Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth

[oscar]

The stricter reliance on vassals was better yeah but that's finally being redressed.

 

[Space Satan]

AS expectd the game enjoyed the fate of a Warlock: master of the Arcane and Warlock 2 - in other words "another mod sold as a full game". Let's wish it luck in oblivion.

 

[Bubbles]

Currently free to play on Steam for the weekend. This really must have bombed.

 

[Azira]

Or they're releasing a DLC next week.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

free? still too expensive.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Exoplanets DLC? That was the preorder bonus, so you can call it cut content if you like.

 

[Norfleet]

The stricter reliance on vassals was better yeah but that's finally being redressed.

Meh, the thing with the vassals is that I never got the sense that the vassals had any distinctive personality or vassally agendas, just derpiness. They weren't somehow either scheming against me/each other, they didn't display any sign of loyalty to me or any agenda, they were just derp. They all basically reacted the same way: Derpily.

 

[mastroego]

Currently free to play on Steam for the weekend. This really must have bombed.

And after they went as far as reading about Alpha Centauri on Wikipedia!
Truly an unfair market.
Lulz

 

[spectre]

Sad thing is, they will probably concede that there's no market for an Alpha Centauri game.

 

[mastroego]

Conversely, if it worked, now everyone would be making additional shitty misguided copies of AC.
Better to wait for someone sane and with more vision while these clowns retire.

 

[Gulnar]

I tried this thing for like, 6 hours when it was free. It was mediocre. Nothing more, nothing less. It was a badly reskinned civ 5, with no new mechanics. And on top of that, it was rather slow and ugly.
After those six hours, i feel kinda ripped off. I could have slept in those hours. It would have been better.

 

[Mr. Pink]

2014: "well this looks like shit, maybe the modders will fix it up to be playable."

2015: "not even mods can save this trash"

Where did all the modders go, anyways? Civ 4 used to have a really strong modding scene with tons of great mods and even complete overhauls and new games made with the civ 4 engine. Then Civ 5 comes out with full mod support, yet there's nothing but My Little Pony faction mods, Vanilla Ice music packs and mild UI improvements. I thought Steam Workshop was supposed to bring in a new age of mod support, not kill it dead.

 

[Bubbles]

Where did all the modders go, anyways?

Skyrim.

 

[tuluse]

2014: "well this looks like shit, maybe the modders will fix it up to be playable."

2015: "not even mods can save this trash"

Where did all the modders go, anyways? Civ 4 used to have a really strong modding scene with tons of great mods and even complete overhauls and new games made with the civ 4 engine. Then Civ 5 comes out with full mod support, yet there's nothing but My Little Pony faction mods, Vanilla Ice music packs and mild UI improvements. I thought Steam Workshop was supposed to bring in a new age of mod support, not kill it dead.

Civ5 doesn't have full mod support. You can't even play multiplayer with mods.

 

[J_C]

2014: "well this looks like shit, maybe the modders will fix it up to be playable."

2015: "not even mods can save this trash"

Where did all the modders go, anyways? Civ 4 used to have a really strong modding scene with tons of great mods and even complete overhauls and new games made with the civ 4 engine. Then Civ 5 comes out with full mod support, yet there's nothing but My Little Pony faction mods, Vanilla Ice music packs and mild UI improvements. I thought Steam Workshop was supposed to bring in a new age of mod support, not kill it dead.

Civ5 doesn't have full mod support. You can't even play multiplayer with mods.

It is not just CiV. With the exception of a few games (Elder Scrolls, NuFallouts, Neverwinter Nights) modding really grew weaker in the last decade. Sure, there are a few nude mods for Dragon Age, or better textures for Dark Souls, but even though we have mod tools for Divinity OS, Shadowrun, Dragon Age Origins and The Witcher, there are really no big mod projects, which add quality content. Maybe the mod tools are not as easy to use as back in the days, or gamers don't have the patience to spend time on this. Probably the latter, since if gamers don't have the time to play long, complex games, they surely won't have time to spend hundreds of hours on making quality content for games.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

Someone point out a game that was fixed by mods.

 

[Destroid]

Consoles, F2P, DLC and high fidelity graphics are all death to modding. The availability of affordable and high quality dev tools to indies also encourages people to make their own game rather than mod.

 

[Hellraiser]

I thought Steam Workshop was supposed to bring in a new age of mod support, not kill it dead.

Like with everything, if you give a man a hammer, he will use it to build a house. If you give a moron a hammer, he will hit himself with it in the head or throw it at people for his amusement. Gamers are mostly the latter, even if the guy can code or can do art, he belongs to a generation raised on video games. Which is the same problem as with game designers now. Sid Meier and his generation were pioneers, they were inspired by books, tabletop games, history and general nerdy hobbies. Current lot of gamers has only games to be inspired by and shitty derpwood movies, between watching adventure time, MLP or whatever the hell 20-somethings watch now when they're not tweeting, liking or messaging.

Also, lets face it, this game is a piece of shit, even compared to Civ V. Civ V lategame was kind of fun, needed some improvements. This game, like alpha centauri, could benefit from having access to all the civ endgame tactical tools and units sooner, by midgame. Nope, instead you have even less tools. No submarines, no ICBMs, no paratroopers. Oh, and they cut veterancy options, most of which went into one time specializations using affinity points.

You would need a proper and huge expansion pack to make it worth modding.

 

[baturinsky]

Someone point out a game that was fixed by mods.

NWN

 

[Jigawatt]

2014: "well this looks like shit, maybe the modders will fix it up to be playable."

2015: "not even mods can save this trash"

Where did all the modders go, anyways? Civ 4 used to have a really strong modding scene with tons of great mods and even complete overhauls and new games made with the civ 4 engine. Then Civ 5 comes out with full mod support, yet there's nothing but My Little Pony faction mods, Vanilla Ice music packs and mild UI improvements. I thought Steam Workshop was supposed to bring in a new age of mod support, not kill it dead.

Civ5 doesn't have full mod support. You can't even play multiplayer with mods.

It is not just CiV. With the exception of a few games (Elder Scrolls, NuFallouts, Neverwinter Nights) modding really grew weaker in the last decade. Sure, there are a few nude mods for Dragon Age, or better textures for Dark Souls, but even though we have mod tools for Divinity OS, Shadowrun, Dragon Age Origins and The Witcher, there are really no big mod projects, which add quality content. Maybe the mod tools are not as easy to use as back in the days, or gamers don't have the patience to spend time on this. Probably the latter, since if gamers don't have the time to play long, complex games, they surely won't have time to spend hundreds of hours on making quality content for games.

It's certainly not a question of patience or time, nerds are still willing to (and still do) sink a huge amount of time tinkering with games they like. Thing is, to follow through on a mod you have to a) really really like a game and b) have the technical ability to realise your vision (ie, not be an idiot). As games have begun to target the 'wider casual audience' this is an ever diverging Venn diagram

 

[Bubbles]

Someone point out a game that was fixed by mods.

Anachronox.

 

[cvv]

Someone point out a game that was fixed by mods.

Anachronox.

nuXCOM.

 

[DeepOcean]

Someone point out a game that was fixed by mods.

Depends of what you mean by "fixed". There are really broken or underwhelming games that were kinda fixed by mods, examples:
All Total War games before Empire Total War.
ToEE.
Arcanum.
Stalker series.
NWN 1.

And games that got a ton of new content from HD patches to overhauls, examples:
Free Space 2
Baldur's Gate 2
Civ IV
Thief 1 and 2.

 

[Mr. Pink]

Ok then.

Time warp to 2013, you're Sid and you have total authority. How do you redesign this game so it's not crap?

1. Make the scale of the game larger. Shrink all the hexes down to half their original size, and allow terrain features and cities to span multiple tiles. Cities grow into adjacent tiles as population increases, increasing coins and hammers, but decreasing food availability. Units now move four tiles instead of two, so it doesn't feel so goddamn tedious. More open space allows for tactics other than "bottleneck with a tanky unit and kill everything with artillery" which has always been the most effective strategy in this one-unit-per-tile system. Urban combat is now a thing, as sectors of a city can be held and lost.

2. Make factions more interesting and not politically correct stereotypes of vast geographic regions with negligible bonuses. Bring back SMAC factions, based on ideology, not race. Bring back Unique Units and buildings and offer powerful bonuses AND DRAWBACKS.

3. More interesting aliens, more cool science like mindworms, proton bombs and nanomachine floods and floating cities from call to power 2.

4. Get rid of fucking quests. They don't belong in a civ game.

 

[Spectacle]

5.　Pick yourself an avatar that isn't already in use by someone else, it's the right thing to do and avoids confusion.