Fixing Total War: The Bigger Picture

[Rhedd]

I really like the original poster's idea!

See, I'm a game developer myself, and it sounds wonderful. Heck, if you guys are not only willing to buy an unfinished game, but will actually pay extra for it, on a monthly basis, who am I to say no?

Maybe we could apply this reasoning to other fields, as well. I'm sure they'd love it, too.

"Oh, we didn't really have time to put wheels on your new SUV. Pay us extra and we'll be happy to, though."

"Of course your new wide-screen TV doesn't have a picture. It's a complicated piece of equipment, and some features have to be sacrificed for a reasonable production schedule. Just sign up for our monthly subscription, and we'll add a color periodically. Let's start with green."

"We here at Regal Furniture pride ourselves in customer support. Sure, some of our chairs only have two or three legs, but we're dedicated to adding new legs at regular intervals for a minimal monthly fee."

Genius!

God I love bad consumers.

EDIT: Wait... CyanCentaur, do you work for Microsoft? ^_^

[Yun Dog]

I really like the original poster's idea!


EDIT: Wait... CyanCentaur, do you work for Microsoft? ^_^

no blizzard

[Furious Mental]

Licence fees? No x 10 to the 58th power.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

If I pay 10 bucks a month for patches, they better be 100% bug free, completely historically accurate, and cure cancer.

[Nebuchadnezzar]

Consumers with such deep pockets and shallow minds.

Here's an idea. What say if I pay 50 bucks as a once of payment for a 98% bug free game. It doesn't even need to cure cancer or be historically accurate!!!

[Doug-Thompson]

Is this a joke?

No. Never. I'd quit and play checkers before paying a monthly fee, without regret or a second thought.

[heynow21]

People saying this game has no bugs are kidding themselves. The game has ZERO AI. There was a poll earlier asking if anyone had ever lost a campaign game and I had to chuckle, because basically it's impossible to lose one.

[Skott]

M2TW had alot of bugs when it came out. Many were so obvious a five year old would have spotted them off the bat. CA got sloppy about catching those and SEGA got sloppy too by missing them as well. The first patch didnt really fix a whole heck of alot neither IMO. It was the modders that fixed alot of the big items IMO and they should be commended for doing what CA and SEGA should have done in the beginning. Hopefully CA will learn from this mistake and not do it again but I have a feeling they won't. This isnt their first time at being sloppy IMHO.


Okay, now having said all that I think the subscription idea is a bad idea for CA. I simply wouldnt subscribe. I'm thinking alot of other M2TW fans would feel the same way. M2TW isnt an online game so it wouldnt work in this situation. Nor would I like it which I have already said. I respect the OP's idea and the right to put forth that idea but I dont care for it personally.

[Csargo]

Is this a joke?

No. Never. I'd quit and play checkers before paying a monthly fee, without regret or a second thought.

Though I'de rather player chess.

[Monsieur Alphonse]

I started with 1.01 and enjoyed it thoroughly. Before reading on this forum about the bugs I even didn't know about a lot of them. Of course I had some CTDs and other mischief but I have never played a game that didn't have bugs. Now I am playing 1.02 and still have a very good time.

overwhelmed with bugs and play balance issues

Well you just have to play along with these and adjust your tactics. I have never played a game were the human player wasn't able in using exploits / out trick the AI. In the end it is a computer game.

If you don't like it don't play it. Pick up gardening. That has a nice calming effect upon people.

Paying extra for patches. If you succeed you will be awarded the businessmen of the year award

[Rhedd]

Paying extra for patches. If you succeed you will be awarded the businessmen of the year award

And suddenly sprout horns and a forked tail.

Of course, that's sort of of the same thing. ^_^

[Kobal2fr]

That's of course forgetting basic cynicism : if your income is suddenly based on bugfixes... well, you're not really that driven to fix ALL the bugs, are you ? More than likely, you'll be really thrilled when you design a patch that breaks something else for each problem it fixes. See : MMO patches, Microsoft, General Motors

EDIT : BTW, did you happen to know that most major antivirus companies have a few virus designers on the payroll ? You know, to create new breeds so that you actually need updated virus files all the time ? Food for thought :]

[diotavelli]

Got to agree with the majority opinion here.

There's normally roughly 2 years between TW titles coming out. That means the average player will play each one for 24 months. At $10 per month, that works out at $240 per title. That's six times the current cost. Add in an expansion after a year for a further $120 per year. Then consider that many of us go back and play the older titles occasionally. We could easily end up spending $400+ per year for the privilege of playing TW games.

Does anyone believe that the experience of playing bug-free TW games is worth that much?

Bug fixes don't sell games. Two years from now when CA announces their Next TotalWar Game, players will be a) drooling over carefully staged screenshots, b) drooling over bogus feature lists, and c) drooling over rave reviews written by crackheads.

I think you're only partly correct here. Two years from now, players will be "drooling over carefully staged screenshots". But, after the experience with M2TW, there will be a great deal more concern about the quality of the released game. A lot depends on the expansion planned for later this year: if it's largely clean, that will reassure many of the customer base; if it's not, CA will be in trouble.

If you go back to the comments on this forum around release-time, you'll find that people were asking whether the AI was any good and if likes/dislikes from RTW were still included. Then people started identifying and publicising bugs. That won't be the case next time around. The first thing people will be asking is: "is it bugged?" If the answer is "yes", a lot of people are going to hold off buying it until they know when the patches are due (or maybe even wait until post-patch).

Or, to put it more briefly, bug fixes do sell games: games these days are rarely bug-free on release but a company that provides timely and effective fixes will retain customers. CA has work to do in that area. Charging people to put right what you got wrong in the first place is not the way to do it.

[Fußball]

No. Never. I'd quit and play checkers before paying a monthly fee, without regret or a second thought.

With so many posts and not so much time to chime in. Doug, I think your idea is the most rational. Mind if I join you in a friendly game of checkers?

Tschüß!
Erich

[trickydicky]

"We here at Regal Furniture pride ourselves in customer support. Sure, some of our chairs only have two or three legs, but we're dedicated to adding new legs at regular intervals for a minimal monthly fee."

Loooollll, we run a furniture company, needless to say that was really funny.
We would love to be able to do things like that.

And to the original poster.
Pigs will fly and hell will freeze over, before that happens.

I don't mind paying a monthly fee for a MMORPG, but for a normal game I have already purchased?

I would rather stick my head in a hornets nest!