a STATEMENT OF ACTIVISION TO THE CIV COMMUNITY

[Baloo]

Funny, I have this little inkling to smack the punks who touted this game as "great", "hella better than Sid's Civ" and even comments like "SMAC? What's that c%#?" which made me waste 40 bucks and to regret later.

Ahh, you guys aren't really the ones to blame. You thought that CTP2 had that potential, and I felt that too when I played it for the first time. Then one by one the walls crumbled -- Poor man's AI, idiotic bugs, not-so-spectacular diplomacy, and dumb game design. I think we Civ-game lovers are all in this boat together. No need to despair b'cause the light is slowly but surely peering at the end of tunnel -- Civ 3 is getting more exposure as Dino is laid to rest.

Good riddance CTP2 and Activision. And the Firaxis employee (Jeffery Morris) who sneered at CTP2 in one of those "How would you rate CTP2" polls, you're a sorcerer arent you?
[This message has been edited by Baloo (edited January 25, 2001).]

[Baloo]

Multiposts
[This message has been edited by Baloo (edited January 25, 2001).]

[Baloo]

Another Multipost. Sorry

[This message has been edited by Baloo (edited January 25, 2001).]

[Mike the Nuke]

quote: Originally posted by WesW on 01-22-2001 08:53 PM I share everyone's displeasure and anger over Activision's decision to abandon support for the game, especially when many people are having problems with saved games and such. I am afraid that the Ctp games never really had the support of the Activision higher-ups, and I suspect that the decision to pull the plug on support was made weeks ago. I have talked to people who have visited Mr. Ogre's website, and he has already taken a position at Blizzard on an un-named project. Make of that what you will. However, please don't give up on the game. If you visit the creation forums, you will see some amazing things that have already been done with the game by the people here, and we are just scratching the surface of what can be done. For those of you who don't have the game, wait until you can get a good deal on it if you can, but I would strongly recommend getting this game. Regardless of what you think of it out of the box, I believe that it has awesome potential, and that we will be unlocking that potential in the months to come.

1. Where is your site. I know it's been posted before, somewhere. I believe I've visited it once but can't remember the link (forgot to save it in my favorites). When I visited it, I was on the site for quite awhile. I think I was looking into Civ 2 stuff. I remember reading a 'diary' of a game you were playing under one of your latest mods (Civ2, I think). I was very interested and almost downloaded it to try it myself until you described a game freeze\crashes\glitch that you couldn't quite resolve without doing a whole bunch file changes and renaming (etc) while you played under the mod.

2. Make a Hot Seat Option for the game and then (if) when the price comes down to the current cost of CTP-1 (about $20), I might buy it. If Hot Seat and PBEM are coded similar, create a PBEM mode for those folks too. These opitions MUST work properly, not be 'fly by night" deals.But then, these, of course are not mods. They are actually game play mode changes, patches or additions. You would probably require the original source code to add these items.

3. What guarentees are there that you will continue to support or patch your fixes/mods/patches. Not to be disrespectful of your abilities or intentions, but how long could you continue on a project or projects like this while receiving (basically) nothing (except pride and possibly some pleasure you get in creating these mod/fixes) in return for all the time you would have to spend. I believe you also do mods for several Civ type games, already.

4. I feel the game should be a 'good' game with few disasterous bugs in it (if any). Most major bugs should have been fixed by the manufacture (not the done in CTP2, as per forum messages). It appears (from the messages on this site) that CTP2 in basically one BIG BUG. I believe that all the other Civ type games you develop improvements/mods for, are still supported by their manufacturers (correct?). This one, apparrently, is NOT.

[tanalias]

I knew it! When CTP came out I returned the game after about 20 days. I loved the way it was structured but not the bugs. When it was official that no more new patches would be made, I got a bit angry but not too upset since I did not own the game. When the sequel was announced I said to myself, "do not buy this game unless all the bugs (I was sure that there would be) are fixed." Well, unfortunately they weren't, and fortunately I did not buy the game. I still am angry at Activision, its not their first time and it wont be the last. I am not going to buy another game with bugs. And this is something that I am sticking with since 1999. F U Actibision. ;p

BTW, what is wrong with BOTF and some people keep complaining about it? The patch fixed the problems that I have noticed and I still play the game.
Perhaps I can help? email me.

[MarkG]

quote: Originally posted by Mike the Nuke on 01-25-2001 09:09 PM 1. Where is your site.

you can find a link at
a) his homepage icon and his special title on all of his posts/9including the one you replied to)
b) the bottom of all forum pages
c) the front page of the site

quote: 2. Make a Hot Seat Option for the game and then (if) when the price comes down to the current cost of CTP-1 (about $20), I might buy it.

boy, you do ask very little form someone with no access to the source code....

quote: 3. What guarentees are there that you will continue to support or patch your fixes/mods/patches. Not to be disrespectful of your abilities or intentions, but how long could you..

you ARE being direspectfull actually

quote: I believe that all the other Civ type games you develop improvements/mods for, are still supported by their manufacturers (correct?). This one, apparrently, is NOT.

depends on what you mean. activision support will still answer questions about ctp2

as for patches, microprose made a lot of money by selling patches packed with a few scenarios
smacers are still waiting for that last patch that was promised but never happened
i'm not supporting activision, i'm just pointing out that noone is free of guilt in this business

[jkadabomb]

Hey look at Valve, they are still filling store shelves with HalfLife, a 2 year old game. And I think another patch is coming out. HalfLife is dated but Valve has pushed it tons, almost way to much, I think they should focus more on Team Fortress 2 and HalfLife 2 now. Maybe if Activision pushed CTP2 this much it would be successful. As I recalled when HL came out it got good reviews but nothing to spectacular, but Valve pushed it and it became a phenomenon. Valve pushed the customibility, fixed multiplayer, and supported the game through everything, and they are still selling tons of HalfLife copies, In fact HalfLife has never been removed from store shelves. It would have been nice if Activision created the equivilant of Team Fortress Classic for CTP2 (and it should be free also).

[The Viceroy]

What really gets me is, in a previous thread which I started, we discussed design methodology .. asking if the way Activision had approched CTP2 was the best way ... the end conclusion was that it seemed to make commercial sense, to fire out a quick & dirty (get the revenue going) and then patch the thing later .. This is widely used in the software industry.

If I recall, Pyaray even joined in this thread, stating the same feelings ..

So, to abandon CTP2 at this stage to me is horrific .. If you admit that you used DSDM (RAD) to develope this product, ... where are the patches ?? as patch 1, quickly followed by 1.11 ha .. don't address the problems both myself and other CTP2 player have faced.

As a software Engineer myself, I have to tell Activision that this is hopelessly amature of you .. and I will no longer be being buying any more of your software... becuase it won't work, and you won't fix it.

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"Wherever wood floats, you will find the British" . Napoleon

[Gwap]

tut2_main.slc indeed makes excellent reading. And it appears from the way the language is used, that tight deadlines had more to do with the problems than bad programmers.

I think I will change my signature to include this line from tut2_main.slc: //note to self: bad design always finds a way of biting you right on the butt

[Grumbold]

Straight from the Brian Reynolds interview, and a lesson Activision badly needs to learn:

quote: Where does one draw the line between delaying the release or sending the game to the market as it is? What is unchangeable: the features you set out to have in the game or the deadline you set to do it? If you delay a product in order to make it great, you're simply delaying your success. But if you ship a product before it is ready the results can be disastrous. A great game shipped late will still be great whereas a mediocre game shipped on time will probably fail. There are eventually some practical limits as to how long you can work on a game before technology leaves it behind or before your company is bankrupt, but within any reasonable timeframe the emphasis should clearly be on making the game great.

Activision have fallen into the trap of shipping a mediocre game. Acceptable but less than stellar reviews have caused sales to be uninspiring so the potential benefits of a proper patch are outweighed by the cost and the whole project has failed.

[Atahualpa]

quote: //general warnings n' info about **** that happens in the game //there's a lot of them; I don't ****ing care enough to comment each one

This could get into my sig

Or maybe this:

quote: //oh, baby, show me your workaround face

This is just to funny

quote: // file info goes here // // This file is for Winnie testing purposes only. // // No lemurs were harmed in the opening of this file. //

LOL

quote: //dumbass workaround for dumbass design flaw

LOL explains a lot bout intern relations to the game. I guess people at Activision know much better than we, that they produced a lot of crap

quote: int_t ******; //probably won't ship with this

Only probably I guess

ata

[Bluevoss]

BlueO,

I know you've done a lot of great work on the game. Now, I saw your list of what you think was wrong with CTP2. One thing you left off was the flaw in negative aspects of growing populations. To me, this was a critical ommission in the game - otherwise, all it means is that your cities exist to built troops, troops, and more troops. Without these negatives, there is no point to building happy structures.

Play a few rounds of Civ2 and you will remember how cities work. You need to walk that fine line, watching your people, guaging just how far you can push them. Nothing like being in the middle of a war and suddenly finding your cities in open rebellion. Do I build another inf unit, or that theater? Can I afford to change a bunch of people into entertainers. Really, that was a major part of the game that was just left off. For me, its critical enought that even if the AI was significantly improved, I still wouldn't bother.

What really sucks is that you can see values for supporting unhappyness & population in dbdiffs, but it dosn't have any effect. That sucks, since unhappyness and population could really make you work to keep that empire running.

Frankly, I'll not play CTP2 now. Without city management, what the hells the point?



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Bluevoss-

[Alpha Wolf]

Seems like everytime we turn around, another of the programmers that visited us has left activision. hmmmm, maybe they all didnt move on to different projects, but moved onto different companies. I wonder if they have enough programmers left to fix it even if they wanted to.

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History is written by the victor.

[Solver]

I'm upset. I love CtP I, and CtP II also seems nice, but this means there will never be PBEM in CtP II. For me, as PBEM Ladder Administraotr, this is especially painful.

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Solver - http://www.aok.20m.com

[BlueO]

quote: Originally posted by Bluevoss on 01-26-2001 11:01 AM Play a few rounds of Civ2 and you will remember how cities work. You need to walk that fine line, watching your people, guaging just how far you can push them. Nothing like being in the middle of a war and suddenly finding your cities in open rebellion. Do I build another inf unit, or that theater? Can I afford to change a bunch of people into entertainers. Really, that was a major part of the game that was just left off. For me, its critical enought that even if the AI was significantly improved, I still wouldn't bother.

You know, ever since I started playing ctp2, it dawned on me that, the game has lots great features, but horribly unbalanced. It was kinda sick that each tile has so much resources, I was beginning to feel it doesn't matter where you build your city, it'll grow up to be a productive city, wherever you put it...(mostly true). And the unit stats also seems horribly unbalaced. When I was playing the game, I find my tanks again and again, defeated by catapults and hoplites fortified in cities!!! What's up with that? And why do artilleries able to shoot down my planes so easily? And the tech tree is also a bit unbalanced, since some of the units go obselete really fast. Like, the Ship of Line, I rarely build those because Ironclads are always around the corner...and I only build a couple Ironclads because Destroyers is just right behind... And then there's the happiness thing Bluevoss mentioned. I was kinda disappointed that city growth is unrelated to happiness...though I guess the designers felt that pollution being related to growth, and happiness being related to pollution, is enough. I agree with that I suppose, but it seems that once pollution is eliminated during late game, it also eliminated the need for 'happiness' in cities. So in the end, they really should have tied happiness directly to city growth.

And lastly, the AI. With the default shipped AI, the AI is totally incapable of taking over each other's cities. I saw the AI conduct war against each other, it was patheic! Like many of you, when I got globalsat, i thought I would be treated to a big chaotic war between the AI. Guess what? The most action I saw was the AI move a stack of 3 back and forth between two squares, and it eventually ended up fortifying itself in one of its own cities! Yet, a couple hours tweaking the strategy.txt and goals.txt, was enough to get the AI to conduct a real war against itself! Cities taken and retaken, major stacks fighting each other. It was a real treat to watch an AI conquer its neighbor and take over half of the world.

All this led to me to realize that, even though the CTP2 team made a pretty good game, they aren't fans of their own game, or civ type games. It seems that none of them played through a complete game, otherwise, they would have realized all the faults that the Aployten fans have found and tweaked them, like we have. This led to the other conclusion, even if Activision had continued to support ctp2, it would still be the lame game it was when it was shipped. Sure a few bugs would be fixed, but the game would still be lame. The only real people who can made this into a great game, would be the fans themselves, and it seems that WesW and a lot of others have already made great progress. That's why, it didn't bother me one bit, when Activision announced that it has decided to drop support for Ctp2. I guess, people who really want pbems would be left out...but oh well, can't have everything.

In conclusion, patch or no patch, its all the same. The game would still be bad as ever. And for the few who experienced crashed, its unlikely a patch would fix it, since the majority of us aren't experiencing major crashes.