And it shows. The number of major complaints about CS1 that were directly addressed in CS2 is staggering. Mixed use zoning, automatic cut and fill roads, smoother lane transitions, seasons, shit they hired the developer of popular mods (presumably to recreate their mods in the sequel at a foundational level).
I love it when mod authors get hired. There’s hardly a better way to show appreciation for their work. It also is a major reason why I mainly play on PC, because of mods. I hate how Ubisoft, EA and Take Two strictly go against it.
Total tangent but you reminded me of it by mentioning Ubi and EA.
It was the greatest insult when Bethesda announced their plans to create a paid-mod marketplace. Let alone the logistics of it, the gall they had, to assume that modding needed or wanted any kind of profit motive was just absurd. I used to create custom textures, models, and maps for SWBF2 way back in the day, and the Gametoast community would never had dared to charge people for access to their work.
If I ever dreamed of getting paid to create game content, that dream was getting hired by the company whose game I was modding, not being a cog in some kafka-esque Gig Economy nightmare. I can’t even fathom Roblox at this point.
EDIT: It was Valve, not Bethesda. I had it confused since Skyrim was their test balloon.
They weren’t intending to have contour lines at release and maybe not at all, but after their first playthrough stream with their community managers, they added the overlay (before the next stream even!) because of feedback in chat.
That’s the kind of agility I would expect with a 1 or 2 developer passion project and not with a game of this magnitude.
It sounds like there are still some areas for improvement in the sequel so hopefully they continue listening and iterating after release as well. Either way I’m looking forward to getting into it, going to be sinking some serious hours on this one I suspect
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I dunno, at least with Stellaris it seems like they’ve followed the model of having an idea for a DLC, making the engine changes to support it in the base, and then the content in the DLC, so even if you don’t buy the DLC you see improvements and changes from the iteration.
If selling DLC of dolphin men is how they want to fund continued development on a game, I don’t exactly find that the most objectionable.
With HoI4 with every DLC they bring out even when you don’t buy it you get a DLC light.
Yeah, it’s been kinda like that with Stellaris. I’d be upset if I felt like they didn’t deliver me a full game,and then wanted to sell me what they left out, but that’s not the feeling I get.
Hey, sometimes things come in a patch!
It’s just that you get access to maybe one feature, that won’t work properly without the DLC, and the rest are for the DLC stuff.
It sounds like there are still some areas for improvement in the sequel so hopefully they continue listening and iterating after release as wel
They definitely are. Even just in the preview build. Like recently they added in a map view for topographic contour lines because a few YouTubers that had been given early access copies were complaining about the absence of this feature. The devs stated they straight up didn’t have this feature on their release roadmap, but changed their minds and added it in based on feedback from these YouTubers with advance copies.
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Like how to remake a game just to resell DLC?
It has a lot of fundamental improvements though. Things you can’t just fix in a patch.
Believe it or not, but players often want a sequel in order for these fundamental changes to happen, with the old game starting to show its age/getting too bloated etc. And DLC is just the price for continued development.
It’s a model that works, and overall gives deeper and more developed games than the competition.
And I honestly love Paradox’s DLC model. For something like a city builder or grand strategy game, I’m looking for a game I can play for a long time. Paradox releases DLC that add significant content to their games in lieu of throwing everything away and releasing a new game. It’s not some kind of money grab like the big publishers do with stupid cosmetics, battle passes, etc, this is actual new mechanics being continually added to the game, and they’re 100% optional.
So instead of buying the refresh every year for $50-70 (looking at you EA), I buy a DLC or two every year for $10-20 and the game feels fresh.
But yeah, sometimes a game needs a bigger overhaul than a DLC can really provide, like performance improvements and traffic overhaul, both of which C:S2 provides and that can’t reasonably be done as a DLC. Some of the new content couldn’t been done as a DLC, but sometimes you really do need to break compatibility to deliver a superior product. They did that with CK3, and I hope they do it in a few years with EU4.
I much more prefer something like that over a Battlepass or other garbage. It’s straightforward for x amount of money you get this and that but the game is still fine to play without it. In HoI4 for example every DLC brings smaller updates for those who don’t buy it too.
Normally I would agree, but paradox are just as cancer with DLC as others with battle passes. Paradox just browse the workshop and take the most popular mods and then sell them as DLC. Some DLC are good, dont get me wrong, I think they did a pretty good job with Stellaris, even if most of it is overpriced.
They learned that from EA
EA has multiple overlapping teams working on “seasons” of releases - this is not that at all. This is a game getting a sequel after more than 8 years has elapsed since the original.
Not familiar with the Sims and it’s expansions then?
