No further patches for M2TW or Kingdoms (update: Kingdoms patch announced)

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Where I live deceptive marketing and sale by deception is very much in breach of our consumer laws and trade practices act.

Where I live, too, should you successfully prove deception, hence the breach.

I used the term in a rather broad meaning. "The best solution for your X needs" is, probably, always a deception but most customers would just buy that and nobody can really prove "it's not the best" since it's incalculable, unmeasurable and not quantitative.

But I digress.
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[Odin]

You see, this right here is half the problem. When a product falls far short of peoples expectations or perhaps fails to qualify as a merchantable product heaven forbid! and consumers express their dissatisfaction they are for some bazaar reason categorized as whinners. Why is this?

Because consumers are the ones responsible for thier purchases, not the manufacture. Also, as stated previously the market condition for games is not a secret. Of course one of the brave could step up and say "gee, maybe I should have held off until I saw a patch come out" but few have said that mate, hence the whinning.

Everyone is a victim I suppose

Yet you throw pie in consumers faces by suggesting that its their fault for not jumping online to do some checking. When I want to buy a new kettle or iron I don't run to the nearest computer to check out samsungs consumer feedback forum lol.

Ah, but if this was the 4th model of kettle and the prior 4 had problems wouldnt you take a second look? Again, this isnt the 1st total war title with similar issues, so laugh it up

The store is usually my first and last stop and if it doesn't work right I take it back, but we all know thats not possible with games.

So if you know that going in, why wouldnt you check to see if its up to snuff first? Sounds a bit contradictory to me.

Why should I need to do some mysterious tango to avoid the throng of used car salesmen keen to peddle a half finished lemon.

Why should you? because its your money ! Again, this isnt the 1st product from them with issues. Whats the mysterious tango? Is a PC game needing another patch a new condition of the market?

Hardly...

[Odin]

[QUOTE=Goaswerfraiejen]

1.) Do NOT patronise me. My being "new" to the totalwar forums (which I'm not) has nothing to do with anything, and it certainly says nothing at all about my internet forum experience.

1. I will say what I want, when I want and how I want. If you dont like what you see, you can put me on ignore, report it to a mod or respond in kind. Since your an expirenced internet user you ought to know these options are avalible to you.

Use them, you wouldnt be the 1st.

2.) I did not quote anything specific because I was not responding to anything specific, just to the general position in your last two posts.

Odin, you're both right and wrong.

You specifically reponded to me, thats how your post started off.

3.) You violated your own call for specificity by saying "No YOU'RE dead wrong". WHAT am I dead wrong about? Your position? Or my belief that you're both right and wrong?

Quote me on my "call for specificity, or are you making this up as you go?

Straw man. Obviously we're responsible for where our money goes--we are not, however, responsible for buying products whose descriptions are grossly inaccurate, or when there's no way for us to know about their defects.

So are you responsible for where your money goes or are you not? the whole paragraph is a contradiction.

Besides, the fact that you're responsible for buying the game that you bought still does not mean that the game SHOULD be as half-assed as it is.

Thats a different point of argument IMHO.

The fact that I CAN get away with murder does not give me the moral and legal basis to go out and do it. Similarly, developers MUST be held accountable for their own failings. The consumer can only be held accountable for his or her own consumption, which may in some instances (such as with Kingdoms) reinforce bad behaviour.

Yes accountability starts at the point of purchase, you dont make the purchase no one is accountable to you.

Again, we're not saying anything too different: I agree that we must shoulder our own share of the responsibility for giving in and buying Kingdoms and soon Empire, but I disagree that it's all up to us to stop buying so that change will happen.

Yep, we disagree then.

I also disagree that, as consumers, we have no right to complain. That is bull, and not at all constructive.

Quote me where I said consumers dont have the right to complain. You can complain all you want, but doing so without accepting fair share of the blame detracts from credability. My point isnt an assault on you personally, its for the many who whine away about a patch but never buck up and at least hint at the notion that maybe they should have known better given the history of the titles.

It has to be a team effort between consumers and developers: we can stop buying, but we have to be aware that it's the developers that have to get their act together in the first place.

It already is a team effort. Look back through the thread, how many consumers have links to free game fixes in thier sig? How many mods are there? Bug lists? Wish lists?

You're quoting either yourself or people other than me--again. What does the fact that this thread has been up for a month have to do with anything that I have said?

I responded to you with an example, I assure you my everyword in response to you isnt about your particular situation. Since your expirenced in message boards/webs you know that posts can often refer to a larger issue other then the individual.

This thread was not up a year ago when M2TW was released (which is when I bought it, I might add), and so the information contained herein was not available to us at the time. Had it been, I doubt I would have bothered to buy the game.

This thread isnt about MTW2, its about an expansion for MTW2. If you had been here a year ago you would have seen posts about a 2 handed bug, a shield bug and assorted other goodies.

I did, and I didnt buy it until a fix was available.

It doesn't matter if M2TW was first or not. What matters is whether or not you (the individual consumer) were happy with what came before. I was, and so therefore I had no reason to expect any less from this instalment. Yes, there were bugs in the past--guess what? They weren't nearly as problematic.

fine you were happy then you should buy it, but you knew then that the series did have problems in the past. So at a minimum you had fore knowledge of a prior negative situation with the developer and you chose to buy, not very savvy IMHO, that dosent mean that I am right of course.

Issues, sure. Nothing nearly as serious as what it had, though. And that's the point. Many bugs are small and relatively unimportant--some, however, are gigantic. Witness the shield bug, the two-handed bug, and the one that made battles go at about one frame every six minutes (was that a shield bug? I don't even remember). These were significant and game-breaking bugs (like I said, I myself was completely unable to conduct battles personally) that weren't dealt with for many, many months. There was no way to predict anything so bad.

All of which happened prior to kingdoms, therefore the purchase of kingdoms would be prudent why?

Please re-read what you quoted, because what you say makes no sense.

Then why are you commenting? How were you able to fathom its content if it didnt make sense? A reply with this preface is contradictory.

And how exactly does that make it right? We're talking about moral responsibility here, and the majority of it lies with the developers since it is they, after all, who create games and rush them out to the public.

Moral responsibility? Okay so we agree that MTW2 was issued with problems. By your logic thats a violation of moral responsibility, yet we have consumers buying Kingdoms. Did the moral compass change? Apparantly not, so dosent the consumer bare some responsibility in that case? I say yes.

Consequently, belittling those who fell for the trap does nothing to help us get higher-quality games. All it does it feed our egos.

Its done nothing for my ego, I feel somewhat saddened by those who dont choose to take responsibility for thier actions when there is overwhelming evidence to make a better more educated decision.

[Mori Gabriel Syme]

You two can yell at each other in private messages and leave this thread to deal with it's supposed subject.

[TinCow]

Please refrain from using personal attacks. The AM moderator tools are very limited and my only options will be to remove your posts entirely, lock the thread, or call in the G(reen)-Men. All of those options will annoy me. Please don't annoy me.

[alpaca]

Please refrain from using personal attacks. The AM moderator tools are very limited and my only options will be to remove your posts entirely, lock the thread, or call in the G(reen)-Men. All of those options will annoy me. Please don't annoy me.

Yeah please don't annoy him

You never know what he's up to when he's annoyed

[Odin]

Yeah please don't annoy him

You never know what he's up to when he's annoyed

Heck your the one I was hoping to annoy alpaca

Please refrain from using personal attacks. The AM moderator tools are very limited and my only options will be to remove your posts entirely, lock the thread, or call in the G(reen)-Men. All of those options will annoy me. Please don't annoy me.

Ah well, my intention wasnt to personally attack anyone. I dont think I did, if I did I appologize sincerely. Although it might be cute to tick you off TinCow, since you dont have enough to do.

I've been around long enough to know when a hand is played.

[alpaca]

Heck your the one I was hoping to annoy alpaca

Ach! I'm not so easily annoyed. And especially not about some jerk on an internet forum

However,

I'm actually wondering when the patch will be released, because if they only start working on it now (and without a lot of capacity), it's going to take quite a lot of time with "all the testing" they will have to conclude. So what does everyone think? Before or after July '08?

[Grombeard]

I'm actually wondering when the patch will be released, because if they only start working on it now (and without a lot of capacity), it's going to take quite a lot of time with "all the testing" they will have to conclude. So what does everyone think? Before or after July '08?

SenseiTW said the following: "CA Oz has opened up a good sized window running into early next year to produce this update for you", so i hope for February or something near that...

[Daveybaby]

Good news on the patch. Hopefully it will include some fixes to the vanilla campaign to make it provide some kind of challenge on the 'Very Hard' difficulty level.

This might convince me to buy empires. What would make that a dead cert for me would be if CA/Sega were to adopt a more pro-active approach to patching than they've displayed during the M2TW dev cycle.

A lot of companies manage to produce incremental patches on a regular basis (e.g. stardock, valve, firaxis, blizzard etc) and i think this approach is essential to games as complex as the TW series. How do these companies manage to keep supporting their games with dozens of patches and yet CA/Sega can't afford to? It's not as if theyre not selling well or anything. What exactly is it that you guys are doing wrong that inhibits this level of support for your games? Why on earth was has it taken you this long to even decide whether to patch the game or not?

A plea to CA/Sega: Youre NOT producing wafer thin console driving and beat-em-up games here. Despite your best efforts there WILL be bugs in Empires and it WILL need REPEATED patches (this is not a criticism, it's just a fact of life with software this big and complex). Even if there are no bugs as such you will still need patches for balance purposes and AI enhancements, once thousands of players find exploits you could never have caught even if you'd tested it for years. So for the love of god PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE plan in advance to provide some long term support for empires.

[Old Geezer]

So when is the first patch for Empires scheduled? I can't wait forever!

[alpaca]

So when is the first patch for Empires scheduled? I can't wait forever!

Probably gonna be a "day-0" patch again

[Whacker]

A lot of companies manage to produce incremental patches on a regular basis (e.g. stardock, valve, firaxis, blizzard etc) and i think this approach is essential to games as complex as the TW series. How do these companies manage to keep supporting their games with dozens of patches and yet CA/Sega can't afford to? It's not as if theyre not selling well or anything. What exactly is it that you guys are doing wrong that inhibits this level of support for your games? Why on earth was has it taken you this long to even decide whether to patch the game or not?

OK, I'll prefix this by stating this is NOT a personal attack Davey, but this is a "come on..." response. Haven't you said several times that you're in the software development business? You above other should know better. Games are unique the regard that developers/publishers frequently release them halfarsed and then essentially leave them that way. Not only do that they do that, but they get away with it all the time and still continue to make games and sell them by the thousands. And THEN on top of that, you get the 'placebo effect', where CA finally announces another patch, and they act like it's a friggin favor to us, and there are more than a few gamers who treat it like it's a favor! "Oh thank you CA, you're so kind!" when they don't realize that CA owes them this much. Man I wish I could find some product or service where I could abuse my customers like this, and have them keep coming back for more, all the time deluding themselves with whatever thoughts they have (it's the only one of it's kind, the alternative is they go out of business, etc etc).

A plea to CA/Sega: Youre NOT producing wafer thin console driving and beat-em-up games here. Despite your best efforts there WILL be bugs in Empires and it WILL need REPEATED patches (this is not a criticism, it's just a fact of life with software this big and complex). Even if there are no bugs as such you will still need patches for balance purposes and AI enhancements, once thousands of players find exploits you could never have caught even if you'd tested it for years. So for the love of god PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE plan in advance to provide some long term support for empires.

Deaf ears my friend. Why spend time and money doing something that the majority of the customer base would just accept anyway and they could get away with?

[Shahed]

Good post Whacker ! One of many good posts. I really appreciate you posting all this, it saves me typing the same thing I've been saying forever, again and again. (no pun intended)

You should consider though that deaf ears are everywhere, right here.This is why I just quit trying to convince people.

I know some guys from CA are great guys. They do watch the forum and they do try to implement what they can. I also see that the company itself does not allow the programmers to do what they really want to do, they obviously do not have the time to do what they really want to do. There is hardly any quality control, at least that's what one would judge by looking at the 2H bug, shield bug etc. (just imagine!!!??!!)

[Bravedude]

It took 4 hours and 12 minutes but I finally finished reading this whole topic, lol. But I actually have a question though: The people with green names are they administrators or moderators or what?

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Moderators. Admins have red names. Blood red.
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[Daveybaby]

@Whacker,

Unlike some people here (not aiming that at you, not sure where you stand on this issue actually) i've always been understanding of the fact that games a extremely complex and yet need to be released to a schedule in order to have a chance of being profitable and that this means that it's inevitable that games are going to have bugs in them. That doesnt mean that there's any excuse for not patching the game until it's right. Maybe youre right and i'm living on cloud cuckoo land for taking this view.

Nevertheless there are companies out there that buck the trend, that continue to patch their games repeatedly to fix bugs, improve balance and AI, and generally continue to tweak the game long after the initial rush of sales has trailed off. The main ones that come to mind are Stardock (Galciv etc), Firaxis (Civ series) and Valve. Id software also come to mind for the number of patches they've produced to keep the online component of their shooters up to date. Oh, and Gas Powered Games (total annihilation, supreme commander). There are probably more. (Of course MMORPG developers also do this, but they have a completely different business model to 'normal' games, so i wont count those.)

For customers of these companies there is never any question that if a significant bug is found (or even not so significant) a patch will be produced. In some cases, patches even add new features as well as fix bugs. Amazing, eh? I know it sounds like something from a parallel universe, but it does happen.

The thing these companies have in common, as far as i can tell, is that they have established themselves to the point where theyre able to call the shots themselves, rather than having to rely on whether the publishers will allow them to produce a patch. I think there also may be a kind of chicken and egg scenario at play here, where part of what's got these companies where they are today is that theyre focussed on getting the game perfect at all costs.

I think the main cause of our problems are the publishers. They dont give a toss about games or gamers, just the bottom line. EA/Activision/Atari/Sega are all the same - short term profit get the next one out the door the customers are stupid enoough to keep buying dont put any long term repeat playability into the game we want the customers to get bored quickly so that they'll have to buy another game. Also, their stranglehold on the patch release process and the associated costs mean that we're never going to see long term support for games they publish. Yeah yeah they do the testing (and we all know what that's worth) but the main reason they they will never let CA release patches themselves is because they have to add their stupid bloody copy protection mechanisms before it's allowed out of the door.

Hey, wow, it's all connected. Who'd a thunk it?

CA and the total war series will never reach the 'all time classic' status of the above companies and their games, until they can get out of the rut that the publishers force them into. It's a catch-22 situation though innit?

Deaf ears my friend. Why spend time and money doing something that the majority of the customer base would just accept anyway and they could get away with?

Youre probably right. Still, we can either keep trying or give up and be totally negative and cynical. If we give up, then what's the point of visiting this forum at all? DONT LET THE BASTARDS GRIND YOU DOWN.

[hellenes]

@Whacker,

Unlike some people here (not aiming that at you, not sure where you stand on this issue actually) i've always been understanding of the fact that games a extremely complex and yet need to be released to a schedule in order to have a chance of being profitable and that this means that it's inevitable that games are going to have bugs in them. That doesnt mean that there's any excuse for not patching the game until it's right. Maybe youre right and i'm living on cloud cuckoo land for taking this view.

Nevertheless there are companies out there that buck the trend, that continue to patch their games repeatedly to fix bugs, improve balance and AI, and generally continue to tweak the game long after the initial rush of sales has trailed off. The main ones that come to mind are Stardock (Galciv etc), Firaxis (Civ series) and Valve. Id software also come to mind for the number of patches they've produced to keep the online component of their shooters up to date. Oh, and Gas Powered Games (total annihilation, supreme commander). There are probably more. (Of course MMORPG developers also do this, but they have a completely different business model to 'normal' games, so i wont count those.)

For customers of these companies there is never any question that if a significant bug is found (or even not so significant) a patch will be produced. In some cases, patches even add new features as well as fix bugs. Amazing, eh? I know it sounds like something from a parallel universe, but it does happen.

The thing these companies have in common, as far as i can tell, is that they have established themselves to the point where theyre able to call the shots themselves, rather than having to rely on whether the publishers will allow them to produce a patch. I think there also may be a kind of chicken and egg scenario at play here, where part of what's got these companies where they are today is that theyre focussed on getting the game perfect at all costs.

I think the main cause of our problems are the publishers. They dont give a toss about games or gamers, just the bottom line. EA/Activision/Atari/Sega are all the same - short term profit get the next one out the door the customers are stupid enoough to keep buying dont put any long term repeat playability into the game we want the customers to get bored quickly so that they'll have to buy another game. Also, their stranglehold on the patch release process and the associated costs mean that we're never going to see long term support for games they publish. Yeah yeah they do the testing (and we all know what that's worth) but the main reason they they will never let CA release patches themselves is because they have to add their stupid bloody copy protection mechanisms before it's allowed out of the door.

Hey, wow, it's all connected. Who'd a thunk it?

CA and the total war series will never reach the 'all time classic' status of the above companies and their games, until they can get out of the rut that the publishers force them into. It's a catch-22 situation though innit?



Youre probably right. Still, we can either keep trying or give up and be totally negative and cynical. If we give up, then what's the point of visiting this forum at all? DONT LET THE BASTARDS GRIND YOU DOWN.

CA has been sold out to SEGA...
Just a reality check...