Are negative opinions of Civ6 allowed here?

[GhostSalsa]

Its the 6th iteration of the game. I mean, what more can they keep doing with Civ?

Oof, there was and is so much they could and still need to do. "Unstack" turns, make tile yields passive, make it more this that etc etc.

 

[ThisNameIsTooLo]

"Unstack" turns

I have no idea what this means. Don't players already take turns in sequence, one after the other?

 

[nzcamel]

*shrug* I don't exactly know what you mean...I don't have to have patience with Civ 6 because I'm still playing and enjoying Civ 4.

I do believe the CIV forums are still here. Maybe you've gotten lost lol

There are plenty of negative opinions on CFC. I've expressed my disappointments multiple time without feeling pressure to shut up. I don't think anybody argues the game is perfect either. That said I've spent less time on the forum because I simply no longer play the game considering its issues so maybe I'm not just seeing the issue.

Though, if you create 10 thread about it or keep repeating the same thing in every thread you will be called out for being just obnoxious.

There's been a couple recently in the 'DLC incoming' thread who don't seem to get that they're posting in the wrong thread. I get that there is a small tie - some see any work on DLC over patches as a betrayal; yet they aren't winning over any fans by pissing on our fun at speculating about the DLC. Yes, we know more patches are needed. We know that the AI and UI both need work. But one way of coping with an imperfect situation is to speculate over what is (hopefully) being released in the next few days.

There are plenty of threads to comment on those issues without hijacking other threads which aren't specifically relevant to them.

 

[nzcamel]

Oof, there was and is so much they could and still need to do. "Unstack" turns, make tile yields passive, make it more this that etc etc.

No "one more turn"!? It wouldn't be Civ!

I have no idea what this means. Don't players already take turns in sequence, one after the other?

Having been exposed to GhostSalsa's ideas in a thread on the movement in CiVI; I'm not sure if there would be much left of the game as we know it once he was done with it

 

[GhostSalsa]

it means that Civ turns would proceed like RPG, especially like Banner Saga, where your units alternate with the AI's. It negates focus fire which makes the AI a lot more dangerous, weeee

 

[Sprenk]

This thread is really weird to me because I have no idea what this "exit crash" is that some folks are talking about. Never have experienced it.

I'm also learning new vocabulary from this thread. Praising Civ VI means I'm "astro-turfing," which means I'm a developer or play-tester? I wish. Could the causality be reversed, so praising the game gets me a playtester job? Dang, didn't think so.

But seriously, of course there are going to be both positive and negative responses to the game at this point. Trying to label responses which you don't agree with as either "astro-turfing" or "trolling" seems a tad disingenuous.

 

[RawlsRorty]

Seriously though, this is a $60 game. If you introduce a patch, and then cannot exit directly after save, FIX THE D**N GAME AND REISSUE THE PATCH. Seriously. I am SO disappointed in the way this whole thing has been handled. Do we have to wait until the second DLC before the exit crash is fixed? And, with my Win 10 setup, forgetting to click on something before exiting results in having my whole computer having to reboot. I know how to put the task manager up front, that's not the issue (and I have 2 monitors anyway). So, I have to carefully make sure that all of my work is saved first, just in case I forget that this game made in 2016 can't exit directly after a save.... I had a few games like that in the late 80's....

And, after experiencing the crash where "well, just declare war on someone after reloading an autosave and it's all cool" and that is *still* not fixed, I will NOT play a Civ 6 game again until that is fixed. Why invest my time? And of course don't get me started on Ctrl+S not saving....

The excuses to say these issues aren't *that* important are just that -- excuses.

Bug free? I don't remember Civ 3 having any issues that crashed to desktop and then crashed the desktop. Civ 4 sometimes had an issue with my laptop video card, but otherwise was fine. Chessmaster 2000 never crashed even in Win 3.1. And so forth....

And quite frankly, why does it matter what crashed or didn't crash in the past. This is 2016. Things shouldn't crash. Quality control is awful, be it games or income tax software, where the software decisions are all made at the top by people who have never done a tax return..... (Block, Intuit, for starters)

Here are some Civ 3 1.29f patch notes I found on the civ fanatics forum. Searching for "crash" brings up 7 hits.
All sufficiently complex software crashes. Especially when it must run on many different computers.

 

[RawlsRorty]

Tetris. Maybe Lemmings?

Lemmings! I loved that game on the Amiga. Can't remember if it had any bugs though.

 

[Lewi11]

Praising Civ VI means I'm "astro-turfing," which means I'm a developer or play-tester?

Trying to label responses which you don't agree with as either "astro-turfing" or "trolling" seems a tad disingenuous.

Ok, I've already explained this 2 or 3 times but I'm not going to insult your intelligence like you have mine. So I'll just assume you didn't read my comments in whole. Astro-turfing and trolling was only one POSSIBILITY I raised. Read my comment again and you'll see I conceded another simple possibility.

Another thing I've already explained more than twice is that I have NO PROBLEM with positive comments. I respect anyone's opinion if they respect mine and don't belittle me or try to silence debate. If, you disagree with my subjective opinion, then please share yours! I DO HAVE A PROBLEM when I share my SUBJECTIVE OPINIONS (which I admit are subjective) and then get told I am just wrong, stupid (repeatedly using a synonym like "disingenuous" doesn't make it any better) or have no memory.

If you did actually understand my previous comments and you're just trying to stir me up, then you are in fact trolling. If you failed to understand, then please read my comments thoroughly next time before you try to analyse them.

 

[Gorbles]

@Lewi11:

You once again inferred that me, or some other unnamed party, is trying to "silence debate". This is what I mean about proving my point.

You're also proving my first point, in that positive opinions don't seem to be allowed. You're using the existence of positive reviews and comments that go against your own perception of the game as evidence that there is some kind of bias to the positive. Maybe that's because a majority of people enjoy the game? Who knows. Certainly, I don't know. But you're complaining about the existence of third-party review sites in a thread asking whether or not negative opinions are allowed on CFC. This makes no sense.

It depends strongly on your reasoning for having a negative opinion, both about those RPG/FPS genres and about civ.

1. What are the most common arguments against these games?
2. Which complaints have the most sound arguments?
3. What is the baseline release standard for quality?

The "safer" things are played. Why are the "safe" (presumably you mean this from the perspective of not taking risk/keeping to a formula) games played? These developers are holding true to an expected formula and putting a greater emphasis on the expected play elements. No matter how innovative your shooter is, if it controls like crap/has aim problems/bad weapons it's going to lose out to expectations. FPS is very broad though, are we talking MP-centric games or more off-line type stuff? As for RPGs, I haven't played one myself directly in a long time and so my take on them is lacking. Fallout, Mass Effect and Final Fantasy are obviously very different, and Dark Souls is a sub-genre that is technically RPG too. What behavior do you consider "safe" there from design standpoint? Even with some pretty heavy deviation to combat mechanics and a borderline RaoCow story going on, FF 13 sold pretty well, but more importantly in making those deviations it did not sacrifice the functionality of its freaking menu. It didn't make you hit attack 200 times extra per hour of playing it.

In those highly competitive genres, the UI and performance are unambiguously much better than Civ . The "safe" behavior in these genres is to prioritize (sometimes to a fault) the core facets of the experience that bring people to them, to the point of being willing to cut innovation to do so.

Civ has a few things that draw people, and each person weights them a little differently. Some like the historical theme most, others like to role play situations, others like the strategy. Correct me if I'm mistaken or I'm missing something here.

Civ lately violates the core of civ in a few ways:

- Newer iterations have reduced the amount of meaningful-to-outcome choices available per real life time (IE strategy per time playing *and* per turn). For those who gain their immersion from making meaningful choices and doing well because of those choices, being constrained to fewer is a blow.
- Plausibility is in the eye of the beholder, but the alignment of industrial era nations wielding swords is odd, same with completely skipping eras. I can't too-effectively speak for the sandbox crowd, but this seems like it's strange.
- The AI also behavior creates an environment where sandbox play isn't too viable (they all start to hate you quickly without gaming them), but it also does not play to win (less strategy per time playing). I'm not talking tactical brilliance here, but just a design "how does X AI respond to seeing Y". In faced with choosing to make it attempt to win or to ham up a personality on a convincing fashion, Firaxis answered "nothing".
- The UI is sufficiently unambiguously terrible on a # input basis such that it interferes with gameplay outright, manifesting in a range of complaints that amount to the same thing. Show me one massively successful major budget FPS or RPG where the game requires triple the necessary inputs to accomplish some common tasks. It's not a thing there.

The fact of the matter is that the market holds FPS and RPG to a higher standard in production quality, while a game like Madden has a similar standard to Civ 6, and you see similar problems with it.

Performance is an ever-present factor. UI and UX concerns, even beyond the scope that you take them to, are an ever-present factor (see: praise of Overwatch's UI compared to even regular contenders in the same scene). Core mechanics are an omnipresent factor. Many things are omnipresent, but the main hitters still play it safe by not diverging from the core formula that marketing and their other analysis-focused divisions will be decided are the core criteria for success.

This is completely aside from development time and resources; Firaxis is certainly a heavy-hitter when it comes to 4x (and strategy games in general), but plenty of the examples we've used to this point have marketing budgets in advance of a lot of company's development budgets. I wouldn't pretend to know the specifics, but I know by casual conversation the size of say, Blizzard's graphics team that works on Overwatch vs. someone like Relic Entertainment (which are a well-known RTS studio in their own right). At which point we circle back to priorities.

Civilisation violates the things you consider important in Civilisation (and others that agree with you, that goes without saying). But it doesn't violate what other people consider important. I like it, for example. I like Civilisation VI more than CiV, though I suspect a lot of the Civ IV crowd might be unsurprised by that. The sci-fi theme of Beyond Earth made it last longer in my anecdotal experience than CiV did as well. Like you said, it's all about that weighting. But you then make the mistake (imo) of defining what is "core", when "core" differs from person to person.

Just like series like Mass Effect violate things some people prefer in an RTS, but succeeds at other expectations for other demographics. Plenty of people consider ME1 the best experience despite the factor it's UI and UX barely advanced from KotOR and quite honestly deserves to be burnt in a rather large flaming hole. The UI issues in that game I consider more egregious than the UI issues in any Civilisation game I've played, and it's not just because the genre itself has a low bar. It's because I consider the genre itself more difficult to get UI and UX right in. This is not to excuse criticisms of Civilisation VI in that regard, or invalidate comparisons to past games in the series. But as a baseline, the difficulty in getting a decent RPG menu right is to my mind simpler than managing the wealth of information in a 4x game that melds a lot of genre expectations into one. Even things like the "three click" design principle (whether or not it applies to video games UX, I think you should strive for it, and I think you'd agree because the aim is to reduce unnecessary clicks, to the ideal goal of three clicks to reach anywhere in the UI) are more difficult to manage because quite honestly there's more minutae to explain.

But again I'm getting too hung-up on UI and UX. The core point was that while market acceptance of what is acceptable is certainly a factor, there are other equally as-important factors that should not be disregarded (even by comparison).

 

[Gub]

^ indeed, its not about whether your comments are negative or positive (fanboys can be as annoying as negative nellies) it is about how you present them. For example in politics, people who provide constructive criticism, offering detailed explanation and possible solutions, encourage debate and stand out over the populist who are there for a good ol' circle jerk.

 

[Lewi11]

@Lewi11:

You once again inferred that me, or some other unnamed party, is trying to "silence debate". This is what I mean about proving my point.

You're also proving my first point, in that positive opinions don't seem to be allowed. You're using the existence of positive reviews and comments that go against your own perception of the game as evidence that there is some kind of bias to the positive. Maybe that's because a majority of people enjoy the game? Who knows. Certainly, I don't know. But you're complaining about the existence of third-party review sites in a thread asking whether or not negative opinions are allowed on CFC. This makes no sense.

I HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH POSITIVE COMMENTS.
I HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH POSITIVE COMMENTS.
I ONLY HAVE A PROBLEM WITH WHEN I SHARE MY SUBJECTIVE (debatable) OPINION AND PEOPLE TELL ME I'M WRONG, STUPID OR HAVE A SHORT MEMORY.
If you post a POSITIVE SUBJECTIVE OPINION, I might reply with my NEGATIVE SUBJECTIVE OPINION, I will NOT TELL YOU THAT YOU'RE WRONG, STUPID OR HAVE A SHORT MEMORY.

Seriously, how many times do I have to explain this? It's a very simple difference. If you haven't done this to me, then it's not you who I'm inferring. Sorry, I don't take a list of names, it happens too often. You did completely misconstrue my words though.

I do think there's a big positive bias in the big gaming review websites. My actual point was that the all the negative comments in this forum (that someone said were abundant) at least balance out all the positive reviews to give a more accurate balanced picture, especially for prospective casual players. Before my head gets bitten off again, this also is my subjective opinion. And if you disagree, by all means please share your opinion, but remember that yours too is subjective and I am not stupid or wrong for sharing mine.

 

[Gorbles]

Well, given that I didn't say you're stupid or have a short memory, you should have no problem then. You were replying to me. If you did not mean me, then maybe you should've stopped replying to me.

That said, it's entirely possible that the conclusions you draw are wrong, despite opinions being unable to be right or wrong in of themselves. If you can't handle being told you could be wrong, I completely fail to see how you expect developers to accept you calling them wrong, misguided, or whatever else you'd like to call them.

And no, plenty of games get given poor scores. Reviews are a subjective medium anyhow; something the demographic described as "gamers" often fail to understand. Something that you don't like could be given an 8 / 10 by someone who ended up liking it. Reviews are not objective, and beyond "does this game run without crashing / this takes 30 minutes to boot up / why can't I click exit on this popup" can never really be objective in any sense that is measurable.

 

[bladex]

whoa destroy your caps lock man. this game is definitely playable BUT only with the right mods. playing it vanilla is absolutely a no go.

 

[Arkatakor]

I paid out a lot of cash for Civ6 Deluxe. In return I got a VERY incomplete product.

This.

 

[Mr. Shadows]

Well, first I learned to beat the game reliably on Deity, then I started learning how all the different game mechanics work and how to use them. That's completely backwards. Learning how to use GPs, faith, religion, envoys and tourism well should be small victories that add up to the accomplishment of winning on Deity. As it is I'm just exploring the game mechanics for the sake of doing it, in the hopes that the game will become something that will reward that kind of game play. This takes a lot of the satisfaction out of the game and it's a huge problem for me.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Civilisation violates the things you consider important in Civilisation (and others that agree with you, that goes without saying). But it doesn't violate what other people consider important. I like it, for example. I like Civilisation VI more than CiV, though I suspect a lot of the Civ IV crowd might be unsurprised by that. The sci-fi theme of Beyond Earth made it last longer in my anecdotal experience than CiV did as well. Like you said, it's all about that weighting. But you then make the mistake (imo) of defining what is "core", when "core" differs from person to person.

It's not a mistake to define it, unless you want to assert that one definition is the only correct one or "more correct" without basis. That's why I asked if I was right with what I put; I wasn't sure. If I slapped a "Civ 6" label on a copy of Rocket League last year, copyright aside almost every civ player would agree that it deviates from the "core" civ formula. Variant physics soccer with cars in an enclosed space is pretty different from making nations to stand the test of time or some such.

So there are clearly at least some things widely accepted as core to the series, that make people choose to purchase civ over alternative options. Beyond "TBS genre with historical theme", I don't have a firm enough grasp of that to say it definitively, so I guessed...hopefully that I wasn't sure was clear at least.

I do feel it is a little questionable to reduce strategy in a strategy title. That said, this outcome in civ 6 was not intentional; the developer stated he wanted the opposite (more viable choices, less alpha strats), so perhaps that is an area Civ 6 will grow considerably, even if it is a principle complaint for many right now.

But as a baseline, the difficulty in getting a decent RPG menu right is to my mind simpler than managing the wealth of information in a 4x game that melds a lot of genre expectations into one. Even things like the "three click" design principle (whether or not it applies to video games UX, I think you should strive for it, and I think you'd agree because the aim is to reduce unnecessary clicks, to the ideal goal of three clicks to reach anywhere in the UI) are more difficult to manage because quite honestly there's more minutae to explain.

I agree it is more difficult in TBS than most genres, with a possible exception for RTS where while the complexity is less, the sheer speed requirement puts even more pressure on its efficiency. Maybe.

However, knowing this, the lack of prioritization it gets is somewhat baffling. There IS more information, and along with that more *important* information the player needs to make use of the game's designed choices. I really do think if Firaxis put out a self-competing title with an excellent UI or a competitor arose that did a truly excellent job of it Civ 6 would struggle to keep pace, and also push that up the priority list considerably.

But again I'm getting too hung-up on UI and UX. The core point was that while market acceptance of what is acceptable is certainly a factor, there are other equally as-important factors that should not be disregarded (even by comparison).

It's not that I'm disregarding that it's harder in TBS per se', but rather that such is an inescapable reality of the genre. I don't usually talk about it because 1) previous TBS have done it regardless and 2) there's no way I know of to make information matter less without damaging the gameplay. That said, other games have other things that are harder (MP is much harder on real-time games because the margin for error in net code delays is smaller and the number of potential players is larger). Other games have heavier graphics/physics demands too, and yet they can and should be criticized if they don't meet standards of competition in their respective genres, regardless that it's harder for them than Civ.

Would I say that Call of Duty does its physics better than civ 6 its UI, given the game's respective dependence on these aspects? Yes, that is a fair conclusion, because rarely if ever does the physics engine restrict or hinder gameplay (in contrast to say the first Dark Souls PC port, where areas of the game were borderline unplayable and From Soft got done dirty by a modder trashing the base game with a performance mod. That was no doubt a black eye for the PC port...). For a game so dependent on that working well, that was an awful mistake too.

And no, plenty of games get given poor scores. Reviews are a subjective medium anyhow

Anecdotally, it appears there is a pretty severe bias towards AAA titles in general wrt generous reviews. I would need to look at a large sampling of reviews and concrete reasons reviewers dock one product vs another to confirm the bias exists though.

 

[AlpsStranger]

Civ5 had a very trouble launch and got much-deserved anger towards it.

BUT

When you just wanted to know something about Civ5 or share possible future changes it should undergo, etc., your thread would be drown in vitriol and rage. It basically made every forum for the game entirely unfit for purpose because it was a repetitive, endless cycle of rage and moaning. I think that's why people aren't always open to negative opinions near the release of a Civ title.

 

[nzcamel]

I HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH POSITIVE COMMENTS.
I HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH POSITIVE COMMENTS.
I ONLY HAVE A PROBLEM WITH WHEN I SHARE MY SUBJECTIVE (debatable) OPINION AND PEOPLE TELL ME I'M WRONG, STUPID OR HAVE A SHORT MEMORY.
If you post a POSITIVE SUBJECTIVE OPINION, I might reply with my NEGATIVE SUBJECTIVE OPINION, I will NOT TELL YOU THAT YOU'RE WRONG, STUPID OR HAVE A SHORT MEMORY.

I appreciate you're frustrated...but hold back on the caps (yelling). It makes it look like anger is overriding you...

 

[shaglio]

I do think there's a big positive bias in the big gaming review websites. My actual point was that the all the negative comments in this forum (that someone said were abundant) at least balance out all the positive reviews to give a more accurate balanced picture, especially for prospective casual players. Before my head gets bitten off again, this also is my subjective opinion. And if you disagree, by all means please share your opinion, but remember that yours too is subjective and I am not stupid or wrong for sharing mine.

I agree that there are too many positive reviews on gaming review websites. But that's not a Civ specific problem. I was recently searching a website called Co-optimus to find a 2 Player Couch Co-op Fantasy RPG that I could play with my daughter. The vast majority of the games that turned up in my search results had ratings in the 3.5 - 4.5 out of 5 range. I then looked each game up on Wikipedia to see what the Metacritic scores were in the Reception section. Very few of the games had a favorable score from the player base. This is a gaming industry-wide problem.

But as far as the "negative comments in this forum [balancing] out all the positive reviews," there aren't that many positive reviews here on Civfanatics, so there isn't any balance on these forums. Most of the opinions here are either negative or ambivalent. Which tells me that most of the people here understand that the game isn't 100% perfect by any means, but it just bothers some people more than others. So people stating negative opinions of the game isn't as much of a problem as certain people repeatedly derailing numerous threads with the same negativity over and over again is. Most of us here are aware the game isn't a 5/5, but there's not much point in stating it repeatedly. NOTE: I'm not referring to you in particular, Lewi11. Now, if people want to write an email to 2k or Firaxis, or post their disappointment on their websites, that might gain a little more traction and be more likely to garner results than it would here.