Did they test this at all?

[TrevorHall]

So, I did a count of "Confirmed" bugs. There are already over 100 in less than 1 week! Only a handful are marked fixed. (I'm lucky, one of my bugs got fixed).
Some are subtle, such as "difficulty in relocating buildings with extensions" or similar issues in buiding access where the adjoining road is curved.
But: Some are so obvious, such as "garbage incenerators don't collect any garbage" that this code should never have passed any kind of review.

My point is:
If casual users can find all these bugs, how deep is their defect database? Must be hundreds of known bugs at launch.

They should have not announced a launch date until beta testers were finding only minor issues.

I would get fired if I launched such a product.

Background: In the 80's I was a software manager of a game company. I now produce other kinds of software, that actually works. (it gets unit tested, tested by automation srcipts. manually tested and tested by other internal groups). If it has any major bugs, we don't ship it.

 

[Gauge]

The short answer is yes.

The long answer is that it's pretty clear Paradox made them release this due to an earnings period coming up. The fact that so many bugs are immediately marked as confirmed tells me that they are searching their lists and already have that on it. Very few of the bugs are asking for more info which would indicate that they actually did not know about it.

They will never say Paradox made them release, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out.

 

[Dushess]

They will never say Paradox made them release, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out.

With current state of AAA gamedev the scenario is the same. Publisher WANTS it to be released in classic fall's best-sale-window.

 

[neroden]

It's disgraceful. I expected better from Colossal Order.

If Paradox is going to force them to do this, they should end their Paradox contract. I'm not kidding. Find another publisher. If we're right, Paradox's shoddy behavior is reflecting on the CO team, which isn't fair to the CO devs.

It seems that "AAA" is the kiss of death for a game studio because of this "ship it broken" mentality: the only good games are non-"AAA".

 

[gizzamaluke]

It's disgraceful. I expected better from Colossal Order.

If Paradox is going to force them to do this, they should end their Paradox contract. I'm not kidding. Find another publisher. If we're right, Paradox's shoddy behavior is reflecting on the CO team, which isn't fair to the CO devs.

It seems that "AAA" is the kiss of death for a game studio because of this "ship it broken" mentality: the only good games are non-"AAA".

It's not that easy to just walk away from a contract like that. I'm not kidding. It's really unfair to lay blame on CO for that one.

 

[neroden]

It's not that easy to just walk away from a contract like that. I'm not kidding. It's really unfair to lay blame on CO for that one.

Yeah, it does depend on how they wrote their contract. If they were forced to release early by Paradox, though, I would be having my lawyers work on preventing this from happening ever again. The damage done to CO is enormous.

 

[Collector78]

We all know what happened. Both testing team and devs indicated the game was not ready for go-live. Paradox management decided to ignore them and do it anyway.
As a result, the well-known Cities Skylines is now notorious. Paradox lost a lot of early adopters, will not attract as many new players due to bad reviews, so in the end they lost a lot of money.
It is clear that they already learned from their mistake, since they dedided to delay DLC and modding and focus on improving the game instead. The game improved quite a lot during the last 6 weeks, although I do not always understand their priorities. Some bugs are so huge that players will stop if they are not solved, especially the traffic related ones.

Nevertheless I'm convinced that we will have a good game in 3 months from now. Until then I'm enjoying the parts of the game that do work, but also the sometimes hilarious bugs, while providing Paradox the input they most likely already received from their testing team. It won't help anyone to keep complaining and grumble.

 

[vvilku]

Nevertheless I'm convinced that we will have a good game in 3 months from now. Until then I'm enjoying the parts of the game that do work, but also the sometimes hilarious bugs, while providing Paradox the input they most likely already received from their testing team. It won't help anyone to keep complaining and grumble.

I admire your optimism.
I think that the game will not receive any further care and investement, since the active players' number botched by 90% since launch, so my bet is that Paradox will write it off.

We'll get the DLCs promised in the Deluxe version, and then maybe some paid asset packs and radio stations, but that's it. Some bugs will get fixed, but probably only to keep the facade of anything being done.

I don't expect a Cyberpunk-ish redemption arc here, especially after reading some quotes from CO top management.

 

[Collector78]

I admire your optimism.
I think that the game will not receive any further care and investement, since the active players' number botched by 90% since launch, so my bet is that Paradox will write it off.

We'll get the DLCs promised in the Deluxe version, and then maybe some paid asset packs and radio stations, but that's it. Some bugs will get fixed, but probably only to keep the facade of anything being done.

I don't expect a Cyberpunk-ish redemption arc here, especially after reading some quotes from CO top management.

I do not admire your pessimism, but do appreciate realism.
Suppose you are right and they write it off. Then what? If CS2 fails, then CS3 has to be completely rebuild. The only way to reuse CS2 is by solving the problems in CS2.
Or will they stop completely and lose their (perhaps) most succesful game? If they don't solve the problems in CS2, then delivering succesful DLC (that are already paid) will only increase complaints. If they decide to write it off it's better to repay everyone the money for the DLC already and not to invest any time in it.

 

[vvilku]

I do not admire your pessimism, but do appreciate realism.
Suppose you are right and they write it off. Then what? If CS2 fails, then CS3 has to be completely rebuild. The only way to reuse CS2 is by solving the problems in CS2.
Or will they stop completely and lose their (perhaps) most succesful game? If they don't solve the problems in CS2, then delivering succesful DLC (that are already paid) will only increase complaints. If they decide to write it off it's better to repay everyone the money for the DLC already and not to invest any time in it.

The DLCs are already a work in progress, so there's not that much work to do to deliver them, especially considering the quality of the core game.

Don,t get me wrong - I would be really happy to be wrong and it would be great if the game development forced me to apologise for my lack of faith. I just don't believe in a 'happy end' to those Dev Diaries...

 

[Dushess]

@Collector78, like the "first time?" They had it before, same publisher, but games like CK3, and other war/politic simulators of the past...

 

[ThomasK_7]

Please read here on other place! That explains a lot.

 

[vvilku]

Please read here on other place! That explains a lot.

It explains a bit, justifies nothing.

 

[dumpster299]

There are already over 100 in less than 1 week!

The ones I'll give them a pass on are the weird driver things, like the poop hurricanes. Drivers are always a horrible mess, and weird things there are impossible to avoid for a small team.

The thing that really bothers me is the high school students bug. That's really clear to everyone who tries the game, without even doing anything unusual. And the fact that it's not fixed already implies to me that they're not comfortable with tweaking their simulation, which is concerning for the future.