I have some things I need to say about Cities Skylines 2
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- Опубліковано 29 вер 2024
- This is not a video bashing the devs or the publishers or the game, but some things that I think need to change to make the game better. I honestly hope this helps...
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*** Please keep your comments respectful, that's all I ask ***
hi biffa, my names tom I'm in secondary school, I really like your videos. I have a small to mid size city, it needs beautification and the is high tax nearly everywhere even though residential is at 0%. I would really like if you could maybe look at my city?
Coffee is better than tea
I just got the game a couple weeks ago now that performance seems a bit more optimized. Some good things about CS2 I've noticed in my short time:
-Traffic seems much more balanced. I have only had a few traffic issues to address.
-Cargo and public transport seems much more balanced, trains, lorries, busses, subways seem much more realistic and contribute to traffic.
I agree there's something 'missing' from the game but overall I've had a good time so far but worry it's going to get stale after I start my next city.
Thank you, I've been waiting for this video
You did a good job trying to stay cheerful about this game for a long time. I was already hating on it like a proper hater before it even came out!😅
You know it’s serious when Biffa doesn’t stop to take a sip of tea for 37 minutes straight.
Also, with the British politeness, getting to this level of criticism it must be bad
I thought about that every time his cup showed up 🤣
He takes it through an IV bag now.
Saw this comment before the video even started. I guess I'm in for something.
My mouth dried out just listening to him
When you asked in Discord if you should play CS1 again, I said something along the lines of
"Yes, please, because it seems that CS2 isn't much fun for you, and therefore we aren't enjoying it so much either. Whereas, in CS1 you are free... almost everything you want is there"
That is my answer to this video too. Bring back the fun, Colossal Order/Paradox. All cities look the same and I just don't feel inspired.
I still watch all the creators I have for the last few years but the only ones I actually pay attention to closely for the whole video at the CS1 creators. CPP keeps me watching for the story building he does, but the actual gameplay doesn't do much. Biffa's stuff has been about the design and layout and the fun and joy of building, but there hasn't been much of that for a bit because of, as he says, the sameness of it all. Sadly, most don't put CS1 up because it gets low views now, which is why I steadfastly support Overcharged Egg so much these days because we get both modded and vanilla. And they're varied and interesting and unique.
Still holding out hope for good CS2 someday but CS1 is where city building is these days.
Agreed. Maybe in a few years when the game is sorted out, has some expansions and mods. Until then its hard to beat the original.
I absolutely love Cities Skylines 1. I am one of the remaining players who loads it up as if it has just released.
@@iguiste23 Not few. CS1 has more players on Steam than CS2 since the end of December.
I have to agree on this one, if you want to keep the CS2 content I'm ok with that but I'd love to see some CS1 content as well. I miss the real game.
My one request on top of everything else said so far here: For the love of Chirper, FIX THE BUILDING SCALE. How is a primary school the size of 2 factories?! Pick a scale AND STICK TO IT THROUGHOUT.
whats even worse, is that making things 'to scale' was one of the things they promised in CS2
In my experience an elementary school can absolutely be the size of a factory or machine shop
@@user-vp9lc9up6v really depends on the student count and type of factory, sure.
Great commentary Biffa, spot on! I like the constructive attitude :-)
Thank you kindly X, much appreciated 👍👍
Yo Xisuma is here. That's cool. Loved the first hermitcraft season 10 episode by the way 😀
@@michadomeracki5910 Yeah, right... I think deleting unconstructive criticism of the game and himself for playing it (aka something along the lines of "Why are you playing this garbage and encouraging those shitty devs?") is rather different than "don't criticise him or you get banned"...
Hey xisuma, if cities skylines 2 has multiplayer you gotta play it with biffa and make a city together
The really sad thing is if you look at the Steam player counts, CS1's player count collapsed upon the release of CS2 (from 32,000 players to 10,000 players), and many of those players probably moved to CS2, but CS2's numbers are now even lower than CS1 (9,000). Meaning that 11,000 people have been so burned by CS2 they've stopped playing CS1 as well.
That's me
Me
Were still here were just waiting for the new one to get fixed and for the content. I deleted the game and I won't reinstall it until its ready. Honestly I think the game needs another few years. Luckily there's plenty of fantastic games to play at the moment.
That’s me. I don’t even really watch the UA-camr shills anymore. Same scum as CAs total war
Me. I get miffed when I get let down by developers and it sours my relationship with the game (and studio) forever.
I still haven't forgotten what you did, Bethesda!! (Shakes fist)
The game doesn't matter, you can do what ever you want will always reach the same goals. I felt this at the start I thought was going to change but now it looks like they are throwing the towel
vc aqui
what?
@@tomaka121 buttbutt mcfutt booty juice from concentrate
I've got less than 20 hours in cities 2 and even though I've barely touched it since its launch I still have it installed because I still have some tiny shred of hope that CO can still turn this around and fulfill the promises they made. I just hope the fan trust hasn't been completely burned to the ground cause I want to see this game flourish.
Sorry but it probably will never be fixed to the level of if they just waited longer to fully cook it. This is the sad state of the gaming industry right now.
yeah in like 2 more years, sadly
I’m with you brother, I’ve set my alarm clock for next year
@@WarbandGames YOu're right it probably will never reach the desired level,but that's because CO is so small that this time around I don't think they are up to what they tried to do.
Same here. I've shelved it and can only hope by the fall of 2024 it's where it should've been at launch.
I've gone back to CS1. When my CS2 city reached a population of 170K, it literally ground to a halt. It maxed out my CPU to the point where my PC became an expensive space heater.
Seen the Linus Tech Tips Vid?
It will take and use 64 cores.
I have as well. Was back on CS1 yesterday actually. It was much more fun. I think city skylines 1 needed like a 2.0 update of the same game. I don't know better graphics and more citizen units expanded map but the same city skylines 1 just like a big update. Why they went for a whole new game and start from square one and rip out everything that we were used to and the thousands of things that were made for it. It just makes no sense. I'll try CS2 again after a few more updates. CS1 all the way for me right now.
I stuck with CS 1 until last weekend when my frame-rate dropped to barely 20fps, It used to be 40-45 but I'm wondering if the lack of support for CS1 has given it a steep creep towards obsolescence as I'm using steam on linux. Other games haven't deteriorated like CS1. Well, good luck. I'm missing my city a lot already.
IMO, I think that there is too much in the base game, and none of it works properly. We didn't need disasters, seasons and industries that have no impact. We needed a balanced city builder where things mattered and we can actually place a rock...
Imagine having a city of over 100,000 people and not a single one rides a bike 😂
CO: oh well, we can make the gamers pay for that later
@EATHinNZ or be like that one person who decided to be an ass and say "well if you don't like the game then it just isn't for you" and only apologized cause they got backlash for it. They weren't sorry they said it. They're sorry cause everybody called them out on it
Absolutely not, it already exist, they needed to make the game evolve and innovate, seasons were a nice thing, industries too, the problem is much more the lack of skill of the devs and the too small team working on the project.
I can appreciate what you're saying here, but every time I see a sequel that cuts back some of what DLC added to the previous game there's tons of complaints about it. Paradox in particular gets a lot of this. I don't think it's necessarily fair (especially when you're considering games that got years and years of DLC and patching), but it is what it is.
I think you need and deserved to have all of those things (working obviously) for the price they ask for the game. You are basically saying "I want to pay more for less". I don't understand how people can stomach losing so much content that we had in CS1. Do you all happily pay for DLCs? I just can't do it.
My constructive criticism:
- Unlink low, medium and high density to type of citizen. Just like in SimCity 4, low, medium and high can be poor, middle or rich.
- Radio annoucements have to be linked to variables of the city no random.
- Chirpers should have colour when they are important, like lack of water.
To your first point, that's just like in real life!
Simcity 4 really is the blueprint, that the sims 2 and the sims 3 were the last good games ea released unfortunately.
cs2 without trafic manager as a part of the game is INSANE to me, after all those years of cs1 gameplay shown game is handicapped without it..
Also another thing. A tool i used in cities one every time. The Paths tool in cities one showing you where stuff is going that takes this piece of road or goes through this district. WHERE IS THAT ? i dont want to click on every single agents destination. less features is always a great idea.
Exactly! One of my most used tools when fixing traffic or planning effective and efficient public transport.
Because transports does not matter. The vehicle can just randomly despawn in a free and open roundabout and the goods just teleport to their destination.
@@Merecir Exactly, which means traffic jams don't matter at all, you can just let them pile up and they resolve with no negative effects. Which makes road planning or design have zero effect and makes no difference. Which mean every other part of the layout of your city just does not matter. At all. Perfect city vs. haphazard wreck of a city = same exact city in CS2. Both will keep on growing at same rate and make tons of money....again making the budget not matter at all. Sheesh....
One of the things I can think of is the "dynamic pathfinding" where they weren't able to find a way to illustrate it properly. But yeah I agree, what's the point if there is traffic, then said traffic just... Vanishes?
Biffa you are the expert. It stings and hurts to hear you unhappy with a game. H
You are is the reason I got CS1 and i still enjoy the game. So, its hurts to hear you upset with this game. But i will wait for you to tell me its ready!
14:15 about power production, i d like the other towns to have a variable limit of the amount of energy you can import and export. It could be a completely random variation, which would push you to be more autonomous in this regard.
TPME, network extension mods (whichever type you choose to use, not just NE2) and Move It are 1000% essential to play the game. Why none of this was included in the base CS2 game is beyond me.
Assets and mods should have been priority 1 since they hyped it so hard before launch. CS:2 launched about 18 months early in my opinion. There are so many promised features that are still not in the game, features that shouldn't be done via paid DLC, but are essential to gameplay.
CS:2's launch and subsequent patches were underwhelming at best, as they really didn't appear to try fixing the biggest things. I still play it here and there, but it's still installed, hoping that it gets fixed and becomes bigger than it's predecessor.
so true, if the majority of the player base of cs1 download a mod to play the game - include it in the cs2 as part of the base game! it blows my mind they they didn't mine CS1 mods for all the awesomeness
They kinda did have Move It, since you can move buildings (for money, as it should) and you can also "adjust" roads (although it isn't very intuitive). And they also kinda had TM:PE and others. It's just most of them feel like pared down knock offs.
For me, there are more essential mods:
Find It 2, Network Anarchy, Prop Line Tool, Forest Brush Revisited, RICO Revisited, Node Controller, Intersection Marking Tool, Prop Control, Tree Control, BOB, Customize It Extended.
I use these basically every time I play CS1.
And of course my trusted 13000 workshop assets (although to be fair I probably use only 3000, the rest came in "packs" or just subscribed out of greed)
The funny thing is that there is a city builder that does the opposite in regards to your issues with CS2. Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic has very hardcore winters (if you mismanage heating and snow plowing, your republic may literally go extinct), detailed and micromanagement-heavy production chains, and an interesting economic simulation. In the game you build a communist system, so you don't pay your workers any salaries (so you could say the tax is 100%), but you must provide them with all necessities (and some luxuries, if you want them to be loyal to you and not escape) for free. Despite the lack of an internal market, you still need to trade with foreign countries to get resources that you lack. The world market is affected by inflation, random events and your actions (if you overexport a commodity, its price goes down as supply starts to outpace demand, so you need a somewhat diversified economy).
In general, while the depth of mechanics in CS2 is underwhelming, in WRSR it's overwhelming :)
My biggest issue is the broken simulation. The more I played the more I realized nothing I did really mattered all that much. In my first city, I went from struggling to stay positive to making millions for no apparent reason. Not sure what I did. Then I noticed import/export from cargo terminals seems to not function at all. Cargo piles up from my industries, but nothing leaves. If I have local cargo routes those move cargo for intracity transport. Just no exports. Nobody goes to high school, but I can not build enough elementary schools. Mail is totally borked. As long as there is coverage, people are happy, but it just piles up in post offices and the big sorting terminal thing never gets any mail. It just sits there costing money.
The issues just keep going and going. The detailing stuff will come, especially with mods. But if the simulation is not working, it really does not matter. Unless you are basically wanting to build digital model cities to look at. It is great for that, right now. But the simulation side of the game seems nonexistent. I really hope they can get this game sorted out. I really liked the first one. And I am willing to give it time. I just hope they can do it.
Your community post about still playing CS1 made me so happy! Haven't watched many cities videos since everyone switch to 2 for those exact reason. Can't wait for the cities 1 videos
I have a cool idea for later in development: civil disobedience/disruption. Like protest, bugleries and other crimes, stuff like that. It seem like it be cool.
Biffa, I applaud your tenacity and communication and constant reaffirmation of your objective for CS2 to be the best builder ever. This sort of video is no fun to make, especially for someone so obviously positively oriented. Very nicely done. Hopefully the folks at CO and Paradox receive it in the spirit it is intended.
Thankyou. Yes it was a tough decision to make the video and I do hope it's received as intended and makes a difference 👍
Really appreciate this whole video and the whole message.
I was super hype for CS2, I bought the game on day 1, I put in nearly 50+ hours into the game (not a lot, but definitely more than most). I started and ended dozens of cities as I learned the new mechanics and wanted to optimize things better and get a better road layout and a better location of my services and a better bus system and maybe make better transit connections to my neighbors and so on.
But at a certain point, it just became more frustrating to play then actually fun. If I don't want my citizens to complain about rent I have to manually zone. The RIC bars are different from every RIC bar in every other city sim in that if you slam em to 0 then you just over produce. Sure that can be seen as me not fully getting how CS2 works, but CS2 is building off of CS1 and all the Simcities that came before it. All of which operated on your RIC bars being at 0 being a good thing. It just seems odd to disregard that and try and shake the boat on something so fundamental to the city sim genre. I get that it gives me more freedom, but I also feel punished if I do try and get the RIC bars to 0, which is just an odd game mechanic to have.
I also started just getting really frustrated by rush hour traffic. I get that rush hour is going to have more cars, and I like that challenge, but at a certain point it just gets frustrating to try and build road systems without good road tools. I had to make very short 1 lane highways to get dedicated turn lanes, and even that took up a lot of space, and I couldn't customize my traffic lights to encourage one part of traffic to have higher priority over another. Or even lanes that switch direction with rush hour (something that many cities have). If we are going to have this more interesting traffic sim, then there should be much better options to have more customization. I should be able to drive to and from my work, and be able to emulate 90% of the intersections I come across in game. As is, I'd maybe be able to do 50% because there isn't dedicated turn lanes, or divided lanes, or dedicated right turns, or split traffic lights, etc.
Overall, I really want this game to be good. I loved CS1, and when I saw news about CS2, I was following all the dev diary updates, and I was getting so hyped up for the whole game, but then it just wasn't as good as I was expecting it to be, and that's a real shame. I really hope the devs for CS2 can start turning things around because if they can, then this game can easily be one of the best city sims ever made. If they instead try and bury their heads in the sand and wait for players to come around to the game as is, or after they put in paid DLC, then it is just going to end up being something lesser than it could be.
I think one of the things Cities 2 is struggling with is lack of feedback to the player, there are those apparent deep systems working in the background but there is no feedback telling players that they are working. I’ve only played the game for about 4hrs, but I felt like those deep system did not work.
I've been enjoying your content for many years and, while I don't normally preorder games, I preordered CS2 as a sign of support for your work.
I'm really glad you made this video to share your thoughts. On the technical side, I agree that getting official mod support to work should be way up on the list of priorities. Modders will make a lot of things better.
But I really appreciated your final point on humility. I was confident they'd fix things until that 1 message saying the game was the way they wanted it and if people weren't happy then the game wasn't for them. I know that person since apologised, but that made me lose faith. I do still hope they turn it around, but until then I'm still enjoying your content!
Wish we could have more control over zoning. Like specify where warehousing is. Where different types of industries can build or not to build. Be able to decide if a gas station or a restaurant or a grocery stores in to a certain location with out having to play whack a mole. We can control housing pretty good with making different sized lots and with different densities. And Yes I miss the Traffic manager soooo much. I also have been playing CS1 and CS2 from close to the beginning. I am not a youtuber but I do try all these challenges they put out just to not be bored with the game. Also would be nice if the mayor would receive requests from citizens/business on where they would like to have a certain business built. So then the mayor can make citizens happier.
The reason for the success of CS1 is the Steam Worksop, plain and simple. Especially for a game like a city builder. It engages the community, people have created many assets, mods, maps all of which have massively helped the iron out things like bugs and improved the game far beyond its original release. The community has the resource to exhaustively test and improve the game. I also believe CS2 tries to do much all at once. There are aspects in the game which I'm not really interested in - such as following people through their lifespan etc and why does it always have to be snowy in Winter? Just little annoyances like that, but I do appreciate that some people might like that sort of thing. I tried giving CS2 another try over the weekend but it just doesn't cut it unfortunately.
By the way, I should say that I don't hate CS2, I think that it just has some way to go to top CS1, if it ever does
Modding for me too. I can overlook the rows and rows of same houses. I can over look the lack of traffic management like the traffic mod gave us. I can overlook an inclusion of detailing tools and assets. The base CS2 did give us some more features not present in the base CS1 game. However, they took away the one greatest thing that overcomes the studios lack of resources to give us all these great things themselves, mods.
I understand, they want to give the wonderful gift of mods to their console players too. I can't blame them for that since I enjoy it so damn much myself. I understand, its a massive task when they are already taking on the massive task of a new release title. I do wonder though if this should be on CO's shoulders alone and why its not a Paradox task since all their titles seem like they would benefit from a modding platform like this. But CO has to be understanding too. Understanding that what made their game great for so many of us was the ease of access to so many community created fixes and assets that make the game a delight to engage in.
hm the workshop helped but CS1 was also the best city builder at the time. Or can you mention a better game? Now that CS1 with mods is out there, CS2 has to be better.
On a related note-bad console ports also kinda give me this same thing. I’ve had so many games I loved playing on PC that I was excited to finally get to play on console with friends, and the controls were so bad and the bugs just made it unplayable, and I ended up even leaving the games behind on PC due to the bad experience.
The most important thing about game development is making sure the user experience is as smooth and friendly as possible. The harder it is to get into the game, the less likely people are to play it, even if it’s legitimately a good game beneath the surface.
The “funny” thing is that they have now made us wait two months for a patch (while this early access build is out since 4 months) and announced that there will only be one Bugifx/Performance patch soon and that other small patches will only come as part of new DLCs, as in CS:1.
So they have literally confirmed that the state of the game will hardly change anymore.
All we can do is bury CS:2.
Kinda on players tho, I bought a total of 3 DLCs before I realised it'd end up being endless and this exact scenario would happen. It's the worst but it is what it is.
Yeah im not paying extra to have the game fixed.
DLCs should add new features not fix a broken base game you already paid for.
Thank god for UA-cam and the folks that tested this game so I didn’t have to buy it. Cheers! 🎉
@UnitedAirlines4Life - Yeah, same for me too! I was buzzed when I watched the trailer for the game, and had intended on buying it, then I started watching UA-cam vids from those who had bought it on pre-release, and my excited expectations was stamped on like some massive asteroid had dropped on me, and I felt so disappointed when the news of the game was released with a ton of bugs and gameplay issues!
I was thanking myself that I didn't pay the money for a game that was released in such a disgraceful way
Underdeveloped sequels that devs launch with a "we'll fix it later" mentality is a ever more common theme in the game industry that's not appreciated by players. Kerbal Space Program 2, I'm looking at you. On the positive side, C:S 2 was less of a disaster (at least it was playable at launch) than that.
Totally, I'm a day 1 player of KSP2 and it was heartbreaking, this was deja vu, I just hoping for a "no man's sky"-esque recovery from both KSP2 and CS:2
This is a knock-on effect from the pandemic. The game industry made tons of money and had a large influx of investment from investors looking for growing areas of the economy during the pandemic. This lead to developers and publishers using that influx of cash to make bigger games or expand the scope of their existing in-development titles as well as over-hire on developers. But as the pandemic gaming boom died down and the economy became more uncertain, investors either wanted out or wanted to start seeing returns which put pressure on publishers to release games sooner or cut-back on spending through other means (i.e. layoffs) to keep revenue and profit high.
Now in 2024 with it being an election year in the US and continually rising world-wide tensions, investors don't want to invest as much in industries they feel are "risky" pending a potential recession or economic downturn. This puts publishers in a tough spot of having these massive titles started during the pandemic with larger teams than before, but quickly dwindling funding to continue development and pay the bills. Hence developers are pushed to release games regardless of the state it's in as delays and extended development would be too costly.
This isn't necessarily "publishers and investors bad, game devs good"; it's the developers job to manage project scope and set appropriate expectations, but they over-hyped their announcement and under-delivered on release.
@@chackiejan3353 A natural and foreseeable evolution completely without regard to pandemics, politics or the economy. It was a natural evolution that developers would push out unfinished products once post-release updates became commonplace.
One can only argue that there may have been an acceleration, but "money in our pockets today" versus later was always going to win out.
@@David-qi1ys I'm just stating what I know from being in the industry and talking to others about why leadership from publishers and developers made the decisions they did over the last few years. Developers aren't dumb, they know releasing unfinished products kills their credibility and hurts sales, but publishers also know that investors are bearish on the game industry need to keep them confident. The pandemic situation is why the industry has faced unprecedented boom followed by unprecedented layoffs; it is also a major driving factor in developers over-scoping their titles earlier in development making it harder on themselves down the line as they get close to release.
@@chackiejan3353 Isn't this a case where a grandiose scope was the only way forward though? It certainly doesn't help that once things started moving again, the powers at play can't adjust for the boots to actually do their do.
My biggest complaint about this game is that anything you do in this game has no meaning because you simply can not fail. I made a city expecting to restart about 2 or 3 times until I understood how to start a city on my own. I started a city, everything was going well a little bit too well to be honest and then about 3 hours in the people started complaining about high rent and I did try to fix it because in CS1 icons usually means a bad sign so I expected the same thing to occur. I couldn't fix it but I wasn't being punished for it my population was going up, I was currently Town 7, my money was going down but not anywhere quick enough for it to even matter so I decided to just build out as many residentials as I could with no plan or prep just to see what would happen. About 1 hour later of random plopping, I managed to reach level 8 money going up, pop going up and all I did was raise the taxes to a rediculous % and whilst the same problems still existed my city was still growing.
That's when I checked out of the game. I haven't played the game for 3 months now and to be honest I don't even have the game installed now which is sad. I had 4 games pop up with high expectations and it sucks that CS2 is another one of those games that couldn't get me to stay.
Some solutions I could try suggesting too;
- Golden yellow cursor for when the slow begins. It contrasts well with green too. Could have a custom cursor colour with an option for seasonal change.
- Like in the CS1 winter dlc, boiler buildings for water pipes and snow plowing seasonal services for maps that get those cold temperatures. Plowing assets could be adapted to clearing blown sand or hordes of tumbleweeds on desert maps.
- A difficulty toggle. Now's state would be normal, then can have an easy mode for people not good at games, then a hard mode for people looking for a challenge. Also a custom difficulty selector which could let you play an extreme mode, which could also be an opportunity for an interesting youtube city build series that is focused on pro skills rather than mod-based customisation and detail.
- Separate specific industries into collection, and zoned production for those specific industries. Production zones build according to the city's supply. Definitely doesn't have the complexity of what an industry DLC would include, but has that important element of interaction.
- Ingame tool for toggling zoning on roads (something I thought of while you were talking about mods and assets, where nothing can really be done right now except wait)
- New map biomes with different challenges; a Desert map can have limited open water sources, and few groundwater resources. But a building from the points you get from reaching milestones could "discover" deeper groundwater sources that can be utilised by more intensive buildings. And unique weather events & disasters, like sand being spread over roads that service vehicles can clear like snow, but a sandstorm would leave a lot, with a gradual return of road use after the initial disaster. And while water is limited, something like a water park would be greatly valued by cims (if you can keep the water flowing).
From the moment I saw that there was no actual game play footage in the first trailer I had a bad feeling... guess I was right to be skeptical.
I'm one of those people who was excited for the release of the game, watched all the pre-release stuff, and then the first few videos that came out after launch, felt that something was lacking, and then kind of stopped paying attention. I was hoping the game would be in a good place by now so that I could buy it and start watching videos again, so I'm sad to see this. Hopefully they'll listen to this feedback from the players.
Cities Skylines 1 was a breath of fresh air when city builders were Always online EA swill, or the same Cities XL game that they released 3 times before. It had it's issues, and I still don't like how the plots work on curved roads, but it was miles ahead of the competition. Cities skyline 2 is now competing against Cities skyline 1 with many great mods and expansions, and there doesn't seem to be a good reason to switch. I've not even bothered to buy it myself.
I just want one thing, they should add some feature, when I build I should not have to spend so much time leveling and still see some weird houses due to no leveling correctly
they should add and reduce the foundation in the building so if some area is low or high foundation is high or low according to the situation. Something similar to The Medival Dynasty
same with roads
Some things that would really balance the endgame budget surplus: Higher Road maintenance and other city services, the game should force us to think conservatively about laying downs thousands of roads. This would also give incentive to use mass transit over the use of roads. Another element should be Carbon Tax, forget politics, think Factorio. In factorio, you pay the price for your polution in the form of increased critter attacks. A carbon tax would force the player to plan out industry efficiently.
Thank you for saying what most of think about the release of this game. They might listen to you and the others content creators. I enjoyed CS1 so I figured I would love CS2, but I have only played it for about 24 hours versus almost 4K for CS1.
I pre-ordered the physical Premium Edition of the game. The official Cities: Skylines Twitter account blocked me for suggesting that the toxic comments (which are NOT okay, under any circumstance, let's make that clear) are stemming from the situation that we're in where the game remains in a poor state and official mod support is now going to be a year after the game's release. The fact remains that the game is not in a good state and now it looks like it will not be for some time. People are calling for refunds, but those requests are falling on deaf ears. The fact that we can't even talk about these things without being blocked makes me think they just don't want to hear it, and the way they blamed the community last month was a real knife stab. Thankfully, they can't block content creators from talking honestly about the game on UA-cam. Thank you for making this video, Biffa. I hope they'll take it to heart.
importing energy should cost exponentially more, it should be just for starting the game, the energy should cost double/triple what you would spend making you own thats the minimum to be balanced. so at the start of the game its cheaper/or similar price, but the price should grow exponentially to be more expensive
Spoken like someone who really enjoys the game and is also disappointed by it. I feel you Biffa. I've only played CS2 for a few hours because I just couldn't get into it. I wanted to wait until my favourite modes (Move-it, Picker, etc) and the assets were available, but by the sounds of it that will be by Autumn - that's 1 YEAR after release. There is no excuse for this at all.
fair play Biffa, i found you in lockdown and you helped a lot of us get through a tough time, really did! i love c.s 1 same as you i play on xbox but still l love yours and others videos for all the tips and inspiration and honest discussions like these, ive felt c.s 2 really is missing something and i hope the developers do listen to your feedback. one thing city planner did mention was on release c.s 1 was very basic and after the initial updates managed to gain some ground hopefully the same happens with c.s 2 :)
Thank you 😊 Also true, but cs1 was 8/9 years ago, we expect more from a sequel almost a decade later.
@@BiffaPlaysCitiesSkylines I'm only guessing here Biffa I havnt played the new game. Maybe the bigger "simulation" is what's holding things back, I've never seen a 1 million population c.s1 city? And how that coped with things! I have a city now on Xbox 260k population 9 tiles maxed out and my consoles hot 🥵 and she crashes a lot lol..I have no idea how the game engine on this works, I heard you mention the huge calculations the game makes like c.s.1 in the background. hopefully they can show us more of what's going on and bring more life to the game and our city's 😎 keep going tho Biffa we all love your channel 👍
If needs be Biffa were send in Hugo and the Heavys for a Proper Chat! 😎👍 🤣
as someone who travels witrh public transport quite often im pretty sure comfort is just how comftreble each mode of transit is for them, car being the best and public transit the worst, at least for most
This game is very much like my other favourite game, Railway Empire. A commentator said that its sequel is like a Volvo, while the original is a Ferrari. It's true because after trying the new game out, I went right back to RE1 and I'm playing the Germany dlc which is far more enjoyable. It's basically the same story with CS1 vs CS2.
It's difficult to come up with any new "constructive" ideas in positive spirits when we all more-than suspect that Paradox kicked the game out the door wholly unfinished in order to lift their quarterly figures to try and shore-up their falling share price at the time. They knew exactly what they were doing, and so it's hard to overcome- or forgive- the utter disrespect that the paying consumer has been shown. This should've been a Q4 2024/Q1 2025 release. The game is so shallow and so samey, with such few customisation options that, incredibly, they've managed to make CS2 a single-playthrough game. A one-and-done.
I could honestly wait for the mechanics and simulation to be fixed, no problem. But no props, no beautification options, repeating assets without an asset creator or mods etc means you can't even play it in a relaxing, no worries, easy-mode, creative-style way, let alone as a mayor/city simulator. After 6 hours, you've done and seen it all.
We all know exactly what needs done, but given the timeline we've been given, i genuinely fear people will have moved on before they get there.
Thanks for making this really important video Biffa. You've respectfully communicated very fair criticisms of the current state of this game. This video will have more impact/influence than you know
I hope so 😁
I just wanted CS2 to basically be better graphics, simulation and implementation of a ton of mods that made the game better.
So that we didn’t have to bother with mods and so that console versions would feel complete.
Importing power should subject you to blackouts as a random penalty when the neighbor doesn't have enough to export or gets hit with a disaster. Also on the power front, you should not just get to export an infinite amount. Your neighbors should have demand. Hard to think of this without having a sim of 4 cities in the background as well though for their economies.
That reminds me of how in SIm CIty 4, your other cities could only supply what you built up(trash incinerators, water pumps, ect). And you could get blackouts from both sides from over supplying/underproducing
Could be relatively easily done. A global market function that updates periodically, like every hour or 4 times per IRL day. Or why not make it very advanced, combine all the active player cities and trade on in-game supply demand. Good luck making that work though 😂
I have a couple of hundred hours played in CS1 and wasn't merely close to the level of detail and perfection as some of the real creators were, still it was among the best gaming experiences I've ever had. Even without mods. Months before the release of CS2 I was sure, I'll be buying on release day. Then the first reviews came and talked about technical problems to be fixed before public release. I got worried and hesitated. On release day, seemingly only few were fixed. Still, imho, that backlash wasn't as bad as it should've been. The big storm of brown fecies started when people realized, the game is actually not in a usable state for most customers.
The decision to not make mods a vital part of the initial release for CS2 however is puzzling me to this day. How in the world would you as a company selling games throw away all the content creators that are willingly improve and extend your game, add so much value to your product in the process?
I really wish to see CS2 and play it myself, but I still don't feel I should. Over the years, I spent about 150-200 Euros for CS1 main game, DLCs and assets and recommended to everyone. It's still a shock, that they neither communicate well with their community nor actually make an analysis what the mistakes were with the release for CS2 and how to fix them on a broader scale.
I really do believe they will fix the issues in the long run but I also fear someone else could jump in, present a better city builder-like game and put Paradox to shame, as Paradox did it with SimCity, back in the day. Maybe then I can again spend a few hundred more hours on that.
Sorry Biffa, to see you and the community suffer from these things like that. Your level of dedication and ingeniuty would deserve much better, imho.
Cities 2 does feel like it is designed how The Sims has been. The Sims comes out, gets a lot of DLC and new features, then The Sims 2 comes out and is stripped back to the basics without all those features you had come to expect and enjoy, because they want to be able to sell another round of DLC. This repeated for The Sims 3 and The Sims 4. You hope that a company will buck that trend, but unfortunately they just want to be able to make more money. Whether that is something that CO had any say in or whether it was dictated to them by Paradox, we will probably never know, but I have my suspicions.
The biggest issue is, that the old game is just better and significantly more detailed. Like, houses are actually being built and fires spread realistically in forests, leaving behind burned trees.
CS2 lacks all those little details completely without offering a lot of new things, compared to CS1 with the most popular mods.
they never listened... their track record on "listening" is awful... you can find EARLY messages of people from right after the After Dark DLC which introduced the Day Night cycle and changed to a different newer (worse) lighting scheme (which was September 2015, around 3 or 4 months after initial release of the game and its groundbreaking impact on all media and critical acclaim...) From people asking BEGGING for them to give the option to revert back to the older lighting system because it looked more BRIGHT COLORFUL VIVID all these words we know and love to use... it ended up coming to Modders to finally give us the option of reverting the Sun position to the original, the Daylight color back, the color palette back, LUT etc... even the Clouds were changed... something I never found a way to reverse was the awful glare that reflected from the roads after EVERY SINGLE TIME it rained in the game, so the otherwise relaxing Rain Effect would not mean that you wouldn't be able to see anything on your roads because they were reflecting all the light like mirrors... it's been EIGHT YEARS of this dysfunctional relationship, and no, me like many others I'm not ready to jump on round 2 of this crap, no thank you
Colossal goal is to repeat the same strategy. The community will make contributions to the game and make it playable. Then Colossal will sit on their hands and collect...... AA maybe worth a Codex.
For me, it's the aesthetics and graphics of the game that just immediately kills any excitement. The roads and railways are painted on the ground, and the water is not dynamic at all and does not interact with the beaches at all. The game has some blue tint that makes everything look boring, and the streets are incredibly empty even when there are 20-floor skyscrapers right next to them. The UI is all right but also empty and boring. funny how at 28:34 is the first time I started feeling excited when I saw CS2, the little bit of color made it so made it so much more interesting to look at.
we need park districts with the fences like in cs1. the complete lack of customising your landscape's details makes the cities you create feel none life like
Seasons could be very fun in a relatively easy to implement way. In real life, seasons heavily affect residential and commercial electrical load. In warm climates, power consumption peaks in summer due to air conditioners. In cold climates, heating in the winter is the big strain. The price of energy on the market fluctuates wildly. That would have a fun effect on gameplay, creating a sort of boom-bust cycle. You'd have to plan ahead, and your bank balance would fluctuate.
Dams could draw down water when making more power, and gain water when making less. Solar and wind output could be strongly affected by seasons. Make players diversify and plan.
Industries, particularly agriculture, are also affected by seasons. Anyway.
This just proves how much better Cities Skylines is than other city simulators. They matched Sim City 5s notoriety in just one sequel.
There’s so many issues with CS2’s simulation right now that make it hard to hope for a good future. I really do hope Colossal Order can get it to a great place, but right now, it’s so hard to see.
I empathize with the bind they were in, in terms of trying to implement everything in cities 1 + mods + be accessible to new players + be fun for hardcore players. I think they needed to really go through the pain box and just declare that CS2 is only going to be a slice of CS1, there's no way to catch up - it's a rebuild of the core with the future in mind.
Really what I want them to build is not a city building game at all, but a city building game engine and a really solid mod distribution system.
Base game should be nice and tight, good core sim, really sexy road placement, great traffic sim, no extraneous features, really great mod support - let the community fill in over time, have some confidence in the people.
I think CS2 is actually on a good trajectory for greatness, i think your comments on no man's sky are totally accurate, if they everyone just takes a moment to breathe, ignore the haters and CO keeps plunking at it'll be great before too long.
I'm learning game dev in my part-time. Everything that you're describing sounds like a fun game. I'm going to build it 🫡
I've been saying this a few times now, but everyone who's disappointed in Cities Skylines 2 should give Workers and Resources a try. It has extensive systems to consider when building your city and freedom in how you build all of them.
As an example, your city needs heating plants to ensure that citizens don't suffer from hypothermia. In a basic setup, you make a heating plant and have the coal for it automatically delivered. Then you set up the pipes to deliver the hot water to your residential and commercial areas. On another level, you set up roads from the heating plant to a border connection, and have trucks deliver the coal to cut down on delivery costs. You could also set up a cable car, river/sea transport, train, or even air transport system to move the coal from the border. Instead of importing coal, you could also set up a mining facility to dig up and process the coal, then figure out transportation to deliver the coal to the heating plant.
The game won't win any awards for looks, but in the places it matters Workers and Resources is impressive and amazing. Even in its current Early Access state.
CS1 was a city BUILDER, this is a city SIMULATOR. its so focused on growing, not building and detailing
Good video. I agree with most of your points and I really hope the devs really consider that Console players do not have access to mods (unless they add them in the future somehow) therefore we can’t just rely on mods to fix anything they didn’t decide to add in.
Me, personally, I'd like to see them add some sort of traffic light manager. If a street intersects a main avenue and you want traffic lights, then there should be an option to tweek the traffic lights to allow for the main avenue to have longer green then the side street. A way to allow a city wide right on red, and even to fix traffic in general.
All the big content creators are starting to turn and call out CO. I love it. Maybe we can see some actual change now that people with platforms are speaking up. Thank you Biffa.
From what I see the game only soared years later because of the mods. This game would have not seen this kind of success without the mods. So I think this company needs to add more effort in the modding department.
It was obviously rushed, the unfinished gameplay is half replaced with +% static modifiers even though the simulation doesnt work.
I want to thank you Biffa for thinking about us console players that haven't even gotten to play yet. I'm still looking forward for the release on my console but i am still enjoying cs1 while i wait
Some improvements could be very simple, too,add.
1. A colour changer for the cursor, or just make it change in winter, heck even cursor skins lol
2. Make the looltips bigger, more information, make it adjust so i can see them and not have to keep changing the cameras' pov, an orbit cam would work.
3. make punishments, and have timely effects,like buildings taking longer to build for new and ruined ones. It should take longer for companies to employ.
4. More disasters and destruction, pair that with above and a tornado striken factory should have huge costs (if not insured) and could take years to rebuild.
Hello, remember me? The one with the game crashing constantly? It turns out it was my GPU crying for help. It died a few days ago. I just got a replacement, so thank you for trying to help me with the issue.
Diablo 2 Ressurected is purely a graphics overhall overlay while the original Diablo 2 runs in the background.
This is how they should have done CS2.
Take what works. Copy paste. Then layer on
Eh, Skylines had some underlying limitations that I would have loved to see go away, namely its limits on the number of things it can load at once regardless of your PC's capabilities.
my disappointments are the hollowness of the industries, and parks etc, that came with the CS1 dlc´s. I loved building up industries, parks and other bits and i expected a upgrade but find that there is no challenge to the game
I was so excited before the lunch. And then i played cities 2 for a month and went back to cities skyline. Without workshop there is no interest
I'll buy the game when Steam Workshop is back in.
It seems to me, as an avid Europa Univeralis 4 player, that a few of the systems in this 10+ year old game could certainly benefit CS2.
It's quite obvious devs know about these issues. Cities 1 DLCs are still full price if not increased (inflation whatever but that means they know they will be still making money of it so they adjusted - and im quite sure most players of C1 dont own more than couple DLCs since they cost as much as a small indie game).
I’d like them to put together a road map for 2024. Doesn’t need to be explicitly prescriptive, something basic like… Q1 performance and optimisation with three areas in that they are going to try and fix, Q2 simulation issues with some areas to address including the normal bug fixes along the way…
The worst, absolute worst thing they can do is start releasing paid DLC before optimisation, simulation and mods are fixed, released and working.
If they release paid DLC before that, I’m done.
Back to Hello Games… they could have probably started charging for DLC after a while but they stuck by their fans and made an incredible game which is making me look forward to their next release knowing that even if they don’t have a smooth release I am spending my my money on a company who will work with their community. I find it troubling the responses Paradox and CO have given so far but remain positive…
Another fear of mine is they will just front load getting the mods up and running so the community fixes the issues for them… in other words a game that needs a hundred mods for something they should have in the base game. For me mods should be for fun and aesthetics, not ‘building’ basic functionality for their game for free.
Give me a roadmap showing commitment, don’t release paid dlc yet and don’t just throw out mod functions so we have to fix the game.
Thanks for making this. Having worked in the industry for a long time, I sincerely doubt this game has the budget or even the remaining team to make fundamental design changes at this point. I could be wrong but it would be extremely unusual for them to still be able to put a lot of resources in this far past a disappointing launch.
Most games get a smaller live team to do bug fix releases, and maybe a team focused on expansions or DLC.
They just did a huge economy patch which changed how the game worked behind the scenes, I dressed the difficulty and made a lot of things count more. Much more fun to play now 👍
NMS style comeback is impossible in this case. Paradox is a publicly traded company and they will siphon every single dollar they can out, because they themselves are hurting for money. They will throw this game under the bus and CO with it.
As a long time map painting simulator player, I can tell you that the problem is Paradox. Over the last few years Paradox has grown increasingly aggressive with their monetization efforts. To current Paradox, sequels aren't sequels - as in new platforms from which to grow and learn from the achievements of a predecessor -, sequels are instead platforms for new DLC releases.
Look at the last few major strategy/sim releases by Paradox over the last 5 years or so. Crusader Kings 3, Hearts of Iron 4, that Roman game I can't recall the name of, and yes, even Cities Skyline. Each one makes a conscious point of stripping out features of their predecessors - usually for the explicit purpose of repackaging them.
It's a hell of a thing since people genuinely love these games , but we as consumers have to put are foot down and stop giving paradox money. Don't let them nickel and dime you, and hopefully a drop in their bottomline might force them to reconsider their practices.
What I really wanted from CS2 was for it to feel like a "Greatest Hits" version of CS1 + it's DLC mechanics, taking what worked and fleshing it out so it felt cohesive instead of like a bunch of disconnected systems. But other than the Industry DLC they barely brought anything forward.
I just read this and this was what I was trying to say. I really don't understand why they didn't just do that.
@@Mita069 because paradox is the publisher, and has probably forced CO to do it like this. It's a consistent theme across every game that paradox releases
@Mita069 and they do it cause it's easier to squeeze a lot of money out of the players*
That's what it should have been fr fr. I HATE all the counters that are like "well you can't expect 8 YeArS ofDlC tO bE iN tHe CS2 BaSe GaMe" and I can reasonably say no one who is angry or disappointed was expecting that, but what you said instead. Instead, we got hyped up marketing videos and a barely playable, bugged out husk of an unfinished game.
@@Mita069 Microsoft is partner with Paradox and CO is in a bad position now because they have two bosses telling them what to do. To make matters worst for CO they will be blamed for everything since both Paradox and Microsoft will never take responsibilities for their mistakes.
Instead of season toggle, may i suggest something on the line of "adaptive cursor color for snow conditions"? I mean instead of us having to toggle the whole seasons manually, the mouse cursor could switch to black whenever mousing over snow?
This is just UI 101, don't render a white cursor or pointer on a white background. This sort of thing has been done for decades in terminal software etc. It's even possible in CSS for websites.
ive been thinking a great feature that could be added to cs2 is a "plan" mode, a build mode option where drawing roads and placing other buildings would be "built" (planned) in a "ghost" layer; you dont pay for these roads/buildings right as you plan them, rather you can pay for them later as you progressively develop and build said "ghost" pieces. this would make forward planning much easier and consistent as you know in advance where/how you would like your cities to develop.
I imagine similar to the anno1800 one? It would help with making cities seem more modernly design
Anno 1800 has this feature and it’s fantastic. It’s become obnoxious to go back to older games in the series without it
Prison Architect also has this feature and it seems to be well received as a way for the player to be an actual planner rather than just a builder.
With Paradox being behind both games, I think they should take the opportunity to share concepts that work across game titles.
this is a legitimately fantastic idea
shut up and take my money, that sounds INCREDIBLE.
By the time the game is fixed there will be $350 worth of DLCs that we can buy to enjoy it in its "correct" state. That's what the devs are banking on anyway imo.
If the bicycles are a dlc im calling quits.
paradox fed over way too much games and its not even 350 dollars look at ANY game they own and there is over 500 dollars of dlc crap that should have been base game look at how bad they fed prison architect 1 ... and now look at the news articles in steam of prison architect 2 the fans are so angry at them that they disabled comments on them just not to have over 500 comments asking them to FIX all the issues they MADE in pa1 that are fixed by the dlc's they brought out ... i dont buy a game to be buggy i buy a game to have fun
btw PA1 whas a COMPLETED game with allmost no issues when they bought it
publishers*
presumably the same people that said "no" when the devs asked to delay the release so they could fix the simulation (since it seems like they were forced to dummy it out last minute and fake the numbers)
That's what I think too. The Workshop has been replaced by paid DLC. Someone up high in some board room told them not to have a game with too much free stuff.
You know it’s pretty bad when biffa is nearly ready to call it quits. It’s quite sad honestly, I know we all wanted this game to be great😪
I'd honestly be fine with it if he called it quits on CS2 content. Cause you can tell he's just not having fun with it at all. With CS1 all the stuff is there for him to do legit whatever he wants with a city. Until CO decides to get their crap together then personally I'd abandon CS2. Cause they don't deserve content creators showing off a game in such a sorry state. Overcharged Egg and CPP have both put out CS1 videos recently and you can tell both of them are having more fun with it than 2
11:00 I think adding difficulty modes would be a great addition! It would allow causal players like me to just enjoy building without stress, and players like you who want more of a challenge to get it. Would be really fun to see you struggle to build and keep a city afloat :P (not something I personally want though)
They had that in CS1, you could play with unlimited money and everything unlocked at the start so 0 stress and can just build how you like. You don't need a difficulty level in a city builder Sim as the difficulty is normally money management and unlocking buildings, take that away and you're on easy street.
@@alixlawrence8555 yes you dont need an easy mode if you have that mod/cheat. but you need a difficulty scaling to make it harder ( maybe a 'realistic mode' which is more punishing in ways that make sense? ) it would be a nice edition
@@TeloMoviesI agree, I think sandbox or various other (custom) cheat modes are great but I don't think they do away with the need for a difficulty scale. If you want it to be a little more challenging so that you feel a pay-off, being told that you can cheat isn't going to help!
@@alixlawrence8555 Theres a difference between having it easier and focusing on building nice and getting everything for free and not having to develop the city somewhat organically
I wish the devs were more receptive instead of telling us “If you dislike the simulation, this game just might not be for you”
They have been gaslighting us which is really pissing me off
I agree. I understand it goes both ways, but I have made a genuine effort to keep up with bug reports and participate in constructive conversations about the game.
There have been a lot of overly negative comments as well as outright abusive ones, but this is the internet and that has to be expected.
You can't ignore the players who have tried to be involved and been patient otherwise the community is going to lose interest.
We understand that there's a time and money constraint to adding features and fixing bugs, we're not demanding everything all at once, just saying it would be nice to have better communication about what IS being done as well as acknowledgement of what we're talking about.
A lot of us spent extra on the premium edition with the expectation of playing this game for a long time and purchasing DLC in the future so it seems very shortsighted not to engage with the genuine fans.
If I had to guess based on industry experience, from the devs' side, they get thousands of people telling them things they already know or trying to backseat design the game. No dev team is going to actually want to hear any of that. Usually there's a community team of some kind that serves as a buffer/shield to placate people and leave the devs some space to work on the game, but occasionally you'll find teams that do more direct interaction, and that's where some harsher, more honest comments can come out due to frustration.
Just remember, game design is an art, not a democratic process. Devs are often expected to treat community feedback like some kind of holy mandate, and violating that expectation is considered rude or some kind of betrayal. But people aren't buying games because "the community" designed and built something special, they're doing it because the devs did. So let the devs create, and either play the game or don't. If it sucks, they'll know from sales and reviews, and they'll know how to fix it better than any single person whose priority is being patted on the head for their forum posts.
@@SineN0mine3 Always thought it was a bit of a cop out for them to say we're "getting toxic" and I understand but, have they wondered the root cause of it? Because they aren't addressing the problems transparently, it just feels like they're biding time.
It was so painfully predictable. In an attempt to appeal to a broader audience they alienated their long-running and most devout fans. Delivered a supposedly accessible product that the true fans quickly saw as shallow and flawed.
I get that studios need to be profitable but I can't see how folks keep convincing themselves taking advantage of their dedicated fans - or taking them for granted - is a good business move. Our vision isn't "make a game that draws more players to make you more money by cheapening systems and making gameplay more shallow."
Ours is "fix the stuff broken in CS1, make QOL improvements and expand on proven systems to make a more robust experience. Am I wrong? Seems like that's a pretty good summation of what we, the fans, expected.
This isn't that.
This is a very fair, well rounded appraisal of the state of the game and I truely hope the devs and pdx pay attention to what you have to say here. Very well said Biffa 🙌
hey everyone’s here! :)
Thankyou FC 🙏
Biffa and other creators play throughs of CS2 are the only way I can feel I'm amongst the hype and love. Because my potato of a computer couldn't even run a modest CS2 map.
I'm also having to run the game on... basically potato settings (this is probably my fault, my laptop is 5 years old and she didn't have bells and knobs on when I bought her and we're definitely getting a bottleneck on the CPU). But no matter what I do, the simulation speed is just so painfully slow.
what makes me sad and very disappointed is just being left out of the new version of a game i love because i can't afford a fancy computer. they made the conscious decision of not making me part of their target market for CS2 even though i could run CS perfectly well 🤷♀️
@@kirithornalley6123 I mean you're gonna have to buy a new computer. I had to buy a new one to play CS1 because my old one was just too old to handle it. Or if your current can handle CS1 your fine. It is a better game currently.
@@veritush I've got a pretty decent computer and it still struggles. Seems you need a pretty elite computer to run CS2 at it's full potential.
@@larag4646Depends on what you find elite level.
The reason I still play CS1.. (almost 1500h started in 2022 ) better graphs, more mods, better gameplay (hate that point system they use now) better building (roads ect) , all around way more fun. I got hyped when they announced it. It looked amazing!! but when I saw the first vids here on you're channel... honestly felt a bit disappointed... so decided to give them some time to fix things.. I'll keep playing CS1 for now. but I have have to admit! CS2 has some great features; Deciding how big you want certain service area's is one of them. I do wish that we are sooner or later able to place/paint in a single house, and then decide how big you want the yard to be, and more important, you can add thing in the yard (swings, pool, patio's ect...) and yes @biffa that is the reason I haven't watched much of you're CS2 vids. (hope you don't block me now :p) look at it this way. when the game gets better, I have something to binge-watch on UA-cam :D and thx for you're insight!
I think it's obvious that CS2 was not ready for release and needed another six months or more in development. CS1 was doing fine, there was no pressing need to rush this out the door. Part of what exacerbates the weather issue is the development decision to ship the game with only temperate zone maps, and for me the maps are the biggest issue with CS2 right now because every map looks identical, all being the same bland colour, which is another big problem. With the absence of LUTs, CS2 just looks terribly bland. My most common comment to CO's updates though has been get the editors out. Maps and assets are a must.
It most likely needs years of additional development. A sequel should exceed the main characteristics of the original and honestly, CS2 doesn't even remotely do this. It's missing *core* features. It should have 100x more assets, modding, etc all on day 1. Take CS1 + great DLCs + 50% of the best mods and this should be the starting point of CS2. It feels like the entire goal was to push the "reset button" on the product so they re-sell DLC to us all over again.
CS2 was released because Paradox are beginning to become far less profitable, they were hoping for a boost in profits, they're losing out because their recent releases (Victoria 3, Imperator Rome etc) are not selling in numbers they thought they would and the shareholders want some dividends, Bellular News covered this 3 months ago.
I think the pressing need came from the financers wanting a return on their investment. Possibly coupled with unrealistic expectations made by an overenthusiastic devellopment team who are better at coding than project management. But that's all speculation, so I could be way off the mark here.
@@Brusselpickeryou are absolutely 💯 they tried to please the shareholders and wanted some of the holiday sales!! In the end it's all about the shareholders!!!
It has already nearly been four months since release, so six months would have done.... Zero difference, just as the existing patches have done.
Two of the things I most wanted from CS2 were better, deeper and more noticeable simulation of urbanism themes like pedestrianism, cycling, traffic calming, safety, sense of place, etc. and a better way of handling default zoning on non-90 degree corners and curved roads. Neither are really in it. Yeah you've got the pedestrian street, limited vertical mixed use and some good transit options, but biking to me is essential for a modern well functioning city. And the zoning is basically the same. So a European city with lots of wall-to-wall streets, courtyards will still involve a lot of manual plopping and mods.
This is it for me. Always wanted to plan out a city I'd like to live in, and New Urbanism is what I model my ideal city around. In the first game it wasn't really flashed out, so I was waiting impatiently for the second game hoping it would expand on those considerably. Shame
Exactly that. There is so much empty spaces everywhere, the city I can build look nothing like what I live in. I got bored and abandoned the game.
Square zoning + boring default floor texture + no "really small road" + pedestrian roads are huge = empty green spaces everywhere in the city center. That's not realistic at all. The city center should look super dense.
Row houses are the exception, but again, curve the road just a little bit and it's all void.
@@acka.Not a native speaker myself, but I always was under the impression it was 'fleshed out'. As in adding meat to the skeleton.
@@MaximusLongus Looked it up, you're right. My brain always imagined it as shining a light on something to make it more visible. Thanks
Thanks Biffa, this video was definitely needed. For me the biggest one is the limited creativity and lack of the steam workshop. "Jarring" is an understatement, "traversty" comes closer. It's just no fun to play yet having such limited assets!
I agree, releasing a game with limited features is understandable because they have rebuilt so many systems and really made them ready for a new generation of simulation behaviour. But releasing that limited feature set without a supported option to mod the game was a big mistake. Modders are looking into the game and how to make it better just as CO is. Making life easier for them should be their top priority because the modders make life easier for their players. The core of the game should be good, clean code and working systems. The community can work on all the outer layers. A single dev studio can never match the development capacity of a large and enthusiastic community. I would consider creating maps and maybe even other mods myself. But if they lose that, it will be very hard to come back.
It's TRAVESTY, brother, not "traversty."
Give us control over traffic lights. This was such an easy addition they could have implemented. For example, we could have dedicated left turn lights.
The lack of asymmetric roads is still crazy considering how much they did add. I don't know a single city that doesn't have multiple turn pockets.
That fixes one tiny problem. What about the land value bug? What about the fact you can operate a city without any services just by letting your neighbors handle them for you? The simulation is fundamentally broken.
TL control is essential to handle the traffic flow which is a large part of the tanking.
There has been a TL control mod around for a while, which I used from it's first release, and I found that after I setup all my junctions, within a couple of minutes my pop cap raised by an extra 30K.
What I mean by that is that my pop was capping around 130K where the game performance would tank and my traffic was gridlocking all over the place.
After I added the mod and set it up, my game performance was instantly better (after around a minute), and my pop started steadily rising to my new cap off around 160K where the performance would tank again.
I also used an early mod that changed the pedestrian pathfinding forcing them to use walkways/underpasses no matter how badly they were built or how far the entrance was from the junction, and that mod raised my pop cap by a further 25K to 30K, because the peds were no longer pouring across junctions holding up traffic everywhere. And that mod worked better than CO's later ped pathfinding fix lol
After the CO ped pathfinding fix I turned off the mod to see what happens, and while most of the peds used walkways/underpasses there were still a lot of suicidal peds jaywalking, but when I turned the mod back on, zero peds crossed on the surface, they all used the walkways/underpasses.
TL;DR we definitely need TL control, and we desperately need code modding so the modders can make huge improvements to game play CS2 desperately needs.
TMPE would do the job but they don't want people to mod because they prefer to release paid DLCs with "extra content". Expect a "new Traffic Lights DLC that has a unique feature to change road signs and customize traffic lights! Only 19,99 € in Steam.|
For me no dedicated left turn got me to stop playing. I don't want to turn every intersection into a giant interstate construction when the city grows
When I place assets like parks and such, I don't see anyone physically interacting with it. In CS1, you could see the dogs in the dog park or people milling around in plazas. Maybe it's a setting (hopefully)? Otherwise that's a huge oversight
Man this video resonated with me. 100% agreed with all points and have really been struggling to love the game the way I want to because without all the information of how certain aspects of the city are being affected and why it just feels shallow and like it isn’t even there. I remember when I first launched cities 2 I was really anticipating a depth of gameplay that was promised in trailers and I looked around everywhere for the information showing that depth but it wasn’t there. I’ve been trying to lean on making my cities pretty but as you said the 18 trees, lack of rocks and the empty hole of props makes it such a challenge… but not the fun kind 😢
I would certainly not complain if you started a new CS1 city, if you were interested. I love watching you, and I honestly REALLY commend you for trying do hard to be positive throughout this. As a single player, yes it stinks... but I can just turn it off whenever I want and play something else or (shudders) outside. Content creators are getting hit the hardest, and I LOVE watching you.
I'm not sure if Biffa has any kind of agreement with CO to be on CS2 for a while and help keep people interested, but I’m with you on wanting more of CS1 as it was once Kettlebridge is maxed out
Overcharged Egg is still putting out CS1 content and he's doing fine. If I was Biffa or any other content creator I'd do the same. Cause at least CS1 is playable and not a complete mess
I have no agreement, I choose what I play and record 👍
Something upsetting to me that Biffa touched on briefly in the video is that CO must have known there were serious issues with the game during development and it feels like they used the amazing content creators from CS1 to pump up a game they didn't have confidence in and now that the game is out they've abandoned those same creators.
This. This is exactly the point.
Of course they did. Cause they got them to hype the game up and then once they got their money from people and everybody realized how crappy the game is they thought that the content creators would take some of the blame off of CO cause well they hyped the game up too. I've seem it happen before. It's what scummy developers do. Not only that but release a game in the sorry state that it's in and then give barely any apology for it. Don't forget too that the one person said "well if you don't like the game then it's just not for you" and expected people to be fine with that. That's the kind of people we're dealing with. They didn't apologize cause they were sorry. They apologized cause people called them out for it
Yeah, remember all those release videos when the game looked amazing? Then they give you this!
@@darknesswave100I'm surprised they refunded console players tbh. I'm glad I got mine
That has bothered me too. It was really shifty to use people like Biffa and City Planner, and several others, to do that. In hindsight, I can see why there were restrictions on how far into the game they could get and how long the videos could be. I don't really blame the content creators for hyping the game because it seems like they were being misled as well.
I've thought, recently, about you and other full-time C:S content creators and how difficult, probably even scary, this whole situation must be. Had C:S2 launched as promised, your job, I assume, would probably have simply moved along as normal. But the way it is, with the state of the game and the player drop-off, I can only imagine how difficult the decisions that you all have had to make have been. I feel for you. I honestly do. I have no interest in many of the other games that some of you are turning to. But, despite that, I'll watch the content, and "Like" the content, simply to help support you all. Thank you, Biffa, for your positive spirit. It's always so evident in your videos. Good luck to you, and to all the full-time C:S content creators.
You've hit the nail on the head. It's not just the huge disappointment that CS2 wasn't a huge hit and we didn't all gain millions of subscribers (nice but not my aims on YT anyway) ... it's the fact that a lot of us felt like the rugs been pulled from under us suddenly and now we're trying to find a way through to keep our business running to pay the bills. I'm doing ok, but others haven't been. Thanks for the kind words and the support 🙏
its crazy to me that they got all the content creators to hype up the game, to just do what you described. I really thought things would be different with these developers. When broken games are coming out i was fully expecting this team to really shine and show other developers how to make a game, but seems like they have scooped to their level. @@BiffaPlaysCitiesSkylines
@@BiffaPlaysCitiesSkylines I mean you definitely assume that risk when you rely on a video game someone else makes for your income. Pulling the rug out is a bit extreme, it's not like anyone is owed being able to make a living off making video game content. It's not really a real career (evidenced by situations like this) and anyone that gets to do it is simply lucky and should enjoy it while it lasts.
It's a career if you treat it like a business and I'm still going 😉
Thank You for being Honest about this Biffa I agree there have been a lot of bugs in this Game I can only imagine the Console versions when they eventually release!
I just think the game looks 💩 right now and I’m glad I held off on buying it.
Pity he wasn't honest before release when he was shilling for CO pretty badly.
@@LilyMoonWitch Biffa is terrible. Not only for being a liar, but also just a bad person. Money grabber, basically.
You guys realize that he was just as mislead as us right? Sure he did get to play the game but a relatively short and limited playtest is more often than not very different from a comprehensive analysis you can get after release.
Here's my list of grievances with the game.
People movement is just not something the devs considered, Public transport is a joke
Detailing your city requires the use of devmode. It includes some functionality that I consider fundamental, like drawing surfaces and placing props, and the response by the "spokesperson" (i. e. the discord mod) was "we have no intention of making it available, but mods can easily do it now."
Which brings me to the next point: making a mod-friendly game is great and all, but when you make a game that is explicitly mod-reliant, that's just bad. especially when mods aren't officially supported yet and mentioning ways of installing mods easily without the non-existent official mod platform you get banned or muted.
Then there's the utter lack of variety in assets. Overall, it just feels like what they want you to build is American sprawl.
It doesn't feel like a city builder, it feels like an economy simulator, and not even a good one.
The city doesn't feel alive. Cims feel like mindless drones, they go to work/school, then go shopping, then go home, rinse and repeat. Even the city services don't really show what they're doing anymore. I want the cims to actually look like they're doing stuff, meet with people, tourists taking photos at landmarks, things that make the city feel alive.
There's no communication. When people ask for bikes, all we get is "they're coming", but when? When will custom parks arrive? Devmode has a park drawing tool thats non-functional. When does pdxmods arrive? all we know is that it keeps getting pushed back. There's thousands of suggestions in the discord, but we haven't heard anything regarding any of these for months.
The two maps they added recently were so unrefined, they look like what happened in the old game when you just imported a bad height map and left it as is. for something official, I'd expect at least some effort, even if it's free.
Landscaping still is a buggy mess leaving weird water artifacts everywhere, usually barely clipping through the terrain for no apparent reason, an just yesterday, I tried to terraform and it created a water source out of nowhere that flooded everything.
Zoning behaves quite strange, tiles appear, disappear, even when not doing anything directly to that area, trying to manipulate zoning to fit your vision doesnt work half the time.
You need mods to make networks look like you want them to, there's no way in the game to for example turn a road into a Quay road for either detailing or because it kinda has to, since even on water edges, sometimes it just doesn't. Building along the water is a pain.
Overall, the game is just stale and lacks creative freedom. it feels like for every map, there is an expected city design that if you do not follow it, things just won't work.
There's a few more minor things, for example the lack of residential/office mixed use but that's not really a dealbreaker, just strange that it's missing.