Fixing Total War: The Bigger Picture

If CA goes to a monthly subscription for a SINGLE PLAYER OFFLINE GAME, I'll just have to find some alternative to the TW series, and you can bet that fanmade versions will start popping up as the TW series starts to hemmorage customers.
I dont see why people support the whole, "Pay $50 for a game, then every four weeks pay $10 to keep playing it." system.
And, y'know, there are games FAR more buggy than MTW2 was on release. I personally dont see what people complain about. It had some gameplay bugs, but I personally have never experienced a crash or lockup with MTW2 (that wasnt caused by something else.) I had one or two crashes with RTW, but they were easy to avoid.
Also, lets not forget the people out there without A) An internet connection on their gaming computer or B) 56k. Believe it or not, they exist. Used to be me a few months ago until we FINALLY got a DSL line in our neighborhood. If CA goes to the suggested system, they'll lose a TON of customers simply because of that.

Anyway, in summary, a monthly subscription would be the death of CA.

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Originally Posted by Rhedd

"We here at Regal Furniture pride ourselves in customer support. Sure, some of our chairs only have two or three legs, but we're dedicated to adding new legs at regular intervals for a minimal monthly fee."

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Loooollll, we run a furniture company, needless to say that was really funny.
We would love to be able to do things like that. :laugh4:

And to the original poster.
Pigs will fly and hell will freeze over, before that happens.

I don't mind paying a monthly fee for a MMORPG, but for a normal game I have already purchased?

I would rather stick my head in a hornets nest!

First, I must say the CA has done a great job producing M2TW. It is a great game, and the RTW was great too. I can't say anything for MTW and STW because I didn't played them.

But all of those games were very much bugged upon their release. Considering the complexity, it would be strange if they were not. This brings the first issue - those games were released too early and were not properly tested, despite of all of the testers mentioned in the credits! Unfortunately, this has become a trend for all publishers lately.

Basically we buy faulty, unfinished games. Therefore, it should be the obligation for the developers to release the patches until all of the bugs are fixed! It should be their first priority! I don't care if they are already working on their next product and don't have the time or resources to work on the patches. I paid for this game and I expect it to work as it was meant to!

BTW, HoreTore, Rome TW is not bug-free after the last patch, there are at least two major bugs: the siege tower bug and the flood bug (which is unfortunately, still present in M2TW!).

EDIT: CyanCentaur, IMO, the idea to pay a monthly tribute to play the game is absurd!

The first priority should be to make certain version 1.0, the release version, of the game is flawless. And there should be no announcements of any kind even hinting at the new game in development unless it's certain it will be bombin' us all to hell in perfect goodness.

If you do something do it right or don't do it. Of course the money issue would come in, but ah...

:)

I'll say one thing about the TW games: they made me permanently shelf other similar games (Age of Empires, Rise of Nations etc.) because of the superior realism of Total War. That alone is a very worthwhile achivement. With that said however, I must add that unless MTW2 is properly purged of bugs (1.2 patch was a step in the right direction but not enough imho) I will not be buying its expansion, nor will I be buying their next title until at least a year after its release.

GAH!

Vanya sez monthly fees are absurd! Vanya will not pay such a ridiculuous thing.

Vanya sez...

Patches are a cost of doing business.

What is at stake is reputation. No patches means reputation suffers. Reputation will have an effect on future sales.

It comes down to delivering quality.

If CA finds that having 100 developers in England is too expensive, they can cut that to 20 and hire 10,000 Indians. With all that extra manpower, they can cut dev time and increase quality.

Mind you, Vanya has experience with this. It is not easy to do, and using Indians means you must manage them very carefully, which increases management costs.

The point is: there are options and avenues.

Vanya does not have time to waste spending 23 hrs a day in a "virtual world". GAH! Crazy!

Vanya sez... the current product is fine. While not perfect, it can be made better with the next release of the game (ie, "Kingdoms"). Software is iterative, and perfection never comes on the first try. Why do you think Microsoft products only really start working after Service Pack 2?

Developers do not like to hear "this does not work" or "this sucks". Rather, they would rather get something specific and descriptive so they can focus their efforts. Don't bash, be constructive with your criticisms, and CA might put in extra effort.

Vanya works in this field. Vanya knows what He is talking about. Listen to Vanya and heed His words of wisdom. Oh, and cut heads off!

GAH!

VANYA!!! Gah!

Methinks that, while great in practice, cut heads off would be counterproductive in terms of taking CA to task, though...

AI issue:
What I found perplexing was that the original M:TW had a pretty smart AI. Then the R:TW was released, so there should be no way that the AI had to be reworked from the start. Why didn't the developers use the experience from in programming the AI from the previous 2 games?
Even in 1.2 I still see the computer controlled reinforcements moving in in total disarray like a mob not an army...

But all in all when you look at the game it is pretty impressive. So, ppl shouldn't be nitpicking because there is not a single game on the market right now that can offer you the features that Total War does...

Let me explain my earlier, strong reaction.

I'm hit up ever day for wonderful things for "only" $10 a month. Car insurance. Health insurance. Unemployment insurance. Cell phone plans. Faster internet.

EVERYBODY keeps digging at me: "Just $10 a month!"

One reason I enjoy computer games is that they are virtually commercial-free, if you ignore the product placement in some of the trendy games.

Now I'm supposed to pay a monthly fee for the one thing that doesn't hit me up for a monthly fee?

No thanks.

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Originally Posted by Bijo

The first priority should be to make certain version 1.0, the release version, of the game is flawless. And there should be no announcements of any kind even hinting at the new game in development unless it's certain it will be bombin' us all to hell in perfect goodness.

If you do something do it right or don't do it. Of course the money issue would come in, but ah...

:)

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With the ressources needed to make a game these days, there's just no way to survive releasing "flawless" games anymore, unless we're talking 3D tic-tac-toe simulators :)

I'm sure you've heard the saying "The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time" ?

Now consider that M2TW took 3 years to develop, and that's using much if not mostly Rome's code. To release M2 pristine would most likely have taken two, three more years. Who feeds CA during that time ? I'm sure they're all great guys who are utterly dedicated to the quality of their work, but they still have metabolisms. And mortgages.
So SEGA does. And SEGA watches over CA's shoulder and sends auditors in little grey suits who use words like "return on investment" and "honor the blood compact, minion !". Publishers are fairly rarely altruistic people. They do look snazzy from the top of their pitchforks to the bottom of their hooves though :clown:.

So CA rushes the game for Xmas, because the choice between having to disappoint its fanbase a bit, for a few months, until they can iron out that other 10% ; and missing out on the millions of grandmas and mummies who want to buy something cool for little Kevin who likes knights, weeeell... It's not even a choice at all :/
Especially considering the fact that the perfect, mindblowing game they wish they could have released if not for ugly monetary considerations, they can hope to achieve through later patches and expansions.

And frankly, CA has been pretty frickin' committed to their bugfixing and feature-adding in the past, compared to some other studios I could name (Troika, anyone ?).

This is my view, a view shared by many others.

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Originally Posted by CyanCentaur

Why is every Total War game overwhelmed with bugs and play balance issues? Why are gamers frustrated with CA?

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Hah, stop whining. If it was overwhelmed, you wouldn't be able to play it at all. I personally am able to play the game and find that almost all units are bug free, and nearly everything works as it should.

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Originally Posted by CyanCentaur

Because CA has no immediate financial incentive to invest manpower in "released" products.

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And yet we are on patch version 1.2. Kinda defeats your argument.

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Originally Posted by CyanCentaur

Bug fixes don't sell games. Two years from now when CA announces their Next TotalWar Game, players will be a) drooling over carefully staged screenshots, b) drooling over bogus feature lists, and c) drooling over rave reviews written by crackheads.

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You need a working game to carefully stage screenshots. It is illegal to advertise features that are not in the game.

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Originally Posted by CyanCentaur

And when the can of worms is revealed, players are horrified.

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You mean you are horrified. I personally, like thousands of others, will be enjoying the game.

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Originally Posted by CyanCentaur

The gaming community demands increasingly complex and lengthy campaigns, which inherently requires more tweaking and feedback to get things dialed in.

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And we get them. Do you know how many campaigns are going to be in factions?



I am sick of hearing people whining about how the game is filled with bugs and is unbalanced. How can you possibly expect every bug to surface in the beta testing period if some bugs take months of careful combing of the game by a forum viewed by hundreds? I was suprised when viewing the bug list - I hadn't noticed any when playing myself. But then, I wasn't specifically looking for any.

If you want a real horror story about poor customer service look no farther than Blizzard.

This is a company who deliberately sold faulty copies of their Burning Crusade Collectors Edition to thousands of European customers and then considered that they were doing them a favour by offering to put the fault right, but only if they ruined their collectors sets by posting a unique collectors card at their own expense to a post office box in France.

And when predictably hundreds of these went missing in the post and in their offices they just shrugged and and walked away.

Now thats Customer Service the Blizzard way.:furious3:

edit

Thank you for your comments, everyone.

It might be a good idea to remember, if this topic is to continue, that CA is - surprise surprise - staffed by living, breathing people. Some of them read these forums.

So it would be great if you all could all make an effort to refrain from criticising the people, even if you feel the need to criticise the product.

Oh, and it'd also be nice if everyone could tone the language down a little, too :yes:

And a final reminder that this is a thread about a possible alternate pricing method for TW games, not for a discussion about how evil blizzard is.

We have the Arena for that sort of stuff :laugh4:

~sapi

Just want to add my two cents, and say that monthly fees are OK, in certain situations. These situations are as follows:

When the game is an MMORPG.

I don't see any reason to pay monthly for other situations. MMORPG's require a certain amount of manpower and dedication that greatly surpasses that of any patch development team I know of. They require a large amount of servers to be reliably maintained online.

Paying monthly for patches and maintained quality in overwhelmingly single player games would cut off many gamers, not just those incensed with the idea. I, myself, would be unable to play, and not just because I disagree with paying. I'm moving into a somewhat financially unstable situation soon, and I don't know for sure how much extra money I'm going to be taking in for a few months. I'll have more bills than I know what to do with, and the question becomes: Do I pay $15 to play City of Heroes this month, or do I buy these groceries so I can eat?

I won't pay a monthly fee for gaming personally. I also waited until 1.02 was released to buy MTW2, and I didn't buy or play RTW (Though I loved Shogun and MTW and especially VI). I stopped buying broken games after Myth III came out. That, BTW, is the game that saw the development team fired about 2 weeks after the game was released, before they could complete a patch to make the game playable. Not that Take Two pulled it off the shelves or anything, they just sold it with full on broken MP and severely crashy SP, and quite a lot of websites reviewed it positively despite that.

Be a responsible consumer. The only way to 'fix' the gaming industry is to buy games only when they're stable and playable. A good general rule is not to buy *anything* at 1.0.

Ramses II

$10 a month? I cannot possibly get that! Do you realise what that money is in other parts of the world?

Rushed products are never the fault of the developers, rather the fault of the producers for rushing the game's developers. I don't blame CA for anything. Sega is another story entirely.

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Originally Posted by CyanCentaur

Well it sounds like most people don't like my idea. That's ok.

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I think the problem with your subsciption idea has been fully covered. Mainly it just doesn't give the software provider enough incentive to correct the software.

However, at the moment the only incentive is its reputation as a company and as Blizzard have shown most software companies have little interest in that either.

Perhaps one solution would be a system where one paid a deposit to play a game 'On Approval' and were only required to pay the balance of the agreed purchase price once you were satisfied that the game was free from playability problems and fit for purpose. That would put the pressure on the supplier to ship quality product and to fix any faults discovered by customers quickly.

But to be honest I can't see that happening, and its not really much different to the existing option of taking the game back to the shop and demanding your money back.

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Originally Posted by CyanCentaur

But there IS a longstanding quality problem with the TW series and I think it's partly due to the payment structure. I once read a comment (rumor? fact?) on the STW boards that sent a chill up my spine - that CA refused to pay programmers to generate patches but allowed them to issue patches in their personal free time only!!

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There is a long standing quality problem with computer software in general, and with the payment structure of paying for it. The TW series is just one small part of a much bigger problem. What has become even more apparent with the Blizzard incident is that the larger software companies consider themselves beyond the reach of normal legislation designed to protect the rights of their consumers, and do not consider that their businesses should be subject to standard consumer rights legislation.

The scary thing is they seem to be right. Consumer protection agencies seem to be incapable of dealing with quality issues related to computer software or with breaches of consumer protection which are instigated beyond their national boundaries.

Buy an iron that doesn't heat up or an oven that doesn't cook and their right there on the case. Ring them up with details of poor quality programming and a bug list as long as the forth bridge and their completely dumbfounded.

For a perfect example: look no further than windows.

As for not paying programmers to correct their own bugs. I don't know if its true but it sounds perfectly reasonable. If you contract with a programmer to produce a peice of code to a given spec, and that code is delivered with numerous bugs in it, why would you then pay the programmer to correct his own mistakes. The requirement would have been for bug free code and any remedial work ought to be completed at the programmers own expense. After all we would not expect to play CA for the patches we need to correct those bugs in the game after it was sold to us.

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Originally Posted by Didz

The scary thing is they seem to be right. Consumer protection agencies seem to be incapable of dealing with quality issues related to computer software or with breaches of consumer protection which are instigated beyond their national boundaries.

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Have you ever taken the time to read any of those "by clicking next, you implicitly accept all these terms" blurbs they put in installation setups ? Very informative. Lawyerly brilliance at its shiniest. They stop short of printing "also, you accept to give us heartfelt thanks and the virginity of your daughter should this particular piece of software make your computer explode and give you genital warts", but one gets the feeling it was an automated spellchecker's conscience that dictated it to remove the line.

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Originally Posted by DVX BELLORVM

BTW, HoreTore, Rome TW is not bug-free after the last patch, there are at least two major bugs: the siege tower bug and the flood bug (which is unfortunately, still present in M2TW!).

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I rate both of these as minor bugs. I've never been too bothered by them. Heck, it took a pretty long time before I even noticed them.

As for the "Patching is the number one priority!"-thingy, I guess that means you want everyone at CA to work with the patches before they start any work on an expansion?

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Originally Posted by HoreTore

As for the "Patching is the number one priority!"-thingy, I guess that means you want everyone at CA to work with the patches before they start any work on an expansion?

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Well I certainly do.

Why would both concepts be antithetic ?
They can work a truckload of fixes INTO the expansion. Thus having an economic incentive to fix bugs because we'd have to fork out our hard-earned cash (well, your hard-earned cash and my mooched-off sycophanted cash, I suppose) on the expansion to get the patchy-filled goodness under the "brilliant new campaigns, units, and stuff" crust. Hoorray !

What a novel idea I just had. I wonder why they didn't do just that with their earlier games... :grin:

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Originally Posted by HoreTore

I rate both of these as minor bugs. I've never been too bothered by them. Heck, it took a pretty long time before I even noticed them.

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I'm surprised you consider those bugs to be minor. The sieges are important part of TW games, and the siege tower bugs makes them pretty annoying, especially towards the end of campaign, when there are more large stone walls, which are particularly affected by the bug.

As far as the flood bug is concerned, you may rate it as minor if you do not build many watchtowers and forts. I usually build WT all along my borders, and use forts to guard choke points and secure my supply lines. In my current English campaign, Bordeaux was struck early by flood, and it bothers me that I can't build anything there.
The same thing happened in Gaza, and since my major supply line passes through it, my conquest of Middle East was hampered by the slowly moving reinforcements.

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Originally Posted by HoreTore

As for the "Patching is the number one priority!"-thingy, I guess that means you want everyone at CA to work with the patches before they start any work on an expansion?

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Yes of course! I'd rather have a bug-free vanilla than some fancy expansion filled with same old bugs.

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Yes of course! I'd rather have a bug-free vanilla than some fancy expansion filled with same old bugs.

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Every TW expansion to date has fixed a lot of bugs, as well as a new patch generally coming out at the same time as the expansion for those who don't buy it. So the 2 aren't mutually exclusive. No game dev company will devote all their time to solely patching a game that's already released, it doesn't make business sense.

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Originally Posted by Lusted

Every TW expansion to date has fixed a lot of bugs, as well as a new patch generally coming out at the same time as the expansion for those who don't buy it. So the 2 aren't mutually exclusive.

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It's true, and the CA does better job than many other devs.

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Originally Posted by Lusted

No game dev company will devote all their time to solely patching a game that's already released, it doesn't make business sense.

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Indeed, patching doesn't make money. But it makes reputation. And in the long run, inadequate support may lead to lower sales and less profit.
I didn't buy Barbarian invasion because it didn't fix some bugs I considered critical. I'm sure there were many more like me. I bought M2TW only after the 1.2 was released, and I'll buy the Kingdoms only if it doesn't contain critical bugs (or after they are patched).

Well, as kobal and lusted has pointed out, fixing bugs and making an expansion is NOT mutually exclusive. Further, what are all those guys who do not have the knowledge to fix bugs(like artists, researchers, etc) supposed to do, as you wont allow them to work on an expansion? Is it really better for them to sit around twiddling thumbs instead of working on an expansion? I certainly can't see the logic in that.

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Originally Posted by HoreTore

Further, what are all those guys who do not have the knowledge to fix bugs(like artists, researchers, etc) supposed to do, as you wont allow them to work on an expansion? Is it really better for them to sit around twiddling thumbs instead of working on an expansion?

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No, they shouldn't sit around twiddling thumbs, they should be reading this forum, so they could give the programmers some informations about the bugs. ~D

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Originally Posted by Kobal2fr

With the ressources needed to make a game these days, there's just no way to survive releasing "flawless" games anymore, unless we're talking 3D tic-tac-toe simulators :)

I'm sure you've heard the saying "The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time" ?

Now consider that M2TW took 3 years to develop, and that's using much if not mostly Rome's code. To release M2 pristine would most likely have taken two, three more years. Who feeds CA during that time ? I'm sure they're all great guys who are utterly dedicated to the quality of their work, but they still have metabolisms. And mortgages.
So SEGA does. And SEGA watches over CA's shoulder and sends auditors in little grey suits who use words like "return on investment" and "honor the blood compact, minion !". Publishers are fairly rarely altruistic people. They do look snazzy from the top of their pitchforks to the bottom of their hooves though :clown:.

So CA rushes the game for Xmas, because the choice between having to disappoint its fanbase a bit, for a few months, until they can iron out that other 10% ; and missing out on the millions of grandmas and mummies who want to buy something cool for little Kevin who likes knights, weeeell... It's not even a choice at all :/
Especially considering the fact that the perfect, mindblowing game they wish they could have released if not for ugly monetary considerations, they can hope to achieve through later patches and expansions.

And frankly, CA has been pretty frickin' committed to their bugfixing and feature-adding in the past, compared to some other studios I could name (Troika, anyone ?).

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That is generally correct.

Well, my first thought when I read this was the launcher poll question - Would you pay $10 for a single expansion campaign? My answer: Yes, IF it was professionally done, added sizeable content to the main game, and was virtually bug-free and stand-alone balanced. A larger map in one, additions to Crusades and their frequency/effect, one for Medieval 2 Total War: Jihads!, an Eastern Orthodox pack, ect. As long as these "updates" were like this, more large upgrade than update, I'd be fine with them.

I would not however, want them handed out for a $10 monthly charge to the 'ole Visa or AMEX. Give me a list of campaigns/upgrades and let me buy what I want, yeah, I'd go for that. I know I can find almost anything I could ever want for free in player created mods - many of which look amazing and their creators must be given mad props for - but I'm hopelessly obsessive about things in their "Original" or "Manufacturer's Option" form.

Case in point: I wanted one of those DVD Navigation Systems in my dash. Instead of buying an aftermarket one for my car, I bought a new car that had it in an option package. I'm completely insane, but at least the new car sure is pretty. I'd seek help, but now I can't afford the therapist. Or $10 upgrades. Never mind. :wall:

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Originally Posted by Didz

Perhaps one solution would be a system where one paid a deposit to play a game 'On Approval' and were only required to pay the balance of the agreed purchase price once you were satisfied that the game was free from playability problems and fit for purpose. That would put the pressure on the supplier to ship quality product and to fix any faults discovered by customers quickly.

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And what would keep you from "not approving" and still keep playing? Playability for a trial period, perhaps, but the that won´t solve the problem, since either you complete the game within the trial period, or its length would be chosen to end while the player isn´t fully aware of the bugs. Basically, we´d be back at the old shareware business model, and I don´t see that working for the majority of the game industry.

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Originally Posted by Didz

There is a long standing quality problem with computer software in general, and with the payment structure of paying for it. The TW series is just one small part of a much bigger problem. What has become even more apparent with the Blizzard incident is that the larger software companies consider themselves beyond the reach of normal legislation designed to protect the rights of their consumers, and do not consider that their businesses should be subject to standard consumer rights legislation.

The scary thing is they seem to be right. Consumer protection agencies seem to be incapable of dealing with quality issues related to computer software or with breaches of consumer protection which are instigated beyond their national boundaries.

Buy an iron that doesn't heat up or an oven that doesn't cook and their right there on the case. Ring them up with details of poor quality programming and a bug list as long as the forth bridge and their completely dumbfounded.

For a perfect example: look no further than windows.

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The issue is, that you buy software "as is", which you would know if you carefully read the license agreement. You have consumer rights in case of product defects, i.e. if the disc is damaged, but you have no warranty on content, the same way you can´t demand your money back if you didn´t like a movie.

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And SEGA watches over CA's shoulder and sends auditors in little grey suits who use words like "return on investment" and "honor the blood compact, minion !". Publishers are fairly rarely altruistic people. They do look snazzy from the top of their pitchforks to the bottom of their hooves though

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That´s got nothing to do with being evil. I work for a finance company (in a different field, but still) as well, and I have to damn well make sure that the money we fork out (around one million € for a game, according to a recent interview) comes back in. Because it doesn´t appear on our accounts out of nowhere, either.