Cities: Skylines 2’s rough early launch has prompted developers Colossal Order to issue a new statement to players, mainly explaining why they occurred and what players can do to solve the most pressing of issues right away.
“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,” the developer said on Oct. 25.
They also added their statement is meant to provide “additional context” to what’s actually going on with the game and lay out a working roadmap.
The devs went on to claim these issues aren’t fundamentally related to the game. According to them, the game’s ambitious graphical fidelity may be causing severe hitching on certain hardware. If players are ready to sacrifice eye candy, Colossal Order said, they can boost performance substantially by disabling several graphics settings.
Colossal Order even provided a full guide on how to tweak the game’s settings with the hopes of getting an enjoyable framerate.
The provided guide detailed everything the players should do to experience the game in the best way possible. Firstly, CO advises players to wait for the “virtual texturing” process to complete. The process shouldn’t take more than a minute, devs claim, but time can vary depending on hardware. While it’s still ongoing, it can also cause severe lag in the main menu, an issue reported by many players on Steam.
Next, Colossal Order advises players to use the following recommended settings for an optimal experience:
- Resolution: 1920x1080x60Hz
- Depth of Field: Disabled
- Volumetrics Quality: Medium
- Motion Blur: Disabled
- Dynamic Resolution: Constant/Automatic
The developers also say Motion Blur, Depth of Field, and Dynamic resolution settings are optional and that players should tailor them to their needs and liking. According to the provided guide, these three settings can cause significant changes in the game’s graphical fidelity, with the Dynamic resolution having the most potential of making the game look blurry and unappealing.
Post-release, CO will now focus on removing stutters, enhancing GPU and CPU utilization, and pushing any optimizations they might require during the optimization process.
But, even with all the fixes, CO warns its target for Cities: Skylines 2 is a stable 30FPS. The game’s scope and gameplay will rely heavily on players’ CPUs, which will undoubtedly bring the FPS down once a city reaches a certain size. Colossal suggests 30FPS is enough for a city builder, compared to a multiplayer shooter.
Nevertheless, the Cities developers will still try to reach the highest possible performance levels and strive to achieve a stable 60FPS no matter the situation.
Published: Oct 25, 2023 07:28 pm