posted 07-05-99 12:04 AM ET        

I was going to look over the ORIGINAL thread that was cited as why to get rid of Trippin Daily, and lo and behold its gone. Simply gone.

Why is that ONE thread messing? Because someone is worried that we will look it over and find more fuel for our outrage about the Banned Trips? Or to protect Wank, who is suspected be by many to be a Firaxian, or a relative of a Firaxian? Or is it simply that strange mysterious swallowing of threads that occasionally happens?

-Darkstar

posted 07-05-99 04:18 AM ET            

You really think that someone purposely deleted that thread, but left the Blow Job pictures in the other forums? That would be silly. Killing a little cussing over leaving a LOT of gay bashing, cussing, and PORN.

Or would it?

Is there any other mysteriously lost threads? They usually go in bunches when that happens...

posted 07-05-99 04:27 AM ET            

You remember my "The customer is NOT always right..." thread? You know, the one we went back and forth on at length and it finally fizzled out because of food analogies and December Man talking about Santiago. That one is gone. Nell's "Are there any other girlies out there?" has also vanished. I'm sure that there are more.

posted 07-05-99 04:31 AM ET            

I think it's a reasonable response to take in light of the demands being aired at the time.

posted 07-05-99 04:45 AM ET            

You traitorous scum! How dare you mention a game other than SMAC and demonstrate the temerity to suggest that you might even play it?

posted 07-05-99 04:46 AM ET            

I only noticed as I wanted to re-examine the bloody thing about a few specific issues... I was hunting for confirmation of a few salient points. (More fuel for the flames.)

Some of those missing threads from old are due to forum crashes and whatnot. Such as the "customer is not always right"... although IIRC Jeff had stated that they really didn't give a flying fig what WE on the boards said or wanted... just the new potential customer base (need/want their money). FirXn reason being they don't care about us was that we "are just silly whiners" (and had our money). See, with threads MISSING, I can't CONFIRM certain things like that. Grrr... I dislike that.

posted 07-05-99 04:58 AM ET            

I don't recall JKM ever responding in that thread. I think that you are thinking about his response to Yin about bug lists or something else, entirely.

It's getting late and we're agreeing too much. I think I'm signing out with this post. In the AM, buddy.

posted 07-05-99 02:39 PM ET            

"Firaxis will never be able to satisfy the internet gaming community." - as best I recall, that's an exact quote.

OW - game companies, like all others, are not fan friendly - they are dollar friendly. Sometimes that works out to be same thing.

I don't see it as a tragedy if we walk off this site and go to ACOL - if some of us don't, email the others an invitation to come on over. If we want to add additional fora, Asian Flu will do it, and if we want no moderators, or peer selected and respected moderators, I'm sure Asian Flu will do that too. The more of use that leave, the more will follow because the most knowledgeable and interesting posters will be gone from here.

When I first signed up at ACOL - it was barely a hundred users, and is now well over two hundred. There's no reason support and strategies and tactics, discussions can't be done over there, as well.

posted 07-05-99 07:20 PM ET            

Not ALL suffer from it, but its amazing how fast someone can turn.

posted 07-05-99 09:09 PM ET         

There are many of who won't follow you to ACOL if the same slack standards regarding obscenity and invective are let loose there as was prevalent here for so many months.

Will you miss us - probably not. You never knew us.

Will we miss you - just a little. But your recent contributions have had nothing to do with the game, or its tactics, and other supremos will arise, to share their wisdom and tactics with new players, but in a more civilized and enjoyable fashion.

As you et al replaced the old masters of CEO Bernard, Imran, Deep Blue, etc so new talent will rise.

So the world turns.

posted 07-07-99 02:23 PM ET            

Wank

posted 07-07-99 02:30 PM ET            

I am just a paranoid git. I know that if I worked on SMAC, I'd probably trawl this forums under a non-official ID. And I have to presume that the SMAC crew is as smart as me, after all. Who they are or might be is up to debate.

But the more we here from you, the less likely we would suspect you of being anything other than the lucky guy at the unlucky spot.

posted 07-08-99 06:42 AM ET            

So reputation is a difficult thing, and if firaxis rests on it's laurels and ignores it's fan base, that base will quickly start to crumble. So far, it's not doing such a bad job. On the other hand, the cracks are there - trip's banning for instance.

And I don't know about the disapearing thread thing - there's only thread that's ever been locked on the forums, as you know, so if firaxis is simply DELETING offending threads, it shows a disturbing change in tactics.

I'd like to see JKM respond to these questions:
1) Explain the exact reasons trip was banned, and why, for instance, he wasn't warned, as well as explaining the difference between trip's behaviour and the average poster's in discussing some of the often highly offensive subject matter involved.

2) Deny that the offending thread was actively deleted, or if so, explain why, and deny that trip was singled out for making anti-firaxis comments, like Yin was earlier in the year.

Old Warrior - I found TA:Kingdoms to be less than brilliant. In fact, between the LOOOONG loading times (and at minimum system specs I am not joking in the least - usually two to three minutes) and the disappointing quality of the sound and unit design, my copy was quickly selved. It moves slowly, the factions are unbalanced, and there aren't enough units in the game... sounds oddly like SMAC, doesn't it .

MtG: As for satisfying the internet gaming community, that quote sounds a bit odd. I'd like to see the context first.

posted 07-08-99 12:48 PM ET            

It was Jeff's exact words that doomed the thread. That Patch 4 might not even happen (They might go direct to SMACX, and that would end any updates to the code), that SMACX might not happen, or not for a long time, if they got too low on talent and resources due to other deals, and that the customer is not right, nor does Firaxis care what the customer has to say, as long as they have the money. Mind you, that's why the thread was killed. Out of the overall message and thread context that they DON'T care about every single user because there are just people that won't be happy with SMAC no matter WHAT is done for them. Whether they thought it should be Civ in space with just the slightest Art change, whether they thought it should be this radical thing with spinning spheres and something more like Moo or Acsendancy... there are bound to be people that just won't be happy. And its those customers that they will ignore, although they are happy to have their money. Same as they won't ever listen to the Internet community as it seems half of the noise they see is things like "SMAC should fix me breakfast in the mornings after I've played it the whole night through. Put that into the next patch! Or I'll whine and tell all my friends that SMAC sux!"

posted 07-09-99 02:05 AM ET            

1) JKM's observations about bug finding seem a little pessimistic. If I can sit down a computer and have a list of 4 or 5 errors or flaws in the game by the end of the first day, that tends to indicate the FINAL testing frankly sucked (though all power to the public testers for making SMAC what it was - better graphics and diplomatic victory for starters). Secondly, he seems to regard testing as a pure hit and miss thing - not true. Testers should have direct instructions to investigate different parts of the game each time they play: "Play builder. Play conqueror. Test the end game throughly. Make a pure, flat, Starcraft type map and test the faction balance on a level playing field. Just try to f*ck the time up as much as possible - find any in game cheats you possibly can and use the cheesiest tactics you can think of."

I don't really need to mention that it didn't seem like that was done. Instead the testers seemed to find their favourite SMAC strategy, and played to that permanently - the conqueror rush, finishing around tachyon and shard level. Hence no-one checked the missile ranges or anything. Hell, the PBEM option, widely dissed by Firaxis staff ("yeah, it would be fun if you had a couple of years at multiple turns per day...") is virtually the only thing holding the internet SMAC community together right now.

So, in short, the testing proceedures seemed substandard, especially for a complex product like SMAC. And guess who's in charge of testing...

2) Ignoring the internet community. Well, they accepted Yin's bug list. Brian virtually commissioned Yin to make a CivIII list, which seems to have been a raging success (it needed to be - after CtP, and to a lesser extend SMAC, I suspect they'll need all the prestige of Sid and Brian combined to move the damn thing). So, I can't see this actually happening, regardless of what JKM says. And people are complaining about bugs, and I'm sure that firaxis can tell the difference between a fan with a problem and a fan with an 'issue'.

And Firaxis hired a web master, didn't they? No, like any other company, firaxis cares deeply about what the internet community says and does. Like Blizzard, firaxis is dependant on making a very small number of AAA (sorry, I mean very high quality) games that sell very very well. SMAC is their only source of cashflow, and they need it to keep on earning, since CivIII, if done properly, could well take another two years before final release.

3) Money. Like it or not, the patch ethos is here, and probably here to stay. This is a double edged sword - a game is never really finished nowdays, and companies MUST continue to pour money into it in the form of manhours and public relations (you can't fix what you don't know...) This ties into point 2 - the game has to keep on selling. People buying the game one year down the track are going to assume that there won't be any problems with it.

posted 07-09-99 04:46 AM ET            

Here is the short version. I am sure that others will be only too happy to elaborate, but I speak no evil.

1) Koshko starts thread about people who spend an awful lot of time trolling on a forum, provided by a company which they disrespect and dedicated to game that they bear ill will to.

2) Trippin lays into Koshko with all 8 barrels of his flamer spouting barely concealed profanity and over the top invective. In other words, another trippin migraine post.

3) Wank comes to Koshko's defense in the thread in a similar fashion, only escalating the level of profanity.

4) Trippin turns on Wank with unconcealed profanity and abusive language.

5) JKM, citing a complaint on the language, emails Trippin notifying him that he is banned from the forums and holds out the possibility of an appeal.

6) Trippin displays a continued lack of tact in his initial response to JKM, softening his tone in a later response.

7) The rest, as they say is history. Replete with myriad conspiracy theories, prophecies, misinformation, self-righteousness, accusations, hurt feelings, martyrdom, rebellion, and exodus. Sort of like the Bible, only a little skewed.