Bibor
Doomsday Machine
Ever evolving thread, what can I say.
You can safely skip my whole rant and read either TMIT's summary or the old thread on this very same topic.
The old (Civ5) thread, still valid. Different game, same potential issues.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=400803
My rants.
You can safely skip my whole rant and read either TMIT's summary or the old thread on this very same topic.
There ARE a few things other genres do that would automatically make civ better:
- Honest list of working features
- A UI that minimizes the number of rote inputs to do basic tasks
- Passing effort at optimizing for game performance
- UI you can trust to do what it represents will happen (serious, game-altering issue in civ 5 vanilla, but was also in 4 to lesser degree)
- Avoidance of fake difficulty (IE do *not* join the I wanna be the guy genre), particularly hiding gameplay rules or obscuring information that is nevertheless still available. Some of 4's events, quite a bit of 5's AI interactions and UI fall into this category.
- Limiting mundane tasks with little or no thought.
- Matching player incentive structures with the implemented win conditions.
Civ 6 might be a very good game, it might even surpass 4. However track record gives me no reason to trust. Even 4 had some of the above problems, including nonsense like the game "thinking" you're pressing alt when you're not causing insta-declaration of war and forced unit selection...the latter finding its way into 5 too.
No civ game needs that garbage, and removing it would make the series better, strictly better.
The old (Civ5) thread, still valid. Different game, same potential issues.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=400803
My rants.
Spoiler :
Summary:
Lacking any need for motoric skills, Civilization games are games for the mind. There's graphics, audio and music, but the bulk of the game happens in the mind, the audio-visual elements just helping with immersion.
Mind games are, by default, based on decisions (choices). These decisions have various weights, consequences, effects. Screen-based games, like computer games, have the additional effect, just as my podcast, that the mind game itself (or the audio in my podcasts' case), isn't enough: players need to be entertained by audio-visual and other distractions to fill the void left by the moments that aren't about decision making. This is an inherent defficiency of games that require no motoric skills, because there's no movement or time-related excitement.
The course Civilization 5+ took (and by this I mean to extreme, all civilization titles suffer from this) is the worst-case scenario for anyone interested in the "mind game" aspect of it. Instead of improving (completely revamping) the decision-making aspect of the game, they are constantly shifting around the distractions and other irrelevant segments of the game. I the recording, I call this "the clicking game" - things that you click but don't have any relevant impact on gameplay.
Constantly and decidedly shifting away from it's board game and strategy game roots, the Civilization franchise is turning into a Farmville-like distraction party, with beautifully crafted scenery, screens and buildings, with little else to offer.
In the podcast, I'm covering the history and offer an explanation on why this is happening, I compare it to other games that managed to pull it off and offer insight why or how Civilization 6 could've played.
This lack of strong, decision-based game mechanics and sticking to old, irrelevant ones, is turning out to be (unrusprisingly) an uphill battle for the developers: the AI can't deal with it and thus still cheats, combat is more a drag than fun, gampelay is full of "nothing happens this turn" and the game cannot be ported to other mediums (consoles, mobiles, tablets).
If you don't feel like listening to the podcast while doing something else, Tabarnak was kind enough to remind me of a thread from six years ago in which I was - surprisingly - saying the same thing. It's worth reading through.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=400803
Link to video.
Link to video.
Link to video.
Lacking any need for motoric skills, Civilization games are games for the mind. There's graphics, audio and music, but the bulk of the game happens in the mind, the audio-visual elements just helping with immersion.
Mind games are, by default, based on decisions (choices). These decisions have various weights, consequences, effects. Screen-based games, like computer games, have the additional effect, just as my podcast, that the mind game itself (or the audio in my podcasts' case), isn't enough: players need to be entertained by audio-visual and other distractions to fill the void left by the moments that aren't about decision making. This is an inherent defficiency of games that require no motoric skills, because there's no movement or time-related excitement.
The course Civilization 5+ took (and by this I mean to extreme, all civilization titles suffer from this) is the worst-case scenario for anyone interested in the "mind game" aspect of it. Instead of improving (completely revamping) the decision-making aspect of the game, they are constantly shifting around the distractions and other irrelevant segments of the game. I the recording, I call this "the clicking game" - things that you click but don't have any relevant impact on gameplay.
Constantly and decidedly shifting away from it's board game and strategy game roots, the Civilization franchise is turning into a Farmville-like distraction party, with beautifully crafted scenery, screens and buildings, with little else to offer.
In the podcast, I'm covering the history and offer an explanation on why this is happening, I compare it to other games that managed to pull it off and offer insight why or how Civilization 6 could've played.
This lack of strong, decision-based game mechanics and sticking to old, irrelevant ones, is turning out to be (unrusprisingly) an uphill battle for the developers: the AI can't deal with it and thus still cheats, combat is more a drag than fun, gampelay is full of "nothing happens this turn" and the game cannot be ported to other mediums (consoles, mobiles, tablets).
If you don't feel like listening to the podcast while doing something else, Tabarnak was kind enough to remind me of a thread from six years ago in which I was - surprisingly - saying the same thing. It's worth reading through.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=400803
Link to video.
Link to video.
Link to video.