I don’t really understand how people make the review threads, but we’re sitting at a 77 on OpenCritic right now. Many were worried about game performance after the recommended specs were released, but it looks like it’s even worse than we expected. It sounds like the game is mostly a solid release except for the performance issues, but they really are that bad.

  • Popular Cities: Skylines 1 streamers are reporting that they are not able to achieve a consistent 60 fps, 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.
  • 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.
  • IGN and other reviewers are reporting that the game does not self-level building plots, which is something that C:S1 did pretty well. This leads to every plot looking like this:

this

Maybe not a big deal to some, but the focus of Cities: Skylines has always been on building beautiful cities (vs. having a realistic simulation), so this feels like a betrayal of Colossal Order’s own design philosophy.

Personally, this is a pretty big bummer for me. I like C:S1 a lot, but I find it hard to get into a gameflow that feels good unless I commit to mods pretty hard, and that means a steeper learning curve. For this reason, I tend to have more fun just watching other people play the game. I was looking forward to C:S2 as a great jumping on point to really dig into city-building myself. Maybe I’m being too harsh here because of my personal disappointment - many don’t really care about hitting 60fps, but those same people also tend to not build top-end PCs. And it sounds like if you don’t have a top-end PC, you’re looking at sub 30 fps, and I think most agree that that is borderline unplayable.

Anyone else have thoughts on this one?

  • hiddengoat@kbin.social
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    8 months ago

    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.

    • Rolder@reddthat.com
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      8 months ago

      I don’t think it’s crazy to expect games to have playable performance levels when they release. Not to mention it’s a sequel so you’d think they would learn some things after fixing the first one.

      • 1simpletailer@startrek.website
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        Yeah the fucks up with all the Paradox apologia in this thread? I also remember Cities: Skylines on release It ran fine and my rig was shitty back then. It was a perfectly functional little city builder. People loved it and it was called the new Sim City! “Just wait two years and put down another $50 on dlc bro. Ur dumb for expecting it to be good now.” Nah this shits unacceptable. If a game needs to be supported for years before its considered good then an honest developer would call it an early access game. Ya know, those games that get years of support, updates, and features for free.

        • nix
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          8 months ago

          Colossal Order is the dev, Paradox is just the publisher. Paradox deserves crap for their many mistakes, but this one isn’t theirs.

          • smoothbrain coldtakes@lemmy.ca
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            Yeah but it’s Paradox as the publisher who is the one setting the parameters of them having to build a game that is designed to support 10 years of DLC like all of their other products because that’s their monetization strategy.

          • 1simpletailer@startrek.website
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            8 months ago

            Publishers still have a lot of power in a games development. They can set deadlines and dictate the direction they want a games development to take. Seeing as this is a recurring problem with games Paradox both develops and publishes, its easy to see who is to blame here.

        • bermuda@beehaw.org
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          8 months ago

          DLC part pisses me off also. I know this game isn’t developed by Paradox but it seems to be a trend in Paradox games where you need to spend the base price + an absurd amount of extra money to get the developer’s “true vision” or whatever. It’s really annoying.

          To get most of the base game features that are currently present in Crusader Kings III, you would’ve had to spend a sizeable chunk of cash on DLC for Crusader Kings II.

      • PupBiru@kbin.social
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        8 months ago

        i’m sure they learned plenty of things about the old game engine they built

        and now they have a new one… which was the whole point

      • CoderKat@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        I completely agree. I think the point of the commenter you’re replying to is that this is the kind of game that will fix these eventually. It’s still disappointing for a launch, but eventually it will probably become better than CS1.

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        8 months ago

        It’s not, don’t buy games on day one. Let the other suckers pay to beta test it. Once it’s fixed in a few years, you can buy it for a discount.

        • nix
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          8 months ago

          I just bought Fallout 4 GOTY for $5 the other day. Look forward to doing the same in a few years when Cyberpunk 2077 has a final release with everything fixed and polished. There’s so many good old games, why buy anything brand new.

          And this doesn’t forgive devs for buggy initial releases either, because I’m not throwing money at something until it’s actually done.

          • entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org
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            The base game of 2077 is pretty good now that 2.0 is out. My biggest issie with it at launch was the lack of cyberspace for hacker player characters. Felt like the game was funneling me towards standard FPS gameplay, even if there are a lot of options within that realm

          • jonne@infosec.pub
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            8 months ago

            Exactly this. No man’s Sky is apparently decent nowadays too.

            Part of the issue is that publishers make studies sign contracts with fixed release dates, with heavy penalties for delays (even though basically any software project ends up going over time).

            But yeah, just go through the backlog of older games, this way you also don’t need the latest PC either to play on max settings.

        • jarfil@beehaw.org
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          Preorders. It used to be that you had to preorder the LOTR special edition on DVD with figurines to make sure the shop had existences… then Kickstarter bastardized it into “pay to maybe get something”… and Steam jumped onto the bandvagon of “pay hoping it might work some day”.

          • lud@lemm.ee
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            Not sure how the point about Kickstarter is relevant but it’s not Steams fault devs are releasing unfinished games.

            And I wouldn’t say it went straight to bad digital preorders. I feel like that is a more recent phenomenon and digital preorders were better years ago.

            • jarfil@beehaw.org
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              8 months ago

              Not wanting to make you feel old, but… No Man’s Sky botched preorder release was 7 years ago (2016).

              I mentioned Kickstarter (est. 2009) as a stepping stone in getting people used to pay for not-yet-existing stuff.

        • nix
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          8 months ago

          deleted by creator

      • saigot@lemmy.ca
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        8 months ago

        I’d much rather play the game in its current state than waiting 3 or 4 months, i have a pretty beefy system and i dont mind low framerates in a strategy game. If you don’t feel the same then don’t pick it up, wait the 3 or 4 months and enjoy it then.

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      8 months ago

      The problem is that they don’t communicate this and still ask for the full price.

      Imagine I’m a gamer who wants to buy and play a working game today, not in half a year. Nothing on their store page indicates that the game isn’t in a playable state yet, so I’d pay full price for a game I can’t actually play. That’s misleading at best, and a downright fraud at worst.

      They could easily fix this by delaying the game or launching it as early access for people who don’t mind playtesting a half-finished game, but they didn’t.

        • shrugal@lemm.ee
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          This is not what I’m talking about, because the vast majority of people buying the game won’t have seen this. It’s not enough that the info is somewhere on the internet, it needs to be front and center when buying the game.

        • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
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          Did they do so on the store page, or the news section connected to it? Or was it only announced on news sites no one reads?

            • SugarApplePie@beehaw.org
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              I doubt the average player looks up whether the devs came out to warn players their game runs like shit before buying it, I think they just buy it. Similar to how people probably don’t check to see if a movie director has mentioned how bad the sound mixing and lighting is in a movie before going to watch it. Might be a crazy take but imo the onus isn’t on the person buying the game to make sure the game is finished, let alone looking up articles on the game to make sure the devs didn’t admit that it runs like ass and isn’t finished. Though with how often it happens and how often there’s people that excuse it maybe that’s where we’re at now, you reap what you sow and whatnot lol

              • Contend6248@feddit.de
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                Anyone buying a full price title without looking it up with a quick Google search or reading reviews on Steam is far gone from my compassion.

                You can even refund it so easy it’s not even worth the outcry and i don’t even pretend to care about anyone pre-ordering digital downloads.

                It’s shitty that these devs have to put the games out too early, but it would save everybody’s money and nerves if you just start to see releases today as early access because that’s what they all are. There are many companies out there which don’t say a peep and i won’t wreck anyone who at least tries to give a heads-up !pre-release! which anyone who cares could get easily for free.

                • SugarApplePie@beehaw.org
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                  8 months ago

                  Anyone buying a full price title without looking it up with a quick Google search or reading reviews on Steam is far gone from my compassion.

                  lol, some things go without saying

      • tocopherol@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        8 months ago

        It’s kind of baffling how we accept this as pretty much the standard for major releases these days. Why would we be okay buying anything else like this? If I bought a pair of shoes and they had issues that made them unwearable until I got them repaired I would be irritated as fuck, and obviously this would be unacceptable for a store to sell them like that.

    • aivoton@sopuli.xyz
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      We didn’t have god damn tunnels in CS1 when it was released and people were raging about the city being limited to 9 tiles.

      If company admitted performance issues before release is the hill that these people are willing to die on, well go ahead then. Back then the alternative was either cities platinum series or the abomination sim city became and neither of those was any good. At least now you have something more modern than sim city 4 to fall back on if CS2 disappoints.

    • saigot@lemmy.ca
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      Games like this are also pretty palatable at low framerates imo, certainly much better than an fps or something. If the gameplay is solid I’ll definitely pick it up. I like to have it as a second monitor game.

    • twistedtxb@lemmy.ca
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      Its not good for the general aura surrounding the release. I don’t follow the game actively but all I hear is negativity.

    • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
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      The problem is, this sets a precedence in the gaming industry (and in the consumer’s minds too) that it’s fine to consume 16 GB of RAM, not on a late game megacity but on a new save.

  • DonPiano@feddit.de
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    8 months ago

    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.

    • tocopherol@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      No bikes??? I hadn’t heard that, one of the most satisfying things about playing C:S1 to me was making great bike routes and useful public transit, without bikes I really don’t feel a drive to play this one now honestly hah. Maybe they are going the Sims route where all the useful basic things they added in the previous edition will be released over time as DLC, ffs.

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        I don’t think the first Cities Skylines shipped with bikes either? Wasn’t it part of the After Dark DLC? Or maybe that was just bike lanes? I hate the DLC for Paradox games… It’s so confusing that I think I’m just not going to buy their games anymore.

        • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          This is why most people wait a couple years after a Paradox game comes out. They’re fantastic games…once you have the DLC.

        • Crotaro@beehaw.org
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          You’re right. After Dark was one of the first(?) DLCs and I’m not sure if bikes were part of that or the eco-friendly DLC but bikes definitely are not part of the vanilla experience (I have quite a few DLCs that are important to me and no bikes yet)

        • Minnels@lemm.ee
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          They usually give a lot of free stuff at the same patch even if you don’t buy the dlc.

      • DonPiano@feddit.de
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        I mean… If I want to build a hell, I still want options.

        Like, realistic space use for car hell would be interesting but maybe sometimes I wanna build a university on a hill and student housing at the top of a different hill and to get to class you have to bike up a hill both ways.

  • saigot@lemmy.ca
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    8 months ago

    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.

    • cnnrduncan@beehaw.org
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      Yeah IMO it’s far better for games like Cities Skylines to use as much RAM as they can - especially once mods start coming out! I’ve had times where my heavily modded version of CS1 wanted 16+ gb of memory because loading assets from RAM is way faster than loading from SSD/HDD!

  • YMS@kbin.social
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    8 months ago

    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.

    • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
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      I don’t get much FPS on CS 1, and it’s not pleasant. It’s probably somewhere between 20-30. But the news above mean that I shouldn’t even dream about running CS 2 with this hardware, because it runs much worse than the first game, but also compared to other games.

      Honestly I was expecting that CS 2 would run better than 1. I have a little hope that they will fix their shit, but now I don’t expect significant improvements over the first game’s performance.

              • TigrisMorte@kbin.social
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                It is indeed much easier to argue against things you made up and not what was posted.
                Where as I stated no such thing, you already have the answer. But, no, I do not believe the straw man you put forth to claim I intended.

            • dom@lemmy.ca
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              The specs until recently were not as intensive but still pointed to the game not being super optimized.

              Minimum was a 780 (3gv)

              I expected that buying a 6650 (8gb) would have put me well over the minimum requirements.

              MINIMUM:

              Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system

              OS: Windows® 10 Home 64 Bit

              Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-4790K / AMD® Ryzen™ 5 1600X

              Memory: 8 GB RAM

              Graphics: Nvidia® GeForce™ GTX 780 (3GB) or AMD® Radeon™ RX 470 (4GB)

              RECOMMENDED:

              Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system

              OS: Windows® 10 Home 64 Bit | Windows® 11

              Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-9700K | AMD® Ryzen™ 5 5600X

              Memory: 16 GB RAM

              Graphics: Nvidia® GeForce™ RTX 2080 Ti (11GB) | AMD® Radeon™ RX 6800 XT (16GB)

            • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
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              I see no justification for why CS 2 is this resource intensive.
              It’s a heavy city simulation game, so high CPU usage is kind of expected (though I think it could be better), but what about the RAM and GPU requirements and actual usage?

              • TigrisMorte@kbin.social
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                And I said nothing about justification. But, the RAM is easy to figure out as that is where the variables are stored and manipulated. A “heavy city simulation game” is going to have a great many variables and lots of formulae.
                The GPU usage is likely to get the picture to be very pretty. But you could argue against it. The RAM, no, it is required by the genre.

                • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
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                  8 months ago

                  And I said nothing about justification.

                  You said that it is a resource intensive game, in a tone that implied to me that it’s fine to you.

                  But, the RAM is easy to figure out as that is where the variables are stored and manipulated. A “heavy city simulation game” is going to have a great many variables and lots of formulae.

                  But not this much. CS 1, which is also a “heavy city simulation game”, was totally fine with less, and while I agree that because of the new features it is expected that CS 2 uses more RAM, it is not expected to use this much more.

                  Also, you are talking as if every vehicle, pedestrian, building object each should cost 1 KB of RAM or something like that. Normally that’s not the case.

                  The GPU usage is likely to get the picture to be very pretty.

                  Unconditionally loading 8k textures for all the existing models won’t make the game “very pretty”.

                  As in every sensible game, texture resolution and such should be configurable, and the game should not load textures not in use. At least one of these is very clearly not happening if the game requires multiple gigabytes of VRAM even on a new, basically empty save.

      • lud@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        My fps is also around that in CS 1 and honestly it hasn’t bothered me that much unless I look at the fps counter. While it would be nice to have 60 FPS, I don’t think much about it while actually playing.

    • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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      Exactly. I still don’t get 60fps on the first one, a now 8 year old game on top of the line hardware. I don’t care. People here act like performance optimizing is just turning a knob they forgot, but it’s hours of detailed work finding anything and anything that may be able to shave nanoseconds off.

      If the game is playable, I’m happy. It’s not a twitch shooter. It’s a city simulation.

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      It’s not a deal breaker, but high fps is always preferable when using anything with a gui

    • raktheundead@fedia.io
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      It’s still something I’d rather have than not; not having it makes for a less fluid experience.

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      Yeah I play a lot of rimworkd and dwarffortress and to be honest the only difference between playing it on my of the line pc and my 10yr old laptop is that it takes way longer to do stuff at max speed, which isn’t really how I play games like this. This review kinda sold me on this game.

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    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.

    • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
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      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

      It does not sound like 50 FPS on 6 years old hardware. Maybe half?

      RAM should be used. For gaming it would be wasteful not to use it.

      Don’t be afraid, I do use my RAM. Like, it’s full of other important programs and filesystem cache.
      But the game shouldn’t take it away from other programs, and it should also be aware of the fact that windows starts swapping out programs when RAM usage has reached ~70%. This will significantly affect any programs you run simultaneously, but the game itself tooz because it’s less used memory pages will be swapped out more. Random access for reading back swapped pages is much slower than loading the resources in smaller groups sequentially.

      16 GB usage sounds like the game has loaded ALL of its models and resources, even those that are not needed (not in view, and probably not even accessible to the player), and probably has multiple copies of most with different resolution and such.

      Loading to RAM that much data would be fine if they managed it to only be loaded to a cache, that can be released for other programs, but I don’t think you can do that in any other way than using the filesystem cache, at which point the RAM usage does not even count against your process, or as usage at all.

      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 .

      Obviously the game does not have to use all the RAM. It only needs to preload textures and models that are useful on your system (based on graphics settings) and are in use right now or can be in use very soon.
      Also, loading from disk is not as slow as you make it seem. Yes it is if your users install games to a drive that’s bad for that purpose (like SMR tech hard drives), or if you haven’t placed the resources strategically, by which I mean grouping resources so that commonly-used-together resources are placed sequentially for a quick and efficient read.
      The first problem shouldn’t be your concern: the player shouldn’t expect top performance from hardware that was designed for a totally opposite task.

      Marketers are paid to lie.

      Yes, but they shouldn’t touch any technical information, including the hardware requirements section. Marketers don’t know shit about the game, just that they want to sell at much licenses as humanly possible.
      The hardware requirements, however, is to be defined by those who know shit about the game. Preferably core developers or performance testers, who have an idea about the game’s inner workings and about how much is it expected to use in average and in the worst case.

      I find that people who watch reviewers are exponentially more disappointed in games because they let reviewers tell them how to feel.

      I can agree with that and your point on Cyberpunk. I haven’t played that game, but not because I’m not interested. It looked fun from content that I have seen.

      But the performance concerns sound like that it’s actually a huge problem.

      I like it that so far it has been described a solid lunch except land leveling and performance, because the first one can probably be addressed in a few months at most if they want it. But even the published hardware requirements were disappointing, and this is a signal that the game will hardly get any better than that, if it can reach it.

    • Rentlar@beehaw.org
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      Yeah, same, I’ll reserve my judgement for later. If it’s truly awful and unplayable then I’ll have to finish building my RTX 3090 system, lol.

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      60fps complaints go back to the dark days of 360/ps3 ports where HD resolutions on the consoles meant high framerate was no longer a viable option there. Since AAA games started using console as lead platform pc became saddled with 30fps caps as well. It possibly happened even earlier, but that was the time where I started noticing it.

  • liamwb@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    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

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    8 months ago

    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

    • nix
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      8 months ago

      Paradox is just the publisher on this one, Colossal Order is the dev.

  • jarfil@beehaw.org
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    8 months ago

    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.

    • 0x442e472e@feddit.de
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      8 months ago

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

      I believe people with lots of RAM simply enjoy the feeling of theoretically being able to run everything, but they don’t actually want processes to use that RAM, because it would deny them the theoretical possibility to run everything.

      I jest, of course. The problem is that as a user you don’t have that much control over which process should use your RAM, and also freeing RAM is hard. Chrome gobbling up your whole memory is good when you’re using Chrome, but you don’t get it back when you alt+tab back to your game

      • jarfil@beehaw.org
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        8 months ago

        freeing RAM is hard. Chrome gobbling up your whole memory is good when you’re using Chrome, but you don’t get it back when you alt+tab back to your game

        Actually… you can do it with two .bat files and a “ram cleaner” tool:

        1. Suspend all “chrome.exe” processes
        2. Free all working sets (since Chrome is suspended, it marks all the RAM used by Chrome as swappable/discardable)

        Now your game can use all the RAM, the OS will just swap out or discard whatever was in use by Chrome as needed.

        Want to go back to Chrome?

        1. Resume all “chrome.exe” processes

        The OS will swap in whatever it swapped out, and let Chrome ask for as much RAM as it feels like.

        • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
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          8 months ago

          Free all working sets what the fucking hell??? No, no, no, I don’t want to send my full browser to swapfile just because of a greedy game. Loading back all the memory pages will take a lot of time when I want to switch back to the browser, and it will lag for quite some more time until all the not too frequently used but important is loaded back too. This also applies to the reverse: swapping the game out and back in will take a ton of time, and then it will have lag spikes when it needs a dozen of memory page that is somewhat more rarely used and haven’t been loaded back with all the rest. This nonsense of literally using all your ram “as a cache” but as working set just makes everything slower in the end. This just cannot be justified. There’s a reason I’m using a multi tasking PC instead of a single-tasking gaming console, which you can only use for one purpose at a time.

          And don’t tell me to put my swapfile on my SSD. This is the perfect way of killing yours, with writing 16 GB of data every time you switch between windows.

          • jarfil@beehaw.org
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            8 months ago

            I don’t want to send my full browser to swapfile just because of a greedy game

            You don’t, most of the times the game doesn’t use all that memory anyways (or crashes if it tries to… so still, doesn’t use it).

            Loading back all the memory pages will take a lot of time

            No it won’t. Browsers preemptively allocate a bunch of RAM just in case they need it… then never use it. “Loading back” empty memory, takes zero time.

            This also applies to the reverse

            No it doesn’t. Games rarely can be suspended and resumed successfully, and they rarely allocate RAM that they aren’t going to use. I was clear when I said you suspend “chrome.exe”, not “your game.exe”. If you resume the browser without exiting the game, the game stays in RAM and the browser manages with what’s left (surprisingly, they manage to run a tab or two without a problem, which further proves they didn’t “really” need all that much RAM in the first place).

            swapfile on my SSD. This is the perfect way of killing yours

            My swapfile SSD got retired after 10 years when I switched to a NVMe, it’s an external drive now.

            writing 16 GB of data every time you switch between windows.

            As explained above, no you don’t, most of the data simply gets discarded, maybe 1-2GB of it gets actually written. To further expand on that, the swapfile gets constantly pre-populated with less changing in-RAM data so the OS can “swap it out” instantly. That same data stays in the swapfile after it gets read into RAM again, so it doesn’t get written to the swapfile over and over, only read back.

            There’s a reason I’m using a multi tasking PC instead of a single-tasking gaming console

            If you do, then you put more RAM in it. Otherwise, you can use it as a gaming console. Your choice.

            • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
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              8 months ago

              Loading back all the memory pages will take a lot of time

              No it won’t. Browsers preemptively allocate a bunch of RAM just in case they need it… then never use it. “Loading back” empty memory, takes zero time.

              Yes, it will, and I’m saying this from experience. I have 32 GB of RAM but since I have dozens of tabs in several windows open, the browser really consumes a lot of RAM. When windows starts swapping it out, even just a little because I’m over 70% utilization, I can feel that it got slower.

              And on the occasion when in PH I accidently click “empty working sets” instead of “combine memory lists” and windows swaps out everything, it’s horrible for days until I just give up and reboot instead.

              Games rarely can be suspended and resumed successfully

              Probably I’m playing with the wrong games then, as those that I play don’t crash from it. One such example is Factorio where I have did that a lot in the past.

              I was clear when I said you suspend “chrome.exe”, not “your game.exe”.

              Now I understand, but then your workaround does not allow for switching back to the browser for looking up something.

              surprisingly, they manage to run a tab or two without a problem, which further proves they didn’t “really” need all that much RAM in the first place

              1-2 tabs maybe work fine. But the whole user interface will also be slower to respond, and if you have addons which need to do this or that when a page loads, then that 1-2 tabs won’t be usable either.
              Also, I doubt that windows wouldn’t swap out parts of the game.

              If you do, then you put more RAM in it. Otherwise, you can use it as a gaming console. Your choice.

              I won’t spend on anywhere North of 32 GB. This is not a fucking server. I would rather just not play games that are so out of touch with reality. To back that up, I’ve just read someone else posted a steam statistics page that says only ~20% of steam users have 32 GB of RAM, while most of the rest has only 16.

              Also, when I have built this PC I have heard multiple remarks that 64 GB RAM may not be a good idea, because the hardware memory manager would be slower with managing that amount of RAM than 32, which is important for games that move a lot of data in the RAM.

              • jarfil@beehaw.org
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                8 months ago

                when in PH I accidently click “empty working sets” instead of “combine memory lists” and windows swaps out everything, it’s horrible for days until I just give up and reboot instead.

                “Empty working sets” doesn’t swap out anything by itself, it marks it as “swappable” but stil in RAM. It does make a copy to swapfile in case it needs to swap it out so it can do it instantly.

                To fully force a swap out, you have to clean the lists… level 1, I think? (sorry, in bed, don’t want to look it up RN).

                If you did that with a HDD however… yeah, I can see how that would feel bad.

                Pro tip: don’t leave PH open for too long, it’s kind of a devel tool and has some bugs that can mess up the hooks of the whole system. Best is to open, use, close, for ~15 day uptimes on Windows 8 to 10 without ECC.

                I have 32 GB of RAM but since I have dozens of tabs in several windows open

                I used to play games with 8 GB of RAM and 40 tabs in Chrome. It was either-or, it worked, didn’t kill the SSD, for years. 🤷

          • jarfil@beehaw.org
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            8 months ago

            Feel free to use any other browser, they all allocate RAM preemptively just the same.

    • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
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      8 months ago

      You want 32GB or more for it to run somewhate decently.

      No, you misunderstood. I don’t want, like at all. That is totally undue. What fucking engine was this crap written in, electron or what???

      The worst is not even the resource usage, but that there are actual people defending this bullshit.

      • jarfil@beehaw.org
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        8 months ago

        What fucking engine was this crap written in, electron or what???

        Unity with C#.

        That’s only half the problem… the add-ons are also written in Unity with C# 🤷

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          Is unity and c# really that bad by itself? I don’t have much experience in c# development, but I was in the impression that c# is a relatively fast language (not as much as c++ but much, much more than js, python and even java)

          • jarfil@beehaw.org
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            Is unity and c# really that bad by itself?

            No, they’re pretty nice, that’s why they got popular. It’s when you pair them with game development, that shit hits the fan.

            Basically, you have:

            • Rocket software - if it fails once, you fucked up
            • F-35, infrastructure software - if it fails, it better recovers fast
            • Business software - if it works for most of the workday, it’s fine
            • Consumer software - if it works most days, it’s fine
            • Game software - if it eventually works at least once, you’re fine; most people don’t care about replaying the same story anyway

            Unity and C# are very easy to make utter crap with, and still have it “work at least once”… which leads game developers to use it, make it work, and have it packaged and sold. Add to that “modders”, who are mostly random people who want to see some [part] of some idea they had, work maybe once in the game… and you get a perfect recipe for disaster: rushed out games, with sloppy mods, often conflicting with each other.

  • 1simpletailer@startrek.website
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    8 months ago

    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.

    • hiddengoat@kbin.social
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      8 months ago

      Find me a performance patch in any Paradox game that requires you to buy a fucking DLC to apply.

      Or maybe just quit bullshitting.

      FFS, we’re talking about a relatively small developer/publisher that continually supports and develops most of their games for the better part of a decade (or more, like EU IV). I thought this shit is what people wanted but what it seems most gamers want is just any excuse to fucking whine.

      • 1simpletailer@startrek.website
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        Way to completely misread my post there bud. Its not about the dlc, its about Pdox (who isn’t exactly a small indie publisher anymore) rushing buggy, feature-bare games to release with the intent of abusing their dlc-centric business model. FFS I guess wanting a game that’s complete and works on release is whining.

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        8 months ago

        “they can just patch the game and crank out new features as dlc” does not have the same meaning as “buy a fucking DLC to apply a performance patch”

        lern2reed

    • coyotino [he/him]@beehaw.orgOP
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      8 months ago

      If you compare the game on max settings to modded C:S1 (and if you ignore the leveling plot issues), I actually think it looks better than C:S1, or at least pretty close.

      • Amju Wolf@pawb.social
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        8 months ago

        …which makes it pretty terrible. What did they change/improve if not the graphics? It should be so ahead that you don’t even have to think what looks better.

    • Nighed@sffa.community
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      8 months ago

      It’s a less cartoony art style I think (although the style in original skyline evolved a lot) we will see.

      Remember mods can fix/change loads

  • Vordus@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    8 months ago

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

  • Narrrz@kbin.social
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    8 months ago

    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.

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    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.

    • coyotino [he/him]@beehaw.orgOP
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      8 months ago

      No one is expecting the game to release with 0 bugs. It’s the severity and quantity of bugs that is the issue.

      FWIW, my current take is that this release would be fine if they had simply released it in early access.

    • phonyphanty@pawb.social
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      I dunno – I’m sympathetic to the DLC argument, but bad performance isn’t something I can forgive on launch day. I’m sure they’ll patch it in time, but if I buy a full-priced game, I expect it to run decently well. Anything less makes for a poor user experience. If a publisher truly cares about user experience then they won’t release a game in that state, or if they do, they’ll make it 100% clear on the storefront that the game has performance issues.