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CO Word of the Week #3

Last week I promised to give you an update on where we are with the modding of Cities: Skylines II. The Editor is in the works and we shared an updated version of it with the closed Modding Beta group for a feedback round just last Friday. The Editor currently includes only maps and support for code modding and we’re looking forward to getting those ready for an initial release. I’m calling it an initial release as we will be adding to the modding tools throughout the game's lifetime, just like we did with Cities: Skylines.

We do not have the asset import feature available yet, so the creators are currently unable to import their own assets into the game. After we have the import feature in place we’ll be running it through the Modding Beta group. When the asset part of the Editor is ready, we’ll have the Paradox Mods nicely populated with the Region pack assets that the asset creators have been working on. The assets are looking amazing, and I’m sure you’ll have a lot of fun choosing the ones most fitting to your cities! If you haven’t already, check out the Region Pack teaser here:


Our goal is to release the Editor as soon as possible, and we will keep you updated on the progress. We expect it will take a couple of months to get the Editor in a shape where we can release it, but we don’t have a concrete timeline yet as we don’t want to make promises we can’t keep. Once the Editor is out we will continue to work on it with your feedback and suggestions to help us prioritize the most wanted features and improvements. We’re very much looking forward to seeing your creations and mods too!

As an update on console, the game will have all the intended Editor features in place when the console versions are released, so you’ll be able to catch up to the PC players in no time. The Editor on console will be on par with the PC version in all but two features: code modding and asset importing as these are not possible within the console restrictions. However, you will be able to download user-created assets from Paradox Mods and create custom maps! The performance improvements we are currently working on also benefit the console version, and we’re actively working on the console versions so they will be ready for you in the first half of 2024.

In the last three weeks, we’ve had a very quick pace with the patches. There is one more of those landing soon, but after that, we’ll be focusing on bigger fixes that take longer to work on. The team is now focusing on LODs and improving GPU performances, and while geometric LODs are largely automated, there are a ton of tweaks and adjustments required. We are expecting a relevant performance boost with these asset fixes. The workload is significant and unfortunately, there is no silver bullet to improve the performance at once, instead, it requires several tasks completed before we are happy with it. This results in less frequent updates so we won’t have weekly patches going forward. Please check the future Word of the Weeks for more information, as I plan to keep writing one every week until further notice.

Before I go, here’s a link to last week’s patch notes if you want to check what it brought! Thanks to everyone who reported an issue and gave feedback. Your effort is most appreciated!

Sincerely,
Mariina
 
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Two issues with that:

- baking over 2,000 additional assets into the base game could have a nontrivial impact on storage and VRAM requirements for the game
- there could be IP considerations around including third-party content in the base game
This is a non issue

Skylines 1 had also content creator packs not developed by CO so they have things for this in place.

Skylines 1 had every asset ever made officially in the base game too. They were just a simple unlock switch. Only radio stations required an additional download. They will probably do 10 years of DLC with assets again as well so this should be possible.
 
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I wish I could commend you for your transparency, like others in this thread, but I can't. The only transparency before release was the performance issues, and that the editor wouldn't be available at launch. It was said it wouldn't be available within hours, which led people to believe days. Months was never talked about. This game is starting to feel like an early access game, and the only road map that we have been given is of a few DLCs. You need to do better.
 
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Honestly with the very disappointing news wrt editor delay of months, not a month or two months, but months, and the myriad of gaming bugs that are not going to be addressed while the very much needed performance bugs are addressed, I feel like I've been scammed.

I purchased the pre order in good faith that I would get a finished article, instead what I was sold is a early access game.

Did I expect launch bugs? Absolutely, this isn't my first game, but this is way beyond launch bugs. Notwithstanding the ridiculous state of the rendering bugs, the huge number of simulation bugs making the game virtually unplayable even at a steady 10fps which in itself is laughable in 2021, make this nothing more than a early access sandbox, and even then it's only good if you boot the developer mode which is fine for painters but no fun for people that wanted to actually play the game before spending the rest of their lives detailing.

Thanks for the transparency wrt patches and dev plans since launch? Sure but I would have preferred full transparency that the game is unplayable before I pre-ordered, or at the very least before the actual launch date so I could have taken advantage of the meagerly 2 hour Steam refund policy, because trust me, had you mentioned the true state of the game I wouldn't have even peeked under the hood for a minute, I would have refunded instantly.

But because I trusted the company I purchased the pre-order from in good faith, I took my time on launch day, stopping for coffee and to stand up and stretch like everyone should do when sitting at a computer, going to the toilet, spending time with my family instead of bolting the door because I'm playing a game, etc. And the time I spent in the game was mostly exploring how the new tools work, and consequently two hours gone loooooooooong before I started to actually play and realize the emperor ain't wearing no clothes here, they are in fact a sun worshiper and it don't look good.

So yeah I feel scammed, and won't ever trust CO again. If this mess ever gets sorted out to where DLCs will be announced for the game in the future, I'll probably be purchasing months after the DLCs release so I can avoid ever having this feeling with CO again, that's if I ever do open my wallet in the vicinity of CO again.

I'm not the guy that shits all over a game in Steam reviews because I was stupid enough to pre-order, so I'll just leave this here instead, and if it offends anyone looking at you mods, tough.
Never pre-order a game....now you've learned your lesson.
 
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I honestly feel that this whole game release has been botched from the beginning. You over promised and severely under delivered with this game. I understand some fixes will take time, but you should be releasing any fixes you have done and tested as soon as they're done. We're not going to be mad if you have smaller updates with a few fixes in them. It just shows you're working. I was ok with weekly updates but now that you're not doing that and there is no clarity on when we should expect updates going forward I'm getting fed up. The incompetence in the c-suites of CO and Paradox with the decisions around this game are abhorrent. This game should never have been released in this state. The traffic Ai alone is a disaster. No car or garbage truck irl backs up on a highway and crosses 4 lanes of traffic stopping everyone, no matter how many times I rebuild that section of road and try and get the nodes perfect. Did any of the execs actually look at the game and play it past 10k pop or 200k pop? Not to mention the economy not working with import export or just giving you cash magically. I suspect it's export profits but how can I know there is no way to track where the extra is coming from. I can run huge deficits and the balance just keeps rising without a clue where it's coming from. You also promised to be able to build a huge city, if 300k is considered huge in a would of 10million+ cities, but yet get a few hundred people waiting at a train station and the whole simulation grinds to a halt. Have the execs created such a toxic environment that the devs couldn't honestly tell you it wasn't ready or were the execs just not willing to listen and change because they set deadline and they think the world will end if its not met, which wouldn't have been the case? The more I play the more disappointed I've become because I can see the promise it has but it doesn't live up to any of the promises that were made by CO and Paradox.
There is for sure a lot of truth in your comment, but next time please use line breaks.
 
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Hmmm... I doubt. If they're making it primarily for console, the PC players will have to live with the restrictions coming from the console implementation and in the worst-case scenario it would mean that we never get a version with the promised features :/
Yes I actually meant the “full” release, as in the release including all caps, limits and restrictions implemented for consoles (and pc players as well) XD
 
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@co_martsu

There must be weekly bug fixes! How can you come up with a word of the week without any bug fix? That's not what the players you took money from deserves!

The game is riddled with issues, and it's beyond frustrating that the attention appears to be on additional content. It's high time you prioritize rectifying the fundamental flaws in the base game before even contemplating map editing, performance improvements, or console releases.

We demand the game you promised us! When will you finally deliver on your commitments?
 
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Never pre-order a game....now you've learned your lesson.
On the one hand, l am empathetic that people are out their hard-earned money on something that isn't what they anticipated.

On the other hand, people are breaking the cardinal rule. Never buy software (or software-enabled products) if they don't contain the features you want. The features you want may never be added, may not be what you expect, or may be much later than you planned.
 
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Whatever they did, the release was too early. Making some christmas money is more important then having satisfied customers. They also can say "its patched weekly" - marketing wise.

As you can see on steam theres no such thing as bad publicity. They buy it anyway.
 
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Whatever they did, the release was too early. Making some christmas money is more important then having satisfied customers. They also can say "its patched weekly" - marketing wise.

As you can see on steam theres no such thing as bad publicity. They buy it anyway.
If they released it as what it is, an early access game, there would have been a lot less complaints. Because that what it is, an early access game.
 
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As someone who preordered the "Ultimate Edition" back in August, this "edition" is gonna need another page or two of bonuses to redeem its value proposition (and repair any form of goodwill with those who spent $90 on it). All of these delays make me uneasy with where the game is, and I was even enjoying it up until traffic AI, mail, and import/export stopped functioning properly! This is a major blow for the short to mid-term future of the game, and I was so excited to keep playing over the next few weeks (maybe a couple months)...
 
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This makes me nervous. The weekly patches have been great but they’re fixing a handful of minor things in each one. There are far more than just a handful of minor bugs left to be fixed. Unless this week’s patch includes about 5 times the amount of bug fixes as the previous ones, I’m not looking forward to a slower release cadence.
This honestly, I agree.
I feel that there should still be weekly updates, if you are planning to work on bigger things, that's okay, but I don't think that necesserily requires stopping weekly updates.

I feel that even if the weekly updates were smaller, due to using resources for future bigger updates, even a small update every week would still bring some excitement and give us as players something, adress some issues that we are facing faster. It might be just me, but with the current state of the game, I would rather get a small something every week than nothing.
 
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All this basically makes your Behind The Scenes & Developer Diary announcements very misleading particularly:
" First and foremost, our in-game editor is currently in its beta phase and will launch shortly after release. "

There's loads more. Looking back through a bunch of Behind The Scenes & Developer Diaries we're not getting the bees knees you told us it would be.

I've gone from briefly enjoying the game to disappointment to now feeling completely ripped off.
 
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I've been poking about some older dev diaries and the statements I saw all very carefully avoided saying anything about any release time-frame.

Personally this makes me muse on the overreliance on developers in terms of modding. "Back in the ancient days" a mod specifically was something you did to the game independently of the tools provided to you. If there was an ingame editor of some kind, that often wasn't considered a mod at all, since, after all, it was part of the game's core functionality. If you wanted a mod, you had to do it from the ground up yourself.

I do kinda wonder if C:SL2 is so slow at bringing out an official editor whether people won't start doing their own thing anyway, possibly splitting the community before it even really starts ...

Eh. Whatever. Like others have said; at least those of us waiting now it's not worth thinking about for another few "months" at least.
I have heard there are mods already, I think someone mentioned Nexus mods maybe?
 
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I would like to get an estimate on when the import/export/cargo simulation issue will get adressed.
Thank you.
 
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This honestly, I agree.
I feel that there should still be weekly updates, if you are planning to work on bigger things, that's okay, but I don't think that necesserily requires stopping weekly updates.

I feel that even if the weekly updates were smaller, due to using resources for future bigger updates, even a small update every week would still bring some excitement and give us as players something, adress some issues that we are facing faster. It might be just me, but with the current state of the game, I would rather get a small something every week than nothing.
Some of the fixes are so small and easy that they could be using public beta branches and pushing fixes out on the daily. Fixes need beta testing so I understand the weekly schedule, but a public beta would be appropriate considering the full release is just a massive beta anyway.
 
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All this basically makes your Behind The Scenes & Developer Diary announcements very misleading particularly:
" First and foremost, our in-game editor is currently in its beta phase and will launch shortly after release. "
This is a great point to highlight. Typically the beta phase means that the software under test is substantially feature-complete, although there may still be issues with how some of the features are implemented. But if as of today they still don't have any of the asset editor ready for testing beyond their internal QA, saying that the editor overall was "in beta" a month ago seems like it was a stretch.
 
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I honestly feel that this whole game release has been botched from the beginning. You over promised and severely under delivered with this game. I understand some fixes will take time, but you should be releasing any fixes you have done and tested as soon as they're done. We're not going to be mad if you have smaller updates with a few fixes in them. It just shows you're working. I was ok with weekly updates but now that you're not doing that and there is no clarity on when we should expect updates going forward I'm getting fed up.

The incompetence in the c-suites of CO and Paradox with the decisions around this game are abhorrent. This game should never have been released in this state. The traffic Ai alone is a disaster. No car or garbage truck irl backs up on a highway and crosses 4 lanes of traffic stopping everyone, no matter how many times I rebuild that section of road and try and get the nodes perfect. Did any of the execs actually look at the game and play it past 10k pop or 200k pop? Not to mention the economy not working with import export or just giving you cash magically. I suspect it's export profits but how can I know there is no way to track where the extra is coming from. I can run huge deficits and the balance just keeps rising without a clue where it's coming from.

You also promised to be able to build a huge city, if 300k is considered huge in a world of 10million+ cities, but yet get a few hundred people waiting at a train station and the whole simulation grinds to a halt. Have the execs created such a toxic environment that the devs couldn't honestly tell you it wasn't ready or were the execs just not willing to listen and change because they set a deadline and they think the world will end if its not met, which wouldn't have been the case?

The more I play the more disappointed I've become because I can see the promise it has but it doesn't live up to any of the promises that were made by CO and Paradox.
Oh they knew! I'd be very surprised if they didn't. Why do you think streamers weren't allowed to cross a certain population limit? Yup, exactly.
 
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I read every post under this WOW. And I'm starting to be afraid. Not because of the game, more about the Community. I Also preordered the Ultimate Edition. I Also spent 90€ for this all. And yes, I'm also sad and annoyed about the state of the game. ...

BUT ... I don't think the harsh comments are fair. Of Course its a uncomfortable situation. Not only for us, also for CO and the DEVS.

TBH from day 1 there are people complaining. Over and over again with the same complainments. And in a super rude way. Some names I even ignore in this forum in the meanwhile bc I think they are trolls. Never heard anything constructive from them. And every try to talk with them doesn't make them accept the reality and looking forward to make it better. Its almost attacking.

What should CO do right now? They can't make a magical trick to fix the mistakes over night. The probably wrong decisions can't be reset. I'm sure some of them would like to have a Delorean to go "Back to the Post Release".

What do you expect? That they give money back? Even with the offer from CO I wouldn't want it back, bc it could mean that C:S2 don't get any support anymore. But the fundament is to good and the team behind it is very passionate. Instead of attacking CO and to assume bad motives, it makes more sense to keep calm, report bugs and let the DEVS fix those problems.

Even if the situation is now very disapointing, it's nothing what can't be fixed in the next month. And I'm pretty sure CO is already thinking how to compansate this legitimate frustration. But the way how some people express there frustration doesn't help. Not the community and also not CO. It even doesn't help themselve.

TBH If I would be a DEV I would loose the joy to fix stuff for such unforgiving players. Even if I know there are lot witch still have a lot of fun with this game, even in the current state.

Sorry needed to be said. Now the hater can hate me and complain about me. less focus on CO for a moment :p
 
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