I just don't understand some people in general forum

[Fabnadderer]

Hi all,

I'm a long time lurker and player of Civ 2, SMAC, SMACX and now Civ 3.

I like this game. I don't like that air superiority doesn't work and neither do the fortresses nor the coastal fortresses. These can easily be fixed in the patch. There may be other bugs, but I haven't experienced them.

My only complaint is that I wouldn't be so confident that Firaxis will address your concerns. Doesn't anyone remember Alien Crossfire? Firaxis promised to fix that and they never did.

[Lord Maxwell]

I said I won't stay hooked by Civ III.

Originally posted by LaRusso
care to explain why?

Once everyone knows how to beat Deity I guess the last part of the fun will be gone. The only thing that keeps me now is trying to beat Deity. Once that is done I doubt I will stay.

I played many games of civ II after first beating Deity, and I played hundreds of smac games after beating Transcend the first time.

Civ III just doesn't have the same depth as those two games had. I don't get the same immersion, and can easily think of other things (like laundry) during a game. Which means it doesn't put me in flow, so it failed at it's only purpose.

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by Lord Maxwell
Civ III just doesn't have the same depth as those two games had. I don't get the same immersion, and can easily think of other things (like laundry) during a game. Which means it doesn't put me in flow, so it failed at it's only purpose.

Long wait times during the final stages of a game is going to do this to me, too. If I have to do something else while I wait, pretty soon I'll find something to do that interests me more than going back to Civ3 for another turn.

Someone made a reference to the long wait times in boardgames, but it is nothing like the same. You can be conducting diplomacy the other non-moving players or actively trying to influence the active player to make decisions that will benefit you. Failing that, you can always make off-topic conversation. Sadly the PC's AI routines can't cope with those activities yet

[aaglo]

Originally posted by The Unknown
What do you mean, multiplayer will probably be installed in an expansion??? That's terrible! Strategy games today are EXPECTED to have some form of multiplayer....

Well, expect the unexpected

[Lord Maxwell]

Originally posted by wal35
Sorry Prince Maxwell, but a software engineer that doesn't produce bugs is as rare as someone in Europe with a legit copy of Civ3.

You'd think even Americans have heard of DHL by now, but apparently not.

I didn't say that you should produce no bugs, but you make a cut off when you think hunting for more bugs won't be cost efficient. Basically you want as high cost efficiency as possible. And the gaming market is very much into buying things that in any other market would be in beta (or even alpha) testing. Ultima IX being the ultimate example of an early launch.

You can introduce practices and procedures to minimize bugs but the only people who can afford so called bug free s/w produced are governments not gamers however avid.

Banks and other financial institutions pay for "bug free" software. I agree there is no such beast.

The reason the gaming market doesn't pay for bug free games is that every manager in the industry knows that the kids will buy early and wait for a patch or two to make it playable, and then ditch the game in favour for their next release.

Given the clamouring for the early release of Civ3 (from the same fans that are whinging now) and the easy access to patches does it really matter if a few hardcore fans whinge and whine ? As has been mentioned already isn't whether a game requires patches (they all will apart from console games that have the advantages of fixed h/w and OS) but whether patches are produced in a timely fashion.

Actually Civ III seems to have few to none of the compatibility problems so often found in other releases.

The final patch for SMAC left some TWO HUNDRED known bugs in the game, some of them more or less game breaking. So Firaxis don't exactly hold the torch high when it comes to timely patches.

[Lord Maxwell]

Originally posted by Auslander
If you don't understand the difficulty in developing software and making it compatible with different hardware, then your NO software engineer. I don't care what title your company gave you. MS Access is not a software development tool.

MS Access isn't a software development tool. I know that after I lost a round of office politics and got a piece of old code in VBA for MS Access on my desk. It was pretty fun to wade throught the MS site with thousands of work arounds for known bugs. (Especially if you need to have the same application run in both Access 97 and Access 2000.)

Mostly I develop in more serious languages. (Including but not limited to C++, Smalltalk, Java, Prolog. I avoid VB whenever human possible.)

But the problems faced by Civ III aren't compatibility issues. It does fine in that area. (Far fewer complaints than most other games.)

It's the classic problem: The accountant decided it was finished, and shipped it. He decided it was finished to they could get some sales before christmas for the entire world.

I just think it's hilarious what crap we pay for when it comes to games.

[TCO]

Don't be so hard on the accountant. Firaxis said they would deliver the game and InfoGrames held them to it.

[Calanor]

Originally posted by Auslander
If you don't understand the difficulty in developing software and making it compatible with different hardware, then your NO software engineer. I don't care what title your company gave you. MS Access is not a software development tool.

Hmm, actually Access supports VBA, so I guess it is not completely unreasonable to call it a software development tool
Besides, the issue here was not hardware incompatibilities, but rather missing or flawed features. Personally, I don't have any real problem when Civ III is concerned - I'm enjoying myself thoroughly. However, the lack of MP is a bit annoying - I did hope that they'd break the Civ tradition of releasing a "..Net" or "Ultimate.." version of the same game.

Originally posted by morb
(snip..) The people at Blizzard show how its done with every game they DO release. Their games are never flawless, but they don't require patches just to fix what was obviously brocken when released. When they patch something, its usually some obscure hardware incompatibility, cheat lockouts, rare happenstance type bugs or minor game imbalances.

You can't be serious. Diablo II was riddled with bugs - many quite obvious and far from all of them system specific. Not only was it a crappy work of programming (something most who are experienced when it comes to coding would agree about - just ask the D2 hacking community), it featured imbalanced/useless/not properly tested skills, interface bugs, barbarians jumping through iron bars, severe memory leaks - oh well, the list could be made quite long. Blizz have managed to produce pretty bug-free products in the past, but since the release of D2 I don't feel that one could say that they "show how its done".

[taffarel]

Originally posted by Lord Maxwell


No, I don't understand the difficulty involved. I understand the laziness and money hungriness involved, but I don't understand the difficulty. (And I am software engineer by the way.) It's pure greed from Firaxis/Infogrammes that made this game come out without several of the most important things even in the game.

The man has a point. Games will always require patching due to new technology. I'm using a Kyro II graphics card (64Mb) and I've had to patch a couple of games to get them to run properly. Most people build their own machines and may have parts that don't conform with this or that, and occasionally cause game crashes. Software manufacturers cannot possibly cater for every single hardware configuration because there are literally millions.

That said, however, there is a lot of laziness around with PC developers. The worst being a game requiring machine specs that are too high. Most developers seem to assume all PC owners can afford the latest technology. (Take it from me that they can't!) There seems to be no effort to make games run on lower spec machines. Remember, that Amiga and the CBM64/Speccy lasted so long due to the fact that the programmers really had to work to do something new to get folks to buy their products (and you couldn't really patch games on those machines.) Patching has become necessary because the PC simply is a more complicated piece of machinery than a console, and it always will be.

Civ 3 is still a good game and it should become better when it does become patched. PC's have this to their advantage. Put simply, if you find a console game bugged or to easy or it's got no re-playability you can't get it patched. Patching is something that can be used to IMPROVE a game as well as fix bugs. Take NHL2002 for example. This game has got add-ons galore, roster updates etc. EA are well known for not supporting games very well after release and for releasing updates every year (NHL1996 -2002) but people still buy them year after year. EA only make minor tweaks every year but still improve the games (usually) and buy NHL every year. Also, how about Championship Manager games!?? A new one every 6 months at £19.99? Still buy 'em. I don't feel cheated because they keep me playing till the small hours.

Civ 3 seems to be little more than an update, but it still has the POTENTIAL with some patching to be so much more. Yes, they should have done better first time, but life is all about second chances, right? Give Firaxis a chance to prove that.

Is it the common held opinion that Civ 3 is poor? I think it's OK and can't wait for a patch.

Originally posted by Lord Maxwell
You are actually good if you got Hello World to run without bugs in VB. Sucky programming language.

Incidentally, it's not that bad at all. I've recently downloaded a freeware game called Eastside Hockey Manager, and quite frankly it's a better game than a lot of full-price games, and could quite easliy have commanded a £30 price tag. The game was coded solely in VB and is Ice Hockey in the style of Championship Manager. (If anyone want's the web address to get it let me know and I'll e-mail it to you.)

[Admiral PJ]

I've now got the game, and its BRILLIANT!
I can't stop playing, I can't see anything wrong with it.. I'm sure it will get even better once i've mastered it.

It should be worth waiting for multiplayer, and I haven't seen any bugs yet, I've only played a couple games up to late middle ages.

The resource system and trading is great.. it all is.

[Ludwig]

CivIII is a great game, patched or not patched, but it WILL get old quickly if something isn't done about the scenario situation.

I never got into SMAC after playing it twice because I never saw the point of trying to come up with a scenario or playing someone else's. There's no historical situation to model, or even to what-if, so why bother making a scenario? CivII, on the other hand, I might still play tonight, since the scenarios kick so much butt. There really is no limit to the number of times I can play the "Visigoth", "Viking", or "Arab Conquest" scenarios as different civ's.

Firaxis has to respond to the concerns of the scenario community to empower those guys to go out and lengthen the game's useful shelf life. If they don't do that, then they deserve to have the game go to CTP2 Hell. If they DO do that, then I tip my hat to the entire project, even if they don't patch air superiority.

[Dominous]

PLease add nvidia patch to the list ARGH! I still can't imagine the beta testers missing the fact that it doesn't work with one of the most popular video chipset out there.

Do I think the game sucks to the point of return. No I do not. If we get some of the minor details patched I think this game has great potential.

I am a lot less tolerant of bugs in games as I am in bugs of productivity software. The main reason? I am used to problem tracking /solving at work, but when I play a game I want to have fun. This game has very subtle flaws and when you first realize that your advanced tank is no match for a horseman you tend to get a little upset. I have noticed many other gameplay problems that have been mentioned on this board (Audio problems, lack of resources, corruption, etc...) but the unit imbalance really makes the game unplayable for me. I enjoy winning the game through military conquest, but the game makes that near impossible even at the easy setting (for me anyway). I never had this many problems playing Civs 1 & 2. I hope they fix the problems, because I like the new look for Civ and the interface is much cleaner. I want the game to play more logically. I am sorry, but there is now way a knight (with a sword!) can take out a tank (with modern artillery shells). Don't believe me? Stand in front of a cannon and I will light the fuse (you can wear plate armor if you think it will help).

[LaRusso]

Originally posted by aderen
most bugs are hard to spot and occur at wierd cirumstances.
civ3 bugs (misfeatures) occur every single time you play the game.
It appears to me that the developers have never played the game or the testers did a really bad job. Public beta would obviously uncover most unbalances and bugs that everyone is complaining now. I guess we all are just beta testing the game for $50 bugs. Maybe infrogames was cheat and didn't want to spend money on testers, so they let the customers do that job.

on making the civ 3 video (argh, where are my designer notes!), one can see some afro-american housewifes playing it on huge screen...
i would rather have a game tested by a horde of bespectacled geeks, or someone as weird looking as eli

[Jack_www]

Overall I do like Civ3 alot. I also there are many who seem to hate this game. First off if you hate it so much return the game and you dont have to worry about it any more. I do have somethings I dont like about Civ3, but I still like it. Currently I am going to collage and my major is computer science. On thing I would like to point out to people is for anyone who programs software of any kind it is that the earlier they find a big and fix it the cheeper it is. After the program is finished it cost much more money and takes more time to fix bugs that come up.

When you program anything you can never program something that does not bugs in it, this is just a fact of life. All companies that make software have it tested before they release it. They etheir get a company that specalizes in beta testing to test it for them or they test it own their own. When you test a program it is impossible to test for every thing that might go wrong, so bugs do get through the beta testing no matter how much you test the program.

[Cian McGuire]

Anyway if they didn't thinked about MP till now, I don't think they can do it quickly.

They've already got some of the implementation in place- check the jackal.txt and the jackal.pcx- obviously they had some of the MP done...

I love the game- I really do. It's has an excellent chance to become a worthy successor and superior timekiller- but that's the problem: it has a chance, not is. Yes, I can understand bugs in relation to hardware compatibility, obscure glitches, and the abuse that a horde of keyboard-toting fanboys can heap on a pile of code looking for ways to 'break'it (re: the 99999999 gold bug or whatever it is), but when things obviously do not work (cases in point: air superiority, fortresses), things that surely would have been noticed during playtesting or the 'numerous' hours each Firaxian played of the game- this is when I begin to get a little upset.

But then I really get pissed when I find out that basic features of the Civ franchise were completely neglected: the scenario maker, historical place settings, shipped scenarios/maps, the list goes on... If they knew that such things would not ship (which they obviously should have since the game went gold a few weeks before shipping), Firaxis should have told us. It's that simple- they knew what we were expected (hell, they acknowledged that months beforehand with coy promises of shipped scenarios and the MP), and it was their duty to inform the public that they failed to meet their's and our expectations.

I personally would have been consoled with this. I would have bought the game the day it came out, just as I did; I would have been content to play the random maps or even random placing on that hideous Earth map; I would never have gotten one shock after another right after I install the game; I never would have had to look around for the Historical Settings Option; I never would have shrugged my shoulders at that and open the Editor determined to correct a minor oversight by correctly placing the civ starting locations; I never would have been perturbed at that; I never would have then looked how to place a city and then sit there with the dawning forboding that there was something definitely missing.

It's not much to ask for really- a little informed knowledge on what I'd be spend fifty odd bucks on.

This is what pisses me off.