The Concerning State of Cities Skylines 2 in 2024

City skylines 2 first released in Early Access City skylines 2 released in October of 23 and much has changed since then and what has been a very turbulent time let's break it down dissect cities 2 is it good now is it worth it is it working let's discuss let's start with a quick Whirlwind overview of how we got here so cities skylines 2 released on the 24th of o October 2023 roughly 20 weeks at the time of recording and in those 20 weeks the patches have almost exclusively focused on bug fixes alongside some performance improvements and tweaks though the impactfulness of those seems to depend on who you're talking to myself I haven't noticed a massive difference the patches focusing on bug fixes have improved the game though with no new significant feat feates added there are still problems to fix both in terms of that variety and the state of the simulation and the bugs within it we'll return to that a little bit more slightly later in the video but first the other thing we should consider when thinking about the state of cities too is how's the community responded and you'll know as well as I do with much negativity with much fear and Justified criticism and some POS positive enjoyment as well it's been a mixed bag but it was certainly a rough launch no doubt about that and if we turn to active player count numbers granted just using steam as our sample size you can see that City skylines 2's player count has been gradually slowly declining in recent weeks and unfortunately this is the tail end of what is an overwhelming and overarching theme and in cities defe me not an all that uncommon one you would expect games to be hyped and have loads of players at launch uh but still quite a negative Trend straight down and across with a gradual decline and the news gets worse when we start to compare it to its predecessor City skylines 1 which at the time of recording this video has seen a trend of well of of being more popular than City skylines 2 and that Gap in player numbers on Steam seems to be widening uh some of course quite important sort of other things to note here uh firstly people will likely rightly point out that this is just steam City skylines 2 is available on Game Pass where people can play it with a much lower barrier to entry in terms of price it's basically free if you are already paying for the subscription that is but of course on the flip side City skylines 2 isn't on Console whereas one is so yes there are play accounts that aren't captured yes this is just using steam I don't claim it to be the perfect Exemplar the ultimate depiction however of course that's not the focus of this video at least not by itself let's talk about what explicitly has gone wrong and what the team are focusing on next we're talking delays in cities 2 now of course cities 2 was itself delayed well at least and I feel I feel bad even saying that because of course it is the console version that has ultimately been the most delayed we released the game on PC they say but not yet console and as far as we know it's still just coming soon with phly vague open-ended uh honestly just kind of fluffy replies to most questions about when we can expect to see the game on console and I think that people are right when they say given the difficulties in this game's performance particularly once you get to that larger City size and of course it will depend on your own individual system but in my opinion once you start getting to six figures 100,000 people especially once you start to cross over 200 250,000 you're basically watching a PowerPoint slide particularly if you're building or placing things down I mean you can see by the footage that I'm playing right now it is not great on what is a high-end system with a processor highest end only a year and a half old and the latest Nidia graphics card and it struggles here it really struggles and if this work to be done here then maybe the consoles are going to struggle too I mean they're pretty old and inferior though I would think that that have some upside of at least being Universal if you're developing for one person's PS5 you're developing for all ps5s the next item and and unfortunately pretty long list of delays was the post relase content uh two different points to make here the first one the largely paid DLC the stuff that actually came with the game if you ordered the ultimate edition of course we had instant access to the San Francisco set basically the Golden Gate Bridge but all of the rest of the stuff was delayed beachfront property and a radio station expected uh frankly any day now wouldn't surprise me if this was being pushed back again and then in quarter 2 of 2024 similarly delayed by around 3 months from the initial expectation some Creator packs finally different architecture Urban promenades and keys inside of the bridges and ports expansion bringing content to City skylines 2 that as some people will rightly point out May have already existed in cities 1 and I think that's one of the strongest reasons why cities 1 is still arguably the best city Builder on the market but I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit here there is of course one more big section of delays and arguably the most important one of all modding and everything that surrounds it modding is something that has been delayed numerous times the team gloss Lord now refraining from putting any timeline on it at all simply saying it will be coming soon and we know that they'll be releasing patches as well speaking of things that need to be added to the game alongside these big changes so the next time we see an update it's likely to include modding or some part of modding custom maps assets blah blah blah in beta form we're not expecting modding to roll out in full and out of beta until I believe around October 2024 which will be coincidentally around 1 year since City skylines 2 released so it's going to be a long road ahead for moding it's worth mentioning colossal ord's recent statement in their word of the week series the turbulent series that's been cancelled and brought back we've learned how to give constructive criticism and recently they've turned to trying to answer some of the harder questions and while I wasn't person ly massively blown away with their answers uh there is some interesting stuff in here acknowledging all of these delays the missing modding the console DLC and issues with the game that we've discussed they say quote we'd much rather be in a different position than we are in at the moment but we cannot change the past working very hard to catch up on the missing modding support missing platforms the content for the ultimate edition and improving the performance and fixing bugs this year the team is divided to work on different tasks so that we're seeing progress on all fronts and while it might not feel it's fast enough I can assure you we are doing the best we can only time will tell if this is enough to turn things around and they go on to talk about how the Cadence of patches will slow down focusing on bigger changes and some of the things that I've already discussed in this video so our expectation is that we should see City skylines 2 fix all of those issues and all of those gaps this year they say they're working on at least improving all of that stuff the extent to which it's implemented of course will have to wait and see and finally as I gently alluded to with my tongue and cheek introduction I think there have been a series of mishandlings or unfortunate accidents that have occurred in and around the discussion of this game PR misplays if you will uh firstly there's a somewhat of a understanding that this game was falsely labeled or overhyped I want you to think content creators in the sky kind of glamorous leading up to this game and as I was going to mention earlier but decided to mention here instead there's also that question around the variety in cities 2 right after the game launched literally just a couple of days amidst that Firestorm of Fury they released a trailer showcasing that we would have buildings created by moders and creatives within the community from eight distinctly different architectural regions of the world almost radio silence on that front a big mistake equally that broader hype perhaps was too far overdone considering what was sort of dropped upon us the kind of game that was presented and more importantly the state that it was in because as I mentioned way back many months ago I I actually really like cities 2 I do I like using the Cinematic camera mode to film these shots for you uh like covering the updates and actually just playing the game but it is still very flawed of course and we've seen a bunch of other things that weren't ideal those word of the week difficulties we talked about earlier on again off again we'll talk to you next week all of a sudden there's no word next week these things could perhaps use some ironing out but aren't really that big of a deal by themselves you know at the end of the day and tweets a tweet I kind of think who really cares but more broadly I think there's also still a fairly prominent position though perhaps not likely the majority of people who consider that there's kind of been a lack of ownership here too or at the very least acknowledgement perhaps the studio comes across as slightly stubborn in their sort of UN wavering or unwillingness to apologize to the level that people want though having them down on their hands and knees bigging I believe would be a step too far of course there are other considerations here too like legal liabilities that may or may not cross the mind of a CEO so we're to from here then let's get to the Crux of the video as I've already mentioned I do like cities 2 and I think that its bones are fairly solid though it's probably missing a few still and one or two of them could use an x-ray because I think they're still broken just to really tease out that metaphor in Practical terms the performance must be better it must improve particularly for larger cities and I anticipate that older consoles and of course older PC systems will continue to struggle if it even arrives to them speaking of arriving the delays must be mopped up too the sooner the better don't get me wrong a cyber Punk kind of situation can I believe and I believe it's actually fairly likely that it will play out here eventually that's good news for someone buying in the future but little consolation to somebody perhaps who purchased the game on launch some specifics I think that the simulation needs better transparency we need to understand what's going on this will help quell the myths and mistruths around the state of the simulation that it's all false but also provide better accountability for us so that we can actually understand what's being simulated and of course the bugs around it need to be fixed I think that it should also potentially better reflect difficulties in Planning and Building a city am I just painting a map growth far too easy land values broken and budgets pumped up by subsidies so far that you can basically get away with doing whatever you like and finally I think there's some missing diversity here as well in City service building type variety size in the look and feel again of architecture there isn't enough and not to go on about it too much but where are my push bikes at where are the bike Lanes it's come on it's a city Builder I need them no I don't know either way to answer another question should I buy it now ultimately that's not for me to say it's your money your budget do you buy one game a year or do you buy one 100 because that will definitely impact the outcome but generally I think that City skylines one still presents a much better deal with full modding support and years worth of content inside of it it's also likely to run better however I will still gravitate toward cities 2 personally I like that it's a bit more modern I like the way it looks and feels when it's working so it will ultimately be down to the individual but I think generally thinking about cities 1 on a steam sale a wonderful discount right down to like 10 bucks or something I mean it's not really a competition between the two as of right now I think what's next will be a busy few months ahead for colossal order the pressure is still very much on for them to prove themselves and and to turn City's skylines 2 into what people expected it to be not necessarily 100% of those often overhyped and unrealistic expectations but it should have modding you should be able to build a large city and the simulation shouldn't be fundamentally broken provided they can fix and improve all of those things crucially rolling out modding I think that by the end of 2024 the conversation and the clusion to this video could be very different but for now I'm going to leave it here thank you for joining me in a video more focused around my thoughts and less around the specific big news and updates inside of cities 2 I hope you enjoyed it I'll see you next time

Channel: JumboPixel

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Id: 6YdX5yOarYw

Length: 15min 17sec (917 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 05 2024