CO Word of the Week #8

[CapnBludd]

I admit I'm not so sure about that. I think that if bad reviews and bad comments continue in the long term it could be enough for the company to see a significant loss. The terrible communication we're currently complaining about is after all made specifically to prevent that kind of situation to happen. If it wasn't the ultimate risk for them, I doubt that they'd invest so much in pr and damage control attempts.

And fwiw yesterday I talked about this WOTW to a friend which is a game dev, and his opinion was "they will collapse in a year or two". Now this is subjective, he could be wrong (and btw I personally do not wish that to happen), but I think the risk still exist.

I think that like many other folks still here and playing in spite of the many frustrating flaws and problems, I don't want them to fail. I want them to be better, but they want everyone smile and nod along to the same stuff week after week which just says soon again and again.

Is there really nothing that could have been pushed out? Some small patch that fixed something, anything? Giving some small thing even it doesn't fix a major problem shows tiny bits of progress.

Weeks back I responded to one of these with something along the lines of "Got it, nothing now, weeks to wait." And it's still the same situation. Nothing now, weeks to wait.

I'm so thankful for the modders out there plugging away with unofficial tools and giving us traffic management and information displays that help me see things like unemployment breakdowns. Maps that aren't 50% water, and don't have tiny dots of fertile land,

 

[Lukedawg]

@co_martsu
Devs please read if you care. Bump if you agree.

Unfortunately, people can say whatever they want to say with zero repercussions. Best way to handle those types of people is to not let them win. Most of those people doing this only want attention, whether it's good attention or bad attention matters not. No, they should not attack anyone but it hard to control that.

HOWEVER, this lashing out and frustration is only a symptom of the real issue/issues. The overarching issue plaguing the gaming industry right now is the sheer number of games, across all platforms and genres, that are being released in the most incomplete and broken conditions. Since 2019, mind you that's 5 years ago now, I think the players in the gaming community can name 10 games total that have released in a playable and enjoyable condition. We get that the VID hit the world hard, but that excuse has run its course. It's literally just an excuse to mask the truth. The truth being that the higher ups making decisions forced the game to be released even when the development team knew it shouldn't be. Released to a community who has stood by you through the years, supported you and your company through everything. A community that made you who you are.

We as gamers are just tired of being lied to, tired of the broken promises, tired of the flat-out abuse, and tired of getting our hopes up just to be let down massively. We are absolutely tired of having to pay full price for a game that's going to take 6 months to a year before it becomes playable and enjoyable even at its basic level. Unfortunately, CS2 fell right in line with the extremely long list of games that we as gamers were forced to pay full price for and it wasn't even playable for most at launch. Making a boring game is one thing, making an unplayable game and expecting full price for it is something completely different. The lashing out, frustration, and anger is directly caused by you Devs. Unfortunately for you, this frustration the community has, has been building for a few years now. The longer this trend in the gaming industry continues, the more volatile the situation will become.

I wish more game developers would take a page straight out of the book from the Devs that created the game Foundation. That game was in early access to the general public for like 3 or 4 years. For 10 dollars you could play the game in its entirety. No demo or specific things tailored to hyping it up. They fixed bugs, deleted things, added things requested, you name it. The major difference here is it was a onetime fee of 10 dollars. I paid 10 dollars for a game I knew was in development. I knew what state the game was in when it recently launched live. I knew exactly what I was paying full price for and bonus, the game breaking bugs didn't exist at launch.

I love this game in general but honestly feel sad and extremely let down. CS2 is a letdown and you as the development team need to acknowledge that. Is it a horrible game??/ Absolutely not, It's Cities Skylines at its core but it's not the Cities Skylines we as a community deserved as the follow up to CS1. Outside of the performance and bug issues, we are most likely going to have to pay for DLC's that we have already bought once already. At a minimum, the CS1 DLC content you added to CS2 should have been the same, if not even approved upon, in CS2. Don't try and put lipstick on the pig by saying it's "new" game or a completely "different" game than CS1. If that were the case, you should have never called it CS2. If you are going to slap CS2 in its title, then it better be worthy of that title right out of the gate. Not years from now, not 6 months from now, right out of the gate.

I would much rather have had farms, ore, and oil industries that were even semi enjoyable to look at and customizable instead of fancy lights on my skyscrapers or overly detailed people. How about bicycles and bicycle paths, or airports that I could customize to fit my city and map, instead of 2 options, one of which I need to flatten 4 tiles just to fit. I mean would it really have been all that hard to add rocks to the game? All of this simple stuff was already in CS1 without needing mods or assets from the workshop. It is the very basic simple things that CS2 doesn't have that, by themselves, make CS2 a letdown, then let's pile all of the other issues on top that and what you are left with is a game that we didn't ask for nor deserve.

The kicker to this all is if I didn't preorder this game, I am lacking more map options and a slew of other things which could potentially make the game more enjoyable. Is this a game that should have been preordered? The answer is no. yet even though it is still in a poor state (better than at launch yes), still has a laundry list of bugs, still missing features that were supposed to originally be available at launch, I am being punished for not buying the game early. You want to show how truly sorry you are, how about saying hey, were sorry about the current state of the game, here has some free stuff. Free stuff goes a long way and right now, if I were in your shoes, I'd be handing out free stuff like candy and doing everything in my power to show how truly sorry I was.

 

[CensoredLOL]

This is my third post in this thread.
I have around 2500 hrs in CS1, and another 300 in CS2. I bought the expansions, I modded my game, and I created publicly released maps for both games. I've read every post in this thread. I'm clearly passionate about the potential of this product.

But the product doesn't exist without a playerbase.
You're up to 12 pages of people posting overwhelmingly negative comments about... well a lot of things, all valid.

This is your primary portal for customer interaction - the customers are BEGGING for interaction from you and on this WORD, like every other WORD, the first page has 1-2 Q&A responses, then gets brushed away.

Don't just tell us answers to a few cherrypicked questions - read everything here. Make a list of grievances that many people here have raised.
Respond to each of them. Inspire confidence in your ability to provide a good game, assuage the fears of many that this game will not last.

This is my final post on this thread, and I want to ask a simple question:

Will you address the multitude of concerns that so many of us have raised in this thread, or simply go on not addressing the concerns of your community?

 

[KyoLo the major]

@co_martsu

Development Time Focus

I think theres a pretty strong consensus amongst current customers who have already purchased this game, that the current game needs a lot of bug fixing and polishing. I believe your underestimating how much more work needs to be done here. Your patches to date have only scratched the surface of your bug report forum listings. Your word of the week strongly suggests your now sailing towards console releases, with a splash of bug fixing on the side.

If you sail in the wrong direction, and pick up more customers, your going to loose customers who are already here and abandon ship in hope of this game improving anytime soon, and pick up new customers on console who are going to repeat this cycle of frustration with you.

If you sail in the direction of Paid DLC's, your going to find a lot of people wont be bothered to invest into an already bugged and broken experience.

If you focus on calming the storm your sailing in, repair the boat, paint and seal the floors, it will stop leaking. You will reframe the negativity surrounding the game into positivity, and that is stronger foundations to move to having sucessful sales on console platforms and for expanding the game with Paid DLC.


Quality Assurance

Whoever did your quality assurance (looking at your game credits, it was outsourced to a 3rd party company), NEVER use them again. They failed the players and your entire team. Something went wrong here very bad. Any of your passionate players could of created a list of issues that need resolving, balancing problems, visual issues, as seen on your bug report forums.

Its time to start utilizing that FREE resource of passionate players and start making BETA releases on steam only available to select players that agree to participate in some closed source forum here with you, to do the Quality Assurance to the standards you require. That means you tell your QA Testing players what you want tested, and ask for them to provide the feedback on if there are still outstanding issues or new bugs introduced. Its a win win win. Your getting free QA done, your engaging the community and the quality of testing will be better.


Bug Reporting

The bug report forum as of writing this has 4064 bugs and counting. It seems to be a case of whack a mole. Your staff going through those forums are having difficulty keeping up and managing it, because its inundated. I think you need FREE community help to start labelling duplicates, and marking older bugs that have been fixed as 'Resolved/Fixed'. A need to do something to prioritise these bugs and show what bugs you are swatting and communicate that. Theres already a voting system, but it does not seem to be something utilized in the decision of which bugs are focusd on.


Communication

The Word of the Week is something to players/fans to look forward to, to get a little present each week while waiting to know whats been worked on behind the scenes, whats being fixed. If you remove communication and engagement from the community, then your going to sink your ship. People will let go of the rope of hope and look for their gaming fix elsewhere, most wont return. As ugly as it feels to be in a swamp of negativity, you need to be captain and sail the ship.

The communication should also be speaking as a player and developer. You should be passionate about playing your own game for hours on end, and know what sucks about your own game, and admit it sucks. That type of honesty goes a long way. You need to get Unity C# coders in on these WoTW's, and talk about the technical problems and issues in detail. Factorio developers do a great job of this, and a lot of the players enjoy the technical detials and provide valuable feedback and solutions as technical people themselves. Being more transparent and speaking in the language of a gamer and developer, may open doors you never knew existed. Your codebase is being dissected by the modding community, if there was more visibility of problems your coders are facing and where, you may find the coding modding community learns quicker how the game works behind the scenese and at the same time, provide fixes and suggestions themselves to fixing some of the technical issues your facing and accelerating the bug fixing/polishing process. Your modding community is a valuable asset, utliize it, engage it, its another win win for all.


Emotion



Engagement with your community is a win for all (customers and your business). In fact, I think the engagement since release has not been enough and thats part of the problem. The only two people engaging are yourself and co_avanya. None of the devs have been seen engaging since your Reddit AMA and a few days post release on the bug reports, at least on the forums here anyway. The tone in the quote above feels like a parent talking to child, its very insulting to read. As much as negativity sucks, you need to own it, and grow from it. The toxicity you spent half the WotW writing about is confusing to read. Most of your customers only see negativity and frustration in the comments. If there is toxicity of threats, harm, and abusive language, then its already been moderated out and no one but yourselves have seen it and speaking about it only is slapping all your customers for the actions of a minority that havent been seen. If toxicity is negativity and that its a revolving door of people constantly whining, then unforunately, you need to accept the good with the bad. When you speak, your only touching a small fragment of the community, you'll be repeating yourself often to get the message across. As tough emotionally as it may be to on the receiving end of negativity, if you put a wall up by moderating negativity, and/or stop engaging, instead of owning the problems and engaging, listening and steering in the right direction to what your customers are whining about, then I dont see any positive coming from that. You'll push away your current customers, and be left with finding new customers who make purchasing decisions on what they read online by the experience of those who gave up on CS2.

This is the post that gives the most complete, detailed and appropriate strategy that CO people shall really follow.
And in case, I volunteer for the free forum bug sorting task! Lol

 

[orbops]

Why is everyone complaining about the lack of communication from the developers? They've given us weekly updates with as much information as they can officially can release. I have played and will continue to play CS2 on XBox GamePass for free each month, and am happy with 30fps. Every game has bugs that need to be fixed, and it takes time to push a fix through. If they really wanted to curtail dialogue, they could simply say that they're working issues and will provide updates as needed. Be thankful that they're trying to be as transparent as possible.

 

[Wade20]

Looking forward to more bug fixes. If we can get all the assets working as intended with economy balance, education balance and land value balance that will help to keep me playing as right now there's just too many bugs to play a llot.

I would also advocate for releasing the mod platform ASAP. Lots of good mods (line tool, light phasing) that I want to use but don't want to use non-standard platforms for. Assets can wait

 

[Collector78]

@co_avanya said so


here:

The Journey to Launch - Mini Documentary about the Release and Future of Cities: Skylines II

Last week was the last written Word of the Week of the year, and we instead wanted to share a short film we're been working on from Colossal Order and Paradox Interactive. Listen in on our thoughts, hopes, and dreams about the development, the...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Ah, thanks. @DanielR80 changed 'no in-house QA' into 'no internal QA'. Makes a whole world of difference.

 

[orbops]

They confirmed there is no internal QA? So there is no sprint planning with a scrum master? There are no test tools containing 'found issues'? There is not even a lead developer informing management about the progress? It would explain a lot but I find it hard to believe (and I've seen a lot after 25 years in IT)

Sprint planning with a scrum master is simply a new form of project development that tries to pamper Gen Zers who need to be rewarded for development with 2 week continual sprints. As a project manager who worked on DirecTVs foray into streaming, I can tell you that QA is made up of the same set up developers who are coding the software. They have been focused on development for a long time, and are looking at issues from how they developed the code. The only way any software company is going to have bullet proof QA is to completely outsource QA with testers that have no knowledge of how to play any game - which is an unobtainable goal.

 

[Collector78]

What? Here your post is. If you wanted to include a link the automated system may have blocked it. Go ahead and provide your feedback.

Dear moderator. Ghostmane is not the only one who - as a new user - got blocked with a 'spam' warning that made no sense. I had a repeating one myself in my first or second comment on this forum and almost gave up on it.

 

[Collector78]

Sprint planning with a scrum master is simply a new form of project development that tries to pamper Gen Zers who need to be rewarded for development with 2 week continual sprints. As a project manager who worked on DirecTVs foray into streaming, I can tell you that QA is made up of the same set up developers who are coding the software. They have been focused on development for a long time, and are looking at issues from how they developed the code. The only way any software company is going to have bullet proof QA is to completely outsource QA with testers that have no knowledge of how to play any game - which is an unobtainable goal.

Noone said scrum is foolproof, but simply checking if all post-its are in the ready column is certainly a quality check to be done before going live. Somehow I'm quite sure someone forgot to look at the board here
That someone is called a scrum master and it's his task to provide this kind of information to the decision makers.
Probably he did so, but was not listened to. What I see in daily life is that bonus constructions for project managers and board members make them ignore people who are giving a message they don't want to hear.

P.s. when scrum is a dev party, you implemented it wrong. According to the theory books post-its shall not go from 'test' to 'done' unless the tester appointed by the customer gave green light. Not even mentioning demo moments that should be reflected on post-its too. Iterations of two weeks are considere too short by many.

 

[anydaytv]

Sprint planning with a scrum master is simply a new form of project development that tries to pamper Gen Zers who need to be rewarded for development with 2 week continual sprints. As a project manager who worked on DirecTVs foray into streaming, I can tell you that QA is made up of the same set up developers who are coding the software. They have been focused on development for a long time, and are looking at issues from how they developed the code. The only way any software company is going to have bullet proof QA is to completely outsource QA with testers that have no knowledge of how to play any game - which is an unobtainable goal.

Totally agree. Scrum and Sprint have literally destroyed productive coding ventures. MY GOD, I can't tell you how much I dislike it.

 

[danielblack64]

Just wanted to weigh in because I’ve never posted before. CS1 is my most played game ever, I’ve got every DLC and I absolutely adore it.

I’m so upset with CS2 I’ve never been so excited for a game before but it’s really disappointing. As someone who hasn’t really been engaged with the community, I don’t understand why the game was released when it’s clearly unfinished rather than being delayed? And why modding has been delayed (and no steam workshop support!!!!!) when it really carried CS1. It really sucks to watch my favourite game get Sim City 2013’ed when Steam workshop support could have fixed all of this, if not just waiting until the game was actually ready to be released.

It’s been such a let down that it’s put me off the game entirely and I’m not sure if I’d even want to pick it back up after everything is ironed out.

 

[lokeusa]

I just want to say a massive thank you to you and your team for all of your hardwork. The launch of this title was not perfect but that is life and I think the way you have handled everything since then has been fantastic. I also wanted to recognise your comments about the toxicity in the community. I have found the levels of entitlement and vitriol abhorrent and it stops me from engaging in the community. The level of disrespect that some people have for fellow human beings is so disappointing.

I believe this is a minority (albeit a vocal one) and for all the haters out there, there are a significant number of lovers who hide in the background afraid to put their opinions out there in case they receive the attention of the trolls.

I personally think your level of communication has been great and have felt well informed on the progress to date.

sub note there is a mod that enables the map editor in its current form use at own risk though.

 

[danielblack64]

Just wanted to weigh in because I’ve never posted before. CS1 is my most played game ever, I’ve got every DLC and I absolutely adore it.

I’m so upset with CS2 I’ve never been so excited for a game before but it’s really disappointing. As someone who hasn’t really been engaged with the community, I don’t understand why the game was released when it’s clearly unfinished rather than being delayed? And why modding has been delayed (and no steam workshop support!!!!!) when it really carried CS1. It really sucks to watch my favourite game get Sim City 2013’ed when Steam workshop support could have fixed all of this, if not just waiting until the game was actually ready to be released.

It’s been such a let down that it’s put me off the game entirely and I’m not sure if I’d even want to pick it back up after everything is ironed out.

Just to add to this re:the editor etc - I really believe that even if unfinished, these features may as well be shipped now to match the rest of the game and at least the community can give feedback.

 

[Zahmbomb]

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.

Then why are people who are airing there general dislike at the state of the game, and the way you as CEO have handled everything being silenced and blocked on a Paradox forum? Your actions are the opposite of your statement.

 

[TripleAgent]

Given the reaction to the Journey to Launch video and given some of the productive conversations we had with co_avanya in the thread discussing it (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...of-cities-skylines-ii.1617727/?prdxDevPosts=1), I'm a bit surprised by the tack this WoW takes.

I have my own issues with CO's general inability to give specifics on anything, but co_avanya doesn't come off nearly as hostile towards the legitimately upset community and actually gave us some solid and direct answers, even if they aren't the answers we wanted, and actually seemed to listen to feedback (seriously, I encourage people to check out the thread). This has none of that and is a really disappointing way for us to open the new year.

 

[Zahmbomb]

Just wanted to weigh in because I’ve never posted before. CS1 is my most played game ever, I’ve got every DLC and I absolutely adore it.

I’m so upset with CS2 I’ve never been so excited for a game before but it’s really disappointing. As someone who hasn’t really been engaged with the community, I don’t understand why the game was released when it’s clearly unfinished rather than being delayed? And why modding has been delayed (and no steam workshop support!!!!!) when it really carried CS1. It really sucks to watch my favourite game get Sim City 2013’ed when Steam workshop support could have fixed all of this, if not just waiting until the game was actually ready to be released.

It’s been such a let down that it’s put me off the game entirely and I’m not sure if I’d even want to pick it back up after everything is ironed out.

I agree 100%!
This whole situation, the finger pointing, the lack of accountability, everything has left me with a very rotten taste.
I've lost my appetite for this game completely.

I don't understand why they didn't stop these WoW's or hire a professional relations team to take them over, after we as consumers were told "maybe this isn't the game for you."

EDIT: Also I literally never post on forums or review sites, but the way these WoW's have been worded and directed at me as a consumer, is what drove me to the forums, review sites, etc.

 

[anydaytv]

Last but not least, we have seen a growing tendency of toxicity in our community, something we have not experienced to this extent before. Not only directed towards our devs but also our fellow community members - resulting in people hesitating to engage with the community. In the long run, this will really hurt not only the mood and the happiness of community members but also discourage creativity and modding, something we would be very sad to see.

I thought about my response quite a lot, especially because I want to believe you mean well, but this is a bit of a misstep.

I've worked in high-demand, client facing jobs. I found them rewarding, engaging, and interesting. I also found them boring, enraging, and pedantic. That's just the end result of dealing with thousands of people a week. It would be absolutely unfair if say, I treated the next person who walks through my door based on the experience I just had with the one five minutes prior. More importantly, being the face of the company, you lead your community by what you choose to embolden - and you've chosen toxicity.

Some people have suggested a "falling on the sword", or apology from you, but honestly I think that would be pretty immaterial. So is toxicity. It's just words.
Take those words and mine them for the useful information you need to be a better person the next day, regardless of it's display.

Creativity and modding already exist, but the hard truth is, you could've done more to facilitate that --- and you didn't.
"Couldn't" may be true, but unfortunately is never true for a customer.

Hey, I get it. Maybe you thought what you have is worth showing the world. It is!! There's a lot of great ideas rumbling around in the game, along with intuitive city building tools, and an attention to detail -- that put plainly, is insane.

... It should've been early access.

Maybe you weren't in control of that decision, maybe there were other forces at play, but that's the truth and people are angry about it. Wrapped in all this anger is a community that has seen game after game after game spoiled to greed and mismanagement. You're on the pitchfork for it now, whether that was your intent, or it wasn't.

So where to go from here?
Put bluntly, get the modding tools out. Give your playerbase something to keep them occupied while they wait for the patches.
Other than that, the good news is, if you pull through this -- if you want to pull through this, your community will be the strongest it ever has been.
It's just gunna be a rough ride!
I look forward to the future of CS2!

Please read the tone of my post as "solemnly bearded pipe-smoking stranger on a bus"

 

[gekj]

CO is doing the same error as creative assembly few months ago.

Meanwhile :

CS1 player peak : 12k
CS2 : player peak : 8k

But that must be toxic players launching CS1 just to bother CO

 

[Zahmbomb]

CO is doing the same error as creative assembly few months ago.

Meanwhile :

CS1 player peak : 12k
CS2 : player peak : 8k

But that must be toxic players launching CS1 just to bother CO

Hey but Creative Assembly accepted accountability a month later, and said "You know what you are right, here's half your money back, and we'll do better next time."