Why was Civ4 released before it was finished ? A letter to the developer

[Kolyana]

One thought: When games are released with expectation to patch in the coming weeks and months, the gamers get a bigger chance to be involved in the final development of the game. In Civ IV, many of the things in the two major patches were due to suggestions by people on this very site. I'm personally glad we get a malleable product that can be improved so easily. I don't even buy console games anymore because they actually can't be improved, and i've been burnt more than once on games that turned out to be less than fun.

If you really don't like unfinished products, wait a few months to buy a game (any new release, not just Civ). This is the state of the PC game market.

So - without being antagonistic - would you say that we (the gaming commnity) are now paying for beta testing?

 

[CivFan91]

You can think of it that way, if you want. I prefer to think about the fact that a new Civ is out. That I own it and play with 0 problems with it. It's fun to play. The 3D isn't spactacular, but it's better than it was. The AI is still dumb, but it can be modded, I'm sure. They did make this very moddable, after all. And I don't know about the 'Pedia. I read little of it before getting the 1.5 patch.

I'm trying to spread some optimism, here: This thread is making me depressed. Come on, guys, it's far from perfect, but it's a game, one that can be easily left alone if you find the problems make the game unenjoyable. If you can't stand the game, put it down. If you can't or don't want to, you have snuffed your complaints rather effectively.

 

[Kolyana]

I like the game and I've also had zero problems (just the usual bugs) ... but I am concerned with the attitude of the gaming industry and on this point, Take2 is a good example. "It's not ready, but we want the cash so releas eit now and we'll worry about it later."

 

[se7en]

Verbose and tedious. You could have made your point in two sentences, and that would have been more effective. Adjectives weaken writing. Use them only when necessary.

Countless hordes of unnecessary adjectives disingenuously obfuscate mental ******ation.

 

[troytheface]

Gaming industry? Lol. Ever hear of the Ford Pinto? They wanted to have something to compete with cheap small foreign imports. It had the ability to go up in flames if it got wrecked because of lame gasoline tank placement and protection. Sherman tank? Another example of saving a buck - even if it costs lives.
The gaming industry is hardly alone in its desire to make a buck - minimum cost maximum profit. Sometimes i read these posts and am reminded of my age. Health care, gas stations, retail stores ...on and on - all have reduced service in persuit of more profit. Old news. Perhaps since many here purchase games more so than say stocks- they become dismayed at the first tastes of economic reality.
(Hell even "Windows" was an inferior operating system to say Mac's OS - but it won out -now why would an inferior product beat a superior one? Marketing)

 

[Kolyana]

Gaming industry? Lol. Ever hear of the Ford Pinto? They wanted to have something to compete with cheap small foreign imports. It had the ability to go up in flames if it got wrecked because of lame gasoline tank placement and protection. Sherman tank? Another example of saving a buck - even if it costs lives.
The gaming industry is hardly alone in its desire to make a buck - minimum cost maximum profit. Sometimes i read these posts and am reminded of my age. Health care, gas stations, retail stores ...on and on - all have reduced service in persuit of more profit. Old news. Perhaps since many here purchase games more so than say stocks- they become dismayed at the first tastes of economic reality.
(Hell even "Windows" was an inferior operating system to say Mac's OS - but it won out -now why would an inferior product beat a superior one? Marketing)

I couldn't agree more. I said earlier "inevitable" and you say "reality" ... it's not exactly something that fills me with joy, but - yes - sadly it just seems to be the modern way of things.

 

[troytheface]

well its not all negative...Kurt Cobain of Nirvanah fame was held up as someone who was interested in the art more than the flash- yet when queried he said that he aimed from the get go to make a buck with his "art"- he banked everything he had on it....
Also- who would give 100 percent of themselves on the job all the time? It is undoable- and could even be counter productive- u want to use the best of urself when it counts- not when ur, lets say , shredding paper.
The Viking expansion? In large part economically driven. Exploration of the new world? Economics. ect. In other words persuit of the buck is not all bad- whats the Stalin quote- Quantity has its own Quality (ripped off that quote from a poster on here- thanks whoever it was- like that quote-kinda cryptic but not easily dismissed.)

 

[9mmjustice]

I cant figure out how to pull just one line from a quote, but Troytheface sherman tanks are not a good example of "saving a buck" .
everything in 1941 had to be shipped to Europe, there was a deliberate strategy of sending 3 light tanks as apposed to sending 1 heavy main battle tank. And truth be told,our heavy tank could not have competed with the tiger anyway. Yes it cost lives, but we won the war.
I agree with everything else you said and dont want to be a forum nazi, I just realy like military history.

 

[Sadan01]

...but I am concerned with the attitude of the gaming industry and on this point, Take2 is a good example. "It's not ready, but we want the cash so releas eit now and we'll worry about it later."

This is not a post arguing your point Kolyana - just want to add further weight to it.

The "gaming industry" is not the only side of software development that suffers from this attitude. Dare I name them, but Microsoft would have to be No.1 in my book by releasing some products (Let me state again as I don't want this to degenerate into another argument with some: not ALL products, but some) that are clearly not ready for market.

However I think there is an addition "layer" on this with bringing Microsoft into this: You go to the shop and buy a game, install it and are then confronted with bugs (which is so common nowadays that I come to expect it from every single release)... You are pissed. You and only you decide whether to take the game back for a refund or exchange or whatever. Fine, as that is up to each of us.

You order the latest <insert type of software here> from Microsoft and install it. You realise that it works okay however there are security issues (which is a large category in and of itself) in certain areas. Microsoft has not released a patch for that particular bug. What do you do? Do you return the software? Well let's say that for what your business does, you would need that software at that particular version so you cannot return it. Now what? You call Microsoft PSS and hope to hell they already know of the issue and at the very least have a temporary workaround for it.

Even though this is similar in effect to <insert game that requires a patch here>, it has more lasting and serious implications on everyone involved - seemingly except Microsoft, for now. You can quite obviously substitute "business" for "home" in this example.

 

[COUGAR69]

Uh.Hello?These guys do visit these sites and you would never know it.But I do.I read the fine print called the credits actually.Pickup your manual and you may get a surprise.I don't belive Sirian works for any of the companies but if I remember he was a play tester for the game.But I may be wrong.Just because a game works for 50 playtesters does'nt mean it will work for 10000 or even 100000 players.You have that many different systems and each system is more than likely different.You take two identical cars with the same problem and you can have very different causes.There is not just one person to blame.If you have a complaint then file it and go on with life.Don't ramble like I am and run a dead horse into the ground.

 

[COUGAR69]

I have no idea what I was trying to say.I got lost.Must be CRS.

 

[KingG]

Complaints about the quality of CIV, intial release and current patch, are well founded and Civ players do noone any good by defending a substandard product.

The game still lacks basic functions, mentioned in many other forum threads, lacks atmosphere due to dull advisors, is fiddly to manage as the info screens are not as useful as they could be, and still runs much too slowly on any but the most modern systems that are way above minimum specs.

Despite these major shortcomings CIV is innovative and, potentially, the best Civ to date imho.

However, the sloppy release should not be condoned by paying consumers.

 

[Ultima Dragoon]

Complaints about the quality of CIV, intial release and current patch, are well founded and Civ players do noone any good by defending a substandard product.

The game still lacks basic functions, mentioned in many other forum threads, lacks atmosphere due to dull advisors, is fiddly to manage as the info screens are not as useful as they could be, and still runs much too slowly on any but the most modern systems that are way above minimum specs.

Despite these major shortcomings CIV is innovative and, potentially, the best Civ to date imho.

However, the sloppy release should not be condoned by paying consumers.

You would've hated Civ3 when it first came out; Even now it has a much larger amount of micro-management than ever will have.

 

[ellie]

You would've hated Civ3 when it first came out; Even now it has a much larger amount of micro-management than ever will have.

I dunno, i love(d) civ3 but straight away bought conquests so maybee i missed a lot of bugs. Ive played it pretty much none-stop since getting it and although ive bought civ 4 its sitting on my desk almost untouched till i get a sid win on civ III.

I had trouble getting CIV IV working smoothly, got it working eventually and had a brief go and didnt like it.

I really ,really wanted to like it but i found the graphics confusing, the interface less intuitive and the atmposphere lacking. We seem to have lost the little extras as the series went on. I find it astonishing that units STILL attack as single units when ancient civ-type games have done armies already in the past.


So, in short i think that the initial letter is harsh.

But the product certainly has been rushed out and it shows.


Ellie

 

[KingG]

You would've hated Civ3 when it first came out; Even now it has a much larger amount of micro-management than ever will have.

MM has nothing to do with releasing a half-finished product.

Many of the limitations appear relatively simple to fix and I expect new patches to remedy this. The simple fact is that the initial game was a beta release. Even with the current patch there is still work to do before CIV lives up to its full potential that the improved gameplay concepts promise.

The criticisms are justified.

 

[warpstorm]

However, the sloppy release should not be condoned by paying consumers.

All I can say is that nobody forced you to buy it right away. You could have waited. In this day and age there are ways to find out (how many raves and complaints were here the first day?) if the quality is worth the price they are asking (as a point of reference I pay more to take the family out to dinner at a cheap restaurant or to a movie or even to fill up the car with gas for a week than I paid for Civ4).

 

[TheNiceOne]

All I can say is that nobody forced you to buy it right away. You could have waited. In this day and age there are ways to find out (how many raves and complaints were here the first day?) if the quality is worth the price they are asking.

That's exactly what I did. I'm a true civfanatic, but still decided to put cIV on my christmas wish list to my parents in law, instead of buying it when it came out. They bought me CIV3 for christmas 2001, so it was a nice tradition

Anyway, it was hard to not buy it before, but the result was that I got to start playing with the 1.52 patch, and got a game that have fine framerates with AA turned on, on my not-to-new PC (A 9700 Pro graphics card).

So I'm of course thankful for all of you who playtested it for me.

 

[ellie]

All I can say is that nobody forced you to buy it right away. You could have waited. In this day and age there are ways to find out (how many raves and complaints were here the first day?) if the quality is worth the price they are asking (as a point of reference I pay more to take the family out to dinner at a cheap restaurant or to a movie or even to fill up the car with gas for a week than I paid for Civ4).

Oh come on mate you cant blame people for 'buying the game early'.

A new game is expected to have minor issues not picked up by Q&A perhaps. Which are fixed with a patch.

For me the problems i had getting it to run were not minor glitches.

And the lack of polish/appeal (my first impressions anyway) led to me loading C3C back up within half an hour and leaving civ4 till im sick of C3C completely.

Perhaps the game will grow on me, shrug

 

[Xavier Von Erck]

Look, more whining. Yay.

All PC games have patches released, ALL. BF2 did, BF1942 did... HEY... CIVIII did... you name a PC game, there are patches. There are too many people running too many hardware configurations for the game to work on every computer. However, the game works fine on 95% of computers out there. It doesn't work great on your configuration yet so you whine. Whine whine whine. Another "open letter" garbage thread, it's just too bad there isn't a negativity forum so those of us who wish to read threads regarding Civ4 could do so without hearing from the small minority of boo-birds who aren't happy because they have to -- OMG -- download a patch!

The game has worked fine for myself and hundreds of thousands of others from outside the box... and thankfully, they've continued to tweak it to make it even better. Yet still, more whiny threads from more whiny people. So tiring and boring.

 

[KingG]

Most of the critical posts I have seen try to be constructive and understanding of the pressures on game developers. The last just seems to be a whine

There were and still are issues in CIV that are stopping Civ veterans, and especially newbies, from enjoying the game to the extent that the new design concepts should allow.

The previews were very complimentary and few could have expected such an unpolished, poorly performing initial release. This of course led to disappointment for many players who have every right to express their feelings and concerns.

The problems are fewer and less extreme now with the second patch, although the posts in other forums suggest that even the hardest of the hardcore Civ fans expect more improvements.

I enjoy CIV and think the effort that went into the new game design really shows. But I haven't experienced the old Civ magic with Civ4 yet.