‘Cities Skylines’ is one of the best city building simulations in the past decade. No wonder that everyone who played the first game was looking forward to the second addition to the successful franchise. On 24th October 2023 it finally got released in various shops and the fans were eager to buy it. But even though there had already been multiple push backs of ‘Cities Skylines 2’, it’s far from finished. Random FPS drops, crashes, unresponsive UI and much more are plaguing the game, making it a rather disappointing experience for a lot of people which resulted in rather mixed reviews on Steam. So what exactly caused those issues and why did they release it despite knowing of the shortcomings? Let’s go and take a look.
What exactly are City Building Simulators?
To really understand the principle of ‘Cities Skylines 2’, we first need to learn what exactly a City Building Simulator is and how it works. As the name already implies, simulators simulate real life scenarios and people use it for both entertainment or educational purposes. The level of complexity can vary a lot depending on the focus of the game itself. In case of city builder simulations they can be very in-depth when it comes to taking care of your city. You have to plan and construct your metropolis while also managing your money and resources the game is providing you.
‘Cities Skylines 2’ is especially complex when it comes to city building. You can manage your citizens every need: from happiness to health to work and education. You can build houses, shops and factories to your hearts content while keeping an eye on the traffic. But what happens in the background, unseen by the player’s eyes, is even bigger. Every single thing like persons, cars, skyscrapers and trees has to be calculated by a computer. This is the most performance intensive process and can be very taxing for the system it’s running on.
Performance Issues On Almost Every System
‘Cities Skylines 2’ is a very complex and detailed game so people would expect some sort of issues and bugs but the amount of trouble with the performance exceeds everything. Blurry graphics and poor frame rates are the most common problems users face. The game needs a horrendous amount of resources to be even playable and a whole more to run effectively. Even some high end computers have troubles with it depending on the components built into the system. So how can it be that a game like this has so many performance issues on computers that can handle ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ on the highest settings without a problem?
One issues is the so-called LOD (Level of Detail). Those define what kind of quality an asset has when it renders at a certain distance to the camera. The further away you get from buildings etc. the lower the resolution and polycount should be to maximize the FPS. Grass for example even vanishes completely after a certain distance. Users have discovered that a lot of things don’t even have a proper LOD system in place. This is a massive loss of performance and apparently a lot of those assets aren’t even optimized properly.
Shadows also calculate from every single asset, no matter the size. Sometimes less is more. Especially in busy games like this. Rendering shadows for every little detail not only makes the scene look rather busy but they also tend to flicker. Implementing a photo mode that pauses the game and renders the light and shadows perfectly would be a great solution. It allows a better focus on gameplay while also giving the players opportunities to take epic shots of their city.
Lack of New Content & Annoying Features
A lot of players also complain about the lack of new content in the game. It seems more like a collection of the best mods from the old ‘Cities Skylines’ than a whole new game. Of course it’s amazing that those features got implemented in the base game but a lot of fans were looking forward to more innovative and groundbreaking features which sadly didn’t get delivered.
Also the lack of influence the newly implemented talent tree has on the playthrough is very minimal. People want to see the impact their specs have on each playthrough. For example if you haven’t developed ‘Police & Administration’ at all, why not have the city be a criminal hotspot?
Another thing people keep complaining about is the bad radio feature throughout the game. It is supposed to be a funny gimmick but instead turned into a very annoying disturbance, especially when it comes to the very repetitive announcements made when some kind of accident happened in the city. Turning off the radio is an option but sadly this also disables the music entirely which isn’t the best solution as well.
That they stopped supporting the Steam Workshop and implemented their own is debatable but the intention of making mods more accessible across platforms isn’t a bad idea at all.
Paradox Interactive & Colossal Orders Reaction
The first thing we like to address is that the team behind ‘Cities: Skylines 2’ knew about the performance issues before they released the game and even shared a note about this because they didn’t reach the desired benchmark target. In a post they explain everything in further detail and even provide players with a guide on how they can fix their FPS:
- Reduce screen resolution to 1080p
- Disable Depth of Field and Volumetrics
- Reduce Global Illumination
- Visit their page for a more in-depth on how to improve your FPS
The developers are constantly working to make the game run more smoothly through a series of patches in the upcoming weeks and months. They want to optimize the game as best as possible to get rid of stutters caused by some synchronization condition, optimize and balance GPU performance and also pushing optimization of the CPU. Their target is to get a steady 30FPS as a minimum which is more than enough for a simulation game that doesn’t always need to run on 60FPS like shooters do.
The reason they released the game despite knowing of the performance issues was to respect the announced release date and to allow people to start playing the game even though it was risky.
Strong Foundations Make Good Games
What a lot of people have forgotten about the first part ‘Cities Skylines’ is the fact that the game also didn’t run smoothly from the very beginning and has slowly turned into the masterpiece that it is today. So while the release was quite the setback for the studio, I am sure it is going to live up to our expectations sooner than we might think. Unlike ‘The Lord of the Rings – Gollum’ the problems of the game aren’t rooted in its foundations. Future patches, DLCs and mods are definitely going to make this game even better than its predecessor, it just needs a little bit more time.
Does this mean it’s justified to charge the full price if the game is released in such a bad condition? Absolutely not. They should have either postponed the release further or put the game into an early access state that costs less for the people who really want to play it despite the issues the game currently has.
Overall this is a really bad trend in the game industry where more and more games are released in a rather broken and unfinished state. Some studios are still able to save their reputation like CD Project Red but others like Daedalic Entertainment had to close up their studio for good as a result.
If you are interested in what exactly caused the closure of Daedalic Entertainments in-house game development department, click here:
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum – The Fall of Daedalic Entertainment
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