While we’re receiving plenty of questions about Cities: Skylines II features, we have also received a ton of questions on topics surrounding the game. Today we’ll go over some of the difficult ones.
Are you going to address the content creators’ concerns and criticisms?
All constructive feedback that we receive is valued and very much appreciated. Thank you to those of you who tagged us and shared the content creators' videos that highlight feedback you agree with and to everyone who took part in the constructive discussions that followed. For example, Biffa and City Planner Plays released videos with useful and constructive criticism that we have gone over with the team. We’ll be addressing the feedback according to the process described below.
Here are some examples of the smaller changes we have made since release based on your feedback:
- Added line color to passenger ships, cargo ships, and cargo train engines.
- Improved moving in pathfinding. This prevents citizens from reserving homes from disconnected buildings (Or moving into the city at all if it's not connected to an outside connection).
- Increased all emergency vehicle siren sound distances.
And I believe the more interesting part is the larger changes that we are looking into now, based on the community feedback:
- Land Value and Zone Suitability
- Education system, specifically kids and teens
- More transparency in the economic system
- Balancing subsidies and service importing
- Balancing negative happiness modifiers with lack of basic utilities (water, sewage, electricity)
How do you plan to get out of this mess? / What is in the works to fix Cities: Skylines II? / What will you do to set things right for the disaster launch of CS2?
We’d much rather be in a different position than we are in at the moment, but we cannot change the past. We’re 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 that it’s fast enough I can assure you we are all doing the best we can. Only time will tell if this is enough to turn things around.
There have also been many questions about the patch cadence and why we moved away from weekly patches. Weekly patches are too heavy for us to keep up with and the issues we are working on need more time than just a few hours or days to fix. We’re a small team of 30 developers and we have to plan the work in a way that creates the fastest results. So instead of spending a big part of the week working on the build deliveries and QA rounds, we can use that time to work on the fixes themselves. For the Ultimate Edition, the DLCs already have a rough schedule so we’ll have good opportunities to patch the game at the same time. This doesn’t mean that we never patch the game between the DLC releases. The goal is to improve the game as quickly as possible and when we have a solid patch ready and tested it will be released.
We are aware we have a mountain to climb when it comes to delivering on the expectations but we have our ice picks ready and we are surely used to the cold. We're going to keep on climbing and you'll continue to see that progress in the game.
Why wasn’t modding support available at release?
The biggest regret we have is that modding support is not yet available for the game. We have been working on it since the beginning of the project and the intent was to have it fully ready at release. Code modding support, map, and asset editing were all planned to be fully usable and mods shareable in one place. We still believe that offering modding support makes any game better and that the tools and mods should be available for all players to enjoy at no additional cost.
During the project we faced, and still continue to face, technical difficulties that affect the speed and quality of the development, especially performance. We simply ran out of time as the focus had to shift from modding support to all hands on deck to fix the performance. All this work is still ongoing.
We’ll be communicating more on the status of the modding soon. It’s not an ideal situation but we are committed to keep working on this part of the game because it means so much to you and to us. “A Colossal Order game is a moddable one” is a promise we have made to ourselves years ago and work very hard to keep.
And we’ll top off today’s WotW with a few quick ones:
Q: More animations to come? Construction, firemen, etc
A: Yes, in the future we’ll be adding more animations to bring details and life to the cities!
Q: When will we have cycle paths on CSII?
A: I don’t know when we’ll get around to them, but Cities: Skylines II will have bikes and bike paths.
Q: Will you add more types of buildings or special buildings?
A: Yes, there will be more buildings both free and paid for the game in the future. If there is something specific you hope to see, we’d love to hear it!
Q: Will we get actual quays like the ones in CS1?
A: This sounds like it would fit great with the harbor-themed Bridges & Ports DLC coming later this year!
Q: When will we get props?
A: Adding the props to the menus for free placement in the game has come up as a request quite often. This is not something we are actively looking into at the moment, but will be added to the wishlist!
Q: When will the land value issue finally be fixed?
A: In the next update we’ll have part of it fixed, but the issues that are tied to the economy will take a bit longer to be resolved still.
Q: Will there be more biomes like wetlands/jungle or more desert like Texas?
A: Yes, we plan to add more maps with different biomes and also assets for you to create your own.
Thank you for all the questions, as well as the constructive criticism and feedback, it is valued and appreciated. Keep it coming! We’ll be back next week with something different: words from the art team!
Sincerely,
Mariina