Is the "hate" worse then it was for Vanilla Civ4 release?

[ash88]

People have commented that Civ 4 Vanilla had a rough release too. For those of you who lived through the Civ 4 Vanilla release, how does the Civ 5 release compare?

 

[Ramesses]

I didn't start playing Civilization until a short time after the release of BtS. I can't imagine Vanilla Civ IV's reception could possibly be any rockier than this, though.

 

[AfterShafter]

Not as bad, but it did catch quite a bit of flak for the scale reduction in turns per game, size of maps, and empire size.

 

[ICanHasName?]

(1) Civ4 was a pretty big improvement over Civ3 without really changing the core mechanics a whole lot. Civ5 changed alot of things, which is inevitably going to make some people unhappy. Also whatever you think of 5, there was just less room for overall improvement because civ4BTS was a pretty solid game despite its shortcomings.

(2) Civ5 was clearly released in an unfinished state. For example the game requires more graphics power then a modern FPS but the rivers are just plain blue shapes that visibly clip through eachother, some promotions that are supposed to be unit specific still get passed on when upgrading, the pedia has no actual numbers anywhere and tries to hide information, multiplayer is borderline nonfunctional, beakers didn't overflow and so on. It has improved quite a bit since then, but some of those issues still exist and the release has left a lasting impression on many people.

(3) Civ4 has 2 expansions and years of patching and years of modding, so civ4 has MOAR STUFF and is better polished and more stable.

(4) The new DLC stuff really bothers some people. I personally think its great, because it allows a few people who really like the game to spend more money and subsidize the overall development of the game without increasing the cost of the game for anyone else. You can always DL a Spain civ mod with a static leader picture anyway.

(5) 1UPT and ranged attacks made combat |-----| that much harder to do well then any other civ game. The tactical AI is only |--| that much better then previous games, so overall it looks like its dumb as dirt. And honestly it is pretty terrible at combat.

(6) The TURBO CHARGED tech rate. I really can't understand why they don't increase overall tech costs ten or twenty percent and give the palace a couple more beakers to keep the early game moving. I guess this is just a personal preference but many people seem to share it...

 

[Lone Wolf]

Civ4 had some gameplay complaints from Civ3 fans, but the overall response was definitely more positive.

 

[MrCynical]

Civ 4 got some complaints at release, but it was on nowhere near this scale. There's also the point that most of those complaints were due to technical rather than gameplay issues. When it first came out Civ 4 ran very badly even on machines with the recommended specs, which was the source of most of the gripes. There were also the infamous black map and cheshire cat bugs with low spec graphics cards. It took a combination of patches and computer specs improving over time for the technical complaints to die out.

On the gameplay side of things there were some complaints about the changes to city maintenance - mostly the point that new cities took a while to get going, and so it was possible to overexpand if you played like it was Civ 3. Given that the corruption mechanism in Civ 3 never really worked properly most people seemed to make the jump fairly quickly. There were one or two people that used to gripe about the maps being "small", but eventually plain old numbers managed to hammer through and point out there really wasn't much difference in scale between the two games. The new way siege units worked also got a bit of hate, but it seemed to wear off (it might be unintuitive, but it worked and the AI wasn't anywhere near as hopeless with it as it was in Civ 3).

Civ 5 has had a worse reception and most of isn't teething troubles - it's very fundamental game mechanics. That's not a good sign.

 

[Seanirl]

Not as bad, but it did catch quite a bit of flak for the scale reduction in turns per game, size of maps, and empire size.

Yeah... that's about all I remember.

I do remember the whole smaller empire thing and Marathon being patched into the game etc... ya, that's about the extent of the complaints I can remember. People worrying they weren't going to be able to build a sprawling empire was a big one.

Civ 4 got some complaints at release, but it was on nowhere near this scale. There's also the point that most of those complaints were due to technical rather than gameplay issues. When it first came out Civ 4 ran very badly even on machines with the recommended specs, which was the source of most of the gripes.

That too

It really was slow as hell, but patches cleaned that up a bit... as well as better computers helping to fix it on my end .

 

[Manifold]

I was around during the Civ4Vanilla release and Civ5 is a rougher release.

civ4 take a little getting used to, because of the comic-style in contrast to civ3.
but the steam stuff before civ5 was a shock and is still annoying

 

[Trias]

Instead of speculating one could check the archives of the civ4 forum:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/archive/index.php/f-144-p-9.html

Release was around thread 2000.

 

[Bhoy]

Civ3 wasn't a great game for me, I thought it wasnt as good as CTP2 - so when Civ4 came along I though 'ah, this is an improvement'.

Civ4 BTS is a great game, I could list a couple of dozen ways it could have been improved, but overall it was a great game. I was totally expecting Civ5 to be a better version of Civ4, as in take all of what was great and add what was missing - such as decent strategic warfare and the fact the AI diplomacy wasn't great. Unfortunately Civ5 seemed to regress in almost all the things I liked without adding practically any improvements - even the 1UPT seems to have been done badly.

 

[rschissler]

Civ 4 got some complaints at release, but it was on nowhere near this scale. There's also the point that most of those complaints were due to technical rather than gameplay issues. When it first came out Civ 4 ran very badly even on machines with the recommended specs, which was the source of most of the gripes. There were also the infamous black map and cheshire cat bugs with low spec graphics cards. It took a combination of patches and computer specs improving over time for the technical complaints to die out.

On the gameplay side of things there were some complaints about the changes to city maintenance - mostly the point that new cities took a while to get going, and so it was possible to overexpand if you played like it was Civ 3. Given that the corruption mechanism in Civ 3 never really worked properly most people seemed to make the jump fairly quickly. There were one or two people that used to gripe about the maps being "small", but eventually plain old numbers managed to hammer through and point out there really wasn't much difference in scale between the two games. The new way siege units worked also got a bit of hate, but it seemed to wear off (it might be unintuitive, but it worked and the AI wasn't anywhere near as hopeless with it as it was in Civ 3).

Civ 5 has had a worse reception and most of isn't teething troubles - it's very fundamental game mechanics. That's not a good sign.

This is exactly how I remember it. Kind of dispels the exclamations of "When Civ4 was first released it had just as many complaints as Civ5 has now. After a couple patches it will be fine."

 

[Bill_in_PDX]

I thought Civ 4, other than some really bad technical issues at launch, was a far smoother reception than Civ 5. Make no mistake, many hated it right from the start, just like Civ 5, but there seemed to be concensus that if they could patch fix the technical issues with running the game, the modders could make it fun. The jury is very much out on that topic related to Civ 5 (though I myself, having played all five Civ games feel there is no doubt the modders will improve the game).

To me the really appropriate comparison is to the launch of CivIII which was relatively rocky as well.

 

[Ajidica]

I feel Civ5 is definately a rougher release then Civ4. Civ4 handled empire building much better then Civ5, rewarding you for having a well developed empire rather then an ICS sprawl. However, Civ5 does one thing well in that it really slows down the snowball effect with regards to empire size.

Unless Firaxis releases an expansion or two of BtS level quality or the dll lets modders work their magic, the game won't be as stellar as Civ4.

 

[Kerosene31]

Back then was a completely different time on the Internet. You didn't have agenda posters and people spending countless hours arguing the same things.

Back then there were never 100+ page arguments over something like Steam.

There were lots of people who loved Civ 3 who didn't like it, but just the same there were lots of us from Civ 2 who never liked 3. This is nothing new. I never liked vanilla Civ 4 much. Years later when BTS came out is when it became something outstanding.

Civ 4 was a very different and complex game, and it is the kind of thing you had to learn before you had any clue what you were doing.

Civ V has issues, and the devs have basically said that admitting that multiple patches are necessary. Lots of constructive criticism is great for the community to flush out issues.

You get a lot more "noise" now than back then, but honestly it is just repeats of the same thing over and over and over and over and over. How many 1upt threads do we get here daily?

I wonder how many people read the manual when it was released? Everything was right there in the manual (and more importantly what was not there). Anyone who was around in Civ 4's release went through the YEARS of patches and expansions. Civ V is going to be the same. No matter how much noise people make, Civ V is going to take years to evolve.

 

[bryanw1995]

I feel Civ5 is definately a rougher release then Civ4. Civ4 handled empire building much better then Civ5, rewarding you for having a well developed empire rather then an ICS sprawl. However, Civ5 does one thing well in that it really slows down the snowball effect with regards to empire size.

Unless Firaxis releases an expansion or two of BtS level quality or the dll lets modders work their magic, the game won't be as stellar as Civ4.

as much as I enjoy civ5 I don't see it ever being as popular here as civ4 was. however, based upon what the modders have said I do think that the POTENTIAL is there for enough outstanding mods that most of the civ4 crowd will eventually play (and actually like) civ5. Probably the biggest long-term hurdle will be a core group of steam-haters, but realistically the way the games market is heading even that resistance should diminish over time.

@kerosene31: check out the front page..."why was 1upt necessary"!

 

[Ajidica]

as much as I enjoy civ5 I don't see it ever being as popular here as civ4 was. however, based upon what the modders have said I do think that the POTENTIAL is there for enough outstanding mods that most of the civ4 crowd will eventually play (and actually like) civ5. Probably the biggest long-term hurdle will be a core group of steam-haters, but realistically the way the games market is heading even that resistance should diminish over time.

I agree with you there. Civ4 was Firaxis's Medieval Total War 2. Civ5 is like Empire TW. It remains to be seen whether the greater mod support for Civ5 will keep it from failing as badly as Empire.

 

[zulu9812]

Even with it's release flaws, cIV was obviously a great game: it really got me playing into the wee hours of the morning. With ciV, I have to force myself to keep playing - and that's not good.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I'd say there is more now, and possibly rightly-so to an extent. But there is so much over-reaction right now. I don't understand the Internet thinking where things can't be mildly disappointing or kind of good--you can only have the Best Thing Ever There Can Be Nothing Better or A Product That Will Bring About The End of Mankind.

 

[NukeEm]

Heh, I remember liking Civ2 and being like "Nothing can beat this. This is amazing." Then three came along... and I played that a ton... to the point of insanity. I then resisted 4, because on the surface I didn't like some of the graphical changes.. (I was using modded terrain from Civ3 and I really got attached to it) but the choice of different leaders for the same Civ was really appealing to me. I played it and I enjoyed it. I didn't like Civ4 vanilla a lot.. I in fact played it for a month... stepped away and then came back and gave it another chance. I'm currently playing Civ5 enjoying every minute of it. There are some things I miss from Civ4 but there are other things I hated. So, Civ5 for me is a different experience. Not better, not worse. Different.... and different isn't bad.. well for me it isn't. But I totally get where people are coming from. To this day I still consider Civ3 the BEST civ.. but that was my experience. Completely subjective.

 

[Stapel]

New versions will always encounter criticism...... So, nothing different on that road. Also, patches and new relases will doubtlessly improve stuff. No news there

But the plain difference is that, when cIV came out, I was hooked within minutes and it dragged me into a whole different bio-rhythm. But ciV doesn't do that. I played it, learnt the basics, got into it a fair bit, and simply found out the game DOES NOT WORK PROPERLY. Apart form several major and minor issues that can probably be (and have been) solved by patches, there are three major downs:
-The AI cannot handle 1UPT warfare. Not at all. It brings down war tactics to AI-stupidity last seen in 1993 or so.
-No multiplayer possibilities (no, I'm not mistaken here)
-Steam. Nuff said on it. My opinion: no pros, dozens of cons