Firaxis BUMMER!

KriFos · September 9, 2001, 14:44

First when Civilization III was announced, there was no specific release date, but "somewhere early 2002"... Civilization III is a game, and the game includes singleplayer AND MULTIPLAYER.

What before looked like an awesome game that was well worth waiting for, because of the work done, the quality of it, and knowing that it would be done 110% before it released, now more looks like a 80% finished game, that is being rushed out as fast as possible just to get the $$$ quicker...

I DOUBT that anyone would NOT buy the game if they had to wait until the multiplayer part was finished, I doubt it very much... They would only have managed to build up a larger crowd of interested potential buyers - satisfied buyers - that knew that the game they bought were a FULL VERSION of the game... Look what happened to Black & White, look what happened to Anarchy Online... Games that was released before they were 100% done... And there is more...

Alpha Centauri was a game with, well, 3 large patches if I am correct (v2.0, v3.0, v4.0)... There were lots of discussion about them, remembering tons of post at the "official" AC forums... I then reffered to Diablo II as a game that did lots of work pre-release to clear out all bugs before they released it... They sure did, but now we are up to 9 patches there as well (including expansion), and they even sent out the first patch - i think it was a day BEFORE release - not 100% sure...

What this tells me is that a game today cant be made bug-free... They are very complex compared to games like (well Civilization I for one)...

So, fine, it is much easier now for most gamers to get hands of a patch than before, so what if they fix some minor bugs after release, as long as the game is well playable... This sentence could have been taken from a Blizzard worker, but is made up entirely by myself: "Sure, there were still some bugs in Diablo II, but at least we included all the features that made the game what it is".

Give us the game, Firaxis... Don't push your release just to give us a part of it.

Kristian Foshaug,
webmaster at Civilization Nation

Ralf · September 9, 2001, 14:57

Quote:

Originally posted by KriFos
What before looked like an awesome game that was well worth waiting for, because of the work done, the quality of it, and knowing that it would be done 110% before it released, now more looks like a 80% finished game, that is being rushed out as fast as possible just to get the $$$ quicker...

The only thing that works 110% at the moment is your imaginations of Firaxis intentions.

Now calm down a bit, and read my reply to Steve Clark and Korn469 at Civ3 MP: Here are your choices.... Read it carefully & read it twice. I really think it make sense.

Gramphos · September 9, 2001, 15:01

You can't be more true.

I don't think that anyone that has planned to buy the game won't buy it if it is delayed. Maybe they will get some fewer people that buy it on impulse before Christmas then in spring, but it is the current players that are the biggest group of target, and they want a complete game.

lockstep · September 9, 2001, 15:32

Quote:

Originally posted by Gramphos
but it is the current players that are the biggest group of target

I don´t think so. I view Civ3 as an attempt to revive the TBS-genre that has, IIRC, produced no major hits in the last two years. Firaxis is going for a new audience as well as for the current players.

Too bad that at the same time Infrogrames is going for the Christmas sales.

Gramphos · September 9, 2001, 15:39

Quote:

Originally posted by lockstep
I don´t think so. I view Civ3 as an attempt to revive the TBS-genre that has, IIRC, produced no major hits in the last two years. Firaxis is going for a new audience as well as for the current players.

Too bad that at the same time Infrogrames is going for the Christmas sales.

I still think that more current players, or people knowing current players will buy Civ3 then people just wandering around and thinking "I shall buy a new game, what shall I buy? Hm Civilization III, this looks cool, I'll take that".

Pembleton · September 9, 2001, 16:18

Age of Kings, Starcraft and Diablo2 are still on the bestseller lists. Who is buying these games, and who was buying them a few months after they were released? Gamers like the ones in these forums? No. They get the games soon and most gamers in here who would be interested in the previous games already own them.

Everyone here thinks that this forum is representative of the market. It isn't. The poll about MP and thinking that you would hurt sales is just not true. You are a minority *within* a fraction of the market for the game. Just because a fraction of a fraction of the potential audience isn't going to buy it doesn't mean that there sales will be significantly hurt.

The people who are still buying Age of Kings, etc., are the "average" computer owners who do not play many games. They will be the same people who will get Civ3. I have a friend who has played about 3-4 computer games in his life including Tetris. His favorite was Civ1 and he swore off computer games for a long time after because it was too addictive. People like him will get Civ3 and will never read a review, or even know the game is out except by word of mouth because he just doesn't pay attention.

Again, I repeat for the umpteenth time, Civ: CTP was very successful despite universally bad reviews and the many complaints and returns by the *hardcore* gamers. CTP2 bombed because it didn't have the Civilization name in front of it and people looking in a store would have no idea what the game was about. Just because Civ3 has the title: SID MEIER's CIVILIZATION 3 will guarantee a bunch of sales. Look at the press already in Time and NY Times.

Sorry everyone, but when the sales are in the hundreds of thousands, the 50-75 MP players who frequent these forums who won't possibly buy the game means nothing. And I bet some of those who really want MP will still buy it anyway.

OneFootInTheGrave · September 9, 2001, 16:30

I agree with you Pembelton, adn for such players the Christmas time is the time to look for a game.

As far as I am concerned I will buy the game straight away and hope there will be a multiplayer patch, and not a separate civ package as with civnet and civ II MPG.

Well I am glad that the game is coming but the lack of MP support just shows that they did not have enough time, I just hope that SP will not suffer..

The most important part is though that Firaxis follows Civ III in the future with appropriate patches and hopefully added functionality...

CapTVK · September 9, 2001, 16:37

These sort of excuses are a prime example of why the gaming industry still hasn't grown up. Games can be released bug free (99,9% level) plus all included features! The fact that all games seem to have bugs (big ones!) or simply cut out features that don't work 'yet' these days shows the development proces is essentially flawed.

The irony is that it's predecessor, the arcade videogame industry did manage to release games on time and bug free. I know this because i had to do some research into this industry (slowly dying-evolving?). Note: sometimes there were bugs in the game, check some of the classic arcade videogame sites for these 'cheats'. But they never released a bugged game to the public!

Reason, games that crashed would get a bad rap and people would stop pumping in quarters. Which would results in some pissed off arcade owners and distributors.

A videogame maker like Sega or Midway would think twice or thrice before releasing a bugged game to the public. Any game would go through a long design-test-manufacture-evaluate cycle to catch mistakes. This doesn't seem to be the case with games software these days.

For some reason the publisher thinks it can unload any tripe on the unsuspecting public and think it will get away with it. Well, that will work for awhile but one day that decision will come to haunt you.

The abyss is looming closer...be warned

Gramphos · September 9, 2001, 16:39

I tell you what:
The first sells, that pays the game

will be the one by players that have played Civ and Civ 2 these sales will be within a month. After that friends of them that have bought the game will buy it if it is good. And after that all newcomers will buy the game if papers and magazines are positive to it. So the quick cash will came from the oldies, and the profit will came from the newcomers. I don’t think that releasing the game before Christmas will help mush to the oldie selling, and all newcomers will not have time to here of it before next Christmas anyway.

MarkG · September 9, 2001, 16:42

Quote:

Originally posted by Pembleton
Again, I repeat for the umpteenth time, Civ: CTP was very successful despite universally bad reviews and the many complaints and returns by the *hardcore* gamers. CTP2 bombed because it didn't have the Civilization name in front of it and people looking in a store would have no idea what the game was about.

ctp2 didnt sell due to the bad memories that ctp1 and the handling of activision left

in fact, ctp2 didnt sell because ctp1 had "civilization" in it's title...

Capt Dizle · September 9, 2001, 16:48

Thats just silly. A box of cornflakes packages as a computer game will sell better before Christmas than any other time.

The Christmas season is when people who have no idea about computer games will buy them as presents.

Putting the game on the shelf before Christmas will net 50,000-100,000 sales that would otherwise be cut in half.

$50 times 100,000 divided by 2 = 2.5 million in revenue that would be missed by waiting till spring.

Then add in the sales of the multiplayer expansion.

How is this so hard for people to accept.

CapTVK · September 9, 2001, 16:51

Quote:

Originally posted by MarkG

ctp2 didnt sell due to the bad memories that ctp1 and the handling of activision left

in fact, ctp2 didnt sell because ctp1 had "civilization" in it's title...

Some substantial facts on this please...because if this is true it means you keep pumping out trash as long as it has a fancy title and some flashy graphics to fool them long enough to buy it.

OH WAIT!, THAT'S TRUE!!!

Transcend · September 9, 2001, 16:58

I never play MP in TBS games, thus I'm very happy that Firaxis chopped off the useless MP aspect and gets the game out earlier. I think the majority of posters on this forum don't care about MP aspect, either, and would like see Civ3 coming out sooner.

Ralf · September 9, 2001, 17:23

Quote:

Originally posted by MarkG
ctp2 didnt sell due to the bad memories that ctp1 and the handling of activision left

"Civilization: Call to power" sold well over half a million copies - maybe even 600.000 - 700.000. It sure as heck had nothing to to with great AI; highly acclaimed interface and unanimously prized game-features.

Then came "Call to power II". The last figure I heared was around 40.000 - 50.000 copies sold. Trust me - if most of the old 600.000 - 700.000 CTP-customers really believed that the CTP-franchise was a worthwhile enough experience, then they would have given CTP-2 a try also.
Many customers buy on impulse - standing in a gamestore, with the game-package in their hands, reading the backside and comparing with previous "civ-experiences" (if any).

- With "Civilization: Call to power", customers compared with - well, "Civilization II" - what else?
- With "Call to power II", customers compared with "Civilization: Call to power" - what else?

MarkG · September 9, 2001, 17:33

Quote:

Originally posted by Ralf
- With "Civilization: Call to power", customers compared with - well, "Civilization II" - what else?
- With "Call to power II", customers compared with "Civilization: Call to power" - what else?

exactly

if ctp1 was sold as what it was, a tbs game that is based on civ, and not as "civ3", ctp2 would have sold much more cause ctp1 would not have dissapointed people by not being "civ3"

of course you can say that ctp1 might not have sold as much as it did, but activision could have had an alive series today

Ralf · September 9, 2001, 18:02

Quote:

Originally posted by CapTVK
Games can be released bug free (99,9% level) plus all included features! [...]

The irony is that it's predecessor, the arcade videogame industry did manage to release games on time and bug free.

Well, I certainly believe that bug-related quality-standards of PC-games could rise a couple of notches - but...

I also believe its much easier to develop relatively bugfree against an 100% known hardware-setup (like playstation), within an 100% known game-machine software-environment, then it is against endless combinations of PC hardware & software environments.

Why isnt this elementary?

Col Bigspear · September 9, 2001, 21:05

I'm pleased that MP got the chop. When I play MP I play Half-Life: Day of defeat mod (WW2) or counter strike mod and I spend far too much money doing it. Now take a TBS game and if direct internet play is going to be this "Something special" that firaxis said is going to be in MP then I don't see how that can work with a game that models 4000 years. As for PBEM, I don't like it one bit. I tried PBEM with West Front once and I hate it. take a turn Zip, post, recieve mail, unzip, move into game folder, load play zip post etc.......

I want to play SP and leave MP to games like Half-life, action, not YES my turn awww SH*T it took 5 mins now i'll have to wait about a day to get a reply.

Col Bigspear · September 9, 2001, 21:22

After looking at the thread What Civ multiplayer should be like, I think that it would be good if implemented like that.

Lung · September 9, 2001, 21:49

Quote:

Originally posted by Col Bigspear
As for PBEM, I don't like it one bit. I tried PBEM with West Front once and I hate it. take a turn Zip, post, recieve mail, unzip, move into game folder, load play zip post etc.......

At least that was one thing that CtP got right. When you played pbem, you just opened the turn. When you finished the turn, you simply sent the automatically saved file. No zipping, no unzipping! This is at the very least the way they should created PBEM for CivIII. If they can just avoid part of the next player's turn appearing at the end of yours, they will be on a winner

korn469 · September 9, 2001, 22:08

Ralf

where did you get your figures at?

Quote:

Civilization: Call to power" sold well over half a million copies - maybe even 600.000 - 700.000

i read earlier on apolyton that both SMAC and CtP sold less than 300k units, i have checked and can't find any figures

for either product so if your info is more up to date than mine i'd be thankful if you gave me a link

star mouse · September 9, 2001, 22:35

Quote:

Originally posted by Ralf
I also believe its much easier to develop relatively bugfree against an 100% known hardware-setup (like playstation), within an 100% known game-machine software-environment, then it is against endless combinations of PC hardware & software environments.

That's essentially correct. A lot of patches that are released fix compatibility problems with hardware combinations that were not in the beta testing pool. It is much easier to develop software for a single hardware configuration, which is why game consoles and arcade games have relatively few bugs.

When the game has a multiplayer component, a lot of the game patches address multiplayer issues, such as fixing loopholes that allow people to cheat.

Urban Ranger · September 9, 2001, 23:37

So what if Firaxis didn't start MP until August? If they want they can just pull in the existing code from SMAC and just adapt that for Civ 3. There's really not much to MP unless they want to try something new.

Which is silly IMO, as nobody wants that.

Ralf,

Ideally, the OS should isolate any program running under it from hardware considerations, so no matter how you tinker with the hardware such programs will still be looking at the same virtual machine.

Clearly, Windoze fails quite badly in this respect.

MarkG · September 10, 2001, 01:07

Quote:

Originally posted by korn469
i read earlier on apolyton that both SMAC and CtP sold less than 300k units, i have checked and can't find any figures

for either product so if your info is more up to date than mine i'd be thankful if you gave me a link

actually, both smac and ctp1 sold 500,000

korn469 · September 10, 2001, 02:01

thanks for the info mark

btw where do you get upto date info on games sells? i scoured the net and all i could find was a company that n something or other, that had custom made market research for like 2,500-3,500 dollars a report

how many copies did civ, civ2, and civ: tot sell?

MarkG · September 10, 2001, 02:11

actually, the info on the ctp1 and smac sales came from activision. so far no firaxian ever told me that the smac number is wrong, so....