Are journalists covering BE required to only ask bland/uninteresting questions?

[Westwall]

And it's the only thing that happened in 9 months.

It's just... I don't know if they're unaware or think it doesn't matter.

The most worrying thing was when McDonough said it addressed "all the problems people had."

 

[Gorbles]

I dunno, I thought people liked some of the Trade Route changes, barring the consequences to Polystralia.

It certainly helps if you understand how to play the game you're designing...

No-one's saying they don't.

There's a difference between knowing how to play the game and being the best in a fan-based online community who decides simultaneously that both AI difficulties and 1 v 1 human play are good hallmarks for balancing.

Moreso when the only self-styled competitive player I've seen post on here got dogpiled by half the community before saying most of the competitive lot don't touch the forums, and laugh at forum-goers. I can't remember his name, mind. He was incredibly antagonistic, which didn't help his point(s).

There's so much rhetoric at play here. Barely any of it is relevant, outside of like what SupremacyKing is stating, and Acken's fair counterpoint about it being desirable to have good players on staff, or at least consult with good players.

So much of it is crafted on absolutely zero experience with how games are developed, modding experience aside. It must be frustrating for people that actually want to engage on the subject, even if they don't post.

 

[calad]

Suprise but this is a bad game and firaxi only wants your money. So dont buy it and do something else.

 

[Galgus]

Well, they take in some balance-concerns from the community at least, but it's more like "The community has said this is op, let's do something about it." - and then some choices are made, based on ... I don't know what. The Wonder-Patch is the perfect example - they knew that "players didn't like them", came to a conclusion that I just can't understand and now wonders are even less powerful and more expensive than before.

To be fair though, in other situations they have reacted "better" - free techs as Traits for example. But then of course Academies are still insane. Overall it's very hit-and-miss, does not seem like the infrastructure to make the people who design and code understand the issues and the possible solutions is really working that good.

The free techs removal also make Franco-Iberia next to useless as a sponsor.

I agree that they have reacted strangely to feedback.

 

[Tagma]

I choose to believe that most of their efforts are in fact tied up in making civ 6... (joking... mostly...)
Out of curiosity, how many people does it take to create a game the size of civ?

 

[Westwall]

The free techs removal also make Franco-Iberia next to useless as a sponsor.

I agree that they have reacted strangely to feedback.

That's a pleasant way of saying they made things a whole lot worse.

I've hated wonders that only affect single cities ever since Civ 5, and now they've doubled down on those while making them even less attractive by raising the resource costs.

They really don't want us building anything.

This is what I mean when I say I disagree with the idea of putting novices to a genre in charge of a game that's supposed to be the benchmark for said genre.

When players can easily tell right off the bat what's missing or being done wrong while the designers themselves can't or simply don't care until they're prepping for a new expansion, I'd say that's a red flag.

At this point I'm banking on the producer bringing more to the table. Hopefully there was a reason he was chosen to replace Brink.

I choose to believe that most of their efforts are in fact tied up in making civ 6... (joking... mostly...)
Out of curiosity, how many people does it take to create a game the size of civ?

You're probably not as off the mark as you think.

 

[Acken]

Most video games start with small teams. Mostly designers and people able to code prototype ideas. Once they are certain of what will go into the game they add a lot of people on the team to do the concrete work (engine, arts, sounds etc etc) so that things come together. Then once the bulk of the project is done they'll add additional members to do the extra stuff like the whole QA etc. and additional people that can simply "copy" what has already been done once simply to add more of it (additional civilizations for example).

According to the wiki civ5 was 56 persons. It's very likely civBE had a way smaller team, the game is simply a lot less ambitious.

 

[Westwall]

Right, but I don't think it was less ambitious by company mandate.

Firaxis knew the first Civ in space would be a big deal and that a lot would be riding on it.

M&M even say they had all the Firaxis resources and personnel they needed at their disposal.

Seems like what happened was that the core Civ team was and continues to be focused almost entirely on Civ 6, and here come these new bloods that had to actually be brought in from another company to make their space Civ.

So they're told, "Look, whatever you need to make this happen, we'll provide it. This is your project, your vision. We're 100% behind you."

And that's basically what happened. We got the vision of two guys who were fairly new to 4x and the Civ series, and they gave it their best shot.

But their best shot turned out to be a modified Civ 5 with a lot of problems, not least of which was a limited vision, probably owing to inexperience and at least in part to the hesitation these guys had to really shake things up too much because they didn't want to trample on the Civ legacy.

Not realizing shaking things up has always been part of that legacy.

 

[Acken]

To be fair I think they're doing the right thing with BERT as designers. That kind of new mechanics introduced is exactly what the original should have been about. I like the agreement and diplo point system, artifacts sounds like an interesting idea. I think water cities are a good idea (although I fear it will just transform seas as extra land). I don't entirely like the new diplomacy but at least I'm willing to see how it ends up.

My worry is that it's just added upon. With little to no modifications of some of the issues like irrelevant techs/buildings, poor wonders, useless specialists, academy spam, poor health system etc. This year period feels wasted when it should have been used to work hard on improving the base game so that the whole BERT experience is on a more solid basis. I'm glad they at least worked on a couple things like trade routes and some exploits.

If they're not the best players around then fine but as I said earlier then in that case you have to get the feedback from somewhere and engage in the discussion. Otherwise some concepts will keep flying over your head. Hell, even if you're good you need the feedback ! I'm making my civ5 mod and I cannot see all the little problems some of the changes introduce. The less feedback I have the less I know if a change is right or not.

 

[Westwall]

To be fair I think they're doing the right thing with BERT as designers. That kind of new mechanics introduced is exactly what the original should have been about.

I agree. And they were even generous enough to only charge us 30 bucks instead of full price for it. Things are certainly looking up, aren't they?

My worry is that it's just added upon. With little to no modifications of some of the issues like irrelevant techs/buildings, poor wonders, useless specialists, academy spam, poor health system etc. This year period feels wasted when it should have been used to work hard on improving the base game so that the whole BERT experience is on a more solid basis. I'm glad they at least worked on a couple things like trade routes and some exploits.

If they're not the best players around then fine but as I said earlier then in that case you have to get the feedback from somewhere and engage in the discussion. Otherwise some concepts will keep flying over your head.

It's beginning to look more and more like they just don't want veteran player feedback.

Why should they when they have reviewers sucking up to them by saying things like, "Well I don't know about you, but I don't need hand-holding in the form of colored tech webs, I like to take the time to get to know everything."

Nevermind that they hardly play the game and just assume players are lazy for finding the tech web unintuitive even after several playthroughs.

 

[Galgus]

That's a pleasant way of saying they made things a whole lot worse.

I've hated wonders that only affect single cities ever since Civ 5, and now they've doubled down on those while making them even less attractive by raising the resource costs.

They really don't want us building anything.

This is what I mean when I say I disagree with the idea of putting novices to a genre in charge of a game that's supposed to be the benchmark for said genre.

When players can easily tell right off the bat what's missing or being done wrong while the designers themselves can't or simply don't care until they're prepping for a new expansion, I'd say that's a red flag.

At this point I'm banking on the producer bringing more to the table. Hopefully there was a reason he was chosen to replace Brink.

They had some amazing ideas - quests, affinities, aliens, virtues and the tech web.

They just didn't develop any of those systems to anything close to their full potential.

My bet is that they were, and are, too scared of drifting from the Civ 5 formula.

 

[Gali]

I'd say there are several factors. This is a game made by rookies who can come up with good ideas. They lack the experience and company support to polish them, however.

The resources thing is a big deal. This game has probably been at least 3rd if not 4th priority for Firaxis its whole development. The Civ franchise 5 and 6, its almost certainly in development, is one. X-com is number 2. Starships and any other Sid project is third. Then you have BE. Its at the bottom of the totem pole. This is actually an increase compared to Civ 4. Beyond Earth is just as comparable, to me, to Civ 4 Colonization as Alpha Centauri. Its a remake of a niche company classic made using the contemporary Civ engine to save time and effort. Compared to that lazy mess BE is having a lot of resources put behind it.

The relative lack of resources explains the poor patching in quantity and quality. I very much doubt Civ Be got anywhere near the support for patching that CiV got. Especially since CiV had DLC to help fund development. Add in the new design team looking with fresh eyes and the lesser scope is obvious. They also had far less time to patch it than CiV. By the time CiV started getting its major vanilla patches, spring after release, BE was already having its resources fully commited to Rising Tide. CiV had more than 6 months of additional patch time at least, when it was probably the companies' number one or at least number 2 priority.
You can see the lack of resources in the expansion too. They probably didn't touch virtues or stations or many other issues because they needed the time to work on the features that w
ould be on the box. Those features are looking pretty decent. However, its clear the rest of the game did not get the full G and K treatment. They didn't have the time or manpower. Civ 6 has to be in full production and X-com 2 just got an expensive delay. Manpower must be tight. I believe they plan to do a major balance patch , every Firaxis expansion gets one, to work on that after using RT as an open beta.

 

[Galgus]

I seriously, seriously doubt that Starships took priority over BE, since it's a tablet game.

I also doubt that they were resource choked, since multiple teams can exist for different games.

Fixing most of the blandness wouldn't even need that many resources - tweaking numbers and using existing AI behaviors would do most of it.

It's far more likely that the designers are shy of pushing their mechanics than that they didn't have the time or resources.

 

[Gali]

Starships is why i said 3rd or 4th. Still yeah it was a tablet game but it was the pet project of Sid who holds way more sway than the BE Devs. Multiple teams can exist but the resources devoted to games is still different. Civ is the foundational franchise of the company. Couple that with DLC money and it GOT more resources. The patching reflected that. X-com is a francise, had a console launch and much better reviews. Those games just have far bigger audiences which argues for bigger budgets and teams.

Lack of audacity doesn't explain stations or virtues not getting fixed. Balancing virtues based on player feedback is not a departure. How much audacity would it take to realize that knowledge is underpowered base on near universal feedback. It is something that would be normal in an expansion. Look at G and K and the work on policies, city states and a ton of other stuff. A lot of background stuff was worked on and its probably because the budget was there for a bigger team. We have seen NO work on virtues or stations, and very little on wonders unless you count very little tie in to the diplo and artifact.

They are doing plenty of audacious stuff in this expansion. The diplomacy system and water cities break far from CiV. Rising Tide definitely seems to be making the game far more sci fi and separate from CiV. What is lacking is a lot of the background detail. That looks to me like a lack of resources because of personnel reasons due to a lower budget. Maybe Civ 6 and X-com didn't pull people away. I'm not going to pretend I have insider knowledge of Firaxis HR managment. I do believe I see a lack of resources due to poor polish.

 

[poom3619]

People used to say that Starship will NOT get in the way of CivBE because there were different team. Which end up with a tablet-game. XCOM 2 looks great I briefly forget it was made by the same Firaxis that made THIS.

I mean, they should be some interaction between players and dev, like Paradox Games. (Skylines dev just did IAMA in Reddit) and at least tell us what constrain do they face that we have no idea what it is, or at least ask for opinion... Just something.

The speculation of intention and constraint of Dev team so far is based on one Dev's "We should had done more!" article and pure opinion/deduction for months now.

water cities break far from CiV.

...and right into SMAC

 

[Gorbles]

It's beginning to look more and more like they just don't want veteran player feedback.

You've admitted on at least one occasion that you yourself are a casual player that hasn't played much recently.

Now if your entire angle here was to get the developers to listen to competitive players or some of the high-level folks around here, I'm all for that idea.

But you keep pushing your opinions on game balance and design despite admitting your own casual nature when it benefits you to.

 

[Galgus]

@Gali

You overestimate the developer's response to feedback, I think.

Honestly I'd take them just developing the systems they already created over diplomacy and water cities, though the diplomacy could be a baby step towards addressing old Civ 5 flaws.

(Though at the same time it seems lacking in denouncements and "don't settle near me" statements.)
_________________________________

@Gorb

While top-level player feedback is most valuable for balancing, all feedback holds value in design.

It's not a minority opinion that Civ BE is lacking in several areas from what I've been able to see.

 

[Gorbles]

All feedback holds value, but you're more likely to reach a consensus on how to approach a problem from higher-level players.

It doesn't take much to say "there's probably a problem with this", or even "there's definitely a problem with this". But that doesn't help the developers. You need focused, accurate analysis which high-level players are good at providing. The solution is then up for the designers to brainstorm.

Which is why you can get solutions that the players therefore don't expect. There is a difference in approach when it comes to players vs. designers (and developers in general), which is why community suggestions aren't always the best. Even high-level suggestions on how to improve the game won't always mesh well with design aspects appropriate to the entire playerbase, which is why competitive players are good for analysing issues, but not providing solutions.

I have some experience with this kind of community approach in at least two other games, and I've seen it play out in those situations.

 

[Hail]

Balance is a product of difficulty in many ways. As the difficulty rises, the importance of each imbalance gets magnified as every advantage needed is important, while at the lowest difficulties, it's irrelevant because everything works perfectly well. The simple fact is that the devs, both for BE and Civ5, are more focused on ensuring balance at the level most players play at, not the highest.

tell me about the "grower" specialist and why you never use them?

I choose to believe that most of their efforts are in fact tied up in making civ 6... (joking... mostly...)

civ6 could be released by next summer (2016).

They had some amazing ideas - quests, affinities, aliens, virtues and the tech web.

They just didn't develop any of those systems to anything close to their full potential.

virtues are renamed social policies.
aliens... on release, aliens used barb scripts from civ5.
quests are nothing new.

agree about affinities and the tech web. they should have taken those concepts further.
but! since affinity xp is tied to techs, the tech web falls apart. how ironic.

devs are full of ideas. 90% of them are trash. an idea has no value. show me the code. (c)

 

[Westwall]

civ6 could be released by next summer (2016).

That wouldn't surprise me at all.

I'd actually be more surprised if we didn't hear an official announcement by the end of this year, probably soon after BERT's release.

Their silence on the elephant in the room makes it almost too obvious.