How is this acceptable?

[Kutuzov]

Paradox.

I don't say they are perfect but they are a light year better than Firaxis when it comes in support. Just have a look into their forum and compare it to 2K. In first one, some of the game developers are actually taking part in conversation. In latter, there is only moderators who desperately keep on telling people they are there only as voluntaries. Now I only keep on asking myself, why would somebody do that voluntary.

Paradox main problem is that they don't have the resources of Firaxis but regardless they are develop several grand strategy game series (Europa Universalis, Victoria, Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings) all the while they stay in direct contact with their fans and keep on patching the games regularly. Some of the people working for them used to be people in forum who made mods, aar-threads etc.

Funny thing is that I got both EU2 and Civ3 in same time. I installed both but played Civ3 more at first, since it was much more easy to learn. However, I ended playing EU2 much more because when I had had enough of single player, I got into multiplayer group in Finnish game-magazine forums. (And we have been playing ever since. Just finished our third game with EU4. It started with 23 players. Something that I can only dream of in Civ-series )

Since then I have played most of the Paradox strategies and all of the Civilization-series games online, but there has always been more problems in Civilization-series even if they look like are somewhat simpler in mechanics.

Paradox. They only support their games as long as they are turning in a substantial profit. 'Not that there's anything wrong with that'. Support for March of the Eagles got dropped very quickly but you can still buy that game. They have other games that got dropped too. Their big strategy sellers are EU, HOI, CK and, to a lesser extent, Vic. the developers have stated very publicly that if a line of games fails to generate enough income for them from DLC they will discontinue support for that game. Which is good business. Fortunately for them, they release all their games and DLC in perfect working order and there are no forum goers boycotting their DLC ...

Firaxis released a patch for Civ V last week. They do support their games. True, they don't interact with their community as much as the Paradox developers do but frankly, the way their so-called 'fan-base' talk back to them and openly insult them, why on earth should you expect Firaxis designers to do the same? Nobody here would insult them, would they?

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Paradox. They only support their games as long as they are turning in a substantial profit. [...]

I can tell you that you are wrong with this one.
Sadly, I can't tell you why, because I am bound by the accursed NDA demon. But hopefully you can see it for yourself soon.

Btw: I found Sengoku to be much more of a disappointment than March of the Eagles in regards of support. It was obvious that the game was just a test run for their CK2 engine...
:/

 

[tzaari]

Paradox. They only support their games as long as they are turning in a substantial profit. 'Not that there's anything wrong with that'. Support for March of the Eagles got dropped very quickly but you can still buy that game. They have other games that got dropped too. Their big strategy sellers are EU, HOI, CK and, to a lesser extent, Vic. the developers have stated very publicly that if a line of games fails to generate enough income for them from DLC they will discontinue support for that game. Which is good business. Fortunately for them, they release all their games and DLC in perfect working order and there are no forum goers boycotting their DLC ...

Firaxis released a patch for Civ V last week. They do support their games. True, they don't interact with their community as much as the Paradox developers do but frankly, the way their so-called 'fan-base' talk back to them and openly insult them, why on earth should you expect Firaxis designers to do the same? Nobody here would insult them, would they?

Granted they have had many secondary titles during the years, that have shorter support period. I can't say how good they are after the support ends or if they have any major bugs or issues left, since I have not played them. I only have EU2, EU3, EU4, CK, CK2, Victoria, Victoria2, HOI2 and HOI3 and most of the addons for those. The stability of the games have varied in release, there has been bugs and game balance issues. So far I have found none of those to be unplayable after patching or have major bugs left after the support ends.

The big difference is that you can be sure that they do take the feedback seriously (well the sane part of it ) and they stay in touch with community. You know that they are going to fix the bugs and often you have approximate time for the next patch. And even if they are not going to fix something, they tell you that also.

On the other hand I have Firaxis. They have published three games in the same time period + dlc:s. When you ask them when the next patch is coming or is there going to be one, you get nothing in return. They give you one way marketing messages now and then but that is not two way communication. They could be producing cars as well as I know from their marketing jargon that you get after giving them direct feedback, except that a car company don't sell you brakes and windshield as a upcoming new DLC.

Yeas, they did release that patch week ago, didn't they. But it took them one year to fix a core-feature of multiplayer trade and they did not tell you when they are going to fix it, if ever. That is what bothers me most.

 

[BlueTemplar]

Paradox. They only support their games as long as they are turning in a substantial profit.

Like Sword of the Stars 2. Ok, I know that it's Paradox Interactive, not Paradox Development Studio (with Kerberos Productions as the developer), but still, I have never been as disappointed in my life...
And Paradox (Interactive) must have been burned pretty hard if a 247 posts-long, 30k views petition won't even make them consider funding an expansion...
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...radox-to-make-another-expansion-for-the-game&

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Paradox.

I don't say they are perfect but they are a light year better than Firaxis when it comes in support. Just have a look into their forum and compare it to 2K. In first one, some of the game developers are actually taking part in conversation. In latter, there is only moderators who desperately keep on telling people they are there only as voluntaries. Now I only keep on asking myself, why would somebody do that voluntary.

Paradox main problem is that they don't have the resources of Firaxis but regardless they are develop several grand strategy game series (Europa Universalis, Victoria, Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings) all the while they stay in direct contact with their fans and keep on patching the games regularly. Some of the people working for them used to be people in forum who made mods, aar-threads etc.

Funny thing is that I got both EU2 and Civ3 in same time. I installed both but played Civ3 more at first, since it was much more easy to learn. However, I ended playing EU2 much more because when I had had enough of single player, I got into multiplayer group in Finnish game-magazine forums. (And we have been playing ever since. Just finished our third game with EU4. It started with 23 players. Something that I can only dream of in Civ-series )

Since then I have played most of the Paradox strategies and all of the Civilization-series games online, but there has always been more problems in Civilization-series even if they look like are somewhat simpler in mechanics.

Nope. While I like their games for the most part, nope.

This isn't even close to true. The patch notes they put out routinely have multiple things that are actively not true and never corrected (to date). They have, for a year now, made multiple substantial changes to core gameplay mechanics without documenting them either in the patch notes or any other method, directly fabricating fake difficulty. They have advertised cross-platform MP, something they broke a few patches back w/o any notification that it's been fixed. They have advertised hotjoin, which has yet to work for a single patch.

Essentially, they sell new content while their present content meets the standard of a non-conforming good. While their games are fun to play, neither EU IV nor CK2 feel like finished products, yet both have been out well over a year. Bugs persist and the small dev team can't keep up, yet they keep releasing and introducing content that's virtually guaranteed to produce new ones.

Of course, all of the grand strategy titles of Paradox are also rife with basic fake difficulty, including things that strictly meet the criteria of "gameplay rule" being completely hidden except through direct experience. Some of their gameplay is complexity, and some of it is inexcusably opaque game mechanics designed to screw you, offered alongside an achievement mode that doesn't let you undo mistakes made by PI.

In asking for a good, well-supported modern strategy title that has no bugs, there is no such thing. There's no gears of war 3 equivalent in the TBS or Grand Strategy genres, no equivalent of Sc2.

BE release state is much, much better than Civ V vanilla though. It's not a well balanced game and it lacks UI conventions that were well known and implemented a decade ago, but it's a playable game with some good elements and a lot of potential...and despite the opaque nature of the quests in BE, it still somehow manages less fake difficulty lol.

 

[tzaari]

Nope. While I like their games for the most part, nope.

This isn't even close to true. The patch notes they put out routinely have multiple things that are actively not true and never corrected (to date). They have, for a year now, made multiple substantial changes to core gameplay mechanics without documenting them either in the patch notes or any other method, directly fabricating fake difficulty. They have advertised cross-platform MP, something they broke a few patches back w/o any notification that it's been fixed. They have advertised hotjoin, which has yet to work for a single patch.

Essentially, they sell new content while their present content meets the standard of a non-conforming good. While their games are fun to play, neither EU IV nor CK2 feel like finished products, yet both have been out well over a year. Bugs persist and the small dev team can't keep up, yet they keep releasing and introducing content that's virtually guaranteed to produce new ones.

Of course, all of the grand strategy titles of Paradox are also rife with basic fake difficulty, including things that strictly meet the criteria of "gameplay rule" being completely hidden except through direct experience. Some of their gameplay is complexity, and some of it is inexcusably opaque game mechanics designed to screw you, offered alongside an achievement mode that doesn't let you undo mistakes made by PI.

In asking for a good, well-supported modern strategy title that has no bugs, there is no such thing. There's no gears of war 3 equivalent in the TBS or Grand Strategy genres, no equivalent of Sc2.

BE release state is much, much better than Civ V vanilla though. It's not a well balanced game and it lacks UI conventions that were well known and implemented a decade ago, but it's a playable game with some good elements and a lot of potential...and despite the opaque nature of the quests in BE, it still somehow manages less fake difficulty lol.

Most of these problems come from the fact they have small developer team. They make very complicated and detailed games so when they change things, there is a lot of other things that are effected to keep the game in balance. Some of the fixes come in new or changed gameplay mechanics you get with in patches, that are much more detailed than what you get with Firaxis.

For me both EU4 and CK2 have both felt like finished while not bug free products from start. Balance issues and bugs were found after people started playing. Some even quite obvious indication of missing beta testing. In general EU4 is in better shape now in multiplayer than what it was in release. Hotjoining did work couple of patches ago and I am missing it, but since the multiplayer is mostly stable at the moment, it is not so big problem.

They could document the core mechanics better and give you more information in game tooltips and so on, but there we hit the resource problems. There is always things that you can't read from manuals and only can learn by playing the game. Also it takes a lot of time to first make changes in game and then update the tooltips making the patching process longer. I rather take the new patches with change logs concentrating in major changes, than wait for 2000 pages long manuals describing things and limitations in diplomacy, relation point limits etc.

I would not go as far as describing the 'hidden' mechanical information as fake difficulty, since that is clearly not designed to be difficulty adding feature. Things like lucky nations, bonuses and rule braking for AI I can count in fake difficulty.

BE seems to have less issues than Civ5 had in release, but in the same time it carries on most of the problems that still linger in Civ5. That just points out the fact that developers took old game and modified it heavily, instead of really making a new one when they could have made better AI and fix the multiplayer as actually working thing.

After learning the mechanics most of difficulty comes from 'fake difficulty' so that AI keeps up with the player. In this point you have two choices: Tolerate/Ignore that and keep on imagining you have now better opponents, or go for Multiplayer for actually intelligent opponents. Since the BE carries on the multiplayer problems of Civ5 multiplayer is not even option and therefore ends the game for me.

 

[Drowsy Emperor]

What's this potential that BE has that everyone is talking about? Its a Civ V rehash with a few (not altogether well thought out) novelties, what exactly do you expect it to become? Its not like its this great game marred by bugs that can be ironed out with a few patches.

I don't expect Firaxis to do anything except a few balance tweaks, and even with such balance tweaks its not going to be as "good" as Civ V with all expansions/DLC. Besides, its delusional to think that Firaxis will put as much effort into BE as they did into Civ V post release. Civ is their flagship title, this is just a fire and forget deal.

 

[beetle]

Fair observation. What kind of expansions/DLC did colonization get?

Also, what exactly is “fake difficulty”? Do that mean giving the AI more bonus rather than having them play smarter? Because that is how the difficulty levels have worked since Civ II!

 

[Tabarnak]

This is all Obama's fault anyway...

Seriously i'm not buying this game in this current state. Probably because i tasted much better recently with ciV BNW. I still don't understand why games can be worse than before when they use similar UI and stuff from past games.

I mean...ciV engine was brand new. That was pretty normal to see some problems at that time. I have read some interesting posts about market theories though and maybe they don't have choice after all? To survive i mean...or what?

 

[UnderKingDuck]

The state of which BE was released in is not acceptable at all and I am really upset about it. Originally I was really excited for BE because I saw that it could be a great game. But here we are at release and it’s beyond plagued with issues left and right, almost to the point where I don’t even want to play it anymore.

AI: The AI in both war and even just diplomacy is, yet again, lacking. Like I can understand it being hard to make the AI great at war, but the fact that it has gotten hardly any form of an improvement is beyond upsetting. The AI does not seem to understand what Miasma is, AI can hardly do naval combat (let alone land combat at times). the AI consider me a warmonger even though they asked me to go to war, the AI gives up their cities for peace without me even having to do a single thing, the AI usually asked for a lot more than what they themselves would be willing to give to you, they yet again get all this interaction with a player that the player can not use to interact with the AI, they ask for resource in deals that they can’t even use, and do I need to continue?

AI does not even interact with a player online. Like I can understand that people might feel it might take turns to take forever or something like that, but if that’s the case then an option should be given to people to disable the AI interact with players. Don’t have it turned off by default though.

Gameplay: Civs feel like they have a lack of character and hardly play any different from each other. I think the biggest reason for this is removal of UB, UU, and the UA do not seem that cool. Then we have the whole issue with trade routes which im sure we are all aware of. Then we are missing unit archetypes...like where is the melee ship? Why is this unit not in the game? That’s not the only unit types we are missing, but that’s the biggest offender if you ask me. Stations have no life to them, for they are only another trading partner. Health can pretty much be ignored at the moment. Affinity progression feels too slow in the beginning and too fast later on.

In addition.I feel really mislead about how aliens were suppose to act. I was under the impression that they could get angry at you when even another player attacks them enough, thats siege worms could literally wipe you out in the early game, and that you always needed to protect your working early game so aliens do not destroy them. Yet siege worms are not that much of a threat, aliens hardly get angry at me when other players attack them, and they never get angry at me when I am even attacking them.

It feels like you guys wanted to do a lot more with affinities and even terraforming. but it never got done on time. Like I remember reading a preview that said harmony would have the ability to make their own aliens yets. One preview even mention each affinity having four “super units” and I thought that sound amazing. I heard someone just say on the forums that even workers were given the option to terraform the terrain, but this is not even in the base game.

UI: The UI has some issues which a lot we're fix with mods. The tech web is very confusing at first (lacking color) and it’s missing filter, it’s very hard to see what was your previous trade route destination, if you hover over a resource it does not tell you anymore what tech you need to improve it, and we don’t even have a simple clock in the base game. I’m sure there are others, but these are what come to mind right away.

Online: Seem to be buggy on release and we still can’t use mods online. Like a lot of my problems, minus the AI, would be fixed if we were allowed to use mods online with our friends. Like if you guys allowed mods to be used online, then I would be very very very happy.

Don’t misunderstand and think this is coming off as a “I hate BE and will never play it again”. I love the Civ series and I think you guys had a great ideas with BE (I love the tech web and the affinity concept), but I feel you needed more time with it before release. I just get really upset when I see issues from Civ 5 in BE that were solved with mods in Civ 5. I put 800+ hours into civ 5 and close to 900 hours in Civ 4. I want BE to be just as good as both of those games. But before you release a lot of dlc that adds new mechanics, I would like to see patches first that address a lot of the issues above, improve existing mechanics, and a little more dev communication on the forums.

 

[Drowsy Emperor]

If its true that most players (80% of all who have buy a civ game) never move beyond the default difficulty setting then I'm not surprised they don't give a toss about the AI (and never have, to be honest). If a "dumb as a brick AI" can service 80% of your customers and you just make it cheat for the other 20%, regardless of the fact that AI cheating is a stopgap solution that those players will quickly overcome, then the AI is perfectly functional. From a sales perspective.

 

[Pietato]

I cannot even get the game to work, AGAIN. Crashes after the skipped intro movie 100% of the time.

This game is just so disappointing.