Some of the settings there are absolute killers. Volumetric coulds is nuts. The game is 90% staring at the ground, and I lose 10+ fps with that. Ditto for transparent reflections, and the settings for global illumination on high are insane as well.
Sure, once you tune it down selectively it looks like CS1... but it also performs like it.
I really don't understand some of the choices they made here, either in the way the visuals work, the way the default settings work or the way they communicated it. If they hadn't come out saying it'd be super heavy and they renamed "high" to "ultra" or had an intermediate setup between medium and high they wouldn't be getting this much crap.
I strongly disagree. The game has massive performance issues and I'm getting 10-20 FPS on the lowest possible settings with my 2080 Super. At that point it looks worse than CS1 and performs worse.
Also the 7 FPS or so on the main menu are ridiculous, unless they're using my pc to mine crypto in full force.
If they release a complete game for 50€ or 90€, then I expect that shit to be a super smooth experience, even on the minimum recommended specs, which do in fact note a GTX 980 if I recall correctly.
So either get the specs correct, optimise the game properly or get out of the business. I'm a programmer myself and I'd be deeply ashamed if I released software that performs so poorly.
I've the same GPU but way older CPU (3900X) and could play for 3h without issues yesterday.
I noticed that the game is using multithreading way better than C:S 1. All cores of my CPU were used equally which made me think that the technical foundation seems to be solid, just too demanding for the average gaming PC.
I'm on openSUSE btw
I've played some action games in the teens and was fine with it. Maybe lower frame rate at low resolution (1080) isn't as apparent as the high 4K, but I've never understood why people can't play with frame rates still far faster than film (if it's truly refreshing the frames completely and not ripping the picture of course). I suppose this argument goes the same direction as the vinyl/CD one, with both opinions dead sure they're right.
If the game is handling variations of frame rates during play badly, that's a different story. The goal is for the player to not realize there's a change and stay focused on the game.
I started out playing Doom on a 386, in a tiny tiny viewport, and until recently my hardware was apways behind the curve. I remember playing Oblivion at 640 x 380. And enjoying foggy weather in San Andreas because the reduced draw distance made my fps a lot better.
Over the years I've trained my brain to do amazing real time upsacaling, anti-aliasing, hell, even frame generation. nVidia has nothing on the neural network in my head.
But not everyone has this experience and smooth FPS is always better, even if I can handle teerible performance if the game is any good.
simple explanation: people get used to their monitors' frame rate.
if all you've been using is a 60Hz display, you won't notice a difference down to 30-40 fps as much as you would when you've been using a 144Hz display.
our brains notice differences much more easily than absolutes, so a larger difference in refresh rate produces a more negative experience.
think about it like this:
The refresh rate influences your cursor movements.
so if a game runs slower than you're used to, you'll miss more of your clicks, and you'll need to compensate by slowing down your movements until you get used to the new refresh rate.
this effect becomes very obvious at very low fps (>20fps). it's when people start doing super slow movements.
same thing happens when you go from 144Hz down to, say, 40Hz.
Some of the settings are messed up, I think. It definitely can run faster than that by toning down some settings on that hardware. They really should have changed the defaults or straight up removed some visual settings, given what they do to the game. In my experience, the volumetric clouds, reflections and GI presets are all messed up and cost a disproportionate amount of performance when maxed out.
There is a vast difference to other games. The core is fine, mechanics work perfectly, the game looks great, it has just bad performance. That can be fixed.
Yeah... but some people wish for more finished games and that includes performance.
Like I get it it's playable... and some games release in much worse state but unless it's an indie game with zero money that needs that early money to continue they should wait.
A company like Paradox should certainly be able afford testers who run the game on a variety of configurations to see if optimization is necessary.
One thing I would say and this is a broad statement - generally you don't do optimization unless you know you need it. And you only do it after the thing you're writing is working correctly non-optimally. Optimize too soon, or when you don't need to just makes code an unmaintainable mess. That doesn't doesn't preclude writing efficient code in the first place but efficient is not the same thing as optimal.
I am absolutely with you there. I do not like the fact that the performance is pretty bad. But a game that „just“ has performance issues is potentially fixable. Games where the core gameplay loop is broken are usually not getting better over time.
And I will play City Skylines for years to come so buying it right now and playing with lower settings and less then stellar performance is fine and I will hopefully be able to increase these things over time.
More complex but you have less control over what is produced, it's more about getting workers to their jobs and transporting goods efficiently than making efficient production lines.
Have been playing all night, the performances are not great, but it's actually playable for most people with lower settings, and the game is pretty great.
Also it's a city builder, it's okay to play it with 30fps in low, it's not a FPS.
The need to hit FPS targets has always been blown way out of proportion by the casual gamer. But seeing people removed about their city builder not hitting 30+ is a new low in the chase for unnecessary frames.
30 is the bare minimum for any game regardless of genre lmfao. Anything below 30 gets hard to look at because of the bad frame pacing, things below 60 can still cause eye strain if you're not used to low fps.
Don't let new games hype you!
Play the actually released, proven, Good games - Undertale, Ori and the Blind Forest, TOTK, God of War, The Last of Us, It Takes Two.
There's a wealth of available, old, discount games! Don't roll the dice on new shit
At the same time I hear you but still I feel like it's still not acceptable to release half done or poorly optimized products and hope that they'll be done over time. For those who pay for the product it's almost an insult.
I absolutely agree, but so long as it remains profitable developers will do it. Skip a whole lot of QC, rush to release the game, then use the launch to gather bug reports and fix those. Costs saved not hiring a ton of QC testers, get a return on the investment much sooner, get early players to pay to be QC testers basically. It's a tried and tested formula now and it will keep happening until too many people won't pre-order games.
Why do you care? Seriously, think about it. Shitty products in every possible category come out everyday and it doesn’t bother you. You do need these products. if they don’t meet your standards, don’t buy them and move on with your life.
Like, you don’t need to get on line and act as thought you have been personal insulted when there is a moldy apple at the grocery store. Just leave it and keep shopping.
Some even Paradox ones. One can waste many-many hours in CK:DV with Mappa Regnorum mod, for example. Though CK2 is more complex, it lacks the relative simplicity and clarity.
Ori unpacks itself slowly. At the beginning, I agree - A pretty basic platformer. Once you find yourself playing Galaga in it, it starts to prove how flavorful a platformer can be.
Gameplay aside, the music, world and story was so heart warming!
It's a really solid Metroidvania, with beautiful design, music and story. It's not the best Metroidvania (my vote would go to Hollow Knight) but the game is really good. The sequel is great too!
I don't know how far in you went: the first half-hour or so is just slow storytelling. And just like all Metroidvanias, your set of powers at the beginning is very limited and isn't so interesting. However, the game is well enough paced that as soon as you're comfortable using your current power set, the game unlocks a new mechanic, and it never really stops until the end. It especially shines if you're a completionist IMO, as being able to go back to each area to explore it to 100% with the whole power set feels really great.
You're not wrong. On the other hand, i would prefer mediocre game from Paradox over every single one of those that you listed solely on base of genre.
What is the OP about on? Cities Skylines 2? It have better reviews now that the first wave of negbomb passes. Also i wouldn't even take those under consideration, paradox forum crowd have long and established tradition of negbombing on steam for petty reasons.
If it makes you feel any better getting older means you learn to see these things coming from a mile away. The best games are (generally) the ones you learn about from word of mouth
And when you're older you have no time to game. So, you're a few years behind. By the time they get to you, they're either hashed out and good or have fallen out of popularity.
Or you could be like me and still play games from the 90s.
I've been a fan of the series for a very long time. Since the first game. But the overkill that released PD:TH isn't the overkill of today. They are extremely incompetent and replaced by fresh blood. PD3 is going to be a mess and I will not be surprised if they go back to releasing PD2 DLCs again.
Tbh, the game's great. I've literally see someone compare playing a city managment game at 30fps to a slideshow.
Does it run well? No. Is it a disaster? Also no. Is every single other aspect of the simulation better than cs1? Absolutely yes. Most of the reviews are by far exaggerated
Places don't feel as alive as they did in the original. The original was still deeply flawed, mind - but this goes even further than that.
A great example - when there was a firetruck putting out a fire in the original, you could see little dudes squirting water. CS2 doesn't even have guys come out; the fire just magically goes away. Multiply this by... everything.
There's no bikes (at least as far as I can tell), and the pedestrian path tooling seems to be a huge step back (the only dedicated pedestrian path I can find is technically considered a 2-lane road, but it doesn't allow cars).
The music has these cute little segments inbetween. But there's only like... 5 of them. Once you hear all 5, you've heard everything and they start to grate. The other 2 "radio stations" don't have the NPR segments, but they do have "ads"... and by "ads" they mean exactly 1 ad that you hear every time for "Spaz Electronics". You can turn the ads off but I'd expect more than just a single one.
Everything overreacts to anything you build. If you upgrade a road, it technically disconnects power + water + sewage for a hot second. Then you get a bunch of spam about "I don't have any power!" blah blah even though the game was paused and they absolutely had power.
It's really hard to see what trips Cims are taking. The original let you see the paths Cims took throughout your city, which let you make informed decisions around public transport. Now you can just see... how much traffic there is? Which doesn't tell you anything about where Cims are going, just where you have bottlenecks. It very much encourages a "just 1 more lane, bro" kind of thinking.
Not having a wide variety of public transport options is a bummer. It feels like they left some stuff out for a future DLC (e.g. monorails).
There's no light shining from the camera at nighttime, so it can get actually literally pitch black at night. Like "turn off the day/night cycle because this is unplayable" levels of dark. A subtle light coming from the camera when not in photo mode would've done wonders.
The zoning information is really hard to read. I can't tell what areas I have zoned with something else because it colors areas from other zones as white and unzoned areas as clear... on a mostly white background. It's really really hard to tell at-a-glance what needs to still be zoned in some cases.
The more I play it, the more it feels like CS1 is the sequel and CS2 is the original. There's just so much that's not done as well or that's simply not there. The stuff they added is cool, sure... but like, I wish it was additive on top of what we had before, and not "back at square one". It just makes me want to play the original.
Can you imagine how much slower the game would have been with bicycles, individual paths and subtle light coming from the camera at night? These were probably performance decisions, not gameplay (though it's possible it was rushed and they cut out non essentials for release).
To me it's win win. I can wait for it to go on sale and by then it will actually run on my PC. If it was finished on day one I'd be really tempted to buy it full price.
I have no issue playing. It runs smooth. I did encounter several bugs though. But that's usual for games released nowadays. I hope those get patched soon.
Although I'm happy it works for me, I'm sad to see so many people have much worse experiences. Game developers aren't what they used to be. Except Larian Studios, they are great.
The original ran like shit too and its UI was garbage compared to any SimCity. Never understood the love for that game. SC3KU was the peak of city sim games.
When Interplay decided that Sim City needed goofy, over-the-top FMVs on a CD-ROM…I think that was peak Sim City. As a kid, I was disappointed 2k and 3k didn’t have professional, career-oriented adults yelling at you for your incompetence in FMV.
They outsourced that work to Grove Street Games who had already done the mobile ports and said have at it. Grove Street Games took their mobile ports (which were already compromised) and adapted them back to console & PC with a new engine. I assume everything was done on the cheap and to a deadline and what they produced is what they produced. For Rockstar it wasn't a labour of love, it was money for old rope and if they had given a damn they wouldn't have outsourced it or at least had stricter quality controls & acceptance on what someone made for them.
Rockstar made a slightly better job with their RDR port in that they didn't completely fuck it up but it was still outsourced and a minimal effort.
Well I think the whole performance thing have been blown waaaay out of proportion by a vocal few. I have a relatively old pc with an rx580 8gb vram and the game's been running fine for me. Obviously it needs some patches, but people have been saying it's the second coming of ksp2, and that's simply bullshit
Agree. I'm several hours in and I'm honestly loving it. Face it gamers, y'all just like to hate things, it's fun to be in the "in crowd" who knows better than everyone else to not buy something. Misery loves company.
I think the performance issue is not at all overblown, but the complaints about stripped features are overblown. The game is more complex than the original, but it does run like dogcrap right now.
Don't downplay peoples valid concerns, we should strive for better performance in any game. Just because some people can put up with low framerates doesn't mean others should have to. I think 120fps at 1080p should be absolute minimum performance we should accept out of a game given the power of PCs these days.
Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't want to downplay people's experiences and performance issues ARE concerning, and I personally hold the belief that a company is responsible for the quality of the product they bring to market and ultimately a fault in their own processes if they couldn't. BUT it doesn't take away that the issue has been overblown. It simply, given the game's circumstances, shouldn't be getting the hate it's currently harbouring. It seems to me that the internet's found the new shiny thing to hate on, and the human psyche simply can't resist just a smidge more of rage
They are filled with unfunny meme reviews, review bombs because they feature a gay person, or reviews from people who don't understand how computers are supposed to work.
Honestly the endgame was pretty fun as well on face value if a bit barren, it's the midgame that was super disappointing to me. Overall it's a decent game imo, it just set expectations way too high and couldn't deliver
I remember thinking that surely Duke Nukem Forever would turn out awesome once it's finally finished. After seeing the reception I just decided it wasn't worth checking out.
All they had to do was throw it in Early Access while they fixed it. The reviews would likely be stellar in that case. Releasing it fully in this state just feels like some corporate BS. Disappointed in dev and publisher, and they keep making it worse with their weird excuses.
"Built with modern hardware in mind", homie this shit ain't even running right on a 4090. And 30fps target? Idk what they're smoking.
Cities skyline 2 performance is pretty bad from the stream I was watching. HOWEVER according to this review by Wal Der Qual if you set the dynamic resolution to "constant" you will get an FPS boost. It helped the gal on the stream I was watching anyhow. I cant speak for their other suggestions as they didnt get tried on the stream.
Yeah gaming on linux has gotten loads better - but it's still definitely not quite there as a main gaming platform. Which is frustrating, because I vastly prefer linux as a desktop experience (and obviously for software development), but I just can't ditch my windows PC for gaming yet.
And I literally use my computer to make me $ with Linux development, and IT consulting and game very very little, I've also got other PCs.
Edit downvote all you want, I'm just pointing out there's other ways to use PCs, I'm just slightly annoyed by the stumble, it's not like I don't have an entire steam library that plays lol.
I'm playing on Linux and it runs perfectly (nixos though). I wouldn't even be able to guess it was on Linux if I didn't know. have you tried the latest proton / proton ge?
I am so down for a sequel of this game and while it looks good the only thing making me hesitate are the performance issues. I'm tempted to just play the first one more and even pick up a DLC I want for that instead of putting the cash to this.
So far I've played 4 hours and I just think there's a hate train on it. I have a 3000 series card and took the recommended steps from paradox and the game plays fine, I'm enjoying it. From what I understand VRAM is the choke point, so if you don't have a ton then maybe hold off
Most of the reviews are because of bad performance, but a friend told me FPS massivly increases on medium settings. They just defaulted to high for some reason
Well yes the Performance gets better on Medium. But the problem with this game is that it's not optimized at all. The devs basically admitted it even before launch.
Edit: someone did a deep analysis on the games rendering system.
The devs said they couldn't reach the level of optimization they were aiming for in time for release. Would you rather have them release the game a month late or play on medium for a month. I know what I prefer. You don't know what you're talking about frankly when you say its "not optimized at all"
Maybe don't jump the hype train every time and instead choose to play proven and established games from developers who are known to deliver quality, which exist in abundance?
In my experience delays just means the crunch time is extended.
Anyone thinking this release was reputation destroying is just fickle and shouldn't be taken seriously
Delaying also means that you are burning cash with zero income. You can only borrow money on worse and worse terms, and if there is an actual prime rate hike whoa boy are you pooched.