why dont you want me to have my civrev?

BaconLad

Chieftain
Joined
Apr 14, 2008
Messages
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Manchester/England
thanks sid, for making a game for me.

everyone has missed the point, civrev is designed for a completely different audience.

sid is a very intelligent man, and has realised that there is a big wide world out there full of consumers, and different markets.

like any good buisness man, he wants to cater for them all (not just for financial gain) but to give everybody a chance to play his superb games.
this isnt about consoles versus pc's. there 2 completely different forms of media entertainment.

you like your pc - i like my ps3... thats fine. i like to read novels about the crusades/templars, my mum likes to read romance novels - 2 different markets... 2 different audiences...

civrev is not intended for pc gamers, just like civ5 wont be intended for console gamers...
im willing to let you have your civ5, why dont you want me to have my civrev???
 
I´m sure you will get your Civ Rev.:)

But I don´t know if it´s true, that Sid is such a clever buisiness man. I think his methode to leave "scorched earth" behind all his last versions of civ is not the best way to treat his customers. For example the customers of Civ 3 now are waiting for about 5 years for their final patch and there is still no sign, that this problem will be solved soon. The customers of Civ 4 are also waiting for their working final patch now for a longer time.

So you will get your Civ Rev. But if you can play it as it is now advertized (and you think you could play it), that´s another question. ;)
 
I think the term 'scorched earth' is a tad over the top!

I mean let's face it, Civ III will be seven years old at the end of this year. Just how long do you think developers are morally obliged to support their games? Also, what is so badly wrong with either game that you think they need a final patch? Or, is it simply the case that a 'final patch' for both games would bring you personally, some form of closure?
 
I think the term 'scorched earth' is a tad over the top!

I mean let's face it, Civ III will be seven years old at the end of this year. Just how long do you think developers are morally obliged to support their games? Also, what is so badly wrong with either game that you think they need a final patch? Or, is it simply the case that a 'final patch' for both games would bring you personally, some form of closure?

I don´t think the term 'scorched earth' is over the top. Imagine in your Civ Rev if a ship of a friendly civ contacts one of your submarines you always fall in war with that civ what ruins all your diplomatic gameplay. The same for all AI civs.

Imagine in your Civ Rev there should be advertised armies as units that can load other units and there are wonders that enlarge the loading capacity but the AI doesn´t load two or more units in these armies.

Imagine in your Civ Rev you were advertised that you have a scientific great leader who causes a golden scientific age with boosted science, but the golden age of science doesn´t work and in the last version of the editor even the Scientific Great leader isn´t working too. Former possibilities for great leaders in rushbuilding are gone too.

Imagine in your Civ Rev you would have an option for looking at your growing cities with all wonders and improvements that were built in that city. In the last semi-patch this and the palace-view, where your citizens built a special palace for praising a good leader of their civ was closed for all scenarios because it didn´t stand high enough on the priority list for the last semi-patch.

Imagine for your Civ Rev there would be advertized working land artillery to bring down the defence of a city but the AI isn´t using it.

There are tons of other bugs that were never fixed, so Firaxis was told about them years ago. If you are really interested in these bugs you can get links to the still existing bugs for Civ 3 and Civ 4.

To leave a game with a not working AI landartillery (catapults, cannons, etc.), submarines that can´t be used as they should, armies that don´t work as they should, and, and, and... I think that´s a lot for such a game.

Your question how long developers are morally obliged to support their games is wrong in my eyes. Especially if they ignore these fixes consequently from the first day of the release of the game. Do you really think, that if a developer ignores the proper demands of his customers consequently long enough, he is loosing his moralic duty to fix these bugs?? Do you really think, that if you are saying for Civ Rev to the developer: "The catapults in that game for the AI are not working, the AI cannons are not working, the subs cannot be used as they should, the armies are not working (and so on) and you got no answer and this from the first day on until now and the developer doesn´t do anything to fix this (even not in lots of years), this creates confidence in his products?

And now back to the "scorched earth":

-Firaxis and Take 2 ignored all demands for getting a working Civ 3 game as it should be. And this for years now.

- Even when the fans of Civ 3 said, that they would pay such a patch (what would be a moralic duty for Firaxis and Take 2 to give this patch for free as it only fixes their not-working game-features), there was no positive response until now.

-Even when some programmers among these fans of Civ 3 said, that they would try to fix these bugs themselves when they can work on these bugs with the source code, and the progamming wouldn´t cost them anything, there was no positive response until now.

The real question should be: Can such developers still be trusted that always ignore the demands of their customers in such a way as Firaxis and Take 2 did this in the past?
 
Oh, I'm not suggesting for one moment that Civ III, or IV, are perfect. Far from it, in fact. But by my understanding of the debugging process it is crashes, exploitable bugs, and game-killers that get immediate priority for patching. Then there's typically a few problems with the balance of the game that need to be addressed. All of which are very time consuming, and very much the norm these days as the great public beta test of the finished product gets underway!

Getting back to the bugs you've mentioned though. I do agree that the non funtioning AI routine for the land artillery is something that should have been fixed before now. Although to be honest, it's not a problem that I'd ever noticed until you mentioned it. That said, such things are core elements of the gameplay, so to miss that one was an unforgivable oversight on Firaxis' part. That's assuming of course, that it wasn't taken out of the game in order to nerf the AI aggression to a more playable level, or to quickly resolve some other related bug in the software. Which could be the case for all we know!

As for the rest, (and granted, in a perfect world you shouldn't have to do this) there may be one or two fairly obvious work arounds for the problems. For example, not building any subs at all will prevent the diplo bug from getting you in a ruck with the neighbours. As already said, it's a far from ideal solution to the problem, but knowing about the bugs is half of the battle won when it comes to avoiding them. Although personally, I've probably encountered most of the bugs in Civ III, and barring a catastrophic ctd, barely even noticed. But that's just me! :)

Moving on though, and the question of whether or not Firaxis can be trusted to support Civ Rev, based on the historical evidence of their support for the PC series. I would say yes, I think that they can be trusted. Because the big difference here, is that unlike with the PC series of Civ, (which not only has to cater for two buggy operating systems, but any number of different hardware configurations) all three platforms for the game have been written specifically for, and coded on, the hardware they are to be played on.

So hopefully, there should be few, (if any) bugs or balance problems for Firaxis to have to put right. But I guess time will tell on that one!
 
To leave all those units out of the game that are in the game, makes the game very poor. In my eyes the units are in a game for using them by the players and by their AI opponents. Important parts of the game as it was advertized are still missing until today.

For the submarine bug the most annoying is, that this bug was fixed by Firaxis for Civ 3 vanilla but for the expansions of Civ 3 they simply forgot to fix this again, so this shouldn´t be a lot of work. This is a very bad service to their customers by ignoring them for such a long time.

About remaining catastrophic ctds I agree with you, that these were mostly fixed for Civ 3 yet.
 
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