Why are these patches not addressing some the most basic bugs?

When the first patch came out, I was 90% certain they were going to address the Kongo Reliquaries bug, which can be used to easily break the game as a human player, or could break any game if the AI accidentally gets it.

First patch arrives... not fixed. I was shocked.

Second patch arrives... still not fixed!!! I'm furious!

For crying out loud! Why? Are they unaware of it? I even posted it on the official Facebook thread to make sure somebody saw it! Where as some things such as AI are understandably complicated, this is a very easy fix.

For those who don't know, if Kongo acquires the religion with the Reliquaries belief in its capital, and houses five Relics in the Palace this happens:

Kongo Glitch by kamex posted Dec 22, 2016 at 9:17 PM

Because somebody made a simple maths mistake. How did this even get through QA? Kongo is a civ focused around Relics. Surely somebody should have tested, what happens when the Relics civ has the Reliquaries belief!? Apparently not! I guess the 1452 faith per turn is intentional!?

I'm a programmer myself. Do they want me to fly over there and fix it for them!? Good lord!

Its not just this bug though is it? The AI is still incapable of using aircraft, among other things.

They expect us to shell out money for overpriced scenario dlc, and they can't be bothered to fix some of the most glaring glitches. Its rather pathetic.

 

They do it to give your posts meaning.

 

Honestly, not fixing the basic and minor bugs and glitches is something that pissed me off the most.
I honestly didn't know much about Firaxis and their boss 2k and the way they operate and the way they treat their community. I realized they don't really even take notes on research that this community does. I was realizing that someone who actually took their time to test the game is doing that in vain (reporting issues), to sit down and burn hours and then nicely format text about all the issues to the only source that can fix that, and there is absolutely no feedback and confirmation that developers even read or take notice of that.
For example - a couple lines of code annoyance - ESCaping from citizen management into the game menu - 60 days later - nobody fixed it - really ?!?! - i mean, come on!
I understand they have a grand vision of how they are going to polish the game, and that's fine, but not to take note of every single minor thing that community addressed and fix that asap is beyond me - i mean - they are not some 2 man basement company - they have bunch of best programmers in the world and 60 days later they can't fix REPORTED bugs and glitches???
Since i know a little about programming, i assumed that it's not really hard for programmer to fix bug when he knows about them, it's a hassle to discover all the bugs and glitches, not to fix them when they are known ...

 

I wonder if Firaxis' legal team has decided to ban their employees from actually communicating to their community on fear that something may be said that could be interpreted to be a promise or obligation that Firaxis will actually fix or do anything, and if they don't, then this will lead to some sort of legal liability. I suppose that tends to happen if a company becomes too successful - they just disconnect from the community that made them successful in the first place and rely on past successes to keep the money train rolling.

On the other hand, I don't want to get on the bandwagon of bagging Firaxis for not caring or listening - there could be any number of reasons why (legal, or maybe they don't actually care about stuff like customer relations, I don't know), but really, communicating with their customers would actually be a good thing and avoid some of the backlash that's starting to happen (or maybe it's always been here, I've only been part of these forums since Civ6 came out).

 

Lets assume Firaxis has some competent project management system. What it comes down to is you have:

• Resource Hours: (hopefully calculated on a 40hr/wk schedule - holidays).
  
• Complexity per story/bug.
• Priority or Business Value

So they have to juggle high value complexity bugs with DLC, and with low complexity bugs (both high and low value).

A Complex AI issue probably takes a long amount of time, and does not benefit from throwing more than 2 people at it. So, if you have several of those, it does make sense to have the majority of the developers working on the complex AI issues, and the DLC/Expansion Packs, and a minority of folks working on low complex issues that can be released in monthly patches.

 

They are not juggling at all. They won't bother to fix basic controls or UI flaws, something every end user experiences every game. Fixing the ai, might be complicated. Fixing the text you show to payers is not.

Firaxis can't even consistently communicate the game rules to players lately. They are getting outdone by paradox at ui. Is that funny or sad? Both.

 

You are right, kamex. OTOH I'm sure they would have solved it if it was just a nobrainer to do. Like the "last-build bug" which I hate with a passion!
I assume this patch got kicked out, because DLC release determined when it had to go live.
Everything they were able to fix until deadline made it in, the rest is ongoin... Not an excuse just a thought why things are as they are.
This was not an AI/UI - patch at all. It looks to me like they're still in the bugsmash-section and introduce stuff that should have been in the game on release but didn't get finished back then (alert)...

Firaxis to me has a good record of looking after their games postrelease - but it takes it's time, I grant you that!

 

Yes. Its seems they are more interested in pushing the dlc out than fixing basic bugs in the base game that most us paid at least £50.00 for. The 'last built' bug also infuriates me and should be a simple fix.

Also, this patch had a lot of game design changes, such as the Factory bonus stacking adjustments. I personally think they should focus on fixing the initial bugs before introducing balance changes (and probably introducing more bugs as a direct consequence)

 

So.. for this bug\exploit to happen you need to play as Kongo, acquire the religion with the Reliquaries belief in its capital, and houses five Relics in the Palace!!! While it is basic for you, might I suggest that they have many such basic bugs, and this one may not be high priority right now with all the other issues I seen around AI for example.

Btw for those who never seen a bug reporting tool here is a simple example of a decade old opensource game.

 

The Kongo bug seems like enough of an outlier to not require much immediate dev attention, but the "last produced" bug is a bit baffling to have sat in the game this long. And I'm given to understand the Alert function currently is not working in many situations (or at least for many people), so they are going as far as introducing new bugs at this point (I haven't done enough playing in the past couple of days to confirm--mod testing only, which is opening a save file for 1-2 turns, closing the game, changing code, repeat).

 

The last produced bug is the perfect example. I still haven't been able to get a straight answer if it is fixed or not. Some people say it is, others say it isn't, and I've even heard that it is fixed for one type of production (districts I think it was) but not for others. Regardless, the fact that such a bug was not fixed in the first patch does not bode well. Either the codebase is so horrible that something this simple took actual work to fix or, I'm hoping more likely, management is so screwed up that a one line fix to a major UI bug wasn't given top priority since the bug didn't interfere with their dang DLCs. Either way, it does not lend confidence to what is going on behind the scenes.

Combine that with the glaringly obvious form-over-function philosophy that is everywhere in this game and the story becomes clear as day: someone messed up and gave suits and designers all the power while cutting the actual programmers out of the loop. This isn't surprising, you see it everywhere these days in corporate game institutions that think a game looking fancy is more important than it working right.

I don't care that they aren't communicating with us, because suits only communicate through community managers who aren't given the power to say anything more than meaningless platitudes and programmers don't communicate though text, they communicate by fixing bugs. If the bugs aren't getting fixed, then no amount of corporate double speak being thrown at us will change that fact.

And, to put it bluntly, I don't care that it is the holidays. We didn't force them drop quality QA in favor of crowdsourcing playtests from paying customers and we didn't force them to release their bug nest of a product two months before everyone was going to go on vacation. While I'm mostly retired, you know what I've been doing all week including today? Squashing bugs in and adding features to a project that I'm a programmer on. Programmers program, it is what we do. Day or night, weekday or weekend, holiday or otherwise. Suits work 9 to 5. Suits take weekends off and week long holiday vacations. If bugs aren't being squashed right now, it is because some suit forced the programmers to take the week off, because suits don't care about quality products and pleased customers, all they care about is charts and bottom lines.

And that is the bottom line of what appears to be going on here: Firaxis has gotten top heavy and instead of optimizing the product they are optimizing the money flow. Instead of making a quality product that people want to buy and are happy they purchased, they are cutting corners and relying on the goodwill of the franchise name to bring in the revenue. Instead of releasing patches as fast as possible and addressing the most important and easiest to fix bugs, they are using some patch schedule that caters to their DLC schedule. Instead of packing content in the actual game and focusing work on feature rich, interesting expansions, they are piecemealing out DLCs with a civ and a couple scenarios. In every aspect, they are treating Civ less like a product and more like a money vacuum, treating customers less like a loyal source of repeat purchases and more like a faceless source of one-time purchase quick cash. Instead of maintaining their spot as one of the good game studios, they are turning into just another greedy company that happens to make games.

This second lackluster patch has stripped away any vestige of goodwill that I had remaining and I'm doubting I will ever purchase another product from them. Despite some promise that the game's design suggested before launch, every step since then has been nothing but disappointment and bad practices and, while it does make me mad, more than anything it just makes me sad.

 

This bug probably affects only a small number of players in limited specific circumstances.

When they decide which bus to prioritize, the do a cost-benefit analysis (assuming they follow the usual standards). Since this bug likely affects only a small number of players, the benefit side of the evaluation would be very low, so even if it's a very easy fix, it might be low priority.

 

Why do people assume the last built bug is simple? And considering its just an annoyance, not something that stops or breaks the game, I'd rather they fix the AI combat then spend months hunting on this (I'd rather they just remove the last built feature if its complex to get it working right.)

 

The only other thing to say, perhaps, is incomplete patches are better than no patches. If they do a patch a month for the next 4 months, that will be better than leaving it for a 6 month patch or whatever.

What I don't get is why paid DLC can't including things like an improved combat AI. I'd much prefer to paid for that, and encourage resources to be devoted to it, than a map script or extra Civ at this stage.

 

No offense but this is a hysterical overreaction.

 

The last built bug is more than just an annoyance. It kind of goes to the heart of the game - which is producing stuff to expand and defend your civ. If you don't know what the city just built, especially if it's actually telling you incorrect information, then how do you know what the next step should be in your strategy?

Yes, you may remember, but this is more difficult with many cities. Yes you can inspect the building and production lists to see if a building has just been built (if it's obvious and you can remember) and close the city view screen to see if a unit has just been built that isn't fortified or asleep, but all this just adds to the micromanagement slog of getting through each turn.

Quite simply, and without Firaxis giving themselves an opportunity to defend themselves due to their lack of communication, it's easy to just put this down to neglect and / or incompetence.

 

I'd take a build queue over last built bug.

Communication is overrated. It changes nothing except your feelings. So many people with so many feelings. Lost cause. Communicate in patch notes.

 

I mentioned that it works for districts but not otherwise, but I was wrong. It also works when building projects. Not when building units, wonders or buildings - in these cases the game tells me the item built before the last. Regarding this "previously built" feature, I can't really think of any reasonable explanation, why would a district or a project be treated differently to a building, unit or a wonder.

 

Ouch, thats got to hurt! Especially if you want to think about PUs in EU4.

Seriously though after basically moving on from civ halfway through civ5 development cycle (still played it after just not much) to play Paradox games I find it completely baffling the lack of communication Firaxis have with the player base. Maybe the feedback rich environment of the Paradox forums where everyone from event coders and artists to project leads and the studio head get involved with discussions has altered my perception of how things are or should be done. Also at Paradox the team don't always pull their punches and will call out stuff they don't like etc, can't see 2K letting their dev slaves do that. This communication means that even though their last 2 releases haven't exactly been great out of the box I haven't become disolutioned with them as products because the devs talk about what they are doing and what they can and can't do at a given time, as well as acknowledging and answering peoples complaints.

Anyway I'll keep watching civ 6 to see if it ever becomes worth putting more time into but Firaxis needs to address a lot of issues before that moment comes.

 

I can's speak for Firaxis, because I don't visit the offical forums, however, generally it is far more common to see higher dev interaction and periodic dev diaries on smaller, niche and indie developers than on mainstream titles. Honestly I can't blame them, the amount of negative\ignorant\immature comments is amazing, here people even compare devs to mentally disabled.. it is not rpgcodex cesspit (which is shunned by devs) but still its like having a diuscussion at youtube comments section That not to say that they do not have lines of communications, iirc for civ6 they had a select group of fans from here as well who helped brainstorm.

True but it is a good marketing tool and helps people feel like they are part of the process (see kickstarter)

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