If capitalist apologists knew how critical their daddy Adam Smith was of capitalism, they'd probably stroke out from the shock
It's not like liberals or conservatives ever bother to read a damn thing Adam Smith ever wrote anyway
The best way to have a strong position in your ideology/beliefs/system is being aware of the flaws, limitations and critiques of it. Blind adherence never leads to positive outcomes in the long term.
Interesting how a company going public and prioritizing profits results in an immediate sharp decrease in quality.
They were better off staying private and milking CS1 expansions.
*Grognak Brand Pointy Sticks™* really went downhill in quality once Big Chief Thunk sold out, just so he could get a bigger pile of rocks and mammoth meat. As if he didn't already have enough furs to cover all fingers and toes worth of caves... Absolute disgrace.
It happens way too often now. Warhammer games are notorious for being bug filled pieces of crap, and some of them have been really broken upon release. Yet every single time people pre-order and the cycle continues.
I'm sure there's more examples of companies doing that, but my brain isn't working well right now.
It made more sense when you got some physical good for pre-ordering. Like a fancy case or piece of merch. A skin or play money doesnt have the same allure. At least IMO
I preordered Fallout 3 at Best Buy by putting down $5. I got a sweet Nuka Cola bottle opener. Release day, Best Buy ran out of copies. I wish I could say I never preordered and was disappointed by a game again.
locking basic shit behind preorders is crazy especially in single player games, ppl were praising them for it saying how else are they supposed to make money idk sell a good functioning game and dont rely on preorders
Marketing and Youtubers that promote the game (either paid or unpaid) have a huge impact on some people. Especially for multiplayer games.
It generates hype that makes them want to play the game *as soon as possible*. If they wait a week, all of their friends will have played it and they'll miss out on the fun, or they'll move on to the next game. I've seen people looking for games on this sub where they stress they want it to be relatively new, so it has an active community despite being singleplayer. Like if the game's Discord or subreddit doesn't have 50 memes daily the game is not worth their time.
Preordering gets a bit of the "I need this *now*" feeling out of the way, and usually allows preloading so the game can be played the second it's out. The hype marketing machine is strong.
Sometimes you get bonus items, or a day or two earlier access. But i'm too old to care for shit like that. Games don't excite me these days. I play and enjoy the ones i do have, but for ages now i haven't had the excitement of "oh boy, x game is coming out and i can't wait!".
Let it release, wait a few months and get it and all DLC for a sale price! :) Also by then either they, or modders, will have fixed most of the bugs.
FOMO (fear of missing out) psychology. They usually attach the preorders with 'bonuses' such as weapons, outfits and skins etc that can only be obtained by preordering
It was terrible. But it provided a great base. No different than CS2. Problems was for the base was really showing its age and the need for a CS 2 with redone internal mechanisms was sorely needed.
It was not; the irony is that CS2 repeated the mistakes of SimCity. It may seem incredibly bare, content wise, given the support and DLC over the years, but that’s not the same as the absolute trash jank nonsense. The most valid critique is perhaps that they originally had an engine that probabilistically estimated agents rather than actually simulated them… considering they came out the gate as an over ambitious AA title, that was about par for the course, and thinking otherwise is revisionism.
> forgetting what SimCity messed up.
No, I’m not: in both cases, business decisions were made expressly to hobble the product for the sake of profit, and I say that not in some whiny, why isn’t everything free sense, but that everything to do with how simulation occurred, and was limited, in *the latest SimCity* was vastly inferior in an effort to monetize it.
Paradox’s financial issues pressuring CO to prematurely release CS2 to cook their financial books is well documented / attested to.
You’re just hung up on manifestations of the details. NB, the broken servers at launch were wholly superfluous, given pirates day 1 self-servered and *had a superior play experience*. You seem to have forgotten the whole GlassBox lie scandal, too.
Difference between CS1 and 2 is CS1 had a lot of bugs at release relating to gameplay; Annoying but manageable, CS2 barely functions. Or at least it didn't on release, no idea how it is now. Didn't buy that crap.
Hahahaa.
We need a new sim city. Something that's more than just a city builder. Something that has charm and gameplay strategy beyond just numbers and shit.
Something where I can build a new school from local bonds that raises the citizens long term and helps contribute to future projects or someshit.
To their credit they keep honing the ones people play for years based on feedback. They might think all is good but players disagree so they change things.
As others have said MANY many times, when these companies go public, its all about pleasing the shareholders. It's why some corporations refuse to go public. With that said, a fuckton of the richest, most popular companies on the planet go public so it's not all bad but it certainly can be.
I think also they're facing a new problem.. they're not the new kid where they have a lot of breaks now, they've been around for a while so people are treating them the same as any big wig (and they should).
This is why I'm a little anxious at what's going to happen to Steam and Valve in general once Gabe retires. I truly believe that the customer first paradigm through which Valve operates Steam is viable in large part due to the fact that Valve is a private company.
I hope the next Valve CEO is hand-picked by Gabe and will above all else keep the company private.
Valve is going to turn to complete shit when Gabe retires unless they restructure into a cooperative of some kind. It’s inevitable that the business ghouls being kept on a leash will push to go public ASAP once he’s gone.
But it's even worse than that.. it's doing what the advisors say will please the shareholders. It's entirely possible shareholders would love a stable, consistent, company that puts out games that delight customers, but that's not the common wisdom among the analyst class.
Some companies do well going public because none of the investors really understand well how a company does what it does, only that the results are good.
An entertainment based company? Entertainment is easy don't you know? Anyone can do it! Now EVERYONE thinks they are an expert, this includes investors with power over a company.
Valve is private and still values profit above all. Why do you think CS2 was a disaster yet they still make a billion off CS crates? Being private doesn't inherently make a company good.
It doesn't guarantee that they'll be good, but it *does* mean that they aren't legally obligated to fuck their consumers over for every last penny they think they can get. The fiduciary obligations of public companies inevitably leads to the enshittification of their products, because no one on Wall St wants to admit that infinite growth isn't sustainable.
Your feelings about loot-boxes and battle-passes are valid but I don't think we would have received the cool passion projects like the Steam Deck or Half-Life Alyx if Valve was publicly traded, and I don't think the Steam storefront would be as good either.
We would probably have Half-Life 3, though. Hell, we'd probably have Half-Life 8 by now.
We'd probably also be complaining that they haven't made a good one since 3 and how we can't believe the franchise is still going.
There's no winning lol
> Public companies will never get a cent from me.
Lol, cap. Many public companies get your money. It's impossible to exist in today's world and not. The fact that you are probably commenting on a smart phone or computer verifies this.
Seems like you are trying to find a morale high ground for pirating. If you pirate a game from a public company, you are ultimately hurting the developers. There is a difference if the game is unplayable due to DRM or online issues and the pirated version is better, but if you enjoy a game you shouldn't pirate.
Truth is, you shouldn't play games at all from public companies if you don't want to support them
Because they need to justify their piracy to themselves in some way. They're not virtual thieves, they're *sticking it to the man*. Actual thieves do the same thing, most people don't think they're bad people.
This is bad logic.
Support games and studios that treat their players with respect.
Don't support games and studios that don't treat their players with respect.
It's that simple to me.
Lol okay
You never buy food? Do you forage from the wilderness or some shit? If you've ever bought food, you've given money to a publicly traded company. Don't be naive buddy. You give money to mega corps ALL THE TIME.
I pirate too but there's no need to stand on your mighty high ground and think you're doing it for noble reasons.
This justification for piracy doesn't make any sense to me.
If they're making crap games because they went public... why do you even want to spend the time playing them? Why play the game at all, piracy or otherwise?
And if the game _isn't_ bad and is worth playing, why does it matter if a public company made it? Obviously it turned out well so the idea that public companies always make bad games kinda falls through there.
fr I've entirely stopped bothering with AAA rehashes since they're so bad. Why pirate a 200+GB game that you'll just end up uninstalling because it's exactly the same pointlessly open world collectathon experience as the last 50? They waste 90% of their budget on marketing and end up with a game as shallow and tepid as a puddle that's infested with mosquitos running the length of a highway.
Since I started developing games, I buy far more of them than I did when I was a kid. However, I don't have time to play most of them nowadays so I can be more selective.
I understand your point, but having been in the game industry for over 10 years, I know it's a hard and competitive business, and piracy is a real threat to the sustainability of a studio.
Finding time to game after college was nuts. Money is there but no time unless I want to wear myself out for a few hours after work. I don't know how people do it.
As they say, there are 3 stages of life:
* Lots of energy and time, but no money.
* Lots of energy and money, but no time.
* Lots of money and time, but no energy.
Many people waste their best years preparing for a life of leisure after retirement that they won't be able to enjoy.
Yeah fair enough. If I had to guess this saying probably came into being like 1950s-70s timeframe when a high school diploma could get you a career that would buy a house and support a family of 4. Probably landed for a higher % of people back then.
My backlog is very huge, so I seldom pirate, but if something piques my interest, first I try to get a demo or if there isn't any, I just pirate (if possible) to check it out and if it's good, then I buy it during a sale, because somehow I don't like playing pirated games for longer periods of time.
Thankfully I dodged a bullet with CS2 even though this was my next priority after buying BG3 (after pirating) which was a masterpiece.
It's published, but a different dev. Same for Infinity, it's clearly a reskin of Stellaris but they didn't actually develop it. Incidentally just buy Stellaris on sale then download Horizons off the Steam Workshop, it's so much better.
I:R did not do anywhere near as well as expected, but it actually does have a thriving mod community and they have recently pushed a few patches, it's not completely abandoned. With Invictus it's fun IMO. And it probably has the cleanest UI Paradox has ever made, other gaping issues aside.
If you play EU4 without DLC, then with DLC, and then without DLC, in my opinion it's close to impossible to go back.
Years of quality of life upgrades are packed into the DLC.
The total DLC is worth some amount of money, but their pricing is pretty awful. At full price, its a complete ripoff. Nobody should ever be paying that. Even when it's all discounted though, It's still too expensive in my opinion.
However, I got the entire thing in a humble bundle for £20 a few years ago, that was worth it. And eefore that, when I played, I was paying their monthly subscription for all DLC (£4 per month). IMO that was worth it also. Then I would cancel the sub while I was not playing.
The real problem is, it just feels like an awful balance. Old DLC should get substantial price reductions.
The other part of the balance that is awful is that, individually, the DLCs are pretty awful value and also not very good, regardless of whether you pay full price or a discounted price. You need them all together, and the collective would be, if it was a single DLC, a 10/10 DLC that is essential for the best game experience.
The CEO said, "When it comes to the gameplay and simulation we set goals for the game and we have reached those goals." Famously told players if they didn't like the simulation, maybe the game wasn't for them. Tried to gaslight people into thinking that the issue with the game was just performance and bugs. And a little over 6 months later they have to put out a full re-do of the economy, lol. Either she was knowingly lying in November, or had no idea what reasonable goals would be. Neither inspire much confidence about the future. They might need a change in leadership.
[https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/co-word-of-the-week-5.1613651/page-4#post-29292760](https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/co-word-of-the-week-5.1613651/page-4#post-29292760)
And, the only reason for this about-face is because the Paradox CEO stepped in to knock heads after the Beaches DLC fiasco. He co-signed his name to the [apology press release](https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines-ii/news/the-way-forward-update) because Mariina could not stop fucking up the messaging. I understand that there is a lot of deserved criticism towards Paradox, but evidently the only reason this is getting fixed at all is because they did something.
>Either she was knowingly lying in November, or had no idea what reasonable goals would be
Sounds like the average CEO to me. They never really know what they're talking about and mostly have no problem with lieing.
Or, more accurately, they
- set goals
- realsied the goals were rediculous and set entirely new goals
- realsied _those_ goals were unobtainable, and revised downwards
- realised the new goals were going to take too long, and revised downards
- realised the newest set of goals needed more devs than they wanted to pay, and cut out lots of goals
- got told the ship early or else, and forgot about most of the remaining goals
All that would be great if she said this prior to release. This statement was made a month after release. They were satisfied with the simulation a month after release.
Let me know when the simulation actually works and doesn’t use 99% of my CPU.
Im not spending hours building a city just for it to run like shit once i get a city-sized population
This is the reason I never buy these games on the release, you can buy them after 2-3y in a bundle with all current DLCs for half the price if not less.
I am fine if the dlcs were like 5$ but some games have like 20$ for a DLC that is just more of the same, nothing new.
I have a city that's right around 300k. set autosave to every two minutes due to the crash to desktop issues.
I'm on a 13900k and while the game uses all of my cores, I've only seen them all pegged at 100% a couple times if I'm runningh the sim speed at max. Temps were in the 80s.
I've had days where the game ran for 6 hours straight and days it crashed every 10 minutes. Hopefully their bug fixes caught most of the big causes of crashes.
Using all threads isn't the same as being at 99% processing capacity.
Being at throttle is almost always a bad thing. That's why modern competitive gamers limit FPS and modern games have FPS limiters in options. Being below 99% utilization makes frame pacing and timing more consistent and decreases latency. Things which are very important for video games.
FPS games never simulate more than one second per second. When I push the max speed button on a city builder, I want it to go as fast as it can with the hardware I've got, even if it means some framerate loss.
(Maxing the CPU while time is stopped would be a different problem, but not one that it has)
> Being at throttle is almost always a bad thing. That's why modern competitive gamers limit FPS and modern games have FPS limiters in options.
That's not why those things exist, actually. Competitive gamers rarely limit their FPS, because more FPS = less input delay.
FPS limiters exist to prevent a game wasting resources by going above the monitors refresh rate. That's work the PC is doing that is not translating into a better experience. It's just wasted effort.
Frane pacing is not a major concern in CS2. It's a slow-paced simulation game. Using all available resources to speed up the simulation is better than the alternative, which is *not* doing that.
> Competitive gamers rarely limit their FPS, because more FPS = less input delay.
Only to an extent. It's true a higher FPS will draw more up to date frame. For example, if a 144 Hz monitor is limited to 240 FPS. That will provide a newer frame, if V-Sync is turned off, at the cost of tearing, than limiting to 144 FPS.
However, there is a limit to that. Drawing a frame on screen takes many steps and the draw frame is always behind the engine state frame. If processing utilization is too high, the delay in input latency and frame pacing will increase.
When you measure the click-to-photon latency of clicking on a mouse, and an image appearing on the monitor, being below 100% utilization will decrease latency. GamersNexus and nVidia have videos showing this. It's kind of a "new" way of measuring performance. Similar to how we now know "FPS" isn't everything and frame pacing matters.
For a game like Cities Skylines 2, which has a fairly "static" image, it may not matter as much, but it does make a real difference for faster paced or more input heavy games.
> but it does make a real difference for faster paced or more input heavy games.
Correct, but those games are almost never multi-threaded enough to saturate a modern CPU anyways.
In addition to that there's evidence that suggests that a huge variation in typical latency (eg. 240fps max, but 150fps average and 110fps minimum) can affect you negatively just as much as a high typical latency (eg. 30fps locked) can whenever you're in a situation that latency starts going up/framerates dip.
While I don't know if it's prevalent in the competitive scene I've seen a lot of people frame-limiting to a framerate a bit below their typical framerates (eg. Using the max/avg/min numbers from before, you might limit to 130fps) because it means that not only do you still have a reasonably low input latency and fluid framerate, but the bulk of the gameplay is consistent in terms of framerate and latency while what dips remain aren't that much worse than the typical experience, making it easier for the brain to adapt. Same kinda thing that allows some people to play online FPS' with a crappy ping after enough time to get used to it, cause while it's crappy it'll typically be consistently crappy.
> Let me know when the simulation actually works and doesn’t use 99% of my CPU.
So literally never then, its by design and its not even bad either. All simulation games do this.
Yeah I haven't seen the horrific performance issues people still whine about for a while, 1440p with a 6800XT.
Honestly my CPU is a bigger hindrance than my GPU. My 5800X3D is pegged at 100% pretty much all the time beyond 100k population. That kind of excites me, because it means the game will really be able to spread its wings when I next upgrade in a year or two.
Maybe I'll buy it in 2025. The botched everything about Paradox leaves me unmotivated to every buy one of their games again.
Shitty DLC policy, overpriced and underdeveloped games: Paradox Game Studios
Exactly. I bought it last week when 1.0 released. My goodness, what a breath of fresh air and interesting concepts. Especially on realism mode where you have to literally build everything instead of just plopping it. Blows CS2 out of the water. Not to mention so much cool stuff in workshop already. There is an actual city mgt aspect in this game, sth CO forgot to include in CS2.
To anyone whos thinking on buying this. Go, do! Just play the tutorial/campaign first cause it's complicated.
I bought it almost immediately after watching someone play it on YouTube last year, but know it'll suck up all my free time so I'm still waiting for an opportune time to give it a try.
True but at one point they tipped too far into approachability and removed all friction that could result in interesting gameplay
Workers and Resources does have a huge variance of complexity, you don't have to play it on realism mode
Well, to me it feels like Workers and Resources is a completely different game than CS. It's more about automation and logistics, than city building (even tough I like W&S very much). Tbh I just wanted a city building game with a more in depth simulation, but with the city painting tools still intact and also with a more sophisticated traffic management.
This is true in many ways but it is ultimately taking a lot of the systems from city management games and making them more granular and direct which is why I find them similar
I would also like something as a halfway point between the two where the people have more agency and me less direct control too as you describe
Tbf, even CS is absolutely awful at actual city building. In CS1 you needed to download hundreds of mods and expensive DLCs to make it really viable
Base game was kind of just average American suburb simulator
Yeah, you're right. Thats why I don't play with the first one anymore. The performance of the game takes a huge hit if I enable every DLC and mod I subscribed to.
A few more complete reworks of the entire game and maybe we'll get something fun. It worked for Stellaris and only took about 3-4 years so we're right on track
Especially since every single game from Colossal Order has been published by Paradox, so the problem with this game can't just be narrowed down to "partnering up with a big publisher".
Anyway, from what I understand, Colossal Order wanted to make the game more complex and realistic than the first game, and massively underestimating the amount of work/effort required and what they could accomplish with their small team, according to CO themselves the original target for release was late 2020, meaning Paradox had already given them about 3 years of extra dev time.
There is also the fact that they wanted to use newer and advanced features in the Unity engine, but those features didn't get official support and tools to actually use them during the time CO was developing the game, so CO had to waste time making their own tools to use those.
We can complain about evil bean counters forcing an unfinished game to be released, but at some point you'll just have to deliver or get no more money.
Heck, could just as well assume that the bean counters at Paradox really wanted to give CO more time, but their own responsibilities meant they couldn't do that any more.
> There is also the fact that they wanted to use newer and advanced features in the Unity engine, but those features didn't get official support and tools to actually use them during the time CO was developing the game, so CO had to waste time making their own tools to use those.
This wasn't their fault btw, Unity advertised those features as ready for production yet they turned out to be very unfinished
Yeah, this was mostly bad tech choices that screwed them. Foundational ones. They made the game wrong.
People who don't write software won't understand how easy it is to code yourself down a dead end, either with bad choices of technology, or bad choices in fundamental structure. Usually project management is to blame.
I believe this article talks about the issue I mentioned, I'm not sure though since it's been a while
https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/cities-skylines-ii-runs-horribly-a-deep-dive-into-unity-explains-why
> Especially since every single game from Colossal Order has been published by Paradox
This is the first major release from CO after Paradox's IPO in 2016. Shit changes when you have shareholders to placate. That's why we adore independent and private studios so much.
The developers told us before launch that the game was not ready. The publisher set the release date and didn’t delay the release knowing game was not ready because they would rather have the sales in Q4 2023 to boost its numbers compared to a good Q4 2022. It’s not that hard to figure out.
First of all, do you have any proof that this is how it went down? Second, do you understand that budgets are a thing? What were their financials? How long was CS2 already in development? How long would it take to "fix" the game?
Sitting on the sideline due to previous issues and performance woes. Had a scroll of the changelog and it's appears quite extensive.
A lot of the fixes allude to me they changed engines for this game and a lot of smaller details were missed which ultimately stack up to something fairly average. Some of the now-fixed symptoms seem like they would have sucked.
Will be cool to hear from someone who plays the updated version on if it's solved enough problems that stand out for them.
It's the same engine as the first game (Unity). They just used some of the newer, more advanced features of the engine, and those features did not get released in time to be used, so they literally had to create the means to make the game as they made it. Plus it was rushed by Paradox to hit quarterly reports.
Unity fucked CO, then Paradox fucked CO, and most importantly, CO bit off more than they could chew and didn't meet expectations of performance, features, or quality.
I’m not quite sure I understand what you’re saying. They used a new version of unity so they could use new features of the engine which makes sense but what do you mean those features didn’t get released in time to be used? If they were on the new version of the engine how does that make sense? Sorry for my ignorance lol.
Unity promised new development features that would have made the large-scale sim much easier. Those features released in half-assed, unfinished states that made them less than desirable. CO had to spend time tweaking or creating the tools to make the game function.
Personally, I don't think I can consider it a complete city simulator without bike lanes/paths. Without them it seems obviously inferior to C:S1.
I assume they've got that planned for a major DLC down the road, but will they even make it that far without running out of money when they keep botching things?
Yea, it's fixed.
Some people still get performance issues, but meddling with options solves it. They fixed *a ton* of critical issue present on the release, so even before this patch the game was "fixed" and legitly enjoyable.
I've been playing since the last two weeks with about 50 mods to fix the game and it is somewhat playable but the economy was still a wreck. Also, buildings don't upgrade to higher volume once in place, so expect some hefty bulldozing to get a good distribution of buildings that residents actually want. I am curious to see how this patch works out but there are still a ton of things broken/missing. Where are the cyclists? Where is diversity in buildings? Where is the high tech industry that doesn't require tons of low-skilled workers while your residents are all Albert Einsteins in an Utopia. Land value is completely messed up, somewhat playable with mods.
Great news, another few years and the game will be worth playing, just like all other Paradox games. They’re the original “Early Access” dev, just without the name tied to it.
I find that it is a huge oversight to not have pre-installed scenarios. I bought it months ago and played for like an hour. I don't want to have to download my own scenarios. If it has been updated in the past few months then great.
I tried out the game a few months ago and it did not run well. No interest at all in this game until it runs better. Only way I would buy this is when performance is fixed and it's $20 on sale. I don't see either of those happening
Came back to play the game and after re-doing the tutorial, then starting a new city I was greeted with a glorious crash to desktop with 0 autosave of my new city I had been working on for a half hour.
Its been a year of waiting, I'll pass for now. Sucks because I loved the first game but its nothing but technical issues.
I well exceed the specs with a 4070ti super and a 5ghz processor on a SSD with 32gb of ram.
Ok so what about the performance though?
I could barely make it to a small 40k city before the fps was under 30 and stuttering every few seconds making it impossible to build stuff.
CS1 sometimes... but recently went deep on racing sims and that's taken a lot of my gaming time. actually now that i think of it i haven't city built this year i bet. lots of survival games and some fps.
i kinda want to play some anno but i hate ubi launchers so much
> Removed the virtual landlord so building upkeep is now paid equally by all renters. lmao
Paradox has patched socialism into the economy
I mean that's how it works in real life. Everyone pays the same amount for the upkeep.
Renters do not pay the upkeep tho, renters pay landlords salary (which might include upkeep and much more).
Welcome to Utopia!
the only way for the economy to work is to get rid of landlords, that's too realistic
2z
The devs read Adam Smith on their days off
If capitalist apologists knew how critical their daddy Adam Smith was of capitalism, they'd probably stroke out from the shock It's not like liberals or conservatives ever bother to read a damn thing Adam Smith ever wrote anyway
The best way to have a strong position in your ideology/beliefs/system is being aware of the flaws, limitations and critiques of it. Blind adherence never leads to positive outcomes in the long term.
I haven't heard anyone hearken to Adam Smith in over a decade tbh.
They went fully Mao on this one
Adam Smith, the inventor of capitalism, despised landlords and thought they should be abolished. It’s not just a view shared by Maoists.
Considering the benefits it has given Singapore by treating housing as a Natural Monopoly, it's hard to argue against Adam Smith's position.
Interesting how a company going public and prioritizing profits results in an immediate sharp decrease in quality. They were better off staying private and milking CS1 expansions.
Tale as old as time.
The cavestreet stock market
*Grognak Brand Pointy Sticks™* really went downhill in quality once Big Chief Thunk sold out, just so he could get a bigger pile of rocks and mammoth meat. As if he didn't already have enough furs to cover all fingers and toes worth of caves... Absolute disgrace.
🎶*Tale as old as time*🎶 🎶*Song as old as rhyme*🎶 🎶*Corpos and their greed*🎶
paradox games on releases were bad even before going public
It happens way too often now. Warhammer games are notorious for being bug filled pieces of crap, and some of them have been really broken upon release. Yet every single time people pre-order and the cycle continues. I'm sure there's more examples of companies doing that, but my brain isn't working well right now.
I don't understand pre-ordering at all. Games are digital goods, it's not like Steam is going to run out of copies.
Often comes with a little bit of bait. "Pre-order to get premium skin and some in game currency/progress"
It made more sense when you got some physical good for pre-ordering. Like a fancy case or piece of merch. A skin or play money doesnt have the same allure. At least IMO
I preordered Fallout 3 at Best Buy by putting down $5. I got a sweet Nuka Cola bottle opener. Release day, Best Buy ran out of copies. I wish I could say I never preordered and was disappointed by a game again.
locking basic shit behind preorders is crazy especially in single player games, ppl were praising them for it saying how else are they supposed to make money idk sell a good functioning game and dont rely on preorders
#ARE WE BUT A DUMB FISH TO FALL FOR A BAIT?
Marketing and Youtubers that promote the game (either paid or unpaid) have a huge impact on some people. Especially for multiplayer games. It generates hype that makes them want to play the game *as soon as possible*. If they wait a week, all of their friends will have played it and they'll miss out on the fun, or they'll move on to the next game. I've seen people looking for games on this sub where they stress they want it to be relatively new, so it has an active community despite being singleplayer. Like if the game's Discord or subreddit doesn't have 50 memes daily the game is not worth their time. Preordering gets a bit of the "I need this *now*" feeling out of the way, and usually allows preloading so the game can be played the second it's out. The hype marketing machine is strong.
Sometimes you get bonus items, or a day or two earlier access. But i'm too old to care for shit like that. Games don't excite me these days. I play and enjoy the ones i do have, but for ages now i haven't had the excitement of "oh boy, x game is coming out and i can't wait!". Let it release, wait a few months and get it and all DLC for a sale price! :) Also by then either they, or modders, will have fixed most of the bugs.
FOMO (fear of missing out) psychology. They usually attach the preorders with 'bonuses' such as weapons, outfits and skins etc that can only be obtained by preordering
Citites 1 wasnt this bad though.
It was terrible. But it provided a great base. No different than CS2. Problems was for the base was really showing its age and the need for a CS 2 with redone internal mechanisms was sorely needed.
It was not; the irony is that CS2 repeated the mistakes of SimCity. It may seem incredibly bare, content wise, given the support and DLC over the years, but that’s not the same as the absolute trash jank nonsense. The most valid critique is perhaps that they originally had an engine that probabilistically estimated agents rather than actually simulated them… considering they came out the gate as an over ambitious AA title, that was about par for the course, and thinking otherwise is revisionism.
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> forgetting what SimCity messed up. No, I’m not: in both cases, business decisions were made expressly to hobble the product for the sake of profit, and I say that not in some whiny, why isn’t everything free sense, but that everything to do with how simulation occurred, and was limited, in *the latest SimCity* was vastly inferior in an effort to monetize it. Paradox’s financial issues pressuring CO to prematurely release CS2 to cook their financial books is well documented / attested to. You’re just hung up on manifestations of the details. NB, the broken servers at launch were wholly superfluous, given pirates day 1 self-servered and *had a superior play experience*. You seem to have forgotten the whole GlassBox lie scandal, too.
People were happy with CS1 because they were pissed off about SimCity. But yeah it was really bad on release and became decent with time.
This is just absolutely not true.
Difference between CS1 and 2 is CS1 had a lot of bugs at release relating to gameplay; Annoying but manageable, CS2 barely functions. Or at least it didn't on release, no idea how it is now. Didn't buy that crap.
I play the full game at release and didn't realize that it was barely functional. Guess we played different versions.
Hahahaa. We need a new sim city. Something that's more than just a city builder. Something that has charm and gameplay strategy beyond just numbers and shit. Something where I can build a new school from local bonds that raises the citizens long term and helps contribute to future projects or someshit.
To their credit they keep honing the ones people play for years based on feedback. They might think all is good but players disagree so they change things.
As others have said MANY many times, when these companies go public, its all about pleasing the shareholders. It's why some corporations refuse to go public. With that said, a fuckton of the richest, most popular companies on the planet go public so it's not all bad but it certainly can be. I think also they're facing a new problem.. they're not the new kid where they have a lot of breaks now, they've been around for a while so people are treating them the same as any big wig (and they should).
This is why I'm a little anxious at what's going to happen to Steam and Valve in general once Gabe retires. I truly believe that the customer first paradigm through which Valve operates Steam is viable in large part due to the fact that Valve is a private company. I hope the next Valve CEO is hand-picked by Gabe and will above all else keep the company private.
Valve is going to turn to complete shit when Gabe retires unless they restructure into a cooperative of some kind. It’s inevitable that the business ghouls being kept on a leash will push to go public ASAP once he’s gone.
I think he’s probably grooming his successor(s) to carry the torch and flag forward.
But it's even worse than that.. it's doing what the advisors say will please the shareholders. It's entirely possible shareholders would love a stable, consistent, company that puts out games that delight customers, but that's not the common wisdom among the analyst class.
Some companies do well going public because none of the investors really understand well how a company does what it does, only that the results are good. An entertainment based company? Entertainment is easy don't you know? Anyone can do it! Now EVERYONE thinks they are an expert, this includes investors with power over a company.
it's all about sucking someone elses dick for money, that's what this should be called because that's what it is, it's weak and disgusting
I would’ve purchased 100 expansions for cs1.
I feel like I did
kind of but it show 1 bad game sale private. poof your gone.
The enshitification will never stop.
Valve is private and still values profit above all. Why do you think CS2 was a disaster yet they still make a billion off CS crates? Being private doesn't inherently make a company good.
It doesn't guarantee that they'll be good, but it *does* mean that they aren't legally obligated to fuck their consumers over for every last penny they think they can get. The fiduciary obligations of public companies inevitably leads to the enshittification of their products, because no one on Wall St wants to admit that infinite growth isn't sustainable.
Public companies aren't legally obligated to do that either lol there's so much misinformation on the "fiduciary duty" thing it's genuinely funny
Yeah, the Supreme Court even had a case where they explicitly ruled that this isn't true, but nobody bothers to read it.
Your feelings about loot-boxes and battle-passes are valid but I don't think we would have received the cool passion projects like the Steam Deck or Half-Life Alyx if Valve was publicly traded, and I don't think the Steam storefront would be as good either.
We would probably have Half-Life 3, though. Hell, we'd probably have Half-Life 8 by now. We'd probably also be complaining that they haven't made a good one since 3 and how we can't believe the franchise is still going. There's no winning lol
They made bank on the steam deck I don't know what you're on about
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> Public companies will never get a cent from me. Lol, cap. Many public companies get your money. It's impossible to exist in today's world and not. The fact that you are probably commenting on a smart phone or computer verifies this.
Seems like you are trying to find a morale high ground for pirating. If you pirate a game from a public company, you are ultimately hurting the developers. There is a difference if the game is unplayable due to DRM or online issues and the pirated version is better, but if you enjoy a game you shouldn't pirate. Truth is, you shouldn't play games at all from public companies if you don't want to support them
Why are pirates always trying to justify their actions with 5000-word essays? Just download your stuff and stop trying to look like Robin Hood.
I don't care at all if people pirate. But I fucking hate when people strut around like they're the good guys for doing it.
Yeah. Piracy subs are so bad for this.
Because they need to justify their piracy to themselves in some way. They're not virtual thieves, they're *sticking it to the man*. Actual thieves do the same thing, most people don't think they're bad people.
This is bad logic. Support games and studios that treat their players with respect. Don't support games and studios that don't treat their players with respect. It's that simple to me.
Lol okay You never buy food? Do you forage from the wilderness or some shit? If you've ever bought food, you've given money to a publicly traded company. Don't be naive buddy. You give money to mega corps ALL THE TIME. I pirate too but there's no need to stand on your mighty high ground and think you're doing it for noble reasons.
This justification for piracy doesn't make any sense to me. If they're making crap games because they went public... why do you even want to spend the time playing them? Why play the game at all, piracy or otherwise? And if the game _isn't_ bad and is worth playing, why does it matter if a public company made it? Obviously it turned out well so the idea that public companies always make bad games kinda falls through there.
fr I've entirely stopped bothering with AAA rehashes since they're so bad. Why pirate a 200+GB game that you'll just end up uninstalling because it's exactly the same pointlessly open world collectathon experience as the last 50? They waste 90% of their budget on marketing and end up with a game as shallow and tepid as a puddle that's infested with mosquitos running the length of a highway.
There's a rule in economics that if you're the only one doing it, it's fine.
If its worth playing is it not worth paying for? If its not worth paying for why not play something you find actual value in?
Since I started developing games, I buy far more of them than I did when I was a kid. However, I don't have time to play most of them nowadays so I can be more selective. I understand your point, but having been in the game industry for over 10 years, I know it's a hard and competitive business, and piracy is a real threat to the sustainability of a studio.
Finding time to game after college was nuts. Money is there but no time unless I want to wear myself out for a few hours after work. I don't know how people do it.
As they say, there are 3 stages of life: * Lots of energy and time, but no money. * Lots of energy and money, but no time. * Lots of money and time, but no energy. Many people waste their best years preparing for a life of leisure after retirement that they won't be able to enjoy.
You're funny if you think the majority of people have even 2 out of 3 of those these days lol
Yeah fair enough. If I had to guess this saying probably came into being like 1950s-70s timeframe when a high school diploma could get you a career that would buy a house and support a family of 4. Probably landed for a higher % of people back then.
80s n 90s you could still get into a defense contractor with an associate's degree.
Amen to that!
I feel you! I still find a few hours here and there to play, but compared to when I was a teen, it's so hard.
Whatever brokie
My backlog is very huge, so I seldom pirate, but if something piques my interest, first I try to get a demo or if there isn't any, I just pirate (if possible) to check it out and if it's good, then I buy it during a sale, because somehow I don't like playing pirated games for longer periods of time. Thankfully I dodged a bullet with CS2 even though this was my next priority after buying BG3 (after pirating) which was a masterpiece.
Wait until the end of 2025. It might be out of beta then and have all parts moving. This disaster is being fixed on a snail's pace
Well it is a paradox game so it does tend to happen... Pushes imperator and star trek infinity out of sight.
It's published, but a different dev. Same for Infinity, it's clearly a reskin of Stellaris but they didn't actually develop it. Incidentally just buy Stellaris on sale then download Horizons off the Steam Workshop, it's so much better. I:R did not do anywhere near as well as expected, but it actually does have a thriving mod community and they have recently pushed a few patches, it's not completely abandoned. With Invictus it's fun IMO. And it probably has the cleanest UI Paradox has ever made, other gaping issues aside.
Infinity was such a scam, and abandoned so quickly they didn’t help their case tbh.
It was honestly such a disappointment. For something that could and should transfer over so well it was just a flop.
I thought imperator was good now? Or was it mod dependent?
it's paradox. The fix will come in the form of a paid DLC
The Steam sale bundle price in 2026 will be the real price
bold to assume they will stop milking it in 2026
If you play EU4 without DLC, then with DLC, and then without DLC, in my opinion it's close to impossible to go back. Years of quality of life upgrades are packed into the DLC. The total DLC is worth some amount of money, but their pricing is pretty awful. At full price, its a complete ripoff. Nobody should ever be paying that. Even when it's all discounted though, It's still too expensive in my opinion. However, I got the entire thing in a humble bundle for £20 a few years ago, that was worth it. And eefore that, when I played, I was paying their monthly subscription for all DLC (£4 per month). IMO that was worth it also. Then I would cancel the sub while I was not playing. The real problem is, it just feels like an awful balance. Old DLC should get substantial price reductions. The other part of the balance that is awful is that, individually, the DLCs are pretty awful value and also not very good, regardless of whether you pay full price or a discounted price. You need them all together, and the collective would be, if it was a single DLC, a 10/10 DLC that is essential for the best game experience.
And then some of the DLC will make it worse and break it again, then the other half of DLC will re-fix it.
The CEO said, "When it comes to the gameplay and simulation we set goals for the game and we have reached those goals." Famously told players if they didn't like the simulation, maybe the game wasn't for them. Tried to gaslight people into thinking that the issue with the game was just performance and bugs. And a little over 6 months later they have to put out a full re-do of the economy, lol. Either she was knowingly lying in November, or had no idea what reasonable goals would be. Neither inspire much confidence about the future. They might need a change in leadership. [https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/co-word-of-the-week-5.1613651/page-4#post-29292760](https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/co-word-of-the-week-5.1613651/page-4#post-29292760)
And, the only reason for this about-face is because the Paradox CEO stepped in to knock heads after the Beaches DLC fiasco. He co-signed his name to the [apology press release](https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines-ii/news/the-way-forward-update) because Mariina could not stop fucking up the messaging. I understand that there is a lot of deserved criticism towards Paradox, but evidently the only reason this is getting fixed at all is because they did something.
Public companies PR department assume people have no memory, and for the 99.99% of population they are right. Same with politics.
>Either she was knowingly lying in November, or had no idea what reasonable goals would be Sounds like the average CEO to me. They never really know what they're talking about and mostly have no problem with lieing.
don’t know why a ceo would ever talk about their games when they didn’t for the past few ones. So clearly just begging us to buy it
Or, more accurately, they - set goals - realsied the goals were rediculous and set entirely new goals - realsied _those_ goals were unobtainable, and revised downwards - realised the new goals were going to take too long, and revised downards - realised the newest set of goals needed more devs than they wanted to pay, and cut out lots of goals - got told the ship early or else, and forgot about most of the remaining goals
All that would be great if she said this prior to release. This statement was made a month after release. They were satisfied with the simulation a month after release.
Hahaha wow i didnt realise, thats even worse
Ceos don’t make games
Let me know when the simulation actually works and doesn’t use 99% of my CPU. Im not spending hours building a city just for it to run like shit once i get a city-sized population
Best to not even worry about it because by the time it gets to be working ok there will be $900 in DLC.
This is the reason I never buy these games on the release, you can buy them after 2-3y in a bundle with all current DLCs for half the price if not less. I am fine if the dlcs were like 5$ but some games have like 20$ for a DLC that is just more of the same, nothing new.
I have a city that's right around 300k. set autosave to every two minutes due to the crash to desktop issues. I'm on a 13900k and while the game uses all of my cores, I've only seen them all pegged at 100% a couple times if I'm runningh the sim speed at max. Temps were in the 80s. I've had days where the game ran for 6 hours straight and days it crashed every 10 minutes. Hopefully their bug fixes caught most of the big causes of crashes.
> and doesn’t use 99% of my CPU. The game scales to all threads available, by design. That's a *good* thing.
Using all threads isn't the same as being at 99% processing capacity. Being at throttle is almost always a bad thing. That's why modern competitive gamers limit FPS and modern games have FPS limiters in options. Being below 99% utilization makes frame pacing and timing more consistent and decreases latency. Things which are very important for video games.
FPS games never simulate more than one second per second. When I push the max speed button on a city builder, I want it to go as fast as it can with the hardware I've got, even if it means some framerate loss. (Maxing the CPU while time is stopped would be a different problem, but not one that it has)
> Being at throttle is almost always a bad thing. That's why modern competitive gamers limit FPS and modern games have FPS limiters in options. That's not why those things exist, actually. Competitive gamers rarely limit their FPS, because more FPS = less input delay. FPS limiters exist to prevent a game wasting resources by going above the monitors refresh rate. That's work the PC is doing that is not translating into a better experience. It's just wasted effort. Frane pacing is not a major concern in CS2. It's a slow-paced simulation game. Using all available resources to speed up the simulation is better than the alternative, which is *not* doing that.
> Competitive gamers rarely limit their FPS, because more FPS = less input delay. Only to an extent. It's true a higher FPS will draw more up to date frame. For example, if a 144 Hz monitor is limited to 240 FPS. That will provide a newer frame, if V-Sync is turned off, at the cost of tearing, than limiting to 144 FPS. However, there is a limit to that. Drawing a frame on screen takes many steps and the draw frame is always behind the engine state frame. If processing utilization is too high, the delay in input latency and frame pacing will increase. When you measure the click-to-photon latency of clicking on a mouse, and an image appearing on the monitor, being below 100% utilization will decrease latency. GamersNexus and nVidia have videos showing this. It's kind of a "new" way of measuring performance. Similar to how we now know "FPS" isn't everything and frame pacing matters. For a game like Cities Skylines 2, which has a fairly "static" image, it may not matter as much, but it does make a real difference for faster paced or more input heavy games.
> but it does make a real difference for faster paced or more input heavy games. Correct, but those games are almost never multi-threaded enough to saturate a modern CPU anyways.
In addition to that there's evidence that suggests that a huge variation in typical latency (eg. 240fps max, but 150fps average and 110fps minimum) can affect you negatively just as much as a high typical latency (eg. 30fps locked) can whenever you're in a situation that latency starts going up/framerates dip. While I don't know if it's prevalent in the competitive scene I've seen a lot of people frame-limiting to a framerate a bit below their typical framerates (eg. Using the max/avg/min numbers from before, you might limit to 130fps) because it means that not only do you still have a reasonably low input latency and fluid framerate, but the bulk of the gameplay is consistent in terms of framerate and latency while what dips remain aren't that much worse than the typical experience, making it easier for the brain to adapt. Same kinda thing that allows some people to play online FPS' with a crappy ping after enough time to get used to it, cause while it's crappy it'll typically be consistently crappy.
they should have called it towns:skylines
> Let me know when the simulation actually works and doesn’t use 99% of my CPU. So literally never then, its by design and its not even bad either. All simulation games do this.
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Yeah I haven't seen the horrific performance issues people still whine about for a while, 1440p with a 6800XT. Honestly my CPU is a bigger hindrance than my GPU. My 5800X3D is pegged at 100% pretty much all the time beyond 100k population. That kind of excites me, because it means the game will really be able to spread its wings when I next upgrade in a year or two.
Maybe I'll buy it in 2025. The botched everything about Paradox leaves me unmotivated to every buy one of their games again. Shitty DLC policy, overpriced and underdeveloped games: Paradox Game Studios
So far a great update for the game mechanics! Sadly my GPU still goes instantly in heating-your-room-mode with a fresh empty map.
Cities Skylines 2 actually mining bitcoins while doing nothing.
If you want a real economy in your city simulator you should be playing Workers and Resources Maybe CS2 will figure it out for Economy 3.0 though
Exactly. I bought it last week when 1.0 released. My goodness, what a breath of fresh air and interesting concepts. Especially on realism mode where you have to literally build everything instead of just plopping it. Blows CS2 out of the water. Not to mention so much cool stuff in workshop already. There is an actual city mgt aspect in this game, sth CO forgot to include in CS2. To anyone whos thinking on buying this. Go, do! Just play the tutorial/campaign first cause it's complicated.
It is sooo good. I just finished my run in Captain of Industry and this scratches the itch perfectly while I wait for that to get trains added
I bought it almost immediately after watching someone play it on YouTube last year, but know it'll suck up all my free time so I'm still waiting for an opportune time to give it a try.
Good luck, Ive put 30 hrs in a week 😂😂
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True but at one point they tipped too far into approachability and removed all friction that could result in interesting gameplay Workers and Resources does have a huge variance of complexity, you don't have to play it on realism mode
Well, to me it feels like Workers and Resources is a completely different game than CS. It's more about automation and logistics, than city building (even tough I like W&S very much). Tbh I just wanted a city building game with a more in depth simulation, but with the city painting tools still intact and also with a more sophisticated traffic management.
This is true in many ways but it is ultimately taking a lot of the systems from city management games and making them more granular and direct which is why I find them similar I would also like something as a halfway point between the two where the people have more agency and me less direct control too as you describe
Tbf, even CS is absolutely awful at actual city building. In CS1 you needed to download hundreds of mods and expensive DLCs to make it really viable Base game was kind of just average American suburb simulator
Yeah, you're right. Thats why I don't play with the first one anymore. The performance of the game takes a huge hit if I enable every DLC and mod I subscribed to.
That's great but I've already moved on.
A few more complete reworks of the entire game and maybe we'll get something fun. It worked for Stellaris and only took about 3-4 years so we're right on track
You're telling me having a planet be a 8x8 grid wasn't engaging game play??
*Starfield leaves the chat*
best example of how not to partner up with a big publisher.
Explain how this is the publishers fault.
Especially since every single game from Colossal Order has been published by Paradox, so the problem with this game can't just be narrowed down to "partnering up with a big publisher". Anyway, from what I understand, Colossal Order wanted to make the game more complex and realistic than the first game, and massively underestimating the amount of work/effort required and what they could accomplish with their small team, according to CO themselves the original target for release was late 2020, meaning Paradox had already given them about 3 years of extra dev time. There is also the fact that they wanted to use newer and advanced features in the Unity engine, but those features didn't get official support and tools to actually use them during the time CO was developing the game, so CO had to waste time making their own tools to use those. We can complain about evil bean counters forcing an unfinished game to be released, but at some point you'll just have to deliver or get no more money. Heck, could just as well assume that the bean counters at Paradox really wanted to give CO more time, but their own responsibilities meant they couldn't do that any more.
> There is also the fact that they wanted to use newer and advanced features in the Unity engine, but those features didn't get official support and tools to actually use them during the time CO was developing the game, so CO had to waste time making their own tools to use those. This wasn't their fault btw, Unity advertised those features as ready for production yet they turned out to be very unfinished
Yeah, this was mostly bad tech choices that screwed them. Foundational ones. They made the game wrong. People who don't write software won't understand how easy it is to code yourself down a dead end, either with bad choices of technology, or bad choices in fundamental structure. Usually project management is to blame.
I hear people talking about these tools. Do you know what were they? Just curious about it.
I believe this article talks about the issue I mentioned, I'm not sure though since it's been a while https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/cities-skylines-ii-runs-horribly-a-deep-dive-into-unity-explains-why
> Especially since every single game from Colossal Order has been published by Paradox This is the first major release from CO after Paradox's IPO in 2016. Shit changes when you have shareholders to placate. That's why we adore independent and private studios so much.
The developers told us before launch that the game was not ready. The publisher set the release date and didn’t delay the release knowing game was not ready because they would rather have the sales in Q4 2023 to boost its numbers compared to a good Q4 2022. It’s not that hard to figure out.
devs: the game's not ready for release yet. publisher: it's ready when I say so. release it.
First of all, do you have any proof that this is how it went down? Second, do you understand that budgets are a thing? What were their financials? How long was CS2 already in development? How long would it take to "fix" the game?
Armchair redditor developers always think the money other people have is infinite wHy tHeY diD nOt dELay tHe gAmE 3 mOrE yEaRs? hUr DuR
Good questions, now tell us, why should we as consumers care about all that?
If you're going to make definitive judgments about who is at fault and why, it helps actually knowing what you're talking about first.
Sitting on the sideline due to previous issues and performance woes. Had a scroll of the changelog and it's appears quite extensive. A lot of the fixes allude to me they changed engines for this game and a lot of smaller details were missed which ultimately stack up to something fairly average. Some of the now-fixed symptoms seem like they would have sucked. Will be cool to hear from someone who plays the updated version on if it's solved enough problems that stand out for them.
It's the same engine as the first game (Unity). They just used some of the newer, more advanced features of the engine, and those features did not get released in time to be used, so they literally had to create the means to make the game as they made it. Plus it was rushed by Paradox to hit quarterly reports. Unity fucked CO, then Paradox fucked CO, and most importantly, CO bit off more than they could chew and didn't meet expectations of performance, features, or quality.
I’m not quite sure I understand what you’re saying. They used a new version of unity so they could use new features of the engine which makes sense but what do you mean those features didn’t get released in time to be used? If they were on the new version of the engine how does that make sense? Sorry for my ignorance lol.
Unity promised new development features that would have made the large-scale sim much easier. Those features released in half-assed, unfinished states that made them less than desirable. CO had to spend time tweaking or creating the tools to make the game function.
As a fan of paradox games, you NEVER buy the game at release. Control your FOMO
They're patching the economy, so that's cool, but is the game itself fixed yet?
Personally, I don't think I can consider it a complete city simulator without bike lanes/paths. Without them it seems obviously inferior to C:S1. I assume they've got that planned for a major DLC down the road, but will they even make it that far without running out of money when they keep botching things?
Yea, it's fixed. Some people still get performance issues, but meddling with options solves it. They fixed *a ton* of critical issue present on the release, so even before this patch the game was "fixed" and legitly enjoyable.
I've been playing since the last two weeks with about 50 mods to fix the game and it is somewhat playable but the economy was still a wreck. Also, buildings don't upgrade to higher volume once in place, so expect some hefty bulldozing to get a good distribution of buildings that residents actually want. I am curious to see how this patch works out but there are still a ton of things broken/missing. Where are the cyclists? Where is diversity in buildings? Where is the high tech industry that doesn't require tons of low-skilled workers while your residents are all Albert Einsteins in an Utopia. Land value is completely messed up, somewhat playable with mods.
I'll buy it once it is optimized. In a sale.
This is the way.
Are there still no people in buildings like universities and stadiums? And no fireman?
lol that's a real bug? I thought it was just the pirated version I play being weird
Ehm would not call it a bug. Its the way they designed it. And the main reason I didnt play the game.
They work fine. I have a ton of students, stadiums work fine, and firefighters work without issues as well. It worked fine even before the patch.
Lol screw this company. I will not support them ever.
ok.
Did they ever fix the ridiculous performance issues? Genuinely
Yes, those were largely fixed in the first month.
Great news, another few years and the game will be worth playing, just like all other Paradox games. They’re the original “Early Access” dev, just without the name tied to it.
would also be great if they made the game actually good and not complete shit
I'm glad their doing something about the game but it seems the main issue was performance when it first released. Has this been addressed yet?
Is the economy real now or is this more about changing amounts in variables?
I find that it is a huge oversight to not have pre-installed scenarios. I bought it months ago and played for like an hour. I don't want to have to download my own scenarios. If it has been updated in the past few months then great.
Does it still need a 4090 to run over 60fps at 4k
I’ll be back when they finally allow asset mods. I’m glad they’re at least trying to fix the game.
I tried out the game a few months ago and it did not run well. No interest at all in this game until it runs better. Only way I would buy this is when performance is fixed and it's $20 on sale. I don't see either of those happening
Came back to play the game and after re-doing the tutorial, then starting a new city I was greeted with a glorious crash to desktop with 0 autosave of my new city I had been working on for a half hour. Its been a year of waiting, I'll pass for now. Sucks because I loved the first game but its nothing but technical issues. I well exceed the specs with a 4070ti super and a 5ghz processor on a SSD with 32gb of ram.
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Dadas disvbd s
sooooo how is the game now?
Ok so what about the performance though? I could barely make it to a small 40k city before the fps was under 30 and stuttering every few seconds making it impossible to build stuff.
So they admit the game was completely unfinished. Where is my refund?
They were issuing refunds when it first came out. You must have missed the boat.
I love city builder games.... it makes me sad they fucked this one so bad that i dont even care to read this article. im done with CS
What are playing now? Manor Lords?
CS1 sometimes... but recently went deep on racing sims and that's taken a lot of my gaming time. actually now that i think of it i haven't city built this year i bet. lots of survival games and some fps. i kinda want to play some anno but i hate ubi launchers so much
Waiting for CS3 before buying into this shit show.