Cities: Skylines 2 developer warns of potential performance issues at launch

[midian182]

WTF?! In what could either be considered refreshing honesty or a true illustration of just how bad things have become, the developer of Cities: Skylines 2 has warned ahead of next week's release that the game's performance could disappoint.

The sequel to the excellent Cities: Skylines looks quite spectacular in its pre-launch trailers. That level of graphical fidelity means you'll require some beefy hardware. In June, the recommended specs were an Intel Core i7-9700K / AMD Ryzen 5 5600X paired with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (11 GB) / AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT (16 GB). But those specs were increased recently.

The game now recommends an Intel Core i5 12600K or AMD Ryzen 5 5800X paired with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 or an AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT with 16GB of RAM. Minimum specs were also raised to an Intel Core i7 6700K or AMD Ryzen 5 2600X with a GeForce GTX 780 or AMD Radeon RX 470 alongside 8GB of RAM.

It seems that even those with hardware that meet the recommended specs could struggle. Developer Colossal Order and publisher Paradox Interactive have just announced that "while our team has worked tirelessly to deliver the best experience possible, we have not achieved the benchmark we targeted."

The post goes on to state that despite this issue, it's believed that releasing Cities: Skylines 2 is still the best way forward. The developer will continue to improve the game over the coming months, which seems to be a standard necessity for most developers these days. It added that "we also want to manage expectations on performance for the coming release."

"Our ambition is for Cities: Skylines II to be enjoyed by as many players as possible, and we're committed to ensuring it reaches its full potential."

A separate modding and performance FAQ notes that not everyone is expected to experience performance issues; it will depend on PC configs and what graphics settings are used. The developer will also release details of the best settings options for increasing performance without sacrificing too much graphical quality.

The announcement will no doubt anger a lot of people who have been looking forward to playing Cities: Skylines 2 – some have compared the decision to release the game in this state to an early access title. We'll have to wait and see just how much the performance issues impact critics' scores.

Cities: Skylines 2 releases on PC on October 24. The game has been delayed on consoles, so it won't arrive on Xbox Series X/S and PS5 until June 30, 2024.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/100514-cities-skylines-2-developer-warns-potential-performance-disappointments.html

 

[winjer]

Then how about delay the game and fix it.

 

[MasterAce]

It’s a cruel world, they fail to hit their targets and now it’s poopstorm no matter how they try to handle it.

Alot of sites have picked this news and, I’m sure, many will postpone buying this to see some benchmarks first.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

"Minimum specs were also raised to an Intel Core i7 6700K or AMD Ryzen 5 2600X with a GeForce GTX 780 or AMD Radeon RX 470 alongside 8GB of RAM."

Well, the OG skylines would run like arse on that setup too. Might have found the problem here.

skylines 1 has some hard set VRAM limits. At 1080p all high settings, you MUST have 8GB VRAM. If you dont, it will spillover into system RAM, and cause stuttering. My laptop is like this, it has a 4GB 1650 mobile, and the GPU is nowhere near saturated, but the game fills all 16GB of system RAM.

A major city will take up 8GB on its own. With a sub 6GB GPU (the 470 was 4, the 780 was 3GB), that poor system is gonna CHUG.

If they can get skylines 2 running on a 8GB system RAM, 3GB VRAM system I'll be impressed.

 

[Dimitriid]

Then how about delay the game and fix it.

They'd need to delay it like 5 or 6 years to just move it to a different engine: They decided to go with the BRILLIANT plan of using Unity Engine again for this game. It was already barely functional with a long list of mods on the last game which let's be clear and honest here, it's basically what this game is: A developer lead compilation of popular player mods somewhat refined and repackaged as a full price sequel.

But hey this game was only ever possible because EA killed Simcity so hard it left a huge vacuum for city builders, I'm sure it will sell as this is the one game where you can actually have a decent time playing at 15-20 FPS when you zoom in since well, the core gameplay loop consist on you pausing, building your stuff, unpause just to see your little buildings pop up and then pause again to either 1) Deal with citizen complains usually by building new stuff 2) Dealing with traffic usually by building new stuff but with roads and public transport 3) Dealing with a budget fallout by you guessed it, building more stuff so you get more tax money and expand.

So it's truly an experience of having the game paused for 80-90% of the time so it doesn't really matter if you play at ridiculously low FPS. Not that this should be any kind of excuse for still using Unity engine and asking for full retail price but hey, they know their audience and know they will pay.

 

[m4a4]

They'd need to delay it like 5 or 6 years to just move it to a different engine: They decided to go with the BRILLIANT plan of using Unity Engine again for this game. It was already barely functional with a long list of mods on the last game which let's be clear and honest here, it's basically what this game is: A developer lead compilation of popular player mods somewhat refined and repackaged as a full price sequel.

But hey this game was only ever possible because EA killed Simcity so hard it left a huge vacuum for city builders, I'm sure it will sell as this is the one game where you can actually have a decent time playing at 15-20 FPS when you zoom in since well, the core gameplay loop consist on you pausing, building your stuff, unpause just to see your little buildings pop up and then pause again to either 1) Deal with citizen complains usually by building new stuff 2) Dealing with traffic usually by building new stuff but with roads and public transport 3) Dealing with a budget fallout by you guessed it, building more stuff so you get more tax money and expand.

So it's truly an experience of having the game paused for 80-90% of the time so it doesn't really matter if you play at ridiculously low FPS. Not that this should be any kind of excuse for still using Unity engine and asking for full retail price but hey, they know their audience and know they will pay.

...What the heck are you talking about? Unity engine is modern, and could easily handle the load with the right optimizations (as with any modern engine). Unity being more flexible makes that more complex, but it would be up to the devs to figure it out.

You sound like someone who's never made games in any of the mainstream game engines and is just using the recent controversy to falsely project your nonsense.
Rust, Kerbal Space Program, Subnautica, Genshin Impact (including mobile) all were able to be optimized pretty well (last I checked) for how demanding those can be. How is this Unity game any different?

 

[dangh]

I don't care. Already pre-ordered and can't wait - is exactly what I'm looking for and I'm fine with the requirements. I know this game at start will be a bit limited, but in expecting that. All the advantages and new features makes up for that and I really want to experiment asap.

 

[MaestroIT]

Then how about delay the game and fix it.

They already delayed it on consoles till 2024 because of performance issues, if they do it also on PC them it will be bad for them.

It seems they prefer to release saying from the beginning it might have performance issues before reviews come out and give it low scores, like this they say "we already told you..."

 

[koohansen]

I wonder what is the object/building limits of SC II, I hit the maximum for my city and has lots of land left to zone....