Interview with Mike Simpson on RPS

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010...-mike-simpson/

Not hugely revelatory, but some thoughts from Mike Simpson on why Shogy 2 will be good. I've picked the below out, on AI issues of previous games, as it seemed the most important (to me):

"To give an example of the kind of problem we faced: if you were playing against AI on a very high difficulty level in Empire or Napoleon, then you wanted a serious challenge, you wanted to be attacked. The campaign AI wasn’t aggressive enough for most people, it was passive, that problem has gone for Shogun 2, and the very hard and hard levels have beaten me already in testing. There is so much AI grunt that I think we are now dialing that back, which is a better position to be in. I don’t expect to get any of that kind of criticism of the AI in Shogun."

I don’t expect to get any of that kind of criticism of the AI in Shogun

Right, that probably just means the very narrow example of the AI not being aggressive -but that's not really the point, its about the AI being sensibly aggressive. Empire's campaign AI was fully capable of being agressive, even if it had no army left to do it with!

Sorry, I just can't read anything Mark S says without getting riled.

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Originally Posted by alh_p

Sorry, I just can't read anything Mark S says without getting riled.

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Then why do you continue to read his interviews? It is easy to sit back and pick apart general comments made in an interview with countless "yeah, but"s on specific items in which they can't respond to (unless CA comes here and addresses your specific issue). We have to face it - we will only get solid info on the AI and the game when we have a chance to play it ourselves. All we can do at thet moment is read every word...fearing for the worse and/or hoping for the best.

Regarding the AI in general, I think it gets a bum deal with all the criticism at being stupid. History is littered with stupid human generalship - Nagashino, parts of the Waterloo campaign, Burnsides' Bridge, Fredericksburg, pretty much all of WW1, Dunkirk, Battle of the Bulge (definitely NOT sensibly aggressive), me in almost any STW MP battle, etc. Of course, human generalship does have competence and brilliance as well, and a healthy level of at least competence is desired for the AI in a TW game.

That may be true, but CA know they've boasted about the AI before and it has been bad. Yet they continue to boast. They can either wait and try to prove it to us on release, or they can get people that players will trust and believe to test it. I understand it still may be too early, but having places that have given the AI favourable reviews in the past give it the same high score again is meaningless. The actual TW fans want reports and reviews from other total war players.

If you read a review praising the AI from IGN, or one from Kagemusha, for example, which would make you think better of it?

And what exactly is CA supposed to say about the AI? "The AI is turning out dreadfully bad for S2TW. The other day I started a campaign battle and was promptly called away from the computer. I came back five minutes later and found out I had won the battle." You know they are going to put a positive spin on the game, so it continues to amaze me when people get all worked up over it. It would be nice if they'd say "We think we've made some great strides in the AI. However, the TW fans will have to be the final judge on whether or not we've been successful", but that isn't likely to happen. :shrug:

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Originally Posted by Gregoshi

Then why do you continue to read his interviews? It is easy to sit back and pick apart general comments made in an interview with countless "yeah, but"s on specific items in which they can't respond to (unless CA comes here and addresses your specific issue). We have to face it - we will only get solid info on the AI and the game when we have a chance to play it ourselves. All we can do at thet moment is read every word...fearing for the worse and/or hoping for the best.

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Of course, it's all just empty words until we have the "finished" (ha!) product in our hands. I really do want to like shogun2 and would melt into a ball of slavish consumerism and hero worship of the CA team if they actually delivered. As Pever says however, this is another interview where Mr Simpson says some encouraging things which I'm too bitter and twisted to let myself be convinced by. Scepticism seems all the more apt when you look at the more tangible evidence provided so far (i.e. the battle videos).

Sega's marketing sucks badly, or it is aimed at consumers are just suckers for pretty graphics.

True, but I believe my last point still stands.

When someone has failed to deliver multiple times, you can't trust what they say anymore. SEGA and CA should realise this and take action to rectify it.

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Originally Posted by Gregoshi

And what exactly is CA supposed to say about the AI? "The AI is turning out dreadfully bad for S2TW. The other day I started a campaign battle and was promptly called away from the computer. I came back five minutes later and found out I had won the battle." You know they are going to put a positive spin on the game, so it continues to amaze me when people get all worked up over it. It would be nice if they'd say "We think we've made some great strides in the AI. However, the TW fans will have to be the final judge on whether or not we've been successful", but that isn't likely to happen. :shrug:

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But that last would be sensible marketing aimed at the fans -rather than the insipid tosh they've chucked out so far.

I'm still convinced CA's best course of action would be to remain silent on the game aside from a teaser trailer or two until a couple of weeks before released. For the Org audience at least, they seem to cause more stress than relief, though the MP crowd seems reasonably happy at the moment...but after months of much gnashing of teeth. Too much hype is rarely a good thing.

Personaly, I dont understand the lack of an open Beta test phase.

Seems to me that many developers have gone away from open testing by their community and do it in-house. As we have seen, in-house testers....well.....suck. Now I'm not trying to come down on the work they do, I am sure its important for game quality, but even if they played a portion of an Empires campaign they would have seen some of the more glaring deficencies in the CAI and BAI. However it seems that the only thing their testers were intrested in was if it looks pretty and do the units properly respond it commands on the Campaign map (yes, for the most part) and pathfinding in battles (no, for the most part)

I dont know. Maybe the testers are told to look for certian things by the developer and not to worry about all those other things. If so, CA (or any Dev for that matter) are shooting themselves in the foot. Having your testers (in-house or otherwise) be so focused on one aspect of a game as complex and huge as the Total War games is foolish and sloppy. I know its expensive these days to get a game like Total War on the shelves in the first place. And then to have the game be even slightly sucessful to the point where you at least get the money back to cover your development costs is an accopmplishment in and of itself.

However, not having a proper Beta phase (open or not) and not taking suggestions by your testers or the community at large (Med2 - ETW) is just plain bad decision making. Kind of like asking a rodeo clown to do brain surgery, you might get it done cheap but, you might not be happy with the results. Or putting it another way: Good work ain't cheap, and cheap work ain't good.

Apologies for the rant.

I don't think it is necessarily that the CA beta testers suck, but that there is just so much to test in a game like TW. It seems that increasing the pool of testers would help cover more ground. However, I do wonder how effective regular gamers are as testers. Most, I'm sure, just want to play the game ahead of time, but do they really test - "lets see what happens when I do this..." and then paying attention for things out of the ordinary? Still, one would think more testers would help quickly find the more glaring problems not necessarily obvious on an individual level but over a large set of testing data - such as the suicide daimyo in STW.

well greg u do sound a bit on sided... i personally gave a signal in willingly to test the game in their house in london.... i dont want to play the game ahead of anyone else its just i am 100% confident i can tell ca if the game is good or not and whats needs -much- more attention....

we all know the marketing is build around fancy graphics and gamemodes......which sells well in magazines but we are interested in gameplay, replayability and epicness....

the best AI opponent for an sp player would be good human opponents drop in battles is helping here.... but we cant trust CA when the boast these things. History probably repeats itself.... remember what we have seen over the years... like
- unbalanced units
- bad mp networkcode
- crappy foyer or none at all
- shooting thru hills

which btw didnt appear in all releases.... but every release had its own big mp-shortcommings what even a blind mp-player would see....

and some testers we could offer from the org are swoosh, amp, spoon, ducky and perhaps even u greg....

stw/mi had at a given point just like mtw/vi the brilliance to deliver a few epic 3 vs 3 games each night

Magyar, I'm not trying to be one sided - just fair base on what I see as jumping to a conclusion with little basis. Also, regarding gamers as testers, I was refering to the average Joe Gamer, not someone such as yourself and the others mentioned who have a deep understanding of the nuances of the MP aspect of the game. I think it would be great if CA recruited a team of experienced TW players (of high skill) and let them be part of the testing.

You are right in that CA's claims in some areas need to be taken with a grain of salt at this point, but at the same time, just because CA boasts about something, doesn't automatically mean it will be terrible either - despite their track record on these things. We will each make our own assessment of the success of their boasts when we actually play the game. We can only take limited info from the recent battle report which was played in a very relaxed and sloppy manner. The limited info is also of limited value because the game is still under development and things will change (hopefully for the better).

I would only be a good tester of the dumb stuff in the game, not the tougher parts like balance and such. Also, testing is rather tedious and not too much fun in my book.

[QUOTE=Magyar Khan
- shooting thru hills
[/QUOTE]

There was and is (???) a problem with the balistics, but it was not shooting through hills nor the 'cruise missile'. It becomes hard to solve a problem when the analysis isn't good. It also doesn't help when a creator is summoned in a way he must feel harsh, for fixing something that isn't there.

I did not read the article but I did watched the asassination movie. And I like it. I probably will buy the game just because of these. ~:)

I think the main problem with E:TW and N:TW is that it was effectively gun versus gun, it wasn't that exciting having a bunch of men march to a spot, then fire at eachother.

I made a copy of this topic in the MP forum, this is the SP discussion. Sorry for hi-jacking.

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Originally Posted by Beskar

I think the main problem with E:TW and N:TW is that it was effectively gun versus gun, it wasn't that exciting having a bunch of men march to a spot, then fire at eachother.

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I don't know, it's theoretically as exciting as having a bunch of men march to a spot then hit another bunch of men over the head repeatedly. (And you're leaving out bayonet and cav charges in the gunpowder age). The trick with both settings is in the implementation (and personal taste).