Patch waiting area
- Thread starter Piruparka
- Start date
No week 1 patches tend to be hotfixes to major game breaking issues.
The biggest issue right now is the AI. That will take time to fix for the first patch as play testing will be needed to confirm and fix.
Assuming they couldn't finish the game in time and features that seem to be oddly missing were in the pipeline all along, those could also hold up the first patch.
Granted there are some exploits and bugs, neither are game breaking if players choose not to use them.
I previously expected an early patch last Friday or early this week, but I think we may not see a patch until mid-november with a lot of fixes in the change log and some features added that weren't in the release version. Basically things they've been working on since the game went gold, and didn't get the chance to put in.
But hey, I'd love to be proven wrong and maybe Firaxis will drop a big patch next week too. I'd love it even more.
Nah, probably 3 patches tops. Maybe 4 if they decided to overhaul something. There's usually a big patch after launch, a winter patch the following year and a spring/summer patch to wrap things up. There may be a number of smaller hotfixes and patches in-between but that's usually they pattern the follow.
This is what the Brave New World 'fall' patch looked like. Granted this is a new release and that was an expansion, It's not fair to compare it to Civ5 vanilla or even Civ4 vanilla as both those games started in a worst place than this did.
http://support.2k.com/hc/en-us/articles/201333233-Brave-New-World-Fall-Patch-Notes-10-15-2013
I guess the first patch will arrive around the same time as the first DLC(s)? Would make sense from a sales perspective if you can announce both similarly (especially if it is a big patch that addresses the most pressing complaints, like the AI)
Ikael
King
- Joined
- Dec 2, 2005
- Messages
- 873
Fixing the AI is something that takes programming resources, I don't expect it to be patched on the very first patch, unless we're talking about a very marginal improvement.
Game balance, however, is a very different beast. There are many things that can be patched via mod, and that does not require lots of coding manpower, just betatesting, and they have it in spades now that the game has been released. I don't think that it is unreasonable to expect one patch fixing balance issues in one month or so, we've modders right here that have come up with provisional solutions to that.
Production is out of whack (the district increasing cost curve needs to be rebuilt from scratch, wonder costs are ridiculous), selling units leads to exploits, tech / civics goes away too easily, sea tiles suck badly, religious units clutter the map, and there are a couple of civs / leaders that are in dire need of a buff (Norway, France, Spain, perhaps Egypt too).
Solving the AI will be more of a mid-long term issue, along with fine tuning the whole "stumbling into cultural victory" and the religious victory issues.
Game balance, however, is a very different beast. There are many things that can be patched via mod, and that does not require lots of coding manpower, just betatesting, and they have it in spades now that the game has been released. I don't think that it is unreasonable to expect one patch fixing balance issues in one month or so, we've modders right here that have come up with provisional solutions to that.
Production is out of whack (the district increasing cost curve needs to be rebuilt from scratch, wonder costs are ridiculous), selling units leads to exploits, tech / civics goes away too easily, sea tiles suck badly, religious units clutter the map, and there are a couple of civs / leaders that are in dire need of a buff (Norway, France, Spain, perhaps Egypt too).
Solving the AI will be more of a mid-long term issue, along with fine tuning the whole "stumbling into cultural victory" and the religious victory issues.
anandus
Errorist
I'm also waiting for the patch. I play multiplayer mostly, but the game desyncs every other turn. It makes it unplayable
Well, I believe the first (big) patch for Civ 5 came two/three months after release, so I'm expecting something like that here too.
Maybe they'll throw a hotfix out in the meantime, but I'm not expecting a serious patch until december, maybe january. Probably coinciding with the release of the Aztecs. And a DLC.
Proteus
King
- Joined
- Nov 25, 2001
- Messages
- 714
That's quite normal for Firaxis.
IIRC they took 1-2 months for the first patch for Civ BE ... and the first patch for Civ V was also within this timeframe.
Guess they put their patches through lengthy QC sessions to make sure their patches don't introduce more errors than they fix
Haphaz
Warlord
Agreed. I use this first pre-patch time to nab all the achievements before they break the exploits I use to get them
Xyriach
Chieftain
Due to the lack of patch announcement, it would seem that the people in control of that disagree that "it's time".
Just had a bug that caused war weariness to not disappear. Now my capital has -7 amenities from war weariness and can't grow. A lot of luxuries are also used in my capital to counter balance it so many cities have also unhappiness. I think I am going to wait for the patch.
Well.. we don't know what's going on behind the scenes. I would hazard a guess that Firaxis don't want to "freak out" potential buyers by admitting to balancing/AI issues with a patch-announcement.
My guess however is that we won't get any serious changes to the game until they release the first expansion. A lot of stuff that needs to be fixed/tweaked is probably too deeply embedded into either the code or the ruleset to fix it "on the fly".
S.
Xyriach
Chieftain
I'd agree broadly, but I suspect the issue is that Frixais perhaps don't see these issues as showstoppers. By virtue of the fact that the steam achievements keep racking up, people are playing and overall, negative feedback seems focused on a few key areas.
There's also the point that people who play at the level (I would presume, and it's a broad presumption) of the members of this forum potentially do not make up the majority of the playerbase. So overall, the feedback may not be as negative as it's made out to be here. e.g. if you as a recently passed learner driver what's wrong with their car, they're likely not to know or even notice that something is wrong, ask a professional race driver, they're going to be able to tell where the problem is and how bad it is, etc.
They sold millions of units (again, presumption, but based on the franchise's performance...) and as yet have no official announcement, so it's possible that they're still collating feedback and working on solutions.
Anyone who's worked on a software project can tell you that the difference between SIT, UAT and Production environments is huge, and it's often only after Go-Live that you find out some fundamental issues that didn't show up during testing as testing conditions are no match for a live fire environment. And the fix, can often end up being a project in itself, particularly with something as complex as the AI in a game like this.
I'm not so sure. I wrote a pretty extensive review on German amazon, in which I was *pretty* critical of the game (and of the fact that lots of gaming sites/mags went to ridiculously high scores for Civ VI). It took my review two or three days to reach the "top negative review" *and* "top overall review"-spots. This is based on reader-feedback and happened even though my review has way fewer feedback votes overall than the one that's currently in second place.
Plus a lot of other customers on amazon left lukewarm to disappointed reviews themselves and I don't think all of these guys are hardcore Civ-fanatics ..
So, over there on amazon.de at least, the general perception of Civ VI seems to be rather negative - despite most mags/blogs slapping 90%+ ratings onto the title.
S.
Xyriach
Chieftain
Plus a lot of other customers on amazon left lukewarm to disappointed reviews themselves and I don't think all of these guys are hardcore Civ-fanatics ..
So, over there on amazon.de at least, the general perception of Civ VI seems to be rather negative - despite most mags/blogs slapping 90%+ ratings onto the title.
Depends on your interpretation and where you're getting your feedback, in the Steam Store, Civ VI has "Mostly Positive (7,683 reviews)" with 77% (according to Steams mouseover breakdown) of those reviews being positive. If you took that as a game rating, you're getting an 8/10 game. Not exactly negative feedback in itself from a high level perspective.
If we take the commercial axiom that a dissatisfied customer will speak out to others faster than a satisfied one, it's a safe presumption that there is probably some weighting to be applied against those even further.
Not to be splitting hairs, but considering the history of the series and Firaxis' track-record in general, any Civ-title that can't get a "deserved" 90% is a borderline-failure in my book.
S.
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