Cities: Skylines II patch hits Steam to address performance troubles

Facepalm: Developer Colossal Order released the especially expected sequel to 2015's Cities: Skylines earlier this week, and matters went simply as maximum predicted. A week ago, Colossal Order warned that the sport's overall performance might fall quick of a few user' expectations. As we highlighted at the time, the admission become both a singular bit of honesty or an correct portrayal of the country of the industry. Regardless, the developer forged ahead and knowingly shipped a product it knew fell brief of a positive trendy.

Did the gamble repay? I guess that depends on the way you degree fulfillment.

Cities: Skylines II touched down on PC on October 24 and in step with SteamDB, peaked at 104,697 concurrent users that day. As of this writing, the game has extra than 14,800 opinions on Steam with an typical rating of "combined" and unsurprisingly, tons of the bad feedback factors to overall performance problems.

For comparison, the sport has a score of seventy five out of one hundred on Metacritic but a consumer rating of just 3.Eight (usually negative) out of 10.

Fortunately, fixes are on the way. Colossal Order has already driven out the primary of what it says are numerous patches to enhance overall performance in the sport. Patch 1.0.11f1 does not restoration the entirety, and it's miles best available on Steam proper now, but it need to be to be had at the Microsoft Store quickly.

This patch consists of the subsequent upgrades and fixes:

• Changed LOD to be unbiased of rendering resolution to get extra constant performance with excessive resolutions

• Minor optimization with fog

• Depth of discipline optimizations and tweaks

• Global illumination tweaks

• Optimized stutters while homes spawn/degree up

• Optimized various stutters throughout all systems

• Fixed crash after upgrading wind turbine

• Fixed crash when vehicle crashes into nevertheless hidden car with trailer

• Fixed crash with mesh loading (that occurs with low settings frequently)

Colossal Order published an optimization manual earlier this week to help gamers get the most out of the game in its contemporary country. Based on early feedback, it appears as though adjusting the intensity of area putting may want to internet a stable overall performance enhance. Lowering your decision and disabling volumetrics is every other surefire way to raise body costs on struggling machines.

The developer additionally addressed a performance-related issue that currently sprung up on Reddit involving in-sport characters' tooth. Responding to the matter, a rep advised IGN that the sport's "lifepath" feature isn't always related to the geometry of characters and accordingly, would not impact characters' overall performance. The full declaration from the dev has been reproduced under:

"Citizen lifepath function does not tie to citizen geometry and does no longer have an effect on the performance figures of the characters. We realize the characters require similarly paintings, as they're currently missing their LODs which affect a few components of performance. We are running on bringing those to the game along preferred LODs enhancements across all sport assets. Characters feature a whole lot of info that, while reputedly needless now, turns into relevant within the future of the challenge."

That closing sentence is specifically thrilling, and now we can not assist however marvel what CO has in shop for the destiny of its town building sport. Could it evolve into more of a people sim than a metropolis constructing sim, and might that also be the right move?

Cities: Skylines II is due out on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series within the 2nd zone of 2024.