No plans for Civ 6 to show up on consoles

[Mira Yurizaki]

https://mic.com/articles/158227/is-civ-6-coming-to-xbox-one-and-playstation-4-ps4-not-likely-and-heres-why#.RldjjgHsH

 

While the announcement is probably not news, the article tries to explain why: the interface is too complicated for consoles

 

I call BS, for a few reasons:

• Square Enix managed to make an MMO with a good amount of depth in its game mechanics to work with a controller. In fact, I think it makes more sense at times.
• What's complicated about the UI that makes it "too hard" for controllers? The choices you make are menu based, which for smaller menus can be mapped into hot keys.
  • On that note, even RTS games with their menus have hot keys for increasing the command throughput.
• Civ is a turned based game, so it's not like the issues of needing to quickly select units and make snap decisions is necessary here which keeps RTS games off consoles.

I'd buy the excuse the game is too hard on CPUs to complete a turn in a reasonable amount of time more so than a "too complicated an interface."

[suchamoneypit]

Have you not played Civ before?

 

The interface is definitely too complicated, it would take forever to play a game, don't even get me started on how long it would take waiting for players to take turns in multiplayer; the amount of time it would take to do stuff with a controller compared to a keyboard and mouse is just way to big, and playing multiplayer would significantly amplify this time to times that are incredibly unreasonably.

[pwn_intended]

LOL, civ's interface is waaaaay too complicated to navigate without a mouse and keyboard. Even the steam controller with custom mappings feels janky as hell for civ.

Now when kb+m support comes to the Xbone, that will pave the way for these types of games on console, but I would imagine that the processing time would suck unless Microsoft brings their Azure cloud computing into it.....hmmmm

[Scruffy90]

Wasnt There a civ game on the console though?

[Mira Yurizaki]

Quote

The interface is definitely too complicated, it would take forever to play a game, don't even get me started on how long it would take waiting for players to take turns in multiplayer; the amount of time it would take to do stuff with a controller compared to a keyboard and mouse is just way to big.

I don't see how it's too complicated to be used with a controller.

 

Selecting units? You can map that to the bumper buttons to cycle through them. The game automatically selects units and cities that need to be tended to anyway.

Selecting what to build in a city? It's a menu interface. If you find one list too long, group it into tabs and use the bumper buttons (or left/right) to switch between them

Selecting a technology, social idoleogy, etc? That's also a menu interface.

Commanding units? Just like any other strategy game: select them, default action is to move them, select them again to bring up the command menu (or hot key it).

 

I mean, maybe if you need to micromanage every aspect of your units, but as long as things are consistent, with a controller you can probably get button presses down fast to access something. It's like how I can launch a program in my start menu by pressing Windows key, the first few letters of the program, and enter.

 

9 minutes ago, pwn_intended said:

LOL, civ's interface is waaaaay too complicated to navigate without a mouse and keyboard. Even the steam controller with custom mappings feels janky as hell for civ.

Now when kb+m support comes to the Xbone, that will pave the way for these types of games on console, but I would imagine that the processing time would suck unless Microsoft brings their Azure cloud computing into it.....hmmmm

The Steam Controller deal is trying to make a controller emulate a keyboard and mouse, which is a terrible hack.

 

EDIT: There are consoles strategy games that are just menus on menus on menus. Like any reasonably complex SRPG.

[pwn_intended]

9 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

-snip-

The way that the civ UI currently is, it would be totally unusable with a controller. I'm sure firaxis COULD create a totally new menu system for console, but then that would require them to make 2 games.

Making one "universal" UI would just alienate the long time fans of the civ series.

[Bananasplit_00]

27 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

 

• Civ is a turned based game, so it's not like the issues of needing to quickly select units and make snap decisions is necessary here which keeps RTS games off consoles.

CIV has a turn timer for multiplayer and its pretty strict sometimes, especially when set to dynamic(which it never should because its trash)

[Mira Yurizaki]

5 minutes ago, pwn_intended said:

The way that the civ UI currently is, it would be totally unusable with a controller. I'm sure firaxis COULD create a totally new menu system for console, but then that would require them to make 2 games.

Sure, because the UI was designed with a keyboard and mouse in mind. People are upset that Skyrim's UI is designed with a controller in mind. I find playing third person games on PC cumbersome because their more suitable for the finer movements an analog stick can provide over eight directions of the WASD. Ditto with racing games.

 

But would that require them to make two games? No. A properly designed program will segregate the front end such that you can plop any front end and the program wouldn't notice. I've made little tools such that it doesn't matter if you use a CLI or a GUI, the business logic does what it's supposed to and it requires no rework to use one interface or the other.

[Zyndo]

used to play roller coaster tycoon on the Xbox..... that game is entirely menus and clicking. worked just fine. wouldn't have been too hard to find a creative way to bind some keys and make it work.

[dizmo]

There's a reason they made a game specifically for consoles. It's too complicated to port over the existing one to consoles.

Clearly it didn't have that strong of a following when the did release it, so why bother making another?

[Mira Yurizaki]

Maybe it would be better to show an example of what can be done to make the interface more controller friendly:

 

 

Let's go from top to bottom, left to right:

• The "HELP" button can be shuffled in the "system" menu. Or have a hot key.
• "RETURN" is redundant.
• The city name has arrows for switching between other cities. You can map this to the bumper buttons to do the same thing.
• The "Edit" city name button can be put into something like a city options menu as another button.
• The production focus can be shuffled in a city options menu. Plus I would condense the options into a drop down menu or select then press left-right menu.
• The rest of the stuff on the right is just info. If anything you can scroll this using the right joystick if you really wanna see this.
• "Purchase" and "Change Production" can fit in a column of buttons with the "Buy a Tile" and "Return to Map" buttons.
• Queuing up builds can be managed when you go to the production menu.

Civ's interface problem, if you were to call it that, is that things are spread out in lots of places. You can rearrange them for easier navigation without making things confusing.

 

The thing with Civ though is it throws out a ton of information, a lot of which I don't care about. I don't care about the right pane (late game especially), I already know what most of the units do, etc. I mean, maybe this info is useful for tourney level players, but I don't play Civ with that level of depth.