Civilization VI is coming

[Cyborg]

I don't know what Wing is saying. I have had him on ignore since some conspiracy theory thread from awhile ago. Your post is quite amusing in that you are doubling down on not only putting words in my mouth, but coming up with philosophy 101 reasons on why assuming what you think I meant validates the rest of your nonsense.

It should be noted I made my comments before even looking on the steam discussion pages. But I decided to look today, and no joke I saw people making clash of clans comparisons and mobile game fears. A lot of people seem to think that by making this game intentionally low polygon count, it means they have the ability to put it on mobile. I know what correlation means, and I studied measurements in college as part of my degree. I am confidently saying that by going to a low polygon count, they leave the door open for mobile games in a way that cannot happen with high polygon, high resolution textures, shaders, etc. Go ahead and check out the steam forums. The mobile game fear thread is approaching 1000 after mere days, and if you read the other threads, they are filled with similar outrage. This isn't just me pointing this out.

I did not say this game is going on mobile. I'm saying it could become one because they intentionally designed it in a way that it could happen. Myself, like many others, look at mobile games as being casual gaming, which is fine for people who like that. I don't, and I won't buy casual civilization. Is it possible that a cell phone can have a good strategy game? Sure. But I don't think that's where the strategy market is, and when AAA companies develop strategy games, it's not for your iPhone. There's a reason for that. We can discuss those reasons, but I'm sure you would find a fortune cookie printout  to disagree with me.

[Coppermantis]

If you want to keep being dismissive and accusing me of finding philosophy 101 nonsense or fortune cookie printouts to justify my arguments, then I really don't want to have this discussion. But I'll try.

I did not say you said that this will be a mobile game. If you are claiming that they "intentionally designed it in a way that it could happen," I don't understand how you know that for certain just because of the simpler artstyle. I'll concede that it is possible that they are leaving the door open for mobile development since, yes, the art style does allow for that in a way that Civ V does not. Maybe I'm just being naive, I don't know, since you presumably have more experience than me in the matter, but I want to wait until I have more information than three screenshots, the store page blurb, and a teaser that shows no gameplay before I worry about any regression or future porting to mobile.

Just because the Steam forums have lengthy threads about it doesn't prove anything. I've seen them too, and volume doesn't make me agree with them any more. Some people are saying that they don't personally like the style, and other saying that they do, which is fine, but I am not worried about mobile comparisons for the time being.

A very similar thing happened with the announcement of Dawn of War III. The models are cartoony and the game as a whole looks much less detailed than DoWII. People expressed concern that it looked like a mobile game there as well, especially given the actual 40k mobile games that have been ported to PC. Maybe Relic is looking into the mobile market as well, or maybe they are doing this for optimization purposes since the battles will be larger. Could be that Firaxis has similar reasoning, and until more information comes out, I am going to remain optimistic.

Not optimistic enough to pre-order, obviously, because that would be silly. But that's literally all I'm trying to say. I have no interest in putting words in your mouth or winning an argument. If I misunderstood you earlier or communicated poorly then I apologize, but I just feel like both the people here and on the steam forums are being pessimistic. And they're probably not wrong to be pessimistic, as games, mobile or not, have been experiencing a trend of simplification. But I think that's a process that is independent of the artstyle.

[Toranth]

There is a simple reason I fear that Civ6's simpler graphics might mean simpler gameplay:  It's already happened.

As I mentioned before, Civ Revolution was graphically simplified to run on consoles, including handhelds, and gameplay simplified as well.

It's possible this is just an art style change.  Maybe someone in management over there is a big fan of Tropico.  Maybe marketing research showed this is what's popular now. 
Or maybe, as was suggested elsewhere, they want to simplify the graphics in order to devote more development and CPU time to the AI and gameplay.

At this point, we don't know.  But with just one antecedent to go by, history is not in favor of Civ6.  And with BE their last product, I feel pessimism is the safe choice.

[Coppermantis]

You and Cyborg have convinced me that there is a reasonable chance that it will happen. I knew very little about Civ Revolution before this thread, and if there is precedent, then, as I said earlier, they're probably not wrong to be pessimistic. But I will remain optimistic. It's not really about what is the "safe" choice this early in the game unless you're talking about pre-ordering, which shouldn't even be a question. It's not just about this, in general I like to give people the benefit of the doubt until I see more evidence, and I do not think that there is enough evidence to definitively conclude that they are pushing towards mobile.

[Misery]

I don't know what Wing is saying. I have had him on ignore since some conspiracy theory thread from awhile ago. Your post is quite amusing in that you are doubling down on not only putting words in my mouth, but coming up with philosophy 101 reasons on why assuming what you think I meant validates the rest of your nonsense.

It should be noted I made my comments before even looking on the steam discussion pages. But I decided to look today, and no joke I saw people making clash of clans comparisons and mobile game fears. A lot of people seem to think that by making this game intentionally low polygon count, it means they have the ability to put it on mobile. I know what correlation means, and I studied measurements in college as part of my degree. I am confidently saying that by going to a low polygon count, they leave the door open for mobile games in a way that cannot happen with high polygon, high resolution textures, shaders, etc. Go ahead and check out the steam forums. The mobile game fear thread is approaching 1000 after mere days, and if you read the other threads, they are filled with similar outrage. This isn't just me pointing this out.

I did not say this game is going on mobile. I'm saying it could become one because they intentionally designed it in a way that it could happen. Myself, like many others, look at mobile games as being casual gaming, which is fine for people who like that. I don't, and I won't buy casual civilization. Is it possible that a cell phone can have a good strategy game? Sure. But I don't think that's where the strategy market is, and when AAA companies develop strategy games, it's not for your iPhone. There's a reason for that. We can discuss those reasons, but I'm sure you would find a fortune cookie printout  to disagree with me.

People overreact FREQUENTLY.   Just because a "fear thread" approaches 500000000 pages doesn't make any of it actually MAKE SENSE or be less stupid.   Having done 10 squillion betas/alphas/early accesses, I've seen crap like that a million times over.   I've seen it be COMPLETELY WRONG a million times over.

It's a damn art style, people!  JUST an art style!  NOTHING more!  The reason it's gone so far in that bloody stupid thread is because idiots everywhere are bloody obsessed with graphics now.  If a game doesn't LOOK good, it must not BE good!  CLEARLY the two are ALWAYS linked!  Ugh.   Ridiculous.   You cant make assumptions based on how something LOOKS.  If people are going to make assumptions, at least base them on... any other damn thing.

And yes, I know I'm getting a bit snappy here and have even less patience than usual.  But I haven't had any caffeine and regardless of that, eventually I can only deal with this sort of thing for so long before it just gets too absurd.  These are just ASSUMPTIONS from people who saw EARLY SCREENSHOTS of the freaking ART STYLE.  How is this NOT absurd?   Don't answer that. 

Something like this cannot be judged before it's even out.  Period, end of story.   To do so is just silly.   To do so based on screenshots where everyone focuses on the art style is even more silly.  And it's the goddamn STEAM FORUMS.  Where illogic, freaking out, flaming, and trolling rule all.  How anyone can spend major amounts of time in those hellholes without going batshit insane is beyond my comprehension.



And really... did it ever occur to anyone that maybe... just MAYBE... and forgive me if this is mindblowing.... the lower-polything might be, at least partially, to make it more accessible to those with very weak machines?  The more customers that are ABLE to buy your product, the more potential there is to actually make money off of it.

Ugh, I'm in a worse mood than I even thought, aren't I.


Also, Wingflier had a ton of good points; they do support this side of the argument quite a bit.   Why you would have him blocked after one damn arguement, I have no idea (and no, I don't particularly need to know).  I'm not actually going to repeat any of what he said though.  But the good points are indeed there, wether you bothered to read them or not.



Also:  Civ Revolution, since someone mentioned it.   It's simplified because it's on a goddamn console.  They don't even GET strategy games there MOST of the time.  Why WOULDNT they dumb it down?  Consoles aren't exactly known for having games of astonishing depth, difficulty, and complexity.   Such things are a rarity and most devs would rather follow the trends.

And now I'll stop here before I break something.

[Wingflier]

For the record, I have no problem with Cyborg, I was just pointing out some of the weaknesses in his argument after he had done the same for both Coppermantis and Misery. It seemed like he was being unfairly critical.

I hope I didn't come off as hostile, I was trying to be pretty fair in my critique of the argument that art style automatically equals mobile quality game, or even hints at that possibility. As I said at the beginning, my bigger concern is that it's the 6th of the series, and from my personal experience games start having diminishing returns in quality after half a dozen of the same type and series have been made. There are a small number of exceptions, of course.

Well anyway, there's no point in arguing over it anymore. Time will tell whether that prediction about the art style turns out to be true.

[Misery]

Agreed.

We'll see what happens.  It's certainly possible that the whole thing could just go to crap as a result of laziness/trends and such.  Definitely, people shouldn't pre-order the damn thing. 

Here's hoping it doesn't happen, but I'm not going to get my hopes up too much.  Too many things dumbed down for the masses these days... brain-melting graphics or not.

Though I only play the series so much anyway.  Tends to have AI issues.  Granted that's the case in a lot of strategy games.

[eRe4s3r]

I assume 2K is running this development on very little money and that's why it looks how it does. Simple 3d art is very cheap, and that's a fact

When I first saw the screenshots (no context at the time) I thought someone solo ported CIV4 to the Unity engine and just showed off some prototype images of his own models and textures, imagine my surprise when I saw them under the official CIV6 announcement spam that 2K pushed into the XCOM2 steam group... ,p

I have no fears it will become a mobile game, because that doesn't really mean anything. What I am afraid of is that, in typical 2K fashion, this is going to be a cash grab.. and this time It won't be my cash

The feature list sounds really barren for a civ game. The only thing that changes from CIV 5 seems to be that you can have support units attached to combat units. No doubt something the AI again can't handle, just like the 1 unit per tile rule. If CIV:BE is any indication 2K is running Firaxis on very low fumes and just hopes to make money SOMEHOW with as little investment as possible... that is the real sadness behind this announcement.

My point being, this seems more like a back conversion from CIV:BE and not an improvement of CIV 5 + Expansions. As if they lost the data or something ;P