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. ;)

[Husar]

Sorry but I actually like 1.2 like a few others here. It's not perfect, but it's fun and it's definitely better than monthly fees and giving everybody my adress and credit card data or having to buy some sort of tickets at game shops all the time. Not to mention that if I payed 10$ per month for a game, I'd expect a bit more than just bugfixes.

I actually think that's a horrible idea, especially for people who cannot afford that.

[Rebellious Waffle]

When dealing with folks from abroad, I have a maxim: "Don't make fun of their English unless you speak their language really well."


The same applies to CA. There are bugs in the games they make, certainly. But am I a better game programmer, project lead, graphic artist, producer, historical researcher and beta tester than everyone at the company? No; their games are enormous. They also have the most detailed and realistic strategy game engine on the planet today that I know about. They've contrived a battle system that lets you put thousands of soldiers on the screen together in real time. There's a wing and a prayer of real diplomacy, which is unheard-of in most other strategy games.


Given how many lines of code and how many man-years go into creating games like those of the Total War series, I'm not all that upset about an occasional bug. It's not like I could have written less buggy code myself and still get the level of functionality they provide. If their patches are no more than bug fixes, what of it? The game has lots of interesting content as it is. I'm more than content to wait for the expansion, if they feel like releasing one.

[Whacker]

Absolutely screw the monthly license thing.

You could have stopped right there. This is unequivocally my stance, I refuse to pay subscription fees for games. If I wanted that (which I don't), I'd go play WoW or some other MMO. Sorry to be blunt about this, but CA does need to get their act together about patching. Memory tells me that STW and MTW were reasonably stable at release. Some view RTW as miserable at launch, I didn't mind it that much. M2TW at launch made Oblivion look like a bug-free game, and that's saying a lot. My hope is that in the future, CA will spend more time polishing and refining what they have, and stop taking away all the so called "little things" like cityview that really round out and add that extra layer of polish to the games.

I'll play advocate here though for a moment. IF they tried to go with a subscription model, it's a given that they'd have to invest a very significant, serious amount of time in the multiplayer aspect of the game, which they've effectively demonstrated with the current title that MP is essentially an afterthought. People don't pay monthly fees for patches, they pay for rather significant regular content updates, the exclusivity of subscription-based online play, and regular/reliable online services.

[Yun Dog]

They also have the most detailed and realistic strategy game engine on the planet today that I know about.

erm are you playing the same game as me

I think that may be a slight exageration

[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

[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.

[Furious Mental]

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

[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.

[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.

[Rebellious Waffle]

erm are you playing the same game as me

I think that may be a slight exageration

Compared to, say, Warcraft 3?

[ASPER THE GREAT]

NO WAY !!!! This is just ridicules I know that the computer gaming companies want to make $$$$$ expansion pack, internet play, "MONTHLY FEES" ect... screw that. Chess sounds good .

Let us get real show me the money how much did it cost to make MTW2?
Now how much did CA/SEGA make from the sales?

Are they going out of business "NOT", are they going to stop making Total War games "NOT". So just give me the next patch or game & let's get on with it .

ps. TEST THE GAME FIRST BEFORE RELEASE

[Lusted]

ps. TEST THE GAME FIRST BEFORE RELEASE

Do you think they list all those testers in the credits for fun or something?