Is Firaxis sinking?

[ontheleftcoast]

Originally Posted by windows7heaven

A Nvidia card would overheat just playing Bejewelled, it's what they do No overheating here on my 5970, game runs great in DX11, fantastic game. Just another 'whinge' post to add to the collection.

I got the game to run just fine, it doesn't crash, etc. To do so I have to be careful to work around the problems I've encountered. For example, I never reload without exiting the game. Or never playing against large numbers of AI civilizations. But the game play is below par for the series. This is as bad, to me at least, as those clunkers from the Atari years. Anyone remember Call to Power fondly? I sure don't.

I've been doing software developmet for a long, long time. Sure, earlier Civ games had problems, I can still get Civ4 to crash from time to time. But this game has lots of nagging problems in addition to the crash problems. Most of crashes seem to be memory leaks/corruption bugs, and those are the sign of code that was shipped without sufficient testing. And the nagging problems are another sign of a rush job.

So, is this a sign that Firaxis is in trouble? Maybe. Can the problems in the game be fixed? Again, maybe. But while I've enjoyed playing the game up to now I'm done with it until a lot more of the bugs get fixed. It's back to Civ 4 for me, I just get fed up with minute long waits between turns because they can't use multi-core. Or the bugs like waiting for 15 seconds when the focus switches to a Great General.

[Mr.Ceefus]

Originally Posted by Europhoria

You divided by zero.

Undefined

[TrainDerailer]

Originally Posted by windows7heaven

A Nvidia card would overheat just playing Bejewelled, it's what they do No overheating here on my 5970, game runs great in DX11, fantastic game. Just another 'whinge' post to add to the collection.

Let's cover over the fact that it doesn't run crossfire without flickering squares all over the place.

Keep in mind that just because a particular person isn't having issue that does not mean that the issues are not there. There's nothing more frustrating then getting a shoddy product and then listening to people tell you how it works fine.

By the way, with one graphics card turned on, ATI Catalyst shows the card working at 99%. I haven't seen that kind of workload on the card since I used the card for volunteer scientific applications.

I just confirmed that the crossfire issue hasn't been fixed yet. I'm still getting squares that are flickering.

Firaxis never answered the post that I left on their site either about it. They said they would in 72 hours and it's been at least a week.

[Rainmaker77]

Originally Posted by lawbreaker

actually einstein my two nvidia cards have never overheated on any other game. this game however makes my computer sound like it's trying to bring frankensteins monster to life.

anybody who claims this game runs great is not being honest, but what would i expect from someone so practiced in the art of deception that he regularly trolls the forums claiming that people who don't upgrade from xp to windows 7 are stupid.

I'm afraid I have to say graphicly I have no issue with CivV, on a huge map towards the end the turns may get a little slow but apart from that it runs fine.

NVidia too, FYI.

[Sajeth]

Originally Posted by windows7heaven

A Nvidia card would overheat just playing Bejewelled, it's what they do

i am elitist because ATI is sooo much kewler
mommy said so.

seriously, what the ♥♥♥♥ guys, cant you just accept there are different brands on the market? Are you all in puperty or something?

[ontheleftcoast]

Originally Posted by Sajeth

Are you all in puperty or something?

If I was a better man I wouldn't hound you for that typo. I have a love/hate relationship with both ATI and nVidia. They both have a reputation of putting out great cards followed by lousy ones. And don't get me started on their driver quality...

[TrainDerailer]

What about drivers? lol

[EagleOne]

To go back on my OP, Firaxis may be sinking.

Think about that : a company having a lot of treasury does not fire people. It reorganizes the staff so people work better, or it splits the teams to work on more projects.

Firing people is because you have economic issues. Maybe the Civ franchise is costing too much. Maybe it is not selling as it should sell (millions of buyers since Civ 1 is not millions of buyers for just one game).

I think Firaxis is sinking. Civ V is probably their last hope. Ok, that is a shame, because such adventures should never end.

However, the only thing I really wonder is HOW THIS GAME COULD HAVE BEEN RATED 95% or 5/5 BY MOST GAMING WEBSITES !!! I feel like cheated, because I can't ever finish a game without a crash happening, and started over many games, reducing always the size maps and number of players, to keep the time between turns quite reasonable.

Cheated we were once. Never again. (hey, it's 50€, 65$!!! even if on steam 1$ = 1€, it's not the 30 bucks it really values)

[Supersomething]

Originally Posted by EagleOne

To go back on my OP, Firaxis may be sinking.

Think about that : a company having a lot of treasury does not fire people. It reorganizes the staff so people work better, or it splits the teams to work on more projects.

Firing people is because you have economic issues. Maybe the Civ franchise is costing too much. Maybe it is not selling as it should sell (millions of buyers since Civ 1 is not millions of buyers for just one game).

I think Firaxis is sinking. Civ V is probably their last hope. Ok, that is a shame, because such adventures should never end.

However, the only thing I really wonder is HOW THIS GAME COULD HAVE BEEN RATED 95% or 5/5 BY MOST GAMING WEBSITES !!! I feel like cheated, because I can't ever finish a game without a crash happening, and started over many games, reducing always the size maps and number of players, to keep the time between turns quite reasonable.

Cheated we were once. Never again. (hey, it's 50€, 65$!!! even if on steam 1$ = 1€, it's not the 30 bucks it really values)

Then again there is always the possibility that those people were terminated due to the poor work in developing CiV V. Generally people do not get terminated unless they're doing poor work, or no work at all. If its an economic problem for a company they usually go the route of laying off people until such a time as they can reinstate them, if ever.

[EagleOne]

Originally Posted by Supersomething

Then again there is always the possibility that those people were terminated due to the poor work in developing CiV V. Generally people do not get terminated unless they're doing poor work, or no work at all. If its an economic problem for a company they usually go the route of laying off people until such a time as they can reinstate them, if ever.

20 guys fired for their lack of skill? That's obviously not the reason.

[Supersomething]

Originally Posted by EagleOne

20 guys fired for their lack of skill? That's obviously not the reason.

Interesting, did not realize it was so black and white. All I am saying is termination in terms of an economic situation usually stems from the employee not doing their job to their fullest, or just not at all. If they are however, but the company can't afford all of its employees they are generally laid off.

Originally Posted by EagleOne

Think about that : a company having lots of treasury do not fire people. It reorganizes the staff so people work better, or it splits the teams to work on more projects.

I wondered the same thing and looked over the net for information concerning Firaxis' finances. Given the relative health of parent company, Take Two Interactive (profit of ~140M last year), I'd say Firaxis is NOT in any kind of serious trouble.

It appears that the firings were done to trim some fat off the company, especially since there isn't much other product development going on at Firaxis (at least that I'm aware of).

Originally Posted by EagleOne

However, the only thing I really wonder is HOW THIS GAME COULD HAVE BEEN RATED 95% or 5/5 BY MOST GAMING WEBSITES !!!

I totally agree! I posted in another thread, these "review" sites are just shills that make sales pitches.

But you can't be too critical of the game on this forum. I've already been censored for calling out Firaxis.

[TrainDerailer]

Originally Posted by EagleOne

To go back on my OP, Firaxis may be sinking.

However, the only thing I really wonder is HOW THIS GAME COULD HAVE BEEN RATED 95% or 5/5 BY MOST GAMING WEBSITES !!! I feel like cheated, because I can't ever finish a game without a crash happening, and started over many games, reducing always the size maps and number of players, to keep the time between turns quite reasonable.

I wonder about those game rating websites too. I mean this game is not good enough to deserve that kind of rating.

I honestly thing the people who rate these games don't spend enough time playing the games before they rate them.

As a side note, GTA IV was a total waste of money for me. In fact they are lucky I even bought this game because of that, and Railroads.

[Dr.Phibes]

So far I've encountered exactly zero bugs and zero performance issues. What now? Should I kill myself? Or should I dare to say "Nice. Vanilla Civ V is way better than vanilla Civ IV"?

[HiImpactHotDog]

PC gamers aren't the same PC gamers of a decade ago. All you have to do is check Steam's top sellers list for an example of console games outselling huge PC franchise such as Civ on Steam.

Basically PC games are niche now days. Console games on the PC outsell PC games now so expect the trend of PC franchises being consolized to continue at an even faster rate and all of the little girls whining about it on forums should be blaming the so called "pc gamers" for purchasing them in droves.

Civ 5 works great for me and I'm a satisfied customer.