I quit for now

[Marla_Singer]

I think you've neatly captured the thinking behind Civ 6. And also why I found Civ 6 so boring. I disagree that Civs 1 through 5 were designed with this philosophy in mind. At least, I personally never played any of them with that mindset, and I never felt like the game itself was designed to provide that experience. I love SimCity / Cities: Skylines, and I love Civs 1 through 5, but they occupy very different spaces for me. I enjoy them both for different reasons. Civ 6 didn't provide either experience well, for my tastes, but it was very popular, so I can't say the dev team didn't do a good job. But I can say that they took the game in a different direction than prior iterations of Civ, and seem to have continued that with Civ 7, focusing on "win your way", i.e. the journey where the ending is already known.

Let me clarify this a bit more. Some people play city builders to create beautiful aesthetic designs, like a gardener, but that’s not what I had in mind at all. Maybe a better example would be Transport Tycoon or Transport Fever: you try to build something efficient, and then challenges emerge from the simulation that you need to solve. It's in that sense that I see similarities with strategy games. Now the big difference is that in strategy games, the challenge mostly comes from AI competitors, which makes them more dynamic and unpredictable.

My personal problem with the newer Civilization iterations is that they feel more constrained and guided than older ones. I haven't played Civ6 enough but from what I understand, replayability mostly comes from the different RPG-style traits of leaders and civilizations. Therefore, it feels more "scripted" than the emergent situational complexity I was trying to describe. I don't know if that's clearer.

 

[Fluffball]

There have been some interesting points in the comparison between sandbox type games and strategy games. There is a lot of crossover and I have always felt they attracted similar players (i like both types of game).

I can see why some people aren't so concerned about the state of the game as they lean into the sandbox style but as a player who enjoys both style of game;

(1) I didn't buy a sandbox game, i bought a strategy game and i can't honestly describe civ 7 as a strategy game, certainly not a good or interesting one.

(2) Trying to look at it as a sandbox player i see no attraction either.

Interestingly I the issues are generally the same whichever side I look from. There is no depth of gameplay, no efficiencies to maximize, no inherent story, no attachment (to my civ/leader) and while the game is graphically nice for a strategy game it certainly isn't graphically pleasing as a sandbox game and doesn't have the design flexibility to make anything other than quite generic, cut and paste cities.

The more I think about it, it seems the devs were just afraid of commitment both by themselves and by the player. The devs seemed to have been unable to commit to what type of game they were making and they were afraid to make the player commit to decisions which is probably because they were afraid of commitment themselves and couldn't envision players wanted to actually make decisions.

When I think about successful games on both sides such as cities skylines, rimworld tranport fever or hearts of iron, stellaris, total war, they were committed to what they were doing and maximized it while generally having the player make actual decisions with consequences.

When you try to please too many people and allow people to drift around aimlessly you always end up displeasing the most people rather than pleasing the most people.

I have a phrase I came to which I have used for a number of years as this isn't just happening in games but I see when companies are afraid to commit and try to attract as many people as possible you end up with "a whole lot of nothing". Like when you walk in to a shop that is trying to sell a bit of everything but never actually has the thing you want.

 

[Marla_Singer]

There have been some interesting points in the comparison between sandbox type games and strategy games. There is a lot of crossover and I have always felt they attracted similar players (i like both types of game).

I can see why some people aren't so concerned about the state of the game as they lean into the sandbox style but as a player who enjoys both style of game;

(1) I didn't buy a sandbox game, i bought a strategy game and i can't honestly describe civ 7 as a strategy game, certainly not a good or interesting one.

(2) Trying to look at it as a sandbox player i see no attraction either.

Interestingly I the issues are generally the same whichever side I look from. There is no depth of gameplay, no efficiencies to maximize, no inherent story, no attachment (to my civ/leader) and while the game is graphically nice for a strategy game it certainly isn't graphically pleasing as a sandbox game and doesn't have the design flexibility to make anything other than quite generic, cut and paste cities.

The more I think about it, it seems the devs were just afraid of commitment both by themselves and by the player. The devs seemed to have been unable to commit to what type of game they were making and they were afraid to make the player commit to decisions which is probably because they were afraid of commitment themselves and couldn't envision players wanted to actually make decisions.

When I think about successful games on both sides such as cities skylines, rimworld tranport fever or hearts of iron, stellaris, total war, they were committed to what they were doing and maximized it while generally having the player make actual decisions with consequences.

When you try to please too many people and allow people to drift around aimlessly you always end up displeasing the most people rather than pleasing the most people.

I have a phrase I came to which I have used for a number of years as this isn't just happening in games but I see when companies are afraid to commit and try to attract as many people as possible you end up with "a whole lot of nothing". Like when you walk in to a shop that is trying to sell a bit of everything but never actually has the thing you want.

I totally agree on every point.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I think you rightly characterize the risks involved in trying to design a game that would work as both a strategy game and a sandbox-style game, @Fluffball. I still remain convinced that one could do it successfully if that was set as a goal and faced square-on during the design process.

You think they were unable to commit. I attribute the failure to how they started. They started with a way of viewing history, that long-lived cities have layers. For me, any fact about history is what I call an "element." Those should come in only secondarily in the process. The starting focus should be to design a game, exactly the kind of game that you want: a strategy game, with victory conditions and the possibility that the AI could beat the human player.

Then develop the mechanisms by which player and AI will seek a victory. Then allow those mechanisms to be employed, by sandbox-style players, to achieve individually-determined objectives separate from the game's victory conditions.

 

[AD1730]

I think you rightly characterize the risks involved in trying to design a game that would work as both a strategy game and a sandbox-style game, @Fluffball. I still remain convinced that one could do it successfully if that was set as a goal and faced square-on during the design process.

You think they were unable to commit. I attribute the failure to how they started. They started with a way of viewing history, that long-lived cities have layers. For me, any fact about history is what I call an "element." Those should come in only secondarily in the process. The starting focus should be to design a game, exactly the kind of game that you want: a strategy game, with victory conditions and the possibility that the AI could beat the human player.

Then develop the mechanisms by which player and AI will seek a victory. Then allow those mechanisms to be employed, by sandbox-style players, to achieve individually-determined objectives separate from the game's victory conditions.

I think when you try to do both, it necessarily involves sacrificing a bit of each type in order to accommodate the other. Whether it's game-defined or self-defined victory, I believe you're better off doing either one very well rather than doing both in a suboptimal fashion.

 

[0urBall]

The more I think about it, it seems the devs were just afraid of commitment both by themselves and by the player. The devs seemed to have been unable to commit to what type of game they were making and they were afraid to make the player commit to decisions which is probably because they were afraid of commitment themselves and couldn't envision players wanted to actually make decisions.

I think you're spot on, apart from this point. I don't think it was indecision that led to the stye of game that's been released, I think it was a desire to appeal to as many people as possible. And I think this is backed up by the fixation/obsession by Firaxis/2K to have equal version on multiple platforms. The end result is as you say tho, a game that is a weaker version of a pure strategy or pure sandbox game that's made more people unhappy with the product