Email Campaign to major Gaming Mags.

[voice_of_reason1971]

Ok sorry for the long post! I’ve been lurking around twc and the org for a long time now but I finally feel myself forced to post because of some of the crazy stuff going on triggered by the savegame issue. I must say, having spent more time here than at the .com because of the much more thoughtful and informed discussions here, I’ve become horribly disillusioned by (imho) extreme and profoundly ill-informed material that is stickied or always bumped to the top.
First of all, let me say that reading all the in-depth test results that were posted up at the .com (all credit to you guys) yes, there definitely is a difference in game behaviour after a game is loaded and the turn ended. I found it quite interesting that CA didn’t actually deny this explicitly but seemed to try to explain it (which to me suggests there’ll definitely be a ‘fix’ in any expansion). I guess I also agree that this could cause major problems for someone who wants to play only one or two turns per session (though wow, that’s some serious micromanagement!)
I’m not sure I agree that it’s a game-breaker. That’s a matter of opinion I guess, but I think we need to keep a sense of perspective. Sure if you only play one or two turns it greatly weakens the AI for the campaign side of the game at least, but it’s not totally broken : the AI does still expand (though much less). Fine, perhaps you think this is game-breaking, but by that level of strictness most games I’ve ever bought have been riddled with game-breaking bugs, even my favourite game ever, Europa Universalis. Even after patching that has AI that makes RTW’s AI look superb, even if saving between every turn (I’m thinking of simple attrition management, not aggressiveness). But I digress. Thing is, games have bugs! Games are the most advanced software products available to normal consumers and are much more complex and technology-pushing than other software, and we should remember that. Especially when they only cost $50… I’ve played Rome for hundreds of hours, so that’s less than 25c per hour compared with a movie ($5 an hour) or any other form of comparable entertainment.
As for the notion that CA is making loads of money from RTW, all I can say is I doubt it! In the UK at least, developers are dropping like flies. Argonaut, the biggest one in the UK just went bankrupt. Any glance at an industry website will show you that game developers pay really low salaries compared with other business jobs like IT. I worked at a big IT company once and we paid our grads fresh out of college more than many senior positions in developers. It would be pretty stupid to get involved with games if you’re in it for the money! Only EA and Activision make any money in this industry as far as I can see. Even Eidos (Tomb Raider/ Hitman/ Deus Ex) is almost bankrupt.
I’m sure many will say it’s not so much that Rome has bugs, but what they take issue with is CA’s ‘attitude’ or refusal to patch. But this is what is getting me really REALLY MAD!
You need to BLAME ACTIVISION NOT CA!!!! Do you guys involved in this insane Amazon campaign not know anything about the games industry ?! CA will have signed a contract with Activision for RTW, so Sega has nothing to do with it. Activision has always had a 2-patch policy (poor, yes, but we always knew it)… and I reckon there’s no way Activision would let CA release an unofficial patch for a game that Activision would consider to be their game – Activision has to run customer support and do lots of QA testing, and the publisher always has to approve patches to ‘their’ products, so I think CA’s hands are tied, explaining the evasive nature of their responses.
It really upsets me that you guys seem to be trying to destroy CA and the TW series under the pretext of trying to force CA to release another patch. Maybe you want to stop it being popular so that you can consider yourself more ‘hardcore’ rather than a fan of a more mainstream game. But the bigger the series, the better for all of us! Games cost millions of dollars to make, and this is only going to get bigger with time. There are so many crappy games out there (especially with film licenses attached) that have such huge budgets – all you’re doing with your campaign (if it’s successful) is to reduce the sales of TW games, and hence reduce the profile and market attractiveness of these kinds of strategy games in general (not just TW games), meaning that they’re left as a low-budget low-profile niche, while all the dev money goes to superficial rubbish. A successful TW series means more millions being spent on huge beautiful wargames and strategy games in the future. Eg: whatever you think of the Imperial Glory demo, there’s NO WAY this game would have ever been developed if RTW hadn’t been so commercially successful. So please PLEASE stop destroying what I love! More to the point, stop destroying what (I think) you love!
You may say your goal is simply to force a fix for the game you would love, but firstly, you should be campaigning to change ACTIVISION’s policy, and secondly, I think the main effect of your campaign (if successful) will be to hurt wargaming and strategy games as a whole. I’m talking about your email and letter writing campaign as well as the (much much MUCH worse) Amazon campaign.
So, I am begging you please please STOP THE MADNESS before this community self-destructs!!!

[Old Celt]

voiceofreason:

If you've been lurking here for long, you know people bent over backwards to try to avoid the writing of letters over the save/reload issue. Members of this community even went so far as to offer to fix it through modding for free if the source code could be made available. You know what sort of response there was from CA.

A strategy game which has a weak AI to begin with, as RTW does, becomes infinitely worse when you consider the Save/reload bug renders it into a quivering mass of jelly which waits like a bookend for you to finally come and put it out of its misery. How would you like/rate a chess program which couldn't reliably save all the game data so you were playing the same game you saved when you reloaded it? Regardless of your opinion, some people find that unacceptable, and seek a fair remedy from the maker for that.

No one AFAIK, is out to destroy CA. It is fair that people who are dissatisfied and have been ignored by CA can write to other venues and say they are dissatisfied. Other customers might decide differently based on that information, but that is just as fair as giving a movie a review and letting that review enter into a potential movie goers decision about whether to see it. I firmly believe that where there's a will, there's a way. CA/SEGA need to find that will, if they want to keep my business.

PS: Please don't write your posts as one long, unbroken paragraph.

[Bhruic]

But the bigger the series, the better for all of us!

Couldn't disagree more. People need to get rid of this fallacious "bigger is better" notion. One can get better. One can get bigger. One can do both. But getting better doesn't automatically make one bigger, nor does getting bigger automatically make one better.

RTW got "bigger" than STW and MTW. But there is a large pool of players that would argue that it certainly isn't "better" (and yes, there is an equally large pool that would argue it is).

Games cost millions of dollars to make, and this is only going to get bigger with time.

No, games don't cost millions of dollars to make. SOME games cost millions of dollars to make. Many do not. There are many exceptional games that are made with much smaller budgets than other games that end up being relative flops.

There are so many crappy games out there (especially with film licenses attached) that have such huge budgets

Ok, glad you see this, but as it invalidates your earlier point, I'm not sure why it appeared here.

all you’re doing with your campaign (if it’s successful) is to reduce the sales of TW games

And why is that such a bad thing? In any other consumer market, if a company has a reputation for not fixing their merchandise, that company is going to end up selling less than companies that do fix their merchandise. That's the way capitalism works. If CA decided they wanted to increase the sale of their TW games, it's an easy fix - support your product.

low-profile niche

Again, you say that like it's a bad thing. STW was a low-profile niche game. As was MTW, although the profile had been raised by that point. They were both excellent games with followings to this date. Perhaps you should attempt to remove the "money = good" mindset you seem to be locked into.

Eg: whatever you think of the Imperial Glory demo, there’s NO WAY this game would have ever been developed if RTW hadn’t been so commercially successful.

I see, so you are suggesting that a game that has been in development for over a year wouldn't have been in development if a game that came out less than 6 months ago wasn't successful? You might want to have another look at your logic on that one.

Imperial Glory was likely made because MTW was successful. And deservedly so.

So please PLEASE stop destroying what I love! More to the point, stop destroying what (I think) you love!

RTW isn't what I love. I love a company that supports their product. I love a company like Blizzard, that just recently put out a new patch for Starcraft. Starcraft! Let alone the support they've put in for their newer titles.

If CA were willing to commit to that level of support for their TW titles, I'd be happy. I still might not like some of the design changes they made in RTW, but it's something I could live with.

Bh

[Kekvit Irae]

RTW isn't what I love. I love a company that supports their product. I love a company like Blizzard, that just recently put out a new patch for Starcraft. Starcraft! Let alone the support they've put in for their newer titles.

Starcraft continues to be supported because Blizzard (AKA: God to many gamers) refuses to be pressured by deadlines, and refuses to give up on a game that has such a cult following.
As I said above, CA does not benefit from lack of deadlines. Their strings are being pulled by Activision. When The Boss says you need to release something right now, you release it right now. If The Boss says you cant put a patch out because there isnt any funding for QA testing, you cant put it out. A sad fact of game making is that feces roll downhill, and developers are often at the bottom of the hill.

[Kekvit Irae]

*snip*

That's what I tried to say on page one. Equal blame falls on Activision, and it is confirmed by The Shogun on the Com boards that CA needs Quality Assurance funding from Activision (which will be a cold day in hell) before they can release a patch.
Unfortunately, my words fell on deaf ears (which is ironic, since my spouse is deaf)

[tai4ji2x]

That's what I tried to say on page one. Equal blame falls on Activision, and it is confirmed by The Shogun on the Com boards that CA needs Quality Assurance funding from Activision (which will be a cold day in hell) before they can release a patch.
Unfortunately, my words fell on deaf ears (which is ironic, since my spouse is deaf)

i find this a bit ironic, since obviously their QA is at worst a sick joke, and at best only able to check for stabilty/CTD issues, not gameplay issues.

[Bhruic]

That's what I tried to say on page one. Equal blame falls on Activision, and it is confirmed by The Shogun on the Com boards that CA needs Quality Assurance funding from Activision (which will be a cold day in hell) before they can release a patch.
Unfortunately, my words fell on deaf ears (which is ironic, since my spouse is deaf)

The same "The Shogun" that has been telling us that the AI "reassessment" on game load is a "feature"? Somehow I don't find his word to be terribly convincing.

Nor is your assertion that it is Activision's fault terribly convincing either. I mean, we already have a historical precedent in the MTW:VI patch. To suggest that it can't be done is obviously false. The will to do it simply isn't there. And that's my point about Blizzard (or Stardock, or any other company that actually supports their products). They ensure that they can support them.

Activision does not own TW. CA owns TW. Therefore, one cannot blame Activision if there is a problem with a TW product. It's just that simple.

(Note, this exact same argument was used with Master of Orion 3 and determining if it was QSI's fault, or Atari's fault. The difference there is that Atari owned the MoO rights, not QSI. QSI was merely contracted to make a game for them)

Bh

[Kekvit Irae]

(Note, this exact same argument was used with Master of Orion 3 and determining if it was QSI's fault, or Atari's fault. The difference there is that Atari owned the MoO rights, not QSI. QSI was merely contracted to make a game for them)

The problem with MOO3 was that it was simply just a bad game. Personally, in my own opinion, the total automation feature killed it.

[Bhruic]

The problem with MOO3 was that it was simply just a bad game. Personally, in my own opinion, the total automation feature killed it.

And yet if you were to visit the MoO3 forums, you'd still find people that enjoy the game and play it on a regular basis.

Bh

[drone]

The problem with MOO3 was that it was simply just a bad game. Personally, in my own opinion, the total automation feature killed it.

If I'm not mistaken, MoO3 had to go through a rewrite. I read an interview of the developer team about mid-way through the original. They wanted the game to be very involved, heavy on the micro-management. I think one of them said something along the lines of "We want you to lose you friends, your job, your significant other, everything. That is our goal." Don't know who forced the rewrite, but it delayed them for a while and killed the game. Playing the released version, there is a lot of complexity buried in the planet management, but not nearly as much control over it. Definite lobotomy. Which was a shame, since I wasted countless hours playing MoO2.

[Bhruic]

Without sidetracking too much, the major problem with MoO3's development was that they went through 3 different publishers. That meant there was no consistent direction, and a great deal of confusion. The end product was cut back drastically from the original vision (as you suggested).

However, that's not really the focus I was aiming at - I was simply presenting the major difference, as I see it, between the situations. That is, the ownership of the license itself.

Bh

[Voigtkampf]

The problem with MOO3 was that it was simply just a bad game. Personally, in my own opinion, the total automation feature killed it.

Compared with MoOII, which I played extensively, the third sequel was horrible. I once tested a claim that you cannot lose the game, and I began a campaign and simply pressed TURN, without actually doing anything. I came as far as 250 turns or something, I simply had no more patience and gave up. My empire was flourishing, the automated AI kicks in without you wanting it, building what it wants. I didn’t manage to lose.

I was utterly disappointed by the successor of MoO2. History repeats itself, I guess.

And yet if you were to visit the MoO3 forums, you'd still find people that enjoy the game and play it on a regular basis.

There are also people “still” collecting stamp marks; I find both equally unappealing. To each his own, I guess.

[Bhruic]

There are also people “still” collecting stamp marks; I find both equally unappealing. To each his own, I guess.

Sure. I wasn't trying to convince anyone to play it. Any more than I'm trying to convince people to play RTW. My point was simply that the fact that some people like RTW doesn't automatically make it a good game in general.

Although, really, who can say exactly what makes a good game?

Bh

[Voigtkampf]

Sure. I wasn't trying to convince anyone to play it. Any more than I'm trying to convince people to play RTW. My point was simply that the fact that some people like RTW doesn't automatically make it a good game in general.

Sure, I understood it that way as well. I agree with you.

Although, really, who can say exactly what makes a good game?

Bh

I can tell you; it is a game that you play for hours and hours, though you have other things to do and must be at work or school early in the morning. As you notice time passing faster and faster, you keep saying things like “ok, only ten more minutes and I’m off to bed” or “only this one turn and I’m turning the PC off”. And afterwards - I recall an M:TW thread one that subject, where so many of the people had exactly the same impressions - you find yourself sitting in a business meeting, listening to your partners and imagining how your Templars would charge down that hill you can see right out of the window.

Shouldnt that be the second sequal as the third sequal would be MoO4 surely?

Huh?

Moooo3 is the third sequel, hence the number three (3) in the title.

[Ginger]

the third sequel was horrible

Shouldnt that be the second sequal as the third sequal would be MoO4 surely?