Am I understanding this correctly ?

[novapaddy]

Please let me just check if I am correct with this line of thought?

I buy City Skylines and I enjoyed playing it.
Lots of guys make mods, maps and lots of great models etc for this game and all is just GREAT!

There are so many mods and "stuff" made for City Skylines, that the Steam Workshop soon becomes a chore to try to wade through to find the item I really want to use in the game. But I have to accept this as this appears to be the "normal" situation here.

This is my first ever city building game, so bear with me.


ALONG COMES THE DLC AFTER DARK
All of a sudden my game does not work any more, I get crashes and the city I was working on, well I just cannot play it any more.
The Steam Workshop now appears to be full of crap that just will not work, as it has not been updated to the After Dark dlc.
But guys are really trying to improve things, and within a few weeks things settle down and I can play again using of course the new dlc.

There are so many mods and "stuff" made for City Skylines, that the Steam Workshop soon becomes a chore to try to wade through to find the item I really want to use in the game. But I have to accept this as this appears to be the "normal" situation here.


ALONG COMES THE DLC SNOWFALL
All of a sudden my game does not work any more, I get crashes and the city I was working on, well I just cannot play it any more.

The Steam Workshop now appears to be full of crap that just will not work, as it has not been updated to the Snowfall dlc. I cannot play the game I could play yesterday, as even though I have not bought the dlc, there was a free update, which no matter what I do, I cannot play my old game, or any new game either.

The guys who used to fix things and try to improve things, well they seem to have gone elsewhere, or maybe there is just many fewer modders interested in improving things any more? Or maybe it is just too soon to judge?

The Steam Workshop is now full of crap still from the first dlc. It is too soon to say whether the working stuff will be updated for the second dlc, but wading through the Workshop is a real chore as I simply cannot tell what works and what does not work. And anyway I'm not doing that right now, as I cannot play the game I bought...

So, to recap. I bought a game and enjoyed it.
The makers made a dlc and somehow they got everything fixed by modders for free and that seems to be ok.
Now they have made a second dlc.
But to enjoy this game I really need to be using free mods and free stuff from the Steam Workshop, but no-one seems to be responsible for this, so there is total confusion. What works, what does not work?

Is someone responsible for the Steam Workshop, answer no?
Is the Steam Workshop now full of unworkable crap, answer yes?

So, basically I bought a game, and the maker depends on free stuff from modders for me to really enjoy the game. Yet now I cannot play my game and somehow .. well is this my fault?

Who is to blame for this total mess ?

EDIT: is this what they call a business plan?

 

[Feindbold]

Calm down -.-
Its not like incompatible mods are something new, its common sense that some stuff breaks, if the basic game gets enhanced/updated
The DLC is puplic for like 6 hours. Most mods are allready updated but MAYBE,.. just MAYBE modders have a RL too and havent got the time to upload these updates.

You should really rethink your "give me all NOW!" mentality.

 

[novapaddy]

Calm down -.-
Its not like incompatible mods are something new, its common sense that some stuff breaks, if the basic game gets enhanced/updated
The DLC is puplic for like 6 hours. Most mods are allready updated but MAYBE,.. just MAYBE modders have a RL too and havent got the time to upload these updates.

You should really rethink your "give me all NOW!" mentality.

Believe me, I'm perfectly calm.

I think you are missing the point I obviously tried to make, but failed somehow?

I can fully understand that the new dlc is going to have bedding in problems.
I cannot understand, how a company can release a game, but to fully enjoy that game, I must use free stuff from the Steam Workshop. Yet, every update of this game, or every dlc of this game, disables the previous free stuff on the Steam Workshop. Understand?

So, the longer the Steam Workshop is not cleaned up, and we have stuff from the original game, the first dlc, post the first dlc, now the second dlc, maybe in the future another update, another dlc....?

SO the Steam Workshop just gets more and more filled up with crap that I have to wade through to find something that will work, and somehow this is "normal".

Someone should be responsible for cleaning up the Steam Workshop and I mean PAID to do it as a job. AND the maker of the game should be paying those wages.

OK, am I understood now? I'm still very calm. LOL

 

[Greng]

I play the vanilla game and enjoy it very much. I would use more if my crappy PC allowed me to and yet as a PC gamer I am aware that mods require upkeep by their creators to keep them in-line with the current patch version of the game they are modding.

No one is forcing you to use mods to enjoy the title except you.

If you don't have the time or patience to deal with this cycle of releases and functionality then it is best to stick to the vanilla game rather than get frustrated with the developers for progressing their title.

 

[Ri0Rdian]

Lots of games can easily be broken while using mods. You don't even needs expansions or DLC's, a good old patch is all you need for stuff to break down and require tuning in order to once again be useable. Mods are great addition to any game but they have their dark sides too. They often require time and time requires patience, and patience can be hard to come by, especially for games you really like and want to play asap.

 

[Lakenstaken]

I was a bit annoyed about this earlier today as well, but actually at the moment my saves has become playable again since the update of Network Extensions, I have to say for me to play with so many mods and my save gets playable the same day is actually not too bad.

I did have to disable a bunch of mods that are listed as incompatible though so I'll wait a bit before I'll actually continue on my main city, even though it is playable.

 

[jcitron]

This is not unusual with this kind of game. Let me explain...

The game its self is built around a set of parameters and the developer has opened the doors, to a certain extent, to allow content creators to make stuff for the game. This is all great and wonderful and as much as you've mentioned there's a lot of stuff up on the Workshop. Now there's a caveat to this open ended program mode with lots of third-party content.

With the open-ended free access to the development tools, comes another problem. Not everyone follows the specs from CO exactly. Heck, if they did we'd have not as many cool add-ons and mods. It was the mods that gave us the ground-level camera, no-pillars, in-game terrain editing, and so on. The problem is because these things push the envelope they can also break when the original developers add stuff to the game because the developers are using the base as a beginning point and not a modified game to start with. You see we now have conflicts happening. CO might have written something that stomped on the code of a mod that you have installed. No matter how hard they worked to avoid this, by working with the more popular content creators, this is going to happen. The only way around this is to have the content creators update their mods, remember these were developed outside the original framework of CO development, so the mods and stuff will work with the game again.

I am currently facing this in another program that has far more content than CSL has - probably 4x the amount now at 400K-plus assets. The game developer has recently released a new version of their program which has in turn caused much angst for the community. The new version is 90% compatible with older content, which is now going on 15 years old now. The problem too is stuff is now broken that worked in the previous versions. We're facing new errors and warnings on things that worked oreviously as well as script timeouts, outright crashes, invisible meshes, LOD issues, and assets that are not allowed to load, which in some cases are critical assets to routes and content we're using.

All and all, it's not easy for anyone when a beloved program is updated and is released. The only thing we can do is let the developers, and content creators, know of the program issues and bugs. These are the guys and gals that can make things right again. Sadly too this doesn't happen overnight, instantly, or a fortnight. We just have to think logically, be polite when posting errors and asking for help, and have patience until the problems are resolved.

 

[Lakenstaken]

Not everyone follows the specs from CO exactly. Heck, if they did we'd have not as many cool add-ons and mods. It was the mods that gave us the ground-level camera, no-pillars, in-game terrain editing, and so on. The problem is because these things push the envelope they can also break when the original developers add stuff to the game because the developers are using the base as a beginning point and not a modified game to start with. You see we now have conflicts happening

In my opinion the devs should really consider adding much needed mods to the base game instead then, mods like the Building Themes, Enhanced Zoom, Fine Road Heights (perhaps adjustable from options menu), Road Anarchy (again limits highly adjustable), Road Color Changer, Precision Engineering, Traffic report tool and one mix of Network Extensions, Traffic President and Traffic++ are all mods that every player would enjoy having. Sure they did implement the Improved Public Transport and Terrain theme mod, but in my opinion it could be more.

My biggest worry for future patches is having a mod which my save relies on to work that gets abandoned by the creator. I really do love my cities and put in a lot of work in them, it's not easy for me to just start a new one every time there is an update, which is why I'm actually at the moment holding off on playing CSL for a few weeks until the most important mods for my city hopefully are updated.

 

[jcitron]

Absolutely and I feared the same. In some ways programs such as Cities:Skylines doesn't quite work as well as it can via the Steam network due to Steam's automatic updates. Sure these can be turned off, but how many users know enough to do that!

As time goes on, certain popular mods and content should be included in the base program. This will always ensure that these mods, that have been time-tested and used by a large number of users, are always available.

In my other sim, that train sim I speak of often here, this is in fact what has happened. As the publisher and developer has published included routes (maps in C:SL terminology), with each new version of the program, certain content becomes built-in or in some cases now payware - meaning these assets came in from a payware route someone purchased. This ensures these base items are there for these routes and are no longer missing dependencies.

As the program is updated, many of these built-ins are updated as well by the original authors and the old versions are obsoleted automatically. There are unfortunately a lot of abandoned assets due to the age of the program, but even today there's a program in place by the developer and community to update all content to error-free status.

 

[TinyWiking]

I'd also just like to add that user made mods are just that, made by users. We are not responsible for ensuring they are compatible, it is up to the creator of each individual mod. The problem with mods becoming incompatible is something that usually comes up with new patches / expansions but give it a few days and I think most of the creators will have them back and working as intended .

 

[Old Joe]

I'd also just like to add that user made mods are just that, made by users. We are not responsible for ensuring they are compatible,.

while you should be! hehe. well at least in some precautionary way!
my save with awsome city i'v build for days now went blanck textures after patch, argh!
probably some warning marker on save that it consist no more compatible mod components or something, and that you should rollback to previous version to play it

 

[novapaddy]

I'd also just like to add that user made mods are just that, made by users. We are not responsible for ensuring they are compatible, it is up to the creator of each individual mod. The problem with mods becoming incompatible is something that usually comes up with new patches / expansions but give it a few days and I think most of the creators will have them back and working as intended .

From the game maker or publisher point of view, what you say may sound perfectly correct to you.

But from the player point of view, this is not correct.


First, CO and Paradox were delighted to say earlier last year, how they had 50,000 items already in the Steam Workshop, contributed freely by fans. Remember this? Showing how popular the game was. Agree this point?

I can fully understand why Paradox and CO may feel they are not responsible for the Steam Workshop, seeing as this is another company altogether, and they already contribute a huge part of the earnings from the game to Steam. Agreed?

Also, Paradox is paradox today because they have a reputation of listening to the players of their games and changing things accordingly. Agreed?

Now, all I am saying is this;

The Steam Workshop is a total mess. It is hindering my attempts to play this game. I have to wade through old broken stuff to find something that might work, try it, not working, dump it, try again, etc etc. I'm sure you can agree with me how brain deadening and frustrating THIS can be for a player who just wants to play the game.

And of course, as CO release more dlc's and updates, the Workshop will just fill up more and more with broken stuff. Players like me will not bother playing and you will lose players, fans and money.

......

A much better plan is to see the problem, not ignore it, not see it as a Steam problem, but see it as a game breaking problem which will cause you to lose fans and players over time. And really instead of having a CS game still running in a vibrant community in 10 years time, you will have some game that used to be GREAT, but it died out by the 3rd year.

EDIT: One final point, and I don't know the figures, so I'm only guessing. But in a month's time please compare the sales figures from After Dark with Snowfall, and you might see that I could be correct in what I am telling you. Thanks

 

[Sloeberjong]

From the game maker or publisher point of view, what you say may sound perfectly correct to you.

But from the player point of view, this is not correct.


First, CO and Paradox were delighted to say earlier last year, how they had 50,000 items already in the Steam Workshop, contributed freely by fans. Remember this? Showing how popular the game was. Agree this point?

I can fully understand why Paradox and CO may feel they are not responsible for the Steam Workshop, seeing as this is another company altogether, and they already contribute a huge part of the earnings from the game to Steam. Agreed?

Also, Paradox is paradox today because they have a reputation of listening to the players of their games and changing things accordingly. Agreed?

Now, all I am saying is this;

The Steam Workshop is a total mess. It is hindering my attempts to play this game. I have to wade through old broken stuff to find something that might work, try it, not working, dump it, try again, etc etc. I'm sure you can agree with me how brain deadening and frustrating THIS can be for a player who just wants to play the game.

And of course, as CO release more dlc's and updates, the Workshop will just fill up more and more with broken stuff. Players like me will not bother playing and you will lose players, fans and money.

......

A much better plan is to see the problem, not ignore it, not see it as a Steam problem, but see it as a game breaking problem which will cause you to lose fans and players over time. And really instead of having a CS game still running in a vibrant community in 10 years time, you will have some game that used to be GREAT, but it died out by the 3rd year.

EDIT: One final point, and I don't know the figures, so I'm only guessing. But in a month's time please compare the sales figures from After Dark with Snowfall, and you might see that I could be correct in what I am telling you. Thanks

You're simply wrong. Steam and mods is a way to get more stuff into your games if you like. That there will be broken bits and that it will take a while to adjust to patches is, and always has been, a problem with city builders. CO gives us the opportunity to create our own content and with that comes our own responsibility. CO and Paradox are not responsible for the mods you use as they have provided the game "as is". You agree to certain terms when using the Steam Workshop and one of those is that the maker of the game is not responsible for "broken" mods and/or games as a result of mods.

I will have to tell you that it's opinions like yours that get mods banned. If people try to blame broken games on the maker because they use (broken) mods then as maker I'd say, well...enough for mods then. They can't and won't be responsible for something they cannot possibly control (50k+ mods/assets/etc...!). Enjoy mods and wait for them to be updated after the game gets patched. Or revert to an older version of the game (it's possible). OR just play vanilla because that IS the responsibility of CO.

 

[Gordon Dry]

There is kinda "strategy" of some modders, creating a mod that is fine, then rest on their laurels and slap on their shoulders.

Later, after a patch and a DLC, it's broken.

The modder won't appear. Complaining and whining doesn't help.
If we're lucky the modder was not selfish and put the source code on github and another modder takes it under his wing.

Weeks later the modder replies to the workshop - something about real life and health issues.

I don't want to be "politically incorrect", but how much is the percentage of modders with serious health issues?

Sometimes it seems that people in their last months start modding, because they don't go to work anymore...

 

[TinyWiking]

From the game maker or publisher point of view, what you say may sound perfectly correct to you.

But from the player point of view, this is not correct.


First, CO and Paradox were delighted to say earlier last year, how they had 50,000 items already in the Steam Workshop, contributed freely by fans. Remember this? Showing how popular the game was. Agree this point?

I can fully understand why Paradox and CO may feel they are not responsible for the Steam Workshop, seeing as this is another company altogether, and they already contribute a huge part of the earnings from the game to Steam. Agreed?

Also, Paradox is paradox today because they have a reputation of listening to the players of their games and changing things accordingly. Agreed?

Now, all I am saying is this;

The Steam Workshop is a total mess. It is hindering my attempts to play this game. I have to wade through old broken stuff to find something that might work, try it, not working, dump it, try again, etc etc. I'm sure you can agree with me how brain deadening and frustrating THIS can be for a player who just wants to play the game.

And of course, as CO release more dlc's and updates, the Workshop will just fill up more and more with broken stuff. Players like me will not bother playing and you will lose players, fans and money.

......

A much better plan is to see the problem, not ignore it, not see it as a Steam problem, but see it as a game breaking problem which will cause you to lose fans and players over time. And really instead of having a CS game still running in a vibrant community in 10 years time, you will have some game that used to be GREAT, but it died out by the 3rd year.

EDIT: One final point, and I don't know the figures, so I'm only guessing. But in a month's time please compare the sales figures from After Dark with Snowfall, and you might see that I could be correct in what I am telling you. Thanks

I understand your point of view, I really do, but you need to understand that if we were to supervise and manage all the user made mods we wouldn't be able to do anything else. There are tens of thousands of mods in the workshop and for us to check they all work, well, it just isn't feasible. This is also why mods are optional, we never force anyone to use them.

Now, had we made it mandatory to use mod X Y and Z then of course we would have a responsibility to make sure they worked, however this isn't the case and therefore we are not going to take responsibility for mods and their compatibility. We simply don't have the manpower nor time.

I've had these discussions before, I worked for Blizzard and Wargaming in the past, and with updates and expansions popular mods tended to break and cause the customers frustration. But I think our community needs to understand that mods are not made by Paradox or Colossal Staff, they are made by the community and the author is solely responsible for updating them.

 

[BadPeanut]

There is kinda "strategy" of some modders, creating a mod that is fine, then rest on their laurels and slap on their shoulders.

Later, after a patch and a DLC, it's broken.

The modder won't appear. Complaining and whining doesn't help.
If we're lucky the modder was not selfish and put the source code on github and another modder takes it under his wing.

Weeks later the modder replies to the workshop - something about real life and health issues.

I don't want to be "politically incorrect", but how much is the percentage of modders with serious health issues?

Sometimes it seems that people in their last months start modding, because they don't go to work anymore...

It's this sort of attitude to modders that makes them not want to continue support, because users become too aggressive in their demands. It can lead to anxiety and even depression if prolonged. which are actually legitimate health issues and also part of real life.

 

[VincentX]

I understand your point of view, I really do, but you need to understand that if we were to supervise and manage all the user made mods we wouldn't be able to do anything else. There are tens of thousands of mods in the workshop and for us to check they all work, well, it just isn't feasible. This is also why mods are optional, we never force anyone to use them.

Now, had we made it mandatory to use mod X Y and Z then of course we would have a responsibility to make sure they worked, however this isn't the case and therefore we are not going to take responsibility for mods and their compatibility. We simply don't have the manpower nor time.

I've had these discussions before, I worked for Blizzard and Wargaming in the past, and with updates and expansions popular mods tended to break and cause the customers frustration. But I think our community needs to understand that mods are not made by Paradox or Colossal Staff, they are made by the community and the author is solely responsible for updating them.

And yet you're still wrong.

If you, as a developer, promote moddability as an essential feature of a game (and yes, it is), then you have a responsibility to make it as practical and as enjoyable as possible for the players. That is what we're paying for, after all. But right now it is a frustrating experience, not an enjoyable one for reasons pointed out by other players.

The major problem that is causing headaches here is that mods basically fall in two categories: those that add mechanics and those that add visuals. Typically, players download mechanics mods first and visual mods second. That means that if mechanics mods are not working properly, players don't even end up using visual mods (like extra buildings) because of conflicts they have with the mechanics ones.

But Cities: Skylines exacerbate the problem. Go have a look at 'most subscribed' mods. That list is filled to the brim with features that have been modded in pretty much since the game was launched. They are so essential to so many players that they basically 'clog' their games. It ends up frustrating everyone because the game is so much less enjoyable without them, but with them keeping C:S up to date and adding other content (like visual mods) becomes a huge pain in the ass. It's the worst alternative in both cases.

Collosal Order has a huge responsibility and a huge opportunity here. As a game developer, you can reduce problems with mods by integrating their mechanics into the base game as much as possible. Your priority should always be to have as few mechanics mods as possible and you do that by making them redundant. Only when you do this regularly and consistently you can keep mods an enjoyable experience for everyone. If you don't, you end up with the complaints you're getting now and the mess you're in when it comes to the relationship with your community.

Automatic buldozing? All 25 areas purchasable? Extended UI's? A tree brush? A better traffic report tool? Precision engineering? Traffic light toggles? Terraforming tools? City vitals? Network extensions? Crossings? Turning lanes? ... I'll pay good money to see all those things in the base game! But I'm really not going to care about an expansion that adds something completely new while already existing issues are largely being ignored. While snow and trams are certainly shiny, right now they just end up disappearing into a much bigger pile of issues a lot of us are having.

 

[Gordon Dry]

I understand what you misunderstand in my post.

I don't demand, I only suggest and I can clearly tell that some of my suggestions went into mods.

By modders who continue in a professional way, of course.

If a modder disappears because he/she decides that it's too much than it would really be helpful to give the code into another modders hands.

Disappearing modders and no sign of a github, that is the problem.

 

[Lakenstaken]

I'd also just like to add that user made mods are just that, made by users. We are not responsible for ensuring they are compatible, it is up to the creator of each individual mod. The problem with mods becoming incompatible is something that usually comes up with new patches / expansions but give it a few days and I think most of the creators will have them back and working as intended .

Yes we do understand this, but many of us think CSL is a unfinished game without many of these mods, so maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to implement some of them into the base game. I would love a Mod Expansion, but I know this is not realistic, especially now when you only have a skeleton crew to work on Cities Skylines.

 

[MotownCountry]

yeah... most of the stuff in the workshop is no good. stuff that isn't titled properly, nor does it offer any worthwhile description. some don't even have pictures. and i know that many of those modders might say that they weren't sure how it worked. but all that should be deleted.

i say...if the mod page has been inactive for 6 months. automatic deletion. or if it isn't properly titled, given a picture and a good description, then it's auto deleted after 30 days. if you really care that much about the mod you made, you are gonna save it.