Why no patches, Firaxis?

[Aaron90495]

It's been more than seven months since the last patch and Firaxis has been dead silent since then about patches for Civ V. I'm sure some of the CiV team is working on Beyond Earth and likely also on Civ VI, but if an expansion can be developed in a year, why not a balance patch in seven months? There are a wealth of issues that still need to be fixed (Tradition/Rationalism OPness and social policy balance, melee/ranged balance, etc.), so it's not like there's nothing to improve.


I tried reaching Kate on Twitter but got the standard "nothing has been announced at this time" response (not that I anticipated anything else). Even just a simple statement that the team is working on a patch or content of some sort would be welcome. Anyone have ideas? What's going on?

 

[layelaye]

probably no more patches in the works. im kind of dissapointed, this game has huge potential but its terrible without mods in single player and multiplayer is completely unplayable due to how often it crashes (and the lack of a chat lobby makes restarting games impossible)

 

[Chum]

It's been more than seven months since the last patch and Firaxis has been dead silent since then about patches for Civ V. I'm sure some of the CiV team is working on Beyond Earth and likely also on Civ VI, but if an expansion can be developed in a year, why not a balance patch in seven months? There are a wealth of issues that still need to be fixed (Tradition/Rationalism OPness and social policy balance, melee/ranged balance, etc.), so it's not like there's nothing to improve.

Because there's not a team working on it. Why would there be? Whatever team WAS working on it has moved onto other projects. There's no reason to continue to devote resources to a game this old. A new patch isn't going to create more sales at this point in the game's lifespan, so no game studio is going to devote resources to creating said patch.

It's just the way it is. All games eventually go unsupported. You can work on them for a long time, and you may never get it bug free, but at some point you do have to declare the job to be done and move on, especially in a business environment. It's not cost effective to waste time on this anymore.

 

[elmurcis]

Too much to improve so why even try to do anything?
Nice game but looks there is no chance it got potential to get same "upgrade" as Vanilla civ4-> civ4 BTS.. still best game in civ series for me (even after multiple huge/mara games on civ5 that was real fun to play specially moment when get -99 happiness because of something I already forgot late game..)

 

[Lord Tirian]

On the other hand, Firaxis just tends to have a slow patch cycle, between the semi-final and final Civ4 patch (BtS 3.19) was a year-long gap.

Seeing how Civ:BE is in the works now, they might just have slowed down and do another final patch later on to fix outstanding problems (trying to do as many as possible in one go and perhaps even transferring over some optimisations they are working on as part of Civ:BE).

I wouldn't expect the latter, but I wouldn't be totally surprised if we got another patch or two for Civ 5, just at a slow rate.

 

[Sherlock]

stick a fork in it, it's done.

BE and Civ 6 are getting all the resources from now on.

 

[Aaron90495]

Because there's not a team working on it. Why would there be? Whatever team WAS working on it has moved onto other projects. There's no reason to continue to devote resources to a game this old. A new patch isn't going to create more sales at this point in the game's lifespan, so no game studio is going to devote resources to creating said patch.



It's just the way it is. All games eventually go unsupported. You can work on them for a long time, and you may never get it bug free, but at some point you do have to declare the job to be done and move on, especially in a business environment. It's not cost effective to waste time on this anymore.

Why? Because Civ IV got a decent number of patches post-BTS and Firaxis is known for their great support of games. The Conquest of the New World Deluxe scenario wasn't gonna generate any new sales, but Firaxis did it (and it likely took a decent amount of resources).

Does anyone remember how long it was between patches in general post-BTS? I know the last patch was released in 2009 (right?), which was a solid two years after the release of BTS, but how long was it between patches? Maybe this wait should be expected, but it'd still be really nice to either get confirmation that all work on the title is done or that there is still a small team fixing things.

 

[Acken]

It's been more than seven months since the last patch and Firaxis has been dead silent since then about patches for Civ V. I'm sure some of the CiV team is working on Beyond Earth and likely also on Civ VI, but if an expansion can be developed in a year, why not a balance patch in seven months? There are a wealth of issues that still need to be fixed (Tradition/Rationalism OPness and social policy balance, melee/ranged balance, etc.), so it's not like there's nothing to improve.


I tried reaching Kate on Twitter but got the standard "nothing has been announced at this time" response (not that I anticipated anything else). Even just a simple statement that the team is working on a patch or content of some sort would be welcome. Anyone have ideas? What's going on?

Like I said in my other thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=524986) Firaxis probably won't deliver a new patch (or only minor changes like bug fixes). That's why I'm currently working on making some sort of an "unofficial patch" to the game. The previous attempt sadly don't have a very active modder or only try to balance a specific part (like a single tree). If people end up interested when I will be able to deliver a working version (which will get other changes as it is being tested or discussed) then great. But don't be in a hurry, unless you just want to test things and help me with reports, because I work it slow and take a lot of time weighing pros and cons of a change.

I'm afraid that as far as the official version goes you will be stuck with the current game. Which while excellent is a bit lacking in balance and would benefit greatly from a complete balance patch (the last fall patch was rather disapointing in my opinion being only a few changes). I'm pretty sure Firaxis won't go further with Civ5 as they are moving onto Civ:BE. Firaxis will probably release some fixes for civ5 but if you expect strong changes, I'm pretty sure you'll be disappointed. You can expect some AI change and minor tweaks. Finally, a balance endeavor is not something that you do once very year anyway.

 

[Camikaze]

Patches aren't necessarily as simple as they appear. Not only would they require time from gameplay designers, but also likely QA and Localisation passes as well (a final patch in particular would need a lot of QA to ensure that a further patch or hotpatch isn't required). That said, the last BtS patch took everyone by surprise, because it was thought that Civ4 was well and truly abandoned at that stage. That's a good omen for a future Civ5 patch.

 

[Leathaface]

The game is good for me ATM. I don't see any big imbalances in it.

 

[GoStu]

A very wise man once wrote: "if the question starts with 'why don't they _______', the answer is 'money' ".

I can't see any reason for them to continue support for Civ 5. Ongoing support earlier would be to retain a player base, to sell more copies of Brave New World. Unless there's another expansion in the works, I don't expect more patches.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

The game is good for me ATM. I don't see any big imbalances in it.

Multiplayer is as they "borked" and there's still a huge lack of mod support for multiplayer.

 

[JamesCivFan]

Patches aren't necessarily as simple as they appear. Not only would they require time from gameplay designers, but also likely QA and Localisation passes as well (a final patch in particular would need a lot of QA to ensure that a further patch or hotpatch isn't required). That said, the last BtS patch took everyone by surprise, because it was thought that Civ4 was well and truly abandoned at that stage. That's a good omen for a future Civ5 patch.

Basically this. However, I don't have hopes for any more patches after this point. It has already been 3.5 years since CiV's release. That was ages ago. To their defense, though, I've never seen any games getting so massively patched for such a long time. Even if you don't count the expansions (which felt more like needed huge patches, in my opinion), it was an amazing "run".

They at least tried to please everyone, after the paid beta we got back in 2010.

 

[cpm4001]

Multiplayer is as they "borked" and there's still a huge lack of mod support for multiplayer.

...something we know they at least made some stabs at earlier, as the "pre-Fall Patch patch" had a non-functional option for multiplayer under the mods menu. Seriously, a minor tweak to multiplayer (something that could be carried over to or from Civ: BE!) and the game's good.

 

[PhilBowles]

Because there's not a team working on it. Why would there be? Whatever team WAS working on it has moved onto other projects. There's no reason to continue to devote resources to a game this old. A new patch isn't going to create more sales at this point in the game's lifespan, so no game studio is going to devote resources to creating said patch.

Given that Civ V is among the best-selling and most-played games on Steam to this day, and it's quite often on sale, I suspect there's quite good potential for getting more sales out of it. But you're probably correct that a further patch wouldn't alter that - people aren't going to be rushing out to by a game because of minor balance tweaks.

As for the original poster's particular examples: Tradition, overpowered? Not really - it's about where it should be for tall empires. Liberty, however, is not quite good enough for wide empires. Improving Liberty will probably not, however, resolve the game issue that it's invariably easier to play tall than wide - this is something that will require a system-level change that isn't realistically feasible until Civ VI, probably including removing or revising global happiness and increasing the economic penalty for maintaining larger empires.

Rationalism OP? Again, the problem is not Rationalism. Civ is at its core a game designed around the 'science is king' concept and every incarnation of the game - as well as the original board game that inspired it - works on this principle. In retrospect, that makes it a poor design decision to have a social policy tree exclusively devoted to boosting science, but there's no cure for that short of replacing the Rationalism tree with something else. Firaxis' solution in Civ V was to reduce sacrifices for taking Rationalism - it no longer competes with other policy trees, since the ones it used to compete with are now ideologies. This is probably the best that can be achieved, again, until Civ VI changes the basic system.

Ditto the melee/ranged situation. Ideally, a future version of Civ which retains the same basic mechanics will only give siege weapons and some ships ranged attacks, and archer-type units will act as melee units much as happened in Civ IV. But a change that radical can't be made outside the scope of a full expansion or, again, Civ VI.

Bear in mind that Civ IV never had a complete balance patch to 'finish it off' - despite a late final patch long-standing imbalances such as the weakness of certain civics (e.g. Serfdom), overpowered nature of others (Slavery), and the general uselessness of the Spiritual civ trait were never fixed. Civ V will probably be left in much the same state. The imbalances it has favour - sometimes heavily - certain playstyles and selections, but the game's fundamentally a sandbox and most strategies it allows are viable. Going wide's not as easy as going tall, but it still works very well even at the highest difficulties.

 

[JamesCivFan]

Given that Civ V is among the best-selling and most-played games on Steam to this day, and it's quite often on sale, I suspect there's quite good potential for getting more sales out of it. But you're probably correct that a further patch wouldn't alter that - people aren't going to be rushing out to by a game because of minor balance tweaks.

As for the original poster's particular examples: Tradition, overpowered? Not really - it's about where it should be for tall empires. Liberty, however, is not quite good enough for wide empires. Improving Liberty will probably not, however, resolve the game issue that it's invariably easier to play tall than wide - this is something that will require a system-level change that isn't realistically feasible until Civ VI, probably including removing or revising global happiness and increasing the economic penalty for maintaining larger empires.

Rationalism OP? Again, the problem is not Rationalism. Civ is at its core a game designed around the 'science is king' concept and every incarnation of the game - as well as the original board game that inspired it - works on this principle. In retrospect, that makes it a poor design decision to have a social policy tree exclusively devoted to boosting science, but there's no cure for that short of replacing the Rationalism tree with something else. Firaxis' solution in Civ V was to reduce sacrifices for taking Rationalism - it no longer competes with other policy trees, since the ones it used to compete with are now ideologies. This is probably the best that can be achieved, again, until Civ VI changes the basic system.

Ditto the melee/ranged situation. Ideally, a future version of Civ which retains the same basic mechanics will only give siege weapons and some ships ranged attacks, and archer-type units will act as melee units much as happened in Civ IV. But a change that radical can't be made outside the scope of a full expansion or, again, Civ VI.

Liberty used to be actually fine... and they went and nerfed it down to the ground. Remember the good, old days where you'd pick Collective Rule as your 2nd Policy and get that settler out on turn 20? Or, when the free GP in the end of the tree was actually free and not "free"? Honor and Piety need a lot of love as well. That's my only "big" complaint about CiV now. The fact that it's really difficult to open with anything else other than Tradition, with a few -rather situational- exceptions.

 

[PhilBowles]

Liberty used to be actually fine... and they went and nerfed it down to the ground. Remember the good, old days where you'd pick Collective Rule as your 2nd Policy and get that settler out on turn 20? Or, when the free GP in the end of the tree was actually free and not "free"? Honor and Piety need a lot of love as well. That's my only "big" complaint about CiV now. The fact that it's really difficult to open with anything else other than Tradition, with a few -rather situational- exceptions.

That's true, but it's true in a very different game context, one in which more than Tradition has changed in favour of tall empires. The new economic system, for example, makes maintenance costs for buildings and roads in larger empires hard to sustain in the early game and the trade system doesn't give many advantages to a wide empire over a tall one. While unhappiness could to some degree be ignored early in the game's lifetime, BNW added more serious penalties to it (although it's also easier to avoid).

 

[Aaron90495]

Liberty used to be actually fine... and they went and nerfed it down to the ground. Remember the good, old days where you'd pick Collective Rule as your 2nd Policy and get that settler out on turn 20? Or, when the free GP in the end of the tree was actually free and not "free"? Honor and Piety need a lot of love as well. That's my only "big" complaint about CiV now. The fact that it's really difficult to open with anything else other than Tradition, with a few -rather situational- exceptions.

This is precisely my biggest issue with the game. Just fixing the starting tree imbalances would make me incredibly happy.

 

[Doktor Vic Tim]

Apart from starter tree adjustment and multiplayer mods, I wouldn't mind seeing some more achievements

I mean, for some (and me) achievements can be a driving force to keep playing a game. The earlier scenarios had an achievement for winning it once with each side. Into the Renaissance only had 3 of those, for example. Conquest of the New world had one achievement for each leader you won it with.

I know it's trivial, but at least having civ specific achievements for the scenarios would add more replay value and incentive to try different civs.

EDIT: and I'd like if they were a wee bit more colourful, please. BNW's achievements looked so dull brown...

 

[Gamewizard]

Changes to the social policies is easily moddable so I don't see firaxis wasting resources on making its own changes. Multiplayer is really the only problem that modders cannot address.