Thanks to the production team for making changes in a day or so and fooling us fools

[oSiyeza]

The worst thing is that it is not a part of the paid pass. It is free. Can you imagine going off on the internet calling people lazy and "I don't like their attitude" when they work to give you FREE stuffs?

I know its free, I also know they advertised meaningful free patches with exciting new content in the pass and this does not have new content and it is barely enough to qualify as meaningful.

Internet gaming culture is so toxic.

Minimum effort is less than I expect from Fxs, that is all Im saying.

Funded critizism is not a toxic actitude.

 

[CaptainUnknown]

While the undisclossed changes are potentially interesting, they are also potentially lazy inconsecuential stuff.

Lets be honest, the full patch looks like 2 days of work of an intern: Change some values in the in the amenity tables, put a small function with a random line in the code for the trees, some minor changes in the UI that add next to nothing and some tuning in some of the broken apocalypse mechanics to make them a bit less broken... Some other number tunning and ready to go.

This was advertised as a meaningful contet update in the season pass, and the team referred to this as having two major features added...

If this is not trying to advertise an empty featureless update as something worth a month of work for a AAA dev team dont know what it is.

It is only more frustrating, because the previous free update (like it or not) added a lot of new content. And it seems they put less and less effort in each subsequent patch of the pass.

This is not a dramatic reaction or complaining for the sake of it, this is just calling atention to a lazy careless work.

Not sure you are a developer or not, but I think your expectations of development are not accurate. Especially since this a AAA studio. Changes would need to be code reviewed, tested, etc. Then a release candidate made and that is tested. For Civ, we know there are different platforms as well so the package needs to be transferred to the porting studio. To give the porting team time to work you need to cut your release candidate weeks early. If there is a bug along these stages you have to fix and do it all over again. It's not like they finalized the build that we got today just yesterday.

Additionally, this is a minor feature patch. In software development it's common to have multiple branches, I doubt every single dev is working on every single patch together. There probably are only a few devs on these smaller patches, since the bigger ones, (Civ releases) would take more time.

Another thing to think about, after changes are made, someone needs to play test them to see how they feel to the player. So even if changes were made in 1 day, the product needs to be verified as enjoyable, which could take countless additional days.

Just a perspective to keep in mind. AAA studios probably have more processes in place as well, which hinder quick turnarounds.

 

[darkace77450]

Lets be honest, the full patch looks like 2 days of work of an intern

What an insultingly disingenuous assertion. If you honestly believe that a single intern is responsible for this patch - that the changes weren't discussed, play-tested, and iterated upon then I don't know what to tell you.

 

[zhugejingqi]

This free update is likely to give away free bugs.Even though they always do

 

[oSiyeza]

What an insultingly disingenuous assertion. If you honestly believe that a single intern is responsible for this patch - that the changes weren't discussed, play-tested, and iterated upon then I don't know what to tell you.

Not sure you are a developer or not, but I think your expectations of development are not accurate. Especially since this a AAA studio. Changes would need to be code reviewed, tested, etc. Then a release candidate made and that is tested. For Civ, we know there are different platforms as well so the package needs to be transferred to the porting studio. To give the porting team time to work you need to cut your release candidate weeks early. If there is a bug along these stages you have to fix and do it all over again. It's not like they finalized the build that we got today just yesterday.

Additionally, this is a minor feature patch. In software development it's common to have multiple branches, I doubt every single dev is working on every single patch together. There probably are only a few devs on these smaller patches, since the bigger ones, (Civ releases) would take more time.

Another thing to think about, after changes are made, someone needs to play test them to see how they feel to the player. So even if changes were made in 1 day, the product needs to be verified as enjoyable, which could take countless additional days.

Just a perspective to keep in mind. AAA studios probably have more processes in place as well, which hinder quick turnarounds.

I have been programming for 20 years. I have a PhD in computer science and teach video game design in college. Which I think qualifies to judge the ammount of effort used here.

My comment was not a passionate or unfunded critic. My critizism is based on my personal assesment of the effort used to create the patch. That is all.

Im not saying the patch is a scam, I just think they used the minimun effort for a patch they though they could use, and that I expected more.

 

[zhugejingqi]

If it is difficult, I believe all fans can understand. However, it is difficult to ignore and put down the self boasting, exaggerating and a certain degree of laziness.

 

[DogeEnricoDandolo]

What about professional ethics mistakes defined as taste?Please explain this definition earlier. A lot of the self righteous definition of garbage turns out to be a gross mistake, and we've been waiting for months without fixing it.

Not sure if this mumbo jumbo is even remotely qualified as English, grammatically and semantically.

I know its free, I also know they advertised meaningful free patches with exciting new content in the pass and this does not have new content and it is barely enough to qualify as meaningful.

Again, define "meaningful", because this patch is definitely "meaningful" to everyone except for you and the OP. They never advertised how big or small these in-between patches would be. They only said there would be monthly patches, which they delivered.

This free update is likely to give away free bugs.Even though they always do

Yup, so let's complain for a bigger patch for even more bugs. You literally just outplayed yourself. The only way to not introduce new bugs is to not update at all, just like the people who don't make mistakes are the people who don't work.

 

[oSiyeza]

Again, define "meaningful", because this patch is definitely "meaningful" to everyone except for you and the OP. They never advertised how big or small these in-between patches would be. They only said there would be monthly patches, which they delivered.

Agree, and I think that despite of using my personal assesment of what is reasonable to expect from a AAA studio that employs hundreds of people. It is not hard to see that they used much less time and resources in this update compared to the previous free one. That is the only thing Im saying.

 

[zhugejingqi]

Not sure if this mumbo jumbo is even remotely qualified as English, grammatically and semantically.

Again, define "meaningful", because this patch is definitely "meaningful" to everyone except for you and the OP. They never advertised how big or small these in-between patches would be. They only said there would be monthly patches, which they delivered.

Yup, so let's complain for a bigger patch for even more bugs. You literally just outplayed yourself. The only way to not introduce new bugs is to not update at all, just like the people who don't make mistakes are the people who don't work.

If you're laughing at me using Google translated English, whatever you want.It may be due to the poor English of the president and his wife.

 

[bbbt]

I've said this before, but it's clear most of their programming/engineering development resources are going somewhere else (like a new game engine/engine version - whether Civ or not Civ). NFP is thus utilizing resources (Art, Production, QA) that are more under-utilized while the core engineering team finishes their work. This is pretty normal in game development, and in fact helps said resources be kept as full time employees instead of temp/contracted ones.

So this patch is perfectly inline with my expectations, and I'm fine with it.

Agree, and I think that despite of using my personal assesment of what is reasonable to expect from a AAA studio that employs hundreds of people. It is not hard to see that they used much less time and resources in this update compared to the previous free one. That is the only thing Im saying.

The previous free patch was mostly Red Death content, which appears to be a pet project of their Networking Engineer. Who may have also had some downtime before scaling up for the multiplayer for whatever is next (and frankly could be using it as technical POC for the next engine/engine version).

 

[AriochIV]

It's a free patch. Anyone who was expecting something exciting simply hasn't been paying attention.

 

[darkace77450]

I know its free, I also know they advertised meaningful free patches with exciting new content in the pass and this does not have new content and it is barely enough to qualify as meaningful.

Quite a few veterans here seem to be quite excited about the random techs and civics. And if you don't think the change to amenities is "meaningful", then I can only conclude that you and I have different notions of what the word means. Because that change, though subtle, is likely to have quite an impact on the way the game is played.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I've said this before, but it's clear most of their programming/engineering development resources are going somewhere else (like a new game engine/engine version - whether Civ or not Civ). NFP is thus utilizing resources (Art, Production, QA) that are more under-utilized while the core engineering team finishes their work. This is pretty normal in game development, and in fact helps said resources be kept as full time employees instead of temp/contracted ones.

So this patch is perfectly inline with my expectations, and I'm fine with it.



The previous free patch was mostly Red Death content, which appears to be a pet project of their Networking Engineer. Who may have also had some downtime before scaling up for the multiplayer for whatever is next (and frankly could be using it as technical POC for the next engine/engine version).

Yeah, this patch (even though yes is probably smaller) is more interesting to me than the one fixing red death, which I don't play. Yes the changes are minor tweaks but they could end up to be quite meaningful for your typical playthrough, moreso than even a sexy new building or whatever.

 

[oSiyeza]

I've said this before, but it's clear most of their programming/engineering development resources are going somewhere else (like a new game engine/engine version - whether Civ or not Civ). NFP is thus utilizing resources (Art, Production, QA) that are more under-utilized while the core engineering team finishes their work. This is pretty normal in game development, and in fact helps said resources be kept as full time employees instead of temp/contracted ones.

So this patch is perfectly inline with my expectations, and I'm fine with it.

The previous free patch was mostly Red Death content, which appears to be a pet project of their Networking Engineer. Who may have also had some downtime before scaling up for the multiplayer for whatever is next (and frankly could be using it as technical POC for the next engine/engine version).

Agree and Im happy you found your expectations met. I didnt. And I think is reasonable to expect they use enough resources for the pass as to deliver good content. Is fine if you think is good enough, I just had higher standards that were not met. And I think they were not unreasonable ones.

Yeah, this patch (even though yes is probably smaller) is more interesting to me than the one fixing red death, which I don't play. Yes the changes are minor tweaks but they could end up to be quite meaningful for your typical playthrough, moreso than even a sexy new building or whatever.

Quite a few veterans here seem to be quite excited about the random techs and civics. And if you don't think the change to amenities is "meaningful", then I can only conclude that you and I have different notions of what the word means. Because that change, though subtle, is likely to have quite an impact on the way the game is played.

My critic was based only on the effort and care Fxs is using and the ammount of content. Not on my preferences or liking regarding the type of said content. I tried to be as objective as posible.

 

[Kwami]

The idea that an intern did the whole patch in two days is just nonsense. Anton even talked about how he had originally tried to get the random tech tree working back in Gathering Storm and ran into a bunch of issues with the UI and other systems and so had the shelf the idea. So, it took at least Anton and the UI folks to get that one feature working. I'm sure that it took another small group of folks to get the wonder picker working. And then the people who had to implement the other minor changes (amenities, etc.) and whoever did all of the bug fixes and "various AI improvements" and the like. And then the QA folks. And then the folks at Aspyr that ported the new patch to each platform. And then...

So, yeah, OK Mr. PhD. An intern did it in two days. Nonsense.

 

[oSiyeza]

An intern did it in two days. Nonsense.

It was a simile regarding the effort used in the patch. Not to be taken literally as should have been clear when I used the words "it looks like". However, what I say is that for a AAA studio, the work used in this patch is disappointing for me to say the least.

OK Mr. PhD

I stated my credentials since it was relevant to respond to comments that mentioned them and they are not private or confidential. If you find it worth mocking, you are welcome to do so.

If you are pleased to indulge yourself into an adhominem, instead of trying to argue that what was released had indeed a comparable amount of effort to the previous free patch, where in addition to similar balance changes, they added for RD new units, new factions, new AI, new abilities, new UI to fit those additions, new voice lines, an observer mode, significant changes to beliefs and Kick Voting for multiplayer you are welcome to do so as well.

 

[AntSou]

What about professional ethics mistakes defined as taste?Please explain this definition earlier. A lot of the self righteous definition of garbage turns out to be a gross mistake, and we've been waiting for months without fixing it.

I'm of the opinion you're being overly dramatic.

 

[Josephias]

Hmm.. It is for sure they did not employ hundred of peoples (I won't expect the current Civ team being greater than 30 people, with much of them set on a two-month schedule for the bigger updates, wich may leave less than 10 people actually working on these mid-term patches), and I think the amenities piece is what may have taken most of the time. Not in coding effort, of course, but in fine-tuning the numbers (*if* they did so). That may have implied several test games with several setups, which actually takes its time... but that means they have been paid to play civ

I agree, however, the Red-death season 2 update seems to have more work in it: new models, new abilities, new factions... it is an expansion of its own, for a mini-game, true, but still an expansion. Indeed, it features some small UI improvements (as a "linked unit" unit card, in example, that I do not know for what reason have not made to base game). But I guess RDs2 had been on the works for more time, even if just internally as a passtime, and it was just polishing in delivering for the patch. Also, I've already stated, my mind was already made that august, summer-holiday, patch was to be underwhelming. I actually don't know if it can be taken as a measure for all future free patches (altough i'd expect December's pre-christmas update to be in-line), so for me its a let's see if they can convince us in October.

 

[Morgawr]

This thread should be merged with the patch discussion thread

 

[BrotherInJah]

Agree, and I think that despite of using my personal assesment of what is reasonable to expect from a AAA studio that employs hundreds of people. It is not hard to see that they used much less time and resources in this update compared to the previous free one. That is the only thing Im saying.

20 years in business and you have no clue how project's life looks like??? Obviously they work parallerly on next civ, new content etc. It's not like they waited for patch release only to finally work on something else. Jeez man, stop this unjustified rant..