Please CA, may we have a better manual?

[Polemists]

Somehow,with a multiplayer campaign map and bug fixes I doubt Game Manual came into thier minds. I might be surprise but at this rate we are lucky we get a video every 3 weeks.

[Fisherking]

Somehow,with a multiplayer campaign map and bug fixes I doubt Game Manual came into thier minds. I might be surprise but at this rate we are lucky we get a video every 3 weeks.

I would not swear it, but one might reasonably expect that they have a technical writing staff that only works on things like that. Adding Multiplayer will surely require some rewrites, even if they send it out of house.

[Sir Beane]

I would not swear it, but one might reasonably expect that they have a technical writing staff that only works on things like that. Adding Multiplayer will surely require some rewrites, even if they send it out of house.

You would think so, but I've learned never to underestimate a game company's ability to release thinner and thinner manuals with less and less info. One would think they had a dedicated staff whose sole job it is to try and release sa little info as possible on how their game works.

Blind ignorance and experimenting to learn what works artificially extends gameplay by atleast a dozen or so hours

[Fisherking]

You would think so, but I've learned never to underestimate a game company's ability to release thinner and thinner manuals with less and less info. One would think they had a dedicated staff whose sole job it is to try and release sa little info as possible on how their game works.

Blind ignorance and experimenting to learn what works artificially extends gameplay by atleast a dozen or so hours

I think they all started taking a page from Microsoft’s book. Practically no documentation. You bought it but how it works is our secret!

I am sorry, but I remember the old days (circa 1985) the program came on one floppy disk but the manual weighed 3lbs.

I appreciate them saving trees, (since it is illegal to make paper from hemp*) but a little more information can be a good thing.


*not advocating this product as a drug. Industrial Hemp (grown by Jefferson and Washington) and later outlawed by money and lobbying efforts of the timber industry.

[Polemists]

Yea

See that's my point. If multiplayer was a release day feature, then yes they'd have to add the standard ten pages that go over all of what you don't want and none of what you want.

You get:

"To select your army, move your mouse pointer over them, and click"

Rather then something like a excerpt, a famous quote, or even a surprise little tactic.

As Multiplayer isn't on release day, I can't see them adding ten pages of info only to have to add at the end.

"Look forward to this surprising and fantastic feature this summer"

[Sir Beane]

What irks me is that the manual never goes into enough detail about actual game mechanics. They give you basic controls, which are easy enough to work out anyway. They tell you what the menus do, which is obvious. They also tend to a paint a very broad picture about various game mechanics and strategies without fully explaining them.

For instance I have played Medieval 2 for hours and I have yet to work out how exactly the limit on agents works. I also don't know how exactly trade goods and things work, or guilds.

It took the good people opn this very website to even start to explain how some of the more obscure elements of gameplay work.

My personal theory is that they avoid mentioning how the game is supposed to work so no one notices when it goes wrong.

[Thermal]

Rome total wars manual was superb, are you kidding me? so picky you people nowadays