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Cities Skylines 2: "Beach properties assets are all gone and my city is screwed. Thanks a lot."

Beach properties assets are all gone and my city is screwed. Thanks a lot.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/beach-properties-assets-are-all-gone-and-my-city-is-screwed-thanks-a-lot.1667649/post-29576259

Since the removal of the DLC, and the fact it's not already in the base game, all assets related to it now appear as grey boxes. Thanks again for that, as it was doubtlessly absolutely necessary to remove the DLC now and not when it's integrated...

It doesn't stop. It just never stops.

55 comments

sukhmel

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This is just gold 🤣

FooBarrington

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God, how can someone be so blind?

But this was such an edge case, removing assets resulting in the unavailability of said assets in game, that this interruption simply couldn't have been for foreseen.

They couldn't foresee issues created by removing assets, in a game that is supposed to support user mods, which can be added/removed at any time? Really?

The explanation I've seen is that they wanted to pull the DLC as soon as possible, since it was - literally - the worst-rated product on Steam. I'm 99% sure the bean counters responsible for all of the terrible decisions (release the game, no matter what state! Release the DLC, no matter the amount of content!) pulled the lever on this one again - no chance they'll see any responsibility with themselves.

lanolinoil

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surely this is satire no?

FooBarrington

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You're probably right, especially considering this sentence:

It's difficult to see in advance that removing game assets from the game will result in the unavailability of said assets in game.

I've seen this kind of defense meant honestly before, so I'm not 100% sure, but by god - I hope you're right.

sukhmel

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This is but their legit response was "dunno, that wasn't supposed to happen but it kinda did, maybe don't do anything now, we'll try to fix it sometimes", so this is not that far:

Summzashi

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Wooooooooooooooosh

FooBarrington

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God, I hope so!

Caligvla

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Wait, but if they pulled the game from Steam shouldn't the owners still keep the game (DLC in this case) on their libraries?

FooBarrington

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They refunded people, which probably removed the DLC from their libraries. People who bought the ultimate edition kept it.

Caligvla

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That can happen? I wasn't aware developers could literally remove a game from your Steam library, if so that's really shitty and scummy.

FooBarrington

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Well, they refunded it, so people got their money back. But it sucks that it breaks peoples save files.

Caligvla

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I guess, but so the owner chose to get a refund, right? If so then that's to be expected, if that's the case then I don't see what the fuzz is about. Unless the refund was forced onto the customer.

FooBarrington

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The refund was forced. Players didn't choose it.

FalseMyrmidon

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Not everything needs a change management procedure, calm down there Satan.

originalfrozenbanana

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But…but software development absolutely does

fishpen0

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Yeah, via automated testing. Old school change management with a group of random managers who don’t know shit sitting in a room once a week running up a really expensive meeting never has and never will actually prevent issues from going to prod.

I devops for startups going through high tiers of compliance and basically half my job is killing change management boards/change control boards/release managers in organizations and replacing them with actual working processes that aren’t just smoke and mirrors for people with no critical thinking skills

FalseMyrmidon

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Yeah, the industry as a whole has been moving away from these types of processes for the last 15 years. There are exceptions where it can still make sense but they have significantly higher risk profiles than video games do.

FalseMyrmidon

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You can keep your grubby ITIL process far away from me.

dinckelman

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Truth be told, i don’t have an ounce of care in me about this community council. I want them to make a product that was advertised, because so far it’s just a scam of colossal orders of magnitude (ha)

BananaTrifleViolin

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I loved Cities 1, I was massively looking forward to 2 but it's been nothing but a shitshow.

I've also had a enough of the gaslighting around this game that somehow it's the angry customers that are the problem.

loobkoob

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The angry customers and the state of the game are problems.

it's hard to feel sorry for people who pre-ordered because they got exactly what they paid for - a game of unknown quality and quantity of content
it's hard to feel sorry for people who bought post-release because they also got exactly what they paid for - a game where reviews detailed poor quality and quantity of content
customers being disappointed and/or wanting a refund is perfectly reasonable
people wanting the game to be better is also reasonable
people abusing the devs is not reasonable

I'm not going to defend the poor quality of the game because it's obviously bad (from what I gather, anyway - I've not played it myself) and should be improved. But I do think gamers could learn to be a little more responsible with their purchases and inform themselves before buying a game.

I'm pretty over the whole cycle of games coming out and not meeting expectations, people buying them anyway (through pre-orders or day-one purchases), people being unnecessarily rude/hostile/sending death threats to developers as if they were forced to buy the game as gunpoint. Yes, developers should try to do better, yes publishers should often give developers more time to polish up games rather than announcing the release date two years in advance and refusing to delay, but also consumers could really take some responsibility for what they decide to give money to.

ArumiOrnaught

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The last time I believed trailers was dead island.

The only reason why I played cs1 so much was because of the mods. I like to play the vanilla game before modding. I bought the game knowing that I would like it for a month or two, then I would wait for mods to come out and I'd hop back into it. I knew what I was getting and I didn't have a problem with the game. I don't need a city builder to be high frames. I didn't have a lot of bugs. I'm totally fine with the game, as long as the modding scene stays with the game.

My worry is that all the negativity around the game will make less modders appear for cs2.

Looking back at other city builders releases cs2 release is fine. I don't understand the extent of negativity. Just ask for a refund. If the game gets better with age then buy it when it is cheaper. I'm sure these people have other games to play. CS1 seems to be popular still. Nothing happened to that game.

systemglitch

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Your opinion is stupid, because these people SHOULD be putting this negative pressure on them. It's deserved and the louder they are the better.

loobkoob

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these people SHOULD be putting this negative pressure on them. It’s deserved

Was it not implied I agree with that when I said:

The angry customers and the state of the game are problems.

and;

customers being disappointed and/or wanting a refund is perfectly reasonable

people wanting the game to be better is also reasonable

I'm not going to defend the poor quality of the game because it's obviously bad (from what I gather, anyway - I've not played it myself) and should be improved.

I don't see why that would make my opinion stupid. Yes, the studio/publisher should be held to account for the crappy release. But a big part of holding them to account should be not giving them money for it in the first place; not just handing over money and then complaining afterwards. Complaining afterwards is reasonable for the people who did hand over money, but they should also hold themselves accountable for financially rewarding a company that puts out a crappy product - they're part of the problem.

systemglitch

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Yeah I knee jerk reacted, sorry.

loobkoob

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It's okay; I appreciate the apology! :)

I think it's important to look for the nuance in situations and not treat everything as zero-sum. Both sides can have good points and be open to criticism at the same time (this isn't an "enlightened centrist" take, I promise!). I think a lot of discussion online does tend to strip away nuance and take the position that if you show any empathy with one side then it means you must hate the other - I do my best to avoid that!

systemglitch

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You are absolutely right, and clearly a person of wisdom. Have a great day. :)

Psythik

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That said, I just fired up the game yesterday for the first time since launch and was surprised by how much progress was being made. I was surprised to find that mod support is already available; I thought it was still a work in progress cause I didn't hear anything about it. You think that Paradox would have been making a huge announcement about it since it's a huge important thing, but if they did, I surely can't find it on their website nor on the produce page in Steam.

I was also surprised to find that my performance issues were fixed too. Now getting a solid 40-60 FPS on high settings with a medium-sized city @ 4K. Not bad, given that I usually averaged 20-30 on the same machine in C:S1.

Now all they gotta do is make the economy easier to understand. I still don't get how I can be losing money every month, yet my balance keeps going up. But other than that, all of my complaints with the game have been fixed. If anyone reading this hasn't played the game in several months, I suggest you give it a try again. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Lizardking27

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I think we need to admit that paradox is a shitty greedy company that cares more about selling a million DLCs than they do about making a quality product.

Paradox's business practices have always been greedy and over monetized. Not sure why anyone is surprised their latest product sucks.

griD

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Hmm, I've only played Stellaris from this company and that game is great. A bit pricey with all the DLC, but the alternative of releasing a new Stellaris every few years probably amounts to the same.
Also, I'd rather play a well fleshed out 8 year old game, than getting a bare boned husk with each iteration - which sadly tends to be the norm for 4x games.

Lizardking27

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"A bit pricey"

My dude stellaris+all DLC is $350!

Furthermore, "releasing a new stellaris every few years" is not the only alternative. Look at all the games that exist that have regular free content updates.

Paradox needs to do better.

konsn

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Dont know about stellaris but I got Cities Skylines (1) with all the content DLCs at the time for under $50, which I consider a very good deal for the hours I put in. For reference, I paid roughly the same amount for BF5 which I played for about a month and then forgot about it

wahming

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Not sure whether you got it on sale, or how many DLC you actually got, but it currently costs $380 for the complete package.

Minnels

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It was in a humble bundle way back. Same with EU4 and CK2 had their own bundles iirc. All were great deals if you didn't own it.

wahming

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300 USD... a 'little' pricey

Maggoty

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In hearts of iron they always made sure to drop free content along with the paid content.

ILikeBoobies

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The link suggests the opposite of what you’re claiming

you were of course supposed to keep access to the Beach Properties content until the patch that moves it to the base game arrived. Assets are replaced by the placeholder boxes, but as the waterfront zoning isn't available in the base game yet, I recommend holding off on loading saves with a lot of those zones.

Putting dlc content into the base game doesn’t sound like they are trying to sell millions of dlc

SpacetimeMachine

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Only because there was major backlash for releasing dlc content before the base game is even in a finished state and is still missing content that players feel should be in the base game.

B0NK3RS

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I haven't played it yet and every time I get reminded of the game it's because of something like this...

4am

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CSII has been a shitshow, and the devs rightfully should be ashamed, but honestly reading the comments on that forum makes me really not feel bad for a lot of those people doing the complaining.

Like yeah the game is broken, you got an incomplete product, and it’s ok to be upset. They didn’t fucking kill your dog, there’s no need to fucking dig into them quite so hard, dude. Stop acting like your abusive parents did to you.

Car

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I think you need to re-read the linked thread. Nobody’s as extreme as you’re making them out to be.

The complaints are fairly level headed. I’ve seen worse in Amazon product reviews.

systemglitch

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They have every right to do exactly what you say they shouldn't. Get off your high horse.

GBU_28

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You're saying if someone sells you a shitty blender or toaster that's the same as they killed your dog?

systemglitch

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Link me the quote where I said that lol

GBU_28

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If you literally said it is have quoted it. I'm making a hypothetical equivalency to prove a point.

They sold a product. It sucks. Have they really violated you beyond that transaction?

systemglitch

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Lol no, I'm just filled with my own personal disappointment fueling my outrage.

GBU_28

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So just say no

Woozythebear

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Found the CS2 dev

weeahnn

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This will only stop once the DLCs start rolling out in earnest. (Or probably not, it's PDX)

Its kinda crazy how badly CS2 got messed up.

Dendr0

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CO and Paradox are a public joke at this point. The only value they bring to the gaming community these days is the entertainment derived from shitting on their inept public relations.

Lizardking27

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Only someone with zero context would try to claim that. You must be completely unfamiliar with paradox games.

Nibodhika

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Long story short:

CO released an unoptimized game
Community complained
CO vowed to fix it before releasing DLCs
CO released an assets only DLC
Community complained they broke their promise
CO tried to explain it's different teams
Community kept complaining
CO refunded the DLC for everyone and removed it from Steam and will add the content for free in the next update
Community gets refund and assets become gray boxes until the new version is released
Community complains about grey boxes

Yes, CO did bad releasing an unoptimized game, but if you put pressure for a cosmetic DLC to be removed you can't be angry that they removed said DLC.

FooBarrington

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Yes, CO did bad releasing an unoptimized game, but if you put pressure for a cosmetic DLC to be removed you can’t be angry that they removed said DLC.

I strongly disagree with this for two reasons:

Nobody put pressure on them to remove the content from the game. "Removing the DLC" can be done in productive or non-productive ways, the latter of which happened here - a better solution would be to set it as non-buyable on Steam and wait with refunds until the patch has been released which allows people to continue playing.
It's not just grey boxes (which would be bad enough on its own - these people paid for the content, there's no technical reason for them not to have it right now) - the CO employee literally says:

Assets are replaced by the placeholder boxes, but as the waterfront zoning isn't available in the base game yet, I recommend holding off on loading saves with a lot of those zones.

So the people who bought the shitty DLC, as in the die-hard fans, can't play on their saves due to COs fuckup.