The best DLC idea ever for Civ 5

[Deggial]

Guys, you can't really take him for serious, can you? I mean, his post is obviously saturated with ironic self-exaggeration. (Good god, please let it be irony!)

While regarding this as an stylistic attitude to catch interest, I don't think he did choose wise with this approach. All the negative reactions show this well enough...

Regarding the idea itself:
This might be a possibillity for a third-party service.
Firaxis themselves, I think, has enough work to do to produce content for the main game - which they *know* will sell.
Mods are nice, but just a niche product.

 

[OrsonM]

Like stock images for videogames?

That is indeed a possibility.

I think there's something like that already, but in such a small scale and specific engine platforms that it defeats the purpose (Unity, Torque, XNA, etc).

 

[Louis XXIV]

See, I understand what you're saying but I really don't like the idea. If they go to the effort of making all this stuff why not just finish it up themselves? It's like they make a leaderhead, UU, icons and all the stuff for the civ, then charge you $5 to buy it and make it yourself. I would much prefer to have a proper DLC.

I agree. Although I have one caveat. I could see them releasing something like 10-15 units for $5. Something like a continent flavor pack might be useful. Ideally, they put work into new units since it's not hard for a modder to reskin existing units.

However, if it's essentially the components of a Civ (leader, units, etc.) they should go the full distance, hire a voice actor, add some music, and put in the states. If it's a Civ for a scenario, they're almost done anyway (and they're halfway for a regular in-game civ).

 

[Spatzimaus]

Something like a continent flavor pack might be useful.

But even there, they'd be better off making a scenario out of it. Make a whole bunch of WW2 units? Create a WW2 scenario to use them. Make a bunch of European units from the 1600s? Make a Thirty Years' War scenario, add a single new civ to go with it, and you're done. And so on. Whatever assets they come up with, they can make something complete that wouldn't require modding to be worthwhile.

Basically, this is one of worst ideas I've seen in quite a while. Just think about it... no one's going to buy a content pack if there are no mods out there to use it yet, except for the modders making those packs. Given the number of modders out there, no single content pack would be useful for more than a handful of them, and unless the pack had a ridiculously huge number of assets in it it'd be hard for even a single mod to get everything it wanted from it. (Oh, you wanted a BLUE Dragon that breathes lightning? Sorry, we only have red ones that breathe fire.)
So the business model would be initially selling the pack to ONE PERSON, then three or four months later selling it to the few people who'll play his mod, and even then only if the mod is actually any good. (And since the OP claimed that the vast majority of mods are "junk", then this hurts his own argument!)

All this does, then, is hurt the modders, by asking them to pay to develop good mods. Sure, they could choose not to pay, and not use those assets, but then what? If I develop a fantasy-themed mod and choose not to use the official Fantasy Asset Pack (FAP), then would the casual mod users even consider using my mod? No, they'd wait for a mod from someone who DID use it, which might never happen.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Oh, I'd make a scenario, no question. If you make a WWII pack, have the scenario. But cultural specific units need not be this way. I also don't really think they'd be necessary for a mod, the mod could just release a vanilla version that uses the regular units.

As for hurting modders, how many modders would make a mod for an expansion pack rather than the vanilla game and incorporate those units? It's essentially the same thing. And I've seen plenty of alternative units made by modders in previous games. Even now, I've seen reskins of every major WWII power. The Firaxis thing might be of better quality but, if the mod is well-designed, the substitute units would work as well.

 

[Spatzimaus]

As for hurting modders, how many modders would make a mod for an expansion pack rather than the vanilla game and incorporate those units? It's essentially the same thing.

It's not even close to the same thing. A expansion pack is playable, and contains entire new mechanisms not present in the core game. Expansions will add better espionage, add corporations, that sort of thing; no amount of custom content can make up for that. The DLCs we've seen so far don't come close to that, so using past games' expansions as an example is just a flawed analogy. These factors make an expansion product desirable to people who have no interest in using mods or buying DLCs; they'll buy Warlords, or Beyond the Sword, because of the way they change the underlying game, and use them for quite a while before they get tired of it (if ever). Sure, the expansion will also provide a bit of extra content for the modders to play with, but that's not their primary purpose.

This is completely different from buying a content pack solely for the purpose of playing someone else's mod (or creating your own mod) using that content. There's no guarantee of a return on the time invested, and even the addition of a scenario or two wouldn't be enough for many (most?) people. And again, what happens if no one makes that mod? The OP claimed that if they were to sell a Mad Max-style pack that he'd make a mod, but what if he didn't? (Or what if he did, and it just sucked because he's not nearly as good of a modder as he thought he was?) Who, in their right mind, would pay even $5 to gain that content without a guarantee that they'd get an enjoyable game experience out of it? Or more specifically, who would pay any amount for it when it's first released, in the possibly vain hope that three or four months LATER there'd be a good mod that used that content?

Most of the reskins people have done so far for Civ5 (the closest analogue to this idea) have centered around importing already-made Civ4 assets into Civ5's formats, or modifying a simple 2D texture without adjusting the mesh underneath. This is FAR less work than creating an entirely new model. So if you're creating new content for modders to use, it wouldn't be nearly as a small amount of time invested as those reskins took. More time spent means more money spent on labor, but do you think there's even a small chance that enough modders would buy this pack to even come close to breaking even on those costs?

And that doesn't even begin to cover things like copyrights; modders can use things like Mad Max in our mods because Fair Use is pretty generous when you're not making a profit (although that's not the only factor), but Firaxis couldn't use that sort of content in its own releases without paying royalties. So anything we'd get from them would, by its very nature, be watered down with tons of "generic" units... unless they were basing it on a property Firaxis already owned, like Colonization (which they did in Civ4) or Alpha Centauri. And if they're going to create Alpha Centauri units, then why wouldn't they just make an offshoot game using Civ5's engine, just like they did for Colonization in Civ4?

 

[Louis XXIV]

Oh, I think something absurd like a Mad Max mod (which would be copyrighted anyway) wouldn't fly. But I could see something like a flavor pack that could be used in the vanilla game itself for variety or modders could use for specialized units in their mod.

For example, suppose there's an American flavorpack that has every unit replaced with an Indian counterpart. That would be playable in game for the Iroquois and perhaps others. However, some modder might create a Sioux Civ and use the Horseman as the UU.

My point is it depends on context. Some are bad ideas, but not every idea is a bad idea.

 

[OrsonM]

Some good points, but ideas are just ideas until executed, therefor they are all bad until proven.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Ideas are just ideas, but I don't see how they are bad ideas unless all ideas are bad ideas.

 

[OrsonM]

Well yes, sort of innocent until proven guilty, all ideas are bad ideas until proven otherwise.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Yeah, but ideas can be established as good through reasoning. They need not be tested out in game. There's no need for proof beyond a reasonable doubt here.

 

[OrsonM]

Not necessarily, that's proven faulty reasoning.

The world is filled with ideas, yet they all must be put through testing in order to see if they are indeed good ideas.

Say it's the 90s I have a crazy idea in the middle of the dot com bubble, we make a free encyclopedia and people from all over the world, non academics and vain people included have access to edit this encyclopedia, and it's free.

And it probably sounded at the time like a terrible idea, for which Wikipedia did not began as a free encyclopedia, that came afterwards, and today it is probably the worlds most popular encyclopedia and one of the webs leading websites.

If ideas did indeed not required execution, then why we would still be using Alchemy, which required little to no scientific testing, conventional research or cooperation between peers. And you have to remember that throughout history some of the worlds greatest minds operated under a similar notion that ideas required nothing but reasoning to validate them.

In their execution ideas find their real genius. Before that all ideas are bad, one because they have not been executed yet, two because they will change throughout development into a more refined idea and three because despite all assurances you never know how well they'll perform.

The original poster can continue to refine his idea as much as he wants, and I encourage him to do so, but it is a terrible idea because of it's unlikely execution (Firaxis will not pick up an outsiders idea and the OP will likely not execute the idea himself).

 

[elprofesor]

Well, ideas can theoretically be proven through reasoning. Your point is that trying to do so doesn't work, since you need empirical facts to prove that an idea is good, so reasoning can prove bad ideas. But a bad idea can't be proven through reasoning: doing so only means that either the premises to prove the idea were wrong, or that the reasoning itself was faulty. It doesn't prove that ideas can not be proven through reasoning.

In fact, since you can't prove for sure that something doesn't exist through empirical truth, the only way to prove that "an idea can't be proven through reasoning", is through reasoning.

This reminds me of the philosophy classes we had some years ago. Our teacher said: "Would you say that the only valid truth is the scientific truth?" And when most of us agreed, he asked "But is that statement a scientific truth?"

 

[OrsonM]

Depends on the nature of the idea, tangible ideas of a commercial nature must be proven outside of just reasoning, as they are meant to be always successful.

It is very easy to imagine a string of ideas until one seems to be doable, but even then things can and will change during it's execution, making whatever idea you may have a bad idea, no matter how reasonable it may sound (it may sound less bad perhaps or harder to encourage people).

For example if, if I had to present this idea (to get backing, volunteers, whatever) I would make sure to move it less and less from the field of an idea, and more into something that looks like it's half way there. The OP for example did not had illustrations or concept art of his idea at all (vague enough as it was), he called himself a genius and insulted dissenters as trolls. That's not how it works, not only you expect Firaxis to work on this one for free with vague notions on how to operate, but you also expect modders to then purchase these and play ball with it.

Teachers love doing those wow moments indeed.

 

[nokmirt]

Do you really think there will be a "real expansion" for CiV? Why not take said content and package it as 4 separate DLC products? The DLC business model seems to be working well for them so far.

An expansion still would be DLC content okay there Mr. Nicholson? I loved you in the movie "Wolf".

 

[Hustapha Thool]

The realistic order lies latent.

 

[TPQ]

Firaxis, you can open the door to an unlimited number of mods by doing this.

Why not just write to Firaxis direct? Why bother posting this on a forum where people will simply scrutinize and criticize your genius? Who's to say your idea will ever be read by Firaxis? You're taking a unnecessary risk in bringing your vision to the people who can implement it by posting here and not contacting Firaxis direct.

I suggest you pitch your idea direct. Set up a meeting even. Just try to contain your genius when you do, as even brilliant ideas can get shot down by a pitch that leaves the people being pitched to feeling like they've just been condescended to.

 

[The Little One]

Is this guy serious? Personally, I would only buy them to make mods if they were exceptionally good and cheap, neither of which are very likely. Even the few mods that used them would only get a few downloads, people just won't pay for what are essentially rip-offs of DLCs, making them cost money would defeat the point of them being mods

 

[nokmirt]

Ideas are just ideas, but I don't see how they are bad ideas unless all ideas are bad ideas.

That depends on the idea. Here is an example, the first two Zorro movies were a good idea, but the third one sets Zorro in a futuristic science fiction world. He is out in space on a ship. BAD IDEA!

 

[CYZ]

That depends on the idea. Here is an example, the first two Zorro movies were a good idea, but the third one sets Zorro in a futuristic science fiction world. He is out in space on a ship. BAD IDEA!

That is potentially a very good idea for a comedy