CO Word of the Week #12

[sonicmyst]

You have not discussed the elephants in the room:

1. The very limited natural resources that even if we utilize all of them (i.e. farms) will n9t be enough for the whole population and thus results in importation.
2. The randomness of the industries, commercial and office buildings and what resources they will need. Is the game really designed for us to check each spawned building if we want those types? Remember how in one street we have rows of gas stations?

 

[tom_mai78101]

That all reads very much like the company's income is determined by a random number generator?
In addition, it very much reads like companies cannot make losses, just not make any income at all.

From what I'm reading it, that's only the income portion, so it's always going to be a non-negative number between 0 and 255. Loss (or cost) is determined by another value, which I'm assuming is ranging between 0 and 255. So, the total would be income - cost = [0..255] - [0..255] = sum.

If this "income" value being 0 to 255 is not represented as such, then I don't get why an unsigned byte is used here.

 

[JouleThief29]

Thank you, I’m really enjoying the new WotW contents!

For the next WotW, I’m hoping for some insights into the AI and traffic simulation. The issue highlighted in this video is quote concerning:

Public transit has 0 influence by imperatur

We should take imperatur's video with a grain of salt, the comparison shot shows the exact same video clip (e.g. ships in both and same position at 2:15), it's not a before and after shot, but a before and before shot. I'm not saying he intentionally manipulated the comparison. I like this content and assume that it is simply a editing mistake, but the shot does definitely not show the real before and after. Also, he himself mentioned why there is possibly no effect: time. As there are no poket cars in CSII people need to buy one before they could use it and that maybe takes more time than a month? There are also further ideas on multiple sub reddit posts explaining why this may be less of an issues than first assumed. Nevertheless, an insight from the devs on his video would be interesting.

 

[Civ5rako]

From what I'm reading it, that's only the income portion, so it's always going to be a non-negative number between 0 and 255. Losses (or cost) is determined by another value, which I'm assuming is ranging between 0 and 255. So, the total would be income - cost = [0..255] - [0..255] = sum.

I am reading it differently, based on this section: "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."

So, first expenses are deducted from revenues and that operation will give you "profitability". The higher the value of "profitability" is the higher will be the chances (!!!) for a positive income.

I have to be very honest. To me this doesn't read much like an economic simulation. That is making use of random numbers - and that would literally mean deceiving the player as he can never be sure which effect his actions will have at the end.
Add to this last week's "explanation" about what households are looking for (the ominous general "resources") and we see a picture in which there aren't any real demands, in turn rendering your composition of industry pointless.

Frankly, the more information we get the less I am inclined to spend any money at all for this game.
Even a super sale with 80% off doesn't sound attractive given that we have to assume the fundamental elements of the game to be either completely broken (after four months they claim to still not knowing the reason for missing synchronization between truck spawning and deduction of ressources from a company's stock for crying out loud!) or those elements are just meaningless from a player's perspective.

 

[Boro']

Thank you for this interesting word of the week

 

[Moppi-chu]

Very very appalling state of affairs we're having here. Not even a reference on the heavy issues looming over the game and/or community. It's giving Ba Sing Se levels...

I don't even know where we're going on from here.

 

[TwentyFumble]

So.. specialized industry affects profitability of companies because they can source raw materials internally instead of importing from far away.
Okay, it makes sense so far.

But what does profitability actually do?
What happens if profitability is low? What's the impact on the city?
And what if it's high? How does the city benefit from that?
Why should I care?

This information is completely missing from the dev blog (and from the UI of the game).

 

[BE-Raph]

Some people might call me toxic, but I have a few things to say about the game. It's a good game, and maybe I'm not the target audience anymore.


My biggest frustrations are different from the performance issues.


Here are my quick criticisms of the game:


1. "Unlimited" money is earned too easily. There is no challenge, no constraints, no risk to take, and even less decisions to make. Everything is fine...


2. The economy is the same, no constraints, everything is going well in the best of all worlds.


3. No matter what you do, you feel like people are always visually happy. It was a good start with the homeless people, which is a sad reality.


4. The assistance from neighboring cities is too easy.


5. Emergency response. Apart from the icons, visually, nothing happens except for fires and accidents.


6. The tornado could have been better, floods would have been nice... There are a lot of missing disasters.


7. The parks are empty. Not much happens outside of the sidewalks.


8. Modders, PC players are the big losers. All the cities look the same and there is not much variety in buildings.


9. Rush hour... at night.


10. Electricity, even when turned off at night, the roads stay lit... !!!!


11. There are really a lot of fun and immersive things missing.


I have ideas, but I'm afraid I won't be heard or even read here.


I always believed in Cities Skylines. I played the first one for a long time, but it's obsolete for me now.


The second one has potential, but it's wasted for now.


Will we have to wait for a CS3 in 10-15 years, another competitor, or is there hope?


I'm not a city painter, even though making a pretty city is still an asset.


Sorry for my cold remarks, but when I look back at the teasers, I feel like I was wrong in my expectations.

 

[TrevorHall]

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.

On these external services that "take a long time". I think they still come if you have local city services? If so, can there be a policy to disallow them? My real life city does not accept garbage services from any other city, for example. If (at level 5? Or as each service becomes enabled locally, or whatever level you choose) you have a "city services policy list" that can disallow various external services, that may prevent some angry customers or abandoned buildings.

 

[RoZarza]

Some people might call me toxic, but I have a few things to say about the game. It's a good game, and maybe I'm not the target audience anymore.


My biggest frustrations are different from the performance issues.


Here are my quick criticisms of the game:


1. "Unlimited" money is earned too easily. There is no challenge, no constraints, no risk to take, and even less decisions to make. Everything is fine...


2. The economy is the same, no constraints, everything is going well in the best of all worlds.


3. No matter what you do, you feel like people are always visually happy. It was a good start with the homeless people, which is a sad reality.


4. The assistance from neighboring cities is too easy.


5. Emergency response. Apart from the icons, visually, nothing happens except for fires and accidents.


6. The tornado could have been better, floods would have been nice... There are a lot of missing disasters.


7. The parks are empty. Not much happens outside of the sidewalks.


8. Modders, PC players are the big losers. All the cities look the same and there is not much variety in buildings.


9. Rush hour... at night.


10. Electricity, even when turned off at night, the roads stay lit... !!!!


11. There are really a lot of fun and immersive things missing.


I have ideas, but I'm afraid I won't be heard or even read here.


I always believed in Cities Skylines. I played the first one for a long time, but it's obsolete for me now.


The second one has potential, but it's wasted for now.


Will we have to wait for a CS3 in 10-15 years, another competitor, or is there hope?


I'm not a city painter, even though making a pretty city is still an asset.


Sorry for my cold remarks, but when I look back at the teasers, I feel like I was wrong in my expectations.

Thanks for this post!
I hope they listen to us and fix the game to have some challenge, it is soooo boring to have tons of money even reducing taxes to the minimum. And that doesn't fix the issue as having no taxes means that every business works, everybody is happy so still having massive incomes.
Besides, landscaping is free?? How is that possible? In real life, it is the most expensive part of building a city, that's why tunnels and bridges exist.

CS1 was way better, even without the hard mode was more challenging. I miss the hard mode and I wish we have a "Very hard mode" because hard mode was not enough after getting some experience.

 

[DJQuad]

At release, the economy did not meet the quality standard we strive for

This completely contradicts your previous statement that it did meet your expectations at launch.

So which is it?

 

[Rome101]

Very good WoW, thank you.
I suggest you run a code analyzer through the game's economy code and graph what elements are interconnected on an interactive diagram. That can be done with a relatively simple script. Then publish it here as an interactive webpage with proper variable names (some of them will be cryptic to non-developers for sure), and maybe an added explanation text where needed. That can help all of us (and maybe you too) understand how different elements affect the economy.

 

[Hydro5]

Is this really the intended behavior of how you want building progress to work in CS2?

Alot of people seem to agree the tall cranes and then instant completion just look unfinished.

I miss the building progress of CS1 and I feel like you could do better. I hope you make progress on building progress

 

[Hydro5]

This completely contradicts your previous statement that it did meet your expectations at launch.

So which is it?

The first step in economics anonymous is admitting you have a problem

 

[avguy2]

This WOW is, again, super vague and the random bits of information do little to explain how the economy actually works (should work). Plus as you admit yourself the systems are unfinished and buggy. This is just another lackluster nonpology. In my eyes you lose even more trust and credibility with these posts.

 

[RMBR]

Thanks for this post!
I hope they listen to us and fix the game to have some challenge, it is soooo boring to have tons of money even reducing taxes to the minimum. And that doesn't fix the issue as having no taxes means that every business works, everybody is happy so still having massive incomes.
Besides, landscaping is free?? How is that possible? In real life, it is the most expensive part of building a city, that's why tunnels and bridges exist.

CS1 was way better, even without the hard mode was more challenging. I miss the hard mode and I wish we have a "Very hard mode" because hard mode was not enough after getting some experience.

I miss having to go to the stock market and make a profit from selling and buying shares to get a lot of money. This was very good in the first game. In the second, it's so easy to make money that it feels like I'm using a cheater.

 

[cRAGGLE]

I care not for the games economics as it's out of my control and doesn't make any sense. Just like in real life.

 

[LeeMeister]

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.

This is the kind of antagonistic post I don’t like, for the record. Believe me, I understand your frustration that people like me are making negative posts, but I think you’re misdirecting your frustrations. CO caused this mess. They released too early, probably got pushed into it by Paradox so they could make quarterly earnings look good because other games flopped even worse. Thing is, getting mad at me won’t solve your problem, and me getting mad at you won’t either. The fanbase of this game has been split by those who sold it. Stop whining about whining and either acknowledge we have rightful grievances, as the product sold was not up to the marketing hype, or just stay out of it. You’re putting yourself in this situation at this point.

Just like you have a right to express your satisfaction, we have a right to express our dissatisfaction in a place where the developer will actually see it hopefully.

 

[tamsi99]

Thank you very much @co_martsu for these explanations.

I'd like to address, again, two main concerns in the overall context, because I strongly believe that they are key to success for CS2:

1. The simulation is just a list of numbers, it does not matter what players do

I see how you explain the mechanics, how e.g. importing something does something else to some other numbers, which does then have an impact on other numbers as well, and so on. And you obviously want to make that more transparent so we as players better understand why certain numbers are what they are. This is all fine and good. It is also, unfortunately, missing the one key point lots of people have been poining out in the past weeks, key influencers and lots of people in various communities: All those mechanics and algorithms are potentially fine, but it does not matter for the player. It has no noticeable impact on the game, except on some theoretical numbers that we currently do not even see (and that you want to make more visible now). Okay, and sometimes someone has to wait a bit longer for an ambulance, at least.

Now, my problem is: You seem to believe that making those numbers more visible will solve the issues. Unfortunately, what many players would like to see is that those mechanics have a directly visible impact on the city and city / cims behavior itself, not just on some statistics shown in a property window or city diagram. A city that mainly imports has to look and feel differently from a city that produces things interally. Different traffic patterns, different distribution of building types, potentially different kind of education required, which might lead to different education and wealth patterns, which again influence what types of buildings you have, and so on.

People very loudly highlighted in the past many weeks the game's biggest issue is that it does not matter what you do as a player. The city is always fine and it always looks the same. No matter what you do. Because, if the simulation even reacts to what you do as a player, it is just some numbers in the background. And the solution is not (just) to make those numbers visible, you need to redesign how the city develops and reacts to that, in a directly visible way. If you don't do that, there will never be a challenge and CS2 will remain not much more than a sophisticated city painter. And that would be a pity, because I believe you that the deep simulation actually exists. Unfortunately, you did a too good job to hide it under the hood and to guardrail it with all the failsafes. Dig that deep simulation out and make it visible in our cities, and I am sure people will love it.

2. Reevaluate the patching strategy

I can't help but to repeat this. Please revert to the patching strategy you had in Nov / Dec 2023. Releasing patches every 2-4 weeks with whatever fixes you have ready. I understand that some fixes take longer, this is perfectly fine. But there are also tons of important fixes that are probably not so complex. For example to make sure that the Day / Night toggle only disable visuals and not the whole energy simulation. This bug currently renders the whole energy simulation for the city obsolete at the moment (at least if you use solar plants and batteries). So, another part of the CS2 simulation that does not work as intended.

If your software studio has kind of half-efficient processes in place, then releasing every 2-4 weeks is not much of an overhead. And definitely worth the benefit of delivering value much earlier and more frequently to your customers. I am leading software development projects myself and understand what it takes. Using the overhead as an excuse is not an acceptable reason. Priority is not the convenience of your team but the value delivery to the paying customers.

Last but not least, the current patching strategy is the ultimate motivation killer. It is the reason why I stopped playing CS2 around 2 weeks ago, after having logged more than 200 hours. But with no perspective of timely getting improvements for all those issues, there is no point to play further. Oh, and the other reason I stopped playing was the land value bug that prevents me from building anything else than huge high-density towers where I intended to have low-density residentials. Obviously, you will not fix that bug before end of March, very earliest. Although I think there are already two mods available who fixed what you could not so far. Imagine that. But anyway, I'm not starting to apply such code mods because with all the fixes that also CO has to do in the upcoming months, you can be pretty sure to have a big mess in town sooner or later when all those mods and fixes clash.

 

[sim81]

Hey, thanks for the update - more of these types of post please as it feels like the systems behind the game are quite complicated and it's great to get an explainer - I miss the days when you got a thick paper manual in the box with a new game!