That's actually a surprisingly honest thing to say ahead of launch. How bad it'll be performance-wise will depend on what their targets were I guess. I'll play this at launch, but only because it's on gamepass.
this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
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I hate how city skylines dominates this genre. I want something that’s more about the challenges of making a real breathing city with lots of options versus a traffic management simulator.
Checkout frostpunk if you want something more about keeping the city living
Frostpunk was absolutely brilliant, I loved every second of it.
Will do thanks!
I thought the whole point of the sequel was to be an actual game this time.
I just wanna build the kind of city I want to live in, which would mostly be car-free.
That was kinds doable in cs1 with mass transit, atleast private cars would see little use with lots of public transportation, did some island without a bridge and it worked fine. I believe you can give Industries train access now so i am hopefull
I'm hoping transmodal transport will work better, my industries all had long single-file lines of trucks waiting their turn to enter the freight station.
Sadly one of the development diaries specifically said that train cargo stations will have a lot of traffic, so sadly I doubt it will be that different.
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The TMPE mod (to remove unwanted parking spaces, and ban car traffic on some roads) and bike lane roads made this possible for me. And some additional DLC that has the trams.
My busiest area has a tram arrive every 5-10 seconds (normal game speed), and they're so busy that I've had to rebuild the 'terminating' train station stop a few times, learning new things along the way. Most recently relocated it and switched to a multiplatform metro station to shuffle cims to various parts of the map faster
Well they did release the Plazas and Promenades DLC
Have you tried timberborn?
No! What is it?
Im pretty sure thats the city builder but youre a beaver
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1062090/Timberborn/
A really neat city builder where you're basically trying to survive as a civilization of beavers fighting the seasons and growing larger and larger.
There's very little focus on traffic, 100% focus on managing literally everything about your civilization though... and it's a voxel style game so you can come up with some really cool setups.
So, not a lot of detail as this is a shit post account, but I mocked up a vector based system to use rather than grids which allows a city builder to run smoother and lighter on ram instead of basically being a giant spread sheet. Each path was a single vector and a data tree ties all the information to a single point on an infinitely divisible grid. It allowed a game to be more complex, and allowed for better road and other building elements.
I gave it away for free, hoping someone, anyone with more time on their hands would use it. Paradox now owns the rights to that system, they aren't using it, but they are likely making sure noone else does.
What's so bad about dropping grids and right angles, why can't a building be a shape other than square? Because it's cheaper to do and easier to mod.
If I ever have the time I'll whip something up in unreal as a demonstration. The original was unfortunately built in unity. The whole point was to allow buildings to follow curved roads.
I look forward to buying this game in twenty installments, like Europa Universalis 4. Or perhaps they'll offer a subscription, so you don't have to pay $400 to access the full game.
I get where you're coming from, but in fairness the model can work. Cities Skylines 1 DLCs did mostly add substantial content to the game which over time built it to what it is today. At launch CS1 was a good game, far better than the premium Sim City 2013. I have over 1000hrs in the game so for me I think it was good value; and a lot of people bought the game over the years on heavy discount with a lot of the DLCs bundled.
The downside with this model is when they release half baked games and withhold core game mechanics to engineer DLC. From what they've released of Skylines 2 that doesn't seem to be the case - it seems to be a fully featured city builder with more at launch than CS1 had. Obviously it will depend what the game is actually like and launch and there are obvious hooks for DLC already.
I compare that to a game like Sim City 2013 - that released as a premium game, with a shitty reduced game scope, basic missing features and an always on-line DRM requirement, 1 crappy expansion and then completely abandoned by EA in a crappy state despite selling 2 million copies.
If I had to pick a model I'd pick Paradox's.
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No one buys all the DLC. Half if it was very project specific so wouldn't have been required for everyone.
I mean there's like 10 radio station DLCs in Cities Skylines 1 and I highly doubt anyone bought those for the music.
The "full game" in the case of CS1 being 62 DLCs released over a span of eight years, just to put that price tag into perspective.
A lot of those were content creator packs though, once you don't really need to enhance the game experience.
Like they give you Japanese buildings but that's only really useful if you want Japanese buildings if you're not interested in having them then really the content creator pack doesn't offer anything so the price tag is considerably less than what OP is quoting unless you get literally everything and I don't think anyone would do that.
I'm fine with this, honestly. I'd prefer more devs do this instead of pushing back releases at the last minute or forcing their teams to crunch.
Why not just push back the release until it's actually ready? No one is going to die if a game gets pushed back a month or two
I totally agree with you, but the issue is that often times it's hard to justify a delay when you're working with publishers or external investors. What I find unhealthy in the industry is that, oftentimes, companies simply can't afford to delay the release because they've signed documents that lock in that date, or that could affect the companies income during the delay. This obviously isn't universal, but it's something that I've seen first-hand, having worked in the videogames industry.
Too many managers just rollover instead of actually fighting for what's best for their employees and it's annoying to say the least.
What's worse: shipping an unfinished, buggy game harming your companies image forever or having investors wait another three weeks until they start seeing their cash flow? Oh no, heaven forbid.
Maybe not but devs nowadays are getting death threats because of stuff like this
Yeah... That's an issue with the community.
I think my original point still stands but happy to rephrase it if it's unclear.
Or just release it as early access with a 5€ discount or something. That way people who don't give a shit about the optimization can get it early while the rest gets the full release (Baldur's Gate 3 was in Early Access for a long while for example)
Although I think in this case it's a bit more complicated. The marketing campaign was rather large so I think they thought they could deliver on time but ultimately were unable to do so. This is likely also why we are hearing only now about mods, they were still working on it with the hopes of making it in time and had to make a judgement call last minute - in this case to delay the modding tools until after release.
Dang, guess I’ll have to upgrade my PC. Assuming I can’t get a GTX 750 TI to play it at 640x480 resolution.
CS1 is the main reason why I upgraded my PC the last time 😭 ugh now I'll need to start saving up again
Would be nice if devs today would still offer demos so that people can see if the games even run on their system.
But I won't bother anyway. Buying the first game was such a mistake, same with Stellaris. I just can't afford this shit, spending hundreds of bucks on a single game. Video games become more and more an unaffordable luxury.
Would be nice if devs today would still offer demos so that people can see if the games even run on their system.
The Steam refund policy pretty much serves this purpose nowadays. Since the refund is auto accepted if you have 2h or less in play time and bought the game less than two weeks ago. After that you still have good odds for a refund but you'll have to actually explain why you want one ("game gets too slow toward late game" would be a reason that would very likely get your refund granted)
Nobody forces you to buy DLC either, there is plenty of content in the free updates. Plus there are always sales if you really want a DLC and from historical precedent Paradox offers decent discounts even on recent DLCs and massive discounts on older ones.
When did they make it auto accepted? I had a refund denied after 15 minutes when I said it caused motion sickness
I think if you're within 2 weeks since purchase and within 2 hours of playtime it's auto accept
The 2 week part is usually what gets people, they seem to be pretty lenient on the time requirement
Completely forgot to answer your question... IIrc it was sometime after 2018, they lost a court battle in Australia and decided to adopt a slightly more lenient than required refund policy globally afterwards.
Not sure in your case but I'd guess it has been over 2 weeks since purchase. The auto accept part is literally stated in their refund policy:
It doesn't matter. Valve will, upon request via help.steampowered.com, issue a refund for any reason, if the request is made within the required return period, and, in the case of games, if the title has been played for less than two hours.
As well as
There are more details below, but even if you fall outside of the refund rules we’ve described, you can ask for a refund anyway and we’ll take a look. Consumers in some jurisdictions may have additional rights to a refund in circumstances where the game is faulty.
which is ambiguous and, from my experience, is definitely applied when the time played exceeds 2 hours.
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Just wait for a sale, you could have bought the base game and the most important dlcs for below 50
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What exactly does CS2 better than CS1 with mods?
Essentially the engine is more modern, the graphics are nicer, and the simulation seems to be better. It is also hopefully a better base for newer mods.
I love CS1 but the engine is 8 years old and PC gamers in particular have been hitting the engines limits in multiple ways for years. There were also some fundamental design decisions which limited the scope of what could be done with the game going forward - it is definitely time for a sequel.
To be fair though, CS1 is going nowhere and has a massive amount of content available for it (including the massive free community content). It will probably take a couple of years before CS2 surpasses it. Although for Console gamers it'll probably quickly surpass what CS1 was and is able to offer.
- vastly improved road tools
- (seemingly) traffic AI comparable or even better than TM:PE
- seasons (!)
- Actually Useful Unique Buildings
- Vastly improved industry handling
- More Zoning, importantly mixed use and degrees of residential
- Better Custom Industries mechanic (not district based, expanding on the new base will allow for more engaging additions through DLC, Updates or Mods)
- Improved Outside interactions (ability to buy/sell electricity for example)
- Ability to create outside connections without mods
- Finer expansion planning via smaller squares (map size aside I think the squares being smaller is a good thing)
- Overhauled city expansion mechanic, you don't have to spam population to unlock new things and you don't automatically unlock everything. Instead you gain points via xp you get through multiple activity sources (you can level up a city solely by building streets for example). The points can then be spent on more advanced buildings of the basic unlocks (highways have to be "bought" using those points after unlocking roads, trains have to be "bought" after unlocking busses, etc.)
Don't forget overall better service pathing (apparently) and the ability to restrict a service to a district. That was one thing I wanted desperately.
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