CO Word of the Week #8

[Skeksis25]

You are never going to eliminate toxicity by saying please don't be toxic. As long as messageboards have existed, people have been toxic. Its not suddenly going to change. A bad, undercooked product is going to be a festering ground for toxicity until the product improves. I am not defending toxicity and it would be great if people acted rationally and like normal human beings on the internet, but if it hasn't happened in 40 years, I don't know why you are expecting it to now suddenly. You just have to block/mute/ignore people taking it too far rather than cut off communication. For every 1 toxic person, there are usually 20-30 times more normal people willing to give proper feedback and just communicate like normal humans.

The game was released unfinished, undercooked and with a lot of deception. That cannot be fixed now. What can be done is give people a reasonable hope/expectation that the product their paid $50 - $80 for might actually be worth it someday. I appreciate the communication, but honestly what have we learned from this word of the week after a month off? The editor might get to closed beta in a few weeks without assets. Don't really know what that means in terms of actually seeing it? Closed beta in a few weeks, then what is the expectation for how long that period will last. And how long after that will it actually be out. Its still a total guess. Its nice to know another patch is coming at some point addressing visual and sim bugs, but again, which ones? I understand it maybe not have been decided and you don't want to promise stuff that may not be delivered(even though this wasn't an issue pre-launch), but its going to get people ruffled.

Again, not defending people who take it too far and respond over the top, but that is going to happen, because this is the internet and you released a product that was severely underbaked. If you cannot separate those people from regular people providing regular feedback, then I don't know. You are only going to alienate the few people left who are still hoping for a turnaround. The best way to improve the mood is to actually put out stuff that will make the customers feel like they are getting what they paid for. "Improvements are coming" has gotten old. The game came out almost 3 months ago. People are still waiting for features and gameplay they were expecting at launch. Get those things in the game and have them actually be good and the mood will change. Until then there is going to be a dark cloud and that is mainly self inflicted.

Heck, I would say that people actually taking the time to check for updates and respond to them, positively or negatively is a good sign. This game is in danger of having most of its audience just moving on and not caring anymore. That would be far worse than people being upset.

 

[MayorWanze]

Please fix this broken game. Please give us a real answer as to when we can expect a patch addressing any of the issues being reported. You say you want to engage with the community, well you can start by going through every thread where a bug is reported and start responding to them with what you are going to do about them.

Im not sure for what level of detailed answers you are looking here besides on the things they are currently working. Do you want work flow charts or detailed dev blogs on how they fix a bug?

 

[Cartama_]

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

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.

Toxicity does not equal criticism. They love criticism and so do I, it helps find and resolve issues. But when it becomes unpleasant and scary for others, that's the issue.

 

[CapnBludd]

Finally some sense.

It makes no sense to hold back the entire mod store if it's just a problem with assets, getting the official coding and maps part open while figuring out whatever the problem with assets is will be a great thing.

 

[[Delta ²k5]]

I am very disappointed that your priority has shifted to MOD. I still encounter many bugs, and I cannot play game correctlly.
I hope that resources from MOD development can be allocated to bug fixes, and resolving bugs becomes the top priority among you.

Well, there are two levels not to be mixed: feature level and bug fixing.

- On (new) features the editor is top priority followed by other additional content/DLCs
- On bug fixing top priority is fixing crashes, completely blocked modules of high impact and bugs preventing progress (highest prio), followed by bugs affecting simulation/experience in some negative way without any workaround (high prio), followed by bugs with an actual workaround on this level (medium to high prio) and followed by bugs which are visual/non functional (low to lowest prio)

At least that is pretty common standard. So ofc they are fixing bugs but also move forward on features.

On resolving such bugs you have also to keep in mind that it's also not about just focusing on highest priority items - all priority levels should be covered in a sprint so the low priority items are not forgotten at the some point and also to free the developers minds a bit.

 

[Licenturion]

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.

I know what you mean with toxity and I never said that is okay behaviour. Personally I think that personal attacks should be heavily scantioned, especially in an official community platform. Same with posts that have the intention of starting flame wars. They contribute nothing to the discussion and don't benefit anyone except the 'bad actors'.

However the internet and game communites today are not the same as they where back in the day when Skylines 1 released. I come across toxicity everywhere these days and it is hard to curb the trend. I am also of the opinion that moderators should just moderate and make sure the rules are followed and use another account for personal (non official) posts and opinions.

Also, with 109 CS-posts and 600 upvotes on my account I think don't I am toxic.

 

[xagash]

Thanks for the WotW Mariina. Keep up solving issues in the game and toxicity will resolve by itself. Not worth loosing time with it as it is so simple to ignore someone . There's so many simulation's bugs once you have a big city that it explains the disappointment (even if it's not a reason for toxicity but hey... it's internet, the land of coward behind a keyboard).

 

[Mrt19]

I am very disappointed that your priority has shifted to MOD. I still encounter many bugs, and I cannot play game correctlly.
I hope that resources from MOD development can be allocated to bug fixes, and resolving bugs becomes the top priority among you.

So the community can fix the game bc they cannot keep up with it, and maybe an editor will 'calm' the buyers down for an little bit

 

[SuspectPizza]

Im not sure for what level of detailed answers you are looking here besides on the things they are currently working. Do you want work flow charts or detailed dev blogs on how they fix a bug?

Hi there, I'm not the OP but I feel like there is a middle-ground to be found here. Obviously having to explain the technical details of every bug is unreasonable and would take an unnecessary amount of time that could be spent elsewhere. Just like creating flow charts, you're right there. But I think that there's room for improvement. For example, the current WoW doesn't mention which bugs are being worked (only "simulation and visual" bugs), so that could be improved. Or like others have said, they could have a public kanban board showing their progress.

 

[MohawkWolfo98]

Welcome back and happy new year.



The only time I've felt "unsafe" posting on these forums is specifically because of the moderation I've seen. I've even seen people call for outright censorship and only "approved" responses which is a very dangerous game.

More moderation and less freedom to voice our opinions isn't the answer, getting rid of biased and salty moderators who only stir the pot further is a good step in the right direction.

I believe that toxicity towards developers is uncalled for. They often get abused for things that are not of their control and by their own contract cannot respond. I’m sure there were devs that said “this will cause a great backlash” but the CEO of Paradox or CO chose not to listen to.

But on the other hand, has Colossal Order ever also admitted full responsibility that they released it far too soon without blaming the playerbase, and what will they do to regain trust in the community? Why did they release it if it was satisfactory but not? How about partial refunds or maybe free mechanical DLC as an apology to truly show it, rather than words condemning people who paid $60 for a full game as advertised? Such a gesture would show that CO is truly communicating with fans and would go some way in repairing bridges as they claim to be doing.

Is there a roadmap to how they are going to fix the problem? How are you going to fix the problems you made? What is the focus over the next year, what are they going to do first? These are the questions I would like to know. Otherwise, this is all just another way of blaming the community for the problems you made in releasing it too early.

 

[sim81]

Happy New year to you and the team if it's not too late to wish it, and thanks for the update on what happens next - I'm very excited to see the mods and maps that far more skilled users than me are able to create.


Regarding behaviour here and on other platforms, as you say this is not the first time your team has made a polite request for improvement, but I still see it and it is annoying. My single Reddit thread response about the game inexplicably led to a stranger attacking me for lying, and I never post here because I don't want to get drawn into an argument about nothing.

There seems to be an belief that anger and toxic behaviour is acceptable in the gaming community, but it is not. How we behave is a choice and people are choosing to behave unnecessarily poorly - even in this thread I can already see messages which read as unpleasant and entitled.


I wonder whether a period of heavy-handed moderation might help break the cycle, but otherwise I understand completely if the devs want to withdraw from the community for a period - I certainly wouldn't put myself through it, and they can probably learn everything they need from the bug reports.

 

[tom_mai78101]

I am very disappointed that your priority has shifted to MOD.

The majority asked for this, hence it is the highest priority. Bugfixes and stabilization of the game is second highest priority. Even if you disagree, this is the set plan moving forward, unless the whole community reverse its tracks.

But on the other hand, has Colossal Order ever also admitted full responsibility that they released it far too soon without blaming the playerbase, and what will they do to regain trust in the community? Why did they release it if it was satisfactory but not? How about partial refunds or maybe free mechanical DLC as an apology to truly show it, rather than words condemning people who paid $60 for a full game as advertised? Such a gesture would show that CO is truly communicating with fans and would go some way in repairing bridges as they claim to be doing.

I'm thinking this is 100% Paradox Interactive responsibility as a publisher, not a Colossal Order responsibility. Players purchase the game from the publisher and the publisher grants the players the license to play, therefore any discussions about monetary transactions should be redirected to them to handle this.

 

[Akasiktorn]

Thanks for the message!

Yes the game is a bit "undercooked", but lots of us still support you! The game is great although some bugs here and there, buts its definitely a great game! Don't let the toxicity get to you.

 

[Troyen]

I don't think there's an easy way to fix all toxicity, but I have noticed from other Paradox forums when their games are in a slump (CK3, Stellaris, Vic 3 have all gone through this), that a clear signal on what to expect next goes a long way. When people have an idea on what's coming next, people can see the light at the end of the tunnel, or at least when major frustrating bugs might finally be addressed, which tends to improve the average mood and tone. The more ambiguous the future of the game is, the more space that leaves to breed discontent because those people won't have anything to temper frustrations.

Some of the earlier WoWs were pretty good about this. "We're aiming to tackle garbage," "we're going to fix cargo exporting" - those weren't particularly detailed statements, but they directly targeted major areas of frustration and people really looked forward to those fixes. It's hard to detail every little fix, but I think there are enough major substantial systemic issues right now that it should be possible to categorize some of them. The lack of details and needing to wait an unknown amount of time for the patch isn't going to help with any frustrations, especially since it seems like 1.0.18 broke a number of things that 1.0.15 fixed (despite 1.0.15 also breaking some other things like simulation balance).

With CS1 you were reluctant to share patch details or even patch goals until the patch was out, but that doesn't work as well when large portions of the game aren't functioning properly. WoWs #2 and #4 were good status updates. With this one, those of us that don't use mods are left wondering when we can go back to our cities.

 

[flepgg]

Welcome back, hope y'all had a great holidays.

One suggestion about the communication I have is to flag the topics in the bug section that have been fixed, and which patch fixed it.
I know it is a lot of work but I think you probably have this internally already, so QA should be able to do it here too.

The tag "confirmed" could be updated to "fixed" and a pined comment mention the patch version that fixed it.

Then if users still see the issue happening on a particular way, they can do a detailed report to help more.

This should give players more clarity about the progression of the game, ease their frustration, and also help your team to catch all aspects of a particular bug.

 

[SuspectPizza]

Happy New year to you and the team if it's not too late to wish it, and thanks for the update on what happens next - I'm very excited to see the mods and maps that far more skilled users than me are able to create.


Regarding behaviour here and on other platforms, as you say this is not the first time your team has made a polite request for improvement, but I still see it and it is annoying. My single Reddit thread response about the game inexplicably led to a stranger attacking me for lying, and I never post here because I don't want to get drawn into an argument about nothing.

There seems to be an belief that anger and toxic behaviour is acceptable in the gaming community, but it is not. How we behave is a choice and people are choosing to behave unnecessarily poorly - even in this thread I can already see messages which read as unpleasant and entitled.


I wonder whether a period of heavy-handed moderation might help break the cycle, but otherwise I understand completely if the devs want to withdraw from the community for a period - I certainly wouldn't put myself through it, and they can probably learn everything they need from the bug reports.

Hi there and thanks for sharing that story. What do you (and the rest of you guys here) think is the most toxic platform in your experience for CS2?

I'm asking because at first I didn't even realize that Mariina could be talking about other platforms than this forum. I've seen a bit of toxicity here, but not as much as to warrant a big mention in a WoW, so I'm curious to hear your answers.

 

[tom_mai78101]

Is there a roadmap to how they are going to fix the problem? How are you going to fix the problems you made? What is the focus over the next year, what are they going to do first?

Colossal Order already gave us the roadmap. They are going to fix the issues in the game, while simultaneously develop and getting ready to release the Editor and Modding updates. They are going to fix the problems by continuing to monitor the game, read the bug reports, and address them. And they are focusing the remaining of this year to fixing the issues until the game is stable enough to start preparing to launch paid DLCs.

 

[Hubbubb17]

I appreciate all your hard work.

And I'd like to offer a few thoughts.

Sadly, the toxicity IS our present zeitgeist. It is unsettling and distressing, but the culture arising from the functioning of social media leads people to feel rewarded saying and doing exactly those things sometimes that we've all been enculturated not to in the physical world. We perceive as license the absence of normal constraints (e.g. a punch in the nose from a stranger, or a tongue-lashing from our parents) and receive regular doses of dopamine in correlation with which our behavior satisfies our perceived needs. Freud is out of fashion these days, but might observe that the Id reigns supreme in these spaces.

Our expectations are inappropriate to our lived experiences. If one had suggested even twenty years ago that a deeply immersive, agent-based simulation could so effectively model group behavior through the aggregate of thousands of algorithm-based individual decisions, most of our heads would have spun. Nonetheless, you have accomplished just this. But many of us forget this simply wasn't possible until only a few years ago.

[***sidebar -- I sometimes wonder if the simulation models macro- AND micro-economic behavior too well. For example, it makes sense that low density residential does not provide a tax base sufficient to support amenities and services, thus driving an unvirtuous cycle toward sprawl. Once one recognizes this and begins adding density, however, the demand for lower density residential dries up--and it SHOULD, all things being equal in a rational economic environment. Human beings, however, do not always make rational decisions, which partly explains why, in the United States, in the last two decades, sprawl has continued to accelerate at the same time that 85% of U.S. citizens now reside in dense urban centers on our coasts. So, I wonder, at some point, as you contemplate the game design, if one can allow the player to ignore the demand bars and actually zone types that the game presently won't spawn because the algorithms only allow rationally correct choices. Again, in the U.S. we still build sprawling suburbs, to our detriment and contrary to the established evidence that the practice has been harmful to the environment, our social relations, and our economy. It would be realistic to allow the player to ignore what makes perfectly rational economic sense.]​

With that said, there is an inaccessibility to some of your decisions. With TMPE, for example, we had an advanced AI that effectively rendered dynamic path-finding and lane-switching. It existed for a few years in CS1. How is it possible, many wonder, that we don't apparently have that in the base of the second version of the game? A second example: with such exquisite road engineering tools in the base game, why don't we have something as simple as a prop line tool... or, for that matter, rocks and other props? Or BIKES? While these are all apparently useless quibbles from one perspective, from another they make the game seem less satisfying than it could be.

Thus, your CEO's comment, "maybe this isn't the game for you," was received by many as insensitive and tone deaf. My personal reaction to that statement was, "well I AM immensely enjoying this game, but good grief I dropped over $100 for the package deal (of which I've seen nil) and that's how you say, 'thank you?'"... maybe this game isn't for me? You've taken my money and not delivered the lion's share of your promises. Pardon me if I feel a teensy bit slighted. In some quarters we call that theft. [ADDENDUM-- I want to reemphasize, having said this, that I am THOROUGHLY ENJOYING playing this game, notwithstanding the lamentations... I'm onboard for the long haul].

I remember, however, when EA released SimCity 3000. I had enjoyed hundreds of hours of play time on 2000 for several years only to discover that 3000 was simply unplayable on my machine at the time. I literally had to give the game up, and was definitely distressed for a little while (although it couldn't have been for long because I apparently survived). Over the last few years I've been intentionally upgrading my current rig with the goal of avoiding just that situation with CS2. My system is handling this game just fine. But on the basis of my personal history, I can imagine how many players with older machines or consoles must feel right now.

There is a degree to which some people's reactions seem to me askew. This situation, for example, hardly rivals EA'S SimCity 2013 debacle. And yet some people are reacting like the protagonist family in "Leave the World Behind."

Further, we live in a world, now, emerging from a pandemic catastrophe, and with several active regional wars underway, yet (some) people respond to this gaming release as if they are living in a conflict zone. Our escapist and toxic ignorance is explicable, but simultaneously offensive and profoundly disturbing.

So, again, thank you for all your hard work. This game is rewarding and enjoyable right now--but for me also represents an unfulfilled promise.

 

[TTJ]

Happy New Year 2024. I also wanted to leave a few lines that I value your openness and hope that you can successfully and smothely finish the base game in the next months. I am looking forward to a long time with the new game with many creative content ideas!

Unfortunately I must agree with what was said above: Some people are upset because they payed 60€ for an unfinished game and I doubt that this will change until the game is playable as players expect it. Be aware that while you already switched to longer patch intervals, some people are still expecting hotfixes for "urgent" problems. So the best you can do is deliver updates and fix bugs.

 

[ma2412]

... we’re also working on the stability and performance on console to make the game available for the console players as soon as possible.

so those fixes mostly also will affect PC version, too?