Jon Shafer leaves Firaxis!

[Doctor Phibes]

That is the reason why some of us were saying, before Civ 5 release, that they should go with limited stacks in the game instead of 1upt; because the problems were forseen ahead of time (but instead the few of us got strung up and hung in the middle of town square).

In fact, it was blatantly obvious the AI would not stand up to the hype, because Firaxis left tons of AI bugs in every civ up to date, that they have never fixed. They even introduced bugs that they never fixed into Civ Expansions (that didn't exist before that). They are not a bunch of AI genius' over there.

Limited stacks would have partially solved the huge AI problem that will forever plague Civ 5; hopefully they go that route in Civ 6 so they can keep the tactical part of it, while maintaining sanity in the game.

Crikey. You were playtesting, I take it? Makes you wonder why the companies bother with playtesting when they are just going to go along with whatever mad random thing the latest crackhead on the board said they should do.

There are a number of RL equivalents tho, for example, offhand, the inability of many navies to accept the idea of aeroplanes sinking warships. Still, small, voices that should be listened to...

 

[Morningcalm]

As much as I dislike what Shafer did to diplomacy, tile yields and multiplayer in Civ V, I'm sure he wasn't responsible for ALL of it.

More importantly, people seem to have short memories. Shafer was involved in designing Civ IV, Warlords and BtS as well as Civ V. Not everything he worked on was worthy of such contempt, and I don't think he did anything to deserve the rather nasty "YAY SHAFTER IS FIRED" kind of reactions this thread has been poisoned with.

Besides, he's *young*. He didn't have the industry experience of Soren or Brian Reynolds, etc.

Anyway, any updates on the situation, or new insights into what actually happened? Imo he actually was fired, not just leaving. Why do I think this? Because on Quarter to Three he said he'd be here to improve Civ V for the long haul. One major patch does not a long haul make, and Firaxis has cut numerous employees before, as people have mentioned.

 

[lschnarch]

That is the reason why some of us were saying, before Civ 5 release, that they should go with limited stacks in the game instead of 1upt; because the problems were forseen ahead of time (but instead the few of us got strung up and hung in the middle of town square).

In fact, it was blatantly obvious the AI would not stand up to the hype, because Firaxis left tons of AI bugs in every civ up to date, that they have never fixed. They even introduced bugs that they never fixed into Civ Expansions (that didn't exist before that). They are not a bunch of AI genius' over there.

Limited stacks would have partially solved the huge AI problem that will forever plague Civ 5; hopefully they go that route in Civ 6 so they can keep the tactical part of it, while maintaining sanity in the game.

I remember having read these threads, too.

The funny thing is, allowing for limited stacks as a game principle gives you (and the modders) indeed *full* control over how many units you want to see in a tile. As well you get full control over any related problems (pathfinding, production, outcome of wars and whatnotever).

If you have limited stacks, you can set the limit by modding to your liking. You're a fan of 1upt? Fine, set the respective value from x to 1. You want to have a limit of 25 instead of the assumed standard 18? Fine, change the value.
As long as the AI has been created to run such a concept, in theory there isn't any difference between a stack of just 1 unit or a stack of 37 units.

The epic failure was to try to get rid of the problems of one extreme option (unlimited stacks aka SoD) by implementing the other extreme option (the falsely so-called "1upt").

And this was pretty much obvious from the very beginning.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Imo he actually was fired, not just leaving. Why do I think this? Because on Quarter to Three he said he'd be here to improve Civ V for the long haul. One major patch does not a long haul make, and Firaxis has cut numerous employees before, as people have mentioned.

That's a good point.

I wonder how the patching process will go from here. Without the lead designer, will there now be holes in the dev team's understanding of the game?

 

[JLoZeppeli]

The facti is that we know that Shafer resigned, but at the same time we don't know if others of the team were fired with him... That's because he is the lead designer, so long the front man of the project, but i think it's a high possibility that some other people are gone with him....

 

[krunsh]

Funny how most people seem to assume that he was fired or quitted because civ was a disaster... The game has been on the top seller on steam since it's release and mostly received very high reviews.

Just because half (or less?) of the hardcore fan on civfanatics aren't satisfied with how the game turned out doesn't mean that it's a failure (on a selling point at least.).

This guy has a personnal everyday life like all of use, and there are MANY reason why he could have left his post at firaxis... like moving to another city for exemple... Or wanting to start is own game studio in the future.

I wish him goodluck in his future project and I will enjoy this game and hope that firaxis will continue to work on more patch (And I'm pretty sure they will.).

 

[Axios]

Finally, the infamous creator of Shafer Dumbed Down Consolization 0.05 is being punished!!! Yay!!!

The first great news about Civ V!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[arstal]

I'm just worried that 2k thought that these would be good changes and that they want to keep them. Perhaps it is time for sid to take civ and go somewhere else.

From what Shafer said about III I would not really have expected this from him. I wonder if he really was the one responsible or if someone on the 2k side of things was responsible...

well, only time will tell. Also if Shafer turns out to be sane, or is only allowed to do things he is good at, I may have to start looking to Stardock for my strategy gaming. What with them having picked up Kael, and the talk about buying MoO.

I expect if Sid left, 2k would keep the rights to the Civ name. Also, he'd have to go with a lesser publisher such as Stardock or Paradox (most likely scenarios).

BTW , Brad has been talking about another big-name pickup, I'm speculating that there's at least a remote possibility it's Jon, though Brad has said it's a modding guy. This is entirely speculation on my part, but I wouldn't be shocked. Stardock and Firaxis did have a close working relationship around Civ 4/GC2 time.

Also, Stardock is trying hard to improve Elemental- Brad's been working on the AI over the holidays. I don't think SD will buy MoO, makes no sense for them- they got GalCiv, and they are sinking $1.2mil into Elemental next year.

 

[Zydor]

The response from their Marketing Director ....

We are grateful for Jon’s contributions to Firaxis and the Civilization franchise and wish him all the best in the future.

.... is Classic Corporate speak for "there has been a raging argument and he left"

Fired or resigned, we'll never know frankly. But its clear there has been an acknowledgement Civ5 is a train wreck in terms of a genuine Civilisation Franchise game by someone high up the tree. It could well be Shafer's hands were tied by business drivers got fed up and left, equally plausible Shafer got the heave ho or resigned before he was pushed. To speculate which is a waste of time.

We'll know within a couple of months by the Patches/Expansions/Direction the game takes.

Meanwhile back to Civ IV and Paradox

Regards
Zy

 

[lschnarch]

That's a good point.

I wonder how the patching process will go from here. Without the lead designer, will there now be holes in the dev team's understanding of the game coding?

Fixed that for you.

The game wasn't understood by any of them.

 

[Greenlocke]

It is an impossible task. Chess has a tiny ruleset and a fixed size (8x8) board. Civ has a large, arbritary and pretty changeable ruleset and an arbitrarily sized board, usually larger than 8x8. You can do +5 move look-ahead in chess easily with current CPUs. In Civ, the combinatorial explosion involved means it would be a cosmic achievement to get a two-move look-ahead - even on an 8x8 board.

While that is true, my brain works differently when I play chess than when I play civ. The AI brain should also work differently. I don't (typically) play civ by looking ahead 5 moves. My civ strategy involves creating a tactical situation (using ranged units and melee units at the front). This means we have far more leeway with civ ai than you would have with chess. Correct me if I am wrong, but the current problem is that a player with 3 ranged and 5 melee units can defeat all AI opponents.

So let's write some kind of code to avoid this specific situation:

IF wardeclared and attackerartillery>2 THAN
-block borderhills and borderforests with melee
-rush artillery until artillery>2
-place artillery behind front

For now, I think a simple 'reinforcement' rule that spawns 3-5 units in a border city near the fight could alleviate the problem. This is cheating, but we will need to cheat for the foreseeable future to solve this problem. We should only need to cheat on higher difficulty levels.

 

[bryanw1995]

Well, Shafer was a good mod designer, he designed Final Frontier that shipped with BtS (didn't he also play a large role in designing BtS?) I just don't think he had enough experiance or fully thought through some design decisions (why did you have to remove religions? They were one of the most potent examples of Sid's 'one more turn' belief.)
That said, it will be interesting to see where Civ5 goes. Will it get mired in a morass of incompetance, or will it get new life from a new lead designer. (Is Soren still there?)

shafer was co-lead on bts. soren left in 07 to go work for a competitor. don't know the details but he might have equity in his new company. if he does then he's not coming back, if he doesn't then it's at least theoretically possible that he could.

 

[MqsTout]

Now if only Firaxis could break away from 2K and get rid of that whole Steam/DRM BS, maybe then could we purge ourselves of the travesty that is CiV and have a hopeful future.

 

[Lone Wolf]

For those who quoted me, my comment was supposed to be ironic. I don't even have Civ5, but I do find all the drama rather amusing.

 

[bryanw1995]

I do not dismiss the notion that 2K had its influence in the game. Not specifics, that's the lead designer's job, but they certainly wanted a broader, more casual customer base to buy Civ5 - to increase sales beyond the base. Lots of ways Firaxis could implement that vision, making it easy to win at all levels was one.

remember that sid in general prefers games that appeal to the masses. he probably hated cIV b/c it was so overwhelming, and I wouldn't be surprised if he hadn't pushed for many of the simplifications in ciV. Even though I personally really enjoy ciV, I think that firaxis made a design mistake by going too far away from cIV. Too much bad word of mouth from the loyal following. Just remember that shafer doesn't exactly have a history of over-simplification in everything else that he's done. Who knows, maybe he left b/c he wanted something more grand and couldn't get sid/etc to give him the green light?

 

[bryanw1995]

I remember having read these threads, too.

The funny thing is, allowing for limited stacks as a game principle gives you (and the modders) indeed *full* control over how many units you want to see in a tile. As well you get full control over any related problems (pathfinding, production, outcome of wars and whatnotever).

If you have limited stacks, you can set the limit by modding to your liking. You're a fan of 1upt? Fine, set the respective value from x to 1. You want to have a limit of 25 instead of the assumed standard 18? Fine, change the value.
As long as the AI has been created to run such a concept, in theory there isn't any difference between a stack of just 1 unit or a stack of 37 units.

The epic failure was to try to get rid of the problems of one extreme option (unlimited stacks aka SoD) by implementing the other extreme option (the falsely so-called "1upt").

And this was pretty much obvious from the very beginning.

I remember reading something from Afforess (or one of the others involved in AND) about the limited stacking option: it just didn't work with cIV ai at all. maybe coming at it from a 1upt ai it would be much more effective, maybe not, but it would be interesting to find out. The problem with stacking in ciV, however, is that all the other rules would need to be altered. the ai basically has unlimited happiness/units/etc while the human is severely limited. unit maintenance/tile yields/etc would need to be altered, many of them significantly, for it to be effective. I think that is better suited for a mod in civ5, maybe if it works out well it could be added in a later expansion.

Funny how most people seem to assume that he was fired or quitted because civ was a disaster... The game has been on the top seller on steam since it's release and mostly received very high reviews.

Just because half (or less?) of the hardcore fan on civfanatics aren't satisfied with how the game turned out doesn't mean that it's a failure (on a selling point at least.).

This guy has a personnal everyday life like all of use, and there are MANY reason why he could have left his post at firaxis... like moving to another city for exemple... Or wanting to start is own game studio in the future.

I wish him goodluck in his future project and I will enjoy this game and hope that firaxis will continue to work on more patch (And I'm pretty sure they will.).

it was #20 when I looked yesterday, though only one or two current titles were ahead of it.

 

[bryanw1995]

While that is true, my brain works differently when I play chess than when I play civ. The AI brain should also work differently. I don't (typically) play civ by looking ahead 5 moves. My civ strategy involves creating a tactical situation (using ranged units and melee units at the front). This means we have far more leeway with civ ai than you would have with chess. Correct me if I am wrong, but the current problem is that a player with 3 ranged and 5 melee units can defeat all AI opponents.

So let's write some kind of code to avoid this specific situation:

IF wardeclared and attackerartillery>2 THAN
-block borderhills and borderforests with melee
-rush artillery until artillery>2
-place artillery behind front

For now, I think a simple 'reinforcement' rule that spawns 3-5 units in a border city near the fight could alleviate the problem. This is cheating, but we will need to cheat for the foreseeable future to solve this problem. We should only need to cheat on higher difficulty levels.

that isn't cheating at all, it's just good sense. I'm currently invading alexander on a large world map. I JUST got infantry 3 turns ago; alex built the manhattan project 20 turns ago and has had mechs for a while as well. he has 15k + gold. is he rushbuying artillery/mech inf/tanks/nukes/etc? of course not. I'm about to take athens and he's just sitting on his fortune, he should be rush-buying/spamming mechs at me until I sue for peace. instead, I'm going to take his capitol and all of his core cities with 5 artillery and 22 infantry.

 

[MqsTout]

For those who quoted me, my comment was supposed to be ironic. I don't even have Civ5, but I do find all the drama rather amusing.

No one owns Civ5 except Take2. Lots of people rent it from them through Steam, but you can't possibly own it.

 

[Me,myself,and,I]

I expect if Sid left, 2k would keep the rights to the Civ name. Also, he'd have to go with a lesser publisher such as Stardock or Paradox (most likely scenarios).

BTW , Brad has been talking about another big-name pickup, I'm speculating that there's at least a remote possibility it's Jon, though Brad has said it's a modding guy. This is entirely speculation on my part, but I wouldn't be shocked. Stardock and Firaxis did have a close working relationship around Civ 4/GC2 time.

Also, Stardock is trying hard to improve Elemental- Brad's been working on the AI over the holidays. I don't think SD will buy MoO, makes no sense for them- they got GalCiv, and they are sinking $1.2mil into Elemental next year.

Well every time sid has changed publishers before he took civ with him.

I do not expect that we will see MoO bought by Stardock soon ('cause of elemental) but when ones CEO is talking about making MoO4, well I think that makes it a very real possibility. MoO, GalCiv, and Sins, are all in the same genre but they play differently, given that two of those games belong to Stardock, they don't seem unhappy with the idea of verity, and it would give them a virtual (if not total) monopoly on 4x space games. (This monopoly would allow them to build hotels)

 

[Morningcalm]

Whatever caused Jon Shafer to resign/to be fired, I think we can all agree that Firaxis Games/2K should have representatives make clear to fans/people who play the game what their post-major-patch plans are.

Hotfixes like the recent 12/22 are nice, but a big patch to fix multiplayer and some of the lingering issues in single player (MONEY BUG, crashes, of course, and diplomacy still being awkward).

Will 2K and Firaxis make their intentions clear? Will they deliver big future patches? I certainly hope so. For the major patch cycle to be cut this short would support many fans' angry comments that Civ V is inferior to Civ IV (in support if nothing else, should they indeed not patch the game). The optimist in me says they will patch the game, but the pessimist in me says Jon Shafer's leaving is somewhat foreboding. He may not have been a perfect designer, but he was good at certain aspects of what he did (combat, modding, etc)...and for someone like him who was so integral to the design process of Civ IV and V to leave is quite...disconcerting, to say the least. There is discord and potential failure afoot in Firaxis, and I don't like it. I don't think this means Civ as a series will die or whatever, but it does leave Civ V in a bit of a questionable state. Maybe they'll just keep launching DLC and hotfixes til Civ VI comes out, God forbid.

Speculating on what Sid Meier will do with the series is understandable given Shafer's and other Firaxian employees being fired, but I don't think we can really extrapolate much. Sid's generally been the figurehead for the Civ series for a while, watching over its production from a distance while we blame/praise the designers of each iteration in the series. This pattern will likely continue.