Well, Cities: Skylines 2 is here, and it's another broken game release.

Yeah, my thought is that this is a game they'll be supporting for 8-9 years so what the fuck does it matter if it runs like dogshit on day one? Don't fucking buy it until the performance increases and the problems you mentioned are ironed out.

It really is that simple.

Anyone that expected this game to be perfect on launch was clearly not around whenever Cities: Skylines launched. The performance was godawful to the point that I refunded it. A couple of months and a couple of patches later shit was cleared up and I repurchased it. Didn't have an issue after that.

So yeah, the whole "Why doesn't this brand new game not have the same performance and features as a nine year old game with numerous DLCs and mods?" thing is getting fucking tiresome.

There's many things I can overlook here but the lack of bikes nixed my hype fully. I don't want to build car hell yet again. I can leave the house if I wanna see that.

Those same streamers are also reporting 16GB of RAM usage when loading up a new map, which means that the minimum recommended spec of 8GB was a blatant lie from the devs.

I'm not saying this is necessarily the case, but just because a game uses 16gb of ram on a 32gb system does not been it can't make do with 8gb on a more limited system.

Not having 60 fps might be an issue for a shooter or anything that is built on fast reactions, but it doesn't really sound like an issue in a city builder.

I don't know, this whole 60fps thing is a new demand from gamers. Frankly I don't care about reviews anymore. Everyone skews negative, and I'm tired of it.

My hard takes:

• 60fps doesn't matter. It's not a shooter. Even CS1 I could only get 50ish on a new map, and that's with hardware that's 6 years newer than the game.
• RAM should be used. For gaming it would be wasteful not to use it. If you aren't using all your ram then you're loading textures, shaders, and everything from disk, which is thousands of times slower and that would lead to .. you guessed it, gamers bitching about lag. What are you using that ram for anyway when you're gaming that's a higher priority? If you're watching someone and they're complaining that a game is using too much ram shut them off. They don't how computers work. These aren't the days of 256MB of ram. I have 32 gigs. I want them to use it.
• Marketers are paid to lie. They don't understand what the game can do, they're paid to sell it. Cyberpunk was disappointing for many because they believed marketers running unleashed, saying the game would be a revolution, that it would be gaming evolved. It wasn't. Instead gamers "only" got a fun open world RPG and they were disappointed by it. (And bugs, they had legit concerns but marketing was stupid around that game and every one of their marketers should have been fired )
• I find that people who watch reviewers are exponentially more disappointed in games because they let reviewers tell them how to feel. If you want to start enjoying games more, stop letting them tell you if you should be disappointed. They're going for clicks and views, and the rage train gets a lot of them. Just try it and return it if you don't like it.

I haven't watched anything and I'm excited. I'm not "hyped", I don't think it will redefine city building forever. I think I will enjoy my time in a game that is by definition an iteration of the franchise. Maybe it'll be great. Maybe it'll be worse than the first, but I'm going to decide that myself, not let some reviewer begging me for a subscribe tell me.

I mostly agree with this post, but

the focus of Cities: Skylines has always been on building beautiful cities (vs. having a realistic simulation)

this is simply not true

even with RTX 4090s and lowering the graphics to 1440p medium settings. Based on utilization numbers, it sounds like the GPU is limiting factor here.

What are the CPU utilization numbers? C:S is a notoriously CPU-first game, particularly with mods. If your CPU can't calculate more than 10fps, you won't get more than 10fps.

Those same streamers are also reporting 16GB of RAM usage when loading up a new map, which means that the minimum recommended spec of 8GB was a blatant lie from the devs.

It starts (barebones, slow as hell) with 8GB. You want 32GB or more for it to run somewhate decently.

Seriously, people don't understand what "cache" means, maybe they should just create a ramdisk and install the game there to understand the concept.

If I wanted a mature, well-performing city-building game experience I'll play Cities: Skylines 1.

From the reviews on that page, it sounds like Colossal Order delivered on the features it promised, but has lots of performance optimization left to do. By the sounds of it, on my laptop I'll probably get 20fps and occasional stuttering on my gaming laptop by 10k population. I will see whether it is playable for my standards once it officially releases. I'd probably expect many game updates addressing performance and bugs in the first 6 months of release.

The demand and happiness mechanics are fundamentally different so it's important not to try to play it like CS1 and expect the same results.

I've been looking forward to this game for months. Can't wait for Tuesday, I'm theirs to disappoint.

E: corrected developer

Between this and Star Trek: Infinite seems like Paradox's new MO is to set unreasonable deadlines and rush games to release. You should basically consider all their games early access at this point, except they'll charge you for updates. They've learned that a buggy half-baked release wont effect their sales, and they can just patch the game and crank out new features as dlc.

And that for a game that looks like shit.

Well, maybe this is why AMD is bringing back threadripper?

My suspicion is that the game would have been delayed had the new Harebrained Schemes game not just flopped.

Well that's disappointing. Also noticed this review: https://www.gamesradar.com/cities-skylines-2-review/

I can't say I'm surprised. I was wondering whether I should jump in on day 1, since I played C:S 1 pretty heavily, and want to support the devs, but this definitely means I'll be waiting at least a few patches.

I never play these types of games but I distinctly remember my friend having a full on meltdown about how fucked up the first Cities Skylines was like a decade ago, lol.

Game companies get greedier, gamers want bigger and better experiences for less money, investors want higher returns, computers aren't getting faster at the same rate and the game industry can afford to treat it's employees like shit because there's always going to be a constant stream of new people who want to work in it.

Can you at least make perpendicular roads easily? I had trouble doing that in the first game.

A game like this is not going to release without bugs. It's just not going to happen. Expect Colossal to patch it fairly rapidly and over the course of a few years release all of the DLC that will make it feel like a rich city building experience. For now, I'll stick to C:S1. No need for the pitchforks and torches.

It feels like every Paradox sequel is worse than the previous game lately. CK3 is garbage compared to CK2 for instance, even after years of DLC.

That's disappointing. Some level of unmet expectations are to be, well, expected for a sequel to such a cultural behemoth as Cities: Skylines, but it sounds like Colossal Order made some sacrifices on the release date altar. Such a shame.

There's a pretty easy fix to games launching in a sorry state: stop preordering

On days like this I ask myself if the reason games are released that broken is because there are no real software engineers in the game industry. Like a carmack with doom. Someone who understands the technical site of things.

I mostly play CS1 with mods (but very infrequently), and now it seems I’ll stick to that for the time being