CO Word of the Week #6

[TheMax85]

The

In my opinion, government subsidies are a very interesting feature. They provide a kind of support when the city is somehow financially inefficient. The government aspect and state structures should be deeper. I believe that government subsidies provide such a sense of actual management of the city. Maybe it would be a nice solution if the player had more freedom in deciding whether he wants this subsidy or not. Maybe something based on a directive introduced by the mayor (but not in the form of a loan), but government support from time to time.

The subsidies and helping neighbor cities is ok. It’s better than all the time being after everything. But it should be transparent and have a strong effect on citizens happiness.

I mean we live in Germany. And and ans I mentioned before this game is pretty good at simulating our country. Our infrastructure is completely broken everywhere. Literally nothing works without massive subsidies and we import most of our resources and energy electricity for high prices from others.

Don’t get me started on what else is all dysfunctional. I don’t want to be political here.

Money is not the only measure of success. What the game currently does is what our government did until they ran out of money a few weeks ago: Covering issues by throwing even more subsidies on it.

As long as your citizens are happy your city will grow. But unfortunately I didn’t find a way to make the citizens in my cities really unhappy yet. Some maybe. I can even see some leaving my city. But the majority is like: The sun is just shining out of their ****** even if they are homeless, unemployed, schools are full and nobody cares for the trashes.

 

[FunkyPanda36]

In my opinion, government subsidies are a very interesting feature. They provide a kind of support when the city is somehow financially inefficient. The government aspect and state structures should be deeper. I believe that government subsidies provide such a sense of actual management of the city. Maybe it would be a nice solution if the player had more freedom in deciding whether he wants this subsidy or not. Maybe something based on a directive introduced by the mayor (but not in the form of a loan), but government support from time to time.

The state (government) can, for example, support the financing of a specific investment in the city and contribute to the costs or simply throw money at the player, which the player will have to use at some point, otherwise it will be lost... Hehe, I'm thinking out loud now

Subsidies are a cool idea and I agree that adding depth to them over time would make the game better rather than simply removing them (though give players that option in the meantime). Makes a lot of sense to get them for big transit projects or some specific development. Anything to lessen the amount of free permanent money you get is a good idea in my books as the game is just really easy right now even for a default difficulty.

 

[co_avanya]

We plan to be out of the office for 3 weeks and I personally will take all necessary actions to avoid the internet (isolated cabin in the woods maybe). However I'm sure @co_avanya has something planned for the social media channels. Maybe we can ask a collaboration with Visit Tampere

*makes notes*
And yes, we have a little something planned for our social media accounts, but the CO Word of the Week will take a break over the holidays.

I know many people like dogs and many have them so it makes sense to include them in a game like this for immersion but do they actually have any influence on gameplay at all?

Pets don't affect the gameplay, they're just there to keep your citizens company and apparently get abandoned by them.

Is there any chance we'll receive either more information presented to the player re: goods and service flows or a release of information about how the game functions? We have people doing deep dives in the code to try and figure out what drives rents or why certain businesses are consistently low on customers - it would be really helpful to be able to have more clarity on these issues directly from the developers

Just adding to @co_martsu's response to this, you realldy can't be too specific on what information you're missing. We're seeing some interest in a peek behind the scenes at how the simulation works, but we're also seeing some feedback on information that would be very useful to have in game. There could be potential for a future dev diary (if I get to steal the correct people away from their usual tasks), but if the information needs to be available in the game, then a dev diary isn't the way to go. So we'll have a look at all the feedback and see what makes the most sense.

 

[FunkyPanda36]

I love this idea and agree that the game needs churches as any city has it. BUT the game should match people from any cultural background. Christmas is a very specific Christian thing. Maybe there could be a in game religion with it's own kind of temples and such a festival? Something like a Chirper Cult. Could be a good DLC. Temples of the holly chirper could bring indoor recreation and have limited capacity, so you need enough of those and on festival nobody goes to work.

Don't a lot of religions put up lights? Just call them holiday lights or something and holiday markets. Though I guess it doesn't matter as much since it'll be modded immensely regardless. Agree with the original idea though of having more automatic seasonal content (halloween, new years!). I also think we should have parks that automatically shift with seasons if we choose. Like a plaza in the fall becomes an Ice skating rink in the winter and back to a plaza in the spring. Making those changes yourself every year is very tedious. Could be applied to all sorts of holidays, decorations and seasonal content too. Makes some more specific DLCs more enticing knowing we don't have to tediously replace stuff if we don't want to and the city will come alive a bit more automatically (with player input)

 

[MasterCruddly]

I'm enjoying the game in its early release format, and appreciate the regular updates. Hope you all have a great silly season, and keep up the great work. Some of my zoom ins have been amazingly detailed and realistic.

 

[anton95]

Don't a lot of religions put up lights? Just call them holiday lights or something and holiday markets. Though I guess it doesn't matter as much since it'll be modded immensely regardless. Agree with the original idea though of having more automatic seasonal content (halloween, new years!). I also think we should have parks that automatically shift with seasons if we choose. Like a plaza in the fall becomes an Ice skating rink in the winter and back to a plaza in the spring. Making those changes yourself every year is very tedious. Could be applied to all sorts of holidays, decorations and seasonal content too. Makes some more specific DLCs more enticing knowing we don't have to tediously replace stuff if we don't want to and the city will come alive a bit more automatically (with player input)

I love those ideas so please post them to the suggestions so that I can upvote them there

 

[safe-keeper]

Last week in my comments on the forum, I tried in my very (and sometimes too) direct way to say that we made different design choices with Cities: Skylines II compared to its predecessor, and we understand that some may prefer one over the other or wish we had gone in a different direction. My poor choice of words did not make it clear that this of course does not apply to any bugs or issues you’re experiencing with the game. Naturally...

I agree with the 'of course'. This should've gone without saying. Then again we're in 2023, so.

Edit: oh, and keep up the good work!

 

[Forkboy2]

Are there plans to optimise or change the behaviour of the pathfinding?
While I enjoy the freedom now it's a lot more chaotic. And I don't even talk about all the illegal turning, but also how the path is calculated and how far (or near) they'll change lanes and stuff like that. Car's almost never change lanes at intersections now but it's common here that a road is splitting up, two lanes coming and then four lanes at the next intersection. At the moment it's not possible to picture that in the game.

(Red would be the way to go but cars will only take the green path)

Issue in screenshot is with your design. You would not normally find an intersection in the real world that requires cars to switch over 2-3 lanes in the middle of the intersection. Also, making a left turn and crossing over 3 lanes of traffic at the same time is also not a good idea. In other words, if you built this intersection in real world, would have the same issues that you are seeing in the sim. Better to have the same # of lanes entering and exiting the intersection and have the merging and lane changing occur between the intersections, not in the middle of intersection.

Also, some of the intersection issues will be easily fixable with a mod that lets you assign arrows to each lane. There is currently a mod that does this available online.

 

[pilkycrc]

Will the mentioned performance improvements just be improving the visuals (i.e the FPS/GPU load) or will there also be some improvement to simulation performance? I have a city of around 150k people and while I'm getting a consistent and playable 20-30fps visually, the simulation is incredibly slow (taking several seconds for an in game minute to tick by at 3x speed). I'm not on the fastest machine (Ryzen 5 3600 and an RTX 2070 Super) but it feels like it should be able to handle things a bit better than it is.

Also, is deleting the cargo station/harbour the recommended fix if the post sorting facility is still not working after the latest patch? Will they still be fixed if we re-build afterwards?

 

[safe-keeper]

The game can be for all kind of players.

I hope in the future you could release some hard mode with no failsafes so that everyone is happy and both casual and hardcore players can have the city builder of their dreams.

I agree. Heck, implement a realism/difficulty slider with three settings --the ultra-forgiving system we have now, a more realistic and challenging mode, and a hard mode with no fail safes whatsoever.

 

[FunkyPanda36]

I love those ideas so please post them to the suggestions so that I can upvote them there

I plan to but I'm waiting for more fixes as it seems they aren't looking too much into suggestions at the moment

 

[Cymsdale]

If the cims keep abandoning their dogs then next patch the PETA vans will be dispatched. Hide your fur babies. Keep them safe.

 

[coasterfreak0471]

I appreciate the continued announcements and updates on the development process of the game, as well as the clarifications coming from last week's discussions. I could definitely use an insight blog or something that explains why industrial buildings have such high land value compared to low density residential. I can't rezone an area that just had industrial zones built because land value goes up so much that the network suitability is instantly deep red with just five or so industrial buildings (land value takes FOREVER to lower or "reset" in an area, too). Only warehouses will build in those "unsuitable" areas, and yet my demand for low education jobs (mainly filled in industrial plots) keeps going up! The only problem is that once I zone too many industrial plots in "unsuitable" areas, the amount of warehouses present drops industrial demand to zero and STAYS THERE because of "unoccupied buildings" caused by warehouses not employing people. How else am I supposed to deal with industrial demand when warehouses/land value keep messing with my ability to provide jobs??? I would really appreciate something that explains the game logic for why land value for any industrial building is so high and how players can keep it low in the future for more expansion of one's industrial areas. I do NOT want to have to keep moving industrial farther and farther away from my population just because land value is the main (or only) issue.

I heard several times that ground pollution and land value were what made a network unsuitable for industrial (even though ground pollution is something generated by ALL industrial, so that didn't make sense), and yet most of my existing network lacks pollution, so I'm almost certain it's the high land value that makes it so warehouses only spawn in what was supposed to be my main industrial complex. How am I supposed to keep industrial happy by keeping fire chances low, crime low, AND getting workers to their shifts if their target workplace keeps moving farther away every month?

 

[DocChorMan]

Hello Mariina, it takes a lot of resilience, dedication and passion to keep bringing these Word of the Week posts, actively read our comments and interact with us, especially in this negative environment. We might not say it enough but we truly appreciate your direct communication with us despite the risks you're taking as a CEO.

And on that note, I will unfortunately have to contribute with some "negativity" as well because, unless we misinterpreted your previous statement, "When it comes to the gameplay and simulation we set goals for the game and we have reached those goals.", this is deeply concerning. I don't mean it as an offense, but I genuinely think that you have no idea how problematic the very core gameplay elements are, which cannot even be classified as bugs. In fact, what I'm about to say will probably shock many. Please try yourself the following (patch 1.0.15f1):

1. Start a new city
2. Provide ONLY electricty, water and sewage.
3. Build ONLY residential, commercial and industrial.
4. That's literraly it. Very high profit. Average happiness 70%. Some buildings will even reach level 5. Others will also get over 100% efficieny. It just works.
*Bonus points for using gravel roads only (to have virtually zero parking spots and bad traffic to see how all of this has no negative impact).

Everything else simply doesn't seem to matter. Parks, public transport, schools, hospitals, parking lots, taxes, policies, logistics, universities, police, loans, telecom, tourism, mail, attractions, traffic etc. are nothing but decorative happiness & efficiency bonus/malus that are just not needed to keep the city going. Sure, without them growth will be slower, a lot of warning icons will pop up but they can be ignored since happiness and profitability will remain high anyway. Not even road layout seems to matter because vehicles will just despawn and teleport to destination if traffic gets slightly menacing.
This whole game can be boiled down to essentially 4 factors: water, electricity, sewage and employment. This is the peak management challenge of the entire game. As long as you have these 4 elements the city is objectively infallible. Cims and and businesses seem to be hard coded to keep moving into your city no matter what. This is not even easy mode for the casual player, this is God mode. If you let the simulation run for a really long time, maybe at some point the city will probably collapse, but by then so much profit has been accumulated that it's like playing with unlimited money. Were these really the achieved set goals when it comes to gameplay and simulation?

Again, I vehemently encourage you and the rest of the dev team to play the game following the instructions provided above, and after that, please let us know if you further confirm that the gameplay was really intended to be so abnormally unchallenging. Failsafes, railguards, poor game design/balancing or whatever the causes are, seem to be so invasive that are almost completely suppressing any resemblance of deep simulation. Hopefully this will help you understand why we often (sometimes unfairly) read terms like city painter, fake economy and fake simulation all over Reddit posts, Youtube, Steam reviews, this forum and elsewhere. Now that the bad reviews related to bugs and performance are slowly fading away, a new storm of negative reviews about how superficial, shallow, bland and devoid of any challenge the current gameplay and management system of this game is will arise.

I know that there is a lot of work to do but I truly hope that what we're seeing now, even with all the known bugs fixed, is not going to be the final gameplay and simulation. Thank you for taking your time reading this and take care!

Solid summary. I’ve put in 120 hours, multiple cities built, and your summary is correct. The game does keep you busy, but it’s too easy. There’s no way to fail. It’s like all of the pieces are there but they lack interdependency; there’s no complexity. One area has limited impact on the other resulting in a fairly positive result no matter what you do or don’t do. You literally don’t have to add anything more than the basics and city will continue to grow and citizens will remain marginally satisfied.

 

[RA1981]

If you haven't already, it may be worth rebuilding the cargo station. If that doesn't do the trick, definitely make a report on the bug report forum and attach the save, so we can look into it.

Which one is "the"? The first one, the last one or also those in between? I've multiple cargo train stations and I'm still trying to figure out how it should work... If I remember the number correctly, the station has a capacity of 15.5k, but the inventory shows way above 100k for some goods. On the other side, the capacity bar shows 0/15500, so I wonder what each of them is meaning.

Also from my side, keep up the good work

 

[Gchromis]

Are there plans to optimise or change the behaviour of the pathfinding?
While I enjoy the freedom now it's a lot more chaotic. And I don't even talk about all the illegal turning, but also how the path is calculated and how far (or near) they'll change lanes and stuff like that. Car's almost never change lanes at intersections now but it's common here that a road is splitting up, two lanes coming and then four lanes at the next intersection. At the moment it's not possible to picture that in the game.

(Red would be the way to go but cars will only take the green path)
View attachment 1059018

I'm going to have to disagree on this. I get what you are saying, but if the green is what the cars are doing, that's totally correct, at least for US driving laws. You are not supposed to change lanes within the intersection, and when turning, you should always turn into the closest lane, then signal and switch lanes after you turn. While they might be making sudden lane shifts, which could be improved, the path they are taking is spot on.

 

[Shinra375]

Any chance to get zone toggling included in next patch? (So we don’t have to put in footpaths and delete to change grids)

 

[xtheaimisfastx]

Thanks for the fast updates guys! I would like to recommend a tab in economy where we can actually see how much tons of our resources are getting exported and how much money we make over it, cause of right now we make money of it without seeing it anywhere back and the games says i am losing money while i am actually gaining money.

 

[ThomSeagal]

I hope they will also fix the demand issue. The "unoccupied buildings" bug prevents people from playing. Since last week I have seen multiple bug reports online.

 

[NULLYUKI]

The next patch (the last one this year) is coming out next week before we start our holiday break on the 18th of December. The patch will have the performance improvements I mentioned previously and the gameplay bug fixes we can manage to squeeze in. The focus is on the characters and a dentist has been consulted. There will also be improvements in the level of detail models for selected assets, as well as geometry improvements for better performances and reduced memory usage. Asset-related work will continue next year, but we should already have a good amount of improvements ready before the holidays.

Releasing the performance improvements patch right before your holiday break sounds very dangerous. So let us all hope that this won't cause any major issues while you are all on holidays.