CO Word of the Week #8

[Askorti]

There's a difference between recognizing the environment being ripe for such behavior and recognizing the behavior itself as wrong. Colossal Order has fostered this environment through less-than-clear and less-than-specific communication, absolutely, just as, say, someone leaving their cell phone out in the open in their car fosters the possibility of it being stolen. But that does not absolve someone taking advantage of that situation of their guilt. The hypothetical troll is still making a choice to behave poorly, just as the person who steals the cell phone is still making a choice to do so. That doesn't mean the person leaving the cell phone out didn't make a poor choice in doing so, but the person who stole the cell phone still had the choice to steal the phone or not steal it and chose to do the objectively wrong thing.

This isn't about the victim making a poor choice in creating an environment where the perpetrator could do as they did, because frankly Colossal Order could have done everything perfectly and still have people hounding them. Just as you could hide your valuables in your car, or not have valuables in your car at all, and still have it be stolen from. They more or less did exactly that and still faced undue criticism for CSL1. This is about the perpetrator, knowing they had the option to not, choosing to do so anyways. Colossal Order's creating of an environment where such behavior could flourish, whether accidentally or willfully, does not in any way absolve the people who, given a choice between constructive dialogue and toxic positivity and negativity, choose to behave in a toxic manner. It does not explain it. It does not justify it. This attempt to deflect blame is telling, frankly, and all I need to see to know how this is going to end.

It just is not worth it to me. Not anymore.

I truly hope that the people here get what they want. I just hope that people are ready to face the consequences, positive or negative, of when it finally comes to fruition.

Okay, simple question. Where did I try to deflect blame? I said, I think 3 separate times, that the person being toxic is, in the largest part, to blame for their behavior. However, CO is also responsible for the reasons I explained before. This response sounds as if I was trying to say that people are completely justified in being toxic, and aren't responsible for their actions at all. Which is completely not what I said at all. Basically a complete strawman.

 

[sonicmyst]

Thinking more about what you wrote in this word of the week, makes me even more scared at whats the future of this game. Or when. Or if there is any at all.

See, you tell us after weeks off, that still "upcoming months", and "few weeks" for things that should have been done on release day. But then you even top it, by stating that the asset importing may or may not be done until that. Not even until that! And this combined with the fact, that there were ZERO substatial updates until now, just some small scripting fixes here and there. Even those maybe 3-5 modders at thunderstore.io did more for the game in these 2 monthts, than the devs!

Do you know what this suggests us? That there are not even 2 people working on fixing this game. Maybe not even 1 in full time. Is releasing the (obviously scaled down performance) console version the only real goal here, to milk some more players? Please prove me wrong. And not by speeches as if they were written by politicians. Prove me wrong by releasing substantial updates, fast.

I share this exact sentiment. To me it feels like CO needs to hire more employees and that Mariina is stalling through WoW. We are past the blame game here (yes both dev and toxic people are at fault) but we need more precise gameplan.

 

[tycoonmike8784]

Okay, simple question. Where did I try to deflect blame? I said, I think 3 separate times, that the person being toxic is, in the largest part, to blame for their behavior. However, CO is also responsible for the reasons I explained before. This response sounds as if I was trying to say that people are completely justified in being toxic, and aren't responsible for their actions at all. Which is completely not what I said at all. Basically a complete strawman.

I'm getting it from this statement specifically:

If the game did not come out the way it did, if the communication was handled differently, there would be no (or less) reason for the toxicity in the first place.

To me, that is deflection. This is the equivalent of saying "well, if they just didn't leave their cell phone out, it wouldn't have been stolen". And while, on its face, it may be true it still, in no way, is a reason for someone doing what is known to be wrong. You're trying to use the state that the game was (and is) in as justification for the behavior, no matter what else is said about blame being, in your words, for the vast majority on the part of the person behaving as such.

If that is not what you meant then I truly am sorry for misunderstanding. But that is what it reads like. Call it a strawman if you want: those are your words that I'm getting it from.

 

[Askorti]

I'm getting it from this statement specifically:



To me, that is deflection. This is the equivalent of saying "well, if they just didn't leave their cell phone out, it wouldn't have been stolen". And while, on its face, it may be true it still, in no way, is a reason for someone doing what is known to be wrong. You're trying to use the state that the game was (and is) in as justification for the behavior, no matter what else is said about blame being, in your words, for the vast majority on the part of the person behaving as such.

If that is not what you meant then I truly am sorry for misunderstanding. But that is what it reads like. Call it a strawman if you want: those are your words that I'm getting it from.

How is it justification to put a situation in its proper context? People chose to be toxic. That is their action and choice. But said choice was caused by something. Pointing out the cause in no way justifies the action without explicitly saying so.

My guess is that this is simply a difference in worldview. To me explaining why something happens does not justify it happening. Perhaps to you it does.

 

[fmagrao]

Welcome happy new year back, @co_martsu and the team!
I just want a way to import the map of my city from CS1...

See ya...

 

[yalex]

Toxicity is never pleasant, but could have been largely avoided if the game met expectations when it was released.
It is almost three months since release off CS2 and we are still waiting for core elements of the simulation, assets and modding to meet the expectations that were set during the development cycle.

Given that modding was a core reason for the success of Cities Skylines I, the fact that almost three months later it is still not production ready, just shows how unfit CS2 was when it was released back in October.

I was burnt once by purchasing Victoria 3 in its then unready state, only to repeat that mistake with CS2 - I definitely won't be making that mistake a third time.

 

[Lys91]

Ah the famous, our customers are toxic.

I discussed this in another thread. Release a poor product -> people are unhappy -> people complain and criticize your work. This is not toxicity but the direct result of your actions. This messaging from Western developers, who are releasing terrible products, is tired and tiring.

I find misleading marketing and corporate denial toxic and disrespectful to the customer base.

 

[Angius]

perhaps you have a constructive way of telling us how we can improve the way we communicate with each other

Well it's simple, really. When a game is released in a half-baked state, two years too early, with all the communication being "oh oh god it will be so deep oh the simulation ooooooooh uhhhhhh the best best best!" people get disappointed, disillusioned, and angry. And those lead to toxicity.

Release good, well-made and finished games, and the community will be happy.

Release a burning garbage heap, and the community will be toxic.

 

[Lortor73]

I mean, what did you expect when you over-promise and vastly under-deliver? I get it, I'm a developer myself. It would be understandable if it were released as a pre-release beta or something.

I think it has a lot of potential and will eventually be a great game. Right now though, it plays like nobody on the testing team actually played it and built a city for longer than an hour or so. So many things completely fall apart as the city gets larger.... and I have a great system. I'm not even talking about performance issues. Even at 500k+ people it runs okay on my machine. I would routinely run up against the 1 million limit in CS1. The issues that fall apart are everything else in the game. All storage facilities staying at 100%. High density housing almost never getting to level 5. Garbage collection not working. I have buildings that don't get garbage picked up even though I have placed 4 recycling centers around the neighborhood, assigned them to that district alone and they still only send out maybe 1-2 trucks. Same with crematoriums. Industrial areas become unsuitable for industry. Neighboring cities flood you with taxis even though you have bus service set up to those cities. The list goes on and on and on. It's like all your testing was done on small cities to test just the basic functionality of everything without bothering to spend time on a large real city that actually has some time put into it. Most things work great on a tiny scale. Once you hit a mid-sized city though (for me that's 250k+) forget about it. It all falls apart.

About performance... I don't know what you guys were thinking when it came down to rendering citizens down to the teeth and eyes (if that is true). I heard there is a reason but I can't help but think that massively kills performance and whatever reason you had can't be worth it.

 

[tycoonmike8784]

It's just not worth it. I had more that I was going to say, but it just is not worth it. In the end, I'll choose to be constructive.

Colossal Order, for as long as this message stays up, I wish you all the very best and I hope that you take this entire experience as a lesson. I have been very much enjoying what time I've had with CSL2 and I look forward to your continued work to make this game as good as it ought to be.

 

[SoopahMan]

I'm sorry there's been such toxicity. That's good you noticed and acknowledged it.

I think there is an economy of positivity/negativity that has its own enforcers in real life that the internet lacks. All online communities suffer from this broken feedback loop and few have innovated to the point of fixing it. I do think it can be better, better even than how real life typically enforces it, but, we aren't there yet.

The best innovator in this space that I'm aware of is StackOverflow, whether they realize what they've accomplished or not. In their model, you can only downvote - be negative - by spending points. You accumulate points by being positive and contributing, and, there's a threshold you must pass before your first downvote is possible. This has had an immense benefit, beyond what they might understnad, on what would otherwise be yet another toxic forum.

Now, it's not perfect. They use bland elections to pick leaders and it doesn't work. And, you can still be awful in the comments, at no cost - all suggesting they don't realize what they've accomplished in the downvote cost. If you could modify this forum to extend this idea of a "cost" to negativity more broadly, I think you could accomplish something. Criticism has its place. But it should require 5x the constructive statements before you go negative, and 5x again, at a minimum.

 

[speedbrake]

Good to know you can ignore people here so their messages don’t show up. Makes it easier to read the forums

 

[MagamiAKO]

I figured I'd post here to just say one thing.

If you cared about fixing the problems with the game and fostering a healthier relationship with the community, I'd recommend opening job positions for remote work. Right now if you go to the CO website you have 1 position open for a Technical Artist for a FT role in Finland.

Find where you need help, open some roles, open them for remote work, and bring in talent to help develop the game.

I'd also encourage bringing in an experienced game producer to help drive the game forward.

 

[Orinsul]

For community engagement, the forum can be moderated, steam seems a lost cause? maybe dropping the platforms that aren't feasible would allow open communication without toxicity, trolls and flaming silencing any communtiy members from voicing their suggestions, complaints and praises for the game.
It is clear that steam is not a place where players can voice anything that the game that fits outside that loud and violent minorities line, focusing here where forum rules and conduct policies are clear and enforced should promote open and inclusive communication and feedback.

 

[Iaaaaaaan]

I am part of a normally silent majority, but I felt compelled to comment here after seeing the article in PCGamer. I'm sorry you're facing this level of toxicity.

It makes me sad reading these replies in this thread, a lot of people still don't get it and are defending their actions. Gamers seem to a particularly entitled class of people, which breeds toxicity.

I've been thoroughly loving the engagement pre and post release and I hope this can continue.

The game is great and I look forward to its continued development.

 

[dan1979]

This is the equivalent of saying "well, if they just didn't leave their cell phone out, it wouldn't have been stolen".

It's not the equivalent at all.

The 'toxic community' are unhappy customers who paid for the game. They feel they have been wronged and have suffered a financial loss. They want their money back or the product they believe they are entitled to.

They may be prone to outbursts and may not articulate their thoughts in a constructive manner, but it doesn't change the fact they're aggrieved. You either give them their money back and tell them to move along, or you apologise and tell them what you're going to do to fix things. Complaining they're expressing their grievance in the wrong way isn't going to change anything because they feel they're entitled to do it and are being proportionate to the money spent.

The fact they have called out a community for having a 'tendency to toxicity' rather than highlighting a handful of individual comments that crossed a line is the real problem here. It comes across as defensive because it's a convenient shield.

The CS2 community is the exact same community that bought all that CS1 DLC - when sales were good, CO was praising the community, now that exact same community has toxic tendencies. Who caused that shift? If people are making specific, personal comments then highlight those as unacceptable and 99% of people will see that's fair. Otherwise, you have to accept you caused the shift in the community and get on with it.

You can see CO and its CEO are walking a tightrope here; apologies one week, defensive the next week, a bit of defiance (that was hasilty backtracked on). It's a very mixed message.

I think CO needs to start out each message by remembering they have people's money here. People got up early and went out in the cold to earn that money, maybe someone had to sweep 50 floors to buy this game, deliver pizzas, drive an ambulance. Those people are disappointed right now, what should we say to them, is it really appropriate for us to be defensive here?

 

[Tropod]

I'll preface this by saying I don't own CS2. I'm not the type of sucker that pre-orders or buys games early nowadays, there's just too many software & software companies that release software products too early. And the current state of the game in my opinion from what I've seen, is (currently) not worth the new price tag it's being sold for. It's not a life saving drug that I need, but rather a game that I should want. Based on a long list of issues this software currently has, I don't want to buy this game.

Toxicity vs criticism - Google Search

Thank you for bringing this up. We want the community to be welcoming to all and so that no-one has to be afraid to voice their opinion. Everyone can be polite and kind to others, even if there's a disagreement. It's a choice we all make.


We will have an asset editor with the import feature eventually. We want to see your buildings in the game!


Toxicity and criticism are different things, I'm sure you understand that. Toxicity is threats, attacking people and being outright mean. It has nothing to do with explaining what the issues with the game you might be facing and what you wish for the devs to fix or improve on first. We don't want praise, we want a community where we can discuss with the players about the game, what is working and what is not without facing abuse.

From what I have noticed, I've seen a lot of frustrated customers that have a product that they're clearly very disappointed in. And there's obviously people that are not disappointed. While that doesn't & never excuses peoples behaviour, it certainly goes a long way to explain the reason why people are venting & being toxic with their comments. If people feel like they're not being heard, peoples behaviour will manifest in other ways, become worse or simply lose interest/engagement. And that's all exactly what's happened here.
While nothing that your business is doing, nothing that people are expecting, is life threatening or requires addressing yesterday. (Paying) Customers may not see it this way.
As a business only thing can really focus on is understanding why this is happening (e.g. people disappointed in game) & improve on moving forward (e.g. improve game, & also address what are customers now expecting). It's all well & good to be hearing what the community is saying, but is the community really being listened to. They're 2 entirely different things & many businesses fail in this.

I would suggest currently, short-term, that staff become more directly engaged with the community, especially around bugs & issues, & obviously modding. Take note on the big things impacting players the most, or impacting most players, their expectations, & then being humble, modest & transparent about addressing these. Only over time will this help improve the mood of players & hence the community.

 

[Eric251992]

I noticed that instead of Spring its now been changed to ASAP, does that mean not far away from a console launch?

 

[mackau]

Oh man, toxicity from people who bought a broken product that you yourself said didn't live up to the standards you set with your marketing lies, with no refunds possible?

Shocking.

This is like telling a restaurant they gave you food poisoning and being told that you're toxic for letting them know they made you sick.

Remember, no-one but you and your company chose to release the game.

• CO decided not to delay the game on PC and instead released it like it was an early access beta but for full price to use PC customers as guinea pigs for an eventual console release.
• CO knew your game was broken months if not years ago and never told anyone, and hid the issues behind an expensive marketing campaign.
• CO required their sponsored marketing influencers sign NDA's to stop them talking about the performance issues, and only at the very last second did you update the community (while trying to hide it as much as possible) about poor performance without having a supercomputer at 1080p.
• CO don't have any in-house QA and have left the bug forum filled with unanswered reports.
• CO\Paradox cut out Steam Workshop without telling anyone until extremely late.
• The first big response made about the game's poor launch was a video blaming fans for "pressure" created as a direct result of your choices in how you marketed the game.
• You told players that if they didn't like the broken simulation that the game "isn't for you", instead of apologising for releasing it broken in the first place.
• There has been zero public accountability over the failures. In most companies a failure this big would have resulted in immediate, significant for cause firings.
• The next big response is to call the people you lied to and sold a dud product "toxic".

You sold a broken product and lied about it for profit.

Stop gaslighting your customers.

 

[Evil Ed]

Ah yes, only approve the 'positive' ones; delete the criticism.

You assume criticism is not positive.

GARBAGE IS BROKEN, FIX YOUR ****

Critical, negative, toxic.

Garbage is broken. The lorries don't transfer garbage between facilities when they should. It would be better if...

Critical, positive, constructive.

I honestly don't see what is hard about this, but keyboard warriors and trolls do unfortunately exist. (Not aimed at the post I'm quoting - just an observation.)

In terms of feedback to the OP:

1. Modding is needed, so anything to expedite that without sacrificing quality is a must IMO.
2. It would be nice to see which bugs are actively being worked on for an upcoming patch, even if it's just a filterable tag.
3. Can you feedback on whether we can expect further optimisation work?