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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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- Cargo trains, boats etc are fully broken for almost everyone
- Import/export stats

math's hard...I feel ya. But the exports ARE working. Have you ever checked how much cargo a train or ship can carry? Like someone said...it probably needs tuning but in the current state it's only viable when you have a fairly large city and well developed industrial.
 
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A it's broken &
B the government subsidy will take care of everything anyway
A - currently the ONLY fairly "game-braking" thing that is NOT working is post sorting facility. Garbage is fixed, exports/imports are working. tho production panel could use some improvement, the whole supply chain stuff IS working. Some things may need tuning, and some less important bugs - fixing, but the game is more than playable. Instead of complaining that everything is broken maybe do some reading (tons of info in dev diaries btw! highly recommend - requires reading tho) and educate yourself on how the game actually works or try to understand how some things work instead of running to the bug forums the moment you face a problem.

B - the government subsidy is there to tell you (aside from early game and investments into the future of your city) that you're doing a poor job...nobody want's a "game over" screen and start rebuilding a 100k pop city from scratch just because some people need some sort of "forced" supervision over their gameplay and are unable to self-evaluate.
 
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B - the government subsidy is there to tell you (aside from early game and investments into the future of your city) that you're doing a poor job...nobody want's a "game over" screen and start rebuilding a 100k pop city from scratch just because some people need some sort of "forced" supervision over their gameplay and are unable to self-evaluate.

No -- the government subsidy makes it impossible very difficult to see what your changes are doing to your city, because a) you cannot turn it off, and b) the amount is calculated by a formula that may as well be handled by the CIA since it is so secret.

One of the entire points of playing a city builder is balancing your budget. I make a change, I check the budget. Ah, but here's a random amount of money being added to the budget because I am in the red (note that I have chosen to be in the red -- I'm BALANCING a budget, I'm not trying to have millions in excess capital). The subsidy can run anywhere from 10k to 600k+ -- why? This even happens when I have 10+ million of liquidity in the bank.

I never have used loans at all, even though there's a whole menu for them, because they are pointless since the government keeps throwing money at me.

It's not about self evaluation. It's about a game that needs balance and options to live up to its marketing. It's also not about "rebuilding a 100k pop city from scratch". That's not necessary either way -- find me another (good) city builder ever that just throws free money at you intentionally.
 
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Hi. Thank you for your transparency. I am an asset maker. (Name is "The L Train" on the Steam Workshop.) I made the Mason Neck, Virginia map and some train stations.
I desperately want to make new models buildings for CS:II but do not want to needlessly create .fbx files and textures incompatible with the game. Is there a way I could get access to the workflow and/or texture methods that CS:II uses for buildings?
Check here: https://cs2.paradoxwikis.com/Asset_Creation_Guide
 
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how to dissapoint everyone.
Paradox WAS my favorite publisher, and CO WAS a good developer. How yould you release mod support MONTHS after release for a game that so heavily depends on them? Well I learned my lesson. Bought the game on day 1 for full price to support you guy and didnt listen to all the negative feedback. Shame on me :(
 
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Glad I resisted the huge temptation to preorder (would have been the ultimate edition). Guess I'll check back when the console version is ready to ship.

I get that games programming, especially in 2023, is no small feat, but holy hell. CS2 has turned out to be a Potemkin village.
 
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A - currently the ONLY fairly "game-braking" thing that is NOT working is post sorting facility. Garbage is fixed, exports/imports are working. tho production panel could use some improvement, the whole supply chain stuff IS working. Some things may need tuning, and some less important bugs - fixing, but the game is more than playable. Instead of complaining that everything is broken maybe do some reading (tons of info in dev diaries btw! highly recommend - requires reading tho) and educate yourself on how the game actually works or try to understand how some things work instead of running to the bug forums the moment you face a problem.

B - the government subsidy is there to tell you (aside from early game and investments into the future of your city) that you're doing a poor job...nobody want's a "game over" screen and start rebuilding a 100k pop city from scratch just because some people need some sort of "forced" supervision over their gameplay and are unable to self-evaluate.

No.

I want to know when I'm failing, and if I run a 100k city into the ground by not managing things then I want to fail so I can learn to do things better.

I'm not the only one who doesn't want a game I can't lose.
 
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math's hard...I feel ya. But the exports ARE working. Have you ever checked how much cargo a train or ship can carry? Like someone said...it probably needs tuning but in the current state it's only viable when you have a fairly large city and well developed industrial.
It is not working then, is it :)

Why would the game simulate constant empty trains or boats with cargo zero for almost everyone. Cargo trains/boats should not be driving around if this is 'deep complex simulation'. I never see empty trucks driving around my city just because there are no goods. The company would go broke and be abandoned after a while.... This simulation of empty transport is also bad for traffic and the environment.

Even in games like Pharao and Zeus from decades ago you could tell your workers to wait until there are enough resources before heading out.

The game should either provide more user settings, more user numbers to actually show why it behaves like that, provide a policy 'no empty cargo', fix the simulation or fix the numbers. But the system does not work like it should in it's current state.
 
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Thanks for all the feedback and apologies for not having time yesterday to write answers to your questions! I see some already answered so I'll just write a summary that hopefully answers at least some of the concerns raised.

You have the right to feel disappointed for the Editor not being already available. We have no intention to delay its release more than necessary. The asset import feature (where a user imports an asset created in a 3D modeling software to the game) is severely delayed due to various technical issues related to it and given it's mid November now we have zero chance of getting it ready before the Christmas break. When it comes to the map editor we'll see if it can be released before the asset import is ready. Regardless of when the Editor is released it is planned to be supported and improved upon based on the feedback from the creators and modders using it. The delay is most unfortunate but we are doing our best to getting the Editor out as soon as possible.

Gameplay issues are being actively worked on and we've been also looking into some pathfinding errors. Some bugs take longer to fix than others and it would cause added stress to try and keep a specific cadence so at no point have we committed to one. Since we've had weekly patches thus far I found it best to warn that it's not to be expected in the future, with the sole purpose of trying to manage expectations. While the patch cadence is expected to be longer going forward it doesn't mean we have stopped working on bugfixes.

We are also working on the performance not only because it's necessary for the console release but also for PC platforms to allow the creation of huge cities. I'm sensing that most are actually able to play with acceptable performance level if it starts to feel like we should be focusing on the other things more, but we are internally not satisfied with the current situation and will keep working on improving the performance until we are.

I will keep bringing you news every week, hopefully good ones but we must be able to discuss setbacks as well, if more occur. For those wanting to leave the game behind, I fully understand and respect that and I hope you will find your way back again later in time. We're not going anywhere.
Performance is the NUMBER ONE issue because it affects every single facet of this game, including the ability to build a big CITY. Doesn't matter if you are a "painter" or a management enjoyer, performance impacts all of it. There are going to be years and years of DLC and mods. If the performance is shaky now, it will only get worse from here if they do not do "all-hands-on-deck," and get it fixed NOW. Mark my words on this one.

CO, if you think the players have moved on from performance, you are wrong. The gameplay issues are big, but you have to get the performance right for the long-run health of the game. Thank you.
 
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Performance is the NUMBER ONE issue because it affects every single facet of this game, including the ability to build a big CITY. Doesn't matter if you are a "painter" or a management enjoyer, performance impacts all of it. There are going to be years and years of DLC and mods. If the performance is shaky now, it will only get worse from here if they do not do "all-hands-on-deck," and get it fixed NOW. Mark my words on this one.

CO, if you think the players have moved on from performance, you are wrong. The gameplay issues are big, but you have to get the performance right for the long-run health of the game. Thank you.
I actually have the opposite feeling tbh

They milked PC players dry and now want console cash, so performance is such a monumental topic they seem to be postponing major gameplay flixes, weekly updates, release of map editor, release of asset editor, release of asset packs and release of the mod platform because redoing all assets for that performance is top priority.

I am awaiting tomorrows patch to see if the big bugs that affect everyone are FINALLY fixed like post office, cargo handling and import/export. But I don't have high hopes because the CEO refuses to aknowledge these issues by name and only follow up we got was along the line 'bugs will get fixed overtime'.
 
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I actually have the opposite feeling tbh

They milked PC players dry and now want console cash, so performance is such a monumental topic they seem to be postponing major gameplay flixes, weekly updates, release of map editor, release of asset editor, release of asset packs and release of the mod platform because redoing all assets for that performance is top priority.

I am awaiting tomorrows patch to see if the big bugs that affect everyone are FINALLY fixed like post office, cargo handling and import/export. But I don't have high hopes because the CEO refuses to aknowledge these issues by name and only follow up we got was along the line 'bugs will get fixed overtime'.
Trust me, I feel the pain of all of the gameplay bugs and oddities. Commercial can literally never go out of business and food/beverage buildings are constantly NOT ENOUGH CUSTOMERS. The post-sorting issues, the lack of UI transparency to see what's going on under the hood (High Rent! Why?! Let me see numbers). But bad performance is the death knell of these games. See: Planet Coaster, a great management sim with years of DLC and mods......annnnnd you can't build anything close to resembling a real-life theme park without fps dropping to the teens, no matter the rig. Ruins the game.

Again, I agree that the game has fundamental gameplay issues, but performance is step 1 for a game to be enjoyable and playable, and I will die on that hill. As another user put it, it needs to be "overkill" so we can build huge beautiful cities with the deluge of DLC and mod assets to come. This is obvious. If a game is buggy/unstable and non-performant, nothing else matters.
 
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Commercial can literally never go out of business and food/beverage buildings are constantly NOT ENOUGH CUSTOMERS.

that is not a bug...check your supply chains...

I'm pretty sure they can go out of business, it probably just takes a lot of time. I've seen Industrial being replaced once, building was made vacant and a different company moved in. so it probably also applies to commercial. I never had profitability so bad to observe this tho.
 
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Supply chains? My city has a massive deficit in fast food. I have plenty of farms for the raw materials, and set fast food tax to negative. I have zero demand for industry, plenty of available workers, and the prodction is still a tiny fraction of demand. Can I fine the industry for not making food? And why do my cims need a metric shitton of fast food anyway? This has to be broken.
 
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I'm quite disappointed mostly because I was under the impression that with modders having had early access for a while, there would be a small selection of QoL mods available shortly after launch.

Without being able to build roads that don't conform to terrain, or being able to adjust road height after the fact, everything just looks so wonky unless you start out on flat terrain already. The new road tools are really nice and I would surely miss the new lane/segment system going back to CS1, but currently I don't think CS2 allows enough control over networks to make it worthwhile.
From what it seems the team is also too busy with other things to hope for straight slopes as an official feature, and it's already been made clear there will not be a base game version of Move It.

I remain optimistic about where the game will eventually end up, but the lack of code mods for the foreseeable future is very disappointing and should have been more clearly communicated beforehand to manage expectations.
 
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The "POTATO TREE / GRAPHICS" LOD BUG needs to be fixed.

It's probably the worst bug right now in the game as:

  • It's completely random when it happens
  • It's not affected by the city size (happens to my ~20k population city)
  • It's completely random on how to fix it.
    • Sometimes I change the texture quality and give some time and change the camera and it fixes
    • Sometimes I restart the game and wait for a new "compiling textures" before load and it fixes
    • Sometimes I need to delete DX Shader Cache and restart the game
    • Sometimes I need delete the DX Shader Cache and restart the COMPUTER

Please please fix this!
 
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Since we have to wait for mods and the editor, can you all please give us an option to at least turn off the snow? I think there are at least 2 or 3 maps that don't have snow and two of those are not very build friendly due to the hilly landscape.
 
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