quote: Originally posted by Alpha Wolf on 01-24-2001 01:30 AM if anyone might want a little insight to the mindset at activision, take a look at the comments in tut2_main.slc. Looks like they knew they had some problems. I would cut and paste of the tastier pieces but i think Mark would kill me if i posted that kind of language. BTW, do not read the comments if you are easily offended.

I can't believe they let it ship with all that language in there.

quote: Originally posted by Grumbold on 01-24-2001 11:26 AM I expressed my reluctance to get involved with another Activision marketed game months ago but bought CtP2 anyway. (...) I wonder how much they will have to spend to counteract the negative publicity to their brand name?

Not one single dollar. Why should they care ? Should they announce CTP3 in 6 months of now, the hype will be re-created by Activision and the Internet community, and you will buy again. Together with thousand others who do not belong to the Internet community and dozens of all those complaining here who will buy even though they flame Activision now.

All of us will be buying Civ III completely independet whether it's going to be a balanced game or not. And directly afterwards, people like you and me will start flaming Firaxis. Again, this will have only a minor impact on shipments. Why ? Because in the gaming industry, it's not repeat purchase what counts, but trial purchase. You are not buying Coke or Pringles - you are buying each product ONCE.

This is not marketing, this is just cleverly utilizing the stupidity of general consumers - like you and like me.

quote: Originally posted by wheathin on 01-24-2001 03:32 PM So test a game, ask your friends, read the online forums, don't buy the first week a game is out, and read reviews.

There were more than ten reviews of CTP2 on Apolyton. There was nothing about bugs inside, and almost all of them gave very high notes to the game (70-80% or even more). Won't you buy the game in such case?
Besides, what do you mean 'test a game'. There is no trial version and I think no more support means no trial version at all. :-(

ucel

I think the one thing Martina is mistaken about is that Activision's ability to do this to consumers reflects on the stupidity of the consumer. Rather, it reflects on the fundamental imbalance in the computer games market where consumers have substantially-less-than-perfect information, and where software publishers, equipment makers, and retailers have effectively prevented any recourse for a disgruntled user. Standards for hardware integration (video cards, drivers, etc.) are flimsy things - is it the fault of the game designers or the hardware makers when the game runs on 85% of machines, but not on yours?

quote: Originally posted by wheathin on 01-25-2001 10:38 AM Are computer games sold on consignment to retailers - if there's overstock or returns, who eats them? Allowing returns might only come out of the retailer's pocket, especially if all you have to do is say "this don't work, dude" and you get your money back.

Wheathin,
Activision will take unsold overstock back from the retailers (at least for the large retailers or distributors). Check the Y10-K reports and the filings of Activision at the SEC for details.

I keep hearing about ctp2 being broken, but there's only 2 things wrong with this game I can see. First, the diplomacy appears to be bugged... like trading for advances or cities, and nothing happen. Not a big deal for me fortunately, since I only play the game for the war aspect.

Secondly, the AI is lacking. Actually, the game AI itself seems well written, it just has one design flaw. The AI doesn't know how to mass troops and do a effective offensive. Otherwise, its quite good, but the whole fun of the game for me, is to have a nice big war against the AI. With the AI's lacking ability in doing an offensive strike, the whole game is just plain boring. Again, luckily for me. I found the Apolyton site, and eventually found a way to force the AI to mass troops and attack the player. So that solved that problem.

Actually, there's a third major bug in the game, the inability to load a saved mod game. Again fortunately, there's a workaround for that too.

So I guess I'm saying, CTP2 started out as the worst game I've ever played, in the end, it turned out to be the best, since it's the only civ type game I know that allows the player to do extensive modding. The only other game I still play today is Starcraft. Spent a lot of time playing Starship Trooper and Super defense maps on that. (for peole who don't know Starcraft, it also allowed extensive modding...but unlike CTP2, Starcraft have a really good and fun AI)

Ahh, you guys aren't really the ones to blame. You thought that CTP2 had that potential, and I felt that too when I played it for the first time. Then one by one the walls crumbled -- Poor man's AI, idiotic bugs, not-so-spectacular diplomacy, and dumb game design. I think we Civ-game lovers are all in this boat together. No need to despair b'cause the light is slowly but surely peering at the end of tunnel -- Civ 3 is getting more exposure as Dino is laid to rest.

quote: Originally posted by WesW on 01-22-2001 08:53 PM I share everyone's displeasure and anger over Activision's decision to abandon support for the game, especially when many people are having problems with saved games and such. I am afraid that the Ctp games never really had the support of the Activision higher-ups, and I suspect that the decision to pull the plug on support was made weeks ago. I have talked to people who have visited Mr. Ogre's website, and he has already taken a position at Blizzard on an un-named project. Make of that what you will. However, please don't give up on the game. If you visit the creation forums, you will see some amazing things that have already been done with the game by the people here, and we are just scratching the surface of what can be done. For those of you who don't have the game, wait until you can get a good deal on it if you can, but I would strongly recommend getting this game. Regardless of what you think of it out of the box, I believe that it has awesome potential, and that we will be unlocking that potential in the months to come.

1. Where is your site. I know it's been posted before, somewhere. I believe I've visited it once but can't remember the link (forgot to save it in my favorites). When I visited it, I was on the site for quite awhile. I think I was looking into Civ 2 stuff. I remember reading a 'diary' of a game you were playing under one of your latest mods (Civ2, I think). I was very interested and almost downloaded it to try it myself until you described a game freeze\crashes\glitch that you couldn't quite resolve without doing a whole bunch file changes and renaming (etc) while you played under the mod.

2. Make a Hot Seat Option for the game and then (if) when the price comes down to the current cost of CTP-1 (about $20), I might buy it. If Hot Seat and PBEM are coded similar, create a PBEM mode for those folks too. These opitions MUST work properly, not be 'fly by night" deals.But then, these, of course are not mods. They are actually game play mode changes, patches or additions. You would probably require the original source code to add these items.

3. What guarentees are there that you will continue to support or patch your fixes/mods/patches. Not to be disrespectful of your abilities or intentions, but how long could you continue on a project or projects like this while receiving (basically) nothing (except pride and possibly some pleasure you get in creating these mod/fixes) in return for all the time you would have to spend. I believe you also do mods for several Civ type games, already.

BTW, what is wrong with BOTF and some people keep complaining about it? The patch fixed the problems that I have noticed and I still play the game.
Perhaps I can help? email me.

If I recall, Pyaray even joined in this thread, stating the same feelings ..

So, to abandon CTP2 at this stage to me is horrific .. If you admit that you used DSDM (RAD) to develope this product, ... where are the patches ?? as patch 1, quickly followed by 1.11 ha .. don't address the problems both myself and other CTP2 player have faced.

As a software Engineer myself, I have to tell Activision that this is hopelessly amature of you .. and I will no longer be being buying any more of your software... becuase it won't work, and you won't fix it.

quote: //general warnings n' info about **** that happens in the game //there's a lot of them; I don't ****ing care enough to comment each one

This could get into my sig

Or maybe this:

quote: //oh, baby, show me your workaround face

This is just to funny

quote: // file info goes here // // This file is for Winnie testing purposes only. // // No lemurs were harmed in the opening of this file. //

LOL

quote: //dumbass workaround for dumbass design flaw

LOL explains a lot bout intern relations to the game. I guess people at Activision know much better than we, that they produced a lot of crap

quote: int_t RETARD; //probably won't ship with this

Only probably I guess

I know you've done a lot of great work on the game. Now, I saw your list of what you think was wrong with CTP2. One thing you left off was the flaw in negative aspects of growing populations. To me, this was a critical ommission in the game - otherwise, all it means is that your cities exist to built troops, troops, and more troops. Without these negatives, there is no point to building happy structures.

Play a few rounds of Civ2 and you will remember how cities work. You need to walk that fine line, watching your people, guaging just how far you can push them. Nothing like being in the middle of a war and suddenly finding your cities in open rebellion. Do I build another inf unit, or that theater? Can I afford to change a bunch of people into entertainers. Really, that was a major part of the game that was just left off. For me, its critical enought that even if the AI was significantly improved, I still wouldn't bother.

What really sucks is that you can see values for supporting unhappyness & population in dbdiffs, but it dosn't have any effect. That sucks, since unhappyness and population could really make you work to keep that empire running.

Frankly, I'll not play CTP2 now. Without city management, what the hells the point?

quote: Originally posted by Bluevoss on 01-26-2001 11:01 AM Play a few rounds of Civ2 and you will remember how cities work. You need to walk that fine line, watching your people, guaging just how far you can push them. Nothing like being in the middle of a war and suddenly finding your cities in open rebellion. Do I build another inf unit, or that theater? Can I afford to change a bunch of people into entertainers. Really, that was a major part of the game that was just left off. For me, its critical enought that even if the AI was significantly improved, I still wouldn't bother.

You know, ever since I started playing ctp2, it dawned on me that, the game has lots great features, but horribly unbalanced. It was kinda sick that each tile has so much resources, I was beginning to feel it doesn't matter where you build your city, it'll grow up to be a productive city, wherever you put it...(mostly true). And the unit stats also seems horribly unbalaced. When I was playing the game, I find my tanks again and again, defeated by catapults and hoplites fortified in cities!!! What's up with that? And why do artilleries able to shoot down my planes so easily? And the tech tree is also a bit unbalanced, since some of the units go obselete really fast. Like, the Ship of Line, I rarely build those because Ironclads are always around the corner...and I only build a couple Ironclads because Destroyers is just right behind... And then there's the happiness thing Bluevoss mentioned. I was kinda disappointed that city growth is unrelated to happiness...though I guess the designers felt that pollution being related to growth, and happiness being related to pollution, is enough. I agree with that I suppose, but it seems that once pollution is eliminated during late game, it also eliminated the need for 'happiness' in cities. So in the end, they really should have tied happiness directly to city growth.

And lastly, the AI. With the default shipped AI, the AI is totally incapable of taking over each other's cities. I saw the AI conduct war against each other, it was patheic! Like many of you, when I got globalsat, i thought I would be treated to a big chaotic war between the AI. Guess what? The most action I saw was the AI move a stack of 3 back and forth between two squares, and it eventually ended up fortifying itself in one of its own cities! Yet, a couple hours tweaking the strategy.txt and goals.txt, was enough to get the AI to conduct a real war against itself! Cities taken and retaken, major stacks fighting each other. It was a real treat to watch an AI conquer its neighbor and take over half of the world.

All this led to me to realize that, even though the CTP2 team made a pretty good game, they aren't fans of their own game, or civ type games. It seems that none of them played through a complete game, otherwise, they would have realized all the faults that the Aployten fans have found and tweaked them, like we have. This led to the other conclusion, even if Activision had continued to support ctp2, it would still be the lame game it was when it was shipped. Sure a few bugs would be fixed, but the game would still be lame. The only real people who can made this into a great game, would be the fans themselves, and it seems that WesW and a lot of others have already made great progress. That's why, it didn't bother me one bit, when Activision announced that it has decided to drop support for Ctp2. I guess, people who really want pbems would be left out...but oh well, can't have everything.

However the game version I paid $50 (about) was buggy (I was able to complete 1 games over 3).

I never bought a more buggy game. It's not acceptable that a game crashes everytime I try to restart the saved game after 10 days of play.

I've installed the patch but I continued to have problems with my saved games (no more crashes but simple SLIC errors). So I started new games and for now It is ok ( I hope ).

The (40+) Beta Testers have never played the game ? Or ACTIVISION has released a beta game ?

Activision has fixed major bugs not the AI. Everyone knows that the AI is inexistent!!!
I dont want to program the AI by myself because it should be an ACTIVISION job.

I dont know if a simple mod will be sufficient to resolve the situation but Blue_orange has made a nice one ( although there are too much stacks in the world ). The possibility of changing AI, coefficients, strategies, etc... is really great but for now CTPII remains an 'empty game'.

Personally if I will not see more support from ACTIVI$ION I will be more careful in the future ( and so other people I think ).

quote: Originally posted by MarkG on 01-25-2001 09:37 PM [QUOTE]Originally posted by Mike the Nuke on 01-25-2001 09:09 PM 1. Where is your site.

Thanks. you are right. That's how I got to his sight the first time. Like I said, I must have been missing something...Yup, sure was/did

quote: 2. Make a Hot Seat Option for the game and then (if) when the price comes down to the current cost of CTP-1 (about $20), I might buy it.

Just a statement. As stated in the original message in another location, I reference the fact that he does not have the source code. Personally, I could care less what he develops for the game. I DO NOT own and will never own it as long as the options I desired from the first version (CTP-1) are not included. Playing solely against Artificial Indiots (I mean intelligence) does little for me. I already have plenty of game program Racing, Shoot-em ups, Trains, Planes, other Civ games (CTP-1 and Civ2 Tot do allow human vs human vs AI on the same machine...Hot Seat) And NO... It isn't his fault that he does not have the source code. I'm sure if he could get it, he would do one hell of a job with it making the game better and giving many of us the options we would like to see or he would give it one heck of a job trying.

quote: 3. What guarentees are there that you will continue to support or patch your fixes/mods/patches. Not to be disrespectful of your abilities or intentions, but how long could you..

It wasn't intended to be. Read the entire statement. I'm asking a question and crediting the fact that he invests a lot of time in a lot of games. Most of those other games have many less problems than this one and seem to have better support from both the manufacture(s) and customers. I haven't seen a statement from too many other manufacturers like the one you posted from Activison, which 'politely' tells it's customers that they are through with their own product... take it or leaveit. The are only so many hours in a day, and only 7-days per week and only (depending on the year) 365
days per year. With all the effort that he must put in to perform quality work on the other games, how long could he support a game in which he has so little to work with from the manufacture and that seems to have so many problems. I reviewed a lot of mesages on his site (the first and only time I went there, I go back now that you reminded me of where the site address was that I used (thanks). I could see that he spent many hours developing his mods and testing. Not an easy task and very time consuming.

quote: I believe that all the other Civ type games you develop improvements/mods for, are still supported by their manufacturers (correct?). This one, apparrently, is NOT.

as for patches, microprose made a lot of money by selling patches packed with a few scenarios
smacers are still waiting for that last patch that was promised but never happened
i'm not supporting activision, i'm just pointing out that noone is free of guilt in this business [/quote]

You are 100% correct. Unfortunately Activision is not the only company that creates games/programs with bugs and fails to 'timely' fix all of them. Windows is a program that comes to mind. NHRA 1 and NHRA 2 are two games that I have that also fall in this category, to an extent. The list could go on, but this forum section was about Activision and CTP2.

As far as creating patches to fix their game and selling those patches, I would see no problem with that as long as the patches included new options or mods. This would be totally unexceptable for customers to have to pay for patches just to fix game play bugs (like the save game items, etc). The Sims was replaced by the Sims 'Livin' Large. The latter made improvements to the game and added some new items and options (ie more than one neighborhood, etc) and modified/corrected a couple game play issues. The Sims site is loaded with free downloads and improvements, as well as free patches to fix 'flaws' as they are identified. Where is Activision's? Yes they have a patch section for both CTP-1 and CTP2. But they DO NOT intend to further support either of those games with any future patches (as per their posted statement). I have emailed their site and they did reply that they would refer my message to the programmer/developers (you know, the same guys that 'quit' on the game to move on to some new projects). The email was sent last week and I've heard nothing since. I'm still hoping, but don't hold out much hope.

I do appreciate your answers/reponses and your site.
The reponses of all those who post (both positives and negatives) are greatly appreciated by myself (and, I'nm sure many others). Those folks and this site saved me (and many others, I'm sure) $50+ and what appears to be great potential disappointment and frustration.