Who will take responsibility?

[Zanmato]

What really surprises me about a lot of these responses, are the people that apparently have perfect copies of Civ4 that run flawlessly on their computers, are spending their time here attacking those of us that are not happy, rather than playing Civ4.

Well first off, I strongly disagree with that. This was a technical forum, now it's just descended into a 'flaming/blaming whoever who disagrees' forum. I'm sorry for the people that have problems with the game. The hardware spec has been grossly overestimated although I know that some users have top spec machines and still have problems. Yes, when it was first released it was a lousy product and yes, the corrupt discs are unacceptable and yes, it is still riddled with bugs. But we, the end-users can do little about it other make our issues known to the developers and hope they put it right as soon as they can. So don't come here and accuse some of us of attacking other members when we are only too happy to help those with problems with the game where we can.

 

[MrCynical]

Please don't take this the wrong way MrCynical... i don't mean any offence, but you do come off super pro-firaxis. I've never heard anyone defend a company like this who isn't somehow related. I'm sure the game is great if it works for you, but no game is good enough to have you hanging out in the tech forum countering every point made against firaxis.

Yeah, I guess I do come over as pro-Firaxis. I just don't like people complaining at people for something that isn't their fault. For those of you who have programming issues, then yes Firaxis deserves your complaints till they fix them, but drop the "game was rushed out" line as this isn't their fault for reasons I've already explained. I don't hang round the tech support forum on a regular basis. The only things I've done in here in weeks are this thread, one short comment in one of Mikesla's similar threads, and the usual dozen repeats a week of how to turn the wonder movies off (that is something Firaxis deserves some criticism for, that so many people need to do this and there's no ingame option). I can assure you I'm nothing to do with Firaxis.

Also, 1,110 posts since october? It's almost a full time job posting that much. If you don't mind me asking, what is it that you do for a living?

I know, I post far too much , but it's mostly in strategy and general discussions rather than here. As for what I do for a living, I'm a student. A lot of the time I'm on here I intended to spend working, but somehow it's very easy to procrastinate...

 

[EricTred]

Unfortunately for you Eric, nobody is going to take any of your posts seriously. You are undermined by your glaringly obvious stupidity:

1) Your "clever" puns (yes, I think everybody got the firASSis one before you put the laughing smiley in)
2) You laugh at your own jokes (did you notice that you're the only one laughing?)
3) Your shocking spelling and grammar (what the hell is a 'gammer' and what is 'flamming'? Did you mean gamer and flaming by any chance?). I think you should look up the word "are" in the dictionary, and when you do, flick through to "our".
4) Rather than back up your arguments with facts (take a look at the member list, there are 23585 users), you choose to use swear words. Well done!
5) You 'bite the hand that feeds you' when you call MrCynical names, he has contributed immensly with helping people find solutions, but I guess you proved him right in the end: "..if you want someone to do something, insulting them is unlikely to help." has he helped you yet?

I would suggest that you seem too young to be playing a computer game that is rated 12+ anyway. Go back to school and learn how to communicate with other human beings without offending them.

Dude your ******** its now confirmed. I'm not here to make a show... I'm here to back up the people who are seriously having problems and are quite frankly..... fed up with companies that produce substandard products and the people who kiss thier arse..... like you. ok .... is that more clear for you ?

And if all you can do is bag me on my spelling and grammar, your even more of a shiithead than I thought yesterday.

edited because i forgot to call him a shiithead!

 

[Porcupine]

Come on people, this is not helpful. This thread was not begun for the hurling of abuse. Making it personal just belittles the valuable contributions on both sides of the discussion.

Admittedly, I began this thread in the Technical Support area because I thought this the most likely to get a response, and it seems that I was right - we have had some heated debate. A full thumbs up to all the members of Civ Fanatics!

So let's get back on thread :

MrCynical: "Take 2 moved the deadline forward a month and Firaxis had no choice but to comply with it."

Why did they have no choice? Surely they are the developers, like Bethesda. If they were to say it was not finished Take 2 would have no option but to delay. In the end, whether it was Firaxis or Take 2, I don't mind. I just want one of their number to acknowledge the problems and give players some assurance that their problems will be fixed and when this can be done.

If a simile helps : I would hate to buy a book, which advertised itself with an English cover, as an English language story but contained crucial plot points in French. Those who happen to be able to read French would be fine and would enjoy the intricacies of a fantastic story, but those, like me, who are capable at English yet do not have any french would be frustrated and feel ripped off that they could get little out of the book.

 

[MrCynical]

Why did they have no choice? Surely they are the developers, like Bethesda. If they were to say it was not finished Take 2 would have no option but to delay. In the end, whether it was Firaxis or Take 2, I don't mind. I just want one of their number to acknowledge the problems and give players some assurance that their problems will be fixed and when this can be done.

Bethseda was an unusual case because they are both the publishers and developers of Morrowind and Oblivion. If Firaxis had simply refused to meet the deadline I think they'd have ended up without a publisher, which would probably have delayed Civ 4 for a very long time. I don't know how the legalities work, but given Take 2 must have been looking to buy Firaxis at that stage they may well have been legally stuck with them. Maybe they would have been better scrapping the release and starting afresh with a new and more competant publisher, if they had that option.

It is a fair point that whoever's fault it is, both Firaxis and Take 2 would be well advised to indicate exactly what they're working on in the coming patch, and a rather more accurate idea of when it will appear.

 

[ice2be]

when I read all of you guys problems I am gratefull that I only had to upgrade my 3D prophet 4500 64MB to a GeFORCE FX 5500 256MB DDR andstill have the time to go downstairs and make me some coffee and fetch me some coockies before the DVD is read by my HLDS GDR-8161B dvd-station

 

[Gorgameth]

Lucky for you.

As for me, my copy of the game regularly crashes to desktop, even after trying all the suggestions. I work at a large computer store, and this game is the first one we've actually set up a warning to our customers not to buy this game.

We've installed it on the demo machines, and I must say that the game itself has experienced problem on 11 of the 16 machines. Because these machines have different configs, and had been restored to factory configuration, we decided the problem could be driver related.

Updating the drivers on all the machines actually fixed* it for 1 HP computer. So we still had 10 to go. We made clones of the drives, and proceeded to install patch 1.09, and the game was fixed* on 3 of the machines. Installing 1.52 onto the patched machines actually brought back some problems on 2 of these machines. As for the remaining 7 machines, 6 of them still had issues.

Bringing back the cloned backup, we installed 1.52 directly. Sadly to say, we were back with the same setup then when we jumped from 1.09 to 1.52.

So, after the upgrade, we were now with: 7 working machines and 9 non-working machines. We figured a 44% success rate was bad, and decided to simply stop selling the game.

We later discovered that applying the patch on 1 of the 5 original working machine actually bugged the game. That did it, and we are now actively warning every customer not to buy Firaxis/Take2 software, as it clearly has programming issues.

We are in the business of Customer Service, and sadly, they have now won the crown for Worst Customer Service.

It takes a lot of time to build up a reliable customer satisfaction, and we didn't wish for Firaxis/Take2 to destroy ours because of their greed.

That is the opinion of me and my staff.

 

[ice2be]

well Gorgameth, my game plays for now...
but for the future i am affraid...
cauze i am gonna buy me a new system in april, its gonna be state of the art, but still what if my brand new shiny machine can't play civ4??
my old one will be sold allready to help funding my new machine

there'll be nothin' left but :suicide:

 

[Philips]

well Gorgameth, my game plays for now...
but for the future i am affraid...
cauze i am gonna buy me a new system in april, its gonna be state of the art, but still what if my brand new shiny machine can't play civ4??
my old one will be sold allready to help funding my new machine

there'll be nothin' left but :suicide:

That is precisely what happened to me, except that I got the new machine right before Civ IV came out. I have even tried swapping out some components with no luck. If it is really hardware then it must be motherboard or CPU related. There just isn't anything else left to try. With all the error reports that Take2 must have received, they must know what the problem is.

I do think the all the "complaining" has done some good.

Now that Take2 (Firaxis is just the name of a Take2 design studio) has realized that spin isn't a cheaper alternative to dealing with a half finished program, they have announced that they are developing a patch to fix the stability problems. I think the reason it is taking so long is because it wasn't until it became obvious that spin wasn't working that the patch was begun.

 

[MrCynical]

Now that Take2 (Firaxis is just the name of a Take2 design studio) has realized that spin isn't a cheaper alternative to dealing with a half finished program, they have announced that they are developing a patch to fix the stability problems. I think the reason it is taking so long is because it wasn't until it became obvious that spin wasn't working that the patch was begun.

You seem incapable of grasping the concept that Firaxis is not responsible for everything that 2K screws up, as was clear from the abuse you threw at Thamer when he told you how the patch was progressing as you've been demanding. He has made it clear that the hold up on the patch is due to 2K's QA, not Firaxis, and there is nothing he can do about it. He'd already done his job on the patch as you've asked, and I don't think your attitude towards him is going to encourage him to work on any future patches. I'm not at all convinced your complaning is helping, and in any case you seem to be pointing it at the wrong people.

As to when work on the patch was begun there is of course no way to be certain, but it has been promised for a couple of months, which would seem a dubious strategy regardless of any "spin" if they weren't working on it.

 

[Gorgameth]

But as a Firaxis employee, couldn't he go to his superior, who could then get in contact with 2k and say "Look, the people are angry, you've got to check this out and release the patch, or at the very least as a beta patch"?

It usually belongs to the customer service department to take these comments to their boss when there are problems, but these people simply don't care. Tech support simply sends in canned responses, and when you've gone through their 3 answers, they restart with the first one. Guess this is what happens when you hire people who've never used computers in their whole life.

I agree that the blame has to be pointed to the proper people. But there is also some guilt associated with knowing a product is faulty, knowing people are angry, and not relaying the information to the proper people. The way its going, people will simply stop buying stuff from 2k (and yes, they'll also stop buying stuff from Firaxis), and the Firaxis people will simply find themselves unemployed. So I ask, would it not be better for them to put pressure into helping their customers, or simply leaving it as is, blaming another branch of the company?

 

[zx1111]

Yes, whether a Firaxis official or it's fanboy agree or not, we all know that Civ 4 has many and persistant vdeo and network problems...
I am playing Civ from Civ II days. and many many other games in last 15 or more years. Among them, not a few had serious and persistant quality problems like Civ4 or worse than this.
From my personal experience, recent game with more problem than Civ4 had is Heroes and Might & Magic IV. But that was 4 years ago.
As it turned out later, HOMM4 was unfinished products, The NWC had run out of money and had no choice but to release unfinished one to reflenish their empty developmentr budget. Result: NWC go broke.
Many people here also accuses that Firaxis/2K released unfinished game. So it has this many problems. It was not ripe for prime time. I agree.
So, who is to blame? I think it is top management of Firaxis and 2K.
It is not the developer or customer department who decides whether currebnt version is ripe for final release and set release date. It is top management who decides. They should have pushed back release date.

See case for Blizzard Entertainment (StarCraft/WarCraft/Diablo/WOW). They are famous for missing the announced release date by full year or even more years, not by few months or weeks.
People complains that the did not keep their promised release date. But once the game is out, customer hardly complains the quality of the game. It's best quality in the industry.
They don't compromise game quality to keep release date...
Even with this high release quality, they continue to issue the periodic patch. StartCraft was released in 1998. Then they continue to issue periodic patch in recent days, 8 years after initial release.
So we do have strong faith in quality of their game. I usually buy their game on first day of release.

Someone may argue that Firaxis has no right to decide release date. 2K games, publishe and owner of Firaxis, have. So 2K's are to blame. But it is same for Blizzard, too. Blizzard is owned by Vivendi Univeral (another game publisher). But I praise Blizzard not Vivendi...

Unfortunately, Firaxis failed in this regards. They betrayed our faith on them.
I will put off the purchase of Firaxis games afterward by at least 3-6 months after initial release and I will wait until they will issue one or two patches or even 3 patches that will iron out most of the problems.

 

[karloslim]

Blizzard is the finest example of PC gaming done right. Their games work out of the box and later patches tend to IMPROVE the gameplay experience. This is a strategy that lends itself to great customer loyalty. It really is a shame that Firaxis/Take 2/whoever didn't realise that they already had an extremely loyal customer base who wanted a quality product instead of a rushed one. The lack of customer support has really just compounded things. BTW I got the game working myself but really feel for the CIV fans who, justifiably, feel let down when there game doesn't work.

 

[Chefxxl]

The point here is simple, we on this board represent the "very" tech savvy people out there who understand enough about computers to even be on this board - and we're still having problems running this game. The oneous should not be on the consumer, who gave up their dollars to purchase the game (rather than d/l'ing it), and we're met with faulty product.

The lack of response from Firaxis or Take 2 on the matter is what I think has most people steamed. If they actually took into consideration the public opinon of their actions and the perception of the lack of quality updates, maybe they would get a fair shake from the consumer. I can't say that I support others on this thread to give these people some slack, would you accept anything else from a vendor that is substandard?

Would you not send back a raw steak if it arrived on your plate at a steak house, when you ordered it well done and had already been asked to pay for it?????

The thing is they already have our money - and don't have to do squat about it, the franchise will continue on - and hopeless punters will continue to purchase their products, because again - we represent the very small % of people who actually understand what is going on with our machines.

If someone from any company wants to contact me about the case# that is under my name with Quality Assurance and Customer Support from Take Two that I filed 2 months ago, reply here.

I'd love to play this game without getting BSOD or COLD REBOOTS, and I would like someone to prove me wrong about stealing my money.

 

[Ralts]

I do know one thing:

Things would change if we were allowed to return software to the store.

I bought 2 copies of Civ-IV so my wife and I could play them.

We have identical machines, high end ones we use for graphic and PDF manipulation/creation, as well as rendering.

Both of them crash out with Civ-IV, and suffer terrible memory leaks.

I got tired of it, and tried to return the game.

Oh, I can swap it for a new one, but I can't my money back.

And that is where the problem lies.

We can't return the game, the company doesn't have to worry about lemon laws, and if they shipped out 50,000 blank DVD's, if we opened the package, we have to suck up the loss.

Yes, video games have had problem (Road War 2000 had a crashing issue on the C-64) but it is pretty rare for a company to just blow the problems off (If you called the company that made Road War 2000, they'd mail you, at thier cost, a disc with the fixed code on it) like it is beginning to feel like.

I'd return it if I could.

And now I hear, that instead of fixing the game, they instead made a new expansion? On a game that won't work for a lot of people in the first place?

Say what you want, but that told me exactly what the company cares about.

My $$$$$.

From many forums, I've begun to feel like I need to just shut up, give them my money, and be glad I've been blessed to be allowed to purchase Civ-IV and stare at the shiney box.

 

[Philips]

I do know one thing:

Things would change if we were allowed to return software to the store.

I bought 2 copies of Civ-IV so my wife and I could play them.

We have identical machines, high end ones we use for graphic and PDF manipulation/creation, as well as rendering.

Both of them crash out with Civ-IV, and suffer terrible memory leaks.

I got tired of it, and tried to return the game.

Oh, I can swap it for a new one, but I can't my money back.

And that is where the problem lies.

We can't return the game, the company doesn't have to worry about lemon laws, and if they shipped out 50,000 blank DVD's, if we opened the package, we have to suck up the loss.

Yes, video games have had problem (Road War 2000 had a crashing issue on the C-64) but it is pretty rare for a company to just blow the problems off (If you called the company that made Road War 2000, they'd mail you, at thier cost, a disc with the fixed code on it) like it is beginning to feel like.

I'd return it if I could.

And now I hear, that instead of fixing the game, they instead made a new expansion? On a game that won't work for a lot of people in the first place?

Say what you want, but that told me exactly what the company cares about.

My $$$$$.

From many forums, I've begun to feel like I need to just shut up, give them my money, and be glad I've been blessed to be allowed to purchase Civ-IV and stare at the shiney box.

There was a bill in introduced in congress a few years ago that would prevent software companies from waiving the implied warranty of merchantability but publishers have lobbyists and consumers don't.

It is too bad that there isn't something like Consumer Reports for software. I guess fan sites should serve that role, but they seem to be filled with PR people who try to shout down any discussion of problems. It is an incredibly sleazy tactic.

Still, I learned to be cautious about buying from Take2 again.

 

[Geddy]

OK kiddies!
Firstly, if you can't spell, you credibility will take a beating if you want your post to sound intelligent.
Secondly, Take 2 this, Firaxis that.....none of this is "my" problem if the product I purchased doesn't work. These technical problems are a disaster for Civ 4, I think that it will actually stop them doing a Civ 5. Remember Falcon 4? It ruined the franchise. If a solution is not found quickly no one will want to pay them for further products, I certainly wont. There are always ways to not fork out your money to get this software, if it works I pay, if it doesn't I wont.

 

[Philips]

You seem incapable of grasping the concept that Firaxis is not responsible for everything that 2K screws up, as was clear from the abuse you threw at Thamer when he told you how the patch was progressing as you've been demanding. He has made it clear that the hold up on the patch is due to 2K's QA, not Firaxis, and there is nothing he can do about it. He'd already done his job on the patch as you've asked, and I don't think your attitude towards him is going to encourage him to work on any future patches. I'm not at all convinced your complaning is helping, and in any case you seem to be pointing it at the wrong people.

As to when work on the patch was begun there is of course no way to be certain, but it has been promised for a couple of months, which would seem a dubious strategy regardless of any "spin" if they weren't working on it.

You seem incapable of comprehending that Firaxis is just a trademark owned by Take2, not some sort of separate entity. Talking about Firaxis vs. take2 is just too dumb for words. Of course, I say "seem" because i think you know that it is BS.

I hate to break it to you, but this Thamer dude is working for a paycheck, this is not shareware. If he doesn't like dealing with customers who don't like being screwed then he needs to find some other line of work. And ditto for you.

It certainly has turned out to be a dubious strategy, despite the best efforts of people like you.

Nearly 1400 posts since October? That is nearly 300/month. Who do you really think you are fooling?

Moderator Action: Enough of the flaming - all of you.

This thread has run its course - its now just a weekly bump for people to flame each other.

Closed.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889