I'm still not understanding this point of view. The clarification that Civ4 will be a bad
game even if it sells well, that makes sense. But I'm failing to see exactly why bluemethod is so sure that Civ4 will fail as a game.
bluemethod said:
Meanwhile, by improving the graphics and dumbing down the gameplay, they can hope to get younger players. Naturally, they're not going to put anything controversial in this game, because they want a low ESRB rating.
"Dumbing down the gameplay" is a complete assertion here; unless bluemethod has been testing Civ4, there's no way to know about this one way or the other (and if he has been testing the game, please share some details with us
). What is that based on? Looking at screenshots? I'll be the first one to criticize Civ4 if the gameplay falls flat (I was a beta tester for Conquests and I have a scathing editorial about it on my website), but it's ridiculous to hurl bland assertions like that around with no evidence one way or the other.
As for the second part of that - would being controversial make Civ4 a better game? If there were fountains of blood every time a swordsman killed a spear, and you got to oogle naked women in the palace view, would that actually make it a better game? I don't think the Civilization games have to be particularly "xxxtreme" to be successful. If the developers want to put terrorism in the game, ok, fine with me. But the Civilization games have never been about realism, only dressing up a strategy game with historical names and settings. I don't see how not including terrorism would make the game a failure.
Does that mean it will be successful, as a game? No. It doesn't mean that it will actually be fun to play. It'll be approachable for young gamers, who will eat up the marketing and buy it. Hardcore gamers will buy it and convince themselves that it's good in order to justify their purchase of the game. The game will be seen by the publisher as a cash cow, and Civ 5 will have even less creativity put into it. It will be a bad game.
Why do you think Civ4 is intended for young gamers? Because of the graphics? Seems like a lot to be reading out of nothing more than screenshots to me...
Secessions and civil wars would be great ways to balance the game. Firaxis doesn't want that. They want adolescent gamers to have a sense of accomplishment when they conquer one enemy with swordsmen, the continent with knights, and the rest of the world with cavalry. You get to see this one-color map, and that's satisfying. Setting up puppet states from your conquered enemies, losing half your territory in revolutions, etc., isn't satisfying to the adolescent gamer.
Again, the continued insistence that Civ4 is intended for adolescents... I'm not sure where that's coming from. We just DON'T KNOW what the gameplay will be like, so I for one am reserving judgement until I at least get a copy in my hands - I hope that sounds reasonable.
I'd also pose the question of whether civil wars are the only way to have game balance. Word is that city maintenance costs are going to do that; I'm a little dubious about that myself, but I'm going to wait and see before calling things one way or the other. One thing I will say is that culture flips weren't much fun in Civ3 - in fact, they were probably the single most hated thing in the Civ3 community. How much fun would it be to fight a long and grueling war conquering enemy territory, only to have it "secede" and form its own new civ shortly thereafter? I think there might be some ticked off purchasers of Civ4 if that were to happen.
There definitely has to be some way to reign in the bigger=better problem of Civilization, but I don't think that civil wars are the only possible solution. We'll have to wait and see how Civ4 does in this regard; if it's a total failure, I'd be more inclined to agree with your point of view.
That brings up something important. I can't predict how well the modding will be in Civ 4. The game itself isn't going to be very good,
On what grounds?! Aside from making some assumptions based on looking at screenshots, I've seen very little hard evidence to back this argument up.
I'm saying the truth: all the signs show that Civ 4 is going to fail as a game.
I don't know about that, unless you have some evidence that I'm not familiar with (and I watch the Civ4 news releases pretty closely). We're all free to disagree, but I'm going to hold off judgement until I can play Civ4 myself. If it does turn out to be an unplayable piece of garbage, you will have my sincere apologies. But from what I've read in this thread, I've seen very little but assertions with little behind them. If you repeat the same thing often enough, it sometimes is enough to convince others that it's a fact. Better for everyone to try and keep an open mind and come to conclusions of their own accord.