I will fully concede that the trend of game makers releasing half-baked, poorly optimized games that are buggy and unplayable at launch is totally a thing and it is frustrating and we should demand better (though we keep buying so why would they stop?).
BUT.... the online game community is so insufferable and this Cities Skylines II launch is a great example of it. The game is not about 4k 120 fps gameplay. It is a simulation game that runs fairly well even on last gen's hardware if you drop SOME of the fidelity settings. But that's not the predominant discourse. If people can't play it at 4k out of the box on their overpriced 4090 then they take straight to the internet to complain (and mind you they have tried fiddling with exactly 0 knobs to make it runnable).
I am by no means making excuses for game makers who certainly share much of the blame for creating an environment of distrust among game fans. But the online discourse is just rage baiting and looking for anything to hate with minimal evidence or sometimes even outright lies. Makes me want to go into a cave and play my games without seeing any content or discussion about it.
> If people can't play it at 4k out of the box on their overpriced 4090 then they take straight to the internet to complain (and mind you they have tried fiddling with exactly 0 knobs to make it runnable).
The top comment contains this extract from an IGN review:
> I have a 13900k, 64GB of RAM, and a RTX 4090, playing on a 1440p ultrawide monitor. I got 35fps at the main menu and in game on a brand new map w/o building a single thing. Turning off motion blur and depth field increased this from 35 to 50fps. Not a single other graphics setting changed the performance at all. I turned off every single setting I could or set it to the lowest possible, and still only got 50fps.
Yes, I was addressing the broader discourse more generally, specifically Reddit. But you're right that the article did directly address this though I would say the tone and title of the article are incongruous with the simple fact that they were able to get the game to run well with minor tweaks.
I take issue with "only got 50fps". This is not Counter Strike or a game that demands 300fps. 50fps (if your 1% lows are within reason) is completely playable.
It's not about the number by itself, it's what the number implies. If an RTX 4090 can't get to 60 FPS on an empty map, what will happen when the game is running on an RTX 4060 and it has to render a complete city?
>I take issue with "only got 50fps". This is not Counter Strike or a game that demands 300fps. 50fps (if your 1% lows are within reason) is completely playable.
You're complaining about people complaining. If you're satisfied with the game being playable then play it, but others may have different expectations of quality, and it's not wrong for them to voice their opinion when the product they paid money for doesn't meet them. I personally don't remember participating in a congress of gamers where everyone agreed not to complain about a game unless it was practically unplayable.
>If you're satisfied with the game being playable then play it, but others may have different expectations of quality, and it's not wrong for them to voice their opinion when the product they paid money for doesn't meet them.
I'm all for voicing opinions in a civic and calm manner. Most people online voicing their opinions come off as know-it-all teens or children throwing tantrums. It's as-if they have a _right_ to a CS2 with 120fps. Paradox warned about bad performance prior to launch (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/updates-on-modd...). Nobody claimed or said performance was gonna be great. And still, people act surprised.
It's no surprise that the reviews was down at close to 30% a couple of hours into the release and today at 52%. Why is there such a massive bias towards large reviews at the first hours? Because many gamers loves thrashing about. It's much more important than taking a step down and calming down.
The people who reviewed the game in the first few days were the ones who either pre-ordered it or bought it as soon as it came out. They were so excited to play the new installment they took a gamble and trusted that the developer would produce a polished product, because they wanted to be able to play it as soon as possible. When they got to play the game, they saw it ran poorly to the point that it might have spoiled the experience for them. They're right to be angry about it, especially when developers and publishers make most of their money during the first few weeks since launch. By releasing a half-finished product they're treating their most enthusiastic users like crap. They didn't have to do that, they could have delayed the launch. Be it because of decisions made by the publisher or by the developer, they chose to release when they did. They made their bed, now they have to lie in it. I don't blame anyone who raves about performance, because what was released was well outside the realm of what's acceptable for a finished product, regardless of what said prior to launch. You don't get to sell a car with an asterisk that says "by the way, the fuel tank leaks so until we find a way to fix it you'll use twice as much fuel as normal".
> You don't get to sell a car with an asterisk that says "by the way, the fuel tank leaks so until we find a way to fix it you'll use twice as much fuel as normal".
Yeah. But in case of CS2, gamers did buy the leaking car. Devs analogously said "by the way, the fuel tank leaks" and people just went with "OK" and bought CS2, after which the customer started to complain (rave?!) about leaking fuel tanks. The car salesman retail store said "Well you can have all money back no questions asked until you've driven at least 160km". Steam has generous refunds. What does the customer do? (S)he still goes onto review sites and bitch about bad leaking fuel tanks. It is very much in bad faith on the customers part.
I wouldn't rush to Colossal Games defense if customers just said "It ran bad for me on my 4090 for some reason so I refunded". That's not what's going on with the negative reviews though. People act entitled.
I would argue a dealer telling you about a major defect directly before you buy the car is a bit different than a post on some forums that the product they're selling is not well made.
I would suggest it's not reasonable to expect that someone buying a game has to do research on a forum to know the game is unfinished -- if it's being sold as a finished game it's reasonable to expect it's in a playable state. the original post was meaning to say it would be unheard of for other products to allow companies to sell known unfinished products as finished products, even with the promise of completing the product. and consumers would similarly balk at such a proposal for virtually any other object.
it was more the absurdity of the different way games are treated which is anti-consumer.
>I would suggest it's not reasonable to expect that someone buying a game has to do research on a forum to know the game is unfinished -- if it's being sold as a finished game it's reasonable to expect it's in a playable state
It is playable, though. Now, if you wanted it to be a perfectly optimized, polished experience with no hitches even on older hardware: well, you get what you pay for, I suppose.
>it would be unheard of for other products to allow companies to sell known unfinished products as finished products, even with the promise of completing the product.
if "120fps" is your minimum requirement of "playable", then you probably care enough about performance to the point where you need to research every game you buy. Similar to how someone interested in road rallies or drag style street racing probably won't be satisfied even with perfectly driveable cars.
The kinds of people making these complaints are those "street racers", so to speak.
You're still not getting it. Yeah, if a car dealership had such a generous return policy you could get your money back and get a car that does what you need within your budget. But these people didn't want just a city builder and they happened to buy this one. They wanted to play the new version of Cities: Skylines. They're loyal fans and they're treated like beta testers.
Yes, it's entitlement. Customers are entitled to get a quality product in exchange for their money. When Paradox goes to spend their earnings they're not going to be throttled to do it at 45 cents per second.
It runs perfectly fine on my 1080 with low settings and a city of 50k.
Quite frankly I'm tired of people speaking out of their ass when there are people who are actually fucking playing the game. Do you also postulate about the weather without looking out the window?
Even 30 FPS is perfectly playable in any game. People have truly gone off the deep end with this FPS shit. Back in the day, most (all?) console games ran at 30 FPS, and we somehow managed to play them and have fun. I would love to see the people complaining about "only" 50 FPS try to wrap their brains around that one.
In your opinion only, not one to be shared by all.
> Back in the day, most (all?) console games ran at 30 FPS
No they didn’t.
> I would love to see the people complaining about "only" 50 FPS try to wrap their brains around that one.
Well it helps that first of all, you’re wrong. Secondly, there is a SIGNIFICANT difference with CRT motion quality meaning it’s not at all comparable to frame rates on LCD/OLED today.
most/all 3d games did for gen 5 and 6, and most of 7 before engines can utilize that hardware. Ocarina of time ran at 15 fps IIRC. Crash Bandicoot ran at 30fps. Final Fantasy 7 fell back down to 15fps.
Once we got to the PS2 era stuff started being 30fps, with the truly exceptionally optimized games hitting 60. Final Fantasy X would get bumped to 30fps and Jak and Daxter: the precursor legacy would be 60fps but often have some spikes down to 30fps. From what I can find, The original Halo also targeted 30fps.
>Well it helps that first of all, you’re wrong
but you just said it was their opinion not shared by all. This is why people don't take the gaming community discourse seriously.
As someone that primarily plays on PC i haven't thought 30 FPS is acceptable since the NES era.
Cities skylines 2 is being released on PC where the expected baseline has been 60 fps for 25 years or so. 60 fps at a reasonable resolution should be available to most users. If even people with a top of the line CPU and $1800 GPU are limited to 50 fps you failed.
this take is not fair to the community. almost all games auto set graphics settings as per your hardware since many years now.
any good developer would test these configurations on common hardware combinations (at least on the popular GPUs) before shipping. other than maybe the graphics preset, why are we expected to change all the dials just to start the game from the menu?
in the crossplatform era, PC has been treated as second class citizen with optimization. forza motorsport is also another example where even having above their minimum requirements give a slideshow on launch, despite lowering all settings.
expecting every gamer on PC to be tinkerers is just a myopic take that does not help with development priorities.
It's predominantly people with strong opionions who actively partake in online communities (instead of just lurking), so the vitriol is to be expected.
BUT.... the online game community is so insufferable and this Cities Skylines II launch is a great example of it. The game is not about 4k 120 fps gameplay. It is a simulation game that runs fairly well even on last gen's hardware if you drop SOME of the fidelity settings. But that's not the predominant discourse. If people can't play it at 4k out of the box on their overpriced 4090 then they take straight to the internet to complain (and mind you they have tried fiddling with exactly 0 knobs to make it runnable).
I am by no means making excuses for game makers who certainly share much of the blame for creating an environment of distrust among game fans. But the online discourse is just rage baiting and looking for anything to hate with minimal evidence or sometimes even outright lies. Makes me want to go into a cave and play my games without seeing any content or discussion about it.