Cities Skylines 2 mods are supposed to be the savior of the beleaguered city building sequel. After a troubled launch in October, marked by performance problems, Colossal Order and Paradox’s municipal opus is due to begin its comeback arc – we’re all awaiting a Cyberpunk 2077-style tale of redemption. But as official support for CS2 mods finally arrives, alongside the first Cities Skylines 2 DLC, it seems the strategy game’s woes are not yet over, as players complain of new technical issues and a variety of fresh negative responses land on the Cities Skylines 2 Steam page. I love the original Cities Skylines. The sequel has the potential to be the best city builder ever. For now, though, it seems there is more trouble ahead.
Cities Skylines 2 mods have been available unofficially for months, as players create their own tweaks and improvements to the city building game’s various systems and simulations. Official mod support from Colossal Order and Paradox, however, has been the light at the end of the tunnel, a robust new platform for making and sharing player-built material that makes mods more accessible and more stable. DLC for Cities Skylines 2 has also been eagerly anticipated, but the first premium asset pack and the arrival of mod support have both seemingly backfired.
The Cities Skylines 2 Steam rating, based on recent responses, is ‘mostly negative.’ 136 negative reviews were posted for the management game on Monday March 25, when official mod support and the Beach Properties pack were both released. This is the largest number of negative reviews in a single day since at least the end of February. As of this writing, Cities Skylines 2 has so far received 76 negative reviews on Thursday March 26.
A variety of Cities Skylines 2 players report that mods downloaded via the Paradox Mods platform are not working correctly. In some cases, players say that they cannot download mods at all. Other players say that after downloading mods, they are not accessible and available for use in the game itself. “The whole mod hub at the moment is a disaster,” one player writes. “Very slow, stops downloading.” “They [mods] simply do not work,” another player writes. “They are not implemented in the game. They are downloaded, but at no time are they activated.”
The first Cities Skylines 2 DLC is also facing criticism. With a ‘very negative’ rating on Steam based on lifetime reviews, players are questioning the release of the Beach Properties asset pack when technical problems persist in the CS2 base game. “Releasing an unfinished game full of bugs that is very badly optimized isn’t great, but I can understand that deadlines have to be met,” one player writes. “What I can’t tolerate is focusing on the release of a DLC that’s just so damn expensive for almost no additional content instead of fixing the core game.”
“The assets themselves are nice but there’s hardly any of them,” another player says. “There is a lot of duplication between the assets to pad out the numbers.” In an updated roadmap, Colossal Order confirms that two creator packs, Modern Architecture and Urban Promenades, will be released in Q2 of 2024. The Bridges and Ports expansion will follow in Q4.
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