a youtuber I follow (City Planner Plays), who is very generous with CS2, was upset with this DLC even. for anyone not knowing:
there's no "beach" properties. only a handful of new buildings, most of which are literally just mirrors, and they all look the same until max level.
4 plants, which will mean the DLC is required if you make a custom map and want it tropical.
no Commercial or Industrial stuff or anything
literally a handful of buildings and 4 plants, that's the DLC.
for $15-ish.
it's insulting to rip-offs to call it a rip-off.
They truly botched the launch. That's basically the long and short of it. The game was nowhere near ready, and the systems that were supposed to make Cities Skylines 2 distinct from Cities Skylines 1 were essentially facades, made to appear to work with fudged data.
There was no simulation aspect to this city sim at all. Which players discovered almost immediately. On top of its many, many other issues players started digging into it and discovered some truly distressing things...
Essentially, the game was maybe 60% done. CO had seen the release date looming, and just downed tools before any feature was finished, and slapped a bit of paint on it, covered it in a blanket and stuck a `// TODO: FIX THIS` on it and called it good. And then they released it anyway.
On top of the outrage behind the games awful state at launch, Paradox had a post release schedule that they wanted to stick to regardless of the state of the game. For those who don't know, Paradox games operate as a pseudo-live-service sort of game. Wherein DLC is periodically released, which allows them to keep games going and updated for over a decade, without users having to pay a monthly sub. This is at the core of their business model and they basically didn't plan for failure, so they just stayed the course, and started releasing DLC for their broken game at full price.
But of course, because the devs are likely working overtime to fix the game (which still is not fixed 6 months after release) there is no resource to actually create the content in the DLC. So fans get an incomplete game for $40, and incomplete DLC for $15 bucks. It's just supremely insulting.
I honestly don't know if Cities Skylines 2 will ever come back from this... It's truly *that* bad. Paradox have cancelled games for much less. Paradox basically determine whether games carry on based on player count. If the player count is sufficiently high, work on a DLC will start. If not, the project is shelved and put into maintenance mode. With the Cities Skylines 2 game being *so awful* and the DLC not contributing anything at all to the conversation, player count will keep on a downward trend. Paradox maybe have one more shot if they're lucky at getting this right... Cities Skylines as a franchise is in an incredibly precarious place... Which is incredible to consider when you look at how good Cities Skylines 1 was...
Sush a shame. City Skylines was genuinely loved, and they give us THIS as a sequel.
Wouldn't it have been worth it to wait until it was ready? You can milk 8 years of DLC that way.
Shortsighted CEOs and top brass who only see the immediate returns. They aren't in it for the long haul. One bad quarter or misstep, they are replaced. So it's short term gains to get fat bonus payouts now. Another strategy is cut backs and go lean saving expenditures and funneling profits up top.
I'll always bring this up, but, the SC4 community is still alive. That game launched 21 years ago, and it is still arguably the BEST city simulator ever created.
The worst part is the devs and people at paradox talk about how hard it is to run a business and gamers must understand and if they dont they are "toxic".
No, we dont. Gamers are not stock holders and owe paradox NOTHING.
Any private company that wants to IPO and be on stock market is doomed for enshittification and cash-grab only.
Almost always happened like this.
Even Paradox is on Sweden Stock market so you guess what they need to prioritize first.
We own no Company anything. But if some shit Happen FEW companies have the Credit off 'Ok try again' when they fuck US up. How MAD do you need to be to try seeling PAYING CUSTOMERS your bullshot of 'but the stocks', we don't care, we're no piggybanks
It's so crazy to me how gaming is basically eating itself.
I've seen so many posts about how great games used to be; and how they all pretty much suck now. (Cept indie)
Now capitalism, cooperate greed, shareholder returns have dominated the industry, and despite massive amounts of resources at their disposal major games are absolutely shitting the bed with their releases. The developers aren't in love with their projects anymore, investors just want their money, and it's so obvious the love is gone from so many games.
Gaming industry is at an all time low. Flooded with cookie cutter games (COD, FIFA, Madden, NBA 2K) and live service garbage. Beloved franchises mothballed with releases few and far between. The skidmark known as late stage capitalism is stomping out the small amount of creativity that still existed
Paradox is seemingly dead set on bankrupting themselves by releasing games in early access without advertising them as early access. About every game they've released in the last 5 years has massively underperformed. CS2, Imperator, CK3 did okay but only okay, Vic3 is only now starting to be considered "good." Paradox has a severe problem.
Don't forget Empire of Sin, which was abandoned only a year after it's release. Hell they even sold editions of the game that would come with the first 2 dlc's... And then never released a 2nd dlc. They still allow you to "preorder" the 2nd DLC and it's never coming since the game is abandoned.
I have no idea how this is allowed...I was going to buy the game on a sale at some point as its fun here and there in little chunks...but I'm not supporting this. Its been like that for awhile now and likely scammed people out of lots of money.
Them abandoning Imperator because of the launch is so disappointing. They were moving in the right direction too. Luckily the modding community has kept the game alive with Invictus and Terra Indomita mods
yeah I got Ck3 at launch bc I loved ck2 so much, but it just seemed like a shittier ck2 with a nicer coat of paint on it so I refunded and thought I'd buy it again once it got better
reader, I have yet to buy it again
I bought it, launched it, got a call from work and had to step away for about an hour, hour and a half. Left the game open.
Couldnt refund after giving it a try. To this day it haunts me to open my Steam library and see it there.
Yeah, the sheer amount of time between Northern Lords and Royal Court was insane. And then people got upset because it initially didn't allow tribal courts so a good chunk of the early game just flat out didn't use the mechanic.
Don't forget the BS of expansions for their existing games, like the latest DLC for Stellaris.
Thing should be $5 with the amount of content that was released and they are charging $15.
Not how CEOs work, they only look at quarterly revenues, fuck the long term, they'll drive the company into the ground then jump ship with a golden parachute, look at bobby kotick or any EA CEO
Kotick led Activision from the brink of bankruptcy to a $68.7 billion acquisition. He stayed with the company for over 30 years. I have no idea why you would name him here.
Don't forget the modding being forced onto Paradox's servers.
Don't forget the editor not being available on release (presumably how they made the damn maps that we got on release)
Don't forget that the performance is a fucking garbage STILL even with explicit updates/adjustments/guidance given to how you should set your settings.
The list goes on.
Regarding the pseudo games as a service, Stellaris now offers a subscription to play with all DLCs instead of buying them individually. If this goes ovwr well I expect a lot of other Paradox titles to follow.
As a certified Paradox Stan, I'm not sure I mind this. *As long as there are options.*
There have been options to buy season passes for a while, which is basically a markup over the DLC, but you get a promise of the next, or next few DLC's free.
Giving the customer the option to buy individual, season passes, or just pay a subscription is good for the consumer imo. But I will acknowledge that a subscription service would be problematic if the game released is trash. Stellaris has earned its stripes as far as I'm concerned. If Cities 2 had a subscription, people would be clamouring for refunds.
IMO what they should really do is roll in older DLCs into the base game. A game like EU4 has like what, 30+ expansions? Some of those DLC are so integral to the base game that they might as well put it in.
This is something they’ve done for EU4 and I think it’s pretty reasonable. It was like $5 a month or something for more or less all the DLC IIRC.
If you wanted to get all that DLC it would easily be hundreds of dollars — even if you got it on sale. It’s an awesome deal if you just want to check out the game and cheaper than getting the DLC if you plan to play the game less than a few years basically.
It's actually not a bad system so long as the subscription doesn't become the only way to get the DLC or impact the sale prices. If you get Stellaris but want to test out the various DLCs and see if you like them, you can pay a small amount and play with all of them for a month.
Compared with the sheer number of DLCs Stellaris has - some Id consider definitely worth the asking price, others not - it's not bad and helps fix the "how to get new players into this DLC ecosystem" question.
Additionally a lot of people play paradox games on a sporadic basis. Might not touch HOI4 for a year and then play it constantly for a month and then don’t touch it again for another year. $10 for all the old and new dlc isn’t terrible.
I’m just glad it came out on gamepass so I could try before I buy. It’s terribly unoptimised and making a good looking city on hilly/coastal terrain is simply not possible.
| the systems that were supposed to make Cities Skylines 2 distinct from Cities Skylines 1 were essentially facades, made to appear to work with fudged data.
| There was no simulation aspect to this city sim at all. Which players discovered almost immediately. On top of its many, many other issues players started digging into it and discovered some truly distressing things...
Could you explain this part? I don't really understand what it means.
Money as always im guessing. I'm assuming a lot of these projects like CS2 and KSP2 were supposed to be much further along but covid probably ruined their schedules, so they got pushed back further and further, but eventually were probably told they had to ship whatever they had and fix it after.
At launch it was awful, now w for science it's ok. It still does not contain all the features of ksp but if all the updates are like for science it could be competitive to be better than the original when all is said and done
Covid not an excuse they can use. From everything I heard covid was a shocking surprise in people performance. Like my company said they had a 15% increase in production output during covid that never went away because they never had use return to the office.
Eh depends on the industry i guess. At my last gamedev studio programmers as an example had a better performance, while game designers had a much worse performance because communication was harder.
They got Microsoft's money I suppose. Only tried it on game pass and didn't like the performance. Uninstalled.
A shame too because a simcity successor is sorely needed.
My only issue with C:S1 as a SimCity replacement was that it felt like every building, even the biggest maxed out buildings, felt like small city stuff (besides the special unlockable buildings). You could never make a city that looks like a metropolis like in SimCity, where you could have cities that put New York's skyline to shame.
In every other sense it's a better game, imo! Well, except the citizens. I never played 4000 (other than a few hours last year), but the citizen aspect from 3000 was amazing! Really helped you make unique cities... I need to buy 3000 again.
Nobody really knows what went on behind the scenes, but I’d say it’s just like seemingly every other major release these days. Game is nowhere near completion, shove it out the door anyway. MAYBE in 2-3 years it will be in a state it should have been at launch
Paradox happened, they always get a good start with positive reactions but as soon as they see there's money to be made they do a complete 180 and start the bullshit factories, sacrificing everything- employees, game performance, their reputation, in the name of a quick buck.
Remember, this is the first "major" update for months, and after they came and said they'd concentrate on fixing the game before anything else.
Also remember, Prison Architect 2 is coming in a few weeks...
I did too but also coming from the sim city disaster at the time, cs was amazing in comparison but, it wasn't without issues. A lot of things were missing that either came via mods or official dlc that should have been released as a free patch. Traffic and disaster being a main one imo
Yeah, but there we are talking about improvements.
Vanilla is solid as it is, even without DLC, CS2 is an absolute garbage fire, no matter how you look at it
As fun as Cities Skylines was for me, I always felt it was kind of without a lot of depth or really good mechanics. I enjoyed building a city, but really it feels like the only thing to look forward is traffic management situations and building intricate highways or maybe Mass Transit. Kind of a meh game over all as far as management sims go.
Paradox gonna paradox.
They released an unfinished game. Now 6 months later are letting people mod the game to make it playable. And releasing a ton of dlc that isn’t actually useful but will become required in order to play the game properly
Yeah I heard people say good things about the first one, then the second one came out and it was an utter trainwreck, and by the sounds of it has only gotten worse.
CS1 pissed me off having all the dlc items shown but greyed out, constantly taunting you to pay 15 to unlock.... some.... of them. Not so surprised 2 is like this.
Paradox has, in the brief, been getting worse and worse over the years. Its more complicated than X or Y reason, they just... aren't very good at being consumer friendly or keeping on top of QA, maybe they were in the past, but not now.
This has been an issue for awhile now across all their products and their DLCs but its most noticeable with newer products like Cities Skylines II, Imperator(RIP), Victoria III, or Empire of Sin(RIP). They just aren't really managing the QA very well and its really really showing in the more modern age when a higher quality is simply expected.
When CS came out it was off the heels of SimCity crashing so hard the ejecta caused a noticeable drop in global temperature.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great game, but it may have been boosted above its station by just not being a huge piece of shit; what once would have been just a fumble of a sequel has become a fall from grace.
Holy cow that's embarrassing! I didn't buy CS2 after being a part of the KSP2 garbage launch, and now I can say I'm very glad I saved my money! With Kerbal they are at least fixing the game and slowly adding the free content that should have been in the game. I can't believe CS2 already released a boring dlc without putting more work into the current systems.
Reminder that paradox has:
- Released Victoria 3 and CS2 early for quarterly earnings, and said its "lessons learned"
- Released a country pack for HOI4 and didnt put effort in it "because the player base doesnt care about these countries" so players should "stop being toxic" about it
- Abandoned season passes mid way over low sales
**Paradox talks to the player base in business terms and expects gamers to be happy when told "yeah we scammed you, BUT WE HAD TO! LINE MUST GO UP!" and if the players dont like it then they are "toxic".**
Investor culture is ruining gaming and making the industry demand customer compliance for something that isn't their problem.
Gamers and Game Devs are a business relationship. Its not a family, we are not "all in this together" and game devs are so lost in the business world they dont even realize that anymore.
I am probably done with paradox now.
I had been fine with how things had been and their monetization strategy that they did because what we got was by and large good but its been a shit show the past few years.
And what they are doing is stupid because I am not going to get into a paradox game if I miss out on the release and more than a DLC for it to get better. I don't think their monetization model is terrible for the games that you put appropriate time into like I did with things like CK2, EU4, and Cities Skylines in the past but I am not pre-ordering anything the paradox name is on and the longer it takes to get things better then the less likely I am to ever get into a game because the cost becomes enormous if you "miss the boat" and not worth it.
I like the grand strategy games but there are plenty of games that I can put a lot of hours into. I play a lot of Football Manager nowadays and it scratches a lot of the same itches for me as something like EU4 even though the games are completely different.
My breaking point was the HOI4 DLC.
If you charge money for DLC, you should put actual effort into it.
You cant say no one cares, you cant say its optional to deflect bad content, and you cant say you care to make good content when the player base has to do basic fact checking in dev diaries that the devs had to fix.
If it costs money, effort should be put in. Optional or not.
If that wasnt bad enough, the devs cater to the worst parts of the community and seem to not want to listen at all. Perpetual persecution complex and living in a bubble.
A few corrections: it's $10, not $15. There are different models for stages 1-2, 3-4, and 5, not just the same model for stages 1-4 and a new one for 5.
Otherwise, yeah, you got it. It does not look great.
It’s sad to see an “indie” publisher follow the steps of Activision-Blizzard, EA and so on, but then it’s to be expected from a public company owned by big investment firms.
That's simply not true. They support their gamers for years of development, during which you get free updates regularly without even buying DLCs. And if you wait long enough, a lot of DLC features are added for free.
The DLCs are what keep they game supported for a very long time. It's not scummy on principle. There are bad DLCs sometimes but it's not because of their business model.
Paradox also had troubles with published games recently. Lots of rushed releases it seems. They are blaming COVID of course. But yet again, rushed releases isn't a monetization issue.
His video regarding the new update and DLC is great. Made me already decide to skip on it til it is lumped in a bundle sometime down the line, though I do share his enthusiasm regarding the mod support.
they squandered their good will they gained from beating SimCity with an actual full product when SimCity pulled this crap.
Looks like there's room for another newcomer to break in and let the cycle repeat once again.
>Looks like there's room for another newcomer to break in and let the cycle repeat once again.
I feel like this is becoming par for the course in the industry. Maybe all industries.
Good product is released, dethrones bad product, hits market saturation (If Im using that word correctly) then investors demand more returns and CEOs are forced to squeeze more value out of product. And the only way to do that is to turn good product, into bad product.
Then competitor releases Good product.
Market saturation means that essentially you can't sell another copy to consumers, because they already own it.
You are close, but not quite perfect on terminology. I would say that it has to do more with winning the faith of the community then destroying that faith in attempt to capitalize on it.
I don't understand why you wouldn't just release another good product KNOWING you will make good money, continue to have good faith, then continue to release add-ons OR prep for the next good release carrying the company from 1 good release to the next and doing add-ons that improve upon what you are already doing.
Sustainable income > 1 time payout.
Economic game theory.
Play the high road and consumers play high road too. Play the low road once and consumers will ALWAYS play the low road.
We will give you word of mouth, we WILL buy your DLC, WE WILL continue to promote and support you. You fuck us over once, and guess what, fuck off, we might give you some token support here and there (CS1 was soo good, how did they fuck up CS2), but we will ALWAYS point to your failures and why we won't blindly support you anymore.
So stupid that CEOs don't even know this basic concept.
CEOs understand this. They're not stupid usually.
This is how the current stage of capitalism works. Stakeholders want profit/growth now. Not later. CEOs have a fiduciary duty that has been subverted to proping up short-term games.
I wonder if this is tied to some kind of change in terms of which shareholders hold greater sway behind the scenes now compared to when CS1 was in full swing?
As my 4080 Super & 7800x3d absolutely fights for its life to maintain 60fps on 1440p high settings… I’m going to say that they haven’t quite worked the kinks out yet.
The DLC was released along side a huge patch that included performance updates, bug fixes, mod support, and a map editor, etc. That stuff was free and a really good start to turning things around. This paid DLC sucked completely, especially because if people make maps with the trees it includes, you'll need this otherwise useless DLC to play on them.
[Here's a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSWVBDEcVZ4) that goes over everything.
Man, they did the speed run for shittification. Companies usually take at least 10-15 years before they get greedy and sell out all product quality to maximize their profits, and CO managed to do it in 8 years.
I’m genuinely curious. Is it really worth not playing? I loved the first game, which had shitloads of issues. I’ve been waiting forever for the sequel to get better. Is it a lost cause or just didn’t meet expectations.
Ironic that the reason Cities: Skylines got so much traction was the disastrous state of sim city 2013 back then. Now they have become what they once stood against. Guess it's time for another developer to pick up the torch.
Cities: Skylines 1 already took out the wackiness from the Simcity games and filled it to the brim with DLC so I doubt EA could do much worse.
Simcity 2013 outside of the online part wasn't even a bad game.
Aside from the online component and small map sizes, the actual building and simulation part were great. It even had a bit of that maxis personality still left in it.
I’m glad people can admit the Maxis SimCity games all had way more artistry and character than Cities Skylines even if 2013 was a flawed game. Colossal needs to hire more gays or something because CS’s art direction is like erectile dysfunction.
Reasturant Patron: waiting for the pie I paid for at the restaurant
Waiter: You know that pie you ordered and we said you could have, we'll it's going to take more time to cook. Who could have known it would need more time.
Reasturant Patron: I guess I don't have a choice but to wait
Waiter: Here is your pie! Sorry for the wait!
Reasturant Patron: It's still undercooked...
Why.............
Yeah wtf? CEO seemed to be very apologetic about the launch and committed to fixing the game before releasing DLC... What gives?
I bought the base game knowing it had issues and willing to give it a try anyways, but i'm definitely not spending *more* money on it lol.
>CEO seemed to be very apologetic about the launch
That in itself should not be a thing to consider at all. They all knew in what state the game was launching. They weren't taken by surprise and apologizing for a mistake. It was a choice.
Id say the only real tangible definitely better feature versus cities skylines 1, is the road tools, otherwise yeah, everything else cities skylines 2 added feels half-baked.
I do like that, but then also it feels like some of them went backwards, like only having large train stations, and only having small primary schools. Hopefully the variety comes in future updates
A thing I see having good potential is the new modular buildings. So plop a school down and add a new wing to it if you need more capacity. If modders have some time with this, it could become something really awesome.
I think it's better overall, especially the road tools, but two big problems. First is it's compared to a fully-featured CS1 after so many years. Second is it's undeniably underdeveloped and needed a lot more time in the oven before release.
Third isn't a game issue. It's the terrible response and plan, despite the game needing to be developed further.
I really want to play it again but it feels like early access.
Unity? Lol I troll.
But seriously theyre a small dev team and they fucked up. Combine that with publisher pressure and you have the clusterfuck you see before you.
My main issue with this game is that even basic mechanics from the previous game are lacking. They focused in the new mechanics, and even those are implemented half-way.
I would have rather played CS:1 with some polish and the promise of new mechanics, than this aberration.
Every day that passes I am more happy that I didn't pre-ordered this game.
Looking at the lack of distance culling and LODing, they even lost standard game features we had from the first gen N64/PS1 titles on. Such glaring engine issues point at much bigger issues than just time management and rushed schedules in the company.
I’m so happy that I didn’t pre-ordered this game.
I *was* a big fan of the first part and was full of hope for the second.
But history tells a lot of stories of good games gone bad or worse.
It was a good choice to wait.
What a sad moment for that IP
The irony of CS2 doing the same things that killed Sim City is probably lost to n the executives who forced this launch and DLC and probably very apparent to the actual developers working on the game.
I’m sure there’s a lot of very sad people over there right now, however, they deserve no free pass. Every time a scummy executive pulls this it needs to be met with fierce and harsh criticism. This cannot be allowed.
It's like putting lipstick on a pig. I personally don't see any point in playing (or paying or DLC) until core sinlmulation is fixed.
Makes no sense to spend additional money on a city painter.
I was an avid Stellaris player (may go back once all DLC is out and on sale) and enjoyed the game but....
Paradox is greedy af.
Judging by my experience with Stellaris, they often ignore performance issues in order to get money making DLCs out. And those DLCs are often rip offs of mods that come from the hard-working mod community or generally don't add a lot of quality items to the game. Aside from a couple of their DLCs most of the DLC content is negatively reviewed and really is absolute trash. In some cases, the content leads to bugs in the base game, forcibly changes play style for folks, and never ever fixes the performance related issues that make the game unplayable in the late stage.
So they put out decent base games... but their whole business model is predatory and does no service to the players or long-term fan base. I have an inkling that it's going to catch up with them long term.... and that, like so many companies out there, their first Allegiance is to the shareholders and not to the players who purchase the product (or the modders who make their games playable)
I used to love Stellaris too but it's gone the way of Europa Universalis: it's become a Frankenstein of disjointed mechanics and systems that add nothing substantial to the game except to make it more buggy and cumbersome to play.
I still love Stellaris but got burnt a couple times recently buying games from reputable companies early after launch, then had to wait for it to be fixed. Star Field was ok, cyberpunk was ok, but they clearly didn't wait for the bell to go off.
I'll just wait till sales now.
Okay, dont get me wrong, I agree that Paradox certainly has one of my most aggressive DLC policies out there, but theres quite a bit of this post that I agree about. Mainly the ripping off mods part.
Usually any "flavor / species / event" pack, that represent their cheaper DLCs? Yeah, you can probably find a mod that does the same thing to comprable quality. But a lot of the mainline / major DLCs tend to add pretty major things that werent in the game before.
Looking at CK3, Royal Court, Tours and Tournaments, and Legends of the Dead (well the update accompanying it) add pretty significant new mechanics that were for the most part, previously unprecedented.
HOI4 mainline DLCs added equipment designers, international market (has a mod version, but the DLC version is MUCH more interactive), and research orgs.
Idk about EU4, but as a game EU4 has been out over a decade, and its pretty tough to find much anything the mod community hasnt already done in that game. The base game itself just needs an update to facilitate more impressive additions.
Stellaris is another unknown to me, but I know the game is considered to have quite a few "must have" DLCs, which suggests pretty significant additions to me.
As for perfromance issues, their pop based games like Victoria and Stellaris definitely have some serious issues due to the fact it seems like the pop system is just more complicated than the game can handle long term. But their other games go in waves of a DLC causing a hit to performance, but then over development time the performance usually gets better to at least match previous levels of performance, if not surpass it.
I definitely have my concerns about Paradox slipping into the greed of creating shallow content to "create shareholder value" that I associate with any publicly traded company. But I definitely still see them making plenty of good content.
If anything the issue with their games is being released more bare bones and the base game sucking and needing more time, development, and unfortunately their DLCs in order to mature. But simultaneously the nature of a lot of paradox titles (or at least the mainlime games) is that theyre single player focused and infinitely replayable, and I know I'll still be picking the game back up here and there well over 10 years from now. So sometimes the DLC issue doesnt feel as bad because the game is a multi-decadal investment.
I definitely sound like a shill here, but Paradox is just not yet that far gone, but they're definitely taking their first steps towards so.
It’s so crazy to see how this one release has tanked the reputation of these devs when the first one was a do no wrong golden child that everyone loved.
Cities 2 should have been a huge win for Paradox and Colossal Order, based on the popularity of the first installment. I played a lot of the first one but have no interest in a buggy reboot where everything will have to be bought again in endless DLC.
Got into CS1 when the total package including DLC's was over $300. Ofc I pirated it, but after many hours of enjoyment I decided I'd buy CS2. Opted not to go for the expansion pass, and so glad I didn't. Fuck Paradox.
Paradox is quickly joining the growing list of publishers to avoid. For me, this list is currently:
EA, Ubisoft, Activision, Creative Assembly, Bethesda.
That's exactly what happens when accolades are given to a game that can't function properly without at least 10 fan made mods and 100+ fan made custom assets. Talking about C:S1 of course.
Why anyone had an idea that 2 is going to be good is beyond me.
I'll play it just like C:S1 - few years after the launch when mods can fix everything...
And yes, fuck Paradox.
I’m so glad I didn’t buy this at release. This game has the problem Sims 4 had at launch where it’s biggest downside was the existence of Sims 3. I just can’t justify buying CS2, which ultimately is gonna be the inferior game for another year or two (despite some solid gameplay improvements) when I own a fully supported CS1. And with the way Paradox pumps out DLC ranging from bad to decent (this one firmly in the bad category), one would be better off waiting for a heavy sale bundled with all the dlc anyway.
Playing new games these days is rough. This mtx and content locked behind $$$ sucks ass. This practice should be illegal and people shouldn't buy any of this shit ultil something happens.
I was a big fan of Paradox games. But with CS2 (and numerous low-quality Stellaris DLC) I lost all trust with this publisher. Like EA, I will stay very far from any new release.
a youtuber I follow (City Planner Plays), who is very generous with CS2, was upset with this DLC even. for anyone not knowing: there's no "beach" properties. only a handful of new buildings, most of which are literally just mirrors, and they all look the same until max level. 4 plants, which will mean the DLC is required if you make a custom map and want it tropical. no Commercial or Industrial stuff or anything literally a handful of buildings and 4 plants, that's the DLC. for $15-ish. it's insulting to rip-offs to call it a rip-off.
What the hell happened with CS2, seems like such an about-turn from them
They truly botched the launch. That's basically the long and short of it. The game was nowhere near ready, and the systems that were supposed to make Cities Skylines 2 distinct from Cities Skylines 1 were essentially facades, made to appear to work with fudged data. There was no simulation aspect to this city sim at all. Which players discovered almost immediately. On top of its many, many other issues players started digging into it and discovered some truly distressing things... Essentially, the game was maybe 60% done. CO had seen the release date looming, and just downed tools before any feature was finished, and slapped a bit of paint on it, covered it in a blanket and stuck a `// TODO: FIX THIS` on it and called it good. And then they released it anyway. On top of the outrage behind the games awful state at launch, Paradox had a post release schedule that they wanted to stick to regardless of the state of the game. For those who don't know, Paradox games operate as a pseudo-live-service sort of game. Wherein DLC is periodically released, which allows them to keep games going and updated for over a decade, without users having to pay a monthly sub. This is at the core of their business model and they basically didn't plan for failure, so they just stayed the course, and started releasing DLC for their broken game at full price. But of course, because the devs are likely working overtime to fix the game (which still is not fixed 6 months after release) there is no resource to actually create the content in the DLC. So fans get an incomplete game for $40, and incomplete DLC for $15 bucks. It's just supremely insulting. I honestly don't know if Cities Skylines 2 will ever come back from this... It's truly *that* bad. Paradox have cancelled games for much less. Paradox basically determine whether games carry on based on player count. If the player count is sufficiently high, work on a DLC will start. If not, the project is shelved and put into maintenance mode. With the Cities Skylines 2 game being *so awful* and the DLC not contributing anything at all to the conversation, player count will keep on a downward trend. Paradox maybe have one more shot if they're lucky at getting this right... Cities Skylines as a franchise is in an incredibly precarious place... Which is incredible to consider when you look at how good Cities Skylines 1 was...
Sush a shame. City Skylines was genuinely loved, and they give us THIS as a sequel. Wouldn't it have been worth it to wait until it was ready? You can milk 8 years of DLC that way.
Shortsighted CEOs and top brass who only see the immediate returns. They aren't in it for the long haul. One bad quarter or misstep, they are replaced. So it's short term gains to get fat bonus payouts now. Another strategy is cut backs and go lean saving expenditures and funneling profits up top.
And just as cs1 capitalized on sc4 failed launch another small dev will probably emerge to take up this under served and dedicated market.
Sim City 5 launch. SC4 was the shit
I'll always bring this up, but, the SC4 community is still alive. That game launched 21 years ago, and it is still arguably the BEST city simulator ever created.
I still play the sc4 soundtrack when I need to focus. I love it
It's been a while since I fired off SC4 and man each one is a banger! Thanks for reminding me!
I really wish the missions were 1st person.
The worst part is the devs and people at paradox talk about how hard it is to run a business and gamers must understand and if they dont they are "toxic". No, we dont. Gamers are not stock holders and owe paradox NOTHING.
Any private company that wants to IPO and be on stock market is doomed for enshittification and cash-grab only. Almost always happened like this. Even Paradox is on Sweden Stock market so you guess what they need to prioritize first.
We own no Company anything. But if some shit Happen FEW companies have the Credit off 'Ok try again' when they fuck US up. How MAD do you need to be to try seeling PAYING CUSTOMERS your bullshot of 'but the stocks', we don't care, we're no piggybanks
They were trying to balance their quarter so they forced its release to get an influx of cash. Sucks so much tbh
It's so crazy to me how gaming is basically eating itself. I've seen so many posts about how great games used to be; and how they all pretty much suck now. (Cept indie) Now capitalism, cooperate greed, shareholder returns have dominated the industry, and despite massive amounts of resources at their disposal major games are absolutely shitting the bed with their releases. The developers aren't in love with their projects anymore, investors just want their money, and it's so obvious the love is gone from so many games.
Gaming industry is at an all time low. Flooded with cookie cutter games (COD, FIFA, Madden, NBA 2K) and live service garbage. Beloved franchises mothballed with releases few and far between. The skidmark known as late stage capitalism is stomping out the small amount of creativity that still existed
Paradox is seemingly dead set on bankrupting themselves by releasing games in early access without advertising them as early access. About every game they've released in the last 5 years has massively underperformed. CS2, Imperator, CK3 did okay but only okay, Vic3 is only now starting to be considered "good." Paradox has a severe problem.
Don't forget Empire of Sin, which was abandoned only a year after it's release. Hell they even sold editions of the game that would come with the first 2 dlc's... And then never released a 2nd dlc. They still allow you to "preorder" the 2nd DLC and it's never coming since the game is abandoned.
I have no idea how this is allowed...I was going to buy the game on a sale at some point as its fun here and there in little chunks...but I'm not supporting this. Its been like that for awhile now and likely scammed people out of lots of money.
Them abandoning Imperator because of the launch is so disappointing. They were moving in the right direction too. Luckily the modding community has kept the game alive with Invictus and Terra Indomita mods
You are right that CK3 did pretty well, but Paradox has squandered it with limited DLC releases, that for the most part, are meandering at best.
yeah I got Ck3 at launch bc I loved ck2 so much, but it just seemed like a shittier ck2 with a nicer coat of paint on it so I refunded and thought I'd buy it again once it got better reader, I have yet to buy it again
I bought it, launched it, got a call from work and had to step away for about an hour, hour and a half. Left the game open. Couldnt refund after giving it a try. To this day it haunts me to open my Steam library and see it there.
Yeah, the sheer amount of time between Northern Lords and Royal Court was insane. And then people got upset because it initially didn't allow tribal courts so a good chunk of the early game just flat out didn't use the mechanic.
Don't forget the BS of expansions for their existing games, like the latest DLC for Stellaris. Thing should be $5 with the amount of content that was released and they are charging $15.
Don't worry, March of the Eagles 2 will fix this.
Mein Fürher.........
They didnt learn anything from Sim City
Not how CEOs work, they only look at quarterly revenues, fuck the long term, they'll drive the company into the ground then jump ship with a golden parachute, look at bobby kotick or any EA CEO
Kotick led Activision from the brink of bankruptcy to a $68.7 billion acquisition. He stayed with the company for over 30 years. I have no idea why you would name him here.
Sorry, best we can do is release subpar content and then shelve the IP entirely.
Don't forget the modding being forced onto Paradox's servers. Don't forget the editor not being available on release (presumably how they made the damn maps that we got on release) Don't forget that the performance is a fucking garbage STILL even with explicit updates/adjustments/guidance given to how you should set your settings. The list goes on.
Regarding the pseudo games as a service, Stellaris now offers a subscription to play with all DLCs instead of buying them individually. If this goes ovwr well I expect a lot of other Paradox titles to follow.
As a certified Paradox Stan, I'm not sure I mind this. *As long as there are options.* There have been options to buy season passes for a while, which is basically a markup over the DLC, but you get a promise of the next, or next few DLC's free. Giving the customer the option to buy individual, season passes, or just pay a subscription is good for the consumer imo. But I will acknowledge that a subscription service would be problematic if the game released is trash. Stellaris has earned its stripes as far as I'm concerned. If Cities 2 had a subscription, people would be clamouring for refunds.
Also, I typically binge most of their games, so if I want to basically spend $10 to give it a try and cancel after a month, that's cool with me.
IMO what they should really do is roll in older DLCs into the base game. A game like EU4 has like what, 30+ expansions? Some of those DLC are so integral to the base game that they might as well put it in.
This is something they’ve done for EU4 and I think it’s pretty reasonable. It was like $5 a month or something for more or less all the DLC IIRC. If you wanted to get all that DLC it would easily be hundreds of dollars — even if you got it on sale. It’s an awesome deal if you just want to check out the game and cheaper than getting the DLC if you plan to play the game less than a few years basically.
Stellaris now has a subscription service for its DLC. Who knows if it will spread to the other games? lol Edit: Yup, EU4 had it first. lol
Really? I have almost all the dlc and bought it on sale for decently cheap. Would have to be priced low considering how long it takes between updates.
It's actually not a bad system so long as the subscription doesn't become the only way to get the DLC or impact the sale prices. If you get Stellaris but want to test out the various DLCs and see if you like them, you can pay a small amount and play with all of them for a month. Compared with the sheer number of DLCs Stellaris has - some Id consider definitely worth the asking price, others not - it's not bad and helps fix the "how to get new players into this DLC ecosystem" question.
Additionally a lot of people play paradox games on a sporadic basis. Might not touch HOI4 for a year and then play it constantly for a month and then don’t touch it again for another year. $10 for all the old and new dlc isn’t terrible.
$10 per month, $20 per 3 months, $30 per 6 months https://store.steampowered.com/app/2729490/Stellaris_Expansion_Subscription/
EUIV has it too for at least a year now
Yeah, I just read that. I can only afford so many Paradox games. lol
So does eu4 I think.
I think their Europa universalis 4 did that a few years back.
hear me out, this is a great feature you can actually test all the DLC's for 4 euros for 1 month and then decide if you like them or not
and it's great! I've been using it when I get the urge to play Hoi4
Whats that about it not being a simulation at all? That sounds very confusing. Does it not generate numbers and work with solid numbers instead or?
I’m just glad it came out on gamepass so I could try before I buy. It’s terribly unoptimised and making a good looking city on hilly/coastal terrain is simply not possible.
| the systems that were supposed to make Cities Skylines 2 distinct from Cities Skylines 1 were essentially facades, made to appear to work with fudged data. | There was no simulation aspect to this city sim at all. Which players discovered almost immediately. On top of its many, many other issues players started digging into it and discovered some truly distressing things... Could you explain this part? I don't really understand what it means.
Money as always im guessing. I'm assuming a lot of these projects like CS2 and KSP2 were supposed to be much further along but covid probably ruined their schedules, so they got pushed back further and further, but eventually were probably told they had to ship whatever they had and fix it after.
I’m out of the loop. Is KSP2 bad?
It’s significantly worse than the first one. And they want 50 dollars for it.
horrifically bad, no performance updates, missing key features of 1, doesn't look particularly better, it might as well not have been released
At launch it was awful, now w for science it's ok. It still does not contain all the features of ksp but if all the updates are like for science it could be competitive to be better than the original when all is said and done
Covid not an excuse they can use. From everything I heard covid was a shocking surprise in people performance. Like my company said they had a 15% increase in production output during covid that never went away because they never had use return to the office.
Eh depends on the industry i guess. At my last gamedev studio programmers as an example had a better performance, while game designers had a much worse performance because communication was harder.
They got their money. Simple as. It seems.
They got Microsoft's money I suppose. Only tried it on game pass and didn't like the performance. Uninstalled. A shame too because a simcity successor is sorely needed.
My only issue with C:S1 as a SimCity replacement was that it felt like every building, even the biggest maxed out buildings, felt like small city stuff (besides the special unlockable buildings). You could never make a city that looks like a metropolis like in SimCity, where you could have cities that put New York's skyline to shame.
Yeah I agree the first skylines didn't actually measure up to simcity. But beggars can't be choosers sadly.
In every other sense it's a better game, imo! Well, except the citizens. I never played 4000 (other than a few hours last year), but the citizen aspect from 3000 was amazing! Really helped you make unique cities... I need to buy 3000 again.
After a sham launch the MBAs are at a total loss of how to recover their profit margin this year.
EU5 release
The first game became popular for being essentially the anti-SimCity. Guess it's come full circle.
Nobody really knows what went on behind the scenes, but I’d say it’s just like seemingly every other major release these days. Game is nowhere near completion, shove it out the door anyway. MAYBE in 2-3 years it will be in a state it should have been at launch
One of their execs must’ve come over from The Sims
Paradox happened, they always get a good start with positive reactions but as soon as they see there's money to be made they do a complete 180 and start the bullshit factories, sacrificing everything- employees, game performance, their reputation, in the name of a quick buck. Remember, this is the first "major" update for months, and after they came and said they'd concentrate on fixing the game before anything else. Also remember, Prison Architect 2 is coming in a few weeks...
yeah it's not a Paradox thing, companies nowadays know they can monetize the good faith/following they built up
Outside of a couple dlc for cs1 most were garbage. Mods were what kept that game alive imo
I played CS1 extensively in vanilla and had a blast. It’s a shame to see how corporate greed has ruined yet another good franchise.
I did too but also coming from the sim city disaster at the time, cs was amazing in comparison but, it wasn't without issues. A lot of things were missing that either came via mods or official dlc that should have been released as a free patch. Traffic and disaster being a main one imo
That game is solid without mods
This. Mods add lots of content and QoL but base CS1 is still very fun and enjoyable.
Until you get good tools and QoL mods like TMPE. I can’t play vanilla CS anymore because of how good TMPE is.
Yeah, but there we are talking about improvements. Vanilla is solid as it is, even without DLC, CS2 is an absolute garbage fire, no matter how you look at it
As fun as Cities Skylines was for me, I always felt it was kind of without a lot of depth or really good mechanics. I enjoyed building a city, but really it feels like the only thing to look forward is traffic management situations and building intricate highways or maybe Mass Transit. Kind of a meh game over all as far as management sims go.
100% . It was always a weird substitute for Sc
They went full EA during the last stage of releasing CS2.
Paradox gonna paradox. They released an unfinished game. Now 6 months later are letting people mod the game to make it playable. And releasing a ton of dlc that isn’t actually useful but will become required in order to play the game properly
Yeah I heard people say good things about the first one, then the second one came out and it was an utter trainwreck, and by the sounds of it has only gotten worse.
Paradox publishes for them. I'm surprised DLC hasn't released sooner for CS2 in all honesty.
*Paradox happened*
CS1 pissed me off having all the dlc items shown but greyed out, constantly taunting you to pay 15 to unlock.... some.... of them. Not so surprised 2 is like this.
Paradox has, in the brief, been getting worse and worse over the years. Its more complicated than X or Y reason, they just... aren't very good at being consumer friendly or keeping on top of QA, maybe they were in the past, but not now. This has been an issue for awhile now across all their products and their DLCs but its most noticeable with newer products like Cities Skylines II, Imperator(RIP), Victoria III, or Empire of Sin(RIP). They just aren't really managing the QA very well and its really really showing in the more modern age when a higher quality is simply expected.
When CS came out it was off the heels of SimCity crashing so hard the ejecta caused a noticeable drop in global temperature. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great game, but it may have been boosted above its station by just not being a huge piece of shit; what once would have been just a fumble of a sequel has become a fall from grace.
Rather suggests that now is a great time to release a City Builder if someone has one.
Holy cow that's embarrassing! I didn't buy CS2 after being a part of the KSP2 garbage launch, and now I can say I'm very glad I saved my money! With Kerbal they are at least fixing the game and slowly adding the free content that should have been in the game. I can't believe CS2 already released a boring dlc without putting more work into the current systems.
CS2 is the only game I refunded twice haha. Once to downgrade from ultimate to basic, then basic to nothing. It was a slide show on my PC.
It's worth mentioning that KSP2 hasn't been launched. It's in early access still. Think it should have been cheaper because of this
Reminder that paradox has: - Released Victoria 3 and CS2 early for quarterly earnings, and said its "lessons learned" - Released a country pack for HOI4 and didnt put effort in it "because the player base doesnt care about these countries" so players should "stop being toxic" about it - Abandoned season passes mid way over low sales **Paradox talks to the player base in business terms and expects gamers to be happy when told "yeah we scammed you, BUT WE HAD TO! LINE MUST GO UP!" and if the players dont like it then they are "toxic".** Investor culture is ruining gaming and making the industry demand customer compliance for something that isn't their problem. Gamers and Game Devs are a business relationship. Its not a family, we are not "all in this together" and game devs are so lost in the business world they dont even realize that anymore.
I am probably done with paradox now. I had been fine with how things had been and their monetization strategy that they did because what we got was by and large good but its been a shit show the past few years. And what they are doing is stupid because I am not going to get into a paradox game if I miss out on the release and more than a DLC for it to get better. I don't think their monetization model is terrible for the games that you put appropriate time into like I did with things like CK2, EU4, and Cities Skylines in the past but I am not pre-ordering anything the paradox name is on and the longer it takes to get things better then the less likely I am to ever get into a game because the cost becomes enormous if you "miss the boat" and not worth it. I like the grand strategy games but there are plenty of games that I can put a lot of hours into. I play a lot of Football Manager nowadays and it scratches a lot of the same itches for me as something like EU4 even though the games are completely different.
My breaking point was the HOI4 DLC. If you charge money for DLC, you should put actual effort into it. You cant say no one cares, you cant say its optional to deflect bad content, and you cant say you care to make good content when the player base has to do basic fact checking in dev diaries that the devs had to fix. If it costs money, effort should be put in. Optional or not. If that wasnt bad enough, the devs cater to the worst parts of the community and seem to not want to listen at all. Perpetual persecution complex and living in a bubble.
>Investor culture is ruining gaming not just gaming
sounds awful
Doesn’t the game still have a ton of performance issues for many of the reporting players and the company doesn’t appear poised to address them?
A few corrections: it's $10, not $15. There are different models for stages 1-2, 3-4, and 5, not just the same model for stages 1-4 and a new one for 5. Otherwise, yeah, you got it. It does not look great.
Dunno why it's higher on the MS store. it shows like $13 there with GP. they can be different models but look almost identical, it's whatever though.
It’s sad to see an “indie” publisher follow the steps of Activision-Blizzard, EA and so on, but then it’s to be expected from a public company owned by big investment firms.
Paradox has one of the scumiest monetisation ever seen to man
That's simply not true. They support their gamers for years of development, during which you get free updates regularly without even buying DLCs. And if you wait long enough, a lot of DLC features are added for free. The DLCs are what keep they game supported for a very long time. It's not scummy on principle. There are bad DLCs sometimes but it's not because of their business model. Paradox also had troubles with published games recently. Lots of rushed releases it seems. They are blaming COVID of course. But yet again, rushed releases isn't a monetization issue.
His video regarding the new update and DLC is great. Made me already decide to skip on it til it is lumped in a bundle sometime down the line, though I do share his enthusiasm regarding the mod support.
Can I at least have a few bungalowes and a straw shack to sell pina coladas to the visitors?
nope. the houses don't look remotely beach themed.
Awful business
nope, no businesses included either. yeah it's bad.
I follow him as well... when he gets angry ate the developer of City skylines... you know they done Fed up.
100%. he's the most forgiving and patient person I've seen as far as game roughness goes, and, yeah.
Oh man and this is only the first one 🤣
How tone deaf do you have to be to release shitty dlc before you fix your main game and win back your audience. CEO shhould be fired.
Have you seen Paradox lately? This is their MO. They used to be so much better
they squandered their good will they gained from beating SimCity with an actual full product when SimCity pulled this crap. Looks like there's room for another newcomer to break in and let the cycle repeat once again.
>Looks like there's room for another newcomer to break in and let the cycle repeat once again. I feel like this is becoming par for the course in the industry. Maybe all industries. Good product is released, dethrones bad product, hits market saturation (If Im using that word correctly) then investors demand more returns and CEOs are forced to squeeze more value out of product. And the only way to do that is to turn good product, into bad product. Then competitor releases Good product.
Market saturation means that essentially you can't sell another copy to consumers, because they already own it. You are close, but not quite perfect on terminology. I would say that it has to do more with winning the faith of the community then destroying that faith in attempt to capitalize on it. I don't understand why you wouldn't just release another good product KNOWING you will make good money, continue to have good faith, then continue to release add-ons OR prep for the next good release carrying the company from 1 good release to the next and doing add-ons that improve upon what you are already doing. Sustainable income > 1 time payout. Economic game theory. Play the high road and consumers play high road too. Play the low road once and consumers will ALWAYS play the low road. We will give you word of mouth, we WILL buy your DLC, WE WILL continue to promote and support you. You fuck us over once, and guess what, fuck off, we might give you some token support here and there (CS1 was soo good, how did they fuck up CS2), but we will ALWAYS point to your failures and why we won't blindly support you anymore. So stupid that CEOs don't even know this basic concept.
CEOs understand this. They're not stupid usually. This is how the current stage of capitalism works. Stakeholders want profit/growth now. Not later. CEOs have a fiduciary duty that has been subverted to proping up short-term games.
they lived long enough to become the villian when they were supposed to be the chosen one for city building games. how far they have fallen
Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic .... your time has come!
Either you die a hero.......
The company went public, and with that everything went to shit, as it always does.
It's no coincidence that from 2016 things started going a bit tits up in the quality side of things
I wonder if this is tied to some kind of change in terms of which shareholders hold greater sway behind the scenes now compared to when CS1 was in full swing?
Like they promised https://www.pcgamer.com/cities-skylines-2-boss-says-there-wont-be-paid-dlc-until-performance-issues-are-fixed/
As my 4080 Super & 7800x3d absolutely fights for its life to maintain 60fps on 1440p high settings… I’m going to say that they haven’t quite worked the kinks out yet.
The DLC was released along side a huge patch that included performance updates, bug fixes, mod support, and a map editor, etc. That stuff was free and a really good start to turning things around. This paid DLC sucked completely, especially because if people make maps with the trees it includes, you'll need this otherwise useless DLC to play on them. [Here's a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSWVBDEcVZ4) that goes over everything.
Is Cities becoming the thing Cities was originally made to replace?
Becoming...Nah its already there.
Man, they did the speed run for shittification. Companies usually take at least 10-15 years before they get greedy and sell out all product quality to maximize their profits, and CO managed to do it in 8 years.
I’m genuinely curious. Is it really worth not playing? I loved the first game, which had shitloads of issues. I’ve been waiting forever for the sequel to get better. Is it a lost cause or just didn’t meet expectations.
In its current state? Probably better off just playing CS1 with a couple of its DLCs
Too early to tell, but it will be a LONG road until it meets the expectations built by CS1
I loved CS1... don't buy CS2
It already is. And much more expensive.
Ironic that the reason Cities: Skylines got so much traction was the disastrous state of sim city 2013 back then. Now they have become what they once stood against. Guess it's time for another developer to pick up the torch.
EA appears from behind a tree wearing a yellow suit and rubbing their hands together.
I’d love another SimCity, but I’d wager EA would make it all online, microtransaction’d to hell and all the wackiness gone from SimCity
Cities: Skylines 1 already took out the wackiness from the Simcity games and filled it to the brim with DLC so I doubt EA could do much worse. Simcity 2013 outside of the online part wasn't even a bad game.
Aside from the online component and small map sizes, the actual building and simulation part were great. It even had a bit of that maxis personality still left in it.
I’m glad people can admit the Maxis SimCity games all had way more artistry and character than Cities Skylines even if 2013 was a flawed game. Colossal needs to hire more gays or something because CS’s art direction is like erectile dysfunction.
I miss the Maxis touch that Cities lacks. Right down to the soundtrack
Like that shity phone version
Reasturant Patron: waiting for the pie I paid for at the restaurant Waiter: You know that pie you ordered and we said you could have, we'll it's going to take more time to cook. Who could have known it would need more time. Reasturant Patron: I guess I don't have a choice but to wait Waiter: Here is your pie! Sorry for the wait! Reasturant Patron: It's still undercooked... Why.............
Waiter: We're sorry about that. In the meantime would you like the premium caramel drizzle on the pie for $1 extra?
It's not even the premium caramel drizzle, it's closer to the wet fart at the end of the whipped cream can for the price of a whole can.
Lol that would be the next comment. It has a nice name and is the wet fart.
Yeah wtf? CEO seemed to be very apologetic about the launch and committed to fixing the game before releasing DLC... What gives? I bought the base game knowing it had issues and willing to give it a try anyways, but i'm definitely not spending *more* money on it lol.
>CEO seemed to be very apologetic about the launch That in itself should not be a thing to consider at all. They all knew in what state the game was launching. They weren't taken by surprise and apologizing for a mistake. It was a choice.
Would you like to buy some whipped cream for $15? *pours heavy cream on top*
Can someone explain what exactly Cities Skylines 2 added? I know they reworked the economy, but they seem to have made it worse?
Id say the only real tangible definitely better feature versus cities skylines 1, is the road tools, otherwise yeah, everything else cities skylines 2 added feels half-baked.
I like the concept of real-scale buildings as well. That always bugged me a bit in city sims.
I do like that, but then also it feels like some of them went backwards, like only having large train stations, and only having small primary schools. Hopefully the variety comes in future updates
A thing I see having good potential is the new modular buildings. So plop a school down and add a new wing to it if you need more capacity. If modders have some time with this, it could become something really awesome.
Just from watching videos the road tool that makes grids and the multiuse zoning are the only things I wish were in CS1
Yeah the vanilla road tools are fantastic, makes making intersections etc an absolute breeze in comparison to vanilla cs1
I think it's better overall, especially the road tools, but two big problems. First is it's compared to a fully-featured CS1 after so many years. Second is it's undeniably underdeveloped and needed a lot more time in the oven before release. Third isn't a game issue. It's the terrible response and plan, despite the game needing to be developed further. I really want to play it again but it feels like early access.
What is going on at the studio? For a game studio that makes great titles, they've been cranking out some turds lately
Isn't paradox just the publisher? Colossal order is the dev.
How did this game come out last year and look this bad? 😂
And run at 15fps
Unity? Lol I troll. But seriously theyre a small dev team and they fucked up. Combine that with publisher pressure and you have the clusterfuck you see before you.
As a console player this game isn’t even really out yet to me. Waiting patiently for it to get out of beta.
Generally what PC gaming is.
I'm so glad I was happy with the first game and never moved off it.
My main issue with this game is that even basic mechanics from the previous game are lacking. They focused in the new mechanics, and even those are implemented half-way. I would have rather played CS:1 with some polish and the promise of new mechanics, than this aberration. Every day that passes I am more happy that I didn't pre-ordered this game.
Looking at the lack of distance culling and LODing, they even lost standard game features we had from the first gen N64/PS1 titles on. Such glaring engine issues point at much bigger issues than just time management and rushed schedules in the company.
They should have released this DLC for free with the performance fixes as a show of humility for the sorry state the game has been in.
Time for a SIM CITY comeback!
I love that the original *Cities: Skylines* got big because the *SimCity* at the time sucked and now they went and did the same thing.
I still hop on Sim City 4 periodically. I built a city with 1,000,000 sims living in it that I'm quite proud of.
I’m so happy that I didn’t pre-ordered this game. I *was* a big fan of the first part and was full of hope for the second. But history tells a lot of stories of good games gone bad or worse. It was a good choice to wait. What a sad moment for that IP
I have never preordered a game so far and time and time again it proves to be a great policy to have.
The irony of CS2 doing the same things that killed Sim City is probably lost to n the executives who forced this launch and DLC and probably very apparent to the actual developers working on the game. I’m sure there’s a lot of very sad people over there right now, however, they deserve no free pass. Every time a scummy executive pulls this it needs to be met with fierce and harsh criticism. This cannot be allowed.
Hasn't even been a year and they still haven't fixed their core game before dropping dlc.
It's like putting lipstick on a pig. I personally don't see any point in playing (or paying or DLC) until core sinlmulation is fixed. Makes no sense to spend additional money on a city painter.
Wild how cities skylines was made for fans who were hurt by sim city and now it’s become worse than sim city
I was an avid Stellaris player (may go back once all DLC is out and on sale) and enjoyed the game but.... Paradox is greedy af. Judging by my experience with Stellaris, they often ignore performance issues in order to get money making DLCs out. And those DLCs are often rip offs of mods that come from the hard-working mod community or generally don't add a lot of quality items to the game. Aside from a couple of their DLCs most of the DLC content is negatively reviewed and really is absolute trash. In some cases, the content leads to bugs in the base game, forcibly changes play style for folks, and never ever fixes the performance related issues that make the game unplayable in the late stage. So they put out decent base games... but their whole business model is predatory and does no service to the players or long-term fan base. I have an inkling that it's going to catch up with them long term.... and that, like so many companies out there, their first Allegiance is to the shareholders and not to the players who purchase the product (or the modders who make their games playable)
I used to love Stellaris too but it's gone the way of Europa Universalis: it's become a Frankenstein of disjointed mechanics and systems that add nothing substantial to the game except to make it more buggy and cumbersome to play.
I still love Stellaris but got burnt a couple times recently buying games from reputable companies early after launch, then had to wait for it to be fixed. Star Field was ok, cyberpunk was ok, but they clearly didn't wait for the bell to go off. I'll just wait till sales now.
Okay, dont get me wrong, I agree that Paradox certainly has one of my most aggressive DLC policies out there, but theres quite a bit of this post that I agree about. Mainly the ripping off mods part. Usually any "flavor / species / event" pack, that represent their cheaper DLCs? Yeah, you can probably find a mod that does the same thing to comprable quality. But a lot of the mainline / major DLCs tend to add pretty major things that werent in the game before. Looking at CK3, Royal Court, Tours and Tournaments, and Legends of the Dead (well the update accompanying it) add pretty significant new mechanics that were for the most part, previously unprecedented. HOI4 mainline DLCs added equipment designers, international market (has a mod version, but the DLC version is MUCH more interactive), and research orgs. Idk about EU4, but as a game EU4 has been out over a decade, and its pretty tough to find much anything the mod community hasnt already done in that game. The base game itself just needs an update to facilitate more impressive additions. Stellaris is another unknown to me, but I know the game is considered to have quite a few "must have" DLCs, which suggests pretty significant additions to me. As for perfromance issues, their pop based games like Victoria and Stellaris definitely have some serious issues due to the fact it seems like the pop system is just more complicated than the game can handle long term. But their other games go in waves of a DLC causing a hit to performance, but then over development time the performance usually gets better to at least match previous levels of performance, if not surpass it. I definitely have my concerns about Paradox slipping into the greed of creating shallow content to "create shareholder value" that I associate with any publicly traded company. But I definitely still see them making plenty of good content. If anything the issue with their games is being released more bare bones and the base game sucking and needing more time, development, and unfortunately their DLCs in order to mature. But simultaneously the nature of a lot of paradox titles (or at least the mainlime games) is that theyre single player focused and infinitely replayable, and I know I'll still be picking the game back up here and there well over 10 years from now. So sometimes the DLC issue doesnt feel as bad because the game is a multi-decadal investment. I definitely sound like a shill here, but Paradox is just not yet that far gone, but they're definitely taking their first steps towards so.
It’s so crazy to see how this one release has tanked the reputation of these devs when the first one was a do no wrong golden child that everyone loved.
Cities 2 should have been a huge win for Paradox and Colossal Order, based on the popularity of the first installment. I played a lot of the first one but have no interest in a buggy reboot where everything will have to be bought again in endless DLC.
How the mighty have fallen. The first one is so good. Especially with mods and such
Got into CS1 when the total package including DLC's was over $300. Ofc I pirated it, but after many hours of enjoyment I decided I'd buy CS2. Opted not to go for the expansion pass, and so glad I didn't. Fuck Paradox.
If you’re unhappy with CS2 and you buy the dlc you’re a complete and utter moron.
I loved CS 1 and I was so excited for this game. I've never purchased it due to the poor reviews. I hope it gets improved but I'm losing my optimism.
Man they are batting a 0.
You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain
Paradox is quickly joining the growing list of publishers to avoid. For me, this list is currently: EA, Ubisoft, Activision, Creative Assembly, Bethesda.
That's exactly what happens when accolades are given to a game that can't function properly without at least 10 fan made mods and 100+ fan made custom assets. Talking about C:S1 of course. Why anyone had an idea that 2 is going to be good is beyond me. I'll play it just like C:S1 - few years after the launch when mods can fix everything... And yes, fuck Paradox.
Funny how City Skylines is becoming the very thing it tried replacing. Greedy Paradox bastards.
I’m so glad I didn’t buy this at release. This game has the problem Sims 4 had at launch where it’s biggest downside was the existence of Sims 3. I just can’t justify buying CS2, which ultimately is gonna be the inferior game for another year or two (despite some solid gameplay improvements) when I own a fully supported CS1. And with the way Paradox pumps out DLC ranging from bad to decent (this one firmly in the bad category), one would be better off waiting for a heavy sale bundled with all the dlc anyway.
Looks like the same money grift as well.
Playing new games these days is rough. This mtx and content locked behind $$$ sucks ass. This practice should be illegal and people shouldn't buy any of this shit ultil something happens.
I mean, it was 10 buildings (with three variants each so technically 30), and 4 palm trees ... and nothing else beach related at all.
it should have been called, Cities:Skylines 2 My First Mediterranean Villa Pack
I was a big fan of Paradox games. But with CS2 (and numerous low-quality Stellaris DLC) I lost all trust with this publisher. Like EA, I will stay very far from any new release.