I don’t really understand how people make the review threads, but we’re sitting at a 77 on OpenCritic right now. Many were worried about game performance after the recommended specs were released, but it looks like it’s even worse than we expected. It sounds like the game is mostly a solid release except for the performance issues, but they really are that bad.
- Popular Cities: Skylines 1 streamers are reporting that they are not able to achieve a consistent 60 fps, even with RTX 4090s and lowering the graphics to 1440p medium settings. Based on utilization numbers, it sounds like the GPU is limiting factor here.
- Those same streamers are also reporting 16GB of RAM usage when loading up a new map, which means that the minimum recommended spec of 8GB was a blatant lie from the devs.
- IGN and other reviewers are reporting that the game does not self-level building plots, which is something that C:S1 did pretty well. This leads to every plot looking like this:
Maybe not a big deal to some, but the focus of Cities: Skylines has always been on building beautiful cities (vs. having a realistic simulation), so this feels like a betrayal of Colossal Order’s own design philosophy.
Personally, this is a pretty big bummer for me. I like C:S1 a lot, but I find it hard to get into a gameflow that feels good unless I commit to mods pretty hard, and that means a steeper learning curve. For this reason, I tend to have more fun just watching other people play the game. I was looking forward to C:S2 as a great jumping on point to really dig into city-building myself. Maybe I’m being too harsh here because of my personal disappointment - many don’t really care about hitting 60fps, but those same people also tend to not build top-end PCs. And it sounds like if you don’t have a top-end PC, you’re looking at sub 30 fps, and I think most agree that that is borderline unplayable.
Anyone else have thoughts on this one?
Yeah, my thought is that this is a game they’ll be supporting for 8-9 years so what the fuck does it matter if it runs like dogshit on day one? Don’t fucking buy it until the performance increases and the problems you mentioned are ironed out.
It really is that simple.
Anyone that expected this game to be perfect on launch was clearly not around whenever Cities: Skylines launched. The performance was godawful to the point that I refunded it. A couple of months and a couple of patches later shit was cleared up and I repurchased it. Didn’t have an issue after that.
So yeah, the whole “Why doesn’t this brand new game not have the same performance and features as a nine year old game with numerous DLCs and mods?” thing is getting fucking tiresome.
I don’t think it’s crazy to expect games to have playable performance levels when they release. Not to mention it’s a sequel so you’d think they would learn some things after fixing the first one.
Yeah the fucks up with all the Paradox apologia in this thread? I also remember Cities: Skylines on release It ran fine and my rig was shitty back then. It was a perfectly functional little city builder. People loved it and it was called the new Sim City! “Just wait two years and put down another $50 on dlc bro. Ur dumb for expecting it to be good now.” Nah this shits unacceptable. If a game needs to be supported for years before its considered good then an honest developer would call it an early access game. Ya know, those games that get years of support, updates, and features for free.
Those same streamers are also reporting 16GB of RAM usage when loading up a new map, which means that the minimum recommended spec of 8GB was a blatant lie from the devs.
I’m not saying this is necessarily the case, but just because a game uses 16gb of ram on a 32gb system does not been it can’t make do with 8gb on a more limited system.
Yeah IMO it’s far better for games like Cities Skylines to use as much RAM as they can - especially once mods start coming out! I’ve had times where my heavily modded version of CS1 wanted 16+ gb of memory because loading assets from RAM is way faster than loading from SSD/HDD!
I mostly agree with this post, but
the focus of Cities: Skylines has always been on building beautiful cities (vs. having a realistic simulation)
this is simply not true
Yes, erm… totally about building beautiful cities.
Not having 60 fps might be an issue for a shooter or anything that is built on fast reactions, but it doesn’t really sound like an issue in a city builder.
It’s still something I’d rather have than not; not having it makes for a less fluid experience.
I don’t get much FPS on CS 1, and it’s not pleasant. It’s probably somewhere between 20-30. But the news above mean that I shouldn’t even dream about running CS 2 with this hardware, because it runs much worse than the first game, but also compared to other games.
Honestly I was expecting that CS 2 would run better than 1. I have a little hope that they will fix their shit, but now I don’t expect significant improvements over the first game’s performance.
“with this hardware”, found your problem.
Yep we better all go drop $3k on a new computer so we can get this game to playable fps!
So, exactly as every other resource intensive game released, ever. Weird huh?
What is your deal? Do you believe that gaming should only be a hobby for the wealthy, or?
The specs until recently were not as intensive but still pointed to the game not being super optimized.
Minimum was a 780 (3gv)
I expected that buying a 6650 (8gb) would have put me well over the minimum requirements.
MINIMUM:
Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows® 10 Home 64 Bit
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-4790K / AMD® Ryzen™ 5 1600X
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia® GeForce™ GTX 780 (3GB) or AMD® Radeon™ RX 470 (4GB)
RECOMMENDED:
Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows® 10 Home 64 Bit | Windows® 11
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-9700K | AMD® Ryzen™ 5 5600X
Memory: 16 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia® GeForce™ RTX 2080 Ti (11GB) | AMD® Radeon™ RX 6800 XT (16GB)
I don’t know, this whole 60fps thing is a new demand from gamers. Frankly I don’t care about reviews anymore. Everyone skews negative, and I’m tired of it.
My hard takes:
- 60fps doesn’t matter. It’s not a shooter. Even CS1 I could only get 50ish on a new map, and that’s with hardware that’s 6 years newer than the game.
- RAM should be used. For gaming it would be wasteful not to use it. If you aren’t using all your ram then you’re loading textures, shaders, and everything from disk, which is thousands of times slower and that would lead to … you guessed it, gamers bitching about lag. What are you using that ram for anyway when you’re gaming that’s a higher priority? If you’re watching someone and they’re complaining that a game is using too much ram shut them off. They don’t how computers work. These aren’t the days of 256MB of ram. I have 32 gigs. I want them to use it.
- Marketers are paid to lie. They don’t understand what the game can do, they’re paid to sell it. Cyberpunk was disappointing for many because they believed marketers running unleashed, saying the game would be a revolution, that it would be gaming evolved. It wasn’t. Instead gamers “only” got a fun open world RPG and they were disappointed by it. (And bugs, they had legit concerns but marketing was stupid around that game and every one of their marketers should have been fired )
- I find that people who watch reviewers are exponentially more disappointed in games because they let reviewers tell them how to feel. If you want to start enjoying games more, stop letting them tell you if you should be disappointed. They’re going for clicks and views, and the rage train gets a lot of them. Just try it and return it if you don’t like it.
I haven’t watched anything and I’m excited. I’m not “hyped”, I don’t think it will redefine city building forever. I think I will enjoy my time in a game that is by definition an iteration of the franchise. Maybe it’ll be great. Maybe it’ll be worse than the first, but I’m going to decide that myself, not let some reviewer begging me for a subscribe tell me.
60fps doesn’t matter. It’s not a shooter. Even CS1 I could only get 50ish on a new map, and that’s with hardware that’s 6 years newer than the game
It does not sound like 50 FPS on 6 years old hardware. Maybe half?
RAM should be used. For gaming it would be wasteful not to use it.
Don’t be afraid, I do use my RAM. Like, it’s full of other important programs and filesystem cache.
But the game shouldn’t take it away from other programs, and it should also be aware of the fact that windows starts swapping out programs when RAM usage has reached ~70%. This will significantly affect any programs you run simultaneously, but the game itself tooz because it’s less used memory pages will be swapped out more. Random access for reading back swapped pages is much slower than loading the resources in smaller groups sequentially.16 GB usage sounds like the game has loaded ALL of its models and resources, even those that are not needed (not in view, and probably not even accessible to the player), and probably has multiple copies of most with different resolution and such.
Loading to RAM that much data would be fine if they managed it to only be loaded to a cache, that can be released for other programs, but I don’t think you can do that in any other way than using the filesystem cache, at which point the RAM usage does not even count against your process, or as usage at all.
If you aren’t using all your ram then you’re loading textures, shaders, and everything from disk, which is thousands of times slower and that would lead to .
Obviously the game does not have to use all the RAM. It only needs to preload textures and models that are useful on your system (based on graphics settings) and are in use right now or can be in use very soon.
Also, loading from disk is not as slow as you make it seem. Yes it is if your users install games to a drive that’s bad for that purpose (like SMR tech hard drives), or if you haven’t placed the resources strategically, by which I mean grouping resources so that commonly-used-together resources are placed sequentially for a quick and efficient read.
The first problem shouldn’t be your concern: the player shouldn’t expect top performance from hardware that was designed for a totally opposite task.Marketers are paid to lie.
Yes, but they shouldn’t touch any technical information, including the hardware requirements section. Marketers don’t know shit about the game, just that they want to sell at much licenses as
humanlypossible.
The hardware requirements, however, is to be defined by those who know shit about the game. Preferably core developers or performance testers, who have an idea about the game’s inner workings and about how much is it expected to use in average and in the worst case.I find that people who watch reviewers are exponentially more disappointed in games because they let reviewers tell them how to feel.
I can agree with that and your point on Cyberpunk. I haven’t played that game, but not because I’m not interested. It looked fun from content that I have seen.
But the performance concerns sound like that it’s actually a huge problem.
I like it that so far it has been described a solid lunch except land leveling and performance, because the first one can probably be addressed in a few months at most if they want it. But even the published hardware requirements were disappointing, and this is a signal that the game will hardly get any better than that, if it can reach it.
