This game feels lifeless...

[markusbeutel]

Some early opinions from a modder that spent over 2k hours on Civ V (I know... and yes, it did affect my grades).

1) The AI might as well be placeholders - they're talking heads with no personality. Diplomacy is cut and paste with a few tweaks here and there where the words are changed. It was barely passable by the time BNW world released because the rest of the world was so gorgeous - that game drew you in with its vivid color palettes, eras, themes, etc.

This game is dark, drab, cluttered, obtuse... I realize that this is kind of an ode to Alpha Centauri - but Alpha Centauri was released over 15 years ago. A callback to Alpha Centauri's diplomacy would have been a more welcome inclusion...

2) The Tech Web and the UI. What happened here? Who thought those icons were a good idea? Why is this thing so cluttered with multiple layers? By far the most user-unfriendly tech tree and UI I've ever encountered in a 4X game.

Having completely redesigned the tech tree in Nights, I know first-hand how AWFUL the AI is maneuvering an intelligent path through Civ V's tech tree - yet in that game, this lack of focus was somewhat mitigated by having all techs funnel you in more or less the same direction.

Not possible in Beyond Earth - there's no chance the AI can navigate this thing with any kind of competency. Basically, there's too many systems overlapping with each other, and the AI doesn't know how to play any of them competently. Combat AI is bad enough, all of these additional mechanics and confusing victory conditions paired with a less than helpful civlopedia (at least he lore is good), does not make for a satisfying AI experience - it's like teaching my parents how to code when they don't even know how to turn on the computer.

3) This feels like a mod. Maybe it's just my aversion to the dreary colors used for the terrain, but to me at least, the game's graphics are sub par compared to Civ V. Furthermore, go through the XML and LUA, and tons of it is untouched. These are all the same systems, the same mechanics, dressed up as 'energy' and 'health', etc. What bothers me the most, though, is that issues/bugs from V, even ones that were mitigated by the time BNW was released, are back. Again, maybe it's just me, but I'd have preferred a complete overhaul of combat AI in lieu of the gobs of cash thrown at all of the admittedly impressive cinematics...

Game's a solid 4/10 right now - first Civ game I've been able to put down this easily. While I wasn't a fan of Civ V when it first came out, I at least saw its potential, and was motivated to mod the changes I was looking for. That's not going to happen with this game, there's just too much that needs to be overhauled for it to have any legs whatsoever. I'd be curious to know whether or not the new lead designers were hardcore Civ players in the past, because I'm not feeling that same passion from a design standpoint that I got from Soren and Jon...


Just my opinions. Will keep playing the game over the next couple of days - maybe I'll change my mind on some of these thoughts and impressions.

 

[Krajzen]

Yeah, I am not 'disappointed' only because in the last 2 months I fell in love with EU4 and can't wait on AOW - thus, I care less about Civ currently

The first thing which stroke me after launching the game was the lack of epicness or feelings. In civ5 you have an epic music, 43 nations and epic Dawn of Man loading screen where each beautifully crafted leader is described by the deep voice of the narrator. In BE you click few times through the slideshow and receive ridiculously bland 'I am the leader X and I go in space'. Without even narrator and with some boring space drawing.

And then I realized immediately: this is Civ5. It wouldn't be a tragic thing as Civ5 is <currently> brilliant game if not the fact I have been kinda tired by civ5 and wanted something new. My interest in BE fell during summer when I realized how similar to civ5 this game is, but I had to launch this to realize THIS IS CIV5 MOD! Except graphics.

Okay, so I am playing civ5 mod. It would be, again, OK as civ5 was a brilliant game <though I spent 1k hours in it and am tired> if not going step backwards:
- horrible UI
- still horrible AI!
- pointless diplomacy

I have constant deja vu, but not even due to similarity to BNW but due to similarity to BASE civ5... Which was a technical disaster.

Okay, so I play. Despite annoying UI and AI there is still one more turn syndrome and it is still good game.

However... I don't know how long it will entertain me. My biggest problem with BE is personal: I never expected this game to be so...


Soulless. Empty. Mechanical.


Civ5 leaders have awesome - even if in some cases very annoying! - personalities and screens. Here we have talking bureaucratic heads. I don't even know if they have unique dialogue lines. Furthermore it is not also quality but also quantity: 8 vs 43... I love strategies with a lot of participants <my little world simulators> and here it is impossible to feel geopolitics.

Furthermore, factions are exactly the same. Recently I checked Endless Legend, 4X released by relatively small company and it alwo has 8 factions but man they are so different they are like 80 when compared with these corpos of BE who lack charavter, music, atmosphere, active traits, design or whatever.

Everything feels small, sterile, limited and faceless. Eight bland corporations crunch numbers until one of them has the most numbers, win.

No statistics which is horrible as I love statistics and they always add much flavour and fun. Without statistics and with limited diplomacy I feel isolated from all factions and don't really care about them.

Most of tech quotes are bland as hell or pseudo - intellectual.

Oh, and speaking about pseudo - intellectual: even before release it striked me how devs are using word 'transcendence' like it was something bland and obvious like 'big tank' - yo there is a victory by this and this and oh you get transcendence - this is deep philosophical term and it should be used along deep lore/thoughts/thinking and here you build 'mind flower' with some pseudo - philosophical hippie babbling about unity with planet and then bam transcendence. Extremely complex philosophical term used only because it was in AC where it BTW had actual meaning due to very deep backgroune. No imagination or even thought - it is like turning 'God' into '+10 to happiness'.



To sum up: enjoyable board strategy game but doesn't feel like anything Epic or Immersive for me. Half - baked good product with some affection and some laziness.

 

[Deon]

I tend to agree here. There is Planetfall mod for Civ 4 which reworks and remakes much more in Civ 4 than this new "Full release". I don't want to sound harsh, but it looks like Firaxis hired a bunch of people to write a concept and spent some moneys on good cinematics... And then released the game.

Because honestly, the amount of content in the game is very low and everything looks like a copy-paste. Which makes me sad.

Not to mention bugs fixed by BNW which return now, because as it was said obviously it's just a modded base Civ5 with some new pretty interesting but underdeveloped/undertested features.

[EDIT] After 2-4 DLC it may become as fun as BNW though, it's just not cool that we have to buy a few games to get a good one in the end, but I don't worry about the cost as much as about the overall trend.

 

[mnf]

I would actually love to play Beyond Earth using Earth's terrain textures. The design is outworldly, yes, but it's harsh on the eyes with flood plains and plains and desert looking almost the same and miasma blending into the base terrain texture. Mountains sometimes look like they're hills.

In fact, I think the texture should gradually change throughout the game according to how high your Purity affinity is. I mean Purity is all about engineering the new world to our earthling tastes. Why shouldn't a Promised Land victory end up having the land within your borders looking just like Earth?

Overall, as artwork maybe the texture is good; but as a game it leaves a lot to be desired.

 

[Kanasuke]

Strong reviews from OP and above. they reflect my thoughts as well, there is nothing epic about this new planet venture biz.

Another thing I want to add is that the different 'Leaders' don't create unique gameplay experiences. It's not like one plays crushingly differently to the others. There are no Race-specific units. Nor do they offer new flavorful strats to your approach except for the very very beginning. Pretty soon everyone does the same: just a race towards purity/supremcy/harmony + juggling your various stats, (science/culture etc) like every other player. In Civ5 there were very interesting strategies surrounding the different leaders.


Also this juggling act only stays somewhat interesting until mid-late game when it becomes: get new tech, build tech building, rinse repeat. Thanks to trade routes, things build so fast there are no opportunity costs to your decisions.

Btw my current strat is to rush culture with the +2 culture trait to get first colonist. Then save 640 gold for 2nd colonist using Thorium Reactors.

I use SonofHades' Weaker Trade Routes mod: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=331275794&searchtext=

 

[Lord Tirian]

Soulless. Empty. Mechanical.

The weird thing is: after digging a bit into the pedia, there's actually a veritable amount of material there. It's a bit on the technobabble side, but SMAC had a designer who studied philosophy, while I get the impression the writers here a more into "regular" sci-fi, like Dan Simmons. Not people who are authors and philosophers on their own. But different tastes and that, I can forgive that.

But I feel like the fairly streamlined and slick UI actually works against. One of the reasons SMAC's story stuck was: you couldn't avoid it.

When you got a tech, you got the pop-up with the quote and the description. When you got an interlude, that was a wall of text in front of you. When you were in the diplo screen, there was the little slide show with the faction HQ and photos of their past.

Now, all of that is clutter and Civ:BE does away with all that. It presents the information you need straightaway, just like Civ5.

This is a better UI design, but unlike Civ5, where we already know what stuff is, it now comes across as random smattering of stuff. New quests are just a notification. A tech revolutionising the world is a little blip.

Civ:BE buries some of it strongest parts and looks weaker than it actually is. And that is a shame.

 

[Deon]

A big amount of text is not good enough to explain the lack of gameplay diversity . Fall From Heaven had both amazing lore/texts AND diversity, and all BE has to offer right now is a nice concept.

As I said above:

but it looks like Firaxis hired a bunch of people to write a concept and spent some moneys on good cinematics... And then released the game.

I want more replayability!

 

[Zodan_Mir]

Can't say that I disagree with any of the thoughts in this thread. The game really does feel like window dressing, and the leaders and game play seem to lack a lot of personality. It really feels too 'genericized'--like a badly written Science Fiction novel, fraught with non-specific 'sci-fi' trappings, and very little else.

With Civ V, you have the whole sweep of history to ensure a compelling story. For history buffs/students, this is a significant draw. But then, you also have distinct personalities, in each of the historical leaders, and this, in itself, adds a certain dimension, or 'charm' to Civ V.

In BE, you have this S.F. Generic planet, with a bunch of techno-babble ... and the leaders are not distinct at all. They really are just figure heads, slurring words in some language or other at you. Apart from their victory path/affinity, they are no different.

Then you have the gameplay itself, with its S.F. Generic units, techs, and upgrades, none of which adds any specificity to the faction you're playing (or the factions you're playing against). Once you work out how each of the three affinities influence the game, it's basically rinse and repeat for a few hundred turns.

The "quests" are hardly quests at all--they're just minor 'busy work'--and the decisions don't seem to make any significant impact in the long run. There is very little 'story' to be built from such generic beginnings.

I don't know ... I see what the game is, and I just feel that other games (AoW3, Endless Legend, GalCiv3, etc.), for better or worse, have captured the spirit/feel of the science fiction/fantasy themed 4x game genre much better. There just isn't enough diversity between the factions/leaders/units, etc., and the overall thrust of the game seems to lack a soul. I've started and stopped playing half a dozen games, now, and I really don't feel compelled to play any more.

Edit: Also just want to mention how disappointing the UI is. After playing Civ V with the EUI mod--which gives you every piece of available info at a glance/hover--going back to this kind of thing (i.e., missing information, having to click through multiple screens, hideous fonts/colors, and a horrid color palette) is just irritating.

 

[The_Reckoning]

Soulless. Empty. Mechanical.

"I think, and my thoughts cross the barrier into the synapses of the machine - just as the good doctor intended. But what I cannot shake, and what hints at things to come, is that thoughts cross back. In my dreams the sensibility of the machine invades the periphery of my consciousness. Dark. Rigid. Cold. Alien. Evolution is at work here, but just what is evolving remains to be seen."

Commissioner Pravin Lal, "Man and Machine"

 

[winddysphere]

"I think, and my thoughts cross the barrier into the synapses of the machine - just as the good doctor intended. But what I cannot shake, and what hints at things to come, is that thoughts cross back. In my dreams the sensibility of the machine invades the periphery of my consciousness. Dark. Rigid. Cold. Alien. Evolution is at work here, but just what is evolving remains to be seen."

Commissioner Pravin Lal, "Man and Machine"

What is that quote? Purity tech progressive?




I don't know why but I think they take care of "going into space" too much and they completely forgot about basic things like AI and other stuffs. Also the robot girl voice is kind of plain compare to the old man in Civ 5 (I think it even worse than Civ 4's too.) Her voice is too plain, emotionless even I know that robot voice is suppose to be like that but why don't they put a more emotional voice and say "she is a woman" instead of woman robot.

Also I know there are bunch problems like miasma (I play a demo and got a problem like most guys: Ends up on miasma tiles. . They are right one thing though: Your eyes have to be real open otherwise you will fall into miasma tiles or aliens. (Feel like playing XCOM here. )

And about the leaders, they are even more plain than I could expected. (Found an AI opponent Kavitha.) Maybe they are trying to try to make leaders as plain as possible so that you can declare war on them? I find only Daoming to be the most scary character.

Hope that they can fix numerous things soon.

 

[Khaim]

What is that quote? Purity tech progressive?

It's from SMAC. You can tell because it's complex and evocative and Lal actually reads it, instead of being dull and trite and delivered by the same voice who keeps boring you all game.

 

[winddysphere]

It's from SMAC. You can tell because it's complex and evocative and Lal actually reads it, instead of being dull and trite and delivered by the same voice who keeps boring you all game.

Ah thank you.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

What is that quote? Purity tech progressive?

It's a quote from SMAC. I want a SMAC mod for BE.

 

[stiefel_ss]

This whole streamlining/dumbing-down of civ is getting out of hand. That units simply upgrade by magic now, and I'm thinking the quotes looking like something out of a high school freshman's English journal is intentional. I remember I hated the living out of Civ V when it first came out because of how dumbed down (not to mention broken) it was from even vanilla Civ IV.

My first post here was a suggestion that would help fix the problem OP points out with lifelessness, but now I don't think that or any other such measure will be implemented by the devs to make civs/colonies more interesting. It's definitely slack that modders will have to pick up. The next DLC will more than likely be another faction led by another faceless suit.

 

[Teproc]

Stop saying things are dumbed down, or back it up with actual explanation.

Here's a simple example : if CivBE was "dumbed down", why did they put the Tech Web in it, which is significantly more complex than a tech tree ?

 

[Strickl3r]

Although i like the game very much this is also my biggest point for critizism so far. Stereotypes with no personalty, that is just not Civ, although it adds up with the recent science fiction teenie movies, haha.

take starcraft for example, the characters have personalty, even the captain of those big terran ships, smoking a big cigar and making jokes about firing a big nuclear missile.

 

[Tabarnak]

3) This feels like a mod

This.

Remember Caveman to Cosmos mega mod for civ4? That one was free!

 

[screamingpalm]

Stop saying things are dumbed down, or back it up with actual explanation.

Here's a simple example : if CivBE was "dumbed down", why did they put the Tech Web in it, which is significantly more complex than a tech tree ?

Significantly more complex? I'd beg to differ on that. I would consider SMAC's semi-random tech to be moreso, or at least much more interesting.

 

[Breadsmith]

SMAC's tech "tree" was indeed more complex than either Civ 5's tree and BE's web. But the Web is still more complex than 5's tree.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Now I'm in my third game and had a bit of time to read the Pedia, the lore is actually starting to grow on me. There are a lot of little cool SMAC references, too. Some jokes. Some decent science. Some weird stuff. But I'm starting to get a "feel" for it.

The biggest let-down, I think, are the leaders. Not because they are boring but because they are:

• Too similar: All of them have, more or less, the same backstory. Prestigious people in the sponsoring nation/corporation chosen as "the best of the best".
• Unrelated: They're meeting in the game for the first time, there's nothing defining their relationship or views on each other.
• Figureheads: They are just that - representing a sponsor and that's where the real character, the real differentiation between the factions lies.

Now, I completely understand why they did it: they wanted each faction to work with every affinity, they wanted the game to be flexible which is very laudable... but in doing so, they forgot that we kind of need a personality to perceive them as person.

They all come across as politicians, mutable and going with the current situation without much personal agency.