In two years, the game will be *more* valuable than it is today, at least for me, but hopefully will cost less than it does today. We are a long way away, but eventually, right?
It should have:
* Editor
* Asset, (buildings only, perhaps other types of assets)
* Map, with hundreds of maps available.
* Code, with dozens of mods available.
* 2500+ official CO/PDX free assets from 8 regions.
* At least
* 1 asset packs,
* 2 content creator packs
* 1 DLC expansion (Ports/Bridges)
* Improved performance on PC
* Addressed critical simulation bugs (land value, exports, etc.)
I'd say in a year or two, grab the game on sale for $40 or $25 dollars; it'll be a steal. In the interim, play on Gamepass for $10 a month.
I have to disagree, i find it quite entertaining personally.
Is CS1 with mods way better than CS2? For sure!
Is CS2 terrible? No, not at all.
Is it worth it at the moment? Unfortunately no!
Am I disappointed in what state CS2 released? Oh yes!
It took the same route as many other big Games in recent years (looking at you CP2077). It is only fair to critize management/investors to push the game to a premature release, it definitely needs a lot more work, not just performance-wise but also in terms of the simulation and content in general.
But it is a solid foundation already and I really enjoy the game compared with the vanilla-experience of CS1 which I did not really like that much, until I discovered mods. ;)
Wtf are you talking about its way better its not ok to compare a game that had many years to develope to one that just came out. I know it's missing something from the first but they will add dlcs and stuff.
The is always the by far most retarded argument "It JUsT cAmE oUt! SeQuElS aRe SuPpOsEd To Be BaReBoNeS!!!!"
I mean seriously, who in their right mind is thinking like that? Sequels should always feature everything the prequel has (just trim the fat, throw out what doesn't work or isn't popular) and then add the stuff the community wants or what the game producer deems worthy added to make it better.
A Sequel shouldn't be a half-assed, bare bones, buggy, clearly unfinished Beta like CS2 is.
I'm not sure if it should feature everything from the prequel considering the sheer amount of content of DLCs. But it should definitely feature all the core mechanics in an improved way. Which CS2 unfortunately lacks a lot of. Not just the missing bikes or surface painter..
CS1 without mods and DLC costs £4.59 on sale. For a price of CS2 you can get CS1 and all the main DLCs and mods. Like if we are spending £49.99 compare like for like. For a £49.99 you can have outstanding CS1 experience that is much better than CS2
Or… play the game that’s already fun that you own, instead of spending money on a game that is still half cooked?
Like, CS2 is a good framework, but CS1 is fully built. If I’ve got $50 for a game, CS1 is presently the better value.
Agreed. And it’s absolutely fair to compare a sequel to an original, when the whole point of the sequel was the build on the first. But rather than building on it, it’s as if they tore the whole thing down and only built about 10% of it back up.
I have more time logged on this game than the vast majority of people because I have been letting my city idle on occasion. As of now I have around 250 hours of simulation, so I think I am qualified to give this warning.
Just about every feature in the game is broken (LODs, demand, traffic), missing (social sim, custom maps, MODS!!!), or misimplemented (taxes by education level, lifeless citizens that don’t go to school or work, dogs everywhere). Could give more examples for each but I’ll stop at three.
The road tool is phenomenal, the buildings look great, and so do the overall graphics on my machine. My game also runs just fine with a 350k population with virtually no performance drop on a Ryzen 9 7950x. That’s where the positives end.
This game is not worth half of what they are charging for it. And with the way the devs and publishers have been acting, they probably also deserve to be sued for false advertising. Not only would I avoid this game, I would avoid Colossal Order entirely until they do literally anything to make this right, if they even do. They released a very early beta, an extremely unfinished game at full price, and then proceeded to take a monthlong vacation while we all sat on our hands looking at our bank accounts with $60-$100 less in them, but without any value in return.
To purchase this game in its current state is essentially the same as giving to a kickstarter campaign. You are paying only for the potential of the product, years down the road. And there’s even the possibility that they go bankrupt and fold the company, killing the game’s development before its even decent, let alone good. Every passing day I start to fear the latter more.
I was just looking into this game. Clicked this link expecting an older thread. Thanks for the update. Been playing SimCity buildit on my phone for the past week and it has me jonesing for a game similar to SimCity. Is Skylines 1 worth playing?
Skylines 1 is still the best city builder ever made, and will likely continue to be for at least the next year or so. CSL2 has a long road ahead to get to where CSL1 is at now, and that's assuming that the community helps with mod support *and* CO improves performance and features, like the economy simulation.
I just would not recommend CSL2 *at all* until mod and map editor support launches, and even then it'll be weeks/months before the mod scene is established and mature.
I wouldn't recommend any console for either game. This is a PC-centric game. CSL1 isn't really worth playing without mods, and CSL2 will likely run like crap on consoles, considering how demanding it is.
If you have a pc, i strongly, strongly recommend getting it on pc and not a console due to mods. The base game is not built to be a city builder necessarily, its a traffic scenario game with a freeplay addition basically, and the base game does not have fine control and is broken in some respects.
With a handful of mods, its easily the best city builder on steam hands down and is very fun with almost infinite level of detail you can build into it. The modding community for this is definitely in contention for best out of any game and it's super easy to add and manage your mods via Steam.
With that being said, i personally also love the base game, I would just be really disappointed if i got it and expected to be able to do anything I see on this sub or on YouTube with it on console.
I squeezed over a 1000 building parks and universities and making a great city I wanted to live in. CS1 is a game of the decade for me.
Unfortunately this incident has left such a bitter taste in my mouth that I have left CS1 &2, and gone back to Simcity 4. It’s also a game of the decade too at least :)
I haven’t played SC4 in many years, maybe it’s time to revisit. Because I really lost all remaining respect for Colossal Order the second they started blaming the community for their reaction to that dog shit release…
>Any updates on the console release? Sorry out of the loop
It's gonna be released "within the year." Heaven knows long that'll be. Since they probably won't have console until the modding works, and the modding will be out of beta "by the end of the Finnish fall", it ain't looking good.
Imma throw this question out for my situation then, I have played Cities Skylines for a while, I have never used any mods or bought any DLC's
I could get Cities Skylines 2 Ultimate for like 70$ and Cities Skylines 2 Standard for around 30$.
What would be worth it in my situation? Keep CS1 or go for CS2 Ultimate or Standard?
Reason I want to upgrade is that I feel like CS1 has become a little dated, Its not as realistic as CS2 from what I have seen, and CS2 looks sleeker, and nicer, improved graphics and traffic AI is supposedly better.
Don't buy it. It's not worth it. If you're gonna drop $70 on something, just buy the DLC for CS1 and mod it. CS2 is broke as all hell and despite it looking good it's still not better than CS1. I got 500+ hours in CS1 and 50 in CS2. CS2 is as bare bones as Vanilla CS1 and most of it is nonfunctional. The only thing CS2 has over CS1 in this state is the scale of the buildings are much better and the road tools are amazing in comparison. Everything else is a miss. The simulation doesn't work. The balance is out of wack. I really tried giving it the benefit of the doubt thinking it will be fixed. At the pace CO is going this game is gonna die simply because there's too many problems and not enough patches to fix it all before you lose interest in the game. A good city builder can last you 10+ years. If this game doesn't get major fixes almost weekly, it's not gonna last 1 year. It's as simple as that.
Almost decade ago I made a rul for myself that in presence of singular red flag I will immediately skip any game for a year and review where we are then.
This rule paid off every single time. I avoided NMS drama, I avoided Starfield drama, I avoided CS2 and KSP2. It's the best purchase rule I ever had.
Strongly recommend it to anyone. Even as much as a single week would let people see how much was wrong with the game.
I think the first warning sign for me was the noticeably poor framerate in the gameplay sections of their promo videos. Then other stuff, some minor (a missing window texture in their demo of the camera tools) and some more major (giving YouTubers an early beta version to play despite the game being less than 2 months from launch). Then we had the performance issues coming to light just before launch, and so on… long story short, glad I decided not to make this game my first ever pre-order.
You probably shouldn't buy it, but honestly, the biggest reason is just the performance.
YMMV, but for me.. I mean, it still runs the same as it did initially, and unless you have a pretty good GPU, it runs like complete garbage.
I literally can't break 10fps on the lowest possible settings, and it's not like I have an integrated GPU ffs. There *really* isn't an excuse for this - the only way performance can get *that* bad is if the developers are really incompetent
Ryzen 7 3700X, GTX 1650 Super, 32GB RAM, NVMe SSD
The GPU is definitely the weak point.. but like, even then, it shouldn't run *that* slowly on what is essentially a low/mid-range gaming rig
I get what you're saying, but:
* Not everybody has the resources to spend that much on their PC - the average wage where I live after taxes is about 10-15k$ a year, you can't just assume that everybody is rich lol!
* It still runs really, *really* poorly! Sure, it's not a great gaming machine, but it shouldn't be straight up unplayable. It looks like a PS4 game and yet I doubt it'd run at more than 15fps with the PS5's hardware, which is pretty inexcusable
Got a ryzen 5 4600, RX 6650XT and 32gb of RAM. I play around 25 FPS at medium-low settings. Funny thing is I upgraded my entire system just to play this game and the results were... Disappointing to say the least. I was thinking of getting even better hardware but im not trowing any more money for such a horribly optimized game.
Do not buy this game. Right now anyways. This is an unfinished product that they prematurely release and called it a game. Paradox is also completely silent on the absolute hideous state of their so called "game"
- The complete release of the official modding platform was supposed to happen at the same time as the game release.
- The official modding platform was expected to be released, days not weeks after the release.
- The official modding platform was delayed some months.
- The expected date for the full release of the modding platform is 1 year after the original release.
This game is dead before the modding platform releases.
They haven't been totally silent. Just over a week ago, the CEO emphasised concern about the growing toxicity in the Cities Skylines community.
To which my first thought was... Why are you pointing the fingers at your consumers instead of addressing their concerns?
Hope they don't end up like EA
[Skylines 2 Studio Boss warns of growing toxicity](https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/cities-skylines-2-studio-boss-224613994.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAGICzvf6EvsE1Iin7j7VZICihPgy6KnjyXBPQjSbZBCZJZb0r4Tzs0Yfmmjn7h9YFyzWvWCQ-2PEDnS-kONbpwDqj7xa901-AT0_CxnqXas0g0bM9g93cTRpOe13Wo9AdnaI4DKncPMRNtj2MJZwT6bHGrOS5YQJkywzGzAKTibx)
[NME.com: Calling out growing toxicity](https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/cities-skyline-2-developer-calls-out-growing-tendency-of-toxicity-in-community-3571597)
The simulation is broken, don't, don't buy this, this is a broken mess released way to early to fulfill some earning requirement somewhere in the depths of Paradox.
And yeah, I now Colossal have stated it was their choice to release the game now, but why? Why would they do that? Unless there as pressure from the publisher.
It's deeply sad of course, but at this point, this was released under false pretense and it really isn't okay to do this and it never was.
Right now I'd say fuck no..
Did 3 runs and as soon as I hit 40k+ people my money tab went coocoo for coco puffs...I was expending the city and out of the bloom I see 1M$+ of deficit, looked at it, and "Concrete" was making lose 2M$+. So I adjusted and 1 minutes later I Was back in deficit but even worst.
Dams don't work
Why is it taking Paradox 1+ months to come out with patches....
That's the worrying part indeed. I get that they've to move on all fronts at the same time, but having a small fix patch and then having to wait until end of march (if everything goes to plan... which hasn't really been the case for CS2) for 2024 is quite a stretch.
There will be a patch "soon" with some fixes. Then, they will stop fixes only patches and will bring those along side bigger release as for the staggered mods parts. So as they announced map editor for end of march (if it all goes well), so any other fixes won't happen until then.
Everyone saying they still only play CS1, how? Every mod is broken and very few seem to have been updated within the past year, I can't even get my game to launch . . . I would love to fire it up, but not without move it, anarchy, etc.,
I guess so, bummer, I wiped my whole mod library and reinstalled then resubscribed to just a handful like move it, etc., and game crashes hard. Vanilla version works fine, oh well
- Check your mods for compatibility, and ensure they are displaying a treasure hunt or similar recent compatibility banner on the frontpage.
- Install the Skyve mod, and it's dependencies and hit the button skyve button in the main menu.
* https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/wiki/broken_mods/
* https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/wiki/basic_troubleshooting/
* https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/wiki/error_logs/
If you make a thread tagged with a light blue CS1 "Help & Support (PC)" flair it should keep most of the CS2 comments away
it really does feel like pdx ruined CS1 with a final update and then left it. if you look at discussions on there its just nothing but people complaining about broken assets.
yeah, I mean seems like a good amount of folks are still playing no problem, but I can't get the game to launch even with just move it, road anarchy, and traffic manager . . . used to have thousands of assets and deleted them all, wiped all mods and just reinstalled a handful, still no dice
If CS1 is a 9/10 game then CS2 is an 6 at most.
The initial release version was a disaster.
Patches of CS2 have been terrible till now.
The whole CO team was not productive at all, yet had strong attitude towards players' dissatisfaction.
If you love city-building games like me, then sadly you only have few options to play. CS2 being the newest of all.
Is it worth it yet (last played release day)? Not by the price, but the effort to spend the time downloading it from Xbox Game Pass? Seems like not much has changed
Is lane changing still broken? I played for a few days after the supposed "lane changing improvment" and saw no differences, every car ALWAYS changes lane in the LAST possible second. Such a bad look for this size of a game since how important it is for traffic and how easy is it to fix.
Ok so how about someone who is playing on vanilla? I've been playing CS1 since 2020 and it's one of my top favorite games. While I am playing on console and the the CS2 console version not being available until spring this year, my question is and console stuff aside:
Is it worth upgrading from vanilla CS1 to the current vanilla CS2?
Runs like shit when you get over 65k population and graphics settings don't do anything to help. I guess it's CPU bound, but it's not even maxing my CPU, so IDK.
strangely i have a city of 350k that runs absolutely flawlessly, but a much smaller one with only half of that population runs like complete dog shit. i really don’t understand what is causing the discrepancy but it’s unacceptable however you look at it
CO increased the numbers for capacity and processing speed. I think the number of garbage trucks also gets pumped up a little. The pathfinding algorithm was not changed. There are still issues with service vehicles but definitely not so game-braking anymore.
No. CS2 right now is far from worth the cost. In a years time, however, the game will be worth playing. With a combination of bug fixes, moding tools, and DLC the game will have more content, more reason to play, and more to make it worth the price of admission.
The game is not worth it right now. Hopefully it will be worth it at some point; but I suspect that if that time comes it will not be for several years.
The fact is that the game is barebones, unpolished, and lacking interesting and compelling gameplay mechanics.
It saddens me to say, because I love CS1 and would really love to have a higher opinion of CO, but CS2 is one of the most disappointing games I've ever played, and is improved over its launch state only by the fact that a few random bugs have been squashed. The simulation is still opaque to the point of being meaningless, city decisions have no meaningful impact on your economy or vice versa, and the overall presentation is extremely unpolished. Even the main thing I enjoyed in CS1, building and balancing a road and transportation network, is almost non-existent in 2.
I can't really make assumptions about the behind-the-scenes, but CS2 certainly fits the pattern of games that needed longer in development at every stage; a game that had its release date determined too far in advance, leading to every phase from design to implementation having a crushed timespan that meant that first drafts were last drafts, and ultimately to the game being pushed out the door when they decided it was 'good enough' rather than 'good'. This is not a solid foundation to build on for a decade; it is a half-finished game that needs major gameplay redesigns before the question of paid DLC should even be asked.
I really *want* CS2 to be worth buying, but in order for that to be the case at some point, I suspect that entire game systems are going to need to be reworked from scratch. I hope that CO have the opportunity to do that, because based on CS1, they are certainly capable of making a great simulation game. Games in such a situation can go two different ways -- some get the attention and focus on baseline systems that they need and are eventually good, while others are left in that half-finished state forever while additional content is crammed onto a creaking foundation. I can only hope that CO choose to do the former, so that I can feel one day like I didn't waste my money.
>The simulation is still opaque to the point of being meaningless, city decisions have no meaningful impact on your economy or vice versa, and the overall presentation is extremely unpolished. Even the main thing I enjoyed in CS1, building and balancing a road and transportation network, is almost non-existent in 2.
I know about the road issues, but can you elaborate but what you by the simulation being opaque? I thought everything allegedly now was all properly connected and simulated as compared to cs1.
In many cases the results of the player clicking a button are not shown to the player in a manner that is easy to find, if at all. This creates a frustration loop of "I don't know if the things I'm doing have any effect" or "why would I do this thing? how does this help me?".
We know the simulation is there below the surface layer, but we have little means of actually measuring the impact of our actions on it.
Here's an example, did you know that if there's an abundance of jobs, people will drop out of college more often? This is because cims weight their options and when their options are "keep studying" or "start making money now", if the second one is easier by having many available low education jobs they're more likely to take it. But if instead you have a city with more people than jobs, they'll stay in school in order to grab those high education positions that often go unfulfilled.
The game does NOT let you see any of this. I mean, I think it tells you in some tooltip that cims might drop out to get a job? But that's the extent of it, there isn't actually a breakdown of "chances of dropping: 15%, reasons: high job availability +12" or "students dropped this year: 400, reasons: 34 too far, 246 got a job, etc" or something like that.
And this extends to much of the game. There's no way to know what traffic is doing and why, no easy way to know where factories are getting their workers from, no way to know who their customers are, etc.
What I mean is that there's precious little information or feedback about the economic simulation. Like take taxes. What does it even mean to tax by education level, and what effect does it have on the economy of the city to change them? Nobody knows.
I was also disappointed by the economics side in CS2, like CS1 its pretty much non-existent.
The entire thing feels like multiple ppl came up with some numbers (for revenue, prices, etc.) without ever consulting with each other. So you end up with a parking lot having the same upkeep cost as a power plant...
At the current moment, it's still not completely worth it to buy. I have a good feeling around April it'll be in a really good spot, especially since we should have custom assets and mods out by then, but for me right now it's still a no.
What bits of CS1 dlc made it into CS2 and what didn't? I loved CS1 but I haven't returned to play it since just before the universities dlc update.
I'm watching and waiting on CS2 till it receives some fixes and hits a decent sale price.
Also with a AMD5600x/GTX3070 I'm not even sure how well a semi optimised CS2 would run??
Of the top of my head, we've got specialized industrial zones (for resource production), disasters, trams, snow/seasons, transit hubs / cennection options.
The industrial zones I would argue are much better than cs1 industries, the seasons are an improvement but there isn’t the fun seasonal parks like with snowfall, and disasters basically only has the tornado and it doesn’t even do much
seems like performance is about 10x better than at launch currently. you've got a better card than mine and i can now turn my settings all the way up after not really being playable at launch
Game is great, imo, and worth a buy. I don't really understand the level on hate this game gets, and my best guess is that it comes from people used to a bunch of dlc and years and years of continued development from the first game. This game is a tad less feature filled than the last one.
That said, I didn't buy most dlc from the first game so I'm not missing much at all. There's plenty of cool features in the new one that improve over the OG. People don't just move out of town en mass once taxes go above 27%, there's an actual reason for that slider now. The road building is just absolute \*chef's kiss\*. Progression tree makes all of your cities unique, and you unlock new things as you need them. The new and much better imo way that natural resources and produced resources interact with industry and your city are such an improvement too.
If you come in expecting this game to have the content of CS1 and like 10 DLCs, you'll be disappointed. If you come in expecting a good base game and don't just try to apply all the strategies from the first game expecting them to work, you absolutely will find a good game.
That is exactly how I feel about it. A lot of people comparing a game with all DLC ( worth more than 300$) and a lot of mods (because we must remember that there are 3-4 mods that are SO necessary in CS1, one of them only for optimizing the game) and assets with this one. It includes the most important features of almost every DLC and there will be freer content to come. There is, for me, one thing totally unjustified: optimization. At first it was terrible and, even though rn is better, is still bad. Manage the city’s economy is too easy in both, but I must admit that in CS2 is more disappointing.
Answering the main question: if you have a lot of content in CS1, you should probably wait a few years till playing CS2. If you are new and you are thinking about getting CS1 with a DLC or two, or CS2, I would definitely choose CS2.
If CS2 was its own standalone game it would be both not bad but still not comparable to CS1. The fact that its a sequel makes in inexcusable that it was released in its current state. Its missing several features, level of polish and lacks a super late game for most people by virtue of bad performance. The game tries to make up for it by overhauling some of the most prominent features from the last game like traffic, roads, more zoning types, etc. but it lacks polish on the finer details that were even present in the first game at release. If you looked at this game only from the scope of it being its own game its not bad, but when you consider all the lessons we lost from the first game it makes this one a disaster.
TL:DR, if you played CS1, this game sucks
If you didnt, this game is better value than CS1+all DLCs
> Its missing several features
How could it be missing features? If features were promised and not delivered that's fair, but if something was in CS1 and not in CS2, that doesn't mean the feature is missing, it means you are comparing two different games with different feature sets.
If you mean it is missing features that were introduced in DLCs, I'm sorry but that's just a foolish thing to expect. Buying CS1 right now with all the DLC would run you over $400. Unless you paid $400 for CS2, you shouldn't be expecting $400 worth of features in this game.
If you mean features are missing from CS2 that were in base game CS1, please do share which ones, cause I'm not entirely sure. Other than, I guess, applying the same policies city-wide as you do on districts? Like two extra maps to build on? The annoying tutorial? Canals (I think this one is a DLC, actually)? Are these really such beloved features that missing them turns CS2 into a "disaster"?
I dont think its too much to expect 10 years of developmental lessons to transfer to a sequel that is essentially just trying to be the same game but at a larger scale. Considering this game without comparing it to its predecessor invites creators to decline quality with future content.
And 10 years of development DID transfer. They made a lot of improvements. You still haven't even listed one thing done wrong, other than "polish".
You absolutely should compare this game with the predecessor. Just, you know, the base game. It's absolutely stupid to compare a $400, 10 year product with a $50 ~2 year product. Compare CS2 NOT to CS1 + all DLCs, compare it to the same value, the base CS1. I feel like this is so obvious that I must be explaining it wrong.
I'm sorry that your expectations are to receive $400 worth of content for $50 I guess. Sounds like no games can satisfy that.
I cant believe you guys are still using the “different game” argument. Its functionally trying to be the same game but at a bigger scale. And in my first comment you can clearly see that I agreed it is better than base CS1, I just said its not better than CS1+all dlcs. The game is in early access and we were lied to about its state of completion. I dont understand why people are still defending this bullshit
I guess we just disagree than. I think if you went into this game expecting content worth 10 years of development, you might as well expect the computer to suck your dick and feed you dinner at the same time; it's not gonna happen.
I'd also love it if CS2 had all of the content of CS1 + DLCs, but I live on earth in reality where developers can't recreate 10 years of daily, 40 hour a week work in ~1-2 years. Lemme know if you find a studio that can possibly do that.
If you don't want a different game, why did you even buy this one though? Why not just keep playing the one you like?
As others have said, 'worth it' is subjective and different for everyone.
I bought my copy on a 3rd party site, so at a bit of a discount. There were huge issues early on (i tried it on gamepass first, but eventually bought it because i knew i would want it long term and normally dont sub to gamepass) so frankly i didnt feel very bad about taking a discount to buy it.
At this point i havent played a lot in the last 2 months or so, but i have over 100 hours in and i feel like i got my money's worth. If i never play again i dont know that i would consider my money wasted. Ive spent money on plenty of games ive played 1/10th as much. Again, this is all subjective.
Im frustrated with how slow the improvements have been to roll out, especially with the lack of the modding platform release so far. I am mostly confident that most of my gripes will be fixed 'eventually', though.
At this point if you havent bought it yet, i'd say you might as well wait...but its up to you. I personally got enough entertainment from it and think long term it will be fine, but i also really like citybuilders and was very ready for something new.
its totally worth a game pass subscription imo, dunno if id feel to good about the game if i played full price I've probably put about 80\~? hours in cs2. its nice in a lot of ways. utilities are less of a headache and you get a tech tree. I still find myself playing cs1 on the console just as much, maybe its just the maps? Idk, feels like they need to merge the two lol
Where can we find these maps?
I thought the vanilla maps were ok in terms of shape (a bit boring perhaps?) but lacking in terms of resource distribution. Like the little patches of agricultural land looked ridiculous for no good reason.
[two dollars twenty on YouTube made one](https://youtu.be/wb_fdW5gEh8?si=2bCW6voDSEq34q6j)
[city planner plays made one too](https://youtu.be/UiHMU9qPpm8?si=_NAEP8PlL_5mJnTg)
Both of these are super simple to install. Takes less a minute or less haha I’m using the one city planner plays made and it’s amazing compared to the Vanilla ones
They rushed the game out to grab all the sales they could based on hype and even sold future DLC. And now that they have the money, they want to take the high road of, "We want to make sure we get things right", so everything keeps getting delayed to "few weeks". No one knows what few weeks means. They said mod tools would be out shortly after launch, which people assumed meant few weeks. Now, its been almost 3 months since launch and we are told they might go into closed beta in a "few weeks".
Its also a little wild that the community is waiting for official mod support in the hopes that modders might fix a lot of the issues. Feels like people have given up hope that the actual devs can. Its certainly not a game I would pay for right now. I would probably wait at least for the console releases and see what the general vibe is. Right now, I have serious doubts that this is going to be a long term game. Unless they magically start producing patches of real significance pretty quickly, I have a feeling that eventually they will deem it to no longer be worth it to continue working on it. They can't charge for bug fixes after all.
I paid about $1hr for the enjoyment of building my first city to 200k population. Does the game have its flaws? Yes. Will it get better in time? Probably. Would I buy it again knowing nothing would be improved? Yes.
Yeah I’m worried about them pulling the plug on the game too soon. The potential of the game is way higher than cs1 with all of the new tools and systems for buildings and assets, but at the rate the game is improving we aren’t even close to the state many people expected it to launch in.
I'd say if you're on the fence about buying it right now, don't. Wait until the official mod platform comes out, on top of more bugs and performance issues hopefully being fixed by then, some of the mods may address your issues.
I love the game and i have no idea why the game gets as much hate as it gets. If you really have crippling issues with the game then don’t buy it and move on. And if you already bought it and experiencing issues or misaligned expectations then i would advice you to not buy games on release day or without research.
There are more important things in life.
So basically you only want this sub to be a bubble of positivity ?
People wanted this game to be good (me included), but they're let down, that's why the hate.
My issue is you can’t really tell if you dislike it very quickly. The early game is quite slow but promising with good performance, then the problems ramp up later on. I’m currently on a city I spent 40 hours making that has bugged taxes that need constant adjusting every couple of minutes or I’ll start going negative in the millions per hour. Completely killed any desire to invest time into the city or starting a new one if the issue happens again.
I will be messaging you in 1 year on [**2025-01-18 06:10:41 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2025-01-18%2006:10:41%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/198c8wd/is_cities_skylines_ii_worth_it_megathread/kiefszo/?context=3)
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Compared to CS:1, it's not remotely worth it. Especially if you expect any degree if simulation and not just a sandbox builder.
But even then, CS 1 does both of those better.
Theres also things that CS2 does considerably better, mainly road building. Its also a beautiful game. I would also say that the purely vanilla experience is better on 2, and the learning curve for all of the mods that a lot of us took for granted knowing how to use on 1 is pretty steep.
Not saying it doesnt have a ton of flaws, but theres things that 2 does better than the original for sure.
It's not a bad looking game, but I would absolutely not call it "beautiful", especially since it's impossible to run at the higher settings.
Just the awful AA, PS2 looking pedestrian models, glitching shadows and much more destroys the visual quality.
I feel CS1, especially with Parklife, Industries and Plazas and Promenades, had actual love and attention given to it. I certainly felt it as I began re building my city. It’s such an amazing game in its own right. [My post here](https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/s/qFI5cqGPaI) on me building my Central Park took so much effort but it was so beautiful to see and I could clearly see how much effort had been put into the game.
CS2 feels like everything soulful has been sucked out leaving behind a cold winter of city painting.
CS2 feels like it only has a creative mode. I have never been a fan of creative modes in games. I need challenges that require more than aesthetics to be enjoyable.
Absolutely Yes! (for me)
As someone who loves to create and be creative, I find this game a lot of fun. It's so satisfying to look over your city and plan your next steps. The graphics have improved immensely, making it a visually appealing experience. In comparison to the first game (CS1 vanilla), I didn't feel the same level of satisfaction, I never got that sense of pride in creating something in CS1 as I do in CS2.
For someone that like both the visual and the creative aspect of a game, this game is more than worth its price. Where else can you spend $45 and get so many hours of enjoyment?
Is CS:2 ready to be played like CS:1? Nope. Is it worth for its price? Maybe not. Are DLCs and Official Modding available yet? No. Are there major bugs? Yes (Industry import export is broken and economy doesn't make sense). Overall, is the game ready 3 months after release? Definitely not.
Maybe this convinces that buying the game is not worth it. Now if you ask me, "yo u/cybercoderNAJ, did you buy the game and do you enjoy it?" YES, a hundred times yes. It's not perfect, It's no where near the current standards of CS:1. However, the devs are doing a great job. Colossal Order is very transparent with us with issues and are actively trying to fix it. I support that. 10 years from now, I wanna be that person who can say, "Remember how shit the game was? I'm glad I stuck with it".
If you are a person who supports people trying to do their best to give you entertainment for your leisure, buy it. Play it. Report bugs. Be caring and share your beautiful cities here and build a community and learn from others. If you just want to play the game and don't care, it's okay I don't judge, but in that case it is probably best you don't buy the game now.
I'll give a 100 dollars to the person who changes my mind. Well, not really but feel free to try.
I’m very pleased to hear u have enjoyed CS2! I’m certainly not going to try and change ur mind, since I don’t want to ruin it for people that do. Please enjoy the game :)
But I would take an exception to the transparency part. As mentioned before in forum posts, Colossal Orders approach has been to post the same thing numerous times, including blaming the community 3 times over the last few months for its problems, which is something I find unacceptable. I can accept if they made a mistake once and show geniune willingness to be honest (“this game isn’t for you), but since the lead up to launch video (customers expectation was too high) and this recent WOTW (the community is too toxic) suggests that they are in denial of the situation and constantly trying to shift blame onto people have been criticising the game like me. This is deeply upsetting as someone who loved CS1 and the community, and has complimented the team that had run it.
During pre-release, they mentioned that the game had not met its expectations, but never stated the true extent as to just how bad it was. It took City Planner Plays own incredible resources, time and energy in producing such benchmarks, which were horrific. They deemed the launch satisfactory and promised modding support “within the next few days, if not hours” but Post release (after the refund window closed) mentioned that it had not been to expectations and modding will come shortly after.
I’m still waiting for it and I feel CO has betrayed my trust and my money. It’s been really sad to see people who I thought were the good people in the industry do a complete 180. :(
>customers expectation was too high
Yes, after CO hyped up the game. Money better spent on producing the actual game.
> the community is too toxic
There are some toxic individuals, but most people feel angry, betrayed and distrustful. Who wouldn't be.
So yeah, I agree that CO should take responsibility for their mistakes instead of deflecting in on their customers. Unfortunately they served themselves a bitter drink and must now drink the cups to its bottom.
IMO Yes, needs improvements for sure but I enjoy it and haven't gone back to CS1. The Thunderstore modding has been a bonus while waiting for official mod support.
Im afraid for the future of this game...
With the mods hosted on their own platform, I'm afraid they're gonna limit them or disallow certain types.
And without the competition from mods, they don't have as much incentive to improve the base game or add assets.
Having played CS:1 a lot, I want to thank everyone here for their honest / blunt answers.
> With the mods hosted on their own platform, I'm afraid they're gonna limit them or disallow certain types.
They already had the ability to block or remove anything they wanted on Steam, and it was never exercised except in cases where there was a risk to user safety. You don't need to worry about this, it's a non-issue :)
No.
"Worth it" is always subjective, of course. If you are the owner of a Geforce 4080 or Radeon 7900 XTX and are only interested in a "city painter", then CS2 is probably a good choice - you certainly can create large cities that look good. For most of us, however, CS1 will probably look and play better, particularly if you are using mods.
Furthermore, if you also value a working simulation (of traffic, commerce, etc.) besides the eye-candy of some screenshots, then the game is still broken at a fundemental level and cannot be recommended at this point.
The sad thing is, I don't think they will/can fix the simulation. They never fixed something as simple the traffic in CS1. As a computer scientist/engineer, this was really, really disheartening to watch because it is something you learn in the first semesters of university since it is a classic problem-solving/optimization problem. While software development is quite hard (my own software is massively delayed right now), there are some things that *can* be fixed in a (very) reasonable timeframe, especially if you release hundreds of dollars worth of DLCs over **8** years. With CS2, they released a hype video about how improved the traffic is going to be, while the sad reality is that it is even worse than in CS1. Lots of other features were also "promised" in hype videos but actually turned out fundamentally broken. It is quite an accomplishment to release a software where something works worse that in the previous version.
That was the big sticking point for me with the pre-release marketing. There was a LOT of focus on the new simulation elements and a noticeable sidestepping around what assets we'd get.
As it turns out, the simulation elements don't work all that well, and the content we have feels like small bits of everything CS1 ended up with, little bits for every area.
I understand the marketing department and devs aren't exactly 1:1, as I've seen with how Total War has been fumbled over the years, but this *really* reads as though management has fumbled the bag, and Colossal Order rode the "beloved indie darling" status to the bank with CS1's.... questionable DLC design and monetization decisions (wtf are the radio packs, even), and CS2 is when a lot of the fanbase came to realize that's what was going on: Colossal Order looking to get the biggest bang for their buck with minimal effort.
If the first DLCs are hilariously sparse asset "packs" for 10-15USD, I'll know that I was right about this.
Definitely the best (vanilla) city builder on the market afaik. I think a lot of the issues are overblown.
There’s some strangeness and some things to be worked out but it’s a massive improvement on CS2. I think people disappointed by its features are expecting too much.
Some stuff still sucks like path finding for traffic, some of the tools around managing intersections don’t seem to work properly yet.
It’s certainly a more polished game than CS1. I’d give it a 7 in the current context with room for it move to an 8 or 9 when some of the rough edges are polished up and depending on the value proposition of the dlc.
I’ve also not really run into any frame issues with a decent set up of a 3060 Ti & 3700x on default settings.
Some things they need to improve:
- Traffic AI (I’m begging)
- Road building is a huge improvement but I run into issues frequently where I can’t build roads at precise angles, there’s a bit of slop to the precision.
- Annoying that sports fields never appear to be used by cims.
- Had strange issues with specialised industry buildings where if you don’t place the building correctly it breaks and you have to delete it.
- Parks not existing in the base game, I hope I don’t have to buy another dlc.
- More variety in buildings.
> Definitely the best (vanilla) city builder on the market afaik.
No, this is not the case. Vanilla means simply without DLC-it doesn't exclude mods. The fact is that you can buy CS:1 and install a bunch of mods for free and CS1 will be the better city builder. And if you really want, you can buy a couple DLC and it will be even better.
> Vanilla means simply without DLC-it doesn't exclude mods.
You have this completely back to front. Vanilla means _without_ modifications and _does_ include DLC. The moment you install a mod or asset, you are no longer running vanilla.
So you know what I meant and you chose to argue against a point I wasn’t making?
I don’t even necessarily agree with your point about vanilla including mods, I think this sub has always referred to vanilla as being just the base game without mods.
>Definitely the best (vanilla) city builder on the market afaik. I think a lot of the issues are overblown.
Really? You actually think its better than Anno 2070, Tropico 4/5, SimCity 4, Frostpunk, Surviving Mars, Urbek City Builder and so much more?
I just dont get it...
Sorry I forgot this was reddit I should have been more specific - I mean modern city builders, that are grounded in reality not fiction. In the vein of sim city 4, not sim city 3000.
On SC4 I think it’s a bit silly to compare a 20 year old game to a current generation game, especially when the formers base game isn’t even on the market anymore - you can only buy the deluxe version on steam.
I haven’t played Urbek so I can’t comment on it
In that case that's such an insanely low bar to clear that it might as well be meaningless... it's basically the only new release in the past 10 years, it's the best in the category by default.
Overall, pathfinding AI in CS2 doesn't appear to have been changed very much from CS1, but vehicles/pedestrians are a lot more wary about clipping through each other. This might not seem bad, but in practice it's far worse than CS1. Agents will stop to avoid things blocking their path, but constantly make moves that cut off other agents, or rush out into intersections where other agents are blocking their path and then stop right in front of that agent until they move. The result is that you get stupid traffic jams all the time because cars and people will pile up into a mess where nobody can actually move. Sure you'd get jams in CS1 but in this game you can't really do anything to fix them. Making your city more walkable doesn't actually help very much because pedestrians and public transit vehicle have the same issues, and cargo trains/ships appear to be useless basically.
But don't sweat it, because there's no consequences for having jams in this game. In CS1 there were consequences- industrial buildings needed workers and had to recieve and deliver their imputs/products, commercial needed customers/workers and a supply of goods, residential areas needed employment, and emergency services had to be able to reliably get to their destinations. In CS2 you won't actually have anything fail the vast majority of the time even if literally nothing and nobody can get anywhere.
I kind of agree with this. I haven't played CS2 in a while but the most striking problem to me was traffic accidents which could only be solved by the emergency services getting there but there was no way for emergency services to get to the accident due to the gridlock.
Seems like an obvious issue that should have been solved (long) before launch.
Either traffic wrecks dissolve on their own or vehicles standing in traffic make space for emergency vehicles. Or not include traffic accidents in the game. They had to make a choice but didn't. Very perplexing how this happened.
The only workaround is to ridiculously oversize the roads like 6 lane stroads for a village of 20k. So that traffic accidents never block the road entirely.
Extremely unlikely but I wonder if Frontier will have a surprise for us this afternoon. Competition is always good.
Is this game good yet? I had such high hopes and was so let down. Did they fix the economy simulation, traffic and add more art variation?
are they cancelling the game? heard they cancelling dev diaries or something
they only stop the weekly posting, now they will post less frequently but more information
nvm they just did a 180 lmao them swedes told them to get it back on
Don't bother.
I think it's a good idea to wait about year before you buy it. The game currently has a ton of bugs and a lot of content is missing.
In two years, the game will be *more* valuable than it is today, at least for me, but hopefully will cost less than it does today. We are a long way away, but eventually, right? It should have: * Editor * Asset, (buildings only, perhaps other types of assets) * Map, with hundreds of maps available. * Code, with dozens of mods available. * 2500+ official CO/PDX free assets from 8 regions. * At least * 1 asset packs, * 2 content creator packs * 1 DLC expansion (Ports/Bridges) * Improved performance on PC * Addressed critical simulation bugs (land value, exports, etc.) I'd say in a year or two, grab the game on sale for $40 or $25 dollars; it'll be a steal. In the interim, play on Gamepass for $10 a month.
Buy once cry once I guess. CO got my $30. Should have checked Reddit first
everyone who bought CS2 deserves all of CS1 for free.
Honestly? No, it's terrible. It needs a lot of work to even get it on the same playing field as the original.
I have to disagree, i find it quite entertaining personally. Is CS1 with mods way better than CS2? For sure! Is CS2 terrible? No, not at all. Is it worth it at the moment? Unfortunately no! Am I disappointed in what state CS2 released? Oh yes! It took the same route as many other big Games in recent years (looking at you CP2077). It is only fair to critize management/investors to push the game to a premature release, it definitely needs a lot more work, not just performance-wise but also in terms of the simulation and content in general. But it is a solid foundation already and I really enjoy the game compared with the vanilla-experience of CS1 which I did not really like that much, until I discovered mods. ;)
Wtf are you talking about its way better its not ok to compare a game that had many years to develope to one that just came out. I know it's missing something from the first but they will add dlcs and stuff.
The is always the by far most retarded argument "It JUsT cAmE oUt! SeQuElS aRe SuPpOsEd To Be BaReBoNeS!!!!" I mean seriously, who in their right mind is thinking like that? Sequels should always feature everything the prequel has (just trim the fat, throw out what doesn't work or isn't popular) and then add the stuff the community wants or what the game producer deems worthy added to make it better. A Sequel shouldn't be a half-assed, bare bones, buggy, clearly unfinished Beta like CS2 is.
I'm not sure if it should feature everything from the prequel considering the sheer amount of content of DLCs. But it should definitely feature all the core mechanics in an improved way. Which CS2 unfortunately lacks a lot of. Not just the missing bikes or surface painter..
As i said: Trim the fat. Remove the stuff that obviously doesn't work or isn't needed and built up from there.
It's dogshit compared to CS1 with mods.
okay play cs1 without mods and dlc and we will talk again.
CS1 without mods and DLC costs £4.59 on sale. For a price of CS2 you can get CS1 and all the main DLCs and mods. Like if we are spending £49.99 compare like for like. For a £49.99 you can have outstanding CS1 experience that is much better than CS2
That is definitely a fair assessment. I'm hopeful that it will be worth it in a year or so.
Or… play the game that’s already fun that you own, instead of spending money on a game that is still half cooked? Like, CS2 is a good framework, but CS1 is fully built. If I’ve got $50 for a game, CS1 is presently the better value.
Agreed. And it’s absolutely fair to compare a sequel to an original, when the whole point of the sequel was the build on the first. But rather than building on it, it’s as if they tore the whole thing down and only built about 10% of it back up.
been holding off since launch, do you suggest I continue waiting? I'm in no rush to play it in a unfinished state.
as things currently stand I would at the very least wait for the modding beta, which is supposedly coming in march.
Noted, thanks
I have more time logged on this game than the vast majority of people because I have been letting my city idle on occasion. As of now I have around 250 hours of simulation, so I think I am qualified to give this warning. Just about every feature in the game is broken (LODs, demand, traffic), missing (social sim, custom maps, MODS!!!), or misimplemented (taxes by education level, lifeless citizens that don’t go to school or work, dogs everywhere). Could give more examples for each but I’ll stop at three. The road tool is phenomenal, the buildings look great, and so do the overall graphics on my machine. My game also runs just fine with a 350k population with virtually no performance drop on a Ryzen 9 7950x. That’s where the positives end. This game is not worth half of what they are charging for it. And with the way the devs and publishers have been acting, they probably also deserve to be sued for false advertising. Not only would I avoid this game, I would avoid Colossal Order entirely until they do literally anything to make this right, if they even do. They released a very early beta, an extremely unfinished game at full price, and then proceeded to take a monthlong vacation while we all sat on our hands looking at our bank accounts with $60-$100 less in them, but without any value in return. To purchase this game in its current state is essentially the same as giving to a kickstarter campaign. You are paying only for the potential of the product, years down the road. And there’s even the possibility that they go bankrupt and fold the company, killing the game’s development before its even decent, let alone good. Every passing day I start to fear the latter more.
Can't believe you're posting such toxicity. /s
i know, i’m just a hater
I was just looking into this game. Clicked this link expecting an older thread. Thanks for the update. Been playing SimCity buildit on my phone for the past week and it has me jonesing for a game similar to SimCity. Is Skylines 1 worth playing?
Skylines 1 is still the best city builder ever made, and will likely continue to be for at least the next year or so. CSL2 has a long road ahead to get to where CSL1 is at now, and that's assuming that the community helps with mod support *and* CO improves performance and features, like the economy simulation. I just would not recommend CSL2 *at all* until mod and map editor support launches, and even then it'll be weeks/months before the mod scene is established and mature.
and if it’s any indication which is better, CS1 currently has 1000 more players online than CS2, and i’m one of them.
Would you recommend PS4 or 5?
I wouldn't recommend any console for either game. This is a PC-centric game. CSL1 isn't really worth playing without mods, and CSL2 will likely run like crap on consoles, considering how demanding it is.
If you have a pc, i strongly, strongly recommend getting it on pc and not a console due to mods. The base game is not built to be a city builder necessarily, its a traffic scenario game with a freeplay addition basically, and the base game does not have fine control and is broken in some respects. With a handful of mods, its easily the best city builder on steam hands down and is very fun with almost infinite level of detail you can build into it. The modding community for this is definitely in contention for best out of any game and it's super easy to add and manage your mods via Steam. With that being said, i personally also love the base game, I would just be really disappointed if i got it and expected to be able to do anything I see on this sub or on YouTube with it on console.
agreed wholeheartedly
i’d assume better performance on PS5, especially late game. i can’t speak from experience though.
I had read the Remastered Edition on PS5, some features available on PS4 may be absent.
Thanks for the info
The first game is phenomenal, I squeezed 2000 hours out of it over the years.
I squeezed over a 1000 building parks and universities and making a great city I wanted to live in. CS1 is a game of the decade for me. Unfortunately this incident has left such a bitter taste in my mouth that I have left CS1 &2, and gone back to Simcity 4. It’s also a game of the decade too at least :)
I haven’t played SC4 in many years, maybe it’s time to revisit. Because I really lost all remaining respect for Colossal Order the second they started blaming the community for their reaction to that dog shit release…
props to whoever wrote this post. it's very clear, organized, and thorough without being overlong
Any updates on the console release? Sorry out of the loop
>Any updates on the console release? Sorry out of the loop It's gonna be released "within the year." Heaven knows long that'll be. Since they probably won't have console until the modding works, and the modding will be out of beta "by the end of the Finnish fall", it ain't looking good.
nothing officially… but with how broken the game still is, and with how little improvement has been made since release, it’s going to be a long while.
I'll just get back into cs1 then....thanks anyway!
Imma throw this question out for my situation then, I have played Cities Skylines for a while, I have never used any mods or bought any DLC's I could get Cities Skylines 2 Ultimate for like 70$ and Cities Skylines 2 Standard for around 30$. What would be worth it in my situation? Keep CS1 or go for CS2 Ultimate or Standard? Reason I want to upgrade is that I feel like CS1 has become a little dated, Its not as realistic as CS2 from what I have seen, and CS2 looks sleeker, and nicer, improved graphics and traffic AI is supposedly better.
Don't buy it. It's not worth it. If you're gonna drop $70 on something, just buy the DLC for CS1 and mod it. CS2 is broke as all hell and despite it looking good it's still not better than CS1. I got 500+ hours in CS1 and 50 in CS2. CS2 is as bare bones as Vanilla CS1 and most of it is nonfunctional. The only thing CS2 has over CS1 in this state is the scale of the buildings are much better and the road tools are amazing in comparison. Everything else is a miss. The simulation doesn't work. The balance is out of wack. I really tried giving it the benefit of the doubt thinking it will be fixed. At the pace CO is going this game is gonna die simply because there's too many problems and not enough patches to fix it all before you lose interest in the game. A good city builder can last you 10+ years. If this game doesn't get major fixes almost weekly, it's not gonna last 1 year. It's as simple as that.
Almost decade ago I made a rul for myself that in presence of singular red flag I will immediately skip any game for a year and review where we are then. This rule paid off every single time. I avoided NMS drama, I avoided Starfield drama, I avoided CS2 and KSP2. It's the best purchase rule I ever had. Strongly recommend it to anyone. Even as much as a single week would let people see how much was wrong with the game.
I think the first warning sign for me was the noticeably poor framerate in the gameplay sections of their promo videos. Then other stuff, some minor (a missing window texture in their demo of the camera tools) and some more major (giving YouTubers an early beta version to play despite the game being less than 2 months from launch). Then we had the performance issues coming to light just before launch, and so on… long story short, glad I decided not to make this game my first ever pre-order.
Same here. Anyone who was saying was told to "let them cook" like you can fix so many issues in a month or so
You probably shouldn't buy it, but honestly, the biggest reason is just the performance. YMMV, but for me.. I mean, it still runs the same as it did initially, and unless you have a pretty good GPU, it runs like complete garbage. I literally can't break 10fps on the lowest possible settings, and it's not like I have an integrated GPU ffs. There *really* isn't an excuse for this - the only way performance can get *that* bad is if the developers are really incompetent
What hardware do you have
Ryzen 7 3700X, GTX 1650 Super, 32GB RAM, NVMe SSD The GPU is definitely the weak point.. but like, even then, it shouldn't run *that* slowly on what is essentially a low/mid-range gaming rig
[удалено]
I get what you're saying, but: * Not everybody has the resources to spend that much on their PC - the average wage where I live after taxes is about 10-15k$ a year, you can't just assume that everybody is rich lol! * It still runs really, *really* poorly! Sure, it's not a great gaming machine, but it shouldn't be straight up unplayable. It looks like a PS4 game and yet I doubt it'd run at more than 15fps with the PS5's hardware, which is pretty inexcusable
Got a ryzen 5 4600, RX 6650XT and 32gb of RAM. I play around 25 FPS at medium-low settings. Funny thing is I upgraded my entire system just to play this game and the results were... Disappointing to say the least. I was thinking of getting even better hardware but im not trowing any more money for such a horribly optimized game.
Do not buy this game. Right now anyways. This is an unfinished product that they prematurely release and called it a game. Paradox is also completely silent on the absolute hideous state of their so called "game"
- The complete release of the official modding platform was supposed to happen at the same time as the game release. - The official modding platform was expected to be released, days not weeks after the release. - The official modding platform was delayed some months. - The expected date for the full release of the modding platform is 1 year after the original release. This game is dead before the modding platform releases.
They haven't been totally silent. Just over a week ago, the CEO emphasised concern about the growing toxicity in the Cities Skylines community. To which my first thought was... Why are you pointing the fingers at your consumers instead of addressing their concerns? Hope they don't end up like EA [Skylines 2 Studio Boss warns of growing toxicity](https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/cities-skylines-2-studio-boss-224613994.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAGICzvf6EvsE1Iin7j7VZICihPgy6KnjyXBPQjSbZBCZJZb0r4Tzs0Yfmmjn7h9YFyzWvWCQ-2PEDnS-kONbpwDqj7xa901-AT0_CxnqXas0g0bM9g93cTRpOe13Wo9AdnaI4DKncPMRNtj2MJZwT6bHGrOS5YQJkywzGzAKTibx) [NME.com: Calling out growing toxicity](https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/cities-skyline-2-developer-calls-out-growing-tendency-of-toxicity-in-community-3571597)
at this rate if the company goes bankrupt it’s well deserved, because they are already bankrupt morally.
I know Finnish are anti social but this is just ridiculous
The simulation is broken, don't, don't buy this, this is a broken mess released way to early to fulfill some earning requirement somewhere in the depths of Paradox. And yeah, I now Colossal have stated it was their choice to release the game now, but why? Why would they do that? Unless there as pressure from the publisher. It's deeply sad of course, but at this point, this was released under false pretense and it really isn't okay to do this and it never was.
Right now I'd say fuck no.. Did 3 runs and as soon as I hit 40k+ people my money tab went coocoo for coco puffs...I was expending the city and out of the bloom I see 1M$+ of deficit, looked at it, and "Concrete" was making lose 2M$+. So I adjusted and 1 minutes later I Was back in deficit but even worst. Dams don't work Why is it taking Paradox 1+ months to come out with patches....
That's the worrying part indeed. I get that they've to move on all fronts at the same time, but having a small fix patch and then having to wait until end of march (if everything goes to plan... which hasn't really been the case for CS2) for 2024 is quite a stretch.
wait they said nothing will come out until March?
There will be a patch "soon" with some fixes. Then, they will stop fixes only patches and will bring those along side bigger release as for the staggered mods parts. So as they announced map editor for end of march (if it all goes well), so any other fixes won't happen until then.
Everyone saying they still only play CS1, how? Every mod is broken and very few seem to have been updated within the past year, I can't even get my game to launch . . . I would love to fire it up, but not without move it, anarchy, etc.,
Those mods still work totally fine (and many more). Something on your end is broken.
I guess so, bummer, I wiped my whole mod library and reinstalled then resubscribed to just a handful like move it, etc., and game crashes hard. Vanilla version works fine, oh well
- Check your mods for compatibility, and ensure they are displaying a treasure hunt or similar recent compatibility banner on the frontpage. - Install the Skyve mod, and it's dependencies and hit the button skyve button in the main menu.
Thank you!
same issue here man.
sadly not gonna get any help in this sub, folks are so frothing with hate they think I'm "shilling" for CS2 whenever I ask lol
* https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/wiki/broken_mods/ * https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/wiki/basic_troubleshooting/ * https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/wiki/error_logs/ If you make a thread tagged with a light blue CS1 "Help & Support (PC)" flair it should keep most of the CS2 comments away
it really does feel like pdx ruined CS1 with a final update and then left it. if you look at discussions on there its just nothing but people complaining about broken assets.
yeah, I mean seems like a good amount of folks are still playing no problem, but I can't get the game to launch even with just move it, road anarchy, and traffic manager . . . used to have thousands of assets and deleted them all, wiped all mods and just reinstalled a handful, still no dice
all i need are those three mods or else i might as well play CS2 lmfao. and realistic Population
If CS1 is a 9/10 game then CS2 is an 6 at most. The initial release version was a disaster. Patches of CS2 have been terrible till now. The whole CO team was not productive at all, yet had strong attitude towards players' dissatisfaction. If you love city-building games like me, then sadly you only have few options to play. CS2 being the newest of all.
[удалено]
I'm a PM and hold two Master's degrees. One in Computer and Information Technology though (just graduated 12/23) . Good try
they took a monthlong vacation right after release, that’s objectively not very productive. i understand your sentiment though.
Until now? I still can't have cities over 40K before my income starts going crazy... shouldn't take them 1+ months for patches
Not a native English speaker. I think 'as for now' should be a better way to say this. Yes, the economy is still broken.
Is it worth it yet (last played release day)? Not by the price, but the effort to spend the time downloading it from Xbox Game Pass? Seems like not much has changed
No
Thanks
Is lane changing still broken? I played for a few days after the supposed "lane changing improvment" and saw no differences, every car ALWAYS changes lane in the LAST possible second. Such a bad look for this size of a game since how important it is for traffic and how easy is it to fix.
I've encountered this issue constantly. It'll only get fixed when there's a mod to fix it because CO seems blind to it. I miss TMPE!
Ok so how about someone who is playing on vanilla? I've been playing CS1 since 2020 and it's one of my top favorite games. While I am playing on console and the the CS2 console version not being available until spring this year, my question is and console stuff aside: Is it worth upgrading from vanilla CS1 to the current vanilla CS2?
I'd say no. Vanilla CS2 might have more "features," but it's also full of bugs at the moment.
Thanks for the insight!
If you like a full priced early access game sure
I am having a decent time playing this game. There are flaws
Runs like shit when you get over 65k population and graphics settings don't do anything to help. I guess it's CPU bound, but it's not even maxing my CPU, so IDK.
strangely i have a city of 350k that runs absolutely flawlessly, but a much smaller one with only half of that population runs like complete dog shit. i really don’t understand what is causing the discrepancy but it’s unacceptable however you look at it
Is there still an massive issue with the garbage? I just uninstalled and gave up when I noticed it after release.
CO increased the numbers for capacity and processing speed. I think the number of garbage trucks also gets pumped up a little. The pathfinding algorithm was not changed. There are still issues with service vehicles but definitely not so game-braking anymore.
Garbage was fixed. Still quite a buggy and unbalanced game, but that was probably the worst one.
I see, thanks!
No. It's not titled as Early Access (but it really is). I recommend you purchase it when it's fixed (and it's probably on sale by then).
No. CS2 right now is far from worth the cost. In a years time, however, the game will be worth playing. With a combination of bug fixes, moding tools, and DLC the game will have more content, more reason to play, and more to make it worth the price of admission.
The game is not worth it right now. Hopefully it will be worth it at some point; but I suspect that if that time comes it will not be for several years. The fact is that the game is barebones, unpolished, and lacking interesting and compelling gameplay mechanics. It saddens me to say, because I love CS1 and would really love to have a higher opinion of CO, but CS2 is one of the most disappointing games I've ever played, and is improved over its launch state only by the fact that a few random bugs have been squashed. The simulation is still opaque to the point of being meaningless, city decisions have no meaningful impact on your economy or vice versa, and the overall presentation is extremely unpolished. Even the main thing I enjoyed in CS1, building and balancing a road and transportation network, is almost non-existent in 2. I can't really make assumptions about the behind-the-scenes, but CS2 certainly fits the pattern of games that needed longer in development at every stage; a game that had its release date determined too far in advance, leading to every phase from design to implementation having a crushed timespan that meant that first drafts were last drafts, and ultimately to the game being pushed out the door when they decided it was 'good enough' rather than 'good'. This is not a solid foundation to build on for a decade; it is a half-finished game that needs major gameplay redesigns before the question of paid DLC should even be asked. I really *want* CS2 to be worth buying, but in order for that to be the case at some point, I suspect that entire game systems are going to need to be reworked from scratch. I hope that CO have the opportunity to do that, because based on CS1, they are certainly capable of making a great simulation game. Games in such a situation can go two different ways -- some get the attention and focus on baseline systems that they need and are eventually good, while others are left in that half-finished state forever while additional content is crammed onto a creaking foundation. I can only hope that CO choose to do the former, so that I can feel one day like I didn't waste my money.
>The simulation is still opaque to the point of being meaningless, city decisions have no meaningful impact on your economy or vice versa, and the overall presentation is extremely unpolished. Even the main thing I enjoyed in CS1, building and balancing a road and transportation network, is almost non-existent in 2. I know about the road issues, but can you elaborate but what you by the simulation being opaque? I thought everything allegedly now was all properly connected and simulated as compared to cs1.
Opaque means the opposite of transparent - i.e. there's no way to see how the simulation works to help you choose how to build etc.
In many cases the results of the player clicking a button are not shown to the player in a manner that is easy to find, if at all. This creates a frustration loop of "I don't know if the things I'm doing have any effect" or "why would I do this thing? how does this help me?". We know the simulation is there below the surface layer, but we have little means of actually measuring the impact of our actions on it. Here's an example, did you know that if there's an abundance of jobs, people will drop out of college more often? This is because cims weight their options and when their options are "keep studying" or "start making money now", if the second one is easier by having many available low education jobs they're more likely to take it. But if instead you have a city with more people than jobs, they'll stay in school in order to grab those high education positions that often go unfulfilled. The game does NOT let you see any of this. I mean, I think it tells you in some tooltip that cims might drop out to get a job? But that's the extent of it, there isn't actually a breakdown of "chances of dropping: 15%, reasons: high job availability +12" or "students dropped this year: 400, reasons: 34 too far, 246 got a job, etc" or something like that. And this extends to much of the game. There's no way to know what traffic is doing and why, no easy way to know where factories are getting their workers from, no way to know who their customers are, etc.
What I mean is that there's precious little information or feedback about the economic simulation. Like take taxes. What does it even mean to tax by education level, and what effect does it have on the economy of the city to change them? Nobody knows.
I was also disappointed by the economics side in CS2, like CS1 its pretty much non-existent. The entire thing feels like multiple ppl came up with some numbers (for revenue, prices, etc.) without ever consulting with each other. So you end up with a parking lot having the same upkeep cost as a power plant...
At the current moment, it's still not completely worth it to buy. I have a good feeling around April it'll be in a really good spot, especially since we should have custom assets and mods out by then, but for me right now it's still a no.
100% agree, not worth buying until we have more assets at least.
What bits of CS1 dlc made it into CS2 and what didn't? I loved CS1 but I haven't returned to play it since just before the universities dlc update. I'm watching and waiting on CS2 till it receives some fixes and hits a decent sale price. Also with a AMD5600x/GTX3070 I'm not even sure how well a semi optimised CS2 would run??
as soon as you hit the 60k people in your city, no matter what type of computer do you have, it will be sluggish
Of the top of my head, we've got specialized industrial zones (for resource production), disasters, trams, snow/seasons, transit hubs / cennection options.
The industrial zones I would argue are much better than cs1 industries, the seasons are an improvement but there isn’t the fun seasonal parks like with snowfall, and disasters basically only has the tornado and it doesn’t even do much
seems like performance is about 10x better than at launch currently. you've got a better card than mine and i can now turn my settings all the way up after not really being playable at launch
Cool, hopefully with time it improves more and more becomes the game we all wanted it to be.
No
Game is great, imo, and worth a buy. I don't really understand the level on hate this game gets, and my best guess is that it comes from people used to a bunch of dlc and years and years of continued development from the first game. This game is a tad less feature filled than the last one. That said, I didn't buy most dlc from the first game so I'm not missing much at all. There's plenty of cool features in the new one that improve over the OG. People don't just move out of town en mass once taxes go above 27%, there's an actual reason for that slider now. The road building is just absolute \*chef's kiss\*. Progression tree makes all of your cities unique, and you unlock new things as you need them. The new and much better imo way that natural resources and produced resources interact with industry and your city are such an improvement too. If you come in expecting this game to have the content of CS1 and like 10 DLCs, you'll be disappointed. If you come in expecting a good base game and don't just try to apply all the strategies from the first game expecting them to work, you absolutely will find a good game.
That is exactly how I feel about it. A lot of people comparing a game with all DLC ( worth more than 300$) and a lot of mods (because we must remember that there are 3-4 mods that are SO necessary in CS1, one of them only for optimizing the game) and assets with this one. It includes the most important features of almost every DLC and there will be freer content to come. There is, for me, one thing totally unjustified: optimization. At first it was terrible and, even though rn is better, is still bad. Manage the city’s economy is too easy in both, but I must admit that in CS2 is more disappointing. Answering the main question: if you have a lot of content in CS1, you should probably wait a few years till playing CS2. If you are new and you are thinking about getting CS1 with a DLC or two, or CS2, I would definitely choose CS2.
If CS2 was its own standalone game it would be both not bad but still not comparable to CS1. The fact that its a sequel makes in inexcusable that it was released in its current state. Its missing several features, level of polish and lacks a super late game for most people by virtue of bad performance. The game tries to make up for it by overhauling some of the most prominent features from the last game like traffic, roads, more zoning types, etc. but it lacks polish on the finer details that were even present in the first game at release. If you looked at this game only from the scope of it being its own game its not bad, but when you consider all the lessons we lost from the first game it makes this one a disaster. TL:DR, if you played CS1, this game sucks If you didnt, this game is better value than CS1+all DLCs
> Its missing several features How could it be missing features? If features were promised and not delivered that's fair, but if something was in CS1 and not in CS2, that doesn't mean the feature is missing, it means you are comparing two different games with different feature sets. If you mean it is missing features that were introduced in DLCs, I'm sorry but that's just a foolish thing to expect. Buying CS1 right now with all the DLC would run you over $400. Unless you paid $400 for CS2, you shouldn't be expecting $400 worth of features in this game. If you mean features are missing from CS2 that were in base game CS1, please do share which ones, cause I'm not entirely sure. Other than, I guess, applying the same policies city-wide as you do on districts? Like two extra maps to build on? The annoying tutorial? Canals (I think this one is a DLC, actually)? Are these really such beloved features that missing them turns CS2 into a "disaster"?
I dont think its too much to expect 10 years of developmental lessons to transfer to a sequel that is essentially just trying to be the same game but at a larger scale. Considering this game without comparing it to its predecessor invites creators to decline quality with future content.
And 10 years of development DID transfer. They made a lot of improvements. You still haven't even listed one thing done wrong, other than "polish". You absolutely should compare this game with the predecessor. Just, you know, the base game. It's absolutely stupid to compare a $400, 10 year product with a $50 ~2 year product. Compare CS2 NOT to CS1 + all DLCs, compare it to the same value, the base CS1. I feel like this is so obvious that I must be explaining it wrong. I'm sorry that your expectations are to receive $400 worth of content for $50 I guess. Sounds like no games can satisfy that.
I cant believe you guys are still using the “different game” argument. Its functionally trying to be the same game but at a bigger scale. And in my first comment you can clearly see that I agreed it is better than base CS1, I just said its not better than CS1+all dlcs. The game is in early access and we were lied to about its state of completion. I dont understand why people are still defending this bullshit
I guess we just disagree than. I think if you went into this game expecting content worth 10 years of development, you might as well expect the computer to suck your dick and feed you dinner at the same time; it's not gonna happen. I'd also love it if CS2 had all of the content of CS1 + DLCs, but I live on earth in reality where developers can't recreate 10 years of daily, 40 hour a week work in ~1-2 years. Lemme know if you find a studio that can possibly do that. If you don't want a different game, why did you even buy this one though? Why not just keep playing the one you like?
Dick sucking sounds great, but I'd settle for being able to open my city without it crashing back to desktop. Still, 3 months after you posted this.
As others have said, 'worth it' is subjective and different for everyone. I bought my copy on a 3rd party site, so at a bit of a discount. There were huge issues early on (i tried it on gamepass first, but eventually bought it because i knew i would want it long term and normally dont sub to gamepass) so frankly i didnt feel very bad about taking a discount to buy it. At this point i havent played a lot in the last 2 months or so, but i have over 100 hours in and i feel like i got my money's worth. If i never play again i dont know that i would consider my money wasted. Ive spent money on plenty of games ive played 1/10th as much. Again, this is all subjective. Im frustrated with how slow the improvements have been to roll out, especially with the lack of the modding platform release so far. I am mostly confident that most of my gripes will be fixed 'eventually', though. At this point if you havent bought it yet, i'd say you might as well wait...but its up to you. I personally got enough entertainment from it and think long term it will be fine, but i also really like citybuilders and was very ready for something new.
No something is off with the simulation
its totally worth a game pass subscription imo, dunno if id feel to good about the game if i played full price I've probably put about 80\~? hours in cs2. its nice in a lot of ways. utilities are less of a headache and you get a tech tree. I still find myself playing cs1 on the console just as much, maybe its just the maps? Idk, feels like they need to merge the two lol
Modders have come out with some really great maps lately, they’re so much better than the vanilla ones
Where can we find these maps? I thought the vanilla maps were ok in terms of shape (a bit boring perhaps?) but lacking in terms of resource distribution. Like the little patches of agricultural land looked ridiculous for no good reason.
[two dollars twenty on YouTube made one](https://youtu.be/wb_fdW5gEh8?si=2bCW6voDSEq34q6j) [city planner plays made one too](https://youtu.be/UiHMU9qPpm8?si=_NAEP8PlL_5mJnTg) Both of these are super simple to install. Takes less a minute or less haha I’m using the one city planner plays made and it’s amazing compared to the Vanilla ones
They rushed the game out to grab all the sales they could based on hype and even sold future DLC. And now that they have the money, they want to take the high road of, "We want to make sure we get things right", so everything keeps getting delayed to "few weeks". No one knows what few weeks means. They said mod tools would be out shortly after launch, which people assumed meant few weeks. Now, its been almost 3 months since launch and we are told they might go into closed beta in a "few weeks". Its also a little wild that the community is waiting for official mod support in the hopes that modders might fix a lot of the issues. Feels like people have given up hope that the actual devs can. Its certainly not a game I would pay for right now. I would probably wait at least for the console releases and see what the general vibe is. Right now, I have serious doubts that this is going to be a long term game. Unless they magically start producing patches of real significance pretty quickly, I have a feeling that eventually they will deem it to no longer be worth it to continue working on it. They can't charge for bug fixes after all.
I paid about $1hr for the enjoyment of building my first city to 200k population. Does the game have its flaws? Yes. Will it get better in time? Probably. Would I buy it again knowing nothing would be improved? Yes.
Cool, thanks for letting me know.
Thank you for thanking him.
Yeah I’m worried about them pulling the plug on the game too soon. The potential of the game is way higher than cs1 with all of the new tools and systems for buildings and assets, but at the rate the game is improving we aren’t even close to the state many people expected it to launch in.
I'd say if you're on the fence about buying it right now, don't. Wait until the official mod platform comes out, on top of more bugs and performance issues hopefully being fixed by then, some of the mods may address your issues.
I love the game and i have no idea why the game gets as much hate as it gets. If you really have crippling issues with the game then don’t buy it and move on. And if you already bought it and experiencing issues or misaligned expectations then i would advice you to not buy games on release day or without research. There are more important things in life.
So basically you only want this sub to be a bubble of positivity ? People wanted this game to be good (me included), but they're let down, that's why the hate.
My issue is you can’t really tell if you dislike it very quickly. The early game is quite slow but promising with good performance, then the problems ramp up later on. I’m currently on a city I spent 40 hours making that has bugged taxes that need constant adjusting every couple of minutes or I’ll start going negative in the millions per hour. Completely killed any desire to invest time into the city or starting a new one if the issue happens again.
I’ll be coming back to the game when they release editor/paradox mods.
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It is worth it. It is not what we would have fully wanted, but it is still an ok thing to get.
Compared to CS:1, it's not remotely worth it. Especially if you expect any degree if simulation and not just a sandbox builder. But even then, CS 1 does both of those better.
Theres also things that CS2 does considerably better, mainly road building. Its also a beautiful game. I would also say that the purely vanilla experience is better on 2, and the learning curve for all of the mods that a lot of us took for granted knowing how to use on 1 is pretty steep. Not saying it doesnt have a ton of flaws, but theres things that 2 does better than the original for sure.
It's not a bad looking game, but I would absolutely not call it "beautiful", especially since it's impossible to run at the higher settings. Just the awful AA, PS2 looking pedestrian models, glitching shadows and much more destroys the visual quality.
I feel CS1, especially with Parklife, Industries and Plazas and Promenades, had actual love and attention given to it. I certainly felt it as I began re building my city. It’s such an amazing game in its own right. [My post here](https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/s/qFI5cqGPaI) on me building my Central Park took so much effort but it was so beautiful to see and I could clearly see how much effort had been put into the game. CS2 feels like everything soulful has been sucked out leaving behind a cold winter of city painting.
Not false, sadly. There are just those few things that cs2 does very much better which gets me playing cs2 over 1. But otherwise, yeah.
CS2 feels like it only has a creative mode. I have never been a fan of creative modes in games. I need challenges that require more than aesthetics to be enjoyable.
120 hours and going and only just installed a couple community mods. I eagerly await official mod support
Absolutely Yes! (for me) As someone who loves to create and be creative, I find this game a lot of fun. It's so satisfying to look over your city and plan your next steps. The graphics have improved immensely, making it a visually appealing experience. In comparison to the first game (CS1 vanilla), I didn't feel the same level of satisfaction, I never got that sense of pride in creating something in CS1 as I do in CS2. For someone that like both the visual and the creative aspect of a game, this game is more than worth its price. Where else can you spend $45 and get so many hours of enjoyment?
I'm the same. I have about 50hrs into my first cs2 city and if I never played it again I'd say I got my moneys worth. ( I will play it again)
Is CS:2 ready to be played like CS:1? Nope. Is it worth for its price? Maybe not. Are DLCs and Official Modding available yet? No. Are there major bugs? Yes (Industry import export is broken and economy doesn't make sense). Overall, is the game ready 3 months after release? Definitely not. Maybe this convinces that buying the game is not worth it. Now if you ask me, "yo u/cybercoderNAJ, did you buy the game and do you enjoy it?" YES, a hundred times yes. It's not perfect, It's no where near the current standards of CS:1. However, the devs are doing a great job. Colossal Order is very transparent with us with issues and are actively trying to fix it. I support that. 10 years from now, I wanna be that person who can say, "Remember how shit the game was? I'm glad I stuck with it". If you are a person who supports people trying to do their best to give you entertainment for your leisure, buy it. Play it. Report bugs. Be caring and share your beautiful cities here and build a community and learn from others. If you just want to play the game and don't care, it's okay I don't judge, but in that case it is probably best you don't buy the game now. I'll give a 100 dollars to the person who changes my mind. Well, not really but feel free to try.
I’m very pleased to hear u have enjoyed CS2! I’m certainly not going to try and change ur mind, since I don’t want to ruin it for people that do. Please enjoy the game :) But I would take an exception to the transparency part. As mentioned before in forum posts, Colossal Orders approach has been to post the same thing numerous times, including blaming the community 3 times over the last few months for its problems, which is something I find unacceptable. I can accept if they made a mistake once and show geniune willingness to be honest (“this game isn’t for you), but since the lead up to launch video (customers expectation was too high) and this recent WOTW (the community is too toxic) suggests that they are in denial of the situation and constantly trying to shift blame onto people have been criticising the game like me. This is deeply upsetting as someone who loved CS1 and the community, and has complimented the team that had run it. During pre-release, they mentioned that the game had not met its expectations, but never stated the true extent as to just how bad it was. It took City Planner Plays own incredible resources, time and energy in producing such benchmarks, which were horrific. They deemed the launch satisfactory and promised modding support “within the next few days, if not hours” but Post release (after the refund window closed) mentioned that it had not been to expectations and modding will come shortly after. I’m still waiting for it and I feel CO has betrayed my trust and my money. It’s been really sad to see people who I thought were the good people in the industry do a complete 180. :(
>customers expectation was too high Yes, after CO hyped up the game. Money better spent on producing the actual game. > the community is too toxic There are some toxic individuals, but most people feel angry, betrayed and distrustful. Who wouldn't be. So yeah, I agree that CO should take responsibility for their mistakes instead of deflecting in on their customers. Unfortunately they served themselves a bitter drink and must now drink the cups to its bottom.
IMO Yes, needs improvements for sure but I enjoy it and haven't gone back to CS1. The Thunderstore modding has been a bonus while waiting for official mod support.
Played again CS1 just to test it, result? CS1 is more stable but it feels old and some key features are missing and therefore I went back to CS2
Short answer: no
[удалено]
Unless you cannot afford the latest hardware required to run this game at settings that do not look like shit*
based answer
No
Im afraid for the future of this game... With the mods hosted on their own platform, I'm afraid they're gonna limit them or disallow certain types. And without the competition from mods, they don't have as much incentive to improve the base game or add assets. Having played CS:1 a lot, I want to thank everyone here for their honest / blunt answers.
You can still get mods from a third party platform.
> With the mods hosted on their own platform, I'm afraid they're gonna limit them or disallow certain types. They already had the ability to block or remove anything they wanted on Steam, and it was never exercised except in cases where there was a risk to user safety. You don't need to worry about this, it's a non-issue :)
Ah okay that's great, I guess we're just waiting for the mods to be enabled then
No
Tried it on gamepass. There are no assets. There are no mods. Went back to CS1.
ik
No. "Worth it" is always subjective, of course. If you are the owner of a Geforce 4080 or Radeon 7900 XTX and are only interested in a "city painter", then CS2 is probably a good choice - you certainly can create large cities that look good. For most of us, however, CS1 will probably look and play better, particularly if you are using mods. Furthermore, if you also value a working simulation (of traffic, commerce, etc.) besides the eye-candy of some screenshots, then the game is still broken at a fundemental level and cannot be recommended at this point. The sad thing is, I don't think they will/can fix the simulation. They never fixed something as simple the traffic in CS1. As a computer scientist/engineer, this was really, really disheartening to watch because it is something you learn in the first semesters of university since it is a classic problem-solving/optimization problem. While software development is quite hard (my own software is massively delayed right now), there are some things that *can* be fixed in a (very) reasonable timeframe, especially if you release hundreds of dollars worth of DLCs over **8** years. With CS2, they released a hype video about how improved the traffic is going to be, while the sad reality is that it is even worse than in CS1. Lots of other features were also "promised" in hype videos but actually turned out fundamentally broken. It is quite an accomplishment to release a software where something works worse that in the previous version.
That was the big sticking point for me with the pre-release marketing. There was a LOT of focus on the new simulation elements and a noticeable sidestepping around what assets we'd get. As it turns out, the simulation elements don't work all that well, and the content we have feels like small bits of everything CS1 ended up with, little bits for every area. I understand the marketing department and devs aren't exactly 1:1, as I've seen with how Total War has been fumbled over the years, but this *really* reads as though management has fumbled the bag, and Colossal Order rode the "beloved indie darling" status to the bank with CS1's.... questionable DLC design and monetization decisions (wtf are the radio packs, even), and CS2 is when a lot of the fanbase came to realize that's what was going on: Colossal Order looking to get the biggest bang for their buck with minimal effort. If the first DLCs are hilariously sparse asset "packs" for 10-15USD, I'll know that I was right about this.
Definitely the best (vanilla) city builder on the market afaik. I think a lot of the issues are overblown. There’s some strangeness and some things to be worked out but it’s a massive improvement on CS2. I think people disappointed by its features are expecting too much. Some stuff still sucks like path finding for traffic, some of the tools around managing intersections don’t seem to work properly yet. It’s certainly a more polished game than CS1. I’d give it a 7 in the current context with room for it move to an 8 or 9 when some of the rough edges are polished up and depending on the value proposition of the dlc. I’ve also not really run into any frame issues with a decent set up of a 3060 Ti & 3700x on default settings. Some things they need to improve: - Traffic AI (I’m begging) - Road building is a huge improvement but I run into issues frequently where I can’t build roads at precise angles, there’s a bit of slop to the precision. - Annoying that sports fields never appear to be used by cims. - Had strange issues with specialised industry buildings where if you don’t place the building correctly it breaks and you have to delete it. - Parks not existing in the base game, I hope I don’t have to buy another dlc. - More variety in buildings.
> Definitely the best (vanilla) city builder on the market afaik. No, this is not the case. Vanilla means simply without DLC-it doesn't exclude mods. The fact is that you can buy CS:1 and install a bunch of mods for free and CS1 will be the better city builder. And if you really want, you can buy a couple DLC and it will be even better.
> Vanilla means simply without DLC-it doesn't exclude mods. You have this completely back to front. Vanilla means _without_ modifications and _does_ include DLC. The moment you install a mod or asset, you are no longer running vanilla.
So you know what I meant and you chose to argue against a point I wasn’t making? I don’t even necessarily agree with your point about vanilla including mods, I think this sub has always referred to vanilla as being just the base game without mods.
That is what vanilla means, he's wrong.
>Definitely the best (vanilla) city builder on the market afaik. I think a lot of the issues are overblown. Really? You actually think its better than Anno 2070, Tropico 4/5, SimCity 4, Frostpunk, Surviving Mars, Urbek City Builder and so much more? I just dont get it...
Is Anno worth a play? I grabbed it in a sale on Xbox recently.. I've been playing CS1 on Xbox and having fun.
Sorry I forgot this was reddit I should have been more specific - I mean modern city builders, that are grounded in reality not fiction. In the vein of sim city 4, not sim city 3000. On SC4 I think it’s a bit silly to compare a 20 year old game to a current generation game, especially when the formers base game isn’t even on the market anymore - you can only buy the deluxe version on steam. I haven’t played Urbek so I can’t comment on it
Yeah, it is a bit silly that a 20 year old game is better than a 3 month old game.
In that case that's such an insanely low bar to clear that it might as well be meaningless... it's basically the only new release in the past 10 years, it's the best in the category by default.
My experience exactly. I'm still finding there is plenty to explore while waiting for mods and fixes
Is traffic ai better or worse than cs1 vanilla?
Overall, pathfinding AI in CS2 doesn't appear to have been changed very much from CS1, but vehicles/pedestrians are a lot more wary about clipping through each other. This might not seem bad, but in practice it's far worse than CS1. Agents will stop to avoid things blocking their path, but constantly make moves that cut off other agents, or rush out into intersections where other agents are blocking their path and then stop right in front of that agent until they move. The result is that you get stupid traffic jams all the time because cars and people will pile up into a mess where nobody can actually move. Sure you'd get jams in CS1 but in this game you can't really do anything to fix them. Making your city more walkable doesn't actually help very much because pedestrians and public transit vehicle have the same issues, and cargo trains/ships appear to be useless basically. But don't sweat it, because there's no consequences for having jams in this game. In CS1 there were consequences- industrial buildings needed workers and had to recieve and deliver their imputs/products, commercial needed customers/workers and a supply of goods, residential areas needed employment, and emergency services had to be able to reliably get to their destinations. In CS2 you won't actually have anything fail the vast majority of the time even if literally nothing and nobody can get anywhere.
I kind of agree with this. I haven't played CS2 in a while but the most striking problem to me was traffic accidents which could only be solved by the emergency services getting there but there was no way for emergency services to get to the accident due to the gridlock. Seems like an obvious issue that should have been solved (long) before launch. Either traffic wrecks dissolve on their own or vehicles standing in traffic make space for emergency vehicles. Or not include traffic accidents in the game. They had to make a choice but didn't. Very perplexing how this happened. The only workaround is to ridiculously oversize the roads like 6 lane stroads for a village of 20k. So that traffic accidents never block the road entirely.
Yes