CO Word of the Week #9

[Swordsman1219]

What is the purpose of getting answers to these questions, other than to serve as ammunition to dictate how they should run their company? I get you might be passionate about the longevity of CO, but I'm pretty sure answering these questions would do them more harm than good. I assume like most companies, they are not going to want to be micromanaged by anyone here, so any expectation of that happening would just lead to disappointment.

The problem is, CO needs to face some form of accountability and pressure. We deserve to know if we're being lied to and WHY they think it's the right thing to do as a corporation.

 

[anydaytv]

I admire the work the core programmers have done. The road system tools are a piece of art. Working with cubic bezier curves, and all the conplex maths to allow building overlapping roads, generating beautiful intersections with well aligned cross walks, a lot of hard work and love has gone into this. If the coder is reading this, pat yourself on the back and thank you. I admire your work.

A lot of the games designed systems, the supply and demand, traffic and lane systems, they were well thought out and are brilliant concepts.

Whats lacking is the QA, the Polish, the balancing, making sure it all fits together and plays as an engaging unbroken experience. Its like no one was allowed to actually play the game at Colossal Order, only work on their individual part making sure it worked standalone.

Managers who know everything about their product, nuts and bolts, are managers who speak the language of their product to the customer. They know their product, its strengths and weaknesses. A great manager should be a lead engineer, who works with the other engineers in the technical issues. When a manager is detached from a product and is just steering everyone, it always leads to disaster, eventually. You can tell a good manager by how they publicly talk about their product. This week dog fixes are coming. Seems like a issue worth mentioning to you?

Yes, agree 100%. Looking at the architecture of this thing can't help but leave me impressed. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that these guys are talented.
It isn't their fault the soufflé was take out of the oven early.

 

[xxcc9602]

Yes, agree 100%. Looking at the architecture of this thing can't help but leave me impressed. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that these guys are talented.
It isn't their fault the soufflé was take out of the oven early.

Your attitude is 100% right. Of course, some architecture of CSII is great. However, as a game in 2023 worth 50$, it should be like this. CO should have been polished it enough for releasing, rather than give us an unfinnished and unplayable one with a few improvements. We have paid money, and we are told not to blame them for the unhappy gameplay experience. Is it fare?
CO keeps claiming that they have achieved the goal of development and that we have the responsible to keep the community peaceful.
It is urgent to tell them: 1.The goal is far from achieved, the road from 10% to 90% is very very long. 2.CO should take the responsibility of everything.
Face the critisizm bravely, and get work done quickly!

 

[ClaudiusWhite]

The problem is, CO needs to face some form of accountability and pressure. We deserve to know if we're being lied to and WHY they think it's the right thing to do as a corporation.

Seems to me they're already facing pressure and accountability in the form of criticism received and having to prove their worth for future revenue. For those that believe they're being lied to, it's not going to matter what CO says unless CO says exactly what they want to hear, so there's really no point. For those that believe there's some kind of criminality at play, I'm sure there are official options they can explore. The best thing CO can do right now is to just continue to work on the game. People can judge CO's work for themselves and decide whether or not to stay, come back, or never come back. Such is the way of the free market.

 

[unoace1006]

Seems to me they're already facing pressure and accountability in the form of criticism received and having to prove their worth for future revenue. For those that believe they're being lied to, it's not going to matter what CO says unless CO says exactly what they want to hear, so there's really no point. For those that believe there's some kind of criminality at play, I'm sure there are official options they can explore. The best thing CO can do right now is to just continue to work on the game. People can judge CO's work for themselves and decide whether or not to stay, come back, or never come back. Such is the way of the free market.

This is exactly how I feel. I understand that for some, holding CO’s feet to the fire makes sense, but I hope they understand it doesn’t change the short term situation.

Even some of the questions (mine included) are pointless to answer. Let these people do their work as best they can. And enjoy whatever parts of the game you can until it gets better. I remain optimistic it will.

Does it suck that they were overly optimistic or misrepresented the status of the editor? Yup, it does. And I hope they understand that moving forward.

I’m here to build amazing cities with tons of assets and play a deep simulation game. Hopefully by August 2024, I’ll be able to do that. Until then, we have what we have.

 

[Rommyca]

I' ve read all of the comments around this topic and it feels a lot of frustration from both directions. I have some questions: How many times you watched a good movie trailer and you bought tickets at cinema and in the final the act was a failure?! Or maybe you liked a song and you bought the entire album but the rest of them were disapointing. You also payed for them... but never meet the expectations. The same thing it s with this game. This is how industry works nowadays , you have to accept this.
I 'm sure you know guys that games like this need the community feedback (bad or good).I think they had money to release it in this form but to develop more and polish to a good state required our financial investment (pre orders , ultimate editions , etc which also required a very good PR to make possible sales ) .
That s why all paradox games come in this state, because they need time and feedback from the players to became a good product.
What i want to say: they are not doctors and our life it s not depending of them so take it easy , grow up ... it s not the end of the world. Instead i see here a lot of IT "doctors" that knows how the things works in a company like this. Do you know how hard is to test a game like this (simulation) , how hard are to reproduce some bugs that occurs in the late game . But think a little how much time need QA to reproduce and test that bug than sent to dev to fix it which then sents again to QA .Maybe as an user you played a month and finaly found a bug.

Also about mods , steam , paradox mod.. bla bla... There is a confusion here: making workshop on steam available it doesn t mean or guarantee that all the classic and old mods from CS1 will be there in the first day. All of them needed years to became what they are today , i feel you always forget this. On the other hand i see Paradox mod as a way to monetize the modders work and to control all of the "unofficial" content . Mark my words : we will see packets of mods for an amount of money like creators packs on steam. The difference here is that all the "steam money" will go in the modders pockets.

As a final thought : Be positive! The game of your dream can't be done by night even if you payed for it in advance and all the bugs you highlight need time to be fixed!​

 

[cestes]

I' ve read all of the comments around this topic and it feels a lot of frustration from both directions. I have some questions: How many times you watched a good movie trailer and you bought tickets at cinema and in the final the act was a failure?! Or maybe you liked a song and you bought the entire album but the rest of them were disapointing. You also payed for them... but never meet the expectations. The same thing it s with this game. This is how industry works nowadays , you have to accept this.
I 'm sure you know guys that games like this need the community feedback (bad or good).I think they had money to release it in this form but to develop more and polish to a good state required our financial investment (pre orders , ultimate editions , etc which also required a very good PR to make possible sales ) .
That s why all paradox games come in this state, because they need time and feedback from the players to became a good product.

Also about mods , steam , paradox mod.. bla bla... There is a confusion here: making workshop on steam available it doesn t mean or guarantee that all the classic and old mods from CS1 will be there in the first day. All of them needed years to became what they are today , i feel you always forget this. On the other hand i see Paradox mod as a way to monetize the modders work and to control all of the "unofficial" content . Mark my words : we will see packets of mods for an amount of money like creators packs on steam. The difference here is that all the "steam money" will go in the modders pockets.

As a final thought : Be positive! The game of your dream can't be done by night even if you payed for it in advance and all the bugs you highlight need time to be fixed!​

Subjectively bad is one thing, but broken is something else.

 

[Rommyca]

Subjectively bad is one thing, but broken is something else.

It s broken for hardtryers and playable for the rest. That s why so much negative attitude , because regular player wont came in the forum to complain.

 

[TheLazyHangman]

The problem is, CO needs to face some form of accountability and pressure. We deserve to know if we're being lied to and WHY they think it's the right thing to do as a corporation.

Seems to me that CO is already neck deep in that, and rightfully so.
What I don't understand is how Paradox Interactive, who is ultimately responsible for taking the decision of releasing the game in this state, is dead silent except a couple of executives showing up in the "journey to launch" video, and after all the feedback from the community also decided that the top priorities are mods, editors, console versions and the expansion pass? This is honestly baffling to me. What kind of feedback are they expecting from console players after they sell them this mess?

 

[MisterMotel]

It sure stings having bought the Ultimate Edition. As non of the things you paid extra for are actually coming anytime soon...

 

[windk]

How many times you watched a good movie trailer and you bought tickets at cinema and in the final the act was a failure?!

Let's imagine that.

You bought the ticket for the movie because it's written by your favorite writer, directed by your favorite director and your favorite actors was in the trailer and even on the poster. The trailer and the poster might even indicate certain favorite themes or topics.

You're sitting in the dark, excited and looking forward to a great movie experience, the start credits doesn't show any of the actor names you were expecting and it's written and directed by someone you haven't heard about.
You're thinking "ok that was weird and kind of dissapointing, but since I've paid I might as well give it a shot, it could be good anyway." 10 minutes in you realize the movie isn't even about any of the themes the poster was indicating. 20 minutes in, you find the plot boring and lacking, the acting really bad and annoying and you decide to leave.

Now, would that made you feel cheated and that you paid for something you were "promised" but didn't get, or would you just accept it, because

This is how industry works nowadays , you have to accept this.

or maybe your expectations was just too high, or "this movie might not be for you"?

 

[tamsi99]

Yes, agree 100%. Looking at the architecture of this thing can't help but leave me impressed. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that these guys are talented.
It isn't their fault the soufflé was take out of the oven early.

I generally agree to this. CS2 has an amazing potential and some elements of the game are already fun. Otherwise I would not bother to be here and waste my time with frustration and a currently broken game. There are, however, two major issues:

1. Unfortunately, the soufflé was not only taken out of the oven early, they also forgot to add all ingredients. And now they don't know any more in which order they need to add the missing ingredients and probably they are even overwhelmed to figure out how to shape those ingredients in the first place. There are quite a number of massive issues that really take a lot of fun out of an otherwise promising game architecture.

• If even your high-end PC cannot handle larger cities due to all the performance issues, then that's a show-stopper sooner or later. At least, they already did some helpful improvements here but we are nowhere near where we should be
• If so much of the simulation is broken that it hardly matters what you do in the game, then the game fails the purpose. I understand why so many people currently say that CS2 is not a simulation, it is mostly a city painter. This is also how it feels for me at the moment, although I know it could be much more than that. I listed many of the broken simulation parts in an earlier posting here, so I'm not repeating. Fact is also that with a merely medium ~150k pop city I already reached the 2B$ money limit and money never was a challenge for the city (which I consider "broken financial simulation", another part that fails the "simulation feeling"). Oh, and having a 2B$ limit ... really? Did you use a 32bit counter for the money or what is the story behind this weird limit? Anyway. Many game breaking limitations at the moment, unfortunately, not just "some bugs to be fixed"

2. During the first weeks after release I was kind of optimistic that CO will be able to fix at least the worst issues within a reasonable timeframe (maybe 2-4 months after release), incl. providing the crucial modding support, improving performance and fixing most broken key simulation elements. As we realize now, they are not even close to that. Even worse, they continue changing priorities and cadence of improvements all to the massive disadvantage of the players.

• Priorities changed from "we're relentlessly fixing all performance issues until it's fine and provide them as soon as we can" to something like "having next relevant fixes maybe end of March 2024, and probably once a quarter in future", and the way they communicate feels like performance is not what they really care about too much any more. THAT is really, really bad.
• With regards to all the massively broken simulation parts, we're mostly told "what's your problem, it is working, it is just a few bugs" now. But besides the fact that this is obviously not true (and I don't like to be treated like an idiot) there is absolutely no visible plan, no roadmap and no priority from CO to fix all that. THAT is really, really bad.
• And then there's the modding part. All has been said already. Going from "shortly available after release" to "we have no clue, BETA maybe 6 months after release and fully available we don't know at all but much later". Modding is the lifeline of Cities Skylines. How the heck could they derail this most important part of the franchise so horribly massively awfully bad? THAT is really, really bad.
• The console release, well personally I have no dependency there, luckily, but I feel with everyone waiting for this. Going from "released with PC version in Oct 2023" to "delayed to Spring 2024" to "we have no clue, maybe not even 2024" (reading between the lines). THAT is really, really bad.

I also bought the Ultimate Edition but honestly the DLCs and the big bill I paid for that is the very least of my concerns. The points above are what will either make or completely break the franchise. They better re-visit how they want to approach this with a better plan with more urgency on those things that really matter.

As mentioned before, I am leading software development projects myself. I agree that just adding more people to a team often does not speed up things, especially not in a late stage of a project. In this situation, however, I absolutely do see the benefit of adding more resources. There are many work packages that can be segregated and done also by new people. For example, someone working through the bug reports, trying to reproduce, prioritize, classify. You don't need to be the lead developer for that work, and it would free up the senior developers to dig into the complex simulation issues. Also, testing the balancing of new simulation settings / code, which is probably a very time consuming task, could be done by newer, less experienced colleagues. And I am sure that some less complex bug fixing or purely visual issues could also be done by additional, newer, less experienced resources / developers / artists. All that would free up the few key developers at CO to focus on the complex code parts where it indeed would not make sense to add fresh resources.

Doing this would then also allow for a more plannable, condensed roadmap to fix critical issues faster and in a more parallelized way of working. And again, having more, smaller and more often releases helps. If you cannot do that, then you don't have the right agile / continuous delivery processes in your company. Less and larger releases are always only a mitigatioin and a step back when your internal processes do not allow for a more agile way of working (unless less releases are desired for commercial / marketing purpose, but that's definitely not the case here).

 

[Rommyca]

Let's imagine that.

You bought the ticket for the movie because it's written by your favorite writer, directed by your favorite director and your favorite actors was in the trailer and even on the poster. The trailer and the poster might even indicate certain favorite themes or topics.

You're sitting in the dark, excited and looking forward to a great movie experience, the start credits doesn't show any of the actor names you were expecting and it's written and directed by someone you haven't heard about.
You're thinking "ok that was weird and kind of dissapointing, but since I've paid I might as well give it a shot, it could be good anyway." 10 minutes in you realize the movie isn't even about any of the themes the poster was indicating. 20 minutes in, you find the plot boring and lacking, the acting really bad and annoying and you decide to leave.

Now, would that made you feel cheated and that you paid for something you were "promised" but didn't get, or would you just accept it, because

or maybe your expectations was just too high, or "this movie might not be for you"?

Your favorite actor , director and writer is CS1 after 8 years of development and modders involved. You should compare CS1 on release with CS2 on release.

 

[thetawaves24.7]

How many times you watched a good movie trailer and you bought tickets at cinema and in the final the act was a failure?!

Let's imagine that.

I would say its pretty imaginative to start with a movie that didn't stick the landing and end up in the wrong theatre.

Some theatres offer refunds if you leave within the first while if you're not enjoying the movie. Similar option with the game. Unlike the movie the game will continue to improve. Most movie patches tend to be pretty minor, not everybody can be George Lucas.

 

[windk]

Your favorite actor , director and writer is CS1 after 8 years of development and modders involved. You should compare CS1 on release with CS2 on release.

I see you totally missed my point. Oh well..

 

[thetawaves24.7]

• Priorities changed from "we're relentlessly fixing all performance issues until it's fine and provide them as soon as we can" to something like "having next relevant fixes maybe end of March 2024, and probably once a quarter in future", and the way they communicate feels like performance is not what they really care about too much any more. THAT is really, really bad.

You do a tricky thing here where you switch out talking about performance issues with feature support. The post clearly states beta paradox mod availability is the end of March while a performance fix is already in testing internally and judging from the information they've already given us about it and past patch trends I'm expecting as early as tomorrow or Friday, or next Thursday/Friday.

Modding is the lifeline of Cities Skylines

Modding is available right now. Modding in games has always been a community led effort and the community is leading the way to provide a stop gap. It really feels like you've written a 1000 words just to say I'm upset that official mod support as announced isn't available on the timeline it was it was announced on.

 

[homerCCCP]

Patch Now!

 

[tamsi99]

You do a tricky thing here where you switch out talking about performance issues with feature support. The post clearly states beta paradox mod availability is the end of March while a performance fix is already in testing internally and judging from the information they've already given us about it and past patch trends I'm expecting as early as tomorrow or Friday, or next Thursday/Friday.

This is not what I read from their message.

Regarding mods, Mariina wrote that Paradox mods and only code modding will be available in BETA end of March. Map editor (i.e. map modding) might be available in similar timeframe or "soon after" (we learnt what this means). Asset mods are far out, they have no timeline. And again this is all just BETA, full release is only in "Finnish Fall" which seems to be in around 9 months from here.

Regarding patches, yes a new patch is coming in a few days, I guess. But they didn't mention that it has any performance improvements, please read Mariinas message again. If it had, I'm sure they would have highlighted that loudly. Instead, they just mention things like "abandoned dogs", which is what I call "random bug fixes". And the next opportunity for patches is end of March (earliest). And thus that makes end of March the earliest opportunity to get relevant performance improvements.

Modding is available right now. Modding in games has always been a community led effort and the community is leading the way to provide a stop gap. It really feels like you've written a 1000 words just to say I'm upset that official mod support as announced isn't available on the timeline it was it was announced on.

That's okay if you consider modding to be available right now. For me it is not, not until an official mod store and the related, necessary editors are available. Although I am a skilled IT expert, I will not waste time with searching for mods on random mod hosting pages and manually installing them, upgrading them, maintaining them. I know some people have that as a hobby, and that's fine. When I was younger and had the time, I was doing these kind of things as well. But today, at this stage of my life, time is my most precious resource. I will only touch mods once Paradox Mods will be available and things are reasonably stable.

By the way, if "1000 words just to say I'm upset that official mod support as announced isn't available on the timeline it was it was announced on" is all you took out of my long posting, then there's nothing I can do about that. But I might wonder why out of all the many things I addressed, you just focus so much on that one single element.

 

[ClemiMD]

It really feels like you've written a 1000 words just to say I'm upset that official mod support as announced isn't available on the timeline it was it was announced on.

This is what the reaction of all WoWs is like.
"We are upset because the game is not what we were promised, we want explanations, we want our money back and fixes ASAP!"
This statement is more than justified as PDX in fact published a faulty game and I think everyone agrees.
Tell ChatGPT to write 10 books about this exclamation and it will roughly be the content of the WoW threads. I only glance over the numerous comments because, basically, the same statements are repeated every time.

 

[thetawaves24.7]

Regarding patches, yes a new patch is coming in a few days, I guess. But they didn't mention that it has any performance improvements, please read Mariinas message again. If it had, I'm sure they would have highlighted that loudly. Instead, they just mention things like "abandoned dogs", which is what I call "random bug fixes". And the next opportunity for patches is end of March (earliest). And thus that makes end of March the earliest opportunity to get relevant performance improvements.


By the way, if "1000 words just to say I'm upset that official mod support as announced isn't available on the timeline it was it was announced on" is all you took out of my long posting, then there's nothing I can do about that. But I might wonder why out of all the many things I addressed, you just focus so much on that one single element.

I guess if I'm being fair I consider performance improvements and simulation fixes to be in the same category but for clarity for others you are right they aren't the same.

Your other points relate to a 'broken' simulation which I would describe more as bugged than broken.

that CS2 is not a simulation, it is mostly a city painter.

Putting aside how cliche this is, there are some bugs in the simulation but in my experience other than industrial taxation bugs, land value issues and import/export issues for cargo things are functioning fine. Many numbers need to be tuned and hopefully land value fixes will solve the issue of high density residential not levelling.

Fact is also that with a merely medium ~150k pop city I already reached the 2B$ money limit and money never was a challenge for the city (which I consider "broken financial simulation", another part that fails the "simulation feeling"). Oh, and having a 2B$ limit ... really? Did you use a 32bit counter for the money or what is the story behind this weird limit? Anyway. Many game breaking limitations at the moment, unfortunately, not just "some bugs to be fixed"

This is due to a known bug resulting in insane incomes from certain bugged industrial buildings. I don't know why the max amount is $2 billion but I do know that a 32 bit int maxes out at 2,147,483,647 so this was a bit silly and kind of betrayed your tech background bonafides. Even more the post from her acknowledges the issue and it seems like its on priority to be fixed. To be fair this can be worked around a few ways but it is annoying for people who don't want to lose the challenge of Milestones and don't want to pay more attention to make sure that their income didn't go haywire. My experience of CS1 in comparison was that the economy was a joke. Just levelling up a city naturally and letting it run would rack up millions where I'm finding in CS2 income/expenses are a lot tighter and it makes taking out a loan a lot more attractive, to get that one service upgrade you really need or maybe a building to get the experience to level and get the cash payout.

And last, but definitely not least, we’re currently testing a fix for the tax bug with crazy high or negative numbers.

OMG so much to address.

That's okay if you consider modding to be available right now. For me it is not, not until an official mod store and the related, necessary editors are available. Although I am a skilled IT expert, I will not waste time with searching for mods on random mod hosting pages and manually installing them, upgrading them, maintaining them. I know some people have that as a hobby, and that's fine. When I was younger and had the time, I was doing these kind of things as well. But today, at this stage of my life, time is my most precious resource. I will only touch mods once Paradox Mods will be available and things are reasonably stable.

They're hosted on one mod page, with a launcher that automatically installs them into place for you and gives you the ability to toggle them on and off. Its not the best mod manager I've ever used but its a mod manager like basically any other. I'm not even a skilled IT expert but just a few google searches to get the info and get it set up took me all of 15 minutes. Mods are always going to introduce some level of instability so I'm not sure when the "reasonably stable" standard would be met. Anyways just to summarize your view on mods you believe its the lifeline of city skylines but you can't be bothered to put in the effort to install mods manually. You also don't want to install mods that are not available on an 'official mod store' even though thunderstore seems to have mods available for 69 (nice) games, and the fact that most people were modding CS1 through steam which is not Paradox or CO. Finally even when the mods do arrive on a mod delivery platform that is suitable to your well refined tastes you will not partake in this so called lifeline until a certain threshold of stability is met.

Honestly in the time it took you to respond to me you could have already had a number of mods that are relatively stable that give the QoL we were used to with CS1 mods.