Why I haven't played S2 for almost a year.
Simple, actually. The last 3 games have been ridiculously buggy, limited, and DLC'd out the wazoo.
On the first point, Empire was the laughing stock of its time. The butt of every proverbial "buggy game" joke out there. Crashes just for walking an army into boondock areas of the strat map, pathfinding being beyond laughable (getting 'glued' to buildings whilst simply walking past them), the list goes on and on and on. Napoleon fixed most of these problems, but aside from the fact you literally had to pay CA all over again, just to finally get a (mostly) working product, this was a day late and a dollar short.
To the second point, on the limited issue, the modding community was thrown under the bus and written out of the TW community almost entirely. Sure, you've got your unit and texture packs out there, but there's no such thing as an EB or Stainless Steel or TATW mod for anything Empire forward. Shogun 2 took this to the nth degree, as the modding community was all but locked out of the game. Modding has been cut back to the level of the biggest things out there for Shogun 2 have been unit stats mods and a couple of mechanics adjustments. There are no complete overhauls, not even 'in production' or hell, even being talked about, and we're closing in on a year out. Had it not been for Darth and his DarthMod series, TW modding would be dead in the water the last 3 games. Which brings me to my final point.
DLC.
I railed against this when CA signed their soul away to the devil. Steam. I knew it was coming. TW games were about to get piecemealed out, one "feature" at a time. And sure enough, right on cue, Shogun 2 walks through the door. And now you people are literally paying CA to put some silly, cartoonish buzzsaw "blood" in a game. Not to mention the laughable rip-off of the climax of The Last Samurai in that FotS trailer. We initially got a watered down, tiny, "rock-paper-scissors" game, with absolutely zero traces of the "epic" feel previous TW games had. Sure, it was polished, but I literally saw everything the game had to offer less than 2 weeks after its release, and only playing an hour or two a day. Clone factions/armies, with the only couple "unique" factions in the game made unplayable. Then came "the rest of the game", with a price. Those "unique" factions you saw in the core game (which you still paid full price for), were finally unlocked for you, if you were willing to shell out even more money, several times over, for these "unit packs" and so-called expansions. And now, you're dropping money for cartoon blood and about to drop even more to have CA throw a small piece of Empire into the cookie-cutter game that was Shogun 2.
I understand CA is a business, but they weren't exactly losing money before they sold their soul to the DLC gravy train. TW games sold like hotcakes before and up to that point. And what did we get out of the move to DLC? Half-games sold at full price, and the modding community virtually killed off. Think I'm paranoid, delusional, or just a "whiner"? Go look at how many are viewing *all* of the Shogun 2 threads on this forum right now, at this moment.
66, as of 1:27 AM.
Now go look at how many are *just* in Medieval II hosted mods thread. 145. There are more people viewing the Rome hosted mod thread than the entire Shogun 2 thread. And Rome is a 7 year old game.
You know things are pretty rough when the audience for a "groundbreaking game" like Shogun 2 can't even match a game from nearly a decade ago. And I'm not the only one who thinks this.
But back to my original point. The TW franchise has become the greedy pig I always feared it would become. I know Rome 2's coming next too. And it breaks my heart to know this company I used to love and support is going to ruin that game by likely DLC'ing out entire factions from the original, or some other way to sell you one half of the original game on release day, then make you pay twice or more the price for the rest of it over the following year or two.
I guess I'm just depressed that, for the first time in the last 10 years, I don't have "that feeling" about the TW franchise anymore. I used to check these forums every few hours, just to see what the scoop was about some wild mod like Europa Barbarorum was pulling off this week, or what era CA was diving into with the next game. But this post marks the first time I've visited these forums in two months, and only the second post since July.
What I'm saying is, CA isn't surprising me anymore. So, as a fan from the infant days of the TW series, when I first played Shogun and Medieval, I'm asking you, Creative Assembly. Surprise me. Bring back the magic and the limitless possibilities we used to be able to pull off with your games. That's what built your fanbase. That's what kept people buying your games, even 5 years after they were released. You're not doing that anymore.
If nothing else, hear this. Please, do not Shogun 2-a-size Rome 2. Take an extra 2 years if need be. But dammit, put out a game that has some depth and soul to it. Bring back that "epic" feel. Your franchise sorely needs it.
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Originally Posted by SlartyBartfast
and where did that get them ...
