Gameplay questions

[panikattak]

I've been watching very closely to see if the style of gameplay I like best from Simcity 4 is going to be in Societies and I'm not getting enough info from what's been released so far to tell.

Basically, I'm a tweaker. I like the act of building the city, but I love the process of identifying bottlenecks or deficeincies and fix them. I love evolving my farm town into a megaopolis. I love it when I have to plan way in the future what I want to do and then juggle loans and make hard choices to make it happen. I love it when I pan out and see everything makes sense, everything is balanced, and happiness abounds. It's like making a big visual equation (which happens to be in the form of a city) growing and tweaking it until it's the best I can make it. I mean, I like dressing up my cities, but what I really love is tweaking them.

Can you tell me what gameplay that will be 'tweaking' in nature? What kind of systems do I get to manage? I get that one can make neighborhoods based on localized societial energies, but past that, what's tweaky about societal energies? Is there going to be budget play at all? Do you have to fund things or will it only be a building cost?

I have a feeling that when I play, I'm going to develope a list of favorite buildings and consequently as my playing habits mature, most of my cities are going to look simular (which isn't necessarily bad, it's that way for me in SC4 as well). I'm disinterested in sandbox play, but from what I've seen a big thrust of the gameplay is the playing around with societal energies in a sandbox like way. What motivation is there to create cities or neighborhoods past the look? Because to me the look is minor compared to the efficeincies of my city.

I'm only aware of some utilities and services like power and police, and I know there is badges that can be earned just so you know if that needs to be part of the answer in anyway.

Another question is one of the big advantages of zoning over plopping in SC4 is with zoning, it's much easier to navigate through the zoning tools with hotkeys that it was for sorting through menus to find the building I want to plop. With one hand on the keyboard and one on the mouse, I can lay down city basics in a very short time. Have you devised any ways of easily navigating the menus without lots of sorting or hunting? I see that when the building menus come up, it shows a lot of building in rows and columns, but is even opening the menu even necessary? This is important because it's one of the things that I hated most about SC4 and too much menu work could kill my interest in Societies.

Also, is there going to be anyway to block certain props? For the most part, I won't mind if I plop a building and I start seeing props associated with it showing up on other buildings, but I'm a person who like to plop everything and I know there are certain props, such as candy canes (yes, the dreaded candy canes), I don't want infecting buildings around them in case I happen to want to use a building that has those props in a selective way. Is there going to be anyway to do this, or is it if I don't want candy canes, I can't use those buildings? Is there going to be a way that I can zap a prop I don't like instead of having to manipulate all the buildings around it to cause the prop not to appear in the first place? For that matter, can you selectively place props? Can I select a certain prop and plop it?

I'm also getting the impression that when you log into the game, you log in as a player who has stats (such as the badges I mentioned earlier) that grow as you build cities which unlocks more options. Does that mean each player's cities are only theirs to play with, or will there be cooperative play? And if so, can you tell who made what changes? Will the cities themselves record their histories? It's an option me and my family have been looking for in Simcity is why I ask.

[Jeff Fiske]

First I am going to stick to what I have answered previously, or as if you were talking to me at E3 or another press event. There are issues we are still working through that we are not disclosing, but I think I can answer alot of your questions.

Originally Posted by panikattak

I've been watching very closely to see if the style of gameplay I like best from Simcity 4 is going to be in Societies and I'm not getting enough info from what's been released so far to tell.

Basically, I'm a tweaker. I like the act of building the city, but I love the process of identifying bottlenecks or deficeincies and fix them. I love evolving my farm town into a megaopolis. I love it when I have to plan way in the future what I want to do and then juggle loans and make hard choices to make it happen. I love it when I pan out and see everything makes sense, everything is balanced, and happiness abounds. It's like making a big visual equation (which happens to be in the form of a city) growing and tweaking it until it's the best I can make it. I mean, I like dressing up my cities, but what I really love is tweaking them.

Starting with the visuals, you will be able to do stuff like copy and paste virtually any ambient in the game, as well as copy buildings with a 'picker tool'. Some objects, like hedges will allow you to 'construct' your own garden maze.

As far as gameplay tweaking goes as well as planning in advance and seeing that plan come to life, that is still very relevant. However, the progress is handled or paced differently- such as you can place down expensive big buildings right away- but- IF you do that, you might go broke right away. So the mechanics of how this is done is different but the thought process, strategy & tweaking remains the same. You absolutely will not make a decent functioning city without plenty of planning and tweaking. I think one area we really improve on is making your city come to life, visually reflecting just how well you have done because the Sims really live, work, and visit venues without disappearing (Except in subways)- as well as textures and text changing on buildings depending on the city you built.

Originally Posted by panikattak

Can you tell me what gameplay that will be 'tweaking' in nature? What kind of systems do I get to manage? I get that one can make neighborhoods based on localized societial energies, but past that, what's tweaky about societal energies? Is there going to be budget play at all? Do you have to fund things or will it only be a building cost?

First, societal values are global to your city, but sometimes the effect of a building is based on how easy it is for Sims to get to it and interact with it. Societal values are part of the equation.

The baseline of the model is buildings cost money to construct. They need power and the appropriate Societal values in the city. But the game builds on top of that with categories of buildings, such as Government or Education, and buildings in a category often influence other buildings within their category. It makes sense to plan your city building costs based in part on where you can get discounts, looking at more powerful buildings you have to plan or budget to get to, in addition to layout. Also, in some societies buildings have actions (crack the whip, stock speculation) where you click on them to collect cash. These actions often depend on workers showing up, so again- you only get the reward for a well planned city. Also, you find yourself looking for buildings with these actions- and strategizing on when & how to best use them.

Originally Posted by panikattak

I have a feeling that when I play, I'm going to develope a list of favorite buildings and consequently as my playing habits mature, most of my cities are going to look simular (which isn't necessarily bad, it's that way for me in SC4 as well). I'm disinterested in sandbox play, but from what I've seen a big thrust of the gameplay is the playing around with societal energies in a sandbox like way. What motivation is there to create cities or neighborhoods past the look? Because to me the look is minor compared to the efficeincies of my city.

Heh, I doubt it- unless you want to only build one kind of city. Lets assume you do have favorites- that list might be 20 buildings- but they all may cost more money then you can start with and belong in different societies, or require a large amount of a Societal Value to be in your city before you can even use it. The temptation to try different societies and different buildings will create a situation where you probably are more apt to customize existing content then you are to fall into any set play patterns.

The cities play very differently. One example- In a society that values creativity, this value is often generated by murals, gardens, statues- where as in a productivity city the spirit of industry or production comes from slum apartments and tenements and is consumed by factories.

Mixing and matching goes beyond metaphors and can be tricky as how a societies value is generated and consumed is part of what makes it feel different. Like I said in an earlier post- they actually play different. So falling into set patterns may eventually happen, but it will probably take a while to happen- much longer then you might think. (Not to mention customization.)

Originally Posted by panikattak

I'm only aware of some utilities and services like power and police, and I know there is badges that can be earned just so you know if that needs to be part of the answer in anyway.

Another question is one of the big advantages of zoning over plopping in SC4 is with zoning, it's much easier to navigate through the zoning tools with hotkeys that it was for sorting through menus to find the building I want to plop. With one hand on the keyboard and one on the mouse, I can lay down city basics in a very short time. Have you devised any ways of easily navigating the menus without lots of sorting or hunting? I see that when the building menus come up, it shows a lot of building in rows and columns, but is even opening the menu even necessary? This is important because it's one of the things that I hated most about SC4 and too much menu work could kill my interest in Societies.

First, we believe we have eliminated at least one if not two clicks on the UI and continue to refine this UI. You can copy any existing building in the game, and you can type the first letter of any building when looking at the menu, as well as a few other methods that fall into an area I can't talk about right now.

Originally Posted by panikattak

Also, is there going to be anyway to block certain props? For the most part, I won't mind if I plop a building and I start seeing props associated with it showing up on other buildings, but I'm a person who like to plop everything and I know there are certain props, such as candy canes (yes, the dreaded candy canes), I don't want infecting buildings around them in case I happen to want to use a building that has those props in a selective way. Is there going to be anyway to do this, or is it if I don't want candy canes, I can't use those buildings? Is there going to be a way that I can zap a prop I don't like instead of having to manipulate all the buildings around it to cause the prop not to appear in the first place? For that matter, can you selectively place props? Can I select a certain prop and plop it?

I'm also getting the impression that when you log into the game, you log in as a player who has stats (such as the badges I mentioned earlier) that grow as you build cities which unlocks more options. Does that mean each player's cities are only theirs to play with, or will there be cooperative play? And if so, can you tell who made what changes? Will the cities themselves record their histories? It's an option me and my family have been looking for in Simcity is why I ask.

Props are a specific term that you don't place- they appear based on the society you are creating. If you avoid creating certain types of cites, you will avoid those props from appearing. Of course, if you want to be draconian about it, delete them- or rename them, or mod a file to never call them- or something else in their place.

There is a census type record, but I understand that is not what you are asking about. As far as the multiple/hot seat type play we have only been discussing traditional single player with the press.

Please ask shorter questions next time! I don't mind long answers, but it might seem that I am avoiding a question, and people are less likely to read it all.

Good questions, and I hope this helps.

[JuliaSet]

That was very interesting to read, Sir Jeff.




My question(s) is about data collection during and at the end of the game. As you know with the CBC contests, we rely on data.. totals, goals met, something on record that a designer can ask for the players to achieve. I hope you have a means for us to check for development progress and societal type in the game. (something beyond the visuals) If there are scenarios to introduce features, if we make custom scenarios, at the end could we find enough data to see if the players have achieved the designers requests? (such as population... % of x or y social energy.. and /or.. % of x or y social energy?)

Will there be a way to see how many goods are stored/used/yearly gathering? All of this makes for good contests.

Thanks for the above note. We probably will re-read it several times.

<--- Bait for Sir David, in case he's flying through.

[Azeem]

A very interesting read, Jeff.

What I'd like to know is the transportation options available. So far we've only seen roads and in one of the screenshots there appeared to be a bus present (or at least that's what I think...). What transportation options will be available to assist sims to get to their workplaces or venues faster? SimCity classic featured at least two different modes of transporation (aside from airports and seaports). Will SCS feature at least these classic two? Speaking of airports and seaports, will we be seeing these as well?

[ManagerJosh]

Jeff told me at E3 that the only other forms of transportation available are busses and subways.

However, given the creativity of modders, I could potentially see alternative forms of transportation coming to life by simply using roads and combining additional elements.

[Azeem]

That's good to know. If there's more than one mode of transportation, them I'm satisfied. But what of airports and seaports?

[Romaq]

I appreciate the response, and having more info collected into a single thread.

Please have 'transit' open-ended, even if you simply can't spare the manpower to impliment in the box that ships. Allow US to make your railroads, your monorails and whatnot. The NAM team has done some really incredible things that SC4 simply was never meant to do. Please figure out what they would need to kick some @$$ on SC:S, and have 'em happy to do so.

It's great to hear menu issues are being thought through carefully as well. SC4 is a gawdawful pain with regard to menus. They left a door open for some really wonderful creative content, but the means to access the content through their menu system leaves much to be desired. Like, a better means to mod their menu.

"Society Values are global"... hrm... Bellingham (creativity/ learning), Lynden (Spirituality) and Ferndale (Prosperity) all have impact on the Whatcom County region, but there is localized effect to some degree, and yes that effect is channeled by transit. We don't yet know how large an area of interaction is, yet. I very much hope that we can have a huge region of interaction with focus on specific 'zones', or what in real life would be either 'city townships' or 'incorporated cities'. Within Indianapolis, I lived in Pike Township. Bellingham has neighborhoods, such as the Alphabet Neighborhood. They were not creative enough to think up city street names, so they pride themselves with 'F' street, and such. I hope that some form of cities in aggregate are possible to allow for ever larger scales of 'city' interaction.

If I have the disk space, the CPU and the time to crunch the data, I should be allowed to do so if I really want to.

--Romaq

[Ocram]

Hmmm... Busses and subways? I hope there will be a way to add different types of busses (city busses, shuttles, regional, cross country/tour busses like grayline, school, aiport, millitary, "historic," electric busses that can only drive under the bus power lines) and each type can have their own speed/capacity/effeciency and they cannot go to eachoter's stops (the exception would be hubs and transfers).
Just dreaming though. Oh, are the subways going to be more like City Life or SimCity 4? Just the stops or you can put in the subway tunnels and see them in underground mode.

[Jeff Fiske]

Transit is one of those things that we are not discussing in great detail in part because we are still working on it. Good sug regarding keeping it as open as possible- but doing a true 3d transportation system is non-trivial.

Neighborhoods can definitely take on their own personalities, as special sims emerge from individual buildings, and buildings can sometimes have influence only on surrounding buildings or buildings of the same category. So the nieghborhoods themselves can definately play differently, and seem different when you observe them.



But when you mix the different building types you often set the overall visual tone(profiling) to a neutral.



Not sure what data output we might make availible, but I should point out that curently you don't stockpile any resources- except cash.

[JuliaSet]

Thanks Sir Jeff!

We just need a way to verify benchmarks or goals to use in contests.

[Talshiarr]

Jeff, thanks very much for all your useful feedback in this thread and in others! I have to admit up front that I was initially very dubious about SC:S after seeing the first few screenshots and what was being touted as the "cool new things" in it compared to previous SimCity games (candy houses, 1984-lands, etc). I also admit that my impressions have come around quite a lot towards the positive in the intervening time especially since user customization will be encouraged and that the developers are listening to the fans and responding as you have .

I have two quick and hopefully generic questions that won't require any divulging of secrets. I've seen in a couple of screenshots that there appear to be some homes up on hills, but overall the cities shown have been on completely flat terrain. Will there be the ability to build cities on hills and down in valleys?

The second question is about diagonal roads, are they planned to be in the final release even though they might not be ready to show at the moment? Grids are fine, but diagonals are nice for the odd bit of variety, especially for making European looking cities.

Thanks for all your time and I sincerely hope the game does well for everyone at TM regardless of my final opinion after trying it out!

[panikattak]

Thank you very much for your time and effort. You have given me much to chew on and I appreciate that. I also apologize for the length of the post and didn't realize how bad it was until I read if from your perspective.


I'm running out of time but I wanted to throw a couple of things by you. First, while I can see the influence of societal values city wide, I think it would be better if the spawing of props was localized. That way the city could take on the appearance of neighborhoods instead of the city taking on a unified look. I could live with the spawing of the more kid friendly props if it only was in one section of my city. That way I could be selective in how I place the building and I can manipulate that building's influence. Second, have you guys thought about an economy for Societies? I could see one where industrial buildings produce raw goods and need neighborhood connections and/or manufacturing industry in order to be fully successful. Manufacturing buildings produces widgets (or deluxe goods?) and needs markets for sims to buy widgets or neighborhood connections to export them.

Thanks again for the reply. I really do appreciate it and it clarified a lot.

[Jeff Fiske]

Originally Posted by Talshiarr

Jeff, thanks very much for all your useful feedback in this thread and in others! I have to admit up front that I was initially very dubious about SC:S after seeing the first few screenshots and what was being touted as the "cool new things" in it compared to previous SimCity games (candy houses, 1984-lands, etc). I also admit that my impressions have come around quite a lot towards the positive in the intervening time especially since user customization will be encouraged and that the developers are listening to the fans and responding as you have .

I have two quick and hopefully generic questions that won't require any divulging of secrets. I've seen in a couple of screenshots that there appear to be some homes up on hills, but overall the cities shown have been on completely flat terrain. Will there be the ability to build cities on hills and down in valleys?

The second question is about diagonal roads, are they planned to be in the final release even though they might not be ready to show at the moment? Grids are fine, but diagonals are nice for the odd bit of variety, especially for making European looking cities.

Thanks for all your time and I sincerely hope the game does well for everyone at TM regardless of my final opinion after trying it out!

Really the answer to both of these questions is to stay tuned. I don't really want to comment because I don't know exactly what we are going to release. Sorry I couldn't be more clear. Right now, all screenshots have been indicative of gameplay at that point in time- so the placement on hills was not faked in any way.

[Jeff Fiske]

Originally Posted by panikattak

Thank you very much for your time and effort. You have given me much to chew on and I appreciate that. I also apologize for the length of the post and didn't realize how bad it was until I read if from your perspective.


I'm running out of time but I wanted to throw a couple of things by you. First, while I can see the influence of societal values city wide, I think it would be better if the spawing of props was localized. That way the city could take on the appearance of neighborhoods instead of the city taking on a unified look. I could live with the spawing of the more kid friendly props if it only was in one section of my city. That way I could be selective in how I place the building and I can manipulate that building's influence. Second, have you guys thought about an economy for Societies? I could see one where industrial buildings produce raw goods and need neighborhood connections and/or manufacturing industry in order to be fully successful. Manufacturing buildings produces widgets (or deluxe goods?) and needs markets for sims to buy widgets or neighborhood connections to export them.

Thanks again for the reply. I really do appreciate it and it clarified a lot.

NP on the length- and thanks for the questions.

Currently you do not produce and stockpile/exchange physical resources between buildings. But we try to have the interelationships between buildings be represented by the types of societial effects they might have (Spawning special sims- preachers, criminals, artists, hippies) and the types of homes workplaces, venues and decorations you might see in those areas. Thus watching the action, where these special sims come from and how they interact with other special sims, as well as your working sims- areas of your city certainly can look, feel and play differently from other nieghborhoods.

As far as the props go, I think for what you are talking about, you will be able to achieve alot of the look you want with decorations that are not associated with the Societal values. You can paint down a variety of textures or place decorative props that are not subject to the city profilling system.

I am not saying it will compleately address what you are after- but if you had it in you to do some editing work, you could set what every props you wanted to have to appear on those buildings in the default setting and that would address the situation if you had a specific place in mind.

[Talshiarr]

I don't want to speak for Panik and put words in his mouth that he didn't intend, but it is similar to a question I had. If you place a large number of Creative buildings in one part of the city to the point that it triggers the whole yellow brick road/candy lamp post change, does that change affect the entire city as a whole so every street and lamppost switches graphics, or will it be in just a localized area around those Creative buildings? For example could you have a yellow brick candy "neighborhood" and a lower class industrial "neighborhood" both within the same city at the same time with the appropriate graphics for each?

Thanks for the time, Jeff!

[Jeff Fiske]

As of right now, so don't come chasing me down at release time if this changes-

The roads all change for the whole city.

BUT people will figure out ways around this. (Sorry to be vague, but this is an area we are not talking about between moding the game and transportation.)

[panikattak]

Well said Talshiarr. That's definitely related to what I was thinking about.

Jeff F., does the aura display the dominate societal value, or is there certain values that when they hit a certain level, have influences that override others?

One example- In a society that values creativity, this value is often generated by murals, gardens, statues- where as in a productivity city the spirit of industry or production comes from slum apartments and tenements and is consumed by factories.

This really caught my eye and I've been considering what it means since I read it. If it's possible, could you explain how societal values work in the game? Some specific points of interest I have is can plopped objects (buildings or otherwise) consume and supply societal values, or is it they can only supply or consume but not both? Can they supply or consume more than one value? Are the values complimentary or is it just six seperate values you mix and match? What happens if I plop something that either supplies or consumes values, but I don't plop anything else that will supply or consume that buildings values?

[ManagerJosh]

*debates on whether to say anything....*

[MarkDuffy]

Hmmm, roads are global? If I understood Jeff properly in this thread so far, I'm not sure I would like that. I would love to perhaps have a Candy Cane/Yellow Brick Road neighborhood, but not my full city (normally, that is ).

Also mixing & matching Societal Values tends to cancel each other out globally? I would think this is too much in the other direction, but I understand this being important & a result of necessary gameplay.

Unique neighborhoods would be really kewl, Jeff, but might be really hard to do. If possible, we will find a way (disconnected roads, anyone?). I don't really wanna have to depend on downloading mods made by others, especially if they are still global, cuz that won't solve the issue.

However, doing it this way forces us to build ALL of the possible different extreme cities. I do wanna see the Candy Canes & Yellow Brick Roads. I wanna taste it ALL!

EDIT: I forgot something, Jeff. You KNOW I want you to be Tricky & VERY Evil™ in SCS. During all campaigns somewhere in the ladder, I want one scenario requirement to be perfect 100 rating on Creativity!

< ducking with one kid's opinion only disclaimer >

[Jeff Fiske]

Originally Posted by panikattak

Well said Talshiarr. That's definitely related to what I was thinking about.

Jeff F., does the aura display the dominate societal value, or is there certain values that when they hit a certain level, have influences that override others?

Without going into too much detail, the 'profiling' (visual, text, textures, music, lighting) is based on the actual buildings- not the societal values. (Buildings can oppose eachother- but societal values never do.)

Originally Posted by panikattak

This really caught my eye and I've been considering what it means since I read it. If it's possible, could you explain how societal values work in the game? Some specific points of interest I have is can plopped objects (buildings or otherwise) consume and supply societal values, or is it they can only supply or consume but not both? Can they supply or consume more than one value? Are the values complimentary or is it just six seperate values you mix and match? What happens if I plop something that either supplies or consumes values, but I don't plop anything else that will supply or consume that buildings values?

Gladly-

A building can produce or consume up to two societal values. Some buildings do produce one and consume another, but the vast majority produce or consume just one. Essentially, a societal value functions like a flavor of power in the game. If a building consumes power, and you don't have enough, the building in question stops functioning. Same with Societal Values.
I think this pretty much covers it.

Additional info.
In general, production buildings can be fairly normal buildings, or contain the traditional city building type games. It is the consumption or usage of these values in buildings- the direct application of the energy- that often are the more powerful, quirky or directly represent the societal value. A courthouse or town hall can produce authority- but you 'cash that in' or use it, in your police stations, jails or the infamous conditioning theater.