Anything on the patch we was supposed to get three weeks ago?

Dudy80

Chieftain
Joined
Jan 12, 2006
Messages
47
I remember at the end of febuary the developers were saying a patch would be out by mid march that would fix most of our problems. That was three weeks ago, i understand if it got delayed but they could have atleast came and said that it might take longer. Its been almost 4 months now and still no patch sence 1.52. Please fix the game i bought at christmas time. :(
 
As far as I know and heard, the patch is in 'quality control and testing' so hopefully not too much longer to wait for the latest fixes.
 
Dudy80 said:
I remember at the end of febuary the developers were saying a patch would be out by mid march that would fix most of our problems. That was three weeks ago, i understand if it got delayed but they could have atleast came and said that it might take longer. Its been almost 4 months now and still no patch sence 1.52. Please fix the game i bought at christmas time. :(

Why? We already have your money, why should we give you a free patch? You already got two. They may not work, but they were free so you can't complain.

You can buy the "PTG" expansion pack. With Civ IV (Play The Game), you will have all the features of Civilization IV, but with added features such as a program that runs.


Mr. P.
Take2/Firaxis Mock Spokesman.
 
Lol thats a pretty good mock letter. Id swaer it was from the ceo of take 2 him self. ;)
 
Dudy80 said:
I remember at the end of febuary the developers were saying a patch would be out by mid march that would fix most of our problems. That was three weeks ago, i understand if it got delayed but they could have atleast came and said that it might take longer. Its been almost 4 months now and still no patch sence 1.52. Please fix the game i bought at christmas time. :(

Anyways, mid March is not three weeks ago...
 
Purest Warrior said:
Anyways, mid March is not three weeks ago...
IMHO over five (5) weeks is not "couple of weeks" either.

The next patch is expected in a couple of weeks.

I don't think more than a month qualifies as "few" weeks or "a small number" when it exceeds the next longest unit of time (a month).

Wiktionary said:
Usage notes
In the U.S., "a couple of things" or people may mean two of them, but it often just means any small number

The farm is a couple of miles off the main highway [=a few miles away].​

In the U.K., "a couple of" almost always means just two

We’re going out to a restaurant with a couple of friends [=two friends].​

Moderator Action: Smily not appropriate - and watch your language. Warned.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
 
Who cares how many weeks its been? Just fix the damn game we payed for.
 
Exactly 5 weeks is not a couple of weeks. When you already have a reputation for not providing any kind of customer support at least you could do is provide us with updates on progress.

What you should be doing is quit working on that damn expansion and finish the game. I have no doubt that resources have been diverted away from this unfinished pos so they could work on the expansion. As for Thamer, I don't take his word for anything anymore. He came into a thread in tech support and was made personally aware of an issue promising to look into it and here it is 3 months later and still no word from him about it. You have the worst customer support ever when it should be relatively easy considering your a computer gaming company and everyone uses the internet.
 
Guys, the patch is in final testing. It was submitted to QA last month but then they got put on a different product, so Civ had to wait to get the test cycles that were needed. Obviously the process took longer than expected, so that's why no one can give firm dates. It is out of our control now so I'm waiting for QA to give the go ahead as well. I think it should happen very soon, but who knows, a last minute showstopper could be discovered... However, I think it's going to be a great update and well worth the wait.
Raider, as for your issue, I looked into it along with other card-related problems. Many of those problems have been fixed for this patch, but since it's HW specific, we won't know for sure until you can run it on your setup.
 
Thamer,
I remember for Civ3 there were beta patches that were released for the public to voluntarily try them out.

I would suggest that this would be more efficient than what is going on now with this QA process that you say was the bottleneck. This mother-of-all-patches approach is too ambitious and you will probably find problems when it gets released into the wild, that an internal or smaller team might not find.

The code should be modular enough to fix it piece by piece and release smaller fixes so that the process is shorter.

Regardless, I am a big fan of the game and I wish you the best of luck with the next release.
 
As someone already complains about next patch's date and the developer already responded to it on this topic, I don't have to post anything to ask for dates! Thanks!

However, I am suggested the developer to release next patch as "BETA" while next patch is await for QA testing completion. This beta patch is for advanced users only.

Anyway, I am in luck because I found a workaround for tooltip display failure bug (by reduce render quality to MEDIUM). However, I did not test workaround for the tutorial lockup problem (only after I ended my turn).

Anyway, I will wait for next patch before I can restore render quality to HIGH.

I don't have any major crash issues or crash to desktop issues at all (yes, even with set to high render quality) with my GeForce 6800 GT and Forceware Driver 84.12.

;)
 
thamer said:
Guys, the patch is in final testing. It was submitted to QA last month but then they got put on a different product, so Civ had to wait to get the test cycles that were needed.

Is this REALLY the kind of answer you want to give us?
I mean, is saying "We're working on more important things than fixing the already released, faulty product you jerks got stuck with" REALLY supposed to make us all say that it is OK?
I've worked in Customer Service in different capacities for years; and as companies in all industries provide less and less service to their customers in general, I have to say that this stands out as one of the worst responses to a customer concern I have ever seen!
You would have been a lot better off to just have said nothing than to tell us all "we know there's a lot of problems, but we're doing something more important right now".
I think when the expansion comes out I'm going to go and take one and tell the store to tell 2K that "I'm paying more important bills right now, but as soon as I get around to it I'll pay for the game" and see how that goes over.
 
danielcg said:
However, I am suggested the developer to release next patch as "BETA" while next patch is await for QA testing completion. This beta patch is for advanced users only.
This would make a lot of sense. If the main patch release cycle is almost 3 months or even longer, having a few untested beta patches in between would be much closer to cutting edge development cycle (read FOSS with nightly CVS captures), yet still reasonably within bureaucratic commercial requirements where someone must authorize each release.

The "Q"A testing won't be able to cover all or even a majority of potential setups anyway, so waiting for even starting the process instead of releasing beta versions doesn't really look "very" efficient.
 
wurm657 said:
Is this REALLY the kind of answer you want to give us?
I mean, is saying "We're working on more important things than fixing the already released, faulty product you jerks got stuck with" REALLY supposed to make us all say that it is OK? ...

I'm not posting as a customer service rep, I'm a developer; I'm trying to give an update on the patch progress since that's was asked for for. If you think it's better to say nothing (as you said), obviously that's easier for me. The truth is that the publisher's QA dept works for many studios and is responsible for multiple products. I'm sure the fans of other games want their concerns to be the highest priority all the time also, (compared to the 3rd patch of Civ), but we all have to share finite testing resources. In this case, the extra time allowed us to add even more fixes and improvements to the game as well as the SDK and PitBoss.

Regarding beta patches, we use an internal QA dept as well as a non-public beta community which has hundreds of 'real-world' users. The application patch has been working with that process the whole time as well. On the other hand, the PitBoss app has been in public beta since January.
 
thamer:
Now that I understand your position within the whole team, I kind of feel for you...this shouldn't even fall on your shoulders.
But, the fact is...1st patch or 3rd or the 100th doesn't make any difference since they are repair patches to fix a faulty product.
I think this whole thing is more a 2K issue than Firaxis.
That being said, "QA got put on a different product" is still a pretty lousy answer.
 
wurm657 said:
Is this REALLY the kind of answer you want to give us?

Would you rather have none at all? If you say "yes", they you are in the EXTREME minority.

wurm657 said:
I mean, is saying "We're working on more important things than fixing the already released, faulty product you jerks got stuck with" REALLY supposed to make us all say that it is OK?

No, but how about a "Thank you"? It goes like this...
"Thank you Thamer for spending your own personal time to voluntarily come to this forum and gives us an update. I think it is really great that you care enough about your work to follow up on what people think about it, in order to do the best you can now, and in the future."

wurm657 said:
I've worked in Customer Service in different capacities for years; and as companies in all industries provide less and less service to their customers in general, I have to say that this stands out as one of the worst responses to a customer concern I have ever seen!

umm, he's not customer service.

I've worked in development in different capacities for years...in general, I have to say..."STFU".

Until you understand that there are other factors involved, or understand a development life cycle, put a sock in it. I am not any more happy with how 2k games has handled this fiasco. It is blatantly obvious that they pushed WAY to hard to get this out the door by Christmas because 2k games is in a financial crisis. They needed the 4th quarter revenue. Read the news, 2k games is doomed, or at the very least, severely crippled. They have dug their hole, and now they get to sit in it. Rejoice at the fact that this type of behavior (i.e. pushing a product too soon, ticking off their customers, etc.) by 2k games has bit them in their arse. As a developer, if all of the above assumptions (and we all know what that means...) are true, thamer is probably just as fustrated as you and I. I know that I truely HATE it when managment forces me to put a program out that I know could be so much better. Many times, I have hesitated to even associate my name with a project because it sucked so bad, and their wasn't much I could do about it.

So, again...thanks for the update Thamer! It's good to know you stand by your work and are trying to help fix the problems as best you can.
 
Well at least i finnaly got an anwser. And if the SDK is coming with this next patch i will gladly wait for a few extra weeks to have that. Also i understand how you have to rotate games for different patches but it would seem to me that a game as big as civ would be high priority.
 
Wow. Civ4's Lead Programmer Mustafa Thamer comes onto these boards and publicly explains why the patch has been delayed, then someone immediately turns around and flames him? I have no words for that. The rudeness of some people is truly appalling.

Thank you very much, Mustafa. I know that 2K is slow moving on these things sometimes, so I'm sorry you have to get all kinds of grief from people who DEMAND free updates to a game and then complain mightily if they are slow in coming. :rolleyes:
 
Some people need to learn some manners. The first two patches fixed most problems that most people were experiencing - the first one fixing the most outstanding technical issues, the second one greatly improving performance, among gameplay-related fixes. That's a fact. Another fact is that the game will never be 100% bug free for every user, not even if Firaxis released another ten patches.

But more importantly, if a Firaxian comes here to explain the holdup, flaming him for that is ridicilous. And as everyone can see now, the holdup is currently because of 2K and not Firaxis.
 
Top Bottom