Without mods, this game feels very shallow.

[poke_ravi]

Even with mods the game kinda gets worn out after you've tried everything. My biggest gripe is that the city doesn't feel animated like it does in SC4 for instance with there being poor neighborhoods, suburbs, Main Street, etc. unless you of course use ploppables to make it look this way. But even though the neighborhood might "look" like a wealthy suburb because of the assets you have, the game might still treat the area as low-medium land value.

Furthermore, the population mechanics of the game are atrocious with houses and buildings pretty much having similar amounts of occupants. And I don't have to tell anyone about the traffic issues that still plague this game. Also the game gets ridiculously easy once you get everything started up and your budget is in the positive. There doesn't seem to be any challenge after initial phase. Hopefully CS2 fixes these issues otherwise it too will have to rely on mods but mods can only do so much when the core game has problems.

[OneJasonBradly]

SimCity4? animated? I played that game for over 11 years and enjoyed every moment. But animated is not a word I would use. Its traffic was an emulation at best even with rushhour.
Couldn't curve any roads unless modded and then only highways. It had a small library of building models and what a park or two.
It is not that hard to build a vanilla slums now that we have access to the historic button. But one needs to remember what makes a low income area.
Traffic, there is nothing wrong with it that possibly understanding couldn't help. You complain about the traffic end then say there is no challenge. The game has been over the years nurfed to a point to expand it reach to people that might not actually want to play Cities but but paint.
I can see Cities II dumming down even further to appeal to many. Who knows.
I've been playing since 2015 and still play today. It will be interesting to see what the next offering will be. As for core problems it's often the mod themselves that causes the problems. Don't get me wrong I do enjoy both unmodded and my mod collection which is mainly graphical or road tools and a great many building models. In my opinion this game will be a classic. it's a great game in my opinion, hand down.

[Tsubame ⭐]

The game is simple and relatively easy to play to entice casual players. Even then, there are many posts of people complaining of problems making money.

CS does not have income levels. That certainly could be a nice addition to CS2.

Yes, traffic is an issue, in particular small cities and freight stations tend to have too much of it. That being said, nothing that some planning and road hierarchy does not solve.

[Straw Man]

Originally posted by poke_ravi:

Also the game gets ridiculously easy once you get everything started up and your budget is in the positive. There doesn't seem to be any challenge after initial phase.

This sort of reminds me of LGR's review of Planet Coaster, where he complains about the finance aspect being too easy because guests will basically pay any price for a ride.

The whole idea behind simulations like like this is creating your own challenges, paying to lose as it were. Set the taxes to like 2% percent in this game, and the upkeep for services will be challenging, unless you actually go through the motions to do profitable things, like unique factories, fish, theme parks or whatever.

The stock tax rates make the game ridiculously easy, which is probably for the best, considering the majority of purchasers are likely kids who have never touched a SimCity before. They will quit in frustration if things don't "intuitively" teleport into their hands. Advanced users like us can go into the menus and mess with sliders, spreadsheets and whatnot, and customize our own hard mode.

[al.y]

After a year I find a basic pro and con of this game based on years of SimCity. I prefer CS "IF" CS2 ugrades a lot of items that mods have had to make the game might I say more complex than simple. For me, and I don't know how many others, have gone whacko with big industry. Of course too much extraction leads to a host of issues particularly with limits.

Right now I have hit the 65636 limit on Cim Instances and my transit went into ghost town mode. No one walking around, still a lot of traffic though. My industry is still pumping, but my Universities are losing students.

It's nothing new, I see the comments as I try to find reasons behind my glitches. Part of my fun is to fix issues. I rather see more ploppable assets that act with RICO than growable zones for Commercial and Generic Factories.

For an older game it was and still a bit fun to play with, but it does get boring. Having to find my Instances limit is still unresolved and having no transit really makes it boooooring. Its about the CIMs so when you can't have any running around its not good.

And I hope Assets can stop being Tourist based. I tried the RICO mod, but don't like the idea I cannot move the buildings.

I hate having too many mods because I don't need to babysit the versions even if I have the compatibility mod. Assets get deprecated, mod authors like CIMs leave and then a new version comes. My last job was doing software change control partly and I rather play the game and not part of my old IT job. Ahhh!

Praying for a better CS2. Also better DLCs that new buildings just add what is out on the Assets, again just tourist based. Why pay for that? But I did some.

[jbc34618]

The reason there hasn't been a true SimCity 5 is because your average teenaged gamer doesn't want the same kind of game that city nerds like myself do. They want something they can casually sit down with for a few hours and have a decent-sized, functional city without having to worry about the nitty gritty or deal with a high learning curve. That's why Maxis/EA went the direction they did with SimCity Societies and SimCity 2013. CS tried to bridge the gap and I think they did a very good job of it. However, I still think SC4 vanilla is a better game than CS vanilla. CS with mods is better than SC4 with mods.

[Stannington]

Mods are what make the game, without places like the workshop it would have ended a few years back. Not forgetting the great job the mod and asset creators do either. The only slight grumbles I have is that when the game is patched, sometimes it might break the mods and that's why mods such as the Loading Screen Mod and the Compatibility Report Mod are so important to get the game running again.

The other issue that annoys me is that most people have cities which are junked. By that I mean a mish-mash of styles which don't really compliment each other. It's very difficult to get an effective looking district. This is because most asset creator make houses, shops and factories with usually one building level, so if it upgrades it is replaced by another model which looks nothing like the first. Would it be too much to ask content creators to build houses, say, with levels 1-5 instead of a just a level 3 house? It wouldn't even have to be a different blender of GMAX model, it could be the same model but with a different scripting level behind it. That way you could have an entire housing state that looks similar throughout the game

[WhiteKnight77]

Originally posted by Stannington:

Mods are what make the game, without places like the workshop it would have ended a few years back. Not forgetting the great job the mod and asset creators do either. The only slight grumbles I have is that when the game is patched, sometimes it might break the mods and that's why mods such as the Loading Screen Mod and the Compatibility Report Mod are so important to get the game running again.

The other issue that annoys me is that most people have cities which are junked. By that I mean a mish-mash of styles which don't really compliment each other. It's very difficult to get an effective looking district. This is because most asset creator make houses, shops and factories with usually one building level, so if it upgrades it is replaced by another model which looks nothing like the first. Would it be too much to ask content creators to build houses, say, with levels 1-5 instead of a just a level 3 house? It wouldn't even have to be a different blender of GMAX model, it could be the same model but with a different scripting level behind it. That way you could have an entire housing state that looks similar throughout the game

If you want to keep a building in CS to have the same look as it levels up, there is the historical button on each buildings info panel. Also, using different assets either from the workshop or DLC such as Green Cities or Mid Century Modern can be used to create unique neighborhoods that real cities have.

[Strvinafrcan]

Originally posted by poke_ravi:

Even with mods the game kinda gets worn out after you've tried everything. My biggest gripe is that the city doesn't feel animated like it does in SC4 for instance with there being poor neighborhoods, suburbs, Main Street, etc. unless you of course use ploppables to make it look this way. But even though the neighborhood might "look" like a wealthy suburb because of the assets you have, the game might still treat the area as low-medium land value.

Furthermore, the population mechanics of the game are atrocious with houses and buildings pretty much having similar amounts of occupants. And I don't have to tell anyone about the traffic issues that still plague this game. Also the game gets ridiculously easy once you get everything started up and your budget is in the positive. There doesn't seem to be any challenge after initial phase. Hopefully CS2 fixes these issues otherwise it too will have to rely on mods but mods can only do so much when the core game has problems.

i'm so glad you feel that way, because you my dear friend are spot on, without mods or assets this game is shallow! infact it's pure ass! oh yeah, and if you ever install a broken mod or asset, the devs have made sure their game is as incompatible with mods as possible so it usually breaks, and they loved the idea of forcing players to spend hours trying to fix this just so they can play again, the base game is basic, bland, unrealistic, and heartless, just like the devs! except the devs sure do love their money!

[caseyas435943]

Originally posted by OneJasonBradly:

SimCity4? animated? I played that game for over 11 years and enjoyed every moment. But animated is not a word I would use. Its traffic was an emulation at best even with rushhour.
Couldn't curve any roads unless modded and then only highways. It had a small library of building models and what a park or two.
It is not that hard to build a vanilla slums now that we have access to the historic button. But one needs to remember what makes a low income area.
Traffic, there is nothing wrong with it that possibly understanding couldn't help. You complain about the traffic end then say there is no challenge. The game has been over the years nurfed to a point to expand it reach to people that might not actually want to play Cities but but paint.
I can see Cities II dumming down even further to appeal to many. Who knows.
I've been playing since 2015 and still play today. It will be interesting to see what the next offering will be. As for core problems it's often the mod themselves that causes the problems. Don't get me wrong I do enjoy both unmodded and my mod collection which is mainly graphical or road tools and a great many building models. In my opinion this game will be a classic. it's a great game in my opinion, hand down.

Let's hope they don't do what ONI did with their last update. They made it so easy it not much fun now.

Let's hope SC doesn't do that.

Fix a few things sure. But the game is already brain dead easy. I don't see how they could make it any easier.

The only that makes the get remotely challenging it traffic. But once you understand it, you'll have zero traffic anyway.

[Hugh]

"Without mods, this game feels very shallow."

Without mods this is no game only a simulator.