Cities: Skylines II developer Colossal Order has a uniquely shut relationship with its group. The unique Cities: Skylines got here out in 2015 and devoured up the viewers that was left behind by EA’s SimCity, which got here out in 2013 and was a busted mess. Cities: Skylines scratched that urban-planning itch, plus it value simply $30. The sport got here first to PC, Mac and Linux with modest {hardware} necessities, and it hit consoles inside two years. Critically, Cities: Skylines additionally supported mods by the Steam Workshop, permitting gamers so as to add their very own instruments to the sport and share these options with others.
“With Cities: Skylines, the audience grew in size and the modding took even a bigger role, allowing for a huge amount of creativity and inspiration for us devs,” Colossal Order CEO Mariina Hallikainen advised Engadget. “Anything from quality-of-life improvements to ideas for DLC content, we have gathered a huge amount of information to help us create the game that Cities: Skylines is today.”
Colossal Order and its writer, Paradox Interactive, continued to help Cities: Skylines with constant sport updates and DLC drops, and its mod group continued to develop. The sport picked up a ton of latest gamers throughout the pandemic in 2020, and around that point, quite a few now-prominent content material creators leaned into Cities: Skylines for streams and movies.
In the months earlier than the launch of Cities: Skylines II in October 2023, Colossal Order partnered with a handful of content material creators and gave them entry to bits of the sport early, so they may create YouTube movies displaying off particular options every week. These companions included Biffa, two {dollars} twenty, YUMBL, Infrastructurist and Metropolis Planner Performs. Metropolis Planner Performs has a intelligent edge on this area — Philip, the man behind the builds, labored as an city planner for greater than a decade, and his movies usually embody insights about how real-life cities are designed. He began his channel in mid-2020, and in the present day he’s a devoted Cities: Skylines streamer and video editor with practically 650,000 subscribers on YouTube. Like many different group members, he has a historical past with Colossal Order that spans years.
“Prior to the Cities: Skylines II release, I think that most everyone in the community viewed them incredibly positively, looking at them as ‘one of us’ and the type of developer that you want making a game that you love,” Philip mentioned. “They were viewed as responsive and generous. …I can’t recall a bad thing being said about them.”
That’s precisely what made Hallikainen’s weblog submit on January fifteenth so shocking.
“We have seen a growing tendency of toxicity in our community, something we have not experienced to this extent before,” Hallikainen wrote, clarifying that the negativity was being directed at builders and gamers alike. She continued, “We have always treasured having the devs present on the different social platforms and having direct communication with the community, but our biggest responsibility will always be protecting the team.”
Tensions have been excessive in the Cities: Skylines group since the launch of the sequel in October. Although the sport was initially pitched as a simultaneous PC and console launch, it’s solely obtainable on PC and there’s no concrete timeline for when the different variations will come out. On prime of that, Colossal Order raised the sport’s minimal and beneficial specs only a month earlier than launch, and the new necessities positioned it out of attain for a big chunk of gamers.
Even with a succesful rig, the sport is riddled with visible and mechanical bugs. Philip mentioned Cities: Skylines II strained his RTX 4090 graphics card, making it run at one hundred pc on the most important menu, and he couldn’t play in 4K at launch as a result of the sport was so GPU-bound.
Merely put, it seems like the sport wanted extra time in improvement.
“Since the launch of Cities: Skylines II, things have without a doubt gotten more prickly,” Philip mentioned. “While many people have been appreciative of Colossal Order’s transparency with the weekly updates as well as the frequent bug fixes, many appear to view Colossal Order as being all-too-willing to release a game that wasn’t ready to be released.”
Hallikainen acknowledged that the sport is lacking some promised and extremely publicized options, like mod help.
“Naturally we’re disappointed we weren’t able to achieve everything we aimed for, but it’s fantastic to have the game finally out and continue working on it with more openness,” she mentioned.
The problem, so far as Colossal Order sees it, lies in the group’s response to Cities: Skylines II. Gamers have been venting on social media and in the Steam and Paradox boards, and the suggestions has risen to poisonous ranges, in accordance with Hallikainen. She cites a surge in private assaults on builders and different gamers.
“Cities: Skylines II attracted a lot of attention and very high expectations were set,” she mentioned. “When the game did not fulfill all the promises, it was natural to cause frustration in the audience. However, the shortcomings should spark a conversation on ideas for improvement, constructive feedback and respectful discussions in the community.”
For Metropolis Planner Performs and different group members, the difficulty is the sport itself. The place Colossal Order sees toxicity, Philip sees justified frustration.
“I will admit that I was taken aback by this description of what’s happening in the Cities: Skylines community regarding Cities: Skylines II,” he mentioned. “I have noticed increased negativity. However, I wouldn’t say that I have noticed increased toxicity. And bluntly, I think the negativity is completely understandable and predictable.”
Philip recognized 4 elements driving the damaging sentiment: The sport is simply on PC, it’s buggy and unplayable on many widespread {hardware} configurations, there’s no official help for mods, and Colossal Order hasn’t held itself accountable for the sport’s blunders.
“Colossal Order has been transparent, talking with the community, but has not taken accountability for the release of the game,” Philip mentioned. “I hear this over and over again. Many players appear to want them to admit that the release state of the game was poor, say that they are sorry, and make some gesture to make amends. To date, they have delayed the DLC release — which actually was a huge negative for people that purchased the Ultimate Edition of the game — but not made amends. [They haven’t] provided the information that people are looking for.”
The most important misstep on Philip's record is the lack of mods. Colossal Order is planning so as to add an official pipeline for mods straight by Paradox, reasonably than Steam Workshop, which was the house for mods in Cities: Skylines. Shifting to an in-house modding platform will guarantee parity throughout all platforms, bringing mods to consoles and gamers exterior of Steam. Nonetheless, the Cities: Skylines mod group was constructed on Steam Workshop, a well-liked and easy-to-use platform, and with the delay of the console launch, the present participant base is solely being inconvenienced.
“The maps that come with the game aren’t great — incredibly high difficulty level, unforgiving weather — and many basic features need refinement,” Philip mentioned. “Mods offered that opportunity and they aren’t available just yet. Worst of all, early messaging made it seem like modding was around the corner, weeks after launch, [but it’s been delayed] to some undetermined time in Q2 of 2024.”
Collaboration with the group is what made the unique sport so profitable, and the sequel may definitely profit from crowdsourced enhancements. For now, some gamers are utilizing a third-party instrument to make mods work in Cities: Skylines II.
“The tech is new, the simulation has been entirely rewritten and the game has all the potential to become the city-builder of this decade,” Hallikainen mentioned. “What we failed in was to get the modding support available for the release, and we’re doing our best to catch up. We have been delighted to see the modding community has not waited for us, but are already creating amazing mods for the game.”
That is solely the starting for Cities: Skylines II. Colossal Order has plans to help and increase the sport over the subsequent 10 years. The unique Cities: Skylines didn’t have all of the bells, whistles and mods when it first got here out in 2015, and the sequel is beginning in an identical place. Colossal Order sees Cities: Skylines II as a contemporary basis, however its core group anticipated a extra full expertise.
“The feedback we’ve gotten from the content creators and modders has immensely helped us in heading in the right direction, and we love working in cooperation with different parties,” Hallikainen mentioned. “There’s a lot of work to be done and we plan to keep going for the next decade.”
Cities: Skylines II has improved considerably in the months since launch, due to a slew of updates from Colossal Order. It’s on the proper monitor. Colossal Order continues to publish updates on the sport’s progress every week, however it’ll take time — and perhaps an apology, a plan and free in-game perks — to rewrite the narrative around Cities: Skylines II.
“I think the most ‘toxic’ people right now are the game’s biggest fans,” Philip mentioned. “And bluntly, they are just disappointed that the game doesn’t run well for them or that they can’t play it at all. They’re disappointed and lashing out, which isn’t right. But to me, that means that there is a path to repair the issues if the game is fully fixed and accountability is taken.”
This text initially appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/whats-up-with-the-toxicity-around-cities-skylines-ii-213034938.html?src=rss
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