In beta?

[caesar44]

let me understand
you are saying that ca had hard coded items in the game to limit moders ?
from their point of view - ok

[FURRY_BOOTS]

let me understand
you are saying that ca had hard coded items in the game to limit moders ?
from their point of view - ok

CA made a mistake there then!, i mean take a look at the Morrowind community, how long ago was that game released & yet people are still playing it, this is mainly because of the 1000s of good mods that are out there,bethseda gave a good construction set along with the game, but its those mods that have kept people in the game for years, & as a result the community is buzzing about new game oblivion(cant wait)
MTW xl 2.0 was an excellent if not the best tw mod, same with the total realism guys alot of good work, theve kept me in the game for a while,
come on CA, a little more modder friendly please

[screwtype]

take a look at the Morrowind community

Goodness me, you mean there is actually a Morrowind community? I can hardly believe it. I consigned that game to the shelf after about a week.

You can buy a copy of it at my local store now for $5.

[Spino]

CA made a mistake there then!, i mean take a look at the Morrowind community, how long ago was that game released & yet people are still playing it, this is mainly because of the 1000s of good mods that are out there,bethseda gave a good construction set along with the game, but its those mods that have kept people in the game for years, & as a result the community is buzzing about new game oblivion(cant wait)
MTW xl 2.0 was an excellent if not the best tw mod, same with the total realism guys alot of good work, theve kept me in the game for a while,
come on CA, a little more modder friendly please

Ah, Morrowind. The perfect example of an incredibly large, complex and successful game that was supported to the fullest by the developer and publisher. Activison seems to have selectively ignored the phenomenal success and lessons learned from Morrowind (or for that matter, Starcraft, Diablo or Half Life). Morrowind on its own or combined with its expansion packs is a MASSIVE and incredibly, complicated game that was greenlit for patches numerous times by Bethesda. Furthermore said patches were released independently of the the expansion packs, meaning you didn't have to fork over $20-30 just to get bug fixes and additional tweaks for the original. I jumped on the Morrowind bandwagon from the beginning and was amazed as the support for the game kept on coming as the months passed. Bethesda made good by listening to the Morrowind community and allowed the game to be patched numerous times. The same could be said about Bioware and Atari regarding Neverwinter Nights. However it is clear Activision simply does not give a crap about Rome and the TW community beyond their two patch agreement with CA.

Best of all was the jaw dropping moddability of Morrowind thanks to the inclusion of the developer's incredibly powerful editing tools. This alone made Morrowind the most moddable game I've ever seen. Users could not only edit the game to their hearts content but they even fixed a surprising number of bugs before Bethesda patched them! The amount of user made mods for Morrowind is simply astounding, I wonder just how many man hours went into creating all of them! Given all the factors I've mentioned (as well as the fact that Morrowind was a great game) I could not be more enthusiastic about Morrowind's sequel, Oblivion.

I refuse to place the blame for RTW's shortcomings squarely on CA's shoulders. Not that CA isn't somewhat responsible for that which we find disappointing about RTW but let's face it, they're severely constricted in what they can do to support the TW community based on their contractual agreement with Activision. The die was cast once CA signed with Activison and began taking their money to make Rome. The bitter taste in everyone's mouth is how RTW was a perfect case of two steps forward, one step back. Two steps forward; great graphics, sound, completely new strategic map & gameplay, etc. and one giant step back; the tactical battles, which are the core element of the TW games, are tainted by the fact that the tactical AI is actually worse than it was in MTW:VI. Add to the mix the high speed, RTS clickfest nature of the battles, the blatantly ahistorical nature of some of the factions (i.e. Egypt) and the utter lack of alternative campaign goals (i.e. no Glorious Achievements) and the 'one step back' label is completely justified. This bitter taste is made that much worse by the fact that such a massive and complicated game is being limited by the publisher to two patches, one of which was issued immediately after its release solely to address MP problems! To limit a complicated game like this to two patches and apply a 'the rest will be fixed in the expansion' attitude is a clear signal from Activision that they simply don't give a f---k about their customers.

I consider myself a TW veteran and I certainly don't dislike Rome. It's a really good game. However, the fact that the tactical AI got the red headed stepchild treatment and is worse than the previous installment really gets my goat and prevents me from giving it higher marks.

[Colovion]

So basically CA needs to get in bed with a new publisher.... or alternatively stick it to the man like VALVe did.

[SpencerH]

let me understand
you are saying that ca had hard coded items in the game to limit moders ?
from their point of view - ok

For example, we can alter the 'friction' of different terrain to slow down every unit, but we cant change that inf units run like modern olympic athletes. Personally, I dont understand why CA did that, it seems pretty short sighted. If they hadnt hard coded so many items we could have at least built mods to satisfy everyone.

[A.Saturnus]

MTW on 1.0 was practically unplayable due to CTD, at least for me. RTW is much better in that way. It is true that there were way to much bugs in RTW 1.0, but for complex products like this game, I guess it´s hopeless to expect it being tested as thoroughly as required.

What I reject is the claim that "all the MTW veterans don´t like the game". I´ve played thousands of hours MTW and I enjoy RTW a lot. From the vocal group of critics, we cannot infer anything. That´s not to say that CA didn´t make design decisions I don´t like. The kill speed for one is too high. This seriously affects the feeling of battles. It´s unfortunate that CA made this decision, but it´s their game, no one forced me to buy it. It should not be forgotten that RTW does a lot things very much better than MTW.

[Yun Dog]

MTW on 1.0 was practically unplayable due to CTD, at least for me. RTW is much better in that way. It is true that there were way to much bugs in RTW 1.0, but for complex products like this game, I guess it´s hopeless to expect it being tested as thoroughly as required.

What I reject is the claim that "all the MTW veterans don´t like the game". It should not be forgotten that RTW does a lot things very much better than MTW.

Amen

This says it all really.

I remember vanilla MTW AI being worse than RTW in fact it didnt improve till MTW:VI was patched - so I think people could show a bit of patience and wait and see.

RTW a BETA - dont make me laugh - I installed the game off the shelf and played it from start to finish - no game stopping bugs. Thats no beta. Doom 3 needed a patch before I could even get past the intro.

RTW is RTW not MTW and its never going to be - this is what is frustrating about the whining - Its a NEW GAME - Im glad its not MTW - MTW was very frustrating and like STW was an unstable game platform which took a lot of machine tweaking to get to run. I was never able to have a single successful LAN with STW or MTW because someone needed to roll back a driver or change OS or machine params etc etc etc. The participants would say - No lets just play something else after serveral almost battles when someone would CTD. I had a LAN where we played 3v3 players vs the AI - it was great - theres 1 point for RTW.

I agree that bugs and game problems should be reported in a constructive and thourough manner. But endless whining threads crying about it not being MTW - or I wanted this or it aint got that, or I did 100 unit tests of greek vs macedonian hopalites and the greek ones are overpowered - PLEASE. There are always going to be exploits and things you would like changed, if the first thing you do before youve even finished the game is start looking for exploits - well I pity you. I prefer to play and enjoy the game - not analyse every little number that has gone into making it.

If some of the community cant get past the fact "it aint MTW" then dont - just leave quietly.

[SpencerH]

So a program is no longer beta if it doesnt cause a CTD. Interesting definition.

[Colovion]

So a program is no longer beta if it doesnt cause a CTD. Interesting definition.

He has a point

but he's using it as a slippery slope argument, so that's no good.

The game is obviously playable, but remember how many people played the open betas for Warcraft and Age of Mythology and hell - almost any large scale release? They played through a technically playable game that had a bunch of unfinished or totally broken features, bugs, huge exploits.... and they fed back those problems to the devs so they would make sure that the Orcs didn't get 10000 Gold at the beginning of a certain campaign. This way when Timmy goes down to the store on release date he doesn't have these problems which he has to deal with.

I really enjoyed the game at the beginning. After a few hours play I posted a huge praise thread for CA. I had begun my campaign as Julii and was loving every minute of learning the game. That's when the fun stopped unforunately - once I learned how to play the game I didn't feel lilke I could improve at all and after playing a half dozen factions I got bored with teh battles; they were no longer epic contests of strategical prowess. The battles were known to be broken during the Demo so I focused on the new parts of the game I hadn't seen.... so that wasn't a large aspect of my concern at the time since I'd already ranted about it earlier and expected a patch to come to fix it.....

/rant