Originally Posted by
Bella
The political system is being reworked, as stated in the RP. Civil wars are being expanded and opened up to multiple instances. This should help with late game steamrolling.
Patch 14, or the Siege AI patch, has been widely praised both here and at /r/totalwar as a massive improvement.
I've not seen a single instance of units running back and forth and blobbing up, as you put it. I have 1209 hours logged into Rome II as of this moment. I think I would've seen such by now. And barbarian factions are supposed to be like this, due to the fact their armies were not as organized as their Greek/Roman counterparts.
Performance enhancements? Do you mean as in framerates? Mine runs pretty smoothly (~50-55 fps) with my old i5 750 and a single Radeon R9 270 and 4GB DDR3 1333.
To produce more than what they have done? 14 patches, a large handful of free extra content, 16 RPs to update us on progress, a constant presence both here, the other forums, and at /r/totalwar to keep us informed, and now the Emperor Edition with all its features, as well as a brand new campaign, all for $0? Would you have them give you a new TW game for free? I'm also well aware the community is the lifeblood of the TW franchise. I have been a part of it for 10 years, and a modding contributor for a span of 5 years. The modding community has made a huge comeback with Rome II, CA holds specific events just for that portion of the community, and have even hired from within that pool.
"The biggest and best Total War to date" is and always will be in the eye of the beholder. That's standard PR. What would you have them say, "this TW is pretty good, but we think Medieval 2 was better"? But to hold them to making every single player think Rome II is "the biggest and best" is ludicrous. Some here think RTW is the best in the series. Some, Shogun 2. Some, ETW. It's a matter of opinion. But you cannot hold a thing against them for promoting their new product in such a fashion. Every company does this. It's unrealistic for you to think they could please even 75% of this community in such a way.
Refer to SPARTAN VI's post above mine for even more that the game is nowhere near as bad off as you claim it is.
As for people spending thousands of pounds/dollars/whatever building a new system for this game, none of that is CA's fault. Nobody forced a single one of those people to buy all that hardware, or set aside time from work to play a video game. That irresponsibility is on those people who did that, not CA. Here I am, running the game on mostly 5-7 year old hardware, and running it smooth as silk with hardly any issue at all. Such is the nature of PC gaming. This isn't an Xbox or Playstation or Wii game where the hardware is standardized. It's PC software, that runs on potentially millions of possible configurations. It's not going to run smoothly for everyone. And with 14 patches addressing those issues, I'd say CA has done their part to correct them. And they still have a little more than a year left on the support time frame given for the game.
Nobody nearly destroyed the entire franchise. This is how TW games are released. They always start out in a horrendous state, with the exception of the original STW/MTW games. RTW, M2TW, ETW, and Shogun 2 were all a hot mess when they all launched. Every single one of them. CTDs, missing features, buggy AI, cheap AI, pathfinding issues, graphical errors, performance issues, compatibility issues, hell Shogun 2's MP feature was a nightmare for months after it launched, and the game didn't even have basic anti-aliasing when it came out. And right now, you can find large groups of people here, at other forums, and on reddit who will tell you each of those games are their favorites in the franchise's history. ETW has a huge portion of posts at /r/totalwar about all the fun people have in that old game, and still do, and it was regarded as the most buggy and worst launch in TW history. This is the natural cycle of TW games. They start off really poorly optimized and lacking in some areas, and are patched and added to over the following years. Are they ever perfect? No. Will any of them ever be exactly what you wanted? No.
And lastly, for you to say "most of us did not enjoy the game" is pretty arrogant. Are you now the spokesperson for "most of us"? You certainly don't speak for me. You certainly don't speak for the thousands of posts over at the TW subreddit that show people having a great time with the game, praising CA for their patches and consistent, relentless efforts to improve the game. You are stuck on a year ago, and refuse to accept the fact that the game has gotten better, much better in fact. And now with the EE coming at zero cost to you or anyone who owns Rome II, it's likely to get even better, and many people are enjoying the game now. Does anyone owe you anything, financially or morally? Not at all. You are responsible for your own money and how you spend it. If you've seen even a single TW game before Rome II, you'd know this. They all start out this way. Creative Assembly put out a game last September that didn't live up to the hype, or the features advertised. And for the last 12 months, they've relentlessly worked and put out free content, 14 patches, listened to feedback from the community and implemented many of the changes asked for, and are on the eve of dropping a pretty big upgrade and additional campaign for $0.00.
At the end of the day, keep the "most of us" to yourself, because you do not speak for me, nor anyone else here. You speak only for yourself.
The moral of the story is, wait one year and pay half price for a game is the quickest way to watch a developer of games you enjoy go the way of the dodo. I preordered Rome II, knowing CA would fix what needed to be fixed, because I have watched this company for 13 years. That's not my opinion, that's based on their previous actions with supporting and fixing their previous games.
And people are literally paying to be beta testers on Steam. That's not a metaphor. "Early Access Betas" are literally being purchased for half price, 20% off, etc. DayZ is one such example, and that trend is growing by leaps and bounds on Steam. That's also literally running the risk of buying a game that may or may not ever be completed at all. So that point of yours is moot.
Upgrading doesn't work? Slaughter fanboys saying their 780 doesn't have great framerates? A) try running even RTW on an ATi Rage 128 Pro, and b) you apparently don't understand the concept of driver sets for untested, brand new, cutting edge hardware. Of course they don't run great. They're brand new, running brand new driver sets that are unoptimized, untested, and relatively unknown. That's why my old Radeon 4870 ran Rome II better than some of these top of the line GPUs people foolishly dropped $500+ on. My GPU had long proven and optimized driver sets. It's not a hard concept to grasp.
Lastly, using physically abusive relationships is a poor analogy for video games that need to be patched for millions of hardware configuration possibilities. This isn't an Xbox game. CA doesn't have the safety and comfort of developing for one particular GPU and CPU and API that millions use. They have to develop for millions of possible configurations, and no developer in video game history has ever done that. You're being unrealistic.