Have you gotten your money's worth?

[ColdWizard]

Re: It's not about the money...

Originally posted by scientist
P.S. I definitely got ripped off paying an extra $10 for the Limited Edition, an issue which has never been adequately addressed by Infogrames or Firaxis and which is definitely sticking in my craw. They did swindle me with false promises and undelivered goods there.

i paid $20 extra

[scientist]

Re: Re: It's not about the money...

Originally posted by ColdWizard

i paid $20 extra

Ouch. Then you must be doubly chagrinned.

It was that LE rip-off that persuaded me of Firaxis' bad faith. The bugs and design flaws would have been easier to swallow if they hadn't taken advantage of my love for previous Sid Meier games and played me for a chump for a lousy $10.

[ColdWizard]

actually infogreed is behind the LE bull**** (hence my signature). after all there's no firaxis logo on the tin, just infogrames. firaxis made the game, infogrames does the marketing rip-offs.

[Ironikinit]

They rushed production and 28% cannot forget their cruel oppression.

[August Borms]

Re: Have you gotten your money's worth?

No, not until they release a decent scenario editor.

[scientist]

Originally posted by ColdWizard
actually infogreed is behind the LE bull**** (hence my signature). after all there's no firaxis logo on the tin, just infogrames. firaxis made the game, infogrames does the marketing rip-offs.

from the back of the tin:

Lovingly crafted by Firaxis Games and Sid Meier

Though you are correct in that only Infogrames' name and logo is on the front of the box. Both companies logos and names are on the back.

Arguing who is at fault is somewhat mute at this point: both companies betrayed my trust. Even if Firaxis was just taking orders or giving up their creative control, they are still intimately involved with a shameless rip-off.

[Encomium]

Re: Re: Have you gotten your money's worth?

Originally posted by Assur
No, not until they release a decent scenario editor.

Absolutely!

It didn't say on the box there was no scenario-building. That's fraud.

I wouldn't be interested in a WW II scenario anyway as long as bombers cannot sink warships. That is sooo stupid.

[OneInTen]

It didn't say on the box there was no scenario-building. That's fraud.

Hmm, looking over my desk, it doesn't say on the box of staples that I can't use them as a writing implement. That's fraud!

[Roy H Smith]

Some things you just have to get out your system. Get comfortable.

I was thinking to myself...perhaps I was too judgemental. Let's try the game again...this time with 16 players (I've wanted this option for years!). Starts good and then....slows down....
eventually two-three minutes a turn....I stop thinking of game time and use real time to measure progress (ok...three hours till I build the War Academy)....and in the end I eject the game and erase it from my hard drive. I'm not going to spend half an hour to move an archer 10 spaces. I did not upgrade my tech to the latest and greatest, toss in a Geoforce graphics card, and install a ridiculously fast CD rom for XT performance.

Forget the little flaws in the game. Hell, overlook the crashes, lock ups, and AI cheats. I'm even willing to totally ignore the uselessness of bombardment, espionage, and a host of other things. And let's not mention the Wonder movies lost, the unlovely Visual Basic-ish interface, and other items no patch could possibly fix.

I'm tempted to mention the new resources which force an unlucky Builder to war and culture/revolt/corruption which demands a Conquer raze every city he defeats but these are designer decisions, even if they limit a players options as much as the new and stripped down tech tree.

What I want is a new poll, and only for people that have the game and have finished at least one game completely. I want them to have experienced the mind-numbing tedium of moving 50 calvary across terrain.

Stacked movement is such as obvious neccesity for the late game (well, that and an AI that mimics Civ II's late game aggression vs the leader) that I cannot believe their beta testers overlooked it.
Of course they must have also noted at least a few dozen other things we've all read about here as well. So why weren't these issues addressed? Pick your answer.

1) Didn't care - Sid's name and the fan base could sell anything with a Civ name - especially after a ton of great reviews
2) Didn't have the time - they had a marketing deadline and just thought they'd patch everything later

Either way it's hardly a compliment since they had to know the game was incomplete. It's pretty obvious. And it's going for $20-$25 on Ebay which is almost a fair price.

As for the poll how about:
Do you suspect you are playing a Beta version? [Suspect?]

or

Do you think the patch will...
a) come out soon
b) fix all the dozens of bugs discovered hear
c) add back in the good ideas for Civ 2
d) improve the interface
e) add MP
f) enhance the editor
g) be free
h) all the above (sure)

If you love the game, I'm thrilled for you. Really. But even with the current poll - ignoring the pirates you've got:
Got Money's Worth: 60
It's Ok: 24
No/Not Yet (Totalled): 47

And let's just imagine the "I got it for free so of COURSE I got my money for it" portion of the most favorable group...I wonder how many that is.

And personal to spend $50 for an "ok" game is no real bargain either - "just barely" does not mean a wildly satisfied customer so it's more like 71 vs a very happy 60 so far....and this is a fan site! Can you imagine how bad it is everywhere else?

Infogrames (a French company) knew the game was incomplete, knew it was missing features, knew it had bugs, and knew it needed more testing...and then shoved it out the door.

Try to imagine a company flipping it's clients a middle finger in a more obvious way. Can you? I'm pretty stumped.

And then think of the dozens of other games that play fine on your system, don't crash, and move at a good speed like...hey...Civ II! Or SMAC! Or even a 3-D shooter like Half Life (hm....models 3-D reality, movement, ammo, monsters, allies, gravity, etc and yet infinitely faster than what is basically a 2-D board game).

As for being a "whiner" I freely admit that when a company sells an incomplete, buggy, expensive, long awaited, slow moving piece of software they've hyped as a nearly religious experiance it really pisses me off. And if I can prevent even one person from wasting their money it's worth it.

And I'd sincerely like to thank Infogrames...whenever I see their name on a piece of software I'll know not to buy it.

This will probably be my final post so I don't care how bad you flame me but before you do finish an entire game...or if you've got two weeks vacation...the 16 player game before you do.

Adios.

PS. Brian Reynold's must be laughing. SMAC is a few years old and Civ 3 can't even touch it. And if Civ 3 were released as Civ II and Civ II (with improved graphics) was released later do you think we'd be *****ing about it here?

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Ironikinit
They rushed production and 28% cannot forget their cruel oppression.

Truth is hard to come by. Treasure it when you see it.

Now, how the h*ll didn't I or Lib or Yin or, or, or... come up with that? Hats off to you Ironikinit. The most apropos statement on these forums that I have yet seen.

This is me, dying of envy.

Salve

[kailhun]

Although my answer is between the first and second option, I voted for the first. I have played it a lot and I've spend a lot of time on this forum thanks to the game. So a lot of entertainment all round.

Robert

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Roy H Smith
Some things you just have to get out your system. Get comfortable.

I was thinking to myself...perhaps I was too judgemental. Let's try the game again...this time with 16 players (I've wanted this option for years!). Starts good and then....slows down....
eventually two-three minutes a turn....I stop thinking of game time and use real time to measure progress (ok...three hours till I build the War Academy)....and in the end I eject the game and erase it from my hard drive. I'm not going to spend half an hour to move an archer 10 spaces. I did not upgrade my tech to the latest and greatest, toss in a Geoforce graphics card, and install a ridiculously fast CD rom for XT performance.

Sorry to all, but I have to enquire about this.

OK. You have a GeForce. BTW, video should add close to 0 in performance for AI turns.

CD ROM? Again, it should do nothing for AI turn performance.

What processor/chipset do you have? And how much RAM? These are the things that will effect AI turn time. Oh, and holding down shift (?) so that the animations are off and the AI units just zip by.

I am on a Duron 900 (effectively) with 256M of RAM. No problems with game performance. Big problems however with the time it takes to order some 100 plus units of my own around.

Did I mention group movement?

Salve

[Calvin Vu]

Originally posted by ColdWizard
isn't that what the "Who pays for this stuff?" option is for?

Actually, this choice is a little misleading since the choices are listed in the order of preference and the rather ambiguous choice of "Who pays for this stuff?" is at the bottom of the list. It could be misinterpreted as "Who would want to pay for this piece of crap if they knew what were in the box ?" by people who really really hate it. It should have been a little clearer, like "Can't say, since I didn't pay for it".
Anyway, I don't agree with the argument that has been flying around which links the "money's worth" with the number of hours played. If it takes over a week for me just to play a single TBS game, (probably with hours of dozing or grumbling at the scores of workers I have to move around) does it inherently makes the game more valuable than the RTS games after I have played a total of 3 games and decided to quit ?

[Ironikinit]

Originally posted by Roy H Smith I was thinking to myself...perhaps I was too judgemental. Let's try the game again...this time with 16 players...

Well, it's sort of nice to know that people with better systems than mine get a lot of slowdown when playing huge maps or 16 players. Mine runs OK on standard maps, although large is slow in the later going.

Originally posted by Roy H Smith And personal to spend $50 for an "ok" game is no real bargain either - "just barely" does not mean a wildly satisfied customer so it's more like 71 vs a very happy 60 so far....and this is a fan site! Can you imagine how bad it is everywhere else?

This forum is the worst of any moderated forum with a specific topic I've ever seen in terms of people complaining about the topic. People who don't know the topic, people who don't own the topic, people who have nothing whatsoever to do with the topic ripping on it. Not saying you, just saying people who haven't even lost any money showing the just straight up bizarre behavior of making up lies, misrepresenting, guessing at things to complain about. When people try to talk about the topic, they consider it a challenge to go and interfere. You could get together a room of guys that Sid Meiers personally knows and he's screwed all their girlfriends and personally kicked their grandmothers down flights of stairs, and you'll hear more nice things said about Sid Meiers in that room than on this forum.

OK, right, so I don't know how that happened. All I know is that I had to adjust to Civ 3. I think it actually helped that I hadn't played Civ 2 much in the last couple of years, because I... eh, never mind, some of it sounds to me like a lack of flexibility. Unwilling to change to accept the game, but also unwilling to give up the game.

OK, now if you don't mind being called a whiner, I'll let you in on something. I don't mind being called fanboy. I've embraced my inner geek enough that I can admit that playing computer games and talking about them online is in itself geeky. Cool people might do it sometimes, but whatever, cool is relative. Anyway, I wouldn't be looking for the info on Apolyton if I wasn't a fan and I didn't think the guys who set it up were into it too.

It's real frustrating to like something, want to go and talk about it, and there's somebody talking about it like I'm a **** for liking it. Half the time they don't get the facts right, and that's straight up annoying. PLUS THEY TYPE REALLY REALLY LONG POSTS and oh um lookit the time g2g.

[scientist]

Originally posted by Ironikinit

You could get together a room of guys that Sid Meiers personally knows and he's screwed all their girlfriends and personally kicked their grandmothers down flights of stairs, and you'll hear more nice things said about Sid Meiers in that room than on this forum.

Sid Meier's name is on the box. In fact, I think his name is officially part of the game title: Sid Meier's Civilization III.

If he wants to make himself a brand name, he should be prepared to pay the price as well as reaping any benefits. I would not have bought Civ III if he had not been associated with it, just as I did not buy CTP. He played on my admiration for the quality of his past work and now it is fair that I point out how that quality has been lowered, though in all truth I don't think that he was very much involved in the making of Civ III.

OK, right, so I don't know how that happened. All I know is that I had to adjust to Civ 3. I think it actually helped that I hadn't played Civ 2 much in the last couple of years, because I... eh, never mind, some of it sounds to me like a lack of flexibility. Unwilling to change to accept the game, but also unwilling to give up the game.

I agree with you on that point. A lot of complaints about Civ III, on the corruption matter or the lack of fundamentalism, stems mostly from the fact that people are just not able to adjust their style of play.

OK, now if you don't mind being called a whiner, I'll let you in on something. I don't mind being called fanboy. I've embraced my inner geek enough that I can admit that playing computer games and talking about them online is in itself geeky. Cool people might do it sometimes, but whatever, cool is relative. Anyway, I wouldn't be looking for the info on Apolyton if I wasn't a fan and I didn't think the guys who set it up were into it too.

I'm not a whiner, though I am a critic, and I, for one, wouldn't consider you a fanboy. A fanboy always supports the object of his affections despite all rationality. You might be an ardent fan, but hardly a fanboy. Ih heck, call yourself a fanboy if you want to, but then you have to admit that:

$!D R00LZ

It's real frustrating to like something, want to go and talk about it, and there's somebody talking about it like I'm a **** for liking it. Half the time they don't get the facts right, and that's straight up annoying. PLUS THEY TYPE REALLY REALLY LONG POSTS and oh um lookit the time g2g.

Qui? Moi?. Actually, what I really hate is people who bit by bit take apart a previous post by quoting it, and now look what you've made me done. If I don't hurry I'll be late for the Mad Hatter's tea party.