Gameplay or Realism? Which do you prefer (and why?)

[Hail]

You say that a magazine needs some value inside, and that is true, and is absolutely the case for civ, being a strategy game. But by the same token, a magazine needs a cover to protect it, promote it, and hold it together.

sure it does, but now days the cover seems to be overvalued. making games, that can be played for years is simply not profitable. you cannot make expansion packs forever, opposed to creating games on the same engine. just change the textures and the scripts and it's a brand new masterpiece.

Well I bought Civilization Revolution for the PS3, and trust me, if you are a hard core PC gamer who loves the Civilization Series, then I suggest you pick more Realism vs Gameplay.

is it "[...] you pick more 'Realism vs Gameplay' " or "[...] you pick 'more Realism' vs Gameplay"?

[...] Civ 4, in pulling away from looking like a game to all this stuff defended in the name of "realism", becomes basically hideous, visually, because all the camera-zooming and so forth, the more "realistic" terrain, drives home how far it is short of actual realism, whole pulling it away from looking like a nice clear computer game designed to be clearly a game. It fails both ways, and unless you want Civ to integrate Google Earth levels of details and to zoom in to units on the same scale as the actual map, it will always fall short on pure realism grounds;

civ4 is solid in gameplay. about the realism thing: civ4 has gameplay concepts that are not realistic. they were added for the gameplay to work as a whole.
actually by dropping corruption, attack/defense, etc. the devs forced themselves on the path they went.

i want logical gameplay rules and concepts. should "logical" mean "realistic"? maybe, the only difference is the steepness of the learning curve.
i wish they would have included options to make civ4 look like civ2, but with the UI features that speed up the game.

I am strongly opposed to failing both ways when it's clearly possible to succeed as a game by looking like a game.

yes, succeed as a game, but fail a commercial product. now days and for a long time making games is a business. back in the 90x the development cycle for a "front line aesthetic" game was cheap and short. companies and groups of individuals could afford to risk and release games of their liking. today failures are very expensive. just ask yourself, would today firaxis risk releasing a clone of civ like "Colonization"?

[...] Eye-candy doesn't hook serious players, and serious players are the market that stick with a franchise and keep on buying.

if by "serious gamers" you mean "hardcore gamers", then your statement is wrong. hardcore gamers are a minority and definitely do not make sales. more so game making companies are interested in hooking gamers to the extent and for the sole purpose of selling them expansion packs and/or non-free mods.

any great(good?) game is a candidate for a franchise, since you do not have to tell people what it's about and most of the folks, that liked the first game will buy the next, hoping that will definitely be better: the game where all their wishes where realized.
i bet that if firaxis made a fps civilization game, it would have, at least, great initial sales. most people will buy it, just because it's civilization.

Realism, let game-play suffer for the while as long as universal rules among historians agree.

 

[rysmiel]

civ4 is solid in gameplay.

I don't find it hugely so myself, but there are other threads for talking about this.

actually by dropping corruption, attack/defense, etc. the devs forced themselves on the path they went.

I would describe that as by taking out mechanics that worked they were then forced to scrabble to patch them with others.

i want logical gameplay rules and concepts. should "logical" mean "realistic"? maybe, the only difference is the steepness of the learning curve.

I am all for logical. It just seems - as for example any of my recentish back-and-forth disagreements with Naokaukodem - that what feels "logical" in game design differes widely between players.

i wish they would have included options to make civ4 look like civ2, but with the UI features that speed up the game.

I find the Civ 4 user interface horrible, actually. Mouseovers that come up without being asked for, and way too much icons without text.

yes, succeed as a game, but fail a commercial product.

Yet people still buy chess sets and scrabble sets.

would today firaxis risk releasing a clone of civ like "Colonization"?

Considering how recent Colonization is... maybe not while we're still at risk of major recession, but it would seem they did in recent enough months to count as "today" to my mind.

if by "serious gamers" you mean "hardcore gamers", then your statement is wrong. hardcore gamers are a minority and definitely do not make sales. more so game making companies are interested in hooking gamers to the extent and for the sole purpose of selling them expansion packs and/or non-free mods.

By "serious gamer" I mean anyone who keeps playing the game long enough to be interested in expansion packs.

any great(good?) game is a candidate for a franchise, since you do not have to tell people what it's about and most of the folks, that liked the first game will buy the next, hoping that will definitely be better:

And how many people will keep buying new editions of a game that does not have replayability value hoping this time it will work ?

 

[Thoughtful Thug]

is it "[...] you pick more 'Realism vs Gameplay' " or "[...] you pick 'more Realism' vs Gameplay"?

It is obvious of what I've had said. Yes, more realism than what we had from the Civ 4 series. I don't think the gameplay will suffer from this route.

 

[exhile]

What!? The rules of game play revolve around how the real world functions.

 

[Hail]

I would describe that as by taking out mechanics that worked they were then forced to scrabble to patch them with others.

just like Soren(was it him?) said about 1/3 new, 1/3 "reworked", 1/3 old stuff. they had to take concepts out.

I find the Civ 4 user interface horrible, actually. Mouseovers that come up without being asked for, and way too much icons without text.

by UI i mean the ability to select several cities and add things to build to their build queues simultaneously, the ability to group units and move and/or give orders to them as a single entity, the ability to assign "go to" commands by a right-click. all of this speeds up the game. i appreciate, that devs value my time.

Considering how recent Colonization is... maybe not while we're still at risk of major recession, but it would seem they did in recent enough months to count as "today" to my mind.

Сiv1 came out in 1991 [MicroProse]
Сolonization came out in 1994 [MicroProse]
Сiv2 came out in 1996 [MicroProse]
CtP came out in 1999 [Activision] (files on the licence cd are dated feb-march 1999)
Civ3tW came out in 2002 [Atari/Firaxis]
Сiv3:Conquests came out in 2003 [Atari/Firaxis]
CtP2 came out in 2000 (!) [Activision]
Сiv4 came out in 2005 [2k/Firaxis]
CivCity:Rome came out in 2006 [2k/Firaxis]
Civ4:Colonization came out in 2008 [2k/Firaxis]

And how many people will keep buying new editions of a game that does not have replayability value hoping this time it will work ?

It is obvious of what I've had said. Yes, more realism than what we had from the Civ 4 series. I don't think the gameplay will suffer from this route.

largely depends on what concepts from real life the game designer will choose to port into gameplay concepts and the level of abstraction used when porting.

What!? The rules of game play revolve around how the real world functions.

yep, the city support costs increase for every city when a new city is build,
unhappy citizens just refuse to work, but still feed themselves, just like in real life.

 

[Naokaukodem]

If Civ5 were to be like Google Earth, my computer would break.

Not granted. They could borrow only the colors of satellite views, and shape of the land also. Now, I wouldn't mind if there were no zoom.

Anyway, as myself, you WILL have to upgrade your computer in order to play Civ5.

 

[Trias]

just like Soren(was it him?) said about 1/3 new, 1/3 "reworked", 1/3 old stuff. they had to take concepts out.

I think that was Sid himself. They might both have said this, but I think it is Sid's "rule" for making sequels.

 

[rysmiel]

just like Soren(was it him?) said about 1/3 new, 1/3 "reworked", 1/3 old stuff. they had to take concepts out.

Yes, and this comes with the assumption that the level of complexity in Civ 3 or Civ 4 does not have space for serious increase. With which I disagree, and which I think the success of mods that have signifincantly more complexity than the basic game supports me in so believing.

by UI i mean the ability to select several cities and add things to build to their build queues simultaneously, the ability to group units and move and/or give orders to them as a single entity, the ability to assign "go to" commands by a right-click.

Grouping units for movement is simple in Civ 3 - yes, it does need he ability to give the same order to all the units on one tile or all the units of one type on one tile, but the structure is there for that - go to commands are as simple in Civ 3 as Civ 4. None of these issues require the things that are wrong with the Civ 4 interface.

 

[aragogthebest]

realism i have always preferred realism games like rhyse and fall
and hotk

 

[Aquila SPQR]

Who said realism must be boring? Civilization shouldn't be a "simulation" with thousands of statistics, but they should make it more realistic and with more, new options. For someone "gameplay" means fun stuff and pumping ivory and dyes into your cities to make war easier. I don't want to see such "gameplay" in Civ V, it would be a disaster.

 

[rysmiel]

Who said realism must be boring? Civilization shouldn't be a "simulation" with thousands of statistics, but they should make it more realistic and with more, new options. For someone "gameplay" means fun stuff and pumping ivory and dyes into your cities to make war easier. I don't want to see such "gameplay" in Civ V, it would be a disaster.

If it's not fun, it's not going to keep people playing. Realism is a benefit only when it's adding something positive to the experience of the game for the player.

 

[Aquila SPQR]

Or when player likes realism.

 

[rysmiel]

Or when player likes realism.

Find me a player who likes a completely realistic representation of how long it would take to organise a D-Day scale invasion.

I am not at all sure it's possible for one person to do that within a human lifetime, come to think of it, let alone within a plausible length for a Civ game.

 

[Aquila SPQR]

I have never said that Civ V should be a complete simulator, but in my opinion it should be more realistic. Look two posts above above at my own words:

Civilization shouldn't be a "simulation" with thousands of statistics, but they should make it more realistic and with more, new options.

 

[rysmiel]

I have never said that Civ V should be a complete simulator, but in my opinion it should be more realistic.

If you're conceding that realism is subordinate to being a good game, we have no point of argument.

 

[Aquila SPQR]

Right now I think you are working very hard to not understand me