Facepalm: Developer Colossal Order launched the extremely anticipated sequel to 2015’s Cities: Skylines earlier this week, and issues went simply as most anticipated. Every week in the past, Colossal Order warned that the sport’s efficiency would possibly fall in need of some consumer’ expectations. As we highlighted on the time, the admission was both a novel little bit of honesty or an correct portrayal of the state of the business. Regardless, the developer cast forward and knowingly shipped a product it knew fell in need of a sure customary.
Did the gamble repay? I suppose that will depend on the way you measure success.
Cities: Skylines II touched down on PC on October 24 and in response to SteamDB, peaked at 104,697 concurrent customers that day. As of this writing, the sport has greater than 14,800 opinions on Steam with an general score of “blended” and unsurprisingly, a lot of the adverse suggestions factors to efficiency points.
For comparability, the sport has a rating of 75 out of 100 on Metacritic however a consumer rating of simply 3.8 (usually unfavorable) out of 10.
Fortuitously, fixes are on the way in which. Colossal Order has already pushed out the primary of what it says are a number of patches to enhance efficiency within the recreation. Patch 1.0.11f1 would not repair every part, and it’s only out there on Steam proper now, nevertheless it ought to be out there on the Microsoft Retailer quickly.
This patch consists of the next enhancements and fixes:
- Modified LOD to be unbiased of rendering decision to get extra constant efficiency with excessive resolutions
- Minor optimization with fog
- Depth of discipline optimizations and tweaks
- International illumination tweaks
- Optimized stutters when buildings spawn/stage up
- Optimized varied stutters throughout all methods
- Mounted crash after upgrading wind turbine
- Mounted crash when automotive crashes into nonetheless hidden automotive with trailer
- Mounted crash with mesh loading (that occurs with low settings largely)
Colossal Order printed an optimization information earlier this week to assist gamers get essentially the most out of the sport in its present state. Primarily based on early suggestions, it appears as if adjusting the depth of discipline setting may web a strong efficiency enhance. Reducing your decision and disabling volumetrics is one other surefire technique to increase body charges on struggling machines.
The developer additionally addressed a performance-related challenge that just lately sprung up on Reddit involving in-game characters’ tooth. Responding to the matter, a rep instructed IGN that the sport’s “lifepath” characteristic shouldn’t be linked to the geometry of characters and thus, would not impression characters’ efficiency. The total assertion from the dev has been reproduced under:
“Citizen lifepath characteristic doesn’t tie to citizen geometry and doesn’t have an effect on the efficiency figures of the characters. We all know the characters require additional work, as they’re at the moment lacking their LODs which have an effect on some components of efficiency. We’re engaged on bringing these to the sport alongside basic LODs enhancements throughout all recreation belongings. Characters characteristic a variety of particulars that, whereas seemingly pointless now, will turn out to be related in the way forward for the venture.”
That final sentence is especially attention-grabbing, and now we will not assist however surprise what CO has in retailer for the way forward for its metropolis constructing recreation. May it evolve into extra of a individuals sim than a metropolis constructing sim, and would that even be the appropriate transfer?
Cities: Skylines II is due out on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Collection within the second quarter of 2024.
