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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq9uRwVLf6c Short cool video on using submerged pedestrian roads to make harbor walls that can have grass right up to the edge of the retaining wall.
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Nov 4, 2023 16:16
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| # ? Jun 6, 2024 00:18 |
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With respect to production chains, city services, and unlock points all being kinda "useless", Cities 2 is still very much a city painter where the goal is to solve the traffic problems you created. Much of the game's progression is not required if all you want is to see the population number go up. There are no new real issues to solve if you keep your transportation infrastructure making sense and you upgrade the mass transit options as they come along. The increased depth vis a vis CS 1 appears, to me at least, to be in the form of making it harder to get the city that you might want to make (level 5 buildings). In CS1, you pretty much spam services to make buildings levels go up and that was it. Land value goes up and building levels correspondingly rise. CS2 throws in new wrenches into this mix with the rent mechanic actively tied to leveling up buildings since people and companies using the buildings need to actually increase net profits to reinvest into the building itself. How companies create profit to pay for workers and make goods appears to have a billion soft levers. https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines-ii/features/economy-production outlines what theoretically should be happening so there are ton of things you can try and tweak to keep the building levels to keep going up. You can also theoretically self sabotage yourself by accidentally jacking land values up so much that it stops certain zones from even spawning. I did that to myself when I spammed enough services where I wad pricing everyone out of single family homes. There may be an effect I am investigating where your population might even be too educated for certain industries since wages are tied to education levels and not the actual job (according to dev diary) since a segment of my industries can even grow while others are at lvl 5. So this game is potentially both entirely too easy and annoyingly complex depending on what your goals are. Several issues though. For the city painter type that just want to see pop number go up, CS2 has fewer assets and variety of things to paint than its predecessor. No getting around that fact. Even well manicured cities in the 200k range look same-y with not enough ploppable landmarks and variety in growables to keep things interesting. The total derth of information on the UI makes min-max people like me extremely annoyed at times and feeds into the "progression" doesn't matter narrative that one poster has described. Both of us appear to be unable to generate lvl 5 high-rises right. I can't tell why my warehousing part of my industrial economy is tanking and thus I can't make informed decisions on what to do. Say I wanted to fix my lvl 4 dense residential problem. There is no way for me to click on a building and get a readout on who lives there, what their education levels are or whether the inhabitants are all relatively equal having capped out on their revenues vs expenses or whether I just have too many proletariat in the building who can't help the 1% in the building push the final level. Maybe they are all 1% cims but I jacked up land value too high or I haven't helped the offices and industries enough to inflate their wages (supposedly revenue is split 50/50 between company and workers). Maybe I need to lower taxes on the educated. Maybe I to hike taxes on the under educated to drive them out? I don't have the information to decide what knob to turn. This pervades all zones in the game. There are even more unconfirmed theories I have come across where things like medical care might not matter if your cims can't pay service fees if they are sick so your coverage might be good but the potential exists for cims to be house rich but money poor and they loving die going without medical care. How can I tell though? No graphs to my knowledge show death to high service fees. Is my hospital just empty because no one can afford it? This partially feeds into the progression tree. A lot of the expensive stuff are city wide buffs which increases efficiency of companies which should in turn theoretically raise wages and help level poo poo up. Similarly, many buildings, especially the communications stuff, offer large area bonuses to entertainment to offset penalties such as small homes. Finally, with so many knobs with so many knockon effects, it is very difficult to tell what is working and what is not. Can I not get my lvl 5 residential because something is not calculated right? Is it working as intended and I not solving a legitimate problem due to lack of information? Or is this tiny part of simulation just not tuned right and if they try to adjust it, what knock on effects are there since everything is so interconnected. This game probably needs 2 years to really dial down all the issues to make it what the developers wanted it to be and I don't think it was ever going to be released well balanced without crowd sourcing QA with regards to certain aspects of the simulation. The technical errors on launch however and the outright bugs we do know about (garbage, mail, cargo etc) should not be excused on these grounds. Despite all this, I still have a strange compulsive urge to play. I hope they keep at it.
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Nov 4, 2023 16:47
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MikeC posted:Despite all this, I still have a strange compulsive urge to play. I hope they keep at it. Great effort post. I share your sentiment too.
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Nov 4, 2023 17:12
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I revamped my entire bus system (taxi too) since I just randomly put stops anywhere and connected them. And coming back from pause I have about 200 taxis all over the place  Grand Fromage, with your bus usage, have you tweaked the cost per ride at all? I know you got your sims to pay $50 for parking curious if the bus price will have any effect on usage.
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Nov 4, 2023 17:45
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I haven't experimented with transit fees but I'm charging $4 for everything at the moment and all parking city wide is $25. Should go back and make transit free now that my city is making a profit. I hate that the adjustments are only per line and you have to reopen the entire interface every time you want to change lines.
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Nov 4, 2023 17:53
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Subsidise free public transport by jacking up parking fees. 
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Nov 4, 2023 17:57
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 Is there something to do to the poison clouds? Or must I always build industry downwind? Wind direction and speed never change apparently? Also why the gently caress the "Tampere" map is so windy.
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Nov 4, 2023 18:01
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Ihmemies posted:
Says the weather in Tampere has 29kph winds right now, Chicago, Toronto, and New York (notably windy cities) are all around 10-15kph. So guess they got that right, Tampere sounds windy as heck.
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Nov 4, 2023 18:11
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Basically that means I can't build any industry ever upwind from population. That isn't how things work IRL. That doesn't make any sense. Can I just disable air pollution?
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Nov 4, 2023 18:15
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Ihmemies posted:Basically that means I can't build any industry ever upwind from population. That isn't how things work IRL. That doesn't make any sense. Can I just disable air pollution? If you enable developer mode you may be able to change the weather so that wind is really low? Not sure, I may check it out next time I play.
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Nov 4, 2023 18:18
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Ihmemies posted:Basically that means I can't build any industry ever upwind from population. That isn't how things work IRL. That doesn't make any sense. Can I just disable air pollution? Not until mods. The game having nothing but 19th century smokestack industry is kind of stupid. I guess the idea is office zones are your clean workplaces, instead of the SimCity 4 method of having high tech industry that didn't pollute, but it doesn't make much sense. There should be all kinds of light industrial stuff and manufacturing that isn't just pouring poison into the air and ground and can be mixed into the city. Multiple industrial zone types would be nice. There's supposedly air pollution from cars too but it's so slight it doesn't affect anything.
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Nov 4, 2023 18:21
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Also usually the idea of smokestacks was, that the smoke wafts over the city, and doesn't land to the neighbour 2km away. Oh well. The city plan doesn't make much sense if I have to put industry where people should live, just because of the wind. But it is what it is.
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Nov 4, 2023 18:32
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I tried zoning a bunch of 2x2 high density offices plots, and they all spawned the exact same 16 floor building. Is that really the only 2x2 high density office building model in the base game? Actually, why is there no middle ground between "single-story offices" and "pin-needle skyscraper offices" in this game.
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Nov 4, 2023 18:41
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There are not very many building models. I try not to make bad faith assumptions but the lack of variety plus this pack of thousands of assets coming with the workshop feels like outsourcing the building work to the community. Which given how weird the buildings in the game are, and as someone who played CS1 with zero vanilla assets enabled, I guess is a whatever to me.
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Nov 4, 2023 18:45
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I wish they introduce smaller schools too. These are absolutely ginormous, every single one. You basically need a whole rear end city block for one college.
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Nov 4, 2023 18:45
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nielsm posted:I tried zoning a bunch of 2x2 high density offices plots, and they all spawned the exact same 16 floor building. Is that really the only 2x2 high density office building model in the base game? My theory is that they spent a lot of time doing the residential zones and assets, which have a pretty good diversity and balance to them, then ran out of time for commercial, offices, and industry. As a result, you only get low density offices (tiny) and high density offices (Midtown Manhattan skyscrapers where 10 people work). The low density commercial ends up being a lot of gas stations, and maybe some fast food? The high density commercial tooltip says stuff like malls, theatres, big box stores -- none of those are in the game for the zone, its just medium density residential buildings with commercial signs on them. Industry is only heavy manufacturing industry with smokestacks, or the awkward and bare specialized industry. I pray that over time they actually finish those off. piratepilates fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Nov 4, 2023 |
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Nov 4, 2023 18:47
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Grand Fromage posted:There are not very many building models. I try not to make bad faith assumptions but the lack of variety plus this pack of thousands of assets coming with the workshop feels like outsourcing the building work to the community. it is outsourcing work to the community, they've hired modders to make official content for the game before
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Nov 4, 2023 19:00
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I don't mind them outsourcing work to the community, especially since they're a small studio, the community has some great quality content, and they get paid through creator packs and such. But they.....kinda need to have it available for us to use, first. The assets in the game that got shipped are......lacking.
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Nov 4, 2023 19:01
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turn off the TV posted:it is outsourcing work to the community, they've hired modders to make official content for the game before Hiring modders to make the content creator packs in the first game is completely different. That's paid work that people are being contracted to do. I have no problem with that at all. These upcoming packs are free. If they are being paid and CO was just like yeah we don't have time to make this many buildings so we're going to hire a bunch of you to do it, then I also am 100% fine with that. If they are unpaid and CO was relying on that to fill out their building roster, that's kind of lovely. But the only people who would know if that is what's going on are at CO and not in this thread. I'm not going to assume that's what's happening.
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Nov 4, 2023 19:06
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I don't know why people keep saying that milestones have you set for money because in my experience it's a chunk of change but then you drop like 2 million for a hospital and run on fumes until the next milestone. Sorting out your economy seems to be crucial, or maybe I'm just a moron with managing my city. 
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Nov 4, 2023 19:09
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Dr. Clockwork posted:I don't know why people keep saying that milestones have you set for money because in my experience it's a chunk of change but then you drop like 2 million for a hospital and run on fumes until the next milestone. Sorting out your economy seems to be crucial, or maybe I'm just a moron with managing my city. Look at the costs of the services. The hospital is extremely expensive compared to clinics, you don't need to build one until the city is larger and making tons of cash. As long as you don't overbuild services it's pretty hard to run out of money. Also remember that CS2 added out of town services, if you don't supply healthcare (or police or whatever) at all people will go to neighboring cities for it. It's lovely compared to having healthcare in town, but it will keep things functional until you can provide it.
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Nov 4, 2023 19:13
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Grand Fromage posted:Not until mods. The game having nothing but 19th century smokestack industry is kind of stupid. I guess the idea is office zones are your clean workplaces, instead of the SimCity 4 method of having high tech industry that didn't pollute, but it doesn't make much sense. There should be all kinds of light industrial stuff and manufacturing that isn't just pouring poison into the air and ground and can be mixed into the city. Multiple industrial zone types would be nice. Yeah, I'd kill for a light/medium/heavy I continuum: Light as moderate to strong noise and nil to weak air/ground, held back by only handling the final step before consumer use and by being either low wage/high employment per tile (textiles, food) or high wage/low employment per tile (machining, garages) Medium as moderate in all pollution categories, produces most technical goods/pharma, largeish buildings per job, requires higher education Heavy as the stuff you absolutely have to put downwind and with a significant greenspace buffer, focused heavily towards large plots with lots of decently-paying jobs in extraction or raw material processing With a final setup that envisions light woven into mixed-use neighborhoods, medium ending up in certain strips, and heavy as entire districts down an exit or on the worse parts of the waterfront.
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Nov 4, 2023 19:28
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Does mixing NA/EU styles help with the sameness of the cities? Or does it look too jarring?
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Nov 4, 2023 19:40
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It helps some. Most of the buildings are just kind of weird and don't make a lot of sense in either style so it isn't jarring.
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Nov 4, 2023 19:55
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Dr. Clockwork posted:Does anyone have some screenshots of their cool cities? I know this game is dumb and bad but I wanna see what you built. I'm a little late for this, but here is Cooltown, town for only cool people.  Population 42069 
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Nov 4, 2023 20:01
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Grand Fromage posted:There are not very many building models. I try not to make bad faith assumptions but the lack of variety plus this pack of thousands of assets coming with the workshop feels like outsourcing the building work to the community. Probably not so much a deliberate decision to let the modders do all the work as--and this is the pretty clear story told by almost everything about this game--the publisher forced it out the door a good 6 months before it was ready. Art was just as far behind as systems and bug testing.
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Nov 4, 2023 20:14
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Eric the Mauve posted:the publisher forced it out the door a good 6 months before it was ready. Art was just as far behind as systems and bug testing. What’s the industry justification for pushing things out before they’re done baking? I feel like I see it happen with so many big games now. Are there financial deadlines that are at odds with game dev progress? If those deadlines are missed is the publisher suddenly in the red until the product is out? Is there some scenario where, by not putting a hard release date, the devs just keep adding extra things left and right until the game never comes out? I feel like there has to be some incredibly compelling force that prefers a broken game with terrible reviews over something that lands really well.
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Nov 4, 2023 20:27
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I have no idea. I don't think Paradox is hurting for money. The fact that the console version was delayed and PC wasn't makes me think there's some difference in the contracts.
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Nov 4, 2023 20:29
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Eiba posted:I haven't played a ton, but at best it feels like booze in 1800. You do not need to do anything with the production chain. Setting it up doesn't unlock anything. Everything will just automatically buy what it needs if you don't have it. But if you do set it up you somehow end up with a whole lot more money. That's a shame. I guess I'll wait for a mod or an expansion focused on production chains and think about getting the game then.
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Nov 4, 2023 20:40
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buglord posted:What’s the industry justification for pushing things out before they’re done baking? I feel like I see it happen with so many big games now. Are there financial deadlines that are at odds with game dev progress? If those deadlines are missed is the publisher suddenly in the red until the product is out? Is there some scenario where, by not putting a hard release date, the devs just keep adding extra things left and right until the game never comes out? I feel like there has to be some incredibly compelling force that prefers a broken game with terrible reviews over something that lands really well. The only thing that matters to a publicly traded corporation is this quarter's revenue. CEO goes to shareholders meeting, projects $X million in revenue from the launch of Cities:Skylines 2. If it gets delayed into the next quarter and the company misses its revenue projection, numbers go down, CEO gets fired. Yes other publicly traded companies much bigger than Paradox have delayed big titles before, so I'm not saying it's impossible. But since Paradox's business model was already built around the DLCs, they probably felt more comfortable forcing CO to publish whatever they've got right now, book the revenue, and keep working on it. There isn't that much downside for players, I don't think--if you don't want to pay to be a beta tester, just don't. Buy it in a couple years when it's finally in a release-worthy state, and has all the core mods, and will probably be on sale. Eric the Mauve fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Nov 4, 2023 |
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Nov 4, 2023 20:47
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buglord posted:What’s the industry justification for pushing things out before they’re done baking?
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Nov 4, 2023 21:01
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Grand Fromage posted:The fact that the console version was delayed and PC wasn't makes me think there's some difference in the contracts. Console manufacturers have hard rules against really bad frame drops or generally bad frame rates
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Nov 4, 2023 21:07
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It looks like they still haven't fixed that Windows Fullscreen mode just runs at desktop resolution, instead of rendering at the resolution specified and then scaled to desktop.
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Nov 4, 2023 21:14
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bagmonkey posted:You do know that a bunch of CS1 modders got early access to both the game and modding tools, right? CO actually made a pretty decent play on CS2 mods if you ask me, the people who make the mods already have access so that when the general population finally gets access, there's actually useful and good poo poo in the mod shop. It's gonna be much better overall from what I've read as Steam Workshop is somewhat restrictive and isn't super deep feature wise, Paradox mods is supposed to fix that. Didn't know that, but as the other guy pointed out yesterday it's already got more peak players than CS1 ever had, so it's in good shape going forward. It beat the first game's top player count on Steam and that's not even considering all the people who will have tried it out on gamepass. I had thought it fell on its rear end out the gate because of the mixed reviews and people complaining about performance stuff, but it's already snagged a healthy audience for its genre.
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Nov 4, 2023 21:50
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Eric the Mauve posted:The only thing that matters to a publicly traded corporation is this quarter's revenue. the poor reviews matter, those can alter bonuses, lead to communities moving on, etc. it hasn't quite caught up to paradox yet but it will, once they get that stink on them it's almost impossible to remove
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Nov 4, 2023 21:56
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Yeah what impression I have of Paradox is generally positive but the last two games I've bought from them have been like barely functional early beta poo poo and I'm not enthused about it. CS2 is a lot more playable than Star Trek Infinite at least.
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Nov 4, 2023 22:02
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Grand Fromage posted:Yeah what impression I have of Paradox is generally positive but the last two games I've bought from them have been like barely functional early beta poo poo and I'm not enthused about it. CS2 is a lot more playable than Star Trek Infinite at least. Same, Victoria 3 and CS2 have made me weary (despite me playing both of them anyway like a rube). Lamplighters League was a complete write-off too. They had a lot of leeway when they were a smaller publisher, but I think people are running out of patience for Paradox's tendencies.
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Nov 4, 2023 22:05
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Mad Wack posted:the poor reviews matter, those can alter bonuses, lead to communities moving on, etc. It may catch up to Paradox but not to the executives involved personally, who will have made off with their bonuses and golden parachutes. It's the quintessential moral hazard of the modern corporation.
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Nov 4, 2023 22:08
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buglord posted:What’s the industry justification for pushing things out before they’re done baking? I feel like I see it happen with so many big games now. Are there financial deadlines that are at odds with game dev progress? If those deadlines are missed is the publisher suddenly in the red until the product is out? Is there some scenario where, by not putting a hard release date, the devs just keep adding extra things left and right until the game never comes out? I feel like there has to be some incredibly compelling force that prefers a broken game with terrible reviews over something that lands really well. It's an Earnings thing, Paradox is publicly traded and Old Fredrik Wester only owns a third of the company these days, that means you have to satisfy the big investors, Tencent owns just under 10% and if they don't get whatever target they need, some poor fuckers getting into deep trouble with the Party, there's an investment fund called Spiltan that basically acted as an angel investor for Paradox in the early days, if they need more funds for other investment, they need earnings to keep the share price up, so they can either sell or use them as collateral for additional funding, loving State Street in loving Boston has money in Paradox and so on. It's the precise same story as all the other games that are obviously released way to early, someone needed some good PR for the stock markets and out go a de-facto Early Access game, at full price of course. And obviously, on a much smaller scale.
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Nov 4, 2023 23:09
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| # ? Jun 6, 2024 00:18 |
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chadbear posted:Great effort post. I share your sentiment too. It's got problems but is still a great game to zen out and play while listening to a podcast. Edible(s) optional. PDX doesn't have a habit of abandoning games either. There'll be tweaks and updates for sure.
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Nov 5, 2023 03:19
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