TL;DR: Let their programmers take a well deserved break
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.
TL;DR: Let their programmers take a well deserved break
You could reverse the first line of this post and it would be equally-valid.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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
ITT programmers and people who are jealous they are not programmers.
I've taken nothing personally, but that's an amusing projection there.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.
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.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.
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!)^^^ 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).