CO Word of the Week #2

[AkaranDeHawk]

Thank you for the update, but I've got a major concern with this.

As it stands, traffic is one of the biggest issues in my city. In Skylines 1, without using mods, I was able to keep a steady 80-90% traffic flow on a full map. In 2, I'm averaging around 60%, and that seems to largely be caused by weird AI behavior (cars randomly stopping at a node and changing into one lane, cars doing u-turns for no reason, cars refusing to take turns in roundabouts, cars ignoring removal of pedestrian crossings).

The idea of adding more traffic is... not great. Are there revamps on the traffic AI being processed with the garbage change?

 

[Massive Higgs]

I'm confused if the garbage bugs/balance was fixed, I don't see anything in the patch notes and I think I'm still having issues with it.

 

[WaffleCheesebread]

So...the responses about the simulation trying to keep the game "functioning" are missing the mark for me.

You're not really responding to the core issue, which is that the game *tries to prevent you from losing*. There's a lot of "Oh, do you think it should be harder?" and "We can consider someday looking into difficulty options!" but the issue isn't "the game isn't hard".

The issue is that none of the game's mechanics matter, because you've created such a poorly balanced system that there's no way to lose in early game (unless you take things very slowly, as I expand on here), because milestone cash is crazy loaded, and there's no way to make enough money to actually fund city services unless your city is large. There's not enough options for cheaper services with smaller scales, there's no way to limit their scale (as budgeting affects efficiency, not scale like in CS1). There's just oto many FUNDAMENTAL issues with game balance.

I am FULLY convinced that Government Subsidies and Milestone Cash payouts are an attempt to hide this. The entire Gov. Subsidy system is...ridiculous, honestly. It's literally just "Hey you'd fail without this, so here it is" as a game mechanic, it's just a complete lack of any attempt to actually balance the game.

In my linked thread I had a lot of fun trying to game the industry system- I have forestry, I produce loads of wood, I should incentivize wood production, and then use that produced timber to incentivize furniture production, and make money off those profits!

That kind of thing made SimCity 2013 VERY engaging to play, but it simply does not work here because the entire rest of the game is built around not being able to truly, properly screw up, and none of the things you try to do to make things better having much meaning or structure as a result.

Lots of people have already expanded on this issue but it's very unfortunate you spent so much time going over "The deep simulation" in dev blogs (yes, I saw the comment where you say you guys write them by hand and stand by them) only to release a game seemingly purpose built to make all that stuff essentially meaningless at best and outright broken at worst. I don't know that this is a solvable problem without mods. I don't have faith you guys will fix it, seeing as how throughout this entire thread you don't really seem to even understand what the problem is.


Speaking of mods, where's the mods? When are we getting mod support?

 

[∆tlαntic4]

I'm confused if the garbage bugs/balance was fixed, I don't see anything in the patch notes and I think I'm still having issues with it.

will be fixed in a future patch, still working on it

 

[Mazisky]

I am looking at Steam reviews and many of the negative ones mention a lack of challenge and economy unbalance other than the usual performance issues.

Probably it is something that should be given the proper attention.

 

[dumpster299]

While on the topic of DLCs, we will not release new paid content for Cities: Skylines II before the outstanding performance issues are fixed to our standards. As a small team, we must focus on the task at hand to avoid spreading too thin. We are also very much looking forward to starting to go through your suggestions for Cities: Skylines II, such as adding some beloved quality-of-life improvements already familiar from the predecessor that were missed in the sequel due to priorities and time constraints.

Wonderful to hear this; thank you.

(I was figuring that Paradox would be pushing for DLCs more than making the game good.)

 

[le luk]

Hi, thanks for the exercise in transparency, I hope the game will be awesome soon!

It also sounds like there is room for improvement on the player feedback in the game, since some things might be left unexplained.

This is something that is indeed really needed: the game lacks information to tell the player what is wrong behind the scenes: do cargo really transport stuff? Why are these cars taking the exit ramp of the runway to enter again just after? Why are sims avoiding this bus line?

Right now, especially on the supply/economics side, I feel that I am left guessing

 

[Astramael_Nyx]

I've been contemplating this for awhile, and here seems like a good a place as any to write this:

There are a few things a city builder needs to do well to have an engaging management gameplay loop (in no particular order):

1. Let you create something that approximates your aesthetic goals.
2. Give you direct manipulations over systems in the city that make tangible differences as you implement them.
3. Give you indirect influence into the emergent state of the simulation such that your choices make a difference.


Cities Skylines 1 was a good game in some ways, but a disappointment for some of us in others. It was a good city painter, good at point 1 (especially after DLC). However, it was much less satisfying at deploying factor 2, and especially factor 3.


Factors 2 and 3 were part of what made the Maxis series of games compelling. It gives me great joy that Cities Skylines 2 seriously took on the task of creating a fun and engaging management loop. Building factors 2 and 3 in as first-class citizens within the game experience.


Some highlights of my time so far:

- Trams being able to reverse on lines is incredible. We have the technology!
- Tax rate changes have substantive and noticeable changes on the simulation.
- Contour lines as a road tool mode toggle is just sublime.
- Loading times are so rapid.
- Building upgrades create interesting decision points.
- Game scale creates more realistic cities with better spacing.
- The way the game holds your hand starting out with government incentives and importing services is, in my view, clever and effective.


I have a laundry list of issues too, but those are for the bug and feature request forums. I wanted to express how pleased I am that the fundamentals are there for a true city management game. For this player anyways, it isn't just better than Cities Skylines 1, it transcends it completely, and brings me back to younger years staying up all night playing SimCity 2000.

All that being said, the performance is not reasonable, and there are some show-stopping bugs. Thank you for making clear that fixing performance issues is a priority. The road ahead looks bright once those fundamentals are in good order.

 

[Troyen]

• Garbage accumulates too little and City Service buildings that process garbage are out of balance.

I guess I'll have to see the patch notes, but this line has me worried. I thought garbage was accumulating too fast (at least according to the info panel). At 5K pop, my city was generating 63 tons of waste per month when the entire US landfills ~140 million tons per year. That combined with the slow processing rate of all the buildings, especially the Recycling Center that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to process 10 tons monthly as a base meant out of all the services garbage was the one you were most likely to run out of local support for first.

I don't know how much of that is due to all the bugs (would they impact the city-wide garbage overview numbers), but it sounds like the intent is we produce and process garbage at a higher baseline than other services.

 

[Surge72]

So...the responses about the simulation trying to keep the game "functioning" are missing the mark for me.

You're not really responding to the core issue, which is that the game *tries to prevent you from losing*. There's a lot of "Oh, do you think it should be harder?" and "We can consider someday looking into difficulty options!" but the issue isn't "the game isn't hard".

The issue is that none of the game's mechanics matter, because you've created such a poorly balanced system that there's no way to lose in early game (unless you take things very slowly, as I expand on here), because milestone cash is crazy loaded, and there's no way to make enough money to actually fund city services unless your city is large. There's not enough options for cheaper services with smaller scales, there's no way to limit their scale (as budgeting affects efficiency, not scale like in CS1). There's just oto many FUNDAMENTAL issues with game balance.

I am FULLY convinced that Government Subsidies and Milestone Cash payouts are an attempt to hide this. The entire Gov. Subsidy system is...ridiculous, honestly. It's literally just "Hey you'd fail without this, so here it is" as a game mechanic, it's just a complete lack of any attempt to actually balance the game.

In my linked thread I had a lot of fun trying to game the industry system- I have forestry, I produce loads of wood, I should incentivize wood production, and then use that produced timber to incentivize furniture production, and make money off those profits!

That kind of thing made SimCity 2013 VERY engaging to play, but it simply does not work here because the entire rest of the game is built around not being able to truly, properly screw up, and none of the things you try to do to make things better having much meaning or structure as a result.

Lots of people have already expanded on this issue but it's very unfortunate you spent so much time going over "The deep simulation" in dev blogs (yes, I saw the comment where you say you guys write them by hand and stand by them) only to release a game seemingly purpose built to make all that stuff essentially meaningless at best and outright broken at worst. I don't know that this is a solvable problem without mods. I don't have faith you guys will fix it, seeing as how throughout this entire thread you don't really seem to even understand what the problem is.


Speaking of mods, where's the mods? When are we getting mod support?

Amazingly well said!

 

[EZ5902]

Can't play yet but great work on the reports and patches.

Curious about that radio ad though.

Edit: read about it, don't find it offensive, disappointed in people.
It was an add for electricity, that's all.

 

[MrMeowPuss]

Thank you for the support!

The DLCs that are listed for the Ultimate Edition may suffer delays, especially the ones set for release in Q4 2023. The Beach Properties assets have been under construction for a while, but as the coding recourses are tied to the improvements and we're having to pull the artists for more urgent tasks this will directly affect the DLC development. It is very likely we'll have the first DLCs for Cities: Skylines II release in Q1 2024. We are committed to delivering the promised post-release content even if they must be delayed for some time.

Thanks for the updates, hard work and being transparent about when we can expect the DLC to release!

 

[safe-keeper]

Those poor orphan cims whose parents perish in terrible fires though :,(

I want to find an orphan in my city, name him Cuno, and follow him to see what he does with his life. Maybe he becomes a cop.

 

[MTO35]

It's nice that things are moving forward somehow, but another big problem that affects most people needs to be addressed, namely water sources and how they are often placed on the respective map. In short, if you paint over such a water source with earth using terrafroming, flooding will occur and it will massively limit creativity and planning. There should be a way to give the player a tool in the game to relocate such water sources, delete them or even create new ones.

 

[brianfung118]

I hope that there are more ploppable prop in this game rather than just tree, at least I would like to decorate those area

 

[Abitus]

tl;dr: much more than being punished by the game for our mistakes, what we need to begin with is to understand when and why we make mistakes




I just read the entire thread and I think it's worth to insist on something: what most of people are asking is not "a hard mode". And I suspect it also isn't something as simple as "remove failsafes", like if the only issue was hardcoded limitations. This is also a problem of UX and feedback.

I'm concerned about the fact that if we as a community are not expressing things more clearly, dev team may miss the important point. So this is my modest attempt at clarifying the following. I'm of course not pretending to speak for everyone, what I'm saying here is only based on my own understanding of the game and of what the community is saying.

When people are saying "we need to be able to lose", it's not really (at least not only) a matter of difficulty. It's because in a sim game, like in all games, like life in general, making mistakes is how you learn two essential things:

• A- How the system works
• B- How to consequently better interact with it

Now in the case of CS2, the main issue is, I think, that it performs very badly at teaching those two lessons to players.

There are a lot of people expressing their main concern as not being able to understand how the simulation works, and why some things sometimes happen without an apparent reason or sometimes do not happen despite their actions.



More precisely, about A- how the system works:

Notice how we slowly shifted from "it's all fake" to "we can't lose" to "too many failsafes". I thinks it's far from insignificant that the first impression was "it's all fake" (see point 3 below). And I think players correctly identifed it was sometimes the fault to obvious failsafe mechasims like government subsidies. But, and it's where I'm more concerned for the moment, I also think that we must be careful to clearly express that it's not all about those failsafes. Players also have a hard time understanding how the simulation works mostly because of three issues:

1. Sometimes a lack of information, like some useful and meaningful numbers actually not displayed, resulting on the impression that the simulation does "magic"
2. Sometimes the information is there but the UI makes it harder to get it at the appropriate time (as quick examples: people already expressed how it's complicated to layout roads while natural ressources stay displayed on screen, or how it's unnecessary complicated to have to click on trucks to get full info on companies...)
3. Things are often tweaked for performance, resulting on the feeling that what the game is displaying does not reflect the current state of the simulation

Now on those 3 points, I strongly believe that 1 and 2 can and will be worked on progressively. If CO keeps working on the game and above all keeps listening to what we say like they currently do, then I'm confident that it's just a matter of time before all these little imperfections can be addressed.

On the other hand I think that 3 is by far the most important, so let me explain what I mean here:

Suggesting that all differences between "what we can see" and "what the game computes" are only the result of hardcoded failsafe mechanisms is imho a mistake. It appears obvious to me that a simulation so ambitious as CS2 must render "fake" sometimes. Like for example, in theory I'm okay with the game not displaying each and every citizen one by one, and instead just showing enough of them for me to feel that my city is alive (but in practice that's currently not the case, everything feels empty because not enough cims).
This is of course just an example, but what I'm saying is that we players have to understand a simulation has to simulate, and that it's not possible to show us everything in realtime. I understand that some things are faked because of performance and not only because devs want to implement tiny wheels.

But, here comes the but: but I think there may be a problem of balance between these simulated things and player experience. Like:

• I would like to see people where they should be. Having these huge schools and parks all empty does not help me think that my city is alive
• I would like to see traffic where it should be (same amout of cars on 2-lanes roads in high vs low redidential areas is not normal)
• I would like a way to know when some road/path is missing or too long for cims to use it, rather than seing them take forbidden shortcuts and u-turns or crossing highways
• I would like goods and resources to not teleport from point A to point B or pile indefinitely
• I would like offices, industries and commercials to actually depend on getting enough resources and employees rather than being magically saved by fake numbers came down from heaven

I'm forgetting a lot here, but you get the idea: In one way or another, there are too many things that I see in game which are not reflecting the real state of my city. And I think that's bad because it prevents me from properly learning how the simulation works. I don't think we need to see a perfectly accurate representation of the simulation state though, just one that does a better job as feeling accurate.



More precisely, about B- How to consequently better interact with the simulation:

B is where the difficulty aspect becomes important. Because, as I was saying, it's by failing that we learn to be good. It's what almost exclusively all games in human history were and still are about: improving yourself. Humans learn by repeating and reiterating. For a game to offer me the feeling that I successfully learnt to get good at it, it first has to encourage me to try again multiple times. If it never tells me that and what I did wrong, then I'm all good and have no reason to start again, no reason to do better.
That being said, I don't think that facing a game over screen and be forced to throw away 20 or more hours of gameplay by starting a new city is the correct answer. I think it's much more about failing and reiterating on small things inside your city, rather than failing and reiterating your whole city.

This is why I think we need much more than a simple "difficulty level for hardcore gamers". Just dropping a hard mode without government subsidies and with a couple of lowered/increased numbers would not be enough to address this. Yeah, sure it will make the game less easier, but would this really be enough to help me understand how the simulation works and how I can interact with it? I'm not really sure. I'm actually affraid that it would just replace "I don't understand how I'm winning" by "I don't understand how I'm losing".

What we need is much more than a game over screen, it's the ability to learn from our mistakes. Which of course means that we should be able to make mistakes. But it also and mostly means that we need to understand them. Meaning more feedback in general: more info about what is produced, needed, lost, blocked, missing, moving, etc. And also, as said before, a better balancing on the simulated aspects, so that what we see better reflects what happens.


Sorry and thanks for reading this long post full of obviousness. Like I said, I was concerned by the fact that all of this must not be interpreted by CO as a simple "hard mode" request. I hope this message can help at least a bit.

 

[nk4qo1530]

After solving various problems of simulation and balance
I hope the game can provide a more difficult simulation environment
Including: canceling subsidies, traffic jams will not disappear, external import costs increase...etc.
I guess this would suit different types of city builders

 

[Astramael_Nyx]

tl;dr: much more than being punished by the game for our mistakes, what we need to begin with is to understand when and why we make mistakes




I just read the entire thread and I think it's worth to insist on something: what most of people are asking is not "a hard mode". And I suspect it also isn't something as simple as "remove failsafes", like if the only issue was hardcoded limitations. This is also a problem of UX and feedback.

I'm concerned about the fact that if we as a community are not expressing things more clearly, dev team may miss the important point. So this is my modest attempt at clarifying the following. I'm of course not pretending to speak for everyone, what I'm saying here is only based on my own understanding of the game and of what the community is saying.

When people are saying "we need to be able to lose", it's not really (at least not only) a matter of difficulty. It's because in a sim game, like in all games, like life in general, making mistakes is how you learn two essential things:

• A- How the system works
• B- How to consequently better interact with it

Now in the case of CS2, the main issue is, I think, that it performs very badly at teaching those two lessons to players.

There are a lot of people expressing their main concern as not being able to understand how the simulation works, and why some things sometimes happen without an apparent reason or sometimes do not happen despite their actions.



More precisely, about A- how the system works:

Notice how we slowly shifted from "it's all fake" to "we can't lose" to "too many failsafes". I thinks it's far from insignificant that the first impression was "it's all fake" (see point 3 below). And I think players correctly identifed it was sometimes the fault to obvious failsafe mechasims like government subsidies. But, and it's where I'm more concerned for the moment, I also think that we must be careful to clearly express that it's not all about those failsafes. Players also have a hard time understanding how the simulation works mostly because of three issues:

1. Sometimes a lack of information, like some useful and meaningful numbers actually not displayed, resulting on the impression that the simulation does "magic"
2. Sometimes the information is there but the UI makes it harder to get it at the appropriate time (as quick examples: people already expressed how it's complicated to layout roads while natural ressources stay displayed on screen, or how it's unnecessary complicated to have to click on trucks to get full info on companies...)
3. Things are often tweaked for performance, resulting on the feeling that what the game is displaying does not reflect the current state of the simulation

Now on those 3 points, I strongly believe that 1 and 2 can and will be worked on progressively. If CO keeps working on the game and above all keeps listening to what we say like they currently do, then I'm confident that it's just a matter of time before all these little imperfections can be addressed.

On the other hand I think that 3 is by far the most important, so let me explain what I mean here:

Suggesting that all differences between "what we can see" and "what the game computes" are only the result of hardcoded failsafe mechanisms is imho a mistake. It appears obvious to me that a simulation so ambitious as CS2 must render "fake" sometimes. Like for example, in theory I'm okay with the game not displaying each and every citizen one by one, and instead just showing enough of them for me to feel that my city is alive (but in practice that's currently not the case, everything feels empty because not enough cims).
This is of course just an example, but what I'm saying is that we players have to understand a simulation has to simulate, and that it's not possible to show us everything in realtime. I understand that some things are faked because of performance and not only because devs want to implement tiny wheels.

But, here comes the but: but I think there may be a problem of balance between these simulated things and player experience. Like:

• I would like to see people where they should be. Having these huge schools and parks all empty does not help me think that my city is alive
• I would like to see traffic where it should be (same amout of cars on 2-lanes roads in high vs low redidential areas is not normal)
• I would like a way to know when some road/path is missing or too long for cims to use it, rather than seing them take forbidden shortcuts and u-turns or crossing highways
• I would like goods and resources to not teleport from point A to point B or pile indefinitely
• I would like offices, industries and commercials to actually depend on getting enough resources and employees rather than being magically saved by fake numbers came down from heaven

I'm forgetting a lot here, but you get the idea: In one way or another, there are too many things that I see in game which are not reflecting the real state of my city. And I think that's bad because it prevents me from properly learning how the simulation works. I don't think we need to see a perfectly accurate representation of the simulation state though, just one that does a better job as feeling accurate.



More precisely, about B- How to consequently better interact with the simulation:

B is where the difficulty aspect becomes important. Because, as I was saying, it's by failing that we learn to be good. It's what almost exclusively all games in human history were and still are about: improving yourself. Humans learn by repeating and reiterating. For a game to offer me the feeling that I successfully learnt to get good at it, it first has to encourage me to try again multiple times. If it never tells me that and what I did wrong, then I'm all good and have no reason to start again, no reason to do better.
That being said, I don't think that facing a game over screen and be forced to throw away 20 or more hours of gameplay by starting a new city is the correct answer. I think it's much more about failing and reiterating on small things inside your city, rather than failing and reiterating your whole city.

This is why I think we need much more than a simple "difficulty level for hardcore gamers". Just dropping a hard mode without government subsidies and with a couple of lowered/increased numbers would not be enough to address this. Yeah, sure it will make the game less easier, but would this really be enough to help me understand how the simulation works and how I can interact with it? I'm not really sure. I'm actually affraid that it would just replace "I don't understand how I'm winning" by "I don't understand how I'm losing".

What we need is much more than a game over screen, it's the ability to learn from our mistakes. Which of course means that we should be able to make mistakes. But it also and mostly means that we need to understand them. Meaning more feedback in general: more info about what is produced, needed, lost, blocked, missing, moving, etc. And also, as said before, a better balancing on the simulated aspects, so that what we see better reflects what happens.


Sorry and thanks for reading this long post full of obviousness. Like I said, I was concerned by the fact that all of this must not be interpreted by CO as a simple "hard mode" request. I hope this message can help at least a bit.

I don’t agree with everything, but I think this is a very good comment. There are certainly… holes?… in the city management loop. Cities Skylines 2 is simultaneously much better than CS1, and not fully grasping the goals it reaches for.

 

[∆tlαntic4]

@co_martsu
@co_aura

Hey there CO! Could you kindly take a moment to focus on this important thread? It's a truly valuable discussion that our community has been actively debating, and it would mean a lot to us if it could receive the attention it truly deserves. It's about ghost towns and magic life on the simulation

City with 0 Population still has Workers + Wrong information given in UI

Information When reporting a crash, stability or performance problems, please ensure that you have the files ready for submission [CLICK] I understand Required Summary City with 0 Population still has Workers + Wrong information given in UI...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[FBC22A]

This is exactly the plan, and we're working as fast as we can to deliver the fixes.

I'm just relieved it's the dogs and not the children.

Just like Cities: Skylines this game also has fail conditions where the game helps the player so that there is no hard failure ending the progress of a city entirely. Is your feedback that the game should punish the player more for the mistakes? We can most certainly look into the difficulty level in the future and see if there could a hard mode implemented.

To be honest, I believed that most of the community wanted the game to be harder on players. For example giving one final loan to bounce back from poverty like in Cities Skylines 1, and then leaving the players to their own devices.