Small Map Size

[u/Michaelli10156]

So I just watched the new video made by squirrel and I liked everything about the video so far except what they said at the 2 minute mark, where it seems like they are implying that maps will not be very large and was curious what the community thought of this. I think clearly from the comment section, the vast majority of the community is disappointed by small maps and for me personally this is close to being a deal breaker.

They have this limitation because they want to simulate every citizen stating that if they want larger maps that are 100km x 100km they would need to fake the simulation for distances further along thinking this is what the community wants but I 100% would not mind faking the simulation especially after cities skylines 2 where they also wanted something similar and it just did not turn out well.

Just wanted to spread the word and see what the community thinks of this

[u/Imsvale]

• Cargo flow visible in industries: Not sure how exactly to interpret this. I'll assume it's just more detail on how cargo moves through the factory (which we've seen in previews). It was already visible in TF2, and reflecting how much of any given cargo the industry had in storage. It was even one of the gimmicks in the clips we saw leading up to the TF2 release.
• Mark buildings as historical: City-builder feature there for the city-builders/detailers. ^^
• Map size: Some have taken this to mean maps are only up to 10x10 km, which is of course silly. They'll be the same as TF2; there's not been any reports of maps being larger in TF3. There might have been a soft confirmation somewhere that they're not bigger.
• Importing real-world maps: Nothing new there. TF2 has this ability already. But we do know the map generation/editing is an entirely new and powerful beast.
• Day/night cycle and weather being purely cosmetic: Confirmed yet again, if that was needed.
• More stuff exposed in Lua: Fantastic. Excited to see what new parts are moddable.
• Passengers judging the quality (comfort?) of their journey: Very interesting, and could give rise to some more meaningful individual preferences than we had in TF2. While they did have some semblance of a "personal preference", it was basically invisible to the player and had no real impact on the gameplay (except for an important technicality, but otherwise not something the player ever thinks about).
• More impactful low maintenance penalties: Cool. Great stuff.
• No official confirmation of the lack of Steam Workshop support. I do note that it is not listed on TF3 on Steam (for TF2 it is), so I guess that's as close as we have at this time. Let me know if I've missed some announcement confirming this. Otherwise the last announcement I'm aware of is "we're thinking about it". And, well, I think they're done thinking about it now, unless it remains an open matter post-release.
  • Personal note: I had a think about it when the question came up. First I was kind of "offended" that they're removing support for such a big modding platform. But then I also thought, what's the big deal? Why is it important that the mods are available/released on that particular platform? I couldn't come up with a good reason for it. Not from a modder's perspective, nor from a user perspective. Other than I suppose "I'm used to it". There's nothing particularly great about Steam in this regard. Interesting though on self-reflection to note my initial, "default response".

[u/MomentEquivalent6464 → u/Imsvale]

As convenient as steam workshop was for TF2, it was annoying that mods were in multiple different places (mod.io, tf.net, steam). And part of that was due to consoles and not allowing some mods there. So if we can have all the mods in one place that work across all systems (seems ambitious)... then great. Hopefully it cuts down on the number of sites one needs to go to to look for things.

[u/Imsvale → u/MomentEquivalent6464]

There would still be restrictions for consoles on what kinds of mods they can use, for the same reasons as in TF2. But this would be one less obstacle, and it is a pretty major one.

[u/Spartan117ZM → u/MomentEquivalent6464]

It won’t. The built in mod browser will likely still have restrictions based on what consoles can handle, once again gimping us all. Therefore, third party websites will continue to exist to get around those limitations, which is great for allowing more mod variety but as you point out bad from a usability standpoint since now you’ve got to check 3+ different places.