RTW demo conclusions: a full summary

Most of us have seen the demo, and a lot of people have expressed their opinions on it. That's a great thing.
What this thread is trying to do is summarize all of them, in the hope that the CA guys will have a look at them and:

1. Feel good about the fact that people ARE appreciating a lot of the stuff they've given us with this demo, and that most people are enjoying it (to various degrees, of course).
2. Let them know what we'd like to see changed in the final release of the game, and the problems we think that the demo has (isn't that one of the major goals of a demo, besides marketing and increasing awareness of the game ?)

If I were to make a (perhaps not very successful) effort of summarizing all of it in a few words, it would sound like this:
"Absolutely great looks, effects and eye-candy, somewhat disappointing as far as the immersion feeling goes, and could be better in terms of customizability of the UI and gameplay".


This thread is merely trying to summarize everybody's opinions and put them in some orderly fashion, with the purpose of getting them better organized and all into one place, easier to read and grouped into logical (?) categories.
So credits go to all the people who have pointed out nice (as well as less-than-nice) things in the threads in the Colosseum.

Please use this thread to point out things I might have overlooked or left behind (or misrepresented), and I'll periodically edit this post to include them.


1. Graphics

- I think it's fair to say that almost everybody enjoyed the graphics: both the terrain and the unit details; night battles rock !
- the ability to zoom in and watch the battle is great.
- not sure if this belongs here, but the game seems to run pretty smoothly on even lower-than-minimum-requirements configurations...well done !
- if possible, a control for anisotropic filtering within the game would be very nice.


2. Animation

- melee looks really cool, almost everybody seems to love charges (the animation effects, although not necessarily the speed at which it's done and their scary effectiveness), and a lot of people also love elephants throwing soldiers in the air; most people were thrilled with the various animations.
- 'flying' units are bad, i.e. units running so fast they look like they're gliding over the battlefield (both inf and cav).
- reports of camera being "jerky" when selecting a unit


3. Sounds

- the spatial effects are really really cool, it's great that you hear them louder when the units are closer and fainter when they're away, and that they're also directional (you can tell _where_ that unit is with respect to your position). That's a big thumbs up from everybody !
- voices and accents are apparently a rather significant problem for quite a few people; most people were less than thrilled with them; perhaps there is time (and disposition) to tweak them a bit; many people suggested screams/orders in native languages (to the extent that is possible, of course)


4. Music

- again, there's no accounting for tastes; people seem to like the main menu music, but opinions vary with respect to the battle music; however, this is certainly just a small sample of the entire amount of music there will be in the final game, so it's hard to formulate a general opinion on the music based on the little we've heard so far.


5. User Interface

- valour better shown as figures, not chevrons
- fatigue should be shown in the unit icons; also ideally as figures/lines
- ability to resize/turn off the HUD and the minimap and the "commands" panel in the lower right corner
- when choosing MTW interface / RTW interface, it should be persistent (currently, you have to change it in-game, otherwise, even if you choose MTW in the main menu, and then start the game, the UI will be in RTW-style unless you press ESC during the game and change it...). But it's excellent that we do have a choice about it!
- also about the "Classic TW style" interface: it would be nice if it were fully consistent with the old one; people reported inconsistencies with respect to dragging to adjust unit spacing and depth, and moving your army while preserving formation.
- minimap: can we have the option of choosing between arrows and dots as back in MTW ? Too many big arrows together make a mess and you can't tell much from it, also it would be nice to be able to get unit info when hovering over them as in MTW.
- great customization of settings (audio/video/controls); perhaps some explanations for each setting would be helpful (esp. to new players) ;)
- possibly show morale in the unit icons as well ? it would be great to have it always available at a glance.
- big ugly pause box; a screenshot with that on it is worthless; much smaller and more discrete would allow us to take breathtaking screenshots of RTW ! ~:)
- speaking of screenshots: can we have an in-game screenshot key as before ?
- cool thing about rallying the troops; also nice that routing units' flags turn white, although the graphic effect itself is odd for some people (kinda intrusive).
- time compression handling from within the game (MTW time slider is missed ! ;) ); or at least have more notches of compressing time.
- Rally hotkey, please ? Also, general's cavalry should have both Wedge and Rally as special abilities (appearing available and working as well).
- a mouse (not camera) sensitivity/speed slider would be welcome
- since the game will have time of day settings, can we have that displayed as well during the battle, please ? It might be useful to know how long you have till sunset/dawn, etc.


6. Game aspect/balance

- speed: the ratio between the units' running speed and walking speed is too big; units walk a bit too fast, run _way_ too fast, and cavalry is like a maglev train.
- the melee speed is also a bit fast: units are killed at an amazing rate. Again, think of 'Commando' with 3.12 dead people / second. A lot of people feel like you don't really have time to do anything once the battle is engaged, and, at the rate the units are dying, it probably wouldn't make much of a difference anyway.
See the "Petition to reduce RTW speed" thread, and "Poll: RTW speed: reduce or not reduce ?" A solution would be an option to adjust speed.
This is definitely the biggest complaint people have, and most people have it.
- flaming arrows: quite controversial; in the end, it probably is a nice feature, and it is definitely great that we can turn them off !
- green arrows underneath units; a big no-no.
- space now shows dots/lines at destination, not the actual units; how can you tell which unit will end up where ? It was way better in MTW.
- speed (yup, it's that important)
- speed - related probably: charges against other fast units tend to be a clickfest; quite a feat to actually click on the right target if it's running at full speed.
- ability to turn off units repeating orders (big issue; lots of people annoyed by this)
- ability to turn off the advisor(s) (it's there ! this is a GOOD thing ;))
- routing units losing their key assignments (that's BAD)
- one unit can't belong to multiple groups (pity, why not ?)
- ctrl+1-0 for assigning groups, 1-0 for recalling them - great
- cut-scenes during battle: really cool, but only if you have the option of disabling them; they're definitely fun, but sometimes during a battle one would rather be focused on the battle itself, and dislike being interrupted to see (for the 1287-th time) how the enemy general is killed. But it's great that they're there, absolutely great ! (hoping for cut scenes in the campaign as well)
- barbarian units names: barbarian infantry, barbarian cavalry, barbarian skirmishers...please. ;)
- would be nice to have the factors influencing morale in the tool tip (e.g., in MTW: "worried about flanks", or "happy that flanks are protected", etc).
- info about a unit is more detailed as the unit is closer - very nice touch !
- not clear if some unit (elephants, sacred band cav) are overpowered or it is just an effect of the difference of valour between units.
- a more in-depth tutorial outlining some of the more advanced features (formations, unit depth, generally speaking "advanced" unit control). If that's already planned, that's great !
- exhausted units should not be able to "run" indefinitely (esp. heavily armoured ones); old STW/MTW system was much more realistic.


7. (Potential) Bugs

- ATI cards: the red glare experienced by some people, apparently due to projectiles (not necessarily flaming arrows)
- flaming arrows occasionally also cause weird effects
- spears of the Poeni infantry disappear (looks like the unit doesn't have spears);
- possible pursuit bug: units order to pursue/attack routing enemy just run along them instead of attacking them, OR going _past_ the chased unit and keeping ahead of it... (encountered by _many_ people) (see the 'Pursuit bug ?' thread)
- units trying to run away get stuck in enemy units' formations; instead of trying to change the direction in which they're routing, they just remain stuck.
- is music supposed to play throughout an entire battle ? a few people reported that it stopped in the middle of the battle.
- in the Trebia battle, a few units apparently got stuck in the river and stayed there for the duration of the battle.
- either the "Halt" command, or disabling "Fire At Will" should stop shooting archers from firing; right now, only moving the archers stops them from shooting.
- changing a unit's formation while it's marching makes it stop, change formation, but apparently not always continue moving; this used to happen in MTW, units resuming march after switching to the new formation.
- options from the main menu don't always seem to be carrying over to the in-game menus (e.g. "high quality shadows") (reported on Win98SE, ATI 9800 PRO, Catalyst 4.7 drivers).
- possibly suicidal enemy generals: reports claim that AI generals blindly charge into units, in a rather suicidal manner (this may be an issue for the demo only)
- perhaps some cavalry units should have "charge, back off, regroup, and then charge again" more of a priority than they currently have (another thing that may only be a demo issue)
- using phalanx in an intelligent way (when needed, break formation, change direction, regroup into formation again, rather than trying to rotate as a phalanx) (possibly yet another demo issue)
- units simply walking into the water and drowning: when AI missile units near a water shore, they keep advancing towards the bridge in a line, thus drowning a significant number of their ranks. To be clear: they are not falling off the bridge, they are advancing to provide missile protection for their troops/to fire at the enemy on the other shore, and instead of forming a narrow and long column to march on the bridge, or to stop at the water shore, they keep advancing straight into the water.
- less frequent than previous one, but apparently still a bug: routing units on a bridge just seem to die after a few seconds; they simply disappear (no, they don't fall into the water) as they were running.

I had a big problem with the routing units. Most of the time, I couldn't tell my routing units from theirs because they all looked the same with their huge white flags.

Perhaps a white flag could pop up out of the unit next to the unit flag or something, but please retain the original unit coloring and the original unit flag.

EDIT: I just realized that the reason the routing units were white was because I was too zoomed out...whoops. :tomato:

Great work, Blodrast. Especially that you also pointed out those things you liked best. That is the right way to critisize; you shouldn't just complain, but also point out what is right.

Good list, it's probably alot easier for CA to see what we would enjoy to see, Don't get me wrong CA, this is a VERY GOOD GAME,

I haven't played it yet, but reports show, people can run this game on 750MHZ computers and computers with 8MB VIDEO CARDS! You did really good there.

I hope CA reads this. Threads with names like these have been popping up in other places with other names and were turned into wine fests. I hope they take this one more seriously because you have made good points.

I sure hope CA does read this. It would be nice of them to drop us a post here if they did.

And the important thing is that they are not MY opinions: like I said, I gathered them from the threads in this forum, and I think that's exactly what makes them important: the fact that they're not just one person's opinions, but of a lot of the people on this board (sure, I have my own likes and disliked, but that's NOT what this thread is; I posted all the opinions I could find, even if I personally disagreed with them).
I will admit that I tried to make them look slightly more polite, occasionally ~:p

Great job, Blodrast! If CA makes half of the changes prescribed here (preferably the half I want done ~;) ), then Rome Total War could very well be the best game ever. Excellent!

~:cheers:

The best and most rational summary I have seen so far! Lets hope the devs read it

agreed-this is an A1 post Blodrast...but do the CA guys ever post here?

Put under bugs that in when I was playing the extened Trebia, when some units waded across the river, tthey got stuck, and stood in the water until I finished the game. Just one or two guys, taking a bath while the rest of their unit routs. ~:joker:

from time to time you find a CA reply in a post. Not nearly enough of course, but still they read some of it. Maybe we should send a mail to CA with a link to this thread?

Good job Blodrast

SteppeMerc: noted and inserted.
Sjakihata and other people, incl. mods: if you think a more suggestive name should be given to the thread, I have nothing against that.
I agree about the mail, although not sure it's necessary (we can wait a couple of days).
But it were best if a mod/admin did it, IMO.

Very good breakdown of the demo Blodrast and you are a man after my own heart, If I had made this list it would read just like yours, you have really captured all the important praises and criticisms :)

Yes, excellent list.

Barkhorn.

I wholeheartedly agree with everything Blodrast has written. Well done!

I would also add a few things to his list.

5. User Interface

Compressed time - Time compression is handled poorly. First of all there are not enough 'notches' for compressed time. I guess I miss MTW's time compression slider too much. I see in the descr_shortcuts.txt file that there are hotkey slots for the time compression; pause, play, ffwd & ultraffwd. Great, but there's no way to set them from within the game! A few more compression speeds would also be welcome: Pause/1X/2X/4X/8X/16X

6. Game aspect/balance

Rally Feature- Forcing you to select your general before rallying the troops is a major pain in the ass. Pausing in SP battles to do this is fine but in MP games things are way too hectic, especially if you're in the middle of a tricky maneuver. Based upon the entries in the descr_shortcuts.txt file I see there is NO Rally hotkey! Rally has become a specialized function of a general unit. Please bring back the MTW method where you could use the Rally feature simply by selecting all your troops and then hitting the button or using the hotkey. Yes, I suppose you could macro your general and use the Rally function that way but with a 20 unit limit I can see people shying away from giving the commander an entire slot.

7. (Potential) Bugs

Mouse control/speed - The mouse controls are way too sluggish and insensitive for a time critical game like this. I've been playing the demo on a friend's rig (Athlon XP 3000 & Radeon 9200 128meg) and while the framerate is fine the mouse controls are not. Even when I pause the game and change the camera view to an empty portion of the map the mouse moves painfully slow. As a result selecting and controlling units, especially those in battle, becomes needlessly challenging. I can only imagine the pain this will cause in large battles, especially MP ones! My friend has an optical mouse that moves the cursor like a teflon coated bullet in other games so it's not the mouse or its scanning rate. PLEASE give us sliders for mouse sensitivity and mouse movement filters!!!

Blodrast,

About the ATI card thing. You might try increasing the details. I'm using a 9800 Pro and maxed everything in the game (except left off AA) at 1280x960, and clicked the "glint" box. That cleared it up. I've not yet gone back and determined what is causing the orange triangles in the default settings, but I got it for about 2 seconds every time a volley of flaming arrows struck. After I maxed the graphics details the orange triangles disappeared completely.

Great post by the way!

Very well done Blodrast, my only gripe with the game is the cheesy accents, hopefully CA will include the native languages, i just hope ~:p

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Spino

6. Game aspect/balance

Rally Feature- Forcing you to select your general before rallying the troops is a major pain in the ass. Pausing in SP battles to do this is fine but in MP games things are way too hectic, especially if you're in the middle of a tricky maneuver. Based upon the entries in the descr_shortcuts.txt file I see there is NO Rally hotkey! Rally has become a specialized function of a general unit. Please bring back the MTW method where you could use the Rally feature simply by selecting all your troops and then hitting the button or using the hotkey. Yes, I suppose you could macro your general and use the Rally function that way but with a 20 unit limit I can see people shying away from giving the commander an entire slot.

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Spino, I haven't played with this much yet. But this actually makes more sense than MTW's method. It should take the physical intervention of an officer/general to rally most units. Yep, it's a pain in the butt, and won't matter if the fighting/movement speed is so high that you don't have time to do anything. Elite/disciplined units should rally on their own--but rank and file should not. I need to study the implementation of this a bit more.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Blodrast

5. User Interface

- valour better shown as figures, not chevrons
- fatigue should be shown in the unit icons; also ideally as figures/lines
- ability to resize/turn off the HUD and the minimap and the "commands" panel in the lower right corner
- when choosing MTW interface / RTW interface, it should be persistent (currently, you have to change it in-game, otherwise, even if you choose MTW in the main menu, and then start the game, the UI will be in RTW-style unless you press ESC during the game and change it...). But it's excellent that we do have a choice about it!
- minimap: can we have the option of choosing between arrows and dots as back in MTW ? Too many big arrows together make a mess and you can't tell much from it, also it would be nice to be able to get unit info when hovering over them as in MTW.
- great customization of settings (audio/video/controls); perhaps some explanations for each setting would be helpful (esp. to new players) ;)
- possibly show morale in the unit icons as well ? it would be great to have it always available at a glance.
- big ugly pause box; a screenshot with that on it is worthless.
- speaking of screenshots: can we have an in-game screenshot key as before ?
- cool thing about rallying the troops; also nice that routing units' flags turn white, although the graphic effect itself is odd for some people (kinda intrusive).


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You forgot that the mouse speed is too slow, making it difficult to fast select units and, i think, making the game seem too fast for some people.

Also selecting the MTW UI. Even when switching it too true in the Preferences file, the UI doesnt fully represent the control you have over your army that STW and MTW gave you. While its at least nice to be able to left click again, dragging out formations to adjust unit spacing as well as depth doesnt work right, as well as trying to move your grouped army while keeping formation.
I hope that the MTW control option is still work in progress and will be fixed in the final game...

Excellent work, Blodrast. It certainly voices my main concerns better than my scattered, lack of sleep hampered, rushed ramblings.

Red Harvest, you managed to fix the ATI problem by maxing everything? I have a 9800 pro, 1280x1024 res with everything set to max and it's still there. I also enabled antistrophic filtering x8 in the ATI control panel. The red galre is still present. I've tried a few other settings (lower res, less advanced effects, no filtering) and there was no change to the glare. Interesting.

Which reminds me of another point:
Graphics options Can we have a control for antistrophic filtering inside the game please? RTW really benefits from this on my system but my other games don't, so having to rely on a universal override setting is not great.

Excellent post Blodrast!

One other addition I for one miss from the previous two games... The Casualty ratio bar! That used to be extremely helpful in working out how well a battle was going, now it seems a lot harder to work out.

It would be great to have it back.

Emperor that ratio is above the speed buttons on the bottom left box.

Hover your mouse over it and you will get % displayed... just look for the blue/red bar.

:wall: oh well its not as easy to see as it used to be... Make it bigger! ~:joker:

Nice summary Blodrast. I think you forgot to mention the concerns about the size and placement of the Pause sign. Seems like just having a blinking icon in the VCR area would suffice.

Edit - The demo does a good job of showing off the flashy graphics. However IMO there should have been a small campaign included to highlight the new features in it if they were serious about providing something that showcased the whole game.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Spino

PLEASE give us sliders for mouse sensitivity and mouse movement filters!!!

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Ummm... Spino, there are two, for camera movement speed and camera rotation speed. ~:dizzy:

Look under camera options. ~:)

A.

@FBE that's why i bought an fx 5600 xt, runs like a dream. and nvidia's drivers are better.
and yes even on low spec systems it works well ,all my family use nvidia so can't comment on the ati glitch. BTW what's up with the light speed movement of cav?
and OT i've been on the shanghai maglev, 431 km/ph and still don't feel fast so ur analogyy may need working on

GREAT post, Blodrast. It voices every single of my concerns about the game, and I simply have nothing to add.
I'm posting here just so that CA knows about the VERY SERIOUS shortcoming of the demo, that could really hamper it.

Because as for me, RTW was about to be bought, no question asked. But then I saw the demo, and honestly, I'm actually hesitating. The graphics are great, but immersion is what makes a game (at least this one), and immersion has taken a crippling shot with the arcade feeling of the game, and these AWFUL ENGLISH-SPEAKING UNITS ! A Roman/Carthaginian unit talking to me in english is definitely an horrible surprise to say the least...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by spacecadet

Also selecting the MTW UI. Even when switching it too true in the Preferences file, the UI doesnt fully represent the control you have over your army that STW and MTW gave you. While its at least nice to be able to left click again, dragging out formations to adjust unit spacing as well as depth doesnt work right, as well as trying to move your grouped army while keeping formation.
I hope that the MTW control option is still work in progress and will be fixed in the final game...

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--insert obligatory and deserved thanks to blodrast--

I'd like to expand on spacecadet's point. I've found that the only way I can adjust formations using the Total War Controls setting is Control-LeftMouse and drag them out. In the Trebia battle however, I grouped 5 phalanx units and, with them selected, tried Control-LeftMouse and the pink dots that showed the new positions weren't in the line I'd dragged out, but were all relative to their current positions. I ungrouped them, selected all 5 and then got the behaviour I wanted. That seems like a bug to me.

Anyone know how to adjust unit facings? Alt-RightMouse was the traditional TW way but I can't seem to find an equivalent in the demo. Ditto with attempts to move a group to a new position and keep its current position/formations. In Trebia last night, I tried to move a group of 2 Sacred Band Cavalry to a new position. Ended up with another group also moving towards that point!

Maybe the attempt to use the old Controls is flawed anyway and I should just get used to the new style. I'll have to give it a go.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lord of the Isles

...Maybe the attempt to use the old Controls is flawed anyway and I should just get used to the new style. I'll have to give it a go.

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Sure would be nice if someone from CA stopped by here to sort out all the control and UI questions.

You did not mention the somewhat worse camera controls of RTW.