What bothers me is that people (some people, anyway) seem to think it's okay. A game comes out and it's not good, and people are defending it saying "it'll be good 3 years from now, after you've paid an extra $40, so stop complaining." That's just crazy to me. The game developers are failing at their jobs, and people just give them a pass.
Measuring the success of BE
- Thread starter mike20599
- Start date
It's almost as if different individuals may have different ideas about how they wish to measure their accomplishments and success, based on their own personal belief and value systems, which may very between individuals and not be some kind of conformist standard that every single person must adhere to!
As noted... different people will like different things. Pretty much everyone in these forums spends their time sitting around vocally shouting about what they want in the hopes that someone else will come along and hand it to them on a silver platter. Why shouldn't the people that happen to enjoy facets of the game that you personally don't do the same?
Or, of course, people could take responsibility for their own happiness and make choices towards that end, rather than wasting their time sitting around kvetching about things in the hope that someone else will come along and hand it to them without them putting any effort into it...
Ah well. I'm going to go work on some more mods.
It does not matter what I "like". Bad game design is bad design, and will always be bad design no matter how much I tolerate it, just as older games had design flaws due to techinical limitations.
If modding were easy, then someone would have put together a working MUPT mod and restructured the game to fix those design flaws. The legacy of 1UPT left Civ5 with an engine that is unfriendly to serious modding. It doesn't help that people have this unfounded obsession with "deathstacks" due to their own inability to grasp army management and, ironically, siege units and collateral damage being so strong thus necessitating stacks to defend vulnerable units.
The only MUPT mod that addresses needed balance issues was discontinued years ago in an unfinished state, and even that wasn't perfect (though it was intended for a scenario anyway). Modifying AI is not easy, and fixing the game to something playable would require removing land- and sea-based ranged units too, among many other core mechanic changes. It would be a lot better if the game were designed properly from the start.
Subjectivist arguments are incredibly weak. That 1UPT is a significant factor in what's wrong with Civ5 is not a matter of opinion but the inevitable consequence of 1UPT in a game like this. It really did wreck the game, and it's the first stumbling block that would need to be removed before the game can be rebuilt to something really good.
Ryika
Lazy Wannabe Artista
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This may very well be true, there is probably some objective standard of "bad design", but you personally lack the authority to just infer what is bad design. All you can do and have done until this point is give your opinion and that will by definition never be objective - no matter how often you repeat it as if it were a fact.
In order to even have a say in what is "bad design" you would have to make a cohesive argument on why certain things are "bad design", which - I would argue - will be very hard to do given that the public opinion pretty much stands against you and the main purpose of the game design they chose probably was to create a product that pleases an audience of players as big as possible.
Of course you have already shown that you are incapable of forming an actual argument in the past.
NASAROG
Prince
This is industry wide, for many titles. Alpha is not alpha. Beta is not beta. Release candidate is... well, you get the drift. I don't know what to tell you honestly. Very few games come out in a good state at release, in any genre actually.
SupremacyKing2
Deity
Well, I agree with you that it is not ok. I don't like it but it is what it is right now. Personally, I think the advent of online distribution like Steam, especially now with the availability of fast internet, has made it too advantageous for devs to release sloppy products. When games used to be released on floppy disks, they had to be in a finished state because the cost of mass producing floppy disks with the updated game on it and re-releasing the game in stores, would be too costly. Now, it is so easy and cheap for devs for patch their games, as easy as uploading a file to Steam. So, there is less incentive to get it right the first time.
Westwall
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We're entering an age where entire generations of people will never know what it was like to play a complete product without having to pay through the nose for DLC content and fixes. I've actually seen people unironically argue things like "well what can you expect? BE is only one expansion in so you can't expect it to be good yet!"
Excuse me, but are these people listening to themselves? Do they have any idea how insane that sounds? Firaxis is quickly becoming the worst offender with BE/BERT. I've lost all confidence in their ability to produce good games outside the XCOM series.
SupremacyKing2
Deity
What is odd is that Firaxis seems to have a different standard for XCOM than for the civ series. With the XCOM series, Firaxis appears to be putting all the time and resources needed to make sure they are delivering a quality product on release. They even pushed back the release of XCOM2 by several months (it was originally scheduled to be released the same month as BERT) because, to paraphrase Jake Solomon, they wanted extra time to put that extra little bit of polish to make the game even better. Yet, they clearly don't have that standard for BERT or CIV.
SupremacyKing2
Deity
Yes, but only after 2 expansions and a bunch of patches. It still followed the same pattern of "firaxis releases an unfinished game that only becomes excellent after 2 expansions and patches" that you lament.
I understand perfectly well why the developers do it -- the incentives are obvious. What I find crazy is the consumers who just accept (and even defend) this practice. As long as people accept it and continue to pay for unfinished products and "expansions" that are really just fixes, the developers will never have any reason to change.
We can't change the world today, but it would be a nice first step if people would stop defending Beyond Earth's shortcomings with the "it's only the first expansion, what do you expect?" argument.
Gort
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Thing is though, BE is built on Civ 5. We should expect them to have used the years between Brave New World and BE to have made a superior game, not one that's in a similar state to a game released in 2010.
Westwall
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Exactly this. Also Civ 5 throughout most of its incarnations was still a more polished and stable game than BE will ever be. BE is literally tripping over its own sloppy coding-upon-coding.
SupremacyKing2
Deity
Well, I would not go that far. BE is far from perfect but it is not the irredeemable mess that some people make it out to be.
SupremacyKing2
Deity
I keep hearing this argument, "BE came after BNW. It should have learned from it." Yes and No. Of course, we hope BE would have learned from the experience of developing civ5. But keep in mind that BE was developed by a completely different team than civ5. And I woud add, the BE dev team was made up of young guys who were making their first civ game. Plus, BE is a scifi game that needed to "tell its own story". So, you have a different team who are making a different game. So, in many ways, BE was starting from a new place. Some of the civ concepts are so general that they always apply but a lot of the concepts in BE, being a scifi game, will be new and will need to work differently from BNW.
Ryika
Lazy Wannabe Artista
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Still think one of "big problems that are hard to fix" is actually the theme. Futuristic, space-themed 4x without actual aliens and without space is just... why? It's like: Hey, humanity's next big step... as presented by generic humans who basically do the same thing humanity has always done on a planet that basically works the same as our earth and the only problem that really has to be overcome are the other generic humans. I couldn't think of a less interesting theme if I wanted to.
And since I am right, you can shut up now.
Moderator Action: Please discuss the topic civilly, rather than simply trolling like this.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
SupremacyKing2
Deity
Which is why I kept hoping that Firaxis would do a true space 4x game like Master of Orion. I thought the makers of the addictive civ "just one more turn" franchise had such potential to give us a great space 4x game.
Westwall
Emperor
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They did. But as you said, they decided to entrust that charge to a team of amateurs, basically ensuring its mediocrity and limited scope at inception.
DutchJob
Prince
BE is as good as it gets.
With 1UPT you cannot expect too much.
With 1UPT you cannot expect too much.
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