Why put out an unfinished game?

[oPunchDrunko]

Why would 2K and Firaxis put out a game with all of the bugs and problems the game has? How could they not notice? Granted the patch did fix a majority of the bugs, but there are still problems ( Like multi-player for example ).

 

[Lonkut]

so they can sell you the patches.

 

[The_J]

Economic pressure.
The economic year was right afterwards over (or something similar, explained elsewhere), so they wanted to have the benefits in the current calculations.


Else i'd say "stupidity", but i guess that's not a valid reason.

 

[Jharii]

Did something new just get released?

 

[Palfouri]

Because you may be surprised to know it costs money to keep a game in development for an extended period of time, and Take Two is not exactly swimming in it. Yeah, I know, how selfish of them to not go bankrupt so you can play a game with less bugs that will be fixed anyway.

Civ IV should have taught you that, or did everyone conveniently forget a sizable number of people couldn't even play the game at release?

 

[Louis XXIV]

They release games earlier than they should be in order to finance continued work by the game developer when they work on patches. Otherwise, they might not be able to release the game at all because they go bankrupt or have to lay off all their employees.

 

[LegioCorvus]

Because you may be surprised to know it costs money to keep a game in development for an extended period of time, and Take Two is not exactly swimming in it. Yeah, I know, how selfish of them to not go bankrupt so you can play a game with less bugs that will be fixed anyway.

Civ IV should have taught you that, or did everyone conveniently forget a sizable number of people couldn't even play the game at release?

*sigh*

I'm getting tired of this.

Civ4 was unplayable for a small number of people, but the people who could play it had a very decent game with few bugs.

Civ5 is unplayable for a small number of people, but the people who can play it have a game riddled with gameplay errors, incomplete features, and a generally unfinished game.

Just today I discovered another new bug. Clicking manual control of specialists and not assigning specialists is better than letting the game's AI choose your specialists. Literally, you will get better growth and whatever focus you select (wealth, production, etc) this way. There's no confound of Great People here either, as when I tested this it was 1000+ points for any specialist.

I took screenshots & everything, but then I decided why bother to post? It'd just be another in a long line of things wrong with this game, and not even as bad as many of the other ones. I will if people ask, but otherwise, it's not worth it.

Also, I'm tired of the assumption that everyone starting playing Civ4 after BTS. I played the heck out of that game from Day 1.

 

[Jharii]

*sigh*

I'm getting tired of this.

Civ4 was unplayable for a small number of people, but the people who could play it had a very decent game with few bugs.

A lot of people are getting tired of the same post being made that the game is "unfinished." When random poster 107 posts this, expect the same answers. You should be complaining about the same old topic just as much as you complain about the same old answers.

FYI, when Civ4 released, there was an issue with ATI cards and players with those cards could not play the game for weeks. I would hardly call this a "small" number of people. Here's a little refresher.

 

[Licinia Eudoxia]

They put out an unfinished game because they thought CFC could really use more threads. They knew that just making a good game wouldn't get the job done. I think we should thank them for considering the community here. It would get boring if we only saw like 10 different threads posted.

 

[LegioCorvus]

A lot of people are getting tired of the same post being made that the game is "unfinished." When random poster 107 posts this, expect the same answers. You should be complaining about the same old topic just as much as you complain about the same old answers.

FYI, when Civ4 released, there was an issue with ATI cards and players with those cards could not play the game for weeks. I would hardly call this a "small" number of people. Here's a little refresher.

The game is unfinished. There are many features that have not been fully playtested, balanced, or well implemented. Take multi-player, like the OP's example. It's pre-Beta. They would have to work at it just to make it Beta. That's one example of hundreds.

Graphic card issues are a hardware problem. Something that can be caught in playtesting, yes, but not always. Blizzard & Valve games often come out when they're well & finished, and many of them still have hardware issues. Not so much gameplay issues.

The OP's topic is mundane, but it's his right to ask. But that response is like responding to someone on the street protesting a war with, "Veteran health benefits need to improved!" It's only tangentially related.

 

[C~G]

Because you may be surprised to know it costs money to keep a game in development for an extended period of time, and Take Two is not exactly swimming in it. Yeah, I know, how selfish of them to not go bankrupt so you can play a game with less bugs that will be fixed anyway.

IF I would payed for that game THEY SHOULD PREY that their customers like me are so patient with them.

How selfish from a customer to wait actual finished product and not some unfinished crap from selfish greedy little piggies.

They can swim in their own filth for all I care.

I bet someone like you is always on the side of some capitalistic moneyhunger company that ROBS their customers.

IT's them that should be on their knees, not the customers.

 

[Licinia Eudoxia]

The game is unfinished. There are many features that have not been fully playtested, balanced, or well implemented. Take multi-player, like the OP's example. It's pre-Beta. They would have to work at it just to make it Beta. That's one example of hundreds.

Graphic card issues are a hardware problem. Something that can be caught in playtesting, yes, but not always. Blizzard & Valve games often come out when they're well & finished, and many of them still have hardware issues. Not so much gameplay issues.

The OP's topic is mundane, but it's his right to ask. But that response is like responding to someone on the street protesting a war with, "Veteran health benefits need to improved!" It's only tangentially related.

What do you expect posters to say?

Well, it turns out, my brother is a head programmer at Firaxis and he said that they were all on schedule, until Brad the intern deleted all their work and they had to revert to backups!

It turns out there was a tornado near Firaxis!

It turns out that ______

What should we say?

No joke, the game has lots of bugs. Nobody noticed this, nobody had any idea. It's been over a month, and nobody has found any bugs or unfinished features yet. You're the first one to pick up on this. There's certainly not any other threads about this on these forums. You should create a single sentence topic post with no content to let everyone know.

 

[Licinia Eudoxia]

IF I would payed for that game THEY SHOULD PREY that their customers like me are so patient with them.

How selfish from a customer to wait actual finished product and not some unfinished crap from selfish greedy little piggies.

They can swim in their own filth, all I care.

I bet someone like you is always on the side of some capitalistic company that ROBS their customers.

Got news for you, they're all capitalist companies.

Also, he has a point. Development ends when your development budget runs out. At that point you either A) get more money to develop more, B) scrap the game entirely, or C) release the game and use sales to continue to 'develop' or patch things. Shrug.

It happens. It's not new, it's been going on for a couple of decades at this point.

 

[C~G]

Got news for you, they're all capitalist companies.

Also, he has a point. Development ends when your development budget runs out. At that point you either A) get more money to develop more, B) scrap the game entirely, or C) release the game and use sales to continue to 'develop' or patch things. Shrug.

It happens. It's not new, it's been going on for a couple of decades at this point.

Capitalistic in the worst sense. From the heart to the bone.

They lie and cheat in their marketing and then they do crap and then sell it on a fancy box.

Then there are people who try to explain to paying customers how someone sells crap in a fancy box or like these customers should be somehow thankful (?!) or are somehow OWING something (?!) to this company and these little piggies?
That's what our fellow Palfouri seem to have been explaining. It's not only distasteful but I personally loathe such attitude.

Yeah, it's not new. It's not new either be blind of it and then someone go defend them like they are just "misunderstood martyrs".
They FU it up. Not the customers.
If company fails because of that, it's their fault.

 

[Adam7Eight]

They put out an unfinished game because they thought CFC could really use more threads. They knew that just making a good game wouldn't get the job done. I think we should thank them for considering the community here. It would get boring if we only saw like 10 different threads posted.

Worked for me.

 

[Roxlimn]

LegioCorvus:

To be perfectly fair, the answers being given by anti-Civ 5 people are also repetitive and often more uninformative or just downright misinformative.

For instance:

Just today I discovered another new bug. Clicking manual control of specialists and not assigning specialists is better than letting the game's AI choose your specialists. Literally, you will get better growth and whatever focus you select (wealth, production, etc) this way. There's no confound of Great People here either, as when I tested this it was 1000+ points for any specialist.

This is not a bug. A bug is a part of the game code that is clearly not performing according to intent. For instance, if your units are not displaying at all, or the game crashes every time you attack, then there is a bug.

Being able to control Focus differently according to how you press buttons on the interface is not clearly a bug. It could very well be intentional, and it is quite possible to use the way the governor behaves currently intentionally. For instance, you can just click "manual control" to clear specialists and then Focus. As you have discovered, the performance is generally better. However, the governor is obviously skewed to favor Specialist assignment, so removing manual control is actually better if you're just clearing happiness points under Freedom.

Your bias against the game in general makes you think of this as "bug," when it is quite functional and can be used for various in-game purposes.

 

[C~G]

To be perfectly fair, the answers being given by anti-Civ 5 people are also repetitive and often more uninformative or just downright misinformative.

To be perfectly clear, the answers being given by pro-Civ 5 people are also in the same manner.

You take one example of some little feature not being bug and then call it settled?

Actually maybe you should start reading MORE of this ccomplains, glitches, flaws and criticism to understand better and stop trying to hang into those straws.

If you happen to correct one flaw, there are many more left.

 

[stormerne]

"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
Apparently they took out so much they thought they'd finished.

 

[Jharii]

Graphic card issues are a hardware problem. Something that can be caught in playtesting, yes, but not always. Blizzard & Valve games often come out when they're well & finished, and many of them still have hardware issues. Not so much gameplay issues.

I can tell that you do love Civ4 complete. Because you're making the same excuse for that game. That's cool, I get it. They fixed that issue in time, just so you know, amongst a ton of other issues. Didn't stop you from loving the game. Obviously, it didn't stop you from defending it. Just like will all happen with Civ5.

And it was all ATI cards. If you think that they missed that in playtesting... well, I have a bridge to sell you...

Blizzard and Valve, by the way, are swimming in money. They have development budgets that allow software to remain in development "until they are finished." It's hardly a comparison that can be made without taking that into consideration.

 

[Jharii]

Capitalistic in the worst sense. From the heart to the bone.

They lie and cheat in their marketing and then they do crap and then sell it on a fancy box.

Then there are people who try to explain to paying customers how someone sells crap in a fancy box or like these customers should be somehow thankful (?!) or are somehow OWING something (?!) to this company and these little piggies?
That's what our fellow Palfouri seem to have been explaining. It's not only distasteful but I personally loathe such attitude.

Yeah, it's not new. It's not new either be blind of it and then someone go defend them like they are just "misunderstood martyrs".
They FU it up. Not the customers.
If company fails because of that, it's their fault.

Do you have a job C~G? What kind of company do you work for?