CanuckSoldier
Emperor
You must have been playing a non-league game. No one on the league takes that long on single turns until much later in the game and then only when they are in a war with another player and moving units around.
CS
Has Firaxis finally learned to balance the game?
- Thread starter Infiltrator
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You must have been playing a non-league game. No one on the league takes that long on single turns until much later in the game and then only when they are in a war with another player and moving units around.
CS
stealth_nsk
Deity
We know what a couple of barbarians aren't enough to capture a city.
CanuckSoldier
Emperor
Well I'll have to say that you are being rather self centred, my game has as much right to be balanced and fun as your game does. And I guarentee that MP players enjoy their game just as much as SP players enjoy theirs.
Now saying that, like I have said before, balancing a game for MP almost never breaks SP balance, in fact in 99.9% of the time it helps balance the SP game. As MP human players are much better at finding exploits than the AI is. In fact in my past experience as a tester, the devs are quite happy to have MP testers test the balance of units, and mechanics etc and it benifits all civ players in the end.
But yes were the game is not balanced by Firaxis we are certainly free to mod our way forward and we will continue to do so. But that doesn't mean that somehow the existance of a vibrant and active MP community somehow threatens the SP community, that is entirely untrue.
CS
a ≠ b
From pretty much all the official info we've seen on the subject, there will be more barbs for longer stretches of game and they will be far more technologically advanced than they were in the past. Yes city strength means a couple barbs won't capture a city, but I don't think that means they're not going to be as much of an issue.
Single player gameplay should come first. After all, that what 90% + of Civ players play a large majority of the time. The game should be balanced with that in mind.
I prefer each civilization to have quite different abilities and I could give a **** if they are balanced or not. I like winning in a variety of ways and I also like a challenge. For instance, I liked winning cultural victories with the Mongols in cIV or Domination victories with the Indians. Sometimes, I liked to make ocean maps and dominate with a civilization that had a large advantage like Portugal. I liked the differences between civilizations and it added immensely to the replay value of the game.
Multiplayer balance can be achieved via a mod.
I prefer each civilization to have quite different abilities and I could give a **** if they are balanced or not. I like winning in a variety of ways and I also like a challenge. For instance, I liked winning cultural victories with the Mongols in cIV or Domination victories with the Indians. Sometimes, I liked to make ocean maps and dominate with a civilization that had a large advantage like Portugal. I liked the differences between civilizations and it added immensely to the replay value of the game.
Multiplayer balance can be achieved via a mod.
CanuckSoldier
Emperor
Yes but that is redundant logic. MP is a smaller portion of the market so lets use that to keep it a small portion of the market and give it few considerations......
Now lets look at every other 2010 era successful PC game, what do they all have.....they have a robust MP system and that is a huge selling point with the market place in 2010.
So we can keep the status quo were MP is last minute icing on the cake or we can keep everything good about SP and add the same level of MP support and increase sales and customer loyality 1000%. Seems like a pretty simple decision to me.
CS
I never said that. I said MP balance can be achieved via a mod. I suppose I didn't specify that I meant that that mod should be made by Firaxis. My mistake.
Single player should be paramount. Not enough people play multiplayer because most people simply don't have the time or the patience. Firaxis realizes this and makes the correct choice in designing the game with their target audience in mind.
Since cIV had sold over 3,000,000 copies in only a few years, it could very well have sold 5,000,000 copies by now. Pretty impressive actually.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_IV
So, say that ciV sells 5,000,000 copies. From your logic, multiplayer would help sell 5,000,000,000 copies? That would be enough for almost every human on the planet.
CanuckSoldier
Emperor
I never said that. I said MP balance can be achieved via a mod. I suppose I didn't specify that I meant that that mod should be made by Firaxis. My mistake.
Single player should be paramount. Not enough people play multiplayer because most people simply don't have the time or the patience. Firaxis realizes this and makes the correct choice in designing the game with their target audience in mind.
BTW, say that ciV sells 5,000,000 copies. From your logic, multiplayer would help sell 5,000,000,000 copies? That would be enough for almost every human on the planet.
Well we will have to agree to disagree then. Time and patience has nothing to do with MP. During the peak years of both Civ3 MP and Civ4 MP, 50 games per day were played on Civplayers League, and that is just the stats I can gather, it doesn't include all the non-league MP games being played.
So your premise that MP will never be a huge success is false IMHO. We already have had a vibrant MP community since Civ2MGE came out. And this despite the fact that Civ2 didn't have a matchmaking service, despite the fact that Civ3 Play the World was barely playable in MP when it was released, despite Gamespy being used for Civ3 and Civ4 and how crappy that was. And despite all these obstacles, MP in Civ still had/has 1000s of players playing the game.
Just think how much better and profitable it would be it 2K/Firaxis actually embraced MP.....food for thought.
CS
We will definitely have to disagree then. 5 billion copies sold is totally unrealistic.
In all seriousness though, you do make some good points.
I do think Firaxis and 2K games are targeting a wide audience with the scalability and much more noob friendly design. I think that's where they figure they'll get their increased sales.
Perhaps they could sell 50% more copies with your ideas. 7.5 million rather than 5 million.
However, I think a mod designed by Firaxis or even an entire expansion designed strictly for MP would be better in my opinion.
Then, SP and MP people would both be happy.
It seems as if they have with Steam integration.
I'm curious if you would support a game that was designed from the ground up to be MP at the expense of SP elements, or if the current system with Civ5 (foundation for MP, but requires tweaking) is sufficient. While I respect the MP community's wishes for a fairly designed MP game, I'm not so sure I'd like to see Civ eschew excellent SP mechanics (barbarians/city-states and their respective SAs/SPs) in pursuit of a better MP experience.
Infiltrator
Warlord
- Joined
- Sep 13, 2009
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I just can't believe some people here think SP is somehow, how should I put it.. "threatened" if anyone tries to make MP more viable and balanced. Funny and sad at the same time.
CanuckSoldier
Emperor
We will definitely have to disagree then. 5 billion copies sold is totally unrealistic.
In all seriousness though, you do make some good points.
I do think Firaxis and 2K games are targeting a wide audience with the scalability and much more noob friendly design. I think that's where they figure they'll get their increased sales.
Perhaps they could sell 50% more copies with your ideas. 7.5 million rather than 5 million.
However, I think a mod designed by Firaxis or even an entire expansion designed strictly for MP would be better in my opinion.
Then, SP and MP people would both be happy.
Well I'm not audaious enough to predict 5 billion MP fans
But I'm sure a couple million world wide is possible. CS
I can't believe some of the MP "fanbois" think that it wouldn't drastically change the SP experience if they designed the game with MP in mind, first and foremost.
I don't want balance between the Civs. I want each Civ to be unique and have interesting quirks that make the game so darn replayable. I don't want generic Civ A fighting against generic Civ B. Oooh! Now generic Civ C is entering the fray! *Yawn*
CanuckSoldier
Emperor
Yes I run into that all the time, this irrational fear that if MP gets equal attention that SP will suffer. This is totally unsubstantiated IMHO.
Yes it means investing in more programmers up front, but compared to the cost of making those pretty leader animations(someone told me they took 6 months each to complete) the cost of making some better MP code is small.
Yes Steam is a step forward, but that was not so much a decision for MP as it was a decision for making money of DLC, and MP just might benifit as a side effect.
CS
Well I'm not audaious enough to predict 5 billion MP fans
CS
True enough. I was having a bit of fun with your hyperbole.
CanuckSoldier
Emperor
No MP "fanboy" here is trying to take things away from the SP game, SP and MP are NOT mutually exclusive goals, they can and do co-exist quit well in every other modern PC game across all the genres.
And I'm quit sure that the creative guys at Firaxis can certainly create a game that is good for both groups if they are given the mandate, time and resources.
CS
CanuckSoldier
Emperor
True enough. I was having a bit of fun with your hyperbole.
I know I do have a healthy sense of humour as well
CS
You laid out a basic configuration for an MP game that cuts out some elements of the SP game. Since the nature of MP calls for certain mechanics to be dropped/ignored, this essentially obviates certain other elements (civs, SPs) as their corresponding game mechanic is no longer there/relevant. I'm not saying that MP is somehow destroying the SP experience; I'm asking about how Firaxis should go about designing a game that uses SP-only systems (Hellenic League, Honor) without negatively affecting the MP experience, and vice versa.
I've seen games that use two sets of mechanics for SP and MP; perhaps this may be the better path for Civ? Although, in a sense, with a generally-agreed upon MP rules mod, it's what the community's already done for itself.
They've put 3 years + development into ciV. Should they put 5+ years into it? By that logic, Civ VI would be released around 2017 or so. 2K games and Hasborg certainly wouldn't allow that.
Even if they did that, the cost of the base game would probably rise to $100 to compensate for the extra time and resources.
Quite the Herculean task I think. It's much easier to release a mod or expansion after they have made their money back on the initial sales of the game. At least that seems to be the correct approach for me.
Infiltrator
Warlord
- Joined
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- 293
They've put 3 years + development into ciV. Should they put 5+ years into it? By that logic, Civ VI would be released around 2017 or so. 2K games and Hasborg certainly wouldn't allow that.
Even if they did that, the cost of the base game would probably rise to $100 to compensate for the extra time and resources.
Quite the Herculean task I think. It's much easier to release a mod or expansion after they have made their money back on the initial sales of the game. At least that seems to be the correct approach for me.
Resorting to petty names like fanbois, and now throwing wild assumptions around. At least don't use the word logic when you go on like that. Look at some other games - MP and SP coexist perfectly fine, and you certainly won't see people on their forums complaining how one will ruin the other. This is a syndrome I've yet to encounter in any other game community, and I'm part of quite a few of them.
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