Cities: Skylines 2 gets long-awaited official mod support and map editor
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I bought this game on release and have honestly yet to play it, just in the hopes that a year or two down the line it'll have the same community support built around it as the original does. Almost like buying a Bethesda game.
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Wow, despite the poor launch, Paradox went full steam ahead with DLC so soon? Paradox's habit of making games fully featured only after dozens of additional DLC can die in a fire.
It creates a huge headache for devs too, who are forced to isolate DLC features, not knowing which the player has, or risk the headache-inducing experience of handling all permutations of installed DLC.
It creates a huge headache for devs too, who are forced to isolate DLC features, not knowing which the player has, or risk the headache-inducing experience of handling all permutations of installed DLC.
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How's the performance? Still absolute shit? Frankly, until it works well...don't know why they bother with anything else. However, Paradox loves putting out pigs and slapping all sorts of DLC lipstick on it.
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Another way to phrase this would be that the game was launched well before it was ready and things got cut to meet the ship date.
This is now something resembling the state it should have launched in, although there's still serious problems with how the simulation works that make it not work very well as a game.
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They sold an edition that came with a bunch of DLC included, so they're gonna ship DLC. Its not like Paradox is super worried about the reception at this point: if they were they wouldn't have launched the game in the state it was in.
The DLC itself is pretty bare-bones too, so it feels at this point a lot like they're just cashing in on whatever revenue they can from this game.
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While I haven't touched the first one in years, I did enjoy running the janky little cities I built, and I definitely hope C:S2 grows into being a decent game (if it isn't already). But I'm kinda glad I didn't jump straight in on launch day.
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Colossal Order / Paradox did actually delay work on the DLC by a couple of months in order to focus on trying to fix some of the bigger issues. The Beaches DLC was part of the more expensive version of the game, so players who were expecting to use it months ago were probably getting restless.
Ninja'd by Tridus.
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The only thing I really wanted from C:S2 was good performance (C:S1 was famous for underutilizing multi-core CPUs), and while C:S2 solved the multi-core problem, it managed to drag performance back down to the mud elsewhere.
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The performance issues were enough to warn me off, but the thing that really kept me from buying it was the way so much of the joy seems to have leaked out vs C:S1. The cute little vans having donuts or bugs on them or whatever just becoming DELIVERY VAN makes me sad, and there are other little touches besides that rob it of texture. Maybe that'll change with mod support.
I don't doubt Colossal Order was stuck between a rock and a hard place in terms of shipping the damn thing for any revenue at all, but I still think they shouldn't have shipped it as they did. Easy for me to say, I know, but the steps backwards are just embarrassing.
I don't doubt Colossal Order was stuck between a rock and a hard place in terms of shipping the damn thing for any revenue at all, but I still think they shouldn't have shipped it as they did. Easy for me to say, I know, but the steps backwards are just embarrassing.
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The first couple of patches seemed to make significant improvement. I haven't had any problems running it although I've only built a city up to 100,000 pop. I'm running a 4070ti, i5-13600K, 32GB.
However I feel the quality of graphics is not up to the standards I would expect for a 2024 game, and as mentioned above, the simulation side still seems to be weak. Traffic is better than CS1 but still does odd things.
I'm in the group that has put the game aside and hope that next year it will be in the shape it should have been when released. It will be interesting if we get a postmortem a few years down the line illustrating how development and release went off the rails and squandered all the goodwill CO built up with CS1.
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I've found mods to be transformative, in many cases. The single-creator game Banished, for instance, an early village-builder, has a ton of mods that change it dramatically. And, of course, the poster child for modding is probably Skyrim, which you can easily spend more time modding than playing.
(Weirdly, I've never messed with any of that for Skyrim. I've just played it vanilla. I really should look into the mod scene more.)
I dropped CS1 when they started the endless parade of paid DLC, but the initial release of the game was hugely improved by road mods. The default roads and traffic pathing were dire, and mods ameliorated some of the worst stupidities. Agent sims do not scale well, and CS1's traffic is a perfect example. Without mods, it would have been even worse.
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I think a very great deal of the problem was the team being foolish enough to trust Unity.
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What I want to know is: have they fixed the surface details (like parking lots) morphing to the drastic slopes of the land, or do the buildings now level the land as they did in Skylines 1? It's a weird graphical oddity to introduce in a game that's supposed to have much greater fidelity.
Also, I really want more non-car transportation options and better simulation of the effects of car dependence. Let us build truly sustainable cities from the start, and even show how they make the municipality more money!
Also, I really want more non-car transportation options and better simulation of the effects of car dependence. Let us build truly sustainable cities from the start, and even show how they make the municipality more money!
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One could argue that better is just a subset of different, and also subjective.
Mods have definitely made Bethesda titles better, BG3 has benefitted as well; even without official support being implemented yet.
Factorio is another great example, you can end up playing an almost completely different game that is just as high quality.
Minecraft, likewise, has such good mod support that it can almost become unrecognizable save the distinctive geometry of the visuals.
The entire MoBA and Battle Royale genres of games started due to mods.
Would e-Sports be what they are without counterstrike having been created?
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I'm ok with getting it as part of my season pass purchase (yes yes stupid me for being optimistic prior to launch) but charging $10 for the beach dlc is yet another collosal PR screwup. It's a $5 dlc at best and charging $10 is just adding additional insult to injury.
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On my Ryzen 7 5800H + Radeon RX 6600M, it slows down to a crawl at 500k pop.
Still playing it everyday, even though it's a torture. I think I need help.
On a side note, I've been using unofficial mods (Land Value Overhaul, Traffic Lights Enhancement, Anarchy, and Extended Tooltip) via Thunderstore. They all broke with this patch. I guess I can stop playing for now.
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J.C. Helios
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Right, since she's counting on modders to fix her company's mess.
I've seen it speculated that they were contractually obligated to ship the game when they did because of an Xbox Game Pass deal, but I don't know.
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I'd argue for CS1 that mods did improve the game. They allowed new, interesting and challenging maps, they allowed you to unlock more than 8 zones of development for bigger cities, they also allowed better control over some elements of the game - such as Traffic Manager PE which allowed custom junction lanes, your own custom schedules for traffic lights, allowing turn-right-on-red and much more. All of these things have (IMO) expanded and improved on the original game and have allowed me to build bigger and better cities than the base game allows for.
I do hope CS2 becomes a success, but it is pretty clear that it was released too early for whatever reasons. The addition of mod support is a big step in the right direction.
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Not in this case. The game is currently broken once you get to a certain point. Specifically the issue is with land values and because of this many people are giving up on the game.
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This has actually been fixed in the game for a couple months at least. They've been working on performance bugs since release
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Pr-ordered, played less than an hour and it is already uninstalled.. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. $10 for a DLC at this stage is a slap in the face.
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CO's decision to use the road network to transmit land value was, in my opinion, an odd choice. I would have expected some sort of internal beacon-type spread, like they used for the 'internet service'.
After figuring out the problem, I "fixed" my cities by connecting high value downtown areas to suburbs using short lengths of 4-lane highways instead of roads. Highways do not transmit anything, unlike the roads. Annoying to have to trick the game into working sensibly.
Last I heard, there's still the problem of a multitude of students and children living alone in single family houses in the suburbs and complaining that the rent is too high for them afford. Well, duh. Adding low-rent apartments helps a little bit for approximately one day. (OK, I'm getting grouchy now, I'll stop)
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This DLC is available now. It's not a pre-order.They are pre-selling DLC that is the even available yet? I don't think I've ever seen that before.
That's like putting down a deposit to a builder for an off-plan housing unit
Sales must be horrible.
They sold a deluxe edition of the game that included the first few DLC packs, but that's reasonably common these days, and has been a thing Paradox does for quite a while. Course they have one game where they never actually released all of them, so caveat emptor definitely applies.
My view on games these days is that anything worth pre-ordering will still be worth buying a week after launch. That's saved me from quite a few bad purchases because once its in gamer's hands they can't hide problems.
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Yikes, has anyone read the reviews for the Beach DLC, pretty brutal, but not surprising either, sadly.
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Eh? Speak for yourself I guess. I view mods very very differently.
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This article is inaccurate: asset modding is not yet available. The only modding supported is Code and Map modding, and the map editor is decidedly still in a beta state.
Honestly this feels like an apology fluff piece. This isn't the journalistic rigor I expect from Ars.
The DLC has 4% positive reviews right now.
Honestly this feels like an apology fluff piece. This isn't the journalistic rigor I expect from Ars.
The DLC has 4% positive reviews right now.
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Abhi Beckert
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
Was it really that bad? My understanding is the game worked well, it just had a few performance issues where a complex city would force the game to drop back to lower quality textures even if you had a high end GPU. The game was still totally playable, it just didn't look as pretty as people would like.
They've fixed some performance bottlenecks and made it look good now on decent hardware, and if this game lasts ten+ years like the previous version did, it won't be long before a budget gaming laptop will have performance on par with a high end desktop today (personally - I plan to wait until then before I play the game, I prefer to sitt on the couch or lay in bed while playing Cities Skylines).
I disagree - release early and often is the right approach as it reduces the developer's dependence on venture capital funding. The earlier a game starts receiving money from players, the more likely they are to make decisions that are in the best interests of the players, instead of the best interest of whoever owns the IP for the game (which, far too often, is not the game developer).
Most of the best games I play were released years before they were done under the "Early Access" program on Steam (for people who don't know, Early Access is basically where you buy partially working game, often at a discounted price, and then participate as a beta tester - once the full game is released you own that as well).
Not really - DLC should just be content. All of the actual programming is usually identical no matter what DLCs you have.
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Yeah my understanding is Paradox overruled CO and had them switch to DLC development. However take that with a grain of salt.
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To my understanding, the devs wanted to keep their resources focused on fixing the backend issues and bug/performance fixes.
The Shift to DLC was unwanted as it'd take awhile development resources from those focuses.
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Abhi Beckert
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
Agreed, but there's a balance. Pre-ordering is essentially voting with your wallet for the developer to fix whatever problems it has and not just throw in the towel.
As an example, I pre-ordered No Mans Sky and only started actually playing it this year. It's a fun game, I'm glad I encouraged them to keep it up. But yeah, I'm a little less optimistic about Cities Skylines - for me the previous version of the game is almost unplayable (balance issues/etc) unless you have mods and I'm betting it will be the same this time. So, I'm not buying Skylines until I see a rich community build up around it. Good enough for people to volunteer their free time to do work Paradox doesn't seem to be willing to do themselves.
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Abhi Beckert
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
Those wouldn't be the same team of people. The content team isn't going to sit around doing nothing while someone else works on the game engine.
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They do when they're quality of life and ease of access mods that give tools beyond the base games capability. I think you're mistaking the quality of available mods from the availability of mods.
Unless the game perfectly covers all needs of all users, it will be improved by access to mods. (unless it's a competitive multiplayer game, then the metrics are all different)
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That's.. not how it works? While yes the content team needs something to do, they can be adding assets to the base game. Which... was part of the needed work as many of the assets were improperly made, causing some of the performance issues (remember that 110,000 vertex log pile?)
DLC also generally adds new mechanics, and requires new additions and changes to the code base. That's a shared resource between teams, there is only so much engineering labor to go around.
The same amount of people working on two different focuses will be less efficient that working on one - as long as the technical debt provides them with something to do.
That's the problem with switching to DLC development early. It will, 100%, delay the needed fixes compared to if they started on the DLC later.
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