Firaxis; who do you actually make a Civilization games for?

danaphanous said:

real antisocial Star Wars fans wait a couple weeks for the theaters to be less crowded and avoid spoilers in the meantime. Not that I'd know, I was there opening night.

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Picture it: Santa Barbara. 1999. It was me. And four hundred of my closest friends. In line. We made the local news, being first for Star Wars episode one.

Then I found out about jar jar binks. I think maybe that's the feeling the OP was getting at. And like an idiot who preorders beyond earth, I found myself in line for episodes two and three. "Maybe it will be different this time."

They aren't taking your food money, buying the game means you had the disposable income to begin with, it's not like you were either gonna pay $60 on Civ or donate it to a kidney fund. The money argument, the argument that Firaxis is cheating you or stealing your money, is rather moot, because clearly you have made the decision to purchase the game yourself; they didn't steal $60 of food off your table.

And you'll always find something to complain about even if they do fix whatever it is you dislike now. Your perspective, which is, "This game sucks and isn't getting enough attention" can be disputed by the fact that it's one of the highest rated, most financially successful strategy games in recent time when counting the further developments. CiV Vanilla wasn't perfect, and you complained, and then they spent lots of time making G&K, and it wasn't perfect, and you complained because they made you pay for the time they spent making G&K because you somehow felt you were entitled to a perfect product to begin with. Repeat for BNW.

And besides, it isn't like they ignore the game until the next installment is completed, there are frequent patches to the game that definitely took time that they're giving you for free. The game was fine after Vanilla, at least from their point of view: it had new mechanics that built on the old, adding up to a perfectly enjoyable and entertaining game, well worth whatever minute amount of already disposable income. Then after receiving feedback G&K was released, and it was also well worth however much disposable income that we all chose to pay. Sure, ideally we wouldn't have to pay, but the world is dominated by an economic system in which people require payment for their spent time in order to live. And yes, surely they were planning on releasing an expansion that would be paid for anyway, but that's because people need money for their time. It was a project, and with both of the expansions they were products worth paying for with surplus income.
Complaining that the form of entertainment you chose to funnel your disposable income into wasn't perfect doesn't make any sense. Complaining they continued to do their job as game developers doesn't make any sense. Of course you paid money, that's how this works, you pay them money for the finished product if you want to buy it. If they spend time improving it at your request, then yes, they will charge you.
Sure, the prequels sucked, but walking out and demanding a refund doesn't make any sense; you chose to spend the money needed to buy the tickets, and it probably wasn't a life or death choice.

The fact that the development team need to be paid their salaries and the fact that the purchase is made with disposable income and the fact that a great many people are satisfied customers does not excuse the fact that after half a decade the defective game engine is still cooking graphics cards, the AI will break any defensive position to capture a Missionary, patrolling of trade routes requires constant manual micromanagement with no option to assign escorts, and the pathfinding is abysmal. Show me how many of those satisfied customers have performed an intercontinental invasion without getting so bored of having to manually resolve a dozen naval traffic jams every turn they just give up and start a new game for the compulsive endorphin rush of the early discovery phase and little pink and white icons upon getting a good pantheon.

I mean, hell, I'm an artist by trade, and if I tell someone I'll do a sketch for £30, inks for £30, and colour for £30, I don't hand them a disproportioned mess and tell them I'd correct my obvious errors but I've got another project on and anyway it's not like the picture is something important like food. I finish the ruddy job. If you're saying you're doing an AAA strategy game, you don't release an AI that makes line units go for a swim in range of hostile gunners it can see. And if you're making an immersive, attractive game, you don't have your painstakingly crafted leaderheads call in multiplayer via SMS. I mean, you CAN, but you can forget it if you think I'm going to pay to be your beta tester next time.

Look at Civ Rev II. Numerous game-killing bugs and the updates just add a new leader and a useless 50 hammer Wonder to make Rome's Cultural victory more unbalanced. I know it's not part of the main Civ series, but it demonstrates how the series is now wielded as a battered, rusty, money Hoover with every single professional standard weighed up as a liability to be minimised to the cheapest level possible.

To answer the question of this post, they made this game for players like me who have never played a Civ game prior to this. I love Civ 5, being the first one I've ever played. After watching a friend play it, I thought it looked really cool and got it as soon as I was able to. Vanilla was pretty good, albeit the end game felt a bit empty, but the rest was solid. I bought BNW before G&K, so it felt more like I was getting additional civs, but I was fine with that. I really loved BNW, as it touched up culture (I play Japan when not using mods), and the trade routes made the economy feel a bit more dynamic.

I have played Civ 4 (prior to getting G&K/BNW for Civ 5, so I was comparing base version vs base version), and I think it's alright. Unlike 5, I avoided building wonders except the pyramids with a passion as I felt it was ultimately pointless if they were just going to be obsoleted a few techs later. I also felt the unit movement was slow, and there were many turns where nothing happened. In my first game I lost my second city because I didn't know that cities can't protect themselves, and that barbarians could capture cities. xD I never did have a bad experience with unit stacking, but I did find it a bit cumbersome to use. I felt religion was awkward and I hated waiting to get Environmentalism just so my cities could stop being green.

However, just because I have a gripes on Civ 4, it doesn't mean that it has things I actually do love. Seeing predators roaming around in the wild made the game feel more dynamic and alive, as it wasn't just some barbarians against you but also mother nature herself in the early game. In fact, just the concept of barbarians being able to steal my cities was neat. Map and Technology trading was another thing I found pretty cool and also found weird as to why they weren't in Civ 5. "What's that? We both have a tech that the other would like? Well let's trade then!" "Howdy there, Christopher Columbus! I agree, trading our knowledge of the lands does sound like a good idea!" I also liked that each civ got multiple leaders, each with their own unique traits.

In short, I'm glad they made Civ 5 with new players in mind. I may be a youngster when it comes to Civilization, but I'm by no means a strategy casual. I may not play as much as when I first got civ 5, but I can still find myself binge playing whenever I feel like it. I often have a play style of minding to myself and focusing on culture and infrastructure, but as a imperialistic Rome in the middle ages found out in my first game, I finish what was started (One war turned me from a simple 4 city nation into a sprawling world power.

As long as they refine the systems they used in Civ 5, and maybe even bringing back predator animals, city-conquering barbarians, and map/tech trading, I will definitely be looking forward to Civ VI.

Also to be clear, I did try Civ Rev 2, and I feel that it is someone who smashed up a disc of Civ 4, duct taped the shards back together, and called it a new game. (I am not calling Civ 4 a bad game, in fact it would my second choice if Civ 5 stopped working. What I am saying is that Civ Rev 2 is a watered down product of a fine wine called Civ 4).

It sounds like you have very specific gripes with small issues that have happened a few times and had no effect on the overall gameplay. If you're the kind of person who decides CiV is ridiculously unplayable and who demands a refund because you have to manually manage an escort to your trade unit, or because of some minor problem with the graphics, then you'll never be satisfied with any civ game. It's rather ridiculous to complain about every single tiny flaw in a game which you overall enjoy; it's like calling a movie unwatchable because of a continuity error.

Wake me up when VI is announced.

As of Friday I'll be playing Master of Orion until VI is out.

lindsay40k said:

The fact that the development team need to be paid their salaries and the fact that the purchase is made with disposable income and the fact that a great many people are satisfied customers does not excuse the fact that after half a decade the defective game engine is still cooking graphics cards,

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I'm gonna need a source on this, because I'm gonna go ahead and guess the hardware in question is unsupported.

No game aimed towards the hardcore players here will make money, and I'd imagine that Firaxis are happy with a small percentage buying the game and complaining about it as long as it has wider appeal to more casual strategy games.

meatpardle said:

No game aimed towards the hardcore players here will make money, and I'd imagine that Firaxis are happy with a small percentage buying the game and complaining about it as long as it has wider appeal to more casual strategy games.

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I agree this is probably their attitude, however, it would have been nice if Deity level had been better designed. They claim only the "best players in the world can beat it!" so you except something phenomenal, but it's just immortal with more bonuses. It would've cost more money but a switch that activates smarter AI play on immortal/Deity would have been a nice investment for them to program and I imagine they could do it and keep both groups of players happy. What I would have done would be to program AI strategies and tactics that only turn on at higher difficulties. They wouldn't be smarter but at least they'd look different in the way they played with the new/better strats. Such as programming them to tech more optimally and use GP's better, planting them before a certain turn number or output and bulbing them after. Recognizing archaelogy as something to rush if they are cultural. Making them target winning players more aggressively with alliances end-game and also making them not take stupid deals like buying random cities in the ice, being less bribable to attack each other and more focused on taking down the winner. It would make for an amazing Deity level game. I'm not familiar with Civ V code but I can think of ways to specify all this using C# or the other languages I know. Apparently many mods already do stuff like this, but I think for the sake of the diverse community the mods should only activate at immortal or deity level or the "smartness" be on a slider with difficulty. This would have made all players happier.

danaphanous said:

I agree this is probably their attitude, however, it would have been nice if Deity level had been better designed. They claim only the "best players in the world can beat it!" so you except something phenomenal, but it's just immortal with more bonuses.

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And yet, unless you're cheesing it (duel maps, etc), it does actually live up to that criteria.

Just because the best players in the world congregate on these forums doesn't make that statement untrue.

Maybe that's true. But it did not require that much help or even that many games for me to win my first Deity. And I don't consider myself one of "the best" having seen the way some players on here micro and optimize every facet of the game. I just play, attempt to build a strong, well-rounded empire, and end up winning. Most of my style is just stuff I picked up as I played, so my experience says the game is not that hard if I could be beating Deity in just 15 games or so. Deity was stressful and required me to play a little dirty with the AI such as stealing their workers early so their advantages would become mine, but with the current AI stupidity it is easy to turn their advantages to your own and I won my first try.

Hence my statement that Deity is just a compilation of discounts and headstarts. It looked intimidating that first game but I still won and after playing it and knowing all their advantages it is quite easy to turn that into your own.

- AI gets gold discounts? Trade away half your resources and your luxes for gpt.
- AI loves to war with religions? Let them and plant your prophet if you get one so you can buy all the buildings and perks.
- AI loves to attack people? Give you neighbors wars to fight that aren't with you.
- AI gets free workers? steal them before they have the military to take your capital.
- AI gets free techs and 2 cities? You can't stop them claiming the best secondary city spots and sometimes even forward settling you, but catching up in science is not even that hard with good empire management and the help of running max trade routes. I'm usually forced to play tall rather than my usual wide immortal playstyle though due to the extra city bonuses.

I will thank some forum comments I saw for teaching me a couple things though. They made me realize you can get 2 gpt if you sell resources one at a time which I'd not figured out (was doing it in bulk by myself though I'd already decided on selling on my own) and I'd also not thought of worker stealing. Some people were also helpful enough to explain ideological pressure to me as well as it was a bit confusing at first. I basically had to go with the flow because I messed up on Deity but it worked out. I think my first Deity game I stole 2-3 workers from my neighbor and he ended up weak as a result and eventually wiped out by other civs. Was sad when he went though as I was the next weakest and became the new target. Deity taught me to keep my military score a bit higher lol and I was fighting nonstop wars the last 20 turns of the game before launching the spaceship. I won fair and square against Sejong as well with a peaceful launch. I've heard it can get even cheesier with some players nuking to win SV on Deity but It's never been that close for me.

Chum said:

I'm gonna need a source on (graphics bug), because I'm gonna go ahead and guess the hardware in question is unsupported.

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I recall reading discussions about a VSYNC bug but Google is not finding them, sorry

meatpardle said:

No game aimed towards the hardcore players here will make money, and I'd imagine that Firaxis are happy with a small percentage buying the game and complaining about it as long as it has wider appeal to more casual strategy games.

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You can do both. Many fighting games routinely cater to both button-bashing scrubs and to the tournament scene - casual gamers might feel content to master the thumb gymnastics to pull a Shoryuken, without ever knowing about the years of balancing that's given Zangief an effective counter-strategy to DP spam.

Hell, despite the company losing market cap, Nintendo put out a patch for Mario Kart 7, a game largely distributed on read-only cartridges, just to close down an exploit that got past testers. It's called customer confidence, and it's something that's not easily measured from a buy-to-play title without a subscription model. I can anecdotally say that a lot of the casual gamers I know have not shown the sustained interest and product confidence to buy all the DLC, which is not an ideal sign for Civ VI's return sales.

I can add that anyone whose introduction is Civ Rev II is probably not coming back after they crash the game by bulbing and get their refund from Apple for being miss-sold unfinished shovelware.

The argument here has shifted from it's a waste of money to its a waste of money because it's unfinished, and I want to stress this point also is rather nonsensical, unless there's some other unknown definition of the term unfinished.
The game looked fine, and this is in fact vanilla I'm talking about. It had a clear early game, mid game, and late game. There were compelling and entertaining strategic points and it had something different from IV to offer. In future expansions, it was improved on, but that doesn't mean it was incomplete beforehand. You're an artist, and you're probably proud of your work; imagine if you completed a commisioned project and it was complete and well made and had every element required, with proper coloring and inking and sketching and all, and then its commissioner tried to tell you it was unfinished, or that they wanted a refund back. They paid you for a specific product, and you completed the product, every required element was present.

inthesomeday said:

The argument here has shifted from it's a waste of money to its a waste of money because it's unfinished, and I want to stress this point also is rather nonsensical, unless there's some other unknown definition of the term unfinished.
The game looked fine, and this is in fact vanilla I'm talking about. It had a clear early game, mid game, and late game. There were compelling and entertaining strategic points and it had something different from IV to offer. In future expansions, it was improved on, but that doesn't mean it was incomplete beforehand. You're an artist, and you're probably proud of your work; imagine if you completed a commisioned project and it was complete and well made and had every element required, with proper coloring and inking and sketching and all, and then its commissioner tried to tell you it was unfinished, or that they wanted a refund back. They paid you for a specific product, and you completed the product, every required element was present.

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I think DLC encourages people to accuse games of not being finished.

About AI personality, I've seen a lot of ppl complain they are unfair/petty or poorly tuned, But before I joined this community I actually came to like this as it made the AI seem a little more human the way they were petty, cared about politics and friends more, and had ideologies they split over. They were not nearly as predictable or robotic in behavior as the Civ III or IV AI. My habit from the previous civs was to basically ignore the AI until I needed something from them and expand till I crushed them in tech which made wars easy. But in Civ V they rushed early, got jealous of my land, hated my religions, and generally didn't behave as I expected and I couldn't make friends. I realized after a few games though that no, the AI act more like humans in this way. Humans are jealous of land, invade randomly, care about religions and ideologies, carry grudges that don't wear off predictably or in set turns, etc. And I had to play politics a LOT more and keep up relations rather than just ticking off a small list periodically like in previous civ games. In fact I had to get them at war with each other and fight on sides to make friends some games otherwise the AI inevitably hated my REX playstyle and forward-settling which I was used too from Civ III & IV. But again, this is good as it makes you have to play politics a bit more.

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I've started reading this with the thought in mind that I really prefer Civ 4 diplomatic consistent system over one in Civ 5, which is based around multitude of weighting factors, which make Civ 5 AI look unpredictable (random) in their diplomatic decisions.

But reading the above made me to rethink it all again. I kind of knew what you said, but now I thought that actually your point of view makes a lot of sense. I was craving all this time for the consistent diplomatic game with AIs, making alliances, long term friendships, etc. to the point that I haven't paid enough attention to the political games you can play with in Civ 5. Sure, it still feels not "quite right", when AI with one city (even a big one) denounces me, when I have 7-8 cities... But you might decide to consider it as that specific AI thought that it can get away with it, since other AIs might defend it from me...

So, I am willing to reconsider that specific complain with Civ 5 I had for years. And Thanks for your post to help me on that road. I'm still hopeful though that for Civ 6 the multi-weight diplomatic system will be more intelligent and consistent

The original point was who do Firaxis make Civilization games for. To which, given the declining professional standards of the franchise, I would have to say they make them for company interests that are primarily interested in quick profits.

I wouldn't say any of them are a waste of money, except for Civ Rev II. Imagine any other AAA franchise putting its name to that. It's as if Nintendo put out a Mario game where Mushrooms have a 25% chance of crashing the console. And every update adds another couple of levels but does not bother to correct the game-killing bug. You wouldn't be interested in whether or not a design project could ever be said to be truly finished. You'd want your money back, and you'd distrust the company from then on. I'm certainly not going to touch Civ VI with a bargepole until a free weekend or humble bundle. I'm sure the maps will be beautiful and I'm sure there'll be plenty of new players drawn in by them, but I'm not one of them.

To stretch the artist analogy to breaking point, Civ V is a lovely picture that's only half varnished, with something that stinks of rotten fish guts. Civ BE is the same, but the subject of the picture is grotesque aliens that even the people who appreciate their disturbing aesthetic are bored of looking at every game. Civ Rev II is faeces smeared on a canvas, by a team of skilled artists who are capable of great works, but whenever they are asked to improve the work it is only to finger-paint a likeness of Taizong, and never given a brief to varnish the painting.

What is Civ Rev II?

Strange post. Guess I am an almost 55 year old kid. I enjoyed Vanilla, I enjoyed G&K and I enjoy BNW, those are hardly what I'd call not supporting the game. Sure there are things I wish they would fix, but that's pretty much true of any game. At this point I'd rather they put their effort into VI making it better and hopefully addressing some of the shortcomings of V while making it new. Now BE was a bit of a let down and RT helped some, but oh well not everyone is going to like everything. Now what I won't do anymore, after being burned a couple of times, is pre-release purchases of any game from any publisher, that I agree with...but then I tend to wait until things get cheap so that if I'm disappointed it doesn't matter much and if I like it then I got a super bargain.

Recently picked up Alice Madness Returns for $5 and being an older game my hardware can play it maxed out while barely getting warm, I have mixed feelings, and for $60 I would have been upset, for $5 well I've already got my monies worth.