Firaxis: Patch coming next week

[warpstorm]

On a side note. You spend 700 a year in games.

That's nothing, I buy a new one about every week. You do the math. (Of course, for me it's research).

 

[warpstorm]

outpost released by sierra in 1994 basically said something like "our child has to leave home today even if he isn't ready" in its readme. i'll put it up against moo3 in a one on one, battle of the prerelease expected A+ title but really a box of crap bowl.

Oh, I forgot Outpost (thankfully). Now that I think back on it, that probably takes the cake.

 

[blue3c]

That's nothing, I buy a new one about every week. You do the math. (Of course, for me it's research).

Well if its research, hopefully it is work related which makes it a tax write off or something like that.

Is there any news on the patch yet. I am curious to see how much they screw up with thte patch.

And a little message to firaxis/take2. A little information, communication with your customers can go a long way. Ignoring your customers and releasing when ever you feel like it can only lead to one thing. Those customers never again trusting anything with your name on it. Right now I promise you I am one of those in the latter group. It will take alot for you to win back my trust, i.e. my Money. Lets just hope you step up to the plate and back your product.

And to those of you who will say the reason they don't say anything is because they are working on the patch. PLEASE, are you telling me they have everyone in the company working on this. I doubt it.
To those who say they will get burned if they say anything. BULL. A little commmunication will keep a wirthering fan base from leaving.
And last to those of you who will reply to this just for the sake of arguing, Really just get married, then you can yell at whoever you want.

 

[Matt_G]

Is there any news on the patch yet.

Yes there is...right on their website.
Here's the link.

 

[allism]

Well, I'd rather they got the patch right than release too soon...but I'd sure like to know if they're fixing the black terrain issue.

 

[jdurg]

Is there any news on the patch yet. I am curious to see how much they screw up with thte patch.

And it's things like this which make companies remain absolutely silent about what they are doing and gives them less and less motivation to put out a good product. Why should they put ANY effort into something if all they get is 'I can't wait to see how badly they screw up the next thing'.

 

[joesf35]

Why should they put ANY effort into something if all they get is 'I can't wait to see how badly they screw up the next thing'.

So people stop saying that.
If they don't put any effort into their job then another company will, and that company will prosper and your company that gets mad and stops working hard will go out of business.

 

[MarkC1]

jesus i was gonna buy civ4 but now Id rather wait until they fix these errors before I give them 50 dollars for an incomplete game

 

[MarkC1]

And it's things like this which make companies remain absolutely silent about what they are doing and gives them less and less motivation to put out a good product. Why should they put ANY effort into something if all they get is 'I can't wait to see how badly they screw up the next thing'.

they charge $50 for it, that should be motivation enough

 

[Borgholio]

jesus i was gonna buy civ4 but now Id rather wait until they fix these errors before I give them 50 dollars for an incomplete game

Actually it's quite complete. It just has some bugs that need to be worked out. Incomplete would be something like MOO 3.

 

[Padma]

Not only is it complete, it works fine on *most* systems. For some reason, it does *not* work correctly on *some* systems.

Of course, the most vocal crowd is going to be those who have problems. (Not that I blame them.)

 

[TheVampire]

Oh, I forgot Outpost (thankfully). Now that I think back on it, that probably takes the cake.

I actually sent it back to them and they sent me a check!

 

[Psyringe]

jesus i was gonna buy civ4 but now Id rather wait until they fix these errors before I give them 50 dollars for an incomplete game

The game is not only complete, it has far less showstopping gameplay bugs and is far better balanced than, for example, Civ3 when it was released.

That said, it's sadly true that technical issues are keeping some amount of people from playing. I'm sure that these will be sorted out. However, if you don't want to risk that you may have to wait for a patch until you can play the game, it's probably better to wait for a patch or a demo.

Personally, I bought the game knowing that it might have technical issues, because I know Firaxis and I know that they will sort them out. And I'm happily playing it since day one, like most other customers. But of course not everyone will be willing to take that risk.

 

[civzombie]

"The game is not only complete, it has far less showstopping gameplay bugs and is far better balanced than"

So what about those "MANY" gameplay improvements that are coming in the patch? If the release hadn't been pushed up, it is fair to assume that those would have been included in the initial release.

Anyway, I am looking forward to seeing what those are. That will give us some perspective on just how incomplete the game was at release...

 

[Roach]

A sad sad day. Unfortunately, I'm a believer now in the problems with Civ IV

I'd gotten used to playing Civ IV until past 1500 or so when a lot of the map is revealed or world maps are traded. Past that, I was expecting to crash to desktop now and then. By the 1800s and definitely by the 1900s crashes were frequent. But I figured, I could get those games going and see if I could start them up again once there was a patch.

Welcome to the fold; you too can now wander these forums aimlessly waiting for the news of the patch. 1500s was when my first problems appeared, after that I couldnt play any game for long.

Sorry to hear about your data loss though, I have wondered how much damage the hard crashes could do to the system, that's why I have given up.

My EB have said they will accept the game back for store credit if the patch doesn't solve my problems.

 

[clinton]

So what about those "MANY" gameplay improvements that are coming in the patch? If the release hadn't been pushed up, it is fair to assume that those would have been included in the initial release.

I disagree. Firaxis has seemed to at least imply that many of the improvements in the patch have been a result of user feedback. Were there not a early release, this feedback would not of been received. They would of in this time continued to receive feedback from their beta testers, but this would be less than the feedback they have received from all their more numerous customers from a release.

Its not fair to assume such features in the patch would of been included in the initial release were it pushed back and its quite probable that, if the game was released at a similar time as the first patch, that the game would be more inferior and more bug ridden than the patched version. Of course, these are all hypotheticals, but I feel real world testing results in finding more issues than in house beta testing.

If you don't like to be a paying beta tester, don't buy the game before its patched. However, some of us do like to pay to be beta testers to get the game early, and it would be silly for firaxis not to use that resource, and not using that resource I believe would generally result in an inferior game in the long term.

 

[civzombie]

"Firaxis has seemed to at least imply that many of the improvements in the patch have been a result of user feedback."

Clinton - I don't think it is fair to say that Firaxis implied such a thing about the "MANY" gameplay improvements. Read what they posted again (below).


"Were there not a early release, this feedback would not of been received. "

This is what betas are for.


"Its not fair to assume such features in the patch would of been included in the initial release were it pushed back and its quite probable that, if the game was released at a similar time as the first patch, that the game would be more inferior and more bug ridden than the patched version."

I didn't assume anything, I spoke to what was highly probable.

I think it defies common sense to say that the game would have been more inferior and bug ridden if it had been released 1 month later!!


"If you don't like to be a paying beta tester, don't buy the game before its patched. "

Thanks for the advice, but I have not purchased the game yet. So you agree that the people who have been playing since release are beta testers







Hello everyone!

I've heard from many of you via the Firaxis website Contact Us form (many thanks for all the dxdiag files and savegames) and wanted to say thanks for all the feedback and detailed bug reports that were sent up.

I just wanted to let everyone know that as of Monday afternoon, the patch was sent to 2K for final testing, so barring any problems in QA, we will be releasing it shortly.

Some of the highlights include multiple AI improvements and tweaks, worker behavior tweaks, MANY game play improvements (ex Animal Husbandry reveals horses), promotion tweaks, a softer pillage sound (requested by many, many people), fixed diplomatic exploits (gold for gold, peace treaty exploit), multiplayer tweaks (Hot seat, Lobby, etc.), memory, caching and performance improvements, etc. There were also a number of video card specific fixes.

To those of you having problems, thanks for your patience. Our guys were working around the clock with your detailed feedback to produce this patch. For those of you having no problems, it's only going to get better. =)

Dennis Shirk
Firaxis Games

 

[blue3c]

paying to beta test a game is just wrong. Decieving the general public, releasing a game before its finished and you know it. Is just wrong. Releasing a game that has this many issues, and knowing it. Well that, is grounds for a class action civ suit. But the problem there is getting proof that it was indeed released with knowledge of problems. Not just piss poor testing.

Padma, you and others have said it works for more then it doesn't. I have asked this before, but I will ask again. Where do you get such data. Did you poll a group who purchased the game. Or are you just assuming. Please if you have a poll or this data then post it. Otherwise don't assume that it works for more then it doesn't. Scrolling around this forum and others I see more people posting problems then oh its great. I will give you the whole if it works they are playing and not posting. But, without some solid data no one can say either way.

As for the nore from Dennis Shirk posted on the fireaxis page. Thank you for info. But that info is getting old. When I asked if there was news before. I was asking for new info. Updated. Like, hey its gone to testing, we found a small issue and are going to resubmit it to testing on Monday. Because we here at firaxis care about the products we put out. yada yada yada.

So here we sit in a communication blackout, no knowledge of when we get to play the game we paid for. And for some unlucky ones, reformatting drives. Wow, that one still gives me shivers. Good rule of thumb is to have a seperate drive for windows. physical or partition, either way, saves alot of data loss. That way you can do a system restore easy. Or look into a raid set up. Either way. Sorry to hear of the loss of your system.

 

[bky1701]

paying to beta test a game is just wrong. Decieving the general public, releasing a game before its finished and you know it. Is just wrong. Releasing a game that has this many issues, and knowing it. Well that, is grounds for a class action civ suit. But the problem there is getting proof that it was indeed released with knowledge of problems. Not just piss poor testing.

Oh please. It’s not illegal to release unfinished software even if they DID know it was unfinished (asmuing in fact it IS unfinished), if it was Microsoft would have been stormed by the military long ago.

 

[Sadan01]

So here we sit in a communication blackout, no knowledge of when we get to play the game we paid for.

You take that risk when you buy any PC game. Doesnt matter what your computer specifications are, you may have problems. Just because you may or may not have had problems in the past with any other game, does not mean you are going to be problem-free with a newer game out. Not all problems are bugs, my friend. My copy of Civ4 crashed too. Was it the game? It turned out it wasnt. I guess I am lucky in a way (and not saying that to rub it in to anyone having real, bug-caused, issues). Wait for the patch. Simple. Wait for the patch. If the patch doesnt fix your issues, email/contact Firaxis. That is all you can do besides trying to return the game to the place you bought it. Well, I guess you could try it on a friend's computer to see if it works there.

And for some unlucky ones, reformatting drives. Wow, that one still gives me shivers. Good rule of thumb is to have a seperate drive for windows. physical or partition, either way, saves alot of data loss. That way you can do a system restore easy. Or look into a raid set up. Either way. Sorry to hear of the loss of your system.

Why would someone do that? You are not forced to re-format your computer's HDD(s) to play a game or run any program for that matter (unless it was Windows - as Microsoft's tech support like to tell you). If someone makes a decision to reformat, then they cope with the "issues" that come about afterwards. Saying or implying (and not essentially having a go at you here, blue3c) that Firaxis/T2/Civ4 made them reformat their machine to get it to work is BS. I have read some threads in the past (very early November) about people that have been advised by posters on here to format their drives and start over (notice the word "about"; i.e. I haven't read it directly in a thread). Once again, that is the person in question's choice to do so or not do so.

On the flipside, there is a certain advantage to formatting your HDD(s) once in a while due to Windows' lack of care for itself. Especially if the many left-over device drivers, dlls, and codecs that can cause problems. These are not Civ- or game-related however.