superregion
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u/JuniorWindow815 Mar 23 '23
Due to the call for realism from CS2 itself, I hope they will stick to city planning processes from real life. Like beeing able to set up a building plan for a district like it is irl. You’d for example restrict new houses to be a certain sice and or the roof to be in a certain cooler.
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u/TheChris16YT Mar 23 '23
More Realistic Car/Civilian Speed, Zoning a zone doesn’t just give you one stud buildings,
Hopefully the game wouldnt need players to rely on community mods..
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u/daveawb Mar 23 '23
I'd like to see:
- Roads that have mini nodes (or an equivalent) per lane
- Ability to build on slopes that don't alter the terrain (paths, buildings, roads etc.)
- Prop / Tree and Road anarchy abilities
- Higher prop counts- Tons of new assets and transport capabilities
- Super futuristic city assets
- Ancient and classical cities assets
- Districts that don't feel like they're trying to be a round peg in a square hole
There are tons of other things I think would be cool but learning lessons from SimCity's massive fail, the simulation, city size and progression need to be very much in sync with each other. People want to build colossal cities, and very few people care if an individual citizen owns a specific car and works in a specific place.
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u/MacDaddyRemade Mar 23 '23
MUD and the sims actually needing to park and not just pulling a car out their literal ass. Also just making the game way more pedestrian friendly. I can’t wait for the next game!
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u/Commonmispelingbot Mar 23 '23
Traffic accidents. ring roads actually being viable. A game that doesn't make it possible to melt steel on my laptop
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u/Significant_Cut_5310 Mar 22 '23
Normal things like traffic manager and all the other top popular mods but available for all platforms.
Real life cars?
MULTIPLAYER!! Multiplayer would be very, very cool. I think people would enjoy being able to build cities with their friends.
Many more options in the settings menu for graphics such as being able to decide the quality, fps, render distance etc etc. this would help (mainly for Xbox) when you build so much that when the game starts to lag, you can turn down the setting to increase performance.
If it’s even somehow possible, for Xbox a bit of mod support. I know minecraft had this at one point for Xbox but I think it doesn’t work any more. If it’s possible that would be cool.
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u/Pandastic3000 Mar 22 '23
Buildings that can handle a slope without looking weird.