Is CVI going to blow?

[TheMeInTeam]

Lets just say that for now they seem to have some understanding of the game and i like the little ive seen.

But its way too soon to tell how it will play out.

Oh and release will probably not be very good. Lets be realistic. Its in how they react to issues that matter the most through patches.

That said ed beach did a very good job with civ5 expansions in term of design. I have more reservations about fine balancing but thats alright because we can mod that once we get enough game experience.

I think fine balancing is beyond most developers' abilities. Working inside the game's framework to optimize is pretty different from creating/programming it, it's rare to find developers who can play at anywhere near the quality of a game's elite players, in any game. They usually have the knowledge to be significantly above average and that's about it.

 

[DeutschDachs]

Have we ever had a bad Civ on PC? I'd say III was the worst I've played since starting with II and I still enjoyed III immensely

 

[johnnybaseball]

I think fine balancing is beyond most developers' abilities. Working inside the game's framework to optimize is pretty different from creating/programming it, it's rare to find developers who can play at anywhere near the quality of a game's elite players, in any game. They usually have the knowledge to be significantly above average and that's about it.

This is a really good point. Programming the game and balancing the game are almost two distinct skill sets.

 

[Barathor]

yea, minds

*mic drop*

 

[Gorbles]

It might or might not.

Best post in thread.

Literally, not being flippant. Bonus points if you get stats.

 

[Martin Alvito]

I think fine balancing is beyond most developers' abilities. Working inside the game's framework to optimize is pretty different from creating/programming it, it's rare to find developers who can play at anywhere near the quality of a game's elite players, in any game. They usually have the knowledge to be significantly above average and that's about it.

It's a different training and skill set, at least in this genre. Optimizing code is very different from optimizing a strategy game's underlying production function. They sound like similar activities, but in practice they are not. You don't strictly speaking need training in stuff like linear programming to play Civ at a high level since the problem is too messy to throw math at, but I can say from experience that it DEFINITELY helps in quickly identifying the structure of the problem and the candidate solutions at any given stage of the game.

I doubt that the game will suck. Vanilla CiV, even in its most broken release state (Warrior rushing opponents!) was a lot of fun to play around with. I personally found Beyond Earth rather unfun, but I think that having the established CiV framework laid down and an experienced designer with a track record of making positive changes within the existing framework should yield another fun sandbox to play in regardless of how abusable it is at release. In fact, finding all of the abusable stuff is a large part of the fun.

 

[Brew God]

For those of you who don't think the new version will be any good then simply don't buy it and wait a year for a Steam Sale and pick it up cheap with any new DLC's and Expansions already out at the time. Then start playing and see what you think.

Brew God

 

[Minor Annoyance]

Yes it is going to blow. That means there's no reason to stick around and talk about it. Good luck to you. Safe journey.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

[Acken]

I think fine balancing is beyond most developers' abilities. Working inside the game's framework to optimize is pretty different from creating/programming it, it's rare to find developers who can play at anywhere near the quality of a game's elite players, in any game. They usually have the knowledge to be significantly above average and that's about it.

Sure although i have more problem admitting something like crappy UAs or covert agent really requires some skills. Especially when you do only one patch for bnw you d expect them to touch a bit more stuff.

In fact i really dont mind the basic state bnw was released in. Im more annoyed by the lack of updates since its release.

 

[Eklabiaan]

PRO: Aspect in favour of expecting a reasonable quality at launch

1. Proven quality of lead designer Ed Beach
2. Not applying the rule 1/3 stays, 1/3 out, 1/3 new
   ( This rule alone can explain low quality of vanilla versions. It does not add up to 1... 1/3 - 1/3 + 1/3 is only 1/3 of a game.
   No wonder Firaxis always needs 2 more expansions to get a full game )
3. It is an anniversary of Sid Meier's Civilisation. 25 years!!! They don't want to bungle this. Not for their imago, but also not for their love of this game.
4. Many years of developement. Ed did mention somewhere that civ 6 was started after release of CiV BNW. So it was developed in parallel to CiV BE/RT, not after that last one.
5. New approach to the AI, learning from experience / issue with the CiV AI. So tackling the first or second most detested issue in CiV.
6. Well filled budget because CiV is still selling. Yeah, yeah I know. That money was also spend on CiV BE/RT and only part of it ends up with Firaxis. (*)

CONTRA: Aspects in downgrading the expectation for a reasonable quality at launch

1. Quite a lot of changes to the Game Mechanics (like sprawling cities, 2 UPT, Civics tree, Happiness,...) There are bound to be bugs and imbalances here.
2. long time thinking...
3. General quality dip/drop/base jump of vanilla releases
4. Commercial hype creation in the run up to release. They polish the lamp of Alladin. They dont publish the progress through the defects backlog. (They = Firaxis + 2 K but also the whole industry in general)
5. General scepticism on forums like these. Sometimes founded but sometimes not.

(*) disclaimer. This is all my speculation of course, I have no knowledge of or involvement in Firaxis / 2K's mode of developent or in their finances.

I did not preorder and will wait and see for a few months after release to see how it goes.

 

[Aristos]

Civ 6 vanilla on release will be about as bad as Civ 5 vanilla on release...

Impossible.

Shafer is not there anymore to achieve such feat.

 

[comatosedragon]

This forum is absurd for three reasons
1) Game comes in 4 months...
2) We barely know anything about it
3) Civ5 is in top steam games six years after its release

Sorry, couldn't help myself -- just had to fix that for you. And here I am, contributing the problem . . . . .

 

[Ikael]

While the release might be full of bugs, just by the little information that we have right now I can tell that this is probably going to be a great title, if only due to its design philosophy.

Where one could easily tell that vainilla civ 5 was going to become a simplified, ahistorical tabletop warmonger game, even before its release, you can also see that civ 6 is going to be almost the complete opposite: A complex, flavourful, deep strategy title focused in building a civ and roleplaying it, with most of the series weak points being adressed and exciting, new design ideas being put into play:

- Making AIs to roleplay rather than play to win
- "Geography means destiny" being translated into game mechanics
- Moving away from "science beats anything else"
- Refining and fixing 1UPT
- Re-introducing goverments
- Increasing customization and min-maxing via city districts
- Having most features right out of the gate (archeology, spyionage, religion, etc) rather than having to wait for expansions / DLC in order to have a complete game
- Tons and tons of flavourful dettails that will add variety and replayability to the game: A land's appeal and beauty influencing the game, unique abilities for city states, unique great persons... so, so much to experiment with!

I completely expect to be blown away by it and to see civ IV surpassed! Make it happen, Beach!

I think fine balancing is beyond most developers' abilities. Working inside the game's framework to optimize is pretty different from creating/programming it, it's rare to find developers who can play at anywhere near the quality of a game's elite players, in any game. They usually have the knowledge to be significantly above average and that's about it.

I think that this is a pity. I mean, strategy games, unlike, say, third person adventures, lives or die due to game balance. If they are going to tunnel resources into some area, it's gotta be this one, I think.

 

[meatpardle]

They've made specific reference in interviews to the stripped down nature of vanilla Civ5 and have said they want to avoid it. I think it was said that the only thing of the main game concepts that has been left out is the world congress, and that religion and trade (which I think were the two things missing from vanilla Civ 5 that were most noticeable) were in there.

 

[Gorbles]

I think that this is a pity. I mean, strategy games, unlike, say, third person adventures, lives or die due to game balance. If they are going to tunnel resources into some area, it's gotta be this one, I think.

Sadly, a developer can want to invest resources in balancing, but simply not be allowed to. It's rarely seen as critical or even important to getting a working product out of the door. Literally everything else in the game takes precedence because everything else is required to have a complete functioning product.

Balance can also be tweaked post-release with less negative impact than bugs, etc.

 

[Plus Ultra]

Sadly, a developer can want to invest resources in balancing, but simply not be allowed to. It's rarely seen as critical or even important to getting a working product out of the door. Literally everything else in the game takes precedence because everything else is required to have a complete functioning product.

Balance can also be tweaked post-release with less negative impact than bugs, etc.

Perfect balance is impossible, especially in a game with so many already unbalanced mechanics with a random effect on each game (UAs, Terrain, Neighbours, UU, City States, Goody Huts...).

As long as:
-Different strategies are viable
-There are no game breaking bugs
-The AI is capable of competitive play on higher difficulties (even with bonuses, if necessary)
-Turn loading times are acceptable

Then fine tweaking can and should be done after release, based on the collective experience and feedback of millions of players and a bunch of those awesome min-maxers out there.

 

[Ikael]

Sadly, a developer can want to invest resources in balancing, but simply not be allowed to. It's rarely seen as critical or even important to getting a working product out of the door. Literally everything else in the game takes precedence because everything else is required to have a complete functioning product.

Balance can also be tweaked post-release with less negative impact than bugs, etc.

This is a very, very sad thing to hear indeed. I understand the rationale behind it, you've gotta have something to show to executives and that looks good in a youtube trailer. But these type of preferences are a recipe for creating bad strategy games, for pretty graphics and trailers are not what makes a strategy game work.

As for post release balance being easier to fix, this is true in theory, but that approach has two drawbacks:

- First, if the released product is incomplete and unbalanced, it is going to be rightfully panned by fans and critics alike, thus negatively impacting the sales due to bad word of mouth

- Second, unless the design of your game is sound, no amount of balancing will be able to fix it, you will have to scrap entire parts of your game or your game altogether in order to make it work. One thing is to fine tune and balance stats (and yes, that is almost impossible to get it 100% right out of the gate), another entirely different thing is to change the core mechanics that defines your game, me thinks

 

[Dedrytus]

The worst thing is, at the beginning, that we won't be able to finish any game if you forget to put Steam in offline mode, of course. Balancing fixes, patches that can ruin your saves etc.

 

[Gorbles]

We're going down a very interesting topic path here, happy to take it to PM if it gets too specialised (don't want this thread shut down) but I think it still relates to how Civilisation games are received on release.

I love talking about this kinda stuff, so I'm sorry if this ends up too long.

It's not just the graphics or pretty stuff that takes precedence. Everything tends to take precedent over balance. Bug fixes, from minor string / tooltip issues to major mechanical failures or AI lockups. Mechanical polish. UI polish. Optimisation (and that's not always a priority for release these days, but it still tends to come out ahead of balance).

Very few games are designed purely for a competitive multiplayer environment - this is the one area where balance would be prioritised. You see it in MOBA games, actually, as much as people seem to criticise that genre, they're undoubtably balance-oriented.

Civilisation in particular - especially given it's historic issues with MP connectivity (CiV was very bad here, but it wasn't exactly the first; the game's design doesn't lend itself well to MP sessions given the length of games in general) - is a single-player game. Scenarios, mods, advanced game setup . . . these are all so people can customise their experience to the way they like it best. Civilisation isn't multiplayer-first, and even if it was (and I'm hoping that Civ VI on launch blows away everything that went wrong with CiV's network issues), balance is a fundamentally tricky subject because you have two types of game.

What two types of game? Human vs. human, and human vs. AI. You can't balance for both of these at the same time, you have to prioritise one. Beyond Earth saw a lot of criticism on this front, and having a competent AI is a large part of this. But fundamentally, balancing the two differs because turn-based strategy games are processed in a completely different way to how people play RTS games, or FPS games, or similar. The real-time component is huge, too. So what do Firaxis prioritise? The human vs. human component, leaving less time and attention for those who regularly play against the AI? Doubtful. The human vs. human contingent is in my opinion unlikely to be the majority of the playerbase. So we cater to human vs. AI. But how do we do that if the AI isn't finished or stable? CiV and BE had these issues.

So the best we can hope for is a functioning AI first and foremost with Civ VI. Balance is irrelevant if the AI isn't capable of playing a balanced game.

To answer your bits on the drawbacks:

1. Incomplete isn't the same as unbalanced. Many reviewers barely even touch game balance despite spending tens of hours on the game(s) in question. It's such a subjective experience that requires hundreds of hours of investment to truly master, that you won't find many games panned solely on their balancing alone.

Tooltip errors, performance issues, UI issues, other bugs . . . these all come up in reviews more often.

2. Revising core game mechanics used to be completely unfeasible given the lack of support for post-release updates (games distributed on CD-ROMs, no digital patching, etc). But nowadays it's a lot easier to revamp entire game mechanics. BE, for all the problems people had with it, did that without the need for an expansion (whether or not Firaxis succeeded at this is entirely up to debate).

 

[SammyKhalifa]

If you think Civilization has a history of arriving playable you've forgotten about the launch of Civilization III.

Was that one that literally wouldn't load on my PC when I first bought it?