Tolerance for errors & multiplayer game etiquette.

Oerdin · August 17, 2003, 11:22

This is going to sound like a whine thread. Please bear with me as it really isn't a whine thread; more like an interesting question which is wearing a whiner’s coat.

I recently began playing PtW again. I bought PtW right after it was released, out of loyalty to the Civ franchise if nothing else, but I found the multiplayer function to be to buggy & problematic so I shelved PtW and figured I'd come back to it once it was properly patched. A good six months have passed so the other day I downloaded patch v1.27f and went on Game Spy to see how the PtW patching effort has gone.

To my surprise the patching has actually gone well and the game seems vastly improved over the initial release though, I am sorry to say, I would still qualify it as buggy and problematic. I would say it is problematic because out of 20 different games I tried to join 14 of them failed to launch correctly. A 70% failure rate cannot be a good sign can it? Especially since I have a brand new 2.4 GHz machine and a broadband line. Still, I can't blame Firaxis entirely (and now I'm getting to the etiquette part) for you see there was an additional problem.

Many of those 14 failures to launch were caused by people who had not installed the 1.27f patch. After we learned that different patch versions were incompatible with each other I would diligently, and politely, ask each perspective player if he had installed the 1.27 patch. Invariably, they would all say yes they had installed the patch, but, low and behold after launching we found that some of them actually had not installed the patch. What the HELL?! If someone tells you the game won't work unless you have the patch why lie and say you have the patch when everyone will know in 30 seconds that you do not? For the life of me I can't fathom why anyone would be rude and waste everyone's time when downloading a free patch would fix the problem.

Another point of etiquette deals with persons who are using hacked versions of the game who have never yet gotten an MP version of the game to work, yet, they let everyone crash over and over again before they reveal that (Oh, yeah) they're trying to use a stolen (and no doubt out of date) version of the game.

Frustrating stuff.

So now I'm arriving at the main question of this post. When games fail to work as advertised or when they crash so often that a good portion of the fun is removed from the experience who do you assign the blame? How do we determine which portion of the fault lays with a software company who might be dealing in shoddy products verses which portion belongs to software users who are just to stupid to use the software correctly? More importantly why hasn’t the manufacturer put in place safe guard to insure no one joins a game unless they have the same patch edition and don’t have a hacked copy? That shouldn’t be very hard. I know EU2 does this. So what is your take on this situation? Is it Firaxis not producing software which works as advertised, is it all the users fault, or is it both?

Verto · August 17, 2003, 12:02

Quote:

More importantly why hasn’t the manufacturer put in place safe guard to insure no one joins a game unless they have the same patch edition and don’t have a hacked copy?

That's the first thing I asked myself, when you began describing your version-incompatibility problem. I don't have PtW myself, yet, but I had assumed this feature would be in it.

Shame on Firaxis for allowing this.

Verto · August 17, 2003, 12:05

Oh, and I wouldn't consider this is a whine thread. These are valid complaints.

Wittlich · August 17, 2003, 12:06

I believe it's a little bit of both....I agree Oerdin, Firaxis should have included a feature which insures all parties have the "proper" game prior to being able to launch. On the other hand, a part of the blame, I feel, resides with those few players who try and buck the system and download the game for free.

Oerdin · August 17, 2003, 12:30

Agreed. The thieves suck. Now why doesn't Firaxis follow Strategy First's example and keep updating the security with each patch and make sure different patches are not allowed to play with one another? This would prevent the obvious crashes due to different editions of the game but also it would make a moving target for the hackers meaning, presumably, fewer thieves with the most recent version of the game.

WarpStorm · August 17, 2003, 14:22

That is a good idea, Oerdin.

Panag · August 17, 2003, 16:15

hi ,

great Idea

Oerdin , what local language do you have btw , ......

have a nice day

skuzzy · August 17, 2003, 16:48

Even though I'm not using a hacked version of the game I would still like to add my two cents to the problem. Yes, Firaxis should definitely introduced a verion compadibility app so good point. But as far as hacking goes, Civ3:PTW uses CD protection known as SafeDisc2 and all that needs to be done is one person to install the patch, use a prog to extract the protection from an ICD file and wallah, you have a cracked version of the new patch. So as far as it preventing thieves from using the game, it's illogical but nice to think about a true free enterprise software industry -.-