Developers "fixing" things that aren't "broken"

[Padmewan]

Although I've been playing Civ3 almost incessantly since it first came out, I've only tuned in to the Civ3 community after C3C came out. This entire controversy around corruption calculations seems to me an example of a company and development team getting too worried about the L337 players and not "regular" players like myself.

IMHO, corruption was never "broken" and therefore should never have been "fixed." Who cares if a bunch of obsessive-compulsive players are exploiting some byproduct of the game's algorithm? Let them be rewarded for their hypervigilent gameplay. Optimized corruption levels don't ruin the game the way unbalanced units do in Starcraft, for example.

Players like myself, who didn't measure our city placements down to the milimeter, were probably building on par with the AI and therefore having a fine time with the game. This means that with the new C3C corruption system we'd probably be equally well off -- except that in the process of "fixing" what for most people is a non-issue, the developers broke something that was working perfectly fine for what I'm sure is the majority of Civ players.

Although it's easier to say than to do, game developers should pay as much or more attention to us "average" players than to the uber-players who generate the most noise and endless documentation (interesting as they may be ) on how to squeeze the most out of the game engine.

For me, the game is not in the uber-players finding and the developers patching "exploits." All I want is for Civ3 to be FUN.

 

[cgannon64]

Corruption was VERY broken. FPs made your cities MORE corrupt rather than less; the same goes for the Police HQ in Communism. I saw it in action. This pretty much made me not play C3C for a while..

 

[Djarum Kretek]

I agree with ALL Padmewan's point completely! I loved FP the way it was when Civ3 1.00 came out. Now it is very very very broken..... I haven't tried the Beta patch. Firaxis claimed it should fix the corruption problem... I'm holding my breath now...

 

[cgannon64]

How did you love it in the unpatched version? It was useless! In fact it was counter-productive.

I think if you micromanaged where you placed the FP it might actually help in the 1.00 version, but that's just silly. Now FP works correctly.

 

[Gogf]

Civ3 1.00, not C3C 1.00. On RCP, it was very annoying. I don't (contiously) use it. But, before the patch, if I put two cities two tiles from my capital, they would have huge corruption.

 

[Mega Tsunami]

@cgannon64
Padmewan meant why did Firaxis change corruption from 1.27 into C3C. I agree in C3C corruption is all wrong, but only because Firaxis fiddled with it (and that was because of the RCP ‘uber-players’).

I agree with every thing Padmewan said – why fix something that ain’t broke for the majority of us ‘average’ players?

 

[Apricorn]

Agree totally with Padmewan, corruption now ruins the game. Maybe they should rename Civilization as "Corruption" as that seems to be the biggest problem we face!

 

[troytheface]

i agree with the initial statement as well. One criticism of C3C was that it was a "modders" patch..aimed at hard core players.
This FP issue clearly illustrates that assessment. Regular players would probably be happier with more techs and less refinement of old issues.

 

[jth]

I don't think C3C having something aimed mostly at hardcore players is a real problem, unless you want to make it one. The expansion had quite a lot of stuff for less hardcore people as well - take the conquests themselves. Not that hardcore, eh? Adding more techs, then? Perhaps, but it's also a balance issue. Those who just want more of everything already got 8 new civs and some units. And more tech trees, actually.

If Conquests is going to be the last expansion for Civ3, the feature selection made by Firaxis was good. Satisfying hardcore players and modders is one important way to have community produce more content and keep Civ gaming alive (even amongst non-gurus) until Civ4 is here.

Whether or not RCP was an issue to you or not is, of course, a matter of personal preference. In games like GOTM, the bias given by using RCP was making comparisons harder and less fun. In solo games, I did suffer from the fact that I knew using RCP would've given better results, but didn't want to found that city in the middle of some crappy hills just to fill out the circle. So for me, fixing RCP was a good thing even though I certainly don't count myself an über-player.

 

[Padmewan]

I certainly don't think C3C is aimed at hard core players: if anything, quite the contrary -- the conquest scenarios open new challenges that are different, rather than harder or easier.

My main point was - why fix a problem that is only a problem for a tiny percentage of players when (1) AFAIK, no one was really complaining about it, and (2) in doing so, you run the risk of breaking some basic gameplay?

The same principle should apply to the withdrawn modification in combat resolution. I'm not sure why they proposed the change -- perhaps all those professional reviews about spearmen beating tanks finally got to them? -- but then to withdraw the change because of the negative feedback from people here was equally arbitrary. It seems that if there was a legitimate reason for them to re-balance combat, they should have stuck to their guns, and if there wasn't, well, they shouldn't have proposed it in the first place...

 

[warpstorm]

Players were complaining about the RCP exploit. It was messing up the competitive scorings and locking players into certain play styles once they became aware of how powerful it was.

As far as combat goes, they removed it not because they caved to peer pressure, but rather because their proposed solution had unintended consequences that needed to be addressed. I think there will eventually be a change to the combat system.

 

[Oystein]

I can understand why you think the RCP-bug is not worth fixing. (personally I really like it fixed).

But that was not the only corruption bug. The real problem is the FP rank bug : http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=62851

That bug has a huge impact of the game. If you dont know how it works it seems like the corruption is kind of random. In my opinion, it ruins the game. It must be fixed. And I think that is the general opinion of us, eh uber-players? It should not be that hard to fix this.

 

[Gogf]

Well, even if I might sometimes lose a tank to a spearman, I think that all combat calculation should be done twice, and averaged, not once (as now), and not four times, as proposed. RCP, well it does make sense to fix the old one, but the it now has the worst corruption was not right. I think it's pretty good now.

 

[tomart109]

warpstorm, what players were complaining, and being "locked into certain play styles"? the ones who play the GOTM and ladders?

not to be annoying, but compare those few hundred to (how many copies of these games are out there?) how many hundreds of thousands of copies of C3C do they expect to sell?
do the math, and see that
they screwed it up for the vast majority by "fixing" something most never know or care about in the slightest. Now the game is broken for EVERYONE til they repair their "fixes."

I completely agree with Padmewan - there were some that said the exact same things during the beta - that fixing the RCP and Rank Exploits wasn't worth it, and could have unintended consequences... ...gee; i foretold the future.

IMHO, corruption was never "broken" and therefore should never have been "fixed." Who cares if a bunch of obsessive-compulsive players are exploiting some byproduct of the game's algorithm? Let them be rewarded for their hypervigilent gameplay.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Like it or not, the obsessive players are the one most likely to contribute feedback, and thus the ones most likely to have their concerns addressed.

 

[warpstorm]

Squeaky wheel gets the grease, tomart.

The only feedback Firaxis gets is from players like the ones who are on the MP ladders, GOTM players etc. Does this mean that their changes are for the hard-core minority rather than the casual majority (if you are reading this, this is not you)? Yes, I think it does.

The casual player has no idea of how to get feedback to Firaxis in a way that will be seen.

 

[Kubla84]

I did not even know what RCP was till I found this forum and know it sort of bothers me to know that I am being penalized if I happen to put 2 cities equally distant from my capital

I have not tried the GOTM and have no clue what you mean by "ladders"

 

[Kubla84]

I did not even know what RCP was till I found this forum and know it sort of bothers me to know that I am being penalized if I happen to put 2 cities equally distant from my capital

I have not tried the GOTM and have no clue what you mean by "ladders"

 

[Gogf]

Well, what Warpstorm said does make sense. If you have ever posted here, you aren't part of the casual majority. I do think that RCP should be averaged. What is a ladder, anyway?

 

[HellboundHeathcliff]

A ladder is a manmade device with two vertical rails connected by numerous horizontal rails that allows one to climb to great hieghts. Construction is a prerequisite technology.

All seriousness aside... some sites have tournaments that are referred to as 'ladders'.