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Post by strictlyrockers on Dec 19, 2005 19:03:20 GMT -5
I was checking the CIV Ladder News this morning and this came to my attention. www.myleague.com/civ4players/Yesterday 36 players withdrew or were purged from the ladder and a grand total of...um...nine signed up Am I missing something here? Civilization is the greatest game ever, bar none, period. CIV ought to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. I was on the beta team. CIV is, without any doubt in my mind, a great game. But I will try to make a few observations here. Confessions of a geek.I still spend many, many hours at a time, sometimes for days at a time when I can, playing c3c on the ladder. I love that game. I find it to be greatly challenging, mentally stimulating and good, highly addictive fun. One of the things I am greatful for is that the ladder has so many great players who can provide me with this challenge that I find so enjoyable. Now, there was never any doubt in my mind that there would be a few kinks to work out with a game this complicated and ambitious. But Firaxis is a great company when it comes to support for the software they produce. The patches for CIV seem to be coming right along, and it is commedable that they are committed to have everything work right...eventually. there is some nebulous quality that a game must have for it to be truly addicting and engrossing for me. There is that certain something that captivates me and makes me want to wheedle away the wee hours of the morning and greet the dawn. Christo's Hall of FameWhat puts a game into Christo's Hall of Fame? It's a short list. Some games have it and some just don't. Master of Orion 2 had it, MOO 3 did not. Close Combat 2 had it, Close Combat 3 did not. Baldur's Gate had it, Dungeon Siege definitely did not. It's hard to define what "it" is, but it has something to do with play balance and depth. CIV has great balance and great depth. It is destined to make it's way into my list of favorites, but it will take a bit more effort for me than Civ 3 did. Civ 4 is superior is so many ways. It is worthy of great praise. But, so far, it has not called me to want to stay up all night playing it, SP or MP. I like Civ 3 better, for now. I anticipate that a huge crowd of great players will be here on the ladder to challenge me when I make the switch to the new, improved, better version of Civ, Civ 4, but the stats I cited at the beginning of this post are worrisome. What is up with that, Hal? Are people growing frustated with connectivity issues? This ladder should have 7000 players by now IMHO, not 700. Looking forward to playing you all soon. SR
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Post by Tony on Dec 19, 2005 19:38:14 GMT -5
I understand what your saying, but people joining and leaving the ladder is not an accurate indication of how the ladder is growing? The league is not invite only so people can withdraw for a number of reasons, name change, reset stats etc.
There is only 1 way and 1 way only to record the success of the ladder, and its gowth, thats number of reports in any given day. Yesterday was 442, thats about 25-30 games.
I agree with you, it doesnt have the addictive element C3C did, you can easily go a few days without playing. That being said the overall health of the ladder is pretty good, the game is about 2 months old, alot of people want to SP before MP, alot still havnt got the game, alot are waiting for it to stable up, etc etc.
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Post by whiplash on Dec 19, 2005 22:10:47 GMT -5
Rockers said:
But Firaxis is a great company when it comes to support for the software they produce. The patches for CIV seem to be coming right along, and it is commedable that they are committed to have everything work right...eventually
Firaxis may well be "commited". As for "the patches... coming right along"; we have seen only one in nearly 2 months. That patch came well short of solving the problems many people were experiencing. Whether or not Firaxis is "commited" has little to do with the future of this game. What is important is that Firaxis is funded, not committed. Commitment means nothing if there is no fuel for implementation.
The fact that we have no GameSpy lobby for this game is a bad sign. What I read between the lines is that there are money issues preventing us from having a full-featured lobby. If this bottom-line mentality prevails, which is the norm these days, we may well see the funding rug pulled out from Firaxis. The mentality may well be "Hey we collected "x" dollars on the initial release, we can sell a bunch more before Christmas, why not take the money and run?"
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Post by friedrichpsitalon on Dec 19, 2005 22:50:18 GMT -5
I don't mean to be rude, Whip, but you couldn't be more off-base. I wish I could say more. I would say the future will please you, but I think somehow you'll find a way to look at it negatively regardless.
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Post by whiplash on Dec 19, 2005 23:36:58 GMT -5
I don't think you are being rude and I really hope you are correct. It's just that my RL experience makes me suspect.
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Midgard
Worker
Captain of LoD
Posts: 103
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Post by Midgard on Dec 19, 2005 23:56:31 GMT -5
I'd have to agree with Whip, I'd love to play more of Civ4 but with my still bothersome Lobby issues and no one else from my clan besides 2 or 3 ppl playing Civ4, it's very hard for me to find a game, which is why Ive given my YIM up freely, so start pming me to play ppl! P.S. If what you say is true Fried, I really hope Firaxis is planning on improving this game to be as good if not better then C3C was at least in the minds of the majority (old cliche, cant please everyone all the time)
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Post by tommynt on Dec 20, 2005 6:09:26 GMT -5
CIV and Firaxis got what it deserves somehow:
very few MP players
WHY?: there are far better MP games out there - all these issues makes it just imposible for some1 who try civ and a game like AOE or LOR BFME at the same time to stay at c4
for the old time civers game made to many changes in wrong directions it lost balance between building military and science between growth on your own and conquer
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Post by friedrichpsitalon on Dec 20, 2005 7:56:40 GMT -5
Sure Tommy, very few MP players. You clearly weren't around in the first days of PTW MP.
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Post by ghost on Dec 20, 2005 9:12:38 GMT -5
the one thing that stops me from playing this game alot latly has been when 1 players dies or 1 player leaves game the game will be froze up and you try to go to lobby and reload game and it still frezes up on same turn. had this happen to me in 3 strait games where a players dies and then leaves game to find out noone in game can move at all and the turn timer gets stuck play a game for a 1 hour just to find out you will have to scrap it cause it won't go on. just hope they fix all these bugs soon as i'd rather play c3c mp right now then this stuff they have given us for civ4.
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Post by tommynt on Dec 20, 2005 10:17:01 GMT -5
lamo Frie, thats the totaly wrong comparison - at this time there were proly about 1/10 of todays internet users and 1/50 of internet gamers.
I like the game but i can understand every1 who isnt kinda civ addicted that he prefer to play a game without that many issues. I d like to have more players around - I d like to have about 500 top players (out of 15000+ playing) as there are in LOR BFM, another game i like to play. But atm it doesnt look like this ll ever happen.
Without the ladder, game d be even more dead anyway i think.
btw what happened to the inbuiult ladder which was pronounced in cvi3 forums???
a inbuilt ladder usually really helps to keep people playing a game
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Post by Lestat on Dec 20, 2005 11:39:27 GMT -5
the one thing that stops me from playing this game alot latly has been when 1 players dies or 1 player leaves game the game will be froze up and you try to go to lobby and reload game and it still frezes up on same turn. had this happen to me in 3 strait games where a players dies and then leaves game to find out noone in game can move at all and the turn timer gets stuck play a game for a 1 hour just to find out you will have to scrap it cause it won't go on. just hope they fix all these bugs soon as i'd rather play c3c mp right now then this stuff they have given us for civ4. U put no AI replacement ? Puting AI on maybe will resolve this prob.
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reptile
Worker
in desperate need of a new avatar
Posts: 106
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Post by reptile on Dec 20, 2005 13:47:56 GMT -5
I think Take2 should sponsor a few tourneys with good prizes.
And CIV could have a game mode "quicker" than quick, not in relation to research speed, but to unit production.
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Post by MMV on Dec 20, 2005 18:20:40 GMT -5
Unlike Civ3 in GameSpy, when you enter a game in Civ4, you are no longer individually shown in the lobby.
Consequently, the only people you see on the chatter's list are people looking for a game.
(I donl't know how the lobby looks from the civfr "players tool" as I haven't yet felt the need to use it)
Unless of course.............. the Admin's are cooking all those Civ4 reports on the ladder to make the game look busy!!!
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Post by claudelu on Dec 20, 2005 19:49:06 GMT -5
What are you guys smoking? 90 percent of the c3c population DID NOT CONVERT to civ4, or they play it as a side to c3c. If c3c, with all its issues and frustrations, can keep people there, it means something is majorly wrong with civ4.
Don't get me wrong - I LOVE CIV4!! I think it's much, much better than civ3 ever was in terms of gameplay and strategy. I would LOVE to see more players. I am sad that it's not the real situation. I haven't touched c3c since civ4 is out and will never touch it again. But Firaxis/Take2 is SLOW in addressing the issues, not to mention 2 years of beta testing should have caught the kill-freeze bug, which is becoming more and more prevalent. The last 20 games I played we started with 7-10 people and I got 1-2 reports because of the kill-freeze bug. People not connecting to peers, etc. No explanation given for all these problems... And you ask why civ4 is so slow in picking up MP speed?
Didn't Firaxis realize that peer-to-peer connection sucks in MP? Why not develop a server approach (i.e. host acting as a server, needs to have good connection and computer?)
I hate what is going on with the game I love right now. And whip is right, 2 months and only 1 patch who didn't fix jack - except lobby crash and horses for Egypt.
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Post by MMV on Dec 20, 2005 21:32:58 GMT -5
some people have problems some don't for some it's their comp for some it's not for some there is no reason at all I haven't had the "crash" problem at all and my comp is neither new or (from what I'm told here....) the latest and greatest. 90percent And like many here have posted - some people say it's all messed up - some people say it's not. I think some of them are right.
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Post by friedrichpsitalon on Dec 20, 2005 22:26:24 GMT -5
Like I said before, 80% of all statistics are made up.
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Post by Canucksoldier on Dec 20, 2005 23:21:59 GMT -5
CIV may have some problem for now. Nothing like PTW had, or C3C still has. I'm not sure what version of C3C you guys are playing now, but it must be a different one than the one that has been played on the ladder for the past 2 years. Having been an Admin and TD threw many CCC's it was very clear that the bugs that remained(and still do) in C3C were not small and only our perservance and love of the game made us put up with them. But it seems to me now that because CIV didn't leave the gates nearly perfect that C3C must be much better by comparison. Well I think we are all coloured by our own perceptions. Some say that CIV doesn't hold them the way C3C did, well being a Civ2 player I'll have to say that C3C wasn't as good as Civ2 and CIV is a step back on the path, but to each his own. No doubt that some new players are put off MP by the bugs, but if you look at the games played just on C4P, which doesn't include all the non-ladder games played by the new crowd, CIV is with all it's bugs, producing more matches than C3C. So I'm not sure were the complaint of "no games" is coming from, perhaps closer to the truth is that there are no games with my old C3C buddies Well it's a brave new world so go out and met some new friends, we all were n00bs at one time and C4P is not going to have the same old membership as C3P, that is just natural evolution. The game is in it's infancy, and Christmas is not here yet, so don't through out your 2 CD set just yet. CS
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Post by civfloaterhun on Dec 21, 2005 5:37:55 GMT -5
The problems need to be addressed IMO (Just short titles)
-Kill freeze bug -alt+tab in lobby -no chat to lobby from staging room -messy way of deciding who is the first to research to moove, to build(wonder) in the beginning of a /simultan-so MP/turn (Yeah some of us need clear and just rules - which have strat elements) -The ridicolous way the game calculates overflow shields. (Does one need a university to find out that 50% tax on it doesnt work when u have 150% bonus on a wonder, and u chop a tree) -In combat the first attack promotion should be beefed up. (its rarely better than combat promotion, and gives less choice) -A formula that calculates combat winning chances for the computer to decide GOOD on which unit should defend in a stack. In the present developers seems to not understand their own combat system, a half way injured unit is at least 20% weaker than the odds show. (Btw the shown odds should be titled as first subround odds, to not to lie) -People can join into the place of a killed nation with 0.0 points. (Was this game tested really?)
Corollary: Firaxis should hire higher qualified personel; like me:)
There must be much more problems, but theese are the ones i could write down in 2 minutes. Maybe there should be a thread for theese to help developpers (if they care).
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Post by Sidhe on Dec 21, 2005 20:07:13 GMT -5
By far and away the worst bug I've seen is the drop bug, where a player drops after he is killed or whatever and the game freezes and won't let you vote to continue or anything. On reloading the game seems to still be bugged and two or so hours are down the toilet. Most annoying is this never seems to happen when I'm in a craphole, only when I stand a bloody good chance of winning! A shed load of connection issues need to be addressed as well, especially the inability to rejoin games which is disturbingly common. I also think you should be able to check the saves of the players, so you can learn from the game more easily. Not every player( including me) is in a clan that's gonna give out all the secrets of civ, so this would benefit all non clan players. There should be an option to replay old games from any other civ. The lobby still needs work too, although it's markedly better it still sucks having to keep going back in to civ. The game actually seemed more reliable before the patch? Strangely enough
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Post by umbra on Jan 2, 2006 14:54:46 GMT -5
Hehe You a littel Map looker ey?
just drop out of the game. look at the save file, and come back as the all knowing?
you miss that??
if you Whanna learn on how to play, just Read what fred Writes.
Why do you whanna look at someone Elses play? when the map is diffretn every time, it dont matter at all.
But rEAD WHAT fRED WRITES then you know what to do?
Oh and you could even ask him.
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