The danger of 'less'

[cephalo]

We've all heard the sayings, 'Less is more', and especially as Civ fans, 'The designer reaches perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.'

These 20th century ideas have become conventional wisdom in almost everything in life these days, and it wouldn't bother me a bit to see this paradigm challenged now and again.

I'm seeing a trend from Firaxis that I'm not entirely happy with. I think that Civ5 suffers a bit from the same thing that Civ4:Colonization suffered from. There is such an overwhelming priority in making all the pieces fit together, that the pressure to deliver fewer pieces is deceptively strong and detrimental to the final product.

In order for a game to have 'interesting decisions', the various pieces do have to fit together. It is certainly a very important aspect of a game's design. However, an equally important aspect of a game's design is the 'discovery process'. This has to do with revealing the game's content in such a way that you efficiently extend the time in which a game continues to be fun. The less content you have, the harder it is to govern this important process.

So you have a bit of challenge here, because more content means that you will have difficulty creating 'interesting decisions' out of it all, while less content means that you have more difficulty providing an adequate 'discovery process'.

I played Civ5 hardcore for 5 days straight, and I enjoyed it immensly during that time, but now I feel I'm finished with it. I've never been done with a vanilla Civ game that fast. The discovery process is too short. There's not enough content for a Civ game. I expect the expansions to help, but there is alot of catching up to do.

 

[stormerne]

Perhaps "less" is a commercial decision. We're all familiar with built-in obsolescence being a way to perpetuate income for modern hi-tech companies, hardware and software alike. Perhaps the strategy of "less is more" is similar and simply to sell content additions.

The rich graphics interface seems to promise a richness of game experience. That pulls us in. But perhaps we later find we're missing a rich conceptual experience to match that. That may cause us to lose interest and drift away.

All in all, it feels to me like we're playing a raw game engine with placeholder content rather than a completed game.

 

[cephalo]

Perhaps "less" is a commercial decision. We're all familiar with built-in obsolescence being a way to perpetuate income for modern hi-tech companies, hardware and software alike. Perhaps the strategy of "less is more" is similar and simply to sell content additions.

Ha! That's funny, but for me its a bit too accusitory. I have no evidence to believe that they are holding out on us. I think its more likely that great games are just really hard to make, and Civ4 being one of the best, is just a really hard act to follow.

 

[crazy_achmed]

All in all, it feels to me like we're playing a raw game engine with placeholder content rather than a completed game.

I thought this when playing the neverwinter nights series

 

[Asylumer]

We've all heard the sayings, 'Less is more', and especially as Civ fans, 'The designer reaches perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.'

"It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience." - Albert Einstein

Sometimes people miss the 'Simple as it can possibly be, and not one bit less' part of simplicity theories. If the overall game experience has been compromised due to shallowness then clearly somebody oversimplified.

 

[drachasor]

Maybe you should clarify the areas you think Civ 5 is lacking. Personally I don't think tech rushing for religions is a great loss. The main lagging area is that Civ 5 probably need another 6 months of fine-tuning and polish.

 

[logintime]

Maybe you should clarify the areas you think Civ 5 is lacking. Personally I don't think tech rushing for religions is a great loss. The main lagging area is that Civ 5 probably need another 6 months of fine-tuning and polish.

-lack of unit types
-boring buildings with enourmous build times and not-so-enourmous benefits
-simplified resources
-trade routes simplified to internal, instead of international. Apparently all nations in this game adhere to Juche?
-diplomacy in general
-city customization and specialization
-science
-happiness

The list goes on.

 

[r_rolo1]

I already said more than once that if you take the Euxpery phrase to the ultimate consequences in strategy game terms we should play tic-tac-toe and nothing more

I have a similar feeling about civ V ... better said, I have the same feeling about Civ V than I had when I started on civ III after coming from SMAC : that there was something missing there

 

[Akka]

We've all heard the sayings, 'Less is more', and especially as Civ fans, 'The designer reaches perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.'

These 20th century ideas have become conventional wisdom in almost everything in life these days, and it wouldn't bother me a bit to see this paradigm challenged now and again.

These ideas are true. But like all simple but true ideas, they need to be understood and not just parroted.

Both are about not cluttering a design with useless parts. They are not about removing content that is actually useful. That's the common error people make when they use them as argument to excuse glaring lack of something.

 

[stormerne]

Ha! That's funny, but for me its a bit too accusitory. I have no evidence to believe that they are holding out on us. I think its more likely that great games are just really hard to make, and Civ4 being one of the best, is just a really hard act to follow.

Oh it's not accusatory at all, and not even cynical - which is why I hedged it around with "perhaps". But facing plain facts, game making is a commercial venture, and investors need their returns. There are many pressures on a development team - their users, their management, their investors, and just what feels right to them - and from experience I know it's a hard balancing act.

The guys who wrote Civ2 said this (in the manual, p179, Designers' Notes):

Of course, the biggest potential pitfall in working on a game like this is that none of us wanted to go down in history as "the guys who broke Civilization!"​

The whole series is a hard act to follow, and yes Civ4 really was very good. I'm sure they're conscious of that. They continue like this about Civ2:

Civilization is about as complex and finely balanced as games get, and any misstep would quickly throw that magical pacing out of kilter. So just throwing in the kitchen sink wasn't going to cut it. Every addition or change needed to be carefully weighed to make sure it wasn't doing more harm than good. On the other hand, we knew we wanted this to be more than a simple facelift - this was our big chance to take our favourite game and make it even better.​

Déjà vu?

There's another (tongue in cheek) explanation too. Perhaps there were too many interests involved. Perhaps we wanted a racehorse and got a camel - a horse designed by a committee.

 

[Bad Brett]

What's ironic is that the few pieces in Civ V don't even fit together.

 

[drachasor]

-lack of unit types
-boring buildings with enourmous build times and not-so-enourmous benefits
-simplified resources
-trade routes simplified to internal, instead of international. Apparently all nations in this game adhere to Juche?
-diplomacy in general
-city customization and specialization
-science
-happiness

1. Units are pretty much the same as before. The biggest difference is no axemen or macemen. Hardly huge (they didn't appear before Civ 4 either).

2. Buildings are a problem, though many have large benefits. The bigger issue is they are a bit overspecialized and the build times are too long. I don't see how this is a great simplification though, but it is a problem with the tuning of the game.

3. They got rid of health and folded it into food resources. Not necessarily bad, as health wasn't much of an issue in 4 anyhow. I don't think this really changed depth of gameplay. Main thing it did was make the beginning even slower (especially with longer build times). Again, this is an issue of tuning (tile yield probably needs to go up a bit or early growth increased).

4. Trade routes are pretty lame now, though they were too under the hood before, imho. There needs to be a good middle ground.

5. Diplomacy is purely a polish issue (regarding display and so forth) and is getting addressed.

6. City Specialization still works, arguably it is even bigger now than before with harder-to-make buildings and maintenance costs. Heck, you can even make happiness generators (not saying that's great from a realism standpoint per se, just saying that something you couldn't do before).

7. How is Science dumbed down? The system in Civ 5 is just as good as that in Civ IV, better in some ways and worse in others.

8. I'll grant that global happiness is odd (except perhaps for golden ages, which is neat). I'd rather they had gone with global food, which makes a lot more sense.

 

[drachasor]

What's ironic is that the few pieces in Civ V don't even fit together.

It's mostly because the game was released in essentially a beta state.

 

[vincentz]

Is Civ V released??? Jubiiii!!!!

Then I can put Civ 0.5 Beta on the shelf

 

[Silvis]

The game is great, but does have its share of issues. I think that comes with most games though. Also, sometimes you have to take a step back before you can progress forward. Hopefully this is what they are thinking with Civ 5.

 

[cephalo]

Maybe you should clarify the areas you think Civ 5 is lacking. Personally I don't think tech rushing for religions is a great loss. The main lagging area is that Civ 5 probably need another 6 months of fine-tuning and polish.

I think Civ5 is lacking in only one thing of great importance. Content. It just didn't last long enough. All the other bits are just details that will please one person and dissatisfy another.

 

[cephalo]

These ideas are true. But like all simple but true ideas, they need to be understood and not just parroted.

Both are about not cluttering a design with useless parts. They are not about removing content that is actually useful. That's the common error people make when they use them as argument to excuse glaring lack of something.

I think they are absolutely true when you are making airplanes or mouse traps. When you are talking about an artistic endeavor, this is where these maxims can be abused. Angkor Wat is cluttered with little carvings that can't even been seen without climbing the building. When compared to many modern buildings, which are often little more than reflective cubes, one might say it is a failed design. It's not really though is it? It's a famous building actually...

 

[marioflag]

Personally i don't share completely the opinion of the OP about civ5.
There are certain areas where the game has less content (smaller tech tree, no religion, no espionage) but the game feels also a lot more streamlined with all features working well and with new features compared to civ4.

Religion was a fine addition but it never worked well not just for its influence upon diplomacy but because it was never balanced even after 2 expansions and all the patches. Personally i would have rather seen religion reintroduced differently but removing religion as it was implemented in civ4 has been a wise decision.
About the tech tree and its content i agree that there are glaring omissions which needed to be already in the game.
About Espionage it was introduced in BtS so i don't know if it's really correct to compare civ5 to civ4 and 2 expansions in terms of content.

Civ5 has introduced though a lot of new features:

-Civilizations are a lot more unique and different. (Anyone remember that in civ4 vanilla there were only leader traits and UU distinguishing civilizations?)
-Reworked combat system
-City States
-Culture which has a more important role
-Golden Age mechanic
-A new economic system which is more complex and fun.

In my opinion most people just forget that when civ4 was released, not only it had a disastrous launch like civ5; but also that the game was less meaty and functional than they remember.

1)Until the first expansion Civ4 had a flawed combat system due to:
-Overpowered siege units
-City defense didn't work well

2)AI was also really stupid until the release of Better AI mod which was subsequently implemented in BtS
3)Less uniqueness among civilizations

 

[JA_Lamb]

Oh it's not accusatory at all, and not even cynical - which is why I hedged it around with "perhaps". But facing plain facts, game making is a commercial venture, and investors need their returns. There are many pressures on a development team - their users, their management, their investors, and just what feels right to them - and from experience I know it's a hard balancing act.

The guys who wrote Civ2 said this (in the manual, p179, Designers' Notes):

Of course, the biggest potential pitfall in working on a game like this is that none of us wanted to go down in history as "the guys who broke Civilization!"​

The whole series is a hard act to follow, and yes Civ4 really was very good. I'm sure they're conscious of that. They continue like this about Civ2:

Civilization is about as complex and finely balanced as games get, and any misstep would quickly throw that magical pacing out of kilter. So just throwing in the kitchen sink wasn't going to cut it. Every addition or change needed to be carefully weighed to make sure it wasn't doing more harm than good. On the other hand, we knew we wanted this to be more than a simple facelift - this was our big chance to take our favourite game and make it even better.​

Déjà vu?

There's another (tongue in cheek) explanation too. Perhaps there were too many interests involved. Perhaps we wanted a racehorse and got a camel - a horse designed by a committee.

Under that philosophy of 'less is more', the Model T Ford with an original Diesel engine 'that could burn' anything is the most efficient design for a car.
Why then are you all running around buying the latest car full of electronic gizmos that do nothing for transporting you from A to B, but make a lot for bragging purposes?

 

[User336657]

my only experience with the civ series is playing civ 2 back in the early 2000s and civ 5 back when it came out and only recently civ 3. these past two months i've gone on a civ binge playing too many hours of mostly civ 2 on my phone and some civ 3 and even less of 5. it's surprising how much better civ 2 is when compared to 5 even though civ 5 has "better" graphics and sound and changes that would have made 2 nearly perfect. To put it simply, civ 5 has become a mainstream oversimplified game to appeal to a broader audience. I'm sure you guys have seen the same thing happen to other game series. the most obvious one to me, other than civ, is the pokemon series; at some point they decided to simplify their game also and it is no longer the type of game that i would play. it's still pokemon but the changes made have drastically lowered its playability.

anyway, i just couldn't sit through even 3 hours of civ 5. it lacks what made me a fan two decades ago; my main issue is the removal of the tax system. i know people say that the tiles are basically the same thing but they're really not the same and even if i agreed that the tiles somehow replace the tax system, they don't really make sense to me. i understand how they work but i feel that it is overly complicated and i know i said the game became simpler but it's complicated such that there must be a better mechanic or system that the developers could have used in place of the mess that we see in the game. i know it's hard to justify a game is somehow inferior to its predecessor even though it has much more content, better graphics, improved gameplay, etc but sometimes less is more.

civ 2 trumps civ 5 no question about it. i can't really compare civ 2 to 3 as i haven't played long enough to come to a conlcusion.
i think i ranted, sorry