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

[Dumbell]

Many games have an option to opt-in or opt-out of a test release. One of the other games I play (Lord of the Rings Online) has a similar setup, and has made the "beta" builds public, utilizing a "beta" server and a separate install so that the public can test the game in its current state, and provide feedback via the beta server forum.

Example: Manor Lords

- Releases as an early access
- Gives an option to opt into beta patches
- 2 patches in 1 month, even though only minor balancing tweaks. Everyone is happy

Makes you think if the 30 people working for CO is more concerned with their snazzy new coffee machine or the game

 

[cvatanen]

The idea of a test server is a good one. They did that with Diablo III to test out new features of a patch to determine new seasonal features. It worked out really good for them.
However, is this a realistic option for this game? With 30 people working on the game, struggling to get it current. Who gets to work on a test server? Would this mean they have to submit any new patches twice now? Are the rules different for a game in early access and a fully launched game (yes, I know, the game is broken). What about when consoles come out. Do they get an option for this feature?
I know they do this on a limited scale with content creators and modders but there is a difference between a small group of testers as opposed to an open invite situation.
I'm interested to hear their take on this idea though. I just wanted to offer a different take on it, or what I assume their answer would be. Since I'm not a developer, nor do I play one on tv, I have no idea what is possible for them.

 

[Liringlaas]

Sure, when they give me my refund for the game that they dishonestly marketed and then blamed us for being "toxic" for expecting that basic features like a logical functioning economy and asset import would be there at or near release, not still outstanding after over six months with virtually no communication on what is being worked on besides the broad category "economy" and "there has been progress but asset import is still not done." What major improvements do they have to show since release other than getting the totally superfluous and unnecessary PDX Mods platform open (when we could have just had Steam Workshop at launch) and adding DLSS?

While they have my money, though, I'm absolutely going to hold them accountable for ultimately giving me the product that they sold me.

That's exactly the problem, you take everything you dreamed about for CS2 and consider it a promise.

CS2 was so overhyped that people thought every single wish they had for the sequel was a must have.

And please stop with them "blaming" you. You and others are the ones being toxic and constantly attacking them like a bunch of Karen, and then getting mad when you talk to the manager and they don't bow down to you.

I'm disappointed too, in the fact that the game was not ideal at launch and many other things like everyone. But that comes from my own expectations.

If you look at things in a non emotional way, CS2 is better in many ways:

- Better than CS1: Graphics, road building, scale, simulation, almost everything that is not in the next bullet (Yes even in its current state the simulation is basically better than CS1 which had close to none)
- Lacking compared to CS1: DLC content, Workshop content (no asset yet), which will both come with time.

Some things are more debatable like the performance - CS2 is heavy on hardware but on good hardware it runs no worse than CS1 fully modded did. In modded CS1 you did not easily exceed 200k people, and no one would ever have expected 240 fps. And if you think 40 fps in a city builder is "unplayable" then maybe you have a problem. It ran perfectly fine on my PC at launch and does even better now.

The one thing where we all were justifiably mad was the DLC, and they reacted by making it free for everyone.

So no, CO is not to blame anymore, they're facing an angry mob of Karen while doing everything they can, and making a great game. It should have been tagged as EA, it had issues (most of which are now fixed), but please move on with your life.

 

[timfrombriz]

Economy Rework

Can you at least elaborate on what changes are being done here?

Im deeply concerned your focused on removing the simulation you advertised pre-released and making it more simcity 4 style where its a dumbed down visual simulation. Given your needing to improve the CPU usage to meet benchmarks for the Console release, itd be disappointing for the community to find out post release of the patch you just scrapped your original design goals and made it a different simulation than the one you advertised.

 

[co_avanya]

Economy Rework

Can you at least elaborate on what changes are being done here?

Im deeply concerned your focused on removing the simulation you advertised pre-released and making it more simcity 4 style where its a dumbed down visual simulation. Given your needing to improve the CPU usage to meet benchmarks for the Console release, itd be disappointing for the community to find out post release of the patch you just scrapped your original design goals and made it a different simulation than the one you advertised.

We'll get into the changes in detail later, but I can share our goals for the rework. Currently, the game does some things automatically and/or "behind the scenes" where you as a player can't interact with it - or at least it's not clear how you can affect things. The economic simulation also adjusts to your city with Government Subsidies in particular making it hard to fail.

With the rework we have looked at how we can make systems more transparent and more reactive, give you more control over how your city functions and evolves, and bring more of a challenge to the game. When it comes to challenge, we aim to make sure everyone has a chance to succeed and build a functional and profitable city, but if you're a terrible mayor, the city should (and will) be able to fail.

We're always looking to see where we can improve performance, but that hasn't been the goal with the rework. The goal has been to address the feedback we have received (edit: with regards to the simulation and economy), and (hopefully!) make the game more fun to play.

 

[EustaceCS]

We're always looking to see where we can improve performance, but that hasn't been the goal with the rework.

The goal has been to address the feedback we have received, and (hopefully!) make the game more fun to play.

These two phrases are contradicting each other.
Performance issues are ongoing systhematically voiced concern from players.
Not mentioning that advertised minimal system requirements (a refreshener from Steam store page: Intel® Core™ i7-6700K | AMD® Ryzen™ 5 2600X, 8GB RAM, 8GB VRAM) don't seem to have anything in common with real state of affairs with the game.
Since the game uses Unity for game engine (instead of something more profile-able) it's very hard to tell for us the players if whatever you currently have for economics simulation does anything bad for performance. But since Unity based games are known for silliest most unexpected interactions between entities, it will be nice on your part to actually pay damn attention to damn performance.
ESPECIALLY since, if I'm getting your message right, you're about to make it significantly more complex. In a game which already struggles on a hardware accessible to average gamer.

 

[Civ5rako]

Currently, the game does some things automatically and/or "behind the scenes" where you as a player can't interact with it - or at least it's not clear how you can affect things. The economic simulation also adjusts to your city with Government Subsidies in particular making it hard to fail.

With the rework we have looked at how we can make systems more transparent and more reactive, give you more control over how your city functions and evolves, and bring more of a challenge to the game. When it comes to challenge, we aim to make sure everyone has a chance to succeed and build a functional and profitable city, but if you're a terrible mayor, the city should (and will) be able to fail.

I am having some problems aligning your statement above with what has been said previously:

(...) this patch will include a large re-work of the Economy to address much of the feedback you have shared with us in the past months. We’ll share more details on what has changed when the patch is ready.

To me it sounds now as if you are aiming to make the inner workings of the "economy" more transparent to the player, maybe with some additional options to "adjust some screws". While the latter certainly wouldn't be a bad thing it equally certainly isn't what I would understand as "large re-work of the Economy".
Frankly, it does sound much more like a limited approach, leaving the "economy" in its working untouched and reducing the changes to mainly UI changes and (maybe) some additional options for interaction.
If that assumption would be right I would have to wonder what does take you that long.

 

[MostBlunted]

We release patches when they're ready to go

You should have done this with the game in the first place.

 

[RedellSlowey]

I am having some problems aligning your statement above with what has been said previously:

To me it sounds now as if you are aiming to make the inner workings of the "economy" more transparent to the player, maybe with some additional options to "adjust some screws". While the latter certainly wouldn't be a bad thing it equally certainly isn't what I would understand as "large re-work of the Economy".
Frankly, it does sound much more like a limited approach, leaving the "economy" in its working untouched and reducing the changes to mainly UI changes and (maybe) some additional options for interaction.
If that assumption would be right I would have to wonder what does take you that long.

And for that matter, how does the response go from "I can't say anything about any of this, not even broad strokes" to "Ok so here's what we're doing" in the cousre of a day? Did they do all this stuff within the last day or was it possible to give us basic information all along and you just weren't doing it?

I really hope by "Economy Rework" they don't mean "You can now toggle on/off certain industries and there's a new graph or two".

At the very basic level, an Economy Rework needs

-All the industrial products to actually matter instead of people randomly picking one and it fills a singular "consumption" need
-All the industrial products to actually mesh together into proper supply chains
-NO subsidies coming in from absolutely nowhere for no reason beyond hiding that the game has no functional economy
-NO free services coming in from absolutely etc etc
-NO people moving into houses they can't afford and then whining that they can't afford it
-NO arbitrary High Rent issues
-NO arbitrary not enough customers issues
-NO buildings functioning just fine without employees
-NO importing of employees from outside of the city
-Taxation that actually makes sense on a basic level
-Land value that actually makes sense on a basic level
-A complete rework of costs for building and upgrading things
-A complete rework of production costs
-A complete rework of maintenance costs
-A complete rework of running costs for amenities, services, etc

 

[MohawkWolfo98]

And for that matter, how does the response go from "I can't say anything about any of this, not even broad strokes" to "Ok so here's what we're doing" in the cousre of a day? Did they do all this stuff within the last day or was it possible to give us basic information all along and you just weren't doing it?

I really hope by "Economy Rework" they don't mean "You can now toggle on/off certain industries and there's a new graph or two".

At the very basic level, an Economy Rework needs

-All the industrial products to actually matter instead of people randomly picking one and it fills a singular "consumption" need
-All the industrial products to actually mesh together into proper supply chains
-NO subsidies coming in from absolutely nowhere for no reason beyond hiding that the game has no functional economy
-NO free services coming in from absolutely etc etc
-NO people moving into houses they can't afford and then whining that they can't afford it
-NO arbitrary High Rent issues
-NO arbitrary not enough customers issues
-NO buildings functioning just fine without employees
-NO importing of employees from outside of the city
-Taxation that actually makes sense on a basic level
-Land value that actually makes sense on a basic level
-A complete rework of costs for building and upgrading things
-A complete rework of production costs
-A complete rework of maintenance costs
-A complete rework of running costs for amenities, services, etc

This. I want to see how much beef is in the economy rework. I really hope they will finally begin fulfilling their promises for it to a deep simulation rather than what we have now. Creating proper production chains that doesn’t cause billions of profit, actual traffic simulations without all the guardrails.

 

[teckmonkey]

While I empathize with CO's position as someone who worked with software developers and the fact that I have experience with development cycles, I want to make it clear that empathy is the not the same as acceptance and approval. I, like a lot of you, am disappointed that they have over-promised and under-delivered. That said, I don't understand the point posting stuff like. "Well, you said this, and I interpreted it this way, and now that you've said something that wasn't exactly what I wanted/expected, I just want to know why you guys are obviously lying or give us more information or whatever".

Someone can correct me here, but I'm not sure browbeating people into giving up information has ever worked in a meaningful way. I also don't think making assumptions because you are justifiably frustrated is particularly helpful either.

Software development is a lot of iteration. You code, you test, you fix. The problem is that the fix sometimes comes down to anything from changing the initial code, all the way to finding out a software library or dependency broke that is causing things to not work, or even worse, sorta work. That's after time was spent trying to figure out what the problem or the needed adjustment was in the first place.

The fix is now in place and your initial testing starts, but surprise surprise, the fix is negativity affecting the performance and/or function in a related feature. Time to start going through that related feature to find out why the fix for the initial bug is screwing with it. Lo and behold, the initial fix is going to cause an unforeseen issue with this other feature thanks to a decision someone else made years ago that didn't get documented, or a software dependency that your code is partly reliant on can't give you a timeline on a bugfix that is causing your code to fail, so now you need to find another solution, etc.

In this game's case, there is the added complication of the game being a simulation. You basically have a lot of different mathematical equations spitting out numbers that go into other equations. Obviously, making changes can have massive ripple effects across a lot of different systems. The simulation also has to scale in a specific way to not only account for the complexity of the city, the cims, vehicles, environmental factors, etc., but also the game's difficulty. If CO cranks the wrong dial, every city you build turns into Detroit from Robocop.

I really understand that frustration the player base has because I'm also a member of the player base. It irritates me to no end that the time I spent learning the map editor so I could build my own neighborhood in this game could have been spent doing literally anything else. I don't like the fact that I have to depend on volunteers to mod in fixes and functionality to make this game playable. I also find it frustrating that more communication is not forthcoming.

CO is in a crappy spot thanks to decisions that were made either by themselves or their publisher, or both. It honestly doesn't make a whole lot of difference to me, since either way, I'm not able to play a functional game. They took a great first step by apologizing and laying out the overall plan moving forward, which is more than I can say for a lot of businesses that screw things up. They also can't spend all their time answering nitpicky posts with information that may or may not be relevant by the time the next internal build is done. Plus, any information CO passes out has to be sure it isn't disclosing potentially sensitive internal information like contract details, timelines, etc.

While it is not reasonable to expect CO to post day to day updates for minutia only a couple of loud posters on these forums or other social media platforms care about, it is also not reasonable for CO to go radio silent for days/weeks at a time either. The only people left that are here, are the passionate diehard players who really do want this game to succeed, even if some of them express that support in the meanest, most entitled way possible.

 

[Caprea.Berlin]

At the very basic level, an Economy Rework needs

-All the industrial products to actually matter instead of people randomly picking one and it fills a singular "consumption" need
-All the industrial products to actually mesh together into proper supply chains
-NO subsidies coming in from absolutely nowhere for no reason beyond hiding that the game has no functional economy
-NO free services coming in from absolutely etc etc
-NO people moving into houses they can't afford and then whining that they can't afford it
-NO arbitrary High Rent issues
-NO arbitrary not enough customers issues
-NO buildings functioning just fine without employees
-NO importing of employees from outside of the city
-Taxation that actually makes sense on a basic level
-Land value that actually makes sense on a basic level
-A complete rework of costs for building and upgrading things
-A complete rework of production costs
-A complete rework of maintenance costs
-A complete rework of running costs for amenities, services, etc

I hope CO is not going to comply to all that above.

Why?

From the dev diary about the industry chain, it does look already compley enough. I do not think adding more complexity to that is going to make thinks better. Of course that chain should work, and we should be able to get basic information about that, like: Who many stones are exported, used in the local industry and who many are imported? So we can make decision about whether to get another stone producer or perhaps just make better connection between the industry and the stone resource? And building industry near a stone manufacturer should make the appearance of industry using stone more likely, at least if the products produced with the stone are wished in the city. So that are my thought to the first two ("
-All the industrial products to actually matter instead of people randomly picking one and it fills a singular "consumption" need
-All the industrial products to actually mesh together into proper supply chains")

No subsidies? I think without it would be impossible (or almost impossible and needed very much time) to build a city without any. And it would be completely unrealistic. Any city that would be built today, would get money to be built. And always have gotten if the city was founded to be a city from the start. Maybe they are too high now, I do not know, but if they could make a hard mod without any, fine, I just would not using it.

No free services?
What do you include here? Well you can decide not to use electricity, water and sewage from the outside. So no need for anything to be implemented here.
So you mean police, fire department, healthcare, deathcare. garbage? We are not in a setting were we start on an isolated island. We build a city that does have connections to the outside world. And while our city is small (more a tiny village than a city) it would make sense to use those from outside. Of course the cost should be adaequate. But as long as one only needs one garbage van for example is would be much more reasonable to use service from outside.

The next four ("-NO people moving into houses they can't afford and then whining that they can't afford it,-NO arbitrary High Rent issues, -NO arbitrary not enough customers issues, -NO buildings functioning just fine without employees) sure, but are the issues arbitrary? I just do not know to say decide what it is

-NO importing of employees from outside of the city: Again, the city is not in an isolated spot, so why not?

-Taxation that actually makes sense on a basic level What do you mean with this? The taxation bug in the economy should get fixed, or so they said. But else? I do not see any reason to change the setting of tax percentage as it is now.

-Land value that actually makes sense on a basic level: Sure

-A complete rework of costs for building and upgrading things: Such buildings will always be unreasonable as they do not take time. And the cost? I rather be able to build more parks then necessary then to have a very unhappy city because I cannot build a doctor or so

-A complete rework of production costs: What production cost? I do not see any production cost the city has to deal with, that is the responsibility of the companies that produce.

Last two: Question is why?

For me it just looks as if you want some difficulty that is very easy to spot: Money.
But there are others to be dealt with, so making on to heavy can make dealing with the other almost impossible.

 

[RedellSlowey]

No subsidies? I think without it would be impossible (or almost impossible and needed very much time) to build a city without any. And it would be completely unrealistic. Any city that would be built today, would get money to be built. And always have gotten if the city was founded to be a city from the start. Maybe they are too high now, I do not know, but if they could make a hard mod without any, fine, I just would not using it.

I didn't read past here because I think it's enough to assume you don't have an undersatnding of what the actual problems with the game are. You don't think it would be possible to build without subsidies? Yes, that's the problem- the economy as it stands is so terrible the game has to give you unexplained money from nowhere that you have no control over for ANY of it to work. A properly functioning economy wouldn't require that. For examples, look to any city builder ever made, including Cities Skylines 1.

The "Subsidies" system is a smokescreen to hide that the economy is so poorly thought out that it outright does not work unless the player is given money to compensate for how imbalanced everything is.

 

[Caprea.Berlin]

I didn't read past here because I think it's enough to assume you don't have an undersatnding of what the actual problems with the game are. You don't think it would be possible to build without subsidies? Yes, that's the problem- the economy as it stands is so terrible the game has to give you unexplained money from nowhere that you have no control over for ANY of it to work. A properly functioning economy wouldn't require that. For examples, look to any city builder ever made, including Cities Skylines 1.

The "Subsidies" system is a smokescreen to hide that the economy is so poorly thought out that it outright does not work unless the player is given money to compensate for how imbalanced everything is.

Sorry, but CS1 did gave you subsidies, with every milestone. They were just not called that.

 

[RedellSlowey]

CS2 does that AND gives you subsidies.

And the subsidies are a constant inflow, not based on player progression, which is totally distinct from getting rewards for milestones.

And if you notice, CS1's economy also functions with them turned off entirely, and the game's economic simulation is not built around money rewarded for population milestones.

They are very much not comparable.

The argument that city builder sjust inherently need free money handed to the player to work is ridiculous. It holds up to near-zero scrutiny, it's flagrantly and wholly incorrect.

 

[Caprea.Berlin]

CS2 does that AND gives you subsidies.

And the subsidies are a constant inflow, not based on player progression, which is totally distinct from getting rewards for milestones.

And if you notice, CS1's economy also functions with them turned off entirely, and the game's economic simulation is not built around money rewarded for population milestones.

They are very much not comparable.

The argument that city builder sjust inherently need free money handed to the player to work is ridiculous. It holds up to near-zero scrutiny, it's flagrantly and wholly incorrect.

OK, maybe the subsidies, the constant inflow is not needed, but I thought so far, they would not happen then. So what is the problem? That one does not have to give up building the city because one screw up? It is a single player game, so that should not bother you.

And btw I doubt it would be possible to build without money at the start because, without money, you just cannot start building roads, water, electricity and so. In CS1 During the first milestones I always needed those money for building a nice city right from the start.

 

[teckmonkey]

The argument that city builder sjust inherently need free money handed to the player to work is ridiculous. It holds up to near-zero scrutiny, it's flagrantly and wholly incorrect.

I'm going to respectfully disagree. Local town and city governments, at least in the United States, receive subsidies from various government levels at varying intervals. Just off the top of my head, the federal government provides money to varying levels to local city, county and state government to subsidize costs for medical care, food stamps, rental assistance, etc.

Source: Me, someone who works for my local government.

I think providing small, recurring blocks of government subsidies based on what services are being provided in the city would match closer to reality. I think a steadier source of income that would be supplemented by local, adjustable service fees would, in theory, prevent you from essentially hitting the lottery every time you hit a population threshold.

Personally, I think that unlocking all of the buildings from the start and being forced to choose what buildings you're going to build based on what your cims want, and what you think the city needs would be amazing. I dislike putting services behind XP thresholds because that isn't how it works in real life. A local municipality decides to start providing a service based on need, demand, available funding, and a physical place for the service to be provided.

For example, if the map you're playing on is full of forests, do you:

• zone forest industry (creating jobs to attract more cims)
• build a firehouse (preventing your cims from becoming matchsticks), or
• create parks (something that your cims want)

Whatever you choose would have both negative and positive effects on cim happiness. So, if you decide to create a park, your cims would love you, but would hate you the instant a forest fire started, and a bunch of people were barbecued. Or the lack of tax revenue from the forest industry you didn't zone in might make it difficult to maintain the park you built, making cims unhappy. Alternatively, cims would be dismayed by the forest industry cutting down trees, or by the noise and maintenance cost of a firehouse.

Which leads me to a solution for how players can't really fail. Ultimately, cims being happy or not would have the biggest impact on whether or not you get voted out of office. Ideally, at specific intervals or special elections to recall you if things are going particularly terribly bad. Achieving, or failing to achieve mandates from your cims would also impact their happiness as well, with things like crime levels, housing availability, cost of living, etc. factoring in as well. Your cims happiness would be much more dynamic than it is now.

Other things that bother me:

• Residential taxes are collected based on education level instead of land value. A 2x2 low density residential zone should pay more than a 3x3 if more services are available to it. A cim's education level should only matter if they aren't in a job that's paying them enough to afford a single-family home.
• Wealthy people should not live in low rent housing. Put in some kind of income cap to prevent this from happening.
• A business full of high school dropouts should be less efficient than a business full of university graduates. I don't think that distinction is being made right now, other than the type of available job openings.
• The option to disable crosswalks being placed at every intersection.

 

[RedellSlowey]

I am not denying the existence of the concept of a subsidy.

I am denying that a city building video game must inherently have an economy that revolves around the player being handed a constant influx of money.

My source for that is every single other city building game ever developed in the entire history of humanity including Cities Skylines 1, which this game is a sequel to.

The only reason this game has government subsidies is because the economy is broken by default and it's the only way to hide that. There is no intrinsic, inherent, god-ordained requirement that the game's systems be built in such a way where they do not work unless the game is handing you money at all times that you have done nothing to earn. Again, my source is every single other game in the genre ever made.

"Subsidies exist" does not mean "Cities Skylines 2 must have subsidies in it or it isn't fun or functional". It just doesn't.

 

[teckmonkey]

The only reason this game has government subsidies is because the economy is broken by default and it's the only way to hide that.

You know, I've been sitting here trying to think of any good reason why CO would release a feature that they knew to be broken and I can't think of any. Am I crazy to think that the reason why you said that is because you think CO is lazy, stupid, or both? If you've got some kind of CO design document that specifically supports your assertion that CO wanted to ship a game with a knowingly broken subsidy system for a reason you haven't provided, I will happily acknowledge I was wrong.

If a game is touting itself a city simulator, and I literally posted real-world applications of government subsidy, then it stands to reason that the subsidy is the game's attempt at realism. That the subsidy in conjunction with the level up bonuses makes the game too easy is simply a matter of tuning. But, if your source is merely because other games decided to design their economies differently, that doesn't actually mean anything beyond CO wanting to do something different than everybody else.

On a somewhat related note, being frustrated that a game isn't tuned right doesn't mean that the game's developer did it specifically to make people's lives worse, good gravy.

 

[RedellSlowey]

You know, I've been sitting here trying to think of any good reason why CO would release a feature that they knew to be broken and I can't think of any.

If you are going to argue that there's no way a feature in this game could possibly be poorly designed or unintentionally broken, there is no conversation to have.

We are literally discussing an update that they are making, right now, to completely overhaul the economy, because it is broken, and poorly designed. How on earth can you try and argue this isn't the case?

Yes, I believe they released the game with a broken economy that outright doesn't work. And get this- so do they. Which is why they're overhauling it. Which is why every youtuber they talked to told them it was broken. It's clearly broken. We all know it.