why arent they talking at all about the AI?

[Lord Adherbal]

yeah the "TW vet" might be a small part of the customers group, but who said STW/MTW style gameplay would make them LOSE customers ? I can't believe they turned RTW into a clickfest without any reason. Graphics were RTW's main attraction and selling point, not the uber fast gameplay. In fact no one knew about this uber fast gameplay until the game was released, and most of us were disappointed. So what is the reason for this change ? I thought there was a saying "if it isn't broken, don't fix it".

What I find strange about CA is that they dont seem to include large groups of beta testers to pretest game concepts. Maybe thats a misconception on my part but it seems that way to me (and I've helped out on other (non-CA) games. For example, I cant believe many experienced game players were positive about the running/fighting speeds of RTW.

the fact that v1.0 of the game crashed when more then 30 players joined the MP lobby clearly proves they didn't test much. If you read developer diaries from Ensemble Studios (makers of AoE series) you hear them taking about excessive (MP) testing sessions and teams, and how they find and deal with balance problems. I doubt these kind of test(team)s exist in the TW game's development.

[CBR]

Yeah the community only gets involved when CA is making a patch. We did MP testing for 1.2 patch but mainly for connection/out of sync problems.

Of course for M2TW one player is involved in testing AFAIK.


CBR