Quote Originally Posted by Dayve View Post
Doesn't matter that it was released or not, you can't rate an unfinished product. If there was an option to rate the company that made the game, CA, out of five, then there would be a case for giving them 1 star for releasing buggy software, but the game itself is amazing, it just needs to be patched and tweaked.

I should also add i've only ever had 1 campaign ruined by bugs, which was 15 turns into a French campaign. I've also played the game over 8 hours a day since its release, because i have no life, and only ever had 2 CTD's. It's not as bad as people are making it out to be.
It's rare to find a troll with such delicacy of touch.

It is hard to judge just what proportion of people are having serious problems with the game, since the sufferers tend to scream loudly and those playing away quite happily just get on with it in peace. Even the second group are missing out the full potential of ETW mind you, since gameplay issues like no naval invasions remain for the moment, but as I know myself from previous TW titles, as long as the game doesn't crash you can usually find a way to live with those sorts of problems until they get fixed or modded.

Over years of PC gaming, I think I've learned to be more patient at times like these. With CA in particular, I owe them the chance to sort things out, since I've had much fun with their games. That doesn't mean I won't point out silly things that only increase the frustration of their customers. I won't do the whole list here but let's look at just those things that this latest hotfix has highlighted:

-- Steam sometimes resetting its "do not automatically keep the game updated" setting, so people who don't want a latest patch/hotfix get it anyway. BTW, I now run Steam in offline mode all the time, and try to always check the update setting before and after I go online like last night to get the patch. Check every time in case it has reset.
-- Steam not allowing rollback to previous versions for those whose game gets worse with a hotfix/patch.
-- Insufficient information to know what version of the game you have (Version Numbers please)
-- Customer information generally - it would be good to have advice from CA about the save-game compatibility of this patch. I'm guessing that it is supposed to be but given the lack of stability of the game, I personally have moved all pre-March26-hotfix saves somewhere else and started a new game from scratch. If I had any mods, I would have removed them first, reinstalling the game if necessary to be sure it is vanilla. Just experience from these sorts of situations in the past.

Note that I'm not trying to list all the problems - just those that seem to me to be much less forgivable than the inevitable ones that can be expected from a complex and new game. I think the main reason I have been so annoyed at times this last three weeks is that I had (and still mostly have) a great deal of respect for CA (and I should add, for the TW fan community) and a lot of things over these three weeks have made me embarrassed for them. I expect better.


Ok, having said all that, my experience with the new hotfix has been positive. In all 7 of the Grand Campaigns I've attempted since ETW came out, all have ended with repeatable white screen CTDs (the 'Empire.exe has encountered a problem and cannot continue' kind), shortest turn 10 and longest turn 108. I started a new one as Sweden last night and have managed about 6 hours of play, about turn 40, with no CTD so far. Also have noticed no sign of the pauses when I select new units/towns. Hadn't run FRAPS for a while so don't have relevant pre-hotfix figures, but battles rarely change from 30-60 range and campaign map good too. No sound problems that I noticed but will check more closely now I know some people have them). Have noticed at least one new problem but it isn't major and I want to test some more before mentioning it.

Far too early to make a proper judgment but for now I'm glad I tried the hotfix. My sympathy to everyone for whom it has made things worse.