Dear Firaxis, your game is crashing on almost every platform

[japanesesamurai]

Dear Firaxis,

i know you folks read these forums. So here goes:

Please fix this game. It is unplayable on Mac and on console’s. The game crashes every 20 minutes. The single player is hardly playable and the multiplayer isn’t playable at all for this reason.

It crashes on Catalina, PS4, Xbox and Switch. I know people who payed full price (100€ and up) for this game on PS4 and they had to stop playing.

This is not acceptable.

I played Civ V for a year (2000h and up) and it never crashed. Not a single time. The community would like to have the same experience on all platforms when playing Civ VI.
Thank you.

 

[aieeegrunt]

What map settings do you use?

I used to play on xbox and now play on iPhone and never crash, but I play tiny maps

 

[E.man]

I play real earth huge map and it crashes and I'm glad to see it raised. It shouldn't matter how I choose to play I paid full price with the expansions.

I have a new Windows 10 laptop that is good for this game's requirements.

I only play Single Player. It crashes frequently in it's own turn but also loading. It's very bloody annoying. l have the auto save every turn but manual save during my turn or I lose a lot of complex decisions.

 

[japanesesamurai]

What map settings do you use?

I used to play on xbox and now play on iPhone and never crash, but I play tiny maps

Either tiny or small. Rarely standard. Never larger than standard map.
And it shouldn’t matter anyway.

It played fine over a year ago on my computer. One of the latest patches messed up the game. And now development stopped and it’s bloody annoying.

The people on console’s, who pay full price, are scammed. On PC I can understand a crash once in awhile (although not at this frequency), but on console it is not acceptable.

It’s a disgrace.

I payed for this game three times. Yes I have three copies, and all of them crash. I have Xcom 2 too. I gave them my money. Now I demand my game. This is how it works.

 

[Alaindor]

Not acceptable, I agree with you.

My experience is different however: I always play on huge maps, and on Windows 10 I will get the occasional crash (sometimes after 30 minutes, sometimes not a crash in 3 hours), and on Linux I did not get one single crash ever yet.

 

[aieeegrunt]

I play real earth huge map and it crashes and I'm glad to see it raised. It shouldn't matter how I choose to play I paid full price with the expansions.

I have a new Windows 10 laptop that is good for this game's requirements.

I only play Single Player. It crashes frequently in it's own turn but also loading. It's very bloody annoying. l have the auto save every turn but manual save during my turn or I lose a lot of complex decisions.

Either tiny or small. Rarely standard. Never larger than standard map.
And it shouldn’t matter anyway.

It played fine over a year ago on my computer. One of the latest patches messed up the game. And now development stopped and it’s bloody annoying.

The people on console’s, who pay full price, are scammed. On PC I can understand a crash once in awhile (although not at this frequency), but on console it is not acceptable.

It’s a disgrace.

I payed for this game three times. Yes I have three copies, and all of them crash. I have Xcom 2 too. I gave them my money. Now I demand my game. This is how it works.

Oh believe me I am not trying to defend the shoddy QA on this game. I’m a master machinist so you can imagine what I think of how game developement is done.

Just doing the coding autopsy to try and pinpoint possible work arounds

I’m not sure what alternate timeline I am posting from, but I also play modded Skyrim on console, never sort my load order and also almost never crash either

 

[reddishrecue]

I play on small or standard and it crashes more often on standard when I Switch it up. The serious case is that my Civ 6 isn't recording my achievements and my different victory times on different difficulties. If this wasn't the case, I would be on Civilization 6 more often.

 

[japanesesamurai]

Ah yeah, the Hall of Fame is also broke on console’s. It will just reset, as if you never played it

 

[Linklite]

Ah yeah, the Hall of Fame is also broke on console’s. It will just reset, as if you never played it

Is that the case for all consoles? Or just the Switch? I was under the impression that the HoF was peculiar to the Switch.

Anyways, that's Aspyr's fault. They dealt with the ports. I'm going to be blunt - while Aspyr is the guilty party who actually broke it, I blame Firaxis no less for that fact. They chose Aspyr to do the job and evidently have not leant anywhere near hard enough on them to get them to fix it.

Until my game works properly (there are several other even more major bugs), then I'll refuse to buy another Firaxis game and advise others to do the same. I've lost patience with them.

 

[Stilgar08]

Second the op! PS5 here...

I was deep into a game (large map, 7 seas, standard pace, normal #of opponents, heroes, mixed tech tree, barbs) then game crashes every other turn. Went out of the game and back in several times for securing the savegame because I so much wanted to finish this game! Did so for about 2 weeks (slow player), a pain in the.... Crashed, save game: "broken file" - cloud clone was 4 days older, I played every day...
Stopped playing since then. It's a shame.

Oh you received every crash report btw...

P.S.: HoF looked fine to me.

 

[Gorbles]

Is that the case for all consoles? Or just the Switch? I was under the impression that the HoF was peculiar to the Switch.

Anyways, that's Aspyr's fault. They dealt with the ports. I'm going to be blunt - while Aspyr is the guilty party who actually broke it, I blame Firaxis no less for that fact. They chose Aspyr to do the job and evidently have not leant anywhere near hard enough on them to get them to fix it.

Until my game works properly (there are several other even more major bugs), then I'll refuse to buy another Firaxis game and advise others to do the same. I've lost patience with them.

So, in the scenario that Aspyr just can't get the fixes out, what's the resolution for Firaxis here? To just drop them as a partner and therefore not provide any ports of the game?

This isn't a gotcha, I'm trying to gauge the gap, or overlap, between "this product isn't worth the money given the flaws" vs. "I want to play the game on the platform of my choice". Because that's the tension on the developer-side (or perhaps more the publisher-side, I don't know).

To explain something more related to my neck of the woods (i.e. games I'm as-or-more familiar with compared to Civ), Feral Interactive handled the UNIX ports of specific RTS games made by Relic Entertainment. They have their own support address (so you don't go to Relic for issues), and the lead time on updates was . . . significant. I don't know how normal this is - my only real experience of ports like this are through Aspyr and FI. Civilisation and Dawn of War being two of my favourite series in the strategy space. I don't know how much pressure the original developers can apply (obviously there has to be some, I just don't know what market competition there is, so I don't know how much Aspyr have to act on that pressure).

 

[japanesesamurai]

Whoever’s fault it is, shouldn’t concern us.

All we want is a working game.

 

[HiRezAudio]

Same for me on both my PS4 Pro and my Steam PC (Windows 10 with a 16-core Xeon chip & 64Gb of graphics card, all up to date).
Standard Map or larger will kill the PS4 - I just posted about this very thing in the consoles section, so please see below as I can't be bothered with typing it all again.
PS4: Is Civ 6 still prone to crashing?

The worst part of this is that all I ever get from support on PS4 is a never ending request to supply a video of the problem, but with no explanation of how I am supposed to do that coupled with requests for crash reports to which I replied last time that if it simply stalls & sticks hard at the turn end there is no crash report generated, and if it is a hard crash then a report is generated automatically as I have to agree it can be sent - but no idea where it goes or how to find it & send it to Firaxis.
In all honesty I think it is just a form response that gets automatically sent out, and they simply do not seem to care.
Both the PS4 and the Steam PC are full versions with all expansions & DLC so I am in a lot of cash on a game I can no longer even play & firaxis do not seem to give a damn.

 

[Linklite]

So, in the scenario that Aspyr just can't get the fixes out, what's the resolution for Firaxis here? To just drop them as a partner and therefore not provide any ports of the game?

There should be controls in the contract to ensure quality. In a franchise, the stipulations are generally incredibly strict - beyond all reason, to be honest. This is to maintain quality - you don't want customers going to the franchise, having a bad time and being put ofg the brand. I'd imagine a similar relationship works here - certainly a stipulation that major bugs should be fixed!

If Aspyr can't fix their bugs, then it's not a good relationship and they were a poor choice. While I really like having Civ on the Switch, at the moment the situation is not far off being a con. They've taken my money, but the game is close to unplayable. Handheld mode is pretty much off limits due to bugs peculiar to the Switch, and there are significant and obvious long term bugs with the game in general not present on the other platforms that have not been addressed. This is above the problems with Civ VI itself.

If Firaxis can't get Aspyr to look after the ports, then that's something they need to reconsider. As things stand, Civ VI on the Switch is simply taking money in their name for a game that really isn't upto par. I would not have bought it had I known that I'd be left with this. It's put me off future Civs - unless they make good on their honour and fix it. The actual game is good (even if flawed), but the bugs need fixing, and they needed fixing years ago.

Whoever’s fault it is, shouldn’t concern us.

All we want is a working game.

The thing is, while in an ideal world I'd agree with you, in reality, it matters. If Firaxis is causing the problem but we blame Aspyr, then Firaxis won't care and just let Aspyr take the flak, and vice versa. If we just shake our fists at the sky without directing it at someone in particular, neither will particularly care.

In an ideal world, they'd care enough about their product to see that they've screwed it up and want to fix it. Unfortunately, that clearly isn't true. If itnwere, they'd have fixed many of these bugs years ago - and I'm not being the slightest bit hyperbolic when I say years.

 

[Ordnael]

The Switch version could really used some fixes...late game turns get way too long, 2 minutes between turns is unacceptable! I should be able to play any map setting with no problem regardless of the port, we paid just like a PC customer (probably more because of port tax!
The Switch can play a really fluid Witcher 3, albeit with some graphical compromises, bottom line that game is enjoyable. DOOM 2016 also plays great, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a beast...sure developed for the Switch...but has a lot going on screen, proving the point that skill full coding can surpass perceived limitations of console. There are plenty of heavy duty games on Switch that play like a charm!

 

[Karmah]

The Switch version could really used some fixes...late game turns get way too long, 2 minutes between turns is unacceptable! I should be able to play any map setting with no problem regardless of the port, we paid just like a PC customer (probably more because of port tax!
The Switch can play a really fluid Witcher 3, albeit with some graphical compromises, bottom line that game is enjoyable. DOOM 2016 also plays great, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a beast...sure developed for the Switch...but has a lot going on screen, proving the point that skill full coding can surpass perceived limitations of console. There are plenty of heavy duty games on Switch that play like a charm!

Well usually the architecture matters to be fair. Console might have faster graphics processing but not a lot for heavy computing. Not saying that's the case here , it's been a while , probably 20 years, since I compared properly and I have no ideas what consoles architectures are about nowadays. But at the time it did make a difference, you could run a beautiful 3D-game fluently on a console while a strategic game would be laggy as hell because of the nature of computation involved.

 

[Ordnael]

@Karmah What games do you have in mind? I don't recall consoles having much of either RTS or TBS games to begin with. If you think of Tactical RPG's then there's plenty games for console...thinking of Front Mission 3 on the Playstation or Fire Emblem Awakening on the Nintendo 3DS, for example, I don't recall lag in either of them.

 

[Tuvok694]

...The game crashes every 20 minutes. ...This is not acceptable.

I am just as annoyed as you but have given up hop a long time ago. They have just abandoned the game, they don't care about all those remaining bugs and crash issues. No one can demand to get his money back, so why should they put any more effort into this. It's not their job to take care or even have sympathy for the fans of this game but to earn money for their company. It is what it is.

 

[japanesesamurai]

I am just as annoyed as you but have given up hop a long time ago. They have just abandoned the game, they don't care about all those remaining bugs and crash issues. No one can demand to get his money back, so why should they put any more effort into this. It's not their job to take care or even have sympathy for the fans of this game but to earn money for their company. It is what it is.

This is bad practise from a business standpoint. As it will caust a bad shadow over the next Civ game.

It’s unbelievable they don’t care for this game (the game itself, not the players). It is one if the most iconic games in history.

As mentioned earlier, Civ V ran marvelous on my mac computer. With over 50 mods and about 1500 hours of playtime, I have experienced zero crashes. Literally none. (I only played the last final patch)

A few bugs here and there and the occasional weekly crash, I could accept. But in this state, it is unplayable on all of my systems. It will crash every 20 minutes or so. This kills single player, but most importantly, it totally ruins multiplayer.

 

[Civinator]

I am just as annoyed as you but have given up hop a long time ago. They have just abandoned the game, they don't care about all those remaining bugs and crash issues. No one can demand to get his money back, so why should they put any more effort into this. It's not their job to take care or even have sympathy for the fans of this game but to earn money for their company. It is what it is.

Tuvok694, why - in this case - under your avatar there still stands "Civ6 addict" ?