CO Word of the Week #8

[Zahmbomb]

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

They aren't a small company anymore. They need a public relations (or a better one if they have one) team, they need a few professional moderators, they need someone who can optimize the graphics for wide variety of PC's, and they need more devs.

 

[Gonzoez]

They aren't a small company anymore. They need a public relations (or a better one if they have one) team, they need a few professional moderators, they need someone who can optimize the graphics for wide variety of PC's, and they need more devs.

Funny thing - they are a small company with ~30 people. However, the weird thing is - they are not even hiring. There is just one position open on their website (as of couple weeks ago)...

Given there is no shortage in developers nor in community managers on the market - one of my questions for CO is why they are not even trying to hire anyone...

If enough people like my previous comment, maybe we will get an answer eventually....

 

[ClemiMD]

One of us should take the lead on this issue and take legal action against CO.

Good old "someone (not me)" ... hey, just do it.

 

[anydaytv]

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

I'm pretty sure I've heard a few of them outright say that they care nothing for the simulation.

At least Biffa cares somewhat about it -- and I admit, it's amusing to watch him solve every traffic problem with a roundabout. At least it was for me until that seems to have become the driving design philosophy behind the game now.

Traffic problems? Let's not think about zone density, structure, using one way roads, or road hierarchy; Let's just put a roundabout on literally every intersection, because that's realistic.

See? I'm vicariously frustrated with a guy I found amusing because rather than giving us traffic light phasing, they give us roundabouts - something you could already make, and still can with more flexibility than what they've provided.

So it's not the CC'ers that did anything wrong, is what I'm saying.
They are who they are. It's the obvious desire to cater them rather than say, a hardcore sim player.

 

[Didi92110]

but what is this bug again??

 

[Licenturion]

Traffic problems? Let's not think about zone density, structure, using one way roads, or road hierarchy; Let's just put a roundabout on literally every intersection, because that's realistic.

Haha. Yeah. But content creators their city is usually 40 percent roads and intersections with barely traffic on them. And 40 percent parks and trees. Buildings are an afterthought and only when it fits in with the road design.

That is partly another problem for CO and their small team. There is a huge part of gamers that cares for actual gameplay and simulation and another part that just want to make ‘pretty thing’ no matter if is realistic or fits with the gameplay.

 

[meanderingmalcontent]

Haha. Yeah. But content creators their city is usually 40 percent roads and intersections with barely traffic on them. And 40 percent parks and trees. Buildings are an afterthought and only when it fits in with the road design.

That is partly another problem for CO and their small team. There is a huge part of games that cares for actual gameplay and simulation and another part that just want to make ‘pretty thing’ no matter if is realistic or fits with the gameplay.

then there's me, who wants both via easy mode and hard mode.

 

[DanielR80]

They aren't a small company anymore. They need a public relations (or a better one if they have one) team, they need a few professional moderators, they need someone who can optimize the graphics for wide variety of PC's, and they need more devs.

Look at the credits, almost all art was outsourced. We know the character models were badly designed, and there was a highly detailed parking lot (with power lines for the monitor inside a booth) that didn't have LODs. An internal artist would have known what level of detail is necessary / supported by the engine.

I said it before, they don't even have in-house QA, and it shows...

Several studios have laid off a lot of people last year, while others shut down completely. There should be no shortage of skilled developers and artists at the moment...

 

[Skeksis25]

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

Sure, which is why CO needs to come out and admit that they sold a broken game and offer some make goods if they want the community to just accept a "long and bumpy road" after having paid a premium for the game. You want to take your time to fix things(if that is even the plan), but also want the people who paid for your product to be happy and understanding about that, you absolutely have to do something first to appease those people. And other than a few lines of "Lol, oops" and blaming the players for being upset, I have seen nothing.

Heck, from all their communications, it sounds like they don't even consider the game to be that broken. Its just the dumb players who don't understand the deep simulation and intricate mechanisms happening behind the scenes. For these idiots, they are planning to make a dev diary or two, cause the actual game surely doesn't need any explanations of why basically every part of the sim does nothing that you would expect it to do.

 

[avguy2]

@Skeksis25 Of course they *want* to fix things. But that's gonna take time which means it's nothing to appease the frustrated community with.

And the big issue is the game doesn't even run on consoles, so it's not hard to guess where their main focus is right now. They probably don't know yet which features they're gonna keep working on and which will be simply declared working as intended.

The strategy seems to be getting mod tools out asap, even if not fully functional yet to at least give the players something. Of course this won't solve the real problems but at least it'll distract the community for a while.

 

[Gaseous Stranger]

Funny thing - they are a small company with ~30 people. However, the weird thing is - they are not even hiring. There is just one position open on their website (as of couple weeks ago)...

Given there is no shortage in developers nor in community managers on the market - one of my questions for CO is why they are not even trying to hire anyone...

If enough people like my previous comment, maybe we will get an answer eventually....

They already answered this. They said it was a “lack of talent in the industry”

It’s a shame, I personally knew some very very talented people who applied to work with them.

They also require employees to relocate to be in Tampere, in person.

 

[Lys91]

At least Biffa cares somewhat about it -- and I admit, it's amusing to watch him solve every traffic problem with a roundabout. At least it was for me until that seems to have become the driving design philosophy behind the game now.

Traffic problems? Let's not think about zone density, structure, using one way roads, or road hierarchy; Let's just put a roundabout on literally every intersection, because that's realistic.

See? I'm vicariously frustrated with a guy I found amusing because rather than giving us traffic light phasing, they give us roundabouts - something you could already make, and still can with more flexibility than what they've provided.

So it's not the CC'ers that did anything wrong, is what I'm saying.
They are who they are. It's the obvious desire to cater them rather than say, a hardcore sim player.

Whoever design roads in France wants to tell you about it not being unrealistic. There is more roundabout in France than in all of the rest of the EU put together.

I believe it happened due to poorly thought through central government funding to local authorities (something like getting money to improve your road if you put some roundabout in the project). They eventually shut down the scheme, but it took a while.

 

[Abitus]

If enough people like my previous comment, maybe we will get an answer eventually....

If only they took care of this, but unfortunately no. Since the release I've read many very constructive and detailed messages with a lot of upvotes, all unanswered. So far CO seems to only reply to what is the less risky and engaging for them. It's pr damage control all the way long. Which, I guess, is understandable from a "business" angle, but is at the same time totally unaccetable from the perspective of a client who already paid 90$.

After the fiasco of this 8th WOTW I admit I'm very curious of how they will communicate with us tomorrow (if there's even anything tomorrow). More pointing fingers at the toxic and demanding community ? More evasive "soon" and "next" ? Excuses ? Jokes about dogs ? Who knows.

(yeah as it sounds I admit I still have no trust at all regarding their communication)

 

[anydaytv]

They already answered this. They said it was a “lack of talent in the industry”

"Lack of talent in the industry"...
More like a "Lack of industry in the talent"

I could write books on all the talent I've run into and how they feel about it.

 

[Swordsman1219]

Personally, I've checked out of playing any PDox title or CO title (even CS1) for the forseeable future, the poor product just isn't worth it.

 

[Collector78]

Christmas was so long ago that most of us can't even remember celebrating. But still no fix for the huge taxation bug introduced long before Christmas. Worse, not even a date has been announced for the next patch.
And worst of all, even though everybody (who did more than just complain) said the same thing ("start communicating"), I did not see one single thread this week with a true contribution of someone from CO. I find this all a whole lot more disappointing than the disappointing game. At least the game is still promising.

 

[dumpster299]

I'm disappointed in the game as the next guy, but everyone should be realistic with their expectations. It's simply not possible for the devs to get the game done in just a matter of a few weeks or even months. Everyone hoping on a quick fix better buckle in because realistically the road's gonna be long and bumpy.

There's a huge spectrum of how hard various things are to fix.

For example, they did promptly fix the excessive LHC water usage. That's just a number in the editor, so it was easy to fix, but nevertheless it's good and laudable that they did.

There are other requests that are certainly not getting fixed in a couple days. A new medium-density office sounds great, for example, but there's lots to do for that. I agree that's not something they can just knock off in an afternoon. (There's a bunch of things in gamedev where the work to finish them needs many different phases, and especially for things that involve outsourcing there can be a bunch of delays in the pipe that make them practically take a while even if none of the steps are particularly difficult. Lots of things just take weeks of calendar time, even if they don't take nearly that much posterior-in-chair time.)

But this is why I bring up the high school attendance bug. It's not "make new assets"; it's not "add a new simulation system"; it's not "design a new tool + UI". I was hoping that it would be a "oh, oops, we typo'd a number" problem like the LHC was. But since it's not fixed, it suggests that there's something about the core simulation that they don't understand well enough to fix promptly. And if that's a broad meta-problem, it's even more concerning than wasting triangles on teeth.

 

[Skeksis25]

@Skeksis25 Of course they *want* to fix things. But that's gonna take time which means it's nothing to appease the frustrated community with.

And the big issue is the game doesn't even run on consoles, so it's not hard to guess where their main focus is right now. They probably don't know yet which features they're gonna keep working on and which will be simply declared working as intended.

The strategy seems to be getting mod tools out asap, even if not fully functional yet to at least give the players something. Of course this won't solve the real problems but at least it'll distract the community for a while.

You can appease the community by either opening up refunds beyond Steam's policies, or by offering extras. Offer the first DLC for free. Offer something. People paid $50-$80 for a broken product sold on the basis of deception and lies. They need to first make people feel that they are getting something worthwhile for their money before they get to demand patience and understanding. Most companies when they screw up, offer coupons and discounts on future products as ways of apologies. All CO has done is gleefully pocket the money they extracted from people, suddenly decide that now "taking their time to get things right" is important to them and then proceed to show their contempt for the people they deceived for daring to be upset at them. After they raked in millions from the customers, now they want everyone to come together and help them build this game into what it should be? I'm sorry, but they need to live up to their end first.

We paid them for a product that they did not deliver. You cannot just overlook that and move on to the next steps by brushing the initial transaction away. Its is 100% on CO to make the customers feel like they are getting something for the money they paid. We paid for a working stable product on 10/23/2023. You cannot just say, "Yeah that sucks, but be patient and at some obscure time in the future, MAYBE you will have what you paid for." and expect everyone to be best buddies with you. You did not provide what the initial transaction was agreed on, so now provide alternatives. Until you do, you are going to keep festering a community of negativity. Some of that negativity will go over the top and instead of blaming the customers for that, perhaps CO needs to look at why that negativity was created.

 

[safe-keeper]

but what is this bug again??View attachment 1075885

At least the bugs make for good entertainment. I had a good laugh yesterday when there was a total gridlock in my city because the police car couldn't reach the traffic accident it was dispatched to clear... in the same intersection the police car was stuck in. I had to bulldoze the intersection to get things to clear up.

"Liuetenant, why don't we get out of the car?"
"We follow protocol, detective! Always follow protocol, my boy, that's the golden rule that's gotten me through 34 years of service!"
"But there's a car in the way!"
"Protocol, detective!"
"There's a sidewalk right outside the door!"
"PROTOCOL!"

 

[RagnarokZ]

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

Is it really that much, to ask for finished, working games now? It shouldn't be.