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:
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?
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.
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.
They did communicate: https://www.pcgamer.com/cities-skylines-2-devs-warn-players-of-performance-problems-we-have-not-achieved-the-benchmark-we-targeted/
These guys are the exception.
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?
If you wouldn’t be so lazy you could find it out yourself.
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
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.
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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.
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.
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.
Its not good for the general aura surrounding the release. I don’t follow the game actively but all I hear is negativity.
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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.
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.
If you’re not making your city a hell for the npcs in some way how are you having fun
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.
I don’t want to build car hell yet again
this, so much
I can leave the house if I wanna see that
too bloody right
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.
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!
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.
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.
“with this hardware”, found your problem.
Yep we better all go drop $3k on a new computer so we can get this game to playable fps!
So, exactly as every other resource intensive game released, ever. Weird huh?
What is your deal? Do you believe that gaming should only be a hobby for the wealthy, or?
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.
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)
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?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.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.
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.
It’s not a deal breaker, but high fps is always preferable when using anything with a gui
I’ve gotten so used to 60 fps that if I play below 60 it makes motion sick
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.
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
Yes, erm… totally about building beautiful cities.
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
Paradox is just the publisher on this one, Colossal Order is the dev.
Ah you’re right… I’ll fix that
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.
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
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:
- Suspend all “chrome.exe” processes
- 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?
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 🤷
Dude 51% of steam users have 16gb. 22% have 32gb. It’s probably lower in the broader gaming public.
32gb is still pricey and far from standard. 16gb should at least be fine. 32gb to be “somewhat decent” is beyond unreasonable.
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.
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# 🤷
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)
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.
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.
I never play these types of games but I distinctly remember my friend having a full on meltdown about how fucked up the first Cities Skylines was like a decade ago, lol.
I guess you’re just talking about one person, but I think Cities Skylines was received quite well in general? I just remember a bunch of praise for Cities Skylines (in contrast to Sim City 2013 which a bunch of people had a meltdown about).
Being better than later Sim City games isn’t much on an achievement, doesn’t mean that CS wasn’t quite janky at the start.
Can you at least make perpendicular roads easily? I had trouble doing that in the first game.
Here’s a pre-release video from City Planner Plays that discusses the new roadway options. I believe even C:S1 added in snap-to-angle options eventually, which made it very easy to build roads at right angles. Unless you mean parallel roads? This is something that vanilla C:S1 did not have, but it looks like C:S2 has that on launch. The new road-building tools are one of the features that had me most hyped.
Oh cool, maybe I’ll check out skylines 1 again
I had such a pain in the ass trying to make highway on ramp and off ramps look good while also being perpendicular to the highway and each other. Ruined the game for me because I couldn’t get past the first offramp to even start building 😓 bugged me way too much
There will be a grid feature where you can make a perfect grid of city lots at once.
There’s a pretty easy fix to games launching in a sorry state: stop preordering
I mostly play CS1 with mods (but very infrequently), and now it seems I’ll stick to that for the time being
On days like this I ask myself if the reason games are released that broken is because there are no real software engineers in the game industry. Like a carmack with doom. Someone who understands the technical site of things.
Gamedev is all about smokes and mirrors. A conventional software engineer will actively resent the shitfuckery you have to do, to make games run well (for good reason; it introduces complexity into already insanely complex systems).
Some performance work, you cannot defer, like fundamental design decisions (3D vs. 2D, raytracing or not) or if you’ve coded a tiny feature and for some reason, it completely obliterates performance.
But there’s always going to be tons of features that have been implemented well, they don’t obliterate performance, but if you replace them with an unintuitive/complex smoke-and-mirror solution, then you may be able to shave off 20% execution time for that feature. Or not. Often no real way to know, except to try it out.
Some of these do need to be tackled throughout development, too, but it’s easy to end up with a big block at the end of development.
Especially, if you had to rush a number of features that marketing promised, so that you can make the release date that marketing promised many months before anyone has any fucking clue how long it’ll take.
That’s disappointing. Some level of unmet expectations are to be, well, expected for a sequel to such a cultural behemoth as Cities: Skylines, but it sounds like Colossal Order made some sacrifices on the release date altar. Such a shame.
I don’t know nothing, but I have a feeling that paradox hurried the release, not necessarily CO
Yeah, I think it’s usually the publisher pushing the release dates on the dev studio.
