bump.

You think a software company actually gives a rats ass what you think? They are concerned with the bottom line pal. Wiseup! It's about sales, nothing more than sales. Companies don't go into business to please the masses, they do it to make money. You actually think Stardock makes a good product? Can you not read these forums? Are you that naive or ignorant to blissfully wish away the latent defects of this game so often posted? How many Sierra games have this much problem? How many EA games? How about Firaxis? Nothing? That's what I thought. Get a clue kid, while your enthusiastic loyalty is inspiring, it means little to the owner's of this company when it comes to cashing their paycheck. lol. Again I am simply amazed... I will give a little props to them though for their last patch which has cured my text issue somewhat. Now instead of constant scrolling through all the text of my game, the scrolling is faster so it's kind of a refresh fast which makes the text a little more legible. Woohoo, thanks for the partial fix to my month old problem.

George

How many EA games?

I lost faith in EA when they sold the Medal of Honor expansion pack. $40 for about three to four hours of gameplay, which then will not uninstall from your computer.

Name one EA/Sierra/Firaxis game where they offered AI upgrades for free. Name one where they offered a bonus content download on the day of the launch. actually like Sierra and FIraxis, but the service Stardock provides is far superior.

I realize Stardock is out to make money. I'm fine with that, if they don't eat and enjoy life, then the games won't get made. Haivng done construction work for many years, I know what it's like to be involved with a project, and yes, money is the driving factor.

But, when a custumer is happy, and when you know you've done a good job, it does matter. Loyalty is the best way to do buisness, since it gurentees a future custumer. Advertisment fades away, catch phrases get old, but a good experiance will keep people coming back. In the end, money isn't worth it. You have to find some satisfaction with your work, otherwise you'll lose it. That satisfaction doesn't come by not caring.

I can't speak for the devs, but I suspect they feel the same way. The great experiance I"ve had (this was the first game I've purchased from them) will keep me a custumer and fan for years.

You think a software company actually gives a rats ass what you think? They are concerned with the bottom line pal. Wiseup! It's about sales, nothing more than sales. Companies don't go into business to please the masses, they do it to make money. You actually think Stardock makes a good product? Can you not read these forums? Are you that naive or ignorant to blissfully wish away the latent defects of this game so often posted? How many Sierra games have this much problem? How many EA games? How about Firaxis? Nothing? That's what I thought. Get a clue kid, while your enthusiastic loyalty is inspiring, it means little to the owner's of this company when it comes to cashing their paycheck. lol. Again I am simply amazed... I will give a little props to them though for their last patch which has cured my text issue somewhat. Now instead of constant scrolling through all the text of my game, the scrolling is faster so it's kind of a refresh fast which makes the text a little more legible. Woohoo, thanks for the partial fix to my month old problem.

EA and Sierra have produced so many turds it's a wonder their headquarters isn't located in the sewers. In fact the best games are always made by those companies who take on board customer feedback.

Stardock POWNS CASE CLOSSED

90% of EA games have no/late patchs, which are 6-12months after the release . ANd mostly its compatibitly/balancing issues that takes no real effort to fix. Until i got gal civ2 and seen what these guy do (ie stardock) and how they care about how thier customers feel and actually import the customers ideas into the game.. holy shit if only other gaming companies did that the world would be a better place....

The standard replys. Thanks boys, it's only proving my point.
Truth be told... I have been gaming since MUDs first hit the scene. Many of you are too young to even know what a MUD is which is kind of scary. I estimate over the past 15 years I have literally played thousands of games in every format and style imaginable. I have alpha'd beta'd dozens, I consider myself an addict when it comes to gaming. In my first two years of FFXI, I spent a total of 352 days online while also playing EVE, SWG and Evercrack. (Oh and my all time favorite game Earth and Beyond)(Sold my account a month before they announced cancellation)
Thankfully my job is a dream job and it allows me ample time to play (I work about 4 hours a day). I am currently finished beta'ing Red Bedlams Roma Victa, I'm still undecided about it's future but they are amazing programmers. The first streaming virtual world with no zone or map changes. It's really quite amazing. My point with RV is that they absolutely refuse to put the game out until it's perfect, I mean almost obsessively prefect.
So to put it into perspective.... I have never played a game with this many bugs in my life. I'm just saying that 396 days of bug posts and 37 pages speaks volumes about a company's ability to produce a good product before it hits the shelves.
I admire all of your loyalty, but geez, step back a minute and ask yourself if they really care. Would they invite you to their house for cocktails? I doubt it, of course they will be pleasant to you on the phone or at a convention, but are they your buddy when they leave? Of course not. Have I established a cordial relationship with one of Stardock's employees trying to fix my game? He is very knowledgeable and polite. Is he my buddy? No. He is getting paid wether my game works correctly or not.

Or, to put it another way:

Please don't feed the trolls.

Yarlen,
Thank you for sounding off as the voice of Stardock, hopefully you will watch this thread and read this post.

Here is my question to you. How would you resolve this matter.

I buy your game at Best Buy. I load it, I update it. It does not work. I submit my problem. You submit I upgrade all drivers. I update all drivers as told. I wait, I wait some more. You provide other alternatives. I do as I am told. Game is still not functioning to capacity. I wait. More ideas. I do as i'm told. Nothing works. I wait for three weeks now and the game still does not work. I reload windows to correct a minor env. variable error. I reload game. Game doesn't work. I try every imagineable setting to try and get the game to work. it doesn't. I read multiple posts about my exact error. The masses say reboot. Three weeks and still nothing.
Now what would you do as Stardock to "care" about me as a customer?

Now what would you do as Stardock to "care" about me as a customer?

What do you want them to do?

Psio:

I see a slight inconsistency in your statement that Stardock doesn't care (whatever "care" is officially defined as - I'm still not clear on that one), and the fac tthat you have received multiple responses to help you with your problem.

I understand you aren't the only person that has problems loading games on your PC, and this certainly isn't the only PC game out there that has had issues when people tried to install it. However, there are two pieces to the equation - their game, and your computer.

Now, I'm relatively old (old enough to have started on an Apple IIc, and also old enough to be way out of my leagues with the way computer tech has gone in the past decade or so), plus, I have a 2001 computer with drivers that haven't been updated since sometime in 2002. (The devs are probably cringing mightily right now.) Yet, I've had barely any problems - particularly since the first patch.

Now, maybe their are some operating problems with GCII - I don't know, I'm just not that tech savvy to know all of the fine points anymore. But, there are also way too many people like me who have effectively no problems on a beat up system, and others who have had problems that have since been resolved - either with Stardock's assistance or through their own research.

Therefor, I conclude that GCII - while it may have some issues remaining - is not inherently unstable or uncooperative with the average PC in consumer's hands. Which leads me to wonder how you can slam a company that has responded to you multiple times in an attempt to help and has put out - either through initiial release or via subsequent patches - a game that appears to be stable on the vast majority of systems? Especially when it appears, based on the apparent fact that most people seem to be able to run GCII just fine, that the issue may just well be that it is your system that may be the problem.

I just don't get it. I mean, I'm sorry the program doesn't seem to work on your computer - I really am. But how does that become Stardock's problem when it seems that they have put out a reasonably stable program, and have attempted to help you through your issues multiple times?

Oh well. The simple fact is that you probably just aren't going to be happy and there's not much I or anyone else is going to be able to do about it. Which, again, I am actually sorry about - I think GCII is a really good game, and getting better as more updates and patches come out.

Best of luck resolving your issues, but until you can prove that Stardock was grossly negligent in releasing a program that didn't work (for a significant % of customers) AND was unresponsive in dealing with those issues (How many patches and updates have we had since release?), you don't have much of a case for "Stardock doesn't care."

Psio says:

The standard replys. Thanks boys, it's only proving my point.

Mine wasn't the standard reply. I explained to you about patches and why there aren't many of them. The short answer is that if you make patches, you take away from your bottom line. it doesn't contribute to sales, so it's an expense.

Now I will tell you another truth:
As a programmer, I would love to release something that was absoultely bug-free and had every option that I imagined on it. However, the reality is that if I were to wait until that moment, the software would never be released. There's always someting you wish you could fix, or something you just didn't have time to include. Bugs are a fact of life. Look at Windows XP itself. There are a zillion bugs and stuff that are *still* unresolved. Microsoft Office, too. For example, why is it that if I hide the stupid paper clip while he is saying something, he will disappear but his word balloon doesn't? In the real world, there are deadlines to meet. You do the best you can, and then you send it out the door.

Psio continues:

admire all of your loyalty, but geez, step back a minute and ask yourself if they really care. Would they invite you to their house for cocktails? I doubt it, of course they will be pleasant to you on the phone or at a convention, but are they your buddy when they leave? Of course not. Have I established a cordial relationship with one of Stardock's employees trying to fix my game? He is very knowledgeable and polite. Is he my buddy? No. He is getting paid wether my game works correctly or not.

Actually, if I'm not mistaken, they DID have a party for one of the releases, and there were several people from the boards there. And when you talk to Brad, you're not talking to cutsomer support. He's not just an employee - he's the Man. You don't see the owner of EA chatitng in the forums.

Mooncusser says:

I understand you aren't the only person that has problems loading games on your PC, and this certainly isn't the only PC game out there that has had issues when people tried to install it. However, there are two pieces to the equation - their game, and your computer.

I cannot recall what game it was, but the install wiped your hard drive. That would be an issue to me.

Mooncusser continues:

Best of luck resolving your issues, but until you can prove that Stardock was grossly negligent in releasing a program that didn't work (for a significant % of customers) AND was unresponsive in dealing with those issues (How many patches and updates have we had since release?), you don't have much of a case for "Stardock doesn't care."

Agreed.

Bill

Understood - but I still say that you can't separate the two issues of their program and your computer.

If the problem truly is in the program, then how does the program work on my computer? I'm not nearly savvy enough to fix anything much beyond a power problem. ("Is the machine plugged in? - D'oh....")

More likely it is something in the program that is reacting to something installed or some setting on your computer. How in the world is Stardock going to figure out your system and its interaction with their program unless they can have your computer in front of them? Even then, is it solely their responsibility to fix the issue if it appears to be a one-off or rare case?

I'm afraid that this is what product returns are designed for. If it simply is too much of a problem, then get your money back. I'm not saying this to be facetious, but just realistic. If it is going to cost all parties involved too much in time, energy and $ to fix whatever issue, then maybe this just has to be chalked up to one of those statistical outliers that just isn't worth pursueing for all parties.

That way, you do, oddly enough, get to hurt the devs in the pocketbook...

Still, coming back to the initial point of your original post - it's really hard to find for your case that Stardock doesn't care.

(That said - the OP to this thread was way to sickly sweet in his praise for my taste, although I do agree that I've probably seen more effort out of Stardock than I've ever seen out of a mass-market gaming company. Even if I do recognize that there were a few, shall I say, "unfinished" aspects about the game on launch, to their credit, Stardock has come back faster with more patches, upgrades and responses than I have ever seen out of a mass-market gaming company.)

Give it up Psio, you're beat. No - one agrees with you.

But i admit, you did get a response (undeserved for you, and not really necessary for the rest of us) from stardock ... So go play some turns or something

Right i'm off to check out 1.1

later init

Anyone who claims this game is "the buggiest ever" or isn't properly supported either knows nothing about PC gaming or is trolling. I'm guessing it's the latter.

LoL @ Pools of Radiance. [Incredible Hulk Voice]Grrr...D: drive makes Pools of Radiance *ANGRY*...Pools of Radiance *SMASH*...[/Incredible Hulk Voice]