Until the patch is released, I am playing MTW!

[screwtype]

Oaty, what programs did you use which found 1 gig of spyware on your PC? Just curious.

[screwtype]

Damn it I am sick and tired of fanboys like Old Celt telling us we expect too much, that we have no right to complain, and that we should get down on our knees and grovel with thanks for every little crumb the industry tosses our way.

If games development was left up to people like you, we'd all still be playing Pong on our TV sets.

I played STW and loved it. I still play and enjoy it sometimes. I also bought MTW and didn't like it at all. It didn't add anything but size to the first game, and I'm not a believer in the idea of "bigger is better". Shogun was just the right size, MTW was a bloated monster.

In addition, MTW's campaign AI sucked (building nothing but huge peasant armies) and the battle engine was clearly more sluggish than the crisp engine at the heart of STW. The lame attempt to create a challenge by having faction resurgences with uber-armies was the last straw for me.

Now I know that puts me at odds with a lot of people who love MTW but for me, STW is still by far the best game in the series, and it saddens me to see how the franchise has progressively gone backwards from that first title.

As for RTW, well I think the system has potential but it has a long way to go. The campaign AI in particular needs sharpening up - I haven't found the battle AI to be that bad, apart from suicidal generals. It's the bugs more than anything that drove me away from playing it.

But I think the greatest irony with RTW is that it was designed to be a fabulous piece of eye-candy and I think it's actually less attractive than the previous games! To me it looks very unrealistic, with the flat, largely featureless battle maps, the absurd skyscraper tall trees, the buildings that seem to be all out of proportion, and which appear to change their proportions as you move around them, and above all, those blindingly bright military units whose clothing looks backlit with neon! I mean, the whole thing looks kind of cartoony to me, and it does nothing for the immersion factor. Perhaps if they had sprays of blood when soldiers got killed - but that would hurt sales, wouldn't it? So the battlefield is not only cartoony, but antiseptic.

Not that I don't appreciate the huge effort that's gone into designing this 3D world, or the sometimes spectacular animations of the soldiers - but man, I wish they'd tone down the colours on those soldiers a bit!

Oh, while on the subject of graphics, where are the fabulous weather effects that they had in STW, those beautiful, evocative mists, the hiss of steady rain, or the spectacular bolts of lightning which light up the whole battlefield and the mighty crash of thunder which makes you JUMP in your seat?

And then there are the finicky controls, which in almost every respect are worse than in the previous games. Whatever happened to "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"? I mean, I could go on, but it's all been said before.

I still think the system has great potential and I look forward to refinements in future releases. I'm hoping the patch irons out those play-destroying bugs and brings the fun factor back. But please, don't tell me I don't have a right to be disappointed, or to express my opinion just because it doesn't happens to coincide with yours!

[Men of Wid]

When I returned to STW last week I was actually startled by the lightning - the ambient weather effects are extremely good, the best of all three games. Why this should be the case I don't understand. Nonetheless, I'm glad to be back on RTW 1.1.

One thing regarding STW is that because it was a simpler game - in terms of units, faction building/troop preferences, and number of provinces - the AI was more up to the job of keeping you on your toes.

MTW & RTW are far more complex worlds, with far more permutations ... is this an argument against the scale of MTW & RTW? Not for me. Eventually the AI will grow to fit into the larger strategic footprint.

And lets not chide CA for being wallflowers when it comes to ambition - the increase in graphics is more than just 'eye candy', it delivers an immersive experience. And I'll repeat the point I made earlier ... the dynamics of melee are far superior in RTW. No matter how good a unit is, they'll still run if you get at them from behind. This is a conceptual leap from STW & MTW, and makes RTW a serious game for adults.

But I hope that they fix the thunder & lightning effects.

[Old Celt]

Damn it I am sick and tired of fanboys like Old Celt telling us we expect too much, that we have no right to complain, and that we should get down on our knees and grovel with thanks for every little crumb the industry tosses our way.

If games development was left up to people like you, we'd all still be playing Pong on our TV sets.

I still think the system has great potential and I look forward to refinements in future releases. I'm hoping the patch irons out those play-destroying bugs and brings the fun factor back. But please, don't tell me I don't have a right to be disappointed, or to express my opinion just because it doesn't happens to coincide with yours!

Screwtype
I never said you had no right to complain. I never said you should get down on your knees. I DID say some of you expect too much, and that's absolutely true. There's quite the disconnect from reality when a couple dozen people who are an extreme minority, think their opinions should trump the work done by marketing and R&D for software projects. RTW isn't a great game because I say so; it's a great game because industry analysts, and many happy consumers say so.

You have the right to complain. I never said you didn't. What I said was: your complaining comes to nothing when most other people are happy. Do you think any company should change its plans just on your personal say so? How about you and 10 other people? I don't think that would matter. But if the reviews were poor, and sales were poor, you would have to change based on the flaws you could fix.

You couldn't be more wrong about me, games development, and Pong. As a programmer, I use the maximum amount of creativity my employer will allow in development. I believe in beginning with the end in mind, and doing a comprehensive assessment of project goals and resources. I will not sign off on any project if I feel adequate testing has not been done, or think things are shoddy in any way. But I'm just a dev. I get overtrumped by sales, marketing, etc. Do you really think the project devs didn't know about the common bugs and issues people point out about RTW? Of course they knew about them! The decision to release isn't up to them!!

Screwtype, you can be as disappointed as you like. And I never said you didn't have a right to express your opinion. I have, in fact, defended that right previously, and will do so again. I would appreciate it if you would refrain from attributing statements to me that I never made.

[Wh1teWolf]

Well said Old Celt.

Screwtype this game is awesome and I almost did not buy it due to the complaining from jagoffs like yourself but I just got it on Friday and love it, I have all TW games and this one is leaps and bounds above the rest.

Oh one more thing.... YOU GOT OWNED!!!

[Colovion]

Well said Old Celt.

Screwtype this game is awesome and I almost did not buy it due to the complaining from jagoffs like yourself but I just got it on Friday and love it, I have all TW games and this one is leaps and bounds above the rest.

Oh one more thing.... YOU GOT OWNED!!!

Oh please calm down and do away with your facade of drama, it isn't wanted here. No one wins or loses when someone expresses an opinion.

The facts, with my comments:

1. The majority of those who frequent these forums are not those who used to frequent them during the MTW days, let alone the STW days. This does not spell "keeping your core enthusiasts happy" to me. I can remember a bunch of people who used ot be very proactive in the game part of the community basically fade away after the Rome Demo was released. This further compounded when the final unit lists were released along with the game itself.

2. The Advertising and Sales have gone up since the beginning. Coke is not the best or more rewarding beverage to drink, yet it's the best selling. It's sales are such because of their advertising and marketting - this is for the same in any Capitalist Society.

3. Many things were lost in transition from Generation to Generation of the game's history. This is not to say that nothing is added, I'd say that more was added than taken away - but it's the little and pivitol things that define any certain game. In a strategy game the physics and graphics engines are relatively moot - it's the AI and the Battle Engine that make up the bread and butter of the genre. It would be very nice to have a lot of things back from previous editions, but I'm not holding my breath. Basically if the patch doesn't do enough, I'm gone.

[MacBeth]

Yeah - not only has the game been dumbed down, so has the feel of these forums.

[Butcher]

1. The majority of those who frequent these forums are not those who used to frequent them during the MTW days, let alone the STW days.

True, doesn't mean they haven't been playing them though. I only joined here in december, but I suppose would be classed as a 'veteran', whatever that means.

[Colovion]

Yeah - not only has the game been dumbed down, so has the feel of these forums.

yeah. it used to be all history and strategy chat. good point.

[Bhruic]

How about you and 10 other people? I don't think that would matter. But if the reviews were poor, and sales were poor, you would have to change based on the flaws you could fix.

Er, yes, because only 10 people (ok, fine, 11) have complained. Nice strawman.

As for reviews, it's already been posted how reviewers tend to be 10hr players. That is, play the game for 10 hours, and then post their review. That may work for FPS with no depth. It doesn't work for a game like RTW. Let's face it, the graphics are a big step up in the "flash" department since MTW. The sheer "differentness" of it means that things look new and cool. It isn't until you've played it for awhile, and seen how bad some of the areas are that you get an understanding of what the issues of the game are.

As for the sales, I hope they are making the bean-counters happy. Lots of sales doesn't translate into a good game. It translates into good marketing. It doesn't mean that the game doesn't have serious issues. And it doesn't mean that the programmers of the game should be satisfied.

If you feel that RTW is a good/great game as it stands now, that's fine. But your somewhat poor attempts to write off the people who don't as "you and 10 other people", or "a couple dozen people who are an extreme minority" is both unsupportable and silly. You are making the exact same mistake you are accusing others of making.

Bh