That does it! I'm outta here...

[OneFootInTheGrave]

good luck

and make CTP even better.

[Zealot]

Ooops! Double post!

[Zealot]

Locutus, you're not leaving Civ 3 in its whole. I won't let you.
But you could take a well deserved vacations! I really understand your frustration about Civ 3/Firaxis/Infogrames. But as a hard-core Civ fan I know you are, you shouldn't walk out of Civ 3 in a sudden. Let the patch arrive. Let MP arrive too! Take your time to ponder. I know your creativity will fizzle when we (Apolytoners) start telling everybody how polished Civ 3 is.

At least I hope so...

Oh yeah, in Portuguese "Até logo" stands for "see you later". I think you meant "Adeus" (Goodbye).

[gachnar]

Do you not understand marketing?

1: You are still complaining about being treated as a second-class citizen. In my opinion, you picked the wrong analogy. Citizens have rights to availability of certain things. Consumers do not. My brother would have to drive 75 miles to get to a store that would sell it. Sounds like he's a second class citizen. How dare Infogrames refuse to sell the game in his town of 4,000.

You wanna know why it wasn't released worldwide? Economics. Use some common sense. Assume you have 50,000 copies of a game. You are in the business of making money. Where are you going to send those games to make the most money. Guess what: You send them all to America. Why? Because we here are ravenous consumers. You drop them off at some warehouses (EB, BestBuy, Babbages, Amazon, etc) and the retailers do the rest. You know that they will all sell in a short period of time. For whatever reason Infogrames needed money fast. The set a deadline and tried to get people to advance buy here in the States.

Its just a simple principle of economics. Why do you have Amazon sell the game instead of trying to get every gas station to pick up one or two? Because every box that is sitting on the shelf un-bought is a box that the retailer wont be buying from you in 2 weeks. If they really thought the Netherlands could sell games that fast, they would have made it a priority.

2: The translation. I find the situation dumb, but dont misunderstand what is going on. They aren't SDOing a modder. They are SDOing a project which would decrease the sales of a german translated version. Look at the manual. I know that that was based off of an internal release that was made a few weeks before the game went gold. Do you want a translation of the game as of that time? Now, granted, they could have started with most of the translation of the manual, and large parts of the game, but for some reason they didnt. That sucks.

But how do you think Firaxis would feel if during the development of SMACX someone released a mod that implemented most of the expansion in original SMAC? You'd have decreased sales, and someone just made sure you'd make less money.

Again. Wake up to the world of Economics. Infogrames is spending money translating CivIII. This is an investment. They are paying someone to do work that will result in a product they can sell. If the amount of money needed to pay that group for their time exceeds the amount of money made by selling what they make, then you have whats called (here in the states, at least) a "mistake". You simply dont do it. (Unless you are Microsoft, in which case you sell it for free, embed your operating system into it, and generally make it suck).

So here's your alternative: Let the modders do the translation instead of Infogrames. And then you have to agree not to whine about Germans being treated as second class citizens.

This very same situation happens all the time with movies. A movie is released. First release dates are a week (2 weeks, a month) earlier in the US than the rest of the world. Its usually released without translations. And probably without subtitles. But I dont hear many people complaining about that. One of my friends wanted a German copy of SUSE. But they dont sell that in the US. If you want it you have to order it direct. She was disappointed, but she didn't go whine on all the message boards.

That being said:

Sorry to see you go. I was hoping for good mods from you. Good luck with CTP2.

[Sytass]

"You wanna know why it wasn't released worldwide? Economics. Use some common sense. Assume you have 50,000 copies of a game. You are in the business of making money. Where are you going to send those games to make the most money. Guess what: You send them all to America. Why? Because we here are ravenous consumers"

I'd like to remind everyone that Civ 3 (US) is sold off store shelves and through online shops here in Germany like any other (localized) game, and it's as expensive or inexpensive as other, "Germanized" titles. It's not as if I had to order the game from the US.

[Sniffer]

Take care Locutus!

I wrote the Civ 3 guide that Infogrames had deleted, so I know how some of the people in the community feel! It just seems like a very poor decision to be so adamant about stomping out every project that could cost them all of 100 - 500 dollars in profits, especially when you stop to think that they are spending a fair bit of money to handle the legal end of things and will also be losing some money from future game purchases.

I understand that many of the people in the mod community will feel at least a bit wary of continuing their work. Compare this to the mod community for Half-Life or Unreal Tournament (where the producers paid people who created good mods for the game). The mod community can only help the producers and publishers!

I really hope that the guys in Germany realize how pissed some of us are that they got such a negative response from Infogrames. It is the worst of all that Kai didn't even have a chance to pull his work before the legal maneuvering began. At least Hurricanegaming was given 24 hours to take care of things, and no formal legal action was taken--we haven't signed non-disclosure forms or cease and desist orders. That is a very big difference from what was done in Germany. Why did Kai get such rough treatment.

Oh well, I'm off topic a bit now. Locutus, I would have enjoyed your Civ 3 work immensely, but I am not a bit upset that you would rather lend your support to a company that cares (or at least ignore your changes). Good luck, and god speed.

[Jerk]

I can certainly understand your frustration Locutus. The lack of a scripting language severerly restricts what any mod maker can do. A pretty game editor is nice and all but mod makers are then restricted to only what the game editor is capable of. In CTP 1 & 2 with SLIC you could pretty much make anything you want and script it to work. With SLIC a person could create a building or new wonder that could do anything. With just a senario editor all you have to work with is existing building flags. Unfortunately I can't see any scripting language introduced in a patch. Something like that has to be thought of and planned for from the very beginning. Unfortunately we will never see Civ3 be as flexible as the CTP series. I am afraid the most we will see out of Civ3 is lots of fluffy mods with graphics changes or new Civs added. Those things are nice but really don't modify the game very much. If I hacked Starcraft to rename Zerg to 'Bugs' it wouldn't make the game more fun.

Those who ask and beg for Locutos to stay should keep in mind that it if he were to stay he still would not be able to do as much for Civ3 as he has with the CTP series. Without a scripting language a mod maker can do only so much. Back when I lurked in the CTP2 forums there was a thread about creating natural disasters. This was a really neat idea and really could only be done through scripting. You wont ever see something like that for Civ3 unless they somehow manage to include a powerful scripting language. Unforunately my fustration with CTP2's horrible desynch problem with multiplayer caused me to look elsewhere for gaming fun. I am now tempted to go back and install CTP and see how much has been done with it. That is not to say I will throw Civ3 away. I enjoy playing it very much and unlike CTP2 it is not crash happy =]

[Immortal Wombat]

SHAMELESS PLUG

Originally posted by Jerk
Back when I lurked in the CTP2 forums there was a thread about creating natural disasters. This was a really neat idea and really could only be done through scripting. You wont ever see something like that for Civ3 unless they somehow manage to include a powerful scripting language.

SLIC rules:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=22679

Final file download on page three.



Scripting Language

[jackshot]

Originally posted by gachnar
Do you not understand marketing?

1: You are still complaining about being treated as a second-class citizen. In my opinion, you picked the wrong analogy. Citizens have rights to availability of certain things. Consumers do not. My brother would have to drive 75 miles to get to a store that would sell it. Sounds like he's a second class citizen. How dare Infogrames refuse to sell the game in his town of 4,000.

You wanna know why it wasn't released worldwide? Economics. Use some common sense. Assume you have 50,000 copies of a game. You are in the business of making money. Where are you going to send those games to make the most money. Guess what: You send them all to America.

No sir, you do not understand marketing. Do not be an apologist for IG. You market perceptions before you can market sales. Only giving the game to a chosen people is not a good way to create an impression (and I live in the US, BTW). I'm not buying the "50,000 CDs" argument, supply is not the issue I'm sure, while I'm also sure IG has some sort of real business reason for the delay. Nonetheless, it was a business decision that had the to-be-expected downside of being bad PR in Europe or anywhere a translation was needed. Good marketing is also about dealing with the downsides, and let's just say their efforts are falling short.

Watch IG shoot selves in foot as bad US word-of-mouth costs them millions in foreign sales that could have been had by releasing sooner. Nothing a few lawsuits can't fix, right? Wrong. Marketing is about dealing with this obvious scenario before it happens.

2: The translation. I find the situation dumb, but dont misunderstand what is going on. They aren't SDOing a modder. They are SDOing a project which would decrease the sales of a german translated version.

I agree. A modder overstepped here, and the company was completely within it's right to say cease and desist. The company still had a lot of options, it chose the big hammer. I realise there are many good reasons for this action from their perspective, still it is kind of like blaming the wall for crashing your car. It was there, it was going to happen, why just drive over things when you can make the road smoother?

Sh!t, they're publishers. What is a publisher's job? Whatever it is, it involves a little more than strongarming shelf space. They signed with Firaxis many months ago, and this scenario was there, what were they doing all that time besides blotting the ink on the contracts and leveraging other deals? I can't wait to see the next step in their master plan.

This very same situation happens all the time with movies. A movie is released. First release dates are a week (2 weeks, a month) earlier in the US than the rest of the world.

So what? A movie is a completely different thing, a different market because it is a different audience. Different expectations and different uses. Books have free libraries, music is played on the radio, so what?

Anyway, sorry to see talented people get frustrated.

[wyz_sub10]

So much garbage

So much has been said here that I'm not sure anything needs to be added. But I feel that *a lot* of people have really missed the point here.

I agree with the opinion that Infogrames has no obligation to release translations at the same time, and I also agree that people who don't like the game should not play it (I enjoy playing the game, well enough).

However...

Some games, like Civ2, live and die by the modding community. Civ2 is a great game, but what keeps it going strong after all this time is the flexibility to tweak and create.

It seems that Civ3 overlooks the modding community altogether. It didn't even ship with scenarios, which seems a little weird to me, and does not have the tools that can provide it with the customization for longevity.

As for the legal issues, I've work with copyright and tort law for many years. I'm not a lawyer, but I understand how it works. (I have to) Infogramers was right in protecting their own interests, but they had options to an immediate C&D order. They were taking a stand I have never seen in the gaming world.

Half-Life and SEIV were good examples given here on why modding works in favour of companies. Look at what's been done to make Armada better. Heck, look at Teambg as a whole.

Yes, this was different because it was a translation, but that doesn't change the fact that Infogrames had options. You don't cut off your nose to spite your face.

The second issue involves this "Civ3 is terrible" versus "Quit bashing Civ3" debate.

Civ3 is a lot of fun...but it didn't deliver what was promised. Consumers are allowed to become upset when a product does not meet *stated* expectations. (*STATED* is the key word here for those like Nikolai who feel gamers expectations may be too high)

If people wanted something that Civ3 didn't promise, then they are misdirecting their comments. But Firaxis stated *clearly and often* that custom units would be available, that scenarios would be possible and that it would suitable for mods.

It isn't...on any count.

If custom units were not going to be possible (as it was stated, because of the animations) than Firaxis had lots of time to tell its fans. Activision was honest regarding the (many) limitations of Armada II. That may have dissuaded people from buying it, but at least those who did knew what they were getting.

You cannot blame people for being upset because they didn't get what they were told they'd get. Would you not do the same with any other product? If you bought an audio receiver that promised Dolby Digital, THX certification and DTS, and when you got it, realized it didn't have DTS, would you not complain?

If the vendor said, "well, DD and THX are still fantastic, but we decided that DTS couldn't be accommodated at this price", would you not want your money back or at lease a promise that it would be accommodated in the future?

Forget legalities, forget what they are obligated or not obligated to do.

Infogrames has shown bad PR here. Pure and simple.

Daikatana tanked (in part) to terrible, terrible advertising and marketing. It was a hard-learned lesson that seems lost on some publishers today.

Civ3 is a good game.

It's a fun game.

But it's not exactly what was promised.

Why shouldn't gamers express their disappointment?

[Green Giant]

Re: That does it! I'm outta here...

Originally posted by Locutus
I've had more than enough of this, I'm not putting up with this Firaxis/Infogrames crap any longer: "Oh yeah, we're gonna make the best game ever, it will by far outdo any other (civ-)game ever made and we'll do everything we can to support the fan-community in their customization efforts". Meanwhile, they didn't have a demo, no MP, no scenarios, disappointing LE, no public beta, very poor PR (as Yin put it), they're treating non-Americans like second-class citizens, the game itself is not only just a 'conservative sequel' but also - even for such a conservative product - of only mediocre quality AND, more importantly (to me), no scripting- or event-language and no scenario support of any kind. Now, I can (and did) accept all that, there are excuses for such things and they can (partially) be fixed afterwards but now they apparently expect us to ask for written permission before we make any modifications to the game. How many other games are there out there for which this is required? Such policy is absolutely rediculous, there is no excuse for it; supporting the fan-community my @ss!

I can understand how they don't like it if people start translation projects on their own, but the way they're responding to Kai Fiebach's project is outrageous. They announced it will be about 4-6 months before a German translation becomes available and they're actually surprised fans start translating it themselves? Either you release translations (almost) immediately after the original release (other companies can do it, why can't they?) or you accept the fact that fans will act themselves. To think fans will patiently wait six months is naive to say the least, and to start a campaign of lawsuits (yeah, yeah, I know it's technically not a lawsuit but it's not a friendly email/phone-call either) and slandering against your fans is extremely immature and inappropriate.

To me, mod- and scenario-making is by far the most important reason for playing Civ and Firaxis/Infogrames seem to be determined to restrict modmakers as much as they can (no scripting, no scenario support, no standard-format files for graphics and texts, requiring fans to ask permission for customization, generally taking advantage of our goodwill), even though their PR-campaign say differently (no doubt in the hope of selling more copies). For this reason and to sympathize with Kai Fiebach/ColdFever, who - regardless of his good intentions - is being royally f*cked for all of us to see (and I can't help but wonder who will be next), I'm bailing out of Civ3 altogether. I originally planned on buying the game when the price-quality ratio was acceptable (i.e. after a patch or two or after the price drops), but I'm not gonna do so anymore. I'll no longer visit Civ3.com (and thus give up my hard-fought #5 ranking on CivTrivia: good luck to Skanky Burns et al) or the Apolyton (and CivFanatics) Civ3 section & forums, I will no longer update the XPC poll (just posted a last big update but that's it) and I resign as the Apolyton ExtraCivs Pack project leader. Firaxis/Infogrames have lost me to the competition, probably for good. You can say what you want of Activision, but at least they were sincere in their attempts of helping the fans (unfortunately due to internal reorganizations and commercial failure their options were very limited)...

Yes, I realize that this is only a small thing, I'm only one individual and it won't hurt Firaxis or Infogrames one bit but it's a big thing for me. I won't start a campaign of flaming, trolling or trying to convince people to follow my lead (heck, I'd probably get sued if I did), but I wouldn't mind if other people would take a moment to contemplate on whether or not they think the way Firaxis/Infogrames have been acting lately (particularly in the last week or so but also over the last 6 months) requires some form of protest (edit: I just noticed Hoek's open letter: that's one option, my selfimposed 'cease and desist order' is another, more radical, one)...

If anyone needs me, I can be found in the CtP(2) forums (and possibly in the Clash and other Alt Civs projects as well) and I check my email and PM regularly (and I'll keep an eye on this thread in the next few days). Inspite of Firaxis/Infogrames' behaviour, the time I spent on these Civ3 forums in the last few months was fun, interesting and well spent, so I hope to see many of you guys (including the Firaxians, I don't have anything against them personally) elsewhere sometime. Until then, I salute you all: Goodbye, Auf Wiedersehen, Au revoir, Hasta la vista, G^is, Shalom, Do svidanja, Zai jian, Sayonara, Salaam, Ciao, Khairete, Xaire, Vale, Näkemiin, Adjö, Até logo, Czesc, Sawatdi, Hoscakal, Dehna hunu, Fo tuma du, De groete, Tjow...
(I apologize if I left out anyone's language but I only speak so many languages )

edit: typo's 'n stuff...

I was going to flame you because I thought you were one of the idiot, pessimist, trolls, but you actually made some very good points. I am sorry to see you leave, I am not so hopeless about the situation as you are.

[adaMada]

EDIT: Oops, posted wrong message to wrong thread.

Locutus: Sorry to see you go. Haven't seen you around that much (been in the wrong places, probably), but it seemed like you would have provided an invaluable service to the Civ 3 community. It'll be a real shame when we finally get the right tools to develop with (if we ever do), and you're long gone, but I can't fault you for leaving. Good luck, and hope to see you again!

-- adaMada

[Locutus]

Once again thanks for all the support and kind words, guys (& gals?)...

Peter,

So, how bout the multiplayer diplomacy bug you were working on, or that other multiplayer cheat bug. Somebody posted recently asking if it had ever been fixed; AFAIK no one ever's tried fixing it.

Actually, I think that's one of the first things I'm gonna work on Right now I'm working on a CtP version of the ExtraCivs Pack but after/next to that I plan to work on that bug and on (finally) finishing the SLIC documentation (+ some stuff I'm not quite ready to talk about yet )...

CyberShy,

I don't know if you read my (complete) opinion about the german translation incident (Read it in the thread) but I'm completely satisfied that in fact nothing very special happened. Anyway, there's no good reason to start that discussion overhere as well.

Nah, it was too long, I don't have *that* much time but I got the general idea. I can understand why you think that but I strongly disagree myself, I think that what happened was very 'special' indeed (obviously, or I wouldn't be leaving).

If I would play Civ3 just for playing it I guess it wouldn't matter too much about who made it but from a modmaker's point of view the situation is slightly differently: you rely very much on what the makers/publishers of the game allow you to do and how much help they offer. But even when I'm just playing the game: I don't like giving my money to companies or people who do things that are IMNSHO 'morally' wrong. It's for the same reason as why some people boycot Chinese products (because of human rights, in case it wasn't obvious) or companies that don't produce their product in an evironmental- or animal-friendly way...

Nikolai,
FYI, I was probably a bigger pessimist than Yin (except I kept it to myself mostly and didn't whine so much ), so it's not *just* high expectations...

kwhit,

So people enjoy fixing the CTP2 bugs themselves? Hmmm. It seems like that should be the developers' job.

Yep. True, absolutely true. I'm not exactly happy with Activisions behaviour either but at least they have some good excuses (in this case: poor sales, internal reorginizations (i.e. firing all the programmers)). But at least they gave us the ability to fix things ourselves, something which is simply not possible in Civ3 (or at least not to the degree it is in CtP)...

Zealot,

I won't let you.

Too late

I know what Até logo means. Au revoir and Auf Wiedersehen and probably half a dozen other words mean the same thing, most languages don't have a 'proper' 'goodbye' strangslation, I'm afraid. (Though in this case I should indeed have picked Adeus...)

Sniffer,

I wrote the Civ 3 guide that Infogrames had deleted, so I know how some of the people in the community feel!

Damn, I my sympathies are with you as well! That was a fine piece of work, now down the drain.




To those people curious about CtP/something other than Civ3, I would advise the following: if you can pick CtP(2) up cheap you should certainly try it (play one or two games with the out-of-the-box game and then download some mods). Some people love it, some people hate it. If it turns out you hate it: hey, you got it cheap so not much lost there. If it turns out you love it, you got a good bargain...

[Dale]

Locutus:
I'm with you mate. I'm over Civ3 already, only had it a few weeks. Here's my reasons:

- Bad balance. I'm sick of losing modern units to ancient ones. And no, it's not because my tank has one hitpoint and the spearman is elite fortified in city on hill with walls.
- No modding. After modding CTP2 to hell (Apolyton Pack) I had hoped to get stuck into Civ3. Like THATS gunna happen!
- I HAD to upgrade to Windows XP just to get the game to work. I had the graphics problem. How? My system is P3-666, 364 RAM, Intel graphic chipset. Surely they'd allow for THAT chipset!!!!!!!! It's a Windows 98 standard chipset! This issue REALLY pissed me off!
- It doesn't have that "one more turn" feel to it. I'd warned my missus beforehand to not expect much outa me when I got Civ3. She expected me to be on the computer all night, but I'll only spend an hour or two on it, if I even bother playing Civ3.
- I hate moving 100 settlers/workers over the map to upgrade improvs. Give me PW!
- No wonder movies.
- And so much more.............

These are not bugs, but design/testing issues. And to top it all off, I got ripped off in the LE debacle. Where's the promised stuff??????? For $110 (Australian) I REALLY took it up the ass for that crappy LE!

I'm so sick of gaming companies/publishers ripping us consumers off. I for one will start looking to Warez sites. It's funny, computer games is the ONLY industry where you can sell a product that is faulty, doesn't work, full of bugs, etc and NOT be liable for it. Amazing huh?

So I'm going back to Alt-Civs to work on my game History of Empires.

[genghisvick]

Originally posted by Hans2
Don't let the door hit you in the @ss.

lol, I was thinking the same thing.