Happening this Thursday, May 15: we want to hear your thoughts on Advisor Warnings!

[MutilationWave]

You should be able to play a game by playing the game. The game itself should teach you.

Manuals / the Civopedia are important and should not be neglected (I've been playing the 2016 Doom, and there's something similar to Mass Effect's codex that you populate as you go), but they should not be how you learn the game itself.

If that's how you work, that's cool. But I'm not sure that's how most people figure out how a game works. Otherwise the need for tutorials wouldn't have developed into the aspect of gaming that it is (some games have overt tutorials, other games softly on board you by introducing you to mechanics over time.

Off topic, but I was just playing DOOM 2016 a few days ago with my friend. On PlayStation, and I'm terrible at shooters with controllers. Massive auto-aim helps . They're all such great games. I even have a DOOM tattoo.

What do you think of the new one coming out going back to more classic tanky controls?

 

[Gorbles]

Off topic, but I was just playing DOOM 2016 a few days ago with my friend. On PlayStation, and I'm terrible at shooters with controllers. Massive auto-aim helps . They're all such great games. I even have a DOOM tattoo.

What do you think of the new one coming out going back to more classic tanky controls?

I need finish 2016 and also Eternal (which I have! But my backlog is as infinite as my ability to put things off), but I like the aesthetics of The Dark Ages. I'm pretty flexible on my shooters, so long as they include melee. Always got to have a melee option (or ten). But I tend to hold back opinion on gameplay until I've had a go, or seen enough of the finished product.

 

[Siptah]

I think I've always had to rely on external sources to understand the mechanics of a game like civ (or the paradox games). These games are just notoriously bad about explaining the rules in a way that you could do it yourself. A lot of things were always hidden, or merely given in a short plain text where a mathematical would have been necessary. The biggest offender for VI and VII are modifiers for me. It's completely unclear when a bonus is applied, and how exactly, even for those that have an accurate description. You can rely on your own careful observation to find out whether a leader bonus is applied before a policy card or not, and when civ and wonder bonuses come in, but it's usually simpler to just consult the internet for this and other formulas (e.g., growth). An example from earlier games is how overflow is treated.

In the end, I don't find it that bad, to be honest. Many systems are rather intuitive until you start to min/max or exploit them, and giving the exact details might overwhelm some people. And I wouldn't want to read all rules before I start a new game. I usually learn the base by playing along, and then look up the rest whenever I'm in doubt how something works or wondering why something came out different than I thought.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I agree that one learns by playing, but I think the Civipedia in a game like III (as I remember it) is a kind of gold standard. What it felt to me there was that the Civipedia was co-extensive with the game itself. I don't know how else to put it. It felt as though the game had a total design, and that every functional element of the game was represented both in the Civilopedia and in the design. Kind of like you could put all the rules of chess in one place, and everyone could agree that, yes, those are all the rules of chess. So whenever, while playing, one wanted to know information on something, the information was 1) available, 2) right in the spot one would look for it and 3) hyperlinked with all other relevant information.

With Civ V (which still has a good Civilopedia), the game itself feels a little more "unruly." (I don't know how else to put it.) I think it's that there are more sub-systems, so that balancing required more fine-tuning tweaks. I seem to remember, for example, it taking a while to get the right value for a Swordsman (or maybe Longswordsman), wheras in Civ III, an archer has an attack of 2 and a defense of 1, whereas a spearman has an attack of 1 and a defense of 2. Cut and dried. It all seemed tighter in terms of total game design, if I can say it that way, and that lends itself to more straightforward and complete entries in the Civilopdia. And that developing the game is tantamount to developing the Civilopedia, not a separate undertaking.

Now it's more like, you can do this cool thing over here and it's partly fungible to that thing over there, but not intrinsically related to that thing over there.

Dunno. Not sure I'm expressing it well.

 

[Krikkit1]

I think I've always had to rely on external sources to understand the mechanics of a game like civ (or the paradox games). These games are just notoriously bad about explaining the rules in a way that you could do it yourself. A lot of things were always hidden, or merely given in a short plain text where a mathematical would have been necessary. The biggest offender for VI and VII are modifiers for me. It's completely unclear when a bonus is applied, and how exactly, even for those that have an accurate description. You can rely on your own careful observation to find out whether a leader bonus is applied before a policy card or not, and when civ and wonder bonuses come in, but it's usually simpler to just consult the internet for this and other formulas (e.g., growth). An example from earlier games is how overflow is treated.

In the end, I don't find it that bad, to be honest. Many systems are rather intuitive until you start to min/max or exploit them, and giving the exact details might overwhelm some people. And I wouldn't want to read all rules before I start a new game. I usually learn the base by playing along, and then look up the rest whenever I'm in doubt how something works or wondering why something came out different than I thought.

I think the problem is it would be good to be able to read the rules from an authoritative in game source... although honestly at this point Fandom and some of the Formula Analysis threads here probably have better documentation of the game than Firaxis does.

 

[CliffCo]

Just a reminder that this discussion is active for 24hrs on Discord, both Sar and Ed Beach are both online reading and responding to peoples feedback. It's your chance to influence changes to the advisory system.

 

[vorlon_mi]

I also really liked the Civ3 civilopedia. Back in the early 2000's, Civ games shipped with a physical *book* that described how to play the game.
But the civilopedia was essential for verifying an upgrade path, a tech prerequisite, and civ/leader properties, with links backwards and forwards.
The in-game civilopedia didn't always have details about certain parameters, e.g., cultural victory threshold, that would depend on map size or game speed.
I found those relationships in forum posts here for Civ3; I found them on Fandom for later games.

I totally understad that Civ7 would never have a book, or PDF file, or similar "wall of text" content.
I do expect that Civ7 will (eventually) have a civilopedia that answers concrete questions about prerequisites, unlocks, civ and leader properties.
I don't expect the in-game civilopedia to have all of the variables that depend on map size or game speed.

As others have posted, I like some advisor messages and would like to skip others.
Like:

• Undefended town warning
• Added / removed a resource from your trade route (useful, though rarely crucial)
• Relationship changes, especially to/from Hostile

Skip or refine:

• Suffering war weariness. I get it on the first turn of every war I declare, even if I have supported myself
• Another leader has opposed your war. Did my opponent add war support? Did someone else send my opponent some gold? Or what? More specifics, please
• Behind in culture or science, e.g., "your people admire the styles of the XXX people" Not really helpful

 

[CliffCo]

I also really liked the Civ3 civilopedia. Back in the early 2000's, Civ games shipped with a physical *book* that described how to play the game.
But the civilopedia was essential for verifying an upgrade path, a tech prerequisite, and civ/leader properties, with links backwards and forwards.
The in-game civilopedia didn't always have details about certain parameters, e.g., cultural victory threshold, that would depend on map size or game speed.
I found those relationships in forum posts here for Civ3; I found them on Fandom for later games.

I totally understad that Civ7 would never have a book, or PDF file, or similar "wall of text" content.
I do expect that Civ7 will (eventually) have a civilopedia that answers concrete questions about prerequisites, unlocks, civ and leader properties.
I don't expect the in-game civilopedia to have all of the variables that depend on map size or game speed.

As others have posted, I like some advisor messages and would like to skip others.
Like:

• Undefended town warning
• Added / removed a resource from your trade route (useful, though rarely crucial)
• Relationship changes, especially to/from Hostile

Skip or refine:

• Suffering war weariness. I get it on the first turn of every war I declare, even if I have supported myself
• Another leader has opposed your war. Did my opponent add war support? Did someone else send my opponent some gold? Or what? More specifics, please
• Behind in culture or science, e.g., "your people admire the styles of the XXX people" Not really helpful

I saw at least some of these mentioned it the discussion on discord and they were well received.

There's been many good ideas posted that i hope they implement. One suggestion i realy liked the idea of and that one of the devs responded to positively was the idea of making each individual advisor recommendation optional.

 

[MutilationWave]

Civilopedia

Civ 3 had a fantastic civilopedia, I agree. You say that you expect that the civilopedia for 7 will eventually be good too, but I disagree. The one for 6 was not good, but a lot better than the new one. I don't think it should be prioritized at all over bugs and AI being just about worthless. I don't think the new civilopedia will ever be good, though of course I hope I'm wrong.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Civ 3 had a fantastic civilopedia, I agree. You say that you expect that the civilopedia for 7 will eventually be good too, but I disagree. The one for 6 was not good, but a lot better than the new one. I don't think it should be prioritized at all over bugs and AI being just about worthless. I don't think the new civilopedia will ever be good, though of course I hope I'm wrong.

The new one def needs work. Now, there were way fewer rules in 3 too though.

 

[Kwami]

So, did anything interesting come out of this event?

 

[CliffCo]

So, did anything interesting come out of this event?

Sar and Ed Beach were there and seemed very responsive to some of the suggestions so i'm hoping good things will come from it.

 

[trev1972]

Yeah, but also not a single person has had their opinion of the game impacted by advisor warnings, positively or negatively. To say they have bigger fish to fry is a massive understatement, regardless of whether you’re looking at it from a technical or gameplay design perspective.

When i first saw the notification i thought they had brought back the acted advisor council from civ 2

 

[evonannoredars]

So, did anything interesting come out of this event?

They seemed very keen on the idea of allowing the player to have more control over which warnings they do and don't get, as well as seperate advisory systems (warnings only vs more 'advice' notifications) and reconsidering what should be a notification, what should be a warning and what should be presented elsewhere in the UI.

Although others also chimed in, everything Ed Beach said was pinned, attached screenshots if people would like to see, although some that reply to things might not be so clear without context (though the one mentioning gossip was relating to my suggestion that there should be a warning about multiple people hostile to you allying with each other).

 

[Kwami]

Thanks, @evonannoredars!

 

[CliffCo]

Copied from Discord:

The <#1371472956127182878> channel's been locked down for a few hours now, so we just want to say to say thank you to everyone who participated in our feedback event on Advisor Warnings!

We saw a lot of interesting discussion on notifications and tips you'd like to see (or would like to see less), how to improve Advisor Warnings in-game, and also some more general insights on UI improvements we can consider to make information more readable and accessible.

**So, what's next?**
Good question! We're going to review everything mentioned in these threads and consolidate your feedback with Ed and the rest of the design team. We'll keep you updated on what comes next and how your feedback helped shape it!
Just taking another moment to shout you out - these events would not be possible without this community. We're broken records when we say we're always reading and appreciating your feedback, but we really feel blessed to put on events like this to get the dev team directly involved, too. Thanks for being the best fans in gaming, and we'll keep you updated as we look to do more of these!

 

[reddishrecue]

I would've asked if under current technology can it be possible to continue all the way to modern on multiplayer. I should've been there to ask that question, but it seems like that's the issue why they wouldn't make multiplayer to run like that because I remember I was playing with a few people and wanted to continue to medieval. It worked for a few turns at the start but then we would get disconnected a lot and had to wait for someone. We even tried rejoining, and it would crash. Each turn would take a while, so it was impossible to play by then.

 

[CliffCo]

I would've asked if under current technology can it be possible to continue all the way to modern on multiplayer. I should've been there to ask that question, but it seems like that's the issue why they wouldn't make multiplayer to run like that because I remember I was playing with a few people and wanted to continue to medieval. It worked for a few turns at the start but then we would get disconnected a lot and had to wait for someone. We even tried rejoining, and it would crash. Each turn would take a while, so it was impossible to play by then.

They only wanted feedback on advisor warnings for this event, but there are other channels on the official Discord where you could give feedback.

 

[reddishrecue]

They only wanted feedback on advisor warnings for this event, but there are other channels on the official Discord where you could give feedback.

As for advisor's warnings I would've said that there are too many of them! As you can tell, I hardly read and all I do is just skip them and press next or ok because I feel like I know but I might not know.

 

[epicivfreak]

Forget the Advisor warnings, make a decent game instead...lol