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

[Bad Brett]

As for closing threads on the 2K Forums: We are always exploring ways to make the forums a more useful place for people to discuss whatever they want to discuss. We invite all feedback, negative or otherwise. The threads that we were closing a lot last week were the countless "My personal review" threads we were seeing come up several times an hour. The problem is most of these threads were something saying mostly the same things that every other personal review was saying, and it was making it difficult for anyone to find threads that weren't the same thing as most of the others.

It's no different than you find here: When there were countless threads popping up about why this or that civilization is not included in the game, the moderators made the decision to create a single thread for this discussion and closed any new ones that were created. Edit: My mistake; it looks like these types of threads were forbidden completely for a period. It was Steam discussion that was asked to remain in a few main threads.

You didn't really answer the question... Long, well-written posts made by disappointed fans were deleted, posts like "OMG! This game roxX0rs!!!!!!!11111 Haters are too stupid to understand Civ 5, go play Civ4 and don't comeback you morons" were not deleted. I think most of the people that visit the 2k forums will indeed agree with me that people who enjoy the game don't seem to be playing by the same rules.

I've seen this so many times before. More and more users post negative topics, the company panics and remove them, with some bad excuse that there were too much flaming going on or something like that (often made by the ...fanboys... who get upset when someone writes something negative about the game). I've seen the same behavior on sports forums, game forums, movie forums... I guess you have every right to do it. But it's hard to take you seriously.

 

[Rexflex]

Because he is backed up by many who share his opinion.

Then he can speak for those who elect to share his opinion, not the whole community.

 

[Fistalis]

o trade.




it adds imagined power and is an SMAC(human centric) feature the humans can manage 1000% better than the AI, who only vaguely understand

You mean like 1Upt? and yet you like that. Just because something is human centric doesn't make it bad.. especially when it caters to your playstyle. As 1UPT has proven.

 

[Bad Brett]

But frankly, it's about as much a wargame as Civ3 and 4 were. War is beneficial and often powerful and effective above all other strategies.

Try to a build a modern army on higher difficulty levels without changing civics, without building factories and without founding corparations... Try to pay for the army without building banks, a well placed wall street and well developed cottages...

Yes, war was benificial. But the whole "Axemen rush" argument is so stupid. You could take out one, maybe two Civs using that strategy (and it was really hard to pull off on deity). After that, you would be almost bancrupt and possibly well behind in the tech race. Chances are that there are no more opponents, and that it will take ages until you research optics. In order to maintain the advantages of having an early war, you had to focus even more on the economy.

Perhaps some Civ guru managed to conquer the planet on deity (continents, random AI's), using prets or immortals... but as you realise, it would be almost impossilbe. You were forced to build a working empire.

In Civ V, you are not. You can use the same four horsemen, promote them, upgrade them, and finish off every city on the continent. When they're finished, turn them into boats, head over to the other continent, steamroll that one. Works on any difficulty level. And it doesn't matter if you're economy is a disaster and your cities are worthless. As long as you keep these units alive, you'll be fine.

 

[2K Greg]

You didn't really answer the question... Long, well-written posts made by disappointed fans were deleted, posts like "OMG! This game roxX0rs!!!!!!!11111 Haters are too stupid to understand Civ 5, go play Civ4 and don't comeback you morons" were not deleted. I think most of the people that visit the 2k forums will indeed agree with me that people who enjoy the game don't seem to be playing by the same rules.

I've seen this so many times before. More and more users post negative topics, the company panics and remove them, with some bad excuse that there were too much flaming going on or something like that (often made by the ...fanboys... who get upset when someone writes something negative about the game). I've seen the same behavior on sports forums, game forums, movie forums... I guess you have every right to do it. But it's hard to take you seriously.

The fact of the matter is that you are just plain incorrect. We very rarely delete posts, and it's only when they are of an over the top offensive nature, such as death threats. Other than that, the worst that happens is a thread is locked and the poster is asked to post their review in one of the other threads where people are posting reviews.

None of us work 24 hours a day; It's inevitable that offensive and rude posts such as your example are going to get missed. I encourage people to use the report feature to bring it to the attention of moderators, just as they do here! We have definitely handed out plenty of infractions to people on both sides of the fence for being rude to other members. I will be the first to admit that our moderation is far from perfect; but that's forum moderation for you!

Unfortunately, if you just think I'm lying then there's nothing I can really do about that.

 

[Bad Brett]

Unfortunately, if you just think I'm lying then there's nothing I can really do about that.

If you didn't lie you would be a bad employee. Would you ever tell the customers if you though a new game was boring? Of course not. In fact, I'd say that you would have been fired if you had said "Seriously guys, if I were you, I would wait for the patches before I bought Civ V, because there are still many issues that need to be solved".

I work with product realization; We purposely want want to products to break after a certain amount of years, otherwise we would go out of business. When say that a product is eco-friendly, we don't usually mention all the carbon dioxide that is released when we produce it. And why do we do that? Because our job is to maximize the profit, not being honest. Of course, it's important to keep the customers satisfied... but if a coffee machine breaks after 5-10 years, very few people will blame the company that produced it. Instead they will say "well, it was time to get a new one anyway."

So let's be honest for a change. This is the way most companies work. And of course 2k isn't an exception. I know it, and you certainly know it Greg.

 

[SuperJay]

So let's be honest for a change. This is the way most companies work. And of course 2k isn't an exception. I know it, and you certainly know it Greg.

While I can see what you're getting at, you're putting Greg in an untenable position, because by definition he is "doing his job" as a 2K representative while he's here. You, on the other hand, are not doing your job.

If you and Greg were hanging out talking about your jobs over a beer at the local pub, you might get a different perspective. But in the context of CFC, and Greg's position being what it is, you aren't likely to get anywhere - so trying to push him into acknowledging things that you yourself state that he can't acknowledge is sort of pointless, you know?

 

[Rohili]

Given that the next patch looks like it will take some time in coming, what with the numerous balance and gameplay changes, can the developers release a quick fix for game-breaking bugs like never-ending peace treaties first? I literally cannot play Civ at the moment for fear of encountering this bug again and having to abandon the game halfway, after having invested days in it.

 

[tom2050]

Moderator Action: *snip* don't troll here.

 

[Bad Brett]

While I can see what you're getting at, you're putting Greg in an untenable position, because by definition he is "doing his job" as a 2K representative while he's here. You, on the other hand, are not doing your job.

If you and Greg were hanging out talking about your jobs over a beer at the local pub, you might get a different perspective. But in the context of CFC, and Greg's position being what it is, you aren't likely to get anywhere - so trying to push him into acknowledging things that you yourself state that he can't acknowledge is sort of pointless, you know?

Yeah, I know. I'm sure he's a really nice guy. But I do wish that they could have been a bit more honest about certain things, which I don't believe would hurt the business:

"Thanks for commenting on the game. We do realise that there are a lot of flaws, and I can tell you that everyone is working really hard to fix this. It may take a few weeks, but eventually we hope that most of these issues will be solved. Thank you for taking your time by pointing out these problems. With your help, we will be able to fix the game a lot faster."

Or something like that.

 

[the_lor]

Moderator Action: *snip*

That is very clearly not at all what he said.

Moderator Action: *snip*

Granting that he implied dealing with rude people, making that statement has a very different level of vitriol than what you’re asking here. And I have absolutely no idea what you’re attempting to accomplish during this whole exchange.

 

[SuperJay]

Yeah, I know. I'm sure he's a really nice guy. But I do wish that they could have been a bit more honest about certain things, which I don't believe would hurt the business:

"Thanks for commenting on the game. We do realise that there are a lot of flaws, and I can tell you that everyone is working really hard to fix this. It may take a few weeks, but eventually we hope that most of these issues will be solved. Thank you for taking your time by pointing out these problems. With your help, we will be able to fix the game a lot faster."

Or something like that.

Yeah, I know what you mean. It'd be nice. Shafer did sort of say that in those Qt3 posts, or at least as close to it he could say. You just gotta read between the lines.

Sometimes companies are just really, really picky about language that comes close to admitting problems. The software company where I work as a writer actually at one point forbid us from writing "problem" or "flaw" or "error" in any of the docs that effectively served as patch notes for our interim releases. We were limited to the word "issue," and encouraged to actually 'write around it' by basically saying "X used to happen, and with this release, Y now happens instead" - avoid mentioning that X was a bug in the first place. (And let me tell you, it can be hard to write about bugs when you're not allowed to call them bugs.) It's more than a little silly, but there ya go.

 

[zonk]

Yeah, I know what you mean. It'd be nice. Shafer did sort of say that in those Qt3 posts, or at least as close to it he could say. You just gotta read between the lines.

Sometimes companies are just really, really picky about language that comes close to admitting problems. The software company where I work as a writer actually at one point forbid us from writing "problem" or "flaw" or "error" in any of the docs that effectively served as patch notes for our interim releases. We were limited to the word "issue," and encouraged to actually 'write around it' by basically saying "X used to happen, and with this release, Y now happens instead" - avoid mentioning that X was a bug in the first place. (And let me tell you, it can be hard to write about bugs when you're not allowed to call them bugs.) It's more than a little silly, but there ya go.

Ain't that the truth - in fact, I'd replace "sometimes" with "always" and "picky" with "idiot wankers".... Been there myself.

Always ticks me off because - especially if something is fairly egregious - I just fire back, "do you really think our customers are idiots?! It's broke. Everyone knows it's broke. Let's take our medicine, make our apologies, promise and follow through on fixing it, and we'll make lemonade out of lemons." I've probably gotten in trouble more often than not for going to war with marketing and communications over saying such things....

Of course - sometimes the trouble is worth it... a few years back, I was invited in on call with an irate (and very big) account. After about 30 minutes of truly scathing attacks -- makes this board look like a woodstock lovefest -- I broke protocol and admitted he was right on a couple items... they WERE crap, they DID need fixing, and we WERE embarrassed about them. I was hustled into the division VP's office and roundly dressed down.... until - right in the middle of my dressing down - said client actually called to follow-up and said point blank that I was the only reason he wasn't cancelling on us. Highlight of my career... which is pretty sad

 

[tom2050]

Moderator Action: *snip* no trolling here.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Louis XXIV]

Every forum gets death threats (at least mild ones - yes, there can be a mild death threat) from time to time. No, you don't contact the authorities (exactly which authorities do you contact?). At least, this has been my experience in the past as a moderator. But he was talking about other serious behavior as well. CFC actually deletes posts with flaming in it, so it's no different.

 

[polypheus]

What matters ultimately is action not words. As long as a company shows it is listening and does it's best to make at least most, even if not all, complainers happy, through timely action, then that is all we can hope and ask for.

 

[Ayt]

Then he can speak for those who elect to share his opinion, not the whole community.

I would hope no one is dumb enough to think one person speaks for all.

 

[happyturtle]

Since you are monitoring this thread, at least -- I'm hoping this question catches your eye....

Was there a conscious decision in Civ V development to focus on the warfare aspects? If the answer is no - absolutely not, was there any post-mortem discussion about perhaps that not being the aim, but the result?

I'm not trying to flame or anything --- but I think you'd probably agree in reviewing the various threads that the people most disappointed in V are the 'peaceful builder' types. I'm not claiming I can speak for them -- but the majority of the "too many boring Next Turn" complaints are coming from those who play civilization with warfare as a fact of gameplay, rather than something we target as a play style.

It seems, based on what I've read, that the devs "get" that the military AI badly needs work --- but that's really not going to solve the problem with V for an awful lot of us.

We're the types who didn't really care about quecha rushes -- because we didn't use them. We're the types who DID pay attention to health and city happiness, even though one could theoretically ignore them. We're the ones that didn't necessarily exploit holes in religion -- because we never really saw it as something to exploit (in fact, we often saw it as a key diplomatic method to overcome our usually lacking military).

In short - I guess I'd just ask if it's understood that for those of us who never really saw Panzer General (whether we liked it or not) as something that should influence Civilization, because as Sid used to say -- "Civilization is not a wargame" -- there are some real flaws here.... and not just the type of flaws that can be fixed by AI changes or rebalancees, but a lot of barren landscape for the non-warmonger.

If it was a conscious decision, fair enough -- I guess we'll go our separate ways... but if it wasn't the intention, I just hope the team understands that a lot us builders see Civ V as a real and significant step backwards.

I agree with Zonk. Civ V made war more fun, but everything else became less fun. (For me. I'm not claiming to speak for anyone else.) So I hope that the empire building gets tweaked in future patches.

I'd like to see an answer to Zonk's question from 2K, if possible.

 

[dexters]

Try to a build a modern army on higher difficulty levels without changing civics, without building factories and without founding corparations... Try to pay for the army without building banks, a well placed wall street and well developed cottages...

Yes, war was benificial. But the whole "Axemen rush" argument is so stupid. You could take out one, maybe two Civs using that strategy (and it was really hard to pull off on deity). After that, you would be almost bancrupt and possibly well behind in the tech race. Chances are that there are no more opponents, and that it will take ages until you research optics. In order to maintain the advantages of having an early war, you had to focus even more on the economy.

Perhaps some Civ guru managed to conquer the planet on deity (continents, random AI's), using prets or immortals... but as you realise, it would be almost impossilbe. You were forced to build a working empire.

In Civ V, you are not. You can use the same four horsemen, promote them, upgrade them, and finish off every city on the continent. When they're finished, turn them into boats, head over to the other continent, steamroll that one. Works on any difficulty level. And it doesn't matter if you're economy is a disaster and your cities are worthless. As long as you keep these units alive, you'll be fine.

You mean you need an economy to wage war? Are you implying there are no banks in Civ5? Or we don't need the equivalent of civics to wage war?

Moderator Action: <snip> No need to be rude.

 

[da_Vinci]

No Zonk is legit and honest. I just want to understand his position. I understand not everyone is going to be satisfied, but the 'Civ5 is more wargame than Civ' is one thing I think is being overblown or misrepresented. Likely because people are predisposed to accuse Civ5 of being a wargame due to the new hex tile system and Panzer General connections with Jon being a fan of such games.


But frankly, it's about as much a wargame as Civ3 and 4 were. War is beneficial and often powerful and effective above all other strategies.

It might be the case that Civ 5 is as much of a war game as Civ 4, in an absolute sense. What I think the builders are saying is that is is less of a builder game (in their opinion) in an absolute sense. The impact of that, if true, is that war is relatively more important in Civ 5 (that's the benefit of relativism, it allows everyone to be right! )

dV