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Ironikinit
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A whiner, IMO, would only answer that they got cheated, even if they got it for free.
A fanboy, of course, is going to say that they're pleased beyond price.
The people who said they got their money's worth although it was flawed are neither, same with those people who are willing to wait and see.
Just rules of thumb.
I didn't say that fanboys are a majority. But at least their presence on a fan forum makes sense.
I hope I've been clear. Now, since you feel free to call somebody a fanboy, why did you put the word whiner in quotes? Whining is what whiners do, and it's the common term for the small, vocal, unexplained minority making a nuisance of themselves on this fan forum.
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Roy H Smith
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Just finished reading a thousand messages on errors/problems people have with the game. Personally I've had to reinstall twice and I have 10+years of computer and gaming experiance and NEVER had to endure this.
There are so many problems and unused ideas from Civ 2 and SMAC that the game just screams rush job. It has so many problems I think we're all beta-testers and frankly I expect a complete game when I shell out $50.
The game makers seriously screwed their fans, and they know it. They've already got my $ so I don't expect Corruption or a dozen other issues to EVER be addressed.
Needless to say I'm stunned at the good reviews.
I will never trust Firaxis again.
Last edited by Roy H Smith on 04-02-2002 at 19:15
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Mikael
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Rio de Janeiro
Jan 1970
time: 05:17
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There are just soo many small unpolished details, you can't ignore them. Mind you I'm not talking about the big screw-ups like corruption, governments (or lack of), diplomacy (or lack of) just small stuff that doesn't impede gameplay but shows you the game isn't complete.
Like the science advisor *always* saying "We lack the funds to keep up blabla bla please increase funds blabla" with a sad face, even when I'm discovering stuff every 3 turns. Or when you get the message "Mr. X has recently completed his great book: World's Wealthiest Nations" and you only get 8 spots even with 16 civilizations. Or the foreign advisor screen where once again you only get 8 spots, no matter what number of civs you play with. Small details that tell the story.
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ColdWizard
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isn't that what the "Who pays for this stuff?" option is for?
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Alkis
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Athens, Greece
May 1999
time: 05:17
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Ironikinit really read my mind with his,
"Yeah, but just barely, and it's got a bunch of flaws."
However I was not dissappointed because I knew what to expect from Firaxis. I even saw a pirated version of the game before buying my own copy. In other words I knew about all the shift +C, shift +R etc. Or ctrl +shift + you name it. It's the many fingers syndrome.  Or that in order to open the city screen you have to double click (sometimes unfortyfing your garrison unit), or right click and choose from a menu (which you don't see if you have many units in the city ). Why not single click, btw. Not to mention corruption, that never goes away, or pollution, that never goes away... or weird combat results etc etc.
Well, anyway the game is good, even as it is and on deity level is challenging. I recommend it to all fans of the genre.
It's only that I am not blind and maybe I love the game more than those who made it and I feel badly comparing it with what it could have been.
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scientist
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For me, the cost of the game is really not that important. What matters to me is the time I spend. I don't buy that many computer games because I know that to really get a good impression of them, I'll need to spend dozens of hours immersing myself in them. Let's face it, the $50 you spend on a game is definitely worth less to you than all the time you spend playing it, unless you are particularly cash-poor.
I've been playing EU II lately, and even though it has its bugs and flaws, it has a feeling of new ideas to me. It is not as polished as Civ III, but it is much fresher. The designers of Civ III can't be so much blamed for this: after a while, sequels tend to become hopelessly derivative and dull, in comparison to the original. Look at the "Rocky" movies , for instance. The later ones were much more professionally produced, but lacked the vitality of the first.
I also suspect part of it is not so much Civ III, but myself. When I first played Civ, I was about 22 years old and less aware of the complexities of life. As I get older, its harder for a computer game to be as thrilling for me.
A good computer game isn't about graphics or features, ultimately it is about ideas. Sadly, Civ III is lacking in new ideas.
Maybe $50 for the game was a worthwhile investment, in that it showed me something, along with discussing Civ III here, about the value and quality of ideas and art and computers. But in terms of the game itself, I was disappointed. I loved Civ and Civ II and SMAC so much that it was probably inevitable that I would have to make up my mind myself about Civ III. And it has been an educational, but unsatisfying experience.
P.S. I definitely got ripped off paying an extra $10 for the Limited Edition, an issue which has never been adequately addressed by Infogrames or Firaxis and which is definitely sticking in my craw. They did swindle me with false promises and undelivered goods there.
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Ironikinit
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They rushed production and 28% cannot forget their cruel oppression.
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Encomium
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quote:
Originally posted by Assur
No, not until they release a decent scenario editor. |
Absolutely!
It didn't say on the box there was no scenario-building. That's fraud.
I wouldn't be interested in a WW II scenario anyway as long as bombers cannot sink warships. That is sooo stupid.
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Roy H Smith
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Some things you just have to get out your system. Get comfortable.
I was thinking to myself...perhaps I was too judgemental. Let's try the game again...this time with 16 players (I've wanted this option for years!). Starts good and then....slows down....
eventually two-three minutes a turn....I stop thinking of game time and use real time to measure progress (ok...three hours till I build the War Academy)....and in the end I eject the game and erase it from my hard drive. I'm not going to spend half an hour to move an archer 10 spaces. I did not upgrade my tech to the latest and greatest, toss in a Geoforce graphics card, and install a ridiculously fast CD rom for XT performance.
Forget the little flaws in the game. Hell, overlook the crashes, lock ups, and AI cheats. I'm even willing to totally ignore the uselessness of bombardment, espionage, and a host of other things. And let's not mention the Wonder movies lost, the unlovely Visual Basic-ish interface, and other items no patch could possibly fix.
I'm tempted to mention the new resources which force an unlucky Builder to war and culture/revolt/corruption which demands a Conquer raze every city he defeats but these are designer decisions, even if they limit a players options as much as the new and stripped down tech tree.
What I want is a new poll, and only for people that have the game and have finished at least one game completely. I want them to have experienced the mind-numbing tedium of moving 50 calvary across terrain.
Stacked movement is such as obvious neccesity for the late game (well, that and an AI that mimics Civ II's late game aggression vs the leader) that I cannot believe their beta testers overlooked it.
Of course they must have also noted at least a few dozen other things we've all read about here as well. So why weren't these issues addressed? Pick your answer.
1) Didn't care - Sid's name and the fan base could sell anything with a Civ name - especially after a ton of great reviews
2) Didn't have the time - they had a marketing deadline and just thought they'd patch everything later
Either way it's hardly a compliment since they had to know the game was incomplete. It's pretty obvious. And it's going for $20-$25 on Ebay which is almost a fair price.
As for the poll how about :
Do you suspect you are playing a Beta version? [Suspect?]
or
Do you think the patch will...
a) come out soon
b) fix all the dozens of bugs discovered hear
c) add back in the good ideas for Civ 2
d) improve the interface
e) add MP
f) enhance the editor
g) be free
h) all the above (sure)
If you love the game, I'm thrilled for you. Really. But even with the current poll - ignoring the pirates you've got:
Got Money's Worth: 60
It's Ok: 24
No/Not Yet (Totalled): 47
And let's just imagine the "I got it for free so of COURSE I got my money for it" portion of the most favorable group...I wonder how many that is.
And personal to spend $50 for an "ok" game is no real bargain either - "just barely" does not mean a wildly satisfied customer so it's more like 71 vs a very happy 60 so far....and this is a fan site! Can you imagine how bad it is everywhere else?
Infogrames (a French company) knew the game was incomplete, knew it was missing features, knew it had bugs, and knew it needed more testing...and then shoved it out the door.
Try to imagine a company flipping it's clients a middle finger in a more obvious way. Can you? I'm pretty stumped.
And then think of the dozens of other games that play fine on your system, don't crash, and move at a good speed like...hey...Civ II! Or SMAC! Or even a 3-D shooter like Half Life (hm....models 3-D reality, movement, ammo, monsters, allies, gravity, etc and yet infinitely faster than what is basically a 2-D board game).
As for being a "whiner" I freely admit that when a company sells an incomplete, buggy, expensive, long awaited, slow moving piece of software they've hyped as a nearly religious experiance it really pisses me off. And if I can prevent even one person from wasting their money it's worth it.
And I'd sincerely like to thank Infogrames...whenever I see their name on a piece of software I'll know not to buy it.
This will probably be my final post so I don't care how bad you flame me but before you do finish an entire game...or if you've got two weeks vacation...the 16 player game before you do.
Adios.
PS. Brian Reynold's must be laughing. SMAC is a few years old and Civ 3 can't even touch it. And if Civ 3 were released as Civ II and Civ II (with improved graphics) was released later do you think we'd be *****ing about it here?
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Calvin Vu
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San Jose, CA, USA
Jan 1970
time: 05:17
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quote:
Originally posted by ColdWizard
isn't that what the "Who pays for this stuff?" option is for? |
Actually, this choice is a little misleading since the choices are listed in the order of preference and the rather ambiguous choice of "Who pays for this stuff?" is at the bottom of the list. It could be misinterpreted as "Who would want to pay for this piece of crap if they knew what were in the box ?" by people who really really hate it. It should have been a little clearer, like "Can't say, since I didn't pay for it".
Anyway, I don't agree with the argument that has been flying around which links the "money's worth" with the number of hours played. If it takes over a week for me just to play a single TBS game, (probably with hours of dozing or grumbling at the scores of workers I have to move around) does it inherently makes the game more valuable than the RTS games after I have played a total of 3 games and decided to quit ?
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Ironikinit
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quote:
Originally posted by Roy H Smith I was thinking to myself...perhaps I was too judgemental. Let's try the game again...this time with 16 players... |
Well, it's sort of nice to know that people with better systems than mine get a lot of slowdown when playing huge maps or 16 players. Mine runs OK on standard maps, although large is slow in the later going.
quote:
Originally posted by Roy H Smith And personal to spend $50 for an "ok" game is no real bargain either - "just barely" does not mean a wildly satisfied customer so it's more like 71 vs a very happy 60 so far....and this is a fan site! Can you imagine how bad it is everywhere else? |
This forum is the worst of any moderated forum with a specific topic I've ever seen in terms of people complaining about the topic. People who don't know the topic, people who don't own the topic, people who have nothing whatsoever to do with the topic ripping on it. Not saying you, just saying people who haven't even lost any money showing the just straight up bizarre behavior of making up lies, misrepresenting, guessing at things to complain about. When people try to talk about the topic, they consider it a challenge to go and interfere. You could get together a room of guys that Sid Meiers personally knows and he's screwed all their girlfriends and personally kicked their grandmothers down flights of stairs, and you'll hear more nice things said about Sid Meiers in that room than on this forum.
OK, right, so I don't know how that happened. All I know is that I had to adjust to Civ 3. I think it actually helped that I hadn't played Civ 2 much in the last couple of years, because I... eh, never mind, some of it sounds to me like a lack of flexibility. Unwilling to change to accept the game, but also unwilling to give up the game.
OK, now if you don't mind being called a whiner, I'll let you in on something. I don't mind being called fanboy. I've embraced my inner geek enough that I can admit that playing computer games and talking about them online is in itself geeky. Cool people might do it sometimes, but whatever, cool is relative. Anyway, I wouldn't be looking for the info on Apolyton if I wasn't a fan and I didn't think the guys who set it up were into it too.
It's real frustrating to like something, want to go and talk about it, and there's somebody talking about it like I'm a tard for liking it. Half the time they don't get the facts right, and that's straight up annoying. PLUS THEY TYPE REALLY REALLY LONG POSTS and oh um lookit the time g2g.
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scientist
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quote:
Originally posted by Ironikinit
You could get together a room of guys that Sid Meiers personally knows and he's screwed all their girlfriends and personally kicked their grandmothers down flights of stairs, and you'll hear more nice things said about Sid Meiers in that room than on this forum.
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Sid Meier's name is on the box. In fact, I think his name is officially part of the game title: Sid Meier's Civilization III.
If he wants to make himself a brand name, he should be prepared to pay the price as well as reaping any benefits. I would not have bought Civ III if he had not been associated with it, just as I did not buy CTP. He played on my admiration for the quality of his past work and now it is fair that I point out how that quality has been lowered, though in all truth I don't think that he was very much involved in the making of Civ III.
quote:
OK, right, so I don't know how that happened. All I know is that I had to adjust to Civ 3. I think it actually helped that I hadn't played Civ 2 much in the last couple of years, because I... eh, never mind, some of it sounds to me like a lack of flexibility. Unwilling to change to accept the game, but also unwilling to give up the game.
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I agree with you on that point. A lot of complaints about Civ III, on the corruption matter or the lack of fundamentalism, stems mostly from the fact that people are just not able to adjust their style of play.
quote:
OK, now if you don't mind being called a whiner, I'll let you in on something. I don't mind being called fanboy. I've embraced my inner geek enough that I can admit that playing computer games and talking about them online is in itself geeky. Cool people might do it sometimes, but whatever, cool is relative. Anyway, I wouldn't be looking for the info on Apolyton if I wasn't a fan and I didn't think the guys who set it up were into it too.
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I'm not a whiner, though I am a critic, and I, for one, wouldn't consider you a fanboy. A fanboy always supports the object of his affections despite all rationality. You might be an ardent fan, but hardly a fanboy. Ih heck, call yourself a fanboy if you want to, but then you have to admit that:
$!D R00LZ 
quote:
It's real frustrating to like something, want to go and talk about it, and there's somebody talking about it like I'm a tard for liking it. Half the time they don't get the facts right, and that's straight up annoying. PLUS THEY TYPE REALLY REALLY LONG POSTS and oh um lookit the time g2g. |
Qui? Moi?. Actually, what I really hate is people who bit by bit take apart a previous post by quoting it, and now look what you've made me done. If I don't hurry I'll be late for the Mad Hatter's tea party.
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04-02-2002 07:01
) with some scenarios and some good mod pack design tools. If Firaxis bails on us, I might change my mind and pull out Civ 2 from the shelf. Although I liked CTP ideas (lookout towers, railroads that didn't let you start in Paris, fight in Hong Kong, and get back to Paris for a night in the town, etc.) the AI was so..... that it just wasn't up to par. This AI has so far kept me down to less than 50/50 on monarch.... Gotta love it.
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