Tridus

[quote who="Nick-Danger" reply="552" id="2660474"] The salient comparison from my line of questioning is how much Firaxis would make if they offered a DD civ5 themselves -- that's the apples-to-apples comparison.[/quote] Your actual question was if they'd make more money by doing all the stuff Steamworks gives them for themselves. Since Steamwork costs $0, I've pretty well established the answer there is no. This isn't much different. How much would it cost Firaxis to set

And from the Steamworks page, first paragraph: "Steamworks is entirely free." Also from the brochure: [quote]Cost to partners and users $0 paid by partners for bandwidth. $0 paid by partners for updating and patching. $0 paid by partners for cloud storage. $0 paid by partners for Steamworks features. $0 paid by partners for retail activation and authentication. $0 paid by partners for technical support. $0 charged to users for a

[quote who="Nick-Danger" reply="545" id="2659994"] Didn't Brad mention steam getting 30%? That's not enough to do the 'good' parts that steam offers (and considering firaxis has to put effort into integrating steamworks, that ups the cost beyond 30%)? [/quote] That's the Steam store cut. That's the amount Valve would get if you bought Elemental on Steam (in fact he mentioned that in a "put Elemental for sale on Steam" thread IIRC). Obviously Elemental doesn't use Steamworks

[quote who="KillzEmAllGod" reply="3" id="2659825"]won't be any difference between the 32 bit and 64 bit besides the 64 getting more much needed ram, only get a 64 bit computer if you want to run elemental on insanely large maps that could take ages to finish. theres nothing to fear unless you plan to get that 64 bit computer before elemental comes out since they said that they won't have 64 bit one on release but a 64 bit computer can still run 32 bit applications[/quote]

[quote who="Nick-Danger" reply="542" id="2659946"] There were fun, bug free games before steam, so it's not a prerequisite. Do you think a steam-Civ5 game will be funner/bug freer than a non-steam civ5 game (factoring in the $ that goes to Valve being instead spent on development/etc.)?[/quote] Working on the assumption that they have the same manpower, budget, and time in both scenarios? Yes. There is no replacement for Steamworks that you can simply drop in, they'd have t

The early game is pretty slow right now, because it takes time until you can do the research to build (and pay for) troops of any real size or strength. And that's still pretty basic stuff. When you throw in 3 more tech trees to work through, it's going to be a long game. I'm hoping for an advanced start option, myself. That was the single greatest option in Civ 4.

[quote who="KillzEmAllGod" reply="24" id="2659745"] but it might be also worth developing it further for people with duel monitors, then it would be almost no need to call the feature hot seat you would need to set it up so the game can use two different mouses maybe even keyboards, maybe even use two different key boards and mouses on the one sreen removes to need to swap make sure it knows whos keyboard is the right person.[/quote] That would require so many changes t

[quote who="TyLarson" reply="537" id="2659851"]http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=365614&page=4 As you can see many heavy steam users are complaining about their games having crashes and problems related to steam. A friend of mine can't get her mic to work on TF2 and tech support has no idea what the problem is even though the mic works fine on non-steam products. She complains about Steam really too much as I don't care that much:) &nbs

[quote who="Nick-Danger" reply="520" id="2659548"] I agree. But look at who's interest is being best served here -- Take2 and 2k's primarily, and Firaxis' somewhat (I say somewhat because they made decent $ doing it the 'old fashioned way' before steam). Where do the player's best interests fit in? Some players will benefit, some won't care, some will be hurt -- but what drives this decision is what's best for 2k/etc. 2k is hoping/expecting tha

[quote who="KillzEmAllGod" reply="534" id="2659833"] at least elemental is only $50 civ 5 is like $80[/quote] Is that some international pricing thing? Elemental - $49.95 USD Civilization 5 - $49.99 USD

Well, this is certainly going to turn things upside down!

[quote who="magnuskn" reply="20" id="2659315"] I see the point there, but with this philosophy, we'll never get hotseat, since there'll always be something more important. For that matter, following this line of thought, all the other MP could also be abolished, since Frogboy likes single player more. I understand that online play and LAN is more important, but hotseat has its adherents, too.[/quote] Over time, opportunity cost goes down. Right now that someone impleme

[quote who="bonscott" reply="507" id="2658828"] (Pls note my post isn't directed at you personally, just to this very good post).[/quote] It's cool. :) [quote]Steam as a digital store is great. Similar to Impulse or Gamersgate it gets a lot of love from people who want to buy their game digitally. The problem though which many don't see is that Steam doesn't end there and controls your games. You can give me posts all day long about "offline mode" all

[quote who="magnuskn" reply="6" id="2658990"] Why do I get the feeling Frogboy is prejudiced against Hotseat? It's not as if the mode would be too hard to implement, if there is a functioning multiplayer infrastructure, right?[/quote] Months ago, this came up as well. IIRC it went like this for multiplayer options: Internet: Definitely LAN: "Almost certainly" Hotseat: "Probably" PBEM: "Not sure" I have a hard time imag

[quote who="Atalvyr" reply="1" id="2658918"]I'd say hotseat is quite essential for me as well. I'm going to be playing the game alot over the 'net and by myself, but if hotseat was added, I would be able to play with my GF. We currently play hotseat Medieval 2: Total War, and its great fun as well as a good way to get my non-game girlfriend interested in playing games with me. If we have to play the game from two different computers, it loses some of its social aspect, even if we are in the s

[quote who="WhiteElk" reply="505" id="2658444"][quote who="Tridus" reply="502" id="2657992"] That's from the 2k site for Cult of Rapture. I lose faith in 2k due to the way they are handling the Civ5 fans;but I do know that the uproar at CivFanatics has been noticed by steam, 2k, and Firaxis. We will have to wait and see if anything useful comes of it. [/quote] Tweaking activation limits in GFWL and *removing* Steamworks are two entirely different things. O

[quote who="Nesrie" reply="500" id="2657795"] And yet games that have a 1% population of complainers can still fail. Do you really want me to list the long lines of games that fell off the wagon? I am NOT saying I think Civ V is going this direction, because I don't think it is. I do know that even if the bulk of the buying population doesn't complain, they'll still walk away.[/quote] And most game "protests" amount to nothing. The Left4Dead 2 group is my favorite one, people say

[quote who="WhiteElk" reply="498" id="2657720"] Yes the fan site population is minimal compared to how many actually play the game. Already there is vocal backlash from that minority (polling at CFC consistently shows that 40-60% are unhappy about steam). Now consider what it means that the majority of Civers do not participate in the forums... How much of that majority will find any value in steams networking potential if they don't already use the

No, I know what the problem is. And I'm saying that there won't be a large backlash when it comes out, because that isn't really a problem for a lot of people.

So will they really not announce the game if it doesn't get enough likes? Seems pretty risky.

[quote who="larrypeters" reply="15" id="2654410"]Such passion on this thread. I don't care how stacks are limited, be it by hard coding because only so many units can fit on a chunk of land or threat of destruction by magic. I just don't want to the see the game dissolve into whoever has the biggest stack wins. Later, LAR[/quote] So you want the side effects instead? That being whoever min-maxes their stack best wins? AoW 2 was notorious for t

[quote who="celicakydd" reply="75" id="2655777"] I don't think the stack of doom itself is the best either, but if I were to design the game for me personally based on what it is I enjoy, I would still have units stacked and combat would be tactical. I prefer setting up armies of units, then playing out the battles in a separate tactical battle. To me this is more realistic, as the scope of map size in a game like civilization would mean that my archers are shooting unrealist

[quote who="Aractain" reply="484" id="2656536"]Theres not really any alternative option though. There isn't a splinter cell "vote no to DRM" version (well, piracy??). Its all or nothing. Have fun or don't have fun. There isn't any have fun without Ubisoft button. Theres only so many times I can replay the old before I get bored and I find games as a the pretty much sole form of entertainment I enjoy. Anyway does anyone think that even if everyone who posted on forums abo

[quote who="bonscott" reply="485" id="2656654"]No, they won't notice. Mainly because 99.9% of people who will buy the game will have no idea or won't care because they don't know any better. Most don't hang out on forums like this and actually know what's going on. Most won't know that Steam is required. What will be interesting is to see if there is any backlash on the Steamworks requiremnet *after* launch. Because Civ is very much a single player franchise

[quote who="John_Hughes" reply="52" id="2656498"]Got one game in. 300 turns till "Error" but I too found the Teching rate change kinda weird. Also the Level up change to only "1 point" was a total whoa! moment Not sure why that was needed to be changed but not having any decision when you level, OK, 1 decision per level, does not work for me at all. [/quote] Because people on the forums didn't like that you got 10 points but everything went up in 0.1 increments.