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CO Word of the Week #1

Hi Everyone, welcome to our little weekly update, CO Word of the Week, where we share what Colossal Order is doing right now, and what you can expect for Cities: Skylines II as a result.

CO Word of the Week originally ran from March 2016 until early 2018 and was mainly written by me, Mariina, the CEO of Colossal Order, but we also had some other team members as guest authors every once in a while so I can’t take all the credit. Now, in the name of transparency, it’s time to dig this old concept from the toolbox and start sharing!

To write this very first Word of the Week (please feel free to suggest an abbreviation) I needed to go back to the source. I searched the Cities: Skylines forum for the original posts and was extremely happy to find the very first one:

co_martsu said:
Hi everyone! I'm Mariina or better known here on the forum as co_martsu. I am the ceo of Colossal Order, the developer of Cities: Skylines. We work together with our publisher Paradox Interactive to bringing you the best city builder ever made and the quest toward that goal continues.

Big part of developing the game further is communication with the players and the community. We have been active in reading the feedback but haven't had as much time to comment as we would have hoped for. Therefore the idea is that I will be writing an update on a semiregular basis on what Colossal Order is up to so that you players can hear first hand what is going on in the development of Cities: Skylines.
Disclaimer: Some things are secret and I will try not to get assassinated by the Paradox marketing department so we'll keep this strictly to the points I'm allowed to talk about. I understand you probably don't value my life as much as I do, but we'll make this work, I'm sure!
Click to expand...

The mission remains the same: We want to bring you the best city builder ever made! And as I have grown older I am no longer afraid of the marketing department so no holding back.

As you may have noticed Cities: Skylines II was released last week and we are happy the game is finally out! However, the launch was overshadowed by technical issues which caused disappointment, and rightfully so. We are happy to see that many players do enjoy the game and for those who are currently unable to play, I want you to know that we are working on a number of fixes and improvements to address your reports.

The first hotfix patch was quick to roll out on Steam last week and this morning the patch for Microsoft Store and Game Pass finally made it live. We will have to see how we can speed up the patching process so we don’t have players waiting for these important fixes longer than necessary. The patch included optimization for LODs, or Level of Detail, which means that the game renders fewer details when the camera is far away from the object. Finding optimal LOD levels is a balancing act between visual fidelity and performance, and we’ll be addressing this in future patches. Yes, including the characters and their teeth! We also identified some offenders such as the depth of field, global illumination, and fog, all now tweaked for improved performance. Additionally, the patch included fixes for a few crash bugs and stutter cases.

This week we will continue to go through the forum reports and fix the most urgent issues. The work on the assets and LODs continues, but it’s a task spanning over a longer period of time as there are quite a few different types of assets needing special attention. On top of the performance work, we are looking into gameplay issues you have reported. We have fixes being tested for education, where college/university eligibility is not shown correctly in the UI, and for trading, where it looks like the citizens are not consuming all different commercial types correctly resulting in not enough customers for the local business. We are currently investigating a garbage problem and it seems that some citizens are abandoning their dogs resulting in a huge dog pack just stranded in the city. Not cool, citizens, not cool at all.

The performance improvements and bug fixes take top priority until we have reached a level we are satisfied with. All the performance improvements will benefit the development of the console platforms and we hope to bring the game to Xbox Series X/S and PS5 as soon as possible!

I want to thank everyone for the reports, they’re very helpful and we appreciate you taking the time to provide us with the information we need. We will go through all of the reports as fast as we can. If you are experiencing a crash or performance issue please create a report on our support forum found here:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forums/cities-skylines-2-bug-reports.1162/

I will be back next week to give you an update on how the work is progressing. Until then, thank you to everyone for the patience and support, it means a lot to us.

Sincerely,
Mariina
 
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Thank you for stepping up and being transparent about the situation.

While we appreciate the efforts, it would be nice for the community if we could get more concrete details regarding patch release schedules.

Are we looking at weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly patches? It would give us something to look forward to and set our expectations right.
 
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I see that you acknowledged the fact that the citizens are not consuming all different commercial types, but does that also include the fact that cities can survive without any commercial at all?

In the current state of the game I can build a big city, isolate it, bulldoze every commercial building and citizens will thrive and be happy despite having no place where to do their groceries.
 
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The dog thing would actually be cool if it was an intended mechanic with some sort of ramifications, typical dog behavior like begging, and options to mitigate via dog catchers or let them be according to your preference. In real life large stray populations famously becomes phenotypically similar within a couple generations, which is probably beyond scope for a city game to simulate, but of there were to be an animal DLC, stray behavior would be the number one thing I'd want to see — cats would be number two, but non-pet animal like rats, squirrels, and pigeons would be three and they'd use basically the same system as strays.

Tl;dr: DLC pls
 
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Thank you for the transparency! Always appreciated.

Any word on Paradox Mods integration? I know there's high priority fixes but the earlier people can start contributing to the mod scene the better! Personally I'm excited for the region mod pack
 
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image_2023-11-01_145216704.png


If we are talking about bugs. Think this would be one. For some reason (cant pinpoint what I built) my water/sewage usages went from ~100k to 4mil.

Tried loading older saves but could not find one old enough where everything was normal already by the time i noticed it.

Problem is its so much use that I had to build 50 water pumps just to manage water, and its cheaper to send sewage outside than buy treatment plants (would have to place like 20-30 of them. Mind you i had it already in 70k city now its nearly 100k.
 
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I'll just pop in to answer a few questions

Diego S Albuquerque said:
Thank you for stepping up and being transparent about the situation.

While we appreciate the efforts, it would be nice for the community if we could get more concrete details regarding patch release schedules.

Are we looking at weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly patches? It would give us something to look forward to and set our expectations right.
Click to expand...
We aim to release the patches as soon as we have significant improvements and the patches have gone through sufficient testing to release. We'd rather be able to release one as soon as possible than save it for later when it's scheduled to come out. The goal with these weekly updates is to give you a better indication of when you can expect the next one.

Herr B. said:
Please comment on the bugs(?) in the economic simulation. There seem to be extreme issues, as seen here.
Click to expand...
I commented on the thread here, but as a quick FYI we are aware of some issues affecting this as well as investigating the reports we have received.

Haby001 said:
Thank you for the transparency! Always appreciated.

Any word on Paradox Mods integration? I know there's high priority fixes but the earlier people can start contributing to the mod scene the better! Personally I'm excited for the region mod pack
Click to expand...
No update yet, but we can share that the modding beta group, which consists of code modders, asset creators, and map makers, has early access to modding information to give them a head start on populating Paradox Mods.
 
Khebeln said:
View attachment 1039784

If we are talking about bugs. Think this would be one. For some reason (cant pinpoint what I built) my water/sewage usages went from ~100k to 4mil.

Tried loading older saves but could not find one old enough where everything was normal already by the time i noticed it.

Problem is its so much use that I had to build 50 water pumps just to manage water, and its cheaper to send sewage outside than buy treatment plants (would have to place like 20-30 of them. Mind you i had it already in 70k city now its nearly 100k.
Click to expand...
If you haven't already, please make sure to report this on the support forum, so we can look into this. Reports here are hard to keep track of and find in the future, so all issues should always be reported on the dedicated forum.
forum.paradoxplaza.com

Cities: Skylines 2 - Bug Reports

forum.paradoxplaza.com forum.paradoxplaza.com
 
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I know that in a moment I will be eaten by the community, because I saw what happened with similar comments and I am aware of my words. I would also like to apologize for my English, I'm still learning it and it's not perfect.
To the point.
I respect Collossal Order and I love Cities Skylines. I'll probably love CSII over time. But respect for the creators and love for their games should not blind me from criticizing their mistakes, which in the long run could lead to disaster.
Optimization lies and whimpers. Everyone knows it. Especially you developers. I'm glad that you are aware of the problems and that you know what is currently the biggest problem with this game. But then you should deal with this problem even more. I'm not talking about crunch here, because it's the worst thing that happens to games and their creators. Crunch literally burns you from the inside.
Finally admit that this is early access. There's a reason why you didn't release CSII on consoles, because you know that in the current situation, consoles would be out of breath.
How to deal with this problem? Delay the release. I say this consciously, after testing the game on two PCs. One with RTX 3060, the other with RTX 4080. I understand that some players couldn't stand the delay, but look at this game and say "do we want games like this at launch?" Some players can play, while others have a problem with fps in the menu itself.
Please don't cover yourself with words (developers and fans alike) "DLSS WILL BE INTRODUCED AND WILL WORK ON EVERY PC WITH DLSS SUPPORT". DLSS should not be the solution to such problems! This should be a supporting tool, not the main solution. Anyone want more fps? Okay! But it's not like an average PC is forced to use this technology to have to run this game on an empty map at 20fps.
I'm not saying that CSII should run at 240fps on my old, dusty GTX 750TI, because this game is a simulator and it is known to consume its own resources. A stable 30 fps should be the minimum, as the developers informed us.
I'm surprised that the local community (I'm not talking about everyone) tolerates such a move. That he even defends. I saw this in the comments. Someone criticized the game for its condition and he has the right to do so, and people ate him alive "because how can our beloved game be insulted!"
Recently, a lot of creators have been getting their butts kicked for what they do with games. Gollum (it was crap from the beginning), Starfield, Jedi Survivor, Redfall, The Last of US PC, Forspoken. Even Baldur's Gate 3 (and I love this game) got a third ACT. And that's not to mention Creative Assembly's Total War and their recent behavior and line "The right to discuss is a privilege, not an entitlement acquired through gaming." Creators and players alike should respect each other at all times. Also this one.
I do not want and do not intend to encourage any hatred here, because that is not what this is about. Just for reflection.
 
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11900k limit in 1x speed is +- 260k people in the city. After that number i can't even keep 1x simulation speed.

I don't care about fps, but if the games can't run the simulation core with only 260k, you will never run good on consoles with more than 50-100k people.

To create the game with "the future hardware in mind" it's a contraddiction with make the game on consoles which are hardware locked.
 
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co_avanya said:
I'll just pop in to answer a few questions


We aim to release the patches as soon as we have significant improvements and the patches have gone through sufficient testing to release. We'd rather be able to release one as soon as possible than save it for later when it's scheduled to come out. The goal with these weekly updates is to give you a better indication of when you can expect the next one.


I commented on the thread here, but as a quick FYI we are aware of some issues affecting this as well as investigating the reports we have received.


No update yet, but we can share that the modding beta group, which consists of code modders, asset creators, and map makers, has early access to modding information to give them a head start on populating Paradox Mods.
Click to expand...


Thank you for the clarification on the patch release strategy. I understand the need for thorough testing and the desire to release meaningful improvements. With that said, based on your words, do you have a better indication of when the next patch might be available?
 
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co_avanya said:
We aim to release the patches as soon as we have significant improvements and the patches have gone through sufficient testing to release. We'd rather be able to release one as soon as possible than save it for later when it's scheduled to come out. The goal with these weekly updates is to give you a better indication of when you can expect the next one.
Click to expand...

Does this mean due to how things work with Microsoft store/Game Pass that Steam will always get patches first? Or will you delay the steam updates to release at the same time as Microsoft store/Game Pass?
 
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Artax Nighteven said:
Why delay steam updates? It's not our fault if microsoft is slow.
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I am not saying to delay steam updates. I am just looking for information on whether that will be what happens or not. Then I can make an informed decision on how I would like to proceed with the game.

Ultimately I would like for the Game Pass version to be released sooner. Waiting a day longer wouldn't be a big problem but 1 week is not really good enough for a game that needs so many patches.
 
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