Medieval II Update 2 Feature List

[Whacker]

they almost ceartinlly did the best job they could given their time constraints, the blame as is ushually the case in matters like this lies with the company executives.

Fixed that for ya.

As I've said before, I'm in complete agreement with you, in that the devs themselves did a great job on this game and did as much as they could with the time they had. I feel their pain also because I've done professional dev work in the past, being ridden mercilessly by clueless and greedy project managers and whatnaught doesn't help the situation. It still doesn't change my opinion about the state of the game right now or when it was released, but I do think that I understand why things happened the way they did.

That said, my views on what they should do with the game right now have not changed. I think first and foremost they need to focus on bugs that are a direct result of game code, i.e. stuff we the community can't mod/fix ourselves. Second, they should focus on bugs that are fixable through moddable files, like traits/ancils. Lastly, they should focus on balancing issues.

Cheers!

[Carl]

I largely agree wit your their Whaker, just hadn't piked up on you with that before. TBH it comes down to the fact that when most people say CA, they mean the Devs and it annos that they get flamed so much when really 90% of the stuff thast goes on isn't really their fualt, it's people elswhere in the company that are to blame.

[sapi]

Does it really matter who is to 'blame' for the supposed faults in the game?

Lets keep this thread civilised and on topic, talking about the new things the patch will bring, not how the fixes 'shouldn't have been necessary' or the like

[pike master]

why have i got the feeling that noone is giving any new information

[sapi]

Because there none left to give until the final version of the fixlist?

[Dexter]

Well it would be good if the shield bug and the 2H would be solved now .. originally i did think i was doing something wrong * LoL ...
the fixes here on the forum helped a lot, but still i would expect a knight to fight better than a simple spearmen .. * tis is a personal opinion *
maybe if the patch is released i will reinstall the game ...

[Daveybaby]

Does it really matter who is to 'blame' for the supposed faults in the game?

Heh, for what its worth, *we* (i.e. the game buying general public) are to blame for rushed/bugged games as much as anyone else.

(1) Market forces dictate that a game has to have a certain amount of graphical 'wow factor' in order to sell well. Please lets not kid ourselves that anything else matters for a large majority of gamers.

(2) When designing a modern PC game, you have to decide how good your graphics are going to look at the start. Graphics take just as long to produce as the game code. You have to plan for how technology is going to advance in the (say) 2 years it will take to develop you game.

(3) If you delay your release by too long, your game will start to look old hat. You will have missed your opportunity for the 'wow' factor to be of use. You could always re-do all of the graphics again, and recode the engine again, but thats just going to make you even later.

Case in point : look at those old duke nukem forever screen shots, i seem to remember that they were state of the art at one point. How many times do you think theyve had to recode their engine and redo all of their graphics?

(4) If your game doesnt sell well enough the company *will* go bust. Just take a look throughout the history of game development to see how many fantastic game studios have gone under. Great games are not enough to ensure your survival on their own.

(5) Delaying a game by 3 or 4 months is often not an option. M2TW came out just in time for the big christmas shopping frenzy. Is it reasonable to rush a slightly bugged (but still playable IMO) game out the door to meet this date? Yes, IMHO. If they'd delayed by 3 months they would have missed it - and thus they would have sold far fewer copies of the game. If they'd waited till *next* christmas the game technology would start to look out of date. Meanwhile what are the programmers going to use to buy food with?

So unfortunately the dirty business of market forces and making money is often more important than shipping the 'perfect' game (as if there would ever be a way of making all of your customers 100% happy anyway). Welcome to the real world - anyone who thinks that the bottom line doesnt matter is deluding themselves. You have to deliver great games at the right time. You have to do it to a tight schedule. You have to make enough money to fund the next round of development so that you can get the 'wow' factor for the next game in the series - so that the incredibly fickle and shallow game buying public will notice it's existence for long enough to part with 30 quid for a copy.

And if you get it wrong - no more CA, and no more Total War games.

Just something to bear in mind next time anyone bashes either the devs *or* the 'suits' for rushing a game out.

[Bob the Insane]

I have put down MTW2 until the 2nd patch is released (finally giving my 360 some attention ) but the list of fixes on this post makes me really look forward to getting back into MTW2 once the patch is released...

Nice stuff, really appreciate the effort...

[pike master]

what about the vanilla release that you buy at the store. the average joe may only have dial up and not think to download a patch right off.

that sure would hurt sells. they need to make an upgraded game disc and start stamping it out for sell. but then again they are probably waiting to perfect the game and then release the version as a gold edition 8b

[King Bob VI]

I have dial-up and it doesn't hurt me a bit to download patches, even though they can take a while. What sucks is not being able to download awesome looking mods that are like 100 MB or more.

[Forward Observer]

what about the vanilla release that you buy at the store. the average joe may only have dial up and not think to download a patch right off.

that sure would hurt sells. they need to make an upgraded game disc and start stamping it out for sell. but then again they are probably waiting to perfect the game and then release the version as a gold edition 8b

The "average joe" that you describe probably wouldn't know a shield bug from Shinola. He would either play and enjoy the game and that might be it, or he might want to expand his involvement with the game enough that he might eventually end up at a forum like this.

Then in very short order he would find out that he should not be enjoying the game because he didn't know that longbowmen eat Wheaties instead of Cheerios for breakfast.

On the other hand, after playing the game for a few hours, and getting nowhere because he is too illiterate to read the manual, your "average joe" decides that the game sucks and he is going back to really great games like the "Sims" or "Quake".


Daveybaby hit the nail precisely on the head. The only point I might add was that Sega/CA also probably wanted to beat the release of Vista and DX10, since neither their game nor the new operating system were optimized to work with each other.

I also would imagine that all those "average joes" who got a new PC for Christmas and later took advantage of their free upgrade to Vista might think twice about purchasing a game that only lists compatability with WindowsXP/2000 on the box. (that of course assumes that they can and do read box copy)

Cheers

[JeromeGrasdyke]

So unfortunately the dirty business of market forces and making money is often more important than shipping the 'perfect' game (as if there would ever be a way of making all of your customers 100% happy anyway). Welcome to the real world - anyone who thinks that the bottom line doesnt matter is deluding themselves. You have to deliver great games at the right time. You have to do it to a tight schedule. You have to make enough money to fund the next round of development so that you can get the 'wow' factor for the next game in the series - so that the incredibly fickle and shallow game buying public will notice it's existence for long enough to part with 30 quid for a copy.

And if you get it wrong - no more CA, and no more Total War games.

Just something to bear in mind next time anyone bashes either the devs *or* the 'suits' for rushing a game out.

That is pretty close to what it's like.

And in fact, even in a near-perfect environment, with good funding and minimal corporate interference (near impossible, though with the Sega-CA partnership we come quite close), a top-of-the-line technical team, sound project management and a crack set of designers and artists, there are limits to what you can do. The limits on what is possible in software development eventually catch up with you, and so the perfect game does not exist - which is a good thing too, else I'd be out of a job ;)

It's a continuous balancing act with as ultimate aim to produce something that you will enjoy playing, that we can be proud of, and that keeps Sega and CA in the black and the shareholders happy. The fact that Total War has proven so succesful and that we're still here making more of them means we must be doing something right.

[Garnier]

Just want to show my approval of a CA person posting. Every post a CA person makes on these forums adds to my(and others') opinion of them.

[vonsch]

Just want to show my approval of a CA person posting. Every post a CA person makes on these forums adds to my(and others') opinion of them.

Well, within reason, Garnier. We don't want them JUST posting on forums.

CA strikes a pretty good balance in getting things out and patching. And I'm willing to forgive a lot when games have the legs that this series does. And the modability which extends the life years over the "standard" sort of game.

That's not to say I don't sometimes about some design decisions, or about some bugs that slipped through. It's not meant to be personal.

I am finding the game much better with a few "fix" mods and am eyeing more comprehensive mods now too. But want this patch to stabilize the base before trying to settle on a personal setup to really play with. Maybe then I'll stop playing 50 turns and restarting.