Really, 2K reps, silence is what we get?

[Darkwyndre]

So,

The hotfix dropped four days ago. When that happened, many people lost the ability to even start the game. Others are experiencing crashes at the same time in each game. Many others (myself included) lost the ability to load any previous saved games: which is the very problem the hotfix was supposed to address.

The Mongol DLC is buggy. The GG's either never become Khan's, or revert to GG's (and won't go back) when you load a saved game. The main selling point of the culture just doesn't work.

I understand that there is a rush to get content and fixes out, that by necessity will make the QA process rapid; however, the QA process appears to be completely nonexistent at this point.

These kinds of gigantic problems need to be addressed. You guys need to make posts here, put up stickies. Just being completely silent and ignoring PM's is going to generate an amount of anger you don't want here. Just go look at what the Bioshock 2 forums were like for the last months ... the same thing is going to happen here if you all manage the same way.

Someone once said something wise about doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

--------------------------

Now, what I can offer to help:

1.) My dxdiag is in the support forum and a search of my very small post history will get you the relevant information. (Cliff notes: core i7 930, 6 GB ram, GTX 260 video card, SB Titanium sound, Windows 7 64-bit, fully up to date drivers across the board).

2.) The "long turn" bug does not seem to be a resource issue. My CPU never goes above about 20%, and no core/thread is ever even closed to maxxed out. When watching the resource and application monitors during the AI turns, I noticed that the game goes into "Not Responding" several times during each round of AI turns, and when that happens the CPU and RAM and GPU usage drops to nothing. There is literally nothing happening when it does that. The in game animations all freeze as well.

2a.) The "take away" from point #2 is that the AI turn isn't taking 2 minutes because of how much its doing. It is taking 2 minutes because the code keeps going into a freeze state. Figure out why that is happening, and I imagine the AI turns will be reasonable lengths.

3.) The inability to load previous saved games is 90% of the way towards making me uninstall this game. When you wait 2+ minutes for each turn after the first couple hundred, and your epic length game was at 820 turns, and then you lose that 40+ hours of investment ... that is the extreme opposite of fun. The thought of starting up another one of those games, while these broken hotfixes can come any time and are forced upon us, and could wreck more save games ... that's nauseating.


Bottom line 2KGreg and 2KElizabeth ... communication. You guys have gone almost totally silent apart from locking threads. I don't know what you have been doing, but I do know that things have been broken for days and there is no official word acknowledging that or giving any kind of hope for if and when we might see some of these things fixed.

We all paid a premium price for this game in a tough economy where there are many competitors for our money. Purchasing Civ 5 means I passed on other games I was interested in. I have a reasonable expectation for my purchase to actually work as advertised ... and when it doesn't, it is reasonable for me to expect the publisher's paid community reps to at least acknowledge the problems and keep me up to date.

Anything less feels like the kind of corporate greed that has leeched the strength out of our economy. How you all behave now will say a lot about if I spend any further leisure money with 2k Games.

[Simkill]

Although I have no issues personally, I do find it sad that 2k have not put up another sticky yet, especially when 2k greg was doing so well at communicating.

EDIT: I just remembered I do have 1 issue, random map size button does not work.

[Gyrate]

I was bored so I went to sites like Walmart, Best Buy, Kmart, etc. to look at something. I wanted to see if they had reps posting how great this game was. In my opinion they do indeed have reps doing damage control. They post about how great the game is dumbed down, and proceed to wave off any controversy with their expectations of patches etc. These are things that random people buying the game are just not going to back there and post in my opinion.

[Darkwyndre]

Comments at vendor sites (Amazon especially) long ago stopped being reliable. While some actual owners might post, what you usually see is planted posts by the dev/publisher, and troll posts by other people.

[Simkill]

Comments at vendor sites (Amazon especially) long ago stopped being reliable. While some actual owners might post, what you usually see is planted posts by the dev/publisher, and troll posts by other people.

Don't worry, I will be starting a website soon with PC game reviews, guarenteed to be straight up and reliable, and untainted by publisher payoffs.

[Gyrate]

Comments at vendor sites (Amazon especially) long ago stopped being reliable. While some actual owners might post, what you usually see is planted posts by the dev/publisher, and troll posts by other people.

It was actually from reading the comments at Amazon that I wanted to see reactions at other vendors. They have a monopoly on positive reviews and the game has a 5 star rating on most others. The "trolls" managed to do a great job of giving reliable feedback on Amazon.

[neil5280]

I get the feeling they have many other responsibilities, but you know what, 2K Greg was on here 7 hours ago giving advice to at least one user. I think they're doing as much as they are being allowed to.

http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/sho...81#post1258681

I agree that they should be way more transparent about what's going on. As long as the anger is focused at 2K the company and not any specific grunt employee that may post here, I think it's justified.

[Morthis]

I love some of the conspiracy theories. People would rather believe 2k spams feedback on retail sites and buys off reviewers than the alternative that some people have a different opinion than them.

[2K Greg]

We are constantly watching the forums and collecting your reports. The developers are aware of what you guys are saying, either by reading it here or me passing along your threads. They and are looking in to the stuff and as soon as I have concrete information for you I will let you guys know.

[Jazzterisk]

Don't worry, I will be starting a website soon with PC game reviews, guarenteed to be straight up and reliable, and untainted by publisher payoffs.

Do you really think that IGN and Gamespot get paid to give a game a good review? I'm not saying I don't believe it but they are pretty big sites. Would they risk their reputation for a few bucks?
I guess it all depends on how much money is being paid.

I've not heard of any rumors of any game review sites accepting bribes. Has anyone else? I'm very curious.
What review sites do people recommend. Typically, I've relied on the two I've mentioned above but I am a little suspicious of Gamespot as big name big money games always get great reviews. They can't all be great can they?

[Darkwyndre]

Do you really think that IGN and Gamespot get paid to give a game a good review? I'm not saying I don't believe it but they are pretty big sites. Would they risk their reputation for a few bucks?
I guess it all depends on how much money is being paid.

I've not heard of any rumors of any game review sites accepting bribes. Has anyone else? I'm very curious.
What review sites do people recommend. Typically, I've relied on the two I've mentioned above but I am a little suspicious of Gamespot as big name big money games always get great reviews. They can't all be great can they?

All you have to do is look at the disconnect between actual game quality and the reviews that are given. There has been more than enough written about the shadiness of review sites.

[Saurus the Second]

Do you really think that IGN and Gamespot get paid to give a game a good review? I'm not saying I don't believe it but they are pretty big sites. Would they risk their reputation for a few bucks?
I guess it all depends on how much money is being paid.

I've not heard of any rumors of any game review sites accepting bribes. Has anyone else? I'm very curious.
What review sites do people recommend. Typically, I've relied on the two I've mentioned above but I am a little suspicious of Gamespot as big name big money games always get great reviews. They can't all be great can they?

What was it about the game rewiever some that was kicked out from GameSpot because of giving a low score to a game that threre had beeen much hype around. Was it not an even an internet petition about this issue?

(Somebody, come to my aid. Was it not an australian guy and what game was this about? ). But bottom line, he made an honest review, and was kicked.

In case of Civ V, all the flaws etc. are not seen by you instantly. On the game site, do not have the time to dig through all the feature in the game, to see if they are functioning or not.

I, myself, have played several game (though only ever finished one AFTER the patch because of bugs ... but it was only now, long after release, when I realized that the Citizenship-policy in the liberty pranch DO NOT give you a 25% worker bonus. Players realize theese broken details while playing enough.

Revievers, in general are far from beeing accurate and thrustworthy sources for this reason.
I'm used to use the "score by user" when evaluating the game. For Civ at gamespot, this score is 8.3 - the lowest of all time for a civ game - closer to beeing a mere "good" game instead of beeing a "superb" game.

[crumb007]

I just wanted to say thanks to 2k and to Greg! The hotfix has allowed me to continue my old saves. To all those negative peeps out there, patience is a virtue. I have found 2k and specifically Greg to have good communication and to have fixed issues in a timely manner. I even had good phone support from 2k from day 1. I am not speaking for everyone, but I would like to say thanks and provide some positive feedback. I have played civ from civ I and I feel they just keep getting better and better. I absolutely love this version of Civ. Thanks Sid and thanks 2k! Cheers!

[WildmouseX]

Don't worry, I will be starting a website soon with PC game reviews, guarenteed to be straight up and reliable, and untainted by publisher payoffs.

until they start offering to pay you off right?

[Gyrate]

Do you really think that IGN and Gamespot get paid to give a game a good review?

If the marketing department could make a few more bucks there would be nothing wrong with them doing it.

[Darkwyndre]

I just wanted to say thanks to 2k and to Greg! The hotfix has allowed me to continue my old saves. To all those negative peeps out there, patience is a virtue. I have found 2k and specifically Greg to have good communication and to have fixed issues in a timely manner. I even had good phone support from 2k from day 1. I am not speaking for everyone, but I would like to say thanks and provide some positive feedback. I have played civ from civ I and I feel they just keep getting better and better. I absolutely love this version of Civ. Thanks Sid and thanks 2k! Cheers!

Wow, troll much?

1.) If you read my post, you'll see that I addressed this hotfix. I'm happy for you that it allowed you to load your old saves. Unfortunately for a bunch of the rest of us, it broke ours. And there has been no word from 2k Greg or anyone else about it. Even in this thread, he avoided the subject really. When the last patch broke things, there were posts by him nearly immediately and things were fixed within 4 days. We're coming up on 4 days since the "hotfix" and we don't even have acknowledgment of the problem, let alone an eta on a fix. Kind of throws your whole "Thanks, this fixed things!" ☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺ off a bit.

2.) Don't tell me patience is a virtue. I didn't pay them for a DDE so I could wait months for a playable product. It's not "OK" just because mindless fanboy's cry out with the "Everyone releases products that are broken for months" excuse. Blizzard doesn't. Funny how they're the top gaming company in the world ... I wonder why?

3.) The next time firaxis/2k games wants to sabotage a thread by posting an over the top "This game is awesome! They fixed all the bugs! RAH RAH RAH" post on a fake account, at least use one that you didn't register the same day to do it.

Bottom line is that this game is barely in a playable beta state. Tons of things are broken and do not work correctly. The longer we play, the more broken it is, because the more carefully we're looking. The kind of things we're finding should have been found during first pass QA, which leads me to believe that Firaxis/2K does not actually HAVE any QA process.

Many of us are giving solid information to help narrow down what to look at, and the response by Firaxis/2K is quite telling. Posts from fake accounts and dodging the actual points.

Well done, 2K, well done.

[Hardly]

The thing is it might be common to release a substandard product on the PC and Civ5 was certainly substandard on release but the question these companies should be asking is what effect their collective low standards are having on the PC gaming industry. The answer unfortunately is they are killing it. Console game sales going up? Check. Ipod game sales going up? Check. PC games sales going up? Nope down the toilet. Wonder why that might be?

On another note here are some minor issues I find annoying at the moment:

Cultural victory doesn't seem practical at all compared to space race (I was trying for first but got the later because it was easier). I restricted myself to a low number of cities, blitzed the culture buildings, got the best policies and still came up short.

If you try for a cultural victory and limit your expansion you are disadvantaged in terms of resources. Iron is often a major problem for me and in many games I will have half a dozen cities and there is no iron in sight. I think they need to look at the resource distribution rules or maybe add more strategic resources in lower quantities. Late in the game I was also without oil but fortunately it isn't as important as it probably should be.

Rocket artillery - civilopedia (worst civilopedia ever by the way) says they dont need to set up - but they do? What gives?

Game hung indefinitely during one opponent turn (well for the 10 mins I waited) so I had to reload an autosave.

The game is stable for me (now I have upgraded my entire computer) but I haven't tried bigger than standard maps and I keep it to lowest settings. To be honest this game isn't fun enough to play a massive marathon game on a huge map. It wouldn't add anything.

[Darkwyndre]

The thing is it might be common to release a substandard product on the PC and Civ5 was certainly substandard on release but the question these companies should be asking is what effect their collective low standards are having on the PC gaming industry. The answer unfortunately is they are killing it. Console game sales going up? Check. Ipod game sales going up? Check. PC games sales going up? Nope down the toilet. Wonder why that might be?

On another note here are some minor issues I find annoying at the moment:

Cultural victory doesn't seem practical at all compared to space race (I was trying for first but got the later because it was easier). I restricted myself to a low number of cities, blitzed the culture buildings, got the best policies and still came up short.

If you try for a cultural victory and limit your expansion you are disadvantaged in terms of resources. Iron is often a major problem for me and in many games I will have half a dozen cities and there is no iron in sight. I think they need to look at the resource distribution rules or maybe add more strategic resources in lower quantities. Late in the game I was also without oil but fortunately it isn't as important as it probably should be.

Rocket artillery - civilopedia (worst civilopedia ever by the way) says they dont need to set up - but they do? What gives?

Game hung indefinitely during one opponent turn (well for the 10 mins I waited) so I had to reload an autosave.

The game is stable for me (now I have upgraded my entire computer) but I haven't tried bigger than standard maps and I keep it to lowest settings. To be honest this game isn't fun enough to play a massive marathon game on a huge map. It wouldn't add anything.

The excuse is that since every console is the same exact setup, it's easier to get it to work with an acceptable standard.

Unfortunately for that theory, I have very standard computer parts which are well ahead of the recommended setup, and I still have awful problems.

Good thoughts about things with the rest of your post tho.

[Fantasy]

Comments at vendor sites (Amazon especially) long ago stopped being reliable. While some actual owners might post, what you usually see is planted posts by the dev/publisher, and troll posts by other people.

Maybe so, but at least Civilization V on Amazon has a rating that is nothing short of abysmal, and anyone who has but a perfunctory look at those feedbacks would be mad to plonk the moolah for Civ V. Is Amazon trying to manipulate the picture? Hells yeah: the most helpful "critical" review, is a 3-star one. That's pretty hilarious, considering there are only 41 3-star feedbacks vs. 183 1-star and 67 2-star ones.

IOW, if you bought the game after seeing those feedbacks on Amazon, nobody can help you.

[Tylerryan79]

The thing is it might be common to release a substandard product on the PC and Civ5 was certainly substandard on release but the question these companies should be asking is what effect their collective low standards are having on the PC gaming industry. The answer unfortunately is they are killing it. Console game sales going up? Check. Ipod game sales going up? Check. PC games sales going up? Nope down the toilet. Wonder why that might be?

On another note here are some minor issues I find annoying at the moment:

Cultural victory doesn't seem practical at all compared to space race (I was trying for first but got the later because it was easier). I restricted myself to a low number of cities, blitzed the culture buildings, got the best policies and still came up short.

If you try for a cultural victory and limit your expansion you are disadvantaged in terms of resources. Iron is often a major problem for me and in many games I will have half a dozen cities and there is no iron in sight. I think they need to look at the resource distribution rules or maybe add more strategic resources in lower quantities. Late in the game I was also without oil but fortunately it isn't as important as it probably should be.

Rocket artillery - civilopedia (worst civilopedia ever by the way) says they dont need to set up - but they do? What gives?

Game hung indefinitely during one opponent turn (well for the 10 mins I waited) so I had to reload an autosave.

The game is stable for me (now I have upgraded my entire computer) but I haven't tried bigger than standard maps and I keep it to lowest settings. To be honest this game isn't fun enough to play a massive marathon game on a huge map. It wouldn't add anything.

When you upgrade units they sometimes retain the abilities of the previous unit you upgraded from, ie chinas uu gets 2 shots, upgraded the "new" unit gets two attacks too. When you upgrade artillary(who needs to set up) to rocket artillary they keep the "set up". To avoid this you will need to build rocket artillary in a city. Brand new rocket artillary(not upgraded from an older unit) do not need to set up. Also not every units abilities carry over.

[jerstone13]

Spend $250 like I did and you wont have a problem

[Soleschism]

We are constantly watching the forums and collecting your reports. The developers are aware of what you guys are saying, either by reading it here or me passing along your threads. They and are looking in to the stuff and as soon as I have concrete information for you I will let you guys know.

Thanks Greg. You have done a good job so far, and that's appreciated. But under these circumstances I don't think it's enough.

More communication, even if it's of this sort, would go a long way to help calm those who are rightly frustrated at their inability to enjoy the game they paid for. Certainly there are many who would not be so easily calmed, but considering the serious issues many people are experiencing, the least 2K could do is have someone such as yourself keep communication open and active with those of us experiencing problems. More so than has been happening. The perpetually enraged would continue to rant, but you at least could honestly say you're doing all you can.

Any reasonable person wouldn't doubt that work is ongoing in trying to fix the problems, but it gets harder and harder to be reasonable when our frustrations are met with silence.

[crumb007]

Wow, troll much?

1.) If you read my post, you'll see that I addressed this hotfix. I'm happy for you that it allowed you to load your old saves. Unfortunately for a bunch of the rest of us, it broke ours. And there has been no word from 2k Greg or anyone else about it. Even in this thread, he avoided the subject really. When the last patch broke things, there were posts by him nearly immediately and things were fixed within 4 days. We're coming up on 4 days since the "hotfix" and we don't even have acknowledgment of the problem, let alone an eta on a fix. Kind of throws your whole "Thanks, this fixed things!" ☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺ off a bit.

2.) Don't tell me patience is a virtue. I didn't pay them for a DDE so I could wait months for a playable product. It's not "OK" just because mindless fanboy's cry out with the "Everyone releases products that are broken for months" excuse. Blizzard doesn't. Funny how they're the top gaming company in the world ... I wonder why?

3.) The next time firaxis/2k games wants to sabotage a thread by posting an over the top "This game is awesome! They fixed all the bugs! RAH RAH RAH" post on a fake account, at least use one that you didn't register the same day to do it.

Bottom line is that this game is barely in a playable beta state. Tons of things are broken and do not work correctly. The longer we play, the more broken it is, because the more carefully we're looking. The kind of things we're finding should have been found during first pass QA, which leads me to believe that Firaxis/2K does not actually HAVE any QA process.

Many of us are giving solid information to help narrow down what to look at, and the response by Firaxis/2K is quite telling. Posts from fake accounts and dodging the actual points.

Well done, 2K, well done.

troll much? lmao ....come on now crybaby...i said i wasn't talking for everyone idiot....i am sorry you are havin tough go....

[Jazzterisk]

Cultural victory doesn't seem practical at all compared to space race (I was trying for first but got the later because it was easier). I restricted myself to a low number of cities, blitzed the culture buildings, got the best policies and still came up short.

Actually, I must disagree with you here.
I find the cultural victory much better in V than IV and I love IV. I failed 3 times before finally getting a cultural victory in Civ V. To be honest, I never even really tried for a cultural victory in IV as I found it too boring. You could basically play the game the same way in IV and still get a cultural victory.
However, in V you have to play a very different game than for the other victory options.
I found it interesting, and that's what kept me coming back for more.
It was tough but I made it by 15 turns.

[Bantams]

Wow, troll much?

1.) If you read my post, you'll see that I addressed this hotfix. I'm happy for you that it allowed you to load your old saves. Unfortunately for a bunch of the rest of us, it broke ours. And there has been no word from 2k Greg or anyone else about it. Even in this thread, he avoided the subject really. When the last patch broke things, there were posts by him nearly immediately and things were fixed within 4 days. We're coming up on 4 days since the "hotfix" and we don't even have acknowledgment of the problem, let alone an eta on a fix. Kind of throws your whole "Thanks, this fixed things!" ☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺ off a bit.

2.) Don't tell me patience is a virtue. I didn't pay them for a DDE so I could wait months for a playable product. It's not "OK" just because mindless fanboy's cry out with the "Everyone releases products that are broken for months" excuse. Blizzard doesn't. Funny how they're the top gaming company in the world ... I wonder why?

3.) The next time firaxis/2k games wants to sabotage a thread by posting an over the top "This game is awesome! They fixed all the bugs! RAH RAH RAH" post on a fake account, at least use one that you didn't register the same day to do it.

Bottom line is that this game is barely in a playable beta state. Tons of things are broken and do not work correctly. The longer we play, the more broken it is, because the more carefully we're looking. The kind of things we're finding should have been found during first pass QA, which leads me to believe that Firaxis/2K does not actually HAVE any QA process.

Many of us are giving solid information to help narrow down what to look at, and the response by Firaxis/2K is quite telling. Posts from fake accounts and dodging the actual points.

Well done, 2K, well done.

Well Said oh and some of the "Beta Testers" were Involved for over a Year figures..................

The bit I dont get is Why the sudden Switch to Steam? Dunno if its bad code but nobody or at least hardly anyone can connect to a game anymore without having any buddies maybe Greg you can get the figures for how many people play tested Multiplayer If its Just those 3 peeps in the manual screenshots then no wonder it dosnt work

[Bantams]

Another Bug....................

Since you fixed the choose Production Bug it now says Choose Research for x number of turns in MP

[yogibbear]

What was it about the game rewiever some that was kicked out from GameSpot because of giving a low score to a game that threre had beeen much hype around. Was it not an even an internet petition about this issue?

(Somebody, come to my aid. Was it not an australian guy and what game was this about? ). But bottom line, he made an honest review, and was kicked.

In case of Civ V, all the flaws etc. are not seen by you instantly. On the game site, do not have the time to dig through all the feature in the game, to see if they are functioning or not.

I, myself, have played several game (though only ever finished one AFTER the patch because of bugs ... but it was only now, long after release, when I realized that the Citizenship-policy in the liberty pranch DO NOT give you a 25% worker bonus. Players realize theese broken details while playing enough.

Revievers, in general are far from beeing accurate and thrustworthy sources for this reason.
I'm used to use the "score by user" when evaluating the game. For Civ at gamespot, this score is 8.3 - the lowest of all time for a civ game - closer to beeing a mere "good" game instead of beeing a "superb" game.

Yeah it was gamespot and i think the game was Kane & Lynch: Dead Men IIRC. Don't put your money on it as that was a few years ago now.

[aj_killer]

Too Bad people are wasting 50$ in this buggy game, I think devs should have waited a bit more to release this game.
However, not a really big loss for me as compared to you guys.
Here in India, PC games are really cheap. The original retail price for CIV 5 is 999bucks (that's just 22USD). YEah you heard it right.

[Peets]

Although I have no issues personally, I do find it sad that 2k have not put up another sticky yet, especially when 2k greg was doing so well at communicating.

EDIT: I just remembered I do have 1 issue, random map size button does not work.

I noticed that all the random buttons don't work.

[aw3524]

If the marketing department could make a few more bucks there would be nothing wrong with them doing it.

Despite, you know, the fact that, if IGN/Gamespot/whatever consistently give "bad" games good reviews because they are 'paid off,' then it would severely damage their credibility as a reviewing collective.

[Peets]

Some magazines get paid to give better numbers. Otherwise they might lose their advertising.

[Davor]

Do you really think that IGN and Gamespot get paid to give a game a good review? I'm not saying I don't believe it but they are pretty big sites. Would they risk their reputation for a few bucks?
I guess it all depends on how much money is being paid.

I've not heard of any rumors of any game review sites accepting bribes. Has anyone else? I'm very curious.
What review sites do people recommend. Typically, I've relied on the two I've mentioned above but I am a little suspicious of Gamespot as big name big money games always get great reviews. They can't all be great can they?

OH it's true. How the hell does Civ V get a score of 9.0 or 95s? Do you really think that Civ V is really that deserving of the game? Also no mentions of bugs? How come a non 2K game Fallout New Vegas gets lamblasted for bugs, but Civ V, there is not one mention of them?

Of course Gamespot got bought out. Maybe they didn't get paid, but You can bet that if they didn't give Civ V such a high score, they wouldn't be getting anymore exclusives anymore.

I am finding more and more that Gamespot reviews mean nothing anymore. Maybe they have changed with the review of Fallout New Vegas. Can you honestly tell me that after reading the review for Fallout New Vegas that Civ V deserves the reviews it got?

[Peets]

OH it's true. How the hell does Civ V get a score of 9.0 or 95s? Do you really think that Civ V is really that deserving of the game? Also no mentions of bugs? How come a non 2K game Fallout New Vegas gets lamblasted for bugs, but Civ V, there is not one mention of them?

Of course Gamespot got bought out. Maybe they didn't get paid, but You can bet that if they didn't give Civ V such a high score, they wouldn't be getting anymore exclusives anymore.

I am finding more and more that Gamespot reviews mean nothing anymore. Maybe they have changed with the review of Fallout New Vegas. Can you honestly tell me that after reading the review for Fallout New Vegas that Civ V deserves the reviews it got?

I totally agree with this.
For the amount of bugs in the game, Civ 5 should only have received around 8 - 8.5 max!

[Morthis]

OH it's true. How the hell does Civ V get a score of 9.0 or 95s? Do you really think that Civ V is really that deserving of the game? Also no mentions of bugs? How come a non 2K game Fallout New Vegas gets lamblasted for bugs, but Civ V, there is not one mention of them?

Of course Gamespot got bought out. Maybe they didn't get paid, but You can bet that if they didn't give Civ V such a high score, they wouldn't be getting anymore exclusives anymore.

I am finding more and more that Gamespot reviews mean nothing anymore. Maybe they have changed with the review of Fallout New Vegas. Can you honestly tell me that after reading the review for Fallout New Vegas that Civ V deserves the reviews it got?

Keep in mind that reviewers, although they should be unbiased, can still be fanbois as well. Scores that seem high given what the game is like can just as easily be caused by the writer of the article being a huge fan and making things sound a little better than they are, which has nothing to do with bribes.

I've seen that before with a review for an Eidos game way back in the day, the review magazine was, as far as Eidos would have been concerned, completely unknown (so they certainly didn't bribe them). Yet the review for a game gave it a 96%, when a 60% probably would have been more accurate. They put an apology for that in the next magazine saying the guy who reviewed it was looking forward to the game so much he simply didn't give the flaws enough consideration.

Of course another consideration is that the criticism of Civ V, no matter how many annoying issues it has, are coming from a minority. I mean the game has a 90 on metacritic, based on 62 reviews, I sort of doubt they bribed them all. It's entirely possible that while yes, there are issues, many people still feel the game is great.

The excuse is that since every console is the same exact setup, it's easier to get it to work with an acceptable standard.

Unfortunately for that theory, I have very standard computer parts which are well ahead of the recommended setup, and I still have awful problems.

There are no standard computer parts. I can just about guarantee you, whatever video card you have, I have a different one. Whatever motherboard you have, I have a different one, etc. That's the challenge of PC gaming, sometimes issues are specific to very specific hardware. Often they're driver based issues, which means the game developer shouldn't be expected to fix it (although they can produce work-arounds usually).

When designing for a console, you know the hardware you'll be working on. On top of that, you also know it's exact capabilities. If the game runs too slow, look into ways of speeding things up. If you're using too much memory, look into better compression techniques. On PC, you need to account for a wider variety of hardware, and thus give players more options to balance graphics and performance.

It's not surprising a lot of developers prefer console. It's easier to develop for, it's market is plenty big nowadays, and piracy is much more difficult.

[keeop]

2.) The "long turn" bug does not seem to be a resource issue. My CPU never goes above about 20%, and no core/thread is ever even closed to maxxed out. When watching the resource and application monitors during the AI turns, I noticed that the game goes into "Not Responding" several times during each round of AI turns, and when that happens the CPU and RAM and GPU usage drops to nothing. There is literally nothing happening when it does that. The in game animations all freeze as well.

Exactly the same thing happening here.

Cheers.
Keeop

[Hardly]

Actually, I must disagree with you here.
I find the cultural victory much better in V than IV and I love IV. I failed 3 times before finally getting a cultural victory in Civ V. To be honest, I never even really tried for a cultural victory in IV as I found it too boring. You could basically play the game the same way in IV and still get a cultural victory.
However, in V you have to play a very different game than for the other victory options.
I found it interesting, and that's what kept me coming back for more.
It was tough but I made it by 15 turns.

Yeah I can probably get it in time too but my point was with all my actions focused on a cultural victory it was still easier for me to change tack at the last minute and build the spaceship.

Oh and another grip razing cities razes the culture required for new policies (I think).

[aj_killer]

The long turn issue is just BAD programming.
4 patches and it's still not solved

[jlozeppeli]

Keep in mind that reviewers, although they should be unbiased, can still be fanbois as well. Scores that seem high given what the game is like can just as easily be caused by the writer of the article being a huge fan and making things sound a little better than they are, which has nothing to do with bribes.

I've seen that before with a review for an Eidos game way back in the day, the review magazine was, as far as Eidos would have been concerned, completely unknown (so they certainly didn't bribe them). Yet the review for a game gave it a 96%, when a 60% probably would have been more accurate. They put an apology for that in the next magazine saying the guy who reviewed it was looking forward to the game so much he simply didn't give the flaws enough consideration.

Of course another consideration is that the criticism of Civ V, no matter how many annoying issues it has, are coming from a minority. I mean the game has a 90 on metacritic, based on 62 reviews, I sort of doubt they bribed them all. It's entirely possible that while yes, there are issues, many people still feel the game is great.



There are no standard computer parts. I can just about guarantee you, whatever video card you have, I have a different one. Whatever motherboard you have, I have a different one, etc. That's the challenge of PC gaming, sometimes issues are specific to very specific hardware. Often they're driver based issues, which means the game developer shouldn't be expected to fix it (although they can produce work-arounds usually).

When designing for a console, you know the hardware you'll be working on. On top of that, you also know it's exact capabilities. If the game runs too slow, look into ways of speeding things up. If you're using too much memory, look into better compression techniques. On PC, you need to account for a wider variety of hardware, and thus give players more options to balance graphics and performance.

It's not surprising a lot of developers prefer console. It's easier to develop for, it's market is plenty big nowadays, and piracy is much more difficult.

According to Steam Stats New Vegas has more players than Civ V... But it was bashed to death by megazines, although user's score is higher than reviews... That means something... Who have money to pay, pays all the megazines they want...

[Darkwyndre]

Keep in mind that reviewers, although they should be unbiased, can still be fanbois as well. Scores that seem high given what the game is like can just as easily be caused by the writer of the article being a huge fan and making things sound a little better than they are, which has nothing to do with bribes.

I've seen that before with a review for an Eidos game way back in the day, the review magazine was, as far as Eidos would have been concerned, completely unknown (so they certainly didn't bribe them). Yet the review for a game gave it a 96%, when a 60% probably would have been more accurate. They put an apology for that in the next magazine saying the guy who reviewed it was looking forward to the game so much he simply didn't give the flaws enough consideration.

Of course another consideration is that the criticism of Civ V, no matter how many annoying issues it has, are coming from a minority. I mean the game has a 90 on metacritic, based on 62 reviews, I sort of doubt they bribed them all. It's entirely possible that while yes, there are issues, many people still feel the game is great.

You do realize that these large reviewers get paid advertising by the very same companies whose games they then review right? That, by itself, in most industries would be enough of a conflict of interest to warrant investigation. There has been plenty of well reasoned and well documented articles written about the problems with video game reviews. If you don't care to go read them, and you want to naively assume that there is nothing shady going on, that's your business. The rest of us who live in the real world know that if it looks fishy and it smells fishy, it probably is fishy.

Also, you do realize that apart from those people who cannot even get the game to start (Nearly 10% of people apparently cannot get it to start, according to the achievements, since they have never put a unit on a ruin in a game), many people find their first many hours quite enjoyable, right? Most folks seem to start on the smaller maps to get a feel for the game, and therefore many of the bugs, taken separately, seem to be of no real consequence.

It is only later, when you start playing larger maps and looking more critically at the systems and find bug after bug after bug, that you begin to realize how many problems there are with this game. My own initial feedback and reviews to my friends were very positive. Were I the type to leave reviews with metacritic, you would be able to cite my own positive review against me.

Point is that people's early reactions do not negate the fact that the game has many serious bugs and flaws. Your argument is analogous to the following one: "9 out of 10 toddlers LOVE those pajama sleepers! It can't possibly lead to suffocation deaths in nearly 10% of toddlers!"

There are no standard computer parts. I can just about guarantee you, whatever video card you have, I have a different one. Whatever motherboard you have, I have a different one, etc. That's the challenge of PC gaming, sometimes issues are specific to very specific hardware. Often they're driver based issues, which means the game developer shouldn't be expected to fix it (although they can produce work-arounds usually).

You obviously didn't understand what I was saying, nor do you understand what kind of variation does and does not interact at all with software. Suffice it to say that your argument does not hold up, but nobody would have the patience to read through my highly technical explanation of why.

If you are that interested, by all means spend some time reading and actually understanding how software interacts with hardware, and about the actual complications varied setups bring to gaming. It's not nearly as much of an issue as you seem to think.

When designing for a console, you know the hardware you'll be working on. On top of that, you also know it's exact capabilities. If the game runs too slow, look into ways of speeding things up. If you're using too much memory, look into better compression techniques. On PC, you need to account for a wider variety of hardware, and thus give players more options to balance graphics and performance.

It's not surprising a lot of developers prefer console. It's easier to develop for, it's market is plenty big nowadays, and piracy is much more difficult.

Way to go sparky for making my point for me? Even though the variety of PC components is not really half the problem some people make it out to be, it also isn't a console where the developer can know exactly what will be there.

[Fantasy]

You do realize that these large reviewers get paid advertising by the very same companies whose games they then review right? That, by itself, in most industries would be enough of a conflict of interest to warrant investigation. There has been plenty of well reasoned and well documented articles written about the problems with video game reviews. If you don't care to go read them, and you want to naively assume that there is nothing shady going on, that's your business. The rest of us who live in the real world know that if it looks fishy and it smells fishy, it probably is fishy.

Also, you do realize that apart from those people who cannot even get the game to start (Nearly 10% of people apparently cannot get it to start, according to the achievements, since they have never put a unit on a ruin in a game), many people find their first many hours quite enjoyable, right? Most folks seem to start on the smaller maps to get a feel for the game, and therefore many of the bugs, taken separately, seem to be of no real consequence.

It is only later, when you start playing larger maps and looking more critically at the systems and find bug after bug after bug, that you begin to realize how many problems there are with this game. My own initial feedback and reviews to my friends were very positive. Were I the type to leave reviews with metacritic, you would be able to cite my own positive review against me.

Point is that people's early reactions do not negate the fact that the game has many serious bugs and flaws. Your argument is analogous to the following one: "9 out of 10 toddlers LOVE those pajama sleepers! It can't possibly lead to suffocation deaths in nearly 10% of toddlers!"

Thou speaketh the truth.