In a forum post by Cities: Skylines 2, they acknowledged the performance issues players have been experiencing. Read on to find out their suggestions, plans for future updates, and more.
Cities: Skylines 2’s Terrific Start Hindered by Performance Issues
Developers Address Cities: Skylines’ Poor Optimization
Following the release of Cities: Skylines 2, many players were quick to notice that they were suffering from various performance issues. Those who had high-end PCs were struggling to maintain smooth gameplay on high settings, barely making a stable 30 FPS(frames per second). Even when turning every graphics setting down, the game would barely climb up the modern standard of 60 FPS, revealing its unoptimized nature.
The developers were quick to address these issues in a forum post, reassuring players that the problems with the game "are not deeply rooted in the game’s foundation, so we fully expect to be able to improve performance going forward." They explain that the current issues are tied to the rendering of the game and that decreasing the quality of certain visual effects will "get you a fair performance without affecting simulation - at the cost of some eye candy."
They continue on by laying out their plans and goals for future updates to address the problems and eventually go past their target FPS goal. Lastly, they spoke about the release timing of the game, responding to concerns that the game should have been pushed back in this "unfinished and unoptimized state." They explained that performance was not a dealbreaker for players, as "the number one priority is for the players to have fun with the game, and we had seen enough feedback from players enjoying the game that it would be unfair to postpone."
Cities: Skylines 2 Future Updates and Goals
As stated in the forum post, they intend to release small patches that will eventually lead up to a big one in order to address different areas that affect performance. The small patches will seek to remove stutters, optimize and balance GPU performances, and squeeze out more CPU optimizations.
They mention their goal to largely improve the default settings, but still reaffirm that their performance target for the game is still 30 FPS at a minimum. " There is no real benefit in a city builder to aim for higher FPS (unlike a multiplayer shooter). What matters more with this type of game is to avoid stutters and have a responsive UI." However, that does not mean they will not be optimizing further. "…while our target is 30fps, we don't intend to limit or stop the optimization work just because we reach it on the recommended hardware. We just don’t believe there would be a long-term benefit in setting the target to 60FPS."
Cities: Skylines 2 Fast Performance Boost and Optimization Guide
In the meantime, before the patches roll out, they have published a guide for optimizing Cities: Skylines 2. The following are the suggested settings that serve to be quick fixes for most troubled performances:
● Reduce screen resolution to 1080p
● Disable Depth of Field and Volumetrics
● Reduce Global Illumination
From within the complete guide, more advanced settings and tweaks are suggested, such as modifying motion blur and dynamic resolution to be in line with how you want the game to feel.
Cities: Skylines 2 Reaches Above 100k Concurrent Players At Launch Day
Despite the technical issues, Cities: Skylines 2 launched to wide reception, reaching over 100k concurrent players, as shown in SteamDB. Only time will tell if the various problems present in the game will deter enough players from booting the game back up in the coming days. For now, PC players can play as much as they want, while console players would have to wait a bit more to get their hands on Cities: Skylines 2. Perhaps this was a blessing in disguise, as the developers might release a more refined version of the game for console owners.
Sources:
Cities: Skylines 2 Forum Post
Cities: Skylines 2 Optimization Guide
Cities: Skylines 2 SteamDB Charts
