Theory on why the release was so buggy

[Stuie]

The Firaxis acquisition had nothing to do with moving the game up. Boosting 3rd quarter sales figures did.

[SpartanLord]

Originally posted by Gunter
The pc game world have changed a lot in last years,money rules and now which is the best way to betatesting a games nowdays ?

Release it to the world and let , FOR FREE OF COURSE , customers betatesting the game.

First thousands copies sold finance the rest of support,that's the golden rule nowdays.

civ 1 times are gone, nowdays there is no room for anything except to maximise the profit and this way to act is the best way to maximise the profit.

Gunter

Thank God for P2P. I was last burnt on MOO3 - Never again for me. In defense of CivIV it was not as bad as RTW. Hell I found over 70 bugs in the Demo and CA did not even try to fix them.

[Dis]

buggy?

It's a slow game and missing all the final polishments (like the F5 screen), but the game is playable.

[DrSpike]

Quite, by modern standards I'd call it polished.

Compared to the Civ3 release it's positively gleaming.

[MJLriak]

The thing seems golden to me, mehh - so they had the CD's labeled backwards, and some of the stuff could have been fleshed out a little more. At least I know it can and mostlikely will be fixed.

If you want true company/fanbase beligerancy and disrespect go have a look about how Star Wars galaxies is running. It was an ok game...

at least there isnt a $15/month charge for civ

[LzPrst]

so, because some games are bad and others worse we should accept poor?
there was a time when the internet wasnt available to most people so games had to be fully finished and functional when they were released.

console games dont suffer from this kind of bugginess and incomplete game release syndrom, why should pc games?

the reason this has happened is that we accept all the crap that gaming companies do. we pay good money, why should we get unfinished games? they spend millions on ads online so that we'll buy the game, but they cut down on actual WORK on the game.

we should say that this is unacceptable. Gamers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but bugs!

(how is that for communism, actual consumer rights

[Franklinnoble]

Originally posted by LzPrst


console games dont suffer from this kind of bugginess and incomplete game release syndrom, why should pc games?

Console games are less buggy because they have 100% identical, predictable hardware to develop their games for.

Everybody with a PS2 has the same video card, same motherboard, same processor, etc. There is no variation to account for.

This is the underlying problem with Civ4. The game works well for some hardware, works poorly for others, and doesn't work at all for some. They didn't have the time/resources to test on enough configurations.

I'm not really making excuses for them - I think good programmers can learn to write good code without having this much bias based on hardware/drivers/etc. But this is the reality of the comparison you've made.

[Common Sensei]

Originally posted by LzPrst

console games dont suffer from this kind of bugginess and incomplete game release syndrom, why should pc games?

The era of bugless console games ended years ago.

"Shining" example of this is Morrowind for the Xbox.

[TheWalrus]

I think the game is nearly as buggy as Civ2 was at release (if you didn't have a sound card you couldn't play the game at first).

CIV3 was a mess, but aside from slowdown issues in late game I've had no problems with CIV4.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Franklinnoble

This is the underlying problem with Civ4. The game works well for some hardware, works poorly for others, and doesn't work at all for some. They didn't have the time/resources to test on enough configurations.

All they had to do to recognize that there were still serious compatibiity issues was bring in a large new wave of beta testers with a wide variety of system configurations at what they hoped would be the end of the testing process. They wouldn't even have had to promise any support to final pre-release testers who had problems; just offer a chance for an early copy of an almost-finished version if it works in exchange for reporting any problems if it didn't. Using that approach, very little in the way of time and resources from Firaxis would have been required to recognize that there were still serious compatibility problems.

[JohnUghrin]

Originally posted by nbarclay


All they had to do to recognize that there were still serious compatibiity issues was bring in a large new wave of beta testers with a wide variety of system configurations at what they hoped would be the end of the testing process. They wouldn't even have had to promise any support to final pre-release testers who had problems; just offer a chance for an early copy of an almost-finished version if it works in exchange for reporting any problems if it didn't. Using that approach, very little in the way of time and resources from Firaxis would have been required to recognize that there were still serious compatibility problems.

Its not just compatibility problems. In my case, the copy-protection on the game was wigging out just because I had a piece of software installed that had the capability of copying a CD image.

Certainly I can't have any legitimate purpose to such software...like burning linux CD or a backup copy of the game...nope...I must be a pirate.

So indeed, the horrible brokenness of this release was (at least in part) intentional.

[JohnUghrin]

Originally posted by Franklinnoble


Console games are less buggy because they have 100% identical, predictable hardware to develop their games for.

Everybody with a PS2 has the same video card, same motherboard, same processor, etc. There is no variation to account for.

This is the underlying problem with Civ4. The game works well for some hardware, works poorly for others, and doesn't work at all for some. They didn't have the time/resources to test on enough configurations.

I'm not really making excuses for them - I think good programmers can learn to write good code without having this much bias based on hardware/drivers/etc. But this is the reality of the comparison you've made.

No, the reality is that they didn't take the time to implement proper quality control because we have a mystique in the industry that somehow programmers can't be monitored by others and their performance rated. As far as compatibility issues go, isn't that what DirectX was supposed to solve in the first place?

I'd recommend to everybody find a copy of The software conspiracy : why software companies put out faulty products, how they can hurt you, and what you can do about it / Mark Minasi. ISBN 0071348069. (The title is a little more provocative than the content.)

[Fistandantilus]

Originally posted by LzPrst
...
there was a time when the internet wasnt available to most people so games had to be fully finished and functional when they were released.
....

And they still weren't. Master of Orion and Master of Magic (two of the games I enjoyed the most and spent a lot of time playing were released with horrible bugs).

As for Civ4 it runs perfectly on my system, but maybe I'm just lucky.

I still think we get much more support now than in the past, not considering that nowadays games are much more complex than they were 10-20 years ago.

[SpartanLord]

If you want a work around PM me. Ill give you one.

Originally posted by JohnUghrin


Its not just compatibility problems. In my case, the copy-protection on the game was wigging out just because I had a piece of software installed that had the capability of copying a CD image.

Certainly I can't have any legitimate purpose to such software...like burning linux CD or a backup copy of the game...nope...I must be a pirate.

So indeed, the horrible brokenness of this release was (at least in part) intentional.

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Quite, by modern standards I'd call it polished.

Compared to the Civ3 release it's positively gleaming.

QFT