Paris is confusing

[Yordridge]

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I posted this a while back on de Reddit of ET, but commenters there told me to post it here. Basicly I wanted to share some of the reasons it's so inconvenient to drive to/from Paris .

So I usually avoid Paris all together because I always took wrong exits, which lead to detours that were +~60 km, if I had to be there. Yesterday I got lost again and so I decided to look into what was constantly throwing me, and I came to this.

1. The signs to Paris don't actually point to Paris. When going to Paris, you're often supposed to be around Gonesse & Charles du Gaul. But the signs will send you (from the north to the region around number 1, and if you're coming from the South/East, they'll direct you to nothing. From the South/East direction, you'll follow signs to number 3, and you have to interoperate 'Peripherique-Nord' as the exit that leads to Paris. This made me have to emergency swerve to the exit more than once.

2. The signs to Lille don't go to Lille. Lille appears on the signs pretty early on. Yet if you follow the signs, you will end up in the South of France. You're supposed to take the exit to Calais, but the signs don't mention Lille for the exit, and as the there aren't any signs to indicate that going straight doesn't go to Lille anymore, drivers will stay on the highway (there are also many country-roads that go to Calais and this Calais-exit sign doesn't say that it leads to a highway).

3. When I only had the Base-game, I always assumed that that bit of road (at 3) would extend in the Vive la France DLC. I was quite surprised that it wasn't. Especially because there seems to be an other cut highway lining up perfectly. It's weird that you can only enter Paris from the West via a road through a town (Poissy I think) where you can only drive 50 km for some bit.

These first problems shouldn't be to hard to fix. On the clover-junction in the South, a sign could point to the North with [Paris Charles du Gaul] and to the West with [Paris [local name]]. Also, adding [Paris -x] on every Parisian exit would help.

The Lille-route can be fixed by just adding Lille to the Calais exit sign.

The last one is a bigger update, but I do think it would make Paris a bit easier to drive through.

Lastly I want to say that I do like the Paris region a lot in this game. Driving through the small villages around Paris felt like a great way to represent that part of France, and makes the world feel a lot bigger. Also I like the updates to the German heartland, making the old base game more alive. It really shows the dedication from the devs. thanks

[IvanKuz]

1. The signs to Paris don't actually point to Paris. When going to Paris, you're often supposed to be around Gonesse & Charles du Gaul. But the signs will send you (from the north to the region around number 1, and if you're coming from the South/East, they'll direct you to nothing. From the South/East direction, you'll follow signs to number 3, and you have to interoperate 'Peripherique-Nord' as the exit that leads to Paris. This made me have to emergency swerve to the exit more than once.

I'm not seeing the problem here. The signs do actually point to Paris. It's just that you as a trucker aren't going to Paris proper, you are going to industries located around Paris. The closest you're getting to actual Paris in the game is the Bâtisse depot near Paris's ring road (The Périphérique).

2. The signs to Lille don't go to Lille. Lille appears on the signs pretty early on. Yet if you follow the signs, you will end up in the South of France. You're supposed to take the exit to Calais, but the signs don't mention Lille for the exit, and as the there aren't any signs to indicate that going straight doesn't go to Lille anymore, drivers will stay on the highway (there are also many country-roads that go to Calais and this Calais-exit sign doesn't say that it leads to a highway).

The game map is in the 1:19 scale, so a lot of things end up being left out or simplified. In this instance, A1 is supposed to continue north to Lille around where the number 2 on your map is, with N104 going west from it. However, it appears that in the game, their interchange was omitted and A1 and N104 were just conflated into a single road. So the signs pointing to Lille are accurate to the real world, but not to the game world. Yeah, it's not an ideal situation, but this stuff just happens sometimes.

I don't think that adding Lille to the Calais exit sign is a good idea, since that's a different road, so it would be a bit misleading.
Ideally, the small road leading north to Lille should be removed (most of these small roads in the base map are fictional stand-ins for omitted freeways) and a proper continuation of A1 from Paris to Lille should be built instead... But that's not happening, sadly.

3. When I only had the Base-game, I always assumed that that bit of road (at 3) would extend in the Vive la France DLC. I was quite surprised that it wasn't. Especially because there seems to be an other cut highway lining up perfectly. It's weird that you can only enter Paris from the West via a road through a town (Poissy I think) where you can only drive 50 km for some bit.

Okay, no. It might look tempting to connect these two ends, but IRL they are 30 km apart and belong to two different roads. A4 continues into city center, while A13 connects to the Périphérique on the other side of Paris. So basically, there should be the entirety of Paris in between these two ends - there is absolutely no space for it. Even if you decide to throw all realism out of the window and connect them anyway, there might simply be not enough space for it amidst the existing scenery there. Remember, the map is in 1:19, so a single ~1 km² interchange or urban zone takes up ~361 km² of real estate on the game map. That's why old base map cities are mostly unrealistic, and newer cities tend to be represented with just 1-2 disconnected areas on the outskirts. That little piece of the Périphérique that we have in the game ate up pretty much all of space there was for Paris.

Anyway, follow your GPS and you won't get confused by signs leading to non-existent interchanges. It even speaks now

[Omicron]

IvanKuz has explained the situation pretty well.
I'd like to add - French signs were reworked in 1.41, and after looking around Paris myself, there is no confusion - all signposted destinations do take you to said destinations. Signs for the junction in the north-west, for example, have both Calais and Lille as destinations (whether it was like this or not before I am not sure).
The only thing that might be confusing is when you follow the signs for Paris on the A3 or A4, they disappear as you approach the Périphérique, with only Reims and Lille as the destinations respectively. It makes sense though, as you have technically entered Paris.
Below you can see how the destinations are signposted in game
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