Vernholio

Join Date 02/2006

Wow... I can't believe the negativity

I'll start by admitting that I'm letting the sum of all of the petty complaints I've seen in the forums here feed this kind of "bash" post, and it's not intended as a personal attack against any particular posters. So, if I point out something you've commented on in this post, please don't take it personally.

Anyway, I just have to say something here... Hey guys/gals, please quit complaining about all of these INCREDIBLY petty things!! Do you complainers live such boring lives that you have to gripe, for all to see in a post, about the fact that Stardock didn't place "Alpha Centauri" right next to Sol to make the galaxy more realistic? Someone also complained about the colors of the Wiki page... calling them horrid, and offered a possible replacement scheme in a link in their post (which, when I navigated to it, appeared almost exactly the same, imho). And, one of my favorites... "Uh, the rotation of the moon in orbit arond Earth rotates in a clockwise direction, not counter-clockwise! This should really be fixed" Holy crap!! Who honestly gives a rat's arse?! Cripes... its a GAME!!

(Oh, and please, no posts correcting me in the actual rotation direction -- I'm just making a point)

Now, if you just point an inconsisitency out, yeah, I guess that's OK... but is it really integral to the overall game play/experience?

Plain and simple, this game is awesome. Quit whining about all of the little things that are so inconsequential! I'm not being biased and defensive because I am a big fan of the game, I just don't see the need to whine about these little things. If you are so disgusted by the fact that, "Mars is only shown to have one moon in the game, when it really has two", just quit playing the game. More importantly, please don't post it here and bring all of us down with your petty negativity.

Like mom always said, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all!" And yeah I know... I'm playing my hypocrite card here saying that, and griping at the same time!

Well, I know that this may result in at least this post being pulled down (if not me being blocked -- which I HOPE doesn't happen), but I had to say something to try to stop the pettiness!

Thanks for taking the time to read this...

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I agree.

City lights?

Nuff said.

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Well, city lights is a legit complaint in my opinion, althought a really really minor one. I recall reading a StarDock post before the game came out that specifically talked up the randomly generated land masses and city lights on the dark side of the planets as an 'attention to detail' feature that I really liked. In fact, everyone I spoke to regarding this game (praising the heck out of it to them) was impressed with that feature as I specifically mentioned it as one that had impressed me. To have that item on your 'main page' post talking up your game's attention to detail only to have it not functional on launch is a MINOR strike against you.

I've not personally complained about it as I love the game so far and realize that bugs happen. I'm content to sit back and just report the ones I find and let them fix them as they can, which so far has been a rather rapid reponse.

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I totally agree with you. Well, except that it really bothers me that all nine planets of OUR most holy solar system are not shown orbiting SOL. I really just can't take THAT oversight. Geez.

It's probably a good thing to let whiners vent. If they can't vent, they'll just go hurt a kitten with a fork or something. But it would be a good thing if SD would hire an intern to shuffle all the whiney posts into a special folder so the rest of us can get down to the business of communicating about game-play and not have to sort through the drivel.

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I believe that all the points before the Devs are good as long as they are posted in a positive way, there is a difference between, for example...

"hey devs I found this problem, can it be fixed?"

or

this

"This game sucks, stink, stupid game. you are stealing my money, I will never buy another game...."

Those type of comments usually don't help the good will of the devs, I agree with the poster of this topic, stop the negative comments and make positive suggestions, these suggestions help to improve the quality of the game and make your opinion counts. Just my 2 cents.

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Well, except that it really bothers me that all nine planets of OUR most holy solar system are not shown orbiting SOL. I really just can't take THAT oversight. Geez.

Didn't you read about the asteroid war? How those other planets were destroyed? Will find the book and let you know, I think it was "History of the 2500 century".

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I guess my issue is "Bug vs. Petty Gripe". A bug is something that affects gameplay. Yeah, by all means point those out. But, actually spending the time to write a full paragraph of obvious complaints about the orbital distance between Saturn and Jupiter is just silly, and WAY too petty.

The City Lights thing... Now, that imho is a suggestion (like "vapor trails" behind ships in the combat screen). It'd be cool to implement. What it all boils down to is how the post is put together. We can all tell the difference between a flat out complaint and a suggestion.

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I would like to see Stardock better staff a QA department, though; even if that means simply paying several high school kids minimum wage to play games. SD's response time/support is good, but the frequency & severity of bugs is abnormally large for a mainstream commercial product. It's like we're the QA department.

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I don't know about the rest of you but I see city lights on planets when I look at the darkside......go figure.

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It's like we're the QA department.

And SD was nice enough to let us test it out in Beta and Gamma. We are the QA.

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GreenReaper

Join Date 05/2001

+32

tetleytea: I'd have to disagree with your statement that it's a "mainstream commercial product". It's a game. Games tend to have the same "version 1.0" issues as every other new product release, plus they are often far more complicated than most applications.

You're right, though - we should get more QA, but it's not as easy to find reliable staff as you might think. Most high school students do not make good bug testers. And, unfortunately, those that are usually want to move onto something better-paid sooner or later.

The wiki complaint was valid at the time - it was white and yellow on black like this site, only not done as well, and to be honest it didn't look all that great. it has been edited since then so it looks different.

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Whiners .... they are almost as bad as people who whine about whiners

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Xan

Join Date 01/2003

+29

LOL. What mainstream game have you purchased recently that was more solid than Galactic Civilizations?

I can recount my experiences:

September: Bought Battlfield 2. Total bug fest. Half the keyboard shortcuts just didn't work. Random CTDs. Months later it is much better but still buggier than GalCiv is.

November: Bought Civilization IV. Didn't work on my video card. Immediate CTD. First patch fixed it but I had to wait over two weeks before I could even play the game. Still had random CTDs while playing until the last patch which has made it better.

February: Bought Star Wars Empire at War. Out of the box the game is a bug fest. Their patch fixes the most agregious problems but the AI, especially the land combat, basically doesn't do anything other than cheat fantastically. Out of the box Star Wars Empire at War was, at best, a beta.

I also purchased Galactic Civilizations II. I've not had a single crash with it. The only bug I've run into is that social production ability which they quickly fixed and was not anything close to a game ender for me.

It's easy to sit around and bitch about petty things like the moon not being astronomically correct. Just like there's people who bitch that the Native American leader has the Indian (as in India) music playing. It's petty stuff that no one outside a Star Trek convention would care about.

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All I have to say is, yes, I had a small problem.. but the SD Support staff took care of business... quick.

No complaints from me.

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I have had very few problems with GalCiv2. At the very most, I get a rare CTD after hours of consecutive play. Other than that, most of the stuff I'd complain about is cosmetic (mostly hardpoints - you can flip and rotate... but only one one axis!) at best. Of all the games I've bought over the past few months (is it me or did Jan/Feb suck for releases?), GalCiv2 is second only to COD2 in terms of bug-free running.

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Yes, petty whining is pretty silly. It is rampant on most game forums. I mean there are some real gems out there, not just here. Most sites do something to clean up whiny absurdities though.

Part of the issue is forum organization. Having moderators and appropriate sections like the "I'm a spoiled geeky teen and want to whine like a banshee folder" coupled with "anal-retentive complaints for those who have difficulty accepting fantasy folder" would probably help tons. Not sure why Stardock always insist on putting together ALL their forums the current way but whatever...to each his own. On other sites you have strategy sections, general sections, off topic section etc... then moderators , those jackbooted attack dogs of an Orwellian New Order, stamping out Thought Crimes with ruthless efficiency, proceed to place rants, raving and off topic post in the correct locations.

Though I believe Brad mentioned that he didn't want to moderate the forums too much (or at all?)." You know,... it's for the kids."

Like the Korx say, it's good for business.

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I would like to see some moderation... Seeing the same question for the thirteenth time in a few days gets old fast and makes it hard to see the relevant new posts. Even if you don't want to delete idiotic/lazy posts, at least lock the thread so it can pass on by and not clutter up the first page or two. I'm still trying to figure out how this forum is organized, I'm gonna give it a month and see if it grows on me

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but the frequency & severity of bugs is abnormally large for a mainstream commercial product.

Not true. Name a game of this type that did not have at least as many bugs on release as GC2. You can't. Civ IV had much worse problems and is more mainstream than GC.

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Most high school students do not make good bug testers. And, unfortunately, those that are usually want to move onto something better-paid sooner or later.

High school students as testers? Are you offering much money for these QA jobs? When I was in QA the only high school student we had on staff was a friends son of a producer and he was just on for the summer. Of course I worked for a publisher and they usually have a bit more money to throw around than a developer (not to question stardocks fiscal status mind you).

Also I might suggest better oragnization of your testers in addition to just better testers. With a proper test plan there really is no reason why a game should ship with typos in it.

edit: Also the post from greenreaper and some of the other forum goers just shows you why it is not appropriate to tell people not to post about minutia as what exactly constitutes minutia is often subjective.

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Just off the top of my head I can think of at least 7 consequential bugs that still have not been fixed in 1.0x. And they are NOT video problems. I'm sorry, that is not normal.

As far as high school QA testers, I think they'd do fine. Not as good as pros--there are people who do PhD's on the topic--but they can do the job. The console companies regularly hire people to just play games all day. It doesn't take someone who did their thesis on State-Driven Formal Verification of Event-Driven Software to play a game all day and report the bugs they see, and what they like/don't like.

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Just off the top of my head I can think of at least 7 consequential bugs that still have not been fixed in 1.0x. And they are NOT video problems. I'm sorry, that is not normal.

NAME THEM. Let's hear these 7 consequential bugs. I can't think of a single one.

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As far as high school QA testers, I think they'd do fine. Not as good as pros--there are people who do PhD's on the topic--but they can do the job. The console companies regularly hire people to just play games all day. It doesn't take someone who did their thesis on State-Driven Formal Verification of Event-Driven Software to play a game all day and report the bugs they see, and what they like/don't like.

I would like to refute or clarify many of your comments about QA work.

"As far as high school QA testers, I think they'd do fine."
"The console companies regularly hire people to just play games all day. It doesn't take someone who did their thesis on State-Driven Formal Verification of Event-Driven Software to play a game all day and report the bugs they see, and what they like/don't like."

QA work most of the time is not playing a game (although that can be a small part of it). It is doing incredibly reptitive things over and over again while also trying to stay alert enough to engage in a decent level of logical problem solving (not related to the game but in determining the determinants of a bug which can sometimes be incredibly well hidden). I'm not trying to make this sound like rocket science or more than it is (the programers certainly have it harder for instance) but it's certainly not a job for everyone. I've seen people burn out in a matter of weeks doing QA work. I just don't think most high school students have the focus to do this for anywhere from 8 to 16 (or even more) hours a day effectively.

"The console companies regularly hire people to just play games all day"
All game companies including PC do this. Normaly the majority of this is done on the publisher end (at least when I was doing it) but I get a feeling from stardock, based off their comments, that they're in charge of alot of this stuff.

"there are people who do PhD's on the topic"
PHDs on bugging software? That's just rediculous. I have no idea if that's true or not but the only thing that that 7 years of expensive education would get you is very significant qualifications for a QA department manager position.

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bah, dup

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