Crispy Review of Civ V

vandyr said:
Basically, the gist I got from this thread is that, since the reviewer didn't bash the game, its not a good review.
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No, he was evasive about who did the review in the first place; he didn't respond to actual issues in gameplay identified by critics; and he adopted sweeping and dismissive approaches to anyone who didn't like the game.

For someone to post such a review, after players here have uncovered some major game flaws, and not to mention them at all - that's just shoddy reviewing practice. I can understand why someone with an advance copy might not hit on ICS, for example, but if you're going to wait a month after release you need to include new information.
 
ohioastronomy said:
No, he was evasive about who did the review in the first place;
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Who cares. This is some nitpicky crap used as a reason to bash the guy because you dont' agree with his review. If he had bashed Civ 5 nine ways from sunday, you wouldn't care at all about that little tidbit.

he didn't respond to actual issues in gameplay identified by critics; and he adopted sweeping and dismissive approaches to anyone who didn't like the game.
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Because all reviews are personal opinion, and as for the last part, sounds astoundingly similar to how the rest of you treat people that DO like the game.
 
stethnorun said:
You're telling me. Though I must say, this is by far the worst (least mature) reaction I've ever gotten from any forum, on any game I've covered. I was a member of this forum for a while before Civ 5 even came out but I think this experience has really put a bad taste in my mouth. It's a sad day when the people on Gamefaqs come out looking more mature. Anyway, thanks to those of you who spent the time and effort reading, and better yet, debating in an intelligent way. Think I'll be moving on.
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Well, I think if you put it all on "them" and don't look at the "me," you're not really learning much from the experience.

While I'm not going to defend the more exaggerated negative reactions you got in this thread, you have to admit that you were less than up-front about your authorship, and that probably didn't help your cause from the start. You also quickly sank to the same level as your "opponents" rather than engaging them from a professional standpoint, which likely didn't help the reaction either.

So I don't think it's as easy as "CFC is immature and GameFaqs is awesome." That sweeps your own mistakes under the rug, much like your review sweeps Civ 5's flaws under the rug. :) I think you'll become a better reviewer by engaging criticism more deliberately, and getting practice taking on negative feedback will help develop the thick skin you need write and present this kind of piece.

I hope this doesn't sound too harsh. I commend the effort and the writing even if I disagree with the opinions. :)
 
vandyr said:
That's because most 'problems' are merely opinions. Take a wander through the forums and see how each complaint is matched by a mirror complaint on the opposite end of the spectrum. The only problem I personally have with Civ 5 is the shoddy AI, so to me, all of these reviews that go out of their way to bash Civ 5 are bad reviews.
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Shoddy AI is not an opinion, that's an established fact :). Did you try the ICS strat ? If you didn't, you might want not to, it could change your opinion of the game ;)
 
Zogar said:
Shoddy AI is not an opinion, that's an established fact :). Did you try the ICS strat ? If you didn't, you might want not to, it could change your opinion of the game ;)
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Nah, I"m a small empire kinda guy :king:
 
Hahaha!
This review is amazing!
:lol::lol::lol::lol:

Somebody can actually enjoy game that is so broken.
:crazyeye:

The AI can't even win different VC's and even that solely ruins the whole gaming experience. Not even going for those hundreds of other reasons why not play this game ATM.
:mischief:
And I don't even care about ICS'n.
 
PieceOfMind said:
fantsu, some complain that the AI does play to win, some complain that it doesn't.
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Which I think we can attribute to people generalizing the action of the AI by using the said phrase.

The people who complain that it is playing to win are generally those who prefer a role play type AI.. the civs play as leaders of nations not players of the game.

On the other hand are the people who like the idea of playing to win as a concept but find that the actions of the AI don't always further its goal of doing so, either going for a victory type thats less viable than one of its other options or ignoring the basic mechanics of a victory type (Bribing CS for diplo for instance).

Point is they aren't entirely opposing concepts so much as different views on how the concept effects game play.
 
Fistalis:

I think the main point there is that many complaints about Civ V now are about the exact same issues, by different players, but they are voicing directly conflicting criticisms!

For instance, ohioastronomy clearly knows something about ICS, but I don't know that really knows that much about it, nor why he considers it a game flaw. All Civs but IV allowed ICS, and even IV allows limited versions of ICS. Civ V ICS doesn't actually start looking like ICS until you're well into the game. At the beginning, it just looks like good old REXing, which was absolutely possible in IV.
 
Roxlimn said:
Fistalis:

I think the main point there is that many complaints about Civ V now are about the exact same issues, by different players, but they are voicing directly conflicting criticisms!
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Which is true for some issues and to be expected to some extent since not everyone has the same idea of what a civ game should be.

My point is that some (of course not all) of the seemingly contradictory complaints are not really contradictory when you read them in context rather than one statement complaints. The fact that many people attempt to simplify their complaints into catchy general phrases makes the entire issue worse.
 
Fistalis:

I don't know of any seemingly contradictory series of complaints that aren't actually contradictory. Some feel that happiness is too constraining - that it unnecessarily promotes Civs with less cities. On the other hand, we have other people complaining about ICS. Clearly, they can't both be right. AIs are simultaneously too aggressive and not aggressive enough.

It's one part people complaining about things which just are (and thus they would have complained no matter what) and one part some players not knowing anything about what they're talking about.

It's not really about Civ V at that point. They're comparing Civ V to some mythical game that was supposed to be better than Civ IV BTS in every way, even though many people also had contradicting opinions about that game as well.
 
Roxlimn said:
Fistalis:

I don't know of any seemingly contradictory series of complaints that aren't actually contradictory. Some feel that happiness is too constraining - that it unnecessarily promotes Civs with less cities. On the other hand, we have other people complaining about ICS. Clearly, they can't both be right. AIs are simultaneously too aggressive and not aggressive enough.

It's one part people complaining about things which just are (and thus they would have complained no matter what) and one part some players not knowing anything about what they're talking about.

It's not really about Civ V at that point. They're comparing Civ V to some mythical game that was supposed to be better than Civ IV BTS in every way, even though many people also had contradicting opinions about that game as well.
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I would suggest you reread my original comments pertaining to "The AI plays to win" vs "The AI doesnt play to win". They are actually 2 different complaints that when simplified to one statement complaints seem contradictory. No need for me to repeat posts but i'm sure you could understand that simply by use of limited phrasing its easy to make totally unrelated issues seem contradictory.
When put in proper context the actual complaints should more resemble "The AI doesn't seem to represent another nation" and " The AI isn't doing everything it can to win". One complaint is about the design decision to make it play to win. The other is a complaint that the AI isn't doing as much as it could in order to win. So a person could easily make both arguments.
 
PieceOfMind said:
fantsu, some complain that the AI does play to win, some complain that it doesn't.
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Not quite --

I don't like that it plays to win... but I HATE that it's not very good at playing to win!

I hate what it does, but even accepting what it does -- it sucks at what it does.
 
Roxlimn said:
Fistalis:

I don't know of any seemingly contradictory series of complaints that aren't actually contradictory. Some feel that happiness is too constraining - that it unnecessarily promotes Civs with less cities. On the other hand, we have other people complaining about ICS. Clearly, they can't both be right. AIs are simultaneously too aggressive and not aggressive enough.

It's one part people complaining about things which just are (and thus they would have complained no matter what) and one part some players not knowing anything about what they're talking about.

It's not really about Civ V at that point. They're comparing Civ V to some mythical game that was supposed to be better than Civ IV BTS in every way, even though many people also had contradicting opinions about that game as well.
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No,

The global happiness approach is poor design from multiple viewpoints. You get a flat amount of happiness from luxuries, the game start, etc. I say it is too constraining on large maps and too generous on small maps. Is that a contradiction to you? Not if you step back and think about it: the criticism is that it doesn't scale intelligently. Your mysterious contradictions tend to disappear when you step back and try to understand what people are actually saying - as opposed to what some of the defenders of the game appear to focus on, namely trying to score debating points and convince people that they're wrong to dislike the design of a game.

We don't have to compare it to some mythical game: we could compare it to any of the previous games in the series, for example, or to other games in the same genre. And we can notice a lot of fundamental choices which, in numerous threads, have been documented as being poorly conceived or poorly implemented.
 
ohioastronomy said:
The global happiness approach is poor design from multiple viewpoints. You get a flat amount of happiness from luxuries, the game start, etc. I say it is too constraining on large maps and too generous on small maps. Is that a contradiction to you? Not if you step back and think about it: the criticism is that it doesn't scale intelligently. Your mysterious contradictions tend to disappear when you step back and try to understand what people are actually saying - as opposed to what some of the defenders of the game appear to focus on, namely trying to score debating points and convince people that they're wrong to dislike the design of a game.
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Not at all. As in here, you start with an assumption that the global happiness is poor design, but don't support that with actual argumentation - you just state it and then elaborate by saying that it is too constraining on large maps and too generous on small maps, even though all the time, all the Civs are playing by similar rules.

I have seen a large map game where a players had amassed so many size 30 cities that his size 20+ cities were off the bottom of the list. What's that? 11, 12 cities? Clearly, happiness was not a problem there.

I contend that you are presupposing that the design is bad, and are now looking for ways that it's bad, rather than looking at the design dispassionately. If otherwise, then if I defeat your arguments for bad design, then you should reply with a response that the design is not bad after all.
 
I contend that you're incapable of objectively addressing criticism of the game and fond of injecting irrelevant anecdotes into discussions. If you think that 75 happiness from luxuries on both duel and huge maps is a great idea, with no balance consequences, you're entitled to be stubborn if you so choose. But you're not entitled to have anyone take you seriously, and at this point your reflexive defenses of every foolish feature in the game have robbed you of any credibilty whatsoever.
 
ohioastronomy said:
I contend that you're incapable of objectively addressing criticism of the game and fond of injecting irrelevant anecdotes into discussions. If you think that 75 happiness from luxuries on both duel and huge maps is a great idea, with no balance consequences, you're entitled to be stubborn if you so choose. But you're not entitled to have anyone take you seriously, and at this point your reflexive defenses of every foolish feature in the game have robbed you of any credibilty whatsoever.
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If you think that a blanket 75 happiness for playing any Civ on variable maps has balance issues, then let's hear the reasoning. Is it nebulous, hard, long, or isn't there any? What about for standard maps? Is this a bad design decision on just alternate settings, then?
 
ohioastronomy said:
I contend that you're incapable of objectively addressing criticism of the game and fond of injecting irrelevant anecdotes into discussions. If you think that 75 happiness from luxuries on both duel and huge maps is a great idea, with no balance consequences, you're entitled to be stubborn if you so choose. But you're not entitled to have anyone take you seriously, and at this point your reflexive defenses of every foolish feature in the game have robbed you of any credibilty whatsoever.
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Well said, I couldn't agree more.
 
Yes, because I clearly have defended Civ V's combat AI, repeatedly calling it "good" and "praiseworthy" at every turn.

Use more facts, guys. Better yet, stop talking about me. It's flattering, but this is the Civ V forums.
 
People were way too hard on the OP and review. Is it that inconceivable that people could actually like the game?

Not everyone is a hardcore gamer and plays Diety level Civ4. Some people are entertained by pretty colors with no challenge. How else can you explain the popularity of the Sims series? It's the same thing. No challenge, but you get to build up a pretty good looking household. Civ5 is just on a larger scale than the Sims and you get to wage wars with no threat of losing. Not everyone plays strategy games for the challenge. That's my point. There are people who genuinely think civ5 is a great game. And they aren't wrong. Because for them it is a great game.
 
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