Two interesting Tales

[Zechnophobe]

What I am about to relate is 100% true. And just as a warning it has to do with the argument about civ 5, so if you are tired of that, please hop out.

I have a friend. Let's call him Sam for right now. In my circle of friends, Sam is the one who never really plays strategy games. FPS, RPG, sure whatever. RTS, or TBS? Almost never. He's TRIED them, mind you. We got him to play a little civ 4 for a while (He eventually got frustrated and stopped).

Anyhow, I was thinking about this the other day, and I suggested to him he try Civ 5. I told him a lot of the things that were annoying before (barbs appearing at random, and pillaging, cities not defending themselves) were gone, and it was a lot more manageable.

Guess what? Sam LOVED the game. He played a game and WON it, he played another and did okay. Afterwards I expressed my views on it to him, explaining I didn't like at much as its predecessor. He actually got rather defensive, saying things like "Well, yeah, just because its different doesn't mean it isn't good."

This shocked me. He also claimed the game wasn't any easier, just less frustrating.

Now, I know this sounds like some crazy parable. Like I'm just spinning this tale as an allegory of the real world, but this is what actually happened. Sam's opinions mirrored many on the forums here, in a very short period of time.

Okay, one more Tale, this is a little tangential:

I played Dragon Age (RPG, kinda hard to figure out the mechanics) a while back when it first came out. I'm a pretty experienced gamer, so I put the difficulty up a notch to play it. My first playthrough... and I'll admit right off the bat... the game was too hard for me. I didn't understand the combat or flanking rules, or which spells I should choose for my mage.

Now Dragon Age has this cool feature where you can turn down the difficulty at any time. Guess what I did? I Got really angry and didn't turn down the difficulty. Why? Because I really didn't want to admit that it was my fault, or that I needed that. I wanted to play it on hard, and beat it there.

So yeah, two tales. One about 'Sam' another that I don't want to admit to... about me. What do the two tales have in common? Well, they say interesting things about the mentality of gamers, I'll give you that much.

 

[carlisimo]

Great post.

I tried to get some other people into Civ IV and they couldn’t stand it. After some patching, I’ll try the same with Civ V. I think the developers could’ve done more to keep Civ veterans happy, but I don’t fault them for trying to reach out for new players. Sometimes it’s necessary for a franchise anyway. SimCity and Master of Orion come to mind as two series that became overly complicated and died.

 

[moscaverde]

This says more about some people mentality.. Civ 4 I always play at noble difficulty, and don't feel bad or ashamed for it, I have fun.
In your tale, I would have no problem lowering the difficulty. Play to have fun.

 

[AlpsStranger]

I've had this experience with several friends. I've tried to get one of them in particular to try Civ4 because he is currently unsatisfied with Civ5 due to treaty bugs and the like.

I don't think a lot of people that played all the way through Civ3 vanilla then its expansions and went on to Civ4 vanilla and then added its expansions slowly really appreciate the wall of confusion that can envelope someone who just confronts Civ4:BTS right off the cuff.

Does that excuse the flaws of Civ5? Certainly not. I certainly don't want to be viewed as taking that line at any rate.

 

[kaltorak]

Happened too with more than one of my friends.

All my friends who have been playing civ for a long time dislike civ5. All the ones that never played them and tried civ5 like it.

 

[Zeiter]

I don't think a lot of people that played all the way through Civ3 vanilla then its expansions and went on to Civ4 vanilla and then added its expansions slowly really appreciate the wall of confusion that can envelope someone who just confronts Civ4:BTS right off the cuff.

I skipped from SMAC to Civ4BTS and handily beat my first game on noble as Suryavarman, picking up on most of the core mechanics by halfway through that game (the basic ideas behind cottages, collateral damage, not trusting Montezuma (lol), etc.). But I supposed to a person who is entirely new to 4X games in general, it can be pretty overwhelming. When I first played SMAC, I was in 7th grade playing it over at a friend's house, and we had no idea what we were doing, but it was still a lot of fun!

I wish I could revisit that mentality of a newbie to 4X games, just so that I could figure out how to best introduce Civ4 to people whom I'd like to convert to my state religion of Siddharta Meierism.

 

[chips2150]

Gosh, my girlfriend was annoyed when I tried showing her why I love CIV so much. Of course she understood the greater concept, but she couldn't get a grip on the game itself, it was to exhausting. All my explaining just made things worse.

She has played CiV now for about a 100 hours, I played 20. She is really getting into it and I guess, when the greater complexity comes with the new expansions, she'll be ready for it. I hadn't looked at it from that perspective. I think not all is bad.

Let's just hope they patch the game up nicely, so when the time comes we can all learn to love again.

 

[Psyringe]

Good OP. I'd like to contribute my own tale, which I think is actually related.

When I started playing video games, one of the most important aspects for me was the challenge to "beat" the game on its highest setting (if it had settings, things like these were a bit of a luxury back then; games consisted of blue squares trying to catch or evade yellow squares and the like). My friends and I had high score lists, we even awarded points to the one of us who held the high score at one game, and then made a meta-list which ranked us according to these points. Back then, it would've never occurred to me to play a game on less than its highest level, because I wanted to master it, and the lower levels were for the people who weren't really good at gaming anyway (I was a kid, please forgive the snobbishness).

After a while, games became more complex, and also harder. It became increasingly difficult to "beat" games on the highest level. I remember early FPS games where I habitually saved at every corner (literally) because I couldn't have survived otherwise. I had to save/reload a lot in strategy games to get the combat results that let me win even on the hardest levels. I had to use strategy guides to make sure I didn't miss out on any opportunities in the games.

Then, some day, "The Question" struck me. And "The Question" was: Are you having fun?

And I wasn't.

I had turned my gaming hobby into some weird conquest that felt much more like work. I had to cheat and exploit the hell out of the games I was playing just to be able to overcome some arbitrary bonuses that the developers chose to implement for the game's highest level, just to satisfy my pride that I was some sort of great gamer. Once I realized this, I swallowed my pride and set the difficulty down a notch on the games I played.

The result was impressive. I could actually enjoy these games now. I could play an FPS game and immerse myself in the setting instead of having to save/reload every two seconds just to get the crucial first shot in. I could play a strategy or RPG game that didn't require optimal results in every single battle in order to survive. I experienced the joy of coming back from setbacks. I believe that this was the time when I grew up from a gaming kid, who danced to arbitrary challenges and rewards hanging in front of him, to a (somewhat ) mature gamer who took command of his actions, and who had the experience to choose or create the environment in which the game would be most fun for him.

Had I met Civ4 before this transition, I wouldn't have been able to enjoy this game as much as I did. It would have irked me that I "only" play at Emperor and never won a Deity game. However, as things are, I got Civ4 more than 10 years after this transition, and I enjoy it immensely. Because I'm not so focused on "beating" the game any more, I learned to enjoy the games much more. I could enjoy the narrative of a game, the setting, the quality of the writing, etc.. I still want to have a challenge, but I don't allow that to get into the way of my enjoyment anymore. As a result, I rarely "gamed" the diplomacy in Civ4 (for example), actually I was quite happy to have a challenging and immersive game at a difficulty level that allowed me to have a challenge without making "gamey" tactics necessary. I learned that the journey could be much more satisfying than the goal.

And that may be one of my grudges with Civ5. The design went out to remove exploits that I wasn't using anyway, and in the process also damaged the narrative qualities that I was enjoying. In a way, Civ5's design seems to be geared at my former self 25 years ago: A game to "beat", a challenging strategy game (assuming that the AI can be fixed) with an AI that plays to win, and that hides a lot of information from the player because it could give him an advantage. Odd ...

 

[Vordeo]

Great OP.

Everything's subjective really.

 

[AlpsStranger]

I skipped from SMAC to Civ4BTS and handily beat my first game on noble as Suryavarman, picking up on most of the core mechanics by halfway through that game (the basic ideas behind cottages, collateral damage, not trusting Montezuma (lol), etc.). But I supposed to a person who is entirely new to 4X games in general, it can be pretty overwhelming. When I first played SMAC, I was in 7th grade playing it over at a friend's house, and we had no idea what we were doing, but it was still a lot of fun!

I wish I could revisit that mentality of a newbie to 4X games, just so that I could figure out how to best introduce Civ4 to people whom I'd like to convert to my state religion of Siddharta Meierism.

SMAC, while not entirely like Civ4 by any stretch of the imagination, is a pretty good primer for something like Civ4. I'm talking about someone who never played a Civtype and isn't a particularly avid 4X gamer just hopping right in to Civ4:BTS. I think you see what I mean.

I took the slow road from Civ3->Expansions->Civ4->Civ4:Warlords->Civ4:BTS so I never experienced the sheer climb that you did, but his leap was more like Played Master of Magic a few times a decade ago->Civ4:BTS

 

[Psyringe]

SMAC, while not entirely like Civ4 by any stretch of the imagination, is a pretty good primer for something like Civ4. I'm talking about someone who never played a Civtype and isn't a particularly avid 4X gamer just hopping right in to Civ4:BTS. I think you see what I mean.

I agree with that statement (SMAC is actually a pretty complex 4x game on its own). Also, Civ4 (as much as I enjoyed it, and keep enjoying it) can indeed be very confusing, even to players who did enjoy strategy games previously.

The Woman Of My Dreams (tm) did play a bit of Civ3 once in a while. She never got into Civ4, from watching me playing she just said it looked too complicated, not what she looked for in a game. That's why I fully expected Civ5 to put a focus on accessibility - otherwise they would have "dwindled their audience", as Dennis Shirk said.

The odd thing is that The Woman Of My Dreams (tm) wouldn't enjoy Civ5 either, because it's so focused on war. She played Civ3 on the lower two difficulty settings and enjoyed the unfolding of an alternative human history, she liked to build her cities up, and she didn't want to be bothered too much by the AI players. That's pretty much the definition of a "sandbox player" in Soren Johnson's terminology (he differentiates between "challenge", "narration", and "sandbox" players), and for such players, there isn't much to enjoy in Civ5 in it's current state. She's rather playing Frontierville.

And that's what I don't understand: Firaxis didn't want to dwindle their audience by making a very complex game (understandable), but then design a game that's so focused on warfare that they exclude two of three types of players from the start. I just don't understand how this is/was supposed to work out. (I do expect the first Civ5 expansion to have a strong builder focus though.)

 

[AlpsStranger]

(I do expect the first Civ5 expansion to have a strong builder focus though.)

This is precisely what I hope to see. I want Civ5:Bricks'n'Mortar to be the first expansion. They need to bust up and differentiate the building lines. We no longer have some of the subtleties of Civ4, such as the difference in nature between a temple and a theater, or a market and grocer. I really hope that you are correct in this prediction.

 

[Zeiter]

I eventually got my dad and my girlfriend to each play about half a game of SMAC with me. I think the main thing they found interesting was the atmospherics (storyline, tech quotes, secret project movies). When it came to the actual gameplay decisions, they had no idea what to do, and I constantly had to offer suggestions.

But I don't think it was that they couldn't figure it out. It was that they didn't really care to figure it out. It was just some chore that I was having them do that one time that they were doing to make me happy, and they never got into the mood of taking the initiative and getting satisfaction from the cycle of: test decision --> observe outcome --> refine decision --> observe new outcome -- refine decision, etc., from what I could tell. There were never those moments of dawning anticipation in figuring out, "Oh, so I guess I can do *this*?

In contrast, I introduced my brother to Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, and he instantly started getting those little moments of dawning anticipation as he figured out, "Ooooh, maybe I can take over that base using engineers and subterranean APCs! Let's see how well that works!" or "Oooh, I can use these Orca fighters to harass the enemy's harvesters!"

I don't know what it is about 4X games that doesn't produce this response in a lot of people. For me, playing SMAC was full of those, "Ooooh, I can use probe teams to steal technology! Ooooh, I can capture mind worms if I have a positive planet rating!" etc.

 

[AlpsStranger]

I don't know what it is about 4X games that doesn't produce this response in a lot of people. For me, playing SMAC was full of those, "Ooooh, I can use probe teams to steal technology! Ooooh, I can capture mind worms if I have a positive planet rating!" etc.

I don't really get it either. The rules for most 4X games, if they are well designed, are a thing of beauty in their own right. I think that's what I appreciate most about the genre. Its amazing how they use abstractions that vaguely resemble something real. Almost none of it is realistic in detail, it is usually blatantly unreal, but the big picture somehow ends up feeling like a self contained little world that is actually full of people. All stemming from rules that are, individually, both simple and unrealistic.

 

[Jediron]

your story strenghtens my idea of CIV 5: it's more like another game then Civilization and therefor should not be called Civilization to begin with....lol

 

[Zeiter]

Hmmm, I was just thinking to myself, a big difference between turn-based strategy games and other games is that, with other games, you are usually reacting to things happening to you, whereas in TBS games, YOU have to take the initiative.

So, take my dad, for example. As a kid, I remember him enjoying playing games with us like Gradius III, U.N. Squadron, F-Zero, etc. In these types of games, ships are flying at you, cars are racing ahead, and you are reacting to these things. You shoot down the planes, you try to catch up to the cars and react to the turns in the course.

Whereas in Civ4, you start the game with a settler and a few units that just...sit there. Nothing's happening. Is the game frozen? Where are the enemies to prompt you to react? Well, that comes later as the civs come into contact with one another and such. And even then it's not so simple as "reacting to enemies," because there's the whole question of whether you want to make them your enemies, or whether you want to have a relationship that's more complex, that might involve carefully-weighed technology trades, religious conversions, etc.

But that's 50 turns later. Right now, you just have a settler...sitting there. Okay, so you read the civilopedia, or, if the quick tips are on, figure out that the game is recommending that you settle on the blue circle. Now you have a city. Now the city is just...sitting there. Is the game frozen again? No, once again, it is waiting for YOU to respond. So you figure out that you need to choose something for the city to build, so you choose the recommended warrior or whatever, and finally you are PROMPTED with SOMETHING!--a little line of text saying, "Press Enter for End Turn." Okay...now the lack of stuff happening starts all over again...

So for these first few turns, the game feels at first like a sandbox. There don't seem to be consequences to where you move your units or what you build, because you haven't met any "enemies" yet, and even if you have, they don't appear to be an imminent threat yet, and you can't yet envision, having not played the game before, what sort of threat they might develop into...so you just follow your curiosity and the recommendations, but it doesn't seem to have any point. Whereas a veteran civ player is thinking about why this early scouting is full of consequence ("Find resources for good city sites later, determine nature of terrain to help decide on techs to research, locate borders of other civs, get an emerging idea of diplomacy, whether to try to rush any neighbors, etc."), the civ newbie isn't experienced enough to have any of these considerations, and without such considerations, the game feels like a sandbox adrift on an ocean without any wind or sails, a feeling of both boredom and dis-empowerment.

That's when I start piping in, "You know, you might want to research animal husbandry to hook up those sheep with a pasture, which will provide 4 food, 1 hammer, and 1 commerce. Food makes your cities grow. Hammers produce stuff. Commerce turns into gold, research, culture, or espionage, but we aren't there in the game yet because you won't be able to divert commerce to espionage until the alphabet tech anyways." My dad says, "Oh, espionage, that sounds interesting, let's research that!" And I have to respond, "Well, we aren't quite there yet, here's the tech tree, you need mathematics for that, and for mathematics you need writing, and you can get to writing from these three different paths. So you could go straight from animal husbandry to writing if you wanted to, but you might not want to because you'll want to see if you have copper somewhere around near your territory, because copper lets you construct axeman, which have a strength of 5 and +50% vs. melee units, and melee units are units like X, Y, and Z, and these might come in handy if you want to take over Hatshepsut's Buddhist holy city, which will give you extra happiness and culture, which are important because they expand your borders and population and yadda yadda yadda, and the bronze working tech is important anyways because yadda yadda yadda slavery and forest chopping yadda yadda yadda..." And pretty soon it must sound like I'm speaking a foreign language. Overload of random information whose relevance has not been demonstrated yet.

That's why good 4X games get players to learn things in layers, where the game can be played in a bare-bones way with one layer of knowledge, and can be played at a higher level of sophistication with another layer of knowledge, and at a yet higher level of sophistication with another layer, and so on. Perhaps Civ4 did not do this so well, I don't know. Perhaps the layers were too intertangled, although I think one could play on Chieftan pretty well enough by just automating workers, picking techs that sounded intuitive and interesting, building an intuitive-looking and aesthetically-appropriate-looking empire, and then coming to understand the basics of warfare, toying around with promotions, and going around to knock some heads off and dominate the globe. No knowledge of maintenance costs, happiness, health, great people, diplomacy, civics, improvements, buildings, wonders, or espionage required. (If playing a cultural leader, no knowledge even of the basics of culture required). Then, as you play a game or two, you toy around with these things, learn about them, and get better. Or perhaps I'm making it sound much more straightforward than it really is for a civ newbie to operate solely from a foundational layer while toying around or disregarding everything else.

My sense is that, in trying to remedy this problem, the designers of Civ5 reduced things more down to the foundational layer. Well, there's no more problem of careful layering if you are only left with one layer. Now, granted, this is an exaggeration. Civ5 has multiple layers of nuance, I'm sure. Perhaps what it doesn't have is that 5th or 6th layer of nuance, those layers to which esoteric insights might be applied to separate the emperor+ players from the rest. Instead, you only have to master up to the 4th layer to win at immortal or deity. I don't know, not having played Civ5 myself, this is pure speculation, but from what I've read on the forums, maybe this is one explanation?

 

[AlpsStranger]

Zeiter, a solution struck me light lightning while reading your post. Make a game that, by the industrial era for example, has as many layers as BTS. The trick might be to tie an even greater number of those layers to the tech tree. For example, have a health system but don't bring it to bear until large scale industry kicks in. Perhaps culture could begin to be a factor in the classical era, espionage could kick in during the renaissance. A tech in the middle ages could cause the specialist system to kick in. These are just random ideas, the actual unlocking scheme would take a lot of careful balancing of gameplay and realism.

Not sure if this would be a good idea or not. It would certainly help new players and probably do less damage to the overall complexity of the game as a whole.

 

[moscaverde]

Zeiter, a solution struck me light lightning while reading your post. Make a game that, by the industrial era for example, has as many layers as BTS. The trick might be to tie an even greater number of those layers to the tech tree. For example, have a health system but don't bring it to bear until large scale industry kicks in. Perhaps culture could begin to be a factor in the classical era, espionage could kick in during the renaissance. A tech in the middle ages could cause the specialist system to kick in. These are just random ideas, the actual unlocking scheme would take a lot of careful balancing of gameplay and realism.

Not sure if this would be a good idea or not. It would certainly help new players and probably do less damage to the overall complexity of the game as a whole.

But Civ 4 is this way. You only start having problems with health more or less with industrialization. Spionage is not so important in the early game etc. (this is the way I play though, it could be different for other people)

 

[AlpsStranger]

But Civ 4 is this way. You only start having problems with health more or less with industrialization. Spionage is not so important in the early game etc. (this is the way I play though, it could be different for other people)

It is but... it isn't. I don't know how to explain what I mean easily. I mean that the systems themselves wouldn't exist except relative to certain things. Like only industrial+ buildings would produce pollution for instance. Raw population and jungles etc would not. Of course, this would require the pollution system to be entirely different as far as the scale of the effect. I'm really talking more about a "pollution system" than the more robust health system present in Civ4. I'm talking about something that would not merely be a counterpart to the happiness mechanic but would have an entirely different style.

I'm not even sure *I* really like the idea. It just popped into my head so I thought I would share.

 

[LDiCesare]

My daughter won CivIV games, on the easiest level, when she was 10, maybe even 9. So it's not a question of difficulty of winning.

I think I'll be shelving Civ V pretty soon because it's too easy to win, and there's nothing to do but warfare. If you do anything else, you end up exploiting ai holes, and the military ai is weak so playing the game always feels like cheating no matter what I do and that's not fun. There's no sense of buildign a civ.