Dev blog #3

[Fisherking]

Well he is still at it.

Good for him!




http://blogs.sega.com/totalwar/2009/...-mike-simpson/

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Tuesday Nov 03, 2009
Who is this game for anyway? - By Mike Simpson

Our guiding principle with design is that we make the game we want to play, and trust that other people will like it. That inevitably means we make the TW games for the hardcore fans rather than for the more casual gamers that are possibly the majority of our customers. We believe that if we succeed in making a game that the fans like it will by definition be a great game, and the because of its quality casual players will like it too, so long as we make it accessible. We need both groups (casual and hardcore) to get enough money in to allow us to keep making the games, so one of the tightropes we walk is the balance between accessibility and depth. Great design manages both, and that’s what we strive for (occasionally successfully!).

We do however also have another customer who we make the game for, and in one particular way they are the most important of all. It’s our publisher, who is driven by the grim necessity of commercial reality. Those necessities tend to be short term compared with the dev time of a game or the lifetime of a series. They are also necessities that we cannot ignore - if we do it’s Game Over. Empire: Total War happened the only way it could - it had to be in a box in Feb 09. Damned stressful for all concerned, but it’s so much a fact of life it’s almost not worth talking about.

I think some people think that when “commercial reality” wins, they lose. If the car parks at Sega or CA were full of Ferraris, I might agree. But they are not. When “commercial reality” wins, we live to make another game.

[Peasant Phill]

Well, Mike did a good job at saying nothing.

At least he didn't acuse TW vets but otherwise I feel completely indifferent about his blog.

[Fisherking]

I am interested in the information that gets passed but not so much with the opinions.

He is the creative director, I believe, and goes back to STW.

People on the various fan sights have accused him and CA of everything bad that has happened on the planet from 1947 to the present and may have them responsible of what may happen in 2012.

He is showing a human side with what he has said all along.

Just like most people he redirects blame and criticism for what when wrong and that is no big deal to me.

He is showing a lot of guts to keep it up because every word is dissected, minced finely, and construed in every fathomable way...

Just wait and see!

[gollum]

More non-truths falling like rain.

In almost every interview that i can remember, Mr Simpson has entertained that "We make TW games for our hardcore fans because we are such ourselves" and that "we make the games we want to play". This one:
http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/r...oper-interview
is no exception (5:36).

In the #3 of this recent blog the weight of responsibility for the influence of "commercial reality" is thrown - typically of CA - to the publisher.

Yet, listen to this; in the very same interview linked above Mr Simpson states (6:23): "When we started out on Rome, we wanted to make a game that would appeal to as many people as possible and thats hardcore strategy gamers; people that only buy a strategy game a year or maybe have never bought one before...!!!"

So which is it Mr Simpson? Hardcore strategy gamers or people who only buy a strategy game a year or maybe have never bought one before (and like the action)? Please help me understand who is who because the two cannot be one and the same. Nor can their needs and the gameplay/gamedesign to accomodate them (be the same).
And if - God forbids - it turns out that you are actually (from RTW onwards) designing for the casual gamer and your blog is nothing but marketing talk, as in my opinion is, then who is more commercially concsious? The developer or the publisher? Could it be that CA wants the games to be every bit commercially oriented as SEGA does but cannot admit it openly beause people will disaprove?

Antithetical soliloquies the TW community has been fed back then, antithetical soliloquies is being fed now.

After all this, people are buying NTW at their own risk. CA has spoken.


PS: The most funny bit of that interview though is Tim Ansel @ 5:58: "Its not intended as an educational device...but on the other hand its fairly accurate as well".

With incinerating men from fire arrows; with men getting thrown 10m in the air from elephant/cavalry charges; with screeching women, flaming pigs wardogs and aracni ninjas; with cavalry behaving like a flock of birds; with chariots outrunning cavalry; with the Romans having the best cavalry roster; with heavy cavalry being awfully powerful in pre-stirrup classical antiquity; with the stereotypical (and wrong) depiction of the "barbarian" factions as crazed uncivilised loons; fairly accurate, sure.

[Owen Glyndwr]

Maybe he was taking credit for the excellent historically accurate mods that came as a result of their game?

Through their disregard for history, they inspire their gamers to go out and learn just how historically ambiguous their games are!

[Asai Nagamasa]

Originally Posted by Owen Glyndwr

Maybe he was taking credit for the excellent historically accurate mods that came as a result of their game?

Through their disregard for history, they inspire their gamers to go out and learn just how historically ambiguous their games are!

Historical accuracy does not make a game. Yes it helps, but it's not the be all and end all. The main failure in TW games of late has been poor play balance, the usual AI deficiencies and general bugginess.

The latest blog is in much the same vein. I see nothing new. It's the same appeal "buy the games and we can then afford to develop better games" etc.

If the car parks at Sega or CA were full of Ferraris, I might agree. But they are not. When “commercial reality” wins, we live to make another game.

So what are the CA car parks full of? Jaguars and TVRs?

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Wait, did he just claim that in order to make a quality product, they have to release shoddy products?
Forgive me, my paradox alert just went off.
That kind of reasoning only gets traction with me if you then man up and fix the thing properly and without delay as priority number one. None of which, judging the current state of ETW and the coming release of NTW, would seem to have happened.

Mr Simpson, on the off chance you are reading this:
I don't care about your problems, they are yours. I don't care about your excuses, it give me no discount. You'd be wise and just go for the unreserved: Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa.
I certainly find it easier to forgive in the face of an apology then in the face of excuses.

[econ21]

Originally Posted by gollum

So which is it Mr Simpson? Hardcore strategy gamers or people who only buy a strategy game a year or maybe have never bought one before (and like the action)? Please help me understand who is who because the two cannot be one and the same. Nor can their needs and the gameplay/gamedesign to accomodate them (be the same).

I don't think there is a contradiction between making the game you want to make and also wanting it to appeal to as many people as you can. As Mike says, the former comes first, but given that you are doing want you want to do, you also try to get other people to like it. As the blog states, the key is quality and accessibility. A lot of "hardcore" artistic material (paintings, music, literature, film etc) can also appeal to a wider audience. For example, suppose RTW was not marketed as vanilla but as say RTR or EB. I am not convinced it would have sold any less, but if it was the EB variant it would no doubt have had to ditch the inaccessible native language unit names and the difficulty levels might have had to be tweaked a little (EB in particular, again, e.g. to avoid player factions going bankrupt right off the bat).

With other commercial games, again I don't see a contradiction. I regard Civ4 as a pretty hardcore strategy game, but I suspect it does well enough more widely. For example, I know that some of my young son's friends play RTW or Civ, but they probably play on different difficulty levels and use different strategies. For example, I might have fun trying to simulate historical army composition and tactics whereas in RTW whereas they might prefer more "fun" approaches and even autoresolve if they want to conquer the world. In another genre, World of Warcraft might be another game that accommodates both hardcore and casual players. And yes, both sides of fans do grumble at each other, but they keep paying their subscriptions.

I also echo the point made by another poster in the thread on the earlier blogs - it is not clear to me that ETW (or RTW) are particularly casual. The strategy layers are much richer than STW and MTW, and slow the game down considerably. The naval combat in ETW has a similar effect. I've been put off getting deeply into ETW at the moment because I just can't commit the time. I think STW and MTW with their Risk type strategy layer allowed one to get more quickly into the action (the battles) and would appeal more to the casual player.

PS: The most funny bit of that interview though is Tim Ansel @ 5:58: "Its not intended as an educational device...but on the other hand its fairly accurate as well".

Well, it's relative. Relative to most historically flavoured strategy games - say Civ4 or Age of Empires - RTW is very accurate. I learnt a lot about ancient history from RTW. Just seeing the map and the factions was an education for me (something you could not get from a Civ or AoE type game). I was surprised playing RTR and EB how much RTW got right. For example, I knew little about the pre-Marian Roman army, but RTW depicted it fairly well. Most of the stuff in your list of grumbles about with RTW is pretty minor IMO (incinerating or flying men, pigs, arcani, dogs, screeching women etc don't impinge on my game experience much). You didn't mention the Egyptians though, who I admit were an abomination.

The TW niche seems to be strategy games with a historical flavour that provide rather thrilling action. I don't think more historically accurate games so far can compete with the "sound and fury" action experience of a TW battle. Of rival games, the EU series seems to be the most commonly mentioned rival on the historically accurate side of the spectrum and Civ the benchmark for a historically flavoured games, but neither provides anything similar to the experience of TWs battles. I suspect this is partly because modelling a TW battle is very expensive and requires commercial success, as the blog points out.

[nameless]

I don't know about you guys but it seems this "blog" is a waste of time.

I mean as the OP said, this is just more meat for those critics to tear apart piece by piece. I mean we got people posting essays about his comments for cripes sakes.

Wouldn't it be more, I dunno, more constructive to talk about where the game is headed (DLC and such) and stuff about NTW? pre-ETW is done man, talk about more relevant stuff.

[gollum]

Hello Simon,
sorry to see you off the moderator's suit, i hope that whatever held you off the .org for a time has been positively resolved.

Originally posted by econ21
I don't think there is a contradiction between making the game you want to make and also wanting it to appeal to as many people as you can.

You bet there is; the only difference is that the commercial strength of the Civilization series comes from sticking to its particular genre.

This is the road that CA should have followed - had they had the guts to actually stand by the unique mix of TBStrategy and unique realistic RT battles they had come up with in all respects and levels: aesthetically, gameplaywise, controls and interface.

TW had its own standard, which it abandoned with RTW as the developers themselves mention in the interview linked above. The idea was to create a hybrid that would literally, to use the developer's words "attract as many people as possible". This hybrid of playstyles and games within the game, inevitably sacrificed depth for breadth. The battles were simlpified, the pace was quickened to appeal to action oriented casual gamers and RTS players. fatigue was considered unimportant enough for its index in the unit cards to be altogether droped and never appear since - you now have to mouseover to get an indication of fatigue. The point of view was moved closer to the action, in order to admire the gore and an "RTS type" camera was introduced. Every conceivable effort was made for the game to look, feel and play like other popular games, as the Civilization series and classical RTS games like AoE and warcraft/starcraft.

As Mike says, the former comes first, but given that you are doing want you want to do, you also try to get other people to like it. As the blog states, the key is quality and accessibility.

What Mr Simpson claims is that CA balances the two, although it gives an edge to quality; but the immense amounts of bugs, dumbing down of the battle engine, increasing of the complexity of the campaign game as per request of the majority of the SP casual gamer fanbase that CA targeted and claimed, without an equivalent increase in AI compeence and poor game balance indicate that this is not actually so.

A lot of "hardcore" artistic material (paintings, music, literature, film etc) can also appeal to a wider audience.

Does it? In my experience the only artists that ever make the transition are those that put suficient water in their wine and aim right from the start for the mainstream. People who are listening to Cabaret Voltaire and The Residents, watching Jim Jarmusch films and read Brett Easton Ellis because they really like it are few and far between.

However, i do agree that it is possible to have "hardcore" games that due to their very nichness and quality do appeal; EB is a good example, but there are others too. I agree with you that this would have been the optimal way for TW to evolve, but it didnt; CA is unwilling to control the admited "overambition" with which they approach their releases; basically they consistently bite more than they can chew because they just have to accomodate more and more SP features and graphical updates to keep up with the gargantuan expectations of sales they and their publisher clearly have. It is well known that people who are aiming for quality are ready for commercial sacrifices, but Mr Simpson is stating the exact opposite in his blog; that they are not and that they want the fanbase to give them better reviews on metacritic user, because they might hurt the sales and sales will hurt the quality, that very same one the game did not have to begin with.

I also echo the point made by another poster in the thread on the earlier blogs - it is not clear to me that ETW (or RTW) are particularly casual. The strategy layers are much richer than STW and MTW, and slow the game down considerably. The naval combat in ETW has a similar effect. I've been put off getting deeply into ETW at the moment because I just can't commit the time. I think STW and MTW with their Risk type strategy layer allowed one to get more quickly into the action (the battles) and would appeal more to the casual player.

It is actually absolutely clear; just not for you because you happen to like the added complexity in the SP part of the game that you mostly enjoy and think that it is depth; but it isnt. At least not rigorously defined chess-like stretegic depth. If it was then chess "actions" (as in taking a piece) that are performed even faster than MTW/STW make chess the most "mainstream" of the lot, with RTW/M2TW the most "hardcore" ones; however popularity of the games and the type of players they attract prove you wrong - its actually the other way around.

This is because it doesnt matter how fast the action is in doing the move that determines the strategic depth but the layers of principles and counterprinciples that you have to consider before making the move. For example in chess you have to consider material/tactics and then strategic considerations such pawn structure, piece mobility, king safety, positionsolidity, pawn storms, poison pawns, passed pawns, tempo, development etc.

In STW/MTW factions are in contact in a series of adjacent areas and similarly to chess, any action at any side of the board such as an attack with a large stack is bound to alter the dynamics of the situation as the region(s) from whence the attack came from will be weakened and be potential targets for counterattacks. Measuring such dynamics as well as the odds that govern them in the ensuing battles was where the strategic depth was in STW/MTW.

In RTW/M2TW this simply does not happen because there is no contact anymore, the same balance dynamics happen now over broad areas in a sea of hexes that the AI cannot navigate. In most cases it is sufficient to have a full stack that conquers city after city aided by the attrocious multi-retrain feature; the AI is always deploying his forces in the campaign map the same way he deploys in the battlefield: piecemeal.

I agree that it would have been interesting to see what would have happened had CA made the mp campaign or had the AI been up to the challenge, but none of these actually ever materialized. The only thing that happened is that people like you, say that RTW/M2TW has more layers, but so what? The AI either does not keep up with the complexity or does not even know complex features exist and all you are left with is more exploits against it for the player.

In actuality however, you say all this because you are the kind of player that likes a TW-Civilization hybrid and is happy with where the series went, generally speaking. This is why, unlike many other veterans you enjoyed RTW. From your persepective what you say is true. From mine it isn't.

Well, it's relative. Relative to most historically flavoured strategy games - say Civ4 or Age of Empires - RTW is very accurate. I learnt a lot about ancient history from RTW. Just seeing the map and the factions was an education for me (something you could not get from a Civ or AoE type game). I was surprised playing RTR and EB how much RTW got right. For example, I knew little about the pre-Marian Roman army, but RTW depicted it fairly well. Most of the stuff in your list of grumbles about with RTW is pretty minor IMO (incinerating or flying men, pigs, arcani, dogs, screeching women etc don't impinge on my game experience much). You didn't mention the Egyptians though, who I admit were an abomination.

I agree with you; no doubt every TW game has been - if not a great pool of knowledge at least a great incentive for knowledge. CA always had a soft spot for gimmicky units, and to a certain degree this was acceptable; however by the time Rome came out, this was supercharged in order to appeal to all these people that make in pure bliss video after video of "3000peasants vs 100spartans" or "beserkers versus legion" etc. I cannot say that my resentment is with historical accuracy, it is definitely though with historical plausibility: the respect with which an era was represented and how this was felt and translated in the gameplay. As such, the abundance of gimmicky units and unrealistic gameplay parameters was in my (and others') opinion, nothing sort of ridiculous, and motivated by profit only - unless you wish to argue somehow that these had to do something with hardcore TWers; you were around when Rome came out and i'm sure you remember many feeling let down.

...but neither provides anything similar to the experience of TWs battles. I suspect this is partly because modelling a TW battle is very expensive and requires commercial success, as the blog points out.

I agree, neither does. But i am 100% convinced that this is not so due to only the money injected in resources - STW/MTW battles are hailed from the specialists of the genre, TW mpers, as top of the crop for years now, as you know better than me, in terms of depth of gameplay. And yet they were far cheaper, i'm sure we'll all agree, than the simulations CA is producing today. Yet they are better than ETW, and vastly better than RTW/M2TW.

I said it in the other thread and i'll say it again: quality of the final result is not linearly prportional to budget and resources. This is simplistic and outright false. If Mr Simpson was arguing that an overambitious commercially and large production is proportional to budget and resources, i would have agreed; but that's not what he's saying.

[antisocialmunky]

Considering that he was alluding to his own dissatifaction at the finished product in the previous blogs, what he says in here is nice in principle and usually makes a successful game but it wasn't practiced all that well with ETW.


As for accessibility... that has two parts most people can enjoy the game and most people can play the game. I mean literally play the game. ETW failed that quite gloriously.


And as for Mr. Simpson. Just come out and say you're doing damage control already. I really don't care about ETW very at this point. Its quite pass tense now.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

"It's all SEGA's fault."

[antisocialmunky]

Yeah, that seems to be tainting all his throughts. 'Sega won't support another TW if it keep getting bad reviews.' Though it really should say 'Sega won't keep supporting CA if their quality control is lacking.'

[Fisherking]

Remember, they send it on to Sega for a final QC approval.

So what does that tell you?

[Richard Sharpe]

sounds like the voice of a company with series issues, both internally and externally. I wouldn't invest in any sort of business venture with them at the moment I'll tell you that.


I am thankful they gave me four previous enjoyable games. Even more thankful that creative and dedicated modders existed to change those good games into various masterpieces.


However, its sad to see the king of the herd fall. Oh well, had to happen sometime.

[Beskar]

I will say one thing. Stop completely bashing RTW and M2:TW. While there are some gameplay elements which needed improving on, they were very good games.

R:TW was the game that got me into the series, and I enjoyed it and still do.

While I admit many mods made the games more fun, like EB, Lands to Conquer (I love the diplomatic system of that), etc. The developers should take ideas from these.

As for historical accuracy, it doesn't completely have to either, by the very definition of a Total War game, it evolves Ahistorical. It is a snapshot of a certain period of time then you model it from different angles, etc, that is what makes the game fun.

That is the rant at some of the kill joys, now at the developers.

Stop accusing the hardcore fans of everything, E:TW had some serious errors, from constant CTD and major flaws in other areas. Seriously, quit it. You released a shoddy product, you can blame Sega, but you did, accept it and move on. In E:TW, you also promised many things which were simply not given, such as the developers kit and the multi-player campaign in any shape or form.

What I have said ages ago and what you should do, is fix the errors, do what must be done, then release the developers kit and allow the community to make the game a great game.

[gollum]

Originally posted by Beskar
So completely bashing RTW and M2:TW.

Your opinion is worthy of respect, as is though mine.

No doubt you feel targeted because you believe that:

While there are some gameplay elements which needed improving on, they were very good games.

and because...

R:TW was the game that got me into the series, and I enjoyed it and still do.

My point of view comes from a certain part of the fanbase that started playing TW well before RTW arrived on the scene. I dont claim to be "enlightened" or "superior" or the "true fan" or anything, and i try to offer factual evidence wherever possible and available for what i say and imply.

As far as i am concerned "joy killers" should have been people who liked the gameplay offered by RTW/M2TW; but this is making it personal and i firmly believe that such an approach does not have a place in the .org because it polarises things uneccessarily - people are who they are and like what they like; my resentment and critique is with the developer, not with anyone else. You feel like praising CA for their games past RTW because you sincerely like them, please go ahead; i just feel like criticising them though, because i sincerely dislike them. Calling names and branding people though isnt particularly wise or just.

Different parts of the fanbase enjoy different things, and disagreeing as to what we like and dislike is by no means excuse for making it personal, for example i respect econ21 and enjoy reading his posts, despite squarely disagreeing with him on a number of things.

As for historical accuracy, it doesn't completely have to either, by the very definition of a Total War game, it evolves Ahistorical.

No it doesnt - it evolves in an alternate history path that isnt necessarily the one that took place, as history could and can go down various different paths depending on various factors and outcomes of key events (battles, political reforms, power structures, leader personalities, social structures, economic conditions etc). Modelling history means modelling the forces that control its dynamics and check the simulation for this; it does not mean forcing it to behave as real history did - this would be a recreation and not a simulation. Many people commonly brand alternate history paths "ahistorical" and then try to shut off people who mind historical plausinility with the argument that the game would be "ahistorical" anyway as you do here. This is false.

In that context, i talk about historical plausibility and not accuracy per se, because although history could have taken different turns there are also limits as to what could have happened set by the technological, cultural, political and other conditions of the period the simulation is set. Modelling such conditions properly as boundary values for the problem is also part of making a good, historically respectful simulation.

This has nothing to do with the "standard" historical accuracy complain relative to the shade of light in the viking helmets being wrongly depicted in Denmark during spring time Sunday afternoons in 1087AD. You just misunderstood the point.

[alh_p]

Originally Posted by Alexander the Pretty Good

"It's all SEGA's fault."

Exactly. Why on earth is he saying that though? Is it meant to deflect criticism of CA to their publisher? Will SEGA be happy with that?

Then contradicting the same point by saying "it's almost so much a part of life that its not worth mentioning" is all the more confusing. He's as incoherent as the fans he rails against!

What is the point of the blog?

Diversion? So that people complain about somehting other than ETW?

[kayapó]

Originally Posted by alh_p

Exactly. Why on earth is he saying that though? Is it meant to deflect criticism of CA to their publisher? Will SEGA be happy with that?

Then contradicting the same point by saying "it's almost so much a part of life that its not worth mentioning" is all the more confusing. He's as incoherent as the fans he rails against!

What is the point of the blog?

Diversion? So that people complain about somehting other than ETW?

You know, english is not my mother language and yet I can actually read his blog and understand what he says.

Is it really so hard to understand that his point is saying that the whole "money first" agenda is actually what keeps things running?
He isn't blaming Sega, if anything he is blaming life and how our world revolves arounds money.

I mean seriously, is it really that hard to just read what he is saying.

Mind you I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with his blog, actually he isn't writing for people to agree or not, but most people just glance over the words and read whatever they want not even making the smallest effort to understand what he is saying.

Diversion? Are you serious? By maintaining this blog he is not only putting his face out there to be bashed by senseless accusations but most of all he is keeping the argument alive. This is paradise for neurotic people that need the fix of beloging to a group that bashes on something (not you, just in general)

Anyway to me the part of the blog that stands out is when he said "occasionally successfully!". This is something that just seems to slip by most people. Making big complex strategy games, especially one of the scope of TW series, is not science. This is not a car, it is a colective artistic work. It is a combination of ideas translated to computer code. Sometimes it works well, sometimes it doesn't work so well.

Either way I think making a post here is basically pointless since the crowd will always scream and shout when it comes to bashing something together on the internet.

If it ever calms down a bit it might actually see that ETW is a very ambitious game that was unfortunatly rushed. That's it, no conspiracy theories. Not the end of the world, nobody is going to die because of this. The game after all it's patches is actually quite nice if you ask me and totally worth my time and money, but hey...that's me.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

This is paradise for neurotic people that need the fix of beloging to a group that bashes on something (not you, just in general)

Don't get between me and my fix.

And the "money first" argument is absolutely hogwash. Paradox makes arcane spreadsheet games that appeal to a smaller niche, and they're not whining about money problems when their game is buggy. They patch it. Same with plenty of smaller developers who focus on appealing to their core demographic and making the game actually work for them. If casual gamers like it, great, but that's not the focus.

CA's heads got too big for their coders after MTW.

[kayapó]

Originally Posted by Alexander the Pretty Good

And the "money first" argument is absolutely hogwash. Paradox makes arcane spreadsheet games that appeal to a smaller niche, and they're not whining about money problems when their game is buggy. They patch it.

In my opinion you are far from correct here. While CA and Paradox are very different in size, the issues that Paradox is having right now are very similar in cause to what happened with ETW.

In the end it comes down to a company only having so much money to alocate to a certain task. In case of Paradox they couldn't afford to test HOI3 forever while knowing that the game was so ambitious and big that it would take a year to play test it with their very limited testing capabilities. For CA it isn't that different, you have to release the game because well...where is the money going to come from to pay the bills?

The paycheks for salaries at CA must not be a joke. Have you ever thought about where the money comes to pay for that when they are between releases? How much money must CA pay every month in salaries and support. This isn't a joke, they probably (I have no idea actually) get the money for development from the publisher and the publisher sets a deadline to get its investment back. CA then does the best it can, with ETW it got a bit out of control, the game was just a bit too big in ideas for it's own good and when the deadline came they just had to cut losses and do what they could.

I'm sorry but I just don't buy into the whole conspiracy theory, we know better then everyone, case where CA is just dumb and can't do a thing right.

And in the end, it is for the money rigtht? But to get more money they need to be doing something right, if they are really so far from doing anything remotely correct then I'm sure CA will be bankrupt in no time.

No please don't think I'm advocating against criticism or argumenting that they could have done differently or better. I just don't buy the whole "we know better, they are stupid" idea.

I know it sounds provocative but please allow me, if CA's business ways are so so bad that every single person on forums around the world would do thousands of times better then they if at the helm of the company, somehow I just don't think they would be in business at all.

[gollum]

Originally posted by kayapó
While CA and Paradox are very different in size, the issues that Paradox is having right now are very similar in cause to what happened with ETW.

Its similar at release only, afterwards its light years away; paradox patches years after, CA has already stopped after 6 months. This is while there is good indication that the majority of players thinks that ETW needs more:
http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/poll.p...ts&pollid=3483

For CA it isn't that different, you have to release the game because well...where is the money going to come from to pay the bills?

Again for CA its vastly different because their patch policy is as their state-at-release policy: not good that is. As for the money, is coming in abundance by people who think just like you

...they probably (I have no idea actually)....

Thanks for conclusively clearing the matter then...

I'm sorry but I just don't buy into the whole conspiracy theory...

Its perfectly clear that you dont; you instead buy broken games that stay broken from a company that promises to fix them before release and plays deaf after, 3 times in a row (5 if you count the expansions), and after all this you still advocate faith in them. You have fun your way, others in their way...

And in the end, it is for the money rigtht? But to get more money they need to be doing something right, if they are really so far from doing anything remotely correct then I'm sure CA will be bankrupt in no time.

Well, then in that case corporations and the mafia must be doing everything right
And i think to myself...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnRqYMTpXHc

No please don't think I'm advocating against criticism or argumenting that they could have done differently or better.

Never crossed my mind...

I just don't buy the whole "we know better, they are stupid" idea.

Indeed, you seem to fondly prefer the whole "buy broken buggy games and shut up" one.

I know it sounds provocative but please allow me, if CA's business ways are so so bad that every single person on forums around the world would do thousands of times better then they if at the helm of the company, somehow I just don't think they would be in business at all.

On the other hand, and far less provocatively, if every single person on forums followed your line they would never go out of business. Absolute genious

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

kayapó - I did not bring up Paradox as an example of a company that is immune to buggy releases or market pressures. I brought them up as an example of a company that is prosperous while focusing only on their core fanbase. Their games are not casual-gamer friendly. And yet they are still in business, while providing superior post-release support.

How can they do that while CA can't? It apparently doesn't have anything to do with "survival" because Paradox has been in the biz for a while and doesn't look like they're going under. If CA can't afford to make games they want to play without drastic compromises in quality, then maybe they've become too big and need a few lean years to trim the fat.

I'm not going to feed the beast anymore. I bought RTW and M2TW because of the quality of MTW. I'm not going to give them the benefit of the doubt anymore.

[kayapó]

Originally Posted by gollum

Its perfectly clear that you dont; you instead buy broken games that stay broken from a company that promises to fix them before release and plays deaf after, 3 times in a row (5 if you count the expansions), and after all this you still advocate faith in them. You have fun your way, others in their way...

I actually am very found of constructive discussions. Not on the internet for obvious reasons but still. Merelly picking appart the text and taking quick jabs like this is a "who has the last word" game doesn't really come out as being fair.

Even though you totally ignored the main idea behind my posts I'll respond to you. What I personally do with my own money and time is actually not relevant for this discussion at all but if you must know I would never buy a game from a big published like Sega right off the box. I actually only bought ETW when I read the forums and comments on how 1.4 was going. I am very happy with my purchase and while I do find annoying glitches in the game it has payed up to its price more then enough.

That said, and what actually matters, is that people read the CA blog and don't even try to understand what he is saying, pretty much like you basically ignored my whole post to just take potshots at it. It is so much easier to just point the finger isn't it?

The way I see it, nothing good can come out of the senseless bashing that goes on most cases like this. There is hardly anything constructive that comes out of these discussions.

Originally Posted by Alexander the Pretty Good

kayapó - I did not bring up Paradox as an example of a company that is immune to buggy releases or market pressures. I brought them up as an example of a company that is prosperous while focusing only on their core fanbase. Their games are not casual-gamer friendly. And yet they are still in business, while providing superior post-release support.

Maybe you haven't been following the boards at Paradox but the mood there was very low following the release of HOI3. Oh and guess what most posts, I mean really all of them, were downright accusing Paradox of: "only wants our money", "doesn't care about hardcore fans", "gave in to market pressure and new consumers and dumbed down the game", please stop me when any of that sounds familiar.

I mean seriously if you just go right now and take a glance at the main HOI3 forums and go back one or two pages you'd be hard pressed to think it isn't ETW's forums when it was released.

Anyway...comparing Paradox and CA is not really fair, Paradox is like 12 people with a few very talented and passionate coders that just keep the ball rolling. CA is huge, it's not even close to comparable.

Now you can argue that despite being smaller you like Paradox's games better or that their patch policy (which is extremely controversial believe me) is better and more fair to consumers, but again they are different companies, different games and it is down to your choice.

[antisocialmunky]

Originally Posted by Fisherking

Remember, they send it on to Sega for a final QC approval.

So what does that tell you?

Great, Sega tests another one of their myrian game for a few days while the dev team has several years of not being satisfied enough to give it to their friends.

[Beskar]

What is worse is all these reviewers giving the game 10 out of 10... what game were they playing?

[econ21]

Originally Posted by gollum

In actuality however, you say all this because you are the kind of player that likes a TW-Civilization hybrid and is happy with where the series went, generally speaking. This is why, unlike many other veterans you enjoyed RTW. From your persepective what you say is true. From mine it isn't.

Well, just to clarify - I am not a fan of vanilla RTW, but got a lot of enjoyment out of its mods (especially RTR) and of M2TW via PBMs. What attracts me to the series is the embedding of "sound and fury" historical battles within a free-form campaign. Other games seem able to provide either historical battles or an interesting campaign, but not both. I see TW games as providing a sort of strategic sandbox game, where you can play a faction as you will (turtle, rush, role-play etc) and fight battles as you will (historical composition and tactics, victory at all costs exploits or conquer the map with only your own bodyguard type self-challenges). Some players are looking for a more chess-like experience (whether vs the AI or in MP) and I can see them being disappointed with the series from that perspective.

I do agree, however, that the basic weakness of the series from RTW onwards has been the strategic AI: your observations about the AI moving peicemeal and the player's big stack conquering cities gets to the heart of the issue for me. Even the mods can't really solve this, although they try to compensate by buffing the AI with money scripts and stationary garrisons etc. What is really needed is a crudely effective Civ type AI that just creates a stack of doom (I guess it would ultimately have to be stacks of doom) and gives the player a threat. STW and MTW provided that very effectively, but it's been lacking since (although I haven't played ETW enough to make a judgement there). It's a computer game, so I don't expect too much although Civ shows the bar can be set surprisingly high. I can't help thinking this is solvable; hence my interest in the series persists. If we can provide feedback to CA, this would be what I would focus on.

The other weaknesses are secondary. The ahistorical stuff is an irritant but so long as the series permits mods, it can be overcome. The battles seem to have improved from the nadir of the RTW Trebia demo - they have slowed down, allowing more tactics, and the AI seems to be gradually recovering to its STW/MTW competence. My limited experience of ETW and what I have read here is quite positive on that point.

[antisocialmunky]

To be quite fair, it takes a fair amount of play through to find all the broken aspects of 1.3 and I doubt the reviewers played it for long enough. He probably looked around the battle map, did some stuff on a list of features, and ran some battles.

[gollum]

Originally posted by kayapó
I actually am very found of constructive discussions.

As far as i can tell from your two above posts your interest is platonic.

Merelly picking appart the text and taking quick jabs like this is a "who has the last word" game doesn't really come out as being fair.

i can see where you are coming from, but this is hardly the case after what you have posted. This is a fan site and as such arguments should come from a fan's point of view; your point of view was placed (at least in the two posts you made above) with the developer; one who has been consistently singing the same marketing tune for 5 years now and delivering very little of what was promised as far as i am concerned.

As such, saying that "its all about money in the end" (apart from confirming what i've been saying all along), sounds terribly wrong to me.

Even though you totally ignored the main idea behind my posts I'll respond to you.

The idea behind your posts was too screamingly obvious i'm afraid to be ignored. Thank you for your response nonetheless.

What I personally do with my own money and time is actually not relevant for this discussion at all but if you must know I would never buy a game from a big published like Sega right off the box. I actually only bought ETW when I read the forums and comments on how 1.4 was going. I am very happy with my purchase and while I do find annoying glitches in the game it has payed up to its price more then enough

I'm happy for you. However for me and apparently many others, ETW wasn't worth even a quarter of the price paid yet irrespective of version.

That said, and what actually matters, is that people read the CA blog and don't even try to understand what he is saying, pretty much like you basically ignored my whole post to just take potshots at it. It is so much easier to just point the finger isn't it?

No it isn't and for the proof of it notice that i didn't rush to respond in your first post - your second one however that basically said that people that make arguments against the official line because they have reasons and evidence to believe they were tricked one more time should basically let it go for the financial well being of CA.

Not to mention that you seemed quite happy to being the typical basher of bashers, a type of forumite that i got to know pretty wellover the years. The last refuge of people that get in that mentality is calling other's posts and arguments bashing and making a case for maturity and "constructive" criticism.

If you are around here the years your regitration says you are, you should know that what i am on about is nothing knew. Its been like this for a long time now for a certain part of the fanbase; CA had tons of feedback and "constructive" criticism before RTW from the core fanbase.

They went though and made Rome as accessible to the mainstream as possible; this is hardly "making the game for hardcore fans"; its the same kind of white lie that Mr Simpson bangs on to this day. They did it because theyknew that once their fanbase was expanded, the people that came in with Rome would "silence" the "whinners". They would have to go along or drop out. All this, is hardly "designing for the hardcore fanbase".

As such i feel compelled to underline the fact - only to be called names by "mature" people such as you, whose "maturity" disallows to say anything that might go against the official line. No emotional attachment is permited, after all this is a product right? Well for accoutants and bosses yes; for me the fan, no. It is a hobby, something that i do to challenge, enjoy and entertain myself. Cold market logic destroys the "love of the game". Well if CA is unable to make games that radiate such a thing and are addressed to people that seek such a thing, they should at least come out and say it. "We are designing for the maximum profits possible and hence we couldn't care less about what our core fanbase wants because we have to make the game accessible to all". Had Mr Simpson said that, believe me, i wouldnt have bothered to say a word here.

And for the proof of the argument listen not to me, but to yourself:

The way I see it, nothing good can come out of the senseless bashing that goes on most cases like this. There is hardly anything constructive that comes out of these discussions.

Originally posted by econ21
The other weaknesses are secondary. The ahistorical stuff is an irritant but so long as the series permits mods, it can be overcome. The battles seem to have improved from the nadir of the RTW Trebia demo - they have slowed down, allowing more tactics, and the AI seems to be gradually recovering to its STW/MTW competence.

Being ahistorical is indeed irritating and secondary, however i disagree with you about the battles. M2TW was just as bad (if not worse) than Rome as was its AI (as CA itself has confirmed). The only thing that was altered was marching speeds and melee times. Both were too slow, in particular melee was made the way it was most likely due and for the new unit animations that killed off unit match ups, since melees took ages. Even if you matched units incorrectly, they would fight for long times making effectively flanking the dominant winning tactic. This gave the advantage to the side that was coming to the battlefield with the most units, which was, you guessed it, the player in the vast majority of cases.

Charges were so strong that in mp limits were set in the number of cavalry units that players were allowed to bring while in SP all cavalry armies trounced the opposition. Charge casualties even from light cavalry versus heavy infantry were more than 50% on impact. So i am not exactly sure for what tactics you are talking about, except i you are reffering to the click behind pikes exploits and the like or the rush on rush tactics and armies that were king in that game.

ETW has undoubtedly potential and the batllefield balance is no doubt far better than RTW/M2TW, but still quite some way apart from STW/MTW. I am not sure about the AI, although it has its moments other times its completely clueless. To be fair he has to deal with a situation where almost all units are hybrids (missile/melee) and the TW AI was always at a disadvantage in using those ever since time immemorial, not to mention artillery. It would seem that although effort has gone in too it, CA chose (as it would typicaly do) prematurely to go into a gunpoweder era as far as the battlefield AI is concerned.

Originallyposted by Beskar
What is worse is all these reviewers giving the game 10 out of 10... what game were they playing?

The same game they always play: $$$

Most large publishers, editors and record companies have a network of "affiliated" media, which they basically own or can strongly influence. Game reviewers are no different than record reviewers, movie reviewers, book reviewers etc. They know better than biting the hand that feeds them. And for the "deniers", this is no conspiracy theory; its how the system works and i got to know it and see it firsthand - this is why the quality driven and core fanbase conscious Mr Simpson decided to blog as he told us himself. 67% average user score on metacritic against 90% from reviewers - this provided me with more fun than all CA games together past RTW.

[Asai Nagamasa]

This debate was an interesting one, but is fast turning into "the old engine vs the new". That's not so bad in itself but at all times we should try to remain civil and respect the opinions of our fellow orgahs, irrespective of how different those opinions may be.