A programmer’s perspective on Civ VI

[Gorbles]

Looks like everyone is a programmer on this forum. And as programmers you tend to defend Firaxis programmers.

There's no point in having a discussion here.

You could reverse the first line of this post and it would be equally-valid.

Do you not like to hear programmers' opinions on programming? Why not?

 

[Zuizgond]

You could reverse the first line of this post and it would be equally-valid.

Do you not like to hear programmers' opinions on programming? Why not?

As you share the same job, you tend to protect their point of view. Maybe you have too much pressure, maybe you have unrealistic deadlines or too low budget. So you think it's still a good job to release a product in a nearly acceptable state considering all the constraints you had during development.

But in the end, the customer doesn't care about it. He just wants to buy a finished product, which is normal. The complaints are not addressed against the developers specifically, but against Firaxis in general and their business plan.

TLR You seem to take it personally.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

As you share the same job, you tend to protect their point of view. Maybe you have too much pressure, maybe you have unrealistic deadlines or too low budget.

. . . or maybe they just have a more realistic perspective on things. I like to hear every angle on this to better understand what's going on.

 

[avguy2]

OP is right about the fact that they knew about the bugs and issues with balance and everything. How could they not be aware? Their list was simply too long to fix everything so they got it to a state where it's technically playble, no crashes etc. and that has to do for now. And strangely enough, for a huge part of players - and reviewers - it does.

But let's be honest, we're not talking about some minor flaws and bugs that got overlooked. We're talking about integral game features that need fixing. Is that complicted and time consuming? I bet. That doesn't change the facts, obviously a late beta is what they're selling (at best). If they needed more time to finish the game they should've taken more time. Are we suckers for pre-ordering? Guess so. The game is not finished and to me that is pretty sad. Not what I paid for! It's not much consolation that other Civ games got horrible releases, too.

But hey, when I read the comments of folks jumping in to defend this release strategy I can't blame Firaxis. What they're doing works.

 

[idjit]

As a programmer, I think Firaxis has done an outstanding job on this release. When I read the forums here, they are full of complaints. But they are complaints about balance, complaints about the AI choices, complaints about 1UPT, complaints about missing features that would be helpful. They are not complaints about the game crashing, not being able to get working on particular hardware, having the game frozen. (There's a couple of each of those, but very rare). People are playing the game for many hours, and enjoying it despite encountering any minor bugs.

Game crashes to desktop alla time, especially when you try and exit the game. Game crashes when taking enemy cities late game and sometimes during the AI's turn.

 

[Mustakrakish]

Yeah, I'm a programmer too and um... yeah, there are bugs you know. They're definitely there and um... the code... well the code is there too, you know? Bugs too, but the most important thing right now is that the code is definitely there. Um... what else? Oh, yeah! I a civ player since civ II !

 

[idjit]

You realize you imply I might be a liar?

Let me still try to get back to the technical stuff I wanted to talk about. The bug we are talking about is not about overflow. I do understand production overflow . I even tested whether it has to do with production overflow. What I did was produce a few units type A and then a few units type B. Unit A took 2 turns, unit B 8 turns. Producing a few units in a row makes sure it is not an overflow problem.

Well, it's possible your cities grew, or you somehow got suzerain status with a city state that adds a buff to unit building. Or a mouse farted in Siberia.

 

[Ravenwild]

ITT programmers and people who are jealous they are not programmers.

 

[idjit]

I've been a software engineer for over two decades now.

As I have stated in a thread I posted a week ago, I have had jobs where I would've been fired outright if I had released software even close to this state. A major product release that people paid a lot of money for on top of that? I'd never work again..

In some ways, more people on a project makes things harder, yes. Interdisciplinary skill and coordination are a nightmare. But at the same time, you also have many more pairs of eyeballs looking at stuff. There is simply no way they could be smart enough to work on a project like this and yet be so naive as to miss the glaring stuff. (why did I lose my last deity game? It is a mystery! Oh, wait, I can do one more time and look at the rankings. K.)

No, I point my finger squarely at the suits cracking the deadline whip on the techs.

The source of the problem, at its heart, is not technical.

It is political.

Gotta get that ROI, make shareholders happy, bolster the Brand Recognition and grind interns into dust so bonuses can be collected. Etc, etc, etc, ad-nauseum, blah, blah, blah.

 

[Larsenex]

OP is right about the fact that they knew about the bugs and issues with balance and everything. How could they not be aware? Their list was simply too long to fix everything so they got it to a state where it's technically playble, no crashes etc. and that has to do for now. And strangely enough, for a huge part of players - and reviewers - it does.

But let's be honest, we're not talking about some minor flaws and bugs that got overlooked. We're talking about integral game features that need fixing. Is that complicted and time consuming? I bet. That doesn't change the facts, obviously a late beta is what they're selling (at best). If they needed more time to finish the game they should've taken more time. Are we suckers for pre-ordering? Guess so. The game is not finished and to me that is pretty sad. Not what I paid for! It's not much consolation that other Civ games got horrible releases, too.

But hey, when I read the comments of folks jumping in to defend this release strategy I can't blame Firaxis. What they're doing works.

^^^ This is entirely your opinion and you are likely in the minority. For me the game is finished and very enjoyable. To make such exaggerations is silly. Clearly the 1000's of folks playing the game and continuing to play the game are too stupid to know the game is not finished (if we follow your statements).

 

[Kwami]

ITT programmers and people who are jealous they are not programmers.

Eh, there's nothing to be jealous about. Programming is just a thing to do. There are other things to do, too.

 

[Gorbles]

As you share the same job, you tend to protect their point of view. Maybe you have too much pressure, maybe you have unrealistic deadlines or too low budget. So you think it's still a good job to release a product in a nearly acceptable state considering all the constraints you had during development.

But in the end, the customer doesn't care about it. He just wants to buy a finished product, which is normal. The complaints are not addressed against the developers specifically, but against Firaxis in general and their business plan.

TLR You seem to take it personally.

I've taken nothing personally, but that's an amusing projection there.

This is a thread made to offer a programmer's perspective. This thread isn't to talk about what the customer does or doesn't care about. You have every other thread in the subforum for that

You as a customer / non-programmer tend to protect customer / non-programmer points of view. Everyone has bias, it's unavoidable. But that isn't a point in of itself. It's not an argument. It doesn't change anything I or anyone else has said.

I've been a software engineer for over two decades now.

As I have stated in a thread I posted a week ago, I have had jobs where I would've been fired outright if I had released software even close to this state. A major product release that people paid a lot of money for on top of that? I'd never work again..

In some ways, more people on a project makes things harder, yes. Interdisciplinary skill and coordination are a nightmare. But at the same time, you also have many more pairs of eyeballs looking at stuff. There is simply no way they could be smart enough to work on a project like this and yet be so naive as to miss the glaring stuff. (why did I lose my last deity game? It is a mystery! Oh, wait, I can do one more time and look at the rankings. K.)

No, I point my finger squarely at the suits cracking the deadline whip on the techs.

The source of the problem, at its heart, is not technical.

It is political.

Gotta get that ROI, make shareholders happy, bolster the Brand Recognition and grind interns into dust so bonuses can be collected. Etc, etc, etc, ad-nauseum, blah, blah, blah.

While I completely agree a lot of this comes down to management (particularly in the games development industry), I'm not sure it's fair to say you would've been fired for a release in a similar state in other jobs. Other jobs come with different demographics, different pressure points, and so forth.

Certainly there's no such thing as a bug-free release in any project (short of, say, realtime operating systems for critical systems like nuclear power plants), so undoubtably jobs you have worked on will have shipped with issues. The questions are "what issues" and "what severity is acceptable". Which is unfortunately where management gets involved (more than the competence of the developers).

But then again without management you'd have too many technical folks and not enough of a project plan. It's just a shame a good balance is rarely struck between the two sides.

 

[Kolyana]

I'm going to throw in with Gorbles and the other here who are saying that the original post citing "a programmers perspective" is all fine and all, bbut it also highlights how little the programmer in question understands the software development life cycle of a project like this. I also work with a small team, and even I understand the behemoth that is this application and the intrinsic complications of a tight deadline, budget, cross discipline team, shifting requirements, scope creep, testing cycle, and an ever looming deadline.

I've been a programmer, project manager, technical director, and CTO within the software development industry, sometimes small projects, often multi-million dollar applications, and even with a smaller team it's painfully obvious that the larger the team, the more cross-discipline, the more a project is fractured across different developers, the harder it is to manage and come up with a perfect product. I'd argue it's impossible and bugs are inevitable.

The testing cycle alone - which also includes identifying, prioritizing, fixing, retesting, all within the same timeline and budget - is monumental.

If a true programmer really had anything to say about this title, it would be "yeah, there are bugs, not surprising really."

Everything in the original post that tries to talk "conclusions" smacks of naivety.

 

[johnnybaseball]

I have no programming knowledge and I would submit that (a) video games have always had bugs, and that as a customer, my expectation is a game that works, but not one that has no bugs. Some of the best games ever have bugs. Some of them are even charming. (B) Most people are not judging the game based on whether Deity is difficult for the best players to beat. For most, that level is insanely challenging. You guys seem to know everything about all the mechanics in the game, but most people are just playing and learning as they go, hovering over icons to see what each tech gives them, having merely a vague idea of what comes next in tech or civics, and they just make decisions as they go along, without being super strategic or even thinking too hard about it ... and the game is perfectly acceptable if you play that way, and that's how most players play, so that's what matters most.

 

[KidHorn]

Another programmer here. I've been doing it since 1990 or so.

None of us know squat unless we've worked on the source code and been at the meetings. We can't even say for sure if the bugs are in Firaxis code. Maybe they use a 3rd party library that has bugs. It doesn't sound like the bugs should be hard to fix. Assuming they can reproduce them. But, we can only guess.

I haven't run into any bugs as far as I can tell. I think they did a good job.

 

[avguy2]

^^^ This is entirely your opinion and you are likely in the minority. For me the game is finished and very enjoyable. To make such exaggerations is silly. Clearly the 1000's of folks playing the game and continuing to play the game are too stupid to know the game is not finished (if we follow your statements).

Just for the record, I didn't call anyone stupid. But what are you trying to say with your post anyway? The fact that a lot of people seem to be enjoying the game doesn't mean they're thinking the game is finished. I don't think anyone on here believes that, you included. (But even if 1000s of people did say the game actually is finished that wouldn't prove anything. The majority opinion isn't always right!)

Again, I'm trying to make my point so you can understand what I'm saying: I'm not talking about minor bugs and glitches. Every project this size will have those. There are obvious issues with basically all critical game mechanics (and that's not even considering the poor UI design) that will need a lot of work to get fixed. You don't even have to be a programmer to see that. And you surely don't have to take a look at the code. The game is unfinished! (If you don't believe me just browse this forum or, I don't know, play a bit Civ VI.) They have published the game anyway, knowing they would need a lot more time to work on those issues. And, of course, they also knew they could get away with it (as they always do). I personally don't think that's ok.

 

[Iron Angel]

Yay! I found a thread full of programmers. And programmers that is saying the game is fine, at that.
To all of you that are defending the code and how good condition the game is in right now. Please download my attached save file and give it a go.

This was my first game of CiVI. There are two cities at your disposal, ready to be taken over by you. The Arabian city 'Halab' and the city state 'Lisbon'.
Tell me how it goes. And then tell me if this would classify as game-breaking or "easy to see past".
I am not alone with this issue.

The game is fun. But to say that it is a solid piece of programming beauty is wrong.

Disclaimer: All of my opinions are from a non-programming consumer, I just want to play, point of view.

 

[Ravenwild]

No one is saying the game doesn't have bugs or is perfect. It's just people have really unrealistic expectations for a game of this complexity to run "perfectly" right out of the gate. It's just posts along the lines of "man the programmers are dumb..." made by people who have no idea what they are talking about. Just trying to provide some perspective here.

 

[player1 fanatic]

HI,
QA engineer here.
Let's talk about that perspective.

There are various bugs regarding reporting UI functionality, like not giving correct data or even missing data (like all factors in earning gold not being counted). Or some in game information not being showed anywhere at all (what luxuries/strategics are traded in diplomacy).

Someone else could say that these panels look like from some early access game.

But my perspective is different.

This tells couple of things. Either these panels were changed really late in the release cycle, so they never get proper QA testing. Or the issues were found by QA team but were deprioritized by the devs, due to more pressing tasks being required to be fixed for release. After all, if some reporting panel is giving wrong info, it will not affect game economy and it will still function as needed.

This may also explain why some reporting info is missing in the game. Maybe those panels were just not really for release, and scheduled to be finished for the later date (diplomacy trade info, etc....)

That's all.

 

[Gorbles]

Yay! I found a thread full of programmers. And programmers that is saying the game is fine, at that.
To all of you that are defending the code and how good condition the game is in right now. Please download my attached save file and give it a go.

This was my first game of CiVI. There are two cities at your disposal, ready to be taken over by you. The Arabian city 'Halab' and the city state 'Lisbon'.
Tell me how it goes. And then tell me if this would classify as game-breaking or "easy to see past".
I am not alone with this issue.

The game is fun. But to say that it is a solid piece of programming beauty is wrong.

Disclaimer: All of my opinions are from a non-programming consumer, I just want to play, point of view.

1. Never said the game was fine.

2. Never denied the game had bugs.

3. Never said the code was anything approaching a form of beauty. Because, as the point I have been making, none of us (assumption, sure) have seen the code.