Dislike CIV5 development? Tell us how!

[Bibor]

Scenario:

You're a small development team best known for 4x games. Your games aren't popular like Starcraft or Call of Duty, but you manage, largely because of a consistent fan base.
You are working on a new, ambitious project for the last two years under relatively new management and ownership.
The expenses for game development were greater than you hoped for and you're running out of budget. You're also running out of time because your publisher is demanding a release date soon and the investors want to see the return of their investment.

You have three choices, which one will you pick?

 

[Lone Wolf]

Release the game, admit that it has flaws, promise extensive patches and deliver on that promise.

 

[lordsurya08]

From a business standpoint, option 2 is best.
Option 1 is the most diplomatic option, and is the one I prefer.
Option 3 is a gamble - if your game is good enough, it may break through into the mainstream and be a huge success. Otherwise, you may just get lost if your distributer cancels its contract and your game isn't good enough to make it on its own.

Nice thread, Bibor. It was a difficult poll, for a change.

 

[lschnarch]

Scenario:

You're a small development team best known for 4x games. Your games aren't popular like Starcraft or Call of Duty, but you manage, largely because of a consistent fan base.
You are working on a new, ambitious project for the last two years under relatively new management and ownership.
The expenses for game development were greater than you hoped for and you're running out of budget. You're also running out of time because your publisher is demanding a release date soon and the investors want to see the return of their investment.

You have three choices, which one will you pick?

I pick the choices which you've left out:
Don't try to invent things which a year before release already clearly weren't working.
Don't advertise non-working features as the BIG points of the game.
Improve weak features from previous games, instead of completely dropping them only to be left with something not working.
And finally, make sure that what you're releasing is working. Cut the scope, if necessary.

So, I would like to ask you to add these four options to get the complete picture.

 

[Bibor]

I pick the choices which you've left out:
Don't try to invent things which a year before release already clearly weren't working.

You mean 1UPT.

Don't advertise non-working features as the BIG points of the game.

And again, 1UPT

Improve weak features from previous games, instead of completely dropping them only to be left with something not working.

And again, 1UPT

And finally, make sure that what you're releasing is working. Cut the scope, if necessary.

Can you elaborate this one a bit? What would you consider "scope" in Civ5? What would you leave out?

 

[PieceOfMind]

What would you leave out?

Good question.

 

[Misanthrop]

You're trying to be clever and to defend CiV but lschnarch is right imo.
There must have been other options for the release.

Also #3 (Delay the release and face financial and contractual consequences) seems a bit vague, could you elaborate this one a bit?

The criticism is not 1UPT only. An overall flawed AI, global happiness, road maintenance, missing religions, hex map, DLC... all concepts that might work but still appear half-baked, making the game seem prematurely released

 

[Hail]

I pick the choices which you've left out:
Don't try to invent things which a year before release already clearly weren't working.
Don't advertise non-working features as the BIG points of the game.
Improve weak features from previous games, instead of completely dropping them only to be left with something not working.
And finally, make sure that what you're releasing is working. Cut the scope, if necessary.

So, I would like to ask you to add these four options to get the complete picture.

will never happen.
Bibor needs this biased poll to make his biased point that, releasing civ5 on 9/20/2010 in the state the game was in, was a wise decision by 2k/firaxis because that's the best they could do.

Can you elaborate this one a bit? What would you consider "scope" in Civ5? What would you leave out?

i would leave out:
1UPT(1), multilayer amazing AI(2), global happiness(3), science = pop(4), mystical diplo(5), etc.

• 1UPT - units may stack. the weakest one defends
• amazing AI - copy-paste AI from civ4. advertise it as multilayer amazing AI BS. no one will know the difference until dll code is released. until then the devs have some time to write a decent AI
• simply does not work. personally i would replace it with a corruption mechanic
• science = pop * money sounds a lot more fun. the idea is that to obtain the player needs "to do science" and to pay them
• as been said before numerous times AI acting on dice rolls or acting in a hidden rational fashion will appear equally insane to the player. therefore the player must have some idea of AI's motivation(why does it do what it does) to appreciate AI's rationality.

all those new concepts do make civ5 different, but not better. just worse imho. civ5 is plain boring.



ON TOPIC:
assuming DLC were made in the same time frame as the game (NOT afterwards).

Release the game in unfinished state, ignore the fact, while selling DLC
leave several devs to pump out patches, at a rate of one/two per month, that change lots of values in the XML to encourage players to return to civ5 once in a while.
just maybe a part of the players will buy DLC in the process

the rest of the dev team starts working on a new civ(maybe a civ to milk social networks' users?)

 

[de Maistre]

Like it or not, the first option is both the most realistic and, regrettably, the most common. My beloved Victoria II, for example, is not yet playable without a modification. It's no slight task to release a complicated game both bug free and on time. Not without infinite time and resources.

 

[lschnarch]

You mean 1UPT.

Right.

And again, 1UPT

Wrong. Diplomacy.

And again, 1UPT

Wrong.
Religion. Espionage. Corporations.

Can you elaborate this one a bit? What would you consider "scope" in Civ5? What would you leave out?

Multiplayer.
In the way it was released it is told to be an almost non-working "feature". The heavily advertised DLC didn't ever work in multiplayer (allegedly, this shall change now).
Leader graphics would have been just the next item.
City states being the next on the list.
What about the modding tools? In which state have they been on release?
Steam integration. Even the "achievements" don't work completely, not to mention that a) it didn't prohibit piracy nor improved the patching process.

 

[Bibor]

Maybe I'm biased. But at least I base my criticism on facts.

- 1UPT is extremely hard (bordering impossible) to implement in a game with such a big gameboard. The developers were too ambitious to give it a try with this limited resources and time. So that part is correct. Yet, every CIV game had "false difficulty" i.e. AI cheating from CIV1. So no big change there.

- AI was everything but amazing in CIV4. Predictable - yes, amazing - no. It was better. Not surprising, considering they had 15 years (CIV2, SMAC, CIV3, CIV4) of development put into it. Dresden and other modders still had to tweak it.

- happiness is not only global for quite some time now

- concepts of randomness were present in all civilization games (including diplomacy); I see no reason for it being different in CIV5. Adds flavor and a level of unpredictability.

 

[Camikaze]

Well I guess the point is that you can't not release it if you're told to, and you can't really admit its flaws if you're under direction not to. Obviously patch it up as you go. Doesn't necessarily make the game any better or it any more excusable, but it's the best you can do in the situation. I think there's a difference between complaints against the development team and the parent company.

 

[Bob_]

Dude, the only things which your polls show is that every rational person would act like those guys at Firaxis. The only implication to me is that Firaxis does not consist of evil but of rational people... Well, thats great, but its not like I didnt know that before. The reason why (nearly) every game developer acts like that is OBVIOUSLY that its the best alternative.

But in the end it doesnt change anything. I still think its not ok selling half-finished products at full price. And I am still disappointed that the game is streamlined, because I wanted it differently.

 

[lschnarch]

- 1UPT is extremely hard (bordering impossible) to implement in a game with such a big gameboard. The developers were too ambitious to give it a try with this limited resources and time. So that part is correct. Yet, every CIV game had "false difficulty" i.e. AI cheating from CIV1. So no big change there.

Seems to be a bold decision to go for it, then.

- AI was everything but amazing in CIV4. Predictable - yes, amazing - no. It was better. Not surprising, considering they had 15 years (CIV2, SMAC, CIV3, CIV4) of development put into it. Dresden and other modders still had to tweak it.

Seems to be either:
* bold borderlining ignorance trying to achieve better results in just two years
* a sign of incompetence to even try to achieve better results in just two years
* a sign of not caring about the results

Now, what are the paying customers expected to do? Wait another 15 years (minus 2.5 now) until a similar level has been reached?
Waiting for somebody at Firaxis being struck by divine inspiration to speed up the process?

 

[Hail]

Maybe I'm biased. But at least I base my criticism on facts.

- 1UPT is extremely hard (bordering impossible) to implement in a game with such a big gameboard. The developers were too ambitious to give it a try with this limited resources and time. So that part is correct. Yet, every CIV game had "false difficulty" i.e. AI cheating from CIV1. So no big change there.

- AI was everything but amazing in CIV4. Predictable - yes, amazing - no. It was better. Not surprising, considering they had 15 years (CIV2, SMAC, CIV3, CIV4) of development put into it. Dresden and other modders still had to tweak it.

- happiness is not only global for quite some time now

- concepts of randomness were present in all civilization games (including diplomacy); I see no reason for it being different in CIV5. Adds flavor and a level of unpredictability.

• - 1UPT is extremely hard (bordering impossible) to implement in a game with such a small gameboard.
• afaik Soren wrote civ4's AI from scratch
• yep. now the mechanic sucks even more. unhappiness is global, while happiness is local. the casual player will be pleasantly surprised!
• nope. that is not the distinction i was talking about (*).

(*) i will illustrate my point with the "pretend to be Friendly before back stab" feature.
never notice that an AI has friendly status, while negative modifiers outweigh positive ones? that's the AI fooling you, before attacking. such behavior is rational, but most player will go WTF. they will either think that it's a feature that a "friendly" AI can attack or because of a dice roll the AI changed status to "hostile" and attacked. either way the AI logic appears ******ed to the player.

an antiexample would be marines in Half-Life shouting "i will flank" and doing something stupid. the stupid action will likely be attributed to the AI's rational intention, than to ******ed AI logic

probably that is the reason i fire up half-life time from time, not civ5

 

[Windsor]

Well, I really don't think you should ship a unfinished game, like Elemental. Even if you do patch it as Stardock does.

Of course, you don't want to go broke either. So it's really a question on how unfinished it is and how desperate you need money. The #2nd option in the poll is just rude, and exactly what Firaxis did with Civ4:Col.

So it becomes a question on how unfinished the game is and how little money you have. Usually, you should be able to delay a game for a few months and that will help it a lot.

Civ5 got released in an acceptable state imo, Civ4 was far worse as it also had major technical issues. The problem with Civ5 is that the game isn't as good as I hope it would be, finished or not.

 

[Bob_]

Well, I really don't think you should ship a unfinished game, like Elemental. Even if you do patch it as Stardock does.

Of course, you don't want to go broke either. So it's really a question on how unfinished it is and how desperate you need money. The #2nd option in the poll is just rude, and exactly what Firaxis did with Civ4:Col.

So it becomes a question on how unfinished the game is and how little money you have. Usually, you should be able to delay a game for a few months and that will help it a lot.

Civ5 got released in an acceptable state imo, Civ4 was far worse as it also had major technical issues. The problem with Civ5 is that the game isn't as good as I hope it would be, finished or not.

Reading your post it just came to my mind that they probably took a different approach when they noticed time troubles. In Civ 4 they might have said:"Damnit, we have too little time! Lets put as many features in as possible, buggy or not, and patch them later. And now lets have pizza-time!"
In case of Civ 5:"Damnit, we have too little time! Lets just implement the very basic aspects of the game and try to avoid that many bugs. Think of what happend with part 4! Who of you likes chinese lunch?!"

 

[eraofdiversion]

I've never been so frustrated with a buggy game...this is literally the worst. I'm trying really hgard to like this game but its not easy..

 

[vandyr]

I've never been so frustrated with a buggy game...this is literally the worst. I'm trying really hgard to like this game but its not easy..

What bugs are frustrating you so much?

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Can you elaborate this one a bit? What would you consider "scope" in Civ5? What would you leave out?

Tactical Combat