"If you're on the fence about the sequel, though, I've gotta say that it's really the performance updates you're going to want to watch for, because woof does this game run badly."
Not like this seems to be status quo in game dev for >1 guy game studios right now (sadly).
Just don't buy/pre order or refund after testing and we are all join the patient gamer community.
Haven't bought a modern current-year release since >2 years.
CS1 was notoriously known to be tied to single core CPU performance
I hope at least that got better, this really hit laptop gamer even if they had beefy GPUs in the laptop
Considering the original that came out 10 years ago still eats up my overclocked octocore entirely unmodded and with several DLC disabled, I’m equal parts not surprised and highly concerned. They’ll get it down eventually, but this is one of the issues that Unity always seems to have with most performance heavy simulation games, regardless of whatever tech they throw at the situation (Burst compiled multithread tasks, DOTS ECS, C#/MSIL to native, etc). The engine is just too bloated and has way too many packages by default for this type of resource intensive game.
The game is reported to be fun and it comes with a whole bunch of CS1's most popular utility more built in. I think I can forgive it for not having content parity with every DLC ever released for the first one at launch.
Yeah, I'll probably pick it up once the performance issues have been ironed out. They promised as good or better performance vs C:S, and until they deliver, I'll be waiting. Even better if it takes until their first sale.
Or, and hear me out, re-writing and re-working all the features built over a decade to work in this new game would take so much time and effort that CS2 would either never launch, or not be worth CO’s expense if the game sold at a standard price?
As one of my favorite baduk streamers puts it, "the mistake was earlier".
Using dozens of DLCs to get B2B-grade revenue out of a game sounds like a great business strategy, but as Paradox is EOLing all those games that people have spent hundreds on, I think there is this reaction of "why should I prepare to spend hundreds again?"
I genuinely believe this is a "short term revenue" thing, and will ultimately cost them against a subscription-from-day-1 model. I mean, I doubt I'm the only person who can't bring themselves to even LOOK at Crusader Kings 3. I never touched Sims 4 until it was free. And if EU5 comes out? I'll act the same. Paradox already has more of my money than Blizzard, so more power to them, but how many people like me aren't going to consider buying sequels? It's not about the money, it's about the investment of money. If I were in $500 from subscription fees, I'd feel less harmed than $300 in DLCs for a now-out-of-print game. We humans are a complicated psychology
For me, I'll try em when they're free or when they go full patient-gamer. Which is a shame because Paradox makes excellent games. They just keep making people like me want to wait to pull the trigger.
Sure, I might have made it sound worse that I intended.
I mean... I am not implying is a copy paste thing it requires work specially if the game had important changes, some of which might not be visible to the user.
Yeah we knew this already. It wouldn't even make sense in any case since a lot of the core mechanics are different now.
Like all the industry DLC stuff wouldn't make sense with the new economy system. And all of the content creator packs wouldn't make sense with the different art style and zoning systems.
Well obviously. It’s a new game and adapting the DLC would be costly. Is CS going to face this ridiculous critique that people apply to The Sims all the time too?
Dude it's Paradox. They're the 3rd most dlc-greedy company after EA and Train Sim. Wait until the dlc goes to at least 50% off or just skip it. They'll keep doing it if it keeps being profitable. Don't just pay full price ever, especially brand new. Have a little self restraint.
IDK, I like Paradox's DLC policy. It sure beats paying full price every year or two for a simple refresh. Their games fit really well into a continually developed model, and they need something to fund continued development.
Paradox has long maintained a DLC policy based around their permanent improvement and development of their games. I don't get what is greedy about genuinely expanding their games with content that wouldn't have been in the base game and charging money for it. Some of the DLC may indeed be on the more expensive side, but calling their entire policy greedy is simplistic and just trying to bunch them in with companies trying to rip you off. Sure, there's been cases where some of Paradox DLC has been egregious, but frankly, the standard case is that they clearly added onto the game that otherwise wouldn't have been there at all.
To propose one of the titles where this works best is Stellaris. I genuinely mean it, take a look at that games post release development and tell me that Paradox is being genuinely greedy. Just because something is long term profitable doesn't make them necessarily immoral.
Opinion: Well some mods and features probably got included in base game so it wouldn't make sense to just redo them if they are already there as QoL features.
And the whole specific-house-as-a-feature thing is done by Sims since all eternetiy.
DLCs aren't a bad thing, the problem is a game company releasing a game WITH one or two DLC's at the same time the game comes out. A DLC adds content that was not available at release, but should not make it an extra greedy money grabbing scheme.
Only dumbasses and entitled people would expect a brand new game to have total feature and asset parity to a game that had 10 years of updates, DLC and freaking mods.
I honestly feel confident CS2 will become a much more complete and better city builder than CS1. And from everything I’ve seen (haven’t played it yet), it’s already better in many ways. Like MIXED ZONING. That’s so major I barely care for anything else tbh.
EDIT: Softened my statements because I didn't like them on reread.
This COULD become the Sims equation problem all over again. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt until I've tried it.
The Sims 3 with all expansions is simply a much better game overall than Sims 4 base game. And since there's no "sequel story", you basically just have a "lower quality rerelease"
I can't find accurate purchase/play figures, but Sims 4 pivoting to F2P last year supports my thoughts on that. In terms of quality, a HD graphics DLC would have been a better value and made them more money.
Except not, because having fewer players give them more money seems to be the new model. More power to em. I really wish "Life By You" wasn't the only Sims alternative coming out. Paradox is definitely much better than EA, but they're not perfect either.
There’s also Paralives in the works too! I hope they all succeed so they can make EA start sweating before they release a very obviously worse Sims 5. 🙏