Thanks Blackadr: I'm a scientist by training, so I try to avoid selection effects when looking at samples to the extent that I can. It's one reason why I take claims of some silent majority behind forum posts so skeptically: you have no idea how the vocal people compare to the underlying population. You can compare the same thing (e.g. user reviews from Amazon of 2 different products) to try and at least make a relative comparison. The samples for Civ 4 and 5 are pretty similar in size, for what it's worth, and the reasons for the one star ratings are not the same (bugs vs. steam.)
What you can already see on Amazon is that Civ 5 will get worse, not better, reviews as it ages.
I'm with you until the last statement. If anything, history shows that there should be a positive bias trend, not a negative one, for future (post patch, post expansion) reviews. Civ 4 started with bad Amazon reviews, got worse and then ended up fine. Why wouldn't the same pattern hold for Civ V as long as it's properly patched? So how do you get from a positive trend to a negative one?
Note: I have zero faith in Amazon reviews anyway. But I am curious how you can make that statement.
And that brings me to my main point:
Civ 5 is getting heavily criticized here because people maintain that it's badly designed and executed. And I think that these claims are very, very solidly based. Attempts to shout it down on grounds of popularity cannot substitute for what you can do in discussions, which is to present and critique ideas.
Let's face it - most ideas have already been critiqued and discussed extensively. Yet I've done no such thing in terms of "shouting down" opinions on Civ V that disagree with my own. I've merely presented the facts that the majority - and a sizable one - have a positive impression of the game. And those are facts, not ideas.
I find it unforgivable that professional reviewers didn't heavily mark down the scores for the poor diplomacy and combat performance. I also am shocked that there was so little acknowledgement of roughness- for example, that you had no end of game movies/summaries, or that the scoring system was bizarre, or that you couldn't tell where a unit was moving when you clicked on it, and so on. These were things that slapped me in the face in my first game.
Most of what you mentioned is entirely subjective of whether or not a game is good. The endgame movie matters to you, but it's not a big deal to me. I've not noticed any bizarre scoring. If it's a problem, obviously it didn't come to my attention as being important. And I had no problem telling where my units were going.
So if I'm reviewing Civ V, none of these factors are going to be mentioned in my review. And I used to get paid to review games, so I have a fairly critical eye. The point is, what you mentioned above isn't really important in looking at gaming systems, graphics, music, AI, etc. - the important stuff that goes into reviewing a game as objectively as possible (note: all reviews are subjective by nature, but you use the same criteria trying to make the
process objective).
More to the point, you only need a little experience in the logic of games to realize some basic problems with the Civ 5 approach. Take happiness, for example. You have a flat cap (which will obviously not act the same on different size maps) and flat per city bonuses. So it's pretty obvious that you can spam small cities indefinitely. Yet the game is clearly set up to discourage adding cities the "normal way" and you can drive yourself into the dirt with annexation. Puppets you can't control can drive you into debt, and inexperienced players won't even know why. Workers cost the same as battleships, again not explained, and these costs balloon late in the game.
There is also the clunky impact of the combat system on movement; the ways in which the game doesn't play well at many size/speed combinations, etc. This game should have been dinged and dinged hard as incomplete on release and shallow on replay. Maybe not at the Elemental level, but it deserves the treatment it's getting here as far as I'm concerned.
If a game will only become good after extensive patches and redesign then the reviewers should say so. This game is a Black & White level reviewing failure as far as I'm concerned.
Most reviewers (and players) of Civ V are playing the game at the most normal settings. So you're right, the game doesn't play especially well at some size/speed combo due to a lack of balance. But no reviewer is going to try to play through many of those combinations before reviewing the game. You're going to play the game on the most normal settings - repeatedly, one would hope - before you write the review. That's going to happen whether the game is Civ V or Rise of Nations or the latest first person shooter.
For example, a reviewer isn't likely to play Fallout 3: New Vegas on the hardest setting with odd squads just to see if the game is too hard/easy at that level. They're going to select a normal difficulty level and play through the game. Because that's what the public is generally going to do. So if someone wants to complain that FO3:NV is too easy because they found some particular set of unbalanced game play elements, that may be a complaint with some legitimacy. It just probably has no bearing on a review score because that's not the way the game is going to be played by the vast majority of the gaming public.
So yeah, you can run yourself into bankruptcy on a huge map with every civ and every city-state by puppeting many of them. But that's not a scenario that a reviewer
should uncover. That's not what they're looking for. They're looking to see how the game plays on normal settings. Frankly, the game plays pretty damn well on normal settings.
Whether there are backdoor tricks to winning the game cheaply will only come up in a review if those are readily apparent. For example, spamming the same move in a combat game and winning every time. But if you're talking about advanced strategies and hidden tricks...no. The reviewer isn't there to dissect the game for the top 1% of players; they're there to provide an honest assessment to the masses.
(ok, I'm starting to belabor the point. I think that horse is glue now)
Besides, some of the things you think the game should be dinged for are just personal opinions. I have zero problem with the unit movement and since it's not been mentioned in many (any?) reviews, it's not been a bit deal among reviewers either.
We're really into YMMV territory here. You're certainly within your rights to think that the reviews of Civ V have been a monumental failure. Note that the reception here and elsewhere has been for the most part positive. You hold a minority opinion and one that isn't shared by most.
It doesn't mean that your opinion is invalid, but you have to realize that if the majority view is positive, then the reviews should also naturally be positive. That's just a basic fact. As such, the reviewers generally got it right when it comes to Civ V.
) Seems at best that 60% can muster entusiasm for the game ... not even that many in the infamous "dumbed down" poll. And in my poll, only 3% like the game as is.
