Sepharo wrote on Mar 8, 2023, 17:47:
I am consistently confused about the "flood of DLC" and "have to have mods to make it work".
No mods, no DLC on my side of things... used the same save file from day 1 until now. No corruption. Base vanilla game.
Each paid expansion (that I didn't buy) came with a free update that included fixes and a subset of free new features.

There were 14 expansions over a 7 year period.
Although, I personally didn't use them, this approach should be celebrated not complained about.

Remember the developer is (private/independent) Colossal Order, the publisher is Paradox.
Cities in Motion and Cities Skylines are their only games.
Seems like you guys might be confusing them with Paradox Development Studio

Absolutely agree. What do people want? Obviously not microtransactions or loot-boxes so what does that leave - endless free content? Sure that would be lovely, but also obviously not going to happen. What else, the game being abandoned? How is that better?

I count 12 full DLC in now 8 years, I guess you're counting Concerts and Match Day too? Anyway, that's about 2 a year. A lot? Yes. Would the base game be better if they had stopped after 4? Of course not. Even if they had kept doing the updates with some free content, it would at best be the same. None of this DLC is required, and if you want to flesh out your game with the most important ones (After Dark, Mass Transit, maybe Parklife and Industries) you'd be out $10 - $20 if you wait for one of the many sales.

The other stuff? Radio stations, which can be ignored. Content Creator Packs are a nice way for players to make a bit of money (and the ones I've talked to seem very happy with their cut) but can be ignored if you want. Some mods are very helpful - I can't recommend TMPE highly enough - but none are required. They're free anyway.

I am consistently confused about the "flood of DLC" and "have to have mods to make it work".
No mods, no DLC on my side of things... used the same save file from day 1 until now. No corruption. Base vanilla game.
Each paid expansion (that I didn't buy) came with a free update that included fixes and a subset of free new features.

There were 14 expansions over a 7 year period.
Although, I personally didn't use them, this approach should be celebrated not complained about.

Remember the developer is (private/independent) Colossal Order, the publisher is Paradox.
Cities in Motion and Cities Skylines are their only games.
Seems like you guys might be confusing them with Paradox Development Studio

The most important announcement was The Lamplighters League and not this "sell a billion dlcs" trojan horse.

I loved everything about this game and sunk hundreds of fun filled hours into it, until I got sick of seeing the cities I had sunk so much time into no longer load due to corrupted save files.

It's a game like WOW in the sense that you really can't play it well unless you have a boat load of addons or mods installed, so you are talking about a serious time investment just messing around to set all of that up, which makes the loss of a mature city to corrupt save files all the more tiresome.

J wrote on Mar 6, 2023, 14:39:
I tried to like the first one. And I may be alone in this, but my head just couldn't accept how it played out. It was the time. The day and night cycle didn't make sense with the speed the people were travelling.

I don't know if there was a mod for that or not. But that was why I stopped playing.

It's Paradox we're talking about. Of course it will be completely barebones and then they'll add in dozens of DLCs. As much as I enjoyed Cities Skylines the whole DLC flood policy was really annoying. Not going for that again unless t he game really offers something new. For now it just looks like same old with new clothes.

Please give me the ability to walk or drive around my city without that having to be awkwardly modded in later. Please!!!

Quboid wrote on Mar 6, 2023, 15:11:

Kosh401 wrote on Mar 6, 2023, 14:50:
Can't wait for this, if only for proper multithreading. Curious how many of the amazing/necessary mods will be baked into it as well.

That will be interesting to see. I'm a mod developer (Move It, Network Anarchy, Picker, and others) so I'm keeping a close eye on this. I'm under NDA so I can't say much, but I can say that I hope to continue modding for CS2 so if possible, these mods' features will be in CS2 in some form.

Oh nice, thanks for your work on those mods, they are definitely some of the must-haves! I'll take it as a really good sign that you're under NDA and likely giving solid feedback. With all the Unity vs Unreal Engine talk I'd be curious if modders like yourself who make such game-changing mods prefer one engine over the other for CS2. I hope the game is very mod-friendly either way just in case it falls short on base features, but also hoping not to have 600+ mods and assets again lol. Cheers,

Burrito of Peace wrote on Mar 6, 2023, 14:01:
Call me cynical, but I half expected them to also pre-announce the 97 pieces of DLC that will be released for it as well. It is a Paradox game, after all.

Knowing you're exaggerating, I decided to look at the DLC list because I was genuinely curious (haven't played this in years)... theres 50 pieces of DLC, most are just content creator art packs or music stations. There seems to be 12 pieces of actual functional mechanics DLC (the ones over $10, except for the Financial DLC)... It's not too bad for eight years.

I've not played much Stellaris in 2-3 years now but I could still rant for an hour about it. DLC is just half their problems with that game and I still cant really figure out the new econ system.

Cities Skylines is the only Paradox game now that I make an exception for on DLC and even then the last two major DLCs have not been well reviewed so I skipped them. Airports seems a pointless mess. I did get some of the cosmetic stuff last year and found I'd lost interest in the game for the most part.

Hopefully the second game is good but... it is Paradox so my excitement is dampened.

eRe4s3r wrote on Mar 6, 2023, 18:05:
I learned my lesson REALLY HARD with Stellaris, curse your BOP for making me remember

If it is any consolation, I still feel the sting, too!

Yeah I liked Skylines, even made assets for it, but bought ZERO of the DLC heh.
Let's hope it won't be a KSP2 all over again.

Also yeah, if this is going like Stellaris I am not even considering buying it. I learned my lesson REALLY HARD with Stellaris, curse your BOP for making me remember

jdreyer wrote on Mar 6, 2023, 15:49:

Burrito of Peace wrote on Mar 6, 2023, 14:01:
Call me cynical, but I half expected them to also pre-announce the 97 pieces of DLC that will be released for it as well. It is a Paradox game, after all.

Missing a zero.

I was trying to be conservative...

/-=-\

RogueSix wrote on Mar 6, 2023, 16:19:
Yep. Paradox = full boycott mode as far as I am concerned.

I'm in the same boat. In the drive to relentlessly push out DLC, I feel they ruined Stellaris which I had really enjoyed playing pre-2.0. Since then, the game was reconfigured significantly so that DLC could be snapped in.

Screw Realistic, just make it fun to play

Burrito of Peace wrote on Mar 6, 2023, 14:01:
Call me cynical, but I half expected them to also pre-announce the 97 pieces of DLC that will be released for it as well. It is a Paradox game, after all.

Yep. Paradox = full boycott mode as far as I am concerned. I'm just glad that they apparently do not own the BattleTech rights. I'd rather have no BattleTech than a Paradox BattleTech.
As far as I can tell, the video game rights lie with Microsoft. I really hope that they got something in the works. Revive FASA Studio and do it, Mickeysoft! Or don't and hand it over to inXile or Obsidian and tell them to use the Harebrained BattleTech for basic design guidance. Then tune it up to 11. kthx.

I have like 500 hours in vanilla City Skylines.
Because I only ever played one city.
I love micromanaging (when it comes to city builders)... a new pedestrian path is a big deal in my city.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Mar 6, 2023, 14:01:
Call me cynical, but I half expected them to also pre-announce the 97 pieces of DLC that will be released for it as well. It is a Paradox game, after all.

Missing a zero.

Though, it would be cool to be able to build a city with megabuildings ala Dredd.

That'll be DLC - Dredd Loadable Content.

The first one wasn't bad but there was no way I was going down the DLC rabbit hole.

Kosh401 wrote on Mar 6, 2023, 14:50:
Can't wait for this, if only for proper multithreading. Curious how many of the amazing/necessary mods will be baked into it as well.

That will be interesting to see. I'm a mod developer (Move It, Network Anarchy, Picker, and others) so I'm keeping a close eye on this. I'm under NDA so I can't say much, but I can say that I hope to continue modding for CS2 so if possible, these mods' features will be in CS2 in some form.

The original had so many rough aspects, like the day/night cycle having little effect on the population (there is a mod, Real Time, that fixes this). It was a small project that Paradox didn't expect to sell very well (estimated 300K sales). It's actually sold well over 10M, so CS2 is a major production.

I enjoy the micromanagement, but I do play it in sandbox mod with dozens of mods so my experience is quite different to what new players have.

I'm sure there will be loads of DLC. I don't mind this, I'm generally happy to pay a set amount for set content, no microtransactions or loot boxes. I only have a problem with it when it negatively affects the base game, which EU4 DLC has some times. That's not cool.

ForgedReality wrote on Mar 6, 2023, 14:14:
Someone gifted me the first one. I played with it a while but I would never have bought it. How do you guys deal with all the overwhelming micromanagement in games like this? It just stresses me out. 😰

That only affects me when I have to refit my roads with a new transport system or wider roads and I ruin my economy because I was not prepared. But everything else is fine.