Dislike the direction CIV5 is taking? Tell us how you'd do it!

No Brian, Spearman got it right.

_hero_ said:

Ultimately what seems to have happened, is that Firaxis was pushed into making and releasing a game with rigid deadlines. Decisions were rushed. The game isn't messed up because any of the specific features are fundamentally flawed as some have suggested. It's messed up because ideas are still being thrown around as to how to fix the basic design.

"Good" gaming companies already have most of these issues resolved before the game even has a release date set. The problem is, IMO, that 2k is pushing Firaxis around. "Good" games get patched because things come up that weren't obvious after much testing. Most of Civ Vs flaws were blatantly obvious. So many "easy to catch" bugs were in the game upon release. That right there just proves the game wasn't ready to come out yet. When the game came out, it felt like an Alpha model. With all the patches so far, it feels like it's in mid-beta stage.

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Yep. I have said all along that 2K Games should get a lion's share of the blame for this debacle.

The game was released way, way, way too early. At least a year too early if not 2 years.

Greedy 2K Games had to get their fix in order to stave off bankruptcy and appease their shareholders.

It's the true Civ fans that suffer having been given a half baked iteration of a classic series.

The only way things are going to really change is if Firaxis escapes the gravity well of the black hole known as 2K Games.

Until then, expect more half arsed efforts and games.

That's not likely.

Even worse if they're owned by Activision. Then we could expect a "new" civilization every year! With brand-spanking new maps!!!!

pi-r8 said:

The complexity of a game is totally irrelevant to whether it's a good game, and also irrelevant to the depth of its strategy.

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I understand what you're getting at here (and you clarify the statement well with your further commentary), but this sentence is a bit inaccurate. In principle, a more complex game has the potential for deeper strategy. However, for that to obtain the complex game has to produce more non-obvious choices than the simple game.

The problem with this version of Civ as it stands is that so many choices are obvious. Luxury sales are a serious missed opportunity for a real choice, due to the existence of city-states. Sell a duplicate resource and a resource that you have a single copy of, and you can immediately cover the hit and pick up , or units. Ditto Research Agreements (badly undercosted and therefore always worthwhile).

The strength of Civ IV was the sheer volume of meaningful choices you had to make. Early city placement mattered a great deal and often produced tough choices. Whip every ten turns was a good rule of thumb, but it was not always correct and failure to recognize when it was an error was costly.

I agree with the sentiment that this game was not ready for release and that its failures in large part belong to the publisher. However, it had been five years between Civs and that's a sufficiently long development cycle that it's reasonable to expect better results than we got.

Bibor said:

How do you proceed?

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They have already started planning for the next generation of players ... by using the next generation of players themselves ...



More details can be found in this Development Thread

Thormodr said:

Yep. I have said all along that 2K Games should get a lion's share of the blame for this debacle.

The game was released way, way, way too early. At least a year too early if not 2 years.

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I don't agree to that assumption.

The main responsibility lies with Firaxis.

Even, if proper programming of the AI and finetuning of the game would have needed two additional years (that's actually something to which I would agree), I don't think that the distributor would cut the planned development time by 50%.
And even if they did (very unlikely), then Firaxis' responsibility would have been to release something which works, even if this would have meant to go back to many Civ4-subsystems.
But they chose to release the game in the state in which it was.

Simultaneously, they decided to postpone Civ:Facebook for more than one year!

That is something which most people don't take into consideration.

Yes, it may have been the case that they were confronted with an either-or situation, in which one of the two had to be released with only half a year left after release.
But it was Firaxis chosing to sacrifice Civ5 for the sake of Civ:Facebook, in other words a game of which it was clear it would generate some revenue was sacrificied for something of which nobody knows yet, how successful or not it may become.

Valkrionn said:

That's not likely.

Even worse if they're owned by Activision. Then we could expect a "new" civilization every year! With brand-spanking new maps!!!!

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Well, with the new achievements at Steam we may assume that new DLC is somewhere in the pipeline.
I don't see that much difference to you "Acticivion scenario", except that in that scenario we may assume a well-developed game.

r_rolo1 said:

You like them, but have to admit you don't need them for any pratical propose in game, and if you really wanted to know them IMHO those would probably fit better in the Civilopedia than in the diplo window, suposing OFC you have the resons stated fully in the diplo window, just not the numbers.

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I have to disagree still. It's definitely useful to know that declaring war drops relations by 4 and sharing religion improves them by 2. It's just much more information than just to know that declaring war weakens relations and sharing religion improves them, without knowing anything about quantities, and allows much better diplomacy planning. And I can't see a reason to hide that in Civilopedia as it's much quicker available if it is in diplo screen.

Activision own (or did own) the Call to Power games, so there could be a chance of having both franchises in development

Bibor said:

No Brian, Spearman got it right.

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Well then, why does the poll you posted (and nearly every post you put up on the issues for that matter)prove him wrong? Well this is the last I'll say on your issue. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

Brian Shanahan said:

Well then, why does the poll you posted (and nearly every post you put up on the issues for that matter)prove him wrong? Well this is the last I'll say on your issue. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

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Intelligence, age, education, eloquence are no guarantee for comprehension. That comes from another source - humility.

The problem is that critical posts like:

SpearMan153 said:

imo I dislike elements x,y,z of civ5 design/implementation
mistakes a,b,c resuling in h,j,k were made and doing l,m,n,o would have mitigated/avoided this
I like what such and such was aiming for but because of this and that it just doesn't quite work for me

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are almost always dismissed by Civ V defenders as:

SpearMan153 said:

the devs are complete morons who couldn't code their way out of wet paper bag, plus their evil and smell bad. Shafer is the anti-civ and all his ideas are rubish and he as ruined civ forever (plus he is evil and has a bad haircut) civ5 is a complete ruinious pile of stinking poo and every design decision was wrong and everything is coded wrong and there is absolutely nothing in it that any thinking person with an IQ above a cheese sandwich could remotely like and that it is so dumbed down that my senile cat could beat it on diety first game with one paw tied behind its back (provided he can stay awake because the game is so boring). Plus the publishes are $ hungry and perniciously evil and want to turn civ into farmville lite for more $ and steam and DLCs are naughty and kill little baby kittens just for fun.

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...regardless of how well the complaints are reasoned.

Many complaints about Civ5 are valid in their essence, but the rubbish that surrounds that essence! Ugh! Complaints need to be prompt and up-to-date, otherwise they just annoy. Like in Croatia - 16-year old kids (thus born well after the war) yelling "I hate Serbs". If you ask why - they don't know. They just do. No reason, never met a Serb, never had any personal issues with them. But they heard really bad stuff about them, apparently.

Thormodr said:

The only way things are going to really change is if Firaxis escapes the gravity well of the black hole known as 2K Games.

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That's a bit of an overshoot.

As much as i hated being enforced into a Steam layer (or relatively simple Updating by Patches & as it happens DLC profits to all), consolidation plans are "re-adjusting" the industry landscape continually.
You could even guess why; the more are sharing the loot the less focused development plans LEAD to flaws in both distribution & actual gameplay features.

EA, Activision, 2K (plus... everybody else!) are control freaks and would spit on *ANY* dev_studios if that's what it takes to fill the cash register for corporate agendas (as in shareholders yearly grab on bottom line results).
Sadly, the fundamental "idea" of pure gaming never supersedes financial interests.
Their loss.

Take the single owner decision (as in StarDock) for example -- Wardell doesn't have to answer to anyone but himself. If he succeeds (bang, done!), the risk is all his to undertake.

Thus, what am saying is this... Sid Meier should re_buy back the whole franchise (before it's too late, is it already?) and gain some trust that he could pull out the guts to shell Firaxis at decisions rather than other -quite frankly- silly concerns (pleasing 2K, etc). Become an Indie (again?) and anchors away, they're in for some real actions now ONLY for the TBS players -- their livelihood provider.
It doesn't matter how or why.

Cuz, long term - the whole Gaming Industry would simply collapse under greed & takeovers.
Blank screens on your PC, C:\ Prompt. Nothing to play, nothing to use, nothing to work with. You'd be stolen of property without your better judgment or awareness. Capitalized away straight off your hands by thieves meeting yearly for their usual lazy lives influx of a coordinated crime against society & population itself.

Karl Marx was right - work is an equation. Democratically calculated & distributed.
Products are simply the result.

Think, hard.

Zyxpsilon said:

Think, hard.

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I am thinking. It's too late. At least for the West.

The problem is - you can never have enough money, because there's so much stuff to buy. Why have one car when its so convenient to have three. Everything comes with a price tag now and the alternative (sects, religions) put even more scary tags on their products.

The first step would be to introduce taxes that scale with profits. Radically. This system wouldn't be without precedent. As a matter of fact this is in effect in several countries. That's the first step - "beat into" people that they cannot have everything no matter how much money their enterprise earns.

The profit motive should always be there. But a society without hard caps on profit is as bad as a system that eliminates profits entirely.

A person that earns 10.000 times more money than his own worker should never be able to pocket more than 10 of his workers do. He would still be far richer than his workers and could still invest the surplus.

Again (sorry), but you still fail at Statistics.

Progress is made of innovations, not proportions.
Patented proverb, here today.

It's not that Money isn't spent wisely, it's that the sharp gaps between rich/poor are creating a weird balance that simply isn't honest.
The mechanics allow for it. The pĥilosophical need for success *AND* personal pride are used as a justification to criminal intent as much as work paychecks raising.

In this world, you're either sufficating or abusively control the stacking pathway unilaterally.
Borrowing a life away isn't my idea of smart proportions.
Tax me or sue me for being alive but don't abuse your grasp over basics; food & shelter & liberty.

At 10$ an hour or more (here in Québec, btw), cuz someone deserves *IT*. Relatively, fairly, honestly, freely.

Zyxpsilon said:

Again (sorry), but you still fail at Statistics.

Progress is made of innovations, not proportions.
Patented proverb, here today.

It's not that Money isn't spent wisely, it's that the sharp gaps between rich/poor are creating a weird balance that simply isn't honest.

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Agreed. I stand corrected. So, your ideas for innovations? Innovations that won't get killed off by rich people that want to stay rich? Do tell

WHO = World Health Organization... already exists, right?
HT = Hagues Tribunal for war criminals... does a pretty decent job for specific Justice, right?
Then...
FFMO = Fiscal & Financial Monitoring Organization. At the absolute top of the Pyramid -- above all Governments, all Social devices, all Banking interests, all Fortunes or Escape Paradises, all Population demands & offers, all Justice systems, all Economic issues, all other considerations for any & every rational reasons.

Until poverty is finally wiped out the face of this planet.

Zyxpsilon said:

WHO = World Health Organization... already exists, right?
HT = Hagues Tribunal for war criminals... does a pretty decent job for specific Justice, right?
Then...
FFMO = Fiscal & Financial Monitoring Organization. At the absolute top of the Pyramid -- above all Governments, all Social devices, all Banking interests, all Fortunes or Escape Paradises, all Population demands & offers, all Justice systems, all Economic issues, all other considerations for any & every rational reasons.

Until poverty is finally wiped out the face of this planet.

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Pfft. Hague Tribunal. If all organizations you listed work like that, we're doomed
Its not the tribunals' fault, but the laws they must adhere to are ******ed.

I'd say Nurnberg trials > Hague trials! Hang except if proven completely innocent.

civ iv is not THAT complex. more complex games exists

No, i guess you didn't detect that i was hinting on something that already exists but doesn't have enough "Influence or Decision Powers" to make a dent where it's needed the most, urgently.
WBO.
The rich would continue to STAY rich... but "irregularities" of a criminal nature would be eliminated altogether.
Insane as it seems, put a limit to abuse and the disproportional factors will fade into oblivion.

Example; Professional Sports in North-America.

Can you honestly say that anyone should earn 25+Million$/per year to throw, catch or run after footballs in 16 games that last about 3 hours?
Talented or spectacular as it may seems to the populace.
We're crazy to let such stuff happen when children starve in developping countries and when Unemployment Rates are anywhere above 0% all over the Globe.

WBO is just a gimmick to protect Forbes' list of high-roller players as well, but in the money stacking game that kills rather than entertains.