warpstorm
Yumbo? Yumbo!
From what I've heard (right from the horse's mouth - in this case, BR), the main reason they left is that they thought Civ3 should be what Rise of Nations is.
Bad news: Next patch on hold
- Thread starter player1 fanatic
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warpstorm said:
I have read multiple interviews with Brian Reynolds stating his preference for RTS games, so he did RoN. I've also read that he thought TBS games were far too restrictive for what he wanted to accomplish. I agree with him on that, TBS games are very difficult to incorporate multi-player options. I don't play Civ as a MP game, so that isn't an issue with me.
I knew why Brian left and if his heart had been in it, he could have made Civ 3 into a monumental game, but I'm glad his leaving didn't kill the series altogether.
CyberChrist
You caught my attention
I dunno, while Rise of Nations is a reasonably entertaining crush-your-neighbour game, well suited for about 1 hour fun once in while, it doesn't really have any depth at all - certainly not for any attempt at a serious empire building game. So if that is what he wanted Civ3 to be like(or at least leaning in that direction) then I am VERY happy he and those thinking like him left.guyfamous said:
Kemal
Tough Bureaucrat
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2001
- Messages
- 555
Trip said:
I agree Trip that we all want Civ 4 to be a great product, but Firaxis's history of developing Civ games shows that they have never succeeded in releasing a civ game that was "good" at the time of release so far.
Keeping that in mind, customer support and releasing patches that fix problems becomes a lot more important to me than getting civ 4 a few months earlier. In the end, if Civ3/C3C would be patched in a way that it does what it is supposed to do, I'll certainly be happy to wait a few more months on civ4.
If they can't do that because they need to make (short-term) money, they shouldn't put in and advertise with these non-implemented features in the first place, nor make promises they can't keep. By doing so, I do in a sense feel betrayed by this company, as I paid for stuff I do not get in the end.
asleepathewheel
Chieftain
- Joined
- Mar 5, 2002
- Messages
- 28
Trip,
its easy to choose CIV when you are a tester for it, or whatever your role is this summer with Firaxis, but what about us poor saps who have to make do with C3 for another year. Waaah Waaah
its easy to choose CIV when you are a tester for it, or whatever your role is this summer with Firaxis, but what about us poor saps who have to make do with C3 for another year. Waaah Waaah
I wonder how long it takes to create a game.If in the last two years they have released 2 expansions then when did they start working on Civ4.From time to time i read articles for games that took over 2-3 years of development,so if Firaxis has been working on this project -Civ4- for less than a year why sould we expect to be something great?If not that means that they have been working at the same time both PTW?-C3C? and CIV4,and that makes perfectly sence why these expansions were released with bugs and lacks.
As far as ATARI,well,i can't understand how those people who calls themeselves businessman and occupies the market teritory don't see that when a product ''fails'' then they have failed too.How can they make mmoooore money when they don't respect niether their product or the customers.
I don't know,but i think that the relation . Good product-Good Sales . is self-evident,i am surprised that a company of this size (ATARI) thinks different.
The last thing that doesn't make sense for me is that,i accept the fact that maybe ATARI as any large company has payed the less they could pay at FIRAXIS for the development of these games.Now,this is how things are getting started in most of the deals,who has the money don't pay,only wants to gain more,but lets say that C3C or better PTW was one of the best expansions released,automatically the sales would
go up=ATARI is satysfied.The next time that they would like to make a contract with FIRAXIS for a future game they sould certainly pay a great deal of money just because FIRAXIS would have a good reputation and for beeing truly good on their work.I believe that these are facts and not my immagination.
As far as ATARI,well,i can't understand how those people who calls themeselves businessman and occupies the market teritory don't see that when a product ''fails'' then they have failed too.How can they make mmoooore money when they don't respect niether their product or the customers.
I don't know,but i think that the relation . Good product-Good Sales . is self-evident,i am surprised that a company of this size (ATARI) thinks different.
The last thing that doesn't make sense for me is that,i accept the fact that maybe ATARI as any large company has payed the less they could pay at FIRAXIS for the development of these games.Now,this is how things are getting started in most of the deals,who has the money don't pay,only wants to gain more,but lets say that C3C or better PTW was one of the best expansions released,automatically the sales would
go up=ATARI is satysfied.The next time that they would like to make a contract with FIRAXIS for a future game they sould certainly pay a great deal of money just because FIRAXIS would have a good reputation and for beeing truly good on their work.I believe that these are facts and not my immagination.
SirPleb
Shaken, not stirred.
I hope you don't think that those two choices are the only possibilities.Trip said:
At any rate, you do seem to be saying that you believe Firaxis "really meant it" and "tried hard" to accomplish it. My first reaction on reading that was "why would I care?" If I were a hard nosed customer, in the same sense you seem to consider ok for Firaxis, then I wouldn't care. All I'd want would be results.
But I find that I do care. And I suspect that many others here also do. If I felt that Firaxis had "tried hard" I wouldn't be so unhappy about the state of Conquests.
So I have a question Trip: Do you have specific reasons to think that Firaxis "tried hard"? If so please share them with us, that might sway some peoples' thinking.
Jon Shafer
Civilization 5 Designer
Sorry, sorry, I do my best.asleepathewheel said:Trip,
its easy to choose CIV when you are a tester for it, or whatever your role is this summer with Firaxis, but what about us poor saps who have to make do with C3 for another year. Waaah Waaah
There is always RON to play. Well, everyone is entitled to their opinion. And I realize that you personally have a reason to be disenfranchised, but that's simply how business goes sometimes. I'm not making excuses, I don't know all the details, I don't know the reasons. I'm not the right person to talk to there, obviously.SirPleb said:
But I do know the people I have seen and worked with in the past do their best to make a great game. Jesse was doing 100 hour weeks working on Conquests for a while. There's more but I'm really not at liberty to speak. Obviously my perspective gives me a different viewpoint than many others, and many of those others will never be able to see things from the same way that I have. And that's just how things go. You can't make everyone happy, you can't convince everyone of what you believe.
But when it's all said and done, I do believe that Firaxis wants to make great games that people enjoy, and I do believe they want to make money and stay in business. Depending on the spin you throw you could say they're all greedy money-grubbing businessmen (any Michael Moore fans around?
) who are only out for themselves.But I'm a fan like everyone else, and I have faith in the company. Yes, some things are promised that can't be accomplished, but that's not for a lack of trying or caring. Yes, it does suck for the people who only have Civ 3 until Christmas 2005, but you win some and you lose some. I've been on both sides of the coin and I'd imagine most people around here have also.
Jon Shafer
Civilization 5 Designer
Well, I've already outlined a lot of the reasons why Civ 3's road has been rather bumpy. Patching away some of the major issues in Civ 3 would require quite an investment of time and labor, especially for what is no doubt the last patching iteration for this game. Jesse listed among the reasons for putting the patch on hold the fact that whenever something was changed another 20 would go wrong. That means someone was trying to do something and yet even more problems arose.Sukenis said:
But, as you said, the simple fact of things may be that it's just different priorities. As I've stated above many a time, I want to see the potential of Civ 4 fully-fleshed than a large amount of time and effort be poured into an archaic product. But that's obviously just a matter of opinion.
Well, you heard what WS just said, and I trust him enough to be telling fact.
If Reynolds wanted RTS or to take Civ in a direction completely away from its roots and was disenfranchised because of that, then is that really the fault of Firaxis? The entire game industry is this way - development companies are given licenses to certain products or series' and are required to develop a very specific product. How much leeway in creativity do you think the game designers for Shrek 2 or Spiderman 2 had when creating those games? Being in the position where you, as the designer, are the one calling the shots and deciding what to make and having primary control over that vision is basically only achieved through your own company - which may very well have been why Reynolds left.
Having Civ 4 a few months later may not be important to you, but Firaxis has its publisher (Atari, in the hole, desperate for money) and a wide variety of less-than-fanatical fans such as ourselves to cater who, who simply want "their" game. To them, the status of a game released way back in 2001 is irrelevant and whether its been patched to completion is the same way.Kemal said:
As far as promises that cannot be made, I'm sure a lot of promises were made before Reynolds left and the entire schedule was thrown out the window. Additionally, certain things are expected to be included, announced to the publisher which plasters such things everywhere for advertisement purposes, and in the end not much as much can be carried through on due to budgeting or time issues. They fully intend to be able to achieve what was announced, but things turn out the opposite way of expected. That's simply fact in the game industry - happens in every genre and with most companies.
However, how would people react to hearing "Civ 4 should have MP included, but we really don't know yet." That doesn't exactly present good advertising material, as true as it may be. That is why companies almost never say much about features unless they're already implimented - anything could be cut at any time. The best way to avoid the situation of "broken promises" is to announce nothing before its completely definitive - which is often rather disappointing for people and usually unacceptable for publishers and reviewers.
Jon Shafer
Civilization 5 Designer
Well, no one is expecting anyone to be happy or not - I'm certainly not trying to make everyone's woes go away, I'm simply doing my best to explain why certain things happen and happen the way they do from a industry perspective. Do I want a fully patched Civ 3? Yes. Do I want a well-refined and on-time Civ 4? Yes. I want both, and the fact that I cannot get both disappoints me, but I accept the reasons behind it and do my best to look at the bright side of the situation - a better Civ 4.The Last Conformist said:
Well, I would imagine that there was a design document for Civ 3 prior to Reynolds and Co. departing, or perhaps it was relayed verbally, or perhaps the function or even the existence of the FP was not determined by the time they had left (always a possibility).Commander Bello said:
Well, to be fair to the people upset about there (possibly) being no patch, there is some merit in their complaints. There are a couple pretty bad bugs in Conquests, and it would be great if they could be fixed. Sub issue, wimpy barbs, etc. are basically all bugs and really don't have much at all to do with Civ 4.Rustwork said:
Jon Shafer
Civilization 5 Designer
Well, this can be true, but the fact is that I don't see any reviewers publishing anything about the "Final Civ 3 Patch That Never Was," or something along those lines. Perhaps if there was more exposure to that sort of thing, it would affect developers more and would change their view on how to present and support their products. But the game industry works a certain way, and everyone involved does their best to fit in. Fact is that it is the consumer base that dicatates how most things are run - they are the ones who want game articles about new games, rather than patches after the fact. They are the ones who want their games sooner, instead of 2 months later like the rest of us are willing to wait. They are the ones who don't download patches and leave the rest of us here.Yashed To said:
If the consumer base did care more about a company's follow reputation, if they did care more about the games and were willing to wait, and if they were more receptive to patching and cared more about that, then things would be different. But the mob is a fickle thing to work with.
Yes, a lot of the things that were tweaked and changed probably could have been ignored in favor of other more pressing issues. I will grant you that. If there is any good legitimate criticsm of Firaxis and how they have handled things, I think that is probably the most valid.Kemal said:
But fact is that a lot of the patches are aimed at this community - most of the mainstream community never even bothers to download a single patch, so us here are actually a sizable percentage of patch users (the opposite situation of the release of the game itself). So if anything, I think trying to cater to us and changing things that we would care about is evidence of Firaxis trying to please us instead of the mob. So the intentions were in the right place, but the implimentation ended up falling short.
Jon Shafer
Civilization 5 Designer
Well, I'm sure no one is perfect, and yes, a design doc was probably lying around somewhere. There is still the issue of Civ 3 being based off of a different (older) game, with a group of people's code (perhaps undocumented or poorly documented) who no one is left that fully understands it.Bibor said:
Well, I have no idea the legal circumstances of what happened, all I know is that it did happen, and bad things happened as a result of it.2. You (Firaxis) can't under any circumstances contract someone (Reynolds) the way he can leave a work unfinished. No normal court of law, even in communism, would let Reynolds get away with leaving the Firaxis *if* such a contract existed, until CIV3 was finished. I'm not a lawyer but I know this much.
Well, PTW and Conquests were an opportunity for the team to continue work on a game they and everyone else knew was incomplete, and to also make some money along the way. Expansion packs have a much greater reach than patches, mainly because they have a publisher promoting them to the public, reviewers, etc. in order to make a buck. Yeah, Firaxis could have stopped working on Civ 3 in order to go to Civ 4 right afterwards, knowing that Civ 3 was inferior, but the fact remains that Civ 3 does have quite a significant following in itself, and an XP or two is a good way to continue the series and make more money. And that is, my friend, what the industry is all about.
Well, there is a massive difference between being able to understand the mechanics of the game and being able to understand how the code behind it is structured and how it functions. Layer upon layer upon layer has been built on top of the Civ 3 code base, by a variety of programmers working from an old product created by someone else. Certainly there are people who could understand it and eventually make something of it, but how long would that take and how much would it cost? Even the greatest programmer in the world will take time to simply decipher what the code is doing, let alone making the actual changes required for a patch. How many of them are in Baltimore, how many of them are willing to move there? It sounds simple on paper but putting things into practice is always easier said than done.
That having been said, Firaxis is and has hired quite a few people, programmers included, to work on things in the future. But Firaxis is still a rather new company and has only released a few games in its short lifetime. The capital base is no doubt still somewhat small (compared with something like Blizzard) and going out hiring everyone imaginable is not really feasible. Hopefully Civ 4 will help vault Firaxis closer to that position.
Well, with a year's work in on Civ 3 it's kind of hard to scrap everything and start over, especially considering the fact that it was a year's work built on another product - meaning that starting over from scratch would likely have contained 1.5+ years of work. Not a financially sound decision. And whatever people's opinions of Civ 3, it has sold quite well, including both of its expansion packs. Excepting PTW, it's gotten rave reviews, on the favorites list of many people. It got into the top 8 Gamespy competition for the top game of all time. The team did a good job resurrecting things from the ashes and making a fun game out of it. The best game possible? No, but the rules of money and time are always working against you as a game company. They did the best they could with a bad situation and now the slate has been swept clean for another round.Summa summarum: obviously the only reason for CIV 3 being like this is because the leadership of Firaxis concluded on following:
1. We will release a game (codenamed CIV3) that will be a half product. Noone will notice since:
a) its a civ game after all. who would not buy civ 3?
b) the game comes in a box package with excellent design. people will buy it.
c) graphics is far better than in civ 2 or smac, this will keep the masses happy
d) the hardcore gamers of Civ will develop the game for us anyway.
2. by putting imperative on patching the editor first, rather than the game itself, not just CIV 3 will *develop itself*, but the final product that we will find on Apolyton and Civfanatics sites will give us all the material we need for CIV4. I mean, these guys are incredible. I am so sorry now that we hardcoded the AI, because it would be already developed by those fanatics by now to a monster level.
Kirby
SirPleb
Shaken, not stirred.
It does sound to me like Jesse tried hard. I doubt Jesse was paid for that extra time. (If he was that's not smart business for Firaxis since he's not a great choice for that particular task.) To consider Firaxis to have tried hard I'd have to see them putting someone suitable on the job, which would of course have cost them, directly or indirectly. With all due respect to Jesse he wasn't the person to do that job and I think he'd cheerfully admit that. So, sadly I remain where I was, it seems to me that Firaxis the company hasn't tried very hard at all. I guess it is as you say, some will never be able to see things as you have.Trip said:
Jon Shafer
Civilization 5 Designer
Well, Jesse wasn't the only one working on the patch. Time issues, etc...SirPleb said:
Anyways, as I said above, I'm not at liberty to talk about everything.
Likewise, people have opinions and that's how things will be.
Will finish responding to the final 2 posts tomorrow sometime.
player1 fanatic
Fanatic
Interesting thing to note is that nowhere is said that there will never be any new patches.
It's just said that plans for new patches are on hold, beaces there are other priorities for Firaxis now.
Which still means that there is possibility for extra patching later (maybe when pirates and civ3:complete get released)
It's just said that plans for new patches are on hold, beaces there are other priorities for Firaxis now.
Which still means that there is possibility for extra patching later (maybe when pirates and civ3:complete get released)
Kemal
Tough Bureaucrat
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2001
- Messages
- 555
Trip said:
In a time and business where, as has already been concluded, everything seems to be about making money instead of the best possible product (and I understand it has to be that way for (some of) these people, as they need to make a living from selling games) , I find it hard to believe Firaxis would be spending so much resources just to service a community that is so small as the CFC/Apolyton community is. That would really be a waste of potential/resources from their part.
But I think something else should play a major role for these companies as well, that is that whether the masses download their patch or not, they are obliged to deliver the product including the functions and possibilities that they have promised it to have, in exchange for the product price the customers paid for it.
If then they do not fulfill their part of the deal, by giving us a product that does not do what it should do (and as for the scientific GA, they've advertised with it, and developed it with the same people that were responsible for the end-product of C3C, even added buttons for it in the game, but the function itself has never been included in the product), I expect and should, from my customer point of view, demand for the product to be fixed to at least such a state that it fulfills to the description given by the developers and publishers at the time of release.
Well, that's the carte blanche for software developers, from a legal point of view.
Imagine a car losing a tire now and then, or the seatbelt only fastening when the engine is started. Or when switching programs on TV from channel 4 to 5, this only works if you first switch to 6 and then back to 5.
Or a book losing some pages as soon as you open it, or with some blank pages. All those examples sound silly, don't they?
Well, *technically* this is the standard in the software and especially the games industry.
User petitions won't change this situation, since most of the customers nowadays are not hardcore players or fans. Legislature would or could. Laws to remind software developers of their obligation to create fully workable software, without any glitches.
I would vote for a full money-back guarantee, as long as a product couldn't be considered "complete" or "finalized" by any means, as is the problem with C3C.
A company's reputation is not only built upon its products but also upon the kind of support it offers for its products, and the devotion for its products and users/fans. And, sorry, here Firaxis seems to have lost some ground.
Imagine a car losing a tire now and then, or the seatbelt only fastening when the engine is started. Or when switching programs on TV from channel 4 to 5, this only works if you first switch to 6 and then back to 5.
Or a book losing some pages as soon as you open it, or with some blank pages. All those examples sound silly, don't they?
Well, *technically* this is the standard in the software and especially the games industry.
User petitions won't change this situation, since most of the customers nowadays are not hardcore players or fans. Legislature would or could. Laws to remind software developers of their obligation to create fully workable software, without any glitches.
I would vote for a full money-back guarantee, as long as a product couldn't be considered "complete" or "finalized" by any means, as is the problem with C3C.
A company's reputation is not only built upon its products but also upon the kind of support it offers for its products, and the devotion for its products and users/fans. And, sorry, here Firaxis seems to have lost some ground.
ummmm........
Extremely normal.
A phenomenally bad idea. I don't know what it's like in Germany, but in America, getting the lawyers involved is basically an admission of defeat. It would only be a good idea if you never wanted to play a game again, and just wanted to stick it to the developers. At that, the lawyers would excel.Yashed To said:
warpstorm
Yumbo? Yumbo!
Kemal said:
Why? This is where they find out what their fans really want. This is where they can check the pulse. This is where they get their testers and their new employees. (Yes, they want to know who you are on these sites when you apply for a job there. Everything you say on these forums can come back to haunt you).
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