The Reason People are Still Upset About Rome Total War II

[TheLastRonin]

Lately more and more people seem to be shocked by why people are still upset by Rome Total War II so I created this thread to give one opinion as to why people are still righteously outraged.

First of all... The lies...

This:



is what we were shown.

This is what we got:



I'm not just talking graphics here... There is a clear lack of polish in the 'finished' product that was deliberately buried by outrageous marketing. BUT THEY HAVE PUT OUT 9 PATCHES!! I hear someone cry out... Since when did the fact that a game needs more than NINE PATCHES worth of work upon release become a badge of honor? Also regarding the patching...



You can put new coats of paint on the car but it's still a useless piece of trash without the wheels... Rome Total War II has serious fundamental problems with its core design... No amount of patches... Not 9... Not 900 will fix these issues... They are so tied into the framework of the game that fixing them would require a total rewrite... For example the game is clearly very, very poorly optimized even with most modern graphical features scrapped such as anti-aliasing.

Lastly rather than actually learn from the disaster that was Rome Total War II Creative Assembly deciding to further spurn their customers have decided to go full casual with their next title... Freemium Crap called 'Total War Arena' that shrugs off any and all vestiges of historical plausibility for mixed era battles...



They do not care about you... They have not learned from their mistakes and their one concern is our wallets... That is not the kind of company I can get behind... And it's not the kind of company I would hope you would want to get behind . Unless something drastic happens Total War as we knew it is dead with Rome Total War II serving as its tombstone.

[christianx]

You are of course entitled to you opinion, but I for one, completely respectfully disagree.

[Jean=A=Luc]

You are of course entitled to you opinion, but I for one, completely respectfully disagree.

Completely? Like 100%? Literally nothing in the OP is true you say? Bugger...

[von stoker]

blah blah blah.
this is what we got:

[TheLastRonin]

blah blah blah.
this is what we got:

So you don't read the post (because if you did you'd know it's not all about graphics) and then you post a picture which is clearly using the GEM mod. Kthx no...

Or in words that may be more easily understood by you...

Blah, blah, blah thank you for further proving my point, blah.

[TheLastRonin]

Some more problems that 'one guy' had:











But next you'll tell me these are not bugs right? These are FEATURES! Zombies and landships! Best features ever.

[emperor77]

All the bugs and glitches aside, this game sucks by design.

[IlluminatiRex]

Many of those bugs have since been fixed.

[jamreal18]

Some more problems that 'one guy' had:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

These are FEATURES! Landships! Best features ever.

Now I understand why armies can cross seas instantly...

[TheLastRonin]

Many of those bugs have since been fixed.

Would you buy a car with no wheels, no steering column, no brake-pads, no windows and no seats for full price if the owner promised he'd fix all the problems in a year (via small patches of work at a time)?

Would you be happy when after the year was up the car was only half fixed?

... No? Oh...

Funny that.

Oh and the game is so 'fixed' that here are some threads from the main page here at TWC:

Sieges - Mine are still broken

End turn freeze

Has Rome 2 Vanilla now reached the level of Rome 1 Vanilla (64% say it's still worse with 10% saying it's reached the same level after patching as an almost decade old game).

Blow up the sun already!

CA is joking us people with capable hardware - updated with patch 9 results

Formation Width Fix Request For CA

Will the Phalanx ever be fixed?

[TheDarkKnight]

Off topic, insulting, and otherwise unnecessary posts have been removed.

Remain on topic

[TheLastRonin]

Edited out.

[IlluminatiRex]

Ronin, I was addressing the post that you made 3 posts above mine. Above all, not all of those threads you linked to are about bugs. Some of them are about complaints about specific design features. Calling those bugs is laughable.

[TheLastRonin]

Ronin, I was addressing the post that you made 3 posts above mine. Above all, not all of those threads you linked to are about bugs. Some of them are about complaints about specific design features. Calling those bugs is laughable.

Calling being able to burn down a solid metal gate a feature is laughable. That's what's laughable.

[IlluminatiRex]

There is no denying it is a feature though, nothing to laugh at. It's simply a fact of the game, a design choice.

[Friar Chris]

I think there's too much focus on simple bugs such as facial expressions, ships on land etc. Where are the screenshots of:

• AI throwing all infantry at gates with torches (Patch 9
• AI DROPPING ACTUAL SIEGE EQUIPMENT to do the above (Patch 9)
• AI derping out because the tactical map has a river crossing on it, and standing its units scattered in random locations around the map completely stationary. When it's 'attacking'. (Patch 9)
• Hoplite Phalanx (renamed 'Hoplite Wall' because no fix...) and Shield Walls standing in jagged lines with huge gaps in them admitting large amounts of slingshots and arrows (and enemy infantry!) into the fleshy rows behind... (Patch 9)
• Naval battles being utterly pointless because free insta-build transports are the most powerful things on the sea. (Patch 9)
• Javelin skirmishers being the most powerful unit type in the game, because they have so much AP that even an 'Armoured Legionary' testudo dies horribly to them (Patch 9)
• 'Armoured Legionaries' even being a thing, instead of having armour upgrades represented visually?
• Javelin skirmishers also being damned cheap and numerous (Patch 9)
• Javelin skirmishers on naval vessels being unstoppable engines of destruction, whilst also being the cheapest, most numerous and earliest available naval vessels (Patch 9)
• Testudos being nearly worthless anyway because any enemy with even a slight view on their sides can massacre every man with the weakest of arrows (Patch 9)
• Bastion Siege Equipment not being in-game since release, still not in-game (Patch 9)
• Bastion Siege Equipment being pointless anyway because AI can't siege, and won't siege because it prefers to rush down a fortified settlement on the same turn as their army arrives. With torches. (Patch 9)
• Ambush Fireballs still not being in-game since release, because CA can't fix half the exciting features they trailered pre-release whilst they're ?busy with DLC? (Patch 9)
• The Campaign AI being so woefully inadequate that single-settlement tribes are given in excess of 1000% of their economy in hidden compensation to make the game 'challenging' on Very Hard. More in legendary.*
• Cavalry no longer charging correctly because Patch 9 changes to their mass means only the first rank of a cavalry formation can actually impact an enemy correctly. (Patch 9)
• Enemies still sit absolutely still when being massacred by ranged attacks - whether archers, javelinmen or artillery, they 'rotate' their units into the line of fire so that, ludicrously, they manage to get all of their available units damaged by ranged fire. (Patch 9)

I could quite literally go on for the next hour until the list was a huge block of text that was probably bigger than the programming block for all the AI in Rome II combined, but I think you get the picture. I started putting '(Patch 9)' on the end of things to emphasize which things were either new, or still not fixed despite being long-standing problems, by patch 9, then I realised towards the end that it was PRACTICALLY EVERYTHING.




*Inb4 'happens in all strategy games' - yes, it does - but not to this ludicrous scale where the AI can build twice as many units per province as the player, plays up to 50% less upkeep and recruitment and has hugely disproportionate swathes of free money. I've done some minor programming work and lots of modding work for games before, and I can tell you: the sheer SCALE of the hidden bonuses to minor AI in Rome II is unfathomably huge. They utterly shocked me - these hidden bonuses are usually used to 'tweak' up an AI to be on par with inevitably smarter humans. As it stands, they're not tweaked up to compensate for human intelligence, they're MULTIPLIED by a factor of something crazy like 5-6 or more, and I can only assume the AI simply lacks the programming to fight better on its own.

[Hoplite of Ilis]

They do not care about you... They have not learned from their mistakes and their one concern is our wallets... That is not the kind of company I can get behind... And it's not the kind of company I would hope you would want to get behind . Unless something drastic happens Total War as we knew it is dead with Rome Total War II serving as its tombstone.

I'm totaly convinced that this game will never be fixed. It's not about the game anymore - it never was. This is about CA's attitude you mention. They knew they would make money just by anouncing Rome 2. That's disrespectful to the fans. Is the way it's going to be for TW(?) games? You want drastic? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfol_TLLnIw - nice songs they got

[TheCenturion24]

It's not just the bugs, people whom seem to enjoy Rome II. It's the DESIGN. Don't compare Empire to this either; sure, it can compare in bugs on release. Hell, even sieges (though they actually work better) are still buggy. But Empire wasn't a sequel to a game. It could be what it wanted. Rome II was SUPPOSED to be a new version of Rome I; they failed completely, and hence why so many still dislike the game.

[pyj99]

Rome II was SUPPOSED to be a new version of Rome I; they failed completely, and hence why so many still dislike the game.

I think thats the whole point

Nobody ever said that R2 was supposed to be a new version of Rome 1 with better graphics

It is a TW game set in the same area that´s very different

If you had come to this game with this a priori you could be very satisfied now

Not at release of couese but Now the game is very good

And our point is that we don't uderstand while so many upset people in THAT forum STilL

Because elsewhere things have calmed down

[MemphisRex]

Oh look! zFilthy rich kid here. Many had that problem.