this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2023
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I don't really understand how people make the review threads, but we're sitting at a 77 on OpenCritic right now. Many were worried about game performance after the recommended specs were released, but it looks like it's even worse than we expected. It sounds like the game is mostly a solid release except for the performance issues, but they really are that bad.

  • Popular Cities: Skylines 1 streamers are reporting that they are not able to achieve a consistent 60 fps, even with RTX 4090s and lowering the graphics to 1440p medium settings. Based on utilization numbers, it sounds like the GPU is limiting factor here.
  • Those same streamers are also reporting 16GB of RAM usage when loading up a new map, which means that the minimum recommended spec of 8GB was a blatant lie from the devs.
  • IGN and other reviewers are reporting that the game does not self-level building plots, which is something that C:S1 did pretty well. This leads to every plot looking like this:

this

Maybe not a big deal to some, but the focus of Cities: Skylines has always been on building beautiful cities (vs. having a realistic simulation), so this feels like a betrayal of Colossal Order's own design philosophy.

Personally, this is a pretty big bummer for me. I like C:S1 a lot, but I find it hard to get into a gameflow that feels good unless I commit to mods pretty hard, and that means a steeper learning curve. For this reason, I tend to have more fun just watching other people play the game. I was looking forward to C:S2 as a great jumping on point to really dig into city-building myself. Maybe I'm being too harsh here because of my personal disappointment - many don't really care about hitting 60fps, but those same people also tend to not build top-end PCs. And it sounds like if you don't have a top-end PC, you're looking at sub 30 fps, and I think most agree that that is borderline unplayable.

Anyone else have thoughts on this one?

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[–] hiddengoat@kbin.social 59 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Yeah, my thought is that this is a game they'll be supporting for 8-9 years so what the fuck does it matter if it runs like dogshit on day one? Don't fucking buy it until the performance increases and the problems you mentioned are ironed out.

It really is that simple.

Anyone that expected this game to be perfect on launch was clearly not around whenever Cities: Skylines launched. The performance was godawful to the point that I refunded it. A couple of months and a couple of patches later shit was cleared up and I repurchased it. Didn't have an issue after that.

So yeah, the whole "Why doesn't this brand new game not have the same performance and features as a nine year old game with numerous DLCs and mods?" thing is getting fucking tiresome.

[–] Rolder@reddthat.com 52 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I don’t think it’s crazy to expect games to have playable performance levels when they release. Not to mention it’s a sequel so you’d think they would learn some things after fixing the first one.

[–] 1simpletailer@startrek.website 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Yeah the fucks up with all the Paradox apologia in this thread? I also remember Cities: Skylines on release It ran fine and my rig was shitty back then. It was a perfectly functional little city builder. People loved it and it was called the new Sim City! "Just wait two years and put down another $50 on dlc bro. Ur dumb for expecting it to be good now." Nah this shits unacceptable. If a game needs to be supported for years before its considered good then an honest developer would call it an early access game. Ya know, those games that get years of support, updates, and features for free.

[–] nix@midwest.social 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Colossal Order is the dev, Paradox is just the publisher. Paradox deserves crap for their many mistakes, but this one isn't theirs.

[–] canis_majoris@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah but it's Paradox as the publisher who is the one setting the parameters of them having to build a game that is designed to support 10 years of DLC like all of their other products because that's their monetization strategy.

[–] 1simpletailer@startrek.website 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Publishers still have a lot of power in a games development. They can set deadlines and dictate the direction they want a games development to take. Seeing as this is a recurring problem with games Paradox both develops and publishes, its easy to see who is to blame here.

[–] bermuda@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

DLC part pisses me off also. I know this game isn't developed by Paradox but it seems to be a trend in Paradox games where you need to spend the base price + an absurd amount of extra money to get the developer's "true vision" or whatever. It's really annoying.

To get most of the base game features that are currently present in Crusader Kings III, you would've had to spend a sizeable chunk of cash on DLC for Crusader Kings II.

[–] PupBiru@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

i’m sure they learned plenty of things about the old game engine they built

and now they have a new one… which was the whole point

[–] CoderKat@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

I completely agree. I think the point of the commenter you're replying to is that this is the kind of game that will fix these eventually. It's still disappointing for a launch, but eventually it will probably become better than CS1.

[–] Sivick314@universeodon.com 25 points 1 year ago (2 children)

@hiddengoat @theangriestbird How did we get to the point where paying money for a broken, unfinished product was acceptable?

[–] jonne@infosec.pub 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's not, don't buy games on day one. Let the other suckers pay to beta test it. Once it's fixed in a few years, you can buy it for a discount.

[–] nix@midwest.social 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I just bought Fallout 4 GOTY for $5 the other day. Look forward to doing the same in a few years when Cyberpunk 2077 has a final release with everything fixed and polished. There's so many good old games, why buy anything brand new.

And this doesn't forgive devs for buggy initial releases either, because I'm not throwing money at something until it's actually done.

[–] jonne@infosec.pub 2 points 1 year ago

Exactly this. No man's Sky is apparently decent nowadays too.

Part of the issue is that publishers make studies sign contracts with fixed release dates, with heavy penalties for delays (even though basically any software project ends up going over time).

But yeah, just go through the backlog of older games, this way you also don't need the latest PC either to play on max settings.

[–] saigot@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'd much rather play the game in its current state than waiting 3 or 4 months, i have a pretty beefy system and i dont mind low framerates in a strategy game. If you don't feel the same then don't pick it up, wait the 3 or 4 months and enjoy it then.

[–] Sivick314@universeodon.com 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@saigot is much rather they release a complete project that works on day 1.

[–] saigot@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

It does work I've been playing it all day!

[–] shrugal@lemm.ee 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The problem is that they don't communicate this and still ask for the full price.

Imagine I'm a gamer who wants to buy and play a working game today, not in half a year. Nothing on their store page indicates that the game isn't in a playable state yet, so I'd pay full price for a game I can't actually play. That's misleading at best, and a downright fraud at worst.

They could easily fix this by delaying the game or launching it as early access for people who don't mind playtesting a half-finished game, but they didn't.

[–] Contend6248@feddit.de 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] shrugal@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago

This is not what I'm talking about, because the vast majority of people buying the game won't have seen this. It's not enough that the info is somewhere on the internet, it needs to be front and center when buying the game.

[–] tocopherol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 year ago

It's kind of baffling how we accept this as pretty much the standard for major releases these days. Why would we be okay buying anything else like this? If I bought a pair of shoes and they had issues that made them unwearable until I got them repaired I would be irritated as fuck, and obviously this would be unacceptable for a store to sell them like that.

[–] saigot@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

Games like this are also pretty palatable at low framerates imo, certainly much better than an fps or something. If the gameplay is solid I'll definitely pick it up. I like to have it as a second monitor game.

[–] aivoton@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 year ago

We didn't have god damn tunnels in CS1 when it was released and people were raging about the city being limited to 9 tiles.

If company admitted performance issues before release is the hill that these people are willing to die on, well go ahead then. Back then the alternative was either cities platinum series or the abomination sim city became and neither of those was any good. At least now you have something more modern than sim city 4 to fall back on if CS2 disappoints.

[–] twistedtxb@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

Its not good for the general aura surrounding the release. I don't follow the game actively but all I hear is negativity.