If you're not going to give us any patches til the next one is done, at least give us previews

[Simify]

There's no excuse for this silence after such a vocal pre-release. If we're going to go over a month without ANY fixes WHATSOEVER until you finish a cosmetic addition to the game, we should at least get regular updates and previews.

I understand full well this game was made by 13 people. But that's hardly an excuse for bad PR. Forgoing bug fixes to introduce new aesthetic content was a poor enough decision (seriously. Fix the core of the game before you tack things onto it. EA would be getting lambasted if they said "Okay, we know there's big bugs, but just wait! We're about to release a new building type! Wait until that's done, then we'll fix the bugs. Maybe. We might. We'll see."), but total silence so far is even worse.

If 13 people is not enough to patch the game, add new content, and keep us up to date, then don't try to do all 3 of those things at once. The new content is unnecessary right now. If 13 people isn't enough to keep the game up to date, well, you really should've gotten a bigger team for it to begin with...

 

[Lord Canterbury]

Or to translate: Thank you CO for a fantastic game and the three patches since launch. And also thanks for your update thread: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/april-progress-update.851539/

We haven't heard as much from you for a while. Could you please give us another update on the next patch?

 

[Simify]

There have been two patches since launch, for one. One patch being broken, retracted, beta tested for a week, and then released again (with bugs people found during the beta not fixed) does not count as two patches.

That update thread was made almost a month ago, which totally supports my whole "going a month with no information" stance.

"There will be bug fixes! And stuff!" doesn't tell us anything. Weeks with no new information is a bit silly. It wouldn't be that bad if we were also getting regular bug fixes, but we're not. CO decided to abandon regular bug fixes in favor of slapping a bunch of new code into one patch and leaving us in the dark for a month minimum instead.

This is a bad approach. Focusing on adding new cosmetic and unnecessary content to the game *before basic bugs are fixed* is just bad practice. The code needs to be fixed as much as possible before you start adding more things into it. The game has loads of bugs, some incredibly basic that really should not take this long to fix, some a lot more complicated that really should be a focus before ANY cosmetic additions are made to the game.

So my stance is, if they're going to make these bad development decisions, the least they can do while they ignore the bugs is keep us updated on what they're doing with them.

Last I heard, one of the most widespread and basic and simple bugs that has been in the game since A WEEK BEFORE LAUNCH- asset icons for custom assets- might not be fixed in this patch. Do people really think that's *okay*? That the developers would sooner add an entire new type of building and a new traffic feature before fixing a simple UI bug? Come on.

CO is not perfect. Paradox is not perfect. They make a lot of mistakes and leaving us in the dark about all this stuff is a pretty bad one. How can we have confidence in the game's livelihood and potential as a long-term investment like SimCity 4 was if the devs don't patch it regularly, like they promised they would? Or if they don't fix basic bugs for 3+ months? Or if they release broken patches? Or if they have a beta test of a patch, and then ignore bugs people found during the beta? These are all awful things that, if any other developer did them, would result in articles on friggin' PC gamer about how unacceptable they are. If EA had done all of those things- ignored simple UI bugs, ignored beta participant feedback, focused on cosmetics before bug fixes...there'd be gaming sites talking about what a bad job they're doing.

13 people is not an excuse.

If 13 people wasn't enough to make and maintain this game they shouldn't have made it, or they should've gotten more people. The game sold a million copies, use some of that money to grow the damn team already.

 

[kosh22]

Simply answer to your question is NO.

TotallyMoo has made it very clear on that point.

 

[Simify]

Well, that's some awful community managing, then.

"Not only are we not going to give you patches and bugfixes for at least a month and a half, we're also not going to give you any information on what we're doing beyond a vague description".

Absolute nonsense. This game had the best communication before release and a week after and they just don't care anymore.

 

[kosh22]

Suggest you look at https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/april-progress-update.851539/page-7 for your answer. I don't think you will advance the issue further.

 

[Simify]

Oh wow. You weren't kidding. The actual official stance is "We are more than happy to leave you in the dark and anyone who disagrees is a little bitch". This whole "The bugs aren't even fixed, why would we tell you we're trying to fix them?" thing is so unbelievably disheartening and probably the least reassuring thing they could've said. What sort of developer has so little faith in their own abilities they won't even tell you what they're TRYING to fix because they might not actually do it?

I am losing a lot of faith in this developer.

 

[KnightHawkTFC]

Might I suggest a little:

While you wait.

 

[wackazoa]

Welcome to Paradox Interactive. No offense* to the developers, but you should NEVER buy a Paradox game or DLC right away if you don't want to work through issues. They are not large, so a lot of stuff gets missed. Then they patch it, make new stuff, patch THAT, repeat etc.

I love their older games that aren't being worked on anymore. Also the ones that are on the last legs in the dev cycle. Go get Cities in Motion and play that for a bit until Skylines gets into the deep end of the pool. Come back to this game in about 3-4 months and it will be much more into what the dev's want it to be.


*Actually feel free to take offense. But in the end my one voice doesn't matter so keep on keeping on and making fun games.

 

[Tropod]

As the saying goes;
You can please some people some of the time, some people all the time, all people some of the time, but not all people all the time .

A business is going to run however its management sees fit, while taking into account many factors, including things such as this. It's very much like politics. There is nothing wrong with customers/people being vocal about it, it does not mean though people have an entitlement. There's nothing anywhere in any contractual agreement that requires this business to continually keep people updated about everything being done. This isn't FB or twitter, where we are told every moment the last time they showered, ate or burped.

At the end of the day, if people don't like it, no one is forcing us to use it or participate .

 

[GeorgeT93]

From the April Progress Report topic: April Progress Update

We at Colossal have had to prioritize our efforts to working on the patch, which will include tunnels, European buildings and various fixes that will be specified in the patch notes. It doesn't make sense to us to start listing the issues here beforehand as they haven't even been fully tested yet. I hope you can understand that.

We are still reading the forum actively and now that I am looking to hire more people to join the team we hopefully can again allocate more time to actually answering the posts. But please remember that I will always rather have the team actually working on the game and recently we have been very busy to bringing you guys the next patch as soon as possible. I can reveal that the tunnels are starting to shape up, but we are still working on the European assets. I think it's looking very nice already, but I'm a sucker for those old styled buildings anyway

This was posted this past Thursday in the April Progress Update thread, by Colossal Order's CEO.

Note the "It doesn't make sense to us to start listing the issues here beforehand as they haven't even been fully tested yet. I hope you can understand that."

Also of note, "We are still reading the forum actively and now that I am looking to hire more people to join the team we hopefully can again allocate more time to actually answering the posts. But please remember that I will always rather have the team actually working on the game and recently we have been very busy to bringing you guys the next patch as soon as possible."

So, they have commented within the last few days, and obviously don't want to make promises as to what is or isn't fixed until they are sure the things they're trying to fix are actually fixed. They are also preferring to dedicate their limited resources toward working on the patch rather than spending that time answering posts on the forums. I'd rather have them working on the game than spending time responding to topics that are asking questions that they've already answered. You're obviously not satisfied with their answers, and that's fine, but they have posted within the last few days, specifically about the patch. So let's cut them some slack, wait for the patch, and then decide whether or not the patch lives up to expectations, once we know what they've fixed (or tried to fix) with it.

 

[Gilga]

In any forum I read, there is always someone that express opinions on company behaviour; devs, producers or distributors, it doesn't matter. For some people all the gaming companies around the world are guilt for something, no matter the game they are playing.

No one understand that, in any forum, the more you answer the more you will get questions. There is no limit and people don't understand that we are speaking of thousand of people that post in a forum, against few people that have to answer. Thousands or hundreds of thousands if the game is successfull.

Some think that few employee can manage specifically any single question from any person. And don't consider the answers already done, because there will be always someone unsatisfied of the answers.

Being rude is really not needed, expecially in this case where the companies have done a good job with the game, regardless of the bugs that will always affect software that can't control all the rigs and configurations spread around the world.

I'm not saying communication is not needed, but there is a big difference in complaining because of the silence, or because you don't trust the actual answers you got in the forums.

They answered questions: there will be bug fixing, there will be tunnels, maybe there will be european-style buildings. Should they repeat their statements every week?

If you are having fun, just play the game and be more relaxed.

For instance, I am one of the stupid people that spent 80 € to preorder Simcity 2013: that was a real stolen money. Actually Cities:Skylines is exactly what a city builder should be, regardless of the bugs, and it costed 1/3 of the Simcity price.

I don't think that being rude with a company that released what they promised is fair.

This is just my opinion.

 

[KR153]

@Simify: you´re wasting your time. Normally I´d suggest to work on your attitude, but even that wouldn´t do you any good here. If you´re not on the praise train you get discarded into the troll forest, if not by the officials then by the so called community. Obviously they have a game that entertaines them so why should they care for others that still only own half a game? They relax on "dontlikeitdontplayit island" with the occasional postcard.
The fact that they didn´t even have a single screenshot of a street with W2W buildings or a tunnel doesn´t worry anyone? I mean that isn´t something that would cost any time nor effort IF they have something to show.

 

[slornie]

There's no excuse for this silence after such a vocal pre-release. If we're going to go over a month without ANY fixes WHATSOEVER until you finish a cosmetic addition to the game, we should at least get regular updates and previews.

Tunnels and wall-to-wall buildings are hardly cosmetic/aesthetic additions. They are both significant technical changes that add entirely new functionality. The first two patches seem to have fixed most of the critical issues preventing people from playing the game so CO spending longer on the next to start delivering on their pre-launch promise to enhance the game seems like a good idea. As for previews and updates, what do you expect them to say? "This week we added three hundred lines of code and modified another 250." I'd love to see a dev diary about wall-to-wall and tunnels, but again that's time taken away that they could be spending actually working on improving the game.

If 13 people is not enough to patch the game, add new content, and keep us up to date, then don't try to do all 3 of those things at once. The new content is unnecessary right now. If 13 people isn't enough to keep the game up to date, well, you really should've gotten a bigger team for it to begin with...

Obviously they're not doing all three at once, else you wouldn't be complaining. They're focusing their dev time on fixing bugs and adding new content rather than visiting the forums answering the same old questions (Q: "when are you fixing superurgentissuethataffectsme X??" A: "when we've found what causes it, had time to fix it and checked the fix works.").

There have been two patches since launch, for one. One patch being broken, retracted, beta tested for a week, and then released again (with bugs people found during the beta not fixed) does not count as two patches.

After which they seem to have opted for a slower patch release cycle, bundled with gameplay improvements, and to spend more time on QA. A decision you're now objecting to because they haven't released new patches every week?

That update thread was made almost a month ago, which totally supports my whole "going a month with no information" stance.

"There will be bug fixes! And stuff!" doesn't tell us anything. Weeks with no new information is a bit silly. It wouldn't be that bad if we were also getting regular bug fixes, but we're not. CO decided to abandon regular bug fixes in favor of slapping a bunch of new code into one patch and leaving us in the dark for a month minimum instead.

The update that said it would be at least a month before the next patch would be out? No news is just no news. It's not a conspiracy to keep us in the dark, and it doesn't mean bugs aren't being or won't be fixed. TotalyMoo and CO never committed to giving us a blow-by-blow account of precisely what they're working on, and I don't there is any game company out there that does.

Last I heard, one of the most widespread and basic and simple bugs that has been in the game since A WEEK BEFORE LAUNCH- asset icons for custom assets- might not be fixed in this patch. Do people really think that's *okay*? That the developers would sooner add an entire new type of building and a new traffic feature before fixing a simple UI bug? Come on.

Are custom icons for custom assets a bug or an enhancement? It's certainly not game breaking. And how do you know it's a simple UI bug? I doubt there's a line in the code that says the equivalent of <Use_Custom_Icons> Yes </Use_Custom_Icons>.

EDIT:

How can we have confidence in the game's livelihood and potential as a long-term investment like SimCity 4 was if the devs don't patch it regularly, like they promised they would?

SimCity 4 had a total of two patches for the base game in the first month or so and then nothing until Rush Hour was released nine months later (which itself then only received one patch). Did Maxis manage to catch and fix all of the bugs with their game in those three patches, or did they just abandon the game after that point?

 

[KR153]

Tunnels and wall-to-wall buildings are hardly cosmetic/aesthetic additions. They are both significant technical changes that add entirely new functionality.

Again I fail to acknowledge if this is meant to be serious or not. I simply cannot believe what you people are willing to swallow.
"significant technical changes that add entirely new functionality" would be like weather or something or even maybe a proper night mode.

 

[rctshack]

Again I fail to acknowledge if this is meant to be serious or not. I simply cannot believe what you people are willing to swallow.
"significant technical changes that add entirely new functionality" would be like weather or something or even maybe a proper night mode.

I don't understand where you anger is coming from. You speak like you aren't able to play the game... yet the only bug you list is one dealing with custom content that isn't a base game issue, and is one they have said they are working towards solving. And then you're upset that after fixing all the critical bugs that they may think to improve other portions of the game?? They aren't abandoning bug fixing like you are making this out to be, they just know that everyone is able to play the game now and that it's not critical to attend to everyones own few non-serious issues RIGHT THIS MOMENT.

Your responses above make you sound like a crying child and that because you paid $30 for a game that would be twice that with any other company, that somehow you deserve perfection and immediate day to day updates. They haven't gone dark, they have very much informed us of exactly what they are doing and their plan (which includes bug fixes as well) and they have been extremely prompt when you look at how much work goes into fixing a million people's (literally) likely bugs. So take a seat cause you are not a special snowflake.

Also your logic is a pill to swallow as well... as if night mode or weather actually adds more functionality than tunnels or wall to wall buildings... which actually provide real functions... not aesthetic changes. But again, you realllllllllly love to focus on that instead of the fact that they are being cautious about releasing updates constantly and having people like you come back and complain that the update had to be updated... which you literally did in this thread above... so you are actually the one who causes radio silence and delays... because you are the person who complains about everything.

 

[KR153]

because you are the person who complains about everything.

Bullcrap. Many people are disappointed by this game and if they are not constantly expressing their ponts of view than maybe they have given up or simply decided to wait and see. Both is not my thing.
Your post however is a perfect example of how critisizm however performed is handled here. You pick arguments and turn and twist them into obscurity so you can ridicule them.
Indeed, I am unable to play the game. I never said that as an universal statement. TO ME THIS GAME IS NOT PLAYABLE. Simple as that. If I wouldn´t have the hope that this changes one day I wouldn´t waste my time with half witted morons that only read what they want.
I never anywhere said that they were "abandoning" anything. Yet they failed to present ONE SINGLE screenshot of a tunnel or a W2W house and until then they do not exist other than in your hopes.

 

[V10lator]

Again I fail to acknowledge if this is meant to be serious or not. I simply cannot believe what you people are willing to swallow.
"significant technical changes that add entirely new functionality" would be like weather or something or even maybe a proper night mode.

You mean weather like UniStorm which they could add for nothing more than $60 ? Or the day/night mods already out there which are most of the time just a few lines of code to activate unitys build-in day/night cycles? Yea, that sounds more complicated than adding tunnels to a game where everything is happening on the surface or wall to wall buildings into a system randomly dropping buildings with no real neighbour connection at all.
In other words: You just proved that you have no idea what you're talking about but are talking like the others are the idiots. Keep on ranting just as we're going to keep on laughing. YMMD.

You pick arguments and turn and twist them into obscurity so you can ridicule them

Mirror, mirror, on the wall... Seriously, look into it...

Indeed, I am unable to play the game.

You never told us that, do you expect us to read your mind now? Also where's the bug report (you're not the guy that waits and sees, so there must be one, no?) and what happened since last week (where, according to your own posts here on the forums, you where happily playing).

Yet they failed to present ONE SINGLE screenshot of a tunnel or a W2W house and until then they do not exist other than in your hopes.

Maybe, just maybe they aren't releasing any screenshots cause they want a real hype when releasing the patch? But then again what does a moron like me know?

 

[slornie]

Yet they failed to present ONE SINGLE screenshot of a tunnel or a W2W house and until then they do not exist other than in your hopes.

If I announced I was going to bake an apple pie would you expect me to show you pictures of it before I had made it? No you wouldn't. So why do you expect a game developer to behave any differently with a new feature they are developing? "Pics or it didn't happen" isn't a particularly useful argument in the context of computer programming.

 

[Simify]

Too lazy and not really willing to argue all these points, as I've already stated my piece, but this one bugs me-

SimCity 4 had a total of two patches for the base game in the first month or so and then nothing until Rush Hour was released nine months later (which itself then only received one patch). Did Maxis manage to catch and fix all of the bugs with their game in those three patches, or did they just abandon the game after that point?

The ONLY comparison I made to SimCity 4 was about longevity. The devs (and community) want this game to be SC4's successor and last us years upon years. The mention of patching was not "THEY AREN'T PATCHING IT LIKE SIMCITY 4!" and I have no freaking clue where you got that from. The mention of patching is part of the question "how can we have confidence the game will have long term sustainability". The only thing relating to SimCity 4 in that entire sequence of questions is "like simcity 4". Not patching like simcity 4. Longevity like SimCity 4.

The question is not "How can we have confidence in the game if it ins't simcity 4 in 3D?". Let me remove the SC4 part so you can read it again and maybe you'll get it.

How can we have confidence in the game's livelihood and potential as a long-term investment if the devs don't patch it regularly, like they promised they would? Or if they don't fix basic bugs for 3+ months? Or if they release broken patches? Or if they have a beta test of a patch, and then ignore bugs people found during the beta?

And let me add some new ones:

Or if they leave everyone in the dark for a month and a half with a cosmetic patch of unnecessary additions that are prioritized over bug fixes? Or if when doing that, their C E FREAKING O basically calls anyone who wants some information on what they're doing stupid and says they don't care?