Latest update on 1.2 patch from Sega/CA

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Originally Posted by Temujin

No it isn't.

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Have you got any evidence to support that?

I can tell you that general statistics (sales numbers vs forum members) are on my side, so the onus of proof is on you

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What exactly is this "conservative estimate" based on, then? Because you can't multiply integers and hot air like that, it's simply not mathematically correct.

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Based on a known fact (the number of users who visited the forum in the past 24 hours)
Known data (members) adjusted to account for guests (which were 90% of currently online users when i posted)
And rounded up

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I have a bunch of gamer friends, too, and with the exception of the one guy-with-no-internet-access, they ALL visit forums to keep up with the games they are playing. All of them.

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And that, I suspect, is because we come from different countries and different age groups.

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My unsourced, empirical datapoint is bigger than your unsourced, empirical datapoint. So there.

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:laugh4:

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So, how old are you, then? Time for an update, perhaps?

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Nice quote, btw :beam:

Actually he's right...majority of the customers dont come to the forums...

Just to use myself as an unrepresentative example:

I have only just started coming to the forum AFTER buying M2TW. So it was too late to boycott, but just in time to get all disillusioned as I read all the bugs and complaints.

RTW: I bought played and thought was fanstastic. i didn't come to forums and so had no idea how broken it was. I noticed a few things myself and jsut shrugged them off as glitches without paying much attention.

So although I now forum in neither case would a campaign have stopped my buying.

To be honest if such a campaign was started with the expansion i would probably ignore it anyway. I think some people are being a little unrealistic about what they expect from their games. IMHO CA & SEGA released a great game. They are trying to now beat the bugs that people have raised, without any new sales from it - purely out of support, NOT making a penny. They are working on an expansion, from which they will make money, that will incorporate feedback and requests from fans. It seems more than fair to me.

I work for a TV broadcast company and believe me when I say NOT ONE of the products we have ever had is bug free. And these are broadcast critical costing millions of pounds being sold to some of the most powerful corporations in the world not 30 bucks a pop to some know-nothing teenager
(not intended as insult but as comparison!)


P.s. Bizarrely enough I think I probably enjoyed RTW more (althoug m2tw is better). Ignorance is bliss.

Because I didn't know what I was missing and couldn't pick up hints and tips, I just enjoyed what it did do. And also enjoyed making noob mistakes and finding tactical answers myself. I can't undo my knowledge, so will probably forum from now on but in many ways regret discovering it....

I'd also point out that if anyone had bothered to follow the thread linked to in the very first post the CA PR guy that was posting admitted on the same day the patch was released that CA & SEGA are asking "serious internal questions" about why the game was allowed to be released so early when it was clearly unfinished.

They know and agree that it was released in too buggy a state and far too early, and "serious questions" probably means whoever was responsible will end up with the sack for sure.

But of course your all soooo busy flaming CA you couldn't be bothered to keep an eye on the other thread. AND, THEN you have the cheek to complain CA pays you no attention when you do exactly the same to CA :inquisitive: ???

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I'd also point out that if anyone had bothered to follow the thread linked to in the very first post the CA PR guy that was posting admitted on the same day the patch was released that CA & SEGA are asking "serious internal questions" about why the game was allowed to be released so early when it was clearly unfinished.

They know and agree that it was released in too buggy a state and far too early, and "serious questions" probably means whoever was responsible will end up with the sack for sure.

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Only time will tell whether that is simply a PR stunt, unfortunately.

I can't see anyone getting the sack based on choosing what was likely to have been the most profitible option, and releasing at Christmas.

What I can never understand are the 'open letters to the developers' and the fact that people seem to think they have a 'right' for the developers to listen to their every whim, complaint, moan, 'game breaking' bugs and the fact that a pike is 2ft longer than it historically was on 4th March 1546 in a small hamlet outside Flensburg.

Most odd.

@Husar

Nice picture! :laugh4:

Frist off I don't need half of all consumers to boycott a game. Even a 1 to 5 percent drop in sales is enough to do damage and prevent a game from going #1 or becoming game of the year.

Yes the traffic on the forums may not be that high (today), but everyone who participates in a boycott or delay in purchase ultimately talks to someone else, and believe me a person is more likely to convince his friends to boycott than a forum is to convince a stranger. Boycott wasn't my term, however, delaying a purchase should become more of good "common sense" rather than a movement. It should be a personal choice of gamers who accept the reality of the business and have decided to save themselves the frustration and disappointment of buying half completed games at full price only to wait 6 months to play what they paid for.

Whether my plan works or not ultimately is moot. I'm making a personal choice and I'm sharing that choice with others in the hope they might also consider the same action. I realize without the support of the forums as well my idea probably won't get very far. But in the end my goal has been achieved. I have been changed and I will be better for it.

BTW I keep seeing a common theme about how nice CA is for making a patch and listening to the community even though they won't make any money on the patch blah, blah, blah. . .

Frankly I think it was very nice of the community to BETA! test their game for them, and to pay full price for that BETA!. I consider the patch and any patches to come to be the actual game and the money I paid to get a copy of the BETA! was nothing more than a pre-purchase. They owe me the patch because I paid for it 6 months ago.

Noneless, I think we all know that if CA/Sega didn't patch there would be a lot of customers who wanted their money back. I can tell you I wanted my money back 6 months ago.

I won't have this problem next time.

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Originally Posted by sapi

Have you got any evidence to support that?

I can tell you that general statistics (sales numbers vs forum members) are on my side, so the onus of proof is on you

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Uhm, No. You were the one making claims and backing them up with pseudo-stats and handwaving (what my stats-prof at uni called "lying with numbers"), so the onus is on YOU to actually back that up with real data and math that doesn't require magic to work. Asking me to prove a negative isn't going to make your claim ring true to anyone with a sense of logic in their heads.

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Based on a known fact (the number of users who visited the forum in the past 24 hours)
Known data (members) adjusted to account for guests (which were 90% of currently online users when i posted)
And rounded up

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Even accepting these numbers (which I can't verify), that's still a far cry from proving that "It's a simple fact that the vast majority of gamers do not visit online forums". Here's some questions to help you on your way to make that claim more than an unfounded assertion:

1) What's the size of the general population of gamers?
2) What percentage of the online forum attendance goes to totalwar.org?
3) Was yesterdays attendance stats representative of the activity of this forum?
4) Is this forum representative of the general population of forums in terms of attendance vs. memberships and daily activity?
5) Is the membership and unregistered attendance of this forum representative of the general population of gamers?

There are more, but this is just a handful to get you started. Either prove your claim or acknowledge that you used pseudo-stats with no backing to reinforce your point.

Having an opinion is fine, but trying to raise it to fact with no basis is a sort of bullying I particularly dislike.

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Originally Posted by Butcher

What I can never understand are the 'open letters to the developers' and the fact that people seem to think they have a 'right' for the developers to listen to their every whim, complaint, moan, 'game breaking' bugs and the fact that a pike is 2ft longer than it historically was on 4th March 1546 in a small hamlet outside Flensburg.

Most odd.

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manufacturer is responsible for their product and to please its customers.

still cant figure out how it is a fact that pikes are two feet longer than they were historically. how did you measure them? just curious.

First off, #338 is a great post, Slice. It's true that it isn't necessary to completely crush a game economically in order to have accomplished something meaningful, as a group or as an individual. I particularly like how you realize that you yourself benefit tremendously from employing this strategy, regardless of the impact it may or may not have on the industry.

Next: to all the comments about the forums and forum attendance. They are largely irrelevant. I cited the Internet as a primary means of information, and it is not necessary to restrict that to simple game forums like this one. The question to ask is how many gamers, even occasionally, visit gaming-related web sites? Theoretically the infrastructure I'm talking about could include review sites, forums, fan sites (think wallpapers, skinning, etc), video sites (like YouTube), and yes even the dreaded crack sites perhaps. In short, there are quite a large number of places where I'm sure a substantial number of gamers visit. The point is not what this site alone could accomplish (which still might not be insignificant) but rather what a majority of gaming-related sites could do. I also point out here that Slice's notion of this seems a much better way to go about it than simple boycotting: actually educating gamers and turning them into better, smarter consumers. If this can be accomplished in some measure, then the boycott-like trends will naturally surface, without any further orchestration.

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Originally Posted by Moah

To be honest if such a campaign was started with the expansion i would probably ignore it anyway. I think some people are being a little unrealistic about what they expect from their games. IMHO CA & SEGA released a great game. They are trying to now beat the bugs that people have raised, without any new sales from it - purely out of support, NOT making a penny. They are working on an expansion, from which they will make money, that will incorporate feedback and requests from fans. It seems more than fair to me.

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Actually, it's pretty deluded to think that CA & SEGA make nothing from the support work they do on this game. The support work CA does on this game is in turn selling copies of their next release. You can clearly see this because the number one result of them cutting off support for the game after release, aside from endless complaining in the community, would be decreased sales of their next release. So in reality they make plenty of money from the post-release work they do on this game, and in fact it may have the most influence on how their next title sells of anything that affects that title's sales. So, I think we can safely do away with this "look how nice CA is to patch the game for us" attitude, as clearly they have very selfish economic reasons to do so. I'm not saying that's wrong or bad: simply that it is fact. They patch precisely because it DOES make them money.

not to veer off the discussion but does anyone know if the armor stats will be fixed in the patch?

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Originally Posted by Slicendice

That said, I will never buy another game on release day. It took me a few times to learn my lesson. Now I'm going to wait until a game gets a couple of patches. I'm going to listen to the forums when people say a game is unplayable. And most importantly I'm going to save my money. In fact if I wait long enough I might even be able to get the game on sale. So not only will I get a game that works, but I will pay less for it than the poor schmucks that had to have it on the release date.

If enough people do this then what will happen? For starters games may not reach #1 in sales. The profitability of releasing incomplete games will decrease and badly needed cash flows will come in a trickle rather than a flood.

I realize if enough people do what I suggest it might hurt game developers, but given the choice of sticking it to them or letting them stick it to me I choose to stick it to them. Do they deserve better? They don't think we deserve better.

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Yeh I rarley buy games on release now, having said that I think if you do 'listen to the forums' then your going to be playing very few games, because whatever the game youll find a heap of 'Buggy unplayable beta' threads of guys crying cause the game wasnt made the way 'they wanted'

That said, Im going to be thinking long and hard about buying the Kingdoms Add on , in fact it may be the first TW title i dont buy, and should the developers continue on the who needs gameplay - look at all the fruit line of development - M2 will prob be the last TW for this black duck - I mean really when the battles are laughable and teadously frustrating because the AI cant find its own shoelaces and most the units dont work as intended??? Then the strategy could be defeated by 'the angry german kid' - this isnt the game it used to be - for me anyway

and the late game is so boring/frustrating/sameness its like the into movie - once youve played it once, its unlikely youll suffer it a second time

maybe with the patch I will be able to spark my interest enough to get past the frustration - I guess what Im saying is... powerup Generals - has confirmed my fears

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Originally Posted by Butcher

What I can never understand are the 'open letters to the developers' and the fact that people seem to think they have a 'right' for the developers to listen to their every whim, complaint, moan, 'game breaking' bugs and the fact that a pike is 2ft longer than it historically was on 4th March 1546 in a small hamlet outside Flensburg.

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I understand that this is intended as sarcasm and exaggerated for rhetorical purposes, but I think you're taking it a bit too far. I'm aware that people on this forum (me included) tend to bicker endlessly about some inconsequential detail, but remember that M2TW is a game, not just a toy or a simulation, and as any other game doesn't really work without a set of rules that are fair to all players, known & understood by all and equally enforced on all, either by mechanics or by arbitrage.
For example, one of the (unwritten) rules in M2TW - and most other videogames too - is that if the graphical depiction of an item resembles something in the real world, then it's behaviour is expected to be similar to its real counterpart. Now, I see the soldiers in M2TW carrying things that look a lot like shields. I expect those things to act as a kind of protection. Instead, they act like slabs of kryptonite, crippling my "little supermen". Thus, a rule is broken or misrepresented. No rules, no game.

If anything, the discussion in these forums helps making a better product by raising customer awareness and helping find the problems in the finer details of the game. It's true, a lot of the talk here consists of moaning and complaining, but, ye know, nobody's forcing you to read it if it bothers you. If you do though, you might emerge somewhat wiser.
An unpleasant side effect is the "losing of innocence", which does indeed reduce the enjoyment, as stated previously in this thread. For my part, I'd rather take the information, since knowing things is enjoyable in itself ; "ignorance is bliss" is like saying "I wish I was dumber so I don't realize when people lie to me or try to rip me off, so I don't stress about it".

I see dealing with the bugs in a differant way. Take the Armoured Swordsmen from England. With the shield bug I quit deploying 'em at all. Played some fun games. Maybe harder since I relied on levy spearmen lots more. Got the unofficial 1.2 Got it to work. Now almost having a whole new game using the Armoured Swordsmen. Its all good.

I agree - totally better game with the shield bug fixed and the cavalry able to actually kill the enemy during the rout... That with the fact that you can actually create an alliance and sustain it with some TLC let you employ strategy...

Playing venice used to suck because you would not be able to do anything because your alliances meant nothing... i was surrounded on all sides and constantly attacked... In 1.2 i was able to hold an alliance with milan for many rounds (they did attack me once - i dessimated a full stack of theres and then we made up and allied again - so far it has held up 30 turns...

Alot of people beat on this game but i like it better than rome NOW... the assassins guild is the greatest thing ever... I dont like expanding the empire quickly. My assassins allow me to grow my technology and conduct covert ops on my enemies...

with regard to the cannon/ballista tower bug... Are my ballista towers causing cannon damage on the enemy? Not sure if i want to upgrade when gunpowder hits...

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Originally Posted by Butcher

a pike is 2ft longer than it historically was on 4th March 1546 in a small hamlet outside Flensburg.

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O, if only the pikes had been 2 ft longer in Flensburg that day!

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Originally Posted by nookie

with regard to the cannon/ballista tower bug... Are my ballista towers causing cannon damage on the enemy? Not sure if i want to upgrade when gunpowder hits...

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Nah you'd know if your ballista towers were firing cannon balls. It isn't just in the damage they do. It doesn't appear to happen all the time though so you may have got lucky. I remember when I first mentioned this bug ages ago few people believed me because they had apparently not experienced it.

My last battle was definitely shooting cannon from my towers becuase it was a huge fireball being shot at night... Yet the last campaign i know i had my cannon towers going...

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Originally Posted by dismal

O, if only the pikes had been 2 ft longer in Flensburg that day!

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Some men are longer than others.

[/Braveheart]

im still somewhat confused what he based his information on. was it by size ratio? if so one must remember that average height for a man up until modern times usually hovered around five and a half feet.

based on my judgement i would think they are between 16 to 18 feet in length. i saw a 21 foot long pike with the original furniture on it at the frazier armory museum in louisville kentucky. but i would say 16 to 18 feet was usually the norm for most of the history of long spears such as pikes or sarissas.

To bring this back on topic (the original topic), anyone hear anything about the official patch recently? :book:

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Originally Posted by Alexander the Pretty Good

To bring this back on topic (the original topic), anyone hear anything about the official patch recently? :book:

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:2thumbsup:

The official patch has gone back into testing, check the News and Announcements section at www.totalwarforums.com for the latest news.

Weird... If the leaked 1.2 was meant to be distributed from the mirror it got "hijacked" from then why does my game say 1.02? Smells free beta test to me.

It didn't get 'hijacked'; they had to delay the patch at the last minute after critical problems were found in it

Well thats what 1.2 is, 1.02, like 1.1 is 1.01. Thats the game version. And as Caliban/SenseiTW/Alex SEGA have said countless times, it was not released on purpose.

It would be nice now to have a separate sticky thread with no posting allowed to give us updates about the patch releases. I Came to this thread just to see if there is any recent news about it and had to wade through 12 pages of moans gripes and retaliation posts back and forth, when all I wanted to know was - is it out yet... or what stage they were up to - jumping to the last page (as I figure thats the response I'll get) sometimes you miss important posts. I dont use any other TW forum cept this one cos its been the best for me since shogun. So please can we just have one thread with no non-admin posting?

A separate sticky?

What a strange idea!

Why, there's been one at the top of this forum for, oh, 10 minutes now ~;)

Sapi,

you missed a post by Caliban at .com.....He said:





Administrator/Administrator

Posts: 82

04/30/07 20:00

CA Staff


"The Patch has embarked on its epic journey from Australia to England. From my understanding it's now being tested by SEGA UK. No amount of whinging or whining is going to make it come any faster. It's in the pipeline now so all we can do is wait. And besides, Jonny Blademan said he's going to cook you all ribs!

*creeps away slowly*"