General Gaming Cities: Skylines II - extensive technical analysis indicates performance issues due to rendering FAR too many polygons ("makes Cyberpunk 2077 look like Minecraft in comparison")

[Paperclyp]

This might be one to come back to in a year or two haha. 

 

It's gotta be hard when you have like a decade of content on a game that runs pretty nicely and then come out with a numbered sequel that just isn't going to be on that level. 

[elbobo]

Is this the current worst performing game out there?

[Massdriver]

It’s disappointing. I was hoping performance would improve from the first one. 

[CitizenVectron]

Unfortunate about the performance. Everything else looks pretty great, in terms of the base improvements over the first game. But only supporting mods via the Paradox system vs Steam...that is going to bite them in the ass.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

I've updated the reviews post and here's a couple of review videos:

 

 

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

8 hours ago, Spork3245 said:

Cities Skylines 2 im Tech-Test: Hardware-Sprenger mit Performance-Problemen

WWW.PCGAMESHARDWARE.DE

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Cities: Skylines 2 frisst Hardware zum Frühstück. Unsere GPU-Benchmarks und Hinweise zur CPU-Leistung.

 

1440p high settings, 28.8fps avg for a 4090

 

GamesStar -- another German PC gaming site -- has declared the game to be technically verboten

 

 

Cities: Skylines 2 hat ein großes Problem, das ihr selbst mit der teuersten und schnellsten Hardware nicht lösen könnt

WWW.GAMESTAR.DE

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Cities: Skylines 2 will an den großen Erfolg des Vorgängers anknüpfen. Dabei stolpert es aber in Sachen Performance über seine großen Ambitionen.

 

[Spork3245]

Just now, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

GamesStar -- another German PC gaming site -- has declared the game to be technically verboten

 

 

Cities: Skylines 2 hat ein großes Problem, das ihr selbst mit der teuersten und schnellsten Hardware nicht lösen könnt

WWW.GAMESTAR.DE

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Cities: Skylines 2 will an den großen Erfolg des Vorgängers anknüpfen. Dabei stolpert es aber in Sachen Performance über seine großen Ambitionen.

 

FWIW, one of the devs tweeted last week that performance wasn’t “up to their benchmark” yet lol

[CitizenVectron]

Sucks because my wife just got me this pre-order for my bday! My machine is basically top-end, but hers is mid-range and I know she wants it too. I might be able to manage, not sure if she can.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Just now, Spork3245 said:

FWIW, one of the devs tweeted last week that performance wasn’t “up to their benchmark” yet lol

 

It was more than a tweet/X/whatever - it was an official Developer Blog post:

 

Updates on Modding and Performance for Cities: Skylines II | Paradox Interactive Forums

FORUM.PARADOXPLAZA.COM

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MORE MODS FOR EVERYONE We know you have been waiting, and now it's time to share the latest developments regarding modding in Cities: Skylines II. First and foremost, our in-game editor is...

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

I have to admit that the in-game models for children truly do capture their inner essence:

 

[Keyser_Soze]

4 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

I have to admit that the in-game models for children truly do capture their inner essence:

 

 

[CitizenVectron]

Sounds like they've added a performance patch to the release version (D1P!) that improves things a bit—some reviewers are redoing their performance benchmarks. Probably still not great, but hopefully it continues to improve a bit.

[Ominous]

Free on gamepass, will still play. 

[Kal-El814]

On 10/20/2023 at 8:57 AM, Spork3245 said:

Cities Skylines 2 im Tech-Test: Hardware-Sprenger mit Performance-Problemen

WWW.PCGAMESHARDWARE.DE

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Cities: Skylines 2 frisst Hardware zum Frühstück. Unsere GPU-Benchmarks und Hinweise zur CPU-Leistung.

 

1440p high settings, 28.8fps avg for a 4090

Jesus Christ. 

[Spork3245]

 

[Keyser_Soze]

Having a release stream - Seem to just be talking about performance issues 🤔 (Turns out it was the pre-release stream where they talked about the technical issues for 20 minutes and now the real stream will start )

 

 

[Remarkableriots]

Cities Skylines 2 Dev Targets 30FPS: 'There’s No Real Benefit in a City Builder for 60FPS' - IGN

WWW.IGN.COM

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The developer of Cities Skylines 2 has revealed the game targets 30 frames per second, even on the most powerful PCs.

 

Quote

In a Reddit AMA, Colossal Order chief technical officer “damsku” said there’s “arguably no real benefit in a city builder to aim for higher fps”. What matters more with city builders, damsku said, is to avoid stutters and have a responsive user interface.

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

1 hour ago, Remarkableriots said:

Cities Skylines 2 Dev Targets 30FPS: 'There’s No Real Benefit in a City Builder for 60FPS' - IGN

WWW.IGN.COM

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The developer of Cities Skylines 2 has revealed the game targets 30 frames per second, even on the most powerful PCs.

 

 

 

I don't necessarily disagree with that assessment, but they're not exactly hitting that 30 FPS goal to begin with.

[Massdriver]

It's sitting at 27% positive on Steam right now. Ouch.

 

It looks like most of the reviews I skimmed are complaining about unacceptable performance. 

[Keyser_Soze]

52 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

I don't necessarily disagree with that assessment, but they're not exactly hitting that 30 FPS goal to begin with.

 

I think it makes sense for overhead views but this is a game you can go down to street level and see stuff, which you might want to see above 30.

[Spork3245]

[Spork3245]

Performance: Post-Release Plans & Goals | Paradox Interactive Forums

FORUM.PARADOXPLAZA.COM

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Cities: Skylines II is built for the future with modern hardware in mind, allowing us to add more depth and detail to the game than its predecessor had. Earlier this month, we shared a note on...

 

Quote

 

If you experience low FPS we recommend the following:

Reduce screen resolution to 1080p

Disable Depth of Field and Volumetrics

Reduce Global Illumination

 

LMAO

[CitizenVectron]

It's a shame because the game itself is really great.

[Littleronin]

They will just toss DLSS at it and proclaim how optimized it is. 

These upscalers are just way to push unoptimized trash out to the masses at this point. 

[Spork3245]

4 minutes ago, Littleronin said:

They will just toss DLSS at it and proclaim how optimized it is. 

These upscalers are just way to push unoptimized trash out to the masses at this point. 

 

Apparently it cannot use DLSS or FSR2 due to some rendering techniques they're using or something. It only has FSR1 for that reason.

[Littleronin]

1 minute ago, Spork3245 said:

 

Apparently it cannot use DLSS or FSR2 due to some rendering techniques they're using or something. It only has FSR1 for that reason.

Quote from the Devs is that they are working on adding it.

 

Quote

“Yes, there are plans. Right now, the game ships with AMD FSR1, which does not look that good when the scale ratio is 50% (you can enable it with Dynamic resolution scale setting) but is supported by Unity out of the box.

DLSS2 would require to use Temporal Anti-aliasing, which is not possible at the moment due some objects being incompatible with that technique.

We are currently working towards making this possible (both with a more recent version of FSR and DLSS), which will not only help to boost performances and also provide a better quality anti-aliasing solution than the one we currently use (SMAA by default).

AMD Fluid motion/NVidia frame generation are definitely relevant to us as well but to be realistic, we have to work within the constraints of our technology so those will take much longer.”

 

[Spork3245]

Just now, Littleronin said:

Quote from the Devs is that they are working on adding it.

 

 

 

Well that's good that they're trying to implement them, but regardless they won't be a magic fix for this when a 4090 can't even get 30fps at 1440p, and that fps is too low for FSR3 or DLSS3 to help via frame generation.

[CitizenVectron]

After a few hours of playing, I can say that the performance issues are mostly overstated, at least with good hardware. I have a 5800x3D and 6950XT and am playing at 1440 and getting good framerates. Just turned a few things down (notably depth of field and global illumination) and it's fine. 

[CitizenVectron]

Performance patch just released, seems to be giving people around 10 extra fps.

[CitizenVectron]

The patch today has improved performance massively. It's actually boggling how they decided to release before this patch, considering the improvement. Obviously the game still struggles at high populations (and that will continue to improve), but it's sooo much better.

[UpvoteShittyTakesOnly]

1 hour ago, CitizenVectron said:

The patch today has improved performance massively. It's actually boggling how they decided to release before this patch, considering the improvement. Obviously the game still struggles at high populations (and that will continue to improve), but it's sooo much better.

this changed my mind on downloading it so thank you

[Massdriver]

I’ll allow you all to beta test this before I purchase it on sale with some dlc down the road. My backlog is too large right now anyway.  I’m pleased the new patch helped a bunch!

[Spork3245]

5 hours ago, Massdriver said:

I’ll allow you all to beta test this before I purchase it on sale with some dlc down the road. My backlog is too large right now anyway.  I’m pleased the new patch helped a bunch!

Just get gamepass  

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Cities: Skylines 2 developer: 'Yes, our characters have teeth. No, the characters' teeth are not affecting performance' | PC Gamer

WWW.PCGAMER.COM

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PCG demands the tooth, the whole tooth, and nothing but the tooth.

 

Quote

 

Do you know what is rooted, though? Teeth. And reddit did it again on this one, with Cities Skylines sleuths trying to track down what may be behind the issues players are seeing. The conclusion they and others came up with was that the performance problems were down to the game trying to render every individual citizens' teeth even when zoomed-out.

 

The game simulates the events of a typical city life to a granular level, alongside rendering the citizens' bodies to reflect this. And players claim it is simulating them down to the level of rendering individual citizens' teeth, and tanking the overall simulation's performance by doing so. This claim was quickly picked-up and amplified.

 

Publisher Paradox has now sent out a missive addressing these stories about the teeth. The statement from developer Colossal Order follows, though I should explain one piece of terminology: level-of-detail, or LOD, is the practice of reducing the detail of models as they're further away from the camera, so that as players zoom-out the city view their PCs don't melt.

 

"Citizen lifepath feature does not tie to citizen geometry and does not affect the performance figures of the characters. We know the characters require further work, as they are currently missing their LODs which affect some parts of performance. We are working on bringing these to the game along general LODs improvements across all game assets. Characters feature a lot of details that, while seemingly unnecessary now, will become relevant in the future of the project."

 

 

[CitizenVectron]

They are releasing a free DLC pack with content from them as well as CS1 content creators. Will include thousands of new assets as well as multiple new regions: