Cities: Skylines 2 "absolutely cannot" have the decade of DLC features that the original game added | GamesRadar+

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hiddengoat@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

"We absolutely cannot have ten years of Cities Skylines 1 content done" for the launch of the sequel, Colossal Order CEO Mariina Hallikainen says in the latest issue of PC Gamer. As a result, the studio decided to focus on "those things that we feel should have been in the original Cities: Skylines, but we didn't have the time or manpower."

Anyone that's not a fucking idiot already knew this, because we understand how temporal reality works. But the whiny "everything sucks and is bad" Stephanie Sterling crowd won't care.

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- HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  But it looks like they did incorporate DLC into the sequel; it just isn’t obvious. The current implementation of extractive versus value added industry looks better than what they did with Industries. The quantity of different transit types also feels like an equivalent to a couple of DLC for the original game. I also feel like the sequel’s approach to power would also be most of a DLC for the original.
  
  It isn’t perfect, but it looks like Collosal Order at least implemented a lot of lessons learned from the original game. It doesn’t seem as empty as C:S at launch.
  
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  - chunkystyles@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I’ve played enough CS1 to know that I can’t play it any more, no matter how much content it has. Its absolutely braindead traffic AI destroys my enjoyment of if the game once a city gets sufficiently big.
    
    The traffic AI fixes were all I needed to see to be interested in CS2.
    
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- scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I see a whole new generation of gamers who have grown up on these new games that they think are perfect, who didn’t see the decades of toil and crap that we did growing up. They expect everything to be the most amazing game they’ve ever seen, not understanding that perfect games are in fact, exceedingly rare. That most games have bad mechanics, quirks, boring areas, and things we put up with. But younger folks just stamp it as a “bad game” and refuse to see the nuance.
  
  Things like games are a spectrum. There’s only 3ish games I mark as perfect. Most will have some things wrong with them. If you don’t like that, then just be content with maybe one perfect game a decade.
  
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  - Pheonixdown@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    While that’s true, there’s also a huge difference from like 20+ years ago when they more often than not released games as a complete functional product as opposed to a “we hit the date” buy-in beta test. Games just tend to release with less features and polish than they used to, for the most part companies will keep working on it and get it where it needs to be so the final product is comparable, but it makes for a murkier cycle, buy in at release and probably suffer or wait and try to time when it’s actually ready.
    
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  - Frostbeard@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    What three games are perfect?
    
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yote_zip@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
This is a trend that I have recently started noticing. PAYDAY 3 came out with basically nothing included after PAYDAY 2 had literally 10 years of continuous content/80 DLCs pumped into it. As another example, The Sims always comes out with a new release that has every feature removed so they can sell you all the same DLC again and again.

In some cases this would appear to be a (corporate) success, but it seems it’s actually been part of the downfall of recently-released PAYDAY 3. As of this moment in time, the rolling 24-hour peak of player count in PAYDAY 3 is 4,699. The rolling 24-hour peak of PAYDAY 2 is 37,399. Why would players who have a fully finished game with all DLC already available want to play your new barren game?

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- dinckelman@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I feel really bad for the people working on these games. PAYDAY 3 will eventually reach success in a niche, but will likely be hated by those same people.
  
  The objective behind a game like this, or Sims, or FIFA/FC, is not to create a great gameplay experience. Sadly, they make a passable game, that will help them leech money sustainably for a considerable amount of time, through endless DLC. Paradox will inevitably make Colossal Order do the same with C:S2, despite them claiming that it’ll be fewer but larger DLC.
  
  There are very few studios I will refuse to show respect for, and the one behind PAYDAY is one of them. Just like what remains of Maxis
  
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  - captainlezbian@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Yeah for an example of a series that has found a reasonable equilibrium there companies should be looking at Civ. By making every game significantly enough different moving to the next doesn’t feel like 20 downgrades to get a slight upgrade, but more like 5 has reached the conclusion of what it will ever be, 6 is now new and will have 2 major expansions and a variety of minor ones, but you only see a bit of how it’s incomplete until years later when you’re reminded that some feature came in rise and fall and you’ve just taken it for granted for several years.
    
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- Sacha@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I think there ie a middle ground as a rule but a lot of games use dlc as an excuse to sell the game for more.
  
  Sims is a great example. It costs over $1k to buy everything for Sims 4 and the Sims 4 stans will defend it going “you’re not SUPPOSED to guy every pack”. Sims 3 vs Sims 4 is something as well. Sims 3 didn’t get as much dlc, but each one had so much more content and gameplay than Sims 4. 9 years and like 50 packs later, Sims 3 STILL has more content overall. The game was just poorly optimized and badly coded and is only now becoming playable in terms of load times and lag. A lot of the Sims 4 packs don’t even work that well together, or the opposite where they release a feature and you need another pack to fully utilize it. (The goats and sheep in the horses dlc don’t do anything without cottage living. And they already didn’t do much WITH it)
  
  The Weather expansion with Sims 2 made sense at the time. Weather was a mechanic that not many games had and quite the milestone, it was groundbreaking for the time. Weather dlc for Sims 3 you could begrudgingly forgive, since it’s such a big thing and the base for Sims 3 was so big. But Weather being sold as an add on for Sims 4 was just unacceptable. The game was barren, weather is a base feature for every single game within that kind of genre. It feels like they remove the feature to sell it later. And you see this with the pets packs too. Sims 3 you had cats, dogs, horses, and small animals. With Sims 4 you have cats and dogs, my first pets stuff, cottage living (for the small animals, it does FINALLY add SOMETHING new with the cows/lamas and chickens), and horse ranch- for the same experience Sims 3 pets gave - and even THEN there is less gameplay and features. No unicorns, no wild horses, no pet jobs (I think) since you can’t control them, no nothing. Sims 4 still doesn’t have fairies somehow but there’s rumbles that they might be the next occult and they could bring unicorns but… you won’t be able to do anything with the unicorns without horse ranch.
  
  So, it’s not even than Sims 4 costs more than 3, you are getting an objectively worse and more barren experience even when you do buy everything. The dlc for Sims 3 made sense and added so much, barring maybe the weather one as an arguable one. Almost none of the dlc in Sims 4 makes sense to be sold to the player instead of in the base game. City living, island living, cottage living, the vacation one… for that’s about it really. But becausethey are supposed to bring new content and gamellay experiences. But the dlc for Sims 4 was just such an obvious money cash cow that they are like “what pieces of the same dlc can we upsell as separate packs?” They barely add anything new.
  
  I have no problem with dlc like how it is with Witcher 3 was with new stories, gameplay experiences, quests, etc, rather than selling base features of a game for morr.
  
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  - kayrae_42@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I’ve been playing Sims since 2006. Sims 4 feels like an insult. I want to like it, and aesthetically it is pleasing, the build tools are nice. But game play wise I need so many mods to make it enjoyable. The packs don’t really integrate with each other and the relationships feel very shallow in vanilla experience. I have Sims 3 and Sims 2 and I love both of them, I used mods but I also it was a fun vanilla experience. I never felt robbed when I bought dlc for them, but at this point with sims 4 unless the dlc is on sale I will not buy it at all. Every sims 4 thing I have bought except base game has been sale. It didn’t even release with pools or toddlers.
    
    I am interested in Life By You from paradox games just to see something different in the genre, it helps that Rob Humble is on the development team. I also keep an eye on Paralives to see how that grows. I just want something new in the life sim genre.
    
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- vagrantprodigy@lemmy.whynotdrs.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  CK3 was the last straw for me. It’s been years, and the DLC released is both expensive and lacking in the mechanics of CK2.
  
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- hiddengoat@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Yeah, and Payday 2 had basically nothing at launch compared to Payday and people bitched about the lack of content after only two years.
  
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Tb0n3@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
And then you’ve got absolute mad men like Concerned Ape making stardew valley 10 times better with free updates for years and years. Showing these money hungry companies how it’s done.

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- echo64@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  The scale is just a little bit different here, isn’t it. One guy (maybe a few more) and an indie sensation that makes a ridiculous amount of sales vs. a company that needs to pay wages for 30 people.
  
  We can have a discussion here, but comparing standard run rates vs. a massive exception isn’t a great starting point.
  
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  - captainlezbian@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Yeah it’s also one guy who got so rich off it he never has to work again if he doesn’t want to. Haunted Chocolatier isn’t because concerned ape is a game dev now and needs money, it’s concerned ape wants to make a new game. He clearly loves stardew valley and that’s part of why he keeps updating it.
    
    Terraria is a better exception to use but still an exception. I’m not asking for every game to give free unplanned massive expansions, though I will continue praising those who do such things and absolutely add them to my list of “buy their next game if I’m remotely interested”.
    
    What I want is games that feel like they’re trying to give everyone a fair deal. A base game that’s good on its own and doesn’t feel like a downgrade from the previous game. A few expansions that are good, reasonably priced, and make the game further into its best version of that iteration of the series. And a reasonable number of non expansion dlc that add something and ideally don’t leave me trying to decide what ones I want to get. And by the end of life the game can be not quite the cheapest but full, good, and complete. That way when the next iteration of the series is dropped I’m not left thinking it was because they just wanted to sell me the same things over again. Civilization does this excellently.
    
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- hiddengoat@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Yes, companies with 30 employees are, in fact, money hungry because that's how the employees fucking eat. One person's recurring costs are nowhere near the recurring costs of dozens of people. WEIRD HOW MATH.
  
  Stardew Valley, Undertale, Braid, all of these one-man (mostly) shows generated enough revenue to effectively retire their creators overnight but if they had to pay 30 motherfuckers with the proceeds... yeah, not so much.
  
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  - TSG_Asmodeus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I’ve worked for those (sized) companies and employee pay is not as much as you’d think. Not to mention higher sales don’t equal more pay (for the actual workers.)
    
    Source: just shy of 20 years in gaming.
    
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- GreenMario@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  At the expense of: No Stardew Valley 2.
  
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  - Tb0n3@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Honestly, why would we need a Stardew Valley 2? There’s so many harvest moon games but are they really anything more than small iterations? Not to mention those have been garbage since the IP was basically stolen from the original developers.
    
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  - Goodtoknow@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    He’s working on the haunted chocolatier while isn’t a sequel looks like a great spiritual successor
    
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  - PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Not Stardew Valley 2 but CA is making a new game about a chocolateer who has ghost friends
    
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  - Noodle07@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Fun fact, we basically had stellaris 2 for free
    
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ComradeWeebelo@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
If the rumors regarding the performance for the sequel are true, they won’t even have a working game on launch.

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- sheogorath@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I curse the day Agile development graced the PMs working on game studios.
  
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  - cashews_best_nut@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    When the term Minimum Viable Product (MVP) was born it was a race to the bottom.
    
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- Psythik@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Well the game is out and luckily the rumors weren’t true.
  
  With a medium-density city, I get about 40 FPS @ 4K in the sequel. With the same-sized city, I used to get 20 FPS in the original, so twice the FPS is a massive improvement IMO. But people are still salty cause we live in a world where anything less than 60 FPS @ 1440p is unacceptable. Which is stupid as fuck cause you don’t need 240+ FPS in a city-building game with next to no action in it that would require such a high framerate.
  
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- TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  It’s already kinda annoying not to have all the old content but I can see the reasons behind that. But a new game starting from scratch of a genre they are experienced with should have much better performance now that there aren’t all those additional mechanics. Failing at both of these is just an utter disregard to their customers.
  
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pete_the_cat@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I haven’t played Cities: Skylines in years, this looks great but hopefully they fixed the stupid traffic AI. I hated that when you built a wider road to decrease congestion half of the cars would ignore the opened lanes and still pile up in the original ones.

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- iAmTheTot@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  That is one of the areas of the game they specifically worked on to improve. There's dev diaries about how they improved it.
  
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  - pete_the_cat@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Nice, I remember that being a huge issue in the original with many people complaining about it
    
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- Goodtoknow@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Widening roads is never a good answer in game or real life, it induces new demand and will eventually become more contested. Need to build a train line instead
  
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  - chunkystyles@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I understand what you’re getting at, but even cities with lots of public transit get choked with traffic in CS1. The traffic AI is abysmal.
    
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- snooggums@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Sounds realistic though.
  
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- Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  do you actually think just adding lanes will infinitely increase the capacity of roads?
  
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  - stankmut@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    It does increase the capacity of roads. Two lanes holds twice as many cars as one lane. Four lanes hold twice as many cars as two lanes.
    
    You’re probably thinking of induced demand, but that’s related to traffic congestion and not capacity. More lanes ultimately means more cars are getting places, but any individual car will see that congestion is just as bad as it used to be.
    
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  - pete_the_cat@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Yeah… That’s how these things work ya know. A 4 lane road has higher capacity than a 2 lane road assuming there arent any choke points.
    
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- Psythik@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  This article on their website goes into detail on exactly how they’re planning on fixing the traffic issues. The AI will actually change lanes this time!
  
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Paradox@lemdro.id ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
From what I’ve seen the road building is far better and basically incorporates all the “retired” mods

I’m sad that zoning is still essentially the same as how SimCity did it in 1989, as I really want mixed use, but that’s a minor quibble

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- lud@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Cities skylines 2 has mixed used, or at least the mini trailers and dev diaries says so
  
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Draedron@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I like Paradox DLC policies. Most of them are actually good and add a lot to the game. It also lets them service the game for a long period of time and push free updates along with DLCs.

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- EternalNicodemus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I really dislike Paradox DLC policies. Most of them are actually really bad and add nothing to the game. It also lets them procrastinate bigger updates and bugfixes for a long period of time and push free updates along with breaking 50% of the mods.
  
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  - Car@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I like their DLC policies.
    
    The base game gets updated over a period of what, 10 years? Core gameplay mechanics which don’t work well or at least don’t make the developers happy are tweaked or revamped all the time. I only really play Stellaris, but the changes to the game throughout the years have kept things interesting.
    
    The alternative is… not updating things which they don’t like? Perhaps that means mods never break, but then we’re shifting the onus of fixing the game to a third party, who can decide to quit whenever they want and let their (closed source) code deprecate. I’ve seen that kind of thing in Civ and I wasn’t a fan.
    
    I guess with a studio that has demonstrated a pattern of long-term support for their games, this is what we get.
    
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DarkThoughts@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Or playable framerates.

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Psythik@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Why not? The constant updates are what kept me playing for so many years!

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PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I’m planning to try and build an offset hex grid city

Basically there’s one hex pattern for car traffic, and an offset hex pattern that’s for pedestrians and cyclists, and where there’s any intersections between the two, the car traffic gets raised to give pedestrian traffic an underpass.

Also every car intersection is a roundabout, and I’m considering doing alternating one way lanes with every pair being bracketed by transit only lanes.

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- sirfancy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  That sounds like an absolute nightmare to realistically navigate but I would love to see it.
  
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  - PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Way I see it the addresses would be kinda like how NYC is organized, one parallel has roads, one has lanes, one has boulevards, and then on the pedestrian side you have street, alley, and row.
    
    Doesn’t just save number space, it’ll also give you an idea of the best way to get to that address since street/alley/and row addresses won’t have curbside parking, because pedestrian route.
    
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