ezwip
Prince
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2006
- Messages
- 389
People were way too hard on the OP and review. Is it that inconceivable that people could actually like the game?
Yes, it is. If you like purdy pictures I can send you a screen saver.
People were way too hard on the OP and review. Is it that inconceivable that people could actually like the game?
People were way too hard on the OP and review. Is it that inconceivable that people could actually like the game?
The review did mention the crummy AI btw.
And for the record, I'm not agreeing fully with what I wrote, I'm just doing the devil's advocate thing.
As for my disclosure I have played the early game, but I have not bought the game yet. I got bored in the early game. The lack of tension really is a downer for me. Which is funny as sometimes I felt Civ4 had too much tension. But now I realize that's what made the game great.
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. [...] 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.
Has the game sold that well? I'm curious what the numbers are. I actually don't want the game to sell well. Then Firaxis will realize their design philosophy was not right. But if it has sold that well, then we have to conclude dumbing down games does increase sales. Which means the expansions won't be any better...
What you said scares me. You and I are no longer the target audience. Am I that old now? I miss it when games were designed to appeal to me.
To be honest, I can't see how young people could enjoy the game any more than us old fogeys. Do they enjoy a game with little challenge?
Perhaps the builder simply plays more FOR the journey than the win --
War was the challenge, the limiting factor to what I found to be the "fun" part of Civilization.... I enjoyed a variety of resource types which had a variety of uses and yields and building the infrastructure on them. I enjoyed multi-purpose buildings and figuring the cost/benefit of OOBs. I enjoyed using diplomacy to cultivate AI relations, sometimes in a quite machiavellian manner, to create buffers against potential attackers. I enjoyed spreading religions and configuring civics throughout the game to best suit the state of the empire and what I needed to accomplish.
"Winning" wasn't the end goal -- the end goal was to do precisely those things. As I said, war was the challenge and the limiting factor -- I couldn't just do those things, there was a need to defend and be able to defend one's self. In some cases, that even meant going on the offensive or cementing AI relationships by coming to their aid in war.
In V -- most of that fun is gone... tile improvements and resources were intentionally simplified and variety reduced. Buildings were made more costly and single dimensional. Diplomacy has been reduced to 'trading'.
Everything in V is locked into single swimlanes... going for the pink spaceship? Then build cultural buildings and pick pink sciences that boost pink science output. Going for the blue spaceship? Build science buildings and pick pink sciences that boost blue science output. There's no point in crossing into other swimlanes - it's too obviously counterproductive.
To the warmonger, perhaps there's some joy in tinkering with what are secondary things -- be they 'mildly amusing baubles' while I wait to build more horseman or 'necessary annoyances' while I build more horseman.
To the builder - they don't even rise to the level of mildly amusing baubles.... They're just occasional breaks in 25-30 Next Turn wastelands.
I've read that the game has sold over 9 million units.
I believe that the 9 million was the sales figures for Civs I through IV.
I've read that the game has sold over 9 million units. That would seem to indicate very good sales, indeed, but I wouldn't conclude that expansions are likely to be poor, that the AI will remain unfixed, or diplomatic feedback so opaque. The last two are likely to be dealt with in patches, and the expansions might add depth to bring in older players.
Or, they might not. I would only suggest people read what each expansion actually includes, and then the remarks of users who buy them, before going that route, too.
What happened is that the arcade/shooter crowd grew up, and the franchises built around RPGs or strategy decided they wanted a piece of that much larger action. It explains on the one hand why Oblivion was so dumbed down after Morrowind, and on the other, why Civ V is so "streamlined" (to use the developers' own term) after Civ IV. I only wish that Firaxis had farmed out the Civ franchise to two different developers, so we could have had our Civ V, and those who wanted a less complex game could have had that, too. But I suspect they weren't willing to take the financial risk, which is understandable. Shame, though: sucks to be us.
Remember what kind of thing they used to play. For its target audience, Civ V represents a strategic challenge. It's really entry level strategy, as we see it, but there's nothing wrong with that. The only fault, if there is one, lies in not letting us know what was going on. The anger you're seeing here is comparable to that Origin Systems suffered when Ultima IX first appeared, after Richard Garriott hyped it up as a model RPG. It turned out to be a very linear action game with some RPG elements, and fans of the series howled. They felt betrayed. I suspect the reaction to Civ V in some quarters is like that as well, but the developers are insulated from the screams by the sound of all that money rolling in.
May I suggest Europa Universalis III as a good game to check out? Turn-based, very different in many respects from the Civ series, but well worth a look.
Roxlimn, and you are somehow...surprised that long time fans are upset about this?Soro:
Pardon my impertinence, but wasn't it clear from the get go that they wanted to reboot the franchise and head somewhere distinctly away from Civ IV?
Has the game sold that well? I'm curious what the numbers are. I actually don't want the game to sell well. Then Firaxis will realize their design philosophy was not right. But if it has sold that well, then we have to conclude dumbing down games does increase sales. Which means the expansions won't be any better...
What you said scares me. You and I are no longer the target audience. Am I that old now? I miss it when games were designed to appeal to me.
To be honest, I can't see how young people could enjoy the game any more than us old fogeys. Do they enjoy a game with little challenge? I guess it's to be expected. Schools have been dumbed down too. It's almost impossible to flunk out of school anymore (unless you don't show up). Nothing is more satisfying to me than overcoming a challenge. This is why civ4 is fun and civ5 is not. It has nothing to do with 1upt or hexes. It has to deal with one game being more challenging and filled with tension (tension being created by more meaningful choices and negative outcomes of these choices). I'm hoping Firaxis will wake up and realize what makes a game "fun". But if the game is selling well, that means Firaxis is right, and we're SOL.
I'm not surprised that people who liked Civ IV would not like Civ V. I am kind of surprised that they bought the game and are here complaining about having bought the game. I mean, wasn't it obvious from the demo that there was no religion and no espionage? What were they thinking?