Next patch speculation thread

Why? The cat started farting?

 

That's ... disappointing.

But perhaps this bodes well for it being a really chunky patch.

The last few patches were very sense. Hopefully this one will be too.

 

Looks more and more like they could be waiting until E3 starts up on June 11th.

 

I dont think you want to wait for E3 for something this small as it would be wasted in the flood of new announcements. Even if it beats expectations. Probably before E3. But dont trust my word on this. I’ve never predicted the future on the stock market accurately with succes. (Stepping in just before Trump dropped the a-bomb on trade wars might not be a good thing for this years investment)

 

I wouldn't expect anything for Civ at E3, especially not a patch of all things...both expansions for Civ 6 were announced in the November prior to their release.

 

They discovered probably some issue at last moment. If they doesn't update branches tomorrow is high probability for release next week. It would be nice, if they announce the live stream tomorrow

 

Honestly, this theatrics is becoming tiresome. We are the beta testers, Q&A, and even "reserve" devs to some extent, so the sooner FXS acknowledges that, everything would be better. Instead of this facade of going back and forth for every stupid patch that breaks more than it fixes, they should just accept that we are the testers and Q&A, the best and most numerous they can get, and for free, and just release the patches and hotfixes at a much higher pace. We then proceed to quickly identify issues, bugs, etc, and they can quickly hotfix again. The process would be much streamlined, and everyone would win, plus the community would be much more receptive of bugs if they are solved quickly. Other gaming companies are doing it with great success.

Instead, we have this theatrical performance in which they send versions internally back and forth, in silence, only to then release a patch with 23 lines as notes, and which fixes 7 things and breaks another 8 (no need to list them here, go take a look at the Bug Reports threads of the last 1-2 years).

 

Crossing my fingers for next week!

 

@Aristos .. Yeah, i would tend to agree we (regular players) stand as formal testers (from Delta to Omega!) of freshly approved/patched version(s). But everything goes beyond what external forces like us can detect or presume. There's the structural model (2K+Firaxis Design Staff+Supported Platforms+Etc) & after that.. official distribution steps. There's also the concept decisions they always must apply within a generic dev system that has (so far, IMO) proven itself as sufficiently effective. This franchise has been relatively successful over the years and most likely intends to continue for more.

To me it all sums up in a very few words -- gimme a rationally stable game worth whatever total money spent & within any of my reasonable expectations!

 

I don't think, if you class this game is something that you beta test, that you do much test testing of software

The mere fact of uncovering bugs is something that end users happen across all the time, for any piece of software. That's why most non-game software has various avenues to report bugs and feedback (if not through an app store of some kind, then through the app itself).

Formalising a fan community, even an active and dedicated one, as a set of "beta testers" comes with a lot of problems to solve. Security, logistics, other legalities, aligning QA / testing work with the product in production (they're not the same builds, at least from the evidence in this thread), payment, etc. It's not something a business can rely on, as it's a resource that could stop existing at any point in time. For example, if a CivFanatic simply couldn't make testing time, and there wasn't adequate coverage. This is what a formal job structure with recruitment, sprint management and the like solves.

This approach severely undervalues support and indeed QA in general. Unsurprising, considering that the general consumer attitude is "I found a bug, what are QA doing with their time". Imagine the ones you don't see!

 

"This is a beta version!" is one of the most tired and persistent themes in all of civfanatic.com-dom, going basically all the way back from what I can tell.

 

the 2kqa_a upgraded two hours ago

 

I'd love to see Firaxis do things differently (read: better, IMHO), but I've never felt like a beta tester playing this game.

 

What really undervalues support and Q&A is mediocrity, no matter how many "I'm special" forum-devs try to defend it.

One word: Paradox. Granted, they are not perfect by any means and have had their share of problems lately, but their patching policy unofficially assumes that the fans are the testers, and even if not always happy, their process works much better than that of FXS. They react faster, and better, to the issues in their games.

 

Oh, please. Paradox games have at least as many bugs as Civ and many of them last for years and years. I guess it's nice to read the dev diaries, but otherwise, there's nothing great about Paradox's patching system. Not at all.

 

Nothing great to some, but still much better than Firaxis'. Sorry, but fact.

 

Can’t disagree more. The civilization series brought me to pc gaming with civ 2. 6-7 years ago the poor development and life cycle on civ 5 introduced me to paradox games. I could not bring myself to play civ 5 while civ 4 had entertained me for more then 4000 hours. I feel like it only recently did what it was supposed to with the help of modding community.

The paradox pr of constantly updating the games while also talking to the community. Is so far superior to the silent treatment of firaxis. I really do hope civ 6 would be able to replace eu4 some day. But i’ve got my doubts it would ever happen. At least not before 1-2 years are over once firaxis stops its 3 year of development. And modders had their go with it.

 

To be critical: I think of Civ like I think of Bethesda games. Every system you can point to is done better in some competitor, to be frank. But much of the reason people go gaga for Skyrim and the reason I tend to appreciate Civ more than many strategy games is the holistic ambition of doing so much at once. (To round out my examples across genres, I'd also lump DE's Warframe in this list.) You will never succeed in trying to do too many things and being all things to all people, but there's something refreshingly bold in these developers trying it anyway and giving us these sort-of-absurd, doomed-to-be-flawed chimeras.

I like the DE/Warframe example because that pulls us back to the topic and highlights ways Firaxis could "do better", that is pretty close to what is being advocated by many here. DE is transparent to a fault, and engages their fans almost to excess. Most of this is due to their business model, where they make a crazy high % of their $$$ off 1% of their players. (I think they might be the only people in the industry doing "ethical whale hunting", in contrast with the many abusive alternatives.) But regardless, they maintain a intensely strong community link without compromising the wall between QA and Users. (They don't even indulge in a public beta environment of any kind, but livestream dev builds almost weekly.)


There will always be a laundry list of diverse, often conflicting demands the community wants of such an ambitious game. (Multi player vs. Single player? Mod tools vs. prioritizing core? Prince vs. Deity? Gameplay vs History? Sim vs. Board game? One Unit Per Tile vs. Garbage?) Even when we appear to agree on things like "better AI", ask people what that means exactly and expect the yelling to start.

But better transparency would make everyone happy, or as close as you are gonna get. Look at the last patch video--it was great! Imagine that, but scaled up, and in "cheap" ways like simple forum or twitter posts that don't require tons of marketing or CM workload. Civ VI is worth improvement, and the work they are doing has been valued and welcomed. Communication to match would make for a happier community, and help make devs' jobs easier as well.

 

Maybe it's Firaxis politics but Civ´s entire PR team Moderator Action: Deleted , specially when it comes to social media managing (their posting style reminds of my 50-something's mom, cute but kinda cringy when not limiting to the outmost basic stuff).

It's such a shame because the leaders are basically walking memes so they could do something like Wendy's twitter account with ease

Moderator Action: Please be civil in discussion. leif
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

Wendy's Twitter is a surprisingly exhaustive effort put forth by a decently large dedicated team. Perhaps cheap in the grand scheme of marketing, but non-trivial to replicate. (Else everyone would do it.)

We don't want them to be trendy, just have more open bandwidth.