View Full Version : Creative Assembly Latest update on 1.2 patch from Sega/CA
Rather than tag this on the end of 38 pages, here is the latest official info from the .com forum:
SenseiTW Medieval II Update 2 - Latest News Lead [-]
Administrator/Administrator
Posts: 222
04/12/07 05:39:17
CA Staff
Tags : None
Hi guys,
We have had a chat with the development team at CA Oz and can now bring you an update regarding the status of Update 2. As previously discussed, there were issues highlighted by final testing that require further attention. The issues have been identified and the process to rectify them is underway at CA Oz. Rest assured that all resources are now being devoted to this as a matter of priority.
The main issue to be addressed is the intermittent passive AI that occurs during siege battles. While this certainly isn't something that occurs in every battle, it needs to be rectified before final release. There are also a number of minor issues that have also been highlighted and will be addressed.
Please accept our sincere apologies for not providing information on progress before now. Being on the other side of the world from our development studio meant that we couldn't bring you up to date on this as soon as we'd like. Based on the rather unfortunate turn of events last week, we feel it would be unwise to provide any further estimation of release dates for Update 2. However, we promise to keep you informed on progress throughout the process of getting this update to you.
Thanks for your ongoing patience. The team are obviously very busy on this, but I will keep pestering them for updates on your behalf!
Cheers,
Mark O'Connell
(aka SenseiTW)
Quickening
04-12-2007, 16:42
Im very happy at their vow to fix the passive siege AI completely. Definately top priority.
diotavelli
04-12-2007, 16:44
Based on the rather unfortunate turn of events last week, we feel it would be unwise to provide any further estimation of release dates for Update 2. However, we promise to keep you informed on progress throughout the process of getting this update to you.
Aah! A bit of common sense from CA, at last!
The deadline given for release of the patch always sounded as though it was driven by the marketing team to keep an impatient community happy, rather than by the guys building the damn thing.
Whilst I would love to have the update tomorrow, I'd rather have a properly working update in a few weeks' time. Letting the developers run the schedule means it will take longer but it should do what it's supposed to.....
Im very happy at their vow to fix the passive siege AI completely. Definately top priority.
I agree - I've experienced the bug only once (with the unofficial 1.2 patch, ironically). I sallied to avoid excommunication, but really was bringing in a massive relief army. The French besiegers just stood with their backs to my relief army as I shot them to death. They did send one or two archers to duel me. But otherwise the AI only reacted when I got tired and charged it from behind. It was very strange and definitely worth fixing.
gardibolt
04-12-2007, 17:11
Both encouraging and disappointing. Well, hopefully it'll be an excellent patch when it arrives.
Yep, I have to agree. I would MUCH rather CA fix the passive AI seige bug that popped up, along with the CTD issue that people have reported, than give us a bad patch.
From what I have seen from the unofficial patch so far, I love it. Agents that actually work, imagine that.
And kudos to CA/Sega for not stepping on their sword again with an announced release date. Take the time to get it right, then let us have it.
Midnight
04-12-2007, 17:25
"It'll be ready when it's working properly" is a sensible policy! Good to hear things are working this way now.
edit in response to Pode, below: I'm hoping that's how it'll be from now on, as well!
"It'll be ready when it's working properly" is a sensible policy! Good to hear things are working this way now.
INFINITELY better would be a policy of "It'll be RELEASED when it's working properly." I know, I know, foolish idealism on my part, but really, would it have killed Sega to push for a release THIS Christmas instead of last?
Agent Smith
04-12-2007, 17:58
Being on the other side of the world from our development studio meant that we couldn't bring you up to date on this as soon as we'd like.
Not to be nitpicky, but why is this even an issue anymore in today's day and age?
Not to be nitpicky, but why is this even an issue anymore in today's day and age?
Because it's easier to talk about something over the phone when your both in the respective offices, instead of by email.
I think the problem was that they said it'll come so soon and in the end came quite a while after.... I belive its better to say that it will come in a lot of time and bring it before tje deadline instead of telling it will come fast and bringing it after.
redriver
04-12-2007, 18:25
I thought the real issue was the 1.1 conflict.. the passive AI was supposed to be fixed with last patch and didn't postpone it from bein' pushed out to the public?
Kryptonitus
04-12-2007, 19:13
I for one am glad that the passive AI will be fixed. I can be patient.
I am fine with the m letting us know about when patches are coming out but with all the bugs we have had to deal with why don't they stop releasing half baked games so we don't have to deal with this all the time.
(This notice also should goto NWN2, Oblivion, and Railroads!)
Because it's easier to talk about something over the phone when your both in the respective offices, instead of by email.
Email?? Yeah, I'd say that's inefficient. That's why nobody I know uses it to do business.
I'm an off-site game developer, and we work over IM. Waiting for email replies would be insane.
I'm perfectly happy playing the unofficial patch while waiting the eternal wait, but Smith's confusion is valid.
Agent Smith
04-12-2007, 21:43
Email?? Yeah, I'd say that's inefficient. That's why nobody I know uses it to do business.
I'm an off-site game developer, and we work over IM. Waiting for email replies would be insane.
I'm perfectly happy playing the unofficial patch while waiting the eternal wait, but Smith's confusion is valid.
Ditto.
I currently am doing intern work for a coal sales company that does millions of dollars in business every month. I work in PA, and there main office is in VA, and the salesmen are all over the country. We have no problem communicating with them, either through phone, email, IM, conference call, etc. I fail to see how distance is any excuse for delays in business today.
But, all of that aside, I love the game and I don't care if I have to wait for the patch. I just thought it was kind of silly to partially blame a delay on office distance.
Because their in diffrent Time zones, about the time where getting up, they're going to bed, they simply aren't in the offices at eithier end at the same for much of the day so they have to rely on e-mail for everything, and considering the complexity of the issues their dealing with it would be murder to try to do everything by e-mail. SO they're very limited in time wise.
Not to be nitpicky, but why is this even an issue anymore in today's day and age?
There is a tremendous time difference between Australia and the US or England. When it is 7am in Sydney on a Monday, its 10pm in London on Sunday, 5pm in New York on Sunday. :shocked2:
I used to live in New Zealand (having been raised in the US) and always had problems if I wanted to phone someone in the US right away. Email sometimes just doesn't cut it.
Hoplite7
04-12-2007, 22:04
Yet ANOTHER delay.
"As promised, here is an update regarding Update 2. It is due to go into final testing at SEGA on 16th March. All going well, we then hope to have it ready for release approximately a week later."
:dizzy2:
John_Longarrow
04-12-2007, 22:13
My personal take;
I assume their target date for the patch is 20090101, so if its earlier I'm happy. Just my 2¢ worth. :laugh4:
Agent Smith
04-12-2007, 22:22
Because their in diffrent Time zones, about the time where getting up, they're going to bed, they simply aren't in the offices at eithier end at the same for much of the day so they have to rely on e-mail for everything, and considering the complexity of the issues their dealing with it would be murder to try to do everything by e-mail. SO they're very limited in time wise.
Still, every single businessman who ever goes on an international business trip has the same problem when reporting home, but they get it done.
There is something to be said about hunkering down when there is a known issue and you are trying to sell your product. But, maybe that's jsut my own personal philosophy...
To each his own, I guess :yes:
nameless
04-12-2007, 22:51
Still, every single businessman who ever goes on an international business trip has the same problem when reporting home, but they get it done.
Uh yeah so aren't they doing what they can in getting the job done then for their side?
I've had to work with people in Hong Kong from Canada and while email was our main method of communication they were times when it would've been more effective to simply contact with each other over the phone. For the people who didn't had office hours it was easier to work with but that lawyer....:wall:
Otherwise I would have to wait for the response time since the guy on the other end won't be responding until he wakes up and goes to his office.
kawligia
04-12-2007, 23:00
IMO it's good they hold off final release until its done right...please continue this trend into actual game and expansion releases!
On the contrary, I wish they'd hurry the hell up and patch this horribly broken game that's been so for the past 4 months. Patience only goes so far.
Still, every single businessman who ever goes on an international business trip has the same problem when reporting home, but they get it done.
Yeah, but when i chat to Pala or Caliban, it's late evening in Australia and early morning UK. So they're not in the CA Oz office, how are they supposed to chat about things effectively if they're not at the office and bring up the code, or bring up the list or whatever.
Agent Smith
04-12-2007, 23:24
Yeah, but when i chat to Pala or Caliban, it's late evening in Australia and early morning UK. So they're not in the CA Oz office, how are they supposed to chat about things effectively if they're not at the office and bring up the code, or bring up the list or whatever.
I don't know, stay up later so you can talk to them when they are in the office?
I'm not trying to be silly, but we all have to do it. I pulled plenty of all nighters in college because I had stuff I had to get done. I'm doing the same thing now going through law school. I'm not asking they work 24 hours a day all the time, just when there is a huge issue that needs to be dealt with such as this you may have to work around some inconveniences.
Palamedes earlier was pulling a late one, he was working til 7pm or something at the office, and that was only 10am here. They're already working over the usual 9-5, and they'd have to stay at the CA Oz office til about 10pm there time to leave enough time for a good convo with the UK office.
Agent Smith
04-12-2007, 23:40
Palamedes earlier was pulling a late one, he was working til 7pm or something at the office, and that was only 10am here. They're already working over the usual 9-5, and they'd have to stay at the CA Oz office til about 10pm there time to leave enough time for a good convo with the UK office.
Well, in the business world, sometimes that is what has to be done. The other comments made it sound like they really weren't attempting to make it work like that. If they are doing that, then good.
Of course they're trying, it's just more difficult to communicte with the CA UK office, so it will always be a few days after somethings happened before a new plan can be decided upon because of having to discuss it with SEG as well and everything else.
Just to remind everyone, we're here to discuss the patch, not our opinions of CA's business practices ~;)
im quite happy with this response, we all know that if they had released a patch with buggy code in it IE passive ai, the community would scream like crazy at them, just like what happened with the original release. perhaps the folks at ca/sega are learning :D
i can wait a little longer, although its hard not to play seeing as i just upgraded my pc. everything is so shiney with all settings on high :D
Cheers Knoddy
Jokerkaaos
04-13-2007, 01:51
Good news.
I am still playing the "unofficial" 1.2 and I am pretty happy with the improvements.
I have experienced the CTD three times out of many hours (30+, easily) of playing. Once was coming out of a sally-from-seige fight that the AI started, and the other two times were when I clicked an agent (a merchant both times I think) to select him from my Agent list.
These have all been in the same campaign as Sicily (vh/vh), but the game does fine if you reload, and doesn't recrash by repeating anything, or get stuck at a bugged point. Before this campaign I played a short one as England with no problems.
I save a lot now.
I *have* seen some unusual AI in battles, though it seems to be much better overall. I once had a defensive position high on a steep mountain to start the battle, and the AI stopped far away from me and set up facing the opposite direction, as if it were the army waiting for an attack - from the wrong direction. I had no reinforcements coming in.
Overall this is a MUCH better vanilla game. Spies and Assassins have been tweaked nicely. Assassins are easier to train on killings alone without going through an extensive Arsonist Training Program, but you still have to be very careful selecting targets, and a lot of them will die in training. Your Faction Leader's reputation takes a lot of hits for using assassins now, so forget it if you want to stay Chivalrous. I guess people tend to notice when your rivals disappear a lot... :laugh4:
Spies are HARDER to train and seem to get killed a lot more often infiltrating cities (which is much much more difficult percentage-wise to do now). You don't see quite the flood of them from the AI now, which I think is good.
The new diplomatic AI is much more dynamic, as you get relations improvements for fighting someone's foes, and negotiating agreements with diplomats/princesses is much more reasonable now, even on vh. Some of them like to haggle, too. I've seen deals go through two or three counter-offers per side before coming to a compromise. Even with good relations the AI diplomats will try to get you to agree to one-sided demanding deals if you let them.
This campaign has been challenging. The AI holds alliances better, but they WILL stab you if they think they can get away with it. The AI also makes a lot more "enemy of my enemy is my friend" alliances among themselves (due to their good relations from both fighting you). So if you are at war with multiple nations, they WILL start ganging up together on you.
hopefully this will help sega realise that running a ozzy office just isnt reasonable in the modern world. i say move all operations back to britain where everything works proper.
hopefully this will help sega realise that running a ozzy office just isnt reasonable in the modern world. i say move all operations back to britain where everything works proper.
Maybe it works like Oz did originally - just now, it's a SEGA penal colony. Do your job and do it well, or be "exiled" (I use the term loosely) to Oz. I'm not sure how horrible of a threat that is anymore though, it could actually be pretty nice.
Maybe if enough guys end up in CA Oz, they can declare themselves independent from their GB offices just like the founding Aussies did. :beam:
Riiight.
And the Aussie bashing stops now.
If you feel like continuing, check where I come from << :grin2:
Brisbane where's that? Near Norway I presume? :P
Durallan
04-13-2007, 05:01
back to where everything works proper(properly)? wasn't that the reason they moved convicts here in the first place because things wern't working there? :P and then all the immigrants left because they wanted a better life :P
its not really bashing we all know the rivalry that can occur between aussies and the british :P and there should be an Aussie office, what about hte hard working aussies that helped make this game eh? gonna leave em out in the cold, I'd also remind you its the aussies making the 1.2 patch that is actually fixing the game :P
sbroadbent
04-13-2007, 05:11
I haven't posted regarding the patch, but it does bring up one thing I read a while back. Rather than having only a couple "mega" patches that it would be better to have several smaller patches. Set ongoing deadlines. Any fix that resolves a bug gets put into the next patch. If something is found at the last minute that causes problems, remove it and release the rest. I'd rather see several incremental updates that improve the game bit by bit, than one huge update that due to it's enormous size and the promise that it'll fix a vast majority of the problems gets delayed because of one unforeseeable glitch.
So far reports say that the unofficial 1.2 patch works as intended (you do need to install over a fresh 1.0 copy). Why can't we get the patch minus the code that causes the problem. Why delay the entire thing. Release what you have, and keep moving forward. Since the original release of M2TW couldn't be released in a perfect state, why try to make this one patch perfect with all the fixes you intended for it.
Or maybe this is just too simple of a concept.
I think CA work the way they do because they are 'allowed' to make x patches and no more.
I haven't posted regarding the patch, but it does bring up one thing I read a while back. Rather than having only a couple "mega" patches that it would be better to have several smaller patches. Set ongoing deadlines. Any fix that resolves a bug gets put into the next patch. If something is found at the last minute that causes problems, remove it and release the rest. I'd rather see several incremental updates that improve the game bit by bit, than one huge update that due to it's enormous size and the promise that it'll fix a vast majority of the problems gets delayed because of one unforeseeable glitch.
So far reports say that the unofficial 1.2 patch works as intended (you do need to install over a fresh 1.0 copy). Why can't we get the patch minus the code that causes the problem. Why delay the entire thing. Release what you have, and keep moving forward. Since the original release of M2TW couldn't be released in a perfect state, why try to make this one patch perfect with all the fixes you intended for it.
Or maybe this is just too simple of a concept.
It doesn't work "as intended." According to the release that started this thread, the "intermittent passive AI" is the main target right now, which means to CA at least, this is dysfunctional behavior, and requires fixing. Many things work right, but that one (at least) does not. And that's not even counting the fact that you have to reinstall the game to 1.0 to use the leaked patch. You could write that off as unimportant, but in reality it's a pain in the butt, and in itself warrants them pausing to remedy it.
As for more patching... I'm sure we've been over this ground before, but for your benefit sbroadbent I'll list reasons not to update more frequently:
1. Doing so invariably means users are running vastly different versions of the game, as many are too lazy to constantly update. This in turn causes confusion, the persistent reporting of old already fixed bugs, and can cause multiplayer compatibility issues as well.
2. Frequent releases waste the developer's time. The more they issue patches, the more time they must spend packing them up, making sure they install correctly, and all of that jazz that isn't simply writing code. Not only is it inefficient to do that step more often than necessary... but it also makes the rest of the process less efficient. Each patch becomes undefined, including whatever happens to get fixed from time A to time B. This means the team doesn't know what's in the patch until it goes out the door, and must spend time figuring out what they're supposed to be doing more often since the patch is so fluid. Also, it's disrupting to release often: generally developers can get in a groove if they're working in the same direction for a while, and will usually remember right where to pick up again next time. Constant releases distract from that continuity of the development process.
3. Cost. One main reason this isn't often done is that it requires huge amounts more testing than a few larger patches do. That testing costs a lot of money. Testing is required for every update that goes out the door, because any one of them being messed up like the 1.2 patch is would cause a big problem. So more releases = more testing = more money, which means companies will try hard not to do it.
4. Less updates means they tend to make bigger splashes each time there is one. Look how hyped people are for 1.2. If these fixes had come out instead in 10 smaller patches, hardly anyone would be raving about how much work the dev team was doing to patch the game. In fact most of us might not even realize the patches were fixing noticeable things, we'd be likely to just take them for granted. Along the same lines, big updates get noticed by other gaming entities as well. The 1.2 update for M2TW is likely to be packaged with notable gaming magazines, and hosted on a myriad of sites due to its perceived importance to the game. Smaller patches are perceived as less important, and so would never rate that sort of special treatment.
There's probably more, but it's getting a lil late here and I'm running out of steam, so I'm going to call it quits. That should be more than enough info for everyone to chew on. Besides, four points is plenty enough for one post :smile:
a_ver_est
04-13-2007, 07:09
Thanks for he feedback CA, I really appreciate it.
crpcarrot
04-13-2007, 10:35
i just wish they had this attitude before they relased games and annouced relase dates. :no: but i guess its the industry norm now
Daveybaby
04-13-2007, 11:40
Unfortunately most developers dont have the luxury of keeping working on a game until its perfect. I guess they could spend a year testing the game (which is probably how long it would take to find most of the bugs with a small team) but then CA would have probably gone bust by now if they'd taken that route so you wouldnt even have an M2TW to be bitching about, ever.
Alternatively you release a playable game on time with a few significant bugs (but not show stopping IMO - if the shield bug is a 'game killer' how come it took so long for people to even notice it) and a slew of minor ones, some of which you will possibly know about before shipping (release day patches are pretty much a given these days) and most of which you dont - but will find out about very soon because 1000's of people playing a game in lots of different ways than you envisaged is going to turn up LOTS of bugs you would never have thought to look for in a million years of testing.
So, which is it people?
Scenario 1 : CA goes bust because they arent selling any games because theyre not allowed to release them until theyre perfect. So no more TW games, ever.
Scenario 2 : CA release slightly buggy games and fix most of the bugs after a few months of patching.
Unless anyone can come up with another scenario, that is. Note: scenario must work in the real world, not a fantasy one where companies dont need money to stay in business.
Yes, i guess in a sense we're paying to be beta testers. If that makes you really really angry, i suggest you have a read of the newspapers once in a while and try to get a sense of perspective (to paraphrase Bill Hicks... albeit slightly more politely).
Rant over. :grin:
So, which is it people?
Scenario 1 : CA goes bust because they arent selling any games because theyre not allowed to release them until theyre perfect. So no more TW games, ever.
Scenario 2 : CA release slightly buggy games and fix most of the bugs after a few months of patching.
The 2nd option is considered standard practice right now, for better or worse. The problem is the current game we have is in terrible shape, hell it makes even Bethesda look like a good software publisher. The shield bug, unit cohesion nonsense, bad pathing, and passive AI are all very serious, game breaking bugs. "Game breaking" doesn't mean CTD, it also means making gameplay thoroughly aggravating, unenjoyable, and a crap shot at best. Of course, one can never expect the Official CA Apologist Crew© or the hardcore fanboys to understand this.
Unless anyone can come up with another scenario, that is. Note: scenario must work in the real world, not a fantasy one where companies dont need money to stay in business.
~:rolleyes:
Yes, i guess in a sense we're paying to be beta testers. If that makes you really really angry, i suggest you have a read of the newspapers once in a while and try to get a sense of perspective (to paraphrase Bill Hicks... albeit slightly more politely).
Oh please. There's a very fine black and white line between being a paying to be on an official beta and being forced into being what amounts to be a beta tester by the publisher. Seeing how this game was never announced or marketed as a "Open Beta" it becomes pretty obvious which category this is. Had I known this was where the game was going to be 4 full months after it's release I would not have dropped my hard earned cash on it. Oh well, we all know how the saying goes. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." This was the last title I buy from CA at launch, if at all.
:shame:
Hmmmm after some thought, i would have to agree. CA needs to make the game in UK. For reasons we won't get into.
AUSSIE BASHING......woot.... some one has to.
In New Zealand Lamb price is about $7.00 a kilogram, when the wallabies come to play the all blacks, it goes up to $35.00 an hour.
Whats an Aussie with a BMW....a Lebo. :laugh4:
Whats an Aussie with a Mercedes......a really good theif. :laugh4:
Come sapi.....put them dukes up :clown:
fenir
fenir, you really are tempting me here, and if you weren't australian I'd be doing nasty things to you about now :grin2:
Quickening
04-13-2007, 13:21
Since this topic is now for all patch 1.2 discussion I'll mention this. If the Pope asks you to cease hostilities you can no longer continue to hold an enemy under siege. You will be excommunicated. As I just found out the hard way :shame:
Still, thats a good change.
A patch requiring this much effort can't be a good approach to developing a computer program. It gets to a point where doing it right in the first place is a more efficient process. Troubleshooting a bug can take more time than the time it would have taken to write working code in the first place. I thought the RTW v1.2 patch, which took 3 months and almost half of the whole development team and addressed over 100 problems, went beyond this point, and now the M2TW v1.2 appears to be an even bigger effort. It's not good business, and the company's credibility as a capable developer suffers.
Unfortunately most developers dont have the luxury of keeping working on a game until its perfect. I guess they could spend a year testing the game (which is probably how long it would take to find most of the bugs with a small team) but then CA would have probably gone bust by now if they'd taken that route so you wouldnt even have an M2TW to be bitching about, ever.
Alternatively you release a playable game on time with a few significant bugs (but not show stopping IMO - if the shield bug is a 'game killer' how come it took so long for people to even notice it) and a slew of minor ones, some of which you will possibly know about before shipping (release day patches are pretty much a given these days) and most of which you dont - but will find out about very soon because 1000's of people playing a game in lots of different ways than you envisaged is going to turn up LOTS of bugs you would never have thought to look for in a million years of testing.
So, which is it people?
Scenario 1 : CA goes bust because they arent selling any games because theyre not allowed to release them until theyre perfect. So no more TW games, ever.
Scenario 2 : CA release slightly buggy games and fix most of the bugs after a few months of patching.
Unless anyone can come up with another scenario, that is. Note: scenario must work in the real world, not a fantasy one where companies dont need money to stay in business.
Yes, i guess in a sense we're paying to be beta testers. If that makes you really really angry, i suggest you have a read of the newspapers once in a while and try to get a sense of perspective (to paraphrase Bill Hicks... albeit slightly more politely).
Rant over. :grin:
Fair enough, very well presented. since i have been an advocate of the other side of the argument I feel it fair to acknowledge your position. You make sound arguments and decent rationals based on common sense, logic, and the reality of the industry.
Perspective though is a funny concept and one that shouldnt be suggested lightly. As a consumer you pay for a product and you have a certain expectation of what you are buying. If it dosent meet with your expectations and you continue to buy it, the process continues on because you are enableing it to do so.
I dont suppose to know how companies can make "perfect games" I do know that games are produced in the state they are now mainly because the public buys them as is.
Not only that but we have vibrant modding commuties and forums where users post links to user made fixes to the game almost like a badge of honor. And on top of that we have a leaked 1.2 patch that had (by thier own admission) more bugs that caused the game to crash(which were discovered at the last hour before release, assuming we give them the maximum benefit of the doubt).
And whats the general concensus on the 1.2 situation? I have read a lot of data on this board and others and for the most part everyone is happy to have the files leaked to work on, happy that CA has pulled it back until fixed, and content to wait until it is ready to go (thats the majority opinion thus far).
And that my friend is the problem. An entire culture has been born, and is flourishing around games that are produced incomplete at the start. Maybe my point of view is a little off center, but I have yet to come across another industry that produces a product where a culture thrives on its inperfections, in almost glee.
It as if they are doing us some great service by correcting issues with thier product, and not only that should someone suggest that they should have had it done prior, it becomes
CA would have probably gone bust by now if they'd taken that route so you wouldnt even have an M2TW to be bitching about, ever..
Maybe my expectations are to high, but really why should I expect more from them, we have an army of willing consumers happy to support the current norm. :dizzy2:
Quickening
04-13-2007, 13:48
Meh, the game shouldn't have been released in the state it was and we shouldn't still be putting up with the game in this state.
But it doesn't matter what we say or think at all and it wouldn't matter if a handful of us voted with our wallet. Mainly because when the next Total War game comes out the magazines will review it and say "OMFG best game EVA!!!!!!!!!!! *masturbates*" and then a million people will read that and buy the game unaware that it is buggy as hell.
So they've got their money and a few dissenting fans who actually know and care about the bugs won't make any difference. Sad but true.
Meh, the game shouldn't have been released in the state it was and we shouldn't still be putting up with the game in this state.
But it doesn't matter what we say or think at all and it wouldn't matter if a handful of us voted with our wallet. Mainly because when the next Total War game comes out the magazines will review it and say "OMFG best game EVA!!!!!!!!!!! *masturbates*" and then a million people will read that and buy the game unaware that it is buggy as hell.
So they've got their money and a few dissenting fans who actually know and care about the bugs won't make any difference. Sad but true.
The magazines are part of the gaming culture, they have everything to gain by giving games great ratings.
the only persons who can effect a change in the gaming culture is the consumer, companies that are for profit always gear there business to make the customer happy.
Barry Fitzgerald
04-13-2007, 13:53
It has to be said the length of time that this patch has taken..and its vast size surely indicates how poor the original code really is.
In a way I feel sorry for CA..since release the game has come under heavy fire for snazzy looks..and not a lot of time spent on the real meat..aka getting the AI, and game working correctly. Things went from bad to worse with further delays..and well withdrawn patch 1.2,
There is nothing new to all this...its a sad fact of life that companies release unfinished games a lot more nowadays..CA are not alone in this. Some more than others..but shockingly some games dont have a lot of issues.
I really hope CA can recover from all this..the damage done to their reputation has been vast. It would be a shame to suffer for this in the long run. I know many players will now be much more sceptical about buying a CA game in the future..lessons will have to be learnt here..and big ones.
If you do a job for someone..whatever that is...paint a house..fix a car..make a cabinet...you should do the best job you can. Quality counts for more than quantity. Do a bodge job and you do yourself no favours at all. Your rep suffers..and cowboys land you get marked with.
Software whilst not that extreme is the same. Nobody expects perfection. But we really deserve better than this.
I hope CA can take all this in and put extra effort into ensuring that future releases are at least acceptable in quality. Maybe part of the problem is lack of competition....that would help to give them a wake up call.
Elmar Bijlsma
04-13-2007, 13:53
Thanks for your ongoing patience.
I think someone doesn't quite grasp the situation.
I for one have learned my lesson now.
Next time, I'll just wait for the box with patched original and expansion(s) all in one for less the amount you have to pay for the bugged original at its' release.
No more "special edition" for me.
Midnight
04-13-2007, 14:14
Same here - while it looks as if the 'when it's ready' attitude of things right now is a good one, I'll be getting my next CA games from the bargain bin.
Quickening
04-13-2007, 14:23
For every single person on this forum who will not buy the next CA game, there are a thousand others out there who will.
If we really want to try to change the way CA works we should like start a topic on the expansion pack and those of us who will not buy it on release can make our voice heard there. We can then see how much money CA is losing. If they really do read this forum then they might take notice then. Basically, to change anything we'd have to show that we're united by the fact that we refuse to accept unfinished work anymore.
diotavelli
04-13-2007, 14:46
I think that there is a lack of true perspective from many of CA's critics right now. Ten or fifteen years ago (pre-WWW), there were no forums for discussions of the relative merits of computer games other than magazines and groups of friends. If game was released with a "killer bug", the general gaming community would know about it but minor bugs didn't tend to get much air. Games that were imperfect tended to be generally recognised as such but it wasn't considered too big a deal if they were still enjoyable.
Online forums have changed all this. The Guild is a perfect example. There may be a few hardcore modders who would have found all the bugs in M2TW even were they operating in splendid isolation but their number would have been small. The vast majority of us would have played the game, enjoyed it or not and become fans or not on that basis.
The lists of bugs and the regular threads of outraged indignation merely serve to heighten awareness of problems with the game out of all proportion to the true situation. Purists who think that a game is unplayable if it doesn't work exactly as planned may hate M2TW but a lot of people aren't bothered.
Do you know how many copies of M2TW have been shifted? And do you know how many of those with a copy frequent these boards? This forum lists 19,560 members, not all of whom will be current and not all of whom will own the game. Far more than 20,000 people own this game. The vast majority of them will play it unaware of any problems. They may notice that some things don't happen as they expect or that some units behave/perform unexpectedly but they'll live with it or bin the game. No big deal.
The idea that CA's reputation is damaged to a "vast" extent is laughable. That may be the case with the hardcore who really know their stuff, buy loads of games each year and spends ten of hours playing each week but with the average punter (2-3 games a year, average of 5 or so hours played each week), it's not. Average punters seriously outnumber the hardcore but they pay just as much per unit.
I'm not a CA "apologist" or "fanboy" but I do work in IT. I know that CA are working in conjunction with SEGA. I know that SEGA are hugely successful, not because they appeal to the hardcore community but because they sell products in their millions to the mainstream "leisure" market.
CA will be feeling bad that the original game was as bugged as it has turned out to be but, like most of us, it probably took them a while to realise the true extent. They will wish they'd got the patches out sooner but they'll know they have a certain level of resource and a finite capacity.
The game works. Not perfectly but it works. If it doesn't work well enough for you, let it go. Find other things to do with your time. For most of us, a delay to the patch of one week or one month is a little frustrating but really no big deal.
We're talking about a computer game here. A fun but trivial bit of kit designed to help you waste a few hours of downtime. It's not like someone sold you a car with faulty brakes or an life insurance policy that didn't cover you properly. If that were the case, some of the rants I've read recently would be justified.
As it is, withdraw your hard-earned cash from CA's future sales pipeline, if you like. Boycott SEGA. Write letters to your MP, Senator or village elder. Rant furiously to the likeminded about how the whole world's gone to hell in a handcart because shields in M2TW are bugged and the pathfinding doesn't always work.
But please realise that employees of CA probably don't care as much as you do. Sure, they prefer to have happy campers in consumerville but, for the most part, they do. Some people are pissed off but they're few in number. Confronted by all the real issues of daily life (relationships, illness, stress, etc.), passive AI may not seem such a big deal.
We're talking about a computer game here. A fun but trivial bit of kit designed to help you waste a few hours of downtime. It's not like someone sold you a car with faulty brakes or an life insurance policy that didn't cover you properly. If that were the case, some of the rants I've read recently would be justified.
I agree with your overall sentiment that in the larger scope of life this game is really trivial, and that the gripes here are mostly from hardcore players, on that I concede. However comments like the one about the car brakes are very telling and apart of the larger problem.
Like it or not your rationalizing the fact that the game was infact released with problems. By your own example, what would you do if you had recieved the car like that? List the problem on a bug forum and link your fix in your signature?
As it is, withdraw your hard-earned cash from CA's future sales pipeline, if you like. Boycott SEGA. Write letters to your MP, Senator or village elder. Rant furiously to the likeminded about how the whole world's gone to hell in a handcart because shields in M2TW are bugged and the pathfinding doesn't always work.
Sarcasm lessens your position considerably. No one has suggested that this has a major impact on the world as a whole, but since this is a fan site for the game critisism here is appropriate. Minimalizing the valid arguments on an appropriate site do little to validate your own position, IMHO.
But please realise that employees of CA probably don't care as much as you do.
We realise this.
Sure, they prefer to have happy campers in consumerville but, for the most part, they do. Some people are pissed off but they're few in number. Confronted by all the real issues of daily life (relationships, illness, stress, etc.), passive AI may not seem such a big deal.
again no one is suggesting that this is the end of the world. This is a fansite of the totalwar series and an appropriate place to discuss the total war games and thier impact on the forum members who chose to participate.
Continual comparissons to life events of larger scopes underlines the weakness of your argument. Of course this dosent compare to
(relationships, illness, stress, etc.) but the Org isnt dedicated to those realities now is it? :no:
Durallan
04-13-2007, 15:02
biiig post
hear hear! what I've been trying to say all along. The best thing to do probably is either get a petition or write to CA employees, in a nice but firm way that if the next game is as buggy or has some major problems with it, you won't be buying it. Considering that CA employees actually post on forums which happens once in a blue moon on EA forums or other faceless publishing entities, they may take more note of what you say, as long as you aren't insulting. Continuing to whine/rant/complain may make you feel better, but CA isn't constantly watching this thread, you need to make a thread, get lusted to tell them to read the thread or ask someone else to do that. If CA says theyre hands are tied then you will have to barge into the SEGA boardroom and demand that developers get more time to make bugless games.
Durallan
04-13-2007, 15:06
I agree with your overall sentiment that in the larger scope of life this game is really trivial, and that the gripes here are mostly from hardcore players, on that I concede. However comments like the one about the car brakes are very telling and apart of the larger problem.
Like it or not your rationalizing the fact that the game was infact released with problems. By your own example, what would you do if you had recieved the car like that? List the problem on a bug forum and link your fix in your signature?
Sarcasm lessens your position considerably. No one has suggested that this has a major impact on the world as a whole, but since this is a fan site for the game critisism here is appropriate. Minimalizing the valid arguments on an appropriate site do little to validate your own position, IMHO.
We realise this.
again no one is suggesting that this is the end of the world. This is a fansite of the totalwar series and an appropriate place to discuss the total war games and thier impact on the forum members who chose to participate.
Continual comparissons to life events of larger scopes underlines the weakness of your argument. Of course this dosent compare to but the Org isnt dedicated to those realities now is it? :no:
This thread is more about the actual patch and its upcomingness than to continually complain about the state the game was released in yadda yadda yadda, if someone could make a topic like that and then sticky so everyone can complain rant and other things in it, it would be appreciated.
and yes I know everyone has a right to be angry and annoyed but I'm more interested in news of the patch, and people keep complaining about the patch, the delays and the bugginess of the game which this post isn't for, no I'm not trying to self moderate but Its just wearing a little thin, we know yer annoyed and you have eeeeevery right in the world to be annoyed at the state of the game, but you don't need to keep telling us. Which is why a topic where you can all get aggro to your hearts content would be great, because it would unclutter this post and then I could actually read for news on the update (no offense to anyone ok? :))
This thread is more about the actual patch and its upcomingness than to continually complain about the state the game was released in yadda yadda yadda, if someone could make a topic like that and then sticky so everyone can complain rant and other things in it, it would be appreciated.
Since you quoted me I will repsond in kind.
There is a PM feature and reporting feature you can use Durallan to ask for this more formally. The mods will reply to you, and if they deem the post innappropriate will correct it in thier own manner via PM or a posted remark as to how to proceed further, which smart forum members will abide.
You also have the option of not reading posts by simply moving to the next one that is relevant to your desire. Because you percieve a thread to be "more about" something dosent mean that the other posts arent relevant or valid.
Basically, no one is forcing you to read these posts Durallan, you choose to.
Durallan
04-13-2007, 15:16
Since you quoted me I will repsond in kind.
There is a PM feature and reporting feature you can use Durallan to ask for this more formally. The mods will reply to you, and if they deem the post innappropriate will correct it in thier own manner via PM or a posted remark as to how to proceed further, which smart forum members will abide.
You also have the option of not reading posts by simply moving to the next one that is relevant to your desire. Because you percieve a thread to be "more about" something dosent mean that the other posts arent relevant or valid.
Basically, no one is forcing you to read these posts Durallan, you choose to.
This is relevant to my desire, Topic Title: Latest update on 1.2 patch from Sega/CA
Yes I can ask for it more formally but I thought a nice unformal post would be better. I don't just mean you either I mean alot of people ahve been posting about the delays etc, anyway Yes one does have he option of not reading posts but seeing they go in a logical progression from the top of the page to the bottom you normally read them all....
I didn't say they wern't relevant or valid I just think a seperate post where you can express your frustrations to your hearts content would be more appropriate and also would be in one location so instead of telling SEGA/CA to look at all these seperate pages in topics, you can just tell them to look at the one topic. (if anyone is actually going to do so)
Oh and thanks for being so polite to me Odin.
EDIT:
Just to remind everyone, we're here to discuss the patch, not our opinions of CA's business practices ~;)
FactionHeir
04-13-2007, 15:19
Since this topic is now for all patch 1.2 discussion I'll mention this. If the Pope asks you to cease hostilities you can no longer continue to hold an enemy under siege. You will be excommunicated. As I just found out the hard way :shame:
Still, thats a good change.
Was like that in 1.1 already. :p
Any news on the other two tests I was asking about? I mean you are bound to have killed at least 1 enemy army so far right? (for the display thing)
As for the experience bonus you got the buildings yet? :D
Durallan
04-13-2007, 15:22
Hey FactionHeir what were the other tests you wanted done?
EDIT: (instead of making ANOTHER post :P ;) )
I'm not too sure Sinan, thats what I thought too! for some people it seems not?
I thought it was'nt like that in 1.10. If you already have a city under siege, can't you just hold the siege and if it's over and you get the city, the Pope seems ok about it.
This is relevant to my desire, Topic Title: Latest update on 1.2 patch from Sega/CA
Yes I can ask for it more formally but I thought a nice unformal post would be better. I don't just mean you either I mean alot of people ahve been posting about the delays etc, anyway Yes one does have he option of not reading posts but seeing they go in a logical progression from the top of the page to the bottom you normally read them all....
I didn't say they wern't relevant or valid I just think a seperate post where you can express your frustrations to your hearts content would be more appropriate and also would be in one location so instead of telling SEGA/CA to look at all these seperate pages in topics, you can just tell them to look at the one topic. (if anyone is actually going to do so)
Oh and thanks for being so polite to me Odin.
EDIT:
So you are correct, I didnt see Sapi's original post. I dont know if the others did but I wont post any more on thier business practices in this thread.
Thanks for posting that, i truly did miss it. :oops:
FactionHeir
04-13-2007, 15:43
Hey FactionHeir what were the other tests you wanted done?
Originally Posted by FactionHeir
Did CA fix the retraining bug? I.e. having buildings that give global or local boni to experience of units trained but units come out green? Its not in the patch readme, but I'd rather ask to make sure before reporting it again for the buglist.
You can try to see if it happens by having a building (i.e. jousting lists or barracks) which gives experience boni (to cav and armoured sergeants respectively) and train said units. Instead of ending turn when training, save and reload. Do not reset the queue after loading. Now end turn and see if the units are green or not. (ie. available for retraining)
Could you also check for the text "Your Forces Melt Away" and "Enemy Army Routs" whether the correct commander's name is being displayed? In 1.1 at least its always the wrong commander's name.
That :)
diotavelli
04-13-2007, 15:44
Odin,
Thanks for your reply. A couple of points though:
1. Yes, I'm rationalising the fact that the game was released with problems. I'm doing so because a) it's only a game and b) most new products in the world are released imperfect. I know this because I've project-managed a few releases myself and I've bought new houses and cars before.
2. If I bought a car with faulty brakes, I'd take it back to the showroom and demand it were fixed or replaced because it would kill me otherwise. That would be a serious problem (IMO, at least). However, when I bought a new house that had some problems, I fixed them myself and got on with my life. I could have called the builders/developers and demanded the work be done and paid for me but I realised that would take longer and was unnecessary. The same applies with the game: provide your own fix or wait for the official one - it's no big deal.
3. I realise this is a fan site and that therefore it is an appropriate context for criticism - I never suggested otherwise. My point was that people seemed to lack perspective. Sure it's fair to criticise the game but to leap to conclusions about the way a company is run and about their attitude to their customers on the flimsiest of evidence is daft.
4. Apologies if my sarcasm upset you. I fail to see how it "lessens [my] position considerably" - my points are either valid or not but you're entitled to you opinion. I didn't attempt to minimalise (arguably) valid arguments but simply to demonstrate that the seriousness of those arguments were not of the magnitude some people seem to believe, IMO.
5. Who is the "we" who realise that CA don't care as much as you do? A royal 'we' or can you speak for all 19,500+ members of this forum?
6. You try to suggest that my argument is weak because I compare M2TW bug issues with major, real life issues - but that is my point, that is my argument. As I said above, I do not for one second believe that The Guild is not an appropriate place for discussions on this issue. I believe, however, that those discussions would be more efficacious if undertaken with greater perspective.
7. The .Org is not dedicated to CA's business practices or policy. Other people (who happen to share your overalll POV) have commented on these and you haven't seen the need to censure them. You have commented on the culture in which computer games are released these days and the role of gaming magazines; again, the .Org is not dedicated these either? That being the case, why should I not bring in other non-TW issues to the discussion? Because you disagree with my position?
My point remains the same: many people now feel the game is so bugged it should not have been released; I believe many of these people only feel this way because they've made aware of bugs they'd never have discovered themselves. Discussions of bugs and CA's response to them have been inclined to the hysterical. I suggested therefore that a little perspective would be useful.
We have no way of knowing if CA believed the game was bugged when they released it (so far as I'm aware - forgive me if I'm wrong) and no way of knowing if they could have released effective patches sooner than they did. Arguments to the contrary are plain wrong. Leaping from such arguments to condemnations of CA, the whole games industry or anything else are therefore without foundation.
Dead_Like_Me
04-13-2007, 15:46
hey guys i have just finished up reading the new preview on kingdoms in GS
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/medievaliitotalwarkingdoms/news.html?sid=6168943&mode=previews
now in the second patch they are talking about the hotseat that will be included
in the expansion but according to it the hotseat is still planned to be out
with patch 1.2 which will make me very happy :D.
the thing that get me confused is the fact that in 3.4.07 they told it goes off
the patch and will feature only in kingdoms which caused me to be sad.
and the preview is from 13.4.07 that means today ...
so which is more reliable ? usually i would think CA site would be but it wasn't
updated for a long time and according to the forums sites the patch is still
planned for Thursday April 5.
help me out guys ... tell me that CA decided to make the right thing and put
the hotseat in original medieval 2 as well.
Daveybaby
04-13-2007, 15:46
@Whacker: I note you failed to choose either of the two scenarios, or to suggest any scenarios of your own, so i assume youre happy with the status quo. If not, what do you suggest is the solution to this problem? Repeating the same complaints over again at every opportunity doesnt seem to be working, though i commend your efforts. :wink:
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." This was the last title I buy from CA at launch, if at all.
Yeah, yeah, sure. I bet you said that last time, too. :grin:
I take this statement as giving me carte blanche to point at you and call you names if i see you on here moaning about Whatever's Next:Total War.
Oh, and you got that saying wrong, i believe its 'Fool me once, shame on... shame on you. Fool me... you can't get fooled again'.
The magazines are part of the gaming culture, they have everything to gain by giving games great ratings.
To be fair, the magazines arent going to have a chance to spot things like the shield bug after the (relatively) small amount of time they get to spend with the game. Note that nobody noticed the shield bug (at least i dont recall seeing any mention of it on here) until a couple of months after release. Thats with 1000s of people playing the game.
The real problem with magazines is that quite often they will review beta code (okay... since the general opinion is that the release code is still in a beta state - i will say pre-release code), knowing its still going to be worked on prior to release, and assuming (or being told) that the bugs they do notice are probably going to be fixed. Gah!
Perspective though is a funny concept and one that shouldnt be suggested lightly. As a consumer you pay for a product and you have a certain expectation of what you are buying. If it dosent meet with your expectations and you continue to buy it, the process continues on because you are enableing it to do so.
Absolutely - i do have a certain expectation of what i will be buying. My expectation was that, being a complex strategy game, it would have bugs - just as pretty much every strategy game i've bought over the last 15 years has had bugs. My expectations are that these bugs will get fixed. I'd like anyone who has been a regular games purchaser, and who was still surprised and horrified to discover that M2TW had bugs on release, to please raise their hands so that the doctors can examine you. :wink:
I appreciate that we as paying customers have a right to expect a working product, but look, even moronic console games with the depth of a puddle ship with bugs. This is because all games software (in fact all software full stop) is now so complex that trying to comprehend all of the code at once would be like looking into the total perspective vortex. Games like M2TW that actually have complex gameplay as well as the graphics and physics engines have got it even worse.
I do know that games are produced in the state they are now mainly because the public buys them as is.
Its more like: companies are forced to rush games out to meet deadlines. There really is no choice - they are all in competition with each other to get something out while it still looks flashy enough compared to the competition that it will grab some sales.
Here's the thing: Strategy games (even if you include RTS stuff) have always had bugs. They will always have bugs. Its the price you pay for complexity. The current consumer obsession with flashy graphics and the vast cost of developing them means that sitting back and taking your time is simply not a viable option, and this combined with the ever increasing depth and complexity of these games means that we tend to get more bugs and more significant bugs.
At least CA/Sega are fixing the bugs. I know it doesnt sound like much to be grateful for but if theres else anyone out there that bought Master of Orion 3 you will know what i'm talking about. I may come across as a CA fanboy in these posts but believe me i'm not (i didnt enjoy RTW and wasnt going to bother with M2TW but ended up buying it anyway on a whim and was pleasantly surprised) but i do at least try to take account of the realities of the situation. The dozens of people posting "THEY SHOULDVE RELEASED THE GAME WITHOUT BUGS" or "THEY SHOULD MAKE THE AI CLEVERER" is about as insightful and helpful as saying "BEER SHOULD BE FREE" or "THEY SHOULD MAKE BEER THAT DOESNT GIVE YOU HANGOVERS". As nice as that would be, its not going to happen.
Quickening
04-13-2007, 15:47
Was like that in 1.1 already. :p
Any news on the other two tests I was asking about? I mean you are bound to have killed at least 1 enemy army so far right? (for the display thing)
As for the experience bonus you got the buildings yet? :D
In 1.1 the Pope always let me maintain sieges on cities even if he warned me.
Well yeah Ive had tonnes of battles and the name has been correct so far but that doesn't really prove anything. Could be wrong next time.
Haven't had the chance to test the upgrade thing and to be honest I don't really understand it. Im sure Foz or someone could give you a much better writeup.
FactionHeir
04-13-2007, 16:00
In my 1.1 the pope never lets me maintain sieges, go figure :D
For the message, so if you defeat an enemy army and get the "enemy army routs" message, does it say your general's name or the enemy general's name right under the heading?
Retraining...did you ever train/retrain a unit in 1.2 and it ended up being retrainable the next turn again as the retrain seemed to do nothing?
Quickening
04-13-2007, 16:16
In my 1.1 the pope never lets me maintain sieges, go figure :D
Im becoming more and more convinced every day that there are about four differently programmed kinds of this game out there :juggle2:
For the message, so if you defeat an enemy army and get the "enemy army routs" message, does it say your general's name or the enemy general's name right under the heading?
I... I... don't know now. That isn't the kind of thing I would normally notice. But in my game so far the name has been correct. Does it get it wrong all the time normally?
Retraining...did you ever train/retrain a unit in 1.2 and it ended up being retrainable the next turn again as the retrain seemed to do nothing?
Nope. But then, I never did in 1.1 either as far as I know. :clown:
However, we promise to keep you informed on progress throughout the process of getting this update to you.
It's about time, that was my major problem with this whole delay is not that it was pushed back, thats fine let them get the bugs out, no my problem was that their was very infrequent updates on the update. It is better to not post a release date but they could at least have the courtesy to tell us, "oh we're fixing this" or "we're doing that". It was the complete silence that got on my nerves but hopefully now they will tell us whats going on until it is released.
Sorry if my last post was a bit abbrasive, but I am getting a bit sick and tired of the "CA is justified in doing this!!" or "CA can do no wrong!" attitudes which is somewhat how I perceived your post.
@Whacker: I note you failed to choose either of the two scenarios, or to suggest any scenarios of your own, so i assume youre happy with the status quo. If not, what do you suggest is the solution to this problem? Repeating the same complaints over again at every opportunity doesnt seem to be working, though i commend your efforts. :wink:
The implication was that I am ok with option 2, as you stated. Games with minor or insignificant bugs are understandable, and acceptable in my personal view. As for repeating complaints, I'll keep doing that until CA rectifies the situation, or they make it obvious they do not care and I will move on and treat the $50 as a lesson learnt.
Yeah, yeah, sure. I bet you said that last time, too. :grin:
I take this statement as giving me carte blanche to point at you and call you names if i see you on here moaning about Whatever's Next:Total War.
Oh, and you got that saying wrong, i believe its 'Fool me once, shame on... shame on you. Fool me... you can't get fooled again'.
Actually I loved RTW from the get go, the only bug that really ruined it for me was the savegame corruption one in v1.0.
As for voting with my dollars, I've already done that with a number of games and franchises. Used to be a big fan of Valve... I think Steam is a DRM riddled pile of poop, Half-life 2 was decidedly mediocre, and I hate episodic content, as such I haven't bought anything on Steam since HL2, in fact I uninstalled Steam completely almost half a year ago. I unknowingly bought a Starforce crippled game about 2 years ago, when I finally figured out exactly what it was I've avoided every game on this list: http://www.glop.org/starforce/list.php like the plague. There are some games on here I'd really like to get too, but oh well.
Voting with your dollars works folks, period. The place where you make the impact and force businesses to listen is when you can affect their botton line. People who suggest not buying games is unrealistic are sadly mislead. Look at what happened to Ion Storm, the guys who put out the sheer awesomeness that is Deus Ex. They had 3 more titles, one of which was a flop, Deus Ex 2 was a horrible console port without any soul, and Thief 3 was another bad port using a terrible game engine. The lesson is simply make bad games, gamers won't buy, and the fat lady sings.
I sincerely hope CA will listen to it's fans and customers now and down the road. Been with the TW series from the beginning, but I'm willing to leave if it continues down this same path.
Respectfully
:balloon2:
edyzmedieval
04-13-2007, 20:12
Finally, I can proudly say this is the attitude I've always expected from CA. :yes:
FactionHeir
04-13-2007, 21:09
Im becoming more and more convinced every day that there are about four differently programmed kinds of this game out there :juggle2:
Sometimes I think that too.
I... I... don't know now. That isn't the kind of thing I would normally notice. But in my game so far the name has been correct. Does it get it wrong all the time normally?
Always the same. So if it displays once correctly it always displays correctly. Just have a look next time you beat an army in the field (and the army is eliminated)
Nope. But then, I never did in 1.1 either as far as I know. :clown:
As you said at point 1 :p
Quickening
04-13-2007, 23:06
Always the same. So if it displays once correctly it always displays correctly. Just have a look next time you beat an army in the field (and the army is eliminated)
Okay I finally have a definitive answer and it's bad news. Since Ive no doubt come across as totally incompetant Ive provided a screenshot as proof :laugh4:
https://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y101/David1536/name.jpg
FactionHeir
04-14-2007, 00:45
Yup, still exists :D
Riiight.
And the Aussie bashing stops now.
If you feel like continuing, check where I come from << :grin2:
it was a joke mate!
Yup, still exists :D
It's not a bug. The event triggers on YOUR general. Note how it says "enemy army routs." The event could have been more clearly worded as "your general caused the enemy army to route" but as it stands, while somewhat unclear, it is not wrong, nor a bug.
DesertEagle
04-14-2007, 03:49
ITen or fifteen years ago (pre-WWW), there were no forums for discussions of the relative merits of computer games other than magazines and groups of friends. If game was released with a "killer bug", the general gaming community would know about it but minor bugs didn't tend to get much air. Games that were imperfect tended to be generally recognised as such but it wasn't considered too big a deal if they were still enjoyable.
True, however also true is the fact that a company's reputation was built on the code they released, so there were no months later patches fixing the game. If a game was buggy, minor major or anything, then that company would not be able to say, "here we'll fix this."
As someone said, it is the consumers acceptance of this method of doing business, letting a company issue a buggy game and then fixing it later, that allows them to follow this business model.
If customers "made" the companies live and die by the code that came packaged in the box, the companies would either start fixing games before releasing them, or go out of business, or the consumers would accept minor issues.
All that said, I knew it would not be a perfect release and chose to invest in the game and enjoy it while letting it be polished along the way, instead of not buying it.
Honestly, after RTW, anyone who expected a perfect release, while admirably optimitic, should be embarrassed to say that they bought the game (assuming they did) not expecting some issues. Unless they are a TW noob :)
That said, I await the official patch excitedly, and in the meantime, I just reinstalled Rome/BI and am re-unlocking the world!
it was a joke mate!
Yep, but not everyone would have taken it that way and we don't want anyone getting any ideas, do we? :grin2:
sbroadbent
04-14-2007, 05:38
It doesn't work "as intended." According to the release that started this thread, the "intermittent passive AI" is the main target right now, which means to CA at least, this is dysfunctional behavior, and requires fixing. Many things work right, but that one (at least) does not. And that's not even counting the fact that you have to reinstall the game to 1.0 to use the leaked patch. You could write that off as unimportant, but in reality it's a pain in the butt, and in itself warrants them pausing to remedy it.
When I say it worked "as intended" what I meant is that it didn't necessarily introduce any new bugs that made the game worse except for the CTD issue.
Well, I suppose if the AI was passive before the 1.2 patch and is still with the existing patch should it matter if they went ahead with the 1.2 release anyway or delayed it? Essentially, all the other things that the patch fixes were withheld (at the last minute no less), unless you grabbed a copy of the leaked patch. Should we be made to wait until they figure out why the AI is still passive? Does the leaked patch make the AI passive bug worse?
I never bothered to download the leaked patch because with my internet service, I get crap torrent speeds unless I stumble upon a peer/seed that has an amazing upload speed. I was waiting for one of the traditional download sites because atleast then I'd have a much better chance at a quick download.
Regarding the CTD issue, do we even know why it happened? Is it something to do with the installer? Is it easy to fix?
I've worked on a project where I had given myself a deadline. I ended up going a couple months over the deadline, and had several delays. Rather than delay the entire thing too far by trying to get the entire thing done, I decided to release the product in pieces. I probably got more completed since I was focused on smaller chunks and had a better time frame in which to complete the rest of the project, rather than waiting for a single release.
You might have a point where a single large patch makes more of a splash than a bunch of smaller patches, but it causes annoyances when some out here would like to see some progress with some of the fixes getting released.
I'll quickly respond to your points.
1. The community so far has done a good job at bug reporting. Stickied in this forum is the 1.3 Wishlist and 1.2 Buglist. Is there really that much reporting of fixed bugs that occurs.
2&3. This depends on how your organizational process is setup to deal with these kind of issues. Since I don't have much experience regarding the QA and development process, I acknowledge I have an incomplete picture of the overall process.
4. 1.2 was hyped because of how much if fixes, but there has likewise been a fair bit of annoyance and frustration from delay after delay.
FactionHeir
04-14-2007, 11:27
It's not a bug. The event triggers on YOUR general. Note how it says "enemy army routs." The event could have been more clearly worded as "your general caused the enemy army to route" but as it stands, while somewhat unclear, it is not wrong, nor a bug.
Then why did it in RTW show the enemy army's character name? IMO it just doesn't make sense that it should say your character's name if it says enemy army routs. Especially if you then see it with "your forces melt away"
Alex The Great
04-14-2007, 22:14
Ca Is Lazyyy
Then why did it in RTW show the enemy army's character name? IMO it just doesn't make sense that it should say your character's name if it says enemy army routs. Especially if you then see it with "your forces melt away"
Perhaps it was bugged in RTW and just now got fixed. Just because M2 does it differently doesn't mean M2 is wrong. Of course it looks wrong to you, because you're used to seeing it the other way...
I have no idea which way it is actually supposed to be, and don't think any of us really does... so it seems premature to label it a bug. Of course you're free to think as you wish. It wouldn't be the first time you've labeled something a bug without any clear indication it is not working as intended, though, and I'm quite certain it won't be the last either.
FactionHeir
04-15-2007, 01:25
delete
"BEER SHOULD BE FREE"
Now there's something everyone can agree on!
Then why did it in RTW show the enemy army's character name?
It didn't.
Ca Is Lazyyy
That's simply not a useful post.
If you dont' have anything constructive to post, please refrain from doing so ~;)
Think of it this way, as a runner comes up with exciting news.
Enemy Army Routs!!
Prince Arthur; I am pleased to report!
The last battle left so few….
SadCat :book:
Quickening
04-15-2007, 13:53
I don't think anyone should be expecting this patch anytime soon. Certainly not within the next few weeks. I think that would be impossible given that they are taking feedback from the leaked 1.2 for the official release.
pike master
04-15-2007, 15:46
the patch will be out in september:laugh4:
RickooClan
04-15-2007, 17:18
the patch will be out in september:laugh4:
The leaked 1.3 patch will be out in september. :laugh4:
Babblearossa
04-16-2007, 05:02
I, for one, welcome and applaud the leaked patch + delay scheme. Had some graphics corruption problems and waited for 1.2 to see if they'd get fixed or a re-install would fix them. Installing the leaked 1.2 led me to finally discover my card was hosed, now with the delay for the fixed 1.2 patch I don't have to feel like I'm missing out while my card is in the RMA cycle.
Huzzah CA for ingeniously forseeing my particular set of circumastances.
FactionHeir
04-16-2007, 10:59
Think of it this way, as a runner comes up with exciting news.
Enemy Army Routs!!
Prince Arthur; I am pleased to report!
The last battle left so few….
SadCat :book:
Its not that it wouldn't work that way, but I'm going according to convention, since the other screens (Shamed by Blasphemer, Blasphemer executed, Failed to Denounce Blasphemer, Fallen to Heresy) contradict the enemy army routs model.
fenir, you really are tempting me here, and if you weren't australian I'd be doing nasty things to you about now :grin2:
Oh? Aus...Austr.....Australiand....Aus ..tra..li.... oh bugger...........GO THE ALLBLACKS! (got to love me?)
oooohh ...do the nasty :whip: ...do the nasty :whip:
fenir............
Woot 300 posts........
Oh, only took me almost 6 years.
Colossus
04-16-2007, 12:18
Does anyone know if the expansion includes 1.2?
@Alex the great, I agree with our friendly mod team, dont be mean to CA, say how RUBBISH gamespy are instead!!!!
As posted by Caliban at TWC:
We are working to get the patch ready as soon as we can. We are focusing on AI and the top community bugs. We have already made some good progress and are looking into some issues further.
I'm sorry that some of you have a tainted view of CA (although you seem to like our games enough to still be here? , the reality is that we don't see the community as one entity nor do we pigeon hole them. There are trolls here just like every other net community, but there are also professionals as well. The constructive criticism we recieve far makes up for the abuse.
Please have patience, we aren’t sitting around playing grab ass or down the beach surfing. The Totalwar Engine is a massive behemoth of code, art and resources. One of our engine coders just gave me the source-code stats which is: 64mb of source-code in 4189 files that equals 1,655,906 lines of code.
It can take a long time to track some of these elusive bugs down; as you could imagine, the code-base is not a simple descr we can search through quickly.
There are lots of simple bugs that havn't been fixed because of the prioriety we work in. I can say that we will have a fix for the ballista-cannon tower problem in the coming update as well as the other major community bugs TWC and the ORG have been organising for us.
It will be out well before the expansion . As for an official date, It will be ready when it's ready.
As posted by Caliban at TWC:
"It can take a long time to track some of these elusive bugs down; as you could imagine, the code-base is not a simple descr we can search through quickly."
That's what I was warning about. Bugs can also interact which complicates debugging. It gets to a point where taking more time in the beginning so that there are fewer bugs in v1.0 is more efficient.
Quickening
04-16-2007, 13:25
"we aren’t sitting around playing grab ass"
Someone must teach me this game.
Now that I have the leaked 1.2 patch, CA can take as long as they like to release the official version! The leaked patch does wonders for the game's playability overall, and given the how long it will take for 1.3, I'd really like to see them take into account "leaked 1.2" feedback and remaining high priority bugs before properly releasing 1.2.
pike master
04-16-2007, 15:43
caliban said-
[I'm sorry that some of you have a tainted view of CA (although you seem to like our games enough to still be here? , the reality is that we don't see the community as one entity nor do we pigeon hole them. There are trolls here just like every other net community, but there are also professionals as well. The constructive criticism we recieve far makes up for the abuse]
the reason we are still out here is because we want to get our dollars worth since we cant get a refund for our game. just because someone makes a critical comment about how CA and sega have handled this situation does not make them a troll.
abuse can go both ways.
Quickening
04-16-2007, 15:48
caliban said-
[I'm sorry that some of you have a tainted view of CA (although you seem to like our games enough to still be here? , the reality is that we don't see the community as one entity nor do we pigeon hole them. There are trolls here just like every other net community, but there are also professionals as well. The constructive criticism we recieve far makes up for the abuse]
the reason we are still out here is because we want to get our dollars worth since we cant get a refund for our game. just because someone makes a critical comment about how CA and sega have handled this situation does not make them a troll.
Quoted for truth. The "troll" bit annoyed me to.
Calibans comment was made after comments like this:
Different people can also be assigned to different tasks. (e.g. programming/testing/No CA bashing please/everything else that CA deems necessary)
Edited by moderator to remove bashing
still waiting for this, pathetic CA, pathetic...sugar coat it all you like but you are pathetic.
Their motto : Let the "scum" (cummunity) do the beta testing.
Rather I'm fed up that the patch has reportedly been 'just a few weeks away' for the last two months, whilst Sega and CA have seemingly been doing everything possible to sideline, delay and screw it up without actually telling us that things aren't going well until it's too darn late
This is the most ineptly handled patch development and release that I have had the misfortune of being strung along waiting for since Diablo II v1.10
Just to give you guys some context, might explain to you why Caliban made that comment.
Quickening
04-16-2007, 16:08
I think only the first of those comments is a bit harsh. The second last one is true and I agree with the final ones sentiment.
diotavelli
04-16-2007, 16:22
Quickening, has it occured to you that no one at Sega or CA is likely to happy at the time the patch is taking?
They don't want to spend time making patches. It takes up programming resource to produce something they will have to release for free. The only reason they do it is to retain customer goodwill and thus protect revenue from future releases. Ever unnecessary minute spent on the patches is effectively money burnt.
Of course, it's possible that they're not dedicating that much resource to the patch. But, by this stage, that would be self-defeating: if the only reason you build patches is to retain customer goodwill, deliberately and unnecessarily delaying the release of those patch negate any benefit you might accrue because you won't retain customer goodwill due to the delay.
Surely that's obvious? It couldn't be any simpler. There is no reason imaginable why CA or Sega would delay the patch unless they had to. Yes, some of their customers are frustrated by that but comments slating CA as a result are childish and unnecessarily abusive. If you knew and could prove that CA were delaying the patch deliberately, that wouldn't be the case - but I've seen nothing to suggest they are.
Daveybaby
04-16-2007, 16:26
diotavelli, you dont understand. If something isnt going exactly how we want it, the people resposible simply must be lazy, evil and incompetent. This has been proven to be true, just ask any teenager. :wink:
Quoted for truth. The "troll" bit annoyed me to.
I think only the first of those comments is a bit harsh. The second last one is true and I agree with the final ones sentiment.
yeah, how could anyone ever mistake you for a troll? :rolleyes:
Quickening
04-16-2007, 16:32
Quickening, has it occured to you that no one at Sega or CA is likely to happy at the time the patch is taking?
I know that. But I don't think people should be accused of being trolls for not being happy about the situation. That is lame. Not one of those quotes is "trollish". A troll is someone who posts something that has no value to anything. Those people were expressing their dissatisfation and as paying customers that is their right surely.
Quickening
04-16-2007, 16:32
yeah, how could anyone ever mistake you for a troll? :rolleyes:
You lot don't know what a troll is then.
Quickening, i've been a moderator at TWC since Jan 05, i'd rate all of those comments, apart from the 2nd to last one as trolling. All of them though are likely to not make any CA guy who reads them happy.
Quickening
04-16-2007, 17:10
The definition of trolling seems to be expressing disapproval of anything CA does then. Fine, Ive been on forums with similar ideas so I know the deal.
Im going to go and be a good paying customer, shut up, play the game and be happy no matter what CA does or doesn't do.
Well calling anyone pathetic, inept, trat the community like 'scum' is trolling, it doesn't matter it's aimed at CA.
diotavelli
04-16-2007, 17:25
The definition of trolling seems to be expressing disapproval of anything CA does then. Fine, Ive been on forums with similar ideas so I know the deal.
Im going to go and be a good paying customer, shut up, play the game and be happy no matter what CA does or doesn't do.
There's quite a substantial difference between being unhappy with the state of M2TW as it was launched and making unsubstantiated claims about "ineptly handled patch development". It is regretable that CA announced the date for the patch and then had to pull it but, since we don't know the full circumstances, claims of ineptitude are unsubstantiated.
I've been involved in a fair few product launches where we've given a planned launch date and then had to pull the product at the last minute. It doesn't mean there anyone's done anything wrong, simply that IT products are not simple affairs.
It's not like a physical product, where the production process is lineal, and where you can ensure deadlines are met simply by dedicating more resource. IT products nowadays are far more complex than that (think Hofstadter's "strange loops and tangled hierarchies") and throwing more people at the process doesn't necessarily speed things up.
Comments such as "Sega and CA have seemingly been doing everything possible to sideline, delay and screw it up" are just plain stupid. How does anyone know what Sega and CA have done? And why does anyone think either company would have any interest in delaying the patch. If comments like this aren't ill-founded and unnecessarily abusive, I don't know what is.
I doubt anyone is suggesting that you should be a passive, uncomplaining fool who buys stuff from Sega and CA with no regard for the quality of service you're receiving in return - simply that if you're going to make a complaint in a public forum it should be proportionate, justifiable and not ad hominem.
pike master
04-16-2007, 18:20
if you paid for the game you have a right to complain until the game is officially fixed.
if i tell a person that i can fix their car if they bring it in on a certian date and they set aside the time to bring it out and then i say i cant get to it because i put them off to do work i could make more money at is irresponsible and dishonest workmanship.
if i sell a car to someone that has something wrong with it and me and the person agrees to a set time for them to bring it in so i can fix it and they bring it in and i make some excuse for not being able to get to it that day. i would think that is being a real jerk.
when customer comes first in business, you drop what you are doing to complete unfinished business with an unsatisfied customer before you move on to making more money. this is common business practice among most companies i know of.
if i buy a riflescope and it is a bad one and i call a large corporation that sells many scopes in one year they still have the time to talk to me one on one over a 1 800 number and help me resolve the problem and will send me pretty much whatever we agree on without any cost in shipping.
how is a gaming software company immune from common business etiquette?
Because software is a completely different kind of product to a car or rifle scope. It would be insane to think that a software company would drop everything to provide fixes for everyone who complains about their products, there would never be an end to it, and where are they going to work on their next product if they're endlessly fixing things.
if i sell a car to someone that has something wrong with it and me and the person agrees to a set time for them to bring it in so i can fix it and they bring it in and i make some excuse for not being able to get to it that day. i would think that is being a real jerk.
Do you have any idea about how difficult it is to set a realistic time scale for anything in sfotware, i've done programming and i would most of the time refuse to give an estimate for whn i might have something done for the course apart from a very vague timescale because i just don't know how long something will take sometimes.
Now of course setting a date and then not meeting it is bad, but when they pull something because they aren't happy with some of the things still giving problems shows they are now fixing to the best of their abilities and they want to produce a quality patch.
Lord Ovaat
04-16-2007, 18:42
Mad Cat said:
the reason we are still out here is because we want to get our dollars worth since we cant get a refund for our game.
I couldn't agree less, Pard. I reckon the vast majority of us are still here because there is nothing that compares to CA's work, like it or not. I know what's involved in business and programming. I have the utmost respect for their products and work. Money's worth, lol? Come on, guys, we've been playing this measly $50 game since NOVEMBER! There is no doubt that the game can use some improvements, but it is most certainly playable. $50 bucks might seem a lot if you're 16, but when compared to a 3 hour night out to a movie and dinner at McDonalds with your spouse or squeeze, it's a reallllllllllly good deal. And that includes the additional five minutes you guys would spend afterward if you get lucky, lol. I've seen this poor game compared to bad brakes on a $30,000 vehicle, which is a bit of a stretch. Aside from the cost differences, brakes or such would be a physical hazard. I've also seen it compared to the quality of a movie. ?? Again, movies are multi-million dollar productions that we spend close to $50 bucks on for about 120 minutes of entertainment. Well, if we don't like the movie, then we've only invested a couple of hours of our time. Dah? Come on, folks. If that's the case, then I got my money's worth the day I installed any TW game. (I stayed up half the night playing M2TW. Wow, that's pretty sad, isn't it?)
I have no intention of belittling anyone's opinion or comments, and I'm not trying to single anyone out. I guess the point of this is simply that I have gotten far more than my money's worth with all of CA's games; and patch or no patch, I'll still buy the next one. Let's face it, except for cosmetics and certain minor variances, all FPS's and RTS's are identical. We simply can't compare any other titles to TW for playability. I doubt I'd still be gaming if the only choices I had were more of the click-fests or run & guns. I mean, I can still go out to a movie. Right? :laugh4:
I believe the biggest cause of grips in our forums isn't the unplayability of the games, rather our desperation to satisfy and enhance our addictions to them. I still need my next fix from TW.
Patricius
04-16-2007, 19:06
Mad Cat said:
I couldn't agree less, Pard. I reckon the vast majority of us are still here because there is nothing that compares to CA's work, like it or not. I know what's involved in business and programming. I have the utmost respect for their products and work. Money's worth, lol? Come on, guys, we've been playing this measly $50 game since NOVEMBER! There is no doubt that the game can use some improvements, but it is most certainly playable. $50 bucks might seem a lot if you're 16, but when compared to a 3 hour night out to a movie and dinner at McDonalds with your spouse or squeeze, it's a reallllllllllly good deal. And that includes the additional five minutes you guys would spend afterward if you get lucky, lol. I've seen this poor game compared to bad brakes on a $30,000 vehicle, which is a bit of a stretch. Aside from the cost differences, brakes or such would be a physical hazard. I've also seen it compared to the quality of a movie. ?? Again, movies are multi-million dollar productions that we spend close to $50 bucks on for about 120 minutes of entertainment. Well, if we don't like the movie, then we've only invested a couple of hours of our time. Dah? Come on, folks. If that's the case, then I got my money's worth the day I installed any TW game. (I stayed up half the night playing M2TW. Wow, that's pretty sad, isn't it?)
I have no intention of belittling anyone's opinion or comments, and I'm not trying to single anyone out. I guess the point of this is simply that I have gotten far more than my money's worth with all of CA's games; and patch or no patch, I'll still buy the next one. Let's face it, except for cosmetics and certain minor variances, all FPS's and RTS's are identical. We simply can't compare any other titles to TW for playability. I doubt I'd still be gaming if the only choices I had were more of the click-fests or run & guns. I mean, I can still go out to a movie. Right? :laugh4:
I believe the biggest cause of grips in our forums isn't the unplayability of the games, rather our desperation to satisfy and enhance our addictions to them. I still need my next fix from TW.
I agree with that. There are problems, and I hope they are resolved soon, but it has given six months worth of enjoyment for a relatively small amount of money.
Do you have any idea about how difficult it is to set a realistic time scale for anything in sfotware, i've done programming and i would most of the time refuse to give an estimate for whn i might have something done for the course apart from a very vague timescale because i just don't know how long something will take sometimes.
The problem is that this phenomena is unique to the game software industry. Anywhere else, "it'll be done when it's done" is completely, totally, and utterly unacceptable. You have customers, project managers, and management all breathing down your neck, so you're forced to give an estimate and make good on it. It's amusing in the gaming industry because it's the only one I'm aware of (besides the way Microsoft acts) where the owners and publishers can treat their customers relatively poorly, make and sell shoddy/incomplete/bug riddled software and get away with it nearly scott free. That's not necessarily aimed at CA, but it's true in general.
This is why it never ceases to annoy me when the fanboy crowd rolls through and says "u just wait because u shuld lole its just a game". Sorry, that's tough turkey, it may be a game but it's also a BUSINESS. Entertainment is a BUSINESS. I'm paying for something that I can relax and enjoy, and when I don't get my money's worth damn right I'm going to say or do something about it. Unfortunately, this is one area where it's all but impossible to get a refund for my hard earned money, therefore we have no real means to achieve satisfaction except collectively raise our voices in frustration. The problem is that you get the paid shills (I think there are a few here) and fanboys that make it hard to do so with all of their trolling, and then you get the kiddies who don't know how to be constructive and troll on the opposite end of the spectrum.
Thus is the situation. If I could get a full refund at this point I probably would, then I'd be done saying my piece. Since that's not an option, I'm going to continue doing whatever I can until relief is given, and so are the others. For all of you can can enjoy the game right now, I seriously envy you. But stop telling us this game is fine. It's got some horrid bugs, and that's great you all can ignore them, quite a few of us can't. If you aren't going to help us or stand with us in trying to get this fixed, fine. But don't try to hinder us, tell us this game is "fine" or "playable", or generally try to disrupt what we are doing. I really do want CA to both listen to us and succeed, but this "sit down and wait" crap is totally unacceptable, it's been almost half a year. "When it's done" is not acceptable.
Quickening, I feel your pain mate.
Thank you.
pike master
04-16-2007, 19:33
all i can say is that i hope they have learned their lesson about releasing an unfinished game.older total war fans such as myself which are in the minority for computer games will continue to attempt to have faith in the game title.
however younger players are not going to be too fond of a game that requires so many fixes to make for balanced and realistic game play. i fear a lot of those players have moved on to play something else and will not buy total war again.
RickooClan
04-16-2007, 19:37
Perfectly said Whacker! :yes:
Game software business is still in kindergarden stage:
- no use of professional software design and handling
- each game company is developping from scratch no use of reusable elements or standards intercompany wise
- the customer base is splitted into many people, no big end user companies as for example in the SAP Software sector --> so the customers have no power, and the fans are still low aged fanboys and doesn't know to much about business
- there are no other enduser organisations as in the business software field, so no power...
In the long future we will see a merge between business software and game software, regarding 3d userinterfaces, AI, storytelling....and maybe the gameplayers organize themselves....
So up to this moment we have imature software and imature fans...
repman
Slug For A Butt
04-16-2007, 19:52
I must say, I'm getting a bit tired of people justifying a half finished product at a fully inflated price just because "software" is different to any other product on the planet... how so?
A purchased product is a purchased product whether it's a pair of shoes, a car or a piece of software. I expect what I paid for, and this bug ridden piece of software isn't what I expected. Saying that, I was quite happy (for some reason) to wait for CA to do their duty and finish this software.
This hasn't been done before they are trying to take more money out of my pocket for another piece of software, :help: I'm still waiting for my last purchase to work properly.
This wouldn't be tolerated in any other sector of the market, and saying "it's software, cut them some slack" cuts no ice with me.
Come on CA, show some loyalty to the people who have spent hard earned cash with you instead of treating us like mugs.
I must say, I'm getting a bit tired of people justifying a half finished product at a fully inflated price just because "software" is different to any other product on the planet... how so?
Because, instead of putting it aside and never using it again, installing a mod, or uninstalling the game and waiting for a patch to be released, people who are mad at software will spend at least six months on a forum complaining. Even though most people don't really care.
More, if it's an operating system.
Theodoret
04-16-2007, 21:06
I must admit that I am a bit disappointed with the current state of MTW2 myself. I've been quite happy with the 'out of the packet' state of the previous releases (STW, MTW, RTW), as although there were bugs, there were none that irritated me greatly.
Unfortunately, MTW2's bugs are sufficiently 'in your face' for me to be reminded of them every time I play the game.
Whenever I send spearmen to attack peasant archers I am reminded of the shield bug. Whenever I play a faction whose units include lots of two-handed weapon troops I'm reminded of the two handed-weapon bug. When ever I try to use cavalry I am reminded of how CA have nerfed cavalry charges. Sure, if I was a gearhead I could fix the first one myself, but I'm not.
Its a real shame because underneath the bugs is a really great game. Its reminiscent of the state that Master of Orion 3 (the sorry end of a great franchise) was in. Sure you can play the game, but the annoyance factor is such that you never really enjoy it.
Given that the game was out before Christmas, a 6 month lead time to some sort of decent bug fix is frustrating. After all, if I had waited 6 months to buy, I could probably have bought the game more cheaply. Perhaps this is the way to go for future CA releases.
But stop telling us this game is fine.
I wasn't aware i was saying that.
I must say, I'm getting a bit tired of people justifying a half finished product at a fully inflated price just because "software" is different to any other product on the planet... how so?
Because software code isn't like a mechanical car, it's friggin complex and a pain in the ass to get perfect.
And where do people get the idea im justifying the state of the game, i also wish it had come out with less bugs but im glad CA are taking the time to make sure the 1.2 is a very good patch.
Saying that, I was quite happy (for some reason) to wait for CA to do their duty and finish this software.
This hasn't been done before they are trying to take more money out of my pocket for another piece of software
Oh come on, Kingdoms isn't out til September of something, 1.2 will be out before then.
pike master
04-16-2007, 21:28
it sure doesnt help any though when one of their devs pops off attacking the community that pays his wages.
if the guy didnt have anything better to say then he did he should have just shut his mouth.
if i talked to a customer service rep from any company i can think of and they popped off like that they would get into some serious trouble.
people that pay their wages have a right to complain and shouldnt be called a troll.
its not so much the current state of affairs that gets me frustrated its that a CA dev would pop off like that. he ought to apologize but im sure he never will.
He isn't a customer service rep, Caliban has been posting quite a lot at TWC recently because he feels the devs should be more active on the forums. If you read my post on the previous page you'd see some of the comments he's been faced with, and some people have been trolling CA. He also makes a point about constructive criticism, which most comments are. It's the few people who just insult/troll CA his comment was aimed at.
SigniferOne
04-16-2007, 21:52
I must admit that I am a bit disappointed with the current state of MTW2 myself. I've been quite happy with the 'out of the packet' state of the previous releases (STW, MTW, RTW), as although there were bugs, there were none that irritated me greatly.
I find that impossible to believe for RTW, and from what I hear, MTW as well. RTW vanilla 1.0 was one of the worst releases I've ever seen, from a favorite company, on a beloved subject. The amount of scorn heaped on RTW has been such that to overlook it now, with blissful equanimity, requires rose-tinted glasses with extraordinarily thick lenses.
Whenever I send spearmen to attack peasant archers I am reminded of the shield bug. Whenever I play a faction whose units include lots of two-handed weapon troops I'm reminded of the two handed-weapon bug. When ever I try to use cavalry I am reminded of how CA have nerfed cavalry charges."nerfed cavalry"? That's ludicrous, and at the very least a judgment call, certainly not a game crashing bug that you tearfully describe. Not only do the 'mass' settings in the text file really matter now (and can be adjusted to your liking), but there's a more powerful charge setting you can employ for units that you believe are underpowered. As for me, I personally feel that your underpowered cavalry charge is ludicrous; I'm no powerplayer by any means, and I struggle with the game on H/H, but when I use my heavy cavalry properly they absolutely decimate the opposition. Using conquistadores against Aztecs in Otumba battle is the only way for Spanish to win against overwhelming odds. Also, in your post, the very fact that you lump two-handed units indiscriminantly into the bug category, shows that you don't understand the nature of the bug involved. It affects 2-handed axes only, and thus really hurts a select choice of units, mostly Denmark huscarls, and Byzantian Varangians. Otherwise, the reason for the suckage of 2-handed units lies solely at your feet...
Its a real shame because underneath the bugs is a really great game. Its reminiscent of the state that Master of Orion 3 (the sorry end of a great franchise) was in. Sure you can play the game, but the annoyance factor is such that you never really enjoy it.
I'm sorry, Master of Orion 3 was not a game. It was business management software. The game was released not in rhetorically half-finished state, but in actually half-finished state. The back-end business modeling of the universe was in place, but the actual soul of the game was not there yet. Not to mention the fact that MOO3 was exactly 0% moddable. And to that you're comparing a fantastic game that has both the complex model behind it, and a finished front and personality in front of it, with only a few bugs, that were fixed not only in official patch to be, but in the leaked patch already available for so long. If you can't see beyond these points, I'm sorry, I can't help you. But I'll just say there is no justice behind your points.
it sure doesnt help any though when one of their devs pops off attacking the community that pays his wages.
if the guy didnt have anything better to say then he did he should have just shut his mouth.
if i talked to a customer service rep from any company i can think of and they popped off like that they would get into some serious trouble.
people that pay their wages have a right to complain and shouldnt be called a troll.
its not so much the current state of affairs that gets me frustrated its that a CA dev would pop off like that. he ought to apologize but im sure he never will.
I believe and sincerely hope that they were referring to the people, mainly at the .com forums, who mainly do troll all day long. I've tried and simply can't read those forums, it's full of some of the worst grammar I've ever seen and some of the worst arguments, trolls, fanboys, and nonsense that I've had the unfortunate experience to encounter in all my years, and that's saying a lot.
It's unfortunate in a number of ways, because the person who simply writes "thsi gaem sux lole ca sux" may actually have some legitimate and constructive criticism and points to add to the mix, but for whatever reason we get that type of garbage that I used as an example. The same with the hardcore fanboys, being able to politely and constructively argue FOR something without flaming or trolling could add value to the discussions.
That's why I say I think it was mainly about the .com kiddy patrol, because I've come to believe that in general the folks at the .Org are a bit better than that. That's not to say that there are some intelligent, polite folks at the .com, but in my experience they are few and far between. That and the likelyhood of anything being censored there is pretty high compared to here. That and I've been reading these forums since what... late '00?
Lusted, my post was not aimed specifically at you, my apologies if that was the perception. If you'd like a serious answer to your middle question, I am willing to PM if you really want to know.
Regards.
:balloon2:
PutCashIn
04-16-2007, 22:42
Whats a troll? (other than green and regenerates)
Whats a troll? (other than green and regenerates)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll
Lovely critters. It's been perfected into an art form over the years.
Edit - @ Star Captain Insane Feline Robot
No, you aren't a troll. Your grammar and spelling leaves something to be desired, but your posts are almost always funny, sometimes hilarious and occasionally way off topic, but seemingly well intended. You're a good guy, not a troll.
pike master
04-16-2007, 23:14
i am a troll. i just dont like being called one:beam:
Zenicetus
04-16-2007, 23:25
The problem is that this phenomena is unique to the game software industry. Anywhere else, "it'll be done when it's done" is completely, totally, and utterly unacceptable. You have customers, project managers, and management all breathing down your neck, so you're forced to give an estimate and make good on it. It's amusing in the gaming industry because it's the only one I'm aware of (besides the way Microsoft acts) where the owners and publishers can treat their customers relatively poorly, make and sell shoddy/incomplete/bug riddled software and get away with it nearly scott free. That's not necessarily aimed at CA, but it's true in general.
Well, it's true ever since the widespread adoption of broadband Internet access anyway. That's the real problem here. Back in the days when we were all using 300 baud modems (if that), PC games and other types of software had to work right out of the box, because there were no expectations of anything other than very low-level patches. It wasn't possible to basically re-distribute a major chunk of the original game, the way it works now.
But there's no way to put that genie back in the bottle. All we can do as consumers is take our business to companies that don't abuse the ability to release large patches, and who release fairly solid products (Stardock, for example). For companies who do abuse the patching cycle and release too soon (I'm looking at you, Ubi and SH4), we'll eventually learn to control our enthusiasm and wait a few months until the patch cycle is complete... and then buy from the bargain bin. That way, we're not rewarding bad behavior by the game companies. It does take self-control though, and I'm certainly guilty of jumping the gun on a game I'm excited about.
if you paid for the game you have a right to complain until the game is officially fixed.
What did you pay for? You have no idea, do you? Then how can you decide if anything is "fixed" or not, without a clear description of what the game is or how the game works to begin with? The analogy with any other product fails here already: you inspect most products to make sure they are what you want before you buy them. You do not do so with software, so honestly you're buying whatever the company decided to put in the package, and you pretty much have to be fine with that b/c you didn't test drive it. Not saying that you COULD do so even... but from a business standpoint, the company doesn't owe you anything after you agree to pay for the product. You have no rights at all after you paid for the product in the state it is in, and it's remarkable that companies actually bother to listen to consumers at all b/c of that. They honestly don't have to, at all. You paid, with no contract for ongoing service, ergo you now have no rights.
if i sell a car to someone that has something wrong with it and me and the person agrees to a set time for them to bring it in so i can fix it and they bring it in and i make some excuse for not being able to get to it that day. i would think that is being a real jerk.
You're obviously trying to draw a parallel to CA delaying the patch. You got the situation wrong, however. It's not like them making an excuse why they didn't get to your car: it's that they found more wrong with your car than they estimated at first, and have to keep it in the shop longer to fix it so you can drive it properly and safely again. Coincidentally, car repair shops do that all the time.
The problem is that this phenomena is unique to the game software industry. Anywhere else, "it'll be done when it's done" is completely, totally, and utterly unacceptable. You have customers, project managers, and management all breathing down your neck, so you're forced to give an estimate and make good on it.
The patch could easily have been released on the day they said. You wouldn't have as many fixes in it as there will be in the version currently in progress, but then again you don't have an official agreement with CA to have any particular fixes in this patch, do you? It's not like other industries where you actually contract a company to develop something to given specifications. There is no end goal here, no way for a user to determine when the game does what it is supposed to, because there is nothing it is supposed to do except run. CA simply tries to keep users, who I will reiterate have already paid for the 1.0 product, happy. They have no obligation to do so. You can be upset about that if you want, but you have no right to be since you paid for the imperfect 1.0 product. At that point, you gave up your right to demand a better product, because you completed the transaction. I'm not saying it's good, or I condone it: I sure don't like it either. But once you pay, the deal is done, you accept the product as is. If any of us expect the situation to be reformed, it will have to start with a change at this step: we can't allow ourselves to be forced into buying products before we can tell what they are or if they meet our approval. To continue doing so is to throw our consumer rights out the window.
Durallan
04-17-2007, 04:49
Stardock do release fairly stable release but they also release alot of patches too.
I don't mind people complaining about a product that they bought, but can we at least stop complaining until 1.2 is released? Everyones pretty much said their piece but then some people (even though they have a right to) they keep going on about it, we know it was a bad release at the start and we found more bugs than we knew about at the start and CA are doing something to remedy the problems, I for one am going to wait to see what the real 1.2 patch fixes before I judge them again, I dunno this topic just seems to keep veering off into discussions about CA's business practises and the industry at large which it isn't reaaaaallly for, I might get flamed for this post but I'm just trying to point out that well we have all heard what everyones had to say about the Release M2TW 1.0 the state it was in etc, we just seem to keep going round in circles about the same thing which doesn't reallly accomplish much. I would very much like to see what the 1.2 patch does to the game and am looking forward to the patches release.
Anyway back to playing my denmark campaign... first one I've hit 200 turns in! its fun making the aztec cities rebel because I made the population Catholics :P but now theyre attacking my city >.> and the Timurids don't have much left I think theyre trying to reach Constantinople and gonna make it their capital, not sure yet all I know is theyre not attacking me :D
(Yay 100 posts!)
and fenir are you a New Zealander? for someone who says they live in Aus you don't seem terribly patriotic... :P
Foz,
I heartily agree with you. Yes, it is imperfect, but at least they are honest about their errors and willing to make it right.Not many software developers care enough to do that. I have bought many clunkers and have been stuck with them. ~:pissed: And what if the "gameplay" is not exactly what you wanted? Don't like RTS? Too bad. Sell it on eBay.
Let's have everybody grow up a bit and stop whining. :disappointed: Software is very complex. Let them do their job. I am glad we have MTW2, even if there are flaws. :2cents:
pike master
04-17-2007, 05:01
i liked zenicetus? viewpoint.
next time i think ill try to wait for the bargain bin.
and yes CA/sega have a responsibility to fix a buggy game. if they dont then it will look very badly for them. no its not breaking the law by not fixing the game but it is very bad business practice and that will come back to haunt them in the future.
i have played all the total war games and this is the only one that had this many bugs off the shelf and i refuse to believe anyone to tell me otherwise.
Nebuchadnezzar
04-17-2007, 06:44
I can't help but feel that yesterdays outburst @twcenter by Caliban regarding trolls may have been pointing a finger at me!!!
Does expressing my displeasure at having received a faulty game make me a troll? or for being observant enough to notice the plethora of bugs and then brave enough to make comment make me a troll? Am I a troll for expressing dissatisfaction for the fact that I had to wait 5 months for customer service to fix the game?
or, god forbid to ever make any negative comment in regards to the game whether justified or not make me a troll?
Did I make some serious error of judgement here to expect the right to make comment after having purchased the game. Perhaps my rights are to shut up and silently put up with what has been handed to me without comment and anything to the contrary will make me are troll. So very well, I'm a troll!!
I love the totalwar series so please lets not try to compare MTW2 with other more buggy games. How ridiculous to compare a highly respected business clearly passionate about their games with some "fly by nighter" game developers whose sole purpose is to release a game for a quick buck then dissapear into the night clutching their cash. Its like trying to compare Sears with some pyramid selling scheme!! Oh please stop.
What hurts is we expected better. We expected better from the start and we expected better customer service. We just simply expected better all round and were let down big time so many times that it hurts.
and spare me "but theirs x million lines of code to debug" or the argument "a product of this complexity will always have bugs". So bloody what! How very unimaginative since every product ever discovered and used by man undergoes a natural complexity evolution that will alter it significantly over time but this will never mean that it should become less reliable! In fact complexity should not only improve ease of use and functionality but also reliability.
So perhaps I should wait for at least the third safety recall before purchasing my next BMW, mmm... Rubbish!!!
or that the space shuttle is so less reliable than the German V1 that every third launch will end up god knows where. Rubbish!!!
Almost every product we use today in the western world are subject to minimum standards set by governments and these products must meet certain legal, safety and consumer protection requirements but unfortunately for the consumers software games manufacturers are not subject to any strict form of controls or standards and the legal requirements are little more than laughable.
Perhaps this is a reason why we are buying games that faulty or dysfunctional and not because some uninformed programmer wannabe thinks its a technical impossibility.
OK, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about since I'm only a troll and not one of your so called conforming "Professionals"
Never mind that I first programmed in the early 70's using fortran and punch cards, or for the fact that I spent 12 years studying & working at the Dept Maths & Computing in a university or spending the last 14 years as a technical director for a product development company.
Here nothing else really matters because I'm just a totalwar playing troll who was disappointed because he expected better. I am very sorry for being a troll.
Would you like to lock down this thread now as well before CA see it Sapi?
Durallan
04-17-2007, 07:45
Ooookay, I think you took it a little more to heart than you should have. The people he was calling trolls are those that were insulting CA, not saying they were disappointed, those that were calling them lazy, inept, etc....
I'm working on a diploma at the moment, right now I'm working in flash actionscript which can be fun and extremely frustrating at times. I've made a couple of things which worked off the bat, but most refused to work at all. I debug for about half an hour trying to figure out whats stopping it from working (and this is with just about 50 lines of code) and it might end up being a spelling mistake or I put an instance name where I needed a variable. Imagine that in 1.5 million lines of code, trying to figure out where that one little mistake is. I personally think you are overreacting and taking too much of it to heart. Yes it should have been done months ago and yes it should have worked out of the box but like most games it didn't. (Actually it worked fine until we found the balancing issues/AI but anyway...) We know this. This is what people have been saying for months and everyone gets the idea. You aren't a troll, unless you were constantly posting that CA is useless at making games and throwing general insults at them. CA is fairly decent at making games just like Microsoft is fairly decent at making Operating Systems. We all know that Windows works out of the box, but it does have issues (M2TW worked out of the box, the machanics of the game worked fine even if the AI wasn't right and there were balancing bugs/issues that prevented people from enjoying the game fully, cept for the elephant crash bug) Windows doesn't run perfectly all the time it has issues aswell, but do people get this upset about it? (and lets face it you pay alot more for Windows than you did M2TW)
You have a right to complain but if its this upsetting to you, you should go back to the store and demand a refund, or write a letter to CA/SEGA and demand a refund or that you get their next game for free or that you won't purchase another single copy of the game, because those are the things that are going to make any difference, continually expressing your disgust, annoyance and general frustrations in this post anyway won't help your goal of getting a bug free game. Whats the saying? There's no use in crying over spilt milk, its happened, we can't change the past but maybe if people decide to do something instead of continuing to talking about it you can do something about the upcoming expansion.
Can we at least maintain a pretence of civilised behaviour?
I'm not going to rush and lock down this thread as Nebuchadnezzar suggested (and I'll even ignore the implications behind that comment), but I would like to remind some people of what has already been said on the matter: a lot.
We've even had a CA programmer who's been trying to cease the flow of trolling and flaming (and i'm not pointing the finger at anyone), but it seems that nothing will please the community as it is.
I'm not a CA fanboy; never was, never will be. I haven't played M2TW in almost two months, and won't until the patch is released.
But please, have a think about the situation that the other guy is in. CA truly is in a no-win situation as things stand: they delay the patch, they're flamed for giving a wrong release date; but if they had of released it, I can tell you with absolute certainty that many people, maybe even the same people, would be complaining about the bugs that CA is even now trying to fix.
For a long while there was little official response.
Now, there is. Lusted has conveyed to us something from the TWC forums, somthing that if not official is as close as we're going to get; and a response that I honestly doubt I would be restrained enough to give in Caliban's position.
So please, calm down. The patch will be done when it's done, and flaming CA here will achieve nothing.
To reiterate: CA is working on the patch. They're working in response to our feedback and for our gain; working at something that is decidedly not easy. I'm sure they'd appreciate a break, and that, at the moment, is all that we can give.
We are working to get the patch ready as soon as we can. We are focusing on AI and the top community bugs. We have already made some good progress and are looking into some issues further.
I'm sorry that some of you have a tainted view of CA (although you seem to like our games enough to still be here? , the reality is that we don't see the community as one entity nor do we pigeon hole them. There are trolls here just like every other net community, but there are also professionals as well. The constructive criticism we recieve far makes up for the abuse.
Please have patience, we aren’t sitting around playing grab ass or down the beach surfing. The Totalwar Engine is a massive behemoth of code, art and resources. One of our engine coders just gave me the source-code stats which is: 64mb of source-code in 4189 files that equals 1,655,906 lines of code.
It can take a long time to track some of these elusive bugs down; as you could imagine, the code-base is not a simple descr we can search through quickly.
There are lots of simple bugs that havn't been fixed because of the prioriety we work in. I can say that we will have a fix for the ballista-cannon tower problem in the coming update as well as the other major community bugs TWC and the ORG have been organising for us.
Did I make some serious error of judgement here to expect the right to make comment after having purchased the game. Perhaps my rights are to shut up and silently put up with what has been handed to me without comment and anything to the contrary will make me are troll. So very well, I'm a troll!!
You only made a serious error in judgment if you expected what you say to magically influence CA. You may have the right to say what you please in whatever country you reside in, but everyone else (most especially CA/SEGA) almost certainly has the right to ignore it. I don't mind anything anyone says on here, really, but I do think it's rather silly to go on a forum and expect to have real power over huge corporations, especially after you've already paid them.
Almost every product we use today in the western world are subject to minimum standards set by governments and these products must meet certain legal, safety and consumer protection requirements but unfortunately for the consumers software games manufacturers are not subject to any strict form of controls or standards and the legal requirements are little more than laughable.
The kind of standards you're talking about are generally to prevent the products from causing physical harm to people, or to ensure a minimum level of consumer protection if the item involves some level of risk (a car for instance). When was the last time you saw a computer game injure its user physically? Games aren't regulated because they can't cause harm the way many other items can. The government does not care at all if a DVD player you bought breaks in a week, or if the moon roof of your car is shoddy and only works half the time - it only cares if you might get hurt as a result. Every other aspect of the product remains quite unregulated, and up to the consumer to spot and avoid if necessary. Software isn't an exception in this area, it's the rule.
OK, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about since I'm only a troll and not one of your so called conforming "Professionals"
Never mind that I first programmed in the early 70's using fortran and punch cards, or for the fact that I spent 12 years studying & working at the Dept Maths & Computing in a university or spending the last 14 years as a technical director for a product development company.
Can I assume that if you had actual experience recently that was relevant to projects of M2TWs scale, you'd have mentioned it explicitly in the part between the early 70s and now? I think I just did. I'm not going to put too fine a point on it, but if it's been a decade or more since you were involved in any projects writing sizable amounts of code, then your experiences are largely irrelevant to the 1.5M line program we're discussing.
If you've written 1.5M line programs that are perfect in every way and you are set on proving the experiences and observations of the entire software development world wrong, though, then just link me to them so I can find the plethora of bugs you've overlooked.
If you haven't done that, though, please stop trivializing the process and acting like a perfectly coded game should be easy (or even possible) to make, as you clearly have no reasonable basis for making that claim. Coding on punch cards in the 70s doesn't make you a specialist on modern software design, nor does being a Math & Computer faculty member at a university, no matter how much you'd like them to do so.
Daveybaby
04-17-2007, 08:15
Everybody who purchased the game has a reasonable expectation that CA/Sega fix the significant bugs with patches (although, FYI, no right to have that happen). I dont think anyone on these forums would think otherwise.
What i have a problem with is the constant pointless derailing every other thread by the same handful of people. Its just unconstructive bitching and it achieves nothing except piss off everybody else and destroy yet another thread.
Its isnt highlighting problems.
Its just whining, bitching and trolling. Nothing else.
My god, are you people like this in the real world as well?
Oh, and can we please stop trotting out the 'IF I HAD BOUGHTED A MOTOR CAR' analogy. It doesnt hold water and it never has. Car manufacturers have to jump through hundreds of safety tests to get a car out the door because CARS CAN KILL PEOPLE. I guess if you dont mind paying double or triple the price for your games and waiting an extra couple of years then i guess software companies could do the same thing too. Oh, and cars are still buggy as hell anyway - and thats despite the automotive industries amaaaaaazing levels of innovation put into every new car. :rolleyes: Anyone who makes this analogy immediately marks their whole argument as being the work of somebody who doesnt have a clue how the world works.
Oh, and one last thing: ITS NOT JUST GAMES SOFTWARE. Its all software. And its not just software. Its everything. Everything we buy is cheap crap. Everything breaks after 6 months. Buying coca-cola will NOT make supermodels want to have sex with you. Video recorders, mp3 players and phones all crash on a fairly regular basis. The entire western economy is based on crap products marketed by bald-faced lies. Just so you know, in case you ever have to interact with the real world once in a while.
Razor1952
04-17-2007, 08:18
Well everyone else is having a go so why not I,
I will spring to CA defense, because as a self taught minor programmer of several small technical simulations, I sympathize with CA trying to find bugs in 1.5 megs of coding. Bugs are a fact of computer life, look at Microsoft and the number of updates you get there. If I had to pay for the patch then maybe there would be a case for CA bashing, but we don't.
What would you have ?, a small perfect game or a large ambitious game , I know I want the latter with sure a few bugs but still immensely enjoyable.
Durallan
04-17-2007, 08:29
Well everyone else is having a go so why not I,
I will spring to CA defense, because as a self taught minor programmer of several small technical simulations, I sympathize with CA trying to find bugs in 1.5 megs of coding. Bugs are a fact of computer life, look at Microsoft and the number of updates you get there. If I had to pay for the patch then maybe there would be a case for CA bashing, but we don't.
What would you have ?, a small perfect game or a large ambitious game , I know I want the latter with sure a few bugs but still immensely enjoyable.
I think it was 6.8 megs of coding, and if someone shows you 6.8 megs of text in a .txt file you will realise how much that is ;) its kinda scary actually.
Nebuchadnezzar
04-17-2007, 08:35
You only made a serious error in judgment if you expected what you say to magically influence CA. You may have the right to say what you please in whatever country you reside in, but everyone else (most especially CA/SEGA) almost certainly has the right to ignore it. I don't mind anything anyone says on here, really, but I do think it's rather silly to go on a forum and expect to have real power over huge corporations, especially after you've already paid them.
Sorry! You've totally lost me here. I had no intention of exercising any power over anyone or anything.
The kind of standards you're talking about are generally to prevent the products from causing physical harm to people,
No! I was more leaning towards various consumer laws and manufacturers warranties such as "working as described", lemon laws, function without fault etc... but I think you already know this.
Can I assume that if you had actual experience recently that was relevant to projects of M2TWs scale, you'd have mentioned it explicitly in the part between the early 70s and now? I think I just did. I'm not going to put too fine a point on it, but if it's been a decade or more since you were involved in any projects writing sizable amounts of code, then your experiences are largely irrelevant to the 1.5M line program we're discussing.
I only included some background to emphasize the fact I was not talking from the wrong hole. But truthfully, you are right in your assumption that I no longer code but very much mistaken to even suggest my experiences are irrelevent for today.
If you've written 1.5M line programs that are perfect in every way
Perfection was never an issue. Functionality is!
If you haven't done that, though, please stop trivializing the process and acting like a perfectly coded game should be easy (or even possible) to make,
Again perfection was never the issue nor did I ever say it was easy but rather done a little too fast.
I'd like to point out that programming a program is very different than doing so for a game.
A program must get the user from point x to point y, and that's it. Almost every situation is predictable and most importantly controllable by the amount of functionality that the user is given.
A game, however, has an AI and relies on emergent gameplay. It would be infinitely more difficult to debug such code than anything else.
Quickening
04-17-2007, 08:59
Oh, and one last thing: ITS NOT JUST GAMES SOFTWARE. Its all software. And its not just software. Its everything. Everything we buy is cheap crap.
Speak for yourself.
Everything breaks after 6 months.
No not at all.
Video recorders, mp3 players and phones all crash on a fairly regular basis.
I don't know what shop you buy your stuff from, but I recommend a change.
The entire western economy is based on crap products marketed by bald-faced lies. Just so you know, in case you ever have to interact with the real world once in a while.
Ah yes the old "anyone who cares must be a loser with no life" card. Very good. Well guess what, I have a job, a girlfriend, studies, a good social life and ambitions but... Im still not happy about this situation and I still want the game fixed! OMFG!!!!!!1111111oneone :yes:
As for Coke, it's a drink. You buy it, you drink it and that's that. Yes it consists of shit but everyone knows that. The coke analogy would only work if there was some imperfection in the can that meant you only got like 83% of the Coke you paid for or something.
I bought Medieval 2: Total War from Creative Assembly and SEGA not Generic Shooter 8 from Cowboys Interactive. Big difference. Creative Assembly are now a well known and respected developer so it's not the same as buying some cheap rubbish and complaining when it doesn't work.
Here's another rule of the real world: you pay for what you get. Well Ive paid and what I got is still not what I paid for.
Actually, the rule is "you get what you pay for".
You did - you paid for M2TW (or at least you should have), and you got a 1.0 that worked pretty darn well.
Now CA's doing more at no cost and all people want to do is complain.
Quickening
04-17-2007, 09:17
Actually, the rule is "you get what you pay for".
You did - you paid for M2TW (or at least you should have), and you got a 1.0 that worked pretty darn well.
Now CA's doing more at no cost and all people want to do is complain.
I play the game, I enjoy it and I love it. I even went and bought the Collectors Edition and gave my first copy to a friend so we could play online. But that still doesnt make the situation acceptable.
And CA arent "doing more" as in going above and beyond the call of duty, they are merely fixing an already released product. And sure some companies dont bother but even when you have a good reputation you have to work to maintain it.
Right and this is an oath right here, this is the last Im going to say on this issue no matter who responds with what. Debate on the internet is always a waste of time but all too easy to get drawn into :shame:
EDIT: Also, no hard feelings Lusted, Davey Baby and everyone else.
crpcarrot
04-17-2007, 09:43
Actually, the rule is "you get what you pay for".
You did - you paid for M2TW (or at least you should have), and you got a 1.0 that worked pretty darn well.
Now CA's doing more at no cost and all people want to do is complain.
whats going on here this forums turned into a total fanboy site. can noone voice an opinion
it doesnt work darn well cos its broken i ahvent played it for months and i paid full price.
it is NOT a favour CA is doing us it is what we have already paid for.
with all due respect to sapi, lusted and co if you have nothing new to add to the discussion dont post anything your views are well known and there is no need to repeat them.
i was going to reply to an ealier argument justifying the way CA is working saying its a business or something like that, what crap.
the only reason that CA/SEGA can do this to its cutomers is cos of the uniqueness of the product and an apprent monopoly in this type of game. SEGA made a great investment when they took over from Activision. thats good business. and all monopolies exploit the cutomer since there is no alternative. but when the competition does arrive it will be a different story.
hats off to sega for having more dialogue but didnt that also start after the latest patch delay.
the only way anyone can change this is by changing buying habits. if u want a complete game wait for expansion when bugs are fixed and pay less for original game. thats what i do with all my games except for total war but i think thats gonna change now as well.
maybe its just me but some patrons of these forums seem to have developed an attitude where they think their opinions mean more than someone elses.
please dont turn this into another totalwar.com forum
Daveybaby
04-17-2007, 10:05
I don't know what shop you buy your stuff from, but I recommend a change.
Its not me particularly, but if you have a look around the forums for thousands of different products, you will see people complaining about issues for TVs, cars, customer service etc that makes the issues people are having with M2TW look insignificant.
Ah yes the old "anyone who cares must be a loser with no life" card. Very good. Well guess what, I have a job, a girlfriend, studies, a good social life and ambitions but...
Actually, that was aimed at all of us, myself included, having arguments about a computer game on the internet is about as far removed from the real world as its possible to get.
As for Coke, it's a drink. You buy it, you drink it and that's that. Yes it consists of shit but everyone knows that. The coke analogy would only work if there was some imperfection in the can that meant you only got like 83% of the Coke you paid for or something.
Yeah, but thats not how they market it, is it?
I bought Medieval 2: Total War from Creative Assembly and SEGA not Generic Shooter 8 from Cowboys Interactive. Big difference.
...
Here's another rule of the real world: you pay for what you get. Well Ive paid and what I got is still not what I paid for.
But M2TW and Generic Shooter 8 are the same price.
You got what you paid for :grin:
EDIT: Also, no hard feelings Lusted, Davey Baby and everyone else.None here, and none intended either.
whats going on here this forums turned into a total fanboy site. can noone voice an opinion
...
maybe its just me but some patrons of these forums seem to have developed an attitude where they think their opinions mean more than someone elses.If you can criticise CA's attitude, surely we can criticise yours?
it is NOT a favour CA is doing us it is what we have already paid for. And theyre doing it... theyre fixing the game. What exactly is it you want, that theyre not already doing, thats giving you cause for complaint?
Yawning Angel
04-17-2007, 10:31
the only way anyone can change this is by changing buying habits. if u want a complete game wait for expansion when bugs are fixed and pay less for original game. thats what i do with all my games except for total war but i think thats gonna change now as well.
I'm afraid this has been my game buying practice since I bought RTW . .
Love the total war series, but sure as hell not buying MTW2 until they sort it out. To be fair this is the same for other games as well, thought Morrowind was great, but I'm not buying Oblivion until its expanded, patched and maybe patched again (and a mod to fix the stupid levelling they put in the game :dizzy2: )
Nebuchadnezzar
04-17-2007, 10:59
But M2TW and Generic Shooter 8 are the same price.
You got what you paid for :grin:
No they are not.
M2TW comes with support, patches & customer service whereas generic shooter 8 comes with nothing but whats in the package which in all respects ends up costing more for less. So, no you do not always get what you pay for. Only the smart shopper does.
What fantasy says patches are free!!! They never are because you pay for them when you purchase the game.
Can't understand the suffocating nature of these forums. Don't you think everyone who legitimately purchased the game has a right to express an opinion without ridicule even if it doesn't agree to others simplistic ideals?
Doesn't the person that writes "dis gaim sux" carry equal weight to yours.
Daveybaby
04-17-2007, 11:16
M2TW comes with support, patches & customer service whereas generic shooter 8 comes with nothing but whats in the package which in all respects ends up costing more for less. So, no you do not always get what you pay for. Only the smart shopper does.
So what exactly is it youre complaining about?
i'm really at a loss here. Youre complaining that CA are supporting the product or what? :dizzy2:
Doesn't the person that writes "dis gaim sux" carry equal weight to yours.
If that's all theyre contributing to the discussion then, frankly, no - any more than if all i kept saying was 'stfu n00b CA RULEZ!!!!' over and over and over again. I would hope that we could aim somewhat higher than that.
Nebuchadnezzar
04-17-2007, 11:22
If that's all theyre contributing to the discussion then, frankly, no - any more than if all i kept saying was 'stfu n00b CA RULEZ!!!!' over and over and over again. I would hope that we could aim somewhat higher than that.
Sorry this wasn't meant for anybody specific only a generalization. But I would add that no matter what side of the argument one sits the 'stfu n00b CA RULEZ!!!!' equivalent always seems to be the bulk of contribution one way or another.
Daveybaby
04-17-2007, 11:34
Can't help you any further there at all it seems :wall:
Thanks for the confirmation.
Nebuchadnezzar
04-17-2007, 11:56
Thanks for the confirmation.
Now look what you go and do to make me feel bad:embarassed:
In summary
I expected a game with far less bugs from the start.
I expected better customer service.
I expected a more timely patch.
Daveybaby
04-17-2007, 12:16
Now look what you go and do to make me feel bad:embarassed:
Heh, i knew all that passive aggressive stuff my ex-gf used to pull on me would come in useful some day.
I expected a game with far less bugs from the start.
Thats fair enough. This is a problem that has occurred throughout the history of the TW series, so i can see your point that CA should have improved things by now.
But unfortunately the only way this is going to start to happen is if the game buying public start caring more about quality and less about shiny flashy graphics. CA have real unmovable deadlines imposed on them by the outside world that are a direct result of our (i.e. the game buying public in general) purchasing habits.
I expected better customer service.
There were bugs - what more can they do but fix the bugs? This is one place where i just dont understand why people are complaining. CA/SEGA are doing all that can be reasonably expected of them in this situation.
I expected a more timely patch.
I feel thats unrealistic - getting things like passive AI fixed is not a matter of simply finding a 'wrong line' in the code somewhere - its more a matter of balancing behaviours for certain conditions. Very, very tricky (if not impossible) to get this absolutely perfect - e.g. fix things 'too much' and you might end up with an AI that keeps charging at you even when its stupid to do so.
Thats without taking into account the fact that the source code apparently adds up to 65 megabytes (IIRC somebody said recently). Thats quite a few punch cards to look through.
Luckily, spring has arrived here and I'm more inclined to be outside anyway.
Nebuchadnezzar
04-17-2007, 12:30
I feel thats unrealistic - getting things like passive AI fixed is not a matter of simply finding a 'wrong line' in the code somewhere -
Except for the fact that they said it was fixed in day 0 patch
then again in 1.1
then yet again in 1.2
and yet still no fix. Getting tired of hearing this nonsense.
JeromeGrasdyke
04-17-2007, 12:33
the only reason that CA/SEGA can do this to its cutomers is cos of the uniqueness of the product and an apprent monopoly in this type of game. SEGA made a great investment when they took over from Activision. thats good business. and all monopolies exploit the cutomer since there is no alternative. but when the competition does arrive it will be a different story.
However, it's worth pointing out that Total War has been around for nearly eight years now, and the competition still hasn't arrived. There's a simple reason for that - the Total War games are among the most complex games ever made, with two seperate but interacting environments, many thousands of individual features, text content on the order of two copies of War and Peace back-to-back and a codebase that stretches to millions of lines. Look at how far Battle for Middle Earth has made it down that road for an impression of the scale of the task.
We do try and keep bugs to a minimum - and if we could eliminate them altogether we would - but with products on this scale there is almost always something that slips the net, and I think you'll find that that's true for all software products that don't have the mission-critical requirements of, say, NASA... and even there, look at what happened to the Mars Global Surveyor (http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/newsroom/20070413a.html) the other day ;)
:grin2:
At least any software errors that slip into M2TW don't cause that sort of problem :thumbsup:
*sits back, relaxes, and waits for the seemingly inevitible CA bashing to being. Be nice - you've been warned
adembroski
04-17-2007, 12:51
I don't think anyone here has an issue with the dissatisfied stating their opinion, but when it becomes "CA is lazy" or something that impunes CA in some way, I think that's going to far.
In this thread I've seen CA's work ethic, empathy, competance, and personal virtue attacked, and that sort of thing is not only unfair, but also creates an atmosphere in which CA employees may not be as willing to drop by and talk. And that is something other users here SHOULD be attacking, as it effects them directly.
I do not wish to lose the personal attention we get here from CA, and people who go beyond controlled criticism and attack CA could end up causing that.
As the previous poster stated (and thank you for taking the time to be here), none of us who don't work in the field they do can have an idea of the complexity that goes into this game. So perhaps they do use us as a bit of a last-line tester sometimes... how many of us have offered to do just that as a favor anyways? As a PC gamer, YOU KNOW you are going to get products that aren't perfect. Either accept that the first few months will be spend as an unpaid tester, or wait for the patch in the first place. They could have waited until 1.2 to release it, but we wouldn't have nearly the mod progress we do, and CA wouldn't have the Christmas sales... a lose-lose situation.
(Oh, and I suppose I'll address the "altruistic" argument... "what about the poor casual players who never even know about the patch?!?!"... honestly, do you know a PC gamer who doesn't know about patches? I can understand a console gamer not getting it, but PC gamers generally speaking are a lot more savvy. Besides, they'll get it with the expansion.)
hellenes
04-17-2007, 12:57
However, it's worth pointing out that Total War has been around for nearly eight years now, and the competition still hasn't arrived. There's a simple reason for that - the Total War games are among the most complex games ever made, with two seperate but interacting environments, many thousands of individual features, text content on the order of two copies of War and Peace back-to-back and a codebase that stretches to millions of lines. Look at how far Battle for Middle Earth has made it down that road for an impression of the scale of the task.
We do try and keep bugs to a minimum - and if we could eliminate them altogether we would - but with products on this scale there is almost always something that slips the net, and I think you'll find that that's true for all software products that don't have the mission-critical requirements of, say, NASA... and even there, look at what happened to the Mars Global Surveyor (http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/newsroom/20070413a.html) the other day ;)
Sadly the strategy genre is stuck in the whole dumbed down basebuilding pathetic clickfests of bar fights of 40-50 guys... :no:
And I believe that the main reason is that its cheaper to reuse same Dune2 stuff and milk the hell out of the masses rather than to create something truly epic and immersive...
I believe that the lack of competition is harming the series and its outstanding how CA managed to keep their ego quite sane...
After the leaked 1.2 patch the game is really what it was meant to be and the shortness of its buglist is indicative of that...
The next step for you guys is to give us a MP campaign so we stop nagging about the PO (for marketing reasons called "AI")... :2thumbsup:
crpcarrot
04-17-2007, 13:24
However, it's worth pointing out that Total War has been around for nearly eight years now, and the competition still hasn't arrived. There's a simple reason for that - the Total War games are among the most complex games ever made, with two seperate but interacting environments, many thousands of individual features, text content on the order of two copies of War and Peace back-to-back and a codebase that stretches to millions of lines. Look at how far Battle for Middle Earth has made it down that road for an impression of the scale of the task.
We do try and keep bugs to a minimum - and if we could eliminate them altogether we would - but with products on this scale there is almost always something that slips the net, and I think you'll find that that's true for all software products that don't have the mission-critical requirements of, say, NASA... and even there, look at what happened to the Mars Global Surveyor (http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/newsroom/20070413a.html) the other day ;)
your just reinforcing my point, if there was a similar game relased at about the same time CA would be all out to get the patch released not making more expansions.
i wasnt saying there will ever be a bug free game but some patrons seem to suggest that the patch is a favour being done to us by CA for free. after all u have already got my money. all games are pretty complex in the current market this not unique to Totalwar (at least the good ones will be complex)
and another point i like to make is since u have no competition what is the pint of dumbing down the game and trying to simplyfy the game? affectively making in a generic product.
@ Yawning angel
yeah morrowind was awesome unfortunately oblivions scaling and follow the arrow system and the fact that they took away so many otions for clothng armour etc seem to make me feel it was a step in the wrong direction in some ways. thought most other improvements were great.
Durallan
04-17-2007, 13:37
Now look what you go and do to make me feel bad:embarassed:
In summary
I expected a game with far less bugs from the start.
I expected better customer service.
I expected a more timely patch.
Yes well it hasn't happened that way, in a perfect world publishers would allow developers as much time as they wanted to make the game what they wanted and bug free, but we don't live there. Instead we live in a world where getting your product out by xmas no matter its condition seems to be a priority for some companies.
I think the customer service has been decent, theyve kept the public informed, theyve posted on the larger fansites to inform fans as to whats going on with the patches, none of them have been rude to anyone or insulting, what more can one ask for?
Well if you want a more timely patch that doesn't fix everything then demand that CA release the patch now, hell with any progress they've made, make the leaked patch the official one and then release a 1.3 later down the track.
Yes okay thats what you wanted, but you don't need to spell it out for us again. We know. :book:
I'm not going to say anymore about this because it only gets people started again, I happen to think that CA has done a decent job on M2TW, I'm still thoroughly enjoying playing it and I'm just waiting for the official patch. I just hope that no one finds anything to complain about the 1.2 patch because if its anything like this thread.... I'm going back to hide in my cave :whip:
and Nebuchadnezzar, if the game really is making you this upset, I suggest you cut the dvd up into little pieces and burn it religiously. There is no way that you should be getting this upset over a game, even if it was buggy when you bought it, they are FIXING (yes it should have definetly been fixed before but there is no use in crying over spilt milk, at least they are mopping it up (and yes they shouldn't have needed to mop in up in the first place, but its happened so they do have to!)) the game as we speak so until they release the next patch to get annoyed about please just relax, install M2TW, don't even think about the bugs, install the leaked 1.2 patch and enjoy some empire building. Otherwise there is nothing we can do to help you!
Have fun peeps, I'm outta this thread, unless I really need to respond to a reponse... :laugh4: :juggle2:
Durallan
04-17-2007, 13:41
your just reinforcing my point, if there was a similar game relased at about the same time CA would be all out to get the patch released not making more expansions.
i wasnt saying there will ever be a bug free game but some patrons seem to suggest that the patch is a favour being done to us by CA for free. after all u have already got my money. all games are pretty complex in the current market this not unique to Totalwar (at least the good ones will be complex)
and another point i like to make is since u have no competition what is the pint of dumbing down the game and trying to simplyfy the game? affectively making in a generic product.
@ Yawning angel
yeah morrowind was awesome unfortunately oblivions scaling and follow the arrow system and the fact that they took away so many otions for clothng armour etc seem to make me feel it was a step in the wrong direction in some ways. thought most other improvements were great.
Uhm I just have to reply to this.... you do realise that it is the UK CA STUDIO who is making the Expansion, and it is the AUSTRALIAN CA STUDIO who is making the patch..... and uhm, No one is saying the patch is a favour being done to us by CA, a favour would be fixing the game even if the company went bust in 2 months time.... It is expected that they fix the game its just nice if everyone wouldn't get so upset over it, and they are simplifying the game or dumbing it down? I didn't know that.
I don't think anyone here has an issue with the dissatisfied stating their opinion, but when it becomes "CA is lazy" or something that impunes CA in some way, I think that's going to far.
In this thread I've seen CA's work ethic, empathy, competance, and personal virtue attacked, and that sort of thing is not only unfair, but also creates an atmosphere in which CA employees may not be as willing to drop by and talk. And that is something other users here SHOULD be attacking, as it effects them directly.
I do not wish to lose the personal attention we get here from CA, and people who go beyond controlled criticism and attack CA could end up causing that.
As the previous poster stated (and thank you for taking the time to be here), none of us who don't work in the field they do can have an idea of the complexity that goes into this game. So perhaps they do use us as a bit of a last-line tester sometimes... how many of us have offered to do just that as a favor anyways? As a PC gamer, YOU KNOW you are going to get products that aren't perfect. Either accept that the first few months will be spend as an unpaid tester, or wait for the patch in the first place. They could have waited until 1.2 to release it, but we wouldn't have nearly the mod progress we do, and CA wouldn't have the Christmas sales... a lose-lose situation.
(Oh, and I suppose I'll address the "altruistic" argument... "what about the poor casual players who never even know about the patch?!?!"... honestly, do you know a PC gamer who doesn't know about patches? I can understand a console gamer not getting it, but PC gamers generally speaking are a lot more savvy. Besides, they'll get it with the expansion.)
I read your post twice and to be honest I agree with a lot you have said here. I am by no means an advocate for CA but those who make remarks directly to thier charecter and work ethic should be challenged.
I also agree that those who arent in the field probably cant comprehend what goes into a game and the realities of the business. In all honesty you make a well reasoned argument and I dont dispute your point of view at all.
I think those who have kicked this discussion up to the point of questioning CA misses the larger point. that larger point is that they are the problem. As I have said in prior posts, the gaming industry is in the state it is in now soely due to the consumption of the fan.
I understand we are on a site that is primarily hardcore fans and not even representative of 10% of the overall purchases of the TW series. That said, I have seen very few posters here step up and take responsibility for thier role in enabling this process.
This trend in the gaming industry is hardly new, and at this point we should all be clear that games released today will have bugs, even follow up patches. You can reconcille them anyway you wish, (industry pressure, lack of money, testers, yadda yadda), but from this point on you cant absolve yourself of being part of the problem.
If you buy PC games at release you support the industry standard as is, stop doing that, allow them to patch thier games up to what you believe to be acceptable and then make your purchase.
Not only will you be excersising your absolute power in this process, you will most likely get the game in the developed state you want, most likely cheaper and you will benefit from the many hundreds of other users who are happy to participate in the fix process.
Its a no loose, accept you dont have the game straight away and therefore cant complain about its short comings.
pike master
04-17-2007, 14:11
safety responsibility only huh.
what about quality control? or is that a term i dreamed up?
but on the other at least they didnt do like clevers did with war of the machines. release a game and not add a single patch and then disappear.
that game had a lot of potential if it had just been supported.
diotavelli
04-17-2007, 14:38
If you buy PC games at release you support the industry standard as is, stop doing that, allow them to patch thier games up to what you believe to be acceptable and then make your purchase.
Not only will you be excersising your absolute power in this process, you will most likely get the game in the developed state you want, most likely cheaper and you will benefit from the many hundreds of other users who are happy to participate in the fix process.
Its a no loose, accept you dont have the game straight away and therefore cant complain about its short comings.
Odin, I take your point but there is an issue I would raise. It may sound facetious but it's not intended to be.
If no one bought PC games until they'd been patched, how would the developers get the feedback that they utilise currently to inform the design of those patches? We know that companies are unable to replicate the sort of mass testing that a released product gets from consumers using their in-house resources. They rely on consumer feedback to improve the product after launch.
I realise that you and a lot of people are uncomfortable with this but I can't see a workable alternative. It's not a question of developers devoting more time or resource to testing - they can't hope to match the variety and quality of playing styles that their consumers will bring to the game.
The upshot is that they build a working version, release it, get us to test it, patch it and hope we're all happy. This approach may not seem ideal but remember that there are benefits: non-buggy changes to the game also occur during this process (e.g., inquisitors get toned down).
Personally, I'm happy to accept the status quo. I know the game will get fixed and I've got plenty of other things to be getting on with meantime. I wish it hadn't taken so long but I realise that CA and Sega have no incentive to hold back the patch and every incentive to get it out ASAP, so I'm prepared to accept that the delay is unavoidable.
If no one bought PC games until they'd been patched, how would the developers get the feedback that they utilise currently to inform the design of those patches?
through thier own vast testing of thier own product. Having an open beta test for users would achieve this, of course this is counter intutive to the current market condition, why do this when you can get paying beta testers?
We know that companies are unable to replicate the sort of mass testing that a released product gets from consumers using their in-house resources. They rely on consumer feedback to improve the product after launch.
While I believe your first sentence is a subjective hypothesis, lets assume your correct. Thats a problem the consumer shouldnt be bothered with, thats a condition of thier business, maybe they arent charging enough for thier product?
The upshot is that they build a working version, release it, get us to test it, patch it and hope we're all happy. This approach may not seem ideal but remember that there are benefits: non-buggy changes to the game also occur during this process (e.g., inquisitors get toned down).
Thats just it mate, it is ideal, for the dev/publisher and the % of users who are happy to go through the bug/mod/reporting procedure for the company. I am not nieve to the reality of the business, but I have been around the block long enough to know that businesses are driven by the consumption of thier customers. So all those people who do nt like the condition of the gaming industry, are the ones who have the power to change it. Perhaps the only ones.
Personally, I'm happy to accept the status quo. I know the game will get fixed and I've got plenty of other things to be getting on with meantime. I wish it hadn't taken so long but I realise that CA and Sega have no incentive to hold back the patch and every incentive to get it out ASAP, so I'm prepared to accept that the delay is unavoidable.
I can live with the status quo as well. I didnt purchase MTW2 until after 1.1 and user mods that fixed the issues. I did my dillegence I read the boards and understood what was wrong with the product and waited until there were appropriate fixes. I have also been playing TW games since shogun, I knew what to expect from CA and how this process would evolve.
I dont begrudge anyone thier use of the system, at any level, my simple point is that only one person can change the current system and thats the customer. Some of the people complaining here dont seem to want to acknowledge thier part in this process.
crpcarrot
04-17-2007, 15:11
Uhm I just have to reply to this.... you do realise that it is the UK CA STUDIO who is making the Expansion, and it is the AUSTRALIAN CA STUDIO who is making the patch..... and uhm, No one is saying the patch is a favour being done to us by CA, a favour would be fixing the game even if the company went bust in 2 months time.... It is expected that they fix the game its just nice if everyone wouldn't get so upset over it, and they are simplifying the game or dumbing it down? I didn't know that.
erm have u even read the whole thread?? well it my be my bad english and i must have misunderstood all the comments made by some of the previous posters. i apologise
and just cos u didnt know something doenst mean it didnt happen, that was a very contructive comment thank you :laugh4:
neoiq5719
04-17-2007, 15:12
hey guys i downloaded the "lands to conquer 1.2" but apparetly is for the leaked patch. Will this patch work with the official patch too? i need to know in order to leave it to my grandchildren when the patch comes out around those years. :oops:
diotavelli
04-17-2007, 15:14
While I believe your first sentence is a subjective hypothesis, lets assume your correct. Thats a problem the consumer shouldnt be bothered with, thats a condition of thier business, maybe they arent charging enough for thier product?
I gave a further explanation of why developers are unable to replicate the sort of testing a product will get from customers using in-house resources: "It's not a question of developers devoting more time or resource to testing - they can't hope to match the variety and quality of playing styles that their consumers will bring to the game."
The only alternative would be some sort of massive beta testing operation but, given that that would be a logistical nightmare fraught with piracy issues, I don't see it as practical - unless customers were prepared to meet the additional cost.
I dont begrudge anyone thier use of the system, at any level, my simple point is that only one person can change the current system and thats the customer. Some of the people complaining here dont seem to want to acknowledge thier part in this process.
I agree completely that there is a lack of perspective from many people who post on this forum. It's one thing being annoyed by aspects of the game or by the presence of bugs but to assume that CA should be able fix things quicker or publish patches faster (when we have no knowledge of the real facts) is plain stupid.
I realise that your approach works for you but I'm not convinced it would work if everyone adopted it.
neoiq5719
04-17-2007, 15:14
hey guys i downloaded the "lands to conquer 1.2" but apparetly is for the leaked patch. Will this patch work with the official patch too? i need to know in order to leave it to my grandchildren when the patch comes out around those years. :oops:
sorry the 2.2 i meant
Dracula(Romanian Vlad Tepes)
04-17-2007, 15:20
You know how this game should be fixed??????????By deleting it from every computer and destroying every dvd or cd containing this game.
neoiq5719
04-17-2007, 15:24
You know how this game should be fixed??????????By deleting it from every computer and destroying every dvd or cd containing this game.
A lot of anger bottled up huh? dude if u dont like it is ok just throw it away and period, get on with your life. We ( the ones who like it) will stick around till the patch get here.
Have a good life and bye
Durallan
04-17-2007, 15:26
I wholehartedly agree, then no one would have nothing to complain about in the first place, because it wouldn't exist and therefore we wouldn't be talking about it right now.
I gave a further explanation of why developers are unable to replicate the sort of testing a product will get from customers using in-house resources: "It's not a question of developers devoting more time or resource to testing - they can't hope to match the variety and quality of playing styles that their consumers will bring to the game."
Yes you did and I read that, but there in lies the large part of the problem. If what you are saying is correct then the only viable solution outside of your example would be to pull from that base and have open beta testing.
Other companies do it, but again, why bother if you can get that from a paying consumer anyway? I am honestly not completely intrested in the shortcomings of the PC gaming business model. I much rather worry about things I can control then things I cant, and one thing that absolutely every poster here can control is when, or whether they buy the game.
We cant control the internal processes of a private company.
The only alternative would be some sort of massive beta testing operation but, given that that would be a logistical nightmare fraught with piracy issues, I don't see it as practical - unless customers were prepared to meet the additional cost.
So we agree after all. Again, to me its a companies responsibility to ensure thier product meets the customers expectations. Logisitical nightmares, and piracy can be dealt with if the appropriate resources are brought to bare. this is why its an industry problem not exclusive to CA. Companies are handicapped because almost every publisher puts thier games out like this. Customers line up for prereleases, modding, you name it. So I dont blame CA at all, there trapped, yet decrease in sales would require a new outlook on the practices that go into the manufacture of a game.
that is the only viable solution, consumers that speak with thier wallet are often the squeaky wheel that gets the grease.
I agree completely that there is a lack of perspective from many people who post on this forum. It's one thing being annoyed by aspects of the game or by the presence of bugs but to assume that CA should be able fix things quicker or publish patches faster (when we have no knowledge of the real facts) is plain stupid.
If those who were preaching that raised thier hand high and proclaimed they are part of the problem I wouldnt have an issue at all.
I realise that your approach works for you but I'm not convinced it would work if everyone adopted it.
It might not, but the current approach has us all running in circles, and who benefits from that ? CA/Sega they already have your cash, and we are telling them what they did wrong in the first place, then they fix it.
There's a simple reason for that - the Total War games are among the most complex games ever made, with two seperate but interacting environments, many thousands of individual features, text content on the order of two copies of War and Peace back-to-back and a codebase that stretches to millions of lines. Look at how far Battle for Middle Earth has made it down that road for an impression of the scale of the task.
We do try and keep bugs to a minimum - and if we could eliminate them altogether we would - but with products on this scale there is almost always something that slips the net, and I think you'll find that that's true for all software products that don't have the mission-critical requirements of, say, NASA... and even there, look at what happened to the Mars Global Surveyor (http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/newsroom/20070413a.html) the other day ;)
This is completely true, and the source of much of my frustration (I won't pretend to speak for others, if they agree with me they'll speak up and if they don't, well, they're probably more likely to speak up:beam: ) The game is massively complex and incredibly difficult to test completely. WHY then, for the love of all that is good and holy, will you not allow us to PAY YOU for the privelege of testing it for you? Enlist the fans who preorder or buy the collector's editions to do pre-release beta testing of games and patches, and redirect some of your testing budget to fixing bugs instead of finding them.
diotavelli
04-17-2007, 15:51
This is completely true, and the source of much of my frustration (I won't pretend to speak for others, if they agree with me they'll speak up and if they don't, well, they're probably more likely to speak up:beam: ) The game is massively complex and incredibly difficult to test completely. WHY then, for the love of all that is good and holy, will you not allow us to PAY YOU for the privelege of testing it for you? Enlist the fans who preorder or buy the collector's editions to do pre-release beta testing of games and patches, and redirect some of your testing budget to fixing bugs instead of finding them.
Thanks Pode - you let Odin and I waffle on for half a dozen posts about how to solve the problem of paying customers testing the game after it's been officially released and then you come along and provide the solution that was staring us in the face the whole time.......
WHY then, for the love of all that is good and holy, will you not allow us to PAY YOU for the privelege of testing it for you?
While diotavelli is giving you praise I am a little dumbfounded at your premise.
This is already occuring, the org itself has a "1.3 wishlist" and a 1.2 buglist.
CA already has paying customers testing it for them, whats thier incentive to change?
And there in lies the problem, the only incentive is from a backlash from unhappy customers not willing to buy thier next offering. Im sorry to be harsh pode but your concept is already a reality.
JeromeGrasdyke
04-17-2007, 16:02
WHY then, for the love of all that is good and holy, will you not allow us to PAY YOU for the privelege of testing it for you?
It's an interesting suggestion, and I'll certainly discuss it with the powers that be. It's the difference between "opting in" to the pre-patch build and not doing so, and it would definitely give a better quality product lying in the shops.... But there is one thing that is likely to scupper it, which is piracy - generally titles last 1-2 weeks before being cracked, and thats if you're both lucky and use the latest copy protection. Games getting out onto the warez circuit before release is fairly disastrous.
diotavelli
04-17-2007, 16:15
While diotavelli is giving you praise I am a little dumbfounded at your premise.
This is already occuring, the org itself has a "1.3 wishlist" and a 1.2 buglist.
CA already has paying customers testing it for them, whats thier incentive to change?
And there in lies the problem, the only incentive is from a backlash from unhappy customers not willing to buy thier next offering. Im sorry to be harsh pode but your concept is already a reality.
Odin, surely you're being obtuse here? What Pode is suggesting is not "already occuring".
Currently, people are buying a product at full cost, under the assumption that it is intended to be a ready-to-play finished product and may well be so. In the case of M2TW, we discovered that the game is bugged after customers had given it a good going over. CA are going to patch the game to fix it. All of this has occured post-release.
Pode is suggesting that a group of customers will pay for their games in advance and then be recruited as beta testers. They will get early access to the game but will know that it is not viewed as a finished product. Changes required to improve playability or remove bugs will be written into the released product, not added via patches post-release.
The two situations are entirely different: beta testing happens post-release in one case and pre-release in the other.
You've been suggesting that people should refuse to buy the product until it is ready - Pode has come up with a sensible suggestion as to how this can happen. His approach would allow you to buy a product on release day, knowing that it had been properly tested and worked fine - which is what you claim to want.
I know you're determined to start some sort of consumer backlash against the PC gaming industry but you shouldn't let that determination leave you unable to grasp alternatives, surely?
All I have to say is Wow, some of the levels of ignorance displayed here are astounding. Some people really do not have any grasp of how the real world works at all, yet the claim of understanding is there. Talk about whining... This thread has made my day. ~:thumb:
Nods to Jerome for posting in here.
The point about the TW games being "most complex ever" is completely insubstantial though. Any dev is going to think that about their baby though. :grin:
Odin, surely you're being obtuse here? What Pode is suggesting is not "already occuring".
Currently, people are buying a product at full cost, under the assumption that it is intended to be a ready-to-play finished product and may well be so. In the case of M2TW, we discovered that the game is bugged after customers had given it a good going over. CA are going to patch the game to fix it. All of this has occured post-release.
Pode is suggesting that a group of customers will pay for their games in advance and then be recruited as beta testers. They will get early access to the game but will know that it is not viewed as a finished product. Changes required to improve playability or remove bugs will be written into the released product, not added via patches post-release.
The two situations are entirely different: beta testing happens post-release in one case and pre-release in the other.
You've been suggesting that people should refuse to buy the product until it is ready - Pode has come up with a sensible suggestion as to how this can happen. His approach would allow you to buy a product on release day, knowing that it had been properly tested and worked fine - which is what you claim to want.
I know you're determined to start some sort of consumer backlash against the PC gaming industry but you shouldn't let that determination leave you unable to grasp alternatives, surely?
Well yes i was being slightly obtuse and slightly rhetorical in the sense that its my view that customers already pay for a product that needs to be tested.
Yes i understand what he is saying and the differences, no need to start down a negative path here. his suggestion is sensible, but hardly practical (IMHO) given the fact of the current circumstance.
the game is being purchased, tested, and reported on and the company improves it from there. That infact is occurring right now. My point is aimed at the sods who come on here and bitch about the game in its current state without acknowledgement of thier part in the process.
Im not trying to start a backlash, Im simply giving an opinion, based on logic of the impact that consumers have on the process. Im honestly not completely intrested in how CA can improve thier business model because I am convinced it wouldnt take root.
Cynical? perhaps, but my approach to life has always been to worry about the things I can control, not things beyond it.
Dracula(Romanian Vlad Tepes)
04-17-2007, 17:15
It's an interesting suggestion, and I'll certainly discuss it with the powers that be. It's the difference between "opting in" to the pre-patch build and not doing so, and it would definitely give a better quality product lying in the shops.... But there is one thing that is likely to scupper it, which is piracy - generally titles last 1-2 weeks before being cracked, and thats if you're both lucky and use the latest copy protection. Games getting out onto the warez circuit before release is fairly disastrous.
:daisy:
Quickening
04-17-2007, 17:55
:daisy:
That's sad if it's true. You should be supporting the industry.
:daisy:
AS much as I was hoping to go on and on with diotavelli, its hard to muster much after this.
You certainly are having quite a day for yourself dracula, your everywhere today. :shame:
:daisy:
Ah VLAD.... Weren't you banned from the .COM for making this sort of comment worthy of Baldrick from Blackadder?
alex9337
04-17-2007, 18:11
I have been away for a little while, too much work. I was hoping to come back and see that, after almost 2 weeks, there might be some sort of update on when we would finally receive the new 1.2 patch, but to no avail.
I admit I don't know much about programming, but what strikes me as odd is that there are many out there who are using the "leaked" 1.2 patch and have, for the most part, good success with it. As I understand it, comments have indicated that the problem was with the installer and not the actual programming itself.
If this is the case, wouldn't one think that this could be resolved relatively quickly?
I am a devoted, but frustrated, fan of this series. I hope it all works out.
atheotes
04-17-2007, 18:22
:daisy:
He has been posting such nonsense in all threads... just ignore him.
Bob the Insane
04-17-2007, 18:28
I suspect the 1.2 patch is suffering from a little feature creep... When it get's sent back from QA, the devs have already fixed a few more items in the latest build so they fix the issues QA raise in this new build and send it out, which results in the possibility of more issues...
It is a case of swings and roundabouts though as while it takes longer to get the patch, in the end it will fix more...
Daveybaby
04-17-2007, 18:38
Hey, as long as it get leaked each time around the loop, i aint gonna complain.
edyzmedieval
04-17-2007, 18:41
It's an interesting suggestion, and I'll certainly discuss it with the powers that be. It's the difference between "opting in" to the pre-patch build and not doing so, and it would definitely give a better quality product lying in the shops.... But there is one thing that is likely to scupper it, which is piracy - generally titles last 1-2 weeks before being cracked, and thats if you're both lucky and use the latest copy protection. Games getting out onto the warez circuit before release is fairly disastrous.
Ah milord, would CA be looking for beta-testers and bug spotters? Recruit from the community. Free, and very eager. :yes:
:daisy:
It must be really sad being you.
Dracula(Romanian Vlad Tepes)
04-17-2007, 18:52
It must be really sad being you.
:daisy:
detroitmechworks
04-17-2007, 19:03
Who started a game of Troll: The Flaming and didn't invite me?
C'mon man, you're ten seconds from the old " U R ALL N00BS" argument. Can't you be a little more creative in your trolling, like mention Gun Control or Abortion or something?
edyzmedieval
04-17-2007, 19:05
I support the community, I get to play online, I have them when they are released ( no, not the usual Romanian companies...).
It's sad being you because your comments are totally off the line of good judgement.
Alas, enough talk. Go back to your cracked games. Real world is not for you.
Please do not respond to Dracula(Romanian Vlad Tepes)'s posts. The moderators will deal with his rule violations.
SigniferOne
04-17-2007, 21:09
Can someone kick this guy out, and ban his butt?
hellenes
04-17-2007, 22:11
It's an interesting suggestion, and I'll certainly discuss it with the powers that be. It's the difference between "opting in" to the pre-patch build and not doing so, and it would definitely give a better quality product lying in the shops.... But there is one thing that is likely to scupper it, which is piracy - generally titles last 1-2 weeks before being cracked, and thats if you're both lucky and use the latest copy protection. Games getting out onto the warez circuit before release is fairly disastrous.
Thats why you guys should switch to Multiplayer...
I havent heard of any multiplayer oriented game being pirated extensively...
WarcraftIII, BF2,Lineage2, WoW, CS, MoH you name it...
These games income is the clear indication of how much money is lost on piracy...
hellenes
04-17-2007, 22:14
It must be really sad being you.
Youve just called the most of Easter/South Eastern Europeans sad...and I must tell you people in Greece where Im from are FAAAR from being sad with the weather and the summer we have...
Its just that we have this all leftist hatred towards corporations of any kind...so there isnt this remorse sadly about piracy...
I agree with your conclusions, Odin: the only way we're going to get the release quality everyone is asking for is with some kind of system where you can actually play a game for a while that you haven't yet paid for, and open betas seem to be the best option there since they'll give the companies the feedback that they'd normally get from the pre-major-patch phase of the process. Without the ability to do this, consumers have no idea what they're purchasing, and that's an unacceptable situation for the industry to remain in. I do understand the risks and roadblocks currently associated with this for the developer/publisher... but it will have to happen in the future, somehow, because the issue is quickly coming to a head.
The idea of waiting for the major patch before buying the game would be quite effective at forcing reform on the industry, as eventually there will be too few pre-patch buyers to give the good feedback the company needs to get that patch into shape... and all the post-patch buyers will be waiting for the product to get to a level it can't get to because of inadequate feedback. At that point, there's no choice left except to fix the situation: the company needs feedback somehow in order to get it good enough for the post-patch buyers to buy it, and if the majority of the market is refusing to pay for the "privilege" of giving that feedback on the unfinished 1.0 product, there's little recourse except to make the 1.0 release free. By that, I simply mean what we just got as a 1.0 would be forced to be the open beta release, and 1.2 would then become the actual paying release of the product. It will take some time to get things to that point, but I honestly think it's the only way any of us are going to get relief from the hosing the gaming industry is currently allowed to give us.
Companies could of course avoid doing that and simply do without the community feedback... but I'm betting without it, the game never gets to a point that people will agree to buy it: it's amazing the amount of bugs the gaming community is currently swatting, and I don't think gaming companies can get their products to a reasonably bug-free and fan-pleasing level without that help or else ridiculous extra testing expenses that they don't want. I'm not against the community doing it, I'm just saying we shouldn't have to pay to do it for them for months, and we have to do something to make them realize that.
Razor1952
04-18-2007, 02:49
It's an interesting suggestion, and I'll certainly discuss it with the powers that be. It's the difference between "opting in" to the pre-patch build and not doing so, and it would definitely give a better quality product lying in the shops.... But there is one thing that is likely to scupper it, which is piracy - generally titles last 1-2 weeks before being cracked, and thats if you're both lucky and use the latest copy protection. Games getting out onto the warez circuit before release is fairly disastrous.
Please correct me if I'm wrong but the real testing that is needed is the main program, ie, to avoid things like shield/2h bugs and passive ai. A time limited incomplete version of mtw2 ( say 3 or 4 faction and small map)would seem to me to allow testing of the most critical things without putting out a full version which would undoubtedly get gobbled up by the warez community. Indeed even if an abbreviated version did get cracked and passed around, it may well still successfully promote the full versions sales. A bit like a better demo.
Sure there may be bugs in individual animations/descr etc files but these would be much more easily sorted.
I for one would pay to be part of making better totalwar type games. That initial payment would go towards the cost of the full game when it was fully released.
Totalwar is one game series which has legions of loyal fans just waiting for things to go right.
I agree with your conclusions, Odin: the only way we're going to get the release quality everyone is asking for is with some kind of system where you can actually play a game for a while that you haven't yet paid for, and open betas seem to be the best option there since they'll give the companies the feedback that they'd normally get from the pre-major-patch phase of the process. Without the ability to do this, consumers have no idea what they're purchasing, and that's an unacceptable situation for the industry to remain in. I do understand the risks and roadblocks currently associated with this for the developer/publisher... but it will have to happen in the future, somehow, because the issue is quickly coming to a head.
After having wasted a good 3 years being a fanboy of Paradox I came to a very concrete conclusion on the gaming industry. That games take approx 3 patches and 6-9 months of release to the public before all the annoying bugs are removed (big and small).
After that you get some real enhancements. I just dont think its to much to ask to be at the 1.2 point when making a purchase. Was it really so hard, and such a trial of the QA dept that they couldnt find the shield bug? The two handed issue? :no:
At that point, there's no choice left except to fix the situation: the company needs feedback somehow in order to get it good enough for the post-patch buyers to buy it, and if the majority of the market is refusing to pay for the "privilege" of giving that feedback on the unfinished 1.0 product, there's little recourse except to make the 1.0 release free. By that, I simply mean what we just got as a 1.0 would be forced to be the open beta release, and 1.2 would then become the actual paying release of the product. It will take some time to get things to that point, but I honestly think it's the only way any of us are going to get relief from the hosing the gaming industry is currently allowed to give us.
Thats possible but unlikely. I truly believe that the industry has developed a wonderful business model and its firing on all cylindars. So you have a 100 or so die hards that arent happy, in the larger scope of things you industry rags and web sites giving glowing reviews to these games, end users happy to fix the problems for you, and on top of that you have multiple fan sites that list the bugs for you.
In a formatted efficent manner that makes its easier to fix. The killer for me is, with all this working in thier favor we still, at (leaked) 1.2 have a bug list. Of course you will always have those who will claim the complexity of the development necessitates a bug or two. No pun intended here, but your solution is decent but "why fix it if it isnt broken?"
Companies could of course avoid doing that and simply do without the community feedback... but I'm betting without it, the game never gets to a point that people will agree to buy it: it's amazing the amount of bugs the gaming community is currently swatting, and I don't think gaming companies can get their products to a reasonably bug-free and fan-pleasing level without that help or else ridiculous extra testing expenses that they don't want. I'm not against the community doing it, I'm just saying we shouldn't have to pay to do it for them for months, and we have to do something to make them realize that.
I benefit from community fixes, I am part of the problem here and I freely admit it. What bothers me slightly is that the end users (those who fix, and those who purchase) rarely step up to the plate and state that they infact are the cause of all this.
I will be curious to see how the new expansion pans out on the boards. I suspect that we will be rightback here having a similar conversation.
Durallan
04-18-2007, 05:15
the only legally binding way that they could probably get more beta testers is if they started a closed public beta, and you had to sign an NDA and register with them (that would mean giving them your name address ekcetera which is what some companies do, and erm breaking the NDA could be nasty for the person who breaks it and its not too ahrd to find out who so, that could be an option if its properly controlled. Except that they wouldn''t have to pay to test it, which would be fair seeing they signed an NDA, but anyway thats just another path, another idea is the DevNet which Egosoft (http://www.egosoft.com) uses.
Hey Lusted do you reckon you can get the CA guys to look at the DevNet idea?
SigniferOne
04-18-2007, 08:04
Just leave some part out. Make settlements only buildable to the 2nd level, out of 5. Send that out to the beta testers, and they can leak it all they want.
Lord_hazard
04-18-2007, 08:51
It's an interesting suggestion, and I'll certainly discuss it with the powers that be. It's the difference between "opting in" to the pre-patch build and not doing so, and it would definitely give a better quality product lying in the shops.... But there is one thing that is likely to scupper it, which is piracy - generally titles last 1-2 weeks before being cracked, and thats if you're both lucky and use the latest copy protection. Games getting out onto the warez circuit before release is fairly disastrous.
I totally agree. IMO piracy is worse then ever and its quickly starting to destroy the pc market.
Thanks to everyone who did their best to engage in constructive debate.
A reminder to a select few people: advocating piracy is against guild rules and as such is simply not acceptable in this forum.
Above and beyond that, what right to you have to complain about a game that you haven't even purchased?
My sincere thanks go to Jerome for braving the terrors of this thread to present his point of view. :bow:
:daisy:
I smell the whiff of the banhammer....~:wave:
edyzmedieval
04-18-2007, 09:39
My sincere thanks go to Jerome for braving the terrors of this thread to present his point of view. :bow:
Ditto. Thank you Jerome. :bow:
Matty, please don't feed the troll (though it would be fair to say that Dracula's immediate future here is clouded)
I totally agree. IMO piracy is worse then ever and its quickly starting to destroy the pc market.
Indeed. The obvious solution is to further lower the quality of games, load them up with malware and provide little or no customer support. If the pirates are so succesful, copying their practices must surely be the way to go.
Chicken? Or egg?
Actually, the obvious (and workable) solution is an online verification system such as Steam; but we digress :grin2:
Actually, the obvious (and workable) solution is an online verification system such as Steam; but we digress :grin2:
Oh, absolutely. Because such a flawless protection scheme (http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/editorials/article/1782/) is exactly what the customers really want (http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=278444).
Forget about quality, customer support and all that other nonsense. Nobody really wants that anyway.
Durallan
04-18-2007, 15:51
Actually, the obvious (and workable) solution is an online verification system such as Steam; but we digress :grin2:
NO. Nonononononononononononono.
I would agree to Egosofts way, of registering your serial number to get the patches and other cool stuff to download, but not an onilne verification system, unless it allowed me to download the game later on (like Stardock). Just NO. What happens when you want to play the game a say a decade later and the company has gone bust or something? What does one do then? Steam is barely acceptable. It forces the program on you to play the game which I don't like but maybe thats just me.
FactionHeir
04-18-2007, 16:41
I quite liked those things in the old days where certain hints were in the manual and without the manual, you'd be stuck at a point in game and couldn't continue (as you wouldn't know in which order for example you had to do something).
I guess the problem would then be people putting the manual online. But that would probably be rarer than the game online, especially if the company does not provide an electronic copy of the manual (someone will have to scan pages)
Or that thing where you had to enter a certain word from a certain page of the manual to start the game. That was priceless. Too bad there's always going to be the kind of people who will try to make those things available online. Not much that can be done about it. Actually I do wonder whether copy protection is overrated. The people pirating with or without would likely still be around the same but the publisher saves some cash not buying the copy protection and having to worry about constantly updating it and getting hate from the community members who use an abberant CD drive that the copy protection doesn't like.
Actually I do wonder whether copy protection is overrated. The people pirating with or without would likely still be around the same but the publisher saves some cash not buying the copy protection and having to worry about constantly updating it and getting hate from the community members who use an abberant CD drive that the copy protection doesn't like.
I agree, a great example is Stardock, companies should follow in Stardock's footsteps, you don't need a serial to install or play the game at all, but if you want the numerous updates (which not only fix things, they also add features) you need to enter your serial number into a program called Stardock central, which is similar to Steam except it doesn't need to be running or even on your system to play the game.
I agree, a great example if Stardock, companies should follow in Stardock's footsteps, you don't need a serial to install or play the game at all, but if you want the numerous updates (which not only fix things, they also add features) you need to enter your serial number into a program called Stardock central, which is similar to Steam except it doesn't need to be running or even on your system to play the game.
This would be perfectly fine and acceptable to me. Steam is a DRM and bug riddled PoS. I'm completely and totally for publishers attempting to protect their software, but there's a line that's drawn when software becomes spyware/big brother/1984-ish, Steam is over that line IMO. What's even sadder is Valve had the right idea with WON. For the record I do agree that piracy is a problem, but it's not nearly as bad as some sections of the industry and publishers would try to make it out to be.
Agent Smith
04-18-2007, 19:22
I agree, a great example if Stardock, companies should follow in Stardock's footsteps, you don't need a serial to install or play the game at all, but if you want the numerous updates (which not only fix things, they also add features) you need to enter your serial number into a program called Stardock central, which is similar to Steam except it doesn't need to be running or even on your system to play the game.
The kicker is Gal Civ 2 was a top selling game for weeks...WITHOUT any protection. Heck, you don't even need the cd to play the game. You just install it (or download the entire thing online).
Gal Civ 2 was a perfect example that the same success can be had without the ridiculous protections that make it annoying for "legal" gamers.
valhalla89
04-18-2007, 20:37
I can't help but feel that yesterdays outburst @twcenter by Caliban regarding trolls may have been pointing a finger at me!!!
Does expressing my displeasure at having received a faulty game make me a troll? or for being observant enough to notice the plethora of bugs and then brave enough to make comment make me a troll? Am I a troll for expressing dissatisfaction for the fact that I had to wait 5 months for customer service to fix the game?
or, god forbid to ever make any negative comment in regards to the game whether justified or not make me a troll?
.....Ja, pretty much. ~:cool:
Keep on topic please. This thread is for discussion of patch 1.2, not general game industry copy protection methods. If you want to talk about that, take it to the Arena.
It's an interesting suggestion, and I'll certainly discuss it with the powers that be. It's the difference between "opting in" to the pre-patch build and not doing so, and it would definitely give a better quality product lying in the shops.... But there is one thing that is likely to scupper it, which is piracy - generally titles last 1-2 weeks before being cracked, and thats if you're both lucky and use the latest copy protection. Games getting out onto the warez circuit before release is fairly disastrous.
I wish I could take credit for the idea, but it's Brad Wardell and crew at Stardock that introduced me to it with the way they handled Galactic Civilizations II. Which, BTW, has done right well for itself without copy protection of any sort, through the mechanism of requiring the CD key in order to register to get the patches.
If I ran the zoo, I would aim for a release build on the CDs to be a presentable beta (first cut beta version less any crash bugs, basically), and then all of the other fixes be bundled into a release day patch (which requires the CD key to install). In this way, the pre-release beta tests work out as discussed before, and the pirates get a weakly functioning version of the game. If they like it and see potential, they buy it in order to get the patches, and now piracy has made you an extra sale, on top of the money you previously made off us fans who burned down your preorder server the second it went live. :laugh4: Which I think is exactly the point in the dev cycle when extra cash would be most handy, as it can go toward the final marketing blitz.
In short, I think in a lot of ways this is a really good idea, and the fact that you're willing to discuss it with the brass in spite of the piracy concerns makes me VERY happy. :yes: :2thumbsup:
Quickening
04-18-2007, 23:36
I wish I could take credit for the idea, but it's Brad Wardell and crew at Stardock that introduced me to it with the way they handled Galactic Civilizations II. Which, BTW, has done right well for itself without copy protection of any sort, through the mechanism of requiring the CD key in order to register to get the patches.
Paradox did the exact same thing with Europa Universalis 3 (except they went one step too far and gave owners of the Collectors Edition more free content to download than those with the standard edition damn them). I think it's a great policy personally.
Not only that, but when you have registered your game it is linked to your account on their forum so you can see who has the game. Only those who have registered the game get access to the tech forums. Not sure about that one.
FactionHeir
04-19-2007, 00:12
Thats kind of like Bioware and how you can only post on certain forums there if you have a valid cd key registered on their site.
PutCashIn
04-19-2007, 03:11
Maybe those who are upset at not being 'allowed' to trash CA/SEGA etc might want to consider where the server for this forum is hosted - If its in a litigal country like the USA, I bet the moderators would be rather quick to clamp down on any posts that are going to get them sued back into the stoneage.
Sorry, but that last post is just ignorance regarding law and legal procedure. There's a pretty well defined difference between legitimate complaints and criticism of a product which is part of free speech, at least in the US, and illegal speech. The other individual's highly controversial posts that we've been asked to ignore are not in of themselves illegal, however the behavior described clearly is. Best thing to do is warn, ban if necessary which I believe is probably occurring. The mods said it best, don't feed the troll in this case.
Discussing copy protection schemes may arguably not be on topic with this thread, but I think some of it is keeping in the spirit of the discussion. I do agree that this has gotten way off topic though, at this point.
:focus:
So, after what, a few weeks now, now that some of us have had time to digest the leaked patch, have any opinions changed?
Honestly my opinion has not. The big button issue for me, unit blobbing and cohesion, shows absolutely no improvement since v1.0 in my experience. Trying to keep my armies in sync, moving in formation, responding to commands effectively, reforming, etc... It's pretty much impossible. This is one aspect where RTW just blows M2TW out of the water. See my post in the bug thread for an aspect of this, it's not the whole picture but it shows much of it. This, coupled with the passive AI bug and extremely wierd behavior in some sieges has led me to just autoresolve all the battles I fight. Kinda sad, because it takes away that whole aspect of the game. The campaign map is fun and I like spending a lot of time on it, but fighting the battles is really the core of what this series is about, without them the game just feels empty. Sure there are some improvements, which are all well and good and to be expected, unfortunately for me the big issues that ruin the game haven't been fixed. Worse, I am starting to get the feeling and impression that this is the way the game is designed to work, and I sincerely hope that is NOT the case.
*discussion on unit blobbing/anti-blobbing*
I haven't seen as horrible results as any of your test pictures are showing, and my units do try to put themselves back into formation while they're marching/running. It's sure not perfect, but it's not disgusting like your pictures, either. I noticed your units sizes in the pics though. Try normal sizes: I can only guess that's why the whole anti-blobbing thing has never seemed problematic to me. In fact come to think of it, the unit size setting may be responsible for an awful lot of the discrepancy we see in forum discussions.
Hope that works for you: it would be a breath of fresh air for you to be somewhat appeased, even if grudgingly and only for 5 minutes. :2thumbsup:
Durallan
04-19-2007, 05:08
actually with 1.2 things seems to ahve gotten worse in sieges for me. I now have to order each individual unit to a spot anywhere otherwise they will stop moving completely, some units just freeze and don't move again for the whole siege.... getting stuck in silly place in the city, like stopping moving in the middle of the road, this has mostly been with archers crossbowmen and taking off the skirmish option seems to help somewhat. I swear it didn't do this in 1.1
still terribly frustrating and I lose a fair amount of archers that I shouldn't have lost, but anyway.
SoxSexSax
04-19-2007, 07:02
Patch makes the game slightly better (mainly due to shield bug fix, 2H fix and siege pathfinding fix) but it is still a looong way from good:
- Battle AI is still basically inept and frequently passive (with horrible consistency if you set it to defender in a custom battle...)
- Deploying properly when defending a siege is practically impossible due to needing about 5 feet between any man and a wall
- No effort was made whatsoever to balance any units...if you don't think balance is whacked, just check out the difference in stats of Poland's 2 main missile troops and then the difference in cost. This is one of many examples of similarly priced units of the same basic type having huge disparities in effectiveness at the same task.
- Campaign AI still builds low tech armies all the time. It's so fun being the world's only superpower and crushing stack after stack after meaningless stack of mercenary crossbowmen and peasants...it really is...
So yeah, they've fixed some critical issues. Woohoo. The game still has about as much challenge in SP as Snap vs a deaf mute. I simply cannot fathom how I could lose a campaign unless I deliberately sabotaged myself. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that the patch has made things EASIER. Now spearmen can actually hold out for a few seconds, I can make significant armies earlier and easier.
Like Rome, Med 2 looks great, sounds great and, for the first few days, was enjoyable. But when you dig a little beneath the surface, what you basically have is an RPG, where you are the emperor of a small country that rises to be a great empire, not a strategy game. You're not playing against the AI, you're just playing. And, personally, I don't find that to be much fun.
PutCashIn
04-19-2007, 08:08
LOL, if anything was well defined in Law, you wouldnt need Lawyers.
Durallan
04-19-2007, 15:35
LOL, if anything was well defined in Law, you wouldnt need Lawyers.
If politicians had to do their own taxes, we would have had tax reform long ago! :2thumbsup: :laugh4:
sorry for the spam.
The game still has about as much challenge in SP as Snap vs a deaf mute. I simply cannot fathom how I could lose a campaign unless I deliberately sabotaged myself.
I'm finding the level of challenge good. I follow some houserules (e.g. avoid rushing or excessive sacking/exterminating) but don't sabotage myself. I've given up my latest English campaign as too hard (I want to do it right next time). The Mongols have arrived and my crusaders just lost Antioch to a rebellion. France is as powerful as ever, and has been joined by Germany, Denmark, Spain and Portugal in fighting me on the continent.
But when you dig a little beneath the surface, what you basically have is an RPG, where you are the emperor of a small country that rises to be a great empire, not a strategy game.
Tastes differ. For me, it's the RPG/strategic layer of M2TW that is rather dull. I'm finding the battles, always the standout feature of the TW series, are as good as ever.
Colossus
04-19-2007, 18:09
"I'm finding the battles, always the standout feature of the TW series, are as good as ever."
Shame gs doesnt do them justice, shame :-|.
Vlad Tzepes
04-19-2007, 19:12
To keep discussions on-topic, 1.2, as requested, here's something I don't understand.
I waited for the patch to be released 2 weeks ago, got ready, checked net connection and everything. Then a strange 1.2 semi-official version showed up, just to be immediately withdrawn. I decided to wait for the official one, as it seemed almost everything in the patch was basically okay, otherwise they wouldn't post it in the first place, right? Honestly, I thought it was only a matter of hours.
4 days later I left for a short holiday and got back today. Checked the Guild... Still no official patch. Also, I couldn't find (maybe didn't search enough, I dunno...) any official statement about this delay.
What's going on? :inquisitive:
What's going on? :inquisitive:
people are playing the unofficial 1.02... that's what's going on :yes: and dead silence from CA as to the official release.
Jokerkaaos
04-19-2007, 20:03
I'm finding the level of challenge good. I follow some houserules (e.g. avoid rushing or excessive sacking/exterminating) but don't sabotage myself. I've given up my latest English campaign as too hard (I want to do it right next time).
But isn't this an admission that the game itself doesn't provide an adequate challenge?
I am playing the "unofficial" 1.2, and while the AI is definitely improved in terms of recruiting quality troops (but not without remaining problems like massive peasant/catapult armies) and battlemap passivity (also still with problems), it is still not aggressive or focused enough on the strategy map to make it possible for the player to be wiped out.
I notice two things in particular in this regard:
1) The AI seems to have a delay in reacting to having its cities attacked. Time and again I will beseige a city and watch the AI, on his next turn, move a nearby large support army off somewhere else toward some other multi-turn objective, ignoring me. Sometimes it will turn around and try to help NEXT turn, but by then it's usually too late.
2) Every time I see the AI move an army out of a city, it always steps out to the west of the city first no matter which direction the army is going next. It will often merge multiple stacks together in this spot, and I am guessing that this is a sort of (really bad) technique of establishing a "waypoint" built in to help facilitate making larger stacks before the units go on to do other things.
This might seem small, but it's very dumb AI and it costs the AI a lot of movement points. I also suspect that this might have something to do with the odd prioritization of AI stack movement on the map, as perhaps stacks have a protocol to move toward these one-tile-west-of-the-city muster spots before they do anything else.
I have played a short campaign as England and a long campaign as Sicily with the patch (both on vh/vh), and while the start was a bit more difficult, my eventual dominance was never in doubt.
Like you, I have been pondering some "house rules" to impose upon myself to make the game more challenging, but I know from experience that this will not be enough. The patch is a step forward, but extensive patching/modding is still going to be required to bring this up to the standards of Shogun and Medieval 1.
One other thing - in the Sicily campaign the Mongols arrived but never seemed to take any cities. I had one diplomat in the area, and as he followed the Mongol stacks around I saw that they were just roaming about Turkey, making regions go rebel but not taking a single city in about 50 years. The Mongols and Turks were at war, but the Mongol stacks would path back and forth each turn all around the eastern Turkish provinces and I never saw them attack anything.
SoxSexSax
04-19-2007, 20:16
I'm finding the level of challenge good. I follow some houserules (e.g. avoid rushing or excessive sacking/exterminating) but don't sabotage myself. I've given up my latest English campaign as too hard (I want to do it right next time). The Mongols have arrived and my crusaders just lost Antioch to a rebellion. France is as powerful as ever, and has been joined by Germany, Denmark, Spain and Portugal in fighting me on the continent.
Well, I am happy to accept that you find the campaign challenging. I am more than a little surpised to find a veteran (judging by join date/post count) who has managed to lose playing England (only Scotland competes with them as the easiest faction to win as IMHO) but if you say it is so, I believe you. I hope you will believe me when I say that I have started dozens of campaigns with multiple factions and have only quit them (normally with a bored sigh) when it has become painfully obvious that I will win
Tastes differ. For me, it's the RPG/strategic layer of M2TW that is rather dull. I'm finding the battles, always the standout feature of the TW series, are as good as ever.
I'm not sure I understand this point. I want the battles to be the standout feature! I want there to be a challenge. I want the question to be "WILL I win?" rather than "HOW LONG will it take to win?". But it isn't, because the AI is too weak to compete WHATSOEVER with any decent player. I have never, not one single time, seen the AI execute a tactical move that I would call decisive. If you have a replay of the AI doing that against someone who is really trying to win, please share it with me. Until that point, I find your claim that the battles are as good as ever to be almost comically inaccurate.
I am quite willing to post some replays demonstrating how inept the AI is if you would like...
(EDIT)
In my experience, the following orders will allow you to fight just like the AI does in 90% of the field battles I've played:
Ctrl - M (Select All Missile Troops)
Single Click
<Wait until missile troops nearly all dead or routing>
Ctrl - A (Select All)
Double Click
<Wait until our mass of troops has been flanked and decimated>
RALLY! RALLY! RALLY! RALLY! RALLY!
You have been defeated.
GG.
Bob the Insane
04-19-2007, 20:28
The patch is a step forward, but extensive patching/modding is still going to be required to bring this up to the standards of Shogun and Medieval 1.
I feel that is a little unfair, I never recall lossing a campaign in STW or MTW either (though I normally played the broken GA mode in that)...
I basically agree that the game is not hard enough yet, but they have taken a step in the right direction trying to make the game smarter as opposed the just giving the AI big boosts as in RTW (and MTW)...
I also agree that the AI's failings are strategic mainly. I think it is unimaginiative but basically competent in open field battles most of the time, holding the line, trying to flank, using archers and such... But it often turns up to fight with such a bizaar range of units that is does itself in...
Gaius Terentius Varro
04-19-2007, 20:49
[QUOTE=SoxSexSax]Well, I am happy to accept that you find the campaign challenging. I am more than a little surpised to find a veteran (judging by join date/post count) who has managed to lose playing England (only Scotland competes with them as the easiest faction to win as IMHO) but if you say it is so, I believe you. I hope you will believe me when I say that I have started dozens of campaigns with multiple factions and have only quit them (normally with a bored sigh) when it has become painfully obvious that I will win
QUOTE]
Playing england VH/VH By turn 20 attacked by: France, Scotland HRE Portugal, Spain and Danmark and I just spotted a Moor ship off the Irish coast with a full stack on it (wander whar they want). I am getting murdered here. BUT...
I don't use my general to melee and always release prisoners (need the chivalry to compete with the AI pop growth bonus). I don't ally with anyone exceprt the pope never accept huge amounts of cash for ceasefire every 2 turns and I don't sally and use missile troops on passive foe. In other words i don't use cheesy tactics to win then complain about how easy it is. Oh yeah the AI sucks but i do not see it getting better anytime soon. I have never completed the long campaign either cos it gets soo tedious managing 30+ regions. I still think the game is great compared to RTW and much better after the "patch".
Gaius that sounds rather like my campaigns. I'm not sure what's going on - it's almost like people are playing different games. I suspect it is either differences in expectations/standards or playstyles.
On the expectations, I've been playing computer wargames since the first Panzer General. By the standards of the genre, TW has always had good AI. Classics like Steel Panthers or the Operational Art of War had great historical detail and provided nice simulations, but the AI was always terribly easy to exploit. I've just read a good book on the Battle of Waterloo (The Battle by Barbero) and I'm iching to try to game it, but my options are very limited. There's a nice Age of Rifles scenario for it, but it would indeed be like a petit dejeuner to trounce Wellington in it. By contrast, a TW battle would provide a much tougher fight (I don't play the historical battles, but recall the demo battles were pretty close run things). It may be that players used to other genres - chess, RTSs, FPSs - are more used to an AI that can kick their butt. There's definitely a trade-off between complexity/freedom and a competitive AI.
On playstyles, I've heard people win the game with massed peasants, with only generals, with tiny armies of a handful of men. I've heard people win the game by turn 50. Fine, if people want to play like that but such a playstyle offers no interest to me. I like to play in a more or less "historical" manner - avoiding rushing, using balanced armies and historical tactics etc. Played like that, I haven't found it that easy (unlike RTW, for example). The economy is tight early on and if the AI attacks me at 2:1 odds or better, I am probably going down.
I'm starting to think I should write an English AAR just to show the game can be challenging and fun.
Darkgreen
04-19-2007, 21:34
Econ21,
In those cases where you are limiting yourself to a particular play style, the game isn’t challenging you, you are challenging yourself.
I would like to see a game that is challenging for any play style. I don’t like having to tie one arm behind my back to get a challenge from the AI. Maybe some people do, and that is great for them. But many people here do not, and thus the desire for a more challenging AI.
I would like to see a game that is challenging for any play style. I don’t like having to tie one arm behind my back to get a challenge from the AI. Maybe some people do, and that is great for them. But many people here do not, and thus the desire for a more challenging AI.
That's why I said it may be a matter of expectations. I don't expect a computer AI in a complex strategy game to provide a challenge for an experienced gamer on a level playing field. If it were Chess, an RTS, an FPS etc, I would. But for a strategy game, there has to be a handicap or restraint on the gamer of some sort.
In those cases where you are limiting yourself to a particular play style, the game isn’t challenging you, you are challenging yourself.
I'm not doing anything too masochistic, like only playing with half-stacks. In fact, I am pretty much playing how I like to play regardless of issues of challenge. I am too lazy to rush the AI or spend hours winning battles in which I am vastly outmatched. It's true I'm not trying my hardest to "win" the game in the fastest time (ie get my 50 provinces and go home), but I don't like to play that - I've always prefer the "Glorious achievements" type goals of MTW.
Gaius Terentius Varro
04-19-2007, 22:19
Not reloading after unsuccessfull takeover/assasination/spying attempt or losing a general in battle also helps IMHO.
Darkgreen
04-19-2007, 22:22
That's why I said it may be a matter of expectations. I don't expect a computer AI in a complex strategy game to provide a challenge for an experienced gamer on a level playing field. If it were Chess, an RTS, an FPS etc, I would. But for a strategy game, there has to be a handicap or restraint on the gamer of some sort.
I'm not doing anything too masochistic, like only playing with half-stacks. In fact, I am pretty much playing how I like to play regardless of issues of challenge. I am too lazy to rush the AI or spend hours winning battles in which I am vastly outmatched. It's true I'm not trying my hardest to "win" the game in the fastest time (ie get my 50 provinces and go home), but I don't like to play that - I've always prefer the "Glorious achievements" type goals of MTW.
Well, I’m happy for you, and I wish I could lower my expectations as low as yours.
I don’t think there has to be a handicap or a restraint on the player. I think this because MTW2 seems so close in so many ways to having a really good and challenging AI. If I didn’t think that, I wouldn’t be here reading the forums and starting a thread requesting AI horror stories as requested by one of the CA guys.
Again, I am happy for you that your particular play style makes it challenging for you, but I just want to be clear here and say that that doesn’t make this a challenging game.
I think one of the failures of CA in creating a difficult AI is their reluctance to really just give it a straight up advantage. I'm a huge strategy gamer and I can't think of a single strategy game I have ever played that was ever difficult when the AI used the same rules and fought with an equal strength of forces. All difficult games I have encountered have either given the AI far more units or altered the rules to make the AI stronger and/or develop faster. CA did that somewhat with a morale boost in MTW and the extra 10k per turn in RTW, but they haven't done much else.
Gaius Terentius Varro
04-19-2007, 22:44
Or give the AI the map hacks so it knows what units you're producing so it sends counters all the time. RTW was harder in battle mode on VH 'cos of the huge bonuses (+7 chevrons) AI got on the battlefield but I remember that we complained about that. However if i send an army without a general against AI I tend to see nice behavior. My elite units rout when outnumbered even if it is bloody peasants if i let them get tired or flanked/separated
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