Creative Assembly Business Practice Discussion Thread (Rome II)

[Cope]

I think Rome II is a bad game, but be realistic.

It was a £30 purchase, which will be over 18 months old by Attila's release. It's time to forget the idea that they are going to give you anything else for Rome II.

I do think that it's cheap that what is essentially BI: II may very well just give us all the things that we want for Rome II, but sadly that's how business works. Now if I had spent like £500 on Rome II then I would be very angry, but at the end of the day it was £30 which in the grand scheme of things is nothing. Most people spend more on buying a single round of drinks on a night out in London. In other words, even though Rome II is a massive disappointment for me and BI: II will make me feel a little ripped off, the money involved on my part doesn't make it worth my while protest voting. All I want is a good Total War game, and if ATW will offer that then I will pay for it.

If however, ATW is as bad as Rome II was and CA have obviously ignored fan requests and are prepared to release lifeless games on a conveyor belt then they can forget my business in the future. As far as I'm concerned, their punishment from me is that I will not be pre-ordering but instead will wait for customer reviews before considering buying it. Don't forget that CA are renowned for releasing "expansions" which blow the originals out of the water (Kingdoms, Napoleon, FotS etc).

[DavidtheDuke]

The only thing I'm wondering myself is if the family tree will be moddable into Rome 2. That's what CA should attempt to do: make it psosible for modders to integrate it into the original game. I won't buy Attila unless it's 75%+ off unless this is possible. Modders have *always* made the TW games into what they really should be, honestly CA mainly builds the infrastructure and base assets to make this possible.

[GussieFinkNottle]

Sorry but what a ridiculous reaction. CA knows they screwed up with Rome 2, and ever since have been frenzeidly patching it to try to bring it to satisfaction, with a lot of big improvements e.g. patch 15 and a boatload of free content e.g. Augustus campaign and other free-lc. Yet you pretend they are still trying to rip you off because they are revisiting historical periods last featured in Total War a decade ago. This is patently illogical, the technology today is totally different, and for one thing, the graphics are light years ahead.

CA also does not make games in competition with modders, there was even a Napoleon mod of Rome TW, but that of course didn't prevent the making of NTW. Really if you are still outraged by Rome 2 then that is just silly, you're being the boy who cried wolf. Why would CA listen to you if you act as though they made no effort to fix the game.

And if 30 quid is your 'financial brink', as Leving observed, then either you are exaggerating, or I feel sorry for you. Have fun missing out on any good future TW games, Attila first of all.

Take a chill pill and let the red mist abate. It doesn't help anyone, least of all yourself, to be in a perpetual state of fury. And there is no reason for CA not to be allowed to release a new title well over a year after the offending one, particularly when they have made such an effort with patching and given us an almost silly amount of free stuff. Do you think the Augustus campaign was originally planned as free-lc?

P.S. re. your closing line: because CA are obviously going to abandon a publisher with deep pockets and global reach out of spite

[DavidtheDuke]

Take a chill pill and let the red mist abate. It doesn't help anyone, least of all yourself, to be in a perpetual state of fury. And there is no reason for CA not to be allowed to release a new title well over a year after the offending one, particularly when they have made such an effort with patching and given us an almost silly amount of free stuff. Do you think the Augustus campaign was originally planned as free-lc?

It's easy to not expect to give money to CA for a campaign I'm not even that interested in (horse archer spam.. f that). I want those features to be applied to Rome 2 or I don't care. I hope their Warhammer TW (if it is TW, I hope so) is better thant his and has more iterations and is more feature complete and not patchworked across in later campaigns or scenarios I don't care about. That's the rub here for these guys.

Edit: Keep in mind I actually don't mind myself paying for DLC to have continued support in adding these features. I'd just like CA to be hoenst that these things are a open progression and they don't always know exactly what we want. I understand things cost money and I'm willing to pay more than $150 for a fully-fleshed out Warhammer with all the factions and everything under the umbrella of TW.

But that's the other side of the rub: Alot of people think all this can be done under $60 with those sales figures and all the complexity and underlying code of a TW title? Pff.

[Maximinus Thrax]

Moving this from TW: Attila General Discussion to CA Business Practice Complaint and Discussion Thread, where it belongs.

[Didz]

There appear to be a couple of issues with your table. First, the 'Over 100 hours' and higher achievements for Napoleon should be 'n/a', not '0.0%', since Napoleon doesn't have achievements for these hours. Secondly it is my understanding (somebody please correct me if I am wrong) that for Shogun 2 the achievement were awarded for completing a campaign on a certain difficulty or harder, whereas for Empire and Napoleon the achivements were only awarded if you completed the campaign on exactly the specified difficulty. I do not know how Rome II handles this. Taking this into account and adding some statistical data from the aforementioned thread (the difference between this table and that thread is due to the thread using percentage of players, while the table uses percentage of owners):

Total Hours Per Player
.	ETW	NTW	STW2	R2	CIV V	EU IV	CK II	M&B: Warband
Over 1 hour	79.8%	70.4%	82.5%	85.4% (89.9%)	86.2%	77.6%	55.9%	81.0%
Over 10 hours	57.2%	49.6% (45.9%)	60.2%	65.3% (69.9%)	71.0%	56.4%	35.5%	62.5%
Over 30 hours	42.5%	31.9% (29.1%)	42.6%	53.5%	51.0%	44.4%	26.3%	47.0%
Over 50 hours	34.3%	23.5% (21.7%)	32.2%	43.2%	39.9%	36.6%	22.0%	36.8%
Over 100 hours	22.4%	12.9%	18.4%	23.6% (27.3%)	25.9%	26.5%	15.4%	22.4%
Over 500 hours	3.2%	1.3%	1.9%	2.3% (2.4%)	5.4%	4.1%	2.5%	2.9%
Over 1000 hours	0.9%	0.3%	0.4%	0.6% (0.4%)	2.2%	0.6%	0.7%	0.6%
Percentage of Players completing at least one campaign
.	ETW	NTW	STW2	R2
Win SP Campaign on Easy	6.8%	5.8%	11.1%	n/a
Win SP Campaign on Normal/Medium	8.0%	6.7%	10.8%	n/a
Win SP Campaign on Hard	0.7%	2.8%	2.9%	3.4% (1.6%)
Win SP Campaign on Very Hard	n/a	n/a	1.0%	1.8% (<1.8%)
Win SP Campaign on Impossible	n/a	n/a	1.0%	n/a

Key:
From your table
Based on statistical sample
Adjusted from your table

Thanks for the corrections and the additional information. However, it doesn't really seem to have made much difference to the conclusions. It still looks as though R2 is pretty much on a par with previous TW titles in terms of player retention and quality of game play. With only STW2 showing a distinctly higher vale for campaign completion.

The information on other games is interesting.

EU IV doesn't surprise me as bought any earlier version and wasted my money.
I wouldn't have classed M&B: Warband as a strategy game really, but it's interesting to see the comparison.
Whats CKII, that looks pretty poor?

Have you looked at Histwar? I've never tried it heard some good and some bad things.

Yes, i was very supportive of the Histwar franchise, but unfortunately it's under resourced and never achieved anything beyond the tactical level game. So, all you can do with it is fight disjointed battles. There is no campaign or diplomatic side to the game. Also from memory the UI was very clunky to use. However, the actual tactic's and uniforms were much more accurate than NTW.

Incidentally, getting the uniforms right might seem a trivial thing. After one could use red and blue penguins carrying dried haddock and the game would still work. The problem only really arises if one is trying to sell into the wargaming market. Boardgamers never really cared much about uniforms anyway because lets face it they come from a background where whole division, corps and armies were represented by a small square of cardboard.

However, for tabletop wargamers the aesthetics were part of the enjoyment, and getting them right was a measure of your knowledge of the period and your commitment to the hobby. So, getting the uniforms of the most famous regiment in the French army wrong is a serious mistake. My old geography teacher once advised me that if you are buying an Atlas the first page to look at is the one showing your home town. Because if they can't get that right then you can be pretty sure the rest of it is crap too, and thats pretty much how wargamers will react to their first sight of the Imperial Guard in their peaked bearskins and gold epaulettes.

But it's not the only issue as it seems that CA hired a historian with a Czech fetish, so half the Austrian units are incorrectly named too. It's basically a mess, even without the lack of tactical accuracy and failure to cover the diplomatic issues affecting the coalition.

[nodey]

I would just like to say that CA has gone from my favourite company to my least favourite over the last couple of releases.
It's not the DLC milking that gets me. But that the games are still balanced in difficulty by "solutions" like spamming the player with bad traits or civil wars based on percentage chances, all of which provide for some examples of hilariously backward logic.
These are features that reflect a mentality within the company of being ok with a shallow appearance of functionality rather than actually solving the major problems that plague the series.

Why this is the path they have taken is beyond me. Maybe they are stuck in a "friendly work environment" type of mentality rather than a creative one - ironic considering the name of the company.
I could personally overhaul the series and theoretically solve the AI and difficulty scaling issues in about two hours. I'm not talking pipe dreams but actual, simple changes that they could implement in one patch.

But we're talking about a company that didn't overhaul their UI for 12 years. That didn't get streamlining (as in provinces with settlements, and generals recruiting to armies, choosable skills and perks) until this late in the series.
It's sad that progress takes too long in CA. I feel like i'm lightyears ahead of them in terms of creativity because they are just so bogged down in traditional complacency. It's pathetic. Heads need to roll. Many, many heads.

[Humble Warrior]

It's pathetic. Heads need to roll. Many, many heads.

The problem with CA\SEGA is they play a very dodgy game with the customer to the point that the customer simply can't trust them any more. They are still at it now, with their `wall` of customer relations people who block off the real questions and appear only to `sell` something `wonderful` to tell us. You can feel it. It's the sheer lying of last year that really has people upset with them. That's all there is to it.

Until that culture of deception and lack of transaprency from CA\SEGA changes, they will never be trusted again by anyone.

[hellas1]

Hi everyone,

I'm a TW veteran of over 10+ years...started with STW: Warlord Edition actually.
I've been posting on this forum for some time now.

I cannot believe that CA has left Rome 2 total war essentially neutered after 1 year of milking people with their DLC.
When I play R2TW, I feel nothing as I did when playing the first Rome TW.

So many things have been taken out of R2TW that I am personally jaded by CA/Sammy Sega.

I had a dream..........After a year, CA would see their folly and revisit this game with a proper addressing of re-adding stripped off features.

Apparently CA believes we are all stupid people with little to no prior TW experience.

CA, shame on you for sticking under the Sammy Sega banner..........You should have left to work for another producer.

hellas1...........Attila Total War? Rome 2 Total war isn't up to par and you want me to shell out more $$.......Yeah right

[LestaT]

If you're a veteran then you'll probably already realized that Total War series lifetimes (before they release a new product) is between 12 months to 18 months on average. However Rome II is already more than average with nearly 2 years in development (if Attila is release September 2015).

STW - June 2000
STW:MI - August 2001
MTW - August 2002
MTW:VI - May 2003
RTW - September 2004
RTW:BI - September 2005
RTW:Alexander - June 2006
M2TW - November 2006
M2TW:Kingdoms - March 2007
ETW - March 2009
NTW - February 2010
TWS2 - March 2011
TWS2:FotS - March 2012
TWR2 - September 2013
TWA - ??? 2015

[Doc Riedenschneider]

Yes, they clearly milked us with DLC. It's not like they heavily supported the game for a year often releasing substantial patches alongside the optional DLC.

[Huberto]

If you're a veteran then you'll probably already realized that Total War series lifetimes (before they release a new product) is between 12 months to 18 months on average. However Rome II is already more than average with nearly 2 years in development (if Attila is release September 2015).

Attila is released February 2015. SEGA needs to book sales before fiscal year end March 31.

they clearly milked us with DLC. It's not like they heavily supported the game for a year often releasing substantial patches alongside the optional DLC.

I get the sarcasm. However, given the terrible state of the game at release, and frankly, the mediocre state of the game post patch 15 (I am in the middle of a vanilla EE edition Antony campaign and it would have been scandalous to release this lackluster effort as $15 DLC), there is an argument that all the DLC had little value, was over priced, and mostly useless.

[texoman81]

Yes, they clearly milked us with DLC. It's not like they heavily supported the game for a year often releasing substantial patches alongside the optional DLC.

i am so sick of some people thinking CA deserves so much credit for partially fixes the game over a year. They gave us the beta version and slowly patched it over a full year to a state that is still a disappointment and still not as good as previous Total War games. They should have done more patching than they've done to date BEFORE release. Rome II was announced approximately one year before release so they've taken twice as long as they were supposed to just to get it out of beta. You would not be so accepting of a half finished product with any other purchase so why hold video games to such a low standard. Not only that when we purchased the game before release (as the majority of sales were preorders) we were told we would get TWO years of patches and DLC and after one year we haven't heard about anything else coming. Since the goal for Attilla is February, there maybe one or two more releases for Rome II but i certainly don't think they're going to live up to the two full years of support they promised. Also soon after release they said they would be releasing one patch per week and they were never able to keep that promise either. Many of the cut features they we've begged for to be readded to Rome II (and were told were not possible) are now being added to BI2 and being sold as a separate game. So it is obvious they could easily add these features to Rome II but choose not to because they think it will sell more copies of BI2. They think no matter how much they lie and release subpar products we are going to keep buying their games, and obviously there are some who will but they are losing the majority of their fan base. Quit getting caught up at the terminology CA use for different pieces of the game they have slowly delivered a year after us buying them, look at the total value we've gotten for the total amount of money we've paid, Rome II is a disappointment to the vast majority of those who have bought it.

[LestaT]

Don't worry. There'll be 3 more DLCs planned.

https://steamdb.info/app/214950/dlc/

[daelin4]

If you're a veteran then you'll probably already realized that Total War series lifetimes (before they release a new product) is between 12 months to 18 months on average. However Rome II is already more than average with nearly 2 years in development (if Attila is release September 2015).

STW - June 2000
STW:MI - August 2001
MTW - August 2002
MTW:VI - May 2003
RTW - September 2004
RTW:BI - September 2005
RTW:Alexander - June 2006
M2TW - November 2006
M2TW:Kingdoms - March 2007
ETW - March 2009
NTW - February 2010
TWS2 - March 2011
TWS2:FotS - March 2012
TWR2 - September 2013
TWA - ??? 2015

It seems to me that as time went by, the growth in technology and creative possibilities did not scale well with the time needed to make them work, and presumably in conjunction with the size of the developer teams. One year between the first shogun and medieval is one thing, but one year between Warscape titles? Especially if there were glaring issues left over from the previous one?
It doesn't seem to me like they have adapted at a corporate/ company level to deal with the complexities behind ever larger, ever more detailed games. Not saying a larger pool of manpower inherently equals better game (there is the issue of management and communication), but there comes a point where a two-man team can't deal with ever-increasing expectations and features promised. A good team that is small can only deliver so much. I feel that might be the case for later Total War titles: whatever intentions and effort put in, it's still lacking. Perhaps CA should have hired some more guys to make things possible.

As for patches, that deals with technical elements, not functional. It's like ordering a desk from IKEA but instead you got a broken dinner table. Fixing it is one thing, that it's not even the product we wanted is another. In this analogy I'd prefer a broken desk. On issues like family tree, I for one never got the feeling that CA should have had the perception that the TW community despised the idea, despite it being such a long-standing element of Total War experience. The only way it makes sense that they took that away, is if they had other plans, plans that did not depend on the consumer base's opinion. It would be like asking the community if they want Warhammer, and 95% say yes, and then they release a game called Medieval III. And it doesn't have kings. No amount of patches will solve that.

[Doktor Soviet]

Don't really care much for the update. What called my attention was one of the comments in the youtube comment section:

"That's precisely what a serious historical simulator with a hardcore fan base needs - Halloween buffoonery! "

When I read the bolded parts, I cringed. With such a pretentious playerbase, It's no wonder why so many of us try to claim superiority over other gamers.

I agree. The amount of whining in this thread is ridiculous.

If you feel like this update was a waste of resources, well, there is an argument to be made there for sure, but to say that this somehow "ruins" Rome II as a "tactical military simulator" is just pretentious posturing. It is absurd to see how knee-jerk this forum is whenever CA does... well, anything.

All I am saying is that you guys are mighty entitled. The fact that we are still getting updates post Emperor Edition, even if they just are some goofy little editions for Halloween, is a godsend. If I was making this game and you people were the fanbase, I wouldn't have even rolled out patch 15 because between all the complaining and whining that "this franchise is dead" or "CA doesn't care", you miss the fact that they wouldn't have spent their time making this update if they didn't care.

If you don't like it then you don't like it, but seriously, CA is trying to do something nice, and you people complain that it wasn't the right kind of "nice". That would be like me giving you a box of dark chocolates and you complaining that they weren't white chocolates.

[texoman81]

I agree. The amount of whining in this thread is ridiculous.

If you feel like this update was a waste of resources, well, there is an argument to be made there for sure, but to say that this somehow "ruins" Rome II as a "tactical military simulator" is just pretentious posturing. It is absurd to see how knee-jerk this forum is whenever CA does... well, anything.

All I am saying is that you guys are mighty entitled. The fact that we are still getting updates post Emperor Edition, even if they just are some goofy little editions for Halloween, is a godsend. If I was making this game and you people were the fanbase, I wouldn't have even rolled out patch 15 because between all the complaining and whining that "this franchise is dead" or "CA doesn't care", you miss the fact that they wouldn't have spent their time making this update if they didn't care.

If you don't like it then you don't like it, but seriously, CA is trying to do something nice, and you people complain that it wasn't the right kind of "nice". That would be like me giving you a box of dark chocolates and you complaining that they weren't white chocolates.

The belief that only praise should be given to CA and any criticism is "whining" is ridiculous. Stop coming at this from the angle that they are doing us favors in anyway. They are a business that are trying to sell us the games they made. They have made some attempts to appease their unsatisfied customer in hopes that we will buy future games and DLC. Looking at each patch you can see where some improvements were made, but when you look at the "definitive" EE, it doesn't stack up to previous games in the series. The reason they are doing all the patching is because they know the claims that the franchise is dying are true. They will never get the number of pre-orders they did on Rome ii, they have to improve their games to stay in business. We pre-ordered this game based on the promises, claims, faked images and video before release. CA is simply trying to get the game closer to what we ordered that they have been unable to provide. We were also told that the game would be supported with updates and DLC for TWO YEARS after release and that is part of what we already paid for, not something additional being given for free. That was why i felt confident in preordering. The track record of the total war series and the promise of 2 years of patches made me confident i would be satisfied with this game.

The reason this "nice" thing ruins the game is partially because this is supposed to be based in history. Comparing former Total War games to the new ones is like comparing Lincoln starring DanielDay-Lewis to Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. They are turning the Total War series into something very different from what it used to be. Total War is a series of history based games. They have Alien for fantasy and there in no need to mix fantasy into the history.

[68 Powers]

I don't know why anyone is even surprised they did something so useless and stupid.
They made Rome 2 didn't they? Enough said, that should tell you everything you need to know about this company, Useless.
Don't buy Atillia, don't buy games from them ever because this is all you get.

If you want a REAL Total war experience, go buy Rome 1 and install Roma Surrectum/SPQR/RTR and you will get your moneys worth and much much more.
This new face of the company is crap and they will only make crap.

[alQamar]

When talking about IKEA. You get a 10 years warranty for your kitchen furnitures but cannot expect to return defective things, because they change parts and style - "enhancement by replacement philosophy"
This happens to glass doors with aluminum frames I had, handles and many other things. They do not even care about that the things you return does not f.. fit into the existing environment.
This is just an analogy to games and the loosy quality. Some games come out quite rubbish, e.g. F1 2011 and you do not get a SINGLE patch but all enhancements and fixes are in the next product F1 2012 and so on. Same for the consumer backup product Acronis Trueimage.

It's a mad strategy.

[Ataegina]

really? people are for a free update that is optional.......... god forgive if they make something free with THEIR RESOURCES AND TIME!!! its time to be adults and grow up here, they dont owe us free units or free content, they sold us a product with good things and bad things, everyone had the option to buy or not buy and also we don't OWN Creative Assembly to keep saying what they should or shouldnt do, what we can do is vote with our wallets and get it or leave it, but is pointless after an year keep crying and complaining for having support and free content...... seriously guys.....