Criticisms of CA... again

[Tamur]

In this thread several weeks ago, I pointed out the wastefulness of crudely expressed feedback about the demo in particular, and software in general. In this post that point was sadly confirmed.

It seems that it's Org tradition to word criticisms in such a way that the feedback riles and disgusts developers, who in response turn away from the boards and find better worded opinions elsewhere. We have many, many, many examples of this sort of thing continuing unabated despite SP's post.

What's the point of giving feedback like this if, by doing so, you're driving away the very people who might have the ability to make changes?

No one is helping the game one bit by putting words like "stupid", "idiotic", "retarded", etc in their descriptions of what CA have accomplished.

Here's a golden chance to learn about self-expression... please take it.

[therother]

AOL!

SouthwaterPanda is right, RTW is a work of genius, with a few somewhat annoying flaws. But they can be put right, and none of them is, IMHO, a game-killing problem in the meantime.

[King Azzole]

Its a matter of being civil and mature. To start, message boards ironically are NOT good social mediums. They dont allow tone of voice or body language, something essential to human interaction for thousands of years. The best thing ANYONE can do no matter how mature you are is to REREAD your post before hitting that submit key. Try and think what someone else will feel when they do and try to be as civil and mature as possible. I love that CA reads these posts and I can get a direct link to the minds of the people who made this awesome game. Please dont let the kids and the inepts ruin it for us more social minded people.

[Indylavi]

I try not to be harsh in any criticisms I have, which have been very few. However, I do think CA might be a bit too sensitive about what other people say. As long as they are proud of their work and their paycheck clears they shouldn’t get too bothered by what others say. That's all that matters to me in my work

That’s how I feel myself. Remember, You can’t please everybody, and all of those people play RTW

[Trousermonkey]

I'm glad I finally have an opportunity to qualify my position on the issue (though it seems to mostly address southwaterpandas rant).

First, insulting the developers personally is pointless. I don't personally know these people and thankfully I've seen very few posts of this sort.

Second, I agree this is a game of genius. It's probably the best game I've ever played ever - even including the sometimes incredibly frustrating interface and various bugs. I've been really enjoying myself every hour I play (it's sad but I put in something like 38 hours last weekend - basically I didn't leave the pc except to sleep). Last night, however, I shut off the game in disgusted frustration and vented by posting some more problems in the list of bugs thread.

The problem isn't that I hate the devs for allowing these bugs to slip through. The problem is that I like this game and I want to like this game but I can already see that these little problems in the interface and AI are turning me off. I want this game to be unique and intelligent - not another C&C clone with a dumbed down sesame-street interface. We're so close as it is surely, I reflect, if they add those features from MTW that were removed it would make things so much better.

Finally, I want to make absolutely sure my concerns are noticed. As fans of a closed source application we're dependant on them to make any changes however small. Furthermore, because we're powerless to change the code the only thing we can do is try to bring these things to the devs attention and hope they deign to address them.

When the developers aren't visibly active in the forums and unresponsive to requests for change it makes the fans even more desperate to be heard. I would suggest we harp on niggling issues because we haven't received any assurance from the devs that they're looking into it (or even that they don't plan on making a change). This uncertainty, like a feedback loop, makes those that love the game become even more vocal and frantic to get the issues addressed before the powers that be decide they're done supporting the game and move onto the next project.

Just my two cents...

[JimBob]

For all the people who keep whining that the game wasn't tested enough. Remember, we're the ones who formed the Pitchfork Phlanx

[Spuddicus]

Anyone whose advice is "get a tougher skin" should try investing two years of their life in a creative endeavour and then ask fifty complete strangers to tell them it's shit...

Does the game have issues?
Yes.
Are some of these issues serious?
Perhaps. Depends on your perspective (and issue).

But consider this .... for every fifty complete strangers that incessantly whine, there's five thousand of us saying 'Well done. Thank you.'

[therother]

Would I be right in saying that there are two quite separate issues (or sets of issues) that you want CA to address? The first, to my mind, are the bugs. That is, the parts of the game that don't work as CA intended them to, e.g. the constant blinking of trade indicators after you build a shipyard or the occasional save game corruption or CTD. But based on the posts of people from CA, they are most certainly working on these right now for patch 1.2.

The second, it seems to me, basically boils down to playability. For instance, the issues the TW MP community are having, or the increased level of province management required from the player as compared to MTW (*). I read a lot from people who are unhappy with the concept of squalor for instance, and I have personally spend a fair amount of my time trying to explain to people that's it's not really that bad at all. Of course, being the kind of player I am, I welcomed most of the strategy changes with open arms. Many other TW veterans preferred the previous TW emphasis on moving armies and fighting battles. As always, YMMV.

Maybe they will tweak some of these, like putting in some of the old MTW battle commands, with a battle timer option, or maybe they will get rid of squalor, or design an 'arcade' strategy map mode where squalor and discontent are no longer issues. I would certainly welcome that last option, as it would mean that those of us who enjoy the new complexities could continue to do so, whilst those who seem to despise them will be sated by their removal in the games they play. But whatever they plan to do with these issues, you've got to give them more time than 3 weeks!

After all, this game was years in the planning; it's unrealistic to expect them to make wholesale changes on the fly. Plus, if you ask me, their energies are more profitably focussed right now on the bugs, which are a problem to all players. And it may just transpire that people are still getting used to the new system, and that discontent will drop after a while. They will then have wasted months reworking a game the vast majority are now happy with, at the expense of bug fixes, in the first instance, but also more crucially for CA’s survival, the development of the RTW expansion disk they will most likely make and developing the new xTW.

(*) Of this I can personally testify. A general province management guide for MTW would be fairly complete at a couple of pages, scattered with a few tables. For RTW, so far, I've written 1.5 pages dealing with mines, probably the simplest part of city management and the one the requires least actual planning.