c189# HAVE A LITTLE FAITH

[CobraA1]

Originally posted by yin26
Every single complaint I have *ever* made has been based on the horrid communication Firaxis has given us throughout the entire process.

I disagree. The only bad communication has been about MP. They've been talking about everything else quite openly. We know about the editors, and we know about culture, we've got a lot of screenshots, they've pretty much answered all of our questions about everything else!

Civ III will be awesome. We've got realms of information to support that.

Although I agree that your complaints have been about communication, I disagree that the communication is horrid. They're more open than any other company I know of. They wouldn't be the first company to hold back information from the public.

[xobsidianx]

Firaxis has yet to fix all the bugs in smac and smacx. That does not bode well for Civlll. Because of that, I have no faith in Firaxis. Yes, the individual games are fun, until it crashes. If people expected more from Firaxis, instead of bragging about Firaxis, we would get games with fewer bugs. After my experience with buggy smacx, I won't be buying Civlll until it is bug free [no crashes].

[CobraA1]

Nobody's really played it, and you're already talking about bugs? Wait until you know what the bugs are before whining about them .

[Shiva]

Originally posted by CobraA1

Although I agree that your complaints have been about communication, I disagree that the communication is horrid. They're more open than any other company I know of. They wouldn't be the first company to hold back information from the public.

Firaxis is about average in the openness department. People whining about communication should take a look at EA and Sierra. They are two houses that have been around for a very long time and on most of their games would rather die than give up anything (to be fair Sierra wasnt that bad till Havas got a hold of them).

[connorkimbro]

*plugs ears*

mommy, mommy, make the voices stop!!

i have a bad temper, so i'm talking to myself also, but some of you need to cool off a little before you post sometimes.

[tuckson]

Hmmm... Maybe it's a bit late, but ehh...

Way to go, orange, couldn't agree more.
I'm still thrilled in excitement to get my hands on The Game!

Grtx,

[Kaak]

The truth is, instead, of 'conspiring' to rip you off as the popular assumption goes, they're working day in and day out, taking YOUR suggestions, listening to what YOU the gamers have to say.

I don't remember one single gamer saying they DID NOT WANT MP at all...And i think if they were working day in and day out, we could have had it...Money grubbers rushing an unfinished game to get it into the holiday market isn't going to ellicit a great amount of faith from me

[lorien]

OK, Kaak I'll say it then.

I DO NOT WANT MP at all.

I do not play MP computer games - mostly because of the unsocalized twits who seem to make up a majority of the online players.

Now, I am not claiming that anyone on this board fall into that group - simply the fact that are here says that you have more social skills than a lot of those gamers.

But I game to escape from dealing with the morons of this world.

So if getting MP into the game would delay me getting the game that I will play - then I don't want MP.

[korn469]

lorien

some players certainly do want MP, and others like you don't care...however that is not the point

So if getting MP into the game would delay me getting the game that I will play

the point is, there is NO reason why MP should delay the game...there isn't a rule that says you have to work on multiplayer after you make single player...it is up to the team leader to budget time programming time for MP so it gets completed along with the rest of the game, this should have been much easier with Civ3, since the game is built upon a highly modified SMAC engine, the SMAC had MP...so firaxis already had MP code that with a little bit of work could have meant that Civ3 would have PBEM, hotseat, and lan...somewhere something went wrong, otherwise Civ3 would have had MP

maybe we should blame it on BR, since his departure ended up costing Civ3 seven months of development time

who know, who cares, what's done is done

[HalfLotus]

I dont play MP. I dont want MP at all. I'm expecting Civ 3 to be well worth the money I pay for it.

[Mahdimael]

I generally have no problem with people complaining about an upcoming product. In some cases, it does let the company know about the wishes of the consumers. Oft times, however, it can be useless. I could complain all day that I want a certain type of new car to have a corvette engine, go-kart handling, and off-road capabilities. That doesn't mean it's viable. Like consumers, companies have to make decisions based on resources (time, money, manpower, feasability, markets).

Like it or not, what really is going to determine if you buy from firaxis in the future is the quality of the game. How quickly do you think you'll forget what information was/wasn't released on the website. And frankly, it's a silly attitude to say "Well, they didn't provide me with enough information about their product before it was released". Name one other industry that even approaches the level of pre-release information that the video/computer game industry does. There is none.

By demanding information, you force developers to release information on details that either aren't pegged down, haven't even been designed, or they're not comfortable releasing. Given that playtesting is among the last steps in the game design process, it's safe to say the majority of design elements in most games aren't considered "done" until the very end. And if a company has to rescind a feature they've announced, woe to them from angry fans.

The complaints I have the hardest time digesting are those that concern the actual gameplay. There is no possible way that you can determine if a specific rule/unit/wonder/etc is bad unless you have the game in your hands. Come the 30th of this month, we'll all have that chance.

The solution? I'm not sure. Perhaps game developers should not announce their products until the end of the development cycle. That way people will have to base their opinions on actual gameplay.

[yin26]

It's a silly attitude to say "Well, they didn't provide me with enough information about their product before it was released".

The point in this case is that Firaxis DID provide information on MP as being some revolutionary thing, blah blah blah, which no doubt helped pre-orders and on the overall image of the product. What was NOT provided, however, was any clear answer if MP would be included on release day. The on-line retailers listed MP for quite a good long while.

Then we get a 'leaked' e-mail, which for all I know was Firaxis trying to give info without breaching its contract with Infogrames. So I don't mind a lack of information, per se. It's the DISINFORMATION and deliberate side-stepping of an issue that was hyped as a selling point that really offended me and others.

As for complaints about gameplay: I agree. No way to tell yet.

[Felch]

Amen, orange.

[yin26]

I would also add that you have to put MP in context of the Civ series to understand its special significance this time: Civ2 had some ummm 'growing pains' to get MP working. Fine. This seemed fixed by the SMAC release, however. Although not perfect, SMAC's MP was usable.

So the announcement VERY late in the game after all the MP hype that MP would NOT be included sent alarm bells about the game itself on top of the PR issue. That is a very reasonable thing, if you ask me.

Now: Spilt milk is spilt milk. The question is: Will MP end up being something really great (like on-line worlds)? If so, nobody...not even I...will bring up the lousy MP PR in any serious way again. Well, I might say: 'Wow! Now I see! But it's still too bad how the info was released.'

However, if MP ends up being nothing special at all (or not included at all, which could still happen I suppose), then you'll see another round of posts saying 'False Advertising!'

[orange]

Did you/are you going to buy the game, Yin?