Dear CO,
I'm not sure how to put this in a constructive way. As a huge city builder fan for decades, I was waiting for this patch to give CS2 a last chance after the total release disaster. I stopped playing CS2 roughly a month ago (or longer), after having logged around 200 hours with a 250k pop city. You decided to massively decrease the patch release cadence, which puts a huge pressure and focus on the few patches that you still release. Given the absolutely massive amount of critical bugs and issues that CS2 is facing, it seems obvious that this decision was a huge mistake and a slap into the face of every customer. Well, it seems obvious for everyone except of you. Or maybe you simply don't care at all and you are already in your usual "let's milk the customers with DLCs" execution mode.
Now we have that long awaited patch, and it is a huge disappointment:
- It turns out the "land value fix" was not really a fix, you just finally implemented a proper land value system that was not even there. Wow. Another "wow" is that you finally fixed a "bug" after 6 months, something that a simple mod actually fixed 4 month ago. Don't you feel completely embarrassed?
- The "performance improvements" are hardly noticeable on my i7-12700K/3080 12GB/64GB RAM/SSD system with the 250k city in 4k. And it still has very irregular frame times, with the GPU usually not being the limit. What exactly did you do in the past 3+ months?
- All the critical key issues with the game are still not fixed. Public transportation, where I still see despawning vehicles regularly, creating a mess, and all the other issues that completely break public transport, which again completely breaks the game. And the same for all others around the solar energy simulation (incl. day/night toggle), cargo, etc.
- You fixed a few crash-to-desktop scenarios, to mention something positive, but then again those few fixes cannot have occupied your dev team for more than 3 months. These are things you usually fix within a few weeks in addition to other major work
- And then there is that Beach thingy DLC ... which I only have because I was stupid enough to pay 90€, the highest price I ever paid for a game, for the CS2 Ultimate edition. Because, I thought as a huge city builder fan who loved CS1, there's nothing that can go wrong with that. Well, here we are
Let me be clear: I am done waiting another 2-3 months for another patch that may or may not fix at least some of those huge amount of critical bugs and gameplay issues that still break the game. I abandon CS2, which is absolutely shocking for me. Last summer, I thought CS2 will be the game where I will spend a large part (i.e. the very most) of my gaming time in 2024. But I am done with CS2 and I am done with CO. You did not only make a horrible mistake by releasing the game in such disastrous condition, you also haven't learned the slightest bit at all. You even continued to take horrible decisions by massively decreasing the patching cadence, you took wrong decisions by not acknowledging the critical issues as urgencies, and at the same time you delivered even the worst DLC ever at the most overpriced level ever.
How is it that you don't realize that you are driving this once successful franchise with ultimate high-speed into a massive concrete wall?
Now I am going back to other simulation games that I enjoy and that actually deliver what they promise. CO often uses the small team as an excuse for nearly everything. It's an excuse that in fact they are completely overwhelmed and not capable any more to handle the mess. Let me mention two other simulation games that are created by an even smaller team, i.e. mostly a one-person creation, that are doing so much better than CS2. For one, I can recommend Highrise City. It's a lot of fun, it actually works, and the developer is continuously pushing out new additions and improvements. For free. Don't go there with the classic expectation of a SimCity/CS city builder. It is more a resource and production chain simulation, but a really good one. Take the city simulation as such as a visual output of what is happening with the production chain simulation and you'll have a lot of fun.
Or, of course, wait for Manor Lords, another one-person project that seems to work already much better than CS2 ever will, and it looks much better than CS2 ever will. Hey, and you will actually see crops on the fields there already, not like CS2 where 6 months after release you still have that horrible standard ground texture. And there is actually grass, something that we still miss in CS2. Oh wait, I know why we're missing it in CS2, it is because it would blow performance out of the water, because CO cannot properly handle their engine. Which the other one-person projects seem to be able to handle. Talking about "able to handle", in Highrise City you can handle cities with 10+ million pop on a PC like mine. Ok, enough said, good bye Cities Skylines franchise. Another promising frachise that goes extinct in a big blow. Really, really sad, it could have been "my" game for the next years. But it's not.
