Total War: Rome 2 Announced

Nexus6

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I watched Angry Joe's entire 45 minute review. You must admit that whatever his faults, he is cheap entertainment. lol But seriously, there were a couple things he mentioned that struck a chord with me. For one thing, he showed some cuts of the CA developer in an interview, very pompously proclaiming that R2 is going to have the best AI ever, and interspersed this with vid cuts of the AI doing really stupid things, all to the theme from the Benny Hill show. LOL Further, he showed cuts of a trireme moving across the desert looking like a sandworm from Dune, and of course used music from Dune in the accompanying soundtrack. Gotta love AJ's sense of humor. Additionally, he decried the long wait times as the AI processes all the factions on the map, something I do recall from previous TW games. Finally, he totally blasted CA for having to pay extra for the Greek City States DLC on game launch day. I mean, seriously, who wouldn't want to play the Spartans? IMHO that was a very shameless and cheap cash grab on the part of CA. :(

Anyway, here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_QK-lcW8a8
 

Scott Tortorice

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Yeah, I posted that vid the night before we got hacked. It was lost with a lot of other posts. :mad:

I could do without the histrionics, but I can't argue with anything he said. In fact, he actually made me more concerned about Rome 2 by pointing out how all the battles become like a "mosh pit". I mentioned that in my (now lost) blog entry on the game, but I thought I just wasn't using the formations button properly. I guess it wasn't my fault but just a flaw of the game. That concerns me because that comes darn close to a game-breaking bug in my opinion. Like he said, it makes it almost impossible to control your forces! I guess I won't be booting up the game again until that is fixed.

Yeah, and the DLC thing is true. It is one of the reasons why I pre-ordered (I used to love playing as the Greek states in R1).

Oh well. To their credit, CA has been open about the problems. Latest letter:

Hi everyone,

We’ve just put up a hotfix that significantly improves campaign map frame-rate on a variety of hardware combinations that were getting frame rates less than 15 fps. It took us until Monday to get a case of this happening in the studio, but it was a very simple fix, so we’ve decided to put it out as a single issue patch. This bug was introduced very late in the process, but we absolutely should have found and fixed it before release.

This release has obviously not gone as planned for some people, and I want to apologise to everyone out there who had issues with the game, whether they were hardware issues or disappointment in the performance of game features. We obviously don’t plan to release a game with any bugs, performance and AI issues. How this has happened is something we’re beginning to post mortem in detail now.

Fortunately, the same tech that gave us the rope to work on the game right up to release lets us keep working on it after it’s out, and the flaws in the game are mostly just bugs, not structural defects. We can and will get the game to where we wanted it to be for everyone.

The top priority is stability and performance – both frame rates in battle and campaign, and end of turn times and loading times. Then gameplay spoilers – AI flaws and exploits, balancing tweaks and the level of challenge on higher difficulties. Then minor bugs, lesser features that really didn’t pan out, UI improvements, and longer term adjustments to features and systems that could be better. Because there are a lot of us working in parallel there will be a mixture of different priority fixes in each patch. Much of this work would be part of the usual planned improvements we would make to our games post-launch anyway, but we are aware that they have now taken on extra significance and importance.

We have a major improvement to end of turn times in the pipeline, along with around 100 fixes in the next patch. We have another 100 or so fixes already being tested for the patch after that. At this point the limiting factor on getting issues fixed in patches is not our ability to fix issues, it’s our ability to test them and guarantee that we don’t repeat past mistakes by putting a patch out that breaks something new. We’ll also be putting each patch up as a beta you can opt in to before releasing it. It’s our aim to continue patching more or less weekly until all the bugs are dealt with.

Then we can start the kind of dialogue we always want to be having with the community – which new features you like, which you don’t like, which deleted features from previous games you really miss and so on. That’s a good conversation to be having, and since it’s our intention not to fall in to the trap of just re-skinning the previous game each time, it’s one that hopefully you’ll be having for years to come.

Lastly, I’m hoping we can fundamentally treat our releases differently in the future. Long open betas are the way things are going, and while that model hasn’t been compatible with the way Total War has been built to date, that could be the way forward.

Mike Simpson
Creative Director
Creative Assembly
For what it is worth....

Having said that, I am still confident that Rome 2 will emerge just fine from this. There are bugs, some of them are big bugs, but the base game is still largely solid. It is just another case of a game being released as a beta build.
 

Nexus6

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Hey Scott, I did like your 'sort of' response to AJ's review. You were being forthright, gracious, and magnanimous as is usually your wont. I would also add though that one important point I neglected to mention concerning AJ's review was that to be fair to Rome 2, AJ did qualify it both at the beginning and at the end by stating that he's a TW fan and thinks the overall game system is sound, but that he's just not happy with the state it's in now. Also, I think CA's apology was mostly good, though I still think they were being greedy and underhanded with that whole Greek City States DLC thing. BTW, I wonder if the project managers were to blame for the R2 launch issues? Having worked with many project managers in corporate America (and there are a lot of them), to their way of thinking, 'ready or not' the schedule is sacrosanct, and if you don't make the schedule be prepared for the Gulag. ;) My favorite project management quote seems appropriate here: "The bitter taste of poor quality lingers long after the sweetness of meeting the schedule has been forgotten."
 
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Scott Tortorice

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Hey Scott, I did like your 'sort of' response to AJ's review. You were being forthright, gracious, and magnanimous as is usually your wont.
I think you have me mixed up with someone else. :D

I would also add though that one important point I neglected to mention concerning AJ's review was that to be fair to Rome 2, AJ did qualify it both at the beginning and at the end by stating that he's a TW fan and thinks the overall game system is sound, but that he's just not happy with the state it's in now.
Right! I should have mentioned that. I also give him credit for mentioning how he was softer than he should had been on the release of Empire, which was another royal screw-up. AJ does a good, honest show. I suspect he has a bright future in TV.

Also, I think CA's apology was mostly good, though I still think they were being greedy and underhanded with that whole Greek City States DLC thing.
Yeah, tis true. But DLC never really bothered me that much. It is nickel and dime-ing the customer...but it is just nickels and dimes in the end. :) If I like a game, I don't mind paying a few bucks more for additional content. Not only that, but I also like DLC because it usually indicates the devs are still working on a title, rather than 'release and abandon'.

BTW, I wonder if the project managers were to blame for the R2 launch issues? Having worked with many project managers in corporate America (and there are a lot of them), to their way of thinking, 'ready or not' the schedule is sacrosanct, and if you don't make the schedule be prepared for the Gulag. ;) My favorite project management quote seems appropriate here: "The bitter taste of poor quality lingers long after the sweetness of meeting the schedule has been forgotten."
Good quote and good question. Whenever a bad release happens, people blame the devs or the pubs. It is probably both. The devs had to know that their game wasn't fit for a 1.0 release, but released it anyway. And the publisher no doubt has some sort of QA process, but they probably looked the other way so as to meet the launch deadline - which, to be fair, is often a contractional matter and not easily disposed of. I never really cared. Truth is, if gamers would start boycotting devs/pubs who habitually release incomplete games, this practice would quickly come to an end. Most gamers don't bother though since a lot of them understand the complex nature of modern game design, and the other portion are fine with a lengthy patching process as long as they get a good game in the end. I think only about 20% are the real screamers who want blood after a bad release. Maybe they are the smart ones....

I will say one thing: a lot of PC devs scream bloody murder over the lengthy and arduous certification process that every XBOX game needs to go through before being released. No doubt it is a PITA, but consoles don't see to have that many launch fiascoes, do they? Something to be said about that. PC gamers like to "hate on" consoles, but they do some things right....
 

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I definitely sympathize with your views on DLC's, especially when it comes to games that I like. That said, I believe the current state of DLC's is yet another sign of, as you would say, the imploding gaming industry. I mean, back in the day when the DLC was still a new thing in the world ;), they were a big deal. Take for example Fallout New Vegas: Dead Money. In that DLC you had a big new area to explore and hours and hours of new story that was very deep, rich, and memorable. Alas, how far things have fallen. Now we have DLC's with limited content that should have been in the original game (SINS Forbidden Worlds, Endless Space Disharmony), nickle-and-dime minimalist DLC's (the thirty plus $2 Crusader Kings DLC's, speaking of which, CK2 Songs of the Caliph - is that lame or what?), and shameless money grabs with pre-order/launch day DLC's like the Rome 2 Greek Cultural Pack.

BTW Scott, that's a good point you make about the console game SDLC. On a related note, although I maintain that Blizzard hasn't done anything really good or innovative since Warcraft 3, their games have been pretty consistently bug-free at launch. There's definitely something to be said for not having to rely on open betas and kickstarter. Having said that, I'm all the more mystified by the bad launch with Rome 2. I mean, they developed and published the game the 'old-fashioned' way. I guess it was like someone wrote in another forum about how Creative Assembly used to be 'Games by gamers for gamers', and now they're businessmen with fat cigars. lol
 
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Scott Tortorice

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Just thought I'd update this thread:

Since release, CA has release four mega-patches so far. I haven't played the game to much to really test them out, but the few hours I have played recently do indicate definite progress is all areas. I think Rome 2 won't satisfy their fans for quite some time yet - probable another four patches at the minimum - but I do think that, like Empire:TW, Rome 2 WILL eventually be accepted as a worthwhile entry in the franchise.

Anyway, two bits of news. First, an update from Mike Simpson:

Hi everyone,

Thank you for playing our patches and reporting issues you find on the forum. Without that help we wouldn’t be able to turn around the patches as fast as we have been doing. We’re achieving in weeks what, on previous projects, took months.

Over the next few weeks there’s going to be a shift from dealing with stability and config to working on gameplay and features, while performance and AI remain high priorities. I expect the pace of patching to slow a little as gameplay and deeper AI changes need longer to test and tune. It’ll still be weeks rather than months between patches though, and we're going to continue to patch the game regularly for the foreseeable future.

Gameplay and AI fixes take a long time to test, and we have to play a lot of 200+ turn games to be sure a change has worked as intended. To make the regular patches possible we have to overlap them, so while patch 5 will go live tomorrow, we've already started work on patch 7. This does mean it takes a while for your feedback to manifest as changes in the game, so please don’t be too disappointed if your top issue isn’t fixed in the latest patch. We are listening to you, and we will get there.

Our long-term plan from here is to get as fast as possible to a point where everyone is broadly happy with the state of the gameplay and AI. After that we’ll shift modes again to long-term support – something which is new for TW and was very much our plan for the title all along. Our games already have a long lifetime, but by releasing occasional DLC packs and free content updates we keep working on them for much longer. This means upgrades in a number of areas which help the game evolve, and stop it becoming obsolete.

I’m not going make any detailed claims about what we’re going to do in the short term. The best way – the only really credible way - we can let you know what we’re doing is by delivering it in the game. But rest assured that we’re constantly reading the TW forums and a variety of others, and the feedback you’re giving helps us to prioritise the issues we deal with, as well as getting a sense of which features work well, which are not liked, and which features from previous Total War games which weren’t designed into Rome II are missed. This is an interesting topic actually, as a lot of people think that we’ve ‘cut’ features to make Rome II and it isn’t as simplistic as that assumption.

A lot of the game is designed from the ground up. We develop many features in parallel, some of which work differently to how they did in previous games: we aim to create a different experience every time, and that’s very important to us. New features are added, and certain features from previous games are therefore not included as they must naturally make way for different features. What’s been interesting – and very useful for us – is listening to you telling us about which features you like and don’t like, and what you miss from previous titles. We take your views seriously, and we’ll take them with us in the future.

For now, we’re about to roll out our largest patch yet, which contains a number of key fixes and changes. The next update will also bring you new, free game content which we’ve been talking about for a while… we hope you like it. Alongside this, you’ll see our next major step towards mod support for ROME II.

Enjoy the update, enjoy the game, and thanks again for your ongoing feedback.

Mike Simpson
If he keeps his word, I think they will turn this ship around.

Second, today it was announced that CA is making the second batch of DLC free for a week (strange, but I'll take it):

Hi everyone,

We have another piece of good news for you, the Nomadic Tribes Culture Pack is available now for download – and to thank our loyal fans for their continued support, if you grab your copy before the 29th Oct, it will be yours to own forever for FREE (normal cost £5.99/$7.99/€7.49).

Three whole new factions! For free!

You can grab your copy here once it's live: http://store.steampowered.com/app/258270
[video=youtube_share;Zl-csVA7bM0]http://youtu.be/Zl-csVA7bM0[/video]

That is a nice olive branch to the community.

Again, even though the forums are still raging, I think Rome 2 is going to be fine in the end. I find it interesting that Steam shows Rome 2 as one of their best sellers despite all the problems (#17 today). The game bit off far more than it could chew, but I think that as with Stardock's Elemental, if CA sticks to fixing the game it will eventually succeed.
 

Scott Tortorice

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This does take some courge:

Total War: Rome 2's first expansion announced: Caesar in Gaul


To be fair to CA, the most recent patch has brought the game to a proper v.1.0, but I don't think now is the time for $15 DLC, especially when that DLC seems to be charging for features the community has been lamenting are missing from the base game (meaningful characters, more than one turn per year, etc). And to charge the people who feel burned by the launch of R2 full price is really silly. At least give us 10% off (50% would be better).

I don't think this is going to go down well.....
 

kawaiku

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This does take some courge:

Total War: Rome 2's first expansion announced: Caesar in Gaul


To be fair to CA, the most recent patch has brought the game to a proper v.1.0, but I don't think now is the time for $15 DLC, especially when that DLC seems to be charging for features the community has been lamenting are missing from the base game (meaningful characters, more than one turn per year, etc). And to charge the people who feel burned by the launch of R2 full price is really silly. At least give us 10% off (50% would be better).

I don't think this is going to go down well.....
I've been reading the TWC forums and people are not happy about it. There is a very large thread there in the R2TW section asking people why the stopped playing and what features that CA should put into the game. I have also read people saying Sega pushed CA to get the game out early and that is why it is unfinished. Imho, everyone is doing that lately and screwing up big time. No one appears to be doing proper production anymore and DLC's are becoming more and more like glorified patches to me. For example, asking people to PAY for factions in a Total War game is just absolutely preposterous to me and this sounds exactly like a glorified patch. And for once I'm glad my computer cannot run a game of its "caliber."
 

Nexus6

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Couldn't have said it better K - DLC's generally speaking are no longer loads of additional content, but rather glorified patches. Sighs. :( In fact, to be totally impartial (as I am something of a Sid Meier fanboy), as good as Civ5: Gods and Kings and Brave New World were, they were basically major patches and modifications to the base game rather than new content. Sid has also been guilty of charging for new factions like Creative Assembly has. Needless to say though they both have a lot of company these days.

BTW Scott, I loved two comments you maid earlier related to TW. The first was how game reviewers seemed to put on their 'Sunday best' to do the Rome2 reviews. The other was how the name 'Total War' came from the time when retail stores were still the primary way to buy games, and games with names like Total War and Guild Wars seemed to 'scream at you from the shelf' (the original Guild Wars did come out about the same time as Shogun TW I believe.
 
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