2K Greg's recent posts on the 2K forums

[ohioastronomy]

I agree. I've played 4 normal speed games and played through the tutorials, and I've only had 1 crash to the desktop. In civ4 release I remember lots of crashing near the point of unplayability until the first serious batch of patches.

The game is simply awful for large and huge maps, especially at slow game speeds. I didn't notice problems with the smaller maps (small/standard/tiny) that I usually prefer, but I definitely see the game grind to a halt even early.

And, my God, playing at marathon is excruciating. Did they test it at all for that setting?

 

[lschnarch]

You've never done customer service, have you? Try it some time and you might just change your mind on this. Or call someone up and act that way, and wonder why you've been put on hold for six hours.

There's a difference between airing a formal gripe, and being a [jerk] just because you can. Maybe he shouldn't have said it that way publicly, but that's a different issue.

No, it is not a different issue.

2K Greg and 2k Liz have spent some time here and over at the 2K forums with throwing around advertisements.
Where they are empowered, they like to close threads turning out to be critical, whilst questions about which kind of things are adressed by the developers are left completely unanswered (which is not only the case for Civ0.V but for other 2k titles as well).

Literally, they are making fun of their customers.
And then they even DARE to complain about rudeness?

 

[Tylerryan79]

Ya I've worked more customer service than I'd like to admit, and I agree people can be over the top sometimes. However, seeing as they were the customer, our goal was to be polite no matter what, and try to fix the problem as best we could. If I ever had said "your being rude" to a customer I would have been written up or warned. If a customer was waaaay over the top I would have to ask them to please refrain from swearing etc, or I would have to end the call. But never could I call them rude etc.

 

[V. Soma]

The Oct 9th link doesn't lead to the quote. It leads to another thread on this forum?

Oups, I corrected it now

 

[Fariic]

Thread should be stickied.

 

[Guardian_PL]

Oh poor 2K Greg! Has it so tough! Maybe we should all chip in and buy Greggy a box of tissues for his sniffles. What a bunch of rude idiots 2K Greg has to 'deal with'. I mean, 2K lies and hypes the game up on Certain Things (not everything), and then he has to deal with disappointed gamers that spent their hard-earned money, and may feel a bit let down by the game.

But wait, it's just more propraganda (erhmm I mean marketing strategy) by 2K, in an attempt (from the sounds of it) to demonize disappointed gamers in a way; because as 2K Greg said, it's the greatest thing that has ever happened in the history of the universe, and everyone else is just some rude pee-on that 2K has to 'put up with'.

I'm glad 2K doesn't come around and fill up CFC with this kind of garbage, I say leave it on 2K forums.

What company in their right mind would call it's customers rude? Well, I guess 2K gets it from their parent, Take-2, who blamed modders for putting porn in one of their games, when it was actually Take-2 who was responsible for it (something like that IIRC).

2K Greg =

Oh but of course he'll stick to 2K forum, rest assured - it's easier to clean up all the rudeness. After all we know how it's like with posting criticism on there, don't we?

 

[tom2050]

You've never done customer service, have you? Try it some time and you might just change your mind on this. Or call someone up and act that way, and wonder why you've been put on hold for six hours.

There's a difference between airing a formal gripe, and being a [jerk] just because you can. Maybe he shouldn't have said it that way publicly, but that's a different issue.

If you do customer service, and you call your customers rude all day long, you will get fired by any normal company. They can say whatever they want to amongst themselves, but it is stupid for 2K to come out and make a public statement calling it's customers rude. There is a big difference there.

Almost everything is customer service in the business world, from sitting in a cubicle to sales. Calling the people that are paying you rude in a public statement or to their face is bad for business. As a business, if customers act like jerks (some with legitimate frustration), doesn't mean the company should act like jerks as some form of payback. It's childish and paints them in a bad light.

 

[PieceOfMind]

And, my God, playing at marathon is excruciating. Did they test it at all for that setting?

That's how it's supposed to be! People dig that sort of gamespeed and if it's too slow why don't you bump the speed to Epic or higher?

I haven't seen anything wrong with Marathon so far. 1500 turns IIRC - that's about where it needs to be.

 

[jahsoldier]

That's how it's supposed to be! People dig that sort of gamespeed and if it's too slow why don't you bump the speed to Epic or higher?

I haven't seen anything wrong with Marathon so far. 1500 turns IIRC - that's about where it needs to be.

I think he's referring to the fact the game slows to a crawl as soon as large portions of the map get revealed / you meet a lot of civs / you enter a certain age / lots of units are produced

I don't know what triggers it myself, but it tends to run fine on mine for the first 150 turns or so before I start having to wait longer and longer in between 'next turn' clicks. By the modern age (on standard speed) it's anything from 30 seconds to 2 minutes between each turn. I can't imagine how godawful Marathon must be on that.

 

[PieceOfMind]

I think he's referring to the fact the game slows to a crawl as soon as large portions of the map get revealed / you meet a lot of civs / you enter a certain age / lots of units are produced

I don't know what triggers it myself, but it tends to run fine on mine for the first 150 turns or so before I start having to wait longer and longer in between 'next turn' clicks. By the modern age (on standard speed) it's anything from 30 seconds to 2 minutes between each turn. I can't imagine how godawful Marathon must be on that.

Oh ok. It seems fairly fine for me too. I've seen it suggested that one should not set the autosave interval too short (like every 1 turn), but otherwise there isn't much that can be done. Even graphical settings don't seem to make a difference, except for some reason DX10/DX11 is considerably faster than DX9 on some machines (twice as slow in one of the reports I saw).

But to the point, it's not a problem with Marathon, the same problem is for all speeds. Marathon still needs to be there for the people who are still prepared to put up with slow turn times and want the Marathon experience. There's no doubt in my mind that people would be complaining more strongly if there was no Marathon mode at all.

I suppose I mistakenly took it as a shot at Marathon when really it was just using Marathon as an example of how the game gets unplayable.

The reloading save bug (bloated save files) could be at play here as well, but I'm not sure if that affects turn times.

 

[evrett37]

Well, since 2K Greg is not showing up here,
I thought I copy here his posts on 2K forums, as lately.

I do search on his posts on 2K forums to get his words on how things are...
I look for new posts, as possible. I quote here what I find interesting for us, CFC:

I try to update it every other day

So:

Oct 9th:
This:
"I'm overwhelmingly happy to get to publicly speak for my favorite game franchise of all time. I've been a huge Civ fan since Civ 1. It makes the occasional rudeness I have to deal with completely worth it.

...

I'm currently working on getting some information for you guys that I think you'll be really happy with. No ETA"


"The developers have been listening to feedback on the worker AI and are evaluating how we can improve it."


"

Soma..if you keep up the charade that 2k is a legit source of information then when we end up disappointed by their apparently lack of communication we really have only you to blame. Its been made abundantly clear 2k and firaxis have no intention or interest in a healthy two way communication relationship. The more you pretend otherwsie and accept scraps from their table the more you hurt the cause and set people up for disappointment and disillusionment..

 

[jahsoldier]

Soma..if you keep up the charade that 2k is a legit source of information then when we end up disappointed by their apparently lack of communication we really have only you to blame. Its been made abundantly clear 2k and firaxis have no intention or interest in a healthy two way communication relationship. The more you pretend otherwsie and accept scraps from their table the more you hurt the cause and set people up for disappointment and disillusionment..

We should at least wait and see what the first big gameplay patch is like before writing them off completely. The game's a massive disappointment for most of us, it's pretty clear it was released unfinished to meet a deadline and that's a crappy way to treat your loyal customers.

Having said that, I've got (most of) the moaning out my system now, and I'm interested to see what they do next. I still maintain there are the fundamentals for a great game here. Let's see if they make it.

 

[evrett37]

We should at least wait and see what the first big gameplay patch is like before writing them off completely. The game's a massive disappointment for most of us, it's pretty clear it was released unfinished to meet a deadline and that's a crappy way to treat your loyal customers.

Having said that, I've got (most of) the moaning out my system now, and I'm interested to see what they do next. I still maintain there are the fundamentals for a great game here. Let's see if they make it.

Why sit on the sidelines and let people who have failed us before fail again? Instead lets get our S together and be an active part of that patch.

 

[Antmanbrooks]

"My favorite thing about the new graphics engine is how the mountains flow naturally over many hexes. I love that a huge mountain range actually looks like natural mountains! Similarly, I love how some of the improvements (mainly farms) flow from one tile to the next, as if it's all part of the same farmland."

Is it just me or does anyone else feel like the farms just don't link up very well, especially around rivers? They are kind of halfway there and look great in some areas but terrible in others. They seem a bit jagged and sharp or ovelap certain terrain features very poorly.

 

[ohioastronomy]

Oh ok. It seems fairly fine for me too. I've seen it suggested that one should not set the autosave interval too short (like every 1 turn), but otherwise there isn't much that can be done. Even graphical settings don't seem to make a difference, except for some reason DX10/DX11 is considerably faster than DX9 on some machines (twice as slow in one of the reports I saw).

But to the point, it's not a problem with Marathon, the same problem is for all speeds. Marathon still needs to be there for the people who are still prepared to put up with slow turn times and want the Marathon experience. There's no doubt in my mind that people would be complaining more strongly if there was no Marathon mode at all.

I suppose I mistakenly took it as a shot at Marathon when really it was just using Marathon as an example of how the game gets unplayable.

The reloading save bug (bloated save files) could be at play here as well, but I'm not sure if that affects turn times.

Yes, it's two things: each turn takes a long time to process (thus having more of them gets very slow), and the slower early game production gets magnified in an unpleasant way at marathon speed. I typically played Civ 4 at marathon, as did my son, but both of us found the Civ 5 equivalent hopeless.

 

[Gaizokubanou]

Oh ok. It seems fairly fine for me too. I've seen it suggested that one should not set the autosave interval too short (like every 1 turn), but otherwise there isn't much that can be done. Even graphical settings don't seem to make a difference, except for some reason DX10/DX11 is considerably faster than DX9 on some machines (twice as slow in one of the reports I saw).

But to the point, it's not a problem with Marathon, the same problem is for all speeds. Marathon still needs to be there for the people who are still prepared to put up with slow turn times and want the Marathon experience. There's no doubt in my mind that people would be complaining more strongly if there was no Marathon mode at all.

I suppose I mistakenly took it as a shot at Marathon when really it was just using Marathon as an example of how the game gets unplayable.

The reloading save bug (bloated save files) could be at play here as well, but I'm not sure if that affects turn times.

Something is really wrong with the game that shows in marathon/huge setting atm. It's beyond 2 minute per turn waiting... sometime it would just lock the game up (at least I consider 10 minute wait time with no sound playing and zero interactivity as locked up game).

I think workers have something to do with it as my late marathon/huge games tend to literally stop 10 ~ 20 seconds when auto-cycling goes to my worker when I have high worker count. I disband all the workers I have and bam it takes 5 ~ 10 seconds per turn.

Edit: that and having city states around also causes RIDICULOUS slowdowns in turn waiting. Given how exploitaiting maritime city states are, I see no good reason on actually having city states in the game atm.

 

[jahsoldier]

Edit: that and having city states around also causes RIDICULOUS slowdowns in turn waiting. Given how exploitaiting maritime city states are, I see no good reason on actually having city states in the game atm.

Yup, I started turning off city states a while ago. Believe it or not, the game's a lot more fun without them.

 

[jahsoldier]

And also, I never thought of this but yes the game's a lot faster without them. Probably because the comp's only dealing with 9 players' turns instead of another 20 'mini-civs'

 

[logintime]

And also, I never thought of this but yes the game's a lot faster without them. Probably because the comp's only dealing with 9 players' turns instead of another 20 'mini-civs'

I should actually try that sometime. I've been using the citystates for their exploits (eg, selling my luxury resources or open borders to the AI players for tonnes of gold which I then use to buy off the CSs for their own luxury resources and benefits, which lets me come ahead in overall gold, happiness, and resources in the end), but it's admittedly a cheap way to play. Having a couple rounds without them might be more challenging?

 

[V. Soma]

OK, I want to ask the CFC members who follow this thread:

Should I keep on updating the OP?
Evrett37 says it is against our interest, we should have instead
active communication with 2K people here at CFC...

I dunno