Rome 2 Wishful thinking of SEGA & CA and the reality - last content update: 02.10.2014

[alQamar]

As this topic will not longer be maintained by me, I would like to point you to my final verdict of this thread.


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Hi TWC community and friends, I am not quite sure if this thread starting will end into the literally 50th complaint thread about this game.

I am personally very disappointed not only about the game but also about how sneaky and unhonest The Creative Assembly reacts on the mess they released (or were forced to by SEGA).

They say things like "I am not blocking users but temptation is high", "only 2 percent of players reporting issues that they cannot launch the game at all" - but this sentence somehow willingly or unwillingly turned into "only 2% of all users do have issues."

In what biased parallel universum do you live?


To face Creative Assembly with facts I created this topic and will provide constantly updated figures about the game.
Actually the reality differs a lot from the magazine reviews. The difference between a wishful thinking and reality could not be bigger than now.
I hope this thread helps them to get this team back on the ground and in touch with community like they spoke on their vassal magazine PC Gamer.
If they would do so, they would have done a beta test prior release for free instead giving us BETA patches every week, after purchase.

They really should do this: Working with the community, no stating "the forums are a great source, but we are paid to have on ideas" and instead of keep lying us like Angry Joe proved in his famous Rome 2 Angry review. UPDATE: we should either not forget about the "camel toe affair" the community backlash and the laughable try of justifying the matter with the wrong statements

The rage of users, reflected in those figures below IS NOT about small bugs.

You may also want to read this long interview to get a clue about what CA actually does to keep a good metacritics score and how do they think about their game quality ambitions and the importance of marketing and events OR watch this youtube video explaining the situation.

Start looking for Rome 2 at 12:00, please


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The game is currently STILL partly unplayable in many ways not only multiplayer after 14 patches and 9 months of time. Especially the Siege AI is still not fixed despite the massive patches aimed for it.
Also Reynold Sanity on Youtube made two epic videos about the game, of course with debateable strong language but rock solid when it comes to content. Some issues are solved but not the most at all. *May the Queen of Total War knight him for this, but well I think TrishCA may not have elevated rights to do so *

Part 1, main flaws and game mechanics comparison


Part 2, campaign comparisons



And there are soooo many issues that are going around here on TWCenter.net and totalwar.com I cannot understand the people that keep playing the game against all odds, or even telling there are "no issues" like Shireknight (Totalwar.com moderator - retired as moderator meanwhile) posted on his twitter towards CA staff, "except the campaign AI is too passive."

UPDATE: Interestingly now after Shireknight retired as a moderator, it seems he changed his mind at lot about the state of the game. Proclamating a new game engine is needed to be done by CA, to avoid another desastrous game release - in his user signature at totalwar.com.

It's time for honesty :-
CA it's time for change, Warscape is fundamentally flawed because it's based on old (bugged) code please retire it and give us a brand new game engine from scratch, until you do this every Total War game is doomed to be bugged before it's even released.

This also meets my point of view of the future of Total War which is a discussable topic here.

Rome 2 is still a bad marketing joke.
Even after 9 patches and probably loads of additional time CA invested for after-customer care, search and destroying bugs and ages of time invested by modders - yet none of those investments helped to recall players back to the game for a longer time.

Now here comes the plain figures, uncolored:

My personal thoughts and my plea to CA:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Dear The Creative Assembly Team, I know it is not easy to stand against all those rants and dozens of complaints, aside some good appreciating feedback you got for yet every game you released.

It is easy to make criticsm on a thing but it is harder to explain joy. At least I never read a wall of text in my TW life how great anything was, honestly , so this rule may apply basically.

BUT please do not stop to listen to these criticsm, rants, whining and whatever it is called, and most of all it would be wishful that you comment it, as mostly you do not. Causing even more distrust and rage. I think, unless you really face a troll, even they are not present everywhere, it helps to put up direct communication to your community and threads instead of making "publications".

Some of those threads may contain essential things that help you to survive on the hard PC game market. And it is really hard if we all know the facts the PC market is shrinking faster than ever.

The fans here - also me - spending or even wasting their time on Total War forums for this game and the community - we do not whine and cry, as some say. We have so many TW friends around us and we share our thoughts, spend a lot of times in your games and we also know the other side of the medal, you potentially could never see due lack of this time. The point of view of those, claiming and demanding, even ranting and shouting fans are your chance to stand the test of time, if just some of their ideas could lead to a better game.

You said once in an interview, the forum is a source but you are paid to have own ideas. Both is true, but a communication with the community, in ranting threads, in suggestions threads, a new approach of you perhaps naming some features that have been made on a fan based suggestion would be really cool and give us a feeling you take us serious, not as customers but as part of the whole.

Some independent developers can afford this. You claim you are quite independent in your interview, so please make use of it.

CA, it is your anniversary, you survived 25 years on a hard market, created a series that now lasts a decade. You can be proud of that!

On the other hand, currently, reading the latest reviews and interviews I got a the feeling, you are a bit too proud, at most in regards of the current game release situation and some more we had previously. Honestly and frankly it gives me the taste you seem to live in a different gaming universe - advertising, speaking and playing another game you released us. It is hard for me to suppress this feeling since Rome 2.

Please move aside from financial point of views you have or SEGA dictates you - preventing those early releases we had with Shogun 2 (no DX11 and antialiasing support for weeks), and now with Rome 2.

Step a bit a side from professional marketing usage.

Please care for the needs this game has, care for the fans responses on the forums "to offer the best possible Total War experience"* this way, you are not only binded to do so by your contracts but your personal claim obligates you - you will not reach this by marketing like announcements threads in a hit & run style on totalwar.com and TWC.

*term taken from http://www.creative-assembly.com/jobs

Yourself said on interviews you are aware how important and helpful the work with the community is, yet a lots have the feeling, me including, you are saying this but running another course.

There is a reason for this thread and the reason is people stopped to enjoy to play Rome 2. Get back to your roots and turn down the, well let's name it over "professionality" for the good of this epic franchise, I love, yet we love.

It is painful to see someone of your team quoting their terms like studied, while sitting a little bit shy in front of the a camera "you never invested more ressources on AI" and then we get disappointed by that so badly. It is all hard to believe. Take a step back from this epic sounding marketing, even you put up recently efforts to this "special task". They will not make the game better.

Detailed figures:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Monthly chart (per day):

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Conclusions on the figures:

Rome 2 is the Total War game which actually lost the most amount of active players* in a timespan of just 3 weeks after release (30% players remaining) and continued this trend rapidly. 12 weeks after release only 13% of the players which played Rome 2 initially, still play the game regularly.*
Till today this significant and fast drop never happened in any Total War game solely sold on Steam before.

From this point of view - in regard of the losses - we can come a conclusion that, at this time, the game was literally dying.
It can be expected the currently inactive users are likely about to come back partly, after the game has been patched through and through.

On the other hand a kind of recovery happened after Patch 7 has been released. The game is currently stable on a weekly average of 17 % remaining active players* while weekends may be little bit more active with an average of 18-19% of the initial player amount.

The review scores speak their own language but aren't very reliable in the positive or negative way as we have 100 and 0 scored reviews, which does not meet the games quality.

The multiplayer, according to CA previously statement is not used at lot, but a concrete number of active players is able to get. All we know is that never more than 3540 different players* played it long term since release.

The rate of people that obviously never played the game really, but just bought it, is according to missing basic achievements, similar to Shogun 2, at a rate of about 30-35%.

Remarks:
*I measured the globally peak of active players within a time of 24 hours, taken from Steam Client Stats or the also reliable steamgraph.net stats.
**back in time this thread was created

[omzdog]

Those figures seem about right.

What this is refering to are the paid off priesthood of intellectuals called 'critics' in the pockets of the publishers.
Not a secret.

[Metallistic]

Solid post, alQamar. I find multiplayer to be completely unplayable - battles and campaign alike. Desync, lag, piss poor performance, crashes etc... The only thing we can do is raise awareness and hope for the best in terms of adequate patching.

[alQamar]

yep meanwhile we can raise our fun factor with forums threads like this instead of playing http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...7#post13232477

[pellik]

To format whenever you hit return you need to add a < br > tag. Two returns (like for a paragraph) is < br > < br > (without spaces).

[Candy_Licker]

Oh don't remind me of that pawn Shireknight.

[bla21]

Guys have a look at this post I made in the official forums.

Iit features a video and transcript of a SEGA employee - actually the german PR manager himself - talking on TV about how he and his British colleaque pressured magazines in the past to put a high rating on games that were in a buggy and unfinished state.

http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...563#post705563

That's pretty much the hard evidence for the obvious, but still it might be interesting to you.


Transcript:
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Commentator: ...or SEGA PR manager "Fabian Döhler", who told us about some anecdotes of the PR manager's daily work.
PR Manager: ...And then, in the PR, if you have somebody behind you that puts alot of pressure on you (your bosses), calling out: "I NEED THE 90 (percent rating)! AND THIS NEEDS TO BE DONE!" , then you have 2 possibilites if you're the PR Manager.

The first: You quit (your job).

The second: Say "Hey, Simon (one of the reviewers), its a 90! It's a 90! It's so awesome!"

Reviewer2 ("Budi"): It's really that crass? Really? Truly?

PR Manager: Yeah, its like that.

It happened to me two times. I had 2 games, which where - thank god - good, but it couldn't be seen yet (meaning the game had bugs).

There was alot, alot, a frigging lot of pressure behind this. They (the games) were not finished at the time so I had to tell the reviewer "Hey, we'll fix this. This will be done! Believe me or don't believe me!"

And then, at some point, the rating/review was finished (it was a good rating). I spoke to my english colleaque... we were close, that close to cry out in joy!

Reviewer2 ("Budi"): Crass.

Reviewer3 I think... I would have known if we rated a title 90%!
PR Manager: Sure, there were some...

Reviewer1 ("Simon"): Yeah I'd know some (games/titles) too...

PR Manager: (to Reviewer3) Yep, you have like no idea! (joking)

[bla21]

edit.

the forum made that a double post.

[DramaBelli]

I'm Still waiting my copy of Rome II so I don't know how the 3570k with a 7970 from gigabyte in my bloody built rig will run the game. Still not get my copy BUT for days I've read without writing a single word in this forum.The fact is: it's NOT importat how the game will run on my rig.I'm involved with reviews but there's nothing better than the opinion of a strong number of experienced people, enthousiast same way as you for this release. Nothing can be more sincere than the hard words of a passionate players waiting ofr a revival of a game representing for him the Golden age of "ten years ago".What I've read make me sad. These are my thoughts:1. CA can strongly fix the game. "Patchism" or "patchtitude" is a trademark since I enjoyed the cause with empire. CA can, working hard for some months, fix enough the game to conquest their veteran fans once again. They can do everything 'cause they're strongly able in what they do.2. MODDERS can save once again the situation, by this way a lost victory for CA will become a triumph for modders3. CA and MODDERS/TECHNICIANS from this forum rich of resources can work together to create NOT ONLY the best online community regarding multiplayer experience...but also BE the revolutionary way to mean users/developers partnership.How could it be possible? in this forum, creating a big team, structure of skilled people and, first, writing a list of big question we urge to solve.Al Qamar explained me warscape engine is not moddable, well BUT with sinergy, creating structured thread (as he made from months) a way to make this game a victory is possible.These are the thoughts leading me to subscribe strongly this thread. I would try my first multiplayer experience in a REAL multiplayer community. I think this is a sane, passionate and interesting proposal he made. And I agree with Al Qamar, laso 'cause of the good person he showed to be during more than one months of discussions.

[StephanVos]

CA better fix this or we might see the end of a franchise in the making....they fooled me with Empire but luckily not with Rome2....I will wait for a steam sale if properly modded/fixed, that's all it's worth I am afraid. Personally, this release speaks volume of the lack of understanding at CA what their series is all about...sad conclusion. maybe some of the more talented CA members can start their own game through kickstarter....that would be interesting!

[Legion_IX]

Great post! Is always good to see some hard statistics. + repedit. damned, the forum is buggy once again, can't add reputation

[Unahim]

Amount of concurrent users: Until you do the same checking of user numbers on some other high-profile triple A releases, that is nigh useless info. Who says that's not the normal trend? I don't trust reviewer scores, but they're often closer to the "average" player, since they don't review the game because they're fans, but because it's their jobs. User reviewers, on the other hand, are always either raving fans or the exact opposite. It makes sense that this group would be most critical of a game that goes in a very different direction than they're used to. So while I won't accept the 80%+ scores from reviewers, I see absolutely no reason to give user scores credibility either, since only the ones with extreme feelings towards the game actually bother. The game is buggy, the game is flawed (but not beyond redemption), but your numbers are all pointless. They have no references to other things, there's nothing anchoring them to reality. They're just numbers, and no conclusions can be made from them.

[alQamar]

Really?
Well then I could also say your words are just your opinion. I think if over 100.000 played the game initially and 45% stopped playing a game they paid much and waited long for there could be a reason beyond raving a reason we do not need to anchor on other facts a reason beyond reality. God knows.

[omzdog]

but because it's their jobs

Exactly. They get paid to give opinions.
Fans do not.

I have serious doubts over the genuine professionalism of reviewers.
But I don't doubt that the overwhelming mass of fans usually isn't wrong.

Size tends to minimize the general fanaticism effect.
His numbers show something very obvious that you'd have to be blind not to notice.

That said in order to draw conclusions more data is need from other 2013 games as well as older games of TW statistics.

[alQamar]

The question is who pays them.

There are a lot of rumours Sega pays them giving good ratings and there is even a quote from a german manager of Sega confirming that. But aside conspiracy you need to know and understand the situation:

Sega is responsible for the publication of the game. So they mainly finance CA and marketing issues to get their income and ROI by selling the game to wholesalers which pass the game to us.

The problem is that also Sega decides where to place ads for their published game. And more likely they will place ads on magazines that have a good "opinion" about their product.

And why then the magazines do favor them and why a newspaper like The Guardian do not have to be friendly?

Because the magazines are in bad conditions and need the income from ads that Sega places in their print and online magazine. That is no conspiracy but how business works.

[Unahim]

You could -say- my words are just opinions, but that doesn't make it true. It is an objective fact in statistical surveys that you must have something to test against. If you could show us that for a "normal" release the decrease of players is much, much slower, then you would have a point. Right now, however, all you can do is say "it dropped by this %", but you can't make a claim about whether that is a lot or not. You say you "think" it is, but that's not how statistics work. You have to actually go out and test it on other games to validate your theory. All of this is cold, hard, factual information that they teach you in every class on statistics, everywhere. Don't get me wrong: your data is very cool and it's good that you took the time to get it... but until we get data on other games, it's meaningless. Like, say you were an alien, and you checked how much 1 person eats. You conclude that he eats 10 kilos a day (made up numbers here). Is that a lot for a human? Is that little for a human? How would you know that? By checking 1000 other humans all over the world and comparing them. Same with these numbers: without comparison to other games, it teaches us nothing. And omzdog: I did say I distrusted -both- of them. "But I don't doubt that the overwhelming mass of fans usually isn't wrong." -> The problem is it's not the "overwhelming mass" that writes reviews. It's the vocal minority, the real diehards. The 90% (warning: made up number used to indicate a general feeling, not exact data!) average users will not take the time, this is as it always goes; therefore, those review numbers tell us only one thing: the diehards are pissed. They don't prove that the game as a whole has failed, however. If we could get a survey of all of the game's players, I'd embrace that number with a warm heart. Metacritic though? No. It's not a place the average user goes, simple as that. There is no such places in existence, incidentally.

[alQamar]

Thanks for appreciating my work. Well then if you trust me let me say Shogun 2 started with a peak of about 35.000 players and this dropped very slowly to about 15k over months not within a week. So I hope you can see the facts within the figures now. Unfortunately never collected them.

[donkixot]

ah, numbers, love them

[Unahim]

That's a start, but if the numbers between Shogun 2 and this went up from 35k to 118k, then obviously we're working with a very different demographic here, probably a lot of newcomers to the game and so on. It could affect it in some way. I'd like to see how other AAA titles with a lot of campaigning behind them do (Shogun 2, while my favourite TW game ever, was a much quieter launch). Also note that this doesn't mean 45% of players stopped playing. It makes sense to want to play "no matter what" the first day, and then the days after that if you're forced to make a decision between some other activities and playing the game, you're less likely to pick the game every day. Doesn't mean you don't still play the game 2-3 times a week. I appreciate what you're trying to do, but these kind of studies are usually done by several people over the course of many months, spread across hundreds of testing groups. The standard divergence number on a sample size of 2 is... enormous, let's leave it at that.

[omzdog]

And omzdog: I did say I distrusted -both- of them. "But I don't doubt that the overwhelming mass of fans usually isn't wrong." -> The problem is it's not the "overwhelming mass" that writes reviews. It's the vocal minority, the real diehards. The 90% (warning: made up number used to indicate a general feeling, not exact data!) average users will not take the time, this is as it always goes; therefore, those review numbers tell us only one thing: the diehards are pissed. They don't prove that the game as a whole has failed, however. If we could get a survey of all of the game's players, I'd embrace that number with a warm heart. Metacritic though? No. It's not a place the average user goes, simple as that. There is no such places in existence, incidentally.

There is a statistical percentage that marks significance related to standard variation. The hardcore fans (people who take the time to review -if of course that is your definition of a hardcore fan- apart for the average non-reviewer) reach that approximation much closer than reviewers numbers particularly for a wide reaching franchise such as TW.

If there is anything to be taken from OP, its that the reviewers are synonymous with the publishers and do not reflect the opinion of regular people who do not get paid to give opinions.
The opinions of people who didn't review the game cannot be counted and so their opinion (which is important) is not relevant in the evaluation though their absence should be noted.