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OK, thanks for the clarification. Then we understand each other. :D
I can understand your concerns too. PDX could say that it's no longer worth maintaining the product any longer, and could kill the whole project and leave it to its fate. This is possible.

On the other hand, CS2 had a good start in terms of gross revenue and the 1.7 million units sold also have potential for future revenue. Even if CS2 may have a lifespan of only three years, it will probably still be developed to the point where it will be in a good playable state. And at least some DLCs will come, maybe two or three? Who knows. There is also a large community of modders.
What I'm saying is that concerns are valid, but I don't think we need to be afraid that CS2 will be canceled in the short term. And even if it is, we will still be able to play it and there will be mods. I'm quite relaxed about it.
 
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I think PDX is more interested by "how many buys it" than "how many plays it". This morning, in the best-selling Steam chart, excluding free games, CS II is 139th. In january 2016, 10 months after its release, CS 1 was 62th. We're talking about money, not players.

No CS II DLC was sold yet. The only released one was refunded. The next 2 are only CCPs and a radio, not as profitable as an expansion and already paid a long time ago by the UE buyers. Actually, no new DLC (not already paid by the UE owners) will be released before the 2nd quarter of 2025. And that's without new postponings.

I agree there's no chance CS2 will be canceled in the short term. But 2025's first semester wil be do-or-die. CO can't spend another year of development with so few results. Not with the new PDX policy of cancelling non profitable games and games going nowhere.
 
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RuralConurbation said:
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.
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I wish I could like this twice. Spot on.
 
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Darren3331 said:
Why do folk use steam numbers as fact lol? Steam doesn't record all (can't be assed to explain this), steam is not the only platform.
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Because in case of Colossal Order Steam is their main platform as they also host their dev builds there, even if MS Store and Epic versions are existing. As QA is also at least partly external (information found on in game credits -> QLOC) it's likely even the most convenient way to provide new test versions to external testers (no need for VPN and own in house test environments).

The only thing unclear is whatever is included in these builds they push - sometimes it's just configuration changes or some fix for an edge case, sometimes it's some additional assets or completely new features.
Also the pace of changes pushed to the Steam branches is important as there is also "just" an automatic deployment running each night it seems (cause I doubt that someone pushes manual changes at 3AM local time).

So that one is basically not that interesting:

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More interesting would be an irregular change during a (finnish) day - if deployments get more frequent a release might be imminent as that's usually done during the last week of a sprint.
 
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tweety80 said:
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.
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If inflation leads to higher costs for them, and (to some degree) we've seen pay increases since your referenced time-period, why do your explanations consistently seem to imply that the DLCs will not cost more than they did in CS1?
 
CitiesSupplylines said:
If inflation leads to higher costs for them, and (to some degree) we've seen pay increases since your referenced time-period, why do your explanations consistently seem to imply that the DLCs will not cost more than they did in CS1?
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CO/PDX increased the price of the last DLC (the beach thing) by around 50% but reduced the quality at the same time.
We all know the result and the Steam rating for that DLC.

The problem is that games are not essential, and people do not have to buy a DLC. In most countries, wages grew less than inflation, so people got poorer.
--> As a result, people are now more selective than before the pandemic and will spend less on non-essential things like a game or a DLC.

I believe getting good reviews and a lot of sales requires more work than a few years ago. Most likely, if CO/PDX releases the same quality at the same price today, fewer people will buy a DLC at the full price, and the ratings will be lower. Many will wait until a DLC is maybe 3 to 5 bucks.

Maybe I am wrong, but the Beach DLC suggests that people expect decent quality at an affordable price. The future will tell us what CO will do and how players rate future DLCs.
 
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cdub8d said:
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
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"more of an art project than an actual game" what the hell is that suppose to mean lol
 
ArtPTarkovsky said:
"more of an art project than an actual game" what the hell is that suppose to mean lol
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There isn't much of an actual game but rather just making things look nice. You don't really have to make all that interesting of decisions in terms of game mechanics. The whole "game" part of the game is pretty much nonexistent. So it really turns more into someone just painting a city. Never really managing a city. Pretty much similar to CS1.
 
cdub8d said:
Pretty much similar to CS1.
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So pretty much fitting the title I guess.

Honestly none of the former city builders I played before C:S1 (SC2000, SC4, City Life, Cities XL...) was the managing aspect impressively complex or challenging. Maybe the ones you are looking for are Anno, any Transport Tycoon title or Workers & Resources.
 
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[Delta ²k5] said:
So pretty much fitting the title I guess.

Honestly none of the former city builders I played before C:S1 (SC2000, SC4, City Life, Cities XL...) was the managing aspect impressively complex or challenging. Maybe the ones you are looking for are Anno, any Transport Tycoon title or Workers & Resources.
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Idk, SC4 its still a challenge for me to balance the budget and do large construction projects... :)
 
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cdub8d said:
There isn't much of an actual game but rather just making things look nice. You don't really have to make all that interesting of decisions in terms of game mechanics. The whole "game" part of the game is pretty much nonexistent. So it really turns more into someone just painting a city. Never really managing a city. Pretty much similar to CS1.
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I see you simulation players (idk how else to call it) saying it's a city painter but it isn't. There are a bunch of visual bugs unfixed and they really put me out of the game, like the bugs were we can see out of bounds it's really terrible.
Night time is impossible to use and all the game changing detailing comes from mods, even after the detailers patch. Never mind we can't import assets. The feature to change the ground and have texture variation in it is completely gone, they didn't put it in the game at all (no, the areas don't substitute that) and the grass on top of the texture isn't finished so they just disabled it before launch.
It can be a detailers dream if you have a RTX 4090, after the Extra Details mod release + the Anarchy mod update and don't care if the other half of the game breaks and you have to give up on a city you built for 2 months because the simulation is completely broken.
So no I think I'm going back to cities 1 and using 15 mods to detail and wipe out of my mind the CSL2 road tool.
 
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ArtPTarkovsky said:
I see you simulation players (idk how else to call it) saying it's a city painter but it isn't. There are a bunch of visual bugs unfixed and they really put me out of the game, like the bugs were we can see out of bounds it's really terrible.
Night time is impossible to use and all the game changing detailing comes from mods, even after the detailers patch. Never mind we can't import assets. The feature to change the ground and have texture variation in it is completely gone, they didn't put it in the game at all (no, the areas don't substitute that) and the grass on top of the texture isn't finished so they just disabled it before launch.
It can be a detailers dream if you have a RTX 4090, after the Extra Details mod release + the Anarchy mod update and don't care if the other half of the game breaks and you have to give up on a city you built for 2 months because the simulation is completely broken.
So no I think I'm going back to cities 1 and using 15 mods to detail and wipe out of my mind the CSL2 road tool.
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I never said it was a good city painter. Don't even have the asset uploader yet. I would prefer if there were actual game mechanics for some sort of city management but what they have is irrelevant. They built this simulation that runs but what the player does kind of doesn't matter much.
 
[Delta ²k5] said:
So pretty much fitting the title I guess.

Honestly none of the former city builders I played before C:S1 (SC2000, SC4, City Life, Cities XL...) was the managing aspect impressively complex or challenging. Maybe the ones you are looking for are Anno, any Transport Tycoon title or Workers & Resources.
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SC4 was actually interesting that had mechancis built around managing a city. It also is from 2002.... I would expect better over 20 years later.
 
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