this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2025
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Oh man I know were not really in too much disagreement here but that false equivalence argument grinds me a bit.
First off were comparing franchise sequels, not tangentially related games of a genre. Civ 4 being like civ 5 being like civ 6 has less to do with being of the 4x genre and more to do with being a direct fucking sequel with an already established gameplay identity that can't suddenly pivot into being more like endless space 2 or stellaris without pissing off preexisting fans of already existing core mechanics.
Looking at gameplay between various modern civs is almost indistinguishable to my eyes. So what were the big gameplay changes besides remixing tech trees and unit production values?
Finally Since you mentioned DOOM, that's a good franchise to compare what taking chances with actual gameplay change looks like. Take a look at doom1/2, to doom 3, to 2016, to eternal. Doom 3 tried to switch up the genre into more atmospheric horror, doom 2016 completely redefined modern arena shooters for the next decade with its brutal swift movement based combat. Eternal somehow refined and turbocharged that experience (the new mideval one is looking kind of mid though tbh). With doom you can immediately see actual improvement in most areas of gameplay, or in the case of 3 just a completely out of left field experiment to switch things up. Civ 4,5,6,7? Idk man it all looks samey, but I'm interested to hear in what ways they aren't.
Actually finally, marvel rivals is a third person action character game, its not even an FPS man come on now.
Yeah that's fair. I didn't feel like writing a book so I was being a bit bellicose with my comparisons.
I'm not a Civ stan, so I'm not dying on this hill, but despite the core gameplay being similar across all of the games each game adds new features that change the gameplay loop. Leaders bonuses, wonders, the way Ages function mechanically, how diplomacy is handled, exploration, etc all get modified and tweaked with each major release. It does seem samey, but the net result is that you're doing different things while using a familiar system.
I guess a better comparison would be to something like Dungeons and Dragons. In the end you're sitting at a table, talking and rolling dice. Trying to explain the differences between 3.5 and 5th Edition to a person who doesn't play seems like you're splitting hairs ("oh, so you just roll two dice instead of adding -5?, that's basically the same thing"), but the updates are more aimed at refining the experience for existing players while also making enough changes to keep the gameplay experience fresh.
If you want a more in-depth explaination, PotatoMcWhiskey on YT (the big Civ content creator) has two reviews on Civ 7 where he talks about the changes between Civ 6 and Civ 7 from the perspective to a player (one review is focusing on positive things and the other on negative things (largely UI related)): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLm8D6tN6GA