Disgusting...

[The Stranger]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Statistically speaking, not everyone will have "such" an attitude, so you can rest assured there will always be freedom fighters and revolutions. Just a note of caution: Freedom fighting and revolutions usually ended up in bloodshed. Has all the revolution actually led to a better world? That is up to argument and out of the scope of this thread.

I did not critisize foz when he raised the shield bug, nor Carl when he did extensive testing to confirm those bugs. Nor any of the people actively trying to make the game much more enjoyable for the fellow players. I think the developers, if they read these boards, have gotten the message loud and clear: There are bugs in the game, we are not happy about it, we even have a solution.

So how did repeating these already known bugs in an angry manner going to achieve anything? Besides serving as a purpose to push the useful thread to the second page so that newbies cannot find them instead of this hateful but ultimately useless thread (including my own posts, thank you)?

IF the Stranger had raised some other unknown bugs and/or propose a fix to already known bugs I wouldn't have the chance to flame(?).

You can disagree with me all you want, but you cannot deny what I have stated is a fact (about how the game industry is runned nowadays). Keep on complaining for all I care. I just needed a break from my venetian campaign and this thread is just perfect.

Lastly, Fanboy? I know my chance to impress a bunch of "intellects" such as this thread feature is nil but fanboy? Don't give CA too much credit. I do not defend CA or any game developer for that matters. I just feel like pointing out some facts and acting like a hypocrite by wasting a lot of internet space while complaining about others who do the same.

I've worked on fixing bugs and rebalancing RTW quite alot. I've made several layouts that were used in several mods that increasingly balanced RTW... I might not be one of the famous modders but ive contributed... As for M2TW... ill say, IT IS NOT MY JOB TO FIX ANOTHER BROKEN GAME... But i would if I could... And complaining is part of doing something about, since CA reads this board, and they can see what people dislike. Now i will agree with you that flaming wont help, so I stopped doing that after like 2-3 flameposts? I tried to post constructive critisism but i wind up defending myself against guys like you...

Caravel and SMZ I agree with your posts...

[Malkut]

Please read around. The_Foz_4 has pointed out the shield bug, Dopp has pointed out the Pike bug, and after fixing all 3 issues I’ve found that 2-handed swordsmen are also bugged with a too slow attack animation. the ONLY UNIT in the game WITHOUT A BUG is peasants, and that’s because they don't have pikes, 2-handed weapons or a shield

. . . and they're all so serious and detrimental to gameplay, that nobody who doesn't go looking for them would notice.

Still, thank you for your hard work and dedication. Seriously, anyone who improves the game even a little bit deserves some thanks.

[Carl]

Thanks for the thanks, although I didn't do most of the work. It's appreciated though.

Also as I noted a few posts up, people over in the Multiplayer section where complaining heavily about Spear vs. Cav and sword vs. anything for some time before the shield bug was fround. people though it was a severe problem before we even knew what it was, they just thought it was intended. People will tend to bash stuff that isn't working right, harder than they will stuff that is working right but is IMBA.

[Barry Fitzgerald]

I think we all appreciate the efforts some players are putting in to fix things etc.

But I have to agree with the OP on this one..it really shouldnt be down to players to do a job that the software developer should have done prior to realease of MTW2.

I have not touched the game for 1 month..and that is is something that CA should be concerned about, esp since many of us have been playing and buying their games for years.

Not a question of being a moaning minnie..but folks this isn't acceptable at all. Not only that but patch 1.1 was feeble, and still didnt fix many of the issues.

Maybe I will hang on for the next patch...and if that isn't right...I will be removing it from my pc...there are more productive programs that could be on there instead.

[Bijo]

But I have to agree with the OP on this one..it really shouldnt be down to players to do a job that the software developer should have done prior to realease of MTW2.

But don't forget Sega, the publisher. It's about money, as it's always been. Developer ain't callin' the shots. If moneylender says "Do this." then it must be done regardless of it being right or wrong.

What I hope for the next installment is that CA will be financiered by a GOOD sugar daddy who isn't only after hard cash, but quality.

[General Zhukov]

That said, theres a difference, between coming to these forums and saying, "hey is this a bug has anyone else experienced it?" and coming to these forums saying "OMG i hate this game its so buggy and unplayable and i hate it, did i mention i hate it" by all means if u find a bug, or somethign u believe is a bug post it, promote discussion about it, but dont come here making threads about how bugs have ruined ur gaming experience and u wasted ur money on this game, the majority of people on these forums dont want to hear it, indeed the majority of the people here have heard it so often that they generally lash out at the people making said such threads.

Cheers Knoddy

I like what you're sayin' knoddy. However, the above is the most horrendous run-on sentence I have ever seen. Good jorb.

[Barry Fitzgerald]

The problem is it is all too late really. I am sure CA are working away right now..but the damage is done.

And there are a number of fatal flaws in the developement of the game..or lack of. It is trying to be a jack of all games, master of none. A strategy game without the tactical depth needed. CA are scared to get stuck into it..and it started with RTW...which I still think at the time was a nice game..

The problem was after 6-12 months..I got sick of it..BI didn't do much either..it was ok..but not amazing. Where we could forgive maybe RTW and the mistakes that made..here there are no excuses. MP saved RTW from total removal..just.

MTW2 is sadly like a Sims 2 expansion pack...a sure fire seller..but getting very tedious. Nothing new here really..and a single line thinking of total war, with limited scope to explore other areas.

A strategy game without challenging AI or strategy is surely doomed.

Some flawed games can cut it even with problems..Oblivion was one. Why because it sucked you in...it worked. To me at least.

MTW2 is a MTW 1 lite..when we needed a real move forward. I hope CA read this stuff...the writing is on the wall guys. Stop trying to dumb things down..and get to the real meat. We don't want to play RTW part 2 medieval theme..been there done that..trying to please the mass audience leaves all less than satisfied.

[Derfasciti]

I agree pretty much on everything except for the heir selection. I mean, it is the friggin' middle ages. Do it the right away and kill your son if you don't want him to inherit the throne

I am playing this totally unmodded except for 1year=1turn now. I just avoid
2handers and just get angry when my cavalry messes up.

[JFC]

Originally Posted by Dopp

Originally Posted by JFC
I posted this in another thread. But I think it's more relevant here.

I have to say I am amazed at the sheer amount of tweaking/downloading/modding/hunting around the forums for said downloads that I have had to do JUST to get the game to work as it was probably intended!

Chances are though, half the "broken" stuff you would never have noticed anyway if the modders hadn't drawn your attention to it.

The game is still great despite the flaws. I'm on my eighth grand campaign already.

Yes, again I'm reposting.

[Hurin_Rules]

Well, the cavalry is partially due to yourself. Charging, without patch 1.1, is quite hard you know. Flat terrain, straight line to the enemy, and the such are all needed to actually perform a charge.

Ok, I downloaded 1.1 and will give it a try. Hopefully, the cavalry will be better now. I just remember my first battle in RTW, and totally loving the new physics of cavalry charges... sure, they were a bit overpowered, but man, they were fun! What a change with MTW2.

Also, aren't Saxon infantry only available in the prologue ? If so, then I'd say it's not that big a deal.

No, not a big deal... just a little annoying.

I didn't quite notice the late medieval look, but then again, I'm no historian at all. But I imagine it's done because a lot of the mainstream gamers simply associate the Medieval times with heavy shining armour. Don't panic, however, I'm sure a lot of mods (MTR for instance) 'll address these kind of issues.

I sure do hope so. MTW never did this-- they at least made an attempt to show different eras.

Merchants, Princesses (to a lesser extent) are useful. Merchants when used correctly don't need that much micro managing, and can rake in a lot of cash. One member was even making 20 K on merchants alone in his game. You just need to practise with them, and learn how to use them efficiently. Be careful though, if you don't have the patch yet there is a strange bug concerning the income of merchants, you need to change your capital every time you load up the game if you want your merchants to perform. The patch does fix this, thankfully.

Again, I will give it another try.

All in all, in my opinion this is a step forward from Rome. Now that was un playable and it took severe modding to make that work, and even then it wasn't perfect - not by a long shot. So, considering what Rome did to the series, I can only conclude this is a step forward rather than backwards. Did you really like Rome that much better than you do M2TW ?

All I can say is, I played MTW for more than a year and could have kept playing it, but RTW came out. RTW got my attention for about 6 months. MTW2 annoyed me after 5 minutes.

[rich19]

I agree that M2TW has bugs. But that doesn't mean it's "disgusting". I have to laugh when I see people complaining that the shield bug is "ruining" your experience, when it was only noticed by someone fairly recently. Sure, some bugs mean units don't perform as they should, but the majority do, or at least appear to. And there's always the autocalculate button if you really can't face your army acting like it doesn't have shields.

The very fact that people had to do extensive research to find shield values make units slightly worse surely means it isn't that noticable unless you look for it. And can anyone here say that all the time they have played on this game hasn't been at least partially enjoyable?

[The Stranger]

when you notice somebody is ill it can still take a while before you find out what for desease he has...

the fact that the "desease" has only been found for a short time doesnt mean people didnt know there was one.

[Carl]

the fact that the "desease" has only been found for a short time doesnt mean people didnt know there was one.

Exactly what i've been saying in my last few posts if anyone cared to read them. And actually the Sheild bug (if you are aware of what fixing it does), IS game breaking, tottaly and utterly as it overpowers cav, makes spears pointless and severly nerfs sword and sheild units as well as apparently ovepowering Archers in general.

[Djurre]

I agree, i bought this game "on my way out" so to speak, expecting i had not need to wait for reviews and such. i was wrong.

Next-time, ill wait a week or two



devs would be wise to make a statement on is matter. its their fanbase and people feel ripped off. problem is, in the gaming industry, you can rip off your customers and get away with it. there should be an international gamers customer organisation

[knoddy]

I like what you're sayin' knoddy. However, the above is the most horrendous run-on sentence I have ever seen. Good jorb.

lol y thank u :P

when you notice somebody is ill it can still take a while before you find out what for desease he has...

very true, however, most people did not realise the game was...ill as u put it alot of people just accepted that some units were not as powerful as expected. then someone who was testing something completely different came through and realised that there was a bug, and everyone kicked up a stink about how it was ruining their gaming experience, yet the game has been out for several months nad nobody knew it existed......

Ok, I downloaded 1.1 and will give it a try. Hopefully, the cavalry will be better now. I just remember my first battle in RTW, and totally loving the new physics of cavalry charges... sure, they were a bit overpowered, but man, they were fun! What a change with MTW2.

Cav was ridiculusly OP in RTW. i remember playing a armenian camp, and training a full army of cataphracts only and conqouring all of greece, most of northern africa and most of italy. one massed charge slaughtering everything in its path.

To avoid making cav OP in M2TW they made it alot harder to get a good charge. they also changed the mechanic. double click means, "get here fast as possible" which means if u double click on an enemy unit ur cav just tries to get tehre fast as possible, not charging. If u single click however, they walk to withing charge range, stop form up, lower lances, blow a horn and charge, and that charge is irresistable for most infantry even front on. however they are very very difficult to produce as well they should be. the perfect charge every time is just unrealistic.

Alot of people seem to believe my posts are suggesting, "we accept these bugs, dont need fixes, etc etc." this is not what i am saying. Wot i am trying to get across is the difference between complaining and offering constructive criticism. again i reiterate my last paragraph from my other post

"That said, theres a difference, between coming to these forums and saying, "hey is this a bug has anyone else experienced it?" and coming to these forums saying "OMG i hate this game its so buggy and unplayable and i hate it, did i mention i hate it" by all means if u find a bug, or somethign u believe is a bug post it, promote discussion about it, but dont come here making threads about how bugs have ruined ur gaming experience and u wasted ur money on this game, the majority of people on these forums dont want to hear it, indeed the majority of the people here have heard it so often that they generally lash out at the people making said such threads."

its good to see people posting bugs for devs, and people from CA to see, its good to see people coming up with fixes for these bugs, its good to see people discussing the bugs, the communities fixes and there various pros and cons, wot isnt good is to see people bashing the game cos they feel cheated out of there money cos of a few bugs they wouldnt even know had existed if they didnt read these forums.

Cheers Knoddy

[TopHatJones]

The meaning he is having, is if you go round searching for bugs, and post them up, people like him read about and then are influcenced in the way they play. if no one searched for bugs, people would assume it is meant to be like that, and have more fun.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I was NOT searching for bugs. Quite the opposite actually. I have spent all my time playing this game from the day of release until the day I posted this ACTIVELY trying to IGNORE the bugs and have fun anyway. Eventually I got overwhelmed by them and just gave up. That's when I wanted to say my piece.

To anybody who feels compelled to complain about the "complainers" - I say, massive hypocrisy.

If you feel that "complaining" is a waste of forum space - then don't indulge in it yourself.

OMG...QFT

Lastly, there are a lot of people replying saying that the shield bug was not known until recently and it isn't that bad...I will not argue with that point anymore because there are plenty of other responses that say everything I would have said.

BUT, I would like to point out one FINAL time, that the shield bug was NOT the reason I made this post. I listed many examples of a very long line of bugs, ONE of which was the shield bug. The shield buig itself is not the topic of discussion here but rather the large body of major bugs as a whole.

@Knoddy,

I did not actually intend to be mean to you, which is why I included the "no offense" modifier in the sentence. I also responded after you posted but before you edited your post to add the last comment. L337 d00ds that post in such a manner are very difficult to decipher and really detract from the value of the thread as a whole. It is a pet peeve of mine and I usually ignore the post and I doubt I am alone.

Lastly, I did not get to make all the responses I would have liked too. There are quite a few new posts since I last logged in. I have officially shelved M2TW and moved on to other games...and a sprinkle of RL. :P I visit the forums of whatever game I happen to be immersed in, and since i have shelved M2TW, I will probably not be here after this.

Hopefully, things will be fixed before I forget about this game. If so, I will come back to it and with it, the forums. If they don't, I will not be following the series anymore and will most likely not get into any expansions or sequels. And no I am not trying to threaten CA or Sega, I am merely speaking my mind. Maybe I will decide to try out a future game anyway (which I WILL if they correct the mistakes in this one quickly), but as of now, I think the chances are slim to none.

Other series have make horrible turns and have lost me as a life-long fan. (Final Fantasy lost me at FFX, The Elder Scrolls with Oblivion, and Zelda lost me with the GamePube cartoon homoparty...although they look like they may be about to redeem themselves with the new one. I won't get my hopes up though.) Sequels and expansions have come out for those games and I have not gone back to any of them yet. :( I really hope this game doesn't die on its feet like those other series have, but there's not much I can do is there?

Later,

-Tophat

P.S. Thanks to the modders who put a lot of work into fixing this game. It wouldn't have even lasted this long without you guys.

[knoddy]

wot long list of bugs, there are 3 major bugs with the game, and while they affect gameplay adversly they dont ruin it all together.
1. passive ai (which is kinda fixed by patch 1.1, fairly rare now afaik)
2. 2h fix - plenty of fixes around for this one, and its spose to be getting fixed in patch 1.2
3. shield bug- dont know much bout this one, or fixes tbh. it hasnt affected the way i play at all so far.

other than these 3, most of the other bugs are minor annoyances in a superb game and i think the people at CA need a little credit cos i dont think people respect how difficult it is to make something on this magnitude, perhaps the fact that nobody else has really tried making similar sort of games should suggest something to all u nay sayers.

337 d00ds that post in such a manner are very difficult to decipher and really detract from the value of the thread as a whole.

i also hate people who act all leet and hella cool on the internet, yet it was a very prudent way to exagerate my point of view, but hey my sarcasm is wasted on u apparantly.

I also responded after you posted but before you edited your post to add the last comment.

i havent edited any of my posts so dont know wot u mean by this.

cheers Knoddy

[Nebuchadnezzar]

1. passive ai (which is kinda fixed by patch 1.1, fairly rare now afaik)

The passive AI is far from fixed! Try sallying and you will experience 9 out of 10. In fact I mostly autocalc.

2. 2h fix - plenty of fixes around for this one, and its spose to be getting fixed in patch 1.2

What fixes? They are more workarounds which substitute alternative animations that create new problems. In the meantime while waiting for 1.2 lets not recruit any 2H units. Is that what your saying?

wot long list of bugs, there are 3 major bugs with the game, and while they affect gameplay adversly they dont ruin it all together.

What about the tower bug?
The princess triggers not working?
A score of other triggers not working
The campaign AI is shat. It does not garrison its border settlements and gives settlements in exchange for traderights.
Armour & xp upgrades messed up
Ongoing mission bugs
In a pathetic attempt to nerf cav CA made them usless. Why not remove them altogether and have gens bouncing on inflatable bouncers.

The list is very long. I just wish my game was like yours!

[JCoyote]

And then there is the bridge pathfinding bug. In fact, the reason I came here in the first place! I knew things were wrong with the game before coming to this forum; it's why I came here at all.

Let's LIST:
2h bug
Shield bug
tower bug(s)
pike bug
princess bug
battlefield pathfinding/bridge bug
cav rundown routers bug
task switch on video bug
"random" seed issue (since previous games!)
upgrades bug(s)
guild bug(s)
Aztec bugs
loaded ship movement bug

And I know I'm forgetting quite a few.

And we'll ignore historical/logical inaccuracies like crossbows firing parabolicly. But just about everyone acting like everything's fine act like the only problem is one bug. It's not, the shield thing is merely the last straw for a lot of people; we kept feeling like things weren't playing melee right, were assured it was "balance" by some people, and found it's a bug. With the exception of the video bug, everything I've listed impacts actual gameplay. Not aesthetics, or smoothness, or occasional crashes (though we have issues there too) like most games. It's a plethora of broken gameplay mechanics. And true, someone who never played TW before might not have noticed, but to most vet players and people who payed attention to the IN GAME TUTORIALS it was clear things didn't work as advertised.

But here's a way you can tell if a software product should be shipped: how many coders are still working on it? If too many coders are being kept on the project post release, it shouldn't be released yet. If a product is actually ready for release, only a residual coding team should need to be kept on for bug fixes. However, in the case of this game, I'm pretty sure it's just about everyone still. I know, other software companies do it to. That DOESN'T mean I'm going to let a company off the hook when they lose on this kind of gamble. It's not a good business practice to release incomplete software and people need to let companies know they don't like it.

You might have been trained in coding, I was trained in marketing and PR just fyi. Everyone in the PR game knows that every bad review you hear about represents a fraction of the bad impressions out there; more importantly, dissatisfied customers tell a lot more people than satisfied ones, by a factor of 5 to 20.

"It's fun but a bit frustrating" is competing against "It has more gameplay bugs than any other computer game I've bought in the last 5 years." There are people in Sega who are seeing this stuff, and they need to, and yes, it does make a difference in how things get done. More than you'd think.

[Yun Dog]

tbh im sick and tiered of people crying on these forums about wot a bad game Medieval 2 is.

I have also been playing the series since Medieval 1, i never played shogun, but throughly enjoyed Medieval 1, Rome and now Medieval 2. ive been playing it since release and love playing it. The graphics are just damn shiny! and the gameplay while not brilliant can give u a real run for ur money on the higher difficulties.


As to the Bugs, well, wot game these days isnt released without a few bugs. AFAIK there are only 2 obvious and bad bugs with vinilla 1.0, that being Passive AI and the 2h unit bug. yet even with these bugs teh game is still playable and very very enjoyable.

As to the "obvious" shield bug, it clearly wasnt obvious at all and it took some guy doin testing on something else to realise it.

Lets look at other games released, Caesar 4, recently released as the sequel to Caesar 3 and old school ROme based strat game, was widely anticipated by fans of the series, yet was released with some glaringly obvious and horrific bugs that made the game unplayable. Crashes at random intervals, and 90% of the gaming community reported CTD's when trying to open trade routes, which is the major source of income in the game, unable to open trade routes = no income = unplayable game.

WoW is patched every few weeks, and while alot of it is content, alot of it is fixing bugs and errors in the code that was affecting. Unfortunatly this often ends up causing more distressing errors. In the recent 2.03 patch, players found that they could cap Battlegrounds flags from huge distances making defense in the battle grounds damn near impossible seeing as u didnt know who was capping the flag cos u couldnt see them.

i could go on with more examples but i will move on

Im currently in the middle of a computing degree, and i struggle to write programs a few hundred lines of code without bugs. How do u think the people at CA go writing code that is thousands possibly millions of lines long. have u ever stopped to think of it from that side of the coin, or do u just complain cos u didnt get wot u wanted.

The notions that CA got the game out without any Beta testing is ridiculus. while i admit there was 1 or 2 bugs that were glaringly obvious that were not picked up in beta, i dont feel that we can make outrageous claims that tehre was no beta, and that they just through M2 out the door so that it would make chrissy sales.

SO in summary Medieval 2 is a great game, both graphically and in gameplay, while it does have some bugs, the game is still very playable, and CA is working hard to release fixes to try and fix the errors that are prevelant in the game. i think the community needs to give the lads at CA a bit of slack, nobody is perfect, most especially those people who keep coming to these forums and complaining about the game. errors should be expected. unless u were willing to wait another year or 2 for the game to be beta tested 47 times to eradicate every single little minute error that the people at CA found.

Cheers Knoddy

P.s. pls note this is not a personal attack on the OP, im sick of all the people posting these sorts of threads on the .org

pps. pls excuse my lack of spelling and grammar :P

This says it all

this single line reflects the respect I have for the remainder of this thread

sorry too busy playing to wade through all the tears

[pike master]

in my opinion which is not a highly rated one im sure is that they should have continued in the direction they were going with barbarian invasion. the reason being is that you already have tournament players only wanting to use high era units to get away from all gunpowder but they want knights and good spearmen.

barbarian invasion had an excellent schiltrom and they did start showing an increased power in cavalry such as the graal knights. the only thing missing would be pavise crossbowmen and pikemen just about any other unit you could think of for the middle ages could have been created based on the rtw engine which they did use quite a bit since unit files show evidence of rome carry overs.

and it is kinda funny to see a roman peasant unit card representing native american archers.not really sure why they weakened the schiltrom spearmen units so much from barbarian to mtw2.

[SMZ]

QFT

I'm not familiar with this net lingo... what's the full expression?

[Malkut]

And to the various persons claiming that any game produced with modern technology will have to go thru a process similar to this... All I know is that my two favorite game series are Total War and the various D&D games run thru Bioware and now Obsidian. And I have not been nearly as frustrated with those rpg's as I have with RTW and MTW2. NWN and NWN2 are both quite complex games - and neither had me quitting in frustration.

Hah! I love Bioware games, they're a dozen times better than console RPGs, but they're not any better than Total War about bugs. It took me three days just to be able to leave that stupid bedroom in the beginning of the NWN campaign, because of a bug that screwed with the framerate. Not to mention, it’s had a memory leak several times, and for a game based entirely around modification, a great deal of it's programming is locked down tight. NWN been patched more than Rome has, and let's not even get started on the bugs in the vast amount of user-created content.

KOTOR also went through his, and KOTOR 2 didn't only because the developers out and out admitted that it was a futile gesture to try to get such an unstable, unfinished game working flawlessly.

The more complex programming becomes, and the less time they have to work on it, the more human errors will occur in it. Simple arithmetic.

[Lord_hazard]

All I can say is, I played MTW for more than a year and could have kept playing it, but RTW came out. RTW got my attention for about 6 months. MTW2 annoyed me after 5 minutes.

Pretty much sums it up for me.

[AussieGiant]

Happy New Year everyone!!

Keep up the good work.

[Carl]

@Knoddy: JCoyote's reply summed things up my thoughts nicely. But I do want to reply to this:

3. shield bug- dont know much bout this one, or fixes tbh. it hasnt affected the way i play at all so far.

Actually it HAS, if your like everyone else out their you won't be using spearmen to recive cav charges, or Sword & Sheild units against light cav and as a pinning unit for everything out there. In fact if your normal you won't be using spear or swords any more than you can possibly avoid. That's a BIG diffrence from what fixing the sheild bug will have.

[econ21]

Happy New Year everyone!!

Keep up the good work.

Happy New Year AussieGiant. But I think your thanks are posted in the wrong thread (following Jerome's lead, the shield bug thread seems more suitable). Finding bugs is worthy of thanks. Starting threads called "Disgusting!" complaining about them seems less deserving.

I visit the forums of whatever game I happen to be immersed in, and since i have shelved M2TW, I will probably not be here after this.

In that case, I will take this opportunity to close your thread, which I think has run its course.