Cities: Skylines II is now available to play on PC via Steam, the Windows Store, and Xbox Game Pass, but would-be architects may want to know that the new city builder wasn’t really designed with higher frame rates in mind. That’s according to “co_damsku,” chief technical officer of developer Colossal Order, who revealed during a reddit AMA yesterday that the game, published by Paradox Interactive, was developed with a 30 FPS performance target. According to the developer, this target was chosen because 60 FPS isn’t necessary for Cities: Skylines II, with it being a city-building game, although they did admit that doing so probably “wouldn’t hurt” and could enable better visuals. Cities: Skylines II has a Mostly Negative rating on Steam at the time of this writing.
“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,” the post from co-damsku reads. “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.”
“Cities: Skylines II is about more than just building; it is about impact,” said Mariina Hallikainen, CEO of Colossal Order, in a press release. “Each choice players make affects their citizens and the world around them in meaningful ways. Never before have players had so much freedom to manage these consequences from different angles by experimenting with and combining systems. We empower our players to plan, build, and grow the cities of their dreams however they want.”
Cities: Skylines II Key Features
- Deep Simulation: Make choices that have ripple effects across the city. Intricate AI and economic systems mean players will need to strategize, problem solve and react to changes, challenges and opportunities.
- Epic Scale, Endless Possibilities: Build a thriving metropolis without compromise. In Cities: Skylines II, players will be able to build sky-high and across the map to realize their dream city like never before.
- Cities That Come Alive: Follow the lives of individual citizens, from love and loss to wealth and well-being. Player decisions will shape the lives of their city’s citizens.
- A Dynamic World: Pick a map to set the climate and biome of the city. These natural forces will shape the growth of players’ cities as they contend with rising pollution, changeable weather and seasonal challenges.
Cities: Skylines II grants players the ability to create bigger and more complex cities than ever before, boasting a map five times larger than the original game. Players have full control over their cities, allowing them to map out paths with flexible road tools, diversify city districts with zoning, expand their public transportation and infrastructure for citizens, and grow their cities’ economies through production and trade.
Players’ choices may have economic and environmental consequences, but Cities: Skylines II offers a wide variety of tools to solve urban challenges and improve the lives of citizens. Each citizen now has a unique life, with jobs, homes, families, and more. Citizens aren’t the only part of a developing metropolis that makes it feel alive; the implementation of more intelligent traffic AI and changing weather patterns based on climate also come together to make cities real.
Discussion (12 replies)
Join Discussion →For this particular game and/or genre - yeah, they aren't really wrong. Not a lot of fast paced action in a city building sim. You just stare at buildings.
That has got to be the most nonsensical excuse for 30FPS.
What is even the meaning of long term / short term when it comes to FPS?
Clearly rushed out the door for the holiday season.
I do somewhat agree that 60 FPS isn't really needed for something like this. There are a number of games out there that may report 60 FPS in overlays but you can easily tell that a number of character animations and such are not rendering at that speed. The Resident Evil games have received criticism for years for that same thing with background characters rendering at 15 or 30 until they get close enough.
Too many games do that. It's pretty f*cking sad. I expect that sh1t on consoles, but when they port to PC they don't tend to improve on this, and it is very annoying.
That doesn't even save on rendering because if you render a new frame you need to render everything. That just saves on the game engine not having to update their animation and status as often.
60FPS might not be needed for something like this but its certainly better.
Sounds more like an excuse to explain its poor performance out of the gate.
Sure but if it starts at 30fps in a small city, what will it be running at when you reach 50k or 100k population?
I'd argue it is more needed in games where you view it top down and pan the entire screen. lower FPS is much more annoying on a fullscreen pan.
Well, that certainly is a good case for it but I think it matters more for something like a first person shooter. Either way, 30FPS is crap.
I've never played cities skylines, but I'd imagine it is the style of game that you could easily play at 30fps.
Sid Meier's Civilization is like that for me. I'm happy as long as I don't dip below like 15fps.
Don't get me wrong, 60+fps is still nicer, but it is not strictly necessary in order to enjoy the game.
Now in a first person title, on the other had, I refuse to play if it dips below 60. I'd imagine I'd be the same with 3rd person titles, if I played 3rd person titles.