Which Civ is superior?
- Thread starter kochman
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Akka
Moody old mage.
Well, actually, I'd think that quality is the only thing that could make a difference if the market is saturated.
There is a funny trend : a game makes a name for itself by being of high quality. The next iteration is then dumbed down for the casual idiot, attempting to sell more by "expanding the market audience" and typically losing exactly what made it special and famous in the first place (why marketing cretins can't get that removing the very REASON why something is renowned is going to be a success, I'll never get...).
Following this title, the franchise's fame disappear, as it has become yet another random, faceless, noname title in the crowd, having lost its special quality.
And though the "Franchise II" may have sold because of the fame of the first, it usually stops here, the desire to gain money having killed the long-term benefit of keeping the serie's renown.
It has happened so many times, I just can't understand why the idiots who cause this can't get a hint.
Disagree here.
The technical quality of the graphics may not have been very high, but it's a kind of "cute" design that ages VERY well.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
I thought civ4 was the ugliest one, even if it was the best overall game (especially its multiplayer) as a game.
The question is, which game had the best sound effects?
I'm thinking civ2, although they all do well.
The question is, which game had the best sound effects?
I'm thinking civ2, although they all do well.
Cashie
King
Immoderator action: Thread violation for being 'On-Topic'
I like Civ 5. I can't go back after Hexes - hundreds of little irks, notwithstanding. And yes, I buy DLC. It's simple value adding.
I like Civ 5. I can't go back after Hexes - hundreds of little irks, notwithstanding. And yes, I buy DLC. It's simple value adding.
Disgustipated
Deity
what's so great about hexes? You have 2 less options to move.
Civ4 was kind of ugly. I was never a big fan of the cartoony leaders. It's my only real gripe with the game. Civ3 didn't look good, but I used a mod (can't remember what's it's called) that looked good.
Civ5 looks like crap too. Maybe if it wasn't so buggy... First of all, the rivers look like crap. I get all sorts of minor graphical glitches. The biggest thing is certain graphics that lay on top of a terrain get "stuck" and even when you scroll the screen to a new location, the same improvement (or city) graphics still remain. The leader screens look good though. I get the feeling that's the only thing they concentrated on in Civ5.
Civ4 was kind of ugly. I was never a big fan of the cartoony leaders. It's my only real gripe with the game. Civ3 didn't look good, but I used a mod (can't remember what's it's called) that looked good.
Civ5 looks like crap too. Maybe if it wasn't so buggy... First of all, the rivers look like crap. I get all sorts of minor graphical glitches. The biggest thing is certain graphics that lay on top of a terrain get "stuck" and even when you scroll the screen to a new location, the same improvement (or city) graphics still remain. The leader screens look good though. I get the feeling that's the only thing they concentrated on in Civ5.
I'm not sure why you can't go back. Hexes broke the game.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
hexes are fine, so are squares. I like that squares allow the possibility of racing past someone given that some modes of movement cover more ground. But I like that hexes divide the spaces better for equidistance.
Hexes? Consensus seems to be centred around 1upt as the game breaker (coming from a stand point of assuming the game is broken).
I've only played Civ3 and Civ4, while I was able to better understand Civ3, Civ4 is deeper and more complex, and probably the better of the two (which is probably why I didn't really wrap my head around it).
But SMAC is the one that rules them all, I think. While I love history and historical settings, and I do think the science fiction theme and milieu of SMAC fits the mechanics, and it is just so rich and interesting to boot.
But SMAC is the one that rules them all, I think. While I love history and historical settings, and I do think the science fiction theme and milieu of SMAC fits the mechanics, and it is just so rich and interesting to boot.
Nobody
Gangster
civ 3 then civ 2. I never really played civ 4 much, i just couldn't get into it, thought alot of people seem to love it so maybe i should try again.
Civ 5 meh, single player games shouldnt need the net
Civ 5 meh, single player games shouldnt need the net
Akka
Moody old mage.
What ?
Oh, ok... Now I understand...
The worst thing with Civ5's graphics is how lifeless the map is. Nearly no animation, cities are subpar and the improvement are just a horrible icon.
@Akka: You may disagree with me about the importance of quality in a saturated market, but that's what marketing people are taught. If you're active in an emerging market, refining your products and focusing on quality makes it harder for competitors to enter... letting your techies/designers focus on making the best stuff they can is sound.
In a saturated market, everyone has their basic needs covered (e.g. every household has as many cars as is practical, there are enough excellent games available for free or almost for free to keep one entertained for a lifetime etc). Manufacturers need to artificially keep demand up if they want decent revenues.
Shoving whatever your techies consider sound down your customers' throats ist grating and doesn't for work in the long term, optimising your products for marketability instead of quality is better.
Planned obsolescence, following or creating fads, 'innovative' features that attract customers but don't actually work well...
the desirable effect is intense, short-lived demand - you don't want to reduce demand for your future products by creating something that's better than it needs to be. Customers can usually be persuaded to accept junk, the only threat would be independent reviewers with high standards of integrity and competence... but even those will eventually give in. If customers don't care, why should they?
It's phrased a little differently in the textbooks, but 'start with contempt for your customers, follow that to the logical conclusion' seems a good baseline for success if you already have market recognition to exploit.
In a saturated market, everyone has their basic needs covered (e.g. every household has as many cars as is practical, there are enough excellent games available for free or almost for free to keep one entertained for a lifetime etc). Manufacturers need to artificially keep demand up if they want decent revenues.
Shoving whatever your techies consider sound down your customers' throats ist grating and doesn't for work in the long term, optimising your products for marketability instead of quality is better.
Planned obsolescence, following or creating fads, 'innovative' features that attract customers but don't actually work well...
the desirable effect is intense, short-lived demand - you don't want to reduce demand for your future products by creating something that's better than it needs to be. Customers can usually be persuaded to accept junk, the only threat would be independent reviewers with high standards of integrity and competence... but even those will eventually give in. If customers don't care, why should they?
It's phrased a little differently in the textbooks, but 'start with contempt for your customers, follow that to the logical conclusion' seems a good baseline for success if you already have market recognition to exploit.
This is why games are so poor quality in the gameplay department for the most part nowadays, an art form has been turned into a souless business, in the old days you could see the originality and passion of the developers in their products, quirky personal games like cannon fodder on the amiga that just screamed "look how original i am, look how much fun the people who made me had while doing so!" but that is very rare nowadays
These days because games need a lot of money to be made they cannot fail, originality suffers, many games have to be designed with low powered consoles in mind first and foremost because of market trends, and suffer in both the UI and overall ambition which they could have benfitted from had they been designed without that overiding consideration, i can only imagine the frustration of the designers and programmers that want to do something grand but just can't because the suits end up directing what they the artists should be in control of, it's the equivalent of forcing velazquez and Dali to whitewash walls for a living instead of truly paint just because it makes more money, the industry may be doing well financially but the art of game making itself is going through dark days in my opinion.
Akka
Moody old mage.
This doesn't work here. You usually won't use more than one car per person, and a car is essentially a tool, made for utility. But you can play lots of games, and the very reason why you do it is to have quality time.
Moreover, with such low-quality marketing decisions, it's actually NOT the case that you have "enough excellent games available". 90 % of the production is the same bland, casual, watered-down crap - hence the situation I described above, with once-great franchise sinking into anonymity by copying the same faceless and boring mass-market formula.
There is actually VERY FEW good games, and the principle of a game is to be good, not average.
That, sadly, is rather true. Most consumers are retards with very low standards.
Hopefully there is still some taste left that end up making some good ideas and franchises successful, but high sales of sh*tty games are still far too prominent - I despair everytime I see the charts.
There's a lot of quality out there. There have been fantastic and innovative titles in the Dos era and slightly beyond, simple platformers and roguelikes continue to see a lot of attention and have been turned into an art several times over, there are many insanely deep if slightly rough niche titles available for those who appreciate them.
What we don't have very often is truly excellent games that follow modern conventions and feature cutting-edge production values... for the same reason that the most technically impressive movies don't actually tend to be very good.
Paradoxically, the ever-increasing budgets of mainstream entertainment get in the way of quality... target figures are so high that there is little choice but to target the lowest common denominator.
Reduced-but-still-reasonable budgets and developing for enthusiasts isn't a comfortable option either, because if a competing title is insufficiently dumbed down to offend the freaks and geeks, you're competing against a bigger fish than yourself.
Small developers can find their niche here though... and some of them create very good games, even though they tend to be a little rough around the edges.
The business model will also affect game design. If you want people to keep putting quarters into an arcade machine, you need to keep it hard enough that they won't finish it quickly but rewarding enough that they keep coming. Cost of entry is small though, so there's little need to coddle new players.
Many of the more elaborate freeware games are written along similar principles - to be attractive to those who will eventually become hardcore fans, and whoever can't take the heat (or cryptic interface or outdated graphics or whatever ideosyncrasies the game may have) can sod right off.
This is not good practice if you expect people to pay dozens of dollars upfront, unless you specifically maket towards the hardcore crowd (inherently problematic, see above). If you scare off newbies you have to deal with fewer customers or with frustrated customers, neither is good. I don't think it's a coincidence that many commercial games have very slick/friendly looking interfaces that are godawful from a functional point of view or dumbed-down mechanics carefully chosen to make sense to people who refuse to think (see Sid Meier at GDC2010 about Civ:Rev for some examples that resulted in a few dents in my desk).
What we don't have very often is truly excellent games that follow modern conventions and feature cutting-edge production values... for the same reason that the most technically impressive movies don't actually tend to be very good.
Paradoxically, the ever-increasing budgets of mainstream entertainment get in the way of quality... target figures are so high that there is little choice but to target the lowest common denominator.
Reduced-but-still-reasonable budgets and developing for enthusiasts isn't a comfortable option either, because if a competing title is insufficiently dumbed down to offend the freaks and geeks, you're competing against a bigger fish than yourself.
Small developers can find their niche here though... and some of them create very good games, even though they tend to be a little rough around the edges.
The business model will also affect game design. If you want people to keep putting quarters into an arcade machine, you need to keep it hard enough that they won't finish it quickly but rewarding enough that they keep coming. Cost of entry is small though, so there's little need to coddle new players.
Many of the more elaborate freeware games are written along similar principles - to be attractive to those who will eventually become hardcore fans, and whoever can't take the heat (or cryptic interface or outdated graphics or whatever ideosyncrasies the game may have) can sod right off.
This is not good practice if you expect people to pay dozens of dollars upfront, unless you specifically maket towards the hardcore crowd (inherently problematic, see above). If you scare off newbies you have to deal with fewer customers or with frustrated customers, neither is good. I don't think it's a coincidence that many commercial games have very slick/friendly looking interfaces that are godawful from a functional point of view or dumbed-down mechanics carefully chosen to make sense to people who refuse to think (see Sid Meier at GDC2010 about Civ:Rev for some examples that resulted in a few dents in my desk).
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
companies should, instead of putting down $20 million to develop a game, should put down $4 million a piece to make 5 games. The niche appeal will probably result in greater total sales.
aelf
Ashen One
There's no use complaining while buying new games as they are released. The whole pre-order culture only serves to prop the market up. Play more old games and buy new games very sparingly.
Then again, there's probably more than enough buyers to keep it afloat. Maybe this will go on until the average quality becomes so bad that there's another video game crash to reboot everything.
Then again, there's probably more than enough buyers to keep it afloat. Maybe this will go on until the average quality becomes so bad that there's another video game crash to reboot everything.
jtb1127
Deity
Civ IV
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