Hello Cities Mayors, We wanted to provide you with an update on the status of our upcoming patches and content.
Economy Re-work
The initial implementation of the economy re-work is done, and the patch is currently being polished. Our internal team, along with feedback from our Beta group, indicates we are heading in the right direction, and we are excited to share it with you soon. This patch will not address everything, but to ensure it meets the expectations of our wider community, we want to give it a few more weeks so we can take action on more of the feedback we have received from the Beta group. The goal of the patch is to address the community feedback we have received in regards to the economy; increase the importance of managing the economy, increase the challenge, and make it clearer to the player how the economy is affected by your choices. Currently, we aim to release the patch in the window June 3rd - June 19th and we will be detailing the update further in upcoming Dev Diaries.
Upcoming Creator Packs
As a result of this extended feedback and adjustment period for the economy patch, the Creator Packs will be pushed to post-summer. Even though the Creator Packs require relatively little time for implementation from Colossal Order, we want to make sure the upcoming economy patch has the intended result, and that we have time to also evaluate your feedback before we release any new paid content. This means we will move the Creator Packs to release after the summer lock.
What is summer lock?
In accordance with Swedish and Finnish vacation laws and union agreements, both Paradox Interactive and Colossal Order observe a general holiday period during the month of July and parts of August, where employees have the right to four consecutive weeks of vacation. This means that our staffing levels are reduced on both the development and publishing side. Therefore, we avoid scheduling any updates during this time period. As there is always a potential risk when patching a game, we always want to have the necessary personnel available in case any critical bug is introduced so we can fix it within a reasonable timeframe. Hence, we do not plan for patches or updates in the month of July or early August.
Upcoming Patches
The patch, scheduled for release soon, primarily focuses on the economy. However, there are some other requested improvements included such as an update to the building upgrade system. This means you will be able to place building upgrades more freely around the main buildings and also delete and move specific upgrades. We will provide detailed patch notes in connection to the patch as usual.
The next patch, expected after summer, will introduce some free content and other frequent requests, such as new service buildings and vehicles, as well as the addition of a surface tool to allow more freedom to paint the areas around buildings. We are also making progress with the technical difficulties that are blocking the release of the asset editor; we cannot confirm if it will be ready for the first patch after summer, so no promises just yet, but we are doing everything we can to make it so.
Consoles
We had a Beta build delivery at the end of April which has undergone extensive performance and stability tests. These results showed that we are not hitting the stability and performance targets that we want to reach. Fixing these crashes and improving the FPS is the highest priority when it comes to the console builds. The development team is working diligently and has already fixed some of the issues from these tests, and we still hope we can keep the timeline for an October release. But, to set expectations, the window for an October release is shrinking and it might have to be delayed further.
Player Feedback
We have two groups testing our patches and providing valuable feedback before public release: a long-standing group of dedicated modders and a newer group of community representatives and prominent modders who joined through the application process last year. We recently held a more intimate meeting with representatives from the community, who shared their insights and conveyed those of their follower base, on what they wish to see in the game. Once the economy patch is out, we will also launch a survey to gather feedback from you, the broader community. This will ensure that we understand your experience and continue heading in the right direction. We are also continuously reading posts you share on our official channels and we appreciate all the good and constructive feedback we have received over the past few weeks.
Thank you for being a part of our community and for your continued passion for Cities: Skylines II. Stay tuned for further updates on the economy patch and the timeline for upcoming patches and new content.
// The Cities Team