Currently, I have ideas for:
I find that putting all our transactions into an electronic system both helps me keep track of my finances but also requires a lot of time. By default, I've selected MS Money as my electronic tool of choice. I started with MS Money 2004; am working with MS Money Plus (MS Money 2008). I find Microsoft does not always improve on its features with each upgrade, so I hesitate to upgrade MS Money unless I'm convinced of the benefits. The old versions work just fine thank you. So, on this page, I'm recording my tech requirements, in order to keep track of desirable improvements that I can checklist new updates against.
The following changes or improvements to MS Money would improve my quality of life in this area:
I've been playing the newest version, SimCity 5, released in Mar 2013, sold simply as SimCity since it came out. I've had and continue to have lots of fun. Here are my observations and wishes.
Better help: Just a note. If any of the following observations are incorrect, or wishes are already met by the current game, then the wish is improve how the game communicates with the player: with better help messages, advisor advice, whatever.
Better help: When hovering over the 3 options: Resume, Play, SimCity World, it would be good to have a mouseover popup explaining what these do. On the button itself, under Resume, prefix it with "City region:" for clarity.
What is Citylog for? It pops up an empty window saying "data not available"? Again a mouseover popup help would help. Or there is enough space to put a para prefix explanation beside each button?
Misleading: When I click on the free ad, which offers an add-in object, you are presented with windows that advertise game upgrades and not the add-in object. This button also leads into a whole set of options that seem to be important and could be useful, but no explanation as to what these are for. When I close that window, I'm back to faded version of Origins and don't know how to remove the fade.
Keeping track of your cities: Once you select Play, you are onto a Choose a game to play window. However, there's confusion here between the word "region" and "game". It would help to have a prefix saying: "These are the regions you have played so far. Pick a region to continue playing in". Also, this window presents all the regions you've played on the server you selected but does not indicate the regions played on other servers. You need an initial window that keeps track of all played regions and servers, thus enabling you to decide which region in case you've forgotten.
Also access great works: Add a popup link to any great works site that has been started, as well as to any city site.
Make chat list more helpful: The Chat mini-window at bottom left could give more information about what is a user to do with the information listed in the mini-window. Put the city names into a different font to highlight them. Group the sentences to separate them from other points. Add a title to the mini-window to indicate what this is and its purpose. Some statements are just general history about a city; but others imply an exchange of resources between cities. Separate these two categories; maybe enable the Chat to change based on which city the user has clicked.
Help with unknown window: Similarly, add an identifying title to the the bottom right mini-window. That window is currently just a blank, so I don't know what its purpose is.
Popups hiding functionality: When you click on any city, the resulting popups hide the other cities so that it's difficult to click on another hidden city.
Create larger cities: If you want to keep the cities small, due to processing/server limitations, then enable cities to be adjacent and interconnect with roads/rail/etc. Thus creating a large regional city.
Add subways.
Display problem message longer: When you get a problem message, such as "water pump is running dry", the popup only stays for a second and then disappears. Hard to read and you have to try and figure out how to pop it up again and have to do so several times.
Problem locations not precise: Once the 1st level design view for a service appears, the small red flashing signal above a problem location is not emphatic enough to catch your attention. Also, the symbol could have some text.
Zooming: Clicking on the magnifying glass just zooms into a random location. Although clicking on the small orange icons by the advisor cycles through the problem locations, multiple orange icons, indicating different types of problems, don't zoom to a location that clearly indicates which of several problem objects deal with the problem relating to the orange icon. The advisor bubble should tell the user to click on an orange icon to cycle thru the problem locations. Sometimes the problem locations that you zoom to are resulting problems (e.g., a building that does not have enough water) rather than the source of the problem.
Advice/help not helpful: Throughout the game, text content and popup messages should be QA'd for consistency in terminology and sometimes for actual content accuracy.
Service source locations need more emphasis: When selecting a service from the bottom line menu, and going into the 1st design level for that service, need a greater visual indicator of the source locations for that service (fire stations, health clinics, etc.). The small blue icon is not enough. Should probably encircle the source locations with a yellow circle.
Servicing which sims? When clicking on a city object, such as a park, or play function, put lines to show where the Sims are coming from (like in SC4). For example, a train station could show lines from the nearest bus stops or parking lots.
Education vs. skills/wealth? Controlling skills and wealth is confusing. There seems to be only one distinguishing characteristic for sims: wealth. There should be two: skill and wealth level. The more opportunity for a higher education (schools, university, etc.), the higher the number of higher-skill sims you should get. I don't know how this works right now. In terms of worker requirement, an industry or commercial site would require so many worker sims from each skill level, and would need a given number of customer sims from each wealth level.
Advanced cities: If an advanced city begins to have only high-skill workers and high-wealth sims, then local industry may need to maybe employ these to fill low-skill jobs, but maybe have to pay them more?
Involving multiple cities: When you exit into the regional view, then that view prompts you to go into adjacent cities to manipulate their range of skill and wealth levels so that that city can then supply the right proportion of sims for your city. That's getting very confusing to suddenly have to play two or more external cities to satisfy the needs of your own city, especially when those other cities may have similar types of needs that require you to manipulate your city to meet their needs. Frequently in one region, you may be the only mayor for all the cities in that region. Also, it's not quite clear whether you can tap other regions for workers and resources, which opens a whole other level of play.
Usage: Why does it stay so under-used? Even with a freight hanger, it never ships freight. Why?
? about limit: Don't understand the limit of 3 tourism objects. I do have the 3 requirements stated for non-approved items, and yet they are disabled. Why not allow more than 3 tourism objects?
Need better advice: Advisor should highlight problem locations and give advice on how to improve/eliminate the problem. For example, tell us why an tourist destination object has neg revenue. How do you increase tourists to that area? Are tourists stuck in traffic? Should we put another ferry close by, or train station?
Predicting future area requirements: Not clear when you plop a city object, just how much space you will need for expansion. Frequently you spend money and plop it into a space that is too small.
Improve plop targets: When plopping an object, should be able to plop it anywhere not just against a street (unless on top of something or irregular land or on a physically undesirable or impracticle location). The associated street section should come with the object and placeable either on top of existing street section (changing the kind of associated street section into that on top of which it is going). If you place it unconnected somewhere, then the object won't start functioning until street access to power/water sources is made, which is how the ferry is plopped.
Parks should be ploppable in any location, not just against a street. Maybe within a certain range of a street because sims can walk from streets to certain destinations.
Upgrading streets/avenues: Should be able to upgrade streets to avenues without having to bulldoze city objects. Rather than be forced to delete the city object (fire station, etc.), the avenue could expand into the area on the other side that of the street link to the city object. If city objects occur on both sides, then of course you would need to decide which side to bulldoze.
Finding pumps: When a "pump has run dry" and it's inside a pumping station, it's not clear which pump inside the station is running dry, and sometimes it's the whole station and not just a pump. It's important to know the difference so that you would bulldoze just a pump or the whole station.
Changing city areas: "i" Change advice sentence to "Place water towers and/or stations to provide water." Add point that you can or may need to bulldoze an existing station now sitting on dry area and reconfigure the city at that point by placing water towers on existing residential areas (that are not dry) and rezoning dry areas for construction.
Rivers/lakes? What does the instruction "being near a river or lake" point to? I don't see any rivers or lakes. Placing pumps close to bodies of water can drain the soil there too. You can never place a pump on top of water or even close enough to imply access to the water. It seems unrealistic to have a whole city go dry; land near large bodies of water should always stay hydrated.
Recycling vs. garbage: Need to distinguish between recycling and garbage. They have different impacts and different solutions. Waste would not go first to a recycling station and then move onwards to the dump/incinerator.
Storage bins: In a recycling station, when "Storage is full", it's not clear what kind of storage because the recycling station window has multiple types of storage. Also, even when the storage is not full and the station is functioning as it should, the warning message stays up. Also, although the station is producing ally and plastics, the warning message reads: "Metal reclamation line" implying the full storage is of metal, when it's in fact pointing to the incoming recyclables bin.
Ports vs. depots: Don't understand why ports are more useful than trade depots. Also, for ports, I don't understand the various combinations of trade HQs and add-ons required to unlock the various commodity bins. Too confusing.
Terminals: When you do add a rail or boat port terminal to a port (which seems to be the only reason to have a port), there is no street connection required to access that terminal. The boat terminal does not appear to load and function in conjunction with the commodity being shipped, so you don't know whether it's working. I haven't seen any freighters stop at the boat terminal. Why should the rail or boat terminal need to be close to the trade port because frequently the rail line is far from the water? Why is it called a "port" if it only has a rail terminal? I could understand a port vs a depot if the port added some ability to conduct international trade; in other words: "direct x amount/% towards a particular city or great work".
When backspacing to the region view from a city, but still keeping the focus on the city being played:
Benefits of volunteering: Don't understand what the Volunteer vehicles option does in that the monthly income field stays $0. What is the purpose of that field in that you only see it in this view? Will volunteering a vehicle decrease that service for the source city? Add some popup help text to help. There is no indication whether the city you select to volunteer to actually needs the service. And what if that city did need the service and no longer does? How does the user get notified of that? Why not just volunteer your trucks to every city? However, you may volunteer them to a city that doesn't need them and not to a city that does. Individual city requirements related to the service do not appear on the volunteer window.
Terminology: What's the difference between a neighbor and a region? If I am the mayor of all cities in my region, why do I need to ask myself what to do? The advisor mentions using a region wall, but I don't have access to a region wall at this point.
Inconsistencies re great works in progress:
Involving other cities in supplying workers: One of the major hitches is the lack of workers in a city. It's not clear how to change the land values in order to control the number of workers moving from one city to another. The local city may need low-wealth workers, then high-wealth workers, then change about. Shouldn't this be based more on the level of education offered and received? Low-wealth and high-wealth tourists, yes, but workers? It's the cart driving the horse. If in the current city, you are told another city needs a certain level of workers. Why should I care? If my city needs a certain level workers, I do care, but then how to I communicate with the other city so that it can provide those workers? We need some regional algorithms here.
Benefits of adding departments? Not clear what the benefits of each city department actually are. They involve trade ports, but then what's the advantage of a port over a depot? For example, the popup says the Dept of Safety allows for a hospital, large fire station, and precinct. However, even without the dept, I can still plop these items.
Upper population limit? No way can I increase the pop beyond around 200,000 sims. Even getting close, I have to practically rezone my city to all residential.
How to increase density: Would help to indicate the exact size needed to zone buildings for maximum density, so that we can place streets appropriately. Also, for maximum population density, you seem to be forced to build a rectangular street grid. Curved streets, although pretty, force buildings to have lots of empty land between them.
High-wealth sims: If only low and medium wealth sims use buses, how do high-wealth sims travel?
Ferry terminal should allow capacity for 2 same wharves (2 cruise ships or 2 regular).
Unrealistic train wait times: Not sure how to increase the number of trains. Putting stations close together doesn't help much. Some stations have incredibly long wait times, but no help on how to reduce these.
More variety: Would be nice to have a greater variety of buildings.
Note my comparisons re SC4 vs. SC5 in blue below the previous wishes for SC4.
The previous version, SimCity 4, was created in 2003, with the SimCity Deluxe patch being the top of the line for that version. Between 2003 and 2013, SimCity 4 was superceded by SimCity Societies, and then by a French product, Cities XL 2011 and 2012. I have all of these.
I was quite excited about Cities XL. It was the first truly 3D version of a city planning game. However, I'm beginning to think that its developers took on too much, got a great 3D going, but dropped many of the features that make SimCity so exciting. XL could have been much more successful had it simply improved on some of SC4 and waited with the bells and whistles until they could do a better job implementing them. XL is still a lot of fun to play; however, its more complex features involving trade could be much better explained - the terminology used should be edited by an English-speaking person.
As I played SimCity 4, Societies, and Cities XL, I kept a list of desired improvements and problems I noticed. Now that SC5 is out, I'm including whether or not, and to what degree, SC5 has responded to each wish.
The following changes or improvements to SC4 would improve my quality of life in this area: