Author Topic: Civilization VI is coming  (Read 16763 times)

Offline Mánagarmr

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Re: Civilization VI is coming
« Reply #15 on: May 14, 2016, 12:52:52 pm »
I haven't enjoyed Civ since Civ 2, so I'm very likely to give this one a pass.
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Offline Misery

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Re: Civilization VI is coming
« Reply #16 on: May 14, 2016, 08:36:15 pm »
It looks like a mobile game.
 >:(


It's just an art style... it has zero effect on the gameplay...

Offline TheVampire100

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Re: Civilization VI is coming
« Reply #17 on: May 14, 2016, 09:12:54 pm »
Some nice guy in the Steam forums did some extra work and made some comparisions of the graphics of Civ5 and Civ6.
http://steamcommunity.com/app/289070/discussions/0/364041517011373776/

I could go into detail but I think it is obvious. Civ6 lacks a lot od details in themes of graphics. It's not only, like Chris said, that the polygon count is lower and the stauration higher, you can clearly see the lack of details here.
Look at the mountains. Look at the forests. Look at the units.
everythink lacks details. It looks very lazy done. Liek tehy didn't care if the game has enough objects because it's cartoon graphics anyway. I can live with the art style they have chosen. There is totally nothing wrong with this art style, some of my favourite games feature a similia style and it can appeal to the eye if done well. But this isn't done well. they just chose it because it was simpler and quicker to make. Probably cheaper too.

This could be also excusable if the price tag would be lower. A cheaper Civilization, affordable for a broader audience? Could work well. Just make it cheaper in terms of production cost and you can lower the price. But this game costs even more than Civ5 and will also feature (again) DLC with additional content.
I know that Civilization is mostly about the gameplay, not the graphics. But I won't pay 60$ for a game that has been poorly made. And you can clearly see that is has been poorly made.

Offline Misery

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Re: Civilization VI is coming
« Reply #18 on: May 14, 2016, 09:26:48 pm »
Actually I like the look of 6 more than 5.   5 had... zero personality.  6 actually has some for once.  Particularly with those units....  The ones in 5 are so bland and uninteresting that it often took me awhile to figure out what they were, no matter how many times I've seen them.

Not to mention that the whole world just looks so much more vibrant.

Polygon count, frankly, means less than nothing as far as I'm concerned (same as object count; these trees and such are HUGE, of COURSE there aren't going to be many of them in a small space).  Not something I even notice.

I know people will whine that it's not "mature", OMG.  Those people can go take a long walk off a short pier.

This is pretty much the same reaction I had when comparing that or 4 to Civ Revolution.  When it's bland VS colorful, colorful will always win for me.  I'm so tired of everything just going for the "realism/mature" look all the time.  It's gotten so old....

Offline Coppermantis

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Re: Civilization VI is coming
« Reply #19 on: May 14, 2016, 09:30:48 pm »
Some nice guy in the Steam forums did some extra work and made some comparisions of the graphics of Civ5 and Civ6.
http://steamcommunity.com/app/289070/discussions/0/364041517011373776/

I could go into detail but I think it is obvious. Civ6 lacks a lot od details in themes of graphics. It's not only, like Chris said, that the polygon count is lower and the stauration higher, you can clearly see the lack of details here.
Look at the mountains. Look at the forests. Look at the units.
everythink lacks details. It looks very lazy done. Liek tehy didn't care if the game has enough objects because it's cartoon graphics anyway. I can live with the art style they have chosen. There is totally nothing wrong with this art style, some of my favourite games feature a similia style and it can appeal to the eye if done well. But this isn't done well. they just chose it because it was simpler and quicker to make. Probably cheaper too.

This could be also excusable if the price tag would be lower. A cheaper Civilization, affordable for a broader audience? Could work well. Just make it cheaper in terms of production cost and you can lower the price. But this game costs even more than Civ5 and will also feature (again) DLC with additional content.
I know that Civilization is mostly about the gameplay, not the graphics. But I won't pay 60$ for a game that has been poorly made. And you can clearly see that is has been poorly made.
I disagree. With the exception of some of the units, I like the new art style a lot. To say that it is objectively "poorly made" strikes me as unfair. I found that the maps in civ V could get fairly dull and flat except for certain biomes, whereas this looks a lot more lively and engaging. The buildings look great and having more color is a good choice.

The biggest thing for me is that the art style is consistent. The lower poly-count, cartoonish look to it seems like a specific design (and likely performance as well) choice, which may not appeal to you but it's just plain wrong to claim that you can "clearly see that it has been poorly made" just from those screenshots alone.

Also, I dunno about you, but I rarely zoom in enough to the point where the poly count would ever make a difference to me. Readability and clarity when zoomed out is what matters most in civ to me, and 6 seems to do that very well.
I can already tell this is going to be a roller coaster ride of disappointment.

Offline TheVampire100

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Re: Civilization VI is coming
« Reply #20 on: May 14, 2016, 09:36:18 pm »
I haven't thought about this. You have a point with "readability". You will probably easier identify tiles and troops with this art style.
Still this is nothing worth of 60$. Maybe 40$.

Offline Cyborg

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Re: Civilization VI is coming
« Reply #21 on: May 14, 2016, 09:51:12 pm »
Actually I like the look of 6 more than 5.   5 had... zero personality.  6 actually has some for once.  Particularly with those units....  The ones in 5 are so bland and uninteresting that it often took me awhile to figure out what they were, no matter how many times I've seen them.

Not to mention that the whole world just looks so much more vibrant.

Polygon count, frankly, means less than nothing as far as I'm concerned (same as object count; these trees and such are HUGE, of COURSE there aren't going to be many of them in a small space).  Not something I even notice.

I know people will whine that it's not "mature", OMG.  Those people can go take a long walk off a short pier.

This is pretty much the same reaction I had when comparing that or 4 to Civ Revolution.  When it's bland VS colorful, colorful will always win for me.  I'm so tired of everything just going for the "realism/mature" look all the time.  It's gotten so old....

You are going the wrong way with this line of thinking. Most people on this forum are somewhat thinkers and good at smelling bullshit. You could ask, what is your problem with the graphics?

The problem with making a title look like a mobile game is that it could become one. This looks very cell phone friendly. The majority of cell phone games, ports, etc. are dumbed down casual games with poor DLC models, micro-transactions, and people like Kate Upton doing ridiculous cleavage commercials selling to idiots.

That's why I don't want this game to look like a cell phone game. Not because I hate color. Frankly, I prefer color in my games. Most of the time.
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Offline Toranth

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Re: Civilization VI is coming
« Reply #22 on: May 14, 2016, 10:04:42 pm »
It looks like a mobile game.
 >:(
It's just an art style... it has zero effect on the gameplay...
I agree that it is just art, but it says things about how the makers view the game.
This, visually, looks a lot like Civilization Revolution - a visually, and gameplay, simplified version of Civ4 for consoles.  It was a decent game.  But compared to actual Civ4, it was small and shallow.
Does this mean that Civ6 will also be simplified?  We don't know.  But simplified graphics are not a good sign of things to come.

Offline Misery

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Re: Civilization VI is coming
« Reply #23 on: May 14, 2016, 10:43:44 pm »
It looks like a mobile game.
 >:(
It's just an art style... it has zero effect on the gameplay...
I agree that it is just art, but it says things about how the makers view the game.
This, visually, looks a lot like Civilization Revolution - a visually, and gameplay, simplified version of Civ4 for consoles.  It was a decent game.  But compared to actual Civ4, it was small and shallow.
Does this mean that Civ6 will also be simplified?  We don't know.  But simplified graphics are not a good sign of things to come.

To some degree though, this is very subjective stuff.

Civ 4?  Utterly despised it.  Yay, big unit lumps crashing into each other... how strategic.  Was bored very, very fast. I consider it one of the worst strategy games I've ever had the displeasure of getting anywhere near. And that's me being kind and in a fairly good mood at the moment.

Not that 5 is perfect, but I wasn't bored to death by it.   Civ Rev I liked.  Played that, had a good time with it.  Perfect?  No, but none of the others are either, so that works out well enough.  Civ Rev did it's job well enough.


Quote
You are going the wrong way with this line of thinking. Most people on this forum are somewhat thinkers and good at smelling bullshit. You could ask, what is your problem with the graphics?

The problem with making a title look like a mobile game is that it could become one. This looks very cell phone friendly. The majority of cell phone games, ports, etc. are dumbed down casual games with poor DLC models, micro-transactions, and people like Kate Upton doing ridiculous cleavage commercials selling to idiots.

That's why I don't want this game to look like a cell phone game. Not because I hate color. Frankly, I prefer color in my games. Most of the time.


As someone that plays mobile games just as much as PC games, I never see a problem with this... when it's done right. 

That's the thing though:  I like to think the devs for this series aren't braindead morons.  They should know their fanbase by now and know what'll happen if they make a brainless version.   And honestly, a full-featured version would actually work just fine on mobile (it's a damn turn-based strategy game, after all).  Were they to do that and put it on both PC and mobile, that'd be fine by me.  I've seen enough of mobile games to know what they're REALLY capable of when a developer doesn't just try to make Angry Birds for the 130471374018th time. 


Though, honestly, even if they did make a dumbed down version.... it probably wouldn't be because of mobile anything.  I think back on what happened with the most recent Anno; it was dumbed down because that's just the bloody trend right now.  No mobile involved.  God forbid the player actually gets CONFUSED by something.  They might not play the game perfectly and might not feel like winners!  And then they might not buy the next sequels!  Oh noes!

So in the end... cartoony graphical style or not... it's likely going to be up to wether or not the devs/publisher gives into common gameplay trends.  The game could LOOK mature or realistic or whatever as hell.... but I, personally, would see THAT as a warning sign.  Why?  Because so many, ahem, "mature" games are just about the most mindless things ever...

Offline Toranth

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Re: Civilization VI is coming
« Reply #24 on: May 15, 2016, 12:46:31 am »
That's the thing though:  I like to think the devs for this series aren't braindead morons.
While I could spend weeks talking about Civ4 vs Civ5, or how the mobile mindset is ruining things that never touch mobile, this is the comment that stood out to me.

Do you know why in Civ5, military units self-embark to cross water?  A developer revealed that it wasn't part of the original design; they had intended to have transport units.  However, they never realized how 1upt didn't work with transporting units until it was too late to change all that.
Then, of course, there is also Civ:Beyond Earth.  It was marketed as an updated Alpha Centauri (the best Civ ever). But at launch, it was poorly designed, poorly balanced, buggy, and expensive mod of Civ5 with many ideas that were not well thought out.  They promised me SMAC2, and gave me... something else, that wasn't even a good something else.  I'm told Rising Tide fixes some of this, but it'll be a while before I'm willing to spend money on that product again.


So, while I'd like to think the developers and publishers are considering their target audience, I've seen the very poor design and marketing decisions they've made in the past.  I'm willing to give Civ6 a chance, but it's starting at a historical negative, and associating themselves with other negatives is not helping.  They only thing they could do worse was mention CtP.

Offline Coppermantis

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Re: Civilization VI is coming
« Reply #25 on: May 15, 2016, 01:00:36 am »
 
The problem with making a title look like a mobile game is that it could become one.

First of all, the argument that if it looks like a mobile game then it could become a mobile game doesn't hold water for me. Even if it did have a "mobile" artstyle (a claim that I disagree with and will address later), that doesn't mean anything about the gameplay until we actually see the gameplay. If you want to be pessimistic and assume that a simpler artstyle will correlate with simpler gameplay, then that's your perogative but that has no bearing on what will actually happen.

Maybe the gameplay will be simplified. Maybe it won't. But if it is, then that will not have been because of the art style. Plenty of games have progressively simplified mechanics alongside increasingly complex graphics, so there isn't even really a correlation between artstyle and gameplay (these accusations get levelled at series like Starcraft and Fallout all the time).

But I don't see why people even think it "looks like a mobile game." Is it just because it is cartoony?  While mobile games frequently have less detailed art, the same could be said for many non-mobile games, even many good ones. I do not think we've seen enough to pass judgement on the artstyle, since, to me, what really defines a "mobile-esque" style is the UI, which is very much absent from current pictures. We haven't seen how the animations are (though I only play Civ with animations disabled), we haven't seen the UI, we haven't seen the leader art. I think that, again with the exceptions of the units (though I do like the boat), the style is very attractive in this one and just says "cartoon" rather than "mobile," much in the same manner games like TF2 or Overwatch do. Obviously, those two are still higher-resolution, but comparing the resolution of models in an FPS to a grand strategy game is pointless.

This is a closeup of a Starcraft II marine. Low-poly, low-resolution textures, wouldn't look out of place in a mobile game. In fact, some mobile games like Deus Ex: The Fall (which was pretty bad but that's beside the point) are far more detailed than that because, like I just said, the strategy genre does not demand high-resolution models. You will rarely zoom in enough to the point where that would even be noticable. From the distance you'll usually be playing Civ at, the only "mobile-esque" quality will be the cartoon artstyle. Both Starcraft II and Civ VI have low-poly models, the major difference being that one has a more "gritty" overarching style and the other looks more like a cartoon.  Which is why I personally think that most people who are angry about the new artstyle (not necessarily you guys specifically) are just having a knee-jerk reaction to a significant deviation in style, and not rationally appraising the quality. Sure, it's not as detailed as V, but I've already spent enough time explaining why I don't think that's a bad or even relevant thing.

The majority of cell phone games, ports, etc. are dumbed down casual games with poor DLC models, micro-transactions, and people like Kate Upton doing ridiculous cleavage commercials selling to idiots.

A majority of PC games are crap too, especially what with Greenlight being the cesspool that it is. 

I agree that it is just art, but it says things about how the makers view the game.

You're right, it does. And I like what it says. To me, it says that they are focusing on the previously discussed readability and accessibility to new players rather than beautiful environments, which is not what Civ is about. A simplified but still aesthetically pleasing (subjective, of course) style is much more appropriate for a game like Civ.
I can already tell this is going to be a roller coaster ride of disappointment.

Offline Cyborg

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Re: Civilization VI is coming
« Reply #26 on: May 15, 2016, 10:42:40 am »
If you want to be pessimistic and assume that a simpler artstyle will correlate with simpler gameplay, then that's your perogative but that has no bearing on what will actually happen.


Except, I didn't say that. Sometimes I can't tell the difference between straw man arguments and poor reading comprehension on this forum.

What I correlated was mobile games and simpler gameplay, not cartoon graphics and simple gameplay.
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Offline Wingflier

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Re: Civilization VI is coming
« Reply #27 on: May 15, 2016, 03:00:37 pm »
Quote
Except, I didn't say that. Sometimes I can't tell the difference between straw man arguments and poor reading comprehension on this forum.
As long as we're discussing logical fallacies (you seem to be overly critical of a harmless forum comment), I should probably point out that in your original comment you committed two of them yourself.

First, the slippery slope fallacy. If A then B. If B then C. If C then D. If D then the world will end.

If it has cartoony graphics, it must be designed like a mobile game. If it's designed like a mobile game then it's designed to appeal to a casual audience. If it's designed to appeal to a casual audience then it will be overly simplistic and boring. If it's overly simplistic and boring then it's going to be a terrible game.

That's quite a leap of logic you've made simply because of the art style they've chosen for the game.

Second, the fallacy of false correlation.

"Because it has cartoony graphics, therefore it has a higher chance of being a mobile game."

You would have to prove that PC games which have this specific art style early on in their design have a higher chance of being glorified mobile games. I'm not sure how you'd go about doing that since there are plenty of PC games with this "cartoony" style of graphics which play nothing like mobile games, and in fact can be extremely complex. Furthermore, there are plenty of mobile games that have very gritty, serious graphics as well. It's safe to say that this is a correlation based on wild speculation more than any kind of statistical fact or evidence-based reasoning.

As I said, I feel you're being overly critical of someone else's opinion, calling their line of thinking flawed when it seems your line of thinking has many problems of its own. As Jesus said, remove the log from your own eye before attempting to remove the splinter from another.
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Offline Coppermantis

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Re: Civilization VI is coming
« Reply #28 on: May 15, 2016, 04:33:54 pm »
Oi, can we not jump on each other here? I just had a painful argument on Reddit and I really don't want one to happen here too. The conversation has been civil so far, and I'd like to keep it that way.

Cyborg, your exact words were that "The problem with making a title look like a mobile game is that it could become one." Correlate may have been the wrong word to use; but the core of my argument was sort of what Wingflier is saying about slippery slopes, though I don't like arguing by picking through a post for logical fallacies. That a transition to a "mobile-esque" artstyle can lead to a mobile (correlated, as you say, with simpler gameplay) playstyle is not a given and to worry about the fact that it could happen strikes me as pessimistic. That's all there is to it.

« Last Edit: May 15, 2016, 05:15:29 pm by Coppermantis »
I can already tell this is going to be a roller coaster ride of disappointment.

Offline crazyroosterman

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Re: Civilization VI is coming
« Reply #29 on: May 15, 2016, 06:02:38 pm »
yes indeed it would be nice to not have enougher argument start btw reading this thread gave me the most random urge to go and finally play alpha centari what do I think of it? mmm I think its o.k.a.y I haven't really done much of anything in it so far and the ai seems a bit dumb (I see having ai fight wars with you was use less back then as well) unless its locked to difficulty of course.
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