New Patch?

[Civ5rako]

Ranting that you want CS2 fixed is pointless. We all have done it a hundred of times in this forum and it only led to the developers to stop responding.

Which is quite telling.

And the repeated requests for fixing the game weren't exactly unjustified, were they?

 

[prismaticmarcus]

My point of view here is the same if I had bought a TV that was not working properly I would have asked the vendor to fix it.

I have a feeling you'd be more specific e.g, 'I can't tune any channels' or 'The audio's not bassy enough' or 'This app won't work.'

I hope so, anyway...

 

[PTOE Plays]

It has been a long time since I bought the game with excitement, yet CS1 is still the better game. I find that amazing, but it’s incredible that I have to play CS1 while CS2 is just "gathering dust on the shelf." Releasing new assets and content is great, but maybe it would be much better if you focused on fixing the game.

I disagree with the premise that CS1 is the better game. As someone who has been playing CS1 since 2016, I enjoy vanilla CS2 far more than vanilla CS1. Now that I’ve played CS2, I can’t play vanilla CS1 without heavy use of mods. It’s just not enjoyable. I can play CS2 completely vanilla and have fun getting lost in the game for hours. Just my opinion.

CS1 has benefited from a decade of modding and DLC, and there are some absolutely amazing mods available that double or triple CS1’s value. The mod history of CS1 is the main advantage CS1 has over CS2 right now.

As you say they sold it as a magnificent simulation, but finally we get a mediocre simulation at most. And still some of the systems barely work o do it in a way that is really hard to understand, perceive or anticipate.

The game want to do everything but at last it's all half made. Probably that's why so many people complain. Who's like city painting, are fine, you can make nice dioramas of cities; if you want "some" city simulation, you will find that are things that still don't feel right. If you want a realistic city simulation, well forget it, you will not find that in the actual state of this game, and may be it would never reach that state, because i think that is not the interest of the creator.

The education system for some people is wrong, because you need to plop a ton of schools. But, you can pick real life examples and you will see that it's fine: you need a ton of schools! May be in the game looks odd because the first school option is humongous, and when you start to plop them, there is no space to do it in a realistic way (thankfully they added smaller versions of them).

Yeah, I think CO bit off more than they could chew with the time and staff they had. There is a lot of complexity in the back end logic of the simulation that isn’t entirely understandable for the player. It seems like they spent all of their time building out the complexity, then ran out of time at the debugging, calibration, and validation phase. The more complex the simulation is, the longer it will take to debug and calibrate to make all of the systems work together properly, which compounds the problem.

To add on to CO’s technical problems, after the debugging and calibration is done, the complexity must be simplified within the game interface/data feedback so players can conceptually understand what is happening in the game and connect how their actions are impacting the simulation. Designing this interface is as much an art as it is a science, and the amount of time and testing of the user interface scales up with the complexity on the back end. If the interface isn’t clearly giving good feedback, then the player doesn’t know the next move they should make when they run into a problem to solve. This will cause frustration, and the player will believe the simulation is arbitrary, wrong, or nonexistent, even if there is realistic logic there within the simulation (like your elementary school example).

So, I think there is a good simulation underneath the hood, but CO has a two pronged issue right now:

1. Debugging and calibrating the simulation is still in progress.
2. An interface with clear and concise feedback to the player when the player takes action is not complete and is not possible to complete until the first issue with debugging and calibration above is largely solved.

 

[Shalafichg]

So it is just a rant. /tuningout

Nope, I mean, I think that complaining politely is completely legit. But toxicity on the internet is as common as laziness, and I think people confuse that. I don't understand well the positioning of some people who defend the game and the company when someone complains and says this is not the game they promised, this is not a finished and polished game, some points of the simulation are completely broken and I can say is not simulating well. Also when I said, I'm not a beta tester, I'm not a programmer, I'm not a modder. This is something they've already known and I'm asking when they will provide us with a patch that solves the mayor problems of the game to have a playable good-simulated version of the game.

So I don't know how way to complain about something without fanatics feeling hurt... It would be easier if we accept the reality of the game and ask the company politely when they will do the promised.

 

[Shalafichg]

With the latest updates, I have to say that I've become a bit more optimistic about the future of this game.
It's heading in the right direction for now. I've had the game since release, and there have been a lot more problems. It even got to the point where we received a hotfix for a hotfix.
At the beginning of last year, I even thought this game was a stillborn and that it probably needed to be developed from scratch.
The biggest problems for me were missing animations, which are still missing today, and some simulation aspects like the economy, traffic, and the constant problem with the homeless. The performance was even worse. Sure, there are still issues here and there, but I can enjoy the game more now than before.

This is a great point. I would like to think this game has great potential to be a worthy successor of CS1. And I understand that every hotfix fixes something in the game, but some problems like you said are from the beginning of the game and after one year and after CO PROMISED everybody can find it on the internet that they will work on that and optimization issues and they won't release any DLC, I feel a little sad and disappointed when they did just the opposite.

For me, the most important is the simulation followed for the modding. And my point in all this is I think we are lazy as customers I mean we say sentences like yours (no offence, I did in some moments too) "I can enjoy the game more now than before"..... The game should be enjoyable from the beginning not 2 or 3 years later, and they should be more responsible as a company.

 

[Shalafichg]

I have a feeling you'd be more specific e.g, 'I can't tune any channels' or 'The audio's not bassy enough' or 'This app won't work.'

I hope so, anyway...

The forum has Plenty of messages with problems, some users add some problems here, and again: I'm not a beta tester, I think the company knows very well the simulation is not working well. But you know, I will do it. Now I'm travelling and is a little difficult but I will try to play some games and say what is broken. I will add that information but it takes time. I also hope the people of the forum add the issues they know.
Prismaticmarcus, did you experience any issues in the simulation of your games?

Edit: I put some of the issues some post below, feel free to answer on it if you like.

 

[campcreekdude]

I'm not sure if elementary school demand is a bug or game design. There are no babies in ages 0 to 4 in the game. Just children teens adults and seniors. From reading the wiki.

As soon as they are born they go to school. If they added another level of school called daycare or stay at home and do nothing for 4 years the elementary schools wouldn't be bloated as much.

 

[Shalafichg]

I disagree with the premise that CS1 is the better game. As someone who has been playing CS1 since 2016, I enjoy vanilla CS2 far more than vanilla CS1. Now that I’ve played CS2, I can’t play vanilla CS1 without heavy use of mods. It’s just not enjoyable. I can play CS2 completely vanilla and have fun getting lost in the game for hours. Just my opinion.

CS1 has benefited from a decade of modding and DLC, and there are some absolutely amazing mods available that double or triple CS1’s value. The mod history of CS1 is the main advantage CS1 has over CS2 right now.



Yeah, I think CO bit off more than they could chew with the time and staff they had. There is a lot of complexity in the back end logic of the simulation that isn’t entirely understandable for the player. It seems like they spent all of their time building out the complexity, then ran out of time at the debugging, calibration, and validation phase. The more complex the simulation is, the longer it will take to debug and calibrate to make all of the systems work together properly, which compounds the problem.

To add on to CO’s technical problems, after the debugging and calibration is done, the complexity must be simplified within the game interface/data feedback so players can conceptually understand what is happening in the game and connect how their actions are impacting the simulation. Designing this interface is as much an art as it is a science, and the amount of time and testing of the user interface scales up with the complexity on the back end. If the interface isn’t clearly giving good feedback, then the player doesn’t know the next move they should make when they run into a problem to solve. This will cause frustration, and the player will believe the simulation is arbitrary, wrong, or nonexistent, even if there is realistic logic there within the simulation (like your elementary school example).

So, I think there is a good simulation underneath the hood, but CO has a two pronged issue right now:

1. Debugging and calibrating the simulation is still in progress.
2. An interface with clear and concise feedback to the player when the player takes action is not complete and is not possible to complete until the first issue with debugging and calibration above is largely solved.

I understand your point, but there are a few things to consider:

1. Is the same company making the sequel? All this talk about the time CS1 needed for improvement can also apply to CS2, since they are not creating a completely different game. They have the knowledge from the previous game.
2. We can talk about comparing the game with or without mods, but I think that once you open your game to the workshop, the most important mods that address some issues should be considered part of the game. CS2 has no workshop, and I’m pretty convinced this is an economic decision.
3. I’m not taking into account all the DLCs of CS1... We all know Paradox’s DLC policies very well. What I’m saying is that the base game of CS2 has serious simulation issues, and they remain unresolved even after one year. Now I’ll need to list them because it seems like many people are either blind to these issues or feel personally attacked when someone criticizes the game.

I’m not a programmer, of course, but I know a lot about simulation and AI. A simulation doesn’t need to be completely realistic; you can take reality and create a model of it, simplifying by removing terms in the formulas that aren’t significantly important. Sure, it’s a big system, but mathematics can also solve large systems. The most important thing here is to check whether the model accurately represents the reality they’re trying to simulate.


Let me give you some examples:


How is it possible for me to reach the status of a large village with 0 population? This happens because they created an XP system with no additional requirements. So, all I need to do is fill the map with wind turbines, sell the electricity, and keep repeating the process. How can this be fixed? To reach each milestone, you should need several conditions, not just XP — for instance, a minimum population or a minimum number of services.


How can I get rich from the education system? It’s not hard. You just need to set the budget to 50%, which will make your citizens a little less educated, causing them to repeat the process, and then you can max out the school payment. (Actually, you can exploit your citizens in different ways.) Should it work this way? I don’t think so. I believe the simulation should be designed in such a way that people might prefer to leave the city instead of continuing with this cycle.


You can reduce the service times for things like ambulances, firetrucks, police, or anything that involves vehicles, to provide the service in half the time. You just need to create a one-way street so that the vehicle cannot return to the station after providing the service. It just disappears and reappears at the station. I don’t think it’s hard to simulate that the station has no vehicles and cannot provide service, with an icon indicating that.


Here’s another one: You can create a city with completely separated zones except for a pedestrian road. I don’t know how it’s possible, but all the products from your industries get transported magically to the commercial and service buildings. This conveniently solves the problem of trucks generating traffic jams. Again, this could be fixed easily: Program the pedestrian road so that it’s not considered connected for product transportation. And, to make it more realistic, you could implement some sort of “efficiency coefficient” because people are far away from their jobs or stores.


And maybe someone will say: "But you’re not playing the way it’s supposed to be played..." These kinds of problems, and more, can occur even if you’re not intentionally exploiting the system. We can also talk about the balance of the game, like elgendo87 mentioned: you need to set up TONS of schools, and they are huge. That’s not realistic. Let’s look at real-world schools and their sizes and placement. Some schools in the game could be the size of a building, maybe 4x4 tiles. I’m not saying they need to change the schools, but the number of schools needs balancing, and maybe the simulation should reflect what people actually want (in a non-political way: Some people might choose to work instead of going to school or university).


Another big issue is the pricing of the zones. People living in cheaper zones save money, and once they have enough, they move to a more expensive zone. Then, they start losing money, complain about the zone's price, and when they’re broke, they move back to a cheaper zone. This creates a cycle. Why didn’t they simulate this based on income? "I will move to a more expensive zone when my income — not my savings — allows me to afford it." And of course, they could simulate that when someone loses their job, they could use their savings until they find a job that might not pay as well as before, and then they could decide to move to a cheaper zone.

I will try to find another examples but I have no more time today.

 

[Shalafichg]

I'm not sure if elementary school demand is a bug or game design. There are no babies in ages 0 to 4 in the game. Just children teens adults and seniors. From reading the wiki.

As soon as they are born they go to school. If they added another level of school called daycare or stay at home and do nothing for 4 years the elementary schools wouldn't be bloated as much.

If you are not sure if something is a bug or design means that if that is the design is a BAD design. A good design feels good, realistic, and not like a bug.

They don't need to create another level of school, simply another life stage: Baby. Babies can not work, Babies can not demand services, Babies can not study , babies demand money from the family, thats all. Simple and clean.

 

[Civ5rako]

If you are not sure if something is a bug or design means that if that is the design is a BAD design. A good design feels good, realistic, and not like a bug.

This.

 

[Evie HJ]

If it's that simple and clean, what precisely makes you think the devs haven't already considered something similar and that there isn't actually a reason why it's not implemented?

Perhaps, say, the fact that filling the game with agents who don't actually participate in the game in any meaningful way beside making your city poorer but who still need to be tracked actually sound like a pretty terrible idea, programing-wise? Add babies, and it means less people actually active in the city, making cities feel even more empty at the same population number?

Maybe the devs aren't the morons you seem to think they are.

 

[campcreekdude]

If it's that simple and clean, what precisely makes you think the devs haven't already considered something similar and that there isn't actually a reason why it's not implemented?

Perhaps, say, the fact that filling the game with agents who don't actually participate in the game in any meaningful way beside making your city poorer but who still need to be tracked actually sound like a pretty terrible idea, programing-wise? Add babies, and it means less people actually active in the city, making cities feel even more empty at the same population number?

Maybe the devs aren't the morons you seem to think they are.

Adding anything to the game is not easy. Otherwise we would see improvements every week. The game is interconnected between a whole bunch of stuff.

I was looking at my home city population of students and if you add ages 0 to 4 to the mix it makes the total population of students bloated. Just like in CS2.