I feel ______ about current the state of the game.

[Krazel]

I feel ___________ about the current state of the game. 220 hours on CS2 (2k+ hours on CS1). The vision is lost to me, or at least obstructed. Every time I load up and play it's only a matter of time before I get frustrated because of some game breaking bug (or unconfirmed feature). Then I go looking in the forums to see other people are having issues as well and just throw my hands up in frustration. I don't subscribe to only letting the community fix (mod) the core gameplay for a functional and positive experience.

With the econ 2.0 update it seems like they're trying mechanical things out - not necessarily polishing the experience or optimization. I unknowingly came along for an expensive beta tester ride. The __________ bug *fills in "homeless cims"* was the last straw for me as this is the second time there's been a game breaking bug introduced directly before a long break in updates. I have no issues with taking that time off, but breaking the game (again) right before leaving shows some indifference towards the customer experience.

The first CS had the community's help with some things but in my opinion the game functioned as a whole. I didn't even know about mods until 2 years after I started playing and never ran into a core gameplay issue that resulted in unplayability. Fast forward to last year, I was sold on the marketing vision and pre-purchased the deluxe edition of the game only to watch in dismay over the next 10 months as CO pushed back: delayed every planned feature to be released, provided some tone-deaf apologies, released the most questionable DLC I've ever witnessed as a gamer, etc. I still come back to the forums to look at the state of the game's community and get the general tone of the player base occasionally. Overall, just a negative endeavor.

One theme I see everywhere that criticism resides, there are people saying, "Wouldn't you rather 'they' spend X amount of time on Y, instead of X amount of time on Z?" It's not my job to figure out or speculate the logistics and priorities of the devs. I don't have to be patient. I paid for a product. That product is broken. So it's not some benevolent act of charity for it to get fixed.

Here's some predictions:

- This game will NOT release on consoles. It hardly functions well on high end PC's and the resource consumption... You need to meet a certain threshold for development and overall quality before consoles will consider putting a game on their marketplace.

- Deluxe Edition purchasers will get swept under the rug. We've seen what the publisher will do to games that don't continue revenue success. We're multiple quarters after launch with nothing to show for the customer base that spent additional money on content that isn't in the game yet. DLC sales will be paramount and take priority over Deluxe Edition contributors.

- Unless there is a massive shakeup in Colossal Order or Paradox, I do believe the game will be eventually be shelved. There's not enough trust in the community for DLC revenue to be close to where it needs to be to sustain this game long term. Initial sales have bought CO some time, but what has been done with it? There are small resurgences of players when a new patch is released but moving the needle by 2k players or so isn't a sustainable variance long term. The DLC machine that is this game needs people to purchase it for development to continue. The rebuttal to this would be "hey, this happened with CS1, it just takes time to flesh out. They'll get there." Things are a bit different now. With high initial sales comes high expectations on recurring revenue (in this case DLC). Colossal Order will have to forecast those sales to investors with uncertain results. There's a low percentage chance those forecasts get achieved with the constant delays in production. There are further reaching implications than only delays on that content.

It seems to me there is a, not so simple, management issue on allocation of resources. Again, this is not my problem. I'm not going to speculate on what should be worked on vs what shouldn't - I'm a customer, not management or a C-level executive. It's hard to see this game getting to where it needs to be in order to continue development past next year. Time will tell.

 

[tweety80]

According to the Steam player base, a lot of people came back after the Economy 2.0 patch. There is at least a bit of hope.
Is it enough, we will see.

CS2 on consoles? I agree... in the current situation, the simulation speed is too slow, and it is a very difficult problem to solve.

 

[CosmicSea]

Spot on. I'm extremely disappointed with the general lack of communication, and feel legitimately ripped off. I would be able to forgive this if modding and asset editing came along near release as CO mentioned it would. Personally I wouldn't be surprised if development of the asset editor didn't even start until after the release. It's very discouraging as I had super high hopes for CS2 after sinking thousands of hours on CS1.

Most of the bump in popularity that came with economy 2.0 dwindled off quickly. Personally I can't get back into the game until asset editor is here and we have more content to work with. I am concerned that the game will get shelved. It will not last 8 years or anywhere close to it at this rate.

 

[Civ5rako]

According to the Steam player base, a lot of people came back after the Economy 2.0 patch.

And the trajectory is going down again.

Sure, there was a "huge" (in terms of percentages) increase in player numbers after the release of the Economy patch as many people wanted to test it out. But given the numbers of copies sold which are estimated to be like 1.5+ million, that increase was actually only marginal.
And those players aren't really staying.
The average numbers of players are still way below the average numbers for CS1 - 10 months after release of what should have been an improvement of the predecessor. Since December of last year the average monthly numbers haven't gone over 10,000 which is really, really bad. They are actually 25% below that threshold.

 

[Reid777]

And the trajectory is going down again.

Sure, there was a "huge" (in terms of percentages) increase in player numbers after the release of the Economy patch as many people wanted to test it out. But given the numbers of copies sold which are estimated to be like 1.5+ million, that increase was actually only marginal.
And those players aren't really staying.
The average numbers of players are still way below the average numbers for CS1 - 10 months after release of what should have been an improvement of the predecessor. Since December of last year the average monthly numbers haven't gone over 10,000 which is really, really bad. They are actually 25% below that threshold.

Why try so hard to present something that is clearly positive in a negative light?

Downward trend is something natural for basically any game which is not a live service in some way.

Which games that sold around million of copies and do not have new content, have over 10 000 of active players?

If we want to read the charts and use that information for any discussion, then maybe do it honestly.
Release of Paradox mods had positive impact on number of players, which was long lasting.
Release of both Economy 2.0 and Detailers Patch had both very positive impact on player number, which seems to be quite long lasting, at least in video gaming world.

There is still a lot of problems with the game and a lot of work to be done, The future of CS2 is very uncertain.
But, really, trying to twist the facts and present positives as negatives, is just baseless hate.
Then, some people are complaining why CO is not communicating much here. Why would they, if that communication is almost universally picked apart and criticized by some begrudged people who want to focus of shortcomings and diminish all the positive aspects and actual work that is being being done by COI/PDX to improve CS2.

 

[Civ5rako]

Why try so hard to present something that is clearly positive in a negative light?

Downward trend is something natural for basically any game which is not a live service in some way.

Which games that sold around million of copies and do not have new content, have over 10 000 of active players?

Because the numbers aren't positve at all.
Yes, they have recently gone up for two weeks (with the trajectory going down again), but we have to keep in mind from where they were coming.

CS2 has sold over 1.5 million copies, based on the success of its predecessor.
Of these 1.5 million customers only 0.5% are playing on average. The average over the past 30 days (which still include partially the relatively "successful" month of July) was 7,323. That certainly is nothing to write home about.

And the game with over 10,000 players is CS1, not CS2. At the time of writing this, the peak for CS2 was 8,766, whilst the peak for CS1 was 12,270 (both for the past 24 hours, but this isn't an exception but the rule). That means that CS1 still has 50% more players than what was supposed to replace it. 10 months past release date.
Not even to mention that CS2 did have some new content recently.

I am pretty sure that the CS2 numbers are way below expectations, again with the trajectory going down, not up. That would mean that CS2 is in quite some danger to be terminated at some point of time.

 

[cdub8d]

I am disappointed that the game continues to feel as if it is more of an art project than an actual game. If that makes any sense. Like there really isn't much in terms of city management other than maybe traffic management. But even then traffic management is very easily solved with half decent land use. The simulation of CS2 has really failed to introduce interesting gameplay. Which is very disappointing considering it was something I was looking forward with CS2

 

[MohawkWolfo98]

The blank I would fill in is “disillusioned”.

The commitment to patch the game is welcomed for free, but progress feels so glacial. going to be years before we can get it a vanilla CS2 experience that can be compared to CS1 in its vanilla state with popular mods like TMPE. That’s not including the popular DLC like Parklife which should have been in this game but isn’t rn.

I hope that they can hire more developers and get it going, but I fear the damage has been done.

 

[tweety80]

Why try so hard to present something that is clearly positive in a negative light?

It comes down to math.

The Economy 2.0 patch was great, it pumped up the numbers from 7800 to around 15,000.

It nearly doubled the player base.
Of course, the effect is fading, but it gave CO an additional three months to rescue the game. Again, we are back at the average monthly loss of around 15% to 30%.
That is not sustainable because CO wants to sell DLCs.

Most fans bought the Ultimate Packet but that means very few people will buy the next DLCs because they already own them.
-> The next big money comes in after the Ultimate packs are included.

The big problem is time. CO is very slow to create new content at the wanted/needed quality. I assume it takes CO more than a year to reach the point where the Ultimate users have to buy the next DLCs.

Now, if we assume an optimistic loss of 10% per month for a year, we get 3400 players. If we take 15%, we have 1700 players, and 20% will end with 800 players.

Regardless of the percentage number, even a player base of 3400 users may not generate enough income to justify the development of additional DLCs.

Are the concerns valid or not?
We need sure more great patches like Economy 2.0 to save the game. Possible, yes, but not easy.

 

[CosmicSea]

It comes down to math.

The Economy 2.0 patch was great, it pumped up the numbers from 7800 to around 15,000.

It nearly doubled the player base.
Of course, the effect is fading, but it gave CO an additional three months to rescue the game. Again, we are back at the average monthly loss of around 15% to 30%.
That is not sustainable because CO wants to sell DLCs.

Most fans bought the Ultimate Packet but that means very few people will buy the next DLCs because they already own them.
-> The next big money comes in after the Ultimate packs are included.

The big problem is time. CO is very slow to create new content at the wanted/needed quality. I assume it takes CO more than a year to reach the point where the Ultimate users have to buy the next DLCs.

Now, if we assume an optimistic loss of 10% per month for a year, we get 3400 players. If we take 15%, we have 1700 players, and 20% will end with 800 players.

Regardless of the percentage number, even a player base of 3400 users may not generate enough income to justify the development of additional DLCs.

Are the concerns valid or not?
We need sure more great patches like Economy 2.0 to save the game. Possible, yes, but not easy.

Great patches that pretty much break the game simulation and cannot be fixed without using a mod? Yeah, alright... (see: homeless bug)

 

[GoldRush1974]

It strange, the OP predicts that the game will not release on console, yet that is the very thing that will drive more players to the game, there is a massive console player base out there just raring to go which will generate more revenue for CO & PI, console players are also much more likely to purchase DLC as they don't have access to mods. The very future of the game may depend on the success of the console launch as it's a massive opportunity for more marketing and exposure.

As a side note, if Rockstar can get GTA6 to run on console there is no plausible reason the CO can't get Cities 2 to run on console.

 

[ClemiMD]

Now, if we assume an optimistic loss of 10% per month for a year, we get 3400 players. If we take 15%, we have 1700 players, and 20% will end with 800 players.

Regardless of the percentage number, even a player base of 3400 users may not generate enough income to justify the development of additional DLCs.

Are the concerns valid or not?

They are not.

You are assuming that the absolute number of active players who are likely to buy a DLC corresponds to those who are playing at the same time according to the statistics.

Of all registered cars on the road, 95% are parked and 5% are driven. If you apply your calculation to this example, you would assume that only 5% of car owners will buy a new car in the next few years and therefore the car industry will collapse.

 

[unoace1006]

Because the numbers aren't positve at all.
Yes, they have recently gone up for two weeks (with the trajectory going down again), but we have to keep in mind from where they were coming.

CS2 has sold over 1.5 million copies, based on the success of its predecessor.
Of these 1.5 million customers only 0.5% are playing on average. The average over the past 30 days (which still include partially the relatively "successful" month of July) was 7,323. That certainly is nothing to write home about.

And the game with over 10,000 players is CS1, not CS2. At the time of writing this, the peak for CS2 was 8,766, whilst the peak for CS1 was 12,270 (both for the past 24 hours, but this isn't an exception but the rule). That means that CS1 still has 50% more players than what was supposed to replace it. 10 months past release date.
Not even to mention that CS2 did have some new content recently.

I am pretty sure that the CS2 numbers are way below expectations, again with the trajectory going down, not up. That would mean that CS2 is in quite some danger to be terminated at some point of time.

I don’t know much about the steam data but every time I see similar data presented it seems the data is this:
*unique # of players at a given moment/day

The better metric is the # of unique players over a period of 30 days.

A proxy for this lack of data may be mod subscriptions: over 65,000 downloaded the Road Editor; Traffic and Anarchy have over 300,000 subscribers.

I would agree that the decrease in # of subscriptions of flagship mods is concerning. But different mods also have different audiences. That being said 80,000 to 150,000 players per month is nothing to scoff at.

 

[unoace1006]

To answer OP:

I feel betrayed as an UE buyer and cautiously optimistic CO can rise to the ocasión . The bugs aren’t my breaking point. It’s the teams inability to provide accurate timelines for accomplishing x,y, or z. And since they can’t do that, they give no timelines at all. Which means players don’t have a light at the end of this tunnel.

If you look at the bugs being fixed in 1.1.5 it’s clear that many of the bugs being addressed aren’t even being reported. That is to say, the team has a long internal list of crap they’re working on and trying to balance that against the changes players are clamoring for. It’s a tough dance.

So all we have is the hope that the things that matter to each of us are fixed “soon.” But we know soon can mean 5 years from now.

 

[tweety80]

You are assuming that the absolute number of active players who are likely to buy a DLC corresponds to those who are playing at the same time according to the statistics.

I look at CS1 numbers.... that is the reference.
We know that it was okay for CO to have 8700 players in July 2015. The business model worked; enough players bought the DLCs.
We also know that the current company size is bigger, and running costs are much higher. An 8700-player base is not likely to be enough to cover the current costs and the desired profit for PDX.
We could argue that CO/PDX will counter it with smaller and cheaper DLCs and higher sales prices, but we all know the result of that experiment.

--> It does not work; players reject such ideas.

We also know that CO is very slow to create new quality content. The game was released in an unfinished state ten months ago, and CO used the time to fix the base game with hundreds of bug fixes and is still adding promised features. Still, the game contains big bugs like the homeless bug, and many promised key features, such as the asset editor, are missing.

We don't know what number CO/PDX needs to publish a profitable DLC, so it is guessing.
I hope CO will bring the game back... but it is uncertain.

CS2 is agent-based, so improving the performance of running it on consoles is a very hard but necessary task. I am unsure if raising the performance by at least 200% is possible. In the current state, a low-performance console may reach the unplayable area with 100K citizens. That is a village.

 

[RuralConurbation]

For a very long time I have questioned the mid and long term viability of the title given the CO/PDX inability to provide what was initially marketed in a timely fashion following release.

When CS1 was released, there was a healthy interest in city simulators and, I feel, a less vitriolic social media presence.

These days, if a product is released which doesn't set the world alight from day one, it can be destroyed by negativity extremely quickly. I think that CS:2 is very much a victim of this situation - not helped at all by the monumental PR blunders of CO and PDX.

As a city painter with a relatively low population count, the title has interest. As a big city builder, it is a car crash. With a decent PC and a wish to build big, it is disappoints.

If you can detail a small city on a console is very questionable. If you can detail a small or medium city on a decent PC is certainly possible but for so many people who want instant and sustainable enjoyment does it deliver? I think not. How many of us are bored with it? Me, certainly.

Litigation aside, the publisher is highly unlikely to pump more money into the title if the forward sales do not justify the investment. So, so many players are disillusioned with the game, the rate of improvement, no longer trust the supplier, and will not spend money on future content, no matter what.

It it unlikely to ever be a big city builder because of the agent based architecture and the amount of money and effort required to optimise it sufficiently.

I suspect that content will be provided so as to address the issue of litigation, to fix basic bugs, and that will be about it. The game will become a "town" simulator/painter and will be reliant upon third party content and, for many casual players, that will probably be enough.

All very sad, IMHO.

 

[ClemiMD]

I look at CS1 numbers.... that is the reference.
We know that it was okay for CO to have 8700 players in July 2015. The business model worked; enough players bought the DLCs.
We also know that the current company size is bigger, and running costs are much higher. An 8700-player base is not likely to be enough to cover the current costs and the desired profit for PDX.

Again, the numbers you are looking at are numbers of players which played the game just in one moment at the same time. You cannot equalize the total numbers of active users with the number of current users at a certain point in time.

 

[Civ5rako]

Again, the numbers you are looking at are numbers of players which played the game just in one moment at the same time. You cannot equalize the total numbers of active users with the number of current users at a certain point in time.

That's the reason why we are looking at time periods.

And since the week of Christmas 2023 CS2 never again had as much players as its predecessor (and even in that week it was leading by just 71 of 14,600 players). That's just a simple fact that cannot be disputed.
From this fact we can deduce that CS2 is less popular. We can furthermore clearly see in the graphs that the interest in CS2 is getting less again, after it shortly did peak with the release of the Eco patch.

Now, of course none of us knows exactly how many players are regarded being enough by PDX to continue financing the game. Maybe they are happy with the current number. I don't know and you don't either.
What we can safely assume though is that they want to have a certain constant playerbase being active as those will be the ones fueling their business model which isn't based on just selling base games, but selling DLCs. The more, the better.
And looking at a timespan of 30 days and seeing that less than 0.5% of sold copies are played doesn't look too promising in that regard. Especially taking into account that a major patch and some additional content has been released and the trajectory is not going up.

 

[ClemiMD]

@Civ5rako
My point was that Tweety80 took a figure from the statistics (current number of players) and used it as a benchmark for something different (total number of players and potential DLC buyers). It's like looking at pictures of Amsterdam by night and concluding that the sun never shines in the Netherlands.

 

[tweety80]

Again, the numbers you are looking at are numbers of players which played the game just in one moment at the same time. You cannot equalize the total numbers of active users with the number of current users at a certain point in time.

I get what you are saying but you do not understand my point.
Yes, a 10000-player base means that a lot more people play the game.

But what we know is that a 10000-player base (the random Steam number) was okay nearly ten years ago and generated enough profit to develop new DLCs.
The question is, is it enough today?
CS1 had an average player base of maybe 15K to 25K depending on the year.
--> That generated enough income for PDX and CO. It sets future expectations.

A 20,000-player base generates four times more revenue than a 5,000-player base. In reality, maybe the real player numbers are 100,000 vs. 25,000, but the relationship is the same.

Since then, CO has grown by maybe 50%, and inflation since 2015 (depending on the country) has probably been over 30%. To earn the same profit, the game needs 80% more active players, or the product has to be much more expensive.

--> It is very unlikely that the current player base is enough to generate the revenue desired, and we all know that CS2 is losing at least 10% of its active player base per month. If you do not play, you do not buy a DLC.
Additionally, the last DLC was a disaster, and many lost trust. Buyers are probably very, very careful and will not trust any ads from CO/PDX. This also lowers future sales and increases the required work for a future DLC a lot. CO/PDX cannot afford to publish an overpriced, low-quality DLC again.