Recently got Skylines and g*med hard on it today, but, as someone who sunk hundreds of hours into SimCity 4, I'm not getting the appeal. SimCity 4 is just so much comfier?
Is Skylines really just a traffic simulator? I watched a video by a self-proclaimed city planner all about how to make efficient transitions from the highway to your town, and it seemed like the road building / traffic control is the whole point.
What am I missing?
Not exactly, cars are actually parked when here is space. You can install some parking mods and see for yourself. Yes, here is no in-game penalty for not having It, but you can play it fair. Also, you see, while the scale of the game is higher than SimCity, it is still lower than in reality. That's why you don't need the murrica-sized parking hell.
If the game forced you to build america sized parking hell to have an america style city, it would be amazing propaganda.