RTW Expansion announced

When the movie Alexander was announced last fall I had high expectations for it, especially considering that Stone was making it.

Well, we all know how that movie turned out... I was very disappointed with it...

CA, based on STW and MTW, built up expectations in that RTW would be an excellent game, since it would be built on experience from the previous two TW games.

In addition, STW and MTW both earned great reviews and word of mouth.

Based on the success and popularity of the TW games, players had a right to believe that CA and Activision would produce and support a top notch game in the form of RTW.

Well, we all know what has happend with this game...

While RTW can still be salvaged, the fact that CA announced its withdrawal of support for the game is a major disappointment...

Since complex strategy games require extensive playing and patches (Paradox does this on an on-going basis), and since computer games cannot be returned once they are opened, and since patches are both expected by the computer industry and the consumer, and since a company's support for its product determines consumer loyalty, and since the consumer has fulfilled his contractual obligations (buying the product), while CA has not fulfilled its contractual obligations (providing a product that in some respects is still "broken"), then the knowledgeable consumer has every right to wait before he/she buys the TW expansion pack and/or the next TW game.

There is such a thing as having "pride in one's product". Even if Activision will not fund the time to put out another patch, then surely CA could devote one person to a few hours a week to iron out some of the worst bugs still in RTW.

Look at the amount of effort and time that people put into mods for the TW games and they are not paid a single penny for their efforts.

Evolution of the gaming industry has decreed that SSI, Talonsoft and 3DO should go the way of the DoDo bird because of their past attitudes and gaming practices...

Should the same thing happen to CA, then we will know at what point that slide into oblivion began...

Bhruic, I pay for this game because I *like* TW style in-depth games. I totally 100% agree that there should be a grass-roots campaign to change the way publishers go about contracting and making games. As a game developer, I know all too well how much the current system sucks. Developers are shackled to publishers (it's the only way to get decent numbers of copies of a game sold), and publishers are shackled to their marketing departments, their shareholders and the almighty dollar. However, I don't want to see the TW series cancelled as a casualty. Thus all I'm asking is to wage the campaign, but not to kill TW in the process!

I'm personally scared that there will be a day when there are no more games like RTW or MTW or STW because publishers are deathly afraid of player backlash. What good is having good customer support for a game if all the games are bland, cliche games?

However, if you feel that I'm part of the problem because I selfishly want *one* game series to continue then go ahead. Frankly I don't give a damn what you think of me. I've spend the better part of my working life working in and around the gaming industry and am tired after years of working against the grain to try to change the system. If you and others want to continue the fight go ahead. Just please don't kill my favorite game series to do it, ok?

You sound like you want RTW/MTW/RTW and the TW series done better. Pointing a financial gun at them and ordering them to do things differently won't work. (which is what a boycott or an email campaign is basically doing: Do things our way or we'll ruin your reputation/financial situation). If I made statues and someone called me up with death threats and said "Make the statues differently", I'd probably stop making statues all together! Since the statue-making is what got me all the negative feedback, despite all my hard work and best efforts, then why should I continue making statues? That analogy holds to games as well. Publishers (not the developer CA, since they will try to make TW games anyway) will get scared that all TW-style games do is create rabid player bases that make their lives miserable. Solution: Stop making TW-style games and the mob will go away and bother someone else. Can you see how such campaigns can backfire, if your intention is to make the game better?

The frustrating thing is that the player-base has such little power over the course of the game's development. It's even more frustrating for a game like RTW because CA went out of their way to try to include the player base in the process, especially by opening up the data files for modification. When you love a game so much, but it goes in ways that you don't like, it's immensly frustrating to not be able to do anything about it.

Trust me, though, if you care about *this* game and *this* series, then boycotts and email campaigns won't make *this* game better. You are assuming that the TW series will be made regardless of what you do and that simply isn't true. All you do is create a problem for the publisher. The publisher will want to solve the problem, and the *easiest* solution is to kill the series. Kill TW, and you have no more boycott problem, no more email campaigns to magazines decrying the bad customer support, no more problem. Your goal is to coerce them into making TW better and providing better customer support and involvement. How is that accomplished if they choose to take the easier solution and cancel the series?

The real solution is to start our own publishing company and do things differently. Something tells me that most of us aren't that ambitious or that fired up to do something to fix the system. But until the publishers see that things *can* work differently and still turn a profit, they will keep doing things the same way until the twilight years of humanity.

And the reason why I always talk about the publishers vs the developers (like CA) is because the publisher owns the property rights to most games (dunno about the TW series however). This means they call the shots. If they say "don't talk to the players anymore", the dev's *must* obey or they can be found in breach of contract (then a whole new world of hurt descends upon them). It is entirely possible that CA *cannot*, due to legal obligations, get as involved with the community as they, or we, like.

I suspect that is the case here. Patches (at least with Activision) can be half-million-dollar (or more) situations involving several months of QA, testing, and back-and-forth. It has to be this way to ensure that the most players benefit from the patch without introducing problems like CTD's, game-stoppers, etc. This severely limits the involvement with the public. An issue could be uncovered by the public, and not addressed for several weeks because of the process required to make changes to a mature product like an already-released computer game. There could be a new feature/fix that would make (in the player base's eyes) the game better, but have some nasty repercusion or financial/developmental cost that is unacceptable (and impossible to explain to the public). Nothing will kill Activision faster than releasing buggy, crashing games. Doom3 shipped with relatively few bugs, RTW shipped with relatively few bugs (anyone remember the "good" old days of the late '90s where games were shipped with known crashers and the attitude "oh we'll fix those in a patch" was prevalent?). The Vampire's RPG shipped with relatively few crashers (however the artwork could've used some polish, especially the intro movie). Call of Duty was shipped with no show-stoppers that I'm aware of. This is one are where console games have had a huge influence. Games cannot be patched on a console, so any game-killer bugs that get in means a multi-million dollar game fails, and the publisher's reputation is trashed.

The process involved in ensuring that that doesn't happen requires a regimented development/testing/QA cycle that leaves very little room for niceties like providing adequate feedback to the public. Quite literally, it is more important to ship a solid game (or ship a patch) that is as good as possible, than it is to post on forums like these. If just one crasher can be fixed at the expense of not responding to a particular thread here on the forums, then I'm a happy camper. However, there is no way (from our side) to know that this happened, so it appears that we're being ignored.

So yes, I have strong feelings about this. And yes I like TW. A lot. And I'm willing to sacrifice changing the system so that I can keep getting my TW fix. If you don't like that, too bad.

BTW, Pericles, CA *cannot* simply devote their own resources to patch the game. It is *activision's* product, so if activision isn't willing to let a patch go out, then CA is helpless. And with activision's #1 priority being releasing crash-free functional games, they cannot allow a patch to be released without a full QA cycle on the patch. And that QA cycle is both time consuming and expensive. Thus, CA is helpless if Activision decides not to fund a patch, even if they are willing to spend their own coin on it.

Go ahead and blame CA about it if you like. It still doesn't change the situation. Only *Activision* can authorize a patch. If CA patched even one minor bug and shipped a patch for it, they would be in breach of contract, and Activision can sue them into bankruptcy.

hoof,

You are speculating and repeating hearsay with regards to "can they patch or can't they?" They aren't going to show us the relevant parts of the contract. If they did, then we would know. So adding my own speculation, I don't believe the Activision single patch mantra. It is a rather convenient excuse for CA, but it just doesn't have the ring of truth to it. What I have heard clearly is that CA won't be FUNDED to do another patch. As some have pointed out on other forums, CA has used this same patch policy excuse for the other 4 titles in the series, and with another publisher. So forgive me if this excuse is beginning to wear thin.

Activision is the only party that has no representation in these forums. It is much too convenient to scapegoat them since they have no voice. From what I can surmise, RTW's problems came from the developer, not the publisher. Shipping a product with numerous blatant sign error type problems, etc. points to a development problem from lack of testing of features, not a big bad evil publisher crushing the little guy. The CTD type bugs are largely absent and the game has been surprisingly stable from the outset (although the patch installer is sloppy, and uninstalls are not clean enough.) This suggests that Activision's basic responsibilities were carried out in the testing--even though it is CA that had to do the hard work of making the game resilient enough.

Oh, and one other thing that I remember being a standard part of contracts like this (at least when I helped write or review them) was that both parties could agree in writing to alter some aspect of the contract. It was usually in there somewhere as "boilerplate." So one could just as easily speculate that there might not be any serious contractual obstacle to prevent CA and Activision from working out an *unfunded* or *unofficial* patch. However, without a contract in hand, it is all speculation.

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Originally Posted by kekvitirae

There's no I in TEAM, but there is a ME :tongueg:

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there are four 'platitude quoting idiot' ~;) j/k

Maybe the CEO of CA could take a bit out of that big Sega check he just got and pay for the patch himself? I'm sure Activision or Sega wouldn't mind.

and Hoof, marketing will look at all sales figures, not just opening numbers. If there was a slow start with a spike later on, they'd say "word of mouth" or "consumers waiting for finished product."

Because, you know, they can go read the Amazon reviews, too. (Our marketing people do that all the time - both our products and competing products.)

It's in my self-interest (if only to keep my sanity) to wait until I am satisfied that some efforts have been made before I hand my money over to CA again.

Don't get me wrong about the "no I in team" statement. But I remember hearing that so many times when devs on a project complained they were working at 3AM and the Project Manager was sleeping under his desk. As I said, it isn't necessarily right or fair, but you do what you must to keep your job. Sorry if "quoting platitudes" made it appear I'm an idiot.

I have already posted the following in another thread but I feel it is just as relevant in this one as the other.



If a moderator feels this cross post is out of place then please delete this response.



The post:



Well I am currently laying the foundation for an organized global boycott of the X-Pack. The main thread is at the TWC. If any poster here wants to become point of contact for .org regarding this effort please contact me. I am also working on a list of international media groups as well as game industry related companies. I will make a banner soon for people to put in their signatures with a link back to the very long bug/issues list.



-Spartan

Red you do know that the patch for VI was a 'house' patch right? It was never funded by Activision but it still had to go through their QA. So obviously this policy of very limited patchfunding is true enough.
And honestly I doubt that CA would be allowed to bad-mouth Activision without any sort of punishment. So it seems that CA have thiers in the dry.
There is nothing holding Activision back from refusing the QA and thus keeping the lid on any 'house' patch from CA. And I find it a very effective tool in their arsenal. CA and Activision are competitors now, this is a good way to antagonize CA's fanbase even more (for Activision certainly knows about the main issues with the game as of now), hopefully pushing them to play more Activision games. And don't tell me that they wouldn't be that cynical.

Also the older publisher was EA, hardly a company that is known for its great support of games.

Now I don't say that this isn't very convenient for CA, it could very well be that. Hey, now they have as I said 'theirs in the dry' so they don't need to solve the problem and not feel bad about it, because the whole issue is dogged with a Somebody-else's-problem-field (to those that don't know this check out The Ultimate Hitchhikers Guide).

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Originally Posted by Catiline

there are four 'platitude quoting idiot' ~;) j/k

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:blankg:

I think the point is that if Activision are standing in the way of a CA/SEGA patch because of ownership/legal reasons (and I suppose that since they are now competitors that's reasonable) then we should be told so. I cant see any reason why CA/SEGA couldnt say that, and if they did make such an announcement to the gaming community it would end most complaints against them almost instantly.

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Originally Posted by SpencerH

I think the point is that if Activision are standing in the way of a CA/SEGA patch because of ownership/legal reasons (and I suppose that since they are now competitors that's reasonable) then we should be told so. I cant see any reason why CA/SEGA couldnt say that, and if they did make such an announcement to the gaming community it would end most complaints against them almost instantly.

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Actually, they've said the opposite. One of the mods at .com stated it would not be a breach of contract for CA to make another patch. The problem was, he said, that Activision QA would not fund that. It's sad, but I am left to come to the cynical conclusion that CA intends to do nothing about present complaints, and expects us all to behave like idiot sheep and buy the expansion on faith that it will somehow be better. Then they will have our cash in hand and feel free to arrogantly ignore us.

The Shogun over at TW.com forums posted this:

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For there to be another official patch, the QA cost would need to be funded by Activision and this is apparently not going to happen. This is obviously beyond CA's control so please stop giving CA grief over this.

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So it all comes down to money. CA/Activsion now has our money, and CA has officially stated that without more money from Activision they will not put out anymore patches, effectively abandoning their customers and their product.

The idea that putting out a patch costs half a million dollars is simply ludicrous on the face of it.

Paradox, Blizzard, Matrix, Shrapnel Games, et al, release patches for their games all the time. Matrix and Shrapnel in particular are small companies. Paradox releases patches through the work of one man (Johan). It does involve some time and effort, but patches are released on an on-going basis.

I'm sure it's very self-assuring to blame publishers, because we'd all like to believe that developers are the "kewl guys" they're supposed to be, but the bottom line is that buggy games are the fault of sloppy developers.

The vast majority of playtesting (and thus feedback to developers) comes from the players themselves.

The fact is, if your game sells reasonably well, you'll get more hours of use in the first week of its release than you will in six months of QA testing.

If your game sells 10k copies each week, and if each person who buys the game plays it for, oh, 15 hours each week (a fairly conservative number), then you have 150k hours of playtime and playtesting EACH WEEK.

These players paid for the game in the belief that the game would be patched to their satisfaction. Through their money they have funded the publisher and developer. Their playing of the game in effect also becomes a further type of beta testing in which they discover further bugs for the Developer to fix. All of this beta testing is done for "free". All of this further playtesting is priceless.

The fact that CA announced that they will no longer support RTW because they aren't getting anymore money to do it, is simply laughable.

Yet, no one is holding a gun to their heads NOT to work on any more patches.

It's called supporting your games through having pride in your work and in keeping faith with your buying customers.

Developers/publishers have abandoned games before, to leave customers twisting in the wind. In the end, however, it is those developers/publishers that get chastised through customers exercising their buying rights in the marketplace.

Talonsoft, SSI, 3DO, Strategy First, QuickSilver, etc, etc have all either paid the price or are going through severe problems...

We work far too hard for our money to support publishers and developers who do not wish to support us...

The buying consumer has far more power and clout than these companies realize.

When, oh when, are they ever going to learn...

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Originally Posted by hoof

You sound like you want RTW/MTW/RTW and the TW series done better. Pointing a financial gun at them and ordering them to do things differently won't work. (which is what a boycott or an email campaign is basically doing: Do things our way or we'll ruin your reputation/financial situation). If I made statues and someone called me up with death threats and said "Make the statues differently", I'd probably stop making statues all together! Since the statue-making is what got me all the negative feedback, despite all my hard work and best efforts, then why should I continue making statues? That analogy holds to games as well.

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Oh, yes, because negative feedback on amazon is a direct parallel with death threats. :rolleyes: How melodramatic can you get? Are you attempting to imply that no other industry has a customer feedback system? That, for example, if people have a bad experience with a car, they don't post about it? Or a bad experience with a brand of dvdrw? Or any other consumer product?

People report on quality all the time. People choosing to do so here is not "pointing a financial gun" at them. It is simply a consumer reaction to the handling of the situation by the developers and publisher. "You're going to put out buggy, unsupported products? Ok, then we're going to make sure people know you put out buggy, unsupported products." In a free market, that is what should happen in a case like this. No company should get away with such behaviour.

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Publishers (not the developer CA, since they will try to make TW games anyway) will get scared that all TW-style games do is create rabid player bases that make their lives miserable. Solution: Stop making TW-style games and the mob will go away and bother someone else. Can you see how such campaigns can backfire, if your intention is to make the game better?

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With the coming emergence of alternate sales methods, that's likely to be a diminishing problem. But even if it weren't, you are drawing such an extreme conclusion it's not funny. There have been plenty of bad reactions to games in the past, in many genres. Did the fact that HoMM 4 was so badly received stop them from making HoMM 5? Nope. Did the bad reaction to MoO3 stop them from making Space Empires 5, or Galactic Civilizations 2? Nope.

The bad reaction to a single game (or a single company) is not going to sink the entire genre. Suggesting it will is simply fear mongering.

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The frustrating thing is that the player-base has such little power over the course of the game's development. It's even more frustrating for a game like RTW because CA went out of their way to try to include the player base in the process, especially by opening up the data files for modification. When you love a game so much, but it goes in ways that you don't like, it's immensly frustrating to not be able to do anything about it.

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And yet modders are suggesting that RTW is less configurable than MTW was.

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Trust me, though, if you care about *this* game and *this* series, then boycotts and email campaigns won't make *this* game better.

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No, at this point, I suspect nothing will make *this* game better. Right now, I'm more concerned about the expansion, and the next game. We can only hope to change the future, not the past.

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You are assuming that the TW series will be made regardless of what you do and that simply isn't true.

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No, I'm not assuming that at all. If CA refuses to adapt a better policy of customer support, I wouldn't be surprised to find the TW series crash and burn. But "not existing" and "existing but unenjoyable" are close enough to the same thing that neither is preferred over the other.

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All you do is create a problem for the publisher. The publisher will want to solve the problem, and the *easiest* solution is to kill the series. Kill TW, and you have no more boycott problem, no more email campaigns to magazines decrying the bad customer support, no more problem.

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And more fear mongering. Instead of talking about some fictional theory, why not pay attention to the realities of the situation? Sega owns CA now. That means, barring the expansion that Activision is still contracted for, Sega will be publishing the TW games. So all this talk about creating problems for the publisher is irrelevant. Sega is extremely unlikely to have bought CA with the express purpose of killing the TW series. So please, stop suggesting otherwise.

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And the reason why I always talk about the publishers vs the developers (like CA) is because the publisher owns the property rights to most games (dunno about the TW series however).

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CA owns the rights to the TW series. That's already been firmly established (certainly, Sega wouldn't have bought CA if it didn't buy them the TW franchise as well). So, no, they don't "call the shots".

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And I'm willing to sacrifice changing the system so that I can keep getting my TW fix. If you don't like that, too bad.

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I don't really care what you like. I'm not trying to convince you to join any campaigns. Apparently, you care about what I like, because you are trying to convince me (and everyone else) to not join the campaigns. So look in a mirror on that "too bad".

Bh

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Originally Posted by Bhruic

I don't really care what you like.

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Evidently. And nor do you seem to care what anybody else likes, judging by this comment:

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Originally Posted by Bhruic

If CA refuses to adapt a better policy of customer support, I wouldn't be surprised to find the TW series crash and burn. But "not existing" and "existing but unenjoyable" are close enough to the same thing that neither is preferred over the other.

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So if the game can't be everything you want it to be, you don't mind if the behaviour of the boycotting/email campaigning minority causes the TW series to "crash and burn" and become unavailable to everyone?
If it exists and isn't enjoyable to you, then you may (as you say) regard that as no better than inexistence. But incredibly, the game isn't made for your personal enjoyment alone.

I'm not suggesting that you should buy something you don't enjoy, or that you should refrain from making negative comments about it. But to say that it might as well not exist if you, personally, don't enjoy it ignores the interests of the rest of the community. Even if you aren't part of the boycotting, email or Amazon campaigns, you seem to share their mentality - "our personal enjoyment of the game is impeded, so let's try to hurt the product/company economically until our complaints are responded to". That goes beyond legitimate complaining or negative reviewing.

Before this gets out of hand, I'd like to say this: Continue keeping this civil, people. I dont want to see the thread turning into personal attacks against each other and having the thread closed.

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So if the game can't be everything you want it to be, you don't mind if the behaviour of the boycotting/email campaigning minority causes the TW series to "crash and burn" and become unavailable to everyone?

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No, I don't mind.

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If it exists and isn't enjoyable to you, then you may (as you say) regard that as no better than inexistence. But incredibly, the game isn't made for your personal enjoyment alone.

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Nor did I ever imply it was.

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I'm not suggesting that you should buy something you don't enjoy, or that you should refrain from making negative comments about it. But to say that it might as well not exist if you, personally, don't enjoy it ignores the interests of the rest of the community.

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Yes, it would, if I were to actually say that. Too bad I didn't.

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Even if you aren't part of the boycotting, email or Amazon campaigns, you seem to share their mentality - "our personal enjoyment of the game is impeded, so let's try to hurt the product/company economically until our complaints are responded to". That goes beyond legitimate complaining or negative reviewing.

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Done with the hysterics yet? Because that's all your post seemed to be full of. You did a wonderful job of ignoring all of the actual points I made, but lept right to a few emotional bits you could savage. Congrats, what a wonderful argument. :rolleyes:

Let's go over those inconvenient facts for you one more time. RTW has numerous flaws. I believe it was Puzz3D who listed them in another thread. CA (and Activision) have effectively decided to ignore those flaws. Therefore, if someone were to go to Amazon, or anywhere else, and write a review that highlights the flaws and the lack of support, those would be factual statements.

Where you run into problems is with trying to ascribe motivation. You seem to be under the delusion that people who would write such a report are acting in a vindictive or hurtful manner. I'm sure there are a few who would do so. But the majority would be doing it as a form of customer awareness. If I went to the grocery store to buy a box of bran flakes, but found a bunch of crap inside instead, I would inform the grocery store. If they refused to look into it, however, I certainly would make a point of informing anyone else who intended to buy bran flakes. That wouldn't be to "hurt the product/company", it would be to prevent other people from buying a box with crap in it. Now, if someone decided they actually wanted to buy the box with crap in it, I wouldn't be stopping them. I'd just want them to be aware that's what they are doing.

So please, leave the doomsday prophecies.

Bh

Babarossa, CA is making millions of dollar or pounds.

They just sold their company, probably for money than we'll ever see in our lifetime.

We are not insulting their mothers or wives.

I think they will live.

Maybe even learn something. The marketplace is not forgiving and the customer is king. Ignore at your own peril.

You only have to see the level of support from the likes of Paradox to see what can be done to support games on a long term basis regards bug killing (and sometimes creating lol) or general, often customer led, tweeking. Like CA their games all share similar roots and mechanics. As Paradox the company was published by Ubisoft, not a minor player, and games such as EU2 are still being updated years later. Now they are Paradox Interactive they may well publish themselves (cannot see another name on the box of HoI2) and I hope that the support will continue. A niche market with no huge profits but they can do it? Why not CA/Activision/Sega? Complacency and greed I suspect, combined perhaps with a poorly negotiated contract with Activision and complete take over by Sega.

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Originally Posted by Barbarossa82

Even if you aren't part of the boycotting, email or Amazon campaigns, you seem to share their mentality - "our personal enjoyment of the game is impeded, so let's try to hurt the product/company economically until our complaints are responded to". That goes beyond legitimate complaining or negative reviewing.

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I don't read that into Bhruic's posts. And I certainly don't agree that the purpose of e-mailing or reviewing to be to "try to hurt the product/company, etc" Like Bhruic said, people give reviews on product performance all the time. If I complain about a feature on a vehicle that I didn't like, I'm not trying to destroy Ford motor company in that process. If I give a movie a bad review, I'm not out to get Paramount.

If anything, people showed a great deal of forebearance with CA because they wanted to give them every opportunity to address the problems so there would be no need for negative reviews. Many people on this and several other sites, pleaded for CA to give customer support to legit issues. The exchange (what little there was) was often condescending, arrogant, and insulting to the customers. Only after CA officially stated: "Too bad, so sad" did people decide they should review the product warts and all, and give special emphasis to the incredible lack of customer support, and ultimately complete lack of respect CA has shown for their customer base.

If you fail to adapt and respond to customer complaints in todays capitalist markets, then you are signing your own death warrant as an organization. But that's totally up to the organization to decide. If they prefer to perish because of poor sales, then they can certainly make that happen. You cannot blame the consumer for making perfectly valid complaints along the way.

Harun,
You're quite right. I wasn't actually trying to defend CA's behaviour, nor disrespecting those who voice their discontent at CA. I simply meant to say that an organised campaign to cause economic damage does carry with it a risk of severely damaging the entire TW series. Since the sales figures (and even the polls on this site) show that most people would at least prefer the game to exist (even though they may not be 100% happy with some of its shortcomings), that seems to me to be taking things too far. To my mind it encompasses a willingness to sacrifice the enjoyment of the wider TW-buying public to the grievances, however justified, of a minority of disappointed gamers.

For my part it's nothing personal its only business. That is how they look at it and that is how I look at it. They ignore, placate, lie, deceive, cheat, patronize, abandon and obfuscate issues related to their games. So I as a consumer have had enough and I will make it my purpose in life (in my free time) to do my best to draw attention to the issues at hand and the bad business practices.

I remember the car industry doing to same to someone back in the 70s called Ralph. He started his campaign as part of his graduate studies. He was called much worse by the industry back then but because of him and his campaigns the industry has changed for the better and now everyone enjoys a higher quality product and standards of service as well as pride in ownership. The same basic arguments given now by the gaming industry are exactly the same as the auto industry but it survived so why all the BS???

-Spartan

i feel i am a bit torn because i am on both sides of the issue. i sympathize with the 'lets get an awareness campaign going' crowd and i sympathize with the 'make sure you don't go too far and ruin it for the rest of us' crowd. i think the solution like so many things simply boils down to money. if CA decides that the awareness campaigners are just a small vocal minority, then no matter what the campaigners do, or where they raise the issue, CA will conclude that it isn't likely to sway thier core market or hurt them financially. if CA decides that the campaigners are a significant part of their market or could sway a significant part, then they will try to placate them so CA doesn't get hurt financially.

of course the million dollar question is ' are the awareness campaigners enough to sway CA's core market financially?'

@Nokhor, the campaigners make up most of the posts that are here and at other sites and not only the English sites. People keep forgetting that the world market is not just only the US/UK.



Further many of us are real working professionals and not the "main stream" market types (10-18 year olds) but we know how things work and are well educated and sometimes connected. So they should be worried, very worried.



Hell just tonight after I finished work, I was talking to a NHK News Producer friend of mine about doing a special interest story related to the international gaming industry. He was not so interested in the story since it's not an issue in Japan (yet) but told me he would ask others at his office and see about things.

-Spartan

If Activison/CA bases their business model on a two patch abandon game system regardless of the issues still outstanding in the games, then players can base their consumer model on an abandon developer/publisher if they no longer support their games after two patches system.

See how that works?

It's simply quid pro quo...

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Originally Posted by Barbarossa82

I'm not suggesting that you should buy something you don't enjoy, or that you should refrain from making negative comments about it. But to say that it might as well not exist if you, personally, don't enjoy it ignores the interests of the rest of the community.

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Originally Posted by Bhruic

Yes, it would, if I were to actually say that. Too bad I didn't.

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It would be "too bad" if you hadn't. But you did:

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Originally Posted by Bhruic

But "not existing" and "existing but unenjoyable" are close enough to the same thing that neither is preferred over the other.

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Originally Posted by Bhruic

Let's go over those inconvenient facts for you one more time. RTW has numerous flaws. I believe it was Puzz3D who listed them in another thread. CA (and Activision) have effectively decided to ignore those flaws. Therefore, if someone were to go to Amazon, or anywhere else, and write a review that highlights the flaws and the lack of support, those would be factual statements.

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Those facts would be highly inconvenient for me if I had disputed them. But I didn't. If you'd like to go and take a look at my first post, you'll see that:
I did not say that the game was not flawed.
I did not say that CA were not behaving badly in their defective response to the flaws.
I did not say that people should not highlight these problems in reviews.
What I did say was that it is not right to embark on a course of action which, by economically hurting the devs and publishers, jeopardises the future of the entire TW series, with the intention of forcing CA to respond to the problem. That is to ignore and sacrifice the interests of those who want the TW series to survive and improve, and would rather have an imperfect game than no game.

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Originally Posted by Bhruic

Where you run into problems is with trying to ascribe motivation. You seem to be under the delusion that people who would write such a report are acting in a vindictive or hurtful manner. I'm sure there are a few who would do so. But the majority would be doing it as a form of customer awareness. If I went to the grocery store to buy a box of bran flakes, but found a bunch of crap inside instead, I would inform the grocery store. If they refused to look into it, however, I certainly would make a point of informing anyone else who intended to buy bran flakes. That wouldn't be to "hurt the product/company", it would be to prevent other people from buying a box with crap in it. Now, if someone decided they actually wanted to buy the box with crap in it, I wouldn't be stopping them. I'd just want them to be aware that's what they are doing.

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Your Bran Flakes example is entertaining, but actually exposes the difference between a legitimate informing exercise and what is happening with RTW. Firstly, A "bunch of crap" bears no resemblance to the expected and advertised contents of the box, whereas the game we bought, for all its imperfections, is nevertheless functioning and enjoyable by most people. (For evidence of this, check out the sales figures, the polls on this very forum, and the Amazon reviews which were not contributed by campaigners).

Secondly,The capaign which was being waged on Amazon is not an attempt to inform customers so that they may make an educated choice, but an attempt to persuade them not to buy the game. So much has been made clear not just by the statements on this forum but by the ludicrously unbalanced nature of the ratings and reviews submitted to Amazon by the boycotters. They are submitting reviews and ratings which are a very distorted reflection of the impact which the loadgame and other bugs might reasonably be expected to have on a potential customer's decision whether or not to buy the game. It is not, therefore, merely designed to make the consumer aware of the bugs (as many of the more balanced reviews on Amazon do), but to distort the impact and scope of these bugs with the aim of reducing sales. An information campaign would not be described as a "boycott", an expression introduced into this discussion not by me but by those attempting to organise it.

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Originally Posted by Bhruic

Done with the hysterics yet? Because that's all your post seemed to be full of. You did a wonderful job of ignoring all of the actual points I made, but lept right to a few emotional bits you could savage. Congrats, what a wonderful argument.

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I'm sorry if my disagreeing with you causes you to get so very upset. If you are so easily hurt by different opinions, you are going to go through life thinking that everyone hates you, when they don't. I actually read your posts, don't dismiss your arguments out of hand, and don't insult you or accuse you of "hysterics." It would be mature of you to extend me the same basic courtesy.

"They are submitting reviews and ratings which are a very distorted reflection of the impact which the loadgame and other bugs might reasonably be expected to have on a potential customer's decision whether or not to buy the game." - Barbarossa82

I think you are generalizing and indulging in an "us" and "they" mentality here. It may surprise you, but not everyone who wrote a negative review knew anything about any campaign to do so. I personally thought CA was refering to THIS site when speaking about activities on another site which I hadn't known about until after that fact.

It is hard to argue with your vague generalization of what you call distorted, but let me offer this: I submit that playing RTW 1 or 2 turns a session and loading the game each session has about the same strategic challenge as playing chess against your toaster. While the toaster might look good and make fine toast, it doesn't know diddley about military strategy.

People are entitled to their opinions. You say they are distorted. Well, the same could be said of people who give the highest possible ratings and happy in the bliss of ignorance, don't understand the complaints of others. Is either review invalid? Certainly not.

If CA didn't want negative reviews, they should have taken test data seriously and taken care of the problem. Since they feel the voices of "a vocal minority" can't matter a hill of beans to them, they are willing to roll the dice. I think they made a serious miscalculation there.

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Originally Posted by Barbarossa82

It would be "too bad" if you hadn't. But you did:

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Please. Try to read what's written instead of making things up.

'But "not existing" and "existing but unenjoyable" are close enough to the same thing that neither is preferred over the other.'

Nowhere in there did I mention anything about me, my personal tastes, or my opinions on the game. I was simply making a generic statement. It applies equally to anyone in that situation. If a game exists that you find no enjoyment in, functionally speaking, there is no real difference than if it doesn't exist.

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What I did say was that it is not right to embark on a course of action which, by economically hurting the devs and publishers, jeopardises the future of the entire TW series, with the intention of forcing CA to respond to the problem. That is to ignore and sacrifice the interests of those who want the TW series to survive and improve, and would rather have an imperfect game than no game.

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Yes, and you completely ignored all the arguments that show that such actions do not jeopardise it. In other words, completely ignoring the facts of the argument, as I first said.

edit: And since it's tinfoil hat time, let's turn the tables. Frankly, I find you and your ilk to be a much likelier cause of the downfall of TW than I. By meekly sitting there and accepting the idiotic "one patch policy", by ignoring the faults in the game, by ignoring the scorn that CA has demonstrated for people who spent a great deal of effort investigating the situation, you are being a silent accomplice. You are saying to CA "Your behaviour is acceptable".

That kind of blind acceptance of the lousy support is detrimental to the goal of having a quality game. And as such, despite your claims, you are actually acting in your own worst interests.

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Your Bran Flakes example is entertaining, but actually exposes the difference between a legitimate informing exercise and what is happening with RTW. Firstly, A "bunch of crap" bears no resemblance to the expected and advertised contents of the box, whereas the game we bought, for all its imperfections, is nevertheless functioning and enjoyable by most people. (For evidence of this, check out the sales figures, the polls on this very forum, and the Amazon reviews which were not contributed by campaigners).

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No, actually my point stands up very well. If that many people truly enjoy the game, then they are free to post their reviews on Amazon as well. No one is denying them that option, or forcing them not to.

And, please, your "campaigners" comment is just silly. The people posting comments about the game are simply customers. Some of them have different opinions about the situation than others. I don't go labelling all the people who post positive reviews as "fanboys". Kindly return the favour.

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Secondly,The capaign which was being waged on Amazon is not an attempt to inform customers so that they may make an educated choice, but an attempt to persuade them not to buy the game.

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What do you think a review is? It's a statement about one person's opinion. If, as part of that opinion, they want to recommend that you purchase the product, then they can do so. If they want to recommend you don't purchase it, then they can do so.

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So much has been made clear not just by the statements on this forum but by the ludicrously unbalanced nature of the ratings and reviews submitted to Amazon by the boycotters. They are submitting reviews and ratings which are a very distorted reflection of the impact which the loadgame and other bugs might reasonably be expected to have on a potential customer's decision whether or not to buy the game.

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In your opinion. Others have a different opinion that they are expressing. Or are you suggesting that people can only review on Amazon if they share your opinion of the game?

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It is not, therefore, merely designed to make the consumer aware of the bugs (as many of the more balanced reviews on Amazon do), but to distort the impact and scope of these bugs with the aim of reducing sales. An information campaign would not be described as a "boycott", an expression introduced into this discussion not by me but by those attempting to organise it.

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Actually, the word "boycott" was introduced with regards to the expansion, which is a completely different issue. I have yet to see anyone suggest they "boycott" RTW, as it's been out for 5 months.

As for your claims of "distortion" of bugs, again, that's merely your opinion. Others believe that the bugs are serious. And, really, it's not even so much the bugs themselves that is the issue, it's the company's handling of the bugs that have provoked the ire.

All of which is besides the point, that being that they are perfectly free to post whatever reviews they wish, as long as they follow Amazon's policies. You are free to complain here about it if you wish. Just don't expect that to stop them.

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I'm sorry if my disagreeing with you causes you to get so very upset. If you are so easily hurt by different opinions, you are going to go through life thinking that everyone hates you, when they don't. I actually read your posts, don't dismiss your arguments out of hand, and don't insult you or accuse you of "hysterics." It would be mature of you to extend me the same basic courtesy.

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Upset? Try "amused" instead. And I'll extend to you the courtesy you extend to me. Which to date has been none, so I guess that explains why I'd refer to your post as "hysterics". I tend to call a spade a spade. I mean, did you even read your post? You take numerous quotes out of context, and somehow construe that I am personally advocating the destruction of the entire TW line. As if such was even in my power.

If you actually want to discuss the facts of the situation, fine. If you want to discuss the merits of each side of the argument, fine. If all you want to do is suggest I'm personally causing the fall of TW, then I'm not for a second going to take you seriously.

Bh

I don't think anything constructive can be achieved by responding to your post if you are intent on shifting the goalposts about what you mean from hour to hour, and on answering arguments i didn't even make.
But I did raise a smile to see that your method of disproving my contention that you get upset when I disagree with you was...to get upset when I disagreed with you. :laugh4:

Yes, I suppose there's no point in discussing things with you. Again, you seem to believe I'm upset, when I'm not. Obviously you're merely looking in posts for what you wish to see instead of what's actually there. Hard to argue against someone who is making up what others post. Guess arguing with the mirror is one debating style, if not a terribly useful one.

Bh