[HN Gopher] Cities Skylines 2 runs with 20fps on an Nvidia RTX4090
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       Cities Skylines 2 runs with 20fps on an Nvidia RTX4090
        
       Author : segasaturn
       Score  : 155 points
       Date   : 2023-10-26 18:08 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.dsogaming.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.dsogaming.com)
        
       | hotstickyballs wrote:
       | I didn't see any mention of cpu used on the article. I'm guessing
       | that might be important.
        
         | belinder wrote:
         | I think the CPU will play more of a part when there is a lot to
         | simulate. But in the article they said this was on an empty map
        
         | mrob wrote:
         | There are CPU/GPU meters on the screenshots. Highest CPU load I
         | saw is 78% on one core and lower on other cores, but GPU is
         | always 100% or close to it.
        
       | apocalyptic0n3 wrote:
       | I'm getting ~60fps on my 4090 at 1440p. Haven't had any framerate
       | issues. My GPU has been pinned at 100% and my temps are sky high,
       | but the game is smooth. They definitely need to fix this, but
       | it's not as dire for everyone as it's being made out to be.
        
         | transcriptase wrote:
         | Considering the game only runs adequately for you on... the
         | best video card for gaming that money can buy...
         | 
         | You can see why the 99% of customers who have much less
         | powerful hardware might consider the situation dire.
        
           | dekhn wrote:
           | The entire history of video cards has been "games that were
           | hard on graphics cards"... leading to... a new generation of
           | graphics cards that run the game with ease... leading to... a
           | new generation of games. It's an ongoing battle.
        
             | transcriptase wrote:
             | There are games that are hard on graphics cards.
             | 
             | Then there are okay-looking city building games that pin
             | the best GPU that exists at 100% usage at 1440.
             | 
             | A card that's meant for playing AAA games at 4K Ultra.
             | 
             | Maybe a dev accidentally bundled a crypto miner they were
             | running on company hardware after hours?
        
             | wjnc wrote:
             | What is new is that 80% of current gamers is playing on a
             | GPU on par the with the highest end model of about 7 years
             | ago. Moore's law might not be dead, but at least is
             | economically forgotten. So older games might have gotten
             | over the performance bump in a year if two, now it's more
             | like seven. Paradox failed to correct for economics in this
             | party.
             | 
             | (My 1060 6GB is still above average on userbenchmark.com.
             | That a 2016 card and has never been top of the line.)
        
             | KeplerBoy wrote:
             | That was before Moore's law was dead. Now devs need to
             | write code that is at least not terrible. (Insert link to
             | casey muratori ranting about modern software)
        
             | laverya wrote:
             | Yeah, but generally those games that push for new GPUs look
             | spectacular, not like SimCity 5 from over a decade ago.
        
             | Stevvo wrote:
             | This is not a new generation game, the graphics are at-
             | least 10 years behind the rest of rest the industry. (No
             | PBR or other modern rendering techniques are used).
        
               | dekhn wrote:
               | I didn't make my comment about this specific game.
               | 
               | I made it about Cyberpunk 2077, Crysis, and Doom 3.
        
           | fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
           | > 99%
           | 
           | I don't think that's accurate. There's tons of complaints and
           | legit issues with performance for sure, but I don't think
           | making up numbers (likely grossly exaggerated) is helpful.
           | 
           | https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/17fsdx9/hav.
           | ..
        
             | mvdtnz wrote:
             | In fact the proportion of gamers with graphics cards less
             | powerful than a 4090 is greater than 99%.
             | 
             | https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/
        
           | stouset wrote:
           | 3080 here. The game runs _completely fine_ at 3440x1400 with
           | max settings.
        
         | patates wrote:
         | > I'm getting ~60fps on my 4090 at 1440p
         | 
         | > it's not as dire for everyone as it's being made out to be
         | 
         | I don't have the game but your first point makes it sound
         | rather dire, especially for a city-building game, does it not?
        
           | apocalyptic0n3 wrote:
           | I could have worded it better. Basically, we've been
           | inundated with a bunch of pre-release players saying the game
           | was basically unplayable on any GPU.
           | 
           | Post-launch, it's perfectly playable for a lot of people.
           | Even on older cards. Performance is by no means good, but
           | it's not a slideshow like everyone was worried it would be
           | pre-release.
           | 
           | (fwiw I also tested this on a 2070. It wasn't great at 1440p
           | but was performing just as well as my 4090 on 1080p)
        
         | Mistletoe wrote:
         | "Let them eat cake!" -apocalyptic0n3
        
           | transcriptase wrote:
           | "I don't know why people complain about potholes. I drive a
           | $180,000 Mercedes G Wagon and barely feel them."
        
             | merb wrote:
             | if they don't have bread, they should eat cakes instead.
        
         | bakugo wrote:
         | >I'm getting 60fps on a $2000 card, that means it's not that
         | bad!
         | 
         | I hate modern AAA PC gaming so much.
        
           | aranelsurion wrote:
           | and on 1440p. You'd assume 4K would become the expectation,
           | at least for the top end. It's been a decade.
        
           | scubadude wrote:
           | To be fair this is AUD$70 not AUD$110-120 like some recent
           | actual AAA games. (They probably plan to add a buttload of
           | DLC though ;)
        
         | nullindividual wrote:
         | There have been so many Unity games which do not manage to
         | throttle GPU usage. Battletech was another one where at the
         | menu it would keep the GPU at 100%.
         | 
         | Not sure why devs allow this, but with Battletech it was a
         | known issue that was never fully resolved.
        
           | Geee wrote:
           | You'll have to enable v-sync to limit framerate. I enable it
           | always (or fps limit) because I don't like blasting my GPU at
           | 100% which makes it hot and loud.
        
         | harrid wrote:
         | 60fps on a 4090 _are_ framerate issues
        
       | piperswe wrote:
       | I'm running 4K, 30fps on a 4080 on medium settings (with a decent
       | size city). It's not good performance, but it's plenty for a city
       | builder.
        
       | nottorp wrote:
       | 20 fps, 60 fps, whatever
       | 
       | When was the last time you could enjoy a 4x or city builder on a
       | laptop, with integrated graphics, on battery?
        
         | test77777 wrote:
         | Yeah it's been proven nobody can actually see the difference in
         | anything over -25 frames.
        
           | methodical wrote:
           | Ignoring all of the scientific evidence otherwise, there is
           | not a chance you're actually parroting this nonsense without
           | actually noticing a rather substantial difference when
           | viewing something (say a movie) at 30fps versus 60+fps. It's
           | literally night and day. Me and a few coworkers noticed the
           | difference between 60 and 120 when upgrading phones recently,
           | and that difference is much more nuanced than the difference
           | between 30 and 60.
        
           | goatking wrote:
           | There is a HUGE difference between 30fps and 60fps games.
           | Very noticable. I got used to 60fps so much, that I don't
           | even touch 30fps anymore.
           | 
           | It's true that your eyes(or brain?) can get used to the 30fps
           | after some time. But if you compare them side by side...
        
           | ElectricalUnion wrote:
           | Assuming you can generate 24fps of "movie quality perfect
           | images", but you can't.
           | 
           | Let's take motion blur as an example: It's a very expensive
           | to do it as a real-time VFX - so we cheat and approximate it
           | - that doesn't that look good most of the time - because we
           | often have to cut too many corners and end up with a poor
           | approximation.
           | 
           | You're generating very slow images that a computer believes
           | is a facsimile of reality that, unfortunately, don't
           | represent motion blur very well, so they might be "24fps",
           | but they look wrong compared to reality, and you probably
           | can't conscientiously tell what is wrong, just that something
           | seems to be sightly off.
           | 
           | So it's easier instead to attack the problem from the other
           | side, and generate (or frame generate, that's a thing now)
           | and show 480fps "crisp images" and make human persistence of
           | vision do actual motion blur for you.
        
           | jandrese wrote:
           | Even when viewing a movie instead of playing a game there is
           | a huge difference between the blurry mess that fills the
           | screen every time there is motion at 24 FPS vs. the sharper
           | details of higher framerates.
           | 
           | The crazy thing is people are actually trained to hate it.
           | When you see smooth motion your brain goes "oh no, this is
           | some cheaply shot camcorder shit, not a quality movie" even
           | though what is really happening is the picture looks better
           | than you expect.
        
         | kimixa wrote:
         | Right now.
         | 
         | You just can't be obsessed with the world "Ultra".
        
         | Arrath wrote:
         | Right now? Just load up OpenTTD and have a ball.
        
           | Kiro wrote:
           | OpenTTD is not a city builder.
        
           | crop_rotation wrote:
           | OpenTTD graphics are just not even remotely comparable. It
           | looked so ugly when I tried it that I couldn't bother to
           | continue for more than 2 minutes. If graphics don't matter
           | then maybe even drop openttd and play a text based graphic
           | game. It will run smooth even on a raspberry pi.
        
             | olyjohn wrote:
             | The game is originally from 1994, what do you expect? We
             | didn't even have 3dfx 3d accelerator cards back then.
             | OpenTTD will run smooth on a Pi. It ran smooth on my 486
             | when it first came out.
        
               | crop_rotation wrote:
               | I don't expect anything, I am just responding to someone
               | comparing it to cities skylines ii smoothness.
        
             | segasaturn wrote:
             | I personally greatly prefer the 2D, handcrafted, pixel art
             | look of games like OpenTTD, SimCity 2000 and Factorio over
             | 3D sim games like CS.
        
             | mcpackieh wrote:
             | The graphics may be retro but the gameplay is lit. It's one
             | of the most relaxing and satisfying games around.
        
           | olyjohn wrote:
           | I'm not a huge gamer, but I did spend 14 hours a day for a
           | week playing this game once. Never been sucked in to a game
           | like this. And even better if you can find the original music
           | and graphics. The music is excellent, and will play in your
           | dreams.
           | 
           | First time I played Transport Tycoon was on my 486, I got a
           | demo of the original game on a floppy disk out of some PC
           | game magazine. Looking back, it's amazing how much game play
           | fit onto a 1.44MB floppy disk. I ended up purchasing the
           | Deluxe version on a CDROM. I ripped the CD and have kept an
           | image of it ever since, which came in handy when I found
           | OpenTTD and wanted to use the original graphics and content.
           | Chris Sawyer and the OpenTTD devs are legendary in my mind.
        
         | filterfiber wrote:
         | Not quite a city building but I think possibly comparable -
         | factorio you can at least get to endgame on pretty low end
         | hardware with decent fps. It even runs on the switch.
         | 
         | I say comparable because of the number of things moving around
         | on belts, machines, etc. I think would be a similar workload.
         | Although it is 2D...
        
         | jabroni_salad wrote:
         | I play stellaris on next to nothing and it runs like a champ,
         | even when I zoom in to enjoy the spaceship explosions.
        
           | jandrese wrote:
           | I run Stellaris on an aging i5-3750K and a somewhat newer
           | Geforce GTX 1070Ti at 1080p and also think that the
           | complaints about performace are overblown. I even leave the
           | planet generation settings turned up fairly high (I know a
           | lot of people online reduce them to like 0.25 for performance
           | reasons). That's not to say I never have slowdowns, enormous
           | doomstack on doomstack fleet battles in the endgame hurt the
           | FPS, but they are fairly uncommon. Fighting the 4x strength
           | crisis fleets are the one other time that the game tends to
           | chug, but those tend to be fairly late as well.
           | 
           | That said, I don't have a ton of expansions installed and no
           | mods. I have a strong suspicion that some mods are harder on
           | performance than others, especially the over-the-top ones
           | like Gigastructural Engineering.
        
         | mschuster91 wrote:
         | I used to play a game called Mobility back in ye day, early
         | 00s, it was city building with a scientific background - IIRC
         | it came out of a funding grant of the German government.
         | 
         | Gotta look if I have an ISO flying around somewhere.
        
       | elil17 wrote:
       | I feel like this is not only a massive technical mess-up but also
       | belies a deep misunderstanding of their customers. Most C:S fans
       | were more excited for a more realistic traffic AI and mixed use
       | zoning. Yet this experience was made unplayable by an attempt to
       | make it look prettier.
        
         | sp332 wrote:
         | Why would someone crank all the settings up and then complain
         | that it runs slowly? Just put the settings where you want them.
        
           | nickthegreek wrote:
           | Because they spent $2k on the GPU alone to do such things.
        
             | sp332 wrote:
             | The cards have a certain level of performance. They can
             | change the settings of the game to match what they bought.
             | If they have a $2,000 card, it's going to look good.
        
               | raydev wrote:
               | > If they have a $2,000 card, it's going to look good.
               | 
               | But it doesn't look good on the $2000 cards. That's a big
               | problem.
        
         | legitster wrote:
         | I mean, how playable is the game on minimum graphics settings?
         | As you said, I don't care if the game is prettier.
        
           | elil17 wrote:
           | For me - not at all. I don't have a computer that meets their
           | minimum system requirements. I really feel like the cycle of
           | newer games requiring more hardware is pointless and
           | wasteful. I wish publishers would focus on good game design
           | and make their games accessible to people without high-
           | powered gaming hardware.
        
             | sp332 wrote:
             | It takes a lot of time and effort to pare down the assets
             | and add tricks to make a game look good on lower hardware.
             | Targeting current-gen GPUs means the devs get a _better_
             | game out in the same time and budget.
        
         | swatcoder wrote:
         | > belies a deep misunderstanding of their customers. Most C:S
         | fans were more excited for a more realistic traffic AI and
         | mixed use zoning. Yet this experience was made unplayable by an
         | attempt to make it look prettier.
         | 
         | That's not fair. This is a new engine that they probably expect
         | to support for maybe as long as 10 or 15 years. As a AAA
         | publisher, Paradox doesn't get to stylize behind indie-style
         | aesthetics and needs to keep up with where their peers are
         | headed. It's not aiming to be prettier just for the heck of it,
         | but because it needs to maintain a certain mark to keep the
         | franchise relevant.
         | 
         | Knowing Paradox, more rich gameplay enhancements probably are
         | on the update and DLC agenda, and we can assume that their
         | designers really care about that kind of stuff. But for AAA
         | publishers like them, there are also other factor that matter
         | and that may need to take priority.
         | 
         | That said, what a f'd up and premature launch!
        
           | Miraste wrote:
           | I don't think that's true at all. Nothing else Paradox
           | publishes has AAA graphics, and that's not the target
           | audience for their games. The first Cities Skylines didn't
           | beat Sim City because it had better graphics. It was because
           | of gameplay. Since EA gave up on city sims, they don't even
           | have peers, they're only competing with themselves.
        
           | staplers wrote:
           | That's not fair.
           | 
           | There is something taught to children about this idea..
        
           | mvdtnz wrote:
           | It's not a new engine. They continue to use Unity.
        
         | WillPostForFood wrote:
         | As a C:S fan, I want realistic traffic, mixed zoning, and
         | expect it to be prettier. I don't find it unplayable at all
         | even when it is turning my PC into a space heater.
         | Optimizations will come, and I'd rather be waiting for
         | optimizations than features.
        
           | tuyiown wrote:
           | > Optimizations will come
           | 
           | As someone that has played C:S 8 years ago and last year,
           | I'll tell you, not really, at least, not from people like
           | paradox.
        
             | labster wrote:
             | Definitely not from Paradox. Europa Universalis IV is 10
             | years old now, still getting regular DLC releases, and late
             | game is still unacceptably laggy on 2023 computers. Like,
             | 20 to 0.2 fps.
        
               | brucethemoose2 wrote:
               | Mid-late game Stellaris still chugs on my 7800X3D, which
               | is massively faster than pretty much any non X3D CPU in
               | this particular game.
               | 
               | And I have it overclocked, with CL30 RAM, running a
               | medium galaxy. Thats kind of unacceptable.
               | 
               | They fix it some, then it regresses...
        
               | labster wrote:
               | DLC feature bloat >>> incentive to optimize
        
               | brucethemoose2 wrote:
               | Funny thing is Stellaris has a "custodian" dev team
               | specifically to address this.
               | 
               | The custodians fix a bunch of bugs and performance
               | issues... then the features/dlc team introduce new ones.
        
             | WillPostForFood wrote:
             | Since my post a performance patch has been released!
        
       | _flux wrote:
       | The site timeouts on me :/.
       | 
       | One guy at Reddit noticed with the nvidia nsight that apparently
       | the cims are drawn without regard to level of detail:
       | https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/17gfq13/the...
       | 
       | Vehicles are handled properly, though.
       | 
       | If the analysis is correct (among some other points risen
       | regarding shadows), then it seem rather a big oversight with
       | fortunately some easy fixes.
        
         | mvdtnz wrote:
         | This is armchair game developer sleuthing and I don't buy it
         | for a dollar. Mainly because performance issues with this game
         | occur even on an empty map. There is absolutely no way the game
         | is rendering 10,000+ characters at that level of detail.
         | 
         | You'll be wise to ignore Redditors when they claim to be making
         | some kind of breakthrough that eluded professional game
         | developers over years of development.
        
           | tyree731 wrote:
           | Except if it's this article - https://nee.lv/2021/02/28/How-
           | I-cut-GTA-Online-loading-times...
        
           | DevX101 wrote:
           | A lot of people who play Skylines ARE developers.
        
             | mvdtnz wrote:
             | A lot of people on Reddit are not.
        
       | Aurornis wrote:
       | I checked the IGN review for comparison. IGN reviewer also has an
       | RTX 4090 but plays with a lower 1440p resolution:
       | 
       | > I have a 13900k, 64GB of RAM, and a RTX 4090, playing on a
       | 1440p ultrawide monitor. I got 35fps at the main menu and in game
       | on a brand new map w/o building a single thing. Turning off
       | motion blur and depth field increased this from 35 to 50fps. Not
       | a single other graphics setting changed the performance at all. I
       | turned off every single setting I could or set it to the lowest
       | possible, and still only got 50fps.
       | 
       | How can a game even get to this point? Everyone in the
       | development process must have noticed that it was running poorly.
       | Even if all the developers had the most expensive consumer GPU
       | available, they still would have seen poor performance.
        
         | brucethemoose2 wrote:
         | > Turning off motion blur and depth field increased this from
         | 35 to 50fps
         | 
         | Whats more, such simple postprocessing filters should not tank
         | FPS so dramatically, even with a severe CPU bottleneck.
         | 
         | That alone is not just unoptimized, its a severe bug.
        
           | mvdtnz wrote:
           | And even if such filters are somehow so intensive, they
           | should be turned off by default. I am playing Cities Skylines
           | 2 and there is so much unnecessary eye candy that is turned
           | on even with a mid-range graphics card. The game runs fine
           | for me at 1440p when I turn off the really intensive post
           | processing.
        
             | fourteenfour wrote:
             | They screwed up the defaults. When I first loaded it was
             | set to a resolution with a 24Hz refresh rate. Also the game
             | looks bad with the default SMAA, it looks great if you
             | change the advanced graphics settings to use TAA. I'm on a
             | 3080 at 4K and after fiddling with settings it looks
             | wonderful and is very playable. Unbelievable that they
             | hosed the first impressions so much.
        
               | brucethemoose2 wrote:
               | > Also the game looks bad with the default SMAA, it looks
               | great if you change the advanced graphics settings to use
               | TAA
               | 
               | Well thats very subjective, as I usually can't stand TAA
               | and like SMAA.
        
               | WXLCKNO wrote:
               | Being set to a default of 24hz sounds like the idea of
               | someone forced to ship the game, hoping users wouldn't
               | notice.
        
               | brucethemoose2 wrote:
               | Its probably just detecting a 24p TV resolution in
               | fullscreen, if I were to guess.
        
               | babypuncher wrote:
               | But no TV maxes out at 24hz, that is a lower bound meant
               | to support things like blu-ray players for judder-free
               | movie playback.
               | 
               | 60 hz has always been the bare minimum any display
               | supports, so if any game is picking something below that
               | then something has gone horribly wrong. But really, games
               | should be using the current desktop refresh rate as the
               | default, because you know it's supported and makes things
               | like alt+tabbing considerably faster even in exclusive
               | fullscreen.
        
             | brucethemoose2 wrote:
             | > even if such filters are somehow so intensive
             | 
             | They should _never_ be so intense.
             | 
             | Some shaders unintentionally scale nonlinearly with
             | resolution, and I'm thinking that may be the case here.
        
           | fyloraspit wrote:
           | Severe CPU bottleneck normally implies that your CPU may need
           | to be upgraded though? If you are running a 13900k, there
           | isn't much room for that.
        
           | epolanski wrote:
           | Depth of field is often more nuanced than simply
           | postprocessing filtering, it generally also swaps textures
           | and models based on distance from camera.
        
             | brucethemoose2 wrote:
             | I didn't know this, interesting.
             | 
             | I don't really like DoF anyway :P
        
           | bluescrn wrote:
           | More importantly, why the hell does a city-builder game need
           | motion blur?
           | 
           | It's usually a pretty obnoxious effect even in action games,
           | the first thing to turn off if the option exists...
        
         | 2023throwawayy wrote:
         | Oh, they noticed. They complained. They said "we need to fix
         | this".
         | 
         | The project manager said "Not high priority for launch", then
         | closed the ticket.
        
           | ryanisnan wrote:
           | Is this satire? If this is real, I'd love to know more.
        
             | refulgentis wrote:
             | It's satire, people are reaching way too far in this thread
             | (ex. IGN's review is using 3080 / Ryzen 7 and they were
             | happy with performance)
             | 
             | The site none of us can read probably has more info about
             | this being a RTX 4090 quirk. And it's not exactly
             | surprising the dev team wasn't optimizing for RTX 4090, and
             | the quirky reaction here would be justified if they were.
        
               | IntelMiner wrote:
               | How would a 4090 perform _worse_ than a 3090? It 's not
               | like Nvidia completely rebuilt the GPU between revisions
        
               | dragontamer wrote:
               | > It's not like Nvidia completely rebuilt the GPU between
               | revisions
               | 
               | NVidia absolutely changes the assembly language rather
               | dramatically between iterations. That's why the code is
               | in NVidia PTX (or HLSL / Microsoft's DXIL, DirectX
               | Intermediate Language), and then recompiled to actual GPU
               | assembly each time you install a game or run the code on
               | a different system.
        
               | IntelMiner wrote:
               | I have not seen an instance where a GPU series that has
               | been out for over 12 months has _regressed_ in
               | performance prior to an older one
               | 
               | Perhaps back in the very early accelerator days when
               | everyone was making GPU-specific hacks of Quake 1 but
               | even that was smoothed over by the transition to
               | DirectX/OpenGL/GLiDE at the time
        
             | hrydgard wrote:
             | It's probably just a very good guess, since that's how it
             | always goes.
        
           | tomatotomato37 wrote:
           | If you notice how fast the PR and guides for optimizing
           | performance has come I'd say not only the developers but
           | everyone that's not the top of the top knew the game's pain
           | points.
        
             | epolanski wrote:
             | I mean if you have time to make guides, you had time to
             | implement some presets in the ui...
        
           | epolanski wrote:
           | More like c-suite, there's no chance PMs have anything to say
           | in this and won't report issues upstairs just to be told "you
           | can fix it after launch".
        
         | legitster wrote:
         | Is 50 FPS a huge issue?
         | 
         | I play a lot of city builders and so long as the UI is still
         | smooth I really don't notice any gameplay difference between
         | 30fps and 60fps.
         | 
         | I put 8 hours into Frostpunk before realizing I was limited to
         | 30FPS.
        
           | ajaimk wrote:
           | 4090 is the fastest available graphics card. That's the
           | problem.
        
           | wlesieutre wrote:
           | 20 fps is playable for a city builder, but that's on a $2000
           | GPU
           | 
           | A bit unfair since most people aren't gaming at 4K (Steam
           | hardware survey puts it at 3.29%), but still
        
             | washadjeffmad wrote:
             | Ok, so around 4 million users. I wonder what the overlap of
             | 4K owners and people who play city builders is?
        
               | dimgl wrote:
               | I feel like this is grasping at straws? Plenty of
               | unorthodox games go mainstream. Can't expect consumer
               | hardware to the stay the same forever. This game is just
               | poorly optimized.
        
               | washadjeffmad wrote:
               | I think I'm giving people the opposite impression that I
               | intended.
               | 
               | Well-compensated people (like engineers) are more likely
               | to own a 4K monitor and high-end GPU, so I meant to
               | convey that there's probably a large overlap with the
               | type of people who play city builders (like engineers),
               | so they really should have accounted for that.
               | 
               | It was only after I bought my 4K 120Hz OLED that I found
               | out how popular they are for sims, including pinball.
               | It's been awesome.
        
               | janosdebugs wrote:
               | Anecdotal evidence: I play at 4k if I can manage, and I
               | sport a 2060S.
        
           | wackget wrote:
           | My personal opinion: yes. As 160+Hz monitors are finally
           | becoming commonplace, it's becoming less defensible for games
           | to run anywhere below 60fps.
           | 
           | But it's the fact that these figures are being seen with the
           | most powerful consumer graphics card (on a brand new
           | unpopulated game map) that's the problem.
        
             | legitster wrote:
             | City Skylines 1 has been played and supported non-stop for
             | over 8 years. Why should they limit the highest possible
             | graphics settings only to existing technology?
             | 
             | Again, this is a _simulation_ game. If I ask the game to
             | spit out more detail and graphics than can be physically
             | supported by today 's technology, I guess I don't
             | necessarily see this as a design fault.
        
               | kaibee wrote:
               | If it were doing a ton of compute-shader simulation on
               | GPU to actually increase the fidelity of the simulation
               | that would be one thing, but having a badly implemented
               | graphics pipeline isn't that.
        
               | iforgotpassword wrote:
               | Somewhat yes, I didn't try it yet, but a few things don't
               | add up then:
               | 
               | Why enable those heavy, performance crippling post
               | processing filters by default?
               | 
               | From what I can find in this comment section, and I guess
               | this has to be taken with a grain of salt, performance
               | doesn't scale. It seems we max out at 50fps on a beefy
               | 13th gen Intel with the fastest GPU available, but then
               | there's a couple comments with mid-range hardware where
               | performance is nearly identical.
        
               | danudey wrote:
               | > If I ask the game to spit out more detail and graphics
               | than can be physically supported by today's technology, I
               | guess I don't necessarily see this as a design fault.
               | 
               | To be clear: I had to turn the quality down to much worse
               | than I recall Cities Skylines 1 looking in order to get
               | worse performance than Cities Skylines 1.
               | 
               | The major complaint here is not "I cannot max the
               | settings on my mediocre hardware", but rather "I cannot
               | mediocre the settings on my max hardware"; the
               | performance is bad at any level, but my hardware, while
               | not top-of-the-line, should be able to run a game like
               | this at 4K _playable_ , or at 1080p while looking awesome
               | and running great. Instead, I get 1080p with a mix of
               | medium/low settings in order to get it looking pretty
               | okay in most aspects.
        
               | cmovq wrote:
               | > Why should they limit the highest possible graphics
               | settings only to existing technology?
               | 
               | This assumes Cities Skylines 2 is using some next gen
               | graphics technology when in practice it is a Unity game
               | without any cutting edge graphics. Another comment
               | mentioned they are doing 10k+ draw calls per frame - it's
               | just poorly optimized.
        
               | serf wrote:
               | this is a trope that is spit out by the developers of
               | every poorly optimized sim in recorded history.
               | 
               | Yes, scalability towards the future is good -- but not at
               | the detriment of player performance _now_.
               | 
               | If the player base doesn't stick around during our
               | current dark-times medieval technology stack, there won't
               | be a player base when we have whatever future tech makes
               | it playable -- see the problem?
        
             | FirmwareBurner wrote:
             | _> As 160+Hz monitors are finally becoming commonplace,
             | it's becoming less defensible for games to run anywhere
             | below 60fps._
             | 
             | You're forgetting the increasing popularity of the Steam
             | Deck where even 60 FPS is a luxury so game devs should
             | definitely have that as a target.
        
               | BlueTemplar wrote:
               | CS2 devs reportedly had 30 FPS as a target. Which is
               | actually fine for that kind of game, but it sounds like
               | that is NOT for low-end hardware ?
        
               | adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
               | For CPU heavy games it totally makes sense to target
               | 30fps, but that better be 30fps at 1080p with integrated
               | graphics, (or 30fps 1440p with 1060 class gpu). Add eye
               | candy if you want, but it really should run well on any
               | remotely modern system.
        
             | giobox wrote:
             | > As 160+Hz monitors are finally becoming commonplace
             | 
             | The Steam hardware survey suggests otherwise to my eyes;
             | it's often easy to forget working in tech that _a lot_ of
             | Steam customers have relatively shit hardware:
             | 
             | https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-
             | Softw...
             | 
             | While they don't track monitor peak supported refresh, just
             | looking at the rest of the results suggests to me high-
             | refresh gaming (over 60FPS) is going to be relatively niche
             | at best. Lots of PC gaming specs I take for-granted on my
             | own builds or consider "average" are actually not that
             | common.
             | 
             | I absolutely agree 60fps should be considered the floor for
             | most modern PC games running on "reasonable" hardware
             | though, 30fps belongs to the past.
        
               | Iulioh wrote:
               | Off topic but 42% of VR headsets are Quest 2
               | 
               | Woahhh
        
               | aeyes wrote:
               | Most Steam customers play games like Counter Strike,
               | Dota, Team Fortress, PUBG, GTA, Call of Duty which have
               | modest hardware requirements.
               | 
               | I wouldn't read too much into these stats.
        
               | giobox wrote:
               | Right - you are proving my point... Most customers
               | probably do not have 160fps monitors.
        
           | stodor89 wrote:
           | 50fps is okay. 50fps on a $1600 GPU is definitely not okay.
        
           | bee_rider wrote:
           | It is just a matter of preference, I don't see why people get
           | bent out of shape about it.
           | 
           | 30fps is fine for lots of games. Especially for stuff that
           | doesn't require super twitchy gameplay.
           | 
           | If somebody really cares about 60fps or 120fps, fine. But the
           | developers have some effects they want to implement, and if
           | some of them don't fit into 8.3ms, let those of us who don't
           | mind 30fps enjoy them, right?
        
           | tomatotomato37 wrote:
           | It's not the average that's the problem, is that it has hard
           | stutters from when you do something like swing or rotate the
           | camera around and force a lot of new things to load. Also
           | there's no fps limiter so I can't stop the game from
           | attempting to match my monitor's 165 FPS with a overheating
           | laptop 3060, causing the stuttering to be even more visible.
        
             | KennyBlanken wrote:
             | You can set a frame limit per-program in the NVIDIA control
             | panel.
             | 
             | Undervolting also reportedly works really well in laptop
             | nvidia chipsets, FYI.
        
           | michaelt wrote:
           | 50 FPS certainly doesn't make the game unplayable, it's true.
           | 
           | But if that's with an empty map, it's an ominous sign for
           | people who plan to build a city in this city building game,
           | as rendering usually slows as polygon count increases.
           | 
           | And if it's with an $1800 GPU, its an ominous sign for the
           | 99.3% of gamers who don't have an $1800 GPU.
           | 
           | And if that's at 1440p - well, I'd wager a lot of the folks
           | with a $1800 GPU also have a 4k screen.
        
           | antisthenes wrote:
           | It's a huge issue, considering the game doesn't look like a
           | revolution in graphics AND you're essentially playing it on a
           | super-computer by 5-6 year old standards.
           | 
           | > I put 8 hours into Frostpunk before realizing I was limited
           | to 30FPS.
           | 
           | Yes, and I have beaten games that rendered improperly at
           | sub-30FPS as a kid, because the requirement was 16MB of VRAM,
           | while my card only had 8. But that's just as irrelevant to
           | the point being made.
        
           | pdpi wrote:
           | If they said "The game is locked to 30fps" I'd probably have
           | been ok with that. It's not a fast paced game, and capping
           | the framerate at a low value is probably a decent enough
           | design choice for that particular game. As you say, it's
           | enough that you won't really notice it in gameplay.
           | 
           | The problem is that we're talking about the absolute highest
           | end consumer card sold by nVidia rendering a blank map,
           | without such a framerate lock in place. If it's not locked,
           | then that framerate is the product of a performance
           | bottleneck somewhere. With a modern gaming PC, "performance
           | bottleneck" also means you're sitting next to a moderately
           | powerful space heater.
        
             | KennyBlanken wrote:
             | Locking a game to 30hz would not have been a "decent design
             | choice" given that's half the refresh rate of nearly every
             | computer monitor out there, especially for a game that
             | involves a lot of scrolling.
             | 
             | Games get mocked for locking to 60hz, 30hz would get them
             | laughed at outright.
        
               | BlueTemplar wrote:
               | The devs supposedly aimed for 30 FPS (but missed it,
               | because that would be for low end hardware?)
               | 
               | In my experience 30 FPS is perfectly fine for a game like
               | this, I'm not sure what do you mean about "scrolling" ?
               | 
               | It's the much more fast paced, mostly first person games
               | that really need those 60+ FPS...
        
               | serf wrote:
               | >In my experience 30 FPS is perfectly fine for a game
               | like this, I'm not sure what do you mean about
               | "scrolling" ?
               | 
               | A top down city sim 'scrolls' up/down/left/right around a
               | map, which is a movement that is strongly associated to
               | screen tearing -- which i'm not really sure is a relevant
               | thing to bring up given the variety of v-sync options
               | available.
               | 
               | Even a game locked at 30fps that 'scrolls' often
               | shouldn't experience significant tearing with the options
               | out there.
        
               | mcpackieh wrote:
               | Even without tearing, a high framerate is very desirable
               | for scrolling around a map or web page. For instance,
               | iphones are widely praised for excelling in this regard.
               | It's just easier on the eyes if things on screen move
               | smoothly when you scroll/pan around, it's less fatiguing.
        
               | Aeolun wrote:
               | I notice when my mouse updates at 30fps. The movement
               | feels noticably choppier.
        
           | kriops wrote:
           | It's like playing in black and white, kind of. But yes 50 FPS
           | is completely fine if you have not gotten used to better.
           | Also helps if the game doesn't rely on high levels of detail
           | (which Skylines, unfortunately, does), so that moving the
           | camera around doesn't just make everything blurry.
        
             | BlueTemplar wrote:
             | If moving the camera around makes things blurry, then they
             | must be using some kind of weird post-processing on top,
             | can't blame that on the FPS alone !
        
           | xcv123 wrote:
           | The issue is that if it runs at 50 FPS on an RTX 4090, it's
           | going to run at 5 FPS on an average GPU.
        
             | Kuxe wrote:
             | Problem with these kinds of statements is that.. well,
             | they're not true. I have RTX 2070 running in 3440x1440. I'm
             | at 35fps on low settings with some special stuff turned
             | off, e.g GI and fogs. In an small town with 4k inhabitants
             | still, so things can get worse for me.
             | 
             | Regardless, the problem is blown out of proportion. I think
             | we can give it some weeks and 4090 performance issues will
             | be in the past.
        
               | xcv123 wrote:
               | > I have RTX 2070 running in 3440x1440. I'm at 35fps on
               | low setting
               | 
               | LOL. You just proved my point.
        
           | dimgl wrote:
           | Yes, yes it is. I have a 4k TV with 120hz. I want to be able
           | to use it. If Anno 1800 can run at 100+ framerates, surely
           | this game can too.
        
           | sidewndr46 wrote:
           | As someone who can safely say that watching a video game in
           | 30 FPS is equivalent to watching a slideshow, yes. It gives
           | me intense motion sickness immediately. So I can't play
           | something below 60 FPS
        
           | xboxnolifes wrote:
           | It's not just 50 fps. It's 50 fps with the best possible
           | hardware and lowest possible settings.
           | 
           | But also, yes, even in a city builder low for is very
           | annoying when you're used to the smoothness of 100+.
        
           | epolanski wrote:
           | It's a 3000$ computer playing at low resolution, of course it
           | is.
        
             | nzgrover wrote:
             | Heh, in New Zealand, the card alone is $3500NZD
        
         | wlesieutre wrote:
         | Display pixel counts for reference, a 1440p ultrawide (assuming
         | 21:9 and not 32:9) is about 60% the pixel count of 4K
         | 4K    16:9   3840 x 2160 = 8.29 million pixels (1.00x)
         | 1440p 21:9   3440 x 1440 = 4.95 million pixels (0.60x)
         | 1440p 16:9   2560 x 1440 = 3.69 million pixels (0.44x)
        
           | LegitShady wrote:
           | also 5120x1440 (32:9) is 7.37 million pixels (.89x)
        
         | refulgentis wrote:
         | This isn't accurate. Review here:
         | https://www.ign.com/articles/cities-skylines-2-review
         | 
         | "My Ryzen 7 3700X and RTX 3080 were able to handle it okay on
         | just shy of max settings"
        
           | LegitShady wrote:
           | it is accurate. check the steam reviews.
        
             | Kye wrote:
             | I found this test of Cities Skylines 2 with the somewhat
             | faster non-laptop version of my GPU. It's so bad.
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNHqs6HYI0I
             | 
             | It _seems_ okay around 1080, but then you realize there's
             | almost nothing going on and it's only doing ~60FPS. It'll
             | choke on anything remotely complex.
        
               | LegitShady wrote:
               | its also a 3070ti and playing at 1080p, which is sort of
               | ridiculous.
        
             | refulgentis wrote:
             | Would me reading Steam reviews make the IGN review use a
             | 4090?
        
               | LegitShady wrote:
               | Perhaps it was edited after the fact. The claim about
               | performance in OP has a link to youtube video recording
               | the performance.
        
               | refulgentis wrote:
               | (insert my comment here, it's not important, I won't
               | waste my time writing one. Let's see how many comments
               | you can go before saying whoops. My bet is infinity / you
               | never will)
        
         | throw0101c wrote:
         | > _How can a game even get to this point?_
         | 
         | Quill18 had a live stream the day of release (Oct 19) and it
         | seemed fine (2h10m in, after some Galactic Civilizations 4:
         | Supernova) from what I saw:
         | 
         | * https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1954873419
         | 
         | Various other live stream days, as well as a separate Youtube
         | series:
         | 
         | * https://www.twitch.tv/quill18/schedule
         | 
         | * https://www.youtube.com/@quill18/videos
        
           | rasz wrote:
           | Twitch Streamers stream fullhd and will usually run games at
           | fullhd.
        
             | KennyBlanken wrote:
             | ...and they're not even remotely objective.
             | 
             | The big ones are paid cash, and before they stream they've
             | already had a team working with them, covering what exactly
             | they do or don't want shown and talked about - and if there
             | are any technical problems, they've been worked out, which
             | may even include special builds of the game.
             | 
             | The smaller ones are "partners" who get access to the game
             | earlier than purchasers, zero-cost items for giveaways, and
             | some access to game publisher staff - but only if they play
             | by the (NDA'd) rules of the publisher, and those rules
             | usually explicitly say "do not say anything negative about
             | the game."
        
               | epolanski wrote:
               | I don't think CS2 is exactly the kind of game that lacked
               | abundance of streamers waiting for the release to be
               | honest.
        
         | nine_k wrote:
         | My cynical take is that everybody noticed, but did not fix.
         | They shipped ASAP. New updates, where they address more tech
         | debt, may fix some if this, claim major performance
         | improvements, and thus guaranteed to generate positive press /
         | posts / tweets.
        
           | Jensson wrote:
           | Their publisher is Paradox so probably. They don't have a
           | "only ship when its ready" culture.
        
             | Aeolun wrote:
             | I don't think Paradox has a particularly urgent shipping
             | culture either? It's whatever their QA department does that
             | sucks.
        
         | pseudosavant wrote:
         | Perhaps it is limited by something other than the GPU after
         | 50fps. It could be CPU bound at that point?
        
           | fyloraspit wrote:
           | Same question then, if it is CPU bound on a 13900k
        
             | colechristensen wrote:
             | Performance problems like this are usually complex dumb
             | things. Like calculating a thing a million times when it
             | only needs to be done once, doing one thing and context
             | switching instead of batching, dumb locking that leaves
             | threads spending most of their time waiting, creating and
             | destroying a thing millions of times when it should be
             | reused, etc etc.
             | 
             | It will just be lots of these things that need to be found
             | and corrected.
        
         | jowea wrote:
         | Maybe they're going for the Crysis plan and designing for
         | future tech?
        
           | cmovq wrote:
           | Except Crysis looked incredible at the time. This is just
           | Unity 3D graphics.
        
         | naikrovek wrote:
         | > How can a game even get to this point?
         | 
         | lots of ways. It is very easy to do things which affect
         | performance negatively.
         | 
         | Once you're sure about what you're doing and the data that
         | you're drawing to the screen, then you can start optimizing
         | things so that performance goes up.
         | 
         | Colossal chose to release when they did because they promised
         | to release on that day. The game isn't done, and they've said
         | this.
        
         | danudey wrote:
         | Not as powerful of a setup, but I have a 5800X, 32 GB of RAM,
         | and an RX 6800 XT on a 4K monitor, and I got 5 FPS on the main
         | menu (which was showing an empty grass field).
         | 
         | I had to set my resolution to 1080p in order to get anything
         | remotely resembling performance (this change alone took main
         | menu FPS from 5 to ~55), plus disabling motion blur, depth of
         | field, and volumetrics, and turning model fidelity down. I've
         | also heard that disabling vsync can make a huge difference, but
         | it didn't affect things for me.
        
         | TylerH wrote:
         | I fault the people complaining about performance of a city
         | builder running at 1440p more than the developer. You're
         | looking at concrete and asphalt and brick textures and shit
         | like that. You don't need anything higher than 720p.
        
           | riversflow wrote:
           | >You don't need anything higher than 720p.
           | 
           | I don't want the UI to look horrible on my 27" 1440p monitor.
        
           | epolanski wrote:
           | I do hope you're being sarcastic.
        
           | dansalvato wrote:
           | Dude, we're talking about an RTX 4090. A GPU that can run
           | current-gen AAA games on max settings at 4k60fps should not
           | slow to a crawl when rendering "concrete and asphalt and
           | brick textures and shit", to use your words.
           | 
           | So if I have a budget PC, I should be content with running
           | this game at Nintendo 64 resolution? Or I guess it's on me to
           | fork over $1,000 for a high-end GPU if I want to run it at
           | 2/3 the resolution of a midrange mobile phone, as you
           | suggest.
        
       | legitster wrote:
       | How is there _no_ mention of CPU?
       | 
       | Simulators, especially ones of this size, are usually much more
       | CPU intensive than GPU intensive. So a lot of reviews are
       | obsessive about how beefy their GPU card is, but I suspect a lot
       | of people have "top-heavy" rigs.
       | 
       | I play a lot of simulator games. Most of them are not paragons of
       | optimization (well, except maybe Factorio). But these are not
       | action games so FPS is not really something I personally optimize
       | for and I don't necessarily understand the importance of
       | benchmarking it against, like, Cyberpunk.
       | 
       | I wouldn't be surprised if Paragon's optimization fix will be
       | just to nerf the depth-of-field.
        
         | coffeebeqn wrote:
         | Sure it uses CPU but desktop CPUs that gamers use are beasts.
         | Even if it's a few years old mid level CPU it's better than any
         | console or mobile device by a long shot. They have dedicated
         | tower or liquid coolers so they can push a lot of power into
         | the chips
        
           | dharmab wrote:
           | With sim games it's not purely about clock speed or TDP. The
           | previous generation 5800X3D outperformed the newest chips in
           | simulation games for a while thanks to it's very large cache.
        
         | thesnide wrote:
         | I'm wondering about any abuse of GPU for non GFX tasks in
         | recent games.
        
           | ElectricalUnion wrote:
           | If it has embarrassingly parallel tasks that it can dispatch
           | to a massively parallel subsystem dedicated to solving
           | embarrassingly parallel tasks, is that abuse or smart use of
           | resources?
           | 
           | That being said most simulation games are usually memory-
           | latency and memory-bandwidth limited, not compute limited.
        
             | thesnide wrote:
             | It looks a perfect match. At first. Then you realize that
             | you are not alone.
             | 
             | Very much like using the Java stream parallel API in a
             | webserver is doing wonders in dev, but not in production,
             | as you have many other threads serving other requests also
             | starved for CPU cores
        
         | __coaxialcabal wrote:
         | Can you recommend some favorites?
        
           | dragontamer wrote:
           | I'm not the guy you're responding to but...
           | 
           | Over the last 10 years, my favorite simulation games have
           | been Factorio, Tropico (4 and 6), OpenTTD, and Two-point
           | Hospital.
        
             | legitster wrote:
             | I'm still an old blowhard and think Tropico 1 is still the
             | best. It was so tough that you _had_ to become a fascist
             | every time. Which made it a harder game but also a much
             | sharper commentary.
        
           | legitster wrote:
           | The Tropico games are a perfectly pleasant place to start.
           | They get progressively easier and more casual.
           | 
           | The Anno games are my all around favorite. 1404 is my
           | favorite, but honestly 1800 is probably the best.
           | 
           | Banished spawned an entire genre unto itself even as it
           | hasn't aged gracefully. These survival sims have a lot more
           | "bite" to them. Try Planetbase for a more streamlined
           | experience. Timberborn if you like physics. Also have heard
           | good things about Farthest Frontier.
           | 
           | And then there's Frostpunk which is an all-around amazing
           | experience. The theming and mood rivals any first-person
           | cinematic shooter.
        
           | nrjames wrote:
           | Check out Oxygen Not Included
        
           | amoss wrote:
           | Captain of Industry is pretty good fun.
        
         | jdiff wrote:
         | If the issue is occuring even on the main menu and a completely
         | new, bare level, that possibility can be safely eliminated.
         | It's also highly doubtful that someone with a 4090 would have a
         | CPU pitiful enough to excuse 20FPS.
        
           | Aeolun wrote:
           | Also, the speed of the simulation should not be bound to the
           | rendering speed.
        
         | MisterBastahrd wrote:
         | Most people who have the money to invest in a 4090 are also
         | going to invest in a beefy CPU. It's not a secret that CPUs are
         | bottlenecks for games within the gaming community.
        
           | mvdtnz wrote:
           | CPU is not a bottleneck in Cities Skylines 2, nor most game
           | to be frank.
        
         | zbuttram wrote:
         | The issues in question here surface even with an empty city, at
         | higher populations the CPU will almost certainly become the
         | issue but right now most of the complaints are unrelated to sim
         | performance and it even seems like for most people the sim
         | performs quite well even at higher populations.
        
         | brucethemoose2 wrote:
         | > Most of them are not paragons of optimization (well, except
         | maybe Factorio). But these are not action games so FPS is not
         | really something I personally optimize for and I don't
         | necessarily understand the importance of benchmarking it
         | against, like, Cyberpunk.
         | 
         | In many of these games, FPS is correlated with simulation
         | speed. So when the fps starts to chug, the simulations starts
         | going slower too.
        
           | mvdtnz wrote:
           | Not in Cities Skylines 2.
        
           | legitster wrote:
           | Uhhh, this doesn't even make sense. Simulation speed is
           | usually controlled by a button.
        
             | Tadpole9181 wrote:
             | It makes perfect sense. Simulations are done in discrete
             | time chunks, as the framerate drops and those time chunks
             | grow larger there are two choices: make the simulation bad,
             | or make the world slow down.
             | 
             | If you don't adjust simulation rate you start seeing higher
             | instances of objects phasing through each other, collisions
             | not preserving energy correctly, pathfinding just
             | fundamentally breaking.
        
               | brucethemoose2 wrote:
               | Well ideally sim "ticks" are completely seperate from
               | rendering, but this is not the reality in many games
               | where they share the same thread, or where cross
               | communication (like UI stuff) blocks enough to slow the
               | other component down.
               | 
               | Even in Minecraft, with its completely seperate
               | server/client, the rendering can bog down TPS due to JVM
               | pauses and other reasons I don't even understand.
        
               | legitster wrote:
               | But the simulation can be done as fast the CPU dictates.
               | If the GPU has to drop frames to keep up, it doesn't
               | impact the simulation.
        
         | trevwilson wrote:
         | They probably should have mentioned the CPU specs at least, but
         | it's very easy to look at utilization while the game is running
         | and see that it's GPU bound even with high-end video cards.
         | 
         | Not to mention that this is on an empty map, so there's very
         | little simulation even happening yet, and the big FPS gains
         | come from turning down GPU effects like DoF and motion blur.
        
         | Der_Einzige wrote:
         | Rimworld, especially after running RimPy and converting
         | textures for GPU, is extremely fast/well optimized even with
         | hundreds of mods.
        
         | Olreich wrote:
         | The speed of your simulation in a game like this should have
         | minimal impact on the framerate of the game. You can paint the
         | screen 144 times a second, but only tick the simulation 10
         | times a second and get a much better experience than painting
         | the screen and updating the simulation 20 times a second. Maybe
         | your city runs slowly, but you can still look around at the
         | various bits moving slowly.
        
           | riversflow wrote:
           | Not trying to be rude, but this honestly reads like you don't
           | actually play simulation/4X games.
           | 
           | > Maybe your city runs slowly
           | 
           | If the simulation is running slow that has a _much_ more
           | detrimental on the quality of game play than jumping from 45
           | fps to 75 fps. Sure, it's a simulation, but it's primarily a
           | _game_ , not a weather model. And I say this as an early
           | adopter of high hertz monitors and a frequent fps player. I
           | absolutely need high frames and low input latency in a
           | competitive PvP game, but in a strategy game, it's much more
           | important that the tick rate is fast enough that it's
           | interesting. A slow sim is boring, and it's not just me,
           | people complain about this all the time in (late game)
           | Stellaris(another Paradox title).
        
       | jakogut wrote:
       | Hugged to death?
        
         | ssharp wrote:
         | "The agony and the irony are killing me"
        
       | notamy wrote:
       | http://archive.today/jkQw9
       | 
       | The actual site times out on my end; did it get hugged to death?
        
         | ehPReth wrote:
         | seems so, i just got a 503 from them after a very long delay.
         | here's an IA link as well for those using Cloudflare's DNS
         | resolvers:
         | https://web.archive.org/web/20231026180914/https://www.dsoga...
        
       | zbuttram wrote:
       | Seems like this was likely from before the hotfix that was
       | released this morning which has improvements for some of the more
       | egregious issues mentioned like DOF, LOD, and global
       | illumination:
       | https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/949230/view/37093367...
       | 
       | Still far from ideal but glad to see movement so quickly from the
       | dev team and as has been mentioned the game is certainly playable
       | albeit with some setting tweaks.
        
         | aranelsurion wrote:
         | Makes one think, if those issues were so quickly fixable, why
         | they weren't fixed already to begin with?
        
           | mplewis wrote:
           | We know why. The game had to ship on a date, and those
           | responsible were not willing to delay the launch date on the
           | basis of performance issues.
        
             | evanriley wrote:
             | After seeing this happen time and time again, it's kind of
             | a wild decision to make. So many negative reviews I see
             | these days are about performance issues.
             | 
             | You would think a little more time would be put into
             | reaching at least some reasonable performance level.
        
               | bakugo wrote:
               | > So many negative reviews I see these days are about
               | performance issues.
               | 
               | Unfortunately, negative publicity from bad performance
               | doesn't really stop these games from selling well, as
               | proven by most AAA releases in the past few years.
        
           | fourteenfour wrote:
           | I think they released it without having a discussion about
           | how bad an impression poor default settings could make. With
           | a few adjustments it looks great and is very playable on my
           | 3080 at 4K even before the patch. Really big blunder for
           | sure.
        
       | alberth wrote:
       | Sounds like an Electron app.
        
         | pelorat wrote:
         | Unity, so basically the same but for games.
        
       | ptasci67 wrote:
       | I will fully concede that the trend of game makers releasing
       | half-baked, poorly optimized games that are buggy and unplayable
       | at launch is totally a thing and it is frustrating and we should
       | demand better (though we keep buying so why would they stop?).
       | 
       | BUT.... the online game community is so insufferable and this
       | Cities Skylines II launch is a great example of it. The game is
       | not about 4k 120 fps gameplay. It is a simulation game that runs
       | fairly well even on last gen's hardware if you drop SOME of the
       | fidelity settings. But that's not the predominant discourse. If
       | people can't play it at 4k out of the box on their overpriced
       | 4090 then they take straight to the internet to complain (and
       | mind you they have tried fiddling with exactly 0 knobs to make it
       | runnable).
       | 
       | I am by no means making excuses for game makers who certainly
       | share much of the blame for creating an environment of distrust
       | among game fans. But the online discourse is just rage baiting
       | and looking for anything to hate with minimal evidence or
       | sometimes even outright lies. Makes me want to go into a cave and
       | play my games without seeing any content or discussion about it.
        
         | wackget wrote:
         | > If people can't play it at 4k out of the box on their
         | overpriced 4090 then they take straight to the internet to
         | complain (and mind you they have tried fiddling with exactly 0
         | knobs to make it runnable).
         | 
         | The top comment contains this extract from an IGN review:
         | 
         | > I have a 13900k, 64GB of RAM, and a RTX 4090, playing on a
         | 1440p ultrawide monitor. I got 35fps at the main menu and in
         | game on a brand new map w/o building a single thing. Turning
         | off motion blur and depth field increased this from 35 to
         | 50fps. Not a single other graphics setting changed the
         | performance at all. I turned off every single setting I could
         | or set it to the lowest possible, and still only got 50fps.
        
           | ptasci67 wrote:
           | Yes, I was addressing the broader discourse more generally,
           | specifically Reddit. But you're right that the article did
           | directly address this though I would say the tone and title
           | of the article are incongruous with the simple fact that they
           | were able to get the game to run well with minor tweaks.
           | 
           | I take issue with "only got 50fps". This is not Counter
           | Strike or a game that demands 300fps. 50fps (if your 1% lows
           | are within reason) is completely playable.
        
             | fluoridation wrote:
             | It's not about the number by itself, it's what the number
             | implies. If an RTX 4090 can't get to 60 FPS on an empty
             | map, what will happen when the game is running on an RTX
             | 4060 and it has to render a complete city?
             | 
             | >I take issue with "only got 50fps". This is not Counter
             | Strike or a game that demands 300fps. 50fps (if your 1%
             | lows are within reason) is completely playable.
             | 
             | You're complaining about people complaining. If you're
             | satisfied with the game being playable then play it, but
             | others may have different expectations of quality, and it's
             | not wrong for them to voice their opinion when the product
             | they paid money for doesn't meet them. I personally don't
             | remember participating in a congress of gamers where
             | everyone agreed not to complain about a game unless it was
             | practically unplayable.
        
               | Kuxe wrote:
               | >If you're satisfied with the game being playable then
               | play it, but others may have different expectations of
               | quality, and it's not wrong for them to voice their
               | opinion when the product they paid money for doesn't meet
               | them.
               | 
               | I'm all for voicing opinions in a civic and calm manner.
               | Most people online voicing their opinions come off as
               | know-it-all teens or children throwing tantrums. It's as-
               | if they have a _right_ to a CS2 with 120fps. Paradox
               | warned about bad performance prior to launch
               | (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/updates-on-
               | modd...). Nobody claimed or said performance was gonna be
               | great. And still, people act surprised.
               | 
               | It's no surprise that the reviews was down at close to
               | 30% a couple of hours into the release and today at 52%.
               | Why is there such a massive bias towards large reviews at
               | the first hours? Because many gamers loves thrashing
               | about. It's much more important than taking a step down
               | and calming down.
        
               | fluoridation wrote:
               | The people who reviewed the game in the first few days
               | were the ones who either pre-ordered it or bought it as
               | soon as it came out. They were so excited to play the new
               | installment they took a gamble and trusted that the
               | developer would produce a polished product, because they
               | wanted to be able to play it as soon as possible. When
               | they got to play the game, they saw it ran poorly to the
               | point that it might have spoiled the experience for them.
               | They're right to be angry about it, especially when
               | developers and publishers make most of their money during
               | the first few weeks since launch. By releasing a half-
               | finished product they're treating their most enthusiastic
               | users like crap. They didn't _have_ to do that, they
               | could have delayed the launch. Be it because of decisions
               | made by the publisher or by the developer, they chose to
               | release when they did. They made their bed, now they have
               | to lie in it. I don 't blame anyone who raves about
               | performance, because what was released was well outside
               | the realm of what's acceptable for a finished product,
               | regardless of what said prior to launch. You don't get to
               | sell a car with an asterisk that says "by the way, the
               | fuel tank leaks so until we find a way to fix it you'll
               | use twice as much fuel as normal".
        
               | Kuxe wrote:
               | > You don't get to sell a car with an asterisk that says
               | "by the way, the fuel tank leaks so until we find a way
               | to fix it you'll use twice as much fuel as normal".
               | 
               | Yeah. But in case of CS2, gamers did buy the leaking car.
               | Devs analogously said "by the way, the fuel tank leaks"
               | and people just went with "OK" and bought CS2, after
               | which the customer started to complain (rave?!) about
               | leaking fuel tanks. The car salesman retail store said
               | "Well you can have all money back no questions asked
               | until you've driven at least 160km". Steam has generous
               | refunds. What does the customer do? (S)he still goes onto
               | review sites and bitch about bad leaking fuel tanks. It
               | is very much in bad faith on the customers part.
               | 
               | I wouldn't rush to Colossal Games defense if customers
               | just said "It ran bad for me on my 4090 for some reason
               | so I refunded". That's not what's going on with the
               | negative reviews though. People act entitled.
        
               | fluoridation wrote:
               | You're still not getting it. Yeah, if a car dealership
               | had such a generous return policy you could get your
               | money back and get a car that does what you need within
               | your budget. But these people didn't want just _a_ city
               | builder and they happened to buy this one. They wanted to
               | play the new version of Cities: Skylines. They 're loyal
               | fans and they're treated like beta testers.
               | 
               | Yes, it's entitlement. Customers are _entitled_ to get a
               | quality product in exchange for their money. When Paradox
               | goes to spend their earnings they 're not going to be
               | throttled to do it at 45 cents per second.
        
               | csydas wrote:
               | this is why car analogies are dangerous :)
               | 
               | I would argue a dealer telling you about a major defect
               | directly before you buy the car is a bit different than a
               | post on some forums that the product they're selling is
               | not well made.
               | 
               | I would suggest it's not reasonable to expect that
               | someone buying a game has to do research on a forum to
               | know the game is unfinished -- if it's being sold as a
               | finished game it's reasonable to expect it's in a
               | playable state. the original post was meaning to say it
               | would be unheard of for other products to allow companies
               | to sell known unfinished products as finished products,
               | even with the promise of completing the product. and
               | consumers would similarly balk at such a proposal for
               | virtually any other object.
               | 
               | it was more the absurdity of the different way games are
               | treated which is anti-consumer.
        
       | albertzeyer wrote:
       | I have played a little bit and I'm a bit confused about all the
       | negative feedback regarding the performance.
       | 
       | I have an AMD Ryzen 9 3900X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090, so not
       | too bad, but also not the best.
       | 
       | And the game runs totally fine for me. I just reduced the screen
       | resolution (I think 1920x1024 or so) and left the other settings
       | as they were (I think all set to High). And I get very constant
       | 45 FPS without hiccups. It feels very smooth and playable. Maybe
       | it will get a bit worse when my city gets bigger, but so far, I
       | don't see any problems.
       | 
       | This is even before the first patch, which was released today.
       | This patch is supposed to optimize the performance more. I will
       | try it later.
       | 
       | Note, this is with Linux. I run it on Linux with Proton 8. So
       | maybe it actually runs better on Linux than on Windows?
        
         | LegitShady wrote:
         | You're playing on an rtx 3090 at 1920x1024 and get 45 fps. I'm
         | confused why you're confused about the negative feedback.
        
           | crimsontech wrote:
           | I don't get it.I would be fuming, it's a 4k card and it is
           | sputtering out 45fps at 1080p.
        
             | sp332 wrote:
             | 4k is a resolution, not an amount of work done per frame.
        
         | fermentation wrote:
         | You have thousands of dollars in hardware and cannot hit full
         | framerate on a small city at a low resolution.
        
       | Wowfunhappy wrote:
       | Is this on maximum settings? Does the game still look good when
       | the settings are turned down?
       | 
       | If so (!), I see no issue here, and on the contrary I applaud
       | them for including options. It gives players more options (the
       | person who doesn't mind aliasing can play at 1080p and get
       | incredible lighting effects), and makes the game more future
       | proof.
        
       | bee_rider wrote:
       | The we appear to have slashdotted the site, so I'm just reacting
       | to the headline, but is this a big problem? It is a Paradox
       | published game, presumably we'll be playing it in 2030 on
       | RTX9070's or whatever (And buying expansions).
       | 
       | It seems like a shame if the ultimate quality is limited by the
       | hardware available now. Turn down the setting 'till you hit 30fps
       | (this isn't a twitch shooter.
        
         | garrettjoecox wrote:
         | You do realize a 4090 is currently $1,600 USD right?
        
           | bee_rider wrote:
           | Yeah it seems like a ripoff, I'm sure in a couple years more
           | capable, cheaper cards will come out (and then people still
           | playing this game can enjoy it with all the bells and
           | whistles).
        
             | CyberDildonics wrote:
             | _Yeah it seems like a ripoff,_
             | 
             | What you wish something would be priced is not the point.
             | It is priced relative to its power.
             | 
             |  _I'm sure in a couple years more capable, cheaper cards
             | will come out_
             | 
             | Maybe they should wait and release their unoptimized game
             | then.
        
       | u10 wrote:
       | While the game should not have been released in this state (or at
       | least with defaults set to broken graphics settings, such as
       | motion blur and depth of field), CO released a patch today and
       | users are saying that it has dramatically increased performance.
       | 
       | https://old.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/17gxkrf/pat...
        
       | brianflakes wrote:
       | I believe that lots of the pushback on the game are due to poor
       | defaults. Lots of unnecessary graphics settings are enabled,
       | leading to bad first time experiences. After disabling elements
       | that most users won't care about (motion blur, volumetric clouds,
       | global illumination) and following some tips from people online,
       | I find no issue enjoying the game >60fps without my GPU fans
       | screaming. (to be fair, using 7900x / 3090)
       | 
       | Yes the graphics need optimization, but they could have rolled
       | out the release with good defaults and just admitted that high
       | end graphics needed more time... but you can enjoy the game in
       | the meantime! Instead, their steam reviews will remain marred.
        
         | fourteenfour wrote:
         | Yay, finally a comment that is similar to my experience and
         | isn't speculation or kneejerk reaction. I'm enjoying the game
         | at 4k and it looks better than CS now that I've adjusted
         | things. They totally screwed up the default settings, not sure
         | why as it seems like an unforced error. It actually picked a
         | resolution with a 24Hz refresh rate when it first loaded for
         | me. I think their "virtual texturing" optimization also kicks
         | off on first run, making the initial menu experience stuttery
         | and slow.
        
       | brucethemoose2 wrote:
       | In other words, this is a true Paradox game.
       | 
       | For those that don't play other Paradox published games... Newly
       | launched Paradox games are early access. Maybe _perpetual_ early
       | access with on-and-off performance woes, like Stellaris and other
       | Clausewitz games. As much as I like Paradox games, that and the
       | endless DLC is the steep price you pay for their sim games.
        
       | bcrosby95 wrote:
       | There's certain problematic graphical settings for CS2 right now.
       | If you have a potato GPU and put it on low settings (as you
       | should with a low end GPU) the performance is fine.
       | 
       | My card is below the recommended specs and its perfectly playable
       | with a city of 50k.
        
       | deanCommie wrote:
       | According to Collossal Order:
       | https://twitter.com/ColossalOrder/status/1716883884724322795
       | 
       | > If you're having issues with performance, we recommend you
       | reduce screen resolution to 1080p, disable Depth of Field and
       | Volumetrics, and reduce Global Illumination while we work on
       | solving the issues affecting performance.
       | 
       | I tried it and had no problems. Everything is smooth, no visual
       | problems. I have a mid-tier Radeon from 3 years ago.
       | 
       | Yeah they fucked up the launch and it's unfortunate they're
       | getting such negative press, but it's a city simulator it doesn't
       | need 120FPS, what are we talking about?
       | 
       | If you want to just have fun and go build cities, there's a clear
       | path for it
        
         | jiggawatts wrote:
         | Some people are fine with driving at 10 mph because the
         | transmission is broken in their brand new car. "It's not a
         | Ferrari and I'm not racing."
        
       | nrjames wrote:
       | It's likely they had a financial agreement with their publisher
       | that stated that the game would launch prior to November 2023 or
       | they would lose some % of the revenue. Publisher contracts often
       | also mandate a certain Metacritic score must be met in order to
       | receive full payment.
        
       | bryanlarsen wrote:
       | Looks like this is the straw that'll finally get me to upgrade my
       | 12 year old CPU and 7 year old GPU. Has anybody figured out what
       | a usable GPU is with today's patch? My initial research indicated
       | that there's a sharp performance hit for 8GB of VRAM or less, so
       | I was thinking the 12GB 6700XT might be the cheapest card with
       | usable performance. Is that still the case with Friday's patch?
       | 
       | So far the best info I've found is the spreadsheet attached to
       | City Planner Play's benchmarking guide:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyNiXYC9eoM
        
       | petercooper wrote:
       | Standards have certainly changed over the years. This takes me
       | straight back to 2003 when SimCity 4 came out, turned out to be
       | an absolute resource hog, and I'd have been overjoyed with 20fps.
       | 
       | As the late Henry Petroski said: "The most amazing achievement of
       | the computer software industry is its continuing cancellation of
       | the steady and staggering gains made by the computer hardware
       | industry."
        
         | BenoitP wrote:
         | I've heard this version: "what Andy giveth, Bill taketh away"
         | 
         | (Intel vs Microsoft CEOs)
         | 
         | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_and_Bill%27s_law
         | 
         | Henry Petroski probably said it first though
        
       | Aperocky wrote:
       | I've always had a felt for city building games having played
       | since Simcity 4 first came out in 2003. imo the genre does not
       | need great graphic - it needs great content, Song of Syx is one
       | of my more recent (~2 years) favorite, having a city building
       | game unable to run with the best video card is baffling at best.
       | 
       | I still consider Simcity 4 with full mods and addons the best
       | ever, but for some reason the industry doesn't seem to make
       | similar titles any more, the newer city building games focus on
       | details but gives up on scale.
        
       | harrid wrote:
       | It also uses 10+k drawcalls per frame. It's amateur hour over
       | there, bordering on fraud. Even more frustrating to see how
       | successful that model is. And how feverish people defend them
       | online.
        
         | naikrovek wrote:
         | this is what happens when you focus on content before
         | performance. they'll get that number _way_ down over time.
         | 
         | games are data problems, like every other computer program. you
         | must know your data before you can optimize how it is moved
         | around efficiently. draw calls are a very good benchmark for
         | this. as they optimize, it will go way down, if it hasn't
         | already.
        
         | tbm57 wrote:
         | software optimization as a practice is dead
        
       | jncfhnb wrote:
       | People make dumb problems for themselves. Play games on 1080.
       | Hardware requirements for otherwise max settings drop like a
       | rock.
        
       | xtracto wrote:
       | Ooh is thereba new CiSk game? I enjoyed playing the first one
       | some years ago I'll have to check it out!
        
       | Geee wrote:
       | I'm guessing they're rendering those trees without any LODs, i.e.
       | they're always pushing millions of polygons. That's why the
       | settings don't make a huge difference.
        
       | Daunk wrote:
       | Unity. -\\_(tsu)_/-
        
       | Waterluvian wrote:
       | I've been playing Pillars of Eternity and I'm amazed just how
       | poorly it runs given what it is.
       | 
       | I'd love a no-judgment, no-blame post mortem on a game like that,
       | which tries to dig into the technical reasons why it's so poorly
       | optimized and the non-technical reasons for how they get there.
       | 
       | I'd imagine it usually boils down to having a deadline and a
       | budget, but I'm quite interested in understanding the in-between
       | portion much more intimately.
        
         | TylerE wrote:
         | Well, they both use the same engine. That might be a hint. Yes,
         | to be clear, I'm talking about Unity.
        
           | Waterluvian wrote:
           | That's one of those convenient non-exploratory answers I'm
           | hoping to dig past. It might be related, but we don't really
           | know based on this alone.
        
             | TylerE wrote:
             | Virtually every Unity game ever that does a non-trivial
             | level of background simulation has considerable jank.
             | There's just a point where you hav wot say - look - Unity
             | games consistently have performance issues at some point
             | it's legit to just call it a poorly performing platform.
        
               | Waterluvian wrote:
               | Cities Skylines 1 performed remarkably well on midrange
               | computers, particularly for just how good the simulation
               | is and how busy the viewport can get.
        
             | scubadude wrote:
             | It's basically an emulator versus native C code, it's
             | completely relevant
        
       | pawelduda wrote:
       | It will keep happening because people rush to preorder or buy
       | shitty, unfinished games on a release day- just look at Jedi
       | Survivor from this year. The game was in a laughable state for
       | months after release. I thought waiting for so long was enough
       | for the patch shitshow to be over.
       | 
       | No incentives to ship good quality games, especially looking at
       | larger companies. Luckily there are still sincere reviewers that
       | will give you heads up about it
       | 
       | I want to give shout-out to the studio behind Lies of P. Game was
       | super well optimized since release and I can't recall a single
       | bug during dozens of hours of gameplay. It's a bit sad that it
       | went by without a lot of hype. This is the kind of game dev that
       | should be praised.
        
       | Bellend wrote:
       | It's a Unity game. Why are people genuinely surprised that
       | performance is absolute garbage? Both CS2 and KSP2 (kerbal)
       | REQUIRE incredibly specific tuning that unity simply does not
       | offer. The first being rigid bodies at scale (which is semi
       | impossible with a dedicated engine) and the latter being "almost-
       | factorio-level" low level cell processing. The graphics of both
       | are second tier to that.
       | 
       | But no, lets use Unity...
        
         | poisonarena wrote:
         | everytime i used to play a game and the made by unity logo
         | popped up i would let out a big sigh...
        
       | Waterluvian wrote:
       | How hard is it to debug shaders? I admit I've only written like
       | two shaders for WebGL and I found it to feel like a black box I
       | feed code into and see what I get out the other end.
        
       | NKosmatos wrote:
       | Do modern AAA games support dual (or multiple) GPUs? In my days
       | we had SLI and Crossfire, but I don't think there's something
       | like it nowadays.
       | 
       | For sure better coded games with proper software driver support
       | will be needed, but I think this trend of having bigger and more
       | power hungry GPUs needs to de-escalate.
       | 
       | I was reading this article about multi GPU gaming, and perhaps
       | this is the way to go: https://www.xda-developers.com/what-
       | happened-multi-gpu-gamin...
        
         | Iulioh wrote:
         | >Do modern AAA games support dual (or multiple) GPUs?
         | 
         | The problem is that modern GPUs don't support multiple GPUs lol
         | 
         | Iirc the series 30 was the last to do it and only 3070 and up
        
       | TinkersW wrote:
       | This game sure is getting a lot of free marketing from all the
       | complaints about the hilariously bad performance for such a mid
       | looking game.
        
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       (page generated 2023-10-26 23:00 UTC)