AnsarWarrior said:
I think RichHeimlich does have a point, its clear that this is a rushed product and thats why i didnt order at the first place, i would wait until the first patch.
He does. I've got the game. When I bought it I expected it to have bugs. I thouroughly expect there to be bugs for some time. In fact it very likely will be many months if not years and 2 expansions (that I'll be forces to buy if I want a solid game) before the game is debugged to the best point it will be.
Today most games upon release are like this. In my experience firaxis is one of the worst offenders. Civ 3 was great in many ways but it took a couple of years before most problems were addressed, and still the AI was horrid (AI not being considered a bug here but still being considered).
The last good solid game to come out of a Sid company was Alpha Centauri. That though was made in an era when most games were still released in a (for the most part) solid state. Nowadays game are produced and released largely for $ reasons, and $ is a very large determining factor in determining a game quality. I'm not saying that $ wasn't always a factor but today gaming is a multibillion dollar enterprise and many of the people making the decisions aren't game players themselves.
Game quality and playability overall have gone downhill in the last decade but at the sametime sales have risen. This is due to the increased size of market, not because games are getting better, simply more people just play them.
Firaxis has some great staff, and no doubt good people who are quality minded working for them. Buisness though trumps good gaming these days. The real sad thing is that we as consumers still buy these incomplete games. It amazes that some of these games are even played.
Nowadays I generally find a copy of a game and preplay it for a couple hours before I decide to go out and buy it. I've bought very few games the last couple years as a result. Currently the most modern game I play on any regular basis is Warcraft III. Nothing I've seen or played since that game was released was interesting ,compelling, or fun enough to play for more than a couple days. Blizzard generally is one of the few companies out there, if not the only major one that releases games only when they are largely bug free, and they are top-notch about fixing known bugs. I cannot comment though on World of Warcraft as I've not played it. I won't play a mmorpg, I prefer to live in the real world rather than a fastasy one. I do know people who play WoW and they have zero complaints about the quality of the game, and I know them well enough to know that if they did they'd say something. Incidently they aren't buying Civ4 until it's been sufficiently debugged. Saying all this I also should say that I have a number of complaints about Blizzard but they aren't quality complaints. And no, I don't work for them I just mention them as a company who overall generally does it right vs. the majority the major game companies that have come to do it wrong.
Another good game company: Bioware
Another bad (very bad) game company: EA (formerly Electronic Arts, and also formerly, but many many years ago one of the best companies out there)
I'll not review all the game companies out there as this post would go on and on forever.. it's already on the long side.
You're probably asking why I bought the game if I have this point of view... simply: I had free time on my hands and wanted to check it out, and I do know that I'd eventually buy this particular game anyways as since before
Civilization I was released I dreamed of playing an epic strategy game against real people. I'm organizing such a game now to start after the holidays. I figure that the majority of the bugs will be AI related, and that the multiplayer epic option will be ok to play (It finally was in Play the World). I hope I am right...
Now I'm off to post about the bug I found and see if anyone has an answer and then I'm going to play my first game.
Cheers,
Eric
.... thats 7 megs max..... now programs are in the 100's of mega
