 |
| |
|
| |
|
|
yin26
|
 |
This space reserved for Darkstar.
Apr 1999
time: 14:14
|
|
TechWins: Thank you. I think you hit all the main reasons. I have learned over time to try to be productive instead of merely posting vague criticism and dark, cloudy "what-ifs." I really tried to express what I feel could be the worst problems of the game (endless and thoughtless micro, AI that can't deal with new features, and graphics that make game mechanics difficult to handle). I'll say again for the record: I'm a neurotically cautious optimist! 
Slanger: Cool. I see your point of view. Feel free to take me to task if I get too negative for you. Just try to show me the errors of my ways, and I'll thank you for the effort.
CyberShy:
quote:
CyberShy: hmmmmmm thinking about it again....
yin, you've been in contact with Firaxis much, aren't you.
pherhaps they've asked you to spread some negative feelings around this game so the expectations wouldn't grow too high.... didn't they ?
they learned from the hyped smac, and for sure CtP lanches....
hmmmm, clever company, clever yin.
how much will I get for giving you more opportunities to voice your negative opinion |
LOL! Well, I can only say this: Virtually EVERYTHING I have ever done to help make the games better (bug lists, wish lists, criticism, etc.), has been totally on my own. Actually, I think Firaxis must love and hate fans like me: Harcore helper one second and biggest pessimist the next. What they don't realize (or ever care about, I assume), is that criticism is just optimism looking for a light at the end of the tunnel.
I would like to think that some members of Firaxis look at boards like this, see posts like mine with some 'legitimate' concerns, and take it back to their offices and say: "Hey, we can't ignore issue A, B or C. The public is already on us." I think companies that care about and use public feedback as a valuable tool DO that kind of thing.
What I get on Firaxis most about, and this is just my perception, is that they put public relations and feedback VERY VERY low on their priority list. This is fine in and of itself if you are working on a game this is original and represents some concepts that might be very hard to get feedback on. However, Civ IS THE PEOPLE'S GAME! Same with various Multiplayer games. How can you possibly take a game that has been around in its basic form for 10 years and IGNORE (or seem to ignore) the very people who know the game inside and out? It's reckless. Perhaps arrogant. Maybe just incompetent. Not sure.
To be fair, I know our nearly 500 page list WAS read...and read carefully, at least parts of it. This is greatly to Firaxis' credit, more directly: Chris Pine made the effort to print, tab and bind the thing. Until that point, it was going to go absolutely NOWHERE.
Also, during the patch work on SMAC, Jeff Morris (QA guy) was exceptionally good at delivering on the things we asked for. Of course he and other Firaxis members would occasionally go out of their way to really piss people off (EX: The classic "Gamer's Actually Like Bugs" article, for which I lost my moderating title for re-posting...bygones are bygones on being 'fired,' though).
If I had to characterize Firaxis, I'd say they are supremely confident in their own abilities to make a 5-star game. Hard to blame them, of course, with Sid sitting down the hall. And the signal to noise ratio in dealing with the public will be REALLY low unless you make a solid effort to process it all. But this also often leads them to put public relations WAY down the list, to the point of completely going into hiding for stretches at a time. Then, when THEY are ready to do that "Public Relations thing," the machinery gears up, various members post happy happy posts, and the easily pleased are ecstatic. This lasts about 2 months until peak sales are secured and then things go quiet again with us begging Jeff to PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE fix this and that and NOT make us pay for a fixed game through an x-pack.
Well, sorry for the long post. I have a bit of insomnia these days unfortunately...
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
death_head
|
|
Caledonia, IL, USA
Jul 2000
time: 23:14
|
|
What they should do is accept a couple volunteers...
*jumps up and down frantically, waving his hand*
Me! Me!
I've got nothing better to do than post here, all Firaxis would have to do is tell me everything about Civ3, since I am a SMAC person.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Jeje2
|
 |
Espoo, Finland
Apr 1999
time: 07:14
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by death_head
What they should do is accept a couple volunteers...
|
Right, this is what should be done and it's what they did on SMAC.
quote:
I've got nothing better to do than post here, all Firaxis would have to do is tell me everything about Civ3, since I am a SMAC person. |
Well, does FIRAXIS really want to tell us everything right now?
We do know that they like to tveak and play until it's ready. In this process some features disappear and others evolve. Should they really tell everything publically?
My reply is NO. Not before release at least, maybe later. (But then also everything??)
So what should FIRAXIS do?
Well get some people to test the game and give feedback, but simultanously keep quiet of theire knowledge to the large public.
This is what happened on SMAC late production stage and it's quite often called beta testing. (SMAC had about 20 beta-testers and CTP1 had really a large groupe)
Maybe the biggest problem to us(*) is that different release dates have been seen, but we haven't heard a word about a beta-team from FIRAXIS... (And trust me, they should use a beta-time)
(*) OK, I'm worried and I think Yin too is worreid  . (And if you ask me I do think there are more worried out there - though I cann't be sure. How about you?  )
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
TechWins
|
 |
Arizona
Apr 2001
time: 22:14
|
|
quote:
TechWins: Thank you. I think you hit all the main reasons. I have learned over time to try to be productive instead of merely posting vague criticism and dark, cloudy "what-ifs." I really tried to express what I feel could be the worst problems of the game (endless and thoughtless micro, AI that can't deal with new features, and graphics that make game mechanics difficult to handle). I'll say again for the record: I'm a neurotically cautious optimist! |
Well, you're welcome. I think people should really understand your motive behind your posts. You're simply critizing Firaxis & Civ3 to provide help for Firaxis to make a more complete game. With you doing this Firaxis will be able to see some of the flaws that could occur in Civ3, from a customers point of view.
quote:
What I get on Firaxis most about, and this is just my perception, is that they put public relations and feedback VERY VERY low on their priority list. |
That is the only problem I have so far about Firaxis. I think they will create a good game but along the way they have done a poor job on providing info to the Civ3 followers. They have given out enough info to the people who just check out a few things here and there (every couple of months). They haven't given the right amount of info. to the fanatic, Civ3 followers. What I mean about fanatic is the people who try and get every little detail about Civ3, talk about every little detail about Civ3, and discuss all the things they would like to see in Civ3. These people (most of us Apolyton Civ Forumers) have been treated poorly and in a manner which is not good for marketing.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
The review was was some funny stuff, Yin. And what's this facsination some people have with a big manual? Save some trees people! Just give me enough to get started and I'll figure it out. Wait! I know - a manual that details every alterable file and gets very specific about how to mod. But I guess that's asking to much. The manual that came with SMAC was pretty big, and had absolutely nothing about modding. It got tossed aside, never to get picked up again after 5 minutes.
I think that I shall never see
A manual as lovely as a tree
If they must, instead of great heft
Just give the damn thing as a PDF.
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
yin26
|
|
This space reserved for Darkstar.
Apr 1999
time: 14:14
|
|
The problem with CtP is it sucked so bad I couldn't even FORCE myself to play it long enough to write a credible review. I like your "pre-emptively *****" tag, though...that has a nice ring. For CtP, I should have said: "Assuming the game isn't a TOTAL PIECE OF CRAP, I'll write a review." Sure, I could have written a great and negative review if I had wanted to really work it all out and give good examples, but most people already knew the game sucked so I wouldn't be adding much.
I do regret not plowing through the game and writing a review. Ahh, salt on the wounds...
I have a feeling, though, I'll play Civ3 no matter what happens if only to see how The List did or did not affect the game. There's also an outside chance I'll lead or participate in the Bug Hunter Project. So I would think that I'll have a real review of Civ3 up at that time. However, I have learned my lesson:
"Assuming the game isn't a TOTAL PIECE OF CRAP, I'll write a review." 
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Father Beast
|
 |
My head stuck permanently in my civ
Feb 2000
time: 22:14
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by Father Beast
About your review: I read this and can't help but wonder, are you one of those guys that thought civ2 sucked?
|
along those lines, I thoght I'd post this:
I was thinking what Yin must have thought about civ2 when it came out…
[Yin's (fictional) review of civ2]
If You've played Civ (and what TBS gamer hasn't?) You know something about the history of this game. You know that the game was made by Bruce Shelley, and given the name of Sid Meier, the founding father of computer gaming. Since then, Microprose has put out a number of similarly themed games, but failed to recapture the elusive Civ magic.
This Gave Microprose the confidence to hand the reins back to Sid Meier (now sans Shelley) and have released Civ2 in time for the 1996 Christmas season. If this Christmas release seems like a warning sign to you, unfortunately, you're right. Just install the game (on one of those newfangled CD's) and find out what the critics mean by "Civ 1.5".
Despite some moments of brilliance, a lot of what die hard civers is, sadly, missing. So, with this lump of quartz in our stockings, the optimist in me suggests "If you look at it right, it does look sort of diamond-like". Then again, I guess I should consider just how much squinting is necessary.
GAMEPLAY
For those of you who wer looking for something radically different from Civ, look somewhere else. While the concepts of Damage and improved trade looked good on paper, In fact they seem to have added more tedious micromanagement at the expense of any strategic decisions. First, while the concept of damage seems interesting, all they could do was make damaged units weaker, and only able to be "healed" by either sitting around for several turns doing nothing (great fun), or by sitting out a single turn in a city with the appropriate building. And guess what? There's not one, but three of these buildings. What does this mean in gameplay terms? Obvious, isnt it? You'll be tempted to make sure you have all 3 of these buildings in every city to keep your units up to snuff. Then a creeping question will settle in: "Was this ever challenging or fun? Is there even a point to this?". In a sense it IS fun, for a while. After all, it takes a streamlined economy to to support all those buildings, and one begins to feel that Civ2 is like a grand Santa Paravia or SimCity. Then the frustration sets in as a damaged chariot spends 12 turns limping back to your nearest city one square at a time, and you'll discover that all those buildings are next to useless a lot of the time.
As for the improved trade, what's it for? You guessed it. Making money. This DOES lead to some fun decision making: "Hmmm, this city supplies gold and demands hides, so if I can find a city that supplies hides and demands gold, I can make even more money". Of course, this would be made all the more interesting if your computer opponents somehow took advantage of this situation themselves, but as you'll see in the next section, you'll often be wanting to either give the computer every chance it can get in order to craft yourself a challenge - or to quickly put it out of its misery.
DIPLOMACY
Cease fire, neutrality, and alliance have been added to the old conditions of war and peace, and peace conditions mean they can't put units inside your city limits. Unfortunately, the computer seems unable to recognize these details. What this means is that you'll continually have to nag your neighbors to get off your lawn, like some disrespectful neighborhood kids. If you're allied, this gets worse as they then have the RIGHT to set up their lawn chair in your driveway when you're trying to get to work. This is a bad situation initially, and it gets abominable when two city limits overlap, which happens all the time. Eventually you'll just want to go to war with these trespassers as the only effective way to get them off your land. While it is possible to make good use of this system, it requires so much annoying micromanagement that I found myself annihilating a neighbor several times just to save myself a few turns of yelling at them. The computer seems utterly unable to repect your limits.
Which brings us to the other side of Diplomacy. Despite these new options, civs will still come to you demanding advances and money just like in the old Civ, and alliances are essentially worthless as you allies can't be counted on to actually attack your enemies. You also have a reputation, but it is completely worthless as it doesn't change how the computer treats you (except for giving it a way to insult you), and the computer cheerfully sneak attacks without any regard to its own reputation.
SOUND
Not bad, but if you've played either Civ for windows or Civnet, you've already heard it. The sounds seem as if they've been directly imported without improvement. Nothing new here.
GRAPHICS
This looks to be the place where Sid and Co. tried the hardest, and failed most miserably. There are several "movies" included, from small wonder films to an animated high council giving bad advice. To a one, these are poorly produced. There's also a new city view which is pointless to look at since there's no way of telling what those buildings poking above the trees are. The unit and tile graphics areplaced almost without any changes int a new, and confusing, diagonal-on point of view (and no, you can't fix it). Perhaps Microprose is satisfied, but I for one wish they had lifted their heads out of the office for just a moment and taken a look at some modern games like Myst, and see what CAN be done today.
AI
I left this part for last, because the faulty AI in civ2 is its most glaring failure. The only times I was impressed was when the computer refused to trade techs when it was building a wonder. This was great. It ended up making no difference, as I was able to steal the tech anyway. This one moment hardly makes up for masses of bad decisions, inexplicable war and peace declarations, and general idiocy of the AI. Also, and this is very important, EVERY trick that worked against the AI in Civ works EVEN BETTER in civ2, mainly due to the fact that the computer is so incompetent at making trade routes or taking care of its damaged units that it starts crippled and stays that way. Frankly, I am stunned that such vital requirements for the AI seemed to be overlooked entirely. Again, I might not be so critical if the computer took any real note of diplomacy but, as noted, the computer is either a trespasser or a warmongerer with little or no intelligent moments in between.
MULTIPLAYER… anyone?
Since we already had multiplayer support with civnet, it would be natural to have multiplayer in Civ2, right? No such luck. Mysteriously, any sort of multiplayer is completely missing from civ2, and even hot seat play is nonexistent. Perhaps Microprose is of the opinion that Civ2 will only be played by people by themselves in the cave of their computer dungeon.
CONCLUSION
Overall, while Civ2 promises a great deal over Civ in a number of fascinating areas, the game simply fails to deliver due to horrendous AI and shoddy implementation of features.
While there has been some talk of including multiplayer into civ2 in a future add on, I would consider paying even a few more dollars on this pathetic gameplay an insult to MY intelligence. Barring any miraculous patches, I'm done with this game. Or as the AI says to me in negotiations, "perhaps if you threw in some advances to sweeten the deal". Well, Microprose, If you make some REAL advances to this game, then I might be willing to give it a second look.
[thank you, facsimile of Yin]
hopefully that will give us some perspective,
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Father Beast
|
|
My head stuck permanently in my civ
Feb 2000
time: 22:14
|
|
Yin:
I was going to do one in the vein of Rah's review also, but realized it wouldn't work, since I was describing the game as it was actually released , rather than a vision of what it's like.
The truth is, reading your review, I could see the genius behind your ranting, and even though your review was negatively biased, it made me want to go out and get the game. Ahhh, but it's not out yet.
In doing this civ2 review of yours, I realized how little civ2 was improved from civ, especially compared to the proposed improvements in civ3. I may now be inclined to think of it more as civ 1.5 even now.
I took a negative attitude in doing your review for civ2, but everything I said there was accurately describing the game. and the potential for ripping it apart for shoddy AI and lack of implementations is far higher than for civ3. And I still think civ2 is an awesome game.
So, thank you Yin, by your negative review of civ3, you've given me more confidence than ever that this will be a totally awesome game.
Thanks for giving me the boost.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
rah
|
|
Apolyton Prince of Moderators, Master of Reason
|
 |
Lord of the Ferrets
Jan 1970
time: 23:14
|
|
Ok, I was bored.
Not that good, but hopefully it will provide some entertainment.
My review of CIV II
After playing CIV on my old NES machine, I was looking for something more. When I saw CIVII, I quickly rushed out and spent my life's savings on a computer. Top of the line 286 machine. I even splurged for extra memory and disk space.
I was hoping for a game with the same feel and I wasn't dissapointed. While there were a lot of new features, they had faithfully reproduced my baby, it was almost like they had used a lot of the same code. I figured since I was an expert on CIV that I would be able to skip reading the manual and leaped right into a Deity game. There were so many new things that I quickly retired and picked up the manual. It beat the snot out of the manual that came with my nes game. There was a couple of hundred pages of top notch information. Within 15 minutes, I was an expert again. The index could have used a little more work. Fortunately I didn't need it.
They added a handful of new "SPECIALTY" unit that in hindsight, I can't believe weren't in civ, especially the unit that looks like a skier. Cool looking unit. And the improvement to the combat system rocked. No longer would my battleships lose to a lowly warrior fortified in a fortress on a mountain. That always bugged me about CIV. And they added damage so a single chariot can't take out an entire empire without resting. Of course, the new chariots are kinda wimpy. You can even see the damage on the unit icon. And during the combat you can watch the unit damage pile up. The combats go slow enough that there's an added element of suspense as both units get down in the red. This is a true revolution in wargames.
Sadly to say they eliminated some of the loopholes that made CIV somewhat easy. No longer can you sell your palace off and get a free one with your next city. I made a lot of money that way. I'm sure that they playtested this game to the max so we won't find any more loopholes like that.
I don't know where to start talking about all the new specialty graphics. There's a throne room that as you progress you can make improvements to. I can't wait to see how much more modern it will get. I'll never tire of this feature. I was laughing out loud listening to the improved council. Their advice will help me successfully finish the game. And the foreign adviser is HOT. The new wonder movies are so good that they could be broadcast as specials on PBS. When I watched the one for the Hoover Damn, I was proud to be an American.
The board graphics have also been improved. I don't have to squint anywhere near as much as I used to to differentiate the units. The terrain features are so consistent that I don't have to double click on them to figure out what they are. (unless a river passes through it). The city icons even have little flags and you can see city wall when you build them. There was also a city view, but I couldn't real tell what it was trying to show. But I know it's important or they wouldn't have included it. Maybe it's in the manual.
I was a little disappointed with the AI, but it hasn't forgotten how to attack, every chance it gets it sends whatever it build in your direction. Maybe in Civ III they'll be able to figure out how to do a coordinated attack, or use aircraft carriers. If you're strong late in the game, you might as well forget about diplomacy. The AIs know you're in the lead and will even gang up on you. It was fun watching them sign all those secret alliance pacts. There must be a bug in the game because everytime they did it, a pop-up informed me. Not much of a secret there. Maybe they'll fix that in the first patch. Of course I worry that there will be so few problems that a patch won't be necessary. But all in all, once you get that far ahead, the AI isn't good enough to stop you. Of course, maybe I'm just that good. I was really impressed with the star race win movie. Using the theme from 2001 was a stroke of brilliance. I'm going to have to satisfy all the other win conditions to see what you get you do that.
I even read a rumor that if enough people buy the game that, in a few years, they would work on a version for multiplay. I'm going to tell all my friends. I would be willing to pay twice as much for just that feature. Maybe if I write letters, it would help.
THIS IS A MUST BUY 6 star game (5 just doesn't do it justice) Well back to playing. I'll be looking for CIV III sometime in 1998.
Rich
|
|
| |
|
| |
All times are GMT. The time now is 05:14.
Apolyton Time is 00:14. |
top of page
|
| archivepost |
|
Forum Rules:
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
|
HTML code is ON
vB code is ON
Smilies are ON
[IMG] code is ON
|
|
|
|
|
|
24-07-2001 13:45
i fixed one post and the other is long forgotten. 
and if you never heard the word damn before than you family must have been pretty screwed up.
and why would you ban me? plenty of people say damn. but not many people insult others family's 
|