What do we think of PTW now?

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by vondrack

When you bought the game, you made a deal with Infogrames, not Firaxis.

No, I made a deal with the shop owner. Should I blame the shop owner?

Nonsensical argument. Of course it´s mostly the producer who is responsible for the product, and not some merchant. And no one forced Firaxis to work with Infogrames. They could have chosen another publisher, or none. If I don´t like a book, do I blame the publisher? No, I blame the author.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by Comrade Tribune
No, I made a deal with the shop owner. Should I blame the shop owner?

Well, wordly taken, I have to admit that you are correct on this. Which, however, does not affect my point - you made no deal with Firaxis. The shop owner made a deal with a wholesaler, the wholesaler made a deal with IG. The chain ends with IG, and only then Firaxis.

Originally posted by Comrade Tribune
Nonsensical argument. Of course it´s mostly the producer who is responsible for the product, and not some merchant. And no one forced Firaxis to work with Infogrames. They could have chosen another publisher, or none.

Who do you mean by "the producer"? The developer or the publisher?

And you are wrong on the Firaxis/IG relationship... It's not that Firaxians were free to choose a publisher... It's that Infogrames were free to choose a developer. IG owns the rights to the whole Civ series and IG decides whom to give the opportunity to develop future versions to.

Originally posted by Comrade Tribune
If I don´t like a book, do I blame the publisher? No, I blame the author.

Which is a completely nonsensical argument here. We are not speaking about whether you "like" a book or not. If you bought a book with many uncorrected typos and maybe some pages missing, would you blame the author? I hope not, since it's the publisher's part of the business to make sure there are no typos and no missing pages in the book.

[vmxa1]

Anyway if you look around you will not find a large number of publishers out there, so Firaxis or anyone can not just choose from a huge list. That is why some games are still looking such as Stars II, even though they have a known product.

[BottleOfPills]

Why do people continue to defend and accept mediocrity?

Infogram or Firaxis - it doesn't matter. The game is a shoddy peice of workmanship. PERIOD.

The analogy with contractors is correct. In my work I deal with contractors everyday - add in sub contractors and disadvantaged Businesses - and Million dollar contracts and you have one big mess.

But what it boils down to is that Firaxis is like a contractor who accepts a job. They accepted a job, they didn't finish it - any criticism they get they deserve. Don't accept a job you can't do - that's one of the first rules contractors learn.

Now if Infograms released a product that was incomplete that is their fault - did they know it was incomplete - if they did I'd say it is a form of Fraud. If they released it against Firaxis wishes - could Firaxis not have posted a warning on their website or for heaven's sake - An Apology - no, that comes almost a month later.

If you like the game and think it's worthwhile great, if you don't great, what ever blows your skirt. But don't defend these companies because they jack you up and know that they can get away with it. Maybe Ensemble Studios should buy out the Civilization franchise - at least it will be playable out of the box.

Have a good one and enjoy the holidays - maybe you can play your game by christmas.

[zulu9812]

I don't really blame Firaxis for all this mess - I blame Infogrames for setting an unrealistic deadline, thus hurrying the developers. However, it was up to Firaxis what to prioritise, and they prioritised the wrong things IMO

[vondrack]

Originally posted by BottleOfPills
Why do people continue to defend and accept mediocrity?

Not sure if this was addressed to me, but I am defending FIRAXIS, not mediocrity. I feel it very unfair that so many people blame them for things they had no or very little control over. I believe that it is the right thing to raise my voice, so that they know not everybody thinks that (simplistic and short-sighted, I may add) way.

Originally posted by BottleOfPills
Infogram or Firaxis - it doesn't matter. The game is a shoddy peice of workmanship. PERIOD.

It does matter as far as we are talking about whether it is justified to endlessly bash Firaxis for what happened.

Originally posted by BottleOfPills
The analogy with contractors is correct. In my work I deal with contractors everyday - add in sub contractors and disadvantaged Businesses - and Million dollar contracts and you have one big mess.

But what it boils down to is that Firaxis is like a contractor who accepts a job. They accepted a job, they didn't finish it - any criticism they get they deserve. Don't accept a job you can't do - that's one of the first rules contractors learn.

Do you happen to know that the key game designer, Bryan Reynolds, and about half the development team left Firaxis during the development process? I find it really interesting that nobody bashes Reynolds for dumping Civ3 in favour of his own game, RoN. Do you believe that his decision did NOT have a direct, very significant impact on the Civ3 time schedule? One, that was really difficult to account for in advance?

Still, the other part of the dev team that remained loyal to Civ3 did (and keep doing) their best to deliver a fine game. What they get in return? Flames and endless bashing.

Originally posted by BottleOfPills
Now if Infograms released a product that was incomplete that is their fault - did they know it was incomplete - if they did I'd say it is a form of Fraud. If they released it against Firaxis wishes - could Firaxis not have posted a warning on their website or for heaven's sake - An Apology - no, that comes almost a month later.

You bet that IG knew. And, Jesus, do I have to repeat it again? You can't officialy post a "warning" explaining that the game was released incomplete and that IG is to be blamed. Firaxis would be out of business not only with IG, but with everybody else in the industry. You do this once and you are on the blacklist.

Originally posted by BottleOfPills
If you like the game and think it's worthwhile great, if you don't great, what ever blows your skirt. But don't defend these companies because they jack you up and know that they can get away with it.

I will keep defending Firaxis, since I absolutely disagree with you on that "they jack you up and know that they can get away with it". Firaxians have shown so many times they care for the players and their opinions. I just can't stand it to see how many people freely bash them without actually realizing the circumstances.

Originally posted by BottleOfPills
Maybe Ensemble Studios should buy out the Civilization franchise - at least it will be playable out of the box.

This is exactly the kind of unfairness that I dislike and oppose so much. What about this: maybe Firaxis should buy out the Civilization franchise. We would still have the game that many consider (very) good, we may even have a (much) better one, with more features (even if one or two years later), and we may even have it working out-of-the-box. Since there would be no publisher pushing the preset release date. Unfortunately, the Civ franchise is owned by IG and currently nobody can do anything about it.

Originally posted by BottleOfPills
Have a good one and enjoy the holidays - maybe you can play your game by christmas.

Funny, when you mention this... I can play my game right now and am enjoying it tremendously. However, to be fair, I do admit that should I be in the MP thingy, I would probably not be able to say so.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by zulu9812
I don't really blame Firaxis for all this mess - I blame Infogrames for setting an unrealistic deadline, thus hurrying the developers. However, it was up to Firaxis what to prioritise, and they prioritised the wrong things IMO

Well, this may have been the case, correct. One year should be quite a lot of time to fix the original release and - basically - to add multiplayer (even though it's a bit unclear to me how much mess should be attributed to the GameSpy utilization, which was an IG's decision). However, we have absolutely no idea about what Firaxis has been or is working on (besides Civ3), how much funding they get from IG etc. Knowing what kind of financial troubles IG is in, it would seem prudent not to focus entirely on a title carried by an almost-sinking publisher. If I were them, I would probably have a backup plan... this is IMHO yet another reason to think twice before going the bash route.

[woody]

Originally posted by vondrack
still repeating the same over and over... so, to bring the analogy even closer to the Civ3 reality... you would probably not blame the roofers should you know that your general contractor forced them to build the roof in too little time, would you?

Unlike you, I prefer to think that Firaxis is a team of professionals, not a bunch of drugged-up irresponsible baffoons that couldn't care less about their reputation.
Maybe you're the one who's right?

But as professionals, they should not accept a job that they can't complete. Nor should they approve any release until they know it is complete. And if they don't have a say over when their product is released, they never bothered to read their contract!

So, yes, I would blame a roofer that couldn't care less that he built a shoddy roof, and instead decided to shrug his shoulders and blame his mess on someone else. Or even worse, as with Firaxis, not say anything at all about his shoddy job. They're not showing themselves to be very professional.

IG is also responsible for the PtW mess (and the original Civ3 mess), but that does not alleviate Firaxis from responsibility too.

Your undying support of Firaxis is admirable, but quite misplaced. It's because of people like you that they think they can get away with crappy releases and patches again, and again, and again.

I held my breath through the whole Civ3 fiasco, but enough is enough! Firaxis clearly has not learned a thing.

[woody]

Originally posted by vmxa1
Anyway if you look around you will not find a large number of publishers out there, so Firaxis or anyone can not just choose from a huge list. That is why some games are still looking such as Stars II, even though they have a known product.

No, Stars Supernova is another example of an incompetent developer that can't work to a schedule. They were funded by Empire to work on Supernova for years, and kept slipping. Finally, after they were 2 years late from the original release date, Empire cut funding. They have no money to continue working on the game, and no producer is willing to fund them again (rightfully so).

Oh, and if you check out the patching history of Stars!, you'll note that the developer can't write software. He always introduces as many new bugs as he fixes. Yes, he's even worse than Firaxis! (At least Firaxis finally released a pretty good patch for Civ3.)

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by woody
I held my breath through the whole Civ3 fiasco, but enough is enough! Firaxis clearly has not learned a thing.

OK woody, we got your point. There's no need to tell it again and again. Some people agree with you, others not, while others agree partially.

Believe me, the Firaxians are fully aware of the damage to their reputation. They are working on the patch and I'm sure they're devoted to make PtW fully playable and enjoyable. They demonstrated it patching civ3 until it was perfect. Repeating hundreds of times the same things doesn't help anymore.

The damage has been done. Are you unhappy with Firaxis' products? Then don't buy them anymore. You and those alike are not helping; not us, nor Firaxis, nor civ3. You are just spamming the forums.

Get over it. Move on. Post something useful.

[Argos65987]

Originally posted by Tiberius

The damage has been done. Are you unhappy with Firaxis' products? Then don't buy them anymore. You and those alike are not helping; not us, nor Firaxis, nor civ3. You are just spamming the forums.

Get over it. Move on. Post something useful.

Amen, brother Tiberius.

[Traelin]

Originally posted by woody
Firaxis did do a very poor job of developing the game. And, for that, they deserve a lot of criticism.

I think it's going overboard by saying they did a poor job of developing the game. I have been in the s/w engineering field for awhile now, and I know I can't name 1 person (including myself) -- let alone 3 -- who could pump out a product like Civ 3 in that period of time (BTW, I use the number 3 because that's apparently the number of developers on the Civ3 project). Only the best, most creative s/w people are hired in the gaming industry. It's a cutthroat, feast-or-famine industry.

So I would argue that, given the criteria of the situation, they did an amazing job. Yes, the game was buggy. Yes, IFGM should have been more flexible with the release date. But could any of us do a better job? If you're truly being honest, your answer is a resounding no.

[Traelin]

Originally posted by BottleOfPills
Why do people continue to defend and accept mediocrity?

Infogram or Firaxis - it doesn't matter. The game is a shoddy peice of workmanship. PERIOD.

Common sense dictates that if Civ3 was such a shoddy piece of workmanship, it wouldn't have sold an a**load of copies. Common sense also dictates that if people weren't happy with their purchase, they would have mass-returned the game, much like we did for PoR2. The beautiful thing about this country is that sales/return figures don't lie. Which also leads to the point that we (at least in this country) have the ability to:

A. Purchase/not purchase a product
B. Ask for a refund if we aren't satisfied

And no, I don't care what the return policy of any company is. If you complain loudly enough and express yourself articulately, you would be able to return just about anything.

[Traelin]

Originally posted by BottleOfPills
Maybe Ensemble Studios should buy out the Civilization franchise - at least it will be playable out of the box.

*Sigh* another comparison to AoE. IMHO that was one of the most overblown games to ever come out. What a piece of crap. I played that thing 3-4 times over a span of two weeks, and now all it does is collect dust next to Menzoberranzan and Icewind Dale.

Sure, AoE may be "playable" out of the box (I assume your definition of playable is that it has a certain level of bug-freeness upon release). But my definition of playability includes the overall fun factor. Running out of freaking trees and stone is absolutely retarded and so ungodly unrealistic it's laughable.

EDIT: Oh, and while I'm *****ing about AoE and how god-awful it is compared to Civ3, I must mention the absolute stupidity of their farm/crop queue. IDIOTIC! If I never hear that stupid sound again (i.e., when a farm is kicked), it'll be too soon.

BTW, one of the reasons AoE was (by your definition) more playable is because MSFT is a cash-cow. IFGM and Firaxis have a lot less money to work with.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by Traelin
I think it's going overboard by saying they did a poor job of developing the game. I have been in the s/w engineering field for awhile now, and I know I can't name 1 person (including myself) -- let alone 3 -- who could pump out a product like Civ 3 in that period of time (BTW, I use the number 3 because that's apparently the number of developers on the Civ3 project). Only the best, most creative s/w people are hired in the gaming industry. It's a cutthroat, feast-or-famine industry.

So I would argue that, given the criteria of the situation, they did an amazing job. Yes, the game was buggy. Yes, IFGM should have been more flexible with the release date. But could any of us do a better job? If you're truly being honest, your answer is a resounding no.

Very well said. My "undying support" of Firaxis and Civ3 may be due to the fact that I, too, am (or used to be) a programmer, and I, too, am a businessman. I have personally been involved in and even leading projects that simply didn't go the way they were supposed to, despite everybody putting tremendous effort (and skill) in. That may be why I show so much understanding for what it takes to create something like Civ3. I seriously doubt there is anyone who can honestly say "I always do a perfect job, I never miss a deadline, no matter what, and I am just plain perfect. I WOULD DO IT BETTER."

"given the criteria of the situation" - that is the key point. In the real world, one is always acting under certain circumstances, facing pressures and obstacles. I am not used to judge/dismiss people and their work just by looking at what they created. I tend to consider what they had to go through, what they faced, what they had to overcome, and how much effort they spent. IOW, I consider their "relative", rather than "absolute" achievement. If this makes me "guilty" of (indirectly) supporting shoddy releases...

And Tibi also put it right. To further respond to "the other side", I would have to be just as repetitive. I made my points. They made theirs. It's up to everybody to make his/her own opinion.