Was there a shift in design during the development of ROME II?

[ReluctantSamurai]

I suppose I should take your classroom lecture on semantics as an insult.....but I won't. However:

Apologists naturally are what keeps CA in business, because their games are often controversial when it comes to product quality.

And as long as CA stays in business you will continue to have something to rag about. And I don't know if you've noticed, but just about every major release put out by everyone from Blizzard to Sega and beyond come with controversial product quality.

And as long as CA stays in business, you'll be able to slink into any local Target, Radio Shack, or wherever there's a bargain bin, and pick up your TW fix all nicely patched and ready for you to play in a year or so.

But until then, take a look around at players actually playing the game. Then look to what they are saying about the game. Things aren't as cut-and-dried as you are making it out to be:

(ie. despite all the problems, folks are still having fun with it, and rather than bemoan all the short-comings, they are finding some very cleverly done aspects to the game and......making helpful suggestions on how to make it better. and who knows, there's been a couple of CA lurkers here from time-to-time...maybe one or two of these suggestions will find some fertile ground to sprout on...)

[fallen851]

I hope you don't take it as an insult, it is an education. And you're already taking my class.

But then you go on to defend not only CA, but the fact that you are a CA apologist...

Think of this way: Imagine you marry someone, and he/she cheats on you so you decide to leave them. You meet and marry someone else, but they do the same thing... would you just tell other people that everyone cheats and that is okay?

No, because it isn't. The release of SC2 wasn't marred with near the issues that the release of Rome Total War II came with. So as long as we have examples of games that were released in a finished state, as long as we have examples of people who don't cheat on their spouses, then the bar has been set.

CA missed the bar, and they know it because they apologized. Blizzard missed it with Diablo III. And cheating is wrong.

All that said, I have Rome Total War II. And isn't terrible. I think the Angry Joe review is 100% right though. It is only slightly above average right now, and even if they clear all the bugs away, there are some questionable game design choices that would still mar the game from being a truly great game. Still, it is fun. You may disagree. Nothing wrong with that.

But then we can agree to disagree and you can stop following me around from thread to thread incorrectly questioning my use of the word apologist... class dismissed.

[Hooahguy]

Just a reminder to please keep it civil.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Final word on the matter from me...

If R2 was freeware, I doubt we'd hear more than a mild hiccup about it. So it's essentially about the money you paid for the game. I'm sure that somewhere in the past, you've spent $60 on something totally irrelevant, or just downright stupid. I know I have. If you want to consider your purchase of R2 as irrelevant or stupid, that's certainly your right.

We all know that Sega/CA screwed this release up, big time...for whatever the reasons. It's done, and there's no going back. Chastising CA accomplishes absolutely nothing, at this point. If you really want to get a point across to someone, do you continually bludgeon them with their mistakes? Or do you voice your opinion and then move to constructive criticism that points to how to fix the problem.

If you want to get into the politics/ethics/economics of how to produce a game, you should probably talk to someone at CA because I think there's very few of us here (if any) who have actually been on the 'inside' in such matters.

If you want to talk about the product, then take the fun that you are having with R2, and make it more productive in terms of criticism. Taking a cue from others who are playing the game....listing your likes and dislikes would be a good start. Then perhaps suggestions on how to fix something, or make something better. In all my years as being a project leader, or a crew foreman, I have found no better way to get someones attention than by being fair and reasonable with my criticism. I state my likes/dislikes and then move on to how to correct what I perceive to be problems.

If you want to get someones attention at CA (and there are folks from there that look in here, from time to time) then I would highly suggest you stop castigating them and post up ideas on how to fix things, now and in future releases. Otherwise it's simply blowing off a lot of hot air, to which noone at CA will bother listening to.

End of

[Myth]

I hope you don't take it as an insult, it is an education. And you're already taking my class.

But then you go on to defend not only CA, but the fact that you are a CA apologist...

Think of this way: Imagine you marry someone, and he/she cheats on you so you decide to leave them. You meet and marry someone else, but they do the same thing... would you just tell other people that everyone cheats and that is okay?

No, because it isn't. The release of SC2 wasn't marred with near the issues that the release of Rome Total War II came with. So as long as we have examples of games that were released in a finished state, as long as we have examples of people who don't cheat on their spouses, then the bar has been set.

CA missed the bar, and they know it because they apologized. Blizzard missed it with Diablo III. And cheating is wrong.

All that said, I have Rome Total War II. And isn't terrible. I think the Angry Joe review is 100% right though. It is only slightly above average right now, and even if they clear all the bugs away, there are some questionable game design choices that would still mar the game from being a truly great game. Still, it is fun. You may disagree. Nothing wrong with that.

But then we can agree to disagree and you can stop following me around from thread to thread incorrectly questioning my use of the word apologist... class dismissed.

Wings of Liberty had a year long closed beta. Diablo III is fail for a Diablo 2 fan like myself (I own the game). It's basically Jay Wilson's successful attempt at destroying the soul and heart of the Diablo franchise and replacing it with gimmicks and ways to drain money, and corny monologues from the villains. And then doubling those things.

However, Stracraft II isn't a single-player game. Not any more. Starcraft and Brood War had great SP campaigns, and each game had 3 campaigns, one for each race. The story was a masterpiece.

Starcraft II is mooching on it's fans, releasing 1 campaign per game/expansion. Thus Starcaft II with TWO separate expansions would have as much SP content as Starcraft 1. And the story is somehow predictable and inferior when it comes to plot and writing. It's clearly made for younger gamers and the only interesting things we get are a legacy of the Starcraft 1 storyline (and a lot of things are messed up, such as Korhal no longer being a nuclear wasteland)

So they forego the SP aspect of the game and focus on MP. However they patched the game how many times now? I dare say 20-30, right? All for the MP aspect. Thus, the MP aspect has been far from polished at release. In fact, I remember mass reapers into mass marauders ruining the game on competitive level until that was patched. So yes, the game didn't have units clipping through buildings and all that, but it was not perfect at launch by far. No game ever is. Apart maybe from Heroes III.

[BroskiDerpman]

Starcraft scenario editor was extremely addictive for me. You could make all sorts of cool things like the inside of a battle cruiser.

[andrewt]

I've been disappointed by the direction they took with Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 and with many of the design decisions they made. However, those games aren't buggy. They are working as intended, even though we don't like what they intended. RTW2, however, is buggy.