I feel ______ about current the state of the game.

[Diacritic]

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.

I not only cannot imagine a situation any longer in which I buy DLC for this game, I feel so burned on my initial deluxe bundle purchase that I'm unlikely to buy anything with CO or Paradox's name on it ever again, as this was my first such purchase. I can't believe they shipped a deeply flawed but playable game and then actively worked to make it worse by fiddling with stuff they're not qualified to do instead of fixing actual technical problems. You don't need a bunch of game designers to fix your economic simulation, you need to give up on it or hire a team of economists.

This game was just too ambitious for this team, but rather than ever admit that and try to make it at least the best it can be at one thing they keep trying to reach the promises they made at launch. That ship has sailed. Maybe one day this will be a game I would have been glad to have purchased if I waited a couple of years and bought it at a discount, but it will never be worth what I paid. I'd like to see it reach a point where I think it's worth playing but right now if it cost the same as Stardew Valley I would tell people to avoid it.

 

[raf8655]

I not only cannot imagine a situation any longer in which I buy DLC for this game, I feel so burned on my initial deluxe bundle purchase that I'm unlikely to buy anything with CO or Paradox's name on it ever again, as this was my first such purchase. I can't believe they shipped a deeply flawed but playable game and then actively worked to make it worse by fiddling with stuff they're not qualified to do instead of fixing actual technical problems. You don't need a bunch of game designers to fix your economic simulation, you need to give up on it or hire a team of economists.

This game was just too ambitious for this team, but rather than ever admit that and try to make it at least the best it can be at one thing they keep trying to reach the promises they made at launch. That ship has sailed. Maybe one day this will be a game I would have been glad to have purchased if I waited a couple of years and bought it at a discount, but it will never be worth what I paid. I'd like to see it reach a point where I think it's worth playing but right now if it cost the same as Stardew Valley I would tell people to avoid it.

Shareable reasoning.

I too was too burned by the premature purchase of the Deluxe Edition, given the subsequent disaster we all know about.

I hope and believe that they can still start a journey towards redemption, but it will be very, very long and difficult... and unfortunately even today we can see almost nothing of this hoped-for "recovery"...We had some good things with the detailer patch, but it's still too little.

This new mini-patch announced today only adds a sort of possibility to better select some props, so nothing sensational and nothing that couldn't already be done with the "Find It" mod; from the simulation point of view, the problem of the homeless should be resolved, but we still have to see with the game in hand.


So overall...I would say we're not there yet, it's still a very negative situation.

 

[CosmicSea]

It is unfortunate and extremely disappointing that the game, almost a year after release, is STILL missing a key feature that would provide a huge amount of benefits and might bring back some players that are now bored of the game - THE ASSET EDITOR. I still firmly believe they didn't even start on this feature until after the game was released. It is absolutely crucial that we get the ability to download new assets as the biggest flaw with the game is the lack of content.

@co_avanya , do we have ANY news regarding the status of this essential feature?

 

[TripleAgent]

It is unfortunate and extremely disappointing that the game, almost a year after release, is STILL missing a key feature that would provide a huge amount of benefits and might bring back some players that are now bored of the game - THE ASSET EDITOR. I still firmly believe they didn't even start on this feature until after the game was released. It is absolutely crucial that we get the ability to download new assets as the biggest flaw with the game is the lack of content.

@co_avanya , do we have ANY news regarding the status of this essential feature?

Seriously, this is the biggest thing holding the game back right now. Mods have been able to bandage the gameplay enough to the point where it's marginally playable, but what's the point when all of the cities look the same and have the exact same generic buildings? The game was sold on the tagline, "If you can dream it, you can build it." Almost a year later, that's still patently false marketing (that's still on the steam page! Along with a clearly faked screenshot).

When we were told the PDX mods, implicitly including asset importing (remember they kept the asset import issue secret until weeks after release) would be ready in "days, not hours" I didn't expect that to mean 321 days (and counting). This isn't acceptable at all, and after almost a year I'm tired of having to pretend that it is. We need news on the asset import issue urgently, having nothing to share or update us on after, again, ALMOST A YEAR, raises legitimate questions about CO's ability to actually fix this.

 

[GoldRush1974]

Completely agree with the previous 3 posts, forward progress of the game is literally stuck until the asset importer is up and running & that is what is fueling a lot of the negativity surrounding the game. With the asset importer come the region packs with its 2500+ creations, then come custom assets from the community which we know are being created having seen CPP's recent videos. Once everyone has access to that mass of diverse content CO can then start to broach the subject of the Bridges and Ports DLC.

It's really hard to understand, given the lack of actual communication other than "we are working on it" what is taking so long to implement it, especially when content creators using custom assets in their games.

 

[CosmicSea]

Seriously, this is the biggest thing holding the game back right now. Mods have been able to bandage the gameplay enough to the point where it's marginally playable, but what's the point when all of the cities look the same and have the exact same generic buildings? The game was sold on the tagline, "If you can dream it, you can build it." Almost a year later, that's still patently false marketing (that's still on the steam page! Along with a clearly faked screenshot).

View attachment 1183330

When we were told the PDX mods, implicitly including asset importing (remember they kept the asset import issue secret until weeks after release) would be ready in "days, not hours" I didn't expect that to mean 321 days (and counting). This isn't acceptable at all, and after almost a year I'm tired of having to pretend that it is. We need news on the asset import issue urgently, having nothing to share or update us on after, again, ALMOST A YEAR, raises legitimate questions about CO's ability to actually fix this.

Completely agree with the previous 3 posts, forward progress of the game is literally stuck until the asset importer is up and running & that is what is fueling a lot of the negativity surrounding the game. With the asset importer come the region packs with its 2500+ creations, then come custom assets from the community which we know are being created having seen CPP's recent videos. Once everyone has access to that mass of diverse content CO can then start to broach the subject of the Bridges and Ports DLC.

It's really hard to understand, given the lack of actual communication other than "we are working on it" what is taking so long to implement it, especially when content creators using custom assets in their games.

You guys hit the nail on the head. CO claims to embrace and understand the importance of being able to have custom assets in the game... but I don't think they really do. We were very clearly mislead about the whole asset importing progress, from even before the game was released. We were not only lied to, but now we're essentially getting stone walled on the issue. Its very frustrating.

 

[TripleAgent]

If nothing else, even if they don't have a concrete update, I'd appreciate at least a technical explanation from one of the devs on why they've been incapable of making substantive progress on the issue and how they managed to misjudge the technical hurdles to the point that a core feature of the game to many players has been on ice for almost a year. That was brought up by CO as a potential dev diary topic several months ago IIRC, but the only one we've had since June is describing the fix of the homeless bug (much appreciated) and a less functional FindIt (less appreciated given other more pressing issues).

 

[MohawkWolfo98]

If nothing else, even if they don't have a concrete update, I'd appreciate at least a technical explanation from one of the devs on why they've been incapable of making substantive progress on the issue and how they managed to misjudge the technical hurdles to the point that a core feature of the game to many players has been on ice for almost a year. That was brought up by CO as a potential dev diary topic several months ago IIRC, but the only one we've had since June is describing the fix of the homeless bug (much appreciated) and a less functional FindIt (less appreciated given other more pressing issues).

The issue is that there is probably not much to talk about. They probably didn’t start making it until very late in the development cycle (or were happy coasting along till Paradox told them to release it), realised that they couldn’t make it but marketing didn’t get the memo on that apart from “it will come out soon”. And when they finally started, realised that it would be so much more complex than the adverts they were pushing out, and now here we are.

It is what it is, we just have to deal with it, accept they won’t refund or admit the mistakes that they made , and move on. It worries me now how slow it’s taking for patches to be made, the update on progress, and what’s happening in the future: what’s being fixed, what’s fixed, what we are planning for the future.

Frankly, It’s also my and fans fault for enabling such behaviour. Businesses always blame welfare and safety laws when they are on the ropes and know they messed up for a faulty product. The whole of Finland, small businesses or otw, surely doesn’t shut down in the summer. Feel free if there are any Finnish lawyers, but I’m sure some people could have stayed to fix the homeless bug, and be compensated for a few weeks vacations afterwards, like what Wiz did in Victoria 3 (which was praised by me and others).

Why does the above matter? It shows that the organisation is well run to compensate for mishaps that occur during development (as it always does), and be able to service fans who have paid a lot of money for a product. From my perspective, It just sounds like CO released it, knew there was a problem, and went “oh well, we all scheduled holidays for us, what a shame”.

Other frustrations is that there is no news of any kind to things that were removed, like no animations to a certain date. UE buyers have no news on when their DLC will be coming out. IMO, A lot of things are being pushed onto modders to solve and help out, which I think is not a good practice.

I’m glad that they aren’t stuffing these fixes into paid DLC, and that they are focusing on them. It’s just that progress is painfully slow to the point it’s going to take years before it gets anywhere close to what was sold a year ago. And I’m not willing to wait till I’m 3 years older for this game to be fixed back to where it should have been when it was marketed.

 

[UsmanSyed]

I’m glad that they aren’t stuffing these fixes into paid DLC, and that they are focusing on them. It’s just that progress is painfully slow to the point it’s going to take years before it gets anywhere close to what was sold a year ago. And I’m not willing to wait till I’m 3 years older for this game to be fixed back to where it should have been when it was marketed.

And that is where the main problem lies. Only very few will wait for the game to get better, as people will move on to other games. And with the console release delayed indefinitely, that is millions of lost revenue right there. But companies need constant revenue, they have to make money to continue development, and that is the main problem.

I have been a firm believer that 'the first impression is the last impression'. Of course there has been a few exceptions, like No Man's Sky and currently Cyberpunk 2047, but that happens very rarely and the conditions were different. They had a banger in their hands, what was needed is how they delayed the console versions, they should have delayed the PC version, worked on it till it was in release state, have the modding and asset editor ready, performance optimized, then release the game.

Now the problem is they have to work in kind of like a reverse cycle. The game has been released, is approaching the one year mark and yet they have to work on optimizing performance, fix bugs, work on mod and asset editor and other things to reach at to the point where it is out of beta state.

I'm really glad they are fixing the game and trying to make the better. But problem is game is already out, and the sands of time keep falling in the hourglass

 

[ThisMachineKills]

And that is where the main problem lies. Only very few will wait for the game to get better, as people will move on to other games. And with the console release delayed indefinitely, that is millions of lost revenue right there. But companies need constant revenue, they have to make money to continue development, and that is the main problem.

I have been a firm believer that 'the first impression is the last impression'. Of course there has been a few exceptions, like No Man's Sky and currently Cyberpunk 2047, but that happens very rarely and the conditions were different. They had a banger in their hands, what was needed is how they delayed the console versions, they should have delayed the PC version, worked on it till it was in release state, have the modding and asset editor ready, performance optimized, then release the game.

Now the problem is they have to work in kind of like a reverse cycle. The game has been released, is approaching the one year mark and yet they have to work on optimizing performance, fix bugs, work on mod and asset editor and other things to reach at to the point where it is out of beta state.

I'm really glad they are fixing the game and trying to make the better. But problem is game is already out, and the sands of time keep falling in the hourglass

I don't believe console is a really big audience based on personal experience on a different PC focused game that was ported to console. It's just not a good way to play these kind of games. All consoles combined probably wouldn't even add up to the PC Gamepass players never mind Steam. Plus if they're having so much trouble optimizing for PC, GOOD LUCK getting it to run on XB Series S (which it has to based on M$ rules)

They do need revenue, but PDX is a big wealthy company plus they're releasing some DLC's soon which will get *some* amount of cash. It might be copium but I don't think they would kill such a flagship title in the same way take two killed KSP2. Eventually, it will be done. (Okay maybe a lot of copium )

 

[Lys91]

You guys hit the nail on the head. CO claims to embrace and understand the importance of being able to have custom assets in the game... but I don't think they really do. We were very clearly mislead about the whole asset importing progress, from even before the game was released. We were not only lied to, but now we're essentially getting stone walled on the issue. Its very frustrating.

My guess? There were one guy* that knew how the asset worked and a bunch of other thing around the engine. Let's call him Bob. Well Bob left the company and the rest of the team is trying to understand how the code work. That can happen especially in small dev team (good manager plan contingencies). That's the only explanation that makes sense at this point. That's why the game was delayed and why they don't seem to be making any significant progress.

* Could be a group of folks, but you get the idea.

 

[Lys91]

I don't believe console is a really big audience based on personal experience on a different PC focused game that was ported to console. It's just not a good way to play these kind of games. All consoles combined probably wouldn't even add up to the PC Gamepass players never mind Steam. Plus if they're having so much trouble optimizing for PC, GOOD LUCK getting it to run on XB Series S (which it has to based on M$ rules)

They do need revenue, but PDX is a big wealthy company plus they're releasing some DLC's soon which will get *some* amount of cash. It might be copium but I don't think they would kill such a flagship title in the same way take two killed KSP2. Eventually, it will be done. (Okay maybe a lot of copium )

IMHO once the DLC of the premium edition are out, PDX will kill support for the game. Unless there is a sudden miracle and they release patches like there is no tomorrow, I don't see the game improving significantly enough to build an audience back. It has less players than CS1 had (and still have sadly), and CO dev team is bigger now. The math don't look good to sustain support of the game on DLCs money.