OMG!!! Computer Gaming World review

[Father Beast]

I just got my copy of CGW yesterday, and immediately turned to the PTW review upon realizing it was there.

I was SHOCKED, I tell you, SHOCKED by what I saw.

rating: 1 star
Verdict: The central purpose of the game - multiplayer support - doesn't work, and the rest is largely junk.
Top blurb: Broken , sloppy, frustrating, overdue and expensive, but who are we to complain? By Thomas L. McDonald
some quotes:
"The worst implementation of multiplayer gaming in recent memory"
"[turnless mode] assumes a set amount of time per turn, an absurd prospect in Civ... It's totally unusable."
"Lag in a 2D strategy game with seemingly meager bandwidth is an indication that all is not well at Casa Firaxis."
"but hey, that hotseat mode sure works great."


That sort of almost continuous criticism is something more expected in a review of something like eXtreme Paintbrawl, not a Civ game for goodness' sake.

I love all things Civ, but this review made me heartsick, because I can't make myself believe that he was totally off track.

I was thinking of typing in the whole review, but wasn't sure if I'd get in trouble for copyright issues. I'm sure just a bit of quoting for "review of review" purposes can't be out of line, though. if it's OK to repeat the whole thing, let me know in this thread and I'll be back.

I just hope the PC Gamer review isn't quite so bad...

[alva]

If he played PTW out of the box, then he quite right about MP, I guess.

Do they even mention SP?

let's see if I still have my future telling capabilities
* alva says hello to Coracle *

[JimMac]

if it's OK to repeat the whole thing, let me know in this thread and I'll be back.

DanQ posted a news item about this review on 15th December, and gave the on-line link;

http://www.gamers.com/game/1144751

I am sure that there is a thread somewhere on Apolyton debating it.

On a related point, I wish I could still buy CGW in the UK. (As far as I know they no longer publish here- anyone know different?) It used to be my favourite for the quality of their reviews. I now make do with PCZone, mostly for the humour though.

Jim

[Enriquillo]

Just tried my first MP game against a friend, it was very disappointing.a

After 3 hours of playing, most of it very laggy, the game exits without warning

We both have great connections, and never have any lag during Age of Kings games online.

Ofcourse we have the latest patch installed, so that's not the problem.
Now all would have been ok if there had been a restore option, but guess what... it's not there, ouch!

So it seems to me the reviews are mostly right. This game stinks in MP and is only playable against the comp for now. Sad but true...

[Father Beast]

Originally posted by JimMac


DanQ posted a news item about this review on 15th December, and gave the on-line link;

http://www.gamers.com/game/1144751

I am sure that there is a thread somewhere on Apolyton debating it.

Jim

Yup, that's the article. wouldn''t this forum be the place for that?

[Dimension]

Well, the reviews are 100% correct. PTW is horrible as expansions go in all respects mentioned. The single-player additions are nice, but the simple fact is that the name of the expansion is PLAY THE WORLD, and its primary purpose is adding multiplayer support, in which it does a miserable job. The truly obnoxious thing is that people are paying $30 for what should've been included in the original game.

I thought Blizzard was as bad as it got when it came to making wonderful games then refusing to support them. After all, right now Diablo II is still awaiting a patch that was promised over a year ago. But at least Diablo II shipped with working multiplayer support.

The reason I still have to congratulate Firaxis is because SOMEONE there is listening. They added editor features, they improved AI slightly, they added menu automation options, and they added stack movement. These are all things that the hardcore fans wanted. This is because they were listening to THIS FORUM.

So, they screwed up with the expansion. Things seem to be better after a few patches, though. Still, it should've been a $10 add-on, not a $30 expansion called PLAY THE WORLD.

I hate the recent practice of software companies releasing games that don't work. Everything seems unfinished these days. It's certainly not just Firaxis. Hell, Microsoft released a 100-gig service pack to Windows XP just a couple months after it came out. There is a complete lack of testing going on. It seems like companies have just fired their quality assurance departments and now rely on free beta testers and the complaints of customers after the purchase of a supposedly finished product.

I don't think this is the fault of Firaxis, though. Who wants to release a buggy unfinished product that costs too much? They were probably just rushed by Infogrames (who would also be the ones setting the price). Perhaps it all would've been a patch if it weren't for Infogrames. I'll bet there was some exec saying, "What are you guys doing adding features to a game that came out a year ago? Just fix the bugs." It's hard for a company to justify paying developers to work on something if they're not going to get a direct profit.

[notyoueither]

Just finished a 30 hour game against 2 other humans and 4 AIs.

Yes, we had crashes and had to reload, but we could reload as long as we could recognize a save file (unlike some apparantly brain dead individuals).

We ended with me and the number one player tossing nukes back and forth while the number 2 built the SS.

Can it be played? Hell, yes!

Was it fun? Hell, yes!

[notyoueither]

ps. Thomas L. McDonald can kiss my *ss! I'm having fun. wth is he doing?

[Dis]

well considering the point of the exp. was multiplayer, and it didn't work, I can't blame them for giving it one star.

But did they mention single player in the review? I still think that bears mentioning.

[Dis]

It is sad to see how far civ has fallen. I agree with you. We all had such high hopes...

[notyoueither]

Why am I having fun in MP over the Internet?

[Dis]

you are one of the lucky ones. Not all of us are so lucky.

Note, I can play MP, but even on a cable modem it is laggy.

[notyoueither]

Lag could still be reduced, I agree. However, these reviews are not related to lag. They are related to RTS idiots thinking that Civ should fit their bill. It don't. They should get over it.

[Switch]

Well, I think quality assurance went out the door with capitalism in video games approaching its peak. One of the main problems is that there is no official quality assurance board that can approve games, much like the CSA in Canada, or 60 Minutes . Anything can be released, and there is nothing besides the rating board that can stop a buggy release.

As much as I hate to say it, but the car analogy really does have some merit. The main reason cars don't suddenly burst into flame while going down the 401 is because of quality assurance. They aren't ALLOWED to release a noticeably buggy car. Video games, on the other hand

[notyoueither]

Tell that to Ford amd Firestone...

Now give me a freakin' break. Ho, ho, ho. Christmas is over. Now earn your trolls.

[Enriquillo]

Lag could still be reduced, I agree. However, these reviews are not related to lag. They are related to RTS idiots thinking that Civ should fit their bill. It don't. They should get over it.

Now who's being the idiot here? If you can't handle the pressure of timelimits in turnless mode you should just play TB.
As a hardcore 'RTS idiot' I'm not saying civ should try to become another RTS, I'm saying it should be possible to make a 1vs1 on modern comps with great connections at least lagfree.


This game's MP cannot even begin to compare to AoK MP.

OK , I was wrong about not being able to restore, I figured that out soon enough. Still, this game does the weirdest things to my comp and don't tell me it's my comp because it's not.
All the other apps and games run fine, not even a single crash until last night during that PTW game. It happened right when I hit F3, maybe that triggered it.

Anyway, the game was as good as over anyway, my friend was ahead in points but behind by about 12 techs, hehe. He just had more territory and got lucky that I didn't have any iron anywhere close. It was mostly my RTS experience that did it because in SP he's at least as good as I am.
I just don't have to patience to play a 'perfect' game, nor would I want to.
To end on a positive note, I did have fun playing against my friend. Next time I'm hoping for early iron so I can end the game before lag sets in

[trickey]

I got ptw for Christmas. So far, i have played 2 almost lag-free games. Im very pleased with it, well worth the 30$ imho (but i didn't pay for it, so even better )

[Dimension]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Tell that to Ford amd Firestone...

Now give me a freakin' break. Ho, ho, ho. Christmas is over. Now earn your trolls.

I can't believe you're actually defending multiplayer PTW even after admitting it crashes all the time.

You're actually suggesting that it's OK for PTW to lag, disconnect and crash all the time in multiplayer just because it's possible to reload? What? That makes it all better?

What's your deal? Why are you working so hard to defend a completely unfinished product? Go look through the Civilopedia entries for the new tribes. They didn't even have a single person proof-read that stuff. There are spelling and grammatical errors all over the place.

[Father Beast]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Lag could still be reduced, I agree. However, these reviews are not related to lag. They are related to RTS idiots thinking that Civ should fit their bill. It don't. They should get over it.

OK, I can get that you still enjoy playing the game, despite lag and crashes. who knows, this may become one of those "post patch classics" like MoM.

however, notyou, that quote above suggests that you didn't actually read the review and are just reactionary against the complainers about PTW problems. are you, by any chance, a DL of Alexander's Horse?

Lag could still be reduced, I agree. However, these reviews are not related to lag.

from the review: "But wait! There?s more! When it is connected, it runs like a dog ? and a dead dog at that. Lag in a 2D strategy game with seemingly meager bandwidth requirements is an indication that all is not well at Casa Firaxis."

They are related to RTS idiots thinking that Civ should fit their bill. It don't.

You can check the review anytime for how turnless mode is a failed attempt to shoehorn Civ into a pseudo RTS. exactly the opposite of what you said.

I am also curious as to whether you played your MP game pre patch or post.

But not to take away from your enjoyment. it's just that I, for one, am going to wait for some patches (and a price drop, with time), before getting the PTW expansion. I just can't resist civ, for some reason.

it's also just a shame that it came out like this. [sniff]

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Dimension
You're actually suggesting that it's OK for PTW to lag, disconnect and crash all the time in multiplayer just because it's possible to reload? What? That makes it all better?

It was crashing because the hosts IP address was changing every few hours (router problem). Aside from that it has been fairly stable. I cannot host with this comp, and the third did not want to host at all. We put up with the hosts connection problems.

I am also curious as to whether you played your MP game pre patch or post.

FB, I've been playing MP since before it was released. It is entirely possible to get good, lagless games with 2 or 3 players if they have good computers and good connections.

For instance, we began the 30 hour game with me using a P4 with 1G of RAM on DSL. The 3 player game went great, except for the hosts IP address problems. Mid way through I had to switch to a much slower Athlon with 256M and cable. Instant difference. Everyone noticed lag from that point. It was still playable, but not as quick.

That is what pees me off about some of these reviews. They are blatantly false, or incomplete. In either case, the reviewers do not know what they are talking about, IMO. But what's new?

[Franses]

Originally posted by notyoueither
It is entirely possible to get good, lagless games with 2 or 3 players if they have good computers and good connections.

For instance, we began the 30 hour game with me using a P4 with 1G of RAM on DSL.

Notyoueither, I do have my fun with PTW-MP too but it is not always lagless (not even on one to one). Now you may accuse me of not having 1G of RAM and DSL but I do have a P4, 256 MB of RAM and very fast cable and I play with people having a ping below 100. If those specifications are not sufficient to run a lagless one to one game then they should have said so on the box. In that case there are only a couple of people that are able to enjoy the game at all.

Instead the box sais that you need a PII 400 and an Internet connection (not cable, not DSL, not even a 56 Kb modem). Furthermore this game is supposed to be played with up to 8 players and we all know that even 4 will probably be to much let alone 8.

Your defense of MP-PTW as it currently is, is understandable because of your history with it but not very realistic. Those of us that are not blessed with a comp and connection that you have, just bought a game that by far does not provide them what was promised. They have the right to be angry. As far as the review is concerned, it may indeed go over the top a bit but IMO not as much as the makers of the game.

[notyoueither]

It would be charitable to call the rest of the package an afterthought; it's more like a half-terthought. Oh yeah, there are eight new civs, each with a new unit, but the differences are marginal.

There isn't a single, solitary element of this package worth $3, much less $30. An utter debacle.

The guy is an idiot. <---- period

[HolyWarrior]

Remember, this SAME magazine gave the original Civ3 5 stars when it was released. I thought the reviewers were smoking crack then, and I think they're smoking crack now. Civ3 in its original state SUCKED! PTW SAVES Civ3. So CGW's rating system is way off IMO.

[Dimension]

Originally posted by notyoueither
For instance, we began the 30 hour game with me using a P4 with 1G of RAM on DSL. The 3 player game went great, except for the hosts IP address problems. Mid way through I had to switch to a much slower Athlon with 256M and cable. Instant difference. Everyone noticed lag from that point. It was still playable, but not as quick.

I find that very hard to believe. Going from 1024MB to 256MB shouldn't make a difference unless PTW has some kind of massive memory leak. Going from a P4 to an Athlon shouldn't make a difference, either. We're not talking about video editing here, and I doubt PTW is 64-bit optimized. The Athlon should be at least as fast unless you've got a crappy chipset or forgot to install the Via 4-in-1 drivers. Going from DSL to cable shouldn't change things, either. DSL usually has less bandwidth than cable, so if the cable connection is slower you must live in a very congested area and have a bad ISP (well, Roadrunner is a bad ISP in most cities).

Look at a huge online game like Diablo II, though. If you've got 256MB of memory, a modern hard drive, a 400 MHz computer and a broadband connection, there will be almost no difference between the lag you experience and that of someone playing on a machine 5X as fast. That's in a realtime 8-player game. If PTW lags, that's just bad coding. There's no excuse for the host to be sending out that much data per turn. The only data that should have to be sent is the actual player's decisions during the turn. How the turn plays out should be calculated client-side for every machine in the game. If that were the case, PTW would be playable on 2400-baud dialup. If PTW were made by people who actually know how to optimize stuff for network play, it could probably have only one or two packets sent to each client per turn. Even with simultaneous turns, the only data you should be seeing is stuff like "Player 3, unit 53 moves west." From a developer's standpoint, it is truly mind-boggling that Firaxis found a way to make Civ3 laggy.

The simple fact is that it's December 2002 and online gaming is not a new thing. People are familiar with how smoothly fast-paced games like Quake / UT play online. People know how well massively multiplayer games, real-time strategy, and everything else can run online. PTW's implementation is a disgrace, because simple logic tells you that a turn-based game where everybody has matching software should have less network traffic than any online game made in the past five years. If anybody else remembers BBS games or MUD's, that's the type of bandwidth requirements we're talking about for turn-based games, and those worked great on 1200-baud dialup back in late 1980's.

Originally posted by notyoueither

Quote:

It would be charitable to call the rest of the package an afterthought; it's more like a half-terthought. Oh yeah, there are eight new civs, each with a new unit, but the differences are marginal.

Quote:

There isn't a single, solitary element of this package worth $3, much less $30. An utter debacle.

The guy is an idiot. <---- period

Maybe he's being a bit harsh, but you can't say he's completely wrong. The best PTW additions are things that could've been done in a day or two by many people on this forum. That is a testament to how good Civ3 is, and the fact that they've given us an editor. The simple arguments are:

(1) A simple mod adding 8 civs is not something that should cost $30.

(2) Multiplayer should've been included with the original Civ3 on release. Even from the financial side, this would've been the right thing to do for Firaxis/Infogrames, because it would've caused several more people to buy the original $50 game.

(3) A game that is buggy should be supported. You should not be forced to buy PTW to get future patches for Civ3.

Civ3 fans are still going to pay for PTW, but many of them are doing so while feeling that they shouldn't have to.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by Dimension
Look at a huge online game like Diablo II, though. [snip]

The simple fact is that it's December 2002 and online gaming is not a new thing. People are familiar with how smoothly fast-paced games like Quake / UT play online.

Dimension, I understand that this may be difficult to realize, but coding MP for TBS is something different from coding MP in RTS, FPS, or games like Diablo II. In those games, you can accomodate for a bad ping (=lost or delayed packets) by means of prediction. If the prediction turns out to be wrong, you just update the units/players position and that's it. Due to the fast pace, nobody notices and/or nobody cares. I very well remember seeing characters "stuck" for like seconds (then jumping instantly to another place), playing Diablo II with my girlfried - and that was over a local 100 MBit Ethernet network... Now, a game like Civ3 is a different beast. You have absolutely no possibility to use prediction. If a packet gets lost or delayed, you can do nothing about that. You can't move that cavalry over there southwards, "'cause the Americans are likely to do that". That's why it is rather unfair to point at fast-paced, low-precision games, praise their seemingly smooth MP and compare it to Civ3 MP.

OTOH, as subsequent patches show, it was possible to code it better, of course. But then we are back again at the problem of Infogrames and rushed release. No need to repeat all the arguments over again.

Originally posted by Dimension
The best PTW additions are things that could've been done in a day or two by many people on this forum.

Oops... do you mean this? Are you speaking about the AI "tweaks" that made computer controlled opponents more challenging? Are you talking about the improvements in the F4 screen? About the action buttons? About stacked movement?

Originally posted by Dimension
(1) A simple mod adding 8 civs is not something that should cost $30.

True. But PtW is not just a mod adding 8 civs, so this point is rather irrelevant.

Originally posted by Dimension
(2) Multiplayer should've been included with the original Civ3 on release. Even from the financial side, this would've been the right thing to do for Firaxis/Infogrames, because it would've caused several more people to buy the original $50 game.

Sorry, this logic is flawed. You could argue - in the same way - that even things we will get only with Civ4 should have been in out-of-the-box Civ3. It would have been nice if MP was in the original release, but it was not. Only PtW adds - beside other things - various kinds of multiplayer.

Originally posted by Dimension
(3) A game that is buggy should be supported. You should not be forced to buy PTW to get future patches for Civ3.

True. But as far I know, there are no bugs left in Civ3 1.29f, so releasing more (bugfix) patches is not needed. Patching PtW only now makes sense - any more vanilla Civ3 patches would not be fixing anything broken, but could just add improvements that are supposed to be in PtW.

[Tiberius]

What bothers me with these PtW reviews is that most of them give a 1 for the gameplay. For the gameplay, which is the same as in Civ3 vanilla! No, I'm wrong, it is not the same, it is better: the AI is better, the new city improvements are good; good additions are the radar towers, the new civs, and so on. You could argue that these should have been in the original civ3, but they were not. Period. If one gave 5 stars for the civ3 gameplay, he must be an idiot to give 1 star for a better civ3.

If they wanted to punish Firaxis for a crappy MP, then they should have given a 1 for the MP implementation (prior the patches) not for the gameplay. I wouldn't be very surprised if they changed the grades for the graphics, too

Saying that "There isn't a single, solitary element of this package worth $3, much less $30" is an idiocy, I agree. I would have paid 30 bucks for PBEM and hotseat alone, so spare me with this “doesn’t worth 3$” crap. It worths as much as people are paying for it.

[Dimension]

OK, I was going a little overboard there. Most of what you're saying is correct. I certainly don't agree, though, with your explanation for lag. The net just isn't that slow, and prediction is mostly used to smooth out motion in realtime games. That is, say I'm playing Quake with a guy on dialup who has a ping of 200, so his character is only updating five times a second. My machine is running at 60 FPS, so there must be prediction to keep things from looking choppy. Prediction does not, however, compensate effectively for dropped packets or a legitimately bad connection.

Even if that were the case, it doesn't really excuse the fact that PTW is excessively slow and buggy. I have worked with all kinds of Win2K machines for years. I have never seen Win2K just randomly lock up in the middle of something when there wasn't some sort of a hardware issue (usually explained by a blue screen) which I could attribute to an actual problem. I have never seen a drive just randomly get corrupted (especially an NTFS drive) where I couldn't link it to a legitimate hardware problem. Last week, PTW locked my machine during a delayed write and corrupted my hard drive. It destroyed my SYSTEM32 directory (making the machine unbootable) and my Documents and Settings folder (destroying my financial records and a large project I was working on, both of which had changed a lot since I backed them up two weeks ago). This really isn't acceptable behavior for retail software.

I'm not accusing Infogrames of robbing people. If they want to charge $30 for an add-on that does nothing but animate the tides, they can do what they want. People would definitely complain, though. Infogrames should be trying to make people happy, and $30 just doesn't fit for what you're getting. You're getting Civ3 -- the same game -- with a few extra civs, some minor tweaks, and shoddy multiplayer support. Historically, your average $20 - $30 expansion adds major elements to a game. Going back to Diablo II, there was a $30 expansion that added new character classes, a very large act to play in, more than doubled the number of items in the game, and added all kinds of minor facets to the game. Of course, the box to the Diablo II expansion was an outright lie which said "Hundreds of runewords" would be added (they never were), but let's not get into the

So, as expansions go, there isn't much new in the PTW expansion. My point is that the supposed purpose of the expansion is multiplayer (hence the name of the expansion), which it does quite poorly. If the name of the expansion weren't "Play the World," much of this could be overlooked. People could just say it's a small expansion to add some things to Civ 3.

I don't feel ripped off, because a friend of mine got the expansion first and I knew exactly what I was getting. If my main priority was multiplayer, though, I would be very disappointed.

I know I'm bringing up all the negatives, but I actually do like the expansion. I was just refuting what notyoueither was saying, because his statements were completely ridiculous.

[Antonin]

I haven't bought PTW yet because of all these complaints about it, even though I only play SP. I think $30 is entirely too much to pay. It's really sad. I know the MP people were looking forward to PTW and I'm disapointed that their experience with it has been so bad.

[Tiberius]

Antonin, if you play only SP, PtW is definately worth it. If you feel that 30$ is too much, fine, wait until the price will drop. However, the SP improvements are all good and make the game better.

If I had bought it for MP, maybe I'll be angry, too. But the SP improvements, the new civs, the better AI, a working PBEM and Hotseat make me say that you're losing not getting it. IMHO.

[Antonin]

Originally posted by Tiberius
Antonin, if you play only SP, PtW is definately worth it. If you feel that 30$ is too much, fine, wait until the price will drop. However, the SP improvements are all good and make the game better.

If I had bought it for MP, maybe I'll be angry, too. But the SP improvements, the new civs, the better AI, a working PBEM and Hotseat make me say that you're losing not getting it. IMHO.

Hmmm. Maybe you're right. I did get a $25 bonus (wow!) from my company this Xmas, so buying PTW at its current price would mean only $5 out of my own pocket. And the wife HAS been asking me "So what are you going to buy for yourself with your bonus?"

For a while I was unsure about the SP experience of PTW, because there were so many negative comments here about the MP aspect. But I have heard others say the expansion adds to the game. Radar towers, stack movement...I'll have to do some searching here and re-familiarize myself with what the improvements are.

Unlike some people here, I enjoyed the original Civ3 quite a lot. I haven't played for a while, though, because there are other games I also like (EU2, Space Empires IV, Championship Manager, Season Ticket Baseball 2003, etc etc...). But last night I started a new Civ3 game as Persia, and I must say it is STILL a really, really enjoyable experience. That "just one more turn" thing.

But I hoped the MP players would get what they wanted with PTW. I have no interest at all in playing Civ3 MP, but I like the game and I know a lot of people really expected the MP element when it was introduced. I feel that I got (and continue to get) what I wanted out of the game; I wish others could have fun with it also.

We need more thoughtful strategy games like Civ3...