This is a perfect example of how hard it is to please everyone. Some people want total control of the grid and go for ultimate symmetry, while others want no grids at all and prefer the way games like manor lords do it.
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As the cynical arse that I am, room availability *is* a resource. I mean, there's only so many rooms available, so you face things like overbooking in real life. Makes some sense if that's how it works in-game as well.
Im still overall disappointed at the pace to get this game up to advertised release day standards, but at least this patch seems like it's actually trying to fix things rather than introduce new nonsense.
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I think allowing free placement would please mostly everyone.
I'd kind of envision you being able to first define how many zoning squares you'd need a building to be, then a box might pop up and show you all the relevant buildings that fit that size.
I will say though, that would be a pretty large addition and I feel like it'd be unreasonable to think it wouldn't be a paid DLC (or officially supported community mod).
I'd buy it though!
Manor Lords is a great example of what zoning could look like. I'm afraid that this is a wasted opportunity to change it.
I had such hopes at the very beginning, when the dev diaries were coming out, that this feature would be polished. I don't know about others, but if someone from the creators decided to change this feature, for me personally it wouldn't bother me that it would affect the current cities. I could build them from scratch. However, this is rather impossible.
The game has huge potential, despite these many difficulties, but its current state requires polishing.
In any case, I see the mentioned switching between zoned buildings and the freedom to place zoned buildings for this feature.
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I agree that I love how Manor Lords does this.
The optimal way for a dynamic city builder would be drawing a plot with a dynamic zoning brush and that the AI proc gen system builds an asset that fits in. Although some features from Manor Lords are not needed. As a city major I have no business what vegetables or chickens my citizen should have in their gardens
I love Manor Lords and a few other city/settlement builders I have my eye on, but it seems all those types of games are all developed by not enough people leading to what feels like an eternal glacial development cycle before hitting 'full game' status.
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I actually agree about the first two sentences.
However, the problem is that "lodging" is neither "produced" or "consumed" gradually. You don't produce 0.1 rooms per basic time interval nor do you consume 0.3 rooms in that given interval.
"Lodging" is created by the sheer presence and capacity of the providing building (hotel for instance) and then consumed per day - and that doesn't happen in fractions. You occupy a room or you don't.
As I have said earlier, the pure fact that this problem hasn't been resolved leads me to the assumption that "lodging buildings" are consuming all their resources at the same rate, most probably in just one calculation step - which in turn makes the basic concept moot.
I guess we will find similar problems when it comes to entertainment.
The whole concept of "immaterial goods" is highly questionable when it comes to "consumption" and apparently hasn't been thought through thorougly.
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I feel like you're romanticizing Manor Lords just a little bit. Yes, the zoning system for that game works well, but I think you're overlooking the fact that Manor Lords doesn't have to deal with concrete.
Am I being slightly facetious? Yeah, but the point stands. Manor Lords has a much much more organic art style and that style hides a lot of imperfections you might see with a modern city builder.
The best analogy I can come up with is sort of like when you start trying to perfect your roads in your city... You could spend an hour making the best intersection imaginable, making sure all the grades are reasonable, etc. Finally, after you're done with your perfect intersection, you look up and realize that now literally everything else in your city looks terrible.
I personally don't mind the current zoning system. Is it perfect? No. I think it should allow free placement, but is it worse than Manor Lords?...
I'm not sure that's true.
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I would assume it being much easier and more accurate to control your grid via mouse than via a gamepad.
Let me be honest: if I had the choice of having more freedom in road construction resulting in imperfect grids or having perfect zoning and being restricted to grids when I build roads, my choice was freedom.
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Indeed. But I suggested CO improve the grid tool by allowing users to specify the grid's size rather than just drawing it by hand and hoping for the best (which is why the grid tool right now is largely useless), and you said
which I do not understand. Surely it would help the person using the gamepad at least as much as it would help the PC user?
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I truly doubt that fixing the problems with grids in CS2 will ever impede your ability to lay down wonky roads.
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The point I was trying to make is this (I was assuming free hand drawing):
If you can see the dimensions of your grid (say 5 * 10 blocks) while using a mouse it is all fine.
It would be fine with a gamepad too, but we have just learned that the exact dimensions actually might be 5.01 * 10.02 blocks.
With the accuracy of a mouse you might actually correct that to exactly 5.00 * 10.00 blocks, while with a gamepad that might result in many unsuccessful attempts.
When I said specify I meant actually typing in the size for the X and Y coordinates before plopping the grid down. It's then CO's responsibility to ensure the grid is exactly that size. Being able to reliably get the grid I want would finally make the grid tool useful. They could even make it a wee bit better again by optionally restricting possible values to multiples of 8 (metres), to make it even harder for the system to get anything wrong.
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Please also take a look at why there is similarly slow or no consumption of media, meals, entertainment, and recreation immaterial goods. @co_avanya are you able to confirm that the team is aware of this issue? I sure hope so, and thank you!
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I have been playing this game since release and have stayed away from the forums in large part to a general negativity that seems to prevail.
It's not been a perfect experience gaming wise but I have enjoyed myself, nonetheless.
I decided to post today for the simple reason of saying thank you to CO for sticking with it, I have no idea about programming or issues faced but after this update...the game is working exactly how I had hoped to see, congrats to your hard working team. There is no lag, sim is running fast, I have 400k people and it runs as fast as it does with 10K, what an improvement!
Thank you so much.
It's not been a perfect experience gaming wise but I have enjoyed myself, nonetheless.
I decided to post today for the simple reason of saying thank you to CO for sticking with it, I have no idea about programming or issues faced but after this update...the game is working exactly how I had hoped to see, congrats to your hard working team. There is no lag, sim is running fast, I have 400k people and it runs as fast as it does with 10K, what an improvement!
Thank you so much.
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I'm not a fan of this change. I have 5k university demand in my 80k population city so this will make the alternative universities (technical or medical and more in the future) useless in terms of student capacity.
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Yes, Manor Lords is not a perfect game. I like it because of what the game is, and how much fun it is to create small settlements. Also, the way of drawing a zone is more convenient for me.I feel like you're romanticizing Manor Lords just a little bit. Yes, the zoning system for that game works well, but I think you're overlooking the fact that Manor Lords doesn't have to deal with concrete.
Am I being slightly facetious? Yeah, but the point stands. Manor Lords has a much much more organic art style and that style hides a lot of imperfections you might see with a modern city builder.
The best analogy I can come up with is sort of like when you start trying to perfect your roads in your city... You could spend an hour making the best intersection imaginable, making sure all the grades are reasonable, etc. Finally, after you're done with your perfect intersection, you look up and realize that now literally everything else in your city looks terrible.
I personally don't mind the current zoning system. Is it perfect? No. I think it should allow free placement, but is it worse than Manor Lords?...
I'm not sure that's true.
On the other hand, Cities Skylines 2 is a game that I dreamed of as a child, digital technology was not as developed as it is now.
I loved creating city plans and I was already planning what game I would like to play if I could make what I drew on a piece of paper come true.
I played the first Sim City on a floppy disk, which allowed me to realize my dream to a small extent. It was already something and a great joy for a child.
Cities Skylines 2 actually allows for more. You can let your imagination run wild here. Unfortunately, the game struggles with temporary limitations, but you can still create almost real cities, which will be possible to develop over time after implementing certain functions, allowing for more freedom. And it will be like this when known problems are removed.
That is why I think that the function of freely placing zone buildings should be easy to implement.
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It is a bit frustrating. Typically, the zoning breaks when introducing a new network element (pedestrian path or street) creates a new node in the existing network--and then that node causes the zoning tiles to shift or to revert to their preferred default.
Playing vanilla, I've just gotten attuned to noticing when a new network element I'm adding might affect the grid elsewhere and I pause the simulation before adding it. That allows me to correct things without losing a building. I use a lot of 1-3 unit path segments inside blocks and behind buildings to reimpose my preferred grid orientation to reset the zoning before I let the simulation start running again. I then either delete them or hide them with landscaping after I'm sure my zoning is intact.
@co_avanya -- I've also had instances, however, where adding just about anything can inexplicably cause zoning tiles to reset blocks away. It's like pulling on the strands of a spider web.
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