Response to SEGA/CA "apology"

[King Philip II]

Just a few facts before you all get your knickers in a twist:

Mike Simpson is the Creative Director in CA. I'm not sure what that means in a game studio environment using the SCRUM project management methodology, but I sure as hell know where the chips land in any other project based governance environment ... and it's not on the Project Managers table. The steering commitee/project board or whatever they call themselves are responsible as they "own" the budget.

Mike Simpson: http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/09/09/to...-unacceptable/

He also commented that "open beta's could be the way forward" http://www.incgamers.com/2013/09/cre...forward-series

Please read the second apology made on Total War forums by Mr. Simpson. I especially noted one sentence: we'll work together with fans to understand the issues they have with game-play. WUT. What have we been doing on TWC for the last couple of years? I'm sure Lusted is polishing his CV/Resume as we speak - I would.

[GM207]

Talk, Talk, and some More talk, lets see what happens

[nameless]

Just a few facts before you all get your knickers in a twist:

Mike Simpson is the Creative Director in CA. I'm not sure what that means in a game studio environment using the SCRUM project management methodology, but I sure as hell know where the chips land in any other project based governance environment ... and it's not on the Project Managers table. The steering commitee/project board or whatever they call themselves are responsible as they "own" the budget.

Mike Simpson: http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/09/09/to...-unacceptable/

He also commented that "open beta's could be the way forward" http://www.incgamers.com/2013/09/cre...forward-series

Please read the second apology made on Total War forums by Mr. Simpson. I especially noted one sentence: we'll work together with fans to understand the issues they have with game-play. WUT. What have we been doing on TWC for the last couple of years? I'm sure Lusted is polishing his CV/Resume as we speak - I would.

Uh TWC is probably the worst place to do it.

If you haven't paid attention a lot of the threads here are ridiculous (IE. Skin color is wrong, sandals aren't right, helments aren't proper, etc.)

In any case though with the increasing complexity of Total war games I don't think they have any other way to handle the problems that come out but to do closed Betas like Blizzard in order to find as many bugs as possible before release. There's just no way their Q&A teams can handle the workload.

[SirRobin]

If you haven't paid attention a lot of the threads here are ridiculous (IE. Skin color is wrong, sandals aren't right, helments aren't proper, etc.)

No, that's not what the threads are about at all, actually. I've been following the forum for about a week now to see how the new game got along, and haven't seen any threads about sandals and skin colour. The threads are mostly about game-breaking bugs and deep gameplay problems.

Also there are some problems about Roman fighting style etc. but I think that's quite a lot more important for a game about the Romans than their sandals.

[nameless]

No, that's not what the threads are about at all, actually. I've been following the forum for about a week now to see how the new game got along, and haven't seen any threads about sandals and skin colour. The threads are mostly about game-breaking bugs and deep gameplay problems.

Also there are some problems about Roman fighting style etc. but I think that's quite a lot more important for a game about the Romans than their sandals.

Well there you go. Compared to pre-launch and such the forum is a lot easier to read through now that people have been able to sift through and work out the rest of the game and we're able to focus on the actual problems. The fact that you admit you've only been following for a week now means that you didn't see all the crap that was around. The mods were working hard to try to keep the topics relevant

@nameless TWC is a really good place to let the publisher/developer know that you are not a happy bunny. Some of these threads with armour texture, weapons, sandals etc might not be important to you, but they are important to many TWC members. I for one hate that the Spartans are using 300-year old helmets - you might as well make them zombies. Correction: they already are

It's the most vocal sure but not something that should dictate how the game should be run. One person's historical accuracy is another person's historical inaccuracy. You've seen it yourself. One person posts a historical inaccuracy, then CA posts their source, then other members posts their own sources..well you get the picture. Heck we even got people complaining about things like why Romans don't have archers in this game?

[Toho]

Uh TWC is probably the worst place to do it.

If you haven't paid attention a lot of the threads here are ridiculous (IE. Skin color is wrong, sandals aren't right, helments aren't proper, etc.)

You are talking about PrometheusTS and 2 or 3 other guys. tops.
please don't generalize all of us. somethings we take issues with and so far for most of them we have been right on the money... like the god awful UI that has you searching for the damn tech tree.

I have yet to find the military traditions one. I have been playing these games for a long time, If I have trouble finding it then what about the new players?

[Faith]

Uh TWC is probably the worst place to do it.

If you haven't paid attention a lot of the threads here are ridiculous (IE. Skin color is wrong, sandals aren't right, helments aren't proper, etc.)

In any case though with the increasing complexity of Total war games I don't think they have any other way to handle the problems that come out but to do closed Betas like Blizzard in order to find as many bugs as possible before release. There's just no way their Q&A teams can handle the workload.

where is this "increasing complexity" you speak of?

[SirRobin]

Well, I will believe it when I see it.

[King Philip II]

True indeed. However, we're all working for something we all agree on (more or less).

[Jester]

I especially noted one sentence: we'll work together with fans to understand the issues they have with game-play. WUT. What have we been doing on TWC for the last couple of years?

This!

i said it before and i say it again: with every new gameplay video people expressed their concern about the battle speed and they didnt listen or care one bit!

what was so hard to understand that we want slower, more simulation-like battles? it was an unambiguous and massive message to CA

[Legion_IX]

This is really something what I still can't understand. So CA wants to listen to their fans. What the did they done the whole time before? There were so many of clear and valid points mentioned in this community. Nearly everything was completely ignored by CA. Why?

[Humble Warrior]

This is really something what I still can't understand. So CA wants to listen to their fans. What the did they done the whole time before? There were so many of clear and valid points mentioned in this community. Nearly everything was completely ignored by CA. Why?

It`s really very simple.

I was there when they had that whole `listen to their fans` thing many posters sticking up ideas, many good. How much of that was listened to?

Maybe Ca didn`t notice it. Ok then consider this:

Then they made especially nice looking cool reviews of the actual game in play or so we were told. This was pushed at us again and again with members of CA bald facedly SHOWING us how the AI, graphics, etc would work from the actual game like it was true.

But none of that actually happened in the game gamers got.

Now during this whole time, our Mr. simpson and NO ONE else of the CA staff saw that nothing was wrong? How?

Now, after the game has sold hugely through propaganda, and seeing there`s a further market in their planned DLCS to be had, we see, Mr. Simpson comes up with this statement of `Oh dear, we`re so, so sorry. They`re things we didn`t notice/realise/understand that the people want. We want a new further dialogue!`

What???


There are only two possible reasons for this: CA are totally incompetent, which I don`t believe.

Or they lied, knowingly.

I really don`t like having to call people liars, and seriously i`m not the kind of guy to do that unless there is no other explanation. A lie is a lie. And no, marketing does not absolve it.

[Crymson]

This is really something what I still can't understand. So CA wants to listen to their fans. What the did they done the whole time before? There were so many of clear and valid points mentioned in this community. Nearly everything was completely ignored by CA. Why?

CA is one of the worst offenders in a market full of companies with terrible game support. Their history of buggy releases, laziness, and general negligence is well-established. At this point, after seeing it happen so many times, it's almost our own faults for allowing ourselves to be duped yet again.

[King Philip II]

@nameless TWC is a really good place to let the publisher/developer know that you are not a happy bunny. Some of these threads with armour texture, weapons, sandals etc might not be important to you, but they are important to many TWC members. I for one hate that the Spartans are using 300-year old helmets - you might as well make them zombies. Correction: they already are

Q&A teams will do what they are assigned to do, but if you cut them short then you get: ROME II quality games.

[King_Porus]

If you really want something to be heard, do it on the official forums. They have staff on 24/7 right now just dealing with issues. If you haven't noticed, Lusted is basically just a ceremonial "ambassador" who will pop in on threads every once in a while, but he isn't everywhere at once and even when he is around it's usually to respond to one of Prometheus' many threads.

[GM207]

[QUOTE=King_Porus;13248619]If you really want something to be heard, do it on the official forums. They have staff on 24/7 right now...

Yeah sure, just like they did with Empire right?... we'll talk again, when all the dust settles.
I am just pissed off man, sorry if I sound bitter, but I am sure many are including you.
Angry people rebell... right??
or better yet, THEE BEST TOTAL WAR GAME EVER!!!??????
is'nt that what it was said about the game, lie after lie, and now you expect to beleive that crap.
you can only cry wolf so many times, but then after a while no one will beleive you.
Again sorry if sound a bit angry there, but I paid my own hard earned money for this ...

[PT_ReVoLuTioN]

meh truth be told working with sega is pretty hard especially when you have a big and complex game in mind, they always find a way to screw you with a deadline and in the end CA is pretty much a group of people trying to earn their pay, im sure they told Sega that releasing rome 2 now would be a disaster but they had to do it anyway.
I think it would be better if they just left Sega asap and start looking for a new more reasonable publisher, which gets harder to do by each unfinished game they make.

[King Philip II]

Just for the record:

First apology: Title: "Sorry from CA" (extract)
...
Gameplay Issues
If you have concerns on the actual features and mechanics, like gameplay balancing and AI behaviour, we do want to hear about them. As mentioned before launch we absolutely intend to support ROME II post-release with plenty of content, further development and comprehensive balancing through-out – and no I’m not thinking of DLC you have to pay for. We have already planned for some very interesting stuff and we wanted to do that with advice from the community.

Please do keep posting your concerns, our code team are focussing on tech issues to get people playing, but our design teams are very aware of your concerns and are already looking at ways to add further options and rebalance aspects of the game.

You will see our community team dropping into threads to ask questions, please do chat to them, but even if you don’t see a response please do know that we look at the forums every day here and do appreciate what you have to say.

Thank you for reading,

Mike Simpson

http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...t-Happens-Next

;----------------------------------------------------
Second try: "Second Statement from CA re ...."

"Hi everyone,

We’ve just put up a hotfix that significantly improves campaign map frame-rate on a variety of hardware combinations that were getting frame rates less than 15 fps. It took us until Monday to get a case of this happening in the studio, but it was a very simple fix, so we’ve decided to put it out as a single issue patch. This bug was introduced very late in the process, but we absolutely should have found and fixed it before release.

This release has obviously not gone as planned for some people, and I want to apologise to everyone out there who had issues with the game, whether they were hardware issues or disappointment in the performance of game features. We obviously don’t plan to release a game with any bugs, performance and AI issues. How this has happened is something we’re beginning to post mortem in detail now.

Fortunately, the same tech that gave us the rope to work on the game right up to release lets us keep working on it after it’s out, and the flaws in the game are mostly just bugs, not structural defects. We can and will get the game to where we wanted it to be for everyone.

The top priority is stability and performance – both frame rates in battle and campaign, and end of turn times and loading times. Then gameplay spoilers – AI flaws and exploits, balancing tweaks and the level of challenge on higher difficulties. Then minor bugs, lesser features that really didn’t pan out, UI improvements, and longer term adjustments to features and systems that could be better. Because there are a lot of us working in parallel there will be a mixture of different priority fixes in each patch. Much of this work would be part of the usual planned improvements we would make to our games post-launch anyway, but we are aware that they have now taken on extra significance and importance.

We have a major improvement to end of turn times in the pipeline, along with around 100 fixes in the next patch. We have another 100 or so fixes already being tested for the patch after that. At this point the limiting factor on getting issues fixed in patches is not our ability to fix issues, it’s our ability to test them and guarantee that we don’t repeat past mistakes by putting a patch out that breaks something new. We’ll also be putting each patch up as a beta you can opt in to before releasing it. It’s our aim to continue patching more or less weekly until all the bugs are dealt with.

Then we can start the kind of dialogue we always want to be having with the community – which new features you like, which you don’t like, which deleted features from previous games you really miss and so on. That’s a good conversation to be having, and since it’s our intention not to fall in to the trap of just re-skinning the previous game each time, it’s one that hopefully you’ll be having for years to come.

Lastly, I’m hoping we can fundamentally treat our releases differently in the future. Long open betas are the way things are going, and while that model hasn’t been compatible with the way Total War has been built to date, that could be the way forward.

Mike Simpson
Creative Director
Creative Assembly"

http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...1-Sep-2013%29?

Edit: my reason for explaining Mr. Simpsons role in my first post is two-fold: (1) why is he taking the blame for something he has no control over (i.e. he does NOT own the budget) and (2) Why the frack does he do it a second time (undisclosed amount of sweet bonus $$$ might be an incentive).

Conclusion: the gaming industry need to mature. More suits and less long hair. Currently it's just amateurs playing around with peoples livelyhood. Just saying.

[King Philip II]

@king_porus I think you're wrong. CA is monitoring TWC - if they are not, then they are even more incompetent than I already believe they are. Lusted was a very reputable modder here on TWC for many years and I'm sure that there is a good reason they made him head of unit stats. However, if you try to make sense of business decisions then you should read the first line in the OP.

However, rest assured, i'll promote this thread on Twitter if we get some good comments.

@PT_Revolution (1) CA does not have the option to leave SEGA. SEGA owns CA. (2) Why is everyone talking about complex game design? Screw that, try being a software engineer in .......... (insert industry)

[AlyssaFaden]

KPII: you said yourself that you do not know what a Creative Director does and then immediately attribute him to a PM role. They are completely and utterly different.

The Creative VISION for a piece of software - and that includes User Experience, Information Architecture, GUI, and Functional Requirements - all fall under the Creative Directors domain. I can absolutely see why he is the one making the public apology.

Granted this is a team effort and no one person is responsible here, but I can see why he is being the one to deliver the message.

As an aside, a Project Manager would be the one to ensure that a timeline has the correct phases, deliverables and milestones, and that each is being met correctly. A PM would also be the one to ensure that the final product meets specifications AND that an adequate QC phase is performed/all sign-offs obtained. Also while the PM does not originate the budget,t he PM is in control of the budget: they are responsible for it, because they have to ensure that it is not exceeded.