Are the Devs responding somewhere?

Producer Pete Murray is still reading, and responding, on Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/5avuld/civ_5_was_worse_on_release_this_is_going_to_be_a/). Sadly no information is being released at the moment.



FXS_PeteMurrayProducer - Firaxis 2 points 22 minutes ago

We still read the subreddit. As soon as I have information on future developments, I will do so.
Sad that CFC is an afterthought to them
.they also have a community manager on steam that post the occasional update.

This is why comparing post counts between the different installments on CFC is not a good measure. Reddit , youtube and steam massively exploded in the last 10 years so a lot of dev attention has shifted to those platforms
 
There's something called post sales support and having a good comunication with clients is the step one of it.
It's been less than two weeks since the game's release, and considering the crunch period that surely lead up to it, the dev team has every right to take some time off.

There's no "policy of silence". Give the guys a bloody break. We all know the drill and how the patch schedule tends to work as far as Firaxis games are concerned. Do you really need to be explicitly told "we're working on a patch" by an official spokesperson if you've been a gamer for at least several years now?

Paradox isn't really different in this regard: they also take time off after releases, and despite all those dev diaries, there's still people complaining this or that bug isn't being addressed or mentioned. So you can never please everyone, and as the saying goes, there's always some who drown in a glass of water.
 
To be fair devs were more active here in the old days. They are still there but posting on reddit instead

So it does feel like we're a bit abanoned here. that said the premise that there is a policy of silence is obviously not true.
 
If Devs would post all over the place they'd get smacked for posting and not work on the patch . And all of you know it.
It's an excellent game not yet finished but "half assed" criticisms surely helps big time . . . :rolleyes:
 
Policy of silence was just a expression, probably it sounded worse than I thought, English is not my native language.

About "give the guys a break", Im perfectly fine with it. I just wanted to know where devs were posting and someone linked reddit. Thats it. You guys are too aggressive, this comunity used to be great, not sure whats going on. Maybe people are complaining too much and you thought that I was another hater or something...chill.
 
Policy of silence was just a expression, probably it sounded worse than I thought, English is not my native language.

About "give the guys a break", Im perfectly fine with it. I just wanted to know where devs were posting and someone linked reddit. Thats it. You guys are too aggressive, this comunity used to be great, not sure whats going on. Maybe people are complaining too much and you thought that I was another hater or something...chill.
Your post went beyond a mere "where are the devs posting?" to criticise how they are not communicating with the fanbase a mere two weeks after release.

I'm sorry if I sounded too aggressive, however.
 
Really odd. I was litterally just on 2k forums and someone was asking devs to answer his thread .

I thought to myself "you will be waiting a long time pal, this isn't Paradox!"

2k almost never post unless it's a patch announcement. policy of silence. was same for Civ 5.

Terrible policy if you ask me. I remember being blown away when a Pdox dev answered me on my first forum post for Eu3!
 
Policy of silence was just a expression, probably it sounded worse than I thought, English is not my native language.

About "give the guys a break", Im perfectly fine with it. I just wanted to know where devs were posting and someone linked reddit. Thats it. You guys are too aggressive, this comunity used to be great, not sure whats going on. Maybe people are complaining too much and you thought that I was another hater or something...chill.

When it works its a place to talk about the game (the good and bad) with people who enjoy the game. Sometimes it seems like people would prefer to hang around talking about it even though they don't seem to enjoy it.

You are not one of those people. Do not take too much offense, a lot of the more aggressive posts were not aimed at you.

I rather prefer they not fall prey to the "are we there yet" mentality. Important time, glad they are keeping their heads down.
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

People are allowed to disagree with your view of the game. Given the Steam numbers for the people playing the game, it could be presented as factual evidence that the people enjoying the game are in something of a majority. For now, at least.
Just because people are playing + enjoying it doesn't mean its good.
It just means it decent+playable... ie its enjoyable

And the devs (and 2k, firaxis in general) have good reason not to post much.

If they post, people will expect them to answer
If they post, people will get mad if they don't make a deadline/fix something like they want
If they post, (unless they are marketing) then they aren't doing their job.

If they don't post, instead they just read the forums occasionally to see how the game is going (bugs/imbalances) they can try and fix what they think should/can be fixed the way they think it should.
 
It's hard to know what the right way to do things as far as gaming PR on the internet.

There are companies and devs who are naturally great at it and build up a lot of community good will, but that's not a given for everyone and you can easily show up and get lynched for sounding unsure / insincere.

It's just not a skill that even every PR person let alone developer has. Doing it isn't super easy or necessarily going to result in a good outcome even for large companies. I've seen some folks give it an honest effort and still get overwhelmed / attacked by the community because of some issues.

I'm not one to demand anyone show up and listen to me, I find that kinda questionable. Maybe they should sell an ultra collector's edition where you get 5 minutes of a developer's time ;)

Let's see how they actually address the issues before we worry about what lip service they give them. Really I don't care if they ack my concerns about various game balance / features as much as I care they actually address them.
 
everyone will always hate you

I see this complaint a lot, but that hasn't been my experience.

In the game I'm playing right now, I'm playing as Saladin; huge map; 20 civs; Emporer level; just entered the early classical era.

From fairly early on I have maintained Victoria as a loyal friend. Brazil and I are on trading terms. France, India, and Egypt seem to be a bloc against Victoria and I.

Egypt and India declared an early mutual war against me. I opened my borders, paid some money and gave an extra resource to Victoria so that she would declare a mutual war against Egypt; Egypt being the only real threat to me. Victoria had 5 warriors near me and she used those warriors to enter my lands and fight Egypt's army, weakening it enough that my smaller army could mop up the rest. Danger averted; peace declared all around.

Later, seeing the Vikings expanding all over to the south of me, I knew I needed to strike quickly. So, I went full oligarchy, bee-lined to bronze working, and pumped out an army eventually totaling 5 warriors, 3 archers, 2 spearmen, 3 scouts, and 2 battering rams.

While the Vikings were busy fighting a city state in the East, I denounced them and renewed my declaration of friendship with Victoria. With my army assembled, I began moving on the Viking's nearest city, defended by 2 slingers and 4 warriors. The majority of their army was off fighting in the East. I couldn't see what sort of force they might have farther south in the capital.

I then paid a small amount of gold to Victoria to declare a mutual war against the Vikings. Her army would hold off the Vikings in the southwest while I concentrated on their core cities directly south. My eastern lands were exposed to the Vikings returning from their conquest of a city state in the East. I had to divide my army to protect my Eastern flank even as the other division took up defensive positions around the Viking's #2 city. After lots of fighting, I finally cleared the Eastern threat and was able to concentrate my army on taking the Vikings #2 city, which was far from certain at one point.

The Vikings brought up reinforcements from their capital in the south -- 2 warriors, 1 scout, and 2 slingers joined the fray -- inflicting much damage before their #2 city finally fell. The Vikings then retreated to their capital. My units survived, but badly injured.

So, that's where it's at, until I get home tonight. Victoria and I are loyal allies. Brazil and I are on good enough terms (even if the little angry face doesn't express it) and then there's some haters. Really fun game so far.
 
Ya know, people playing the game doesn't mean that without question it's a good game. I play it, it's a civilization game after all (it gets away with a lot for me just for that fact alone). It's one of 2 titles / game series that I bother to play at all and right now there's nothing from the other one.

Not saying it's a bad game, but I keep hearing this "thousands are playing hence it's good, undeniable fact!" - argument, which is kinda tiresome. It is decent. Wouldn't call it "half-assed" really, but it's decent. Much more than what I expected it to be, and I didn't expect much after V vanilla experience. This doesn't come anywhere near that disaster IMO. BUT it needs some polishing to be IMHO considered "good".

Hopefully (and I'm very optimistic as I see nothing broken beyond repair) one patch or patch and a half will get it there so I might play a "good" game during Christmas holidays. From then on, maybe mods will even make it "very good". So by summer I will enjoy a "very good" game. Then come expansion and it might become "great". Looks like a good prospect to me! Compare that with V, which went "unplayable" > "somewhat playable" after patches > "halfway half-assed decent" after mods > "decent" after the first expansion > "good" after the second expansion. The time it took for it to become "good"... well, by then there was zero excitement about the game, it was more of a habit, "nothing else to play to get my fix" kinda habit.
 
It's good. Just accept the truth.
 
I don't get why a dev can't take 2 minutes to post or tweet "hey, we're glad the game is being well received overall, we're working on fixing some exploits and issues, we hope to have a patch out in about two weeks (or whatever it is)." That would be really helpful to the community.
 
Ya know, people playing the game doesn't mean that without question it's a good game. I play it, it's a civilization game after all (it gets away with a lot for me just for that fact alone). It's one of 2 titles / game series that I bother to play at all and right now there's nothing from the other one.

Not saying it's a bad game, but I keep hearing this "thousands are playing hence it's good, undeniable fact!" - argument, which is kinda tiresome. It is decent. Wouldn't call it "half-assed" really, but it's decent. Much more than what I expected it to be, and I didn't expect much after V vanilla experience. This doesn't come anywhere near that disaster IMO. BUT it needs some polishing to be IMHO considered "good".

Hopefully (and I'm very optimistic as I see nothing broken beyond repair) one patch or patch and a half will get it there so I might play a "good" game during Christmas holidays. From then on, maybe mods will even make it "very good". So by summer I will enjoy a "very good" game. Then come expansion and it might become "great". Looks like a good prospect to me! Compare that with V, which went "unplayable" > "somewhat playable" after patches > "halfway half-assed decent" after mods > "decent" after the first expansion > "good" after the second expansion. The time it took for it to become "good"... well, by then there was zero excitement about the game, it was more of a habit, "nothing else to play to get my fix" kinda habit.

^^ Musta, I have been posting something similar to that effect. The idea is that forums get intelligent and savvy gamers like you and many of the good folks over in the 'I am a programmer' thread. However it stands that if one is unhappy they will tend to come here or another forum (2K) and write up a complaint. My statement was just ment to infer that lots of folks who are 'not unhappy' (double negative i know) are not here posting how bad the game is.

I like several of the folks here on these forums and I try to keep my posts civil and on topic which can be hard as we are all passionate about things we like or dislike.

Cheers!
 
Everyone should simply accept it as a fact that the devs are monitoring these forums. It is well known that they do. And personally, I much rather devs use their time considering better game play options and solutions versus using that time to respond to these posts. Every minute spent responding to some ingrate is a minute lost on real work.

And anyways, so much of what you read in these forums is extremely vague. Superficialities, such as "it could be better" or "I like it," really does not generate the sort of conversation or lead to the sort of insight that improves the game. The best thing for you non-devs to do is describe issues you see in concrete terms; elaborate on your ideas; and describe well the changes, additions or subtractions that you think would make the game better.
 
People sure got vicious defending the game fast. Hopefully people can relax their reflexive defense of the Dev/Game/Series and realize it clearly had VERY LITTLE QA before it was released or so many of these bugs would have been noticed/fixed. The game is quite fun at first, until you realize how easy it is to win because of bugs/glitches and a failed AI, even on Deity.

Maybe a mod or someone can set up a master bug list thread which can be forwarded to the devs at some point. At the very least it would help minimize threads like this where people want to report bugs.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Xur
Everyone should simply accept it as a fact that the devs are monitoring these forums. It is well known that they do. And personally, I much rather devs use their time considering better game play options and solutions versus using that time to respond to these posts. Every minute spent responding to some ingrate is a minute lost on real work.

And anyways, so much of what you read in these forums is extremely vague. Superficialities, such as "it could be better" or "I like it," really does not generate the sort of conversation or lead to the sort of insight that improves the game. The best thing for you non-devs to do is describe issues you see in concrete terms; elaborate on your ideas; and describe well the changes, additions or subtractions that you think would make the game better.
Yeah. They need to take in a lot of information and data only the mass-playing following the launch can provide. Anyone and their dog can see a problem and throw out a quickly-devised solution, but that seldom considers the whole context and all the repercussions the hasty fix can have. Not to mention some random poster solutions are extremely vague and don't really comprehend the problem they're supposedly fixing (i.e. "hey, just program the AI to upgrade its units!").

Spotting problems is one thing, understanding them is another, and figuring out a good, proper way to address them is another entirely.

People sure got vicious defending the game fast. Hopefully people can relax their reflexive defense of the Dev/Game/Series and realize it clearly had VERY LITTLE QA before it was released or so many of these bugs would have been noticed/fixed.
Hopefully people can relax and acknowledge they know VERY LITTLE about QA procedures, and how it's dwarfed compared to the sheer volume of playtime and data players can provide after launch. But the typical know-it-all poster is quick to point out just how wrong people working in an industry they know nothing about are doing their jobs.
 
Last edited:
Meh. I downloaded the Giant Earth Map and the 8 Ages of Pace mod and customized research civics speeds to my liking. I'm quite pleased at the moment. But then, I play Civ for the aimless empire building aspect, rather than actual victory, so I am far less reliant on competent AI at the moment.

I can just role play a competent leader in a world of rabid imbeciles. :D
 
Top Bottom