I will or will not buy Rome Total War

[Shahed]

This is NOT a thread of silly declartions. It is a thread expressing the discontent caused by the bugs in the game. Requesting that these bugs be fixed, and that RTW is better tested, and reasonably bug free.

[KukriKhan]

*Kukri posting his personal opinion*

This site:
http://www.payscale.com/research/vid-18643/fid-6886
lists payscales for dev/programmer-types in US $'s (65-90K per annum).

Assuming it would take 1 top-earning guy 1 month to patch VI (in other words: make v2.1 of MTW), it would cost $7,500 in diverted labor (also assuming that "guy" would be taken off RTW development...potentially delaying it's deployment, and therefore realization of profit by a month - not an unconsiderable factor).

So the question is: who pays that 7500, and why? Activision? They'd have to sell at least 150 extra copies of MTW or VI (that they wouldn't have sold otherwise) to compensate that labor cost alone (ignoring the costs of distributing the patch).

Those figures are at best, hypothetical...but they give me an idea of the hurdles involved in any business decision to apply resources to a project. Will they sell more VI if it's patched ? Is the goodwill of buyers an economically measureable factor considered? Will they sell 150 less copies of the next game due to customer disgruntlement over the last?

All that said, I will join the chorus (sort of):

"I am skeptical about the reliability of RTW, because of unresolved issues with MTW/VI. Therefore I will not pre-order RTW, until either
1) VI is patched, or
2) early-adopters of RTW give it the "thumbs-up" 2 months after release."

[Knight_Yellow]

i got bored with medieval and subsequently VI.


i couldnt realy care less if VI gets patched

infact i hope it doesnt since that will give CA more time to spend on making Rome a better game.

just my point of view

[Foreign Devil]

Sorry to have offended you Sinian. However, my amusment stands.

In fact, I declare that I continue to be amused...

[ChaosShade]

I will not buy RTW unless VI gets patched and I mean it. I quit paying for three MMORPGS because of a lack of support even though I enjoyed them despite bugs. You do not get my money if you shrug off bugs and that is that. I can play caesar III for my rome fix at least that has few to none bugs in it

[ChaosShade]

keep in mind that not only will those saying that they will not buy RTW until we get a VI patch be doing this personally but they will not recomend Rome Total War to thier friends...or at least that is my stance on the issue

[Brother Derfel]

Ah, Ceaser III What a game. Thanks for reminding me I have it. That game has taken nealry a much of my life as MTW.
I can't rmember ANY bugs for it.

[de la Valette]

Quote[/b] (The_Emperor @ June 09 2003,07:37)]Is it me or are the Germans always the most likely faction to get a Civil War?

My history of this era isn't that great, but weren't the princes within the HRE constantly fighting each other? Whilst this may not have been a civil war, its probably the closest you could get within the game to simulating this.

Oh and just to throw my hat into the ring, VI has made the game far more enjoyable for me and whle the bugs are slightly annoying, they have no major effect on my enjoyment of the game.

As for Roman total war...hmmmm...looks great but i have doubts that i just can't quite put my finger on about how the battles will play out given the unit types i have seen so far.

[Mount Suribachi]

Hehe, stirred up a real hornets nest here...

Anyways, just to clarify, I am not dissing VI as a bad game, in fact I love the VI campaign - it reminds me of Shogun

But CA/Activision need to take this seriously. Word of mouth - mainly via the internet - is hugely important to games sales these days. If the Total War series gets a reputation as having great gameplay but being buggy with no proper support, sales WILL suffer.

As it stands VI is 2 steps forward, 1 step back. It adds a lot of little improvements, but also adds a couple of big clangers, and leaves other stuff un-fixed. Not to mention the lack of proper MP support. I don't play MP at all, but even I can see the total lack of support for MP for MTW. As has been pointed out, many games have multiple patches - especially for MP - MTW has had 1 patch and one exp. pack and thats your cracker.

Not good enough for a PC game in 2003.

[Maniac]

Maybe this thread should be moved to the entrance hall so the new guys can express their opinion as well?

[Longasc]

I agree with Maniac. Everyone should have the option to participate.

[Shahed]

Quote[/b] (Foreign Devil @ June 09 2003,14:50)]Sorry to have offended you Sinian. However, my amusment stands.

In fact, I declare that I continue to be amused...

hehe Np Bro. I'm not offended at all.

I thought you were misunderstanding the nature of this thread, and the purpose of it's creation.

So I felt I should mention why I participated.
I love the TW series but some things must change.

[Orda Khan]

Well I for one would prefer if CA learnt to walk before it tries to run

......Orda

[tgi01]

I think ill just wait for the bug reports be4 i buy RTW instead of buying it on the release day as I did with VI ...


TGI

[sassbarman]

I'm in full agreement with the poster here this bug must be fixed. I'm completely confused as to how this obvious bug passed testing, and even more confused as to why Activision isn't rushing out to correct this problem. I mean really can it be that difficult and time consuming to get this thing done. It seems like a small sacrifice of time and money on Activision's part to make everything in the totalwar universe right again.

[Sir Robin]

My apologies but I am having an attack of pessimism.

Was Viking Invasion tested?

[Satyr]

I am sure that Viking Invasion was tested. It is a substantial bit of work. However, to fix the dead at 56 bug couldn't possibly take more than 2 days of programming. If they want to be more thorough and fix the ransom bug too then I can see this taking longer. But still, it would cost so little time and effort to fix, I don't understand why they haven't committed to fixing this yet.

[DemonArchangel]

i won't either, but my reason is different

i have NO money

[Knight_Yellow]

hmmm an old saying comes to ones mind when reading this thread


"You would cut your nose off to spite ur face"

think about it

[Portuguese Rebel]

Actually Knight_yellow, i wouldn't

What's the difference between warez games and legit copys? Support...

Now you think in the meaning of this

[Crazed Rabbit]

I will not buy R:TW unless VI is patched. I don't want the designers thinking they can release a half-baked game on us again and again. (VI wasn't half-baked, but that's not the point.)

R:TW is not the only game out there. Plenty of great games around the time R:TW is being released.
Half Life 2 is one I'm interested in. I still play Day of Defeat occasionally.
Homeworld 2 is another. I played through all of Homeworld Cataclysm (Which I haven't done with any other game besides Baldur's Gate.) and loved it. HW 2 is going to be even better.

Unfortunately, my three year old computer is showing its age, and I don't want to buy a whole new comp just to play a buggy game.

Most of my time with VI has been spent online, so now I wonder if I should've bought it. The devs promised to make it easy to mod and add new factions but in the Dungeon, people have been complaining how this crashes the game. Where are the so called improvments?

Also, ALL OF THE UNIQUE IRISH UNITS HAVE LOW MORALE. I mean, for crying out loud, even Gallglasses, an ELITE UNIT, has low morale. This continually bugs me, even if it is "historical" (did the Elite warriors of Ireland really have low morale? Have the Irish been known for running away? Maybe they confused the Irish and the French )

Besides, all we've seen so far of R:TW is eye-candy. And we all know eye-candy doesn't for a great game by itself (M:TW has all sprite units).

All that said, R:TW looks great so far. And they'll have movies again But that isn't enough to convince me.

And, Knight Yellow, I won't be hurting myself if I don't buy R:TW. Like I said before, it is not the only game out there.

-Crazed Rabbit-

P.S. Devs, please give the Irish some decent morale in the patch. Also keep up the hard work on R:TW And be sure to have LOTS of playtesting When it's 3 am and the testers are moaning something that sounds vaguely like 'sleep', don't give in Work them to the bone Tie them to the computers Threaten to torture and kill them if any bugs are in the released version (I am of course kidding here, it is only necessary to kill them, you don't have to torture them.)

EDIT: typo

[MiniKiller]

If CA people reply to other topics once in awhile why cant they reply here ahhh

[Knight_Yellow]

ive thought about it.

dont know what magnificent shining light im supposed to discover though.

at the end of the day CA probably dont care about VI anymore and i for one hope they have all of their resources are focussed on rome.

and not some expansion pack that will be obsolete in 6 months anyway.

[KukriKhan]

Quote[/b] (Maniac @ June 09 2003,09:03)]Maybe this thread should be moved to the entrance hall so the new guys can express their opinion as well?

Sounds like a good idea at first glance; but I'd hate for the thread to lose steam, since the main hall gets more traffic (including EH patrons who can't post here yet).

But I will copy over any posts requested by a Junior Patron.

[Papewaio]

KY think it through.

RTW comes out, then a single patch for SP and a maybe a few crumbs for the MPs "not a significant market share".

Then the expansion comes out for RTW.

Then they focus on the next game. After STW, MI, MTW, VI don't you see a trend, independent of the publisher, where very few patches are released.

Based on the previous four releases you can expect 1.5 patches per release. So why do you think RTW will get any better treatment?

I bought MTW after the first patch came out. VI I have no intention of buying while the die at 56 bug is out there. Nor will I buy RTW until I hear that it is ok.

For the marketers out there they can understand the term Branding. TW series has a great name as a Brand for concept, developer involvement at the websites, music, mix of real time and turn based, large battles of soliders, used to have a great name for cutscences and character immersion with the Throne Room which added to the feeling of diplomacy. TW has a very very poor brand name when it comes to patches and MP Campaigns.

I remember last time that the blame was placed at EA for the patches. Supposed to be better supported with Activision. Anyone else remember the assurances that TW was getting the full support from the publisher. Well the status quo is the same, either CA purposely lied to us or where not as fully in the know as they thought themselves. Fool me once, shame on you, Fool me twice shame on me. Seems we all have been made a fool of by CA.

Bottom line is the Brand Name TW is damaged as far as patch support is concerned.

----

PS as for the Irish Morale you can mod that, as to the kings dying at 56 you cannot.

[Lehesu]

Lehesu will probably buy R:TW regardless of the patching situation. However, if R:TW turns out to be a bug-ridden mess, I will probably refuse to buy it and continue to play Diablo:2 WHICH BLIZZARD IS PATCHING (albeit slowly) EVEN THOUGH THE GAME IS OLDER THAN MEDIEVAL AND THE PATCH ISN'T EVEN FOR BUGS THEY ARE ADDING NEW STUFF JUST TO ADD ENJOYMENT TO THE GAME Blizzard has released tons of top-selling games, including Warcraft III, yet they are STILL taking the time and resources to patch an older, but still well-like game BRAVO I wish that the same would happen with the Total War series.

[oblivious maximus]

Im sorry but if i happened to see RTW for sale,im gonna gobble it up like the cookie monster

What bothers me more than the 56 is when a general dies,he is replaced with one of his soldiers that picked up all his traits and stars.Only some please.I appreciate the attempt,but you might as well let the old guy live.

Still optimistic of a VI patch.

[Foreign Devil]

Quote[/b] (Lehesu @ June 09 2003,22:16)]Lehesu will probably buy R:TW regardless of the patching situation. However, if R:TW turns out to be a bug-ridden mess, I will probably refuse to buy it and continue to play Diablo:2 WHICH BLIZZARD IS PATCHING (albeit slowly) EVEN THOUGH THE GAME IS OLDER THAN MEDIEVAL AND THE PATCH ISN'T EVEN FOR BUGS THEY ARE ADDING NEW STUFF JUST TO ADD ENJOYMENT TO THE GAME Blizzard has released tons of top-selling games, including Warcraft III, yet they are STILL taking the time and resources to patch an older, but still well-like game BRAVO I wish that the same would happen with the Total War series.

1.10 is out? Hmm... I just might have to pick up Diablo II again. Of course, Blizzard had to put up with neverending greif from its "fans" that make this thread look like Activision worshipping.

I'm still amused, to those it may concern... the bugs in VI aren't exactly crippling, so I don't think that Rome's going to be massivly unstable or anything.

And even if there are several annoying bugs, I will still drool on my keyboard. Drool, I tell you

[FesterShinetop]

Well, first of all, I am not buying VI until it is patched

But I just can not imagine Activision will not produce a patch for VI... some of the bugs are really annoying... I just can not imagine. But if they don't I am sure as hell gonna think twice before buying RTW which I would probably buy the day it comes out if they do produce some customer support

But most patches are released 3 months or so after the actual game comes out... so they still have time...

[hrvojej]

I agree wih Pape. If VI is not patched, I will not buy RTW unless/until it's patched. The bugs in VI are not really showstoppers, but deter from enjoyment, and the potential to make the game more polished just cries out every time I play.