Not flaming Ca

[antisocialmunky]

Your assertion is plausible for the old-fashioned, 20th Century, way of developing and publishing software. The critical issue is that there is not enough time and talent to work out all the (significant) bugs before release, and the folks are needed for the next project after the release.

However, the modern approach is to get as many eyeballs as possible on the code, and to spread the workload of finding and exterminating the bugs over as large a population as possible. Dare I say "open source"? A revolutionary notion, indeed -- 'way beyond simple modding via data changes.

Silly hippie, this is a comercial product.

What do you think open betas are for anyways? CA really should release one for the next game seriously, they should have learned by now that they can't stamp out all the bugs in house.

[CavalryCmdr]

I concede that CA's past 2 releases (E:TW and M2) have seemed more of an "open beta" then a "commercial product."
Personally I don't mind, even an open beta would not track down so many bugs this quickly. So M2 was not a "finished product" until about 4 months after it was released (patch 1.2) but after that patch it turned out to be one pretty awesome game, IMO, and pretty darn fun to mod if I was bored of playing. For myself I have no problem going through the same thing again, so long as I get the same results, indeed that's why I bought the game the day it hit the shelves instead of waiting a couple months or reading "real" reviews. I also must say that E:TW is far more like a finished product then M2 was, so to me that's a step in the right direction.

[Durallan]

Actually I think an open beta would probably fix most of the bugs, definetly those campaign stopping fleet clicking CTD ones! and those are the ones that make ETW an expensive coaster as well for now. and as far as I remember, I really don't remember Medieval 2 total war being this bad at the start, I could be wrong, but I don't remember having this kind of game stopping crashing bug which would end the game completely, I could be wrong, I mostly remember the bugs that ended battles that you were almost done with and won, more than campaign ending show stopping bugs.

I love the potential for ETW and I am glad that CA will fix these bugs eventually, but right now... I'm not overly impressed, I don't mind the bugs that are probably my fault, but those CTD's are just something you think they might have been able to pick up earlier...

[Vuk]

I for one refuse to put STEAM on my computer. I had to buy a crappy $800 laptop for travelling (just so my good one would not be damaged), so I bought ETW and installed it on that. It is playable, but barely. I cannot install it on my beast gaming rig though, because I do not want STEAM on it. Now I am restricted to horrible performance and will never be able to enjoy the good graphics. The Special Forces Edition was just a way to milk the fans. I think SEGA needs a kick in the butt to be honest. These two things, as well as rushing the game out are my big complaints. I find the campaign fun (minus enormous load times, which on my laptop can be over 10 minutes - no exagerration), but the battles are ridiculous. The AI sends its crappy cavalry out at me way ahead of its other forces, lets me wipe it out in a volley, then splits its men into wacky and illogical groups and moves one unit forward a step, then the next unit forward a step, etc. So it ends up taking the 10 darned years to finally reach me (so as you can guess I have been doing all the attacking, even in defense battles :P). The will put thier men in front of cover instead of behind it, so I just march a group of line infantry up behind them and wipe em out. :P Got quite a few other battlefield gripes, but suffice it to say, that I loath fighting my own battles now. :P The campaign map is still fun though. (though also bugged :P) I have a feeling that most of these issues would not be in the game if SEGA had not rushed development so that CA is working like frantic to finish the game a month after release. Let's put it like this, I got no problem with CA (except their historical inaccuracy, but I forgave them for 90% of that when I saw quotes from Edward Gibbon in the game ), but I really think they need a new publisher.

[Durallan]

why won't you put steam on your gaming beast?

[Lord of the Isles]

why won't you put steam on your gaming beast?

I can't answer for Vuk of course, but I know why I was reluctant to put it on mine, though I have. For me it boils down to preferring to manage my own games, file system and software. I'd mind less much if I felt that Steam were actually competent (I didn't mind so much putting Stardock Central and Impact on it, though Impact did cause me some worries when it first appeared and didn't work very well). How can I be confident in letting Steam manage parts of my machine when they do such a poor job at times of managing their own product?

[gollum]

Originally posted by CavalryCmdr
I concede that CA's past 2 releases (E:TW and M2) have seemed more of an "open beta" then a "commercial product."

Me too, only RTW was an open Alpha

[The_Reckoning]

@Vuk

Why the hell don't you want Steam? It's a brilliant program. Do you realise how many games are only sold over it now?

If it were flawed in any way then don't you think there'd be a massive amount of complaints?

[A Very Super Market]

Please, don't start that. Vuk can choose whatever opinion he wants on steam, as can anybody else. There is no "enlightenment" in a debate on steam, so you could say it is a pointless endeavour.

[Vuk]

@Vuk

Why the hell don't you want Steam? It's a brilliant program. Do you realise how many games are only sold over it now?

If it were flawed in any way then don't you think there'd be a massive amount of complaints?

Why aren't there massive amounts of complaints? Last time I looked there were. :P I have gotten into quite a few debates on quite a few forums since STEAM was announced with Half-Life 2 (one of the games I was looking forward to most in gaming history, but have not and will not buy because of STEAM). I have presented lots of data about it to very STEAM savvy people on the Half-Life 2 boards to explain why no one should support the spyware, but everyone wants convinience. :P I installed it on my traveltop to play ETW, but it will not go on any of the 4 other computers. Also, I find it an inconvienence to have STEAM manage everything for me, and it limits the amount of things you can go in there and mess around with. :P Not to mention it takes a hit on performance.
Market is right though, it is pointless to argue, and I am not gonna get into a debate about it here. Suffice it to say that this is the only STEAM powered game I am buying, and STEAM is not going any farther than this laptop. Also, true to my promise years ago, I have not bought Half-life 2 (even though it is very tempting), and will not.

[gollum]

Thanks MikeV

[Daveybaby]

I'm not a fan of invasive DRM software in any way (there are several games i havent bought purely because of the DRM technology theyve used), yet i really dont have any problem whatsoever with STEAM (once it got patched to the point that it works correctly). It's not invasive (note that steam can be configured to NOT RUN AT ALL on your computer unless you manually fire it up when you want to play a game), it's not spyware (does anyone have any kind of proof of this?) and it doesnt create any performance penalty (it possibly might have in the early days, but it doesnt on any system i've seen in the last 3 years). I'd much rather have steam than securom any day.

Here's what steam DOES give you. Quick and regular patches. And more of them. It streamlines the patching process and makes it cheaper. There have been four patches released already - more than we ever got in total for M2TW. The only people who have a legitimate problem with STEAM are those who it doesnt work for - it's not 100% bug free even now, so there are some people out there who can't play the game they paid for. But some people wouldnt have been able to play anyway due to invasive DRM on a standalone DVD release.

I'm all in favour of being in total control of what's running on my computer, but being paranoid about STEAM violating your precious data privacy when the operating system you've installed it on is microsoft goddamned windows is... beyond ridiculous.

[Melvish]

Silly hippie, this is a comercial product.

What do you think open betas are for anyways? CA really should release one for the next game seriously, they should have learned by now that they can't stamp out all the bugs in house.

I think you should document yourself a bit before throwing "pseudo insult"
Agile Unified Process
Agile software development
Who's Your Coding Buddy?
Real Ultimate Programming Power

Open Source approach had a great influence over the programming techniques in the last 10 years.

It look like Steam has a perverted negative influance over patch deployment for ETW. Yes it's easy to deploy patch but since it so easy to deploy, it look like less quality control was done. That would make a great Dilbert cartoon

[MikeV]

Open Source approach had a great influence over the programming techniques in the last 10 years.

It look like Steam has a perverted negative influance over patch deployment for ETW. Yes it's easy to deploy patch but since it so easy to deploy, it look like less quality control was done. That would make a great Dilbert cartoon

Good point!

I doubt we'll ever see this code open-sourced, unless it's about to become abandonware. And, I'm not sure it's in any shape to be refactored easily. Given some of the chronic bugs that have lingered since R:TW, I'm not optimistic.