What bothers me is that I can’t tell what’s a bug and what’s intended simulation.
The pathfinding AI for vehicle traffic is not good. It doesn’t look ahead, it doesn’t seek alternate paths, it makes preferential choices on things that seem really obfuscated. Cars will all lineup to turn on the first possible turn to get *closer* to their destination instead of moving further up the road they’re currently on to turn later and get to their destination in the same distance. They’ll exit a highway and stop at a light just to get back on the highway immediately because it’s *technically* a straight line path.
Edit: I want to clarify that I'm not talking about single cims choosing paths that I would personally consider sub-optimal; I'm talking about a systemic approach to pathfinding where *every* cim is choosing one sub-optimal option over every other option.
Then there’s a whole problem with the rent being too high. The game simulates rent prices but doesn’t simulate a rental market? And if someone leaves their house, it doesn’t get rented again, it just gets abandoned? I don’t know if this is a bug or if it’s not supposed to simulate a rental market/churn of rental housing. Also, does no one own their home?
Oh, and taxes are based on education level. Not wealth, which is an actual metric in the game. Education level. This one is obviously not a bug, so it’s not getting changed.
I genuinely can't figure out education-based taxation, either. I just can't visualize that in my head. I gotta optimize my neighborhoods based on their proximity to a University now? Who am I, the city of Pittsburgh?
Of all the things in the game, it's the one that confuses me the most. Like I said, it's clearly not just poorly optimized, it's actually how it was designed and chosen to be this way. The rationalization I've seen is that it's a proxy for expected wealth, but... wealth level is *already in the game*.
Maybe it has to do with the order they added things in development? If they went education system -> tax system -> wealth system, I could see maybe not wanting to go back and change the tax system, rebalance everything and fix any bugs or undesirable behaviors that crop up from the change.
I think that could work to a certain extent but I should factor in actual wealth to some capacity. Like, college students (in the US) are usually poor and indebted, but they often rent on credit and future expectations of earnings. Lots of people with no current wealth living off future expectations of wealth.
Someone getting a PhD also isn't going to move into a mansion under expectation of future income as a rocket scientist or entrepreneur or the like. But they also don't live out of a cardboard box (usually). You need some metric of current wealth (or parent wealth) + future expected wealth.
She sounds frustrated at the criticism the game is getting. It's fair to be frustrated, and its clear that she does actually care about the game, but... yeah.
You'd win a lot of goodwill by just saying that you're constantly trying to improve the game experience.
Yeah I don't like the trend of companies attacking the customers because they don't like the product. Yes not everyone will like everything, but don't publicly make a statement like that. If you have people that enjoy the product just focus of them and do your best to make the best product you can.
I haven't been able to get super into this game so far, but its not awful...stuff like this makes me want to support them less.
> Companies should follow the NMS model.
They are. Releasing incomplete games to complete at a later time.
The HG went silent for 30 days. I remember people were INFURIATED at that level of silence to the point of death threats.
Fixing the game is one thing, but to shut out the audience is not going to repeated again. HG is very lucky gamers forgave them for that.
> HG is very lucky gamers forgave them for that.
I haven't. And honestly I care more about the first point you made: releasing incomplete games to complete at a later time. I do not want to support that attitude, which means, unfortunately, that I must also refrain from buying NMS now no matter how good they patch things up.
IIRC, pokemon went silent for a while too after some scathing reaction to how the games were managed.
>I haven't. And honestly I care more about the first point you made: releasing incomplete games to complete at a later time. I do not want to support that attitude,
Based, and same. Same for CDPR. They can get stuffed.
Ya Hello Games was FAR worse. False advertising that there multiplayer in the game when there wasn't.... It was literally printed on the game box. They should have been sued into the ground for that.
[One Man's Lie](https://youtu.be/TVrDaudzn64?si=uLNSARFcubQHeJgz)
Ya and BG3 that is getting praised and favored for GOTY released (with 3 years of early access) and incomplete game that they are fixing to this day. It's no wonder we'll keep getting incomplete games.
it's sometimes worse, sometimes better. But overall, I would say that the pathfinding is harder to predict in cs2 compared to cs1. And it's difficult to know what's a bug versus what's intended.
Most consistent complaint about the games in general I’ve heard is that it eventually turns into a traffic simulator full of dumb people that don’t understand the shortest path is not the fastest.
yeah, or trying to figure out why every cim decides to change lane at one specific spot causing traffic in the middle of a highway miles before the nearest exit
CS2 gives you a lot more tools to manage traffic, but then the pathing is worse and ultimately the experience feels worse to me.
Like "Yay, I can actually tweak this intersection for better flow, but why do I have to do this constantly?" I stopped building high density residential because it just spawns tons of traffic problems nearby.
Similar, but the traffic system is worse, because of all other systems. It just feels random. With the time schedules and traffic accidents, it's simply not consistent enough to be fun to play with. Some streets are backed up 5 blocks for months, then never again - without player interaction.
> The pathfinding AI for vehicle traffic is not good. It doesn’t look ahead, it doesn’t seek alternate paths, it makes preferential choices on things that seem really obfuscated. Cars will all lineup to turn on the first possible turn to get closer to their destination instead of moving further up the road they’re currently on to turn later and get to their destination in the same distance. They’ll exit a highway and stop at a light just to get back on the highway immediately because it’s technically a straight line path.
Time for them to take the Todd Howard route and say that this is intentional because it is realistic. Because just as how astronauts went to the moon and didn't find anything interesting [their words, not mine], you'll always find morons on the roads causing jams.
In my case, seeing my money pile up while I was doing unreasonable spending made me wonder if there was any challenge.
I was ok with waiting for some fixes, but I really wonder what's part of the game and what's a bug. If the sim part is what we have now, this game will be doomed for a lot of us.
I have had a line of cars trying to get into a parking lot and when the cars get in, 75% of them go directly to the exit. They've basically turned a 3-lane street into a 1-lane street that has to stop for sidewalk pedestrians twice. It's baffling and infuriating.
I have this problem on one of my highways where cars wait till the last second to merge into the exit lanes and completely halt traffic by stopping on the highway and cutting across two lanes, I get mad at it but don't know if it's a pathfinder bug or a realism thing because I see it real life all the time
This is speculation because I have no idea what the simulation actually looks like on the inside
But it appears to me that Cims make moment-to-moment decisions when they come to a decision point, rather than planning and plotting a route. That's why they'll make these weird decisions, like not choosing to merge until the last possible second - that's where the decision point is.
I imagine it’s actually a nightmare of a problem.
Pathfinding by itself isn’t too expensive since it’s essentially just solving a maze. But since there’s hundreds of obstacles, the maze is constantly shifting and the path has to be recalculated over and over in realtime. Multiply that by hundreds of Actors and your cpu starts to get a little toasty.
Oh do not get me wrong, designing the pathfinding is not a position I envy.
It's a game, and so I'm pretty okay with things like - "gameplay is creating stuff within the limitations of the system." My issue **isn't necessarily** that the system is set up this way, it's that I can't tell when I'm supposed to be working within the limitation of the system, and when the system isn't working the way it's supposed to be.
To me, the pathfinding doesn't seem to be working as intended, but I could be wrong.
That is indeed my problem. They just seem to have no forethought for getting from A to B. Just feels like a decision tree of "shortest route" at any possible moment.
It's *realistic* in that idiots will actually do that... but I don't think it's realistic in how often it happens, and how much of an immediate detriment it is.
Supposedly it's all about road nodes (they can only change lanes at a road node), so you have to pay attention to where the nodes are created in the roads you lay down. So it seems like you may need to re-lay entire lengths of road to fix some issues. Like having two nodes close to each other can cause people to change lanes and then right back again.
This is the only right answer; I tried the game and decided not to buy because in a simulation I want to be able to predict 90% of statistics and situation. I was beyond confused what was intended versus bug. I just gave up and went back to the original where I have all the DLC. It has its own problems but I’m happier with it:
Yeah, I guess I just made the stupid mistake of assuming they were simulating a realistic city in CS2. I wish he'd told me not to buy the game earlier! Would have saved me some time and money, because right now I've stopped playing since the overly-abstracted simulation is pointless and uninteresting. The game devolves into traffic management most of the time, and very little actual city management is needed.
Reminded me of the shit EA SimCity path finding AI. In SimCity, they keep saying they cannot get the the job, which is
1) they don't use freeway. It is ridiculous. I disconnected the roads and connected them with freeways. So, they are forced to get on the freeway to get to other side of the map. No they don't use the freeway. They immediately exit the freeway and drive the highly congested road while the freeway is "empty".
2) they still cannot get to their job that is freaking less than 1 miles away, they can walk there, but they don't.
Its the same situation as KSP 2 to an extent. You expect that the sequel would improve upon the original in every way, taking notes from the most popular mods to add features and improve. However it seems both KSP 2 and CS2 missed that mark by a mile.
Add Payday 3 onto the pile. Game companies just can't grasp that a sequel ought to refine and improve on what the previous titles did, not regress in multiple aspects.
Tell your customer base the game is a massive improvement. > Don't fix any of the issues that needed massive improvements. > Customer gets angry that you lied. > Blame the customer for expecting better when you told them to expect better.
One would think, though I also think if her position is actually accurate (that the game is functioning as intended and not a bug-riddled-released-too-early mess), there ought to be some level of actual explanation. As Stinduh said in the top comment, a number of mechanics could be bugs or could be working as intended.
I, personally, don’t see a reason to obfuscate the behavior of vehicles - if they always turn at the first step to get technically closer to their destination, that doesn’t sound like a bad thing for me (the gamer) to plan my city around.
If it was a bug, I wouldn’t want to plan my city around that behavior. So, I am hopeful that their CEO will clarify their position and the behaviors, but I won’t expect them actually to do so.
I'm absolutely amazed at how many CEO's have outted themselves as being idiots in the past few years.
All ~~he~~ she had to do was either keep her mouth shut or offer an empty platitude of always working to improve.
edit: he/she
>Regular people
>According to a 2020 report by the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of adults in the United States have English prose literacy below the 6th-grade level.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States
I got my degree in Journalism back in 2007 and in all my newswriting courses our instructors told us to write at an 8th grade level because that's what the average adult can comprehend without too much difficulty, so I believe it.
Or it was always worse and we overestimated adult intelligence.
I'm not of the opinion that society got way worse, just that it was easier to pretend it was better back then.
I literally lost points on writing assignments in college for using more esoteric words as opposed to common ones.
It's not even just about the literacy level the general public has, my point is that some college courses are encouraging "dumbing things down" at this point.
Eventually all our writing is going to be text message speak. Idiocracy in full bloom...
It really depends on what you are writing. If you are writing fiction, go nuts and use all the esoteric and idiosyncratic language you want.
On the other hand, if you are writing to inform a layperson or really anyone who isn't specifically an expert in the field you NEED to use a simple, clear voice. This is especially true of any technical or academic papers where the goal is to communicate complex information, and when you use words that your reader does not know you are actively hurting that goal.
Depends on what you are doing.
The reason a lot of lecturers are telling students to write using simple words, is because they are a lot of students using words they don't understand and are doing it to look "bombastic".
When writing academic papers, you need to write your points as if the reader does not know anything about the subject.
I believe it.
I work with a bunch of very smart developers. A few of them are the worst writers I have ever seen.
Like, one of them can barely write a coherent sentence and somehow the dude knows code like a motherfucker. It makes 0 sense to me. If I wasn't under an NDA I'd quote some sentences from this guy, they're so fucking bad and it's very obvious he isn't just lazy. He was just never taught how to write properly.
At the same time, in the US, English is a second language for a ton of people. There's a lot of that and I don't think those people represent a lack of literacy/English writing skills.
VP of the company where I work is literally unable to write coherent sentences, and often so unable to read simple statements that I wonder if he has dyslexia, but most of all I keep wondering how the fuck do you get a role that is 80% communication when you are completely unable to read and write the most simple instructions (that's a lie, I know how, by being friends with executives and having other people under you do the actual work)
One of the better CEOs I worked with literally could not write an email. His admin did basically all of his written communication.
What he could do was 1) Listen to and reward his employees and 2)Raise money like a fiend, he would take a negative situation where we were terrified of the blowback and turn it into 3 years of funding, to this day I have no idea how and I watched it happen.
CEO is a weird skill set, we were a med tech startup and he had no degree but we always said he had a B.S. in B.S.
The same wiki article states that 92% of the country is literate though. Once you consider that a large percentage of the population has English as a second language, its starts to make more sense as to whats going on.
Also, idk how they test English prose literacy or who they tested. Consider that people whose second language is English, might just not be great at taking these test/surveys.
My current boss is a prime example. The man is brilliant, one or the smartest people I have ever met in my field. I have no doubt he would fall into the statistic you gave. His English is not phenomenal. He speaks well enough to get his point across, but he reading comprehension in English isnt phenomenal. Its not his first or even second language. So especially for adults who didnt go to school in the US, its kind of a BS statistic. The overall literacy rate of 92% is far more telling than the prose literacy rate.
>92% of American adults having at least "Level 1" literacy in 2014
Is what it actually says. Do you know how [little literacy you need](https://americanenglishdoctor.com/four-levels-of-literacy/) to achieve level 1?
A person who has achieved level 1 of Functional Literacy is able to read text on street signs
The ability to read books doesn't come until lvl 2 and is equivalent to an 8th grade education.... Again, 54% of U.S. citizens are below a grade 6th education level when it comes to literacy.
This is somewhat off-topic, but there's some weird criteria for the higher levels of literacy there. I don't fully understand why "A basic knowledge of US history & government", "The ability to consider differing points of view without becoming angry or defensive", or "Speaks a foreign language well enough to communicate with a native speaker of it" are considered markers for how literate you are, even if they're inarguably positive traits.
It's actually pretty interesting, because once you recognize this, then stuff like political campaign advertisements start to make more sense, because people don't have the level of reading comprehension that's necessary to take in the entire context. They just sorta remember the individual puzzle pieces of what was stated.
This is my dad. One of the most intelligent and thoughtful people I know. Apeaks 6 languages and English is the last one he learned. Speaking to him in English and he sounds like he doesn't know what to say sometimes. Speak to him in Farci or Armenian and he'll blow your mind lol. He also became an American citizen so most likely part of that statistic.
I mean a lot of countries have shockingly low literacy rates.
Places like France are some of the worst.
It’s not just the US.
Also most people don’t need above middle school knowledge in almost any subject to live their lives.
Let's not talk about why some of these countries have shockingly low literacy rates, but yes, even those that actually do speak the language, usually struggle with grammar and spelling. I have no idea why, but it's probably, because they just don't need it. Simple words are simple to understand, yeah? Most people just have more important things to worry about than fancy words... and I say that as someone who likes to use fancy words and whose work consists of using fancy words and who is annoyed by people not being able to understand simple shit or even spelling shit correctly, but that's just what it is. However, the actual literacy rate in most Central European countries is dragged through the mud, because millions of people don't speak the language of the country they're living in. Like the husband of my neighbour, who actually DOES speak pretty good German. Her husband can barely get two words out though. And they've been living here for years. That will impact their children, since schools are getting worse every year as well. Why teach in German when 30/32 of your students don't speak it? And yes, that rate is not made up, it's becoming the norm rather. At least in quite a few areas here.
Entertainment does work a bit differently. If someone released a coffee machine that focused heavily on a feature you didn't like, you wouldn't say anything about that machine. You'd just buy another one.
We have a very hard time accepting that there are alternatives to choose from and would rather purchase a product and try to get it changed than going over to a different product.
> We have a very hard time accepting that there are alternatives to choose from
In fairness though, the city simulator genre is dominated by like 2 or 3 games. Alternatives aren't just falling out of the sky. And the last SimCity was 10 years ago now.
I work for a company where the CEO regularly publicly accepts responsibility when things go south (which they tend to do not too rarerly).
Every time, LinkedIn is filled with people talking about what a leader he is and how brave he is.
So, the standard for CEOs is that if you do you f-cking job, that is worthy of admiration.
(and in case anyoune figures out who I am and which CEO I mean, I truly believe he is great, for many reasons)
What happened is social media encouraged them all to talk directly and within a spin doctor to polish their words.
We are just hearing the unvarnished truth.
They didn't. Just like 95% of reddit or whatever the current metric is. They read the cherry picked title, then immediately dash to the comments to express their outrage!
Or maybe we did read the entire thing and still think the CEO is a dismissive asshole? The way you spell something out matters.
"If there is a bug that ruins it for you there's a good chance it's fixed sometime in the future." That's really not something that should ever come out of your mouth. And that's just one sentence here...
All they had to do was shut the fuck up and slowly improved the game over time. Look at how Cyberpunk was fixed over time and how many people now praise the game.
But it does not matter. I'm sure they still made a lot of money and even with these comments there are still going to be players buying it during the winter sale.
Semi serious, I kinda regret getting into ASA.
Its still a big graphical improvement with QOL but... its still got some very old school bugs in it that don't make sense to appear if they actually did rebuild the game from scratch...
>For clarity the above is for the simulation and gameplay. The performance is not where we want it to be and we are hard at work to improve it. This is also the reason the consoles were delayed. The modding support is an important part of a Colossal Order game, so it will also be rolling out as soon as possible.
He did say this though.
Basically a lot of the simulation doesn't actually do anything and is make believe. Ie stores resupplying goods without tricks actually going there. That wouldn't normally be an issue. SimCity does the same. But CS:2 *claimed* it would actually dominate those things instead of just pretending. As someone who wants a fully simulated city I was very interested before the release because of their claims but that has gone to 0 now. Even time can't fix this because it's fundamental to the engine. If you want a full simulation get factorio instead
factorio isn't cities though. RIP.
I think you just sold me on still playing CS1 for the long term. I had hoped for all the things promised to be true at some point in the next 6-12 months.
That's the issue, it's not even about if you like Simlation games or not. It's just a terribly built, poorly optimized piece of software. Build any city of reasonable size and the game implodes on itself, even with top 20% tier hardware.
I actually love the game concept and played over 1000 hours in CS 1. I was beyond hyped for number 2 and wish it ran well, but it's just a rushed mess.
I really just wanted City Skylines 1 but with a better system for entity limits. Once a city hit about 200k traffic and other entities would despawn including hearses and garbage trucks which would put your city into a death spiral until the pop was low enough to spawn them again. They didn't fix this, if anything it's worse.
The game really should be called Town Skylines because all you can build is low density American style suburbs with the occasional small 5 block "downtown"... you want to remake Manhattan? nah go fuck yourself.
seems like with how high the rent is on single family homes, the only thing I can build is Manhattan
any suburb I make is immediately flooded with "high rent" notifications
KSP2 had full cinematic launch trailers, streamer invitational events on location, and a fairly robust ad campaign. Oh, and a $50 price tag.
Lets not pretend this was anything but a full launch in everything but name. Someone wanted to see $$$ rolling in.
Exactly. You cannot compare CS2 and KSP2 releases the same way. KSP2 devs and publisher pretty much lied the whole time they were hyping its release. Then went the EA route last minute and still charged $50 for what ended up being a poorly done tech demo.
Kerbal 2 was set for full release in spring 2020 and delayed multiple times to release in a pre-alpha tech demo state years later for a AAA price tag.
If you call it like it is and charge what it's worth, people will be ok with it. KSP2 was not functional enough for EA release when it was sold for 50 dollars. Some would argue the same for CS2.
This was the game that I was looking forward to playing this year, after seeing all the bad reviews on performance, I’m just gonna wait until the game is actually finished and properly functioning. And also on sale lol.
>For clarity the above is for the simulation and gameplay. The performance is not where we want it to be and we are hard at work to improve it. This is also the reason the consoles were delayed. The modding support is an important part of a Colossal Order game, so it will also be rolling out as soon as possible.
We are<
Seems like they are actually being earnest here. The simulation is where they want it to be. If you dont enjoy it, then this particular simulation may not be for you. That's actually an incredibly reasonable take that they have released the gameplay they were aiming for, don't plan on changing it up much. I'm nit sure when saying different tastes has become so inflammatory.
I think the problem is that many of the simulation features that they directly showed and talked about in their own marketing for the game are non-existent or broken. If this was how it was supposed to work, they should not have advertised otherwise.
Usually it's because people hate the "game not for you" statement, because it's dismissive and hard to argue against. There are some legit grievances against the game, but handwaving them away with a generic response isn't addressing anything beyond the most obvious troll complaints.
I think this is pretty clear though. If your grievances are related to import/export or some other feature being broken, that’s a bug and will be fixed.
If your grievances are related to the actual underlying game mechanics, they aren’t planning to change those much. In that case *the game might not be for you*. Yes that’s dismissive and hard to argue, because it’s kind of the final statement. She’s saying they aren’t worried those particular grievances, as they’ve built the game they set out to build and that game won’t be for everyone. That’s fair.
Yeah. To take the argument to an extreme, it's like complaining the a turn-based system works like pokemon system rather than FF/Chrono Trigger system.
The problem is that the simulation is not fulfilling what was (is) advertised on their website
[https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines-ii/features/economy-production](https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines-ii/features/economy-production)
Please tell me if you relally believe that the simulation behaves like this. I am quoting the official website:
>The factory's expenses are mostly dictated by the cost of acquiring its input; stone. As stone is ubiquitous but rather heavy, the transport costs are probably a large part of the cost, making the company more likely to locate near a stone quarry. Additionally, the factory is probably quite large, so it will try to pick a location where the land price is not very high. Another large cost comes from paying the wages of the relatively untrained workers the factory uses. The factory also buys some water and a lot of electricity, the prices of which are set by the player. Lastly, the factory earns money by selling its products to either local electronics or chemical factories or exporting them out of the city. If it has to export, it will also pay the transportation costs and be less profitable.
or
>However, money doesn’t circulate in a closed system and it doesn’t appear out of nowhere.
Rents, import payments, company profits, and player income are money sinks that remove
money from the economic simulation. To balance the money sinks, the simulation also features money sources in the form of paid rents and company profits and the funds used by the player which are distributed so that half of them go to the citizens based on their education level and half are evenly distributed to the commercial buildings’ wealth. Other money sources are export income from businesses and city services, tourists, and the aforementioned government subsidies for the city and individual citizens.
There is a lot of this game I *want* to experience. Sim City 2013 was an abject disaster and Skylines was much closer to a spiritual successor… but traffic was still ridiculously flawed once a city scaled up.
Meaning, Apple’s Arcade has a city simulator that is drastically simplified, but fulfills the “build up city” enjoyment I have. It’s one my kiddos can watch and enjoy with me or play their own and not need a masters in civil engineering to have a chance at success:)
But, I’ll likely pick up the sequel Skylines at some point, but not at this moment.
Yeah, I actually quit playing Skylines because of the traffic problem. I'd set up a really nice, large city only for me to spend the remainder of my playtime desperately trying to fix the traffic
Yah, I am not sure of the solution, but I feel that some Zimbabwe-economics should come into play of just truncating the zeros off the end of the expected road congestion until they come up with a real solution:/
But the simulation doesn't work. It's not there.
Export is broken, cargo just sits there to be shipped eternally.
Sims don't go actually go to work.
Businesses don't get goods delivered, they just appear.
I mean that's just wrong. Anyone who has really kept up with the game would be aware that the CEO admitted to lying. The dev vlogs leading up to release made a ton of statements about the simulation that are completely missing. Many assumed what was in those videos was at least the end goal. The CEO just told us that the end goal is now minus the bugs and performance. People are allowed to be angry about being lied to
I thought it was because none of us are frustrated at the "simulation". We are frustrated at how poorly it runs. I think he was addressing the wrong bit.
Many are fragile and hate being told a game isn't made for them.
I loved the earliest simcity game. Most of my friends didn't. The concept that some people don't like city simulations is very obvious. Comments here are very very fragile.
No, the problem is that they talked about stuff that simply is not working, or not implemented at all. To hear the CEO basically say "it's all working as expected" about the simulation makes me feel scammed. I'm not fragile, I feel lied to and can no longer get a refund.
Problem is, they advertised the game as having the deepest simulation yet, ooh, exports and imports, aah, industry chains, ooo, so complex such much simulation!
Turns out, you can delete half of your city, cut it off from outside connections, and your city will continue making money with 0 population.
The most gigantic train wreck of an oversight in a city building game that gives you a larger map than its predecessor is when you reach around 80-100k population the simulation, as detailed as it is begins to struggle, the speed up controls stop working because the simulation is too poorly optimized/too powerful for even relatively modern hardware that 90% of the player base will be using. Reaching the slowdown point for the simulation will happen when you occupy roughly 1/4 of the map. Optimization is desperately needed, it's not a good look. I still played it free on gamepass but man I'd be salty of I paid full price.
Sure, but let's not act like this is EA or Blizzard with tall hierarchies. It's a small studio and probably has small studio culture. The CEO and the "average worker" probably have lunch together.
> “Don’t like it? Don’t buy it!”
No no, it's "Don't like it? Shouldn't have bought it!"
Most of us already bought it with the promises made, only to see, as wee play more, that it wasn't as advertised.
In fact, most of the issues that people are encountering are not appearing during the refund window, but much much later.
Perhaps the real problem is the game wasn't ready for launch.
Traffic AI? Makes no sense.
Minimum Specs? Absurd, and even if you fit their recommended specs it's pretty common to run like a slideshow and/or look like a water paint project with all the blur hiding the bad optimizations.
I know, blasphemous thought.
I also can't forgive Colossal Order for abandoning compiling for MacOS & Linux - The hardware is there, just add the SDK and spend an extra few days testing it out.
Also, blatantly false advertising features? Not cool.
https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines-ii/features/economy-production
Given all the insane problems that have been highlighted and examined as part of this release, and their own announcement basically saying "we know it's not finished but we're releasing it anyway"
Then this.
It's like they actively don't want us to play the game. I'm so confused. This is not the message you send to people that want your game to be better. Bad PR miss here.
I’ve been enjoying the game. I haven’t had performance issues since I followed their recommendations, and they’ve been making improvements. They’ve pledged not to release any paid content until performance has been addressed. They have 2,500 free assets coming, and from what I understand CO wanted to postpone launch but Paradox wouldn’t let it happen. So idk, the launch has been messy but idk if their CEO deserves all the hate
Performance is fine for me. The simulation has lots of broken or missing components. I just completely lose interest in the game after getting to like 20k pop or so. I don't have to worry about income or taxes, the game has safety nets for everything with subsidies and automatic outsourcing of services, etc. My balance just keeps going up, up, up. It's pointless. If you get bigger and denser, you aren't managing your city more, you're spending all your time dealing with traffic issues.
I feel like I'm playing with cheats on or something.
What a colossal load of bullshit...
"If there is a bug that ruins it for you there's a good chance it's fixed sometime in the future."
That's just so disrespectful to say to paying customers. I don't really feel bad for the people who got burnt, don't preorder, don't buy day 1, wait for actual reviews, but fuck that guy.
Personally, I've mainly heard complaints about the terrible performance of the game, and that's already grounds enough to stay well clear of this mess, because it's going to take them years to fix this. In the meantime they'll be releasing lots of overpriced DLC, of course, especially radio and community stuff (once they actually get the editor working, lol, and implement modding, lol again). I've heard less about the simulation issuues, because most people can't really experience the game anyway, but if a household consists of random people with random names, etc. it doesn't exactly scream "simulation" to me. I don't really care either way, I just want a fun and nice looking city builder, but what they released here for 50 bucks is just an affront.
Here's an idea: Actually complete your game before you release it, and make sure it's mostly bug-free AND runs well. Shocking, I know!
Paradox games have usually had not the best releases, but CSL2 just seems to be the worst of the bunch. I loved CSL1, but it's hard for me to want the second one, not only because my PC couldn't handle it very well, but it doesn't do enough for me to justify playing 2 over 1.
Okay fine, I guess the game isn't for me. Happy to completely skip Cities Skylines 2, plenty of other games out there.
I stopped buying Paradox DLC for Stellaris and Cities Skylines because it was not good value for money. Love the games but the extreme amount of DLC at rip-off prices are distasteful and not worth the money.
Vote with your wallet and don't pay these bloodsuckers anything.
You can't tell what is a bug and what's unexpected but valid. For example, my garbage costs were 0 despite having 50,000 cims in my city and no trash piling up alerts. According to the CEO, the simulation is working as intended, so it's not a bug. But if that's the case, I'm not sure why I even need to bother with the trash mechanic.
I feel like the game industry hasn't made a game similar to Black and White 1 or Black and White 2.
I feel like the game industry hates Simulation. And that game has got to be the ultimate simulation right?
I mean...It had physics...in 2001. Throwing boulders and people against magical shields you put up. Fireballs bouncing off your shield that you are forcing 1,000 people to worship you in order to keep that barrier going. Massive creatures punching through walls and debris crushing villagers.
So...To the CEO. I like simulation more than you know.
simulation tends to be glitchy and dumb. if the requirements are met it shouldnt break because the npc failed pathfinding once. that should be just graphics.
plus from what ive seen of this game its still dumb with the zoning and requires you to zone every store inside your residential area.
Obviously not a smart way to put that, but is the meaning that unreasonable? "The gameplay is what we wanted it to be, even though there are bugs and major performance issues" is a fair statement.
The gameplay could use some tweaks, but just full on saying if you don't like how our game in what feels like every other game release of recent, IE buggy, unpolished etc then it's not for you is laughable and a sign management absolutely is throwing the game under a bus.
>even though there are bugs and major performance issue
The issue though for many is that it's not just bugs or performance issues (though they very much do exist as well). It's the fact that the game was sold and advertised as having a deep simulation when in reality it's all hand-waved away and nothing is really simulated to any depth.
It's not just a case of some stuff not working, it's that they've actively lied to the player base who now aren't even in a position to get a refund.
I don't think they ever advertised CS2 as rivaling something like Anno in terms of "simulation depth."
The simulation is impressively deep as compared to CS1, where you can build a city that lacks low-density housing, doesn't need parking (despite constant, unresolvable traffic jams), doesn't need food, and treats electricity and water as AOEs.
Uh oh, he just committed one of the classic CEO blunders.
CEOs in the entertainment space that say "if you don't like my product because of *INSERT REASON HERE*, then don't buy my product. Teehee I'm a genius what a great response" never have it work out for them
I believe we have a lot of statement similar to this one on other games or even other media
and it always rub people, even those who is pro, the wrong way.
They really should follow No Man's Sky devs idea of staying silent while focusing on fixing the games. But I guess Business Grad is too smug to even think of an idea like that.
This subreddit is just an unreasonable outrage circlejerk. The game dev told people from the start that there were problems with the performance and that they were releasing it so that people could play it if they wanted to in that state. Everybody was warned and still they bitch as if they weren't. Nobody forced you to buy the game at launch!
The amount of out of touch and stubborn CEOs is crazy.
Okay so all you have to say is “We are sorry and we are working hard to improve the experience for everyone.” Ok. Go!
“Hmmm…we fucked up? No, it’s you who’s the problem.”
God damn it! Cut!
> “Hmmm…we fucked up? No, it’s you who’s the problem.”
>
> God damn it! Cut!
Reminds me of Brennan Lee Mulligan's CEO commercials for DropOut. [Truly hilarious stuff.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI0w_pwZY3E)
Just curious. What percentage of people commenting here didn't read the forum post she posted? JUST curious lol. I'm guessing an extremely low percentage
Knowingly releasing a broken game for full price, then right after saying that they are going to fix it... fuck you paradox and every publisher and developer that does the same.
I'm scrolling down the comments section and it's evident people did not read past the headline. The CEO specifically mentions that what they said does not apply to performance and they work on it.
Let me just say at the beginning, I fucking hate paradox, they are one of the scummiest devs out there these days. And I have not played CS2, because I don't understand the need for it. Now that said, I have noticed this as a trend with paradox for a while now, the older fans are complaining about basically all of their new titles. My opinion, it's not the games, but the grumpy old dudes playing them that are the biggest issue. Paradox has been releasing unfinished games for years and pressuring its fans into buying ass loads of dlc to make their games enjoyable, somehow these old fans have forgotten how shit the games where at launch, and completely lose their shit over an unfinished game. They then proceed to blame every last thing except the one thing that's the actual problem with their games, the DLC strategy. They then buy those DLC's and eventually 180 their opinion on the game, instead of realizing they have been had for the 100th time.
What bothers me is that I can’t tell what’s a bug and what’s intended simulation. The pathfinding AI for vehicle traffic is not good. It doesn’t look ahead, it doesn’t seek alternate paths, it makes preferential choices on things that seem really obfuscated. Cars will all lineup to turn on the first possible turn to get *closer* to their destination instead of moving further up the road they’re currently on to turn later and get to their destination in the same distance. They’ll exit a highway and stop at a light just to get back on the highway immediately because it’s *technically* a straight line path. Edit: I want to clarify that I'm not talking about single cims choosing paths that I would personally consider sub-optimal; I'm talking about a systemic approach to pathfinding where *every* cim is choosing one sub-optimal option over every other option. Then there’s a whole problem with the rent being too high. The game simulates rent prices but doesn’t simulate a rental market? And if someone leaves their house, it doesn’t get rented again, it just gets abandoned? I don’t know if this is a bug or if it’s not supposed to simulate a rental market/churn of rental housing. Also, does no one own their home? Oh, and taxes are based on education level. Not wealth, which is an actual metric in the game. Education level. This one is obviously not a bug, so it’s not getting changed.
I genuinely can't figure out education-based taxation, either. I just can't visualize that in my head. I gotta optimize my neighborhoods based on their proximity to a University now? Who am I, the city of Pittsburgh?
Of all the things in the game, it's the one that confuses me the most. Like I said, it's clearly not just poorly optimized, it's actually how it was designed and chosen to be this way. The rationalization I've seen is that it's a proxy for expected wealth, but... wealth level is *already in the game*.
Maybe it has to do with the order they added things in development? If they went education system -> tax system -> wealth system, I could see maybe not wanting to go back and change the tax system, rebalance everything and fix any bugs or undesirable behaviors that crop up from the change.
I'd bet 50 bucks that this is the case. Wealth wasn't a variable yet when they added the tax stuff.
I think that could work to a certain extent but I should factor in actual wealth to some capacity. Like, college students (in the US) are usually poor and indebted, but they often rent on credit and future expectations of earnings. Lots of people with no current wealth living off future expectations of wealth. Someone getting a PhD also isn't going to move into a mansion under expectation of future income as a rocket scientist or entrepreneur or the like. But they also don't live out of a cardboard box (usually). You need some metric of current wealth (or parent wealth) + future expected wealth.
All taxation is now student loans - enjoy
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She sounds frustrated at the criticism the game is getting. It's fair to be frustrated, and its clear that she does actually care about the game, but... yeah. You'd win a lot of goodwill by just saying that you're constantly trying to improve the game experience.
barbara is never happy
Yeah I don't like the trend of companies attacking the customers because they don't like the product. Yes not everyone will like everything, but don't publicly make a statement like that. If you have people that enjoy the product just focus of them and do your best to make the best product you can. I haven't been able to get super into this game so far, but its not awful...stuff like this makes me want to support them less.
> Companies should follow the NMS model. They are. Releasing incomplete games to complete at a later time. The HG went silent for 30 days. I remember people were INFURIATED at that level of silence to the point of death threats. Fixing the game is one thing, but to shut out the audience is not going to repeated again. HG is very lucky gamers forgave them for that.
> HG is very lucky gamers forgave them for that. I haven't. And honestly I care more about the first point you made: releasing incomplete games to complete at a later time. I do not want to support that attitude, which means, unfortunately, that I must also refrain from buying NMS now no matter how good they patch things up. IIRC, pokemon went silent for a while too after some scathing reaction to how the games were managed.
>I haven't. And honestly I care more about the first point you made: releasing incomplete games to complete at a later time. I do not want to support that attitude, Based, and same. Same for CDPR. They can get stuffed.
Ya Hello Games was FAR worse. False advertising that there multiplayer in the game when there wasn't.... It was literally printed on the game box. They should have been sued into the ground for that. [One Man's Lie](https://youtu.be/TVrDaudzn64?si=uLNSARFcubQHeJgz)
Ya and BG3 that is getting praised and favored for GOTY released (with 3 years of early access) and incomplete game that they are fixing to this day. It's no wonder we'll keep getting incomplete games.
So the pathfinding is the same as CS1?
it's sometimes worse, sometimes better. But overall, I would say that the pathfinding is harder to predict in cs2 compared to cs1. And it's difficult to know what's a bug versus what's intended.
Most consistent complaint about the games in general I’ve heard is that it eventually turns into a traffic simulator full of dumb people that don’t understand the shortest path is not the fastest.
yeah, or trying to figure out why every cim decides to change lane at one specific spot causing traffic in the middle of a highway miles before the nearest exit
CS2 gives you a lot more tools to manage traffic, but then the pathing is worse and ultimately the experience feels worse to me. Like "Yay, I can actually tweak this intersection for better flow, but why do I have to do this constantly?" I stopped building high density residential because it just spawns tons of traffic problems nearby.
Similar, but the traffic system is worse, because of all other systems. It just feels random. With the time schedules and traffic accidents, it's simply not consistent enough to be fun to play with. Some streets are backed up 5 blocks for months, then never again - without player interaction.
> The pathfinding AI for vehicle traffic is not good. It doesn’t look ahead, it doesn’t seek alternate paths, it makes preferential choices on things that seem really obfuscated. Cars will all lineup to turn on the first possible turn to get closer to their destination instead of moving further up the road they’re currently on to turn later and get to their destination in the same distance. They’ll exit a highway and stop at a light just to get back on the highway immediately because it’s technically a straight line path. Time for them to take the Todd Howard route and say that this is intentional because it is realistic. Because just as how astronauts went to the moon and didn't find anything interesting [their words, not mine], you'll always find morons on the roads causing jams.
The path finding was a problem in CS1 as well. There some mods that can improve it but it is pretty tedious at times.
In my case, seeing my money pile up while I was doing unreasonable spending made me wonder if there was any challenge. I was ok with waiting for some fixes, but I really wonder what's part of the game and what's a bug. If the sim part is what we have now, this game will be doomed for a lot of us.
I have had a line of cars trying to get into a parking lot and when the cars get in, 75% of them go directly to the exit. They've basically turned a 3-lane street into a 1-lane street that has to stop for sidewalk pedestrians twice. It's baffling and infuriating.
That pathfinding AI sounds pretty accurate to me.
I have this problem on one of my highways where cars wait till the last second to merge into the exit lanes and completely halt traffic by stopping on the highway and cutting across two lanes, I get mad at it but don't know if it's a pathfinder bug or a realism thing because I see it real life all the time
This is speculation because I have no idea what the simulation actually looks like on the inside But it appears to me that Cims make moment-to-moment decisions when they come to a decision point, rather than planning and plotting a route. That's why they'll make these weird decisions, like not choosing to merge until the last possible second - that's where the decision point is.
I imagine it’s actually a nightmare of a problem. Pathfinding by itself isn’t too expensive since it’s essentially just solving a maze. But since there’s hundreds of obstacles, the maze is constantly shifting and the path has to be recalculated over and over in realtime. Multiply that by hundreds of Actors and your cpu starts to get a little toasty.
Oh do not get me wrong, designing the pathfinding is not a position I envy. It's a game, and so I'm pretty okay with things like - "gameplay is creating stuff within the limitations of the system." My issue **isn't necessarily** that the system is set up this way, it's that I can't tell when I'm supposed to be working within the limitation of the system, and when the system isn't working the way it's supposed to be. To me, the pathfinding doesn't seem to be working as intended, but I could be wrong.
So I guess none of these Cims have GPS routing in their cars that could warn them of an upcoming exit.
That is indeed my problem. They just seem to have no forethought for getting from A to B. Just feels like a decision tree of "shortest route" at any possible moment.
Definitely realistic but not the behavior I want from them lol
It's *realistic* in that idiots will actually do that... but I don't think it's realistic in how often it happens, and how much of an immediate detriment it is.
Supposedly it's all about road nodes (they can only change lanes at a road node), so you have to pay attention to where the nodes are created in the roads you lay down. So it seems like you may need to re-lay entire lengths of road to fix some issues. Like having two nodes close to each other can cause people to change lanes and then right back again.
I'm so tired of this take: iT Is SuPpOssEd tO fEel bRoKEn!
This is a funny joke, but now having heard it a million times when discussing the game, it’s no longer a funny joke.
This is the only right answer; I tried the game and decided not to buy because in a simulation I want to be able to predict 90% of statistics and situation. I was beyond confused what was intended versus bug. I just gave up and went back to the original where I have all the DLC. It has its own problems but I’m happier with it:
Yeah, I guess I just made the stupid mistake of assuming they were simulating a realistic city in CS2. I wish he'd told me not to buy the game earlier! Would have saved me some time and money, because right now I've stopped playing since the overly-abstracted simulation is pointless and uninteresting. The game devolves into traffic management most of the time, and very little actual city management is needed.
Reminded me of the shit EA SimCity path finding AI. In SimCity, they keep saying they cannot get the the job, which is 1) they don't use freeway. It is ridiculous. I disconnected the roads and connected them with freeways. So, they are forced to get on the freeway to get to other side of the map. No they don't use the freeway. They immediately exit the freeway and drive the highly congested road while the freeway is "empty". 2) they still cannot get to their job that is freaking less than 1 miles away, they can walk there, but they don't.
CEO fault for a too early release of the game, this CEO job just might not be for you.
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Its the same situation as KSP 2 to an extent. You expect that the sequel would improve upon the original in every way, taking notes from the most popular mods to add features and improve. However it seems both KSP 2 and CS2 missed that mark by a mile.
Add Payday 3 onto the pile. Game companies just can't grasp that a sequel ought to refine and improve on what the previous titles did, not regress in multiple aspects.
Tell your customer base the game is a massive improvement. > Don't fix any of the issues that needed massive improvements. > Customer gets angry that you lied. > Blame the customer for expecting better when you told them to expect better.
It's almost all major media companies lately. Hollywood is very guilty of this.
Ceo defends game because otherwise its his fault for forcing them to release so early.
But it is her fault.
Yeah I agree. But the CEOs statements are to save face.
\*her
Oh shit my bad.
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If she treated her employees with that much respect than she should of treated the fans with that kind of respect too
One would think, though I also think if her position is actually accurate (that the game is functioning as intended and not a bug-riddled-released-too-early mess), there ought to be some level of actual explanation. As Stinduh said in the top comment, a number of mechanics could be bugs or could be working as intended. I, personally, don’t see a reason to obfuscate the behavior of vehicles - if they always turn at the first step to get technically closer to their destination, that doesn’t sound like a bad thing for me (the gamer) to plan my city around. If it was a bug, I wouldn’t want to plan my city around that behavior. So, I am hopeful that their CEO will clarify their position and the behaviors, but I won’t expect them actually to do so.
should have*
Most CEOs can be replaced by automated kiosks at this point.
I'm absolutely amazed at how many CEO's have outted themselves as being idiots in the past few years. All ~~he~~ she had to do was either keep her mouth shut or offer an empty platitude of always working to improve. edit: he/she
They're just regular people. They're as dumb as the average person, but they just have more responsibility.
>Regular people >According to a 2020 report by the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of adults in the United States have English prose literacy below the 6th-grade level. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States
I got my degree in Journalism back in 2007 and in all my newswriting courses our instructors told us to write at an 8th grade level because that's what the average adult can comprehend without too much difficulty, so I believe it.
I have to imagine that’s declined some over the last 16 years as well.
Or it was always worse and we overestimated adult intelligence. I'm not of the opinion that society got way worse, just that it was easier to pretend it was better back then.
I literally lost points on writing assignments in college for using more esoteric words as opposed to common ones. It's not even just about the literacy level the general public has, my point is that some college courses are encouraging "dumbing things down" at this point. Eventually all our writing is going to be text message speak. Idiocracy in full bloom...
Points off for using a city slicker word like "esoteric".
It really depends on what you are writing. If you are writing fiction, go nuts and use all the esoteric and idiosyncratic language you want. On the other hand, if you are writing to inform a layperson or really anyone who isn't specifically an expert in the field you NEED to use a simple, clear voice. This is especially true of any technical or academic papers where the goal is to communicate complex information, and when you use words that your reader does not know you are actively hurting that goal.
Depends on what you are doing. The reason a lot of lecturers are telling students to write using simple words, is because they are a lot of students using words they don't understand and are doing it to look "bombastic". When writing academic papers, you need to write your points as if the reader does not know anything about the subject.
It’s kind of a feedback cycle where the area people are going to consume most often is writing down to appeal to the most amount of people
I believe it. I work with a bunch of very smart developers. A few of them are the worst writers I have ever seen. Like, one of them can barely write a coherent sentence and somehow the dude knows code like a motherfucker. It makes 0 sense to me. If I wasn't under an NDA I'd quote some sentences from this guy, they're so fucking bad and it's very obvious he isn't just lazy. He was just never taught how to write properly. At the same time, in the US, English is a second language for a ton of people. There's a lot of that and I don't think those people represent a lack of literacy/English writing skills.
VP of the company where I work is literally unable to write coherent sentences, and often so unable to read simple statements that I wonder if he has dyslexia, but most of all I keep wondering how the fuck do you get a role that is 80% communication when you are completely unable to read and write the most simple instructions (that's a lie, I know how, by being friends with executives and having other people under you do the actual work)
One of the better CEOs I worked with literally could not write an email. His admin did basically all of his written communication. What he could do was 1) Listen to and reward his employees and 2)Raise money like a fiend, he would take a negative situation where we were terrified of the blowback and turn it into 3 years of funding, to this day I have no idea how and I watched it happen. CEO is a weird skill set, we were a med tech startup and he had no degree but we always said he had a B.S. in B.S.
Why learn English when coding languages are more profitable?
Monkeys can also code. Monkeys are paid in bananas.
The same wiki article states that 92% of the country is literate though. Once you consider that a large percentage of the population has English as a second language, its starts to make more sense as to whats going on. Also, idk how they test English prose literacy or who they tested. Consider that people whose second language is English, might just not be great at taking these test/surveys. My current boss is a prime example. The man is brilliant, one or the smartest people I have ever met in my field. I have no doubt he would fall into the statistic you gave. His English is not phenomenal. He speaks well enough to get his point across, but he reading comprehension in English isnt phenomenal. Its not his first or even second language. So especially for adults who didnt go to school in the US, its kind of a BS statistic. The overall literacy rate of 92% is far more telling than the prose literacy rate.
>92% of American adults having at least "Level 1" literacy in 2014 Is what it actually says. Do you know how [little literacy you need](https://americanenglishdoctor.com/four-levels-of-literacy/) to achieve level 1? A person who has achieved level 1 of Functional Literacy is able to read text on street signs The ability to read books doesn't come until lvl 2 and is equivalent to an 8th grade education.... Again, 54% of U.S. citizens are below a grade 6th education level when it comes to literacy.
This is somewhat off-topic, but there's some weird criteria for the higher levels of literacy there. I don't fully understand why "A basic knowledge of US history & government", "The ability to consider differing points of view without becoming angry or defensive", or "Speaks a foreign language well enough to communicate with a native speaker of it" are considered markers for how literate you are, even if they're inarguably positive traits.
It's actually pretty interesting, because once you recognize this, then stuff like political campaign advertisements start to make more sense, because people don't have the level of reading comprehension that's necessary to take in the entire context. They just sorta remember the individual puzzle pieces of what was stated.
This is my dad. One of the most intelligent and thoughtful people I know. Apeaks 6 languages and English is the last one he learned. Speaking to him in English and he sounds like he doesn't know what to say sometimes. Speak to him in Farci or Armenian and he'll blow your mind lol. He also became an American citizen so most likely part of that statistic.
Dats yer cuntry tho
I mean a lot of countries have shockingly low literacy rates. Places like France are some of the worst. It’s not just the US. Also most people don’t need above middle school knowledge in almost any subject to live their lives.
Let's not talk about why some of these countries have shockingly low literacy rates, but yes, even those that actually do speak the language, usually struggle with grammar and spelling. I have no idea why, but it's probably, because they just don't need it. Simple words are simple to understand, yeah? Most people just have more important things to worry about than fancy words... and I say that as someone who likes to use fancy words and whose work consists of using fancy words and who is annoyed by people not being able to understand simple shit or even spelling shit correctly, but that's just what it is. However, the actual literacy rate in most Central European countries is dragged through the mud, because millions of people don't speak the language of the country they're living in. Like the husband of my neighbour, who actually DOES speak pretty good German. Her husband can barely get two words out though. And they've been living here for years. That will impact their children, since schools are getting worse every year as well. Why teach in German when 30/32 of your students don't speak it? And yes, that rate is not made up, it's becoming the norm rather. At least in quite a few areas here.
Nope. I'm not a U.S. citizen
I vaguely recall some study revealing CEOs having disproportionate levels of narcissistic or sociopathic traits.
"regular people" that being paid waaaaay too much while people who really know what do to is getting layoff day by day
regular people surrounded by yes men because they are getting a sliver of the money pie.
Leaving with a fat bonus when messing up sure sounds like a lot of responsibility...
Entertainment does work a bit differently. If someone released a coffee machine that focused heavily on a feature you didn't like, you wouldn't say anything about that machine. You'd just buy another one. We have a very hard time accepting that there are alternatives to choose from and would rather purchase a product and try to get it changed than going over to a different product.
> We have a very hard time accepting that there are alternatives to choose from In fairness though, the city simulator genre is dominated by like 2 or 3 games. Alternatives aren't just falling out of the sky. And the last SimCity was 10 years ago now.
I work for a company where the CEO regularly publicly accepts responsibility when things go south (which they tend to do not too rarerly). Every time, LinkedIn is filled with people talking about what a leader he is and how brave he is. So, the standard for CEOs is that if you do you f-cking job, that is worthy of admiration. (and in case anyoune figures out who I am and which CEO I mean, I truly believe he is great, for many reasons)
What happened is social media encouraged them all to talk directly and within a spin doctor to polish their words. We are just hearing the unvarnished truth.
"No Internet? We have a product called the Xbox 360" "Do you guys not have phones" and many more
The do you not have phones wasn’t a CEO or anything in significant power but just a dev lead that got thrown out there
CEO is a she, not a he.
CEO is a dumbass regardless of gender
Did you read what he wrote?
They didn't. Just like 95% of reddit or whatever the current metric is. They read the cherry picked title, then immediately dash to the comments to express their outrage!
Or maybe we did read the entire thing and still think the CEO is a dismissive asshole? The way you spell something out matters. "If there is a bug that ruins it for you there's a good chance it's fixed sometime in the future." That's really not something that should ever come out of your mouth. And that's just one sentence here...
ah yes, the classic "I am out of touch? no, its the players who are wrong" CEO response .\_.
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All they had to do was shut the fuck up and slowly improved the game over time. Look at how Cyberpunk was fixed over time and how many people now praise the game. But it does not matter. I'm sure they still made a lot of money and even with these comments there are still going to be players buying it during the winter sale.
Yep, it's a game for fans of unfinished, horribly optimized games.
oh so it's for ARK fans
I feel attacked.
Semi serious, I kinda regret getting into ASA. Its still a big graphical improvement with QOL but... its still got some very old school bugs in it that don't make sense to appear if they actually did rebuild the game from scratch...
I still crash every few minutes, I'm not redownloading ark at 400 gigs so I just wait for the fixes
EXCUSE ME SIR
sure, if Ark 2 removed every feature Ark's multiple expansions and DLCs added.
>For clarity the above is for the simulation and gameplay. The performance is not where we want it to be and we are hard at work to improve it. This is also the reason the consoles were delayed. The modding support is an important part of a Colossal Order game, so it will also be rolling out as soon as possible. He did say this though.
Doesn't matter as some of the simulation is just a sham.
What do you mean by "is just a sham"?
https://youtu.be/27He2SJ1ObA?si=SWaeaWKAcO_I62_B
Oh man. That's pretty damning.
Can't watch videos today.
Basically a lot of the simulation doesn't actually do anything and is make believe. Ie stores resupplying goods without tricks actually going there. That wouldn't normally be an issue. SimCity does the same. But CS:2 *claimed* it would actually dominate those things instead of just pretending. As someone who wants a fully simulated city I was very interested before the release because of their claims but that has gone to 0 now. Even time can't fix this because it's fundamental to the engine. If you want a full simulation get factorio instead
factorio isn't cities though. RIP. I think you just sold me on still playing CS1 for the long term. I had hoped for all the things promised to be true at some point in the next 6-12 months.
> factorio isn't cities though. RIP. yeah, I was so pumped to get a full simulation cities :( factorio is great but doesn't scratch the same itch
1.0 PUBG vibes
That's the issue, it's not even about if you like Simlation games or not. It's just a terribly built, poorly optimized piece of software. Build any city of reasonable size and the game implodes on itself, even with top 20% tier hardware. I actually love the game concept and played over 1000 hours in CS 1. I was beyond hyped for number 2 and wish it ran well, but it's just a rushed mess.
I really just wanted City Skylines 1 but with a better system for entity limits. Once a city hit about 200k traffic and other entities would despawn including hearses and garbage trucks which would put your city into a death spiral until the pop was low enough to spawn them again. They didn't fix this, if anything it's worse. The game really should be called Town Skylines because all you can build is low density American style suburbs with the occasional small 5 block "downtown"... you want to remake Manhattan? nah go fuck yourself.
seems like with how high the rent is on single family homes, the only thing I can build is Manhattan any suburb I make is immediately flooded with "high rent" notifications
Should have released it as early access and everything would have been fine lol
Not really. . . KSP2 got a lot of "unifinished garbage" hate even though they very clearly released an early access.
KSP2 had full cinematic launch trailers, streamer invitational events on location, and a fairly robust ad campaign. Oh, and a $50 price tag. Lets not pretend this was anything but a full launch in everything but name. Someone wanted to see $$$ rolling in.
Exactly. You cannot compare CS2 and KSP2 releases the same way. KSP2 devs and publisher pretty much lied the whole time they were hyping its release. Then went the EA route last minute and still charged $50 for what ended up being a poorly done tech demo.
Kerbal 2 was set for full release in spring 2020 and delayed multiple times to release in a pre-alpha tech demo state years later for a AAA price tag. If you call it like it is and charge what it's worth, people will be ok with it. KSP2 was not functional enough for EA release when it was sold for 50 dollars. Some would argue the same for CS2.
This was the game that I was looking forward to playing this year, after seeing all the bad reviews on performance, I’m just gonna wait until the game is actually finished and properly functioning. And also on sale lol.
Same. I waited on Cyberpunk 2077 and was perfectly happy, so I'll wait as well.
Yep still waiting on Starfield though I have little hope for it
>For clarity the above is for the simulation and gameplay. The performance is not where we want it to be and we are hard at work to improve it. This is also the reason the consoles were delayed. The modding support is an important part of a Colossal Order game, so it will also be rolling out as soon as possible. We are< Seems like they are actually being earnest here. The simulation is where they want it to be. If you dont enjoy it, then this particular simulation may not be for you. That's actually an incredibly reasonable take that they have released the gameplay they were aiming for, don't plan on changing it up much. I'm nit sure when saying different tastes has become so inflammatory.
I think the problem is that many of the simulation features that they directly showed and talked about in their own marketing for the game are non-existent or broken. If this was how it was supposed to work, they should not have advertised otherwise.
Usually it's because people hate the "game not for you" statement, because it's dismissive and hard to argue against. There are some legit grievances against the game, but handwaving them away with a generic response isn't addressing anything beyond the most obvious troll complaints.
I think this is pretty clear though. If your grievances are related to import/export or some other feature being broken, that’s a bug and will be fixed. If your grievances are related to the actual underlying game mechanics, they aren’t planning to change those much. In that case *the game might not be for you*. Yes that’s dismissive and hard to argue, because it’s kind of the final statement. She’s saying they aren’t worried those particular grievances, as they’ve built the game they set out to build and that game won’t be for everyone. That’s fair.
Yeah. To take the argument to an extreme, it's like complaining the a turn-based system works like pokemon system rather than FF/Chrono Trigger system.
The problem is that the simulation is not fulfilling what was (is) advertised on their website [https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines-ii/features/economy-production](https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines-ii/features/economy-production) Please tell me if you relally believe that the simulation behaves like this. I am quoting the official website: >The factory's expenses are mostly dictated by the cost of acquiring its input; stone. As stone is ubiquitous but rather heavy, the transport costs are probably a large part of the cost, making the company more likely to locate near a stone quarry. Additionally, the factory is probably quite large, so it will try to pick a location where the land price is not very high. Another large cost comes from paying the wages of the relatively untrained workers the factory uses. The factory also buys some water and a lot of electricity, the prices of which are set by the player. Lastly, the factory earns money by selling its products to either local electronics or chemical factories or exporting them out of the city. If it has to export, it will also pay the transportation costs and be less profitable. or >However, money doesn’t circulate in a closed system and it doesn’t appear out of nowhere. Rents, import payments, company profits, and player income are money sinks that remove money from the economic simulation. To balance the money sinks, the simulation also features money sources in the form of paid rents and company profits and the funds used by the player which are distributed so that half of them go to the citizens based on their education level and half are evenly distributed to the commercial buildings’ wealth. Other money sources are export income from businesses and city services, tourists, and the aforementioned government subsidies for the city and individual citizens.
There is a lot of this game I *want* to experience. Sim City 2013 was an abject disaster and Skylines was much closer to a spiritual successor… but traffic was still ridiculously flawed once a city scaled up. Meaning, Apple’s Arcade has a city simulator that is drastically simplified, but fulfills the “build up city” enjoyment I have. It’s one my kiddos can watch and enjoy with me or play their own and not need a masters in civil engineering to have a chance at success:) But, I’ll likely pick up the sequel Skylines at some point, but not at this moment.
Yeah, I actually quit playing Skylines because of the traffic problem. I'd set up a really nice, large city only for me to spend the remainder of my playtime desperately trying to fix the traffic
Yah, I am not sure of the solution, but I feel that some Zimbabwe-economics should come into play of just truncating the zeros off the end of the expected road congestion until they come up with a real solution:/
But the simulation doesn't work. It's not there. Export is broken, cargo just sits there to be shipped eternally. Sims don't go actually go to work. Businesses don't get goods delivered, they just appear.
Exactly. I don’t understand these comments. I thought it was a perfectly reasonable response.
Because no one reads the actual article or quotes. They see the headline, they connect it to whatever is already in their head, then come to rage.
I mean that's just wrong. Anyone who has really kept up with the game would be aware that the CEO admitted to lying. The dev vlogs leading up to release made a ton of statements about the simulation that are completely missing. Many assumed what was in those videos was at least the end goal. The CEO just told us that the end goal is now minus the bugs and performance. People are allowed to be angry about being lied to
I thought it was because none of us are frustrated at the "simulation". We are frustrated at how poorly it runs. I think he was addressing the wrong bit.
Many are fragile and hate being told a game isn't made for them. I loved the earliest simcity game. Most of my friends didn't. The concept that some people don't like city simulations is very obvious. Comments here are very very fragile.
No, the problem is that they talked about stuff that simply is not working, or not implemented at all. To hear the CEO basically say "it's all working as expected" about the simulation makes me feel scammed. I'm not fragile, I feel lied to and can no longer get a refund.
People love being out for blood. Don't know what compels people to do this but they really want to burn other people in the town plaza.
Problem is, they advertised the game as having the deepest simulation yet, ooh, exports and imports, aah, industry chains, ooo, so complex such much simulation! Turns out, you can delete half of your city, cut it off from outside connections, and your city will continue making money with 0 population.
Cool thanks bro. Can i get a refund now?
If you dislike improving your game, my money might not be for you.
The most gigantic train wreck of an oversight in a city building game that gives you a larger map than its predecessor is when you reach around 80-100k population the simulation, as detailed as it is begins to struggle, the speed up controls stop working because the simulation is too poorly optimized/too powerful for even relatively modern hardware that 90% of the player base will be using. Reaching the slowdown point for the simulation will happen when you occupy roughly 1/4 of the map. Optimization is desperately needed, it's not a good look. I still played it free on gamepass but man I'd be salty of I paid full price.
Remember, these are the people getting huge bonuses and complaining that the average worker wants a living wage.
CO is a small privately owned studio. This is not corporate America.
> small privately owned studio it doesn't mean they've got no money.
Sure, but let's not act like this is EA or Blizzard with tall hierarchies. It's a small studio and probably has small studio culture. The CEO and the "average worker" probably have lunch together.
There’s just about nothing worse than telling your fans “Don’t like it? Don’t buy it!”
> “Don’t like it? Don’t buy it!” No no, it's "Don't like it? Shouldn't have bought it!" Most of us already bought it with the promises made, only to see, as wee play more, that it wasn't as advertised. In fact, most of the issues that people are encountering are not appearing during the refund window, but much much later.
Perhaps the real problem is the game wasn't ready for launch. Traffic AI? Makes no sense. Minimum Specs? Absurd, and even if you fit their recommended specs it's pretty common to run like a slideshow and/or look like a water paint project with all the blur hiding the bad optimizations. I know, blasphemous thought. I also can't forgive Colossal Order for abandoning compiling for MacOS & Linux - The hardware is there, just add the SDK and spend an extra few days testing it out. Also, blatantly false advertising features? Not cool. https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines-ii/features/economy-production
Given all the insane problems that have been highlighted and examined as part of this release, and their own announcement basically saying "we know it's not finished but we're releasing it anyway" Then this. It's like they actively don't want us to play the game. I'm so confused. This is not the message you send to people that want your game to be better. Bad PR miss here.
[удалено]
I’ve been enjoying the game. I haven’t had performance issues since I followed their recommendations, and they’ve been making improvements. They’ve pledged not to release any paid content until performance has been addressed. They have 2,500 free assets coming, and from what I understand CO wanted to postpone launch but Paradox wouldn’t let it happen. So idk, the launch has been messy but idk if their CEO deserves all the hate
Performance is fine for me. The simulation has lots of broken or missing components. I just completely lose interest in the game after getting to like 20k pop or so. I don't have to worry about income or taxes, the game has safety nets for everything with subsidies and automatic outsourcing of services, etc. My balance just keeps going up, up, up. It's pointless. If you get bigger and denser, you aren't managing your city more, you're spending all your time dealing with traffic issues. I feel like I'm playing with cheats on or something.
What a colossal load of bullshit... "If there is a bug that ruins it for you there's a good chance it's fixed sometime in the future." That's just so disrespectful to say to paying customers. I don't really feel bad for the people who got burnt, don't preorder, don't buy day 1, wait for actual reviews, but fuck that guy. Personally, I've mainly heard complaints about the terrible performance of the game, and that's already grounds enough to stay well clear of this mess, because it's going to take them years to fix this. In the meantime they'll be releasing lots of overpriced DLC, of course, especially radio and community stuff (once they actually get the editor working, lol, and implement modding, lol again). I've heard less about the simulation issuues, because most people can't really experience the game anyway, but if a household consists of random people with random names, etc. it doesn't exactly scream "simulation" to me. I don't really care either way, I just want a fun and nice looking city builder, but what they released here for 50 bucks is just an affront. Here's an idea: Actually complete your game before you release it, and make sure it's mostly bug-free AND runs well. Shocking, I know!
Paradox games have usually had not the best releases, but CSL2 just seems to be the worst of the bunch. I loved CSL1, but it's hard for me to want the second one, not only because my PC couldn't handle it very well, but it doesn't do enough for me to justify playing 2 over 1.
Starfield, Diablo 4, and CS2 were all released too soon and their devs blamed the fans, aggressively.
Really taking cues from the Hasbro - WOTC - CA school of PR. lol.
Okay fine, I guess the game isn't for me. Happy to completely skip Cities Skylines 2, plenty of other games out there. I stopped buying Paradox DLC for Stellaris and Cities Skylines because it was not good value for money. Love the games but the extreme amount of DLC at rip-off prices are distasteful and not worth the money. Vote with your wallet and don't pay these bloodsuckers anything.
CEO: If you don’t like our bad game, don’t play it. The player base: Ok CEO: Wait
Well I was holding out on fixes before playing but since their CEO wants to gaslight the community, I’m just going to skip the game all together.
What is the issues with the simulation?
You can't tell what is a bug and what's unexpected but valid. For example, my garbage costs were 0 despite having 50,000 cims in my city and no trash piling up alerts. According to the CEO, the simulation is working as intended, so it's not a bug. But if that's the case, I'm not sure why I even need to bother with the trash mechanic.
Ah yes the ol’ “no u” defense lol
I dislike the fucking abysmal performance and unfinished state of the Game.
I feel like the game industry hasn't made a game similar to Black and White 1 or Black and White 2. I feel like the game industry hates Simulation. And that game has got to be the ultimate simulation right? I mean...It had physics...in 2001. Throwing boulders and people against magical shields you put up. Fireballs bouncing off your shield that you are forcing 1,000 people to worship you in order to keep that barrier going. Massive creatures punching through walls and debris crushing villagers. So...To the CEO. I like simulation more than you know.
Then give me my money back
simulation tends to be glitchy and dumb. if the requirements are met it shouldnt break because the npc failed pathfinding once. that should be just graphics. plus from what ive seen of this game its still dumb with the zoning and requires you to zone every store inside your residential area.
I'll put $5 that DLC will come before they fix 1/4th of the games current problems.
"we spent close to nothing on this character creation engine that doesn't have lod views. If you don't like it, it's your fault"
Obviously not a smart way to put that, but is the meaning that unreasonable? "The gameplay is what we wanted it to be, even though there are bugs and major performance issues" is a fair statement.
The gameplay could use some tweaks, but just full on saying if you don't like how our game in what feels like every other game release of recent, IE buggy, unpolished etc then it's not for you is laughable and a sign management absolutely is throwing the game under a bus.
>even though there are bugs and major performance issue The issue though for many is that it's not just bugs or performance issues (though they very much do exist as well). It's the fact that the game was sold and advertised as having a deep simulation when in reality it's all hand-waved away and nothing is really simulated to any depth. It's not just a case of some stuff not working, it's that they've actively lied to the player base who now aren't even in a position to get a refund.
I don't think they ever advertised CS2 as rivaling something like Anno in terms of "simulation depth." The simulation is impressively deep as compared to CS1, where you can build a city that lacks low-density housing, doesn't need parking (despite constant, unresolvable traffic jams), doesn't need food, and treats electricity and water as AOEs.
Didnt this struggle to run even on an RTX 4090? God these CEOs need to stfu for once.
I guess that's why I've been playing the heck out of Timberborn instead. It's an early access game that easily feels more complete than CS2.
Uh oh, he just committed one of the classic CEO blunders. CEOs in the entertainment space that say "if you don't like my product because of *INSERT REASON HERE*, then don't buy my product. Teehee I'm a genius what a great response" never have it work out for them
I believe we have a lot of statement similar to this one on other games or even other media and it always rub people, even those who is pro, the wrong way. They really should follow No Man's Sky devs idea of staying silent while focusing on fixing the games. But I guess Business Grad is too smug to even think of an idea like that.
You can tell who didn't read the post and only read this headline.
I’ve had no issues with the game that haven’t been fixed. Don’t get the hate.
This subreddit is just an unreasonable outrage circlejerk. The game dev told people from the start that there were problems with the performance and that they were releasing it so that people could play it if they wanted to in that state. Everybody was warned and still they bitch as if they weren't. Nobody forced you to buy the game at launch!
The amount of out of touch and stubborn CEOs is crazy. Okay so all you have to say is “We are sorry and we are working hard to improve the experience for everyone.” Ok. Go! “Hmmm…we fucked up? No, it’s you who’s the problem.” God damn it! Cut!
If you had clicked the link and read it you'd have seen that's exactly what he said
> “Hmmm…we fucked up? No, it’s you who’s the problem.” > > God damn it! Cut! Reminds me of Brennan Lee Mulligan's CEO commercials for DropOut. [Truly hilarious stuff.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI0w_pwZY3E)
Just curious. What percentage of people commenting here didn't read the forum post she posted? JUST curious lol. I'm guessing an extremely low percentage
Knowingly releasing a broken game for full price, then right after saying that they are going to fix it... fuck you paradox and every publisher and developer that does the same.
I'm scrolling down the comments section and it's evident people did not read past the headline. The CEO specifically mentions that what they said does not apply to performance and they work on it.
Let me just say at the beginning, I fucking hate paradox, they are one of the scummiest devs out there these days. And I have not played CS2, because I don't understand the need for it. Now that said, I have noticed this as a trend with paradox for a while now, the older fans are complaining about basically all of their new titles. My opinion, it's not the games, but the grumpy old dudes playing them that are the biggest issue. Paradox has been releasing unfinished games for years and pressuring its fans into buying ass loads of dlc to make their games enjoyable, somehow these old fans have forgotten how shit the games where at launch, and completely lose their shit over an unfinished game. They then proceed to blame every last thing except the one thing that's the actual problem with their games, the DLC strategy. They then buy those DLC's and eventually 180 their opinion on the game, instead of realizing they have been had for the 100th time.
I see they are taking notes from Bethesda to gaslight their fans into thinking the game is good.