Firaxis is "Calling all Spies!"

[Robert Plomp]

A message was delivered, mysterious and unclear:

"A coded message has been posted on our site. Is it a contest with fabulous prizes? Decode the message and find out!

http://www.firaxis.com/community/bts_crypto.php"

[Krill]

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[Krill]

****ing owned in 2 minutes.

[Krill]

And now to see what it says.

[Krill]

First line:

Congratulations on decyphering this message! What is this mysterious puzzle? It's a contest.

I'm getting bored, anyone else want to do it for me? Or tell me the autometd way to do it?

[slnz]

http://www.secretcodebreaker.com/caesar.html for the lazy ones I actually coded a program myself

[Krill]

Firaxis are losing thier touch. Thanks for that.

[Robert Plomp]

I actually decoded it without knowing about the key on before, I finished it about 5 minutes ago.

[slnz]

The picture of JC was a bit too much of a giveaway. Should have just hinted in the direction of Rome or something. Though that cipher is so elementary that it's the first thing anyone thinks of anyway.

[Krill]

The point is Firaxis **** about alot nowadays. Perhaps I'm just pissed that it's almost 4 years since civ 4 got released and we haven't heard hide nor hair of civ 5 yet, but I'd have expected something substantial by now, not pieces of crap like this (woo, we can win copies of of civ 4 complete, autographed!)

It's just pathetic. It really is.

[slnz]

Erm... How exactly is it pathetic? Or is everything pathetic except announcing Civ5? Not like they have some obscure "obligation to the fanbase" about anything. Stuff like this is an acknowledgement and a nod to the fanbase more than anything IMO.

[Krill]

IIRC, civ 1 > 2 took 5 years, same to civ 3, then 4 years to civ 4. That's from conception to shelf. Most games nowadays are coming out faster and faster to take advantage of shorter attention spans of gamers (and selling more games helps the bottom line, something 2K really need to do, because they've made a lose every quarter save when GTA4 got released, since start of 2006, IIRC).

It's pathetic business strategy. How many people would pay good money to have civ 5 now? I'd say that's alot. And 2K need the money. So where the hell is it?

[Alex]

And yet no one posted the entire thing...

Here's the full text:

CONGRATULATIONS ON DECODING THIS MESSAGE! WHAT IS THIS MYSTERIOUS PUZZLE? IT'S A CONTEST!

PLEASE SEND AN EMAIL TO SPY AT FIRAXIS DOT COM WITH THE SUBJECT "DECODER PUZZLE" FOR A CHANCE TO WIN YOUR CHOICE OF AN AUTOGRAPHED COPY OF CIVILIZATION IV: COMPLETE, CIVILIZATION REVOLUTION (XBOX 360, PS3 OR DS VERSION), OR A CIVILIZATION REVOLUTION IPOD TOUCH COVER.

STAY CIVILIZED!

THIS SHIFT CIPHER IS ALSO KNOWN AS THE CAESAR CIPHER, SINCE CAESAR USED THIS METHOD TO COMMUNICATE WITH HIS GENERALS.

No news of Civ5, but at least we know they are still there...

[Theben]

Wow, that's a total non-issue...

[AAHZ]

read thrade expecting Civ 5...

didn't leave disappointed because its Firaxis we're talking about here.

[Robert Plomp]

There are some spoiled kids in this thread.

[wodan11]

The best way to ruin this franchise would be to rush out new major versions every couple of years. There's absolutely nothing wrong with 5 years between each. Quite the opposite.

And thanks, Firaxis, for doing something for the online community. Pay no attention to the Ferengi in the gorilla suit over in the corner.

[Krill]

The best way to ruin this franchise would be to rush out new major versions every couple of years. There's absolutely nothing wrong with 5 years between each. Quite the opposite

Was civ 3 better than civ 4?

[Alex]

I admit that I find it weird that we have no news of Civ 5 so far. It's been, what, 5 years since Civ 4 was released?

A simple "we're working on Civ 5" kind of announcement would at least give us some hope.

[Blaupanzer]

Alex, that specific message sends the Civ fan community into a complete frenzy. They'll want to know who specifically is working on it, when it will be available, concepts related to game play refined or changed, etc. Key here is that this announcement better be true if announced for Firaxis to maintain credibility. At the moment, it appears to me that the Firaxis people are working on other things.

In every way that an old-timer can remember, Firaxis, in introducing the BTS update, put almost as many updates and changes into Civ IV vanilla as the old team put into Civ II during the transition from Civ I. So maybe we should count the years to next game from BTS, not the original Civ IV vanilla.

[Sarco]

I still find CivIV fun and it doesn't feel old to me at least. I'll buy civV, but I rather wait for a good game and play another good game in the meanwhile.

I don't want another CtP.

[rah]

Or CIV III

[Alex]

Alex, that specific message sends the Civ fan community into a complete frenzy.

That's the idea.

Of course, it has to be true. Otherwise, they would just be hurting their credibility, as you said. If they're not working on Civ 5 - and this could be the truth - then it makes no sense to announce it.

They could do like Bethesda Softworks does: they make an early announcement that they are working on a game and then shut up and let the speculation run rampant. What better way to create high expectation for a game?

But then Firaxis works a bit different than Beth does; Firaxis has much stronger links to the community and the "announcement-followed-by-months-of-silence" tactic would probably not work.

[Krill]

No, Firaxis prefers to sit in silence and then release software at the drop of the hat. Patches, for instance.

Still waiting on an answer to the above, or was civ 3 really better than CIV?

[rah]

No, civ III sucked and wasn't even playable till the final patch. By then most people had already given up on it, and never realized that they fixed it. Like me. For me, it's still only a rumor that they ever fixed it.

[Krill]

Well, according to Wodan and Sarco, good games need longer to be developed. Civ 3 took 5 years from the delivery of civ 2 to be delivered, and CIV only took 4 years from the delivery of civ 3, and that isn't taking into account XPs. Civ 3 got 2 XPs (and Pirates) designed in the time until CIV got delivered, CIV has only had Civ:Rev, the shitfest that was Col and 2 XPS (if you can call Warlords an expansion...it had less than 6 months from conception until code lockdown was finished). And if CIV was such a good game...(it's been a pretty high selling game), and was designed with so many other projects going on...they really don't need this long to have the majority of CiV designed, and have it well designed.

pwnd.

Spoiler:

The best way to ruin this franchise would be to rush out new major versions every couple of years. There's absolutely nothing wrong with 5 years between each. Quite the opposite.

And thanks, Firaxis, for doing something for the online community. Pay no attention to the Ferengi in the gorilla suit over in the corner.

I still find CivIV fun and it doesn't feel old to me at least. I'll buy civV, but I rather wait for a good game and play another good game in the meanwhile.

I don't want another CtP.

[joncnunn]

If you were only interested in Single Player; Civ III got the major bugs out about six months after the Vanilla disk came out. The major thing that Civ III had that was much better than Civ II was an AI light years ahead of the one in Civ II & SMAC. Civ II Deity / SMAC Transcendi were not a challenge.

Now if you wanted MP, one of the last patches to Play the World fixed the last of the bugs with MP. PTW itself didn't seem to have much, but Conquests added some neat stuff to Civ III.

Would agree that Civ IV, especially Civ IV BTS is better than Civ III. It's AI is again much better than the predecessor (and has continued to get better with BTS and now Better AI) and it largely reduced the micro management with regards to min 4 / max 50 research and the lose all the extra beakers.

I'm thinking that the message could mean that Firaxis is going to make some sort of game involving Julius Caesar next.

[OzzyKP]

After Civ3 we were all anxious for Civ4 to be released since Civ3 was such a disappointment. But Civ4 is damn near a perfect game and I'm still exploring new mods and aspects of the game. Just downloaded a new mod a week ago and am quite enjoying it.

People keep saying 5 years, but it has only been two since BTS came out. And only ONE year since Colonization. For those people into mods I'm almost disappointed when new releases and expansions come out too soon, because all the great work people have done for the previous version no longer works. Plus good mods take a while to perfect, so the more time we have for mods to come out and for people to appreciate them the better.

And if you aren't exploring all the mods out for Civ4 then no wonder you are whining, half of the brilliance of Civ4 is how much they've opened up to modders and the subsequent brilliant mods that get produced. Some of which change the game around completely.

Seriously though, Colonization just came out a year ago, why on earth are people whining? Plenty of us have been waiting for them to reboot that game for a decade, and while you may be dissatisfied with the game you can't accuse them of sitting on their hands.

[OzzyKP]

Another thing... the whole point of the civ franchise is replayability. This isn't some shooter where when you finish the campaign you are done and ready for the sequel. So comparisons to other games and their development schedule isn't quite fair or accurate. If you don't count expansion packs and want a full reenvisioning of the game every year or two I think most of us would be pretty damn annoyed. Once you get the hang of a game you'd have a new one thrown at you.

You need time to appreciate, master and explore all the different parts of a game like this.

[TheDarkside]

personally, I was more hoping for an X-COM game announcement