CO Word of the Week #8

[avguy2]

The way CS2 was released was way more toxic than anything I read on here.

 

[Shrubber83]

Really? You released the latest patch almost 40 days ago. We still don't know when the next one will be released. once the game exceeds 200k inhabitants it becomes practically unplayable even with recent PCs. Glad you're rested, but I would have thought about making up for the bad impression made with the first version

 

[Skeksis25]

I'm still blown away that they sold a broken product based on false promises and deception, but instead of being upset, they expect the customers to just hold hands with them, be buddies and help them build this into the game it should be. They keep asking for feedback and discussions and even though there are thousands of bug reports and other issues brought up on their own forums, there are barely any mentions of what has been acknowledged, what has been addressed, what is being worked on. They want to hide behind the, "We don't want to promise things that may no happen" but had zero issues doing that prior to launch when it was time to collect money from the audience. Bug fixes cannot be monetized, so now it is time to take their time and demand a respectful and peaceful environment.

Meh, the game is dying. It has developed a terrible reputation in the gaming community. Which I suppose CO doesn't mind cause according to the CEO, the audience is just full of terrible people. I wonder if Paradox noticed that not only has this game and its reputation crashed, it is affecting other games too. Prison Architect 2 got announced and you see so much feedback on that everywhere that is basically, "Beware, look at CS2 and what that is right now".

 

[Skeksis25]

We’re aware of some issues with the statistics and they’re currently being looked into. I’d have to check the specifics to see if that’s what’s happening here, but if I remember right that’s likely the case.

If you are aware of issues with the stats and graphs, why don't we know that? Why is there not a known issues post or page where we can see how many of these issues you are aware of? So at least we can hope that there will be fixes. More importantly at least the players can know what is a bug and what is a feature. People are trying to fight with the systems in the game every day to understand why things are not working and if we were made aware that stats and graphs are bugged, people wouldn't be looking at them trying to figure out why numbers are so wonky.

Can we get a list of issues with the game that you are aware of? Wouldn't it actually help you guys if there was such a list pinned or easily available somewhere so we don't keep spamming the same issues in bug reports?

 

[RagnarokZ]

About that...

Erm... Mariina is on record as saying it was her/CO's decision to release the game.

That begs a simple question then, why? Why would they do something like that? It's a privately owned company as far as I can see, where they running out of cash or something, why release the game so early?

Doesn't make any sense.

 

[Lys91]

That begs a simple question then, why? Why would they do something like that? It's a privately owned company as far as I can see, where they running out of cash or something, why release the game so early?

Doesn't make any sense.

Reading a lot of reactions from western developers I feel it's a sort of widespread contempt for their customers and being totally out of touch. I don't think it is specific to CO. They "worked really hard", so we should appreciate the effort.

What has been telling is when western devs rant on successful game made with passion and ethic (Elden Ring, BG3 etc.). They also tend to be very vocal when it is not a north American made game (and borderline racist when it is made in Japan). I haven't seen that particular thing at CO.

In short, I think there is a non-small part of the dev community that is ironically very toxic. Little respect for their customers or their peer that they consider to be "others".

 

[ImanIdgit]

As this is my maiden post here, I will keep it fairly brief.

I'd like to touch on the 'community' comment by the CEO.
On your Twitter page, I would enjoy seeing screenshots from cities that your employees have built.
As an added bonus, they could add a quick blurb about certain issues they have found during their gameplay in their cities. Maybe a little statistic about the number of hours they've spent on their city so far, things of that nature.
For me, this would definitely show that you are a part of the 'community', as you have implied. It demonstrates company engagement with its own product as well as empathy towards the other members of the community that may be experiencing similar issues.
Doesn't have to be daily, do it once a week. It should take all of 5 minutes to create this type of post. Monday morning is a great time to start off the week with some community engagement.

PS: I am a 1-2K hour player of all Cities:Skylines/Remastered Console Edition(s) and their DLCs. Thank You! for that.

 

[Duke49th]

That begs a simple question then, why? Why would they do something like that? It's a privately owned company as far as I can see, where they running out of cash or something, why release the game so early?

Doesn't make any sense.

Makes perfectly sense.
What do you think is needed in order for her to get a CEO bonus at the end of the year?

Costs or profits?

 

[dumpster299]

As the mentions of this in previous entries do not seem to have moved the needle, perhaps you have a constructive way of telling us how we can improve the way we communicate with each other.

The problem is that you lost a *massive* amount of trust with the release. It made it obvious that you and/or your publisher are willing to, at the most charitable, be misleading in PR. Having seen that we can't trust what was said before the release, it's entirely reasonable to be skeptical of communications put out now.

I think the only thing that will fix it is concrete progress on actually resolving the issues. Everyone playing on Steam, for example, will reasonably treat "working on the stability and performance on console" as evidence that CO and Paradox continue to care more about finding a way to release something to a new audience than about quality and existing customers.

The new game does have good bones -- I'm really happy to see the ECS and road tools -- but so long as it feels like the studio lacks either the ability or the willingness to address simulation issues hitting most of the players, I can't see the disaster turning around.

Edit: For example, the high school problem has been known since October, if not earlier. And it's still not marked fixed.

 

[dumpster299]

Don't preorder, and wait for independent tests.

And importantly, don't trust people with NDA builds -- they're not independent.

You can no longer trust anything that Biffa, for example, says about the game.

 

[S.C. Watson]

You can no longer trust anything that Biffa, for example, says about the game.

I don't know about that. Biffa is a pretty avid mod user and has been quick to jump on the Thunderstore bandwagon with the unofficial mods. He also made it as clear as he could while he was doing the pre-release videos that he wasn't happy with things, without going into specifics. Since release, he's been pretty clear about what he doesn't like - especially the lack of detailing options, but he's also been trying to be optimistic about it. Even pre-CS2, he's not really one to be overly negative about things. He'll just kind of go play something else (for example, his most recent vid is on Timberborne, not CS2).

 

[dumpster299]

Give feedback and disagree, but do it constructively! Be specific and detailed, and don't worry about what others think. We have a diverse community so opinions and experiences will always vary.

Unfortunately, I don't see evidence that it's worth bothering giving feedback right now even when it's constructive and seemingly solicited.

Concrete example:

There's a new "Suggestions" forum here, after WotW7 said "We'll be taking your suggestions". It has lots of well-written, highly-voted, constructive ideas. I've not seen anything I'd personally call toxic in it, and certainly not in the most-upvoted things. But not a single one has a dev response, and this WotW8 didn't mention anything from it.

What would I have liked to see? The WotW pick one of the simpler highly-voted ones and say "yes, we're doing that in the next patch". For example, one of the things in the top 5 is currently "Office skyscrapers should have more workers", which is just a number, so do that. (Lots of the others are good too, but are definitely more work, so I wouldn't expect them to be something possible to do quickly.)

That would show that you're listening, and give a carrot to encourage people making well-thought-out and polite posts, rather than doom-commenting.

But the longer people who attempt to give constructive feedback feel like they're fruitlessly screaming into the void, the more likely that they stop trying.

 

[DanielR80]

(for example, his most recent vid is on Timberborne, not CS2).

Because he got paid for it. Timberborne had a pretty big update and is now sponsoring a lot of content creators who do building sim stuff. Probably because they know people are disappointed by CS2 and might want something else...

 

[RagnarokZ]

Because he got paid for it. Timberborne had a pretty big update and is now sponsoring a lot of content creators who do building sim stuff. Probably because they know people are disappointed by CS2 and might want something else...

That's honestly just solid marketing and makes perfect sense.

 

[safe-keeper]

Unfortunately, I don't see evidence that it's worth bothering giving feedback right now even when it's constructive and seemingly solicited.

Concrete example:

There's a new "Suggestions" forum here, after WotW7 said "We'll be taking your suggestions". It has lots of well-written, highly-voted, constructive ideas. I've not seen anything I'd personally call toxic in it, and certainly not in the most-upvoted things. But not a single one has a dev response, and this WotW8 didn't mention anything from it.

What would I have liked to see? The WotW pick one of the simpler highly-voted ones and say "yes, we're doing that in the next patch". For example, one of the things in the top 5 is currently "Office skyscrapers should have more workers", which is just a number, so do that. (Lots of the others are good too, but are definitely more work, so I wouldn't expect them to be something possible to do quickly.)

That would show that you're listening, and give a carrot to encourage people making well-thought-out and polite posts, rather than doom-commenting.

But the longer people who attempt to give constructive feedback feel like they're fruitlessly screaming into the void, the more likely that they stop trying.

To be fair, though, that's pretty common with video games forums. Sometimes the devs will chime in with their thoughts on the suggestions, or tell the community what they want suggestions on, and what they're not going to be doing, but generally there won't be dev replies to suggestions. Sometimes when they announce new features they will tell the players if something was added thanks to a suggestion, or "by popular demand", but generally you don't see much dev interaction in suggestion threads. Which might as well be a good thing, since it lets players discuss freely without being hampered by what they think the devs expect or want to hear (you won't get as much backseat moderation like "don't suggest this, the devs have said that...").

 

[Licenturion]

I don't know about that. Biffa is a pretty avid mod user and has been quick to jump on the Thunderstore bandwagon with the unofficial mods. He also made it as clear as he could while he was doing the pre-release videos that he wasn't happy with things, without going into specifics. Since release, he's been pretty clear about what he doesn't like - especially the lack of detailing options, but he's also been trying to be optimistic about it. Even pre-CS2, he's not really one to be overly negative about things. He'll just kind of go play something else (for example, his most recent vid is on Timberborne, not CS2).

Well if we had to rely on content creators to get gameplay fixes or change, we would get nowhere ever

All the videos of the main Skylines 2 content creators never actually do any gameplay. All I see in my feed is 'how to fool the editor to create beaches' and stuff like that. Then they go build 50 tings, do terraforming and break them all down again to have changed half a tile visually. Same goes for roads etc. In my opinion tools need to be optimised and fixed so all this isn't needed.

Other creators like FewCandy take 4 hours to build 5 streets because they keep demolishing buildings and fooling the zoning system with fake pedestrian roads to get the asset they want. These CCs are all painters, where the actual gameplay seems like a nuisance for them.

And here are we, the boring players trying to build a working city, with a thriving realistic economy and trying to overcome (the currently non existing) money and traffic challenges. I am happy that the whole community is very vocal about the actual gameplay and simulation instead of plopping down 1000 trees and benches and call it a day.

 

[avguy2]

I'm disappointed in the game as the next guy, but everyone should be realistic with their expectations. It's simply not possible for the devs to get the game done in just a matter of a few weeks or even months. Everyone hoping on a quick fix better buckle in because realistically the road's gonna be long and bumpy.
This game has a long way to go and it might be too early for CO to be sure what and how to remedy this.

 

[BoraBora]

I'm disappointed in the game as the next guy, but everyone should be realistic with their expectations. It's simply not possible for the devs to get the game done in just a matter of a few weeks or even months. Everyone hoping on a quick fix better buckle in because realistically the road's gonna be long and bumpy.
This game has a long way to go and it might be too early for CO to be sure what and how to remedy this.

CS II grossed $50 millions in 2023. After Steam's cut and taxes, you would think CO and PDX still have enough money to hire a lot of developers to help finish the game.

 

[avguy2]

CS II grossed $50 millions in 2023. After Steam's cut and taxes, you would think CO and PDX still have enough money to hire a lot of developers to help finish the game.

If only that was how it works. But you can't just hire someone and expect miraculous overnight fixes. And honestly my concern is that what CO/ PD considers "finished" differs greatly from what you and I would consider finished. In their mind CS2 is not in early access... But who knows. Let's talk in a year or two.

 

[BoraBora]

If only that was how it works. But you can't just hire someone and expect miraculous overnight fixes. And honestly my concern is that what CO/ PD considers "finished" differs greatly from what you and I would consider finished. In their mind CS2 is not in early access... But who knows. Let's talk in a year or two.

I'm not talking about overnight miracles, I'm talking about efficiency. Even Avanya admitted they were short on manpower.