Is this the right place to discuss (what little we know of) the game? Or a new thread in the "Other Games" forum?
Either or. There's also a thread in CivV GD last I checked.
What does that have to do with the quality of the game?
Markets>Your opinion
Given the relatively good scores CivV got in the press plus the fact it has been in the top ten played games on Steam
for years, I have to go with the crowd that thinks that market has decided it is a quality game.
That's like proclaiming the Wii was the best home console because it sold the most.
The Wii is the best home console because it did sold the most. I don't think you understand how capitalism works. I get on Steam. I read about game. I buy game. I like game. I buy DLC. Millions others buy game. They also buy DLC. Market decided game is success.
I wouldn't trust anything with the Shafer name knowing full well he has a barebones game design philosophy.
You people act like Shafer personally came over to your houses and scratch your CDs or something. If I was Shafer, I would have nothing to be ashamed about. The same reason Firaxis has nothing to be ashamed about for XCOM. Sure, some diehards and tryhard fans harking back to the rosy-tinted golden days of broken UI in CivIV and general inferiority of CivIII, II, and especially I are going to log in and espoused how the latest entry in the series is "awful", "dumb down", "not a $50 graphics upgrade of CivIV/III/II/I".
Moderator Action: Removed the word fanbois, it is trolling. Please be more civil in your discussion
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
Game has a 90 on metacritic. The expansion has an 80.
But yes, you're right. The game has a barebones game design philosophy as evidence by...nothing. There is no evidence other than the kind you created inside your mind to justify your irrational hatred for the newest game in a series you like because it isn't simply a revamped version of one of the other four games you can go play instead if you don't like V. For the love of Science, the game has been out two years now. Even the most irrational FPS CoD player will move on from hating a new release to something else.
But the fact you're here, complaining about the lead designer of a game that came out two years ago and a game that you don't like, is proof that the game worked. If it really was half as bad as you or the umpteeth other amateur critics thought it was, it would be completely forgotten like Empire Earth III or remember uniformly as a game that killed a series.
It wouldn't be in the Top #10 played games daily for over two years. That doesn't just mean you people are
wrong, it makes you people
reactionaries.
Leaving aside the discussion on the merits of Jon Schafer (which personally I think has taken place enough times on this forum already), I think his goals are in the right place. His opinion on the flow of a regular 4x game is spot on for me. I have 110 hours logged into Steam for Civ V and, in all this time, I've actually only finished 2 games! I have a lot of fun early on, but eventually the game starts to drag and I get bored. And this isn't because of a particular fault in the fifth Civ, I think it was the same in the previous ones as well.
Of course, there's a long distance in between being able to identify a problem and being able to fix it. But I hope he succeeds.
It tends to get to a point where you're so large that there is no external or internal problems that can shake you down. You're not big enough that you've won yet, but big enough that you can only snatch defeat from the jaws of victory on the grounds that you make some gigantic blunder.
Resource depletion and seasons should be able to shake up the mid- to late-game enough that, like the revolutions mod for IV, if the player is able to maintain an increasing empire, it is leaning more towards the ability side than the runaway end of the spectrum.