Normal Civ 5 or Civ 5 Deluxe?

[Disgustipated]

deluxe is only download?

Then I won't be getting it. As I mentioned in the other thread, I'm not going to sit for hours waiting to play the game. Our download speeds aren't that great in many parts of the U.S. It's faster to drive to the store and buy a physical copy.

Plus I want the fancy box with the pretty artwork on the outside. Pure fluff, but I like it anyways.

Usually collector's editions are sold physically and have a fancier case and a few minor extras inside. They are genually a ripoff, but I'll buy them for games I know I'll love. I bought them for Civ4 (vanilla) and Dragon Age. Dragon Age came in a cool metal box I liked. But Civ5 collector's edition being digital only? No thanks.

 

[eireksten]

Then I won't be getting it. As I mentioned in the other thread, I'm not going to sit for hours waiting to play the game. Our download speeds aren't that great in many parts of the U.S. It's faster to drive to the store and buy a physical copy.

There is the concept of preloading with Steam, allowing you to have the game ready for play the instant it is released. Hopefully this will be done with Civ5.

I've already bought the Digital Deluxe version

 

[Chalks]

As eireksten says, there is a very high chance Steam will allow you to preload the game content quite some time before the release date.

Although you will lose out on the fancy box goodness, this is true.

 

[Shurdus]

So I said already my fiancé will buy the game for me. I thought that she would not want to pay ten extra bucks just for the extra civ, but she told me yesterday that I could pick whichever version I wanted and that she is fine with buying either version.

In the end I think I will still buy the box just because. Let Firaxis stick it right there for their trying to pass a stupid candid movie behind the scenes and a soundtrack of assorted classical tracks for premium content. Also I care not if my package has 18 or 19 civs. I would not get exited if firaxis released a new leader for BtS as a free download, I do not think I will be more exited with the game if my game had Babylon in it. Still the boxed version for me.

 

[GhostWriter16]

Buy the normal and wait 2 days for someone to mod the Babylonians into the normal version of Civ. I don't get Firaxis's ploy of paying extra for 1 civ when with the powerful modding tools they promised we'll be able to throw it into our normal version within a day or two.

I guess it speaks to how dumb they think the people that are going to pay for the extra civ up front are; but if they actually do it then how wrong could they have been?

Hmmm....

I tip my hat to thee Firaxis, I think you're on to something.

I have no experience with it, but couldn't someone just mod in THE EXACT SAME stuff from Civ into Deluxe.

Personally, it is a bit annoying, but the main reason so far is finding out WHAT They are doing, have no experience with Steam nor do I know what it is.

What is Steam, and why are they requiring it?

 

[HamTard]

There is the concept of preloading with Steam, allowing you to have the game ready for play the instant it is released. Hopefully this will be done with Civ5.

I've already bought the Digital Deluxe version

Most developers don't offer preloading for midnight release. Valve always does it, but I think there have been very few others that have done it. I believe that was because of agreements with some retail stores that wanted to have the first release through their own midnight releases.

 

[Coldie]

Sounds like you haven't got the Firaxis 1.01 patch installed.

I do have it installed though......
I thouroughly checked everything.
Oh, and when im starting up, it says theres a problem with the Man-O-War, the Artillery, and the Natives.

Oh yeah, and my friend and me were talking about Civ 5.
He already has a Steam account, so we were thinking about buying one, and sharing.
Is it possible?

 

[Xoatl_169]

I do have it installed though......
I thouroughly checked everything.
Oh, and when im starting up, it says theres a problem with the Man-O-War, the Artillery, and the Natives.

Oh yeah, and my friend and me were talking about Civ 5.
He already has a Steam account, so we were thinking about buying one, and sharing.
Is it possible?

Yes it is, you can buy it on one account and access that account from two different computers in order to install the game twice.

 

[LDiCesare]

Quote:
Originally Posted by |B]need my speed[/B]
Well, companies make more money when having no DRM.
/Quote
Evidence?

The only piece of research on this subject that I know is World of Goo. They had sold their game with 0 copy protection and their piracy estimations were similar to DRM-protected games. Therefore, since DRM has a cost, DRM costs money.
However, as already stated in many places, DRM's aren't about piracy but against reselling. It's hard to know whether DRM-protected games have sold more copies because people couldn't get second hand games working, and I know of no marketing data about it.

 

[Ahriman]

The only piece of research on this subject that I know is World of Goo. They had sold their game with 0 copy protection and their piracy estimations were similar to DRM-protected games. Therefore, since DRM has a cost, DRM costs money.

Please change your quotes so you aren't misattributing.

Some minor game called "world of goo" is not a useful example; small/minor games suffer much less piracy than major blockbuster games. If Starcraft 2 came out with zero copy protection (or even more so, a primarily singleplayer game like Civ5!!) you can bet there would be a ton of piracy.

 

[Chalks]

The only piece of research on this subject that I know is World of Goo. They had sold their game with 0 copy protection and their piracy estimations were similar to DRM-protected games. Therefore, since DRM has a cost, DRM costs money.

This is completely false

Piracy of World of Goo is almost 90% and the entire experiment is an example of why DRM is justified.

Ironically, I bought World of Goo from Steam.

The developers actually said that their sales through the Steam platform were one of the reasons they didn't go bankrupt.

 

[LDiCesare]

Yes, 90%, but would it be better with DRM?
See this: They say:

ricochet shipped with DRM, world of goo shipped without it, and there seems to be no difference in the outcomes

So 90% piracy looks like a usual score, whether you have DRM or not.
This article on the other hand tends to show some DRM can lead to more sales. As for casual games, I don't know if the DRM cost offsets the loss of sales cost. For a game like Civ, I guess the 1 pirate in 1000 converted into a sale would indeed be significant enough to make DRM a good idea. But DRM's do turn potential customers away (I never bought Spore because of that, and waited on the Witcher for a long time until I could get something with a bearable DRM scheme - and thus paid less than I'd have without the DRM), so the above article lacks an indication of what would have happened to sales if/when they had removed the DRM.
Then again, these figures are 2 years old. Another article dating from 2006 estimates piracy rates to 15-33%. Software piracy in general (not just games, stuff like Windows and Office included) are estimated a bit less than 50%.

 

[Coldie]

Yes it is, you can buy it on one account and access that account from two different computers in order to install the game twice.

You can install it?
I thought it was just pre-bought on the website, and the website had all the info.
I thought you had to verify something on the website before starting each game.

 

[Xoatl_169]

You can install it?
I thought it was just pre-bought on the website, and the website had all the info.
I thought you had to verify something on the website before starting each game.

Yeah, if you buy the game off Steam and download and install it through the internet then yes you can have the game on two machines while paying for only one... theoritically, of course you wouldnt want to do that because that sort of thing is bad

If you buy a physical copy im not sure.

 

[Vordrax]

I've been lurking here for a bit but I felt rather compelled to post. There is a tremendous amount of ignorance (not stupidity, just lack of information) regarding Steam on this forum.

It isn't inherently a form of DRM beyond the simple need to login (just like logging into the forum.) It is incredibly simple to use and very convenient. You can't "lose" a game from Steam like you can lose a DVD or a CD, or the manual containing the CD key. If I get tired of Half-Life or Grand Theft Auto IV or cIV or what have you, I right-click on it and say "delete local content." If I want it back, I double-click it and it downloads. No annoying install process or fragmenting the registry.

What issue exactly do you have with Steam? That it takes up minor resources (something like 4 megs of RAM when it's running in the background)? That it has a very intuitive and well-designed community feature? That they have ridiculously good deals every week (just last week I got cIV and all its expansions for $10, which was very nice- I hadn't been able to afford the whole thing before) that run 25-75% off of multiple titles? That they allow a popular platform for distribution and free advertising of independent products that would normally fall flat?

I'm sorry, but the only way you can get "less DRM" than Steam is if they allowed you to download all the games without logging in. So many comments are grossly misinformed and smack of "agreeing to hate" without actually giving it a chance or logical thought. Steam allows for developers to distribute with no DRM at all (although some still foolishly package with Starforce or what have you) because they know that individuals downloading their products are legitimate owners. Supporting Steam means supporting the best non-invasive DRM available- ownership attached to an online persona that you, as a user, cultivate. I find it a very useful tool, and I'm more annoyed when games AREN'T released on Steam at this point.

 

[Savoir10]

I've been lurking here for a bit but I felt rather compelled to post. There is a tremendous amount of ignorance (not stupidity, just lack of information) regarding Steam on this forum.

It isn't inherently a form of DRM beyond the simple need to login (just like logging into the forum.) It is incredibly simple to use and very convenient. You can't "lose" a game from Steam like you can lose a DVD or a CD, or the manual containing the CD key. If I get tired of Half-Life or Grand Theft Auto IV or cIV or what have you, I right-click on it and say "delete local content." If I want it back, I double-click it and it downloads. No annoying install process or fragmenting the registry.

What issue exactly do you have with Steam? That it takes up minor resources (something like 4 megs of RAM when it's running in the background)? That it has a very intuitive and well-designed community feature? That they have ridiculously good deals every week (just last week I got cIV and all its expansions for $10, which was very nice- I hadn't been able to afford the whole thing before) that run 25-75% off of multiple titles? That they allow a popular platform for distribution and free advertising of independent products that would normally fall flat?

I'm sorry, but the only way you can get "less DRM" than Steam is if they allowed you to download all the games without logging in. So many comments are grossly misinformed and smack of "agreeing to hate" without actually giving it a chance or logical thought. Steam allows for developers to distribute with no DRM at all (although some still foolishly package with Starforce or what have you) because they know that individuals downloading their products are legitimate owners. Supporting Steam means supporting the best non-invasive DRM available- ownership attached to an online persona that you, as a user, cultivate. I find it a very useful tool, and I'm more annoyed when games AREN'T released on Steam at this point.

Welcome to Civ Fanatics. The place where Logic and common sense have no place in the Steam discussion. Of course everything you have said is correct, but after a week of banging your head against the wall and double face palming, you too will probably give up out of sheer frustration.

 

[PieceOfMind]

25-75% off! They must be awesome deals.

There is a department store in this country which sells things at very high prices. It regularly has massive sales (nearly 50% off a lot of things). This means the prices are brought down much closer to what they should have been in the first place. The difference is that in most stores that sell games, as the price of a game falls over time, they don't advertise it as a discount - they just advertise the price as the reduced price.

A game that is 75% off - next time I suggest you check - is it 75% off the RRP (the release price) or the current market value (e.g. approximately what you'd pay in a store or buying it second hand)?

But OMG 75% off is awesome.

 

[PieceOfMind]

This is completely false

Piracy of World of Goo is almost 90% and the entire experiment is an example of why DRM is justified.

Ironically, I bought World of Goo from Steam.

The developers actually said that their sales through the Steam platform were one of the reasons they didn't go bankrupt.

90% is an estimate. It's an estimate with various assumptions worked in.

http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/

it’s just an estimate though… there are factors that we couldn’t account for that would make the actual piracy rate lower than our estimate:

-some people install the game on more than one machine
-most people have dynamic IP addresses that change from time to time

there are also factors that would make the actual piracy rate higher than our estimate:

-more than one installation behind the same router/firewall (would be common in an office environment)
-not everyone opts to have their scores submitted

for simplicity’s sake, we just assumed those would balance out. so take take the 90% as a rough estimate.

I have put emphasis on the one that IMO is a huge thing to take into consideration. It is indeed pretty common for routers to assign new IPs regularly. I don't agree with their assumption that the various positive and negative influences on the 90% figure "balance out".

It's a shame the game was pirated I agree, but I recommend not taking figures like that without examining how they were achieved.

EDIT
Consider for example this comment (on that linked page)

Sad to hear it, but…

“more than one installation behind the same router/firewall”, that’s like saying because one family member pirates it (or even bought it) and the whole family plays it, that it is somehow more than one pirated copy (in lost revenues).

“not everyone opts to have their scores submitted”, but then again, this is a percentage that should be somewhat equal on both sides, but perhaps slightly less for pirated copies.

And I would like to point out that I have dynamic IP-addresses, as well as many many others, and I get a new every time I reboot, meaning I could very well have tributed to a 50 or so IP-addresses (which you would consider to be pirates). This counts for the _entire_ player base, meaning that you could very well have a 66% pirate ratio with ONLY bought copies, if say 20% of the users have dynamic IP-addresses (and they changed IP-address 10 times).

It could very well be that those assumed 90% played 2 maps and then removed it, which I would consider an illegal demo rather than a pirated copy, most certainly not lost revenue.

I’m sorry, but due to the fact that only IP-addresses are used and as I see no correlation to actual playtime I can’t take this information seriously, regardless of similarity to other studies. For all I know, the actual value could be piracy 50% and actual lost sales could be 10%.

I’m a proud owner of WoG and I loved every minute of it, but I feel sad when I hear such flawed reasoning.

Of course, anyone trying to justify DRM in any form will try and convince you about the reasons why the figure should be close to 90%.

Also, I think the following guy has made the most brilliant suggestion I've seen for a long time:

alf Says:
November 14th, 2008 at 7:44 am
I love how rational you’re being about all this. I wish more people actually engaged their brains when discussing piracy.

Hopefully, other companies will share their statistics too, so we might actually be able to estimate some more meaningful numbers.

I think the 90% figure is completely useless however. Dynamic IP’s in particular is not just some minor fringe issue that probably balances out with everything else.

I’d expect that alone to account for at least 3-4 IP’s on average per user within a couple of weeks. Then you can double that for people who play the game from multiple locations.

Based on the numbers you’ve shared above, I’d estimate a 30% piracy rate would be much more accurate. That’s still higher than it should be, of course, but it’s not 90%.

The 90% figure is still an interesting ratio, of course, in that it can be compared to other products to get an estimate of how many IP’s your average user actually goes through per month. But it’s nowhere near a meaningful estimate of the piracy rate.

Of course, a simple way to estimate the impact of dynamic ip’s would be to track this value over time. All your users, legit or otherwise, are going to *keep* getting new IP’s from time to time, so the 90% rate should grow over time. So by looking at how fast the ratio of IP’s to sales grows, we might be able to get an idea of the impact of dynamic IP’s, and so eliminate that from the piracy rate estimate.

I doubt he will be heard though.

 

[Chalks]

It's a shame the game was pirated I agree, but I recommend not taking figures like that without examining how they were achieved.

Yeah, you're right. I'm not massively bothered about the actual figures, but more the incorrect attempt at holding this game up as an example of why you don't need DRM.

It's also worth pointing out that the 90% figure comes from a guy who set out to prove DRM was pointless so he released his game without any. He's not going to be intentionally twisting the figures.

The fact of the matter is, when DRM disables features of the game or makes them too frustrating and limiting for your average Joe, more people will buy the game. Stopping piracy is not required, you just need to get as many people who would consider buying your game out of the piracy bracket and into the spending bracket.

If someone who won't ever buy your game pirates it, any effort spent trying to stop them is effort wasted.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Yeah, you're right. I'm not massively bothered about the actual figures, but more the incorrect attempt at holding this game up as an example of why you don't need DRM.

It's also worth pointing out that the 90% figure comes from a guy who set out to prove DRM was pointless so he released his game without any. He's not going to be intentionally twisting the figures.

Actually, there could still be incentive for him to inflate the figure. Consider that the higher the figure, the more people will feel sympathy for his efforts and buy the game out of pity. Not a big incentive I guess.

Also, I don't recall seeing he was out to prove DRM was pointless. I thought the point was he actually wanted to see whether or not DRM was pointless. That is an important distinction! I'd imagine if his goal was to prove DRM was pointless we'd have ended up with a much poorer experiment.

So yeah, there isn't really any reason to just trust his figure because he's being honest. Honest people still make mistakes, especially when it comes to fairly complex issues like this. The multiple IP per user issue is almost certainly massively underesimated by him. One of the people who commented on that page estimated a real figure being closer to 50%, even as low as 30%.

The fact of the matter is, when DRM disables features of the game or makes them too frustrating and limiting for your average Joe, more people will buy the game.

Doesn't sound at all like a fact to me. It does sound like a good guess though.

Stopping piracy is not required, you just need to get as many people who would consider buying your game out of the piracy bracket and into the spending bracket.

Agreed on the "stopping piracy is not required". In a video game market that is flooded with heaps of crap titles, I don't personally find it surprising that piracy is so rampant. You can't know whether a game is going to be bad until you buy it, play it and get disappointed. If a game is good, and the dev/publisher provides strong incentives for that player to activate their product key online, then the pirated copies essentially become free advertising for the game. A restricted demo in a way.

If someone who won't ever buy your game pirates it, any effort spent trying to stop them is effort wasted.

Absolutely agreed.