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

[alpaca]

Odin: The points is a bit more problematic really. The thing is that in my opinion buying M2TW was not a mistake when considering that I like the game and spend a lot of time modding it.
It maybe was a mistake if you consider the signal, because I could have tried to send a signal to the devs with not buying it. However I came to TW with Rome and I wasn't ready to take that step yet; my opinion about that changed a bit, hence I was very resilient to buy Kingdoms (and I didn't). For some of us it just takes a bit longer to learn their lesson sometimes.

Whacker: There are apparently some clearly broken components that had been advertised prior to the release of kingdoms. This is not right from a legal perspective - if you advertised a database server that contains a backup system and that backup system doesn't work and even worse you refuse to fix it, your customers will sue you, and they will have success before court.
The problem is that games are much too cheap to even warrant suing the developers unless you do a massive thing with thousands of plaintiffs it'd be turned down. It's probably not exactly critical features that are broken but nevertheless...
In general I agree though, with games you often can't easily discern what is really, technically broken and what is just designed in a way you don't like.

[Odin]

Odin: The points is a bit more problematic really. The thing is that in my opinion buying M2TW was not a mistake when considering that I like the game and spend a lot of time modding it.
It maybe was a mistake if you consider the signal, because I could have tried to send a signal to the devs with not buying it. However I came to TW with Rome and I wasn't ready to take that step yet; my opinion about that changed a bit, hence I was very resilient to buy Kingdoms (and I didn't). For some of us it just takes a bit longer to learn their lesson sometimes.

In your case perhaps it wasnt a mistake. I came to TW at shogun and I didnt regret the time I put into the game, MTW came along and I bought it right away, my mistake as at the same time I was buying games from another company that was notroious for putting out almost finished games and getting feedback, yadda yadda.

However the simplicity of this is that one must understand that this is an industry issue , not exclusive to CA,and the easiest, direct and most fruitful way for the end user to affect the situation is by them assuming control over thier singular piece to the equation (that piece being the holy grail of the process).

Thats your purchase, once you give your money over, your pulled into the process. I remember playing Koei games on my SNES before message boards, heck i didnt even have a PC. Now its a right of passage to get a game and go seek out the official patchs and the community mods.

The simplicity of the process and the consumers role in it, isnt complex alpaca. Once you make the purchase it does become more problematic, but here we are years later with the TW series, do you think the cat is out of the bag yet?

If it isnt I'll let everyone in. Games are released today early with minimal testing (this is the main issue) because of fan sites, free mods, pre order, direct downloads, zealous flattering reviews, and solid sales. Hence you have issues, and they dont get corrected until after sales are made.

Very simple, the corrections are made after the games release, not before and this simple reality is all one needs to look at to understand the industry has parlayed the process into a nice business model.

Yet, through the haze there is the customer, and thier credit card or cash and thier willingness to go along. I dont propose that my solution is the end all be all, but it is the one solution offerred where the end user has 100% control, that makes it a no brainer IMHO.

[alpaca]

In your case perhaps it wasnt a mistake. I came to TW at shogun and I didnt regret the time I put into the game, MTW came along and I bought it right away, my mistake as at the same time I was buying games from another company that was notroious for putting out almost finished games and getting feedback, yadda yadda.

However the simplicity of this is that one must understand that this is an industry issue , not exclusive to CA,and the easiest, direct and most fruitful way for the end user to affect the situation is by them assuming control over thier singular piece to the equation (that piece being the holy grail of the process).

Thats your purchase, once you give your money over, your pulled into the process. I remember playing Koei games on my SNES before message boards, heck i didnt even have a PC. Now its a right of passage to get a game and go seek out the official patchs and the community mods.

The simplicity of the process and the consumers role in it, isnt complex alpaca. Once you make the purchase it does become more problematic, but here we are years later with the TW series, do you think the cat is out of the bag yet?

If it isnt I'll let everyone in. Games are released today early with minimal testing (this is the main issue) because of fan sites, free mods, pre order, direct downloads, zealous flattering reviews, and solid sales. Hence you have issues, and they dont get corrected until after sales are made.

Very simple, the corrections are made after the games release, not before and this simple reality is all one needs to look at to understand the industry has parlayed the process into a nice business model.

Yet, through the haze there is the customer, and thier credit card or cash and thier willingness to go along. I dont propose that my solution is the end all be all, but it is the one solution offerred where the end user has 100% control, that makes it a no brainer IMHO.

Yes I agree, the thing is however that it's hard for people (and I include myself here) to stop buying any non-blizzard games at all. It's a really harsh step to refrain from purchasing bugged and unfinished products exactly because, as you say, the whole industry is into it. That said, I personally have to admit that I was closing my eyes to the problem until maybe half a year ago (although I didn't buy too many games in general, only strategy games really).
You're right that my posts are maybe a bit anti-CA here - I am mainly talking about CA because the guild is a TW forum. I won't buy any more games on release, and I won't buy them at all until consensus on the respective fansite forums is that they're in a decently playable state.

[The_Baron]

At the end of the day, I suspect there is no chance that bitching about problems that have already been declared insoluble is going to greatly improve the situation. Requesting and suggesting to a Creative Assembly representative is one thing; being inhospitable and mildly insulting is entirely another. All we can really do with any possible degree of success is to politely suggest that Creative Assembly sort out its' priorities for the next Total War release (Empire: Total War) and hope they grasp the fact that a strong fanbase is imperative for a continued fan community.

On a lighter note, I dreamt of playing Empire: Total War last night after reading one of the Sharpe's books. How... expectant of me .

Kindest regards,


-Max

[SpencerH]

At the end of the day, I suspect there is no chance that bitching about problems that have already been declared insoluble is going to greatly improve the situation. Requesting and suggesting to a Creative Assembly representative is one thing; being inhospitable and mildly insulting is entirely another. All we can really do with any possible degree of success is to politely suggest that Creative Assembly sort out its' priorities for the next Total War release (Empire: Total War) and hope they grasp the fact that a strong fanbase is imperative for a continued fan community.

On a lighter note, I dreamt of playing Empire: Total War last night after reading one of the Sharpe's books. How... expectant of me .

Kindest regards,


-Max

With all due respect, we've been down the "polite request/suggest" road too many times. The only thing SEGA has to decide is whether they want to support their games and keep some of their die-hard fans or continue down the road they're on now and say adios to the last of us.

[Cheetah]

Vote here: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=94304. This might be of some help ...

[Cheetah]

BTW, "obviously" CA decided that Kingdoms is good enough that it needs no patch. In a sense they are correct as indeed Kingdoms is arguably one of their best releases. Challenging scenarios, interesting and unique factions, and no serious game breaking bugs (though some missing features ...). However, that is the very reason why they should patch it. This way they ruin all the hard work that went into desinging the scenarios and factions; what everyone will remeber now is the lack of support and not the new features (controlling reinforcement armies) or new scenarios.

[fallen851]

All we can really do with any possible degree of success is to politely suggest that Creative Assembly sort out its' priorities for the next Total War release (Empire: Total War) and hope they grasp the fact that a strong fanbase is imperative for a continued fan community.

Or we could just not buy Empires, encourage magazines such as PC Gamer to recognized our problems with CA, and tell others not to buy the game. Then maybe they will listen, when they actually take a hit where they can feel it.

[Odin]

encourage magazines such as PC Gamer to recognized our problems with CA,

Hate to be the barer of bad news, but PC gaming mags are in on the business model mate. Bad reviews = less ads and less games sold which = less games being played which = less readers.

Incestual inst it?

[Mori Gabriel Syme]

It is slightly encouraging that, while extolling BioShock elsewhere in PC Gamer, they do include a bit about the activation and copy-protection woes in the letters section of the most recent issue. Besides, there isn't much to lose by letting the magazine know our opinion. They won't sell much advertising if they stop serving their readers.

[Fisherking]

Patches to me are a double edged sword. If they just fixed the known problems it would be great. But I think most of the time and expense goes into the wish lists and things that work but not everyone cares for.

If they would just fix the problems I would be happy, but they seldom do because of the other crap and yes I mean crap that they wind up changing.

They should just set up a small shop in India to fix problems and it would hardly make a dent in budgets and leave the nice to have stuff to the moding community. After all it is mostly just nice to have stuff, or even unwanted stuff that they add in most of the patches.

Working 2 hand weapons, pike, spear wall, and being able to fight elephant artillery is more important than much of the other junk.

[Jacob Debroedere]

I haven't bought M2TW or Kingdoms yet, and this tread seems to give some good reasons why I shouldn't buy them in the future. By the way what is that SecuRom thing everyone talks about?

[Mouzafphaerre]

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By the way what is that SecuRom thing everyone talks about?

SecuRom is supposedly a copy protection software. (It supposedly prevents copies of game disks from being used instead of the legitimate ones.) However, it acts as malware in which it places itself into your system and remains there. It cannot be removed/uninstalled in normal ways. Even if you uninstall Kingdoms, it remains in your system and causes malfunction. Details are discussed in this thread.
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[Jacob Debroedere]

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SecuRom is supposedly a copy protection software. (It supposedly prevents copies of game disks from being used instead of the legitimate ones.) However, it acts as malware in which it places itself into your system and remains there. It cannot be removed/uninstalled in normal ways. Even if you uninstall Kingdoms, it remains in your system and causes malfunction. Details are discussed in this thread.
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Not patching a game is one thing, but including malware on purpose in a disk is a bridge to far. We should hire some lawyers and see what they think about this...