Good game...or just a good game engine?

[Cherokee158]

Is anyone else becoming frustrated by game releases that offer more potential fun than actual fun right out of the box? I see more and more games, Civ IV being an example, that seem to offer a POTENTIALLY great experience...but only after a year of patches and fan-authored content hit the web.

Am I the only one who would like to see more realistic and historic scenarios out of the box? Much to do has been made about the authoring tools provided with this version of Civ...but what seems to be overlooked is that less than rabid fans lacking a background in programming (that is, most buyers, if you compare the number of copies sold to the number of posters you might find on websites like these) will find these noteworthy additions completely unusable. How many game players honestly know XML and Python? How many people can even get the map editor to work predictably? (Would it kill them to add an undo button?)

It seems to me more and more game designers aren't designing games, but designing game kits...and expecting us to build the game.

I didn't pay fifty bucks for a class in XML, or the rare priviledge of spending fifty hours to design a map I kinda wished had been in the box to begin with. Civilization has always been about replaying history. So why do I have to bring all the history to the table?

Don't get me wrong: I am grateful to the developers for giving me the tools to breathe future life into the game, even if I find them difficult to use. But let's not forget that designing these tools is, after all, in their best interest, since it gives them the ability to easily modify the game, too. Which is, after all, their job.

Given that there is a visible push by the Firaxis marketing team to put Civ IV into the classroom, I would hope that they would pay a little more than just lip service to history this time around, and start cranking out some nice historical what-if scenarios so obviously desired by their customers.

The handful of scenarios in Civ IV are a step in the right direction, but not nearly enough to be satisfying.

Anyone else feel that way?

 

[henrycccc]

I suggested the moderators set up an official complaints thread, and they said I ws flaming......

 

[Bard]

I suggested the moderators set up an official complaints thread, and they said I ws flaming......

Quit this pointless flaming

 

[henrycccc]

Bard, you are the true flamer for calling me a flamer.

 

[Psyringe]

To the OP: I can see your point, but I totally disagree. I see it this way: I usually play a game like Civ for 5 to 10 years (I still play MoO1, for example). During these years, I will develop some ideas how the game could be even more fun for me - not necessarily for everyone else, but at least for me and some people who share my taste. This means that after the initial phase of new "official" content wears out (about two years after release, if you include expansions), I depend on modders to fulfill my dreams. And to fulfill my dreams, these modders depend on the engine being able to handle ideas that the original game couldn't.

In any case, I will play modded versions far longer than the original game. Some of my ideas would never be implemented in any original game, because the number of people who like them is far too low to justify that. But if the engine is flexible enough to handle them, then it takes just one dedicated modder to make a dream a reality.

I like Civ4 as it is, but i like even more that (by browsing the XML and Python code) I can see that there are many, many possibilities that the game doesn#t even use yet. I am pretty sure that because of this flexibility, I will play Civ4 intensively for years and years to come.

Frankly, I see Civ4 more as a strategy game construction kit which is sold with one working example. And I like that a lot, because if the designers had focused more on the "example game", and less on engine flexibility, then less of my ideas could become real. Fortunately they didn't think so.

 

[snizzake]

Quit blaming Firaxis... These games take years to make and develop as well as hundreds of man hours from dozens of people.. Guess what? All those people got to be payed and most of them get payed well. Just how do you propose to pay these people with no serious income for years and years to get a perfect product out there? It's like all games that get made these days they are pushed out the door so the company can report income for the year for their shareholders. Same thing happened to World of Warcraft.. if you want anyone to blame, blame today's society, blame consumerism or capitolism. Time = Money

 

[Cherokee158]

I humbly suggest that other game designers in times past have managed to make perfectly good games without spending thousands of man hours and millions of dollars developing them. Time has always equaled money...but money has not always produced art. And game design is, ultimately, an art form.

Many of the hundreds of man hours spent developing modern games are, frankly, wasted on technological issues. How many man hours were spent creating the 3D environment for this game? Was it really necessary? It has practically insured that the game has an unwritten expiration date much less than ten years, as video hardware continues its frantic pace of development. It also insured a nightmarish release, as longtime fans of the franchise trustingly installed it on five year old machines and spent the next several hours of their life ranting pulling their hair and cursing software return policies. But that is the nature of the beast, and it is, I suppose, pointless to bemoan it.

But it would not have taken years or a staff of thousands to include a little more out of the box content. There is a huge, loyal and talented fanbase out there that would have happily labored for free, and it would take only a few competent people with a handful of history books to design a boatload of custom maps, which I think many people would have appreciated. It simply wasn't a priority.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not flaming the game. It's a great game. But it's not quite finished, and I think that the current relationship between publishers, developers and hardware designers is threatening to turn us all into game mechanics instead of game drivers as we get more and more unfinished products dropped in our lap.

I don't want to be a mechanic. I want to drive. Right now I feel like I'm bending over, and they are driving.

 

[skadistic]

I'd have to say its a good game made with a good engine. I like the game as it is but just as civ3 did it will get old and i'll download some modds and extend my playing fun. This game is well worth the price when you concider that with mods you get more then one game. I had a choice between an xbox360 and new computer. I picked the computer not just to play civ on huge maps but so I could get elder scolls; Obivian for the pc too. That game too will be moddable not to the same extent mind you nut beeing able to add content with x-packs and mods just seems a better bang for the buck over consoles.

 

[vbraun]

Actually you can buy the 3d engine yourself. Though it does cost quite a bit of money: http://www.emergentgametech.com/index.php?source=gamebryo

 

[Algernon Pondlife]

I have to say I don't really agree with Cherokee158. The game is complete as is. Sure it is good to have scenarios, variants and mods. And sure they are now entrenched in the civ tradition. But right out the box you have a game (admittedly with flaws) that has repeat value for many people.

Still, there is a valid point in Cherokee158's comments. I think it is because there is no longer a firm definition of what game civ is. Whatever Sid's original concept was it has largely been taken over by the fan base. For example, for some players there are not enough unit types but for others there are too many; some think the nations should be depicted more realistically, others think they should be fictional; some think all the rules and values should be explict, others think things should be much more foggy.

The developers understand this and, I believe, try to cater for a wide part of the spectrum. Perhaps at the moment CivIV is a little caught between for some people. I'm sure that will change over the next year or two. And where Firaxis fears to tread, there will go the modders. For me RaR, Rhye, and especially TAM enriched CivIII enormously. But these could not have come out of the box. All the profound mods took many people playing many games to understand not just the possibilities, but also the ways in which they could be realized. The game dynamics cannot be fully understood before thousands of players have played hundreds of games.

On the subject of the "what if" variant, I'm not convinced that CIV lends itself to this at all well. Oh, well enough for fun, but not for serious history. The way that it interlaces different time dimensions between technical development and international relations pretty much knocks that on the head; knowing so much about the tech future is also a bit of a killer for long term historical realism; the inexorable progress and growth, with only minor setbacks, is not a historical model of much worth. Using the game engine to depict short periods of time, say the length of a war is much fun because the design is so accessible, but it is rather abstract to be "realistic".

 

[BlackMage]

If you want historical realism, buy Rome: Total War and install the realism mod.

The purpose of Civilization, as it always has been, IMO, is to recreate history with your own rules.

 

[Zhahz]

I suggested the moderators set up an official complaints thread, and they said I ws flaming......

Perhaps...but I agree!

I like Civ IV as a game. I play random maps and most likely will never play any scenarios. The map scripts and options in Civ IV are better than ever, which works for me!

If you consider all of history, there are tons of potential scenarios one could create. It's not really reasonable for the devs to include a tons of scenarios - because even if they did chances are that they wouldn't include one YOU wanted - or that any given player wanted - so it'd be a waste of dev time. Why guess?

It's better, IMO, that they make a solid game that can create endless random content in a lot of fun ways, and which also provides the framework and tools to build scenarios, so that those who like them can create them or get them from others who create them.