The Disappointing Reality of Cities Skylines 2: Is it even a sim?  

Thanks for playing the pre-alpha! Your feedback helps us build the best game possible, 2030 will be an amazing year for this game.

I'm glad you clarified that the game fails (or at least comes up severely short) as both a city simulator AND a city painter. I've seen a lot of comments since launch saying "oh the simulation is pointless, so this is basically a city painting game for now," but it's not even that. Self-identified "city painter" players in CS1 relied heavily on beautification tools and assets available through mods to achieve the looks they wanted. CS2 incorporated NONE of those tools. Not even exaggerating. They ignored nearly ALL of the essential mods. No MoveIt, no FindIt, no ploppable RICO, no anarchy, no prop placement, no tree/prop line tools, no decals, no surface painting, no water source tools, no building color editor, no random tree rotation, and no asset import capability (so far). And yet within a few short months, modders have been able to add several of those features back so seamlessly into the UI that it's absolutely maddening CO couldn't manage to include these themselves.

i'm just getting tired of this gaming model of selling a stripped out base version of the game for full price and then have to buy everthing seprate back what they stripped from the basegame. i still remember when games were complete on a disc. and you could unlock stuff. now everything is a dlc

There are a few small things missing in this game such as after a fire we no longer have charred trees or buildings. When it rains we don’t have the wet roads. A lot of animations aren’t there like the firefighters. Small things but made the game interesting.

Paradox had a subpar quartely finacial report due which I think push CO to release it unfinished, I'm hoping people will boycot the DLC untill the game is finished and working properly

Nailed that, what I have been thinking but expressed more eloquently than I can. I just got bored after the novelty of being able to draw junctions more easily wore off.

In my experience playing the game: -Most of the traffic influx during rush hour is artificial, mainly from incoming cims looking for somewhere to park even when they live in a part of town with fantastic public transit. -Public transit is broken. it will "work" even with no network lines/ only stations set up. Imperatur showed a recent video on this as well. -High end PCs will begin to see a noticable change in the simulation speed, starting at around 150k population and gets worse over time. -"Beating the game" hitting level 20 can be done by buying structures and deleting them, and is meaningless. It's more of a death rattle for your save, than a celebration. The game as it is, is such a lapse in expectation that I genuinely feel worse after playing it, and that's with the understanding that the bar was already on the floor. I'm sure the game will be fine eventually though.

Great vid, I especially agree with the smoke a mirrors part. For example the twitter feed, a citizen complains about something that doesn't affect them in anyway, pretty sure it's just random. The radio is useless too... "pending upgrades to the power grid"... what! I'm exporting a hundred megawatts, there's no shortage!

I think it's telling that they put a ton of work into the cinematic camera menu, but apparently didn't care that the graphs didn't fill the chart space, nor that high school attendance is blatantly out of whack.

The game was pushed out the door before it was ready, that’s clear to anyone that’s played it. My biggest issue is having build a few cities outside of the bugs if the cities all feel lifeless. Once you have built one cities skylines city you have built them all. That said I do think that the game will recover once the modding platform takes off and customer building becomes available including the free region packs they mentioned around the release of the game. Getting modding support should be the top priority outside of the bug fixing. If they are to save this game and for it to become what everyone expected.

CS2 may have a more advanced simulation than CS1, but all those additional features are geared towards making the city run itself without the user's input. Importing electricity from neighbouring cities would be cool - if you had any say in the matter. CS2 strips away all the challenge by making decisions on your behalf, so the user doesn't have anything to do besides make a city that visually looks nice... except there's very few assets and modders haven't been given enough tools to pick up the slack. Doesn't matter if you're playing CS2 for the simulation or for the art, nobody's having a great time right now.

I’m so disappointed by the state of this game! I was really looking forward to playing it but I’m glad I waited

I noticed that while I was building my cities I really only focus on the road and traffic, transportation in general. The rest of the game was just there to spawn a bunch of people and cars, nothing else really much matters.

To me the choice is easy - they should focus on a solid simulation (perhaps with a true sandbox mode) and then let the modding community take care of the art / city painter track by giving them a super solid platform to work with.

The thing that pisses me off is, before the game launched, when all the big CS creators were playing and showing off the game, every single one of them hyped it. There were no warnings. Nothing negative about the game at all. Until AFTER it launched and a million people bought the game. Hell a ton of dudes had to upgrade their freakin rig to play it. Just a massive shitshow, and I don't appreciate those creators not cluing us in a bit. Idgaf about NDAs or w.e.

I agree with your video 100 percent. When even someone like BIFFA abandon’s your game 3. Months after releasing it that tells you something. The real issue with the game is that it tries to control everything and be flashy at the same time. You can’t have both with a single chip, no processor could keep up with that.

They released an unfinished game. This should have been in beta still.

It's like everyone forgot what CS1 truly whas. A bad traffic simulator with a fake citybuilder glued on top. The game was saved by content creators, modders, city painters postign their creations on youtube. CS devs made a ton of bad decisions, CS2 is the result.

It's so sad, this game is now in the same grave as The Sims 4 and Sim City 2013 for me. Previous versions of the game as just better and I don't see it improving.

Your analysis is spot on. All the basic/vanilla stuff doesn't work or matter!!

This game had a huge potential but right now is unfinished and broken. With the current state of the game is much better playing CS1 with mods.

i don't play city skylines but a lot of my friends do and this helps me understand the discourse. thanks for the video CG

I have 6600 hrs (+) in CS. 58 minutes CS2 and most likely will never play it again.

it doesnt know what it wants to be. It trades off simulation for painting, manages to do none. I think it needs a toggle for simulation. When one builds a large city right now, its neither simulated (enough) nor is does it have playable performance. Manages to do nothing

Are they still releasing the console versions of CS2 this spring? I have this feeling we’ll get an announcement from CO that they’re delaying the console versions.

There could possibly be a chance that CS2 could get a “new release” especially for Console’s players. If they do it right.

It’s way too complex in areas it should be basic and way too basic in areas it should be complex. There’s no flow to the sim like most people say you feel like you’re just plopping stuff down with no purpose.

I tried very hard to like CS2 and at first i did, but has time has gone on all my city's look the same and no matter what i do the cities all seem to thrive and generate money. I bought the game pre order with DLC to follow and played it for 537 hours. Its back to CS1 for me for now i might return to CS2 in the future if it improves.

They had EVERTHING to enhance the CS original game from the MODDERS already. No move it, node controller, RICO function, or fucking mods and assets from the workshop. CS2 looks, plays, and runs like a game 2 generation back. Absolute garbage.

To be honest with you as a Game Developer. Games that released on its first few years are always plagued with performance issues and bugs; no game is perfect. Cities Skylines 2 is still month's young too young. Remember the first few years of Cities Skylines 1 is also plagued with Performance Issues and Bugs. Yet here we are, be patient with Colossal Order, be patient with the Game Developers because we are trying our best to make games playable with great efficiency. Most games are fixed after two years of release.

My biggest issue with cities skylines 2 is, 1 exists. 1 has more content available both for free and $$$, more assets and customization available to make cities look less samey, actual mod support, and graphics that are still plenty serviceable in 2024. CS2 has a “Sims 4” problem in that its improvements don’t make up for all the things they cut, and it comes off feeling like they are going to start selling features back to us. They had what, 4 or 5 expansions that built off custom building parks and industry and airports etc etc….why would you remove that entirely, especially for parks? Why does the game run this bad when it doesn’t look much better than CS1 unless you’re really zoomed in? Given traffic management was so big in cs1 and traffic mods were so popular, why does it feel so barebones in cs2? And where the fuck is mod support?!

CO has screwed this game in so many ways, it's just hilarious that you can achieve this from a good part one of the game. 1. Graphics are not so wow as you might think. Especially when you consider what today is possible. 2. Instead of keeping the good stuff and ideas from part one, they wanted to make everything perfect but failed miserable. We don't need to simulate every CIM so detailed. We want to build big cities, pardon huge cities with millions of people in it. 3. Steam Workshop must come back. Nobody cares about Paradox mods, neither anyone want them. 4. To less assets and building variety. Everything looks boring. 5. Bugs, Bugs and bugs. Nobody understands how the game works or should work. Nor even the Devs it seems. I am huge CS1 fan and love to play the game. That is why I am so disappointed and also angry about how they messed this up. The game isn't simply fun. And I am not going to pay for several DLCs again just to have stuff in the game it already should have from the beginning on. I think I am done with CS2.

I just try again Simcity 3000 and Simcity 4.My goodness.Theses games are so good , to this day.The beautiful graphics , art style , music , gameplay over all and great and challenging economy. Cities skylines 2 looks so bad in almost every way.No heart , no art style , no fun and challenging gameplay.What happened to Collosal Order ?.This game is so empty.No visionary and heart at all.We need Simcity 6

I agree. But, I don't think it has be Artsy vs Game Management. It can have both.

I had the weirdest thing happened I build a road that built on the side of a cliff and there was some type of crazy explosion or something and it sent Cars flying everywhere on fire into peoples backyards into the ocean for like six city blocks. There were 40 cars Throne I wish I could’ve witnessed what happened.

I think CO basically decided to ignore all the mods and modders and consider them as idiots. They created a city MANAGEMENT game (and by that, I mean, you have a limited number of objects like houses and trees) with Cities 1 (or that is their perception) and they disdain "city painters". The problem is that we all had to BREAK their Cities 1 game with mods to make it enjoyable to play. It was only after the modders broke it with Move It and Anarchy mods that detailers and RU-vidrs could make videos with truly awesome and unique cities. CO apparently has no real conception of this. They invited RU-vidrs to play the game in early access, but then gave them no detail objects. The obsession that CO has with weather that MUST be always on and you MUST go through this pathfinding to unlock buildings (which was present and also stupid in Cities 1) and trees that MUST grow. That's why they are mystified by people wanting a Workshop or being able to plant fully grown trees. It isn't "realistic" in their minds, because they mistakenly think people are playing this game and enjoying raising and lowering taxes and don't understand the enjoyment comes from CREATIVITY. What's completely asinine is that they had three years of development hell and still couldn't even get the simulation to work properly for a city MANAGEMENT game, much less a city CREATOR game, so we are left with a game that the developers do not understand should be about creativity and not stifling that creativity or forcing it to manage or play a city a certain way. A game that fails at a city simulation and also fails at being an artistic city painter. I mean, they COULD have just used the Steam Workshop, AFAIK. Even if they couldn't, they certainly could have paid modders a pittance to create new content, so they could have had 3-5 variations of each object and building at launch. Hell, some modders probably would have done it for free. They did not even think of this. If you think you are building a city simulator you worry about stray dog pathfinding, homeless people, and stuff that no one in their right mind cares about. And when you build it on an engine that cannot support it, and then you are left with an unfinished (and possibly unfinishable) product, well, um, yeah. It sucks.

People need to stop buying games from bigger publishers on release date to teach these guys a lesson. They are motivated by money and you gotta hit them where it counts. Buy games after they are fixed at discounted prices. Eventually they will get the idea and fix their business practices. As of now they have no reason to release polished and complete games.

I was really looking forward to buying this game. I decided to wait until some of the bugs were worked out. It seems I will be waiting for a while.

I quit the game after the devs decided to blame the failure of the game on the community being toxic, I went through so many news update posts on steam and never saw any toxic behavior, the only thing that existed was fair, and accurate, highly critical and much needed complaints about CO's complacency and their outright lies. People being fed up with a garbage release and non functional game isn't toxic, it's fucking expected, but CO can't seem to handle feedback what so ever unless you praise them out the door first.

Sim City 4: Rush Hour is still the greatest city building game of all time. The regional play is still unmatched til this day, i had a huge real life map region of over 1 billion population population and at least 50 mega cities all connected and the satellite reginal view was amazing. Oh and the music.

I was so hyped but never did bought it and I am glad I didn't

After trying Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic, CS2 feels so flat and uninteresting. It was the biggest gaming let down of the decade for me. I even took a day off to try the game out when it's new. Honestly I didn't notice any performance issues but the game was so uninteresting, so ugly and so flat I returned it the next day

Cities 2 feels far more like a game than a realistic simulation. I was excited because I thought it would lean more toward simulation... I had the same feeling with football (handegg for y'all overseas folks) games. They are basically collision engines with some randomization for animations of the collisions that happen. Cities 2 feels that way to me currently.

game devs have gotten lazy and worse...... and i have been playing since pong,,,its not only CS2

I think SimCity Societies needs a re-evluation - so far it's the only City builder - whether from Cities Skyline, Cities XL, Anno, Societ Republic , etc. that I've see actually adapt the environment and characteristics of the city to what you build . Like it says in the title of the game society changes and cities definitely don't look the same nor dreary, giving it evidently identifiable character that I would love for a contemporary city builder to employ. But with CS2's launch, tha's still very far off on the horizon... le sigh

Once you make a city, every city will look the same… the tornados are like wtf, the buildings are ok but NO variety… the special buildings are like a mess, there should be more… the landscape is empty, feels like a fake world…

The decision to not have the steam workshop really backfired. Cs2 gets repetitive and all the cities look the same very quickly. People will not wait months for PDX to release mods and assets, so are returning to Cs1.

I prefer the visuals of the sequel. Minus some of the area fillers, as you mentioned, the quarry in aprticular. But it's okay. What is not okay is that it suffers the same issues the first suffered under: Completely superficial and kind of boring. Mind you, C:S was made to only top off SimCity 2013, an extremely low bar to set yourself. And well, of course it succeeded in that regard. Now it seems they did the same, but with minor additional basic features (first one didnt' even have tunnels at first)... but it seems they forgot that there was no SimCity to beat. (Well, there was, Sim City 4 is still unbeaten to this day). Yes, it is a huge disappointment. Though I also would call it a scam, since that is basically an early access game that they have released. Completely unacceptable. And no, I don't care that "others do it too". Guess what I don't play in this regard. Speaking of city builders, I really need to get back into Sim City 4. Such a great game and even after 2 decades nothing has beaten it in its genre. Of course, C:S is nice and all, has a lot of possible detail work and more road freedom. But that's all it has. Simulation is basically not there, nor is it challenging in any way. The average C:S player wouldn't even survive a month in Sim City 4.

i'm thankful for the console delay or I would have jumped into this with wallet wide open on Ps5, and clearly regretted it. Such a shame after all the hype and disappointing as I expect better from CO and Paradox in 2023/24. Hopefully a lot is done and PC players are happy with it before the game releases on console.

You are still playing without mods? Oh my. There are so many already available that really help with so many issues.

Problems with Citie Skylines 1 is you cant save anymore your Assets. You can get your Assets for a Sertain Citie you want to built and then its over. Turn the Steam off go 5 Minutes back and every asset except the Assets your just downloaded are there the others are gone.

I would have personally waited a bit longer. The game was released way to early. It would have been way better to add mod support at launch.

The game clearly came out about 6 months too early. I don’t blame the devs necessarily, but I do blame management and I lean more towards it being Paradox’s fault. Either way they cratered COs reputation and damaged CSS brand. They are honestly lucky no one else released a city simulation game at the same time or we’d be having a repeat of 2013.

Cities Skylines have never been quite a sim. The fact that they had took the chance to start with a blank slate tells me that the brainrot within the game development scene are so severe that I think the skill to create a boundry breaking game that doesn't crash on start-up isn't just there.

Personally I think they could of pulled off both art and sim but for whatever reason failed at both. In both areas its worse than CS1 base game. On the art side it lacks so many options and assets that were and still are present in CS1. On the sim side its bugged, sloppy, poorly designed in areas and very restricted. In my opinion its just a worse CS1 with some enhancements here and there. Its like they took a look at CS1 and went nah, lets do our own thing and its not like they were rushed with this release either. They had 4-5 years. That is a long time and plenty long enough for a dev already experienced in making this type of game. I think its only become clear since release, very little progress with the game overall is present and then they decide to slow it down? On top of that communication has been very poor and condescending. On the flip side if you look at life by you, That team is honest, they take feedback, they make consistent progress, if they feel they need to delay it they do and they are VERY transparent about things and that game is releasing into early access.

I wonder if there's some marketing ploy with just making stuff bad at first. Seems stupid but the amount of attention it gets is insane. What baffles me is that these games are tested. Sure it's by a small number of people and they're likely using high-end PCs but there's little chance that the devs play their own games and not notice the many issues with it as well as beta testers and all the RU-vidrs that had early access etc but the game still gets released with all these issues. Same with CyberPunk and No Man's Sky. How on earth are these things overlooked? I can understand a few bugs being missed as there are a lot of factors but for something like gameplay mechanics, I don't see how it can be overlooked at all.

ZERO respect for CO. It's as if they were jealous of the incredible MODS from CS1 and, like babies, left them out of CS2 in objection. So odd! They were handed the most incredible opportunity on a silver platter and completely fucked it all. It seems purposeful at this point. It's THAT bad. How can anyone mess up such a glorious opportunity this poorly?

While I fully understand cities skylines 2 has bugs and needs some help If you play with mods from the thunderstore. The game is actually a lot more fun

Graphically it looks good, albeit lacking volume of content. The road tools are excellent. However, I agree that : it falls short as a city painter, but that could be improved with time. it falls short as a simulator. It is far too nannying and the simulation, especially in terms of the economy and traffic management is bizzare and illogical. I get the impression that CO are pround of this and I doubt it will change or be easily changed by modding. it falls short in terms of performance. It was supposed to be able to build the city of our dreams. At the very least I would take that as being able to make a city larger than is possible in CS:1. For the average user the performance gets pedestrian above 50K. Even for a top end system the simulator performance is extremely slow at 250K and most large systems just turn into space heaters rather that simulators. Even if theay are "simulating" what they are simulating is questionable anyway. Having a simulator which takes 10 seconds per game minute is non sensical, but very typical. It would take an order of magnitude improvement in performace to get the game playable yet the patches are chipping away at a few percent here and there. I can't see that changing any time soon. it also falls short because the developers are steadfastly maintaining that they are right and that their customers are not. Unless there is an attitude change, none of the other issues will be addressed significantly and, even if there is one, the developer is focused upon console and DLC and not upon general product improvement. I've had to go back to CS:1.

I don't lag but god damn my CPU heat the house. It is too much fear overheat my CPU by running my town.

Liked and subbed :)

Very insightful video. Thanks for sharing.

I think that is not quite it. I would say the resource managment actually exist and works.. sort of. But they made this adaptive difixulty that chease the system to varying degree to make the game accessible to all. That is, there is a hidden dificulty setting that is ramped up and down depending how well you are playing. On top of that, there is plenty of buggs and glitches in the system (that some have been fxed now, but not all) that also make the system look like it dont work... because. Well, it partly do not work.

Its only about Designing a City not building one. Streets Highways Parks Modules are much to big. The Citie will work anyway if you dont put Transit in there. Its Crazy.

Yes that is also my flaw if you would do every Transit in Citie Skylines away the Citie will still work. Its only about Building Designing Streets and Parks. Its not even importend to build on ongoing Mega City. You cant. What can you. Building on this Maps differnt Cities in a Vast Region Its to easy. It dosent makes fun anymore. Sadly.

i am so glad i waited

Build a Citie of 1 Million and the Citie will Lag moving in Slowmotion. Cars Sims etc. It feels like a Demo Build a City without Cars and Mass Transit. the City will work anyway you only have to create Park and Highways Habor and what a City needs Like I once said Design a Citie dont built one Citie Skylines 2 is a Disign Game. Not A Building Simulation.

Most of the major creators have abandoned this game now. There will be no comeback for CS2.

Need to be able to make 2 way stops instead of all 4 ways

The moment it was announced i knew Skylines 2 would be an incomplete half-baked torture chair of a game. It really seems too many people are not catching on to what happened with Skylines 1 and the DLC's. You really cannot blame anyone else then yourself for having any positive expectations about the sequel after a decade of phony business tactics to teach you otherwise.

I'll stick with my CS 1.

and i just wonder.. why make they game more arty and less sim based.. when you can modify the map to have infinite money making it a somewhat like a painter already

Maybe they should figure out who their customers are.

You know, for a interesting talk about the game its odd how you have very few subscribers.

All I see here is a company with a game that is sincerely getting it's karma. Those who mocked Sim City for it's issues and claiming this would be far superior over time, are now witnessing the boomerang effect with this game. You get back what you put out...

Your description of traffic and transit and how they behaved and the lack of influence of the latter on the former sounds like CO decided to copy US Sunbelt cities!

Is the game development team going to fix these issues? Is there hope?

I really wanted to like this game so much, but i just don't enjoy it. Maybe im just spoiled with all the mods and dlc of cities 1

Paradox games feel sort of underwhelming, look at CiM2 my dad bought it and refused to go back to CiM1 for some reason, even if its superior game albeit dated by today standards given it came in 2011.

Seems like another game that has been dumbed down to run on the console.

i always niche play games, and this one dislike it, it want to just grow how it want to grow its so boring compared to very old sim city, you have less agility to do whatever you want, its kinda boring with good grafic i liked the road alot, but putting everything for a couple residential and meh pop population creep is boring i wish it wasnt but traffic system is very fun

this game is classic paradox MO. They have been doing this for a decade now...they will kick out a polish alpha version out the door, then release dlc\patches for it for as long as it sells. anyone that doesnt fall in ine, I guess the game ''just isnt for you''

I've noticed since more and more content creators are coming out about the mess of the game the fanboys are in hiding! When it came out the abuse from the fanboys I received for criticizing the game was incredible, I even got a death threat or 2!... I'm glad the RU-vidrs are finally speaking out and hopefully another developer can maybe bring us a proper city builder... Paradox & CO are money hungry thugs that do not deserve your money! They knew the game was not ready but put it out for greed over quality!!!

o cities skylines 1 tem um gráfico horrivel e o 2 ta muito mal acabado.

Cities skylines is a series of city painters. Not sure why people think 1 had a good simulation.

cringe

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