Initial Patch Thoughts

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Some interesting comments Toranaga. Not sure if I agree with all of them though.

I suppose on Easy and Medium, the battles are probably a bit of a pushover, I don't know, because I've only ever played on VH, and I know how diabolically hard it is to manage, with ridiculous kill rates, infantry that run like gazelle, and armies that crumble from broken morale two seconds after contact. I suppose if on the easier levels this is happening to the *enemy* army rather than yours, then you could argue the game has been "dumbed down" for a mass audience. It's just that I can't imagine how anyone could regard a two-second battle in which you don't get time to do anything but point your troops at the enemy and charge, as any kind of *fun*.

(For those unfamiliar with Shogun, its maps were MUCH harder to deal with in that the terrain is less flat, and the AI would make good use of it. If a player didn't master the use of Terrain, his success would be limited.)

Yeah, this is one area where the game has definitely been dumbed down, where so many imponderables have been reduced in their effects. In STW and MTW, terrain, weather, morale, fatigue, all had very marked and noticeable effects on the outcome of a battle. Most of these effects apart from morale have been reduced to virtual insignificance in RTW, which is a real shame. (Mind you, I always thought that in the earlier games, fatigue had too *much* of an effect, but in RTW it barely even registers).

The thing I really can't understand about that is that they already included an "RTS" mode in which these variables are totally disabled. So why knobble them in real-mode as well? It's got me beat.

Have you played the earlier titles?

The game is MUCH more accessible---MUCH.

I don't know. When I first booted up STW and started playing, I was instantly hooked and couldn't put it down for weeks. Heck, I didn't even learn there was a pause button I could use for the first month or so, and somehow, I still managed to win more often than not. There was time to do stuff, to see what was happening and change strategies, time to learn about what worked and what didn't. In RTW it's just wham bam thankyou ma'am - all over in the blink of an eye. If I hadn't played the earlier titles, I can't help but think I would have thrown my mouse through the monitor in utter frustration within a few hours. In fact, even as a veteran of the previous games, I almost did!

The simple solution, and the one CA choose, was to make the game more RTS -like, which would, consequently, make the game *easier* for the non-grognard.

It appears to have worked!

The proof is in the Sales. RTW is a runaway success.

Is that proof that the game itself is a runaway success, or just the marketing campaign? RTW got enormous publicity in the period leading up to its release, and then excellent reviews in most of the gaming mags, which clearly ignored all the obvious problems. Activision did its work very well.

But do high sales really equal satisfied customers? Will those who bought RTW be prepared to buy the next release in the series? Time will tell. But within days of its release, dozens of copies of RTW were up for sale on eBay. And at my local EB games store, RTW went into the bargain basement bin BEFORE Christmas - as a half priced game. I don't think I've ever seen a major release slashed in price so quickly.

The hope for the true Grognards and those with Grognard-tendancies (me), is that RTW is a *Ploy* by CA to wrest control of TW and their little company from the grubby hands of producer/distributors----and provide them with, Valve, Id, Blizzard, Sid Meier like industry CLOUT and FINANCES. Which they can then use to truly create the greatest game of all---Shogun on Steroids!!!

Hope springs eternal, for surely the creators of the SHOGUN masterpiece can't be happy with the compromise that RTW represents...

Heh. Nice idea. But I think I should point out, the creators of the wonderful title that was Shogun are not with the company anymore. If you look at the credits of both games, you will see that not a single programmer who worked on Shogun worked on RTW. In fact virtually the whole original Shogun staff has apparently moved on, with the exception of a couple of head honchos.

Maybe that's one reason so many things about the game have changed...?