The Great LE Scandal, Infogrames elevates it to new heights

[Kautilya]

Well a few of us had guessed that the one page letter was the "designer notes" so I am not very surprised. It's still a complete fraud of course. For that matter trying to market a standard 6 minute preview video as a "making of Civ" CD is pretty deceitful as well.

[gaikokujin]

Doh! (slaps his forehead) Why didn't I think of that? "Designers notes" means, "Notes from the designers"...saying 'Hi Ya' or whatever. And who tracks English-language apostrophe rules, anyway?

[Ka Shima]

LaRusso:
While I agree most whole-heartedly with the intent of your email, I do see where you can be greeted with a less than pleasing response.
In any correspondence, email included it is imperative that you produce a nearly error free document. I noticed several grammatical errors, or errors where you were saying one thing, and then started to change your line of thought. I can see it going either way.
Anyway, it doesn't hurt to have someone proof read, when you send a sort of offical complaint.
Anyway, good luck. It is because of the complaints on this forum that I was able to save a few bucks and switch to the standard version. I already own a couple of cookie jars, so not getting a cookie tin didn't bother me that much.
Anyway, can I say anyway anymore, anyway?

[Venger]

Quit your whining LaRusso, that's all you ever do. Everyone is sick of it, blah blah, blah blah...strap that on sonny!

Things not so perfect in Civ3 land? Am I to understand you are up in arms over something ancillary to the game, and not the game itself? After all your petty posturing about people concerned about things actually IN the game, you go on ad infinitum about some trivial thing you didn't get in the box!?!?!

Jeez...

Heh, for the record, I'm just teasing you, but it's about time you got your ox gored. Frankly, I find the full color tech napkin (poster my ass!!) more offensive than the lack of designer notes - dude the designers never even finished the game, much less the fuçkin notes!

Here's some designer notes:

[Designer1] Yeah, and this is when we decided that the air superiority missions shouldn't work for the human player
[Desinger2] It was real up in the air, and since we couldn't make it work before release, we just bagged it and released as is, I mean, there were SO many other things we had to do...
[Designer1] That's right. I had precious few hours to scramble all the keyboard shortcuts...
[Designer2] Yep, we learned that one from Microsoft - if you change around how stuff sorta works, and move things around, people get the "look and feel" of a new release.
[Designer1] I had loads of keys to redo to meet this vision - we originally had the r key make roads and railroads if roads were already there, but we decided that was too "Civ2"
[Designer2] So we changed it, and we also put in a few other command easter eggs, like the Shift-G we changed to revolution, rather than what someone might think of as a GoTo command
[Designer1] Yeah! That was great! You should have seen the one guy we had beta testing, he nearly panicked trying to move his worker to the capital, he nearly caused a revolution!
[Desinger2] That was a great beta test game! Actually, that was our only beta test game...

Venger

[Ragnarok]

Not quite what we had in mind..
But mostly acurate.

[Calorman]

I mostly agree with you LaRusso and I think your aims are justified.

Originally posted by Zanzin


To put in a "designer note" instead of the advertised "designers notes" is an absolute travesty.

Taking this stance is pointless. You're arguing a case of grammer by implying that "notes" indicates several pages of work. Sorry but I just don't think that's a fair statement to make.
Having 'notes' of something could just as well mean one paragraph of information as it could 10 pages. It's interchangable of course, a note could refer to just one piece of paper sure. But the point is that whatever word is used is not the be all and end all. You cannot simply assume that because they stated 'notes' that they specifically meant several pages of words. Not that I'm disagreeing with you Zanzin that the notes are woefully inadequate. I just want to point out that touting this statement in an offical complaint, possibly involving legal issues, is unlikey to get you anywhere.

{EDIT} This is just my take on it of course. I don't know anything about law so feel free to tell me if I'm wrong (and a stupid moron).

[Calorman]

[SIZE=1] [Designer1] I had loads of keys to redo to meet this vision - we originally had the r key make roads and railroads if roads were already there, but we decided that was too "Civ2"

Venger

Haha, so true.

And I think we're the beta testers btw.

[randomturn]

Calorman are you kidding? "Designer Notes" has a very specific and clear meaning to the gaming community, and Infogrammes knew very well what that meaning was. This was deliberate deceit.

[Elowan]

Originally posted by Venger
Frankly, I find the full color tech napkin (poster my ass!!) more offensive than the lack of designer notes - dude the designers never even finished the game, much less the fuçkin notes!

Here's some designer notes:

[Designer1] Yeah, and this is when we decided that the air superiority missions shouldn't work for the human player
[Desinger2] It was real up in the air, and since we couldn't make it work before release, we just bagged it and released as is, I mean, there were SO many other things we had to do...
[Designer1] That's right. I had precious few hours to scramble all the keyboard shortcuts...
[Designer2] Yep, we learned that one from Microsoft - if you change around how stuff sorta works, and move things around, people get the "look and feel" of a new release.
[Designer1] I had loads of keys to redo to meet this vision - we originally had the r key make roads and railroads if roads were already there, but we decided that was too "Civ2"
[Designer2] So we changed it, and we also put in a few other command easter eggs, like the Shift-G we changed to revolution, rather than what someone might think of as a GoTo command
[Designer1] Yeah! That was great! You should have seen the one guy we had beta testing, he nearly panicked trying to move his worker to the capital, he nearly caused a revolution!
[Desinger2] That was a great beta test game! Actually, that was our only beta test game...

Venger

ROTFLMAO!! True! Designer Notes my @ss!

[E_T]

LaRusso:
I Support you! This is the first time that I've paid full price for a Wide Release Beta, and I've got the S.E.

Venger:
Designer #3: And the beta tester didn't even finish, because of the bugs that he had found. We couldn't do anything about that, as it was to "Go Gold" that afternoon.
Designer #1: Yeah, that was a close one! We didn't want to miss out on the release party, set for that afternoon, so we figured that the public will do the beta test for us.
Designer #2: That way, we could try to work on the bugs that we knew about, and keep an eye on the major CIV Forums for any other bugs. That way, with a head start, we could come out with a patch that would get most of the bugs and we would appear to have been really working hard on the problems.
Designer #3: Sheer Genius!

[Capt Dizle]

huh...

I find it hard to believe that three designers were used for this mess. Oh, you must be counting Brian Reynolds and the two guys who left with him.

[Kaak]

i don't know, but if you do decide to file a class action suit, let me know and i'll go buy the LE, just so i can have the satisfaction of sueing their asses...

[Fidel]

Kaak, I guess that the class action is not really possible since there was a possibility to return it to the store and get a refund. Anyway, I really do not care about class action, I edited my first post - class action reference was supposed to be a joke.

Realistically, the most we can hope for is something resembling designer's notes coming from Firaxis. I reckon IG does not give rat's ass about the whole thing.

venger: i disagree with you about the gameplay. everything but the game itself is crap (manual, tech tree, etc.) but i really enjoy playing it.

there are some valid whining points (air sup bug, no ability to mass group workers, etc.) but combat-related whining is really really naff....

ka-shima: thank you for your suggestions. i never heard, though, that a complaint must be as stylistically pleasing as any of the e. hemingway's novels. i mean, it's a right to whine, rather democratic and availiable even to school dropouts

[techumseh]

Do you have consumer protection laws in the States that could be invoked? This looks like a bait-and-switch scam. Maybe someone could investigate laying a charge?

[marcuspeddle]

Originally posted by paiktis22

BTW can we get the LE in other countries except USA and Canada? Anyone knows?

LE is the only version I've seen released in Korea. Very strange.