My concern of a pay for expansion pack...

It's up to Stardock to answer, but I'll try too:
They said they'd provide support for galciv for one year and this they will do. It also looks like they didn't plan support for more than one year (and we're nearly there).
They said they'd continue to support galciv (no XP) as was planned and the resources on the XP are different resources.
So I think that
1) there will still be support for galciv (no XPack)
2) there will be support for the paying XPack after vanilla galciv support runs out

Whatever happens, I think Stardock showed amazing support for their product. It is stable and diverse. I don't think anyone of us has any right to expect stardock to support the original gal-civ after the paying expansion. I suspect they still will in some way, because they are just that nice, but honestly, I didn't see any other company support a game for so long, shy of MMRPG's and their ilk.

About the danger of splintering - well, why should it splinter? Everyone should just buy the expansion pack Seriously, I don't mind spending 20$ every few months to enrich a game I already play almost 24/7, and I doubt anyone here does. The only reason why I might not buy the expansion set if it's just bad, but considering what we are getting I don't see that happening.

The 'we will support the game for one year after release' is all very well and good but what about those who have only just bought GalCiv from a shop, as it has only just been released to the shops, if those words are true those people can expect a lot less than a years support (yes you can say they download all the previous patches from release, but as you pointed out this gave the customer more of an intrest as the game was constantly evolving, and yes they timed the free expansion to be available at the same time as the game was available retail) are we to see the support drying up?
An offical comment please?

I'll be begging for support until all my ships and planets properly load their images without saving, exiting, and reloading

There is so much work YET to be done on this version its just so silly to even speak of expansions and such ......If the economy sliders are not changed to individual planet use, then the game is not all together to diverse,,,,,,on top of all the UI glitches ......i agree the support is there but i dont agree that this game is set to move to the expansion phaze.....just needs more work as a base.....>>...

There are not supposed to be individual planet sliders. This is not a bug, it's a design decision, and a darn good one. It streamlines the game and make it more fast-paced. A much better approach to macro-management then MOO3.

You just want to stir up trouble again, Droid. I remember you. GalCiv is done. It's an excellent, elegent and effiecent game. It does not need a lot more work - it needs a few more twicks and possibly more content in an expansion (like more tech, races, etc.). The design, however, is solid. If you don't see that, you're just rumbling. Again.

Isn't their primary revenue stream through Drengin.net? You have a subscription to that, I'm sure they will continue to support you.

As for retail... GalCiv has been in the stores for quite some time around these parts. So, it depends on where you are located in the world on "when it became available". However, as the game has already been supported for quite a while, and very much work has already gone into improving GalCiv from its original retail release version, I'm betting Star Dock will feel that they've met their support for a year commitment if your local stores don't carry the boxed GalCiv until 2006. Now, that said, Star Dock strikes me as very committed to supporting their products, so I'd hazard a guess that they will continue to support vanilla GalCiv for a good while longer then just the year they committed to.

And they don't need to change to individual "exception" sliders... if they had a generic product you could invest in which would add back that planet's slidefull of points/money/bc at the end turn (rather then be wasted).

What they are talking about with the Premium Expansion is adding more dimensions to the game: i.e. new races new techs so on and so forth.

However I agree with you all about you're fears. I don't want to see them stop fixing and updating the game, but I may not have a say in that. There is only so much you can do. When the money is gone, its gone.

I think StarDock have given this game great support. If you don't think so play the game unpatched.

I remember the CTD bugs that would plague my system but now the games as stable as a rock for me, minor annoyances like the invisible ship bug aside, plus all the added goodies.

I see droid is back, I don't agree with you droid ( I disagree that the fundamental design of the game needs to be changed) but congratuations on your most intelligent post yet. We could actually take your opinon seriously this time, and I think thats important to point out.

Otherwise I think my feeling echo Dark Lord's.

~SDC~

still needs lots of work .....

True! But this was in thier best interests because the original release was rather buggie. Stardock could have saved themselves alot of time money and have really cornered the market hands down if they play tested the original release more thouroughly . . . that said I still hope Galactic Civilizations will grow into the classic it was ment to be . . . they have a vision besides just making $$$ and that counts for alot these days.

Also, I thought the expansion was going to be written with a new 3d based engine . . . from a design perspective that should solve alot of the problems, tighter better coding, more maliable display settings, forced 3d card calculation usage etc etc . . . makes it pretty much a new game doesn't it? (except for the concept) . . . All that considered I'd buy shares!

[Message Edited]

I played one of the earliest versions, and I found the game to be quite excellent even then. IMO it wasn't buggie, and anything since then to now has been a steady improvement. I am really impressed with stardock and I don't think we can expect anything from them. Maybe I say that because I'm so dishearted by the industry - being a game journalist I saw too many games that had far less support.

Regardless, I think GalCiv is solid, interesting and effiecent. I would like to see more content, but I expect and I'm willing to pay for it. You need to rememeber the game industry is centered around the concept that games buy a new game every 2-3 weeks. A game that can be played for years are not economical. If this was a MMRPG we would have been paying 10-15$ a month for this amount of new content. In contrast, paying 20$ once a year is cheap.

I think Hasbro and others would disagree (Harel) .. ??

With regard to the economics and life of a game .....
[Message Edited]

Yes, and user input counts for a lot more at StarDock than at any other software company I can think of. How many user suggestions were incorporated into the game so far? Way too many to count. But this is typical support for StarDock. It's almost like they are doing it because they CARE about their products and customers, and not just as a revenue stream.

Bill

~SDC~

I actually think we have been spoiled by Stardock in 2 ways:

1) the support and constant improvement of the original games has been ammazing
2) The fact that the game is so unpredictable makes the AI much stronger than in most other games

But i will second the concern about splitting the community with the Xpack (this is by all means not because i don't want - I can't wait)

I think some of the early responders misunderstood my post. I'm not complaining about Stardock's support. They've been quite good. Their response to customers is the best I have ever seen. Some bugs have taken longer to fix than I would have expected, but that's not a big deal. Overall, I'm very pleased so far.

What I am suggesting is, a pay for expansion pack is going to splinter the user group, between those buy it and those who don't. Remember the whole philosophy being driven at the beginning was that by providing constant meaningful updates to the game, they can keep people playing longer. This was to avoid the game being shelved after a couple months like most games. I completely agree with their statement by the way.

However, if those updates stop for one branch of the userbase, it probably pretty much means those users have or will be shelving the games. As they suggested, without meaningful updates to the game, generally interest will fade.

I just bring this up because I find myself on the fence. I'm not sure I want to spend the money to upgrade the game because I'm not sure what's being offered is worth the extra money. However, if outstanding bugs don't get fixed in the non upgraded version, and no meaningful updates occur anymore, I'm likely going to shelf the game completely, as was originally expected by their description. I also think it will create 1st and 2nd class citizens amongst the userbase.

That's just me, maybe I don't represent a significant amount of the userbase. Just expressing my opinion.

But if that's the case, the question then becomes, is the expansion (which includes the face-value *plus* all the extra fixes later on) worth the price? In other words, you are no longer just paying for just what was stated in the expansion (the 2 extra races, events, map editor), but also the undocumented support.

But from what I understood, Stardock wasn't gonna split the groups apart like that anyway, and both groups will be supported equally (maybe there'll be extra support if there's problems with expansion-specific stuff like the map editor).

I'm a Dregnin subscriber, so I get the expansion free anyways, but i very much disagree with Stardock charging for the next expansion. The original literature on the site implied quite clearly, at the time I purchased GalCiv (before I upgraded to Dregnin), that all relevant releases within one year from purchase would be free.

Now I understand that developing new material takes time and effort and invokes certain costs, but $20?? That's on the same level as what Maxis has done with the Sims. Seriously, isn't Stardock supposed to be *DIFFERENT*???

Hi Fastryder nice seing you posting again, why have you not posted at the Jedi Republic post? I think that I am going to pay for the expansion pack, I have bought other games such as civilization I, and whent II and III got out I had to paiy for them, and they didn't provide support at all, the same with other games, this is the only game that I have seen the creators openly exchanging ideas with the players and openly doing their best to fix any bugs that may happen during the game, to me it is worth the $20, I have paid more than that for other games that are very lousy like MOO3.

The key word is "relevant" - all patches, one major pack and some other bits and pieces (including the metaverse) are free.....

Alex


~SDC~

This is the one bug they said they could NOT fix without a major (paid) upgrade. I believe it has to do with the 2D vs. 3D graphics engine.

We never implied that ALL updates for GalCiv would be free. We have challenged people in the past to find a single post that would imply that.

We said we would provide free updates to GalCiv for a year after release. Not only have we done that but we provided a free BonusPak upon release with lots of new features and a free expansion pack.

Much of the work on this new expansion pack is on editors and such that had to be created from scratch. I can't see how anyone can possibly argue that free updates would include additional programs being made nearly a year after release.

Also, just because we release an paid expansion pack doesn't mean that we're going to stop supporting the base Gal Civ, which seems to be your main worry.  Gal Civ and the expansion pack will be using the same code base, but the expansion pack will have additional code.

$20 for an expansion pack seems like a pretty good deal to me. I've seen expansions that are alot more for other games for alot less (Civ3 Play the World anyone?? Especially when mutliplayer was originally supposed to BE in the original release?) Someone else mentioned the Sims. Yes, their expansions are about 20 bucks each, aren't they? And they don't really add much more gameplay--they just have to slap a few new objects/locations into each one (kudos to them for developing a truly object oriented design to enable them to do that easily).

Being a programmer myself, $20 seems little to me for how much development effort must go into these things. Not to mention how much the developers interact with the community! (CariElf, I want your job! )