CA jumps the shark

[rainkloud]

So I wake up this morning to find out that I had been banned from the forums for making the following post regarding the decision of CA not to update the campaign for 1.3:

"The guy who made that decision should follow this guys example"

*Link to story*

The story is about the president of the Chinese company accused of having toxic levels of lead in their toys and how he committed suicide. Now 99% of people would realize that this was a metaphor. Not the .com mods though! Massala Corvinus sends me a letter saying that I'm banned for wanting "CA employees dead." Yeah you caught me! I want the whole CA staff to off themselves Jonestown style! Really?

Then to top things off they're closing all threads there about the 1.3 patch. They might as well just put a big sign on the front page reading:

SHUT UP AND BUY KINGDOMS!

For those not in the know: Patch 1.3 will not fix any of the problems on the grand campaign. Don't like the AI making asinine decisions? Suck it up and deal with it tough guy. Want to have your general's bodyguard upgraded to late general's bodyguard? Not in this patch you won't! The best part is they wait FIVE months after this decision is made to tell us about it. NICE!

I hope everyone will vote with their dollars or (enter your currency here) and remember that every purchase of Kingdoms reinforces this behavior.

[Roman Rapper]

Am I right in saying the 1.3 patch will be released with the expansion and not before? When is the expansions release date?

[crazyj]

I might be a little obtuse, but I don't exactly see the "metaphoric" quality of your statement. Saying basically "the prez of CA should do this" >> link to suicide isn't the most articulate way of expressing yourself. Granted, you put the smiley face in so I'd take it with a grain of salt. But I learned it's better to not give somebody an excuse to take you literally and give you the douche.

[Nebuchadnezzar]

Well, totalwar.com are banning across the board and for a lot less than what you said.

Wikiman wrote: You really have to walk a mile in a dev studios 'shoes' to get an understanding of the demands of game production.

On a difficultly scale of 1 to 10, if 1 equals getting 5 people all to agree on the same movie in a video library and 10 equals launching a space shuttle, it is definitely a 9. Now we all know that five people in a video library can never agree so I hope that gives you some idea of how difficult it is!

Oh come now! You don't seriously think that pc games devs are the only ones that have high demanding jobs with unrealistic deadlines while the rest of the world cruises down easy street? There are many who say your jobs are the opposite with nothing but playing games all day long lol

Wikiman wrote: Whether we made it or not I won't comment on, it cannot be proven either way except in the extremes. You either do not get a single person complaining (we all know that didn't happen) or every single thread is in uproar and the game returns are through the roof. This didn't happen either.

We all know pc games can't be returned. Maybe if they could you may have got a more clearer picture.

Wikiman wrote: I know you probably don't want to hear it, but Kingdoms has had even more testing and process applied to it to ensure it is in a better state for release than Med 2. I will eat my words if the consensus doesn't agree.

But they said the very same thing about M2TW except this time you forgot to add how much the AI has been improved and the all new diplomacy options with added welcoming message "Hello dear and noble ally" for diplomats blah blah blah...

Like everyone else I just want the game fixed and balanced. I don't need Kingdoms. Keep it=ban

[Kalos]

Yeah, screw kingdoms. I'm having enough fun with Rome, and once we finish our mod it's going to make Medieval 2 actually worth playing.

[SonOfCrusader76]

Yeah, screw kingdoms. I'm having enough fun with Rome, and once we finish our mod it's going to make Medieval 2 actually worth playing.

Are you working on a 'Rome' mod for MTW2?

The fact that this 1.3 "patch" does nothing apart from making Kingdoms compatible with M2 on multiplayer(how many people plays that anyway?) tells us something about CA.
The little faith I had left in CA is steadily melting away.
I'm now pretty sure that they are never going to releaser any more patch after 1.3.
I really really hope a new company will appear that can compete with CA.

What I want is for CA/Sega to grab the LotR licence from EA!

Please use the edit feature instead of double posting. Thanks.

~Sher Khan

[Kalos]

Are you working on a 'Rome' mod for MTW2?



What I want is for CA/Sega to grab the LotR licence from EA!

Please use the edit feature instead of double posting. Thanks.

~Sher Khan

Almost. I'm part of an Ancient Greece mod, I've got links to our main forums in my signature.

[rainkloud]

Are you serious? I'm familiar with your post. That's outrageous! This is really turning into a debacle here. Has anyone else had a similar experience?

*The metaphor was suicide = someone taking extreme responsibility for their actions. If they don't like the post they can delete it but to ban is simply draconian. I'm advocating responsibility not suicide just to be clear.

[sumaznguy]

*The metaphor was suicide = someone taking extreme responsibility for their actions. If they don't like the post they can delete it but to ban is simply draconian. I'm advocating responsibility not suicide just to be clear.

Probably should have just said the message without the whole sucide thing.

[mightyfenrir]

Oh come now! You don't seriously think that pc games devs are the only ones that have high demanding jobs with unrealistic deadlines while the rest of the world cruises down easy street? There are many who say your jobs are the opposite with nothing but playing games all day long lol

It's like I've said before: people tell me that these people have ridiculously difficult jobs and I should respect them for being able to make a game or whatever, and I think it's crap. These people spell something in their game incorrectly and go "oops, our job is way too hard, don't blame us."

I'm sitting there thinking, "Gee, I taught you to spell, you went out into the real world, and couldn't spell. I devoted an entire year to your life trying to instill in you the idea of always checking all your work twice, backing it up with dictionaries when you weren't feeling sure, spell check on the computer and the skill to use that, grammatical exercises and everything else that comes with teaching one kid one full year in English and you have the nerve to tell me your job is too difficult to make sure you've corrected your mistakes?

"It isn't like that year I spent teaching just you, there were 110 kids in your graduating class and I was the only English teacher for your grade level; I had to repeat those directions 110 times a day 180 days that year plus grading papers, filing teacher's paperwork, procuring supplies for the classroom, ordering instructional materials, planning 180 days worth of lessons, and devoting a good deal of my free time to rechecking the understanding of all 110 kids and you're going to tell me that your 40 hour a week job is damn near too much for you to handle?"

At least that's how I feel when programmers say their work is so hard it's "almost like launching a space shuttle." I think a lot of the problems of today's world are that everyone has the "woe is me" bug. Everyone tells everyone else how hard their life is. Barry Bonds says he's under all kinds of pressure and people don't understand how difficult his life is. Paris Hilton whines about going to jail for three months for something that some people lose their license and go to jail for years for. Sometimes kids in my class tell me it's so hard being a teenager without a cellphone and how cruel their parents are for not buying them one. I do my fair share of *****ing too.

The thing with the patches is that they should be done right and things should be checked and double checked. I know that's hard and tedious and boring as hell. What I think is that they should finish the game, play it for a month during their work day and write down anything and everything that bugs them. Then take the major flaws and patch them up, release it to the public and take a survey every six months that's open to anyone that has registered the game and anyone that visits their site. Then they can correct the flaws they consider major at that time. Saying "oh, we released it and we fixed it twice already and that's the last patch you get until you buy the next $40 expansion" is equivalent to me saying "I gave you two lessons on it and you still messed up your homework, so you're just going to have to wait until I cover it again in review for the class."

I've said this a million times, but if I came up with excuses and didn't provide a finished to the best of his/her individual ability student at the end of the year I'd be fired whereas programmers seem to just release things that need fixing, don't fix them and expect us to just enjoy the game whether it's flawed or not. There's certainly no place for advocating suicide within the company ranks. I think the company just needs to take a page from Eastern philosophy concerning quality work as a representation of a person's worth to society and a page from Ubisoft who delayed the new Brothers in Arms an extra year to work out kinks they found.

[akd]

The thing with the patches is that they should be done right and things should be checked and double checked. I know that's hard and tedious and boring as hell. What I think is that they should finish the game, play it for a month during their work day and write down anything and everything that bugs them. Then take the major flaws and patch them up, release it to the public and take a survey every six months that's open to anyone that has registered the game and anyone that visits their site. Then they can correct the flaws they consider major at that time. Saying "oh, we released it and we fixed it twice already and that's the last patch you get until you buy the next $40 expansion" is equivalent to me saying "I gave you two lessons on it and you still messed up your homework, so you're just going to have to wait until I cover it again in review for the class."

Your extended school metaphor is completely fallacious. They are running a business, not a nonprofit. Your "CA was raised without proper morals and work ethics by their parents and here is how they should behave like good little children" line is also more than a little, well, arrogant and pedantic.

By the way, you do realize there are occasional typos and misspellings in some of the greatest works ever published, don't you? You don't actually teach your students that anything less than perfect is failure, do you?

[mightyfenrir]

Your extended school metaphor is completely fallacious. They are running a business, not a nonprofit. Your "CA was raised with proper morals by their parents and here is how they should behave like proper children" line is also more than a little, well, arrogant and pedantic.

By the way, you do realize there are occasional typos and misspellings in some of the greatest works ever published, don't you? You don't actually teach your students that anything less than perfect is failure, do you?

Actually I have to edit that... The part you put up there is how I'd run the business, putting forth my best product and striving for continuance of excellence. It's an opinion on how the game and patches should be released.

The point I was making was about jobs being difficult and saying that they need to go back and acknowledge mistakes and be willing to correct them, not just say, oh well, suffer and thanks for your money; I wasn't making any comparison of profit versus nonprofit. I guess I don't assume that it's arrogant to ask people to do their best and put forth their best work and effort, sorry. Looking at "pedantic" concerning book knowledge you have a point, but looking at it from the idea that CA should be paying attention to the small details I think is kind of the point. The small details form the larger details.

Typos in the "great works", by the way, are not necessarily from the authors anyhow, they usually come into play during typesetting which has nothing to do with the author. So that idea is sort of the same as CA not double checking all of their work much more than stating that the author messed up; which I'm sure they did. Teaching students that anything less than their best is what I believe I said I strive for at the end of the year.

provide a finished to the best of his/her individual ability student at the end of the year

That says nothing about being perfect nor does it mention that I expect them to be perfect. Try reading everything before making flippant responses. I acknowledge my shortcomings and I was simply advocating that CA acknowledge theirs as well as stating that I wish, in my opinion, that they would try to put out a high quality and as good as can be attained product before it goes onto the market.

[rainkloud]

Out of curiosity, how many of you would have paid $59.99 for the game had it not had all the bugs and AI difficulties?

[akd]

That says nothing about being perfect nor does it mention that I expect them to be perfect. Try reading everything before making flippant responses. I acknowledge my shortcomings and I was simply advocating that CA acknowledge theirs as well as stating that I wish, in my opinion, that they would try to put out a high quality and as good as can be attained product before it goes onto the market.

But you are making up your own definition of what CA's "best to their own ability" is and it seems this definition probably aligns with what you believe would make the game perfect/near perfect. What if CA has taken the game to point that is the best of their ability within the confines of economics? Talent is one component of ability, but resources is another. Until you can answer the resources side, you have no right to pass judgement on their ability.

[Sher Khan]

I suggest we drop this discussion on the moderating habits of another site. This certainly isn't the place for that, and their policy is yours to confront. That said, I wouldn't recommend trying the same stunt here and expecting a much different result.


I was under the impression that the 1.3 patch was meant solely as a way to make Kingdoms compatible with our retail copies of M2TW and not a general patch to fix bugs.


God knows how long they had to work on 1.2, the largest patch I have ever seen. People demanding that more patch work be done after that monster may get on my nerves if I was a dev.

I mean, it's not like they were busy with anything else (Kingdoms), right?

[rainkloud]

I suggest we drop this discussion on the moderating habits of another site. This certainly isn't the place for that, and their policy is yours to confront.

I have to disagree on the basis that this is a community website and that if .com is shunting its users based on criticisms of it's decisions then the community should be aware of that. They may agree or not but nonetheless should still be informed and be allowed to debate this. If you follow .com's precedent and censure discussion on this matter then you run the risk of becoming a propaganda tool for CA which is hopefully not your aim. My aim is not a debate about policy but instead a discussion on the merits of popping a surprise with the 1.3 patch and then suppressing feedback not adhering to "the company line." Please allow this thread to continue in the interests of open and civil debate.

People demanding that more patch work be done after that monster may get on my nerves if I was a dev.

As a professional you still get the job done. I don't doubt these guys and ladies worked extremely hard and had a grueling schedule but that's the norm in the industry and yet these jobs are still coveted. CA had options here. They could have delayed the release of Kingdoms until a patch was created. They also could have scaled back the Kingdoms project to perhaps two campaigns instead of four and spent the additional resources on the patch. Instead they chose the most customer unfriendly route of ignoring the majority of the community in order to make a quick buck. This is a clear case of some executive seeing $'s in his eyes and identifying the lack of competition and seizing upon it.

The bottom line to me is: Is it reasonable to expect a patch considering the current state of the game? When taking into account siege AI, battle AI, campaign AI, diplomacy and pathfinding just to name a few, I think the answer is a resounding yes. To be clear I don't expect things to run like clockwork but there is definitely a middle ground and 1.2 is a good ways away from it. The fact that 1.2 was 700 megs just goes to show you what a debacle the original release was and is certainly not something to be proud of.

[Sher Khan]

You may of course continue debating. This thread could have been closed at any time, but remains open because it is allowed, at the moment.

Just make sure to steer clear of using this thread as a soapbox to harangue the moderators on another forum. Please limit yourself to only discussing CA and the patch.

[Primvs Sextvs Loverlord]

You may of course continue debating. This thread could have been closed at any time, but remains open because it is allowed, at the moment.

Just make sure to steer clear of using this thread as a soapbox to harangue the moderators on another forum. Please limit yourself to only discussing CA and the patch.

Sir, Yes Sir!

[Juggernaut]

The fact that this 1.3 "patch" does nothing apart from making Kingdoms compatible with M2 on multiplayer(how many people plays that anyway?) tells us something about CA.
The little faith I had left in CA is steadily melting away.
I'm now pretty sure that they are never going to releaser any more patch after 1.3.
I really really hope a new company will appear that can compete with CA.

[Magic Man]

Im not really too bothered to be honest, i buy games because they are supposed to entertain me. If it entertains me, job done id say.