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

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

Originally posted by Desert Fox


You are forgetting that you guys defended SMAC and did not hide and make comments about us having high expectations instead. What do you say about the fact you seem to not want to admit there are serious problems with civ 3. We mention on how far away this is from the greatest game ever, civ 2.

Desert Fox

Nobody is "hiding". I answer questions when I know the answers and help people where I can. What we won't do is get into arguments or name-calling matches with people who've obviously already made their minds up. My comments about expectation management, though thoroughly unpopular, are still dead on. We made the mistake of sharing too much too soon, before we were 100% sure of many things, and we were taken to task for it. This is a mistake I'm sure we won't be in a hurry to repeat.

I also fail to see how we are failing to "admit there are serious problems with civ 3" when we just put out a patch that fixed a pretty long list of problems. Like I've said before, every modern PC game ships with bugs, it's part of the business. We do the best we can to minimize the number and impact of those bugs, and then we try to squash any that we missed after the fact.

And it goes without saying that it's pretty hard to exceed or even meet expectations when many consider Civ II as the greatest game of all time. For those people, no matter what we produced, we would have fallen short (either changed too much or not enough)


Dan

P.S., I'm now bowing out of this thread. I have an unofficial policy about not participating on any threads past the fourth page and look at me now on page 7 and 8...

 

[RogueNine]

Originally posted by Desert Fox


You are forgetting that you guys defended SMAC and did not hide and make comments about us having high expectations instead. What do you say about the fact you seem to not want to admit there are serious problems with civ 3. We mention on how far away this is from the greatest game ever, civ 2.

Desert Fox

Hide? My poor boy, you've never seen a programmer hide from his game if you think Dan is 'hiding'. I played Need For Speed High Stakes online for two years, and despite all the bugs, we never got to talk once to a developper of the game. (Which was REALLY FUNNY, since it was a BETA version to help them make future online racing games better! )

Also, I don't see how he isn't 'defending' Civ 3. He isn't going to get into a flame war and say that he thinks the game is great and you all suck. He comes on every now and then and answers some valid questions that some people have about the game. That is his way of defending his product.

Also, when you say "We mention on how far away this is from the greatest game ever, civ 2" be more careful. SOME of you have said that. Others here have said how much they like it. I personally think it is head and shoulders above Civ 2. (I re-installed Civ 2 last night because some guy said he prefered it to Civ 3. I completely forgot that each unit needed support from their home city. lol! How foolish! ) Remember that your opinion of Firaxis and Civ 3 is not universally held.

Dan, it always seems to be tough for game designers to come to a message board and talk about their product. I just wanted to thank you for being here to answer questions. (And thank you for the game too of course. )

Enough talk, time to go play.

 

[black_adder2]

Trancas and every other naysayer:

This game is not about graphics. It never has been, nor are any of Sid's games - ever. But they are some of the best, and the most innovative to boot.

Civ3's innovation was not as dramatic as 2 from 1... but 2 compared to 1 was not as innovative (Civ 1 was a pretty original design)...

Gettysburg is VERY innovative and just awesome for a Cival War game... it's the best CW game ever IMHO, and fun for those who don't car for that genre even.

Firaxis has great products. I have yet to see any total crap by Sid, so there.

 

[RLymburner]

Call to Power II had this functionality in a turn-based mulitplayer game built in over 2 years ago. Companies that do not include this functionality are resting on laurels and missing the point on building on known improvements in competitive products.

I won't buy the add-on - I'll find the warez and put it on my purchased original. I will support the company for the original product but not for patches for missing functionality.

Better yet - I'll wait and see if AOE3 includes this and change alliances to Micro$oft. Egad!

 

[Charles]

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS


Nobody is "hiding". I answer questions when I know the answers and help people where I can. What we won't do is get into arguments or name-calling matches with people who've obviously already made their minds up. My comments about expectation management, though thoroughly unpopular, are still dead on. We made the mistake of sharing too much too soon, before we were 100% sure of many things, and we were taken to task for it. This is a mistake I'm sure we won't be in a hurry to repeat.

Dan, you've been ignoring my posts. Just because Iam against one of your products doesn't mean I've given up hope for your company. I've been a fan for over 8 years now, I'm not about to give up that easily. My "hate-mail" in these forums is my way of venting my anger due to my disapointment of Civ3. I don't have any personal hatred toward you or your company so please, with all due respect and common courtesy give me the benefit of the doubt here, what is your design team working on right now, specificly?

Thanks.
Charles.

 

[Eliezar]

A life might substitute for this obsession. Try it sometime. Charles

As normal the people who have no arguement go to insults instead of providing a substantial post. The lack of maturity itself should be enough to make most people laugh you away.

Where you got the idea that someone wouldn't have a life because they spend maybe 30 minutes in a weeks time reading a forum is beyond me. Unless you get the idea from your the state of your own existence that causes you to thrash out with insults against other people for no apparant reason other than to try to make your position look better.

And as far as the product goes Civ 3 >>> Civ 2. Civ 2 was made so obsolete by Alpha Centauri that it wasn't even funny. And what exactly IS the demand for multiplayer turn based strategy games? I once again will remind you that battle.net recorded over 1 million starcraft games played several times over single weekends. First person shooters are high demand on multiplayer as well. If the demand is truly there for the multiplayer aspect then where is the multiplayer community? I had Kali and Alpha Centauri and was never able to get a Kali Alpha Centauri game going...I wonder why.

And I'm sorry but complaining because you bought something that didn't come with something you wanted is whining. Complaining that you bought something that didn't deliver what it promised is criticizing. There is a huge difference and despite posts where infogames is quoted as saying "current plans are for multiplayer"...well obviously current plans changed between E and going gold. However, the game came out without multiplayer and you chose to buy it.

Air superiority bugs, the degree of corruption, handy unit commands that were in Alpha Centauri but not in Civ III are all things to discuss.

However, if infogames put out 50k copies of civ III without internet and 50k copies of civ III for $10 more with internet which would sell more? My guess is that for every 8 copies sold with internet functions only 1 would play more than the trial 1 to 3 internet games.

Eliezar

 

[OneInTen]

what is your design team working on right now, specificly?

What part of the explaination that Firaxis wont be saying what they're working on because people chuck a hissy fit if they don't release it did you fail to understand?

 

[Jeffrey Morris]

Originally posted by OneInTen


What part of the explaination that Firaxis wont be saying what they're working on because people chuck a hissy fit if they don't release it did you fail to understand?

That's my new sig.

Jeff

 

[Caligula]

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS


It's amazing how time affects the memory, isn't it? I can remember just starting at Firaxis and enduring endless waves of personal attacks on forums and via email because SMAC was "the buggiest game ever written", etc.

Subjectivity aside, from what I have been told based on our bug reports and databases, Civ III is infinitely more stable than SMAC ever was.

Dan

Or how lack of experience leads to incorrect conclusions. I didn´t play SMAC in the early days, so by the time I bought it (Alien Crossfire), a lot of patches had probably been added. It never crashed, however, and I never saw a bug, so I didn´t know it was ever buggy. Civ3 has crashed a few times (before and since the patch), and also several times stopped finding the CD, forcing me to reinstall (only before the patch, so I think that problem has been fixed).

If there´s a lot of work to making Civ3 multi-player, then of course it must to be sold instead of given away, but without improvements for scenarios and some of the other things in the older games (Civ2 and SMAC), I´m honestly not so sure I´ll want to buy it (where as nobody could have convinced me not to buy Civ3 itself). I really liked the social engineering of SMAC, and the Civ3 governments are so primitive in comparison; that´s the biggest disappointment for me. The map (flat, and without labels) also feels like a retrograde step, along with much of the user interface.

 

[Rhandom]

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS


It's amazing how time affects the memory, isn't it? I can remember just starting at Firaxis and enduring endless waves of personal attacks on forums and via email because SMAC was "the buggiest game ever written", etc.

Subjectivity aside, from what I have been told based on our bug reports and databases, Civ III is infinitely more stable than SMAC ever was.

Dan

I don't have to use my memory on this one. I play SMAC to this day. I've played it across 3 different computers now. I've never downloaded a patch or bought an expansion. I've had exactly 3 crashes in that whole time, and I think they were all OS issues. I've never been able to bombard a city from the other side of the world, or lost 5 combats in a row when I had 2:1 favorable odds, or had units in cities switch side without changing color or control. Or games the corrupt with each save, resulting in games you can never reload. Or killing a civ locking up a game.

If SMAC was buggy, I DON'T see it, even today. Civ III, I feel lucky when I finish a game without an early conquest victory.

 

[eyrei]

Originally posted by Rhandom


I don't have to use my memory on this one. I play SMAC to this day. I've played it across 3 different computers now. I've never downloaded a patch or bought an expansion. I've had exactly 3 crashes in that whole time, and I think they were all OS issues. I've never been able to bombard a city from the other side of the world, or lost 5 combats in a row when I had 2:1 favorable odds, or had units in cities switch side without changing color or control. Or games the corrupt with each save, resulting in games you can never reload. Or killing a civ locking up a game.

If SMAC was buggy, I DON'T see it, even today. Civ III, I feel lucky when I finish a game without an early conquest victory.

I agree. SMAC was probably the least buggy complex strategy game I have ever played. I didn't even know there were patches for it, probably because I never thought it needed one. Regardless, buggy or not, I thoroughly enjoy civ3, and I imagine that all of the problems will be worked out in a reasonable amount of time. I have actually only had it crash once the first time I got to the modern era, and never again. Most of the bugs post patch have more to do with the AI than anything else, it seems. Maybe the game wasn't playtested sufficiently, but if I were a game designer or publisher I might see the benefit of simply having the end-user test the product. Most civ players probably have no problem with this. In a way it gives us a chance to have a greater impact on the way the game finally turns out.

 

[Cerryl]

Originally posted by Eliezar

I did really enjoy playing multiplayer alpha centauri except that it sucked too. If one of the people I was playing with wasn't disconnecting then another was. If one person only had 3 hours to play is there a point? etc

Eliezar

Excellent point, and I gave CIV2 MPGE a good chance, but I found just logging on and finding intelligent, good players WITH the time and commitment to play too much of a hassle, let's face it, this game is NOT Starcraft.

However, finding a couple of players who will put in the time and effort makes it all the worthwhile, and more.

I think, that Multiplayer support should be in a form of a downloaded and *FREE* patch. I understand shipping it as is with MP support would have delayed its release for months and that's ok, I'm very happy playing SP right now.

 

[Cerryl]

Originally posted by RLymburner
Call to Power II had this functionality in a turn-based mulitplayer game built in over 2 years ago. Companies that do not include this functionality are resting on laurels and missing the point on building on known improvements in competitive products.

I won't buy the add-on - I'll find the warez and put it on my purchased original. I will support the company for the original product but not for patches for missing functionality.

Better yet - I'll wait and see if AOE3 includes this and change alliances to Micro$oft. Egad!

Of course AOE will have multi player, what RTS doesn't? It's not even a good comparison.

I agree with not wanting to purchase an add-on just for MP, or scenario creation tools, it should be a free and downloaded patch.