Is the next patch where Civ V should have started?

[Zenstrive]

When I look at StarCraft II, I think: hmm, blizzard gone lazy and release the same game, only in 3D

 

[Thormodr]

or when walking into a resturaunt

"the food may or may not be an accurate representation of the item in the menu including product size, quality of ingredients, and freshness of the food. you hereby agree and declare complete liability for any damages accumulated while eating any food, or dining in any location of our establishment"

(thus your "quarter pounder" is actually a quarter pound sandwhich and not a quarter pound piece of meat being used.)

Not to mention an "all beef patty" is not actually made of beef. It's supplied by a company called All Beef.

It's routine for companies to lie to their consumers these days.

 

[insaneweasel]

Essentially, they released when (generally) stable and used the principles of user-centered/participatory design to polish the rest.

As others have said, they could have:

• Had a massive beta test phase and then charged you when it sold (net is the same)
• Did a huge internal test ($$$) and not let you play for a year - and still have to cover for all the exploits and bugs the larger community finds. Oh, and you still get charged.
• Released when they were stable and let the community play around for a year and figure out what works and what doesn't for them.

If you were Firaxis, which would you have picked? Most sane businesspeople would have chosen #3, and would have gotten more (earlier) $ and a better end product after year 1 for it.

I'm sorry, but I expect gaming companies to not release piles of untested garbage, especially when their product is something like civ.

It's obvious that the devs put little thought OR playtest time into the game-even without playing, most veterans could spot that the wonders were boring and useless, non-strategic resources were pointless, and many of the social policy trees were useless.

I don't think that 2k has any excuses - they had years to develop, test and improve.
They didn't do their job, and the consumers suffered.

 

[Helmling]

With the policy buffs, better wonders, improved UAs (though US still needs a buff), combined with the other patches, it seems as though civ may be the most fun it ever has been for the casual gamer.

The problem is, it's been many months since civ was first released, and many fans of
civ 4 left this a long time ago. If the game had been released in its current state, would it have been better received? If this had been the starting situation, to be improved upon, I think it would have gotten a lot less flak from people.

I don't think that many Civ 4 fans have gone anywhere. You know how I know? 'Cause there's always so many of them posting things like this.

Anyway, I think the new patch sounds like nerf over-kill.

 

[Brichals]

Thadian mentioned StarCraft, and I was just about to point to it as well.

StarCraft is a textbook example of professionalism in PC gaming. People's preferences vary - myself, I play CiV over SCII simply because I prefer turn-based - but there's just no comparison on the level of finish and respect for the customer being shown between the two games. Civ 5, while a good game simply and only because it's a civ, is an atrocity when it comes to respecting the customer. Had it been Blizzard-made, I assure you we'd be receiving not only patch support to put this pitifulness from 2k Games to shame, but also tons of free DLC and possibly even the option of a full refund for those interested.

I play SC2 and I can tell you Blizzard have had exactly the same release model (apart from DLC).

When the game was released it was horribly balanced. Zerg was broken and unplayable, thats 1 out of only 3 factions unplayable. They have done regular patches so it's getting better but there are design flaws that won't be fixed.

Anyway, balance aside, battle.net 2.0 (AKA battle.net 0.2 or fail.net) has needed loads of work on it since release and still has nowhere near the same functionality of rival games (or even BroodWar). Its got an archaic custom game search and no clan support, shared replay viewing, and only recently got chat channels.

They want to make seasons 3 months long but still cant code for that so the first season was 8 months long - basically ladder was a mess and nobody knew how well they were doing. God knows when they will fix that.

I think tbh the Civ5 patches are better and have given more value than the SC2 ones.
Well I was very happy when they added to chat channels to SC2 (I can have friends now!?) but why wasnt this in on release? I played for 6 months with no guys to chat too Not saying SC2 is a bad game but they also released a very far from finished game with the intention of ongoing patch support.

Like has been said, money in the bank now is much more valuable than money in the bank in 1 years time. And with the economy how it is, I have no idea of how these companies finance themselves, but you don't want to be borrowing much money nowadays. For all I know there is a massive group of economists advising both Blizzard and 2K and THQ etc. etc.on how to sell their stuff.

 

[Agent Cooper]

Skipped SC2 altogether and cherish SC even more

But I can live with that if I see Diablo 3 released before I become a pensioner

 

[gozpel]

Civ is a game that outmatches any attempts of copycats.

Civ itself has been played by millions of people, from Civ1 until today. We have seen many changes in the game, but we always embraced the changes as new greater game.

Civ4 started the downhill roll, even if it is probably the greatest iteration of this series, but it stopped us players to have free will. They started to make the game more linear so new players could get into the game faster. No worries, it's still one of the best games ever made, esp. BTS.

Civ3 though, had the capacity to let us decide what we wanted to do with our empires, but had the setback of ICS and other issues. But it was so loved and still is, ppl's still playing SG's today!!!

Civ4 stopped that fun that and Civ5 totally killed it.

 

[TyBoy]

Brichals if this was just a cash grab for the company, should we hav enot allowed the company to go bellyup? survival of the fittest is the natural way of life, why is it not in gaming?

I wouldn't say 5 is anywhere near that bad. It's not the game of the year but I still wouldn't say anyone else has released anything better in the genre. If this were 20 years ago and 5 people could take a year and release a great game maybe, but with the millions of dollars it takes to make a game now there just aren't that many companies releasing games of this quality and complexity (I would say Blizzard and Bioware for sure. I'm hard pressed to come up with another though, reskinning some FPS engine and writing a new story just doesn't seem to measure up and that encompasses the rest of the good games I've seen anytime recently).

I think it's a bit of a mistake to try and compare SC2 to CiV. They put a lot of emphasis on balance in SC2 because they knew that the multiplayer would be a very important part of the game, so it's not surprising they got the numbers right on that, while CiV is largely about the single player game and the civs don't differ that much, so balance wasn't as big an issue. The starcraft AI is probably miles behind the CiV AI just because the game is much much simpler. It achieves a high-ish level of play through micro-management (i.e. a high number of clicks per minute) that a human player can't match, but its strategies and tactics are generally pretty weak. Nobody really cares though because nobody is judging starcraft based on playing skirmishes over and over again against the AI (which is what CiV is being judged on).

It's not like before high speed internet made constant patching possible developers were releasing highly polished games that didn't need patching. They needed patching, they just didn't get it. MoO2 is one of my favorite games of all time, but there are traits and techs and strategies in that game that are so incredibly dominant over others that doing anything else is just wrong. They never got fixed, but I still enjoy the game.

 

[MoonFlare]

No.
It's still beta. No pitboss/PBEM, bad balance, bad design choices, no optimization and no working MP. Maybe 3-5 more patches and it will be ready for a release.

 

[Brichals]

No.
It's still beta. No pitboss/PBEM, bad balance, bad design choices, no optimization and no working MP. Maybe 3-5 more patches and it will be ready for a release.

This is true. Especially I would love to jump on to find a decent multiplayer scene. Even if its on silly custom maps, co-op tower defences etc. But imagine if they did add these things. OK you were disappointed with the first Civ5 release but 2 years later through patches you've got what amounts to an expansion for free.

I came late to civ4 (couldnt afford a game computer on top of my macbook) and missed all the succession games etc. and history here. I wanted to get in at the beginning for Civ5, even though it's still messy, I keep my hopes up.

 

[shihuacao]

Civ is a game that outmatches any attempts of copycats.

Civ itself has been played by millions of people, from Civ1 until today. We have seen many changes in the game, but we always embraced the changes as new greater game.

Civ4 started the downhill roll, even if it is probably the greatest iteration of this series, but it stopped us players to have free will. They started to make the game more linear so new players could get into the game faster. No worries, it's still one of the best games ever made, esp. BTS.

Civ3 though, had the capacity to let us decide what we wanted to do with our empires, but had the setback of ICS and other issues. But it was so loved and still is, ppl's still playing SG's today!!!

Civ4 stopped that fun that and Civ5 totally killed it.

Played Civilization from its first incarnation, and it is V that I really start to enjoy it. For me, previous versions are most about how to exploit AI flaws, and for V, well it is still about exploit AI flaw, but at least we got some decent rules.

Maybe I just played too much board games.

 

[Tapewormlondon]

No it just means that I got the game a year earlier than it would have been released and even though it was beta I still got to test it out. And the company got the cash 1 year sooner to avoid going broke and finance another year of work on the game. All companies do it now. It's almost standard practise to release a game and add features through patches.

I can not believe that this is some peoples attitude. The fact that it it is becoming standard practise is something we should stand up against not embrace.

If you bought a book and half the pages were missing you would ask for a refund, if you bought a meal and half of it was missing you would ask for a refund, if you bought a car and it didnt have the features that made it work properly.....you would ask for a refund.

Except gaming companies know we cant ask for a refund, and they can quite easily patch it. Just so you know I dont hate civ 5, quite like it. But there have been so many sweeping changes to the game it is 100% obvious they released the game unfinished and not complete. Not acceptable in any way shape or form in my eyes. Civ 6 will be the first civ game I dont rush out and buy, if I buy at all.

IMO Civ 5 has been one of the worst offending games I have ever seen in terms of unfinished. The patches to it have not been for minor bugs or slight tweaks. Its been full game overhauls - each and every one. And to be honest it makes feel like I was the means to an end of making a quick buck.

"ah dont worry, we will just send out a 1/4 finished product, no one will care, they will just wait around for a patch. In two years when we have put the final patch to it, it will be as good as Civ4. Just in time for us to start releasing news about Civ6......all will be forgiven"

Not in my eyes Fireaxis.....not in my eyes

 

[shihuacao]

I can not believe that this is some peoples attitude. The fact that it it is becoming standard practise is something we should stand up against not embrace.

If you bought a book and half the pages were missing you would ask for a refund, if you bought a meal and half of it was missing you would ask for a refund, if you bought a car and it didnt have the features that made it work properly.....you would ask for a refund.

Except gaming companies know we cant ask for a refund, and they can quite easily patch it. Just so you know I dont hate civ 5, quite like it. But there have been so many sweeping changes to the game it is 100% obvious they released the game unfinished and not complete. Not acceptable in any way shape or form in my eyes. Civ 6 will be the first civ game I dont rush out and buy, if I buy at all.

IMO Civ 5 has been one of the worst offending games I have ever seen in terms of unfinished. The patches to it have not been for minor bugs or slight tweaks. Its been full game overhauls - each and every one. And to be honest it makes feel like I was the means to an end of making a quick buck.

"ah dont worry, we will just send out a 1/4 finished product, no one will care, they will just wait around for a patch. In two years when we have put the final patch to it, it will be as good as Civ4. Just in time for us to start releasing news about Civ6......all will be forgiven"

Not in my eyes Fireaxis.....not in my eyes

The real question is, is it possible to have a balanced strategy game without being released in beta state?

 

[Tapewormlondon]

The real question is, is it possible to have a balanced strategy game without being released in beta state?

Gaming companies seemed to do alright before the age of the patch. They had to otherwise no-one would buy their next release.

Also I am not totally against some slight patching to make some balances. But to the degree CiV has been.......its crazy!!

And to answer a question I saw earlier. yes I would prefer to pay a little bit more upon release for them to do a beta.........although wasnt that the point of steam, to reduce packaging costs so that could be passed onto consumers? Oh yeah, it didnt happen. (not against steam either- just making a point!)

 

[Brichals]

Tapewormlondon you have a good point and my post was kind of "devils advocate".

Now there are analogies to buying a burger and so on which is definitely one kind of service.
But then there is the other side, for example you hire some plumbers to build you a kitchen, or you hire some guys to build Wembley stadium. You have to give them some money up front etc to buy materials and maybe pay them weekly. They just do not have enough money banked from their last job to do this one for nothing until they get a big lump sum at the end. Payment at the end of the job is not as useful as payments in installments as you can cover loans and invest earlier if you get the cash earlier.

Now I think this is a sign of companies, as is a general trend in our economy, overextending themselves. But this also might have some uses if they find they can finance things more efficiently this way.

They could stoop even lower, e.g. you have to pay for civ6 before they even hire people to work on it. If they could get away with it I'm sure they would!

 

[Agent Cooper]

The real question is, is it possible to have a balanced strategy game without being released in beta state?

Allow me to rephrase that question into:

"...is it possible to have a balanced strategy game when playing against the AI?"

and my answer to that is a resounding no.

The developers are simply not capable of writing an AI up to the task.

 

[shihuacao]

Gaming companies seemed to do alright before the age of the patch. They had to otherwise no-one would buy their next release.

Also I am not totally against some slight patching to make some balances. But to the degree CiV has been.......its crazy!!

And to answer a question I saw earlier. yes I would prefer to pay a little bit more upon release for them to do a beta.........although wasnt that the point of steam, to reduce packaging costs so that could be passed onto consumers? Oh yeah, it didnt happen. (not against steam either- just making a point!)

Before the age of the patch, gaming companies do well, but we as consumers, also do not judge them as we judge them today. Before Internet, we rarely have strategic discussions, but today, when someone found how to do an exploit, everyone knows. It is different now. Many great old games, such as Civilization I, if released today equiped with most cutting-edge graphics, it will still be trashed, not honored.

 

[shihuacao]

Allow me to rephrase that question into:

"...is it possible to have a balanced strategy game when playing against the AI?"

and my answer to that is a resounding no.

The developers are simply not capable of writing an AI up to the task.

Artificial Intellegence is meant to mimic human behavior, without huge samples, it was never possible to have a good AI, unless game rules are very very simple.

 

[Tapewormlondon]

Tapewormlondon you have a good point and my post was kind of "devils advocate".

Now there are analogies to buying a burger and so on which is definitely one kind of service.
But then there is the other side, for example you hire some plumbers to build you a kitchen, or you hire some guys to build Wembley stadium. You have to give them some money up front etc to buy materials and maybe pay them weekly. They just do not have enough money banked from their last job to do this one for nothing until they get a big lump sum at the end. Payment at the end of the job is not as useful as payments in installments as you can cover loans and invest earlier if you get the cash earlier.

Now I think this is a sign of companies, as is a general trend in our economy, overextending themselves. But this also might have some uses if they find they can finance things more efficiently this way.

They could stoop even lower, e.g. you have to pay for civ6 before they even hire people to work on it. If they could get away with it I'm sure they would!

I appreciate what your saying, however I am of the mind that I am not buying a service, I am buying a product and so my attitudes towards buying something unfinished, as opposed to paying a person for their labour differ. What if these people charged you for wembly stadium and then said - i know it aint quite there yet but i will be back in 2 months to finish it?

What you describe is slightly different. However what you describe at the bottom of your post is already happening in some forms and I believe it will spell the end of gaming as a hobby for me.

What I mean is, companies are now trying out the "free game on release method". In which you have to pay for in game content as you go - Kind of like farmville i suppose. I have seen the ads on steam for these "free games", which over the life time of the game will mean consumers spend way above what they would have done for the base game.

But consumers will buy this content, no doubt about it. It will only take one person to buy it and then others will have to in order to stay level. Good business model for the company......not so good for us.

Can you imagine trying to play a multi player game and before you sign in to the lobby a message comes up "Sorry you do not have the same content as player x, please download the superdooper uber flame sword for £1.99 to join this game".

Its coming.......

 

[Agent Cooper]

Artificial Intellegence is meant to mimic human behavior, without huge samples, it was never possible to have a good AI, unless game rules are very very simple.

Agree completely.

My point was, with regards to the CiV discussion, that an argument I read over and over is that the game post-patch will now feel more 'balanced' or it has been 're-balanced' etc.

I very much doubt it. Experienced players will just find new ways to exploit the game post-patch, a new patch will be designed to counter this and the cycle is endless.

Perhaps we should focus on making the game more 'fun' and 'playable' instead?