Upcoming Patch & Content

[aortali2147]

These "influencers"/"content" creators are as trustworthy as Avanya is when it comes to what CO is going to do with the game.

I think this is a rude and simplistic characterization. The content creators are not employees of CO or Paradox and although some of them seem to have access to some degree they can only speak to information that has been shared with them. I doubt that they have direct contact with the coders actually doing the work, so I would not expect them to give us inside information. As for Avanya, she is now an employee, and as such she is obligated to perform the tasks she is paid to do. That appears to be monitoring and when possible interacting with the various public forums where people post about the games. She is not employed as a coder, nor is she an executive or supervisor who would be in a position to know what the coders are told to focus on. She at best is able to see and summarize the concerns we share and try to pass the information to the people who do have control. If they decide to tell her something about what the problems actually are or what is being focused on, she would have to frame any answers posted publicly in a way that will not expose the corporation to legal liability and still not just outright say "So and so is lying about this- it's crap and they don't plan to fix it" or whatever you think you want to hear. I for one am happy that Avanya was hired to facilitate communication. I think it is great that they hired someone who is absolutely excited about the game and was a prolific creator and community member for a long time. I believe she is doing everything she can to satisfy people.

 

[speedbrake]

On top of that, she is our way into the company. If anyone is an ambassador for us, the players, it is her.

 

[Civ5rako]

A development building an entirely new game from scratch, with similar, yet not the same toolset, with different asset types, ran into issues. It happens in software development.

Unfortunately this "explanation" only holds water for a certain amount of time.

In the case of CS2 however we are talking about a timeframe of around five years - till release. And now we are seven months past that moment.

CO consists of around 30 people. Under the assumption that 20 of them are actually programming, and furthermore rounding development time down to just five years in total from start till today, that makes 100 man years or two and a half professional lifespans.

I would say the time has come for some problems to be resolved once and for all.

 

[DanielR80]

Cities: Skylines II uses a variation of the standard PBR pipeline (with metallic/glossiness), while Cities: Skylines uses specular. We've also added a bunch of new texture maps that allow for more color variation control and emissive textures. For any asset creators, you can find more details on the official wiki. Furthermore Cities: Skylines uses an older version of Unity, which changed significantly from Unity 5.6 that Cities: Skylines is using to the modern version we're using today for Cities: Skylines II.

The editor we built for Cities: Skylines or the solutions we used for it would not work with Cities: Skylines II and would not be able to import the textures we're using for assets in Cities: Skylines II.

That doesn't explain anything!

Tools from CS1 not working for CS2: No one's expecting that. Of course you wrote new tools. But YOU (Colossal Order) wrote them, so if they have a bug, YOU should be able fix that.
Assets are more complicated: Yes, but YOU made them that way, so YOU should know how to deal with it.
New Unity version - Great, but YOU chose it. A good craftsman never blames his tools.

 

[raf8655]

That doesn't explain anything!

Tools from CS1 not working for CS2: No one's expecting that. Of course you wrote new tools. But YOU (Colossal Order) wrote them, so if they have a bug, YOU should be able fix that.
Assets are more complicated: Yes, but YOU made them that way, so YOU should know how to deal with it.
New Unity version - Great, but YOU chose it. A good craftsman never blames his tools.

I totally agree.



Furthermore, beyond the terrible lack of MOD assets, in all this time nothing has been done to improve some aspects of the game in terms of graphics/animations...
The aesthetic aspect of the streets is nauseating with terrible textures and those white trails ..much better than CS1 from this point of view (which certainly didn't shine for graphics in vanilla).
The appearance of the trees and hedges is horrifying.
There are no entertainment for people who use the parks recreational activities, there are no entertainment for city services (ambulance, fire brigade...).
Antialiasing is terrible, even on high-end PCs.
When it snows, some buildings remain intact and unaffected by the snow...Etc., etc...


The answer we will get is that they have committed to other things (which unfortunately have not been seen)...But if the MOD assets had already been there I am 100% sure that most of the problems would have been solved.

 

[TrevorHall]

More delays for content packs.. it's been nearly 8 months and we have just got 1 content pack.. You said it, it's low effort but would have huge impact. Have you considered more hiring or outsourcing? maybe hire people from other countries??

:/

I agree with that. What company shuts itself down for months at a time? Last year they seemed to be closed for weeks around December, and now for a month in the summer. There are plenty of places without this bizarre scheme. Try India, with over a billion people they have boatloads of developers. Sure they have 3 day or weeklong holidays at times, but nothing shuts down for a month! If you want to have many 1000s of satisfied customers, you should stay open.

 

[AvgConsumer]

I think this is a rude and simplistic characterization. The content creators are not employees of CO or Paradox and although some of them seem to have access to some degree they can only speak to information that has been shared with them. I doubt that they have direct contact with the coders actually doing the work, so I would not expect them to give us inside information. As for Avanya, she is now an employee, and as such she is obligated to perform the tasks she is paid to do. That appears to be monitoring and when possible interacting with the various public forums where people post about the games. She is not employed as a coder, nor is she an executive or supervisor who would be in a position to know what the coders are told to focus on. She at best is able to see and summarize the concerns we share and try to pass the information to the people who do have control. If they decide to tell her something about what the problems actually are or what is being focused on, she would have to frame any answers posted publicly in a way that will not expose the corporation to legal liability and still not just outright say "So and so is lying about this- it's crap and they don't plan to fix it" or whatever you think you want to hear. I for one am happy that Avanya was hired to facilitate communication. I think it is great that they hired someone who is absolutely excited about the game and was a prolific creator and community member for a long time. I believe she is doing everything she can to satisfy people.

You got a little brown right there... under your nose...

Nowhere in your rambling did you counter that she was untrustworthy. So my point still stands.

 

[cvatanen]

I agree with that. What company shuts itself down for months at a time? Last year they seemed to be closed for weeks around December, and now for a month in the summer. There are plenty of places without this bizarre scheme. Try India, with over a billion people they have boatloads of developers. Sure they have 3 day or weeklong holidays at times, but nothing shuts down for a month! If you want to have many 1000s of satisfied customers, you should stay open.

Except where the company is based has labor laws which gives workers the right to 4 straight weeks of vacation time. I might not like the delay in the game development, but that's the break we are given. As a gamer I am bummed, but as a person I am happy they get this vacation time. They have been working hard since the launch and will have to work hard when they return. Plus I've read that companies are switching to a less is more philosophy for workers. A company might get more work done with a 4 day week as opposed to a 5 day week.

I get the frustration though. When the game launched I fully expected to be playing a fully developed game, with all the DLC from the UE version of the game at this time. I decided to take a step back from the game, to try other games while this one is being worked on. I do play CS2 a few hours a week to work on a map and to test out some of the new mods (amazing btw).

In the meantime I've been playing HoI4, which I got clued onto by a poster here. That game has been keeping me occupied for the time being.

 

[avguy2]

The answer to the first question is obvious: a lack of manpower and skills.

The actual problems which prohibit solving the first problem seem to be the design of the game as initially planned. And here it becomes a bit complicated as it seems that there was no consistent design philosophy at play.

CS2 isn't a city builder, as it lacks main ingredients of that genre, most prominently the option to fail. Or one could say it even lacks options, as one is just as good or bad as the other. That has been discussed ad nauseam now.

CS2 isn't a city painter either, as it lacks the assets (or easy access to them) and well, the infamous asset editor/importer.

There seems to have been at least at a vital point during "development" (if one really dares to call it that way) the idea to transform it into Cities:Sims. Zombies with teeth and unobedient dogs which you can "follow" when they stay at home although they should be at work.
And that is in accordance with the two other points: it is only meant to be watched (that is, if you have a RTX 4090 in your system).
Make some zones, place some roads (or not, doesn't matter) and watch the game do its thing.

In total, it seems to have been designed for a completely different audience. Nobody who loved CS1 for what it offered really is satisfied with CS2.
There is a reason why they proudly yelled "We haven't used ANYTHING from CS1!"

They wanted to have a "game" which had nothing to do with the predecessor.

And now they don't have a way back.

I don't think they deliberately moved away from the CS:1 formula. Your observations are correct though. If you think about it, the only department that has great results they can point to, is marketing, sadly. The whole design seems super rushed. More like a bunch of rough ideas instead of a fully developed concept. Look at the progression curve of the game - it's completely off. I did the experiment right after release: to progress through the first several milestones easily, your city doesn't even need electricity. CO missed to develop CS:2 as a game. On top of that the asset pool is tiny, the code is heavily bugged and I won't even start about optimization.

Seemingly they made some bad decisions in the underlying systems, ran into one technical issue with the engine after the other and just stapled underdeveloped incoherent parts together to have at least something to show at the next meeting with the higher ups. A bit issue was time, or rather a lack there of. As release got closer it was clear it wouldn't be a matter of just months to fix this mess and postponing a year or more - which would have been a realistic minimum - just wasn't on the table.

So here we are. Like you said, there's no way back. I'm not confident a post-release re-work of the economy can work. The delay of mod support (after they had our money they said "soon after release!") speaks for itself. How anyone could think with a couple quick patches things will turn around is beyond me.

Imho the future of the game looks bleak. Four weeks vacation won't change much one way or another.

 

[shoebird]

Except where the company is based has labor laws which gives workers the right to 4 straight weeks of vacation time.

It’s like that in pretty much all of Europe and companies don’t close completely in Christmas and a month in summer, unless they are really tiny, as some workers keep working while the others are on holidays.

That being said I’m not sure they close completely, maybe they have less staff and that’s why they don’t release updates. Although it certainly feels as if they were doing full stops, not that it feels they are much more “open” while not in holidays. To say that the patching process of the game is being slow is an understatement. And let’s not forget they have got the money from their customers already. Perhaps they just need to eat a bit of those profits and hire more people.

 

[speedbrake]

Just hiring more people won’t magically solve problems, especially not in software development.

They won’t be completely closed during summer, but their staffing levels are reduced on both the development and publishing side

 

[shoebird]

They won’t be completely closed during summer, but their staffing levels are reduced on both the development and publishing side

That’s what I imagine. But in any case, they are moving at a snail pace. They are saying that asset buildings (only buildings) would hopefully come after the summer, a year after game released. Who knows, it is now even clear they know how to solve whatever problem is holding them back yet, so..

And in like 9 months they have barely solve nothing, some performance improvements (only in graphics it seems), the land value bug and the beta version of the editor. Hiring people won’t magically solve problems, but giving the slow pace they have and the many problems the game faces, it looks like they need more hands to progress a bit faster through the task list. I mean software development or not they must be able to parallelize development tasks to a certain degree.

 

[speedbrake]

They’ve been looking for developers for quite some time now but they can’t seem to attract them for some reason (see https://colossalorder.fi/?p=2166).
Those same job postings were on there when I looked a few months ago

 

[unoace1006]

They’ve been looking for developers for quite some time now but they can’t seem to attract them for some reason (see https://colossalorder.fi/?p=2166).
Those same job postings were on there when I looked a few months ago

Those same jobs were also posted on PDx’s careers website but are no longer there.

Not sure what to make of that. Maybe CO forgot to update their website?

 

[Purplizer]

Those same jobs were also posted on PDx’s careers website but are no longer there.

Not sure what to make of that. Maybe CO forgot to update their website?

If you click on the individual job postings, it says the position has been filled (for two of them). The other two say they aren't accepting any new candidates, which can either mean they are in the process of choosing a candidate, or have decided not to fill that position anymore.

 

[bugritall]

They need people who can actually write good code, something sadly lacking in their current squad. They are totally burnt out so how about sacking the lot of 'em and recruiting every skilled modder they can find, teaching them how to use CO's tools, paying them very well and actually getting the job done? Modders enjoy coding and revel in the challenges it presents because programming, as they say, is the best game ever invented. Bite the bullet and do it, C.O.

 

[BoraBora]

They need people who can actually write good code, something sadly lacking in their current squad. They are totally burnt out so how about sacking the lot of 'em and recruiting every skilled modder they can find, teaching them how to use CO's tools, paying them very well and actually getting the job done? Modders enjoy coding and revel in the challenges it presents because programming, as they say, is the best game ever invented. Bite the bullet and do it, C.O.

How ironic. It seems you don't know they already recruited every skilled modder they could find years ago to develop CS II. They hired 4 or 5 of the most skilled CS modders, a good catch considering very few people, modders or not, wish to move to Tampere and learn finnish.

 

[AvgConsumer]

How ironic. It seems you don't know they already recruited every skilled modder they could find years ago to develop CS II. They hired 4 or 5 of the most skilled CS modders, a good catch considering very few people, modders or not, wish to move to Tampere and learn finnish.

And 25 interns from who knows where to flesh out the rest of the development "team".

Even acknowledging that indeed, those modders have quite a bit of talent, at least in those particular things they were known for, who's to say what the other alleged developers are doing. I mean, other than the end user who has to suffer their end product (or enjoy, whatever, I dont kink-shame). And we also have an idea of how their management is run, via their very public posts.

So congrats macsergey, you're the little nugget of joy amongst well... the rest. Hopefully the talent doesn't get burnt too hard.

 

[jsbartley88]

Economy patches and modding is cool, but I don't think that should have been the priority. The #1 CO should have focused on was assets and optimization. The average CS player is probably not even using mods. We want to just have a pretty city builder with cool assets. Release the content creator packs. I don't understand why that is taking so long. New content and assets every month would have made the problems people have with modding and economy go over smoother. We just want to create our own unique and cool cities. Currently, all of the cities look the same and it's very disappoint.

 

[cvatanen]

Economy patches and modding is cool, but I don't think that should have been the priority. The #1 CO should have focused on was assets and optimization. The average CS player is probably not even using mods. We want to just have a pretty city builder with cool assets. Release the content creator packs. I don't understand why that is taking so long. New content and assets every month would have made the problems people have with modding and economy go over smoother. We just want to create our own unique and cool cities. Currently, all of the cities look the same and it's very disappoint.

So you want a city painter. That's fine, I want that too. However I can see how other players might want to play a game that has an actual challenge. The economy bug is massive and game breaking when it occurs. So I can see a number of players (I don't actually have data so I can't give a label like average), not bothering with the game until those issues are fixed. It's funny that you ask them to release the content creator packs, which are mods, after saying that the average player does not use mods. I'm not trying to be a pain, maybe I need a Snickers. I just wanted to provide an alternate viewpoint.

I agree with you though, I do want those assets as bad as I want a proper working game with no bugs and fully optimized. However, their resources are finite and they have to decide where to use them. I look forward to the survey that is planned (I hope still?) so we can get a better understanding what the average player actually wants going forward.