C3C Redux: Six months with no patch.

[PimpyMicPimp]

Honestly, most game companies suck at patching except Blizzard :/ I mean, hell, they still patch Starcraft and WC2. I'm no fanboy, I have my fair share of issues with Blizzard, but they are definitly one of the best when it comes to supporting their games (not necessarily when it comes to their players, though).

 

[SenhorDaGuerra]

you can get civ IV complete (vanilla, warlords, BTS) in Zavvi (england) for £13... how long before it becomes abandonware?

 

[obsolete]

Ohhh, StarCraft/Broodwar brings back many memories!

Very good patching & server support. Unfortunately, they lacked security. I quit battle.net because it just became a cheating ground for maphacks, unithacks, etc....

But the gameplay itself ran fine. If there was even one graphical glitch somewhere, rest assured it was fixed.

 

[Napalm102]

Ohhh, StarCraft/Broodwar brings back many memories!

Very good patching & server support. Unfortunately, they lacked security. I quit battle.net because it just became a cheating ground for maphacks, unithacks, etc....

But the gameplay itself ran fine. If there was even one graphical glitch somewhere, rest assured it was fixed.

Blizzard is becoming a brand name synonimous with quality.

I mean they have what like 3 game worlds and all of them top quality: Diablo, Warcrfat and Starcraft.

The worst offender imho is the EA Games, they practically never patch games.

 

[SenhorDaGuerra]

Blizzard is becoming a brand name synonimous with quality.

I mean they have what like 3 game worlds and all of them top quality: Diablo, Warcrfat and Starcraft.

The worst offender imho is the EA Games, they practically never patch games.

diablo is still going??? what a great game.

 

[Psyringe]

If Bhruic can spend his free time to fix this and many more issues, surely Firaxis can spare one person for the time needed to do something similar.

One person wouldn't do, I'm afraid. I don't think Firaxis has made any official statement about that, but some testing would be required, plus preparing the patches for Direct2Drive and Civ Complete. But in general I agree with you.

 

[ICNP]

That culture not showing was a big deal for me. The others on Bhruics list we're just kinda rare occurances but not having something like culture show up for a new player is just wrong and should be an easy find.

 

[Solver]

Let's all start by once again showing our appreciation for Blizzard, the company that can keep on patching 10 years after release

At this point, I really understand how many of you are pretty pissed at the lack of a second patch. But remember it's not quite as simple as, say, taking the unofficial patch code and releasing that officially, even if that would be absolutely fine legally. The parts which can be the most time-consuming are QA and, therefore, publisher approval. The publisher doesn't approve any patches before it's spent some time in the publisher's QA department (yes, they do that despite developer's own QA) and the publisher is satisfied with that. Which is the difficult part - QA departments don't really tend to be overstaffed, and their instructions usually are to prioritize games that are about to be released or games that have just been released and need the first patch out fast.

 

[oranges]

IMO, that process needs to be either done genuinely well the first time around or reexamined later if there are no plans for an extensive patch for quite a while. That is the whole point. If something else takes priority, do a small scale thing just to fix major issues introduced by the latest patch. If you're fixing a dozen or so bugs, surely testing it can be done in a far more efficient and direct way then for instance for the latest patch (though bugs such as no culture showing should really not be something easily missed anyway). If not, pay Bhruic for his efforts, his patch has been tested quite extensively

BTW, thanks for you patch pre-3.13

 

[Solver]

I agree, in an ideal world It'd be great to see quick "hotfixes" that just fix a few outstanding issues. As to why that doesn't happen with Civ, who knows. Maybe 2K won't approve such hotfixes. Maybe they make a more extensive patch instead and just are unable to release it for a long time. Maybe 2K is unable to allocate QA resources altogether - they'd still be needed to approve even a hotfix.

Let's hope, though, that something does get released in the end. Even though it's been a while, the last official word is still that there's going to be another patch. I assume they'd have said something if it were cancelled.

 

[r_rolo1]

They ( I know that it is not the same team... ) didn't said anything in C3C, remember? Besides the ones that bought Atari Complete box ( like I did ) , C3C players are still waiting for the patch.....

 

[Solver]

I'll admit that my knowledge of C3C is mostly hearsay. I don't know what happened exactly then, I stopped playing Civ3 by the time Conquests came out already. Was a final patch promised and not delivered?

 

[r_rolo1]

I can't recall if it was explicitely promissed ( this one was not promissed explicitely as well... just references to "we're working on it" ) , but last patch of C3C had game breaking bugs ( like the DoW if you tried to enter with a normal boat on a water tile with a sub of other civ ( that supposedely was meant to be invisible ) )

 

[Solver]

( like the DoW if you tried to enter with a normal boat on a water tile with a sub of other civ ( that supposedely was meant to be invisible ) )

Ouch, I remember that particular bug from the out-of-the-box version of vanilla Civ3. It was annoying.

 

[r_rolo1]

IIRC only the Atari Complete version solved it.....

 

[Willem]

They ( I know that it is not the same team... ) didn't said anything in C3C, remember?

They did actually, around when they announced that they were already working on Civ 4. They made it very clear there would be no further patches.

 

[Willem]

I can't recall if it was explicitely promissed ( this one was not promissed explicitely as well... just references to "we're working on it" ) , but last patch of C3C had game breaking bugs ( like the DoW if you tried to enter with a normal boat on a water tile with a sub of other civ ( that supposedely was meant to be invisible ) )

There was also mention of this. Apparently that was an unfixable bug. When they tried to do something about it, they always ended up breaking something else in the game.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Apparently that was an unfixable bug. When they tried to do something about it, they always ended up breaking something else in the game.

Through it was already fixed in PTW. Makes me wonder about the quality of their code.

 

[r_rolo1]

There was also mention of this. Apparently that was an unfixable bug. When they tried to do something about it, they always ended up breaking something else in the game.

The Complete version of Atari doesn't have that bug ( I don't recall facing it after using it atleast.... )

 

[Duuk]

I'll finally chime in.

There will never, ever be another patch for BtS, and I will not pay full price for Civ5 (although I'll probably buy it once the price comes down).

I can't reward a company this dumb.