CO Word of the Week #9

[Gaseous Stranger]

Yes.

The only pre-release public-facing testing that has any actual bearing on the eventual product is load testing server capacity in multiplayer games. Which has nothing to do with the actual product, just how much the support infrastructure can bear.

Apart from that pre-release events like this are:

1. A marketing gimmick (influencers, pre-release youtube hype eg this game)
2. Revenue generation (early access, eg bg3).
3. It's actually a soft launch and changes are set in the pipeline for post-release support anyway (eg Battlefield V, Titanfall 2)
4. Calling it a beta helps fanbois defend critical failures in the game quality, because the instant response to any criticism is "it's just beta, it'll be fixed for release" when it never is.

That is quite unfortunate. It’s a shame, as they really tried to frame it as generating feedback, and some of the creators I know were expecting that feedback to be heard. In addition to that, I have seen these Early Access creators catch a lot of flack and unwarranted hate for the state of the release as well.

 

[MohawkWolfo98]

You have concluded a contract of sale with the retailer and not with the manufacturer. The retailer is therefore responsible if you want to complain about a defective product. You certainly don't go to the manufacturer.

Creative Assembly did partial refunds when Total War Pharoah was not up to scratch, which was done through steam. CO could also offer free DLC in the future as some sort as an apology. Such alternatives have been proposed many times in the community without any answers.

CO can absolutely do it, they just won’t. It is not Steams fault that CS2 was an unfinished game.

 

[srjun]

Welcome back to the weekly update on what’s happening at Colossal Order and what to expect for Cities: Skylines II. Last week we had in-depth conversations with our publisher Paradox Interactive on the priorities and goals for Cities: Skylines II for 2024. There’s really nothing new when it comes to the previous statements: Modding support, console versions, and the Expansion Pass content are to be worked on and released during the year. From the great discussions emerged an important decision however: the modding support will roll out gradually as the features enter beta and we won’t wait for all of them to be fully completed before setting them live.

What this means in practice is that we’ll start giving the mod creators early access to the modding tools as soon as the code modding and Paradox Mods are ready for testing. If everything goes as planned a Public Beta version of the code modding and Paradox Mods will be available a couple of weeks after that. We’ll continue to work on the Map and Asset editing as they require a bit more attention still. Map editing is expected to be available sooner than the Asset editing, but at this time it comes down to iteration time and the feedback we’re getting on the usability of the tool. Asset editing is unfortunately suffering from technical issues and as long as players are unable to save and share the assets there’s no point publicly releasing the tools. We do have a plan for the fixes, but it might take months in the worst case I’m afraid.

To summarize on the priorities of the modding support:

1. Public Beta version of code modding and Paradox Mods will be available in the live build by the end of March
2. Public Beta version of Map editing available in the live build together with code modding or soon after
3. Public Beta version of Asset editing to be announced, only after the technical issues are sorted can we roll out the tool
4. Continue to work on the modding support and get out of the Beta stage during the Finnish fall.

We’ll keep resources on the modding support throughout the entire lifecycle of Cities: Skylines II as we know there are many improvements and feature requests we can work on to help the modders achieve their goals even after the initial Beta release.

The work on the console versions is ongoing and while gated by the modding support we’re making progress. We’re not committing to any timelines as there are too many unknowns at this time, but we’ll keep you updated and will communicate the moment we have something to share. For the Expansion Pass, the artists have the Beach Properties content almost ready and we’re on track for its release.

Before those bigger releases, we’ll have one more patch coming out. After this, we’ll include the bug fixes and performance improvements in the releases to reduce the amount of individual patches. Patch 1.0.19 is going through its first round in QA at the moment and will be released after it passes the checks. Full patch notes will be released on the day the patch goes live, but you can expect fixes for stuck maintenance vehicles and an additional fix for abandoned dogs, who will now be returned to their homes. While the work still continues on the land value, we have an improvement so pollution properly affects the value. And last, but definitely not least, we’re currently testing a fix for the tax bug with crazy high or negative numbers.

Keep following our social channels for news about the patch release and hope you enjoy the game in the meantime. Have a lovely week!

Sincerely,
Mariina

Thanks to all of you guys developers! The game is great, and is being tuned to become even better! Keep up the hard work!!

 

[Mdizzl3]

They are a small team of 30 people, how on earth were they not all aware of how badly the game was performing from a technical and gameplay point of view?

How did they not all know the Editor/modding was a million miles off?

How have they not noticed they promised modding support days after launch until now?


It's all very convenient for them. We have been lied to and it's very disappointing.

 

[Gaseous Stranger]

They are a small team of 30 people, how on earth were they not all aware of how badly the game was performing from a technical and gameplay point of view?

How did they not all know the Editor/modding was a million miles off?

How have they not noticed they promised modding support days after launch until now?


It's all very convenient for them. We have been lied to and it's very disappointing.

Plausible deniability is a powerful tool

 

[safe-keeper]

Okay, this is getting ridiculous. I'm used to PDX titles being broken on release and then being fixed gradually by patches, and I have hopes for this game as I know it has it in it to become a great classic, but the WoWs make it sound like everything is fine with the game and you're just stomping out the last minor bugs. I mean, it might just as well be PDX not allocating you more resources for some reason, but regardlessly, I grow more and more worried with every passing WoW.

edit: also, maybe it isn't a good idea to have weekly dev diaries if you don't actually have anything to say. The HoI4 devs start DDs when they are far enough along in DLC/patch development that they can actually show off new art and models, talk about new features, etc. The WoWs are pretty samey and most often don't really tell us anything, and what is there is increasingly concerning (not just for CS2, but for PDX as a whole --I'm not going to be buying more games from them if this is how poorly they're going to be supporting their titles going forward). Would probably have been better for PR not to have them.

What about the 2500 assets you promised?

I had completely forgotten about those. Just goes to show.

 

[safe-keeper]

Never seen a community want to see a game fail so bad. Give it time!

Haven't seen a single post indicating this. Can you point them out to me?

Possible scenario : Community shit on us. Devs pulled away and resented the community. Cycle continued. Game died. Studio closed.

Um, no, that's not a plausible scenario at all.

 

[yalex]

I'm not sure how to feel after that Word of the Week, one on hand it's good to see some timeframes, on the other it also highlights how unready CS2 was at launch and that's before you include the undelivered assets, simulation expectations etc.

Perhaps I'd like see some candidness over why it was so undeveloped at release and an ongoing roadmap identifying each area that will be improved so as to meet expectations held at launch.

 

[tamsi99]

I'm used to PDX titles being broken on release and then being fixed gradually by patches, and I have hopes for this game as I know it has it in it to become a great classic, but the WoWs make it sound like everything is fine with the game and you're just stomping out the last minor bugs. I mean, it might just as well be PDX not allocating you more resources for some reason, but regardlessly, I grow more and more worried with every passing WoW.

This is exactly how it feels for me, too. What I am not sure about is: Is it CO being completely overwhelmed by the amount and complexity of the issues to handle, so they are lacking a solid concept, roadmap and communication around it (by probably also lacking people with the necessary experience to handle that from a project / product / OCM point of view). Or, did they already start to not care anymore too much, so they thin out patches, they see performance improvements as just "one of many things" that may or may not come as a side-effect of planned e.g. quarterly releases for their DLCs. They are kind of declaring the simulation to "work as intended with some minor bugs" and so on. Not sure which one is the worse scenario but I'm definitely worried.

As I mentioned before, in the first weeks after the release, despite the horrible release, it felt for me like CO will really work hard and will deliver clear improvements regularly, maybe every 2-3 weeks, so we will regularly see good improvements within helpful timeframes. I could live with that, given the release mess that we could not change any more. But now, I don't see how this game will get into any "expected" state within a reasonable timeframe. I do not even have any feel for high-level timeframes and I don't see any sense of urgency or drive from CO to make things happen as required by the horrendous state the game still is in. Very worrying.

Edit:

Let me demonstrate how the CO behaviour and their communication changed meanwhile, based on how I personally perceive it:

In Nov/Dec: "The game is not in the state we want it to be. We cannot give you an exact date but in the upcoming weeks we're working hard on issue xyz and will deliver it to you as soon as available". And then they delivered xyz and it made the game at least a step better, indeed.

Now: "Well, we will not have patches any more. We just do regular releases where we can sell DLCs and as part of that we just regularly try to improve things if we have the time. We cannot tell you what we are working on and what we may or may not improve. Of course, we are also not giving you any idea of timeframes any more. But hey, the game is great. And oh, the modding thing will come one day. Some beta of some things end of March. Maybe. And the rest and full version maybe later the year when it's cold outside, somewhen."

 

[AngryHitsuji]

Never seen a community want to see a game fail so bad.

It's already failed.

It's up to CO & PDX to unfail it.

I guarantee there are people at CO & PDX wondering just how much they can throw at the game and if it's worth it, or if they should cut it loose like certain other PDX games in recent years.

 

[Marov84]

Based on what I noticed on Steam DB - the game's update status is "release", I suspect that a new patch may be released today or tomorrow or next week. I'm very curious what changes will be made to improve the game experience. I think it will be good, because CO is consistently trying to "put out the fires" in Cities Skylines 2. I am very grateful to them for that and I wish them a lot of strength, despite so many negative comments. As they say co_martsu and co_avanya, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger". Take care you .

 

[co_avanya]

@co_avanya :
Thank you very much for your response.

1. Could you please clearly confirm that end of March 2024 is the time we will see the next relevant performance improvements, as implied by the WotW?
2. Could you please inform us if you are already working on a DLSS 2/3 integration? If yes, I'm sure you have a rough target date at hand, feel free to not hold back on communicating it
3. Regarding all the simulation issues, it would be helpful to get a kind of roadmap from you to understand what can be expected next. If you are not comfortable with communicating dates (or at least months or quarters) then at a very minimum a priority list on what you are working on. Fairly managing customer's expectation is always a good way to control their emotions and frustrations. Vague statements on the other hand just accelerate the rumor mill and by that again frustration

1. The patch we're working on at the moment includes some performance improvements (assuming they make it through testing of course), though nothing major that's expected to have a huge impact on performance, hence why we haven't mentioned them. They're a part of the continued efforts to improve the performance throughout the game's lifetime.

2. We're working on DLSS integration yes, though I'm afraid we don't have a timeline for when you can expect it. When we do have an update, we'll let you know.

3. We're working on a roadmap (don't expect dates/months though), but it needs to go through a few people before we can share it. I know it's frustrating having to wait, but we need to make sure everyone is aligned on what's shared and how far into the future it reaches. Fingers crossed for next week! ^^

 

[atomic8810]

Welcome back to the weekly update on what’s happening at Colossal Order and what to expect for Cities: Skylines II. Last week we had in-depth conversations with our publisher Paradox Interactive on the priorities and goals for Cities: Skylines II for 2024. There’s really nothing new when it comes to the previous statements: Modding support, console versions, and the Expansion Pass content are to be worked on and released during the year. From the great discussions emerged an important decision however: the modding support will roll out gradually as the features enter beta and we won’t wait for all of them to be fully completed before setting them live.

What this means in practice is that we’ll start giving the mod creators early access to the modding tools as soon as the code modding and Paradox Mods are ready for testing. If everything goes as planned a Public Beta version of the code modding and Paradox Mods will be available a couple of weeks after that. We’ll continue to work on the Map and Asset editing as they require a bit more attention still. Map editing is expected to be available sooner than the Asset editing, but at this time it comes down to iteration time and the feedback we’re getting on the usability of the tool. Asset editing is unfortunately suffering from technical issues and as long as players are unable to save and share the assets there’s no point publicly releasing the tools. We do have a plan for the fixes, but it might take months in the worst case I’m afraid.

To summarize on the priorities of the modding support:

1. Public Beta version of code modding and Paradox Mods will be available in the live build by the end of March
2. Public Beta version of Map editing available in the live build together with code modding or soon after
3. Public Beta version of Asset editing to be announced, only after the technical issues are sorted can we roll out the tool
4. Continue to work on the modding support and get out of the Beta stage during the Finnish fall.

We’ll keep resources on the modding support throughout the entire lifecycle of Cities: Skylines II as we know there are many improvements and feature requests we can work on to help the modders achieve their goals even after the initial Beta release.

The work on the console versions is ongoing and while gated by the modding support we’re making progress. We’re not committing to any timelines as there are too many unknowns at this time, but we’ll keep you updated and will communicate the moment we have something to share. For the Expansion Pass, the artists have the Beach Properties content almost ready and we’re on track for its release.

Before those bigger releases, we’ll have one more patch coming out. After this, we’ll include the bug fixes and performance improvements in the releases to reduce the amount of individual patches. Patch 1.0.19 is going through its first round in QA at the moment and will be released after it passes the checks. Full patch notes will be released on the day the patch goes live, but you can expect fixes for stuck maintenance vehicles and an additional fix for abandoned dogs, who will now be returned to their homes. While the work still continues on the land value, we have an improvement so pollution properly affects the value. And last, but definitely not least, we’re currently testing a fix for the tax bug with crazy high or negative numbers.

Keep following our social channels for news about the patch release and hope you enjoy the game in the meantime. Have a lovely week!

Sincerely,
Mariina

This is not good. there is a high loss of players on CSII and an increase of players on CSI. Dear Colossal, I know you're trying hard, but you need to give a sprint to evolve the game. For the MODs in circulation there is already something created by someone and you haven't released it yet and it's absurd that the animations of the cims in the park or the firefighters, which were present in the first chapter, are not present. Come on Colossal we believe in you!
Ciao Roberto from Italy

 

[tamsi99]

Thank you very much @co_avanya , good to get at least part of this information already. It is important to publish that roadmap as soon as it's internally approved. I think it will play an important part for creating some trust again. CO needs to demonstrate that you acknowledge all the simulation (and performance) parts that are not working as desired and that you indeed intend to fix them with urgency and with a plan. Also, please keep us in the loop for things like DLSS. For people like me, playing in 4k, this will most likely resolve the current GPU bottleneck.

 

[DiNardo1910]

1. The patch we're working on at the moment includes some performance improvements (assuming they make it through testing of course), though nothing major that's expected to have a huge impact on performance, hence why we haven't mentioned them. They're a part of the continued efforts to improve the performance throughout the game's lifetime.

2. We're working on DLSS integration yes, though I'm afraid we don't have a timeline for when you can expect it. When we do have an update, we'll let you know.

3. We're working on a roadmap (don't expect dates/months though), but it needs to go through a few people before we can share it. I know it's frustrating having to wait, but we need to make sure everyone is aligned on what's shared and how far into the future it reaches. Fingers crossed for next week! ^^

Thanks for the update. And what about refunds? If it's a no, just tell us please.

 

[Rommyca]

It's already failed.

It's up to CO & PDX to unfail it.

I guarantee there are people at CO & PDX wondering just how much they can throw at the game and if it's worth it, or if they should cut it loose like certain other PDX games in recent years.

But CS player , by definition IT should be a dedicated one and with patience person. Playing a game like this should draw a good character. Is this thing: "Don t make great illusions to not Have bad desilusions" such a thing to release such an undercover "monsters" until to the point of canceling a developer who brought You the Best city builder from the last decade??!! IT means that even the community was a fake one ready in any moment to take out the skull from the closet.

 

[Otis85402]

despite the horrible release, it felt for me like CO will really work hard and will deliver clear improvements regularly, maybe every 2-3 weeks, so we will regularly see good improvements within helpful timeframes.

I expected this too. Even if they fixed one minor bug per week that might keep me playing. Throw us a frickin' bone here, devs!

 

[Briggzyy]

I've been thinking about this whole situation and just cant get my head around the decisions.

Why make a new paradox modding platform that is not ready at launch, at the cost of having ANY mods available on the game at launch? Why not allow steam mods to start, then build the platform to allow these mods to be put onto the paradox platform, which in turn allows console to have mods.

Instead, the focus is creating a platform that will allow mods on console, but the console release isn't even ready?

I think around toxicity in the community too, not one person on this forum is directing their anger/frustration towards the developers of the game. I don't doubt for one minute they work around the clock under immense pressure from this awful launch of the game. It seems an industry trend whereby executives and shareholders push releases of games in frankly a pre-beta state to maximise profits. Senior executives within CO and Paradox made this decision and unfortunately the 'little guys' get the fallout of bad decisions. The tone deaf mention of console release (to get more revenue) & DLC (to get more revenue), really is in bad taste too. Cyberpunk not only offered refunds, but also didn't release any DLC until the game was years further into development and in a good state.

For the next few months the focus should be on two things, and two things only.

1. Performance improvements - the attitude seems to have shifted and this seems to have taken a back seat in priority? I endure constant stuttering on a mid tier PC, and dont even dare zoom into highly populated areas (on lowest settings too....)
2. Mod support - Allow mods on steam, put everyone on mod support.. anything! CS has an amazing modding community and i'm sure 99% of the problems with performance and bugs will be solved by them in days - for free.

Just to close, if devs do read these comments, our anger is not towards you, we know its not your fault and thank you for the hard work you do.

 

[Hobbel68]

You have concluded a contract of sale with the retailer and not with the manufacturer. The retailer is therefore responsible if you want to complain about a defective product. You certainly don't go to the manufacturer.

i think this is complete wrong.
consumer rights are to protect you from the manaufacturer. If not any manufacturer can bring out a fault product or a imitation product. the retailer who sells the product is not responsible even for the product he sells.
A retailer selling an faulty product or imitation can be accused and fined, but in the end the responsibility is towards the manufacturer or producer.
if that would not be the case, no retailer would take the liability on, to be responsible for the goods they selling and it would kill free market.
but rarely any retailer sees any refund from producer or manufacturer , because they will claim that all will be fixed with releases.
For this game , CO and PI have still got time to satisfy the customers and retailers. so fixex and patches and extra's for good will

but if they would cancel the game or not would be able to fix it and let's assume stop development, then retailers and consumers could ask for a refund.
They would be in their right, but since no global laws exists , i doubt many will execute this right.

In the end is rarely in SW or Games that refund are done and it all depends on goodwill of the developer.

 

[elektrizikekswerk]

i think this is complete wrong.

It's not _completely_ wrong and may depend on the region you are in.

In general, as I know it from Germany, the manufacturer is responsible but the retailer is the processor. Retailer and manufacturer have a framework contract so that the retailer gets compensated for any costs they may have while processing warranty issues.

Assume you buy a car - a Dodge for example.
Will you go to Michigan if it has a defect in the warranty period? Or will you go to your local retailer/garage for repairs?

Of course there are some differences with online purchases and especially with digital products like we are discussing here, but the general chain of "customer <-> retailer <-> manufacturer" remains in place.

(Not mentioning the cases where vendor and manufacturer are the same legal person)