Firaxis; who do you actually make a Civilization games for?

[darko82]

Taking the quality of vanilla Civilization into a consideration, I take it that their target audience is not the old fanbase but some young newbies, children.

My concern is that Firaxis wants to make milions of dollars just because the game is named Civilization. That they want to sell a few ideas that do not necessarily work as intended to. They sell a poor quality game; they never fix it and abondon it after 3 years (Paradox still supports CK2, new DLCs, patches etc.) because they think "kids" will be happy with it. This is their target audience, which is less demanding etc. They can, however, destroy this franchise in the future - just as UBI destroyed a HOMM series, for instance. I think Firaxis should be punished for what they did to Civ 5.

I mean, they cannot expect that a community of modders will fix their game. Modders modify a game, not fix them. Otherwise, this is a terrible mentality.

This is a milions of dollars income to Firaxis. Why do some gamers even approve it, not to mention support it? Before they can earn milions of dollars, they should provide a quality first. Unfortunately, other BIG companies do the same - take advantage of gamers. Expectations and demands are constantly rising among gamers; and they should not only be aware of that, but also they should be able to satisfy them/us, at least in the respect of quality and challenge.

 

[kaltorak]

When civ5 was released, I still liked civ4 better. But now civ5 is a great game. There are still some aspects I prefer about civ4, and some I don't like about civ5, but civ5 is still the best civ right now.

And I am one of those old civ fans who are sorry that all the stats screens and such are gone. But come on, your post is way overexagerated

 

[darko82]

When civ5 was released, I still liked civ4 better. But now civ5 is a great game. There are still some aspects I prefer about civ4, and some I don't like about civ5, but civ5 is still the best civ right now.

And I am one of those old civ fans who are sorry that all the stats screens and such are gone. But come on, your post is way overexagerated

Why? Because of the expansions or mods?

People cannot just accept it. If they do not listen, they need to be taught it. CivBe (also terribly done and released) was developed by other team, even though Civ 5 at release was a total disaster, too. I will never pre order their game again.

Modders should mod; Firaxis should fix the game to the very end.

 

[Chum]

Civ 5 is fine.

What's your beef with it? Its been a top game on steam for over 5 years. I don't think your opinion of its quality is widely accepted.

 

[Optional]

I believe the OP is specifically talking about Civ 5 Vanilla, and that game has had a mixed reception indeed. A poll here among the fans on this forum in the day gave it a 6 out of 10. There have been blogs by Sullla and Jon Schafer - respectively a former beta tester and developer of Civ 5 - that were very critical. I believe it's widely considered the poorest Civ game.
After all the expansions it's doing much better.

I don't think all the criticism in the OP is justified though. They did have some new ideas with Civ 5, like one unit per tile, hexes instead of squares, City States... but I don't think they came up with these ideas just to satisfy "kids", and you can argue about what the "old fanbase" is. Look at how many Civ III players don't like Civ IV and vice versa.
Certainly the Brave New World expansion has been made with builders in mind; there was a wide criticism of Vanilla that it was a war game and that it didn't offer enough of an empire building experience, and the developers have taken that criticism to heart.

A beef you can still have with the finished game is that it offered systems on top of existing systems instead of integrating things better - this is a criticism that I have.
The resource trading system for example - it's very crude and unsophisticated, below what we had come to expect of a Civilization game - and what Brave New World did was coming up with a trade route system that, albeit offering more sophistication, didn't interact at all with the existing trade system and left it completely untouched.
Personally I hope for any successor of the existing games that it will have a decent trade and policy system from the start, and that expansions will mainly offer extra civs, resources and maybe the occasional policy bonus here and there, but not that something crucial like a trading system has to wait until the last expansion.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Firaxis has always given me the impression that they care for both the veteran players and the new players. They try to cater to both. Obviously, it is difficult to please both sides 100%.

 

[kaltorak]

I believe the OP is specifically talking about Civ 5 Vanilla, and that game has had a mixed reception indeed.

afaik, the same happened with civ4

 

[Chum]

I believe the OP is specifically talking about Civ 5 Vanilla,

So, we're gonna talk about a game that's 2 expansions and almost 6 years old?

I'm so confused. The time to bring this up was years ago. Why bring it up now? And why do it with this "You damn kids need to get off my lawn" tone? The game is what it is, and has been for quite some time.

 

[ShakaKhan]

afaik, the same happened with civ4

Exactly. IMO, what lead to Civ5 having an initial reaction of "questionable" was that people were comparing Civ5 "hot off the presses" edition to Civ4 at the time, which had had two expansions, limitless mods, and numerous patches to address it's "hot off the presses" issues.
Additionally, if the Civ5 developers were as vane as the OP suggests, they would not approach the game as they did. With the series as successful as it has been, it would have been much easier and INCREDIBLY safer to just do what EA sports does with their games: take civ4, update/upgrade the graphics, add another unit or two, tweak performance issues, and call it Civ5. Instead, they completely changed the engine, as well as serious gameplay tweaks like hex grids, 1UPT, nixed civics for social policies, overhauled religion... they elected to make a new game instead of updating a previous game all the while aware that the new changes may not be accepted by some gamers - they acknowledge they may lose some of their audience as that's the cost of making the best game that they can. This is what separates games like Civilization from games like NHL94 or Madden NFL 2013. It's why over the course of 25 years they've only released 6 titles (plus XPs) whereas EA has had 3 times as many titles in 1/2 the amount of time... in football alone, and then include hockey, basketball, baseball, soccer, FRICKIN' GOLF! If you want to troll about corporate greed in the video game industry, there's a lot of better targets than the Civilization developers.

 

[darko82]

Firaxis has always given me the impression that they care for both the veteran players and the new players. They try to cater to both. Obviously, it is difficult to please both sides 100%.

They did not care about the AI from the very beginning, which was a deal breaker for me. I mean, after getting cash, they abandoned it.

So, we're gonna talk about a game that's 2 expansions and almost 6 years old?

I'm so confused. The time to bring this up was years ago. Why bring it up now? And why do it with this "You damn kids need to get off my lawn" tone? The game is what it is, and has been for quite some time.

Because I would prefer not to experience it once again with Civ 6.

I clearly said what was my beef. Firaxis should support (like Paradox) the game until now because it is not finished. They leave it to modding community but why? Modders are not supposed to fix the game or the AI; modders are supposed to make mods. This practice concerns other companies, too, and many gamers just apporve it. I do not get it.

 

[Primacide]

I thoroughly enjoy civ v and have defended things like 1upt and smaller empires in endless threads hating on the game. As much as I disagree with several of the points in the original post, I have to agree with Darko on one major issue: firaxis DID release a half completed game when vanilla civ v came out.

The excellent and innovative mechanics and features that many replies in this thread refer to, like religion and trade, were DLC that came out years after the initial release and, let's be honest, they made us pay for. Also, I have to agree that patches have been infrequent - the game has felt a little unsupported.

I love this game and I appreciate the studio's work. I disagree that they are catering to children or halfwits. The difficulty scaling is pretty good, and the game is as enjoyable for kids and casual players who just want to build wonders all the way to us hardcore folks with accounts at civfanatics.

 

[alex15]

They did not care about the AI from the very beginning, which was a deal breaker for me. I mean, after getting cash, they abandoned it.

Because I would prefer not to experience it once again with Civ 6.

I clearly said what was my beef. Firaxis should support (like Paradox) the game until now because it is not finished. They leave it to modding community but why? Modders are not supposed to fix the game or the AI; modders are supposed to make mods. This practice concerns other companies, too, and many gamers just apporve it. I do not get it.

Some modders did great job with making AI way smarter and harder to kill without changing gameplay mechanics, and without giving production/researsh/happiness bonuses to AI, like "BetterAI" mod for Civ4 BTS

 

[Chum]

I clearly said what was my beef. Firaxis should support (like Paradox) the game until now because it is not finished. They leave it to modding community but why? Modders are not supposed to fix the game or the AI; modders are supposed to make mods. This practice concerns other companies, too, and many gamers just apporve it. I do not get it.

No game is ever "finished." No piece of music is ever "finished." Instead what is happening is someone somewhere is deciding "this is good enough for the effort I can/am allowed to put into it."

Games are designed to make money. You don't pay a subscription for Civ. How many developer hours should be put into the game AFTER you pay for it? You really think devs should be working on a game 6 years after it's release?

There are deadlines that need to be met and there's only a certain amount of money that can be spent on projects. Expecting someone to work on a 5+ year old non subscription based game is just ridiculous.

 

[lindsay40k]

Civ 5 is bad skag. The fact that it is compulsive and we keep coming back for a fix doesn't change the fact that it fills our graphics cards with brick dust, and our supplier laughs in our faces. Civ BE is the same, except the brick dust makes up most of the product. And then there's Civ Rev 2. That is basically rat poison with a trace of meth. It's been out, what, two years? The AI doesn't claim goody huts, Wonders don't obsolete when they're meant to, and bulbing a tech has a 25% chance of killing your game.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

They did not care about the AI from the very beginning, which was a deal breaker for me. I mean, after getting cash, they abandoned it.



Because I would prefer not to experience it once again with Civ 6.

I clearly said what was my beef. Firaxis should support (like Paradox) the game until now because it is not finished. They leave it to modding community but why? Modders are not supposed to fix the game or the AI; modders are supposed to make mods. This practice concerns other companies, too, and many gamers just apporve it. I do not get it.

Simple, Don't buy Civ6 until Civ 7 is announced. I didn't get CivV until Civ BE was released and have been happy (not perfectly) especially since I got the finished game for the normal price of a game..all DLC bundled into one ~50$ package)

If you are a "real civ fan" you don't preorder, you wait until it is finished and then buy it.

 

[docbud]

If you are a "real civ fan" you don't preorder, you wait until it is finished and then buy it.

It's just the opposite.

That's like saying that real Star Wars fans won't camp out overnight to be the first in line to see the movie, but would wait until it came out on DVD.

 

[Primacide]

No game is ever "finished." No piece of music is ever "finished." Instead what is happening is someone somewhere is deciding "this is good enough for the effort I can/am allowed to put into it."

Games are designed to make money. You don't pay a subscription for Civ. How many developer hours should be put into the game AFTER you pay for it? You really think devs should be working on a game 6 years after it's release?

There are deadlines that need to be met and there's only a certain amount of money that can be spent on projects. Expecting someone to work on a 5+ year old non subscription based game is just ridiculous.

Your first point here is a good one: just because some expansions have added fun content to the game doesn't necessarily mean that they should have already been there on release. I never thought about that.

However, the answer to whether or not they should still be patching a six year old game is, "yes." First, it's not like they have just been killing themselves patching the game - you cannot argue that countless programming hours have been dedicated to patching this game. Its been that way since release. This is also currently firaxis' flagship title. This is the game that generates their money - it's not like this is a one-off little app. Civ V is their current franchise game. It is a good idea, in my opinion, to continue supporting the gamers that you would like to purchase your next title. That's not wasted time, it's investment.

 

[poom3619]

However, the answer to whether or not they should still be patching a six year old game is, "yes." First, it's not like they have just been killing themselves patching the game - you cannot argue that countless programming hours have been dedicated to patching this game. Its been that way since release. This is also currently firaxis' flagship title. This is the game that generates their money - it's not like this is a one-off little app. Civ V is their current franchise game. It is a good idea, in my opinion, to continue supporting the gamers that you would like to purchase your next title. That's not wasted time, it's investment.

But there's good time to release and make a patch, which should be when the game or expansion is full of bug and player expect to cope with it.

The time for Firaxis to patch things is passed for few years now, mostly because they think they fixed enough bug and move on. And modder mod upon it to the point that it is equivalent to one or two expansions now.

 

[elniallo]

It's just the opposite.

That's like saying that real Star Wars fans won't camp out overnight to be the first in line to see the movie, but would wait until it came out on DVD.

Actually that's a fallacious argument, waiting for all the civ expansions gives you the best possible experience, as does seeing star wars in the theater.

 

[danaphanous]

It's just the opposite.

That's like saying that real Star Wars fans won't camp out overnight to be the first in line to see the movie, but would wait until it came out on DVD.

real antisocial Star Wars fans wait a couple weeks for the theaters to be less crowded and avoid spoilers in the meantime. Not that I'd know, I was there opening night.

Also I'm gonna play devil's advocate with these arguments and say that if the majority of people didn't have this community and forum to point out all the exploitable AI traits and learn to do it on habit we would've been more satisfied. We also would've been more satisfied if we weren't transitioning off an extremely well polished and fun Civ IV with all the habits we learned playing that gen. I think a new player to civ V that was learning the ropes and didn't know how to exploit every programming trait in detail would like Civ V and think it was a good game. I personally like it even knowing. It would be nice if they solved all the flaws we found but I bet they didn't because the majority of players wouldn't stumble upon them without help. A lot of stuff we complain about the community taught everyone such as worker stealing so if anything that's our fault. We tipped the balance on a lot of things with educating everyone and they weren't unbalanced to the average player who wouldn't think of those things.

I might argue that the AI being bad at war makes the game MORE fun for the general player that isn't great at it either. They are concerned with every player having a good time and it is fun to feel smarter and proud of a big battle you won. If the AI was ruthlessly efficient at war such as the better players are I'm sure it would catch the average player unawares and not be fun for them. Sudden nuke attacks and well-coordinated strikes are hard to defend against and casual players are probably glad the AI is not this coordinated.

About AI personality, I've seen a lot of ppl complain they are unfair/petty or poorly tuned, But before I joined this community I actually came to like this as it made the AI seem a little more human the way they were petty, cared about politics and friends more, and had ideologies they split over. They were not nearly as predictable or robotic in behavior as the Civ III or IV AI. My habit from the previous civs was to basically ignore the AI until I needed something from them and expand till I crushed them in tech which made wars easy. But in Civ V they rushed early, got jealous of my land, hated my religions, and generally didn't behave as I expected and I couldn't make friends. I realized after a few games though that no, the AI act more like humans in this way. Humans are jealous of land, invade randomly, care about religions and ideologies, carry grudges that don't wear off predictably or in set turns, etc. And I had to play politics a LOT more and keep up relations rather than just ticking off a small list periodically like in previous civ games. In fact I had to get them at war with each other and fight on sides to make friends some games otherwise the AI inevitably hated my REX playstyle and forward-settling which I was used too from Civ III & IV. But again, this is good as it makes you have to play politics a bit more.

Another thing: Civ V has loads of new features that are fun to coordinate compared to previous iterations. At this point we may forget just how much got added but I remember raving to my brother after my 3rd game just how cool and more realistic global politics, religions, ideologies, tourism, and everything was. It felt like a much more real world with every country out for himself and struggling to win with irrational leaders, religious zealots, etc.

It is only now after hundreds of hours playing this game and reading this forum that I know in detail every silly AI flaw and every way to exploit it. I remember Civ III and IV fondly because I learned them myself and when I was younger and less experienced but I don't think they were better games. I would not have thought to exploit many flaws or know about them without reading what other players were doing and to this day I do not exploit them much to keep my games more fun. I think the growth of the online community and youtube tutorials is why everyone is so much more aware of Civ V flaws and hates them. I'm sure there were exploitable things in the past versions that I never knew about since I did not read about the game online.

In summary, I think past civ games seem great because some of us were younger and knew less. Stepping back and recognizing this I see that Civ V, by itself is actually pretty great after the BNW expansion catering to all classes of players. For most players Deity is very hard so I'm sure the development staff didn't feel the need to change the way the AI worked with bonuses rather than growing intelligence. It worked the same way in all previous civ versions, the AI was always this dumb it just shows a little more with the new mechanics and 1UPT. Call it a learning curve and lets hope Civ VI they can use all the new features more optimally.