Did rampant greed and too much Multiplayer concern ruin CA`s Design sanity with RTW2?

[Humble Warrior]

I am becoming convinced that over-the-top need to fit childish multiplayer gaming and greed was a large basis for the destruction and deceptions of RTW2.


Bear with me a sec. Or don`t. It`s your choice.

Look at how things have gone since MTW2, more and more we`ve seen realistic elements (which weren`t even that realistic to life) have been dropped for ease of play, but more importantly to suit multi-players who don`t want to think. Now let me just say plenty of multiplayers like to game and think, some hard. I played in multiplayer strategy and FPS games in a team for many years where tactical strategy was the order of the day, team work and thinking and situational awareness were extremely important- We didn`t whine about snipers half a map away we killed them- We didn`t complain about an ME262 booming and zooming us, we avoided, waited for him to run out of fuel and shot him down.

But i`m talking about the KIND of multiplayer CA has aimed for has resulted partly in the slow decay of TW games that we see here...


Ships of the Line fired at ridiculously made up ranges that did not follow the real life of order of ship firing, archers with a greater firing range than rifles. much of this followed into Shogun too. Of course the bad sieges were part of the bad engine and incompetence, but it seemed CA thought it suited the `I don`t want to think` general MP crowd as well. There was the issue of MPers whining about `hill camping`...

Now we have a terribly stripped down RTW2 that seems designed for easy, no thinking MP that does nothing to emulate battlefield or siege warfare at all, especially on release, ie, the Flags, the speed, the arcade buttons, like an Unreal Tournament of Total War. Now I liked Unreal Tournament, it don`t belong in TW games though!

Even now, there are strange siege mechanics like the inability to charge into an open gate the AI opened by accident because a forcefield is there ( I think it`s a Flag issue too) which appears to affect the AI`s decision process too and often makes it half way abandon Towers at the walls to go for the gate instead. There`s the refusal to remove the stupid fire javelins, cavalry fire arrows (what other reason is there than to appeal to MP 10 year olds?)

To sum up, once, to deal with a mechanic CA, used to think `How do we fix this realistically, but also make it fun?` That`s where we got Shogun up to MTW2 - Then they started thinking, `How do we make this fun for multiplayer?` and that`s when the game started to fall apart. they need to keep REALITY as a FOUNDATION a BASE and they`ll succeed, otherwise, fail.

Of course, over-the-top greed was an overriding factor as well. They wanted to make sure they had a win\win super-pofit scenario just in case no one liked their game, in this heavy advertising, hype and Steam (guaranteed no refunds), were heavily used.

My musings.

[Durnaug]

I am becoming convinced that over-the-top need to fit childish multiplayer gaming and greed was a large basis for the destruction and deceptions of RTW2.


Bear with me a sec. Or don`t. It`s your choice.

Look at how things have gone since MTW2, more and more we`ve seen realistic elements (which weren`t even that realistic to life) have been dropped for ease of play, but more importantly to suit multi-players who don`t want to think. Now let me just say plenty of multiplayers like to game and think, some hard. I played in multiplayer strategy and FPS games in a team for many years where tactical strategy was the order of the day, team work and thinking and situational awareness were extremely important- We didn`t whine about snipers half a map away we killed them- We didn`t complain about an ME262 booming and zooming us, we avoided, waited for him to run out of fuel and shot him down.

But i`m talking about the KIND of multiplayer CA has aimed for has resulted partly in the slow decay of TW games that we see here...


Ships of the Line fired at ridiculously made up ranges that did not follow the real life of order of ship firing, archers with a greater firing range than rifles. much of this followed into Shogun too. Of course the bad sieges were part of the bad engine and incompetence, but it seemed CA thought it suited the `I don`t want to think` general MP crowd as well. There was the issue of MPers whining about `hill camping`...

Now we have a terribly stripped down RTW2 that seems designed for easy, no thinking MP that does nothing to emulate battlefield or siege warfare at all, especially on release, ie, the Flags, the speed, the arcade buttons, like an Unreal Tournament of Total War. Now I liked Unreal Tournament, it don`t belong in TW games though!

Even now, there are strange siege mechanics like the inability to charge into an open gate the AI opened by accident because a forcefield is there ( I think it`s a Flag issue too) which appears to affect the AI`s decision process too and often makes it half way abandon Towers at the walls to go for the gate instead. There`s the refusal to remove the stupid fire javelins, cavalry fire arrows (what other reason is there than to appeal to MP 10 year olds?)

To sum up, once, to deal with a mechanic CA, used to think `How do we fix this realistically, but also make it fun?` That`s where we got Shogun up to MTW2 - Then they started thinking, `How do we make this fun for multiplayer?` and that`s when the game started to fall apart. they need to keep REALITY as a FOUNDATION a BASE and they`ll succeed, otherwise, fail.

Of course, over-the-top greed was an overriding factor as well. They wanted to make sure they had a win\win super-pofit scenario just in case no one liked their game, in this heavy advertising, hype and Steam (guaranteed no refunds), were heavily used.

My musings.

CA seem to have gutted their own game to satisfy metacritic reviewers. Perhaps they used this evaluation approach for the beta version? Unfortunately it is not based on gamer feedback, just reviewers. The guy behind this approach, Tim Heaton, suggests that he will remove any feature (no matter how complete) if it does not help them get to a metacritic score of 90. So the theory goes that Tom Heaton gets the CA team to remove stuff that metacritic reviewers don't like? If true then that could be a reason right there why the game is not what was advertized - it was changed due to marketing feedback not user (gamer) feedback. So you have the CA development team being pulled in two directions - completing a properly designed game and satisfying the whims of metacritic reviewers.

Seems like a classic conflict to me - the demands of marketing vs demands of the development team. Only this time you have this cult like faith in metacritic? I remember marketing dudes running into our office and getting us to change our standard system so that it could be used in an entirely different discipline. It spawned a very clunky system. But no way did the marketing director run in and say "Guys, there are these dudes who are not frequent, regular nor even casual users of our system but they have produced a list of changes for you to make at the last minute. Hop to it!"

[Jade Falcon]

Certainly I think greed played its part somewhere along the lines, the PR is testament to that. Perhaps over ambition too, mixed with a healthy dose of reality when publishers demand that the game is released so the unfinished features get axed due to the devs running out of time. Of course then I also get the feeling that Rome II was just an attempt to test new mechanics and introduce new casual fans before working on Warhammer. Theres so many magical effects in the game at present and then theres the introduction of click me buttons to boost your magic powers at a moments notice.

At times the game feels more like Total War: Sorcery than anything else. Yes I know mods can get rid of that stuff but why didn't they make that stuff optional. A slider that lets you scale the game from a traditional TW experience with all the old features to one that supports a more casual fanbase, that slider would work like magic for me and I suspect many others.

[BigHairyMelon]

Never really been a fan of multiplayer. I prefer games that don't rely on multiplayer to be good, definitely think Tim Heaton's methods and greed ( Sega?) played a big part in the current state of total war games. I also think it has become a lot more streamlined and casual to appeal to a wider audience, most of the features that were present in M2TW are gone completely which is a shame.

I just feel that the Total War franchise that I loved to play when I was younger (Rome 1 and M2TW) is not the same as it is now. It took re visiting the Roman period for me to realise this. I know there are people who would disagree but I would have loved Rome 2 to be Rome 1 but with updated graphics and some more in depth features. Or failing that just a re-skinned shogun 2, sadly it isn't even that.

[Zenky]

Greed is what drive this world sadly cant blame CA they are no different then other they have stock holder to please before gamer, not sure why its a shocking news.

[Bethencourt]

The problem is that it is not greed that moves the world, it is intelligent greed what moves it, the rest makes it go backwards. Intelligent greed makes the producer take long term viable decisions so the income last the maximun time, so maybe you do not gain so much at first moment but in long term you gain much more. How is that? providing good products so your costumers will repeat their purchases in long term. Cheating costumers is not an intelligent business.

[VanGoth]

OP seems to have no clue what he's talking about when it comes to MP, oh and congratz to yet another bash thread filled with assumptions. The world really needed that^^

[Ironhorse]

OP seems to have no clue what he's talking about when it comes to MP, oh and congratz to yet another bash thread filled with assumptions. The world really needed that^^

I agree with OP, this game didn't need this level of MP functionality other than to draw in the console kids and ruin a decade long franchise, and it added a huge burden on trying to please 2 very different gaming groups. The result is obvious.

[Ataegina]

yaaaaaaaaaay another thread like this !!!!!!!!!!!!! @VanGoth thats true!! and really people still acting like gaming industry is about what? charity? no, this is a bussiness and to stay alive is all about make the most money out of it......... maybe too much ambition out of product? perhaps!!! Greed because they need profit? give me a break...... i would challenge anyone to open a bussiness and just try to break even or barely money no money out of what you're selling, than try to keep all your bills and employees paid, without ever "think" on make big bucks out of what you're selling. isn't greed, its surviving as you know gaming industry is hard to survive and we had example of one giant that thought somewhat in the same logic of people here crying and we all know how it ended......bankrupted..... divided and sold for peanuts...... yup THQ!!! Gaming > Bussiness > Money = Needs to profit !! and please we all know rome 2 have flaws and many of you don't like whatever you don't like, but stop spamming threads just for the sake of needing attention and needing of say "oh i hate them because...... and they're satan".theres 1000000001 threads already...... WE GET IT !!!

[Huberto]

and really people still acting like gaming industry is about what? charity? no, this is a bussiness and to stay alive is all about make the most money out of it......... maybe too much ambition out of product? perhaps!!! Greed because they need profit? give me a break...... i would challenge anyone to open a bussiness and just try to break even or barely money no money out of what you're selling, than try to keep all your bills and employees paid, without ever "think" on make big bucks out of what you're selling. isn't greed, its surviving as you know gaming industry is hard to survive and we had example of one giant that thought somewhat in the same logic of people here crying and we all know how it ended......bankrupted..... divided and sold for peanuts...... yup THQ!!! Gaming > Bussiness > Money = Needs to profit !!

OK thanks for the rant. THQ didn't go bankrupt because its games were not selling. Do your research.

Anyway Mr. Satomi makes $5 million per year last time I checked. SEGA is not some venture start up etc. etc.

Here's the thing. SEGA/CA had a nice little thing going with Total War. It wasn't selling in the millions but was obviously making money. So naturally company management wanted to make it bigger because that's what they do. Bigger = success. Success = bonus. To make it bigger they needed it to appeal to more people. To figure out how to appeal to more people they chose steam metrics, Metacritic and a bunch of other market research. Then they went out and designed Rome II.

The game isn't good. A major reason the game isn't good is because many of the new features don't make the game fun to play. Some if not all of these features appear to have been designed to make the game easier to play, faster, quicker, more simple, more 'streamlined.' This would presumably appeal to non-TW hardcore. ?But the fact that the game isn't good means they will not grow sales the next time they release a TW, should they choose to release another TW. Something went wrong. What happened?

[daelin4]

I disagree, I think they are just detached from what the community wants, and just make products to sell, not games for consumers to enjoy.

I mean all you REALLY need to do is just convince people that they love the game, not actually make the game lovable.

However I think it's more complicated than that: I mean a lot of the guys that made the game might have wanted or tested some cool features we would have really loved, but then gets cut out due to time or budget constraints, or they don't fit in with certain features that are paramount to the game. As much as I'd still be paid if I was that person, I'd still have preferred the things that would make the game truly great.

[krisslanza]

They made a game that appeals to more players then just TWC. Nothing wrong there.

Also Rome 2's MP is a huge step back compared to Shogun 2's, so... there's that. They went from having this fun, engaging RPG-esque MP mode to... pointless matches. Woo.

[AgentGB]

Not to mention the Clan global domination map mode, that was fun. if anything has been done well, its probably the mp campaign, it seems alot less buggy compared to previous total war titles, i haven't had a game go bad on me yet, the new resync feature does it job most of the time, only once have i had to go back a turn. when a resync failed, which surprised me to be honest, but was playing a mod, using larger unit sizes.

I won't deny, MP is far better due to it actually working well, as in stable for the most part, and tbh i can see some justifications for having flags in some cases, a macedonian player could hug a corner and force you to fall back if the battle as a timer, which is a exploit, hugging map edges & the falling back army always takes more losses, although the ai would never do such a thing. But most of all, it probably stopped the player exploiting the ai in same way, but its hard to argue the case of the flag, when the ai does seem pretty naff tbh. although the CAI still get eaten fairly well by human players, but the ai atleast stands some form of a chance when players are commanding there armies in versus mode, atm singleplayer a bore, i know im going to win. So im hoping there gonna be some cracking mods made in time, like another roma surrectum or five good emperors.

[SirRobin]

I don't think "greed" is the right word for it. All businesses try to maximise their profits, that's why there need to be some laws to restrict what they can do, but that's another discussion.

On topic, I think what happened was that some businessman in charge of CA or SEGA thought:

"It's not the game that matters, it's SELLING the game. Once we got the money, we win." And that's very logic, isn't it?

So, from the old design philosophy of building the best possible game, it's now a matter of marketing. That's where they focus, that's where they invest their money, because that's what pays off for them.

It's not because they are 'evil', it's because they predict that it's more profitable for them to release an unfinished game early, rake in pre-order and day-one money, then keep the ship afloat with promises and patches for maybe a month - that's when most of the money has been made.

Very simple really. It's about how much money they would need to invest to get the last 20% of revenue that they could potentially squeeze out of the game if it had been amazing. Pure cost/benefit.

From what I can read in the comments, the game is not a total disaster, only halfway. Some people find the game "ok" or even enjoyable in some way. But for the people who care(d?) strongly about the series, like me for example, a half disaster is a total disaster.

It's not something that keeps me awake at night, but it's something that keeps my money in my pocket.

[Zenky]

I don't think "greed" is the right word for it. All businesses try to maximise their profits, that's why there need to be some laws to restrict what they can do, but that's another discussion.

On topic, I think what happened was that some businessman in charge of CA or SEGA thought:

"It's not the game that matters, it's SELLING the game. Once we got the money, we win." And that's very logic, isn't it?

So, from the old design philosophy of building the best possible game, it's now a matter of marketing. That's where they focus, that's where they invest their money, because that's what pays off for them.

It's not because they are 'evil', it's because they predict that it's more profitable for them to release an unfinished game early, rake in pre-order and day-one money, then keep the ship afloat with promises and patches for maybe a month - that's when most of the money has been made.

Very simple really. It's about how much money they would need to invest to get the last 20% of revenue that they could potentially squeeze out of the game if it had been amazing. Pure cost/benefit.

From what I can read in the comments, the game is not a total disaster, only halfway. Some people find the game "ok" or even enjoyable in some way. But for the people who care(d?) strongly about the series, like me for example, a half disaster is a total disaster.

It's not something that keeps me awake at night, but it's something that keeps my money in my pocket.

Exactly my though , I have 2 friend casual player ( they have young family and can only game couple hours per week and they love the game , they didn't like very first TW it was to time consuming/micro for them and they do not post here nor care about any game forums. I think TWC is where hardcore fan gather thats why the game look bad here , but for casual the game is fine. And the problem is casual have a much larger player base then the hardcore base.

[Emperor Arcturus Mengsk]

Well their multiplayer is severely lacking compared to other strategy titles

Oh and yes cavalry fire arrows and javelins......

Fun times

[Holger Danske]

Now I liked Unreal Tournament

The reason to like UT is that it's stays true to it's genre and doesn't pretend to be anything else. Rome II, not such much.

OP seems to have no clue what he's talking about when it comes to MP, oh and congratz to yet another bash thread filled with assumptions. The world really needed that^^

Oh, maybe you could elabroate on his statements and why they, in your opinion, are wrong rather than support it through your attitude?...

[Grimreapo]

What... the... hell...

I am not a MP player of the TW games but even I know that the MP community plays a vital part in balancing the game, for example Shogun 2 is a shining example of fairly good balance (both internal and external) with units not only have a relation with other units but they even give the player a reason to buy a cheaper "inferior" unit over a more powerful unit (i.e. yari ashigaru over Yari Samurai) and even though FOTS was mostly gunpowder units each unit had a different use with a different feel as well.

Whilst the Ships Of Line balance was "gamey" and because of how simple the naval mechanics of the TW games are there was little reason to buy anything but SoL even though in real life there are more reasons not to buy a SoL (for example they had terrible range and speed, so if you had a global empire they were not helpful). If anything our multiplayer comrades are the ones who have lost the most, Shogun 2 had extremely robust MP system that was gutted from Rome 2 without any sort of replacement, IMO the single player side of Rome 2 had a few good ideas but they are under a broken mess and we dont have stuff outright taken out without any sort of replacement...

[B. W.]

One major problem that the TW series has is that with eachsubsequent iteration, it is essentially competing with itself, even taking intoconsideration that each iteration usually involves a different time period. Inthe case of sequels, fans would expect an improved and graphically enhancedversion of the original. Unless I’m mistaken this is what happened with Shogunand Medieval.

Now comes Rome 2 at a time when many things have changed.There are dozens of new platforms just waiting for an intrepid company toexpand their share of the market. If you were a publishing firm executive, Ithink you know where this line of thinking would take you. To put it bluntly,it would take you right to the catastrophe of Rome 2. i.e.; let’s make a gamethat people can play out battles against one another on their tablets whilethey’re in a bar or waiting for a plane. Gee, what brilliance! Give that man araise!

The truth is that if Rome 2 were the only TW game everproduced it would be considered revolutionary, even with its faults. Sadly itis not and the benchmarks it has to compete with were, for TW fans, very re-playable.

A lot has been said about so many game play decisions thatdon’t make sense. I’m going to give my take on one of them here:
Let’s take forinstance transport ships. Why did they do it the way they did it? Well for onething, it’s a one turn game. The one turn per year decision affects all aspectsof game play. If you had the army build its own fleet, it would take at leasttwo years of game time. If it were left up to the player to tell the army tobuild the fleet this would slow down an already glacially paced game. Keep itsimple would be the decision. We’re looking for a new TW type of customer,because we already know most TW gamers are going to buy Rome 2 because it’swhat they’ve been screaming for. Same goes for trade ships and trade nodes. Getrid of them because they don’t fit a one turn per year game.

And while you’re at it, don’t waste time creating and artisticallyappealing UI. The Meta-critic guys who spent most of their one hour playing timewith battles say it’s just fine, never mind the fact that after 20 hours play alot of people will be tired of it. Same goes for family trees and while we’reat it make all rivers passable everywhere. That should speed things up a bit.

Now let’s see where else we can trim…

You get the idea.

And that’s what happened to Rome 2.

[Holger Danske]

To put it bluntly,it would take you right to the catastrophe of Rome 2. i.e.; let’s make a gamethat people can play out battles against one another on their tablets whilethey’re in a bar or waiting for a plane. Gee, what brilliance! Give that man araise!

Then make an IP that caters for such a crowd and don't butcher another IP in order for it to better fit with your new target group?...