Not Happy with Lack of Animations

[GregUMR]

That's the great thing about a server side option. If you don't want the animations, don't join a game with animations on. If you like them then look for a game which has them enabled or make your own. It really is a win win. (assuming they are smart and put some little picture easily visible in multiplayer games list so you don't have to join , check, leave, repeat)


The problem with you saying that you'd have to watch 600 fights is that you are assuming you game focus is automatically drawn to that fight. What they need to do is have the fights occur with animation but don't auto-focus your screen to that animation. That way if you are in the middle of a battle or focus on some certain area, you can focus on that area and watch what goes on there. There is no reason why the game should force you to watch every single animation that occurs within a turn.

So if they implement it this way, you'd only watch animations that are near your field of view at that current time, and it wouldn't rip you away from what you're doing if you don't really care. Someone should do an analysis on whether or not the game currently has a specific delay built into the game whenever an animation would occur (but of course is not since the game doesn't have animations on atm).

Either way, this is Civ and we should have options. It's not like there are thousands of multiplayer games going at once. The most I've ever seen on the list is about 12-15. So why can't we have a flipping server side option and the rest of the people that don't want it can play with their more competitive friends and disable the option. There's little reason to argue against that other then to play devil's advocate or be stubborn.

 

[LordTC]

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I'm less opposed to it as a host-side option, but again as they already said there were technical problems I'd rather they spend their time fixing the problems we already have without going into this as well.

Also, I already knew having tried my hand at developing some basic games myself what a tremendous pain in the ass even seemingly simple things can be. Everyone just says, "well, throw this in too!" like it doesn't take time and resources to accomplish.



The only reason it's any more imperative to know where attacks are coming from is that you can double move right now. Once they fix that it will be like it was in Civ IV. Plus, this is a symmetrical situation so it's kind of on you to take advantage of it rather than let more competent players use it against you.


No noob with combat animations on knew how to build a stack. That's not what I was talking about so you can forget that strawman right now. One unit attacking me is in itself a problem.


I really get tired of the non-competitive players complaining about a lack of features that makes the game more like single player. No, it's not unreasonable, it's just redundant. Civ is killing off its competitive market and to me that's a travesty.


Slow down there, buddy. 1) I never said everyone agrees with me, obviously there are a people that disagree or I wouldn't have to listen to this in the first place. 2) My experience with the SYSTEM has not been positive. I acknowledge there are many many fixes needed for this MP engine to function like it should. I am addressing combat animations and only combat animations.


The arguments themselves are moronic even if the opinion isn't. You two basically said it was ruining the game (if I understand what you mean by "game-breaking" which I guess I don't). To imply that this feature is going to ruin the game through its presence or absence is complete nonsense.

I find it hard to believe that Civ is killing the competitive market and the expense of the casual market. If that is the case then Civ is just outright bad, because most people would argue its the other way around. The Beta-testers from outside Firaxis were basically top ladder players and podcasters from competitive communities, and the suggestions they made all had competitive bents. No option to save an MP file, No option for turn-based, no option for unit animations (with potential confusion from ranged attacks + "teleport style" movement is a perfect example of not having a broad community represented. Casual players who like to arrange an MP game in a forum and play 3 hours on 1 night of the week every week for a few months until the game finishes are without a doubt the group most heavily neglected.. they have no convenient mechanism for saving a game and loading it a week later (guess which autosave it is ) and no option to play turn-based which is a strong preference among those adverse to click-fests. No one is saying to make these the default and no one is saying "if I turn unit animations on the hosts settings should be ignored" it should simply use the host settings over everyone elses in that regard.

I really think the big issue is no one sat down and figured out a solution for these problems that have existed since at least Civ3 and are trying to fix them after writing code that isn't well set up for it. If they thought about how to handle uniit animations in multiplayer pre-alpha, then they'd be able to implement any reasonable solution, and given how many complaints there were for Civ4, its sometihng they really ought to think about at the pre-alpha stage.

 

[GregUMR]

Good post LordTC. I echo those comments 100%. I also don't understand why they aren't allowing regions to play eachother, all in one big pool. There is no reason the western US can't play with the eastern and neither can play with any other region in the world. Civ IV had this option, and while gamespy sucks, not being able to play with the rest of the world is really bad. This game is immensely popular overseas and I enjoyed the varied personalities and play styles you encountered when playing with people from around the globe. After all, this is civilizations, conquer the WORLD, not the western US and then switch regions if you want to play another set of players...

 

[turingmachine]

No option to save an MP file, No option for turn-based, no option for unit animations (with potential confusion from ranged attacks + "teleport style" movement is a perfect example of not having a broad community represented. Casual players who like to arrange an MP game in a forum and play 3 hours on 1 night of the week every week for a few months until the game finishes are without a doubt the group most heavily neglected.. they have no convenient mechanism for saving a game and loading it a week later (guess which autosave it is ) and no option to play turn-based which is a strong preference among those adverse to click-fests.

Don't forget the implementation of MP AI that is significantly dumber and less interactive than it's SP counterpart, so that the only purpose of MP AI is to essentially function as a placeholder till a human player can take over the slot. MP should have been designed from the SP game as a base with options to cater to the individual communities, instead of as solely a competitive game that now has technical issues when trying to re-implement stuff so basic as animations and a normal save feature.

 

[E66man]

Either way, this is Civ and we should have options. It's not like there are thousands of multiplayer games going at once. The most I've ever seen on the list is about 12-15.

I'd kill for that many. Typically on the West Coast side, 3 is a record and 1-2 the average. Segregated communities make no sense when the available player pool is this small.

And even with this there is apparently some issue with lag in the 'lobby', as I've run into numerous cases of the host saying that people don't appear to be checked in as ready even though the other players present have everyone checked in on their screens. When only a dozen people are online at the same time, how does the lag get this bad when the game hasn't even started?

...so that the only purpose of MP AI is to essentially function as a placeholder till a human player can take over the slot.

I've read this kind of statement before. Is there actually some mechanism that a human player can take over an AI slot for a game in progress, or does the game have to saved and reloaded so that the AI gets kicked out in the game hosting screen?

 

[Aquila SPQR]

Ummm... so still there is no animations in multiplayer? We (me and my friend) tried to play Civ V multi soon after we bought it but without animations we together consider it unplayable. So we are not playing it and waiting for a patch. It's not a big issue though, because we also both consider Civ IV BTS a much better game.

 

[Maxor127]

From 2kgreg http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1206729&postcount=17

"It's a lot more complicated than that. Animations are not simply something that we turned off and forgot to provide an option for. There are underlying technical reasons why they aren't in multiplayer at this time. We will be evaluating what it would take to allow them in multiplayer, but at this time I don't have any guarantee that it will be added. We definitely have heard your feedback on the issue though."

so I wouldnt hold your breath for this getting patched in..

I don't see what's so complicated about having animations on in multiplayer. I think the game is just poorly designed and coded. Lots of other strategy games, including previous Civ games had animations, and they worked fine. Civ4 multiplayer was for superior. Civ multiplayer should be a single player experience with human players. And if people want the choice to strip away animations or leaderheads, then great, let them have that option. So now I'm stuck with a crappy single-player game with stupid AI that could be more fun with multiplayer, but at the cost of all of the graphical enhancements and immersion that make Civ5 an "improvement" over Civ4 in the first place. At this point, I really just want Civ4 with 1UPT combat.

 

[z220580]

Once in a game, i had the misfortune of blinking right when my scout walked onto a ruin and i never knew what i got from that ruin.

I am also for ANIMATIONS to be enabled in MP.