Info on Upcoming Patches from Jon Shafer

[ohioastronomy]

Because he won't get lynched by a torch-bearing mob at Qt3, maybe?

Well, poor customer relations may have a lot to do with the increasingly annoyed attitude of customers. They put out a poor game which bore little relationship to the pre-release hype. And then they basically said nothing in response to documented problems. The people here have done the developers a tremendous service by shaking the game out and finding many core problems. That is priceless, and they should be grateful regardless of whether they like what the players have found.

Companies who talk to their customers retain loyalty even when they make bad mistakes. 2K is not doing this; the tone here and elsewhere is thus entirely their fault as far as I'm concerned. People get mad when they are taken for granted and ignored.

 

[Grimberht]

This coming out of Jon Shafer makes me cautiously more confident. At least, they didnt send a PR person to put us asleep for a while... which seem to me has a good news.

But, the timing of it seem really odd. Its right after the Bioshock 2 "screw job" has flood the internet?? Coincidence??. PR moves?? Who knows. The post seems vague enough to fit the Bioshock broken promises: lets point out two or three things we didnt bother to finish and people caugh, tell them we're thinking about it, lets establish a vague timeframe for patching and let them dream some more.

Sorry about the rambling.. i know that this forum doesnt need anymore of it right now, but I have ABSOLUTLY no confidence in ANYTHING with the 2K stamp on it (Firaxis or not) and has long has its stay in the land of "promises" I wont be celebrating anything. Until it actually making my broken game look something like a Civ game... I dont even expect it to be a great game anymore... I will continue to warn has many people has I can about how bad it is.

 

[drachasor]

Seeing the posts he had made, I assume he will stand with the empire-happiness feature. Look like the worst feature of the game will stay on during the course of a thousand patches in the future. *sigh*

I think the community can fix this.

Change food to happiness and happiness to food. Modify some other stuff and graphics, and now you have global food (makes much more sense) and local happiness. There'd need to be some more tweaking, of course, but overall I think we might be able to mod this pretty easily.

 

[SuperJay]

Well, poor customer relations may have a lot to do with the increasingly annoyed attitude of customers. They put out a poor game which bore little relationship to the pre-release hype. And then they basically said nothing in response to documented problems. The people here have done the developers a tremendous service by shaking the game out and finding many core problems. That is priceless, and they should be grateful regardless of whether they like what the players have found.

Companies who talk to their customers retain loyalty even when they make bad mistakes. 2K is not doing this; the tone here and elsewhere is thus entirely their fault as far as I'm concerned. People get mad when they are taken for granted and ignored.

I agree, actually - my comment wasn't meant to imply that the CFC community is so unreasonable that we'd lynch him just for the sake of recreation. I just meant that Schafer knows that poking his head in here would be like trying to cross a minefield on a pogo stick, blindfolded.

 

[Frasco]

No I haven't been, friend. It's really not the same scenario at all as your car example. There's no defined list of standards in which the game has to live up to in order to be considered "complete" other than those which we invent ourselves. If I bought a car without test-driving it first, later decided that it didn't perform as well as I'd expected, and then couldn't get a refund because I'd explicitly bought it from a store which made it very clear that this would be the case... well, it's silly, because I wouldn't spend that much money without making damn sure the car was right for me first.

And every game is "unfinished" to some degree. At some point you have to consider it "good enough" and leave it otherwise you'll just be pissing money away, fiddling with things ad infinitum. What you consider "good enough" may be different to someone else, and I suspect *very* different to the man who's paying the bills.

That said... I can't imagine any product I'd like to buy and find out it was unfinished. Not a car, not a house, not a cake, not a movie, not a music album, not cel phone... why should I accept unfinished software?

Imagine a book if you will... how about having the author mail you two months after you bought it with the corrections?

 

[Lillefix]

Imagine a book if you will... how about having the author mail you two months after you bought it with the corrections?

I bought Digital Fortress four years ago. I still haven't received the corrections.

Anyway, I'm an optimist. I like the diplomacy system as it is, but the AI needs some improvements.

 

[Thoughtful Thug]

Imagine a book if you will... how about having the author mail you two months after you bought it with the corrections?

A pretty good analogy there.

As that being said, expect the story in later months to be completely rewritten with additional characters (extra Civs for 3 dollars a piece) and new plots (extra features in diplomacy and such for 5 dollars).

 

[jjkrause84]

This is good news.

I hope they deliver.

 

[ZimbuTheMonkey]

A pretty good analogy there.

As that being said, expect the story in later months to be completely rewritten with additional characters (extra Civs for 3 dollars a piece) and new plots (extra features in diplomacy and such for 5 dollars).

That's a horrible analogy, do you even know what a book is? You think a good analogy is one that compares software update deployment to a book author mailing you corrections?

 

[CaptainBinky]

Imagine a book if you will... how about having the author mail you two months after you bought it with the corrections?

Lots of books, particularly big long complicated ones, get corrected in later editions but you don't tend to get them for free

 

[andrewlt]

Well, poor customer relations may have a lot to do with the increasingly annoyed attitude of customers. They put out a poor game which bore little relationship to the pre-release hype. And then they basically said nothing in response to documented problems. The people here have done the developers a tremendous service by shaking the game out and finding many core problems. That is priceless, and they should be grateful regardless of whether they like what the players have found.

Companies who talk to their customers retain loyalty even when they make bad mistakes. 2K is not doing this; the tone here and elsewhere is thus entirely their fault as far as I'm concerned. People get mad when they are taken for granted and ignored.

Disagree. A lot of posters bring up Blizzard but their official forums have the same tone as this forum.

 

[Thoughtful Thug]

Moderator Action: *snip*

 

[dexters]

Good news. A bit disappointed he didn't post here to let us know.

Also disagree he would be lynched. A lot of us here like the game. And the more I play, the more Civ3 I discover underneath all that normal mapping and fractal water effects.

At its core, this game is intended to be a lot less restrictive (than Civ4). In trades and diplomacy, and it is much much appreciated. I think in retrospect, vassal states was a huge problem in Civ3 that prevent run-away AIs from becoming runaways they can in this game, and that they used to in Civ3.

Glad the first thing he mentioned is diplomacy getting an overhal.

 

[Thander]

It's nice to see an update. The last few weeks there had been little, if any, response from Firaxis/2k about patches. The only thing that worries me are the few statements where he says he will work on it as long as he can. I don't think I've ever seen a developer say this. It makes it seem as 2k told him he only gets two patches before he has to make the expansion. Like he is setting everyone up for the inevitable drop in support.

I'm pretty sure I will be getting the expansions anyways, but it hurts my confidence that we will have a really good build by the end of it all. My computer is at or above recommended specs, and I still get CTDs and lagginess as the game goes on. If basic things like these don't get fixed I won't care much about balance changes. I'm always able to reload the game fine, but it's those little annoyances that put me off playing the game in the first place. I might feel like playing, but then I remember the little bugs, and I decide to play another game instead.

 

[r_rolo1]

Good news. A bit disappointed he didn't post here to let us know.

Also disagree he would be lynched. A lot of us here like the game. And the more I play, the more Civ3 I discover underneath all that normal mapping and fractal water effects.

At its core, this game is intended to be a lot less restrictive. In trades and diplomacy, and it is much much appreciated.

Glad the first thing he mentioned is diplomacy getting an overhal.

Well, last time a civ dev posted a patch list in here before the release of the said patch was ... memorable, in the bad sense of the word. I'm pretty sure that Shafer remembers that

 

[Lillefix]

Well, last time a civ dev posted a patch list in here before the release of the said patch was ... memorable, in the bad sense of the word. I'm pretty sure that Shafer remembers that

Poor Alex.

 

[cmdrxizor]

You've been brainwashed friend. Imagine you bought an unfinished car. Would you be happy because you are promised that in some time in the future... without a ETA... they will make your car work as it was supposed to from the beginning? I don't know you... if my car doesn't work as it was specified I put it back to the vendor's office and demand my money back.

Because cars are *never* recalled to fix bugs. I guess my wife has been a beta tester for her Sienna over the last decade, since it was just recalled because the spare tire can fall off in the middle of the road. I'd better tell her she should be furious.

 

[Frasco]

Because cars are *never* recalled to fix bugs. I guess my wife has been a beta tester for her Sienna over the last decade, since it was just recalled because the spare tire can fall off in the middle of the road. I'd better tell her she should be furious.

Heh... I would... Think on how you would have to pay for any damage that tire causes to thirds.

EDIT. Cars, as most other technological products of these days, are developed by teams of engineers; but inside that development chain they are tested to their far extents to make sure the product goes to stores finished and as perfect as can be done.

Surely if you got into a test-car, you would find innumerable flaws that are not present in their final release, and when a car company screws it with a malfunctioning car-lot things like this year's Toyota's scandal come out, where even the US Congress had Toyota's President go to the US and have an audience.

The fact is... it's their work to debug a program, before release. No program is perfect, that's for sure; and minor issues will come out every time. But this is a valid case of major problems affecting ciV's gameplay.

 

[SerialK]

good to ear and somewhat expected, as usual Civ games are sold buggy and get way better over time. Like most 4X games

 

[CaptainBinky]

Because cars are *never* recalled to fix bugs.

Just to continue labouring this analogy... this does happen though, doesn't it? With pretty much everything in fact. Every couple of years there's some news story about a car or food or whatever having to get recalled because it's dangerous or contaminated. At least software won't kill you if it's buggy