Has anyone been to totalwar.com recently

[hrvojej]

Thank you for letting me know that I don't have to hope to ever play this game again. And that I should advise others not to buy/play it as well.

Best regards,
Cockroach

[sassbarman]

"There are also another reasons to lift a siege. It simply doesn't have to be carried to a conclusion to be damaging".

Please, conquering cities is the whole point of the game. nuff said

[demon rob]

Is development of the expansion pack so far down the track that they cannot return to the Rome source base and fix the bug?
I think that may be the subtext of the Shogun message.
If this is the case does that mean that they will give us free copies of the expansion pack so we can play Rome?
Hey, surely they can, we are only a tiny minority, thats not many copies.

Seriously, CA, please don't send out misleading emails. You have done the tests inhouse. You know there is a bug. You probably have even fixed it. Don't demean your customers like this. We want to support you or we wouldn't be here. Disclaiming clear evidence really doesn't work - even the Church now agrees with Galileo, not many people believe in a flat earth, etc etc.

Mislead the .com people if you like, but the .org should be treated nicely. Captain Fishpants of the Org is so much better than MikeB of the Com!

[SpencerH]

Actually a silent protest along the lines of a black frontpage with a smiley (or something else) with its head hung low would in fact make the point much better than any kind of discussing the issue.

The smiley could go into our sigs instead. That would very quickly show the 'lay of the land' without offending anyones sensibilities.

[Pode]

MikeB/Capt FP

I have a semi-photographic memory, and your .com post on the loadgame issue made me so livid it was burned into my memory. Allow me to assist you in recalling what you said and why it was poorly recieved. This may not be perfect, but I would swear in a court of law that it does not differ in any material detail.

, I lost all sympathy for your problem as soon as I read that you were using the RTR mod. You cannot mod the game then complain to the developers that their game is broken.

Yes you did not explicitly blame the RTR mod for the issue, but I can't believe for a second that you are so foolish as to believe that it would not be interpreted that way. Oh wait, you're part of the team that believes there is no load game issue, maybe you are that stupid. Mea culpa.

[IrishMike]

Alright guys, just calm down here. Yes their is a load game bug, I don't save to much, but I have seen it. Yes they don't think its a bug. The simple fact is that we can all have heart-attacks and die right in our computer chairs, but thats not gonna change anything at all. Whats done is done, and their is not a single thing we can do to change it. What we must do is improve/fix what we can, and the rest were just gonna have to live with. Also you can't really direct your anger at MikeB/Capt FP, these guys can't just come one here and post whatever they personally think. They got jobs to keep. Just like you can't tell your boss he sucks and still have a job. Its the same way for them, so just ease up a little, and think that mabey they agree with us, mabey they don't, their just keeping their job.

[ElmarkOFear]

First off, since I see a lot of new faces here, I will give you a little of my TW history:

I began playing STW online (never an SP player) after about the 2nd month the game was out. I enjoyed the MP game so much I stuck around thru the Mongol expansion, MTW and its Viking expansion, and finally left TW MP after the first week of RTW's release. I do not like RTW MP. Each game in the series has taken a little more away from the MP experience and RTW finally ruined it for me (For a whole list of reasons I will not get into, but those that know me are well aware of.)

During my time in the TW community:

I hosted the first MP 1v1 tournament (STW) and then a 2v2 tournament (STW) a bit later.

I was a moderator here at the .org for several months until lack of time, forced me to resign that spot.

I actively participated in the MP clan community. First as a member of the small Blood Ronins clan, which then became the Fearful Ways clan.

I eventually became Fearful Ways Diamyo and remained for several months, until lack of time, once again, interfered and I resigned my position after making sure there was someone to take my place.

My love of Shogun, and the frustration of no MP campaign (which was the big issue at that time), made me want to try and host an MP STW campaign. After much open discussion and trial and error practice campaigns, a small group of us established a fairly good working MP campaign. Alas, time once again forced several members to drop out and the campaign faded away.

During the last days of STW, myself and Obake (A former .com admin), established an Honor Society which was a multi-clan group which tried to educate and influence the MP community on TW ettiquette and fairplay.

We also started a small community called Ugli (United Gamer's League, International). This group consisted of members from almost every clan in TW, at that time. It was created as a "non-competitive" group, which allowed members to leave clan-business/politics behind, while still maintaining membership in their respective clans.

Eventually, the Ugli's changed into a multi-gaming community, due to the problems many had with MTW's bugs, imbalances, gameplay, etc . .

During the last stages of MTW, I was asked to become a .com moderator and after a few months I was asked to admin. there. I had high hopes for RTW, especially since I was brought there initially to start up an MP forum section, and to gather ideas from the MP community on what was wanted for RTW's MP. It was a non-flaming environment with some great discussions, which led to a nice list of what the veteran MP community and newer MP players wanted to see in the next game. After, RTWs release, I realized that I had been misled as to the seriousness of CA towards creating a great MP experience for RTW. I thus played RTW MP for one week, created a long list of MP problems and expressed my dissatisfaction in the private .com admin section. I then resigned from my position as admin. since I no longer felt I could moderate patrons who were just expressing their anger at the direction RTW had taken.

I know this was a long intro, but I felt it was necessary since it proves how much I have enjoyed the series, how intimately involved I was in the community and the forums, and how dissappointed I was with RTW and CA's change of direction for the series (without letting anyone know of it until they actually bought the game and played it.)

First off: The .com moderators and Admins (With the exception of Eradosan) were all asked to become mods/admins by the current mods/admins (at that time) and not CA. There was and still is an unspoken rule, that if you actually WANT to be a .com mod. and ask to be one, you will never be asked to become one. Bat, Wart, Aurelius, Tarrak, Psycho, Killemall, all were surprised when they were asked to become mods. And they were not exactly sure they wanted to become one either, especially since they saw the way the community treats mods and admins.

Knowing I am not happy at all with CA and that I resigned from the .com because of it, I am hoping you will finally believe that there is no conspiracy to silence dissent, or complaints from patrons. Due to the sheer volume of new patrons and the unruliness of a few, many good threads get the short-shrift and are closed, moved, deleted or sent to the graveyard by the moderators and admins. Since none of the mods/admins are paid by CA and are not in any way, shape or form employees of the company or any of its affiliates, they are not compelled to defend anything CA does. The reasons some good threads get closed, is the mods/admins do so in their spare time, which in most cases is limited. This means they do not necessarily have the time to edit out pages and pages of a good post gone bad, so they just close the post. I was guilty of it quite often, but I always tried to go back to it, when I had the time and edit it and reopen the thread minus the bad stuff. I am not sure if any of you remember me from there, but I always tried to keep things light and fun for everyone.

The problem is not what is being said, but HOW it is being said. The problem you are complaining about with what MikeB (Fishpants), and the other CA reps have said, is the EXACT same problem the mods have with YOU at the .com forum: Many post appear insulting, flaming, trolling, spamming etc . . It is a fine line to know when to edit, delete, and ban and when to step back and let things continue on their course. The mods/admins always have to make a judgement on the intent of the patrons and try to keep things light and fun for the rest. Plus they also have to try to keep things tidy, by closing redundant threads and saving good threads from quickly running off of page 20. I saw a good thread started and run off of page 20 in the listings, in less than a day's time, recently in the RTW forum. If the mods/admins did not try to maintain order there, there would be NO good threads and everything would be a rehash of old statements/ideas/discussions.

So cut them some slack. I know them, I know their personalities, and I know they only mean well for the .com community. What you really have a problem with, with some of the mods, is with their manner of posting. Some may seem, at times, brusque, demeaning, short-tempered etc . . What you fail to realize is the mods not only take abuse in the open forum, but they also receive quite a few, extremely nasty PMs from individuals who feel they have a right to call people names, publicly demean other patrons, and other nefarious deeds. Being human, the mods/admins all have their breaking points and hot buttons and you might have been the last straw and they vent their frustrations on you. A lot like when someone at school makes fun of you and embarasses you in front of a lot of your friends and then you end up saying something to hurt your brother's or sister's feelings when you get home.

Until you walk in a .com moderator's shoes, you cannot know what it is like and do not know how you will react to patrons taking pot-shots at you and making false accusations. I can assure you it will feel EXACTLY like you felt when you thought Fishpants was dissing you. Now multiply that by 10 and you know what a .com mod has to put up with.

Lastly: On CA's PR and willingness/ability to patch. It is deplorable. They don't fully understand the game mechanics of the game they have been working on, and are offended when the community finds things and complains. This is why they appear arrogant. They fail to realize there is a big difference between the programming of the game and the playing of it. You guys are unbelievably innovative and in-depth in your findings, but you spend much more time at playing the game than CA ever had the time for. It is CA's job to make the game, and try to make it fun. They don't have the luxury of setting around playing the game and studying in-depth every problem that crops up. Especially with a completely new game engine and the next game/expansion coming up. This is the real problem occuring. CA doesn't understand your viewpoints and you don't understand theirs. Different focuses colliding and causing a spark which can easily to into a flame war.

I believe I have just created the longest thread I have ever made and that is saying something! Sorry, but I wanted to give you a semi-unbiased opinion on the .com forums and the people who moderate/admin there, and also cut CA a slight bit of slack. They are people just like us, who get angry, say the wrong things, are full of themselves, and sometimes easily offended, care deeply what the community thinks of them, and are genuinely surprised by all the commotion and don't know what to say to make things better.

[Quietus]

And as for the official and unofficial comments made by CA patrons here and at .com being interpreted as "insulting our intelligence" Gregoshi, no, no. That's just inaccurate. If you re-read my post carefully, the first part simply asks Captain Fishpants a direct question - that's it.

The whole second part was entirely directed and devoted to one of the .COM Admin's inane conclusion of the siege bug, which btw was quoted by tai4ji2x on the 5th page of this thread.

[Captain Fishpants]

...
OMG. When RTW was first released, wasn't Captain Fishpants that sang the praises of the ORG and spoke of its importance in terms of the development of the series? Now he doesn't like the ORG because it gives him honest opinions that aren't heavily censored like the .COM?~:confused:

Users here aren't personally mad at Captain Fishpants, they are fed up with a game in dire need of a patch! Fix the game and the negative reaction will vanish.

Actually, we even thanked the .org patrons in the RTW game credits. No: what I'm worried about is the now-automatic reaction by some that I'm from CA, therefore I must be fibbing, pig ignorant or just plain evil. A lot of that kind of comment has been personally directed at individuals within CA - just look at the reactions to TorquemadaUK's posting.

As to opinions over at .com being 'censored', they aren't to anything like the degree that you suppose. I'll say it again: our games are certificated to a T or 12+ audience; therefore a certain degree of decorum/civility is required so younger patrons and their parents can feel comfortable in visiting the forums. Is that so unreasonable? Abuse and profanity are removed, opinions are largely left alone, unless they are in areas that are clearly demarcated as off-limits. There is one category of post that does merit automatic removal: pirating the game. Then again, that is hardly surprising.

And once again, I'm not going to get into a discussion about the 'dire need' for a patch.

[Browning]

Actually, we even thanked the .org patrons in the RTW game credits. No: what I'm worried about is the now-automatic reaction by some that I'm from CA, therefore I must be fibbing, pig ignorant or just plain evil. A lot of that has been personally directed at individuals within CA - just look at the reactions to TorquemadaUK's posting.

If so many are angry at so few, then perhaps there is a problem with the mentioned few?



As to opinions over at .com being 'censored', they aren't to anything like the degree that you suppose. I'll say it again: our games are certificated to a T or 12+ audience; therefore a certain degree of decorum/civility is required so younger patrons and their parents can feel comfortable in visiting the forums. Is that so unreasonable? Abuse and profanity are removed, opinions are largely left alone, unless they are in areas that are clearly demarcated as off-limits.

Possibly we read different forums. I saw there (at .com) whole threads with valuable info disappear because of some abusive posts.


And once again, I'm not going to get into a discussion about the 'dire need' for a patch.
Yes, that's the problem: you (CA in general) are not getting into the discussion on the issue.

[Browning]

Is it possible that the CA tests a different software version than we have? Is there a "developer release" and a "customer release"? In the company I work for we have this, and these versions have, of course, quite a different info in their savefiles....

[Jambo]

Actually, we even thanked the .org patrons in the RTW game credits. No: what I'm worried about is the now-automatic reaction by some that I'm from CA, therefore I must be fibbing, pig ignorant or just plain evil. A lot of that kind of comment has been personally directed at individuals within CA - just look at the reactions to TorquemadaUK's posting.

As to opinions over at .com being 'censored', they aren't to anything like the degree that you suppose. I'll say it again: our games are certificated to a T or 12+ audience; therefore a certain degree of decorum/civility is required so younger patrons and their parents can feel comfortable in visiting the forums. Is that so unreasonable? Abuse and profanity are removed, opinions are largely left alone, unless they are in areas that are clearly demarcated as off-limits. There is one category of post that does merit automatic removal: pirating the game. Then again, that is hardly surprising.

And once again, I'm not going to get into a discussion about the 'dire need' for a patch.

Mike, believe me, it is nice to be appreciated in the credits. It was a hard and "testing" time being a beta tester for reasons that I'll I not discuss here. Though it's not to say I wouldn't love to discuss these with CA developers, and this is solely for the benefit of CA and future TW titles, not myself..

I guess what's been hard for some to accept is lack of reference to any of the glaring evidence that has been provided and tested by patrons over the past month or so. The points put across in Shogun's (CA's) response go a long way to explaining how the AI works and assesses its plans each turn and that these may differ upon reload. Fair enough. But there's no mention or comment on the following issues discovered by patrons other than myself, which to me seemed quite conclusive of an issue:

-Protectorates able to be negotiated with any faction in the first turn upon reload. Think this covered all diplomacy, e.g. ceasefires, but don't quote me on this part.

-The differences in AI expansion when playing a consecutive number of turns without one reload compared to varying degrees of saving and reloading and playing the same number of turns. This culminated with the AI unable to take any cities when the game was saved /reloaded on each turn.

I would agree that I have noticed the AI break sieges anyway, mainly in response to the encroachment of enemy armies in their own territory or through rebels, but I've also seen them simply return to a city upon a reload, which doesn't strike me as responding to anything in particular. They'll then re-siege the same city they left, in the following turn. This is really easy to test on the Isle of Sicily.

You see, it's the lack of comments on the evidence provided that's frustrating patrons. Ca have always insisted that this was important as opposed to just shouting "bug!" coupled with a loosely constructed theory. Well the patrons did this and yet still no comment.

I hope you can understand where I am coming from. ~:cheers:

Jambo

[Kraxis]

Elmo, that was one fine post. Thank you! :balloon2: ~:)

I'm Tarrak and in a semi-retired state over at the .com. I'm tired of it simply, and mainly for the reasons you mentioned.
But I fear your post will be ignored here, people are set in their ways and it is a chore to make them believe otherwise. Sadly.

[Captain Fishpants]

Yes, that's the problem: you (CA in general) are not getting into the discussion on the issue.

Perhaps you missed my earlier posting, so I'll just repeat this bit again:


Finally - and some of you may choose not to believe this, if you wish - I'm not in a position to make any kind of official statement about patches or expansion packs until or unless they have been subject to a formal announcement. Long industry experience means that I'm not inclined to make informal comments on these matters either. This isn't 'fueling the fires of frustration', but *not* providing fuel for those fires. I really can't do anything else here given that there are people who, I believe, actively relish the chance to fan flames.

As to any other comments you made, I shall not respond. And thus the flames will not be fanned.

[Browning]

Perhaps you missed my earlier posting, so I'll just repeat this bit again:

(part of the message reposted)


Yes you maintain that you (CA people) read our posts. But a discussion, by definition, requires answering questions. So far, we (the community) have been waiting for the answer to our most basic question: have any of the developers performed the simplest of the tests, the one that on my crappy computer takes only 30min to complete: play a 20 turns game, note the results, play a game of 20 single turns saving-reloading, compare the results.

Because you remain deaf to such simple questions, writing instead pages on how we misappreciate and misuse your product, you are loosing our respect very rapidly, sir.

[Cruelsader]

Perhaps you missed my earlier posting, so I'll just repeat this bit again.

There is a difference between discussing a problem (loadgame anomaly) and announcing a patch. Your previous post does not answer why you, not speaking of CA in general, prefers to avoid the subject... or rather, why CA prefers to dismiss the issue, without convincingly explaining the anomaly.

BTW, could you state, please, who is in a position to make announcements about patches? Are you allowed to describe CA policy in regard to patches?

[Jambo]

Mike, like Elmo astutely stated, I think the main problem is miss-communication between what CA members and forum patrons think the alleged issues are with Rome TW.

Just to clarify:

Many of the questions being asked or points put forward by the patrons were answered by CA indirectly with no reference to the information displayed before them in the threads.

For instance, and I apologise as this reiterates what I said before, the testing people were conducting and the subsequent evidence posted to prove their points wasn't apparently being heeded. Whether this is because CA have actually ignored it or not I don't know. The tests were simple and easy to replicate and so it confuses and infuriates people as to why no reference or subsequent disproval of these tests was made by CA in their "no bug" answer by Shogun.

Regardless, the answers being given in response to all this evidence were on "how the AI is programmed to behave and what it does to assess its options each turn". Fair enough; we can't argue with that as we didn't program the game. However, this, as I'm sure you'll appreciate, is different from the points that were raised by the community in those now discarded "LoadGame" threads. See my post above for those.

Perceived miss-communication, whatever the issue, is always likely to cause problems. It can give the impression that people aren't listening/reading what's being put in front of them, or in the worse case scenario are being completely ignored (irrespective of whether or not this is true).

Cheers
~:cheers:

[*Ringo*]

...current febrile atmosphere... reinterpreted and hurled back with some invective editorialising... correction of misinformation... misinterpretaion was immediately repeated... odd situation for many... delight in thinking the worst... negative reaction... keep them orderly.... a duty of care... within those boundaries... UK libel law... anonymous posting of defamatory material...

...official statement... patches... expansion packs... formal announcement... isn't 'fueling the fires of frustration'...

After some careful analysis of the Good Captain's post, i have come to the conclusion... and by changing a few words here and there it could say... ~;)

Only joking, just gonna say there are some who read official posts with a degree of appreciation of both the problems faced by CA in regards to customer relations & also with development of good software. Good wishes go to all at CA, patients allows me the virtue of waiting for the real information that i seek. Not idle speculation; that often leads to people that (quote) "actively relish the chance to fan flames".

[Puzz3D]

I have a campaign test that clearly shows the siege problem in 6 turns. I already posted it here and at .com. It's obvious that all the variables are not being restored to their prior values upon a reload. If they were, the AI could easily come to the exact same decisions that it does in continuous play.

CA is loosing credibility because they don't see such a basic programming error as a problem. It now throws into question whether CA is capable or even wants to make a serious strategy game. I've seen very clear statements by CA that historical accuracy and realism were not their focus in making Rome. They claim that gameplay is their focus. So, where is the commitment to doing that in the face of a programming error that detracts from the gameplay?

[a_ver_est]

It seems that the main problem may be the "bug" meaning.

After reading CA feedback I think that there isn't any bug, if we understand bug as a "broken code". As coders has said, the program works out as expected.

It looks like they hadn't never expected AI remind its current strategy after a game load. Why ? it is Perhaps because it is easier to implement or because they thought that it would have a minor impact in the on going camping or ...

After some test done by some community members it is clear that frequent loads have a big impact in the game development. Call it bug, issue, desing error, feature ... whatever you want, but these are there, and a lot of people are waiting for a solution.

IMHO the CA answer: "it is not a bug" looks like a big simplification of the problem. :bow:

Edit: A sad 100st post.

[Old Celt]

It is perfectly clear that CA has no intention of participating in a solution to the problem of the save/reload bug. It is a bug; calling it a feature is just a case of convenient redefinition when reality doesn't suit. There is no point in continuing any "conversation" with CA at this point since they will not even concede the problem exists.

I believe we should now take our case to SEGA and request their intervention on this issue. If customer service at SEGA can be persuaded to run the simple test of lifting the FOW and saving/reloading after each turn, it would most likely be enough to convince any reasonable person the bug is there. We can then hope to leverage this recognition into a hot fix which will be done at SEGA's demand, not CA's whim. Even if CA staff are completely unavailable or unable to fix the problem, SEGA could commission a SWAT team to come in and solve the problem. I've seen this done before in software development when a team either fell apart, or were unable to solve a critical problem in the time alloted.

If SEGA fails to act after being given a fair chance to respond, then I think it would be foolish for any of us to pay good money for an expansion or future title from CA, knowing this is the kind of support it will get. Other software companies found out the hard way that you cannot behave like this and keep selling titles. Once the public trust is lost, you're done for.

[SpencerH]

AFAIK CA has defined a bug as something that causes CTD. Based on that definition, the 'load/save feature' is not a bug! It seriously detracts from or abolishes any gameplay, but it's not a bug.

EDIT after seeing last two posts:

Maybe SEGA will be able to help. Wouldnt that be a ***** for those that believed that SEGA ownership would be the end of the world.

[Midnight]

So, where's a better place to start? SEGA or gaming mags?

[SpencerH]

1) I'd like to see everyone who believes this needs to be addressed to have an identifiable smiley in their sig (one needs to be made). That will show the level of public opinion on this issue without the percieved abuse (from all sides). As was pointed out, one of the problems with this question is that it can be hard to sort out whining from legitimate complaint over this issue. If every post on this site (and the other TW sites with sigs) demonstrated our dissatisfaction it would send a clear message to CA and SEGA (I suspect) especially if the 'more respected members' also took part.

2) Those who have 'the ear of' someone with some 'gravitas' should put a word in that there is a problem in paradise.

[Cendre]

I don't want to sound pessimistic but I think you're fooling yourself if you think CA is concerned with people contacting PC magazines or Sega...
But let's face it, the number of people visiting these boards are all core fans of strategy games and probably a sizable sample of CA's customers; so it's easy enough for all of us not to buy any CA game or extension until they fix AI problems. Maybe that will give CA the insentive to work on a fix.
I for one will not buy anymore CA software until I see a change of attitude regarding patches...
Maybe we should start a thread and get everybody who's commited not to purchase there software anymore to post into it...

[tai4ji2x]

elmar, thank you for your post. probably the most level headed contribution here so far (admitting that my own posts haven't always been so even tempered)

[ElmarkOFear]

Howdy Kraxis. I wondered where you had gotten to. :) I can't play RTW since I sold my game back to EB Games during the first week of its release and have never considered trying it again, post-patch. I knew when I posted, there would not be a response from EITHER side. Some appear to be relishing in their own self-righteousness and an "I'm right, you're wrong" attitude.

Tai4J: Thanks. I have been thru it all before, with each TW game and have a unique perspective of both sides of this arguement. I DO understand your dissappointment, and realize some of the posts here are out of frustration. I was guilty of the same during the first week of RTW. Should have seen my rant in the private .com forums before I resigned there. :) We ALL have our moments.

CA has stated there will not be another patch. I heard it over at the .com in both the public and moderator/admin forums several times. History also proves this to be the case. History also proves, that complaining on the forums, has no effect and the only reason CA responds to anyone is to try and calm down the number of complaints. Unfortunately, MikeB (Fishpants) has always had the major habit of sticking his foot in his mouth, and trying (badly) to use humor in proving how unwise, and unknowing a complaining patron is. It is his way of striking back at those who complain about the lack of communication (not sure what his age is, but that may explain some of it). CA has always felt communication with the community was/is a hassle.

As for TorquemadaUK: He should not have been treated as badly as everyone treated him here.

As for me: TheShogun, MikeB, Eradosan, and a few others at the .com, at first, asked me to come back and admin. I refused at that time, but as I saw the mods being mistreated, I offered to come back in a limited capacity. However, I am an unknown. Publicly criticizing RTW here and at the .net (never at the official .com forum), pointing out MikeB's verbal foibles here at the .org, and chasitizing Erado and gang when they decided to vent their frustrations/anger over at the .net forums, has made me an unwelcome, but "put-up" with patron of the .com. I abide by the rules, will always defend the .com mod staff (since they are in the same boat as the rest of the community as far as knowing any information) and will always state my likes/dislikes concerning the TW series, no matter who may dislike it ( I paid $50 for the priviledge of doing so.

To me: RTW is the worst game of the series )for the MP community). I cannot say what it is for the SP game since I have never played SP, for any of the series thus far.

RTW will not be patched, or otherwise changed in any manner until the expansion. Even then, the game will not be changed much, except for a few lingering connection problems and/or pet issues with CA.

Complaining here will have the same effect as it always has. None. CA may be listening, but they are not hearing for many reasons. The number 1 reason is: Complaints about RTW here and at the other forums, may be viewed from the perspective of a customer publicly complaining about how YOU have made a mistake at work, how YOU refuse to acknowledge it, how YOU have belittled everyone who has complained, and how YOU do not know what you are doing. You would not like this, would feel that your efforts were not appreciated, would withdraw from any communication with this customer and/or would knowingly communicate in an arrogant manner. Plus you know, these complaints, may actually be heard by your boss and he might question your ability to work with the public, thus, your job performance and future income will be effected.

The best way to register your dissappointment with the series would be to no longer play the game, and wait for the TW series to get back on track with a game more suitable to your tastes. That is what I have done. RTW + any expansions will not be purchased/played by myself. I am waiting on a TW game which offers a better MP experience. Until that time, I will not purchase any future TW games, which do not meet that criteria. You guys should do the same. Unfortunately, many say they will: most do not. The business world knows how fickle the consumer is, and how willing they are to pay for something new in the hope of a better product.

[Puzz3D]

Quote from CA's official statement about AI decisions after loading a game:

"The decision was made that this was a reasonable and sensible thing for the AI to do as well: the loading of a game seemed like a good point to get the AI to sit back and go "hmmm... what's happening?... maybe those guys should be doing something more useful..."

So, what is the AI doing when you don't save and reload? Isn't it sitting back and assessing the situation everytime the player hits end turn? The strategic situation on a reload hasn't changed since the savegame was created. Why did the AI change it's decision? What data is missing that caused the AI to make a different decision?

[sik1977]

Thanks for the great post Elmar (Am i right to assume you are the same Elmar at .com). Really enjoyed reading both your posts, very insightful.

I have always been a fan of Tarrak (Kraxis) at the .com forums since the MTW days. He made so many great and useful posts in the MTW forums and none of the Killemall brand of policing (to be fair, no one but Killemall does his kind of moderating). I just wish the senior patrons which end up as mods/admins also try to make more useful and helpful posts rather then just policing the forums as that would also result in greater appreciation for their work and the thought of them as 'CA reps simply there to extent CA's agenda' in Patrons minds will be eased to a great degree (ofcourse I know its hard given the time limitations that they are faced with).

It is unfortunate what you (Elmar) say though regarding CA's behaviour as it is all too true when we observe the recent attitude and posts made by CA here at the .org and at the .com.

I have been a great fan of the series, mainly the SP campaign. The only MP experience i have had was with MTW on LAN with my brother. Though I have still a lot of respect for CA for their work, inventing a completely new genre in the gaming industry etc., but higher we raise our idols, the more disappointed we all are when these idols fall from grace in such a shameful fashion.

I think we should let MikeB off the hook regarding the RTR statement at .com. Its water under the bridge, and Mike, please you should know by now (if you are 25+) that sometimes its best not to try and defend some (suspect) statements and let them go as you will only make things worse for you.

What we would appreciate from Mike is some more forthcoming info/debate on the issue, which he can safely provide us without jeopardizing his job ofcourse (please guys understand his position and not be selfish, MikeB is not CA, just a fallible human like us all).

:help: Is this a good icon to show our knowledge and discontent on the handeling of the Loadgame issue (as a sign of silent protest as mentioned by some of the patrons) (unless someone comes up with the same icon with 'helpless' written on it).

[Nelson]

Because you remain deaf to such simple questions, writing instead pages on how we misappreciate and misuse your product, you are loosing our respect very rapidly, sir.

Browning, trust me when I say the ice is cracking beneath your feet with this accusation. You speak for yourself but not me and certainly not the org at large. The man is not deaf. He must necessarily remain mute concerning certain topics. There is a vast difference.

Do be warned, people, before things get too out of hand. I will brook no slander. The devs are guests here like anyone else and will receive the very same respect as any other patron. It would be a mistake for anyone to regard the appearance of any CA or Sega representative as “open season” for unruly venting. These gentlemen owe us nothing. They come here because they want to just like us.

Captain Fishpants represents CA and has said what he can about patches. Belaboring the point is not useful regardless of how anyone feels.

Those who want the org to avoid closed threads and apparent censorship must behave with dignity and decorum. Speak your minds but remain polite. Never be rude. Set passions aside. To quote Lincoln, let us conduct the forum “With charity toward all and malice toward none”.

[Voigtkampf]

Magnificent posting, as always, ElmarkOFear-sama. It was a pleasure to read it.

For the new faces around here, I will not introduce myself extensively, nor do I have as nearly as a formidable background as the greatest of the Org and TW, but I traveled my share of this path. I was with TW since the beginnings With Shogun but, unlike Elmo, I was SP player primarily, because of the bad modem connections and inability to play online. I lurked Org for ages, it seems, registered ones, dropped my account and registered anew.

I joined the Org actively when it was at its peak; Medieval reigned supreme, Viking appeared, the forums were full of interesting topics and satisfied fans that were sharing their joy and love for TW.

Then Rome was announced, first screenshots became available, sky was the limit. We discussed it from dawn to dusk, and then the first jitters appeared. The lack of historical authentic units and settings troubled some players who began complaining loudly, and it only got worse and worse. Before we knew, Org was divided into two factions, the “historicals” and “ignorants”. I chose the latter, even though I love history and have hundreds of books on historical topics, and have read thousands more, because I understood that out of gameplay reasons, one had to sacrifice a thing or two down the line. One may agree or not, question of priorities; I chose gameplay over the historical accuracy and the “Bullwarrior” agenda. Sadly, I even lost one of my best friends here at the Org because he represented the opposite position and got so involved into this task that he developed a nasty habit of flaming everyone with opposite opinion.

I digress. Well, I stood with CA and supported them without reserve; I trusted them. My intention was to engage into MP world of Rome, something I missed with previous two titles. There was no chance Rome wouldn’t be the king of them all.

Rome fell. It is still a mystery to me how such game, with thousands of 3D units and so many new features couldn’t match up, in my eyes at least, with Medieval or Shogun. The old guard renounced the game, they hated it in matter a fact. I have lost most of my faith, but I still had hope. For a while.

Now, I have no more hope for Rome. The old honorable players are gone, the scene isn’t what I expected it to be, not to mention the MP part of the game that has so much glitches... I won’t detail the reasons why the game is …well, not satisfactory, let us say, they’ve been brought up over and over again. I played Medieval and Shogun for hours and hours, months and years; I played Rome for two-three weeks and couldn’t bring myself to play it any more. I didn’t sell it, it is still on my computer installed, but I haven’t played it for millennia…

Now? I don’t hate nor do I flame CA and respectable members of their staff. I am just gravely disappointed. I could write a book instead of these few chapters, my discussions with honorable members of these boards on the Rome and possibilities it could have had, like naval combat we discussed into almost the last detail on these boards, our time of waiting and our great expectations, our eventual downfall and spreading of discontent…

I am only sad. Sad to know that Rome isn’t what the vast majority has expected, saddened not to be able to test my skills against Elmark-sama and many other giants of TW… Sad that I might spend another three or four years before the next TW title hits the shelves which I could play then… Saddened that Rome wasn’t a game to end all games, and it could have easily been.

I can’t even hope anymore. That may be the hardest part. Perhaps all the new faces of Colloseum can, but I cannot. Not anymore.

[Turbo]

Actually, we even thanked the .org patrons in the RTW game credits. No: what I'm worried about is the now-automatic reaction by some that I'm from CA, therefore I must be fibbing, pig ignorant or just plain evil. A lot of that kind of comment has been personally directed at individuals within CA - just look at the reactions to TorquemadaUK's posting.

As to opinions over at .com being 'censored', they aren't to anything like the degree that you suppose. I'll say it again: our games are certificated to a T or 12+ audience; therefore a certain degree of decorum/civility is required so younger patrons and their parents can feel comfortable in visiting the forums. Is that so unreasonable? Abuse and profanity are removed, opinions are largely left alone, unless they are in areas that are clearly demarcated as off-limits. There is one category of post that does merit automatic removal: pirating the game. Then again, that is hardly surprising.

And once again, I'm not going to get into a discussion about the 'dire need' for a patch.

Captain Fishpants,

Seriously, all the patrons of the ORG appreciate it when anyone from CA visits and posts even when we don't agree with their opinions. I think people genuinely love the series but are frustrated with RTW. Unfortunately, some of that frustration spills out into the posts. This doesn't perhaps explain everything 100%, but I hope you look past it and look for the root cause of why people feel the way they do. There is a pretty significant rift between the community and CA, and this isn't healthy for the future of Total War.

[Colovion]

sales + reviews =/= customer satisfaction

if this forum is any indication on the status of this game in the eyes of the average person who indulges in PC based entertainment then CA has their work cut out for them in the worst way

people aren't waiting for a patch or an XP. people waited for the patches and were left wanting. I had high hopes for the patch fixing all of the problems. Well when you have one patch to fix everything in the game that's a rather unrealistic avenue to take (no the first patch doesn't count).

people are waiting for the EB Mod

I'm still totally confused why there wasn't an open beta released.

[tai4ji2x]

wow... the locking of threads at .com has reached a fever pitch. hehehe

[rcp]

Unfortunately censorship seems to be a fairly accurate description of what is going on over on the official forums. They seem to be locking everything, even what is in the rants and raves, etc.

[tai4ji2x]

http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotalwarfrm12

these things are piling up like there's no tomorrow. i believe i've even seen many of them leave the graveyard and into the internet netherworld.

most hilarious is this one, where a mod directs someone to post in a supposedly unclosed thread... which turns out to now be closed/deleted completely. hahaha

http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotalwarfrm12.showMessage?topicID=1926.topic

[player1]

Anything related to loadbug is in graveyard?

That's disgusting.
That is indeed worst censorship ever.


Discussing loadgame issues isn't supposed to be same thing as asking for no-cd crack?


I really think that we should stat copy/pasting those threads in ORG and TWC, since otherwise all good data will be lost too.

Quickly before they get deleted forever!
(any volunteers?)

[player1]

So is 6th april the day of 2nd purge?
Crusade against loadgame issue?

[Colovion]

There"s No Problem Here! Move Along People

[Browning]

Browning, trust me when I say the ice is cracking beneath your feet with this accusation. You speak for yourself but not me and certainly not the org at large. The man is not deaf. He must necessarily remain mute concerning certain topics. There is a vast difference.


Please answer the simple question:
Has any of the developers performed the tests designed by Puzz3D or similar?

[Midnight]

Well, apparently discussion is no longer welcome on forums.

While I agree abusive threads should be locked\moved, some of them should not be. I'm referring to these in particular:

http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotalwarfrm12.showMessage?topicID=1936.topic
http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotalwarfrm12.showMessage?topicID=1938.topic

No reason to close these - perfectly good questions (the answers to which would have been interesting) in topics which were both locked and shunted off. This behaviour, IMO, is disgusting.

[mishad]

Background: I like R:TW, and played both M:TW(VI) and S:TW(WE) from release, but only get to play for relatively short periods so find the AI less than challenging on the strategic map. I have a son who plays too, so we can't use the hibernate/keep-running work-around. Oh, and I'm a software developer who understands the difference between a bug and a feature, and between a code bug and an analysis/design bug.

So, CA designed R:TW so that the AI re-evaluates its strategies every few turns, and at least on every load game.

This probably sounded very reasonable during the design process -- and would have had the significant benefit that it avoids having to persist (in the save game file) the AI's strategic planning/analysis data. As a developer, I've made similar decisions and might well have done the same thing in their shoes.

Clearly this approach means that there is a difference between "1 hour session" and "5 hour session" players: the former will have AI re-evaluating the position every turn, while the latter will have the AI re-evaluating every few turns. And this too would be fine if the "every few turns" re-evaluation were, say, just an optimisation (to reduce the time taken by the AI turn calcs becoming excessive).

However, testing shows that when the AI is forced to re-evaluate every turn (by loading a saved game) it dramatically reduces its expansion. This seems not to have been discovered during alpha and beta testing -- perhaps because testers paid to test the campaign play day-long sessions.

This may because the load-game "re-evaluation" is bugged (i.e. works differently from the normal periodic re-evaluation), or it may be that the re-evaluation is simply prone to "dithering" and it is only because the periodic re-evaluations happen only every few turns that the AI is not hamstrung in long session play too. (CA devs could probably test this fairly easily by making a special build with the "periodic re-eval" set to "every turn" and comparing the AI's performance. It might be possible for this to be done by community testing, e.g. using RomeSAGE to increment the turn counter, but such testing would be so "unrealistic" that it would probably be dismissed by CA in any case.)

It is a matter of speculation as to whether CA are being cynical about this bug^Wfeature (e.g. they knew, either from testing or just "by design", that persisting the AI state was too complicated, so they really chose re-evaluate-on-load from necessity but are now dressing it up as a design choice and/or the knew that AI re-evaluation would get nowhere if run every turn, so used periodic re-evaluations to mitigate the negative effects and/or are playing down the bug^Wfeature because they can't afford to create-test-support another patch) or whether they are simply not aware of the interactions and emergent behaviour resulting from the various design decisions they have made. Without a mole/whistle-blower from CA turning up, I don't see how we could ever find out, and don't see what it would gain us if we did.

In any case, to fix this bug^Wfeature, CA will probably need to either:

i) persist the AI stategic plan data in the savegame file

ii) make the load-game re-evaluation work the same as the periodic one (if it differs)

iii) make all AI re-evaluations work better (e.g. by increasing its preference for siege if it is already sieging)

Ironically, the best case for a fix is probably if CA *is* being completely cynical about this -- they know there is a problem and what the cause is, but won't admit it because of the pressure for a patch that would result. In that case, they may well fix it in the XP. I don't envy the XP release note author the job of describing that fix -- they can't hide it because many R:TW owners (including me) certainly won't buy the XP without knowing it has a fix for this bug^Wfeature, but as soon as they list it the community will cry "you knew about it all along you b*******!" :duel:

The worst case is that CA devs know about the bug, and have realised that it is a fundamental problem with the way the AI works (i.e. they can't do (i) or (iii) above because it is too hard, and load-game is already using the "right" re-evaluation code so (ii) doesn't apply). In that case, we're back to looking for alternatives to R:TW.

In either case, CA will have to work hard on the design of the next TW to ensure its features don't overwhelm its AI (a common problem with TBS games -- look at CTP/CTP2 for example), and CA/SEGA will have to be more careful about how testing is done to ensure it reflects how punters actually play the game.

[Duke John]

...

[tai4ji2x]

If you really care so much for this game then you should all calm down and start writing a detailed bug report, with screenshots, the settings/environment of when it happened and possible fixes/solutions.


~:confused: this has been done over and over, on numerous threads at com, org and twc. CA either does not understand the methodology and implications, or outright dismisses/ignores them completely. of course, you'll always have participants that will flame and troll on otherwise helpful threads.

[Duke John]

...

[tai4ji2x]

it has been attempted to keep these threads "clean". i agree that those which appear on twc and org should be moderated more heavily to "stay on focus". as for the official .com forums , they claim to have the power to edit and delete posts at their discretion and with more strictness than here or at twc, but instead it looks like they simply use the appearence of anything they deem as "rants" in these threads as justification/excuse to move the threads into the "rants" forum and eventually to lock the threads completely or have them relegated to the graveyard.

[Bhruic]

if this forum is any indication on the status of this game in the eyes of the average person who indulges in PC based entertainment then CA has their work cut out for them in the worst way

It's not. I seriously doubt anyone who hasn't been to the forums is aware of this particular issue. And that represents the majority of the people who bought the game.

I still remember when Thief 3 came out. There was a bug that caused the difficulty level to default to "easy" any time you loaded the savegame. This was true on the xbox as well. Was there a huge cry on the xbox forums? Nope. They never really noticed, because they weren't really looking for it.

Same case here. Economically speaking, CA will be fine ignoring this bug, assuming all other things to be equal. The percentage of people in the "I'm never buying another CA product" is too small to have any real impact on their sales.

Bh

[therother]

it has been attempted to keep these threads "clean". i agree that those which appear on twc and org should be moderated more heavily to "stay on focus".The thread on this issue in the Ludus Magna forum, here (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=45860), will have as much (or hopefully as little) moderation as necessary for it to stay completely on track.

PS Welcome to the forums, mishad! ~:wave:

[Puzz3D]

CA knew the AI didn't recover the full game state after a loadgame because they designed it that way, and they said nothing. They must have been hoping that no one noticed this issue. Since the number of times you save makes a difference in the course of the game, players should have been advised of it. However, when you realize that this "reassessment" by the AI is causing it to make "inferior" decisions, I guess you wouldn't want to say anything.

After reading over at the usenet strategic newsgroup, apparently the game Galactic Civilization has this loss of memory behavior even worse than Rome, and that game hasn't been fixed either.

[Old Celt]

When you look at the heavy handed, draconian censorship going on at
.com over anything that comes close to talking about any bug, you have to wonder why CA is so sensitive and unwilling to discuss or even try to refute people with evidence rather than flat footed denials. As other members of this forum who are also programmers have said: RTW is incomplete. Looking at the files we DO have access to shows many elements which were in the works but scrapped or never completed. Finding "kindergarten mistakes" like reversed "" signs which caused the silly scarring trait to manifest on every Roman combat general are further evidence of the rushed and incomplete way this project has been handled.

As a developer, I must say there is absolutely no way I believe The Shogun's statement that the AI was deliberately designed to
"reevaluate" in the couched way he described. What has happened here, IMHO, is the work to add persistence to the game with the save file was not completed when Activision finally dropped the bomb and said, "boys, you're 18 months late, and we won't wait any longer." So this left CA in the position of having to hope for the best. And their hopes panned out. Getting the GOTY awards and critical acclaim from sources which only do cursory examinations of games allowed CA to get catapulted into the major leagues of game development by getting SEGA to buy them.

I have also considered another reason for the tremendous arrogance I've seen coming from some CA staff toward the lowly consumers. If CA is anything like smaller development houses I've worked for, they attract and keep talent through a combination of salary and contingent benefits like stock options and bonuses for the developers. The acquisition by SEGA of CA means the original management with ownership has probably largely been bought out, or made wealthy enough to not care much what happens from here. The developers on the team have probably been substantially enriched as well, and if you are 25, and find yourself with a lot of bonus/stock option money, it is pretty conceivable that some arrogant attitude may show itself. That isn't an excuse for treating people wrongly, just a theory as to why they would.

If CA can't/won't fix the bugs, then they will eventually pay the price for that down the road. It might not be the current team members who pay, but will likely be other young hopefulls who join later, and find that the company policy of forcing inferior quality out the door ends up euthanizing the organization. That's an old story, and one I've seen personally more than once...Oh well, c'est la vive!

[screwtype]

As a developer, I must say there is absolutely no way I believe The Shogun's statement that the AI was deliberately designed to
"reevaluate" in the couched way he described.

I must say I've been a wee bit sceptical of that one myself. Why would the AI only want to evaluate every few turns instead of every turn? All they would really need to do is establish a set of priorities for the AI to follow, and I can't imagine why these priorities would only be checked every few turns instead of every turn, or even more strangely, why it would be rechecked after every loadgame. It just doesn't make sense.

[Benny Moore]

Well, apparently discussion is no longer welcome on forums.

While I agree abusive threads should be locked\moved, some of them should not be. I'm referring to these in particular:

http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotalwarfrm12.showMessage?topicID=1936.topic
http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotalwarfrm12.showMessage?topicID=1938.topic

No reason to close these - perfectly good questions (the answers to which would have been interesting) in topics which were both locked and shunted off. This behaviour, IMO, is disgusting.

I am the one who asked that question about the test. I have stated elsewhere that Creative Assembly is either lying or has not done any testing on this issue. The closure of my thread has convinced me that they are lying.

[Old Celt]

But strangely enough, the mods have left this thread open: http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotalwarfrm7.showMessage?topicID=24408.topic

How to win with a protectorate only strategy of saving and reloading then asking for protectorates and automatically receiving them each turn! It's pretty funny! I guess that since everyone is respectfully calling it a proper feature, the mods don't see the sarcasm there.

[tai4ji2x]

old celt: lol... trust me, they'll catch on sooner or later. in which case i'll have to update the link in my signature to point to the thread's new home in RnR and eventually the graveyard.

[mishad]

I must say I've been a wee bit sceptical of that one myself. Why would the AI only want to evaluate every few turns instead of every turn? All they would really need to do is establish a set of priorities for the AI to follow, and I can't imagine why these priorities would only be checked every few turns instead of every turn, or even more strangely, why it would be rechecked after every loadgame. It just doesn't make sense.

Because the "full eval" takes a long time, perhaps?

Or perhaps (like, IIRC, CTP1/2's AI -- which was scriptable and therefore examined in some details by the apolyton community), it is a bit "twitchy" (over sensitive to small changes in the input stimuli) which makes re-eval every turn prone to the AI continually changing its mind and never getting anywhere.

My guess:

1) persisting the AI state to the savegame was dropped/de-prioritised with "re-eval on load" considered an adequate workaround

2) re-eval on every turn was found to be too slow or too indecisive and changing to every Nth turn was considered an adequate workaround

3) nobody at CA put (1) and (2) together with "some people only have an hour to play" to realise that this would be a problem

4) it wasn't picked up at playtesting because they ran long sessions, and playtesting focusses on the RTS side and CTDs, not maintaining a challenge to a decent player in the campaign.

[AussieGiant]

This is a blow by blow description of another "feature" that comes with the load/save siege feature.

And the Emu/Ostrich characteristics continue from our favourite damage control team..."CA".

You know I think they need a PR department reeeally badly at this point.

[slackker]

This is a blow by blow description of another "feature" that comes with the load/save siege feature.

And the Emu/Ostrich characteristics continue from our favourite damage control team..."CA".

You know I think they need a PR department reeeally badly at this point.

If they understood.
listening and understanding are entirely 2 different matters...
rite now the war is not in the game its btw us and them :duel:

[screwtype]

Because the "full eval" takes a long time, perhaps?

I find it a bit hard to believe that a CPU running at 1000Mhz plus cannot crunch its way quickly through a priority list. Heck, if every single soldier in a battle can be tracked for multiple fields, I don't see how tracking a handful of enemy stacks on the campaign map could be such a big deal.


Or perhaps (like, IIRC, CTP1/2's AI -- which was scriptable and therefore examined in some details by the apolyton community), it is a bit "twitchy" (over sensitive to small changes in the input stimuli) which makes re-eval every turn prone to the AI continually changing its mind and never getting anywhere.

I think I'd just describe that as poor programming.


My guess:

1) persisting the AI state to the savegame was dropped/de-prioritised with "re-eval on load" considered an adequate workaround

2) re-eval on every turn was found to be too slow or too indecisive and changing to every Nth turn was considered an adequate workaround

3) nobody at CA put (1) and (2) together with "some people only have an hour to play" to realise that this would be a problem

4) it wasn't picked up at playtesting because they ran long sessions, and playtesting focusses on the RTS side and CTDs, not maintaining a challenge to a decent player in the campaign.

Hmmm it sounds feasible I guess. But I'm still sceptical as to how it could be so hard to get a few armies to behave logically from turn to turn. I can't imagine that many events that might cause an army to break off a siege, for example.

And let's face it, it's not as though these armies are behaving with much intelligence now, even without reload breaks. Often they just seem to wander around aimlessly anyway.

[Puzz3D]

The discussion thread "Loadgame-AI Bug" at .com has been deleted. It appears that all the loadgame discussion threads were deleted. Now you know how CA is going to deal with gameplay problems that they have no intention of correcting.

[Benny Moore]

They were moved out of Rants and Raves and into the Graveyard. They are still locked, of course.

[sik1977]

Puzz3D

You see they discovered the next best thing to removing the Loadgame AI *featurer*, i.e., to remove all the Loadgame AI bug threads/posts/rants etc.

BTW, most of the thread can be found in the graveyard now, where they shall remain as a sad memory of the support the community got from CA on this *feature*.

[Pode]

For further confirmation that CA and the mods still don't understand what the bug/issue actually is, the thread discussing the protectorate aspect of this issue is very much alive and well in the main forum, despite it being just as much if not more unpleasant than many of the buried loadgame threads. Does anyone have any ideas what we can do or say to make the point clearer, 'cause they still aren't getting it. Maybe the Ludus Magna tests will help.

[BeeSting]

To not fix it may be a breach of implied warranty.

[demon rob]

rite now the war is not in the game its btw us and them :duel:

Forum Total War!



Ok, I mentioned this in the now deleted rant-n-rave over at the com,
if we presume Shogun is not lying or deceived, and we have no reason to believe he is, then:
1) the pc is re-evaluating on reload
2) the re-evaluation is conservative/negative/ignorant.
3) therefor the AI is hamstrung every reload.
4) if you continue play without a reload it doesn't do this,
and the AI works pretty much OK.
Therefore we need a mini-patch to stop the re-evaluation code running. It doesn't do the AI any good so don't let it happen!
There must be a flag set on reload that is later checked on the AI turn that says to run the re-evaluate code. Either don't set this flag or just remove the sub-routine. Mods could do this by editing the source, but this would be extremely difficult, probably illegal, and not guaranteed of success because we don't fully believe such a routing exists anyway.

alternative 2:
this task is being run, and would work ok, but there is missing state information which means the AI cannot perform the task succesfully and so breaks sieges, damages diplomacy, ruins shipbuilding, etc. this therefor is a bad bug and should be fixed.

on the other hand, if they are misleading us (deliberately/accidentally? who knows) then the AI is not performing this task and the reload function is broken. They either then cant fix it, don't want to fix it, or can't go back to the rome 1.2 version to edit it due to expansion pack work.

[tai4ji2x]

i cannot come to any other conclusion than the likelihood that CA is simply lying - or deluded themselves to the point where they actually believe their own lies. if you look at the graveyard (http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotalwarfrm12), you will quickly come to see that they have essentially put the forum on "lock down". it is damned near the internet equivalent of martial law.

instead of deleting the individual offending posts, they just close entire threads. this means discussion on the matter is effectively off-limits.

[Pode]

Tai, as Heinlein said through Lazarus Long, "never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity." Yes, they are telling us things that are obviously not true. However, we know they are not true because we have run the tests. The simplest explanation is that Torquemada and later Shogun never bothered to read any of the detailed explanations of the bug, but went to the devs saying something to the effect of "There's a couple of whiners bitching about how the AI lifts sieges" To which the devs replied correctly that the design called for sieges to get lifted occasionally, and so we got the official nonanswer that was posted. CA protestations to the contrary, we all have seen plenty of evidence that they simply don't read nearly enough of what we post. Why should we assume that this issue was special in that regard, especially when the answer we got makes it clear that no one heard the question?

As for the forum, the mods obvoiusly haven't taken the time to run the tests either, with two exceptions (Obake and Wart IIRC, both of which came around to our side after testing. Wanna bet that they tried to argue with Shogun and got outvoted by the others?) Since there is an official "answer" and they don't see any reason to doubt it, they are doing their jobs. The church has decreed that the earth is flat and the center of the universe, and further arguement to the contrary is not to be allowed to corrupt the impressionable minds of newcomers.

[ElmarkOFear]

Pode: Just to let you know.

The mods and admins at the .com rarely get a conversation going with anyone from CA. TheShogun hasn't been around for quite a while and it appears that the rest of the CA staff can only visit the forums on their own time and not during the work day at CA HQ. You would be surprised (Or not) about how little contact there is between the mods and CA. Except during times like these, when the CA staff take a slightly more pro-active interest and take exception with what is being said in the .com forum.

Personally, I believe there is a problem and that you guys have gone to a lot of trouble to prove it is there. Unfortunately, I also believe CA doesn't see it as such a big thing, or as something that most of their customers would be aware of and/or feel it was a major problem.

You guys made a good effort, but I can state with 100% confidence: There will not be a patch coming to correct the problem. There is a slight chance it may become a part of the expansion, but I do not think much effort will be placed in solving it.

The spamming of the .com forum on this topic is only having the effect of harrassing the mods/admins there. CA has closed the door on this, and no amount of reopening of the topic will make them change their mind on the issue. It is just creating more work for the mods/admins. I am sure some of you feel that some of the mods/admins may deserve this trouble, but you are also punishing the rest, who are only trying to keep order and make the forums enjoyable for everyone.

You gave it your best shot, and your intentions were good, but it is past time to let it go. The veterans, who have been around since the first STW days, have seen all of this several times before and recognize the signs that CA is done discussing this. I feel for you new guys, who, like us, had hopes that there would be a lot of interaction between the community and the developers with a lot of good discussions on how to improve the series. It has never happened in the past and if history holds true, it will never happen in the future. I am not happy with the way things have turned out, nor are a whole lot of people. A whole large group of MP players, left the community after RTW, and will not return unless things improve considerably.

I still wish you good luck in your attempts to get changes included in future releases of the TW series, but please do not take your frustrations out on the .com forum volunteer staff members. Let the topic die. Once things settle down, maybe a good discussion over the issue can be made, which may have an affect on future TW decisions.

Take care guys.

[Bel]

As the man that got the load bug thread closed and locked (as if it wouldn't have happened eventually), let me just say that I may have gotten out of hand. I don't really believe that. I think the mods over there are insane, I think CA letting them represent their company is insane. Today, I watched an army of thrace go back and forth from Byzantine (save, load, save, load, save, load, save, load). I showed my girlfriend who knows nothing about games, and even she knew that was insane. The thing is broken, if they don't want to fix it, I want my money back.

I would love to file a class action suit agains these people, but I'm fairly certain I'm going to file a small claims suit. I bought two copies of this piece of crap, and anyone with half a brain can see its entirely defective for the purpose it is intended if one can only play 1-2 turns at a time. I did not see that disclaimer on the box. Nowhere in the manual does it say that loading your game will make the AI unable to function. I'm fairly certain had I seen it, I would have returned it. They don't want to fix it fine, I want my 100 bucks plus tax back please.

[ElmarkOFear]

Bel: I am not sure what initially got you banned, but I believe you called the mods/admins "fascist", "Nazi's" or something of that ilk, which led to the later bans. That is never a good idea, nor is it seen as acceptable by the majority of the patrons of that forum. Anger has a way of making us look as bad as the people we are complaining about.

Plus your re-registering under new names and continuing in the same vain, cursing, name-calling, etc . . forced the mods/admins, who might normally have been more lenient, to ban you over and over again and finally to delete/move/close any thread you entered, and pre-empt any more such outbursts. There are children who frequent the forum, as well as older adults, who do not deserve being treated to such vulgarities.

Making angry posts is one thing, but using foul-language is completely another. The best rule of thumb for posting is not to post anything you wouldn't say in front of your grandparents. It has served me well over the years and forced me to be more creative in expressing myself when I am disturbed about something.

I hope you can continue as a patron of the .com forums, by showing your anger in another, more acceptable way.

Good luck

PS: I sold my game back to EB Games during the first week, but unfortunately, I only got about half of the actual cost of the initial price. But I am definitely no longer frustrated by the crappy MP game and horrible interface/control scheme. ~:)

[Bel]

No, I got banned initially for saying posting the name of the newsgroup which be the only place I would ever acquire another CA game. Childish sure, immature maybe, but no less insulting than The Shogun's post. I believe everyone was being very patient and just wanted an answer until they decided their answer was that everything was fine and everyone was insane. I'm not a poster. I don't troll, I don't BS. I'm a lurker. I have absolutely no desire to ever patronize the .com forums again nor get into inane arguments with them.

You'll notice that noowhere did Killemall just ban me, or erase the post. No, he had to have the last stupid word, throw in his final jab then ban, well I'm not one for allowing someone to have the last word. Thus, the reregistering. He then had to start threatening my supposed "friends" if I posted again, like I know anyone from any total war board anywhere, at which point I had to post just to find out who he banned. Instead, he just closed the thread. No biggie. They are the worst public face in the history of game companies, hopefully it bites em in the butt bigtime. I'm done with CA.

[Pericles]

Well, the load/save game issue is currently making the rounds, and many wargamers are none too happy about this issue. They too are boycotting CA games in the future:

http://www.wargamer.com/forums/tm.asp?m=121533&go=last

http://www.wargamer.com/forums/tm.asp?m=121601&go=last


I seem to remember something similar happened a short while ago:

The developer was 3DO and the game was HoM&M4. 3DO went belly-up and the rest is history...

When will they ever learn?

:bow:

[AussieGiant]

I have to say at this stage with a quick rescan through multiple sites and including the very entertaining Official .COM site this has reached a disgraceful level of response by CA.

I don't mind a company that takes on an ambitious project like this and then has to iron out many issues after release, but the mere fact that the Protectorate thread is merrily running along on the .COM site as "Exhibit B" of the Load/Game "Feature" is very damning to the overall understanding of CA about their own product.

That is a long sentence, sorry for that.

I think what is really going to happen with the 20 or 40 or 60 thousand people that are realistically aware of these debilitating "Features" is that they will wait to purchase the next Expansion when it comes out...that "Wait", will impact the initial sales numbers enough to get the money strings tugging. Then of course *bingo*...we have a consumer win!!

Until we reach that "Bottom Line Correction" point, we are better off making as many people as possible aware of these Debilitating Features so as to make this Correction Point as impactful as possible. They have to release an expansion. And when they do...well you all nkow the best result for the long term...massive drop is sales figures.

Think of it like a Stock Market Correction. We just have to make sure the "Ass" falls out of the CA market at that time.

[Catiline]

You reckon 60000 are aware of this? a couple of thou tops I suspect. I'm aware, and frankly it doesn't bother me that mmuch as a bug, i play long sessions, as I suspect, in fact, do most of those complaining. It's not ideal but it doesn't really affect my enjoyment.

.org, TWC and .com are pretty incestuous places, and while there's a lot of noise, there's actually not that massive a footfall. I suspect most people will still by the XP. I will.

There are some issues about the way CA has handled this, but IMO it's not a game killer. I'd much rather any development itme went into beefing up the AI in general for an XP.

[*Ringo*]

Then of course *bingo*...we have a consumer win!!

Watch what your doing with those *'s.!!! ~;)

*Ringo*

[player1]

Bel, thank you for closing loadgame thread.
I blame your immature behaviour more then moders.

[Butcher]

Ok, I have to confess: I reinstalled MTW this week, and am immmediately engrossed in a Polish High Hard GA campaign.
I haven't played RTW for weeks now, it just doesn't grab me in the same way.
And if I am going to play for just half an hour, then it has to be COD or something similar, esp. as it will screw my RTW campaign.

Ah well, such is life.

[Old Celt]

@Elmark
I can understand you being an apologist for the ridiculous behavior of the .com mods, as you say you have experience as a mod and know how it feels to be abused. We all know there is improper behavior on every forum that needs correction from mods. But the actions of the mods on .com go far beyond what is required. They are quite obviously moderating to an agenda, probably because of angry e-mails from CA staff. I think they teach you in Mods 101 that you edit or delete individual messages, rather than locking whole threads over one or two problem posts.

The Mods are really unhappy when they get compared to Nazis or other fascists. There's the Godwin's Corollary, etc, and the enforced political correctness that says, "If you mention that in any way, your point and your posting are invalid." Well that's simply not true. If someone can make a valid comparison between how the Minister of Propaganda or Baghdad Bob treated things, then I don't see how that is a violation of the forum rules in any way other than some people just don't like it. It sure is a lucky thing for people like you that FREEDOM OF SPEECH is not enforceable on your precious forums.

@Those who would prove the bug exists to CA:
Trust me, they KNOW. One of the first things you need to do as a dev with a game is make sure the game state persists in the save game file. There is no wiggle room here. Patrons here have proven the game state does not persist. That isn't a "reassessment", that's a REINITIALIZATION. We didn't save the data, so we treat every load like it's a new game. What's the first concern when you start? Adequate defense, hence the recall of troops from active offensive positions to passive defensive ones, because the AI has no memory of what was going on. It's spin, plain and simple. So while I completely understand you wanting to prove the point, this is just a case of CA not wanting to hear it. Angry posters at the .com have called them liars, and the mod response has been to imply some "dire consequences" for that. Yeah, I'm sure they'll put some barristers in a rowboat to prosecute some 13 year old in Australia who has insulted them.

@The whole community:
Don't let people like Elmark tell you your actions can't influence the bottom line for CA and SEGA. They (the companies) NEED YOU. You don't NEED them! You can't force them to act by being civil and giving them test results, but you can post negative reviews on Amazon, write to all the people (and do it in a mature way) at the gaming magazines and websites, and expose as much as possible to the gaming community just what's going on here. That will eventually get enough notice to either force CA to do what is right, or if they never give in, they can become the next 3DO or SSI. The choice is up to them, but this can only work if you keep up the campaign of public information. Don't let it die, that's exactly the hope of CA: outlast the cloud over them.

[Turbo]

Elmark,

I personally gave up on CA issuing a patch for the load/save bug some time ago. The recent locking and deleting of bug threads shows that the Mods over at .COM are sweeping the whole issue under the rug. Just because this has happened doesn't mean that the community should just shrug its shoulders and say "oh well". If the users roll over and take it, Creative Assembly will continue to do a shoddy quality assurance job and refuse to patch game altering bugs. Their policy will never change.

BTW, my account over at .COM was deleted the same day that I posted a message encouraging an email campaign protesting CA's refusal to patch a flawed game. Aside from the obvious censorship implications, it does signal that CA is concerned about us (the community) raising public awareness.

[Bel]

Player,

Your welcome! You can blame my immature behavior all you want, as for the several thousand other threads they closed, I'm sure you'll come up with some apology for that too. I stuck to the thread they created, in the buried Rant and Rave section and I ranted about the company's announcement made that same day. If he didn't like a comment (like the fake newsgroup name I posted) he could have felt free to delete it or edit it out, just as easy as what he did. Instead, killemall had to rub his e-peen and act all sweet and engage a conversation with a guy he banned. If you don't see the fact that he was equally responsible for that conversation, you're insane. He just thought he could get the last word, and as it turned out he was wrong.

[Voigtkampf]

@The whole community:
Don't let people like Elmark tell you your actions can't influence the bottom line for CA and SEGA. They (the companies) NEED YOU. You don't NEED them! You can't force them to act by being civil and giving them test results, but you can post negative reviews on Amazon, write to all the people (and do it in a mature way) at the gaming magazines and websites, and expose as much as possible to the gaming community just what's going on here. That will eventually get enough notice to either force CA to do what is right, or if they never give in, they can become the next 3DO or SSI. The choice is up to them, but this can only work if you keep up the campaign of public information. Don't let it die, that's exactly the hope of CA: outlast the cloud over them.

We Shell Overcome?

Well, I wouldn’t be holding my breath on that bet.

And as for ElmarkOFear-sama, he is an old dog and highly respected on the TW scene; he is no underdog, and never will be.

When he says “don’t waste your breath”, he says so because he knows the way things will unfold, not because he is covering anyone. I know it too, and I say he is 100% right. I would love to be wrong, but I know I’m not. I’d be happy if people could prove me otherwise at some point, but whatever you do in process, don’t hold your breath.

Want another sad truth? Nobody else except CA will give us the next TW; we need them, they don’t need us. If they prove unable to give us another proper TW game, forget it, girls and boys. The fans of Fallout will know what exactly I am talking about. You don’t trust me? Well, I review games for a PC magazine, preferably strategy games; only game traders in stores have more games in their hands than me, I can assure you of that. There were attempts to imitate TW, but they all failed miserably, mediocrity is the best they could do. No one can make a new TW game but CA, period.

When I look at the number of old school fighters posting in Colloseum, I realize a painful truth; CA could write us all off and concentrate on the new target groups for the next title, and would still have remarkable numbers on their hands.

So, basically, we’ve been dealt a worst possible hand, and the dealer as well as all the other players on the table know it exactly.

[Old Celt]

voigtkampf,

I respectfully submit you are wrong. There are many venues in life that show what only a few determined individuals can do when they work together. It is true that only CA can produce the next TW title. But we certainly don't NEED them. It will take years for them to build the next one, and in the meantime, other companies will build off the technology and beat them to the punch. We as consumers will have other choices.

I'm not some 13 year old kid. CA has chosen to insult the users who have discovered their game bugs on this and other forums. They have refused to stand behind their work. You act as if it is unreasonable to expect good customer service. Also, since I program for a living, I feel the conduct of CA is a slur on the integrity of ALL programmers. I'm not willing to excuse them any more.

I started out on this forum firmly in support of CA and soon found how wrong I was to give them the benefit of the doubt. At this point, they have already committed PR suicide, and the ratings at Amazon and elsewhere will soon reflect that. Only SEGA can salvage this situation, if they care to, by hiring some "commandos" to fix the code and put their PR department into action to keep their reputation from going where CA's is headed. I watched an organization I belonged to take the same tact CA has. It only took about 25 of our customers to decide they didn't like the policy, and the company shut its doors less than a year later. My supervisor was fired for demanding the company properly stand behind our work. I know for a fact that if the right people complain to the right places, it gets results.

[nokhor]

there is a fine line here, and i think some of us are beginning to cross it. this is becoming less of a cry for justice 'let's force CA to do the right thing' and is becoming more of a cry for revenge 'let's hurt them economically because we know we won't be getting another patch' that's perfectly understandable if you guys feel that way, but i don't think the org should be used as your staging ground for your reprisals against CA. create your own forum and hound them from there. i think if things continue along their present course here, threads will begin to be locked and deleted, some patrons will begin complaining about the despotic moderators and eventually people will get banned. all i'm saying is respect the org and what it stands for, and take your war someplace else.

[a_ver_est]

We Shell Overcome?

Well, I wouldn’t be holding my breath on that bet.

And as for ElmarkOFear-sama, he is an old dog and highly respected on the TW scene; he is no underdog, and never will be.

When he says “don’t waste your breath”, he says so because he knows the way things will unfold, not because he is covering anyone. I know it too, and I say he is 100% right. I would love to be wrong, but I know I’m not. I’d be happy if people could prove me otherwise at some point, but whatever you do in process, don’t hold your breath.


But VI patch was released only after a heavy community pressure, is it correct ?

Which is the difference between both situations ? well, I think that the current protest actions are more aggressive, too aggressive perhaps.

[ElmarkOFear]

@Elmark
I can understand you being an apologist for the ridiculous behavior of the .com mods, as you say you have experience as a mod and know how it feels to be abused. We all know there is improper behavior on every forum that needs correction from mods. But the actions of the mods on .com go far beyond what is required. They are quite obviously moderating to an agenda, probably because of angry e-mails from CA staff. I think they teach you in Mods 101 that you edit or delete individual messages, rather than locking whole threads over one or two problem posts.

The Mods are really unhappy when they get compared to Nazis or other fascists. There's the Godwin's Corollary, etc, and the enforced political correctness that says, "If you mention that in any way, your point and your posting are invalid." Well that's simply not true. If someone can make a valid comparison between how the Minister of Propaganda or Baghdad Bob treated things, then I don't see how that is a violation of the forum rules in any way other than some people just don't like it. It sure is a lucky thing for people like you that FREEDOM OF SPEECH is not enforceable on your precious forums.

Very interesting reading here celt. You feel you have the freedom of speech to say anything you want on a corporate-owned forum and that you expect nobody to take any action. First you call me an "apologist", then you group all the mods into the same category by stating the mods are "ridiculous", then you throw out a nice conspiracy theory by stating they are "moderating to an agenda", then make the "Mods 101" comment, and lastly go into a description of how it is ok and relevant to refer to someone as a Nazi and/or Fascist. LOL

You either did not read my long post describing, in detail, the way the .com mods work, or you believe I am lieing to everyone. Your belief seems very clear as to what you believe with the "people like you" comment.

I know it hurts to realize that what you feel, say and do, will never have an impact on CA's business decisions. You are not the first. There is a whole veteran TW community (both SP and MP) which left due to this, myself included.

The best suggestion I have heard so far was posted, I think, by Pode, who said to go to Amazon.com and other internet sites which allow reviews of the game and flood them with the load/save game problem. This way you COULD impact sales of the game. Here and at the .com you will not affect sales, because most people who come here have already bought the game, or enjoy RTW. The only way to get a business to pay attention to you is to somehow hurt their bottom-line. CA (or any business) will not listen to you unless they feel this will happen. You end up looking badly every time you continue to make the same arguments and jump on anyone who states otherwise.

Striking out like this is not a very mature way to handle things. The only time the MP community ever had the developers actually listen to problems found in the game was when they gathered together a list of bugs and annoyances for the last RTW patch. There was no direct conversation with CA, CA did not promise anything, and the list was gone over by the MP community, very carefully, and reduced to a workable 100 or so problems ~:) Interestingly, most of the known irritating MP problems were supposedly taken care of (This I would not know personally, since I sold my game, as stated previously). Still; most of the old TW MP community left due to the new direction the series has taken and not due to game-breaking bugs. Unfortunately, it appears the Save Game bug was not found at this time. Since it was the MP community who made the list, the list consisted of issues important to the MP side of the game with a few crossover game play issues which affected both MP and SP.

TURBO: Unfortunately, CA WILL continue to "do a shoddy quality assurance job and refuse to patch game altering bugs". This has been proven over the past 5 years again and again. Many have tried to get things changed, and used a lot worse tactics than what you guys are using, to no avail. CA won't budge. As stated above, Podes Amazon.com idea would have a greater affect on getting the attention of CA than continually stating the same argument over at the .com. As for your account being deleted. There are only a few capable of doing such a thing Killemall would have that ability, Eradosan would have it, otherwise the only ones who could delete an account would be CA staffers. It was probably one of the above who did it, not a moderator. The moderators do not have that ability. Most of them are new now (Obake, Wart, Tarrak, myself and a few of the other veteran mods have left) This is the point I was trying to make. By grouping everyone together you are stating a "guilt by association" which is not the case. The moderators, especially the new ones, were respected members of the .com community and liked by a majority of the patrons. Their personalities have not changed and they did not ask for the job ("You ask you do NOT get" is the unwritten rule there) and they surely did not want to get involved in this save-game bug mess. However, they have to represent the whole community, and not just one section. This is another reason why the spamming of the same topic at the .com has been dealt with in a harsh way, with the closing of both good threads and bad. The mods are too new to be working an agenda as Old Celt suggested earlier. However, they are not experienced enough, nor confident enough yet to edit individual flames, and sometimes just close down the whole topic. Even if they did only edit the cursing, name-calling etc . . some would still throw out the words "Nazi" and "Fascist" and think that it was their right. There IS Freedom Of Speech at the .com, patrons have the right to say anything they want there, but CA also has the right to what they want to allow on their site and patrons will be held responsible for what they say when it breaks the agreement they had to agree to when registering to participate on the site. They should have read the rules of the forum before they clicked "yes". Nothing they say can validate their abuse of any patrons and/or mods or any of the rules of the forum. This could be likened to someone yelling "fire!" in a crowded theatre. Or "This is a hijack!" on an airplane. The right of Freedom Of Speech only goes so far and will not protect him when the FBI comes and thumps him on the head. Plus the patrons of the theatre and plane will undoubtedly encourage the FBI to thump this individual a couple more times just for good measure. ~:)
I doubt CA is worried since things such as this have been tried for longer periods of time and using much nastier means, in the past and have never affected CA's decisions.
Trust me, I hope you have a greater success than the community has in the past. I was trying to save you the time and trouble of finding out the hard way, what DOESN't work. You can try if you like, but I think you will end up being more frustrated than ever. I got tired of trying, and decided to best show my dissappointment by not playing RTW, selling my game back, and not buying any expansions. Once the TW series gets back to what I like in a game, I will be back, but not until then.
The only bad thing is, the online friends I have made over the years here in the forums make it difficult to just leave. I still enjoy the banter, and meeting new patrons and discussing ideas of what would make a great game. It may not accompiish anything, but it is an enjoyable pasttime for me.

BEL: Anyone who posts links to any No-CD sites, promotes any pirating of games, posts they are playing with a pirated copy or insinuates they are going to do such a thing is removed immediately and most often results in a permanent ban for that username or IP. There are few exceptions. It is stated in the rules of the forum, when you registered. That is probably why you were banned. Pirating is the one thing that will get the ire of the developers and it was probably MikeB, BOFH, or TheShogun who banned you. Also, it is much easier for CA to ban than it is for you to reregister a username, even if you DO have a non-static IP. Eventually, CA (not the mods: They cannot ban) knows you will wear down and either use a name which does not break any rules or will leave the .com entirely. Once again, you can try, but it will be to no avail. All it does is aggravate some innocent by-stander moderators for a short while, and may begin turning them into the very things everyone so readily accuses them of.

Good luck on getting this save-game bug fixed. Maybe it will be in the expansion, but if you can get them to make another patch, I will be most surprised.

PS: I noticed that my Civ3 Complete game has a switch in the options menu for each game which allows players to turn off and on a "random number generator" save feature. With this turned on, it will save the random number with the save game file and the game will always battle out the same when you load it up again. Since CA doesn't seem to think this issue is a big deal, how about trying instead to get them to offer this type of switch as an option on the expansion? That way players could determine for themselves how they want to play the game. To me, more options, are always a good thing.

[SpencerH]

I think that if the industry percieves that the market is there then we will see more (and better) strategy games. Firaxis (for example) hasnt made a tactical strategy game for a long time, but what will happen if Meier 'dusts off' the ideas behind the civil war games (which were every bit at good as STW and MTW IMO, given that they were earlier games than the TW series).

Previous TW games may have had no competition from the imitators, but RTW hardly comes up to the previous high standards. I agree that CA doesnt 'need us' to stay in business, but I'd say that if they dont stay at the top of the tactical-strategy niche and enter a more general RTS world then they will need to compete with many more developers who will turn out games every bit as entertaining as RTW.

[Voigtkampf]

voigtkampf,

I respectfully submit you are wrong.

I sincerely hope that I am; then again, I’m certain I’m not. I’m a genius! ~D Time will tell, but by the time time tells, we’ll all have forgotten this issue all together.


It is true that only CA can produce the next TW title. But we certainly don't NEED them. It will take years for them to build the next one, and in the meantime, other companies will build off the technology and beat them to the punch. We as consumers will have other choices.

I played recently Civil War Bull Run that was basically the same type of the game as Medieval is; mediocre, at best. There can be only one TW, both in terms of copyright license and spirit. No one else can even appropriately copy the spirit of the game, aside of the mods being made for them, of course.



I'm not some 13 year old kid.

I never implied otherwise nor did I intend to be disrespectful towards you.


You act as if it is unreasonable to expect good customer service.

It is not realistic to expect anything more after the 1.2 patch is what I am saying.



I watched an organization I belonged to take the same tact CA has. It only took about 25 of our customers to decide they didn't like the policy, and the company shut its doors less than a year later.

I know for a fact that if the right people complain to the right places, it gets results.


But what do you exactly expect from them? They made the game, they produced the first patch, they brought out the second patch. That’s it, boys and girls, take it or leave it, nothing more goes. I feel like thousand patches won’t fix Rome and make it feel for me the way Medieval and Shogun felt.

I still wish the CA all well, I respect them and I’m grateful for the STW and MTW, but Rome has let me down. Never mind, that happens. If I were commanding at CA, I would pull ranks and “hold fast”; in matter a fact they are doing it right now. It is not financially excusable to embark in another patch production, what is done is done, cut.

Your efforts are in vain and are both doomed to fail and further widen the current gap between CA and TW fans.


But VI patch was released only after a heavy community pressure, is it correct ?

Which is the difference between both situations ? well, I think that the current protest actions are more aggressive, too aggressive perhaps.

CA has already produced the patch for Rome, two of them in fact. That is the difference; we already used up the magic patch option.

[ElmarkOFear]

Spencer: I hope you are right, I have liked almost every game Sid has ever created. I still play a lot of them too. :)

a_ver_est: The VI patch came about as the normal 1-game, 1-patch way of doing thing CA has always had. They also made one patch for STW/WE (Mongol Invasion). The only true second patch for a TW game was made by a community group, which did not go over so well. I can tell you the reasons if you like, just PM me. I will not go into it in this thread though.

Old Celt: You seem to have missed the whole point of my previous threads or did not read them through. I am probably the most dissappointed person here when it comes to CA. I resigned the admin position at the .com over it, I even sold my game back to EB Games (for a loss) after one week of play. I have complained since day one of RTW's release on the direction the series has taken, the type of gameplay it promotes, the shoddy MP lobby and the lack of game features (which were in previous games and now removed or forgotten in RTW). Even after I quit playing and quit admin'ng, I helped here, by suggesting to the people who were putting together the list, how best to present their issues to CA. From what I have heard, most are please by the number of issues CA helped with. They did not deal with them all, but they did deal with quite a few. Even CA was pleased with the way the list was presented, and THAT is a small miracle right there. What it proves is: there is a right way and a wrong way to present problems and that CA will only address problems it wants to. You cannot force them to do otherwise. I don't like that model, but I have learned it is impossible to change. You are preaching to the choir when it comes to your feelings towards the way CA handles things. However, it is WRONG to harrass, call names, and be a general nuisance to the non-employee, unpaid, volunteer moderators at the .com. If you think you are somehow going to get CA to make changes by doing this, you are mistaken. They care as little about their mod staff as they do about this community. CA is concerned with CA. This is the way of most businesses today. I don't like it, I think they should be more open to the community's wishes, but until you can hit them in the pocket-book they won't listen. The only way to do that is to not buy their games, which a lot of people seem unwilling to do.

I am sure that some at CA are laughing over the fact that people are spending hours upon hours playing, testing RTW for this save-game bug, and talking hours upon hours in the forums about RTW and getting very emotionally involved. They probably consider it validation that their game is entertaining enough to keep people's attention for such a long time. I can see the next box cover ad for their new expanison: "Rome Total War: Invasion of the Huns Great graphics, compelling single-player campaign, and enough obvious bugs included to keep you interested in the game for months on end! As a bonus, we have even included some special Easter Eggs: Not so obvious bugs, in which you will have to spend an extreme amount of time in finding and then spend even more time trying to get us to fix! Something for everyone!"

[*Ringo*]

Elmark, your fingers must be bleeding by now! Any chance your next post will be a few sentences before you befuddle my brain even further! ~;)

[ElmarkOFear]

hehe I actually enjoy discussions such as this. :)

I think they offered me the mod positions, first at the .org and then at the .com, to try and keep me from spamming! hehe

[HarunTaiwan]

Old Celt was fully supporting CA in the beginning. I think it speaks a lot that he's changed his mind 180 degrees.

As consumers, we have wonderful new tools to make corporations pay attention to our concerns.*customer reviews and ratings. The Economist this week has a whole article on this.

Anyone who tries to lay a guilt trip on me sayings it's "revenge" is wasting their time. In the non-software manufacturing world, you can't get away with these things. Let me know if any of you would refrain from SLAMMING a company that made a poorly designed or malfunctioning clothes iron.

Yeah, the game is great: my review says so. But the service is lacking. Why am I using a home made Bug-Fixer to correct the Scarred General "feature" among other things?

Or, if we all want to be forgiving and merciful, please make sure to be the same way when my company ships something with poor powder coating that's a bitch to assemble. I would love to be in the room when we see a CA developer cut me some slack if I put the wrong screw type in a hardware packet, etc. He won't call the 1-800 number asking for a replacement, will he? He'll go down to the hardware store and take care of it himself.

End of rant. It's still a great game - I just wish they'd committ to correcting the error in the XP.

[*Ringo*]

Any chance your next post will be a few sentences...


Thanks, just about managed that one! ~;)

[ElmarkOFear]

Harun: If you read the previous posts, you should see that nobody is trying to make you feel "guilty" about complaining. Every post appears to being stating, that the person is not happy with RTW, and not happy with CA. I have not seen where anybody is trying to argue that. What is being discussed is the way some are trying to get changes made. This has proven not to work over the past 5 years. You are correct in stating the wonderful new tools available to consumers. As stated previously, Pode's idea about going to Amazon.com and other sites which allow reviews of games would be a good way of getting to the consumers before they buy. The .com, .org, and .net forums are "after the fact" and too late in the purchase process to have any effect on CA's bottom line. BTW: Who is being merciful? Have you read thru the previous posts? Show me where any say to be merciful, and/or forgiving of CA. Shame this isn't the Old West, we could Tar and feather em, and string em up on the old Oak tree south of town. ~:)

[ElmarkOFear]

LOL Sorry Ringo: I just couldn't help myself! ~:cheers:

[HarunTaiwan]

No, we don't want any mercy.

But we do want the punishment to involve scythed chariots.

[ElmarkOFear]

Lol

[player1]

Player,

Your welcome! You can blame my immature behavior all you want, as for the several thousand other threads they closed, I'm sure you'll come up with some apology for that too. I stuck to the thread they created, in the buried Rant and Rave section and I ranted about the company's announcement made that same day. If he didn't like a comment (like the fake newsgroup name I posted) he could have felt free to delete it or edit it out, just as easy as what he did. Instead, killemall had to rub his e-peen and act all sweet and engage a conversation with a guy he banned. If you don't see the fact that he was equally responsible for that conversation, you're insane. He just thought he could get the last word, and as it turned out he was wrong.

Yes, I'm insane, thanks for the insult.

[Old Celt]

@Elmark,

I did make a mistake of generalization with regard to "those people" at the .com. I did NOT intend my meaning to be that all the people in mod jobs are behaving in a ridiculous way. As you pointed out, some of the people doing the most drastic things aren't even mods, but hold other positions. So my apologies for lumping things together inappropriately.

You may be right that a campaign of customer complaints may not get CA to do the right thing. We can but try. CA is under new management now, so SEGA oversight could possibly make a difference. As happened with one of my former employers, the old CA management probably sold their interest in the CA, and so they just might move on or retire having made their money, and not wanting to deal with annoying pests like me.

@Nokhor,

This isn't a "war" from my perspective. I'm exercising my right to complain about something I paid for and didn't receive. If other like minded people decide they want to suggest other places to make those complaints or what not, then that's their choice. If you dislike the contents of a thread, then I respectfully suggest, you just don't read it?

@Player 1

Don't worry Player, I'm crazy too. I live in my own little world, but that's okay 'cause they know me there! ~:grouphug:

[player1]

Don't worry Player, I'm crazy too. I live in my own little world, but that's okay 'cause they know me there! ~:grouphug:

cheers ~:cheers:

[Odin]

I have monitored this discussion closely on several boards. The concensus seems to be that RTW has been a marked step back for the series. I own STW, and MTW and loved each of them. However I dont own RTW. Why? Because of issues like this.

The gaming industry is full of companies who pump out games, get customer feed back, patch and rinse and repeat. In the end the customer spends more time testing then playing, and its a loosing proposition for a consumer.

I dont purchase games until at least 6 months after release, this way most of the strengths and weaknesses are out in the open. The game reviews further this issue along with lack of testing on thier end, and simplistic macro reviews that give you a flavor for the game, but not the subtleties.

In the end, the only way to make companies improve the release quality of thier games is make your purchase conditional on the quality of the product. RTW came with a lot of hype, and being the new shinny game on the bloc consumers ran out and bought it, no questions asked. In the end its the consumers fault for these issues.

why would CA change anything if you buy the games anyway? It all comes down to consumption, you dont buy it, they will listen, you buy and the transaction is complete, your recourse has been waived (save for your moderated ability to complain on thier boards....).

Do the right thing, wait until you make your PC purchases, dont give the benefit of the doubt and allow companies like CA figure out how to regain your business.

Enevitably CA will do an expansion for RTW, will you buy it straight away?

Its like complaining about baseball players salaries being to high, while you have a baseball cap on, and your local team's jersey on your back.

We are all part of the problem, your consumption is the most powerful tool you have to garnish what you want, never ever forget that.

[ElmarkOFear]

Well said Odin. And you did it in less the three pages like I tried to! hehe :) Now I can go back to my old, spammy ways. :book:

Old Celt: You will find, once you able to get to know some of the .com mods better, that most of them are very decent individuals. There will always be a few who rub patrons the wrong way, but it is more difference of personalities between the participants than a blatant attempt at silencing everyone. Of course, you will run into a mod, every now and then, having an extremely bad night, who may not act in the most level-headed manner. Ahem! . . I remember having one patron get under my skin once by challenging my ability to stop him from spamming and cursing in the forum, so I deleted every post he ever made in the .com forum, and then deleted his username and banned his entire IP range for a night (Unfortunately, when you range IP ban someone, it can also ban the innocent patrons of the forum too who just so happen to have connected to the internet with one of the ranges.) From this, I learned not to go overboard and especially do not do any mod commands when I am feeling emotional :furious3: (Though it DID get rid of whomever it was, until he could calm down.) hehe In the end, we are all human and subject to the whims of our emotions, except for maybe Killemall (He IS a lawyer in real-life after all!) ~:)

***Don't get me wrong, I like Killemall as an online friend, but I do not always agree with his aggressive style of moderating. I must admit it DOES get the job done though, but sometimes at the expense of alienating some patrons who were just blowing off steam and would normally obey the forum rules. I mark it off as a difference of moderating style. I am sure he feels the same about me sometimes as well. ~:) ***

I keep in touch with a lot of the old mod squad over at the .com and if some of you would like, I would be willing to ask one of them "why?" when you feel you may have been subject to a harsh penalty. I can at least find out why you were banned or had your posts edited. (Turbo: What was your username over at the .com? Nobody I spoke of could see where you were banned or even remember a Turbo username. If you would like an explanation of why you may have been banned, PM me with your username and I will get back to you in the same manner.) You will find it is better for everyone involved to settle things privately through PMs than to publicly go into the forum and post there. As long as I don't flood the .com moderators with PMs or emails, I am sure they will be more than happy to give me the information for anyone. I was always happy to give second chances and to unban patrons who had let their emotions get the best of 'em, as I am sure most of the current mods are. No reason for everyone to be getting angry at the wrong people. Save it for CA. :duel: hehe

[Midnight]

I'm beginning to feel utterly powerless here.

I am disgusted with CA's treatment of their fans, who have gone to (and are still going to) great length to point out what is, IMO, an obvious flaw. They won't listen. They've shut the door, and appear not to care.

I can say I won't bother with the x-pack, regardless of what they do with it, now. I can say I won't buy another CA product, but ultimately I'm insignificant. It doesn't matter. They can get away with what they like, and treat their loyal fans (I've followed CA since MTW, and bought RTW straight away on the basis of their previous offering) like dirt, and what can anyone do?

What is the point when they refuse to listen?

[Odin]

I'm beginning to feel utterly powerless here.

I am disgusted with CA's treatment of their fans, who have gone to (and are still going to) great length to point out what is, IMO, an obvious flaw. They won't listen. They've shut the door, and appear not to care.

I can say I won't bother with the x-pack, regardless of what they do with it, now. I can say I won't buy another CA product, but ultimately I'm insignificant. It doesn't matter. They can get away with what they like, and treat their loyal fans (I've followed CA since MTW, and bought RTW straight away on the basis of their previous offering) like dirt, and what can anyone do?

What is the point when they refuse to listen?

Dude, what you can do is not buy any more of thier products, as you said. It might seem like you as one guy cant make a difference, but how many other guys are there out there like you who think thier one voice means nothing?

What if all of you didnt buy the expansion, or any other CA product?

I suspect it would matter a great deal, and would be taken note of and addressed, otherwise CA can kiss its profits goodbye. Remember your purchase is your power, they want it bad, and once you give it to them the only incentive they have to keep you happy is the hope you will buy more.

The cycle of consumers buying poor release quality games has to end sometime or we will always be stuck with issues like the save game thing. It starts with guys like you saying "I wont buy thier games any more". Your voice matters as a gamer, and your opinion counts....

Particularly when you back it up with your wallet.

[ElmarkOFear]

Midnight: It is not completely lost. Though more difficult now.

The MP community had some success in getting things addressed in the first patch, but they worked extremely hard on gathering the list together and weeding out "personal preference" items from actual game problems. The list was gathered by a lot of the .org patrons (find out who they were) and this would be a great place to start asking questions on how to present the save-game problem in a manner which will make CA more likely to consider the changes. Do not expect it in a patch for RTW, but it MAY be included in the expansion or later on in future releases if it can be presented in the right manner and if CA is convinced it hurts gameplay.

[Puzz3D]

I bought Rome shortly after release because Best Buy put it on sale for $40 (usd) and included an exlusive RTW soundtrack CD. I went ahead and bought it even though I didn't like the demo, but I was genuinely appalled at the state of multiplayer. Even after the v1.2 patch, the gameplay is such that I won't play MP, and now it's apparent that the SP game is seriously compromised by the latest revelations. The best part of the game is the opening screen with that lead in music. It's very inspiring and makes it easy to believe that RTW must be the best game ever released for the PC. Well, it isn't by a long shot, and it's clear that the players can't fix it no matter how much they mod. They can't fix the strategic game, and they can't really fix the tactical game either.

After the initial release of a game, CA relies heavily on players identifying problems. After the patch, they are much less receptive to this because they don't want to keep making patches. The discerning player is out of luck because his gameplay concerns are drowned out by the majority who are mostly concerned with CTD's. CA did a very good job in making a stable game, and without that no one would be concerned with gameplay issues. It could be that CA isn't allowing or can't allow themselves enough time to produce the games which is a fundamental problem and will affect everything they produce. Every Total War game they've produced so far has had gameplay issues that were never ironed out.

A Best Buy sale isn't going to be enough to get me to buy a CA game next time. I'm sure CA has some projection on how well the add-on should sell. If it doesn't meet that projection, it will their their marketing department doing the reassessment rather than the AI after a loadgame.

CA may want to consider changing their name to Creative Disassembly if they are going to continue along the path of dismantling the gameplay in the Total War Series.

[Pode]

For the record, HarunTaiwan originated the excellent idea of the Amazon (and other) reviews. I was simply very vocal about spreading it across other fora. One of the mods here felt that the .org shouldn't be used to promote such a strategy, and so locked HT's thread and it's related follow-on thread. I can respect that call, even if I disagree with it. I think that was what HT was upset about below
Back on topic, the Amazon review suggestion was not greeted kindly by Kill54 over on the .com. I've bent over backward to discuss things reasonably without backing down, but I expect I'll get a warning regardless.

[Puzz3D]

I've never advised anyone to purchase Rome. In fact, I've advised 3 people over the last few months who I saw holding the Rome box in Best Buy not to buy it, and they didn't. It's not too hard to talk someone out of buying a $50 game.

[Colovion]

I've never advised anyone to purchase Rome. In fact, I've advised 3 people over the last few months who I saw holding the Rome box in Best Buy not to buy it, and they didn't. It's not too hard to talk someone out of buying a $50 game.

I told a few friends to not buy it as well. I'd been setting this game up for glory the months I lauded over it on this forum. When it was released I was really embarrassed to find that I couldn't even recommend it to anyone else and retain a clear conscience. I was playing World of Warcraft and for some reason RTW came up. Someone mentioned how they loved MTW. I told them that if that was the case they better not get their hopes up for RTW, as they hinted towards purchasing.

It's an incredible oxymoron. Fansites driving new fans away. :dizzy2:

[ElmarkOFear]

Thanks for the correction Pode. I am an old man and forget things. ~:)

A very good idea Huran! Also, Puzz and Colo seem to have the right idea as well. I have warned many of my online friends from other games, that they might want to avoid this one, if they were expecting another STW or MTW. I also told them to avoid RTW MP at all cost. Now it seems, I must change it to include SP as well.

[SpencerH]

My sig at poly has a line "CIV is dead, long live the next generation of strategy games, Rome Total War". Needless to say, it generated some 'tough' comments from a few fellow civ'ers. After playing RTW I added the line "Dont buy the beta version though. We deserve games that are finished when they go 'gold'."

[ElmarkOFear]

I put this Xbox sig in right after I played the RTW Demo and it appears to have been prophetic, since Sega is taking over the helm and they are producing the Total Warrior game. ~:)

[SpencerH]

I put this Xbox sig in right after I played the RTW Demo and it appears to have been prophetic, since Sega is taking over the helm and they are producing the Total Warrior game. ~:)

Yes, it appears to have been a glimpse 'through the veil' all right.

[Browning]

Calling modeators of an internet forums fascists is just... wrong. Fascism (sided by communism) is a single most evil creation of the human mind in its recorded history. Humans following these evil ideologies killed millions of other human beings without any justifiable reason and changed the history and the spirits of whole nations in a way that these nations will never be the same.

Whatever one does on an internet forum just cannot be compared to that. It is wrong even if the word "fascist" is used as a parabola because some words just must not be abused. In fact I consider using this word in such a stupid context an insult for all those who suffered because of and who fought against this evil.

So please refrain from using the word "fascism" or "nazism", this turns the discussion away from the topic at the very best.

[Browning]

Spencer "Rome Total War: Invasion of the Huns Great graphics, compelling single-player campaign, and enough obvious bugs included to keep you interested in the game for months on end! As a bonus, we have even included some special Easter Eggs: Not so obvious bugs, in which you will have to spend an extreme amount of time in finding and then spend even more time trying to get us to fix! Something for everyone!"
This is a marvel...

[Benny Moore]

Main Entry: fas·cism
Pronunciation: 'fa-"shi-z&m also 'fa-"si-
Function: noun
Etymology: Italian fascismo, from fascio bundle, fasces, group, from Latin fascis bundle & fasces fasces
1 often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2 : a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control

Do note the second definition. It is in the dictionary for a reason.

[Catiline]

This thread is no longer going anywhere positive. Constructive discussion and criticism of the TW series is fostered and encouraged here at .org. Personal vendetta's, which much of this smacks of, are not, and will not be tolerated. Discussions of the semantics of 'fascist' and 'nazi' are fine in their place, but that place is the backroom.

Thread closed.