I have now played all three Civ Killers and none have

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

I was just watching some more Ara gameplay (I jumped to about 3 hours into Potato's stream) and yeh, that's definitely not for me, not my cup of perfectly brewed Earl Grey tea. Way too much micro, and here's me worrying about resource micro in VII, sheesh.

 

[Zaarin]

I was just watching some more Ara gameplay (I jumped to about 3 hours into Potato's stream) and yeh, that's definitely not for me, not my cup of perfectly brewed Earl Grey tea. Way too much micro, and here's me worrying about resource micro in VII, sheesh.

I had the same experience in the alphas. I think it's a good game, but it's not for me.

 

[Kwami]

The terms Rougelike and Metroidvania both date back to last century. If they're reflective of uncreative genre naming, I think you could probably just say "how uncreative genre naming always has been in video games".

More specifically, Rogue was published in 1980 and roguelike goes back at least as far as 1993. So, they weren't very creative 30 years ago, either!

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Reach for the Stars in early 80's is the first 4X game, though the term was first used to describe Master of Orion in '93 in Computer Gaming World.

Civ whilst influential, was not a "genre starter". That honour goes to the likes of Reach for the Stars, Cosmic Balance II, and Imperium Galactum.

I wish Civ had never been labelled 4x. The "explore, expand, exploit, exterminate" is extremely limiting in terms of gameplay. And while I recognize that Civ games themselves try not to limit themselves to this straightjacket, every move away from it generates pushback that "its a 4x game, its supposed to be focused on unlimited exploration/expansion/exploitation/extermination".

 

[Dale]

I wish Civ had never been labelled 4x. The "explore, expand, exploit, exterminate" is extremely limiting in terms of gameplay. And while I recognize that Civ games themselves try not to limit themselves to this straightjacket, every move away from it generates pushback that "its a 4x game, its supposed to be focused on unlimited exploration/expansion/exploitation/extermination".

The more Civ moves away from 4x, the less I want to play it. Just sayen'.

 

[8housesofelixir]

The more Civ moves away from 4x, the less I want to play it. Just sayen'.

It is funny how, despite the genre being named "explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate", most of the 4X games' promise is a robust base-building or management system instead.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Some interesting version of each of the four is for me indispensable in any good Civ iteration.

But one should never think the game limited to just those four things.

 

[Siptah]

About the micro in Ara: is it that you have to do stuff per resource, or per resource per city, or per resource per tile/pop per city? Sorry if that doesn't make much sense, but I'm trying to see how the quantity of micro scales as you progress.

Per "resource" per "tile" (provided that the tile in question has a building that can make use of the produce/resource in question). The game needs either a macro builder or a UI from a city builder or eco sim asap.

 

[Siptah]

Oh no. That this would create too much micro is something that ought to have been seen in the early stages of sketching out the design of the game, not late in the development cycle...

It's not the micro per se (at least for me who plays much more micro-heavy games, such as workers & resources). It's the amount of clicks and searching you have to perform. You produce a plough and then have to click through all your farms to see where you don't have one yet and where it's most beneficial/needed. And then you have tons of things that can go into multiple buildings which have multiple slots etc... It's also a drawback for watching someone play the game when there is no "story" for 20 minutes, just someone clicking through the UI.

It seems salvageable with a macro builder or an empire-wide "slot" screen that previews the possible effects for all possibilities. Or just a UI that was not designed for a civ-like game, and instead look at city builders or eco sims. I mean, who thought it was a good idea to have ~100 buildings that you can build in a list in a city view? There needs to be some clustering/grouping on a higher level. Virtually every city builder in the last 25 years had this.

 

[j51]

It's not the micro per se (at least for me who plays much more micro-heavy games, such as workers & resources). It's the amount of clicks and searching you have to perform. You produce a plough and then have to click through all your farms to see where you don't have one yet and where it's most beneficial/needed. And then you have tons of things that can go into multiple buildings which have multiple slots etc... It's also a drawback for watching someone play the game when there is no "story" for 20 minutes, just someone clicking through the UI.

I’ve noticed game companies skimp on hiring for user experience versus other tech sectors. Is that why they often have menu bloat vs general software?

 

[Siptah]

I’ve noticed game companies skimp on hiring for user experience versus other tech sectors. Is that why they often have over designed menus vs general software?

I don't think it's just greed or not valuing user experience. As far as I know (but I knowledge is anecdotal and only applies to a few cases in Western Europe), it's really hard to get good UI designers, they are in great demand and would rather work for more money/more stable jobs than in game design.

 

[j51]

would rather work for more money/more stable jobs than in game design.

I’ll vouch to that lol. Also among UI and UX people Europe is noted for much lower pay than the U.S.

 

[Sephi]

It's not the micro per se (at least for me who plays much more micro-heavy games, such as workers & resources). It's the amount of clicks and searching you have to perform. You produce a plough and then have to click through all your farms to see where you don't have one yet and where it's most beneficial/needed. And then you have tons of things that can go into multiple buildings which have multiple slots etc... It's also a drawback for watching someone play the game when there is no "story" for 20 minutes, just someone clicking through the UI.

It seems salvageable with a macro builder or an empire-wide "slot" screen that previews the possible effects for all possibilities. Or just a UI that was not designed for a civ-like game, and instead look at city builders or eco sims. I mean, who thought it was a good idea to have ~100 buildings that you can build in a list in a city view? There needs to be some clustering/grouping on a higher level. Virtually every city builder in the last 25 years had this.

in the city screen you can filter for improvements rather than regions. Then you see all farms with all slots and which are missing a plough.

 

[Ornen]

Ozymandias is great for a quick version of a 4x. And a challenging AI!

tried Ozymandias and walked away disappointed. feels more like a fight in a mud pit than a 4x game imo

 

[Zoeff]

It's definitely a personal preference kind of thing. I've tried Old World and liked it but only being in well... the *old* world didn't make it very interesting to me.
Watched a bit of Millenia gameplay and found it to be odd somehow and it just didn't appeal to me.
Humankind has the UI and vibe of the other games made by Amplitude Studios which I really dislike. But it seemed like I dodged a bullet anyway.

Trying out Ara for the past few days and I like crafting management type of games HOWEVER the UI needs some work. It's way too tedious right now to manage all that crafting even more so in the endgame.
Good news is that the devs are very aware of this and they have the funding to release updates and DLC for a year for free. See the discord screenshot below:

 

[Zaarin]

Humankind has the UI and vibe of the other games made by Amplitude Studios which I really dislike.

I wish it did. EL and especially ES have a very quirky charm that is completely absent from HK because heaven forbid history be fun.

 

[Zoeff]

Sounds like it would help, but it's an approach to game design I'm seeing lots which baffles me.

Step one is to add lots of detailed game mechanics that model something on a low level of granularity. Step two adds an interface that hides all that, and lets the player interact with those systems at a larger scale by automating interactions with those low level systems. Which, IMO, is pointless? Why add the detailed simulation in the first place if you're going to hide them? Why not just abstract them away into a coarser-grain game system if that's all the player is meant to interact with anyway? The only differences I can think of to doing it this way is that: it takes up far more dev time to build, creates a system that's opaque to the casual player, and encourages the min-maxing player to do it all manually to eek out an extra advantage at the cost of enormous boredom. The point elude me.

I think there's a real fear of abstraction now in game design. I don't know if it comes from devs themselves who somehow think more detail == better game, or if being able to put large numbers of stuff makes for good marketing, but it's a real shame. If modelling things on that level of detailed ended up generating unexcepted emergent behaviour it might be cool, but the vast majority of the time it seems to just be adding more layers to systems just for the sake of there being more layers. Heaven forbid a AAA studio release a game in 2024 that doesn't have RPG-style skill trees, a crafting system, and a roll-to-dodge button...

It sounds like you haven't actually played Ara and experienced having to manually give 50 farms in your empire a heavy plow over the course of many turns because you can only make so many heavy plows every turn.

 

[Zoeff]

As I said above, no, I haven't played it. But isn't that exactly the type of game mechanic I was criticising? Or rather, both that and the "global economic manager" screenshot you posted? Or are you defending that gameplay and saying I'm wrong to criticise it?

Rather than having each farm have a plow or not have a plow, why not abstract it? If your empire has X farms and Y plow, you get the fraction Y/X (capped at 1) of the benefit of having a plow in every farm. Or if the decision of which farm has a plow and which does not is somehow a crucial strategic one, then at least raise the decision up to the city or the province level (ie, you either have enough plow to allocate one to every farm in a province at once, or none in that province get it). But if in a game of Ara you have 50 farms and it's absolutely crucial that Rome's 7th farm gets a plow ahead of Rome's 6th farm, then I'd argue the level of abstraction is completely wrong (at least, not to my taste) for a game trying to cover an entire civilization for millennia.

I've been keeping an eye or Ara because production-chain games and city builders are a favourite of mine. But the idea of having to manage dozens of identical production chains as my empire grows doesn't seem fun to me.

Sorry I misunderstood your post.

 

[Thugless]

Ara feels like a spreadsheet would help. In my line of work that is not what I would call fun. So they have the balance too micro I agree.

Also interesting given the discussion somewhere on Civ7 units being too big on the map, the Ara choice of at-scale units and dragging icons around the map is an absolute immersion killer.

So two points of distinction in favour of Civ7 hopefully (no spreadsheet and units not icons).

 

[Zaarin]

Ara feels like a spreadsheet

Could have stopped the sentence there.