My Review of Civ 3

[TechWins]

"wow, your a loser"

I thought you we were past that, I guess not. What you call funny is well irritating and annoying for everybody else. If you take Yin's advice on how to be irritating to somebody.

(awkwardly ) VERY negative . haven't you waited a long time for it? i beleive it will be Quite good. i agree that we should post about problems that may happen so firaxis may look at them but i thought that your story pointed all the bad stuff that we haven't even heard about out. what angers me about firaxis is that they are so slow with information that we have nothing to speculate from!

He has waited very long for this game but I think that he feels very dissapointed on the way things turned out with the creation of Civ3. Which I could understand on many levels. Some reasons why he might be dissapointed. 1)He was expecting more to be in the game (possibly, i.e. religion). 2)The manner in which Firaxis took in treating the public. 3)Feels mislead with the look of the graphics from the screenshots. There are many reasons for him to be let down, being let down turns to negativity. His review was just simply portraying the worst case scenario with Civ3. He stated all of his concerns with Civ3, while doing it in a review type of format. I, as well, find it weird how somebody could be this negative about Civ3 but he does have reasons for it. That is my outtake on how I think Yin feels. I'm not sure if my outtake is exact but I think it's fairly accurate from a general point of view.

[campmajor!]

Re: huh?

Originally posted by splangy


my mother raised me just fine and what goes on in my private life is non of your buiseness! i fixed one post and the other is long forgotten. and if you never heard the word damn before than you family must have been pretty screwed up.
(dont make fun of my family if you dont want to be made fun of yourself!! and why would you ban me? plenty of people say damn. but not many people insult others family's

Hmm, may be it's better to let this rest before anyone gets hurt.

Just a suggestion: think before you post something.

[yin26]

TechWins: Thank you. I think you hit all the main reasons. I have learned over time to try to be productive instead of merely posting vague criticism and dark, cloudy "what-ifs." I really tried to express what I feel could be the worst problems of the game (endless and thoughtless micro, AI that can't deal with new features, and graphics that make game mechanics difficult to handle). I'll say again for the record: I'm a neurotically cautious optimist!

Slanger: Cool. I see your point of view. Feel free to take me to task if I get too negative for you. Just try to show me the errors of my ways, and I'll thank you for the effort.

CyberShy:

CyberShy: hmmmmmm thinking about it again....
yin, you've been in contact with Firaxis much, aren't you.
pherhaps they've asked you to spread some negative feelings around this game so the expectations wouldn't grow too high.... didn't they ?

they learned from the hyped smac, and for sure CtP lanches....

hmmmm, clever company, clever yin.
how much will I get for giving you more opportunities to voice your negative opinion

LOL! Well, I can only say this: Virtually EVERYTHING I have ever done to help make the games better (bug lists, wish lists, criticism, etc.), has been totally on my own. Actually, I think Firaxis must love and hate fans like me: Harcore helper one second and biggest pessimist the next. What they don't realize (or ever care about, I assume), is that criticism is just optimism looking for a light at the end of the tunnel.

I would like to think that some members of Firaxis look at boards like this, see posts like mine with some 'legitimate' concerns, and take it back to their offices and say: "Hey, we can't ignore issue A, B or C. The public is already on us." I think companies that care about and use public feedback as a valuable tool DO that kind of thing.

What I get on Firaxis most about, and this is just my perception, is that they put public relations and feedback VERY VERY low on their priority list. This is fine in and of itself if you are working on a game this is original and represents some concepts that might be very hard to get feedback on. However, Civ IS THE PEOPLE'S GAME! Same with various Multiplayer games. How can you possibly take a game that has been around in its basic form for 10 years and IGNORE (or seem to ignore) the very people who know the game inside and out? It's reckless. Perhaps arrogant. Maybe just incompetent. Not sure.

To be fair, I know our nearly 500 page list WAS read...and read carefully, at least parts of it. This is greatly to Firaxis' credit, more directly: Chris Pine made the effort to print, tab and bind the thing. Until that point, it was going to go absolutely NOWHERE.

Also, during the patch work on SMAC, Jeff Morris (QA guy) was exceptionally good at delivering on the things we asked for. Of course he and other Firaxis members would occasionally go out of their way to really piss people off (EX: The classic "Gamer's Actually Like Bugs" article, for which I lost my moderating title for re-posting...bygones are bygones on being 'fired,' though).

If I had to characterize Firaxis, I'd say they are supremely confident in their own abilities to make a 5-star game. Hard to blame them, of course, with Sid sitting down the hall. And the signal to noise ratio in dealing with the public will be REALLY low unless you make a solid effort to process it all. But this also often leads them to put public relations WAY down the list, to the point of completely going into hiding for stretches at a time. Then, when THEY are ready to do that "Public Relations thing," the machinery gears up, various members post happy happy posts, and the easily pleased are ecstatic. This lasts about 2 months until peak sales are secured and then things go quiet again with us begging Jeff to PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE fix this and that and NOT make us pay for a fixed game through an x-pack.

Well, sorry for the long post. I have a bit of insomnia these days unfortunately...

[Robert]

I think things went wrong when Firaxis tried to get the 'list' forum over from Apolyton to their own website, and the threadmasters (including you and me) got into some fights with Dan.

Firaxis should put one person on 'apolyton', like Micropose did during the ToT development with John Posidente (if I write his name right)
He answered about all our questions and eventhough people were slightly dissapointed with ToT he became very popular, and so did Microprose during the John-days.

I think you should keep in mind that you can't blame Firaxis for the mistakes Microprose and Activision have made, nor shouldn't you be too scared for the mistakes that have been made with SMaC and CtP(2).

And what I should do ?
uuuh, wait I guess (and correct you if I think you're wrong )

[MarkG]

Originally posted by CyberShy
Firaxis should put one person on 'apolyton', like Micropose did during the ToT development with John Posidente (if I write his name right)

from what i recall, John was here on his own, he was not sent by Microprose....

[MarkG]

btw yin, from my experience, people from companies who posted here, did so on their free time and not during any pr plan(with the exception of "Lt John" who handled the pr of ctp1/2 and who for a period of time put it in his daily schedule to reply to questions on the forums and sometimes post reports from the team)

[death_head]

What they should do is accept a couple volunteers...

*jumps up and down frantically, waving his hand*

Me! Me!

I've got nothing better to do than post here, all Firaxis would have to do is tell me everything about Civ3, since I am a SMAC person.

[Jeje2]

Originally posted by death_head
What they should do is accept a couple volunteers...

Right, this is what should be done and it's what they did on SMAC.

I've got nothing better to do than post here, all Firaxis would have to do is tell me everything about Civ3, since I am a SMAC person.

Well, does FIRAXIS really want to tell us everything right now?
We do know that they like to tveak and play until it's ready. In this process some features disappear and others evolve. Should they really tell everything publically?

My reply is NO. Not before release at least, maybe later. (But then also everything??)
So what should FIRAXIS do?
Well get some people to test the game and give feedback, but simultanously keep quiet of theire knowledge to the large public.

This is what happened on SMAC late production stage and it's quite often called beta testing. (SMAC had about 20 beta-testers and CTP1 had really a large groupe)


Maybe the biggest problem to us(*) is that different release dates have been seen, but we haven't heard a word about a beta-team from FIRAXIS... (And trust me, they should use a beta-time)


(*) OK, I'm worried and I think Yin too is worreid . (And if you ask me I do think there are more worried out there - though I cann't be sure. How about you? )

[CapTVK]

Originally posted by Colon
Apart from the fact that Yin's review was plain amusing to read, I think it was constructive. It appears to me that Yin thought out really well what could go wrong with the new features and signals on what to pay attention on. (maybe you should send it to Firaxis?)

Better write something like this before the game is finished than after, when the damage is already done.

For better or worse (if the october scenario really comes to pass) we can only wait and see. The only thing left for us now is to worry, then stop caring, read a good book or make a couple of threads that attract lots of debate but accomplish zilch.


The trains, once set in motion, cannot be stopped

[Robert]

from what i recall, John was here on his own, he was not sent by Microprose....

John was sent by Microprose,
I'm sure since I got very close contact with him (he even sent me a free game of ToT after I helped him with tracking some warez sites that offered ToT for download)

He liked Apolyton that much though that he even logged in outside office hours.

I think 6 months after the release he left Microprose.
He left a last msg, and we never heard anything about him anymore

John, if you're still here........... what if you say *hi* to us ?

[death_head]

Originally posted by CyberShy
He liked Apolyton that much though that he even logged in outside office hours.

Sounds like me

[MarkG]

Originally posted by CyberShy
John was sent by Microprose

...

I think 6 months after the release he left Microprose.

either way, he continued posting here. his last post was this March! what i'm saying is that he contributed to the forums cause he wanted to, not within any pr plan....

[Robert]

he wanted to............. and it was pr
let me dig the ToT archives to find if I can find any evidence for this.

[CapTVK]

I can remember his reaction when we discovered the 'simul'-turn settings in Civ2MP and ToT. See the thread "A word with you John" in the ToT forum.

[TechWins]

TechWins: Thank you. I think you hit all the main reasons. I have learned over time to try to be productive instead of merely posting vague criticism and dark, cloudy "what-ifs." I really tried to express what I feel could be the worst problems of the game (endless and thoughtless micro, AI that can't deal with new features, and graphics that make game mechanics difficult to handle). I'll say again for the record: I'm a neurotically cautious optimist!

Well, you're welcome. I think people should really understand your motive behind your posts. You're simply critizing Firaxis & Civ3 to provide help for Firaxis to make a more complete game. With you doing this Firaxis will be able to see some of the flaws that could occur in Civ3, from a customers point of view.

What I get on Firaxis most about, and this is just my perception, is that they put public relations and feedback VERY VERY low on their priority list.

That is the only problem I have so far about Firaxis. I think they will create a good game but along the way they have done a poor job on providing info to the Civ3 followers. They have given out enough info to the people who just check out a few things here and there (every couple of months). They haven't given the right amount of info. to the fanatic, Civ3 followers. What I mean about fanatic is the people who try and get every little detail about Civ3, talk about every little detail about Civ3, and discuss all the things they would like to see in Civ3. These people (most of us Apolyton Civ Forumers) have been treated poorly and in a manner which is not good for marketing.