Open letter to Firaxis

after reading this thread for a bit i realize that people just need to complain. so im not going to post any more replies to those who dislike the game for whatever reason. So in any case im going to go play my WORKING version of the game and have a butt load of fun doing so :D
 
Okay mate, let's be honest here.

This isn't really a letter to Firaxis is it, this is just a complaint that you hope will get a lot of replies saying 'me too', 'well said' and 'I want the OPs babies'. If you really wanted Firaxis to read this letter then you would just... oh I don't know EMAIL IT TO THEM!!!!

This forum has no link to Firaxis. If you have a legitimate question about the game, want to discuss it, or have a technical problem that you would like to know if there is a solution to then this place is agreat place to put it. If you just want to sound off about your personal problems, make exaggerated claims, and do it under the pretence of 'wriiting an open letter' problems then please take it elsewhere.
 
Piemaster, a looksie at the member list for this forum would not hurt you ;)

THough you have a good point, there are in fact Firaxians registered at Civfanatics.

Jeff_ATARI used to post back when ATARI handled publishing of civ.

And - even if they do not post here actively anymore (IMO civ3 or 4 general discussion is filled with a lot of stuff that is less interesting to me than other stuff, so I dont check either forum as often as I could have if I wanted...) - there seems to be a connection between what people wanted in civ4 and what they got in civ4.

So, to some extent, this forum has a link to Firaxis.

That does not reduce the efficiency of sending Firaxis an email though ;)
 
You have to start somewhere and this is as good a place as any. This site is indeed a good place as it has a link directly on their home page. I have no doubt that the developers and their management (who is more at fault because they probably pressured them for pre-Christmas release) read comments on this site - the initial letter as well as the many comments that follow. Now, whether they learn anything or care is a different story.
 
:eek: I cannot believe it!!!!!!!... In the same paragraph he is complaining about the new game being different from the older versions and being too similar to the older versions. What do you want, mate? :eek:

pdathert said:
Dear Firaxis,

1. Forgetting your roots. Civilization has always been for the vast majority of it’s fans, almost 100% about gameplay. So why do we have this new game that is so intensive on our systems (for no real gameplay gains), and thus it is in no way accessible to all who want to play it. The gameplay is not drastically different to Civ I and rightly so, you had a winning formula then and you still do now.
Click to expand...
 
Okay mate, let's be honest here.

This isn't really a letter to Firaxis is it, this is just a complaint that you hope will get a lot of replies saying 'me too', 'well said' and 'I want the OPs babies'. If you really wanted Firaxis to read this letter then you would just... oh I don't know EMAIL IT TO THEM!!!!
Click to expand...

Three things to say to this:

a, Unless you have had problems with this game you won't know that getting in touch with Firaxis or Take2 is hard enough on its own, and unless you use the phone (costs £££££££'s) getting any response is pretty hard too.

b, This is a forum, (for'em!) and so such speech should be tolerated. It's not offensive.

c, Like someone else said, why should we put up with substandard releases? Thats what I believe it was. The more apathy we show toward this sort of practice the more it will occur and the the more people will ditch PC gaming totally and go to consoles. I don't want that to happen.
 
I cannot believe it!!!!!!!... In the same paragraph he is complaining about the new game being different from the older versions and being too similar to the older versions. What do you want, mate?
Click to expand...

My gripe is not with the gameplay - that is fine. It is the unneccessary strain it now takes to run, when the gameplay is essentially the same! Thus alienating core gamers.

I could understand if the gameplay had become VASTLY more complex but it hasn't, it's still a pretty simple TBS.
 
pdathert said:
Three things to say to this:

a, Unless you have had problems with this game you won't know that getting in touch with Firaxis or Take2 is hard enough on its own, and unless you use the phone (costs £££££££'s) getting any response is pretty hard too.

b, This is a forum, (for'em!) and so such speech such be tolerated.

c, Like someone else said, why should we put up with substandard releases? Thats what I believe it was. The more apathy we show toward this sort of practice the more it will occur and the the more people will ditch PC gaming totally and go to consoles. I don't want that to happen.
Click to expand...


I think behind the ranting there is a good point here. It's great for everyone using this forum, mostly whether the game works or not, to discuss it in a place where people know about computers and PC gaming. How many people that bought civ 4 actually know there is a patch out? I believe the majority of people who bought civ 4 working or not won't have gone to the steps of reading a forum, checking websites, looking for updates etc. in order to enhance the game. People switch to consoles for this very reason. You buy a game, put it in and it works. End. In some ways, PC gaming should work in exactly this way, it doesn't matter how complex it is dealing with thousands of differently configured systems. People without the knoledge of PC gaming to be here discussing this should be Firaxis's first worry. 'Gone to the shop, checked the specs, got all of that. Put it in. It doesn't work? Take it back and we'll get an X-Box game.' This problem will only get worse as more people get more different PC's, and it may kill PC gaming eventually, after all, how much money is there in making 50 patches trying to please everyone?
 
Please try to remain consistent

If developers, as you claim, produce substandard games - then switching from one medium to another (from PC to xbox, SP or whatever) should not really improve the situation - assuming that developers follow the same basic logic that you outlined.

The same logic which I objected to quite extensively...
 
pdathert said:
The more apathy we show toward this sort of practice the more it will occur and the the more people will ditch PC gaming totally and go to consoles. I don't want that to happen.
Click to expand...

...or more people will use pirated software because they don't want to pay for something that is not up to par! Something for software companies to think about.
 
Paalikles said:
Please try to remain consistent

If developers, as you claim, produce substandard games - then switching from one medium to another (from PC to xbox, SP or whatever) should not really improve the situation - assuming that developers follow the same basic logic that you outlined.

The same logic which I objected to quite extensively...
Click to expand...

True to a certain point, but programming for a console is much, much easier. The hardware will always be the same in that case and you will not need to design for different sound and video cards, RAM, processors, etc.
 
Well, I have to get out and say this. I knew when I pre-ordered this game, that it was not going to run on my computer with the system reqs listed. Thats ok I thought, Its six years old, I need a new one anyway. I picked it up the Wednesday it arrived in the store, and installed it on my brother's computer. It didn't run well, but that was because the minimum memory requirements for an XP machine was 512, not 256 as it said on the box. After getting a memory upgrade for his computer, the game runs fine. 2.4 Ghz, graphics card is a little low end, so It can't be played with the highest graphics settings, but I could play it.

On a whim I installed it on my computer, fulling expecting the game to laugh at me and ask "are you kidding?" (850 Mhz Pent III). What happened surprised me, it actually ran, not only that, it ran better than it did on my brother's XP machine. Thus re-enforcing my opinion of Windows XP Home. Now I am not advocating that someone with less than a GHz go out and get it, as mine might just be a fluke. But the fact of the matter is, with custom built computers out numbering "store-brand" computers, they will never get this game to run on everyone's configuration. It shouldn't do this, but different hardware reacts differently with each other, and is going to affect game performance. Keeping your computer as uptodate as possible also helps.

Yes people might see this as making excuses for the developers, but as I see it, they are much more deserving of excuse making than the publishers. They actually wrote the game, they were constrained by an artificial time limit, they were told by the publishers to get it out now or else. What you see is a product of the publisher not caring about whether the game worked or not, just their bottom line. Sadly, it happens all the time, I used to hope that Activision was alone with their lousy quality control. Lets just hope that 2k allows more than one patch.:lol:
 
As my final point I would like to say that there has to be a point where you have to draw a line over how much you try to get a game to work.

Personally I have an above reccomended spec for this game and I have tried all the fixes and the patch.

I would like to think that I have spent above the average time a random person would spend trying to get the game to work, and it has only been at this point that I have had a rant.

This is not a knee-jerk reaction, I have tried for nearly month to get the game running and when you are up at 2am, trying the 15th system tweak that day you realise that this game should have been developed better/for longer.

Whatever happened to people striving for perfection?

Apathy rules.
 
So, if you couldnt make it run, How can you say this ...



Quote:
Originally Posted by pdathert
Dear Firaxis,

The gameplay is not drastically different to Civ I ....

?
Click to expand...

Because I have played hotseat on my friends laptop, although we had to quit eventually due to lags and ctd.
 
pdathert said:
Dear Firaxis,

Can I just say that the ongoing debacle that has been Civilization 4 has made me extremely sad. Be aware that I have been a massive Civilization fan ever since I played the first glorious instalment on my 386-sx.

However like any great Empire yours has expanded and has now fallen foul to many failings - the worst of these being: (in no particular order)

1. Forgetting your roots. Civilization has always been for the vast majority of it’s fans, almost 100% about gameplay. So why do we have this new game that is so intensive on our systems (for no real gameplay gains), and thus it is in no way accessible to all who want to play it. The gameplay is not drastically different to Civ I and rightly so, you had a winning formula then and you still do now. I just don’t understand why over 15 years the game is getting much much more system intensive when the gameplay has moved on at nothing like the same level. This is a TBS! It should not be killing our computers to play. Anyone who wouldn’t sacrifice a bit of zoom-ability for a bit more playability/accessibility is a fool.

2. All this ties in to point 2, the specifications on the box are nothing short of a lie. People are reading the box and thinking “yep, got all that” and buying the game and it is disappointing them horribly.

3. Also why release the demo AFTER the game? I know why, so people would buy the game and find that they cannot run it properly, instead of getting a free demo and coming to the same conclusion, it’s seems like it is all about £££’s in the bank!

4. Again to tie in with 3. The game is not finished. Sure it is just about playable for some people but it is not really acceptable IMO. December should have been the release date and November the demo release. Again money driven.

5. Testing, a disgrace.

6. You haven’t learnt any of your mistakes from the Civ 3 release. Or at least you haven’t cared about them.

7. Too complacent. People are going to buy anything you produce with the “Civ” tag because of the brand name, that basically means your quality doesn’t have to be as high, you know it, I know it.

8. Bug-ivilization

9. Patch-ivilization

10. Patch Patch Patch-ivilization.

11. Bin-ivilization


I have spent HUNDREDS of hours trying to get this game to work. I have friends who have similar but different issues, not one of us is satisfied with your efforts.

EARN YOUR MONEY, or don’t bother in future.

There shan’t be peace in our time,

P Atherton.
Click to expand...


12. Yes i am an idiot, and i dont stop complaining.......

Moderator Action: You may disagree with him, but keep in mind that trolling is not allowed. Warned.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
 
My game ran fine out of the box. Civ4 does require better hardware than the previouse releases. However, I don't think the requirments are unreasonable.

Rick
 
Paalikles said:
Edit: for the heck of it, here are some of my system specs:

www.srtest.com said my system was sufficient for minimum and recommended settings
I run win xp, with SP2
Athlon XP2100+ = 1.77Ghz
512MB of DDRam (which anyone experienced with hardware will tell you is certainly not new. I would rather call it "antique")
20+GB of harddrive space
non-optimal swapfile
samsung dvd rom (since I am European, the game is on a dvd)
Hansol 730E (probably not even for sale anymore, and certainly not the best monitor for its time either)
nvidia based Gforce FX5700, which is a 128MB graphics card. This card was not sufficiently updated in terms of drivers, till recently

All of these are more than sufficient "according to the box", and by my playing games without crashes, proven sufficient in real life as well.


A key understanding is: software producers are not hardware producers. There are variants of the same hardware products, and IMPOSSIBLE to test absolutely every hardware configuration.
Click to expand...

I agree, my PC is also more than sufficient "according to the box" and it too plays without crashes.
 
Little mishaps and problems happen here and there. Now with the new patch, the game actually works just fine with many, and I had only had one problem last night, and that was my fault.

In game projects such as these, bugs, many which might be intolerable, WILL happen, WILL exist, and WILL be patched. The older versions of Civilization were much simpler in terms of coding and engine, and therefore they had less problems. Now, the game has to meet the new customer standarts.

"Bugs, patches! Bugs! It's full of bugs!" and such comments are what I can't stand. OK, if the game is REALLY full of bugs, how come I only came across 1 minor, unimportant one and 1 major one that made my game crash?

I am a veteran gamer, and I have seen many other games with billions, billions of bugs, stuff that were basically gamebreakers. People complained in those games, and the developers were too slow in reacting (and now they killed the game completely, SWG is what I'm talking about), but this case is different.

You don't stab someone to death because they had a pimple growing on their noses now, do you?

Besides, I'm sorry to say but the game works perfectly fine on the computers of the majority and you can't blame Firaxis of leaving their roots because it doesn't work on yours. What if the problem is with YOUR computer my friend?

And I had some "computer reset" problems myself: even worse than CTDs, which I also got occasionally, but did you ever see me complain? I stated on threads dedicated to bugs and such issues that this was happening quite frequently, etc, but I never said "GOOD JOB ON RUINING IT ALL FIRAXIS!", because I find these kinds of statements beyond childish and not well thought.

"YOU'RE DOING THIS FOR MONEY!" is what I'm understanding from your open letter, and my answer is, "NO SH*T!".

There's a saying in Turkish, "You can kill the famed warrior, but you shouldn't disrespect his accomplishemts" (Yigidi oldur hakkini yeme).

Saying Firaxis has done a horrible job, just because they had to release a patch (guess what, EVERY studio releases a patch for their games in the first few weeks after the initial launch!) is unfair.

I have to say, I don't agree with most of what's written in this open letter and I am NOT signing under it. Sorry.
 
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