They get to say "Dude...if you release this now...it will flop...give us more time."
One thing is for certain: the more profoundly baffled you have been in your life, the more open your mind becomes to new ideas.
-Neil deGrasse Tyson
Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.
The game does need polishing though, doesn't feel complete, especially when the the units charge.
It's not feasible for them to take a longer development time. They won't make nearly as much money if they have a lower games-per-year ratio.
What we should ask for is less features.
Now that they are on Steam they are taking the Valve approach to game release. Releasing a slightly unfinished product and just starting to patch it here and there. On one hand it sucks, on the other hand we get to play the game in the meantime and we might not have to wait forever to see a major patch that tries to address everything.
2974% Satisfied. One CTD out of at least 10 hours so far, and the autosave was a moment before it happened.
Few glitches with arty not packing up, and infantry firing into oblivion behind cover.
Other than that, I have yet to stop planning conquests in this game. On my 95th turn already.
When life gives you lemons, let sleeping dogs lie.
Maybe an article like this UK video game firms call for help will put what you want into some perspective...
ive only 'noticed' one or two bugs and ive been happily enjoying my game for several days now.
i personally have been loving this game, ive played every minute that could be allowed up till now.
sega is the best thing that happened to CA in my opinion.Extactly, Without sega or big companies there wouldn't be Total war.
Remeber Rome under activision? the orginal release?
now that, was buggy!
Last edited by bigfootedfred; March 06, 2009 at 09:56 AM.
They basically made three games in one. We asked more than they could give / they bit off more than they could chew.
The game has a massive amount of content -- new technology tree, ability to recruit generals on the fly, entirely new campaign map system that brings new economic, governmental and strategic options, and a brand new naval combat engine.
That doesn't mean everything's peachy, just that not "everything" is content.
Think of a game as if it's a novel. Graphic features -- skins, blood -- are like the cover. They're not content, like the text is. Bugs are like typos -- they're not content, but they get in the way of enjoying the content.
I have yet to CTD, but there are plenty of bugs. Why so many? Because this was an ambitious release with a ton of new content. Should they have waited on release? No, because it takes much less time to find these bugs when a huge number of paid customers delve into it.
Doesn't make it "right". But I'd rather play it now than wait 3 months for CA's QA to find some of the bugs.
I'm not particularly bothered by smaller unit diversity. This isn't the medieval era -- units simply were less diverse.
People need to understand deadlines. Companies can't keep spending millions of dollars pushing their release date forward to get it 100% right on release day.
There's a patch coming, what's the big deal? Would you rather see gamebreaking glitches go unfinished?
Relax.
The game for me has worked very well. Some minor bugs but overall its well polished. Some games I have gotten in the past, particularily ubi-soft games have been just terrible upon release. Really great game CA!
No lag, no CTD, immersive beautiful visulas..granted there are one or two dodgy AI moments in the battles but I dont really expect HAL to have taken up residence in my processor..
What needs to happen is companies need to stop pretending that min specs work in 2009.. I sometimes wonder what devs mean when they talk about optimization..I hope they mean they are improving the code even more.. I sometimes wonder if the reality is the publisher has asked them if they can find a way of making their code work on below spec machines to increase the market ...
E8400 on Asus P5N32-E overclocked to 4.00ghz with arctic cooling
POV GTX 285 XP (SP3) Crucial Ballistix 2gb DDR2 RAM
Given the global finance situation, I think SEGA was forced to push for a release, Its nearly impossible to get cash or credit at the moment for companies to keep going.
Having said that it seems we have two camps on our Forum.
The very happy no problem group!
and the less fortunate who seem to be having a bad time.
May I suggest to the happy camp that with their posts they give a few details of how they achieved the good running of their copy of ETW.
Just list maybe their specs and how they installed the game, what driver they are using.
This would I think help out the people who are having trouble with their install game play, and lessen flame and bad feeling amongst members of our little community.
I think deadlines have to be imposed in the business world, knowing modder's its never finished we have to do just a little more!
regards all mags.
Last edited by magpie; March 06, 2009 at 03:22 PM.
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No, we should not.
We should ask CA to play their game before printing it. Most bugs seems to be from ordinary gameplay and are easily observed.
It would be good if they hired more people to work for them. Thus decreasing development time and increasing quality. And in these times..labour is cheep and plentiful
The best thing about their games are the modding comunity, and their ability to make fantastic improvements of gameplay and design.
There is something to be said about an expensive game that on the very release day also gets a giant patch....Itīs like buying a part of the game on disc and the rest in small bits over time dl.