Civ4 Lovers/Civ5 Haters Level of Optimism for Civ6

Aristos · Aug 9, 2016

Lemon Merchant said:
Boy, is that ever true.

Aristos may back me up on this one, but the level of fanboyism and general foolish commentary over on the Civ 6 forums is approaching maximum density. And you are berated and criticized for saying anything against the holiness of Civ 6. Ed Beach has been deified, canonized, and sanctified. It's as if Elvis himself has risen from the grave and is bestowing Civ 6 on all of us. That most sanctified, holy game. Angels will sing upon it's release!

And I, for one, am evil incarnate. I am a heretic. I have dared to speak heresy against the holiest of holy games. Call an exorcist! I must be cleansed! Perhaps a good spanking, too.

Seriously though, TMIT has been trying to point out that people were mislead about MP on the release of CIv 5, and the game industry has adopted this practice of actively misleading consumers. He's being almost shouted down by people who are saying that it's irrelevant and that they don't care about being victimized or lied to.

Jeez, when did we become a society of brainless sheep?

I can see this in the news soon enough:

Lemon walks up to a man in a dark alley...
Lemon: Hey mister. You're a robber right?
Robber: Yes, but I'm not going to rob you. I'm on my coffee break.
Lemon: That's OK, you can have my wallet anyway.

Hey, I might as well fit in. Just give me a good blow to the head and I'm good to go.

Can I be in charge of the spanking?

You are not alone. Our name is Legion, for we are many. You are not alone in the Civ6 forums either, you know that. As for Ed, I have always given him the credit for saving the disaster that Shafer boy created, but that's it. It remains to be seen what he did with Civ6, and I for one, will never pre-order or even buy at release. Not after Shafer. And I have been very vocal about that, same as many others. So no, Lemoness, you are not alone.

On your last, "rhetoric" question: sadly, the truth is that most of humanity has always behaved like brainless sheep. Look at the rise and domination of Sheepbook. I always tell my kids, when they ask about ET life, that it is certain that there is intelligent life out there, and likely eons ahead of us, and the only reason why they do not invade us and enslave us is because they receive our TV signals, and quickly conclude that as a species, we are not worth the invasion resources.

Any doubt? Watch one episode of "Real housewives of wherever"... :crazyeye:

Aristos · Aug 9, 2016

lymond said:
Ha..didn't see that one. What is IGG? some kinda sponsor?

I've long been thinking of dumping cable myself. Most of what I watch is on the computer anyway. "Vikings" is great, but I can see that on Netflix anyway. Too bad History Channel doesn't have more shows like that, as well as ..you know..history stuff.

I abhor all reality tv..all...of...eet.

IGG = Instant Gratification Generation

mourndraken · Aug 9, 2016

unlike CIV4, newer games always request your credit card

games used to be a fun hobby, not some continuous business

georgjorge · Aug 9, 2016

Boy, are those two threads (this one and the one in the Civ 6 subforum) good drama.

I agree with Staler that there is a LOT of stereotyping and making wild connections between different phenomena going on (on BOTH sides of the issue). For one side everyone who doesn't hype VI is a dinosaur and too old for anything, for the other side everyone who pre-orders VI is part of the instant gratification generation and wants to get scammed. There are people making nuanced statements but they are being overwhelmed.

I'm not saying the trends in the gaming industry you mentioned are not there, but I do think it's possible to pre-order VI without demanding instant gratification everywhere and liking the current History Channel. I'm not going to pre-order by the way.

I would like this thread to merge with the other one in the VI subforum. Oh, the drama!

Lemon Merchant · Aug 9, 2016

georgjorge said:
Boy, are those two threads (this one and the one in the Civ 6 subforum) good drama.

I agree with Staler that there is a LOT of stereotyping and making wild connections between different phenomena going on (on BOTH sides of the issue). For one side everyone who doesn't hype VI is a dinosaur and too old for anything, for the other side everyone who pre-orders VI is part of the instant gratification generation and wants to get scammed. There are people making nuanced statements but they are being overwhelmed.

I'm not saying the trends in the gaming industry you mentioned are not there, but I do think it's possible to pre-order VI without demanding instant gratification everywhere and liking the current History Channel. I'm not going to pre-order by the way.

I would like this thread to merge with the other one in the VI subforum. Oh, the drama!

I don't think it's drama to criticize the gaming industry for dishonest tactics. YMMV. I think you're missing the point of all the sarcasm.

As for pre-ordering, that is the person's right to do, or do not. I know that I'm not able to change the minds of the hard core people who are into that sort of thing. Hell, I've been caught up in the excitement myself and done it (to my dismay upon release.)

What baffles me is the fact that people will throw good money at a gaming industry that does not operate in good faith. It's well known that a LOT of titles are severely broken on release, or released in a beta stage, yet people continue to plunk money down for them. I just don't think it's right to support a business model that actively victimizes its user base.

But you can't say that in the Civ 6 forum. You get shouted down by adolescent behaving people determined to justify the fact that they just spent $80 to $110 CDN on a game that if you go by the Civ track record, will likely require numerous patches on release to work properly. It's sad.

I guess I'm one of those dinosaurs.

salty mud · Aug 9, 2016

I think most, if not all, of us vocal anti-preorder brigade were once avid preorderers. Just as our time came to wake up and see the industry for what it is, I'm sure it will come for the others too.

Regards

civfanchambers · Aug 9, 2016

>dinosaur< and proud of it!

Staler87 · Aug 9, 2016

Drakarska said:
The previous statement was actually allegorical Staler( I did find the irony of the History Channel mixed in vastly amusing), and you appear to be missing the main point.

No one is accusing you of anything. They are simply pointing out the differences of product purchase decisions from an earlier time to what is considered the "norm" now.

Let's put it this way.
Your planning on pre-order, correct? Because it's something you want as soon as possible, yes? It doesn't matter to you what condition it will be in, how easily it will run for you, whether it will actually be worth the money you pay for it. All that matters is that you've seen some selected videos, read some orchestrated reviews and comments, and have decided that you want it.. That's your right, and by all means, go ahead and do so.
The problem is, that's exactly what the corp wants. 10 years ago, a person would actually spend a little bit of research and time before making a purchase. people wouldn't accept buggy crap, a basic beta version, or a game that constantly fails to meet the expectations of it's primary consumer base.
Now days, Corps know how to dangle the proverbial carrot in front of their consumers ( and I find the irony of that word funny as well) and know that they can literally shove a P.O.S. down their throats and laugh maniacally all the way to the bank. And a vast percentage of people will let them.
So no Staler, the people above are not directly attacking you. They are actually lamenting that hardly anyone now days can't see past what is happening in the industry, and that when it is pointed out, they are berated for trying to help.

I do wish you well with your pre-order though. I truly hope that it is everything and more for what you expected. As for myself, well, my cynicism towards the industry will have me patiently waiting for a very long time before I decide to make a purchase.

I already pre-order yes because I believe the game will be in decent shape day one. You can kick me if I'm wrong (I did not pre-order civ V for the record just bought it after Gods and Kings was released) but I think Firaxis is going to do a good job this time so I pre-ordered the game.

I was trying to defend myself in previous points, but by quoting a post that was clearly directed at me, and then saying welcome to the instant gratification generation, to claim that you were not at all directing the comment at me is a bit odd. I'm not trying to be defensive, I'm just trying to rebuttal points that I don't see as being true, and if they are directed against me then so be it, and if they aren't then so be it. It really makes no difference.

You are attacking (or rebutting or whatever you want to call it) people who pre-ordered civ VI (and games in general) and I'm the only guy on the thread who pre-ordered the game, you can see how that kind of implies that you are in an argument against myself. Maybe I should have used 'people who pre-ordered civ VI' instead of I but it wouldn't of really made a difference to my argument. Nobody's really addressed any of the points I brought up.

Lemon Merchant said:
I don't think it's drama to criticize the gaming industry for dishonest tactics. YMMV. I think you're missing the point of all the sarcasm.

As for pre-ordering, that is the person's right to do, or do not. I know that I'm not able to change the minds of the hard core people who are into that sort of thing. Hell, I've been caught up in the excitement myself and done it (to my dismay upon release.)

What baffles me is the fact that people will throw good money at a gaming industry that does not operate in good faith. It's well known that a LOT of titles are severely broken on release, or released in a beta stage, yet people continue to plunk money down for them. I just don't think it's right to support a business model that actively victimizes its user base.

But you can't say that in the Civ 6 forum. You get shouted down by adolescent behaving people determined to justify the fact that they just spent $80 to $110 CDN on a game that if you go by the Civ track record, will likely require numerous patches on release to work properly. It's sad.

I guess I'm one of those dinosaurs.

How can you label a trend in civ games after on civ game was unplayable on release? I mean civ IV's release was fine. Ultimately, the two sides will only be able to see who is right once civ VI comes out.

rah · Aug 9, 2016

Short memories I see. IV wasn't as fine by my memory.
(hint MP)

At least I didn't get fooled by V.
Didn't have to pay to be a play tester. Brought up issues, and a few (very few) were fixed.
Time ran out and the game was released.
That was when I stopped playing it. Eventually my free copy stopped being active. It took a long time for me to even realize I couldn't play anymore. I was not sad.
It cost me nothing but some time.

For the record, any game you can be bored of before it can be released, really shouldn't have been released.

Just one less turn.

Aristos · Aug 9, 2016

rah said:
For the record, any game you can be bored of before it can be released, really shouldn't have been released.

Just one less turn.

Ha! Amazing!

You managed to summarize the entire ordeal in four, powerful words. That sentence is exactly what defined Shafer's civ:

Just-One-Less-Turn.

:goodjob:

Aristos · Aug 9, 2016

Lemon Merchant said:
I guess I'm one of those dinosaurs.

Better Dinosaur than sheep.

Lexicus · Aug 9, 2016

BE and V were both broken on release, though BE was an improvement. V was nigh-unplayable, that I can remember.
She's not talking about a trend in civ games, anyway, but across the entire gaming industry...
I'll keep my opinion of you pre-ordering Civ 6 to myself. Ultimately I think these things are subjective and if you think you got your money's worth, no one can really argue with that, but I do agree that in the aggregate it isn't really good if developers are not punished for releasing games in an unfinished state.

rah · Aug 9, 2016

In all fairness, their heart was in the right place. Just some of the decisions were based on some crazy logic.

Like the maps. The main goal was to not encourage people resetting the map until they got a great map. Solution make all the maps really similar (and boring). You can't believe how much effort went into making those boring maps. Would have been better spent working on the AI.

Like roads. The main goal was to not encourage road spam because it didn't look good. Solution, road maint. Impact, just silly since the decision to go 1 up put a premium on multiple alternatives for efficient travel. It made the goto command totally useless since units would leave the road to go around someone that wouldn't even be there the next turn.

These were not surprises due to the play testers. We were vocal, but ignored.

Any creative way we figured out how to beat the game was immediately nerfed. The result was a predictable boring path to victory. Time could have better spent on the AI.

We had real fun with the nation states originally. I guess too much fun because they nerfed them.

I could go on and on but I won't.
They made a lot of decisions that they really thought would make the game better. They could have listened to the testers a bit more. And of course, they ran out of time. It's hard to fault the designers for that. (if you discount project management)

Lemon Merchant · Aug 9, 2016

Staler87 said:
You can kick me if I'm wrong

Don't plan to. I honestly hope that you get what you paid for.

You are attacking (or rebutting or whatever you want to call it) people who pre-ordered civ VI (and games in general) and I'm the only guy on the thread who pre-ordered the game, you can see how that kind of implies that you are in an argument against myself.

I'm not specifically attacking you, or anyone else. I'm just questioning the logic behind pre-ordering.

How can you label a trend in civ games after on civ game was unplayable on release? I mean civ IV's release was fine. Ultimately, the two sides will only be able to see who is right once civ VI comes out.

I'm not speaking of a trend in Civ games. I'm speaking of a trend in the industry as a whole, not just Civ. Just as an example, the following recent games had serious issues on release/ Some took numerous patches to get right:

Fallout: New Vegas
Skyrim
Stellaris
Civ 5
Civ 4
XCOM 2
Battlefield 4
SimCity (server issues)
Diablo 3 (server issues)

I could go on, but you get the idea.

A small list of recent games is here:

http://gamerant.com/broken-games-launch-batman-halo-diablo-155/

Staler87 · Aug 9, 2016

Lemon Merchant said:
I'm not specifically attacking you, or anyone else. I'm just questioning the logic behind pre-ordering.

I never accused you of attacking me just arguing with me.

Lemon Merchant said:
I'm not speaking of a trend in Civ games. I'm speaking of a trend in the industry as a whole, not just Civ. Just as an example, the following recent games had serious issues on release/ Some took numerous patches to get right:

Fallout: New Vegas
Skyrim
Stellaris
Civ 5
Civ 4
XCOM 2
Battlefield 4
SimCity (server issues)
Diablo 3 (server issues)

I could go on, but you get the idea.

A small list of recent games is here:

http://gamerant.com/broken-games-launch-batman-halo-diablo-155/

In all fairness you did say civ games originally. I don't play many video games, so I can't comment personally on any trends (in fact civ VI is the first video game I've ever pre-ordered).

6K Man · Aug 10, 2016

I'll probably regret wading into this discussion, but here goes.

I've never preordered a game, and I've taken this approach for two reasons: I don't know if the game will be good until I see some feedback from people I know (like on this site), and I don't want to have to deal with the unpatched/buggy version of a new game.

As to the second point, though... isn't it practically impossible to produce a bug-free game, at the current level of software complexity? I'm old enough to remember games that had to run in 16K or 48K of RAM - obviously back then, the programmer(s) would be able to review each line of code, individually. That's not possible anymore, of course. So how reasonable is it to expect a bug-free game at initial release? What is the standard that you all hold game designers to?

(Bugs, of course, are not the same as bad/uninteresting game design, which can't be fixed in a patch)

Lemon Merchant · Aug 10, 2016

6K Man said:
So how reasonable is it to expect a bug-free game at initial release? What is the standard that you all hold game designers to?

I can't speak for anyone else, but I expect a certain number of bugs in a new game. It's bound to happen, and the developers can't test for everything. But the game should be playable from start to finish and still accommodate the bugs. And by bugs, I mean things like graphical glitches, messed up text, etc. Not something that borks your game.

I'll give you an example of an undesirable bug:

When Civ 5 came out, I was eager to play, but couldn't play the game beyond five turns before it crashed. I tried many games, but it would no go more than five turns before the game would crash. I tested everything and finally I took out one of my graphics cards (I have two in my PC for Crossfire - better performance in games) to see if one of them was the problem, and the game worked. I put the card back in and it crashed on turn 5. It was not the graphics card. AMD said the drivers and Crossfire profiles were right and should have supported Civ 5, but other people using Crossfire had reported problems. It took a patch 2 months later before I could play the game.

I had lost interest by then. That's what I call an unacceptable game-breaking bug.

Lazteuq · Aug 11, 2016

I'm not sure how many of you have already heard this one, but this is a podcast interviewing the designers: Soren Johnson(IV) and John Shafer(V).

https://www.idlethumbs.net/3ma/episodes/civilization-at-25

At one point (1:01 to 1:02), Jon says

"Civ 4 was basically perfect, the perfect Civ, lets try something new....Not everything's going to work, theres going to be some bumps along the way, but its time to try something new because, you know, civ 4 was that good."

I sort of feel bad for Jon. He had to make a sequel to something that even he believed was near perfection. So he had to make a game that was seriously different from the other civs, yet still call it a part of the franchise. If he had made it really as just an improvement of Civ 4 like civ4 was over civ3, he would have received the same sort of criticism that the Beyond Earth $60 Total Conversion Mod got for not being different enough. He was forced to change the game dramatically, and I think Jon actually acknowledges that Soren made a better game, he sort of gives that impression through the whole interview, to say the least.

This interview makes me worried that Civ6 will go down the same path Civ5 went on.

Staler87 · Aug 11, 2016

Then again, it would be a lot easier to improve on civ V than civ IV, so that can give you hope for civ VI. Civ IV took the mechanics that didn't work so great in civ III and made them into an excellent game, I hope civ VI will do the same for civ V.

If only Schafer could use the hindsight he has now to re-make civ V.

Thormodr · Aug 12, 2016

Lazteuq said:
I'm not sure how many of you have already heard this one, but this is a podcast interviewing the designers: Soren Johnson(IV) and John Shafer(V).

https://www.idlethumbs.net/3ma/episodes/civilization-at-25

At one point (1:01 to 1:02), Jon says

"Civ 4 was basically perfect, the perfect Civ, lets try something new....Not everything's going to work, theres going to be some bumps along the way, but its time to try something new because, you know, civ 4 was that good."

I sort of feel bad for Jon. He had to make a sequel to something that even he believed was near perfection. So he had to make a game that was seriously different from the other civs, yet still call it a part of the franchise. If he had made it really as just an improvement of Civ 4 like civ4 was over civ3, he would have received the same sort of criticism that the Beyond Earth $60 Total Conversion Mod got for not being different enough. He was forced to change the game dramatically, and I think Jon actually acknowledges that Soren made a better game, he sort of gives that impression through the whole interview, to say the least.

This interview makes me worried that Civ6 will go down the same path Civ5 went on.

To me, it looks like Civ VI will be seriously different from Civilization 5. So, in a way it will go down the same path that Civilization 5 did. However, since Civilization 5 was such a dud, it can only be deemed a good thing.

Civ4 Lovers/Civ5 Haters Level of Optimism for Civ6

How optimistic are you about Civ6?

Extremely Optimistic

Somewhat/Cautiously Optimistic

Somewhat Pessimistic

Completely Pessimistic

Lightseeker

Lightseeker

King

Deity Wannabe

Not Quite Sonic

Deity

Prince

Warlord

Deity

Lightseeker

Lightseeker

Deity

Deity

Not Quite Sonic

Warlord

Bureaucrat

Not Quite Sonic

Chieftain

Warlord

Servant of Civ

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