r/CitiesSkylines Apr 04 '23

No multiplayer in Cities Skylines 2 Discussion

So Colossal Order have answered a few question which were submitted for month of March. The most intresting one was this one when asked if there will be mutiplayer in CS2? And the reply indicates for now there seem to be no multiplayer option as it would take too much time and resources.

https://preview.redd.it/0crbe54wnvra1.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0ba17c882b76c0faf0327bd2c3285d3bfc80f9df

1.9k Upvotes

1.2k

u/joaomsneto Apr 04 '23

I hope we can "connect" our own cities, just like we did in SC4

582

u/[deleted] Apr 04 '23

That would be awesome. To create a large county with several small towns and one big city

248

u/OhMyDiosito Apr 04 '23

In a continent/country-like massive map with different resources or places to specialize in industry, tourism... Do you imagine?

128

u/wamakima5004 Apr 04 '23

Yes I can imagine. Cities XXL have this kind of thing. Pretty fun

75

u/mattmitsche Apr 04 '23

I'm sad that game was never really finished

17

u/Artess Apr 05 '23

At a time when we didn't have C:S yet and it's been years since the last good SimCity it was a perfectly playable and fun game with a few issues. I spent hundreds of hours on it (the XL version) and don't regret a single one.

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u/Jccali1214 Apr 04 '23

Yeah, one of the coolest things about it. To see the different maps in the respective biomes on that earth was pretty cool.

24

u/MinimalistAnt Apr 04 '23

I wish we could create plazas in CS like in CXXL, it would help a lot to make some areas in my city not feel empty

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u/CourageousChronicler Apr 04 '23

Plazas and zoning. There is something satisfying about XXLs free form zones.

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u/Its_cool_Im_Black Apr 04 '23

Or something like all of your saves feeding into each other on the same shared world. Highways connecting to other highways in a separate city build

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u/OhMyDiosito Apr 04 '23

That's the idea in my head, I hope we see something like that

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '23

Most big cities in real life are more or less just collections of towns anyway.

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u/Ridiculisk1 Apr 04 '23

I know it'd be basically impossible but I'd love a game where you have cities on the scale of cities skylines with intercity logistics like in transport fever 2 but you could also individually check in on anyone's houses like the sims. I don't think I'd ever play another game again

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u/Magistrate17 Apr 04 '23

We haven't seen anything about CS2 yet. It could be very well true it basically does this already without multiplayer.

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '23

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '23 edited Apr 04 '23

Reddit users when words beginning with the same letters in the same order make the same acronym đŸ˜±đŸ˜±đŸ˜±

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u/ayylmayooo Apr 04 '23

Same with the new Cum Sock after my last one got too crusty.

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u/DrMux Apr 04 '23

That's if you use a straightforward numbering sequence. I started with Cum Sock Episode IV: A New Stroke and now I'm on Cum Sock Episode IX: (Sup)Rise of Cumwalker.

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u/Dropdeadfred23 Apr 05 '23

Cum Sock III: The Search For Sperm

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u/Sinsley Apr 05 '23

Chirper: You're going to need to use one of these one-time use items from the store to unlock this feature!

[CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE STORE! ]

[USE ITEM FROM INVENTORY]

Store page description: Does not work with the classic version of the game. You must have purchased and downloaded all of the following DLC:

  • Not in a Million Years.
  • Your Child is Going to Completely Fall for This.
  • Hell Has Frozen Over.

ALLPURCHASESAREFINALANDYESMOSTOFTHISSHOULDHAVEBEENINTHEBASE

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u/sl2006 Apr 04 '23

Regions like in SC4 is the number 1 on my list! Would absolutely love it

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u/[deleted] Apr 05 '23

Regions should be a standard for any city builder.

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u/bwoah07_gp2 Apr 04 '23

If they do that I hope that it works a little bit better. Because if you play in City A to a certain date, when you go to City B, you have to play catchup. Personally I wish the cities we don't play simulated in the background, so everything is all as one.

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u/joaomsneto Apr 04 '23 edited Apr 04 '23

The best option it would be limited transactions between cities, like goods, commuters, rivers flow. When you play City A the data with interactions will be saved to be updated in the load of the next city.

(I'm not a game engineer, so I don't know if this is actually manageable)

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u/Canadave Apr 04 '23

This is basically how SimCity 4 handled it, to the best of my understanding.

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u/silgidorn Apr 04 '23

River flow would mean could deviate the river and block water access to the downstream cities (why was it the first interaction I thought about ?)

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u/joaomsneto Apr 04 '23

Yes, exactly. But also the position of sewage and the effect in other cities and also construction of dams etc. Everything related to physics in the border of the map.

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u/pobotuga Apr 04 '23

I believe in Simcity4 you could trade water and garbage with other cities. That would be interesting in CS. Defining a supplier city and reaching agreement to get better placements of dams, sewers or others.

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u/silgidorn Apr 04 '23

In sc4, you could trade water, garbage and electricity.

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u/stdexception Apr 04 '23

I used to play "multiplayer" SimCity4 with a friend by sharing a region over Dropbox. Having multiple players in the same city would be pretty ambitious, but just being able to connect with other cities, importing and exporting stuff, would be great.

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u/felix_mateo Apr 04 '23

This, shared regional megaprojects and more modular buildings are the things I want from SC.

2

u/Frydendahl Apr 04 '23

With the reveal that the play area can cover 100+ tiles, I'm hoping we can actually run multiple cities in one simultaneous simulation.

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u/limeflavoured Apr 05 '23

Depends how big the tiles are, obviously, but hopefully that will be the case. I also hope they've improved the scale, regardless of how big the tiles are.

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u/Alfonze423 Apr 05 '23

Personally I'd assume that tiles will be the same size: 2km by 2km. If I remember correctly, it's going to have "over 150" playable tiles. In my mind that's likely 169, or 13 by 13, as a square map just makes sense. I'd be very surprised if they shrank the tiles to give us a higher number of tiles that equal the same area we can currently play on with mods.

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u/somewhat-right May 28 '23

This is what I want. I don’t necessarily need full multiplayer where me and a friend are working on the same city simultaneously. Zoo Tycoon actually made this a possibility and it worked flawlessly for me and my friends but Zoo Tycoon also failed at making the game actually enjoyable since there was hardly anything to do and very little challenges to face. If multiplayer was the challenge that doomed zoo tycoon than I understand why they don’t want to go that route. But I’d LOVE to have the ability to visit friends cities in a “view only” form and maybe even do stuff like request goods from their industry areas to make up for resources my city might be lacking.

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u/jojou114yt Apr 04 '23

I really hope so! I've only played SimCity 2013 but the regions worked great there. Loved being able to take cash and unlocks to other cities and being able to preplan them well. Trading goods as well.

Like imagine all the maps being part of one world and being able to connect them by road, rail, water and air? đŸ˜©

3

u/Desarth Apr 04 '23

I would love that too, but last time a game did that it died within a year and their studio got shut down.

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u/felix_mateo Apr 04 '23

SimCity 2013 was a disaster, but not because of those cool features. In fact, those things were the only thing that kept me coming back after the comically bad initial release.

What doomed the game was corporate meddling, always-online DRM, a drastically reduced scope and basic features not working (e.g., I once had a nuclear power plant explode in my city because my college-educated sims were just going to the nearest retail job, so undereducated sims were running the power plant. That should not happen.)

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u/GoabNZ Apr 04 '23

Weren't Sims heading out to work to the closest available business that had jobs, them returning to the closest residential property that had space?

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u/joaomsneto Apr 04 '23

but back then the major problem was the size of the cities (and 7 thousand more)

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u/grahamwhich Apr 04 '23

Do you have a link to this? Would love to read answers to other questions the might have given

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u/co_avanya Colossal Order Apr 04 '23

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u/oldtrenzalore Apr 04 '23

Lurker! lol :)

170

u/co_avanya Colossal Order Apr 04 '23

Lurking is an important part of any community manager's job :D

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u/Late-Lynx362 Apr 04 '23

Wait aren't you a modder? Did colossal hire you? How many other modders have they picked up? So cool yall get to actually be a part of the team

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u/AnotherScoutTrooper Apr 05 '23

There’s a series of forum posts about the various modders CO has hired, including Avanya. They’ve hired more since then, and it might be the way things like limited TM:PE features and Precision Engineering made their way to the console versions.

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u/oldtrenzalore Apr 04 '23

Well, joking aside, I’m glad CO cares enough about the CS community to deploy you 😊

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u/AdonisBatheus Apr 04 '23

Completely understandable, I don't think anyone expected it to have any. HOWEVER...I would really enjoy it as an addition. Not online play with dedicated servers, just peer-to-peer. I would love to build wild cities with my friends or boyfriend.

366

u/celestiaequestria Apr 04 '23

My fear would be that multi-player as a "must have to launch" feature would wind up overbuilt to justify its existence. I don't want to see Cities Skylines introduce a seasonal pass because of feature creep.

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u/LiquidMedicine Apr 04 '23

I wonder if it’d be feasible to go the route Fallout did and release the singleplayer standalone game, then a separate multiplayer game on the same engine

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u/-Dillad- Apr 04 '23

for such a small company I wouldn’t think so

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u/Hardass_McBadCop Apr 04 '23

I'm not sure FO76 is a launch experience that should be emulated.

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u/Ekgladiator Apr 04 '23

I don't think multiple in a city simulator would work like that. I think a lot of people would be happy with what sim city (2013) was but not shit lol

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u/spookytransexughost Apr 05 '23

Is a dlc not a season pass

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u/Liringlass Apr 05 '23

Another issue is that multiplayer rarely pairs well with mods, and some of us spend as much time browsing the workshop as they do in the game :)

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u/Not_Felryn_Btw Apr 04 '23

peer to peer and take a page out of simcity's books where each player also runs their own city (or they can control 1 city. options are good!)

could become primary trading partners or something along the lines.

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u/AssociatedLlama Apr 05 '23

I'm kind of fascinated by the idea of players completely dumping their problems on their neighbours, or purposely leaving the border areas of the city polluted and crime ridden so it bleeds over to the next region.

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u/Not_Felryn_Btw Apr 05 '23

ah so like the GTA as it is now? how other cities dont fund homeless support so it all falls to Toronto!

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u/bettaboy123 Apr 05 '23

I actually started teaching my husband how to play so he could play on my saves every now and then. I don’t go back to try and “fix” his stuff, I integrate it into my city because I think it’s cool that he cares about the game I love enough to play with me.

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u/Ulyks Apr 07 '23

That's actually a pretty cool idea.

Because real life cities also elect different mayors that have to build on the city made by their predecessors.

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u/jefferios Apr 04 '23

It's really hard to make multiplayer good, and really easy to have it not work. Keep it offline, sharing save files/maps is good enough for me. I want a really robust single player experience.

Cities Skylines 1 was a good game. Like how Sim City 2000 was a good game. Lets make a masterpiece like SC4!

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u/JustWantsHappiness Apr 04 '23

It would be nice if there was a feature to detect changes made in offline mode to upload to a shared “multiplayer” save file where two builders work on it alone and then the system detects differences and applies it to the save file. If two builders make something in the same spot, there should be a prompt asking which should stay, or something like that. That way, two can work on the same city at the same time.

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u/bschug Apr 05 '23

That's hard enough with text files. In a city builder where you can manipulate the terrain too, and roads will still need to connect, I can't imagine how you'd create a usable merging interface.

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u/orgasmicfart69 Apr 05 '23

...You actually gave me an idea to use Syncthing

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u/AnotherScoutTrooper Apr 05 '23

Maybe something could be done with Steam Cloud saves to make this work? At least then they’d have a purpose.

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u/kjmci Apr 04 '23

Good, imo.

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u/microwavedcheezus Apr 04 '23

Agreed 100%, stop trying to jam multiplayer in singleplayer games.

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u/bullo152 Apr 04 '23 edited Apr 04 '23

Having a multiplayer environment requires an ongoing investment of compute resources and operations to keep them up and running a.k.a operational expense, which doesn't seems to be their business model and can drive them to bankruptcy if they do not handle it properly. If it's just singleplayer, this is completely off their minds they only need to ensure it runs on your computer.

Maybe if they invest in subscriptions like seasonal pass and that kind of products, they may consider starting a product that could be MP, but so far cities skylines 2 and life by you won't be multiplayer

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u/YourNightmar31 Apr 04 '23

P2P multiplayer doesn't have this problem at all.

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u/AnotherScoutTrooper Apr 05 '23

They don’t have to run servers for something like that, as others have mentioned P2P is a viable option for games like this where latency isn’t a big killer. A great example is another Paradox game, Stellaris, which has its own niche multiplayer that doesn’t cost them much to maintain. I have no idea how people play a full scale 4X game with each other, barring all of them taking the day off work, but I’m glad it’s there.

I’m not arguing for multiplayer at launch, CO is only 35 people after all, but I’m just saying it won’t kill the studio outright.

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u/hibbert0604 Apr 04 '23

Yep. Never have understood why people insist on shoehorning multiplayer into games where it doesn't really make sense. I'm glad they are keeping their resources focused on a quality SP experience.

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u/subsequent Apr 04 '23

I wouldn't necessarily say that it doesn't really make sense. It's just more of a nice to have. I played a bit of multiplayer in Parkitect with a friend and it was a blast. Just working on your own little corner with a friend to see how you guys can meld together different playstyles. Not necessary, but would be a fun add for me personally.

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u/thetruth5199 Apr 04 '23

I mean it’s not a difficult concept to grasp. People like to be social and share experiences together. And it would totally make sense in a game like this; to create a city with a buddy. I have no clue why your comment is upvoted so much.

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u/Solcry Apr 04 '23

Agreed! For all of SC2013's faults, I loved building with my friends. I had a friend who simply exported mass amounts of crime to my city and it was a good time just going back and forth on it

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u/digita1catt Apr 04 '23

They've made millions off DLC for CS1. I would have liked to have seen that reinvested in a team branched off to focus on some type of multiplayer. Trading with friends cities or some online global economy would have been fun.

EDIT: And before others jump in to defend, there is demand because CSM is an incredibly popular mod for pc, and all the "[x] creators, 1 save file" videos by you tubers show definitive interest in the idea.

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u/kjmci Apr 04 '23

I'd challenge the "incredibly popular" part of your statement. It has about 5% of the subscribers of Move It.

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u/jackalope8112 Apr 04 '23

I recall when EA tanked SimCity quite a number of us on the modding forums laid blame solely on spending resources on multiplayer. I remember writing a post that what the genre needed was a fairly open model game design that used steam workshop for user mods. I even suggested there would be a ton of money to be made forming collections of user mods of similar type and packaging and selling them as dlc for people who couldn't be bothered to hunt and peck and wanted a curated list of buildings. At that point SC4 modding community was doing some of that for people who found it and I figured with actual developer support and marketing it would take off. Sure enough CS made that game, adopted that model and took over the genre.

So yeah they aren't doing multiplayer because that's not what people who play these games really want the resources going to. If it was they wouldn't have sold so many copies.

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u/SomeMF Apr 04 '23

It's very simple: if they don't do it, it's because they don't think it's profitable. There isn't really more about it. It's a company, its goal is to make as much money as possible, they have seasoned professionals deciding the best way to achieve that goal, so when they do X or they don't do Y, rest assured they have analyzed the topic for a long time, discussed for a long time, and finally decided, again, what they think it's most profitable.

Of course they can make mistakes, but let me trust them more than random redditors.

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u/Kwonzle Apr 04 '23

They won't do it because demand isn't as high as yall making it seem. It's a single player game first, that's where their focus should be.

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u/kjmci Apr 04 '23

Did you reply to the wrong person?

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u/SomeMF Apr 04 '23

Nah I was agreeing with you.

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u/hibbert0604 Apr 04 '23

Just because you happen to be part of the less than 5% of players that have used CSM, that doesn't make it "incredibly popular" lol. Incredibly niche would be far more accurate.

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u/a_filing_cabinet Apr 04 '23

You're describing online play, not true multi-player. It's reasonable for there to be some sort of system to download other people's saves and modify that, but true, multiple people on the same map at the same time, multi-player makes zero sense. You don't do multiple things at once in this type of game. There's absolutely no competitive aspect. What would you even do with multi-player? Sit around while money builds up, start two projects at the same time, and run out of money before you're a quarter done? You sit and wait for money. You sit and wait for traffic. You sit and wait for population. Why would you want to multiply all that? It makes no sense.

CSM is far from what I'd call incredibly popular, and I've yet to see a 1 save file collaboration that wasn't a mess or got finished. CSM has never been incredibly popular and has always been a really niche mod, more of a novelty than a serious change.

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u/[deleted] Apr 05 '23

There's a board game of cities skylines which is multiplayer. Maybe they could develop a digital version of the board game.

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u/amazondrone Apr 04 '23 edited Apr 04 '23

What would you even do with multi-player?

I think the use case would be casual - enable infinite money and unlock all the milestones and just have fun designing a cool city with a few mates/SO whilst chatting, having a beer, hanging out. I'll do the zoo, you do downtown. Then let's figure out the road hierarchy for the next suburb together.

Which means there isn't much money in it, probably.

Or everyone builds a different city but they interact through tourism, trade etc - perhaps there are some fun mechanics there. Maybe I can build a really good university and attract your students and deplete your educated workforce, for example.

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u/EvilSporkOfDeath Apr 04 '23

Never even heard of it before.

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u/applejackrr Apr 04 '23 edited Apr 04 '23

Multiplayer cost too much for a small studio like Colossal and Tantalus to utilize. I work at a small game studio, and we do not look into online play unless we know we can afford it. That’s usually never and we have a huge net profit on our games (maybe x2-3). The millions they made also goes into employees and hardware to keep up, not just investing into new tech.

Edit: Not Paradox, meant Colossal and Tantalus.

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u/MarginalMagic Apr 04 '23

...did you just call Paradox a small studio?

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u/applejackrr Apr 04 '23

Technically they’re not if you count the headcount of the studio across all sub companies. Not all of them work on the same game. Colossal Order is only 30 employees as of 2022 and Tantalus is roughly 56 employees. That’s a small studio.

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u/SomeKidFromPA Apr 04 '23

You're not wrong, and I don't want multiplayer, but oftentimes other studios are brought in to work on the multiplayer aspect of their games. So being a small studio isn't really a reason not to do it. It's that the cost of bringing in that studio costs more than the number of players that would be added by having multiplayer.

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u/ommanipadmehome Apr 04 '23

Incredibly popular it is not.

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u/Min21319 Apr 04 '23

Nice! They got the their priorities right. Not many people would want to play multiplayer, so make sense to dedicate their limited time onore important stuff.

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u/wobwobwob42 Apr 04 '23

Who else, if not for me, will build topiaries in the shape of penises in my friend's parks!? Who?!

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '23

When I think about multiplayer in city builders I think of Simcity 4's region system, multiple cities on one map that can interact with each other.

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u/romeo_pentium Apr 04 '23

A more recent example is SimCity 2013 with its dreaded always-online requirement and tiny cities

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u/birdsofgravity Apr 04 '23

Never fear, RCE is here!!!

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u/GfxJG Apr 04 '23

Good. The vast majority of players would never use that feature, and personally, I'd be really sad if they had implemented that at the cost of other features.

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '23

It would have surely ended just like SimCity did. EA trying to add online features was their ultimate downfall.

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '23 edited Jun 08 '23

[deleted]

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u/Lee_Doff Apr 04 '23

-it always has to be online!

-but we dont want it to be! and it works fine with this offline mod i installed.

-oh, ok i guess it doesnt then. our bad.

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u/kapparoth Apr 05 '23

-oh, ok i guess it doesnt then. our bad.

Not before banning users left and right for merely mentioning mods on the EA/MAXIS forums.

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u/Lee_Doff Apr 04 '23

right. they really do have bigger and more important things to work on for single player. they put together a very good first effort. but over the course of all the DLC the scale and mechanics of the game have morphed and changed into something that should be really good when they can pull it all together with a refreshed base code and fresh start.

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u/Joth91 Apr 04 '23

In my opinion, multiplayer is not needed and has never been an expectation for management games like this. I'm not disappointed. My real hope is they turn it into a problem solving game.

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u/Cue99 Apr 04 '23

I would have loved to see some version of region play, but I would rather the game be more polished at launch and avoid the controversy of a bad launch and the aggression that tends to cause in fans.

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u/Armada_Z Apr 04 '23

A lot of long time players probably play with a variety of mods in their game. That would be a nightmare for multiplayer.

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u/Somepotato Apr 04 '23

Mm yes mods are what keeps Factorio multi-player from working... Oh wait.

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u/DaKluit Apr 05 '23

Indeed, a lot of games work perfectly in multiplayer with mods.

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u/Koku- trains are cool Apr 05 '23

Wasn't Factorio designed with both modding and multiplayer in mind?

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u/GTAinreallife Apr 04 '23

Kinda sad to hear. Simcity in 2013 was a disaster throughout, but I really loved the way they did multiplayer

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u/progz Apr 04 '23

Man it would be cool if there was coop support at least.

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '23

Leave that to our most insane modders please, Id rather the main team focus on a single player game.

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '23

Good. It’s exactly what killed Sim City. They tried to focus on making multiplayer work and the game suffered because of it.

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u/Daveallen10 Apr 04 '23

Understandable, however I'm a bit unclear as to how they plan to make this game different from the original. Some kind of multiplayer would be a great selling point.

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '23

I don’t mind, im an autocrat. I am the only one who can be trusted to execute the one true vision of the perfect metropolis. /j

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u/ThomasNorge224 Apr 04 '23

Sad, would be very cool to have mp. Like private mp servers or some.

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u/orgasmicfart69 Apr 05 '23

I was really expecting it to have it, I finally have friends that want to play this kind of thing with me

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u/liquience Apr 04 '23

I'm good with this to be honest. It really makes development so much more complicated. If they can instead direct all their energy toward having rich and deep core gameplay mechanics, a slick user experience, and strong performance I will be more than satisfied.

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '23 edited Apr 04 '23

I can sympathize with disappointment but honestly I'm glad that none of the development resources are going to go towards MP functions. Personally I have zero interest in it. I wish games like Civ and Paradox titles wouldn't worry about it, either, but that's just my 2 cents. I understand a lot of people love playing those games online with others.

Same with Fallout. Never plan on touching 76. I will hold my breath until I die waiting for the next single player title lol.

And for the record I HATED what Maxis chose to do with MP.

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u/squeddles Apr 04 '23

How would multilayer even work in a game like this?

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u/munzter Apr 04 '23

My mind goes to you and a friend building a city together in real time in vanilla. You could work on separate areas of the city or an area together in real time.

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u/greasedonkey Apr 04 '23

I guess I'm the minority here, but I really wanted SC5 multiplayer to work. I think they had some interesting ideas but in practice it didn't turn out so well and I don't think it's because it was bad ideas but instead it's how they implemented them.

Like neighbor cities not really taking much into account other cities simulation. I for example wanted to build an industry city where my friend city residents would commute to my city to work. It was impossible to do and impossible to maintain my city since the number of workers coming from his city was neglectable and didn't directly affect his city at all.

I wanted to setup garbage disposals in my city but only a neglectable amount was sent from his city to mine and further more the statistics were very different from his side and mine. It was simulated at best and didn't offer much control.

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u/orgasmicfart69 Apr 05 '23

Idk, same way that stardew valley, but with emphasis on building instead of controlling a character

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u/MDSExpro Apr 05 '23

There is multiplayer mod for CS1 and it's a blast - makes things 2x better.

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u/memtiger Apr 05 '23

Your roads and trains already just run off the map.

I could envision those roads would lead to your friend's city. "Player X's Citiopolous".

From there, you could:

  1. Click the connection to check out a static view of their city and do a flyover to check it out.
  2. Manage trading and sharing resources.

But you could also re-use that connection functionally to connect to a different city of your own. So it doesn't have to be another player that you connect to. If you've got a few different cities you're playing with, you could interlink them all

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u/Emergency-Nothing Apr 05 '23

Not a perfect comparison, but I used to play factorio with my friend online an awful lot. We had a kind of shared common goal and then if any jobs were time consuming we could help out. It was basically the same as normal factorio with an extra person, just had to share resources etc.

As a bonus, we could work on our map without the other one and get a nice surprise when we rejoined!

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u/TampaPowers Apr 05 '23

Probably similar to Cities in Motion 2 did it. You know. Another game CO made...

Honestly can't understand not adding it or at least building the game for it in mind. The most fun I have had with these style of building games was playing together with friends in various stages of inebriation. Given CS2 will end up on consoles though all hope for a good game went out the window anyways.

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u/PandaRider11 Apr 05 '23

Good, my cities area carefully and detailedly trimmed banzai trees, I don’t want you people mucking them up.

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u/obxhead Apr 05 '23

Mine are finely detailed chaos. I have no desire to have order applied.

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u/rhonit_ Apr 04 '23

So glad to see this. Cities, first and foremost, is a single player game and developing multiplayer for it would be an immense undertaking. If Cities 2 wants to deliver as a true and better sequel to Cities, focus is important.

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u/ghostlyman789 Apr 04 '23

Honestly this is fine. Make sure the single player gameplay is working as intended and get the bugs out, then they can develop a multiplayer later on if they want once they have a finely tuned product.

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u/aStoveAbove Apr 04 '23

How would multiplayer even work in a game like this? Would it be like a lobby where multiple people work on one city? Or would it be like one person manages some of it and the other manages the rest?

I am genuinely asking, not trying to shit on the idea, I just can't picture in my head how that would work out.

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u/herrbdog Apr 04 '23

i could see two neighbouring plots that would be owned and only controlled by each player, but you could set up trade and such, like one city produces excess electricity and another trades back cash or something else, like trash services?

like SimCity 4, but on the same map, but can't build into the other's area

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u/aStoveAbove Apr 04 '23

That sounds like a great idea! I never played any of the sim city games so I wouldn't know lol

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u/Overwatcher_Leo Apr 05 '23 edited Apr 05 '23

Adding multiplayer to a game is harder than a lot of people think. Wanting to spend the resources on other features is entirely believable and sounds like a good thing, even if a multiplayer mode would be kind of neat.

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u/StoneSnipeSteve Apr 04 '23

good, not every game needs to be multiplayer

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u/manormortal Apr 04 '23

Real reason is they don't deal with the backlash after friendships and relationships get ruined once cims abandon one city for another with more prospects.

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u/BoxOfDust Apr 04 '23

Competitive Cities:Skylines lol, with realistic economic realities.

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u/[deleted] Apr 05 '23

1v1 me in public transit bro

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u/ForgottenBelicheck Apr 04 '23

Good. It doens't make sense to devote resources for a mode that 95% of the player base will never touch at all. Make the single player experience better

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u/Able_Put4900 Apr 04 '23

I can't describe the amount of visceral hated I felt for "multiplayer in Cities Skylines"

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u/LrckLacroix Apr 04 '23

Thank god, don’t want to lose another amazing game to a shit online experience

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u/AwesomeWill28 Apr 04 '23

Good. CS:2 does not need any sort of multiplayer imo. Focus on the city building part of the city building game instead of adding useless gimmicks like multiplayer

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u/EuroTrash_84 Apr 04 '23

LAN Multi-player would be great because then I can design infrastructure and the girlfriend can make nice parks.

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u/ducksareeevil Apr 04 '23

Is there any link for these Q&A? Would be interesting to read them.

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u/LeDerpLegend Apr 04 '23

I'm fine with this. In the end someone will mod it into the game, and for those who want to use it, can. It exists for CS:1 and I use load order tool to make sure I can join him on the fly. That's only a fraction of my time though, never really needed multiplayer.

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u/cydonia8388 Apr 04 '23

What else did they answer

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u/lostnumber08 Apr 04 '23

I’m fine with this. We can just continue posting screen caps of our cities on this sub like a bunch of nerds as usual.

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u/Mindight_Ghost Apr 04 '23

Maybe they could do a thing like in SimCity 4 and Theotown when you have something like a bug state divided by grids and you can connect your cities with each other and share your resources with them and vice versa, i think that'll be a lot better than actual multiplayer

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u/StoicPomegranate Apr 04 '23

I mean they are not lying. It's fundamentally a single player game. Pivoting that is very risky and a huge resource sink, that is not guaranteed to be a hit with the community. I for one am happy that they chose to focis on the core of the game.

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u/Yorkshireman94 Apr 05 '23

Only multiplayer I could see being any use is purely for trade and tourism, which would be cool but at the same time NPC cities could easily do the same

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u/LeStk Apr 05 '23

The more complex the system, the harder it is to make it multiplayer, especially when you didn't start it as multiplayer right off the beginning

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u/Greygor Apr 05 '23

Multiplayer is my least needed thing in a city builder.

For the most part City Builders are single player games.

The fact that I hate most other people does factor into this decision to a certain extent

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u/warpedspoon Apr 04 '23

I didn't realize this would be something people even wanted for a game like this.

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u/bleo_evox93 Apr 04 '23

Dang! My buddy and I were really excited for multiplayer
 even if it’s just two people working on one city it isn’t possible? Aren’t there mods ? Just buy a modder or two I bet they’d be willing!

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u/Artillect Apr 04 '23

I really don't get why some people in here are so vehemently against multiplayer, I think it'd be fun to be able to build cities with my friends. I understand that it would take resources away from developing other features, but I don't see how having access to multiplayer would be a bad thing. It doesn't have to be implemented the same way that Sim City implemented it.

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u/Kniit Apr 05 '23

Multiplayer is the single most important feature that I care about for city skylines. such a shame to hear :'( surely its not that hard of a thing to implement.

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u/Draux Apr 04 '23

This is a bummer. I was really looking forward to native multiplayer. My friends and I have spent countless hours building cities together with the multiplayer mod. Unfortunately, it's quite buggy and isn't maintained.

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u/Temporary-Purpose431 Apr 04 '23

Eugh, my buddies and I wanted to play together

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u/[deleted] Apr 05 '23

I think it’s easily something that could be added long term with the mod community so I’d definitely focus on the game for rn. But a sandbox mode where it’s like all squares available and you can just build shit with infinite resources OR you have like a mycounty or some shit where you can connect your cities to your friends via highway and transport systems and produce and trade resources so one city who’s lane is lots of oil can trade with another that has raw metal and shit. That would be kick ass man I’d love to build cities and shit with my friends we don’t play as often as we used to but when we do we’ll be on discord live streaming to each other while we build our cities up and catch up

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u/Dimoxinyl Apr 05 '23

I love the answer. My thoughts exactly.

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u/ConanaPalooza Feb 05 '24

These days I don't really invest in games so that I can avoid my friends - I will buy this game as soon as they implement multi-player. NOTE: I tried a multi-player mod in the original game, and it was buggy and would go out of sync. As a gamer, and also a software developer (not of games), I'd recommend a workflow of granting control of a territory by selecting a region of the map, perhaps by lasso-selection? that would explicitly hand over control while mitigating the multi-user concurrent edit challenge I've seen. Also I'd recommend use of a pub-sub model for eventual consistency of all clients. Here's hoping, one day...

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u/Ajgr Apr 04 '23

This is the only feature I wanted them to add to the game. I just want to make cities with my partner and have them interact with each other.

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u/TacohTuesday Apr 04 '23

This is unfortunate, but understandable. I know people I would play with in multiplayer mode and was hoping it was going to be a feature. It would be fun to split a map up into two areas, collaborate, and link our cities up. But this response from Colossal Order is about as firm a NO as can be. Perhaps one day...

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u/Time_Garage5820 Apr 04 '23

I think some sort of standard peer-to-peer multiplayer could've been cool and fairly easy to implement, but im no game dev so i won't judge

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u/littlejart Apr 04 '23

Maybe not at launch, but I could definitely see a future where it is added on.

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u/antshekhter Apr 04 '23

I don't think that's possible, something like this would have to come out at launch or not at all from a programming perspective.

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u/qtq_uwu Apr 04 '23

Precisely this; as a casual programmer and game dev multiplayer requires a LOT of specific architecture to set up. It's very complicated, and if a game isn't designed for it from the ground up, it's (usually) not going to work. Usually games with both single and multiplayer have single player as an extension of multiplayer (think internal servers), not the other way around. While it's possible to add later (see Stardew Valley), it's rather difficult and not likely

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u/wasmic Apr 04 '23

There is literally a multiplayer mod for C:S 1. It's not impossible to add later.

And even more impressively, there's also a mostly-functional multiplayer mod for Kerbal Space Program, which needs to handle players being in different timelines due to the fast-forward feature that the game has.

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u/bwoah07_gp2 Apr 04 '23

Many people are celebrating, but online for city building games is still a very interesting concept. We see on YouTube the Cities Skylines content creators sharing files and adding on to each other cities. It would be neat to see a real in-game version of that, or to have a region where you all manage your own cities and have that impacts each other. But the reasoning from Colossal Order makes total sense. And most of the fanbase are content with just single player.

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u/duuuuuvallll Apr 04 '23

Disappointed a bit but totally understandable. I know I could hook a few players if multi-player was built in, but it's ultimately not worth the resource allocation if so much of the user base doesn't see this as a huge positive.

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u/JoeBidensBoochie Apr 04 '23

I never get the desire for multiplayer in a game like this, idk it seems like it would be more trouble than it’s worth and tbh boring af for multiplayer. I don’t want anyone dicking around my city. Now if it’s something like you can visit other ppls cities like Big City Stories, that would be fun

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u/CougarIndy25 Apr 04 '23

Only way I can see multiplayer work is if they allow players to build two cities within a close proximity of each other.

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u/Creepernom Apr 04 '23

A very simple form of multiplayer would be lovely. Hopefully modders will figure something out.

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u/Console_Stackup Apr 04 '23

They made a mod for coop in cities 1 and its fantastic. My buddies and i play it a lot

Im hoping a mod helps make this one multiplayer too

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u/satelliteflights Apr 04 '23

I’m fine with that. Focus on the core game first, then deal with multiplayer later on

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u/magvadis Apr 04 '23

Damn. That would have been amazing.

Would have loved to split up a map and build out areas like independent towns

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u/infurno1991 Apr 04 '23

I think that's great news.

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u/ooglieguy0211 Detailer Apr 04 '23

You can share save games with you friends already. A group of detailers have done this several times on Twitch already.

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u/DaKluit Apr 05 '23

This is not multiplayer.

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u/i_was_an_airplane Apr 04 '23

Aww man that was like the single feature I wanted the most in CS2 :(

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u/achyshaky Apr 04 '23

Fine by me. The idea sounds like a logistical nightmare for players too, I don't see the appeal.

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u/Lil-respectful Apr 04 '23

You want multiplayer like SC4, I want modular buildings like SC4

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u/stdexception Apr 04 '23

Do you mean SC5 for modular buildings? I don't remember SC4 having those

Edit: I guess SC4 didn't have multiplayer either.. but you could share a region over cloud with someone and import/export stuff between cities, with some limitations

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u/Lil-respectful Apr 04 '23

Yeah I think I meant sim city 5, I only played the last one so I just remember it as “sim city” the worst thing about it was the launcher back when I started

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u/RenTroutGaming Apr 04 '23

Anyone who has messed with multiplayer in a SimCity or similar game knows that after a couple weeks most of your neighbors are ghost cities as people drift away and stop playing. I am firmly in the camp of "Make a great core experience and don't add multiplayer" personally.

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u/EvilSporkOfDeath Apr 04 '23

I'm selfish. I have no interest in a CS MP so I'm glad there wont be that option, as it would take resources away from SP.

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u/Wigwam81 Apr 04 '23

Why does every game have to multi-player now? A game like this wouldn't really suit multi-player anyway.

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u/ThePokeX17 Apr 04 '23

This comment section hurts deep. Everyone's opinion is fine, and the dev's stance makes sense, but I really enjoyed the async multi-player of SimCity 2013 and would love to see improvements or evolutions of the concept.

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u/StoneDick420 Apr 04 '23

Same. I’d love to build with other players and people, or group chat/hang while someone builds during the game. There could be a whole subset of games or features around that as well

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u/---_-___ Apr 05 '23

I'm convinced most of the people here have never played a co-op game with friends. The responses here are really bizarre.

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u/baronneuh Apr 04 '23

Thank god

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '23

they should add some kind of multiplayer that is somewhat similar to anno, but of course without the wars/battles thing. like something to do with trade of goods and natural resources. as one city doesn't have oil but needs it and can be sold from a friend's city to another or maybe with food or even some factorial industrial thing. one city produces something the other needs that cant produce

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u/markhewitt1978 Apr 04 '23

Good. Can you imagine this sub if multiplayer was introduced. It would be constant "When will CO take on the cheaters" etc. far more trouble that it would ever be worth.