I think the real problem with Civ V was something that we saw in almost every Civ launch since the third version: each game changes the coreplay so much that it actually needs a lot of balancing and a lot of actual PLAYERS doing the tests.
Civ 3 was like that, Civ 4 was like that and I the only reason I can think of why Civ 5's launch is being so criticized is the fact that Civ 4 was launched 5 years ago and after that we had 2 expansions, whose launchs are our base of comparison.
But we can't compare Civ 5's launch with 2007 smooth Beyond the Sword's. We have to compare with 2005 problematic Civ 4's launch, which most people forgot about. Before we had actual patches turning the game into a pleasant experience, we had unnoficial patches by the community doing all the hard work, and even after the last official patch, most of us still play with unnoficial patches that further improves the AI in some situations.
But was Civ 4 slovenly released? I also don't think so, I just think it had so many gameplay changes that the game needed, again, balance and real PLAYERS doing the tests.
Why am I putting a big emphasis on "real players"? Because no QA or beta testing can be effective enough to substitute the real players of a game, with all their diversity of personalities freely doing what they want.
The hardcore power player will imediately look for clever exploits in the new system, and we are getting a lot of feedback of this type.
The bug catcher player will look mostly for bugs in every inch of the game, doing things that the developers would never think of ("why would someone do something like that?" they might think when they bump into one of this players) because they never intended to make the game be played that way.
The anarchist will start combining things that were never intended to be combined.
The problem with the development of a game is that the ideas are implemented and everyone works around those ideas thinking solely on the purpose it was designed for and possible bugs about the implemention of the idea are treated looking if the implementation does what the idea is supose to do.
When a game is released, crazy gamers like us starts to think about using those implemented systems to do things they weren't designed to do. That's collateral damage my friend, and it is caused by our hunger to conquer the world!
I think most of the Civ V problems fits this immense category. I agree with the statement that more beta testing was needed, but we alse have to speak about a more qualified beta test. And honestly, if you have the men power to fix a game in a couple of months, it's better to release the game to the masses to have the most qualified opinion they can have: the one that comes from thousands of different gamers that could never be in a beta test.
One can argue if this is ethical, and I think it isn't, but it's certainly very efficient in the long run, since the game will most likely become perfected in short time and the community will get a sense of contribution to the state of perfection that the game will acquire. But notice that this is only valid when you, as a developer, is absolutely sure that you can reach this state of perfection in a couple of months. And since Greg's last message about the upcoming patch, I think Fireaxis can.
That's why I think Civ 5's launch was so different than Elemental's. Elemental is broken to the core. Just go to their forums and you will se the phrase "we need a revamped [put any aspect of gameplay here]" a lot. Here, is more about balance and AI improvement. Much simplier.
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