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Colossol Order/Paradox : WAKE UP

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timfrombriz

timfrombriz

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Mar 29, 2011
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To Paradox/Colossol Order;

I like a lot of users had been a dedicated fan to the CIM franchise, and up until the Monorails DLC, I vowed to cease supporting the franchise as I felt like I was just being 'milked' and ignored.

There is next to zero communication to your fanbase, even your DLC releases seem to spur out of thin air without any hype which I consider odd. The community forum has a Suggestion Box/Wishlist thread, and CO/Paradox has never responded or acknowledged any user contributed idea within it. The community has made numerous requests for bug fixes/improvements to the game, but all we've ever had is DLC orientated around new vehicles, and new 3D models to place in the world. There has been nearly zero changes to the game engine other than a few minor bug fixes since release.

There's a large wave of indie developers coming along, and Im excited to see what new transit sims come out through that, such as TrainFever. It's disheartening that I see the same discussion amongst forumer's who reiterate how they feel that the game could be so much more but for some reason CO aren't taking those idea's and making them a reality.

The DLC thats been produced could of been achieved through the fanbase, but the game was released lacking support for modding. CO states because the game uses Unity, modding is unsupported. This is untrue, various Unity developers have written technical articles on how to add modding to their games. Even updating the game engine to use the latest version of Unity, which is at 4.5f currently seems to be months behind, which would offer improvements to game performance through internal improvements with the Unity engine.

In short, Colossol Order need to start focusing on the community more, and the recent 'Community DLC' was just a farce to what the community was asking for when wanting input into DLC decisions. If Paradox are strangleholding Colossol Order from speaking out about their development cycles and their choice of work, then Paradox need to re-establish the relationship they have with Colossol Order, and the community. The CIM2 forum is becoming drier and drier of user posts and I feel if the development approach was more focused on improving the game engine and listening to the community, then the fanbase would have more of a positive experience, and thus talk about it more amongst other potential new customers within their scope of influence.
 
Totally agree. CiM2 is a great game and I played many hours, but for me, it's dead. To much errors errors and things that I can't overlook about it and a big amount of missing features and missed opportunitys.
Here in the forum I am an unheard voice, so why scream when nobody listens.
 
I'm also in total agreement with this!
Perhaps when CO come back from their holidays they could start by:
  1. Take a serious look at the fixing the very long series of bugs that have been reported here, and ignored by them.
  2. Take steps to enable us to add modified content to the game. Perhaps even a modding kit of tools for modding? (Could be sold as a DLC)
I understand that they need to maintain a revenue stream to sustain their business, but if they don't keep their fans on board it will be dead.
 
Hi,

I am sorry you feel we have been absent lately.
We absolutely value user feedback, we would be crazy not to.
You will not find as many Dev posts right now, since it is vacation season and most of the staff are off.

Also note that just because we do not have the time to debate all suggestions made, (lets face it any comment made about a user suggestion would spur an extended conversation) Does not mean that they are not seen/read/absorbed/valued and appreciated.

It is not always possible to take all suggestion for content as in general it is usually better to make content that will appeal to the most people using the resources available.
I will pass your comments along and make sure they are seen.
 
This game had so much potential, but so little is being done with it. Actually most people on the forum experience the same bugs and want the same things; The two Norfolk_Chris stated, as well as airports/stations and coherence in vehicle capacity. The reply we get , if any, is "that's not on the planning right now". I posted a complaint about the logic of the vehicle capacity of the last DLC. Right when the previous one came out the players commented that the numbers of seats didn't make sense. CO just ignored these comments and went on doing their thing. I'm sorry, but I don't feel the players are being taken seriously at this time. If there's no time for the developers to fix things, at least give the community mods and tools to do it.
 
Castellon said:
Hi,

I am sorry you feel we have been absent lately.
We absolutely value user feedback, we would be crazy not to.
You will not find as many Dev posts right now, since it is vacation season and most of the staff are off.

Also note that just because we do not have the time to debate all suggestions made, (lets face it any comment made about a user suggestion would spur an extended conversation) Does not mean that they are not seen/read/absorbed/valued and appreciated.

It is not always possible to take all suggestion for content as in general it is usually better to to make content that will appeal to the most people using the resources available.
I will pass your comments along and make sure they are seen.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, the problem doesn't have anything to do with holidays; the bugs/inconveniences/things to improve we are suggesting are ignored by developers for over a year now. For a short period of time, shortly after the release of the game, CO was listening to the community and the first few patches were aimed at improving the gameplay, rules, and offering the improvements enhancing the game experience. However, after few initial patches, the role of the devs has been limited solely to creating new designs of either buildings or vehicles. Some incidental and small bugs has been fixed, but in general the main problems about this game the community is signalling has either been overlooked by CO or we have been told that everything is running as designed and no changes are required.

Of course, we cannot debate all the suggestions, but CO is not discussing almost ANY suggestions that are not focused on releasing new designs of vehicles or buildings.
A numerous posts has been made on this forum which summarized our requests about the game and made bullet point suggestions about the improvement of the game engine. I have read them and written about them so many times that I can summarize you our main requests about the game at any time if you want. However, right now, to me and to a lot of other community members this seems a hopeless task because CO is simply not interested in them, they only want our opinions about new designs which we do not want unless the game is improved.

Even You, here, write about our suggestions for content. We don't need more content right now, we need to have the game improved in terms of mainly pathfinding (in many aspects), the ability to create weekend and night lines only, to add letters to line names, to be able to turn off vehicle wearing off, to be able to create terminus stops for our lines, auto updating of ticket prices, rebalancing the capacities of vehicles and many other changes that have been requested so many times. Some of them are even not as difficult or time consuming to do. If you only care about delivering more content to us this means you are not listening to the community which really wants to IMPROVE the game before getting even more content.

The fact that there are numerous threads appearing about the 'suggestions for CIM3' means IMO that the community has lost its hope on the improvement of CIM2 and wants a new game with its voice heard. I am still hoping that you, Paradox/CO can finally listen to us and bring the changes we request instead of flooding us with yet new vehicle designs. Yes, this will mean that you will have to do the work for which we will not pay you this once (ie. patch with substantial changes), but in long term it can have an effect of making the community actually excited about the game and recommending it to others. This forum would flourish and a lot of new people could become interested in this game because of us. Right now, if my friends ask me whether or not buy this game I say it is not a good idea, despite the numerous hours I played.

Please, listen to us.
 
Castellon said:
I am sorry you feel we have been absent lately.
We absolutely value user feedback, we would be crazy not to.
You will not find as many Dev posts right now, since it is vacation season and most of the staff are off.
Click to expand...
Firstly, Thanks for replying and I hope you honour your word of having this addressed further. Thus far my statements seem to be mutually felt with other forum posters.
Understand your holiday cycles, merited, but my opinion has been a reflection of the last 12 months.


Castellon said:
Also note that just because we do not have the time to debate all suggestions made, (lets face it any comment made about a user suggestion would spur an extended conversation) Does not mean that they are not seen/read/absorbed/valued and appreciated.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately this is not true; just look at forum post histories of CO staff; co_martsu, Co_Karoliina, co_damsku. There is no forum posts towards ANY suggestion/wishlist post in the last 12 months. I constantly look at the suggestions and nor is any paradox member making posts within these dicussions.

Combine with my argument on DLC since CiM2 was released April 2013, why would we presume any expectation that our feedback is seen/absorbed/valued.

Castellon said:
It is not always possible to take all suggestion for content as in general it is usually better to to make content that will appeal to the most people using the resources available.
I will pass your comments along and make sure they are seen.
Click to expand...

Appeal to the most people, valid, however its been cosmetic DLC constantly which as I stated could of been done by the modding community if that doorway was opened for them. My argument is ZERO content based on actual game engine modifications have occured since release, and no communication from CO/Paradox about what to expect in the future with the CiM franchise other than much the same DLC.

Co_Martsu has stated the publisher has complete control over direction and communication with the community about coming DLC/developments, this needs to change. From a marketing and hype perspective, its doesn't work.

As far I can guess, the game is already bordering on falling apart with the minimum system requirements of memory [ie. Ram limitation on 32bit OS], and DLC direction has been strongly influenced by this. Thus any additional engine features pose breaking stability further, and the easiest solution as a developer is just to add a few vehicle models to the game or replace the existing ones in the case of the European Cities DLC. If this is the case, then you need to tell us why we should foster any future hope in this game? Is CiM3 on the cards, will you consider branching the project to 64bit only?

Consider this, you have an opportunity to expand your game to beyond just the 'train/transport enthusiasts', the likes of 'Transport Tycoon' players to include 'city management/strategy enthusiasts' like 'Simcity' players. Theres a massive market share you could be opening up to by improving the city management dynamics in the game as many have suggested in your suggestion/wishlist forum. Your crazy not to foster these idea's, you'd be capturing more of an audience and making the game a vastly more engaging experience for your existing player base. The game has a solid base and as many forumers have stated, it could be made so much more.

If you really want to foster your community, and have them re-engaged in your product, and expand the products offerings so it appeals to a greater audience, then you must seriously consider what they are asking for, and not just pump out simple DLC in the manner of hoping to get some sales. Respectfully,you are a business, but 12 vehicle DLC pack's I think now, come on. Open the communities suggestion box and appeal to voting for which game engine features should be implemented, and do these as DLC/expansion packs for the game. Consider the opportunities within those idea's for attracting new players by making the game have new strategic dynamics, the things that players love, and make it happen.
 
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Very well said timfrombriz and jasiekzar. I find it interesting that this thread: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?779009-CIM3-suggestions-list is in the top 7 or 8% for views (on page 3 sorted by views) and 11% for replies (on page 5 when sorted by replies). It seems the community has given up on this game and is hoping for another game that actually lives up to the potential that this one had. I don't want more vehicles or buildings, I want a game that actually does what it is supposed to do. Painting over the white streak of a skunk still makes it a skunk.
 
Ok, so this is mainly just me replying to various tidbits people have already posted. But first I'd just like to say that while I appreciate that alot of people are disappointed with the lack of recent updates of CiM2 and its failing to live up to all of the hype/expectations, we shouldn't forget that CiM2 is still a good game! I know I've got many hours of enjoyed playtime behind me, sometimes frustrating playtime where I can't get something to work the way I want, but that's all part of the challenge, right?

happyshrimp said:
I posted a complaint about the logic of the vehicle capacity of the last DLC. Right when the previous one came out the players commented that the numbers of seats didn't make sense. CO just ignored these comments and went on doing their thing.
Click to expand...
To be fair, considering how soon after Player's Choice the European Vehicles DLC was released it's likely they had already finished and submitted it to Steam by the time we started commenting on the inconsistency between vehicles.

jasiekzar said:
We don't need more content right now, we need to have the game improved in terms of mainly pathfinding (in many aspects), the ability to create weekend and night lines only, to add letters to line names, to be able to turn off vehicle wearing off, to be able to create terminus stops for our lines, auto updating of ticket prices, rebalancing the capacities of vehicles and many other changes that have been requested so many times. Some of them are even not as difficult or time consuming to do. If you only care about delivering more content to us this means you are not listening to the community which really wants to IMPROVE the game before getting even more content.
Click to expand...
Just a quick comment on your list above from my perspective: Items in bold don't both me personally (w/end and night lines are no use with the default timeset I'm still playing at), but I appreciate others might want these features more. Items underlined I'm pretty sure can be achieved now through various mods/tools already released by the community. Also, I'm pretty sure CO said that mixed number/letter line names can't be done due to technical limitations so that's not really a "won't do" thing.

timfrombriz said:
Unfortunately this is not true; just look at forum post histories of CO staff; co_martsu, Co_Karoliina, co_damsku. There is no forum posts towards ANY suggestion/wishlist post in the last 12 months. I constantly look at the suggestions and nor is any paradox member making posts within these dicussions.
Click to expand...
Not posting and not reading/taking note of are not the same thing. I think CO have made a conscious decision not to get too involved in the ideas discussions, although I do recall seeing co_martsu commenting on one of the station/airport discussions.

What I *would* like to see is CO publish a short "can't do, won't do" list covering the most common/popular suggestions with whatever justification is appropriate. That would remove some of the current and long-standing uncertainty/confusion within the CiM2 community where we've all suggested things but don't know if there's any chance of them being implemented.

timfrombriz said:
My argument is ZERO content based on actual game engine modifications have occured since release, and no communication from CO/Paradox about what to expect in the future with the CiM franchise other than much the same DLC.
Click to expand...
What about Monorails (admittedly a reskinned Metro, but still a new transport type which I have so far enjoyed) and the Metro DLC with customisable trains?

timfrombriz said:
Consider this, you have an opportunity to expand your game to beyond just the 'train/transport enthusiasts', the likes of 'Transport Tycoon' players to include 'city management/strategy enthusiasts' like 'Simcity' players. Theres a massive market share you could be opening up to by improving the city management dynamics in the game as many have suggested in your suggestion/wishlist forum. Your crazy not to foster these idea's, you'd be capturing more of an audience and making the game a vastly more engaging experience for your existing player base. The game has a solid base and as many forumers have stated, it could be made so much more.
Click to expand...
This one is a +1 for me. Since I first got CiM and CiM2 I have wanted more control over the transport network. Not so much the buildings ala SimCity, but to be able to define lanes, upgrade/downgrade/reconfigure roads without demolishing first, and change junction layouts/light sequences/have roundabouts, dtc.

PS. It is somewhat unfair of you to create this thread just after co_martsu posted to say that CO are on holiday and aren't around to respond. :p
 
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timfrombriz said:
There's a large wave of indie developers coming along, and Im excited to see what new transit sims come out through that, such as TrainFever. It's disheartening that I see the same discussion amongst forumer's who reiterate how they feel that the game could be so much more but for some reason CO aren't taking those idea's and making them a reality.
Click to expand...

Train Fever it is all the way. Funded by fans and developed by fans.

Not developed by a DLC milking studio that supplies 10 DLCs with 50 new buses and expects users to pay more then the base game to get all DLCs for close to zero extra gameplay value. You test it out once and then get bored.

How this title has been handled is IMO a complete mockery of the Paradox policy to develop/publish "Smart games for smart gamers" that you "can play and replay again and again".

Any smart gamer will get bored of CiM2 within a few days due to noticing how broken the dynamic development feature and path-finding is.

You can also question how smart the game is when the city cannot grow without the commuter transport company paying for new roads that help the competing cars (what???), or without any AI opposition.
 
Well, path finding is pretty much in every game a problem. CIM1 had these problems.
However if you introduce timetables and change the focus on them, they have to work.
But pretty much time tables are used to regulate how many vehicles are on road , as features like syncing timetables for different lines isn't doable. However Citizen don't take time tables into account. So the whole game concept seem to be flawed.

Focusing on that point I still think was a big mistake, and time better invested in other aspects, like city growing without external help. However this was a thing I already was aware when buying the game.

The different aspect, using Unity. - We have a solid engine, CO can focus on the game internals -
But the result is pretty much: CO drop their models into Unity and release a new vehicle DLC. Paradox here even seems to force this model.

Constantly ignoring main parts on bug reports (vehicle wearout, capacity of vehicles as example) is a point that will make any player ( and future customer ) mad. I wonder if the beta test was only a marketing gag and they never considered fixing bugs reported. No, there is no excuse, the bugs are reported a year ago.

Did the dev team even played their game?
CIM1 had a lot more love and was a much better product.
However even in CIM1 they refused to take bug reports serious
Don't even considering some script change to make bug reporting for them easier.

As we don't know the business relations between CO and Paradox we can only speculate, but somehow I fear Paradox as publisher is responsible for some aspects of the problem too. Bad marketing, NDA about DLC that are already on game stores but can't be told about...
 
@LTA, this is business. There is no place for being grateful or ungrateful. I am paying a lot of money (yes, for me it's a lot of money) for the game and DLC's, first and foremost to support the devs in their quest of making the game better and secondly to get nice models of new vehicles. Do I think a bunch of monorails models, which are in fact reskinned metro with IMO awful sounds is worth 9.99 euros i payed for it? No. But I bought it anyway in a hope that this will make this game more profitable for Paradox/CO and they will be able to sometimes release a patch addressing at least some of our suggestions and requests. However, the fixes come very rarely and they address cosmetics. I play some other games where the devs actually listen to the community and issue numerous patches which try to make the game the best experience possible. In the case of CIM2, in my opinion, the role of devs on this forum is mainly PR, not actual discussion with the community.

In fact, I don't think we are particularly ungrateful here. On the contrary, I think Paradox/CO is ungrateful to us, the community, in the way they don't listen to us, communicate with us and intentionally ignore the topics which are problematic for them, such as the use of timetables in pathfinding, vehicle capacity and many others. I think, it is ungrateful to do it, in the light of our support in a way of paying for the DLC's they issue and providing them with lots of information about the flaws of the game. I, myself, am let down.
 
LTA1992 said:
There's criticism, then there's sounding outright ungrateful. Just saying.
Click to expand...

Ungrateful? Why should we, as consumers, be grateful? Paying money for a product is how we show that we are grateful. We are indeed feeling unpleasant because we are frustrated. If we are hurting the producers feelings, they will either give up or better yet make a better product. Consumers show they are ungrateful with their pocketbook.
 
I think the word entitled is a better fit than ungrateful.

CO have said they are working on another project, so please understand that they are moving on.
Also some people need to understand that it's impossible to please everybody. Yea, it's unfortunate that the game wasn't 100% the game i dreamed about, but I rather enjoy it than bitch about it.

/rant.
 
jasiekzar said:
In fact, I don't think we are particularly ungrateful here. On the contrary, I think Paradox/CO is ungrateful to us, the community, in the way they don't listen to us, communicate with us and intentionally ignore the topics which are problematic for them, such as the use of timetables in pathfinding, vehicle capacity and many others. I think, it is ungrateful to do it, in the light of our support in a way of paying for the DLC's they issue and providing them with lots of information about the flaws of the game. I, myself, am let down.
Click to expand...

Agree. We were willing to buy dlcs, even when we were not completely satisfied with the content or the way how things went. We were patient (as much as possible), supportive (with our hard earned money), cooperative (with ideas and suggestions). I think we did our best to show how passionate we were. Sadly, this was mainly a one sided relation. Co and Paradox Interactive showed almost no effort to communicate, to improve, to listen, to consider. This game could be the best of it's genre with a little more care and love. This was a true passion program at the start (i guess), but now... I don't understand what the hell happened with it. The new vehicles are cool, don't get me wrong. However, we need improvements in many areas of the game, some of them are not even big things. Please don't kill the game just because you are not interested in fixing it. Give a chance to the community then...
 
jasiekzar said:
@LTA, this is business. There is no place for being grateful or ungrateful. I am paying a lot of money (yes, for me it's a lot of money) for the game and DLC's, first and foremost to support the devs in their quest of making the game better and secondly to get nice models of new vehicles. Do I think a bunch of monorails models, which are in fact reskinned metro with IMO awful sounds is worth 9.99 euros i payed for it? No. But I bought it anyway in a hope that this will make this game more profitable for Paradox/CO and they will be able to sometimes release a patch addressing at least some of our suggestions and requests. However, the fixes come very rarely and they address cosmetics. I play some other games where the devs actually listen to the community and issue numerous patches which try to make the game the best experience possible. In the case of CIM2, in my opinion, the role of devs on this forum is mainly PR, not actual discussion with the community.

In fact, I don't think we are particularly ungrateful here. On the contrary, I think Paradox/CO is ungrateful to us, the community, in the way they don't listen to us, communicate with us and intentionally ignore the topics which are problematic for them, such as the use of timetables in pathfinding, vehicle capacity and many others. I think, it is ungrateful to do it, in the light of our support in a way of paying for the DLC's they issue and providing them with lots of information about the flaws of the game. I, myself, am let down.
Click to expand...

Agree... Regardless of the price of a game players need to feel that they are being listened to. While it is not possible to please everyone the least developers can do is to address some of the most important issues reported by players. DLCs are okay but unless the base-game is fixed to a certain point players cannot help but feel "milked" if those DLCs do little than cosmetic changes. That course of action could well project poorly upon future CO games as most disgruntled players would think twice before getting another one of their titles. CO, please show that you are listening to us. A little compassion goes a long way in the world of gaming.
 
I don't really think the game is dead, but I'd say they have to add something very basic: bugfixing, ability to name streets/buildings/put signs, sandbox mode in multiplayer etc. Already that would be very appreciated. If they would start working on somewhat more special, it would be just great.

I have a big doubt mods support will be ever added, but will we see DLCs in new season? Maybe they will already concentrate on CiM 3 or some other game.
 
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