12-06-2005 22:27									#1
	Apolyton Weekly Survey II: Bugs Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

This thread marks the second edition of our Apolyton Survey feature, in which we poll our community on various issues related to Civilization IV. Our question for this week may stir up some more emotions than the first edition:

How stable and bug-free do you expect Civilization IV will be?

The question applies primarily to the out-of-the-box version of the game, but it also has some options for any patches that may or may not follow. Note that the answers are intended to be from best to worst, so "Buggy" is worse than "There will be bugs". Effectively, the out-of-the-box game can be graded on a scale from 1 to 9, whereas for the patches there are 3 options available for the choices where this is relevant (when the game is neigh perfect or just utterly unplayable patches aren't going to make much of a difference).

'Bugginess' should here be seen in the widest sense of the word: everything from graphical glitches to CtDs (crashes to desktop) to hardware incompatibility (within the norms of the minimum requirements) to gameplay imbalances or (unintended) cheats.

Feel free to use this thread to explain your expectations in more detail, to compare Civ4 with Civ3 or other games you've played or to discuss the role of patching in the gaming industry in general...

	12-06-2005 22:31									#2
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

I want yin's opinion on this . Where is he?

	12-06-2005 22:55									#3
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I expect and want the game to be free of major bugs on release, and patches to fix the existing bugs and minor problems. By major bugs I mean game-stopping bugs, such as the Civ3 submarine bug that was present in the release version or air power not working at all in Civ3.

I also hope the game won't have crash to desktop bugs. This is where I have to give Civ3 credit, it didn't crash on me at all.

I'd say these expectations are reasonable. I'm pretty sure, though, that the game will need a patch or two subsequently for bug fixing, because that's how game development works. No matter how good the playtesters do their job before the release, they're no match for the thousands of players who all have the game after it's released.

	12-06-2005 23:07									#4
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Being optimistic by natureIhave to votefor mostly bugfree and any bugs will be fixed with a few patches. (A PC game without patches hasn't existed for a very long time)

	12-06-2005 23:20									#5
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A game without patches is now impossible, especially a complex game such as Civ. Now that the userbase for a game is over a million, bugs are spotted at a very good rate.

	12-06-2005 23:23									#6
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quote: Originally posted by Solver A game without patches is now impossible, especially a complex game such as Civ. Now that the userbase for a game is over a million, bugs are spotted at a very good rate.

Have you ever seen a patch to a console game like Zelda?

It's all about how specific you want to make your system requirements

	12-06-2005 23:23									#7
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

"There will be bugs, some will be fixed, some won't be"

Only a few developers, like Paradox, actually commit themselves to fixing the game properly. Firaxis is not one of them. But I suspect they will be as supportive as they were with Civ3.

	13-06-2005 00:59									#8
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

Mostly bug free, nothing a patch or two canīt fix.

Hopefully Firaxis and Take Two has learned something with the hurried crap that was the out-of-the-box version of Civ III. Only a utter fool would make that mistake twice

	13-06-2005 01:28									#9
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There will be bugs, some will be fixed, some won't be.

We all know there will be bugs. And I'm fairly sure Firaxis will fix the most glaring ones, especially in the case of "technical" bugs ("technical", for me, are those bugs related to hardware incompatibility, installation problems, memory leaks, CTDs etc.) The "gameplay" bugs (i.e., bugs related to how gameplay works, the rules of the game etc.) will be fixed by Firaxis too, but there will always be some bug - remember that sometimes patches also introduce new bugs in the game.

But if the modding capabilities are really good as they say, then I'm sure that the community will fix most of the bugs that can be fixed using the tools they will provide.

	13-06-2005 01:47									#10
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Indeed. There's nothing to stop a modder from fixing issues.
The only problem is then how to spread such a corrected version throughly, to avoid players being unable to play with one another in MP.

	13-06-2005 04:12									#11
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Mostly bug free, nothing a patch or two canīt fix.

It is nigh on impossible for developers to accomodate for every hardware combination possible, so there WILL be hardware related bugs.

I also expect a game bug or two. Hopefully with this public testing team that are working on the game all the logic bugs will be gone before release though even if there are a couple of game bugs.

Dale

	13-06-2005 04:58									#12
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So what's with the 16 options poll?

I think it'll be mostly bug free.

	13-06-2005 05:23									#13
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I'm undecided on this. What constitues as a bug? An actual glitch or hardware problem with the game? If so then I'd imagine it will be mostly-bug-free but could be patched in a couple tries. Although more glitches may arise after more gametime has been expended; it's hard to say in regards to this. If a bug also includes gameplay problems, then I would think it will be fairly-bug-free but again mostly could be fixed in a few patches but with more problems arising as more gametime is expended.

Wow, does that make sense?

	13-06-2005 05:45									#14
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"There will be bugs, some will be fixed, some won't be"

They have done this before, they will do it again

They abandoned the Civ III community with uncompleted patches...

	13-06-2005 05:47									#15
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quote: Originally posted by Paddy the Scot "There will be bugs, some will be fixed, some won't be" They have done this before, they will do it again They abandoned the Civ III community with uncompleted patches...

Unfortunately, I agree.

	13-06-2005 06:32									#16
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

quote: There will be bugs, some will be fixed, some won't be

Games are becoming more and more complex to make, be it hard or software related, with a regretable side effect that their will be bugs.

	13-06-2005 09:49									#17
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

"There will be bugs, some will be fixed, some won't be"

Let's face it, this game is being rushed for a holiday release, and there will be both unresolved hardware and gameplay issues that will cause the first batch of us to go buy the game problems. Firaxis is no different than any other major developer in their "release it first, release patches later" mentality.

	13-06-2005 10:25									#18
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quote: Let's face it, this game is being rushed for a holiday release

and how exactly do you know it's "rushed"? do you happen to have a copy and now if it has bugs or not?

	13-06-2005 10:56									#19
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quote: Originally posted by MarkG quote: Let's face it, this game is being rushed for a holiday release and how exactly do you know it's "rushed"? do you happen to have a copy and now if it has bugs or not?

good point

it certainly will be good to get Civ IV

it would be fantastic if the new code and the great team they have working on it (yeah some of this very community) can come out with a perfect programme

I for one do let the experinces of the past colour the picture of the future...

more power to them

	13-06-2005 12:13									#20
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It will be perfect!

	13-06-2005 17:08									#21
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I'm very optimistic.
It's a total new engine, I think Firaxis has been working for a long time on this as well.

of course there'll be some bugs, but nothing a patch or two can't fix.

	13-06-2005 20:27									#22
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

quote: and how exactly do you know it's "rushed"? do you happen to have a copy and now if it has bugs or not?

Call it 'experience, combined with imperfect information.' For all I know, Firaxis has a genius coder who runs on coffee and diesel who will make this the most bug-free game they have released to date. What I do know, though, is they have that November release date looming over them -- whether the game will be finished or not. Hence my pessimism.

	13-06-2005 20:49									#23
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quote: What I do know, though, is they have that November release date looming over them

late 2005 has always been the plan...

	13-06-2005 20:53									#24
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

...and Take Two isnīt Atari (I hope )

	13-06-2005 20:58									#25
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Late 2005 has always been the plan, Firaxis actually said Winter and not november (November was supposed to mean November 1st, Winter likely means Christmas holidays, a month and a half extra), and Take Two is generally known to be a good publisher, so I expect they are going to give Firaxis the time they need to finish the game. Note that there is not exact release date for Civ4 yet - which is also a sign that they're looking at how the development goes before announcing a date.

	13-06-2005 21:03									#26
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plus, civ3 worked fine on my pc out of the box

	13-06-2005 21:28									#27
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It worked on my PC, too, but it still had a ton of bugs . Civ3 was good in how it would very rarely crash, not crashing at all for most people, and how it had good hardware support. Yet, out of the box it had a few game-breaking bugs, such as air power not working.

	13-06-2005 21:29									#28
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Solver beat me to it, but i was gonna mention the airpower thing too.

	13-06-2005 23:33									#29
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quote: Originally posted by DerSchwarzfalke Let's face it, this game is being rushed for a holiday release, and there will be both unresolved hardware and gameplay issues that will cause the first batch of us to go buy the game problems. Firaxis is no different than any other major developer in their "release it first, release patches later" mentality.

I actually think that this game will not be rushed - at least to to the degree that civ3 was (regarding balancing) and PTW was (regarding multiplay). Seems like this game has been in a playable state for some time (Firaxians playing/multiplaying the game had been reported a while back), and I suspect that there has been some solid beta playtesting going on for some time too.

The game may suffer from some subtle playbalancing issues that are subjective in nature, but I feel the initial release will be stable in issues like CTDs.

	14-06-2005 00:26									#30
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

mostly bug free,

not that bad of a bug history to me.
still the number one game I play

whats the case history of Take2 and buggy games?

Just ship it and soon