So what's actually wrong with the game?

[UnwantedCabbage]

I haven't played it and was wondering why I haven't seen any of my favourite youtubers play it so I looked at the reviews and they're very negative.

[ArmedGhost-]

You're either going to get people who love the game or hate the game. There's no median in this community.

The game isn't perfect, there's bugs, but my overall experience has been positive and have been really enjoying the game. This has been my favorite channel to watch and really shows what is possible in the game so far.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp61QbNCmd0&t=3067s&ab_channel=Infrastructurist

Anyway brace yourself, because this post is going to swarmed with toxicity and hatred real quick. lmao.

[SumGumption]

Originally posted by Uncle_Festus:

You're either going to get people who love the game or hate the game. There's no median in this community.

The game isn't perfect, there's bugs, but my overall experience has been positive and have been really enjoying the game. This has been my favorite channel to watch and really shows what is possible in the game so far.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp61QbNCmd0&t=3067s&ab_channel=Infrastructurist

Anyway brace yourself, because this post is going to swarmed with toxicity and hatred real quick. lmao.

OP stated that they looked at the reviews. That should be good enough. It is OP's choice to make, after all. But I think it only fair that you lead these people to your game style choice and your mods that you use to enjoy this game in your own style. Your specs might be helpful to them as well. If indeed, you are looking to be helpful.

[ekin]

The game has thousands of identified bugs, and in many ways the simulation is fake (including public transportation which has no impact on traffic.) But worst of all, the performance of the game is so horrible that even the highest end machines struggle with 100-200k population. Go more than that and the game is pretty much unplayable. It's recent reviews dropped below 30% for good reason.

[Haystack]

Originally posted by UnwantedCabbage:

I haven't played it and was wondering why I haven't seen any of my favourite youtubers play it so I looked at the reviews and they're very negative.

Anything that keeps dev's and Fan Boys away from CS1 CAN'T be all bad. :)

[Kiriveh]

the game was released (and still is) incomplete, and they wont even be adding steam workshop

[Townsendvol]

Sub par performance, almost no actual simulation and many bugs.

If that’s what you enjoy, give it a buy. If not, don’t.

It may eventually be a great game, but it needs a ton of work.

[Geist]

Originally posted by UnwantedCabbage:

I haven't played it and was wondering why I haven't seen any of my favourite youtubers play it so I looked at the reviews and they're very negative.

There are 3 Main problems.

A: The performance of the game on mid tier and even high tier machines is not good enough. As soon as your cities get bigger it will all crawl to a halt. Some people on the lower spectrum of hardware can't play it at all even if they meet the minimum requirements listet on the store page.

B: many critical bugs in the games main systems and simulation. For example they had a bug that suddenly let your city loose huge sums like 200 million credits an hour or gain them because the taxation system bugged out. Or the land value that can grow so high that it prevents you from actualy building anything in areas of your city at all or even destroyed parts of it because the companies went bankrupt as they could not pay the building rent that is calculated with the land value.

C: (not important for me at all but for a huge part of the community its a no go) pre release announced full mod support and mod platform is not yet integrated in the game.

[Professor H. Farnsworth]

The game was sold as the most realistic city simulator to date.

It is nothing more than a city painter where there are no consequences whatsoever and where nothing you do matter.
- Don't have garbage/water/electricity/fire department/police department/schools etc? Not to worry. Outside connections will do it for you.
- Is your budget completely negative? Not to worry - government subsidies will cover you.
- The game does sport an impressive industry, the problem is you have zero effect on it. You want that ore refinery next to your ore extractors. Well enjoy play whack-a-mole for the rest of your playthrough because the game wants to place wood refinery there (this is also the case for commercial areas) even reducing/increasing taxes does nothing as they boldly claimed.
- Only X% of your city is simulated. The rest stay home.
- Resources (consumer goods) are teleported straight into Cims home if the Cims can't find a "valid" path, but here's the kicker.. It teleports to all the Cims that stay at home. Could at least have send a delivery truck..

Then there a critical bugs such as:
- Land value spiraling out of control and even the CO has said that their next patch won't fix it. A mod, however, has.
- Exporting/Importing still not functioning correctly.
- Dogs.. Everywhere and we're on round 3 of fixing those. That might not seem like a critical bug, but they cause major traffic issues.
- Cars do u-turns on highways. Cars cut across 3 lanes on highways to take an exit at 90 degrees and I could go on. Cars do not observe proper roundabout rules etc.

And much more which you can read on paradox forums in their bug section.

The people here that like the game, like the city painter aspect. The majority of the people that bought the game and have left or give it negative ratings wanted the city simulator that was promised.
That's why ratings are in the gutter. The vast majority feel like they were sold a big fat lie and have lost faith in COs ability to fix it.

[Geist]

Can you guy please stop to call it a city painter. its not. it has nothing to paint a city in it.

[ekin]

Originally posted by Geist:

Can you guy please stop to call it a city painter. its not. it has nothing to paint a city in it.

They call it "city painter" out of kindness, I suppose. Mass transit making no difference in traffic (AFAIK that still hasn't been debunked) means it is not a simulation, either. So what should we call it? Esp. with the dev mode, it is probably more of a painter than a simulation.

[Billy Lee]

Originally posted by UnwantedCabbage:

I haven't played it and was wondering why I haven't seen any of my favourite youtubers play it so I looked at the reviews and they're very negative.

This what professor H. Write. I just a city painter and CO don't bring anything to this game, Bug fix? Just boost numbers to astronomical like landfill when fundamental issue still exists.

and the difference between the description in negative and positive reviews speaks for itself

[Geist]

Originally posted by mehmeteking:

Mass transit making no difference in traffic (AFAIK that still hasn't been debunked) means it is not a simulation, either.

Mass transit has no big impact on traffic, there is nothing to be debunked.
But the problem is not that there is no simulation (because that is wrong) the problem instead is something else entirely but leads to the same result.

If your public transport is bad the CIMs will decide that its too much of a hassle to travel to work (if they don't own a car, or walking is too far) and therefore they will stay at home more often. If your public transport is good the CIMs will decide to travel to work more often instead.

So without public transport you see 1000 cars on the street and with public transport you also see 1000 cars on the streets + 1000 cims traveling by bus and train. And thats the problem.

[ekin]

Originally posted by Geist:

Originally posted by mehmeteking:

Mass transit making no difference in traffic (AFAIK that still hasn't been debunked) means it is not a simulation, either.

Mass transit has no big impact on traffic, there is nothing to be debunked.
But the problem is not that there is no simulation (because that is wrong) the problem instead is something else entirely but leads to the same result.

If your public transport is bad the CIMs will decide that its too much of a hassle to travel to work (if they don't own a car, or walking is too far) and therefore they will stay at home more often. If your public transport is good the CIMs will decide to travel to work more often instead.

So without public transport you see 1000 cars on the street and with public transport you also see 1000 cars on the streets + 1000 cims traveling by bus and train. And thats the problem.

Ok, but what you described is not a simulation. A simulation should approximate what would happen in reality, and this game doesn't even attempt that at any level.

A "cim" may choose to stay at home because public transit is not that good, but a "human" wouldn't. They would either find another job, move to somewhere closer to the job or cope with "bad" mass transit.

At the end of the day, if a game fails to simulate the effects of mass transit on traffic, I will not consider it a city simulation in any capacity.

[purrcat33a]

If you are happy to build pleasant little villages or small towns where nothing much ever happens and everyone looks delighted (even though they seldom leave their homes), it's fine - but you will need external mod support to make it look reasonable.

If you want to build a city of more than about 50K population, prepare to become bored with the simulation speed and very frustrated with the illogical way that the simulator runs - irrespective of the performance capability of your PC.

Add in that the developer is releasing bug fixes at glacial speed and has a rather arrogant attitude to the customers and that the publisher is more interested in DLC and console sales than in supporting the existing clientele and most of us, from that, feel let down and unsupported.

But aside from the previous posts and this, it's a great game!

[Th3_Jok3r_BR]

and game is empty. Looks a apocaliptic town near the first one, no pedestrians on roads