Frustrations with Cities Skylines 2 are starting to boil over among city builder fans and content creators alike: "It's insulting to have a game release that way"

I love that the game is such a CPU hogging mess that LTT used it to test over clocking a brand new AMD thread ripper and the game still ran like garbage even on one of the fastest and most multithreaded CPUs that exist.

I love Cities Skylines but whatever is happening in 2 is a three alarm fire and needs to be fixed.

I imagine LTT did that for meme purposes more than anything else. Threadrippers are not built for games. They're built for production workloads which don't translate to gaming performance.
That said, the point still stands. This game needs the most powerful gaming hardware (e.g. Ryzen X3D series and RTX 4090) on "recommended" settings and 1080p to get averages above 60fps, which is wild. There's a rather dedicated fellow on reddit who does detailed performance tests after each patch.
- So very fucking glad I haven't bought this game.
- They did it because the developers said the game will use however many cores you can give it. And i mean, yeah it maxed out all cores. Likely doing nothing but struggling to keep them synchronized but it was using em
- I imagine LTT did that for meme purposes more than anything else. Threadrippers are not built for games. They’re built for production workloads which don’t translate to gaming performance.
  What are some characteristics of modern, multi-threaded games that don't match up to production workloads as far as the CPU is concerned? What do you consider a production workload? How does it differ from CS2's simulation system?
lol got a link to the video? That sounds hilarious and worth a watch.
- https://youtu.be/R83W2XR3IC8?si=nTUMXFiFGFRcdtQa
  Jump to the 3 minute mark.
The game when it saw that CPU:
It seems like we have more power than we know what do do with.
That means we’re not cutting it close enough!
Edit: I don’t remember the exact quote but y’all get it.
Not sure why LTT or anyone else would have thought that would even help considering simulation games like that rely heavily on single core performance.
- I mean... Watch the video? It uses 64 fucking cores when available. It's a heavily multithreaded game.

Yeah, and the people like me who haven't bought it are pissed. That game had a lot of potential to fix C:S 1's flaws, which was squandered to performance issues.
Buy the game, can't complain because you are a filthy PrE-ORdErEr. Don't buy the game, can't complain because you didn't buy the game. What kind of logic is that?

They seriously blamed the customers, anybody but themselves for this boondoggle.

How did they blame the customers? And do you have a link to your source?
- https://www.gamesradar.com/cities-skylines-2-dev-says-it-has-seen-a-growing-tendency-of-toxicity-in-the-city-builder-community-asks-players-to-be-kind/
  We have seen a growing tendency of toxicity in our community, something we have not experienced to this extent before," the CEO writes. "Not only directed towards our devs but also our fellow community members - resulting in people hesitating to engage with the community."
  Read through Steam, forum, etc. comments. The vast majority are not toxic, her statement is ridiculous. Customers are angry and we just want our damn money back for this fraud of a game. Instead of recognizing that and/or doing anything to take responsibility, CO has made enemies of literally hundreds of thousands of customers.
  As time goes in, it's clear that CO is too incompetent to fix the game in any reasonable time frame. The game is in Alpha/EA state right now at best. The list of broken things, and how incredibly broken they are, is nothing short of embarrassing. Someone needs to clean house, starting with removing their out of touch clown of a CEO and culling most of their "leadership."
  I'm waiting and hoping for a class action lawsuit for fraud and misrepresentation of the product.

Then don't buy it? I really don't understand the online community.

It's a follow up game, there are expectations.
- If only there was some method to check the gameplay after release and decide if you want to purchase.
  Emotionally pre-ordering a game based on your own expectations is a meme.
  I wanted to play KSP2 and waited an actual decade for it so I could go to space with my friends. Upon release I checked gameplay and reviews and never ended up buying it. I voted with my wallet and not my complaints, it's that simple
- Expectations that people made up in their heads. If you followed any of the pre-release media, you knew exactly what you were getting, including the performance issues.
People are well within their rights in being deeply disappointed by something that they had high hopes for. Go figure.
- People are within their rights to feel (and I quote) "insulted" for getting scammed by something which is easily avoidable by having even the slightest bit of patience?
  Honest 2020s meme

Oh the irony... SimCity sucks, now Cities Skylines sucks.

Can we get a good SimCity now EA? It's your chance...

No put down the paw right now! Stop it!
I'm glad to have waited on this game. I was going to buy it but after all the terrible reviews, decided against buying.
Dude what do you mean it sucks? The original is A tier.
EDIT: I see you have since edited your comment to prefix "now" in front of cities skylines. Could have still added the "2" to reduce ambiguity. 4/10 edit
City Skylines doesn't suck. There are performance issues, yes, but really the only real issue is the lack of mod support. People got so used to modded CS1 that CS2 -- a giant leap forward for us vanilla players-- felt like a step back.
- I'm creating cities that look way better than anything I was able to make in CS1 even with all the DLCs, dozens of mods and hundreds of custom assets. Saying this game sucks is a dead giveaway that you've never actually played it. There are problems, sure, and CO's communication has been... awkward. But, the game itself is quite playable and enjoyable.

This game has a lot of potential and I haven't given up on it yet.

That said the biggest pain point is still the lack of official mod support. That needs to fully arrive before we see any DLCs. Paradox/CO have only themselves to blame that people are getting impatient for the slow progress on getting out the thing that made Cities 1 so good.

It would help with scenery variety, community-made fixes, community-derived balance changes, better UI and exposing of important game variables (logistics), etc., which would address a lot of the current shortcomings.

- Well I can understand the reasons why Paradox wants to use their own modding suite, it would be cross platform between console and PC and not exclusive to Steam. It would be possible to extend certain features such as version management or better collections system than Steam. Steam workshop is nice but C:S 1 had issues with it when the game updated, I think those shortcomings are what is intended to be addressed.
  If they go the "paid mods" route I will be highly disappointed.
Yeah it was a huge mistake luanching without mod and custom asset support. It was what made CS1 popular and endure so long, and was a core part of its success.
I played a huge amount of CS1 and I was very excited about CS2. But I've lost interest very quickly in CS2.
The whole thing comes across as corporate greed and bad management - a small team pushed to release on an unrealistic schedule. It is also a huge mistake to have spend so much time working on and promising console releases - it's seemingly just hobbled and compromised the launch of the main platform which is PC. And if it's in this state on PC it'll be even worse on console - they could do even more damage to the games reputation and success if they are distracted trying to fix those versions while the released game is in such a bad state.
I'm really upset about the map editor not being released yet.
They said early 2024. It should have been in the game when it was released. I would not have purchased it if I had known that to begin with. My own fault for not reading the fine print I guess. I expected city skylines one with some improvements.
- Totally understandable.

That's a shame. I played tons of the original game and must've got most of the DLC over the years, but while 2 looked awesome in demo clips, the system specs were outrageous. Above my pay grade lol!

I wonder where the performance bottleneck lies? Is it graphics or modelling the city? I know in the demos it looked almost photo-realistic, but tbh I don't need that. The new gameplay elements like better control over traffic at intersections were the interesting part to me.

Typically, unless it's sheer number of objects drawn (which can be kind of relevant to a city sim, especially if they're plotting individual vehicles on a broad map view), heavy graphics aren't really a source of high CPU load. Inefficient real time modeling of stuff like traffic is a more likely culprit.
- Even the old game had a noticeable dip in performance by the time you were building airports and stuff, though it never reached deal-breaker levels for me. I suspect you're right that it's the modelling?
For what it's worth, I have a machine with less than the recommended specs, and as long as you don't mind spending a little time downgrading settings to Medium/Low, I have a fairly playable framerate, usually between 30 and 50. I've only built a couple cities up to 25,000 population, but it's still been fun.
You won't be disappointed by the road tools, they are everything they promised and more. In 15 minutes I can make interchanges that look like I pulled them out of a mod pack. It's obscene. Traffic control is decent for vanilla, but if you were a power user of TMPE in CS1, you might be a bit underwhelmed.
Overall though, there is a desperate shortage of maps and unique assets. As for the game's systems - economy, education, land value, industry - I can see how they were intended to work, but it seems like a lot of boilerplate was added to make the game playable at release. With time - and mod support, Dear Lord - I think it will greatly improve.
Edit: Infrastructurist is a great showing of how the game still has legs.
- Yeah, I love the game, but I'll absolutely admit it was released too early. The simulation is broken in multiple ways, but it appears to be fixable as evidenced by progress in patches and some mods as well. Then again, personally, I'm glad I have the opportunity to play it now rather than waiting another year, even in the state it's in. The cities I've been building are very satisfying, and like you said the road tools are a dream.
- Oh interesting, so there's a glimmer of hope at any rate. Thanks for the feedback! Maybe if there's a big steam sale…
What seems to be the issue with a lot of these games is "seamless zoom".
So even if you're all the way zoomed out, it's still rending every tiny detail at the same level you were zoomed in.
All they'd have to do is split it into three levels and only render the one you're in. A fraction of a second delay when you cross a threshold isn't a big deal.
- True. That could be deadly with a sim since the amount of detail grows like crazy as you build it up. Even the amount of RAM it would take to store all those polygons sounds insane!

I stick with CS1 and mods.

So how long until Cities Skylines 2 becomes the new Crysis for modern hardware?

Crysis actually looked good for its time, and wasn't horribly optimized. It just legitimately needed hardware that didn't exist yet.
CS2 looks like ass and without bug fixes will probably never perform well on any future hardware.
- The OG Crysis wanted hardware that still doesn't exist. They built the game and engine under the assumption that clock speeds would keep increasing, and instead we moved to high core counts.
  Even today, at 4K and max settings, the original (2007) release can drop below 100 fps on the best possible hardware.

As a big fan of cities Skylines 1 (>400h), I only decided to get the sequel after I saw creators play it and there was a promotional sale.

The performance issues are bad and I get 40fps at 1080p medium on my system, with a 40k city. But the game really is better than vanilla C:S 1 in a bunch of ways. In particular, the way lanes are handled and the size of the map is better.

It takes time to make something great. I bounce between both games at this point, and just play other games. I now have 28h in the sequel so I say I got my money's ($36 due to the sale) worth. I'm patient. There are so many games and mods for other games on my backlog, I can just play those until Cities Skylines II has fixed its major issues.

Yup, I'm happy to wait until C:S2 is ready. I have it on my wishlist, so whenever there's a sale, I'll check out the current state and decide if it's time to buy.
Until then, I have plenty of other games to play.

I'm more annoyed that the underlying gameplay hasn't improved, there's still zero challenge and you have to actively go out of your way to bankrupt yourself. It's the same road builder as Cities In Motion was.

This seems like a major trend with modern management games. Planet Coaster, Planet Zoo, Cities Skylines... They all have great creative features but they all lack depth and challenge their predecessors had.

I use it to heat up my room when I'm cold

I use UBOAT for that, it pins CPU and GPU

Is there an alternative software for designing cities?

CS 1 hasn't disappeared yet, you can still play it.
TinkerCAD
The first one must still be pretty good.

I just wanna play Simtown and SimCity2000.

Why anyone would buy a Paradox game during the 1st year of release is beyond me. This happens literally every time they put out a game. Give it a year or two and it'll be the best city builder out there.

If you're a reviewer and you've not reviewed it yet you're kind of too late to start now aren't you?
On steam it's mixed reviews so it's not exactly a "shit show"

Don't forget to pre-order CS3 when it's announced so we can do this all over again.

Sure, I wish things were different. But, CS1 took years to become what it is. They started again from the ground up, it's going to take a while to get there. I'm giving it some time.

Cs1 was good on release

The consumers should blame themselves for buy it.

You shouldn't be downvoted. I didn't buy it and don't give a shit it sucks. Super easy. Barely an inconvenience.

Yeah CS2 is really good. People just leaned way too hard on mods for CS1
- In CS1 I had like, 6 mods? But the only one I really used was TM, since the ai is awful with picking a path or traversing a roundabout, or wanting a 2way stop with 2way priority, or... That's the only one I'm currently 'missing', but I'm making okay progress without. I'm on my first and only city, and very recently I broke 1 billion of city funds (edit: with a population of ~45k) with 96 hours of playtime. So I'm doing alright :p