Drastic Mods - What does Firaxis need to do? Why don't they?

From what I understand, If Firaxis releases the ability to modify the game complete, instead of just changing values and data edits...we could actually improve the AI...

What exactly is stopping them from giving us this ability?

Smarter devs do it as fast as possible. Bethesda Game Studios comes to mind. They make one of their first priorities to give players the ability to modify the game. Because quite honestly, why pay people to improve a game when the players will do it for free? and better than the studio itself. =/

Just don't understand their reasoning...

 

Well my guess is that 2K (2K themselves said they are Firaxis, one and the same now) do not want to be upshown, so they will not release the kit yet. They still want thier DLC to be sold so they don't want anyone giving it away for free.

Once done, then they will release the Kit then market how awsome the mods are so they can sell more Civ V. But not untill they are done with DLC I believe.

 

In regards to the dll, here is a post from Dennis Shirk in July:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=401228&page=35

Post #687

 

I wonder what bugged or dubious AI logic will be uncovered with the DLL revelation. Hope at least some of it will be improved.

 

of course they don't want to be shown up, the quality of the work in these forums on CiV far outweighs the progress they've been doing. The modders make the games better and they look even more incompetent than they do now.....sounds good to me. CivNIGHTS alone is a great example of that.

-Mark

 

You guys are dreaming if you think that all you have to do to fix the AI, is to create a mod.

 

It's not dreaming, it's reality. Prior Civ games, the Mods have improved the AI. In Call to Power 2, the AI has been improved alot.

It's a FACT, that modders are better "improving" the game than proffesionals. The difference is, Proffesionals have time lines that need to be met, Modders can take their time with no stress about meeting a deadline.

 

And they don't have anyone ordering them to keep it dumbed down for the lowest common denominator gamers. And mods don't have to stick to some other person's personal vision of how everything 'has to be'. The freedom to try new things and experiment and just go with what's fun and actually makes sense, versus what you're told to do... can lead to amazing things.

 

Sorry, I'm still skeptical. We're talking about AI here, you know like combat between you and another civ. How the AI moves units across the battlefield and chooses which unit to strike your units, how it retreats, etc. Name one mod for CivIV that does this.

 

Well the "Improved AI Mod for CiV comes to mind. (not sure about the actual name)

Most of the big Mods I can recall use it...BUG, the german B.A.S.E.
And I'm pretty sure FFH does as well.

 

They need to hurry up and make mods playable in multiplayer. The single-player multiplayer "divide" in this game is bizarre.

 

Do you mean "Better BUG AI?" This doesn't do anything to improve combat or movement of units, like I described above, and when we are talking about true AI, that's what we're talking about.

 

Do you mean "Better BUG AI?" This doesn't do anything to improve combat or movement of units, like I described above, and when we are talking about true AI, that's what we're talking about.

 

There has been Blake's AI improvement, which was at least partially included into BtS as far as I know.
In addition to this there were some other "better AI" projects, too.

 

The ai is so poor, every upgrade would be awesome.
Mostly when i play on deity , the ai loose. Because the ai never update its strategy.
And the best ai civ loose because there damn flavors.

 

You're a bit too general in that sort of statement, but it's still cute and funny at the same time.

There's a difference between 'modders' (a group label covering everything from XML tweakers to c++ coders) and people who can actually develop games.

So no, it's not a 'fact' that modders are better at improving a game. A few properly skilled 'modders' will be able to create improvements (opinions vary on if it actually improves anything, depending on the mod) to the game, but it's not so general as you'd like to make it sound. (else, why aren't the modders making the game in the first place? oh wait... )

As per the OP - the July comment by Dennis is a bit dated, but still 'accurate' (timeline is rather 'fuzzy'). 2K Greg recently added more 'fuzziness' to it here. (effectively - in the next 'few' months)

 

I have to agree with this guy - and this is coming from a hopeful future video game designer.

Designing games from scratch is much different than building on an existing design (the core game) and improving one or more areas of the game.

However, that doesn't excuse extremely poor PR by the developers (cough, weren't we supposed to have the DLL already? They promised it was coming "soon" back in July?).

 

Well, I can't speak for all Civilization mods/modders, but the gaming world is rich with examples of modders who have taken a game and done amazing things with it in the realm of fixes, improvements, and entire makeovers, far beyond what the original devs could do, or bothered to do. Examples like Falcon 4.0, Vampire The Masquerade, and multiple incredible mod games based on the original Half-Life 2/Source game, come directly to mind. Could CiV be greatly improved upon if some of that kind of mod talent was directed at it? I have no doubt whatsoever that it could, yes.

 

this would be covered under the 'few properly skilled' point I made in the post you quoted.

Which directly conflicts with the 'general' always' statement.