It's all about bonuses if you don't make your deadlines bonuses for employees and the company are reduced. Why waste time on a patch when your feverously working to meet your next deadline. Tis the way of the world.
Re: No further patches for M2TW or Kingdoms
It's all about bonuses if you don't make your deadlines bonuses for employees and the company are reduced. Why waste time on a patch when your feverously working to meet your next deadline. Tis the way of the world.
Re: No further patches for M2TW or Kingdoms
Shouldn't you then employ someone who can actually deliver within that timeframe?Originally Posted by sassbarman
I agree. I wish I had informed my friends sooner.
Some people get by with a little understanding
Some people get by with a whole lot more - A. Eldritch
Re: No further patches for M2TW or Kingdoms
Bolded emphasis mine. Well said, but the reason one patches their games is to both avoid lawsuits and to maintain reputation/satisfied customers. To my knowledge noone has every tried a lawsuit or class action suit for a horribly unpatched, broken game, but it'd be interesting to see how one would play out. $50 isn't chump change for anyone these days. As for maintaining customer sat, it boils down to a calculated risk. Are the majority of customers satisfied? Can they "live" with what you've put out? Are you likely to drive them and future customers away given the current status? Are there any significant repercussions in the marketplace that would affect sales due to the "infamy" of having a poorly patched game? Questions like these go into the math that management uses to decide whether or not they patch. For a parallel situation, look at what happened with KOTOR2, it had a token patch, and then was completely abandoned by CA and Obsidian. They made their money, and the fans be damned.
Another worthy point, but to be fair, any project both large and small is subject to any number of snags, roadblocks, delays, etc, no matter how competent the technical folks and leadership team are. If one looks at some of the more experienced developer studios, one can see general trends where both game release dates are somewhat generalized (eg. 3Q2008), and they hit those deadlines with a product that's in good shape at release. Conversely, the "when it's done" mantra doesn't always work either, as people by nature have expectations of deadlines that they can look forward to.
Don't feel bad mate, it took me several times before I learned my lesson, I know others are in the same boat.
INSOLENCE!!!!
Last edited by Whacker; 10-19-2007 at 22:58.
"Justice is the firm and continuous desire to render to everyone
that which is his due." - Justinian I
Re: No further patches for M2TW or Kingdoms
Well, I learned my lesson after seeing what mess RTW really was. I just didn't take into account that some kind people will actually spend their hard earned money to give me a TW game as a gift. But as I said, that's quite unlikely to happen again.
I frankly still cannot understand how people, as the customers, can just shake their heads and say "you got away with it this time... well, the last couple of times.... ok, more than a few times, but I'll trust you one more time and you better not do it again with ETW." I mean, come on...
Some people get by with a little understanding
Some people get by with a whole lot more - A. Eldritch
Re: No further patches for M2TW or Kingdoms
I'M TELLING MOMMY!!!!!BIG MEANIE
Re: No further patches for M2TW or Kingdoms
The wait six months policy is a solid one, after I waited six months for Rome: TW and the community still loudly said it was an unfinished, unpolished mess I gave up. I've never bought Rome or it's expansions, despite loving MTW (And especially VI) and Shogun quite a lot. With MTWII it seemed that the 1.2 patch satisfactorily took care of the most glaring bugs and so I sucked it up and snagged the game. While the AI is disappointing I've still found the game enjoyable, but I'm very glad I waited. SecuRom killed Kingdoms for me, and this idea of ending support for Kingdoms/MTWII with no patches makes me very glad I didn't purchase the former. CA moved off my trusted developers list with Rome, but this decision puts them squarely on my ban list.
As with anything else you might buy gamers have a right to functional products, particularly to functions used in advertising to sell the game. If you are unwilling to release a product that works, and unwilling to fix it after you release it broken, you will rapidly find that many of us are unwilling to pay you for it.
Good luck CA. Seems like you'll need it.
Re: No further patches for M2TW or Kingdoms
Whacker: Yes, in fact I was already wondering if I should buy M2TW but decided to give CA another chance (and give CA: OZ a first chance). With Kingdoms I was a lot more hesitant, and as a result I don't have it yet.
Somewhere in between I realized that CA officially decided to be a "big bad mean company" on the lines of Microsoft
We shall see... I for one am not at all optimistic about CA. It already sounds like it's going to be another rushed game with glaring bugs that were not anticipated and caught the guys totally unawares
I don't agree that this approach is the natural state of things though. Looking at companies like Blizzard (who incidentally don't have an external publisher iirc), reputation today is a hard currency. If CA suddenly find themselves bereft of any modding community, or community in general, to speak of, they will definitely perceive a drop in expansion sales for ETW. Casual gamers will be their answer to such a thing, so I do hope that we'll get some competition like some other posters here, because casual gamers probably won't buy two games of the same type.
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