Does CivWorld have a chance to succeed?[Review/Forecast/Etc]

[starrywisdom]

Preface: CivWorld is currently in beta, yes. Some may argue the relevance of reviewing or critiquing in some way a beta. It's worth noting that how a game 'succeeds' in beta(whether closed or open) has a very large correlation to a game when it's 'gold'. In closed beta the game still has quite a bit of leeway to 'change' but when a title reaches the 'open beta' stage what is seen is usually the grand majority of what you are going to get at gold. Beta also allows users/critics review how the company is adjusting in a development sense - such as their communication with the fanbase/testers, time to roll out updates, and the such. I would specifically like to note that the stance CivWorld has taken clearly shows that there won't be as much of a change due to the fact that they are already allowing users/testers to use their 'item mall' which further affirms they think their game is 'mostly complete'.

With that being said I think we should start out with some comparisons. CivWorld can be compared to a great many things, whether it's fair or not it's worth taking the time to explain. Generally speaking I think the top comparisons are going to be to previous civ games(on any platform), Age of Empires: Online, and Empires and Allies.

• CivWorld will be compared to previous Civilization titles just due to Civ being in the title. Most comparisons to a fully released retail(60USD) title will be quite a bit biased, but having Civ in the name opens the door for a few. One of them is does it feel like a Civ game? In my opinion the fundamentals that Civ was created on are there, but the depth, complexity, and many other things that made the Civ Franchise great really are missing. Comparing 'graphics' obviously aren't a fair comparison to a retail title running on a full '3D engine' but we'll come back to this topic.
  
• Many people who are fans of Civ tend to have a very stuck opinion on Age of Empires. Age of Empires hasn't fully released a title to compete with another Civ title in quite some time. Age of Empires: Online while not a full retail title(IMO) nor a browser based social networking game is in it's own place. That being said that it shares a lot in common with both 'fields' and you'll start seeing a lot of comparisons between the two in the near future.
  
• Finally we probably have the most direct 'rival' in my opinion to CivWorld, that being Zynga's Empires and Allies. Both games are social networking titles, both are fairly new to the market, and both have quite a bit in common. There are a ton of differences between the two of course, but they share enough similarities to be rivals.

Now that we have an idea on what 'criteria' the game will be judged on by it's 'competitors' it's time to move on to the review(I guess you could say) about the game. I want to start by saying that I have no vested interest(financially) in the game doing good or bad and this post is merely to draw attention to positives/negatives in order for things to be addressed. As a fan of video games in general, I prefer not to see titles crash and burn and would much rather see them improve.

Platform Choice:

First on the table is the platform choice of the game. Development companies have many platforms to choose from nowadays when they design including: cell phones, mobile gaming hardware(PSP, DS, etc), tablet PC's, PC's, consoles, iEverything, etc etc. CivWorld is developed in the 'social networking market' of which has received a large boon in software, gamers, and revenue in past years. Whether you like browser based social gaming or not, you can't deny the juggernaut it's become.

I'm a fan of social gaming. I'm not a fan of all social gaming, mind you, but I do like quite a few titles. CivWorld managed to miss a lot of the very disliked 'concepts' of social gaming such as having to spam your wall, others walls, messages and the such asking for items and other mandatory gameplay 'mechanics'. This is terrific news! It's worth noting though, that while it did dodge that bullet it seems to really have missed out on a lot of the benefits of social gaming. In the current iteration of the game, it really doesn't feel like a 'social experience' - at least to me.

Graphics:

All right, we all knew this would be here. Graphics, GFX, Eye Candy, etc - one of the most debated topics whenever a game comes out, no doubt! Obviously if we are going to review or compare visuals we need to do so at the 'fairest' level. Obviously due to the platform choice you would be hard pressed to get to the 'level' of graphical fidelity of full retail titles(IE: previous civ games). With that being said, you need to compare it to something more comparable - so other social gaming titles.

I think one of the major negatives of the game is there is no zoom in and out. While from a user stand point this can be quite irritating or depressing it allows CivWorld a lot of leeway in creating art assets as they can't be scrutinized at a microscopic level. With that being taken into account the graphical level of the game is just underwhelming.

Underwhelming - but why you ask! Well the overall 'art direction' of the game is a little grainy and just looks like a poor job was done when the art assets were created. Art direction is a hotly debatable topic of course, but I think that most people will agree that most of the art assets are not on par with what the dev team can deliver and/or on par with what else is currently on the market.

The animation of workers is nice, but I wish there was more. Maybe the flags on watchtowers, the water, something or another would be nice. The black 'fog of war' is also really...really outdated - I would have liked to see something else(maybe clouds - like in Civ 5) or something else. Some variation in 'tiles' would have been nice as well, right now it's just green, brown, and blue which is just kinda...boring.

User Interface(UI):

GUI, UI, Interface, Clicky Boxes, whatever you call it the UI is one of the most important components in any piece of software, especially games(even more so in browser games). The layout of data and the ease to browse said data can make or break a users ability to enjoy or even play the game!

Now how does CivWorld fare you ask, well I'll tell you! It's awful, in my humble opinion. How do I come to such a negative deceleration of distatste you ask, well I'll tell you that too! Let's take a look at all of the items on the screen at any given time.
[Picture Here eventually]

• Sound On/Off: This isn't in a bad place, but it really doesn't need to be on the general UI. Although since there is no other system settings(when there should be) it's not really all that bad. It should be a system settings icon that takes you to a menu that allows you change various settings and not just sound.
• Fame Points: It's debatable of if it's really that important to know how many fame points you have, especially when most people don't know what fame points even do. I'm not sure if this is really worth it's current space. So I'm impartial to it's placement.
• User Avatar/TownName/Date: This is pretty standard fare, but it's quite large when you take into account that you can't zoom the game out! Adding in the ability to zoom out and see more of the 'map' would alleviate my issue with this.
• Victory Conditions: I couldn't care less, to be blunt. Without telling me what progress is done towards said victory, I still have to dig through other menus to get that information so this could be replaced with something else or make it click-able to take it to a better, more informative menu, or just put previously stated information on the hover.
• CivBucks: This has to be somewhere and it makes sense where it is.
• Alert Bar: Nothing negative to say here
• Resource List: Kinda large for the information they provide and they are quite ugly. A small icon on a gray background with white writing is just ugly. It functions well enough, and expands with extra info which is nice, but would love to see a better 'graphic' for them.
• Harvest button: Once again ugly as could be but does what it needs to. Would like to see a hover over telling you what you will be getting when you do hit harvest though.
• Bottom Row Clickables(Science, Throne Room, etc): Just like the above these icons are effective in doing what they should, but they are very 'childish' it appears in their design. The layout makes sense and there are no major qualms with them, with the exception of possibly the size once again(since no zoom or full screen). Although, I want to point out that the hover text is all lower case, and it kinda bugs me - I don't know why.
• Population List: I really don't think this is necessary. It's great to see the empty icon to know that you build a house, but I really don't find any use in knowing 100% of the time what my workers are producing and how much of it. I think it would be better to leave the space empty until a free worker comes up, and create a sub menu with more detailed info for all workers.
• Information Center: It's nice that it provides information for when you hover over some icons on the bottom bar. Once again though aesthetically it is ugly as can be. Some of the information it provides is also utterly useless IMHO and could be used to provide some other information.

Well that doesn't sound so bad! Well the top UI has a few issues, but it's definitely not the worst. Here's some of what makes the UI so irritating:

• Sometimes clicking buttons will click what's underneath, and not what you meant to. While not doing anything negative, it adds frustration.
• Hover over/Ballon Pop-Ups block what you are really trying to get to adding a lot of frustration and just making the UI look like a total mess.
• SubMenus are absolutely atrocious! This is the main complaint with the overall UI. Submenus are just a complete eye-sore and hard to navigate and completely unintuitive. Fixing this would make the UI go from awful to alright.
• As stated above, overall intuitiveness of the UI is just not there.
• Some information is just darn hard to find - when it shouldn't be. While extremely less useful information is provided multiple times.
• No real help is given when first learning to navigate the labyrinth that is the 'detailed menus'. A tutorial or help button for each page explaining why it's there, what it does, and what you can do from it would help immensely.
• Severe lack of 'linkage' to other parts of the UI, increasing the amount of clicks someone needs to do exponentially.
• 'Tooltip/Balloons' for information in submenus is really hard to read and is quite annoying, not to mention(once again) it's just not aesthetically pleasing.
• 'Tooltip/Balloons' for information on the main city screen are overly aggressive and need to be toned down a bit.

The above may seem to be 'small gripes' but when you end up with an unintuitive, ugly, and hidden-information type UI it makes the game more complicated then it needs to be. While some of those things on their own won't make or break enjoyment, the compilation of everything in one package just removes enjoyment!

Gameplay:

The heart and soul and the main draw for the game - gameplay! How is the game is it fun, or no? Is it repetitive? Is there strategy? This is a very, very opinionated section(obviously) and there is no way I'll be able to just separate 'facts' from opinion here so I won't try.

Being a social gaming title some things are usually assumed. Either you'll be in a 'tick' type game, you'll have to spamming your friends for items, won't be able to play by yourself and a lot of others. I think many people didn't expect the type of game we did get - whether that is good or bad is up for debate. I won't be able to touch on every single subject so I'll just touch on what I think is the most important.

City Building:

This is how you construct and expand your empire - worker management and buildings. Having played quite a few games I can safely say that I find this to not be exciting in any way, shape, or form. I'm quite irritated to say the least. With how resources are generated, you'll soon find that you won't spend much time creating your empire and many people won't find themselves creating many buildings at all with the current accelerated speed the games are played in. The 'map' that you have to place buildings on is quite a large size, but many people(myself included) won't even use 20% of it by the time the game is over. Empire management comes down to the absolute most basic concepts of what do you want your tiny population to focus on.

Mini Games:

I think many people will find that this is where they actually spend most of their time(unless they are popping bubbles or trying to find something in the menus). The mini games are varied enough and a nice distraction. That being said, they just don't feel integral to the gameplay and you still get the feeling you are waiting for the next harvest tick to do anything. The artists picture swap mini-game is a nice distraction though. The caravan mini game is way, way, way too easy and for the most part the science maze is just boring.

Combat:

Honestly, I'm not going to dignify this with a long section. Let me just sum it up as unintuitive, unfun, a complete mess, and should have been completely different. Try it for yourself, don't take my word for it.

Bubble Poping:

This is essentially the only thing to do with your entire empire if your mini games are on cooldown and your civ isn't fighting. This is the epitome of unfun and is honestly the main 'gameplay mechanic' and it really really really...sucks.

Civilizations:

Hard to organize, never fully explained, and the fact many people join a civ and have no idea what to do or the point of it makes the whole system unsatisfying. Not to mention the lame civ jumping we see people doing in order to obtain medals and get era victories.

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I want to draw some specific attention to the below notes as when asked by friends if they should play the game I say one or more of the following:

• No good tutorial and the current documented resources make the game an absolute nightmare in trying to figure out any 'advanced' concepts of the game. Either the dev team or the community really needs to get on the ball and put out a tutorial worth it's space on the web otherwise I foresee a great many people leaving the game for just lack of knowledge.
• The gameplay, at the moment, is utter boredom. If you want a city builder there is much much better games on the market(City Ville and others), if you want combat/PvP there are tremendously better games out there(E&A/MW), if you want a micromanagement farm game there is better ones(FV), if you want a mini-game focused macro game there is once again much better others. Right now the game leaves nothing memorable.
• Don't really come into the game expecting a Civ game as you'll be greatly disappointed.
• While the screen may say beta - any title giving you the opportunity to pay for stuff in their item mall ; gives up the ability to use the term 'beta'.
• There is no current ability to make sure you play with friends - removing a lot of fun of the 'social aspect'.
• Currently if you don't sit around 'popping bubbles' you will never get in the top 10(possibly much higher) - even if you do use CivBucks.
• The current graphical fidelity of the game is low, many things are just really really badly constructed or of a poor 'resolution' creating an unfun eye-atmosphere.
• There is a very large lack of developer communication with their 'beta testers'/fanbase which leaves a bad taste in many peoples mouths. While many of us can understand that things can't be fixed immediately just acknowledging the issues will tide the crowd - for a time.

Edit: Tornado Warning for my area - I'll stop it here for now. Would love to hear everyone elses opinion on the current iteration of the game and what they would like to see changed.

 

[DirtyFinger]

whoa, that was an in-depth analysis hidden behind a harmless thread headline.

But yeah, I get most of what you say although I couldn't overcome basic boredom and ... repulsion to stay longer than half an hour.
The kiddie graphics don't appeal to me, the non-sensical sounds (mumblemumble whawa wang) disconcern me, the "gameplay" doesn't hook me in (push-button-to-harvest-because-automation-doesn't-waste-time) ... and I didn't see "Civilization" anywhere.

To me, the game is dead on arrival.

 

[starrywisdom]

whoa, that was an in-depth analysis hidden behind a harmless thread headline.

But yeah, I get most of what you say although I couldn't overcome basic boredom and ... repulsion to stay longer than half an hour.
The kiddie graphics don't appeal to me, the non-sensical sounds (mumblemumble whawa wang) disconcern me, the "gameplay" doesn't hook me in (push-button-to-harvest-because-automation-doesn't-waste-time) ... and I didn't see "Civilization" anywhere.

To me, the game is dead on arrival.

I can fully understand where you're coming from with the boredom comment. I saw a thread on the official 2K forums asking 'Convince me why to play this game'(happens on every new game now - multiple times). The thread really offered not one good reason to, which is quite sad.

I'm now on my 23rd game(I believe) and I think this may be my last. I like to give everything that could interest me a fair shot at keeping me around, but I just can't get into the game at the most basic levels.

 

[punctuator]

Bubble Poping:

This is essentially the only thing to do with your entire empire if your mini games are on cooldown and your civ isn't fighting. This is the epitome of unfun and is honestly the main 'gameplay mechanic' and it really really really...sucks.

This is a very common type of complaint in any kind of social game that involves time-based restrictions to gameplay. There will inevitably some people who want to invest extra time to obtain a competitive advantage, or who simply prefer to spend more time on the game than other people. Those people often complain when either (1) they can't because of "arbitrary" barriers or (2) it's tedious or difficult to do so.

But from a game design standpoint, these "arbitrary" barriers to spending 24/7 performing fun, productive tasks are anything but. One wants the bubble-popping game to be not particularly productive or fun for long periods of time. The time-based restrictions are there to keep you from playing a social game too competitively or wasting too much time on it. This is not a bad thing. One might argue that it's paternalistic--the "I should be able to play the game however I want to" defense. However, again from a game design standpoint, letting a small minority of players gain a competitive advantage through spending too much time or money ruins the game for everyone else (hence, also, the built in limits on the use of CivBucks).

You're aware of this last point, of course, because one of your complaints is that bubble-popping is too effective.

Currently if you don't sit around 'popping bubbles' you will never get in the top 10(possibly much higher) - even if you do use CivBucks.

This is false. While I engaged in some bubble-popping on the first day, when it does matter, once your city grows a bit the resource income from bubble-popping is completely trivial compared to the resource income from harvests/trickle income/playing the market. There is essentially no good reason to actively sit around popping bubbles (also no reason not to pop them should they appear while you're doing something else). At that point they really are just a bonus, not a gameplay mechanic. The fact that this means you have nothing fun to do while waiting for resources to come in is a feature, not a bug.

 

[starrywisdom]

This is a very common type of complaint in any kind of social game that involves time-based restrictions to gameplay. There will inevitably some people who want to invest extra time to obtain a competitive advantage, or who simply prefer to spend more time on the game than other people. Those people often complain when either (1) they can't because of "arbitrary" barriers or (2) it's tedious or difficult to do so.

Bubble popping in the game is the epitome of 'unfun'. There is no 'skill' to it, there is a lack of achievement when doing it, there is no amplification of difficulty, in fact - there is nothing 'fun' about it. I have no qualms with people gaining an advantage by 'playing the game'. My issue is with that the concept as a whole is both unfun and unnecessary. There is a large difference between a fun concept turned 'boring' by excessive grind/repetition and just being unfun from the get go.

You're aware of this last point, of course, because one of your complaints is that bubble-popping is too effective.

This is false. While I engaged in some bubble-popping on the first day, when it does matter, once your city grows a bit the resource income from bubble-popping is completely trivial compared to the resource income from harvests/trickle income/playing the market. There is essentially no good reason to actively sit around popping bubbles (also no reason not to pop them should they appear while you're doing something else). At that point they really are just a bonus, not a gameplay mechanic. The fact that this means you have nothing fun to do while waiting for resources to come in is a feature, not a bug.

I had no intention of stating that bubble popping for long periods throughout the entire game was the absolute #1 thing to do to place highly. In the early stages of the game you are gaining very, very little of whatever you are producing(of course buibbles as well will yield less but % wise they provide more). Spending a large amount of time popping bubbles in the early game can give you a significant advantage in production(in general, not just hammers) that if you then use it to further other facets of the game(IE: gaming the market) you will have a tremendous lead if you play 'frequently'.

Popping bubbles as a main strategy, and if thats all you know how to do, will not gurantee sucess - nor did I say it would; nor as anyone for that matter. In the early stages of the game though - it's quite effective. In the start of your next game, take an hour and see how many bubbles you can pop in comparison to how much you harvest; you'll see a large % of possible production can come from bubbles. Take that bonus, play the market, and you'll achieve success without knowing a whole lot of the meta-game, civ strategy, etc etc.