Stardock: The Deli

Well... sure it sounds bad when you put game production ideas into a deli situation...

ME: What is your return policy?

Sign on door: Finished with your sandwiches? Trade in two old sandwiches for one new one!

Hot Cross Buns package: Special Collectors edition. Now one really huge bun instead of a six pack.

Can we get some fire hydrants hooked up? you may experience a warm burning situation as not just fanboys but ordinary gamers who happen to like "hypothetical" cheese set you alight.

This may also open a new dimension for cheese. Perhaps the Douglas Adams reference at the end of tech victory is really about cheese? what a cheesy idea. At least this AI doesnt use cheese. To cheese, or not to cheese, that is the gouda.

I'm going to stop now before someone bans me

But on a serious note, how, HOW do people complain about free updates? I mean, would you like some cheese with your whine? (damnit!)
Come on, stardock are amazing guys who made a great game with a staff size not even ultimate miniturisation could manage. I've been looking at the reaction to the problem with the German version, and how Frogboy works on everything, puts it in the journal to say what how and why he's doing it, and makes it entertaining. I've seen the entire team all over the forums, trying to answer people's questions when sometimes the people are being obtuse, saying the usual troll line of "TEH GAME IZ BUGGED!!!1! TEH GAME SUXX0RZ!" without posting any information on what's happening, no debug.err or anything.
I'm not calling you a troll. I'm saying you're being a bit unfair. Cut them some slack! they deserve it. If this makes me a fanboy, so be it! I'm joining the Stardock Army! *salutes*

You know, this sort of post really sucks the enjoyment out of doing free updates.

Last time I checked, the game -- the 1.0 version of the game -- had just won countless editor's choice awards.  Yet you're treating us like we've given you an unfinished product simply because we're doing free updates.

A better analogy would be the deli is providing you with free refills on your soda and french fries.

ou know, this sort of post really sucks the enjoyment out of doing free updates. Last time I checked, the game -- the 1.0 version of the game -- had just won countless editor's choice awards. Yet you're treating us like we've given you an unfinished product simply because we're doing free updates. A better analogy would be the deli is providing you with free refills on your soda and french fries.

Agree, But you can hardly say there ain't bugs. Alot of bugs..well. a huge amount. Which could have been solved already in the release

if you hate them, why use them? (reffering to updates, and the game)

its not good for stardocks self-esteem..... thank you



i like cheese.

You know, this sort of post really sucks the enjoyment out of doing free updates.

Well don't stop... I'm really looking forward to the changes in 1.1, and I am sure there are heaps more around the horizon that I don't know about yet but don't want to miss

Just ignore people like this, am not a fan boy by any means. But i know when i find a company willing to expand any already game, without charging you or holding off the new features in order to make an expansion AKA more money..


Heck for all we know this could just be a starforce employee jumping on here and trying to rattle peoples cages.
Nothing but cry babby trolls. The game out of the box is great and feels like a finished product. Of course no game is 100% out of the box, but for me GAL CIv 2 was close. And thats what patchs are for anyhow.

Well I like the sandwich the way it is, thank you very much. And hopefully improvements will make the sandwich even tastier.

Just for the record, there are a lot of us out here that really appreciate free feature upgrades, especially the kinds of massive, expansive, and incredibly fast feature upgrades you folks are working on. Personally I've had almost no bug problems, but then this is a brand new system and maybe that matters. Either way, you've picked up a loyal customer here Stardock.

Honestly, this isn't about self-esteem. I'm sure there are hundreds of programmers who would like me to compliment them on well-done games...

It's about performance and customer support. I'll say this- a lack of customer support is a reason for me to quit buying games from a company. It's the reason I will never buy another game from EA for example- console or PC. Their customer support is ultra-craptastic.

To the top poster: to put it mildly, you're whining. While I consider bugfix patches a right, the extra content that's in this patch- is not a right, it's a bonus. You don't like the bonuses, you don't have to use them.

Good, complex games will have more bugs then simplistic games due to the amount of variables and math in the game. I know how hard it is to program- I failled C++ 5 times. I consider Civ IV's support acceptable despite the fact they only patched twice- due to the bugfixes and the fact the game isn't buggy for me at all. I uninstalled the game cause GC2 is better, but it's a good game.

Stardock is excellent in regards to customer service- In the top 2 of publishers that I'm aware of. I'm unsure whether to rate Paradox or Stardock higher- they are very close, and that's high praise to both companies.

One last note: every forum will have its howler monkeys- you just have to ignore them, unless they want to fire Herb Sendek...

Agree, But you can hardly say there ain't bugs. Alot of bugs..well. a huge amount. Which could have been solved already in the release

Um, no. I don't agree with that assessment. While I can point out lots of piddly bugs, the release game had few if any bugs that significantly impacted people. The only one I can think of was the Shipyard not saving games if the user went to the shipyard from the GNN screen which nobody in the beta or gamma noticed.

90% of the work we've been doing has been doing new features.  Sure, we fix "bugs" like typos or some piddly issue. I was looking at the 1.1 list and there's a bunch of "fixes" for issues even I hadn't heard of. 

I'm curious, if GalCiv II was "buggy" then tell me, what game should we be aspiring to? What constitutes a game that doesn't have a "huge" number of bugs?

Here's the reality - I've got a handful of incredible developers working -literally- around the clock to add NEW features based on what people want. They read these forums and they see posts like this and they think "Why am I spending this kind of time?" Or they got onto Gamespot and see some 1.2 "user review" or whatever. 

The only reason we're able to do things like 1.1 so quickly is because my dev team voluntarily works amazing amounts of hours because they're so excited about what they're doing and they so much want to make people happy. 

Alot of bugs..well. a huge amount. Which could have been solved already in the release

Shall you do the maths, or shall I?
Alright, I will. Firstly, there appear to be a very limited number of bugs, just some re-occur in computers. It isn't unplayable, my first few games were out of the box.

Secondly, Stardock has (as has been mentioned) a very small staff. I'm not entirely sure, but I'm willing to say less than 30. Sooooooooo, how many people playing this game? multiple countries, huge selling, etc, so, lets say there are about 50,000 people playing.

50,000 divided by 30.
HOW were they meant to find the bugs? they weren't expecting most of them, because you don't expect people to do some things, like try and run it on ancient software (it'll still run though), or the FPS rate wasn't thought of as an issue, who runs things like that? quite a few people it seems. The issue got fixed though.

There weren't enough people available to test the game fully. That's not stardocks fault. They fixed everything they could, and they still are fixing things. What would you rather have, a "meh, we can leave it a few months" attitude? how about "NO! THEY CAN'T HAVE IT! IT'S NOT DONE YET!" because, sure, it'll be better when it gets out. There still will be bugs, mostly because in the end, a computer isn't stable. Most computers can CTD or even blue screen under their own applications, let alone something foreign like a game running.

Thirdly, heres an example for what you mean. I've edited this post twice, for spelling mistakes that I just didn't think were there. Looked over the post before I posted, didn't notice them. Not perfect out of the box. I MISSED A BIT OF CHEESE. I know some basic coding, and can only imagine what it's like to miss a line or so of code and have to scrap a few days work to correct the problem. Stardock do it brilliantly.

And finally, as iffle said, if you really do have a major issue, then play something else! there are thousands of games out there! Choose one where the dev's will take any chance to screw you over for more money if that's what you want. These sort of messages damage morale and sales. Looking at a a game which someone has spent years working on and saying "yeah, its buggy, bad job, you guys should've workd harder" is depressing. Plus it can damage sales, people glance at the forums and read only about crashes and bugs, and they think "wow, it IS buggy. No game for me then". When you people with bad experiences ARE A MINORITY!

... my fingers hurt. Stardock, you should've invented time travel, checked to see this would happen, gone back to see God, and told him to make my fingers less buggy!

WELLLLL... Now that we have the fanboys views (and brads) I have to say that in some regards I agree with the poster. I want many fixes that are coming or have come in the updates but I didn't want tomatos!! The nerf to minor races stole some enjoyment, I think it likely the upcoming starbase nerfs will do so as well. I do not want nerfs, please add them as options only or something. I do like exploit removals just fine because I can't stop using them (no self discipline!) so I consider those bug fixes too. The tweaks to things that are beyond comprehension as to how they made it to a finished product in the first place are fine as well. Such as that economy system, HELLO?!, I've said this before but i'll say it again, do not put in such wildly revolutionary things without asking yourself "Self...? Yes self?... Self I was thinking we should add a convulted system to put a damper on eXpansion...? Well, Self do you think that would add fun to the game? Self we must prevent eXpansion due to the fact that AI's are limited in thier ability to conceptualize and create massive empires giving humans an advantage if we don't find some way to tag them... Ok self I agree with that concept, but does it add fun to the game?! Not really self, people will complain that they don't understand it or that it limits them (Which it is designed to do!)... Ok self then make it more simple like civilizations red shields of corruption... Wait a sec self people hated that.... Ok self then add it like you want and let the complaints fly! That's the ticket self!" Important question "Does it add to the game?" I think the jury has come back with the verdict on that one for sure. It makes me ill personally. Ok cool I made this uber production world but it is draining my coffers until I capture a full 5 economy rescources and have 9 out of 10 worlds devoted to population/ stock exchanges and 1 trillon plus people (I can't really tell how much over 1 trillion because that number is unreadable to me).

Anyways I hope that was as convoluted for you as the economic system was for me! I don't care about the music but please do not nerf things, make them options. The starbase limit per sector should be an option, while the changing of modules concerns me far less and is kinda hard to make an option out of anyways. Make more options for game creation whenever you can rather then just changing or nerfing is my main point. I searched all through the XML files to find a way to return the minor races to my game but couldn't and GC2 Builder doesn't seem capable in planet assignations or scenario creation. I want them back, and I'm quite unhappy this change (Which didn't seem to be widely complained about) happened. Was this to fix tech trading? Because that didn't work.

A better analogy would be the deli is providing you with free refills on your soda and french fries.

Thanks, Can I get those to go? I'll be back tomorrow for more of my free refills too.

Whats that you say? I get free refills for life? Wow, just wow.

Marca - Actually I would argue that the size of the company has no bearing on whether it's acceptable for a game to be buggy or not.

If you sell a product, it should be solid. Period. The user shouldn't care about the company size.

My position is that while the game certainly isn't perfect, it's no more or less "buggy" than any typical modern game.  One visit to a Civ 4 forum or Oblivion forum and you'll see the same kind of thing.  There's just too many configurations out there.

If we eliminated the people who reported "bugs" that were actually feature requests and the people who report "bugs" because they have 2+ year old video drivers from this forum, the "bug reports" would be quite reduced.

Heck, the biggest "bug fix" we put in was the GPU throttling in 1.0X.  If one looks that the 1.0X log, there's very few "bug fixes". The GPU throttling solved all kinds of issues.  People who didn't buy GalCiv II are going to run into those same problems as they buy new games that make use of those new video card features.  The days of being able to go out to your local store and get some mongo video card to toss in your existing PC are over. Now you really have to take cooling seriously since the GPUs are running so hot.  We just happened to be the lucky ones to discover this early. But we won't be the last.

My position is that while the game certainly isn't perfect, it's no more or less "buggy" than any typical modern game. One visit to a Civ 4 forum or Oblivion forum and you'll see the same kind of thing. There's just too many configurations out there.

Totally agree with you. All software has bugs, be it a small word processing application to a huge MMO. They all have some un-intended features/bugs. My favorite thing to say when I was a developer was "It's not a bug it's a feature".

to #1
the "play", "scenario", "script", what-have-you has no tension, no stakes, no >drama<. the jokes fall flat and are poorly written. the characters ("clerk" and "me") are unsympathetic and nonrealistic. the deli setting is banal; the metaphor trite. there was no climax, no interesting progression of events, and the narrative structure was derivative and flat.

the veiled attempt to disavow agency with your intent to be humorous yet "critical" by saying "it's all meant in good fun" is heavy-handed and clumsy.

being a civil war army surgeon would be more fun than reading you.

but hey!

"it's all in good fun", right?

Was this to fix tech trading? Because that didn't work.

No, this was so that you could no longer trade a handful of crappy techs for enormous amounts of money. That, is an exploit. You can't really argue with that when you think about it.

The starbase limit per sector should be an option

Why? the AI has to put up with it. Why should your planets be defended with tiny fighters capable of ending a war with all the bonuses they have, despite only costing you 100 bc? This isn't an exploit, but it's still cheating the AI, especially if he can't do it.

convulted system to put a damper on eXpansion...?

This, I would like to be optional. I've had a planet with +1000% (yes one thousand) manu bonuses before, and it nearly crippled me. EVERY other planet was economy, and I was only barely scraping through financially, and behind on tech. But then again, beforehand the pop. bonuses were worthless thanks to the cap. And the cap can't go, because then people would be in trouble. Plus, the realism camp really wanted this one (200 mil a turn, are we humans or rabbits?)

Honestly, if you enjoy the AI being easy to screw over with starbases and everything else, uninstall the game, redownload, and don't get the patches. Problem solved.

Oh yeah, not all of us here are fanboys. I'm not denying my newfound favourite company, but some people (and here's the tricky bit) just like the game and developers because they're both good! Not so hard now is it?

Well, if you take out the criticism, it's actually a pretty funny parody.

I got a good laugh out of "expansion sandwhich".

Ok and it won't let me edit that last post so let me just add something else real fast.

People that are having bad experiences are not a minority simply because you say so. I think if we counted people having bad experiences they would be in the majority. My bad experiences are in the minority, maybe that is what you meant? I experienced 75% of complained about bugs (well it came close to 76 when I added them quickly). I think anyone who spent a significant amount of time playing probably hit around that number. Those are bad experiences. Most of those are fixed now, some aren't, some are coming up in this next fix, apparently some aren't (there are still some glitches where you get a shipyard message about components being too big etc. outside of the shipyard for instance). In fact a few others come to mind right off but I'll post those somewhere more appropriate. I really enjoy this game about 95% of the time, and I know no game can be perfect. To deny existing or recently fixed glaring issues though is wrong. And adding tomatos to a sandwhich (changing mechanics in such a way that I have to abandon favorite elements of my playing style) while I am eating it is going to make me complain. Alas, stardockians, someone will always complain! I found 10 major gameplay issues in about 20 minutes of gameplay (the update expliot and GNN shipyard issue were two off the top, but for me the shipyard would ask to save outside the shipyard and then crash the game) and I'm glad they were so promptly fixed and they didn't ruin my fun much. HOWEVER, if you want to avoid getting most complaints don't change the game mechanics. For a recent lesson in the nerfing world see how many people walked off star wars galaxies because of repeated and vast mechanics changes. When people enjoy a game the way it is and you change it, they get upset. (Of course this is worse when the charcter they have invested 7 months into is now the weakest link but it also applies to strategy). And in strategy games, especially ones that aren't multiplayer, you can make these changes still and leave them optional, that will never offend anyone. Like I said most changes have been very necessary, but please, no more nerfing without options. I should not have to do a cost benefit analysis on each update.

I probably shouldn't even respond to your post, however, here it goes.
You are nothing but a propagandist, spewing out lies and half-truths.

Frogboy & crew, forget this guy, we all know about what you have done!

but please, no more nerfing without options

bah! This is whining at its finest.

You have to change a sure-fire-win-every-game-strategy? Cry me a river.

WTF_Chuck, sorry but you're just one of those miserable people who make nice forum communities suck for everyone.

You really think 3 out of 4 people who played GalCiv 2 had a bad experience? You're insane.

For a guy who doesn't know how to use paragraphs, WTFChuck sure casts a lot of stones.

Hint: Game mechanics you don't agree with aren't bugs.

Hint #2: Claiming the game had 10 major bugs while only being able to list the single one that FB mentioned doesn't help your case.

For the record: The game has worked flawlessly for me.

#18 I don't use military bases much anyways but I may use one in the same sector with an influence and 4 econ starbases. Anyways 4 military starbases and that 100bc fighter can still kick ass. Normally my military bases are built at some choke point the AI decides to file through no where near my planets. It is the fact that my core worlds will now number 8-10 as I spread out my econ bases where before they would just be 3-4 maybe 5 worlds together, and trade magnification with some crapbox world right near these core worlds that I turn over to a minor race.

There would only be one or two sectors in the whole game that broke that limit anyways for me even with 150 worlds.

Now with minor races, simply lowering the money should have been enough, which was done. They don't stay rich enough for me to bother with later in the game, and the little whores start spreading that tech all over the galaxy if I am not careful. If you release a tech, make sure you want to release it to all at once! I enjoyed the whole minor wars, the occasional minor race dominating a major race (The iconians telling me I would need to talk to walter montgomery if I wanted them to have peace was pretty hilarious), the extra trade in the game, the hilarious way they would snatch up every resource etc. This was fun for me. Now I might meet one race and two others die and maybe one jumps in late in the game. Yawn. I liked the extra element, Now minor races disabled is about the same for me.