Holy S***! NO Multiplayer Until Spring! - Page 2

Ralf · September 7, 2001, 14:40

Quote:

Originally posted by tniem
I don't want to have to buy a ton of addons just to play the game that I should have originally gotten.

Well, its not exactly "a ton of addons" we talking about, is it? Just one reduced price expansion-pack, available a couple of months later. And it will certainly contain a whole lot more then just added multiplayer-support.

By the way: What about MP-related patches, as a consequence of rushed development?

Quote:

But I agree with Snapcase that I am very skeptical about these reports.

Being skeptical about non-official news is always wise. Its not that I have anything against MP-support from the very start. Why should I? IF they manage to add reliable MP-support before christmas-01, then both thumbs up.

It just that IF they have trouble with development-schedule, then they shouldnt delay the whole game until spring-02 (and by that miss the christmas-sales), just because of that MP-support. Remember that, the more they put into "MP before christmas", the less they can put into "SP before christmas" (and vice versa). They have after all, a limited staff over at Firaxis.

Finally, nobody plays Civ-3 MP very good anyway, just 1-2 weeks after the release. Why not put the MP-delay (IF really true) into good use? Play against the AI - learn the game inside out. Learn all the tricks, get familiar with game-tweaking editors.

TCO · September 7, 2001, 14:42

I TOLD YOU SO!!!

P.s. Even if you wait until March, you will probably have to buy both the original plus the addon.

SITS · September 7, 2001, 14:49

I wonder if the delay, if true, is down to having servers ready etc. If so then they should still be able to have PBeM/Hotseat enabled to allow people to play that way. I would be very disappointed if this is true.

TCO · September 7, 2001, 14:51

Quote:

Originally posted by Mister Pleasant
That was the whole message except Kelley Gilmore's phone and email (she's Firaxis's communication manager). Nor was it a scam to get news or a free game.

My idea is that for my philosophy class next semester, where I teach Turing, I would set up a project with four students per game, four AI controlled players. I would set up the games and tell students who they were in the game - but that's all. PBEM format. In game chat would be disabled to make it more difficult to determine who is who. Students goal would be to play the game alone until the point in the semester when we get to Turing. Then they would devise their own test to predict which civs are human controlled and which civs are computer controlled. After they turn in their papers about their tests and predictions I would say who was who. Philosophy relevant and in action instead of just on paper. Boosts enrollment in my class, I would publish both on the results of the test and in an educational journal about using the project in class.

Oh and if anyone is thinking about using this as a scam to get free games, all of the companes who have actually sent me games for evaluation DID check my credentials and shipped them to my office - so don't try it.

BTW, anyone have any suggestions on a game I could use?

1. Sounds like a fun experiment. And you have a good plan for writing it up.

2. I think with Civ3, you might have a hard time doing a 4/4 game because we may have one civ as the barbarians...like civ2. Maybe 3/4 would work.

3. You might want to just buy the games...that way there is no scam issue as a concern.

4. Why not use civ2MGE or SMAC? I think the experiment should be done with a proven game not a new one.

faded glory · September 7, 2001, 15:07

What about PBEM!? That must be in the first release. Otherwise Firaxis isnt getting one penny from me.

PBEM Confirmation anybody!?

To my knowledge it comes with the game right off the bat

Ralf · September 7, 2001, 15:08

Quote:

Originally posted by SITS
I would be very disappointed if this is true.

I dont know if its the CTP-2 experience that scares people.

Activision declared 3 months before the release, that MP-support would be "temporarily" postponed, but later the sales of CTP-2 plummeted beyond repair. They was forced to quickly abandon the whole project. Not even a second patch. MP-support that could have worked as a recompense for a lousy AI - was simply never available.

Inverse Icarus · September 7, 2001, 16:20

i will FUCHING RETURN CIV 3 AND GOTO HUNT VALLY AND SPIT ON SID MIER'S FACE FOR RELEASING A GAME LIKE THIS WITHOUT MULTIPLAYER.

tniem · September 7, 2001, 16:20

Quote:

Originally posted by GP
3. You might want to just buy the games...that way there is no scam issue as a concern.

But if he needs to install it on all of his student's computers than he needs permission. That or make it required to purchase the game to enter his class. I would love a professor to require us to buy a video game instead of a text book. It would be cheaper and as long as it was educational it would be a lot more fun.

CapTVK · September 7, 2001, 16:24

Quote:

Originally posted by GP

1. Sounds like a fun experiment. And you have a good plan for writing it up.

2. I think with Civ3, you might have a hard time doing a 4/4 game because we may have one civ as the barbarians...like civ2. Maybe 3/4 would work.

3. You might want to just buy the games...that way there is no scam issue as a concern.

4. Why not use civ2MGE or SMAC? I think the experiment should be done with a proven game not a new one.

Or why not try out FreeCiv ( www.freeciv.org ). The open source version of civ offers full multiplayer support and has decent AI (well, it's certainly agressive

) . That the source code is included will also be a big bonus. You can show bits of the code in your report.

I do suggest playing it on Linux or with an X-windows manager. The windows version is a bit sluggish in isometric view (flat view is faster).

Back to MP...

I should mention that firaxis is NOT an indie. Any decision on the future of Civ3 is in the hands of Infogrames. So there proabably isn't a thing Firaxis could do about it. Even if they wished.

Any takers on a release date for the next data disk?

Inverse Icarus · September 7, 2001, 16:26

i have no tolerance for this crap.

you honestly have no idea how pissed i am at this. it makes no sense. the AI cannot provide a challange over and over. it's just HOW games work. you find their flaws and exploit them. HUMAN OPPONENTS CAN DO SO MUCH MORE THAN AN AI. god.

i am so damn mad.

i hope this is some goddamn joke and this a$$hole gets banned from the forums.

dennis580 · September 7, 2001, 16:34

The Civ franchise has and always will be a single player game. I think Firaxis should be commended for having the courage to not waste time and resources on mulitplayer

SITS · September 7, 2001, 16:40

Quote:

dennis580
The Civ franchise has and always will be a single player game. I think Firaxis should be commended for having the courage to not waste time and resources on mulitplayer

I suspect you will find that view isn't universally held....

isaac brock · September 7, 2001, 16:41

Quote:

Originally posted by GP
2. I think with Civ3, you might have a hard time doing a 4/4 game because we may have one civ as the barbarians...like civ2. Maybe 3/4 would work.

WRONG! Firaxis has said EIGHT civs, and they aren't just dicking around and secretly mean the barbarians are a civ. Which is why they have screens for EIGHT civs in diplomcy and stuff. You don't see one picture on that screen of a slobbering barbarian tearing the meat off a skunk leg or anything. I'm always right! Everyone else is wrong! Go home!

tniem · September 7, 2001, 16:44

Quote:

Originally posted by isaac brock
WRONG! Firaxis has said EIGHT civs, and they aren't just dicking around and secretly mean the barbarians are a civ. Which is why they have screens for EIGHT civs in diplomcy and stuff. You don't see one picture on that screen of a slobbering barbarian tearing the meat off a skunk leg or anything. I'm always right! Everyone else is wrong! Go home!

Whose DL is this? And when can it be banned?

tniem · September 7, 2001, 16:46

Quote:

Originally posted by dennis580
The Civ franchise has and always will be a single player game. I think Firaxis should be commended for having the courage to not waste time and resources on mulitplayer

Except they have told us that they are planning something for MP. That means even if would be commendable to only do single player for a game they have still lied to us. And to that, I would be highly disappointed to the point I would consider not purchasing this game and would definitely ignore SM's Sim Golf.

donarumo · September 7, 2001, 16:52

Quote:

Originally posted by Wittlich

Doesn't this sound familiar:
a. First there was Civilization - then CIVNET.
b. Then there was Civilization II - Then CivII Multiplayer Gold Edition (MGE).
c. Now it looks like there will be CivIII, and aprox. 6 months later, what? CivIII Multiplayer?

Okay, now I am only %75 sure they would not charge for an update to a multiplayer addition. Maybe only %50.

tniem · September 7, 2001, 17:01

Quote:

Originally posted by Ralf
Well, its not exactly "a ton of addons" we talking about, is it? Just one reduced price expansion-pack, available a couple of months later. And it will certainly contain a whole lot more then just added multiplayer-support.

By the way: What about MP-related patches, as a consequence of rushed development?

Look Ralf, I am willing to wait until MP is ready before the game is released. I know that Christmas is big and money sells but I want a complete game. I don't want them to rush, I don't want them to have to make tons of patches. What I want is them to wait until it is done. That tells me that they care about who is buying the game enough to wait until they were finished to release the game.

Quote:

Being skeptical about non-official news is always wise.

Thanks.

Quote:

It just that IF they have trouble with development-schedule, then they shouldnt delay the whole game until spring-02 (and by that miss the christmas-sales), just because of that MP-support. Remember that, the more they put into "MP before christmas", the less they can put into "SP before christmas" (and vice versa). They have after all, a limited staff over at Firaxis.

Yes they should. They should wait until the game is finished. It will sell better. The reviewers won't critizice lack of MP which you know they will if Firaxis goes ahead with this. The game is going to get negative publicity if MP is not in box.

Now if the have some server system and that is not ready but allow us to play PBEM and direct connect and say more is coming later than I would accept that. But they have to give us something and if they don't the game is going to suffer.

Quote:

Finally, nobody plays Civ-3 MP very good anyway, just 1-2 weeks after the release. Why not put the MP-delay (IF really true) into good use? Play against the AI - learn the game inside out. Learn all the tricks, get familiar with game-tweaking editors.

Look I have said that I will not buy the game without MP but we all know that isn't going to happen. I will be one of the first to purchase the game and start looking for bugs and such. But if this is true, than it will have angered me to no end to have Firaxis lie to us about MP and then release a non-complete game. So I will say it again I don't believe the rumors, but if they are true Firaxis will be making the biggest mistake of all time.

Inverse Icarus · September 7, 2001, 17:02

RALLY THE TROOPS!

MARKOS: USE YOUR POWERS TO MAKE SOMEONE FROM FIRAXIS ANSWER THIS.

ANYONE NEAR HUNT VALLEY: FORM A PROTEST OUTSIDE THE FIRAXIS BUILDING UNTIL WE GET AN ANSWER.

EVERYONE ELSE: SPAM THE CIV TEAM UNTIL WE GET A RESPONSE.

lockstep · September 7, 2001, 17:24

UberKrux, perhaps you should specify your signature ...

September 7, 2001, 17:53

Quote:

i hope this is some goddamn joke and this a$$hole gets banned from the forums.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Quote:

MARKOS: USE YOUR POWERS TO MAKE SOMEONE FROM FIRAXIS ANSWER THIS.

I probably should not get bent out of shape for being called a liar on the internet (see Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back for why one should remain calm as well as inappropriate ways to cope). So I forwarded a copy of the email Firaxis sent me to Markos and Dan. Don't believe me? Ask them about it.

As for I why I requested evaluation copies of games:

(1) I didn't want to spend my meager stipend on a bunch of video games as opposed to food and rent. I haven't decided which game to use yet for the project but I need something that might reasonably fool a human player.
(2) Publishers send us (unsolicited I might add) free texts and "properly academic" software all the time for evaluation. I've decided to spice up a course with "non-academic" software.
(3) Company sends me free copy so that 40 of my students buy copies at the campus bookstore. If my project is sucessful, other instructors may adopt a given game for their class, game may also get a reputation as educational - get it? Its good business for them. Same reason why publishers send me stuff all the time without my asking for it.
(4) Since it won't fill my needs until may, I'll buy it like everyone else and decide if I want to use it for next year. If Multiplayer costs extra, I'll ask Firaxis for an instructor's copy but only if I actually adopt their game.

Steve Clark · September 7, 2001, 17:57

UberKruX: Your immaturity is showing again. Please consider things in life in a proper perspective and priority.

RobC · September 7, 2001, 18:13

Quote:

Originally posted by Mister Pleasant
My idea is that for my philosophy class next semester, where I teach Turing, I would set up a project with four students per game, four AI controlled players. I would set up the games and tell students who they were in the game - but that's all. PBEM format. In game chat would be disabled to make it more difficult to determine who is who. Students goal would be to play the game alone until the point in the semester when we get to Turing. Then they would devise their own test to predict which civs are human controlled and which civs are computer controlled. After they turn in their papers about their tests and predictions I would say who was who.

Are you giving students any incentive to not give away that they are a human player? It seems to me that if I wanted to, there are lots of in-game and out-of-game ways I could pass on this information. For example, in-game: changing city names to 'Im_a_real_person' or writing letters in roads/irrigated tiles, etc. Out-of-game: 'yeah, I'm playing the Babylonians and just recently took Berlin from the Germans with a half-dozen knights'...
Of course, if they have an incentive to hide the fact that they are human (e.g. only the top 25% most accurate guessers get an A in the class), then it could get interesting...you would have people observing the way the computer plays to try and make their play more AI-like.

korn469 · September 7, 2001, 18:15

well first i will wait for confirmation before i actually believe this, but i do say that it is within the realm of possibility and if it does happen i know why

it wont be because they want to perfectly balance MP, instead it is because they HAVE to release civ3 by christmas to meet their contractual obligations to infogrames

the quickest way to do that will be to focus on the single player portion of the game, because while civ3 does have a strong multiplayer following, single player is the more important component, hopefully it will be a free patch, but sometime in May (about seven months after civ3 comes out) makes it sound more like an expansion pack than a patch...if MP just needed a little bit of extra programming or play balancing it wouldn't take seven months to do that...so that means it will cost anywhere from 19.99-34.99 here in the US for the expnaion which will most likely have two features that the players should have gotten anyways, those features being multiplayer, and the ability to play with a larger number of civs

i could also see the scenario editor shipping slighty after the game in the form of a patch

civ3 is now firmly in the hands of investors in infogrames, daytraders, financial institutions, and others decide how good civ3 will be, and not Sid...civ3 is a profit vehicle, and apparently it is better to half-a$$ the job and get it out by christmas than to do the job right and maybe release the entire thing till march, however i'd like to point out that The Sims is one of the five highest selling games ever and it came out in febuary

what makes us so sure that the rest of the game will be the highly polished excellently balanced game we hope it will be if they don't even have the time to put in MP? SMAC had MP, and i'd like to remind everyone that civ3 came from the same engine as SMAC (though it is highly modified)...they didn't have time to conduct an open beta, which Jeff Morris said he'd like to do, but he said there wasn't time for it...civ3 has already been pushed back a little bit (from 10/16 to 10/30) so they have encounted some behind the scene problems

i want civ3 as soon as possible, but i want civ3 to be well done, i'd rather wait than see it come out with lots of problems...firaxis said that civ3 will be the best civ experiance ever, i find that hard to believe if civ3 doesn't have MP...if infogrames and firaxis charges the fans for a expansion that adds something that should have been in the game then that will anger the fans, plus make civ3 look expensive compared to other games and will cut down on its fan base, just because Sid's name is on it doesn't mean that the game will be a huge seller, SMAC and SMG did well but they certianly didn't dominate the charts like AoK or The Sims or Diablo2...people want high quality games at a reasonable price, i don't want to have to buy civ3 $49.99, then buy civnet3 19.99, then buy civ3 Xpak 29.99...i would certainly buy civ3 and and civ3 Xpak, but since i don't really have time for multiplayer i WOULD NOT buy a disk that only adds in civ3 MP compatibility

we are civ fans here...if we aren't going to buy the game then who is?

Robert Plomp · September 7, 2001, 18:41

I have to admit that I *will* buy the game without MP,
I will buy the mp expansion and I will buy the usual expansion.

Sometimes I look at the games I've bought so far.
Then I read:
Civilization
Civilization (II)
Civilization (II MPG)
Civilization (II ToT)
Civilization (CtP)
Civilization (CtP II)
Civilization (SMAC)

$350 for about more or less the same game.
I'm a maniac. I don't care about any computer game, but I do care about civ.
I'm checking apolyton 10 times a day.
I'm sure there are much maniacs like me. Pherhaps Infrogames made the easy count:

- we release a complete game, 1 million people will buy it for $40
- we release the game in 4 parts, 0,4 million people will buy them all for $150

1000.000 x 40 = $40.000.000
400.000 x 150 = $60.000.000

in fact it's just all my fault.

Inverse Icarus · September 7, 2001, 18:43

the cooperate world wins another i suppose.

Inverse Icarus · September 7, 2001, 18:45

Quote:

Originally posted by Mister Pleasant
Confirmed! I asked Firaxis about using Civ3 for my class next semester to participate in a Turing test and they wrote back:

Civ III is set to release in October, but the multiplayer component won't
release until some time next spring (May-ish), which will be too late for
your class this year. I could send it to you for possible use next year once
it's released.

perhaps it IS going to be free?

ancient · September 7, 2001, 19:10

im kind of happy because i didnt like civ2 multiplayer, maybe they can make it good,,,

anyways id like to perfect the new elements before i start playing against you all..

dainbramaged13 · September 7, 2001, 19:16

First of all, I agree with whoever said that nobody shoudl play multiplayer at least until they have beat the ai a few times, so maybe a multiplayer delay is a good thing

tniem · September 7, 2001, 19:22

Quote:

Originally posted by korn469
civ3 is now firmly in the hands of investors in infogrames, daytraders, financial institutions, and others decide how good civ3 will be, and not Sid...civ3 is a profit vehicle, and apparently it is better to half-a$$ the job and get it out by christmas than to do the job right and maybe release the entire thing till march, however i'd like to point out that The Sims is one of the five highest selling games ever and it came out in febuary

Diablo 2 and StarCraft were also released in the spring when the missed Christmas releases. WarCraft III is going to do the same. But they were all given game of the year awards and were the top sellers of the year and no doubt WarCraft III will do the same. It actually makes more financial sense in my opinion to release in the spring when there are less games coming out. This fall you are going to see big strategy games like Empire Earth coming out as well as Simsville (I believe) and the release of the XBox and Gamecube. Sure Christmas is big that is some big compettion. Then you ride your top spot for months generating more sales. By Christmas you release an expansion and now you have two Christmas hits. It has worked for any company that has done so and been quite successful.

Alas, I know it is not going to happen.

I also agree with most of what you said about making Civ the best experience ever and that is hard without MP. How long before I beat Deity and say no MP, I guess I will move on? It will be the end of a chapter of my life.

Quote:

we are civ fans here...if we aren't going to buy the game then who is?

It'll sell but with MP on the box, it will be lower than they hoped.

Bleyn · September 7, 2001, 20:09

YAWN! SHRUG! SNORE!

No, MP support until next year? C'est la vie. Don't phase me in the least. I'll still buy Civ3 at some point. Probably not immediately. My comp is a little slow, and I don't want to play on my wife's laptop. Ugh.

When I buy a game, the presence or lack of MP has nothing to do with it. I buy and play games based solely on their single player value. If they are not good single player games, I'm not going to play them. If the game is multiplayer only, I'm not going to buy it. It would just be a waste of money for me.

Why? Because there are only a few people in this world I would want to play computer games against multiplayer, all of them close friends. And even then, we aren't likely to play online that often with as different as our various scheduales are. And when we get together RL, we are much more likely to pull out a deck of cards and play pinochle than to fire up a vido game.