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Comment by Kuxe | Hacker News Reader

>If you're satisfied with the game being playable then play it, but others may have different expectations of quality, and it's not wrong for them to voice their opinion when the product they paid money for doesn't meet them.

I'm all for voicing opinions in a civic and calm manner. Most people online voicing their opinions come off as know-it-all teens or children throwing tantrums. It's as-if they have a _right_ to a CS2 with 120fps. Paradox warned about bad performance prior to launch (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/updates-on-modd...). Nobody claimed or said performance was gonna be great. And still, people act surprised.

It's no surprise that the reviews was down at close to 30% a couple of hours into the release and today at 52%. Why is there such a massive bias towards large reviews at the first hours? Because many gamers loves thrashing about. It's much more important than taking a step down and calming down.

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The people who reviewed the game in the first few days were the ones who either pre-ordered it or bought it as soon as it came out. They were so excited to play the new installment they took a gamble and trusted that the developer would produce a polished product, because they wanted to be able to play it as soon as possible. When they got to play the game, they saw it ran poorly to the point that it might have spoiled the experience for them. They're right to be angry about it, especially when developers and publishers make most of their money during the first few weeks since launch. By releasing a half-finished product they're treating their most enthusiastic users like crap. They didn't have to do that, they could have delayed the launch. Be it because of decisions made by the publisher or by the developer, they chose to release when they did. They made their bed, now they have to lie in it. I don't blame anyone who raves about performance, because what was released was well outside the realm of what's acceptable for a finished product, regardless of what said prior to launch. You don't get to sell a car with an asterisk that says "by the way, the fuel tank leaks so until we find a way to fix it you'll use twice as much fuel as normal".

> You don't get to sell a car with an asterisk that says "by the way, the fuel tank leaks so until we find a way to fix it you'll use twice as much fuel as normal".

Yeah. But in case of CS2, gamers did buy the leaking car. Devs analogously said "by the way, the fuel tank leaks" and people just went with "OK" and bought CS2, after which the customer started to complain (rave?!) about leaking fuel tanks. The car salesman retail store said "Well you can have all money back no questions asked until you've driven at least 160km". Steam has generous refunds. What does the customer do? (S)he still goes onto review sites and bitch about bad leaking fuel tanks. It is very much in bad faith on the customers part.

I wouldn't rush to Colossal Games defense if customers just said "It ran bad for me on my 4090 for some reason so I refunded". That's not what's going on with the negative reviews though. People act entitled.

You're still not getting it. Yeah, if a car dealership had such a generous return policy you could get your money back and get a car that does what you need within your budget. But these people didn't want just a city builder and they happened to buy this one. They wanted to play the new version of Cities: Skylines. They're loyal fans and they're treated like beta testers.

Yes, it's entitlement. Customers are entitled to get a quality product in exchange for their money. When Paradox goes to spend their earnings they're not going to be throttled to do it at 45 cents per second.

this is why car analogies are dangerous :)

I would argue a dealer telling you about a major defect directly before you buy the car is a bit different than a post on some forums that the product they're selling is not well made.

I would suggest it's not reasonable to expect that someone buying a game has to do research on a forum to know the game is unfinished -- if it's being sold as a finished game it's reasonable to expect it's in a playable state. the original post was meaning to say it would be unheard of for other products to allow companies to sell known unfinished products as finished products, even with the promise of completing the product. and consumers would similarly balk at such a proposal for virtually any other object.

it was more the absurdity of the different way games are treated which is anti-consumer.

>I would suggest it's not reasonable to expect that someone buying a game has to do research on a forum to know the game is unfinished -- if it's being sold as a finished game it's reasonable to expect it's in a playable state

It is playable, though. Now, if you wanted it to be a perfectly optimized, polished experience with no hitches even on older hardware: well, you get what you pay for, I suppose.

>it would be unheard of for other products to allow companies to sell known unfinished products as finished products, even with the promise of completing the product.

if "120fps" is your minimum requirement of "playable", then you probably care enough about performance to the point where you need to research every game you buy. Similar to how someone interested in road rallies or drag style street racing probably won't be satisfied even with perfectly driveable cars.

The kinds of people making these complaints are those "street racers", so to speak.

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