Quoting Frogboy, reply 13

As for your specific response, Nas. I've read your posts and what I will say is tat I look forward to these other games coming out so that perhaps you'll leave and go play them instead.

Now that's not particularly constructive. You might find my criticism (which usually comes complete with a list of suggested ways to mitigate whichever problem that I'm discussing) somehow offensive, but that's not the intention. I spent quite a lot of money on GC3, so it's just as much in my best interests for the game to be in the best possible state as it is in yours. I didn't buy it because I want something to slag off on the internet (I could have just bought CIV:BE if that was what I wanted to do ). I bought it because I'm a fan of your work, I respect Stardock, I enjoyed GC2 a great deal and I'd like to support the next game in the series. Nice to see that in return for that I get 'stfu about problems or sod off'.



You know the game is flawed, just like we do - you've literally said as much on this very forum in the past couple of days. Am I not allowed to discuss those flaws too? I don't hate you, and I don't hate your game. As with many of the others you've suggested just stop playing over the past few months, when I'm critical, it means I actually give enough of a damn to pay attention to it and be worried when you make a mis-step. It has enough potential that it can be an outstanding classic, as GC2 was. But I think we can both admit it's nowhere near that yet without either of us having to get into a huff and say we hope that we never have to interact with each other again. When I think something you've done is a good idea, I say so, and when I think you're making a mistake I say that, too - and I give reasons for my opinion. Justifications. I'm not sitting here just calling you names and saying everything sucks.

I know it's your baby, and you want to stick up for it. But if we push that analogy a little further, does that mean you'd thump your son's teacher if she gives him a bad grade when she knows he could do better?







Quoting Frogboy, reply 13 The base game of GC3 was good.

Two months ago you referred to the base game's AI as an embarrassment. Last month, you removed a big chunk of the UI because, in your own words, you "hate it". In another thread TODAY, you have agreed that the rest of the UI is horrible. These are just your own critiques.

At release, the base game of GC3 was at the low end of OK. It has been steadily improving, and it has potential to be very good indeed. But it's only around now that I'm starting to think of actually recommending it to people. If I'd written a Steam review, then up until pretty much 2-3 weeks ago I'd probably have had to make it a negative recommendation (in fact, that's a big part of the reason I haven't reviewed it yet).

Quoting Frogboy, reply 13



That you complain that we improve other areas of the game instead of exclusively what we mention here is ridiculous. Of course we're going to address other things when we do updates. We're not going to put off improving other areas of the game for marketing reasons. Each update has a particular focus. But lots of other things get worked on during that time as well.



That said, you aren't the community. If you personally are that unhappy with the game, then leave. But don't assume you represent "the community". I've been dealing with guys like you for 20 years. Even in GalCiv II, there were guys posting the same nonsense you're posting abut how the community is angry that don't have this or that and that the game should have this or that. You are better off accepting that you will never like GalCiv III and find another game. I've listed a few options in the original post.



If you'll read through my post again, you might note that I wasn't complaining. I was making an observation about perception management and how the roadmap is driving false expectations.

I don't mind the fact that your patches are dozens of tiny improvements to each aspect of the game - that's actually what I expect from a patch, since that's how 90% of all patches from all companies have been, ever. The point I was making is that you're actually changing people's expectation AWAY FROM THAT by aggressively headlining individual features, which is leading to genuinely good patches getting bad feedback because you've focused everyone's attention on feature X, which fans then expect to represent a whole month's worth of work. When it doesn't, they start to say 'well, what the hell have you been doing for the last month and a half?' - even though you've published a fairly comprehensive list of exactly what you've been doing in that time. This is why, for example, we saw Macsen telling us that a patch with 50-odd changes in a 4-week turnaround was 'very disappointing'. Sure, it's not fair. There was a ton of work in that patch (1.3 I think?). I actually said as much to Macsen at the time in response. Expectations for each patch are unrealistically high, and theme-ing is one of the things causing that.

So, for example, say we have the 'espionage' patch. In this patch, you're probably also going to do a metric ton of bugfixing. You'll do another balance pass, you'll maybe spruce up some assets and tweak the AI some. And you'll implement a fairly bog-standard espionage system, which will in turn continue to be worked on for months afterwards. And because you told them this is the Espionage patch, people will ignore all the bug fixes and the AI work and the art asset improvements, and will judge the patch solely on the quality of the new Espionage module. And they will find it lacking, because you had 6 weeks to do this and the bog-standard espionage system is all that they're judging that six weeks worth of work on.

If instead we just had 'patch 1.7' (or whatever), then people will not ignore the bug fixes. It'll be another new patch after only 6 weeks, with loads of bug fixes and AI improvements and assets etc, but even cooler they've added an espionage system as well! It's not a great espionage system, but that's OK because this was just a patch so we weren't expecting too much.

See the difference?

'Themeing' the patches like this is turning them into little free DLCs. And the thing about DLCs is, they're always just one thing which has had six weeks of effort put into it. The fact that the patches are actually just a patch and so are mostly for addressing lots of small issues is getting left by the wayside. So people said that the AI patch wasn't good enough because the AI hadn't suddenly become Big Blue on steroids; the diplo patch wasn't good enough because it only added two new diplo options and the AI always says no, the UI patch wasn't good enough because the entire user interface wasn't outright replaced in the course of 4 weeks. But if they'd just been called patches 1.2, 1.4 and 1.5, respectively, then I think expectations would be more in line with what can actually be done in a 4-to-6 week turnaround.