Is the game just ugly? I would not ever want to move to one of those cities.

[chikkichakka]

With the economy 2.0 patch, it has become a game which at least offers a bit of a challenge, at least at the very start of the game.

However, the other big problem still remains: the cities still look damn ugly as a whole. Or to quote my girlfriend: "I really would never want to move into this city". And that was after putting days into making a new city as beautiful as it could be. And the worst part, she was right.

And yes, there are these creator packs coming up which could maybe help fix some problems. However I think there is a huge list of basic things missing, and some of them are fixable:

- American suburb-city style: No matter what I do, in the end it always looks like some spread out American-style city (even when I choose the European style). Buildings and streets take up all the space, no beauty at all. Just a spread-out blob of same-looking face-less rectangles. No life or community can be sensed. And this is while suburb sprawl-cities are the ugliest ones in the world. And then in-game the cities look like the worst examples of those.
- One of the problems there: You start out with low-density buildings. So basically you first have to build suburbs as a start. Suburbs will always just look ugly even in reality.
- Another problem is that buildings are only possible on a street. Then the zoning leaves tons of gaps which would be filled in immediately in real cities because of the good location.
- Even when you get to higher density buildings, they often look like soviet-era prison-blocks of boredom. Please god, do not force to me to ever live in one of those.
- Then the default color scheme is also pretty flat. I guess it's intended to be realistic. Also I have seen discussions about the anti-aliasing or something, I'm not an expert but something is off.
- Rainy weather then makes this all a depressive flat and boring looking pixel disaster. I see no reason why I would spend my free-time with this sad mess, when the worst European cities look 10 times as nice in reality.
- Small issue: A lot of the service buildings still look without any life, but this has improved a bit lately, at least parks seem to have people.
- The people themselves always seem to either have glitches or look weird too. I wished for more relatable and human-like figures like in the "planet" series.
- Reality vs game: And there is the big underlying problem: Trying to be super-realistic in game depictions is not a good idea. Why do you play games at all? It is to dream and build something nicer than reality, while imaging this could be just real.
- It seems all city planning ideas from the past which failed already were re-implemented in the game, but no-where are some fun, cool or even utopic ideas of how humanity could live together closely in cities in the future

Good parts:
- I wonder who did the vehicles, because those are the only ones which look truly amazing. They function nice, they look nice. Almost perfect.
- With the row-style medium density housing, some streets can look really nice when you zoom in. Somehow those often dont fit into the overall picture though.

[john.glossop]

Hmmmm, it sounds to me like your girl friend has hit the nail on the head.
Who designed these monstrous cities that she's turning her nose up at?
Well, it wasn't her, so you can't blame her. And it wasn't CO - they only supplied the canvas, it was up to the user to put paint on the canvas.
If you (and she) were to look at some of the cities that have been videoed, and are available on YouTube, you would see that many of them have indeed overcome the limitations of the game, and have created truly remarkable cities - with the same tools that you and I have.
Frankly, my cities are probably as skanky, if not worse, than yours in terms of being liveable, but that doesn't bother me - I'm still learning the game. Every day either in this forum, or on YouTube, I learn a little more about city design and layout, and each time I start a new city, I intend to improve on what I produced the last time.
A couple of things that I learned today.
1. Don't build right up to your major arterial roads. Someday, the traffic will be such that you'll need to widen the main roads, and that's a lot less traumatic than if you have to tear down half your city to do it.
2. Leave empty spaces between your urban areas. For expansion, and for placing new features as they become available.
3, Put down parks, and not only formal parks, but green spaces with trees and pathways to make them more attractive - and don't forget that industrial areas need parks as well as residential areas.
4. Most of all, understand that this game has had a traumatic birth, and the developers are running hard while appearing to be standing still - that's a function of the Real World budget, not the one in the game.
and finally
5. If you really can't see the game improving, step away from it for a while. Take on another genre completely different to CS2 (I've come here from a long stint with Microsoft Flight Sim 2020) and for a while, just forget about CS2. When you come back to it, you might be surprised by how much it's changed. Equally, you might find that it's died, and you can thank your lucky stars that you didn't waste any more time on that loser. Or you might, just, find that you like your alternative better than you like CS2, and not bother to look back again.
Whichever way you go, it's your decision, and you must live with it.
Good luck, and I hope that you'll make the right decision - for you.

[chikkichakka]

Yes you are right that everything can be overcome. It's just a really high hurdle and ask for this game to use the detailer tool and care about every tiny patch yourself. Btw, I think most of the youtube cities ( I watch a lot) also look.. hm.. not so nice.
Thanks for the tipps and your comment nevertheless!