Last week we had some actual news for you: Cities: Skylines - Green Cities was announced at Gamescom! Our game designer Miska was in Cologne to show the new more sustainable expansion. If you didn't see the live stream on Thursday you can check it out here for a first look!

We will also start with a series of dev diaries this week where members of our dev team write about the paid expansion part as well as what the free update will bring to all the players. There's also new opportunities with modding as we open up the roads for modders to creating their own. The series will run all the way to the release of the expansion which will be later this year (Release date: TBA).

There's been a lot of conversation around the expansion after the announcement so here are a few answers to the most common questions about the expansion:

"Why Green Cities?"
- When bouncing around different ideas after Mass Transit that focused on different public transportation methods we started to talk about cars. Mainly electric ones and how it's interesting to follow how quickly these can be developed so that a) they make sense in Finland and b) are affordable for most. Then the discussion spiraled to new energy methods and sustainable cities and our artists got super inspired. So inspired actually that Green Cities expansion will come with over 350 new assets. This includes new specializations and options for the city services. And we'll go deeper to these in the dev diaries (with pics!).

"Does Green Cities come with zoneable parks?"
- No unfortunately it doesn't. However it seems that we have to give that request the higher ranking in the wishlist.

"Will you fix Traffic AI?"
- Once more and most likely not for the last time: No.

The team is hard at work implementing the rest of the features and finalizing the assets this week and soon we can move on to the Beta phase and bug fixing for Green Cities. And you know when entering Beta it's not that far away from the final product

So how does the Green Cities expansion sound to you? Will you save your cities or rather see them polluted an miserable? Whichever the answer have a great week everyone and we'll be back soon with the first dev diary for Green Cities.

Cheers,
Mariina

 

[CookieMonk]

Even if it's feasible or not, this attitude and kind of response is enough for me to not buy another game from you guys. I've seen a ton of reluctance to add any sort of mechanics to the game other than assets but I'm drawing the line here with this useless Green Cities and the silly Concerts cash grab. Even the decent expansions you did put out like After Dark and Mass Transit only ever achieved half of their potential, they could have had a lot more if you spent more time working on it other than coming up with lazy excuses constantly, and the community would have rewarded you for it.

If Mariina, was truly joking thats fine, but i would hope she come back to the forums and say so, if not i will be joining "Sanny", who just happens to be a wonderful person and a great human bean and if he is upset, than so am i and i will not purchase another product from this company and i have bought everything they have released to date. (to support CO) Gamers need to stick together because sometimes companies seem to forget the buyers decide who make money and who don`t, they seem to forget that fact when they become successful. (Paradox) So in closing i look forward to a reply from Mariina, was it a joke answer, which she does do on occasion and if so i apologize. "Sanny", is right about the content that has been released and what the community wants and expects. "I LOVE City Skylines"

 

[Sanny]

I understand if it was a stab at humour but with the way the game has been going after release it isn't funny at all and I find the humour to be inappropriate as it reflects attitude to your work and the way you lot treat the community/fans, especially after ignoring a lot of their wishlist (which CO asked for by the way). I also know that in general, developers (especially with a small team like yourselves) don't have a good track record with community relations hence why community managers get employed, as certain things do get lost in translation. And it is also understandable if certain things like improving the Traffic AI is not feasible due to Unity engine limitations but this was not made clear, and as a result it seemed like you can't be bothered, repeating what happened with fixing serious gameplay issues with Cities in Motion 2. The problem is you've never acknowledged where the most problematic Cities Skylines issues lie and never admitted to the community "oh we know we messed up on that part and we will try and improve on Feature/Mechanic X in future", this is the work ethic we are used to seeing with PDS in particular after the disastrous launch of Hearts of Iron IV, the developers did eventually listen to the community after two despicable expansions and have promised to attempt to fix the core game issues (which is still ongoing a year later).

In a game as modifiable as Cities Skylines you should have left a considerable amount of asset work to the fantastic modding community, and focused + dedicated more time to improving and adding mechanics and gameplay features. To put things into perspective, the latest DLC Concerts has "Mostly Negative" Steam Reviews of which 35% are positive, and there has been absolutely no official comment on this which worries me and other fans. I feel though that you guys have continued to mistaken the core game's success (and believe me this was one of the strongest base game releases in years) to the quality of the after-care support and expansions which have been underwhelming, unpolished and a disappointment. Regardless I've bought every expansion (bar Concerts and now Green Cities) because I wanted to see your company succeed and I was hopeful that one day you'll make that one great expansion that will immortalise Cities Skylines as one of the great City Builders as Rush Hour had done for Simcity 4, and maybe they'll fix the core game's issues such as traffic AI, death waves, and the general blandness to gameplay but after 2 and half years, this day hasn't come nor will it. But it's OK, continue to make hats for Chirpy, you just won't be getting any more of my money.

 

[EricTheGreat12]

I understand if it was a stab at humour but with the way the game has been going after release it isn't funny at all and I find the humour to be inappropriate as it reflects attitude to your work and the way you lot treat the community/fans, especially after ignoring a lot of their wishlist (which CO asked for by the way). I also know that in general, developers (especially with a small team like yourselves) don't have a good track record with community relations hence why community managers get employed, as certain things do get lost in translation. And it is also understandable if certain things like improving the Traffic AI is not feasible due to Unity engine limitations but this was not made clear, and as a result it seemed like you can't be bothered, repeating what happened with fixing serious gameplay issues with Cities in Motion 2. The problem is you've never acknowledged where the most problematic Cities Skylines issues lie and never admitted to the community "oh we know we messed up on that part and we will try and improve on Feature/Mechanic X in future", this is the work ethic we are used to seeing with PDS in particular after the disastrous launch of Hearts of Iron IV, the developers did eventually listen to the community after two despicable expansions and have promised to attempt to fix the core game issues (which is still ongoing a year later).

In a game as modifiable as Cities Skylines you should have left a considerable amount of asset work to the fantastic modding community, and focused + dedicated more time to improving and adding mechanics and gameplay features. To put things into perspective, the latest DLC Concerts has "Mostly Negative" Steam Reviews of which 35% are positive, and there has been absolutely no official comment on this which worries me and other fans. I feel though that you guys have continued to mistaken the core game's success (and believe me this was one of the strongest base game releases in years) to the quality of the after-care support and expansions which have been underwhelming, unpolished and a disappointment. Regardless I've bought every expansion (bar Concerts and now Green Cities) because I wanted to see your company succeed and I was hopeful that one day you'll make that one great expansion that will immortalise Cities Skylines as one of the great City Builders as Rush Hour had done for Simcity 4, and maybe they'll fix the core game's issues such as traffic AI, death waves, and the general blandness to gameplay but after 2 and half years, this day hasn't come nor will it. But it's OK, continue to make hats for Chirpy, you just won't be getting any more of my money.

Every company has their own release schedule with their own expansion content. I would honestly prefer to have the current CO/Paradox policies than what companies like Firaxis do with their game and communities.

If I take the example of the Civilization Franchise, Firaxis releases 1-2 expansions with a ton load of content that changes most of the base game; however, on the other hand, their patches are about 3-4 per year with no minor hotfix patches. They keep themselves very far from their community and I have rarely seen them speak with members of the community on the forums. If that's not terrible customer interaction, I don't know what is...

Paradox is pretty much the exact opposite of Firaxis: Paradox has small expansions and the usual patch and bug-fix. While the games have more expansions, they are not as big on content as their counterparts. But, the developers are active in the community {Colossal Order seems to be an exception; they are rarely here on the forums} and we get minimum free content in patches.

The whole point of this comparison is to demonstrate how lucky we are to be on the Paradox Forums. Do Paradox games have problems ? Of course, and I'm still incredibly pissed off after having pre-ordered Monks&Mystics as well as the stupid Concerts. But at least the games are enjoyable and provide entertainment, more than what Civilization VI has ever done for me.

 

[AzemOcram]

This looks good! I can hardly wait to play it! Allowing levels to specialized zones gets my hopes up, I hope the free update adds or allows modders to add levels to existing industrial (vanilla) and commercial (after dark) specializations. Having different buildings for soecialized low density housing vs high density housing got my hopes up for zoned small hotels and large casinos. I would be so happy if specializations could have densities and levels!

 

[vukica]

"Does Green Cities come with zoneable parks?"
- No unfortunately it doesn't. However it seems that we have to give that request the higher ranking in the wishlist.

definitely!