Creative Assembly Business Practice Discussion Thread (Rome II)

[Durnaug]

Well, they pissed away their 40% budget on mocap animations, Brian Blessed, cinematic trailers, and wining and dining the media down on HBO's Rome set. And as others have said, despite the budget, CA designed a terrible campaign game that was scandalously bad at release

Yup. I regard the original release as a scam in that they promised something they knew the Warscape Engine could not deliver at that point. The EE is okay but still feels like a fix.

[WoollyMammoth]

How will the new Steam refund policy effect CA business practices, when looking at problem releases like Rome 2? Could it bankrupt CA if tens of thousands of people ask for a refund if a release like Empire/ Rome 2 occurs again? Look at the hype for Warhammer. CA still appears to be chasing the carrot, and hanging on to its own ride, running down hill. When CA wants to sell a product they are all over the place "loving the customer". However, when it cames to support afterwards there is much more silence in communication, and waiting for patches, looking at Atilla. The fact then, in the case of Rome II, that so many patches were needed, and the game is different from the expansion, well that raises needed questions as well.

Interesting vlog on this subject by Totalbiscuit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPUToCNq-iA

There should be a (European) law which as long as a game publisher sells a game they should be obliged to fix bugs that effect customers? The fact that (some) software companies don't do this, and think they are part of some other laws then consumer laws, well then that should be clarified. Allowing for things such as new operating systems could become mission impossible for game developers, but for the sake of argument let's look at in-game bugs alone. How about showing a list of bugs before the game is released, or when you buy the title, so a customer knows what they are getting into?

I do hope, CA, takes all the feedback as a learning situation, and not as a way to look for loop holes, and keeps listening to its customers. For example to this day, a number of people warned about Atilla being a stand alone, and how will CA incorporate that?

Why not back port Atilla into Rome (for a price), a number of people would love it, and it would breath love and life into the series. Whereas playing Rome II, one wishes they had the stuff from Atilla, and playing Atilla one wishes for love that was giving to Rome II eventually.

Corporate companies can take time to turn around. Will the course set out for CA turn around in time to save the franchise? Or will the franchise (and company) lose out? Looking at Arena as well. Will CA bank everything on Warhammer and titles like Alien? Leaving the historical total war in the past?

CA needs to scratch its head, that pushing limits and not 'just reskinning', may at times be pushing the envelop too much, and putting too much pressure on getting a proper release. Rome II would have been (even more) awesome if it build more upon Shogun 2, reskinning units, and focussing more on gameplay and A.I., what in essence Atilla intends to do.

It's a shame CA responds so little in threads like these, and not with the same enthousiasm, compared to spending it's time promoting new total war titles and DLC. Is CA losing credibility, and more importantly how do they get it back? What needs to change for improvement to happen?

[Dago Red]

The Total Warhammer announcement is hilarious. I hope all those doods who didn't believe it was real 2 years ago when we told them, really got their eyes opened. Was there any acknowledgement of the pitiful excuse for a TW game that was Rome 2 when they came out with the info dump? Will that fantasy job actually deliver a real gaming engine?

[Abdülmecid I]

No, TW will keep being based on the Warhammer engine (TW3 to be more precise). Honestly, I don't think that CA plans to change the engine in the immediate future, so we're in a circle of revolution-evolution-evolution again-a bit more of evolution-some evolution more-still evolving-....

[Atlas5515]

To bring a completely unrelated concept into this, it is like the Stagnation-Competition-RMA cycle, where we are just moving from stagnation to competition. The technological change after shogun/rome(the original RMA) hasn't really been that great, and hasn't really changed throughout the series. Rome 2 actually picks up the pace a little, because of competition from others in the genre. Rome 2 iirc moves away from the more simplistic mathematical models that have been a mainstay for the entire series, especially in projectile warfare which actually models the projectiles instead of just showing you something pretty flying through the air while the kill determination has already been made. However, I don't think the change is really noticeable.

What I think everyone was hoping for was an RMA on scale with how the first Rome felt (if you didn't play Shogun, and maybe even if you did). And that's why I think so many people were disappointed. That being said, I am considering EE as the actual game, just like Gold Edition for Rome 1. The horribleness that was Rome 2 at launch is a completely different topic. About how CA tricked everyone into playing what amounted to a paid alpha and then charging for fixes and features that should have been included in the base game.

[Dago Red]

Rome 2 iirc moves away from the more complex mathematical models that have been a mainstay for the entire series, especially in projectile warfare which actually models the projectiles instead of just showing you something pretty flying through the air while the kill determination has already been made. However, I don't think the change is really noticeable.

That needed a fix for clarity. You're right, the warscape engine (especially RomeII, there may have been some leftovers in Empire at least) abandons all the real gaming engine calculations under the hood, in favor of synthetic approximations. But the change is more than noticeable, it's what fundamentally breaks the game, and it's way beyond projectiles....

The fake veneer you recognize extends to all weapons. If you play the current beta for EB II (built on M2TW) you'll find real secondary weapons and side arms for units. In R2 when phalanx (for example) switch to short swords, they're not really there -- you just see cosmetic swords+animations, but they still wield 21-foot long sarissas for all purposes within the engine. It's absurd. There's no zone of control like before where you could manipulate terrain and position amries strategically on the map, and even if you get lucky, the AI just turns on its hyperdrive and transforms into a magic sailboat to go leagues around your silly set up. Thermopylae? Not in R2!. And then, when you actually get to battle outside of a town or city (rare), the game gives you some random template for the region, not the actual spot with the actual terrain that exists there -- in in the former games. It's all fake.