criticism gone?

[sabrewolf]

i joined poly in june 2002 and the first thing i noticed was the permanent criticism of civ3 and firaxis.

since then there has been some patches for the vanilla game (1.21f, 1.29f) and an XP (1.01f, 1.04f, 1.14f).

and now i hardly hear any criticism any more. why's that?
1. the game i nearly perfect by now (except maybe MP) so there's no reason to grumble
2. coracle, jimmytrick, etc. have been exiled out of this section
3. people are just tired of ranting

as for me, i'm fairly pleased with the game 1.29 and PTW1.14 are stable and are still fun to play. and the MP problems don't matter to me, because i havn't got time for MP and i'm too much a builder

i'm still missing real scenario support (diplomacy editor, scripting), removing of some hardcoded stuff (tech cost, flexibility for traits, workers tasks, etc) and some other smaller things.


how do you guys explain the nearly missing criticism?

[player1]

1) all cruical things fixed
2) or maybe lack of interest

As far as me, all is OK exept MP (which would need some boost in next patches).

[CerberusIV]

I bought civ3 in August 2002 and patched to 1.29 almost straight away so I never had much problem with it. The only real problem I have had was the european patch fiasco for PTW 1.14. They still haven't really sorted that one out since sites that have the US patch say it should not be used with the european PTW but don't then tell you where to get the european patch.

Other than that SP and PBEM seem to work OK so I don't have a problem. The editor does as much as I want to right now.

[WarpStorm]

Most all of the bugs have been fixed. The big complaint that Civ3 was not Civ2++, but rather a different game with different rules and assumptions, has mostly quieted down.

[MrBaggins]

Maybe ,also the fact that the modability required to make real scenarios a la Civ2 is gone... never to return, since Firaxis is utterly opposed to scripting languages... etc.

The large civ2 scenario making/playing contingent have given up on civ3, perhaps?

[sabrewolf]

MrBaggins,
you actually remind me of something else that's missing:
customizable AI.
e.g. in a scenario you'll want a civ to be specially agressive toward another, but not at all to an ally (e.g. WWII: germany shouldn't attack italy, britain and france should keep together, etc.)

i remember there once was a game with AI-scripting, but i can't remember which one.

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

1) Enough patches are out and with PTW the multiplayer was added making the die-hard civers happy.

2) Anyone that was not a die-hard civer or was at least moderately okay with Firaxis has long since left this arena to go complain about something else.

[Master Zen]

I too was VERY disappointed by the original release, the 1.29 patch alleviated most of my issues but PTW 1.14 is, to me, truly the game I wanted to play from the start 10/10 no doubt about it. (i don't have much time for MP either)

I still miss the lack of scenario support and truly hope Firaxis does something about it in a future patch since the game has even more potential for good scenarios than Civ2. Plus, I doubt that the designers would find it sufficient to include cities, units, techs, etc. in the editor yet fail to include diplomacy and events, why include the former at all then? It's like building a car and not putting the chasis, quite worthless in spite of the effort.

[player1]

Originally posted by sabrewolf
i remember there once was a game with AI-scripting, but i can't remember which one.

That was CtP2.
(and CtP to some extent)

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

I think a lot of people have come to the realization that Firaxis just isn't capable of programming the necessary code to make a bug-free scenario editor like we had in Civ2.

[sabrewolf]

maybe they could be pressurized to release the code and let the freeciv guys have a go at it. in 2 months you'd have a bug-free perfect scenario editor with scripting, etc. and a gam with an AI which could start 2000 years later on a 1 tile island and still beat the best of us

no, seriously, i don't know if it's firaxis fault (too many artists, too few good programmers) or if you have to blame infogrames (too tight scedule, too many "no"s for game feature requests).

let's just hope before civ4 comes out, the developers will make an extensive enquiery in the community...

[notyoueither]

Some of the critics still drop by from time to time. However, it would be expected that most people who do not like, and can never come to like, Civ 3 would move on eventually.

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

Originally posted by sabrewolf
(too many artists, too few good programmers)

I certainly wouldn't say that, we've got quite a few people in their SPARE TIME creating graphics that far surpass the Firaxis stuff for free.

[sabrewolf]

Originally posted by GhengisFarb
I certainly wouldn't say that, we've got quite a few people in their SPARE TIME creating graphics that far surpass the Firaxis stuff for free.

i respect you artists a lot.
but for me, the gameplay is decisive. and with my limited time, i turn all animations off...
personally, i would have preferred less unit animation and more other game functionalities (as mentioned in earlier posts)

[sabrewolf]

but i guess today you can't sell games without beautiful graphics and cool sounds...