OT: Do Not Buy Alert

[Instar]

oh yeah Audigy 1 card in my machine with 512megs ram running WinXP
Your opinion of it being buggy is only for you Atrocities, believe me, I think SC4 kicks major *** and is under-rated. But based on your experiences, you cant say anything but bad stuff.
When I say rock solid, I mean NEVER crashes, and I have played enough to get about 250000 people in about 7 cities

[Atrocities]

I only said the game was unstable and that there have been many complaints by AMD owners. A few intel owners have had problems to. I envy you that you can play the game. I would love to be able to play the game as SC is one of the games in my top five games of all time. I still play SC3k, and was very excited about SC4. I went out and bought it the day it came out. At first I thought the problems were caused by my PC, all drivers up to date, and using a GeForce 4 Ti420 (64megs DDR) when I read a few game reviews. Gamespot.com described it best. And they pointed out that the game has stability problems. I want to play the game, but I also wanted to spare people the cost of buying it now and getting frustrated at it because it won't run properly. Once Maxis comes out with a patch that fixes the memory leaks and other issues, and the game runs, then I will recommend it to god himself.

Don't get me wrong Instar, I think the game looks great, and even though it is missing some features, such as the ability to turn off random events, I hate having to put out a fire every few months, the game has a lot to offer.

The graphics look fantastic, and the controls work much better than in SC3k.

The detail is awsome, and the sound is without equal. The game is a world apart better in many way to SC2k and 3k. (Both of those game kicked *** as well.)

When I complain about performance issues, its not to be mean or evil, its to that lagging issues are a common problem for many people. My specs are above the high end recommendations, but still I get lag and lock ups. There is nothing more frustrating then to wait twenty minutes for a zoom out to cycle. Or to move the mouse and several seconds later the map moves. Very frustrating to say the least.

I also must point out that the game has few starter regions, and the lack of starting difficulty level is missed. The game is hard, but playable.

The one thing that is unforgiveable is EA's technical support. Without a doubt, the worst I have ever experienced and that included Serria. At least I could email Serria.

[ January 24, 2003, 12:17: Message edited by: Atrocities ]

[Growltigger]

My personal bugbear, games that are released way too early (normally for the Xmas rush) and havnt got all the bugs worked out of them..

Patches? simply a modified form of product recall for the computer game industry

Bastards the lot of them (except Malfador and Shrapnel of course)

[Jmenschenfresser]

My worst experience was Fallout 2. I could forgive bugs in such a complex game, but I can't forgive the sheer amount of terminal bugs. I played half way through the game and ended up with a save game that had a bug which wouldn't let me go any farther.

In a rage I pulled it from my computer and left it. I went back to it few years later and got the final patch for it. Still some minor bugs, but a much more enjoyable experience.

One of the reasons I rarely buy games when they first hit the shelves. A) Price, B) Bugs, and C) Later Versions usually come with more extras, i.e. Gold Versions.

[Instar]

well, growltigger, MM has made quite a few patches for SEIV.
The thing is, MM actually shipped a complete product instead of some crapware. I usually do not mind downloading a few patches, but only if the game is good in the first place.
Being a programmer (in training) myself, I cannot help but see both sides of the equation though. It is very hard to write 100% bug free (or 100% user friendly) but at the same time you cannot take forever to release software. Most of the time I bet it is the publisher breathing down the necks of the development team to rush a product out the door. EA, to their credit, does have a few good products, but Ive heard a lot of negative too. Part of me wishes that Maxis was never bought out by EA, but at the same time it gives Maxis more marketing capability and resources.

I was at first put off by the inability to turn disasters off. However, you can rest easy knowing that only the mayor can trigger the major disasters. I dont mind the fires too much, but I would rather have it handled automatically. Riots on the other hand only happen if you are a bad mayor.

[Baron Munchausen]

Yep, yep... sounds like the rule still holds. The first release of anything is a public beta. Don't buy until it has been patched. I just got Civ 3 Last fall when the 1.29f patch came out. It's still got balance problems (as many have complained, the combat system is much too simple and needs to be better designed) but it's playable. Unlike the original release. I'm considering whether to get PTW with some further changes. I waited for SC 3K Unlimited before upgrading from SC 2k (which I bought on a 'Special Edition' CD after it had been out for years). Now I will plan to get SC 4 sometime next Fall or maybe next Spring.

And actually, I disagree on SE IV. It was also incomplete when originally released. It was a patch to Gold that finally fixed several interface problems -- like 'escape' and 'enter' working like button clicks, the help said they worked but they did not -- and the ridiculously simple feature of filtering ships without cargo out of the cargo transfer window or ships without unit launch/recover out of the unit launch/recover window. Granted, SE IV didn't have the kind of nasty glaring crash bugs that SC 4 seems to have, but SE IV was also a far less demanding program. No real time, no 3D graphics, etc.

Since Moo 3 finally has a release date we can now prepare to hear about this public beta...

[ January 25, 2003, 00:25: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Instar]

well, I am a serious hardcore SimCity fanatic, so I had to buy it first day. if you can wait, well, that is cool (I usually don't buy games the first day, but for me SC4 is different)

When I say SimCity fanatic, I mean I have played every Version of SimCity (and the streets and copter games too)

Honestly, I feel that SC4 is one of the more complete games that I have played (but I do not experience any crashes at all, my opinion would certainly be different, if say, I was in Atrocities shoes)