Who else agrees that Civ 5 has been dumbed down?

[PieceOfMind]

Everyone with half a brain can see Civ5 has been dumbed down to attract the masses of gamers who want a quick and simple game.

Some people with at least half a brain will tell you it's a poor method of argument to simply belittle the people whose opinions differ from yours.

In my view, not all the problems with civ5 are intended to be that way. The vanilla and unpatched game is a starting point, on which patches, expansions and mods will improve on.

I understand the annoyance/frustration with buying and playing a game which is best described as unfinished, but frankly, arguing for or against whether the game has been dumbed down is a waste of time when you'd find that most of the people arguing don't even agree on what the phrase means. It's like a religious debate about the existence of God, when people don't agree what God means.

 

[Grapa]

I think Civ 5 was dumbed down in terms of information. I loved all the statistics in Civ IV, now they're all gone.

 

[nemini]

Some people with at least half a brain will tell you it's a poor method of argument to simply belittle the people whose opinions differ from yours.

In my view, not all the problems with civ5 are intended to be that way. The vanilla and unpatched game is a starting point, on which patches, expansions and mods will improve on.

I understand the annoyance/frustration with buying and playing a game which is best described as unfinished, but frankly, arguing for or against whether the game has been dumbed down is a waste of time when you'd find that most of the people arguing don't even agree on what the phrase means. It's like a religious debate about the existence of God, when people don't agree what God means.

I didn't even buy the game but got it from a frustrated buddy (along with his steam account which he only created for this game lol)! Could you imagine my annoyance and frustration if I had actually bought the game?

The question is not if Civ5 is a nice/decent/good game or if it can become one with mods or expansion packs. The question is whether or not Civ5 is dumbed down in comparison with Civ4, and as a sequel this question has to be asked. You can without a shadow of a doubt answer that question with a YES, it is dumbed down, there is proof everywhere!

A lot of features have been removed instead improved upon, for instance Religion, Espionage, Health Ressources, Vassals, Technology Trade, Permanent Alliances and Random Events.

A lot of features have been simplified, for instance Trade Routes (no longer multiple trade routes between cities, only one trade route per city to the capital) or Roads (no longer necessary to build roads to connect resources)!

And it doesn't stop there! The biggest indicator that Civ5 was dumbed down for the masses is the lack of information and customization.

Compared to Civ4 there are less than 50% of options available in the options menu, for instance, no option for fast movement, no option to change to quick combat after you have started a game and no option to toggle whether or not you want to see friendly/allied combat or movement! Just to compare I have taken a screenshot of the Civ4 BtS options menu and the Civ5 options menu, you find them attached!

The same goes for the map options, there are far less options (no unrestricted leaders, no aggressive AI) and even one less victory condition (no conquest)! See the attachments for comparison screens!

The city screen is another example, the focus there was apparently big icons and as little information as possible! While the Civ4 city screen provided a clear overview, the Civ5 screen interface is overladen with icons, doesn't have a clear structure and you have to open submenus (production / purchase), or collapse/expand menus on the right because due to the huge icons not everything fits on one page! The city screen in Civ5 feels crowded even though it only provides a fraction of the information! See below for comparison screenshots and bear in mind those are screenshots taken at the very beginning of the game, the city screen in Civ5 will get far more crowded than that, with additional buildings and wonders taking up most of the space on the right to the point where you have to scroll to assign specialists!

[edit]
Maybe a mod could edit the thread title and poll question? It's "dumbed" down and not "dumb" down.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Before you tell me the game is dumbed down, why don't you first tell me what functional definition of the phrase you are using? Some of the things you bring up seem irrelevant to the question of whether it's dumbed down or not, which is exactly why I make the point that many people don't even agree what it means.

Also, if you don't want bias to creep into analysis (impossible, I know, but you can try harder), rather than focusing solely on features that have been removed or simplified, why not mention features that are new, or expanded upon from previous games?

EDIT
Also, your images are comparing patched BtS (an expansion pack) to unpatched vanilla civ5. Do you honestly see nothing wrong with that sort of comparison? Try installing unpatched vanilla civ4 and see if the screens look the same, eh?

 

[Biz_]

just because features are missing doesn't automatically make the game "dumbed down". you have to consider the whole picture

civ (any of them) is a very dumb game if you go by that yardstick

most of the time the best games are the ones what execute and integrate their features well instead of just throwing a lot of them at you.

i'm not saying civ5's are particularly well done, but some of these posts are just pathetic...

 

[Doctor Phibes]

I voted yes, on the basis that I read 'dumbed down' as:

'Don't you go worrying your pretty little heads about all those nasty numbers and stuff, we've hidden all that away (even in our Civopedia, which has been cleverly written so that a child of six could understand it). And those horrible graphs have gone too, good eh? Now all you have to do is click, and keep on clicking. And you won't get paper cuts from our big friendly cartoony icons neither. And every few moves you'll get a video [sorry, I mean powerfully rendered animation - we spent 50% of our development budget on those, you know] of an iconic world leader. You will never tire of these, we guarantee.'

I could go on, but you get my gist. Got a lot of problems with the game mechanics too. But it's dumb - and if it's an attempt at the console market, then it's misconceived partly because console games don't have to be dumb either.

Oh - and I am enjoying the game even if critically, there are some really good ideas here. Lasting appeal, like Civ4 - or SMAC - I'm really not sure. The analogy for me is more with Activision's Civ CTP games, full of great ideas, but never properly executed.

 

[Thormodr]

Businesses lie all the time. Without a doubt, there will be a ciV for consoles.

I know it and everyone else should know it. The game was designed top down to make it very easy to port over. Less money spent to port the game over means more profits.

If that also means removing parts of the game that won't appeal to the heathen unwashed masses (non-Civ players ) then so be it. They know darn well that little Johny FPS doesn't want to think too much. Don't make it too taxing or he'll go play something else.

I still think ciV is a good game that has a potential to be great but there can be no doubt as to Firaxis' and 2K Games' intentions. They took the low road.

 

[mike_cf]

Also, your images are comparing patched BtS (an expansion pack) to unpatched vanilla civ5. Do you honestly see nothing wrong with that sort of comparison? Try installing unpatched vanilla civ4 and see if the screens look the same, eh?

Where is that rule written that you can compare the current version ONLY to the previous vanilla version, ignoring any features the expanions brought? I don't understand WHY we should compare civ 5 with civ 4 vanilla. When you buy a version 5 of a car do you compare it to version 4 or with the latest 4.5 version?

 

[PieceOfMind]

In its current state, porting this over to consoles would probably be a disaster. It runs poorly on the most expensive, high-performance computers. Either some big optimisation improvements would need to come first, or significant concessions (e.g. removing all maps bigger than small, simplifying the AI) would need to be made in order to put it on a console.

Where is that rule written that you can compare the current version ONLY to the previous vanilla version, ignoring any features the expanions brought? I don't understand WHY we should compare civ 5 with civ 4 vanilla. When you buy a version 5 of a car do you compare it to version 4 or with the latest 4.5 version?

The reason it's an unwritten rule is because ignoring it is a huge source of bias in comparisons. It assumes that there is no intention for civ5 to be expanded on from what it is now. We can't see 3 or 4 years into the future and know how much better civ5 will be then, so the best we can do is not make direct comparisons with a very polished game that took many years to reach that state.

I know what you're saying and in some part I agree with you, but I am accepting the reality that this game was pushed to a deadline and while there are many UI features lacking, AI that can be improved on etc., I don't think many of the things are done that way out of intention of making the game 'condescendingly simple' (that is the exact definition I am using for 'dumbed down' FYI). Rather they are more a symptom of insufficient time or resources or forethought.

 

[kuukkeli]

Also, your images are comparing patched BtS (an expansion pack) to unpatched vanilla civ5. Do you honestly see nothing wrong with that sort of comparison?

I don't see anything wrong with that sort of comparison. Actually from the customer's point of view that should be the only meaningful comparison - Civ5 is meant to be an upgrade from Civ4.

 

[falconne]

The reason it's an unwritten rule is because ignoring it is a huge source of bias in comparisons. It assumes that there is no intention for civ5 to be expanded on from what it is now. We can't see 3 or 4 years into the future and know how much better civ5 will be then, so the best we can do is not make direct comparisons with a very polished game that took many years to reach that state.

I don't understand why people keep using this as an excuse. It's not technical issues people are complaining about, it's gameplay. When Civ 4 came out, the reason people complained was because of technical issues, of which it had many. But the gameplay was much better than any previous Civ. Sure a few people would have complained about the gameplay becoming too complex, but nowhere near the percentage complaining about Civ 5 getting too simple.

What is it about going from 4.x to 5.0 that makes a company go backwards in gameplay? Surely you take what you've learnt and make it better. It's version 5, it should at least try to do better than the last version released, even if that was an expansion.

Until now, the Civ series has always gone up in complexity with each release, each one trying to model human history better than the last. Sure they were never very realistic, but each tried to be more realistic than the last, at least by adding more aspects of human civilization into the game mechanics. This version has thrown all that out the window and not only abstracted too much, it's abstracted incorrectly. The game now has no bearing on reality and is simply an abstract strategy game; a computerised Euro boardgame.

Changing direction in a major series like this is never a good idea... look what happened to the HoMM series. If they wanted to go down a whole different path, they should have called it a different name, like Civilization Revolutions 2, which is what this is.

 

[MM1nd]

Sorry this is somewhat a repitition but so is the whole thread since page 6.

I think this thread totally asks the wrong question. The AI currently sucks and there are some balancing issues. As far as I can see these points are agreed on throughout the forum. And as many have pointed out they are likely to get fixed. So of course the game at present is dumber. That said, both IV and V have tons of gameplay elements so both are "deep games" on their own right.

The real question is, why have the developers removed gameplay elements that worked perfectly well? I pretty much agree with what zonk said on page 4, that this is no longer the civ experience. It is a break in gameplay which has not been so hard in any of the new versions before.

I would have been very happy if they had redesigned combat and religion/civics put some polish on the rest and called it a day. New combat and the social "skill tree" would have been enough innovation for a new game. No need to change (or in this case dump) the rest of the game.

 

[PieceOfMind]

(I wrote this before seeing MM1nd's post, so assume it's answering to previous comments)
-------------------

I should have known better than to get myself involved in this argument.

Look, let's suppose for a little bit that what some of you are saying is correct and the Firaxis people, when designing civ5, made a conscious decision to make this game more condescendingly simple than civ4.

Ok, so remember, we're going to assume the above is true.

Now, come to the present day and imagine yourself as a Firaxis employee browsing the threads at civfanatics, reading through the complaints in threads like this from people who believe the game has been "dumbed down" (made condescendingly simple). Considering that was their intention, then they can only take all these complaints as a sign that they were successful in their goal. That is, all the dedicated fans of the series are confirming back to them that, "indeed, the game has been dumbed down!".

Now, that Firaxis employee knows that there are patches to come, and probably an expansion pack or two down the road, and certainly a bunch of DLC packs lined up. Remembering again that it was their intention to make the game condescendingly simple, are they going to consider it a priority in future updates in the game to make the game less condescendingly simple, or the 'opposite' of condescendingly simple?

No. As we have already assumed, they wanted the game to be condescendingly simple and so will almost certainly leave it that way. All of you who purchased civ5 and genuinely believe it to be intentionally made condescendingly simple, you're screwed - I'm sorry to say it. They're not going to make the game more complex just because you want it to be. That would be going backwards on a design decision they made a long time ago.

*****


Now, go back to the beginning of this post again, and now let's reverse the the assumption we made that the game civ5 was intentionally designed to be more condescendingly simple than civ4.

In other words, let's assume that the designers/developers wanted to make the game more accessible to a wider audience, more intuitive, easier to use, more streamlined or simpler. This, by the way, is where I'd lean more towards assuming. So while they may have intended for the game to be simpler, they weren't intending for the game to be condescendingly simpler. After all, they're not idiots and would surely know that treating their customers like morons is not a sound business strategy.

Firaxis were working to a budget and timeline, with limited resources of time and manpower. When the deadline came, they unfortunately had to deliver their product in a somewhat unfinished state. Unfortunately the product does not offer up much of a challenge to experienced players/fans of the series. This means that given time and resources they will try to address that problem in futures patches and possibly expansions. The only thing stopping them would be if their incentive was cut - e.g. development of the game was discontinued and everyone moved to another project.





******

Anyway, my point is that some of you need to stop for 5 seconds and ask what exactly it is you're trying to achieve here and what exactly it is you expect to be done about it. If you think they wanted the game to be condescendingly simple, why the heck would they take your advice in reversing that?

For the record, I would say that there are lots of things in civ5 that have been simplified when compared with civ4. HOWEVER, I think the only thing I've seen so far that is condescendingly simple is the advisors (which thankfully can be disabled) and to a slight extent some of the speech from the leaderheads (personally I really hate it every time Liz says "Would you be interested in a trade agreement with England?" - it sounds so idiotic and unrealistic, patronising even)

 

[craig123]

I voted yes, on the basis that I read 'dumbed down' as:

'Don't you go worrying your pretty little heads about all those nasty numbers and stuff, we've hidden all that away (even in our Civopedia, which has been cleverly written so that a child of six could understand it). And those horrible graphs have gone too, good eh? Now all you have to do is click, and keep on clicking. And you won't get paper cuts from our big friendly cartoony icons neither. And every few moves you'll get a video [sorry, I mean powerfully rendered animation - we spent 50% of our development budget on those, you know] of an iconic world leader. You will never tire of these, we guarantee.'

Nice definition .

I don't see anything wrong with that sort of comparison. Actually from the customer's point of view that should be the only meaningful comparison - Civ5 is meant to be an upgrade from Civ4.

No it isn't! It's supposed to be a new game. Warlords was an upgrade from Civ4. Civ5 is a completely new game, built from stratch. Whether you like Civ5 or not, you should be able to recognise this.

Until now, the Civ series has always gone up in complexity with each release, each one trying to model human history better than the last. Sure they were never very realistic, but each tried to be more realistic than the last, at least by adding more aspects of human civilization into the game mechanics. This version has thrown all that out the window and not only abstracted too much, it's abstracted incorrectly. The game now has no bearing on reality and is simply an abstract strategy game; a computerised Euro boardgame.

Adding more and more complexity and more and more mechanics for the sake of it is not good design. (Besides, Civ is not a history simulator - it's a game with history as its theme.) Civ4 BtS is a complex game; making Civ5 more complex than BtS would not have appealed to many people outside these forums. Although it would have made many people here happy, Firaxis cannot make a game that will only be bought by a few thousand hardcore fans. That's just economic reality. Yes, I understand that many people think they have gone too far the other way - making it too simple - but hopefully expansion packs and mods can give hardcore fans the game they desire, while novice players can be happy playing the vanilla game.

 

[eoran]

I just wanna say that in CIV 4 barely can win in Monarch. Here, in Civ 5 I win in Deity without much difficulty. Not joking, you can check my steam ID. This is boring, in a week a mediocre civ4 player can dominate the game.

In other hand we have hexagons, but we dont have taxes, health, religion, espionage, local happiness, multiple trade routes, alliances, cultural influence, civics, civil wars (from Civ2 ) and etc.

If this is not dumb down a game, tell me what is it.

 

[falconne]

Adding more and more complexity and more and more mechanics for the sake of it is not good design.

Throwing mechanics in for the sake of it is bad design. But the point is to use subsequent releases to fine tune existing mechanics and slowly introduce new ones. Instead, most of the mechanics from Civ 4 have been thrown away in the name of "streamlining". People go on about "this is not Civ 4, it's a new game", but in fact that's not true. It's a heavily simplified Civ 4 with a hex map, 1UPT, social policies and city states added to make up for everything that was taken away. Aside from the new combat model and hexes, nothing else that's added is very revolutionary. They don't make up for what was taken away. The net result is a game with much less to do than the previous one.

As for your point about finding new markets - if they wanted to change direction that's fine, but they should have called it something else, like Revolutions 2 and kept the core series satisfying the players who want depth and complexity. That way they keep both markets.

Right now, a significant % of players, mostly vets not new players, aren't satisfied. By the poll in this thread it's nearly 1:1. Firaxis got the pre-orders for Civ 5 based on the reputation of Civ 4. A large portion of their customer base won't be paying for any more expansions unless they see, on these forums, that it's become worth playing again. This is bad for Firaxis' income. Furthermore, when Civ 6 comes out, you can bet that a good portion of their regular customers won't be pre-ordering it, or indeed buying it until they can be sure the same thing hasn't happened again. Doing this has damaged the brand and that's bad for business.

 

[PieceOfMind]

I just wanna say that in CIV 4 barely can win in Monarch. Here, in Civ 5 I win in Deity without much difficulty. Not joking, you can check my steam ID. This is boring, in a week a mediocre civ4 player can dominate the game.

In other hand we have hexagons, but we dont have taxes, health, religion, espionage, local happiness, multiple trade routes, alliances, cultural influence, civics, civil wars (from Civ2 ) and etc.

If this is not dumb down a game, tell me what is it.

What does 'dumbed down' mean to you?

 

[gamella]

I agree, it has been dumbed down. It's my opinion because when playing, my feeling it's that I don't have too much to do until later in the game (or when there is something to do it's always the same thing). This is a very big difference with all the other CIVs, on them my favourite part of the game was stone-age to mid-age period)

I like the new military system, but i think the game will be better having more Hexs (this don't means it needs a bigger map).
More unit types will be good too.

 

[eoran]

What does 'dumbed down' mean to you?

Well, my english sucks a bit... So im not going to describe it so well

But if you read my post you can see that im talking about complexity. In Civ 4 you can play again and again and again and dont get boring of the game because every new game was totally different.

Here, as other people said, you have hexagons and city states. But just the 3 o 4 new things can not supply that all have been removed and the lack of options, the game becomes repetitive and simple. At least for me.

 

[falconne]

What does 'dumbed down' mean to you?

You can tell from his post what he means. It's much easier to form a winning strategy in Civ 5 because there's far fewer variables to consider and fewer decisions to make.

The complexity of Civ 4 meant you needed a lot more intuition and experience to figure out how to win. There were too many variables and interconnected mechanics to easily come up with a game winning strategy at the start... and even when you do, you keep having to readjust during the game as conditions change. A game in Civ 5 doesn't change much after the classical era. Not only is it easy to formulate your strategy early on, it doesn't need much changing either. You just keep hitting End Turn and occasionally nudging things in the right direction.

I think this is why some people are calling it "more strategic". Less variables means now they can actually see what a clear strategy in a Civ game is, whereas Civ 4 was more organic and made it much harder to formulate that strategy.