Colossal Order vs Frontier (Planet Coaster 2)

[epicgamerrusher]

Planet Coaster 2 is similar to Cities Skylines 2, as it is a sequel to a beloved game, which the sequel had a rocky launch but room for success. They are both in the same genre, creative simulation and management games. They both have similar DLC based update strategies.

After being received poorly, instead of saying 'the game is not for you' they promised free updates with NO dlc while they focus on improving the game. Instead of dropping random updates with minimal improvements, they communicate with their audience, said they were sorry immediately and got to work on updating the game. They SAID what they were going to do, have provided sneak peaks for features and gave AN UPDATE ROADMAP SAYING WHAT FREE UPDATES WILL CONTAIN AND THEY WILL UPDATE EVERY MONTH!

Where as Colossal Order insulted their fans in posts, didn't communicate well at all, released a DLC shortly after launch which soon got the lowest scored reviews on steam, then finally after seeing no one bought it they refunded it and put it in the base game, as they should have in the first place. After that, they never communicated with fans again. I know they are toxic people, but most fans are just disappointed. Tell us what you are planning, what they updates are.. be more like frontier and other small game studios.

And for a team of over 30 developers, the updates don't contain much at all, and take a long long time, longer than they should. Something is fishy with this update cycle and lack of communication. Please just talk. I don't have faith anymore that they know how to develop games and add more than 5 features in an update or update the same pace as CS1. And don't get me started about selling DLC that doesn't exist... they don't even haves names let alone what they will contain, Three missing content creator packs and radio stations.. against steams new terms but they don't care, violating consumer rights laws but nothing will be done

They have shown a lack of care for the community, not fixing critical bugs in a short time or at all, not listening to feedback, ignoring a large part of the community on the steam forums, not adding requested features or not to their full extent (line tool). It must be a mess over there,

'The asset editor was going to be ready 2 weeks after release but we encountered a bug' FOR THE PAST 14 MONTHS WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN DOING??!! Either you don't know how to code and have been lazing around all day or something else is going on. Even someone who has no idea of game development or unity could learn how to code and fix it in 14 months. I have a suspicion it's so people buy their overpriced and content lacking dlcs, and so people don't realise how bad quality they are, that modders can make far better assets and far more of them.

I'm giving up on this game. They clearly don't know how to code or manage a community. 95% of posts even on paradox forums don't get a response and practically none on steam.
I'll only come back and play it after they've released all the content I've paid for but will only stay if the free updates have improved the game and fixed it enough. + Never buying a Paradox and especially Colossal Order game again.

[Cosmic Sea]

Originally posted by epicgamerrusher:

Planet Coaster 2 is similar to Cities Skylines 2, as it is a sequel to a beloved game, which the sequel had a rocky launch but room for success. They are both in the same genre, creative simulation and management games. They both have similar DLC based update strategies.

After being received poorly, instead of saying 'the game is not for you' they promised free updates with NO dlc while they focus on improving the game. Instead of dropping random updates with minimal improvements, they communicate with their audience, said they were sorry immediately and got to work on updating the game. They SAID what they were going to do, have provided sneak peaks for features and gave AN UPDATE ROADMAP SAYING WHAT FREE UPDATES WILL CONTAIN AND THEY WILL UPDATE EVERY MONTH!

Where as Colossal Order insulted their fans in posts, didn't communicate well at all, released a DLC shortly after launch which soon got the lowest scored reviews on steam, then finally after seeing no one bought it they refunded it and put it in the base game, as they should have in the first place. After that, they never communicated with fans again. I know they are toxic people, but most fans are just disappointed. Tell us what you are planning, what they updates are.. be more like frontier and other small game studios.

And for a team of over 30 developers, the updates don't contain much at all, and take a long long time, longer than they should. Something is fishy with this update cycle and lack of communication. Please just talk. I don't have faith anymore that they know how to develop games and add more than 5 features in an update or update the same pace as CS1. And don't get me started about selling DLC that doesn't exist... they don't even haves names let alone what they will contain, Three missing content creator packs and radio stations.. against steams new terms but they don't care, violating consumer rights laws but nothing will be done

They have shown a lack of care for the community, not fixing critical bugs in a short time or at all, not listening to feedback, ignoring a large part of the community on the steam forums, not adding requested features or not to their full extent (line tool). It must be a mess over there,

'The asset editor was going to be ready 2 weeks after release but we encountered a bug' FOR THE PAST 14 MONTHS WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN DOING??!! Either you don't know how to code and have been lazing around all day or something else is going on. Even someone who has no idea of game development or unity could learn how to code and fix it in 14 months. I have a suspicion it's so people buy their overpriced and content lacking dlcs, and so people don't realise how bad quality they are, that modders can make far better assets and far more of them.

I'm giving up on this game. They clearly don't know how to code or manage a community. 95% of posts even on paradox forums don't get a response and practically none on steam.
I'll only come back and play it after they've released all the content I've paid for but will only stay if the free updates have improved the game and fixed it enough. + Never buying a Paradox and especially Colossal Order game again.

Yep, I have to say I completely agree with this post. Especially regarding the asset editor. There's absolutely no excuse or good reason for it. My thread on the official forum was recently locked with some smooth-brained unnecessary comment from the mod. In that thread I outlined some similar thoughts a few posts before they closed my thread.

The way CO has zero communication. It's clear they are just too scared and simply don't care about the product. They got offended and now they've got their thumbs in their ears and don't care about their customers or their product anymore. That much is clear.



https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/approaching-the-year-mark-and-still-no-asset-editor.1702296/

[ekin]

I don't think there is anything fishy; they are just incompetent (apart from being slimy and dishonest.) Why would they not want to fix the game? Of course they do, but they simply can't. That's why there is no roadmap or solid promises; they don't know what to do or whether they will be able to fix things at all.

[gameblogger]

They should at least provide progress updates, even if there's no ETA on anything.

[girlaroundthecorner]

Could be wrong, but even with mixed reviews, DLC is already available for Planet Coaster 2 to the tune of $56 or so dollars if you buy all three. Just sayin...

[epicgamerrusher]

Originally posted by mehmeteking:

I don't think there is anything fishy; they are just incompetent (apart from being slimy and dishonest.) Why would they not want to fix the game? Of course they do, but they simply can't. That's why there is no roadmap or solid promises; they don't know what to do or whether they will be able to fix things at all.

They're trying to hide how incompetent they are and lying about it "OH ASSET EDITOR COMING SOON!!1!!1!, OH WE GOT A BUG NEVERMIND" and given it's paradox there might be more

Originally posted by girlaroundthecorner:

Could be wrong, but even with mixed reviews, DLC is already available for Planet Coaster 2 to the tune of $56 or so dollars if you buy all three. Just sayin...

The first one is the deluxe edition of the game, it includes some good content but personally I think it's overpriced, like the game's other dlc. The ride pack, which I didn't buy was released at a bad time, instead of being overpriced it just contained too little. The soundtrack was released at launch and has no ingame content, it's just to support the development and you get to download the soundtrack on steam.

They apologised after the dlc and said they will only do free updates for the next year and future dlc after that will include more content. Unlike ignoring the community after that, they listened to their feedback, made a free update roadmap and their free updates are MONTHLY and have a fair amount of fixes, improvements and additions, they also show sneak peaks of them. Where as in Cities Skylines 2, the free updates are rare, come randomly and have little to no overall improvements or additions, just fixing things from previous patches which should have been done in the first place.

While I agree Planet Coaster 2 is not a great game, I still have a negative review for it, they are trying to fix it and actually know how to talk to/manage a community and ACTUALLY KNOW HOW TO CODE AND UPDATE THEIR GAME FREQUENTLY AND UPDATES ADD STUFF AND DON'T CAUSE BUGS

[lukas]

They don't know how to code. 3 years ago last programmer left them and since then they don't have any programmer on board and are just pretending that they are working :)

[russfarr2007]

CO is definitely an example of product development incompetence

[Caprea]

Any comparison between those two is void without taking into consideration the amount of employees of each companies. Frontier has more then 20 times the employees of CO. So instead of about 10 developers (CO) Frontier has about 200 devolopers. Even if not all at Frontier had been working at that game, it is much easier in case of problems for Frontier to find a developer that will have a fresh look at the problem and might therefore be more able to find the cause for it. And of course I would expect a team at Frontier dedicated only for communication with the players. I highly doubt there is even 1 at CO whose main purpose is to do that.

[Hekteur]

I've been saying exactly this for months. A small team did much better within a few months than whatever CO/Paradox did since they began work on CS2.

Saddest part is CS2 community is full of people (*cough* Major Kudos *cough*) who don't want to hear anything about the whole situation. Those can make snarky/condescending remarks all they want (derRRrrRr tUrN oFf de de lyte wHeN yOu lEaVe) on people trying to express their concerns while we get several of our post, which are completely void of anything negative or insulting towards the dev, deleted for being too negative. There really couldn't be anyway for CS2 situation to get more toxic. The few fans who still refuse to actually look at the situation will defend their fort to the point it's easy to wonder if those actually are developers disguised as users and the devs won't even acknowledge any feedback, even on the actual game forum.

The CS2/PC2 comparison is only meant as a proof that this situation DEFINITELY could be avoided with the right attitude, but whatever we bring up (like the fact that there still is no release date for console in sight, nor any sign that they will complete the mod tools anytime soon) immediately gets shut down either by CS2 defense corp or by the dev and both these 2 clans wonder why the game doesn't receive as much love as the first one. Simple: when you wish to understand something, you ABSOLUTELY have to remove your bias glasses, to listen to what people say AND admit that MAYBE, just MAYBE, if there's such a huge disappointment with the game (it still has mixed reviews on steam and watching at the graphic, it's slowly leaning towards mostly negative), there HAS to be reasons for it.

If you people (again *cough Major Kudo *cough*) truly think the game is perfect as is, why don't YOU leave this place (it is meant for FEEDBACK and not as a way to be condescending to those BRINGING actual feedback) and go back to playing. I mean, the game is fine, so what do you think your snarky remarks to people bringing feedback do add to the whole "feedback" purpose of this place? Come on dude, you turn those lights off and go back to watching your latest city play itself since the game is fine..

[Caprea]

Originally posted by Hekteur:

I've been saying exactly this for months. A small team did much better within a few months than whatever CO/Paradox did since they began work on CS2.

.......

The small team of those two is CO with 30 employees and the big team is Frontier with more than 600 employees, so Frontier has 20 times the number of employees.

[buda atum]

+++1

[buda atum]

Originally posted by Caprea:

The small team of those two is CO with 30 employees and the big team is Frontier with more than 600 employees, so Frontier has 20 times the number of employees.

So, hire?

If they'd just contracted more of the modders for City:Skylines we'd have had a much better game.

Instead, they stuck their fingers in their eyes and covered their ears and ignored all the data there was and told us the game might not be for me, which is where they sadly lost me. For now.

[Dani9]

Originally posted by lukas:

They don't know how to code. 3 years ago last programmer left them and since then they don't have any programmer on board and are just faking that they are working :)

Is there any proof of this anywhere? Or do you appreciate that?

[epicgamerrusher]

Originally posted by Hekteur:

I've been saying exactly this for months. A small team did much better within a few months than whatever CO/Paradox did since they began work on CS2.

Saddest part is CS2 community is full of people (*cough* Major Kudos *cough*) who don't want to hear anything about the whole situation. Those can make snarky/condescending remarks all they want (derRRrrRr tUrN oFf de de lyte wHeN yOu lEaVe) on people trying to express their concerns while we get several of our post, which are completely void of anything negative or insulting towards the dev, deleted for being too negative. There really couldn't be anyway for CS2 situation to get more toxic. The few fans who still refuse to actually look at the situation will defend their fort to the point it's easy to wonder if those actually are developers disguised as users and the devs won't even acknowledge any feedback, even on the actual game forum.

The CS2/PC2 comparison is only meant as a proof that this situation DEFINITELY could be avoided with the right attitude, but whatever we bring up (like the fact that there still is no release date for console in sight, nor any sign that they will complete the mod tools anytime soon) immediately gets shut down either by CS2 defense corp or by the dev and both these 2 clans wonder why the game doesn't receive as much love as the first one. Simple: when you wish to understand something, you ABSOLUTELY have to remove your bias glasses, to listen to what people say AND admit that MAYBE, just MAYBE, if there's such a huge disappointment with the game (it still has mixed reviews on steam and watching at the graphic, it's slowly leaning towards mostly negative), there HAS to be reasons for it.

If you people (again *cough Major Kudo *cough*) truly think the game is perfect as is, why don't YOU leave this place (it is meant for FEEDBACK and not as a way to be condescending to those BRINGING actual feedback) and go back to playing. I mean, the game is fine, so what do you think your snarky remarks to people bringing feedback do add to the whole "feedback" purpose of this place? Come on dude, you turn those lights off and go back to watching your latest city play itself since the game is fine..

I just looked at his profile. He doesn't even own Cities Skylines 1. He's probably never even played it. Doesn't know what a real city builder is.. (though in his review of cs2, he said he played cs1?)

His profile also seems odd, as in the only thing he talks about is Cities Skylines 2. His profile was also created a month before Cities Skylines 2 released. The only game he owns is Cities Skylines 2.

He doesn't appear to have any friends, and the ones he did have were all shills as welll.

Maybe the developers are making false accounts, pretending to be users?

I don't think so though, since he left a negative review for the game and he's not in Finland or Sweden. But he is certainly a troll, and only insults people or makes unneeded comments.

Originally posted by Major Kudos™:

Originally posted by epicgamerrusher:

They were referring with how bad the game is in it's current state and how they will miss it because the developers don't care enough to properly fix it...

Oh, my bad!

The game is progressing well so I tend to ignore the negative parts of any comment.

This is troll behaviour and totally unneeded. We are trying to give constructive feedback and want answers but comments like this, ignoring everything that is bad, That is not how you do things. In real life, would you ignore everything bad? If your city was collapsing around you and everyone was homeless?

Ignoring things only makes it worse.

[pauliescos]

Originally posted by Cosmic Sea:

My thread on the official forum was recently locked with some smooth-brained unnecessary comment from the mod. In that thread I outlined some similar thoughts a few posts before they closed my thread.

The way CO has zero communication. It's clear they are just too scared and simply don't care about the product. They got offended and now they've got their thumbs in their ears and don't care about their customers or their product anymore. That much is clear.



https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/approaching-the-year-mark-and-still-no-asset-editor.1702296/

Yea I was watching your thread and found it insulting when he gave that reddit tier reply to close the thread.

"Erm... this thread has outlived it's usefulness *locked*"

Joke of a company. Not a damn word about about release of what was promised as a day one feature and they shut you down when you ask them. If this developer was held accountable by a quality publisher, we'd have faster updates, no month long vacations, and much more communication about upcoming features and fixes, not this cutesy memes and photos of the week bs we see out of their social media.