18 months later - how is Civ VI?

[Gorbles]

The way I expressed myself may not have been the best, as I did mean my statement to be different from the way you read it and paraphrased it.

What I was trying to express was that the two items I listed (accurate UI information and highlighted features not working as advertised) are, to me, two things that should take priority in the development stage. If you know the UI isn't giving the player the right information or you know that a feature isn't working properly, then you make fixing them your priority, even if it means not proceeding on to some other features you hoped to include. And if the issues arise too late in the development to avoid shipping with these errors, then these are the types of errors I would address first, in the first patch.

I understand that many features are developed in parallel and it's not as simple as finish one and make it work before proceeding on to the next. But to me, if you want to leave your customer with the sense that "wow, this is a really polished and well made product", you worry first and foremost about what the user experience is going to be. To me, a key - and controllable - part of that is the player not getting inaccurate information and not having "hey, it doesn't do what it says on the tin" moments.
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This development team has different priorities. They prefer putting in cool, new things. From a business perspective, that might be the right approach. It wouldn't be my approach. That's all I was trying to say.

Every development team prioritises "cool, new things", though. It's hard to sell anything without a selling point. "polish" doesn't sell games. Not even modding tools sell games (they help retention, and I'm a modder, believe me, I'm not knocking it). The things that sell games are marketable features. Perhaps something as technical as a "brand-new game engine". But nothing deeper than that.

That's the market, for better or for worse. It pervades cultural expectations to the point where modding scenes are held to similar kinds of expectations (though this varies per genre and game).

I guess for me, I don't see the difference you're trying to point out with the Firaxis development team that worked on Civ 6, vs. the team that worked on other Civ. titles and indeed other teams that work on other games. I understand and respect your issues and concerns with the game - even in any situation where I could disagree, that's not the point. I get you. But that is not a unique nor even egregious flaw that sets this title apart, I feel. But we all have different priorities, and weight them differently too.

That doesn't make sense. The points I made are not contingent on the conclusion that UI on release is a travesty, so (not) refuting them because I said that is meaningless. Unless you agree with them, and just set your standards lower so as to conclude "not travesty"?

I didn't specify the UI. We were talking product lifecycles, comparisons of products on launch, and so on. You then went back on the whole thing to reiterate your belief of <a product> being a travesty on launch, undoing the posts to that point in terms of discussing the state of the respective releases and reasons for their being so.

You can consider what you like meaningless, honestly, it's fine. But maybe consider that it isn't always other people "setting their standards lower", and respect their opinions when they wish to disengage!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I didn't specify the UI. We were talking product lifecycles, comparisons of products on launch, and so on. You then went back on the whole thing to reiterate your belief of <a product> being a travesty on launch, undoing the posts to that point in terms of discussing the state of the respective releases and reasons for their being so.

It doesn't undo anything, there's no clear reason or source for such an assertion.

But yes I consider a pre-beta UI with spotty MP, unclear rules, and broken cycling to be a travesty relative to expected quality of a AAA title. Maybe you don't. It doesn't change anything about the rest of what I said, especially not about magic "under the radar" problems or that the type of scenario where you get more bugs than QA can possibly handle is likely a project management failure.

But maybe consider that it isn't always other people "setting their standards lower", and respect their opinions when they wish to disengage!

If we hold that we agree on actual product capabilities on release, you evaluating the game more positively necessarily implies that you have lower standards for considering the product acceptable. That is a fact regardless of whether my standards are unreasonably high, yours low, or even if we're both somehow simultaneously off-base.

 

[Gl0bal1st]

So basically Civ 6 is still not as good as Civ 4 is the general gist I'm getting here?

 

[Biz_]

So basically Civ 6 is still not as good as Civ 4 is the general gist I'm getting here?

civ6 might eventually become a fun diversion depending on what they do with it

but it will never be a good strategy game because of numerous balance problems and poor design decisions

civ 4 is kind of simple and straightforward, but if you want a competition based on optimal sequencing and resource management, it at least delivers something of value.

civ 6 doesn't do anything well. it's not exciting. it's not competitive. it's just a pile of features loosely related to developing a historical empire

 

[darko82]

And I have bought Collector's ED. which turned out to be a joke for the amount of money you had to spent on it. Never again. Now after 18th months I have big problems to sell it half price. The game was already bundled (sold for pennies) and the value of it must be so ridiculous. Shame. 2K treats their fans as trash. Such marketing strategy only makes sense if both products (vannila and the expansion is up to the standards). But in short, it seems that nobody is interested in it for half price. 25th anniversary edition is simpy a crap. That's why. And the game still has many issues discussed in this forum.

 

[Melchizedek]

Do you like Tetris? District planning is like that. Little tile optimization puzzles. Do you like arranging for different things to land on exactly the right turn? The era system and production bonuses hang on that. Would you rather have the AI poorly simulate a strategy game player, or poorly simulate a real person with their own passions? Civ VI offers the first of those instead of the second. The UI seems almost intentionally clicky. I've recently switched back to Civ IV for most of my gameplay because I realized that, after hundreds of hours in Civ VI, it wasn't much fun for me. I was playing by habit and from a sort of loyalty to the series. Civ IV feels more like immersion in a simulation of real power struggles, and Civ VI feels more like a board game arranged for balance and competition. I love board games, but they aren't so much fun to play by myself. Civ VI leaves me wondering why I should care about winning--although I agree with others in the thread that it has a lot of individually neat gameplay ideas, the overall feeling of it has a low imagination to tedium ratio. However, if you like micropuzzles and arranging things just so, or if you disliked prior releases because they lacked balance between starting locations or starting civs, this could be for you.

 

[acluewithout]

@Melchizedek Agreed. There’s lots of stuff in the game I love and keeps bringing me back. But then when I start playing, it rapidly feels bland somehow.

Odd, because the AI seems to actually be getting better, and is more competition. But because some many mechanics live in little silos, it feels like there’s a real lack of depth. There’s lots to do, but none of it connects to other stuff, so I end up just skipping stuff. Seriously, I rarely get round to building the new government plaza until very late and then only because I feel like I’m supposed to.

I’ve been looking at EU4, but it seems expensive and I need to work out when I’d find time to play because it looks quite complex.

 

[ThERat]

My biggest issues are not even the UI (which is utter crap and misleading) or the braindead AI that simply cant handle the superficial complexity of the game (which civic at which time, chopping madness etc).
I play mainly PBEM which gets rid of the AI irritation. However, the game completely falls apart in the mid and late game when costs escalate quickly. Unfortunately, cities in Civ 6 are relatively small (housing caps and hills/forests etc emphasis) and can't keep up at all with hammer scaling. Unless you have produced your units in earlier eras, there is no way to produce anything meaningful in later eras. Try and produce a tank from scratch and you know what I mean.
Carefully groomed and developed cities cannot outproduce a new junk city which is merely used to chop the hell out of their tiles. Crab harvesting is essential to keep up with upgrading costs etc.
This will not be so apparent in SP games where you can afford to have a minimal standing army due to AI incompetence. Try the same in a competitive game and the maintenance cost for units alone can cripple your empire unless you are prepared for it.

There needs to be a major overhaul for the game to be interesting beyond the first 3 eras.

 

[acluewithout]

I’ve been spending more time playing R&F for variously reasons. Mostly Norway, Japan and Germany.

I’ve made some longer posts about some things that I’ve been thinking about, and have been reading very closely this thread, the unit balance thread, and the ‘civ of the week thread’. I also have another post I’m working on about how Civ does (or doesn’t) represent the Industrial Revolution.

The more I play and think about it though, I keep coming back to one overarching thought.

I really liked (like) the Civ base game. It contains a lot of features (wonders and districts, splitting tech tree into science and tech, religion, great people, governance in particular) which seemed a natural evolution of prior games. It’s a good game.

But R&F, although filled with lots of great ideas, just hasn’t taken things forward much. I’ve said before that R&F feels like a beta for the next expansion. But the more I think about, it’s more like Vanilla 1.1. It's really just a gloss on the base game.

Partly it’s that R&F hasn’t yet addressed some basic balance issues, like anti cav and Militaty Tactics. But mostly it’s that R&F doesn’t actually advance the base gameplay much, nor does it add anything (except maybe loyalty) which really changes or fleshes out existing systems much (with the exception of faith, which is much more useful now).

So how is Civ 18 months later? Well, IMO, Civ was a great game when it came out (or it was after a few obligatory patches), and it’s better now after R&F.... just..., not all that much better, really.

Look, if you didn’t like the base game much, then nothing has really changed, so you probably still won't like it. Forward settling is a bit better, the AI is a bit smarter, diplomacy is a bit more consistent, and a few things are better balanced. But that's it.

And if you did like the base game then, well then, hey, good news*, not much has changed! It's basically still as awesome as it was when it came out...

...and I think it’s the second camp where there's real frustration or disappointment. The base game was a real evolution or jump forward for some people, but since release the game hasn’t moved forward much. There’s been some needed balancing and bug fixing - but that’s been slow - and some new stuff has been added in a few patches and now in R&F - but a lot of that new stuff hasn’t really built on and or fleshed out what was in the base game.

Basically, for some people - me included - Civ is a good game. But it’s frustrating it's 18 months down then line and it’s not ‘great’ or perhaps ‘amazing’ game, particularly when all the pieces seem to be there for it to be exactly that...

*unless England is your favourite Civ.