Sorry From CA - Current State of the Game and What Happens Next

[BroskiDerpman]

I argue for the Shogun 2 ui over Empire.

It's much more responsive, icons stand out more, simply makes for a good feel in the Warscape engine. Plus the immersion factor too. (I still prefer Medieval 2's feel)

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

The patch has made the unit graphics look tremendous, shame the battlefield animations, AI, gameplay, etc is still bloody awful.

Back the Third Age mod for Medieval II I guess!

[BroskiDerpman]

At least there the unit collision makes more sense! XD

I believe Nvidia blames performance issues on CA's poorly optimized game than their own drivers. Interesting...

[The Stranger]

At least there the unit collision makes more sense! XD

I believe Nvidia blames performance issues on CA's poorly optimized game than their own drivers. Interesting...

http://www.incgamers.com/2013/09/nvi...e-optimization

[Barkhorn1x]

I believe Nvidia blames performance issues on CA's poorly optimized game than their own drivers. Interesting...

Not surprised at all.

[BroskiDerpman]

Seems like an really legitimate argument too from what I've read in the Nvidia forums too.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Feature-wise a lot of the game feels like it was pieced together in a patchwork manner, nothing feels like it compliments anything else. Technology is researched too quick creating huge gaps between faction military strength. Units gain veteran too fast, causing armies to become death machines in within 10 turns of their creation. Unrest is obtuse in how it builds, and friendly fire unrest from taking neighboring cities is possible. The AI regards the player armies with indifference on the campaign map and tries to rush your cities. Campaign movement speed doesn't make sense for the turn length. There's no penalty for losing all your generals as you get free ones right away, making commanders throw away units

This. Seems to be a common opinion amongst many veteran players. The lack of cohesion between game features, the incomprehensibility of others. Somehow I can't see these kinds of issues being fixed by patches & hot-fixes.....

And yes, you may spend considerable time right now, playing the game....How much of your attraction to the game, at the moment, is simply novelty? how much is because of the 'meat & potatoes' of the game itself? how much time will you be spending 6 months from now? or a year?

That's where a mediocre/average/good/classic game gets sorted out.........

[sassbarman]

I know it's been mentioned a million times but it still boggles my mind how this game scored so high with reviewers. I guess there are really only 3 possibilities to account for this gross error in judgement.
a) they never actually played the game beyond 3 turns.
b) they are massively incompetent.
c) they where offered '"incentives" to utterly ignore the obvious shortcomings and focus on the few good aspects of this game.
Apologies aside this game reeks of everything wrong in the PC gaming industry today which is to say the souless persuit of profit over professional integrity and just doing what's right for your loyal paying customers.
Sorry to be so heavy handed but I'm just sick of this CRAP.

[Monk]

I know it's been mentioned a million times but it still boggles my mind how this game scored so high with reviewers. I guess there are really only 3 possibilities to account for this gross error in judgement.
a) they never actually played the game beyond 3 turns.
b) they are massively incompetent.
c) they where offered '"incentives" to utterly ignore the obvious shortcomings and focus on the few good aspects of this game.
Apologies aside this game reeks of everything wrong in the PC gaming industry today which is to say the souless persuit of profit over professional integrity and just doing what's right for your loyal paying customers.
Sorry to be so heavy handed but I'm just sick of this CRAP.

There are fair reviews out there but they turned out to be very few and far between. The Rock, Paper, Shotgun analysis likely captures the spirit of playing Rome 2 the best. The writer describes in perfect detail how awesome the spectacle of the game is and the disappointment at everything else. The "When i stop playing, i'm not sure if i was having fun" (paraphrased) line sums up my experience to a T.



And it's not that I want to be negative or bash on the game, I doubt any of us do. I was so hype when my preload was unpacking, i dare say I was giddy. Truly excited for the potential that lay ahead of me. Right now my attitude is summed up by the words extreme disappointment.. there is much more wrong with Rome 2 than technical issues, there are deep flaws in the way the game is constructed.

It's shocking really, to believe the same studio who made the refined and incredibly focused Shogun 2 could make a game as scatterbrained as this.

[quadalpha]

On the bright side, I kind of have a hankering to reinstall STW now.

[CaptainCrunch]

I know it's been mentioned a million times but it still boggles my mind how this game scored so high with reviewers. I guess there are really only 3 possibilities to account for this gross error in judgement.
a) they never actually played the game beyond 3 turns.
b) they are massively incompetent.
c) they where offered '"incentives" to utterly ignore the obvious shortcomings and focus on the few good aspects of this game.
Apologies aside this game reeks of everything wrong in the PC gaming industry today which is to say the souless persuit of profit over professional integrity and just doing what's right for your loyal paying customers.
Sorry to be so heavy handed but I'm just sick of this CRAP.

You said it. Incidentally, my guess is all of the above

CA banked on the 'big spectacle', it was by design that nobody was given an early build of the campaign so they could get into the nuts & bolts of the system and see that it was FUBAR. This is their beta, "now that we're getting real-time metric feedback from thousands of players" says it all.

There's no question that what I saw pre-launch drove my curiosity to overcome my suspicion. The fact that STW2 was so well made also played a big role in my decision making, which I think is true for many others. I felt they were on the right track to make something really special... at least something really fundamentally good that the modding community could take the rest of the way.

Maybe they didn't set out to intentionally deceive their customers, but they certainly set themselves up for failure without realizing it when they gave themselves such a short development cycle for such an ambitious release. They thought they could pull it off... they were wrong. Evidently when they finally realized that, they probably hoped that the grandeur and scale of the game would impress enough to make it a sales winner, and plenty of people fell for it. Hell, there are those out there who think 'OMFG TEH G4ME POWNZ!' Maybe those are the customers they want to attract now? That argument can certainly be made going by their PR campaign and the 2 fools they hired to promote it.

There may come a day after patches and add-ons when the game will actually be more or less finished, but I don't think it will ever be considered a worthy successor to RTW cuz there are just too many poorly implemented and ill conceived core features. Time will tell of course, but this is how I see it at the moment (and the game runs pretty damn well for me on an older machine, which I have to give them serious props for).

[JeromeBaker]

how much time will you be spending 6 months from now? or a year?

That's where a mediocre/average/good/classic game gets sorted out.........

Very good point ReluctantSamurai. I started the game this past weekend and I have had no major issues with crashes or graphical glitches. I think for me reading all the negative forum posts greatly helped to reduce my expectations when starting. In fact they were reduced so greatly that I was pleasently suprised at a few things. I think my fav change was how you can build up an army's abilities and reputation away from simply boosting the traits of the general. Being able to create the 10th legion and build it up to fight my toughest foes was a very neat premise. Seeing the stats of my 10th legion, broken up by past generals, added some immersion. That being said though, I really do not see myself playing this months from now without some overhaul. I see enough i like that I will not close the book and hope that mods and future patches can bring some much needed improvement to the immersion factor. Perhaps the biggest deal to me is the wait time inbetween turns. I can overlook a lot, but when you spend more time waiting than playing in the late game it kills the fun factor big time.

But to your point, I would much rather see RTW or M2TW get a graphics boost and some of the cool features I like than the idea of RTW2 getting patched and moded to a more playable form.

[Lemur]

I can't see these kinds of issues being fixed by patches & hot-fixes.....

Yeah, I was saying to a RL friend, who is new to the TW world, that CA is okay with eventually fixing bugs, but they have never, ever fixed a design problem in an existing game.

And a lot of what ails R2 appears to be fundamental to design.

I've spent most of my time in the campaign, and there's a whole lot of "Huh?" going on.

Why do I need to click through three sliding screens to perform an upgrade on a general? Why?

And the general lack of cues and feedback ... that's just bad design. Carthage had an epic civil war last night. Why? I have no idea. The Hanna Montana dynasty had ~20% control of the Senators. This was nowhere near the trigger point, by my understanding. None of the other factions had massive control. The "Other Families" had ~50% control. So ... civil war? Why? Who knows?

[andrewt]

Not surprised at all.

I side with Nvidia here. There may be plenty of video card makers but they all carry chipsets from either Nvidia or AMD. In contrast, there are dozens of video game publishers and hundreds of video game developers. I don't see why the onus is on Nvidia and AMD to tweak their drivers to support the games instead of developers making sure their games are optimized for all of 2 chipset manufacturers.

[Hooahguy]

Yeah, I was saying to a RL friend, who is new to the TW world, that CA is okay with eventually fixing bugs, but they have never, ever fixed a design problem in an existing game.

And a lot of what ails R2 appears to be fundamental to design.

I've spent most of my time in the campaign, and there's a whole lot of "Huh?" going on.

Why do I need to click through three sliding screens to perform an upgrade on a general? Why?

And the general lack of cues and feedback ... that's just bad design. Carthage had an epic civil war last night. Why? I have no idea. The Hanna Montana dynasty had ~20% control of the Senators. This was nowhere near the trigger point, by my understanding. None of the other factions had massive control. The "Other Families" had ~50% control. So ... civil war? Why? Who knows?

And to piggy back off of that, I think the political system is great in concept, but poorly executed. For example, I think a power-struggle is about to start between my faction leader and the next in line, another general. My FL has about 60 gravitas and the other guy has about 80. But nowhere does it say what happens when someone reaches 100, and I dont even know which one is part of "my family." No idea where to see my family list/tree. In the end I sent the rival general first into a siege and he was killed. Overall, great ideas, poor execution.

[Lemur]

Overall, great ideas, poor execution.

Nothing's quite as tacked-on and Early Atari-style as, say, the railroad transport screen in FotS. But a lot of it is close. Damn close.

[BroskiDerpman]

Do you know how that works? Never got to really start up FoTS yet.

[Azi Tohak]

It seems to me this game had a deadline set a year ago, and no one with the cojones to say "that just won't work" as the game neared release. So many of the little pieces (the traits and faction politics) sound like such fun, but they're too poorly done to be interesting. I need more time with naval combat to pass judgement but my initial thought is it's a circus.

I enjoy the army stances, the look of the map (I am the 98%, and even the game turns aren't terrible when I think of the enormous number of factions) but not the enormous UI in battles.

Azi

[BroskiDerpman]

It's the ui... Ahhhhhhh it burns m'lord!

I wished CA reconsidered redoing the ai with important functions hidden in other buttons. Plus the modern minimal ui gets on my nerves,I thought CA learned from Shogun 2 and designed the ui that way. It was immersive and functional.

[a completely inoffensive name]

The more I read about this game, the more of a joke it becomes. Like most AAA titles.

CA has never had a real competitor. The Total Wars are a unique blend and because there are so many apologists and marketing (hence the 40% larger budget), they honestly do not have to improve anything but graphics.

I don't know what the solution is, other than to simply not buy R2 and not buy the next game on principle unless there is a public beta or until the *actual* reviews come out, post-release.