Cities Skylines 2 - One Year Later... Is It Better Now?

[@Myne1001]

Adding a Beach DLC when there are no beaches in the game was a really bold move on CO/Paradox's part

[@majid7925]

it was like a rugpull and i think I honestly would have understood the idiocracy better if it was a crypto scam for the money

[@user-wq9mw2xz3j]

its so annoying how they speak and try sound so positive and fake all the time..​@christiangraff4754

[@majid7925]

@@user-wq9mw2xz3jthat my friend was one of the most frustrating most of the content creators had no experience being critical as they were used to being friendly to the makers and public had no reason for that

[@FenceAKAGlasnost]

i can safely say that Simcity 2013 is superior to CS2.

[@Myne1001]

@@FenceAKAGlasnost only regards I'd say CS2 is better is map size. SC2013 was so disappointing in that regard.

[@dean._.0.0]

It’s so sad… we will have to wait for another developer to step into the city building genre and replace Colossal Order the same way Colossal Order did to EA and SimCity

[@fancreper]

You should definitely check out Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic. It's janky in many ways, but imo it's one of the best city builders currently and it had a 1.0 release recently.

[@Dar1usz]

@@fancreper its totally different game its not an city builder, its an city simulator with many complicated mechanics requiring planning and solving issues instantly, otherwise your city will become empty anyway its an good alternative to all city builers, but its NOT as CS or Simcity - you are building cities right, but theres plenty of other thing related to managing city

[@fancreper]

@@Dar1usz What do you mean it's not a city builder lol? Of course it's not the same game, but just because one game is more complex/simpler than the other, it doesn't mean it's not a city builder. It has the same core gameplay of building a city and making sure your citizens needs are met while you try to expand and grow your economy. I would say W&R: Soviet Republic is more of a city builder considering you are actually BUILDING the city yourself. All of the infrastructure in your city doesn't magically appear, and you have to plan how you are going to get the materials and workers to build it. However, you don't need to play the game like this. The difficulty is customizable, so if you don't like the complexity of it you can just make it stupidly simple and play it like CS where you just paint the city.

[@BeachLookingGuy]

@@Dar1usz what's ironic is the amount of people playing CS asking for a game like W&R. this whole "CS isnt hard enough" crowd

[@cass7448]

@@Dar1usz I think a better distinction is to call CS a *sandbox* city-builder, as compared with a *management* city-builder.

[@Krishnath.Dragon]

CS2 was hurt immensely by being released in an unfinished state, had it been early access, it'd have been acceptable, but it wasn't. And it's clearly still in an unfinished state one year later.

[@Infernal_Elf]

early access is not acceptable from big well funded studios.

[@Krishnath.Dragon]

@@Infernal_Elf Do note that Paradox is only the publisher, Colossal Order is not a big studio. But as I said, a game in an unfinished state has no reason to be released as a finished game.

[@Infernal_Elf]

@@Krishnath.Dragon Paradox owns the cities skylines ip. Bit yeah the Developer is Colossal order.

[@Dar1usz]

Same as CS1, nothing changed. CS1 still have bugs even mentioned 8 yrs ago so yeah its unfinished as well cause every finished game is polished from simple bugs.

[@Krishnath.Dragon]

@@Dar1usz There is a difference between a game having bugs, and a game having so many bugs it is close to unplayable, or in a few cases, are straight up unplayable (the first year of Cyberpunk 2077 is a prime example of the latter). If your game is either of the two, IT SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN RELEASED UNTIL IT IS IN A PLAYABLE STATE.

[@HistoryTeacherSteve]

my biggest gaming disappointment in years. I was so hyped, and so let down by this dumpster

[@vaughn1804]

🔥

[@pipedreamin]

Agree, hard to believe I’ve been waiting a year for my prepaid game and DLC to get delivered in a fully functional state. 😢

[@droid4d279]

Right I litliterally cried now to wait for dumpster fire of GTA 6

[@Infernal_Elf]

@@droid4d279 ohh yeah take 2 killed ksp 2 really hard so not impossible they will kill gta also

[@Infernal_Elf]

@@pipedreamin never ever preorder if u already paid they dont need to finish the product. W8 for rewievs

[@PoshJosey]

between CS2 and KSP2, 2023 was a rough year for sequels

[@vomm]

Or new IPs like Starfield. 2023 could have been the best year of the decade regarding to new releases, but instead it was the year of disappointment except for BG3.

[@Gadottinho]

and the other cs2 too, well, at least that shit still sells the same

[@fusilier3029]

@@vomm Armored Core 6 is really good, it didn't get enough media coverage as it came out around the same time as BG3.

[@wta1518]

CS2 is amazing compared to KSP2.

[@FlyingPenguino]

Alan Wake 2 was a banger

[@geofff.3343]

Sometimes I wish Hello Games had failed to redeem No Man's Sky. Not because I hate them or it, but because every dev and publisher seems to have taken away the wrong lesson. Now they all think with time they can turn it around.

[@Baulderstone1]

I appreciate that Hello Games fixed NMS, but all the praise they got for it was ridiculous. They ripped people off, selling the game with images found to be fraudulent by Steam. It's good the criticism forced them to eventually give people the game they wanted, but that only warrants an end to the criticism, not the exuberant praise they got. I think that's what made other people think they could just start releasing unfinished slop at full price. I've been playng some CS2 since the Economy 2.0 patch, and there really are a lot of great things about the game, which only makes the flaws more annoying. Aside from performance (which is a real issue), the only fatal flaw at the moment is having no asset mods. Asset mods were the secret sauce that gave CS1 so myc long term playability. The really sad thing is that the stated reason they didn't go with Steam Workshop is so the console players got mods too, but I really doubt this game is ever coming to consoles anyway.

[@rmjohnson144]

Yeah, NMS was a joke. I couldn't believe they could turn the game around so quickly. I was pleasantly surprised. And this seems the trend now. I seen so many games come ouit that were in beta forever and have a decent game. I just wish CS2 was released as paid beta. Then the game would have gotten a lot less hate. I mean when CS1 launched, the devs said it would release piecemeal, and it was pleasantly acceptable. but CS2 dropping as a finished game and it felt like in alpha. This was very unacceptable.

[@lethalmantis89]

@@Baulderstone1 I understand what you mean but I don't think that is totally fair. If you do everything you can in your power to still make this product as how you marketed it in the first place, it's still a good thing and eventually I don't feel ripped off at all. Cyberpunk 2077 same thing for me. It's just the best game in the world now so even though they released it completely broken, they did everything they could to fix it and more. With CS2, I do still feel like they aren't even remotely close to a 'comeback'. It's just my opinion of course, like I said, I do understand where you're coming from.

[@Ch-xc4fo]

To be honest, I'm glad this is actually a thing. Lets be honest, NMS or not, games still come out unfinished, past present and future. The truth of the matter is that it's more likely for a game to be unfinished nowadays than not, and it's not just greed. The scale of non-indie games nowadays is insane, and the expectations people put on these products are insane as well. I don't see an alternative where they didn't release and got no issues: people complain about delays too, and it ups the stakes a lot. Look how even Jumbo classifies delays as "Ls". We perceive delays as an overall negative thing, let's not kid ourselves. Given the state it is at today (still very non-ideal), had the game been delayed a year, it would've only caused even more controversy and cost a lot more, which could've impacted development for the future (looking at Imperator: Rome). It comes to bear at one point the fact that realistically, this is the only viable timeline we get a playable Cities Skylines 2. Releasing it as early access wouldn't have helped much either. At the end of the day, "Early Access" is a sticker, a brand. One that has just as many (if not more) controversies tied to it. Personally, I haven't bought Cities Skylines 2. Ever since I bought Simcity 2013 I vowed to not pre-order a game, and it has allowed me to be more critical, but also more forgiving of games in general. A game's botched launch isn't a problem for me, because from my perspective I can pretend it never came out in the first place, wait a few years, and get the improved version. To me, the worst a game can do is release in a broken state and be left that way, or being cancelled altogether. So if I have to pick between a culture that focuses on "doing it right on the first time" and end up cancelling a good portion of games, or one that allows for more games to come substandard, but with a chance of improving drastically, I'm picking the latter.

[@michaelcook6288]

Sadly it started before nms. Call of duty and sports games have been a cut copy and paste scheme for decades.

[@BeachLookingGuy]

feels like yesterday i was pointing out all the red flags in their marketing footage and everyone was telling me "it's not even finished yet".... now a year later they are saying "it's not even finished yet?"

[@Infernal_Elf]

@@BeachLookingGuy spot on people keep paying for advertisement. Not an actual finished game a week or two after release if its actually good.

[@Archman155]

yeah i remember watching youtubers like Biffa and their streams, weeks before release, watching it struggle on a small city on a 4090 and i9, and i said then that it'd be a disaster, but people still somehow thought it'd be ok at launch and that "theyre still optimising it" (biffa himself also said this). i still feel like half these youtubers were completely paid off

[@Infernal_Elf]

@@Archman155 ahh yeah it was biffastillplays that was feeding us total shit about it being good.

[@harveyboy83]

The subreddit defends this game like hell. People that defend this horse siht are the reason games are released unfinished

[@dycedargselderbrother5353]

I remember the whiplash I got during the video series. At first they were tech demos showing proof of concept features, most of them looking prerendered. Then, all of a sudden, the game is coming out in a month. There's no way they can wrap all this stuff up by then, right? Turns out, no, they couldn't. People can be really bad judges at how long it takes to implement features or correct bugs. There are so many games that look bad in open beta a month or so before release but you'll have people saying "it's just a beta". The code base is probably already frozen by then.

[@Tagarav]

Marketing budget: insane hype Game budget: ...

[@owenlee4080]

I'm still baffled that bicycles aren't in the game yet. Nothing makes my cities feel emptier and more hollow than the bicycle infrastructure of Gary, Indiana. And this doesn't seem to come up in many assessments of where the game currently is or what CO should prioritize even though this is a core mechanic with assets already available in the code.

[@2complicated4u]

They don't even have people in the parks or school. The special buildings are always empty

[@owenlee4080]

@34fj-y69ez CO announced just a few days ago on Twitter that bicycles will be free

[@Zimionz]

@34fj-y69ez Wasn't there a statement from a dev recently, that bikelanes and bike traffic were supposed to be included in the original release? If that's the case, CS2 isn't even feature complete yet - one year after release.

[@LongJourneys]

IMO if a game requires mods or DLC AT ALL to be playable, it's not "finished".

[@mnewm21]

it didnt "require" them but the expectations were there that they would be available just like in City 1. You can quite happily play the game as is without any of the dlc or mods, it is just that everyone wants them as in City 1 it makes the game much prettier and more real when you can add in extras that aren't necessary but exist in real cities. It is also promises that were made and have been broken that were the biggest issue for most people. Whether that was Colossal Order or Paradox at fault it broke the faith in the game ever being delivered as promised hence most of us gave up and returned to Cities 1.

[@fueyo2229]

All the Paradox Games are like this, they either require lots of mods or multiple DLC, take hoi4 or Europa Universalis as prime examples

[@jacksonbarkerthebluehairedfox]

@@fueyo2229 Yeah. CS1 with no DLCs or mods is just really dull. It was serviceable when the game first came out because it was filling the hole that the death of the SimCity franchise left, but now it's just really boring to today's city builder standards.

[@weekndfan]

Basically every EA game

[@Homedepotorange]

What about Fallout New Vegas?

[@Mogloth]

It never gets old watching the helicopter fly through buildings. 🙂

[@Mikko088]

Looks really bad that is.

[@vomm]

You can't expect path finding or colliders in 2024, at least not from games made by multi billion dollar stock companies. Imagine the performance of CS2 if the helicopter would be able to detect buldings and fly around them, that's tech for the year 2200 when quantum computers are ready for gaming and AI with the intelligence of hundrets of billions of humans is capable to code something like collision detection, which is nothing but magic for us primitives today.

[@mnewm21]

one day we will demo it to a friend and it will crash into the building and we will be flabergasted! 🤯

[@Bearodon]

The cars driving through the waterlogged tunnel was my favourite part :D

[@ianbeck5897]

I remember, probably at least six months ago, referring to this game as an orphaned child. I still stand by that in that I don't believe that it is getting or will get, the love that it so seriously needs . The game needs a ton of money injected into it and the right people engaged so that it can be "quickly" improved. Trouble is, the player base and positivity is so low that it's almost a lost cause - and for all of the reasons that you have highlighted in your excellent video.

[@rmjohnson144]

I agree, the devs didn't take the game (CS2) seriously. I think they should have fixed all of the CS1 bugs and released it as a true (DX12) remastered. This way, they would have gotten a little more experience in building an AI system, plus not have CS2 so broken, half baked, and unfinished.

[@vomm]

This game needs not money but good team management. It's insane if you think about how much money it got, how many people "worked" on it, and still it's such a crap while other games are developed by only one coder with some help here and there and only a fraction of the budget and still works out much better. CO has serious management issues. You can shit unlimited money on this studio and it won't help if the management put's it in their own pocket or burns it for matcha latte machines or whatever.

[@franzeusq]

The player base is waiting. But if they don't fix things, they won't be able to monetize this thing.

[@BlueTemplar15]

It does remind me of the Sword of the Stars 2 debacle a bit. Which I still (mostly) blame Paradox for. Speaking of, has Paradox announced any city builder projects yet for their own Development Studios ? (Yeah, the SotS2 thing was bad enough, but then Stellaris taking many of its ideas - but still falling short in interface and tactical combat departments - felt like insult added to injury.)

[@kevnar]

I uninstalled this back in November last year. I keep checking out the progress videos. I'm looking forward to actually playing a finished game if it's ever completed someday.

[@GFACTION]

Same here !

[@White_Tiger93]

play simcity, much better, becaue this game, CK2 has been proven it doesn't exist. the simulation doesn't work, stuff just magically appears. they can fix this issue by hiring Will Wright to do the simulation part but unfortunately, paradox being dumb is a tradition at this point. that guy, Will Wright, right now if you looked hard enough, he's on cryptocurrency type of game development like holy shit what a bummer for a legend. people should hire him ASAP!!

[@Bluedino549]

I wouldn't suggest you wait this long because you'll have to decide between playing Elder Scrolls VI, Half-Life 3 and that.

[@noworries272]

Unfortunately by the time they get this thing fixed they probably could have just started over and rebuilt the whole game

[@user-wq9mw2xz3j]

making something good takes much longer than you seem to think..

[@noworries272]

@@user-wq9mw2xz3j How long does it take? That depends on the game and complexity? Right? Things that they should know before releasing the game correct?

[@ninochaosdrache3189]

@@user-wq9mw2xz3j But not that long. Other devs create something good much quicker.

[@ChasseurTueur]

@@user-wq9mw2xz3j but they were fast to take coin :)

[@gruis3783]

@@noworries272 noob... you know nothing about coding

[@CharliMorganMusic]

What pissed me off-and why I haven't bought CS2-is the hundreds of dollars I spent on DLC for CS1. There is mod support beyond reckoning for CS1, and now we know the game won't change to break them all over again. Why the shit would I buy a new game, all of the DLC they're inevitably going to re-release, and then endure all of the essential mods breaking with every patch. Why. Why would I do that.

[@Cris1Mac]

Why don't they just admit, that not using workshop on Steam didn't work and just open that option up? Or is the game hard-coded to only work with the Paradox mod system? What do they have to lose?

[@tablechair]

I guess they wanted a complete control of the ecosystem. This game is a proof of what happens when their plans fail.

[@Cris1Mac]

@@tablechair Agreed, I hope EU5 will not have this mod system whenever it launches. Johan is smarter than that. (Hopefully)

[@tobbakken2911]

@@Cris1Mac what they lose is people using other sites or platforms then steam missing out on mods. It would just split the modding community

[@Cris1Mac]

@@tobbakken2911 Is that a bad thing? Why not have both? PC folks are happy, and console folks are happy (whenever that happens) It's been a year. Try different things is all I am saying.

[@Cris1Mac]

@@AT1972ASDF Ok, it's about paid mods. Well then all I can say is good luck with that..

[@Codraroll]

What bugs me the most about the performance issues is that they are the main driver of "difficulty" for unlocking some of the end-game content. Getting all of the signature buildings requires you to build a city so big that even high-end PCs struggle, then level up the buildings while the simulation chugs along at a snail's pace - which makes buildings take forever to level up, if your PC can handle it at all. Sure, it runs fine enough when you play with smaller cities, but the game can't be played to completion in this state. And I worry that future DLCs will just exacerbate the problem. Computers that struggle to simulate cities of 250k inhabitants now, will probably struggle similarly at 100k or less when there's lots of DLC content (Parks, industries, hotels, airports, campuses, etc.) being simulated in the background. And some of the content will only be unlocked at 400k or more. And that's not even mentioning mods. I like this game and want to like it even more, but at the moment it needs more content to be enjoyable. But more content will also make it heavier to run, and I'm not confident it will manage to find the sweet spot between content and performance within the constraints of remotely affordable PC hardware. In short, I'm worried either way.

[@doublemgamer]

My main gripe with this game currently is that if your city has a big enough population (e.g. 100k), no matter how good your PC is, the game simulation speed will slow down to an unbearably slow snail's pace, even when on the fastest speed and optimization settings.

[@MrTJPAS]

I wish they had improved zoning so as to better accommodate lots/zoning squares on curved roads and corners that are not right angles. Part of the reason that so many cities I built end up as grid-central is that the slightest curve in the road or change in height results in drastic limits to the size of the buildings that can be zoned there to 1x4 strips of land that look out of place when surrounded by 20 ft of unbuildable grass and then a giant skyscraper.

[@ntl9974]

Right

[@raginasiangaming910]

The performance needs a lot of work. I run a really good gaming rig and over 200k pop its unplayable. Imagine a city building game where you can't build a city...

[@evelynnleague2232]

This is also one of biggest issue

[@benmann16]

Absolutely this…

[@pyrox4549]

This issue will never change it's the engine.. Unity was never built for city building simulator games its built for action games the same issue was in CL-1 will be forever there in CL-2.. It will never change..

[@pickleman40]

New Hampshire city builder lol

[@chills_tiny_mom]

whats your rig?

[@NovaRaptorTV]

*Me being a Kerbal Space Program fan*: "Oh hey, I've seen this one"

[@LegionOfEclaires]

It's better but it is not the game most fans want, yet.

[@Dar1usz]

Fans dont even know what they want.

[@username9175]

​@Dar1usz what? a functional game?

[@alexdevcamp]

Fans just want custom assets ​@@username9175

[@user-wq9mw2xz3j]

​@Dar1usz slightly true, but not that much in this case. It might be true about one thing: many dont actually want a realistic simulation- they want a fun experience with easier and faster city growth.

[@ninochaosdrache3189]

@@Dar1usz Fans know pretty well what they want. It usually just doesn't allign with that the corporation wants.

[@R4ZORLIGHT]

In my opinion, the games foundation is so broken, they have to redo the whole game. This game can't be saved anymore.

[@JustaGuy_Gaming]

Lets be honest it's Paradox. They don't "fix games" they just make minor cosmetic changes to trick people into buying their games and DLC. Honestly speaking their games have seemingly gotten worse over the years, not better in terms of actual game mechanics. Most of their simulation stuff is fake with zero impact on the game.

[@XJeepWerks]

I very much agree with your assessment. I do love the game and I do enjoy playing it, but it’s not what we were told it would be nor what those of us who preordered paid for. Still my favorite title right now.

[@TheVerendus]

I reinstalled CS1 last week for the first time in years, not even knowing there was a CS2. Upon some research it seems like it isn't worth it. I'd rather buy $50 of DLC for CS1 then buy an inferior game with less modding options.

[@user-wq9mw2xz3j]

as somebody who hates csl2, its so much better than the first game in plenty things (not the least road building) and I would never go back to the first game.

[@CaseyLynn-i7u]

@@user-wq9mw2xz3j With mods building road is easy. Sure if you don't mods CS2 is better than the CS1 base game. But with mods CS1 it still miles ahead of CS2. and will be for years.

[@1994CPK]

I hate how they have giant cranes building a small single family home

[@sandmandf]

Another year of "Workers and resources: soviet republic"

[@Jaroartx]

spot on Comrade

[@bracken7794]

Will be giving it at least another 12 months before I jump in.

[@Katastra_]

8:00 here we see the daily commuters from Atlantis emerging from their under sea access tunnel to go to their menial day jobs

[@swedizzle12]

At this point i just chucked into my I'll play it one of these days bucket. Also, when i've gotten a new computer

[@Infernal_Elf]

@@swedizzle12 new computer dont help. Its the game engine thats broken.

[@piotrekstel]

i have a pc with i5 13400f and RX 6800, 64 gigabytes of DDR4 ram. The lag isn't that big, around 110 fps when the game is not speed up (300k population) but there are many stutters when moving the camera. It becomes much worse when you put the game speed to 4x and now the game runs at super unstable 20-30 fps

[@55....]

that tornado is the ugliest thing ever looks straight out of roblox

[@savagepanda8458]

Meanwhile those of us on console are still missing obvious features in CS1 like the asset editor and togglable contour lines.

[@zakarhyn]

Yep, but consoles players are an afterthought to colossal order. always has been.

[@VloneKid25]

@@zakarhynwe shouldn’t be as we’re a large population of people that play this game

[@mikesbasement6954]

The Beach DLC was CS equivalent of Horse Armor for Oblivion.

[@ape8404]

Hard to get myself to play a game that basically deleted 80 hours of gameplay by bugging out my city so hard that even going back to previous saves didn't work.

[@Liam94Smith]

The fact they even considered selling a DLC when their base game STILL isn’t at the level it should have been at release is mind blowing to me. What makes them think they deserve extra money for anything when they’ve short changed everyone so badly with a terrible, broken game?

[@Toodyslexicforyou]

Can’t wait for try game to be the Cities skyline killer like cities skyline was the Sim city killer.

[@user-wq9mw2xz3j]

there wont be this decade. its not worth the risk for big studios and small ones cant do the job. this is and will be the city building game of the decade however bad it is

[@OkrotnaGlista]

Try Workers and resources soviet republic. Hellishly hard and complicated but my favorite game so far. Just came out imo best city builder/simulator there is.

[@Toodyslexicforyou]

@@OkrotnaGlista only issue is that is is a command economy not a market based system, which is super cool I agree the game looks epic but not like citifies skyline.

[@OkrotnaGlista]

@@Toodyslexicforyou Yeah i agree they are totally diffrent games. Still very cool and share some simmilarites.

[@ninochaosdrache3189]

@@user-wq9mw2xz3j "and small ones cant do the job" They can. Colossal Order is proof of that.

[@CosmicBit64]

Yeah. The bait and switch Colossal Order did with those early teasers and trailers. The footage they presented was beautiful, and not at all reminiscent of the game they released. A year in and at least I thought we'd have bike paths, and be able to toggle off that ugly white highlighting on the roads; it bothers me so much. Hopefully another developer makes a city simulator. A lot of people said when this was released, it seems like there's something fundamentally wrong with the code that patches will not be able to fix or optimize.

[@XGD5layer]

You want to turn off the road marks?

[@TROPtastic]

​@@XGD5layer cars don't make roads lighter when they travel on them. Rubber from tires and leaking oil makes the road darker where they travel, with roads getting *uniformly* lighter with age.

[@ItWasSaucerShaped]

NMS didn't 'linger in the hurt', though. that's the thing regular, extremely substantive content updates. they started rolling out and never really stopped. and they always addressed the most pressing pain points that players had with the game and when all of those pain points were addressed, THEN the devs started pushing out new content on top of a foundation that was rock solid. all the while never asking for an extra red cent from the customers Cities 2 isn't like that at all. it was and still is a panic product pushed to release without being finished, and the solution time and again has been to try and nickel & dime customers to get it feature complete when that should have been the baseline there are no regular releases addressing pain points, just spasm updates - almost always in reaction to content creators dropping the game from their platforms - that try to paper-over the narrow set of problems a given content creator cites as the reason they aren't featuring it anymore i don't think there's any malice here, just a project that ballooned outside the scope of what its studio could achieve... but that doesn't actually change anything, and unlike with NMS, there's no way to really address that with content updates because the fundamental issue of the scope being too big for the developer to handle remains. the core of the experience is missing

[@kaylemain2006]

You're absolutely right, we all have been. When the game released I thought the game was far away from a finished state and I estimated it needed at least two more years of work to reach what I would consider minimum to call it completed. It's turning true of course but now I honestly think I was off and the game needs at least two MORE years from now to reach a playable state given the pace of progress, a total of 3 post-release development years.

[@terrellrogers7645]

Honestly I don't even put all of the blame on CO, I put the blame more on Paradox for being like EA for most likely forcing them to release it ASAP because of their greed as a publisher/distributor despite all the delays they had between Covid and just overall trying to finish the game

[@harrysmith3606]

I was definitely frustrated at release, but I do think the game is a really enjoyable game to play now that they've made various patches. There's still a long way to go, of course. The main thing that turned the tides for me was CO / Paradox being honest with the community in their comms and being realistic about timelines. Pre-release, had a lot of good faith in them-buckets of it!-then we were subjected to the usual money squeezing that we've come to expect from all other modern game studios. Now it seems they've addressed that and are treating the community with the same good faith that we held them to before, and I am optimistic about the future. The beta tag with modding is necessary and I'm glad they're sticking to it rather than trying to pretend that something clearly unfinished is completely finished. That's all we ever wanted! I don't consider that as an L, personally.

[@nathaniellindner313]

I think I'm gonna have to bite the bullet and finally just sort through my mod folder for CS1 if I want to do any city building anytime soon

[@VloneKid25]

Atleast you have a mod browser for cities 1 us console players don’t have anything smh

[@jasonfuentz4282]

@@VloneKid25 🥱

[@VloneKid25]

@@jasonfuentz4282 you say that until your the one suffering then it’s no longer “🥱”

[@VloneKid25]

@@jasonfuentz4282 you say that bro but you don’t know how us console players feel like we have nothing to fall back on while they try to figure cities skylines 2 for us, we’re still stuck with the very frustrating and non modded cities skylines 1, your literally witnessing CO kill their console player base.

[@jasonfuentz4282]

@@VloneKid25 😢😂

[@LilaHikes]

No Man's Sky was simply missing content. SC2 is not only missing content, but also suffers from major performance and stability issues. When patches fix one thing but then break other things, consistently, there's bigger problems under the hood. You can always add missing content but you can't fix bad code/game design. And I do believe that is what CS2's biggest issue is. If I am right, there is no 'No Man's Sky' comeback for this title.

[@vomm]

Yeah, NMS was not a bad game on release, it just was not what they've promised. CS2 on the other hand is just bad, it has no soul, was not made with love or compassion, it's a game made for stakeholders not for gamers.

[@Infernal_Elf]

Yeah u need to have a stable game engine foundation. That actually can utilize modern hardware.

[@dycedargselderbrother5353]

It's not a good sign that someone thought that rendering each agent individually and giving them fully rendered teeth at all times was a good idea and wasn't stopped anywhere in the pipeline.

[@DaggeroPlays]

It's quite sad how it's turned out. I understand their desire to create something completely new but with how advanced CS1 became they should have had a pre-made checklist of every feature that should be included on release as a bare minimum. The release now, update later (and in some cases charge for it) trend has been a disaster for the industry. Gamers are fed up with receiving unfinished products and we can no longer trust anyone.

[@FeniksGaming]

The moment I have spotted first red flags I have put this game off for a month post lunch to watch all the reviews and actual players feedback. After a month I put this game off for another year to see where we are. This year after release I am still waiting. I suppose I will reassess the situation in 2025 winter sale. I am still sceptical that this game will have a long term life spam and will not crush and burn the way Kerbal Space Program did.

[@Dap740]

sameee

[@GustavSvard]

My prediction: The next patch will come out on October the 24th. Will it be big or small? Stable or needing a hotfix to be playable? No clue. But the actual 1 year anniversary feels way to obvious to not get a patch out. Unless there's nothing stable to release at all.

[@shanghaiultra]

Very fair assessment. Really enjoy your channel and humourous approach to Cities 2's countless issues.

[@Lucasolvalou]

CS2 is a crying shame but a great case study into the sad state of affairs the gaming industry finds itself in today. The drive to create a quality product overshadowed by the need to make a quick buck. The golden age of gaming has long been over.

[@MrMpa31]

The game is nothing like what was advertised. The teasers and trailers gave everyone hope and i remember all the hypothesizing what may be coming based on what we were shown. In the end, even if the game reaches it's full potential, we will only be getting a slightly improved, outdated CS1+. People have massively lowered their expectations in order to cope with this reality. We desperately need a new dev team to take on the challenge of making a true modern SimCity style game.

[@werewolf1336]

Appreciate your honesty Jumbo. Seriously. I'm patient. And I'll be watching your vids until you give CS2 a thumbsup that it is ready for prime time.

[@Hilfe1217]

100% Agree. Its still an early access game. Keep up the good work.

[@richardhingston6073]

The biggest gaming disappointment since EA's Sim City. I hope a new developer can pick up the baton for modern city building. There are plenty of good classic city builders out there (Manor Lords, Memoriopolis)

[@YammoYammamoto]

So... if Beachfront was made for free.... What did Deluxe players get INSTEAD?! I swear - I'll NEVER buy another Paradox game. May they all burn in hell.

[@alexdevcamp]

I've been saying from the beginning, they should have just released it in early access. Then no one would've cared because they'd have the right expectations. Just look at Satisfactory and Valheim

[@GodxMischief]

I expected better visuals. More variety, more control

[@L.TripzZ]

can we just talk about how you have to pay £41 for a low tier game

[@Dap740]

lol imagine paying $1250 on all 80+ Sims 4 packs. oh yes, EA still throwing out their $40 expansion packs which are non-functional, buggy crap content

[@sahhull]

Im still playing CS1 So glad I held off and waited... Saved my money and disappointment.

[@DokisKalin1]

Does anyone else have a problem where low density residential never upgrades? Even after providing some services and parks these neighborhoods stay poor and stagnate.

[@taltheairchair]

Same

[@Dar1usz]

It takes time, some years not months. U expect to level up in same way as CS1. This isnt CS1.

[@kaydxn_rblx]

You have to wait for the cims to be well educated and etc for the building to upgrade fully it a slower process unlike cs1

[@waffl_798]

the game is just so... souless. The graphics are now a dull grey, the simcity esque tone that would pop in sometimes, even the small things like cars being washed away by a tidal wave, all gone. Cities 1 has dated graphics, but they are miles ahead of 2.

[@tonyzed6831]

0:31, ALL the cars have snow on their windscreens... Skylines 2 is as stupid as 1 was, the devs do not care and do not give a damn f*ck about details. I'm glad I didn't get into 2.

[@moizesbrando]

1:27 *STILL* gives CS1 life. Has more players than CS2 at any given moment. As modders and creators continue to create the game for CO

[@VideoGames_NerdSection]

Thank you for the update! The lack of animation when building houses is also disappointing and destroys the atmosphere. Do you know if any changes are planned?

[@marcus7564]

It seems minor but the lack of grass is a deal breaker to me. Compared to CS1 the flat grass looks like sim city 2000. I just can't for a game thats so much about esthetics. Hope it is added or modded.

[@Whiitzer1]

We were curious with my friend that how long it's going to take that game is going to be in good shape. My guess was smth like 1 year, but lets give it 1 more year to get everything together. It will ve really nice game eventually ❤

[@KischteBier]

Streamers have turned CS into a big MS Paint. No focus on the simulation itself, just beautification BS. This is the result.

[@jacoblyman9441]

I don't know if I would blame it all on streamers and content makers (and some of the cities I saw made by them were indeed very pretty), but... I think there is merit to the criticism. Streamers play a game to entertain their audience, and will add or ignore features so they can reach that goal. A game has to stand on its own and entertain it's player. Making a game to be optimized for the streamer's needs can miss the mark on the player's needs, and the 2010's and 2020's are littered with games that are fun to watch others play but not fun to play yourself.

[@imperiallegionnaire6943]

I get that sense too. SimCity for all its faults made it clear that you are the Mayor and it’s your job to plan the city and manage its budget. I get the sense with this game that people feel more like they’re playing the role of architects and designers rather than as a politician. SimCity 4 was primitive, but it was a difficult game. Cities smoothed some of that out but it took away the political part of having your advisors screaming at you the whole time. I fear that Cities 2 has gone even more in the direction of playing a city designer rather than a city manager, and that’s what ultimately puts me off from buying it.

[@AnastasiaThemis]

My biggest issue stopping me from coming back, and I feel a bit bad about it because I know they made this choice to focus on fixing the game, but a year has gone by without any really mechanical additions through expansions. That'd be fine if the game was a bit more fleshed out on launch, but in the run up to launch I remember constantly hearing how Cities Skylines 2 was a kind of foundation that the expansions were going to bolster, akin to 1. They've not been able to go through with that plan though, and so ultimately I just find there's not nerely enough to do still. I mean sure we can freeform place down assets now, but almost all steps in the management (and especially tourism) elements feel just half-complete.

[@ccevideo]

I haven’t bought the game yet but I will very soon . I loved what they did with CS1 and the community that evolved around it. My hope is that Paradox will support their efforts to fix and add content to the game. If Paradox is willing to make the long term financial commitment, the players and the revenue will follow. CS1 proved that. But if the suits (AKA Paradox) get involved and start with the whole “we have to save money” mentality, we may never get the game we all hope will be there. The long term financial potential is there, let’s hope Paradox agrees with that sentiment and allows Colossal Order to fix this.

[@Sc00terNut]

Having paid for the full edition back in 2023, I am disappointed things haven't moved along more quickly. I must say, however, that I am seeing progress and things are coming along, just more slowly than I'd like them to.

[@hamishashcroft3233]

I genuinely don’t understand how they’ve managed to mess up to such an extent, especially with modding. I remember watching a livestream from CO a few days before release and them announcing that modding wouldn’t be available with the original release but it would be ‘a matter of days rather than weeks’ before it was possible. How could they have been so unbelievably wrong?

[@Bluerocket94]

I think Colossal Order really needed to ask themselves was anyone needing a City Skylines 2. Sure it made improvements, but just like the Sims, whenever they start a new version (Sims > Sims 2 > Sim 3 > Sim 4) the previous version was always good for it had a full set of expansions, community, and everything already. Plus with people spending money already on City Skylines didn't make sense to go to Skylines 2.

[@koynov333]

Yes we need it better looking cities. CS1 is outdated.

[@declanashmore]

Yes, we needed a CS2. The engine was old, the game was unoptimised as it would quickly choke, the design of the game didn't allow for a lot of desired features, etc. A version 2 would allow them to implement the lessons they learned, and make use of newer, faster tech.

[@imembridibuddha]

CS1 is held back by an outdated Unity engine, and while I do appreciate mods pretty much, you still need mods to implement some crucial features in CS1 that I hoped would be included in vanilla CS2.

[@Blobey]

Are we ever going to get the same DLCs from the first game like the Natural Disater, College, Airport, Industry DLCs?

[@vomm]

As long as they don't care to fix the extremely ugly fields and mines I won't touch this game. Even the 20 years old Cities XL did this 100x better.

[@BHNative]

I cannot believe I had to search like 7 different websites to find out the new generation has decided to shorten the word "double-u" for "win." I mean I get it but seriously. Seriously.

[@ravimattar]

So... still no bikes? In a city sim game? But there are motorcycles? AND HELICOPTERS?

[@Mattius08]

The game runs fine on my high end rig but my issue with this game is bugs, random crashes, the population gets wonky. I got a city of 300k and all of a sudden no one drives their cars, everyone walks and I don't have any subways or trams. The zoning demand is all over the place. I like the game but truly believe the game is still in early access beta...

[@dividebyzero1000]

I had been planning on using this game as an excuse to get a new system sooner. Neither of my two systems (6 and 13 years old) can run it. But given the horror show, still just waiting. And yes, my interest has waned a bit too. When Windows 10 hits EOL and I finally have to get a new system, not sure if I will even buy this or not. Guess it depends what they do over the next year.

[@rudyrosales6737]

I’ve been playing since release. Recently after their latest patch my population will go up by 20k when I first log in and then starts dropping by the thousands with no explanation. Everyone is happy no one is moving in & only have demand for commercial/industrial/office. I build those specific zones & then they start complaining they don’t have enough workers. Such a pain bc I put so much time & effort into my city. Anyone else having this issue?

[@kaydxn_rblx]

That is happening because they patched the homeless glitch so a lot of people are moving out of your city

[@NBGKecko]

absolut right - it feels like early acess. The performance is still a no go - my system keeps slow down the simulation speed at 100k pop. that makes no sense for a game like this

[@nanjing78654]

I honestly just want to have the 81 tiles equivalent. The map size is by far my biggest letdown and hurdle, also network multitool. But i choose to believe

[@DaggeroPlays]

While I've been waiting all this time for a console release date I'm also super reluctant to get my hopes up that it would be any good just by looking at the state of the main game.

[@andrewhasissues]

Good video! Though I think the people who are wondering 'where is the dlc' are crazy. The base game isn't even finished (despite being out for one year already) and yet they want to be sold additional content? 😂 Finish the base game, then work on dlc, should be the message from the consumer. After all, broken game + dlc still equals broken game.

[@m_hut]

good that I can play Sim City on my C64 while I wait and see if CS2 will ever finish. Thanks for the warning. And I just hope it is a lesson to the studios that it might be better to release a game later but in a better shape.

[@Secretsofsociety]

The game is really fun and the new models they added are helping a lot. There are lots of features that make it hard to go back to skylines 1. However there are still major problems with large cities. Homeless bug has been worked around but it still doesn't seem to work as intended and breaks your growth. The simulation slows down horrendously on ddr4 systems between 400k and 700k. I am at 800k with a 57003dx and a 4070 ti for a GPU and the simulation has slowed to the point I cannot go further. This is basically a peak DDR4 system. A DDR5 system may be able to get it up to a million. It takes lots of play sessions to hit these ceilings but its sad when you have to start over because of optimization issues. Skylines 1 wasn't easy to do big cities either because of highway pathfinding bugs which are thankfully not in SC2.

[@BHNative]

Also this basically just kind of reminds me of the rise and fall of Cities XL and SC13. On to the next attempt.

[@NewSchattenRayquaza]

3:23 How nice of CS2 to make a 9/11 ester egg. Very wholesome ^^

[@Tsudkyk]

I found the first version of the game in 2022, I was really excited for the second version to release. I really hope the bugs get worked out and the game returns to console very soon.

[@Jay-nk6dm]

I’ll probably check back in once the region packs come out. Those buildings and free assets will be a massive boon to the game

[@MIKUIEL]

I’ve never played a city builder before but I love this game I’ve built a mega city and it’s fun to keep adding to it daily

[@Rogue_Tiger]

I remember being super hyped for this game, the great sun set city skylines got, and then only buying this on sale and playing at most 2 hours

[@felixmuller1526]

Sad to see that the game is still so far away from being finished. I was hoping they would have made some decent progress after 1 year, but it looks like they need another 2-3 years, if they continue with the same pace.

[@macronomicus]

I've not been able to play it yet since I need a new video card to even bother trying, & GPU are so overpriced I keep putting it off. I remember being worried when they said they'd use Unity instead of moving to Unreal Engine for CS2, signaled to me there'd be a lot of difficulties with performance. I dont blame the devs or anything, nothing can be perfect in this world, & some things require immense effort to get refined & up to par. I think its commendable they're still steadily working on it, I only hope they give the devs enough resources to keep knocking things out & people give it another chance once enough is sorted out. It still looks like it has tons of potential & will eventually make it thru these tough times.

[@FinnlayRyan]

10:14 this has to be the best take/option I have heard spoken about the whole situation with this game since topics started. Would be really cool/ interesting if they did a kinda relaunch of the game whilst finding a way to “pay back” if you like the players who have stuck around for the ride and given feedback to improve the games development.

[@seathomplay4167]

I believe you gave a very fair assessment of the different areas of the game, whether good or bad, but I come out with an opposite conclusion, well, as much as a conclusion for a work in process. I absolutely love playing this game, much more so than CS. I'm a city player, not a city painter, and the mechanics are so much more fun in CS2. I love the dynamic world and the traffic runs so much better. The game should have come out in Beta (or Alpha, I'm clueless with tech jargon) as most CS players would have gobbled the game up anyways and further refined the game with player suggestions. That was a big miss and would have alleviated all the ill-will associated with its problems. However, that was not done and we are living with the consequences. That said, I will continue loving this game and looking forward to all the improvements to come, and I will do this patiently and encourage the devs with suggestions.

[@WarHeadUK]

Thanks for the update. I was so hyped for this game on launch but after seeing the negative comments pile up, I didn't buy. Now a year later and doesn't sound like it's worth buying yet. Lol. I'll stick to original.

[@CalmHiker-ou1co]

Is the first one worth it?

[@MrHaggyy]

I get the feeling that management doesn't want mod support in any convinient way at all, as it would enable many modders to outperform the DLC content for free. They should have made it Early Access. Gather some feedback and cash, and let the Dev's do their job. In the current state it's what you expect from a team thats worn out by internal friction, 2 steps for 1 or more back.

[@isaacbenjamin6758]

I agree with your assessment even a year later. If it wasn't for the mods where would this game be today?

[@georgetb9083]

Also I think one of the reasons why cities 1 is more popular as it can run better on older computers better and it has a better ui with a better font.. well to me anyway

[@toddbrooks970]

This game is still rough, a city with 25K still hampers the best of Systems, hard to play this game without your AC on full blast

[@Zimionz]

They way I see it, they got one last chance to convince a larger playerbase with the upcoming Bridges and Ports DLC scheduled for Q2 2025. If they can't get their shit together till then (performance, traffic, homelessness etc), and if this DLC isn't a massive success, it will be the end of the Colossal Order city builder franchise, and possibly CO itself.

[@dycedargselderbrother5353]

The only reason they've been able to hold on this long, including the seven years to produce a sequel in the first place, is the lack of competition in this market segment. Almost any other company would be dead by now. It's not like they have a big slate of products with one struggling. They make one thing.

[@jameshughes6078]

@@dycedargselderbrother5353 To be fair SIMS are incredibly complicated, even to implement subpar. Nailing it is harder. Their new tooling is the best I've seen in city builders by a mile.