My take on why Civ 6 will be a bad game, a 3 pt. podcast

[Bibor]

And we finally got it, it's the evil greedy corporations argument.

Nope. My best guess is that 2K has too many mouths to feed. Probably nothing to do with the actual developers of the game. And yes, when Blizzard slaps a $60 price tag on something, at least I don't feel they went cheap on me. I might disagree with the game mechanics, or be angry at a botched launch, but their games are polished to the bone.

 

[Bibor]

Hey Bibor, I'd probably spend more time hanging out in Tisno chasing women than playing civ. That's just me.

I'm working my butt off this summer. No vacation for me till september. But thank you for the kind thought

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Excuse me for this particular question: Exatly what have they done with the Civ5 civilopedia that is bad? Could you explain this?

The documentation of game mechanics is 90% missing and 50% false.

 

[Nikae]

Polished like Diablo 3 was, right? Permanent online with crap servers, untested and not doable difficulty, half of the game was the glorious auction house since items had to be bought because they sure as hell could not be found, it was imbalanced to the extreme, 99% of the promised versatility was not viable. Apart from the frothing zealots in the fan base and media people who played it for 4 hours, noone liked it much.

It became pretty good depending on whom you ask, but at start it was a mess. Just like Civ5.

I repeat it for the last time. You judge every possible aspect of a game before you could play it, call the designers of a game you have played for 1000+ hours nobodies, start reintroducing your lamenting about civ5, use a ton of clouded allegories to prove your point, and flat out state that the games are bad because some schmuck went for larger profit. All this after stating that you no longer play Civ.

It is extremely arrogant and ridiculously hypocritical. After all, I do not have to read it. I sure as hell do not have the patience to listen to it anyway.

 

[wiggawuu]

Polished like Diablo 3 was, right? Permanent online with crap servers, untested and not doable difficulty, half of the game was the glorious auction house since items had to be bought because they sure as hell could not be found, it was imbalanced to the extreme, 99% of the promised versatility was not viable. Apart from the frothing zealots in the fan base and media people who played it for 4 hours, noone liked it much.

It became pretty good depending on whom you ask, but at start it was a mess. Just like Civ5.

I repeat it for the last time. You judge every possible aspect of a game before you could play it, call the designers of a game you have played for 1000+ hours nobodies, start reintroducing your lamenting about civ5, use a ton of clouded allegories to prove your point, and flat out state that the games are bad because some schmuck went for larger profit. All this after stating that you no longer play Civ.

It is extremely arrogant and ridiculously hypocritical. After all, I do not have to read it. I sure as hell do not have the patience to listen to it anyway.

At least he has the guts to come out say what most fanboys on here wont. He's pointed out legit problems because we've already watched game play.

Its not worth getting upset, everyone is entitled to their own opinions. I personally, think he's on to something.

 

[qwerty25]

Excuse me for this particular question: Exatly what have they done with the Civ5 civilopedia that is bad? Could you explain this?

The civilopedia has a large number of errors that were never corrected or not corrected for a very long time. (Lighthouse, yields, many wonders, food growth base or compound percentage, etc...) If this were a shooter game or something that would be fine. But its specifically a strategy game compounding the severity of having so many mistakes. Like some of the new win conditions text in BNW werent updated either.

 

[Acken]

I personally, think he's on to something.

So it's not me that still have no concrete idea ? Good

 

[Bibor]

So it's not me that still have no concrete idea ? Good

Civilization could've been made to be portable to consoles and other media while retaining 90% of its intended gameplay. It's not. The costs I presume would be minor compared to profits, and thus enable more polish and investment into DLCs etc.

So it's a PC game. Presumably that would mean they'd want to capture as big a PC audience as possible, from Celeron 1024x768 Intel HD4000 laptop owners to i7 GeForce GTX1080 owners (I'm exaggerating obviously). That's not happening either. I've seen footage taken (presumably) in Firaxis HQ, guessing on a reference gaming machine. AI turns are sluggish in mid early game already.

It's an exploration-expansion-builder-combat-singleplayer-multiplayer game. Six focuses for one game. Hard to do. Each should be polished to the bone and then interwoven with the other 5. Not seeing that either. (Consider that this is a brand new game, not an expansion).

Dips in overall player activity while at peace are still huge. Watch the first 40 seconds of Quill18's 4th video. Tell me, how many seconds of these 40 is player activity. And how would you characterize the player activity that you see? Fun, interesting, exciting, meaningful, boring, kill me now? (spoiler alert: it takes 27 seconds @ turn 70 for the AI to complete its turn).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO58UkNeAzc

 

[Ryika]

Could be worse though. Play the video on 50% speed and it's 54 seconds.

 

[Abraxis]

Watching someone play civ is nothing like playing it yourself, being in control and letting your imagination generate a narrative.

I get the general gist of your arguments; I think. It's the same thing Toady (developer of Dwarf Fortress) has against conventional game design, which is to say he feels it generally focuses on exploiting impulsive behaviour rather than stimulating higher thought patterns.

However, coming back to creating your own narrative, this is higher thought in my opinion, and at least for me where a lot of the enjoyment in Civ games lies, I don't think this potential translates when watching someone else play, unless they narrate this way, which Quill does not.

That being said, you're never going to get the kind of stimulation you're looking for until simulations advance another 50 years... if it's ever possible. The closest now being Dwarf Fortress, which has its own set of issues as a direct result of pursuing such lofty ambitions.

A game is essentially a box. Shaped differently depending on its rules. Each shape deliberately designed to optimally contain a functional subset of the human mind to be repeatedly stimulated. In order to create one that could encompass the whole mind, you'd need someone smart enough to understand the whole mind, which is enherently paradoxical, and some damn sophisticated technology to keep ahead of it as well. So far the only box that can do this is real life, and good luck contacting the developer.
Anything short of that and you're just settling for different shaped boxes, whatever your preference, it just sounds to me like you, like Toady, are unwilling to settle for any limits.

But maybe I'm getting a little off topic. Have you tried Dwarf Fortress? If so what are your thoughts there?

 

[Bibor]

I took 45 mins. of some people's lives here, so I thought to return at least some of that time

Here's a clip of Quill18s play through as England.
Duration: 31 minutes 29 seconds. I took a 10 minute sample. Too late in the night to do the whole 30 minutes. I'll do my best to do a full 30 tomorrow, as I feel 10 mins is not a good enough sample.
Game presumably played on a decent gaming rig.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO58UkNeAzc


Here's the list of player activity by type, on a few occasions grouped, but otherwise consistent:

number of seconds / activity

3 unit movement
4 nothing
26 ai turn
24 city management
10 nothing
3 city management
15 text reading
10 event interaction
3 choosing tech/policy
15 ai turn
5 diplomacy screen
60 YT commentary
5 unit movement
13 AI turn
20 city management
14 nothing
13 unit movement
20 AI turn
8 reading text
8 city management
16 unit movement
16 AI turn
11 unit movement
3 nothing
16 AI turn
10 text reading
13 city management
30 YT commentary
6 unit movement
17 AI turn
6 text reading
27 choosing tech/policy
42 city management
12 trade route management
22 choosing tech/policy
20 unit movement
60 YT commentary

total 10,1 minutes

of these:

AI turns = 106 seconds (1 minute 46 seconds)
Tech/policy screen = 56 seconds
Build (city) management = 110 seconds (1 minute 50 seconds)
Diplomacy screen = 5 seconds
Event interaction = 10 seconds
Nothing = 31 seconds (no visible activity)
Reading text = 39 seconds
Trade route management = 12 seconds
Unit movement = 74 seconds
Youtube Commentary = 150 seconds (2 minutes and 30 seconds) (visible activity in form of map browsing, scrolling etc)

NOTE: Apparently the AI is being calculated during diplomacy screen.

 

[Abraxis]

Why didn't you post this in your other thread? Anyways, like I vaguely implied there, I think your decisions per second metric is a poor way of judging the game. Idle time is time for the imagination to focus on imagining a narrative which certainly has value.

If you want maximum decisions per second I think you're better off playing a MOBA.

 

[Bibor]

Watching someone play civ is nothing like playing it yourself, being in control and letting your imagination generate a narrative.

I get the general gist of your arguments; I think. It's the same thing Toady (developer of Dwarf Fortress) has against conventional game design, which is to say he feels it generally focuses on exploiting impulsive behaviour rather than stimulating higher thought patterns.

However, coming back to creating your own narrative, this is higher thought in my opinion, and at least for me where a lot of the enjoyment in Civ games lies, I don't think this potential translates when watching someone else play, unless they narrate this way, which Quill does not.

That being said, you're never going to get the kind of stimulation you're looking for until simulations advance another 50 years... if it's ever possible. The closest now being Dwarf Fortress, which has its own set of issues as a direct result of pursuing such lofty ambitions.

A game is essentially a box. Shaped differently depending on its rules. Each shape deliberately designed to optimally contain a functional subset of the human mind to be repeatedly stimulated. In order to create one that could encompass the whole mind, you'd need someone smart enough to understand the whole mind, which is enherently paradoxical, and some damn sophisticated technology to keep ahead of it as well. So far the only box that can do this is real life, and good luck contacting the developer.
Anything short of that and you're just settling for different shaped boxes, whatever your preference, it just sounds to me like you, like Toady, are unwilling to settle for any limits.

But maybe I'm getting a little off topic. Have you tried Dwarf Fortress? If so what are your thoughts there?

Sadly no, but you intrigued me. I'll try Dwarf Fortress. I'm not looking for the perfect box, but I live my life as I play my games. If I didn't work, build, learn or entertain myself (or others around me) the most I could in the time frame given, I consider it a day not optimal, and the next day I try better. I cut the clutter where I can. If its close, I take a bicycle. If I have to further away, I take a cab to cut time on parking. I have a computer that can keep up with me. If I can a flight for 45 mins or drive for 8 hours, I take the flight. It's all pretty no-brainer to me. That doesn't mean I don't purposely drive or walk. But I can repeat the same pattern only so often if it doesn't feel like time well spent.

 

[Bibor]

Why didn't you post this in your other thread? Anyways, like I vaguely implied there, I think your decisions per second metric is a poor way of judging the game. Idle time is time for the imagination to focus on imagining a narrative which certainly has value.

If you want maximum decisions per second I think you're better off playing a MOBA.

You're right, I should probably ask the mod to merge this thread with the other one.

These values have no meaning by themselves, apart from the AI turns (LOL). I need to assign weights to choices and narratives the player could make during these activities, and determine how quickly each of these can turn into automation (i.e. into no-brainer choices). I don't know if this makes any sense to you.

 

[Atlas627]

Apparently, the journalists for the lets play sessions that got released around that time played on a build that had debugging on. This would increase AI turn times significantly in comparison to how much it would increase the player turn time.

So I certainly wouldn't look at those videos for AI turn time.

 

[Bibor]

Apparently, the journalists for the lets play sessions that got released around that time played on a build that had debugging on. This would increase AI turn times significantly in comparison to how much it would increase the player turn time.

So I certainly wouldn't look at those videos for AI turn time.

I honestly didn't take that into consideration. :-/

 

[Bibor]

I get the general gist of your arguments; I think. It's the same thing Toady (developer of Dwarf Fortress) has against conventional game design, which is to say he feels it generally focuses on exploiting impulsive behaviour rather than stimulating higher thought patterns.

Hm, now that I think about it, actually - no, I have an another example in mind. This time someone who knows what he's doing. If you played civ4, you'll love his videos.

This is the gameplay I'd like to see back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5uBd9IlMR4&list=PLqyBKiHbM__ESg4k45ijeu_z2XrtkCTlY

EDIT: I'm watching this video for the Xth time and I can't stop watching lol

 

[Acken]

Civilization could've been made to be portable to consoles and other media while retaining 90% of its intended gameplay. It's not. The costs I presume would be minor compared to profits, and thus enable more polish and investment into DLCs etc.

So it's a PC game. Presumably that would mean they'd want to capture as big a PC audience as possible, from Celeron 1024x768 Intel HD4000 laptop owners to i7 GeForce GTX1080 owners (I'm exaggerating obviously). That's not happening either. I've seen footage taken (presumably) in Firaxis HQ, guessing on a reference gaming machine. AI turns are sluggish in mid early game already.

It's an exploration-expansion-builder-combat-singleplayer-multiplayer game. Six focuses for one game. Hard to do. Each should be polished to the bone and then interwoven with the other 5. Not seeing that either. (Consider that this is a brand new game, not an expansion).

Dips in overall player activity while at peace are still huge. Watch the first 40 seconds of Quill18's 4th video. Tell me, how many seconds of these 40 is player activity. And how would you characterize the player activity that you see? Fun, interesting, exciting, meaningful, boring, kill me now? (spoiler alert: it takes 27 seconds @ turn 70 for the AI to complete its turn).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO58UkNeAzc

You know there is already a thread to talk about turn times if that was your point ?

And PC gaming has never been about having a game playable on crappy systems. Like never. Crappy systems have always been left out.

Whether or not Firaxis decided to not port to console is up to them. Besides the UI issues it may simply not be a good market for that kind of game. They weren't exactly in a hurry to release XCOM2 there either.

Hm, now that I think about it, actually - no, I have an another example in mind. This time someone who knows what he's doing. If you played civ4, you'll love his videos.

This is the gameplay I'd like to see back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5uBd9IlMR4&list=PLqyBKiHbM__ESg4k45ijeu_z2XrtkCTlY

EDIT: I'm watching this video for the Xth time and I can't stop watching lol

So 10 pages of vague nostalgia to finally just say you want civ4 back ? Ok.

 

[Bibor]

So 10 pages of vague nostalgia to finally just say you want civ4 back ? Ok.

Yes. Exactly. That's the only logical conclusion one can draw from Absolute Zero's video and my fascination with it.

I guess I marked myself as a certified condescending moron with this thread. All are welcome to take their turn.

 

[Ryika]

Yes. Exactly. That's the only logical conclusion one can draw from Absolute Zero's video and my fascination with it.

I guess I marked myself as a certified condescending moron with this thread. All are welcome to take their turn.

I'm glad you've acknowledged your flaws, now you can start treading the path of improvement.