The scary bit is that if "TheMeInTeam's" argument were actually true, that we are doing "nothing" between turns, why just between turns? After all, at the end of the turn we push a button right? At the start of the next turn we push a button right? You define that during this time, we are doing nothing. But every button click we do during the turn even if it is less than a second, is still a sequence from one button push to the next. Therefore in that "1 second" we must also be doing nothing. Therefore if you argument is correct, then if you add up all the time between button pushes, you get the conclusion that we are doing nothing "99.99% of the time" and are only actually doing something for an infinitely short amount of time while we are actually pushing the button. If you visualize it, the line of "nothingness" is a flat line with instantly short periods of doing something.
Cute, but irrelevant. Everyone has different capabilities while playing, but the point is that their own capability be the limiting factor so they can have fun. The point is not to make the game painfully slower than their capability so that they want to give inputs but the game won't let them.
Strictly speaking, command lag DURING turns causes players to lose time too. For example, you order a unit to fortify and it does not do it (Civ IV forever, and civ V until some patches). You given an order, and it takes 2 seconds to execute, etc. Civ V is generally much less offensive in this sense, so I didn't point it out.
They simply cannot run the turn times quicker on this technology for the level of quality we are demanding
I've heard from more than one programmer that they can do it and that the code is just sloppy. That has been posted and confirmed by quite a few individuals on this very forum. Do you KNOW information to the contrary, or are you trying to make something up to support an argument that shouldn't even exist?
Your problem may be unique to you in that you generally speed-play Civ.
Wrong. The problem is more *noticeable* to me because I speed play civ. If given the same machine specs, you, I, santa claus, a 5 year old, and the king of the orcs would all lose the same amount of time waiting for the interface to allow additional commands. Whether it takes you 2 hours to finish a game or 20, you still lose 2 hours per game. For some, that might be 10% of their play time. For me, it's 50%. There are a few more people who can play at my speeds than you seem to think, I know several in fact.
I definitely spend a comparable amount of time walking from one point of interest to other points of interest in action-RPGs and the bigger JRPGs.
That's a horrible analogy and it breaks focus. Comparable situations to your RPG analogy in civ would be what you do during turns. Just as speed runners route plan, sequence break, etc so that they spend far less time moving between "points of interest", players with heuristics of fast thinking can reduce the amount of time spent playing civ V turns. That is also 100% irrelevant to the point.
How many of those action rpgs, jrpgs, or other games can you think of where over 1/5 of your time is spend
where you can't give the game commands of any kind whatsoever? The ACTUAL COMPARABLE moments in these games are load times. There is a tvtrope for "loads of loading" for a reason. People don't like it. Ah! But firaxis pulled a number on us. They put loads of loading to EXTREME levels and sprinkled it in between turns in portions that are (usually but not always) less than one minute. This way, they can force us to watch a loading screen for hours and so few people seem to catch on.
To make the arguments you and glider1 put forth look as bad as they actually are, I'll draw up a fun analogy, complete with similarly apologist excuses! Let's say you're playing pokemon, except that NOW you have to spend 1 minute before EVERY SINGLE BATTLE in the game. There's no actual reason to make you wait 1 minute, but Nintendo decided they wanted to load in some cut scenes or animations and poorly coded that.
1. This is fine, I'm doing something else anyway! Pokemon is still great and 3+ hours of load times across a game is no problem at all! Surely nobody else should complain about this because I have a second nintendo or am browsing the internet every time I get into battle! Lul!
2. Nintendo has good economic sense, and therefore it is a good thing to sell a shoddy product to gamers. Reducing load times is SILLY.
3. Only fast players should care about the load times! Nobody else will mind! YOU shouldn't mind! Haha!
4. Doing nothing is player prerogative, so it is OK to FORCE players to do nothing.
What are the load times in mass effect? How many HOURS do you spend in mass effect on LOAD TIMES? Oops, you DON'T spend HOURS on load times in mass effect! Whooooooops! Or did you time it and can confirm that the game requires this? Does it require an hours of wait time for every 2 hours of game play? Does it?
No. It does not. If anything, you're proving my point further; good games don't FORCE the player into situations where they can't give inputs for extremely large chunks of the game. Mass effect received critical acclaim because it is a good game (though not perfect. Civ V received critical acclaim because...well...publications chose to indisputably lie to their consumers about the gameplay experience (I dare you to try to find a publisher that rated the game highly that actually called the game on its MANY release bugs, or the fact that MP didn't even work. As paid reviewers, you'd have thought they'd notice that core features didn't exist yet.....)
Anyway, all I'm seeing from the opposition is that:
1. Civ V does in fact force players to do nothing for longer than any AAA title mentioned yet
2. People who are annoyed by doing nothing for 2 hours/game against their will are supposed to be fine with that "because they can do other things, because they themselves aren't optimized, or because other games probably do this too even though we can't give any examples"
That's it. That's all the opposition has to answer for the FACT that this game yanks 2+ hours of time away from everyone who plays it each time they run through a game, where they LITERALLY CAN'T PLAY IT. Yes, civ IV was an offender also, and it sucked then too. Now, it's even worse, and all people are doing is making excuses for it! Let me emphasize one last point:
Therefore if you argument is correct, then if you add up all the time between button pushes, you get the conclusion that we are doing nothing "99.99% of the time" and are only actually doing something for an infinitely short amount of time while we are actually pushing the button.
There are players out there who can spend nearly 0 time between actions. Do you know who these players are?
THE AIs
A simple calculator can pull arithmetic at thousands of times the speed that people can. Computers can do calculations or follow algorithms at speeds human beings can't even perceive. Why, then, can the computer not even manage to go 5 times as fast as me in civ? I'm not a superhuman. I'm not a genius. I'm above average in a few categories that let me play the game quickly, but there is NO REASON that should be insurmountable to a computer.
What calculations is it doing? Are we seeing some fine top-level grandmaster tactics brewing
? Is the GAME ENGINE lagging the units so much that it bogs the game down and the AI can't move them? Is it still refusing to cache things that can't possibly have changed? What is it? According to you, the AI should be the ONE THING that DOESN'T waste time during a game, and yet I'm somehow capable of dragging the game along so much that it actually can't do its movements a mere few times faster than me! What gives?
Who am I supposed to listen to? Several on and off-forum programmers that insist this is a shoddy product in this regard, or apologists who are fine with it because it's called civ? I apologize if that question sounds biased, but so is the assertion that the problem is "unique to me". Given the state that the game was in on release, claiming making between-turn times reasonable is somehow impossible seems.............off. Firaxis opted to insult its players by making them lose 2 hours/game continually while addressing a myriad of other things. Why?
You know what my favorite thing is? I can see how much time I lose. I can compare my session start time to session finish time on the clock, and then the game tells me that I spent less than HALF that time playing (IE 4 hours pass, game says it took me 90 minutes to finish). I could pull that in civ IV mind you and V is WORSE. My 33% to 50% estimate is CONSERVATIVE and meant for other players out there. But, apparently it's true, people like watching paint dry but get offended when you point out that's what they're doing...
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