CO Word of the Week #8

[Migue_RTM]

Hi Mariina, thank you for the update. I'm glad to know we will be able to edit maps soon enough, and I'm eagerly awaiting that patch so I can continue my cities (the cargo export issue became a big obstacle in my way of playing the game). About the toxicity, I think there's not much to do since rage, hate, impatience and hyper-sensitivity are just consequences of the way the world is functioning right now. If you guys feel all that negativity is affecting your mental health, maybe it's not a bad idea to pull the engagement just a little bit back until the biggest problems are solved and some dust has settled. I think more moderation will only feed the bad feelings and you should focus on keeping a healthy work environment, even if that means a temporary decrease in interaction with the community, so the major issues are fixed as soon as possible. Thanks again and happy 2024!

 

[ThomasK_7]

After a month of releasing the heavily buggy patch 1.0.18f, not a word of apology/explanation, typical.

There has been more than enough constructive feedback in the Paradox subforums since publication, but unfortunately no direct feedback from CO!
Does CO expect the correct program code from us?

What should proper constructive criticism look like?

 

[prismaticmarcus]

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.

It's against the rules to have more than one account.

 

[tom_mai78101]

After a month of releasing the heavily buggy patch 1.0.18f, not a word of apology/explanation, typical.

Because they have a long holiday between the patch 1.0.18f1 and now. They are busy with the next patch.

 

[LocutusH]

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.

 

[tycoonmike8784]

Starting off, welcome back! I'm sure the break was well needed.

I do think that a heads-up on some of the specifics of what is being worked on for the next patch would be worth it. I'm not a programmer by trade, but I know a bit about it from working alongside them and I know that a patch is never truly final, but some idea about what we may be seeing in the future would be very helpful, I think, in quelling some of the anxieties people are feeling right now.

As for the release of the modding tools, I will remind you that this was said before, right before launch. Days not weeks, which turned into a couple weeks, which turned into several months. I hope you can keep that promise this time.

And finally, regarding toxicity. As one of the people who was on the forums engaging with some of those claims and has since decided it just isn't worth it, all I'll say on this is we, and we alone, are responsible for our behavior. All of the disappointment, frustration, and anger in the world does not justify claiming that Colossal Order and their staff are, at best, bad at their jobs and, at worst, liars and con-artists.

Yes. Those were the words used over the last four months. If you don't believe me, go do a deep dive in the forums and see it for yourself. Some of the longest running threads (which thankfully have since cooled off) started with that as the very premise.

People are acting like this didn't happen. People are acting like it was justified, both how the threads started and how many others continued to spread the message despite the amount of effort many of us, including myself, undertook to demonstrate how complaints were either misunderstood mechanics, straight up bugs, or outright fabrications. We were there to see it ourselves and this attempt by those same people to whitewash and minimize the history of the game's community (and, frankly, the attempt to place the blame for personal bad behavior on Colossal Order, as though it were the CEO themselves holding them hostage until they did so) is the reason why I'm not engaging with it anymore beyond the official outlets.

TLDR: Colossal Order needs to do better, yes. We, also, need to do a heck of a lot better. Or else the community is going to do more damage to itself than a dozen botched releases ever would.

 

[Askorti]

I think CO fundamentally doesn't understand why the toxicity is present. The state CS2 released in, as well has how it was handled since has created an adversarial relationship between CO & PDX and the players. Many players feel like the companies took them for a ride, and are now dragging their feet on delivering what was actually promised. Add to this the fact that pretty much all assurances and plans for the next steps are extremely vague.
I can totally see how the communication from CO so far can feel more like pragmatic attempts at damage control than legitimate and honest attempts at genuine reconciliation.
The feeling of being seriously abused, and then the lack of trust in the communication since, fosters a very negative and pessimistic mood in the community.

When the community feels this way, it is no wonder a part of it will become toxic. While it is never justified, and I do not like it how toxic some of the conversation has become, I think it's very important to know the root cause and go from there. Moderation is important, but you really need to hit at the very source of the toxicity, not the symptoms.

A more direct feedback: Communicating is good, but just throwing empty words in the wind doesn't work. You need to communicate with purpose, and communicate very clearly. If you are able to(and I understand that it's not always easy), hard dates, hard facts, hard features. No vague statements that in the end mean very little.

 

[boorkie]

It's back!

Looking forward to the new patch and even more so the modding update. I hope there's a fix for pedestrians crossing the road as now they only cross if there's an explicit zebra crossing since the last patch broke it. It would be ideal if we could get some control over settings but just a fix would be sufficient too

 

[MKMarcusP]

Happy New Year to CO and Paradox teams! Hope you are full of energy for the new year and the goals for CS2.

My modest opinion about toxicity and haters is that they should be warned once and if they continue the hate and rude comments, can be banned. Criticism is ok, is part of the right of people to express what they dislike and what they think they would do differently, but the way to say it is very important. Education is a must!

 

[tycoonmike8784]

I think CO fundamentally doesn't understand why the toxicity is present. The state CS2 released in, as well has how it was handled since has created an adversarial relationship between CO & PDX and the players. Many players feel like the companies took them for a ride, and are now dragging their feet on delivering what was actually promised. Add to this the fact that pretty much all assurances and plans for the next steps are extremely vague.
I can totally see how the communication from CO so far can feel more like pragmatic attempts at damage control than legitimate and honest attempts at genuine reconciliation.
The feeling of being seriously abused, and then the lack of trust in the communication since, fosters a very negative and pessimistic mood in the community.

When the community feels this way, it is no wonder a part of it will become toxic. While it is never justified, and I do not like it how toxic some of the conversation has become, I think it's very important to know the root cause and go from there. Moderation is important, but you really need to hit at the very source of the toxicity, not the symptoms.

A more direct feedback: Communicating is good, but just throwing empty words in the wind doesn't work. You need to communicate with purpose, and communicate very clearly. If you are able to(and I understand that it's not always easy), hard dates, hard facts, hard features. No vague statements that in the end mean very little.

Because I don't believe in adding a 'respectfully disagree' without providing justification and an opportunity for discussion, I'm going to respond to this.

This, frankly, reads like an attempt to justify and backpedal on the behavior of the forum's past. If that's not the intention, I sincerely apologize but that's how I'm reading it. There were entire days you couldn't post anything positive on the forums because you'd get people dogpiling them about problems (real, misunderstood, or just outright false). Again, if you don't believe me, go back through the history of the forum for the last few months and you'll see exactly that.

No one but the person posting toxic negativity (or toxic positivity, for that matter) is to blame except the person posting as such. Not Colossal Order. Not the CEO. Not the programmers, the marketers, or anyone else. The person posting as such bears that blame alone. If we can't accept that as a starting point, then there's no point in going forward with any proposed changes because, ultimately and has been pointed out multiple times by now, toxicity will always exist in some capacity and thus there'd be no justification for stopping any of it, positive or negative.

Colossal Order messed up big time. I don't think that's controversial at this stage. Nor do I think it's controversial to say that they need to do a lot of rebuilding of trust. Part of that, IMO, ought to be more concrete language in the WotWs about what to expect, that much I agree with. But they can only shoulder so much of the blame before, ultimately, the person with final control over what and how they post needs to take the L and just... move on. No one is forcing toxic people to stay, but there's a not-insubstantial number of people making this community less and less welcoming to new people. And, frankly, it ain't Mariina doing it. It's the people saying that anyone who posts positively about this game are clearly paid by Colossal Order/Paradox. Just as it was the people who, before launch, said that anyone who posts negatively about this game are clearly just spreading FUD.

Incidentally... also language used on official platforms. Here and elsewhere.

 

[BoraBora]

Hi Mariina, thank you for the update. I'm glad to know the Editor is only a few weeks away,

That's not what Mariina wrote:

The Editor UI is expected to be ready enough for the closed beta in a few weeks

The start of the closed beta is not the release. Add to this we don't know (and CO doesn't either, seemingly) what we'll be able to edit at release. Maps seem a given. Assets, Mariina's not sure.

 

[Mazisky]

I truly hope to not see again what happened with another popular strategy company, where the CEOs antagonized the community and nobody bought the next DLC and game in protest, so they risked bankrupt\failure and the company was forced to apologize and cut in half the price of the new game, begging the community to return.

Please don't do the same mistakes, it would be a loss for everyone.

Community and developers need to be united.

 

[meanderingmalcontent]

I posted a note yesterday saying we needed to hear from devs today. The toxicity came from people pro-current state of the game and not the people I expected from. Now we get this... I still haven't heard from devs today, but rather the PR team. Given that you broke the game with your last patch (infinite money glitch) and come back without even a "oops. sorry!" is kinda ish a best.

I'm hanging on by a thread y'all.

 

[timfrombriz]

Colossal Order ..

Do you remember how Unity lost focus with finishing tools and systems and you had to implement your own low end systems because DOTS sucked, because Unity CEO John Riccitello was focused on stock prices and spending billions buying out companies instead of fixing what they already had released.

Well thats the best example I can give here to how it feels. The focus is wrong and its not giving the players the experience they want. Just as Unity caused your development process to be delayed by not giving you the finished tools you want because their focus was wrong.

Then after all that Unity decided to impose huge royalties on Colossal Order (thats the equivalent for players, of focusing on console releases and new dlc releases while the game is still broken), and then everyone in the developer community said enough is enough, were leaving, and now John is no more.

Constructive Criticism key point
Fix the bugs, polish what you already have, and then focus on consoles and DLC. You'll know you have achieved that goal when the whining stops, and the bug report forum goes quiet. Have strong foundations to build upon. Please reasses your focus, it should not be performance/mod support yet, the two tasks preventing you from doing a console release.

Dont be a John Riccitello. Nobody liked John.

 

[[Delta ²k5]]

Colossal Order messed up big time. I don't think that's controversial at this stage. Nor do I think it's controversial to say that they need to do a lot of rebuilding of trust. Part of that, IMO, ought to be more concrete language in the WotWs about what to expect, that much I agree with.

While I agree with most parts you wrote I personally think this is basically a bit off the road. Not Colossal Order is to blame for the release itself, it's mostly a unfortunate combination of lack of support for certain Unity functionalities they used to build the first alpha versions, then broke and which they had to recreate themselves and Paradox Interactive as the ones which are doing the marketing part for the campaign itself leading to false assumptions/hype within the community.

If Paradox would have clearly offered C:S2 as being "early access", maybe for some reduced price tag, I think not as many would be mad (still there are always haters around attacking new stuff for pure fun). However business was forced after 3 additional years of development to release the game now, even if it's more or less just a platform for stuff to come.

However that platform seems pretty good to me if one does not focus on single bugs which pop up (that's stuff which can be patched). Actually there are no hard limits in place, so that promise is surely valid. Maps can be expanded to hundreds of kilometers square technically, a set limit for citizen units like in C:S1 does not exist so if you go all mad and have an Azure server cluster sitting in your basement you may be able to simulate 10M residents. Also the editor is impressively flexible and powerful from what I was able to see on the current release build which is great (as I plan to create some content again I love to see that there are less restrictions than on C:S1!).

For now it's baby steps towards a better performance to enable also people with regular hardware to properly simulate 1, 2 or 3M residents (the simulation has to scale better for the hardware in use) but it's now the right time to do so with as much hardware to analyze as possible - but as I told at the start it would have likely been better to offer it as early access or even a beta version by the actual marketing staff.

Mariina now just tries to fight that dumpster fire over here using the WotW while I wonder what Paradox actually does besides watching it burn? That might also lead people to put CO into focus as they are the only ones currently communicating regularly.

 

[akrobby907]

There's no community here.

 

[BoraBora]

Paradox Interactive as the ones which are doing the marketing part for the campaign itself leading to false assumptions/hype within the community.

Blaming PDX for the marketing campaign is once again blaming the customers for too high expectations, which is getting very, very old. With or without any marketing campaign from PDX, a 50 € to 90 € game newly released is expected to run on a middle of the road gaming rig with good graphics and FPS, to be mostly bug-free, at worst after one or two patches in the first weeks, and being a CO game and the sequel to CS, a modding legend, to include full modding support.

These kind of expectations are basic and have nothing to do with the marketing campaign.

 

[Migue_RTM]

That's not what Mariina wrote:

The start of the closed beta is not the release. Add to this we don't know (and CO doesn't either, seemingly) what we'll be able to edit at release. Maps seem a given. Assets, Mariina's not sure.

You're right, I'll edit my comment.

 

[KhalahanFr]

I feel like not everyone has the same definition of toxicity here. Can we agree that complaints and disappointment messages are not in essence considered toxic?
In my book, toxicity is about being aggressive, insulting or even menacing and this is NEVER acceptable, whatever the reason. I'll even go that far to say some messages might be illegal and eligible to legal action : threats are unacceptable and deserve zero tolerance.
Now that being clear, I must say I haven't seen that many toxic messages, if any, which proves the moderation team is pretty efficient and we don't get to see the really toxic comments.
I've seen here people make beautiful arguments and demonstrations, being polite and precise and I won't repeat one more time what they said.
But to be constructive, I'll try to give you (CO / Paradox) some better vision of what's really happening here : people love your games, even those who are the harshest with you. All these passionate people, and I'm among them, have had great expectations following the hype you built around the game for months before release. Your campaign was really exciting and well done, your promises so incredible. You gave so much hope to your community. But then you chose to release the game in a state that could only disappoint those of us who dared listening to your promises and dream. Sure, CS2 has a great potential, but let's be realistic, 3 months after release, it can't compare to CS1 with all mods.

So that's the thing : now you face anger. It's not hatred, it's not rudeness, it's raw, understandable anger. People are in pain when they feel they've been deceived and they're in fear when they're in the dark. And there are not 1000 ways to calm that anger and sooth that fear. You must acknowledge your mistakes, own them, and make amends. Now what's done is done. You must apologise and IMHO offer refunds, at least partial, to those asking.
That alone will cool down most of the anger and put minds back into a constructive state.
Then you need to be transparent and precise on your roadmap : what are you going to fix / improve and when? I know it's not easy to make promises you're not sure to hold but you can't work without a roadmap anyway so you might as well share with us. And if difficulties arise, continue to be transparent! Your community is willing to help, as it always has been!
Don't underestimate how understanding and forgiving people can be when they feel you're actually respecting them. There's a saying "Fault confessed is half redressed".
Your community loves and respect your games, show us you really love and respect us enough to do just that so we can all move on.

 

[Askorti]

No one but the person posting toxic negativity (or toxic positivity, for that matter) is to blame except the person posting as such. Not Colossal Order. Not the CEO. Not the programmers, the marketers, or anyone else. The person posting as such bears that blame alone. If we can't accept that as a starting point, then there's no point in going forward with any proposed changes because, ultimately and has been pointed out multiple times by now, toxicity will always exist in some capacity and thus there'd be no justification for stopping any of it, positive or negative.

I'm afraid I cannot fully agree with this. While I do agree that the vast majority of the blame lies with the person being toxic, I do not think that the people who caused the situation are free of blame.
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. So while obviously the person being toxic carries the vast majority of blame for their unacceptable actions and behavior, in my opinion the circumstances surrounding the toxicity deserve attention as well, and as such some blame lies at the feet of CO and PDX.

People like to have this victim vs perpetrator mentality, where the former is always blameless, and the latter is wholly bad, but reality is different. Nothing is black and white like this.

Also, I must admit that I completely fail to see the logic of the later half of your statement. It does not follow any logical thread or cause and effect relation that I can perceive.

 

[tycoonmike8784]

I'm afraid I cannot fully agree with this. While I do agree that the vast majority of the blame lies with the person being toxic, I do not think that the people who caused the situation are free of blame.
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. So while obviously the person being toxic carries the vast majority of blame for their unacceptable actions and behavior, in my opinion the circumstances surrounding the toxicity deserve attention as well, and as such some blame lies at the feet of CO and PDX.

People like to have this victim vs perpetrator mentality, where the former is always blameless, and the latter is wholly bad, but reality is different. Nothing is black and white like this.

Also, I must admit that I completely fail to see the logic of the later half of your statement. It does not follow any logical thread or cause and effect relation that I can perceive.

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.