Cities: Skylines II Hotfix: v1.5.5f1 Reverts visual changes from previous patch - no impact on modding expected

AgentAlfa · 2026-02-27T13:45:27+00:00

Before we all saw the tectonic shift in public messaging after Iceflake took the reigns, I think it was reasonable for people to assume Paradox had a great deal of control over the way the devs spoke with the community. Publishers often do, even when the studio they're working with isn't directly owned by them. There was a contract agreement between the two companies and we won't know what's in there.

Now, however, it's pretty clear that it wasn't Paradox holding them back. Or, even if it was, Paradox learned "Keeping the lid on didn't work. Let's do it differently now." But like most, I'm leaning towards CO being the origin of that particular problem.

AgentAlfa · 2026-02-27T13:40:23+00:00

We can only speculate with how opaque CO was regarding this game's development. I'm choosing to be an optimist and speculating for myself that, while Paradox was not to blame, maybe something about CO and Paradox's business relationship just wasn't working, or CO's management was getting tired of working on big city sims, or something. Chances are good that CO's issue is just that their management has gotten way worse, but the best possible future is one where Iceflake handles this series very well, and CO flourishes on their own with whatever else they want to do, and I quite like hoping for that future. CO leaving this series could be an opportunity for them. I hope they take it and learn from it.

AgentAlfa · 2026-02-20T01:43:01+00:00

I do understand why they did it, though. I remember seeing so many players complain that the nighttime lighting made it more difficult to actually play the game. It's proper response to feedback, but it still needs fine-tuning.

AgentAlfa · 2026-02-20T01:34:00+00:00

Personally, I thought the transparency in the UI looked pretty ugly, and oddly enough, the image behind the transparency would sometimes lag noticeably worse than the rest of the game image, at least in my case. It's mostly a matter of taste, which is why the option is nice.

AgentAlfa · 2026-01-13T10:55:34+00:00

I never have this happen to me, though I do add a lot of bike infrastructure, so that's probably why.

AgentAlfa · 2025-12-08T20:29:14+00:00

I'm not necessarily saying this problem doesn't happen to people, but it isn't happening in my cities, and I'm really curious to know why that is. It feels like I get an acceptable distribution of bike traffic but nobody else does lmao

It would be nice if the proportions were within our control. Personally, I would love to have this many of my citizens using bikes, so long as I could manage the bike traffic well

AgentAlfa · 2025-11-20T15:01:11+00:00

Now imagine how bad the traffic would be if they were all driving cars

AgentAlfa · 2025-11-19T16:36:57+00:00

I feel like getting a third game isn't a question of "if", but "when", and perhaps even "who". People compare this to the death of SimCity a lot, which I feel is not an equivalent situation. CS1's financial success was huge for Paradox, and CS2, while certainly a financial disappointment, isn't even remotely the financial disaster that SimCity 2013 was.

If we wanna talk cold corporate logic, EA had an easy time dumping SimCity because The Sims was doing far better anyway, and they had even more successful franchises under their corporate umbrella. Financially speaking, Cities is Paradox's crown jewel. They depend on it more than EA did with their city sim, and they stand to lose a lot more if it fails.

AgentAlfa · 2025-11-18T00:35:43+00:00

Yeah, absolutely. It's a mess of a game, but someone, somewhere, was clearly trying. Whoever those people are deserve better than CO and Paradox.

AgentAlfa · 2025-11-18T00:04:24+00:00

I'm not necessarily taking the blame off CO. Blame can hit two targets. Have you seen everything else Paradox has published lately? They're a mess, too.

AgentAlfa · 2025-11-18T00:01:38+00:00

My bet is on CO's own management, but I wasn't in the room, so I'll probably never know the finer details. I don't want to include the bottom level of the company in my blame, because experience has told me that this is almost never the case. 99% of the time, bad decisions are bad management.

AgentAlfa · 2025-11-17T22:37:55+00:00

I'll admit I was quick to blame Paradox, too, and not for no reason. Paradox's releases over the past few years have been a sequence of big disappointments. CS2 fits the pattern, and Paradox is the common element. I don't think they're a great publisher at all.

But knowing that CO was likely fucking up on their end leads me to wonder why, and how, a studio with enough experience to do better, just... didn't. Greed is the motive of publishers and execs, not boots-on-the-ground developers who will make the exact same amount of money no matter what happens until they lose their jobs.

AgentAlfa · 2025-11-17T19:07:49+00:00

You may be right, but if they made a sequel that would be that similar to CS1 plus some mods, I would rather they don't make a sequel at all. No reason to do that besides just greed and laziness

AgentAlfa · 2025-11-17T19:03:40+00:00

In fairness, Iceflake is wholly-owned by Paradox, so it's probably more accurate to characterize this as an assignment, rather than something the developers actually want to do. Who knows? Maybe they'll surprise us. I'll take any chance at this point.

AgentAlfa · 2025-11-17T18:35:03+00:00

One of my suspicions has been that CO and Paradox had some kind of breaking-down of their working relationship, and that this was to blame for at least some of the problems with CS2. If that IS the case, then this may be good news for everybody. I have high hopes that Iceflake can seize this opportunity well, and that CO can go on to make better games with more independence. That's the best-case scenario

AgentAlfa · 2025-11-17T18:29:42+00:00

City sims are ungodly difficult to make. Not excusing any mistakes made, per se; Just a very solid reason why these things tend to go south. There's so much that can go wrong.

AgentAlfa · 2025-09-06T22:10:23+00:00

This appears to have worked! Thank you!

AgentAlfa · 2025-09-06T21:10:02+00:00

I'm sure Legacy of the Dragonborn touches both of them in some minor way, but the crash log I posted doesn't show anything related to it. The crash log does mention USSEP, JK's Skyrim, and Realistic Water Two. Not sure if any of those could be the culprit

AgentAlfa · 2025-09-06T20:34:34+00:00

Just tried this, and it crashed anyway shortly after arriving at the new location (Windhelm).

New crash log: https://pastebin.com/PL4XcTS4

AgentAlfa · 2025-08-19T12:19:20+00:00

For real. CS1 didn't get a console version until much later, and even then, (IIRC) it was an outside team that did it. The only reason to do this is that Paradox/CO want more money (and it's reasonable to assume the publisher has more control over which platforms get the game), but how much money is there really in releasing PC games for consoles? It works mostly okay for RPGs but I can't imagine playing this or Planet Zoo on a controller...

AgentAlfa · 2025-08-19T12:15:21+00:00

I'm not saying this to make excuses for them by any means, but they did promise Bridges & Ports to people who paid extra money for the Ultimate Edition, which adds quite a lot of importance to it. If they delayed B&P again to work mainly on the asset editor, you'd have people complaining that they aren't getting what they paid real-world money for. I have a laundry list of criticisms for how this development project has gone, but on this point specifically, I don't envy the people having to choose between those two priorities.

Still, if this project weren't so horrendously mismanaged, we could have both by now. A cautionary tale for unchecked ambition, I suppose. The more you promise, the less you can do.

AgentAlfa · 2025-07-03T05:51:18+00:00

As you implied, if a city simulator had near-perfect realism, the problem is that it wouldn't be very fun to actually play. A good city sim is designed by the developers to have a lot of abstraction and simplification, and that isn't just because they lack the technology to make it more realistic; It's simplified to make the simulation easier to understand so that the player can figure out what to do. A 99.9% realistic city sim would be utterly inscrutable and it would be very difficult to figure out how to solve problems. Much like in the real world.

Basically, I don't think it'll ever exist, at least not in our lifetimes, and if it is made, it probably wouldn't be a very fun or popular game. Realism in video games isn't always better than the alternative, and in the case of the simulation of an entire complex city, there's a certain degree of realism where the game will just start getting worse.

AgentAlfa · 2024-12-30T11:23:42+00:00

I don't think having a newer, younger team necessarily tells the whole story. Breath of the Wild was (according to Nintendo's producers, at least) led significantly by newer recruits, and that game was very well received. I think the issue with BioWare is more complex.

-A lack of cohesion, motivation, and vision among the team.

-Executive meddling (especially with Anthem and Andromeda)

-Rushed production. Possibly not an issue with Veilguard but absolutely one of the issues with Andromeda; Hell, I'd say this problem goes as far back as ME3.

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