A few days ago, we shared some early benchmarks for Cities Skylines 2. In those benchmarks, an Intel Core i9 13900KS with an AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX struggled to run the game at 4K/High Settings. And in a recent Reddit AMA, the developers claimed that their target is 30fps and not 60fps, even on PC.
Colossal Order’s “damsku” made some pretty wild claims. They said that running a city-building game at 60fps doesn’t really make a difference. But it seems like they haven’t tried panning the camera around at 30fps, where you can notice the jerky movement.
Later, the developer admitted that when players build big cities, the game starts relying a lot on the CPU. But, as shown in a video by PCGamesHardware, Cities Skylines 2’s multithreading capabilities are awful. It’s obvious the game can’t take advantage of high-end CPUs, which is a classic sign of a poorly optimized game. So, it’s not really because the city calculations are super complex. It’s more about the game not being able to use all the powerful CPUs properly. Hell, even the first Crysis game had CPU issues in some places due to its single-threaded nature.
And I really had a good laugh at that “60fps as it can contribute to better visuals in relation to temporal effects“. Ahem, no? 60fps is all about fluidity. It makes movement easier for the eye. It can also make menu navigation a lot easier (you know, lower latency and all). Which is exactly what the developer claimed that it mattered the most. But somehow they can’t see the benefit of 60fps? Oh boy.
Here is the full quote from ‘co_damsku’
“The target is 30fps because of the nature of the game, (arguably) there are no real benefit in a city builder to aim for higher FPS (unlike a multiplayer shooter) as a growing city with inevitably become CPU bound. What matters more with this type of game is to avoid stutters, and have responsive UI.
For that reason, our simulation is also built around an expected update rate given 30fps. However, it does not hurt to get 60 fps as it can contribute to better visuals in relation to temporal effects so while our target is 30fps, we don’t intend on limiting or stopping the optimization work just because we reach it on recommended hardware, we just don’t believe there would be a long term benefit in setting the target to 60fps, especially because we face rendering challenges both from close up and far distances.”
Paradox Interactive will release Cities Skylines 2 on PC later today. And the harsh truth is that the game may never hit 60fps, even on the latest and greatest PC systems. Also, if this quote is anything to go by, we can safely say that Colossal Order will not bring any major performance improvements. I mean, the developers themselves claim that they target 30fps and not 60fps. And they also believe there won’t be a long-term benefit in setting the target to 60fps. Oh, and remember that performance target they missed? That was their 30fps target and not a 60fps target.
In short, Cities Skylines 2 will target 30fps on PC because the developers cannot optimize its engine. That’s the fact, and you should be prepared for it. It’s a real bummer, especially to those who were looking forward to it. However, the game won’t magically get optimized for 60fps anytime soon.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email
The first public statement of the game performance being shady was fine in a way, but here they’re adding insult to injury and gratuitously shooting themselves in the foot.
Just STFU and achieve at least 30fps without drops, even cheer yourselves making some statement on the mild performance improvements and keep it going from there. But not like this.
all these years and we re still in discussion regard 30 vs 60 fps. all devs who are shady about it simply dont believe i to their own words. product is unpolished and should not be released.but we re in era of marketing budgets and digital releases so all decisions are mady in Excel
Its a PC game, talking about target 30 or 60 fps should not have become a point , PC is fluid FPS, it can be set whatever the user wanted according to Hardware they own.
Just play the first one
It got more contents and f*cking works properly.
With other words… we messed up.
Like how hard was it to just make the first one but add more content.
It was impossible, they probably hired more men pink hair, implanted breasts, and shaved a*shole.
You f*cked up.
*laughs in Sim City 4* 😋
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/004adf3fc35d835ee8078dc97e4c5ec0d21e163ea16f4b3bf36e86db2bfb54ed.jpg
Gorgeous to look at, runs good…
Nah, can’t have that in the year 2023.
Such a good game, and series (I don’t count the last scam entry).
30 fps for city builders is fine.
exactly! only idiots new gen fake pc gamers who only plays MP shooters and other consolitis mainstream garbages would nitpick over that.
“exactly! only idiots new gen fake pc gamers who only plays MP shooters and other consolitis mainstream garbages”
Maybe learn what CRT monitors did. That was way before your time, old timer.
There is a big difference between a game using high-end CPUs to their fullest (especially when talking about sim games that should rely heavily on CPU power) and a game relying on 2-3 cores/threads (so basically using only 25% of modern-day CPUs). The former is acceptable. The latter is not and shows major optimization issues, plain and simple.
So as long as I create pointless busywork for your other cores to do you will accept that my game runs badly? Horrible heuristic.
the game cant even do 30fps, its dipping into single digits with a 4090 at 1080, and no, 30fps for city builders is not “fine” when they are 3D, its immersion-killing.
Meanwhile in Konami camp:
– MGS 2 & 3 locked to 720p on PC.
No 1080p like they advertised and promised.
– No graphics options.
– Controls and keybinds reset.
– K&M controls suck.
Haha so let me get this straight. MGS 2&3 are 1080p on consoles but only 720p on PC? Pfffft, haha
That is some Dark Souls Prepare To Die levels of porting.
Yeah PC version is locked to 720p, you can do hex edit, but that breaks the textures, there is more blurry textures and artifacts.
On PS5 is 1080p like they advertised.
Konami scammed people, true is it was easy scam to do.
Both wrong, game is upscaled to 1080p on both PC and Consoles.
Also very low settings makes this game look worse than Sim City 2000.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/53cd497055cd08ae06adff204a91cc8c63894745d46991b4d8ee9f02e048a6a6.jpg
We replaced hard working Japanese devs with overconfident “I love the smell of my own farts” stuck up whites and blacks. FML
Exactly zero golden era PC games were made by Japanese devs. All of the greatest PC games were made by White men, no exception.
How about Rapelay?
Should’ve gone for immersive 10 fps
~10 ~F~P~S~
A definite dumpster fire, but you’re off point with your little rant about “temporal effects”. He has a point, which is to say it’s worse than you think.
To complete impractically complex calculations within real-time frame intervals, many modern graphics effects rely on temporal accumulation. By reusing information from multiple previous frames, complex calculations are given multiple frames to converge. Unfortunately, scenes aren’t stationary and reprojection isn’t perfect. Phantom light when a light source is switched off, reflection artifacts and a lot of the smudginess in modern games are as a result of temporal effects. Frame rate determines how long “stale” frames remain in the buffer – a higher frame rate means more information can be accumulated with equivalent latency (more samples), or the latency can be reduced.
Them mentioning this leads me to believe 30 FPS isn’t going to be wonderful for reasons other than fluidity.
Fück those retärd enough to buy a shïtty game with a shïtty performance, since no one is forcing anyone to buy it. If you bought, you deserve it!
Wtf are these people smoking? It’s almost like they don’t care if people buy their game or not. Disgusting.
What clown would add motion blur to a city builder?
Man, these subhumans making a sh*t excuse for a video gayme to nickel and dime the brain dead goyim who will STILL pay full price for this trash deserve to rot in hell and be remembered with uttermost contempt for the rest of all of video gayme history.
LMAO..As allways with BS, like this – retarded POS worthless developer Trash, and nothing more!
For the record, I couldent care less about garbage like this. Sh*t games like this is a niche annyway!
Wow, these guys clearly don’t care. Is this because they’re on PC Game Pass? So they secured a deal already with Microsoft and they don’t care to sell this sh*t. ‘Cause it looks like it. I saw a dev on DF podcast, saying ‘devs don’t owe you anything’. Well, yes they do when you bought the game, they owe you a f*king game. What the hell is this?
That kind of mentality pervades throughout most modern developer’s psyche. And people wonder why we have so much sh*t tier optimization lately. It’s because devs are incompetent and they also justify their incompetence.
glad i didn’t buy this. might check it out in the future when it’s half price and possibly running better
WHY is 30fps still a thing?! It is beyond me!
I don’t even prefer 60fps many times, so can’t understand how anyone can enjoy a game running at 30fps!
I believe lower range is still supported, but now you will get Hz doubling. For example, at 30 fps your adaptive sync will drive the panel at 60 Hz. It still works. At least that’s how it works on my G-Sync compatible (FreeSync) panel.
Translation: We didn’t learn2code.
This game series has been intel “biased” cpu seller. I wonder if intel hasnt paid them to keep this engine that bad.