The Way Forward, an update from the team behind Cities: Skylines

[Stealthy]

This is how many apologies now? And after an earlier half apology telling us this game might not be for us. It’s not for me. I don’t find it enjoyable. I bought ultimate so I’ll be getting lots of content I’m not going to use. I am not buying any other DLC and I’m not buying another paradox game.

It's kinda sad and funny how that was so misunderstood by the community members. Deliberately or by accident. Her point simply was that if you dont like their desing choices on what C:S2 will be, then the game isn't necessarily for you. Same way like Highrise city or Soviet workers & resources isn't for me. I don't like that sort of micromanagement with resources, so I don't play them anymore. I own both, but they are not for me.

Same applies to C:S2. If you like something else than what it offers, then it isn't for you. It won't have similar resource flows and management of those like HRC has. If you want that, game isn't for you. And any sensible person understands that. Only trolls keep twisting it the otherway.

 

[Tox1ceNN]

I do appreciate the "honesty" of the Studio. but one thing I have learned over the years is that Money Is all that matters.
I believe that the game Developers would like to make the game better, but the Studio wants to earn more money. and as a developer by myself and my knowledge about the markets right now, I'm not buying those fancy words and apologies. the way that game studios release products (and software companies) is a shame...

I loved the game but it was too heavy for me after 100k Pop and there are too many problems (the community already elaborated about them so much)
I haven't played for several months and I won't until those issues get fixed.
I won't believe it until I see it.

Good luck and happy Holidays everyone.

 

[co_avanya]

Is there a reason why we went days with the early-posted refund post with people theorizing rampantly about what was going on and whether it was real or a hoax or if the forums had been compromised instead of just having someone from PDX or CO pop in and say "Don't worry, it's nothing malicious, we'll have an announcement later this week"?

We don't comment on leaks, real or fake, and I imagine that Paradox has a similar policy. If a leak happens, it's usually information that isn't ready to be shared with the public. Maybe everyone who needs to approve it hasn't done so yet, maybe there are still uncertainties about the details that need to be determined. There can be a lot of reasons why, and those reasons usually also mean we can't comment on something until all boxes are ticked. For fake leaks, we don't comment as that would have the same effect as confirming the real ones.

As I work for Colossal Order I can't comment on what policies Paradox has in case of malicious activity and at what point they'd caution you, but as a general rule of thumb, if you are the least bit uncertain about any email containing links, always go to the main site itself and navigate to where the content would be.

As a software engineer I am still mystified why we still don't have the assets we were promised from the creators that Colossal Order is directly working with. (E.g., the region packs) I well know that it can take a long time before enough bugs are ironed out to release a piece of software for public use, but I see no reason that an alpha release couldn't have been thrown together rather quickly. They must have had some sort of pipeline for getting asset files from the artists they employ into the build system for integration with the game code before initial release. I understand that such a pipeline for internal use may be very janky and unsuitable for any external use, but slapping together a website for a small number of trusted users to send files to Colossal Order for import into the game can't be more than a couple weeks development time for a single developer. What on Earth is the hold-up?

The short explanation is that the Editor needs to import and package asset files in a way that does not require having Unity installed and access to the project itself, and the file format needs to be future-proof so assets created with the Editor are functional down the line too. As the Region Packs are to be released on Paradox Mods, they need this before they can released, while we can directly implement assets for DLCs.

While working on the asset import and saving, we've encountered some frustrating technical issues, that have caused the work to take significantly longer than we had expected.

Hi Mariina!

Thanks for the update. I've been quite patient with CO regarding the CS2 release. I am not as unsatisfied as other people are, but I understand that a lot of people have problems with the game and I don't want to discount anyone's concerns. That being said, I do have one request. Many of us have been making assets in preparation for assets to finally be able to be loaded into the game. I know that there are some guidelines around asset creation on the wiki, but I was wondering if it would be able to get more detailed information about asset creation and expectations around our models. Or release asset creators who have been working closely with CO for CCPs and the regional asset packs from their NDAs (or at least portions of the NDA specifically regarding asset creation) so they are free to discuss asset creation with the rest of the community.

I know there are a lot of us who are ready to pull the trigger as soon as asset importing is available, and it would make the process a lot smoother for those of us who aren't in the beta if we were able to get more information.

Could you elaborate on what information is missing/wanted from the guidelines? I'd be happy to look into what else we can share from our side. As for the creators we work more closely with, they're already allowed to share tips or guidance on how to create assets for Cities: Skylines II, though I of course cannot comment on how much time they might have to do so.

 

[AvgConsumer]

We don't comment on leaks, real or fake, and I imagine that Paradox has a similar policy. If a leak happens, it's usually information that isn't ready to be shared with the public. Maybe everyone who needs to approve it hasn't done so yet, maybe there are still uncertainties about the details that need to be determined. There can be a lot of reasons why, and those reasons usually also mean we can't comment on something until all boxes are ticked. For fake leaks, we don't comment as that would have the same effect as confirming the real ones.

As I work for Colossal Order I can't comment on what policies Paradox has in case of malicious activity and at what point they'd caution you, but as a general rule of thumb, if you are the least bit uncertain about any email containing links, always go to the main site itself and navigate to where the content would be.


The short explanation is that the Editor needs to import and package asset files in a way that does not require having Unity installed and access to the project itself, and the file format needs to be future-proof so assets created with the Editor are functional down the line too. As the Region Packs are to be released on Paradox Mods, they need this before they can released, while we can directly implement assets for DLCs.

While working on the asset import and saving, we've encountered some frustrating technical issues, that have caused the work to take significantly longer than we had expected.


Could you elaborate on what information is missing/wanted from the guidelines? I'd be happy to look into what else we can share from our side. As for the creators we work more closely with, they're already allowed to share tips or guidance on how to create assets for Cities: Skylines II, though I of course cannot comment on how much time they might have to do so.

"We ran into technical issues". Ha. The excuse is overused and tired and at this point, the more you use it, the worse it makes you look. Sure, you're using new tools and trying new things... but you still released a heaping pile under false pretenses, so all these excuses fall squarely into "It's a 'you' problem". We're just the customer. Our only need is for a product that is as described on the packaging.

Technical issues happen. But if it's taken this long to work the kinks out, it lends credence to the idea that the issue isn't the technology. PEBKAC is an acronym that needs more use these days.

 

[Lys91]

As I work for Colossal Order I can't comment on what policies Paradox has in case of malicious activity and at what point they'd caution you, but as a general rule of thumb, if you are the least bit uncertain about any email containing links, always go to the main site itself and navigate to where the content would be.

This is extremely unprofessional (not you personally, but as a response from a company). The security of your customers is your responsibility. This is extremely disappointing.

EDIT: You are basically telling customers to classify any e-mail from your company as spam, as you are not guaranteeing the integrity of your platform, and it may be used to spread malware or phishing attacks. If enough people using clients such as Gmail and Outlook classify you as spam, their algorithms will catch up, and none of your e-mails will reach a customer again. This is a terrible, terrible practice.

EDIT2: please like here https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/serious-concern-about-forum-security.1669634/ this is a serious security concern for every forum user.

 

[ihateuselesssoftware]

We don't comment on leaks, real or fake, and I imagine that Paradox has a similar policy. If a leak happens, it's usually information that isn't ready to be shared with the public. Maybe everyone who needs to approve it hasn't done so yet, maybe there are still uncertainties about the details that need to be determined. There can be a lot of reasons why, and those reasons usually also mean we can't comment on something until all boxes are ticked. For fake leaks, we don't comment as that would have the same effect as confirming the real ones.

As I work for Colossal Order I can't comment on what policies Paradox has in case of malicious activity and at what point they'd caution you, but as a general rule of thumb, if you are the least bit uncertain about any email containing links, always go to the main site itself and navigate to where the content would be.

respectfully disagree

whats also pretty interesting is that both parties, PDX and CO, which im in contact with, blame the other and dont know what happened.

 

[alcarcalimo2364]

Could you elaborate on what information is missing/wanted from the guidelines? I'd be happy to look into what else we can share from our side. As for the creators we work more closely with, they're already allowed to share tips or guidance on how to create assets for Cities: Skylines II, though I of course cannot comment on how much time they might have to do so.

Hi Avanya,

It looks like there has been even more information added to the wiki since I last checked. I guess one of my main gripes with the wiki is specified triangle counts. For zoned assets, it says triangles can be anywhere from 3000-95000 tris. That's obviously very broad. Can we maybe get more examples of specific triangle counts for zoned assets? Like typical tris for level 5 low residential? Typical tris for level 5 office, etc. I've been modeling some low-density residential assets to be added as soon as asset importing becomes available, but want to know like typical tris counts to make sure I'm not going over, or possible if I can even add more tris. I'm being very conservative right now with my modeling because I don't want to overdo it, but having more info about it would be helpful.

 

[Sc0rpy4]

Excuse me, what? I have not seen any hateful comments here. Since when is pointing out shady and scammy business practices hateful?

Everyone here appreciates that they're finally actually addressing concerns, however, the way Ultimate Edition is handled is far from ideal, and again, in my country it is also illegal. I truly cannot fathom how calling that out is hateful in the way it has been done in this thread.

You have not seen one single comment that is just here to hate? Not one? Nahh cmon, even statistically that's not really realistic. Btw, what makes you think that I put comments of people that are not happy on the same level as hating? These two things can but don't have to go hand in hand.
You can criticize them as much as you want, as long as it's in a constructive manner. I literally mention "concerns". Not everyone is happy. But I still appreciate that at least they take some time to respond to questions, complains etc which they haven't done for a hot second. What's wrong with giving credit to where credit is due?

Next time take a chill pill. Not everyone is out to get you.

 

[Licenturion]

The short explanation is that the Editor needs to import and package asset files in a way that does not require having Unity installed and access to the project itself, and the file format needs to be future-proof so assets created with the Editor are functional down the line too. As the Region Packs are to be released on Paradox Mods, they need this before they can released, while we can directly implement assets for DLCs.

While working on the asset import and saving, we've encountered some frustrating technical issues, that have caused the work to take significantly longer than we had expected.

Can you elaborate why CO didn’t want to just patch the content creators packs in the game, since this was promised coming soon in the release week. Especially given the fact that asset variety is still a big problem for the community in the game.

Wouldn’t an exception for these packs have been much better for the game, the players and the community as a whole. They are free anyway. That way there would have been a lot less pressure for the mod platform and asset editor as well

This sounds like a big missed opportunity. With the beach properties you showed that patching assets in the game is a possibility. So I am wondering why you didn’t do that for the asset packs. That was low hanging fruit.

 

[Civ5rako]

The short explanation is that the Editor needs to import and package asset files in a way that does not require having Unity installed and access to the project itself, and the file format needs to be future-proof so assets created with the Editor are functional down the line too. (...)
While working on the asset import and saving, we've encountered some frustrating technical issues, that have caused the work to take significantly longer than we had expected.

Two things have to be said to this:
1) You would have had to know that you would need that kind of editor setup since almost one year now (at least). Namely since you did announce that you would do things with ParadoxMods.
It is really hard to understand that after this one year you are still not aware of what is causing the problems nor how to solve that issue.
Frankly, this track record doesn't give much hope when it will come to further added functionality via DLC's in the future.

As the Region Packs are to be released on Paradox Mods, they need this before they can released, while we can directly implement assets for DLCs.

2) I fail to see why it would be so hard to turn the Region Packs into DLCs. Nobody is requesting them to be mods instead, right?

 

[TripleAgent]

Can you elaborate why CO didn’t want to just patch the content creators packs in the game, since this was promised coming soon in the release week. Especially given the fact that asset variety is still a big problem for the community in the game.

Wouldn’t an exception for these packs have been much better for the game, the players and the community as a whole. They are free anyway. That way there would have been a lot less pressure for the mod platform and asset editor as well

This sounds like a big missed opportunity. With the beach properties you showed that patching assets in the game is a possibility. So I am wondering why you didn’t do that for the asset packs. That was low hanging fruit.

Two things have to be said to this:
1) You would have had to know that you would need that kind of editor setup since almost one year now (at least). Namely since you did announce that you would do things with ParadoxMods.
It is really hard to understand that after this one year you are still not aware of what is causing the problems nor how to solve that issue.
Frankly, this track record doesn't give much hope when it will come to further added functionality via DLC's in the future.


2) I fail to see why it would be so hard to turn the Region Packs into DLCs. Nobody is requesting them to be mods instead, right?

For some reason CO is not capable of just importing the Region Packs using their own tools. Those tools are reserved for important assets like beachless beach properties and four palm trees.

 

[MohawkWolfo98]

It's kinda sad and funny how that was so misunderstood by the community members. Deliberately or by accident. Her point simply was that if you dont like their desing choices on what C:S2 will be, then the game isn't necessarily for you. Same way like Highrise city or Soviet workers & resources isn't for me. I don't like that sort of micromanagement with resources, so I don't play them anymore. I own both, but they are not for me.

Same applies to C:S2. If you like something else than what it offers, then it isn't for you. It won't have similar resource flows and management of those like HRC has. If you want that, game isn't for you. And any sensible person understands that. Only trolls keep twisting it the otherway

Thanks for all the feedback. When it comes to the gameplay and simulation we set goals for the game and we have reached those goals.
Surely there are issues that we're looking into and fixing bugs, but the overall gameplay experience is what we aimed for. Cities: Skylines II is the better game compared to the first one. If you dislike the simulation, this game just might not be for you. If there is a bug that ruins it for you there's a good chance it's fixed sometime in the future. Games are a subjective experience and it is impossible to please everyone. There's a bugfixing patch on its way soon however, so hopefully we'll be able to resolve at least some of the issues that may be a deal breaker for some. We thank you for your patience!

For clarity the above is for the simulation and gameplay. The performance is not where we want it to be and we are hard at work to improve it. This is also the reason the consoles were delayed. The modding support is an important part of a Colossal Order game, so it will also be rolling out as soon as possible.
We are disappointed we couldn't make these aspects of the game ready for you on time, but we refuse to give up. The missing features and platforms will be available in the upcoming months.

With respect, looking back at the quote, Im not sure if I agree. Based on the comment, she believes that the goals for the simulation were met (ie WAI), as was given by her and the marketing team were reached, that CS2 is better than CS1, and that if you disliked the simulation of it, the game isn’t for you.

She isnt arguing that this game simulation is completely different like Workers and Resources, neither was there such a major change to it like Vic 3 was in their war system - and at least they told us there was such a massive change. CS2 was marketed as a direct sequel to CS1, and it was implied throughout development that they had taken the CS1 simulation and improved it (or at least that’s the impression I took away from it), when judging by forum reports it isnt - the gaurdrails and the 1 billion industrial tax springs to mind.

Even on its own, I might have given her the benefit of the doubt, and i appreciated the apology. But CO’s CEO has been known to make comments like this post release of CS1, and her actions and comments post this one suggests that she believed her quote by blaming fans for unrealistically high expectations which Paradox and CO set through their marketing campaign and other hints through their WOTW and videos. It’s hard to give her that benefit of the doubt anymore.

CO’s actions following her comments has added to this. People are trolling because CO actions made it that way.

 

[timfrombriz]

Words... words are cheap.

6 months of words.

With this newly created disaster, your studio still wont do a hotfix to patch the Beach Properties assets problem you just created by removing the steam reviews from public visibility. I dont play your game anymore, but damn, I see enough community frustration to know theres a large demographic of customers with this new problem.

If I was in your position, Id be so ashamed to tell my customers, suck it up, well fix it when we decide to release the next patch, when we feel like it. Thats pretty much your response, but in a more polite use of words.

 

[co_avanya]

This is extremely unprofessional (not you personally, but as a response from a company). The security of your customers is your responsibility. This is extremely disappointing.

EDIT: You are basically telling customers to classify any e-mail from your company as spam, as you are not guaranteeing the integrity of your platform, and it may be used to spread malware or phishing attacks. If enough people using clients such as Gmail and Outlook classify you as spam, their algorithms will catch up, and none of your e-mails will reach a customer again. This is a terrible, terrible practice.

EDIT2: please like here https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/serious-concern-about-forum-security.1669634/ this is a serious security concern for every forum user.

You will not get emails from Colossal Order (that would be something@colossalorder.fi btw) unless you have reached out to us through email. We don't have any automated notifications that you can sign up for, so if you do indeed receive an email from us unprompted, then yes, you should treat it with caution because that would be extremely unlikely to happen. This is of course different with Paradox, but as I do not work for them, I cannot answer for them.

Hi Avanya,

It looks like there has been even more information added to the wiki since I last checked. I guess one of my main gripes with the wiki is specified triangle counts. For zoned assets, it says triangles can be anywhere from 3000-95000 tris. That's obviously very broad. Can we maybe get more examples of specific triangle counts for zoned assets? Like typical tris for level 5 low residential? Typical tris for level 5 office, etc. I've been modeling some low-density residential assets to be added as soon as asset importing becomes available, but want to know like typical tris counts to make sure I'm not going over, or possible if I can even add more tris. I'm being very conservative right now with my modeling because I don't want to overdo it, but having more info about it would be helpful.

I'll look into adding some examples to the wiki, but for low density residential I believe our models average around 8000 triangles and we tried to avoid going over 15000 triangles for the most complex ones. Complexity of course depends on the style of buildings you're making - some architectural styles naturally result in lower or higher triangle counts, but as a general rule of thumb, we recommend having most of the buildings in a zone type around the same average with a few high or low outliers. I hope that helps for now.

Can you elaborate why CO didn’t want to just patch the content creators packs in the game, since this was promised coming soon in the release week. Especially given the fact that asset variety is still a big problem for the community in the game.

Wouldn’t an exception for these packs have been much better for the game, the players and the community as a whole. They are free anyway. That way there would have been a lot less pressure for the mod platform and asset editor as well

This sounds like a big missed opportunity. With the beach properties you showed that patching assets in the game is a possibility. So I am wondering why you didn’t do that for the asset packs. That was low hanging fruit.

The contracts are between the creators and Paradox, so I can't comment on whether they would allow for such a change. I imagine that they differ in some ways from the Creator Pack contracts. But if the Region Packs were to be implemented as Creator Packs instead of being released to Paradox Mods, then it would require development time from us. 2500 is not an insignificant amount of assets to implement.

 

[raf8655]

I may be ignorant on the subject and not able to understand, but I still don't understand what could be a bug so serious and insurmountable that assets MOD cannot be imported into the game after almost 1 year from release, after several years of programming, with a team of programmers working on it...and furthermore, this bug also forces the DLC release schedule to be moved and delayed...

For me there is something strange that doesn't add up.

 

[The Aziz]

The 2500
Are we talking growables only? Because ploppable buildings don't have regional differences aside from signatures, most vehicles are also the same (except for trucks I guess). 8 different regions have been announced, but since they're treated as asset packs, does it mean there will be no regional buttons to choose from during gameplay?

 

[Civ5rako]

The contracts are between the creators and Paradox (....) But if the Region Packs were to be implemented as Creator Packs instead of being released to Paradox Mods, then it would require development time from us. 2500 is not an insignificant amount of assets to implement.

So you are telling us that somewhere in the whole process somebody decided to have packs of items by third party creators (aka creator packs) implemented as mods?
Knowing that asset implementation through mods was not working while implementation in the game did?
While having creator packs was an established process for CS1?
Furthermore, it sounds like there is no automatic process in place to implement assets in the game?

Frankly, the more we learn by official responses what does work (little enough) and what does not (and for what reasons) the more one has to question your processes.
It seems to be just an endless queue of mishaps, mistakes, accidents.

Again and again your company apologizes only to have the next action going wrong just as the ones before. That is impressive.

 

[raf8655]

Knowing that asset implementation through mods was not working while implementation in the game did?

In fact, knowing that you were having problems implementing the MOD assets, you still released a video several months ago where it clearly says that those resources would arrive immediately... How do you release such a video knowing that you can't put all this into the game yet and you don't even have an idea how to solve this problem? And it hasn't been 1 month, but many months...all of this is absurd to me, which is why there's something that doesn't add up to me.

How can a company make such a serious and egregious mistake? But above all, how in all this time can a company not solve this situation with those who should be professionals in the sector who dedicate themselves to doing only that as a job, while it seems that passionate modders can solve these things in a short time?

 

[raf8655]

The contracts are between the creators and Paradox, so I can't comment on whether they would allow for such a change. I imagine that they differ in some ways from the Creator Pack contracts. But if the Region Packs were to be implemented as Creator Packs instead of being released to Paradox Mods, then it would require development time from us. 2500 is not an insignificant amount of assets to implement.

With work and dedication, especially to remedy the problems and delays, it would have been a right thing to do to implement them directly into the game without having to take resources on the PDX MOD, as another user said we would have had at least more variety and alternatives given that the base game has very few of them.

 

[Civ5rako]

The contracts are between the creators and Paradox, so I can't comment on whether they would allow for such a change. I imagine that they differ in some ways from the Creator Pack contracts. But if the Region Packs were to be implemented as Creator Packs instead of being released to Paradox Mods, then it would require development time from us. 2500 is not an insignificant amount of assets to implement.

Coming to think about it a bit more...

Given the fact that Creator Packs had been a thing for CS1, it sounds very strange to me that somebody thought the Regional Packs should be a mod.
I get it that the creation of those assets has been outsourced, so to say. Nevertheless, from the point of view of a customer they are "official" products. And then they shall be marketed as mods??? That is baffling.
I get it that - at the moment - they are still announced as being "free of charge", but to me it looks dangerously close to opening the door for future "paid for" mods as it looks like blurring the line between fan made modifications and additions to the game coming through official channels.

I would strongly recommend not only to streamline your processes, but also not to go that route.