An honest review of the state of the game.

[maarten_714]

I almost never give a bad review to any game, and I really have not with CS2 either..... but with that being said, I have come from a long, long line of games that lie in the "sphere" of Cities Skylines. I played SimCity in the MSDOS days, I played Civilization 1 in the same year(s), and fast forward to now, I have owned (except SimCity 2013) all SimCity games, all Civilizations games and ALL its expansions, I own Cities Skylines 1 and all of its DLC. I also have history with Railroad Tycoon and Transport Tycoon all the way going back to the DOS days, and I still play OpenTTD (an Open Source Transport Tycoon implementation) today. Other games I own include Tropico 4, 5 and 6, Transport Fever 1 and 2, SimAirport, Airport CEO, as well as the Paradox games Stellaris and Surviving Mars. So, since the release of SimCity in 1989, almost 35 years ago now, it is fair to say that I have some experience with the genre.

And for the record, of all the titles mentioned above, I pirated only two of them: The original Simcity release, and the original Civilization 1 release, as you know..... teenager, exchanging floppy disks in high school. Until I made a move to the United States in 2002, leaving The Netherlands behind..... I still had the original boxes of Simcity 2000, 3000 and Civilization II and III.

But.... I have never seen a game release so bad, so horribly mismanaged, and so insulting to the long time players of the genre, and in particular those who played Cities Skylines 1, and were expecting a thoroughly improved version of this game. I stopped playing after 1 month, and only came back about 2 weeks ago to check out Thunderstore before modding was announced to be released on the 25th this month. And I am still on the fence. The game doesn't feel ready. It's been SIX MONTHS since release, and modding is still in beta? I mean c'mon..... When they announced that the console version was going to be delayed, I thought to myself: If they postponed that, a version that is likely not going to have all that much modding, the base game must still be in a really poor state. They would have been better off delaying the ENTIRE game for all platforms until just about now.

Now, will this game become the glorious successor it deserves to be? Yes, I still have faith. But someone at Colossal Order needs to call a management meeting, put the stop on everything, and figure out what they MUST do to make the players happy. I'm sorry folks at CO/Paradox if anyone happens to read this, but it is time to realize you have to sit on the blisters you created. You are going to lose a lot of money in 2024, you are not going to meet your sales targets, and you are 100% guaranteed not yet done with receiving the wrath of angry players, and I really, REALLY do not want to be one of them. Being in the engineering field, I know how big of a slap in the face it is to have worked your collective asses off to create a product, only for the public to treat you like dirt, and I do NOT want to be like that. But this..... is indeed an insult to the players, and you folks need to go sit in a room for a few hours, and come up with something that will act as a REAL apology to the players.

Not a free building. Not a few free trees. Not even a free mini-DLC.

Like I said, you are going to have to sit on the blisters in 2024, you are going to lose money this year, and hopefully..... in 2025 you will be able to fix this mess in such a way we can all be PROUD of you guys, just like I have always been on Cities Skylines 1. I know you can do it, but you need to feel the pain first, and you are not yet done feeling the pain.

Now, things I recommend Paradox/CO does immediately:

1) Make "Beach Properties" 100% free to everyone, regardless of having bought Ultimate. Refund people who bought the stand-alone version of it.
2) To compensate for the loss of 1 DLC within the Ultimate version or the Waterfronts bundle, give them the NEXT content creator pack, whatever it may be, for free. (Those who did not get the Bundle or Ultimate will have to pay again).
3) Stop tying trees to DLC. This is a huge problem for map makers who may just want to make a desert map, and are not forced to require DLC to plant a few palm trees. Line 1 above will help with that.
4) Lay out a really clear roadmap for 2024. We already know what is coming Q2, Q3 and Q4 now of course, but make it more clear, and stick to it.

I want to love this game, and I have started playing again, because I love city builders so much. But I think as a company, Paradox/CO still do not realize how badly they screwed up, and how much pain, including financial pain, they will have to suffer to make it right for the players. If you do the above, I think the players will start coming back..... provided some of the other bugs of course, are fixed.

Sorry for my long rant, I try to be as professional and non-toxic as possible. We, the players (or maybe just I, this player) am NOT saying all of this because we want you to fail..... I am saying this because I desperately want you to succeed.

We want you to make the game you always wanted to make, and feel good about it. I know how defeated you must feel after years if painstaking hard work, and then this..... I don't know where it all went wrong.... (deadlines? sales targets? wrong people in the team? technical setbacks?) .... but wrong it went.

I really, really want you to be able to close out 2024 with positive reviews, and enter 2025 with a roadmap that could make this game better than CS1. We want you to succeed. We (at least not I) do not hate you, and I WILL buy whatever DLC comes next, because I still believe.

But it is time you realize how badly you messed up, sit down in a meeting, and figure out a way to dig yourself out. And that might have to be a way that hurts you financially in 2024, but may get your sales numbers back up in 2025.

 

[jordanrl]

I mentioned this elsewhere, but having worked in the industry, I really don't think this game survives more than 18 months from now. Do you really have that much hope? You think they not only have the will to turn it around, but the runway and the goodwill of their publisher to do that?

 

[brother_korahael]

I think collectively this forum is demonstrating the five stages of grief. We seem to be passing the anger phase and slowly inching towards bargaining.

 

[TTJ]

I am personally also very disappointed about the pace in which the game is further improved and bugs fixed. I still can't understand why it takes them so long and why they didn't hire more personnel since release to be faster. Of course there has been the argument that newly hired people also need time to become productive but we are taking about HALF A YEAR now and there is a good chance things will continue another year like this.

However I also dislike very much how the tide shifts and all people in the forums are no becoming outward negative about the game. This outright hate towards the devs and citing bad reviews in triumph is disgusting!

Maybe because I am a (relatively) old guy, I can be more patient. I have a busy job and only a few hours per week for games and I also earn enough that investing 50€ in a game that I then put aside for a while is not ruining my life. On the other hand, my Steam Library has about 15 entries over the last 15 years so considering what other players own as piles of shame they should probably also be more relaxed!

I want to emphasise that I still didn't lose hope. I think CS:2 can absolutely be a great game. However CO and PDX have to be faster, no matter how they do it!

 

[RuralConurbation]

The possibility of adding goodwill by giving free content is really only window dressing and doesn't really mask the fundamental issues with the game - that the simulation is screwed up, that the game is very poorly optimised, that it is actually full of hard limits (when the marketing claimed otherwise), that it lacks visual content, that it becomes boring very quickly and that there are far too many failsafes which kill any element of game play.

Really, it falls short on almost every level and fixing all of these issues, bearing in mind the rate of improvement so far seen, seems like an impossibility as things stand. A few more palm trees, for free and publishing a roadmap that most people won't believe, will fall too short at this juncture.

 

[Civ5rako]

However I also dislike very much how the tide shifts and all people in the forums are no becoming outward negative about the game. This outright hate towards the devs and citing bad reviews in triumph is disgusting!

Maybe because I am a (relatively) old guy, I can be more patient. I have a busy job and only a few hours per week for games and I also earn enough that investing 50€ in a game that I then put aside for a while is not ruining my life.

Sorry, but I have to disagree with you.

Any criticism CO is receiving at this moment is very well deserved.
Not only have they failed, but they did fail utterly. And there are not too many signs which would indicate any improvement in their approach.

I think most players at this moment still are forgetting or neglecting the fact that CO didn't only release a poor product, but they did so being three years in delay. This does carry a message in itself.
And we all know that the game doesn't suffer from just ONE flaw, just one weakness. It has technical issues, it has conceptual issues, it has design flaws all over the place.
One really has to wonder what was going on in the four years of "development".

And the way in which CO is "interacting" with their customers (paying customers, btw) is very close to being called an impudence.

Showing them any sign of generosity at this point in time would only set a bad example and invite to even more of their current kind of behaviour.

I am honestly happy for you that 50 EUR don't mean much to you. It is good to hear you are in a position of being able to say "Sad, but I don't really have to care about it"
But it isn't just you (or me, or anybody else in the same position as you are). They have sold a million copies at least, probably some hundred thousands more. It isn't just you and me whose trust has been misused, they have mislead at least a million people.

And we as being a part of the overall crowd of gamers shouldn't let them escape with that.
Why do you think the gaming industry is infamous for delivering such bad services to their paying customers?

Because "we" (the gamers in total) have let them do that for years, for decades meanwhile. "We" have invited them to treat "us" like dirt. This kind of behaviour wouldn't be possible in any other kind of industry.

And that has to stop. Now.

We have to show them our disappointment and that we are aware now how our trust has been mislead. And we have to do it with words (to warn others) as well as with our wallets (to let them really feel the consequences).
Nothing else will stop them (and other similar companies) from treating us like they did.