Fixing Total War: The Bigger Picture

[Nebuchadnezzar]

Maybe someone can enlighten me but I have never ever seen any evidence that suggests if we pay more or by introducing a monthly subscription that the quality of games will improve or get more regular (working) updates.

Total Fantasy. Smells like another way to milk an already bloated cash cow for an industry thats already got the reputation of a used car salesman.

Now consider that M2TW took 3 years to develop, and that's using much if not mostly Rome's code. To release M2 pristine would most likely have taken two, three more years.

Your joking right! It took them only six months to deliver patch 1.2 using only 1-2 people.

Who feeds CA during that time ? I'm sure they're all great guys who are utterly dedicated to the quality of their work, but they still have metabolisms. And mortgages.

A common misconception that patches are free. They are not as their costs are estimated and incorporated into the final cost of the product. I am sure that CA are not starving nor will they starve if their games were of a more satisfactory level.

Sorry to pick on you but you made it sound as if CA have got it hard when infact its the consumers that are being shafted. lol

By the way SEGA are not simply publishers. SEGA own CA and CA I guess is something like a semi-autonomous division concerned with only the Total war franchise. SEGA does the beta testing, marketing, distribution, publishing etc.

Someone else here said that you get what you pay for. Absolute and utter nonsense. Only the smart shopper gets what he pays for.

[HoreTore]

Your joking right! It took them only six months to deliver patch 1.2 using only 1-2 people.

Make that 1-2 thousands. Yes, only a few were used to fix the bugs, but the difficulty(and time consumption) lies in finding them. A big part of that job was done by us(ie. the community). If that would had taken part exclusively at CA, it would have taken a very long time.

[crpcarrot]

i would just like to include my point of of view that its utterly riculous that any consumer must accept a half complete product. i know it is prevelant in every software that we buy but just cos it exists doesnt make it right and doesnt make it an excuse to abuse our rights as a consumer.

all the people who seem to think anyone who is agrieved at paying his hard earned money on somehting that doesnt work as it was intended to is a bit need to learn to respect other peoples views.

although the analogy to the car may not be perfect its the point that everyone is trying to make that matters.

consumer rights groups have always been slow to catch up with the current market, but they will eventually. i hope to see the day when i buy a game and then dont have to stop playing till the patch comes out.

to the poepl who can continue playing a broken product, good for you. but i personally would like to enforce my right to get what i pay for. in a way i campaign for this with my wallet. i only baught 3 games ever within a month of release Rome TW, Civ 4 and M2TW. afetr the RTW experience i was never going to buy a CA game on release again but got in with all the hype with M2. i hope it doesnt take 5 patches to get the game right like it did in Rome.

games are priced at market conditions and i dont agree with the argument "its only £30 u cant expect the CA to do everything for that". well if CA didnt factor in the the cost properly that CA's fault not the consumers. bad business and bad managment decisions is not our fault and we shouldn't pay for it (although we probably do all the time).