So why did you buy this game?

[Raider]

I think the issue people are having is that budget priorities seem such that they don't lead to a good game in the end. Ad budget, teaser movie budget but at the same time no attention given to the AI and relatively little is spend on testing and making sure that gameplay is top notch. Obvious issues such as trade routes being at the same time OP and a huge bother to manage should never make it past a good testing stage.

 

[Manannan]

Well they are doing themselves a disservice, the easiest way around incomplete games is to wait and see if they become complete and buy them for five dollars on Steam sale.

That's 45$ less than what they'll get if they get it right at launch.

Can't remember when I last bought a game full price to be honest. The prices seem to drop within months post release, so its not like you're waiting forever. I bought XCOM, Civ V and GnK for 20$ on an Amazon sale. *shrug*

You say this as if $45 is a huge investment. Not everyone cares about stretching their entertainment dollar that far.

 

[Manannan]

I think the issue people are having is that budget priorities seem such that they don't lead to a good game in the end. Ad budget, teaser movie budget but at the same time no attention given to the AI and relatively little is spend on testing and making sure that gameplay is top notch. Obvious issues such as trade routes being at the same time OP and a huge bother to manage should never make it past a good testing stage.

I want to harp on this again; who the hell beta tested this game? Did the beta testers not understand the point of being beta testers, was their just so much to fix that stuff like this just slipped by, or what exactly? I was befuddled that as far as MD's previews he was abusing things like the trade routes and they STILL made it to the final release. How did no one pick up on that way earlier and say "hey guys, these need a nerf something fierce"? I'll accept that not everyone working on the game is going to have the time/ability to play a bunch of diety games to get a feel of where the issues are, but still, how did they not find one dude/dudette to power game this for a bit to find all the glaring imbalances and exploits?

 

[Joch]

I bought it because I liked Civ5 and science fiction. Very happy with my purchase so far, played close to 5 hours today. Something about this game just sucks you in, every game is different.

I may be in a different budget category, but so far I have put in about 35 hours into this game for a $45 investment which makes it very profitable on a entertainment hour per dollar basis. $45 is nothing, I spend more than that on a gas fillup, taking my wife out, on a ski day pass, cable monthly fees, etc.

 

[Drowsy Emperor]

Those two posts are conspiracy theory, nonsense crazy talk.

Do publishers cut content to be sold later as DLC because $$$$? There may be some unscrupulous examples in the past, sure, but doubtful. Games have budgets. Only so much fits into that budget. Things get cut. Pre-orders meet or exceed expectations so a budget is created for DLC. A budget that would not have been present if pre-orders were weak. Cut items can than be implemented later in DLC thanks to the new funding.

Even day 1 DLC has a separate budget from a core game, but Firaxis isn't doing that, unless you count the exo planets, which was a freeby preorder marketing gimmick, primarily - not meant as a money-maker perse.

I can guarantee no designer, and most publishers, are not cutting features to sell later. I wish more developers followed cdprojeckt red and produced DLC's as thank you gifts, but most companies are concerned about profits, but not so much to actually actively try to cheat their audience.

If you think developers are this evil, why do you buy games and why are you here on a forum supporting games?

It makes much more sense to me to pre-plan and designate a part of the in game content to sell separately as DLC. No one's ever going to convince me that extra armor packs, or weapon packs and similar junk is justified in costing 5$-10$ and that its anything other than a cash grab intended for people already hooked on the game.

Personally I don't particularly care since I don't buy a game until its on sale and by that time the DLC is usually integrated into it.

 

[Drowsy Emperor]

I want to harp on this again; who the hell beta tested this game? Did the beta testers not understand the point of being beta testers, was their just so much to fix that stuff like this just slipped by, or what exactly? I was befuddled that as far as MD's previews he was abusing things like the trade routes and they STILL made it to the final release. How did no one pick up on that way earlier and say "hey guys, these need a nerf something fierce"? I'll accept that not everyone working on the game is going to have the time/ability to play a bunch of diety games to get a feel of where the issues are, but still, how did they not find one dude/dudette to power game this for a bit to find all the glaring imbalances and exploits?

Its quite obvious they intended trade routes to work as they do now. The point is to make the game even more accessible by providing an easy way to compensate for bad play.

Even an idiot could see that a massive influx of free resources undermines the value of tile yields, worker optimization and strategic city placement - making the game easier overall.

Since I don't think they're idiots I can only conclude that it was intended all along.

 

[CaptainPatch]

I have bought four new releases in the last year:
World in Flames by Matrix Games
Age of Wonders 3 by triumph Studios
To End all Wars by AGEOD
and this.

You might want to look at Endless Legend. Sort of a "Civ meets Heroes of Might & Magic". Also not particularly balanced, but exploring each of the different factions is kind of fascinating.

Did the beta testers not understand the point of being beta testers, was their just so much to fix that stuff like this just slipped by, or what exactly?

Did they even do any betatesting? I never heard of a call for betatesters. (Of course, I was late to the party.) The final product certainly feels like it was never betatested. Of course, it may very well be that the developers only "heard" the feedback they wanted to hear and ignored the rest. Also of course, their thinking may have been, "Any problems we can fix by issuing a patch. Or the patch after that one if need be." Hard to imagine diehard Civ players totally giving up on the franchise, no matter how many problems surface. (They have this addiction to feed. Bad crack is still crack.)

 

[Drowsy Emperor]

Endless Legend and Age of Wonders 3 seem to be poorly optimized. On my i7-3632QM and ATI 8750M (laptop) both of them tend to crawl on anything other than the lowest settings, while I can run most new games with everything turned up to the max.

AoW 3 isn't really my type of game but EL is worth a spin or two.

 

[Roxlimn]

Its quite obvious they intended trade routes to work as they do now. The point is to make the game even more accessible by providing an easy way to compensate for bad play.

Even an idiot could see that a massive influx of free resources undermines the value of tile yields, worker optimization and strategic city placement - making the game easier overall.

Since I don't think they're idiots I can only conclude that it was intended all along.

I had no expectations other than a Civ-type game. I've been a player since Civ 1. I appreciate all the Civs in their incarnations. Each one has a personality and is good at what it expresses.

I agree with Drowsy Emperor in that the team is obviously shooting for something different in their interpretation of the TR mechanic. I DON'T want it to just be CiV BNW in Space. I already have that game. I can boot SMAC-tpe mods for it. I don't need CivBE to be that game.

I want it to be a new game with new concepts and new ideas. TRs as a core expression of a city's economy is certainly novel and interesting.

 

[BSPollux]

What were you expecting, really what where you expecting?

I hoped it would be like Serious Sam

 

[tzaari]

Do publishers cut content to be sold later as DLC because $$$$? There may be some unscrupulous examples in the past, sure, but doubtful. Games have budgets. Only so much fits into that budget. Things get cut. Pre-orders meet or exceed expectations so a budget is created for DLC. A budget that would not have been present if pre-orders were weak. Cut items can than be implemented later in DLC thanks to the new funding.

Even day 1 DLC has a separate budget from a core game, but Firaxis isn't doing that, unless you count the exo planets, which was a freeby preorder marketing gimmick, primarily - not meant as a money-maker perse.

I can guarantee no designer, and most publishers, are not cutting features to sell later. I wish more developers followed cdprojeckt red and produced DLC's as thank you gifts, but most companies are concerned about profits, but not so much to actually actively try to cheat their audience.

If you think developers are this evil, why do you buy games and why are you here on a forum supporting games?

I think you are mostly correct. However, when you have a game that you know is going to make profit, then it is much harder for outsider to know if things are left out because of budget reasons or because they are designed to be introduced in expansions and dlc:s and generate more profit.

Firaxis is relatively old company in gaming industry. The older any company gets, the less there is those original people around who found it and the more it becomes like any company. They have to make the plans for what the game content is going to be, so why not include profit-perspective in that design-phase? That's what business is meant to be anyway, generating as much profits as possible for the share holders of the company?

It can produce worse games with less content in it, but I would not call it cheating their customers. It's not like they left out the most of the aliens from the game that was marketed to have aliens in it. But you can't bypass a thought that they had a complete game (Civ5) to scramble around and then make a new game out of it.

Spoiler :

"FOR TOP SELLING SID MEIER'S CIVILIZATION: BEYOND EARTH, ALL NEW DLC 'MISSING ALIENS', COMING IN THIS CHRISTMAS! ONLY 14,99$"

Sorry, just found out this thought funny.

Witcher 3 is one of the few games I have pre-ordered. That is purely because I trust that that CDProject Red is going to make the game out of passion for games and not drop out stuff to make more profit. I think that is pretty much how any game companies start and why most of their early products are most liked. They tend to be more complete products at their time, before big money kicks in and passion gets kicked out.

 

[m15a]

People are meaning two different things when talking about content being left out for DLC. Either that the devs planned to not implement a feature until after release or that they actually implemented it but then cut it. I think Lucius is objecting to someone claiming that the DLC was ready before launch. That doesn't mean they didn't plan to profit from DLC later.

 

[grant2004]

From the initial description of the game I thought that some of the decisions that had been made would make the AI more capable of fighting competently. This isn't to say I expected the AI to be smarter, that's clearly not going to happen until Civ6 if ever (sigh), but I thought the game would be easier for the existing AI to play.

In particular the purity affinity sounded very AI friendly, stronger units would give them a little more leeway to do stupid stuff. They might even be able to handle supremacy, because conventionally the AI compensates for less skill with larger armies, which should mean more adjacent friendly units.

I also thought that having air units early in the tech tree would benefit the AI.

Those theories didn't pan out...

 

[Manannan]

Did they even do any betatesting? I never heard of a call for betatesters. (Of course, I was late to the party.) The final product certainly feels like it was never betatested. Of course, it may very well be that the developers only "heard" the feedback they wanted to hear and ignored the rest

At risk of sounding like I've got my tinfoil hat on a bit too tight I'm concerned they've established an "old boys' club" of beta-testers they keep going back to, and that said old boys' club don't particularly care, or don't want to potentially rock the boat. With all due respect I don't know why someone like MadDjinn was asked to beta test BE instead of some other seemingly more engaged personalities. Especially frustrating when MD does a stream with Pete and I get the feeling he's bringing up balance issues he has been fully aware of for some time, but has only brought up with them that day. :/

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Beta testing isn't as easy as it sounds.
It is quite possible that the issue had been reported, but the devs failed to fix them for the release. The reasons for that can be manyfold - I, for one, have even witnessed other cases where the flu was involved.

 

[Gort]

Beta testing isn't as easy as it sounds.

For Beyond Earth, it feels like the game wasn't played even once by someone who had played Civ 5. I spotted stuff like the trade route balance being completely out of whack, ships getting killed in one shot by everything, the horrible building quest choices, and the awful wonders on my first game. MadDjinn brought some of those up in his pre-release streams. After they nerfed Adept Blue pre-release I was pretty hyped, I figured they were actually on the ball when it came to balancing the game, but instead we got this. Did none of the devs listen to MadDjinn's streams? Did he not tell them about the unbalanced elements?

All that said, the modding community's doing a pretty good job of balancing the game so far. I just need a mod that fixes ship combat and a mod that activates proper AI in multiplayer games and I'm just about set.

 

[Manannan]

Beta testing isn't as easy as it sounds.
It is quite possible that the issue had been reported, but the devs failed to fix them for the release. The reasons for that can be manyfold - I, for one, have even witnessed other cases where the flu was involved.

Not always, no, and I don't expect them to solve every little issue but come on. You couldn't watch some of the streams and go "yep, that's OP, yep that needs to be fixed, yep, someone went off their meds when they thought that was a good idea" without even playing the game? Adept blue only got nerfed AFTER they showed it to everyone and this forum had a how many page thread wondering if it wasn't going to be stupidly OP. You're telling me none of the beta testers could have told them that station was ridiculous before they let it get showed off in a stream? Trade route mirroring got nerfed pretty quickly after all of one stream with MD (again, where it seemed to me like he knew about it well before but only brought it up with Firaxis that day), but trade routes were apparently never touched again despite still being absurdly strong. Come launch day we had mods popping up less than 24 hours after release trying to fix them and that doesn't strike you as something that wouldn't have been hard to fix before releasing the game?

Again, I can't help but wonder if the beta-testers treated it more like early access and didn't ignore their duties. It's not uncommon for people to not understand the difference between the two in this day and age, not exactly a stretch to suggest such a thing. :/

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Well, all I can do is speak for my own experience.

And, no, more often then not beta testers are not slacking off. Devs are smart enough to notice that.

 

[Rakshasa72]

I think blaming the beta testers is a bit out of line. Considering it's purely hypothetical. We will probably not ever know what happened during beta or, how much the devs paid attention to their testers.

Having participated in more then a couple betas myself. I know it can be quite hard to get a message through to the devs about balance issues. Largely, it should be the responsibility of the devs at Firaxis to make sure the lines of communication with the beta testers are good. So either way the blame for success or failure of the beta would fall back to them.

 

[m15a]

Again, I can't help but wonder if the beta-testers treated it more like early access and didn't ignore their duties.

Do you have any evidence at all for this? That is, knowledge about the quality or attitude of the beta testers.

The game being bad isn't evidence for this because there could have been the best beta testers in the world and the game could still be bad (for example, if the programmers are bad or there is no budget to fix bugs).