Latest update on 1.2 patch from Sega/CA

[sapi]

No it isn't.

Have you got any evidence to support that?

I can tell you that general statistics (sales numbers vs forum members) are on my side, so the onus of proof is on you

What exactly is this "conservative estimate" based on, then? Because you can't multiply integers and hot air like that, it's simply not mathematically correct.

Based on a known fact (the number of users who visited the forum in the past 24 hours)
Known data (members) adjusted to account for guests (which were 90% of currently online users when i posted)
And rounded up

I have a bunch of gamer friends, too, and with the exception of the one guy-with-no-internet-access, they ALL visit forums to keep up with the games they are playing. All of them.

And that, I suspect, is because we come from different countries and different age groups.

My unsourced, empirical datapoint is bigger than your unsourced, empirical datapoint. So there.

So, how old are you, then? Time for an update, perhaps?

Nice quote, btw

[Generals_Bodyguard]

Actually he's right...majority of the customers dont come to the forums...

[Moah]

Just to use myself as an unrepresentative example:

I have only just started coming to the forum AFTER buying M2TW. So it was too late to boycott, but just in time to get all disillusioned as I read all the bugs and complaints.

RTW: I bought played and thought was fanstastic. i didn't come to forums and so had no idea how broken it was. I noticed a few things myself and jsut shrugged them off as glitches without paying much attention.

So although I now forum in neither case would a campaign have stopped my buying.

To be honest if such a campaign was started with the expansion i would probably ignore it anyway. I think some people are being a little unrealistic about what they expect from their games. IMHO CA & SEGA released a great game. They are trying to now beat the bugs that people have raised, without any new sales from it - purely out of support, NOT making a penny. They are working on an expansion, from which they will make money, that will incorporate feedback and requests from fans. It seems more than fair to me.

I work for a TV broadcast company and believe me when I say NOT ONE of the products we have ever had is bug free. And these are broadcast critical costing millions of pounds being sold to some of the most powerful corporations in the world not 30 bucks a pop to some know-nothing teenager
(not intended as insult but as comparison!)


P.s. Bizarrely enough I think I probably enjoyed RTW more (althoug m2tw is better). Ignorance is bliss.

Because I didn't know what I was missing and couldn't pick up hints and tips, I just enjoyed what it did do. And also enjoyed making noob mistakes and finding tactical answers myself. I can't undo my knowledge, so will probably forum from now on but in many ways regret discovering it....

[Carl]

I'd also point out that if anyone had bothered to follow the thread linked to in the very first post the CA PR guy that was posting admitted on the same day the patch was released that CA & SEGA are asking "serious internal questions" about why the game was allowed to be released so early when it was clearly unfinished.

They know and agree that it was released in too buggy a state and far too early, and "serious questions" probably means whoever was responsible will end up with the sack for sure.

But of course your all soooo busy flaming CA you couldn't be bothered to keep an eye on the other thread. AND, THEN you have the cheek to complain CA pays you no attention when you do exactly the same to CA ???

[sapi]

I'd also point out that if anyone had bothered to follow the thread linked to in the very first post the CA PR guy that was posting admitted on the same day the patch was released that CA & SEGA are asking "serious internal questions" about why the game was allowed to be released so early when it was clearly unfinished.

They know and agree that it was released in too buggy a state and far too early, and "serious questions" probably means whoever was responsible will end up with the sack for sure.

Only time will tell whether that is simply a PR stunt, unfortunately.

I can't see anyone getting the sack based on choosing what was likely to have been the most profitible option, and releasing at Christmas.

[Butcher]

What I can never understand are the 'open letters to the developers' and the fact that people seem to think they have a 'right' for the developers to listen to their every whim, complaint, moan, 'game breaking' bugs and the fact that a pike is 2ft longer than it historically was on 4th March 1546 in a small hamlet outside Flensburg.

Most odd.

[pike master]

What I can never understand are the 'open letters to the developers' and the fact that people seem to think they have a 'right' for the developers to listen to their every whim, complaint, moan, 'game breaking' bugs and the fact that a pike is 2ft longer than it historically was on 4th March 1546 in a small hamlet outside Flensburg.

Most odd.

manufacturer is responsible for their product and to please its customers.

still cant figure out how it is a fact that pikes are two feet longer than they were historically. how did you measure them? just curious.

[Ars Moriendi]

What I can never understand are the 'open letters to the developers' and the fact that people seem to think they have a 'right' for the developers to listen to their every whim, complaint, moan, 'game breaking' bugs and the fact that a pike is 2ft longer than it historically was on 4th March 1546 in a small hamlet outside Flensburg.

I understand that this is intended as sarcasm and exaggerated for rhetorical purposes, but I think you're taking it a bit too far. I'm aware that people on this forum (me included) tend to bicker endlessly about some inconsequential detail, but remember that M2TW is a game, not just a toy or a simulation, and as any other game doesn't really work without a set of rules that are fair to all players, known & understood by all and equally enforced on all, either by mechanics or by arbitrage.
For example, one of the (unwritten) rules in M2TW - and most other videogames too - is that if the graphical depiction of an item resembles something in the real world, then it's behaviour is expected to be similar to its real counterpart. Now, I see the soldiers in M2TW carrying things that look a lot like shields. I expect those things to act as a kind of protection. Instead, they act like slabs of kryptonite, crippling my "little supermen". Thus, a rule is broken or misrepresented. No rules, no game.

If anything, the discussion in these forums helps making a better product by raising customer awareness and helping find the problems in the finer details of the game. It's true, a lot of the talk here consists of moaning and complaining, but, ye know, nobody's forcing you to read it if it bothers you. If you do though, you might emerge somewhat wiser.
An unpleasant side effect is the "losing of innocence", which does indeed reduce the enjoyment, as stated previously in this thread. For my part, I'd rather take the information, since knowing things is enjoyable in itself ; "ignorance is bliss" is like saying "I wish I was dumber so I don't realize when people lie to me or try to rip me off, so I don't stress about it".

[dismal]

a pike is 2ft longer than it historically was on 4th March 1546 in a small hamlet outside Flensburg.

O, if only the pikes had been 2 ft longer in Flensburg that day!

[Temujin]

Have you got any evidence to support that?

I can tell you that general statistics (sales numbers vs forum members) are on my side, so the onus of proof is on you

Uhm, No. You were the one making claims and backing them up with pseudo-stats and handwaving (what my stats-prof at uni called "lying with numbers"), so the onus is on YOU to actually back that up with real data and math that doesn't require magic to work. Asking me to prove a negative isn't going to make your claim ring true to anyone with a sense of logic in their heads.

Based on a known fact (the number of users who visited the forum in the past 24 hours)
Known data (members) adjusted to account for guests (which were 90% of currently online users when i posted)
And rounded up

Even accepting these numbers (which I can't verify), that's still a far cry from proving that "It's a simple fact that the vast majority of gamers do not visit online forums". Here's some questions to help you on your way to make that claim more than an unfounded assertion:

1) What's the size of the general population of gamers?
2) What percentage of the online forum attendance goes to totalwar.org?
3) Was yesterdays attendance stats representative of the activity of this forum?
4) Is this forum representative of the general population of forums in terms of attendance vs. memberships and daily activity?
5) Is the membership and unregistered attendance of this forum representative of the general population of gamers?

There are more, but this is just a handful to get you started. Either prove your claim or acknowledge that you used pseudo-stats with no backing to reinforce your point.

Having an opinion is fine, but trying to raise it to fact with no basis is a sort of bullying I particularly dislike.