CA blog from Mike Simpson

[Martok]

As Spock might say: "Fascinating...."

Link (http://blogs.sega.com/totalwar/2009/10/01/blogging-for-quality-by-mike-simpson/#more-145)

Thursday Oct 01, 2009
Blogging for Quality - by Mike Simpson

Well, I’ve finally given in and decided to start blogging. It’s something I’ve tried to resist over the years. I’ve also not posted directly on the forums, and it’s mainly because it takes so much time. Many of the issues discussed on the forums are deep and complex, and the arguments well put and compelling. Writing considered and persuasive responses that really deal with the issue is time consuming, and that is time I can’t spend working on the games.

So it’s a choice - fix stuff, or talk about fixing stuff. Seems like a no-brainer, but things have changed. I can now add more quality to the games by talking to the community than I can by fixing issues.

Quite simply, the quality of what we produce depends directly on how much we get to spend on developing them. How much we spend depends directly on how many people buy the games. The user feedback on sites like IGN directly impacts sales, and that impacts how positively our publisher views the future of Total War, which determines how much we get to spend on the games.

Normally it’s a virtuous circle, and that’s allowed us to be very ambitious with what we try to deliver. We were not entirely happy with the state of Empire: Total War when it went out, and are only now getting to a point where we are broadly speaking happy with the game. Our own threshold for how we’d like the game to be is much higher than the commercial threshold required by our publisher. We are, like our community, hardcore fans of our own products, and any imperfections drive us nuts.

With Empire: Total War, the virtuous circle turned a little vicious. The community used user ratings and user comments on sites like IGN and Metacritic to highlight weaknesses in the game, to try to encourage us to fix existing issues before working on anything new.

I’m not saying that we didn’t deserve to have a fair number of verbal bricks thrown our way.

However overdoing the criticism (For example I think a 67% user score on Metacritic is unfair), has the opposite effect to what is intended. Gamers (and reviewers. retailers, marketeers and publishing execs) will be put off Total War. That could mean fewer sales and less money to spend on adding quality to the games.

And so I find myself blogging. The aim is twofold. Firstly, I want to explain why we do the things we do, and also a little more detail about what we’re spending our time (and your money) on. That should give the community a much better starting point for discussing issues. Secondly, I want to prove we listen to the community by directly addressing the big issues. I’ll be as honest as I can be without getting sued or fired.

Anyway, I started this by saying I’d rather be fixing the game than talking about it. That’s true, but talking about it is a pretty good second best. I’ll start with the 1.5 patch and AI on the next update, and then go on to talk about Napoleon - what it is, why it’s the size it is, how that affects the price.

Mike Simpson


At the very least, I found it an interesting read. I think this has been about the most candid anyone from CA has been with us in a long time; kudos to Simpson for having posted it. I can at least partially see where they're coming from now.

That being said, however, I still don't know how much I can truly sympathize with CA. They're still guilty of often having promised far more than what they've actually delivered on....and IMHO they really have no one but themselves to blame -- either for budgeting insufficient development time, and/or making a bigger game than the development time allotted to them by the publisher would allow for. While I'm generally critical of how publishers frequently seem to push games out the door before they're ready, I suppose I can't entirely blame Sega for getting impatient.

On the other hand, I'm pleasantly surprised that there's already a 1.5 patch in the works. (I'm even happier that, like 1.4, it's apparently going to be heavily focused on the AI.) It gives me some hope that Empire will maybe receive the support it needs to achieve its potential.

[Crazed Rabbit]

A vicious cycle, hmm? He makes the point that if us buyers had been easier on ETW, they would have made more money with it and been able to spend more making the next game.

That is true, I suppose. But it also makes me wonder; what incentive would CA have to improve the game if we didn't complain and thereby hurt them financially? If we didn't, they'd be rewarded for giving us a shoddy product. Perhaps now they'll have more incentive to make a better product than ETW so they don't suffer financial consequences. So really we're helping them.

Another thing I noticed; they're admitting now that they weren't happy with the release state of ETW. Gee, that'd seem to imply they were lying back when the game was released, weren't they? I think the 67% score for the release game is fair.

Now, what would that lead us to believe about what they're saying about NTW? I, for one, have the feeling I'm going to be punched in the face (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=2343757&postcount=98)again.

Well, if I was planning on buying NTW. Given how ETW's AI performed after CA promised dramatic AI improvements, I'd have to be a real sucker. The blog is an improvement, I suppose. It's good to know they plan to work on ETW more, but I don't plan on spending any more money, and I doubt I'll be spending much time on their games I already own, so I feel distant.

Finally, I want to say I'm not trying to accuse any specific employee of anything; I understand their jobs and that they can't say what they believe all the time. It's how the business works. But I take their past statements into consideration when they talk about their next game. That's how I work.

CR

[Yun Dog]

Facinating indeed

Sooo the bottom line was we are to blame for putting at risk the future of total war, because we voiced our dissatisfaction with a product they now admit was not in a good state at release.

really CA have a perfect storm and the only people responsible for it is themselves.

1) people were angry about the game receiving high review scores when it was barely working, so to some extent they went to reviewing sites to show both their frustration with the game, but to correct the review sites from misleading other punters.

2) the blatant denial and spin by CAs PR department just added fuel to the fires

3) The untimely announcement of NTW, rather than envoking a positive response, further fuelled the fire and caused an ugly backlash, such that almost any anouncement by CA was fervently set apon with 'fix ETW first'.

4) unsolicited and unwelcome DLC and patch changes to the game (force fed thanks to steam) was CA version of taking a stick to a bull ant nest.

5) a groundswell of support to 'sack the quaterback' and have TW be taken over by another developer has found furtile ground in the embers of the ETW trainwreck.

and Im sorry... what was that... we're.. the bad guys here.!!!

so now this guy is showing us how much hurt we are causing to our beloved TW by voicing our dissatisfaction and being generally disloyalists. Probably in the hope of quenching some of the flames before the NTW train arrives. but he'd rather be fixing the game

maybe he shouldve signed it Homer and finished with a 'DOH'

whats that sound??... choo choo!! is that the 3:10 from NTW, someone better tell them the track is out!! someone.... anyone.... :beam:

I wonder what its score on Metacritic will be :thumbsdown:

[Peasant Phill]

The positive:
- A mea culpa from a developer
- Confirmation that they're working on patch 1.5 with a focus on AI

The negative:
- He apparently can't see that the critical customer reviews and the consequential drop of sales was the long overdue wakeup call. I can't really blame him as he's thinking in terms of budget and time for development rather than in supply and demand. Perhaps higher-ups do get the signal and react appropriatly.

[edyzmedieval]

Most of the times it's not the developer, it's more likely the publisher who's been pushing CA to release E:TW before time. Dissapointing, but thumbs up CA for this blog post.

[Peasant Phill]

Most of the times it's not the developer, it's more likely the publisher who's been pushing CA to release E:TW before time. Dissapointing, but thumbs up CA for this blog post.

Point taken, but for now I can settle with at least someone from CA/SEGA acknowledging that ETW as shipped was far from finished.

[Sheogorath]

CA has, in my opinion, made real progress from a year ago. They've gone from denial and dithering to apologizing and getting something done.

True, ETW needs mods to bring out it's real potential, but the base game is basically playable now, at least.

The consumer-blame isn't good, though. They've done this a few times, as I recall. CA's team need to get over themselves on that point and admit that it's not the fault of the consumer for giving bad reviews to a product they themselves admit was broken on release. The product has been fixed now, more or less, and hopefully 1.5 will polish it up even more.

If 1.5 can hold up to expectations, I may actually buy NTW. And even the next TW game...at least, once it's been reviewed by independent sources and patched a bit.

[Yun Dog]

Point taken, but for now I can settle with at least someone from CA/SEGA acknowledging that ETW as shipped was far from finished.


I dont know Phill

I dont see how his admission is positive or in fact has any impact on anything - [edit} in fact it shows their willingness to release unfinished betas despite the reservations of their own staff.

other than an attempt to gain the trust of his audience as a 'truth sayer'

Is the admission of some guy who isnt the head of CA that ETW was released unfinished going to mean that NTW wont be released in the same state??

or that I didnt have to wait 8 months for a MPC which was promised for shortly after release

In what way is Mr Simpsons candid remarks, blame casting, and explanation of how if you release a broken product people complain and you dont make as much money from the next one.. going to improve TW at all?

they have already shown a complete disregard for the wishes of their community - and this does nothing to change that

fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me

there wont be a twice

dunno maybe Im missing the momentus significance of this blog which essentially says nothing

[Peasant Phill]

@ Lord Yunson

I'm not saying I'm overjoyed with this blog, rather that I'm choosing to see the silver lining( and stay cautious at the same time). The fact that this blog is an advertising tool is rather obvious. That Mr. Simpson threathens us as consumers is downright sad.
However, As Mr. Simpsons' blog is an advertising tool, I must asume that someone else has approved it in order to post it on the sega website. In other words, it's not just one developer saying that ETW was shipped to early. Let's just hope that Simpsons' view on the 'budget-sales-budget'-cycle isn't shared by everyone at CA/SEGA.

[Yun Dog]

I agree

lets hope that its not just words to placate us

and that hope carries us to purchase the expansion pack/not an expansion pack scripted campaign

but I personally had those same hopes when I read other words about what a revolutionary improvement ETW would be.

they say hope dies last.. mine died some months ago

now only bitterness remains :laugh4:

[Dradem]

I for one am happy with the blog,

Ok they released it to early no doubt about it, probably due to pressure from SEGA.
But also from a lot of the Fan base I remeber reading posts here and on the /shoguntotalwar.yuku.com (not to mention on other sites) that a lot couldn't wait for the release and where angry that it even got postponed for a few weeks.

I'm not blaming us just pointing this out.

[Boohugh]

But also from a lot of the Fan base I remember reading posts here and on the /shoguntotalwar.yuku.com (not to mention on other sites) that a lot couldn't wait for the release and where angry that it even got postponed for a few weeks.

I agree with this sentiment. Have you all forgotten all the DEMO spamming that occurred on these forums as release date approached? That was just a symptom of a general community feeling that the game should be released sooner rather than later and there were relatively few voices saying CA should take their time even if it were to add another 6 months or more to development time.

With a publisher trying to push the product out of the door and the community pushing for a release, what would you have done in CA's position?

Now, I'm not trying to absolve all blame from CA because they perhaps should have stood firmer against Sega as they clearly didn't have a stable and polished product (I don't want to use the word "finished" as I don't think a game can ever be finished as such, there are always improvements you could make) and Sega's own Q&A department should have realised the product wasn't up to scratch either. They could then have made a joint statement to the effect of explaining the game wasn't polished enough, or stable enough, to release at that point to appease the community to some extent (although as I said earlier, I think that would only have appeased a minority with the majority wanting an immediate release just because they don't care about the 'polish' as much).

Additionally, a number of you have admonished Mr Simpson for saying that the community has potentially compromised future quality by criticising the game so heavily. Whether you feel his criticism of us is justified or not, you seem to be ignoring the fact he is correct. If, due to the criticism of the community as a whole, sales of ETW fell significantly, then we will have impacted on future game development as they will have less money to spend. I'm not trying to debate whether they "deserved" it or not due to releasing a sub-par product, but I can certainly sympathise with Mr Simpson's position as a game developer. He presumably wants to create the best game he can, both for himself and the community, but is constricted by the amount of time and money given to him. Now if that amount of time and money is constricted even further due to the same community criticising all his work, I imagine that would be a very frustrating position to be in.

I think part of the problem was so much of the criticism was negative rather than constructive. Constructive criticism would help the developers fix aspects of the game, whereas lots of it was basically "oh, the game is broken" or "the way that aspect was designed is rubbish". That doesn't really help them track down problems or figure out why something doesn't seem fun (and remember they have to take into account a whole range of opinions about what is fun and well designed, as well as their own vision of the game which may well be different to your own).

All the negative criticism the game received from the community didn't really help anyone. The developers had to sift through all the dross to get to the useful nuggets of information on what the actual problems with the game were. The community atmosphere turned hostile and unfriendly to both CA and each other (you just need to read the posts in this thread to see how it has affected people, they've generally become cynical and hostile to any effort by CA to communicate with us now). In the end the victim of all this criticism is the game itself, in that problems don't get solved as quickly or at all and there is less money to spend on game development in the future.

So, I can wholeheartedly sympathise with Mr Simpson's position and his views on the damage the community has done to the game. He acknowledges in his first blog that the game went out when it shouldn't have and that CA deserved some criticism for this, saying:


I’m not saying that we didn’t deserve to have a fair number of verbal bricks thrown our way.

I think we now need to acknowledge that the community does deserve to carry some blame too. We had the chance to show the Total War community can be mature and criticise a game whilst remaining constructive and we comprehensively failed at that task, and it has damaged the game and its future as a result.

[Khorak]

I no longer have much truck with excuses, because they're meaningless to me as a consumer in the first place, let alone after they're all I've been getting. You don't get to tell the community what is and isn't fair in how they judge your product, it's a process where they take what you've given them, and you only get to watch as the result comes out. If they think you've given them something bad, that's the end of it. With the sheer numbers involved, it starts to become entirely amoral and faceless; you'll be able to put a face to a .org member and make judgments on them, but that Metacritic rating? Nah, that's what you get. There's no 'too harsh' anymore, the votes get tallied and that's how you did. If the game was ultimately good in spite of a few problems here and there, the averages would show that, but no, there are such vast numbers of people casting their vote on the basis of being buried under an army of bugs and inadequate gameplay that you end up with just what you deserve.

I, and no-one else, has any responsibility to spend money or recommend the spending of money, on anything they don't think they should. If that impacts future game development, that's not our fault. We are not the ones who put out a product which cannot be recommended in such a fashion. Any thought otherwise is an act of absolutely incredible hubris, and if you've slipped into a mindset that we should buy and recommend things regardless just in the hope that the future developments won't be a continuation of an apparently failing/failed process, then you get everything you deserve when it comes crashing down around your ears.

[caravel]

Sooo the bottom line was we are to blame for putting at risk the future of total war, because we voiced our dissatisfaction with a product they now admit was not in a good state at release.

That's how I read it as well. The whole blog is marketing pure and simple.

The blog tells us nothing new, reading between the lines, it's the same old "buy the games, don't criticise them (because ratings hit our (SEGA's) profits) and we 'promise' to fix it all later as we did with ETW, M2TW and RTW" ..........

-Edit: It's looks like CA have realised that the blogging/messageboard communites can damage sales by supposedly "hijacking" online user reviews and this is what has prompted this "counteroffensive".

It's only a matter of time before the TW bubble finally bursts. In the past us players complained about "fantasy units", historical inaccuracies and other fine points. Nowadays the complaints are about bugs, poor MP implimentation, serious game balance issues, AI problems, visual glitches, copy protection software, etc, etc. That says a lot about the decreasing standards of the games.


I think we now need to acknowledge that the community does deserve to carry some blame too. We had the chance to show the Total War community can be mature and criticise a game whilst remaining constructive and we comprehensively failed at that task, and it has damaged the game and its future as a result.
I totally disagree with this. The communtiy provides input and the developer can selectively choose to either use it or ignore it. The community is absolutely not to blame for how the TW series has turned out. That fault lies squarely with the developer.

:2cents:

[Monk]

Well this is not what I was expecting when I woke up this morning, but it is a bit of a nice surprise. Communities love to get attention from developers, and any bone thrown to us to make us feel that our comments aren't being out right ignored is always a plus. I have to commend Simpson for coming flat out and laying it down, even if I may not agree with it. We're big boys and girls, we can take it.

I was one of the loudest supporters of ETW prior to release, and I was banging the "demo" drum just like everyone else. I was also one of the ones who was severely disappointed with the state of the game in 1.0 and have not shied away from voicing my criticism. However, i have to take issue with the feeling that "too much criticism is a bad thing". I perfectly understand the sentiment, don't get me wrong. Poor reviews can kill a game and end all hopes of future support. But it's not as if anyone fabricated things to say about ETW, nearly every complaint* that was filed against it was completely fair. I have an important question - and If any CA developers are reading this please do not take it the wrong way this is a candid and honest question.

What score do you think Empire deserved, CA? Now. I'm not speaking of the Empire of today, version 1.4. That Empire has certainly come a long way (but oddly, still has a while to go before we get to what we were promised.) Instead, i ask what do score do you think Empire version 1.0 deserved? I dislike rating systems as they try to boil down the act of enjoyment into an arbitrary number. No reviewer uses honest numbers either, because if they did the score for a truely average game would be 5 of 10, not 7 of ten. But I'd be genuinely interested as to what some developers think on this subject since a 6.7 is "unfair".

This isn't an investment, this is a video game. One that i paid good money to enjoy. As it stands, i'm not enjoying it. My criticism has been aimed at helping the 'powers that be' get a handle on the situation so that they could improve it, not hinder that process. Criticism is only truly unfair when it is used in the hands of those who would destroy that process with argumentative attitudes and unwillingness to compromise. You won't find any of that here, all I want is what we were promised. All i want is better AI.

I stand by earlier comments i've made on this site, and in support Crazed Rabbit's point on NTW. Many of us felt NTW was a slap in the face when the core game still has so many problems. Especially since the touted features of NTW didn't seem to address those problems. It's good to see that they are continuing their patch support, and my fears of there being a "1.4 and no more" were unfounded. We're not out to get you, CA. We're frustrated, we're tired, and we would prefer that we didn't have to pay another $30 for features that were promised in the core game.





*barring rants that are emotionaly driven, of course

[econ21]

I think the blog is a good step - it shows that CA shares some of the concerns voiced at the Org about the ETW AI. The daily diary was already a novel attempt to try to engage with the community, but now that things are slowing down, that format is less attractive. The 1.4 and 1.5 patches are promising too, suggesting it is not just words.

The blog all but confirms the charge that ETW was rushed out the door for monetary reasons before it was ready. Perhaps the concerns expressed about the negative impact of community feedback on sales will give the money-men reason to pause before repeating that mistake.

Looking at the metacritic user ratings, I was struck by how many 0s and the like were given by users who suffered from CTDs or just could not get the game to run. My impression from the fansites is that those problems were not so common (I've never experienced one). In that sense, I suspect the 6.7 may be unfair: there may be a negative selectivity, of people with technical problems being more likely to rate it.


What score do you think Empire deserved, CA? Now. I'm not speaking of the Empire of today, version 1.4. That Empire has certainly come a long way ...

That's an interesting question, but also largely rhetorical. No one is playing 1.0 anymore. Just as no one is playing RTW 1.0. As the "revolutionary" step in the TW series, there were bound to be more teething troubles - just as RTW had more patches and problems than M2TW. I am reminded of the P-51 fighter or the Panther tank of WW2, which when they first came out were seen as very problematic due to poor technical performance, but then were revamped and reworked to become world-beaters.

What I am interested in, is what ETW will be like after the dust has settled (1.5+?) and what NTW will be like? Replaying RTW, I find it hard to avoid the conclusion that - despite the splendour of some of the mods - it is terribly hamstrung by the woeful strategic AI. Just trying hitting "end turn" for 20 turns in a row mid-way in a campaign to see what I mean. I confess I've put ETW to one side until it stabilises (was going to try 1.4, but with a 1.5 coming, am not sure it's sensible). But from the feedback in the Org to 1.4, I think there's a good chance ETW will end up leaving a better legacy.

[Peasant Phill]

It's only a matter of time before the TW bubble finally bursts. In the past us players complained about "fantasy units", historical inaccuracies and other fine points. Nowadays the complaints are about bugs, poor MP implimentation, serious game balance issues, AI problems, visual glitches, copy protection software, etc, etc. That says a lot about the decreasing standards of the games.

I've been saying this a few times of late, as have others many times before: It was about time the TW community gave a signal (by decreasing sales) to CA/SEGA that the TW series was in a decline of quality. Ever since RTW, some org members have pointed out that the lack of competition lulled CA into lazyness. I hope they now renew there effort in upcoming patches and TW titles.

[Monk]

Looking at the metacritic user ratings, I was struck by how many 0s and the like were given by users who suffered from CTDs or just could not get the game to run. My impression from the fansites is that those problems were not so common (I've never experienced one). In that sense, I suspect the 6.7 may be unfair: there may be a negative selectivity, of people with technical problems being more likely to rate it.

Without having looked, there's a good chance those are earlier reviews. CTD and lockups were very commonly reported in regards to ETW in the first few months. I haven't had a CTD for a long time, personally. At least two patches ago.




That's an interesting question, but also largely rhetorical. No one is playing 1.0 anymore. Just as no one is playing RTW 1.0.

Perhaps, but it is one I felt compelled to ask. To decry the current rating of ETW on metacritic as unfair just begs the question of "What would you give it." 1.0 was the state of things at release and where many critic scores based their opinions on. There are over 1800+ user ratings, so its hard to tell how many of them were playing which version. Well, beside going through each of them date by date and guessing. :shrug:


I think the blog is a good step - it shows that CA shares some of the concerns voiced at the Org about the ETW AI. The daily diary was already a novel attempt to try to engage with the community, but now that things are slowing down, that format is less attractive. The 1.4 and 1.5 patches are promising too, suggesting it is not just words.

On this we can agree.

[Husar]

So basically some shareholders peed in their pants and now we're supposed to make a happy face over a pile of bugs so that the shareholders can earn a bit more money due to more unhappy but force-smiling customers? :laugh4:

[antisocialmunky]

They've been on a downward trend since RTW. If any other company were releasing polished unbroken games in the same vein, CA would have been in trouble. However, the simple fact that the developpers who capitalized on TW's success with clones have not met with the same success and that the games are equally buggy make me wonder if CA's onyl advantage is the TW label.

[al Roumi]

The communtiy provides input and the developer can selectively choose to either use it or ignore it. The community is absolutely not to blame for how the TW series has turned out. That fault lies squarely with the developer.


Indeed, CA and or Mr Simpson look frankly naive expecting the community of consumers to accept responsability for CA's misfortunes.

My charitable guess is that Mr Simpson is a good programmer who unfortunately has a fairly flimsy grasp of the market economy or expectations of it that are inconsistent with reality.


So it’s a choice - fix stuff, or talk about fixing stuff. Seems like a no-brainer, but things have changed. I can now add more quality to the games by talking to the community than I can by fixing issues.

What so "things didn't used to be like this" when:
1. there wasn't such an easy way for the community of our consumers to react to us directly and
2. when CA produced more complete/stable/enjoyable products -without shameless marketing gimmicks to squeeze more payback out of initial sales (Special forces edition)

What I find particularily galling is what I interpret as CA's perception that we as their consumers should appreciate their efforts -whatever they end up being and never mind what we expect them to be as a result of their marketing.

I can see why they might think that simply producing code which allows a consumer to play a game with a resulting "experience" should engender a mininum of respect and thanks -we wouldn't have anything to complain about if they hadn't programmed the game. Nonetheless, the short sightedness and lack of customer empathy of this point of view is astonishing.

If anything, ETW is a cautionary tale for CA, Sega and any developer who pushes their marketing beyond what their production team can actually provide.

ETW really has suffered from poor management and decisions which overall have made the publisher and developer look mendacious and more interested in exploiting new DLC features for financial reward than consumer enjoyment.

[Fisherking]

I appreciate the blog.

I don get the feeling that he wanted to stop criticism. I think he was just telling it as it is.

We have to differentiate between constructive criticism and just bashing.

I know the game was buggy in 1.01 and they deserved the unfinished label for it but unlike some of you I thought 1.01 showed a great deal of potential with a few fixes.

It was what they did in 1.2 and 1.3 that was so bad. By 1.3.1 it was getting a bit better but they through in the black knight diplomacy which brought on more gripes.

I too was an ardent supporter of ETW before release but after 1.2 I was accused of bashing. I didn’t see it that way though, and I would do it again. I thought they took things that were working fine and trashed them and put in some quick fixes to placate a vocal minority.

Well as various points they put things back mostly how they were and things are looking up.

The largest part of it is fixed now. I am mostly satisfied with what they have given us and I think I got my money’s worth out of it.

I am even considering buying the War Path Campaign, something I didn’t see happening just a few days ago.

Depending on support and developments I might even take a (skeptical) look at NTW.

[Durallan]

First off I'll try to explain why people may have gone for meta critics score, I anticipated Empire Total War quite eagerly even downloading the demo on my measly connection to see what it was like, (for my old computer, that struggled) I started off hearing about its announcement, then I read a preview in my favourite magazine and talked with a few friends and got excitied about its release, I then read about the Special Forces Edition coming with a special unit if I pre-ordered the game, I also foolishly thought it was the Collectors Edition, which it was not.

(Note to developers, put out a STANDARD and COLLECTORS edition game (try NOT to put ingame content in the collectors, that doesn't attract me, pretty maps or figurines or t-shirts or making of dvd's or a keychain, something appropriate to the game...)

The title on the preview, Exclusive Interview and Details! EMPIRE TOTAL WAR: 40,000 Redcoats agree: This is the BIGGEST strategy game ever!

I would have pre ordered the Collectors edition had I known there WAS one. I thought it was the special forces edition, foolish me. I then finally read the review of the game in my favourite magazine. They Scored as follows:
Gameplay: 10 - More theatres, more nations, more tactics, more tech, more Brilliant!
Innovation: 7 - New features don't always come off that well
Polish: 8 - lacking some big features at launch, waiting for DLC
Overall: 9 - Best of Total War, but some less than fantastic new additions

Now surely I could be forgiven for thinking that it meant it was rather bug free. Of course you expect a few bugs... But I couldn't even complete a campaign in 1.0, my computer kept crashing because of that incredibly annoying clicking on a ship CTD. I personally think it is probably half the game magazines faults as well of hyping up the game. I almost feel rereading the review that they went forward in time and managed to get a copy of 1.4 somehow! At any rate, I would have given polish, a 1 if they were lucky.

So my problems with the game at that point were technical and not, about how the AI was going about its business. I was fortunate to not be one of the people who couldn't even start the game. Now if I was one of those people I would have been veeeery angry. It is only fair, if someone buys a fridge or something that isn't easily tested at the store before you take it home and it isn't working at all when you try to turn it on or use it, you would have a right to a full refund. Obviously computers are complex and CA cannot test every configuration of computers known to mankind, but it felt to me that there were bugs that CA really should have identified even before release.

I can agree with the RELEASE IT RELEASE IT! sentiment although I thought I was more concerned that it be released bug free than prematurely. Either way it was released when it was and most people agree that it probably could have had a couple more months in the tank, but if I remember christmas was coming up and no one can miss that opportunity! (or am I completely misremembering when it was released? not good with dates...)

At least the naval changes don't seem to have destroyed the balance of the game, and 1.4 is making alot more sense than 1.3 ever did.

I would have hoped that CA picked up that people felt the AI could be a bit smarter after Medieval 2 Total War, and that someone double checks their unit stats, (shield bug!) before going gold.

I must say I am thoroughly angry at the magazine I buy that they did not seem to pick up on a single bug in Empire yet have thoroughly bunked a game called ARMA II which is apparently buggy, (never played it but suprised at the polish score they gave it when they were so generous with empire)

I believe the hostile community reaction is because simply, it was over hyped and not tested enough before release. Note how few people complain about having to wait for the Multiplayer Campaign (my most desired feature) I think we can take a few months for the whole game too! Project managment is mainly about time management, developers need to give publishers realistic completion dates and then add 3 months to cover problems that crop up (because they will, murphys law!) and Publishers need to give the developers that time because while games are incredibly simple compared to real life, they are incredibly complex! and therefore need alot of time to be worked on. If that happened in a magical fantasy land, games might not be so buggy on release and be more fun. (Most people I would hope realise that there will always be bugs in computer games, (they even get them in consoles now, no excuse there!)

CA, feel thoroughly shamed about ETW's Release, learn from it and improve on it. I realise there is only so much you can do, but PLEASE make the AI have the essential ingredient, and that is intelligence! the AI in this game needs to behave more cohesively and form up alliances and form power blocs because thats hows things worked, you built up alliances and went to war, (world war one and two are good examples) Like has been explained earlier, make sure the AI can ACTUALLY WIN YOUR GAME before you set it up against a player! then see how it goes compared to a player and then try to improve the AI till it is on par with average players, then set the difficulty modifers accordingly. Of course who am I to be telling people who make games how to do things, but just having played them for a long time, thats just how I feel.

Its a complex game, theyve done the graphics, now they need to work on the machinery behind it.

[Crazed Rabbit]

I stand by earlier comments i've made on this site, and in support Crazed Rabbit's point on NTW. Many of us felt NTW was a slap in the face when the core game still has so many problems. Especially since the touted features of NTW didn't seem to address those problems. It's good to see that they are continuing their patch support, and my fears of there being a "1.4 and no more" were unfounded. We're not out to get you, CA. We're frustrated, we're tired, and we would prefer that we didn't have to pay another $30 for features that were promised in the core game.

Oh, I wouldn't worry about that. It's definitely going to be $50. It's not an expansion, after all, it's a full game! Though with less of a period change than the first MTW expansion, so they have to change much less, and can get it out the door faster. Heck, it's very convenient; they make the game they were supposed to with ETW and get to charge people for a whole new game!

And look at the end of the blog post, where he says he's going to talk about NTW's price. He wouldn't have to do that if it were $20 or $30, because that's what people expect to pay for an expansion. Instead he mention's the size of NTW and how that affects the price. And the size is a whole brand new campaign! Well, not new at all, just the current campaign moved 100 years, but you get my point.

It's $50.

CR

[econ21]

It's $50.

In some ways, I hope so - if it means a bigger game.

The worse case scenario is another Alexander Total War (or, I know this is unfashionable, Mongol Total Invasion). A small, half-baked campaign that added little.

What I thought most likely to be the case is a Barbarian Invasion or Viking Invasion. A fairly meaty campaign - not quite as big as the original game, but where the AI arguably poses more of a challenge.

But both of those would only justify an expansion price tag. I suspect you are right about the $50. They seem to be marketing it as a full game - the evolutionary successor to ETWs revolutionary step, a M2TW to RTW, or a MTW to STW. If that is so, then we are entitled to expect something pretty major.

And to be fair, the Napoleonic Campaigns do offer that prospect. They seem as well suited as any period in history for the TW strategic layer - a fair number of major powers, who could each credibly pose a threat. The little we have learned so far - more provinces in Europe, modelling supply - sound promising. I'm not wild about "Road to independence" type campaigns. The period seems better suited to a MTW style "early/medium/high" structure of alternate start dates, as France's power definitely flowed and then ebbed. There would be quite a lot of potential for selling separate campaigns as DLCs - Spain and Russia stand out, but there could be others. But the $50 price tag makes me more curious rather than less.

[Zenicetus]

Sooo the bottom line was we are to blame for putting at risk the future of total war, because we voiced our dissatisfaction with a product they now admit was not in a good state at release.

That does seem to sum it up. The blog post was remarkably thin-skinned, coming from someone in a game company trying to communicate with their audience. There seems to be an implied expectation that people who have followed CA over the years, and bought previous games, should be good fans of the series. We should keep a stiff upper lip and suffer through the flaws on release; we should help to boost the ratings at places like Metacritic out of past loyalty and future expectations.

It doesn't work like that, not for me anyway. I like to support game companies that are consistent in providing good gaming with minimum hassles on my end. Life is too short, and there are other good games out there to play. Maybe not games exactly like the TW series, but good enough. I don't like being asked to be patient for fixes to make the game playable and fun, after spending my money.

I thought I was being smart by waiting to buy ETW until several months after release and two patch cycles. But 1.3 brought the constant DOW's, and it was only the last 1.4 patch that has made the game worth playing (IMO) on the strategic level.

I'm having some fun with it now, but this experience (and similar experiences with RTW, M2TW) will only make me wait even longer to buy the next major TW game. They have zero chance of getting me to buy a game on release day, if they can't break this pattern. I don't know how a game company can survive, if a significant portion of the "loyal" fan base, who eventually will buy the game, doesn't want to buy it in the critical initial release phase due to past history.


Ok they released it to early no doubt about it, probably due to pressure from SEGA. But also from a lot of the Fan base I remeber reading posts here and on the /shoguntotalwar.yuku.com (not to mention on other sites) that a lot couldn't wait for the release and where angry that it even got postponed for a few weeks.

That has no bearing on the issues (IMO). This is something that every game developer with a large following has to deal with. It just comes with the territory. The better companies learn not to get too specific about release dates until they're forced to, by notices showing up on retail sale outlets.

If the other game companies can handle this kind of pressure, then CA can too. This is the least of their problems.

[Vlad Tzepes]

I absolutely love Total War games, but with ETW it turned out to be a love and hate relationship. I still think CA had a marvelous plan with Empire and after patch 1.4 it looks more like what they probably intended to offer us in the beginning.

Would it have been economically sustainable for SEGA/CA to take an extra year to develop and polish the game and to release it as it is now? I doubt that. But I believe much of the grief and disappointment they probably resent over the community's reaction could have been appeased by starting early a blog (or several) and communicating with people web 2.0 style long time ago. It goes with our grief and disappointment as well.

It's hard to understand why a company that designs software has so much trouble to interact with their software users in a time when anybody interacts with everybody on www.

It also puzzles me why they didn't react faster to the gamers disappointment after the 1.0 ETW release. The crisis was obvious and quick reaction was a must. I'm sure the fellows at CA put lots of hard work and imagination in fixing the game - and I bet they had some quite depressing moments, that they really don't deserve, after all.

The blog comes quite late in this relationship, but better late than never.

[econ21]

It also puzzles me why they didn't react faster to the gamers disappointment after the 1.0 ETW release. The crisis was obvious and quick reaction was a must.

To be fair, the ETW patches came quicker than with previous games. And we did get the daily diaries to reassure us that the fixes were ongoing. Also, given what Monk said about the CTDs etc, I guess the first priority of the patches was to get the game to work on most people's rigs. Fixing the AI was a longer job that was probably rightly scheduled for later.

It should also be born in mind that several folk - like Fisherking and Frogbeastegg - have argued that the earlier patch attempts to improve the challenge from the strategic AI made the game worse because it introduced excessive warmongering. Which probably goes to show that programming a good AI is harder than programming a stable game and so will take longer. Frankly, most TW games strategic AIs have been weak and unchallenging, except perhaps STW which cheated outrageously ("seeing" beforehand your supposedly simultaneous move).

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Meh, damage control.
If they were truly interested in some sort of dialogue we'd have seen a more unreserved mea culpa and less pushing blame off on others. I mean... SEGA and us? Nor would we have been waiting so long for it if they truly felt bad about how it went down.
Face it, what he's saying is that before now it wasn't worth his time to come clean. Nice! :furious3:

I'll believe CA's honest intentions the second they submit themselves to a Jeremy Paxman style Q&A session.

[mor-dan]

Well, I’ve finally given in and decided to start blogging. It’s something I’ve tried to resist over the years. I’ve also not posted directly on the forums, and it’s mainly because it takes so much time. Many of the issues discussed on the forums are deep and complex, and the arguments well put and compelling. Writing considered and persuasive responses that really deal with the issue is time consuming, and that is time I can’t spend working on the games.

It is not Mr. Simpson's job to write considered and persuasive responses to our pleas for better AI. It is his job to make sure the dev team delivers to the community what is needed to have a working game. It makes no sense that before this time when people complained there was no time to respond but now there is.

I can now add more quality to the games by talking to the community than I can by fixing issues.

This is actually the no brainer, because without communication you don't know what to fix. It makes no sense that there was no time to talk before, but now that you are hard at work on NTW you have time to discuss the problems with ETW. This is very suspicious.

Quite simply, the quality of what we produce depends directly on how much we get to spend on developing them. How much we spend depends directly on how many people buy the games. The user feedback on sites like IGN directly impacts sales, and that impacts how positively our publisher views the future of Total War, which determines how much we get to spend on the games.

In the movie, The Running Man, we would be seeing the flashing text saying, "Killian is lying to you!!!"

A) The quality of a game does not depend on how much you get to spend on the team. It does effect how many team members you get to hire which in turn determines how long it will take for a product to get completed. That's like Cheverolet saying, "The quality of car you buy from us is directly related to the amount of money you pay us." Who would buy a $12,000 car? You would then expect lower quality because you aren't paying $30,000. You would expect that the $30,000 would have better brakes, tires, windshield wipers, engines, harnesses, and body construction. You would expect the $12,000 care to be a death trap. Why? Because quality is related to cost. No sir. Quality is based on the commitment to excellence of the team putting the product together. Value is when I get more than what I paid for. Quality is what should come with everything I purchase.

B) If how much you spent was directly related to the game then the game should grow by leaps and bounds, not take steps backwards as has been the case with RTW up to now. NTW should almost be a different game because the engine should have been so completely overhauled and made to be some kind of a beast that pummels Shogun as like a pre-historic piece of grass. The games have sold in the millions of copies at $50 each, plus $30 for the expansions. That's $80+ million for each Total War title. Movie studios don't enjoy such elaborate successes. But as you are finding out, consumer purchasing is directly related to part A. You just told us that if we don't part B, you can't part A. This is an incorrect business model. You deliver qualify FIRST. Then we deliver our money.

C) If feedback determines how much you get to spend on the game, then you have been in trouble for a long time. You just didn't know it because everyone was being nice. Now people aren't being nice anymore. NTW is in danger of not selling and you have been asked to try and smooth things over with a community that is abandoning the marketshare.

Normally it’s a virtuous circle, and that’s allowed us to be very ambitious with what we try to deliver. We were not entirely happy with the state of Empire: Total War when it went out, and are only now getting to a point where we are broadly speaking happy with the game. Our own threshold for how we’d like the game to be is much higher than the commercial threshold required by our publisher. We are, like our community, hardcore fans of our own products, and any imperfections drive us nuts.

That's funny. Perhaps that guy promoting Napolean didn't get the memo that as a compay you guys weren't happy with the state of Empire, because that guy said he was very proud of Empire. And what do you mean ambitious? What are the primarily ambitious additions to Empire? Siege works? Been done before. Real time battles? Been done before. Turn based strategy? Been done before. Tech trees? Been done before. Naval comabt? Been done before. Diplomacy? Been done before. Guns? Been done before.

There is not a single thing I can think of about ETW that hasn't been done before either by you in the TW series or by a competitor in a different game. There is no ambition here. Only addition. By the way, I love how you threw the publisher under the bus and will later make a comment on how you won't say anything that will get you sued or fired. It's a huge red flag that the company knows you are writing this and has approved you bashing the parent to reach the masses.

With Empire: Total War, the virtuous circle turned a little vicious. The community used user ratings and user comments on sites like IGN and Metacritic to highlight weaknesses in the game, to try to encourage us to fix existing issues before working on anything new.

I’m not saying that we didn’t deserve to have a fair number of verbal bricks thrown our way.

However overdoing the criticism (For example I think a 67% user score on Metacritic is unfair), has the opposite effect to what is intended. Gamers (and reviewers. retailers, marketeers and publishing execs) will be put off Total War. That could mean fewer sales and less money to spend on adding quality to the games.

Now Mike... I know you are a smart guy. You wouldn't be in the position you are unless you had some sort of university degree. But let's be realistic, ok? It is basic rule of life that if you don't receive criticsm you don't grow. If everyone tells you how great things are, you won't change anything. The problem here isn't people being unfair, it's CA being deaf. I have not read a single complaint on these boards that I did not hear about M2TW or RTW. So this is game three. You have to expect the voices not being heard to get a little louder if you aren't going to listen to them. For a game I have repeatedly heard as "beta released", you are lucky to get a 67%. And if you will take a moment to look at the job you have now been assigned you will see that just the opposite of what you said has occurred. We haven't damaged the game, we've damaged the wallets of the powers that be. We accomplished our goal, and because of that your team may just deliver a better product. It sounds to me like we are winning the battle. And it's about damn time.



The reason I have responded thus is two-fold. Being an actor and reading scripts has taught me a few things. People have a thing called "sub-text". It's what you aren't saying but you really mean. We don't realize how often our subtext comes out in what we write. It's difficult for the company proof reader to catch (ie. "...we have higher standards than our publishers... i won't say anything to get myself sued or fired..." um, if you're my employee and i didn't give permission for you to say such things, you're fired). This is why I know that you aren't writing to tell us what you are spending your time and our money on. You're doing it to try and rebuild consumer confidence in your product. Bad reviews, sagging sales, and flame wars brought on by the announcement of Napolean with weak pre-order outlooks have the PR and AD campaign teams scrambling to put the piss back in the bladder. CA has been evacuating on us for three games now and the community finally said enough is enough.

Secondly, I am also a student of the bible, which means a student of ancient literature. When it comes to ancient literature you have to know things like who the author is, who the audience is, why is the author writing, what time frame is it, and what is going on with the audience at the time of the writing. This establishes historical context so we can understand what the writer meant. Obviously this is helpful not just with ancient literature, but all literature. It will help people to read what I have written and divulge why I wrote it. This is why I know that you are not writing to prove that you are listening to the community. You are writing to SAY that you are listening to the community. If you were listening to the community it wouldn't have taken three games for it to come to this point. You would have fixed it a long time ago. Action is what will show us you are listening. Less talking, more fixing.

That said, maybe you should go back to what you said at the beginning. If you are talking, you aren't fixing. That's what I see. That's what I read. It's good that you mentioned patch 1.5. It's the only thing that makes your post worth reading. It's the only thing that might show you really are listening.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

If they're worried about tightening belts, I'm pretty sure Medieval (1) was made with a smaller budget than Empire.

:coffeenews:

/Now if they want some cash to fix their mistakes, have a 50% off "we're sorry!" sale on Steam. $25 sounds about right for the price.

[Beskar]

I think we should rename the entire saga as "Broken: Total War".

Broken Public Confidence.
Broken Brand Confidence.
Broken Game.
Broken Promises.
Total War between the Developers and the Userbase.


While I will be honest and say the patches have gone a long way to fixing the game, after a year, they should have simply done my suggestion in the beginning.

Release a stable product that works, then release the mod tools and allow the community to make this into a great game. If they simply did this, E:TW would be miles better.

[Servius]

I liked that he came out and plainly explained the link between publisher funding/patience --> quality of game --> player reviews --> publisher funding/patience.

I agree that a 67% is a bit low for ETW, but only because ETW added a lot of new (and useful) stuff. I think the "professional" game review folks are daft though. They gave RTW a 9.1 or something nuts like that. IMO, ETW was a 75% on release, and has stayed that way until 1.4. I need to give credit where it's due. 1.4 is probably the single biggest improvement to a TW game I've ever seen, and I've been with the series since Shogun. More on that in a sec. Post-1.4, I'd say ETW is 85%.

If he's blaming players for unfair reviews that hurt the quality of games, he's got it backwards. I mean, I know the cycle does flow that way, I just think he's off on the starting point. The problem started with RTW, the conversion to 3D, and how WAY too much attention was focused on eye candy with RTW and no where near enough time was spent with the AI. The poor quality of the TW games on release since RTW is what's lead to the low player scores, and abuse of trust since RTW had led to some player reviews that are exageratedly low.

AI is the core of the TW games. They are almost exclusively single-player strategy games. That means the only thing the player interacts with is the AI. Graphics are important, and cool new features like ETW's trade system are important, but the AI is far and away the single most important thing about a TW game. A solid AI can excuse less impressive graphics, but eye candy can only hide a stupid AI for so long.

As I see it, CA has done it to themselves by constantly releasing games before they have a competent AI. It was much easier in MTW because there were far fewer variables to deal with. I understand that. But the TW AI has sucked in every game and expansion since RTW...until now. While it's still not perfect, the 1.4 patch for ETW is WAY smarter than it used to be. The AI may not always make brilliant decisions, but it's mostly stopped making stupid ones. It's also finally doing stuff it never used to. Today, like a hour ago, Marathas sent a full stack all the way from India to the Carribean to take one of the Lesser Antilles. Not only that, but they bypassed my garrisoned port and dropped the troops just outside the capital city. WHAAAAA!!!!?? That's HUGE! When ETW came out, the AI couldn't even figure out how to put its own troops on its own ships.

I have to say, when I saw how much improved the AI is in 1.4, I decided I'd buy the Native American expansion pack just to give CA some money for a major improvement.

CA's at the low ebb of the cycle now. They and their publishers have squandered what started out as an excellent reputation by releasing follow up games before they were ready. Both of them need to take a sober look at their business practices to date and decide how they want to move forward. I think the TW franchise could be very strong. 1.4 proves the devs do actually know how to make a smarter AI. If CA and Sega want to continue to make money on these games in the future, they both need to ensure no more TW games come out before the AI is solid. Not barely competent like every release AI has been since RTW. They need to be at least as functional at ETW 1.4.

[Servius]

Jebus, my last post was way too long. No one's gonna read it. Here's the skinny...

Players understand the cycle. Bad player reviews/scores are deserved because the AI is the core of a TW game and the AI has sucked since RTW. Sega/CA have spent too much time on flashy visuals and not enough time on the AI. That's what kills their reputation, angers players, and leads to bad scores.

1.4's AI is a major improvement and has proven CA devs have the ability to make a good AI. If Sega/CA want to make the cycle virtuous again, they need to make great AIs, and those AIs need to be in the game at release, not months after. Never again release a TW game with a poor AI.

[Quickening]

Just so that everyone is aware, mainstream game reviewers are completely bought and paid for which is why it's possible to predict which extreme accuracy what score any given title will receive. Empire: Total War was always going to receive high scores no matter what the reality of the game was.
Because of this, I really don't think anything has or will change. The average person isn't logging onto any website to voice dissatisfaction with any game, only the fans are doing that and writing lengthy posts about why they're broken.
Until either mainstream reviewers start being honest, or the majority ignore them and start logging on to listen to the fans nothing will change. Since neither of these will ever happen, hype will continue to keep the Total War franchise alive. Yeah so a few of us around here have finally learned our lesson and won't be buying NTW but I can't see that seriously making a dent. Maybe I'm wrong.

As for the blog entry, the actor on the last page said it all for me.

[Kantalla]

For me the interesting part of this is reading the reactions of the other posters more so than the blog. I picked up ETW fairly recently (late 1.3). Had a couple of crashes on installation, which worried me a bit, especially after the sales guy had asked me if I had a new computer when handing the game over (after I had paid for it!).

Having played through each of the main games in the Total War series, ETW was an interesting shock when I first started out. I was expecting something similar to previous games, where there would be modest threat to my home territories, and provided I didn't go too crazy I could hold things together, while I figured out how to play in detail. Starting out as the Ottomans I sent some troops to help my protectorate in the Crimea, and sent back the Russians, only to have Poland and Austria declare war and take a province each, and when I brought troops from the eastern side of my empire, Georgia and Persia joined in and suddenly I was in real trouble. Learning from that I tried again, making sure to keep an eye on the build up of forces in my neighbours' territories, and make a more circumspect expansion than expected. I also found some of the battle tactics a little more difficult to adjust to that in Rome. That save game died, meaning I had to start the game again, and this time as the United Provinces did the grand campaign.

A couple of weeks later and 1.4 has arrived and the game is stable and quite fun to play. Some of the things that were bothering me in the Dutch campaign (particularly the AI's inaction in the colonies, inability to use ships and massive and unwarranted diplomacy penalties) are gone, and there seem to be some solid improvements.

From my perspective, I can't imagine with the current game feeling the way a lot of you clearly do. The game is decent now, though I suspect there is a lot of lost ground to make up for many people.

[Servius]

I think you should think of 1.4 as where the AI should have been at release. Release AIs should never do anything stupid. They might not make brilliant decisions, but they should never make stupid ones. 1.4's AI is pretty close to that. A lot of the stupid DOWs are gone, and it's learned how to do some rather complex operations (like trans-theatre naval invasions). I don't expect AIs to be perfect at release, just competent. The players will then go to work on it, point out what should be the few remaining idiocies, and suggest ways to make it better than competent, and the devs should act on that super fast. It's just my opinion, but the programmers should not work on anything else until they (and the players) are happy with the AI. Everything else is secondary to the AI in a mainly-single-player game like TW.

[peacemaker]

Here's the problem I've noticed with this cycle of getting the game out much later and more flawed. If you make people wait longer, some people will decide just not to get the game. If you release it too soon, then the game isn't perfect. If you TELL people that you're planning to release it on a certain day, then you'll have to keep pushing the date back until it's ready. CA noticed this so they decided not to give an exact date.

For the complexness of the game engine and the game itself, how good the AI really is opinion. I've been beaten by the AI on many occasions.

As for naval invasions, I'm not sure why people care so much about them. If I'm in a war with my neighbor, I would go ahead and march my army right to their capital-not sail halfway around the world to take some small island.


The average person isn't logging onto any website to voice dissatisfaction with any game, only the fans are doing that and writing lengthy posts about why they're broken.

I just found that kind of ironic
Until either mainstream reviewers start being honest, or the majority ignore them and start logging on to listen to the fans nothing will change. Since neither of these will ever happen, hype will continue to keep the Total War franchise alive.

I think the problem with the bolded statement is that people on the forums are trying to force opinions about the AI onto others. The few people I know that play this game are satisfied with it, so the only voices you usually hear on the internet are the game reviewers or the critics. The people happy with it don't care as much-They'd rather go play the game than talk about it.

As the game is right now, I would say CA did a semi-poor job on the release. It did have many bugs, but grading your own work is difficult. They've gotten lots of feedback from the players and in a few months have fixed the game up to a good shape. They're not done working and people in general are saying "okay, this game is pretty good".

[Beskar]

As for naval invasions, I'm not sure why people care so much about them. If I'm in a war with my neighbor, I would go ahead and march my army right to their capital-not sail halfway around the world to take some small island.

I mean, if you take Naval Invasions out, the neighbours such as France and Britain can just invadeand take each others capitals right? :juggle2:

Oh wait...

[Kantalla]

As for naval invasions, I'm not sure why people care so much about them. If I'm in a war with my neighbor, I would go ahead and march my army right to their capital-not sail halfway around the world to take some small island.
But what if it's not your neighbour by a handy land route? There are plenty of situations where the most important target for you isn't directly in front of you, and that disregards the potential for avoiding a large army or fortress to attack a key spot.

Before the recent changes to the AI, as Great Britain you knew that your home provinces would never be touched by the AI because they needed to jump on a ship. On top of that you had free reign in the Americas because your rivals would never send troops from Europe, and didn't seem that good at recruiting there either. Similarly France and Spain could depend on Great Britain never to get aggressive toward them in Europe.

Now it's a different situation, and that makes the game much more interesting and challenging. There are still a few enhancements that could happen - I'd like to see more border raiding and willingness to retreat if the odds aren't good, and hopefully there will be more progress in 1.5.

[Durallan]

Well the Americans didn't sail straight to berlin in World War 2, normally you do take out less defended territories first, to weaken your enemy, but this is total war! where you can defeat the enemy and take out his capital region without one hell of a fight.

[antisocialmunky]

Well the Americans didn't sail straight to berlin in World War 2, normally you do take out less defended territories first, to weaken your enemy, but this is total war! where you can defeat the enemy and take out his capital region without one hell of a fight.

But the did fly over it and bomb it on a fairly regular basis. :-p

I think that the main complaint about the AI that people have is that it has gotten progressively worse wince the 2d TWs while the graphics have continually improved. Its not that people think its pure crap, its that people who remember the older games are ticked off that seemingly everything has been sacrificed for the sake of THE ALL MIGHTY GRAPHICS. Graphics actually cost a fair amount of money(motion capture, tons of artists, etc) to produce while other features that would be cheaper to improve are ignored.

This is a strategy game, making it challenging should be a priority up there with making it look better.

[A Very Super Market]

What if you aren't willing to risk your most important armies? What if the war is over a colony in the first place and you do not wish to get the home country involved?

[Owen Glyndwr]

On most occasions, the major European nations had no interest in absorbing their mainland neighbors. Especially in the case of the French and English, war was faught over the colonies. Neither side had any real interest in taking the homelands of the other, which was simply not profitable.

[Zenicetus]

But the did fly over it and bomb it on a fairly regular basis. :-p

I think that the main complaint about the AI that people have is that it has gotten progressively worse wince the 2d TWs while the graphics have continually improved. Its not that people think its pure crap, its that people who remember the older games are ticked off that seemingly everything has been sacrificed for the sake of THE ALL MIGHTY GRAPHICS. Graphics actually cost a fair amount of money(motion capture, tons of artists, etc) to produce while other features that would be cheaper to improve are ignored.

This is a strategy game, making it challenging should be a priority up there with making it look better.

Sure, I'd rather see more time spent on the core engine and AI than unnecessary graphic enhancements. For example, those silly motion capture scenes for dueling. Who will ever watch that more than once? To be fair to CA though, they've chosen to show a depth in tactical battles that does require detailed visual representation, in order for the player to make appropriate decisions in the heat of battle. For example:

Did that cannonball do any damage, or just skip over the line of troops? How many volleys did the enemy soak up before they closed to melee range? Is my cavalry attack about to bog down, so it's time to withdraw?

In a simpler game, like a 2D hex-based strategy game, you can abstract this as simple numbers. "Unit health drops from 100 to 70, gee they must be taking damage!" But it isn't nearly as fine-grained as what you see in the TW battle engine, and I think it makes for a more challenging tactical experience. So, do you want that level of detail, or something more basic?

My personal gripe isn't that they're showing too much detail (or "fancy graphics" if you want to put it that way). It's that having chosen that path, they didn't cook it in the oven long enough before asking us to pay for it.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

I've received every Total War game so far almost as soon as it came out, and I've defended CA for a long time on these forums, in public, and elsewhere on the internet. It's not going to continue. N:TW isn't the first release (Alexander) that I haven't been excited for, but it is the first one I actually don't care about. Napoleonic warfare is one of my favourite styles of the art of war, and yet right now, I couldn't care less.

Why? Not because Empire was terrible - though it had more problems than most other TW games, it also had some upsides. No, the horrendous customer service, PR, and other things that I really hope were SEGA's meddling (but probably weren't) are things that guarantee I will not buy this game on release date. I may not buy it at all.

CA gets posts like this with every release, but they should be concerned here. I'm not someone who was on the fence, I was a total fanboy. And they've lost me.

[antisocialmunky]

I'd have to disagree: MIITW was worse. Atleast the mechanics aren't ridiculously screwed up like shields being NEGATIVE defense values, super peasant attack animations, and useless two handers.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

I'd have to disagree: MIITW was worse. Atleast the mechanics aren't ridiculously screwed up like shields being NEGATIVE defense values, super peasant attack animations, and useless two handers.

I quite agree, which is why I said most.

[antisocialmunky]

Okay, I'll give you that I read that poorly. However, its still only better than one game on release. Though MIITW actually turned out quite well in the end for graphics and modding. I mean... infinite reenforcement armies? :)

[gollum]

Originally posted by Mike Simpson

Quite simply, the quality of what we produce depends directly on how much we get to spend on developing them. How much we spend depends directly on how many people buy the games.

Quite simply, this is wrong. It is an apparent truth and not an actual truth; STW and MTW were much more quality oriented products for the simple reason that they were aimed at smaller and more quality hungry audiences. The development team for the STW prototype consisted of people that could be hand counted and yet the game was a leap forward in the graphical sector for its day and a revelation in terms of gameplay. Not only the gameplay was something relatively new, it was executed excellently and it is for this reason that the MP community still holds it as the golden standard of TW.

From RTW and onwards that quality was sacrificed for a huge amount of bells-and-whistles type features that were typically coming from other popular genres/games like the civilisation series and popular "classic" RTS games like the EoA series and Starcraft/Warcraft. The original TW community was basically ignored as were many of the gameplay and aesthetic conventions that TW had built for it self up to that time, in order to bring the TW games to the mass of the gaming public. RTW 1.0 had at least 10 fold the bugs of MTW 1.0, just look at the lists of 1.2 and 1.3 patches - the bugs fixed number in hundreds. Clearly CA was putting too much in their games; too many new 'features', too many units, too many factions, too many graphical upgrades and as it is obvious since then, neither the AI, nor their resources as a company could cope with those to provide a solid, immersive, balanced game experience. RTW became the game it should have been after 4 years of intense and continuous modding.

It seems that as long as the formula was a winning one CA was happy to further ignore all the fans, old and new, that observed all this, time and time again. With Empire the trend of putting many secondary features and breadth that the AI and company resources coudnt handle became so ambitiously greedy that even declared fanboys of the .com and twcentre simply turned away (see the notable case of Yakaspat aka Candelarius who despite being perhaps the greater fanboy in the RTW/M2TW era remarkably "gave up" (!) on ETW); also the "new" (past RTW) community has "matured" - the awe/impact factor of the novelty that RTW had, which alone could make the new fanbase "forgive" any quality shortcomings just isnt there anymore. CA thought it apparently funny releasing their games with bugs that were fixed time and time again in the past like say the suicidal generals, a bug trademark really of the company as it almost certainly appears in every v1.0 TW game release.

To be fair, ETW has a lot of potential and many of its featutes and design concepts seemed to be geared towards a more gameplay oriented, more balanced experience at least on the battlefield. Many of these decisions aesthetic or gameplay ones, simply backfired as the RTW/M2TW community was too fond of the cartooninesh of say the pre-battle speeches or the "uniqueness" (that is basically the availability of different skins) of faction rosters. In this respect CA is reaping what is has sown over the past 4 years. While i can see the irony i dont sympathise with them in the least since they were the ones that so fondly embraced the "more" concept and made it an integral(?) part of TW, quite simply because they knew it will sell.

In any case, to try to rally a community that has been fed white lies time and time again with the cheapest marketing sophistries possible (luring in with promises before release and play deaf when half of it doesnt make it to the game and the other half doesnt work) because the TW public image is in crisis and then so might be sales, is frankly pathetic.

And yes, when you are releasing sub-par products for a long time, eventually even your peers take notice
post No 4;

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=407726

Notice that the marketing plautitudes of Mr Bridgen in that thread could not save the day as more and more TW long term fans came out of the woodwork like Garnier, Alpaca and Yellow Mellon to basically agree, even cheer, the statement that "ETW has no AI".

If Mr Simpson and CA demostrate that they can still produce a game as well balanced, gameplay oriented, challenging, well presented, atmospheric, immerssive and respectful of the period it represents as STW/MTW did, i'll be the first to be behind CA. But i know for a fact for years now that this is not going to happen. CA has gone so far downhill that now sells expansions as "new games" while allowing the customers of the mess that was ETW to have a "graphical upgrade from NTW" - apparently the only solution that CA can implement; when people are complaining about the AI, balance and immersivness, upgrade the graphics. NapoleonTW is marketed in the same old, same old tired Hollywood tirade, far from any respect to historical reality and possibly far from any decency, and there is no reason to expect anything new than another commercially oriented venture.

CA and TW have been heading for a crash for years now and unfortunately they deserve it as they are the only ones to blame for the current situation they find themselves in. Get lots of fluffy pillows guys, the higher you jump the longer you fall.

[Yun Dog]

I think we should rename the entire saga as "Broken: Total War".

Broken Public Confidence.
Broken Brand Confidence.
Broken Game.
Broken Promises.
Total War between the Developers and the Userbase.


While I will be honest and say the patches have gone a long way to fixing the game, after a year, they should have simply done my suggestion in the beginning.

Release a stable product that works, then release the mod tools and allow the community to make this into a great game. If they simply did this, E:TW would be miles better.

Yes and this I believe remains one of the largest outstanding issues with ETW

where are the promised modding tools

given the amount of DLC we are seeing I wouldnt be surprised if we dont see any serious moddability for ETW for some time, and Im pesimistic as to ETW being as moddable as previous titles because it will compete not only with their past and future sales of DLC but also NTW for that matter.

this for me is the final nail in the TW coffin - because it was the only thing that saved previous titles from having the lowest replayability of any game in my stable.

It was the modding community that rescued CA in the past and now like the rest of the community they too have been muted.

:thumbsdown:

[jklm192]

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[antisocialmunky]

WORDS

This is pretty much a good summation of the reason why TW has gone downhill in many fan's minds. Too many doodads, not enough on the core gameplay mechanics and polish off each addition. Instead of releasing with a ton of new features and patch up the core part of the game, why not come out with a solid game and then add in a bunch of nice extra stuff. You'd come out with a product that is quality and then you can better focus on the CTDs and all the small things. No more bugged sieges, no more bugged suicidal generals, better diplomacy, better AI. We can get extra skins, multiple soldier skins, traits, certain units later and no one will complain about terrible AI, tons of CTDs, broken this, broken that etc.

Oh well, lets give him a chance to present CA's POV before we completely write if off. It should be interesting at any rate.

[hoom]

Agree with the general trend here: CA has been trying to take TW too big & too quickly = loads of features that would be pretty amazing except that many of them are either broken, the AI doesn't know how to use them or the game balancing never enables them to happen properly.

Go play RTR VII:The Iberian Conflict (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=524) to see what awesomeness the RTW engine is capable of if the target is kept tight enough.
Its not just good quality, its rollicking good fun.

Not least because the game balance is tweaked so that all sorts of excellent AI behaviour actually happens and despite there being only two playable factions, relatively few turns & not many provinces.

I'd like to see a return to a smaller release polished to perfection.

[caravel]

Good post gollum,

The TW series should be leading the field in AI. A game like ETW should sell itself on recreating realistic battles - and not just visually.

AI has always been a vital component of the strategy game and with TW games CA have twice the work with campaign map AI and tactical AI, but the only time they've ever got anywhere near to decent standards in both of these was back in the days of STW/MTW. Since that time the games have been sold and marketed around the graphics alone with AI and game balance taking a back seat.

[Servius]

Quite simply, the quality of what we produce depends directly on how much we get to spend on developing them. How much we spend depends directly on how many people buy the games.

This statement has a chronological error. What he should have said (and probably meant to say) is...

"Quite simply, the quality of what we produce depends directly on how much we get to spend on developing them. How much we spend depends directly on how many people purchased the previous game(s) in the TW series."

You can't spend money making a game that you can only earn after that game is done. I think what he meant to say is the money used to make a new game comes from profits from previous games and/or spec. money from publishers/investors. Thus, if ETW doesn't sell well, CA will have less money to spend on NTW, which may lead to a less-awesome game, which may lead to fewer sales. This is the vicious cycle he talks about.


Normally it’s a virtuous circle, and that’s allowed us to be very ambitious with what we try to deliver. We were not entirely happy with the state of Empire: Total War when it went out, and are only now getting to a point where we are broadly speaking happy with the game. Our own threshold for how we’d like the game to be is much higher than the commercial threshold required by our publisher.

The good news I see in this statement is that problem, cause, and consequence are clear. The problem is that games released before they are ready get panned by players, which leads to lower sales. The cause is that SEGA (and maybe CA?) seem to care more about short-term than long-term revenue, so TW games are released with shoddy AIs and other problems. They'd rather eat the goose that lays golden eggs now than keep the goose alive and get golden egg after golden egg in the future. The consequence is CA has less money to make the next TW game.

The solution is also clear. Never release another TW game before it's ready.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Lastly, on naval invasions and why they're such a big deal, ETW covers the colonial period, which requires naval invasions since the colonies are overseas. It's also a big deal, a big accomplishment for CA's AI designers, because it's also a lot more complex than invading an adjacent neighbor.

[caravel]

Lastly, on naval invasions and why they're such a big deal, ETW covers the colonial period, which requires naval invasions since the colonies are overseas. It's also a big deal, a big accomplishment for CA's AI designers, because it's also a lot more complex than invading an adjacent neighbor.

Diplomacy was also a big deal during the period, more so than in earlier periods. Though we don't see a 3D real time diplomatic engine where you walk your agents into the city and find your way to meet/kill the rival faction leader in person. No TW does not have 3D real time diplomacy/espionage, so does it need 3D real time naval engagments, when there is still so much wrong with the core land battles and campaign map games, that the TW series is supposed to be about? I would say no, it doesn't.

If CA had not spent much of the budget on the naval battles and instead concentrated on doing a good job of building a quality TBS/RTS of the standard TW format they might not have this mess on their hands now. A jack of all trades is usually a master of none.

:2cents:

[AussieGiant]

So while the next patch 1.5, is downloading as I type; (top job there CA)

I have the following thought.

Based on the blog from Mr Simpson, the important lesson is as follows.

Due to the longevity of the franchise there is clearly a very well informed and LARGE player base. Something that is a direct result of the generally high level of quality games produced to date.

Due to this, well informed and large player base, there is clearly a minimum quality threshold for the "retail release" of CA titles.

In this instance I believe CA have realised that, for better or worse, their 1.0 version game was so far below what the, well informed and large player base expected, that they received a harsh set of responses.

The key:

Next time, keep this LARGE and well informed player base in mind, and ensure SEGA "get this", before forcing something out the door. Therefore, release the next game at the equivalent of E:TW 1.3 patch or higher.

To support my point: "If everyone could take a moment to imagine their response to the game if 1.3 was the initial release version...

...there done."

I would expect the criticism to be far less damaging, no?

If you don't make this adjustment, then expect the LARGE informed player base to react in the same fashion and the self fulfilling cycle of feedback, sales and decline will continue.

What you certainly do not want to do, is give an indication that the consumers responses are the reason for the franchise failure.

For better or worse, CA have clearly tens upon thousands of players with more than a few CA titles to compare. Managing expectations is what needs to be the future focus, why, because at the commercial size CA are right now, they can afford two :daisy: ups, before they are done...finito, kapputt, 'game over'.

Maybe this was one of them...I'm not sure, but it was certainly a "FIRE DRILL" in the first 4 months of the E:TW release, and that is not good for business as we have now read.

Kudos for Mr Simpson's words.

It' bodes well for the moral fortitude and future of this business.

I'll get off the soap box now. **Grin**

[gollum]

Originally posted by Servius1234

This statement has a chronological error. What he should have said (and probably meant to say) is...

"Quite simply, the quality of what we produce depends directly on how much we get to spend on developing them. How much we spend depends directly on how many people purchased the previous game(s) in the TW series."

You can't spend money making a game that you can only earn after that game is done. I think what he meant to say is the money used to make a new game comes from profits from previous games and/or spec. money from publishers/investors. Thus, if ETW doesn't sell well, CA will have less money to spend on NTW, which may lead to a less-awesome game, which may lead to fewer sales. This is the vicious cycle he talks about.

What i am trying to say is that quality is not a function of resources only. It is a function of scope, of planning of objectives and of resources. If you want a detailed hex grid on the strategy map that has thousands of targets and possible paths and you mount on it an AI that beforehand was treading on the "2d" map of STW/MTW it doesnt take a rocket scientist to guess whats going to happen. CA is overambitious with their games not because, as they'll tell you, they want to make them better, but because they want them to sell more. There is no other explanation why RTW's map was Civilazation-like as were many of the "new" features. Also all the new fanbase that came to TW after RTW was exactly the people the game was designed to appeal to; SP players of mass market RTS games. The original TW fanbase had nothing to do with Civilization or AoE, because STW and MTW had nothing to do with these games.

The statement of Mr Simpson simply goes to show how their whole philosophy, not only of design, but also of development is based around the "more" concept. It has gotten so far now, that they are communicating to the fanbase in order to keep up the sales, because, we are told, they mean more quality. This is an outright lie. Even people who enjoy the newer games agree that the older games were better in terms of quality, and this was clearly not because CA had more resources then but because CA was designing games with the available resources in mind as well as the capacities of the engine and AI and also, crucially, because their fanbase was not so mainstream oriented and quality was essential to it. So the game was more well put together and hence more challenging and the system worked so to make sure that the AI was aware of (most of the) features and options available to the player. CA new that the gamers that picked up STW and MTW were having gameplay and immersivness as priorities and not fancy visuals and tons of micromanagement.

Wether you play it in the latest 3D graphics or in a chess board, a strategy game is a strategy game. Representation is important for clarity and immersion, but ultimately its not were the game is at. When i want to play a first person shooter or a first person adventure or puzzle game, i'll play that. TW is supposed to be about strategy on the battlefield and it makes no difference to that how much i can zoom in and how well things look when zoomed in. Anyone who plays the battles knows that you command better when zoomed out. So all those fancy graphics which i am sure occupy a lot of resources offer little quality in terms of gameplay. So why are all these graphics oriented resources needed? Whats the point of having great 3D sea surface textures and no tack (sailing maneuver against the wind) for sailing ships in the battles? To make the game sell in the mass market, that's why. Nothing to do with "quality". Or "realism". In fact i am pretty certain that CA would make far more interesting games had their budget remained low. They wouldnt be able to count on visuals then to attract people. They would have to make it by interesting and immersive gameplay like they did in the past.

CA started with a brilliant battle engine; the SP campaign was a way to bind the battles and give them purpose, and gradually, for business purposes alone, TW ended up as a AoE/Civilisation/Warcraft/TotalWar/TBTabletop bloated SP hybrid that tries to take players from all these genres/games by offering breadth over depth. This choice of breadth over deapth is responsible for the loss of quality and the loss of direction of TW, as the original concept was watered too much to fit the expectations of players from other genres/games and so break in the mass market. CA as creators did not have the guts to stand by their creation and market it for what it was and not for what the mass market wanted it to be.

For those who like Heavy Metal, CA is the Metallica of PC developers; a company that has strayed so far from its roots and origins, in order to make it in the mainstream, that it cant return to them even if it wanted to.

[Servius]

@ Asai: I agree with you in that land battles are the core of the game and the logical place to start. My point was simply to answer a question posed earlier in the thread about why everyone was making such a big deal about naval invasions, and at least in my opinion, it's a big deal because it shows the CA knows how to make an AI that can execute complex operations.

@ gollum: I agree that there is not a 1:1 relationship between $ and quality. There is a strong relationship between the two to be sure, but there's also the innate quality of ideas of the game designers. No amount of money can make a dumb idea fun to play. I have no idea what kind of development money CA had to work with when they made Shogun, but I'm guessing it wasn't a lot, or at least not a lot relative to what they've had to work with since, so that supports your idea that it's not all driven by money.

I also agree that CA may just have tried to bite off more than they could chew. Mike's blog said they have been "very ambitious", and perhaps too much so. I felt RTW was the best example of reaching beyond your means. The technology and skill existed to make a 3D TW game, but either the programming skill or publisher patience wasn't there to allow the AI programing and other aspects of design to keep pace with the graphical advances. IMO, RTW sucked because the shift to 3D maps and units introduced WAY more variables than the AI could handle intelligently on release, and I'm pretty sure CA moved on to M2TW before they had properly fixed the RTW AI. I think the 1.4 patch represents a major improvement to the AI, which makes me feel that the gap between the AI and the variables it needs to deal with is closing, which is great. That being said, I'm nearly certain I won't buy NTW until ETW's AI is solid. Since NTW will likely just be a reskin of ETW, I don't want to buy it until I know the AI in both games is actually intelligent.

[Basileus]

CA only has them selfs to blame and i dont even care anymore, i´ll see what the future realeses show from now on before i ever buy another of their products.

To even think i bought E:TW SF to support them.

[Nebuchadnezzar]

However overdoing the criticism (For example I think a 67% user score on Metacritic is unfair), has the opposite effect to what is intended. Gamers (and reviewers. retailers, marketeers and publishing execs) will be put off Total War. That could mean fewer sales and less money to spend on adding quality to the games.

and so they should be put off Mr Simpson. Its termed BUSINESS. Blowing smoke, and expecting others to blow for you to cover up shocking quality does not emanate any confidence with the fan base. Nor does finger pointing. I clearly recall how you lot distanced yourselves from M2TW and the aussi team during development of ETW, and now the finger is pointing at SEGA! I somehow detect a sinking ship.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

You know, I still can't get over him feeling hard done by at the hands of fans.
If you make a single player game about strategy, tactics and diplomacy, and the AI is incapable of using basic strategy, tactics or diplomacy, a 67% scoring is downright stratospherically high!

[antisocialmunky]

You know, I jsut went to metacritic to check the numbers and do comparisons with other TWs...

The 6.7 isn't what surprises me the most:

RTW: 8.9 @ 132
http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/rometotalwar?q=rome total war
RTW-BI 8.2 @ 37
http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/rometotalwarbarbarianinvasion?q=rome total war

MIITW: 8.7 @ 130
http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/medieval2totalwar?q=medieval total war
MIITW-Kingdoms: 8.8 @ 37
http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/medieval2totalwarkingdoms?q=medieval total war

ETW: 6.7 at 1889: ONE THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED EIGHTY NINE
http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/empiretotalwar?q=empire total war

Wow, that is a huge jump in exposure period. I don't have the numbers handy but last I heard ETW did better than MIITW and RTW combined in units sold.
(Edit, I found the numbers: http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/45324/Empire-Total-War-Breaks-U-K-Sales-Records)
It definitely has had the most mainstream hype of any TW game with the massive Sega ad campaign. And he's complaining about MONEY?!?!

Besides, for better or worse you already have our money this time around. Use it better next time or you might not get any of it.

PS. I guess we can't make that much of a judgement since we don't know how much the game actually cost to produce. The engine is new, naval combat, etc. Still if you go by absolute #'s ETW is the most successful yet. I guess he's jsut trying ot play at our heart strings or something. The whole "If you rate ETW too poorly, SEGA will pull the plug" thing is a little bit much.

[Yun Dog]

whats really funny is East India Company which is complete and utter :daisy:

got 68% :laugh4::laugh4::laugh4::laugh4:

yeh maybe there was a bit of a negative campaign but the punters felt lied to by the game company and the reviewers

[AussieGiant]

As I mentioned.

You have a massive jump in the player base, AND that player base has expectations.

Their E:TW 1.0 version stunk it up...and the main issue was FIRST stability. There were way too many CTD's and general stability issues were worse than anything they have produced in the last 10 years.

Only after they stabalised the thing could they then really allocate resources to in-game issues as a SECONDARY move. Hence with 1.5 you have a pretty damn good product...9 months after release.

The numbers antisocialmunky mentions are telling.

They have become a victim of their own success in many respects.

Another way of making my point is like this:

CA have total control over two things;

1) What they 'SAY' they will produce.

2) What they 'ACTUALLY' produce. By produce I mean what their "retail version" is in the 1.0 state.

If they make those to things closer together in the next game, then they will really hit it big.

Basically if you match expectations with results you will succeed in business.

E:TW was a clear example of not doing this.

[AussieGiant]

With 65 replies to date I'm sure Mr Simpson has a feeling that he just stuck his helmet up over the trench with the butt of his rifle.

The result...

every weapon the enemy had was just unloaded in his direction.

:egypt:

[TinCow]

ETW breaks my heart. The engine is easily the best TW engine I've ever played. We all thought gunpowder combat wouldn't work very well with the TW system, but I actually find it even more enjoyable than melee. On top of that, the naval battle engine is absolutely superb and they are hugely fun to fight. ETW really has more potential than any other TW game IMO.

And then there's the AI. It's absolutely miserable. Well, the battle AI is finally tolerable (except for sieges, of course), but the campaign AI is as idiotic as ever. The game is rarely challenging, even at the highest difficult levels... and the few times it is challenging it is because of handicaps placed on the player, not because the AI plays well. This is a trend that has existed in every single TW game since RTW, and it's ruined all of them for me.

I bought ETW on faith that this time they had learned their lesson and would do it right. They didn't. I haven't played ETW in months now; it's not even installed on my computer. Unless a future patch significantly improves the campaign AI, I now consider myself done with TW games. If CA think that my complaints are excessive criticism, then they don't need to worry about hearing them again in the future. I certainly won't be complaining about a game I haven't bought.

[Slaists]

ETW breaks my heart. The engine is easily the best TW engine I've ever played. We all thought gunpowder combat wouldn't work very well with the TW system, but I actually find it even more enjoyable than melee. On top of that, the naval battle engine is absolutely superb and they are hugely fun to fight. ETW really has more potential than any other TW game IMO.

And then there's the AI. It's absolutely miserable. Well, the battle AI is finally tolerable (except for sieges, of course), but the campaign AI is as idiotic as ever. The game is rarely challenging, even at the highest difficult levels... and the few times it is challenging it is because of handicaps placed on the player, not because the AI plays well. This is a trend that has existed in every single TW game since RTW, and it's ruined all of them for me.

I bought ETW on faith that this time they had learned their lesson and would do it right. They didn't. I haven't played ETW in months now; it's not even installed on my computer. Unless a future patch significantly improves the campaign AI, I now consider myself done with TW games. If CA think that my complaints are excessive criticism, then they don't need to worry about hearing them again in the future. I certainly won't be complaining about a game I haven't bought.

Amen!

I disagree about the campaign AI being idiotic starting with RTW. It was just as stupid in MTW1. Did you ever try to give a well developed empire to the AI in MTW1 and then take it back after 20 turns? Oh man... The mess the AI could do...

[Fisherking]

Complaints about the AI are subjective and relative to the player by this point in time. There have been huge changes from the past versions.

There are still a few things that could improve but it is doing a much better job.

When they DoW now they usually mean business.

Playing at higher difficulty levels is tougher than any of the other TW games. The only problem with the siege game is it is for the AI a matter of capture the flag and not kill the opponent. It has been that way with all the previous games. It is just more apparent with this one fighting in forts and not in city streets.

The changes in the last two patches just in the last couple of weeks have made the game out of it that it should have been to start.

If anyone has not played since 1.3.1 or before, you should give it another try and see what you think now.

[Durallan]

subjective on probably most things except the economy now, while I haven't played 1.5 yet I'd wager its still woefully inadequate at managing its economy. it is at least less suicidal now which is the biggest difference.

[Fisherking]

In 1.4 I was seeing very few nations that were weak and destitute. Most were at least affluent if not rich or spectacular.

I don’t know if it is due to bonuses or not but most areas I captured were developed as well as their techs allowed it.

Techs though for the AI seemed painfully slow. Some were ahead of me in areas but they were specializing. Most military techs were at the lowest levels.

[Slaists]

subjective on probably most things except the economy now, while I haven't played 1.5 yet I'd wager its still woefully inadequate at managing its economy. it is at least less suicidal now which is the biggest difference.

Dunno about economy, but 4 years into my French campaign the pirates were busy building star-forts around their cities (while my sloops were sitting inside their destroyed ports).

[gollum]

Originally posted by Fisherking

Complaints about the AI are subjective and relative to the player

This is very true and not-so-true at the same time.

It is very true because the objectivity of the AI issues under fire depend on the skill, experience and game understanding of the player who mentions them.

However, there is also an objective layer and more often than not "veteran" players can tell how well the AI plays.

Veterans usually come in two formats, SP veterans and MP veterans, with MP veterans having a slight edge in terms of skill and understanding of the game because both are required and cultivated more intensely if you are to play online.

I'd say that orgahs like Caravel, Martok, Omanes Alexandrapolites and econ21 (and others) have a good SP sense and their opinions have quite some objective weight, at least for me.

On the other hand orgahs like CBR, TosaInu, Celtibero Mordred, Swoosh So, Puzz3D, Sasaki Kojiro, Tomisama (and others) can post opinions about the battlefield part of the game that are very close to objectivity because they know by experience the "working" ranges of the parameters and have a spectrum of batllefield strategies far wider than any SP player against which to judge the performance of the AI.


Originally posted by Slaists

I disagree about the campaign AI being idiotic starting with RTW. It was just as stupid in MTW1. Did you ever try to give a well developed empire to the AI in MTW1 and then take it back after 20 turns? Oh man... The mess the AI could do...

Of course everyone is entitled to their opinion, but the choices of the STW/MTW AI and his capacity to build and maintain an empire, bear no comparison to RTW and later. The challenge of the SP game went straight to the gutter progressively past RTW and this is a testimony to, among other things, the AI's skills which weren't spectacular but were adequate.

The "mess" you refer to, happened most often because of low influence and Civil wars - an overdeveloped AI with lots of money would turn predictably and rightly, very aggressive. However the MTW AI was designed around the STW campaign that had no faction leader influence rating, no loyalty and no civil wars. So the fact that he can suffer a civil war because he turns offensive is not a testimony to how bad the AI played, but that the AI, typically of CA, was not tuned to the influence/loyalty/civil war feature/mechanic. The AI in MTW is not aware of which of the generals has high loyalty and who not. He uses high ranking generals as stack leaders by default - when these happen to be disloyal, he doesnt change them, or marry them to doughters or burn them with inquisitors or sentence them in trials using spies or take the ir titles with emmissaries like the player. Neither does he "know" that the loss of regions amounts to influence hits when he calculates his moves.

[caravel]

I disagree about the campaign AI being idiotic starting with RTW. It was just as stupid in MTW1. Did you ever try to give a well developed empire to the AI in MTW1 and then take it back after 20 turns? Oh man... The mess the AI could do...

The AI has never been breathtakingly good in any of the TW series, but it was leaps and bounds better on both the campaign and battles maps in STW/MTW. This is a sad fact that a game several years old still beats the latest title when it comes to AI.

Giving a well developed empire to the AI in MTW would cause a pretty predictable blitz and collapse. This is pretty normal and the same would happen in any game. The player can engineer and develop the most perfect empires that a simple AI cannot hope to maintain. The AI in MTW was a simple beast playing on a simple provincial map. The RTW AI was the same simple beast playing on a tiled map and movement points system. That is why it didn't work properly.

So yes, the problem with the RTW campaign map AI is simple: It is not sophisticated enough to actually handle the map, diplomacy or troop movements that make up the foundations of the campaign. The campaign map AI in RTW simply engages in base building and then moves it's rabble of army stacks towards a target. At the same time it's emissaries are heading to those same settlements to broker peace, alliances, trade rights, etc... M2TW suffered from the same ailments. RTW's AI is actually an "epic fail", precisely because the AI did not progress much from the original STW/MTW campmap AI.

The battles are a totally different matter. It is the deterioation in the quality of battles in the TW series that I find entirely inexcusable. Here you cannot blame the increased complexity of the game and the Ai being unable to handle it - when it comes to battles there are no excuses. There is simply no reason for battles to be actually worse - yet they are absolutely atrocious. The basic model is the same: A 3D real time battle map with men that fight in units vs other units. The units either fight in melee or with ranged weapons. In this respect RTW is no different from it's predecessors, so what went wrong?

IMHO battles went wrong because their entire purpose has altered since the release of the first game in 2000. Battles are no longer about tactical engagements of those that wish to test their wits against a competent AI (or human player), they are a visual killfest aimed at recreating mass slaughter for fairly basic entertainment. Units are no longer balanced against each other and parameters that were fundamental to the old engine, such as weather, terrain and fatigue ceased to be the focus. None of this was even attempted in RTW as it was not the aim.

So from my point of view CA lost the plot long ago and the state of the later TW games does not surprise me at all.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

This is almost off-topic, but maybe there's an opportunity for the modding comunity here. If non-seige battles are in the field of "pretty good" and you can make custom battles (you can, right?) then maybe someone can find a way to generate a dynamic set of battles that would simulate playing a campaign (though probably in greatly decreased scope).

If I didn't have class to be late to, I'd expand on that thought here...

[TinCow]

The AI in MTW was a simple beast playing on a simple provincial map. The RTW AI was the same simple beast playing on a tiled map and movement points system. That is why it didn't work properly.

This is exactly the problem. CA simply is incapable of making an AI that can handle their 'improved' campaign map. They've tried to do it now on three games and have failed every single time. I very strongly believe that the game would be significantly improved if they went back to a province-based campaign map like in STW/MTW. But... they'll never do that because the current campaign map looks better, which is apparently all they care about.

[gollum]

Originally posted by TinCow

I very strongly believe that the game would be significantly improved if they went back to a province-based campaign map like in STW/MTW. But... they'll never do that because the current campaign map looks better, which is apparently all they care about.

Precisely; and why they only care about that? Because it makes them lots of $$$$$$ allows them to bring more "quality" in future TW games :laugh4:

[peacemaker]

I personally think you guys are being kind of harsh on the new CAI after patches 1.4 and 1.5. The AI plays nice, actually uses its troops, and sometimes asks for peace if it notices it's losing. This may be one of the first games in a while where the AI is competent enough for the campaign map.

As for the BAI (and to an extent the CAI) I think that people's expectations are too high. OF COURSE it's not going to be like a human. OF COURSE you'll probably win if you've been playing for a while. Let's pretend for just a moment that some of you have never played TW in your life. You shouldn't be able to just set the settings on VH/VH and expect to win by a huge margin (I sure don't). Some of you do manage to do this, but I'm confident that most of the players that buy this game don't spend as much time playing as some of you do. Some of you expect to be able to fight against a human simulator that matches your skill level-which still hasn't really been made yet.

[Monk]

I personally believe we as consumers had every right to have high expectations going into ETW. The PR campaign in the months leading to release needs no introduction and has been mentioned before (in this thread and many others).

Leading up to release I said I would be happy if this AI simply gave a challenge, i didn't care if it was "human" i just wanted to be provided a challenge against I would need to think to overcome. For seven months there was no such AI, and even now it still isn't at that point. Is the Battle AI capable of moments of ingenuity and promise? Oh, of course. Can it win battles on its own merit without resorting to stat cheats and unbalanced situations? Not against me, no. It's certainly come a long way but like so many things in Empire, it has a long way to go.

I will reserve comments on the CAI until after i've played the GC post 1.5 (i've only done the Warpath campaign since, it did not inspire confidence).

[antisocialmunky]

If you're playing as the natives, back stabbing, and constant DOWs aren't that unrealistic...

[Monk]

If you're playing as the natives, back stabbing, and constant DOWs aren't that unrealistic...

Unfortunately that's not good enough for me. This game might be called "Total War" but that doesn't put it above logic or the need for sensible diplomacy.

[Komutan]

I don't agree the AI problems started with Rome. I think some of you simply forgot how it was.

Some AI problems I recall from MTW1:

- AI building masses of low tech units like peasants and archers and almost never building higher tech units.

- AI sending its units one by one when assulting castles. Each time a unit gets annihilated the next one is sent.

- At the start of France campaign, England sends an army consisting of only the king and all his heirs. They would bravely attack the French spearmen/militia waiting in the woods. I remember England losing all its heirs and as a result being defeated at the very start of the game.

- Vikings never attacking England in Viking Invasion.

People did not complain much then, because CA was not a big name yet and expectations were not as high as today.

Of course I am talking about just the AI. None of the former TW games (including Rome and Medieval2) had so many crash issues. All of them at least ran more or less smoothly from the first day I bought them.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Hmmm, I seem to have lost a fairly big post in reply. You will now get my redux version.

Sure, STW and MTW had their faults too. But we are nearly a decade on, and the AI is less capable on all levels.

Also, we weren't complaininmg as much back then? Are you kidding?! The .org used to populated almost exclusively by wargamers and boy, they did their nickname of Grognard credit.

[nafod]

Complaints about the AI are subjective and relative to the player by this point in time. There have been huge changes from the past versions.

There are still a few things that could improve but it is doing a much better job.

When they DoW now they usually mean business.

Playing at higher difficulty levels is tougher than any of the other TW games. The only problem with the siege game is it is for the AI a matter of capture the flag and not kill the opponent. It has been that way with all the previous games. It is just more apparent with this one fighting in forts and not in city streets.

The changes in the last two patches just in the last couple of weeks have made the game out of it that it should have been to start.

If anyone has not played since 1.3.1 or before, you should give it another try and see what you think now.

The only problem is players like me quit playing at 1.3. Actually I never finished a campaign as I started a new one with each patch hoping they would dramatically improve things.

I understand player issues with the AI since RTW. I was actually quite satisfied with RTW and MTW as I was able to play through a few campaigns before their failures became clear. In fact I played RTW + BI for 3 years, MTWII + Kingdoms for 2 years. I was completely sick of Empire after 5 months.

As a somewhat longterm TW fan I guess I had an expectation gap resulting from the expectation that things would get better, comibined with the massive sales campaign + CA comments spouting their endless drivel about how great this game was.

Additionally I feel the release now and finish later approach led to some heartburn among the playerbase regarding their various balancing changes and what-not that had the game been that way at launch, the playerbase wouldn't have either noticed it, or at least the response would have been much more subtle.

[antisocialmunky]

I don't agree the AI problems started with Rome. I think some of you simply forgot how it was.

Some AI problems I recall from MTW1:

- AI building masses of low tech units like peasants and archers and almost never building higher tech units.

- AI sending its units one by one when assulting castles. Each time a unit gets annihilated the next one is sent.

- At the start of France campaign, England sends an army consisting of only the king and all his heirs. They would bravely attack the French spearmen/militia waiting in the woods. I remember England losing all its heirs and as a result being defeated at the very start of the game.

- Vikings never attacking England in Viking Invasion.

People did not complain much then, because CA was not a big name yet and expectations were not as high as today.

Of course I am talking about just the AI. None of the former TW games (including Rome and Medieval2) had so many crash issues. All of them at least ran more or less smoothly from the first day I bought them.

Well, MTW massively improved on STW. You had castle sieges, 100 or so units, general portraits, the trait system, more religions, the pope, crusades etc, glorious achievements.

That's reasonable and it didn't have suicide FMs quite as much, armies that didn't devolve into a massive ball of units like MIITW and RTW, (ETW has fixed some of this actually), the diplo AI was atleast somewhat reasonable. It generally stuck to treaties and would all-in weaker guys.... etc.

RTW was to a lesser degree similar upon release. It was friggin 3D and added the new campaign map and converted everything to 3D. However, RTW also saw the rise of the suicide general charge head-long into phalanxes, and other bad things like poor diplomacy and multiple personality diplo/warfare AIs. Where as the MTW AI actually effectively flanked sometimes and did some other clever-clever things... RTW's AI never did too much. Interestingly enough the strategic AI got a nice upgrade in Alexander where diplomacy became quite better and the AI learned how to properly invade and reinforce invasions as much as an AI can be expected to.

MIITW was a trainwreck plain and simple. The AI was nuts:
-The diplo/warfare problems were still present.
-The idiotic BI naval invasions came back with a vengence.
-Units balled up instead of come at you with any decent formation most of the time.
-We had passive AI if the player fielded too many missiles.
-There were much more errors with unit cohesion and getting units to actually fight.
-Castle pathfinding was and still is borked.
-The AI kept spamming uber peasants.

Also, just incase anyone cares here's my personal play time on each of the games:
-I played about 12 campaigns in STW and finished 3.
-I played about 15 campaigns in MTW and finished 2 due to memory leaks.
-I played about 4 campaigns in Vanilla RTW and finished 1. Found CIV3 for $5 and played a ton of games. Then I discovered EB, XGM, and other things:book: of which I played several campaigns though finished none.
-I played about 9 campaigns in MIITW and finished 2(Milan and Jerusalem in Kingdoms).
-I played 3 campaigns in ETW, got bored with the silly AI and went back to CIV4 and then EB and then Third Age: Total War for MIITW, then I found XCOM.

[Yun Dog]

Well, MTW massively improved on STW. You had castle sieges, 100 or so units, general portraits, the trait system, more religions, the pope, crusades etc, glorious achievements.

That's reasonable and it didn't have suicide FMs quite as much, armies that didn't devolve into a massive ball of units like MIITW and RTW, (ETW has fixed some of this actually), the diplo AI was atleast somewhat reasonable. It generally stuck to treaties and would all-in weaker guys.... etc.

RTW was to a lesser degree similar upon release. It was friggin 3D and added the new campaign map and converted everything to 3D. However, RTW also saw the rise of the suicide general charge head-long into phalanxes, and other bad things like poor diplomacy and multiple personality diplo/warfare AIs. Where as the MTW AI actually effectively flanked sometimes and did some other clever-clever things... RTW's AI never did too much. Interestingly enough the strategic AI got a nice upgrade in Alexander where diplomacy became quite better and the AI learned how to properly invade and reinforce invasions as much as an AI can be expected to.

MIITW was a trainwreck plain and simple. The AI was nuts:
-The diplo/warfare problems were still present.
-The idiotic BI naval invasions came back with a vengence.
-Units balled up instead of come at you with any decent formation most of the time.
-We had passive AI if the player fielded too many missiles.
-There were much more errors with unit cohesion and getting units to actually fight.
-Castle pathfinding was and still is borked.
-The AI kept spamming uber peasants.

Also, just incase anyone cares here's my personal play time on each of the games:
-I played about 12 campaigns in STW and finished 3.
-I played about 15 campaigns in MTW and finished 2 due to memory leaks.
-I played about 4 campaigns in Vanilla RTW and finished 1. Found CIV3 for $5 and played a ton of games. Then I discovered EB, XGM, and other things:book: of which I played several campaigns though finished none.
-I played about 9 campaigns in MIITW and finished 2(Milan and Jerusalem in Kingdoms).
-I played 3 campaigns in ETW, got bored with the silly AI and went back to CIV4 and then EB and then Third Age: Total War for MIITW, then I found XCOM.


I think this is a fairly accurate assesment
I finished and played alot more MTW campaigns
Likewise with RTW I played most of the factions and finished quite a few, and then EB goodness but like you due to the Massive Awsomeness of it, actually finished few if any
gees you managed to finish 2 M2TW camps - I did 1 so that I could be massively let down by the ending - and after all these titles would it kill them to have some end-game stats a score sheet and a ladder.

Really this game is begging to be taken by 2k games and have the battle engine merged with the Civ4 campaign engine - Oh my GOD I think I just made a mess in my pants :yes:

[Elmar Bijlsma]

...then I found XCOM.
Eh?
XCOM Enemy Unknown, the old fashioned alien hunting and king of all great games? Or is it something new/different?

[caravel]

I don't agree the AI problems started with Rome. I think some of you simply forgot how it was.

Some AI problems I recall from MTW1:

- AI building masses of low tech units like peasants and archers and almost never building higher tech units.
Not an AI problem. This was caused by poorly balanced unit rosters that were introduced in MTW and have continued to this day. STW did not have this problem as it had the ideal setting, conflict, era and unit rosters for a TW game. RTW also had this problem, for example you often find yourself fighting hordes of crap eastern infantry, hillmen etc. It tends to be a faction/roster specific issue.


- AI sending its units one by one when assulting castles. Each time a unit gets annihilated the next one is sent.
True and this has not improved. The AI has never been competent at handling a siege - either in defence or offence. This is why I autocalced everything to do with sieges in MTW.

This was less of an issue in STW as the castles had an open breach instead of a gate and no siege engines or towers. It suited the simple AI better.

Sieges in MTW are still more difficult than those in RTW however. I have won most siege defences in RTW even when outnumbered ten to one - they are stupidly easy and the AI is hopelessly inept. For offences a ladder rush works in most cases with siege towers being best for the larger walls. The AI on the other hand assaults in the most idiotic fashion, shooting at a single tower for ages before attacking and sometimes hanging back whiloe being shot to pieces. The general often remains ouitside until all his troops are dead before getting involved.


- At the start of France campaign, England sends an army consisting of only the king and all his heirs. They would bravely attack the French spearmen/militia waiting in the woods. I remember England losing all its heirs and as a result being defeated at the very start of the game.
That's just a particular example. I've not often seen the AI sending cavalry to attack infantry in woods but it can happen in certain circumstances. The reason it sends it's royalty in to attack is due to unit rosters and placement. The French attack the province that contains the faction leader and thus the faction leader gets into battle. Not a lot can be done about this. I liken it to the RTW AI sending it's family members out alone, while the armies they should be leading are led by captains.


- Vikings never attacking England in Viking Invasion.
Not entirely true but yes, the Viking Invasion campaign was badly flawed. The Vikings fielded "uber units" (like the Romans in RTW) and in order to rein them in somewhat they were given a poor economy. In essence CA introduced imbalances in an attempt at recreating an historical scenario and this is what ruined the game. They did the same thing with Rome in giving the Romans a huge range of overpowered units that come in two phases and neutering the "barbarian" factions' tech tree.


People did not complain much then, because CA was not a big name yet and expectations were not as high as today.
People did complain then in fact and expectations are always high when it comes to something you actually pay good money for. All I expect from TW is good game play and decent AI - anything else is a bonus. Graphics should not be the focus in a game like ETW, the main focus should be in simulating the warfare of the period accuractely - not just visually but physically.


Of course I am talking about just the AI. None of the former TW games (including Rome and Medieval2) had so many crash issues. All of them at least ran more or less smoothly from the first day I bought them.
STW/MTW never crashed for me until I upgraded my PC. The game does not run well on new hardware. There is only one group of people that can fix this problem - yet they choose to ignore it. As far as CA are concerned when the new title is released the old title simply ceases to exist.

As to general crashes and bugginess. From RTW onwards this got steadily worse. RTW still crashes quite often when you exterminate the populace in a captured settlement. RTW is also prone to crashes and horrific bugs during sieges. M2TW's bugs are well known, ETW's seem endless from what I've read so far. It seems to me that the developer is not interested in releasing a fairly stable product from day one. This may be one of the main reasons as to why the Steam platform was introduced.

[hoom]

Regarding the Battle AI having gotten worse post STW/MTW, I used to think this too.
I did sometimes see glimpses of STW/MTW AI in RTW & RTR 6.0/EB brought it out more often.

Play at least the first battle of RTR VII:TIC.
That is a tough battle.
Its got a big thread (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=139172&page=1) about how hard it is & various strategies for getting through it with enough army to not destroy your chances at success for the rest of the campaign. (reminds me of the glory days of the .org)

The AI storms up to you in double line formation, engages across a broad front, feeds in reserves as needed & even double-flanks! :2thumbsup:

Does much the same in other battles too :)
Its positively frightening to see when you've been so used to seeing AI armies just milling around, not engaging.

The RTR guys swear black & blue that while the Campaign circumstances that give rise to that battle are scripted, the actual battle itself isn't, just good balancing bringing out AI routines that never get triggered normally.

The one time I have beaten that first battle with most of my army intact would be definitely in my top 10 most epic TW battles, quite possibly top 5 & I have played a lot of TW.

It was all I played, many hours every day/evening from Mongol Invasion through MTW & VI until RTW release.
Since RTW came out I've been increasingly playing other games but have still put in probably the majority of time on various iterations of RTR & EB mods.
Haven't played a single turn of Retail version of BI.
Have probably played about 40 turns of M2TW/Kingdoms (mainly waiting on EB2)
Empire, I nearly finished a Maratha campaign but am mostly waiting for patches/mods to mature & make the thing work properly.
(also hoping that RTR team will be able to migrate to E:TW engine within a reasonable time because there are heaps of features that could be awesome for the Rome period)

[antisocialmunky]

That sounds fun :). I'm aware that the RTW AI guys have worked some miracles with formations and other things so that's pretty epic.

To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if CA finally ups the AI for the next installment of TW whenever it takes place(WWI? with air combat engine XD') now that either they themselves or Sega feels that the second major mainstream release is getting beat on so hard for bugs and poor AI. However, the campaign AI is the only thing completely now lackluster. The BAI's problems mainly came from bugs and bad unit mission assignments(READ: Cavalry attacking cannons it cannot kill and hiding in every single house) but alot of those have been fixed.

A detailed strategic component is and always has been the biggest hole in TW.
STW - Plot out the most efficient Risk rout to kill everyone. Allies were actually useful in battle so don't kill everyone straight away.
MTW - STW except you need to figure out how to fake out the pope. You also have to worry about crusades and Jihads alienating everyone.
RTW - Make big stacks of units.... ROME SMASH!!!!
MIITW - Make big stacks of units and tech.... then everyone will eventually all in due to your ports. Murder everyone with uber Knights while they only have spearmans and peasants.
ETW - Play as Prussia or make a ridiculous amount of trade money.

A problem also as big is the context of your battles. Post-RTW is basically wading into a river of spam with battles not having any significance other than taking out the generic faceless AI. While not every battle can be the biggest and the one battle to decide the campaign, it would be nice if we decreased the frequency of battle and the importance of each battle.

It would be nice if they did it in time for NTW and added that module onto vanilla like the graphics package they talked about.

And yes: XCOM Enemy Unknown - it is awesome until you get psi-amps so I never get psi-amps. :)

[hoom]

Post-RTW is basically wading into a river of spam with battles not having any significance other than taking out the generic faceless AI.Yes, on the Risk type map it was possible & often best to fall back in the face of superior numbers, buying time for reinforcements to arrive, a counter-attack next turn from multiple neighbouring provinces or just forcing the enemy to overstretch & leave somewhere else vulnerable :2thumbsup:

Then there was also the off chance/carefully executed plan where Province A & B are attacked, province A army withdraws to province B, while province B fights & loses leaving the province A army cut-off & annihilated/taken prisoner without a fight.
I lost a Daimyo & my main army that way once. It just about collapsed my empire & took ages to recover from, but it was awesome!

Many a drive deep into enemy territory was made possible by a great victory in one province, with the weak AI leftovers & garrison armies repeatedly falling back, combining & gaining reinforcements until suddenly I found myself facing superior numbers, with a depleted army & a long 'supply train' back to my barracks provinces.
Result: An ignominous retreat to more manageable borders or several tense turns/tight battles to secure the new borders.

That is all pretty much impossible with the RTW & later campaign simply because you can't effectively retreat out of harms' way.
In RTW & later its always better to fight to the last man from whatever strong point you can find on the battle map than to withdraw.
If you withdraw you'll only find yourself with the non-option:
-Lose your army without inflicting any losses on the enemy
-Fight the same guys you already decided to run away from but probably on worse ground :wall:

I'd really really like to see a return to the Risk type of Campaign Map, aside from the above simply because it would be vastly easier to write a competent Campaign AI for.

[Peasant Phill]

Making the possible for the AI to retreat AND knowing when to retreat, would go a long way towards what you want without resorting back to a risk-style map.
Would that be so hard to code? CA has done that already.

[Slaists]

Making the possible for the AI to retreat AND knowing when to retreat, would go a long way towards what you want without resorting back to a risk-style map.
Would that be so hard to code? CA has done that already.

Yup, I agree. And I wonder why did they pull retreating out of the ETW equation. Their pre-release announcements boasted about the AI being intelligent about when to retreat. However, in the game, the AI NEVER retreats, no matter what the odds are.

[Fisherking]

Yup, I agree. And I wonder why did they pull retreating out of the ETW equation. Their pre-release announcements boasted about the AI being intelligent about when to retreat... However, in the game, it NEVER retreats, no matter what the odds are.

How true! That seems the thing they keep putting off until later!

Though they will give up cities now without a fight...though they are still all trashed...what is with that part anyway?

[TinCow]

Really this game is begging to be taken by 2k games and have the battle engine merged with the Civ4 campaign engine - Oh my GOD I think I just made a mess in my pants :yes:

Make it Paradox and EU3 instead. That's pretty much my dream game right there.

[antisocialmunky]

Yup, I agree. And I wonder why did they pull retreating out of the ETW equation. Their pre-release announcements boasted about the AI being intelligent about when to retreat. However, in the game, the AI NEVER retreats, no matter what the odds are.

You mean those videos where Jack Lusted and the other AI guys 'played' a battle and commented on the intelligence of the AI and went 'YES! I won' at the end? Yeah, those ones that hyped the battle AI but only showed sporadic in game video and the narration about the AI acting intelligent. Yeah those, right?

Yes, Jack and his sexy facial hair... Those...

[Owen Glyndwr]

You mean those videos where Jack Lusted and the other AI guys 'played' a battle and commented on the intelligence of the AI and went 'YES! I won' at the end? Yeah, those ones that hyped the battle AI but only showed sporadic in game video and the narration about the AI acting intelligent. Yeah those, right?

Yes, Jack and his sexy facial hair... Those...


Don't forget about the Dev. Diary recounting his jaunt as Prussia and just how close he came to losing the game. And that it was fun, and wars meant something and every decision had political repercussions. Yeah, I remember that game.

In fact, I'm downright surprised I never actually bought the game. Thank god I was broke on release day...

Oh, and The political arena of EU/HoI+the battle system of TW would be great!!!

[hoom]

Making the possible for the AI to retreat AND knowing when to retreat, would go a long way towards what you want without resorting back to a risk-style map.No.

The problem is fundamentally the 'one turn after the other' format.
This makes it impossible to retreat effectively.
It also completely removes Allies from the battlespace except in very rare circumstances.

In STW/MTW when you drag an army into another province, you're not actually moving that army, just indicating where it should go when you click 'end turn'.

When you click end turn, the AI take their turns to indicate their moves, then the units actually move and finally anywhere that armies from different factions are on the same province = Battle or withdraw.

The STW/MTW AI did actually have the advantage/slight cheat of seeing what you did & being able to respond but in nearly all cases this was positive for the game play as they did things like send reinforcements to attacked provinces, counter-attacks into lightly defended provinces or Allies could send in their guys to help.

Thats why we need to go back to the Risk style provinces.

-------------

Additionally, I'd like to see a 3rd separate layer to the game so that when two armies meet in a province (ie neither choose to withdraw at STW/MTW style 'armies meet' interface), instead of jumping straight to battle, you go to a third 'Theatre Level'.
RTW style campaign was an attempt to add this 3rd level but it fails at it, while simultaneously it broke the Campaign level AI & gameplay.

My way the Theatre level would play similar to the RTW style but would just be one, zoomed in province at a time.
You would have a few turns (eg if Campaign level turn is 1yr, you'd have say 4 * 3mth turns) of army level maneuvring before going back to the Campaign level.

For example you could:
Position on strong ground or maneuvre to deny it to your enemy
Bypass the enemy forces, pushing through to another province
Escape superior forces
Intercept an invader
Withdraw to safety
Split the army to attack/defend multiple targets (eg minor towns) or perform Theatre level flanking moves (eg Telamon)
Avoid battle but attack the enemies' supply lines
Sit & wait for your enemy to make a move
Close to Battle!


I think that would give the best of both worlds & be relatively easier to code AI for.

[Kantalla]

That's actually a pretty decent idea there Hoom. Depending on how it was done you might end up with some of the same issues, just on a micro scale though.

Personally, I like the potential of the 2D campaign map, particularly with the importance of a number of the town nodes. I'd actually resolve the retreat issue with giving both sides a range of options when the defender elects to retreat, essentially the defender would make a short withdrawl, and then each side would be presented with new options. For example the defender could choose outright flight, retreat to a reinforcing army within range, retreat to defensible position etc. The attacker could chose to allow the defender to withdraw, pursue to border, or pursue to engage. I'd also like to see the potential for casualties if you attempt to flee rather than engage.

[caravel]

Additionally, I'd like to see a 3rd separate layer to the game so that when two armies meet in a province (ie neither choose to withdraw at STW/MTW style 'armies meet' interface), instead of jumping straight to battle, you go to a third 'Theatre Level'.
RTW style campaign was an attempt to add this 3rd level but it fails at it, while simultaneously it broke the Campaign level AI & gameplay.

My way the Theatre level would play similar to the RTW style but would just be one, zoomed in province at a time.
You would have a few turns (eg if Campaign level turn is 1yr, you'd have say 4 * 3mth turns) of army level maneuvring before going back to the Campaign level.

This is precisely the idea I proposed over at the .com back in '05 before M2TW was released. Most of the .commies at the time thought I was slightly unhinged for suggesting it, so good to see someone thinks along the same lines. IMHO it's the ideal way to make use of the RTW style campaign map.

:bow:

[Dead Guy]

I'd absolutely love it if that was implemented. Move your armies to the general area and then get tactical locally. Then you could make use of the terrain better than on the risk map without retarding the AI too much. Awesome idea.

[Slaists]

No.

The problem is fundamentally the 'one turn after the other' format.
This makes it impossible to retreat effectively.
It also completely removes Allies from the battlespace except in very rare circumstances.

In STW/MTW when you drag an army into another province, you're not actually moving that army, just indicating where it should go when you click 'end turn'.

When you click end turn, the AI take their turns to indicate their moves, then the units actually move and finally anywhere that armies from different factions are on the same province = Battle or withdraw.

The STW/MTW AI did actually have the advantage/slight cheat of seeing what you did & being able to respond but in nearly all cases this was positive for the game play as they did things like send reinforcements to attacked provinces, counter-attacks into lightly defended provinces or Allies could send in their guys to help.

Thats why we need to go back to the Risk style provinces.

-------------

Additionally, I'd like to see a 3rd separate layer to the game so that when two armies meet in a province (ie neither choose to withdraw at STW/MTW style 'armies meet' interface), instead of jumping straight to battle, you go to a third 'Theatre Level'.
RTW style campaign was an attempt to add this 3rd level but it fails at it, while simultaneously it broke the Campaign level AI & gameplay.

My way the Theatre level would play similar to the RTW style but would just be one, zoomed in province at a time.
You would have a few turns (eg if Campaign level turn is 1yr, you'd have say 4 * 3mth turns) of army level maneuvring before going back to the Campaign level.

For example you could:
Position on strong ground or maneuvre to deny it to your enemy
Bypass the enemy forces, pushing through to another province
Escape superior forces
Intercept an invader
Withdraw to safety
Split the army to attack/defend multiple targets (eg minor towns) or perform Theatre level flanking moves (eg Telamon)
Avoid battle but attack the enemies' supply lines
Sit & wait for your enemy to make a move
Close to Battle!


I think that would give the best of both worlds & be relatively easier to code AI for.

Sounds like a great idea to me...

[hoom]

Depending on how it was done you might end up with some of the same issues, just on a micro scale though.Yes, this is true, I'm particularly anxious that Allied forces need the opportunity to get into any battles.

I'm actually suspicious that this Theatre level would work well in realtime or semi-realtime, which would enable simultaneous movement, Allies to rendezvous (or be prevented from it!) etc.

Asai Nagamasa, great minds eh? :bow:


For example the defender could choose outright flight, retreat to a reinforcing army within range, retreat to defensible position etc. The attacker could chose to allow the defender to withdraw, pursue to border, or pursue to engage. I'd also like to see the potential for casualties if you attempt to flee rather than engage.This is a good idea too :)
Certainly its a minimum improvement that CA could implement fairly easily.

It has downsides that its a bit 'texty' & it doesn't solve the Allies issue though.

[fenir]

Well i no longer post much, but i still read here.

Been here since shogun. And it's nice to see a return to some developer consumer communications. Even if it is just a marketing controlled damaged limitation exercise.

Overall Mike is saying, the consumer is to blame for poor sales. Because of the negative comments.

I agree.

So lets visit this.
The developer released a poor game. The consumer complained. The big gaming houses, like sega et cetera.. do not engage their consumers, nor do they take any notice. Thereby compounding the problem.
So the consumer needs an out let. Hence the complaints.

Everyone knows someone that is a hard core gamer. Myself, i am going on 22 years of online games.
I still have Sid Meirs Civ 1 on two 3.5 floppies.
I also own majority holdings in 3 companies. So we are far from idiots here. There are marketing exec's here, software developers, and many more as such.
And with this it makes one wonder just why CA/Sega mainly, have not sort to engage us more comprehensively in the past.

Anyway, back to it...

With everyone knowing a hardcore gamer, it is not hard to find out what a game is like.
In world war II online, we were talking about the poor state of it, after telling people it should be a great game. Even the GM's where engaged in talking about it. Including a RAT. (Name given to the developers).
Unfortunately the release was not good. And we told people. Gamers listen to gamers. doesn't take a uni degree to find like minded gamers.
Even Lord of the rings online appranently, and warhammer, there was much discussed on the state of ETW.

You can hardly expect people to buy a broken down car, and for it to travel back and forth to work, without fixing it.

And this was the problem with ETW.

The entire purpose of doing what the gamers here and else where did, was to hurt Sega/CA finanically. It's the only way we can get you to take notice.
And it obviously worked.

So the lesson CA/Sega should be taking from this is simple.

Gives us a damn product that works on release, with what you claim it to do. And we will tell people. They will buy it.
Give us crap again, we will repeat the exercise.

Previously there was grace in this, because CA was a small company, but with the $1 billion mark cap of sega, I cannot see money being a problem for investment.
The blame lies entirely, at the developer/Publishers feet. Without question.




Ok i read someone saying that many wanted the game released, literally saying we wouldn't like it to be any longer than it had to be.

Well that is human nature.

If the highest ranking person at CA/Sega posted and said, look guys we found some late sreious problems. I will not release this game unfinished.

Many of us, myself included, would have reposted what we said orginally.

Ahh bugger, No worries mate, take your time.

I have no problem with delaying somthing to get it right. For one it would have had a positive effect, knowing hey no marketing crap/propoganda. Just an honest the boss saying it's not up to standard yet.
We would told everyone, look the boss said he needs more time. People would have been impressed. It would have spread like wild fire. Sales on release of a finished no hassells product of a good game could have doubled.
The most basic marketing, look at what your competitors are doing, and what are they not doing. And do something they are not.
Reputation is everything when selling.


And on release, the game would have got far better reviews, and hence far greater sales return.

Basic 101 first year university.
Professor Don Trow.
"If you make a good to sell, make sure it works before it leaves for the consumer, make the consumer want to tell their friends about your product. Only then can you place a premium on your product."

Personally i have never seen this fail.

So do what CA did orginally.
A unique product, quailty of work, place a $5, or $10 premium on the work.

As long as it does what you claim, and what the consumer expects.

But dont blame the consumer for poor products.

Sincerely

fenir

[gollum]

Originally posted by fenir
With everyone knowing a hardcore gamer, it is not hard to find out what a game is like.

CA know what hardcore gamers are very well - that's why they manage so well to make games that are not for them, but for the mass gaming public.


The entire purpose of doing what the gamers here and else where did, was to hurt Sega/CA finanically. It's the only way we can get you to take notice.
And it obviously worked.

Did it? ETW sold double what RTW and M2TW according to the link of antisocialmunky. This is after making two straight half baked and commercially oriented products (RTW and M2TW) that were full of bugs and ultimately partially fixed, AND hyping up ETW to the stars with any means possible, while knowing that the game wouldnt even "broadly satisfy them" at release.

In reality if the game had less stability issues and avoided common AI flaws and bugs with its predecessors, CA would have gotten away with it this time too. At least, the so called "professional reviewers" were revealed for what they are. The discreepency of scores between reviewers and users was nothing short of enjoyable.

[nafod]

CA know what hardcore gamers are very well - that's why they manage so well to make games that are not for them, but for the mass gaming public.



Did it? ETW sold double what RTW and M2TW according to the link of antisocialmunky. This is after making two straight half baked and commercially oriented products (RTW and M2TW) that were full of bugs and ultimately partially fixed, AND hyping up ETW to the stars with any means possible, while knowing that the game wouldnt even "broadly satisfy them" at release.

In reality if the game had less stability issues and avoided common AI flaws and bugs with its predecessors, CA would have gotten away with it this time too. At least, the so called "professional reviewers" were revealed for what they are. The discreepency of scores between reviewers and users was nothing short of enjoyable.

Easy, the quote by antisocialmonkey measures metacritic ratings. In no way is a purchase of a game linked to submitting a metacritic rating on a one to one basis. In fact I own all of the games he listed but only rated one--you guessed it--ETW. Back in 2004/2005 I wasn't even aware metacritic existed.

It is probably safe to infer ETW outsold earlier releases, I don't know about the twice as much as both combined bit though.

And yes I believe the "Professional" reviews are to blame as well. The self serving internal reviews from CA didn't help either and provided for some comedy for the community as the mirage of ETW unravelled rather quickly.

For the record I only look at game media reviews to see if a game flops entirely, (eg a 4 or less) as they do call out total lemons pretty well. It's just the difference between a 6 and a 10 is often hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertisement costs it seems.

[gollum]

Hello nafod,
it seems i got confused - i cant remember after all who linked there, but i meant this link
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/45324/Empire-Total-War-Breaks-U-K-Sales-Records

[nafod]

Hello nafod,
it seems i got confused - i cant remember after all who linked there, but i meant this link
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/45324/Empire-Total-War-Breaks-U-K-Sales-Records

No problem, I'm sure there was a more reliant source.

[antisocialmunky]

Hello nafod,
it seems i got confused - i cant remember after all who linked there, but i meant this link
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/45324/Empire-Total-War-Breaks-U-K-Sales-Records

I did. :-p I was using metacritic to measure exposure which is different from sales.

[gollum]

:2thumbsup: Got it right!

[peacemaker]

Well, I just realized that at least one person has mentioned that ETW had a broken release, they should've waited a while longer to finish patching, blah blah blah. If you think about the current state as it is now, and how it's more or less the game it should be, then the 'release date' of the full, fixed game is just a few months later. Much later.

[antisocialmunky]

By that logic I should be expected to give the same tip both to a waiter that gives me prompt quality service and one that forgot to put my order in so I have to wait 20 more minutes... for the third time in a row even though I did give him the same tip the first two times because I'm a nice guy.

Its not the just the product, people expect that certain reasonable standards of conduct to be met especially after the issues have been acknowleged by both parties and promises have been thrown around so many times before.

[gollum]

Part Two - is good to quote them all here for future reference; links tend to disapear sometimes.


Originally posted by Mike Simpson
One common complaint we get from the community is that so long as there are defects in Empire: Total War, we shouldn’t be working on any new products. If there was just one of us, or all of us could work on any issue that would make sense. As it is, we’ve had Empire: Total War patch work as the top priority for everyone. The campaign AI team has worked on nothing else at all since release. The other programmers have dealt with their patch issues before moving on, and get dragged back to them if they resurface. Most of the content team have not been able to help with patches - artists and designers can’t code and most issues are code issues - and have moved on to new stuff.

Patch 1.5 has just been released. This is the last planned major patch for Empire: Total War, and attempts to sweep up the remaining AI issues that for the hardcore gamer take the shine off of the Empire apple. The previous patches have dealt with the most common crashes and tidied up a lot of bugs, and 1.4 dealt with a lot of the AI issues. What is left at this point are a few minor issues spread around the game, and the last big campaign AI problem - the aggression level.

Battle and campaign AI are completely different systems and teams. I’ll talk about battle AI another time. The Empire campaign AI has been way too passive for me, and the community pretty unanimously shares that view, so it’s not something I need to explain. It is however interesting that a good proportion of the more casual gamers - and they are probably more than half our customers - actually like the AI to be fairly passive. The US casual gamer in particular likes a more sandbox-like experience, where he can make and execute long term plans and not have them constantly disrupted by an aggressive AI. This is a play style thing rather than a level of difficulty thing - they still want a challenge, but they want it to be their game, not the AI’s.

Making a passive AI may have sold us lots more games in the US, but it wasn’t intentional. Maybe we’ll have a play style setting in the future, but for now our intention is to challenge the player with an AI that is as aggressive and varied as human players would be.

So it is campaign AI that was the main focus for 1.4, and that I think we’ve finally got sorted out on 1.5. It’s worth talking a bit about how we ended up with an AI that didn’t have the play style we intended on release, and has taken 6 more months work to get there. The short answer is an excess of ambition.

This AI is not like any other we have written. It’s a beliefs - desires - intentions based planning system, and it’s also by far the most complex code edifice I’ve ever seen in a game. I wrote much of the campaign AI for Shogun and Medieval I (Ah… those were the days…) and I know that even quite simple “static” evaluate-act AI’s with no plans or memory can be complex enough to exhibit chaotic behaviour (we’re talking about mathematical “butterfly effect” style chaos here). It does what it does, and it’s not quite what you intended. This can be a good thing - you cull out the bad behaviours and are left with just what is good, and with a simple system that’s not too predictable.

Well, the Empire AI is way more complicated than any of our previous products, but the team is bigger and has more talent that we had in my day - PhD’s, and coders sharper than a box of razor blades. It’s a V12 supercar compared with Shogun’s 50cc moped. When it’s firing on all cylinders, it will be way, way ahead of anything we’ve seen in any PC strategy game before. It thinks about everything. It thinks of everything, it plots and it plans. As we approached release, bringing more subsystems on line, it was looking amazingly good, but at some point the level of chaos reached a tipping point and we lost control. Our AI did a “HAL” on us and gained the AI equivalent of multiple personality disorder. The net result is an AI that plans furiously and brilliantly and long term, but disagrees with itself chronically and often ends up paralysed by indecision.

We’ve had it on the coder’s couch for 6 months now, and it’s finally feeling better. It’s more aggressive, it uses naval invasions, and it doesn’t dither much more than most humans I know. It should now be well ahead of Rome/Med II’s AI, but it’s still only firing on two or three cylinders and had much untapped potential.

One thing I am sure about - I don’t regret having the ambition that led to this. This AI will I think astound in the long term, but I am gutted that we didn’t get the AI we wanted for the hardcore fans on day 1.

I had 6 copies of Empire: Total War sat on my shelf intended for close gamer friends that I didn’t send out because I was too embarrassed about the flaws. Old friends are the harshest critics. Well they’ve gone out now. I think the game now meets my personal unreasonably high quality threshold - not just good but great. Hopefully my friends will agree.

Which basically affirms almost word for word many if not all of the arguments in this thread. Have fun with Napoleon guys...:laugh4:

edit: i'll be interested to see what new plot will be told if NTW proves to have a flawed AI...

[Elmar Bijlsma]

While I was pretty sceptical about the "damage control" aspect of the previous blog, this one seems pretty frank.
I'd love to have play style setting, sounds good. Might help me role-playing as a nation not set on conquering everything and everybody.

Dunno, but from

This AI will I think astound in the long term
it sounds like they intend to use this engine for a while longer. No longer revolution>evolution sounds good plan and I hope they stick to it. The game is sweet looking, it needn't be that much prettier. Not switching engines might give them time to consolidate the features they have and polish it till it shines.

You know? I think someone just deserved to have their DLC bought.

[gollum]

Originally posted by Elmar Bijlsma
No longer revolution>evolution sounds good plan and I hope they stick to it.

True, it has gone from revolution to revolution now, as they tell us themselves, with NTW.

So either they can design a new engine in a year in the midst of patching frantically ETW or they want fans to pay full price for an expansion. In other words from bad to worse. But not to worry; the brilliant PhDs who designed a very good AI that wasn't good after all, will fix everything - no matter how many extra fanciful, commercially oriented features suggested to the "designers" from the sales analists, they are asked to accomodate at the same time.

AIs are not the only things that exhibit non-linear behaviour - for example the quality of a resulting product and the resources (human and not) available to make it arent in all probability linearly related. These resources have interelationships and interdependencies and it is the nature of those that gives you the system of PDEs that govern quality. There is also the matter of team communication and team cohesion relative to the objective.

In other words, as has been said, the blog is (mostly) marketing talk.

[hoom]

Patch 1.5 has just been released. This is the last planned major patch for Empire: Total War

It’s a V12 supercar compared with Shogun’s 50cc moped ... We’ve had it on the coder’s couch for 6 months now, ... but it’s still only firing on two or three cylindersNot exactly what I want to hear really :sick2:

Neither is emphasis on AI aggression. I want to see Rationality not Aggression.

Aggression obviously has its place but I want to see minor factions rationally stay at peace with me if I leave them alone (unless they join an anti me alliance) or accept peace when clearly on the losing side, having just had their army smashed & with a big army poised to beseige their capital :bobby2:

[Owen Glyndwr]

I thought useless aggression was the major gripe during the early days. In fact I recall many threads about nations never taking peace. ever.

I think I would consider myself a hardcore gamer, and I have said repeatedly I would rather have a rational AI that declares war only when it needs to than an AI that is constantly at war.

Thank you Mike Simpson. Thanks for telling us exactly how CA feels about its own product.

[Crazed Rabbit]

I'm already astounded by the poorness of the AI.

CR

[antisocialmunky]

I thought useless aggression was the major gripe during the early days. In fact I recall many threads about nations never taking peace. ever.

I think I would consider myself a hardcore gamer, and I have said repeatedly I would rather have a rational AI that declares war only when it needs to than an AI that is constantly at war.

Thank you Mike Simpson. Thanks for telling us exactly how CA feels about its own product.

Post 1.5 is somewhat reasonable with a touch of the old madness.

[Incongruous]

Ladies and Gentleorgahns, I present to you The Death of A Franchise.

How long does CA think it can continue with this before a new company agments the TW game style into something respectable? All it requires is for Paradox to take an interest, then it's game over.


Note: I am angry at the moment because since "up"grading to 1.5 my game no longer starts, my pc can clearly no longer handle the AMAZING V12 SUPERCAR...

[Elmar Bijlsma]

There's a couple of ghastly admission in the latest blog, but him admitting it goes some way. The copies for friends bit is a bit tough to swallow, true. but hey, nothing personal, right? :dizzy2:

Anyway, I think the current state of ETW is reasonable. It has a fair few flaws still, but it's a good place to start afresh. If I read it right, the current engine is going to be with us a while, so it'll slowly get better instead of re-inventing the wheel every second title.
Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty annoyed with the way it went with ETW. But I just don't think the future is all doom and gloom.

[antisocialmunky]

Yeah, it wouldn't have been so bad(actually it would have deserved the praise it got on day 1) if ETW was released in the current state.

If they schedules more Q/A at the end of their development cycle would have been nice. Some sort of ten turn campaign/battle public beta/demo would be nice.

[Monsieur Louris]

HINT: Annual financial turnover is calculated in March. NTW is coming out February. Can you connect the dots? I wonder what would happen if the majority of NTW sales took place around April-May instead of the first two-three weeks following the game's release i.e. after the fiscal year ends...
Panic? Closure? Good thing that I don't have the necessary public opinion 'muscle' to launch a 'delay buying NTW' PR campaign.

[mor-dan]

all i know is that i have never played any of the series with the enjoyment and consistency i did Shogun. i finished the campaign for each playable faction, and each in both religions. Medieval was too long. i would get bored trying to reach my goals. Rome was annoying. the trait system basically wouldn't allow you to have any good generals unless you never left them in a city. Medi2 was more of the same from Medi1 and Rome. with Empire, i have had a bit more interest in the trade possibilities, diplomacies, and tech trees, but it has just been poorly implemented so again it isn't fun, it takes too long, and until 1.4 you didn't have to worry about being attacked on islands or in different theaters except by land.

battle AI is always going to be lacking. it's not a computer chess game. not mention, you can see them almost immediately. if they approach you, you know where they are coming from. the only challenge is if it is wooded and you have to approach them because you don't know exactly where the hidden units are, but you have a general idea sinc ethe idea doesn't really deviate from normal stances.

all in all it just isn't a challenge unless you play other people who are less predictable at first. but since there seem to be no rules for engagement, it's a big ball of cluster nuts.

[Monk]

It seems what we've got here is a failure to communicate. We ask for rationality and logic, CA gives us senseless and high aggression in programming.


I think I would consider myself a hardcore gamer, and I have said repeatedly I would rather have a rational AI that declares war only when it needs to than an AI that is constantly at war.



Not exactly what I want to hear really

Neither is emphasis on AI aggression. I want to see Rationality not Aggression.

Aggression obviously has its place but I want to see minor factions rationally stay at peace with me if I leave them alone (unless they join an anti me alliance) or accept peace when clearly on the losing side, having just had their army smashed & with a big army poised to beseige their capital


You guys are taking the words right out of my mouth. The measure of an AI (for me) isn't just how effectively it can fight you in war, it's how effectively it can preserve its state of existence while achieve goals in opposition of the player. Having the AI believe losing its capital province is "only a flesh wound" and refuse all manner of peace offers (including those that offer the lost capital back) is not good AI.

Mr. Simpson says the AI is only firing on two or three cylinders and has much more potential, but how long does he expect me to wait while he paints the Sistine Chapel? All he's given me so far is a few doodles of stick figures, and quite frankly I'm tired of promises of future greatness.

If 1.5 represents the "final" state of ETW then I'm getting off this crazy train. :shame:

[antisocialmunky]

Well, his statement doesn't preclude any sort of serious expansion based improvements and patching of said expansions.

NTW is supposed to add some graphical additions if CA is to believed, hopefully they'll add some AI additions as well. I find it hard that they'll risk their credibility even more with a NTW that has a broken AI considering how important diplomacy was during that period.

[gollum]

Originally posted by antisocialmunky
NTW is supposed to add some graphical additions if CA is to believed

CA can always be believed as far as grahics are concerned.


...hopefully they'll add some AI additions as well

Like they did with RTW, M2TW and ETW... yes, yes i know that it will be the greatest AI ever, better than any strategy game, its just that i have a strange premonition that it wont work on release :laugh4:


I find it hard that they'll risk their credibility even more with a NTW that has a broken AI considering how important diplomacy was during that period.

CA have risked their credibility many times before and seeing the sales that brought them i'd say the risk was worth it.

You can have a good AI without good diplomacy.

The Napoleonic period is a perfect setting for a TW game in that it does not need a deep diplomatic model. The period is closer to a Sengoku Jidai, ruthless domination, setting than in an ETW type of setting that diplomacy should be a large part of the game.

[antisocialmunky]

Alexander's AI was much better than BI's and RTW's so its not unheard of. Kingdoms was... quite meh on the AI front? So really they are 1-1 and MIITW's diploAI has been modded quite well for Stainless Steel and friend.

Also, it took an alliance of everyone three times to finally take out Napoleon and the map was reverted back to the status quo so its quite unlike Sengoku Jidai unless you're playing Napoleon.

Last Point:
I think CA's gotten the fact that the core fans are pissed with their lackluster performance. The next title will probably decide whether a lot of us will buy the next several TWs at first day prices, not just NTW. There are ~25000 people registered on this board. If ~$45(mark up by the store is about $5) of each game goes back to Sega, that is $1.1 million right there over a period of several titles. Of course that's not too much and not everyone on this board will buy a TW game but again, that's not the point. Now add to that game recommendations that we give to other people ("Stay away from TWs, they suck now. Go buy EU4 or Civ5.") and you have abit more.

However, the real numbers will come from the huge amount of the first timers that weren't fans coming into it that felt screwed(6.7 1800+ reviews on metacritic) by ETW's CTDs and poor workmanship? Do you think they'll go "Oh, a new TW game, I'm going to buy it even though its non-refundable due to Steam AND the last 2 didn't run for me for 3 patches"? And their recommendations to others are also factored in. Now that's a bit more than a few pennies we can do.

[gollum]

Originally posted by antisocialmunky
Alexander's AI was much better than BI's and RTW's so its not unheard of.

Much better, being the keyword. Considering how "good" RTW's AI was, i can't say that this amounts to much, imho.


So really they are 1-1 and MIITW's diploAI has been modded quite well for Stainless Steel and friend.

I doubt that RTW and M2TW have so much different AIs - if there is a difference is that M2TW offers the AI parameters in data files - that doesn't make the AI all that much better - just more finetuned if modded. I agree however that this can make up for tremendous difference in the gameplay - MTW's AI also lacks significantly finetuning in vanilla as is M2TW's.



Also, it took an alliance of everyone three times to finally take out Napoleon and the map was reverted back to the status quo so its quite unlike Sengoku Jidai unless you're playing Napoleon.

Actually alliances mattered very much in exactly the same light you mention in Sengoku and they played a tremendously important part. This kind of diplomacy, the opportunistic, temporary, buying of time diplomacy TW always had. And its exactly the kind of alliances that existed during the Napoleonic wars.

[antisocialmunky]

Much better, being the keyword. Considering how "good" RTW's AI was, i can't say that this amounts to much, imho.

RTW's AI wasn't that abysmal. It wasn't totally broken and can do some decently intellegent things. Alexander added naval invasions and naval reinforcement, better diplomacy, troop retraining, and some other things.



I doubt that RTW and M2TW have so much different AIs - if there is a difference is that M2TW offers the AI parameters in data files - that doesn't make the AI all that much better - just more finetuned 9if modded. I agree however that this can make up for treendous difference in the gameplay - MTW's AI also tremendously lacks finetuning in vanilla as is M2TW's.


MTIIW's AI was broken upon arrival and still is.


Actually alliances mattered very much in exactly the same light you mention in Sengoku and they played a tremendously important part. This kind of diplomacy, the opportunistic, temporary, buying of time diplomacy TW always had. And its exactly the kind of alliances that existed during the Napoleonic wars.

Not really. The alliances were actually fairly static. Alliances in the sense of Sengoku Jidai were about defeating your neighbors and divining up the land because its a feudal society and the economics of such a society are driven by land the people living on it. Alliances are temporary throughout the conflict and you may apply game theory to see how the backstabbing game resolves itself.

Now, with the rise of the Nation State and the ideas of solid borders seperating sovereign homogenous groups of people you usually end up with two alliances:

You have an alliance of agressors who want to redraw the borders and you have an alliance of nations threatened by the agressor's attempt to disturb the status quo. The major players stay fairly solid throughout the conflict because of a concordance of interests while smaller players might be rolled over or support the winners. If you look at the alliances of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Coalitions that took Napoleon down, you can see that the major players pretty much stayed the same(Britain, Prussia, Russia, and Austria with Austria and Russia not included in one apiece).

Now the reason I say that the AI in NTW needs to be tuned up is that the AIs and the player actually need to work together to accoplish the job which is more difficult than making an AI that allies with all the other AIs and throw uncoordinate stacks at the player like ETW currently ends up doing.

Since they've announced that you can play against Napoleon this becomes an issue. You can't have destroying the alliance that will defeat Napoleon. I mean, playing as Napoleon would be fine since its all against him like most TW games but playing against him would require a more rational AI that realizes its not a good idea to screw you over until atleast Napoleon is done with and can support the player. Otherwise, they'll need to over power each individual playable faction so they can match France's massive power during the period.

So bottom line: NTW will need more than paper diplomacy. The AI will need to be able to back up the alliance with action.

[gollum]

Originally posted by antisocialmunky
RTW's AI wasn't that abysmal. It wasn't totally broken and can do some decently intellegent things. Alexander added naval invasions and naval reinforcement, better diplomacy, troop retraining, and some other things.

MTIIW's AI was broken upon arrival and still is.

M2TW's AI was indeed worse than RTW's, but not all that different in effect. Being not abysmal and not totally broken doesn't equal good in my book - however it is a matter of opinion too of course.


Not really. The alliances were actually fairly static. Alliances in the sense of Sengoku Jidai were about defeating your neighbors and divining up the land because its a feudal society and the economics of such a society are driven by land the people living on it. Alliances are temporary throughout the conflict and you may apply game theory to see how the backstabbing game resolves itself.


Backstabbing was no longer possible once cetrain clans became too big. There were alliances that lasted a long time during Sengoku and alliances that were never broken too.

In addition the period lasted far longer than the Napoleonic wars (1.5 centuries approx.). There are many 15 years periods of Sengoku too that alliances were static in much the same way as during the Napoleonic wars.

Society wasn't feudal in the strict 6th to 10th centuries sense - there was a rising merchant class the importance of which was acknowledged and even favored by the Daimyo, as it was clear that a blloming economy meant more men and weapons for their armies. It has been long speculated that if the emerged Shogun had a more "progressive" personality (say Nobunaga) the country could have jumped the Imperialist power bandwagon, modernise and take it to the seas from 1600 onwards. Armies of the period numbered in hundreds of thousands, something that took a few centuries more to happen in Europe.


Now, with the rise of the Nation State and the ideas of solid borders seperating sovereign homogenous groups of people.

Sengoku Jidai clans and their territories were pretty much independent states, in the same line of the German States in Europe - if you consider Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria etc states, so were the Takeda, Hojo and Imagawa.


...you usually end up with two alliances:

You have an alliance of agressors who want to redraw the borders and you have an alliance of nations threatened by the agressor's attempt to disturb the status quo.

The major players stay fairly solid throughout the conflict because of a concordance of interests while smaller players might be rolled over or support the winners. If you look at the alliances of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Coalitions that took Napoleon down, you can see that the major players pretty much stayed the same(Britain, Prussia, Russia, and Austria with Austria and Russia not included in one apiece).

Not necessarily, just this happened to be the set up in the specific period under discussion. Various factors affect the dynamics of the situation and alliances could have happened, in other ways and set ups. There can also be other incentinves for coming together or falling apart than "wanting to redraw the borders".


Now the reason I say that the AI in NTW needs to be tuned up is that the AIs and the player actually need to work together to accoplish the job which is more difficult than making an AI that allies with all the other AIs and throw uncoordinate stacks at the player like ETW currently ends up doing.

Since they've announced that you can play against Napoleon this becomes an issue. You can't have destroying the alliance that will defeat Napoleon. I mean, playing as Napoleon would be fine since its all against him like most TW games but playing against him would require a more rational AI that realizes its not a good idea to screw you over until atleast Napoleon is done with and can support the player. Otherwise, they'll need to over power each individual playable faction so they can match France's massive power during the period.

So bottom line: NTW will need more than paper diplomacy. The AI will need to be able to back up the alliance with action.

Actually, according to your correct "static" depiction of the situation during the Napoleonic wars the game could dispense of diplomacy altogether, binding the coallition forces in a way that cannot go to war with each other. That would be historically accurate, and perhaps from a certain perspective even good for the gameplay.

[antisocialmunky]

Well what is a 'good' AI to you then? I just want an AI that can play the game rationally and preserve itself while trying to acheive its goals...

Well my 'correct' depiction is limited. Yes things could have panned out differently, but you said this:

Actually alliances mattered very much in exactly the same light you mention in Sengoku and they played a tremendously important part. This kind of diplomacy, the opportunistic, temporary, buying of time diplomacy TW always had. And its exactly the kind of alliances that existed during the Napoleonic wars.

I wouldn't mind some sort of immutable alliance either.

[Fisherking]

I find it hard to believe that they are satisfied with the game if their world beating AI is only firing on 3 cylinders.

Shear aggression doesn’t make the game fun. A clever AI would make it more interesting but we sure haven’t seen anything clever.

The Game hating the player and allies sitting with blocked trade ports for 70 or 80 turns might have hurt the player but it didn’t make for an interesting game.

Factions committing suicide didn’t make the game fun.

A few times in some version or other I had protectorates that tried to make life hell for me. That was interesting.

But they keep taking away the interesting parts and replacing it with more aggression and black knight behavior.

Lots of players give regions to a protectorate. To have one of those start a secret war with agents and actions counter to the protectors interests. Things like DoWs on his trade partners, blockading their ports, interrupting trade lanes, and so on.

Things just seem to get more narrow, restricted, and aggressive. It loses scope. Other than the lack of naval invasions and a touch of inaction at times, the diplomacy and actions of the AI were better in 1.1.:smash:

No one wants a passive AI but diplomatic actions should be at the hart of a multifactional game. Reasonable diplomacy is just as important as the battle AI. When it works like it is now it can never be more than half what it should have been.

[Durallan]

I tried making a post earlier but then the internet died so I completely lost it. we don't want aggressive AI, well not stupidly agressive, black knight agressive, we want like fisherking said, rational AI.
This Quote is as a matter of fact one of the quotes in the Empire total war loading screen quotes database:

The victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.
- Sun Tzu

A good example of this is the AI's Hamfisted approach to battle on the campaign map, it will organise small armies, whereas the player will always try to have a full stack army where it can, and then send those one at a time to attack the player, thus ensuring its continual defeat.

They decide to include this piece of strategic wisdom, yet they cannot even get their own AI's to manage such a simple feat.

Once a Rational AI has figured out where its best chance of success in a war is, then and only then should it act agressively, and if it loses badly, then it should retreat.

Another good quote is that the best Tactical decision is where you have the most to gain, at the lowest cost to you. Going out with guns blazing might be heroic, but retreat is often the most sensible decision.

we want to feel, Ooooh that narsty AI is darn clever! damn them!!

but it just don't feel like that.

Developers shouldn't be afraid to make their AI as smart, devious and annoying as possible, like in some first person shooters, not everyone might be able to handle the normal difficulty straight off the bat, the AI's actions might have to be disadvantaged till you get used to it. it would be refreshing if most people had to start on easy difficulty first just so they can figure out how to beat the AI! (gal civ 2 for me when I first played it, couldn't play it on the 'normal' ai setting where it got no bonus or handicap)

[Kantalla]

Depending on the stage in the game it's fair for the AI to become extremely aggressive toward you. If the player starts expanding too much, and becoming dangerously powerful, then the AI nations should gang up to prevent the impending world domination. Once you have captured enough territory, it should be difficult or impossible to get or maintain peaceful relations, without the benefit of fear.

That said, this should be in a cloak of rationality, becoming a protectorate is superior to being wiped off the map.

There is certainly room for improvement, but I'd prefer to err on the side of over aggressive than over passive AI.

[Fisherking]

Depending on the stage in the game it's fair for the AI to become extremely aggressive toward you. If the player starts expanding too much, and becoming dangerously powerful, then the AI nations should gang up to prevent the impending world domination. Once you have captured enough territory, it should be difficult or impossible to get or maintain peaceful relations, without the benefit of fear.

That said, this should be in a cloak of rationality, becoming a protectorate is superior to being wiped off the map.

There is certainly room for improvement, but I'd prefer to err on the side of over aggressive than over passive AI.

~:wave: Hi Kantalla

No one is talking about being at that stage of the game. There is nothing at all wrong with that. It should happen.

Instead, what happens is there is some sort of AI god in the campaign that starts a lot of small calamities, like the Pirates block your best trade partners ports. Pricing for all your commodities go into the tank and all your allies go to war with one another, leaving you to break treaties or lose trade partners.

But this is not when you become a mega power, no, it is at almost every stage when you have an economic up-swing. You make another 1000 or so in profit and the little AI god cruses you.

There is no counter except to find new trade partners because expanding usually loses you money in administrative penalties.

There is not much rhyme or reason in most of the diplomacy.

If the AI is so clever it should not need over aggression to compensate. As things stand you would think you were in the Mad Max World where everyone is an enemy. If this is what we expected out of the game it would be different. But it is supposed to have some grounding in history to give you the feel of the age.

This is the Age of Enlightenment, and the Age of Reason. The AI belongs in a Dark Age Epic.

[gollum]

Originally posted by antisocialmunky
I just want an AI that can play the game rationally and preserve itself while trying to acheive its goals...

AIs that actually have a memory and continuous cohesive plans in game time terms are quite complex and very hard to make - this is a fact. As the TW community moved on gradually from a battle centered one to one with a more SP player mentality, it has been naturally asking for a more "reasonable" campaign AI as far as the diplomatic, political and planning layers are concerned. This is very tough to do and it is no doubt to the credit of CA for finally attempting it.

What CA has done wrong though, and the reason i criticise them, is that they have systematically tried to fit a number of SP features that gave the SP game many many more layers of complexity without making alongside the effort to actually atune the AI to them. When they do try, they do it with so unrealistically high goals for the times they have to release (and they know this better than anyone), that they are faced with bugged and mediocre products everytime, in the end.

It would have been way, way better to limit themselves to what can be realistically done and re-distribute their resources that are too visual oriented around the objective of making the game well put together (have good cohesion) without one part of it antagonising the other. So if they have a one cylinder AI, make him deal with one cylinder of features - but no! - he has to deal with ALL the features the designers "thought" after consulting the sales analists, because if not, the games wont sell. the amounts they do now - they wouldn't even break into the mainstream.

The number one reason for their overambition is sales and sales alone. They know that better visuals and more complexity will make the games sell more and they also know that the AI is struggling to keep up with the complexity - but they leave it as it is, because it obviously works! The games sell - the community does not mind sub par products at the end of the day. And when it may doso, Mr Simpson's blog comes to the rescue - a mix of have-a-little faith, some sincerity, some we-did-it-all-for-you and some truths, half truths and outright lies, and problem fixed :2thumbsup:


Well what is a 'good' AI to you then?

A "good" AI, imo, is one that first and foremost works as intended upon release and is atuned to the complexity and features of the game. It doesnt have to be the most complex code edifice man set his eyes on - it has to be a code edifice that is well atuned to its objectives and gets the job in hand done.

I couldn't care less if the current AI proves excellent three releases later (and even less than that how good CA's coders are, i have paid for a game not for the services of their coders) - i am interested as a player of ETW, not a bonafide long term investor in the future of CA. If they want money for their future products they should ask them from investors or their publishers, not by scolding their current players for criticising a sub-par and hyper-hyped game.

I know for a fact that already from MTW (let alone RTW) the AI is asked to do things that are beyond him - because if they were not he would be aware of them. And by the way he plays, even short term, he is not (aware of them) - everyone in the TW community knows that. So why are these features there? Why can't they design TW games with what they realistically have in hand and build on the basic concepts, strengths and successes of their code step by step? - that is, release after release?

Incidentally, this is how things work out there in the real world where quality is required. If you ask research coders they'll tell you that things are improved step by step on the initial concept - no one attempts leaps all too often because the ability of the code to make predictions may stray too far - thus rending the code unusable. In the case of a game, the equivalent is making the game unplayable- which is exactly what happened with ETW by the looks of it.

Its true that new codes are written when a better theoretical vehicle is presented for modelling the phenomena that need modelling, however, no-one jumps from concept to concept all too often. People, teams and even whole departments specialise in order to get the most out of their efforts.

CA jumps from feature to feature and thus AI concept to AI concept by the looks of it, because sales require additional features and additional features require a better AI to handle them, but so far they have never match the two.

The result is that the game is underwhelming because all that complexity translates as abuse by the player towards the AI; in other words you win by doing things your opponent doesn't even know they exist and so can't do.

This is the so called "overambition", which they dont even regret it we are told, even when it brings frustration to the end users - that is us, the community.

Well i guess, it shouldn't come as a surprise if parts of the community do not regret their decisions not to purchase TW games henceforth then.

[antisocialmunky]

1st Part of Words
That's true and has been the problem with with a lot of games. However I don't think that people are just accepting it nor is Mr. Simpson convincing anyone.


Other Stuff
1) There is no such thing as a real "Research Coder." We design algorithms, not code. "Research Coders" are graduate students who implement stuff for researchers.
2) Methods of improvement usually mean optimization of current paradigms to shifts to other better paradigms for the current problem. That or someone finds an novel way of approaching a problem and blows it out of the water Don Knuth style.

Oh well, we haven't heard from Jack in a while. Perhaps the AI team is slaving away at NTW or we could have just scared him away.

Also, this is something I have always wondered at since MIITW. SEGA is a Japanese company, I thought the Japanese were sticklers for quality and brand image. And yet we still end up with this launch failure and near product failure after the debacle of MIITW and Kingdoms.

If you're reading this SEGA people: Way to break into Western PC Strategic Gaming market, SEGA - all talk and no polish. Lets hope Squeenix doesn't crush you attempts despite your 3 years of head start next year with Supreme Commander II. Also, stop being idiotic with Sonic. Seriously.

[gollum]

However I don't think that people are just accepting it nor is Mr. Simpson convincing anyone.

Maybe not - but eversince all these phenomena started TW got more sales, not less.


1) There is no such thing as a real "Research Coder." We design algorithms, not code. "Research Coders" are graduate students who implement stuff for researchers.

I am not sure you are arguing over substance here - more like for a term technicality, that in essence means little.


Methods of improvement usually mean optimization of current paradigms to shifts to other better paradigms for the current problem. That or someone finds an novel way of approaching a problem and blows it out of the water Don Knuth style.

Optimisation often yes, but not always; you can improve a model through other means too. "Paradigms" can be either theory driven, or technique driven; the first is down to theoreticians and the second usually to mathematicians.


Oh well, we haven't heard from Jack in a while. Perhaps the AI team is slaving away at NTW or we could have just scared him away.

Jack Lusted is a designer and not a coder - last thing he was doing was the unpopular balance stats alterations on the battlemaps, that dont directly link to the AI, particularly the campaign AI.

[antisocialmunky]

Well to be quite honest, its hard for me to understand what's beneath all that flowery language that you did up there so I'm not going go too any further on the AI front.

But last time I heard he was working on both AI and balancing as a designer: http://news.bigdownload.com/2009/02/27/empire-total-war-presents-more-superior-tactics?icid=sphere_blogsmith_inpage_joystiq

I did say he was a coder, I just said the AI team might be working away at improvements for NTW.

[Fisherking]

We haven’t heard from Jack since the end of Aug. when everyone was trashing NTW and swearing never to buy another CA release.

Judging from the unloading on the Simpson Blog, I might hesitate before posting here too. Or maybe they just have some policy in place at the moment.

At any rate NTW is supposed to add content and an upgraded engine to ETW and maybe that is what they are looking at.

But there are enough bugs and glitches in the game as it stands that should be looked at if not fixed and some of the elements that were adding to the experience have gone away or gone to a previous incarnation that was not so good.

Maybe they plan some minor fixes with the Beta Multiplayer release, when ever that is, but hearing something would be nice.

[Shahed]

However overdoing the criticism (For example I think a 67% user score on Metacritic is unfair), has the opposite effect to what is intended. Gamers (and reviewers. retailers, marketeers and publishing execs) will be put off Total War. That could mean fewer sales and less money to spend on adding quality to the games.


Now that's some nerve.

[fenir]

Much more impressed with Mike's Second post.
His statement about not working on the next issue until this one is done, personally i think only a very unreasonable person would expect that.

MIke also touches on the very human essence.
No game should be Polished. It needs to have some flaws, just a few. And it needs to be developed, enough to engross the gamer. Without mass micro management.
That is a hard balance.

Shogun had it. big problems, but it had it. So did Medieval Total War I.
I actually played that a few times this year. Oh the fun. lol love the sarjeants and their Bumble bee shield.
Anyway, much more interesting post. Still probably to late now. But lets see what we get next.

Thank you Mike.


RTW, MTW II are the same engine. CA does the engine for the first game, then a second. Then another engine. So Shogun, MTW .....RTW MTW2.....


Posted by sinan
Now that's some nerve.

Yes, leaves alot to be desired, but we did warn them. good to see you still here.

Sincerely

fenir

[antisocialmunky]

MIke also touches on the very human essence.

No game should be Polished. It needs to have some flaws, just a few. And it needs to be developed, enough to engross the gamer. Without mass micro management.


He has a point that you can't completely polish a product but really? Human essense that it should be flawed? Really?

Polish is a subjective thing but I think that like pornography, we know when we see the difference between it and other things while we actually define the line rigidly.

I've always been of the opinion that its polished if you think you as the designer can't improve it anymore.

And about the AI issue, you should be able to scale its aggressiveness using difficulty level. I mean, really - that's what they are there for.

[Richard Sharpe]

50$ for Napoleon total war is a kick in the pants. Considering that I could not fully use my 50$ purchae until a couple months ago when patch 1.4 came out, there is no way I would even drop 30$ for Napoleon. I don't care if it is the best PC game to ever come out.

No more of my money, however.


I do believe, to be fair, that Empire total war had tremendous potential. And still does. However, still, as of now it is not enjoyable. Especially AI wise.

[invalidopcode]

I think what we have here are two different points of view that are never going to be reconciled.

From CA's point of view...

They are spending large amounts of time and money to update E:TW and keep their customers happy. CA cannot understand why their sacrifice is still getting so much grief.

The game has shipped. People already bought the game at the "full price". Redesigning pieces now will no way get them enough new customers to justify the cost.

The do recognize that "bad press" will hurt future sells, but they are hedging their bets that E:TW is now "good enough" to dodge the harshest criticism and *not* prevent you from buying the next TW game.


From the customers point of view...

We all expected that as time went on, the strategy and tactics part of the TW series would continual improve. We expected the gameplay to get better. We expected less bugs and issues since CA are experienced at creating this genre of games.

What happened in our eyes [rightfully so] was that CA totally dropped the ball and released a beta product that was not ready for prime time. It had game stopping bugs. They did not deliver on promised goods (e.g. MP). The strategy and tactics actually got worse. And the overall gameplay is worse than the other TW games. The only thing that did improve was the eye candy.

We think we are going out of our way by giving CA the time to redress their bad initial release. The community cannot understand why CA is not reciprocating and fixing their "broken" game. To us, CA appears to be just "polishing a turd" and not fixing the meaningful things.

Most of us are happy that they tried to add new features like the naval battles. Unfortunately the actual implementation cannot decided whether it should be a naval simulation (e.g. sailing physics implemented) or whether it should be a dumbed down pretty "boat battle" and is mostly ignored (e.g. autoresolved anyways).



As they say in the business world, "Reputation is everything. Guard it with your life." I think that with E:TW, all that goodwill and reputation that the TotalWar franchise had going for it is lost. They really need to do something special to change our minds that N:TW will not be "business as usual" for CA.



YMMV,
InvalidOpcode

[AussieGiant]

As they say in the business world, "Reputation is everything. Guard it with your life." I think that with E:TW, all that goodwill and reputation that the TotalWar franchise had going for it is lost. They really need to do something special to change our minds that N:TW will not be "business as usual" for CA.



YMMV,
InvalidOpcode

That is a 'telling' statement and something CA need to "get", and it really doesn't matter if SEGA doesn't get it, because CA will fold if their reputation takes another hammering, because sales figures will begin to tumble.

My thought;

I wonder if Simpson and his other mate who run the show have made enough money to fold and move on.

That's something for us to consider.

[al Roumi]

I continue to be amazed by this blog. The complete lack of awareness or empathy with customers is astounding.

Man I hope he's a good programmer because these are an appaling things to say to your customers.


I had 6 copies of Empire: Total War sat on my shelf intended for close gamer friends that I didn’t send out because I was too embarrassed about the flaws. Old friends are the harshest critics. He knew it wasn't good enough for his friends, but it was still sold to their customers???



Well they’ve gone out now [the freebie games for his friends]. I think the game now meets my personal unreasonably high quality threshold - not just good but great. Hopefully my friends will agree.

This could almost be a continuation of the tone from the 1st blog where consumers who disliked or felt let down by the product were insinuated as being anti CA and the continuation of the TW series.


This blog continues to make CA look completely out of touch IMO.

[Trapped in Samsara]

Hi

It doesn't seem to have occurred to you chaps that CA-SEGA might actually WANT to lose the hardcore veteran TW players/followers 'cos you are disproportionately the ones who are (in CA_SEGA's eyes) tarnishing the good name of their product by your criticisms, observations and campaigning.

If they could only ditch you and retain the fanboys and eyecandy addicts they'd carry on coining it.

Mr Simpson's blog makes perfect sense within that logical construct - he's hoping you will all go away. I cannot otherwise comprehend how/why he could have made (and been allowed to make) the statements/admissions he has.

Let's face it: we are an inconvenient truth.

Regards
Victor

[Zenicetus]

It doesn't seem to have occurred to you chaps that CA-SEGA might actually WANT to lose the hardcore veteran TW players/followers 'cos you are disproportionately the ones who are (in CA_SEGA's eyes) tarnishing the good name of their product by your criticisms, observations and campaigning.

If they could only ditch you and retain the fanboys and eyecandy addicts they'd carry on coining it

I don't think it could work that way. CA has ramped up the eye candy in recent games, and they've simplified some things like easier diplomacy contacts, and dumbed-down sailing for the naval combat, but they've also made other parts of the game more complicated. For example the tech trees, and more buildings besides the capitol in each province to manage. This is not a game that can appeal to the short attention span, twitch-reflex gamers who make up a huge part of the market.

They're also stuck with this game engine for at least NTW and the next major release after that, according to what I've read so far. That means the next major title will have to appeal to a certain number of hardcore gamers. They would need a completely new game engine, ditching much of the complexity of the strategy map, to go in a more mainstream direction. Or maybe just ditch the strategy map completely and go to a full RTS battle design with scripted interludes as a "plot" (err... if they're not already doing that with Napoleon? That does worry me a little).

[mountaingoat]

Hi

It doesn't seem to have occurred to you chaps that CA-SEGA might actually WANT to lose the hardcore veteran TW players/followers 'cos you are disproportionately the ones who are (in CA_SEGA's eyes) tarnishing the good name of their product by your criticisms, observations and campaigning.

If they could only ditch you and retain the fanboys and eyecandy addicts they'd carry on coining it.


very good :2thumbsup: ,this is the way of the "corporations" . They just want to make money any way possible , and do not really care about the direction of the TW series or anything else related to that .

IMO they should stop making any more TW games , and maybe later on a small development team may pick up and release something new .

[fenir]

Antisocialmunky.

Yes, we as humans, like to ajudge ourselves, in a manner with our faults and flaws.

Take for example.
If I lead my old company into battle, and win a stuning victory that changes/ends the war. That will be promoted in the face of other failures. Other past failures. Real or Perceived.

THis is our way of hiding, if only for a short time, our flaws/faults/mistakes.

BUt we can only define this victory, because of the past....flaws/faults/mistakes. Because these are the benchmark.

Now yes, I can hear you saying, but it could work the other way, and therefore we define ourselves in regards to our happiness/victories.
Ahhh.... but....we as a specis are disstatisified or upset et cetera... more often than happy.


THis is why people tend to do things, that make them happy. Whether this is.....

Winning a battle/war.
Out smarting someone.
Completing a hard task.
Writing something intelligent.

It defines us as people. This is why people will complain. Why people will phone in to a shock jock radio station.

It is in our misery that shapes us.


After all, we're only human :laugh4:

Sincerely

fenir

[Beskar]

Brilliant idea with the blog Mike. We can’t let the supergeeks who hate Steam, or the people who don’t have proper computers bring down a work of genius such as Empire. I too can’t understand the multitude of bad reviews on Amazon, etc… Not to say there aren’t plenty of bugs. But the grandeur and brilliance of the game clearly outweigh any negatives that may pop up from time to time. Hopefully word of mouth will continue to spread so that more and more people buy it. I myself can’t wait to buy Warpath. And whatever else you’ve got in store for us. Keep up the great work!

Posted by Dave on October 1st, 2009 at 7:40 pm

:rolleyes:

[edyzmedieval]

:rolleyes:

Fanboy. He's a lost cause.

[NimitsTexan]

Hi

It doesn't seem to have occurred to you chaps that CA-SEGA might actually WANT to lose the hardcore veteran TW players/followers 'cos you are disproportionately the ones who are (in CA_SEGA's eyes) tarnishing the good name of their product by your criticisms, observations and campaigning. . . .

. . .Let's face it: we are an inconvenient truth.

Regards
Victor

The truth is that us hardcore history buffs are the minority of players, and a even smaller minority of potential buyers. To date, I am pleasingly surprised CA has spent as much attention on ETW as it has.

Anyway, none of the CA games have been particularly historically accurate by default or bug free on release. While unfortunate, most followers of the series know this trend and should expect it.

Nor is most of the critcism of ETW valid. With one or two exceptions, the general bugs have been fixed, and those that remain are not game breakers and mostly are incompatibilities with a handful of systems, something that will happen with most complex games. As for the AI, the battle and campaign AI are generally the best of any TW series. Like the AIs in most any complex wargame, they will generally be outwitted by a competent human opponent, especially as humans have the option to reload a saved game to avoid any crushing defeats or huge mistakes, something not available to the AI. I know EU is often cited as an example of a better campaign AI. While I have not played EU specifically, i have played the WWII version (Hearts of Iron) in all its versions; considering that the EU/HoI engine does not even have to worry about tactical battles at all, I would not rate it much higher than the ETW AI. At least, to date, I have a much eaiser time taking over the Europe as a major power in HOI than in ETW.

[fenir]

Nor is most of the critcism of ETW valid.

Care to expand upon? Would look orward to you quailifing this.



Sincerely

fenir

[peacemaker]

Care to expand upon? Would look orward to you quailifing this.

I'm just going to take a quick stab at this...I had many games in 1.3 where I was completely left alone, and never experienced 'black knight AI'. Then I un-installed it, re-installed it, and it seemed like the whole game changed. Everyone attacked everyone, and so I ended up choosing Great Britain and just sitting on my island to watch the world's events unfold.
I've had times where the BAI just clumped up into a tight group and I've had times when the BAI utterly destroyed me, even when outnumbered.

The point is for some reason ETW is wierd ( in a good and bad way). Sometimes it "behaves" and sometimes it doesn't. To many people, it seems to work just fine and they don't bother commenting on how great it is because they're busy playing.

In terms of bugs, the only ones I had was the 1.0 fleet-on-trade-node-not-trading bug. I've had the occasional CTD, but I suspect it may be partly due to a mod not becoming fully uninstalled.

[hoccalugee]

Don't the eye-candy addicts and fanboys LOVE the fact that the dedicated modders create more beautiful (and more historically accurate) add-ons to the game? Don't the dedicated modders LOVE the praise, attention and fulfillment they get from making new mods? I do!

The modders and the fanboys/eye-candy addicts go hand in hand to make the game more successful and popular. Any person who buys the game, and realises that there are practically hundreds of FREE additions to the game that will indefinitely extend the playability of the game, will likely become a great fan of the series. The fact that the mods available cover nearly every major historical period and every major fantasy world make this game anyone's ONE STOP for a strategy game.

Why would SEGA/CA ever want to LOSE the thousands of free workers who make their great game even better? Because the free workers occasionally whine about how hard it is to make the mods? I doubt it. If they are so petty and un-businesslike, they'll all be out of a job soon enough, and the ORG and TWCENTER can take up a collection to buy up the rights to the series!:laugh4:

About STEAM: It is a terrible business model for those who have to pay for their data, as well as their bandwidth. For M2TW I'd have to pay triple the price to download it. For Empire, just not even worth thinking about. STEAM is about control of the product, not distribution. I doubt it's even viable from an emissions standpoint.

Smarter people are attracted to the series (strategy), and even smarter people make mods for it. Smart people desire quality from their products, so whining about bugs/mod-ability is inevitable, and shouldn't be discouraged, it's called FREE feedback, something good producers use to improve their products.

I remember a bunch of people groaning and getting upset about "finishing moves" being added to M2TW. Imagine the reaction, if, instead CA said:
"Hey, we've made M2 animation so mod friendly that you can even add your own animations - here's an example on how to add finishing moves..."

CA needs to follow the Bethesda model. Create the best game engine for the purpose with a good basic campaign, then let the modders create the real content. And maybe then the SEGA required copy-protection won't be destroying my DVD drive.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

About STEAM: It is a terrible business model for those who have to pay for their data, as well as their bandwidth. For M2TW I'd have to pay triple the price to download it. For Empire, just not even worth thinking about. STEAM is about control of the product, not distribution. I doubt it's even viable from an emissions standpoint.
A lot of smaller developers (and probably larger ones, as well) would disagree with you. Steam has a huge audience, and for a small studio that needs to move copies to eat, Steam offers an excellent way to reach consumers while being very reasonable in terms of the fees charged to work with them.

As for downloading the games, the only reason you have to complain is the patches really. You can still buy a physical copy of the game, connect once to verify the purchase, then run offline. You won't get patches, but if you're that concerned about bandwidth you wouldn't get patches anyway.

[hoccalugee]

I'll pay that, STEAM is probably very useful to indie devs.


You won't get patches, but if you're that concerned about bandwidth you wouldn't get patches anyway.
Hmmm, unpatched TW game...not so enticing. How about I buy it normally and download patches from the normal place, as opposed to buying it (hardcopy) from STEAM but not getting access to patches, which is what you seem to be saying...

BUT, as the profits from the larger companies may help STEAM to offer better deals for smaller companies, I'll just shut up now.

[Trapped in Samsara]

Hi

I'm really not looking to rain on anyone's parade here, but it seems to me that a reality check is in order.

hoccalugee wrote, "Why would SEGA/CA ever want to LOSE the thousands of free workers who make their great game even better?"

The answer is that CA-SEGA just does not care about the relatively small numbers of veteran/hardcore TW players. Nor are they (any longer) interested in the modding community or facilitating their contribution to the development of the franchise. The proof of this is obvious: modding tools for ETW were promised on release or "soon" thereafter. Where are they?

The economic logic is equally obvious and unarguable: CA-SEGA wants to milk their cash cow for all it's worth. Anything which distracts from sellable add-ons is competition CA-SEGA can well do without. The advent of downloadable content packs has hugely increased the profitability of small (some might say trivial) add-on releases -because of the massive reduction in the cost of distribution and elimination of several links in the distribution chain.

Why would CA-SEGA countenance foregoing this additional revenue for the sake of retaining the loyalty and enthusiasm of a few tens of thousands of veteran/hardcore TW players?

CA-SEGA's bean counters are only interested in the hundreds of thousands of 'casual' gamers who are content to receive plenty of eye candy and action ("sandbox" gamers) for their £35 - on the strength of shallow, misleading, and some might argue dishonest, reviews - but who never really do more than dip their toe into the complexities and intricacies that the developers may have have attempted to create.

I'm sorry, but much as I would love to be able to agree with your position hoccalugee, it just doesn't stand up when analysed in the cold hard light of economics and what we know about corporate behaviour.

It's time to board our ships and sail off into the West. :sad2:

Regards
Victor

[Owen Glyndwr]

Sadly, your post pretty much hits the nail on the head.

Something to feel even more depressed about (a couple weeks old, but still pertinent)

Source: http://www.geeks.co.uk/7282-activisi...heap-games-you
(http://www.geeks.co.uk/7282-activisi...heap-games-you)

Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has been on fire this week. At the Deutsche Bank Securities Technology Conference in San Francisco he made a number of comments that seem to have been calculated to explode the heads of gamers, developers, and anyone who cares a jot about the industry. In a wide-ranging speech, Kotick – who earned $14m last year – dropped a number of bombs about Activision’s future plans, none of which were designed to make anyone happy apart from Activision shareholders.

Essentially, Kotick is in thrall to the almighty dollar to the expense of all else. Thus: “In the last cycle of videogames you spent $50 on a game, played it and took it back to the shop for credit. Today, we’ll (charge) $100 for a guitar. You might add a microphone or drums; you might buy two or three expansions packs, different types of music. Over the life of your ownership you’ll probably buy around 25 additional song packs in digital downloads. So, what used to be a $50 sale is a $500 sale today.”

This echoes a statement Kotick made last year when he explained the company’s lack of support for some new games, specifically ones that don’t lend themselves to sequels. Activision, Kotick said, has no interest in games that “don’t have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million franchises.”

Talking of $100m franchises, Kotick likes the way that World of Warcraft is heading. “The best of all margins – the 25 per cent operating margin business – has the potential as we can see with World of Warcraft to be a 50 per cent operating margin business. What used to be a low 20s return on invested capital business is now growing to a plus 40 per cent return on invested capital business.”

And he’s not just setting his sights on Guitar Hero and WoW fans. Talking about upcoming and expensive Activision titles such as Modern Warfare 2, Kotick said: “if it was left to me, I would raise the prices even further.”

Having fired these encouraging salvos at the gaming community, Kotick then switched his targets to console manufacturers, who he seems intent on putting out of business by “untethering” Activision games from other-party hardware. “I think what the untethered Guitar Hero does is equal the playing field a little more and give you some leverage with first parties when it comes to downloadable content and the business model.”

Maybe the choice quotes of the event, though, came when Kotick talked about Activision’s developers; you know, the guys who actually make the stuff he gets so rich from. You’d think he’d have a bit of respect for them, right? Oh no, Kotick’s goal over the past 10 years has been – you couldn’t make this up – “to take all the fun out of making video games.” How? By instilling a culture of “scepticism, pessimism, and fear” amongst the company’s staff based around the economic depression and an incentive program that rewards “profit and nothing else”.

We’re having a hard time coming to terms with all this. While we tend to expect mega rich corporate bosses to be at least a bit evil, this flagrant display of gamer hate has left us dumbfounded. Activision is a mammoth company, with some of the biggest-selling franchises in the world under its umbrella, but at the end of the day its profits come from the pockets of gamers who don’t want to miss out on some great titles. If any other CEO exhibited as much contempt for his or her customers as Kotick has, their company would surely expect to face negative feedback or even a consumer boycott. But you just know that nothing like that will happen here. Apart from running the negligible risk of a few blogs printing pictures of him with devil horns or a Hitler moustache, Kotick knows that he’s invulnerable. The gaming “community” just doesn’t have the will or the organisation to, say, boycott Modern Warfare 2, and that – even more than Kotick’s comments – makes us truly sad.

[gollum]

Bloody hell, and i thought all that was conspiracy theories...:laugh4:

[Vlad Tzepes]

This is not depressing, this is gross.

[gollum]

CA was also published by activision (MTW/VI/RTW). RTW in particular impressed the big wiggs in Activision enough to grant CA another year to "finish" the game. I hope its clear now what exactly impressed them, if it wasn't before and something tells me it had something to do with having "the potential to become $100 million franchises".

Even CA at some point (after they became SEGA property) openly denounced Activision as a bad publisher with unrealistic deadlines and a lot of pressure due to commercial reasons. Not that many of the really big publishers will be all that different i would imagine.

[Zenicetus]

hoccalugee wrote, "Why would SEGA/CA ever want to LOSE the thousands of free workers who make their great game even better?"

The answer is that CA-SEGA just does not care about the relatively small numbers of veteran/hardcore TW players. Nor are they (any longer) interested in the modding community or facilitating their contribution to the development of the franchise. The proof of this is obvious: modding tools for ETW were promised on release or "soon" thereafter. Where are they?

The economic logic is equally obvious and unarguable: CA-SEGA wants to milk their cash cow for all it's worth. Anything which distracts from sellable add-ons is competition CA-SEGA can well do without. The advent of downloadable content packs has hugely increased the profitability of small (some might say trivial) add-on releases -because of the massive reduction in the cost of distribution and elimination of several links in the distribution chain.

Why would CA-SEGA countenance foregoing this additional revenue for the sake of retaining the loyalty and enthusiasm of a few tens of thousands of veteran/hardcore TW players?

Spot on. Digital distribution and paid-for DLC is the death of modding for PC games. Look at what Bioware is doing with all the pre-release DLC for Dragon Age, with continuing sales of DLC after initial purchase. I just hit a scene in Dragon Age where an NPC wanted to give me a new side quest. He told me all the initial information that got me interested (with a loot teaser at the end), and so I clicked to accept the quest. The next thing that happened is a screen popped up and asked if I now wanted to buy this optional quest, as paid-for DLC! Amazing. First time I've seen something like this directly embedded inside an RPG. You might say it broke the immersion just a little bit.

With all that in place, do you think Dragon Age will ever be a platform for the kind of amazing (and free) user-made content we saw with Neverwinter Nights? Not a chance. User mods for PC games were valuable for a few years, because they would extend the retail shelf life of a game. That was before so many people had access to Steam and the other retail digital distribution sites. I think we'll only see user modding in the future for a few of the smaller independent game devs like Stardock... unless they too, bite the tempting apple of DLC income, and lock up their games like everyone else. It's all pretty depressing.

The next thing to look for in a TW game, will be where you've met the requirements to start a building that will recruit some fancy new troop or artillery type. When you click to start the building, a screen will pop up asking if you'd like to buy that right now, as optional downloadable content. And it will happen right inside the game, like this thing in DA:O. That's the future, folks. You're going to pay $75 for a game that's 75% complete, and you'll be buying the rest of it piecemeal as you progress through the game.

[Peasant Phill]

That is indeed a grim future(?) you're painting there Zenicetus.

[Owen Glyndwr]

I think this kind of stuff is only ever going to end if gamers start banding together and outright refusing to buy games on a massive scale that pull stuff like this. DLC has been sneaking into the industry for the last 5 years or so, and the fact that we keep buying into it tells the industry they can go a little bit further with it each time. This is a free market, and the only way we as a consumer can tell the industry that this kind of action is not ok is by not buying the game.

[Vlad Tzepes]

The next thing to look for in a TW game, will be where you've met the requirements to start a building that will recruit some fancy new troop or artillery type. When you click to start the building, a screen will pop up asking if you'd like to buy that right now, as optional downloadable content. And it will happen right inside the game, like this thing in DA:O. That's the future, folks. You're going to pay $75 for a game that's 75% complete, and you'll be buying the rest of it piecemeal as you progress through the game.

Okay... You know what? After all, there are lots of good books to read, out there, and a life beyond the computer games. Maybe time is coming (for me, at least) to quit this gaming hobby.

[Owen Glyndwr]

Okay... You know what? After all, there are lots of good books to read, out there, and a life beyond the computer games. Maybe time is coming (for me, at least) to quit this gaming hobby.

That's a little too extreme for me. I prefer to play 5-10 year old games. They still have that old charm to them, and no optional-required DLC to boot!

[Cecil XIX]

That's a little too extreme for me. I prefer to play 5-10 year old games. They still have that old charm to them, and no optional-required DLC to boot!

Same here. I'm sure I haven't played X-com for the last time in my life, and that game's fifteen years old!

The way things are going, I'll never buy something from the videogame industry until it gets a price drop and a patch or two.

[antisocialmunky]

Same here. I'm sure I haven't played X-com for the last time in my life, and that game's fifteen years old!

The way things are going, I'll never buy something from the videogame industry until it gets a price drop and a patch or two.

I need to find a copy of the second one.

[ReluctantSamurai]

And to add my 2cents to what Owen and Zenicetus said.....an area that CA hasn't tapped into yet is the huge console market. With consoles able to d/l content, I can see TW being ported to PS3 and/or Xbox with the aforementioned scenario taking place.

No hassles, no need for a power gaming PC....just plug it in, drop in the disc, and you're ready to play. I can even foresee a subscription type of setup.....pay your monthly fee and be able to d/l the latest quests, units, etc.

Bleak.....................:skull:

[Krusader]

And to add my 2cents to what Owen and Zenicetus said.....an area that CA hasn't tapped into yet is the huge console market. With consoles able to d/l content, I can see TW being ported to PS3 and/or Xbox with the aforementioned scenario taking place.

No hassles, no need for a power gaming PC....just plug it in, drop in the disc, and you're ready to play. I can even foresee a subscription type of setup.....pay your monthly fee and be able to d/l the latest quests, units, etc.

Bleak.....................:skull:

Although maybe CA are hesitant to try again? Their console RTS, Stormrise was mostly panned from what I read and they even cancelled a patch for it.
Never know though, they might go console for all I know and blame piracy.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

I doubt CA will ever go full console; they'll be eaten alive if their experiments are going to be par for the course.

[Martok]

I doubt CA will ever go full console; they'll be eaten alive if their experiments are going to be par for the course.

I concur with Krusader and Alexander the Pretty Good. CA's efforts in the console market have yielded only mixed results at best. If you check out Metacritic's scores:

1.) Spartan Total Warrior -- average score of 74

2.) Viking: Battle for Asgard -- average score 67

3.) Stormrise -- average score 47


Spartan was really their only halfway-decent console title, and that only barely. Viking was no better than mediocre, and Stormrise seems to be almost universally reviled to the point that many sites considered it a contender for Worst Game of 2008.



So yeah. However tempting it may be for CA, I doubt we'll see them switching over to mostly (or exclusively) console games anytime soon.

[gollum]

Originally posted by Martok
CA's efforts in the console market have yielded only mixed results at best.

Maybe that's why they've felt like throwing Empire "in the mix" :laugh4:

[antisocialmunky]

Empire scored better than Stormrise...


crap...

[Rowan]

With all that in place, do you think Dragon Age will ever be a platform for the kind of amazing (and free) user-made content we saw with Neverwinter Nights? Not a chance.

I would beg (http://dragonage.bioware.com/toolset/) to differ (http://social.bioware.com/browse_bw_projects.php?page_num=1&project_search=Search&view=0&project_category_id=1&sort=1). The game's not been out for two weeks, but Bioware's already published a toolset explicitly designed for creating your own adventures.

[Suraknar]

@ the OP.

Hehe, this sounds so much like an MMORPG developer talking to the community....


Our own threshold for how we’d like the game to be is much higher than the commercial threshold required by our publisher.

Then Publish your games yourself! How many years have you been making TW series games, haven;t you made enough money to be independent and not at the mercy of a Shark-like Publisher?

:juggle2:

It must not be as simple, I understand, but you have to understand too that, this has been an argument many developers throw on to their communities, blaming it on the publisher and on sales.

But you are the one in the vicious circle here...not us. Your publisher is the one that will need to be patient and linient if they want more sales and invest a bit more in to you so you can spend more time delivering a quality product which in turn would yield more sales...

You have exhausted the random factor. It times to take a step back and pay a bit more in order to make two better steps forward.

Thanks for the blog, Cheers!

[Suraknar]

I would beg (http://dragonage.bioware.com/toolset/) to differ (http://social.bioware.com/browse_bw_projects.php?page_num=1&project_search=Search&view=0&project_category_id=1&sort=1). The game's not been out for two weeks, but Bioware's already published a toolset explicitly designed for creating your own adventures.

BTW, Biowares Toolset is full of WIN!!!

While CA has been moving away from Modding in the past years...others have been smarter about it. Maybe this is another factor why Sales are not doing so good?

[A1_Unit]

Well considering that mods add greatly to a game's replay value they are worth the inveestment in tools by the companies.:yes:

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

BTW, Biowares Toolset is full of WIN!!!

While CA has been moving away from Modding in the past years...others have been smarter about it. Maybe this is another factor why Sales are not doing so good?

I have no ideas on the numbers (do we have any from CA/SEGA?) but I would think Empire to be their biggest success yet, which is why the whining about user ratings is all the more insulting.

Though I'd love to be wrong because that would mean we're actually getting through to them.

[Babblearossa]

I have no ideas on the numbers (do we have any from CA/SEGA?) but I would think Empire to be their biggest success yet, which is why the whining about user ratings is all the more insulting.

The initial reviews from the "press"(ign etc) were stellar for empire, leading to great initial sales. But with tons of players dinging it for bugginess press reviewers for napoleon and whatevers after will be very likely to a) mark it down regardless as vastly different user-reviews reflect poorly on their prognosticatory capabilities and b) check it against at least the most obvious/complained about bugs.

a lower scored initial review should translate to lower sales.

well that's my take on why they care about user reviews..