About The Graphics of Civ VI

m15a said:

I assume you also have other reasons for not picking up Civ V, but if not, you should know that giant death robots almost never get made in a game unless you go out of your way to make one. (Actually, I don't think I've ever seen an AI make one.)

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I think I saw the AI build one once, in almost 2000 hours of play.

AriochIV said:

I think I saw the AI build one once, in almost 2000 hours of play.

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I saw a GDR once in the early days of vanilla (*shudders*). Shot it to death with Comp Bows (or was it Xbows? probably) due to the AI's 'dancing disease' + 10 hp combo... Then the AI that sent it (Persia with something like 40 cities) sent three more and a swarm of tanks etc, and I couldn't cope with one city anymore (I was playing OCC on Immortal iirc; one of my very first games so I hardly knew what I was doing).

AriochIV said:

I think I saw the AI build one once, in almost 2000 hours of play.

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The release AI actually tuned me off for a few years untill CP didn't make some fundamental changes.

I hope this time I will not have to wait years for mods. Come on...

It ain't cartoonish to attract kids. Tom n Jerry are pretty much banned for being too racist, violent etc!!!

Its just change, and its whether you think change is guud or not, amiche.

Anyhoo, its CIV SIX!!!!!!!!!!

I want to throw my two cents into all this. I feel the art style is fine. It feels correct. More and more today you see games going for the ultra gritty realistic set up. At least when it comes to triple A titles. Don't forget smash hits come out bleeding high detail assets and rugged charm.

But I think the reason this style looks strange and ugly is just one small thing. The grassland tiles are so boring plain. If you compare the pictures of a civ starting out to the American picture with all the times worked, it's a huge difference in satisfaction.

Games can be cartoony and sell big, while holding an adult audience. Overwatch, Stardew Valley, Firewatch, and in my opinion, Fallout 4. That game has grit and blood out the wazoo but it's also the brightest Fallout yet. More colorful and cartoonish than the dirt reality of Fallout 3 or the majove wasteland of New Vegas.

And ultimately, when you play a Civilization game, are you playing it for the deep complexities of the system? The idea of starting from scratch and building this wonderful empire? Are you going to let such a fun experience be left untouched because the art style is for your daughter or son?

It's all personal preference in the end. I am 30. As long as a game functions, offers entertainment and has depth, I can get past any art style and find enjoyment.

Scauthra said:

Fallout 4. That game has grit and blood out the wazoo but it's also the brightest Fallout yet. More colorful and cartoonish than the dirt reality of Fallout 3 or the majove wasteland of New Vegas.

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Fallout 4 is the most hated Fallout game. What is more, one of the developers called the players "kids". He also said he did not play games; he made them.

darko82 said:

Fallout 4 is the most hated Fallout game. What is more, one of the developers called the players "kids". He also said he did not play games; he made them.

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We seem to be going in circles here. We all agree that:

-Stylized / Cartoony / Exagerated proportions doesn't equate to Simple or Bad gameplay.

-Some developers treat their players as Kids / Peasants / Stupid and some gamers are Whiny / Entitled / Pessimistic but that has little to do with anything even remotely related to Civ VI.

Darko82, honestly, are you really trying to make a point, or are you being controversial just for the sake of it?

The graphics look awesome, after watching the latest interview has convinced me. They want you to focus on the map, and they did a great job to make stuff on the map catch your attention. Every thing looks so crisp, every erection looks distinctive and attractive, the city sprawls look very impressive and cohesive. Zoomed out you can still tell the tiles apart for their functionality. But zoomed in you can almost feel the immense details their artists put in. Yoo will feel the pride and joy from the hard work raising your cities.

In Eurogamer interview Ed just stated they are doing some graphic tweaks according to some feedback.

Personally I love all the graphics except the damage "explosions" but I can live with them too.

Plus Ultra said:

Darko82, honestly, are you really trying to make a point, or are you being controversial just for the sake of it?

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The point from my post above is that some devs. still think they make games for kids. And it also lowers the bar, as in the case of Fallout 4, which is the least successful game in the series. That kind of mentality has bad impact on the game quality etc. But that does not concern this thread nor Ed Beach who takes things seriously and consciously

Haig said:

In Eurogamer interview Ed just stated they are doing some graphic tweaks according to some feedback.

Personally I love all the graphics except the damage "explosions" but I can live with them too.

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I really want them to tweak the borders. They cannot be so blocky. They need to make it look like in Civ 5.

Damage explosions are ok. I don't mind.

Chinese American said:

... every erection looks distinctive and attractive ...

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Umm, phrasing. This is a family-friendly site, after all (as one of the mods was kind enough to remind me)!

Haig said:

In Eurogamer interview Ed just stated they are doing some graphic tweaks according to some feedback.

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Yes and he also explained that players will be able to see what buildings they have in a district, what buildings are under construction and what buildings were pillaged in a district, just by looking at the district on the map. Civ6 definitely needs to be able to convey more info and detail on the map than what civ5 did. So, I think it makes sense that they went with a different graphic style.

Haig said:

In Eurogamer interview Ed just stated they are doing some graphic tweaks according to some feedback.

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Glad to hear that, hope that means bye-bye exploding swordsmen, must less vivid colours on districts and slightly less vivid colours overall.

EDIT > And better models for trees. Much better models for trees!

kaspergm said:

Glad to hear that, hope that means bye-bye exploding swordsmen, must less vivid colours on districts and slightly less vivid colours overall.

EDIT > And better models for trees. Much better models for trees!

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I would not hope they will change tree models, but they could improve ocean/river textures and give them more details.

Haig said:

In Eurogamer interview Ed just stated they are doing some graphic tweaks according to some feedback.

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Promising news! If we can get the ridiculous combat animations addressed and perhaps some desaturation done (and maybe the borders adjusted), I think the graphics will be at least halfway tolerable.

cpm4001 said:

I wouldn't agree that those concerns are dismissable, at least no more so than the counterarguments that Civ VI's graphics look great.

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Except the that the concern generally isn't "I don't like the graphics" - it's "This game will suck - the graphics are evidence of that". Either way both are dismissable because not liking the graphics in general is just a tough beat - that's she style of the game. The second and clearly more discussed conplaint - that the graphics are indicative of a dumber game, is just rediculous. For reasons I've mentioned;

cpm4001 said:

So, your view is that because Civ V has realistic graphics and Civ VI (like Civ IV) has more stylized graphics, and because Civ V was overly stripped-down at release and Civ IV wasn't (and that Civ VI looks to not be), then ergo stylized graphics automatically mean that Civ VI won't be dumbed down?

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No. My view is that the graphics alone are not sufficient evidence to raise the concern that the game will be dumbed down - as evidenced by a previous installment. No one talked about civ5 being dumbed down because the graphics were too real - they talked about civ5 being dumbed down because of gameplay additions.

Considering you can have deep, rich, immersive gameplay with literally any graphic style you want - there is no correlation. There's evidence of this all over the gaming industry - the game Braid is regarded as one of the finest games ever and it looks like a NES game. World of Warcraft, regardless of your tastes, if at least arguably the greatest MMORPG ever made - it redifined the genre and all of it's story-driven content follows a very serious thread and tone of epic fantasy. Yet the graphics are cartoony and you can dance naked on the tavern bar or essentially play pokemon within the game world. Stardew valley is an incredibly rich gaming experience and it's another SNES styled graphics game where, I bet if it did have modern graphics, they would absolutely be cartoony.

You don't need one to have the other. Serious graphics does not equate to a rich gameplay experience, no more does cartoony graphics equate to a dumb one. Portal would have still been Portal if it looked like a lego game.

cpm4001 said:

I'd say that doing the style that's been present in 5 of the major installments in the series and two of the spin-offs pretty much translates to "doing the same thing over and over again", but this particular branch of the argument appears pointless.

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Apparently, cause I don't think civ2 or 3 were that cartoony.

cpm4001 said:

Promising news! If we can get the ridiculous combat animations addressed and perhaps some desaturation done (and maybe the borders adjusted), I think the graphics will be at least halfway tolerable.

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So what you're saying is if they change all the things you want changed in the way you wanted it changed, you might call it halfway tolerable?

I'd rather they not cater to such expectations, personally.

stiiknafuulia said:

The graphics are mostly irrelevant to me, as I almost always play in Strategic View -- but I wanted to point out that there was a huge uproar about the graphics of Diablo III when the game came out. People were bashing it left and right for 'selling out to the WoW crowd', 'being plastered with rainbows & unicorns', etc. I agreed with them to an extent (in a Diablo game I too care about the graphics); the graphics didn't stop me from playing the game, but they gave it a strange vibe that took away from the nebulous but crucial 'Diablo feel' (although the main culprit were the terrible, terrible, terrible items, which have hardly improved over the years... trust me, all three 'terribles' are quite necessary! ).

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I remember that as well, I was part of the debate to that game too and I was on the opposite side. I understand mostly where they were coming from because the "WoW" was in the U.I. for sure but really that's not a bad thing. Anyway, if you look at any screenshots and from my own personal opinion playing the game... it wasn't cartoony at all. A little stylized in some areas? A richer color palette than it's predecessors? absolutely... But jesus just because a game isn't on the complete end of the photo-realistic spectrum doesn't mean it jumped to the complete opposite end.

Put it this way; Even I concede that graphic style can be used as evidence of gameplay. I still think the concerns are moot because we already have countering evidence to suggest the game isn't being dumbed down.

The fact that Ed was given the lead and the game is retaining nearly every aspect of the full version of civ5 (gameplay-wise, not things like civ count) is pretty telling that they want to take what people finally considered was a complete game with BnW and make it something more, not less.

Gorbles said:

So what you're saying is if they change all the things you want changed in the way you wanted it changed, you might call it halfway tolerable?

I'd rather they not cater to such expectations, personally.

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I would indeed say that, if they changed the things I wanted changed in the way I wanted them changed, the game would be more tolerable to me personally. You genuinely wouldn't feel the same way if you thought there was a chance they might improve a feature you dislike?

King Jason said:

Except the that the concern generally isn't "I don't like the graphics" - it's "This game will suck - the graphics are evidence of that". Either way both are dismissable because not liking the graphics in general is just a tough beat - that's she style of the game. The second and clearly more discussed conplaint - that the graphics are indicative of a dumber game, is just rediculous. For reasons I've mentioned;

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Again, disliking the graphics is no more dismissable than liking them. It's personal taste, and it's equally valid to think the graphic design choices were extremely poor as is it to think they were fine.

King Jason said:

No. My view is that the graphics alone are not sufficient evidence to raise the concern that the game will be dumbed down - as evidenced by a previous installment. No one talked about civ5 being dumbed down because the graphics were too real - they talked about civ5 being dumbed down because of gameplay additions.

Considering you can have deep, rich, immersive gameplay with literally any graphic style you want - there is no correlation. There's evidence of this all over the gaming industry - the game Braid is regarded as one of the finest games ever and it looks like a NES game. World of Warcraft, regardless of your tastes, if at least arguably the greatest MMORPG ever made - it redifined the genre and all of it's story-driven content follows a very serious thread and tone of epic fantasy. Yet the graphics are cartoony and you can dance naked on the tavern bar or essentially play pokemon within the game world. Stardew valley is an incredibly rich gaming experience and it's another SNES styled graphics game where, I bet if it did have modern graphics, they would absolutely be cartoony.

You don't need one to have the other. Serious graphics does not equate to a rich gameplay experience, no more does cartoony graphics equate to a dumb one. Portal would have still been Portal if it looked like a lego game.

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King Jason said:

Put it this way; Even I concede that graphic style can be used as evidence of gameplay. I still think the concerns are moot because we already have countering evidence to suggest the game isn't being dumbed down.

The fact that Ed was given the lead and the game is retaining nearly every aspect of the full version of civ5 (gameplay-wise, not things like civ count) is pretty telling that they want to take what people finally considered was a complete game with BnW and make it something more, not less.

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I'm not necessarily disagreeing that there's not always a correlation between graphics and gameplay - to refer to one of the games you mentioned, I've played Stardew Valley and agree that the SNES graphics don't detract from the gameplay in the least. But people are saying that the cartoony graphics don't mean anything in regards what the gameplay will be like, which I strongly question. Again, Ed Beach is involved and it doesn't sound like there's too much to worry about in regards the game being stripped of features, but at the same time we can't know for sure that the game hasn't been dumbed down. It's too early to tell, and so the concerns are valid until at least October 21st. Until we've all played Civ VI, we won't know if the graphics are irrelevant or indicative of a greater effort to appeal to the mobile crowd, which will almost certainly involve dumbing down the game.

I'd also mention that saying "there's no link between graphic style and gameplay" while simultaneously saying that "graphic style can be used as evidence of gameplay" is probably not the best way to support an argument.

stiiknafuulia said:

I agreed with them to an extent (in a Diablo game I too care about the graphics); the graphics didn't stop me from playing the game, but they gave it a strange vibe that took away from the nebulous but crucial 'Diablo feel'.

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This pretty much sums up the reason there's still this stink-up going on. Regardless of any link between the graphics and gameplay features, the fact is that for many of us the cartoony graphics take away from the "Civ feel" - we're building a civilization here, not playing on our phones!

I'm a bit disappointed in the graphic style. Although I liked many gameplay elements from civ IV I always appreciated the grim realism feel of the civ V graphics. I really wish they would change how units and combat worked (I mean even civ IV had better combat animations and more realistic units) but I really enjoyed playing civ IV and am sure if CVI has good graphics I will enjoy playing it as well.

What i don't get is all the anger and conspiracy theories surrounding the graphics. The graphics represent simplified gameplay. Why did civ V have such simple gameplay (in vannila) then? Somehow people have become convinced that the graphics were created to attract (insert any demographic or type of gamer here who like 'simple' games or games the speaker does not like) and then Firaxis has gone through a tremendous amount of effort to cover this up and create and entire alternate story to cover it up. How does this make sense?