FINALLY! Official word on the patch!

[TenderBranson]

At long freaking last! Its not out yet, but at least they're talking about it.

A Note from Firaxis Concerning the Civilization IV Patch
November 16, 2005

Hello everyone!

I've heard from many of you via the Firaxis website Contact Us form (many thanks for all the dxdiag files and savegames) and wanted to say thanks for all the feedback and detailed bug reports that were sent up.

I just wanted to let everyone know that as of Monday afternoon, the patch was sent to 2K for final testing, so barring any problems in QA, we will be releasing it shortly.

Some of the highlights include multiple AI improvements and tweaks, worker behavior tweaks, MANY game play improvements (ex Animal Husbandry reveals horses), promotion tweaks, a softer pillage sound (requested by many, many people), fixed diplomatic exploits (gold for gold, peace treaty exploit), multiplayer tweaks (Hot seat, Lobby, etc.), memory, caching and performance improvements, etc. There were also a number of video card specific fixes.

To those of you having problems, thanks for your patience. Our guys were working around the clock with your detailed feedback to produce this patch. For those of you having no problems, it's only going to get better. =)

Dennis Shirk
Firaxis Games

Emphasis added.

Source (civ4.com)

And for the record, this is not a case of chalk one up for Firaxis even if it fixes nearly every problem out there. Its inexcusable that the game was released in this state, and its just as inexcusable that there has been ZERO communication from them on the patch until now.

[Bill3000]

1. http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=143541

2. Stop your whining.

[TenderBranson]

1. Different forum, but thanks I missed it. Its relevant here too though since many people likely wont bother going to the General forum if they can't even get the game working.

2. No. My gripes seem to be legimate and shared by an enormous ammount of people here, if not a majority.

[wrak_nj]

The gripes are legitimate, only an idiot would suggest that purchasing a game and finding that it's utterly unusable is in any way acceptable.

[Greentrees]

Originally posted by Bill3000
1. http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=143541

2. Stop your whining.

Who goes to the general forum when the game doesn't run?

[vannibombonato]

Originally posted by Bill3000
1. http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=143541

2. Stop your whining.

Oh yeah...the "general forum"...sorry if i just went to the tech support forum, sorry if in one month i've not been able of playing a single minute, sorry if i event tried with 3 different video cards, sorry if the company that sold me an unfinished product didn't say a single "sorry" in one month...sorry, really.

I should just shut up and stop whining...after all, i've only paid 50 dollars for an empty box. What i'm complaining about? It's life!

Vanni

[Repairman_Jack]

Welcome to the wonderful world of PC gaming. Name a game that DOES work for everyone out of the box. It rarely, if never, happens.

[vannibombonato]

Originally posted by Repairman_Jack
Welcome to the wonderful world of PC gaming. Name a game that DOES work for everyone out of the box. It rarely, if never, happens.

My first pc was a 386...and i just almost never seen such a piece of crap.
Every game has bugs...but just a few manage to completely not work for such many people and configurations.
This game don't have a problem with a single chipset, videocard, or O.S.
This game has problems with personal computers in itself...maybe it works good on macs.

At least in my small 10 years experience with PCs.

[ikajaste]

Originally posted by Repairman_Jack
Welcome to the wonderful world of PC gaming. Name a game that DOES work for everyone out of the box. It rarely, if never, happens.

I didn't want to enter the wonderful world of PC gaming, I wanted to play Civilization, not the latest Quake.

Of course it's an entirely subjective opinion how broadly a game should work on different systems. But a least for me Civilization should be on the wide end. And right now, it isn't. The problems seem to be caused by the need to use fancy 3d techniques, and that just doesn't fit with Civilization.

And to Bill3000: Sorry, but it isn't "whining" just because you're not having a problem. So please stop your whining about us whining.

Anyway, let's hope this patch fixes all our problems so this issue doesn't need to be discussed anymore and we can concentrate on enjoying the improved gameplay.

[Moonbars]

I should start by saying CIV4 ran fine on my 1.8Ghz AMD, 600Mb ram, Geforce 4mx system - I had to keep all the settings on low, but it worked. Movies stuttered.

However, the fact that I still get periods when the game slows down, lags and the wonder movies still stutter now that I have a 3Ghz Pentium 4 with 2 gig ram and a geforce 6800 is, it strikes me, a bit bad.

[CivNonFreak]

Originally posted by vannibombonato


Oh yeah...the "general forum"...sorry if i just went to the tech support forum, sorry if in one month i've not been able of playing a single minute, sorry if i event tried with 3 different video cards, sorry if the company that sold me an unfinished product didn't say a single "sorry" in one month...sorry, really.

I should just shut up and stop whining...after all, i've only paid 50 dollars for an empty box. What i'm complaining about? It's life!

Vanni

Well put, despite the sarcasm. Stop the whining... take the darn thing back if you don't like it. And its not like no one can play it... Wifes PC played it fine with no problems. Once I rolled back to 71.89, mine played with only sound stuttering problems.

Peeps are acting like this was a deliberate F-U from Firaxis. It wasn't... its an very complex game and it had bugs. If they fix it, then we all good. If you NOT good AFTER they fix it, get your money back, stop b!tching and never, ever buy a firaxis game again.

[vannibombonato]

Originally posted by CivNonFreak


Well put, despite the sarcasm. Stop the whining... take the darn thing back if you don't like it. And its not like no one can play it... Wifes PC played it fine with no problems. Once I rolled back to 71.89, mine played with only sound stuttering problems.

Peeps are acting like this was a deliberate F-U from Firaxis. It wasn't... its an very complex game and it had bugs. If they fix it, then we all good. If you NOT good AFTER they fix it, get your money back, stop b!tching and never, ever buy a firaxis game again.

Boy...i understand is full of people that is playing without problem...i would say probably 90%.
What i'm saying is that, in my point of view, it's unacceptable to sell something that you know won't work in 10% of the cases. Because this is what has happened. Once again, it's not that there is "some bugs", it's that this game does not even start on THOUSANDS OF DIFFERENT SYSTEM CONFIGURATIONS.
This, my friend, is not a bug. It's an incomplete product. It's a car with 3 wheels.

They preferred to take the money here and now and fix it later, and they didn't say a word for one month. They simply preferred not to delay the start of shipments of one month. It's just a business decision, very poorly managed in my opinion.
You are bad if you do this, you are stupid if you don't even say "sorry".

Vanni
And

[CivNonFreak]

Originally posted by vannibombonato


Boy...i understand is full of people that is playing without problem...i would say probably 90%.
What i'm saying is that, in my point of view, it's unacceptable to sell something that you know won't work in 10% of the cases. Because this is what has happened. Once again, it's not that there is "some bugs", it's that this game does not even start on THOUSANDS OF DIFFERENT SYSTEM CONFIGURATIONS.
This, my friend, is not a bug. It's an incomplete product. It's a car with 3 wheels.

They preferred to take the money here and now and fix it later, and they didn't say a word for one month. They simply preferred not to delay the start of shipments of one month. It's just a business decision, very poorly managed in my opinion.
You are bad if you do this, you are stupid if you don't even say "sorry".

Vanni
And

Well there is the rub, ain't it? If they KNEW it wouldn't work on 10% of the machines then I'd say they should have fixed it or noted the problem on thier site. Certainly, if its as widespread as you ASSUME, I would expect some sort of apology or notice and you are correct, they have not done so. But:

I'll not complain about the sky being blue, politicians being dishonest or games requiring patches. These things are facts of life; you can tilt at windmills all you want but its NOT GONNA CHANGE. It sucks when it hits you (I generally wait until the first patch is out before I buy and don't even mention MMORPGs.. WOW still has issues a year+ later) but sooner or later a game you buy is gonna suck on your machine and you'll have to wait for the patch. Sack up and deal with it. Part of life.

[ikajaste]

CivNonFreak: Yes, well, if you find it's wrong to complain about politicans lying I guess there's not much left to say...

People should complain more about PC games being released before they are ready. People should not go buy those games. But they still do, that's the problem. They get a ****ty product from a company, they complain, and then they go and buy the next one. Or at least enough people do. So no wonder the next product is ****ty too when produced in a very strongly capitalist corporate system.

And at least I'm not complaining about PC games being released before their time with gaping bugholes. I'm complaining about Firaxis's lack of response. I know even big companies make mistakes, everyone does. However, people should handle those mistakes by informing the customers what's wrong, and what's being done. And apologize if necessary.

Firaxis waited weeks before saying there will be a patch concerning the graphical problems, and even now they haven't said which issues the patch exactly tries to address. However if the patch does fix most of the problems, I'll have to congratulate them on a very fast fix. Poorly handled, but fast.

vannibombonato: I get your point. However, car with 3 wheels probably wouldn't work in 90% of cases. Nor are there thousands of meaningfully distinct configurations Civ4 doesn't work on. Also, thorough testing in PC market is very difficult. I however completely agree that their handling of this incident is very strongly alienating. Sad for them, because I initially tend to like a company that makes a game like Civilization.

[CivNonFreak]

Originally posted by ikajaste
CivNonFreak: Yes, well, if you find it's wrong to complain about politicans lying I guess there's not much left to say...

People should complain more about PC games being released before they are ready. People should not go buy those games. But they still do, that's the problem. They get a ****ty product from a company, they complain, and then they go and buy the next one. Or at least enough people do. So no wonder the next product is ****ty too when produced in a very strongly capitalist corporate system.

And at least I'm not complaining about PC games being released before their time with gaping bugholes. I'm complaining about Firaxis's lack of response. I know even big companies make mistakes, everyone does. However, people should handle those mistakes by informing the customers what's wrong, and what's being done. And apologize if necessary.

Firaxis waited weeks before saying there will be a patch concerning the graphical problems, and even now they haven't said which issues the patch exactly tries to address. However if the patch does fix most of the problems, I'll have to congratulate them on a very fast fix. Poorly handled, but fast.

I didn't say it was wrong, I just don't see much sense in doing it. Waste of time and effort. But some people enjoy it, so more power to them, I guess.

So long as they fix it with the patch, I have no real problems with them. As you said, if its effective its a fast fix for a problem that (probably) they never should have let get as bad as it was. However, they did release it with some fairly big bugs and thier lack of communication about it was overly timid and should be something they work to improve. But I won't waste my time complaining about them if they don't. So long as they make a game I want and its playable on my machine i will keep buying thier games. And so far, so good.