Full Price Beta

[Dracul JOSHI]

Forgive me - but I literally stopped reading here. I've played the game practically nonstop since it's come out and while there are certainly some things that lack polish (), are some questionable design choices, and a couple of bugs - saying it's worse than those two games would be vastly overstating it, in my own personal experience.

I didn't say it was worse... I said that which is there, which is a lot in comparison, feels less finished.

And you are forgiven ^^

 

[Louis XXIV]

Frankly, I was worried when they announced the release date so early in the process, but Civ5 was buggy, unbalanced, and felt stripped down. Even two or three patches later (not to mention expansions) felt like a completely different game. I'm skeptical of any claim that this is worse.

You can predict people complaining about a game being unfinished just like you can predict the seasons, but the fact remains that games have to get launched at some point and they don't have an infinite amount of money prelaunch to make it perfect. Once it's launched, they'll get more money to worry about exactly these complaints and they'll have a greater playtesting experience to customize the game based on feedback.

 

[anandus]

Even more so than Vanilla 5 [...]

I doubt you played Civ 5 vanilla then

Regarding calling it a 'beta', basically nowadays games never reach a real 'finished' state (or software in general for that matter). 'Beta' refers to old paradigm programming. Modern programming is a continuing process, where development of a product continues after release. Agile software development it's called.
On the downside a released product (be it Civ or Windows or a website) may be missing some features, on the plusside a working product can be delivered earlier than normal and development can continue for far longer (in theory for ever) after release. Also there's increased flexibility in possibilities.

Regarding Civ 6, there are some things that need to be tweaked or balanced, but mostly it's a very solid game, a good foundation to build upon.

 

[Dracul JOSHI]

Frankly, I was worried when they announced the release date so early in the process, but Civ5 was buggy, unbalanced, and felt stripped down. Even two or three patches later (not to mention expansions) felt like a completely different game. I'm skeptical of any claim that this is worse.

You can predict people complaining about a game being unfinished just like you can predict the seasons, but the fact remains that games have to get launched at some point and they don't have an infinite amount of money prelaunch to make it perfect. Once it's launched, they'll get more money to worry about exactly these complaints and they'll have a greater playtesting experience to customize the game based on feedback.

I said it before and I say it again... I didn't say 6 is worse, I said that which is there doesn't feel as wholesome and finished to ME.
It's an impression, nothing more.

Nice attempt there, but by that logic many good games shouldn't exist... particularly those before patches were a thing for console games.

 

[Dracul JOSHI]

I doubt you played Civ 5 vanilla then

Regarding calling it a 'beta', basically nowadays games never reach a real 'finished' state (or software in general for that matter).
There are some things that need to be tweaked or balanced, but mostly it's a very solid game, a good foundation to build upon.

I did... for one or two games before laying it to the side and waiting for the add-ons... just like civ BE and 6 now in fact.

also I had a pretty crappy laptop at the time that was always giving me issues, so I might have gone easy on it because I couldn't tell what was the game and what was my bad graphics card.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Compared to CIV5, this game seems to be a in a pretty solid state.
Haven't encountered any technical issues and most of the mechanics seem to work well (enough).

Is it perfect? Nope, certainly not.
There are plenty of balance issues - but they seem far less blatent than CIV5 happiness or BE TR spam.

 

[ZubieMaster]

Compared to CIV5, this game seems to be a in a pretty solid state.
Haven't encountered any technical issues and most of the mechanics seem to work well (enough).

Is it perfect? Nope, certainly not.
There are plenty of balance issues - but they seem far less blatent than CIV5 happiness or BE TR spam.

This is my experience too so far. I am a Civ IV lover, never bought Civ V until this year, and I play it with Vox Populi. I hated the cartoonish warrior units of Civ VI and the zippity zap religious stuff, so was set against pre-ordering for the longest time, but on a whim just changed my mind and decided what the hell. I must say I am very pleasantly surprised. So far I'm having a great time in my first game, zero technical problems, no long wait times on a large map, even on my crappy laptop. Got surprised DOW'd by Kongo and fought a huge war taking his lands. Maybe with more game time it will suffer from the same flaws of V, but my initial reaction to a game I wasn't expecting to like is all thumbs up so far. Maybe it's all about peoples' different expectations, but just judging on entertainment and cost per hour already I'm pleased with my purchase.

 

[Dracul JOSHI]

This is my experience too so far. I am a Civ IV lover, never bought Civ V until this year, and I play it with Vox Populi. I hated the cartoonish warrior units of Civ VI and the zippity zap religious stuff, so was set against pre-ordering for the longest time, but on a whim just changed my mind and decided what the hell. I must say I am very pleasantly surprised. So far I'm having a great time in my first game, zero technical problems, no long wait times on a large map, even on my crappy laptop. Got surprised DOW'd by Kongo and fought a huge war taking his lands. Maybe with more game time it will suffer from the same flaws of V, but my initial reaction to a game I wasn't expecting to like is all thumbs up so far. Maybe it's all about peoples' different expectations, but just judging on entertainment and cost per hour already I'm pleased with my purchase.

Despite my own issues, I am glad to hear that. Probably because I had a similar experience just recently with Paper Mario Color Splash.

Also, I was never talking about technical issues... always about design issues.... because those are the ones I have with the game.

From a technical issue... looks and runs better than civ 5... I still can't believe civ 5 doesn't run perfectly on my 5k Swiss Francs custom Gaming rig... how poor is the efficiency of the architecture of these games?
Honestly, now I know why our teacher in application design said, that an XML-Database based design has poor performance... (but other advantages, such as ease to code)...
Now Obduction I can understand why I can't run that perfectly... those Moderator Action: <snip> particel effects.

Although honestly, I wouldn't mind them building a new engine that's actually coded in a low or medium level Language. Modders will probably ***** for a little bit, but Bethesda's TES and other games like SPORE are proof, that they can handle that... and the games would look and run significantly better.

Moderator Action: Please read, and comply with, our inappropriate language rules.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[dexters]

I've been through four full Civ launches now 3,4,5,6 where I participated online and saw real-time reactions of how the vanilla unpatched game was received.

Civ6 is likely one of the better launches. No major game breaking bugs.
There will always been that one exploit that gets patched out, but as far as I can see, this has been a pretty good launch.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

I put about 15 hrs so far. I am just having problems with the look of the game. Everything seems to blend together for me. I have 3 massive armies taking over the world and it is difficult to tell the hexes/tiles apart from one another. I'll play it but it sorta feels more like Civ Rev to me than Civ V (The look of the game more so than the play although I seem to be able to run an empire with over 20 Cities like I did in Civ Rev which was very difficult in Civ V this early for me). As usual though when the Challenges start to roll around it will make things more fun and when I get bored with that I can always go in Public MP and roll some newer players and enjoy all the DCing I am not sure if it is a good idea but I have been keeping almost every city I have captured. Playing Immortal this game Stand/Stand.

 

[Dracul JOSHI]

I've been through four full Civ launches now 3,4,5,6 where I participated online and saw real-time reactions of how the vanilla unpatched game was received.

Civ6 is likely one of the better launches. No major game breaking bugs.
There will always been that one exploit that gets patched out, but as far as I can see, this has been a pretty good launch.

Why is everybody so focused on technical issues when those were never mentioned, let alone the focus, of this topic?

 

[Menzies]

There's no such thing as 'Industry Standards'... there might be such a thing as 'Industry Trends' in which case, I do agree... although that doesn't excuse anything, after all, 'Everybody does it' has and never will be a valid defence in favour of anything.
Although I guess I am a bit spoiled by the fact, that I mostly play games by companies that don't do that... such as Nintendo, Platinum games, from software, Atlus and even Square Enix... although on that last one, do international releases and final mixes count if they are the only version that is available in your place or are not available at all?

My apologies, I didn't realise that I was speaking with the grand arbiter of the English language, I'll be more careful with my terminology in the future. "By Industry standards" was meant to imply "by the standards seen within the industry", not codified rules, my most sincere apologies for your confusion.

Next, playability and stability are criteria for an Alpha, not a Beta although the later often, but not always, suffers from stability issues. Technically anything before a version 1.0 is a Beta... in other words, everything before the finished product.
Since the game isn't finished as expected, it technically IS still a Beta.

The game is finished as expected, you're the one trying to define it otherwise. Even by your own statement here it isn't a beta as it is, to my understanding, past version 1.0.

For the record, if we're going to be technical, a beta is generally feature complete, and what you're complaining about is that it's not "finished".

Although I do understand your need to defend the game based on your explanation on such being perceived as inflammatory by the masses... but I ain't really a 'social' person or good with people, so neither do I care, nor does it change anything.

So let me ask you this: What should I call a game that isn't finished and sold at full price, regardless of quality, then, if not a Beta release?

Don't know really, not sure of the relevance of the question here though as the game is finished.

 

[dexters]

Why is everybody so focused on technical issues when those were never mentioned, let alone the focus, of this topic?

Technical issues are a huge part of a bad launch. I also did mention exploits that get patched out due to failure to properly balance a Civ or a strategy in the development phase.

Your suggestion that Civ6 is an overpriced BETA is not really backed by facts. Your entitled to your opinion naturally, I'm just pointing out that from my 16 years of experience watching Civ titles roll out, this has been the best, if not one of the best launches. So even if we grant you that the vanilla game as it is right now is a BETA, then every Civ launch has been paying a high price to play a BETA.

Even then, this would be the best BETA build we get out of the 4 Civ launches out there.

 

[Dracul JOSHI]

I put about 15 hrs so far. I am just having problems with the look of the game. Everything seems to blend together for me. I have 3 massive armies taking over the world and it is difficult to tell the hexes/tiles apart from one another. I'll play it but it sorta feels more like Civ Rev to me than Civ V (The look of the game more so than the play although I seem to be able to run an empire with over 20 Cities like I did in Civ Rev which was very difficult in Civ V this early for me). As usual though when the Challenges start to roll around it will make things more fun and when I get bored with that I can always go in Public MP and roll some newer players and enjoy all the DCing I am not sure if it is a good idea but I have been keeping almost every city I have captured. Playing Immortal this game Stand/Stand.

you're one of the players that play using large armies... I noticed the game design is strongly skewered to that playstyle so I am not surprised that you find it to your liking. My problem is... I ain't... an don't tell me I shouldn't be able to play that way, I won games on Diety in Civ BERT turtling up thanks to explorers getting a lot of Free Affinities from Progenitor Ruins, remaining peaceful with the aliens and getting The Frontier Stadium and Tesseract targeting from Relics.

and here I can't even get through settler without being helpless against A.I. ? It's honestly personally infuriating, although I realize that's a purely emotional reaction.

 

[Menzies]

Why is everybody so focused on technical issues when those were never mentioned, let alone the focus, of this topic?

Because it is extremely unclear why you are suggesting the game is a beta. A beta is generally characterised by bugs and stability issues, but is feature complete. What you're suggesting is that it's not feature complete. Whether you feel you're discussing technical issues or not, you've brought technical issues into the discussion.

Frankly, I was worried when they announced the release date so early in the process, but Civ5 was buggy, unbalanced, and felt stripped down. Even two or three patches later (not to mention expansions) felt like a completely different game. I'm skeptical of any claim that this is worse.

You can predict people complaining about a game being unfinished just like you can predict the seasons, but the fact remains that games have to get launched at some point and they don't have an infinite amount of money prelaunch to make it perfect. Once it's launched, they'll get more money to worry about exactly these complaints and they'll have a greater playtesting experience to customize the game based on feedback.

The other thing to keep in mind is that even if you have 100 people in the beta tests, playing for a month straight, 100,000 players with a release copy with dwarf that playtime within a day of release.

 

[grandad1982]

Game mechanics are better at release than in CIV5 however the AI needs work (expected) and more to the point for me the UI makes those mechanics a chore to interact with and make playing the game less fun than it should be. I play mostly Paradox games so its not like I'm unused to poor UI that takes a while to learn but having this is CIV is a real let down. I'm not sure who they have to design the UI but they need to sit down and consider many of their poor choices. I don't expect the UI to get much attention, maybe some tweaks and additions here and there but I guess I'm left waiting for modders to see what they can come up with.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

That's what I feel this game is...

It just feels... untweaked... incomplete...

Even more so than Vanilla 5 or BE.

That's crazy talk
AI and UI are bad, and there are balance issues, but it's in a far better shape than Civ 4 or 5 at release.

 

[Menzies]

That's crazy talk
AI and UI are bad, and there are balance issues, but it's in a far better shape than Civ 4 or 5 at release.

It's actually in a better state than Civ IV at the release of Beyond the Sword even. That expansion was a mess in so many respects, and ultimately if it wasn't for the community patch, and ultimately most of those changes going into an official one, we probably would have remembered Civ IV very differently.

 

[wiggawuu]

what are you smoking? lol It can't be worst than civ 5 vanill.

I hope your enjoying all the attention your getting by us replying to your troll thread.

 

[Apoll]

Anyone arguing that this had better release than CIV V or BE. Please set a huge map. On Immortal, in continents and Marathon or Epic speed. Let me know if you do not get battered by turn 25, consistently
The slow game speed affects only the Player not the AI. Hence before you get your second warrior out, the AI has 4 cities and 8 units, thinking you are weak, and they come all together knocking your doors.

That wasn't an issue with CIV 5 nor BE on release, nor affects Standard speed on Civ 6.
And everyone who says CIV 5 had release issues to post them here. Because I played it since day 1, without issues.