Late Spring 2012 is too soon

[snapple232]

'Late Spring' by any reasonable definition means late April or sometime in May. That's in barely 3 months. Remember what happened last time when Civ 5 was released just 7 months after it was announced? It turned out to be buggy, imbalanced, and rushed.

Impatient people will be happy that the expansion is coming out so soon, but people who want a title that'll live up to the Civilization franchise should find this worrying.

 

[Pazyryk]

I would find it more worrying if they announced it 9 months out, or 1 month out. Either would be bad marketing. Do you really think they started working on it today?

 

[CivOasis]

They announced something was "in progress" back in November, just not what it was. We all thought it was a new DLC or patch, at the time.

 

[snapple232]

I would find it more worrying if they announced it 9 months out, or 1 month out. Either would be bad marketing. Do you really think they started working on it today?

Obviously I don't think they started working on it today. Given that the last major patch was in August, that means they've likely been fully developing it since the summer. If it comes out in May, that's a ~9-10 months of real development time. Considering how rushed Civ 5 felt when it came out, I can't say I trust that they'd put out a high-quality expansion pack within that time frame. It's not a knock on the developers, I'm just saying I wish (and I'm sure they did too) that they had more time to work on this.

 

[Camikaze]

They've probably been working on it for quite a while. I would hope, though, that they'd be willing to delay it a week or two if necessary to ensure a stable release.

 

[Venger]

Hell, you know much of this stuff was pre-integrated into the base product way back when - you don't think the game engine was designed for a religion integration down the road? Of course it was.

My hope is this is Civ5 1.0.

 

[flp_ndrox]

'Late Spring' by any reasonable definition means late April or sometime in May. That's in barely 3 months.

My guess is early-mid June, right before Q3. That's what a lot of the speculation has been elsewhere.

 

[Helmling]

Come on, it's obvious that there hasn't been a DLC or major patch in a while because they've been focused on this. It looks flippin' awesome, too. I'm in complete fanboy mode.

Crap, there goes my summer.

 

[Gucumatz]

Yep, final summer before college here, time for some fun!

 

[Gamewizard]

It is likely that all of this was on the drawing board since day 1. They had to decide a long time ago (before the game was ever released) how they planned on making a game that would turn the most profit without pissing off the consumer. I believe they purposefully omitted the contents of the expansion from the base game in order to get the game out quicker and on schedule. Now I'm not saying that I believe the expansion contents were complete back in October 2010, but surely the ideas were there in a rough, unplayable form.

This method of releasing a base game and slowly adding on through DLC and expansions allows for large user feedback (some would argue it is paid beta testing, but I think that is just spoiled, elitist talk). The base game sales figures surely proved to the suits of 2k that Civilization deserved more resources thrown its way and that an expansion based on consumer feedback would turn a nice "second wind" profit.

 

[CivOasis]

I'm not so sure the religion isn't new - that's probably what most people are thinking, but the indication given out to the modders seems to indicate that the stubs were actually leftovers from CivIV.

 

[Helmling]

It is likely that all of this was on the drawing board since day 1. They had to decide a long time ago (before the game was ever released) how they planned on making a game that would turn the most profit without pissing off the consumer. I believe they purposefully omitted the contents of the expansion from the base game in order to get the game out quicker and on schedule. Now I'm not saying that I believe the expansion contents were complete back in October 2010, but surely the ideas were there in a rough, unplayable form.

This method of releasing a base game and slowly adding on through DLC and expansions allows for large user feedback (some would argue it is paid beta testing, but I think that is just spoiled, elitist talk). The base game sales figures surely proved to the suits of 2k that Civilization deserved more resources thrown its way and that an expansion based on consumer feedback would turn a nice "second wind" profit.

I don't think so. I think the lack of religion was part of Schaeffer's vision for the game. He's gone, so CiV:G&K is no longer constrained by that vision.

 

[Pro2A]

Lets hope they find a way to bring government back and change polices to laws for that type of government.

 

[MadDjinn]

I don't think so. I think the lack of religion was part of Schaeffer's vision for the game. He's gone, so CiV:G&K is no longer constrained by that vision.

That's really poor wild speculation that can't be substantiated.

I'm not so sure the religion isn't new - that's probably what most people are thinking, but the indication given out to the modders seems to indicate that the stubs were actually leftovers from CivIV.

All we knew from the XML was that 'flavours' for religion were left in, but no other code used it (at least the LUA code anyways).

Given the vast quantity of other left over parts in the files, it's not surprising.

Either way, it's 'new' now.

As per the OP - Consider the last 'major' patch was really last July. A DLC and a few minor patches happened, but nothing huge.

 

[vexing]

Remember what happened last time when Civ 5 was released just 7 months after it was announced? It turned out to be buggy, imbalanced, and rushed.

the civ 5 release pretty much had to happen in september to get proper christmas market share. at least there isn't that pressure for this expansion.

given that they've ironed out most of the major problems with the base game, i don't see how it's possible the expansion release could be quite as bad... and they'll hopefully continue to push out patches post expansion release, after the entire player base has beta tested for them =p

 

[Helmling]

That's really poor wild speculation that can't be substantiated.

Not so much speculation. In his interviews, he always plugged the "one thing in/one thing out" philosophy for the design of the game. From what we're seeing about the expansion, that doesn't seem to have guided the design. We're getting quite a few entirely new elements--or well, new implementations of elements that were abandoned from Civ IV.

Clearly Civ V was designed to appeal to a broad market by tightening the focus and scope of the game design. Maybe the design team for G&K figures that this is for the hard-core base, the people who want more features and all the increased complexity that goes with them.

Okay, so that is speculation, but not so much "wild" and...hey, what's with the "poor" crack anyway?!?

; )

 

[anandus]

'Late Spring' by any reasonable definition means late April or sometime in May.

I don't know what your definition of spring is, but here in Europe spring ends around the 22nd of june (midsummer's day), so 'late spring' seems to me to be somewhere in june

 

[Nevyn]

I don't know what your definition of spring is, but here in Europe spring ends around the 22nd of june (midsummer's day), so 'late spring' seems to me to be somewhere in june

Where in Europe is that?

A meteorology definition of when spring becomes summer is when the daily mean temperature over a week reaches 10 degrees Celsius. That means spring can turn into summer, can turn into spring and then back into summer.

So in Sweden there are also official dates for summer. In Stockholm summer is the period between May 13 to September 29. In Malmö - May 13 to October 12. In Kiruna - June 18 to August 16 (city founded on tundra).

But I think the whole idea with saying 'late spring' is to not make any commitments to dates. =)

 

[anandus]

Where in Europe is that?

A meteorology definition of when spring becomes summer is when the daily mean temperature over a week reaches 10 degrees Celsius. That means spring can turn into summer, can turn into spring and then back into summer.

Here in the Netherlands the summer starts on the summer solstice, around the 22nd of june.
That's the astronomical summer, and the most used term of 'summer' when speaking of dates.

 

[Teodosio]

'Late Spring' by any reasonable definition means late April or sometime in May. That's in barely 3 months. Remember what happened last time when Civ 5 was released just 7 months after it was announced? It turned out to be buggy, imbalanced, and rushed.

Impatient people will be happy that the expansion is coming out so soon, but people who want a title that'll live up to the Civilization franchise should find this worrying.

Oh my... how do you know in what state the expansion currently is?

Perhaps it is already complete and beta tests are running, perhaps one year would be needed to properly finish it... in any case the announcement itself isn't proof that the expansion is still at an early stage of development.

Cheers