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The Cities Skylines Paradox: how the sequel stumbled

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Re: The Cities Skylines Paradox: how the sequel stumbled

#51

Post by michaelcampbell »

voidUpdate wrote: post #3

I still don't know why we needed a sequel... Couldn't they just keep working on the original game, which already worked really well and lots of people loved? I had similar feelings about kerbal space program, but at least there it's somewhat understandable, given the jank that crept in over time

> Couldn't they just keep working on the original game, which already worked really well and lots of people loved?

Of course. If history (and "IME") is any guide, this was all marketing and product manager driven. Creators of all stripes now create the thing THEY want, not the thing paying CUSTOMERS want.

That's perhaps overly cynical and sometimes this is not the case if some new set of features can't be easily done in the architecture of the original, of course.

Re: The Cities Skylines Paradox: how the sequel stumbled

#53

Post by Tadpole9181 »

bob1029 wrote: post #14

> The engine lacked occlusion culling and relied on high-resolution shadow maps, causing “an innumerable number of draw calls”. The engine does not lack or cause these things. The fact that the developers chose the HDRP pipeline for this game should be the most obvious dead bird in the entire coal mine. These games should be running on URP without question. We don't need advanced lighting systems in a top down city b…

> We don't need advanced lighting systems in a top down city builder.

You don't need a lot of things. The developers wanted the game to look better than the first, so went with HDRP because it claims to be a production ready pipeline that helps them achieve that.

But it was not and the developers did not have the time, or perhaps skill, to work around it's issues.

> we should probably reach for Unreal and flip on TAA like everyone else is doing.

First of all: "Just ask the entire studio to throw out all existing work and retrain staff to change their engine."

Second of all: Do you mean DLSS? TAA is an AA technique, it does not improve performance.

Third of all: Unreal? The engine notoriously ragged on as dragging down the performance of countless games in the last 2 years because it too has features that are easy to turn on and look good, but require skill and knowledge to fine-tune to be reasonably performant? That Unreal?

Re: The Cities Skylines Paradox: how the sequel stumbled

#54

Post by duxup »

luckyturkey wrote: post #4

The story is familiar: small team nails a niche, publisher scales expectations, sequel inherits AAA scope without AAA staff. Ten years later we call it "mismanagement", but really it's the same incentive loop that breaks most creative partnerships once success hits Excel.

It's also strange to do with with a city builder.

Now Skylines certainly uped the game game in graphics, but honestly I would pay good money for an updated Sim City 4 or ... Sim City 3000.

A city builder doesn't have to LOOK amazing to be great.

Re: The Cities Skylines Paradox: how the sequel stumbled

#55

Post by Tadpole9181 »

wongarsu wrote: post #25
voidUpdate wrote: post #3

I still don't know why we needed a sequel... Couldn't they just keep working on the original game, which already worked really well and lots of people loved? I had similar feelings about kerbal space program, but at least there it's somewhat understandable, given the jank that crept in over time

KSP2 made some degree of sense: the game had outgrown its engine and architecture, so you start fresh with a bigger dream. But before that had a chance to fail from second system syndrome it was doomed to fail by insane demands from Take 2. News of work on KSP2 could harm sales of KSP1, so when hiring people to work on KSP2 they couldn't mention what they were hiring for. So you had a team who didn't know KSP1, and d…

Ironically, the KSP 2 studio in all their secrecy couldn't help but post multiple videos as early access approached, praising themselves for how innovative and smart they were - how they're so inspired and it's gonna be amazing.

Re: The Cities Skylines Paradox: how the sequel stumbled

#56

Post by bcye »

wongarsu wrote: post #48
TylerE wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cities skyline is not top down. It’s a fully three d environment

But you are rarely looking at it from street level, you spend most of your time in a birds-eye view I guess you could argue that top down should be defined narrower than that, but the steam tag Top Down is full of games like this [1] 1: https://store.steampowered.com/tags/en/Top-Down/

Detailers spend a lot of time in 3D perspectives and zoomed in close so I don't think that this is generally true.

Re: The Cities Skylines Paradox: how the sequel stumbled

#57

Post by TylerE »

bcye wrote: post #56
wongarsu wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you are rarely looking at it from street level, you spend most of your time in a birds-eye view I guess you could argue that top down should be defined narrower than that, but the steam tag Top Down is full of games like this [1] 1: https://store.steampowered.com/tags/en/Top-Down/

Detailers spend a lot of time in 3D perspectives and zoomed in close so I don't think that this is generally true.

Honestly the gameplay is so shallow I'd spend my time zoomed in too. Talk about a series where every release went down hill. The original Cities in Motion was the best of the 4.

Re: The Cities Skylines Paradox: how the sequel stumbled

#58

Post by xboxnolifes »

dfxm12 wrote: post #23
voidUpdate wrote: post #3

I still don't know why we needed a sequel... Couldn't they just keep working on the original game, which already worked really well and lots of people loved? I had similar feelings about kerbal space program, but at least there it's somewhat understandable, given the jank that crept in over time

You can only sell a game once. Once you have your customers' money, you've achieved your goal. What else is there to do? DLC has a hard cap on your possible sales... You could work on a totally new game, but, I think companies are looking to cut costs by reusing content.

> DLC has a hard cap on your possible sales...

DLCs have a hard cap on possible sales in the same way a new game has a hard cap on possible sales. DLC releases can, and do, bring in new players to the base game.

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