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[Sean Mirrsen]

Simtower feels like it needs a 3D version. With realistic physics.
(and random aircraft flying about)

[Siquo]

You could build basements in SimTower?!

Damn, I never knew that.

[CobaltKobold]

The best MMO was the original Everquest, with MASSIVE raids needing hundreds of people, A HUGE world, and addicting gameplay, and it doesn't really have much Unfun Grinding.

Hour of hitting snakes/rats/etc, (with deaths), to level up once...drop all points into something and it remains at "very worst"?

Yeah, ne'er played that again.

I disagree on additional gameplay modes. Done right, makes the game wonderful. Like Space Rangers.

And random encounters are a necessary evil in games that can't afford to accurately model monster movement.

Look at 7th Saga's encounter system. Or Chrono Trigger's.

Remember that both are more than decade old( more like 15y), and do not have random encounters, and are better games for it.

Extra modes can be fun, certainly.

CLIFF RACERS 

I'll agree with that.

Simtower feels like it needs a 3D version. With realistic physics.
(and random aircraft flying about)

SC2000 you could crash any aircraft by clicking on it.

Condos were traps because they were quick bucks, but they then were worthless.

Back on topic, what's bad design about SimTower is not being able to switch default pricings on things so you don't need to place, pause quickly so nobody buys it/rents it, change the price, unpause...

Bad game design, well, I could link to Tropes. Unskippable anything.

Oh yeah, that's one thing recently I found to be annoying. Okami, where cutscenes are skippable, and the text rate is slooow. Outside of cutscenes, you can speed up the text. (Excellent game otherwise...except the CREDITS SEQUENCE BEING CUT FROM THE WII VERSION.)

You know, more effort = win, that's what it should be.

Puzzle Pirates is excellent in this regard. The better you play at a puzzle, the more effective you are at running the ship/fighting/crafting. There are no meaningful levels except rankings by performance.

Yes, major gameplay features should either be explained or be blithingly obvious. Hiding them from the player but then making them pretty much mandatory to win the game is about the worst possible design imaginable.

Dunno what version you're playing, it was in my manual (of course, so was the outdated "wizard starts with athame")

Also, for many, this is one of the big draws of the game, figuring stuff out, hence mechanics and the like being "spoilers".

Lessee...bad game design...most "one-button-does-everything" control schemes are this. Scribblenauts is horrible for hero-motion being controlled by stylus, when moving objects, etc. is too.

TESII:DF. Not their fault though, given executive meddeling was used to release the game sooner.

DF was awesome. It could have been much more so, but it ate up countless hours of my time. OK, monster scaling was horrific particularly when the era's programming did not permit compensating for better computers, permitting those monsters to unload their entire mana bar of death spells into you at once._{And where's my Daggerfall Chronicles? I forget now.}

Yes, basements. Can't put most rooms there, so use it for your fast food establishments early on.

Condos are a multifarious trap because they're one-time money...WHICH CAN BE TAKEN BACK FROM YOU. Get offices and hotel rooms, they're revenue streams.

[SHAD0Wdump]

I could never understand condos, why should I have to pay people for kicking themselves out?

[Neruz]

Random Encounters are not even remotely close to a 'necessity', they, like the grind in most MMORPG's, are a content diluter. They are implimented to make less content last longer.

[Muz]

Random Encounters are not even remotely close to a 'necessity', they, like the grind in most MMORPG's, are a content diluter. They are implimented to make less content last longer.

They can be done very well, I'm sure. Just that nobody ever bothers to. You have a lot of fun with random generators these days. Fallout sort of got the gist of it, by having those "special encounters".

But yeah, they're put in as a content diluter, which is evil.

[Sean Mirrsen]

In MMOs (and even normal CRPGs sometimes), that's chiefly due to lack of permadeath. If the player's char is unlikely to completely die, you want to make the next coolest abilities exponentially harder/longer to get. If a game requires you to grind to proceed with the story, it's just poor balance (I'm looking at Phantasy Star II, specifically). In a well-balanced game, you should be theoretically able to handle a plot-driven encounter with the experience you acquired just from the encounters you had while walking to it.

There's a GBA game called Sigma Star Saga that even turned random encounters into "something completely different" - a scrolling shmup. It's fun, especially since you spend time in normal mode collecting various upgrades and modifications for the encounter-mode ship. Unfortunately, they didn't balance them - there are very definite "killer techniques" with the powerups, many of the (hundreds of!) powerup combos are useless, and in most cases you can beat the plot-based fights with nothing but your default pewpew gun and some wicked piloting skillz.

[Asehujiko]

Sim tower is easy to "finish". Build a lobby large enough to have an office on top, build 29 offices on it, set rent to minimal, repeat until you have just about enough money for a full elavator(set cars to wait on ground floor), watch cash slowly trickle in and expand sideways, always setting the rent to minimum. Why? Offices at minimal rent never get vacated. by the time you reach the other side of the map, you should have express elavators, build one from the bottom to the 30th floor, put another stack of ofiices on it and add a regular elavator. This means that some workers have to walk the full width of your tower 4 times a day but they don't care since your offices are so cheap.

The game you are thinking of might be Yoot Tower. a fan sequel, which i never had a chance to play but is supposed MUCH harder.

[Draco18s]

The game you are thinking of might be Yoot Tower. a fan sequel, which i never had a chance to play but is supposed MUCH harder.

I've played Yoot Tower, but not Sim Tower, so I can't compare them, but I have read that there are numerous fixes--both bug wise and exploit wise.

[Mephisto]

Lessee...bad game design...most "one-button-does-everything" control schemes are this. Scribblenauts is horrible for hero-motion being controlled by stylus, when moving objects, etc. is too.

I liked the game but hated that part. I don't know how many times I had the camera positioned perfectly where I wanted it on the other side of the map. The ADHD game said "Oh, you must want to look at your character!" and zooms right over. I lose.

[beorn080]

There's a GBA game called Sigma Star Saga that even turned random encounters into "something completely different" - a scrolling shmup. It's fun, especially since you spend time in normal mode collecting various upgrades and modifications for the encounter-mode ship. Unfortunately, they didn't balance them - there are very definite "killer techniques" with the powerups, many of the (hundreds of!) powerup combos are useless, and in most cases you can beat the plot-based fights with nothing but your default pewpew gun and some wicked piloting skillz.

There was also some serious bugs in that game, but the theory was sound. Implemented poorly though. Some very fun combos though. Rubber Ball + 8 way fire = dozens of bouncing balls.

[Neonivek]

Edit: Alright I deleted it... it was rather weak. It was basically how in Saga Fronteer ONE charm status effect can wipe out your entire party.

[CobaltKobold]

charm status is 99% of the time quite difficult. Usually the mitigating factor is physical damage cancelling it.

[Neonivek]

charm status is 99% of the time quite difficult. Usually the mitigating factor is physical damage cancelling it.

Naw the Mitigating factor is that few enemies in the game actually have Charm and the ones who do usually try to solo you (or rather do so) and are tough enough for you to use abilities on. It is more then possible to complete the game multiple times without ever dealing with charm and after that it isn't too unlikely to win the battle in spite of it.

The only time I was wiped out by a Charm was I believe was when I got random status effects with Wheel Slash being used.

Oddly enough the toughest enemy in the game is Dulihan because
1) It is capable of blocking EVERY attack in the game excluding ones that are specifically unblockable (which is only No Moment). So It can block grabs, spells, combinations, and Area of Effects
2) I has Siren... If your not immune to sound your likely to have your entire team die. (I've never survived it)
-However this difficult is mitigated by the fact that it drops the best shield in the game which coincidently gives you the insane blocking ability.

[Sergius]

Sim tower is easy to "finish". Build a lobby large enough to have an office on top, build 29 offices on it, set rent to minimal, repeat until you have just about enough money for a full elavator(set cars to wait on ground floor), watch cash slowly trickle in and expand sideways, always setting the rent to minimum. Why? Offices at minimal rent never get vacated. by the time you reach the other side of the map, you should have express elavators, build one from the bottom to the 30th floor, put another stack of ofiices on it and add a regular elavator. This means that some workers have to walk the full width of your tower 4 times a day but they don't care since your offices are so cheap.

The game you are thinking of might be Yoot Tower. a fan sequel, which i never had a chance to play but is supposed MUCH harder.

Yoot Tower is definitely NOT a fan sequel, it's a commercial sequel made by the same guy & company that made SimTower (except this time it wasn't sold to Maxis and renamed as a "SimThing" for American markets) with several improvements. I still like the first SimTower better as a coffee break game, and because it fits in a tiny window on my desktop.

Actually, SimTower is VERY easy once you know the trick: you have a maximum number of elevators, so you have to optimize the distances as much as possible and not use more than two large elevators per section, and have two express elevators from top to bottom, build upper-floor lobbies every time you can, and in each one add regular large elevators that go up and down. I always make condos in the first floors even if they are traps, just 'cause they look nice and people get stressed if you fill everything with offices - I only add about 4 floors of offices in each building segment. Also, I make one elevator go to even floors only, and other only to odd floors.

Just keep building this way up until you hit hotel rooms. Even then, you'll probably want to keep making the same amount of office floors.

I reserve two levels up and down from each lobby for restaurants and businessess, security offices, etc. I make a really big effort to have my approval rating way up and avoid any stressed visitor. I've finished it many times making the chapel on top and everything. I also use escalators for the shopping areas and don't place any elevator stops there.

A good way to know the right spacing is to make a test tower, place an elevator, and add offices to each side. Count how many offices get populated to each side, that's your optimal distance.

Also, pressing ctrl+shift+alt or something while placing your first lobby makes it either two or three levels high depending on the key combo, which is damn gorgeous, if wasteful. I always do that.