Please don`t pre-order.

[vahouth]

To be 100%, maybe even 1000% fair, what happened with TWR2 was a long time coming.

How so?

 

[Double A]

Why pay people to test your game when players will buy your game and test it for you?

 

[GeoModder]

Why pay people to test your game when players will buy your game and test it for you?

I shouldn't worry about that one. It's merely one of the job descriptions of a QA/PR job slot of the publisher. In this case 2K games.

 

[Sonereal]

How so?

There's been a notable decline in the quality of Total War games. Rome, even if it wasn't buggy as all hell, it still missing plenty of features present in the previous Rome.

I don't know. It just seems like in the case of Total War, their solution to declining quality is to throw more polygons at a model until sales improve.

That, and at least Civilization V was decently running before Gods and Kings, whereas they're milking Rome players for everything they have in the DLC department.

Why pay people to test your game when players will buy your game and test it for you?

"Oh my God, a Civilization VI early access? I sure hope it is super cheap so I-"

$99.99.

Yes, I understand the reasoning. I just don't like it, but hey, the GC3 and PlanetaryA early alphas weren't aimed for people like me anyway.

 

[vahouth]

There's been a notable decline in the quality of Total War games. Rome, even if it wasn't buggy as all hell, it still missing plenty of features present in the previous Rome.

Though what you say is true, it still is not an excuse for the overall mess on the release day IMHO.
And they even tried (pre-release) to justify a 40% increase in budget for the development of the AI.

 

[Sonereal]

Though what you say is true, it still is not an excuse for the overall mess on the release day IMHO.
And they even tried (pre-release) to justify a 40% increase in budget for the development of the AI.

FAIR ENOUGH. You are right actually. I suppose that, despite what certain users in CivV would want you to believe, Civilization V at release was not even in the same country as Rome II.

What I'm saying is that I would be more surprised if Civilization BE came out broken as all hell than if it came out running relatively decent, especially since the jump from V to BE isn't as big as the jump from IV to V and, in the worst case scenario, they can at least look at the other hexed-based Alpha Centauri-expy for what to and not to do at a red light.

 

[NASAROG]

So what are the pre-order benefits anyways?

 

[vahouth]

So what are the pre-order benefits anyways?

6 exoplanet maps based on real exoplanets found.

 

[Flippy562]

hmmm, I get where you're coming from. But I myself, have only pre-ordered games like Madden (once) CoD (once) and Battlefield(3 times). Because those are games that I already knew I was going to buy regardless of paying before or after release.

Have always loved the Battlefield franchise (4 sucks though, still broken), and I just had a big gift card to spend on CoD.

Pre-Orders are definitely worth it, -IF- you already know 100% you're buying it, and IF YOU CAN AFFORD IT, hate people who pre-order and then that they're broke lol

 

[Lord Shadow]

6 exoplanet maps based on real exoplanets found.

I get the feeling they'll sweeten the deal further once we're closer to release, and the game's available for pre-purchase on Steam.

 

[Sonereal]

10% off purchase price if preordered plus a free DLC or two because lulwhynoteverybodyelsedoesthatnow

 

[Nares]

Hmm, I think pre-ordering encourages developers to play safe with game designs, even more than they would anyway.

I'd rather they play it safe with graphics and other glitz features.

 

[jrregan]

I get the feeling they'll sweeten the deal further once we're closer to release, and the game's available for pre-purchase on Steam.

Steam was crushed on several pre-releases in 2013, so they are smart to not offer pre-release until the last possible minute. I personally was so disappointed in the RTW2 pre-release jerk around, that I'm not likely to buy a pre-release ever again.
TCA/Sega took way too long and offered way too many changes before ALL the pre-release options were solidified for RTW2. In fact, I bought the Steam pre-release just to see a month later that TCA/Sega released a much better pre-release in a physical package that I had Steam cancel my pre-release and got that package (the full monty version).

Right now, the offerings are not even being listed except for an anemic map pack.

 

[NASAROG]

6 exoplanet maps based on real exoplanets found.

Um, really? That's a terrible pre-order.

 

[Fabien]

I've already pre.ordered CivBE exactly because I want to Support Firaxis.

I buy a lot of games from different Genres and Studios and if you honestly think Firaxis is going to rip you off by releasing a horribly broken product then you obviously should no longer buy any games at all, because most games will and have been released in far worse conditions than any title from firaxis.

You can go to every game Forum and all People say is that Producer X is releasing only untested garbage that should never have reached the beta stage.

 

[Karmah]

I am ambivalent about preordering , and in my opinion of Fireaxis in general.
On one hand , their games are great and never disapointed me. The Civ V serie or X com were loads of fun and gave me litteraly thousands of hours of gaming.
Now , they suck at patching. Really , in a world were good and dedicated gaming company update their games at least once a month , fireaxis is just the laziest bunch of coders (or at least appear to be so) .
They are still game breaking exploit like for instance the research overflow exploit that have been known for like forever , affect a central mechanism in the game (your tech advance) and yet has never been corrected properly . Promotions like cover on range units or the planes promotion that don't work because they affect the wrong stat of the units and hence have no effect in the game whatsoever. That's really amateur hour sometimes.

So great games with zero support. Do they deserve the trust implied by my preorder ? i m still not sold.

 

[Lancor]

Um, really? That's a terrible pre-order.

True, a good pre-order would be 100% the same game as buying on release day, but 10% lower price or some physical boni (print of tech tree, soundtrack etc.)
There is nothing more terrible than the everlasting gutting of games for as many DLCs as possible and the creation of priviliged people with more ingame content than others have.

 

[Sonereal]

Spoiler :

True, a good pre-order would be 100% the same game as buying on release day, but 10% lower price or some physical boni (print of tech tree, soundtrack etc.)

Most normal people buy electronically so I don't know what physical bonuses (not boni, Jesus) I would expect. 10% off seems to be what all the cool kids are doing these days though, plus extra DLC.

 

[bladex]

ok i won't pre-order....i'll just get it day 1

 

[Quintillus]

I think the real question is how long to wait after release until the most annoying bugs are eliminated.

Buying Civ 4 at release: shame on Firaxis. Buying Civ 5 at release: shame on me. Buying BE at release? No way...

That's why I didn't buy Civ5 at release...

To be fair, Civ4 wasn't a disaster at release. The minimum/recommended specs were a bit too low, but it was playable. It just wasn't as polished or fun as Civ3 Vanilla, let alone Conquests, and thus was disappointing. BTS really brought Civ4 into its prime. With Civ5, there was a similar cycle (BNW bringing it into its prime, from what I read - still haven't bought it myself). Although again, Civ5 wasn't a disaster near release. You could make a lot worse choices than Firaxis when pre-ordering a game. Think SEGA/Creative Assembly, EA, whoever developed Diablo 3, etc.

But in general, I do agree that it's best to wait till after launch. Chances are the 10% savings will not add up to more than the amount you'd save by not buying duds at release. And there's not much lost by starting playing a fortnight later after reading some real reviews. Case in point: everyone who was on the fence and decided not to buy R2:TW or SC5 at launch is very glad they didn't. And those who buy a game that is smooth at launch 2 months later? Not much lost.