Disgusting... [Archive]

TopHatJones

01-12-2007, 22:39

I have been a Total War fan for a while now. I have played every game/expansion, missing only the original Shogun.

But this latest installment has killed a HUGE amount of my faith in CA and the TW series.

I know all games have some bugs, but they are usually minor and/or are fixed very shortly after release. This game, however, is FULL of serious, game-breaking bugs such as 2h axe units not attacking, shields taking away defense rather than adding to it, the long list of broken or missing triggers, etc. It is obvious that this game was not playtested at all. I am hesitant to make such a claim since there are so many things to test for and some things will surely slip through the cracks, but 2h axe units not attacking? Shields removing defense? Passive AI and AI seige bugs? These are things that anyone can easily see within a few minutes of playing the game even if they weren't looking for it. Its the type of thing you can notice while testing for something else! That's what leads me to wonder if the game was tested...not just enough, but at all.

This game came out very quickly after RTW + Xpac. I wasn't even finished with those yet TBH. There was absolutely no reason that I can imagine to rush this game out like they did. An extra few months would have probably been enough to turn this game from a shack to a palace since it has so much potential....they just threw in the towel at the 1 yard line. This is also the first TW to not have some major advancements. Some new features were added, but nothing extraordinary. This is basically a self-contained expansion to RTW. Maybe Sega has something to do with it...every system and game they ever made themselves was awful.

To be fair, I am still having some limited enjoyment with the game, but that is due 100% to LTC 2.0 (Waiting for 2.1) for fixing a lot of the problems. Modding is a great feature for any game since people will inevitably disagree with a lot of design/balance features and will want to make their own changes, but modding should NEVER, EVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES be expected to require the players to fix game bugs and make the game, or large sections of it, playable.

That seems to be the trend lately though, games have been doing this more and more. Oblivion had similar problems...I found that game unplayable without an extensive list of mods. The difference is, Oblvion required mods to rebalance the game and add in missing features, while M2TW requires mods to fix actual game-breaking bugs. Even Oblivion didn't require players to do that. What's worse is that a LOT of this game is hardcoded and we CAN'T add missing features like heir selection and the ability to start in different eras (high, late) for example. So we get all the negatives of modding abilities (bugfixing) but few of the positives (new content and features).

If CA doesn't get their act together, Sega or no Sega, the chances of my buying their games in the future will be slim to none.

$0.02

manbaps

01-12-2007, 22:43

Totally agree with this statement.

Bijo

01-12-2007, 22:53

If CA doesn't get their act together, Sega or no Sega, the chances of my buying their games in the future will be slim to none.

$0.02
But your money is already taken, isn't it? Just like all of us who had their money taken :laugh4:
Anyway, you speak good words in there, but I wouldn't blame too much on CA. Sega, the publisher, is the financier, meaning they call the shots. Blame Sega. Boycott Sega! Down with the infidels!

Eh-- I mean-- uh.... :beam:U

Goofball

01-12-2007, 22:55

I partly agree. Please see this thread:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=77300

But as in that thread, be prepared for some guy who has played for 10 minutes to call you a whiner and say the bugs are historically accurate...

:laugh4:

TopHatJones

01-12-2007, 23:13

But your money is already taken, isn't it? Just like all of us who had their money taken :laugh4:

Yes they got it this time...but unless this is the last TW they are making, they will be missing out on a lot more in the future.

ShadesPanther

01-12-2007, 23:14

I agree mostly with what you have said.

True, alot of the bugs are major and obvious some aren't quite.
For example the Shield bug.
The shield bug means that the higher the shield value the worse it fights in melee regardless of its total armour.

But It isn't very obvious that this is going on and so I sort of forgive them for missing it, but expect it fixed ASAP in a patch. Some other things are so bad you do wonder how they missed them and even missed them again in the first patch.

Carl

01-12-2007, 23:18

Some of them wern't missed in the first patch, they knew of them but just didn't have time to fix them in time for the patch release date. I've also heard rumouirs from people claiming to be in the "know", (they may have been lying BTW), that the publisher was so determined to get a christmas release date that no beta testing was done, which explains the bugs unfortunatly~:(.

Of course these people might have been lying.

p.s. The sheild bug isn't obvious to us, but to the devs who should know what they expect to happen it should be glaringly obvious.

TopHatJones

01-12-2007, 23:24

True, alot of the bugs are major and obvious some aren't quite.
For example the Shield bug.
The shield bug means that the higher the shield value the worse it fights in melee regardless of its total armour.

Fair enough...it did take some extensive testing to really nail the shield bug, BUT on the other hand, it IS instantly noticable that there is definately SOME problem when some of these units fight each other.

Lusted

01-12-2007, 23:33

Fair enough...it did take some extensive testing to really nail the shield bug, BUT on the other hand, it IS instantly noticable that there is definately SOME problem when some of these units fight each other.

Not really, i've extensively rebalanced units for my LTC mod yet it never occured to me there was a shield bug. Didn't even know something might be wrong until someone started a thread about it.

To be fair, I am still having some limited enjoyment with the game, but that is due 100% to LTC 2.0 (Waiting for 2.1) for fixing a lot of the problems.

Glad your enjoying my mod.

Personally, i love this game, and i think its the best TW to date. Yes, it has some bad bugs, but i cannot help but feel they are down to rushed development, or in one case the result of people complaining(2 handedbug - animations used in demo removed by CA due to number of complaints). Im sure CA will try to fix as many as possible in the patches, and they've already said they're working on the 2 handed bug for Patch 2.

Now if you don't mind, im going to resume my Danish campaign, i have some Russians to beat up.

zulukiller

01-12-2007, 23:47

Hmmm you know what TBH with you its not just this game thats buggie. Im not sure whats going on but for at least the last couple of years most PC games have been released with major bugs and bad game imbalances. Some of which never get fixed and i know this for a fact because ive taken part in several closed betas were bugs or massive game imblances have been reported and the games still gets released.

JCoyote

01-12-2007, 23:50

I have a deeper question about all of this.

BTW, I'm new around this forum but I've been playing TW since Shogun.

Anyway... knowing they had a strong development-minded community already there...

Did we buy a "beta"?

Is CA/Sega using us?

Did they think they could rush a game out the door, and more pointedly save money on playtesting, beta trials, and even bugfixing (that's the one that really bothers me), and let the community put in uncompensated work to finish it for them?

I'm just sincerely hoping that a modder doesn't get their code ripped off in the midst of this to find it included in a patch. I know it's a bit paranoid, but hey, as far as I can tell I already bought an incomplete product from a store shelf in all of this.

Monarch

01-13-2007, 00:01

shields taking away defense rather than adding to it,

rofl, I'm sorry but thats beyond a joke. Until recently, when some guy accidently stumbled accross it whilst doing other tests. Nobody even knew about it, now its the main reason people are hating the game....

You guys are such jokers :laugh4:

(*Monarch turns around and walks back to the mp forums. Where even though everyone still complains, at least people like Puzz3D and Orda Khan who complain actually make sense and know what they're talking about)

Satyr

01-13-2007, 00:07

It's hard to imagine the CA would want to release a buggy game. The results of the lack of quality in RTW is probably used to scare future game developers. When have people taken up a campaign against a game before, and those were people that dearly loved that company's previous releases? I would have bet that M2TW would be really good when it was released. Well, I obviously would have lost that bet. I hope they can fix this game. It's pretty close as it stands, and it is gorgeous. Too bad they have lost so much more credibility with their fanbase. You have to wonder how many more times they can do that and survive as a company.

TopHatJones

01-13-2007, 00:18

rofl, I'm sorry but thats beyond a joke. Until recently, when some guy accidently stumbled accross it whilst doing other tests. Nobody even knew about it, now its the main reason people are hating the game....

You guys are such jokers :laugh4:

(*Monarch turns around and walks back to the mp forums. Where even though everyone still complains, at least people like Puzz3D and Orda Khan who complain actually make sense and know what they're talking about)

Like I said above, I didn't know what the problem was, but I did know there was A problem when peasants roll spearmen and a whole slew of other rediculous inconsistencies.

Like another person said above, it may not have been obvious to us, but to a developer who knows exactly what's going on behind the scenes, its glaringly obvious that there is SOME sort of problem.

Also, nothing is more pathetic than when someone finds any reason to argue against ONE of the original points (ignoring all others), and pretends to have won the entire arguement.

Even IF it was entirely impossible for the developers to not notice a problem with the shield bug (unlikely)...remove that one half of a line from my original post and try again.

General Zhukov

01-13-2007, 00:23

Too bad they have lost so much more credibility with their fanbase. You have to wonder how many more times they can do that and survive as a company.

Hey I just did some tests :phonecall: and uh... ok the results are coming in now:

For every 1 person negatively motivated enough to post on a forum how much M2TW sucks, there are 100 others who think alike but do not post. The other 900 in the sample are too busy enjoying the game to come and post, and couldn't give a whit.

Developing...

TopHatJones

01-13-2007, 00:23

Too bad they have lost so much more credibility with their fanbase. You have to wonder how many more times they can do that and survive as a company.

To blunder twice in war is not allowed.

TopHatJones

01-13-2007, 00:27

Hey I just did some tests :phonecall: and uh... ok the results are coming in now:

For every 1 person negatively motivated enough to post on a forum how much M2TW sucks, there are 100 others who think alike but do not post. The other 900 in the sample are too busy enjoying the game to come and post, and couldn't give a whit.

Developing...

I don't believe the sample of people who go to online forums are that significantly different than those who do not.

And I also seriously doubt anyone would spend so much time playing the game that they wouldn't have time to log in if they wanted to.

Satyr

01-13-2007, 00:35

Hey I just did some tests :phonecall: and uh... ok the results are coming in now:

For every 1 person negatively motivated enough to post on a forum how much M2TW sucks, there are 100 others who think alike but do not post. The other 900 in the sample are too busy enjoying the game to come and post, and couldn't give a whit.

Developing...

Yeah, the other 90% are 12 years old and too blinded by the pretty soldiers to notice the bugs (I pre-apologize to all you really bright 12 year olds who kick my butt online - and post here).

Goofball

01-13-2007, 00:35

knoddy

01-13-2007, 00:36

tbh im sick and tiered of people crying on these forums about wot a bad game Medieval 2 is.

I have also been playing the series since Medieval 1, i never played shogun, but throughly enjoyed Medieval 1, Rome and now Medieval 2. ive been playing it since release and love playing it. The graphics are just damn shiny! and the gameplay while not brilliant can give u a real run for ur money on the higher difficulties.

As to the Bugs, well, wot game these days isnt released without a few bugs. AFAIK there are only 2 obvious and bad bugs with vinilla 1.0, that being Passive AI and the 2h unit bug. yet even with these bugs teh game is still playable and very very enjoyable.

As to the "obvious" shield bug, it clearly wasnt obvious at all and it took some guy doin testing on something else to realise it.

Lets look at other games released, Caesar 4, recently released as the sequel to Caesar 3 and old school ROme based strat game, was widely anticipated by fans of the series, yet was released with some glaringly obvious and horrific bugs that made the game unplayable. Crashes at random intervals, and 90% of the gaming community reported CTD's when trying to open trade routes, which is the major source of income in the game, unable to open trade routes = no income = unplayable game.

WoW is patched every few weeks, and while alot of it is content, alot of it is fixing bugs and errors in the code that was affecting. Unfortunatly this often ends up causing more distressing errors. In the recent 2.03 patch, players found that they could cap Battlegrounds flags from huge distances making defense in the battle grounds damn near impossible seeing as u didnt know who was capping the flag cos u couldnt see them.

i could go on with more examples but i will move on

Im currently in the middle of a computing degree, and i struggle to write programs a few hundred lines of code without bugs. How do u think the people at CA go writing code that is thousands possibly millions of lines long. have u ever stopped to think of it from that side of the coin, or do u just complain cos u didnt get wot u wanted.

The notions that CA got the game out without any Beta testing is ridiculus. while i admit there was 1 or 2 bugs that were glaringly obvious that were not picked up in beta, i dont feel that we can make outrageous claims that tehre was no beta, and that they just through M2 out the door so that it would make chrissy sales.

SO in summary Medieval 2 is a great game, both graphically and in gameplay, while it does have some bugs, the game is still very playable, and CA is working hard to release fixes to try and fix the errors that are prevelant in the game. i think the community needs to give the lads at CA a bit of slack, nobody is perfect, most especially those people who keep coming to these forums and complaining about the game. errors should be expected. unless u were willing to wait another year or 2 for the game to be beta tested 47 times to eradicate every single little minute error that the people at CA found.

Cheers Knoddy

P.s. pls note this is not a personal attack on the OP, im sick of all the people posting these sorts of threads on the .org

pps. pls excuse my lack of spelling and grammar :P

TopHatJones

01-13-2007, 00:46

Sheogorath

01-13-2007, 00:53

GB2/rtw/, then.

Carl

01-13-2007, 00:54

Knoddy: I'm not asking for a perfect game. But TBH the Sheild bug should have been obvious to the developers at the start, (it is a bug, i just remebered the M2TW defence chart, (seen it online, didn't get it with my game), it says their that the sheild provides defence and makes NO MENTION of it not applying in melee, yet it does for defence skill). Lets not mention how glaringly obvious the inability of ikemen to use pikes is or how 2-handed swordsmen can't beat working 2-handers of any other type without nerfing the other 2-handers stats so much it tottaly borks auto-calc.

Too much of this stuff simply shouldn't have been missable TBH.

On the other hand if the AI and 2-hander bugs where the only ones I wouldn't mind much. I too have ben enjoying the game, but it's a lot more fun when you mod the bugs out.

econ21

01-13-2007, 00:55

And if you spell like that all the time its no wonder you have so many bugs...no offense.

Petty sniping like that is why these kind of threads tend to get locked. Your original post was fine, IMO. But don't let the thread descend into bickering between Org members.

Polite request to everyone: no calling each other 12 year old girls, saying each others' arguments are pathetic, saying people are "crying" etc. If you want to debate these kind of matters, please do so courteously.

Goofball

01-13-2007, 01:04

tbh im sick and tiered of people crying on these forums....(blah, blah, blah)......pps. pls excuse my lack of spelling and grammar :P

I understand what you are saying. But there is a difference between crying and trying to point out flaws that you want to see fixed.

You know all those other games you talked about being buggy too?

Well, I wouldn't know if they are buggy or not, because I never played any of them.

Pretty much the only games that I have played with any level of seriousness since they began are the TW games, because I think they are hands down the best games ever made.

And every time a new one comes out, I have some problems with things that don't work properly.

So I come here and bitch about them. And guess what happens?

For just about every problem, solutions appear. Either EA corrects the problems with a patch (partly because I think they actually do listen to the complaints of fans on boards like these), or talented members of this community create mods/fixes of their own that make the game that much better.

So it really seems stupid when people start flaming us for voicing our opinions about the game.

What the hell is this forum for, if not to talk about the things you like or don't like about M2TW?

TopHatJones

01-13-2007, 01:09

So it really seems stupid when people start flaming us for voicing our opinions about the game.

What the hell is this forum for, if not to talk about the things you like or don't like about M2TW?

I agree.

If no one cared enough to discuss problems with the game, then what incentive would they have to fix them and/or try to catch them before release next time?

Joshwa

01-13-2007, 01:48

I've got one. If you have cannon towers (or balista towers if you are Byzantines, but that's another story) and you 'sally', you can just sit in your city/castle and let your wall cannons demolish the enemy army, who will obligingly march into range of your cannons, and stay there until 75% of their army is toast. Using this tactic means you are pretty much guaranteed to win every single siege that the enemy put you under. How did noone notice this?! More to the point, how difficult can it be to programme the AI to stay out of range of wall defences unless it is actually assaulting the walls?

TopHatJones

01-13-2007, 02:16

Well IMO there is no doubt that this game was rushed out with little or no playtesting and has an obscene amount of bugs...more numerous and serious bugs than any game I have ever played before TBH.

The issue at this point is if and how quickly CA fixes them that will decide if I remain a customer.

$0.02

Sid Arthur

01-13-2007, 02:42

Just taking a look at the credits, it's obvious that there was a LOT of testing going on for this game. Medieval 2 being what it is, I'm sure test cases take a long time to go through and the sheer number of circumstances would require a lot of testers and a lot of time. And just noticing a bug during production does not magically fix it.

You also have to understand that QA, development, production, and publishing are all different departments. The decision to fix a certain bug at all does not generally rest with QA, it's done by Dev and Production, which in turn are usually pressed by publishing. I can easily imagine a bug in the M2 database that says "Units with two-handed axes don't attack cavalry," but it was something that just couldn't be fixed in time.

Yeah, it's a whole messy web of things that determine what bugs are in a game at release. And don't kid yourself about games being released without bugs at all: there are ALWAYS bugs. But blaming the testers for that just isn't cool. It's like being that guy who yells and screams at the cashier for why store prices are so high.

Please don't be that guy.

P.S. No, I don't work for CA or Sega, but I do work as a tester. It just gets tiring reading official forums on games I have worked on that blame QA out of ignorance for bugs in games.

Foz

01-13-2007, 03:03

No one is asking for a perfect game. A completely perfect game would take so long to produce that the system it was designed for would be obsolete by release.

What I am saying is that some of those bugs that exist are WAY too significant to not have noticed if any playtesting was done and WAY too numerous and serious to consider the game finished.

This game is a Beta...you can play it and you could even enjoy it, but its NOT finished.

It is possible they DID playtest and DID notice the bugs and didn't have time to fix it before Christmas. But I don't accept that as a valid excuse anymore than I would accept raw meat b/c the chef didn't have time to cook it all the way before the lunch rush.
There's a MAJOR difference between developing software and cooking a steak, and I don't mean in the activities themselves. I mean the situations the people doing them find themselves in. Chefs still get paid during the lunchtime rush, no matter when they get those food orders out. In software, especially gaming, developers get paid for exactly as much work as the guy dumping money into the project is willing to pay for. If the man in charge says you release on a given date come hell or high water, YOU DO, or you don't get compensated for your work, may be in breach of contract, etc. If that means you release a buggy product like 1.0 M2TW is, and the boss doesn't seem to care, then it's what you do. It's entirely likely they knew about some or even all of the issues we're noticing before the release date of the game... but since the people that set important dates like that are usually not members of the dev team and refuse to listen to sense from said experienced developers, developers often find themselves forced to release things they know are not ready, without a damn thing to do about it. The fact is that people less motivated to put out quality products and more motivated to make money quickly are the people more often than not making important timetable decisions, decisions that used to be made by more-informed developers who controlled their own projects. This fact is IMO the single most detrimental trend in software development, as products will continue their downward spiral as long as people who do not care about the product are the ones who get to make decisions about it.

TopHatJones

01-13-2007, 03:51

OMG guys I know any problems with the game, whether it was due to lack of testing OR lack of "time" to fix the bugs, is mostly or entirely the fault of Sega or whoever the "suits" are that make the decision.

Either they didn't allow them time to test, or they didn't allow them time to fix what they knew was wrong. It's irrelevant to me since the result is the same. I did not mean to say or imply that I had anything against the developers (or testers) themselves, b/c I know the boss(es) tell them what to do.

The point of all this is to voice my dissatisfaction with the decisions made (regardless of who made them or why) and let them know if it doesn't get fixed soon and stop happening, I will stop talking on the forums and start talking with my wallet. Hopefully the people who call the shots will get wind of this post and other posts which is they are made.

P.S. When people respond with "Its ok, stop complaining, the game is fun anyway and the mods fix those problems" all it does is encourage those decision makers (who don't care about the finished product) to keep cutting corners are putting out half baked products.

pevergreen

01-13-2007, 04:02

Yeah, the other 90% are 12 years old and too blinded by the pretty soldiers to notice the bugs (I pre-apologize to all you really bright 12 year olds who kick my butt online - and post here).

So....pretty....

A large number of people complain here to make themselves feel better, and it just ends up as a flame war.

The solution for some people is go back to RTW...but in that cav can run the entire battlefield just charging and charging. The campaign map and not good looking models make it unplayable for me.

Then there are the people that say RTW with mods is the way to go.

What mods? RTR gold? RTR PE? EB? SPQR:TW? Ive tried them all, yet i cant stop playing M2TW.

The fact is, if you look at it, (forewarning, this is quoting another member, i do not know 100% for the following to be true)

Shogun was revolutionary. Medieval was same engine, Rome was revolutionary, Medieval 2 was same engine... All signs look towards new engine for new game (not xp pack for medieval 2)

Going by the multiple threads all over the net, Pike and Musket era, with sea battles like trafalgar will be the most popular.

We will see, but please, to the new people who come here and their first post is complaining on the game, dont. We have enough of these threads.
I think Simon(econ) should just lock everyone of them, but that is only one members opinion.:shame: :no:

TopHatJones

01-13-2007, 04:36

- As far as worrying about graphics v. gameplay, I am about 25/75. I don't want to feel like I am playing a game that is 10 years old, but as long as it looks decent, its good enough. A game that is pretty but not fun will not last anywhere near as long in my dvd-rom drive as one that looks pretty good and is a lot of fun.

Games that don't last long in my dvd-rom drive dont have their xpacs/sequels purchased. I don't buy games just to play them for a few days before I'm done. It needs to have more life than that. The shortest game I have ever enjoyed that I would continue buying in the series is Hitman.

- Going back to RTW? Maybe. Usually once I'm done with a game, I am done with it. I quit RTW to play this, so its unlikely that I will go back (well actually I had slacked off a lot on RTW in favor of Hitman and Oblivion off-and-on).

- I hope the next game is revolutionary, but I am mostly concerned with whether or not the game will be finished when it is released. After this game, if its not, I will retire the TW series for good and I would rather not have to do that.

- I really like the late era with pikes and professional armies and gunpowder One of the biggest things missing from this game IMO is the ability to start in the High and Late eras.

- I don't know if you are referring to me or not, but if you check my registration date, you will see I am not exactly new. I was here a good while before that too under another name, but I forgot the password and the email account I used to register it was no longer active.

- Good forum moderation is minimal moderation. No one likes it when mods are constantly editing or removing posts that someone may not like. A forum is a place where people can go to discuss their views and opinions openly. Heavy censoring does not further that goal. It is true however, that in todays society, there are a lot of sensitive people that are offended by words, phrases, and topics. Also the anonymity of the internet encourages people to be a lot ruder and bolder than they would probably ever be IRL. So there must be mods present to clean up "smut" and curb flames. However, it should never be allowed to spill over into deleting posts that have any negative views or censoring people who are new any more than older members. A person's registration date or number of posts does not make their opinions any more or less valid.

Malkut

01-13-2007, 04:40

So . . . am I the only one who can play a game with a shield bug, and still have fun?

Or who thinks that every game released in the past ten years has gone through this exact same thing as a nigh-inevitable consequence of games becoming more rich and complicated, and that talking with my wallet would inevitably lead to giving up gaming altogether?

TopHatJones

01-13-2007, 04:50

No, a lot of people are playing. I still play with mods, but less and less.

Its been said in this thread alone multiple times that every game does and will continue to have bugs. I don't think I have played a game in the last 10 years without bugs either.

The problem is that the bugs in this game are so large and serious. It would be like if a first person shooter had a bug that wouldn't allow half of the guns to hit the target at all, or a fighting game that wouldn't allow you to use a large portion of half the character's moves.

Most bugs in other games are relatively minor and/or only occur under certain circumstances. The few times there are serious bugs like this, they have been fixed almost immediately. I can't recall offhand any game I have ever played that has had this many serious bugs.

llewellyn

01-13-2007, 05:08

i agree whole heartedly with what you are saying. i too have played every singel TW game and have been a fan for about 6-7 yrs. this is the only game that i can say is mediocre, that is all it is and if they dont fix this problem thene i wont buy anymore TW games and the new gaming comp i got will just rot.

Malkut

01-13-2007, 05:15

.
The problem is that the bugs in this game are so large and serious. It would be like if a first person shooter had a bug that wouldn't allow half of the guns to hit the target at all, or a fighting game that wouldn't allow you to use a large portion of half the character's moves.

While I can see that as an analogy for the two handed animation problem that has been fixed (for the time being), it rings a bit false for shields. The units still work, they just don't do something they are (allegedly) supposed to do. It's more of a balance issue, than anything else. It's common in this sort of game, and you just have to roll with it, plan around it, and re-evaluate your tactics when they fix it.

I agree with the need for better support. Having another patch right now would be nice, but I’m not going to hold my breath, or threaten them with money I might not have given them anyway, for all they know.

I can't recall offhand any game I have ever played that has had this many serious bugs.

Really? This game works out of the box, is compatable with common video cards, and is decently stable. That's more than I can say for some of the games I've bought. I've spent weeks trying to get some games just to start up right.

pevergreen

01-13-2007, 05:35

That last statement rings true.
Took me 2 weeks to get Starwars battlefront 2 to work.

- I don't know if you are referring to me or not, but if you check my registration date, you will see I am not exactly new. I was here a good while before that too under another name, but I forgot the password and the email account I used to register it was no longer active.

No I am not referring to you, just voice-ing my concern over the amount of people who sign up here and bag the game.

I admit, there are some bugs, but its still fun.

The modding here is excellent, i just dont want this turning into a spam war, as many other threads of this nature have.

Now if you'll excuse me, ive got to convince another person to not post how much they think this game is bugged/crap/worthless

A. Smith

01-13-2007, 06:39

The two bugs that really affect gameplay are the 2H bug and the VnVs and retinue characters. Now, there are tons of fixes for that one. as for VnVs, i honestly dont mind, and if i did, there are aquite a few fixes for that too.

As for the shield, the game is balanced taking in account that bug, soit doesnt change anything. some units are underpowered, but you simply have to learn who they are and how to use them.

I'll make an analogy with Battlefield 2, an FPS on which i spent countless hours.

this game had so many installation/patching bugs got me, i had to take a break of about 4 or 5 months before they released a new patch (with a new installer) that i could instla. the patches before that required me to unpack the patches and run a dos command to make it work.

Yet, that game was still awesome. why? because i had lods of funs playing it. sure, there were these annoying technical bugs; yet, i always came back for more. (For the record, I have now switched to Battlefield 2142, its sequel, because i prefer its gameplay, and the installation works proprely for that one.)

And now your telling me that gameplay bugs that only change the real value of a small number of units and are easily fixable (or avoidable) makes you feel this game is total crap?

SMZ

01-13-2007, 07:29

I've been disappointed as well.

When I buy a game, I want to play a finished product. I don't want to have to hunt around on forums downloading tidbits here and there to fix each problem that pops up.

Now, no - most of the bugs posted about on these forums, I didn't know they were there until somebody did some testing and figured out what was wrong. But I knew SOMETHING was wrong. I don't want to have to decipher cryptic behavior patterns behind how each unit works. If a unit is listed as "Spearmen", I want it to be able to kill horses. If a unit is listed as "Pikemen", I want it to poke things that can't reach it. If a unit is listed as "Two-Handed Whatever" I want it to dish out tremoundous amounts of pain to anything and everything.

I don't want to have to sit around wondering why my units with bigger numbers than the foe, can't beat them. I want these things to work intuitively.

I want to spend my time figuring out clever ways to use my units and my armies and my agents. Not spend it trying to figure out what exactly it is my units do, because the numbers and descriptions attached to them are useless.

When I bought the game I was excited - I played the game a good deal for a couple weeks - I started constructing guides for various portions of the game... but the more I played it, the more I found things not working the way I instinctively expected them to work. I got frustrated. I didn't know what was wrong - I just knew things weren't working correctly. I haven't played the game in a month or more now.

I'm hoping the second patch fixes these issues. And if it doesn't, I'm hoping they're already making plans for a third one that will. I'm simply very frustrated. I spent 50 bucks, and I want to play a finished game. I want the game to make sense. I don't want to have to install a patchwork of mods.

CA, Sega, whoever - finish the damn game would you?

I'm not going to make stupid claims - I'll probably still buy the expansion and the next Total War game. I just wish I didn't have to wait until six months after I bought it to get an enjoyable experience.

Zuraffo

01-13-2007, 07:42

Message to whiner: Grow-up.

[Oh boy, I am so asking for it. :D]

Malkut

01-13-2007, 08:18

Just because there are a handful of gameplay bugs doesn't mean the game isn't finished. It IS finished, it just needs so fine-tuning, as most strategy games tend to.

You want to see what an unfinished game looks like? Check out Enter the Matrix, where the last level can be beaten by holding the mouse button down and setting still.

Try Star Wars: KOTOR 2, a game that stalls on the beefiest computers, has a plot that actually stops before the end of the game, and only got one patch before the P.O.'ed developers gave up on the game entirely.

Take a look at almost any licenced game ever published by EA, outside of the sports genre, anyway.

pevergreen

01-13-2007, 09:18

Try Star Wars: KOTOR 2, a game that stalls on the beefiest computers, has a plot that actually stops before the end of the game, and only got one patch before the P.O.'ed developers gave up on the game entirely.

Thanks, you just stopped me buying it :laugh4:

Message to whiner: Grow-up.

[Oh boy, I am so asking for it. :D]

Yeah, you are. Dont bag people, especially when a mod has Told everyone to keep it civilised, no calling of whiners, saying that they should stop crying.

And triple so because you havent been here this long.

Be veeeeery good for the next few weeks :shame:

The Stranger

01-13-2007, 11:00

it already says enough that a game needs to go to patch 1.6...

I'm sorry, but all those people that call other people whiners just because they espect something good for their money is rather stupid... When I buy a game I atleast expect that they gave a full hundred percent to make it as good as it can... and I don't doubt the developers... I will immediatly believe that they tried that, but the bosses only concern is to get it out for christmass...

WELL I BOUGHT THE GAME ONE DAY AFTER NEW YEAR! BACK AT YA... buncha*&%^$#@!!

Atleast half these bugs could have been discovered by giving the game for betatesting to a 1000 coveting gamers, they prolly wouldnt even ask money for (well $50, a free game)... just a month more time... just a month...

JCoyote

01-13-2007, 11:04

Well one obvious thing is, if the in game descriptions and guides do not match the actual in game abilities of the units, the product isn't finished.

And if the game takes 6 months to make work the way it was advertised... not counting a bug or two or a few bad units, but just have its general components and categories work together the way they should... by the time 6 months is up the game will be on the shelves for $20-30. Having purchased it at $50, and having to wait til the price drops for it to play as intended... yeah I will feel a little cheated if that turns out to be the case. Not only does it feel like we are helping to finish beta test the product we bought, but then it'd feel like we paid extra for the privilege to do so.

And to be honest, I'm more aggravated because I like the game, and I like TW games; most games that have given me issues anything like this in the past have ended up thrown out. CA is spending their credibility with me for the moment... and to be honest, til things are more complete I can't in good faith recommend this game to a friend. And I'd really like to. I'm hoping after the 2nd patch I'll be able to. If I recommend it to a friend but to not feel like I'm misleading them I have to say "But the halberds and pikemen can't fight horses, the peasants trounce spears, oh and the extra defenses you buy for your castles won't work..." I've just lost CA a sale by telling them that.

And it is a bit like an FPS where half the guns don't work... and then having a bunch of players say it's ok it's like that because half the enemies can't attack you either; obviously it's "balanced". ~D

Carl

01-13-2007, 12:02

@A.Smith:

The problem with your last line is that in reality it isn't JUSI a few units, I think peasents are the ONLY unit in the game somone HASN'T found a bug for, and I wouldn't be suprised if a bug turned up on them at this stage.

@SMZ: You hit my thoughts on the head. I really, really, really, enjoy the game, but it's covered in massive bugs.

Malkut

01-13-2007, 12:24

Thanks, you just stopped me buying it :laugh4:

Well, the beginning is kind of slow, and the end is made stupid by omission, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the middle. Can't say I felt too cheated, since it's still on my hard drive.

No, what really tore me up about that game is what's inside the game files. The cut content.

That last planet with no plot? It was going to be freakin' EPIC. Betrayal, love, death, revenge, redemption, an all HK-47 level, for pity's sake . . . . why didn't Obsidian just personally come to my house and spit in my face? That would be better than cutting anything regarding HK-47! :furious3:

Well one obvious thing is, if the in game descriptions and guides do not match the actual in game abilities of the units, the product isn't finished.

That's an odd standard for completion to suggest. Especially since guides are often wrong on some of the details, being written, as they often are, from pre-release versions of the game.

CA is spending their credibility with me for the moment

This is what really annoys me, however. CA is owned by Sega, now. Sega decides when to put out the game, not CA. I doubt the game makers suddenly decided that they hate you personally and wanted to hurt you on purpose by releasing the game before all of the kinks had been worked out.

The only part of this I can see CA being culpable for is removing the 2H animations when fans complained. They should have spent less time listening to people whine on the Internet, and more time fixing the game for the final release, moreso now that people are complaining about their attempt to fix something that was never actually broken in the first place more than they were about the inital problem. That they're willing to do something that obviously stupid for you should give you an indication about how much they care about their fans.

And it is a bit like an FPS where half the guns don't work...

No, it's not. The only units that don't work are the two handed weapon ones, and that's been fixed. The rest of them do work. There may be some tactical balance and formation issues, but they can kill and they can die, so they work on most of the levels I need them for. It's certainly not worth going into histrionics over, and I can't see why so many of you are doing just that.

Barbarossa82

01-13-2007, 12:31

My money has not been wasted, because M2TW has become the first TW game that I have not bought and have no intention of buying. The state of RTW on release was a shock to someone who had played STW and MTW, and the patches that were supposed to fix it were also poor. Now, with RTW clearly "disowned" in terms of ongoing support and updates, there are still at least three noticeable, significant hardcoded bugs, all of which were introduced by the patches rather than being solved by them!

I made up my mind after that that I wouldn't buy M2TW unless it was clear that CA had done a more professional job this time. It seems clear they haven't, so this seems like a good point to stop following the franchise.

I appreciate that they have publishers and that publishers call many shots, but that excuse is wearing a bit thin after going through two different publishers. While CA did a great job on STW and MTW, I believe they are just too small a team to achieve their grandiose dreams where RTW and M2TW are concerned. They dedicate such a massive proportion of their energy and manpower to shiny new graphics that they have none left over to concentrate on ironing out the eye-poppingly big bugs in gameplay. I gladly give CA credit for the early development of what was a fantastic franchise, but that means they also have to take some of the blame for its decline in quality.

pevergreen

01-13-2007, 12:40

Dont worry fellow orghians, for I shall rise up and work for CA one day, then all the gameplay problems will be fix-ed!

Carl

01-13-2007, 12:51

No, it's not. The only units that don't work are the two handed weapon ones, and that's been fixed. The rest of them do work.

Please read around. The_Foz_4 has pointed out the shield bug, Dopp has pointed out the Pike bug, and after fixing all 3 issues I’ve found that 2-handed swordsmen are also bugged with a too slow attack animation. the ONLY UNIT in the game WITHOUT A BUG is peasants, and that’s because they don't have pikes, 2-handed weapons or a shield

sapi

01-13-2007, 13:12

Am i the only person here who can still have fun playing a game that isn't perfect?

I judge value for money based on fun, not on perfection...

Oh, and Zuraffo and others; let's not go back to flaming - keep this civilised.

Dutch_guy

01-13-2007, 13:25

Well, a lot what has already been said makes a lot of sense. Sure, there are quite some bugs in the game, but I can still have a good time playing it. Knowing tons of mod's fixing quite a lot of not-so perfect things in the game are released, or are still in the making, doesn't make me regret buying the game at all.

Plus, having played 1.0 Rome, Medieval, and all of the expansions. I can say that in my opinion the vanilla version of M2TW beats that of Rome by a long shot. Anyone remember the load / save bug (or whatever the name was?) or the Egyptian faction ? Now those are game breaking factors which I believe outweigh the ones seen in M2TW by a lot.

That said, I wonder how many people here (especially those who seem to dislike the game, as it is) consider the last thing I said (Rome vanilla <. M2TW vanilla) as true, or untrue ?

Because if one finds that true, then we can only conclude CA did listen to us on numerous occasions, like one can gather from the credits shown in M2TW.

Not saying they made the perfect vanilla game, but in my opinion they did do their best to improve it.

:balloon2:

JCoyote

01-13-2007, 13:31

@Mal Yeah and the castle defenses don't work... the 2h and shield units aren't working correctly... those are entire classes of units, and together compromise the majority in the game. It's a LOT like I said. You act like it's one thing, it's not. Bribing doesn't work. Alliances are either bugged or nerfed. The list is actually pretty long and extensive.

And for the record, read my WHOLE sentence Mal, I said "in game descriptions and guides", which I shouldn't have to tell you refers to the ones... you know... in the game. That is, being actual portions of the game itself the things they describe and recommendations they give SHOULD be accurate as they weren't print ahead of completion. I am familiar with printed manuals having differences from finished games, I've been a computer gamer since the 80's. But not having in game description and tutorial match the in game realities is just... sloppy. And downright unprofessional.

I just found the game crashes if I switch programs during video play... Now THAT is a bug, and if it went unfixed I could really care less; it's generally inconsequential to actual play. Not so with these other things.

This isn't like "avoid kerns because they can't throw missiles without getting stuck in a loop" or a bug with a single particular unit, it's entire categories that are apparently incomplete/bugged. And for the record, 2h is NOT "fixed". No patch has fixed it yet. Only community mods have negated it, but it isn't "fixed" as CA/Sega haven't released a fix yet. You can't defend CA/Sega on that one, as they have little to do with anyone using fully functional 2h in game... yet.

Like I said, if I have to wait until the game's price has dropped before the majority of units work as intended, then I do feel a bit cheated.

Bijo

01-13-2007, 13:37

Well, I'm also one of those people who can enjoy the game with bugs, tbh. Shield bug schmield bug I say. Didn't even notice the damn thing, and to be even MORE honest, I hardly zoom in while battling, so I don't really notice the 2h bugs and other faulty stuff THAT much. See it was a way of ignoring things to keep your cool.
I don't enjoy the "constant total war" aspect (bad diplomacy) and some other stuff too, like bad sprites. I didn't know horses could strafe-run, ya know. And so fast too! Heck, they can even FLOAT just above the ground! They must be magical horses. And most units seem to have some kind of chameleon power, I dunno. Do they change color so they'll be better noticed? :beam:

:whip: Fix the sprites, CA.

- I hope the next game is revolutionary, but I am mostly concerned with whether or not the game will be finished when it is released. After this game, if its not, I will retire the TW series for good and I would rather not have to do that.
Are you sure about that? I can very well imagine people thinking this, but usually when it comes down to it they'll just get it anyway :P

Modestus

01-13-2007, 14:27

You cannot have a good tactical warfare game if certain bugs or apparent bugs effect what would be reasonable tactical decisions, you can still enjoy the game but look how far we have moved away from MTW1.

Theodoret

01-13-2007, 14:30

I must admit that I agree with the OP. I bought MTW2 on release, and was initially very impressed, as the graphics are much better than R:TW.

However, I quickly became frustrated with the units not doing what I expected them to (charging badly, engaging the enemy in dribs and drabs, a peasant crossbow unit massacring three units of spear militia in close combat, billmen being useless). I also found it annoying that the Inquisition slaughters my generals and priests with ease (regardless of my status with the Pope) and seem immune to assassins (and if this is a feature it is an ill-considered one).

The first patch doesn't seem to have sorted much of this, although I haven't had any CTDs since I installed it. I hope the second one does.

Having said all that, I was frustrated with R:TW when it first came out but I now enjoy playing v1.5 very much. There are still some issues, but nothing major. Perhaps this will prove the case with MTW2.

For me, the key issues are two-handers (which spoils the tactical game) and Inquisitors (which spoil the strategic game).

Bijo

01-13-2007, 14:50

Which is why I hardly use 2h units, and if I have 'em, I don't want to see 'em. I just use 'em as filler. But I am FINALLY going to try out Lands to Conquer now that I've seen a versio 2.0.

The Stranger

01-13-2007, 15:31

How can you use Varangian Guard as filler, How can they say that the best byzantine unit is Varangian Guard. What is the point in playing as the Byz when one of their coolest unit isnt working properly. How can you not notice that your Varangian Guard is getting beaten by spear militia?

Just saying they improved is already good enough would only work if they were already above standard. RTW was indead worse than M2TW but that doesnt mean that M2TW is great. Its like the first time you buy an apple and its totally rotten and you go back and buy a new one, oh this one is only half rotten, well thats an improvement... ill just eat them both... I want a non rotten apple. And if the overal taste is good i wont mind those little spots...

Saying that you dont zoom in during battles that much, and that you do that to not get pissed of and just ignore the bad things to keep it cool is totally stupid... Not that you are being stupid or whatsoever... but then they might as well not made such cool graphics because people dont zoom in anyway because due all the bugs they wont enjoy the game anymore... so than whats the point of all those graphics?

The fact that u will not use a unit because it is broken is already a reason to complain, when it is only one unit its accepteable... BUT EVERY UNIT EXEPT PEASANTS ARE BUGGED...

Bijo

01-13-2007, 16:08

Well, I never play Byzantine, so I wouldn't care. Though, in terms of product(ion) quality and community support I'd care. I might try them out, the Byzantines.

Anyway, I usually not have many 2h units in my armies, . I try to have as many spears and swords as possible, missiles, and cav. But now I'm anxious to try out the 2h bug fix by zxiang. Never bothered to install a fix :P

The point of those graphics? The nice graphics are there to be a feast to the fools' eyes. It's as simple as that. There are enough people who get carried away by graphics, and additionally they might not even notice bugs because of it.

It's not that I'm not mad or angry, or that I don't complain (actually I'm quite calm with these matters, unless it's about M$ and Apple).... it's just necessary to ignore certain aspects and relocate your attention to be able to enjoy the game.

Anyway, take it easy, Stranger. Think about your heart and try to enjoy the game :bow:

The Stranger

01-13-2007, 16:54

:P I'm easy... im totally relaxed...

:fool:

Neoncat

01-13-2007, 17:14

I must agree with these 'whiners'.

Everytime I try to start new game in mtw2 I need to recall all bugs and eventually when I recall all of them I can't play nearly with any faction. Two last times I have come to the decision that moors are least effected by the horde of bugs in this game. It was only playable faction untill shield bug and random generator bug was found. For now theres no single faction I would be able to play with. Therefore I put this game away atleast for six months and check if there have been any progress after that time.

And yes this is the last game from CA for me. I am not going to 'enjoy' even expansions, if nothing works in game like they should.

Revenant

01-13-2007, 17:18

seneschal.the

01-13-2007, 17:53

I completly agree with the OP. Great post, and replies.

The people that keep saying everyone is "whining" "crying" etc.; you are the reason the game is in such a broken state. Without your stalwart defense at the various boards during both M2 and Rome, the developers would never have released such a buggy product. But ofcourse they do in this case, because they know so many people are perfectly happy playing a buggy game, and then defending it like it was a personal insult to complain about the bugs.

Other fun things in this thread are the "if you don't know about it, then what harm does it do!!" re: the shield bug. It has been obvious from day 1 that something in combat wasn't right. Some very bright people have figured it more and more of the problems, which all point to a completly broken combat model. But everyone who atleast played a short campaign knew that things weren't right. Just because you have a fun time playing a game where things do not work as intended, as advertised or as stated in the game itself and by pure logic, doesn't mean that the rest of us enjoy it. but we paid for it, and we want what was promised and what is reasonable to expect for something you pay money for.

(But don't forget, we will "Love the new aggressive AI" or whatever they posted on that blog... Yay.)

OMGLAZERS

01-13-2007, 18:26

Sorry, but what is "Random Generator Bug" ?

I have no clue either

The Stranger

01-13-2007, 19:35

heroic hungarian

01-13-2007, 20:38

i think mtw2 is 2wice as good as rome and as good a mtw1 i think its great:laugh4: :laugh4:

SMZ

01-13-2007, 20:56

Just because there are a handful of gameplay bugs doesn't mean the game isn't finished. It IS finished, it just needs so fine-tuning, as most strategy games tend to.
Just one thing...

YES, that DOES mean the game isn't finished. Just because other even crappier games have been released in the past, doesn't mean I should be satisfied with the condition of this one. If I buy a new car, and I can't get the windows to go down, have to open the passenger door from the outside and can only turn the wheel to the left - I'm not going to be placated because, "well hey, at least it runs".

The reason I'm upset is because I'm a huge fan of this series - I love what they're trying to create. If I bought any other game in this condition, I'd just decide right there to avoid that company henceforth - unless they made some major changes. But I WANT to play the game that CA has envisioned. I'm GOING to give them my money... Alright now, let's practice the feudel system. I give you my loyalty - don't buttrape me in return.

Kien

01-13-2007, 21:12

Zuraffo

01-13-2007, 21:16

Ok I will post something constructive.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=72874

Try this mod, it fixed most of the bugs and made the game fairly close to its intended purpose. If the shield bug bug you you can try out foz fix, although I am not totally convince it should be fixed that way.

As for complaining/whining/feedbacking/whatever term you fancy, unfortunately it will not change how games are release these days. It is now a trend, and game developers feels more comfortable in taking liberty with PC games with the ease of patching/modding (cummunity fixing bugs). It is, by all count, a sound business decisions and no amount of complaining will get that fix. Even if you boycott CA, it won't achieve anything. Why? Because you are just a part of (10%?) statistic, which belongs to the fan base they are prepared lose when they released a not-so-finished-but-playable-and-moddable product.

Even if enough people boycott CA and it folded, it still won't achieve anything. Another investor will buy up the franchise and the key people in the dev team, make another game company and continue with M3TW, which I am sure the original fanbase will still suck it up faster than I can say "hey" in hope that the change of "developer" (which in fact is really just a change of company name) will produce better result.

I am not trying to take away your right to complain/whine/feedback/whatever term you fancy; I am merely trying to point out any attempt to change how a company would act by such action is, ultimately, futile. Reflect upon this before you decide to waste any more precious internet space (I was tempted to use "your time" here but obviously the value of time in question is subjective to the interpretation of various people).

That said, I understand the need to get the frustration off your chest. :laugh4:

General Zhukov

01-13-2007, 21:39

Sorry, but what is "Random Generator Bug" ?

You haven't heard about the Random Generator Bug? HAs and Heavy Cav were found to be too powerful in combat. Call the Mod Squad.

The Stranger

01-13-2007, 22:18

I have to agree with the OP 100%

I'm a Total War: Rome vet, and I must say really enjoyed Rome and its expansion. I expected M2 to be a high quality game like Rome. Instead, within a few hours of play I started to realize the game was buggy. Also, some of the new features were interesting, but had a "slapped on at the last minute" feel.

Overall M2 is an OK game, but it would be so much better if it had been beta tested.

RTW? High Quality Game? :inquisitive:

And Zuraffo, if everybody had such an attitude there would be no revulotions... there would be no freedom fighters... the world as we know it wouldnt be... you can say that you cant compare that to games... why not?

LordKhaine

01-13-2007, 22:42

New game, same old comments. Happened when STW came out, when MTW came out, when RTW came out, and when MTW2 came out. Happened when every expansion came out. It will always happen.

I played shogun, mtw, rtw and now mtw2. And all the expansions except the second RTW expansion. And you know what? they were all bugged. But I enjoyed all of them immensely and saw through what were typically minor bugs. Yet people on this (and other) forums just pull the game apart and do nothing but complain. It's pathetic how one person "discovers" a bug by "testing", and suddenly half the forum bands together to complain about the game stopping bug. They weren't complaining before when they just played the game, but because some guy on a forum pits two units against each other in a custom map and records the results everything is changed? Meh

Hell, I don't think MTW2 is any more bugged than MTW was. In fact I crashed a LOT more in MTW than I do in MTW2. RTW is the only game I felt the bugs really impacted on the fun, and those were fixed in patches. Not that I stopped playing RTW at any time anyway, since it was still very fun even with the bugs.

caravel

01-13-2007, 23:30

RTW? High Quality Game? :inquisitive:

And Zuraffo, if everybody had such an attitude there would be no revulotions... there would be no freedom fighters... the world as we know it wouldnt be... you can say that you cant compare that to games... why not?

Allow me to give an opinion on this from an outside perspective, not an unbiased one as there is no unbiased opinion in reality. This is not purely an opinion on this thread but on many of these threads that have cropped up of late.

It seems to me that the problem here is primarily one of patching, bugs and comparisons? Firstly you cannot compare this game to MTW, as it's simply not the same thing. Saying it's better than MTW is flawed because M2TW is an newer game, as is RTW, they should be better in almost every way. If they're not, then something is seriously wrong. This game is based on the RTW game engine through and through. Some MTW-like features have been reintroduced, but it is not MTW. Why compare?

Secondly the game is to all intents and purposes an RTW expansion, and yes I can tell you this without playing the game. Any game that is built on the same engine as another is technically an expansion. However much the developers will try to convince us otherwise this is the case. There are light expansions such as BI and heavier ones such as M2TW. It's not entirely new, it's not original nor groundbreaking. The same 3D battle engine is used, the same campaign map system is used. The rest is all bells and whistles, gloss, cosmetics and features. It is an updated version of the old game on a different theme. The many changes and optimisations are what has introduced the new bugs. As MTW was only really an STW expansion, M2TW is only an RTW one.

Thirdly we have to look at patching. RTW was a much bigger undertaking than STW, MTW was. Alot more code was involved. 3D models on a battlefield are much harder to manage than 2D ones, there will always be pathfinding and clipping problems. Yes the AI may be poor, but has the AI ever been that astronomical anyway? The games market is driven by visuals, not advances in AI. Accepting this is the key to understanding why certain areas are not priority. CA release the game, at the date required by the pubisher, with the visuals needed for it to compete on the market. The balancing and AI fixes come later in the form of patches... or not at all.

It is always the case with complex programs such as these that when something new is implimented something else is broken. The answer is always patches. I've never seen a PC game that wasn't patched at least once. The majority of PC games are patched several times. Those of you that bought the game early have been unwittingly testing this game all along. This has always been the way, with all games developers not just the Creative Assembly, all of them. M2TW is not a simplistic RTS game it's a highly complex program that consists of two games in one, two game engines, and of course several bugs are bound to slip through the net. Putting a game out in the state that M2TW was released in, makes alot of sense from a cost perspective. It saves a fortune in playtesting, and also saves a lot of time.

Some people may think it was rushed out, I disagree. This is not a "from the ground up" project. The vast bulk of the code is already there, so it's not going to take as long as an entirely new conception. Also it will be patched, probably several times, as ever. As a program gets larger and more complex, you can expect more patches, this is always the way. Where there is more to go wrong, there will be more patches needed. STW/MTW was a 3D rendered flat textured tabletop for a campaign map, with 2D sprites as the markers. The battlemaps were an enclosed box with a 3D contoured ground, with some small 3D buildngs dotted about here and there. The men and the trees were all 2D sprites. There is no where near as much code, work, or potential problems in a simplistic game engine such as this, as there is in the RTW engine. Since 3D games first apeared on the market they've been becoming more and more complex, patches appear every few months in some cases, but this also depends on the publisher.

I think people need to get this into perspective. The complainers need to be allowed to complain. CA read these boards, and if the complaints are not seen, CA will lose out on necessary feedback. The complaints are positive as they will only force up the standards of the game. Those people that label the complainers as "whiners" are contributing to forcing these standards back down again. By complaints I mean posts such as The Stanger has made, and not "this game sucks" etc type posts which don't point out the actual faults, and are largely worthless.

Nothing is perfect, those complaining would do well to remember that as would those criticising the complainers. Just because someone has criticised your beloved game, it doesn't make them a target for a flamefest. By attacking them you have only disrespected and shamed yourselves. You will be labelled by many as "fanboys". In the eyes of the fanboy the developers can do no wrong and the game is perfection itself. Fanboys get together with other fanboys, like a group of schoolgirls calling names across the playground. I am reading your posts as are many others, I am not impressed, I doubt very much whether the other readers are either.

:bow:

-Edit: @LordKhaine: Very true.

yiph

01-14-2007, 00:09

wow i knew about the weirdness of the shield ages ago, its quite (moderator edit:) messed up.[1]

[1]Note: partial asterisking out of swearwords is against forum rules.

Carl

01-14-2007, 00:45

Yep, they where going on about the way Spear units are totally useless in the vanilla game over on the MP forums before I even joined the forum. They didn't know what was causing it, (Shield Bug as it happens), but they though either something was bugged or a bad balancing decision had been made, and they where making their displeasure clear. Likewise I’ve seen plenty of posts in the Guides dissuading people from using most of the various shield units for some time. People DID know something was wrong, but they weren’t sure it was a bug, it looked like a bad set of balancing decisions mostly. People didn't like it and grumbled, but in the end they where willing to believe the devs knew what they where doing balance wise. Besides the obvious bugs where bothering them more than messed up play balance at that point. The Bugs where more important in their opinion as they represented fundamental flaws that could be messing up the perceived unit balance. They wanted those fixed before looking at the new balance and complaining about bad balancing. It’s only when most of these supposed bits of bad balancing have turned out to be bugs that they've let their frustration out.

pevergreen

01-14-2007, 01:39

The people that keep saying everyone is "whining" "crying" etc.; you are the reason the game is in such a broken state. Without your stalwart defense at the various boards during both M2 and Rome, the developers would never have released such a buggy product. But ofcourse they do in this case, because they know so many people are perfectly happy playing a buggy game, and then defending it like it was a personal insult to complain about the bugs.

I think the following quote sums up my feelings about this paragraph

Are you a &$#@*$& !^^?)

The amount of work they put in is not relevant to how much I, or anyone else, defends their games.

Name a game that you think was bug free at the start, and other people and myself will be able to point out multiple bugs at release.

If you dont like the game, then dont continue to post why. Just put in in your sig or something like that. If you find a bug, look if its been posted before you go into a rant saying how retarded CA is.(Note: This is not directed at one person) If you hate the game that much, Do something about it. Sell it, take it back or plain just dont play it anymore.

All these member posting how much they think the game is unplayable gets kind of old. Yes, freedom of expression, but your not really acheiving anything by posting on the internet "I dont like this game, because of the bugs i didnt know existed, but now that I do, I feel compelled to rant about it."

Or worse, the new members who have one of their first posts

"This game sucks"/"Whats wrong with XXXX is it a bug?"

SEARCH THE FORUMS, and if you cant, AT LEAST LOOK IN THE BUG THREADS.

DESTROYER!

01-14-2007, 02:00

Revenant

01-14-2007, 02:32

in all honesty, if i didnt register in the forums and read what you guys are arguing about i DOUBT i would "find" said bugs.
maybe the passive ai bug i would notice but the 2h animation bug? highly doubt it. i would instead blame my lack of strategic skills and continue playing and enjoying the game.

seriously. you guys who ACTIVELY look for bugs just ruined my game =(

OMG, I played the game only for a short time and was surprised how some expensive and supposedly elite units were beaten by "weak" units, judged by their stats/price. It was obvious something is broken.

And now you blame people who discovered what is broken for ruining your game? :dizzy2:

pevergreen

01-14-2007, 04:00

Hurin_Rules

01-14-2007, 04:26

Afkazar

01-14-2007, 06:00

It is possible they DID playtest and DID notice the bugs and didn't have time to fix it before Christmas. But I don't accept that as a valid excuse anymore than I would accept raw meat b/c the chef didn't have time to cook it all the way before the lunch rush.

But lets say the customer does not know its raw meat and thinks its cooked?
Now lets that there are numerous customers who want meat and will pay top price for it. You can always say im dearly sorry would you like Me to cook it or take a refund.

But if there are signifigantly lower customers after the lunch rush the shop doesnt nearly as much money.

So here i offer MY views on the characters who are purchasing or not purchasing

1.People who buy it pretty much real close to the release date
1a.Those who actually return it (very few most likely)
1b.Those who complain about it but not return it because (a.They Are past the return date. b. they are just lazy and would just rather wait for a Patch and play something else in the mean time.

2.THose who wait for the price to drop.
(as with most major consoles they customer waits for a pirce drop since a.ITs cheaper we all like money b.they expect all the "bugs" to be worked out

3.Those who have read bad reviews and just not bought it.

Usually ill fall in the 2 catergory
I fell in the 1 for this

to be honest i havent had much of the complained problems. Ive played MP and have had pleasurable enjoyment.
I did kinda notice how those Dismounted gothic knights chewed through those armor 26 scots But its a 2h sword i would expect that

SMZ

01-14-2007, 06:52

To anybody who feels compelled to complain about the "complainers" - I say, massive hypocrisy.

If you feel that "complaining" is a waste of forum space - then don't indulge in it yourself.

And to the various persons claiming that any game produced with modern technology will have to go thru a process similar to this... All I know is that my two favorite game series are Total War and the various D&D games run thru Bioware and now Obsidian. And I have not been nearly as frustrated with those rpg's as I have with RTW and MTW2. NWN and NWN2 are both quite complex games - and neither had me quitting in frustration.

pevergreen

01-14-2007, 07:00

NWN has me quitting in frustration. Angry because it works in DND online, but not NWN :laugh4:

Zuraffo

01-14-2007, 07:30

And Zuraffo, if everybody had such an attitude there would be no revulotions... there would be no freedom fighters... the world as we know it wouldnt be... you can say that you cant compare that to games... why not?

Statistically speaking, not everyone will have "such" an attitude, so you can rest assured there will always be freedom fighters and revolutions. Just a note of caution: Freedom fighting and revolutions usually ended up in bloodshed. Has all the revolution actually led to a better world? That is up to argument and out of the scope of this thread.

I did not critisize foz when he raised the shield bug, nor Carl when he did extensive testing to confirm those bugs. Nor any of the people actively trying to make the game much more enjoyable for the fellow players. I think the developers, if they read these boards, have gotten the message loud and clear: There are bugs in the game, we are not happy about it, we even have a solution.

So how did repeating these already known bugs in an angry manner going to achieve anything? Besides serving as a purpose to push the useful thread to the second page so that newbies cannot find them instead of this hateful but ultimately useless thread (including my own posts, thank you)?

IF the Stranger had raised some other unknown bugs and/or propose a fix to already known bugs I wouldn't have the chance to flame(?).

You can disagree with me all you want, but you cannot deny what I have stated is a fact (about how the game industry is runned nowadays). Keep on complaining for all I care. I just needed a break from my venetian campaign and this thread is just perfect.

Lastly, Fanboy? I know my chance to impress a bunch of "intellects" :sweatdrop: such as this thread feature is nil but fanboy? Don't give CA too much credit. I do not defend CA or any game developer for that matters. I just feel like pointing out some facts and acting like a hypocrite by wasting a lot of internet space while complaining about others who do the same. :2thumbsup:

knoddy

01-14-2007, 09:15

Wow the thread grows and grows while i was away from the forums lol.

First off to the OP thanks for the casual insult, i tried to point out that my post wasnt personal, but obviously u took it personally and felt the need to respond as such. also ironically despite my comment about my bad spelling and grammar im fairly sure my spelling and grammar wasnt "that" bad in my first post so yea

NEWAY on with the point.

THERES A DIFFERENCE, between complaining and whining and offering criticism. When i see a post labeled "DISGUSTING..." or "THIS GAME IS TEH SUXXOR" etc etc thats whining. if u find a bug, error, problem, there are appropriate threads to post in so that people who can do something about it can...do something about it. all threads with stupid titles like above will do will provoke forum wars, arguments and generally annoy most of the populace of the forums. For those of us who browse these forums daily, these threads get very annoying very very fast.

Really? This game works out of the box, is compatable with common video cards, and is decently stable. That's more than I can say for some of the games I've bought. I've spent weeks trying to get some games just to start up right.

how so so true.
at least the game runs, which is more than alot of released games these days.

the funniest thing is, if alot of these people didnt come to these forums, they would just play the game thinking that is how it was spose to work and wouldnt complain at all, but because they come here they see that there is a bug and they start kicking up a stink saying they wasted there money or want there monies back. its quite humerous really.

So . . . am I the only one who can play a game with a shield bug, and still have fun?

No, however most of the people who play the game and enjoy it dont post here, cos they are too busy enjoying the game, or they just dont feel the need. also posts that say "i love the game" attract alot less attention than those saying "ZOMG GAME IS TEH SUXXORRZZZZ" and the people who enjoy it are usually posting in other threads helping people with real problems, posting in guides, answering questions and the like.

neway i think the op has left the building so maybe econ should just lock this thread and let it die along with the other threads of this ilk....

Cheers Knoddy

Neoncat

01-14-2007, 09:55

Name a game that you think was bug free at the start, and other people and myself will be able to point out multiple bugs at release.

Thats easy... Lets see... how about monkey island 1... ;)

As a coder I know that every program has bugs. You simply just cannot make bug free programs. Ok, you can take "Hello World" example and show me that it doesn't have any bugs. But the main point is that even if every program has bugs, still the bugs in mtw2 are bugs you should find when you play game without even testing in mind. It gets even worse when bugs disable some things in the game.

And for THE random generator bug...

Random generator is build wrongly. For now its using only one generator with only one seed for every action you take. This makes percentual actions act very strange ways. For example if you sabotage something with 95% percent your other actions shouldn't affect on it. However for now if you do anything between your sabotage attemps your percentual possibility changes alot. You might get always 100% or you might get always 0%. Oo... so its really totally random! No I am not referring to load and save thing. I am sure that everyone have scratched their heads when denouncement has been very hard even with high % to success. So lets take a simple example...

First you sabotage something with 95% and fail. Then you use random generator to do other jobs untill you get 'bad' seed and try to sabotage again with 95% and fail. You can repeat this thing over and over... Can you really say that your assasin has 95% probability to sabotage?

How to correct this bug?

Bind one seed for every agent in game that uses random generator.

or

Bind one seed for every percentage.(Can improve generator, but don't know for sure does it fix it correctly.)

or

Use seed based on time all the time.(This would mean goodbye for load&save thing.)

knoddy:

If you would buy a car and nothing really works really how they should work with it, but you would be able to drive with it, you would be happy about it and you wouldn't complain about it? "Dude, your lights go on and off all the time. Yeah, I know I think its a feature in this car."And you can offer criticism about things that work, but you might have your own opinion about how it should work. When you look at bug, you can only complain and whine about it. Especially if it kills some parts of the game completely.

So if I get it right, you should stay content all the time and not to discuss about how things are bad in game. You surely shouldn't use your brains to even think about bugs in the game. "Look into my eyes. They are just features. Repeat after me... They are just features..." This reminds me something called Zero Tolerance... Fortunately we don't have such a thing here. We only have some problems with broken windows and penguins. ;)

knoddy

01-14-2007, 10:54

Ok first off the random no. generator bug, u say u dont mean the load, save thing but if i interpret correctly they are one and the same, forgive me if i am wrong, but the "random" generator for % chance of sucess on missions is designed to prevent cheating form loading and saving repeatedly. Therefore it isnt really broken it was an intelligent piece of programming to prevent people cheating which, people who cheat got annoyed about and say "oh its a bug"

i dunno if that is wot ur ar refering to as the "random No. generator error" and if not i apologise cos i cant follow wot u mean lol.

NOW

U say ur a programmer yet u use stupid examples like buying a faulty car, almost as silly as the OP and his steak. as a programmer u should realise that these are totally inacurate examples cos the field of programming, and gaming is so uterly different to anything else out there. IF i buy a faulty car and i crash and get hurt/die, the car company is screwed. If i buy a game and it has bugs, im not going to sue the game company. more over if a car company realised one of their cars was faulty they would recall them all for checks etc. I doubt very much sega/ca is going to tell everyone to bring there copies of Total war back so that they can fix them all. U are comparing 2 completly diferent markets which is y ur comparison lacks any real conviction.

The customer has a right to expect quality products from a gaming or any other software company. But anyone who has been around computers accepts that nobody is perfect, and that in hundreds of thousands of lines of codes making mistakes really cant be helped.

Please note im not defending CA/Sega for missing the bugs that are in the game. The passive ai and the 2h unit bugs are obvious and it is hard to see how they could have been missed. However people saying that the game is unplayable and not fun with these bugs are just being picky. They see it has errors and go "oh noes errors cant play that game its all buggy and bad" the 2 main bugs have both been recognised by CA who are workign towards solutions. Coming to these forums to complain about how these bugs ruin ur gaming experience doesnt help the process at all. CA have said that they know the bugs are there, they are working towards fixing them, we dont need to hear about how "john smith" is all annoyed cos he cant play his game cos it has bugs. if ur all hanging out of a prefect product u will be waiting a LONG LONG TIME.

That said, theres a difference, between coming to these forums and saying, "hey is this a bug has anyone else experienced it?" and coming to these forums saying "OMG i hate this game its so buggy and unplayable and i hate it, did i mention i hate it" by all means if u find a bug, or somethign u believe is a bug post it, promote discussion about it, but dont come here making threads about how bugs have ruined ur gaming experience and u wasted ur money on this game, the majority of people on these forums dont want to hear it, indeed the majority of the people here have heard it so often that they generally lash out at the people making said such threads.

Cheers Knoddy

Lord_hazard

01-14-2007, 12:19

I agree with the op. Ive been playing the TW series all the way back to shogun. And i must say that this game is the buggiest one yet which is ofcourse due to the rushed retail just like almost any other game today.
Its not only the bugs that irritate me, but also I think that the game is imbalanced, my main concern is that, even though i have never played mp, that certain main factions are alot stronger then the rest like say the French against the English. The French has almost the same type of units that the English has (they have archers that are extremely close to the longbowmen, whom i think isnt nearly effective enough in the game as they were in rl.) and then a whole lot more.
Think the main problem is just like in RTW that the devs take a factions historical elite units (like the urban cohorts whom were never used in large scale) and make them recruitable on a huge scale just like the normal soldiers (like the French scots guard). I just feel like this takes away alot the of the English firepower, that the enemies can train units of equal strengt as their best unique units. I mean the English were feared for the use of their longbows, other countries were not. There are so many other archer units in the game that are just as good or even better then the longbowmen. This again comes down to a rushed retail without the player testing to improve balancing.

Neoncat

01-14-2007, 12:24

No I didn't refer to load/save bug as I said. As all actions are binded to one seed and one generator it makes statistically very different percentages to those which are shown to us. Try flipping a coin. After you have flipped enough(Some guy did it 10 000 times, if I recall correctly from statistic course.) you will see that its getting closer and closer 50% for heads or tails. When you do same with agents in mtw2, you can get a bit different results. Its like your dog would have obsession with coins and it would eat sometimes your coin when it would fall on the tails. Sometimes it would eat heads too, but however it would affect your results in coin flipping, because you wouldn't know is your dog obsessed with tails or heads.

Blinking lights of the car won't get you killed. If you want worst case scenerario it would be something like one bug in game formatted your harddrives. Of course this doesn't happen with mtw2. However both are products and theres a point when there are too much bugs in the game. Maybe theres no such a point for someone. But when you accept more and more bugs in games, there will be more and more bugs in games as developers see that people buy their games even if those would be in beta phase or even worse.

And cure for that problem? They should make a group boosted with standards to test every game that is going to be released and if game wouldn't pass the tests you wouldn't let it to get released or even better group would release all bugs they have found in final product before release of the game, if the game was about to release. I know that it won't happen and people will forgive more and more of bugs in games...

Dutch_guy

01-14-2007, 13:31

I've played all the TW games extensively, just bought and installed MTW2, and my first impressions...

Yech. This is a real step backwards for the entire series.

Blurry, pixelated graphics in the unit screen at the bottom. My cavalry won't charge home. Why do Saxon infantry have Norman-style shields? Why is everything given a late-medieval look? There seem to be too many non-combat units now-- merchants, princesses, etc. are all back and still not useful unless you love micro-micro-management. Poor AI still.

Wow. All I can say is, after anticipating this for a while and playing for one hour... I'm bored and frustrated.

Yech.

Well, the cavalry is partially due to yourself. Charging, without patch 1.1, is quite hard you know. Flat terrain, straight line to the enemy, and the such are all needed to actually perform a charge. Also, aren't Saxon infantry only available in the prologue ? If so, then I'd say it's not that big a deal.

I didn't quite notice the late medieval look, but then again, I'm no historian at all. But I imagine it's done because a lot of the mainstream gamers simply associate the Medieval times with heavy shining armour. Don't panic, however, I'm sure a lot of mods (MTR for instance) 'll address these kind of issues.

Merchants, Princesses (to a lesser extent) are useful. Merchants when used correctly don't need that much micro managing, and can rake in a lot of cash. One member was even making 20 K on merchants alone in his game. You just need to practise with them, and learn how to use them efficiently. Be careful though, if you don't have the patch yet there is a strange bug concerning the income of merchants, you need to change your capital every time you load up the game if you want your merchants to perform. The patch does fix this, thankfully.

The AI is...well...still not great. That's a given, and I think it always will be. However, now, more than in Rome, captain versus general battles aren't that easy anymore. And the death of a general, on VH, does actually amount to something and can turn the tide of a battle like it would in real life. No more routing on contact, or so I've noticed.

All in all, in my opinion this is a step forward from Rome. Now that was un playable and it took severe modding to make that work, and even then it wasn't perfect - not by a long shot. So, considering what Rome did to the series, I can only conclude this is a step forward rather than backwards. Did you really like Rome that much better than you do M2TW ?

:balloon2:

The Stranger

01-14-2007, 13:36

Statistically speaking, not everyone will have "such" an attitude, so you can rest assured there will always be freedom fighters and revolutions. Just a note of caution: Freedom fighting and revolutions usually ended up in bloodshed. Has all the revolution actually led to a better world? That is up to argument and out of the scope of this thread.

I did not critisize foz when he raised the shield bug, nor Carl when he did extensive testing to confirm those bugs. Nor any of the people actively trying to make the game much more enjoyable for the fellow players. I think the developers, if they read these boards, have gotten the message loud and clear: There are bugs in the game, we are not happy about it, we even have a solution.

So how did repeating these already known bugs in an angry manner going to achieve anything? Besides serving as a purpose to push the useful thread to the second page so that newbies cannot find them instead of this hateful but ultimately useless thread (including my own posts, thank you)?

IF the Stranger had raised some other unknown bugs and/or propose a fix to already known bugs I wouldn't have the chance to flame(?).

You can disagree with me all you want, but you cannot deny what I have stated is a fact (about how the game industry is runned nowadays). Keep on complaining for all I care. I just needed a break from my venetian campaign and this thread is just perfect.

Lastly, Fanboy? I know my chance to impress a bunch of "intellects" :sweatdrop: such as this thread feature is nil but fanboy? Don't give CA too much credit. I do not defend CA or any game developer for that matters. I just feel like pointing out some facts and acting like a hypocrite by wasting a lot of internet space while complaining about others who do the same. :2thumbsup:

I've worked on fixing bugs and rebalancing RTW quite alot. I've made several layouts that were used in several mods that increasingly balanced RTW... I might not be one of the famous modders but ive contributed... As for M2TW... ill say, IT IS NOT MY JOB TO FIX ANOTHER BROKEN GAME... But i would if I could... And complaining is part of doing something about, since CA reads this board, and they can see what people dislike. Now i will agree with you that flaming wont help, so I stopped doing that after like 2-3 flameposts? I tried to post constructive critisism but i wind up defending myself against guys like you...

Caravel and SMZ I agree with your posts...

Malkut

01-14-2007, 13:53

Please read around. The_Foz_4 has pointed out the shield bug, Dopp has pointed out the Pike bug, and after fixing all 3 issues I’ve found that 2-handed swordsmen are also bugged with a too slow attack animation. the ONLY UNIT in the game WITHOUT A BUG is peasants, and that’s because they don't have pikes, 2-handed weapons or a shield

. . . and they're all so serious and detrimental to gameplay, that nobody who doesn't go looking for them would notice.

Still, thank you for your hard work and dedication. Seriously, anyone who improves the game even a little bit deserves some thanks.

Carl

01-14-2007, 14:20

Thanks for the thanks, although I didn't do most of the work. It's appreciated though.

Also as I noted a few posts up, people over in the Multiplayer section where complaining heavily about Spear vs. Cav and sword vs. anything for some time before the shield bug was fround. people though it was a severe problem before we even knew what it was, they just thought it was intended. People will tend to bash stuff that isn't working right, harder than they will stuff that is working right but is IMBA.

Barry Fitzgerald

01-14-2007, 14:25

I think we all appreciate the efforts some players are putting in to fix things etc.

But I have to agree with the OP on this one..it really shouldnt be down to players to do a job that the software developer should have done prior to realease of MTW2.

I have not touched the game for 1 month..and that is is something that CA should be concerned about, esp since many of us have been playing and buying their games for years.

Not a question of being a moaning minnie..but folks this isn't acceptable at all. Not only that but patch 1.1 was feeble, and still didnt fix many of the issues.

Maybe I will hang on for the next patch...and if that isn't right...I will be removing it from my pc...there are more productive programs that could be on there instead.

Bijo

01-14-2007, 14:34

But I have to agree with the OP on this one..it really shouldnt be down to players to do a job that the software developer should have done prior to realease of MTW2.
But don't forget Sega, the publisher. It's about money, as it's always been. Developer ain't callin' the shots. If moneylender says "Do this." then it must be done regardless of it being right or wrong.

What I hope for the next installment is that CA will be financiered by a GOOD sugar daddy who isn't only after hard cash, but quality.

General Zhukov

01-14-2007, 14:42

That said, theres a difference, between coming to these forums and saying, "hey is this a bug has anyone else experienced it?" and coming to these forums saying "OMG i hate this game its so buggy and unplayable and i hate it, did i mention i hate it" by all means if u find a bug, or somethign u believe is a bug post it, promote discussion about it, but dont come here making threads about how bugs have ruined ur gaming experience and u wasted ur money on this game, the majority of people on these forums dont want to hear it, indeed the majority of the people here have heard it so often that they generally lash out at the people making said such threads.

Cheers Knoddy

I like what you're sayin' knoddy. However, the above is the most horrendous run-on sentence I have ever seen. :dizzy2: Good jorb. :2thumbsup:

Barry Fitzgerald

01-14-2007, 14:53

The problem is it is all too late really. I am sure CA are working away right now..but the damage is done.

And there are a number of fatal flaws in the developement of the game..or lack of. It is trying to be a jack of all games, master of none. A strategy game without the tactical depth needed. CA are scared to get stuck into it..and it started with RTW...which I still think at the time was a nice game..

The problem was after 6-12 months..I got sick of it..BI didn't do much either..it was ok..but not amazing. Where we could forgive maybe RTW and the mistakes that made..here there are no excuses. MP saved RTW from total removal..just.

MTW2 is sadly like a Sims 2 expansion pack...a sure fire seller..but getting very tedious. Nothing new here really..and a single line thinking of total war, with limited scope to explore other areas.

A strategy game without challenging AI or strategy is surely doomed.

Some flawed games can cut it even with problems..Oblivion was one. Why because it sucked you in...it worked. To me at least.

MTW2 is a MTW 1 lite..when we needed a real move forward. I hope CA read this stuff...the writing is on the wall guys. Stop trying to dumb things down..and get to the real meat. We don't want to play RTW part 2 medieval theme..been there done that..trying to please the mass audience leaves all less than satisfied.

Derfasciti

01-14-2007, 15:09

I agree pretty much on everything except for the heir selection. I mean, it is the friggin' middle ages. Do it the right away and kill your son if you don't want him to inherit the throne:2thumbsup:

I am playing this totally unmodded except for 1year=1turn now. I just avoid
2handers and just get angry when my cavalry messes up.:rifle:

JFC

01-14-2007, 16:20

Originally Posted by Dopp
Originally Posted by JFC
I posted this in another thread. But I think it's more relevant here.

I have to say I am amazed at the sheer amount of tweaking/downloading/modding/hunting around the forums for said downloads that I have had to do JUST to get the game to work as it was probably intended!

Chances are though, half the "broken" stuff you would never have noticed anyway if the modders hadn't drawn your attention to it.

The game is still great despite the flaws. I'm on my eighth grand campaign already.

Yes, again I'm reposting.

Hurin_Rules

01-14-2007, 19:09

Well, the cavalry is partially due to yourself. Charging, without patch 1.1, is quite hard you know. Flat terrain, straight line to the enemy, and the such are all needed to actually perform a charge.

Ok, I downloaded 1.1 and will give it a try. Hopefully, the cavalry will be better now. I just remember my first battle in RTW, and totally loving the new physics of cavalry charges... sure, they were a bit overpowered, but man, they were fun! What a change with MTW2.

Also, aren't Saxon infantry only available in the prologue ? If so, then I'd say it's not that big a deal.

No, not a big deal... just a little annoying.

I didn't quite notice the late medieval look, but then again, I'm no historian at all. But I imagine it's done because a lot of the mainstream gamers simply associate the Medieval times with heavy shining armour. Don't panic, however, I'm sure a lot of mods (MTR for instance) 'll address these kind of issues.

I sure do hope so. MTW never did this-- they at least made an attempt to show different eras.

Merchants, Princesses (to a lesser extent) are useful. Merchants when used correctly don't need that much micro managing, and can rake in a lot of cash. One member was even making 20 K on merchants alone in his game. You just need to practise with them, and learn how to use them efficiently. Be careful though, if you don't have the patch yet there is a strange bug concerning the income of merchants, you need to change your capital every time you load up the game if you want your merchants to perform. The patch does fix this, thankfully.

Again, I will give it another try.

All in all, in my opinion this is a step forward from Rome. Now that was un playable and it took severe modding to make that work, and even then it wasn't perfect - not by a long shot. So, considering what Rome did to the series, I can only conclude this is a step forward rather than backwards. Did you really like Rome that much better than you do M2TW ?

:balloon2:

All I can say is, I played MTW for more than a year and could have kept playing it, but RTW came out. RTW got my attention for about 6 months. MTW2 annoyed me after 5 minutes.

rich19

01-14-2007, 19:25

I agree that M2TW has bugs. But that doesn't mean it's "disgusting". I have to laugh when I see people complaining that the shield bug is "ruining" your experience, when it was only noticed by someone fairly recently. Sure, some bugs mean units don't perform as they should, but the majority do, or at least appear to. And there's always the autocalculate button if you really can't face your army acting like it doesn't have shields.

The very fact that people had to do extensive research to find shield values make units slightly worse surely means it isn't that noticable unless you look for it. And can anyone here say that all the time they have played on this game hasn't been at least partially enjoyable?

The Stranger

01-14-2007, 21:28

when you notice somebody is ill it can still take a while before you find out what for desease he has...

the fact that the "desease" has only been found for a short time doesnt mean people didnt know there was one.

Carl

01-14-2007, 21:30

the fact that the "desease" has only been found for a short time doesnt mean people didnt know there was one.

Exactly what i've been saying in my last few posts if anyone cared to read them. And actually the Sheild bug (if you are aware of what fixing it does), IS game breaking, tottaly and utterly as it overpowers cav, makes spears pointless and severly nerfs sword and sheild units as well as apparently ovepowering Archers in general.

Djurre

01-14-2007, 23:10

I agree, i bought this game "on my way out" so to speak, expecting i had not need to wait for reviews and such. i was wrong.

Next-time, ill wait a week or two

devs would be wise to make a statement on is matter. its their fanbase and people feel ripped off. problem is, in the gaming industry, you can rip off your customers and get away with it. there should be an international gamers customer organisation

knoddy

01-14-2007, 23:45

I like what you're sayin' knoddy. However, the above is the most horrendous run-on sentence I have ever seen. :dizzy2: Good jorb. :2thumbsup:

lol y thank u :P

when you notice somebody is ill it can still take a while before you find out what for desease he has...

very true, however, most people did not realise the game was...ill as u put it alot of people just accepted that some units were not as powerful as expected. then someone who was testing something completely different came through and realised that there was a bug, and everyone kicked up a stink about how it was ruining their gaming experience, yet the game has been out for several months nad nobody knew it existed......

Ok, I downloaded 1.1 and will give it a try. Hopefully, the cavalry will be better now. I just remember my first battle in RTW, and totally loving the new physics of cavalry charges... sure, they were a bit overpowered, but man, they were fun! What a change with MTW2.

Cav was ridiculusly OP in RTW. i remember playing a armenian camp, and training a full army of cataphracts only and conqouring all of greece, most of northern africa and most of italy. one massed charge slaughtering everything in its path.

To avoid making cav OP in M2TW they made it alot harder to get a good charge. they also changed the mechanic. double click means, "get here fast as possible" which means if u double click on an enemy unit ur cav just tries to get tehre fast as possible, not charging. If u single click however, they walk to withing charge range, stop form up, lower lances, blow a horn and charge, and that charge is irresistable for most infantry even front on. however they are very very difficult to produce as well they should be. the perfect charge every time is just unrealistic.

Alot of people seem to believe my posts are suggesting, "we accept these bugs, dont need fixes, etc etc." this is not what i am saying. Wot i am trying to get across is the difference between complaining and offering constructive criticism. again i reiterate my last paragraph from my other post

"That said, theres a difference, between coming to these forums and saying, "hey is this a bug has anyone else experienced it?" and coming to these forums saying "OMG i hate this game its so buggy and unplayable and i hate it, did i mention i hate it" by all means if u find a bug, or somethign u believe is a bug post it, promote discussion about it, but dont come here making threads about how bugs have ruined ur gaming experience and u wasted ur money on this game, the majority of people on these forums dont want to hear it, indeed the majority of the people here have heard it so often that they generally lash out at the people making said such threads."

its good to see people posting bugs for devs, and people from CA to see, its good to see people coming up with fixes for these bugs, its good to see people discussing the bugs, the communities fixes and there various pros and cons, wot isnt good is to see people bashing the game cos they feel cheated out of there money cos of a few bugs they wouldnt even know had existed if they didnt read these forums.

Cheers Knoddy

TopHatJones

01-15-2007, 00:38

The meaning he is having, is if you go round searching for bugs, and post them up, people like him read about and then are influcenced in the way they play. if no one searched for bugs, people would assume it is meant to be like that, and have more fun.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I was NOT searching for bugs. Quite the opposite actually. I have spent all my time playing this game from the day of release until the day I posted this ACTIVELY trying to IGNORE the bugs and have fun anyway. Eventually I got overwhelmed by them and just gave up. That's when I wanted to say my piece.

To anybody who feels compelled to complain about the "complainers" - I say, massive hypocrisy.

If you feel that "complaining" is a waste of forum space - then don't indulge in it yourself.

OMG...QFT

Lastly, there are a lot of people replying saying that the shield bug was not known until recently and it isn't that bad...I will not argue with that point anymore because there are plenty of other responses that say everything I would have said.

BUT, I would like to point out one FINAL time, that the shield bug was NOT the reason I made this post. I listed many examples of a very long line of bugs, ONE of which was the shield bug. The shield buig itself is not the topic of discussion here but rather the large body of major bugs as a whole.

@Knoddy,

I did not actually intend to be mean to you, which is why I included the "no offense" modifier in the sentence. I also responded after you posted but before you edited your post to add the last comment. L337 d00ds that post in such a manner are very difficult to decipher and really detract from the value of the thread as a whole. It is a pet peeve of mine and I usually ignore the post and I doubt I am alone.

Lastly, I did not get to make all the responses I would have liked too. There are quite a few new posts since I last logged in. I have officially shelved M2TW and moved on to other games...and a sprinkle of RL. :P I visit the forums of whatever game I happen to be immersed in, and since i have shelved M2TW, I will probably not be here after this.

Hopefully, things will be fixed before I forget about this game. If so, I will come back to it and with it, the forums. If they don't, I will not be following the series anymore and will most likely not get into any expansions or sequels. And no I am not trying to threaten CA or Sega, I am merely speaking my mind. Maybe I will decide to try out a future game anyway (which I WILL if they correct the mistakes in this one quickly), but as of now, I think the chances are slim to none.

Other series have make horrible turns and have lost me as a life-long fan. (Final Fantasy lost me at FFX, The Elder Scrolls with Oblivion, and Zelda lost me with the GamePube cartoon homoparty...although they look like they may be about to redeem themselves with the new one. I won't get my hopes up though.) Sequels and expansions have come out for those games and I have not gone back to any of them yet. :( I really hope this game doesn't die on its feet like those other series have, but there's not much I can do is there?

Later,

-Tophat

P.S. Thanks to the modders who put a lot of work into fixing this game. It wouldn't have even lasted this long without you guys.

knoddy

01-15-2007, 03:40

wot long list of bugs, there are 3 major bugs with the game, and while they affect gameplay adversly they dont ruin it all together.
1. passive ai (which is kinda fixed by patch 1.1, fairly rare now afaik)
2. 2h fix - plenty of fixes around for this one, and its spose to be getting fixed in patch 1.2
3. shield bug- dont know much bout this one, or fixes tbh. it hasnt affected the way i play at all so far.

other than these 3, most of the other bugs are minor annoyances in a superb game and i think the people at CA need a little credit cos i dont think people respect how difficult it is to make something on this magnitude, perhaps the fact that nobody else has really tried making similar sort of games should suggest something to all u nay sayers.

337 d00ds that post in such a manner are very difficult to decipher and really detract from the value of the thread as a whole.

i also hate people who act all leet and hella cool on the internet, yet it was a very prudent way to exagerate my point of view, but hey my sarcasm is wasted on u apparantly.

I also responded after you posted but before you edited your post to add the last comment.

i havent edited any of my posts so dont know wot u mean by this.

cheers Knoddy

Nebuchadnezzar

01-15-2007, 04:04

1. passive ai (which is kinda fixed by patch 1.1, fairly rare now afaik)

The passive AI is far from fixed! Try sallying and you will experience 9 out of 10. In fact I mostly autocalc.

2. 2h fix - plenty of fixes around for this one, and its spose to be getting fixed in patch 1.2

What fixes? They are more workarounds which substitute alternative animations that create new problems. In the meantime while waiting for 1.2 lets not recruit any 2H units. Is that what your saying?

wot long list of bugs, there are 3 major bugs with the game, and while they affect gameplay adversly they dont ruin it all together.

What about the tower bug?
The princess triggers not working?
A score of other triggers not working
The campaign AI is shat. It does not garrison its border settlements and gives settlements in exchange for traderights.
Armour & xp upgrades messed up
Ongoing mission bugs
In a pathetic attempt to nerf cav CA made them usless. Why not remove them altogether and have gens bouncing on inflatable bouncers.

The list is very long. I just wish my game was like yours!

JCoyote

01-15-2007, 04:43

And then there is the bridge pathfinding bug. In fact, the reason I came here in the first place! I knew things were wrong with the game before coming to this forum; it's why I came here at all.

Let's LIST:
2h bug
Shield bug
tower bug(s)
pike bug
princess bug
battlefield pathfinding/bridge bug
cav rundown routers bug
task switch on video bug
"random" seed issue (since previous games!)
upgrades bug(s)
guild bug(s)
Aztec bugs
loaded ship movement bug

And I know I'm forgetting quite a few.

And we'll ignore historical/logical inaccuracies like crossbows firing parabolicly. But just about everyone acting like everything's fine act like the only problem is one bug. It's not, the shield thing is merely the last straw for a lot of people; we kept feeling like things weren't playing melee right, were assured it was "balance" by some people, and found it's a bug. With the exception of the video bug, everything I've listed impacts actual gameplay. Not aesthetics, or smoothness, or occasional crashes (though we have issues there too) like most games. It's a plethora of broken gameplay mechanics. And true, someone who never played TW before might not have noticed, but to most vet players and people who payed attention to the IN GAME TUTORIALS it was clear things didn't work as advertised.

But here's a way you can tell if a software product should be shipped: how many coders are still working on it? If too many coders are being kept on the project post release, it shouldn't be released yet. If a product is actually ready for release, only a residual coding team should need to be kept on for bug fixes. However, in the case of this game, I'm pretty sure it's just about everyone still. I know, other software companies do it to. That DOESN'T mean I'm going to let a company off the hook when they lose on this kind of gamble. It's not a good business practice to release incomplete software and people need to let companies know they don't like it.

You might have been trained in coding, I was trained in marketing and PR just fyi. Everyone in the PR game knows that every bad review you hear about represents a fraction of the bad impressions out there; more importantly, dissatisfied customers tell a lot more people than satisfied ones, by a factor of 5 to 20.

"It's fun but a bit frustrating" is competing against "It has more gameplay bugs than any other computer game I've bought in the last 5 years." There are people in Sega who are seeing this stuff, and they need to, and yes, it does make a difference in how things get done. More than you'd think.

Yun Dog

01-15-2007, 05:21

pike master

01-15-2007, 05:44

in my opinion which is not a highly rated one im sure is that they should have continued in the direction they were going with barbarian invasion. the reason being is that you already have tournament players only wanting to use high era units to get away from all gunpowder but they want knights and good spearmen.

barbarian invasion had an excellent schiltrom and they did start showing an increased power in cavalry such as the graal knights. the only thing missing would be pavise crossbowmen and pikemen just about any other unit you could think of for the middle ages could have been created based on the rtw engine which they did use quite a bit since unit files show evidence of rome carry overs.

and it is kinda funny to see a roman peasant unit card representing native american archers.not really sure why they weakened the schiltrom spearmen units so much from barbarian to mtw2.

SMZ

01-15-2007, 06:47

QFT
I'm not familiar with this net lingo... what's the full expression?

Malkut

01-15-2007, 07:30

And to the various persons claiming that any game produced with modern technology will have to go thru a process similar to this... All I know is that my two favorite game series are Total War and the various D&D games run thru Bioware and now Obsidian. And I have not been nearly as frustrated with those rpg's as I have with RTW and MTW2. NWN and NWN2 are both quite complex games - and neither had me quitting in frustration.

Hah! I love Bioware games, they're a dozen times better than console RPGs, but they're not any better than Total War about bugs. It took me three days just to be able to leave that stupid bedroom in the beginning of the NWN campaign, because of a bug that screwed with the framerate. Not to mention, it’s had a memory leak several times, and for a game based entirely around modification, a great deal of it's programming is locked down tight. NWN been patched more than Rome has, and let's not even get started on the bugs in the vast amount of user-created content.

KOTOR also went through his, and KOTOR 2 didn't only because the developers out and out admitted that it was a futile gesture to try to get such an unstable, unfinished game working flawlessly.

The more complex programming becomes, and the less time they have to work on it, the more human errors will occur in it. Simple arithmetic.