Quality?

[Baldecaran]

I joined this group here to try to get some help for the startup problem I've been experiencing, but what I see disturbs me. There seem to be dozens, perhaps hundreds of different problems with this game. Everything ranging from CD problems like mine, to XML issues, to the requisite video card glitches, etc. etc. It will probably take me hours to go through all the things listed here to see whether the bug I'm experiencing has been reported before! And the menial tech support I received from take2 has been the typical outsourced nonsense: "please reinstall this and that, please reset your services". I've done all that, of course. And it didn't help, of course.

I must say that this amazes me! Do Firaxis / Sid Meier / Take-Two / etc. have any decent quality control? For a product to have this many bugs so many months after its release is truly astounding! It saddens me to see it, because I loved the Civ games since the beginning. But I guess that's what happens when creativity and intelligence gets diluted by the dumb and careless.

Does anyone else share my feeling of throwing my hands up in the air regarding this pathetic product?

 

[Velvet-Glove]

No, I don't share your view. I'll admit that there does seem to be a number of people who have never found a solution to their problem (and there are lots of issues to do with online gaming connectivity, this is definitely broken) but there is probably a much larger number of people who have had problems but who have overcome them. Given that the game has probably sold many millions of copies by now I would also say that the vast majority of players probably experience little or no problems (multiplayer online issues aside, I'm referring to just running a single user game successfully here).

It seems to me that there are many reasons why things don't work (in no particular order and by no means an exhaustive list):

1. Insufficient or old hardware, users not checking minimum spec requirements (game won't run, runs badly or crashes)
2. Failing hardware, over-clocked hardware, and/or overheating (system instability)
3. Presence of old mods which are incompatible with newer game versions (XML issues)
4. Graphic card drivers - unstable beta versions, old versions (graphical issues)
5. Sound card drivers (error messages, game won't load, garbled sound)
6. Illegal copies of game (won't install, game ends prematurely)
7. Presence of disk copying programs e.g. Daemon tools (piracy protection - game won't install/run when these are detected)
8. Corrupt media (game won't install, disks not recognised, replacement disk/s required from supplier)
9. CD ROM drive incompatibility (one or two specific drives seem unable to read disks, multiple drives causing problems)
10. Updates to operating system, directx etc. not performed

The greatest sources of strife, by far, seem to be graphic card drivers, probably followed by issues caused by installing mods. The former is often solved by trial and error, which is unsatisfactory to be sure, but not the fault of the game programmers if users have not updated their drivers or if the drivers themselves are buggy. Mod problems are puzzling and irritating but a good clear out and re-install often fixes a great many ills.

So don't be disheartened by what you see here. There are one or two seemingly insurmountable problems that may possibly be attributed to game code or design but on the whole I believe the majority of problems are fixable. Whatever your problem is, use a few key words in your search and you could well find instances of people who have experienced the same problem and hopefully who have found a solution. If not then give us as much detail as possible and maybe someone here will be able to help you.

 

[yvovandoorn]

You also have to consider that there are 1000s of different hard ware configurations out there and on top of that 100,000s of different drivers and their many versions. hell not even two ati 9800s are alike.

It is pretty hard to test. Hardware wise its a tad bit more feasible but there are just so many driver versions out there (there have been at least 200 versions of Nvidia's drivers the last 5 years, and probably something similiar for ATi).

hell its not as bad as the macintosh version of the game. That is pretty limited test bed (considering its a single platform) and contained to maybe 40-50 types of machine... but it barely runs on 5% (and 5% of a small market isn't much).