Does Carthage looks as it did in Alpha?

[Sir_Pee_Alot]

If the sieges actually worked and the game was deeply immersive I wouldn't care much that we were shown something that isn't there, that it would only get better an eventually "look, way way better than this!"

deeply immersive? Not really the campaign is not immersive if you ask me.

[Scorpionet]

Each new thread that remembers what Rome II should have been, is to name the rope in the house of the hanged ..... Our complaints are absorbed by a black hole that swallows everything

[Dago Red]

Exactly. I think you misread me. If, if all those things were true, if the game was well done and deeply immersive in other areas. Then I wouldn't mind so much about the false "in game footage" that turned out to be so much less impressive than we were told and shown.

I suspect I'd be more happily playing a deeply immersive, well done game, instead of not even touching it for 3 months and growing more disenfranchised each week as I continue to read very little in the way of positive changes coming from CA, other than paid for DLC's that lo and behold, do add some missing features.

[AnonMilwaukean]

There's lots of differences... for one, the Alpha portion of the photo being quoted seems to imply units can disembark onto the dock jetty itself, when in fact you can only disembark onto beaches. Perhaps a feature that got changed or removed, but when it comes to the graphics, well, yes, they are certainly not the same.

That said, I've almost never played a triple-A title that looked like its promotional material, and there's a reason to this other than simply not playing on highest settings: triple-A titles tend to have the budget to airbrush and touch-up photos left and right. Now, I'm not excusing this practice, but it's nothing unique to R2. And any alpha stuff we were thrown was promotional stuff, wasn't it? What I mean is: the alpha wasn't open to anyone outside of CA, was it? Are those alpha photos from a person outside of the company who took them in-game, or are they just from things CA themselves released? I honestly don't know, so apologies if the photo is actually from a player, but if the alpha photo is from the company itself, then I fail to see how that photo is all that different from what lots of other companies do regularly.

[Dago Red]

There's lots of differences... for one, the Alpha portion of the photo being quoted seems to imply units can disembark onto the dock jetty itself, when in fact you can only disembark onto beaches. Perhaps a feature that got changed or removed, but when it comes to the graphics, well, yes, they are certainly not the same.

Agreed, and I've added a lot more than that. Others have exhaustively noted still more differences in other threads.

I honestly don't know, so apologies if the photo is actually from a player, but if the alpha photo is from the company itself, then I fail to see how that photo is all that different from what lots of other companies do regularly.

There's 2 huge differences. From the OP:

1. I will note that not only was the so called alpha described as "actual in game footage" (which has become noticeably less awesome) but that we were also specifically told that all of this would improve:

2. "We're way way pre-alpha and what that means is there is loads of features not just in terms of the graphics but also in terms of the combat and animations that actually aren't in the game yet.So the final game is actually gonna look way way better than this!” - James Russell, CA.

Thirdly, a note about the very Youtube video I took the screenshot from which is titled "First gameplay footage." And the above quote from James Russel, only one of many like it, came after the world saw these gameplay footage trailers. Anyone can watch the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OHV628oGiU


EDIT: and for further inquiry, this is one example of the media storm that surrounded this actual game footage, with every magazine and media outlet on the planet also under the impression this was actually representative of the game, not just the members of this forum.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/09/26/to...me-2-trailer/:

Ouch! I've never seen someone get crushed with the head of a massive statue before, but this is WAR. The new Rome 2 trailer shows the first in-engine footage of the siege of Carthage. Legions of troops pour onto the beaches, wash into the streets and break against the grey, craggy fury of an elephant charge. It's a short teaser for a longer fly-through video of the siege that The Creative Assembly are keeping locked safely away in their trailer Trireme, but it offers a heady glimpse of the updated engine. Don't let me keep you. The video is right here ready to go.

Ouch! None of that is actually in the game for you to do / see / marvel at, including the mysterious elephant attack animation that terrifyingly breaks men into screaming routs and can pick men up with their trunks and cast them to their deaths!

This is the reason I bought this game, this in game footage trailer, that was "actually gonna look way way better than this!" when all was said and done.

[Epic28]

Extreme setting, Carthage in the historical battle (high level). I tried to take screenshots at the same place of the alpa/beta screens

Alpha vs patch 10

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

beta vs patch 10

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

2. "We're way way pre-alpha and what that means is there is loads of features not just in terms of the graphics but also in terms of the combat and animations that actually aren't in the game yet.So the final game is actually gonna look way way better than this!” - James Russell, CA.

Those pictures along with that immediate quote demands an explanation from Creative Assembly. Why were we sold this pre-alpha footage and why did you say that in the interview, which is quoted above in bold courtesy of Dago Red?

Our games do not look like that. In fact instead of looking "way way better" they look worse. At this point it is obvious Creative Assembly is no longer the moral integrity driven company they started as. I don't place the faults on Craig, Will, Trish, Jack, Joey, the ones who frequented these forums prior to release. No I blame this to the people higher up, people we never will see or hear from again. Mutiny needs to occur at CA.

Remove those in charge.

[allmodcons]

I had forgotten about that game play footage. What the heck happened CA?

[stevehoos]

Not to worry guys, this is way way patch 10, future looks bright!

Seriously, almost nothing in that video is depicted in the game, it's pure absurdity to think otherwise. It looks like a video for a movie, or for something totally unrelated. It's a waste of mental energy to waste time on this "argument."

[Super7700]

Sure, so the in-game Carthage is undeniably different and scaled down from Carthage in the Alpha. However many users here are too quick to jump on the "it's different so CA must be lying/scamming us" bandwagon. Just consider this - CA had already created this larger Carthage in game, so they would not have reduced its size without good reason (at least in their opinion), for instance the greater scale may have had a negative impact on the gameplay. Perhaps the city was too large and the fighting became too spread out and difficult to manage, perhaps they removed some of the buildings because it hindered pathfinding. CA aren't going to put the time into creating something for the game and then go "hey wait we need to scam the customers, let's remove this just to piss them off". It just doesn't work that way.

I'm pretty sure that every game cuts things from their alpha state, but since we don't have the opportunity to play the alpha, we only have the pictures and videos of what's been cut. These things might look really awesome and epic so of course we are going to be disappointed if we don't see them in the final game. What we won't know about are the technical or gameplay flaws with these things, which may have in fact been detrimental to our gameplay experience (or not given CA's other controversial design decisions).

On the other hand though I do believe CA is completely guilty of dishonesty when it comes to the differences between the alpha and release graphics details and lighting effects. Unlike the city size, these differences cannot possibly be excused as design decisions because CA continues to use the enhanced effects and LOD, which cannot be accessed in the game without modding, in their promotional pictures.

[Prince Regent George]

Sure, so the in-game Carthage is undeniably different and scaled down from Carthage in the Alpha. However many users here are too quick to jump on the "it's different so CA must be lying/scamming us" bandwagon. Just consider this - CA had already created this larger Carthage in game, so they would not have reduced its size without good reason (at least in their opinion), for instance the greater scale may have had a negative impact on the gameplay. Perhaps the city was too large and the fighting became too spread out and difficult to manage, perhaps they removed some of the buildings because it hindered pathfinding. CA aren't going to put the time into creating something for the game and then go "hey wait we need to scam the customers, let's remove this just to piss them off". It just doesn't work that way.

I'm pretty sure that every game cuts things from their alpha state, but since we don't have the opportunity to play the alpha, we only have the pictures and videos of what's been cut. These things might look really awesome and epic so of course we are going to be disappointed if we don't see them in the final game. What we won't know about are the technical or gameplay flaws with these things, which may have in fact been detrimental to our gameplay experience (or not given CA's other controversial design decisions).

On the other hand though I do believe CA is completely guilty of dishonesty when it comes to the differences between the alpha and release graphics details and lighting effects. Unlike the city size, these differences cannot possibly be excused as design decisions because CA continues to use the enhanced effects and LOD, which cannot be accessed in the game without modding, in their promotional pictures.

First of all, your arguments are actually possible (and rather unprobable) excuses about why CA downgraded the "pre-alpha" Carthage. Valid or invalid (personally, I believe the second, but that's just my opinion), they don't change the fact that CA clearly misled her customers.
If Carthage, the warships, the units and etc. really had to be downgraded for whatever the reason, CA was obliged to inform her customers about the unfortunate news, regarding the "actual gameplay footage".
They didn't and that shows dishonesty, insincerity and a desire to manipulate their fans.

Secondly, let's be reasonable, here.
I don't think we ever saw any pre-alpha or alpha material (although we played the beta version since September).
The videos of Carthage, the images, all of them were almost certainly just a special version of the game, created for marketing purposes. The pre-alpha Carthage, if she ever existed, was never seen by the gamers. Never. For a whole year, we were just watching "Marketing Footage" or scripted battles, like the one of the Teutoberg Forest or the infamous Roman-Macedonian skirmish.

Let's remembert the 1st of September, when a Russian managed to illegally unlock the already downloaded in Steam game. In his video, he depicted an atrocious siege, which had accurately predicted all the future complaints concerning sieges.
The video looked so worse than the previous ones, patronized by CA, that the fanboys had to invent a myriad of ridiculous excuses to reject the video ("It's clearly pre-pre-pre alpha", "B-b-but guyz, he's Russian!" and etc.).
They didn't understand that marketing is designed to mislead the potential customers and not to provide an objective preview of the game.

[Raining Red]

Secondly, let's be reasonable, here.
I don't think we ever saw any pre-alpha or alpha material (although we played the beta version since September).
The videos of Carthage, the images, all of them were almost certainly just a special version of the game, created for marketing purposes. The pre-alpha Carthage, if she ever existed, was never seen by the gamers. Never. For a whole year, we were just watching "Marketing Footage" or scripted battles, like the one of the Teutoberg Forest or the infamous Roman-Macedonian skirmish.

Sorry, but I can't resist. You start a paragraph saying "let's be reasonable" and proceed to outline a conspiracy theory? Really? There was a playable battle during their pre-alpha period that was labelled pre-alpha footage.The city was obviously finished. I don't see any reason why the lighting and such could not have also been active in the rest of the game at that time. Be reasonable. It was real footage of the game at that point that, for whatever reason, had to be downgraded going forward. Maybe it was pathfinding. Maybe it was performance, maybe it was that the AI was incapable of attacking/defending it properly, maybe for gameplay reasons (unwieldy large and felt empty), or maybe some other reason. Likely a combination of reasons.

I'm going to guess that they were using monster computers that was capable of handling it and thought that they could optimize the game for non-monster PC's for release, but were unable to do so, and instead had to scale things back. To me it looks to be a case of ambition that fell flat.

As for false advertising...well...it was pre-alpha footage. It should ALWAYS be taken with a grain of salt. Things change. They should be expected to change. Therefore I wouldn't say it was false advertising that things changed between then and release. However, I agree that it would have been good form to own up and say that the quality isn't up to the initial video's once it became apparent that it wouldn't be.

[jamreal18]

Will we be able to use the port as it should be?

[Dago Red]

Will we be able to use the port as it should be?

Not a chance, it's way too reduced in size to fit even a single ship within the famous military harbor (even though this could hold hundreds of ships in real life and it left an impression in the earth that is still visible even though the harbor itself is long gone). The version we saw in the alpha game play footage was probably not even capable of allowing for the player to sail ships into it (though maybe technically large enough to fit a ship in, I suspect it was/is blocked off like other objects you cannot get near with any units). Now for sure you can't.

You can sail ships into the trade harbor area -- just like in any other city template, although it is more cramped than some given that it is a narrow channel walled on both sides.

[jamreal18]

Not a chance, it's way too reduced in size to fit even a single ship within the famous military harbor (even though this could hold hundreds of ships in real life and it left an impression in the earth that is still visible even though the harbor itself is long gone). The version we saw in the alpha game play footage was probably not even capable of allowing for the player to sail ships into it (though maybe technically large enough to fit a ship in, I suspect it was/is blocked off like other objects you cannot get near with any units). Now for sure you can't.

You can sail ships into the trade harbor area -- just like in any other city template, although it is more cramped than some given that it is a narrow channel walled on both sides.

but the purpose of dockyard is to load, embark, anything to do with ships...

so the port is only for display?

[weirdoascensor]

No, of course not.

The "Large" map is Carthage for Historical Battles suited for Scripted Historical Battles - and what in the in-game Grand Campaign Siege Map is the scaled-down "Practical" version for the real game.

Anyway, did anybody replaced the Carthage siege map battleterrain template with the larger one? If the Large Carthage Map still there buried in the data packs, doing it may be possibly done just using PFM.

[zeroFreeze]

Any E3 reveal and/or gameplay footage will always be subject to change, and usually not for the good. The footage they show would have been in-engine and yes, gameplay to show what the engine is capable of. More like a tech-demo if anything. What we forget is that as development progresses, there are compromises that need to be made and usually graphical fidelity suffers because of this. Now, what I'm more dissappointed with is the combat animations and the lack of any real elephant fighting animations. But hey, this is a circle-jerk so 'ye CA r liarz alfa futege wuz fakedd'

[chris10]

I would argue that the two screens shown in OP are different in scale. The ingame screen representing a smaller setting of the image shown below. The casual eye will not see a big difference and the slightly different angles between both points of view are miselading a bit too.
In the lower screen you only see a section of the city wall and the lighthouse seems to be closer to the wall.


Its depressing that as always one of our two main derailers rolled directly in and took the first page over with denials.

[ScytheRayne]

I sincerely believe that if CA/Sega had been feeling confident about this game succeeding, they would have released a demo or had a free-to-play weekend prior to release. The video featuring Carthage happens to be one of the reasons I decided to get Rome2, and if I had been able to play the historical battle for Carthage or even the tutorial, I would have decided against purchasing it. As it is, they only released footage putting the game in the best possible light whilst trying to avoid revealing some of the most glaring issues such as pathfinding and the hilariously inept siege AI.

That speaks to some level of deception on their part, which disappoints me.

[Ganossa]

Well if you checked steam where most of the players complained after release you would know that (I think until now) most players complain about their bad performance (on their notebooks).
Also many players want to have Rome 2 to look like Rome 1 ..
.. so well, I think CA is doing what they can to change Rome 2 into Rome 1 -graphically- and enhance performance for all the people with weak "gaming" notebooks that expect high quality games are made to work for them maxed out.

[Butan]

I think it somewhat looks different (especially in term of buildings proportion, heights and position of walls/houses), but overall it looks the same (as long as your city is max level and you are gifted with the best computer on earth that is).

I cannot vote no, just as I cannot vote yes, because there is valid points for both opinions.