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Post by MMV on Nov 7, 2005 11:40:00 GMT -5
lobby access in-game including Pm's[/i]
I dunno, I kinda' like that limitation - makes people pay more attention to the game!
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Post by zzZhenon on Nov 7, 2005 14:03:22 GMT -5
Well, at least for now the lobby looks good... lmao It's not how the game plays, it's how it looks doing it!
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Post by Rhyanon on Nov 8, 2005 14:51:19 GMT -5
I want to beg again to do something with the spinning globe in mp lobby. I get so sick from it. Was only 10 min there and feel dizzy like mad. The feature looks great and all and doesn't need to vanish at all, but least an option to turn it off spinning for those that get sick. As it looks now, I won't be able to go there and play mp games And as far as I know, I am not the only one affected. Rhyanon
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Post by Sidhe on Nov 9, 2005 6:44:14 GMT -5
Can someone explain how to stop the lobby from crashing every ten seconds again. Saw it before but can't find it now, maybe it needs stickying somewhere. something about the ini file. And some way of not playing in windows mode through the game I saw too?
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Post by whiplash on Nov 9, 2005 6:53:47 GMT -5
Can someone explain how to stop the lobby from crashing every ten seconds again. Saw it before but can't find it now, maybe it needs stickying somewhere. something about the ini file. And some way of not playing in windows mode through the game I saw too? Go into c/program files/firaxis games/sid meier's civilization 4. Find the shortcut _civ4config. Click on it to go to the config file. Edit this line: ; Specify whether to play in fullscreen mode 0/1/ask FullScreen = 1 The default is 1 and forces fullscreen mode. You can change it to 0 to run in windows mode or to "ask" to be prompted at startup. I'm not sure this fixes the crash problem though. While you are in that screen you may also want to edit it to allow mouse scrolling in window mode.
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Post by thejesus on Nov 12, 2005 14:23:24 GMT -5
the lobby is awful. is gs and feraxis even trying? civ 4 is truelly what u get when u outsourse your programers from 3rd world hole in the ground countrys
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Post by Canucksoldier on Nov 12, 2005 16:52:13 GMT -5
the lobby is awful. is gs and feraxis even trying? civ 4 is truelly what u get when u outsourse your programers from 3rd world hole in the ground countrys Your ignorance is astounding. CS
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Post by ozmono2005 on Nov 12, 2005 22:21:27 GMT -5
END QUOTE. THATS THE WHOLE POST. I believe it unfair and inapproaite of a moderator
I am not trying to argue or just blatantly insult you cannuck but that last post is under explained at best and I feel as though it needs rectifying
I can't get in the lobby long enough for a game to be organized in the main chat, in fact I cannot even speak to people in chat anymore and obviously haven't been able to play, if thats not fixed soon, I will be requiring my money back from firaxis.
And personally I don't think a moderator just blatantly insulting someone is helpful
If you think of the "ignore" in ignorance you may start to use it more appropriately.
The fact is people including myself are angry that they cannot play MP without serious fault and are far from ignoring the problem. Their trying to find help maybe not in a well mannered way and to people putting effort in maybe even insulting.
But your post is much closer to resembling true ignorance than the people complaining. Their is a problem. Recognizing that problem is not ignorance nor is extraditing the extent (BTW awful is a fair judgment, doesn't mean anyones doing a bad job, could just be the numbers of people)
In regards to the third world comment that is clearly someone expressing there rage by using the negative connotation's with cheap labor, outsourcing and cost cutting at the expense of quality. Wether it true or not is irrelevant and frankly who cares. There are people from all over the world in this forum.
How many were playing civ3 at its peak, they aimed for more but were they prepared for more?
Please don't feel the need to insult me if you feel the need to defend fir axis or game-spy!
I am stating how unfair that comment of yours was canuck and if you really wanted to help people overcome what you believe to be ignorance a explanation would be better than an insult!
Honestly I find it hard to believe that has come from a moderator I've had nothing but respect for the moderators until now and I believe if the moderators start acting in such a way the whole forum will be like a typical teenagers chat room.
PS I thought civ4players was supposed to be above the typical standard of fair play and communication found on the Internet!
However all that said I can understand that you have been telling people the lobby crashing issue will be fixed and its only a matter of patients. Also I understand that it must be frustrating at times to be overwelhmed by the same comments and I have discovered I am guilty of this(due to not reading back when I joined the forum) and apologize for that.
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Post by Canucksoldier on Nov 13, 2005 0:28:10 GMT -5
Sorry if I have lost your respect but your thoughts on what constitutes an insult, and mine are vastly different, in fact my comment was not in insult at all but a plain statement of fact. -------------------------------------------------- ig·no·rance ( P ) Pronunciation Key (gnr-ns) n. The condition of being uneducated, unaware, or uninformed. dictionary.reference.com/search?q=ignorance--------------------------------------------------- "thejesus" has no idea of how CIV was develped and any comment he made was nothing but conjecture or worse bold faced lies, if you take offence to me calling this what It infact is then I think you are a little too sensitive. And as to the problems that CIV has now, I and the other Admins have spend much of our time explaining how best to deal with this, and that it will be patched very soon. I personally have done this here and in all the major SP fan sites. Maybe you should take a look at all the other "constructive" comments that thejesus has made today in these forums before you judge my response so harshly. We are all here to help people that ask for help. People that do nothing but complain but can't even put two sentences together to actually explain what there specific problems are and not helping the community here one single bit, and that is what we are here to do. I was one of the first 20 people in the PTW lobby 4 years ago, and that game was a 100 times worse than a couple minor bugs that CIV has at launch. And myself and the other Admins that put countless volunteer hours making this community the place that it is today, have every reason to react strongly to people like thejesus that want to be part of the problem and not part of the solution. CS
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Post by MMV on Nov 13, 2005 1:30:19 GMT -5
I understand your frustrations CS, but "we" can't be part of the solution.
"we" can't call the tech support line as listed for "customer support" for this game because no one answers the phone.
"we" can't email tech support as listed for "customer support" for this game because we get the emails back saying "no such address found."
The game and it's promotional campaign state one thing, what "we" found out when "we" bought the game that it was that is completely different.
"we" have difficulty playing because "we" don't have ANY of the pre-release patches and suffer a great frustration about it while you (and a few other QA's) tell us "what a great game" it is.
"we" don't play the same version; "we" play the retail version (french tech tree, a keyboard "lav-over" that doesn't "lay-over" stated/printed minimum computer requirements that don't even come close, and a misleading "stable game-platform").
"we" don't have the "new multiplayer patch" that the QA people have had for a week (even though it's still in the "testing phase").
"we" don't play the same game as you and "we" don't play on the same "patched platform."
"we" have been playing under these conditions for nearly three weeks and everyone who points out these frustrations seems to be treated with a callous disregard by those who play a different version.
Yes - civ2 through the current civ4 were/are "buggy" but that's not an excuse for Firaxis - a MAJOR game developer - (nor is it your fault as a QA). ALL of you QA pepole did a GREAT job with the game testing because in fact, the game "program" is probably the best they've ever put out and is nearly without flaw technicallly.
"we" have been told over and over for the past months "how great it's going to be" and at the same time we have been regaled with QA stories about the feedback from Firaxis. But again, "we" don't have that feedback, "we" don't have ANY communication with Firaxis. Odd, since "we" are the paying customers.
Consequently since we can't (in fact) be part of the solution in ANY capacity, as you suggested, we CERTAINLY can't be part of the problem.
"we" also understand that the QA's have "limited" input into the decision making system and that there were many things you weren't told about.
Perhaps one thing the QA's can do to make it better for the rest of us, is to take advantage of the previously and constantly stated "close and long term relationship with Firaxis over the many many months/years of game development" and help keep "us" informed of what's going on and/or express at least "some" disatisfaction of "the players on your league" with the current game conditions. This site is CERTAINLY ideal for that purpose.
I (at least) understand the frustrating conditions you have been put in to as an Admin and QA - we all look to you for answers that simply aren't available. There's no one else to turn to.
YES, you are correct, thejesus's remarks don't do any good - but neither does the "standard response" "we've" been getting.
If we can't play a game, or have great difficulty in playing a game, exactly how good of a game is it?
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Post by ozmono2005 on Nov 13, 2005 1:57:23 GMT -5
education= learning process (I don't regard it as something necessarily Lent at school EGA. I believe by having this conversation in the manner we are, we effectively educate each other Ignore= Dismiss, or more loosely to not give something its proper attention can't have a "good" education if your generally a dismissive person I NEVER said that ignore means ignorance I said if u take the ignore out of ignorance (not literary of course) u may better appreciate how to use the word better. My opinion but I wasn't looking in a dictionary whilst saying it "If you think of the "ignore" in ignorance you may start to use it more appropriately." I put the quotation marks around ignorance for a reason no dictionary mate, as I said I didn't want to argue and you haven't lost my respect in fact I've taken your comments into consideration and did judge your response to harshly. I thought by emphasizing with you as I did in the end I had rectified it. I was wrong regardless how you interpreted my post. For that I apologize. I mentioned how I interpreted the other post and by the wording I implied the post presented resentment anger and hostility. You are confirming these things to be worth more than implications by offering me proof in the form of a lead to other post I also implied that those comments were insulting to those who work to make it better knowing and addressing you as a moderator. You again confirmed this implications to be correct, and I admire such dedication. In fact that is the reason I am treating you with the respect deserved. Finally I stated that I thought the main issue here is that he is not astoundingly ignorant because the only point worth commenting on was his anger as the rest clearly shows a over dramatic expression of hostility. (PS if I looked up astoundingly than I could prove myself technically right as that is an extremity or such a dramatic use of the language it must have intended to insult) however it is not necessary maybe I was wrong to assume it was an insult but I interpreted I am thankful that you gave my last post a seemingly respectful attention and care when responding to my last post Furthermore I hope I've educated you on my last post intended meaning as much as you have cleared up the intended meaning of yours. If it has that means I can drop the excessive formalities and blissfully type without consideration to minute details and if anything I have now gained respect from the moderators of this forum Finally I want to repeat once more that this was not intended to hassle you but to support someone I thought (judging by that one post) was treated unfairly. You have explained how you see the incident to an extent in which I can throughly understand. I hope I have done the same, or if that is not the result of this post may we at least be frank with each other? as the amount of errors in the spell check, incomplete sentences and other grammar mistakes is beyond my Patience rectifying
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Post by ozmono2005 on Nov 13, 2005 1:59:57 GMT -5
PS MMV your post is very good and you pointed out many things I was unaware of I would not have posted such a large response after such a post if I had not been writing it at the sAme time to you.
This was a quick and easy post
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Post by Canucksoldier on Nov 13, 2005 2:43:32 GMT -5
MMV, I spend almost all my time playing the same version you are playing, so I know very well the problems it has and the dev's are very much aware of the issues, they are simply trying to solve as many problems as possible with the first patch and that is why a small patch that fixes our major headache hasn't come yet.
And you certainly can be part of the solution MMV, fans find more bugs/exploits than all the QA testing can, and helping to find them helps us bring them to the forefront for the dev's attention, but mindless bashing isn't helping to get the bugs ironed out.
And we do keep the community informed as much as our NDA's allow us too, afterall we worked on this game for the MP community, and believe it or not the very frustrating lobby problem is a small easy fix that just never became a problem for us simply because we were never able to put hundreds of games up at the same time, and I'm sure the dev's have learned from this experience. C3C never had this problem as inprogress games weren't displayed in the lobby and hotjoining wasn't even a mechanic in C3C. So while I agree that it's very frustrating now, it won't be a problem for very much longer and the MP game itself is very mature and bug free.
I'm not sure how we come across as "callous", I want the bugs to be fixed so everyone can move on to the fine gameplay as much as the next person.
Yes you are a paying customer and you have a right to some feedback, but that is not the developers area that is the publishers job to do that, and while I'm sure Take2 is not perfect they are much better than Atari/infogrames was. Atleast they have a web page with solutions to some of the major graphics problems.
Firaxis is much better than most any other developer, they have always listened to there Fans and that has not changed. You may not get personal feedback from them and neither do we most of the time, simply because they are to busy trying to work on the game.
CS
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Post by holocanthe on Nov 13, 2005 5:57:51 GMT -5
Bravo MMV Excel summarized majority of the problems of the MP. And it is necessary to add those of the solo to it
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Post by MMV on Nov 13, 2005 8:24:52 GMT -5
CS - thanks for taking the time to reply but I'm afraid that after my detailed post you've left me rather speechless.
No matter what I would say, ask, or clarify -, it would appear negative and that would not be my intention.
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Post by whiplash on Nov 13, 2005 8:43:33 GMT -5
Well, some folks can handle frustration better than others. A major problem is the "tease" we have all been given. Buyer expectation was very high amongst the civ addicts because we were all told how great it was gunna be.
My complaint is not about the bugs; they will be fixed. And I don't have the lobby crash bug as some do. My complaint, as stated on other threads, is the misinformation regarding "minimum" and "recommended" system requirements.
I don't see the beta-testers having any part in that fraud.
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Post by tommynt on Nov 13, 2005 10:28:49 GMT -5
dont like to say - but he s just right its 2005 - have a look onto other game - whats posible there - there s no way that this lobby has anything to do with latest programmming and graphik skillz
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Post by WarningU2 on Nov 13, 2005 11:26:12 GMT -5
Yikes. Nasty thread. Lets get back to the question and try to improve things. First off ... you want a suggestion ... make it the same as GameSpy I think we are all in agreement that the MP lobby is without question unacceptable. The gist I get from this thread is Firaxis is saying like it or lump it, we're not playing games with GS. That is totally unacceptable too and they should make amends but assuming they don't we're going to have to learn to work around it. Problems with current lobby IMHO: 1) The jumpy screen... you can workaround that until the patch comes out ...by using the keyboard up arrow, down arrow. I sort on game name and can find my game a little easier by moving down or up the list using the arrows. It sucks but its marginally better. 2) No filter option. I want to find a particular game and can't. We as ladder members can work around that too ... why not create a standard game name for ladder games? ie LDR_hostname_typeof game 3) CTD ... no work around need a patch. 4) No mute option. We need Firaxis to patch this. 5) No ability to multitask to another vechicle for chatting. Use windows mode helps and you can have GS or Yahoo in the background. 6) buddy lists seem to not be retained. 7) no means to sort lobby members I'm sure there are other problems but I've list my main offendors I think the best suggestion is to use a GS user room for Ladder members. We can organize games there. I suggested this a while ago and Friedrich overruled me, so I've stayed mum until now. I think it is a mistake to not use a ladder run GS user room. People are doing it anyway through other means but not in an organized manner. Most people do not have IRC chat means nor are that familiar with it CS. The shell GS wraps around IRC is much better for noobs. Many of us are familiar with GS. Although I understand Friedrich's relunctance to abandon the game lobby, with all do respect it's unreasonable to use the game MP lobby alone given the issues. Seeing 50 games up with ladder in the prefix will still make people ask what is ldr and a someone can post civ4players. It will soon cause people to go to a place they can get games. It will soon make the civ4players user room very popular. Once a game is advertised in civ4players userroom people can bounce over to the game lobby and join ...very much like we do today with civ3players. Perhaps if Firaxis sees this they will realize what a terrible terrible mistake they have made not supporting GameSpy properly. My next suggestion is for everyone to send one email to support usa@take2support.com politely requesting they improve the lobby and have GS support it from the arcade. There is strength in numbers.
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Post by Canucksoldier on Nov 13, 2005 11:59:12 GMT -5
CS - thanks for taking the time to reply but I'm afraid that after my detailed post you've left me rather speechless. No matter what I would say, ask, or clarify -, it would appear negative and that would not be my intention. Well I apoligize if I am offending you, but I'm not sure what response you do expect of me(us), I'm not the CEO of firaxis, and I have little more control of the issues than you do. What I believe is the difference here is that I have faith that Firaxis will fix the problems and some others here don't, and there's probably no solution for that issue. CS
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Post by MMV on Nov 13, 2005 12:40:00 GMT -5
CS - thank you very much, TRULY (although I'm too old to get offended, lol)
I'd love to see the "we" changed to include all and I'm all for letting both FIRAXIS and TAKE2 know of our disatisfaction with response time to what are major issues for us all (as also pointed out by WU2 - even at one person at a time).
As I stated in my previous post, their email (to date) has been inaccessable (both FIRAXIS and TAKE2) and their call-centers are still "pending" and not set-up. I think that's why people "look" to the QA's and Admins that we know here (and thus a deepening frustration level on your parts).
I know they are working on it (they're supposed to - they are paid professionals).
I know people at both FIRAXIS and TAKE2 and trust me, their response to me would be less than jovial if I called just to "whine" lol (as FIRAXIS, TAKE2, GAMESPY, et.al simultaneously point fingers at each other).
They know, trust, and rely upon our love of Civ (and our "acceptance level") although I do believe that basically these same issues (bugs, minimum support, etc) repeated game release after game release after game release, demonstrates a clear pattern of the total Civ Franchise.
Fortunately, it's the game we love and not the processes involved.
As I stated before, KUDOS and BIG PATS ON THE BACK to the QA Testers (god what a thankless job, eh?) for indeed, the game programming itself is nearly flawless.
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