Metacritic - average player's rating. Civ4, COL, Civ5, BNW, BE

[Krajzen]

Ehh. Okay, after criticizing the game much I am leaving this forum ang going back to Civ5 - 5 days was enough for me to explore all affinities/virtues/setting possible and finally decide this is definitely not game for me Honestly I am not even disappointed as I suspected this will happen since first gameplay videos.

Just one last sad fact - while there are people who like or very like BE, a pattern and statistics are clear. Let's compare community ratings of:
- Beyond Earth
- Civilization IV Base Game with patches
- Civilisation IV: Colonization, a game widely considered as 'meh'
- Civilisation V Base Game, important note: post - release rating was much worse, like 6.7/10, and it is still much better average than BE/
- Civilisation V: Brave New World, which was released 14 months before BE and logically you should expect a new game to be on a similar or just a bit lower standard without need of 74337 patches to fix it...

Honestly, my personal opinion is simple - Beyond Earth is mediocre game with a lot of bad design mistakes, but this time it does NOT have a potential to become good game as Civ5 did. It is basically Civ5 reskinned into space but in the same time IMHO much worse than Civ5. I don't believe it will improve via patches/expansions - not to even mention again how bad it is to release broken game and require payments for repairing it - because it's core is IMHO very mediocre. Civilization 5 was unstable technical mess but it was unpolished diamong with a lot of potential, which finally became awesome game - I spent 1236 hours in Civ5.

While BE is a spinn - off which isn't going to receive that big support and, furthermore, I don't even see a potential here - this is clearly rushed Civ5 'mod' with atrocious AI (AI is VERY hard to change post - release!), atrocious UI (UI is also hard to change completely after release), lack of flavor, lack of atmosphere, lack of life, lack of replayability, horribly unstable multiplayer (resyncs removing buildings, total lack of balance) and just plain wrong design decisions (awful wonders and Affinities based not on 'gameplay philosophy' but on luck and grabbing techs)/


This graphic shows a brutal fact - even now, when the game is fresh new and unexplored, it has worst ratings of Civ games since 2005 (Civ4). Is rating going to improve with patches? Surely, but even Civilization 5 which was VERY controversial on release didn't have 5.9 rating but 6.8 - I remember this till today as the Civ5 controversy was pretty huge


Sorry Firaxis, I bought every single DLC for Civ5 but I hoped you will learn how not to release mess - currently I am going back to Civilization V with expansions and mods (and in the meantime, Endless Legends and EU4 are my secondary pearls of modern strategy games). I wish you good luck at patching BE, although I don't believe in it, and I have still very big hopes for Civilization VI.

 

[GenEngineer1]

That's... interesting, actually. While I personally really enjoy the game (mostly because differing opinions regarding lack of flavor and atmosphere - to each their own), I find it surprising that BNW was regarded as Worse than Vanilla. The expansions kept fixing issues... so why was BNW given a lower score?

 

[Jimbo30]

The AI is almost certainly to be based on months-old Civ 5 code. It'll be fixed using almost the same Civ 5 code as today.

And anyone who thinks BE is worse on release than vanilla Civ 5 has a really short memory.

 

[Greasy Dave]

No, let's not do that.

I'm sorry you don't like the game. I respect your view.

But posting comparisons between users ratings that were accumulated over several months (in the case of BNW) or years (all the others), with a user rating accumulated in three days is simply statistical distortion.

Post it again in six months or a year and if it's still as low as it is now - then I will acknowledge that the comparison is fair.

 

[Krajzen]

And anyone who thinks BE is worse on release than vanilla Civ 5 has a really short memory.

I don't know nor I don't care about Absolute Truth, I just show what community ratings are. Also I rember release controversy of Civ5 very well and I was one of the most enthusiastic players back then (lurker on these forums, very active on another). But my patience for Grand Patching finished with Civ5 + yes for some reason I had MUCH more fun with Civ5 on release date than with BE.

GenEngineer -> you mean 'proffesional reviews'? They aren't worth anything and I am talking here about all strategy games, not only Civ5. Grand strategies require much time and thought invested in them and most of pro reviewers have simply no time/will to do that, plus they usually they aren't 'experienced in a series' and they don't see many things lacking in a new particular game.

Community was VERY divided on Civ5 base game and almost completely happy over BNW

 

[ahawk]

And anyone who thinks BE is worse on release than vanilla Civ 5 has a really short memory.

This.

Civ V vanilla was not very good at all in many ways. Further, unlike the original poster, I think this game will indeed get decent support despite being a spin-off. I mean, why wouldn't it? And even if it doesn't, we live in the age of the Steam Workshop and have good modders on the Civ Fanatics roster anyways.

So, I don't think Civ:BE deserves quite as much criticism as its gotten, and I think a lot of the negative reaction is to the fact that they went back to Civ 4 style factions that don't have much unique about them (along with to the admittedly pathetic number of factions at release... 8 is not many at all when Civ V had at least 12 in the base game and all 12 were pretty nicely detailed).

 

[GenEngineer1]

I'm just referring to those metacritics scores: 85 for BNW vs 90 for Vanilla. More recent, yes, but also having been built up to with community feedback to improve the balance up to the release of BNW.

 

[klail]

I really like Civ:BE. It definitely needs some patches and I'm eagerly awaiting the first expansion, but it has a lot of cool ideas.

I love the quest system and I hope they keep adding more via DLCs and regular patches.

I love the addition of canyons. I like in general that the terrain is much more varied and interesting in Civ:Be. I'd like to see even more stuff though, and I'd love to see natural wonders!

I love that every player isn't just a clone of every other ... I love the affinities and how it makes each affinity seem much more unique. The affinity system is awesome.

I wish stations had more stuff to them (more like city/states), but I'm glad they are in the game.

I'm really excited about the possibilities for this game!

 

[Krajzen]

No, let's not do that.

I'm sorry you don't like the game. I respect your view.

But posting comparisons between users ratings that were accumulated over several months (in the case of BNW) or years (all the others), with a user rating accumulated in three days is simply statistical distortion.

Post it again in six months or a year and if it's still as low as it is now - then I will acknowledge that the comparison is fair.

Actually I am pretty sad about lack of Metacritic archive or whatever because actually - as I said - even Civ5 in it's darkest days soon after release had scores oscillating on ~6.8/10 while BE has ~5.9/10 so far. And I am pretty goddamn sure about that due to my obsession with numbers, calculations and statistical averages

Also, many of negative scores for Civ5 came from the fact that it was extremely bugged and had completely broken AI, BE has these things better than Civ5 on it's release date and still has much lower scores...

 

[Resipsa]

I think the sample size might be off

 

[bhavv]

I'm just referring to those metacritics scores: 85 for BNW vs 90 for Vanilla. More recent, yes, but also having been built up to with community feedback to improve the balance up to the release of BNW.

Look at the 'user score' on the right, not the 'metascore' which is based on reviews.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I don't agree that CivBE is beyond all hope of redemption even with patches and expansion packs. If Firaxis releases a patch that fixes trade routes, fixes some of the AI issues, balances covert ops, balances quests decisions and buffs wonders that would be an improvement. And if we get an expansion that enhances diplomacy, gives us more unique sponsors, more interesting units etc, that would also make the game much better as well. There is definitely ways that Firaxis can make BE much better, just as BNW saved Civ5 vanilla and made it the decent game it is today.

 

[Jimbo30]

Honestly I see way more potential with this than I ever saw with Civ 5.

 

[GenEngineer1]

Now I see the numbers referred to. My mistake.

I don't agree that CivBE is beyond all hope of redemption even with patches and expansion packs. If Firaxis releases a patch that fixes trade routes, fixes some of the AI issues, balances covert ops, balances quests decisions and buffs wonders that would be an improvement. And if we get an expansion that enhances diplomacy, gives us more unique sponsors, more interesting units etc, that would also make the game much better as well. There is definitely ways that Firaxis can make BE much better, just as BNW saved Civ5 vanilla and made it the decent game it is today.

Not to mention, just because it's a spin-off does not equals no support. AC was a spin-off, and still got an expansion of its own (I don't know to what extent patch support).

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

I would say CivBE is the best designed civ game ever, BUT it needs alot of time spent on polishing, likely only a mod will do it justice.

Civ 5 at release was a much worse game then BE is right now.

 

[WiseGreen]

Just one last sad fact - while there are people who like or very like BE, a pattern and statistics are clear. Let's compare community ratings of:
- Beyond Earth
- Civilization IV Base Game with patches
- Civilisation IV: Colonization, a game widely considered as 'meh'
- Civilisation V Base Game, important note: post - release rating was much worse, like 6.7/10, and it is still much better average than BE/
- Civilisation V: Brave New World, which was released 14 months before BE and logically you should expect a new game to be on a similar or just a bit lower standard without need of 74337 patches to fix it...

A nitpick: an average, without the company of sample sizes and/or standard errors, is one of the worst statistical informations you can have. Having a median, and/or an interquartile hand, and/or the sample size and standard error are much better sources of info than a solitary average.

I would say CivBE is the best designed civ game ever, BUT it needs alot of time spent on polishing, likely only a mod will do it justice.

Civ 5 at release was a much worse game then BE is right now.

This is my opinion as well. I think CivBE is closer to BNW-levels of polished-ness than CiV was on release.

 

[Ryoga]

Honestly, my personal opinion is simple - Beyond Earth is mediocre game with a lot of bad design mistakes, but this time it does NOT have a potential to become good game as Civ5 did. It is basically Civ5 reskinned into space but in the same time IMHO much worse than Civ5. I don't believe it will improve via patches/expansions - not to even mention again how bad it is to release broken game and require payments for repairing it - because it's core is IMHO very mediocre. Civilization 5 was unstable technical mess but it was unpolished diamong with a lot of potential, which finally became awesome game - I spent 1236 hours in Civ5.

I don't understand what makes you reach these conclusions. You are calling civBE a reskinned civ5 and then you state there is no way to redeem it. How so if by your own admission the core is the same?

The main problems of CivBE are not at all different from the main problems of CivV, bad AI, bad diplomacy, all the rest is something that can be fixed easily changing a few variables and if the devs won't do that, the mod community will.


Moreover I remember well the first day of Civ V release, the forum was flooded by negative comments as much if not more than it is now for Civ BE.

Here is just one of the several "treatises" on why Civ V is fundamentally a bad game at its core level.
By reading that you'd never think that this would be a game to reach a 8.5 by user review on metacritic.

 

[Tibbz]

They need to patch trade routes asap.

Honestly as a diety civ 5 player after face rolling the AI on apollo a couple times BE is already extremely boring and shallow.

There are no unique units and buildings which is a HUGE mistake imo. Honestly the different civs in this game are barely even different they more or less play exactly the same. They need to add at least 10 more civs and add in unique units and unique buildings. Also the tech web is garbage - you can slingshot so easily while the AI is too stupid to use this tech web and even on the highest difficulty is way behind you. They should have just stuck with the more linear progression tree instead of trying to be innovative, but in reality it is an inferior system.

 

[AriochIV]

Civ V vanilla has such a high reviewer metacritic because the initial glut of 5-star reviews seemed to have been done by hacks who only played the game for about 100 turns. (Insert a replay of me crying about the demise of the gaming mags and videogame journalism)

But posting comparisons between users ratings that were accumulated over several months (in the case of BNW) or years (all the others), with a user rating accumulated in three days is simply statistical distortion.

In addition to the above, voluntary polls like this disproportionately over-represent people with an axe to grind, who are more likely to take the time to vote. In the 1UPT poll current on the forums, for example, the vocal minority who hate 1UPT made up as much as a third of the votes, but if you conducted a real poll in which you randomly contacted Civ gamers and asked them their views, I'd bet the 1UPT-haters would score even lower.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

They need to patch trade routes asap.

Honestly as a diety civ 5 player after face rolling the AI on apollo a couple times BE is already extremely boring and shallow.

There are no unique units and buildings which is a HUGE mistake imo. Honestly the different civs in this game are barely even different they more or less play exactly the same. They need to add at least 10 more civs and add in unique units and unique buildings. Also the tech web is garbage - you can slingshot so easily while the AI is too stupid to use this tech web and even on the highest difficulty is way behind you. They should have just stuck with the more linear progression tree instead of trying to be innovative, but in reality it is an inferior system.

Diety in civ 5 is no harder then Apollo but you have less choices in your playstyle.