CO Word of the Week #12

[AGayRobot420]

Funny, I don't seem to remember many people asking about the 'economy' of the game last week. In fact, a quick search shows only 6 posts that mention the economy. It seems like you are actively ignoring the majority of honest critiques and legitimate questions and instead focusing only on the positive feedback, like people being happy that you're attempting to communicate with us still. But this? This isn't cutting it.

I don't think any one of us were asking how interest on a loan works. That's basic stuff. We want answers to the real questions, like what are your plans for dlc and future development, why are you not going to be releasing more bug fixes without bundling it with paid dlc, why havent we gotten content we already paid for, can we get a refund because weve been waiting for 4 months for it, what are your thoughts on popular content creators making videos saying they're going to go back to cs1, how do hotels work, when are mods and assets coming, why did you sell us an unfinished early access game and refuse to acknowledge any of our complaints, etc, etc... Does anyone there actually read the forum posts? Or do you just get someone to filter out all the negative stuff and only show you meaningles praise?

Again, thanks for this entirely useless information about how an economy works. It doesn't show or work in game, but it's definitely information about stuff...

I urge everyone to speak with their wallets and not give any more money to this game until some of the issues have been actually addressed. They are pushing essential, basic features to the back so they can get the console version released as soon as possible so they can make money by selling the game to more people, even though it's still a broken, unfinished mess.

 

[MohawkWolfo98]

At release, the economy did not meet the quality standard we strive for and I apologize for the frustration this has caused.

If you knew the quality of the economy was not up to scratch why did u a) release it and b) say before release that your game met expectations?

From the Steam Store as of writing, the blurb states:
“Raise a city from the ground up and transform it into a thriving metropolis with the most realistic city builder ever. Push your creativity and problem-solving to build on a scale you've never experienced. With deep simulation and a living economy, this is world-building without limits.”

Would you agree that this is now considered deceptive marketing since the economy is not the quality standard you strive for? The economy is literally the backbone of any city builder.; it’s mind blowing that this was allowed to be released.

 

[mikeny]

Thank you for all the positive feedback on last week’s word! It’s great to hear you like the format so we’ll stick to it for the time being. While the tech team is hard at work implementing the code modding support, we can focus on the economy in Cities: Skylines II in today's WoW. At release, the economy did not meet the quality standard we strive for and I apologize for the frustration this has caused. In the post-release patches, we have included fixes for issues present in the economy implementation, but some still remain, and we’re working on resolving those thanks to your reports. The fixes will focus on the underlying system as well as how the information is presented in the game to achieve more clarity that helps you understand the economy better. We’ve received many questions about what parts of the game’s economy are working as designed and what we’re working to change, so let's dive in!

What is the impact of the specialized industries on the local economy?
Providing raw materials locally means companies using them do not have to import them as much from outside connections (or at all), which leads to those industries being more prosperous. Importing from outside connections is a more expensive choice than local availability, so local resources benefit companies’ bottom line. The design team will look into how to make it more clear which companies are importing or exporting, and how you can affect that.

Why are some services free to import while others have a fee?
One part of the Budget panel’s Expenses is the cost of service trade. Only part of the services are charged when traded, and these are electricity, water and sewage. Other services do not cost you anything to import. But why? The cost of these traded services comes in the form of time, as it will take a long time for them to arrive at their destination. This increases the negative effects on the city. For example, a citizen waiting for an ambulance for a long time increases their probability of dying when their health is low for a long time. Additionally, when a citizen is waiting for treatment, they can’t go to work, giving the company a penalty to its Efficiency.

How is “profitability” determined?
In the game, the company's profitability is calculated from the company's revenue and expenses, which include employee salary, resource buying, tax-paying, and daily production. The profitability indicates the possibility for a positive income, and it varies between 0 and 255. When there is no income for the company, and it still needs to pay a lot of expenses, the profitability can become 0. But it doesn't mean the company currently doesn't have any money, but rather predicts the value of revenue or loss of money. Issues like the lack of employees and the lack of input or output resources can cause profitability to fluctuate. When it comes to the profitability of the company, the calculations may change after we evaluate the complexity of the entire economy based on the feedback we’ve received.

What does the monthly balance show?
The game’s user interface includes tools for you to observe and control the overall economy of the city. The monthly balance in the City Economy panel’s Budget tab counts the current Revenues and Expenses together. It shows what is currently the estimated amount of money the city will gain or lose in the current month. Note that one day cycle in the game equals one month! The City Economy has been affected by bugs that caused the expected income (or loss) to not match the actual monthly income of the city, and we’re working to resolve the remaining issues with industrial tax reaching high values for no apparent reason.

What does “9% interest” on a loan mean? How is it calculated?
It will add a Loan Interest to the Budget panel, which is a monthly fee that will apply to your city’s money. It is calculated by the formula LoanRemainAmount * InterestRate every month, and as the remaining loan amount decreases each month, so will the amount your city pays.

We have also received questions about Land Value, so I want to share a quick update about the current state of both the Land Value and Demand systems, as both will have changes and fixes included in the next patch to the game. The Land Value system has been worked on for a while now, with the first improvements available in patch 1.0.19f1, and the demand system will be improved to make it easier to understand. Fixing major systems like the land value takes a bit more time than the usual bug fixes because these elements are connected to the other parts of the game’s economy system. Our goal with these changes is to make the systems more user-friendly to work with so, for example, it’s easier to understand what causes the high rents and how you can affect it. We’ll go over the land value and demand system improvements after all the changes are in, so stay tuned for that.

That’s it for this week. Have a lovely one until next time!

Sincerely,
Mariina

Awesome. Great read while I'm home with Covid!

 

[Infixo]

How is “profitability” determined?
In the game, the company's profitability is calculated from the company's revenue and expenses, which include employee salary, resource buying, tax-paying, and daily production. The profitability indicates the possibility for a positive income, and it varies between 0 and 255. When there is no income for the company, and it still needs to pay a lot of expenses, the profitability can become 0. But it doesn't mean the company currently doesn't have any money, but rather predicts the value of revenue or loss of money. Issues like the lack of employees and the lack of input or output resources can cause profitability to fluctuate. When it comes to the profitability of the company, the calculations may change after we evaluate the complexity of the entire economy based on the feedback we’ve received.

Accidentaly, I was digging into profitability logic only yesterday. This description is very shallow and inprecise, I am really starting to wonder if you actually know what you implemented and how it works. As a test, maybe you should try to explain why oh why virtually ALL companies have maximum profitability of 255? You can easily check it in DeveloperInfo. Really, I was browsing my city of 65k, that has like 500 companies, and I wasn't able to find a single company with profitability less than 255.

So, let's look into the code. m_Profitability is kept in Profitability component and updated in 3 jobs, each for a specific type if company (commercial, industry and extractor). For simplicity let's focus on industrial i.e. IndustrialAISystem.CompanyAITickJob.
The formula is simple:
m_Profitability = (byte)math.min(255f, math.max(0f, 127f + (num - (float)rent) / (float)(8 * building.m_LotSize.x * building.m_LotSize.y)))
num is DailyProfit, rent is well Rent.
So, yes technically Profitability depends on many factors you mentioned, but this formula clearly shows that its philosphy and meaning is different. It basically says if you earn more than rent or not... <127 means less then Rent, >127 means more than Rent.

Then, you should probably also explain why is Profitability actually calculated at all? We have a number that noone knows what it means and where is it actually used?
And here is the funny part - not counting UI and serialization, there is literally one place where it is used - PropertyRenterSystem.PayRentJob. It influences how much Rent is paid.
(int)((float)num3 * (1f + (float)(math.max(spawnableBuildingData.m_Level - 1, 0) * m_Profitabilities[renter].m_Profitability) / 255f));

This formula basically makes companies pay more Rent that is actually required. Why? Idk. But this is one of the reasons of quick leveling and Land Value problems. Company with profitability 0 (which means it cannot even earn Rent) still pays that Rent, ok, but company with Profitability 255 pays N-times more. So, the higher level, the more rent it pays thus speeding up leveling even more.

You have a lot of work ahead of you, redesign and proper balancing of this stuff is certainly not easy. Good luck.

 

[tweety80]

It seems like you are actively ignoring the majority of honest critiques and legitimate questions and instead focusing only on the positive feedback

Maybe it has to do with how humans work.

CO developed a game for years. Of course, they are proud of all the small and big things. The game compared to CS1 improved a lot.
A human trait is to ignore negative things if the tendency is going down and you may focus on the good things if you are responsible for something. Why? This way you can mitigate fear and uncertainty. You just hope the best and wait for a future change into something better. -> The strategy of avoidance.

A lot of companies failed because of that or got into serious trouble. We know that CO's CEO only wants to hear good things... what would you do as a manager? You would report the good things. What would you do as a dev? Maybe you report good and bad things but it does not matter because your "red" light will turn "orange" at the first manager level and "green" when it reaches the top.

Nothing that we can fix...

 

[scunthorpe]

Hey! I just wanted to say thanks for the latest Word of the Week and for giving us some insight into the game mechanics. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the feedback from content creators and the difficulties in understanding certain complaints. Overall, I think the game is fantastic and has a bright future ahead of it, but I do feel that the feedback mechanisms could use some improvement, particularly with CS2 being a slower simulation to show the success/failure of any decisions made in planning and design.

I'm excited to hear that you're planning on introducing more information into the gameplay, which will provide us with a better understanding of notifications such as high rent. Currently, I'm a bit confused as to why it only appears in low land value areas, while others claim it's due to high land value. Anything you can do to clarify the causation will go a long way!

As a casual gamer, I'm not really interested in micromanaging industry and supply chains, but I totally get that others might be excited about that aspect of the game. On the other hand, I'm not a sandbox player either and would love there to be a purpose to what I build next and how my city expands. It could be in the form of missions or scenarios that are triggered under certain circumstances, like high unemployment or high import costs, so it can give me heads up to preventing my city falling into a death spiral.

 

[JustMePatrick]

I intend to. But I still paid for a finished game, and feel the need to register my grievances and exhortations with the developer as they only seem to see positive comments. I don’t think that CO’s PR has helped in any way, but rather only poured gasoline on the fire. This post was more neutral than some in the past, but it still doesn’t address the frustration of the community in any meaningful way, and shows me that management at least still isn’t listening meaningfully either.

It’s cool if people are enjoying the game, but I don’t think it’s right for them to go out of their way to antagonize people who are disappointed and angry about it. I’m not here to antagonize anyone who enjoys it, so please don’t antagonize me.

100% Agree Lee (It's Lee!). I've made similar comments on Reddit myself. I still think the higher ups wanted the game released no matter what. I would have paid for Early Access knowing there were issues. It's no good to release a major game with major underlying issues. It reflects badly on Colossal Order as a whole unfortunately. It's unfortunate the talented devs weren't given more time to polished what will eventually be a great game (I Hope!).

 

[cdub8d]

If you knew the quality of the economy was not up to scratch why did u a) release it and b) say before release that your game met expectations?

From the Steam Store as of writing, the blurb states:
“Raise a city from the ground up and transform it into a thriving metropolis with the most realistic city builder ever. Push your creativity and problem-solving to build on a scale you've never experienced. With deep simulation and a living economy, this is world-building without limits.”

Would you agree that this is now considered deceptive marketing since the economy is not the quality standard you strive for? The economy is literally the backbone of any city builder.; it’s mind blowing that this was allowed to be released.

They also said post release that the game was fine and the simulation just might not be for you. Seems like a bit of lying if you ask me.

 

[humorpalanta]

So, what if no resources are produced locally?
Nothing. Literally it has no impact, at all. Then what is the point of this mechanic?

Same with profitability of the companies. If their profitability dumps, they should go out of business. Also they should only upgrade if they can financially afford it.
Plus they should monitor what resources are produced locally and then change their business according to that. Otherwise it doesn't matter what you produce.

So in the beginning they should make easy to create stuff, like bakery stuff from grain imported, you know, basics. Then when you open up other resources locally, they would start making other stuff. Otherwise, why bother?

Plus, it is kinda obvious that the cost of trade is out of balance. It should be more expensive to import resources because right now you can grow unlimited amount of businesses...

Now let's talk about Day/Month. It is showing us that 1 day passes with hours and we have rush our and such. But according to the game it was 1 month? So in 1 month there is rush hour twice? This doesn't make sense!!!! Pls ffs decide finally what you want because it does not make sense.

Then let's talk about Grants. The current system doesn't work. You literally cannot go bankcrupt at this point. Change this BS because then there is no challenge, no fun. Maybe have some rules, like you can get a grant every year from the government and you have an option of either receiving an immediate payment or 6 month installments and then you have to give up something for it... But it just doesn't make sense now...

 

[VentureIndustries]

> The fixes will focus on the underlying system as well as how the information is presented in the game to achieve more clarity that helps you understand the economy better.

> The design team will look into how to make it more clear which companies are importing or exporting, and how you can affect that.

> The Land Value system has been worked on for a while now, with the first improvements available in patch 1.0.19f1, and the demand system will be improved to make it easier to understand.

This is really good to see. A lot of issues in the current game come from not having enough information to make decisions that can lead to working on improvements and fixing issues.

Thanks, and looking forward to the changes!

 

[Potoroo]

Accidentaly, I was digging into profitability logic only yesterday. This description is very shallow and inprecise, I am really starting to wonder if you actually know what you implemented and how it works. As a test, maybe you should try to explain why oh why virtually ALL companies have maximum profitability of 255? You can easily check it in DeveloperInfo. Really, I was browsing my city of 65k, that has like 500 companies, and I wasn't able to find a single company with profitability less than 255.

So, let's look into the code. m_Profitability is kept in Profitability component and updated in 3 jobs, each for a specific type if company (commercial, industry and extractor). For simplicity let's focus on industrial i.e. IndustrialAISystem.CompanyAITickJob.
The formula is simple:
m_Profitability = (byte)math.min(255f, math.max(0f, 127f + (num - (float)rent) / (float)(8 * building.m_LotSize.x * building.m_LotSize.y)))
num is DailyProfit, rent is well Rent.
So, yes technically Profitability depends on many factors you mentioned, but this formula clearly shows that its philosphy and meaning is different. It basically says if you earn more than rent or not... <127 means less then Rent, >127 means more than Rent.

Then, you should probably also explain why is Profitability actually calculated at all? We have a number that noone knows what it means and where is it actually used?
And here is the funny part - not counting UI and serialization, there is literally one place where it is used - PropertyRenterSystem.PayRentJob. It influences how much Rent is paid.
(int)((float)num3 * (1f + (float)(math.max(spawnableBuildingData.m_Level - 1, 0) * m_Profitabilities[renter].m_Profitability) / 255f));

This formula basically makes companies pay more Rent that is actually required. Why? Idk. But this is one of the reasons of quick leveling and Land Value problems. Company with profitability 0 (which means it cannot even earn Rent) still pays that Rent, ok, but company with Profitability 255 pays N-times more. So, the higher level, the more rent it pays thus speeding up leveling even more.

You have a lot of work ahead of you, redesign and proper balancing of this stuff is certainly not easy. Good luck.

Where do those code snippets come from?

 

[cestes]

At release, the economy did not meet the quality standard we strive for and I apologize for the frustration this has caused.

"The simulation itself, that’s something we know how to make. That is the core of our skills. We make simulation games." Mariina from the Journey to Launch video (starts around 6:26 if you want to hear for yourself).

I guess I would expect the simulation to be pretty great, given that's what CO does... yet, it still seems pretty unclear, broken and lacking transparency.

 

[Infixo]

Where do those code snippets come from?

Game code. There are classes and job names in the post.

 

[Potoroo]

Game code. There are classes and job names in the post.

That doesn't answer the question. How do users get access to game code?

 

[pjpe]

That doesn't answer the question. How do users get access to game code?

The game comes with dll files that contain the game's code, originally written in C#.

Using a decompiler tool like ILSpy, you can decompile the code and read it for yourself. Some of the variable numbers don't transfer over, but it's still pretty readable. This is how modders have been able to make code mods before an official API.

 

[Otis85402]

I'm not sure what I expected in this WOTW but somehow it didn't even meet my already quite low expectations.

I feel like if you actually read the forums and what people are saying about the game you would spend more time addressing the concerns and issues people bring up regularly there. Check the threads I've posted recently for some examples. I'm posting about gameplay mechanic issues and those posts do generate some helpful discussion but only from other players and from mod creators. So why aren't you present in any of those threads? Why is nobody from CO engaging in a meaningful way with the community to help us learn to play this game better?

It's pretty sad when mod programmers post in this forum about these gameplay mechanics that you suggest are "way too complex" when the mod creators quite clearly seem to know how to address at least some of these issues. I am super grateful they are here because the devs sure aren't. Mod programmers are offering help all over this forum. That's embarrassing, CO. Not one of you participate in these threads to offer insight.

 

[Tullaris]

The negativity warriors are out again and the only way to get upvotes is getting on the hysterical train. They want full acknowledgement and apologies for the hardships they have had to endure while playing the game. They want the CEO of CO to go to Canossa and repent. Perhaps some self flagellation to satisfy the masses?

CO is working on the game. I'm sure they got the message by now. If you can't bear it currently wait a month or 6 and come back then.

 

[ThomasK_7]

to all players:
You want more information in the game about the economy, understandable.

With this information you will realize that your actions are irrelevant to the outcome of the simulation.
Your only adjustment screw is the tax system and it does almost nothing.
An (imperfect) fully automated economic simulation was created and the human player's intervention was reduced to a minimum so as not to unbalance the fully automated simulation. This is the game design.

 

[ZEROibis]

We still need public transit fixed so it is not grid locking the city.

 

[AGayRobot420]

The negativity warriors are out again and the only way to get upvotes is getting on the hysterical train. They want full acknowledgement and apologies for the hardships they have had to endure while playing the game. They want the CEO of CO to go to Canossa and repent. Perhaps some self flagellation to satisfy the masses?

CO is working on the game. I'm sure they got the message by now. If you can't bear it currently wait a month or 6 and come back then.

If you go to walmart and are looking to buy a blender, and you find one that advertises all these great features, like a juicer and an ice maker built in and 5 different speeds, and then you buy it and take it home and then you open the box and find a blender with no blade so it can't do any of the stuff it advertised, and a note that says "we're working hard to get the blade finished and shipped out to you as soon as possible, please wait 6 more months," what do you do? Do you sit patiently and wait, or do you go back to Walmart, get a refund, and buy a blender that works, even if it has less features? If the note said 'the blade is coming in a few days' and you waited and waited only to be told a week later that it's going to be months actually, and the time frame for returning your useless blender was up, would you not be mad?