Soren Johnson's Blog

[markusbeutel]

Found a video at Soren Johnson's blog where he talks about all facets involved in making CIV IV. He mentions that one of the most important things that makes CIV enjoyable, is that "we want the player to win, or at least understand why they lost."

Everyone involved in making CIV V should watch this video

 

[Jharii]

Found a video at Soren Johnson's blog where he talks about all facets involved in making CIV IV. He mentions that one of the most important things that makes CIV enjoyable, is that "we want the player to win, or at least understand why they lost."

Everyone involved in making CIV V should watch this video

Can you elaborate a bit more? Maybe provide a link?

Thanks.

 

[markusbeutel]

Can you elaborate a bit more? Maybe provide a link?

Thanks.

http://www.designer-notes.com/

interesting stuff.

 

[Psyringe]

Soren's blog is always worth a read (imho ). It's one of the very few i actually follow somewhat regularly.

The Googletech talk was already discussed quickly in the Civ4 section, but the thread died much quicker than I had hoped.

The second video I haven't seen yet, so thanks for bringing it to my attention.

 

[Thoughtful Thug]

It’s not social games as a threat to game design, it’s money-driven treadmill games that’s a threat to game design. A coworker identified a similar problem with a money-driven free-to-play social game, in which they specifically destroyed the balance in key ways at times in order to persuade the players to pay money to fix their own game balance. It is a war. It’s suits versus the creative people

Love this guy. (Take Two) 2K can stick it where the sun don't shine.

 

[Biz_]

doesn't really help that you would only ever lose because "the AI starts with all these bonuses and gets all these advantages". it's the same every game

 

[pickle]

doesn't really help that you would only ever lose because "the AI starts with all these bonuses and gets all these advantages". it's the same every game

yes but an idiot with a great start is still an idiot,

 

[Palfouri]

Found a video at Soren Johnson's blog where he talks about all facets involved in making CIV IV. He mentions that one of the most important things that makes CIV enjoyable, is that "we want the player to win, or at least understand why they lost."

Everyone involved in making CIV V should watch this video

So, based on what you posted, the reason no one likes this game is because they lose a lot? Or because they refuse to accept the game requires strategy and assume they only won out of dumb luck?

 

[C~G]

So, based on what you posted, the reason no one likes this game is because they lose a lot? Or because they refuse to accept the game requires strategy and assume they only won out of dumb luck?

Come again?

 

[edcrane]

So, based on what you posted, the reason no one likes this game is because they lose a lot? Or because they refuse to accept the game requires strategy and assume they only won out of dumb luck?

Precisely the opposite. The most common criticism of this game is that the AI is completely inept at combat. The only difficulty level that presents any challenge at all is deity, and it tends to be a very boring type of challenge.

 

[markusbeutel]

So, based on what you posted, the reason no one likes this game is because they lose a lot? Or because they refuse to accept the game requires strategy and assume they only won out of dumb luck?

I was thinking this applied more to the Diplomacy in CIV V and how you're left completely in the dark.

 

[Psyringe]

Watching the Civ4 "making of" presentation was quite illuminating. Some things that caught my attention:

1. Having a working build already in the very early stages of development allowed for quick iterations and early playtesting. I'm curious whether Firaxis was able to maintain this approach for Civ5 (because for Civ5 the game engine had to be developed in-house and in parallel, whereas Civ4 used the existing Gamebryo engine). If the Civ5 devs had very little opportunity to see their design in motion during development, then this might explain why the gameplay in Civ5 feels less polished.

2. "The units are the most important thing on the map, not the terrain, the terrain shouldn't 'hug' the player's attention". Also, interesting to hear that they scrapped a whole system of realistic looking terrain in the middle of development because the players couldn't easily see which tile was what and therefore had less fun. As Soren says:

"If you don't have immediately recognizable tiles in a game like Civilization, you're not going to have a fun game, because the game's gonna be (...) fuzzy. (...) And we were actually making a mistake, we were trying to get away from that art-wise."

Since I had a _lot_ of problems with both things in Civ5 (terrain tiles bleeding into each other, and units being hardly recognizable on the terrain), I wish they had continued to follow this rule instead of concentrating on "organic looks". This may be a preference issue, but Civ4 clearly matched mine better in this case.

 

[Jharii]

2. "The units are the most important thing on the map, not the terrain, the terrain shouldn't 'hug' the player's attention". Also, interesting to hear that they scrapped a whole system of realistic looking terrain in the middle of development because the players couldn't easily see which tile was what and therefore had less fun. As Soren says:

Since I had a _lot_ of problems with both things in Civ5 (terrain tiles bleeding into each other, and units being hardly recognizable on the terrain), I wish they had continued to follow this rule instead of concentrating on "organic looks". This may be a preference issue, but Civ4 clearly matched mine better in this case.

Even more funny is how Blue Marble is one of the most popular mods that people downloaded and/or used, at least by CFC's tracking.

Fall from Heaven II 446,370
Civ4 Warlords v2.08 Patch (PC) 159,688
[BtS] Rise of Mankind v2.91 122,582
Civ4 Blue Marble v4.50 Gold 113,593

And I wouldn't classify Civ5's terrain art style as organic. To me, it looks a lot more like a watercolor art style.

 

[DashieBaby87]

Love this guy. (Take Two) 2K can stick it where the sun don't shine.

Ick. That's like an evil mechanic screwing your car up so that you'll keep coming back for repairs. If I noticed a game company doing that, I would never buy from them again.

This is what happens when you have dumb, snooty, non-gamer executives running the show. They have no idea what they're doing, and as a result make their own games unplayable.

♥

 

[Tylerryan79]

Watching the Civ4 "making of" presentation was quite illuminating. Some things that caught my attention:

1. Having a working build already in the very early stages of development allowed for quick iterations and early playtesting. I'm curious whether Firaxis was able to maintain this approach for Civ5 (because for Civ5 the game engine had to be developed in-house and in parallel, whereas Civ4 used the existing Gamebryo engine). If the Civ5 devs had very little opportunity to see their design in motion during development, then this might explain why the gameplay in Civ5 feels less polished.

2. "The units are the most important thing on the map, not the terrain, the terrain shouldn't 'hug' the player's attention". Also, interesting to hear that they scrapped a whole system of realistic looking terrain in the middle of development because the players couldn't easily see which tile was what and therefore had less fun. As Soren says:



Since I had a _lot_ of problems with both things in Civ5 (terrain tiles bleeding into each other, and units being hardly recognizable on the terrain), I wish they had continued to follow this rule instead of concentrating on "organic looks". This may be a preference issue, but Civ4 clearly matched mine better in this case.

When they started making V they modified iv to do it. I remember it was posted somewhere, there were early screenshots of the game using iv. They also carried a lot of the code over.

 

[tokala]

Psyringe, that was exactly what I was thinking while watching that video

And you are not alone with the terrain identification issues, that's clearly a case of where "shiny looks" got preference over good usability.

 

[TheBlackAdderBG]

Watching the Civ4 "making of" presentation was quite illuminating. Some things that caught my attention:

1. Having a working build already in the very early stages of development allowed for quick iterations and early playtesting. I'm curious whether Firaxis was able to maintain this approach for Civ5 (because for Civ5 the game engine had to be developed in-house and in parallel, whereas Civ4 used the existing Gamebryo engine). If the Civ5 devs had very little opportunity to see their design in motion during development, then this might explain why the gameplay in Civ5 feels less polished.

2. "The units are the most important thing on the map, not the terrain, the terrain shouldn't 'hug' the player's attention". Also, interesting to hear that they scrapped a whole system of realistic looking terrain in the middle of development because the players couldn't easily see which tile was what and therefore had less fun. As Soren says:



Since I had a _lot_ of problems with both things in Civ5 (terrain tiles bleeding into each other, and units being hardly recognizable on the terrain), I wish they had continued to follow this rule instead of concentrating on "organic looks". This may be a preference issue, but Civ4 clearly matched mine better in this case.

Sid said this on one video.They got early build soon after they start making CiV.But ppl say many things when want to sell something.

 

[Namaspamus]

I like the aspect of the "wooden" interface in the prototype Civ IV versions.

 

[katipunero]

watched the entire prototyping series. and i just realized how much i love civ 4.

 

[deanej]

So, based on what you posted, the reason no one likes this game is because they lose a lot? Or because they refuse to accept the game requires strategy and assume they only won out of dumb luck?

From Soren's google talk, you have the three types of players. Civ5 was clearly designed for the challenge players, given the strategic AI. The rest of us are left wanting more.