Civilization 5 Rants Thread

However, after the trend since Civ 4 - CivRev, Colonisation, many of the younger developers cut their "coding" teeth on these and even the lead designer was a youngling, what could I have expected. It really is nothing more than CivRev 2 for the PC and Mac, Iphone, Android, Xbox, PS3, Wii, PSP, ... so it may make a lot of money initially ... by being portable (watch this space), but it won't have the staying power/re-playability/immersion of Civ 4 ... ever. It's just simply a quick ... it's the end of wonderful franchise ... doomed to play out on an iphone near you ... whoop de do :(

Frankly, I'm still surprised that Firaxis haven't announced Civilization V for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The interface lends itself to a console game.

Your post basically sums up a "majority" of Generation Y thinking. The Gen-Y'ers that frequent this forum I would argue probably do not fit the mold however most game developers today aren't focusing on the "hardcore" any more. There's more money in dumbing-down your games than by making them a little challenging or forcing the player to actually read a manual or stop and truly think about what it takes to beat a level etc. I for one am hoping the pendulum will start swinging back in the other direction but I'm not holding my breath. Yes, this doesn't all apply to Civ V as you do have to think, somewhat, in playing the game. But it's more about the lack of defining concepts in Civ V. Everything is just so... bland. So boring. Or possibly even under-developed. An expansion may correct a lot of the problems but I think Firaxis need to define their goals with Civ V as their goals with vanilla Civ V, if put to an expansion, will not make me buy it. More of the same means I'll spend my money elsewhere instead.

Civilization V is the latest game to take on this "dumbed-down" design philosophy. Oh sorry, what did Shafer call it? "Streamlined". That's right. Streamlined. I suspect the term was first used in the MMO industry about 5-8 years ago as that is also when they started making them for the "mass market" cookie cutter gamer.

I fear for where PC gaming will be in another 10 years.
 
Frankly, I'm still surprised that Firaxis haven't announced Civilization V for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The interface lends itself to a console game.

Your post basically sums up a "majority" of Generation Y thinking. The Gen-Y'ers that frequent this forum I would argue probably do not fit the mold however most game developers today aren't focusing on the "hardcore" any more. There's more money in dumbing-down your games than by making them a little challenging or forcing the player to actually read a manual or stop and truly think about what it takes to beat a level etc. I for one am hoping the pendulum will start swinging back in the other direction but I'm not holding my breath. Yes, this doesn't all apply to Civ V as you do have to think, somewhat, in playing the game. But it's more about the lack of defining concepts in Civ V. Everything is just so... bland. So boring. Or possibly even under-developed. An expansion may correct a lot of the problems but I think Firaxis need to define their goals with Civ V as their goals with vanilla Civ V, if put to an expansion, will not make me buy it. More of the same means I'll spend my money elsewhere instead.

Civilization V is the latest game to take on this "dumbed-down" design philosophy. Oh sorry, what did Shafer call it? "Streamlined". That's right. Streamlined. I suspect the term was first used in the MMO industry about 5-8 years ago as that is also when they started making them for the "mass market" cookie cutter gamer.

I fear for where PC gaming will be in another 10 years.

I predicted already that you'd see Civilization 5 on the consule within 2 years.

There is way too much money for greedy 2K Games to ignore.

There's a reason Civilization 5 was made the way it was.

To make it easier to port over and make some serious $$$.

Doesn't bode well for Civ's future that is. (At least for a deep, enriching game experience anyway.)
 
omg!!!!!!!!!!!!! is the game getting so many bad reviews that they put it all in one thread so it looks like a minor problem?????!!!!
 
omg!!!!!!!!!!!!! is the game getting so many bad reviews that they put it all in one thread so it looks like a minor problem?????!!!!
The point is that ... many of the reviewers have played Civ into it's third decade (90's, 00's, 10's) and are really horrified that it has come to this, but when we think about it deeply, we realise that it was a trend we had observed years ago.

The dumbing down trend (e.g. the Total War series, did this as well) may appeal to the mass market (i.e. lot's of $$$ for corporates), but not us, who want to play a single game for days / even weeks, before a result is known. My own "mod", if you turn all the animated features on (and they do look good - e.g. combat zoom), will take weeks (i.e. 100's of hours of game time) to play. This is immersion, into a whole new world you have created in many cases by your own decisions and the real world (civanon anyone), takes a back seat.
 
omg!!!!!!!!!!!!! is the game getting so many bad reviews that they put it all in one thread so it looks like a minor problem?????!!!!

Basically yes. Mods got sick of the main page being 90% threads complaining about civ V. So they now combine complaints into this singular thread.
 
Basically yes. Mods got sick of the main page being 90% threads complaining about civ V. So they now combine complaints into this singular thread.

I think this is more telling that any point I can make about how unhappy some people are with Civ V. It's also telling about the direction of this forum. Because quite frankly, eventually this thread will sink down off the front page and everyone else that remains here, including Firaxis and Take-Two employees, can see all the joy left here and think to themselves that they did a "good job" with Civ V. It's telling with the amount of new threads being created here (irrelevant of content) that there just isn't the fanfaire that other Civ games have generated. Delusions are more important that what's real.

Well, I'll go back to the Civ IV forum. Actually, no I won't. I'll go back to visiting other sites instead of here as I'm not playing Civ any longer. I was done with Civ IV long ago too. :p

Enjoy your [broken, unfinished, dumbed-down] game, folks. :goodjob:
 
omg!!!!!!!!!!!!! is the game getting so many bad reviews that they put it all in one thread so it looks like a minor problem?????!!!!
Yup, that's what I've meant by "sweep under the carpet, so nobody can see" option. Officially it was made so all those poor fans that are disgusted by other fans (a.k.a "whiners" - the ones who can't agree to call this turd of a game a next installment of Civ series) can have uninterrupted discussion about their favourite game ^^
 
perhaps we should pay a renewed visit to Apolyton. They were the founding fathers of Civ forums after all, and are still working on recoding the "lost gem", Call to Power, which ironically had a huge amount of good ideas to teach to the civfive "developers", specially the "lead" "designer"... maybe the last refuge of the hardcore, the last stand, will be there at good ol' Poly...
 
Why is there no govenor? I wish there was a govenor, i like to focus on macromanagement quite a lot rather than micro and having to tell every single city to build granary/walls etc isnt likely to be much fun, i need a govenor :(
 
perhaps we should pay a renewed visit to Apolyton. They were the founding fathers of Civ forums after all, and are still working on recoding the "lost gem", Call to Power, which ironically had a huge amount of good ideas to teach to the civfive "developers", specially the "lead" "designer"... maybe the last refuge of the hardcore, the last stand, will be there at good ol' Poly...

I visited Poly a few months back (and again just last week, but not the Civ section) and the site owner was just cheerleading for Civ 5. His front page / blog / news or whatever read like a 2K Games press release for Civ 5. That alone was enough to send me back here to CFC. :p
 
Moderator Action: This thread is for ranting about Civ5, and not for ranting about the moderation, so back to topic.

Moderator Action: In case you missed this? Back on topic, please.
 
Rant: What I don't understand is how over a decade later, Civ 5 is less interesting and well developed as a game than Alpha Centauri. My general sense is that the series has "gone console" with the general dumbing down. Civ 5 is also an amazing resource hog. I would much rather developers invested more time in gameplay nuance and balance than creating GPU sucking "eye candy" which still lags well behind actual state-of-the-art graphics.
 
This thread should be stickied. People can't use it unless they know of its existence.
 
Rant: What I don't understand is how over a decade later, Civ 5 is less interesting and well developed as a game than Alpha Centauri. My general sense is that the series has "gone console" with the general dumbing down. Civ 5 is also an amazing resource hog. I would much rather developers invested more time in gameplay nuance and balance than creating GPU sucking "eye candy" which still lags well behind actual state-of-the-art graphics.

Welcome to the Forums. :)

Myself and many others agree 100% with you.

The problem as we all know is that Firaxis has decided to cater to the Noobish casual crowd. Those kind of people don't want to have to think too much and love graphically intensive games. Really, a style over substance game. They can pick it up quick, screw around for awhile then cast it aside.

The theory of built in obsolescence also applies here. Make a dull, boring game that is somewhat entertaining for a short while. Then spoonfeed DLC that players will overpay for in order to derive a little more satisfaction from a stale game. It simply doesn't pay to make an awesome game with great replayability anymore apparently.

As well, the truly sad thing is that, as you mentioned, it's a resource hog and it's not even state of the art graphics.

It's a sad day for Civ...
 
I have 66 hours played, but I think it's time to give up on this game. Everyone said it was much better after the patch, and maybe it's marginally better. But I still get bored to tears playing it.

The first part is kind of fun, but once you get to the classical age, things start bogging down. Building up my cities isn't fun, war isn't fun. The only fun thing in the game is the initial exploration. I got this game as an X-mas present and haven't played much until after the recent patch. I guess I got some time out of the game. But I just can't bring myself to finish any of the games I start. I just get bored by the classical or renaissance age and quit.

I so want this game to be fun. The graphics are nice, but that's all you can really say about this game. I can't really go back to civ4 as I'm so bored of that game now. So maybe my civving days are over.
 
actually I haven't played rise and fall or fall from heaven. I will take a break for a while and then come back to those, and maybe in a long while Civ5 might be more fun. I just can't pin exactly what is wrong with civ5. But the rewards aren't there, and the pacing is off.
 
actually I haven't played rise and fall or fall from heaven. I will take a break for a while and then come back to those, and maybe in a long while Civ5 might be more fun. I just can't pin exactly what is wrong with civ5. But the rewards aren't there, and the pacing is off.

If you like Fantasy, you'll love Fall from Heaven II.

Even if you don't, it's a nice new challenge that's a refreshing twist on cIV.

Civilization 5 was designed with casuals and noobs in mind. That is one of the main reasons that people hate it so much. We aren't the target audience anymore.
 
I have 66 hours played......<snip>....... I can't really go back to civ4 as I'm so bored of that game now. So maybe my civving days are over.

I'm now clocking in at over 400 hours on this game. And while Civ V most certainly has some problems, I'm not going back to Civ IV. The Civ half of my brain is now fully adapted to policies, hexs, and 1Upt.

Let's see now.....400hrs / 8 = 50 (8 hr) days. I should probably rethink my priorities at some point.
 
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