Fixing Total War: The Bigger Picture

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[centurie]

what bugs are you talking about ??have you patched to 1.2 ??please list the bugs

[Bijo]

While your idea possesses merit, the ideal is the following: do not release until superior quality is secured.

[DVX BELLORVM]

what bugs are you talking about ??have you patched to 1.2 ??please list the bugs

Take a look: buglist

[econ21]

Why is every Total War game overwhelmed with bugs and play balance issues?

I don't think they are. In terms of bugs, I think STW, MTW and RTW were left in pretty good shape, just as M2TW 1.2 is in pretty good shape now.

If you had said "overwhelmed on release" or "Total War game 1.0", you might have had a point about M2TW. I'm not sure about the older titles.

[darth_napo]

1) CA offer game 'licenses' on a monthly renewal program. To run the game, you log into their secure server instead of inserting the CD. Licenses should be affordable, say $10 per month, with reduced fees levied for periods with less activity.

to the hell with it, I'm living in a 3rd world country

[danfda]

Absolutely screw the monthly license thing. I bought the game, I'm not playing an MMORPG, and I will not pay to continue playing something I already paid for. If I wanted that, I'd play Everquest. I'm not paying for a service; its a stand-alone game. Maybe do something like Steam and use that as a patch release system, a way to connect to others for multiplayer games, and even a way to sell the game initially. Hell, even sell "episodic" content, as Valve does with HL2, which is basically a more frequent expansion pack system. I'd pay for that, as long as the "new" content added worthwhile things. I don't want to, nor do I think I should have to pay to have the game I bought fixed when it has bugs. No company on earth would last doing that for very long.

Sorry. I read the original post and became inflammed. No worries, ibuprophen took care of it. ;)

[rich19]

This is my view, a view shared by many others.

Why is every Total War game overwhelmed with bugs and play balance issues? Why are gamers frustrated with CA?

Hah, stop whining. If it was overwhelmed, you wouldn't be able to play it at all. I personally am able to play the game and find that almost all units are bug free, and nearly everything works as it should.

Because CA has no immediate financial incentive to invest manpower in "released" products.

And yet we are on patch version 1.2. Kinda defeats your argument.

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.

You need a working game to carefully stage screenshots. It is illegal to advertise features that are not in the game.

And when the can of worms is revealed, players are horrified.

You mean you are horrified. I personally, like thousands of others, will be enjoying the game.

The gaming community demands increasingly complex and lengthy campaigns, which inherently requires more tweaking and feedback to get things dialed in.

And we get them. Do you know how many campaigns are going to be in factions?



I am sick of hearing people whining about how the game is filled with bugs and is unbalanced. How can you possibly expect every bug to surface in the beta testing period if some bugs take months of careful combing of the game by a forum viewed by hundreds? I was suprised when viewing the bug list - I hadn't noticed any when playing myself. But then, I wasn't specifically looking for any.

[Didz]

If you want a real horror story about poor customer service look no farther than Blizzard.

This is a company who deliberately sold faulty copies of their Burning Crusade Collectors Edition to thousands of European customers and then considered that they were doing them a favour by offering to put the fault right, but only if they ruined their collectors sets by posting a unique collectors card at their own expense to a post office box in France.

And when predictably hundreds of these went missing in the post and in their offices they just shrugged and and walked away.

Now thats Customer Service the Blizzard way.

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[sapi]

Thank you for your comments, everyone.

It might be a good idea to remember, if this topic is to continue, that CA is - surprise surprise - staffed by living, breathing people. Some of them read these forums.

So it would be great if you all could all make an effort to refrain from criticising the people, even if you feel the need to criticise the product.

Oh, and it'd also be nice if everyone could tone the language down a little, too

And a final reminder that this is a thread about a possible alternate pricing method for TW games, not for a discussion about how evil blizzard is.

We have the Arena for that sort of stuff

~sapi

[unknown_user]

Just want to add my two cents, and say that monthly fees are OK, in certain situations. These situations are as follows:

When the game is an MMORPG.

I don't see any reason to pay monthly for other situations. MMORPG's require a certain amount of manpower and dedication that greatly surpasses that of any patch development team I know of. They require a large amount of servers to be reliably maintained online.

Paying monthly for patches and maintained quality in overwhelmingly single player games would cut off many gamers, not just those incensed with the idea. I, myself, would be unable to play, and not just because I disagree with paying. I'm moving into a somewhat financially unstable situation soon, and I don't know for sure how much extra money I'm going to be taking in for a few months. I'll have more bills than I know what to do with, and the question becomes: Do I pay $15 to play City of Heroes this month, or do I buy these groceries so I can eat?

[Didz]

Well it sounds like most people don't like my idea. That's ok.

I think the problem with your subsciption idea has been fully covered. Mainly it just doesn't give the software provider enough incentive to correct the software.

However, at the moment the only incentive is its reputation as a company and as Blizzard have shown most software companies have little interest in that either.

Perhaps one solution would be a system where one paid a deposit to play a game 'On Approval' and were only required to pay the balance of the agreed purchase price once you were satisfied that the game was free from playability problems and fit for purpose. That would put the pressure on the supplier to ship quality product and to fix any faults discovered by customers quickly.

But to be honest I can't see that happening, and its not really much different to the existing option of taking the game back to the shop and demanding your money back.

But there IS a longstanding quality problem with the TW series and I think it's partly due to the payment structure. I once read a comment (rumor? fact?) on the STW boards that sent a chill up my spine - that CA refused to pay programmers to generate patches but allowed them to issue patches in their personal free time only!!

There is a long standing quality problem with computer software in general, and with the payment structure of paying for it. The TW series is just one small part of a much bigger problem. What has become even more apparent with the Blizzard incident is that the larger software companies consider themselves beyond the reach of normal legislation designed to protect the rights of their consumers, and do not consider that their businesses should be subject to standard consumer rights legislation.

The scary thing is they seem to be right. Consumer protection agencies seem to be incapable of dealing with quality issues related to computer software or with breaches of consumer protection which are instigated beyond their national boundaries.

Buy an iron that doesn't heat up or an oven that doesn't cook and their right there on the case. Ring them up with details of poor quality programming and a bug list as long as the forth bridge and their completely dumbfounded.

For a perfect example: look no further than windows.

As for not paying programmers to correct their own bugs. I don't know if its true but it sounds perfectly reasonable. If you contract with a programmer to produce a peice of code to a given spec, and that code is delivered with numerous bugs in it, why would you then pay the programmer to correct his own mistakes. The requirement would have been for bug free code and any remedial work ought to be completed at the programmers own expense. After all we would not expect to play CA for the patches we need to correct those bugs in the game after it was sold to us.

[Kobal2fr]

The scary thing is they seem to be right. Consumer protection agencies seem to be incapable of dealing with quality issues related to computer software or with breaches of consumer protection which are instigated beyond their national boundaries.

Have you ever taken the time to read any of those "by clicking next, you implicitly accept all these terms" blurbs they put in installation setups ? Very informative. Lawyerly brilliance at its shiniest. They stop short of printing "also, you accept to give us heartfelt thanks and the virginity of your daughter should this particular piece of software make your computer explode and give you genital warts", but one gets the feeling it was an automated spellchecker's conscience that dictated it to remove the line.

[Ciaran]

Perhaps one solution would be a system where one paid a deposit to play a game 'On Approval' and were only required to pay the balance of the agreed purchase price once you were satisfied that the game was free from playability problems and fit for purpose. That would put the pressure on the supplier to ship quality product and to fix any faults discovered by customers quickly.

And what would keep you from "not approving" and still keep playing? Playability for a trial period, perhaps, but the that won´t solve the problem, since either you complete the game within the trial period, or its length would be chosen to end while the player isn´t fully aware of the bugs. Basically, we´d be back at the old shareware business model, and I don´t see that working for the majority of the game industry.

There is a long standing quality problem with computer software in general, and with the payment structure of paying for it. The TW series is just one small part of a much bigger problem. What has become even more apparent with the Blizzard incident is that the larger software companies consider themselves beyond the reach of normal legislation designed to protect the rights of their consumers, and do not consider that their businesses should be subject to standard consumer rights legislation.

The scary thing is they seem to be right. Consumer protection agencies seem to be incapable of dealing with quality issues related to computer software or with breaches of consumer protection which are instigated beyond their national boundaries.

Buy an iron that doesn't heat up or an oven that doesn't cook and their right there on the case. Ring them up with details of poor quality programming and a bug list as long as the forth bridge and their completely dumbfounded.

For a perfect example: look no further than windows.

The issue is, that you buy software "as is", which you would know if you carefully read the license agreement. You have consumer rights in case of product defects, i.e. if the disc is damaged, but you have no warranty on content, the same way you can´t demand your money back if you didn´t like a movie.

And SEGA watches over CA's shoulder and sends auditors in little grey suits who use words like "return on investment" and "honor the blood compact, minion !". Publishers are fairly rarely altruistic people. They do look snazzy from the top of their pitchforks to the bottom of their hooves though

That´s got nothing to do with being evil. I work for a finance company (in a different field, but still) as well, and I have to damn well make sure that the money we fork out (around one million € for a game, according to a recent interview) comes back in. Because it doesn´t appear on our accounts out of nowhere, either.

[Budwise]

This is my view, a view shared by many others.




Hah, stop whining. If it was overwhelmed, you wouldn't be able to play it at all. I personally am able to play the game and find that almost all units are bug free, and nearly everything works as it should.



And yet we are on patch version 1.2. Kinda defeats your argument.



You need a working game to carefully stage screenshots. It is illegal to advertise features that are not in the game.



You mean you are horrified. I personally, like thousands of others, will be enjoying the game.



And we get them. Do you know how many campaigns are going to be in factions?



I am sick of hearing people whining about how the game is filled with bugs and is unbalanced. How can you possibly expect every bug to surface in the beta testing period if some bugs take months of careful combing of the game by a forum viewed by hundreds? I was suprised when viewing the bug list - I hadn't noticed any when playing myself. But then, I wasn't specifically looking for any.

Word!

[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).

[Augustus Germanicus]

Well, my first thought when I read this was the launcher poll question - Would you pay $10 for a single expansion campaign? My answer: Yes, IF it was professionally done, added sizeable content to the main game, and was virtually bug-free and stand-alone balanced. A larger map in one, additions to Crusades and their frequency/effect, one for Medieval 2 Total War: Jihads!, an Eastern Orthodox pack, ect. As long as these "updates" were like this, more large upgrade than update, I'd be fine with them.

I would not however, want them handed out for a $10 monthly charge to the 'ole Visa or AMEX. Give me a list of campaigns/upgrades and let me buy what I want, yeah, I'd go for that. I know I can find almost anything I could ever want for free in player created mods - many of which look amazing and their creators must be given mad props for - but I'm hopelessly obsessive about things in their "Original" or "Manufacturer's Option" form.

Case in point: I wanted one of those DVD Navigation Systems in my dash. Instead of buying an aftermarket one for my car, I bought a new car that had it in an option package. I'm completely insane, but at least the new car sure is pretty. I'd seek help, but now I can't afford the therapist. Or $10 upgrades. Never mind.

[Budwise]

1) CA offer game 'licenses' on a monthly renewal program. To run the game, you log into their secure server instead of inserting the CD. Licenses should be affordable, say $10 per month, with reduced fees levied for periods with less activity.

2) Licensed gamers are automatically eligible for all patches and upgrades.

3) CA invests the additional income into bug fixes and enhancements, at least one patch per month!

4) CA uses login fees to maintain their own patch servers, instead of foisting this onto third parties.


Your comments are invited.

Are you insane. I NEVER have played an MMO because of subscription fees. I feel that its the developer's JOB to finish what they have produced and FIX what they have made. I work in a food processing plant and we pack FlavRPac (and other brand names) frozen vegetables. If the bags are not sealed properly or the date code isn't on certain bags, we have to strip all the vegetables out of the bag and reprocess them. This cost labor time and material fees (new printed bags needed to be processed as well as waste removal from the old ones.)

Another thing is console game makers CANNOT TO MY KNOWLEDGE RELEASE PATCHES TO FIX THEIR GAMES. If they don't work then the recall as well as the bad press could be catastrophic. I on the other hand believe that we should hold producers accountable for what they do.

1. A game should NOT NEED TO HAVE A PATCH TO DOWNLOAD, much less a HUGE ONE TO MAKE A GAME FUNCTIONAL.
2. A game designer should be more concerned about the finish product being enjoyable than what it looks like. For instance, I would rather have the vegetables that we produce taste good than have a pretty package and have it taste like .
3. I should not be charged EXTRA for this to happen. Personally, I think this is why computer games although vastly superior, is DECLINING to consoles. I think its our job as consumers to not have to put up with this kind of . Anyone agree with me?

[Budwise]

This deserved its own reply. I AM NOT RICH, I am an educated laborer in a food processing plant with a morgage and raising children. I feel that I do NOT have extra money to throw out just because you all do. Please CA, just fix your products and make them work from the start. The next TW game, we do not need a new graphics engine, we need better improvements. Use the same engine again and "solve" the issues this game has. I would like to say that it works for Rockstar Games with the GTA series.

[Fußball]

Well said Budwise.

Tschüß!
Erich