Bad news: Next patch on hold

If indeed there is no sign of a further patch before the release of Civ3:Complete, I am sure that Atari will include in the box cover art some useful information such as:

'Replay history with The Greatest Strategy Game in the World’*



(*but don’t fear the Barbarians,…. or build submarines,…or armies, or expect the Scientific Golden Age to do anything)


:)
 
player1 fanatic said:
From first post by Tavis:


-on hold (not canceled)
-no promises
-no idea when, not will be available
-history of firaxis making patches for long obsolete games (SMAC)


Thank you for stating the obvious. Firaxis has a very good history continuing to support their games, SMAC and Gettysburg as examples. I feel bad for all the "doom and gloomers" who feel like Firaxis just kicked their puppy, but I read Tavis' statement the same way player1 does.
 
They did 'kick' :D the puppy and spit on him too! However, someone thinks they will get around to 'feeding' the puppy within 6 months, oops :blush: that already went by, make that one year or so... Well leave the emphasis on the 'so'. :eek: And see, I am not dooming or particularily gloomy, :cry: just modding away, as anything I come up with might make it to top of the heap at this rate! :goodjob: :king:
 
Assume the worst, hope the best. "No promises" is not sounding very soothing to me.
 
Also, it must be realized that there was a lot of time between the 1.22 patch release and Travis announcment. So something must have been done on patch issue in the meen time. Probably not enought to be released in public, but still something.
 
Longasc said:
Assume the worst, hope the best. "No promises" is not sounding very soothing to me.

Now compare that statement to this one about Call to Power II few years ago (regarding possibile future patches).

There are a lot of questions and speculation on the Apolyton message boards about Call to Power II, so we have decided to issue the following statement to clear some of them up.

When we began the design process on Call to Power II, we spent a good deal of time querying our Call to Power owners about what changes or additions they wanted to see in a sequel. Of course, there were thousands of suggestions from formal research surveys, informal message board posts, and one-on-one chats with gamers. But the majority of the requests centered around the following areas: diplomacy, combat, interface, customizability, and empire management. Our team set out to make a sequel that would address all of these features, yet would still remain true to the gameplay from the first game. We intentionally kept the graphics engine mostly the same because we felt that our graphics were, and still are, the best offered in a turn-based empire building game. We kept the setting the same because we felt that an actual historical basis would have more appeal than a fantastic or science-fiction setting. Many of the programming changes to Call to Power II may not be readily visible to the user, but in reality, most of the major engines were rewritten to accept the changes to the diplomatic, combat and empire management systems. Opening up the extensive customizability options required a level of complex code changes as well. As in all software development projects, some features from Call to Power were dropped or cut as the project unfolded, including PBEM and Hot Seat.

We have been reviewing the posts by various forum members calling for additional patches to make the AI more challenging for them, to add PBEM and Hotseat back in, and various other requests. These requests, which sound simple, are actually long, complex feature additions that would require up to 3-4 months of programming and testing time. This is not feasible, as the Call to Power II team is moving on to other projects. So there will be no additional patches, enhancements or scenarios coming from Activision. Additionally, there are no immediate plans to make an expansion or sequel.

None of these decisions were taken lightly, however, we feel that in the end, we have delivered a game that met the design goals of the project: an empire-building game that delivers new diplomatic features, more realistic combat, better empire management options, a new interface, and a customizable gaming engine to extend the life of the game. We thank all of you for your dedicated support and enthusiasm over the last four years. We look forward to seeing the results of the various mods and scenarios that the community is working on.

Activision


By the way, Ctp2 was most buggy TBS game I played (and still enjoyed due to moding abilities). Pity it din't got patched.
 
guyfamous said:
Thank you for stating the obvious. Firaxis has a very good history continuing to support their games, SMAC and Gettysburg as examples. I feel bad for all the "doom and gloomers" who feel like Firaxis just kicked their puppy, but I read Tavis' statement the same way player1 does.


the last patches for those two games just resolved issues regarding windows xp, they didn't fix any bugs or add new content. While I don't care if you are foolishly optimistic about firaxis, at least get your facts right about the support. See: http://www.firaxis.com/downloads_allfiles.cfm for the latest patches for firaxian games. While I am pleased to be able to play SMAX on xp, the patch didn't change anything wrt gameplay.
 
While it may not have changed gameplay, it did take time, effort, and money to make these changes (they didn't just miraculously happen). Programmer time even for a relatively simple fix is expensive, not even counting the opportunity cost of what they could have been working on instead. To me that does qualify as support.
 
Did they change things on the level that people are wanting to see from c3c or not? I might be wrong here, but I think people are wanting more than a patch that will play C3C on longhorn.

They have shown support for previous games, but not the level of support that some here are looking for.
 
asleepathewheel, can you answer the business case for adding many new features to a game (like SMAC or Gettysburg) that nobody has bought in years? I imagine the patch to make them work on XP only took a week or so to do. This is still thousands of dollars out of their pocket. Months worth of work to add a bunch of new features, I can't see them taking out of hide.

C3C is still recent and still selling a little, so it might boost sales a bit to add features. Fixing the remaining major bugs would add good will to the hard-core community.

Fundamentally, Firaxis is a small business in a very competitive (and now rapidly becoming a very risk-averse, money-driven) industry. If their actions don't make sense on the bottom line, they too will follow the route of the hundreds of other failed development houses (like their predecessor Microprose, which was once the king of PC game houses).
 
warpstorm said:
asleepathewheel, can you answer the business case for adding many new features to a game (like SMAC or Gettysburg) that nobody has bought in years? I imagine the patch to make them work on XP only took a week or so to do. This is still thousands of dollars out of their pocket. Months worth of work to add a bunch of new features, I can't see them taking out of hide.

Fundamentally, Firaxis is a small business in a very competitive (and now rapidly becoming a very risk-averse, money-driven) industry. If their actions don't make sense on the bottom line, they too will follow the route of the hundreds of other failed development houses (like their predecessor Microprose, which was once the king of PC game houses).

Ah, but it was not I who raised SMAX and GB as examples of ongoing support, analogizing them to the issue at hand. I was merely pointing out the facts of what happened with those games and their recent patching history and differentiating what was done with them from what is apparently desired by this community now.

And why the lecture? I think I've been around long enough to know those things, Warpstorm ;)
 
Force of habit...
 
:lol:

But seriously I respect your views, probably more than most others, due to your proximity in area of expertise and location ;)

/me hopes that CIV graphics can be watercolored. :)
 
warpstorm said:
While it may not have changed gameplay, it did take time, effort, and money to make these changes (they didn't just miraculously happen). Programmer time even for a relatively simple fix is expensive, not even counting the opportunity cost of what they could have been working on instead. To me that does qualify as support.

That was my point, except that I didn't quite make it as well as Warpstorm.
 
asleepathewheel said:
While I don't care if you are foolishly optimistic about firaxis, at least get your facts right about the support. See: http://www.firaxis.com/downloads_allfiles.cfm for the latest patches for firaxian games. While I am pleased to be able to play SMAX on xp, the patch didn't change anything wrt gameplay.

Well, as far as I see, I don't take Travis message as that there will no be Civ3 patches ever.

He only said that C3C patching is on hold, not scraped or caceled (due to Pirates and Civ3:Complete, not Civ4 as some here imply).

If I'm wrong, and Civ3 patching is definetly over, maybe Travis should make a post and clear that to all of us.
 
About Firaxis not saying that there won't be another patch:

Previously, when a patch was promised it wasn't done. What are the chances now, with a patch not promised?

The people who could do a patch are now working on newer games. What is the chance that those people will, after finishing their current tasks, have time to patch Civ3? It seems to me a safe bet they'll be more needed to patch those newer games.

Perhaps Firaxis really truly intends to get back to a C3C patch when they can. If so I think they're just fooling themselves.
 
Personnalty, I think that reason why they didn't said plainly that they won't/or will patch C3C in the future is that they are really not sure about that at this point (that why no promises).
And that they don't want to make false promises anymore. Bad for advertising.

Also, they are concerned to make another fiasco patch, like it was 1.20, so instead of making quick fixit patch with limited resouces, which could be as bad as 1.20, they opt to put Civ3 patching on-hold instead.

Bad patches give worse reputation then having no patches.
1.20 inflicet pretty much when it got release. Especialy becasue of MP problems.
Also, due to Atari negligece link to 1.20 patch stayed over a month at civ3.com, even when 1.22 got released. As far as I know, if I don't knew about CivF and Poly community I would not know about 1.22 at firaxis.com


Also, I'm pretty sure that between 1.22 and last week there was some after-1.22 patch progress (otherwise Travis messgae would be posted much earlier, right after release of 1.22), so it would be resouce wasting that any progress after 1.22, gets scrapped just becase they have no time for it at this moment.
 
warpstorm said:
asleepathewheel, can you answer the business case for adding many new features to a game (like SMAC or Gettysburg) that nobody has bought in years? I imagine the patch to make them work on XP only took a week or so to do. This is still thousands of dollars out of their pocket. Months worth of work to add a bunch of new features, I can't see them taking out of hide.

I don't think that compatibility fix would take just a week or so.
 
player1 fanatic said:
I don't think that compatibility fix would take just a week or so.
Considering he's a computer game programmer for a computer game company... I would be willing to trust his judgement on that issue if I were you. ;)
 
Regardless of economical issues and the oh so bad situation of gaming companies...

JUST FIX CIV3: CONQUESTS!

Damn, this is like pulling out the *censored* before the *censored*!!! Not after all that effort put into C3C!!!
 
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