Cities Skylines (1&2), SimCity 4, city simulators - sperg about simulations that include or don't include niggers

[Mr.Miyagi]

Sorry for the bump, but Cities Skylines 2 is continuing to be a major problem. They seems to be falling into the traps Maxis did back in 2013 but with even more disrespect and incompetence.

Player counts for C:S1 are now higher than C:S2.

At one point Mariina Hallikainen, CEO of developer Colossal Order, wrote that "if you dislike the simulation, this game just might not be for you." An apology for that statement swiftly followed.

I really love when suits just let the mask slip and outright state how much they fucking loathe having to appeal to their consumers. How dare you plebeians demand functional products! But remember: it's the community that has a toxicity problem. The fact that they've already put the kibosh on the dev diaries because they have nothing to show, only to get them back on due to popular demand, really shows how dire things must be. Some game companies can handle the slings and arrows while they go radio silent and try to get things working, but I don't think CO is one of them.

 

[BIG BILL HELL'S]

I really love when suits just let the mask slip and outright state how much they fucking loathe having to appeal to their consumers.

I suspect if the core audience for a game like this were anything other than straight white males the messaging would be completely different.

 

[Classical Lord Dessler]

The past week has seen a number of C:S content creators make videos on the issues ranging from "we just have to be patient guys, CO is working hard to fix this" to JumboPixel's "If I was the publisher doing PR stuff, I'd probably make a call to Colossal Order too". City Planner Plays is actually cutting down his CS2 series due to.. you guessed it, bugs and the half baked simulation. He's reviving some CS1 series that he didn't get to finish, probably because there's more interest in CS1 at the moment.

Also I'm surprised I missed the post release interview CO did for CS2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oULuIc9BkgE&ab_channel=Cities:Skylines

Got some great quotes from our favorite game CEO. And by great I mean delusional and tone deaf!

5:23 - "I have at times felt that this project is cursed"
It is Mariina, cursed with you at the helm.

9:43 - "I feel like we ran out of time in a sense that with more time we wouldn't have anyway reached reasonable results"
Complete and utter gaslighting evidenced by the fact the game went from 15fps in the menu on release day to rough but playable a month and a half later in December. A month delay to release would have softened the blow for the performance issues and 6 months delay would have completely changed the narrative on this game.

14:32 - "I think the performance issues, it was actually a little bit surprising for me because not not because we wouldn't have tested the game but it was more about how on different individual setups there seemed to be issues that we weren't fully aware of"
The only way she could have genuinely been surprised about performance issues was if she never played, watched, or interacted with the game. This was struggling on top end rigs in 2023, rigs that had silicon that didn't exist when they started working on this game back in 2018.

16:00 - "the gameplay is good and that's what I've been telling everybody the gameplay is good. Technology is something that we can keep working on, we can fix those issues but if the game is not fun and the simulation sucks where do you go from there?"
Was this an open question asking for your next move, Mariina?

21:06 - "but before before we get to it (further performance optimization and mod support) we need to take a little bit of a breather so happy holidays to everybody"
"Yea so we missed all deadlines excluding the major one that made us our money but we've been working hard so we need 3 weeks break. See ya in the new year, have fun with the beta!"

 

[Friendly Primarina]

How do you work on a game for five years and complain about not having enough time? It doesn't even have the movie-level production values that AAA games do.

 

[Raging Capybara]

Cities Skylines was always bad, it only became a successful meme because Sim City 2013 shat the bed before. But in retrospect, I would say Sim City 2013 is probably better and had more potential.

 

[DeadwastePrime]

How do you work on a game for five years and complain about not having enough time? It doesn't even have the movie-level production values that AAA games do.

you forget, the scope on this was gonna be a lot bigger than the original game. you gotta basically improve upon what was already done with the first one. also, lest we forget CurrentWorldEvents™ threw a wrench in things for a bit so they weren't on their A game with this

 

[DeadwastePrime]

also double post because fuck you i can

But in retrospect, I would say Sim City 2013 is probably better and had more potential.

i own the game. trust me. it isnt

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Half the memes about how bad the game is comes from the hideous yet over-designed (in terms of polygons, etc.) NPCs that wander the streets.

I remember reading the dev diaries (some of my blow-by-blow reports can be seen earlier in this thread, I gave up because it was looking worse and worse) and I didn't see any of the people. If the people were a fairly late-game design decision (or deliberately concealed), why didn't they test just dummying out the people and see that improved performance?

I've always thought that would cause them to save face when it came to release.

- People would discover it and un-dummy it to find the horror show.
- CO could release some softball statement like "yeah, we wanted a bunch of citizens and had them randomly generated but the results weren't close to our vision"
- Game performs better on release, leading to more productive time in patching

I wonder if/when Paradox Interactive will have enough of CO's bullshit and cancel their contract.

 

[Snekposter]

with bits carved out here and there to address "a growing tendency of toxicity" in the community

Gee, considering how toxic everything related to Paradox becomes, I'm starting to think there's a common thread to all of them...

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Gee, considering how toxic everything related to Paradox becomes, I'm starting to think there's a common thread to all of them...

These days "toxic" means "less than glowing things said". As bad as C:S1 was, as bad as some people continue to simp for CO, I'm at least glad to see that the fanbase has a spine and not willing to eat shit as CO expected them to.

 

[Long Tongue Silver]

Fuck it at this point I’ll take Factorio meets SimCity and give me a damn 2D city painter that ain’t shit.

CS1 slathered in mods is actually pretty damn fun in a “how will I fuck this up fixing it” sort of never ending impromptu improvement way.

Maybe I’ll need to slide back to SC4.

You know what'd be a dream come true?

SC4, but recoded from the ground up so it can finally take advantage of modern PC hardware.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

You know what'd be a dream come true?

SC4, but recoded from the ground up so it can finally take advantage of modern PC hardware.

The thing that comes to mind is NewCity which had a few (very simplistic, almost LEGO-like) textures for building multiple floors. But the last thing you want is a much of procedurally-generated mutant buildings. I mean, we've already the procedurally-generated people...

What we need is "just fast enough so you can play the game" style rendering, simple LODs, etc, decent simulations and AI (we have all these things) and then the ability to pause the game, or slow it down, and go into "screenshot mode" or "fancy rendering mode".

Fucking people have made this shit for dwarf fortress, it can't be impossible for an entire development team. Nobody gives a shit is all.

 

[Snekposter]

These days "toxic" means "less than glowing things said". As bad as C:S1 was, as bad as some people continue to simp for CO, I'm at least glad to see that the fanbase has a spine and not willing to eat shit as CO expected them to.

More like its code for "People keep calling them out on their bullshit". But none of these "journalists" seem to put 2 and 2 together and realize that maybe Paradox just keeps releasing shit.

 

[Rome's rightful successor]

 

[Sicko Hunter]

 

[Xarpho's Return]

While the "It's Over" thumbnail with that soyboy is grating, I disagree with the premise that CS2 was "rushed out" to make up for numbers..."rushed out" implies that it could've been better but circumstances prevented it as such. SimCity 4 was rushed out. But at the core was a great game and within a few weeks the biggest issues were fixed.

I wanted CS2 to be a good game, but that would require CO looking at CS1's shortcomings and decide that they needed to be changed. And what was changed wasn't good. Like I said, there were a series of posts I did on each developers notes, but I eventually told myself "this is too autistic, this is going to suck either way" and it did. Worse than I expected, even.

The After Dark DLC was released about six months after the release of Cities Skylines, so with that schedule we might see CS2 DLC announcements within a month. Whether that is true or not says something:

- We see no DLC because CO is trying to fix everything, possibly on Paradox's orders.
- The DLC is released because CO is arrogant and thinks they can do no wrong. (Possible).
- The DLC is released in a desperate bid to increase sales. (Also possible.)

 

[Just Some Other Guy]

Still get amused when people defend the poor performance by saying "it's a sim, I don't need fps".

It's just a dumb waste of resources. There's no defending that.

 

[Classical Lord Dessler]

The After Dark DLC was released about six months after the release of Cities Skylines, so with that schedule we might see CS2 DLC announcements within a month. Whether that is true or not says something:

- We see no DLC because CO is trying to fix everything, possibly on Paradox's orders.
- The DLC is released because CO is arrogant and thinks they can do no wrong. (Possible).
- The DLC is released in a desperate bid to increase sales. (Also possible.)

My only thought is do they even have the dlc content available to push? I would assume they planned to throw the bridge and port assets together in the time from October to now. Regardless of opinions on the state of the game now (of which it is still pretty bad) it objectively has improved with performance and some bugs. We have yet to see but they are approaching a deadline for phase one of 1st party mod support so assuming that does meet schedule, it's reasonable to think they've spent a lot of manhours on late promises with few remaining to cobble up a dlc unless they outsource it.

Still get amused when people defend the poor performance by saying "it's a sim, I don't need fps".

It's just a dumb waste of resources. There's no defending that.

People commenting that made me see red. Yes it's a sim but it would be nice to watch my simulation at a smooth framerate! I don't expect my city of 970k to hit 60 fps but 50k should be doable when I'm running a 7950X and 7900XTX. That hardware didn't even exist for 2/3s of the game's development time

 

[Xarpho's Return]

My only thought is do they even have the dlc content available to push? I would assume they planned to throw the bridge and port assets together in the time from October to now. Regardless of opinions on the state of the game now (of which it is still pretty bad) it objectively has improved with performance and some bugs. We have yet to see but they are approaching a deadline for phase one of 1st party mod support so assuming that does meet schedule, it's reasonable to think they've spent a lot of manhours on late promises with few remaining to cobble up a dlc unless they outsource it.

I know I'm late and not straight for this, but a few weeks ago they announced their last major patch that wasn't tied to DLC. Which means that the Bridges & Ports DLC will be released without major fixes.

There is no "redemption arc" for the game.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

I know I'm late and not straight for this, but a few weeks ago they announced their last major patch that wasn't tied to DLC. Which means that the Bridges & Ports DLC will be released without major fixes.

There is no "redemption arc" for the game.

There’s still a slight chance - cs1 was kinda shit at release, nowhere near this bad, but “eh keep playing sc4”, and each DLC was also a free patch to the base game that included content and fixes.

No guarantees, no promises, no refunds. Even if cs2 was perfect, what does it really offer over modded cs1?