Brigden Response to Game Flaws in Empire: Total War

[Pinxit]

You are all being quite hard on CA.

I for one, believe this game is by far the greatest game of all time. Its so epic and has so much depth. Granted, there are issues thats need to be adressed. Creative Assembly aimed for the stars but got stuck in the clouds. Still, the clouds are higher up than any other game out there in the genre. I believe that with a lot of post release work this game truly could reach the stars.

Some things I want to see except that which have already been said:

1. My stationary (they are all stationary) fortress _moved_. Jupp. It did not move on the campaign map, but during two different attacks against my fortress the battle map looked totally different. This is not a huge error, but still something of a "Oh really? Last battle my fortress was on a huge hill in a landscape full of trees and now my fortress is on flat grass covered landscape. I did not move my fort! The enemy must have moved my fort while I was sleeping!".

2. I want to be able to give my generals names of my chosing.

3. Charles XII should be able to participate in the battles as a general. I thought CA said that Charles XII of Sweden were the only king who could do this? But I sure cant get him to ride with his troops. Sweden should have a huge moral bonus because of Charles going to battle with his army. Ofcourse, his death on the battlefield could turn this bonus in the opposite direction.

4. Reinforcements arrive at very weird places.

5. Statistics at the end of a campaign. Now this is really important to me. And I do mean _really_ important. I would kill for this feature.

I want to know exactly how many battles I fought, how many I won, who was the greatest general during the campaign (not just mine), how many of my soldiers died, how many they killed, who they killed, bars, stats, numbers, economy, awards, largest battle, graphs showing which country was strongest in certain areas during certain times, best regiement (most kills, least losses), worst regiment (most losses, least kills), I want statistics at the end of the game that shows all this. Thats what I really want, the CTD be damned, the statistics is more important.

[hoom]

Clearly the game was not ready for release.

When certain groups around here were clamouring for early release I was stating I'd prefer a year long delay or whatever length of time was needed to make sure everything was working sweet.

If they fix the bugs, I'll be happy & this could be the greatest TW ever.

Some of the things that people are complaining about (eg unit pathfinding) are maybe not perfect but much better than we had in previous games.

There are heaps of truly awesome bits in this game.

There are vastly more features & variables in ETW than in any First Person Shooter, vastly more things that an AI needs to be aware of & to be able to cope with properly.

[SpiritFox]

Well, having worked with a development team for a couple of years, I can sympathize with CAs testing issues. Sometimes, when you've been working on something for so long, some bugs just fly past your head without you even realizing it. It's like using that cranky 6-year-old PC you just don't want to throw away. You grow so used to its little quirks that you're inured to crud that other people will find impossibly frustrating. That's why, when I was doing testing, my boss insisted I spend as little time with the program as possible - so that I wouldn't fall into those little self-troubleshooting routines.

I hate testing myself. It's an endless chore that has to be repeated every time so much as a single line of code is changed. And, for that matter, the CA test team really might never have actually *played* the game. At least when I was working on testing, the dev team gave me a list of variables to test and that's all I did. For weeks. I never actually had an "organic" experience so to speak. Just methodically poking holes in anything that might fall apart - e.g, 1 click variable 1 + 1 click variable 2 + hold variable 2 for three minutes + click variable 4 + click variable 3 etc. I just followed a set test plan and never actually *used* the program I was working on.

That's for a simple data gathering program. Something like ETW... well, let's just say that I would *never* want to test something like that ever.

Still, that's not going to stop me from bitching the hell out of the AI. On normal, the damn thing gets stuck behind walls to the point it doesn't actually just do the intelligent thing and hop over the wall and take cover on the opposite side when I've waltzed around them and hit them from behind. It garrisons buildings in the middle of nowhere, isolated from the bulk of its troops, charges cavalry straight across my line of fire, forms a fucking square in the face of 2 line, 2 grenadier, 3 6pdrs and 2 18pdrs, and generally demonstrates the intelligence of a sackful of rocks. What I'd give for a learning AI that'd take a players tactics apart and react intelligently to them.

I've only had two crashes so far. One immediately after a naval battle against some pirates and another when moving some ships around. Annoying, but not gamebreaking.

[aimlesswanderer]

Nothing really ground breaking in that response, it was a completely standard corporate response to a bugged product.

Apart from the CTDs, being unable to finish a turn, massive slowdowns on the campaign map, stupid pathfinding, etc etc, I think that the biggest bug may well be the lack of AI naval invasions. This essentially means that outside of Europe the European powers don't take any territory and you don't have to defend your provinces there (unless the NA are nearby). After a few games this has meant that factions like the UP don't expand or get killed off, and the only changes - apart form what the player does - take place because of land swaps or faction exterminations.

I guess that it is "historically accurate", but it means that the player is the only one who actually does anything in the Americas especially. The pirates should be able to invade places if they are lightly defended, and perhaps the rebels cold band together sometimes. Also, if a faction's home regions are taken it should trigger a Colonial empire or something which would have most of the faction's overseas holdings. This might actually get the AI to DO something, if it can't stuff around in Europe any more.

[Servius]

I think you all are being a bit rough. I've experience many of the CTD problems since release, so I have as many reasons to be ticked with ETW as anyone else. I've also been playing TW games since Shogun, so I've also had ample time to get frustrated with CA.

But I have to say that ETW is the best TW game they've ever made. I know it had bugs, and they need to be fixed. I know we'd all prefer that there were 0 bugs on release, but console games get released with bugs and they're designed with everyone using the exact same hardware and software set-up!

I'm never surprised by weak AI because it's the hardest thing in the world to do right. It is something I always expect the devs to continue to tweak and improve after release, but I've never played a game with a challenging AI out of the box.

ETW has so many new things that, I think, are HUGE improvements over previous TW games. I don't have to babysit pissy citizens anymore like the worst of times in RTW. I can build multiple buildings at once now, both in the city AND throughout the region. The travel distance of armies, navies, and agents has been increased, so I don't bash my head in frustration about how long it takes to move across the map. The diplomacy system shows you the reasons and numbers behind how other nations feel about you, which is an enormous improvement. I don't have to choose between towns that make money and fortresses that don't like in M2TW. I have real naval combat for the first time in the series. The graphics are beautiful (but don't focus too much on that CA, AI >>>>>> graphics!). No more agent spam. Diplomats are gone and replaced with a better system, princesses are gone, assassins and spies have been merged... You also don't have to build or pay any upkeep for the agents you DO get. There's a technology tree, and it improves existing units and structures rather than just unlocking replacements that you have to build! The trade system is much more transparent and open to your control what with trade goods you produce, trading posts you can park merchant ships on, trade routes you can either plunder/raid or block completely.

Of the things that are bad with this game (bugs primarily), I don't think ETW has abnormally more than usual for other PC games. On the things that are great about this game, I think there are an unusually large number of improvements in this installment relative to the number of innovations you get in other games. I think only Relic does more to mix things up each time it makes a new game, and as a fan of DOW2, I have to say that ETW got more of those new things right than DOW2 did.

Kiernan said the right things. There's only so much words can do to soothe. All I ever care to hear from devs is:
1) They're listening to the players
2) They're aware of the issues raised by the players
3) They agree with the players that the issues are problems and the devs intend to fix them
4) When those fixes are imminent

After that, I judge them by their actions. The patches so far have made ETW far more stable for me. While I still get the occasional unavoidable CTD that forces me to abandon a campaign, they're WAY less frequent now, and I hope I'm able to further reduce the chance that they'll ruin my campaign by cycling 4 save files.

[Monk]

Thanks for the post and link Allu X.

Kiernan said the right things. There's only so much words can do to soothe. All I ever care to hear from devs is:
1) They're listening to the players
2) They're aware of the issues raised by the players
3) They agree with the players that the issues are problems and the devs intend to fix them
4) When those fixes are imminent

I have to agree.

I know that it is very easy to be angry at CA given the way they handled the games release, and quite frankly if anyone wants to stomp their feet and let steam shoot from their ears I'm obliged to listen what they have to say (so long as it's respectful). Personally I feel some of those disappointments and even frustration toward both CA and the finalized product that was released about a month ago.

But that's the kicker folks. We are only one month removed from the release and CA have acknowledged quite a bit of a mishap on their part and are, by all admissions, putting quite a bit of money and manpower in order to fix the game up right. Am I suggesting that you should be grateful for that? Not at all, i'm not suggesting you should be anything. Rather I would suggest that we all take a step back and look at the situation for what it is before anyone goes and makes angry posts, especially those that throw around such livid terms as "lied to" and "deceived".

Sure you can go on about how CA lied to its community if you want but that argument only holds water if CA are genuinely bad people, and I personally don't get that vibe. If I did, I wouldn't have spent the last ten years playing total war games.

[nafod]

I'm not willing to state "fraud" or "incompetence" in any means. But can we all acknowledge there is definitely an expectation gap that exists here?

Also I ask any additional posters if they believe Kiernan has no incentive to defend the company standpoint.

Not that I disagree with his approach, I'm glad to see feedback from devs.

But I'd rather not have to see it at all.

[Monk]

I'm not willing to state "fraud" or "incompetence" in any means. But can we all acknowledge there is definitely an expectation gap that exists here?

Also I ask any additional posters if they believe Kiernan has no incentive to defend the company standpoint.

Not that I disagree with his approach, I'm glad to see feedback from devs.

But I'd rather not have to see it at all.

Without a doubt there is an expectation gap: However if you were here for the weeks leading up to ETW I'm inclined to say that even if the game had cured cancer not everyone's expectations would have been met. Many were hyped up by the insanely high scores ETW was receiving from many (read: all) media outlets who were not willing to tell us the down and dirty truth about ETW. And who could blame us for getting our hopes up? With such praises as "best strategy game of all time" it was impossible, not having the game in hand, to wonder if this would really be what it was claimed to be.

What is the truth? The truth about the game is that it is without a doubt, the best game we've gotten in the last five years from CA. What is also true is that it is buggier than a bee-hive and many of the core features, the meat and potatoes, are either glitchy or just not working right now. (AI aggressiveness, Trade zone glitches, MP issues, I could go on.) What is further true? CA has released around four patches thus far for ETW, two of which have caused at least two more problems then they fixed - but that is the point of the community beta. They realized they released ETW in a less than polished way and turned to patches. They again fouled their patches in not testing them, caving to the community's outcry and thus only making the problem worse, therefore they have turned to a slower patching process.

It is without a doubt that CA could have handled any of the stages, be it release or the following patches, in a much better way than they did. And I agree. In a perfect world I would have loved ETW to have completely shattered my mind and melted my eyes by how amazingly polished it was on day one, but considering that CA is hard at work on getting to that point I really can't sit here and claim they are worthy of my ridicule.

If anything: My ire is reserved for the media who were so eager to get their hands on this game that they took off their critic cap and threw roses at ETW's feet. The game is good, but it's nowhere near as playable or polished as we were lead to believe.

[Ordani]

I think you all are being a bit rough. I've experience many of the CTD problems since release, so I have as many reasons to be ticked with ETW as anyone else. I've also been playing TW games since Shogun, so I've also had ample time to get frustrated with CA.

People are forgiving of sound and video crashes. It happens. We know. Not every unit has exactly the right jacket and hat. It's ok, modders get off on fixing that sort of thing anyway. But the dozens of enumerations of the AI-faction crash bugs and savegame corruptions that result in unplayable campaigns, the AI being ignorant of entire areas of the game, numerous map transit problems, et al -- these are the same sort of problem that plague every CA release since Shogun. These problems are design and testing failures independent of the interface of the game.

This isn't 2000 anymore. This isn't their first big game. You can tell me you had QA people working around the clock for months the minute after you explain how they totally missed that the AI NEVER performed sea transit operations for armies and that several of the land-bridge points only work one way and splitting trade fleets destroys the trade lane they were on as well as making the units unactionable. This is not obscure, arcane considerations exposed by exposing their idiot-proof game to a Better Idiot. This is nobody bothering to try and move a unit across Denmark.

I've implemented unit and regression testing automation for far more complex systems that a single-input game state with a high level scripting language built into it. Once you have the basic operations instrumented for your test apparatus, it's just attention to detail. You can buy development packages that do the majority of this work for you, and even dumb-terminal oriented testing software that simply replay key/mouse input if you're super lazy.

I cut CA a lot of slack. I know they're a small shop working in a niche game market, and I appreciate their games more than nearly anybody else's. But with the possible exception of the VH/VH unplayable campaign bug and the other "no naval transit" bug, they've never had anything this much of a show-stopper for so many people, much less several of them at the same time. Maybe the original MTW was worse, I never played it, but out of the box they've never had something this sloppy before and despite my fondness for them, this was simply too much. I'm apparently not alone in feeling enormously let down and disillusioned with ETW.

[lenin96]

Lets sum it all up like this: If you don't love TW games or don't support CA then what are you doing on these forums!?

[Devastatin Dave]

Lets sum it all up like this: If you don't love TW games or don't support CA then what are you doing on these forums!?

For the whippings....

[Zatoichi]

They did say they were testing right up until release - this may explain the lack of naval invasions - maybe there were more naval invasions than you could shake a stick at right up until the the last pre-release patch, and something was tweaked that stopped them working, but as it wasn't on the list of things to test, it got missed. I doubt there was time for a full regression test in the final few hours.

That's not to say it isn't annoying, just that it is possible for something like this to slip through.

Or maybe it was never working and in the thousands of hours of testing it underwent, no one noticed.

I'm glad that they're working on these things to improve the overall experience, and address some of the problems that were evident in the released version - I want this stuff to work how they designed it.

[Daveybaby]

They did say they were testing right up until release - this may explain the lack of naval invasions - maybe there were more naval invasions than you could shake a stick at right up until the the last pre-release patch, and something was tweaked that stopped them working, but as it wasn't on the list of things to test, it got missed. I doubt there was time for a full regression test in the final few hours.

That's all too likely. Anyone who has ever played around with an AI even 1/10th as complex as this one will know that tweaking something to fix one bit of errant behaviour will quite often have unintended and unforseeable consequences elsewhere. It's like trying to get 3 ferrets into a box.

There are some pretty obvious errors which i find it hard to believe weren't spottable before release. But then again, i doubt many of the people throwing tantrums on the various TW forums have any idea just how insanely manic the last couple of months of development have probably been at CA, once a release date is set in stone and they have to get a workable product out the door. But i guess people sometimes have a busy day flipping burgers and think they know what pressure is.

And also: There's no way you can fully regression test something as complex as this game. There are just too many different behaviours and too much persistent state over too long a duration for it to be possible to test all of the possibilities even if you carried on until the end of the universe. Things are ALWAYS going to slip through that will only be found once you have thousands of people playing the game in different ways on different hardware for months on end. The best we can hope for in the real world is that CA fix the problems once theyre found.

People arent going to like this, but: if you want complexity youre going to have to accept the fact that youre going to be a paying beta tester for a few months. Throwing tantrums isnt going to change the reality of the situation one bit, and that's that games have a finite development budget - and therefore a finite development timescale - you *cant* just sit there for years testing the thing before you release it or you will go bust and there wont be any more total war games, ever. If you dont like it then either wait a month or two before you buy or just abandon the whole thing and go buy an xbox and fire up gears of war or some other shiny yet wafer thin slice of gameplay with everyone else.

I mean... you people *do* realise we're getting slightly more than just shogun with better graphics each time, right?

[Yun Dog]

I think you all are being a bit rough. I've experience many of the CTD problems since release, so I have as many reasons to be ticked with ETW as anyone else. I've also been playing TW games since Shogun, so I've also had ample time to get frustrated with CA.

But I have to say that ETW is the best TW game they've ever made. I know it had bugs, and they need to be fixed. I know we'd all prefer that there were 0 bugs on release, but console games get released with bugs and they're designed with everyone using the exact same hardware and software set-up!

I'm never surprised by weak AI because it's the hardest thing in the world to do right. It is something I always expect the devs to continue to tweak and improve after release, but I've never played a game with a challenging AI out of the box.

ETW has so many new things that, I think, are HUGE improvements over previous TW games. I don't have to babysit pissy citizens anymore like the worst of times in RTW. I can build multiple buildings at once now, both in the city AND throughout the region. The travel distance of armies, navies, and agents has been increased, so I don't bash my head in frustration about how long it takes to move across the map. The diplomacy system shows you the reasons and numbers behind how other nations feel about you, which is an enormous improvement. I don't have to choose between towns that make money and fortresses that don't like in M2TW. I have real naval combat for the first time in the series. The graphics are beautiful (but don't focus too much on that CA, AI >>>>>> graphics!). No more agent spam. Diplomats are gone and replaced with a better system, princesses are gone, assassins and spies have been merged... You also don't have to build or pay any upkeep for the agents you DO get. There's a technology tree, and it improves existing units and structures rather than just unlocking replacements that you have to build! The trade system is much more transparent and open to your control what with trade goods you produce, trading posts you can park merchant ships on, trade routes you can either plunder/raid or block completely.

Of the things that are bad with this game (bugs primarily), I don't think ETW has abnormally more than usual for other PC games. On the things that are great about this game, I think there are an unusually large number of improvements in this installment relative to the number of innovations you get in other games. I think only Relic does more to mix things up each time it makes a new game, and as a fan of DOW2, I have to say that ETW got more of those new things right than DOW2 did.

Kiernan said the right things. There's only so much words can do to soothe. All I ever care to hear from devs is:
1) They're listening to the players
2) They're aware of the issues raised by the players
3) They agree with the players that the issues are problems and the devs intend to fix them
4) When those fixes are imminent

After that, I judge them by their actions. The patches so far have made ETW far more stable for me. While I still get the occasional unavoidable CTD that forces me to abandon a campaign, they're WAY less frequent now, and I hope I'm able to further reduce the chance that they'll ruin my campaign by cycling 4 save files.

This post sums up my thoughts

Already I have seen greater support for this game than the previous titles where we waited months for a single patch, which wasnt guarenteed and god forbid you should want 3 patches!!!!

Lets get the platform and stability issues fixed so more people can play the game, then I think we will be amazed at what a few playability fixes will do.

I agree this has been an ambitious build and am willing to be tolerant with regards the issues as I believe they will be fixed and when they are I will be playing what I think is the greatest TW made. I also agree with Pinxit, 4 titles and we still cant get an end of game summary, its clear from my stats page on steam, the numbers are all there, so can we get a small scorecard wrap up for a game. Its a would be nice, maybe the expansion.

[nafod]

You are all being quite hard on CA.

Yup they produced a product and we paid for it. It isn't as if this game were provided for free, or as a service funded through taxes.

If it were I'd heed your thoughts a bit more. But it isn't so I shall not.