Upcoming Patch & Content

[Collector78]

More than 5 weeks since the last patch and at least 2 more until the next one.. Furthermore quite some words to say "the next months we will not be so active".
Somehow I had different expectations (no sorry, hope) after reading the "Way Forward". Perhaps that was the Way Forward of another game or even company? Or did you simply forget about "from now on we will improve the current base game before anything else"? Not many will consider this as 'working on the base game':
"will introduce some free content and other frequent requests, such as new service buildings and vehicles, as well as the addition of a surface tool to allow more freedom to paint the areas around buildings. We are also making progress with the technical difficulties that are blocking the release of the asset editor"

So the only two things from this whole communication being inline with what we were told earlier are:
1) Economy improvements
Although the word "economy" doesn't say anything, I'm hoping this will fix:
- high density residential never going beyond level 2.
- industrial buildings staying empty.

2) "This means you will be able to place building upgrades more freely around the main buildings and also delete and move specific upgrades."
Could you elaborate on how this got priority?. This is only a nice-to-have. In this game you are flooded with money, so who cares if you have to rebuild a building?


What I find extremely disappointing is that there is again no mentioning of fixing the huge bugs.
1) the broken signature buildings (Dairy House, Oil Refinery and Ground Earth)
2) the broken postal services (due to mail never leaving cargo harbors/stations)
3) children having jobs, seniors going to school, homeless people having a home (plus many more similar inconsistencies in resident statistics)
4) the excessive presence of dogs (not only looking weird but also causing traffic and transportation problems)
5) extreme amounts of taxis coming from abroad
6) water behavior not according to the laws of physics

Is it really that difficult to focus on these things, just like we were promised?

p.s. in December there was several weeks of inactivity due to "US vacation period", but now it's about "Swedish and Finnish laws". Please make up what applies to your staff.

 

[PleaseFixBugs]

This is the transparency we are talking about!

 

[aortali2147]

I think there is a disconnect in the views from inside the CEO's office compared to everyone else. If you read the executive communications they frequently said "We see your comments"; "We are addressing the comments"; and "We have heard you". But if you listen to the comments made by the participants in the "chat" between CO and the YouTubers, they said that CO Marina in particular seemed surprised by their comments which if anything had to be more polite than the comments here. I think she may be a little out of touch. How could she not know that most of the "big" YouTube creators are detailers and the inability even to place the props that are built into the game code was a basic failing from the first day.

I truly respect the people stuck with doing the actual work (I doubt I could stand it) but it seems Marina is just making statements without asking the people who work for her and would likely be able to say "Don't promise that because we are not going to be able to do it." I have enjoyed CS2 but I invested quite a bit in an upgraded gaming laptop because I expected it to be demanding. However, having a great system was not enough at launch to make up for code that crashed without provocation. Each update has helped, but it only became something resembling the promised game after modders were able to try to address some of the shortcomings. I sincerely hope that the "economy" updates allow much more visibility so we can see the changes we make actually are doing something.

 

[SeattleHighs]

Is Mariina finally out of control of this project?

 

[aortali2147]

Is Mariina finally out of control of this project?

She was at the meeting with Biffa, OverchargedEgg, and CityPlannerPlays. I suspect that the vitriol directed at her after the first few months (especially after the "this might not be the game for you" comment) the executives at Paradox and possibly her own team got her to step back from public posting.

 

[Potoroo]

She was at the meeting with Biffa, OverchargedEgg, and CityPlannerPlays. I suspect that the vitriol directed at her after the first few months (especially after the "this might not be the game for you" comment) the executives at Paradox and possibly her own team got her to step back from public posting.

I only follow one of those three so I'm curious to know which one made the comment about her apparent surprise at comments and suggestions that shouldn't surprise anyone. I don't doubt you, just curious.

As for the "this game might not be for you", she was saying that back when CS1 was new too. It's the sort of corporate speak that is entirely logical from a business perspective but which completely fails to understand how desperate gamers get when they've been deprived of a viable offering in their favourite niche, sometimes for years (there was roughly a decade between SC4 and CS1, with a few false starts inbetween, so we weren't going anywhere).

 

[Civ5rako]

I suspect that the vitriol directed at her after the first few months (especially after the "this might not be the game for you" comment) the executives at Paradox and possibly her own team got her to step back from public posting.

Two things:
a) removing here from any position in which she could be heard by the public was the wisest thing they could do
b) "vitriol" - you should once experience an angry paying customer in the industry. THEN you will have vitriol. What is going on here is a child's birthday party in comparison.

 

[aortali2147]

I only follow one of those three so I'm curious to know which one made the comment about her apparent surprise at comments and suggestions that shouldn't surprise anyone. I don't doubt you, just curious.

As for the "this game might not be for you", she was saying that back when CS1 was new too. It's the sort of corporate speak that is entirely logical from a business perspective but which completely fails to understand how desperate gamers get when they've been deprived of a viable offering in their favourite niche, sometimes for years (there was roughly a decade between SC4 and CS1, with a few false starts inbetween).

https://www.youtube.com/live/JDfLuzz3sZI?si=JV9dfSxAr1QJF8eE Egg said they seemed shocked that detailing was so important.

Biffa mentioned that several things seemed to surprise them, I can't pull a quote out of my hat just now.

I haven't seen CityPlannerPlays post anything yet, but the other 2 said he was there also. Mariina and several others from CO and Paradox were there as I recall.

My take from their posts is that they were impressed that the companies are both working hard and making progress, but they were both (especially Egg) a little taken aback that after all the feedback (both hate posts and just disappointment) and the fact that apparently every one of the creators that had early access to the release candidate last year (and as long as several years before that) told the devs in every way they could that there were important features missing and asking why some of the features from modders were not included in the release candidate. This was the aspect that seems truly odd since CO hired several of the best modders who created or maintained very popular mods that we all consider to be essential.

 

[Olderandwizer]

View attachment 1137537

Hello Cities Mayors,
We wanted to provide you with an update on the status of our upcoming patches and content.

Economy Re-work
The initial implementation of the economy re-work is done, and the patch is currently being polished. Our internal team, along with feedback from our Beta group, indicates we are heading in the right direction, and we are excited to share it with you soon. This patch will not address everything, but to ensure it meets the expectations of our wider community, we want to give it a few more weeks so we can take action on more of the feedback we have received from the Beta group. The goal of the patch is to address the community feedback we have received in regards to the economy; increase the importance of managing the economy, increase the challenge, and make it clearer to the player how the economy is affected by your choices. Currently, we aim to release the patch in the window June 3rd - June 19th and we will be detailing the update further in upcoming Dev Diaries.

Upcoming Creator Packs
As a result of this extended feedback and adjustment period for the economy patch, the Creator Packs will be pushed to post-summer. Even though the Creator Packs require relatively little time for implementation from Colossal Order, we want to make sure the upcoming economy patch has the intended result, and that we have time to also evaluate your feedback before we release any new paid content. This means we will move the Creator Packs to release after the summer lock.

What is "summer lock"?
In accordance with Swedish and Finnish vacation laws and union agreements, both Paradox Interactive and Colossal Order observe a general holiday period during the month of July and parts of August, where employees have the right to four consecutive weeks of vacation. This means that our staffing levels are reduced on both the development and publishing side. Therefore, we avoid scheduling any updates during this time period. As there is always a potential risk when patching a game, we always want to have the necessary personnel available in case any critical bug is introduced so we can fix it within a reasonable timeframe. Hence, we do not plan for patches or updates in the month of July or early August.

Upcoming Patches
The patch, scheduled for release soon, primarily focuses on the economy. However, there are some other requested improvements included such as an update to the building upgrade system. This means you will be able to place building upgrades more freely around the main buildings and also delete and move specific upgrades. We will provide detailed patch notes in connection to the patch as usual.

The next patch, expected after summer, will introduce some free content and other frequent requests, such as new service buildings and vehicles, as well as the addition of a surface tool to allow more freedom to paint the areas around buildings. We are also making progress with the technical difficulties that are blocking the release of the asset editor; we cannot confirm if it will be ready for the first patch after summer, so no promises just yet, but we are doing everything we can to make it so.

Consoles
We had a Beta build delivery at the end of April which has undergone extensive performance and stability tests. These results showed that we are not hitting the stability and performance targets that we want to reach. Fixing these crashes and improving the FPS is the highest priority when it comes to the console builds. The development team is working diligently and has already fixed some of the issues from these tests, and we still hope we can keep the timeline for an October release. But, to set expectations, the window for an October release is shrinking and it might have to be delayed further.

Player Feedback
We have two groups testing our patches and providing valuable feedback before public release: a long-standing group of dedicated modders and a newer group of community representatives and prominent modders who joined through the application process last year. We recently held a more intimate meeting with representatives from the community, who shared their insights and conveyed those of their follower base, on what they wish to see in the game. Once the economy patch is out, we will also launch a survey to gather feedback from you, the broader community. This will ensure that we understand your experience and continue heading in the right direction. We are also continuously reading posts you share on our official channels and we appreciate all the good and constructive feedback we have received over the past few weeks.
Thank you for being a part of our community and for your continued passion for Cities: Skylines II. Stay tuned for further updates on the economy patch and the timeline for upcoming patches and new content.

// The Cities Team

 

[DanielR80]

Also QA is not just done internally but also by PDX and an external QA company (likely on demand)

Sweet summer child, thinking this company cares about quality:

we do not have in-house QA

 

[Frossty Official]

Their reason (we do not want to release paid content until we are satisfied with X and Y and Z) is a bad reason since multiple players already paid for this content.
If they just release, we get what we paid for and others can choose whether or not to buy. Right now, there is no choice, only money paid without goods delivered.

But thank you for becoming personal for no reason and calling names.

Patience is key, it was your choice to buy the ultimate edition just like how its the players choice to buy dlc they release in the future. They are delaying these so they can focus on improving the base game which keeps the loyalty of the fanbase and means that the base game for majority of players is playable and enjoyable. Would you rather some rushed dlc put together because people paid for ultimate edition knowing that the dlc they paid for at the time hadn't released yet or would you rather wait another year or so and have a great base game and great dlc's. They aren't gonna release crap dlcs so that ultimate edition players "get their moneys worth!" when they can focus on the important stuff and then release paid content.

 

[DanielR80]

I AM PISSED OFF!!!!!!!! I AM NOT A HAPPY CLIENT!!

A short google search for that error code says your D: drive might be full.

 

[Frossty Official]

Suddenly "About a month" became "About a month and a half to two months". You had to have known it wasn't gonna be "about a month" a couple weeks ago, why wait until a month has passed to say so?

The creator packs are delayed...again.

You're going on vacation for two months...again. (And not to be that guy, but vacation from what? We've got little evidence you've done anything since the last one. Bugs introduced before the last one aer still in the game!)

So by late september/early october we'll get another patch after this one?

This pace is glacial. This pace is unforgivably slow. Is anything being done internally to bolster development? More hiring? A second company coming in and helping, or, hopefully, outright taking over? This is not a hopeful update.

They said it is a break in sweden that all employees have the right to have. They legally cant stop their employees from taking that break and they're not saying nobody will be working but most people will be out enjoying their 4 week holiday they rightfully deserve. Game development takes time and people like you who are complaining the main drive behind it is always impatience. I'd rather a good game with good dlc than a bad game with bad dlc but quicker and its clear most of the community wants it aswell as shown by the outroar that happened when the beach properties dlc released

 

[Dumbell]

Patience is key, it was your choice to buy the ultimate edition just like how its the players choice to buy dlc they release in the future. They are delaying these so they can focus on improving the base game which keeps the loyalty of the fanbase and means that the base game for majority of players is playable and enjoyable. Would you rather some rushed dlc put together because people paid for ultimate edition knowing that the dlc they paid for at the time hadn't released yet or would you rather wait another year or so and have a great base game and great dlc's. They aren't gonna release crap dlcs so that ultimate edition players "get their moneys worth!" when they can focus on the important stuff and then release paid content.

They said it is a break in sweden that all employees have the right to have. They legally cant stop their employees from taking that break and they're not saying nobody will be working but most people will be out enjoying their 4 week holiday they rightfully deserve. Game development takes time and people like you who are complaining the main drive behind it is always impatience. I'd rather a good game with good dlc than a bad game with bad dlc but quicker and its clear most of the community wants it aswell as shown by the outroar that happened when the beach properties dlc released

You're describing how one should treat an early access game.

If I buy a car I'm not going to be "patient" for a year before the wheels are fitted. FFS

 

[Arathir]

Is there any chance that we will get improved traffic management tools in this patch or that they are already planned for the next one?

Currently, the tools are quite lacking and it is the most popular suggestion in the suggestion subforum.

 

[Civ5rako]

the base game for majority of players is playable and enjoyable

No, it is not.
The last time there have been more positive than negative reviews has been February 2nd.

 

[[Delta ²k5]]

I don't expect them to describe every variable and algorithm changes. I would just like to read what these changes are about in general. Economy is a broad term under which it is very easy to both pull ine and throw out something.

It might be hard to explain these changes in a rough way as economy, at least from what I read over here, is fairly complex in C:S2 as it's working down to the agents level, so basically each individual resident (as a part group of all agents) has a certain income and certain needs for specific groups of goods as well as traveling expenses.

The economy is formed by flows of various resources among the agents; households, businesses, and city services. The number of agents naturally grows as the city grows and each agent tracks the amount of money and resources they have. The agents have expenses and income and they try to balance them out by making decisions on what to buy and sell depending on their current situation. Households spend money to buy resources and pay rent, businesses buy resources and turn them into other resources which they then sell to other businesses or customers. Businesses also pay rent for their building which is taken into account when they calculate their profit. Certain city services also consume resources and these expenses are added to their monthly upkeep. - https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/development-diary-9-economy-production.1595744/

On C:S1 that thing was pretty shallow in comparison as basically only buildings had "needs". Citizen did on their end not have income, so no virtual money - they just had some pretty much unused wealth levels.

As now income plays a key role both reworking and explaining the economy changes get tricky - in theory the text from above should obviously be still valid because that's how things work irl and how they should work in C:S2, right? however small changes within that logic can have some undesired effects: if you just add 10 credits of income to each resident per game month which might be a unit of processed food as a good this might lead to more virtual people going shopping but it could also lead to them invest that additional income in choosing a more comfortable mean of travel (car) which on 100k residents mean more traffic chaos. Or it could mean that businesses now have so much income that they never would go bankrupt, which is also not realistic.
So my guess on the economy topic is that they do not rewrite the logic as a whole (as the logic itself won't be wrong) but instead tune the variables more carefully when it comes down to income and expenses on each service and job. On top there might be some bugfixes to the logic itself or they may expand it with some factors, however it's not easy to describe this without really going into detail imho

But somehow it was possible to write about buildings upgrades and surface painter.

These two things in comparison are more straight forward, so there isn't much to cover. The surface painter tool is the surface painter tool which is already used on assets for concrete/grass/dirt surfaces. It's basically opened up and extended with some fill mode for easier handling.

Building upgrades are more detached than before from their main building. On this side there are basically just the limitations missing when it comes down to a full description (like, is there a certain radius within the player can place the buildings freely or is it basically the whole city at which I could place the additional taxi garage?) - so, yeah, it's also pretty straight forward

So, here we have a "Cities Skylines Official" account, but this account doesn't know what's going on in the "Cities Skylines" game.
I see some similarity to "Beach Properties" here. There is a beach in the name, but it generally has little to do with the beach.

Yes, in this case I cannot do more than agree when it comes down to the roles and titles PDX should really rework them on this forum. Mariina as the CEO also has the "Colossal Order Dev" label while she clearly is not a dev on her own.

 

[Civ5rako]

It might be hard to explain these changes in a rough way as economy, at least from what I read over here, is fairly complex in C:S2 as it's working down to the agents level, so basically each individual resident (as a part group of all agents) has a certain income and certain needs for specific groups of goods as well as traveling expenses.

Nope.
"Private" demand is defined by the households needs. And households aren't looking for specific goods but for anonymous "ressources".
It hasn't been specified any further, but my best guess is that when a househould has less than say 100 "ressources", they will go shopping. As they don't look for specific goods however, the assumption is that some random numbers come into play. Which literally makes the allegedly complex "economic simulation" rather moot as the link between production and final customer is broken or non-existent.

It has been my hope that the rework of economy would fix that, but apparently there will be just some more info in the UI and maybe some more means to influence economics. But then again, no specific information was given, so it is still all guess work.

 

[MohawkWolfo98]

All of this has to be a teachable moment. My only question to everyone is,
What have we learned...?

My personal ones:

1) Never preorder.
2) Never buy under the assumptions of “loyalty” or “support”. The higher ups don’t care about that as long as the money comes in.
3) Take influencers with a pinch of salt on buying a game, no matter how friendly they seem or whether you have watched them over the years are not. They are too engrained and reliant on CO to give accurate information.
4) Of these, I have learnt which influencers to relatively trust when making an assessment if I should buy the game, and which ones are not and engaging in the same CO defensive attitude. And have adjusted my viewings accordingly.

Frankly, it’s also my fault for enabling this behaviour. Lesson learnt.

 

[[Delta ²k5]]

Nope.
"Private" demand is defined by the households needs. And households aren't looking for specific goods but for anonymous "ressources".

That's why I mentioned "groups of goods" like you quoted and not just "goods". -> https://cs2.paradoxwikis.com/Economy#:~:text=Processing Minerals-,Material goods

It hasn't been specified any further, but my best guess is that when a househould has less than say 100 "ressources", they will go shopping. As they don't look for specific goods however, the assumption is that some random numbers come into play. Which literally makes the allegedly complex "economic simulation" rather moot as the link between production and final customer is broken or non-existent.

I might look into this using scene explorer later - might be that the proof of things is visible there.

---------------------------------

Edit: seems you are right - the household itself has the need for goods. A bit funny however: the resident itself holds a mail amount in contrast.

Maybe CO will change that in future, after stabilizing the actual status. I don't think it would be rocket science for individual agents to have a need for goods which all accumulate into the household needs. However I cannot judge if this would really make a difference or if it would be just overcomplicating things in the end.