Games being dumbed down?

I believe that everyone around accepts the fact that games in general have been more and more simplified. But the question is why? Are they trying to kill off PC gaming and exclusive pc titles, and in the future all PC games are going to be cheap console ports?

Famous examples are:

Rainbow six series. The first one makes you do your own planning, rogue spear and raven shield plans for you (not necessarily bad for those that don't have time), but lockdown and vegas are all cheap console ports.

Sim city got more and more complexed up to 4, but societies is so simple.

Anno series, 1503 was the most complexed one, 1701 is simpler, 1404 is even more simple.

Dawn of warII you can't even build bases anymore.

Oblivion simplified the RPG elements of Morrowind, and is again designed for Xbox, from interface to the general game mechanics.

Civilization 4 is also simpler and has less game mechanics than CivIII. Firaxis explains by making the game "less tedious" or "more fast paced" or something like that.

First person shooters have less and less guns available, BF2142 has less weapons/veichles than BF2, Rainbow six vegas has less weapons than raven shield, etc...

There are tons of more examples.

However, there are exceptions, for example the TotalWar series is still feature rich, but that's the exception not the rule.

Gaming has become mainstream more than ever, simple is where the money is.

So the question is why did they do it that complicated in the first place? Sim city 4 was such a good game, and Societies is so simple that you get bored of it immediately. Most FPS games are nothing but jump and shoot a lot, like Crysis, Farcry etc... The old style games like Rainbow six and operation flashpoint have all been simplified in their sequels.

There are ofcourse exceptions, like Galactic civilizations, but those are the exception not the rule. And who knows if Galactic Civilizations III is going to be dumbed down just like every other game series? Because Galactic Civilizations II is already many years old, and Stardock says that the next one won't come for many years, they have to finish their fantasy game first. So anything can happen.

How is Civ IV simpler than Civ III? Because you don't need to attack with a stack of 50 tanks in one turn? Because they actually made treaties meaningful by enforcing them for a few turns?

Also, the AI in Civ IV is decent without being given huge bonuses.

I miss the old Rainbow Six games so much. I didn't even play the missions, just spent 30+ minutes planning a perfect assualt, and let the AI do the grunt work. I understand that isn't everyone's idea of fun, but I always enjoyed it.

How is Civ IV simpler than Civ III? Because you don't need to attack with a stack of 50 tanks in one turn? Because they actually made treaties meaningful by enforcing them for a few turns?

SpaceMoose

It was Firaxis' own statements before launch that the game is going to be more "streamlined"and"fast paced", and they have admitted that in several pre launch interviews. Don't ask sarcastic rhetorical questions by putting words in my mouth.

Are they trying to kill off PC gaming and exclusive pc titles, and in the future all PC games are going to be cheap console ports?

ZJI

Yes.

They are dumbing them down because simplified games sell on consoles. Unfortunately lately some PC gamers too have been buying this crap, like Quantum of Solace, Wanted and Terminator Salvation etc. (really guys..? get some standards)

Casual and mainstream crap is the future, unless we see another video game crash then unfortunately it's gonna stay that way. We still get a few complex games per year, mostly from East Europe and Russia, since a big percent of those countries gamers are PC gamers..

Hardcore game are still around and they mainly come from Europe and Russia...

[QUOTE="SpaceMoose"]

How is Civ IV simpler than Civ III? Because you don't need to attack with a stack of 50 tanks in one turn? Because they actually made treaties meaningful by enforcing them for a few turns?

ZJI

It was Firaxis' own statements before launch that the game is going to be more "streamlined"and"fast paced", and they have admitted that in several pre launch interviews.

Also, the game makes it clear why certain factions are happy with or mad at you unlike previous games where some of the game mechanics were very enigmatic to a noob and possibly even some veterans. "Streamlined" does not necessarily mean simpler. Really, if you want to focus on making great people or getting a cultural victory (which personally I turn off half of the time because I think it's kind of lame) or something there is even more tedious micromanagement to worry about. If you want to.

[QUOTE="HenriH-42"] We still get a few complex games per year, mostly from East Europe and Russia, since a big percent of those countries gamers are PC gamers.ZJI

Hardcore game are still around and they mainly come from Europe and Russia...

DCS Blackshark.

That game is both amazing and crazy hard core (on max realisim).

Dawn of warII you can't even build bases anymore.

ZJI

Whats wrong with Dawn of War II going towards the Warhammer 40k Tabletop? The tabletop didn't have base building. Furthermore in Warhammer 40k universe, most of combat engagements are small skirmishes, occasional big mobilization here and there and a rare massive war once in a long while.

As for reducing selection of guns, I feel not much problem with that. Most are just the same gun with different model and skin, also many players uses the same gun as the others with exception of occasional one or two players.

[QUOTE="ZJI"]

[QUOTE="SpaceMoose"]

How is Civ IV simpler than Civ III? Because you don't need to attack with a stack of 50 tanks in one turn? Because they actually made treaties meaningful by enforcing them for a few turns?

SpaceMoose

It was Firaxis' own statements before launch that the game is going to be more "streamlined"and"fast paced", and they have admitted that in several pre launch interviews.

Also, the game makes it clear why certain factions are happy with or mad at you unlike previous games where some of the game mechanics were very enigmatic to a noob and possibly even some veterans. "Streamlined" does not necessarily mean simpler. Really, if you want to focus on making great people or getting a cultural victory (which personally I turn off half of the time because I think it's kind of lame) or something there is even more tedious micromanagement to worry about. If you want to.

Whats wrong with Dawn of War II going towards the Warhammer 40k Tabletop? The tabletop didn't have base building. Furthermore in Warhammer 40k universe, most of combat engagements are small skirmishes, occasional big mobilization here and there and a rare massive war once in a long while.

Can you give some examples?ZJI

STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl & Clear Sky

Cryostasis

Necrovision

Men of War

DSC Black Shark

Elven Legacy

King's Bounty

Space Rangers 2

etc.

Also if we include North Europe we have Frictional Games with the Penumbra series and their new upcoming game.

I'm not sure if we have the same definition of "simpler" here. Taking features, elementsout out of the game, and letting you do less things in a turn, and games taking less turns to complete where you advance in ages very quickly, is simpler according to my definition.

ZJI

I'm not sure what you mean about letting you do less things in a turn either. Like I said, if you change the game speed, games can last even longer than they did in Civ III. You're not seriously complaining that they gave you the OPTION to have a faster game, just because that's the default speed, are you? I rarely play the game at normal speed. At any rate, I have to say the AI in Civ IV, while being far from amazing, is a hell of a lot better from a strategy standpoint than the AI in Civ III ever was.

Again, what features do you miss specifically? More tiers of the same kinds of units? I thought I might miss that, but in the end I really didn't.

[QUOTE="ZJI"]Can you give some examples?HenriH-42

STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl & Clear Sky

Cryostasis

Necrovision

Men of War

DSC Black Shark

Elven Legacy

King's Bounty

Space Rangers 2

etc.

Also if we include North Europe we have Frictional Games with the Penumbra series and their new upcoming game.

Interesting, many of these games got mediocre reviews on Gamespot so I didn't even look into them.

They took out features, but they also added features...especially if have the Beyond the Sword expansion. I have to say that there are not really any features I miss from Civ III, except that I don't like how they changed the cultural victory conditions to being city-based. Would you care to be more specific about what features you miss?SpaceMoose

Beyond the Sword is the second expansion, thus it is a bit unfair to say that a game requires two expansions to become somewhat rich in features. If you take the vanilla Civ4, it's skimmed of complexity.

I'm not sure what you mean about letting you do less things in a turn either. Like I said, if you change the game speed, games can last even longer than they did in Civ III. You're not seriously complaining that they gave you the OPTION to have a faster game, just because that's the default speed, are you? I rarely play the game at normal speed. At any rate, I have to say the AI in Civ IV, while being far from amazing, is a hell of a lot better from a strategy standpoint than the AI in Civ III ever was.

SpaceMoose

Better AI isn't the same thing as complexity, complexity is a part of the game mechanics, not the AI. Better AI makes better games ofcourse, but it doesn't have anything to do with complexity. Complexity means more units, more techs, more gameplay factors (such as pollution and corruption in civIII), etc... You can hate how pollution and corruption works in CivIII, but the goal should be to make them work better, not getting rid of them and replace nothing in their place. Then you just have a game with less depth and complexity.

Again, what features do you miss specifically? More tiers of the same kinds of units? I thought I might miss that, but in the end I really didn't.

SpaceMoose

I never liked any of the civ games, especially CIV4. In other games, Galactic civilizations, Alpha Centauri, etc... the game mechanics was a lot more complexed, you can even design your own units, and in Alpha centauri the super projects are much more interesting and had interesteing effects on gameplay too. I find all of Sid Meier's games to be too simple for a turn based Strategy. In galactic c civilizations Twilight of the Arnoryou actually get different tech trees for different races, not just one unique unit per race like in Civilizations.

I believe that the original DOW was intended to be something more than just a simple tabletop game, a PC version of a tabletop game need not copy every characteristic of it.

ZJI

Which I find ironic, if the original was intended to be more than a simple tabletop game (which it is not simple, I will explain later), it didn't made it far enough and landed straight into a simple RTS. Like I mentioned before, the tabletop game is not simple, the manual which can be easily thicker than the game box and amount of rules and exceptions will make the most dedicated Total War fan cry in frustration. For example, Deep Strike in tabletop can actually go wrong and land outside of the board thus considered dead and your tanks can explode and kill everyone around them. Now I call that complex, rulemakers goes out of their way to make a tabletop games with little figures seem real by thinking out ridiculous amount of "If this happens then this happens" situations. I wonder why the DoWI didn't implement them, hmmm...too complex I suppose? "Well hell with all those rules, lets just throw in a bunch of buildings and call it a day"

[QUOTE="ZJI"]

I believe that the original DOW was intended to be something more than just a simple tabletop game, a PC version of a tabletop game need not copy every characteristic of it.

CHC999

Which I find ironic, if the original was intended to be more than a simple tabletop game (which it is not simple, I will explain later), it didn't made it far enough and landed straight into a simple RTS. Like I mentioned before, the tabletop game is not simple, the manual which can be easily thicker than the game box and amount of rules and exceptions will make the most dedicated Total War fan cry in frustration. For example, Deep Strike in tabletop can actually go wrong and land outside of the board thus considered dead and your tanks can explode and kill everyone around them. Now I call that complex, rulemakers goes out of their way to make a tabletop games with little figures seem real by thinking out ridiculous amount of "If this happens then this happens" situations. I wonder why the DoWI didn't implement them, hmmm...too complex I suppose? "Well hell with all those rules, lets just throw in a bunch of buildings and call it a day"

Do a RTS game really REALLY need a base building machanic to be complex? My eyes might not be too good, but I can never read Base Building (BB) in Real Time strategy (RTS) and trust me I tried tosquinting my eyes and all those silly optical tricks . Perhaps once upon an ancient time, the BB dropped off RTBBS otherwise I'm not sure. I rather have a game that awards you for tactical strategies than well formulated, mathamatically calculated of "If you don't build this first you will have no hope of winning"

As someone already said, it comes down to the money. Let's be honest here, the majority of the population is pretty ignorant and an even larger portion is just downright stupid. Most companies aren't going to risk making a game that (heaven forbid) is hard for the average joe; thus we get boring and linear games that look amazing on the outside and have absolutely no depth or strategy. I would suggest looking into the survival horror and/or rts genres for some challenge.

The biggest crime of "dumbing down" is the Rainbow Six series. The truly made it worthless within the past game.Bumzur

I agree, I enjoyed the hell out of the originals, so much more freedom and ways to strategize IMO.

Oh and by the way, HAIL VARG VIKERNES!

Stalker Clear Sky was obviously designed with hard-core gamers in mind - in other words, this title was not designed for people who will maybe play a PC game once every few years or so.

By dumbed down, I assume you mean that the game will take you by the hand and lead you to your destination, maybe with a big arrow pointing the way overheard, or that when you die - if you die - you will be 're-spawned' at a location close by, with full health, a la Bioshock? Stalker Clear Sky is definitely not dumbed down - and at times I absolutely hate it. At times I'm on the verge of having a nervous break-down, and am truly wondering whether I'm enjoying the game, or merely tolerating it.

An example: A number of times I've barely survived a tough fire-fight, only to die five minutes later by bleeding to death from having run out of bandages. I mean, it should be enough that I have to restore my health by using medkits - but no, the developer wants to add bleeding damage to the mix, which really just compounds the difficulty in healing yourself. It's just not necessary, and more often than not it just detracts from the fun.

At times playing Clear Sky is like walking into a Fun House and advancing through the corridors - you get to a room and there's only one door, so you open it, and as soon as you do, a guy wearing a clown outfit clubs you on the head with a big mallet and then closes the door. Alright, you think, that was entertaining. So you open the door again, knowing full well what's going to happen - surprise, surprise, the guy in the clown outfit whacks you on the head again. Okay, I get it, you think - this Fun House is going to be difficult to get through.

Ya know - you can only get hit on the head so many times before you just give up.

Dumbed down can be nice sometimes. I mean, if a game is just too frustrating, I'm not going to play it. There are just too many great games on the market for me to be sitting in front of my PC developing high blood pressure because I'm being forced to re-play the same damned sequence over and over again.

I would suggest looking into the survival horror and/or rts genres for some challenge.

VVatson

I just played Headfirst's Call of Cthulhu. Pretty well designed game, much better than most of the first person games of today.

Also, you are right about today's game focusing all the money on eyecandy, games like UTIII and Crysis are like that, they look nice, but once you play it it gets old FAST.

Interesting, many of these games got mediocre reviews on Gamespot so I didn't even look into them.

ZJI

Don't trust Gamespot's PC reviews. There's not a single reviewer here that is a hardcore PC gamer, most of the GS staff only like the mainstream stuff on consoles. But this is pretty much true for every single review site out there, apart from stuff like Rock Paper Shotgun and other PC-only sites.

[QUOTE="HenriH-42"]

[QUOTE="ZJI"]Can you give some examples?ZJI

STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl & Clear Sky

Cryostasis

Necrovision

Men of War

DSC Black Shark

Elven Legacy

King's Bounty

Space Rangers 2

etc.

Also if we include North Europe we have Frictional Games with the Penumbra series and their new upcoming game.

Interesting, many of these games got mediocre reviews on Gamespot so I didn't even look into them.

Least theres still starcraft 2

You simply can't address the complexities of a turn based game in real time, all RTS games are more simple in game mechanics. What I meant by "simple tabletop" was the lack of basebuilding facet of the game. In DOWII neither did they follow all of the rules of the tabletop game, but they also have taken out the buildings. The better physics and terrain effects are a result of improved technology which they inherited from COH, which is to be expected. But taking out the base building part of a game means taking out a very important strategic part of the game.

ZJI

Considering that basebuilding in the first Dawn of War was extremely unimportant, with the only thing mattering being defence placement (which is in Dawn of War II, just relegated to a role which encourages you to play the less combat-intensive Commanders, thus making the choice aspect more balanced), there was really no point in putting them in Dawn of War II.

Why bother? In the original game, all you had to do was place some buildings randomly around your base and in 2-3 minutes you could be spamming Tactical Marines equipped with all sorts of guns at the other guy who'd then be spamming you with Necron Warriors. In Dawn of War II, those unnecessary and pointless 2-3 minutes of basebuilding get taken out and the viability of spam severely reduced, with improved cover elements. Overall, Dawn of War II is more tactical, but in terms of strategy, it's weaker than the first game - then again, the first game was also quite lacking in that regard, so the difference is minimal. And like I said, the only important part of basebuilding, defence construction (turrets), made it into the sequel anyway, so I don't see the problem.

I know I already replied to this post, but - and hopefully not to sound too contentious - I'll break this down in a bit more detail. Maybe I'm just really bored.

Letting you do less in a turn means that there are less things to worry about, and less commands and facets of the game that you have to address. It is not merely deciding how fast techs are researched.

ZJI

You haven't really established to me that there is less to do in a turn, other than not cleaning up pollution or not having to shuffle around 200 of the same unit every turn in the end game.

Better AI isn't the same thing as complexity, complexity is a part of the game mechanics, not the AI. Better AI makes better games ofcourse, but it doesn't have anything to do with complexity. Complexity means more units, more techs, more gameplay factors (such as pollution and corruption in civIII), etc... You can hate how pollution and corruption works in CivIII, but the goal should be to make them work better, not getting rid of them and replace nothing in their place. Then you just have a game with less depth and complexity.

ZJI

They did put stuff in its place. In fact, pollution is still there. Its effect is now to reduce food and thus growth if it goes over the health number, although the effect on easy difficulty settings is probably negligible. It still reduces production, just in a more roundabout way, and you can't resolve it just by sending out a stack of workers and scrubbing it away, which actually makes it more meaningful.

Corruption, that was a joke. Now having too many cities costs more money. Building new cities just to have them do nothing at all, that was always dumb. Again, you are taking something that is actually basically a non-choice and painting it as a positive. Do you want to build a city that doesn't really do anything (except maybe under Communism IIRC)? Almost never (unless you need a city at a choke point or something) so how does that really make the game better? You realize there's a reason they changed this stuff, right? Because most people though it was stupid.

... And yes, I wanted more teirs of the same kind of units, making the units "level up" turns the game into an RPG, that's not what I look for in a turn based strategy game.

ZJI

Okay, those two things don't really have much to do with each other (leveling up and having more tiers of units). I really don't need to "discover" a unit type just to have something slightly better than it 5 turns later every time. Maybe that's hyperbole, but not by much. As far as the leveling up goes, whatever. I'm pretty neutral about it, but it does add more choices, and also makes unit-related buildings like barracks and drydocks a little bit more interesting.

I never liked any of the civ games, especially CIV4.

ZJI

Okay, great, so you want the new one to be more like an older game you didn't really like to begin with. :roll:

In other games, Galactic civilizations, Alpha Centauri, etc... the game mechanics was a lot more complexed,

ZJI

Gal Civ is definitely not more complex. In fact, it's far more straightforward as I see it. Anyway...

you can even design your own units, and in Alpha centauri the super projects are much more interesting and had interesteing effects on gameplay too.

ZJI

..."interesting" or "broken." I'm looking at you, hunter-seeker algorithm.

I find all of Sid Meier's games to be too simple for a turn based Strategy.

ZJI

Yes, none of Sid Meier's games are as complex as Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Are you joking or what? If you're going to point out that he didn't really directly create SMAC, then I'll retort that he didn't directly create Civ IV either. Either way, it's more than a little obvious that SMAC is 75% Civ clone with a sci-fi setting.

In galactic c civilizations Twilight of the Arnoryou actually get different tech trees for different races, not just one unique unit per race like in Civilizations.

ZJI

So now all of a sudden expansion packs are relevant. :roll: I don't really think the different tech trees make that big of a difference for the most part anyway.

[QUOTE="ZJI"]

Letting you do less in a turn means that there are less things to worry about, and less commands and facets of the game that you have to address. It is not merely deciding how fast techs are researched.

SpaceMoose

You haven't really established to me that there is less to do in a turn, other than not cleaning up pollution or not having to shuffle around 200 of the same unit every turn in the end game.

Corruption, that was a joke. Now having too many cities costs more money. Building new cities just to have them do nothing at all, that was always dumb. Again, you are taking something that is actually basically a non-choice and painting it as a positive. Do you want to build a city that doesn't really do anything (except maybe under Communism IIRC)? Almost never (unless you need a city at a choke point or something) so how does that really make the game better? You realize there's a reason they changed this stuff, right? Because most people though it was stupid.

spacemoose

[QUOTE="ZJI"]I never liked any of the civ games, especially CIV4.

spacemoose

Okay, great, so you want the new one to be more like an older game you didn't really like to begin with. :roll:

That doesn't even make sense, I said I dislike Civilization IV the most. Especially if your expectations are according to the year of release, that is games released later should be better as technology/experience improves.

[QUOTE="ZJI"]

I find all of Sid Meier's games to be too simple for a turn based Strategy.

spacemoose

Yes, none of Sid Meier's games are as complex as Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Are you joking or what? If you're going to point out that he didn't really directly create SMAC, then I'll retort that he didn't directly create Civ IV either. Either way, it's more than a little obvious that SMAC is 75% Civ clone with a sci-fi setting.

Alpha Centauri was Brian Ryenold's idea, for the games where Sid was the core designer, like Gettysburg, Civilizations, they are all much simpler in game mechanics.

[QUOTE="ZJI"]

In galactic c civilizations Twilight of the Arnoryou actually get different tech trees for different races, not just one unique unit per race like in Civilizations.

spacemoose

So now all of a sudden expansion packs are relevant. :roll:

You keep writing insluts and cliches without context, it's hard to write a reply when you don't make any descriptive statements.

Unfortunatelly they do dumb down some games (doesnt mean they ty to kill pc gaming though just make their games appeal to more people) but fortunatelly hardcore games are still around. Good examples are eastern european games that others said like Stalker,cryostasis,necrovision and even western developers are making some hardcore games with an excellent recent example sins of solar empires

Paradox hasn't gone the dumb down route...It just that for mass appeal the larger companies go for what sells the most...Simple seems to be it but you can always find new games with complexity...Think of Dominions 3...300 page manual..:D

Alpha Centauri was Brian Ryenold's idea, for the games where Sid was the core designer, like Gettysburg, Civilizations, they are all much simpler in game mechanics.

ZJI

I don't know what you call "established", if you want a mathematical proof then there isn't one.

ZJI

You keep saying there is less to do in a turn, but I want some examples other than the things I mentioned, and thus far I haven't really seen any. Less to do how?

Corruption, that was a joke. Now having too many cities costs more money. Building new cities just to have them do nothing at all, that was always dumb. Again, you are taking something that is actually basically a non-choice and painting it as a positive. Do you want to build a city that doesn't really do anything (except maybe under Communism IIRC)? Almost never (unless you need a city at a choke point or something) so how does that really make the game better? You realize there's a reason they changed this stuff, right? Because most people though it was stupid.

spacemoose

I said to fix the way they work, not put the exact same thing back again. ZJI

They did fix it. They made it deduct money from your overall economy instead, which is why rush building towns too fast can really screw your economy. Boom, fixed.

That doesn't even make sense, I said I dislike Civilization IV the most. Especially if your expectations are according to the year of release, that is games released later should be better as technology/experience improves.

ZJI

I don't understand why you even bought the new one if you never liked the series in the first place, which is what you said: "I never liked any of the civ games, especially CIV4." So you played the new one anyway for whatever reason and thought it was worse. Fine, if you don't like the game, whatever. I'm not going to try to convince you to like it. That's just pointless and I don't really care what games you prefer playing. That doesn't mean it is "dumbed down" from the previous ones. I mean, did you keep playing it even though you don't like the series? How are you even that familiar with all of the gameplay mechanics if you've barely even played them...or do you always play games that you don't like to the point where you understand them thoroughly? Anyway, according to the overwhelming majority of Civ players it is better,in a lot of ways.

So now all of a sudden expansion packs are relevant. :roll: spacemoose

Again, that doesn't even make sense, you just wrote a sarcastic cliche without context. I said that Civilization IV is too simple, and after two expansions, it finally gotten some decent depth added to it.

ZJI

Why do you even keep playing this game that you claim not to like to the point where you actually get the expansions? You're not just another pirate whining about the games that they obtain illegitimately in the first place, are you?

GalacticCivilizations II was very rich in the first place.

ZJI

Again I fully disagree. I mean, it's rich, but I wouldn't say it's more rich than Civ IV. There are various reasons for this, such as not actually getting to choose where bases are located, not that it would matter much anyway since, with it being space, there is no terrain. There are not really specialized combat units to the extent there are in other strategy games. You have different weapons (and I already gave my view on that), but you don't have, say, air units and grounds units and sea units, for obvious reasons. On another note, the economic model is just blatantly illogical and broken with the way that increasing spending on production decreases it on labs, even if you have the money to support both.*

I never said that expansion packs are not "relevant', what ever what you intend that to mean. Twilight of the Arnor should be compared to Beyond the sword, as they are both second expansions to their respective games, and Twilight of the Arnor is much richer in content than Beyond the sword.

You keep writing insluts and cliches without context, it's hard to write a reply when you don't make any descriptive statements.

ZJI

Well, you said something to the effect that it shouldn't have taken two expansions (in your opinion) for Civ IV to acquire depth, but then you basically praised Galactic Civ 2's depth based on them making the races significantly different in their second expansion. (I don't really think the tech trees make that much of a difference so much as the super-abilities, personally, which is at least partially because you can trade for a lot of the techs, which you would be doing anyway, exclusive or not.) And I'll be the first to say that the first expansion to Civ IV was crap, which is why I never bought it. This is all getting way off of the topic at hand anyway, which is whether games are truly getting "dumbed down" or not.

*Side rant on Gal Civ 2 economy, just to clarify what I meant about it:

Say you have 8 squares. You could have 8 factories and have them operate at 100%. You could have 8 labs and have them operate at 100%, but if you have 4 factories and 4 labs having half of your buidlings operate at 100% means the others do nothing. That's just stupid. I honestly do not know what on Earth they were thinking. It might not even be so bad if you could adjust the rates per planet and thus specialize, but no, it's across all of your planets, and since you can use the resource focus to shift one to the other anyway, it makes it even more difficult to comprehend why they did this. Even though I like Gal Civ 2, there are so many things that bug me about it , but I don't even want to start arguing about a different game, so I'll leave it at that.

I think there is a difference between "dumbed down " (I hate that) and being simplified. Part of the problem is that it has become a lot easier to make games so they can get mas produced as fast as bad movies.

[QUOTE="ZJI"]

I don't know what you call "established", if you want a mathematical proof then there isn't one.

SpaceMoose

You keep saying there is less to do in a turn, but I want some examples other than the things I mentioned, and thus far I haven't really seen any. Less to do how?

Corruption, that was a joke. Now having too many cities costs more money. Building new cities just to have them do nothing at all, that was always dumb. Again, you are taking something that is actually basically a non-choice and painting it as a positive. Do you want to build a city that doesn't really do anything (except maybe under Communism IIRC)? Almost never (unless you need a city at a choke point or something) so how does that really make the game better? You realize there's a reason they changed this stuff, right? Because most people though it was stupid.

spacemoose

I said to fix the way they work, not put the exact same thing back again. ZJI

They did fix it. They made it deduct money from your overall economy instead, which is why rush building towns too fast can really screw your economy. Boom, fixed.

That doesn't even make sense, I said I dislike Civilization IV the most. Especially if your expectations are according to the year of release, that is games released later should be better as technology/experience improves.

ZJI

I don't understand why you even bought the new one if you never liked the series in the first place, which is what you said: "I never liked any of the civ games, especially CIV4." So you played the new one anyway for whatever reason and thought it was worse. Fine, if you don't like the game, whatever. I'm not going to try to convince you to like it. That's just pointless and I don't really care what games you prefer playing. That doesn't mean it is "dumbed down" from the previous ones. I mean, did you keep playing it even though you don't like the series? How are you even that familiar with all of the gameplay mechanics if you've barely even played them...or do you always play games that you don't like to the point where you understand them thoroughly? Anyway, according to the overwhelming majority of Civ players it is better,in a lot of ways.

So now all of a sudden expansion packs are relevant. :roll: spacemoose

Again, that doesn't even make sense, you just wrote a sarcastic cliche without context. I said that Civilization IV is too simple, and after two expansions, it finally gotten some decent depth added to it.

ZJI

Why do you even keep playing this game that you claim not to like to the point where you actually get the expansions? You're not just another pirate whining about the games that they obtain illegitimately in the first place, are you?

GalacticCivilizations II was very rich in the first place.

ZJI

Again I fully disagree. I mean, it's rich, but I wouldn't say it's more rich than Civ IV. There are various reasons for this, such as not actually getting to choose where bases are located, not that it would matter much anyway since, with it being space, there is no terrain. There are not really specialized combat units to the extent there are in other strategy games. You have different weapons (and I already gave my view on that), but you don't have, say, air units and grounds units and sea units, for obvious reasons. On another note, the economic model is just blatantly illogical and broken with the way that increasing spending on production decreases it on labs, even if you have the money to support both.*

I never said that expansion packs are not "relevant', what ever what you intend that to mean. Twilight of the Arnor should be compared to Beyond the sword, as they are both second expansions to their respective games, and Twilight of the Arnor is much richer in content than Beyond the sword.

You keep writing insluts and cliches without context, it's hard to write a reply when you don't make any descriptive statements.

ZJI

Well, you said something to the effect that it shouldn't have taken two expansions (in your opinion) for Civ IV to acquire depth, but then you basically praised Galactic Civ 2's depth based on them making the races significantly different in their second expansion. (I don't really think the tech trees make that much of a difference so much as the super-abilities, personally, which is at least partially because you can trade for a lot of the techs, which you would be doing anyway, exclusive or not.) And I'll be the first to say that the first expansion to Civ IV was crap, which is why I never bought it. This is all getting way off of the topic at hand anyway, which is whether games are truly getting "dumbed down" or not.