My PTW Experience. Disasterous. . .

Hurin · October 31, 2002, 19:09

Installed, patched it. Tried a quick single-player game. All is good.

Tried multiplayer. . . Ack!

First try: Went to in-game browser. The screen is non-intuitive. Can't see list of players. Only two or three games are shown waiting for players. Double-clicked a game and saw another waiting room. The host launched. . .

At this point, my screen (and the host's I later learned) got very sluggish. Just choosing our tribe was agonizingly slow. And this was just the setup screen.

It took 10-15 seconds just to register each mouse click.

Eventually, my the screen froze altogether. I ended task and came back.

We tried again. Same thing. We tried again. This time, we got into the game. But then it froze again. My settler just sat there. . . unable to move. I could chat with the host, however, and he described the same thing.

We were both broadband. 100ms pings to each other.

So, I tried to host a turn-based game. Just me and him. Same thing(s) happened.

Then my brother got the game and brought it into work.

We tried using Gamespy instead of the in-game game browser. I set up a game and tried to host. My brother (who *is* behind a firewall, admittedly) was able to join the lobby I set up.

The first time I launched, he just got kicked to the main Gamespy lobby. The 2nd and 3rd time, his game would start to load, and then it would GPF on him. I would always get to the tribe-choosing screen. But by then, I had no players.

I came into work today and tried a test LAN game. It worked fine. But that isn't very helpful for those of us who need to play over the Internet.

I have a cleanly installed Windows XP Pro system. Here are my specs:

Pentium 4 2GHz Northwood CPU
ASUS P4B266-C Motherboard
512MB DDR PC3200
NVidia GeForce 4 4600 (VisionTek)
Sound Blaster Audigy X-Gamer
Cable Modem (no firewall)
3Com 3C905C-TX Network Card
Adaptec 29160N SCSI Adapter
SCSI Hard drives and CD-ROMs
Windows XP Pro SP 2

I must say, I usually stick up for gaming companies. When OSI released Ultima Online, I defended them and all their bugs because that game was so very complex and had to deal with so many different players doing unpredictable things.

But, really. . . there is no excuse for the state of this game. Nobody I see in the Gamespy lobby is able to reliably start a game. Most (95%?) haven't even successfully started one. Those that have were stuck in a lag-fest that was unplayable.

There are legendary successful games where people have played 1v1 for a while. . . but it usually crashes.

The game quite often crashes on me just when I start it, and then exit. Sheesh!

Who exactly is running this show? There is a patch. Yet the civ3.com site is not updated. Half the chatter in the lobbies is taken up by people saying: "Where is the patch?" "Go to firaxis.com".

There is no support page yet on Firaxis or Civ3's site either.

I have absolutely *no* problem with a patch being released alongside the game. If anything, that encourages me! Many fine games have done this. But, then, after patching, to find multiplayer in such an egregiously un-usable state. . .

Whatever happened to the Firaxis that released the Civil War games and Alpha Centauri? They weren't perfect, but they *functional*!

Finally, my last bit of disappointment. Unlike almost every other multi-player game I'm aware of. . . PTW will not let you type in a known IP address for a host. You *have* to go through Gamespy or the horrible in-game browser. Pardon me, but that's crap! How about a little bit of control for gamers who want it!

Again, I'm surprised at myself for being this upset about it. I usually give developers the benefit of the doubt. But, this. . . this is just beyond the pale. How in God's name did this non-functional pile of code ever make it out the door? How does Firaxis expect to maintain *any* reputation while foisting this on their fans?

I never complained about Civ3. I never complained about the editor. I never complained about the patches. But this, this is too much.

Hurin

notyoueither · October 31, 2002, 19:17

I hosted 4 players last night. We played way too late.

It can be done. Patience is required.

I found that what often looks like a freeze will be recovered from. I'm not sure why it does that, but if you wait a bit it almost always begins to respond again. Or you will get an error message and XP will shut PTW down for you (less often).

[FX]Roman · October 31, 2002, 19:24

Well, you see this is what happenes...

/me sarcasim ON

The coders for PTW were all very bad at their job, hence the netcode is very shoddy. So In actual fact, when you do something, and you think:
"My action of me moving this unit is being being sent over to the other players."
What is actually happening is thousands of uncompressed full screen bitmap images of what you are doing are being sent to each player... As you can see, this can really slow down the game play.

/me sarcasim OFF

Simpleton · October 31, 2002, 21:24

Hey Roman,
You shouldn't be so quick to criticize the programmers. It's damn difficult to get a simple program to work never mind something as complex as Civ III or PTW.
There may be some problems but take your hat off for what they have accomplished. The day you contribute to the creation of program as large and complex as Civ III maybe then you'll realize your comments really were foolish.

rob.derosa · October 31, 2002, 21:42

You obviously havent learnt these new sarcasm tags have you?

Strakorfsky · October 31, 2002, 22:52

[FX]Roman....

please, those same programmers brough you civ 3. patiance is all that is need. making rants and trying to seem "cool" by critizing does nothing. why don't you e-mail firaxis instead of making rants

Hurin....

you were unlucky, i have heard many people getting on games and playing fro a while. did you ever bother asking the host what programs he ahd on, maybe it was his fault for making the game lag and crash. but that possibility is excluded once you just lay in your input without evaulting other ptoential options.

notyoueither · October 31, 2002, 22:58

Lag is an issue no matter how much the host tweaks. That is real, and something that is being worked on, I hope.

werdhertz · October 31, 2002, 23:11

Do any of you people have this game? If you do, go to the multiplayer lobby and see for yourself all these 'other' people who have gotten successful games. Sure, they can program a single player game, so can tons of other companys. And tons of other companys can program a multiplayer game too.