Things they obviously removed to have some expansion material

[tomaalimosh]

As with the vanilla Civ 5, I feel the developers obviously chose to not introduce some functionality that was either present in the predecessor, or it was obviously necessary.

(see the religion and spying that were missing from Civ 5 vanilla)

The first thing I noticed in the little time I spent playing BE, and it grated on my nerves is the way stations work.

Or more like don't work.

These stations are nothing but trade destinations. This is an obvious downgrade from the city state system.
And I feel that they'll definitely reintroduce that as a big "feature" in a very costly expansion. I hate that!

It's obvious how those stations were supposed to work: start as an outpost, and work like they work now, until they transform into a colonies much like the outpost does for factions. And then function a lot like the city states in Civ5.

As it stands, you can't even have any recourse to a different faction attacking a station that you like to trade with. All you can do is declare war on the attacking faction. No diplomatic solution. You can't really demand tribute (other than that quest - which is, again, an obvious foreshadowing of what they plan to do)

Did you find any other features that were obviously removed just to be ableto introduce them in future expansions?

 

[Cymsdale]

I think it's a stretch to assume that buffed up stations are being saved for an expansion feature. That seems like it would be a lame feature in any case.

Are Demographics and Last-built Notification being saved for an expansion too?

 

[mnf]

Conspiracy theory follows.

A: Hey, what do you say we mod Civ V and package it as a new game for sale?
B: WHY would anyone buy it?
A: Just use the Alpha Centauri theme, people will buy it, trust me.
B: Okay...but I don't think they're gonna like getting just an Alpha Centauri mod of Civ V.
A: Don't you worry. Just take out features like religion and city states, or leave some of them half-finished, then release them when its time for an expansion! This way it's not the same as Civ V at launch, and by the time people realize it, they've bought in to the main game and might as well buy the expansions!

Conspiracy theory ends.

 

[tomaalimosh]

I'm not saying it's just a Civ 5 mod (like a lot of people have)
It definitely has a lot of cool innovative features (the tech tree, the affinity system and a lot of others).
Even the way settling new colonies works is cool.

But, that said, you can't miss how much stations look like outposts and how organic it would look if they evolved like outposts do. (especially in the context of how city states work in civ V)

 

[Ryika]

I don't think any feature was "obviously removed" to serve as content for future expansions. I think they just fell behind their time-plan and had to rush a lot of the stuff. That theory goes hand in hand with the state the game is currently in. ...although I assume that, if you really wanted to go that far, you could say that they obviously created that state on purpose to make it look less obvious that they removed stuff for future expansions, ehh.

 

[Lord Tirian]

I don't think it's a "conspiracy" as in something being done deliberate. No game ever releases with all the features the developers want to have.

They clearly wanted stations to work differently than city states because a) city states make no sense on a new world, b) a lot of mechanics associated with city states are out and (luxuries and votes) c) the new quest system supersedes the main interaction mechanism with city states.

As a result, the station system pretty much had to be a major re-design and not just the city states as they are.

At this point, stations are effectively a new feature and hence start competing with everything else in terms of development time. And since stations are only supposed to be a thing in the early game (before you have other civs to trade with), they were probably low in the list of priorities and got less love.

And expansions are pretty much that anyway... additions that are expanding on under-utilised mechanics and themes, so it was probably less "let's not give it to them so they buy an expansion" and more "leave it to an expansion so we can get the tech web working well!" (or something like that).

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I think they'll be fine if they greatly enhance the trade benefits with them while greatly re-balancing the internal routes.

 

[Martinus]

It is possible that stations will be buffed in future expansion(s), but it is ridiculous to claim that they only serve as trade destinations - they are also heavily involved in several quest chain lines. This, imho, is a biggest problem with a lot of criticism being levelled against the game at the moment - most of it does not take into account quests which add an extra debt.

 

[albie_123]

I don't think any features were removed for expansion / DLC material.

What I assume occurred is that as release day grew closer, several features were then put on hiatus, and will probably be reimplemented as DLC.

Looking through the code - especially for stuff that was changed but never finished (World Congress equivalent, Religion) - it seems almost undeniable.

 

[Lucius_]

Stations? Really? I would be surprised if we see stations becoming city-states.

 

[MadDjinn]

I don't think any features were removed for expansion / DLC material.

What I assume occurred is that as release day grew closer, several features were then put on hiatus, and will probably be reimplemented as DLC.

Looking through the code - especially for stuff that was changed but never finished (World Congress equivalent, Religion) - it seems almost undeniable.

and yet the devs themselves said that religion was removed because it didn't fit the theme.

no one ever said that a World Congress 'equivalent' was ever going to be in BE.

so, given that they directly deny your silly statement with facts, it seems quite deniable.

edit -

at most you can say is that someone was sloppy and didn't remove code.

 

[Joch]

at most you can say is that someone was sloppy and didn't remove code.

That is not limted to Civ:BE either, you look through the code of pretty much any game or software, and you will see unused or legacy features. There was an article where the devs discussed the game code evolution, basically, you can still find code going back to Civ I.

 

[MasterDinadan]

There is XML data for eras like Ancient, Classical, etc.
Obviously they intended for the game to have eras and then dropped it!
There is data about starting bias for an Egypt civ, but no Egypt civ in the game. WTF!

Seriously though, it's comical how much stuff is left over from Civ 5 data - it's totally believable to me that this started as a Civ 5 mod and then evolved into something more. That said, the expensive part of game design is the sounds, graphics, UI assets, etc. These are the things that justify the cost, and it is clear they didn't just re-use Civ 5 assets. They may not have a made a good attempt to disguise that the engine is re-used, but you aren't really paying for the engine.

 

[Joch]

ehh, well again, I presume you are totally unfamiliar with game code, especially with a long running franchise like this one. Here is the interview:

To hear Miller tell it, a lot of the low-level code underlying established Civilization systems like tiles and city management has been carried over (in some form or fashion) from earlier games in the series -- all the way to back to the original Civilization game released in 1991.

"One of my favorite parts about working in the Civilization codebase is that it's very stratified," says Miller. "There's Civilization 4 code rattling around in there, some Civilization 3 rattling around in there, and you can kind of see the evolution in style and approach between games."

The weight of that legacy codebase can be burdensome; while the Beyond Earth team wrote fresh code to govern the lion's share of the game's systems, they had a tricky time integrating that work with some legacy code. "We couldn't burn everything to the ground, like probably every engineer wants to do," says McDonough. "It's hard to be airdropped into something that's seen this much iteration; you just have to sort of run with what you've got and make the best of it."

Making the best of it often entails rewriting large swathes of code to allow for systems that weren't imagined by earlier designers. Both Miller and McDunough take pride in calling themselves designer-programmers, a hybrid role that they feel empowers them to make design decisions with an understanding of (and ability to manipulate) the code.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/227041/Building_Beyond_Earth_atop_the_Civilization_codebase.php

 

[m15a]

A lot of features were not implemented in BE because they didn't make sense with the game's story/setting or because they were replaced with something similar. Definitely, the game design was influenced by the code/content available from Civ V, but they didn't copy everything just because more things is better.

City states would make no sense with the story. Stations growing into something like city states is possible, but why would that happen over the year-per-turn timeframe of the game? I could see them building a very small military maybe, but would they start claiming land and get enough people to work it?

Conspiracy theory follows.

A: Hey, what do you say we mod Civ V and package it as a new game for sale?
B: WHY would anyone buy it?
A: Just use the Alpha Centauri theme, people will buy it, trust me.
B: Okay...but I don't think they're gonna like getting just an Alpha Centauri mod of Civ V.
A: Don't you worry. Just take out features like religion and city states, or leave some of them half-finished, then release them when its time for an expansion! This way it's not the same as Civ V at launch, and by the time people realize it, they've bought in to the main game and might as well buy the expansions!

Conspiracy theory ends.

I find it funny that two of the big complaints about BE are that it's just a re-skin and that they didn't copy Civ V closely enough. I know there are probably distinct sets of people that have those complaints (hopefully), but it's still kind of funny.

 

[Atepa09]

and yet the devs themselves said that religion was removed because it didn't fit the theme.

no one ever said that a World Congress 'equivalent' was ever going to be in BE.

so, given that they directly deny your silly statement with facts, it seems quite deniable.

edit -

at most you can say is that someone was sloppy and didn't remove code.

Actually, their Community Rep (i think that's what he is) has said that for us...

There being leftovers in the files doesn't not mean those are being 'held back' for DLC. It means the files didn't get trimmed properly.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/65980/discussions/0/619569608707859029/#c619569608708198908

 

[Darvon]

If there isn't a North/Central Europe sponsor released as some form of DLC at some point in the near future I'd be surprised.

 

[Tinker]

I find it funny that two of the big complaints about BE are that it's just a re-skin and that they didn't copy Civ V closely enough. I know there are probably distinct sets of people that have those complaints (hopefully), but it's still kind of funny.

That's usually the same people, though, and they work together - because a lot feels like a reskin, it becomes way more obvious which parts are suddenly missing, like the demographics or diplomacy screens, things like replays, trade route sorting, all that. If it was a completely different game to Civ 5 there wouldn't be many of those complaints because it wouldn't be similar enough to be missing that.

 

[Becephalus]

This is a dumb idea and show a real lack of understanding how computer game development works. Now Take Two might have intentionally kept the budget and development time with a plan that there would be expansions to flush it out. But that is not the same thing.

Games have to make money or the companies will go bankrupt, they could have worked on it twice as long and had it be much better but come out a year from now and cost $100.

 

[Tomice]

You make a huge mistake when you compare the complexity of BNW (which developed over years) with BE.
The fact is: Even if you change only a fraction of the game mechanics, all the balance you had established before goes down the river. They HAD to reduce complexity to have any chance of making the mechanics interact in a reasonable way.

It was the same between Civ4 BtS and Civ 5 at release.

Expansion mechanics usually fix issues the base game had. They expand the core mechanics, but they also rely on them. If the core mechanics don't work properly, the added mechanics do nothing but increase the chaos. If each Civ title kept all the mechanics the predecessors had (plus adding new ones), there wouldn't be a chance to balance the whole thing. And new players would be frustrated because the game would be extremely hard to understand.
This is the "core" of BE. It will take a few patches until those base mechanics are balanced properly. Then we'll have the base on which an expansion can be built (given enough interest).




I'm a bit disappointed by the game as well, but one has to accept the fact that they can't make a game like BNW or BtS without community feedback and a lot of trial & error.