Pay for multiplayer? Boo!

I see, anyone who disagrees with you is a mindless fanboy.

BTW, stack movement is in the game. MP has been polled on in this forum several times and isn't a factor for the majority of players polled, and thus probably wasn't a "standard feature" in the eyes of Firaxis. Finally, the XP doesn't just have MP, it includes other features as well, some of which have already been released inside free patches.

Firaxis has released numerous patches in response to customers requests and complaints within the past year. I don't see that as a bad thing as I found the game quite playable at release. I see it as refreshingly good compared to many companies today.

And what is so wrong with a company looking to make money on their efforts? Without that attitude we would not have any games in the first place, and a bunch of talented people would be writing code for fortune 500 companies instead. It costs money to produce this stuff, and I for one don't begrudge paying a reasonable price and margin for that work that has provided me with hundreds of hours of fun.

 

If you don't want to buy it... then don't. Speak with your dollar. If you think that MP should be in Civ, then don't buy it because it doesn't have it.

With rally points and all that, it sounds like you want a RTS and not a TBS like Civ is. Well, it sounds like Firaxis is listening to guys like you and made a real-time version of Civ in PtW also.

As people have said, if you think MP is a major feature, then don't plan on buying Civ IV, 'cause I can almost guarantee you that it won't have MP. That's just how the series has been developed... without MP.

Your comparison to chess is a good one. Wrong in this case though. Civ is more solitaire than chess. Starcraft could be considered Chess. Civ was designed as Solitaire. Starcraft was designed as chess. That's how the designers intended it be played: by yourself in Civ, and against others in Starcraft.

With that being said, MP is the feature I've been waiting for since I first played the game when it came out. The AI is pretty stupid (smarter than most games, but could be soooooo much better), and I want a real opponent. So no, I'm not praising Firaxis and kissing their feet, I'm just explaining to you why Civ 3 doesn't have MP, and doesn't need to, as far as the purpose of the game goes.

P.S. At risk of being a fanboy (), Civ 2 didn't have stack movement or rally points either.

 

Moderator Action: Any more suggestions from anybody on how to crack civ3/PTW or even suggesting that someone SHOULD do it will earn a ban.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

I really don't know what the big deal is about multi-player versions. You want to play Civ3 with your friends? If I had any friends I wouldn't be playing computer games!

Just kidding, but seriously, who even has the opportunity to play multi-player? You need several computers and a LAN, and I don't have them in my house. This sort of limits the opportunities for multi-player games to college students and people whose employer doesn't mind them using the company LAN to play games. I can't imagine that this would be such a big segment of Firaxis' market that they have to make it a top priority.

 

I have voices in my head. That's all the multiplayer I need.

 

the only way I would be playing multi-player is if it more than one person could play on the same computer, hot-seating it. Other than that, my internet connection could not handle it and neither would my wife.

 

I'm just curious how they are gonig to make MP work where we don't do the majority of time sit and wait

 

With turn time limits and their new 'turnless' system. Don't ask me how that works though, or if it will at all for that matter.

 

1. Stop the frickin whining. It's a wonderful game. Debate that fact if you want, but since there are so many who love it, claiming it's not a wonderful game obviously doesn't make it fact.

2. Gonzo, I think you should be permabanning the pirate-trainers automatically. Hell, I had a thread shut down just for trying to understand the bastards, so why let them breed their ideas?

3. I never, ever, ever expected MP in the first edition, and all power to them for charging for it in the second. Why? How else are they to make money with so many GODDAMN PIRATES around? If you PIRATE THEIVING BASTARDS had put your coddled lives behind you and learn about simple concepts like economics and self-denial, then maybe, just maybe, companies like Firaxis could have planned to have done so well on round one that MP would have been in it....

R.III

 

Does any of you have an ounce of understanding what a large undertaking successfully implementing multiplayer in Civ3 is?

I'm starting to!

 

I agree completely. Anyone who wants to go pirate stuff get the @#($ out of here 'cause I don't want to hear about it.

 

I don't see how you can say that rts games like starcraft are more like chess than tbs games like this. Last time I played chess my friend waited until I completed my turn before he took his.

As for civ2 not having rally points or mp etc. well the first d&d games for computers you had to use punch cards but I don't think if one came out today using that people would be too happy. All I was trying to say is that if firaxis is going to charge the same amount of money for their product as their competitors it might be a good idea to keep up with todays standards in gaming. Doing things like being too lazy to even put in resolution switching via menu, ie making people add commands to the ini file went out of vogue quite a while ago. I completely understand that tbs games have traditionally been the ******** step child of gaming as far as graphics and interface go. Does that mean that consumers should be happy with that as the status quo? After all if tbs games got their act together maybe we would see a lot more titles hitting the shelves. If I were a gaming comapany I would sure take a hard look at why the rts segment has so many more sales than the tbs segment but that's just me. I am not trying to just bash firaxis here, I am pointing some things out in the hope that they come by this forum and take note.

While I see a lot of people telling me to basically shut up about it I don't see any valid points as to why exactly we have to shell out more money and wait quite a while for gaming industry standard things like mp to be added to the game. DOn't bother trying to insult me by implying I play rts games either, yes I do play them and I am not ashamed to admit it. They can be a nice thing to have around when you just have a short time to play.


Lans, well obviously there is a signifigant sector in the market that do have home lans and people that play over lan connections or I am sure there wouldn't be so many products that support lan play. As people buy new systems and find out just how little money they can get by selling the old and throw in a laptop and they end up having home lans. At least that's why I have a four sytem home lan now. Obviously firaxis agrees or why are they adding it to the game?

Richard II wrote...

". I never, ever, ever expected MP in the first edition, and all power to them for charging for it in the second. Why? How else are they to make money with so many GODDAMN PIRATES around? If you PIRATE THEIVING BASTARDS had put your coddled lives behind you and learn about simple concepts like economics and self-denial, then maybe, just maybe, companies like Firaxis could have planned to have done so well on round one that MP would have been in it...."


While I am no advocate of pirating games, I have done some programming and believe me I think anyone who does that for a living deserves to be fairly compensated, I am tired of the industry whining and idiotic methods of dealing with the problem like safedisc etc. I don't want to hear the whining, every intellectual medium that I know of has always had a certain percentage of lost revenue to piracy. Heck ask an Author sometime how he feels about libraries. There are good ways to combat it and bad however. Things like safedisc are bad, things like actually giving people tangible reasons to buy instead of pirate are good. That's one of the things civ gets right, I love having a nice manual instead of a pdf.

As I have said before I am more than willing to pay them to add new content. My problem is with them leaving out what I consider integral parts of the game and then selling them in an expansion.

 

I mean no offense by this. But you said your problem is them leaving out what you consider important. But quite frankly, most people didn't care about MP and wont use it except 3 times or so to test it out. I dont know if this MP will work Games take me days to finish. Over 100 hours if i go for spaceship. I mean i don't know how many people are going to want to sit infront of the Computer to play a full game. True there will be time limit modes but still ... Adding time limits and such on Civ 3 is kindof like making it a demo that allows you to get to the middle of the middle ages.

For me, its no loss that there is no MP. It would be way too much of a hassel

 

What I meant is that chess was designed for you to play against someone else. Civ 3 wasn't.

Despite great sales for games like Civ 3 (#1 for a while, IIRC), TBS games are a more niche-based genre. RTS hit upon a nerve that people like more than games like EU or Panzer General, etc. MP TBS is even worse... my last game of civ spanned 2 hours per day for over a month. 1 long-running MP game of Civ could take a whole day (or longer) to complete... not many people can/want to/will do that kind of thing, which makes MP in TBS more of an extra feature than it is in (sometimes) 5 minute MP RTS games.

It may be industry standard, but it's not Civ-standard or TBS-standard for the most part. That's how it's been, that's how they've been successful, and that's how people like it. Like I said before, in RTS games, games are much shorter, and there's a lot more focus on building and 'real' strategy. Many times in RTS games, it's a rush to build up as many units as you can and then destroy people ASAP. Not much strategy involved there.

Every time someone pirates something like 3D Studio Max, the company loses a lot of money. With file-sharing programs, it's easy to accumulate thousands of dollars of software in a few hours.

As I've said, RTS and TBS are different niches. TBS main focus is against the AI by yourself, and RTS are fun mainly because you can play them in a few minutes or an hour with some friends.

 

While I love Civ3 and play it frequently, I do see that there is a valid argument in zantax's words. I would have loved to see MP without an expansion, though I knew before I bought it there would be none. I get the feeling that Fraxis never really fine tuned the game when it first came out. This can be seen by what the patches accomplish; instead of small issues and some balancing problems, they fix major errors and huge annoyances within the game. It seems to me a little more beta-testing and/or conceptual thought would have revealed most of Civ3's flaws and short comings, though I am very glad to see they put such patches out. For example, it's only in the recent patch they included Fortify/Wake all, a seeming obvious concept. Like I said, I love Civ3 and will continue to play it, but I don’t believe zantax should be all together dismissed, because if everyone would have such expectations in a game, there would generally be a high quality product released.

 

I agree that multiplayer could be considered a "standard feature" nowadays. Especially games with "many players striving for the same goal" if you know what I mean (as the opposite of one player laying a puzzle or something). Even if there is no word about multiplayer on the box I would not be surprised to find it in the game (even though it will not likely be there).

About the tradition of multiplayer in Civ... Civ1 had the followup CivNet. Civ2 was SUPPOSED to include multiplayer from the beginning as far as I can figure, since many of the files were prepared for it. So it was a fair bet that Firaxis would have catched up with themselves and included multiplayer in Civ3. Especially since the multiplayermarket has exploded the last few years. Probably they didn't strain themselves too much to get it in though, since they have all that positive experience of selling each game twice... I'm surprised that not more people have complained about this. Can anyone imagine for example id software selling one bot-version of Quake3 Arena and one multiplayer version?

After I bought Civnet I was sure that Civ2 should have multiplayer support as well, so I ended up as dissapointed as zantax (I bought the game on mailorder, so I never got the chance to read the box).
When I found out that Civ3 didn't include multiplayer I decided not to buy the game. I have tried the "evaluation" version though, but never finished a game. I might buy PTW (unless it requires the original Civ3) if the multiplayer features are better than those in Civ2gold or Civnet.

A few (correction: lot of ) words about the controversial piracy theme...
No matter how the software producers yell about losing income to pirates, piracy is one of the major causes of the incredible development over the last 15 years or so. If it never would have existed I believe that we still would be in say 1995 computer-wise. Both when it comes to hardware, software and general computer use/knowledge.
That is also why I think there aren't many piracy convictions. Officially the companies growl, but they know that "evaluation" copys are their best marketing channel. Sure, maybe they loose some income when some people decide to use the pirate version instead, but hey, marketing costs! And maybe those persons decide to buy their later products, or introduce them into where they get a job when they grow up? The standard proclamation that the prices go up to compensate for illegal copies I don't buy. Even though piracy have increased, a computer game has always costed about the same (in today's money value). What they loose in immediate revenues to pirates they get back in some other way eventually.

To refer to myself as an example I can say that I got a pirate copy of Civ 1. But that led me to buy Civnet and Civ2, and maybe PTW too. I don't think I ever would have bought those without getting hooked on Civ 1 for free. (Admit it, Civ looks BORING on the boxes). The same thing for Quake, where I bought Quake 2 after playing a pirate version of Quake 1. The company I work for has also bought Paint Shop Pro on my recommendation.
Where do you think Microsoft would have been without piracy? Today everyone is expected to know how to handle Microsoft Windows programs like Office etc. Without piracy most people (who still would have bothered to buy a computer) would have bought different low budget programs, if any. And when they start to work they are supposed to handle much more expensive programs that might work in a completely different way. Imagine all the education costs!
And I don't think I have to mention how much the hardware industry have made on piracy...

Of course, it is morally wrong to use pirate copies etc, but there are two sides of it and I thought this side deserved some attention. Two kinds of piracy I will not defend though. One is where you sell or use pirate copies in a commercial interest, and the other is where you know you would have bought the software if the pirate version wasn't available.

I expect some critisism, but I hope I don't get banned for this opinion

 

I salute you, sir.

Overall, though, I have to admit that perhaps I'm just happy with the lower standard...

We'll deal with Zerzes after lunch. I need some solid food in my belly before I take that one on.

R.III