Unnatural Disasters - The Honest Reviews

[Meesmoth]

The very first game in the city-building genre, SimCity, released in 1989, featured unnatural disasters such as UFO invasions, monster attacks, or even train accidents.

Many games that followed has this feature, from SimCity 2000, to SimCity 2013, to the point it has become one of the "traditional features" of a classic city-builder game.

A description of SimCity 2000's disasters, as quoted from Wikipedia:

Originally posted by Wikipedia:

The game also included several playable scenarios, in which the player must deal with a disaster (in most, but not all scenarios) and rebuild the city to meet a set of victory conditions. These were based in versions of real-life cities, and some were based on real events such as the Oakland firestorm of 1991, the 1989 Hurricane Hugo in Charleston, South Carolina, the Great Flood of 1993 in Davenport, Iowa, or dealing with the 1970s economic recession in Flint, Michigan—but also included more fanciful ones such as a "monster" destroying Hollywood in 2001.

Scenarios were added into Cities: Skylines as part of the Natural Disasters expansion

In Cities: Skylines, there was no disasters originally, including random events such as car accidents or riots. On 2016, a DLC named Natural Disasters was released, fixing the fanbase's complains about the lack of disasters. But not all, as some disasters are still absent in the game, and random events still don't happen.

What this DLC should be called is Unnatural Disasters, where disasters caused by things like UFOs, volcanos, or giant monsters occur in your city, and how to decrease the damage they cause to your city with the use of military forces. Also included in the DLC are random events such as car accidents, caused by reckless Cims, or riots when something is wrong on your city's services. The Plus version contains a modular University, that you can place in your city, from dormitories, to research departments.

But, as proven on past DLC suggestion threads here and on the Paradox forums, each time a person suggests for this DLC always get downvotes to the point the user has more downvotes than upvotes, which is similar to ruining some guy's reputation on a website. This DLC will be nice, to those have cities that feels boring and lame due to nothing much happening in it, giving them a little bit of realism and feels the city more alive than before. You can unleash your creativity skills by spawning these unnatural disasters and create a nice, detailed backstory about it in a City Journal.

What's up with people disagreeing for things like Unnatural Disasters, University, or Events to be added into the game? I liked SC13's university for being more alive, while I miss random events like car accidents or UFO invasion/monster attack on my cities. I remember my old SC4 city journal where a monster attack occured and it had a nice, interesting backstory I wrote.

Plus, not all people buy all DLCs, if you don't like a DLC, then just don't buy it. Examples include ND - Not everyone has ND, only people who want it, plus there is a mod that allows bigger disasters but slows your game down - again user's choice, as it was a mod and not part of the DLC itself. On the options menu there are multiple options can be turned off if you don't like them. You can turn off Dynamic weather, Day/night cycle, random disasters, road names, and even notification pop-up for buildings. If you don't like car accidents or Unnatural disasters, then turn it off. Nobody's stopping you, or don't buy the DLC at all.

Some people have doubts buying some past DLCs like Parklife, as they complain that the forest fires burns them very frequently, while for me this is not an issue. I disabled forest fires and only enabled vanilla fires and I have no problem of lightning striking trees, as forest fires never happen now. Same for Industries, which includes me, as I have doubts if I should buy it or not, because for me it's just too complex, example when I place a warehouse and a resource extractor then afterwards everything falls apart. DLC suggestions of each people should be given respect, not give them mass disagrees, it would be like ruining the guy's reputation on a website. You have the own choice if you want to buy these DLCs or not, disagreeing other people's suggestions will not do anything other than hurting that person's feelings. As of today, I still haven't bought both Parklife and Industries, because of this thing called "User's choice", so do the same on DLC suggestion threads.

These features, were on SimCity 4, yet many people call Cities: Skylines "better than SC4", even though some SC4 features are not yet added into CS. Examples include random events, unnatural disasters, and even driving.

For me, in my opinion, CS is much more building-friendly, as it is focused on building your city, while in SC4 it is focused on player's freedom, such as after building a huge city, you can do a City Journal with creative backstories (such as this car accident occured due to some reason, etc), because of several features existing in the game, from UFO invasions, to giant monster attacks. You can drive in your own city, and create a Youtube video about it. This is one main reason why SC4 lasted for decades, not to mention its still-growing modding community, which is still very active as of March 2019. Some people even tried playing CS, but returned to SC4 after they complained the lack of "traditional features", examples include well-known SC4 player Haljackey, who tried CS but returned to SC4 (source: https://imgur.com/a/KqVxlBQ ). Unnatural disasters, and random events has been a long "traditional feature" for the city-building genre, even the very, very first SimCity in 1989 had these unnatural disasters. Not adding unnatural disasters would be like "Oh hey why CS lacks the traditional unnatural disasters feature?". Many reviewers, who reviewed this game (either on release day or afterwards), complained the lack of random events and disasters, yet a part of this were added in a DLC to fix those complains, but not all (as other disasters does not exist in the game still, random events still don't happen such as car accidents, while it gives more realistic feel on cities).

One of the real-world cities I recreated, Lipa City (in the Philippines), had experienced another major road accident only this March 23, which was shown on national television (link here: http://cnnphilippines.com/regional/2019/3/23/1-dead-in-10-vehicle-crash-in-Batangas.html ), yet in-game that same city feels dead and simulated, as car accidents such as what happened on the real-life Lipa City does not occur on the recreated version of Lipa City, thus removing some realism.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1646888474

Yet things that many people do not need such as construction animation updates, are planned to be added into the game. A side-by-side comparison of both, shows that car accidents use less CPU power than updated construction animation, as all zoned buildings will use the same animation for 32,000+ buildings (if you're building a large city), while car accidents only occur only once at a time, you cannot have more than one accident at the same time.

[ebrumby]

In one sentence (or even 2 or 3), what is your point?

[Punxsutawney]

Originally posted by ebrumby:

In one sentence (or even 2 or 3), what is your point?

The OP's point is:

Originally posted by Meesmoth:

Plus, not all people buy all DLCs, if you don't like a DLC, then just don't buy it.

I've just randomly quoted the first sentence I found and I have not read the rest. I just hope this is the OP's point.

[ephil4705]

Reading the wall of text. The OP is complaining about negative reviews are holding the game back.
He / she wants the game more of a SC feel about it, the negative reviews aren't helping.
Or I've got it wrong my apologies if that is the case

[Meesmoth]

Originally posted by ephil4705:

The OP is complaining about negative reviews are holding the game back.
He / she wants the game more of a SC feel about it, the negative reviews aren't helping.

Yes, this is the main point of the thread.

[MarkJohnson]

I down voted Natural Disasters as I've never seen any point of them since their inception in any city builder.

I also down vote Unnatural Disasters.

No point at all destroying a city you are trying to build.

The only thing they seem useful is a scenario, but CO abandoned that idea a few DLCs ago.

Although SC2013 had the best one. The disasters only occurred when you had issues with your city.

You don't manage your garbage dump, Godzilla spawns across the map and empties your garbage dump for you and wipes out everything in it path. So next time, you make sure you fix your garbage or your city get damaged.

sick people turned into zombie apocalypse if not cured, then start eating you other sims brains. At least it only lasts one night.

And my favorite, unemployed sims eventually go homeless and lived in parks, then eventually turned to crime that police would hunt down and have a shootout and arrest the bad guys, then if criminals never get caught, they level up and are harder to catch, then finally they level up so high they will leave your town and invade your neighbors. Then you get spammed with hate mail from your neighbors.

But SC2013 disasters were used as a game mechanic and not just random acts. They were also minor in damage, and in this game, a disaster can do large amounts of damage. I don't think that is a fun mechanic to try to recover from an almost completely abandoned city. Then just as you recover, if you are lucky enough to get that far, then another disaster hits.

Disasters are just too inconvenient other than a scenario. I don't think anyone wants to have these major issues on cities they've spent countless hours building to have it destroyed. It just doesn't make sense to me.

Probably why you see it get down voted so much.

[Meesmoth]

Originally posted by -DI- rmjohnson144:

I down voted Natural Disasters as I've never seen any point of them since their inception in any city builder.

ND was released, so downvoting it today does nothing as it is now used by many people.

Originally posted by -DI- rmjohnson144:

I also down vote Unnatural Disasters.

ouch.

Originally posted by -DI- rmjohnson144:

No point at all destroying a city you are trying to build

Unless I wanted to, speaking of which, I just made this thread only a few hours ago: https://steamcommunity.com/app/255710/discussions/0/1846946102861388592/

Originally posted by -DI- rmjohnson144:

Disasters are just too inconvenient other than a scenario. I don't think anyone wants to have these major issues on cities they've spent countless hours building to have it destroyed. It just doesn't make sense to me.

Hence, that's why there is a option in-game to turn off Random disasters, and only have the manual placed ones if you like to see one.

[ephil4705]

Never bought it so no worries for me

[theSeb]

I played the original Simcity and kept the disasters turned off. I hated them then and I hate them now.

[Catratio]

I keep my disasters off normally, but I still think the DLC is a great buy because it comes with all the helicopter types, radio masts, water tanks, etc. Nice things to have on hand for things other than disasters.

[Mazisky]

I feel that the game need more realistic challenges, so i'd prefere things like riots, robbery, car accidents and such rather than godzilla or weird stuff.

[Meesmoth]

Originally posted by -DI- rmjohnson144:

I down voted Natural Disasters as I've never seen any point of them since their inception in any city builder.

I also down vote Unnatural Disasters.

No point at all destroying a city you are trying to build.

The only thing they seem useful is a scenario, but CO abandoned that idea a few DLCs ago.

Although SC2013 had the best one. The disasters only occurred when you had issues with your city.

You don't manage your garbage dump, Godzilla spawns across the map and empties your garbage dump for you and wipes out everything in it path. So next time, you make sure you fix your garbage or your city get damaged.

sick people turned into zombie apocalypse if not cured, then start eating you other sims brains. At least it only lasts one night.

And my favorite, unemployed sims eventually go homeless and lived in parks, then eventually turned to crime that police would hunt down and have a shootout and arrest the bad guys, then if criminals never get caught, they level up and are harder to catch, then finally they level up so high they will leave your town and invade your neighbors. Then you get spammed with hate mail from your neighbors.

But SC2013 disasters were used as a game mechanic and not just random acts. They were also minor in damage, and in this game, a disaster can do large amounts of damage. I don't think that is a fun mechanic to try to recover from an almost completely abandoned city. Then just as you recover, if you are lucky enough to get that far, then another disaster hits.

Disasters are just too inconvenient other than a scenario. I don't think anyone wants to have these major issues on cities they've spent countless hours building to have it destroyed. It just doesn't make sense to me.

Probably why you see it get down voted so much.

Well at least this post explains the reasons why Unnatural Disasters gets like a ton of downvotes on the Paradox forums. Thanks for clarifying it.

[SovietAmerica]

Originally posted by -DI- rmjohnson144:

No point at all destroying a city you are trying to build.

Mate have you ever watched RTgames?

[Priest]

Originally posted by Meesmoth:

Originally posted by -DI- rmjohnson144:

No point at all destroying a city you are trying to build.
:::
Probably why you see it get down voted so much.

Well at least this post explains the reasons why Unnatural Disasters gets like a ton of downvotes on the Paradox forums. Thanks for clarifying it.

Because people cant differentiate between a obligatory base game element and a completly free option they would need to buy ?

I think i need to post some hate posts too
https://store.steampowered.com/app/715193/Cities_Skylines__All_That_Jazz/

I HATE JAZZ