Fixing Total War: The Bigger Picture

[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.

[Husar]

What's really funny is that in the first few weeks of playing Medieval 2 I was actually amazed to have such a stable and bug-free game. I don't want to say that others are lying when they say it crashed often for them, but for me the crashes actually started in 1.01 when Mongols broke a gate or in some other cutscenes including Mongols, hasn't even been fixed in 1.02 for me but I deactivated cutscenes now, I like that better anyway.
But I seriously believed, until weeks after realease when the shield bug and the twohander bug became obvious, that this was one of the least bug-infested games I've bought.
And they actually fixed quite a lot and 1.02 is really enjoyable, I think MTW also needed two patches or so to feel really finished.

[HoreTore]

I don't really care how bugged a game is at release, if it's virtually bug-free after the final patch(like rtw), I'm happy.

I'd take an earlier release date over less bugs any day of the week. As long as the game is playable, and the bugs will be fixed eventually, I'll have fun while waiting for the bugs to be fixed. If they decided to hold the release until nearly all the bugs have been fixed, I'd get a lot less fun out of it. And getting the most fun out of the product is really all I want. That's accomplished better by an earlier bugged released date than a later one.

But I suppose I'm a patient man, and I don't get angry at something trivial like a computer game...

[Lusted]

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.

Your assuming they didn't spot them.

Oh yeah and the idea of paying a monthly fee for patches is not one i like, patches are, and always should be, free.