Am I the only one disappointed that this "big" patch barely fixed any bugs?

[Leyrann]

Basic rule of software development - no matter how much testing you do users will find combinations that trigger bugs you weren't aware of! Especially in a game like Civ VII where the sheer volume of users dwarfs the dev team.

This is true. A hundred full-time QA testers working 40 hours a week for three months (13 weeks) straight rack up a total of 52 000 hours of playtesting. A million users playing for thirty minutes each rack up a total of 500 000 hours of gameplay.

You could devote insane resources to QA testing and in just thirty minutes from launch, players have eclipsed the total testing by an order of magnitude.

However - and this is where the issue lies - once the game is out, and all the feedback is coming in, why does it still take a lot of time to adjust things? Why do they not have one person who spends one afternoon, say 1 pm to 5 pm, first three hours skimming through forum posts, reddit posts, steam discussions et cetera that are about game balance (who's weak, who's strong, etc etc) to make notes, and then in the last hour of their afternoon gets into the XML files and tweaks some numbers here and there to better balance civs and leaders? Just halve Hawaii's naval culture bonuses, reduce the values of the Maya bonuses, et cetera. You can quite literally do a rough balancing pass like that in one afternoon with near-zero chance of introducing bugs. I've done such passes myself in mods for Civ VI, Civ IV and Colonization. And Civ VII actually (I should upload that mod - only game pacing though).

Obviously, bugs can be quite a bit harder to track down, but even then, some of the reported bugs are this simple. A building's yields and tooltip not aligning can only be in two spots, for example - the tooltip or the building's XML.

 

[King of Prussia]

Basic rule of software development - no matter how much testing you do users will find combinations that trigger bugs you weren't aware of! Especially in a game like Civ VII where the sheer volume of users dwarfs the dev team.

10000%

To just add on to this. There were more hours played by none devs than devs in the entire development cycle in the first few weeks if not days. That is what happens when you have this many people playing the game. Thats a lot of brain power, clicks, keyboard inputs, etc, on a crazy amount of PC part combinations. You just cant match that in any studio. To their credit, in my 80+ hours, i can count the amount of crashes on 1 hand.



Database bugs imo are the least excusable to take a long time to fix. Im talking about simple should be 1 instead of 11 type issues. Or has the wrong trait, flag, etc linked to something. These could and should be fixed in a day. Its a different story if the flags, traits, etc,. dont work. That requires a lot more digging and testing.

 

[Krikkit1]

This is true. A hundred full-time QA testers working 40 hours a week for three months (13 weeks) straight rack up a total of 52 000 hours of playtesting. A million users playing for thirty minutes each rack up a total of 500 000 hours of gameplay.

You could devote insane resources to QA testing and in just thirty minutes from launch, players have eclipsed the total testing by an order of magnitude.

However - and this is where the issue lies - once the game is out, and all the feedback is coming in, why does it still take a lot of time to adjust things? Why do they not have one person who spends one afternoon, say 1 pm to 5 pm, first three hours skimming through forum posts, reddit posts, steam discussions et cetera that are about game balance (who's weak, who's strong, etc etc) to make notes, and then in the last hour of their afternoon gets into the XML files and tweaks some numbers here and there to better balance civs and leaders? Just halve Hawaii's naval culture bonuses, reduce the values of the Maya bonuses, et cetera. You can quite literally do a rough balancing pass like that in one afternoon with near-zero chance of introducing bugs. I've done such passes myself in mods for Civ VI, Civ IV and Colonization. And Civ VII actually (I should upload that mod - only game pacing though).

Obviously, bugs can be quite a bit harder to track down, but even then, some of the reported bugs are this simple. A building's yields and tooltip not aligning can only be in two spots, for example - the tooltip or the building's XML.

The balancing pass is just as complicated because it has to go through multiple people to check do we really want this?
One person is fine doing everything if they are the only person who designed/programmed* the game.

*designed for balance / programmed for bugs

 

[Noble Zarkon]

The balancing pass is just as complicated because it has to go through multiple people to check do we really want this?

and then you hit the new bugs the balancing introduced and here we go again.

Database bugs imo are the least excusable to take a long time to fix. Im talking about simple should be 1 instead of 11 type issues.

agreed but you've got to think there's more to some of these than what we've seen.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Why do they not have one person who spends one afternoon, say 1 pm to 5 pm, first three hours skimming through forum posts, reddit posts, steam discussions et cetera that are about game balance (who's weak, who's strong, etc etc) to make notes, and then in the last hour of their afternoon gets into the XML files and tweaks some numbers here and there to better balance civs and leaders? Just halve Hawaii's naval culture bonuses, reduce the values of the Maya bonuses, et cetera.

Well you can maybe get away with that if you're a modder but not for a big dev studio. You need to test that tweaking some numbers doesn't through out something else, maybe 99% of the time it's fine but if in the other 1% you introduce a major bug then all hell breaks out.

The other point is it's easy to find people with a particular playstyle saying something is too strong/weak and then a bunch of different players saying the opposite. I remember in Civ VI when they buffed the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus at a time when many of us regarded it as overpowered! It totally depended on how you approached Industrial Zones what you thought of it and most of the streamers were in a phase of ignoring them so they were the voices that were listened to.

 

[UWHabs]

This is true. A hundred full-time QA testers working 40 hours a week for three months (13 weeks) straight rack up a total of 52 000 hours of playtesting. A million users playing for thirty minutes each rack up a total of 500 000 hours of gameplay.

You could devote insane resources to QA testing and in just thirty minutes from launch, players have eclipsed the total testing by an order of magnitude.

However - and this is where the issue lies - once the game is out, and all the feedback is coming in, why does it still take a lot of time to adjust things? Why do they not have one person who spends one afternoon, say 1 pm to 5 pm, first three hours skimming through forum posts, reddit posts, steam discussions et cetera that are about game balance (who's weak, who's strong, etc etc) to make notes, and then in the last hour of their afternoon gets into the XML files and tweaks some numbers here and there to better balance civs and leaders? Just halve Hawaii's naval culture bonuses, reduce the values of the Maya bonuses, et cetera. You can quite literally do a rough balancing pass like that in one afternoon with near-zero chance of introducing bugs. I've done such passes myself in mods for Civ VI, Civ IV and Colonization. And Civ VII actually (I should upload that mod - only game pacing though).

Obviously, bugs can be quite a bit harder to track down, but even then, some of the reported bugs are this simple. A building's yields and tooltip not aligning can only be in two spots, for example - the tooltip or the building's XML.

There's 2 big issues with the second part, and almost certainly because it's a big company with processes. Speaking as someone who has worked in multiple sides of these roles...

First, for random bug fixes, sure, as a user it might take you 5-10 minutes to find the xml line that's wrong, update it, and reload your game. But for a QA resource, it takes them a few extra minutes at least to read through the bug report and figure out what's wrong. They probably have to confer with a dev to check what the intended behavior is (ie. is it a bug in the text, or a bug in the ability). Then they have to go in, re-create the game in that state, and confirm that it is an issue.
Once they do that, they probably package that up to the dev who was responsible, who has to more or less repeat all those steps, and do the fix. And then probably they have to wait for the next day to get it in a build, where it can go back to the QA person to re-verify that it has actually been corrected. Never mind any part of that process that needs to double-check that nothing else broke - other civs with similar traditions, does the bonus still work properly on regular/coastal/navigable rivers/regular rivers/etc... as necessary? Even for a simple bug, it's far from a simple process to fix.

Second, for balance stuff like Hawaii, Maya, etc... that's really up to the dev/balancing/progression developers. Sure, I can look and see that Maya's bonus is like super OP later in the game, but if you drop it to 5% or 10% from 15%, does it become too weak early? How does that impact the rest of the Mayan abilities? Or do you even want to do that - I mean, at some level, if everyone is OP, then nobody is. Never mind I would imagine that a lot of those teams are still fighting the regular bug reports, it can take some time to figure out the balance issues. Plus often you have multiple teams and people at play.

They did a balance pass on a lot of the mementos in this update. I'm sure one of the next patches we'll see a big balance pass over a bunch of civs, another patch will have a big balance pass over the leaders. And it might also have a little company culture at play too. Some games and companies are happy to constantly be updating things - maybe this patch they drop Maya from 15% to 5%, and then next patch they see that was too much, so instead they change that to give you the city's science as production for a turn instead. Oh but oops that bonus was bugged because there's something else that gives a city a one-time science bonus and if you chain them together now accidentally you gave a city 3000 production. So you fix that to only go off the base science. And then people don't like that, so they go back to based on tech costs, but they change back to 15% but only for masteries. But that's not enough, so they change it to 15% but only for the base tech and not masteries. And on and on.... Which way is better? I don't know. Doing a lot of fine tuning you probably eventually reach a good place, but it can be frustrating for users to constantly have functionality and bonuses changing around on them.

I mean yeah, in so many cases they could probably get in a quick change without too too much issue, and without worrying about all that. But at the same time, they probably also like keeping some slightly unbalanced items in. Like sure, the min-maxers see the Maya as crazy OP when you chain everything in such a way. But the average user is probably like "oh that's cool I just finished a wonder because their ability kicked in. This game is awesome". I mean, I played as Maya, and sure, their ability was pretty crazy, but due to me not realizing as well as a few other things, I only had 2 cities that I got in before the era kicked over, and it was good, but I don't think it was necessarily game-breaking even. To someone else who really maxed them out, maybe picking a different leader or with a different setup, absolutely crazy broken setup and is demanding a balance.

 

[Nikolai II]

How do you know?

Modders can move quickly as they don't have to worry about cross testing, UAT, quality control etc etc so very easy for them to move fast. One mod broke the AI's ability to declare war, can you imagine the fuss if Firaxis did that?? I love the modding community but it's totally different to being the devs responsible for a game.

A very good point!

 

[Leyrann]

The balancing pass is just as complicated because it has to go through multiple people to check do we really want this?
One person is fine doing everything if they are the only person who designed/programmed* the game.

*designed for balance / programmed for bugs

So then you instead make a list of proposed changes, send the list to everyone who gets to have a say in the process, and they all vote 'yes' or 'no'. Majority vote passes. And if you want to be fancy about things, you can have people flag changes as 'a change is needed but I don't think this is it', and if sufficient people do that, you have all of them propose a change and everyone gets to rank the changes, whichever change is the most liked passes.

Also, mind that I'm not thinking about finetuned, multiplayer-level balance here. I'm thinking about making blunt adjustments to obvious outliers. Because you can't even start debating "should they get 120 or 100 gold for this" until you've cut down the overpowered 300 gold they're currently getting from it. Hypothetical example, of course. I don't know if there's anything in the game that actually gives you 300 gold.

Well you can maybe get away with that if you're a modder but maybe not for a big dev studio. You need to test that tweaking some numbers doesn't through out something else, mybe 99% of the time it's fine but if in the other 1% you introduce a major bug then all hell breaks out.

Changing an integer in an XML file is not going to cause a bug. Ever.

You can only introduce bugs by messing up tags in the XML and there are warnings specifically related to that. If not in Civ VII specifically, well, Civ IV definitely has them, as I've run into them in the past. So they exist. And what's more, they tell you exactly where the issue is. Oh yeah and the file won't load properly so it's not like you can ever miss it being present.

 

[pokiehl]

Changing an integer in an XML file is not going to cause a bug. Ever.

You can only introduce bugs by messing up tags in the XML and there are warnings specifically related to that. If not in Civ VII specifically, well, Civ IV definitely has them, as I've run into them in the past. So they exist. And what's more, they tell you exactly where the issue is. Oh yeah and the file won't load properly so it's not like you can ever miss it being present.

This is categorically false. XML is simply a meta-language; there's no telling how a given XML line interacts with the actual game core. Through modding Civ over the years, I have come across many flummoxing issues with changing the game's database that one would never expect.

Even accepting this assertion at face value, every development studio has processes and SOPs. Everything needs to go through the full pipeline and get validated, approved, etc. no matter how facile a change it seems. Nothing in professional software development at a mature organization is ever as simple as 'change this number and ship it out in 2 minutes.' That's the realm of modders and lean indie studios with one person doing nearly everything.

 

[StargazingDog]

How hard can it be to implement mouse pointer edge scrolling of the map?

It’s funny. I was playing a lot of Civ 4 just before Civ 7, and I was immediately frustrated by this. Your post made me realize that I hadn’t even thought about it since that first day! I just use the mouse to click and drag.

 

[Leyrann]

This is categorically false. XML is simply a meta-language; there's no telling how a given XML line interacts with the actual game core. Through modding Civ over the years, I have come across many flummoxing issues with changing the game's database that one would never expect.

I did specify changing an integer.

 

[Canadian Bluebeer]

Basic rule of software development - no matter how much testing you do users will find combinations that trigger bugs you weren't aware of! Especially in a game like Civ VII where the sheer volume of users dwarfs the dev team.

Been there, done that, got the tshirt.

Users will do things that testers just won't think of. Accidents, or just dumb stuff.
Not to mention the variety of other stuff installed/running on the computers.
(the memories/nightmares of all that back in the 80s/90s... blearch!)

However, too much of the game looks like it was "done by comittees". Ones that don't talk to each other.
(eg: where did that stupid dinging sound come from in the latest patch. Clicking on stuff it makes that sound.)

A typo in an XML *should* be easy to fix. Remember though: SHOULD and REALITY are not always on speaking terms.

There are a lot of little things that while not game breaking, show a lack of finish/polish.
Things that *should* have been fixed before release.

So yep, this patch is underwhelming.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

There are a lot of little things that while not game breaking, show a lack of finish/polish.
Things that *should* have been fixed before release.

So yep, this patch is underwhelming.

Agree 100%, lots of good in the patch but definitely lacking Polish lol.

 

[LilBudyWizer]

Why do they not have one person who spends one afternoon, say 1 pm to 5 pm, first three hours skimming through forum posts, reddit posts, steam discussions et cetera that are about game balance (who's weak, who's strong, etc etc) to make notes, and then in the last hour of their afternoon gets into the XML files and tweaks some numbers here and there to better balance civs and leaders?

Not in a professional environment. One modder can do that but when you get 100 doing that at the same time on the same files you're likely introducing errors faster than you can fix them. That's the first thing you need to teach someone coming out of school. Realistically the way you do that is mods. There you can't say they aren't actually doing that.

It isn't just it's an error, nor just how many people are impacted, but also who knows? Largely in this community if it can be fixed by a mod then it's effectively fixed. It's rather nitpicking to saying I shouldn't have to use this mod I'm using. It's quite another to say I know nothing about mods and shouldn't need to. That's the vast majority of players. That's a community ruled by influencers.

The Spiffing Brit has a video about how Civ 7 is broken with 2.3 million views. I don't know that the fixed what allowed him to get his legions to such extreme combat strengths. The point is the 2.3 million views. How many people know? 2.3 million. You certainly don't want a it's still broken video.

 

[bumpyglint]

Who does it have to do with? It followed your reply to Gedemon, and seemed to be a part of that reply. If it wasn't a reply to Gedemon, what "this" is anyone accepting?

You made a point, I'm just trying to explore what you meant by it.

It's not about who, but what. I never disagreed with the idea that "things take time" or "some things are more complicated than they seem"—that’s completely obvious, which is why I didn’t feel the need to mention it in my opening post. However, considering some of the responses in this thread, I still clarified this in messages #12 and #20. I fully understand that everything takes time and that some tasks are more complex than they appear. In fact, I find it self-evident that creating a mod is far easier than developing and releasing an official patch for everyone.

That being said, when you stated that "these things take time / might be more complicated than they look" is a valid opinion, I obviously agreed. I never thought otherwise, especially since you were making a general statement. However, I think we can both agree that just because something takes time and effort, that doesn’t mean everything is acceptable. And that’s exactly what we’re discussing here—what is acceptable and what is not.

Companies respond to what their customers find acceptable. If players tolerate major issues—like a civilization's core ability not functioning as expected in any situation (an issue that a single test could have caught)—then developers will continue to release content like this. Many of these specific issues, for instance, has either gone entirely untested, or it was tested, found to be broken, and then ignored for over a month (with nearly another month to go before the next patch).

Again, given that multiple modders have stated that many fixes are literally a single line of code, I find this situation unbelievable.

Meanwhile (as seen in the new Reddit post "Carthage is pretty neat") it has also come to light that not only Carthage's social policy is completely broken 100% of the time—something a single test could have caught, but apparently, a AAA studio either didn’t test or didn’t care. On top of that, the Numidian Cavalry appears to have a game-breaking bug: instead of receiving a combat bonus for each unique resource in the capital, it gets the bonus for every resource in the capital, easily reaching +20 combat strength. I haven’t tested this myself yet, but if true, it’s a massive balance issue.

Once again, if players accept releases in this state—where either no testing is done or issues are identified and completely ignored—then developers will keep doing it. A +20 combat unit is undeniably game-breaking, I can state this despite agreeing that "some things takes time and/ r are complicated"

Been there, done that, got the tshirt.

Users will do things that testers just won't think of. Accidents, or just dumb stuff.
Not to mention the variety of other stuff installed/running on the computers.
(the memories/nightmares of all that back in the 80s/90s... blearch!)

However, too much of the game looks like it was "done by comittees". Ones that don't talk to each other.
(eg: where did that stupid dinging sound come from in the latest patch. Clicking on stuff it makes that sound.)

A typo in an XML *should* be easy to fix. Remember though: SHOULD and REALITY are not always on speaking terms.

There are a lot of little things that while not game breaking, show a lack of finish/polish.
Things that *should* have been fixed before release.

So yep, this patch is underwhelming.

I completetly agree, the main problem here is that many of these bugs are not "accidents or dumb stuff", but they literally are mechanics that simply "do not works in the 100% of the cases"

 

[stealth_nsk]

Spiffing Brit has a video about how Civ 7 is broken with 2.3 million views. I don't know that the fixed what allowed him to get his legions to such extreme combat strengths. The point is the 2.3 million views. How many people know? 2.3 million. You certainly don't want a it's still broken video.

Except clickbait titles are almost the only way to get views on YouTube nowadays, so you'll get "the game is broken" videos regardless of whether it's broken or not.

And 2.3 million views is not necessary bad PR for Firaxis - they are still PR.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I completetly agree, the main problem here is that many of these bugs are not "accidents or dumb stuff", but they literally are mechanics that simply "do not works in the 100% of the cases"

If that's true I agree, I just find it hard to believe they did absolutely no testing in basic mechanics like the Carthage ability. That makes no sense at all.

 

[bumpyglint]

If that's true I agree, I just find it hard to believe they did absolutely no testing in basic mechanics like the Carthage ability. That makes no sense at all.

For literally more than half of the bugs I reported in the opening post of this thread, that's true for sure.

Songhai +5 bonus (which is a game breaker), Onsen wonder (which at least now seems fixed), CasaConsistorial wonder, city state unique improvements etc... simply do not works as intended 100% of the time. It's not a "specific situation", a "strange composition of leader/ Civs" or stuff like that. It's literally 100% of the time.

I've not yet tested Carthage but it would not surprise me if this would be the same situation (even worse now I would say, because such a huge combat bonus added to a discount to everything would be another huge game breaker bug, for a 30 $ DLC).

I agree with you, probably they tested it, noticed the problem (it's impossible they didn't) and simply decided that they didn't care and that they would have published the game/ the DLC anyway (again, I repeat, if people accept this behavior, they will keep doing it). At least now I would require a fix.

 

[vorlon_mi]

My day job includes working with software developers for a large manufacturing company. One aspect of software development I see -- which hasn't been included as much in the comments here -- is *severity*, or impact.

My hypothesis is the Civ7 development team have a backlog of identified bugs to fix. The question that was asked (over and over again) before release is, "is this bug a showstopper? Will it delay shipping?" They prioritized fixing the bugs that would lead to crashes. Now, a month after release, they are still prioritizing which bugs should be included in a given patch. Which ones have the biggest potential negative impact? Which ones can wait?

Yes, I agree that bugs exist which are single-line fixes. The effort is relatively small; regression testing (did it break anything else?) still needs to happen. I submit that those bugs are ranked at a lower priority to other bugs. Further, I suggest that some bugs may be prioritized lower than certain new features, e.g., content planned for DLCs. The new question is, "will this affect shipping the Crossroads pack?"

Project and product managers are constantly juggling their priority lists. "Ease of fix" is only one component of their priorities.
I expect they hold weekly (or twice weekly) meetings / Slack discussions to check on progress and get the product owners / producers to buy in on the priorities.

 

[firadin]

If that's true I agree, I just find it hard to believe they did absolutely no testing in basic mechanics like the Carthage ability. That makes no sense at all.

Didn't Isabella's ability literally not work 100% of the time on release? You dont need a million people playing the game to realize you don't get gold from finding a wonder.