Letter of JEFF BRIGGS to the CIV COMMUNITY

[Psycho Billy]

Re: happy they replied ,but...

Originally posted by dovlvn
a patch should be a thing you need after a few months of playing not a few hours yeah I know that the industry standard is not to do so but I expect firaxis who know their games will be purchased immediatly in large quantities because of their good name and have the large back of infogame to take a bit more time test all aspects of the game properly and only when it reasonably bug free publish it.if blizzard can do it so can firaxis.

WarCraft 3 had a patch available the day before it was released.... and you couldn't play on battle.net without it.

[vmxa1]

Seems I recall LOD had a patch the day before it hit the shelfs.

[JoeDaddy715]

WTF?

Personally, I think it's sad that companies release games that aren't perfect, but that's the way of the world. I bought Civ3 right after it came out and played it despite all the bugs. What is just as pathetic to me is is all the in-fighting that goes on in the forums. If it wasn't for people like coracle and all the other "whiners" Firaxis wouldn't know about many of the problems in the game. What brings us together here is our collective love for (virtual) world domination. When I bought this game I was so pissed off that it didn't work properly that I didn't play it for about a month. So what? Now I have a game that kicks ass, thanks to two things, whiners and Firaxis listening to whiners. What is even worse than the in-fighting is people correcting grammatical errors by posters. I mean, really, WTF is this ninth grade english class? If you can't attack the argument, then you're not being very logical, and it's unlikely that anyone with an IQ of greater than 80 or so (which is most any civ player i think) will even pay you any mind...
I haven't bought PTW yet, but I will. I'm hoping Firaxis will provide as much support to it as they did "vanilla." Yeah, Civ1 didn't require a patch, but it fit on just a few floppies if I remember right.... Plus, compared to civ3, it sucked. The graphics, the units, the combat system, the AI, and most everything else is just better now. Besides, whining about whiners is still whining.... What I'm doing is whining about whiners who whine about whiners.... Now i'm thirsty... Does anyone have some wine? I'm fresh out. I poured it all on my keyboard.
Hell, for me just having airbases and towers and stuff would make PTW worth at least $15. I don't allow cities to be built in the jungle, in desert, flood plains, tundra, or in mountains (you figure out why if you want to know) plus all of my civs START the game with a leader and a unit or three.... It's a goofy game, it's not realistic at all, so why fight it? If you liked reality so much, you wouldn't be playing video games....
This is for you language arts specialists:
I love this game because it let me take out all aggressien mine on them damned palestenians and lets me rape cities to the ground while i build terrorist units (6/4/1 A.T.A.R., INV, H.Nat) in a world where New York is smaller then Denver and George washingon Was bornded in 4000 bc and i like the railroads too but for the fact that it takes fifty years for horseman to move six squares on a road in 3000bc but only two years in 1900 ad when the pony express didn't even exist in ancient modern babylon cause papa smurf is who i play as....
hahaha

[JoeDaddy715]

call me a troll if you like, it's just another way of saying that my argument (assuming I made one) is too strong for you to counter... just like vondrack's earlier attack on woody didn't dispute the (un)playability of civ3 "out of the box" but rather alluded to him being a coward because he doesn't accept pms and something about some relative of goblins.

[MarkG]

If it wasn't for people like coracle and all the other "whiners" Firaxis wouldn't know about many of the problems in the game.

problem reporting IS NOT whining
whining IS NOT problem reporting

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by MarkG

If it wasn't for people like coracle and all the other "whiners" Firaxis wouldn't know about many of the problems in the game.

problem reporting IS NOT whining
whining IS NOT problem reporting

BINGO!

[JoeDaddy715]

so what's the difference? the use of emotive terms, the content of the complaint, or the reader's perspective on the problem (or the writer)? or is there something here i'm not seeing?
Please enlighten me, mark

[Coracle]

Originally posted by MarkG

If it wasn't for people like coracle and all the other "whiners" Firaxis wouldn't know about many of the problems in the game.

problem reporting IS NOT whining
whining IS NOT problem reporting

We have heard the tired old stuff from Day One last December, a year ago, when the Firaxis Faithful told us how "wonderful" and "great" Civ 3 was. . . that BEFORE THE FIRST PATCH!! Now everything I said about Firaxis long ago has been proven again - another rushed incomplete product filled with flawed concepts and problems needing patches even before release.

PTW is also overpriced. And it stinks. Just read the review at Gamespy.com that RIPPED PTW as a borderline disaster, with MP very slow and almost unplayable even after the patch. You get a small number of single-player features that should have been in the original game, plus lousy MP and loads of bugs. That for thirty dollars?? No thanks.

Those who criticized the incomplete beta game with its bad ideas and simplified history and endless bugs were personally attacked and called "whiners" by the fanboys and other Firaxis SYCOPHANTS and SUCKUPS. They do polls on the forum asking if people like Civ 3 - sort of the same as going into a church and asking how many believe in God. The critics of Firaxis are mostly long gone from here.

But I really shouldn't blame Firaxis or even Jeff Briggs himself. He clearly has his marching orders from a financially troubled Infogrames. I can't even blame Mark G. - he has a business to run and this site primarily gets hits from Civ fans, so the game has to be promoted and critics of it attacked. Just business.

If there is one lesson to all this. . . consumers should wait at least several months after release before buying a game, and then only after carefully reading the forum comments. If I had just read one long detailed critique of the game from Zykla (remember him?) earlier this year I would have passed Civ 3 by.

Well folks, told ya so.

Now all you Firaxis Faithful tell us how "wonderful" PTW is.

[notyoueither]

You have a serious problem bud. An entire year spent posting about something you hate.

Do you use whips on yourself too?

[notyoueither]

btw, I remember Zylka. He is playing PTW.

What are you doing?

[WarpStorm]

JoeDaddy, 'whining' about something will get you on Firaxis ignore list (see Coracle for example). At this point your message (and any future message) has been lost.

Talking rationally to Firaxis and telling them what is wrong with their titles without resorting to insults does wonders to getting changes made. Sending cases of beer works even better I hear (nye). I've probably told Firaxis more things wrong with CIV3 and PTW and suggested more changes than anybody here and they still answer most all of my requests (sometimes the answer is NO).

The tone does matter.

[Provost Harrison]

Some of us wouldn't know because Infogreed haven't deemed us fit to receive the new expansion pack. But by the sound of it, I am not missing too much...another one to wait for methinks...

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Dear Mr Briggs.


Thank you for your kind letter concerning Civ3PTW. I was intrigued by your comments and feel that I can help. Through years of working in numerous industry fields I have learned a technique that Firaxis have not yet encountered, and which will almost certainly improve matters.

This technique is called "testing". For my standard consultancy fee of £1200/hour (plus expenses) I would be happy to roll-out a series of workshops at Firaxis that will introduce the concept of "testing" and demonstrate how it can result in superior products and sales.

Interested? Feel free to contact me via Apolyton and I'd happy to arrange matters. Working together we can only succeed.

Laz. T. Gimp.
Global Domination Enterprises.

[notyoueither]

Dear Mr Gimp.

Thank you for your kind suggestions. However, I direct you to the following; www.buyaclue.com

There you may find some enlightenment as to the current state of the gaming industry. You may also trip over a few leads as to how PTW got released as it did.

Now, if you could get an in with Infogrames, that would be useful. Perhaps you could engineer some kind of take over. You sure seem to know everyone's business, so we can hope.

notyoueither
A tester

[Zero-Tau]

Originally posted by Coracle

Just read the review at Gamespy.com that RIPPED PTW as a borderline disaster, with MP very slow and almost unplayable even after the patch.

Gamespy policy is not to apply patches before rewieving. The rewiev was of the unpatched PtW. I don't think anyone here denies that the unpatched Multiplayer was horrible. But, from what I hear, it seems to work smoothly with the 1.14 patch.