CO Word of the Week #5

[Licenturion]

You might want to rephrase this comment. A lot of people are going to read this and IMMEDIATELY give up on the game, and that's not what this game needs; don't give people a reason to no longer play this game. You can still say that there are short-comings with the current version of the game & how the development team is working tirelessly to fix the bugs and performance issues; HOWEVER, any message related to "well, this game isn't for those who dislike "x feature" or "y function", so it's not my fault you're upset with how it works" will TICK OFF so many people as it's a deflection from what needs to be relayed to current players and soon-to-be players.

I am trying so hard to continue defending this game and how all the hard work that was put into its predecessor will carry into this one, but with comments such as this that alienate the player base, this does not give me high hopes for how future problems/expectations with the game will be addressed. Please consider rephrasing what you said into something not as "facepalm-worthy"...

To be honest, we all have been complaining how we were deceived by the official marketing before the game launched.

Now the CEO gives really clear information, so asking to reword it to something what it is not going to be or what you want it to be, with more dubious or hopeful language, seems counterproductive. The message is crystal clear.

Alas, I am also disappointed with the game too, especially for lack of 'visual content/polish'. For a 1.0 version the gameplay is okay and more depth and a difficulty modes will probably come along the way (which will probably free anyway)

As for things I like to see polished up, mainly in the art department: (and no, this should not be community mods IMO)

• way more building variation: but this is coming with the packs. Just dumb this wasn't in the base game tbh since these are 'official packs'
• more assets for service buildings. One is not enough for building diverse cities, it is just sad and cheap. Maybe these are also in the packs...
• clean up industry. Random buildings popping up doesn't vibe with 'if you can dream it, you can build it'. I have almost no control and industry ground textures look hideous
• speaking of textures: fix snow layers so that it is displayed everywhere it is supposed to be. Add grass like in Skylines 1 and provide actual farm textures with grain or other produce instead of 1 brown flat ugly texture for everything.
• fix simulation bugs: but coming december
• add 'line tool' for placing trees. Can't believe this wasn't part of the base game after the huge popularity of that mod in CS1
• restore all animations from CS1. People in parks, service and entertainment tiles seems a no brainer. So are animations for city services like fire, health, police etc

 

[co_avanya]

I just want to jump in with a few notes on the great feedback being shared here. First of all, please consider also adding your feedback to the suggestions forum (or posting there instead if you don't want to double post), as it's often much harder for us to find the feedback again in threads like these ones, that tend to have a shorter lifespan.

Cities: Skylines 2 - Suggestions

forum.paradoxplaza.com

And always be as specific as possible. For example, if there are features from Cities: Skylines you miss, then it's great to let us know exactly what those are. It's the same with information you feel is lacking or something you expect to work differently. Specifics are super helpful for us to understand what you're looking for. And it's the same for issues you might run into as well. You can't really get too specific.

 

[Licenturion]

I just want to jump in with a few notes on the great feedback being shared here. First of all, please consider also adding your feedback to the suggestions forum (or posting there instead if you don't want to double post), as it's often much harder for us to find the feedback again in threads like these ones, that tend to have a shorter lifespan.

Cities: Skylines 2 - Suggestions

forum.paradoxplaza.com

And always be as specific as possible. For example, if there are features from Cities: Skylines you miss, then it's great to let us know exactly what those are. It's the same with information you feel is lacking or something you expect to work differently. Specifics are super helpful for us to understand what you're looking for. And it's the same for issues you might run into as well. You can't really get too specific.

I just did that with my thread (snipping out the non relevant parts). Thanks for reading.

 

[unmerged(524934)]

I just want to jump in with a few notes on the great feedback being shared here. First of all, please consider also adding your feedback to the suggestions forum (or posting there instead if you don't want to double post), as it's often much harder for us to find the feedback again in threads like these ones, that tend to have a shorter lifespan.

Cities: Skylines 2 - Suggestions

forum.paradoxplaza.com

And always be as specific as possible. For example, if there are features from Cities: Skylines you miss, then it's great to let us know exactly what those are. It's the same with information you feel is lacking or something you expect to work differently. Specifics are super helpful for us to understand what you're looking for. And it's the same for issues you might run into as well. You can't really get too specific.

Hi @co_avanya what I'd like to see is a design document explaining how the simulation works - by which I mean, an in-depth explanation of the thought processes behind the decisions you took when it came to designing the game the way you did.

If you need more specifics, how about this:

1. Import/export - how does it work? What are the thresholds for exporting goods? Why can't we see a colour-coded representation of which specific buildings are importing and exporting goods like we could in CS1, so we can make some decisions about our cities' industrial priorities?
2. Industry and commerce - how do the various interlocking parts of the production chain work? How do goods get transported from industry to commercial? Is it always by physical carrier (e.g. trucks) or is there a mix of physical transportation and teleporting? If the latter, why did you choose to do it that way?
3. Failsafes - how many are there, and why did you choose to incorporate them into the game in the way you did?
4. Cim behaviour - is it really agent-based or is there a fudge factor which uses RNG or some other mechanism to limit the number of cims behaving in what we might call a "realistic" way? Is there even a limit?
5. Education - what was the thinking behind the education system? Is it working as intended right now?
6. Taxes - why did you decide to base taxes on education level? What benefits does that give us as players?
7. Demand - what are the deciding and limiting factors when it comes to the RCI meter? What part does land value and rent play in determining how cims decide where to live?
8. Traffic AI - why did you decide that left turn lanes (in a "traffic drives on the left" situation) should be ignored when the road comes into a roundabout at 90 degrees?
9. Public transport - why did you decide that buses shouldn't unbunch along a line? Why did you decide that despawning buses was a good idea?
10. UI - can you explain some of the thinking behind the design of the UI, particularly the amount of "under the hood" information that is presented to the player? Why, for example, does the SIP of the industrial buildings have two variants, one of which is only accessible if you click on a truck belonging to that building? If you want another example, have a look at the budget screen - is there more information you could present there or are you happy with the information you're presenting to us as players? Which leads me to
11. Problem-solving - a good deal of the fun for people like me is solving problems in our cities. Are you happy that the information presented to us allows us to do that in a well-thought out and satisfactory manner, or was the design perhaps different and it's just a problem of execution i.e. you didn't have time to fully flesh out the feedback loops in the game for us players?

That's just a few things off the top of my head, I'm sure there are many more design decisions, if can call them that, that have people scratching their heads and wondering "now why did they do it like THAT??"

 

[G315t]

Mods are not a problem for me, Performance is also no problem for me.

My biggest issues with the game (after playing about 280 hours up till now) are

Bugs that break the game)
like for example the disfunctional large signature factories / or post sorting / or train/harbor export hubs.

or are simply annoying)
like orphan childs or elders living alone in houses and then (of course) comlaining about high rent all the time, despite the fact that low rent housing is available (but often occupied by rich people instead...) Please add foster families or ophanages and retirement homes they are needed.

Design decisions that seriously need rebalancing as fast as possible)
Amount of people willing to break traffic rules in bigger cities. Its fine if 20 people jaywalk or u-turn. It becomes an unmanagable problem if 50% of people do this. There are also plenty of reports about the rule breaking like ignoring no left turn signs, driving on pedestrian streets or bus lanes, walking over a 6 lane highway and stuff like that. Its a nice feature but it needs to be toned down massively to be realistic and managable.

School usage balance.)
Right now Elementary school education takes too long compared to all other education forms causing a massive bottleneck in elementary school availability.

Information presented by the City infoviews that are missing )
like for example I can see that I have not enough parking, but I can't see where it is needed. I need a heatmap to show spots that need more parking. Or for example how much unemployment I have, based on education level. Or a view of houses/commercials/factories that are empty, because empty houses influence the demand, but I can't find them in my city.

Inconsistency in options for service charges )
I can change the amount I want to charge them for Water and Power. But I can not change the fixes charges for example for education or garbage.

Problems with the AI decision making)
For example: City needs more food. Plenty of raw material is available, taxes are low on food and raw material, but the AI decides to instead spawn a new industry area full of factories that produce everything else, like cars and chemicals and plastics, but not a single food industry. )

 

[mackau]

If you dislike the simulation, this game just might not be for you.

No, it's the children who are wrong.

Cities: Skylines II is the better game compared to the first one.

Reviewers AND players say otherwise.

Metacritic Skylines - 85.
Metacritic User Score: 8.7
Steam: 93% of 183k user reviews positive.
SteamDB Current In-Game - 13,297

Metacritic Skylines 2 - 75.
Metacritic User Score: 3.6.
Steam: 60% of 28k user reviews positive.
SteamDB Current In-Game - 12,719.

You released an alpha/early beta where the fundamentals of the genre simply don't work properly, and with performance levels that are unacceptable in modern day (effectively limited to medium/low settings at 1080p unless you own a supercomputer), and you blame the customer?

Not your company for releasing it significantly earlier than what it should have been, with no mod tools, with no editor, having ripped away Steam Workshop and despite knowing I assume for a year or more that it was, in the companies words, "not achieved the benchmark we targeted". Unacceptable.

You can spin all you like, reality doesn't match the statement.

If the performance was by your own words unsatisfactory, why release it saying ur satisfied with the game It is only natural that players assume what you say has worth in it? Why lie to us about when modding will be released?

Locking in those pre-orders before people were exposed to the reality of the game, not the marketing hype. It all comes down to money. Greed. Lack of pride or care factor in their product. Wanting that big fat 4th quarter executive bonus.

Exact same reason Cyberpunk released 2 years early, the executives care more about stuffing their bank accounts than their product being fit for purpose.

 

[TrevorHall]

What an out of touch thing to say and bold, given that the playerbase is now on par with CS1 barely a month into launch. It was your marketing team and ur decision I’m sure to promote this game as a deep simulation and a worthy successor to the game we all know and love, and charge us an incredible amount for it. Stop blaming players for your own incompetence - it never goes well.

If the performance was by your own words unsatisfactory, why release it saying ur satisfied with the game It is only natural that players assume what you say has worth in it? Why lie to us about when modding will be released?

Games are a subjective experience but I would like one that works please and delivers to what it was advertised as. Not failsafes that were sneakily added and only exposed when people found out. This is one of the most basic demands of any game, whether a indie developer or a major one. Would you ever even look into this and resolve player concerns on these standout issues?

This arrogance reeks of Simcity 5 behaviour and EA.

When they said "When it comes to the gameplay and simulation we set goals for the game and we have reached those goals.", maybe it's like serving your annoying girlfriend cold weak coffee and burnt soggy toast every day, in the hope that she will move out? When she does: the goals are achieved.

 

[∆tlαntic4]

Mods are not a problem for me, Performance is also no problem for me.

My biggest issues with the game (after playing about 280 hours up till now) are

Bugs that break the game)
like for example the disfunctional large signature factories / or post sorting / or train/harbor export hubs.

or are simply annoying)
like orphan childs or elders living alone in houses and then (of course) comlaining about high rent all the time, despite the fact that low rent housing is available (but often occupied by rich people instead...) Please add foster families or ophanages and retirement homes they are needed.

Design decisions that seriously need rebalancing as fast as possible)
Amount of people willing to break traffic rules in bigger cities. Its fine if 20 people jaywalk or u-turn. It becomes an unmanagable problem if 50% of people do this. There are also plenty of reports about the rule breaking like ignoring no left turn signs, driving on pedestrian streets or bus lanes, walking over a 6 lane highway and stuff like that. Its a nice feature but it needs to be toned down massively to be realistic and managable.

School usage balance.)
Right now Elementary school education takes too long compared to all other education forms causing a massive bottleneck in elementary school availability.

Information presented by the City infoviews that are missing )
like for example I can see that I have not enough parking, but I can't see where it is needed. I need a heatmap to show spots that need more parking. Or for example how much unemployment I have, based on education level. Or a view of houses/commercials/factories that are empty, because empty houses influence the demand, but I can't find them in my city.

Inconsistency in options for service charges )
I can change the amount I want to charge them for Water and Power. But I can not change the fixes charges for example for education or garbage.

Problems with the AI decision making)
For example: City needs more food. Plenty of raw material is available, taxes are low on food and raw material, but the AI decides to instead spawn a new industry area full of factories that produce everything else, like cars and chemicals and plastics, but not a single food industry. )

that's about it! I couldn't have written it better, these gameplay problems are really annoying

I'm happy that they are seeing the problem with the post office and exporting resources. But the others you mentioned are just as important. Mainly:

orphan childs or elders living alone in houses and then (of course) comlaining about high rent all the time, despite the fact that low rent housing is available (but often occupied by rich people instead...) Please add foster families or ophanages and retirement homes they are needed.

@co_martsu and @co_avanya knows when this kind of bug will take priority to be release on a patch?

 

[Stevo Wallis]

I’d just like to say how awesome it is for players to have direct communication with the CEO and Devs. When someone from CO is actively engaging with everyone on a forum, sooner or later someone will have an issue with something that was said. It’s just a case of the old “if you talk for long enough”. I know CO staff on this forum would have a thick skin and be quite well versed with criticism, but it must be hard with the release not meeting expectations and then consistently fronting up on here. I’d just like to say thank you and well done to CO for the community engagement.

 

[Shogun-Slayer]

Hi @co_avanya what I'd like to see is a design document explaining how the simulation works - by which I mean, an in-depth explanation of the thought processes behind the decisions you took when it came to designing the game the way you did.

If you need more specifics, how about this:

1. Import/export - how does it work? What are the thresholds for exporting goods? Why can't we see a colour-coded representation of which specific buildings are importing and exporting goods like we could in CS1, so we can make some decisions about our cities' industrial priorities?
2. Industry and commerce - how do the various interlocking parts of the production chain work? How do goods get transported from industry to commercial? Is it always by physical carrier (e.g. trucks) or is there a mix of physical transportation and teleporting? If the latter, why did you choose to do it that way?
3. Failsafes - how many are there, and why did you choose to incorporate them into the game in the way you did?
4. Cim behaviour - is it really agent-based or is there a fudge factor which uses RNG or some other mechanism to limit the number of cims behaving in what we might call a "realistic" way? Is there even a limit?
5. Education - what was the thinking behind the education system? Is it working as intended right now?
6. Taxes - why did you decide to base taxes on education level? What benefits does that give us as players?
7. Demand - what are the deciding and limiting factors when it comes to the RCI meter? What part does land value and rent play in determining how cims decide where to live?
8. Traffic AI - why did you decide that left turn lanes (in a "traffic drives on the left" situation) should be ignored when the road comes into a roundabout at 90 degrees?
9. Public transport - why did you decide that buses shouldn't unbunch along a line? Why did you decide that despawning buses was a good idea?
10. UI - can you explain some of the thinking behind the design of the UI, particularly the amount of "under the hood" information that is presented to the player? Why, for example, does the SIP of the industrial buildings have two variants, one of which is only accessible if you click on a truck belonging to that building? If you want another example, have a look at the budget screen - is there more information you could present there or are you happy with the information you're presenting to us as players? Which leads me to
11. Problem-solving - a good deal of the fun for people like me is solving problems in our cities. Are you happy that the information presented to us allows us to do that in a well-thought out and satisfactory manner, or was the design perhaps different and it's just a problem of execution i.e. you didn't have time to fully flesh out the feedback loops in the game for us players?

That's just a few things off the top of my head, I'm sure there are many more design decisions, if can call them that, that have people scratching their heads and wondering "now why did they do it like THAT??"

Amazing post. If all points here are addressed, my faith will be restored.

 

[unmerged(524934)]

U

Amazing post. If all points here are addressed, my faith will be restored.

There's an excellent post I've just realised I missed in the "Speculate and analyse" sub-forum which goes into a good deal of depth on the way demand works for industry - kudos to @Infixo for going into this amount of detail:

IndustrialDemandSystem - how the game decides what to produce

[my post from Reddit] Here are some findings from the analysis of the game's IndustrialDemandSystem and IndustrialSpawnSystem classes. This post is long and a bit technical. There are parts where I am not entirely sure about the details. It...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

It's an excellent deep dive into the game's engine and is exactly the sort of thing I'd like to see officially published by CO.

 

[DanielR80]

I just want to jump in with a few notes on the great feedback being shared here. First of all, please consider also adding your feedback to the suggestions forum (or posting there instead if you don't want to double post), as it's often much harder for us to find the feedback again in threads like these ones, that tend to have a shorter lifespan.

What this game needs most, is bugfixes, performance, mods, editor and an statistics UI overhaul. But you know that.

If you dislike the simulation, this game just might not be for you.

Without knowing what is a bug and what is working as intended, I can't tell if this game is for me. And until I do, I keep my money.

 

[TimC340]

I’m delighted that there is direct engagement from the CEO here, and I’ll skip over some, ahem, challenging language as I suspect English is not their native tongue!

Everyone here is keen for the game to reach its promised levels of gameplay and to eventually (no doubt with the help of modders) reach its full potential. I’ve played about 40 hours and, after the performance patches we’ve already had, generally enjoying the game. But some of the bugs are making it very difficult to manage your city, and they really need to be dealt with quickly. I’m aware we’re expecting a big patch in December, so I’ll hold any further judgement until I’ve seen it.

It’s good to see that some modders are already putting stuff out that improves the game’s playability but of course many of these unofficial mods may not survive the evolution of the game and, as CO have warned, may break game saves in future. Hopefully CO are watching which mods players are enthusiastic about and will incorporate those which give important QoL improvements. For me, improving the AI behaviours (cims and the simulation) is now probably top of the list.

I’m sticking with it. I can (and do) pop back into my fully-DLC’d and fully-modded CS1 when I need a fix of variety and flexibility, but I do believe CS2 will eventually be the better game.

 

[Puliandro]

Thanks for all the feedback. When it comes to the gameplay and simulation we set goals for the game and we have reached those goals.
Surely there are issues that we're looking into and fixing bugs, but the overall gameplay experience is what we aimed for. Cities: Skylines II is the better game compared to the first one. If you dislike the simulation, this game just might not be for you. If there is a bug that ruins it for you there's a good chance it's fixed sometime in the future. Games are a subjective experience and it is impossible to please everyone. There's a bugfixing patch on its way soon however, so hopefully we'll be able to resolve at least some of the issues that may be a deal breaker for some. We thank you for your patience!

For clarity the above is for the simulation and gameplay. The performance is not where we want it to be and we are hard at work to improve it. This is also the reason the consoles were delayed. The modding support is an important part of a Colossal Order game, so it will also be rolling out as soon as possible.
We are disappointed we couldn't make these aspects of the game ready for you on time, but we refuse to give up. The missing features and platforms will be available in the upcoming months.

Well this is truly disappointing, kudos for your marketing team that sold a game which promised a deeply simulation experience and it turned out to be far from it and it's just another city painter instead.

 

[VeronicaTS]

Thanks for all the feedback. When it comes to the gameplay and simulation we set goals for the game and we have reached those goals.
Surely there are issues that we're looking into and fixing bugs, but the overall gameplay experience is what we aimed for. Cities: Skylines II is the better game compared to the first one. If you dislike the simulation, this game just might not be for you. If there is a bug that ruins it for you there's a good chance it's fixed sometime in the future. Games are a subjective experience and it is impossible to please everyone. There's a bugfixing patch on its way soon however, so hopefully we'll be able to resolve at least some of the issues that may be a deal breaker for some. We thank you for your patience!

For clarity the above is for the simulation and gameplay. The performance is not where we want it to be and we are hard at work to improve it. This is also the reason the consoles were delayed. The modding support is an important part of a Colossal Order game, so it will also be rolling out as soon as possible.
We are disappointed we couldn't make these aspects of the game ready for you on time, but we refuse to give up. The missing features and platforms will be available in the upcoming months.

That is quite unclear. There are a handful of gameplay and simulation issues that might be considered bugs, but might not, which someone publishing under Paradox ought to ensure will be fixed. If you say you set goals and are unopen to goals based on player feedback, that is how you sink a series unless you are Electronic Arts and spend many times more on marketing to cover it up - in the context of a monopoly - than it would cost to fix it.

Notably:

• The educational system is fundamentally broken. You have infants going immediately to elementary school and tending toward 20% of the population, long term, being enrolled in elementary school. That is about equivalent to the amount of the population in an advanced economy that is under 18 years old. If we overuse the elementary compared to high school and place kids 5-13 in there, it should only be 10.95% for the United States and even less for Europe. It currently is reflective of a society that only recently industrialized and drastically reduced child mortality and is still adjusting the number of children people have. I also have a constant lack of college students despite the only jobs being available are half of the well educated jobs - you promised that people would go to school for economic opportunity.
• Traffic isn't simulated correctly as there is no meaningful spacing or difference in lane speeds, and everything gets held up at a bottleneck as everyone gets off at once across all lanes. Cars do not merge in at an angle, but rather turn 90 degrees toward the lane they want then turn 90 degrees again to level out, including semi trucks. Note that one lane going faster than others is precisely how people can safely change lanes - you can get in front of or behind someone and merge in at an angle - I don't think it is higher than 22.5 degrees when you do.

Are you considering these bugs that you will still be working on fixing or are you standing behind poor design choices and simply declaring that you met your goals?

 

[cdub8d]

We will be evaluating the difficulty level and the failsafes based on the feedback we've gotten. It's like you say, we want the game to be easy to get into but it should also offer enough challenge. We just need to properly evaluate if the problem is rather how information is displayed, if any bugs are affecting the outcome or is a failsafe out of balance. We'll be listening to you and also running play tests to make sure we're on the right track.

And I'm sure there's going to be an Iceland mod where the system is just allowed to collapse and there's no government subsidies.
^^Hint to all the modders out there: this sounds like it would be a popular mod

Relying on the modders to remove the subsidies to give players a challenege instead of not having that option in game is truly wild to me. I find this comepletly unacceptable.

 

[co_martsu]

If you dislike the simulation, this game just might not be for you.

I apologize for the formulation of my response above. My intent was to point out that while we do our best to improve the game we will never be able to please absolutely everyone. We are fixing bugs and improving the game combining our vision with the feedback and bug reports we're getting from you, the community.

As I said it's disappointing we weren't able to meet the expectations that were set by the stellar marketing campaign and the success of the first game. However working together with you is the best part of creating games, and together we can make Cities: Skylines II the best it can be. I truly believe that.

 

[Angius]

I apologize for the formulation of my response above. My intent was to point out that while we do our best to improve the game we will never be able to please absolutely everyone. We are fixing bugs and improving the game combining our vision with the feedback and bug reports we're getting from you, the community.

As I said it's disappointing we weren't able to meet the expectations that were set by the stellar marketing campaign and the success of the first game. However working together with you is the best part of creating games, and together we can make Cities: Skylines II the best it can be. I truly believe that.

I have no clue how you got "the simulation is how it is, don't like it then don't buy it" out of "we intend to keep improving the game but it's impossible to cater to absolutely everybody, so some people will be left unsatisfied".

I'll take the liberty of taking what you initially said at face value and just won't buy the game. Unless your actions prove that this "don't you guys have phones" moment was actually a brainfart, and that the simulation isn't where you want it to be. Kinda hard to believe that the current "nothing matters and you cannot fail" simulation you have right now is the intended state.

 

[MohawkWolfo98]

I apologize for the formulation of my response above. My intent was to point out that while we do our best to improve the game we will never be able to please absolutely everyone. We are fixing bugs and improving the game combining our vision with the feedback and bug reports we're getting from you, the community.

As I said it's disappointing we weren't able to meet the expectations that were set by the stellar marketing campaign and the success of the first game. However working together with you is the best part of creating games, and together we can make Cities: Skylines II the best it can be. I truly believe that.

Thank you for the clarification. Would you be able to pass on @unmerged(524934) comments to the development team and perhaps follow his comments? They sum up a lot of I feel about the game and its issues.

 

[mackau]

As I said it's disappointing we weren't able to meet the expectations that were set by the stellar marketing campaign and the success of the first game.

But you released the game anyway.