Hot news!Multiplayer will come with in an official add on!

[OneInTen]

My first point was that you're massively overestimating the number of people who are disappointed with the game.

The second point I've tried to make is that no matter what you do, some people are going to be disappointed. To judge a game on how many people didn't like it is silly. Instead you should look at how many people really like the game. Civ 3 seems to have divided people into two very clear camps - those who are disappointed by the game, and those who absolutely love the game.

I consider that a huge success for Civ 3. It's far better to make a game that many people really like but also with some people who don't like it than a game that everyone agrees is just average. In fact, I'd suggest to make a great game you're always going to piss off a certain section of people to the same extent that you give pleasure to others.

Like a good work of art, the fact that such varied opinions exist and people are eager to express them suggests that what has been created is good (although not enjoyed by all!)

That said, there are one or two posters (and I'm not referring to you Charles) who seem to just hang around and gripe about the game for the trolling factor, since they clearly have no interest in any of the constructive conversation going on.

 

[Charles]

Originally posted by seeker
Charles if you want people to take you seriously, you really need to improve your comprehension.

I don't want people to take me seriously, I'm here to vent and that is all.

Firsty Cutiestar said not even 0.01% of civ III players would want MP, nothing about that 0.01% not liking the game. Remember Cutiestar made it very obvious in her post that she was making a rough guess, so maybe it would be 0.05 %, who knows, but certainly an incredible amount lower than the 30-40% you tried to suggest.

Sorry I didn't read "Cutiestar's" post clearly enough I guess. But regardless, my estimate is realistic enough to be close. I base my opinion on the number of negative posts to posative posts. And then I throw in logic, if the majority of the users online are complaining than it would stand to reason that at least 30% of the civ-community world-wide would have some disapointment to share. Just because we can't hear from them, doesn't mean that the silent majority doesn't exist. But if anyone uses logic and realism my theory is best supported by the overwhelming evidence online. Do some reading and you'll see for yourself. But until then I'm convinced my theory is accurate.

It is psychologically well known that complainers speak a lot louder than content and happy people, so even though the figure of 1 in 10 was mentioned earlier, i think that person was playing extremely safe so it couldn't be argued, I would say it is more like 1 in 1,000.

Well that's a naive analagy. Considering "content" people have nothing to complain about in the first place. And obviously a disapointed individual has more to say. Is that wrong?

oh i am a qualified statistision, so please tell me i need to learn maths , and go find out how many gamers really would be dissatisfied with CIV III, like i have no idea about these things

I think you need to learn grammar first.

Charles obviously you are a big net user, but a huge amount of gamers don't even have internet, a huge amount of gamers that have internet just use chat and email, and another huge amount just surf, but never even consider going to forums about games they like to play. I think you see internet as being such a huge part of your life, that it must also be for everyone else.

True. But just because they aren't online or within the civ-community sharing their opinions and statements doesn't mean they don't exist. The point is, no one really knows what everyone thinks. I'm stating my opinion based on the numorous complaints I find in nearly every forum/thread. Deductive logic and blaintly obvious evidence reveals that more people are disapointed than are pleased. At least that I've seen so far.

Far from it buddy, an extremely small amount of CIV players would ever have written one word on a computer about this game. They just sit at their computer and play it, trying to think of strategies to beat it, rather than complaining because their strategies aren't good enough and they don't like losing. [/B]

Again, your basing your comments on assumptions of what people are really doing. And unless you have camera supervision in every home in America, you don't know what your talking about. You assume that's what everyone is doing. Just as I assume a small majority (30%) are disatisfied. So how do we really know? We don't. But as it stands now, there is more criticism than there is bragging. But only opinion can be a sure thing from this point on.

Charles.

 

[Charles]

Originally posted by OneInTen
My first point was that you're massively overestimating the number of people who are disappointed with the game.

The second point I've tried to make is that no matter what you do, some people are going to be disappointed. To judge a game on how many people didn't like it is silly. Instead you should look at how many people really like the game. Civ 3 seems to have divided people into two very clear camps - those who are disappointed by the game, and those who absolutely love the game.

I consider that a huge success for Civ 3. It's far better to make a game that many people really like but also with some people who don't like it than a game that everyone agrees is just average. In fact, I'd suggest to make a great game you're always going to piss off a certain section of people to the same extent that you give pleasure to others.

Like a good work of art, the fact that such varied opinions exist and people are eager to express them suggests that what has been created is good (although not enjoyed by all!)

That said, there are one or two posters (and I'm not referring to you Charles) who seem to just hang around and gripe about the game for the trolling factor, since they clearly have no interest in any of the constructive conversation going on.

I agree, if someone has a beef with the game they should criticise constructively and make their point as painless as possible. And you make another good point, there will always be people who hate the game, as there are people who enjoy it. So when we get into things like "numbers" or "facts" there really is no such monster. I agree with you completely on this, as long as you understand that Civ3 does have issues and that it has been a let down to some of us. If you can understand that *one* point, I'll be happy. Because I'll be honest with you, Civ3 is a really good game with lots of potential. But the things that made Civilization2 great (in my opinion, ofcoarse!) where left out of the sequal.

Charles.

 

[Hobbes]

What would I be willing to pay for in an add on?

It depends, does it include?

The ability to move a stack of workers or units all at the same time.
Being able to auto assign more than two workers to clean up pollution.
Not having to reassign the population to start working cleaned up pollution squares (I do not like using the governors)
The ability to put to the top of the turn queue, all of my bombardment units (I hate launching an attack and then finding out that there are 3 artillery pieces that have not fired yet).
To have all units within a theater move in some semblance of order (i.e. a unit pops up in one theater, and then you jump to another theater, and then back to the one you were just in).
Multi-player.

 

[stonewall]

About $9.95.

Its become a matter of principle to me that I don't buy "add-ons". These programmers have had the technology for multiplayer ever since civ-net. They certainly had it in Alpha Centauri. So putting it into Civ3 wouldn't have been a major deal. A little new work to tweak it to new diplomacy and trade systems, but the main core of it has been sitting there ready to go.

I could see it not making the Christmas version due to not wanting to complicate a product being rushed out for a deadline. But there's no reason why they couldn't release this as a patch to the people who bought the first release of the game.

So, to me it was a pure financial decision to not include this in the game. And if there is any doubt, its exactly the same thing they did with Civ2. This bugs me because its a policy of gouching the maximum amount of money from the people who are your biggest supporters. The people who like your work so much that they go buy a copy as soon as it hits the stores end up paying about $100 for the "complete" game. Someone who is less interested and waits for the "gold" edition that comes out later and gets the original game plus the "add-on" pays about $40 for the identical product.

When I see people deliberately taking decisions to cripple their product to try to later get an extra $40 from me, I dig in my heels and say "no way".

I'll wait till this "add-on" hits the discount bins in the stores, and then pick it up.

Personally I'd love it if they put out this add-on and absolutely nobody bought it. It might teach some greedy software companies a lesson in treating their customers right. And it would also mean the boxes of the add-on would hit the discount bins even faster and I could get my copy sooner.

 

[Moulton]

My two cents.
I have bought and played every flavor of civ since the beginning of time. (Civ time, that is) I am addicted. Actually, I started with Pirates, before there was Windows.
There are some things I don't like. I hate the grid that makes me move the wrong direction. I hate spending more for warfare than culture. I hate having to stave off the AI from occupying my little corners of unused land. I hate jumping all over the world from piece to piece... at least give me the option of "Dont move my mouse".

But I love the game, and live with the things I don't like. They do listen, and do change what they think is appropriate. Not everyone will agree with their decisions... But they do work at it. As I recall, Civ II took 6 patches to get it right.

It is not a real world simulation. I would not want to have to play 6000 turns to finish, and with the first advances taking not 40 turns, but 200 waiting for something different to happen. It is a pretty good model of what actually happens in this world.

Movement of ships is awkward, and I don't know how to fix that. I would not want the AI to be able to load up a dozen transports and my first clue was to see them on my beach.

Part of the fun of the game is discussing the issues, complaining about things that need fixing, and finding strategems to foil those that are designed in.

 

[OneInTen]

I agree with you completely on this, as long as you understand that Civ3 does have issues and that it has been a let down to some of us. If you can understand that *one* point, I'll be happy.

I agree that it has issues. There are still quite a number of (mostly minor) bugs, but hopefully there'll be another patch or two for those. There's some things with the gameplay that nearly everyone agrees needs fixing, and maybe a patch will get to those, or maybe not, who knows (corruption got fixed, so there's still hope).

However, mostly I do think it's a style issue. I accept that some people hate stuff like culture flips. On the other hand, I love the concept and don't think it happens often enough.

I appreciate it's been a letdown for some, and I wish everyone could be happy with the game. But I think it's mostly due to false expectations. Don't get your hopes up before a game is released that it's going to be the greatest game ever. I did that before quake came out, after playing doom and reading all the stuff said about quake on the net I thought the game would be absolutely brilliant. Of course it came out and it had a stupid, inconsistent single player game, it ran fairly poorly on machines of that time, and the promised internet multiplayer was laggy as hell over a modem (all these issues were fixed over time - some by mods, and some by id).

So you live and learn and take games on their merits rather than on what you expect from the pre-game hype.

Civ 3 is far from perfect, but there is still hope, in my opinion, that it will get better with another patch or two. And already it is the best turn based strategy out there for me, so I can't complain.

If people preferred Civ 2, then by all means go and play Civ 2. I think a lot will find it's a matter of rose coloured glasses though and when they play it they improvements made in Civ 3 will be made more readily apparent (of course, some of the changes they don't like might be more obvious too ...)

 

[damunzy]

Although I feel that MP should have been added in the original product I will be one of the idiots that will pay up to $30 for the expansion.
I don't think there is a future for Civ4 if it is coming from Firaxis and Infogrames, at least not a future with me. If Firaxis wants me to buy Civ4 (which it will come out sooner or later and it will probably be out in less that 5 years) they will need to find a different publisher, or adopt a model like Blizzard, "It doesn't ship until it is finished". Although that model didn't help with the D2 server problems.

 

[AustralianJerem]

I paid $100 (Australian) for this game. The standard price of games here is about $90. To ask us for another $50 or so for something that was present in SMAC and Civ2... no bloody way.

It had better be downloadable. (It will be... one way or another...)

I agree with whoever pointed out that it's an interesting business philosophy to punish people for getting your software product early. If people who buy your game early end up having to pay $150 for something which someone who leaves it for a year can get for $100 or less, then we'll simply have to stop buying your game when it's released.

To be honest, I feel cheated - I feel that I've been suckered by buying it on release. I should have waited till the "gold" (ie completed) edition.

 

[Gatlin]

Originally posted by OneInTen

I appreciate it's been a letdown for some, and I wish everyone could be happy with the game. But I think it's mostly due to false expectations. Don't get your hopes up before a game is released that it's going to be the greatest game ever

Does that mean that we shouldn't listen to what the people at Firaxis tell us the next time they start hyping their newest game?

False expectations? I'm sorry, but when Firaxis themselves (from day one, no less) say they will have multiplayer and multiple scenarios in the game, I expected multiplayer and multiple scenarios.
Now here's the kicker. One month before they released the game, Firaxis said something like, "We're sorry, we can't get multiplayer to work the way we want to, so we are removing it."
Does that mean I had false expectations? I Don't Think So.

I expected scenarios to come with the game, BECAUSE Firaxis said they would be there. (I can't comment on when they removed them because I don't know)

Does that mean I had false expectations? I Don't Think So.

Now if it had been mere speculation as to what was in the game, yes I can see you justifiying false expectations, but when the game company itself is hyping the features, then we do have a right to be discouraged.

By the way, I am not a hater, but I don't like being misled. I did expect a great game, because that is what we are used to them putting out. Unfortunately, what we got was admittedly less than great.

I was one of the not so lucky ones to buy the Limited Edition (aka the Sucker Box) thinking I was getting something special.
Ugh, so much for your false expectations...

 

[Gatlin]

Originally posted by PaleHorse76
or adopt a model like Blizzard, "It doesn't ship until it is finished". Although that model didn't help with the D2 server problems.

The D2 server problems were not a result of a bad game, just a gross underestimation of the number of people who would play the game online. But at least Blizzard owned up to that fact as soon as possible, (like the next time the servers came up. ) and worked as hard as possible to ensure that the game would play to the customers expectations.
Why do you think just about every Blizzard game has sold over a million copies? They listen to their customers, they are forthcoming with their customers, especially in a timely manner and not after repeated threads on the same subject, and they have that policy that you mention of releasing games "when they are done."

 

[Jodo Kast]

Well this REALLY brought out the 'fanboys' and the 'whiners'.
Since I visit a Civ site and play Civ3 and Civ2 and CTP A LOT! I can say I am a 'fanboy'.

Why don't the others play something else? It gets really annoying when these folks whine about editting their own scenario with the editor, or using Marla's Map with CCPT, or something or other. They want the game to play according to their preferences - who cares about anyone else.

In the days of Civ2, we weren't this lazy and editted the game ourselves. If the company said there wasn't support for the feature we MADE IT happen.

Endlessing whining will get you NO WHERE with CIV3. When will you ever figure it out? DO something - stop sitting there.

 

[Gatlin]

Originally posted by Jodo Kast
DO something - stop sitting there.

Just to let you know, I have done something. Unfortunately, that something has been stop playing Civ3.

I keep checking into the forums and such to see if Firaxis says anything about anything, and to throw my $.02 in when I desire.

I will probably get multiplayer in whatever form it comes in (expansion, patch, whatever), but then again, I might not. I guess it really does depend on the way Firaxis responds to us, the customers, without whom, they have no job.

 

[Centrifuge]

Jodo Kast, You've said it in the best possible way.

 

[CyberChrist]

Originally posted by Jodo Kast
Well this REALLY brought out the 'fanboys' and the 'whiners'.
Endlessing whining will get you NO WHERE with CIV3. When will you ever figure it out? DO something - stop sitting there.

It obviously also brings out the trolls ....


Civ1 had MultiPlayer support in the CivNet version which worked nice enough on local net (I never tried it on the Internet though), but Civ2 was released without MultiPlayer support as 'they couldn't get it to work properly'.

However someone couldn't stand the fact Civ2 had no MultiPlayer support and started making their own MultiPlayer Hack for Civ2, but as soon as they had a nearly working version ready then an official MultiPlayer version magically appeared (not as a free fix/upgrade of course).


Also there is a major difference between Civ2 and Civ3 as far as being able to 'do it yourself'. In Civ2 there was an IN GAME cheat/scenario editor that allowed you to do a lot of things, such as; placing units on map, setup relations between civs, build cities, set up techs already available to the various civs and a lot more. In Civ3 there is currently NO WAY to do this and while the shamelessly named 'Scenario Editor' (a more accurate name would have been 'Map and Rules Editor') in Civ3 is very nice to alter the basic conditions of the game, but it doesn't even start to be sufficient for enabling us to make REAL scenarios.

So unless you are saying that anyone that want to be able to play MultiPlayer Civ3 and real scenarios, should take up programming and get codecracking abilities - then I don't really see what you are talking about.


I have a lot of issues with the things Firaxis chose to remove and/or leave out of Civ3 from the previous versions of Civ2(and I don't just mean the MultiPlayer part - what happened to the brilliant concept of multiple maps and the advanced macro scripting developed in ToT?), but that does not mean I do not like the new things in Civ3 or the game and concept in generel. It just means that I - like many others it would appear - do not feel that Firaxis has yet delivered the Civ3 that they promised (and have been hyping), and we are justifiably upset by the prospect of us having to pay double price to be able to finally get what we were promised.

EDIT: Minor grammatical errors

 

[seeker]

Well when this game went on the shelves, it did not say it includes MP or scenerios, so anyone that bought the game knew this, therefore you have purchased a game without these extras, and you have absolutely no basis for complaint .

So many people think firaxis owes them something, firaxis simply released a game, that anyone with freewill had the option to buy, or not. When you buy the game you know there is no MP, it wasn't a bug, a mistake, ooops forgotten, this a non MP game as of time of release, simple, I am banging my head on the desk wondering why so many people don't grasp that fact.

As with everything in life, if you want it early or first you pay more, you have to weigh up the extra price with the problem of early bugs and enjoyment of playing it. I personally was happy to pay my money and be the guinea pig, because i am impatient and didn't want to wait a day longer to get it.

I guess the majority of CIV forum posters are American, it is so weird how people from the great land of democratic capitalism, are so against free speech, and the ability for a company to make money.

The kind of comments i hear about firaxis making more money from a MP addon, sound like you's were raised in a country of extreme socialism bordering on non militaristic communism. Firaxis produce a product, they make a lot of money from it and will make a lot more, get over it, if you don't want the game don't pay your money, i am sure Firaxis will still make plenty without you. It is all about business in a competitive market in a capitalistic country, and firaxis does it well.

 

[CyberChrist]

Originally posted by seeker
Well when this game went on the shelves, it did not say it includes MP or scenerios, so anyone that bought the game knew this, therefore you have purchased a game without these extras, and you have absolutely no basis for complaint .

You mean that a company does not have to live up the promises they made for years in advance of sending the product out on the 'shelves'?

Originally posted by seeker
... this a non MP game as of time of release, simple, I am banging my head on the desk wondering why so many people don't grasp that fact.

If you bang your head on the desk a few more times the maybe you will be able to grasp what we are talking about

Originally posted by seeker
I personally was happy to pay my money and be the guinea pig, because i am impatient and didn't want to wait a day longer to get it.

You are of course free to be a Masochist if you wish, but you seem to have misunderstood the basics of Capitalism which is that if you have to do something for someone then YOU get paid.

Originally posted by seeker
... it is so weird how people from the great land of democratic capitalism, are so against free speech, and the ability for a company to make money.

Democratic Capitalism? That is a contradiction in terms, but then I always wondered why the people in USA consider themselves to be living in a democratic country, when they do in fact live in what is getting ever closer to a Corporate State. But lets not turn this into a political debate - just my personal view and I am in my full right to speak it out loud, right?

Originally posted by seeker
...sound like you's were raised in a country of extreme socialism bordering on non militaristic communism.

I don't really see the relevance of comments like this other than to perhaps reveal yourself as another troll, but I will indulge you.
I live in Denmark, we currently have a right wing government by elected majority, we are a member of NATO and no ... I have never been a member of the Communist party. Happy now McCarthy?

Originally posted by seeker
Firaxis produce a product, they make a lot of money from it and will make a lot more, get over it, if you don't want the game don't pay your money, i am sure Firaxis will still make plenty without you. It is all about business in a competitive market in a capitalistic country, and firaxis does it well.

Please wipe that brown nose of yours before we continue!
...
Ok, yes Firaxis will probably make a lot of money from Civ3 and I will be more than happy to support them - IF they live up to their promises of what the product was hyped to be.

Will they loose a lot of money if I choose not to buy the AddOn? Of course not, but keep in mind that I am not the only one. In any case they would make more money if they made me and all the others who are 'complaining' about this AddOn happy. And you can rest assured that it will cost them double the effort to make any of us that ends up dissapointed buy any new product Firaxis might produce in the future.

Also many of the ideas they used in Civ3 came from us - the hardcore of the Civ2 community - and I seriously doubt that many of us will be willing to offer new ideas to Firaxis if they don't deliver the things we wanted and was promised, but choose instead to feed it back to us in very small expensive pieces.
...
But maybe you are right about the competetive market - next time we should just put our heads together and make a company of our own and make the game we want ourselves and leave Firaxis to continue the business practices you are praising them for using until they choke on them.
...
But then again - maybe not. I doubt Firaxis/Inforgrames will let it get that far, they probably do want to stay in business after all and unlike you I am sure they at least have a minor grasp on how important customer goodwill and image is.

There is a price for neglecting and ignoring your base customers (us that will normally ALWAYS buy the new products regardless of PR - IF you deliver the promised product..and sometimes even if you don't). Many companies in the past have learned the hard way what this price is, it would be sad if Firaxis should join their ranks among the forgotten and unwanted - and bankrupt.

I for one am still (perhaps naively) expecting Firaxis to deliver what they promised free of extra charge and when they do they can count on my continued support for their products

 

[OneInTen]

Does that mean that we shouldn't listen to what the people at Firaxis tell us the next time they start hyping their newest game?

That's exactly what I'm saying. Do you rush out and buy every fitness product you see on late night infomercials simply because the promise you'll be as buff as Arnie in the Terminator movie in just 5 minutes a day?

False expectations? I'm sorry, but when Firaxis themselves (from day one, no less) say they will have multiplayer and multiple scenarios in the game, I expected multiplayer and multiple scenarios.

Yes, but they never claimed that the shipping product had those features. If you expected those features to be there when it was clear that they weren't, then you only have yourself to blame if you were disappointed upon purchasing the product.

Now here's the kicker. One month before they released the game, Firaxis said something like, "We're sorry, we can't get multiplayer to work the way we want to, so we are removing it."
Does that mean I had false expectations? I Don't Think So.

If you expected the game to have multiplayer after Firaxis said it wouldn't, then yes, you had false expectations.

To go back to my previous example, id said Quake would run well on a 486 and a 14.4k modem, amoungst many other things. The shipping product only worked well over a LAN, and required at least a pentium. These things happen, if you believe everything you hear about an unfinished product you deserve to be disappointed - the reality of development is that things wont always work out the way the designers had hoped.

Is it any wonder Firaxis aren't saying what they're working on - if they mention anything it'll only be held against them if they don't deliver precisely what people thought they said they would.

Wake up to the real world people - finished software products rarely if ever match their initial design, and most aren't even close.

 

[OneInTen]

I paid $100 (Australian) for this game. The standard price of games here is about $90. To ask us for another $50 or so for something that was present in SMAC and Civ2... no bloody way.

You know, a first person view is included in games such as Quake and Half Life. How dare firaxis leave it out of Civ 3! The rudeness of it all!

Civ 3 is not Civ 2 or SMAC. Just because those games included feature X is no reason why Civ 3 HAS to include it.

It was made clear Civ 3 didn't have multiplayer. If you purchased it anyway, you have no right to complain about how ripped off you were about it.

I'd like to see multiplayer too, but I don't claim Firaxis are somehow ripping me off when I've purchased a product that doesn't do something it never claimed it would.

 

[Fayadi]

Originally posted by OneInTen


It's not my forum, and I can't claim to know the official answer, but ...

The forum is the Civilization Fanatics' forum. Which would seem to suggest it's a forum for fans of the game. If you're not a fan of the game and instead just want to gripe about it, my gut feeling is that this isn't really the right place.

Of course, I'm not about to tell people what they can and can't say, even if I could enforce it, so take it as a passing observation.

I am a big fan of Civilisation series mind you!
I didnt raise this question before but I am gong to ask,
are these people who are defending Firaxis work for Firaxis?
We all cant deny Civ III is a great game but the company is "troublesome"