1y ago

The Way Forward, an update from the team behind Cities: Skylines

forum.paradoxplaza.com

TL;DR:

They apologized (again)
They will refund everyone who bought the beach DLC and make it a free addition to the game, admitting it was tasteless that they made paid DLC when the game is in a broken state
They will focus on base changes and better modding tools before starting to make more DLC (previously announced DLC has been delayed to 2025)
Console release delayed

Honestly, this is a good update. It's everything we wanted to hear. Looking forward to buying the game when it gets fixed.

Gaming @beehaw.org

alyaza [they/she] @beehaw.org

1y ago

The Way Forward, an update from the team behind Cities: Skylines

forum.paradoxplaza.com /forum/threads/the-way-forward-an-update-from-the-team-behind-cities-skylines.1665858/

Games @sh.itjust.works

nanoUFO @sh.itjust.works

1y ago

The Way Forward, an update from the team behind Cities: Skylines

forum.paradoxplaza.com /forum/threads/the-way-forward-an-update-from-the-team-behind-cities-skylines.1665858/

26 comments

This was too late. Paradox's in house development studio did the same thing with Victoria 3. Do something way too greedy (lock historical characters behind a preorder for a dlc that was already bad). Waited to see the backlash, and when it was too much, they make the bonuses free.
At least they're doing something, but the dlc should have been pushed back at launch.
- It's not just greedy, at this point it's blatant. The release itself was already bonkers, but they could have saved things by working hard on the base game and releasing additional free content. But this? How many "sowwy we fucked up, we promise to do better, buy our new 132 DLCs" will they pull before people stop giving them the benefit of the doubt?
  
  I'm not hopeful at all. If Bethesda or Blizzard are anything to go by, they can keep messing up big time for years, maybe decades to come and consumers will keep coming back, begging to be disappointed once more. You'll have more luck looking for alternatives out there in the ocean of indie games.
  
  I am actually planning on not buying anything more from paradox if they fuck up the launch of eu5, only dlc from current games (if they're worth it/required)
Remember when games used to be a finished product on a cartridge/CD? You just bought it at the store for a base price of a video game and that was it. Any bugs found in the game became widely accepted, and maybe even exploited by competitive gamers. But there was no patching, no updates, no DLC. You paid for a game up front and that was it.
I miss those days.
- idk if this is a stupid opinion but I feel like us, the consumers are to blame. If everyone just waited a week and read reviews before buying games then publishers wouldn't be able to get away with this shit.
  
  I do wait, and the publishers don't get away with selling me unfinished games. It's great.
  I wait at least a month for any game, 8 months for a Bethesda game.
  
  To be precise, the new generation is to blame, who constantly preorders a game, and spends a lot on mobile games. Companies realize that bad products sell, so why would they improve?
- I remember a few cases where a rare bug softlocked my game and I had to reset my entire progress. It wasn't all that good I would say. They definitely had some standard of quality on release though.
- Games were also significantly less complex then. It takes teams of 100s of people to make a AAA game now. But don't kid yourself, there were definitely game-breaking bugs back then. And in the pc world, patches arrived much, much earlier than in the console world.
- Why do you miss things being permanently broken and unfixable?
  
  The thing is, it forced the people making games to release them as a finished, working product, with the bugs (mostly) stamped out.
  Today it's just push something out the door now, and we'll ~~patch it~~ soak them for even more money with DLC later.
We're riding this wave over in the Total War community too. Broken game, weak and overpriced DLC.
We kicked off (and then all their other games managed to flop at once, so they came crawling back) and now we've got a notable amount more effort into the DLC coming at the end of the month, as well as price cuts, refunds and redoing of the bad DLC.
Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but I'm seeing positive movements in general on legacy resting-on-laurels games.
Thanks for the tldr :)
They've basically perfected keeping the community mostly happy by toeing the line between putting out solid base games and putting out greedy DLC.
What we're now seeing is what happens when you don't immediately change course after you skimp on making a good base game.
- It's all sheer greed, too. Paradox has fully embraced the model of releasing sequels with less content than their DLC-enhanced previous games after 2K showed the market had tolerance for it with Civilization. Considering how that already puts them ahead of the curve, it's amazing that Paradox let this game come out in this state.
  
  That doesn't make it sheer greed; it's what's feasible to develop. A systems driven game like a city builder or a 4X game mean that you can't just drag and drop old content in the new systems and expect it to work and look cohesive. Every fighting game launches with fewer characters than the previous version, and it's not because it's some conspiracy to delay dropping the SFV characters in SF6; it's because swapping out the V system for the Drive system is a massive change, and the old characters take a lot of work to port over. Even the art style in Civ 6 is very different from Civ V. When you try to just copy and paste content between two different styles of art direction, you end up with nightmare fuel Chun-Li in Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite.
City Skylines Team to their fans: We’re sorry. Making good.
George R.R Martin to his fans: Go get fucked.
- What's the scuttlebutt with GRRM?
  
  Refuses to finish next installment of Game Of Thrones — like ten years waiting.
This team has been making the exact same game for multiple decades. Look at this developer's game history. It is literally the same exact game redeveloped over and over every few years and then they repackage and resell the same DLCs for the new versions. What a con of a game dev.
- 13 years since Cities in Motion 1 is not multiple decades, and Cities in Motion 1 is in no way the same game as Cities Skylines
  
  So you think they've been making entirely new games for their entire existence? You don't think it's conny at all that literally all they do is make city builders and sell DLCs and then make a new one when interest dries up? Doesn't seem very creative or innovative in my opinion it sounds like pure capitalism. Publisher is a microcosm EA.

26 comments