Patch this --immediately!

[Bandobras Took]

Give me a break. Asking them to produce a game that is not functionally-broken is hardly asking for perfection.

Originally Posted by mrt144
point: dont offer a feature in settings that is broken or unbalanced from day 1. to say that one shouldnyt play certain settings that are offered because they are broken means they should be fixed before being offered

No matter how you look at it, that's asking for the game to be absolutely mistake-free. So far, in this thread, I've seen one issue (the length of two out of several espionage missions) that's broken when played on an optional speed.

Does it need to be fixed? Sure.

Does that justify comments such as

I doubt millions of people bought this in the first week it came out buddy, and maybe your forgetting that people pay an avarage of 30 bucks or more for this game, they would appriciate it if it was playable

(With which the complainers lent their wholehearted support)? Nope. The game is playable; otherwise you could never have reached the point of finding out that those spy missions were bugged on epic.

Firaxis made a simple mistake that affects approximately 2% of all the content they added. That hardly qualifies as making the game unplayable. It just means one of the options needs to be patched, and that's as old as the "Adventure" game for the Atari 2600, wherein you could get yourself absolutely stuck by misplacing the bridge.

 

[eric_]

I bought an old game of DiabloII and that game has overwhelmed my enthusiasm for Civilization.

Hehe...I love how people say that like it's some slight to Civ . Diablo II is the only game on earth that has engrossed me like Civ, aside from maybe Zelda back when I was a kid. It's just a great, great game. Can't wait for Diablo III (really hope it happens)! I just hope it's not an MMO that you have to pay to play online .

Anyway, my BtS games have been strikingly bug-free (haven't got to corps, but the 'problems' there sound more like a new, complex feature that was regulated too stringent, not so much a bug). This is pretty common for me, though: read about tons of problems, experience none or very very few.

 

[andrewlt]

No matter how you look at it, that's asking for the game to be absolutely mistake-free. So far, in this thread, I've seen one issue (the length of two out of several espionage missions) that's broken when played on an optional speed.

Does it need to be fixed? Sure.

Does that justify comments such as (With which the complainers lent their wholehearted support)? Nope. The game is playable; otherwise you could never have reached the point of finding out that those spy missions were bugged on epic.

Firaxis made a simple mistake that affects approximately 2% of all the content they added. That hardly qualifies as making the game unplayable. It just means one of the options needs to be patched, and that's as old as the "Adventure" game for the Atari 2600, wherein you could get yourself absolutely stuck by misplacing the bridge.

Since the original poster brought up Diablo 2, there was a bug there wherein AoE attacks like static field had a cross like shape instead of a circular shape. The bug was caught by players months after the game was already released. That is an excusable oversight since people took a long time to figure it out.

This bug on marathon could have easily been discovered by 1 QA guy playing a marathon game for an hour or two. That's just unexcusable. You can't release a game with multiple options and just playtest the standard settings and let very obvious bugs into release.

 

[MisterBarca]

No matter how you look at it, that's asking for the game to be absolutely mistake-free. So far, in this thread, I've seen one issue (the length of two out of several espionage missions) that's broken when played on an optional speed.

Does it need to be fixed? Sure.

Does that justify comments such as (With which the complainers lent their wholehearted support)? Nope. The game is playable; otherwise you could never have reached the point of finding out that those spy missions were bugged on epic.

Firaxis made a simple mistake that affects approximately 2% of all the content they added. That hardly qualifies as making the game unplayable. It just means one of the options needs to be patched, and that's as old as the "Adventure" game for the Atari 2600, wherein you could get yourself absolutely stuck by misplacing the bridge.

1. Various Firaxis beta testers have implied and even outright conceded that Firaxis does not even test the Marathon setting. This was a bug that could have been discovered by testing for a few hours, not a few thousand hours.

You are being either ignorant or dishonest in implying that this was a rare, difficult-to-detect bug.

2. How do you come up with the "2%" number? A recent poll, the last time I checked, says about 1/3 of player-base prefers the Marathon setting. And the bug appears in every full game. Wouldn't something like "33" percent, if you had to quantify, be a more accurate number?

Hence, you are also being either ignorant or dishonest in implying that this is a bug that does not affect the game much.

In short, you are either mentally challenged or a liar.

 

[Bhruic]

Don't be silly. The "bug", if that's what you want to call it, is hardly game breaking, and if it really bothers you that much, you can mod it out. There are a lot more serious and genuine bugs that need to be fixed - overly dramatizing this one is pointless.

Further, dishonestly attacking his point just makes yours look that much weaker. It's obvious that the "2%" refers to "content they added". And calling a particular spy mission 2% of the content is overly generous.

Bh

 

[Saluki]

Every Civ game and expansion has had major issues at release. If it bugs you wait until the first major patch before buying. Several thousand players can test a game like this much more extensively than a relative handful of playtesters.

As a general rule, I don't buy any software until its been out for a few days and have checked the forums to make sure it lives up to hype. I did this time though, thanks to the Australian Beta Test.

 

[fishlore]

Wait, wait, wait. So you're telling me.... that there is a bug.... in a video game?!?!? *GASP* Oh my god, how could that happen? Well that's it, I'm never buying a video game again. Afterall, $29.99 and it's not perfect? I had to put a second mortgage on my house for that and they reward me with a bug?!?

Seriously though, welcome to 1980. Bugs happen, live with it.

Game breaking... LOL, my f@#$king @ss. Let's be a little more dramatic please.

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[mrt144]

fishlore, do you use sarcasm because you don't understand the problems at hand or because you dont want to?

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[Truronian]

Marathon speed wouldn't even exist if it weren't for a patch...

Just give Firaxis time. They've made a mistake which they will fix... relentless complaining won't speed up the process.

 

[Bandobras Took]

1. Various Firaxis beta testers have implied and even outright conceded that Firaxis does not even test the Marathon setting. This was a bug that could have been discovered by testing for a few hours, not a few thousand hours.

You are being either ignorant or dishonest in implying that this was a rare, difficult-to-detect bug.

Then it's a good thing I never once implied that.

No, really. Please tell me where I once even hinted that it was difficult or hard to find. I mean, if you're going to call me stupid or dishonest, you should at least be able to back up the opinion.

I wrote: "Firaxis made a simple mistake that affects approximately 2% of all the content they added.

2. How do you come up with the "2%" number? A recent poll, the last time I checked, says about 1/3 of player-base prefers the Marathon setting. And the bug appears in every full game. Wouldn't something like "33" percent, if you had to quantify, be a more accurate number?

I'm certainly glad that people who play Marathon length games account for 33% of the content Firaxis added. But why didn't I get a copy of you in my package? Now, read what I actually wrote. Those two spy missions account for approximately 2% (i.e. two percent) of the content they added (i.e. the content they added).

In other words, I was talking about the content they added. Which should have been clear, as that is what I wrote.

Perhaps if you had tried responding to my post, you wouldn't have come up with:

Hence, you are also being either ignorant or dishonest in implying that this is a bug that does not affect the game much.

Since I never even implied that the bug does not affect the game much, I'm probably not the one being ignorant and dishonest. If you look at my original post, I'm replying to those who have stated:

1) That the game is completely unplayable because of a bug on Marathon speed; and

2) That Firaxis is somehow negligent for making a mistake on release.

As I pointed out, you cannot say the game is unplayable because you have to play the game in order to find the bug.

I also said that obvious errors in a released game are as old as the Atari 2600, and that Firaxis made a simple mistake. Sure, it could have been found if they had tested the Marathon speed more.

However, you could have responded to my post with something reasonably approaching intelligence if you had bothered to read it slowly.

In short, you've lost all credibility by overlooking something completely obvious (e.g. that I wrote "2% of the content they added") while trying to call Firaxis down for overlooking something obvious.

This is known as hypocrisy, and is usually considered one of the worst character traits in existence.

In short, you are either mentally challenged or a liar.

Between the two of us, I'm not the one who completely misread a post and responded with insults instead of a real argument. Given that I am neither mentally challenged nor a liar, it would seem that the flaw lies elsewhere.

 

[frob2900]

Oh come on, the worst issues will obviously be patched! I think it's really unusual for a company to release patches which actually fix gameplay/balance issues (rather than just bluescreen crash bugs) like Firaxis have done with Civ IV, so that's something to be truly thankful for.

With all the bugfinding going on in this and other very active Civ communities I think it's safe to say that the next patch should get rid of the worst issues, so what's with all the aggression?

(And it isn't just "fanboy" talk.. I could list a bunch of games where I had no hope that gameplay issues would be officially fixed, but I've never had this feeling with Civ)

[EDIT]

Cant trust Firaxis to patch it as they left Warlords high and dry.

What was the problem with Warlords? I think the 2.08 patch is extremely balanced and playable...

 

[Methos]

Moderator Action: This discussion can be had without the name calling and insults, so stop it! If you can't, than we'll just close the thread.

 

[doronron]

I agree with Frob. This ranting over an XML file has got way out of hand. It's a game. If you're that upset over it, you really need to find something better to do with your time. More than that, it's a game from a company that gets a decent post release budget from its publisher. They've already stated a patch will be out. You can bet there will be one out.

 

[frob2900]

To be honest, one possible idea might be for someone to put up a home-made "First Aid" XML patch for some of these issues (like was done with the Next War issues), but for me at least I'm guessing that doing so would be redundant as I'm pretty sure we are talking about a week or two max before the Firaxis patch comes out.

 

[largedarryl]

I always get a kick out of how these threads go and how people overreact all the time. I even like it more when they say they are going to play another game that has bugs.

I recal a forum I was in and one guy must have spammed 10 threads about how broken and unplayable the game was. He was going to go and play Medieval II: Total War. This was before any patches were released for MII:TW, and I was laughing to myself because MII:TW had a bug where melee units shield was subtracted from armour during combat. This is a bug that actually took a long time to catch (even by the community) and after this was mentioned everyone on the MII:TW forums said the game was unplayable and went to play a different game.

Todays consumer market is so fickle.

 

[doronron]

To be honest, one possible idea might be for someone to put up a home-made "First Aid" XML patch for some of these issues (like was done with the Next War issues), but for me at least I'm guessing that doing so would be redundant as I'm pretty sure we are talking about a week or two max before the Firaxis patch comes out.

Easy enough. What would be preferrable? An edit to drop the value of the unhealthiness and anger, or an increase in the cost of the two missions?

 

[frob2900]

Easy enough. What would be preferrable? An edit to drop the value of the unhealthiness and anger, or an increase in the cost of the two missions?

Hmm.. I think I remember reading in another thread that the best fix (scaling the effect with game speed but still keeping the 24 turns so it's less but still for the same amount of time) is an SDK issue, so I suppose an XML fix can only reduce the number of turns from 24 (am I correct? I'm not at my BtS computer so I can't dig through the XML).

It's hard for me to guess the best fix before I get at the XML files.. I think it should concentrate on the effect, though, rather than spy mission costs?

 

[doronron]

The thing is scaled by three. The XML is set to 8, so it becomes 24 by 24. Attached is a small mod that drops the XML Poison and Unhappiness counts to 4, so it should be 12 by 12 in Marathon.

Here

 

[MarkM]

point: dont offer a feature in settings that is broken or unbalanced from day 1. to say that one shouldnyt play certain settings that are offered because they are broken means they should be fixed before being offered

Counter-point: to assume that Firaxis must catch every single error before releasing the game is to hold them up to a standard of perfection that the entire human race has consistently failed to achieve throughout its history.

Amen.

This whole is thing is hilarious. I work in the software development field & let me tell you, the players who want six sigma perfection out of the gate, could they please also pay all the money it's gonna take to pay for all that unit testing? They can buy the game for $20k+ per seat (like all the rest of the software in the world for which that level of testing is required, usually in medical field, defense, etc). Then they can have what they want, "it all correct on day 1." And they can pay what that usually costs. Then the rest of us can get it on day 21 & pay the price that befits this kind of software.

But of course you know these people who insist this hugely complex piece of software should be bug free would not actually PAY what it costs to do what they demand. It wouldn't even surprise me if some of them pirated it off P2P!

 

[fishlore]

fishlore, do you use sarcasm because you don't understand the problems at hand or because you dont want to?

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Oh I fully understand the problems. The marathon players (myself included sometimes) will either have to spend the 1.5 minutes it takes to edit their XML file to hold them off until the patch comes, or they'll have to play a different game length like normal or they'll have to set the game aside until a patch comes. The horror!!!

It seriously sounds like this is the first video game a few people in here have played in their lives. Show some patience, the game will be patched in the near future. Life will go on. I promise.