Multiplayer Add On In March 2002 !

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by tmarcl
First off, no one has said officially that you'll have to pay for multiplayer, so it's a little early to be jumping the gun and threatening to to boycott Firaxis and Infogrames.

True, but no-one said officially that MP wouldnt be included upon release, until we found out through a leaked email, and then on another gaming site...

Also, infogames (who aparently make the decisions about patches)
a) are currently going through economic difficulties, and
b) have proven their willingness to screw the Civ fans (see LE)
so im assuming the worst case until proven otherwise.

Secondly you must remember this: Firaxis and Infogrames are businesses. They don't make profit giving things away for free (on that note: Thank you to both Soren and Dan for both coming by daily the past week with advice and assistance. As far as I'm concerned, that goes far above and beyond the call of duty, and you both deserve a round of applause.) No matter how much we want things handed to us, it just isn't going to happen. If Infogrames feels it'll make more money by charging us for multiplayer, then guess what, were going to pay (and we will, regardless of what we say now).

Wrong. They make a profit by selling games. True enough. But there are many people who are undecided about buying Civ 3. They see Civ 3 is only single player, and they will be charged again to play multiplayer, they decide that its not worth their time or money. On the other hand, they see that Firaxis has made a commitment to keeping Civ 3 patched, uptodate and removing bugs, (without constantly screwing us for more money) they will decide that Civ 3 is worth it after all. More copies of Civ 3 are sold, and they make more money by giving things away for free.

The rest of your post not commented on, because i agree with them

Dont get me wrong, i think Firaxis did a superb job, especially considering they lost (i think) 7 months development time due to their lead developers leaving to form their own company. Its infogames that i have a problem with, who are unashamedly going after our hard earned money with both claws. Grrrrr.

[wervdon]

Not sure where the original info came from that there wouldn't be multiplayer...but its been in their faq for weeks.

Directly from civ3.com:
Will there be multiplayer support for Civ III?
Civ III will not be shipping with multiplayer included. The single-player experience has always been our main focus throughout the development of Civilization III. However, we're working on some cool multiplayer concepts that will take a fresh approach to the challenge of making multiplayer for a turn-based game fun. Once we have more details to report, they'll be posted on this FAQ.

Although I admit it makes it almost sound like multiplayer will be added later in a patch ;P I guess deliberately vague is the way to put it In any case, I won't feel cheated unless they dont fix the editor for free.

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by GP


Ummm....yeah...a computer game that you can buy or not (I haven't) is being kicked....yeah....

You try and try Gp but you just don't have the knack

[Grim Legacy]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse


You try and try Gp but you just don't have the knack

ROFL. I would normally scoff at such self-applauding comments, but I admit that you indeed have the 'knack' in this thread!

---
As for MP; sux it isn't here, sux they want money, good it's going to come at all. Any questions?

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by wervdon
Not sure where the original info came from that there wouldn't be multiplayer...but its been in their faq for weeks.

The posters complaining are mainly the ones that were helping compile "The List" 3 years ago and have been constant posters ever since. If you'd been promised a $1,000 payrise for christmas and then they told you in november it was only going to be $500, wouldn't you be pissed? I sure would. There was a large number of pre-orders already made before the information was officially announced. Of course its not a problem if you didn't care about the game before your favourite mag did a preview a few weeks ago.

Perhaps I'm being unfair, but every other game I'm waiting on at the moment has been delayed in order to improve the quality of the product before shipping. Civ3 is the only one that shipped regardless. I'm not saying that this makes it the worst game, but it shows that the beancounters are firmly in the driving seat which is bad news if we want patches to polish the game to perfection.

[Utrecht]

Then again if the bean counters were not in charge we might never see any games..... good or bad.

Regarding "The List" the over-hyped holy artifact that it has become. Firaxis never promised to include any of the items. What they did do was was promise to take a look at them and incorporate what made sense. Whether they did that - well that is open to interpretation. My opinion is that they did take some stuff - but very little, but what they did take I like (culture being one of them)

Regarding whether MP will be a paid for of free of charge - we have no evidence either way so before railing against the injustices of the world - lets operate under fact and not conjecture.... at which point arguments will at least have some credibility to stand on.

[TCO]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse


You try and try Gp but you just don't have the knack

Yeah, I know I'm not as much of a troll as you! At least I don't cry like a girl when I get banned and thread locked. I've learned to take it!! And smile!

[Steve Clark]

Originally posted by Utrecht
Then again if the bean counters were not in charge we might never see any games..... good or bad.

Regarding "The List" the over-hyped holy artifact that it has become. Firaxis never promised to include any of the items. What they did do was was promise to take a look at them and incorporate what made sense. Whether they did that - well that is open to interpretation. My opinion is that they did take some stuff - but very little, but what they did take I like (culture being one of them)

Regarding whether MP will be a paid for of free of charge - we have no evidence either way so before railing against the injustices of the world - lets operate under fact and not conjecture.... at which point arguments will at least have some credibility to stand on.

I completely agree with this, even though that puts us in the minority around here. I had asked repeatedly over the past few months for any tangible evidence that they promised such things would be in the initial release. No one could produce such evidence. What we did was to buy this game on hope (or perhaps assumption). That truly is a caveat emptor.

But since many customers are not pleased with the completeness of the product, it is up to the developer and publisher to deliver in some manner. But don't expect it to be free because they have never said that either. That's just wishful thinking on your part.

Here's another thought. This very vocal community represents about 1% of the customers (my rough guesstimate). What makes you think that us 1% are more important than the remaining 99%?

[z0dd]

Give me MP asap!

The computer is down right boring to play against. It blatently cheats and isn't playing by the same rules I am.

Sorry, as a hard-core gamer this simply isn't fun.

95%+ of the game I still play are because I can compete against another human.

[Utrecht]

I agree, hope is a funny thing - it starts to distort reality and often times I think that members of this forum loose sight of the big picture.

Your estimate of 1% of the market seems well..... high, but your point stands. This game is going to be sold in Wall Mart and in Costco - where (blantant generalization on) most of the consumers are not as demanding. They are simply after a good gaming experience - and often times thier definition of a good gaming experience differs from ours.

And to this end, we as fanatics (both positive and negative) sometimes forget.

But as an example, let me tell everyone how I judge games. It is based off of the concept of utilization where I equate a doller amount to an hours worth of enjoyment.

Specifically, I use average movie as my baseline so 7 bucks for 2 hours of time. Thus, I need to be lower than $3.50 per for the eperience to be worthwhile.

So using this formula. I paid $40 dollars for Civ 3 (will end up lowering that another $10 dollars due to price matching) so I need to spend at least 40/3.5 = 11.42 hours on Civ in order to break even - more and I am ahead. - so in this context I very uch believe that I will be ahead and thus obtaining a great gaming experience. Then again YMMV.....

[Steve Clark]

Nice reply, Utretch, must be our altitude that gives us a better perspective.

I fully agree with the "money's worth" argument, always have. There have been numerous games (like Shogun) that I played once and liked it and said, "I got my money's worth out of it." However, there are games like Civ2 MGE where I paid $29.99 and probably got thousands of dollar's worth out if it (which makes up for all of the games that I didn't get the value out of it). I haven't gotten that far yet in Civ3 to say that but once they release the 12 scenarios, then the $60+ that I paid would be well worth it, imo.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by MidKnight Lament
The add-on will be for bonus features like MP,

On what planet is MP considered a bonus feature? I'll tell you one thing they sure didn't have the gall to treat the SMAC players that baddly by making you pay money in order to play PBEM.

[DanS]

"On what planet is MP considered a bonus feature?"

France.

Kick me in the Jimmy!

KICK ME IN THE JIMMY!

YES!!!

[DinoDoc]

"On what planet is MP considered a bonus feature?"

France.

Damn Frenchies!

[Sunstone]

well, started a nice (but old !) little discussion here.
You are all right, in a way.
But, my 2 c , as a thread-starter :

Think about the add-on.
1. Yes it will cost money . IMHO as much as the Diablo II add on.
2. MP is in there.
3. I think it won´t only be MP ! They said in the faq, that it will be a TOTALLY NEW XP. So, not like MOO2-waiting for another player etc. They will develop something radically new. I am VERY eager to see this !!
4. There will be heaps of little changes (that esp. WE as "the gamers") will adore. Like we love the changes in CIV3.
5. The editor will be changed only partly. As Soren already said, it´s very unlikely, that they will add a scripting language, random events and stuff.
6. It will be worth the money. As CIV3 was.

You´re of course right about Infogrames. But as some wise guys here already said : You´ve to bear it. If you don´t want to pay money (as a fan !? I can´t understand that!) there are other possiblities, you all know that. So, ít´s ranting w/o any result.
Sad but true.

[Saber_Cherry]

(I don't know if this forum allows naughty words, so...)

I, too, will never pay for a multiplayer patch. It makes Firaxis seem like a used-car dealer, or (even worse) Microsoft. I BOUGHT Windows 3.1, it SUCKED. I BOUGHT Windows 95, it SUCKED (a little less). I payed Microsoft for what they advertised, and got ripped off. So I pirated Win98, then Win98 SE, and I'm realtively happy with it. I am a very moral person, but not stupid; even though I had to break the law and look like the evil one, I have finally made Microsoft fulfill their obligation to me.

There are 2 kinds of companies: Those that care about their clients, and those that care only about their profit. The first kind is exemplified by Valve. They released Halflife. Then, even though some (crazy) people would have sold their left nut for it, they realeased Team Fortress 1.5 FOR FREE. Then, the BOUGHT the rights to Counterstrike, and INCLUDED IT FOR FREE WITH HALFLIFE. This is like buying a game (which of course came with standard multiplayer along with its awesome SP game) and then getting 2 more complete games for free, with full support!

How does Valve profit? Well, they also released Halflife: Team Fortress Edition and Halflife: Counterstrike Edition. All were extremely successful. And the fanbase is very loyal and loves Valve. It just shows that when the client is satisfied, the money will follow.

Now let's look at the OTHER kind of company - the bad kind. Well, it's hard to find examples (other than Microsoft, which is unique) because they go out of business too fast. But one springs to mind: Apple. They used to be dominant, because what they made was the best for the situation. But then, time went on. Certain things became standard, like 17" monitors. So Apple said, "Our computers come with 12" monitors, which is a design decision. You can still buy a 17" monitor instead, but it will be a $1000 upgrade." (Yes, mac monitors actually were about 3X as much as PC monitors.) Then PCs came out with 64 megs of memory standard. And Apple said "Sure, you can have 64 megs of ram, but it's not standard. Instead, you can pay us 3 times as much as PC memory for it." Then Apple realized they were losing market ground, and allowed clone makers to come in. However, they were selling Apple systems with all the stuff that comes standard with PCs (large monitor, good speakers, big/fast harddrive) - and they were selling it for LESS than Apple sold their inferior systems! It looked like Apple compatible stuff might win back marketshare! So, Apple said: "Damn you, we're here for a huge profit margin, and we can't make our profit if we have to compete with you! If you keep bundling standard stuff for free instead of raping people for it when they 'upgrade', we might have to sell MORE units for a LOWER unit profit!" So Apple revoked their license, and kept selling computers with 100 MHz processors for more money than competing 300 MHz Pentium II systems, and making still more when people had to "upgrade" their brand-new system because it was so slow.

What is the result? Well, Counterstrike is the most widely played multiplayer game of all time, and Valve is so profitable that the can just sit around and design Team Fortress 2 for years, making it perfect, without releasing anything since 1998. And Apple has about 3% market share, down from (guessing) 90% of the home computer market. But at least they still make an assload of money of each computer they sell - and will continue to do so until they go bankrupt in early 2003.

Where does Firaxis fall? I don't know. They released a product that they knew was faulty (um, editor? hmm?); but that's OK if they patch it. They planned to have the release version multiplayer, but now won't give any official comment - maybe they'll do the right thing, and maybe not. But before I go, I'd like to share one thing with you:

************************************************** *

If you have any doubts that Firaxis decided at the LAST MINUTE not to let people have multiplayer in Civ3, go to your Civilization III root folder (or CD). Open "jackal.txt". Read the contents.