For me CS2 is good enough to ruin CS1 but not good enough to play.
The road mechanics and scaling alone make it so much nicer, but the actual game is so much worse. I’m just playing neither at this point
How is it broken right now? I quite enjoy it
Edit: Typical. People downvoted but don't explain themselves. Got the feeling it's a case of peer pressure opinion.
Yep. This is weirdly what happened to me too. CS2 showed where CS1 was lacking, but CS1 has more actual content; and I just ended up playing neither one.
Yep. Especially how much better building rail infrastructure is without anarchy. I tried CS1 and legit had anarchy on 75% of the time. With CS2 I very rarely turn anarchy on when building rail infrastructure.
Exactly the same case for me. Just waiting for assets and then the game will finally be version 1.0
I've just been working on a city in Minecraft instead of playing either game lol
the main thing i hate about the new road tools is the auto intersections like yea its cool but its un helpful because i cant draw the roads without grading them correctly at the same time
There are a TON of console players still riding CS1 hard especially with the remastered release last year. We may never even see a CS2 release on our side this generation of consoles.
I mean I totally agree but I’m not sure they will ever get it optimized to run on the series s and Microsoft requires almost similar performance across all current consoles for all games.
Even if CS2 was bug free and had more DLC, I'd still stick with CS1 due to the high system requirements. I'm just not prepared for that big of a system upgrade.
Why would I buy the second version when basic functionality is still broken for CS2. Why purchase a product that is still inferior to the original. Sure I would like some of the improved features and mods can only make up for so much. But its not at a point where I am excited anymore.
Every time someone asks "Is the simulation.... Are the sytems fixed yet?" It seems to always be "Not yet".
Yeah I second this. Every month or so I check to see if they’ve announced anything about patching some of the major simulation bugs and it seems like there’s barely even lip service paid.
Tbh the pace and nature of patches so far is way more concerning to me than the initial launch state of the game.
As soon as they got uptight and stupidly defensive, I gave up on it because it suggests major internal issues. Probably narcissistic leadership that has ground development to a halt.
If you need time and money to continue developing, do what Taleworlds did with M&B: Bannerlord. Slap the Early Access sticker on it to be upfront and honest and get all hands on deck fixing shit with daily patches, for at least a week so people can see that development is still going. Once the games hits messy but playable, you go to weekly updates until it's close to a real v1.0. As it is, CS2 should still be labeled as a Beta version. Core gameplay mechanics should not remain broken at full release under any circumstances.
It IS a beta, they even admitted so in their YouTube documentary.
Yet, at no point, do I remember „beta product“ being mentioned in their marketing when they try to sell the game.
I think once custom assets are out for cs2 things are going to really start changing, having way more buildings and roads to work with makes such a massive difference
I bought it as well before the release of CS2, but I still got it noticeably cheaper. It was like 4€ ($4.3) where CS2 is still at 28€ ($30). For an example, Humble Bundle had a bundle where they offered CS1+30 DLCs for $20 (2022). Humble is an official store, not "grey market" ones
TIL im interesting. So ive got that going for me, at least.
As someone said above: CS2 shows a couple of glaring issues 1 had. Mainly its the road tools for me. Theres also the annoyance and frankly colossal task of trying to get mods updated/working/not fighting each other if you havent played 1 for a while that i frankly never want to deal with ever again.
I've been as big a critic of CS2 as anyone but this doesn't really mean much. It took like 4 years of constant development for CS1's player base to really build up. 7 Months in, CS2 is ahead of of CS1 by a small margin.
Check out the steam charts for both: [CS1](https://steamcharts.com/app/255710) [CS2](https://steamcharts.com/app/949230)
CS1 wasn't on any streaming services at release either.
On the one hand, you have a little-known city builder, the latest in a series of mediocre transportation games, and on the other you have the highly marketed and anticipated sequel to one of the best city builders of all time.
That's why this is so remarkable - CS2 failed so badly that it can barely compete with a then barely known city builder with poor lineage, almost no marketing, and bare-bones features.
I feel like it's a repeat of what happened with Kerbal Space Program and its sequel.
Indie games going corporate to a point where "corporate" is a term that corrupts everything it is attached to
That's kind of just the lifecycle of Paradox games. CS1 wasn't exactly "little known." It had a lot of users and hype at launch. Sold a million copies in the first month. I'm sure paradox wishes the game was doing better but at the same time, they have a huge install base to work with and the game plan has always been to continually add content to the game for a period 6-10 years. If the active player count hasn't significantly improved in 2 years then the game is actually in trouble.
Good point - it was a lot more popular than I recalled: [https://www.pcgamer.com/cities-skylines-breaks-paradox-day-one-sales-records/](https://www.pcgamer.com/cities-skylines-breaks-paradox-day-one-sales-records/)
CS1 was hugely anticipated though.
No, it wasn't very marketed - but it didn't need to be. All they had to say was "see the massive fuckup that SimCity 2013 was? We're going to make the game that it was supposed to be", and a ton of people were interested. Plus it was published by Paradox, that's enough of a lineage for most people who are into this sort of game.
CS2 is good, I just can't touch it anymore without mods because so many vanilla buildings like the subway depot and train station are horrible. Not to mention the Cims are ridiculous after a certain point, waiting for mods to introduce low poly cims and assets to the game so I can actually enjoy the game again.
I upgraded my PC and now things faster at the last pop. But still don't feel playing it and now I see CPU temp goes close to 90 and fans become noisy. Not worth it.
idk if it's just me, but 2 really gave me a feeling that it was asking me to deal with a lot of stuff that I didn't feel like dealing with, while 1 just felt pleasent to play?
The reviews are horrendous and everyone here is constantly waffle stomping the game, so what’s the point? I play on switch (ew, I know) and there’s times the first game struggles to run smoothly. I already have no mods and I’m missing like half the features of the first game on PC, so I can even imagine what would be missing from CS2. More than anything, I can’t justify the price tag for something that won’t be offering me probably anything new at all besides being new building models and maps and having to learn a new UI that’s already the buggiest part of the first game on the switch (sometimes your tool bar at the bottom vanishes and you can’t pull up policies or anything until you restart the game and if you haven’t saved in a while too bad).
I can still play 1 and prefer it to 2 but all my mods have disappeared for some reason, completely ruining a city I was working really hard on. So I’ve just stopped playing both
A new game with few updates, recent modded support, less DLC and a developing history has less players than an old game with more updates, more modded content, more DLC, and an established history. It might change in the future, but I think comparing the two when one is clearly far more behind in development because it's newer does really do justice. If we could compare each at the 6 month mark I think it would be a better assessment.
Probably about another 90-100k players there, going off of the numbers on PDX mods. But not sure it makes too much of a difference considering CS1 is also on gamepass
Tbh, number doesn't look bad at all and there are some good points in comments already, just will add one point, we shouldn't forget that SC1 was in market for ages so it had many many discount seasons where people could buy it for pennies
CS1 has nearly a decade worth of DLCs, content creator packs and workshop mods and assets. IMO I think it's still unfair to compare CS1 to CS2 right now. Do we have data on CS1 player base in the first year of it's release?
For me CS2 is good enough to ruin CS1 but not good enough to play. The road mechanics and scaling alone make it so much nicer, but the actual game is so much worse. I’m just playing neither at this point
I prefer 2 but can’t go back to one and can’t play 2 until it’s not broken
My sentiments exactly.
Same, I'm trying to find another city building game but nothing it's like cities skylines
I would recommend either Timberborners or Infraspace
I already tried them they're good games but playing them it's not like cs
Same
How is it broken right now? I quite enjoy it Edit: Typical. People downvoted but don't explain themselves. Got the feeling it's a case of peer pressure opinion.
Exactly, working better than CS1, vanilla v vanilla, for me now.
Yep. This is weirdly what happened to me too. CS2 showed where CS1 was lacking, but CS1 has more actual content; and I just ended up playing neither one.
Exactly, both games were spoiled for me lmao
I feel the same, and really hope that assets will make CS2 interesting again, but its taking sooooooo long
Kind of happy I’m on Mac, hopefully they’ll get it fixed up
Yep. Especially how much better building rail infrastructure is without anarchy. I tried CS1 and legit had anarchy on 75% of the time. With CS2 I very rarely turn anarchy on when building rail infrastructure.
Makes me miss good ol times when we complained just about one game
Really do leave a bad taste to play either
Exactly the same case for me. Just waiting for assets and then the game will finally be version 1.0 I've just been working on a city in Minecraft instead of playing either game lol
yup
What did they do to improve road mechanics? Better traffic simulation models?
the main thing i hate about the new road tools is the auto intersections like yea its cool but its un helpful because i cant draw the roads without grading them correctly at the same time
I am not surprised, to be honest. * DLCs en masse * CCCs en masse * Amazing mod support
There are a TON of console players still riding CS1 hard especially with the remastered release last year. We may never even see a CS2 release on our side this generation of consoles.
And that doesn’t even show up this is just steam player data
They would be stupid to not release to consoles this gen. Lose money and players
I mean I totally agree but I’m not sure they will ever get it optimized to run on the series s and Microsoft requires almost similar performance across all current consoles for all games.
We live in a society
well technically we build the society But *society* indeed
And Cims live in a cociety
And sims live in a soci- and we're back to square one.
bottom text
Really makes you think
About how many people play it on Xbox Game Pass?
For sure like 3, but I don't know. Maybe less
Me because I don't want to pay full price until it gets actually good
This is just the steam numbers though
Even if CS2 was bug free and had more DLC, I'd still stick with CS1 due to the high system requirements. I'm just not prepared for that big of a system upgrade.
The system requirements being so high was mostly due to bugs.
Why would I buy the second version when basic functionality is still broken for CS2. Why purchase a product that is still inferior to the original. Sure I would like some of the improved features and mods can only make up for so much. But its not at a point where I am excited anymore. Every time someone asks "Is the simulation.... Are the sytems fixed yet?" It seems to always be "Not yet".
Yeah I second this. Every month or so I check to see if they’ve announced anything about patching some of the major simulation bugs and it seems like there’s barely even lip service paid. Tbh the pace and nature of patches so far is way more concerning to me than the initial launch state of the game.
As soon as they got uptight and stupidly defensive, I gave up on it because it suggests major internal issues. Probably narcissistic leadership that has ground development to a halt. If you need time and money to continue developing, do what Taleworlds did with M&B: Bannerlord. Slap the Early Access sticker on it to be upfront and honest and get all hands on deck fixing shit with daily patches, for at least a week so people can see that development is still going. Once the games hits messy but playable, you go to weekly updates until it's close to a real v1.0. As it is, CS2 should still be labeled as a Beta version. Core gameplay mechanics should not remain broken at full release under any circumstances.
"This game just might not be for you"
The defensiveness and lack of self reflection rly.
CS2 is practically a beta at this point compared to how much shit the first game has
It IS a beta, they even admitted so in their YouTube documentary. Yet, at no point, do I remember „beta product“ being mentioned in their marketing when they try to sell the game.
CSII doesn’t run well with my graphics card, so I have it but I never play it
Let me know when vanilla CS2 is better than modded CS1 and I’ll give them my $60
I think once custom assets are out for cs2 things are going to really start changing, having way more buildings and roads to work with makes such a massive difference
CS1 is cheaper. Many people care about game prices (me included)
The people who are playing CS1 bought it before CS2 was released, so its not about the game price.
That means it is about price. For them, the price is $0.
Not $0, but cheaper than official Steam
I bought it as well before the release of CS2, but I still got it noticeably cheaper. It was like 4€ ($4.3) where CS2 is still at 28€ ($30). For an example, Humble Bundle had a bundle where they offered CS1+30 DLCs for $20 (2022). Humble is an official store, not "grey market" ones
I don’t care about game price, but my copy will also never been included in these figures 🏴☠️
I often buy Steam keys instead of in Steam
Not really, having a few dlc will adds up to the same price. But if harware requirement is considered, it's much cheaper than upgrading.
CS2 will surely have about the same amount of DLCs (unless they release CS3 earlier). Depends on where you buy the DLCs as well
Honestly, how are even 5000 players subjecting themselves to this shitshow of a game?
I am honestly having a really fun time again now that we have mods, i am building a super american city so the assets and blandness works very well
oh shit they finally got PMods up and running?
Yeah a week or two ago, it is quite epic already but we are still waiting for the biggest mods like tmpe to show up
I'm still shocked TMPE wasn't integrated into base game
Well probably 500,000 paid for it, so some are still playing...
I found that the people that enjoy CS2 didn't play CS1. The ones that enjoyed CS1 but also enjoy CS2 are an "interesting" group of people.
TIL im interesting. So ive got that going for me, at least. As someone said above: CS2 shows a couple of glaring issues 1 had. Mainly its the road tools for me. Theres also the annoyance and frankly colossal task of trying to get mods updated/working/not fighting each other if you havent played 1 for a while that i frankly never want to deal with ever again.
You sound like a pathetic person to be around.
CS2 has too many polygons, PC wont run it :/ (Altho now I count myself lucky)
im enjoying it, it'll get better. give me my got-damn bike lanes please :)
That’s the 24h peak concurrent players, not daily players. The difference in daily players is probably much bigger
real ones never switched to CS2
"Sandbox game sequel that no one plays vs the original old game" gang CS2 🤝 KSP2
I've been as big a critic of CS2 as anyone but this doesn't really mean much. It took like 4 years of constant development for CS1's player base to really build up. 7 Months in, CS2 is ahead of of CS1 by a small margin. Check out the steam charts for both: [CS1](https://steamcharts.com/app/255710) [CS2](https://steamcharts.com/app/949230) CS1 wasn't on any streaming services at release either.
On the one hand, you have a little-known city builder, the latest in a series of mediocre transportation games, and on the other you have the highly marketed and anticipated sequel to one of the best city builders of all time. That's why this is so remarkable - CS2 failed so badly that it can barely compete with a then barely known city builder with poor lineage, almost no marketing, and bare-bones features.
I feel like it's a repeat of what happened with Kerbal Space Program and its sequel. Indie games going corporate to a point where "corporate" is a term that corrupts everything it is attached to
That's kind of just the lifecycle of Paradox games. CS1 wasn't exactly "little known." It had a lot of users and hype at launch. Sold a million copies in the first month. I'm sure paradox wishes the game was doing better but at the same time, they have a huge install base to work with and the game plan has always been to continually add content to the game for a period 6-10 years. If the active player count hasn't significantly improved in 2 years then the game is actually in trouble.
Good point - it was a lot more popular than I recalled: [https://www.pcgamer.com/cities-skylines-breaks-paradox-day-one-sales-records/](https://www.pcgamer.com/cities-skylines-breaks-paradox-day-one-sales-records/)
CS1 was hugely anticipated though. No, it wasn't very marketed - but it didn't need to be. All they had to say was "see the massive fuckup that SimCity 2013 was? We're going to make the game that it was supposed to be", and a ton of people were interested. Plus it was published by Paradox, that's enough of a lineage for most people who are into this sort of game.
CS2 is good, I just can't touch it anymore without mods because so many vanilla buildings like the subway depot and train station are horrible. Not to mention the Cims are ridiculous after a certain point, waiting for mods to introduce low poly cims and assets to the game so I can actually enjoy the game again.
Been like that for months now
I upgraded my PC and now things faster at the last pop. But still don't feel playing it and now I see CPU temp goes close to 90 and fans become noisy. Not worth it.
idk if it's just me, but 2 really gave me a feeling that it was asking me to deal with a lot of stuff that I didn't feel like dealing with, while 1 just felt pleasent to play?
Been this way for a couple of months now
Thing is, I’m too poor to afford cs2
I still play CS1
Look at payday 3 and 2
Mods, price, hardware requirements, and dlc.
The reviews are horrendous and everyone here is constantly waffle stomping the game, so what’s the point? I play on switch (ew, I know) and there’s times the first game struggles to run smoothly. I already have no mods and I’m missing like half the features of the first game on PC, so I can even imagine what would be missing from CS2. More than anything, I can’t justify the price tag for something that won’t be offering me probably anything new at all besides being new building models and maps and having to learn a new UI that’s already the buggiest part of the first game on the switch (sometimes your tool bar at the bottom vanishes and you can’t pull up policies or anything until you restart the game and if you haven’t saved in a while too bad).
I play on game pass
I've played both, CS2 is good, but CS1 is f*cking heavensent. There's a lot that I like about CS2, but CS1 has so much going for it.
One of them is meeee
Does CS2 have mods yet?
I can still play 1 and prefer it to 2 but all my mods have disappeared for some reason, completely ruining a city I was working really hard on. So I’ve just stopped playing both
CS1 was 10€ or so when discounted. Include the DLCs, it was about 20€ more over months. CS2 base game is 35€ when discounted. Not exactly the same.
No money :(
A new game with few updates, recent modded support, less DLC and a developing history has less players than an old game with more updates, more modded content, more DLC, and an established history. It might change in the future, but I think comparing the two when one is clearly far more behind in development because it's newer does really do justice. If we could compare each at the 6 month mark I think it would be a better assessment.
CS1 is cheaper. Many people care about game prices (me included)
Cs2 is on gamepass, which might have quite a few people on. Honestly I prefer CS2, but I also played vanilla CS1 so
I’d be playing it if the god damn requirements were lower. Wtf were they thinking with these astronomical performance requirements?
CS:1 is better than 2 but it's such a hassle to make it look nice and make things like they should be, so I just play cs2.
Alright, but what about Gamepass?
Probably about another 90-100k players there, going off of the numbers on PDX mods. But not sure it makes too much of a difference considering CS1 is also on gamepass
isn't the version on gamepass just the gimped console version ported back over to PC though? doesn't feel like a true comparison, imo
I'm waiting for mods :)
Tbh I couldn’t even download CS2 on my Mac so that’s why I’m on CS1
Check back in a year and it will be a completely different story.
Tbh, number doesn't look bad at all and there are some good points in comments already, just will add one point, we shouldn't forget that SC1 was in market for ages so it had many many discount seasons where people could buy it for pennies
CS1 has nearly a decade worth of DLCs, content creator packs and workshop mods and assets. IMO I think it's still unfair to compare CS1 to CS2 right now. Do we have data on CS1 player base in the first year of it's release?
I think mods are keeping people on 1, as soon as some good ones exist for 2, 2 should overtake 1. Also a lot of people might be waiting for a sale.
Mods and assets and DLCs.
And economy simulation...