CO Word of the Week #9

[yalex]

I completely agree with you upon that.
And as I have said, CO seems to have messed up in a stellar way. I understand very well that people are disappointed and angry - and they do have every right to feel that way, no doubt about that.

If you want to pursue a lawsuit in Australia against Valve/Paradox/Colossal Order/whoever I honestly whish you to be successful. The way in which customers have been mislead wouldn't have been possible in any other industrial sector, I think and if somebody can do something against such practises, he will have my full support.

But reading the question "what about refunds?" in every third posting (at least it feels that way to me) gets tiring.
For the reasons I have stated I don't assume them to even consider that (nor to be in the position to even be able to consider it).
So a legal way seems to be the only viable to achieve to get some refunds. But it is a different way than raising that question again and again and again in forum postings.

I'm unsure why you believe there needs a be a lawsuit, in my experience while business are generally reluctant to issue a refund in the first instance they tend to change their view with persistence and an appreciation of their legal and ewgulatory obligations.

In addition there are regulators who exist to asses such issues well before they go through a legal process.

 

[Civ5rako]

I disagree with you in some things... The question is not in the refund itself. The refund is just a word we commonly use. If it will make you more comfortable, I'll call it a "compensation" for the purpose of this post.

So, in order to talk about a compensation, CO has to admit the wrongdoings/mistakes on their part. Because if they haven't done anything wrong (willingly or accidentally) there is nothing to compensate in any form. Currently CO is in denial claiming that everything works as intended, except for minor bugs so there is nothing to compensate.

I don't think that many of us, "refunders", really hope to get our money back... That would require some legal actions which none of us have money to pay for... And given PDX losses according to their earning calls - these money are either long gone or giving them back will put PDX back into red...

It doesn't have to be "here is your $90 back and get out of here"... It could be "yes, WE made mistakes, WE should have done better. We will make it up to you with extra free content in a form of XYZ". They could just work a few extra hours per week (for free, not for overtime pay) and get us a... I dunno... Bicycle DLC? TPM mode baked into the game? Whatever, doesn't really matter as long as it is not a set of few lame assets...

Fixing bugs and releasing mod support a year later does not qualify as "compensation". It doesn't even qualify as "fulfilling their part of the deal" anymore, because the deal that I (personally) paid for was "money in exchange for the finished game".

Personally, I don't think that I would even use that hypothetical "compensation", because at the moment it feels like I'm done with this game forever. But being treated like a respected customer (which we all should feel like) would make me feel less angry about lost (well, I'll call it lost, even though I'd rather use another word) money and spoiled holidays break.

Now, that was a good posting!

I do agree with what you have said (even with you disagreeing with me in some points) .

The only point I see as potentially being problematic is CO admitting to have made mistakes or given misleading information in a (legally) tangible way, so to say - because that might have legal consequences none of us is currently even thinking of.

But yes, they certainly should think about a way of how to compensate the current customers (at least).

 

[Gonzoez]

I completely agree with you upon that.
And as I have said, CO seems to have messed up in a stellar way. I understand very well that people are disappointed and angry - and they do have every right to feel that way, no doubt about that.

If you want to pursue a lawsuit in Australia against Valve/Paradox/Colossal Order/whoever I honestly whish you to be successful. The way in which customers have been mislead wouldn't have been possible in any other industrial sector, I think and if somebody can do something against such practises, he will have my full support.

But reading the question "what about refunds?" in every third posting (at least it feels that way to me) gets tiring.
For the reasons I have stated I don't assume them to even consider that (nor to be in the position to even be able to consider it).
So a legal way seems to be the only viable to achieve to get some refunds. But it is a different way than raising that question again and again and again in forum postings.

Ignoring this question is not going to make it go away. Possible answers from CO could be:
- no way, we not gonna issue refunds
- we are sorry but it's legally not our decision
- we can't afford to issue refunds, but will compensate you in a different way.

Pretending those questions were not asked aggravates people even more.

Mariina should man up (pardon the pun) and address this part of the "community" she claims to care about.

 

[cestes]

Another news article about the state of the game and Mariina calling us toxic, but at least they interviewed City Planner Plays who stuck up for the community, good on him. The article is actually more balanced than the headline indicates and actually addresses a lot of the concerns that we've been raising here as well and doesn't pull many punches.

What’s up with the 'toxicity' around Cities: Skylines II?

Tensions have been high in the Cities: Skylines community since the launch of the sequel in October.

www.engadget.com

Also, from the article:

This hurts considering the genuine representations Avanya seemed to make acknowledging the major problems with the game and with CO's actions/inactions around release. The attention and high expectations came from CO's marketing and promises that have been acknowledged as incomplete/misleading! And now the problem isn't CO, it's the community! Seriously?

The shortcomings should spark the things you mention, but a game not fulfilling its promises should spark the developer giving refunds!

It's refreshing to see some balanced coverage in the gaming media after the "articles" written in response to WotW #8 that vilified the entire community.

“Naturally we’re disappointed we weren’t able to achieve everything we aimed for, but it’s fantastic to have the game finally out and continue working on it with more openness,” she said. -- I'm curious about when this interview with Mariina was done. This comment seems incredibly tone deaf, though that's becoming a recurring theme as well. It might have been fantastic for CO/PDX bottom line, but it clearly hasn't been fantastic for the community.

"However, the shortcomings should spark a conversation on ideas for improvement, constructive feedback and respectful discussions in the community.” -- These forums are full of all three of these things. The issue, is that this is a two way street. It requires the community to provide these things and for CO to listen. So far, I really haven't seen much to indicate that they are.

The cardinal sin for me has been CO painting the entire community as toxic as a means to deflect legitimate frustration and criticism. Take responsibility for your (CO) decisions and actions. Edit, ban, and call out toxic comments. Report to law enforcement threatening comments.

 

[yalex]

It's refreshing to see some balanced coverage in the gaming media after the "articles" written in response to WotW #8 that vilified the entire community.

The cardinal sin for me has been CO painting the entire community as toxic as a means to deflect legitimate frustration and criticism. Take responsibility for your (CO) decisions and actions. Edit, ban, and call out toxic comments. Report to law enforcement threatening comments.

Agree, Colossal Order seems to continually deny its failings or the mismatch between the expectations it created as reality. Rather than be upfront and candid in its shortcomings it has instead decided to criticise the community and fail to release fixes in a timely manner.

As much as I believe in the value of communication, each word of the week has resulted in me having diminished confidence that the game will ever live up to its expectations.

Besides this being an exercise in how not to do crisis management, I see little value in how Coloss Order is tackling this situation.

 

[unmerged(524934)]

As a mod developer I have experienced multiple instances of toxicity, and I can't imagine what CO devs are dealing with right now. I'm an avid critic of the game, but I've had my fair share of run-ins with enough crazies to know that Mariina is not making this up. One person told me to "do your job you little b****" and complained of "poor service" when I refused to continue the conversation. Another stalked me for months and made a Reddit post collating posts and comments I've made on multiple platforms trying to "take me down a peg" because I had disagreements with them in Discord months ago (and haven't interacted with them since). This same person asked someone else in the Discord if they were autistic because they disagreed with them. This morning, someone posted a link to Cities by Diana's latest video on the official CS YouTube channel on r/ShittySkylines and tore into her, saying that the video was terrible and that her build was bad, justifying it by saying "well at least she's getting paid."

I'm very, very frustrated at the state of the game and especially modding support (check my comments earlier in this thread if you think I'm a shill), but the toxicity IS a problem. I think that Philip is on an island on his Discord server and enjoys a positive community because that's what he's curated for himself (more power to him, I love his community and his channel), but he doesn't spend much time in other Discords, Reddit, or these forums to see the true extent of the toxicity that has been going on, and (respectfully) does not speak for all of us.

We can be angry. We can be frustrated. But some of us have GOT to learn how to channel that anger into concise, cogent, factual comments that seek to drive the conversation forward. It's not everyone. It's not even most people in the community. But there exists a large enough cohort of toxic people that it bears mentioning and repeating until it stops.

The toxicity you've experienced is terrible to read about, but out of interest what does it have to do with what I wrote in my post? I certainly wasn't talking about Mariina "making this up" or toxicity towards her/CO, I was talking about her being in denial about the level of frustration in the community, the state of the game when it was released after the "stellar" marketing campaign, and the fact she seems to think we should now just sit back and either wait for CO to fix it without complaint or, and this is perhaps even worse, prioritise the direction they should take now and essentially fix the game for them because they don't really know what to do next.

It just seems like such a disconnect between what we're seeing, and what she's seeing.

 

[timfrombriz]

To get a refund, we are on our own to fight for it, under your own countries consumer protections. CO/PDX are not going to offer it unless forced by legal action.

In Australia, its the retailer (aka Steam) that is responsible for refunds, not the manfactuerer (CO/PDX).

My Steam refund was declined with the following response

We will not be granting a refund at this time as there is no evidence that the product has a major defect as defined under Australian law.

So, the product is definitely defective, as evidenced by the huge list of bug reports on this forum.

But outside of defective, the product was not sold as described by marketing material pre-release.

1. Mod support to be available days after release

Evidence here


2. Ultimate Edition paid content post-poned (once or twice now?)

Original pre-release Steam marketing material; Source: Wayback Machine Steam Page



Anyone able to add points of evidence that they can remember are misleading/false statements about the product, that'll help all wanting to pursue a refund.

If your from a different country and know of similar consumer rights laws from where your from, consider sharing your knowledge for others also.

 

[erkinalp]

Anyone able to add points of evidence that they can remember are misleading/false statements about the product, that'll help all wanting to pursue a refund.

The worse is Finland (home of Colossal Order and PDXmods) and Sweden (home of Paradox Interactive) both have strong consumer laws.

 

[purplegamer]

Thanks for bringing that article to our attention.

I would however prefer if we as community wouldn't circle anymore around the "question" of refunds. Without having any insight whatsoever in CO's financial situation, from the information we do have (the "making of" video stating three years of delay for the release, the current timeline reaching to the end of this year) we can at least assume that CO's situation is not all rosy at the moment ("in-depth conversations with our publisher Paradox Interactive" doesn't sound like too much fun for them).
And we shouldn't forget that they have to pay salaries to their people as well.

Do I want to find excuses for the mistakes (and there have been plenty) CO has made? No, not at all. They seem to have messed up in a stellar way.
But I really don't see them in any position to even think about refunds (not to mention that it might be Paradox's decision as well).

Should they be thinking about a way to compensate the current customers for their mistakes? Yes, they should.

But bringing up the (in my eyes - you may think differently) unlikely to happen "refunds" again and again doesn't help anybody either.

It's not my responsibility to keep their company afloat.

 

[anydaytv]

View attachment 1077377

Original pre-release Steam marketing material; Source: Wayback Machine Steam Page

Anyone able to add points of evidence that they can remember are misleading/false statements about the product, that'll help all wanting to pursue a refund.

If your from a different country and know of similar consumer rights laws from where your from, consider sharing your knowledge for others also.

What sort of behooves me about that picture is, did they really think anyone would pay $116? I mean, I've purchased some games near $100, but that usually includes a goodie bag / box full of collectables and books.

 

[S.C. Watson]

What sort of behooves me about that picture is, did they really think anyone would pay $116? I mean, I've purchased some games near $100, but that usually includes a goodie bag / box full of collectables and books.

Not a big deal, but I think the word you're looking for is "baffles" - not "behooves." Behoove means something is necessary. Anyway, sorry. Carry on.

 

[anydaytv]

Not a big deal, but I think the word you're looking for is "baffles" - not "behooves." Behoove means something is necessary. Anyway, sorry. Carry on.

More a feeling of whether something is appropriate, but couldn't think of an inverse as I was writing, Google claims "ill behooves". What a weird word.

 

[S.C. Watson]

What a weird word.

It is indeed. But I've always enjoyed how it just rolls off the tongue.
Figuratively speaking, of course

 

[JacobClarke]

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

I am glad there is good transparency however I am dissapointed. Your four top priorities are for an altering of a game that is yet to be mentionned more than a paragraph. The fact you choose to delay an entire playerbase to instead further develop and value higher mods gives us a clear picture on where your priotiries are. It shows a clear message and since the lag issues now prevent me from playing over all the very low settings and over 10FPS on my computer, the exitement for the game has completely dissapeared. I obviously could go back to the first game however I really think that it would be difficult knowing what everyone else online has access too. I'm sure the console community agrees, I hope it comes soon but In conclusion, just some feedback on what it looks like for improvement, Genuinely hope it gets better, good luck

 

[Civ5rako]

I obviously could go back to the first game however I really think that it would be difficult knowing what everyone else online has access too.

Maybe your decision will become easier by knowing that more people are playing Cities: Skylines 1 than Cities: Skylines 2.
And 1 is still a good and enjoyable game, so why wouldn't you play it while waiting for improvements of 2?

 

[Gaseous Stranger]

Welp another word of the week tomorrow… I wonder if any of these 26 pages will be addressed.

 

[anydaytv]

Welp another word of the week tomorrow… I wonder if any of these 26 pages will be addressed.

At least this WOW attempted to at least level with us, and that was appreciated. It wasn't good news, but it was realistic.

@co_martsu
Go look over the suggestions forum, there are some really great ideas over there. Heck, have the whole dev team sit down and build a half million population city or something. Not only would it be interesting to see, I think it'd help you empathize with some of the game's frustrations.

The little things you know? Like how creating a subway line flashes a blinding white data view overlay over your screen, making it impossible to see (kind of gives you a headache actually), when just having the data view off by default would be far more functional.

 

[Angius]

Welp another word of the week tomorrow… I wonder if any of these 26 pages will be addressed.

Not like they have anything more to talk about lmao, everything people care about will be coming in the coming half a year or so.

Actually, I'm curious whether they'll stop releasing WotW eventually, or will the contents just become "we have no news, stop being toxic, cya"

 

[Askorti]

Not like they have anything more to talk about lmao, everything people care about will be coming in the coming half a year or so.

Actually, I'm curious whether they'll stop releasing WotW eventually, or will the contents just become "we have no news, stop being toxic, cya"

No no, the series will just change its name to "word of the month", and when people point out that the frequency went down, they will tell us to not have unrealistic expectations.... and then to stop being toxic

 

[newtlord]

Actually, I'm curious whether they'll stop releasing WotW eventually, or will the contents just become "we have no news, stop being toxic, cya"

It's easy to write a new Word of the Week when half the content is always apologizing for the previous Word of the Week.