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

[tomart109]

Originally posted by warpstorm
Actually, C3C was very much geared for MP play. MP balance and closing of exploits was a primary concern.

Too primary, if you ask me.

This is still primarily a Solitaire Game, (one of the best ever made, IMHO,) by design and by the vast majority of purchasers, who will never play it MP. (My slow modem shuts me out.)

I appreciate them trying to have their cake and MP too, but look what it's done. Wouldn't you think making sure it works for your 95% SP market, trumps extra complications that your 5% MPs want?

Oh yeah, i forgot the "lumberjack exploit" fix - now once you chop a woods, that's it forever - what, does it petrify?? Again, someone yelled ""EXPLOIT!!!!"" in a crowded theatre, and now we have less of a game. (I'll stick my neck out here and admit that i liked having my workers chop forests over and over - it was IMO a legitimate, businesslike solution to terminally corrupt cities. It was simply large scale lumbering like in distant parts of Canada or Australia, generating some income for distant areas.) They could have limited it to chopping once every hundred years, or something sensible.

I realize now, how to get them to change anything you want in the game -

..........JUST CALL IT AN """"EXPLOIT'''''''!!!!!!!!

 

[warpstorm]

Originally posted by tomart109
Too primary, if you ask me.

This is still primarily a Solitaire Game, (one of the best ever made, IMHO,) by design and by the vast majority of purchasers, who will never play it MP. (My slow modem shuts me out.)

I agree with you, tomart109, but as you are no doubt aware the MP contigent is very vocal and includes the developers.

I nearly always play it SP myself.

 

[Kev1916]

Originally posted by tomart109
[Bwant?

Oh yeah, i forgot the "lumberjack exploit" fix - now once you chop a woods, that's it forever - what, does it petrify?? Again, someone yelled ""EXPLOIT!!!!"" in a crowded theatre, and now we have less of a game. (I'll stick my neck out here and admit that i liked having my workers chop forests over and over - it was IMO a legitimate, businesslike solution to terminally corrupt cities. It was simply large scale lumbering like in distant parts of Canada or Australia, generating some income for distant areas.) They could have limited it to chopping once every hundred years, or something sensible.


Totally agree with you, a very useful solution to get shields into far away cities.

With regards to the agrument re FP I think it is a very poor show to have something working in PTW then months later in Conquests make an arse of it, somebody should be held to account.

 

[Aggie]

Let me see if I understand this....

1. Firaxis creates a game called CIV3 with a huge exploit that breaks the game
2. The exploit is revealed by "fanatic" players and a discussion started about it
3. This discussion catches the attention of Firaxis
4. Firaxis agrees that this is indeed an error in the game and tries to resolve it
5. Firaxis fails to resolve the error properly
6. The people that found the bug and wanted to have it removed get the blame

....

 

[warpstorm]

I do think that it needs fixed. If something is easily exploitable (and the various FP related bugs are), it needs to be fixed. I want a game that gives a good challenge (and, confidentially, I am not sure that I have the willpower not to use an exploit if it means the differnece between winning and losing).

 

[Yumbo]

a huge exploit that breaks the game

I never saw any of this as a huge exploit. I must be missing something...

 

[Aggie]

Originally posted by Yumbo
I never saw any of this as a huge exploit. I must be missing something...

It is brilliantly explained by Oystein:

Originally posted by 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.

Simply put: when you disband your capital and move it to a remote area (like Eastern Island while your core is Europe) you would have a massive reduction of the corruption in vanilla CIV and PTW. Firaxis acknowledged this and therefore decided to do something about it.

 

[Yumbo]

And let me add that where I think the anger is direct, and perhaps misdirected, is at those posters who proudly post the news of the latest exploit that have discovered, and their followers who sing their praises and pat them on the back at their marvelous discovery.

For example, I recently read the Free Palace Jump post. Someone (I don't know or care who it was) mucked about long enough to figure how you could jump your palace across your empire, essentially for free, by disbanding your capital. There followed pages of congratulatory posts from other players who were waiting to enthusiastically take advantage of this exploit.

Now, if you believe what has been posted on these forums, palace jumping is one of the primary reasons the FP was broken in the first place, and one of the reasons it was "fixed". (Note: According to Tavis, this is not the case, but several other posters have been claiming this for some time now). So becuase of the widely praised original Free Palace Jumper and his minions, we all basically lose the use of your FP.

And I'm not even getting into those RCP gurus.

Any system is exploitable. No matter what Firaxis does to fix these exploits, more will be found. Nature of the beast.

In summary, I think the casual player is tired of the mechanics of the game being chewed up because an elite group of players decides they want to cheat. I say let them cheat.

 

[Aggie]

@Yumbo: the key passage of my statement was:

"4. Firaxis agrees that this is indeed an error in the game and tries to resolve it"

EDIT:

Originally posted by Yumbo
And let me add that where I think the anger is direct, and perhaps misdirected, is at those posters who proudly post the news of the latest exploit that have discovered, and their followers who sing their praises and pat them on the back at their marvelous discovery.

Misdirected is the right word.

 

[Yumbo]

Yes. And I agree. But the bug itself is only really made possible by those who make use of the free palace jump exploit (and those that widely publicize it).

And it is to those that I direct my frustration.

Fix this exploit, and the number of situations where it is possible to take advantage of this bug decreases to near 0.

 

[Yumbo]

From your original post:

Simply put: when you disband your capital and move it to a remote area

Now, why in the h*** would one disband their capital and move it to a remote portion of the map, except to take advantage of a cheat? Eliminate the ability for them to do that, and you eliminate the bug...

 

[Bam-Bam]

Yumbo--there is more to it than that.

The FP rank bug did not just affect games where a palace is jumped to a remote area. It also affected games where folks would move their palace (using a great leader) to an overall better spot after conquering their landmass. It could be abused to extremes, if you wanted to. What Aggie pointed out is the best example of how to show the bug--not necessarily a formula for playing the game.

IT IS A BUG IN PTW; IT WAS ACKNOWLEDGED AS SUCH BY FIRAXIS.

 

[Gogf]

The reason bugs are fixed is because vocal people tell Firaxis about them. The "casaul majority" is more of a "silent majority." What I don't understand is why Firaxis didn't just say "Okay, let those people cheat." In multiplayer, it would just be that nobody would play against a known cheater. The system now is probably just as easy to cheat on...

 

[Aggie]

Originally posted by Gogf
What I don't understand is why Firaxis didn't just say "Okay, let those people cheat." In multiplayer, it would just be that nobody would play against a known cheater. The system now is probably just as easy to cheat on...

Simple, it is NOT cheating

EDIT:

Originally posted by Bam-Bam
What Aggie pointed out is the best example of how to show the bug--not necessarily a formula for playing the game.

IT IS A BUG IN PTW; IT WAS ACKNOWLEDGED AS SUCH BY FIRAXIS.

@Bam-bam: thanks for elaborating it

 

[Yumbo]

I would argue that the free palace jump is a cheat...

 

[Marlor]

I don't mind them fixing the FP exploit, as long as they preserve the existing FP functionality (or something similar) when they fix it.

The FP is one of my favourite small wonders in the game, simply because I *hate* the way corruption is implemented (as many Civ and Civ2 veterans do), and often play an expansionist game. The way the FP works in the current patch, it is next to useless, as it can't be targeted to a certain area, and has a negligible effect.

 

[Bam-Bam]

I posted this in another thread--but thought it would be of some use here.

If you haven't looked, Jesse Smith (Tavis), explains why Firaxis changed the corruption calculation vis-a-vis the forbidden palace here.

That is why things have changed. How it affects gameplay (including the SPHQ and new specialists) remains to be seen.

 

[The Last Conformist]

That the Rank bug, judging from Tavis's new thread, did not figure in Firaxis's decision to modify the corruption calculation is, to me, somewhat disheartening, but it's also quite interesting for what it shows about the developers' priorities. Aggie's list could now be modified:

1) The game is released with a huge bug.
2) Astute players notice the bug and complain about it.
3) The developers do not figure it's worth fixing.
4) The developers change the relevant system for unconnected reasons.
5) Doing so, they inadvertly introduces a new bug.
6) The players who complained about the bug get blamed.

Neat, eh? I'm probably naive, but I'm hoping we'll be seeing less of players who try and offer constructive feedback to the developers get blamed for bungled patches in the future.

Yumbo wrote
Any system is exploitable. No matter what Firaxis does to fix these exploits, more will be found. Nature of the beast.

That does not mean that all systems are equally exploitable, nor that filling one loophole necessarily opens one equally big. This is particularly true when the originally exploit was due to an outright bug!

Also, is it too much too ask that people uphold the distinction between a cheat and an exploit? I think everybody agrees that, in Vanilla and PTW, jumping the Palace to Easter Island to reap the corruption benefits is an exploit, but it's most definitely not a cheat, since it's perfectly in the game rules.

 

[Yumbo]

But by your definition, are there any cheats?

I would argue that disbanding your capital to bounce it half way across the world, and beforehand loading up a city pop with workers to guarantee it will be the new capital, is a cheat.

I also always thought that the Palace prebuild was a cheat, plain and simple.

The palace jump defies logic and the integrity of the game. If you want to move your capital, you should have to build a new palace--no free jumping, not using a GL. The Free Palace Jump is a cheat, or at least as much of a cheat as exists in a game like CivIII.

 

[Aggie]

@Yumbo: you constantly ignore the essence of our input (in the last few hours from me, Bam-bam and the Last Conformist). The palace jump issue is NOT what it's about